Practical experience of using the Forms in combat, coupled with further months of constant drill, allowed Rey to make rapid strides. She learned to employ the kata creatively, to counter different weapons. She moved more quickly, she hit harder, and now she could send whole squads of Stormtroopers scattering like rumble-pins.
But her confidence was tempered by the knowledge of what she had yet to face. In due time, the Resistance would have to challenge the First Order's advance directly. That would truly mean really big battles, the sort which could run for days and which would pit her against the worst that the First Order had to offer. Not just the elite of the Stormtrooper legions, but other Force-wielders. The dreaded Knights of Ren… and him.
For on the horizon, at the edge of her mind, her nemesis loomed. In the depths of her most ominous dreams, she saw him. Kylo Ren, wreathed in fire and smoke, always in battle. The glimpses she got were fragmentary things, like a faulty and stuttering holofilm, but they burned themselves on the back of her mind's eye.
She saw him lead an army of Stormtroopers against the soldiers of a Republic world, face a hulking beast on a field of rusted metal and bones, fight with his Knights against a ragged horde on a lava world, beneath a black tower. Despite the scattered nature of the dreams, his increasing power was ever-more apparent.
As was his growing swordsmanship. She wasn't sure he had even had a Form when she first encountered him, unless you called it a crude version of Djem So. Now, however, his moves displayed a far greater finesse and assurance. It was true Form V, and more than that. Increasingly, she noticed his attacks. There was a speed to them which recalled Ataru and Makashi, but also a fury which went far beyond anything a Jedi would practice.
So that's Juyo, Rey thought to herself when she woke from one such dream.
He was, as she should only have expected, doing the same thing as her. Accounting for the gaps and vulnerabilities in his style, deepening his connection to the Force. Juyo to counter Djem So's lack of mobility, Niman to amplify and harness his own affinity with telekinesis.
And at least in part, he was doing this with an eye to facing her again. So she must do the same, difficult as the thought was.
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Now came a point where Rey found herself meditating upon the Forms, upon herself. She needed to evolve, to determine which would fit her best – and her needs as a combatant. At this point, her understanding of Niman's principles, both physical and spiritual, was sufficient for her to call again on her prior experience. Now she could integrate what years of fighting with the staff had taught her.
Increasingly, she found herself thinking back to the first time she had truly let the Force flow through her. Her fight against Kylo Ren in the snowy forest, the two of them fighting as the Starkiller was torn down around them.
What were the details of that fight which stood out to her? The two emotions which concern me the most as a Jedi. Fear, and anger. It had been a fight of two halves, the first a headlong retreat until she finally reached for the connection she had fled from, and the other an unmitigated savaging of her opponent.
She left aside for now that Ren had been wounded and unbalanced at the time. Right now, her thoughts were on how she had been, how she had felt during that part of the fight. She remembered the ferocity, the thundering of blood in her ears. The way his blood had gleamed on the snow, the red seeming vivid even though they'd fought in the dark. She recalled the savage rush when she cut him across the face, and the satisfaction of seeing him sprawled, wounded in the snow.
But most troubling of all, she remembered feeling the urge to go further
On the other hand, when she leaned away and tried to spurn that anger, she felt diminished, neutered even. So perhaps she needn't clamp down on her anger, but rather she should find ways to focus it, channel it.
For that reason, she had already discounted Makashi, which centred almost entirely on duelling. That wouldn't serve her well in battle against First Order troopers. But there was another style which might.
"So, Ataru has piqued your interest," Cyn Drallig's ghostly avatar smiled when Rey returned to his holocron. "This Form vies with Djem So to be the most physically taxing style of saber combat, demanding its users to be ever on the attack and drawing constantly upon the Force. But for the persistent and robust, it is one of the most rewarding, enabling some of the most startling acrobatics that the Jedi arts are famed for."
Keep talking, Rey murmured inwardly. This sounded like her already – the greater the effort, the greater the reward.
Drallig ignited his saber and brought it… well, en garde didn't seem like quite the right phrase. More that he seemed to draw himself in, coiling like a spring. Everything about the stance spoke of imminent movement, Drallig ready to evade or explode into an attack.
"The Ataru practitioner calls upon the Force at all times," he said. "But to what end? Well…"
He moved so quickly that Rey started. His blade flickered through the air as he flowed through the kata, weaving from one stance to another with impossible speed. Or rather, speed which could only be made possible with the Force.
"Our connection to the Force," Drallig said, "bolsters our strength, speed and awareness. Often a Force-sensitive will call upon it to all of these ends before they understand how it is done, and sometimes before they even become aware of that sensitivity. In fighting in the Ataru style, a Jedi must assume conscious control of this, and then push it further."
Rey remembered seeing Luke break his own fall with telekinesis, and her momentary glimpses of him facing Kylo Ren on the salt plain of Crait. Was that Form IV, I wonder?
She turned her attention back to Drallig. "The Fourth Form, due to all of this, requires more non-combat training than any other. You must become intimately acquainted with your body's capabilities, and how the Force can carry you far beyond its limitations. But heed too the demands it places upon you. For those must be met if you are to master Ataru."
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The immediate upshot of that was that acrobatics now became a part of Rey's fitness routine, on top of longer and faster runs, heavier weights and more frequent team exercises. It drew quizzical reactions from her friends, but they couldn't deny the progress she showed.
From the start, of their time in the base she'd been climbing, both on the practice walls set up within the base and the less perilous rock faces around the base. Now she was free-climbing no matter the terrain, making moves she could never have attempted without the conscious use of the Force. Here, as when she fought, she found herself drawing fully on reserves she hadn't understood before, summitting climbs in a fraction of the time she would have taken before.
With that reinforcement, she began to practice the Ataru velocities. Some of them she recognised from Niman – that Form did integrate Ataru, after all – but here applied with much greater intensity. There was a purity to Form IV that made its derivatives in VI feel diluted in comparison.
Still, Rey could perceive the greater strain which the elaborate, highly mobile style imposed on her body compared to the measured and mannered styles of Niman. "They should call it the Appetite Form," Kaydel mused, watching Rey devour her rations after practice one evening. But through it all, Rey persisted.
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And it paid off. Over time, as she practiced while her hair grew back to its old length, Rey saw marked improvements in her fighting. Even compared to when she used Niman and Shii-Cho, she found that she moved faster and hit harder, imbuing her attacks with greater momentum. Even for her sparring partners, her attacks were unpredictable as she wheeled around an opponent.
Find an opening swiftly, and end a fight before it could drag out and risk fatiguing her. That became her guiding principle. In the field, that unpredictability became her watchword, along with the Force attacks which she carried over from her studies in Niman.
It was undeniably more taxing, however. Not least in how Ataru required her to actively "read" the Force, rather than permit it to steer her through a fight. She'd also had to contend with its weaknesses in defence, falling back on Niman when she used her little training droid.
"Sooner or later," Drallig cautioned, during a later lesson, "an Ataru practitioner will need to change course without going against the flow outright. If that occurs – or rather, if you allow it to occur – you'll be swept under by that flow, and then you will be lost."
Rey frowned questioningly at the long-dead Master. Fortunately, the answer came swiftly.
"The current will not always carry you to victory, and there will be enemies with enough skill, strength and speed to overcome you. So we aim for a balance. You need a light touch. You must know the core movements of the Form, but you must also learn to deviate and then return smoothly to it, as the flow of both the Force and battle dictate."
In some ways, Rey thought, using a connection to the Force was rather like taking a small boat down a river. Yes, she had limited experience of rivers, but she thought it worked in principle. You couldn't simply rely on the flow to deliver you to where you needed to be, but at the same time you couldn't fight it or else you'd be swept under and away.
There were also parallels, she supposed, to serving under Poe. "I'll set an objective," he'd tell her early on, "but I want you to figure out the best way to achieve it."
In any case, Rey found that Ataru worked against the principles of simple surrender to the Force. Too much concentration had to be devoted to the physical side of things, and bringing out her anger, it required tight focus to channel it properly and safely.
Mindful of the potential risks involved in sparring in that state, before she was comfortable with it, she went to Snap and asked if there was a way to make her practice droid project some semblance of physical opponents. His response had taken a couple of days, but now the droid could muster up holos of Stormtroopers, which would collapse when Rey struck them.
And once she was comfortable with that, it was time to test what she'd learned against her sparring partners.
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"Are we dancing again, Captain?" LM-276 asked as he and Rey circled each other in the snow.
Dancing. The Scrappers, the irregular squad of commandoes and close-combat specialists which Rey and Finn headed up, all used that word for Rey's new moves. Cylarei, schooled in
"Rather depends if you can keep up," Rey retorted, regarding him from beneath her hood. Unlike the droid, she had guard against the cold. Despite the clear sky above them, the air was still frigid.
They'd drawn something of a crowd. It always happened when she fought in view of the personnel on base. Rey ignored them – well, not entirely, but while she was aware of her audience, she didn't let it interfere with her focus. Be mindful of the Living Force. Keep your eye on the task before you.
She stilled, bringing herself into her ready position. Body slightly turned, practice staff held out. She drew in a breath and exhaled, engaging her core, and let the awareness permeate her. She had a sense of coiling as the Force suffused her, welcoming it into every muscle and sinew.
LM moved first, but it was Rey who struck the first blow, staff hammering against his practice sword. This was the Swarm, one of the core techniques of Ataru. She kept her strikes brief but unrelenting, robbing LM of momentum and withholding the initiative.
Not that she could dominate LM. The ex-gladiator was a tough, wily fighter even beyond his mechanical strength and speed. He'd prevailed many a bout in the arena by weathering an attack, reading his opponent's patterns and then countering.
Now that response kicked in. Putting his mass to good use, he drove at Rey, giving his blows a weight which she couldn't hope to parry for long – Force-derived strength or not. So Rey evaded and deflected rather than blocking, letting the practice sword whoosh past her. With each dodge, she struck back, derailing the offensive and prising the momentum from LM's hands.
The truly acrobatic aspects of Form IV were still beyond her at this point, but she could sway and weave, using the Force to augment her strength and drive her attacks home with greater speed.
To her inner eye, the Force was a many-channelled river, and she rode the currents and eddies, wheeling around at such velocity that even LM's electronic reactions were hard-pressed. This was jung su ma, building her own momentum, making it exponential. Now she was the Hawk-Bat which gave the Form a name, she was in full flight in the open sky and nothing could halt her.
There was the opening now, and Rey seized on it. She tore the sword from LM's grip then darted back, a half-step which brought the end of her staff to hover beneath his jutting iron chin. "Yield?"
The droid spread his hands. "I yield, captain. Gladly."
Rey let out a breath – a heavier one than she'd realised she was holding in. She rolled her shoulders, noting the traces of exertion. But she put it from her mind. A win was a win.
