As we faced off against each other, in the end, the droid was the one who made the first move. Despite its age and the fact that it was made of metal, missing some platings and who knows what at some places, it wasn't sluggish at all, quite the opposite, actually. It opened with a calculated, precise lunge, apparently demonstrating that it was built precisely to kill its targets and give them no chance to flee. I watched as its crimson blade snapped into a backward grip and swept in a tight Makashi counter-line aimed directly at my throat... Was it... analyzing me? Recognizing my preferred form? For just how I stood? I had no time to ponder on it... Whatever the reason was, I still managed to catch its opening move with my blade. The clash between us rang through my arm, but my fingers were locked around the hilt of my own weapon as I angled my blade to deflect, redirecting the force behind him and opening it up for a counter-attack. Immediately, a shower of sparks burst between us, making me evaluate its strength, which was... exceptional. It physically hurt to clash with it, and because of that, my window to counter flew past me, having to readjust because of the weight behind his strike. Still, just then, Vila vaulted up high behind and over me, her orange blades sweeping at the droid as she twisted her body gracefully in the air, but the droid reacted, even in this tight space, dodging her.
"Flank it!" I shouted.
"I'm already there!" She moved, using the Force to propel herself towards the bastard by the time her toes touched the floor.
Once again, the Sith droid rotated its body before Vila even touched the floor, anticipating her next move. Its joints spun at impossible angles as it spun its torso a full ninety degrees, its red blade reversing mid-motion to meet her descending strike, and when their sabers clashed, the Sith bastard slid backward on its heels, already recalibrating while leaving grooves on the metal floor.
The moment it finished its calculations, which was under a second, it struck again. Its hand was a blur, spinning its wrist in a way no flesh could do as it advanced, its blade cycling through Form I, then sweeping upward into a sloppy but vicious approximation of Ataru, just to mix in some Makashi next. It wasn't good at any of the forms it mimicked; there was no actual balance between them, nor did it bring the techniques together as one... It was brute-force programming, compensating for the finesse its mechanical body sorely lacked. I guess whoever made it had crammed all the forms into its databank, along with combos and movements...
[Disdainful Commentary: Its technique is robotic. It should have chosen proper weapons that compensate for the fact.] HK fired both pistols in tight bursts, trying to catch the droid as it overextended toward Vila.
Just as he did that, I saw something that made me open my mouth a little, while my eyes went wider than ever before. I could feel the Force suddenly reacting and watched as the Sith glyphs on its body flared up, and they erected a kind of... Force-made shield around it, bending HK's shot out of the way, and around it... Like how a black hole bends light. It happened on a moment's notice, causing his shots to twist around the droid in swerving arcs before slamming harmlessly into bulkheads and crates behind it.
"Kael!" Vila shouted, ducking as the droid's saber cut a burning arc overhead, almost slicing off part of her lekku, "That thing's cheating!"
"No kidding!" I yelled, shivering from the thought that a droid, no matter how or why, managed to tap into the Force. That was impossible... It wasn't a living thing!
I lunged again, stepping into its supposed range, my blade extended, point angled for a disabling cut across its joint. The droid read it before I completed the thrust, its body rotating on a central axis like it was on a swivel. The red blade hissed back into a Shien-style guard, then reversed to whack at me from behind. Its fighting pattern was... readable. So by the time it made the attack, I was also there to block, not even looking, my blade appearing behind my back, catching his in a parry. At the same time, Vila attacked low, her twin sabers carving up the floor as she aimed to immobilize the droid by severing its legs. Even then, the Sith weapon predicted each entry point, its own blade coming within centimeters of her face as she was forced to twist away and abort her attack.
By then, I tried to use the Force and push it over, but those bastardly glyphs! They lit up, canceling my efforts... I couldn't even rip the saber out of its hands!
"HK!" Vila yelled, her breathing quite fast. "Shoot its joints!"
[Dry Acknowledgement: Already planned to do so.]
HK was already tracking, waiting for the right moment before firing again, but the glyphs lit up again, and a ripple of Dark Side energy flared outward from its body. This time, the bolts stopped midair, suspended for a half-second, then snapped backward toward HK, causing him to duck and dodge, going into a combat roll, before taking aim again.
[Deeply Offended Statement: That violates several rules of combat.]
"It's a Sith relic," I shouted between parries, "They don't do fair!"
I pressed harder in the meantime, trying to slip into a position where I could just... grab its blade, to disarm it, but I was thwarted at every moment. Did... did it recognize the material my hand was made of? I couldn't think of anything else, because he was avoiding it and kept either parrying or attacking me in a way that made it impossible for me to try and get a hold of its weapon... Well, not unless I was willing to lose another limb or get poked by its red saber. Tsk!
Even then... For a moment, I almost had it... Yet when he dodged, the droid's free hand pistoned up, slamming into my side, almost as if copying what I wanted to do to it. The strike wasn't Force-enhanced, just pure mechanical, but it still hurt... I could practically hear my ribs groan and crack as I was lifted off my feet, thrown into the crates from just the power behind that one punch.
Vila moved in instantly, seeing it land a strike on me. She was like a wild animal, jumping on its back, sabers crossing at its neck, trying to bisect its head. Even then, the droid snapped its entire torso backward, spine bending far beyond anything a living thing could attempt, and flung her over its shoulder in a violent arc before she could finish her job.
"Vila!" I grunted, already pushing myself off the crates, watching her flip herself, landing on one knee, sliding, knocking over everything around her, flinging them at the droid via the Force, then bursting forward again in a whirlwind of orange flashes.
"I'm fine! Just kill it already!"
"That's the plan!"
HK stepped forward in the meantime, his blasters firing in a tight spiral pattern meant to compress the droid's movement options into a narrow range, halting it from taking a step towards anywhere else. Of course, once again, the glyphs distorted his aim, but this time, HK compensated immediately because he stopped trying to hit the droid. His aim was to get the surroundings... The moment they struck the pipes overhead, a shower of sparks burst down directly above the droid, forcing it to pivot again, precisely as HK planned.
[Insultingly Obvious Strategy: Strike it while it's distracted.]
I was already moving, without needing him to say anything. My blade slipped in like a needle, aiming for the gap where its plating was already cracked from time and who knows what else. Sensing the impending doom, the droid rotated its guard, but once again, I was just a distraction as Vila was already there.
She slammed her sabers into its flank while it was twisting its body, sending a ripple through the Force as the Sith droid's movements suddenly faltered. By then, capitalizing on it, I slipped inside its guard, my blade slicing through the actuator at its elbow, disarming it at once, while Vila was about to finish the rest.
Probably sensing that it was done for, it responded instantly with a backup directive, as its body began spinning like a centrifuge. Good thing I disarmed him, or it would be a swirling red blade, whirring, here to chop everything apart before the force behind its spinning torso tore itself apart, getting finished by a precise shot from HK, scorching its chestplate. When it finally tumbled, splintering and scattering on the ground, broken into multiple pieces, I let myself breathe out, slowly straightening my back and closing down my saber.
[Assessment: Target neutralized. Structural damage is minimal. Victory is ours.]
"Just make sure it doesn't have a bomb inside of it!" Vila panted, leaning on one knee, her sabers also flickering out.
"Don't jinx us," I exhaled, rolling my shoulder, my ribs aching, but I held myself back from grimacing, "Let's keep it intact... Master Katarn will want every fragment, plus... We should examine it and try to access what memory it has." As I said that, HK walked up to it and nudged the droid with his foot.
[Correction: He will want the internal core. The rest is primitive scrap with delusions of grandeur.]
"Keep telling it to yourself," I crouched beside the by now dismantled and deactivated relic, studying its cracked armor and, most importantly, the etched runes on it. "I don't think you can bend and reflect blaster bolts, can you?"
"Of course, he plays deaf," Vila snorted, smirking to herself because HK refused to talk about. "So...?" She turned to me, eyes scanning the limbs of the droid, looking for any twitch or sign of reactivation.
"Whatever this is," I murmured, "it's connected to the vision I had."
"Like...?" She asked, crouching beside me.
"The Dark Side surrounding this one is the same as I felt from that Sith berserker," I muttered, recalling the dream I had, while using the Force to examine it, "I am not saying it's the same... But it has the same sensation, either because it was made at the same place that the warrior frequented... or had contact with someone who owned him."
"Are we talking about someone who made a robot that could fight Sith and Jedi, even having a kind of Force-protection?"
"Kind of..." I muttered, carefully opening the torso and looking for its internals, before moving on to its head, which most likely had the core components. It was a humanoid design, and if I am right... It should follow the arrangement of most humans' organs. It was simply how we all worked and... I was right. "They were destroyed," I said, standing up, and glancing at HK, giving it the head, "I saw it in my vision. The question is, even if they were destroyed, what did they leave behind? HK,"
[Affirmation: I will hack into it. I had nothing yet that I couldn't crack. This will be trivial.]
"Not just that," I shrugged, "Try to find where it came from."
"You think," Vila looked at me, "that this is the pilot that brought Jalo's ship here?"
"That's my intuition," I nodded, watching HK examine the droid's skull, "Whatever Jalo and Iowi found has to be related to this and the Sith artifacts... I just don't know how... yet."