Easily amused
and determined
to understand it all.
Posts: 82
(8/15/07 1:20 pm) Reply
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith...
Shakti followed Maize with her eyes, turning as she watched the Sith master leave the pavement. She blinked at his little trick, fairly impressed. She was apparently expected to follow, and that demanded a moment of thought. He hadn't asked her to do anything impossible yet, and there wasn't anything to be gained by assuming she couldn't do something simply because she'd never tried.
She replayed in her mind what she'd just seen him do. He'd kept his legs bent and held himself back a moment longer than what a normal jump would have demanded. Maybe charging his movement with the Force to let it propel him further than his legs alone.
Yeah. Great deduction, Shakti. Turns out the guy can't jump a story and a half without using the Force. Good eye. You're a credit to your field.
He hadn't asked her to do anything impossible yet. Shakti took a step backward, and she noted with amusement that gathering the Force for such a task felt a lot like gathering the will to rise from a comfortable nap. She held it in, resolved to accomplish what she meant to do, she held it down, collecting the power inside her body and appraising the distance between her feet and the roof Shakti bent her legs and left the ground. Gravity attempted to enforce its authority, and she let the tensed power within her snap and press that downward pull away from her.
She saw the edge of the rooftop fall below her, and when her feet touched the gravel they skidded out from under her, landing her unceremoniously on her backside. "Gngh," she growled. "That was my ass. I need that," she said with a glance over the edge. "That was extraordinarily surreal."
Shaking her head, she rose to her feet and ignited her own lightsaber. It was odd. Similar as Shakti sometimes guessed they were, she and Maize had lightsaber colors that were almost in direct opposition to one another. Perhaps that was somehow significant, but there probably wouldn't be time for such musings today. There were more pressing facets of her education to attend to, and they would require her full attention.
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith...
Maize flourished the hilt in both hands; it wasn't near as impressive as when both blades were ignited, but it served the point well enough that a Sith needed to know their weapon that well that they could 'play' with it and not do bodily harm.
"Alright. You're up here, you still have your backside--" Maize paused to smirk, "--and you have a functional lightsaber. Now. The aim right now is to anticipate me, which is no small feat as I have no particular style as I have said. Block me however you can from hitting your body, Shakti. Parry with your blade, use your wits, use the Force."
A savage grin lit his face.
"Extra point to you if you can manage to knock me off the rooftops as we move about."
She'd think he was kidding, but Maize wasn't. He wanted this apprentice to be as fierce and ferocious a warrior as she was capable of being. Maize was realistic; he knew that Shakti had skills that were better than her dueling would ever be, but he wanted her at her best potential.
With that, he launched forward with a kick toward her stomach first.
Easily amused
and determined
to understand it all.
Posts: 82
(8/17/07 12:30 am) Reply
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith...Yeah so. Very basic "I kick your ass and also learning" sort of instruction. Great.
His kick came suddenly, but Shakti had been given fair indication that now was the time for the beating of her ass, and under such conditions these things really must be expected. Forgetting for an instant that part of the point of this exercise was to improve her lightsaber combat, Shakti reflexively struck out with the Force at the ankle Maize had left planted on the ground for his kick. She pulled toward her, intending to imbalance the man as his momentum carried him toward her.
Maize had seen her fight before, and it was possible he was familiar with this stage of combat for Shakti. Her first swing with her lightsaber wasn't truly an attack, but a broad horizontal sweep intended to push him backward as she pulled on his ankle. Anyone else would have been knocked on his back, but Maize had seen Shakti trip her enemies at least half a dozen times.
Against the street thugs she'd spent the first span of the battle playing conservatively, evaluating and reacting to her opponents when they moved against her. Maize had told her she'd have trouble predicting his actions, but until the battle escalated Shakti was still fighting with her mind and not the bloodlust that only began to drive her late in a battle. It remained to be seen how long Shakti would take to reach that stage.
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith..."Good."
Maize halted his attack, drawing on the Force to levitate himself ever-so-slightly so that his balance wouldnt' be undermined by Shakti's counter. He was pleased that she was quick to respond with the Force; that was the sort of creativity he prided in an apprentice.
Letting her push against him move him backward, he reset himself for another attack. As he'd used on Darth Sennou in their arranged fight on Coruscant, Maize set his blade as though to run Shakti through the middle, pulling her toward him with the Force...
Easily amused
and determined
to understand it all.
Posts: 83
(8/17/07 12:46 pm) Reply
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith...
Feeling the grip of the Force around her, Shakti pushed against the momentum dragging her toward Maize. Her first option was nearly always to defend herself with the Force, but here it was clearly a contest of strength and there was no way it was a contest she could win.
For once she wouldn't win a contest of Force manipulation by inventiveness alone. A creative use of Force energy wasn't enough here, and a streak of fear blazed across Shakti's mind as her thoughts raced to determine an appropriate reaction, something to get her out of this deadlock.
Your lightsaber, you idiot. But wha--
She began to evaluate her options, but the very act of openly questioning what her lightsaber ought to be doing seemed to prompt her hands into action on their own. Maybe there really was something to those vague "use the Force" instructions she'd been given by the Jedi. Her right hand slipped down below her left and she flipped the saber upside-down. She continued pushing back against him as Maize's raw power began to overtake hers.
Then she abruptly stopped fighting him and lunged forward, letting the force of his own pull launch her forward at greater speed. With her lightsaber down she brought it across to impact his blade sideways, the blades hissing as energy ground against energy in the air. Finding it slightly easier to push herself away from Maize now that she had something to push against, Shakti used the impact of the blades to turn her body sideways away from his vicious forward thrust.
Counting on the assumption that it might take Maize a moment to bring his blade back up to strike, Shakti turned her blade upright again in a wide arc that swung toward Maize instead of to the side as she'd just done. It was a move intended to buy her some space to get the hell away from him again, a reflexive ploy to bring things back to a ranged battle.
Re: Shakti's tale of sweets, speeders and the Sith...OOC: Oh how I hate dueling - all these years and I still suck at visualizing this! >:
Again, Maize stepped back and released the remnants of the Force Pull he'd used on Shakti. He extended the second half of his lightsaber so that two violet-purple blades came into play. This time, his flourish was a bit more impressive.
"Creative. I admire that in an apprentice. The critical business here is that you can think on your feet. The rest will come with drills, which we're not going to do out here," Maize said simply. "This is the basics of your training. Of using the Force. Of using the Darkside. The rest is up to you, Shakti.
"Do you seek power? Knowledge? Revenge? The path is yours to go forward upon."
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