A Certain Point of View

Chapter 21: Duel of the Masters

They stood. They approached each other. An unseen litany of mental and physical Force defenses sprang between them.

Vader gripped his saber like a weapon. Obi-Wan held his like a wand.

Defense. Insight. Patience.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the brash young Jedi master, had thought of Soresu once as a fighting style, not a state of being. He adopted its signature stances, practiced the precision spins and whirling arcs that tore attackers apart with their own hostile energy. But he was past that now. Soresu was a credo, a paradigm of the mind. The grip on his lightsaber did not matter. The lightsaber itself did not matter. Only in the light of the Force was there true strength, and that is where the old man now stood.

Kenobi's arms and shoulders shifted not into the iconic, two - finger ready stance of his signature form, but into the ungainly two - handed grip of Shii-Cho, the most basic of lightsaber combat styles. It was rudimentary in the extreme, a child's form, reserved in the late period by masters for teaching petulant children. The insult was not lost on Vader.

The Lord of the Sith advanced, Kenobi's weapon angled loosely to the side, its tip slowly arcing to eye level. "Drawing the circle," entering the ready stance of Shii-Cho, was the first movement taught to the younglings. The ready stance was the first posture Obi-Wan had shown him—no, shown Anakin.

"The circle is now complete," Vader warned his would-be instructor. "When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master."

"Only a master of evil, 'Darth'," Obi-Wan taunted, as he opened the duel.

There was no power in the strike. It was a lazy, backhanded brush of the weapon toward Vader's blade. He tapped high, then low, then high, with nothing but the natural strength of his arms. Vader parried the clumsy blows easily. His own saber descended in a murderous chopping arc, and Obi-Wan met each with the flimsiest of parries. The blades squeaked and rippled in protest, but never met with a satisfying crash. Vader's attacks landed only weakly against Obi-Wan's deceptively slow-moving blade. The old man nearly met Vader head-on, once, but let his wrist go slack at the last second. He slipped out of the blade's path as it carved through his soft defenses—not with great agility, but with the slowest possible movement. It was a dance of precision, of half-inches. But Vader, seeing his enemy nearly struck, committed to the blow with his full strength, and his heavy armour betrayed him, pulling him slightly off-balance.

In that moment, if he called on the power of the Dark Side, Obi-Wan could have tried to end the fight with a powerful riposte. Even now the thirst for revenge railed in his blood. But instead of chancing the quick attack, he turned a whole useless circle with the blade. It was a spin he had made a thousand times before—but it was graceless, slow, and left a massive opening. Vader thrust in mid-spin; as if in slow motion, Obi-Wan's blade barely got in front of it. Vader pressed the attack; again the old man was a half-inch out of place as the red saber cut through a maintenance panel. Obi-Wan's counter, a direct mockery of Vader's wild, clumsy swing, was more of a taunt than a serious attack.

"Your powers are weak, old man," Vader taunted. But beneath the cool outward confidence, a growing frustration began to simmer. Beneath the black helm, beneath the armour plating, Vader's breathing and heartbeat fluctuated wildly, trying to settle into an organic rhythm. He was made for Jedi-killing, for deadly fights at full speed and strength. And yet the old man moved slower than expected, in fits and starts, and the artificial intelligence of the armour struggled to find the rhythm of the fight. He lumbered where he should have charged, second-guessed the movement of his immense body weight, and tried to focus his anger at the clumsiness of his attacks into greater speed. Kenobi was moving as if waist-deep in water, raising last-minute blocks and counters with his feeble strength of arms. Every strike against this slow, ungainly old man felt as if it would be the killing blow—yet every blow was blocked in the instant before it landed. Vader's frustration boiled in him. Even this victory would bring him no satisfaction. This was no duel. This was a mockery of his power. But try as he might, Vader could not break the fight of its plodding, graceless rhythm.