"I wouldn't want you doing that without someone watching."

"I trust you with - stuff like that."

"But - would it make you uncomfortable? To be the one watching me."

"Mm. It might. I would have to meditate on it myself."

Serious nod. "Okay."

"I'll let you know when we get back to the Temple."

Small smile. "Thank you, Elesse."

"You are welcome, Anakin."

And then soon enough, it's time for her fight.

She still hasn't gotten any information about who her opponent will be.

That's happened more than a few times, but it's odd for a headline fight. 

There's not much to do except rest up ahead of time. Make sure she's fully healed and comfortable, and pay close attention to her morning warm ups and meditations.

And then keep herself ready as the fight begins. 

The crowd is definitely very hyped for tonight's show. (Above, in the private boxes, the mood is similarly heightened, but with an extra edge of tension.)

Anakin's opponent appears after she's on the floor, emerging slowly from a darkened entryway, in a black robe with its hood up.

He shrugs the robe off, revealing himself to be a Zabrak, barechested and muscular and covered with intimidating black spiderwebbing tattoos.

He looks Anakin straight in the eye and grins viciously.

She meets his gaze and bares her teeth. It's almost a grin. "I haven't seen you fight before," she says, stance shifting slightly. 

(Something feels even more wrong than it did earlier...)

"You're still alive." There's an instant of warning, a minuscule shift in his weight-

-then he's upon her. Far, far faster than a non-Force user should move.

! Kriff - !

She twists out of his way enough that she can redirect his first strike away from her midline, bleeding off some of the power behind it - it still hurts like fuck, of course.

She doesn't let that slow her down, striking back - leaning into her higher flexibility, her speed - her prescience, because there's no way she's going to survive this without getting blatant - her strikes blur together, a ferocious outburst to meet and keep tempo with her opponent. She hasn't drawn her lightsaber yet - hasn't gotten the space to do so - but the Force moves through her all the same, slams out from her sharp blows.  

He's more than capable of matching her blow for blow, invisible strands of dark side energy wrapping around his limbs like blades. His entire body is a weapon, a conductor in a symphony of jab-kick-spin-punch-tackle-dodge.

The Force sings along to his performance, a chorus of all the ways he could beat Anakin, bruise her flesh, split her skin, break her bones, leave her lying helpless on the floor.

Nnnnnff.

Anakin rises to the challenge, and her body sings in counterpart to his. She grins, and that fierce exhilaration darts and weaves around him - and the slow thrum of her concern and love for Elesse hovers throughout her awareness, giving her a direction, anchoring the way the light side flashes around and through her.

(Anakin likes an enemy she can see. One she can punch? All the better.)

Slowly, the pace and intensity begins to ramp up.

"You make a terrible Jedi. Do you think your master will keep you after what you've shown her? What you're showing her now?"

That causes a flicker in her pattern - she strikes out at him, a moment of anger giving her blow greater force - and then she tries to weave that anger back into her flow, subsume it, tame it. 

"I'm hers," she snaps, her voice low and fierce. "She won't cast me aside." She pushes into him, then, her attacks stepping up, coming even faster. "Do you know nothing of loyalty?"

"More than the Jedi."

"But I suppose I should have expected a slave like you to be too weak to break her shackles."

"Love and loyalty are not shackles," she growls, stepping up her tempo again. "Trust is not a cage."

Her words come as fast as her strikes, pouring out of her in an avalanche as hard to parse as her hands are to see. "And if you think I'm a slave, then you truly have no grasp of what devotion means."

Suddenly Maul has tucked himself under her guard and is kicking her in the stomach with both feet, launching himself back and knocking the wind out of Anakin.

"Show me your devotion, then," he growls, producing a long hilt and igniting a lightsaber blade that glows bloody crimson. "Perhaps it will comfort you when you lie dying, alone and cold as your master flees the planet."

Her own brilliantly violet blade hums to life in her hand as she regains her balance. The blade's shorter than his, and she initially holds it in a grip more suited for a dagger.

And then she closes with a wordless scream, lashing out - the Force is a wild storm around her, and she's still using the light side, but, well.

It's definitely clear what a Sith master might see in her. 

As good as he is unarmed, he's better with a saber.

Better than Anakin, even in her wild fury.

And, of course, she starts to lose. She's not dead yet - but she's still constantly running that thin edge of disaster, one millimeter away from grievous injury, from a tailspin she won't escape.

At least until one of the boxes overhead explodes in a shower of glass shard and Elesse dives down to the arena floor, her golden lightsaber blade leading the way in a flipping strike aimed to slice the Zabrak open shoulder to hip-