Galan007
|Quantum Observer|
Originally posted by Mizukage Yoda
Does anyone have Shatterpoint handy? I'd like a full quote of the fight as there seem to be discrepancies.
Here's the entire battle, since I think that's what you are essentially asking for:
"I think," Mace said, "that if you were all you claim, I'd already be dead." He pushed himself into a forward roll that brought him up to a crouch, and looked down into the hole. Depa had done most of his work for him already. He could cut through with a single stroke.
You are not yet my kill.
"No? Whose kill am I, then?"
The answer to his question was a lightsaber's emitter jammed against his belly.
Mace had time to think blankly: Oh. Not dead. Faking.
"Depa-?"
She screamed as she triggered her blade. And kept screaming as its green fire chewed a tunnel through Mace's guts and speared out his back. His hand seized hers instinctively, locking her blade against his body so that she could not kill him by slashing it free. His own blade ignited-But he could not strike her. Even now. Not here, so close he could kiss her instead; not while her scream spiraled up into a shriek; not while he had to look into her wide staring eyes and see no hate or rage but only stark agony.
He was going to have to do this the hard way. He struck downward into the pit beside them, his blade slicing out a lopsided ellipse of armor plate that dropped into darkness below and clanged to an unseen floor. "Geptun!" he roared. "NOW!"
Flashes of battle:
- shadows fleeing the bunker as swarms of screaming electric blue blaster bolts rebounding off walls shoot them to rags-- a flood of troopers spreading into a wave through the doorway, weapons gouting lightning-colored energy, Geptun in the middle of them, head down and running, datapad cradled like a baby in his arms-- a buzzing shield of silver flame that sliced through a blaster rifle so that it exploded and took with it the trooper's hands-These images burned in Mace's brain as he fought for his life against the woman who should have been his daughter.
He brought his blade back up from the pit and turned his wrist on the forehand so that his recovery stroke took her in the temple with his lightsaber's butt. Her fingers slipped off the blade's activation plate and it shrank back down through his body. She howled and punched his eyesocket with her free hand, but Mace got his foot wedged between them and he shoved her away with a powerful thrust. At the same instant both of them backflipped into the air, landing on their feet poised in perfect mirror images, their blades whipping in identically curving slashes almost too fast to see. Blaster bolts howled around them. The air crackled with streaks and splatters of energy. Their blades flickered and whipped and no bolt touched their flesh. Their eyes never left each other's.
Something had torn in his guts when he did the backflip. Smoke trickled upward from the hole in his belly. He could smell it, but he felt no pain. Not yet. His blade whirred through the air. Hers whirred faster. She advanced. The slashes never stopped. They would never stop. They flowed one into the next with liquid precision. This constant near-invisible weave of lethal energy is the ready-stance of Vaapad. "Depa," Mace said desperately. "I don't want to fight you. Depa, please-" She sprang at him, screaming without words; he couldn't know if she'd heard him. He couldn't know if language still had meaning for her. Then she was on him. His whole world turned to green fire.
Mace backpedaled, parrying frantically, absorbing the shock of her attacks with bent arms and a two-handed grip. He was taller than she, with more reach and weight, and vastly more muscle in his upper body, but she drove him backward as though he were a child. Green flame struck through his guard, and only a frantic jerk of his head turned what would have been a brain-burning thrust into a line of char along his cheekbone. Still he did not strike back. "I will not kill you," he said. "Death is not the answer to your pain." Her reply was a scream louder and more savage and an onslaught to match. She broke through his guard again and scorched his wrist. Another stroke burned a slice through his pants leg just above the knee. Power roared around her, a rising storm of darkness. Mace got it now: as each Akk Guard died, his share of pelekotan backflowed through the bonds Vaster had forged among them. She was getting stronger. And with each stroke of her blade, he could feel himself slipping into the shadows. He had to. She was too strong, too fast, too everything. The only way he could survive was to give more of himself to Vaapad. To give all of himself. To sink into pelekotaris dream. He felt it: he had reached his own shatterpoint. And he was breaking.
Through the trace of Force connection he had with Nick, Mace felt the young Korun collapse. Something broke inside his head, and all his own wounds crashed upon him. Every cut and bruise, every cracked bone and sprained joint, the man-bite on his shoulder and the hole through his guts: all of them blossomed into silent screams. His lightsaber went heavy, and his arms went slow. She burned a stripe across his chest, and he staggered. His fighting spirit wasn't destroyed. It wasn't even far away. He could feel where it had gone. He could reach out and touch it. It was waiting for him in the dark. He took one last look at the darkness that called to him-Darkness within mirroring darkness without-And turned away. He let his blade vanish. His arms dropped to his sides. Depa moved in for the kill. Mace backed away. She leaped for him, slashing, and he slipped aside. She pressed her attack and he retreated, over bodies and through blaster-riddled wreckage of console banks, until he came hard up against a console that still had power: indicator lights flashed like droid eyes in the gloom. The blade of green fire whirled up, poised, and struck. He let himself collapse. He fell to the floor at her feet, and instead of cleaving his skull, her blade slashed the console behind him in half. Cables spat blue sparks across the burned gap.
Mace lay on the floor. He didn't think he could get up. Depa stared down at him, her face lit jungle-green by the glow of her blade, and a single needle of light seemed to pierce the dark madness in her eyes. "Oh, Mace..." Her voice was a moan of astonished pain. Her blade vanished, and her arms fell limp and helpless to her sides. "Mace, I'm sorry-I'm so sorry..."
---
Once more: Mace immensely held back the entire time. He never wanted to fight Depa at all-- much less injure her-- much less kill her. He thought about utilizing Vaapad, but he knew that to utilize the form to it's potential meant possibly killing Depa, and the writer solidified multiple times that Mace had no intention of harming "the woman who should have been his daughter."
The aforementioned facts are 100% incontrovertible. Unlike others around here, I don't spew BS. 🙂