Author's note: Thanks again for the reviews! While I don't just write for reviews, it really is rewarding to know people are enjoying your writing. Even if one of them is Matt Jones (a.k.a. The Puppet Killer).
Anyway, one nice comment I've been receiving a lot lately is on my action scenes. I'm glad to know they don't go unnoticed. Most action scenes you read in books these days either don't really go into detail on action, as they tend to think they're above that sort of thing, or they describe it really badly. So I'm glad that people think that I can write action semi-competently.
A note here on Star Wars itself: in this chapter I'm forced to use a word I hate: Vaapad. When Attack of the Clones came out they invented all these neat little different styles of lightsaber combat called Forms I – VII. Now however, they're rarely called this, instead they've been given lame names like "Vaapad", "Soseru" and "Ataru", and the different styles of lightsaber strikes themselves have crappy names like "sun cho" and "ya maoi" or whatever. Since much of the Jedi culture is already somewhat inspired by oriental religious disciplines, I think it was a terribly bad idea to give lightsaber styles very oriental-like names as it removes any chance of you remembering you're in a Galaxy a long time ago and very far away. I mean, they might as well start calling Yoda "sensei". Totally kills the originality.
But I'm going to use the hated name "Vaapad" here because it's become such a big part of Mace Windu and his fandom. I don't actually like Mace Windu, in fact I detest him as an example of how lame the majority of the Jedi are portrayed to be in the prequels (don't know if that's apparent in my writing or not?) but I have to represent him accurately.
Anyway, here we go:
Aayla watched as Mace decimated Grievous' defences. She had fought alongside Mace before, during the desperate battle on Geonosis, and she had witnessed him in various training exercises and demonstrations in the Jedi Temple. He had always impressed her with his dominating focus and his control.
Here, however, his actions were impossible to keep up with. He was a whirling tempest of shearing purple light, eclipsing even the flashes of Grievous' blades that seemed somewhat feeble now compared to the sword strokes of the Jedi Master. The cyborg was stumbling along: sometimes when he went to parry the Jedi's blade was no longer even there and Mace took the opportunity to strike closer to home, driving him back.
Grievous ran a few steps with Mace directly behind him. Hope was high in Aayla's heart. The monster, the Jedi killer, the murderer of thousands of innocents, was on the back foot at last.
However, suddenly Grievous spun about and face Windu. He reared up to his maximum height and his eyes gleamed. The motors in his arms whirred loudly as he adopted a new fighting stance.
Mace watched in amazement as Grievous altered his stance to match his. The cyborg's arms were swept back in a ready stance for cutting sweeps forward and above the head. His legs were close together with both feet planted firmly on the ground, so he relied on his own reflexes and footwork for manoeuvring rather than simply high-speed speed. The General's head was level and still, and his eyes blazed out from under his mask.
Mace's Windu's own personal fighting technique. Form VII, or Vaapad, the lightsaber duelling form that cut dangerously close to the Dark Side in its practice and relied on the willpower of the user to prevent him from sliding into evil.
Grievous, of course, was under no such obligation.
However, Grievous' stance might have looked like Form VII, but Mace knew it wasn't truly Vaapad. The deadly fighting style took decades to master, in fact Mace was the first and only Jedi to use it effectively. All Grievous was doing was copying the actual movements of Vaapad: there was no channelling of energies from within for Grievous. However, that didn't distract from the fact that Grievous could now answer Mace's attacks with some degree of knowledge, something Mace had never had to deal with before.
The Jedi was not interested in prolonging this conflict. He lunged forward and swung low with blade before bringing it up in a deadly killing arc. Grievous responded by blocking with only one blade and stabbing and slicing from three different directions and with three different velocities and intensities with his other arms.
Mace leapt aside just in time, although Grievous shredded his cloak as he did so. Angrily, Windu discarded it and leapt back to engage his foe, who responded near-perfectly blow for blow.
Form VII's actual duelling technique involved overhead swings to bring blades down at unpredictable angles, or sweeping from a different direction at the last millisecond. There were no elegant twirls or unnecessary attacks at all: it relied on wasting as little energy as possible to keep stamina up.
Mace knew that unlike him, Grievous did not have to worry about his stamina: his mechanical body could not tire. Also, with four arms, the blows were coming thick and fast, draining Mace's precious stamina by forcing him to parry or to leap aside.
A slight chuckle came from the ghastly figure of Grievous. He was becoming more and more confident with each second the duel progressed.
But he was mistaken. If he thought all there was to Mace's power was a simple type of body stance and attack pattern that could be analysed by miniature computers and crudely copied, he was desperately wrong.
Grievous continued to duel Mace to a standstill. He was beginning to enjoy himself. It appeared that while Dooku's prediction about Mace's power was accurate, Dooku himself had completely underestimated Grievous' prowess. And so had the doomed Jedi.
He attacked relentlessly: it was almost easy for him now. Slashes and hacks and swipes that kept the enemy at bay. The little female twi'lek Jedi cowered in a corner as her senior was forced back another step.
But as Grievous advanced on Mace, he suddenly noticed something was wrong. The Jedi had disappeared.
"Uh?" the General grunted in bewilderment.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something moving. Moving fast.
Mace reappeared to his left in a split second, thrusting his laser sword at blinding speed at Grievous' metallic body. Only a frantic spin of a saber managed to block the blow. Furiously Grievous spun to face Mace, only to discover he had disappeared again.
Another blur of movement, this time to the right. Grievous whirled about and blindly blocked a deadly strike. Counter-attacks hit nothing: the Jedi had disappeared again.
Panicked, Grievous glanced all sides around him. There was no sign of the enemy. Some instinct left in his organic brain screamed at him look above him.
Mace descended from the sky like some devilish bird of prey. His leap had carried him thirty meters above Grievous and now he rocketed down towards him at a speed the cyborg had never witnessed before.
There was no time to parry now. Grievous ducked and rolled away, holding his sabers out as he did so as to avoid impaling himself. But even as he did, Mace struck. His amethyst lightsaber sliced through metal armour and electronics. Sparks flew.
Grievous crawled to his feet, snarling in pain and rage. Mace's strike had cut off a significant portion of his right shoulder. The circuits exploding inside him and the cut wiring caused shocks throughout Grievous' duranium shell, rattling his internal organs and actually wearying him, something he had not experienced since his rehabilitation into his new body. The cyborg hacked and coughed manically.
Mace was breathing heavily too. His attacks had not been him disappearing and appearing again at all: he had simply been moving at such high speed that Grievous' eyes, that were accustomed to seeing things move at a much slower pace, could not keep up with him.
However, the attacks drained Mace's stamina greatly. He could not keep up this speed for long, not as long for example as the one who had taught it to him, Master Yoda. But hopefully, it was not something he was going to need to keep up for much longer.
Aayla watched in amazement. She had never seen such speed in a living being before, although she had heard some of the truly veteran Jedi Masters such as Yoda, Mace, Plo Koon, the defected Dooku and long-deceased Qui-Gon Jinn had such powers.
But she could see the exhaustion on Mace's face, the sweat trickling down his forehead. That was also something she'd never seen before, not even in Geonosis. She was also aware that Mace's strike had missed: the blow that had severed Grievous' shoulder was supposed to be the final strike that ended it all. Desperately she tried to stand up, to join the fight and help in some way, but the pain of the lightsaber burn screamed from her leg and up the rest of her body, freezing her to the spot and causing her to clench her teeth to avoid screaming out.
Grievous snorted like an enraged bull reek. The spatter of sparks from his right shoulder cast his face in a pale angry light. He was not about to give up. Before Mace could recover from exerting himself, Grievous charged, stamping across the rocky plateau at top speed, adjusting his stance to match that of Form VII.
Sabers clashed again. Grievous pounded at Mace ruthlessly, driving him back, but Mace picked up speed again and rushed Grievous from all angles. This time, however, Grievous was prepared. The droid General remained in one place but used his Vaapad-like footwork to turn to face Mace each time, parrying the attacks as best as he could. One strike broke through his defence and came dangerously close to slicing through his head: Grievous ducked to avoid instant death. The smell of charred metal poured from a smouldering gash on the crown of Grievous' skull-like mask.
Grievous struck out wildly in rage, forcing Mace to leap away. Grievous followed and attacked, and the two duelled again, the cyborg hammering away with his heavy arms while maintaining high speed foot-work to keep up with the lightning strikes of Mace Windu.
Neither of them was going to give now. The battle raged on in flashes and sparks. The purple blade whipped back and forth in subtle swipes to block and stall the sheets of crackling green and blue light that were Grievous' blades.
With her blurring eyes, Aayla could barely see what was going on anymore. Sparks flew and blades throbbed with bursts of energy as the two opponents gave the battle everything they had.
Aayla watched. Mace wasn't winning anymore. He wasn't losing, but he wasn't winning either.
The end came quickly and abruptly. Grievous' dexterous foot shot out and seized Mace by the leg, the heavy black talons digging into his skin. The Jedi fell, hitting the floor with such force that his violet lightsaber fell from his grasp.
He called upon the Force to summon the saber back to his hand, but Grievous stomped down, trapping the Jedi's hand underneath the massive duranium claws.
Mace extended his left hand to call on the lightsaber instead, but as it leapt through the air an ivory-coloured clawed hand seized it. Grievous deactivated two of his four blades and tucked them into his cloak along with his newest trophy.
In a spilt second, Mace had gone from the being in the heart of a furious duel to defenceless on the floor. Grievous towered over his flattened body as Windu struggled to pull free. However, Grievous was wheezing in exhaustion and coughing uncontrollably as he did so, and sparks fell in showers from his damaged robotic torso. The battle had taken a great toll on him too.
Nevertheless, he was the victor. He reared up proudly and leered at Mace Windu.
"With you dead, your army will crumble before my might, and Cosko will be mine".
Mace shifted and snarled up at his enemy spitefully, "You can have Cosko when you pry it from the grip of my cold, dead fingers".
"Your proposal is acceptable", Grievous stated, and raised his saber.
The plasma blade of a lightsaber sheared through flesh, tainting the air with acrid smoke.
Grievous' eyes widened in shock. He had struck out for Mace Windu, but the blow had never connected. In fact, both of his lightsabers had dropped from his fingers and Mace lay unharmed beneath him. But there had been the distinctive sizzling sound of a lightsaber plunging through flesh. What was going on?
It was then he a spasm of pain struck him, so intense that he nearly screamed in agony. He glanced down and saw a brilliant blue blade still impaled through his chest: it had thrust through both robotics and some of Grievous' last precious internal organs. The gracile hand of the twi'lek held the lightsaber that had pierced him.
He managed to look at her in disbelief as she stood before him, shaking all over and sweating but she managed to hold the lightsaber steady. She looked back at him, panting heavily but staring him down defiantly.
Another wave of pain tore through Grievous as circuits exploded and his gut sack began to leak clear green liquid. He doubled over and with a final snarl, he collapsed in the dust.
Author's note: I stole a line off a movie somewhere near the end. Just so you don't accuse me of plagiarism, for sure. And I'll be surprised if anyone can guess what it is. ;)
Thanks for reading, and please leave a review if you get the chance.