"I mean... you killed my master. You were compromised, yeah, but... you did seem to enjoy it."

"I did. But I did not seek him out, and I did not follow it with a rampage through the rest of the enclave. It was my intention, upon being granted entrance, to leave without the Jedi being any the wiser. Another Sith might have taken the opportunity to slay everyone within."

"Yeah, pretty much, so—why, is what I'm asking, why exactly this and not some other thing."

"This is the path I was set upon, before I had the agency to change. I was not handed such an opportunity as you were."

"And you can't change now? ...after you kill that guy."

"Once I do that, the rest of the Dark Council will rather expect me to take his place and will be... slightly put out if I do not."

"As in they will want to kill you?"

"And will come looking for me if I attempt to hide, yes."

"Why? That's stupid."

"If they didn't, anyone at all might feel they could kill a Councilor and get away with it."

"I mean, that sounds like a reason to make imprisoning and killing the murderer the general solution, not a replacement to the default of 'murderer replaces murdered.' And the fact that they can just get away with being terrible anyway, it's a wonder the system survives at all."

"I have no doubt that if the system ever faced a serious challenge it would not take much more to overturn it entirely, but I have little interest in being the test case."

She nods.

And how is the little pesky mind-influence thing doing?

Still being peskily mind-influencing. It's trying something more along the lines of direct emotional intervention than intrusive thoughts.

Oh, that explains a couple of things. "Stupid mind control," she mutters.

"Yes. I wonder... There are ways to make one's Force presence harder to detect. If we each did the inverse of that and made ourselves more obvious, having that competing influence might, mmm, dull the effect?"

"—could work, yeah."

She focuses inwardly and then—out.

Occlus does the same. Her presence is no longer overwhelmingly dark, but neither is it bright. Most of all, it is there, powerful and important and difficult to ignore.

...and does it help?

Somewhat.

"Okay, this seems to be doing something."

"Good. Then we should try to maintain it. I believe we are getting close."

She nods. "I wonder why I saw myself going with you, I'm not sure I'm powerful enough to make a difference in a fight."

"I could not begin to answer that question without much more information than I currently possess."

"Yeah," she sighs. "We'll see, I suppose."