Mass Effect: Knight of the Old Republic

Revan didn’t wait for her opponents to make the first move.

The second the enemy Justicar drew her lightsaber – and wasn’t that a surprise – Revan blurred into motion. Outnumbered and semi-surrounded as she was, being aggressive was the only way to prevent herself from being slowly picked apart. But she didn’t charge the Justicar, no that would be too predictable. Instead she focused on the third biggest threat, the asari with what looked like a heavy repeating blaster of some kind, since the biggest threat was the Justicar and the second biggest was the sniper the group didn’t seem to realize Revan knew about.

Revan thrust her red blade forward expecting to impale the asari, only for the blue near-human to jerk to the side unnaturally. Revan narrowed her eyes as she changed her thrust to a slash that bisected the heavy weapon and glanced at the Justicar.

That had been a Force technique, not the biotics Revan had grown used to seeing. It seemed her enemy was not just spouting nonsense when she claimed to be a Jedi.

The other enemies recovered from Revan’s sudden move and opened fire. Revan would have loved to finish off her downed opponent but she needed to split her focus between deflecting the incoming gunfire, keeping a metaphorical eye on the sniper, and a more literal eye on the Justicar. She simply couldn’t risk a lucky shot wounding her this early in the fight to completely eliminate a disarmed opponent.

Red and blue sabers twirled as Revan fended off the gunfire – slugthrowers, naturally. It would be too convenient otherwise – and moved to engage another assassin. Even if she hadn’t killed the first asari, she had removed her as a major threat. Now Revan needed to cut down the enemy numbers or stop them from freely shooting at her.

In the back of her mind, Revan was slightly impressed by the discipline of her attackers. Despite an angry dual-saber wielding Sith bearing down on her, Revan’s current target didn’t panic or try to run. Even when her shots were almost effortlessly deflected.

The instant Revan was close enough, a saber rose and fell. The Force shrieked a warning, but it was late. The sound and scent of sizzling flesh filled the air. The Sith turned her head to look at the suddenly much closer Justicar, given that the asari had practically teleported even to Revan’s senses.

“You could have defended your subordinate, but you chose to attack me instead. How callous of a self-proclaimed Jedi.”

“I took advantage of an opening in order to remove the stain of the Sith from the Galaxy.” The Justicar retorted. “Letiya should be honored to have given me the opportunity.”

Revan snorted as the now headless asari slumped to the ground and focused on increasing the reinforcement allowing her so single handedly block the Justicar’s double handed strike despite her arms being crossed across her chest. “Justifying someone else’s suffering as an honor as long as it serves your purposes? Perhaps I was wrong, you’d fit in with some of the Jedi I knew.”

Further conversation was interrupted by the remaining assassins repositioning and doing their best to avenge their fallen companion.

Sith and Justicar separated as an orb of dark energy erupted where they had been standing, the Singularity too slow to do more than briefly hinder the Force wielders.

At least it only briefly hindered them until both the Justicar and a member of her entourage glowed blue with biotic auras and fired something resembling a Shockwave directly at the false-black hole. The resulting explosion caught Revan mostly unprepared and sent the Sith flying across the park grounds they were fighting in, but thanks to her personal shields, armor, and using the Force to cushion her fall, she was practically uninjured. Though it seemed she had lost a lightsaber in the process, only the red blade remained in her hand.

“Keep pressuring her, huntresses! Without her second blade, she will be on the defensive. Encircle her and whittle her down!”

“You overestimate yourselves.” Revan immediately refuted the Justicar’s words.

Instead of hunching down and guarding herself, the Sith became even more aggressive. Lightning surged from her fingertips towards the Jedi pretender while she charged another asari.

The sudden appearance of electric tendrils forced the Justicar to root herself in place and defend with her lightsaber and stunned the remaining huntresses for only a moment, but in that moment Revan crossed the distance between her and her target and swung her red blade once.

The three remaining huntresses cried out at the death of another one of their members and recklessly opened fire on the Sith, not caring if they risked overheating their weapons as long as they could either wound or kill Revan.

The Sith Empress was finally forced to back off as she used her remaining lightsaber to block as much of the incoming fire as possible while keeping an eye on the integrity of her shields for the shots that slipped through.

Predictably thanks to the wild firing of the huntresses, two of their guns vented their heatsinks at the same time greatly reducing the pressure Revan was under with the final one being easily defended against until she too overheated her weapon. But just because the huntresses had lost their cool, the Justicar had not.

Before Revan could move to eliminate another target she was intercepted by a lightning quick slash that tried to cleave her in half. Rather than meet it head on, Revan angled her blade and stepped to the side allowing the Justicar’s blade to pass by harmlessly before she riposted with a stab of her own.

Block, stab, slash, sidestep, counterattack, jump, Force Push, block, slash.

The two Force Wielders fell into a complex and deadly dance. Blue and red blades clashed and spun, quickly creating a zone none of the other Asari could interfere with once they had replaced their heatsinks – not without risking hitting the Justicar with a stray shot.

Revan’s opponent obviously knew that.

Now that her team of assassins had reloaded, she was trying to disengage once more so the Asari could open fire again. Something Revan was not inclined to allow. Theoretically, Revan should be at a disadvantage in a close quarters fight with her heavier armor and after fighting multiple opponents, but reality often laughed at theoreticals.

While Revan was not a Mandalorion, she spent nearly as much time in her armor as one. She had grown used to the added weight years ago and still managed to maintain the speed necessary to duel much more experienced Jedi than this knockoff. The other aspect was Revan was simply a better fighter than the Justicar. Even with her focus split between the lightsaber duel and watching the huntresses for signs of a biotic strike or to simply start firing again, Revan still had the Justicar on the defensive.

“Was this the best you could do? An ambush followed by this poor display of skill?” Revan taunted as she landed a punch on the Justicar’s cheek. Dark purple blood spurted from both a gash caused by Revan’s gauntlet and from a split lip. “For the first self-proclaimed Jedi I’ve encountered in this galaxy you’ve been a massive disappointment.”

One of the remaining huntresses opened fire and prevented the Sith from finishing off her opponent, but Revan was not concerned. She had the Justicar’s measure. And it fell far short of the opponents she was used to facing.

“Your arrogance will be you undoing, Sith!” The Justicar spat, literally, as she recovered.

“Your ignorance will be yours.” Revan replied.

The sound of a lightsaber igniting was almost lost under the sounds of the remaining Asari’s gunfire, but the gasp of pain and surprise followed by one of the guns falling silent was attention grabbing enough to get their attention.

Revan could feel the shock and dismay from the others as they watched one of their companions slump over dead, stabbed from behind by the Empress’s seemingly discarded lightsaber floating behind her held in an unseen hand. And the Sith was not about to allow the distraction to pass unpunished. She gestured with her free hand and the floating blue blade shot towards one huntress like an arrow while her red blade was turned into a disk of bloody light as she threw it at the other.

The Justicar tried to interfere, trying to deflect the projectiles using her own Force powers, but caught off guard and with her attention split between the two different blades… she failed to deflect either enough to prevent Revan from landing a fatal blow. Yet, instead of frustration or anger at the failure, Revan felt elation radiating off the justicar.

“I told you your arrogance would be your undoing! Tela, NOW!”

Ah, the sniper. Revan had been wondering if they were going to merely observe the whole time. Instead they simply had orders to not make a move until Revan showed vulnerability, like if it seemed she was completely disarmed.

*snap-hiss!*

Which is why it was a good thing Revan was never foolish enough to completely disarm herself as her third lightsaber ignited and blocked the incredibly heavy round the sniper had fired. While the yellow blade was rarely used beyond the rare instances the Sith had allowed Shepard to borrow it for sparring sessions, it was no less effective than Revan’s personal blades. Neither was the small hold-out blaster she pulled into her off hand and fired three shots back towards the source of the sniper shot, though the odds of those killing the sniper…

Revan pushed the thought from her mind and returned the blaster to its holster even as her red and blue lightsabers returned to circle protectively around her.

“I believe I said your ignorance would be yours.” She calmly told the Justicar. “Now then, it is time to end this.”

-o-

Tela Vasir cursed as she stumbled down the hallway of the building she had been using as a sniper nest, her nearly dislocated shoulder sending shooting pains down her arm.

Normally she would never use something like the M-98 Widow, preferring guns that didn’t try to rip her arm off when she fired them, but Keayla had insisted on her using the highest power rifle she could get her hands on.

Tela had thought the Justicar was being overcautious. The Widow was meant to take down Krogans and armored vehicles, not single lightly armored fighters! But that was before the Spectre had seen exactly what kind of monster the Justicar had been after.

Five Huntresses, a Council Spectre, and a Justicar…

That should have been more than enough to kill anyone caught alone and unsupported.

Whatever the hells this Sith was had torn through them instead.

Tela swallowed nervously and glanced down at the remains of her sniper scope, where the thin metal casing had warped and deformed from catching one of the blasts her target had snapped off after pulling another of those bullshit swords from her ass.

The Spectre didn’t know what gun she used or how a handgun managed to be even remotely accurate enough at the range it had been fired, but she did know one thing. If Tela had been just a few inches to the side - that bolt would have caught her in the forehead instead of her scope.

Monster. That thing was a monster.

And to make things worse all Tela could do without a working rifle was follow the instructions Keayla had given her and watch the Justicar fight for her life through the several cameras they had set up before the confrontation.

Keayla T'raosir was a blur speed and grace, fending off two magically floating swords even as she fought the Sith. Vasir was one of the most physically fit Asari in the galaxy, her job demanded her to be, but compared to the Justicar she would have been as slow and clumsy as an Elcor. But it wasn’t helping.

All those feats of near supernatural skill and athleticism, her biotic might, and even the other powers Keayla had briefly shown off meant nothing as the Justicar was forced firmly on the defensive.

The Sith seemed to know exactly what Keayla was going to do before she even did it.

Feints, slashes, stabs, and even unarmed strikes were countered. Pieces of scenery were somehow ripped up and thrown at the Monster but were stopped or redirected before they got close. And biotics seemed to splash over some sort of unseen dome or shield.

Keayla was tiring. And the Monster seemed to just march indomitably forward.

The yellow blade was returned to wherever it had been hidden and the red and blue ones were back in the Sith’s hands. At this point, all Keayla could do was fend off the inevitable.

The glowing blades continued to clash long enough for Tela to reach the skycar they had stashed for her to leave the scene in and the Spectre considered disobeying the Justicar’s orders to just ram the whole thing into the Monster. But just as she started the vehicle, she knew that she would be too late. Keayla made a mistake… and the Sith had removed her right hand for it, the one that had been holding her lightsaber.

Tela could only watch as the two seemed to talk to one another, but the cameras hadn’t been wired for sound and Keayla’s comm wasn’t connecting.

Whatever conversation the two had, it wasn’t very long. Or at least Keayla didn’t intend to drag it out.

She made one desperate gesture for her fallen blade…

…and was stabbed through the heart when the Sith closed the distance faster than the lightsaber could return to her remaining hand.

Tela let out a few more curses at that and pulled out the special communicator Keayla had stored in the Skycar. A final contingency if she was killed and the Sith survived.

She waited until it connected and said one word.

“Knightfall.”

“...understood. Proceed to these coordinates, there will be someone to debrief you. Were you able to recover Knight T'raosir’s weapon?”

Knight? No, that wasn’t important right now. But Tela did remember Keayla giving the Huntresses orders to retreat with her lightsaber if she was killed before they were.

“No, I was on overwatch. No one else survived.”

“No one!? I see…this is a bigger threat than we expected. Head to those coordinates, Sprectre. May the Force and the Goddess be with you.”