"Good," the girl snarls, and there is something wrong with her voice, a strange undertone, like someone else is speaking in tandem with her. "Then hold still."

She lunges again - and this time, his vigilance is rewarded with a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision, another combatant entering the fray. This one is a few years older than Anya, and not one of the girls he'd had a hand in training. She's wielding a shock baton, and it crackles as it arcs through the air in a clear bid to make him choose between risking a hit or leaving himself open to Anya's knife. For a less-skilled combatant, there wouldn't be much room to maneuver to avoid both.