Anakin once visited Coruscant’s underbelly, as an escort for Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s secret visit. Festering within the 2685th level of Coruscant, it is a feeding ground to the best and worst criminals—bureaucrats among them. Slaves and contraband are bought and sold on the hour, while others gamble with their lives or ill-gotten gains on the roll of a chance cube.

Others are content to seek entertainment, watching holographic projections of exotic dancers in various states of undress—the likes of which will no doubt be traded as slaves in exchange for credits or other services. Games of chance are often obscured under the sheer volume of patrons gathered around the game tables. Smaller round tables serve for social or business gatherings, with more discreet booths tucked into alcoves along the walls.

Having undergone unfinished renovations at some point, the ceiling has been raised to resemble that of a warehouse. Smoke gathers among the durasteel supports, making a buffer for the intense red and violet beams lighting the cesspit below. Zeltron perfumes are among the most common smells in the establishment, while the rolling of dice cubes make for the most recognizable sound above the music. Fights don’t often break out, and violence is often dissuaded at the sight of armoured bouncers several heads taller than most humanoids

Club Kasakar. A true cesspool of the worst the galaxy could offer. As Rasilvenaira stepped through the door, she felt her skin crawling from the sheer press of people around her. Places like this were always too crowded for her tastes. The stench of sweat, various pheromones from different species, and smoke hung heavily in the air. The bright flashing lights and loud music made her head hurt. She hated places like this with a passion. But she was here because this was where her contact insisted on meeting, and she wasn’t about to lose another special shipment of her favorite rum.

Finding her contact in one of the back alcoves, she slid into her seat and pulled back the hood of her cloak as she studied the Duros.

“I trust there was no issue with my shipment?”

“No, everything is good, I even have a bottle here for you to try, satisfy yourself with the quality I’m bringing you.”

Rasilvenaira nodded and took the offered bottle and opened it, pouring some into the glass that was sitting on the table. She took a sip, considering it carefully as she swallowed it.

“It’s acceptable. Have the shipment delivered to my ship, and I’ll pay you.”

The Duros frowned, but reconsidered complaining when he spotted Rasilvenaira’s lightsabers on her belt.

“Alright, I’ll have my people load it on your ship.”

He pulled out a comlink and gave the order. Rasilvenaira waited, then pulled out her own comlink to check with her droid, Veritas, and confirmed the delivery. Satisfied, she pushed over the agreed on payment.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” she offered.

“Yes, a pleasure, be sure to let me know if I can ever be of service again.”

The Duros got up and left. Rasilvenaira decided to stay a little longer while she enjoyed the bottle of rum. It was too good to rush, and she didn’t want to deal with anyone thinking she hadn’t paid for her drinks, just because her bottle didn’t come from the club’s bar.

She emptied the first glass and poured a second. Several more glasses later, she had nearly emptied the bottle. She was just starting to take a drink when someone bumped into her hard, causing her to drop the glass which spilled all over the table.

Bristling with instant anger, she rose to her feet and grabbed the almost empty rum bottle and smashed it over the person’s head. Her tone was cold as ice as she stood there, eyes dark with anger, hands on her lightsabers.

“Who in the nine hells do you think you are, hm? You just spilled my rum. I suggest you pay for it or replace it.”

The man shook off the remnants of the bottle and rubbed his head where he’d been hit. Then he turned around facing her, one silver eye and one cybernetic eye staring at her incredulously. “I don’t intend to do either as it isn’t my fault. Someone bumped me and I bumped into you. I am sorry, but I’m not paying for anything.”

Rasilvenaira met his gaze and drew her sabers, the silver blades igniting with an angry snap-hiss.

“I think you will, one way or another,” she growled.

The Sith lashed out with her sabers, but Celevon countered her strike blocking the silver blades with his Sith sword.

Celevon Werd’a had arrived at this club — the Seeker had to withhold a mental sneer at the very thought — earlier, as it had been the designated meeting place for the details of a contract. Only, his contact had never arrived. It happened often enough, for a variety of reasons. Many were as simple as the fact that the contact had lost the nerve to have someone killed. Or word had gotten out and the one putting out the contract had been killed off.

Regardless, the Shaevalian-Umbaran had eventually decided to cut his losses. Then, whilst he had been making his way around the crowd, some drunken lout had shoved him — to be truthful, the other had been wildly dancing, been shoved out of the pit and into Celevon himself — into a woman he vaguely recognized.

It had taken a few moments for the Seeker to turn around, after being bashed over the head with a partially emptied bottle of rum. He regretted leaving his helmet behind on his ship.

The moment the Sith drew the hilts from her waist and ignited both silver blades, the Corellian native instinctively drew his Sith Sword from where it had been sheathed at his hip. It had barely escaped the scabbard and moved into a smooth block, momentarily locking their blades.

At this point, the crowd was still unaware of what had begun within their midst, though some moved away instinctively as an aura of fear spread from Rasilvenaira.

Sharp brown eyes took in the Sith Sword of her opponent, the barest hint of a stylized Raven and crescent moon embossed on the underside of the right wrist. Then her eyes flicked back to the man’s own, where rum still dripped down his hair and coated his face, then to the hilt of another sword over his shoulder. Any wounds from the broken bottle were concealed beneath the aforementioned dark hair.

At the same time, the Shaevalian-Umbaran did his own visual assessment of the Shadow, taking particular note of the Nightsister Duskblades and the matched set of lightsaber hilts in her hands. Then, he caught the script of Ancient Sith lining her robes. To an outsider, it would appear as though Celevon had admired her figure.

These were just the highlights of what each of them noticed, the point from where their blades clashed to whence silver and brown eyes locked once more only a heartbeat in time.

Celevon’s lips curled into a smile as he perfectly spoke the guttural language of the Ancient Sith, a direct quote of the glyphs on the Sith’s robes. That smile widened as he swapped to Basic, the slightest dilation of her pupils the only sign of the Human’s surprise. “Let’s dance.”

“Only if I get to lead,” Rasilvenaira retorted instinctively, fluidly bringing both blades back before she slashed at his other side in an attempt to overwhelm the Force Disciple’s defenses.

A flick of his left wrist ejected the retractable wrist blade from a Mandalorian vambrace, which halted the silver beam on the beskar. His smile continued to grow, as it was clear the Shaevalian-Umbaran loved a good fight.

Rasilvenaira glared at the man over their locked blades. “Thrice damned beskar and alchemical weapons,” she cursed to herself. It would make landing any serious blows on him very difficult, though his head was exposed, it still didn’t make it an easy target. It just meant she’d have to be creative to have any chance of gaining the upper hand.

The world around the pair went instantly, absolutely dark. Rasilvenaira pulled back, deactivating her humming sabers and switched them for her twin nightsister blades. She moved a few steps away from him, circling around as people screamed at the sudden darkness. A handful of people had gotten caught in it at the edge of the dance floor. Rasilvenaira didn’t care, let them cause more confusion, it would make her presence harder to detect.

All armor had weak spots, it was just a matter of finding and hitting them. Finally, she made her move, striking for the joint in the armor at his hip, trying to slash at it with one blade, then stabbing through with her other blade as the darkness broke around them. They were once again back in the glaring flashing lights of the club.

After her strike, she moved back, out of range again as she studied her opponent. Finally, she gathered the Force and launched a vicious blast of Force Lightning aiming for his unprotected head.

The move was akin to poking a rancor with a small stick. It just made him angry. He retaliated with a more formidable blast of Force lightning of his own. Then he pulled a table up with his telekinesis and slammed it into the smaller woman.

Rasilvenaira stumbled back, barely able to keep her grip on the duskblades. She growled under her breath at the pain rippling through her body. She staggered again when the table slammed into her. She pushed it away from her and stepped past its broken form. The Sith gathered herself again and used telekinesis to send some of the broken shards of the wooden table straight for Celevon’s head.

The Elder easily blocked the attack with his own telekinetic power and threw them back at Rasilvenaira. She managed to dodge most of them, though a couple hit across her left shoulder before she could get completely out of the way.

She moved further back, out onto the dance floor to keep from getting pinned against the wall between the tables. Rasilvenaira was starting to make another move, planning her attack as she lunged forward, blades drawn and ready to slash at his head, trying to target the one part of him not shielded by beskar.

She only got two steps before a telekinetic strike slammed her to the ground, followed by another furious blast of Force lightning. Celevon walked closer to her as he kept up the barrage of lightning. Rasilvenaira writhed in pain, doing her best not to cry out from it. Finally as he stood above her, he stopped the lightning and drew his Sith sword.

“You won’t need to worry about spilled rum again.”

Before she could recover from the lightning to defend herself, he ran the Sith sword through her chest.

Whether it was the insouciant smile, devil-may-care attitude, or the waste of good rum, Celevon was likely never to know what fully set the Human off. What he did know was that the woman was furious.

Rasilvenaira increased the pace of her powerful strikes as she sought to overwhelm the Shaevalian-Umbaran, which he reacted to with a series of blocks and redirections. At some point during his defense, the Seeker retracted the wrist blade, relying solely on the Sith Sword and the properties of the beskar itself.

The crowd of revelers quickly realized that this was, in fact, not a light show or part of the evening’s entertainment when one of the dancers drew too close to the duel and a limb went flying, courtesy of one of the Sith’s silver blades. Her scream echoed out, louder and higher in pitch than the pumping music, which began the cascade of panicked yelling. Whilst this level of Coruscant was no stranger to fights that erupted seemingly at random, the populace of Club Kasakar also knew on an atavistic level that this screamed danger. Thus, in a combination of drunken haze and — likely enhanced by the Shadow’s aura of fear — well honed self-preservation instincts, the crowd pushed and shoved at one another, fighting their way toward the exit to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of two Force Users.

To Celevon, this was far from how he had expected his evening to turn out. Instead of meeting with a cagey sentient who sought to put out a hit on a rival or someone who had simply wronged them in some manner or other, the contact had never shown up. Then, it was just his luck that someone had shoved him into another Force User, simply attempting to enjoy her sample bottle before departing this... haven of scum.

Truthfully, he had still been reeling from the bottle to the head when the Human had drawn and ignited her lightsabers, only decades of experience at having to quickly draw his sword allowed him to survive the initial attack.

The beskar armor likely would have protected the Seeker, but he was not accustomed to relying on it and thus, did not think of that.

In fact, there was no time for thought, only muscle memory as Celevon dipped in and out, weaving around his opponent in between blocking and dodging the overwhelming assault from the older woman.

Meanwhile, the Sith had continued to observe her opponent, eventually having recognized the Shaevalian-Umbaran as someone Rasilvenaira had met in passing numerous times over the years. Since the beginning of their duel, the Human had been assessing the male’s skills, her ire only growing as Celevon never once called upon the Force.

Once the crowd had cleared out, with a few wounded and at least one dead via trampling, the Shadow had withdrawn her aura of fear, as it seemed to have no effect on the Force Disciple. And, whilst she herself was a master of her chosen lightsaber form, the Seeker had proven his own mastery of his chosen blade, meshed seamlessly with a martial art style that reminded Rasilvenaira of the Jedi.

Seeing as she had begun to pant, whilst the male seemed barely affected by their ongoing battle, the Sith abruptly changed tactics. Rasilvenaira deactivated and returned one of her lightsabers to her belt, only to draw and lash out with her double-bladed dagger.

Celevon barely dodged in time, whilst the blade itself nicked his cheek, just beneath the cybernetic left eye. He seemed stunned that she had drawn first blood.

Well aware of the poisons that coated her blades, the Sith wove a cloak of light and shadow around her body, vanishing from sight in a matter of seconds as she simultaneously deactivated her remaining lightsaber to simply observe.

The Seeker glanced around, wiping at his stinging cheek from a combination of sweat, the lingering alcohol and the inhibiting poison that he was unaware of. “Where are you hiding now?” Celevon murmured, reaching out with the Force to where the Human had been standing, only to sense nothing there.

Indeed, Rasilvenaira had begun to move slowly the moment the cloak of Force energy settled around her. Originally, she had intended to find a better position to attack from once the poison began to affect his muscles and nervous system. However, when the moments continued with no notable changes, the Sith bared her teeth in a silent snarl.

Instead, the Shadow chose to cut her losses as she came to determine that the Shaevalian-Umbaran seemed immune to her poison. Still, she took solace in the fact that she had spilled his blood, just as the male had spilled her rum...

The Seeker continued to search his surroundings with the Force, a frown of consternation marring his features as he realized the woman had departed. Then, Celevon glanced around.

“Oh, dear... Time to flee, methinks. I’d hate to think of the bill I’d get for this mess.”