Here is the penultimate chapter of act two. It's going to be an eventful one, so...strap yourselves in.

Secrets of The Outer Rim.

Act II.

The Heart of Darkness.

Chapter XXIV.

Fate of The Jedi.


The clones were the first to react, raising their blasters at Schweva and I. The Chiss reacted next, reaching for her weapons, ready to activate them at a moment's notice, but, as for Thonna and I, we simply stared at each other. My purple eyes appearing within the shadow of my hood, and Thonna looking through the opaque, black visor of the Third Sister. Of course Palpatine dispatched Inquisitors here, he knew that Taaszon had Force users in abundance, he knew because Ullara and I provided a meticulous report to the Jedi Council and to the Chancellor, and of course Thonna had to be the Inquisitor I encountered. The Third Sister, the woman who I had just barely stopped a fight with on Loukhamii, sacrificing my lightsaber and my Padawan braid in the process, was standing here right in front of me. Neither of us wanted to fight, but both of us knew that we had to fight. We had no other choice. Thonna was reduced to a pawn of the Empire, forced to do their bidding by fear and by torture, and that meant she was going to try and kill me, and that meant that I had to defend myself.

"What are your orders, commander?" the familiar voice of a clone trooper finally rang out, asking the Third Sister for their orders. I watched as the Twi'lek, dressed head to toe in black armor, finally snapped out of it. I knew that this was going to happen, and that it was naive to hope that this would go any other way, but it still hurt to feel that sinking realization in my stomach that I was going to have to fight my best friend. I watched as she grabbed her double-bladed ring lightsaber off her hip and I reciprocated, pulling my new lightsaber into my hand with the Force, trying to ignore how drained and exhausted I felt. I probably should have noticed the concerned glance Schweva threw my way, but I was entirely focused on Thonna Ai'sunn and the fact that I was going to need to battle the Inquisitor yet again. Our third encounter since Order 66, and our second battle.

"Take care of the blue-skinned one. The red-skinned one is mine." the Third Sister ordered. I noticed the fact that, even now, Thonna protected my identify, feigning ignorance. That was a small consolation, the fact that she was still trying to protect me from the wrath of the Empire, but lacking the will, the determination, to do anything but fight me. Thonna didn't want to see me die, I don't even think she wanted to see me get hurt, but she didn't see any other option, and she thought that the best thing she could do is making sure that she hurts me, not anyone else. I wasn't sure how much that logic really worked, but I also haven't been through what Thonna has been through, I haven't seen what the Empire did to her, and I haven't been in an environment where everyone around me wanted to kill me at the slightest provocation, the slightest disobedience, or especially the slightest hint of disloyalty.

I've been in battlefields, yes, but that's different. Thonna is surrounded by death and walls and lies wherever she goes, whatever she's doing, and whoever she's with. She can't talk to anyone, can't trust anyone, and she definitely can't depend on anyone. The other Inquisitors wouldn't hesitate to kill her to get ahead, leaving her with two options: kill or be killed. I know that Thonna has committed atrocities for the Empire, I know that she has had to track down Jedi survivors and kill anyone who got in her way, and I fear she may have actually gotten to some of those survivors already and had to kill them. I know all of this has happened, but I also know that it's not her fault. Thonna doesn't want to die and, under the oppression of the Empire, she has no choice but to kill others so that she can survive. That's why I want to rescue her from this - I want to find a way where nobody has to die.

"No." Schweva declared. I finally turned to see the Chiss raise her hand and electrocute two of the clone troopers were her bluish Force Lightning and taking out the other pair with a few swings of her blue and black lightwhip. Clones dispatched, Schweva spoke to Thonna "You're not going to split us up, you're not going to divide and conquer. If you're going to fight us, it's going to be two on one."

"Don't do this Thonna, you're outnumbered and I don't want you to get hurt. We don't need to fight." I replied, trying to reason with her, hoping that the Twi'lek woman would see that the situation wasn't favoring her any longer. I was also grateful for Schweva, once again, because the Chiss woman was aware of my current condition and she made sure that I wasn't going to be in this alone, dispatching the clones with ease and making sure I won't have to defend myself alone in my present state. I also hoped that this would make this encounter go by more quickly because, fundamentally, Schweva and I still needed to get to Phanza. Phanza and Vader were fighting, and that was the real concern here, not Thonna, and none of these clones either. Our master was in danger and we needed to get to her, I didn't want Thonna to be an obstacle in that, and I didn't want to fight her to begin with, so I really, really hoped she would back down here. Of course, I also knew that wasn't going to happen...Inquisitors don't back down in the Empire, Palpatine doesn't give them that option. Not without severe consequences anyway.

"You know that's not true Zaliza. Palpatine is here, he's on the command ship, and he's demanding the head of every Sith on this planet. You know that I can't disobey him, not here, not now." Thonna replied, revealing just how bad the situation was. Palpatine was here in orbit, likely watching everything from the bridge of a star destroyer in orbit, watching the carnage unfold below. That was the only thing that Thonna was able to choke out in her poor emotional state - she didn't want to do this, she just felt that she had to - before disappearing into silence as she ignited her lightsaber, two red blades coming to life as she lunged at me. I was able to activate my purple and black lightsaber in time and catch her upper blade while, at the same time, Schweva swung her lightwhip and the coil of light wrapped around her lower blade, the blue and black whip halting the Third Sister's weapon.

The Third Sister pulled her lightsaber up and back - unbalancing me - before kicking me in the stomach, sending me to the ground. I watched as Thonna brought her foot down and activated her ring lightsaber, spinning it and thus freeing it from Schweva's lightwhip. The Chiss woman deactivated her weapon before the blue and black whip could go flying off chaotically. The Third Sister was a good fighter, and I'm sure that Palpatine and Vader had the Inquisitors training relentlessly to prepare for this invasion, and that was showing. Meanwhile, I was tired from holding off the clones and overusing the Force, while Schweva probably wasn't much better off, having being swinging her whip an awful lot and having used quite a bit of lightning herself. We may have outnumbered her, but neither of us were in peak shape for a fight right now, and that was compounded by the fact that I've never wanted to hurt Thonna. I didn't seem to have much of a choice as the ring ceased spinning and a red blade was aimed straight at me. I scrambled to my knees to catch her blade, locking weapons as she tried to bear down on me, while I tried to rise from the floor and throw her back, already at a disadvantage due to my position.

I looked at her faceless mask, a black plate, a long, triangular visor, and a smooth headdress that gave way to the cascading flexible armor plate which covered her Lekku, all of it illuminated by the hellish red glow of her weapon. It was a sickening view, the way her outfit made it clear that she was a Twi'lek, yet still covered every inch of her, robbing her of any humanity, any empathy, any identity beyond that of a faceless servant of the Empire. Her outfit was perhaps unique, among Inquisitors, but it still robbed her of a face, letting her be no more than a particular variation of the Inquisitor mask. The dehumanization was so extensive that Thonna wasn't even allowed to have a name in Palpatine's new order, now, she was known simply as the Third Sister. A number, just like the clones, a mere designation rather than a real personality. That was what Palpatine and Vader ultimately wanted to reduce her to, an obedient and featureless servant, useful, but always disposable - they wouldn't even have to remember her name when they brought in a new Third Sister or Third Brother to replace her - and the worst part of it all was that it was working. Thonna Ai'sunn and Zaliza Vyvan were friends in the Jedi Order, sitting together in the Jedi Temple cafeteria and even going on an extended mission together, yet, here we were, locking blades, trying to push deadly plasma into each other because Thonna's hope has been ripped away from her.

Schweva rejoined the fight, swinging her lightwhip at Thonna in an attack that would have cut straight through her back, would have if Thonna hadn't countered it with relative ease. We had been blade locked when the Third Sister suddenly disengaged, leaping backwards and giving me the chance to get to my feet, meanwhile, Thonna twisted around and repelled Schweva with another spinning motion from her lightsaber. Schweva's attack had failed, however, it had also given me an opening. Rushing towards her on tired feet, I stabbed at Thonna's side, forcing the Third Sister to take evasive action and roll out of the way. Schwevaa'aphere'enda, meanwhile, switched to her regular lightsaber, realizing that the lightwhip wasn't doing much good in this context. Thus, we were finally exploiting the advantage of our numbers, both of us trying to keep the pressure up and attack the Third Sister from both sides. Thonna was a skilled woman though, and she was able to resist with considerable fury, rapidly twisting herself around and contorting herself to block a strike from me and then one from Schweva, and so on and so forth. I could tell what she was doing, slowly but surely, she was trying to move to her left, trying to get out of our trap and having us both on one side of her, but Schweva and I weren't letting her do that, following her movements and preventing her from gaining better positioning. We would tire her out if need be, she can't last much longer than this.

Well, she may have worked in diplomacy to the Hutts, but the Padawan turned Inquisitor had become an expert fighter, so, seeing that we were following her to her left, Thonna feigned left again, watching us preemptively step to cut her off, then leaped to the right, escaping our encirclement on the other side. Perhaps knowing that the mere action would be enough to throw me off, or simply seeing something she could throw at me, I watched as Thonna grabbed a dead clone off the floor with the Force, then throwing his limp body at me. I couldn't even react to the dead weight at it hit me and knocked me over, I was too stunned by the fact that I was now laying on the ground with the dead mask of a clone right in front of me, filling my eyes with the image of my former comrades. The masks I fought with may have usually had some purple graffiti on them, some attempt at individuality, but it was still the same helmet, the one that every fresh clone wore as they joined the 1204th to fight under Master Avdune and I. Now that mask was lying on top of me dead, killed by my new ally and thrown at me by my old best friend. All the pain came rushing back, all the loss, and, combined with my present exhaustion, I lied there, petrified, while Schweva and Thonna continued their battle across the room. I was far too preoccupied with my current demons, with the knowledge of Order 66 and all the Jedi that were betrayed and killed looking me right in the eyes.

Schweva was bouncing her normal lightsaber between the Third Sister's twin blades, trying to hold back her onslaught, but there was only so much that she could do. As a Sorceress, her main weapon was the Force, and, even when amplifying her training with the Marauder discipline, she chosen to make her primary melee weapon a lightwhip, and these two facts combined to make Schweva a rather circumstantial fighter. Schweva did have a sense of practicality, having the simple, single-bladed lightsaber to fall back on, and that was all well and good, but the Inquisitors used these ring lightsabers as their weapons, almost exclusively so. Schweva was down to her tertiary weapon while Thonna is using the one that the Empire has relentlessly trained her with since Order 66. This was no longer tiring out Thonna and forcing her to give up, now Thonna was pushing Schweva back with a relentless onslaught.

There was another thing that I didn't want to admit to myself as well. Thonna knows me, we were best friends after all, so she has a reason to hold back, even in spite of her Imperial conditioning, she is still capable of showing empathy to me. Thonna, despite some of the ferocity shown while fighting me here and on Loukhamii, doesn't actually want to kill me. She doesn't have the same connection to the Chiss apprentice. I can't help but think that the Third Sister could kill Schweva if given the chance, not having a strong enough connection to her to resist the mission the Empire has given her. I need to get back involved in the fight, I need to find a way where Schweva, Thonna, and I can all walk away from this alive, and then I need to make sure Phanza survives this as well. I looked at that visor, a clean and sterile version of the clone trooper helmet, and I knew that this wasn't the same helmet I thought with, not really. The personality of the clones, the loyalty, anything that made them an individual, was wiped out with Order 66 and whatever that phrase from Palpatine did to them.

I don't know if it was brain implants, use of the Force on a massive scale, or brainwashing and conditioning on Kamino, but Palpatine had a way of taking control of these clones and changing them, changing my friends into vicious killing machines. No matter how much empathy I tried to show them, no matter how much these clones reminded me of my former allies, those clones were never coming back. The face and the armor may be the same, but what these clones are now is not the same, these are not my comrades, and I am not going to pretend they are anymore. I pushed the body of the clone off me, freeing me from the ground, and I reactivated my lightsaber, ready to return to the fight. I still didn't want to put the galaxy through a war and I doubt that all my difficulties with killing will go away this easily, if at all, but I wasn't going to let myself get petrified by this, not now, not while I'm needed.

I rejoined the fight, attacking Thonna from behind, and forcing her into an uncomfortable defense yet again, getting attacked from both sides and having to turn around before she could spot any weaknesses or openings. Schweva seemed to appreciate my return as well, because it took the pressure off of her, and allowed us to begin concentrating it at Thonna again, closing in on the Inquisitor and constricting her movements more and more. Schweva caught her double-bladed lightsaber in a blade lock, I saw an opportunity, raising my lightsaber to strike, but Thonna caught my grip with the Force, now straining herself to hold us off on two fronts. We finally forced the Third Sister into an unsustainable situation, and she knew that too. Thonna deactivated her lightsaber and dropped into a crouch, unbalancing us, then, raising the ring above her, she reactivated it and spun it in a circle, forcing Schweva and I backwards, recoiling from the deadly spinning plasma. I groaned, once again, we had her right where I wanted her, and she got out of our trap.

The Third Sister glanced back and forth at us really quickly, before ultimately deciding to attack me, seeing I was more tired, more vulnerable. I knew that I was weak, she knew that I was weak, and, honestly, Schweva wasn't doing that much better at this point...I probably should have gotten off the ground moments earlier, really I shouldn't have been on the ground to begin with. I was scared and my emotions were complex, but the same could be said about Thonna Ai'sunn, and I knew how I could get the Twi'lek to stop all of this. At least, I think I knew how to end this, I hoped that I was right, because, if I was wrong...this wasn't going to end well. I raised my lightsaber, the purple and black blade telling Thonna exactly where to swing. Positioned directly in front of me, I saw the Third Sister's red blade swing for its target, swing for me, and that is when I sprung my trap.

"No!" Thonna shouted as I deactivated my lightsaber, halting her red blade just in front of my hood. I couldn't see her face underneath the mask, but I think if I could, I would have seen the look of realization on her face. I was right, Thonna didn't want to kill me, she didn't have that in her. I know that she has killed for the Empire, but she can't, or won't, do that to me, not to the girl that was once her friend, not to the girl that is still trying to save her. Thonna may be the Third Sister now, she may be a killer, but she doesn't have the killer instinct within her. Thonna backed off, deactivating her lightsaber, slumping her shoulders in defeat as she dropped the ring. I was reminded to our last encounter, the one on Loukhamii, where I destroyed her last lightsaber, and lost my own, now, we both had perfectly good weapons, but neither of us wanted to use them. I deactivated my lightsaber as Thonna spoke again "I'm sorry...I - I just...I can't kill you. I can't...Palpatine is going to kill me for this...he's going to kill us all."

"It doesn't have to be like that though. We have an escape plan, we know of a place where Palpatine can't find us, and we can take you there too. A shuttle is right there, waiting for us to get onboard with Lady Attam so we can all board the escape ships. You could come with us." I told Thonna, hoping that now, now that she knew she was going to die if she returned to the Empire, she would finally be willing to listen, be willing to be saved. I know that we can't erase Thonna's pain and everything that Palpatine and Vader have done to her, but we can at least stop it from continuing and begin helping her work through this. Saving her from this and putting her on the road to recovery is at least a start. It's certainly better than what Thonna has at the Empire and I have to hope she'll accept now, if for no other reason that her continued fear of death. It's not the best reason, definitely not the most noble reason, but it's a beginning, and a very understandable beginning, if nothing else. Her fear of death can be used to put her into a good enough mindset to have a greater, more just motivation.

Granted, my own motivations weren't particularly grand. I wasn't a Jedi anymore, not really...or maybe I was, but I wasn't actively being a Jedi or pursuing the reconstruction of the Jedi. Whatever I currently was, I wasn't being motivated by the Jedi teachings anymore. Nor was I being motivated by Sith teachings either. I was now training under a Sith Master and living with a Sith state, possibly being half a Sith myself no less, but I am not following their ideology nor living according to it. I don't have a greater cause in my life, I don't know what I believe in beyond the survival of myself and my loved ones, and the desire to see that the galaxy was somehow freed from Palpatine's grasp. That meant that, in short, I wasn't in a much better state than Thonna was, but, at very least, I could make it so that we weren't enemies anymore, and I could ensure that, whatever we choose to become in the rest of our lives, we come to that decision together. Being Jedi in a galaxy without Jedi was a complicated existence, but Thonna and I could face those trials and tribulations together. We could help heal of trauma together, because nobody knows the pain of the Jedi more than Thonna and I do. We were there to see the flaws, we were there to see the blindness, and we were there to see the end of the Jedi, but we are still alive, and we can analyze what led to that end. That is a unique shared experience.

"You can't escape Palpatine. He...he has everything figured out. Vader and the clones are going to kill the Nautolan girl, he has all of us Inquisitors forming a perimeter so she couldn't escape if she wanted to. On top of that, he has dispatched clones to destroy the last evacuation shuttles before they leave. As soon as they win, and...and the will, Palpatine is going to be hunting for those escape craft. Whatever your plan is, it's not going to work." Thonna replied, giving her inside knowledge on just how hopeless our situation was. Phanza was not only up against Vader, but also surrounded without a way out of this Imperial trap, meanwhile, HK-107, Ceyla, and Yevenna at the evacuation site were simply being lured into a false sense of security before the next Imperial attack, and, any moment now, the Imperials would be combing the world for the Silent Fleet. All of this combined to form a rather grim picture, but there was one thing that Thonna failed to consider - the fact that she just told us this already increased our chances.

"Yevenna," I said to my open holocommunicator, managing to get a hazy and rough signal over to the Mandalorian. It was hardly perfect, and it was clear that the Imperials were still jamming our communications, but I could get something through "The Imperials are going to attack you, I repeat, the Imperials are going to attack you. Get ready and hold them off, we'll be back with Phanza as soon as we can. Wait for us."

"The Imperials are co - oh, OH, now I see them. Yeah, okay, we'll hold the line...we got this, yeah." Yevenna seemed to be confused at first, however, the warning seemed to coincide right with the beginning of the Imperial movements, and that gave her, Ceyla, and HK-107 all the confirmation they needed. It wasn't much of a warning as it turned out, but they still knew what was going on before they could be caught off guard, and that was already a big piece of help. Maybe it wasn't ideal that the rear line of defense didn't have a Force user with them anymore, but the Mandalorians were vicious fighters. I trusted their ability to hold the line.

"Okay, you got that little warning out to your friends, but what good is it going to do you? The Empire is still going to overwhelm them before you find a way to get Phanza out of Vader's perimeter." Thonna replied, the Twi'lek Inquisitor still being hopeless, still not seeing a way that we can get out of Palpatine's machinations. I couldn't help but feel bad for the girl, seeing the extent of what the Empire did to her. Any resistant bone in her body was broken again and again until nothing was left but a hollow, obedient shell of an Imperial servant. Thonna saw no way of resisting against the Empire because she had no way of resisting against them. They had full control over here and they forced her to do terrible things as the Third Sister, now, Thonna Ai'sunn didn't believe that another way was possible. Fortunately for us, the answer to Vader's perimeter was right in front of us.

"Except there's a hole in Vader's perimeter, a hole that we can slip Phanza through and escape to the shuttle." I told her. Thonna had slid her mask open by this point, revealing her violet-skinned face, and I watched as the realization finally hit her. Thonna looked around, seeing that the clones in here were dead, seeing that she was the main one holding the line here, and that, without here, this was a breach in the perimeter, a breach that we could use. Then I saw her eyes turn to the floor, where her discarded lightsaber laid harmlessly. I instinctively took a step backwards, wanting to trust Thonna, but well aware that, if she felt backed into a corner, it could trigger a fight or flight reaction with deadly consequences. I wanted Thonna to choose to help us, not to be pressured into it. It was difficult to be in the right when I was siding with Sith, even a moderate form of the Sith, so I wanted to be sure that I was at least giving Thonna a real choice in siding with us. I wanted to give her something better than what Voytana gave me.

"We...we are the break in the Empire's trap. I can get you inside." Thonna realized, her tone and the expression on her face indicating a suppressed awe, like she was finally experiencing hope again and wasn't quite sure if this was real. This was the first step of getting out of her Imperial conditioning, realizing that she could resist and it could have results. Our current situation doesn't look great, the Empire is on the verge of taking Taaszon and they've done it with incredible speed and brutality, but there are still those of us who are still alive, and we can still live to fight another way. If we play our cards right, if we work together, and if we have a little bit of luck on our side, we could get Phanza out of there, escape Vader, board the shuttle and escape with the Silent Fleet. That means all of us - Phanza, Schweva, Thonna, Ceyla, HK-107, Yevenna, and I. We could all live, but we need each other to do it.

"So, shall we?" Schweva asked, joining us. The Chiss woman had taken the context clues well and decided to let me lead the situation, seeing that I had a very real chance of turning Thonna back over to our side, and, now that it was working, Schweva was standing here, unarmed, making it clear that she wasn't a threat either. Neither of us wanted to hurt Thonna, even if Schweva didn't know the full story yet, and I could tell that was what finally, really made Thonna relax - she knew that she could trust me, now she knew that she had nothing to fear from Schweva either. She finally reached down and grabbed her lightsaber, exactly what I had feared her doing, but I didn't flinch as she came back up, knowing that she wasn't going to attack us. No, if Thonna was going to use that Inquisitor's lightsaber again, she was going to use it as a member of our side.

"We need to be quick, the Nautolan woman is tough but Vader is something else entirely. The anger, the misery, the sheer hatred he has, for himself, for us, for everything around him...I've never seen anything like it." Thonna warned us, giving just the smallest insight into what it was like to be near Vader on a daily basis. I already knew that I didn't want any part of it when I heard that mechanical breathing, that loud, unsettling his on controlled lungs, a distinctive sign that you were about to be face to face with the Empire's greatest enforcer. Thonna was exposed to that almost constantly, she could feel the Dark Side radiating off of Vader, and, evidently, she was no fan of what she saw. This wasn't the time to talk about that, this was the time to move, so, we followed Thonna up the steps to the upper level of the station, depositing us on the higher level where we could finally exit out onto where Phanza was fighting Vader. Out of the station and back into the light, I finally saw just how bad the situation was.

Vader and Phanza danced around each other, trading lightsaber blows as Phanza tried to use her speed and her fury to break through Vader's iron defense while Palpatine's new apprentice waited to tire her out, not giving the Nautolan an opening. At their feet were three dead bodies. I couldn't help but gasp when I identified the first two as Ruumshi and Avoine, Phanza's loyal bodyguards having died trying to protect her, laid down by Vader's lightsaber, by the looks of it. The third dead body belonged to a male Sith I couldn't identify, seemingly a warrior of Taaszon who tried to get involved, tried to help Phanza, and paid the price for it. The same price we may have to pay if we try to get involved. Surrounding the pair, with blasters raised, was a ring of clone troopers, a ring that would gun down Phanza in the event that she ever really got the upper hand. That wasn't even the worst part of the site. No, despite the death, despite seeing Phanza surrounded and having to fight against Vader for her life, the thing that scared me the most was the armada of gray star destroyers filling the sky. Palpatine's armada, now completely in control of the skies, a fleet of oppression blocking out the light, ready to cover Taaszon for as long as the Empire shall reign.

But they won't reign over us.

I looked over at Schweva and Thonna, reaching an understanding with the two of them, that we had to kill these clones. I was aware of the fact that Schweva, as a born and bread Sith from the Grand Duchy of Taaszon, probably had the fewest qualms about killing clones, but this was about Thonna and I, veterans of the Clone Wars, Jedi who served alongside clones, and Jedi who were now faced with clones being perverted into our enemies. The Chiss nodded first, as expected, her featureless red eyes narrowing as she silently picked her targets, just waiting for us to give her the signal. Then I turned to Thonna, seeing the Inquisitor reach from her mask, wanting to put her visor back on, but then she stopped herself. Thonna was still for a moment, but then she narrowed her eyes, turned back to me, and nodded - she wasn't going to wear her visor, she decided that she was going to reclaim her face here, this is where she was going to fight without the blank mask of the Empire - that left me, the one who was going to give the signal. A clone stood right in front of me, his blaster and attention focused on the fight in front of him, thus, he didn't even know what was coming when I grabbed him with the Force and threw him off to the right, into his friends.

The three of us sprung into action, and so did the clones, turning away from Vader and Phanza to face us. Schweva ignited her whip and brought it down on the clones, slicing clean through their armor, then electrocuting another clone on the far side. Thonna started slow, first deflecting blaster bolts with her double-bladed lightsaber, still shaky on the idea of fighting against clones but, perhaps seeing how quickly they turned their guns on her, she abandoned any fear of the Empire, her need to survive taking over from it. Now, the former Third Sister Force pushed a number of clones over the railing, leaving them to fall to their deaths to the streets below. Finally then, she finished off by sending her lightsaber into a spin and throwing it at a pair of clones in the top right corner of their formation. That left me, using my new purple and black lightsaber to finish off the clones on the ground and then slicing down and killing a final clone. Just like that, the circle of clones immediately surrounding them was gone, and Vader and Phanza had noticed. Phanza, seeing the situation change to her benefit, gave subtle, silent gestures to Schweva and I, instructing her apprentices to surround Vader and join the fight. Vader, however, had his eyes firmly set on Thonna, so much so that he even lowered his lightsaber, so immersed in the betrayal that the Lord of the Sith seemed to forget he had just been in a duel to the death against another Sith Lord.

"You turned against me!" Vader accused her, raising an arm, pointing at Thonna, as if to declare that he was going to kill her first, but he had forgotten one crucial thing during all of this. Phanza was a Sith Lord, she didn't fight fair, and she certainly wasn't going to let a distraction go to waste. I watched as Phanza raised both of her hands and unleashed red Force lightning from her fingertips, even as she held her red and black bladed curved-hilt lightsaber in her hand. Then, I watched as the the lightning struck Darth Vader himself. Then, everything suddenly made sense - the lumbering body, the full body suit with a sort of control pattern on the chest, and the infamous mechanical breathing - Vader was a cyborg, and the Force lightning inflicted massive damage on his cybernetics. Now that she wasn't held back by the threat of the clones surrounding her, Phanza was able to pour the full brunt of her lightning into Vader's suit, and it was having a devastating effect.

The electrocution brought the Sith giant to his knees, his legs unable to support him with the hydraulic and cybernetic support. I watched as Vader even dropped his lightsaber, the hilt falling dumbly on the ground as Vader lost control of her mechanical hands as the lightning short-circuited his electronics and fried his remaining nerves and human parts as well. I watched as a cable in Vader's neck outright exploded, his breathing growing erratic and inconsistently mechanical in the aftermath. This was how we could win, this was how we could defeat Vader. For the first time in the Battle of Taaszon, I allowed myself to grow hopeful, seeing that things were finally going our way. That was, until I heard an unbridled, animalistic scream, unsupported by his cybernetics, sounding like it came from the damaged, choked vocal cords of a creature that went through an experience it should never have survived. Then I saw Vader's hand pushing through the pain, reaching for something - his lightsaber at first, I thought, but then I noticed that he was reaching for his belt instead - pulling some sort of device off of it. Pulling his hand back out, with what seemed to be some kind of detonator in his hand, Vader used the last of his strength to pull the trigger.

A cry and a hiss tore through the air. My head whipped around to the source, as did Schweva's, and even Phanza dropped her lightning to see what that sound was. We found the answer soon enough, seeing Thonna's Third Sister mask clamp shut and parts of it begin glowing red as Thonna clawed at the mask, trying to get it off. I didn't understand what was going on - was the detonator a mind control device like that which was on the clones? Was it suffocating her? Or was it...oh no. The red lights were soon joined with beeping, then they started flashing, progressively faster. We tried to come closer to her, trying to help her, but Thonna raised a hand, trying to stop us, trying to protect us from what was going to happen. The beeping, the incessant beeping, getting faster and faster and faster still until finally...it ended with a bang. The three of us stood there shocked, barely able to process what had just happened.

The reality only really set in when Thonna's dead body hit the ground with a thud, her head and helmet reduced to nothing more than a pink dust where she had just been standing. Vader...Vader killed her. The Empire had a bomb in her mask, likely a bomb in the mask of every Inquisitor, a bomb meant to destroy the Empire's weapons if they were ever turned against them, just as Vader had just demonstrated. A choked sound rang out in the air, at first, I had almost thought it had been my own sob, a reaction to seeing my friend unceremoniously killed right in front of me, but then, it continued, a choked, distorted sound, a masculine sound, but profoundly damaged, and downright sordid in tone. I turned around to see it was coming from Vader. He was laughing. My friend had died and he was laughing.

I let out an animalistic cry of my own, pouring all my hatred and pain into it - Order 66, the loss of Ullara, the loss of the Jedi and my home, seeing the galaxy fall under the thumb of Palpatine and his oppressive Empire, having to kill all those clones, and now the loss of Thonna along with Taaszon - and I unleashed all of it in a powerful Force push. I watched as Vader fell to his fate and then beyond, his knees hitting the railing with a sickening crack before the weight of his torso and the strength of my Force push sent him flying to the ground, a pained grunt turning into a bloody scream as he fell to the ground. I heard the thud as Vader finally crashed against the ground, but that wasn't enough for me, I wanted to finish him off. I marched over to the edge of the railing, gathering lightning at my fingertips, before finally looking over the edge there. I saw Vader lying painfully in a crater of his own making, unable to get up on his own power, but there were clones nearby, clones who could save him if I didn't end all of us this right now.

"Zaliza! We need to go!" Phanza ordered, my Master speaking for the first time since we rescued her.

"He killed my friend!" I growled in response, there needed to finally be some justice in this galaxy, and if that meant that I had to kill one last enemy, then so be it.

"We'll all be dead if we don't run, look!" Phanza grabbed me and pointed to the sky, where Palpatine's flagship was rotating its cannons at us, about to open fire now that Vader was out of the way. It wasn't a regular Venator-star destroyer either, it was somehow larger and more heavily armed than the other ships, and I knew that wasn't a good sign, far from it.

"Okay, okay, fine." I accepted, turning and running.


That was a big one, like I said, and next chapter will cover the escape from Taaszon.