Elan
The Net cafe became a shadowy, furtive place in the late hours; people spoke in hushed tones and ducked their heads as though to hide as they moved through the room. Elan was getting increasingly frustrated with her failed efforts to reach Hapes. She knew they'd been distant from the Old Republic, but she'd never thought any developed system could be unreachable.
She was trying a signal routing through Tatooine when the cold swept through the cafe.
It was a brittle cold, the kind that ate at her bones, and she felt her shields creep up almost unconsciously. This cold, she recognized. She'd been around Sith before, though never in such a public place-any known Sith in her time had been imprisoned for ages.
Her time card clicked out of the holo screen, and she reached for it, hesitated, then took it and opened the curtain. A man in a dark cloak stood at the counter with one clerk; she waved her card at the other.
"I need a recharge," she said, going up to stand a comfortable distance from the cloaked man. He glanced over at her; a pointed face, all sharp bones and angles, softened not at all by a white beard and hollow eyes.
And she decided to risk it. What the hell.
"You're the one they're looking for," she said, giving him a smile she hoped was unreadable, mysterious. His nostrils flared, and she saw his left arm twitch beneath his cloak-reaching for a lightsaber?
She held her hands out. "I am unarmed." Damn Jacen and his blasted insistence that she should give up her lightsaber in "such an emotionally volatile time." "But you would do well to be wary of me."
He stared a moment, then began to laugh; a low, deep, humorless sound.
"Foolish child," he said, in a voice that seemed to resonate from beneath the floor. "You have no idea what you toy with."
She considered him a moment. She didn't know much about the other Sith in this time beyond Palpatine. But she was third-generation, and they did know for certain that third and fourth-generation Skywalkers were infinitely more powerful than any Jedi from the Old Order-so, it stood to reason, infinitely more powerful than any adversary from that time.
Elan smiled again, feeling the tightness in her muscles. It was idiotic to pick a fight with a Sith here, when she had no backup, no place to run. But she was at her core a Skywalker, a daughter of the Jedi, and this man was part of the movement that would try to wipe out her family. She took a step closer to him, feeling the dangerous Skywalker darkness creep into her fingers.
She knew what would scare him most. What scared any Force wielder most.