Ask Naboo The Heretic

[Asuka Hino]

His strength was unbelievable and her muscles were already so, so sore. But Asuka would not relent to him. She would sooner see her skeleton turn to jelly than give him the satisfaction of beating her. And she wasn't about to give ground in their verbal duel, either.

"Please," she hissed through locked teeth. "You're lucky I came instead of him. The way you're fighting right now, you wouldn't have lasted very long."

Seemingly in response to the insult, he raised his foot, intent on smashing the very bone in her feet. But she snatched her foot backward, peeling her blades away from his at the same time. His heel collided with thick cobblestone in what she could only presume was a painful impact. The strength behind it was enough to crack the very stone itself.

Perfect.

A deep breath, and then she twirled, and the Force followed the momentum of her body. Water rose from the nearby river and followed her motion. As she spun to face him again, she flicked a jet of water up at his eyes. What he did with it? She didn't care. He could try to block or reflect it with the Force, he could slash at it with his sabers, or he could simply let it slash into his eyes and blind him.

Whatever he chose to do would take precious seconds. In that time, she would have slashed once at his legs with her shoto and up at his chest with her long sword. A move Fel had taught her: cut the tendons in the legs, bringing the target down on the waiting longer blade.

If it worked.

Have you so little faith in the things I taught you? he asked, seemingly hurt by her doubt.

She left that question unanswered.

 

[Alek Lantsov]

When his heel connected with the ground, splitting rock and stone, he felt no pain, no numbing ache. Just righteous fury. “And the only reason you’ve lasted so long is because I let you. I told you, Asuka. You amuse me. But keep running your mouth and you might end up losing your tongue.”

As she jettisoned water toward his eyes, Aleksander cut his lightsabers clean through. His blade hissed violently as cool water met plasma, exploding into a cloud of steam. The haze swallowed him whole. Desperate to push to the edge of their fight, he pressed through, but instead of catching her by surprise, she turned the table back on him in a two-set move that'd render him into a state worse than the Apparat. Stunned, he backpedaled as fast as he could.

But while he narrowly escaped the slash to his legs, his tilt backwards didn’t take him far enough. The longer sword grazed into the plastoid armor he’d been wearing since they snuck inside the tunnels, its edge flying past his chin and only inches from his nose. Aleksander staggered back. Shock registered on his face a moment later, then a dull pain. She hadn’t cut deep, but his chest stung with a single, finely-drawn burn. He looked at it, then back at her.

“It seems I've played this game with you for too long,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. His face darkened considerably. “Fine. Ruin the fun.”

When Aleksander advanced on her, he became someone, something, else. His movements lost its heat, its uncontrolled rage, and turned cold. Every strike he made next was almost surgical, precise. There were depths to his anger, but this wasn’t that.

It was pure murder.

 

[Asuka Hino]

Aleksander's rage came as a surprise. Until now, the darkness she'd felt in him was restrained, like an akk dog on a leash. It was a common flaw in Dark Jedi—they could never fully tap into the power of the dark side the way Sith could. But, just now, the pain he'd felt was like the needle that burst the balloon, sending all the darkness inside spilling out. And what a sight it was to behold.

Asuka synchronized her movements to his as best she could, batting away swings at her head, chest, and legs. Even so, his frenzy was wild and unpredictable. The dark side served as a thick haze through which Asuka's own ability of premonition could not penetrate. She was forced to rely more on instinct than the Force to make up for this loss of sight. Not an entirely tragic thing, but the Force had been more reliable.

Once his blade cleaved off the pauldron of her own plastoid armor, sending it spiraling away into the dark. Then she'd nearly lost a hand.

Remember, warned Fel. His anger is his weakness. He can't think straight while he's like that. Use that to your advantage!

And she tried. But she had already lost the momentum of the duel. It took everything in her just to keep him off of her. He forced her back until her heels were toeing the edge of the cobblestone. She could feel the spray of the water behind her as it rushed by.

This was it. She was about to die. She didn't have any room to move and the Force was officially useless in predicting his movements. Still, if this was to be it, she wasn't going to go out without leaving him a present to remind him of her. She wanted him to always remember who it was that had refused to back down to him. Who had very nearly beaten him. So, in a last desperate swing, she aimed for his eye.

A scar would do.

Med droids could path him up, but the mark would never be gone. Then she allowed gravity and fate to take hold and plunged into the icy depths below.