★ Canon Conundrums - Third Challenge

The Official Starships And Vehicles Collection 63 wrote:In that particular instance, Bane and Sidious were foiled, but Sidious' basic aims remained. He sought to create a network of Force-wielding agents loyal only to him. None would be trained sufficiently to be a threat to Darth Bane's insistence that there only be two Sith, nor would they be a threat to Darth Sidious or his apprentice, Darth Vader. The most powerful of these agents were "only" Sith adepts but would appear almost as dark Jedi - the likes of Asajj Ventress, Mara Jade, or Inquisitor Valin Draco (in fact, a fallen Jedi). The lesser agents were reduced to still-deadly faceless minions. Among their ranks were the Shadow Guard.

The Cestus Deception wrote:“Your pleasure,” Kit hissed, and went at her. He was like fire, Ventress like smoke. The dance had substance but not form, a blur of light that seemed impossibly fast, unbelievably deadly. The two leapt and swerved, collided and bounced away. Single against double lightblades. Hands, knees, feet, all in a mind-numbing blur.

Obi-Wan would have given his right hand to join. Or even to watch such a display. But he had his own worries, his own battle to fight.

He struggled with the urge to simply draw his lightsaber and slaughter the X’Ting. His enemies came on and on, struck quickly but clumsily, got in each other’s way. Obi-Wan was direct in attack, and as elusive as a breeze.

He’d missed the engagement, but suddenly—Kit was down! Wounded and groggy from a kick in the jaw, for the first time Ventress had pierced his guard. Her left-hand saber sliced his arm but as sparks flew he dove away from her left blade, leaning into a glancing blow from her right.

The Cestus Deception wrote:This is between me and Ventress,” he screamed. Enough of this play! “Anyone who stands between us, dies. Translate it, Ventress!”

“Why?” She snarled.

“What?” he said scornfully. “Haven’t you learned what you wanted to learn? Seen what you wanted to see? What is the point in sending these children to their death? They only die because they trust you. Is there nothing left inside you? If not goodness, then loyalty?”

Her eyes flickered for a moment, and he knew that something he’d said had struck a nerve. She nodded. “Tell them to leave,” she said, and the protocol droid spat out its translation.

He covered the distance between them with a single somersaulting leap. Asajj Ventress was extraordinarily quick, but her very ferocity gave Obi-Wan a hairline opening, a moment when he had the better leverage. He blocked Ventress’s lightsabers, and managed to pin her blades down.

Ventress was surprised, but in the next moment disengaged her right-hand blade and slashed at his neck, attempting to behead him.

There was no time for conscious thought, no time for anything but response as Obi-Wan ducked and spun back. Ventress drew his attention to the left and leapt into the air in a spinning kick that slammed Obi-Wan down into the dock. Once down, he never had a chance to get up again, found himself fighting from his back, wiggling and edging backwards, movement so limited that he knew the confrontation might be over within seconds. The first touch of desperation wormed its way through his emotional shields.

Obi-Wan bared his teeth. As Master Yoda had often said these days, The dark side has clouded the Galaxy. Difficult to see, the future is.

Floating below the dock, Kit Fisto could still hardly move. He had barely evaded death from a lightsaber wound to the head, and his senses still were far away. But some deep instinct had warned him that his compatriot Obi-Wan was in trouble, fighting to protect both their lives. He woke up enough to reach for his lightsaber.

He triggered it, and sliced the pilings supporting the dock. Ventress howled in surprise as she and Obi-Wan tumbled into the water. Kit wanted desperately to help, but had exhausted his supply of strength. Surrendering to his wounds, he lost consciousness.

Obi-Wan had but a moment to snatch his rebreather and jam it into his mouth, and in the next instant realized that Ventress couldn’t! She clutched a lightsaber in each of her lethal hands!

He went at her savagely, never giving her a moment to sheathe one lightsaber, to slip in her own rebreather.

The Jedi Knight could move in three dimensions, attacking from under the water and from all angles, and Ventress’s desperate defense forced her to gulp air when her head cleared the water.

Nearing panic, Ventress dropped one of her lightsabers, and lunged at Obi-Wan, surprising him. She flipped back away, taking that moment to don her own rebreather.

Then, eyes burning with hatred, she came at him.

The two circled each other like some kind of aquatic predators, but both were out of their elements. The question was which would adapt most swiftly.

Lure her. Leave an opening for a stroke in the upper left. I will block more slowly, as she expects. Then I will flinch, as I did with the X’Ting, and she will think she’s aggravated an injury, and that I will back up. She saw me do it twice.

The water was murky, and he realized that he was wrong to trust his eyes. Stop. Defocus. Feel the water pressure as she makes her moves. Trust the Force.

Obi-Wan felt the water surge at him, and he let that surge carry him in its natural arc. His lightsaber flashed in, and for the first time, he cut her.

The wound was low on the ribs on her right side, and her eyes widened in pain and sudden fear.

Instead of moving back, Obi-Wan moved in. She butted him in the mouth, ripping out his rebreather. But the movement stunned her, and he tore hers out in the same instant.

So. There they were, the two of them, beneath the water. The first to bolt for the surface would be exposed and vulnerable. The first one to break loses.

Well, then, Ventress. Which of us can hold our breath longer?

This would be as good a place as any to die. If this was his end, how better than to take a creature like Ventress with him?

And she saw his face. Yes. Like Duris. I’m ready to die here and now, and for these reasons. I’m willing to die to kill you. Can you say the same?

In the same instant, Obi-Wan threw caution to the winds, and went at her. His blade was here, there, at all angles, and her wound slowed her…

She wielded her single remaining blade, eyes wide and staring.

Then something broke inside Ventress. She shrieked a mouthful of bubbles, and triggered something at her belt. The water around her churned into an expanding onyx cloud, as if she had emptied an ink-sack into it.

And in a flurry of bubbles and blackness, Asajj Ventress was gone.

The Force Unleashed novelisation wrote:Out of the cloud of metal fragments leapt a second of the Emperor's Sith assassins, saber-staff upraised. The apprentice met him with a clash of sparks and lightning. Sith against Sith, they fought backward and forward through the broad, metal-lined space. This assassin was more proficient than the first, wiry and strong with a good reach and penchant for telekinetically throwing items from inside the apprentice's blind spot. He proved to be tough work until the apprentice wrenched the next giant fan off its gimbals and sent it spinning through the air. The black guard seemed so stunned by the sight of it that he didn't jump until it was too late. One spinning blade took his right leg off at the knee. From then, the fight was over.

The Force Unleashed novelisation wrote:"You can't keep this up forever," he taunted Shaak Ti as they dueled.
"Neither can you," she said. "You are wasting your strength too quickly."
"The dark side is inexhaustible."
"Your strength is prodigious," she admitted, "but that is your doing. Light, dark..." She paused to aim a blow at his head that he barely deflected. "They are just directions. Do not be fooled that you stand on anything other than your own two feet."
He slashed at her own feet as they spun by overhead and sent one of her ribbons twirling down into the sarlacc's gaping mouth. "Spare me the philosophy lesson, Jedi," he snarled. "I'm only here for your blood."
"And you may yet have it, or I yours."

The Force Unleashed novelisation wrote:"She had taken a world enjoying the normal flows between the light and the dark sides of the Force and twisted it out of balance. There was still darkness on Felucia, but it was stifled, frustrated, weakened. He strained to awaken it."