Revan tilted her head to the side to avoid the blue saber being thrust at her face. Nearly the same second the beam of contained plasma missed, her left saber beat it away with a small circular motion while her right slashed diagonally upward.

Enes recovered quickly by side stepping out of the way of the first strike and parrying the follow up. An aura of biotic energy formed around the Jedi. The Force screamed a warning and Revan jumped up, somersaulting over the Asari as a massive Shockwave lashed out where she had just been. If the Sith Lady had been less of a duelist, the following stab might have caught her midair, but Revan felt the attack coming and deflected it with a swipe of her sabers.

The moment her feet touched the floor she launched herself back at the Asari.

The air shrieked as the three lightsabers clashed over and over. A complicated dance that only went faster as the two opponents learned more about the other and began trying new things to gain an advantage.

Slash, parry, stab, block, jump to avoid some biotic technique, slash, slash again, parry, counterattack.

Revan could definitely say this Asari Jedi was better than the one she killed on Illium. And the thought of killing such a capable fighter when the Reapers were practically right around the corner was such a waste that the Empress definitely considered trying to convince the Jedi to surrender, or failing that, knock her out so Revan could make a better effort later.

Whether or not that was a realistic goal was another matter however.

Another shockwave from the Asari shattered the floor around them as Revan once again jumped out of the way.

She barely had time to twist and throw out a hand to deflect a few floor shards Enes had telekinetically grabbed and threw after her. More shards floated around the Asari Jedi and Revan decided to make the Master regret trying to challenge her in a battle of Force Powers.

Force Lightning erupted from her fingertips and quickly disintegrated the rock shield Enes moved in front of her, but Revan wasn’t done. She focused on the scene in front of her and while the Jedi was powerful and skilled enough that Revan couldn’t directly target and throw her without considerable effort on the Sith’s side, that didn’t stop Revan from tearing out a section of wall and throwing that at the Asari.

Enes handled it in stride, however.

Before the chunk of masonry could even threaten the Jedi, a biotic shockwave followed by a series of Force Pushes reduced the wall to rubble long before it came close to crushing the Jedi. Only a small handful of debris even came close and that was easily deflected by a combination of biotic and Force powers followed by the occasional lightsaber swing.

Power and control, Revan mused in her head. A rare, and annoying, combination in her foes. And as much as she would like to let the duel play out, Revan couldn’t spend a large amount of time playing around. The noise alone would draw attention and even if the local leaders had agreed to follow her, the general populace would likely side with the Jedi based on the Justicar uniform alone.

This needed to be brought to a close.

Revan briefly closed her eyes and for the first time during the fight, actively empowered and immersed herself in the Force. Enes was instantly on guard as light and shadow seemed to bend oddly around the Sith, completely focused on Revan as the Sith ran towards her.

The Sith Empress feinted low and lunged forward with a Force-empowered leap that Enes barely managed to throw herself out of the way of, her sleeve smoking where Revan’s blade almost scorched her arm. The Jedi Master’s eyes widened at the near miss and she tried to fall back and get some distance. Revan replied by hurling her blue saber after the fleeing Asari, forcing her to make a slightly desperate parry.

Revan prepared to rush the opening in her opponent’s guard, but a flash of warning caused her to dive to the side instead.

A shard of jagged rock passed through the area she just was heading straight for Enes. Even panicked the Jedi had managed to set a trap for the Empress that likely would have caught most Force adepts, Jedi or Sith, off guard. Especially when Enes turned the shard of rock into a makeshift grenade by exploding it with a biotic technique Revan didn’t immediately recognise, but in her enhanced state Revan simply raised a hand and erected a Force Barrier the shards of stone bounced harmlessly off of before charging forward again.

Her lone saber chopped down. Enes raised her own as best she could but her injured arm buckled under the force of the attack. Red clashed and slid against blue as Revan drove her saber down, intent on disarming her opponent. Literally if she needed to.

At the last moment Enes threw a desperate Force Push at Revan, which she simply anchored herself and allowed to pass around her, but was actually a clever way to propel the Jedi master away from Revan’s saber before it cut her. Very clever actually, Revan noted. In her experience very few Force users would hit themselves with their own technique to avoid an attack. And most of those were Malak’s Sith Acolytes too stupid to properly control their powers.

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But clever only got you so far. Especially when you ended up disorientating yourself without affecting your opponent.

Revan’s blue lightsaber ignited and lifted itself off the floor once she had it in a mental grip and speared towards the prone Jedi. Enes screamed as the blade burned a hole through her leg, but Revan wasn’t about to discount the Jedi even then. She pulled on the Force and sent a surge of energy at the fallen Asari whose screams redoubled as the lightsaber was ripped from her leg and sent tumbling over the broken ground. Revan quickly recalled the blade and made sure to grab Enes’ from where it had fallen and clipped both to her belt.

Striding forward with only her red saber in hand, Revan addressed the Jedi, “You fought well. Especially for someone that is not purely dedicated to a martial path.”

“D-don’t mock me Sith.” Enes ground out past the pain. “I failed and you bested me, just kill me already.”

“Kill you? Now why would I do that when I can finally have a conversation with your order that you cannot end by simply attacking me anymore?”

“So i-it’s to be torture then? Do your worst. I will not betray my sisters.”

Revan withheld a sigh. It seemed even these knock-off Jedi didn’t believe a Sith could have a conversation without the threat of pain or violence. Ironic because she had turned far more people to her side through words then she ever did through threats. If Enes had paid attention to how Revan secured the Geth and Quarians she would have understood that.

“I don’t need you to betray them. Soon enough, if they are smart, they will come to me.”

Enes’ face darkened. “I’m to be bait?”

This time Revan did sigh. Jedi could be so self-important. “The Galaxy is at war for its very survival. I would hope your order would recognize that eventually they will need to at least cooperate or be destroyed one by one.”

“We would never work with a Sith!”

“So you would rather condemn everyone else to die then?”

Enes fell silent.

“We don’t have to fight,” Revan said, letting the Force carry the sincerity of her words. “I don’t even need you to do more than be an observer to our true enemy. Come with me and see the horrors the Reapers have for all life they come across and honestly report it to your order. I’ll even swear no harm will come to you and you will be free to investigate as you wish.”

“...I-”

Revan almost had her, she could feel it. Most Jedi simply wanted to do their duty to protect. Giving them an opportunity to do so in a harmless way was an easy sacrifice for the Sith Empress and more often than not it allowed her to gently coax them towards her stance.

So it was doubly irritating when Revan’s senses screamed for her to get back as an empty aircar crashed in front of her accompanied by the roar of a dropship’s engines.

It exploded and Revan was forced further back from the downed Jedi Master.

It seemed the Knight and Padawan had decided to come back against Enes’ orders. In hindsight Revan should have expected that, but she would have to beat herself up over the mistake some other time.

The pale faced Padawan – Jinany if Revan remembered correctly – was behind the controls but Revan ignored her in favor of focusing on the knight and whatever the hells she was doing. The Force surged in response to the Asari reaching her hands out and pulling.

The walls around Revan rumbled and cracked, giving the Sith Empress barely a moment's notice before they collapsed on top of her. Rocks and debris bounced off the Force Barrier she threw up, but more and more poured down until the Sith had been buried completely.

The Sith fully expected some sort of followup as sweat dripped down her forehead from the strain of holding several tons of rock from crushing her, but nothing came.

And a Jedi with time to prepare was a dangerous, unpredictable thing.

So Revan drew even deeper on the Force even as the first hints of burnout started to affect her and pushed the tons of rock away like it was made of styrofoam. And the second she didn’t need to focus on not getting hit by the debris, Revan scanned the area for any sign of the Jedi new arrivals. Only to find that all three Force presences she could feel were above her and fleeing in the opposite direction.

The younger Asari had taken the wounded master and fled. How surprisingly tactical of them.

Revan activated her helmet’s comms, “Harrower-01, this is Empress Revan. I need–”

“Oh Keelah, Empress you have incredible timing. We were just about to contact you.” The comms operator interrupted frantically. “It all happened too fast…what do we do?!”

“...” Revan looked silently at the rapidly disappearing shuttle. In moments it would disappear among the normal sky traffic in the city or simply land and she would lose track of the three Jedi entirely.

But it sounded like she might have more urgent issues for now.

Very well. Enes Daliza and the two others could escape and bring the warning Revan initially gave to the rest of the Order. Revan would deal with them later if need be.

“Calm down and tell me what happened.” She instructed the hysteric quarian.

“Sorry, sorry, of course…we just received word from the Scout Fleet that the Reapers have moved beyond Batarian Space – invasion groups were seen heading towards Palavan, Illium, Earth, and several other major planets!”

So the invasion was beginning in earnest then.

“Send a shuttle to my location and prepare the fleet for departure. It seems we are done here.”

-o-

Jane Sheperd looked out her window down at the London skyline and did her best to quell the knot of frustration that had been building in her chest for the past few months.

She had thought – and at some level still did – that turning herself over to the Systems Alliance after the debacle at the Alpha Relay was the right thing to do. That she needed to be accountable for her actions in destroying a Batarian colony along with a whole damned solar system even if it was necessary to stop the Reapers from strolling in through the Galaxy’s back door.

But as she wasted her time being grounded and shuffled from meeting to meeting only to reiterate things she had already discussed to oblivion and back…she was getting tired of it all.

Motion on a nearby building caught her eye and she idly watched a young boy run around a rooftop garden playing with a model ship.

Was this what Revan felt when working with her? Feeling frustrated because despite there being a clear goal in front of them that even an idiot should be able to see, she was held back by the people surrounding her focusing on the wrong things?

She hoped not.

Especially because the Sith’s lessons on politics and meditation were a large reason Shepard hadn’t begun climbing the walls after certain meetings. And as the months dragged on the former Commander found herself missing the blonde elf more and more. The occasional talks they had, the debates around their respective leadership styles, Revan teaching her how to use that ridiculously cool laser sword…

She closed her eyes and shoved away from the window just as the door behind her opened. A quick look showed it was Lieutenant James Vega, an Alliance marine that had been Shepard’s guard/watcher since her arrest.

He was a good guy, if a little too enthusiastic with the protein powder.

“Commander.” James said, snapping a salute at her.

Shepard smiled. “You aren’t supposed to call me that anymore, James.” Not that it had ever stopped him before.

“Not supposed to salute you either…” The burly marine replied, completing their little greeting ritual before getting serious. “We’ve got to go. The defense committee wants to see you.”

“Sounds important.” Shepard mused and began following after the Lieutenant.

Maybe this meeting would actually get something done…