Due to the tightened security ever since the decimation of Corellia, senators were asking for Jedi bodyguards more often. Chancellor Kanai made sure that the most active advocators were specially protected because they were bigger targets than senators of the minor systems. After about a week or so, at least four Jedi Masters were off on assignment on any given day, not to mention a lot of the Knights were as well. The Temple began sounding a bit quieter as time went on.

Since Jinx still didn't have a new master assigned to him, he had been bouncing around and training with Knights and Masters who weren't busy. Caleb and O-Mer tried to join him whenever they could, but their masters were on the Council and were kept quite busy themselves. On one particular day, neither of them were at the Temple, but Anakin was. Master Windu asked Anakin to work with him on his saber strokes for an hour or so, which was how they wound up spontaneously training together.

It wasn't so bad, honestly. Both Jinx and O-Mer were behind on their lightsaber training since they had been missing until they were sixteen. They had only had about two years of saber instruction, and while they had made a lot of progress they still were behind. Anakin was one of the better duelers in the Order, from having been roped into a lot of saber fights on missions, so Jinx's exposure to his training was definitely a good thing.

Without having any idea of how Adi Gallia had trained him, Anakin just started with the basics. It was clear he had been studying them hard, but the movements looked unnatural and awkward. Jinx didn't have the advantage of years of muscle memory to work off of, like Anakin was used to utilizing, so he was a bit stuck on how to help him.

After ten minutes of struggling with the standard sequences, Anakin called for a stop. "Have you ever tried fighting blindfolded?" he asked, and the Twi-lek's face blanked for a second.

"...no, was I supposed to?"

Anakin shook his head, a little amused but trying to be patient. "Not really. Here, tie this around your head. Let's just spar for a moment. No lightsabers, no weapons." If he couldn't train Jinx with his lightsaber, he'd train him without it. Start where Jinx was comfortable, and trick him into being comfortable where he wasn't.

The first minute was a little rocky. Jinx didn't have a problem seeing Anakin with the Force, but he kept trying to use the movements he had been taught. "Forget your form for now," Anakin instructed, pacing around him. "Just fight me with whatever looks like it might work."

Slowly, the change came. His movements became wild and unorthodox, definitely not according to the book, but the most important thing was that it looked natural. Anakin was familiar with unorthodox, so he started picking it apart. After a while, he started to recognize some patterns.

His natural technique was like a whip: Jinx would wait from a fair distance, then move in and make one or two calculated moves before retreating again. They would be good moves, unique but good, but he never capitalized on them. He was like a sniper, waiting until he knew he could hit something.

So Anakin didn't let him. When Jinx would strike, Anakin would fend it off, but he would follow his retreat away, forcing him to move. If he took too long to make another move or get out of the way, he would pay for it by risking getting hit. "You're making good decisions, too slow," Anakin told him, rather bluntly but effectively. "Shorten your thinking process, and act before I do. I'm not going to let you watch like a predator anymore."

Jinx started getting cut off as he was thinking. He'd be looking for some kind of weak spot, a place to aim for, but Anakin would start jumping at him before he could think the attack all the way through. None of his strikes were as neat or foolproof as he preferred, and he kept feeling rushed. After a few rounds, Anakin called for a break, and Jinx slipped the blindfold off.

"I've seen you train before," Anakin told him, "and you never used to be this hesitant. Your natural instincts have changed a lot since a few weeks ago."

"A few weeks ago, I didn't have a reason to be this hesitant," Jinx mumbled back, not making eye contact.

Despite how downtrodden Jinx was, Anakin felt himself smiling. Dueling may have been once of his strengths, but recently, loss was his area of mastery. He could train Jinx all he wanted, but this might be the one practice that Anakin could actually teach.

Every physical loss came with some kind of mental or emotional companion. In losing his master, Jinx seemed to have lost his confidence. Probably more, but that was what Anakin saw right now. "Neither does anybody else. No one is going to wait for you to make sure your decision is safe, and the longer you take to think the longer you opponent has too. There's a balance between making the right decision and making a quick decision. In the past, I've fallen on the quick side."

"I can't risk it," Jinx admitted, still not looking at Anakin. "Can't risk being wrong."

"Then you better get pretty fast at being right," he decided, quietly pulling his lightsaber from his belt. "And quickly." Without warning, he activated his lightsaber and swung it at Jinx. He barely pulled his own out and blocked the strike, startled by the sudden change in practice.

"What is right, now?" He asked. "Just in this moment, what is right?"

"...not getting sliced in half?" Jinx guessed, and Anakin smirked at his dry humor.

Pulling his saber away, Anakin spun it once and gestured out. "Then don't let me slice you in half."

So he didn't. For the next fifteen minutes, Anakin would walk around Jinx, swinging at him randomly. If Jinx didn't parry the strike in time, they would do it over again in that same spot until he did. Secretly, Anakin focused on the seven basic parries used in the usual training sequences. He didn't tell Jinx, but kept picking them whenever he was in front of Jinx.

Then Anakin started doing two at a time. Occasionally three. His reflexes became more calm, more routine. It wasn't quite solving his confidence issue yet, since this was only defense, but he needed to get in the mindset of trusting himself again. That confidence had to start from somewhere. Defense was that somewhere. Jinx's thinking was picking up speed.

He kept going. Anakin threw in some complicated looking maneuvers into his strikes, but he still kept hitting in the same spaces. Jinx picked up on this quickly, and instead of panicking he just reverted back to what he had been doing earlier. He was now deflecting four or five strikes at a time, but it finally was looking a little less like the chicken dance and more like dueling.

When Anakin circled back around in front of the Padawan, he went for the full sequence. It wasn't perfect, nor was it by the book, but it worked. Jinx deflected all seven strikes in order. Anakin smiled, a little proud that he had found Jinx's flow. He didn't get it at first. "What?"

Anakin did the same stroke again, but slowly. "One," he showed, and counted off the rest as well. "Two, three, four, five, six, seven."

Then it clicked. Anakin had tricked Jinx into learning his basic deflecting sequence.

"Let's try the usual method one more time," he suggested, and Jinx brought his lightsaber up, almost not believing that he had done it. Anakin counted off the strokes like the Jedi Masters preferred that he did, but instead of awkwardly trying to mimic the standard deflection positions like he had at the beginning of the lesson, he used his original pattern, the one he had accidentally created. Anakin corrected a little bit of his technique, small things like his grip and angles, and then sped it up.

By the time Master Windu walked in, unannounced, Jinx was deflecting the strikes at nearly regular speed. Windu raised an eyebrow as Anakin put away his saber, and Jinx deactivated his. "I see some progress has been made."

"A little," Anakin reported, looking down at the Twi'lek. "Not bad for an hour."

"Actually, I'm afraid I'm cutting you a bit short," Windu admitted, "but we just received word from the Senate. Senator Amidala needs a bodyguard for the next few days, and you happen to fit the bill for what she needs. I can finish the lesson with Padawan Majal."

Anakin walked towards the exit, taking that as his cue to leave. He looked back at Jinx, nodded once in praise. He would learn, eventually. It would take a lot of discipline, but Anakin had done what he could: set him in the right direction.

Windu looked at Jinx once Anakin left. "An eventful lesson, I take it?"

"Yes," he answered quietly, "but I think I needed it."

~

There were a lot of Jedi speeders parked at the Senate building when Anakin got there. With so many Jedi deployed, their resources were dispersed everywhere. As he ascended to the launch platform, he wondered if it was a good idea to spread themselves so thin. It wasn't his call to make, but it was worth thinking about.

Padmé's decoy was waiting for him outside of the Nabooian ship. She didn't bother with small talk, which raised Anakin's suspicions. Padmé made conversation often enough, her decoys was usually diligent about doing the same no matter who it was at the moment standing in her place.

The ship took off as soon as Anakin stepped on board, too. What were they in such a rush for? As soon as the ramp closed, Anakin asked tentatively, "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, for now, but we need to move quickly," the fake senator responded. "We need to pick up one more guest, and you need to be on Naboo as soon as possible."

Anakin was getting the feeling that this assignment was actually a cover for something else. He wasn't surprised, but he hadn't been expecting to pay Padmé a visit and they usually tried to plan ahead for these types of things. And who were they picking up?

He almost felt stupid for wondering. It was Ahsoka, obviously, there was no one else who officially knew about him and Padmé. Not to mention, she knew about the child-

Was this it? Anakin suddenly felt a little sick to his stomach. He had been keeping track of the passing days, and they still had about four weeks before the due date. There must have been some sort of problem with Padmé...unless, the child was early? Was that possible?

He was sitting down when the hatch to the ship opened and Ahsoka jumped on board. Literally. The Nabooian pilot had simply pulled over to the side of traffic at a prearranged spot and opened the door so Ahsoka could jump from the surface onto the ship. When she saw Anakin's face, she knew something was up.

Padmé's decoy walked in before she could ask about it. "I'm very sorry for this sudden change of events, but Senator Amidala has gone into labor prematurely. She started having contractions about an hour and a half ago."

Ahsoka could feel Anakin's panic increase as the words were coming out of her mouth. He went from a 3 to a 9 very quickly, and she was pretty sure she could hear his heartbeat speed up. The decoy didn't say anything else, probably for security's sake, and left to go change out of her senatorial outfit. Anakin, on the other hand, stood up and walked straight to the back of the ship, towards the engine. "Anakin!" Ahsoka called, following him, but he didn't stop.