"I wouldn't if I were you...."

All eyes turned to the Sith Assassin who just appeared.

"YOU!!!" Sianid shouted.

"Yes, me." he replied calmly.

"I will NOT let you stop me, Traitor." She was still shouting.

"Though I don't expect you to believe me, that is not, in fact, why I'm here. I've come alone, and I wish to negotiate for the release of Dianiss into my custody, in the tradition of the Trandoshan--and I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly--DOOS'VORAASSSC ODDO'VUSSS-GRUUP custom."

Khem/Qyzen looked at him and growled, baring his teeth.

"I'll take that as 'close enough' then."

Sianid was looking Zarvell straight in the eye. "This girl is mine. She has always been mine. Her power is mine. I've been planning and preparing for this moment for decades, Traitor. Just WHAT do you THINK you have to offer me that I would willingly give this up for?"

"Well, your life and your freedom, of course. You don't strike me at all as the type to sacrifice either of those in the cause of your ambitions. As a show of good faith, I will give you this: you stand now just before the point of no return, but are still able to stop this--for your own sake. You've been lied to--quite a lot, actually--and frankly, you're a Sith and you should know better."

"And if I refuse to give you the girl? As if I would do anything else...."

"Well, as I said already, I'm not here to stop you. I know you think that this power will make you invincible, but power has never been the way to defeat a Sith, as you'll soon find out."

"Well then let me give you my answer, Traitor!" Sianid shouted, and brought down a powerful storm of lightning on Zarvell's location as he attempted to blind them to his presence and make a quiet exit. The lightning itself didn't hurt him all that much, but it did distract him enough that he was unable to vanish as intended.

The odd thing, he thought, was that the lightning definitely should not have been causing his vision to blur and his muscles to give out. As he collapsed to the floor, he heard a voice from the side of the chamber....

"Confirmation: Target has been neutralized."

--

"Dammit!" Violet'ence said to herself under her breath, as she quickly pulled the ammo clip from her weapon and cleared the round from the chamber, then tried to--as quickly as she could--retrieve the injector dart that Zarvell had given her from her pocket.

"I do hate it when that man is right...."

Behind the Scenes:
* HK-51 does have a stealth ability ("Stealth Suit") of his own, after all.
* I didn't just randomly put together syllables for what Zarvell says in the Trandoshan language ("Dosh"). That's actually a rough transliteration of the sound you hear from Qyzen when he says "Devour fear, or be devoured."
* As I said before, shorter chapters now, posted more often.
Notes from the Future:
* Again, I've made a number of edits to avoid totally name-dropping the in-game abilities that the characters are using, such as Force Storm and Stealth.
* Also, it's worth noting that this was written before the companions were all made the same. The original iteration of HK-51 DID have such an ability at the time.