Being screamed at was never Ayli’s favorite thing in the world. Being screamed at by a slightly monstrous version of herself from less than a handspan away however was oddly calming.

“I know,” she said as the shackles on her wrists fell away.

“Um, who is this?” Monfi asked, still as securely fastened to the wall as he had been before the room became filled with the shattered remains of a half dozen HK droids.

“Me,” Ayli said. “This is me. I’m her, she’s me.”

Her other self bared the razor sharp, jagged teeth which Ayli couldn’t help but admire after seeing them tear off a droid’s head.

“She doesn’t seem to be terribly fond of you,” Mondi said, sounding as deeply confused as Ayli had ever heard him.

Ayli raised her hand, palm open and facing towards the Dark Side double she’d met in Shadowed Cave. The doppelganger raised a matching hand bent into a claw by barely contained rage.

“I’m sorry I can’t be you,” Ayli said. “I can get us out of here though.”

The doppelganger screamed again, and tore at the air between their hands, but without touching Ayli.

“Yeah, I get it, believe me, you’re not wrong. Destroying the danger we’re in, it would feel so good, and so right. And the fear? It’s warning us about so many things we need to be careful of.” Ayli looked into eyes which would forever be the blood red of rage and yellow of terror. A breath in, and a breath out. The peace she could find at home eluded her, but she was able to find her center.

It was a tumult, but she’d expected that. She might be able to play a good game with an enemy like Overwhelming, but with herself she had to be honest. The vast extent to which she wasn’t was something Kelda, Ravas, and Nix had helped her learn.

Far from being destroyed by confronting that truth though, Ayli had found strength there. Strength which didn’t fail her when her fears rose against like they always did.

Her Dark Side knew that too and broke their gaze first.

“You can rest now,” Ayli said, but the doppelganger shook her head, unable to speak or meet Ayli’s eyes.

Ayli wanted to reach out to the warped version of herself and say that everything was going to be okay.

But she didn’t know that it was.

And her anger and fear weren’t ready to sleep just yet.

Not when they were needed.

Not when existing as a separate embodiment was oh so easy in the Dark Side nexus of the ship.

Spinning on her heels, Ayli’s Dark Side took three steps to stalk out of the room, vanishing before she took a fourth.

She hadn’t disappeared though. From out in the hallway, Ayli could hear metal tearing and more screaming. Her Dark Side was very much not ready to cease its rampage.

“That’s not something you see every cycle,” Bopo said, seeming content to stay right where she was in her cell.

“No, it’s not,” Ayli said. “This place is unique though.”

“I’ve never heard of a Dark Side nexus working with a Jedi,” Monfi said.

“Not a Jedi.” Ayli freed her legs and moved over to Monfi to unbind his shackles as well.

“You’re not a Sith either though,” Monfi said.

“Nope. I don’t think a Sith’s Dark Side would be separate enough from them to do what…,” she gestured to the hallway where the sounds of destruction were growing more distant, “whatever she’s doing.”

“You don’t know?” Bopo asked.

“Not a clue.” Ayli unlocked the controls Bopo’s prison cell but couldn’t find the switch to drop the forcefield. “Or, well, one clue; she’s going to destroy Overwhelming. And this ship.”

“You can see her? Or sense her here?” Monfi asked.

“No, I just know what I want to do and I don’t think ‘restraint’ is a notable trait of the Dark Side.”

“If she destroys this ship, won’t that present a few issues for us?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, we’ll definitely die if we’re still onboard when she gets through with this place,” Ayli said. “Which is why we need to leave.”

“The droid, Overwhelming, it can still hear us can’t it?” Bopo asked.

“I’m sure it can,” Ayli said. “It’s got control of the ship’s systems. In fact, I’m pretty sure it could kill us at any point it wanted to. I mean, I don’t breath vacuum very well, how about you? It’d take a half second or so to open airlocks and maybe a minute for the air to all get sucked out?”

“But it needs us alive,” Monfi said, understanding the point Ayli was making.

“Exactly. If it spaces us, I suspect Paralus will arrange for an even worse punishment for failure than my Dark Side is planning on inflicting on Overwhelming.”

Monfi saw the trouble Ayli was having with the door mechanism and came over to inspect it as well, gesturing the question to Ayli of whether she wanted his help or not.

“That works out well for it and for us though,” Ayli said. “It’s smart, and it’s capable of thinking long term. It can easily allow us to get to an escape shuttle that it’s put tracking beacons in. We could search for those and disable them, but we’re under a time crunch too and, realistically, there’s no chance we would find all of the trackers Overwhelming could hide on something the size of a shuttle.”

“Couldn’t it just kill your Dark Side before she did too much damage though?” Bopo asked.

“No,” Monfi answered. “You saw what she did to those HK droids. Ayli’s other self is working with the power of a full Sith Lord here. Also, she’s a projection of the Dark Side. Stabbing her, blasting her, even blowing up the whole ship won’t matter. If something could cleanse this ship and restore balance to the Force here, that would disrupt her ability to manifest but that doesn’t seem like something a droid would be capable of.”

He worked a bit of no-Force related magic and the door to Bopo’s cell powered down.

“So where’s the nearest escape shuttle?” Bopo asked.

“This direction,” Ayli said, leading them out into the hall and in the opposite direction as her doppelganger had headed.

“How do you know that? I thought the Force didn’t work for you here?” Bopo asked.

“The Force works everywhere, even inside a Dark Side nexus,” Ayli said. “In this particular case though, I’m just familiar with Assassin-class corvettes.”

“Do I want to know why?” Bopo asked.

“Well, the Rebellion won, so all those things probably aren’t crimes anymore, but no, you don’t want to know.” Ayli watched the hallways they passed by. 

She knew her reasoning was sound, and she knew Overwhelming had heard her and agreed at least to the point of not spacing them all the moment they escaped the prison room. That didn’t mean she could afford to blithely ignore any warning signs they came across. She hadn’t mentioned that in addition to tracking beacons, Overwhelming could inflict serious but not fatal wounds on all of them, constraining them to land the shuttle somewhere far more convenient to be captured again. If a holding a city hostage had worked after all, holding a hospital was just as likely to.

That thought, and many others like it kept Ayli on high alert as they stalked to the shuttle bay where Ayli hoped they would find a ship.

When they arrived and a ship was in fact waiting for them, she almost turned them around though.

“What’s wrong?” Monfi asked, reading her change in mood from body language rather than the Force.

“This is a trap,” Ayli said.

“The Force is saying that because this is a Dark Side Nexus.” Monfi took a step into the room, before Ayli caught his arm.

“I’m not listening to the Force,” Ayli said. “You’re right that the Dark Side won’t show us a true picture of what’s happening, but this is still a trap.”

“We knew that coming here didn’t we?” Bopo said. “If the droid knows everything we’re doing, then it knows we’re doing this and it’ll have its own plans in place. That was the deal you talked out with it.”

“It was,” Ayli said. “But it’s a machine intelligence that serves a Force Lich. Betrayal and backstabbing are the electricity they run on. It should have attacked us by now.”

“And you want to wait around until it does?” Bopo asked.

“We can’t do that,” Monfi said. “We’re running out of time as it is.”

An explosion shook the ship, followed by a stronger one, and then one which knocked out the lights leaving the only illumination the landing lights in the shuttle bay.

“And now we’re out of time,” Monfi said. “It’s this or we find some other means of surviving the destruction of this ship.”

“No. It’s gotta be this. It’s just that this is a mistake,” Ayli said.

“And why might that be?” Paralus Stahl asked, stepping out of the shadows from beside them.

Ayli reached for her lightsaber but that was the first thing the droid had taken from her.

“We’re not coming to you,” Ayli said, moving to step in front of Bopo.

“I assure you that you are,” Paralus said, smug certainty dripping from every word. “You’re current resistance cannot change your destiny. You will return. No matter how hard you fight against it and how little you desire to succumb to your fate.”

“You’re going to a lot of effort for someone who thinks we’re going to do what you want regardless,” Ayli said.

“Destroying you is no effort at all,” Paralus said.

“You’re about to lose a whole ship over it,” Ayli said. “The cost is just going to keep rising the longer you pursue us.”

“The ship is no concern,” Paralus said. “It will survive or it will become a ghost, luring the unwary to their doom. Nothing you do will improve anyone’s situation, least of all your own.”

“You should probably start celebrating then,” Ayli said. “If you’ve won already, if our fates are decided, might as well throw yourself a party.”

“Your destruction awaits in the future and it will be in the moment when you finally accept that, when despair claims you at last, that is when my celebration shall begin,” Paralus said. “But where are my manners. You have a guest with you. A guest for whom I have no need.”

Ayli felt the killing lightning starting to gather in Paralus’s fingertips and moved to block the bolts that would take Bopo’s life.

But an interruption occurred.

Before Paralus could strike, a red lightsaber blade stabbed clean through his torso. His form turned to smoke as he fell and reformed with a blade of his own, facing off against Ayli’s Dark Side.

“Now we leave,” Monfi said, dashing towards the ship.

A hail of automated blaster fire opened up on him, but he sailed like the wind past them as the Dark Side’s influence was concentrated on the battle between Paralus and Ayli’s Dark Side.

“I can’t move like that,” Bopo said, the distance to the shuttle an impossible gap for anyone without Force powers to cover.

“You won’t have to,” Ayli said and took hold of her friend’s hand. “Just walk with me.”

Bopo looked at her, uncertainty writ large over her features until she managed to make peace with the death that awaited her.

Ayli didn’t lead Bopo to her death though. Step by slow step, they advanced towards the shuttle which Monfi was prepping for launch.

Around them, electronics and machinery exploded as a tornado of power tore through them. Halfway to the ship, Ayli stumbled but rose with fresh determination before Bopo could help her out. 

By the time they reached the ship, the hangar looked worse than if a bomb had hit it.

But not one shot had landed on either of them. 

“We made it!” Bopo cheered as Ayli pushed her up the ramp to the ship.

“Yes,” Ayli said. “You did. And now you’re going to get to safety.”

“What? No. You’re not staying. Why would you?”

“Tell Nix she knows where she’ll find me,” Ayli said. “Tell her what my eyes looked like too.”

Without waiting for Bopo’s protest, Ayli Force pushed her friend into the shuttle, slammed the entry hatch shut.

As the Force tornado cast the shuttle out into the void, Ayli turned to face the thing that had weathered the worst her Dark Side could throw at it, the deal she knew he would accept waiting on her lips.