The steady, rhythmic, measured pattern that sound like so many soft, muted slap, slap, slaps was only punctuated by the occasional, timed crack that broke such an easy pace. The sounds were famous hands bouncing off of black pads that a man held high, someone much taller than Melanie. The thick, almost wet crack, something seen so often, was her foot blowing past the hands and whipping against the chest pad he wore with such a resigned look on his face.

The steady, smooth sounds were only broken by the scritch and scratch of pencils and pens, the sounds of people waiting. There was always a flock of them at the early morning practices that her contracts, entangled and confusing things, demanded from her. One bold man broke the tentative silence.

"So, you're apparently over the event that happened awhile ago, or at least it looks that way?"

Melanie's hand didn't slow, they didn't speed. Her left footed hip kicks did not vary. Everything stayed the same, all of the details were so practiced. Her shoulders lead, each drawing a reaction that triggered her next jab, each was set up to create space for the flashing kicks that had, though not so much as of late, seemed to baffle a slew of fighters. "I'm here to talk about the ring, so are you. If you want to talk about anything else, find me at a bar and buy me a drink. Other than that, I'll start answering questions." She didn't wear gloves, she never taped her hands. After stepping away from her trainer, she swept dark hair back and pulled stray strands into the loose pony tail. Bedecked with a slight sheen of sweat, she turned her attention to the men and women in the seats before her. Comfortable in her relative lack of dress, she seemed dominant, controlling and forceful even when clad in a bright pink sports bra and black compression shorts.

"So, Iron Fists. Dirty?" Another question was chimed out of the room's corner.

"Absolutely. I think it's great, Claire and I can reunite. They're a big market team with a high budget limit, so it made sense in that regard. I'm a big marker fighter with an expensive price tag, so that limited the pool. This is my job, I intend on treating it like any of you do. When you write something great, you want to get paid for it." When both hands fell on her hips, she shrugged and flashed the man a knowing, alluring smile. Such was life, it seemed to say.

"You didn't do very well last year, so what changes this year?"

Melanie's smile turned into sarcastic, amused laughter. "I do. I'm not the same fighter as I was then, not physically and surely not mentally. I made a lot of mistakes, I still make mistakes on a day to day basis. Last night I went one and three. That's a mistake. That's a mistake I can control and I will. Will I be perfect? No. Will I ever be perfect? Absolutely not. At the same time, I'm only going to get better and as of right now, while I'm not good enough for my own standards, I think I do alright."

"If you don't do well, you'll leave a bad taste in people's mouth as another failed year. Does the pressure get to you?"

"No, not it doesn't." So skilled a liar, Melanie spoke to a group of people who'd long since learned to decode the subtle expressions that a face makes when uncomfortable with words that masked honest emotion.

They picked up, all of them did, on the naked honesty she displayed to the world. So much of it was a show, but so much was the brutally honest, shocking clear reality. Such was the draw, the thing that kept people coming. All of Melanie was on her sleeve, it simply was written in a different language, one that so few understood. "How doesn't it?"

"Let me ask you a question, guy. When you ride a roller coaster and get sick, do you blame the ride or should you step back and blame yourself for riding it? Look man, I put this pressure on myself. I knew it when I decided I was going to craft this image, I knew it when I first stepped in these rings. I made a thought out choice to be a lightning rod for attention, and now that I am that, I've got to accept it and all that comes with it."

That was not, not at all, what these veteran writers had expected. Thrown for a loop, the entire room took a collective breath and simply stared. There it was again, the enigma, the confusing shift. "Oh?"

"Yes, and there's this, man. Pressure?" She threw her head back again, she let wild laughter flow through hedonistic, parted lips. "I come from a world where if I lost, I died. People died. Here?" She gestured about, still too amused. "I can lose here and get back in the ring ten minutes later, no worries. Sure, I'll lose some regulation fights, I'll lose some in Iron Fists. I'll lose some tournaments, I'll lose challenges. Hell, I got shut out last night. And I got back in the ring. That's what I do with the attention, man. That's my obligation. At the end of the day, no matter how hard I get beaten, no matter how much I have to take and shrug at, I'm going to get right back into the ring and keep on fighting. This is my war, this is my job. The fights. What's your war? I don't know. What's some random person's war who's going to watch this? I don't know, I can't relate. All I can be is myself, and that's a pretty terrible person at times, but I do know this."

With all the poise that life on a run way, life spent in bloody armor and life spent under so many various spotlights, she turned towards a camera that was sending a live feed back to the various sporting television networks that existed in Rhy'Din.

"If, on the off chance, someone, maybe just one person, sees that? Sees me get my ass beaten and then walk right back into the ring, maybe they'll think something like this. 'Oh, sure. Melanie's rich, she's famous. She's not me, I won't be her in that regard. But, you know what? That's her war and win or lose, she's fighting it. So maybe even though I'm depressed, I can fight mine for a little bit longer.' That's why I wanted the attention, guy. Just for that. If I'm going to be an example, throw *** at me. I'll fight it, I'll shrug. And maybe someone will get some inspiration."

Again, the silence. Deafening, the silence that came when a room was stunned, floored. After a sigh that rippled across the entire group, pencils and pens came back to life, eyes turned back to the enchanting force of will, charisma wrapped up in dangerous thorns, that so casually occupied, as always, center stage.

"Anything else, people?" Melanie's hand waved, it flipped around the room.

Again, silence. A pause.

"Then I've got to get back to work. Clearly, I still need to get better." Though she'd not said as much, she'd said precisely the opposite, the internal pressure was there. Perfection, a need to be flawless for her own sake, the shattered needs that filled a ruptured mind. Slowly, she same pattern began again, the measured steps towards a lofty goal.

It'd been a long walk towards this midnight, almost an ominous road that'd never lead to absolution. This was her perdition, a trajectory that'd never bent though it found new targets, more warped planets to touch with fingers coated in so much blood.

The entire building was dark, every light was out save one set of windows. The gym, her personal hell, battleground, sanctuary. Elysium, a broken hall for a broken heart. She wasn't training, there were no sounds of bags or pads slinking back under graceful ministrations best suited for a surgeon's table. No feet founded the ground, she wasn't running around the edge of the massive room with an endless set of steps. Rather, she sat perched atop a a turnbuckle, feet resting on the ropes beneath her. As if she was deep in thought, she cradled her chin between fingers, one elbow posted along a knee clad in yoga pants. The door opened, she didn't need to turn and look. So many secrets were her's to keep, so many latent reminders of what she'd never be able to escape. This was running, coming here was a retreat in so many ways. This town, this gym, this obsession. A black sheep, the prodigal son walked with steps she'd often seen walking from her bed. Those days were gone, however. Those nights had been burned away by the light of truth that is a rising sun shining through curtains, spilling honesty and refusing to hear the whispered lies spoken so softly.

"Sorry I quit, but you know...." His voice was the same, so painfully awkward.

"It's fine, it's better that way. Besides, things changed. I'm with someone, Alex." It was a rare gift, the shifts in Melanie's tones that showed earnest emotion. Far from the biting, scathing mockery that so often lingered behind the muted drawl, it also lacked the forced smiles that seemed always on the edge of a deep, dark cliff. They just sounded tired, woefully exhausted, fatigued. Slow, controlled. Each a puff of breath from a chest that was heavy, too heavy for her shoulders.

"I'm writing again, so I thought I'd find you here. Everyone else sort of thought you'd take a few days off, maybe go somewhere. I didn't think you would, I just didn't think you'd be here so late." As he circled her, he made a quick decision. This was natural for her, this place. A folding chair was taken, he dragged it up and slipped between the ropes. This was her world, her empire, her Macedonia should she be Alexander the Great. He was a guest, a stranger given rare insight to what so many couldn't ever understand. Not the fighting, nor the ring itself. Her. As he sat, he drew out a legal pad and a pen before putting his glasses back on. "Do you mind, Melanie?"

For the first time, she threw a glance in his direction. All of it, dead for the moment. Withered away, faded and scattered to the winds of war. From behind a frame of jet black hair, she shrugged. The walls had grown too heavy, the weight of her own conscience sunk her sanity like a ship thrown against so many jagged rocks, a lost vessel with no beacon of light on the horizon. "Don't ask me about my private life. If you're here for that then you can ******* leave now."

"Ah...okay, okay." The hand that held a pen rose and patted the air in a defensive way. "So, Melanie, one hundred, one year. You did it. Thoughts?"

"It's not enough." Her answer was a bolt of lightning that cut across the still air. It'd been quick, she spat the words she'd been thinking. It was almost as if, again, the man was too close, too able to see through the maze of her thoughts.

"Alright, we're done here." His own choice was a knee jerk reaction that sent the pad to the ground and the pen scurrying in random way as he dropped both. "What the hell do you mean by that?" He leaned forward, both hands on his knees, and studied the strange specimen before him.

"It means I've got a few hundred more to go. That's all." For once, she stopped speaking before flying into a rant that wasn't asked for, wasn't provoked.

"For ****'s sake, Melanie, can't you ever be happy with what you are and what you've done?" Flabbergasted. He'd expected some sort of happiness, blissful joy after stamping her name across an elite club's welcoming sign.

"Look, you wanted an answer, there it is. I'm less than twenty percent of the way along this road and, if we're being honest then this is just a reminder of that, a huge one." This time, when she looked up, she fixed her eyes upon the man, black things wide open. He was revolted, he was shocked into silence. He'd seen so much in them before. Hate, anger, love, passion, fervor. Vigilance, a baffling array of expressions that were as polished as a mirror, expressions that'd forced him to look back into his own mind and scramble for the code that'd render such a time bomb inert. He saw doubt, insecurity, concern and fear. They were not the eyes of a viper, not right now. They were eyes that'd died before she learned who she had to be, a child's eyes. A tired, frightened little girl's eyes.

"Are you going to be alright?" He wasn't afraid for himself. He'd touched the storm, he'd laid hands on the volcano at it's hottest points before, he'd burnt fingers on the gates of hell that kept her secrets so tightly locked away. He was afraid for her, terrified. Like a star that's too pretty, too radiant, she'd shone with a supernova's glow, one that was bound to explode. Held too tightly, the pressure would eventually build.

A woman called misery sat perched on her throne, the turn buckle. Despair, desolation, bone chilling. A tragic poem, he thought. His question had been posed to such a scion with tentative words. Who knew when she'd explode? Who knew when she'd lash out again, a vain attempt to force her pain onto the world at large. Her doubt. She heard him, she just didn't answer. All she offered was a slight lifting on her shoulder, a barely there shrug.

"Melanie, go somewhere. Don't stay here, why are you here? It's late as hell and you've got a reason to be at home." He was begging, the words like some odd sonnet, the prelude to the end.

If his were a sonnet, her's were the threnody, whispers of wind along sand turned black. "I often doubt that I'll be able to stay the course, Alex. In everything, you know? I always have, which is why I force myself back into these places. I think that, you know, if I punch enough walls then they'll break. I think that if I just run at something then I'll figure out a way to win. It's something, you know? It's better than not knowing what the hell I'm going to do." Again, it was the shrug that ended her words. So many of them were amused rolls of thin shoulders. These were defeated, they were gestures that spoke volumes.

He wasn't a stupid man, not by any stretch of the imagination. He saw past the issue of the night, the past week. She spoke hints, he could only guess, never understand. He knew that to assume was to flirt with the devil in her own playground, her heart and her mind. "Jesus..." His head shook, he wasn't going to ask. Not here, not now. She'd broken before, she'd done it in front of him. Through the cracks, he'd been able to glimpse a nightmare life, a twisted strand of fate's cruel workings. He and a few others, the only ones she'd parted the curtains for and revealed the torture chamber of her fragmented mind. "Melanie, life doesn't work like that."

"It has so far, hasn't it?" Like a rapier, the rebuttal was flashed across, defensive. Closed.

"No?" He was seeing the results now, the product of a hysterical machine, a factory that created such flawed, yet such incredible weapons. Break them first, teach them hate, self hate. Give them no outlet, drive them to insanity. Arm them, lie to them. Create an army of fanatics, forge men and women who hate their own lives so much that they beg and plead for a cause worthy of death, worthy of peace. Not proud, they were not conquerors. Not haughty, they were not ghosts on the wind. They were broken, the Sa'ha. Intentionally. His stomach churned, the room closed in around him. "That's suicidal, Melanie, it really is." Like birds fluttering away from a falling tree, his words were quiet, rustling.

"I know." It was a simple response, something to pure and so raw that he was struck by the weight that he knew no one else could share, the burden that was entirely her's to give. He knew, also, that she wouldn't let another touch it, she'd not let it rest. Not even for a moment. As she spoke, she dragged her phone out of a pocket and started to stand. The words were typed quickly behind eyes that became fogged with the residual moisture that so rarely dripped past. I need you, now. I'm coming home.

"And yet you still walk?" He stood as well, though he did not start for the door. To chase her, he knew, only ever ended in one thing.

"Of course, Alex. It's something, isn't it? Everyone's got a path, this will be mine, always has been. I didn't ask for it, but I got it. Is it right? No. Is it wrong, I don't even know the definition of those words. What matters, Alex, is this. It's here, it's the real. Bad, good, smart, stupid, it's mine and I've got to walk it. One day I won't, but one day I'll be dead." Portentous, unspeakable logic from introverted lips that screamed lies to hide the truth. As she left, another blot on a dark city skyline, he fanned fingers through his hair and stared after her.

"And yet you still walk it." Hours later, he found himself looking up at his apartment, staring at the easy life he had the nerve to complain about. Suddenly sick, he fled the car and retched on the street.

Away, Vo'de. They come, they look for you. Avoid confrontation where others may be hurt.

The words resounded and bounced along the crumbling walls that once locked such a perfected guardian from living the life she'd been destined for. Twisted prophecies, misunderstood signs written in blood. Bound to an age old oath signed with wet fingers coated in life's most precious offerings, her methods did not change.

Only her targets.

Heeding the darkness that stormed around her like fog wreathed about a high mountain top, Melanie fell through the canyons of her own mind and, knowing it mattered little where she went, chose a dark ally locked in the Dockside district. Some place where she'd be alone. Clad, as she had been more often than ever before, in the dark plates of her fabled armor, she found herself looking down on a small group, four men, armored like her. Heavy armor, impure beskar. None of them dripped the living Force, she smelled no tainted offerings cast onto a liar's altar and accepted by a hypocrite perched atop a jaded pulpit spewing biased vitriol in the form of self serving lies.

Work, Vo'de. Seek the balance.

Unchained and attached to what'd been stolen from her once before, Melanie drew upon a different side of the Force, a pure Revanite, a gift given to so very few. The fall was controlled and easy, she landed in a quick crouch with the black blade flashing in her hand. Her people, master killers of those who sought to battle with the aid of the Force, reacted with a typical response, a volley of small, well aimed rockets. She'd expected, almost relied, on just that. Knowing her armor would protect her from the shock, she held her ground and waited for the precise moment. Nanoseconds before the first explosion ripped cobblestone into deadly shards, she pounced forward, willing to use the over pressure from the shock waves to push her through the air. Time seemed to slow as a dancer's grace held her, a dark bolt of lighting, true to her course. Even before she landed, the blade spun and flew into a backhanded slash, easily cutting through the weakened beskar and leaving a man standing, confused as to why his head rested at his feet.

She hit the ground in a quick roll, fully in the midst of a patrol thrown into chaos and discord by the violence of action. As she came up from the roll, first one blaster bolt, then another, were deflected by the twisting, whirling dance that shone with such regal poise. Fully within the center of the pack, Melanie dipped into another roll that left her behind the last man, poor soul. As the black blade erupted from his chest, the more potent weapon flared to life. Her mind.

Two died by the blade, another was crushed under the hammer's blow of Melanie's pinpointed, controlled rage. It drove the man into the ground, shattered and left broken in a crater that'd resulted from the massive output of emotional outrage. Three.

Finally, Melanie felt the slam of a rocket pound into her chest short seconds before she was wreathed in flame, blanketed in an awful heat that reached into her very mind. A soothing presence, Revan's soft hands fell around her, his cloak draped her and absorbed the heat. He could, however, do nothing for the ragged breathing that resulted from a set of ribs that was, at the very least, cracked. Three dead, two stood, unwilling to retreat.

A foolish man fired another stream of blaster fire towards the dark lit scion of perfected justice. Her wits recovered, she tipped the blade into the path and, at the last second, flicked her wrist. The neck, the place where no armor could be placed. Dead by his own hand, the bolts he'd hoped to slide past her vigilant defense riddled his throat and punched two neat, small holes. Four.

Left alone, the final Mandalorian foot soldier scrambled for another rocket, only to glance up and see the slow arc of black energy that severed his head from his shoulders. Thrown lazily, Melanie extended her mind once more and drew the blade back, catching it safely as it turned in its trajectory and fell into her hand once more.

Her breathing was heavy, a result of the damage she'd taken, though her eyes were clear and her steps well under her control. Slowly, she calmed, she left the dangerous fourth stage of her mind and lowered herself, bit by bit, into the second layer. The composed layer. Instantly, she felt the raging headache, the voices that screamed in the now empty halls of her mind's cathedral built to war. An act of pure reaction, she throw both hands over her face, bloody and heated hands.

"I said I'd never kill anymore of them!" She couldn't take her eyes off of the broken bodies who were armor so much like her own, at least in looks. Impure, these were not the elite she'd expected. Not yet. Her scream echoed around the empty buildings around her.

They are no longer your people, Vo'de. You have not changed, the world around you has. Embrace this. Purify them.

"You'll never know! Ever!" Melanie's shout rebounded off the broken coliseum that this city had become. Too dark for the shining lights of incredible opulence, she flourished in the seedy, half glow of the rotten streets and crumbling walls. The underbelly, the forgotten and the lost. On hands and knees, she felt the spatter of warm rain run along her hair and drip down the soaked strands that framed her face. The water reminded her, warm and thick, of so much blood running across the planed expanse of armor she wanted nothing more than the tear off, throw down and walk away from.

"It's not my fight anymore, Revan! Can't I quit? Why the **** can everyone else quit, why can't I walk away?" As the days had passed by like seasons in a year, she'd grown used to the nature of her patron's, that dread scion, will. It no longer seemed a seething storm or a roiling waterfall. Though....

It did not feel like home. Tainted, alien. Foreign even to her.

"Calm, you are not Sith. Giving vent to your emotions will only be the end of what you can give these people.

A volcano always so close to shattering the walls that crowded her fragile mind, Melanie's reaction to the words was perfectly delirious. Shocked into motion, she rose from her inert posture, stately in regal armor, and met the faceless expanse of a mask that held all emotion locked behind beskar.

"Do you, by any chance, even know what I am? How can you? This is what I was saying before, Revan. You can't understand because you're already ****ing dead, yeah? You live within me, you live in my bubble. What, I ask, will you do when I'm dead? Find someone else?" The words grew in pitch, a fever tone that bordered on the ragged edges of relative insanity. Trapped within the honesty of a world she could not understand, those same walls seemed to grip at her mind, a constrictor's scaled tendrils that squeezed and pressed along the fingers that held tightly to a sheer cliff's edge. "Can i not be tired, Revan? Can I not be sick, can I not be hurt, can I not be worried? Can the problems of my own life not be important, prophet? Can I, some ****ing hero in the making, not be sore, can't I want to quit from time to time? Another of my friends if dying and, for ****'s sake, you ask me to just move on? You can't know! You're not a human, you don't have god damned emotions, you don't have a heart. Mine can't bleed?"

"Can't you see? The struggles of your life are personal, yet the struggles of the world are ubiquitous. You are a savior, Apsala. You carry them all, the secrets and the struggles. You will fight, this I know, until..."

"Until what?" Chest to chest with the shadowy form that bled such poignant, prophetic power, she stared up into the face that'd consumed worlds. "Until I die?" Her words were soft, akin to the pitter and patter of the sky's tears that draped the world in such a melancholy overture. "I'm not you, Revan. I don't come back. I'm stuck here, a candle's glow against the eternal night. I get lonely, I do, when all I hear is what I can do. It's never been about me, has it?" Through puddles and divots in the broken road, downcast steps splashed water as boots took her backwards and away. "No, don't answer. I'm tired of being lied to."