Caedus battles?
Can someone please post the battles of Caedus vs Luke and Caedus vs Katarn??? I can't find them for the life of me. Especially the second one (I think I've found the first before, and I didn't read it 'cause I di'int need it then. DX)
Does anyone have Inferno/Betrayal and/or can post these battles for me? I seriously don't got shit on Caedus or how he compares to Luke or Katarn.
Sure. Luke vs Caedus:
"It had to be a bad dream, Ben sitting there in that overgrown bramble, swaddled in thorn-studded vines, his skin flaking away in purple scales, his eyes burning with a pain-mad gleam. Luke had to be imagining this. Not even Jacen would use the Embrace on his own cousin.
"You'll have to do better than that, Ben." Still facing Ben, Jacen laughed and threw his hands up in mock terror. " 'Look! Behind you!' That ruse was old when the stars were young."
Ben shrugged. "It's your funeral."
"It might be, if I were naive enough to let you summon that."
Jacen pointed at a vibrodagger lying on the deck, about two meters in front of Ben. Luke didn't know what it was doing there-whether Ben had attacked Jacen with it, or whether Jacen had been using it on Ben-but he started to accept that the horrible scene was real. He was, in fact, standing in the doorway of a secret cabin filled with Yuu-zhan Vong torture devices, watching his twisted nephew taunt his captive son.
Luke didn't give Jacen a chance to surrender. He just sprang.
Ben's jaw dropped, and Jacen started to spin, snatching his lightsaber from his belt and igniting it in the same motion, bringing the emerald blade around high to protect his heart and head.
But Luke was attacking low, striking for the kidney to disable in the most painful way possible. Jacen's eyes widened. He flipped his lightsaber down in the same moment Luke's met flesh.
The tip sank a few centimeters, drawing a pained hiss as it touched a kidney, then Jacen's blade made contact and knocked it aside. Even that small wound would have left most humans paralyzed with agony. But Jacen thrived on pain, fed on it to make himself stronger and faster. He simply completed his pivot and landed a rib-crunching roundhouse.
Luke stumbled back, his chest filled with fire. Jacen had caught him on the barely healed scar from his first fight with Lumiya, and now his breath was coming in short painful gasps.
Good, Luke thought. This was supposed to hurt.
Jacen followed the kick with a high slash. Luke blocked and spun inside, landing an elbow smash to the temple that dropped Jacen to his knees. He brought his own knee up under Jacen's chin, hearing teeth crack-and relishing it. He parried a weak slash at his thighs, then drew his blade up diagonally where his nephew's chest should have been.
Except Jacen was sliding backward, one hand extended behind him, using the Force to pull himself toward a tendril-draped rack in the far corner of the torture chamber. Luke leapt after him, bringing his lightsaber around in a low, clearing sweep.
Jacen stopped pulling and started to swing his free hand around. Luke was ready, had been expecting this since the fight started. Still flying through the air, he raised his own hand, palm outward, and pushed the Force out through his arm to form a protective shield.
The lightning never came. Instead, Luke was blindsided by something heavy and spiky, and his body exploded into pain as he slammed into a durasteel wall. He found himself pinned in place, trapped by a bed of thorns Jacen had hurled across the cabin. He felt the hot sting of the thorns pumping their venom into him. His hearing faded and his head began to spin, and he saw Jacen, one hand still raised to keep Luke pinned, sneering and taking his time rising.
Bad mistake.
Luke raised his lightsaber, slashing through the thorn bed as he sprang. Jacen scrambled to his feet, barely bringing his weapon up in time to block a vicious downstroke. Luke landed a snap-kick to the stomach that lifted Jacen a meter off the deck, then followed it with a slash to the neck-
-which Jacen ducked. He came up under Luke's guard, holding his weapon with one hand and driving a Force-enhanced punch into Luke's ribs with the other, striking for the same place he had kicked earlier. Luke's chest exploded into pain, and he found himself croaking instead of breathing.
Luke struck again with his lightsaber, using both hands and putting all his strength into the attack, beating his nephew's guard down so far that Jacen's emerald blade bit into his own shoulder. Jacen kicked at Luke's legs, catching the side of a knee. Something popped and Luke felt himself going down. On the way, he swept his blade horizontally.
Jacen screamed, and the smell of scorched bone and singed hair filled the air. Knowing Jacen would strike despite the wound, Luke rolled over his throbbing knee and spun back to his feet with a clearing sweep.
His blade met Jacen's in a shower of brilliant sparks. Luke freed one hand and drove a finger-strike at Jacen's eyes.
Jacen turned his head, but Luke's little finger scratched across something soft and bulbous. Jacen roared and stumbled away, shaking his head. Luke feinted a dash toward his nephew's blind side, then-as Jacen pivoted to protect his injured eye-Luke hit him with a Force wave.
Jacen went flying, and it required only a soft nudge to steer him into a tendril-draped rack in the far corner. He hit with so much cracking and crashing that Luke worried the rack had broken, but the thin tendrils quickly entwined Jacen in a net of pulsing green.
Luke started forward, his injured knee buckling each time he put weight on it. The rack's slender tendrils were tightening around Jacen, cutting into his flesh and oozing a yellowish irritant that made skin puff up and split. Jacen began to slash his lightsaber up and down, cutting the vines away two and three at a time. If Luke wanted to finish this-and it seemed like a good idea, given how battered he was himself-he had only a few seconds.
Luke closed to within two meters without saying a word. What point would there have been? Jacen wasn't going to surrender, and Luke wouldn't have believed him if he offered. It was better to attack quickly, while he still had the advantage. He brought his lightsaber up to strike.
"Wait!" Ben cried from behind him. "Let me do it!"
Kyle vs Caedus:
"A flare ignited high in the air, and Caedus reached upward, sensing through the Force, feeling the descent of many tumbling metal cylinders-He raised a hand to sweep them away, but a tingle of alarm caused him to stiffen. This came not through the Force but from a simple mathematical realization. Four metal clangs. Two grenade launchers firing. What were the other two positions doing?
He had a moment before the descending grenades would be close enough to explode and do him harm, so he looked down, out toward the darkened plaza, and extended his perceptions in that direction.
And felt them-more metal cylinders, at least a dozen, rolling toward him rather than flying. Now he could feel the ripples in the Force as they were propelled telekineti-cally toward him.
Contemptuous, he flicked his hand toward the darkness and felt his own power turn the cylinders around. They began rolling back the way they had come.
The sky above lit up as though noon had come more than six hours early-worse, for the brightness surpassed that of high noon. Troopers all around him cried out, threw their arms over their eyes. The visors of their helmets could not darken fast enough to protect their wearers from these dazzle-grenades.
Caedus cursed. His assumption that the falling missiles were explosives, that he had a second before they reached him, had just cost him his support troops. But he, at least, could see.
Out in the darkness, the rolling grenades exploded with moist crump noises. Gas grenades, then. Coma gas? Stun gas? The breeze was from behind him. The gas would nor reach him or his troops.
Finally he detected more than just telekinetic pushes; he felt presences as his enemies drew on Force abilities. He felt them rush toward him, caught sight of them as they entered the glow of lights from the front of the Senate Building-four Jedi, Master Kyle Katarn foremost among them.
Katarn ignited his lightsaber as he came to a stop a few meters away. "Care to surrender, Colonel Solo?"
"Not to a traitor." Caedus looked at the other three as their Force-augmented sprints came to an end, leaving them in a semicircle before him. Three Jedi Knights: the younger Horn, the Falleen Mithric, the Bothan Hu'lya. He resisted the urge to snort. Separately or collectively, these Jedi Knights were no match for him.
Katarn, though, was a threat. Still, the Jedi had only moments before GA reinforcements would arrive. Their attack was already a failure.
He sensed Katarn's attack, threw up his blade in a block so well practiced that his muscle memory could have performed it while he slept. With his free hand, he gestured at the Bothan Jedi. She was suddenly airborne, hurtling sideways to slam into the Falleen, knocking them both down.
Katarn's blade struck his, rebounded with a snap-hiss. and came around from the other side as the Jedi Master executed a lightning-fast spin. Caedus stepped back from it. not engaging the blade. He watched the blade flash harmlessly past him.
He stepped forward again into a side kick, aimed not at Katarn but at the onrushing Valin Horn. His boot heel caught the Jedi Knight on the point of his chin, knocking Horn backward off his feet. Two seconds had passed since the attack began.
* * *
Only Seha's head protruded from the pavement hatch as she watched her four companions assault Colonel Solo.
In one sense, it was a beautiful and brilliant thing to see. The five combatants moved as though they'd been choreographing this event for years and had planned, all along, that the two sides would somehow be even. Each time the lightsabers came together, the resulting flash of light, slightly greater than two glows by themselves, cast the five combatants into relief. Around them, blinded GAG troopers withdrew, finding one another by touch, keeping their blasters up and at the ready, waiting for the moment when their sight would return and allow them to open fire. Above, though at a distance from the Senate Building, the trails of airspeeder lights glimmered in their passage.
And Seha still had one task to perform.
In her free hand she held a patch of black cloth. It was square, five centimeters to a side, and very soft and pliant, despite the fact that its center layer consisted of circuitry embedded in a flexible polymer.
One side was covered by a transparent layer of flimsi. With her teeth, she worried an edge of the flimsi free, then pulled the whole layer off, dropping it into the access hole she occupied. The removal of the flimsi exposed a layer of adhesive.
With her own Force powers, so much less subtle than those of her allies, she sent the cloth patch flying, centimeters above ground level, toward the fight.
But she couldn't send it on to her target, not yet. Master Katarn had been clear about that. She had to wait until things were at their most chaotic, their most distracting.
So she guided the patch ever closer to the fight, but waited, waited...
* * *
Ten seconds.
Caedus rolled out of Katarn's kick to his head, catching a scrape along his cheek, and swung at the Master's leg, but Kolir's blade intercepted his before it bit into flesh. His strength batted her weapon away, but she had deflected his blow and spared Katarn an amputation.
They're coordinating. Good for them. Bad for me.
Caedus heard a siren-an oncoming GAG vehicle. No, two-maybe three.
He allowed himself a certain satisfaction at their speed of response. He hadn't expected anything of the sort for another half minute.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw the first oncoming vehicle, an aging Sentinel-class armored shuttle. It was yellow, with spots of rust. He could not make out its markings without looking at it, but he knew it was not in GAG or Alliance colors. Entering airspace above the plaza, it began a dangerously steep and fast repulsorlift descent. Behind it came three GAG airspeeders, one of them firing a top-mounted laser at the shuttle.
Ah. So they were not responding with brilliant speed to an alarm. They were chasing the Jedi escape vehicle. Caedus swung at Horn, a blow meant not to connect but to cause the young Jedi to flinch away into the path of the Falleen, which he did. While they were interfering with each other, Caedus gestured at the Bothan Jedi, hurling her toward Katarn.
Katarn hurled his lightsaber off to the side and caught Hu'lya with both hands, preventing her from falling, prepared to pull her out of harm's way if Caedus followed through.
Caedus did not. He kept his senses on Katarn's light-saber, and, when it vectored to fly toward him from the side, he negligently swatted it away with his own blade.
Fifteen seconds.
Caedus gave Katarn and Hu'lya a little smile. "You could save yourselves a lot of pain by telling me now where Luke has set up the new Jedi headquarters. I swear, when you are in my hands, you will answer that question."
The Bothan got her feet back under her and stood at the ready.
Katarn caught his returning lightsaber. "Meaning you will torture us to death. Are you listening to yourself, Jacen? Do you even know who you are anymore?"
"I do. It's you who have no idea who I am."
He felt Force energy growing within Mithric and Horn. He gestured, telekinetically yanking the Bothan forward, positioning her between him and them. He felt their Force exertion as it was suddenly cut off.
Katarn advanced, lightsaber at the ready. Caedus withdrew before him. With part of his awareness, he was keeping track of the four inbound vehicles, plotting their trajectories. . .
One of the GAG vehicles was circling ahead and to starboard of the descending shuttle. Its arc, intended to put it toward the bow of the shuttle so it could fire on the cockpit, would bring it near the combatants, just a few meters above them. The pilot's maneuver was smooth, the vehicle clearly under control. Caedus could see the Jedi barely registering its presence, since it did not figure into the combat.
Caedus reached out a hand as if intending to hurl Katarn away from him. The Master raised his own hand, a deflecting gesture. But Caedus exerted himself against the oncom-ing GAG speeder, yanking it down and toward all of them.
A moment's inattention or focus elsewhere. That's all it ever took. By the time Katarn felt the speeder coming toward him-spinning, its stern a mere two meters from his back-it was already too late for him to send a command even to Force-augmented nerves and muscles. His face changed with the awareness of danger.
Then the speeder's port quarter hit his back, hurling him forward to slam into Caedus. The speeder, continuing its out-of-control motion, slid through the location of the other Jedi, knocking Hu'lya to the permacrete, causing Horn and Mithric to leap to safety.
Katarn now stood so close to Caedus that every facial feature was visible, every scar and line in his weathered face, every hair on his brow, mustache, and beard.
Caedus felt a rush of satisfaction, enjoyment, as Katarn's expression turned from one of surprise to pain. Katarn looked down to see Caedus's lightsaber buried to its hilt in his chest.
A noise, something halfway between a groan and a death rattle, emerged from Katarn's lips. Smiling, Caedus yanked his lightsaber free and let the stricken Jedi Master fall face-first on the pavement."
Wow, the battle between Luke and Caedus is pretty damn brutal. Though are you sure that's the end? I saw something Arhael posted while searching for this and it showed Caedus collapsing a ceiling on Luke's head/shoulders, and his fall broke his nose or something.
Also--Katarn did pretty decently against Caedus, but as I expected he in the end was no match without help. Still, it allows me to more clearly see how the two compare to each other.
Thanks again, Neph.
You're right. Heres the rest:
"Astonished and appalled, Luke put a little too much weight on his injured knee-and fell as it buckled. He rolled beyond the reach of Jacen's lightsaber and looked back across the chamber. Ben was still strapped in the Embrace, but he had summoned the vibrodagger off the floor and was battling to cut himself free of the chair's lashing tentacles.
Luke shook his head. "I don't think so, Ben."
"You have to!" Ben insisted. "I deserve it!"
"Deserve it?" Luke returned to his feet, far angrier with Jacen than he had been just a moment earlier. "To kill someone?"
"You don't understand, "Ben insisted. "It was my fault. If I don't do this..."
"I said no, "Luke interrupted. How could Ben believe that he had a right to kill someone? "You're very confused, Ben. We'll talk about this later."
Giving his son no further chance to argue, Luke turned back to Jacen, who by now was almost free. Only one leg remained caught, though it was still entwined in a half a dozen places. Luke limped forward, circling toward Jacen's trapped side.
Jacen stopped cutting at the tendrils and flung a hand toward the ceiling.
"Dad, look — "
Luke was already throwing himself to the deck. A tremendous crash sounded from the illumination panel, and the chamber fell instantly dark. He rolled opposite the direction he had just been moving, but wasn't quick enough. The fixture smashed into his head and shoulders, slamming his face into the deck. He heard something crunch in his nose and was instantly choking on his own thick blood.
Jacen's lightsaber droned twice, filling that corner of the torture chamber with flickering green light. Luke Force-hurled the light fixture off his back, then hobbled to his feet.
Jacen launched himself over Luke in a high Force flip. They exchanged perfunctory attacks as he tumbled past, then Luke was alone in the corner, watching the green column of his nephew's lightsaber move toward the door.
Jacen was running.
Luke spat out a mouthful of blood and Force-leapt after his nephew, at the same time reaching out to drag him back. They came together in a blinding flurry of sparks, their blades colliding faster than the eye could follow, filling the dark chamber with flashing fans of color. Blows came out of nowhere. Luke caught another kick in his knee and found himself calling on the Force to keep his balance. He landed an elbow and felt a bone in Jacen's face shatter.
Jacen stumbled back, groaning, the green light of his lightsaber briefly illuminating Ben's face as the boy struggled to cut himself free. Luke pressed forward, angling toward the Embrace to keep Jacen away from Ben. Jacen fought his way over anyway, placing himself squarely between Luke and the chair, then gave ground and vanished behind the green ribbons his lightsaber was weaving through the darkness.
Luke Force-leapt after him, knowing that this Jacen- the Jacen he had caught torturing his son-would not hesitate to take Ben hostage... or to kill him. Luke landed half a meter in front of Jacen's lightsaber and quickly beat down his nephew's guard-too quickly. When he did not glimpse a face in the light of his own blade, Luke knew something was wrong and stopped.
Which was exactly what Jacen was waiting for, of course.
Luke had barely started to turn before a loop of thin tendril slipped over his head and tightened around his throat, oozing toxin and cutting deep into the flesh. The wound swelled and burned as if it were on fire. Luke whipped his lightsaber around, trying to cut Jacen off his back, but Jacen was already spinning away, tightening his garrote and placing Luke's body between himself and the deadly blade.
"Should have let me go when you had the chance, "Jacen snarled. "Now you're done."
Luke slammed an elbow into Jacen's ribs, but it was like hitting a permacrete wall. Instead of continuing to fight, he accelerated into the spin, using the Force to hurl them both into the nearest wall.
Jacen hit first, his skull clunking hard into the durasteel. The garrote loosened a little. Luke dropped his lightsaber, bracing one hand against the other so he could use the strength of both arms to hammer his elbow up under Jacen's chin.
The garrote went completely slack. Luke followed up with a palm-heel to the same target, using the impact to drive himself away from his attacker and buy some maneuvering room.
Then Jacen let out a bloodcurdling scream and stumbled away, a black silhouette vanishing into the darkness of the torture chamber.
Luke stepped back in shock and confusion, summoning his lightsaber to hand, but knowing by the surprise in Jacen's scream that this was not another trick.
"It's okay, Dad, "Ben said from beside him. "It's just me."
Ben took the glow rod from Luke's belt and activated it. Jacen was crawling across the torture chamber, the hilt of a vibrodagger protruding from between his shoulder blades. His face was inflamed and misshapen, his clothes were smoking and tattered, a hand-sized rectangle of scorched skull showed through his scalp, and still he was stretching a hand toward his lightsaber.
Luke re-ignited his own lightsaber, then pointed out the door. "Artoo is in the hangar prepping a skiff for launch, "he said. "Go help him while I finish up here."
"No way." Ben extended his free hand and summoned Jacen's still-ignited lightsaber. "This kill is mine."
Damn, Caedus is strong. He fought Luke, and left him with a broken nose, a broken leg, several gashes and bad bruises, and several bone fractures. This says a lot for his level of ability.
Anyway, I don't need any more quotes or anything, but people are saying Caedus is a master of Force Illusions. Has he done anything of note to support this?