Unsettled/Disillusioned

Chapter 7: the Enforcer

"I knew I'd seen him before! Look, here!" Omega cried as she yanked Kallus and another lady who just happened to be standing near him, (Sabine's bounty-hunting friend, Ketsu, he thought?) over to the holoscreen in the mess hall. The young woman pressed a button to replay the holo in a loop. Hunter stood close by, silvery hair in a messy bun, his arms crossed over his chest, "you've replayed this over a dozen times for anyone unfortunate enough to walk by here."

"Well, how often do you get to see a Jedi fight?" Wrecker argued. He'd rewatched it a dozen times too. He'd started to make a game of it, it seemed he could always find something new about the footage each time.

"Literally any time, Wrecker, you can watch Kanan and Ezra spar whenever you want. Just ask the next time we're all here," Echo said.

"No, but, they don't fight like that!" Wrecker exclaimed, pointing at the screen. A young man wearing a poncho was in the middle of an arena looking up at a large hologram of another man; the leader of the notorious Haxion Brood crime syndicate, Sorc Tormo.

"Ladies and gentlemen we have a special challenger for you tonight, an enforcer of a bygone era, a Jedi! Let's see what he's got!" The crime lord exclaimed.

"Oh, this old holo," Ketsu said slyly as she crossed her arms and leaned on a table to watch.

"You want a show!? I'll give you a show!" Shouted a familiar voice, the pitch slightly more soprano and certainly with more anger than he'd ever heard in person, but the young man in the holo had flaming ginger hair, a clean-shaven but scarred face and a buddy droid hanging onto his back. The young man was Cal.

The gates set into the walls around the arena opened up and hordes of insect-shaped creatures swarmed him, scuttling over to him with their crab-like legs, claws snapping. Cal made quick work of them with his blue-bladed lightsaber. More and more insects were sent into the pit to overwhelm him; some sported poison spikes and stingers, razor-like wings or balls of acid spit. None of them stood a chance against his burning blade. Cal struck one, the next, they surrounded him, he pushed them away with a blast of the Force. Then, with a pump of his lightsaber hand, a second blade ignited on the other end of his hilt, revealing a full lightsaber staff.

"He has a third phase to his lightsaber?" Kallus gasped.

"I know! Awesome right? Look close, he's about to do something cool!" Omega pointed excitedly at the holoscreen. She didn't need to, Kallus' eyes were glued to it the whole time. Cal wrenched his arms up and the insects were all pulled towards him, he threw his lightsaber around him like a vortex, slicing and cleaving through them in an instant.

"I bet I could do something like that," Crosshair said around the toothpick in his mouth.

"But not with the same level of carnage that's happening here," Tech argued as the young Cal in the holo left pieces of scattered carcasses at his feet. Larger creatures were sent to assault him, from platforms rising from the sand, larger and more ferocious beasts with each wave, "Sorc Tormo wanted an entertaining and long-lasting fight, with as much violence and brutality as possible; not a calculated and surgical strike that could clear the arena in a few seconds."

The elderly clone chewed on his toothpick and rolled his eyes.

"Haha! Watch him go!" Wrecker cheered along with the arena's audience as Cal sliced the front legs of a giant spider with his double lightsaber, leapt on top of it and sank the single-blade lightsaber into its body. The spider crashed onto a charhound with an agonised wail. Then he flipped backwards and landed in the middle of a swarm of scazz, giant rats, a wave of the Force erupted from him like a rock in a pond. They were all knocked back, some against the laser gate on one wall where they were burned to death. A gundark emerged from its cage and charged, Cal, igniting the second blade on his lightsaber again went on the defensive. An anubi pounced at him. It met a gruesome end. The gundark swiped at him. It lost an arm. A spider spat acid at him. He flung the burning ball at a scazz. He slid across the sand, severing two more of the gundark's limbs as he went. It tried to crawl away but he climbed onto its back and plunged his lightsaber into its skull. The young man was fighting for his life, employing Force pushes, pulls, repulses and waves, even freezing whole groups of creatures in their path as they collided with his own destructive one. He switched easily between the double and single blades of his lightsaber, sometimes even changing the phase in the middle of an attack or a flourish; the beams always flowing like a lethal river of light. Kallus had heard the war stories of Jedi during the Clone Wars, blazing through droid armies like a storm. He'd seen Kanan and Ezra at work, deflecting blaster bolts right to the Stormtroopers who'd fired them. He'd seen Cal duel with his own eyes, graceful and even elegant. But he'd never imagined a Jedi could fight quite like this. This was... this was just brutal. The grace of an experienced Jedi hid raw power, something the young Cal had put on full display.