Khal'Saad in Battle

From TFC Galactopedia

Khal'saad stood in the training arena, his jaws open and slack from fatigue, panting in great heaving gasps. He staggered as the smoke from destroyed combat droids swirled around him and nearly fell among the piles of burning metal that littered the stone floor. His fatigues were in tatters, and a series of puncture wounds oozed bright red down his thigh; his shoulder gleamed bare of fur where a nasty burn had scored it, the flesh blackened and cracked.He spat blood and lumbered forward, his eyes scanning left and right for the newest wave of automated death machines.

It can't be over yet... his weary mind reached out with the Force, searching for the danger that pricked at his awareness like a splinter. No, I know better... There! He spun and lifted his saber in an eyeblink, snapping it to life as he did so; he saw too late the iron bar from the other side that cracked across his skull, sending an explosion of sparks through his vision and dropping him to the floor. His instinctive roll saved his life more than anything as more combat droids roared to life around him; high-speed slivers of glass shattered in his wake as half a dozen needlers tracked his movements, bracketing him for blaster fire. He leapt up and back, his rage propelling him away from them impossibly fast, and two of them crumpled and twisted as his mind lashed out at them , tearing their internal structure to pieces even as his feet touched the arena wall. He hadn't alighted for more than a tenth of a second before a pair of blaster cannon blew that section of wall out from behind him, and he fell again, half-buried in rubble.

The debris exploded from around him, chunks of rock smashing against the lumbering metal as he called forth a maelstrom from within. The Dark Side flowed through him as he ripped free of the rubble, calling his saber forth and reflecting a series of blaster bolts back at the cannons that spat them. More droids died as he moved, screaming with fury, cut to pieces by his sweeping crimson blade.

The remainder closed formation, launching flights of missiles after the tiger as he leapt desperately between piles of shattered rock and twisted metal. Most veered off course or detonated in mid-air as his mind gripped them; explosions from near misses lifted him up and slammed him into one of the arena supports with rib-cracking force. Heightened senses screamed and his combat awareness drove him flat as the column he'd landed against disintigrated under a hail of autoblaster fire and heavy cannon, deafening him from concussion. He sprang again like a bolt from a gun, directly at the oncoming machines, into the midst of their formation; their cannon fire tracked him as his blade snapped left and right , their saftey interlocks engaging a split second too late to prevent them from blasting each other to wreckage.The jungle cat moved like a whirlwind, cutting, spinning , dodging, rolling, leaping with inhuman grace and energy, his body an instrument of agression as he tore the remaining formation to bits from the inside out.His blade drove into the heart of the last droid as its molecular batteries destabilized, and the explosion sent him halfway across the arena in a blazing fireball. He landed smoking and bleeding from nose and ears, a spar of durasteel driven through his abdomen, unconscious.

He awoke in a world of fluid, the familiar tingle of Bacta caressing his new-grown skin, the bright burn of pure oxygen in his lungs from the respirator. The bacta tank's cycle light shifted to green, and he pushed off the bottom, lifting himself up through the access hatch into the air above. Acolyte Mylthiss was there to meet him.

"Congratulations, Khal'Saad... forty-four hour session this time. Nine hundred and sixteen confirmed kills overall. Most impressive."

The fourteen year old tiger eyed him. "Not good enough. Premature arming sequence threw my timing off. Droid tagged me with its bloody arm and I was facing the wrong bloody way. They almost killed me in there."

The acolyte nodded. "The Master instructed us to elevate the difficulty level at random intervals. You reached level twenty-two. Also a new record for this arena. It won't be long before you'll have outgrown us here, My Lord."

Khal'Saad threw on a meditation robe and strode toward the exit. "Next time, set it for twenty-three. And use the living-matrix assasin droid brain algorithms exclusively."