Dooku
The girl was more than she seemed. That he knew instantly. Dooku looked past the tiny frame and messy hair and tired bruising beneath her eyes and felt a hint of power. He didn't know how deep it went, and he knew she was no Jedi. There was too much darkness here, and she wasn't the least bit afraid of him.
Which either made her a fool, as he first thought, or something else entirely.
He needed to tread carefully here.
Dooku held up a hand. "Perhaps we started off on the wrong foot," he said slowly. "Please-let us speak somewhere more private." He waved to the petrified clerk who had only yesterday spared his own life by swearing to turn on his Jedi masters. Idiot Kenobi. As though finding one of Dooku's connection points was crucial to winning a war he didn't even know he was fighting.
The girl followed him into a back room; soundproofed, he knew, for some of the cafe's more illicit activities. A perfect place to handle an unknown such as this one.
She crossed her arms and leaned against a cool metal wall as he closed the door. There was curiosity in her eyes, and he indulged her.
"Count Dooku," he said, folding his hands in front of him and waiting for her reaction.
The look she gave him was blank; raised eyebrows and all but a shrug.
"I'll need a bit more than that," she said. "You're a Sith, but what else?"
Good gods. Who was she, that she didn't know who he was? The whole of Coruscant was put on daily alert for him. The Jedi-turned-Sith who headed up the Separatist movement, the reason they all believed this war was happening...
"You're joking, right?" He didn't know what else to say. She wasn't joking, he knew. She wasn't playing the fool. She literally had no idea who he was.
"So you're important, and I've wounded your pride." She smiled, the same dangerous smile as before. "You must forgive me, Count. I'm new around here."
He hesitated a moment, then decided to reach out through the Force and read what exactly he was facing.
And he felt suddenly, horribly suffocated. Her presence in the Force made the air thick, seized his lungs with fear he hadn't felt for decades.
She was something else entirely. No Jedi, for certain, and no Sith he knew of.
The girl flexed her fingers, then tightened them into a fist, and he felt a horrible pressure on his arm. He tried to fight it off, but his efforts were like that of a flailing child against a wall.
"It is the greatest fear of all who use the Force," she said, in an even tone. "Not being able to be in control. Being controlled by another. So casually do we use our own power, that the idea of someone exerting power over us is...unthinkable."
She could break his arm if she wanted to. She could crush his heart, tear out his lungs, twist his neck, all from across the room. This girl needed no lightsaber to defeat Count Dooku, the Sith who had bested both Obi-Wan Kenobi and the so-called Chosen One. She could tear this city apart with her mind if she were so inclined.
"There is much for you," he heard himself say. "Darth Sidious can give you power, can make you one of us-"
"Oh gods, why would I want to be a Sith?" She took two steps toward him, and though her words were light, he knew by the edge to her tone that he'd said the absolute worst thing possible. He felt a pressure on the back of his head, somewhere beneath the skull, and then-
Nothing. Her presence in the Force vanished. The air was clear again. He could breathe, and the pain in his arm ceased. She stepped back against the wall, looking grimly satisfied.
"You will not remember who I am," she said, and immediately he could not see. "You will not remember how this moment came to be," a voice said, but he could not put a sound to the words. "And you will tell Palpatine that his reckoning has come."
The door opened. The voice was gone.
And Dooku could not find the Force.