#i've placed it in monument plaza near the galactic museum

[dapurinthos]

me: i am going to make problems for maul on purpose by attempting to speed-run his emancipation from sidious post-yinchorri invasion of the jedi temple but pre-naboo.

My eyes flick up, and then back down. “Sorry,” I say automatically, course-correcting to a path where I won’t bump into anyone else on the way to the ‘fresher. “I didn’t see you there.” I go to step around him and freeze, my brain catching up to what I actually saw in that millisecond. The man in the hallway wears black, enough to be shrouded like a corpse in it. His hands are encased in black gloves, and the hood sits on his head in a way that reveals the hidden vestigial horns beneath. Black tattoos paint his face in sharp shapes and lines, following the natural variations in his skin pigmentation. Zabrak, a voice in my mind says helpfully. Dathomiri Zabrak. A very specific Dathomiri Zabrak. My breath freezes in my throat as I look up and up and up. It’s not that Currently-Still-Darth Maul is especially tall—he’s about the same height as Kenobi—but he has a tall presence. A tall, dark presence. The air practically roils around him, seething with the heat and edge of his hate. The thickness of it should have been palpable from kilometres off. Why no one else has sensed it, I don’t know. I glance back over my shoulder at the main part of House of Leaves but I can’t feel anyone coming to investigate what could be causing this sudden surge of darkness. Maul stares down at me with a suppressed rage that puts the hair on the back of my neck up, eyes more golden than the sickly yellow of the Sith. There are red rings around his irises bleeding into the yellow and the white sclerae. For one of the very few of times in my life, I manage to hold eye contact, mesmerized by how his eyes glow beneath his hood. Even though the glow panels buzz and whine overhead with their cold and sharp light, everything is shadows. “Oh, motherkriffer,” I squeak, after I remember to breathe. This is how I’m going to die: Darth Maul, in the Monument Plaza boba tea shop, probably using some sort of twisted Sith weaponry that will make my death look like an accident so it doesn’t call down the attention a lightsaber wound would. Can’t have shit on Coruscant.