The first strike did not come like anger.
That was the first lesson Count Dooku taught every opponent foolish enough to mistake his cruelty for lack of discipline.
His red blade moved with the calm precision of a nobleman extending a hand at court—wrist relaxed, elbow economical, shoulder still. A thrust, not a slash. Direct, narrow, aimed at the line between Will's ribs as if Dooku were signing his name into flesh.
Will met it with green.
Not by blocking hard.
By answering like a Makashi enthusiast.
His curved hilt turned in his palm, basket guard catching the faint red glow as he angled the blade just enough to deflect Dooku's thrust off-line. The contact was brief, less than a heartbeat, but it rang through his arm like struck glass.
Makashi was not a battlefield Form.
Makashi was a language of insult in it's higher form.
A question of distance, timing, wrists, pride.
Dooku's saber slid away, then returned instantly in a shallow cut toward Will's weapon hand. There it was: classic Count Dooku. Elegant, predatory, targeting the means before the man. Take the hand, take the fight, take the dignity, just like he did with Skywalker.
But Will's basket guard existed for exactly that kind of bastard.
The red blade scraped across phrik-alloy ribs instead of flesh, hissing against the protective cage. Sparks spat outward, green and red light flaring between them.
Dooku's brows lifted by the smallest fraction.
Will smiled thinly.
"Yeah," he said. "Had been preparing to duel with you for some time, Count."
Dooku withdrew half a step, amused despite himself.
"A charming modification," he said. "Crude in concept. Elegant in utility."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
"You may."
Then Dooku attacked again.
This time the count did not test.
He fenced.
His blade came in measured sequences: high inside line, low outside disengage, wrist feint, shoulder draw, thrust to throat. Each motion was compact, stripped of waste. He did not swing like Anakin, who hit as if the galaxy deserved to be punished. He did not press like Windu, whose presence could turn defense into bantha shit. Dooku was something colder.
He made violence look like etiquette.
Will gave ground by inches, not steps. His boots whispered over polished Naboo stone and Separatist plating, cloak trailing behind him, armor shifting beneath the cloth. Green met red again and again: bind, slide, disengage, counter-thrust. His own Makashi was younger, less refined, but not inferior in imagination. Where Dooku's style was aristocratic purity, Will's was a soldier's adaptation, reinforced by survival, by clone training, by dirt, by the knowledge that the perfect line meant nothing if a grenade rolled under your feet.
Dooku probed.
Will refused to be read cleanly.
The count's blade flicked toward his face.
Will dipped, rotated his wrist, and caught the blade on the outer third of his own. He used the contact to step inside, shoulder turning narrow, point driving toward Dooku's sternum.
For one instant, the green blade was almost there.
Dooku pivoted.
Not backward. Sideways.
A precise retreat into a new angle, cloak turning like black water. His red saber came down in a diagonal line meant to cut Will's attack apart at the wrist.
Again the basket guard saved him.
The strike hit metal instead of hand.
The impact jarred Will's bones.
Dooku's eyes sharpened.
"Resourceful," he said.
"Annoying, too," Will replied.
"Indeed, it is."
Behind them, the chamber still lived in fragments of battle. One Magna Guard lay twitching near the wall, Jackal's blade having ruined its photoreceptor assembly and half its processor housing. The other clashed with Brick and Rift in the corridor, electrostaff screaming against blaster fire and shield bursts. Doc was dragging Anakin farther toward extraction while swearing with medical authority. Somewhere beyond, Burner's charges barked in controlled succession, sealing routes and opening others. Spark's voice chattered through the comm in a constant stream of technical abuse.
But inside the immediate circle of green and red, everything narrowed.
Dooku lunged.
Will parried.
Dooku disengaged under the parry and riposted toward the thigh.
Will turned his hip, armor plate catching a glancing heat-score where flesh would have burned deep. He answered with a short thrust to the shoulder.
Dooku swayed away, the green point passing close enough to light his beard.
The count's smile thinned.
"Your Master trained you well."
"Even Piell did not enjoy wasting time."
"No. He indeed did not, boy."
There was something almost respectful in the way Dooku said it.
Then the red blade snapped in faster.
Will barely caught it.
The impact drove him back one full step.
Another strike followed. Then another. Dooku changed tempo—not faster in the wild sense, but more layered. He began placing attacks where Will's defense would naturally want to go, forcing him to answer yesterday's strike while tomorrow's was already arriving.
Will felt the difference immediately.
This was not a duel between equals in experience.
Dooku had fought masters, assassins, Jedi, Sith. He had spent a lifetime refining his arrogance in the blade. He did not merely attack openings. He created them by teaching your body bad habits in seconds.
Will's left shoulder dipped a fraction too low.
Dooku saw it.
The red blade darted in toward the collar gap under the armor.
Will abandoned formal purity.
He kicked Dooku in the knee.
Not a beautiful kick. Not a Temple-approved transition. A short, ugly, close-range strike taught by clone troopers who understood that surviving was more important than looking mythic.
Dooku's leg shifted just enough to spoil the thrust.
For the first time, irritation flashed across his face.
"There it is," Dooku said. "The soldier under the robes."
Will recovered guard. "Problem?"
"On the contrary. It is the first honest thing you have shown me."
Dooku pressed again, and this time Will met him with a blended style—Makashi at the core, but with soldier's interruptions. A shoulder check denied space. A half-step trap forced Dooku to move around debris. A short Force shove disrupted timing, not posture. Will used the room, not merely the line. He drove the count toward the restraint frame where Anakin had been chained, hoping to limit the old master's footwork.
Dooku noticed immediately.
"Trying to cage me?" he asked.
"Trying to see if you rattle."
"Oh, my boy, I'm not the one locked with you...
It's you, who's locked with me." He gave a small smirk to Will.
Dooku's red blade swept low, then high, then vanished into a tight disengage that nearly took Will across the brow. Will leaned back just enough, felt heat kiss the air before his eyes, and countered with a thrust aimed not at Dooku's body but at his saber hand.
The Count withdrew in time.
Barely.
That was when Jackal moved.
He had been waiting in the high shadow above the chamber arch, still as death, letting the duel draw Dooku's attention tighter and tighter. Now he dropped without a sound, vibroblade inverted, aiming not for the heart but for the tendons behind Dooku's shoulder.
Lethal if driven deep.
Incapacitating if angled right.
Jackal had chosen the angle that allowed both.
Dooku sensed him at the last possible instant.
The Count's free hand lifted.
A burst of Force power slammed Jackal sideways mid-fall, hurling him into the chamber wall with a sound that made Will's stomach tighten.
"Jackal!"
Jackal hit stone, dropped, rolled badly, and still came up to one knee with a knife in hand because apparently death had not been properly introduced to him yet.
Dooku looked almost offended.
"Assassination? How un-Jedi."
Will's eyes hardened.
"Good thing he's not a Jedi."
He attacked.
For the first time, Will stopped trying to capture Dooku cleanly.
The objective shifted.
Capture if possible.
Kill if necessary.
Survive regardless.
His green blade came in tighter, more aggressive. He used the basket guard to crash through Dooku's hand attacks, forcing blade-to-blade contact where a normal Makashi duelist would have avoided prolonged binds. He stepped close, too close for classic fencing elegance, and made Dooku fight in the cramped space between doctrine and brawl.
Dooku adapted.
Of course he did.
He gave ground, not in panic, but in contemptuous recalculation. His blade became a needle again, punishing every overreach. One red stroke scored Will's upper arm, burning through cloth and kissing the armor. Another opened a shallow burnt line along his cheek. A third nearly pierced his ribs before he twisted and caught it with the lower basket strut, sparks showering over his glove.
Pain clarified.
Will breathed through it.
In on four.
Out on six.
Will let the harmonic settle.
Not the broad, battle-rhythm version he used with Bad Company. This was smaller. More intimate. The rhythm of Dooku's breathing. The delayed pressure before a thrust. The angle of his wrist before a disengage. The slight preference for drawing opponents into overextended ripostes.
There.
Dooku feinted high again.
Will did not bite.
The true line came low.
Will was already there.
Green and red locked in a bind near waist height, blades screaming. Will rotated his curved hilt inward, using the basket guard not only as protection but as leverage. The guard caught against Dooku's blade angle, briefly trapping the red saber away from centerline.
Will's off-hand shot forward.
Not a push.
A pull.
He yanked Dooku's cape.
It was ridiculous.
It worked for half a second.
The fabric snapped tight, disturbing Dooku's shoulder line just enough for Will to drive a knee into his midsection and follow with a pommel strike toward the jaw.
Dooku twisted away, but the pommel grazed him.
For one perfect instant, the Count of Serenno looked genuinely, deeply insulted.
Will grinned through blood at the corner of his mouth.
"Too modern?"
Dooku's answer was a Force blast.
It hit like a speeder.
Will flew backward across the chamber, slammed into a support pillar, and dropped to one knee hard enough to crack stone beneath the armor plate. His ears rang. His lungs forgot their function. The green saber nearly slipped from his hand.
Dooku advanced slowly, red blade low.
"You are talented," he said. "But talent without refinement means you will have a useless death."
Will coughed, tasted blood, and pushed himself upright.
"Funny," he rasped. "I was about to say refinement without a spine becomes treason."
Dooku's expression cooled.
Good.
Will had found something that still reached him.
They met again in the center.
This exchange was the finest and most dangerous yet.
Dooku became pure Form II: every motion efficient, every step calculated, every attack designed to humiliate before it harmed. He aimed at fingers, elbows, throat, eyes—not wildly, never savagely, but with surgical contempt.
Will answered with a hybrid Makashi that had no official name: curved-hilt precision, clone-taught practicality, Ataru footwork used sparingly for angle changes, and Soresu instincts borrowed from the shoto drills. He did not try to out-Dooku Dooku. That would have been suicide. He made Dooku fight someone who respected his prowess but refused to worship it.
Their blades rang across the chamber.
Red thrust.
Green parry.
Red disengage.
Green counter-line.
Dooku's shoulder dipped.
Will refused the bait.
Will stepped left.
Dooku's blade was already there.
Will turned the basket guard into the contact, letting the red blade skate along the outer cage while his own green point darted toward Dooku's ribs.
Dooku's hand lifted.
Lightning gathered.
Will saw it a fraction before it came.
He snapped the saber down and angled the blade with both hands, basket guard locked around his grip. Blue-white lightning slammed into green plasma and broke around it in branching arcs, crawling across the guard, down Will's forearms, into armor plates that were absolutely not designed for this and complained with heat.
Will gritted his teeth, boots sliding backward.
"Jackal!" he barked.
Jackal moved again, injured but lethal, throwing a compact ion limpet toward Dooku's flank.
Dooku cut the lightning, turned, and flicked his hand. The limpet froze midair, then shot back toward Jackal.
Will reacted on instinct, using the Force to shove Jackal sideways.
The limpet exploded against the wall instead, painting the chamber with ion static.
The lights flickered.
For one second, Dooku's outline blurred in darkness.
Will lunged through it.
Green point aimed for the center of the chest.
Dooku parried late.
Not too late.
But late enough.
The blades locked close, face to face, red and green burning between them. Dooku's eyes held Will's, and for the first time there was no amusement there.
Only calculation.
And perhaps, somewhere buried under layers of pride and treason, genuine respect.
"You would kill me," Dooku said softly.
"If convenient," Will replied.
Dooku's mouth curved.
"How refreshingly honest."
Will shifted pressure, trying to collapse the bind toward Dooku's wrist.
Dooku yielded just enough, turned the line, and used Will's own forward pressure to spin them apart. The movement was beautiful. Infuriatingly beautiful. In another life, in another galaxy, it might have been something worth admiring without disgust.
A distant alarm began to pulse.
Low.
Then rising.
Spark's voice cracked through Will's comm, distorted by interference. "General, we've got a problem! Facility purge just lit up! I'm reading cascading power spikes through the lower structure!"
Burner cut in, way too excited and way too concerned. "That's a self-destruct! Not ours! I repeat, tragically, not ours!"
Dooku stepped back and lowered his blade slightly.
There was a small control device in his left hand.
Of course there was.
Will stared at it.
"You smug bastard."
Dooku inclined his head. "I prefer prudent."
"You're destroying the complex."
"Naturally. The facility has served its purpose. Skywalker's extraction complicates the intended exchange, and I will not leave useful infrastructure in Republic hands."
"Grievous stays captured," Will said.
"For now."
Will's grip tightened. "You're not leaving."
Dooku smiled.
"Knight Kriss, I have no intention of killing you today."
"That's not your choice."
"Oh, but it is." Dooku's red blade angled toward him, elegant again. "The galaxy needs more Jedi like you."
Will almost laughed. "That is the most suspicious compliment I've ever heard."
"It was meant to be." Dooku's expression sharpened. "You are what the Order pretends it does not require: decisive, adaptable, willing to think beyond marble halls and ceremonial restraint. The Republic will use you. The Council will fear what you represent. And when you begin to see how thoroughly they waste men like you…"
He let the implication hang.
Will's face hardened.
"Don't."
Dooku's smile returned, faint and terrible.
"Very well. Another time."
The floor shook.
This time violently.
A support beam cracked overhead, showering dust and fragments of old stone. The red alarm strobes bathed everything in emergency light. The Magna Guard still twitching near the corridor finally shut down as some internal pulse fried its systems. Jackal staggered to his feet, one hand pressed against his ribs.
"General," he rasped. "We need to go."
Dooku backed toward a side exit that had not existed on Spark's map.
Hidden passage.
Noble exits.
Always.
Will started after him.
The ceiling collapsed between them.
Not fully, but enough: a curtain of stone and durasteel smashed down, severing the chamber with an avalanche of debris. Will threw a Force barrier up on instinct, stopping shards from cutting him and Jackal apart. On the other side, through smoke and firelight, Dooku's silhouette remained visible for one final second.
He raised his saber in something that was almost a salute.
Then he was gone.
Will considered blasting through the rubble.
He truly did.
Then another explosion rolled through the lower structure, and Jackal coughed violently.
That settled it.
"Damn it," Will snarled.
He clipped the green saber to his belt, snapped the shoto-pike into hand, and grabbed Jackal under one arm.
"Move."
They ran.
The base came apart like a liar under pressure.
Corridors warped. Panels burst. Old Naboo stone cracked where Separatist supports had been drilled through it. Steam and smoke filled the lower passages, turning every light into a smeared wound.
Jackal tried to keep pace on his own until his knees nearly folded.
Will caught him again.
"Stop being stubborn," Will snapped.
"Not stubborn," Jackal growled. "Independent."
"That's worse."
They reached the first intersection just as a blast door began to descend. Will threw the shoto-pike. The blue blade activated mid-spin and punched into the mechanism housing, freezing the door halfway with sparks shrieking from both sides. He yanked the weapon back with the Force and shoved Jackal through the gap first.
Behind them, the chamber they had left collapsed inward.
Ahead, Bad Company's comms crackled through interference.
"General!" Rift's voice. "Where are you?"
"South maintenance artery," Will replied, coughing through smoke. "Jackal's hit. Dooku escaped through a hidden route. Base is going up."
"Copy. We're holding extraction point Aurek. Skywalker is aboard and angry."
"Good. If he wasn't angry, I'd worry."
Doc cut in. "How bad is Jackal?"
Jackal tried to answer. "Fine."
Will answered over him. "Not fine."
"Copy. I'll prepare the 'lying idiot' kit."
They burst into a wider utility hall where smoke rolled along the ceiling and the floor buckled under thermal stress. Two B1 droids stumbled into view from a side corridor, apparently abandoned by everyone important.
One pointed at Will. "Jedi!"
The other looked at the collapsing ceiling. "Do we still have to fight him?"
"I think so?"
"Aw."
Will did not have time for this.
He lifted a hand and slammed both droids into opposite walls hard enough to turn them into loose parts.
"Roger roger," Jackal muttered weakly.
Will almost laughed despite everything.
The last stretch to extraction was uphill through an old service ramp slick with coolant. Explosions chased them from below, each one closer than the last. The facility's self-destruction was thorough, but not instant. Designed not merely to destroy the base, but to deny investigation. Dooku had planned for loss. He always did.
They reached the outer breach as the evening air of Naboo punched in, cool and wet and painfully alive.
The stealth shuttle waited under the shadow of ancient trees, ramp down, engines hot.
Brick stood at the ramp with shield deployed, deflecting debris and occasional fire from scattered droid survivors. Rift waved them in. Burner had one arm wrapped around an equipment crate and the other around a detonator he absolutely did not need but seemed emotionally attached to. Spark was inside, shouting at the pilot. Doc stood ready with a medkit open.
Anakin sat strapped against the inner wall, bruised, furious, alive.
The moment he saw Will and Jackal, he tried to stand.
Doc shoved him back by the chest.
"Sit down, hero!"
Anakin pointed at Will. "Dooku?"
"Gone," Will said, hauling Jackal up the ramp.
Anakin's face twisted. "Damn it."
"Yeah," Will said. "That."
Doc immediately seized Jackal and began scanning. "Rib fractures, bruising, possible internal bleeding. Congratulations, you're an idiot."
Jackal smiled faintly through blood. "Alive idiot."
"Barely."
Rift grabbed Will's shoulder. "You good?"
Will looked back at the collapsing facility. Fire bloomed through the hidden base's roofline, smoke rising into Naboo's beautiful sky.
"No."
Rift nodded, understanding exactly what kind of no that was. "But breathing?"
"Yeah."
"Then we'll take it."
The ramp closed.
The shuttle lifted hard as the complex detonated in full behind them. Fire punched upward through stone and earth, sending debris into the trees. The shockwave caught the shuttle and rocked it violently. Everyone grabbed straps, bulkheads, armor, anything.
Burner whooped once.
Doc yelled, "Why are you like this?"
"Because I survived!"
The shuttle climbed, leaving the burning site below.
Will sank into the seat opposite Anakin, finally letting his body acknowledge that dueling Count Dooku was a deeply stupid thing to survive.
Anakin studied him through bruised eyes.
"You fought him."
"Yeah."
"And?"
Will leaned his head back against the bulkhead.
"He talks too much sometimes."
Anakin snorted, then winced. "That's your tactical assessment?"
"Also very good with a saber."
"Yeah," Anakin muttered. "No shit."
For a moment, neither said anything.
Then Anakin's expression shifted, frustration burning under exhaustion. "We should've had him."
"We almost did."
"Almost doesn't count."
Will looked at him.
"No," he said quietly. "But alive does."
Anakin looked away.
He knew.
He hated it.
But he knew.
The holo-call with the Council happened once Anakin had been transferred to medical care aboard the Resolute Dawn and Jackal had been sedated despite protesting in three different tones of stubborn.
Will stood in the cruiser's briefing chamber, cleaned up enough not to drip blood on the deck but not enough to hide the duel. His cheek bore a fresh sealed burn. His forearm armor had melted scoring where Dooku's lightning had crawled along it. The basket guard on his green saber would need repair; two of the protective struts were blackened from saber contact.
The holoprojector formed the Council again.
Yoda. Windu. Obi-Wan. Shaak Ti. The Rest too.
Padmé was not present this time.
Probably wise.
Kenobi spoke first, and for once the usual polite wit was gone.
"Is Anakin safe?"
"Yes," Will said. "In medical care. Injured, dehydrated, tortured, but stable. He'll complain his way back to health."
Obi-Wan exhaled almost invisibly.
"Good."
Windu's expression remained hard. "And Dooku?"
"Escaped," Will said.
The word tasted like rust.
"I engaged him in the holding facility after Skywalker's extraction began. Jackal attempted a flank strike. Dooku repelled him, initiated the complex's self-destruct, and used a hidden escape route. I was forced to withdraw with Jackal injured."
Ki-Adi-Mundi, present by holo at the edge, frowned. "You had an opportunity to eliminate him?"
"I had an opportunity to die trying," Will replied before he could soften it. Then, after a breath: "I pressed him. He was forced to disengage, but he controlled the field well enough to burn the facility and leave."
Windu studied him. "You failed to capture or eliminate Count Dooku."
"Yes."
No excuse.
No dressing it up.
The room held that truth.
Then Shaak Ti spoke.
"You succeeded in extracting General Skywalker."
"Yes."
"And without completing the prisoner exchange," Obi-Wan added quietly.
Will nodded. "Correct. Since Skywalker is no longer in Separatist custody, there is no valid leverage for an exchange. Grievous remains a Republic prisoner."
Yoda's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Advantage, regained it is. Costly, but regained."
Windu's gaze sharpened. "Dooku's facility?"
"Destroyed by his own hand. Bad Company recovered minimal local data before evacuation, but the primary objective shifted to extraction once Dooku appeared and self-destruction initiated."
"Any indication Dooku expected your presence?"
Will considered that.
"He expected a rescue. Maybe Skywalker's people. Maybe Kenobi. Maybe a direct strike. I don't think he expected Bad Company specifically." He paused. "He adapted quickly."
Obi-Wan's mouth tightened. "He always does."
Will looked toward Windu. "He said something before he left."
The Council waited.
"He said he would not kill me now because the galaxy needs more Jedi like me."
That landed strangely.
Not as praise.
As contamination.
Yoda's expression darkened.
"Dangerous words from Dooku are."
"Yeah," Will said. "I didn't take them as encouragement."
Windu folded his hands.
"Dooku has always been skilled at identifying dissatisfaction and turning it into philosophical ideals."
Will's jaw tightened. "I'm aware."
"Are you?"
The question was not accusation exactly.
But it was close enough.
Will met Windu's gaze.
"I know the difference between criticism and treason, Master."
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then Windu gave the smallest nod.
"See that you continue to."
Fair enough.
Will bowed his head slightly.
"What happens with Grievous?"
Shaak Ti answered. "He will be held under maximum security at the Jedi Temple pending interrogation and strategic review."
"Very well," Will said.
Kenobi's brows lifted faintly. "You sound surprised."
"I'm used to us trading monsters back because someone asked politely, master."
No one had an immediate answer for that.
Yoda tapped his cane once.
"Victory, this is. Imperfect, like all victories in war. But saved, Skywalker is. Captured, Grievous remains. Failed to take Dooku, you did. Yet prevented the exchange, you have."
Will accepted that as much as he could.
"Yes, Master."
Windu's voice softened by a fraction. "Rest while you can, Knight Kriss. Dooku has now measured you personally. That means he will account for you next time."
Will glanced down at the damaged basket guard on his saber hilt.
"He better do it," he said.
The Council holo flickered.
Kenobi lingered one second longer than the others before vanishing.
"Will," he said quietly, "thank you."
Then he was gone.
The room returned to dim silence.
Rift, who had been standing near the rear wall, finally stepped forward.
"You all right?"
Will let out a breath.
"No."
Rift nodded.
"Still breathing?"
Will looked at him.
"Yeah."
"Then we'll take it."
The same words as before.
The same truth.
Will clipped his damaged saber back to his belt after inspecting it one more time and looked toward the medical bay where Anakin Skywalker lived, where Jackal slept under protest, where the war had lost one bargain and gained another prisoner.
Dooku had escaped.
Grievous remained captured.
Anakin had been rescued.
And somewhere in the elegant, bloodless mind of Count Dooku, Will Kriss had become a name worth remembering.
That did not feel like victory.
But in war, victory rarely felt clean.
It just felt like being alive long enough to face the next damn problem.