Mara paced back and forth in the small training room trying to control her anger. Did Skywalker go out of his way to make everything on that dirtball of a world small? Her week of isolation -imprisonment, she growled to herself- was almost up. Then he'd give her back her parts and she'd be off Yavin IV fast enough to make that farmboy head of his spin. But...
She reluctantly admitted to herself that so far, it hadn't been a horrible week. It had had its moments already. She snickered to herself at the look on his face after that first night. She chuckled to herself at how distraught he'd looked in the kitchen. She laughed out loud when she remembered the little looks he'd been sneaking at her when he thought she wasn't watching. In fact, she resolved on the spot to make that outfit her offical nightwear whenever she was exiled at the Jedi Academy. Just to get under his skin, she reasoned.
The little remote buzzed, bringing her out of her thoughts. Lightsaber practice. For some reason, Skywalker had her working on her skills with the Jedi weapon; skills that didn't really need practicing. But the little droid hovering in front of her had thus far completely stumped her efforts at stopping. It was a new excersise recently developed at the Academy in which the student was to deflect the low-power blaster bolt back at the droid, trying to hit it with its own weapon. But so far, the blasted thing was just too fast. Zipping this way and that, just skipping one beat ahead of the redirected blasts. Well, that was about to change.
Mara locked her wrists solidly around her lightsaber and activated the remote, promising herself that this time she'd get it. And she tried, she really did. But the darned thing just kept mocking her with that slight buzz of repulserlifts as it flitted about the room, her deflected bolts scoring the stone walls but coming no where near the droid.
It was finally too much, and she shut her lightsaber off and threw it against the wall in frustration. The impromptu missle never made it there, stopping in mid-air and hovering in place.
"It'll never work that way, Mara," came that familiar voice, and she gritted her teeth. Terrific. Now she was going to get lectured and patronized at the same time. She thought long and hard about breaking Skywalker's nose, but decided that the effort wasn't really worth it. That farmboy had been hit by much stronger people and still had a skull as thick as duracrete.
"So why don't you show me how it should work, then?" she asked in as civil a tone as possible. Then her eyes narrowed as Skywalker proceeded to do just that. Activating her lightsaber, he strode into the centre of the room and turned to face her fully, his back to the remote. Mara could feel a pulse of Force power ripple around his body, and the remote suddenly sprang into action, firing a bolt at the Jedi's unprotected back. Skywalker held Mara's gaze for a long, long moment, the time stretching out between them. It seemed like an eternity before the Jedi whirled around and snapped her lightsaber up into a solid defensive block. Luke didn't stop there, but continued around in his circle until he was facing Mara again, all in the same motion.
Behind him, the droid was nailed squarely with its own blaster bolt and shut down.
Mara's mouth gaped open. The fluidity of the move, the economy of movement startled her, and she knew what was going to happen ahead of time. Then her pride caught up with her mind and she stalked over to him and snatched her lightsaber from his outstretched hand. She pulled her hand back, ignited the blade again, and whipped it forward, hoping to catch Skywalker by surprise.
No such luck. A green-white blade appeared in front of hers in an instant, and she never saw his hand move to his own weapon. She raised an eyebrow at the challenge and accepted it with a backhanded strike of her own, which was just as easily blocked.
They battled across the room, attacking and blocking each other with such ease that it would have looked like a choreographed routine to anyone observing. But it was completely random, and Mara was thrown by how easily she was matching Skywalker's moves. It was as if her body knew exactly what his body wanted to do and she could easily set up for the moves, and her mind was stuck playing catch-up.
Skywalker came at her with a slow overhead chop, and she was able to easily parry it. What she wasn't ready for, however, was the lightning fast side-to-side strike that followed immediatly, and she was wide out of position to block it. For the briefest of moments, she thought that his blade had struck home and she was dead. But she didn't feel pain, just the cool whisper of air over bare skin.
Mara blinked hard, then looked to the side. He hadn't cut her body, just the sleeve of her jumpsuit. The stroke by Skywalker had torn off a patch of her clothes, leaving her arm completely exposed.
Her eyes narrowed. He was going to pay for that. Oh, yes. He would pay.
Unfortunatly, Skywalker just wasn't cooperating. His lightsaber was everywhere, completely closing down any opportunties she may have had for an attack. But... her trained eye noticed a small hole in his strategy, and her body was moving to exploit it before her mind could fully comprehend things.
One long step brought her very close to him, fully inside his defensive circle. His lightsaber technique was based on long, sweeping strikes that do an effective job against ranged opponents but were utterly useless against a woman who was as close to him as she now was.
She grinned as his eyes widened and his lighsaber skipped to block her strikes. Now she was in control of the fight and she was going to enjoy it. Small, short stabs were the order of the day, given that she didn't have the room for larger blows, but that would be sufficient. Skywalker was on the complete defensive, backing away and trying to get more room. Mara wasn't going to allow it. She kept time with him, stepping when he did, moving when he did.
But it didn't last. Skywalker faked a lightsaber strike, ducked under her outstretched swordarm, and gave her a hard shoulder shove, pushing her back. Mara recovered quickly, but realized that she'd lost the momentum, and that Skywalker was back in his preferred terriroty.
Fighting down the wariness that threatened to overcome her, she darted forward, trying to bring the attack back to him, to put him on the defensive again. No such luck. Luke stood stock-still until the very last possible moment, when he exploded into action, his lightsaber flicking back and forth behind her blade, somehow slipping through her defenses. In a flash, her other sleeve joined its twin, and her arms were bare to his view.
She glanced at her arms, then to Skywalker. He was smirking at her. Oooooh, that did it. Mara charged forward, chopping this way and that, the familiar energies filling her muscles. But Skywalker, damn him, now had a perfect defense that simply shut down any attempts to hurt the man. Then he slipped to the side and stuck his lightsaber out, forcing Mara to veer off to one side to avoid being run through. She easily heard the blade of the energy weapon parting fabric, but couldn't feel any cool air on her legs, which she expected. Sparing a glance down confirmed that the legs of jumpsuit were still attatched and in one piece. Odd, considering Skywalker's current mood, but she wasn't about to complain. The thought of being this unclothed in front of Skywalker wasn't a very cheery one.
A thought Skywalker paid no heed to, since he made another horizontal slash. Now Mara could feel cool air whispering across her skin. But it wasn't her legs. It was... Mara looked down.
He's sliced off the front of her jumpsuit, leaving her midriff totally bare.
Mara's eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she could feel the heat rising in her face. Did he just do-? she started to ask herself before fury took over. How dare he? An angry shout rose in her throat and she tore into Skywalker's defense with a blur of lightsaber strikes, each fueled by the indignity of her state of undress, and, more importantly, the man causing it.
Skywalker, perhaps realizing that maybe he'd pushed things too far, fell back and focused fully on defense. Not that it was going to save him. Mara's arms were blurs, her lightsaber blade a dangerous line of hard light flashing back and forth. But while she still couldn't hit him, she was able to slip beneath his arm and move so tightly against his body that they were touching.
She brought her arm back to punch his nose through the back of his skull, but he ducked beneath her arm, wrapped a solid lock around her elbow, and twisted her around and around, bringing her arm across her chest. She had to twist with the move to keep her elbow from dislocating, but the result was Mara's back presssed tightly against Luke's chest, her lightsaber trapped against her chest by the arm Luke had a hold on. They were taking a small breather, both panting hard. Somehow, Mara suspected it had little to do with the workout.
Mara could feel his hot breath tickling her ear, his heart hammering through his chest against her back, and she felt a silly grin spread itself over her face. She had no intentions of moving. Far from it, she couldn't belive how... how... how good it felt to be in his arms like that. She twisted her neck around and discovered his face right beside hers.
Suddenly, her heart was pounding as strongly as his.
Her gaze drifted down and down and down until settling on his lips. So close to hers, just a little more twist of the neck... before she understood what was happening, what she was thinking or feeling, Mara started to lean a little closer to him, bringing her lips a little closer to his. Closer... closer...
Then, due to some unknown and entirely inappropriatly programmer's mistake, the little remote, which had been hovering off to the side in standby, suddenly whined to life and darted across the room to the entwined fighters. That did it. Whatever spell had been brewing between Luke and Mara popped like a bubble, leaving only confusion in its wake.
Mara pulled back from Luke's slack grip and turned to look at him. Oddly enough, her eyes just couldn't meet his. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sounds came out. She tried again, and only a quiet croak emerging. When she finally could make her mouth work properly, she spoke at the same time Luke did.
"Luke, I-"
"Mara-"
They both broke off immediatly, each waiting for the other to speak. But neither did, and silence reigned, each becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Ironically, it was the little disturbing remote that came to the rescue. It had finally reached its programmed range and fired. Jedi training took over and Mara was pulling away from Luke altogether, bringing her lightsaber up to deflect the oncoming bolt before she knew what she was doing.
Inwardly, Mara was thankful for the droid. Fighting like this was something she was used to and could deal with. Not sorting out her conflicting feelings for Luke Skywalker.
The red bolt reflected off of her weapon and just barely missed Luke, who hopped into the air and brought his lightsaber down, trying to take her head clean off. Mara dodged to the side, somersaulting out of the way, the cold stone floor chilling her flesh were it touched her bare lower back.
Funny how after that last close encounter with Luke, Mara was no longer as upset at how he was effectivly stripping her bare as she once was.
She chose not to dwell on that change too much, instead trying to focus on the fight anew. The zipping remote added an interesting flavour to the battle, since having even low-powered blasters taking random potshots at each opponent raised the difficulty level by several notches. Twice, Mara was nearly caught by Luke's lightsaber, the blaster bolt, or both, and she was skipping to make her defenses instead of solidly setting herself for them.
Mara gritted her teeth as she saw Luke having no apparent troubles with splitting his attention between her and droid. She huffed to herself. If she couldn't get more of his attentions than that, she must've been losing her touch. A small part of her mind resolved that she would be paying another visit to the Jedi Master's room that night.
During that small thought, Luke took the opening and thrust his lightsaber high above his head, relfecting a red bolt right at her. She had no time to dodge and she hastily brought her own saber blade up, somehow getting it in front of the beam of light in time. Even more amazingly, the bolt deflected off her saber and right at the droid that fired it in the first place!
Mara gaped for a moment, then lashed forward, enveloped Luke's blade with her own, tore it off to the side, and disarmed him. She held the tip of her blade close to his throat for a moment, then pulled it away and shut it off. "Good fight there, farmboy," she said, fighting hard to keep the emotional quiver out of her voice. She looked at Luke as she picked up his lightsaber and could see a flicker of emotion in his eyes at the business-like tone. Then the emotion died and the Jedi Master came back.
"That's the proper way, Mara. Don't think too hard about it, and the Force will make it happen," he said, before taking his weapon back, turning around and walking out, leaving Mara alone with her thoughts after one last over-the-shoulder look at the woman.
In that stone room, surrounded by the tatters of her own clothes that revealed too much of her body, Mara couldn't have been happier. It suddenly all made sense, everything that she'd been trying and failing at the Jedi Academy. On impulse, she took control of the remote and turned it on to its highest difficulty setting.
Not once did she miss the little droid on the return shot.