STAR WARS REBELS || Her Wings Of Fire

CHAPTER FIVE: Leaving

Sorena danced across the length of the large training room aboard the Star Destroyer, the two crimson blades on her lightsaber flying this way and that.

In a moment, Darth Vader was upon her once more. Their lightsabers clashed with a loud tzap, as the two beams of plasma struggled to find a weakness and dominate over one another.

"Your skills have improved since we last sparred," he said, breaking the saber lock to use the Force to push her into a wall.

She fell effortlessly into a low crouch, and the energy went over her head to smack into durasteel plating of the inner hull and dissipate into the air. But not before leaving a shallow dent in the wall.

"Or maybe you're just getting slow in your old age, Sky Guy," she taunted, a wicked smile on her face. Using the Force to propel herself, she jumped up and used a nearby pillar to vault herself back down onto her Master from above.

Their blades smashed together once more, and Vader grumbled indignantly. (The noise really sounded quite peculiar and even a little funny with the mask on and the microphone active, but Sorena would never tell him that.) "I will have you know that I'm thirty-nine! That's hardly–"

"Still old," she sang, landing a few quick strikes to his left side before darting away. Then, she revealed her secret weapon: she pushed a button on the saber and tiny locks gave way to allow it to split in two, leaving her twin a lightsaber in each hand instead of just the one.

Surprised, Vader took a step back. Using this to her advantage, Sorena hit the floor and slid by his unguarded right side, slashing at the unarmored underside of his arm. Of course, he was on alert far too quickly to allow her a hit, but she comforted herself with the fact that she had shaken the mighty Lord Vader.

Her Master retaliated by aiming for her face, forcing her to bring up both sabers in an X formation to block him. "Impressive... Most impressive," he said. "At last I find out what you were working on in your quarters all last week and the week before that when you ditched training. You had better not let Fifth Brother or Seventh Sister get ahold of that design."

"I have no intention whatsoever of doing so," she told him. "I'm the Grand Inquisitor, and they are my underlings. They're nowhere near as powerful as me. They would not deserve it."

"But you're not all-powerful."

As if to underline that statement, Vader put all the force in his metal arms behind pushing her left blade away. The blade deactivated as the sword was sent skittering across the floor, leaving Sorena's side unprotected.

Another sharp blow with the Force sent her sprawling to the ground. The tip of a red blade appeared over her neck the moment she tried to sit up.

"You are defeated," he intoned, with just the slightest glimmer of self-satisfaction she'd always known from back during the Clone Wars as they had fought side by side and he was in the process of winning the latest game of who-can-kill-the-most-clankers.

But she wasn't out of tricks yet. Reaching out with her senses as far as they would go, she pulled both sabers from the ground without breaking eye contact with her Master or using her fingers. By the time they had turned on and alerted Vader to Sorena's plan, it was too late: both sabers were formed up in a V around his neck from the back, at such an angle that even he couldn't force them away.

"I may be defeated, but there's no reason I can't take you with me," she said with a smirk.

Then, simultaneously, the two withdrew their lightsabers. Sorena stood up and looked at her Master, putting the two hilts back together again and clipping it back onto her belt.