They have a lovely evening, nice takeout eaten on the balcony while DZ shares poetry and songs from her and Deskyl's home and encourages the other three to share as well. After dinner, Deskyl goes to the basement to practice with her lightsaber.

Forty minutes later, she bursts back upstairs, wild-eyed.

Ira is already surging to his feet before she actually bursts anywhere - and where the hell did he even pull that knife from??

Shin's straightened somewhere he's sitting.

DZ takes a little longer to react, and Deskyl doesn't wait for her, pulling her upright and then signing at her, pacing, intermittently looking up at a point somewhere off behind the house.

    "She says - there's another one of her, a child, near the edge of her sensory range - being tortured. Not - not right now, but ongoingly. I don't know what she means by another one of her."

Ira swears quietly.

"How far away is the edge of her sensory range?"

"Ten, maybe fifteen miles - it'll be farther for something like this, I'm not sure exactly."

Ira's quiet for a moment. "We're going to need a car then."

DZ relays this; Deskyl glares at her. Her mood doesn't improve in the exchange that follows, but DZ apparently wins. "How long will that take, sir?"

"As long as it takes us to find a car that isn't in this neighbourhood to boost. I'm not stealing a car from here."

Deskyl calms, a bit, at that, and goes back to pacing.

    "The new one might not be able to talk, or to hear very well; Deskyl uses the Force for those. She'll bring me to translate. Shin - we'll need someone preparing, here; she'll sleep in our room but make up the couch just in case, please, and food and water and medical supplies - Deskyl isn't sure what's wrong but she could tell she's in poor condition physically. Tell Ant what's going on, too."

"I've got it covered," Shin assures them.

"C'mon then," Ira says, already heading for the door.

Deskyl certainly doesn't need to be told twice.

She'll favor a larger vehicle, given the choice, but mostly she just wants to be on her way.

Ira finds a people carrier - not ideal, but it's the best he's managing on short notice - hotwires it, and gets them on their way.

Good enough.

She takes shotgun and points him in the right direction, dropping into meditation once they're on their way.

It'll be a half-hour drive if he sticks to normal speeds, but what's the chance of that, here?

Speed limit, what's that?

He doesn't quite halve their travel time, but it's a close run thing.

She hisses, a few minutes in, and signs once to DZ: "She's been starved, sir."

She reacts again, a couple minutes later, slapping the dashboard hard enough to leave a dent - "There are dozens of them."

She's quiet for the rest of the trip, grim, tense.

Ira's hands tighten on the steering wheel. "-We've not got the resources to take all of them," he says, voice tight.

"She knows, sir."

She shifts, as if to tap Deskyl to get her attention, but apparently thinks better of it.

Ira doesn't say anything to disturb them.

The last couple miles are along a wooded back road; Deskyl points out when their destination is coming up. "No combatants, she says; she'd like you to stay with the car, sir."

"Sure, why not, I'm just the chauffeur here." He doesn't sound entirely happy about that.

    "The faster we can leave, the less likely we are to be followed, sir."

A sign just past the turnoff declares the sprawling building beyond it to be the White Willow Youth Asylum. Deskyl doesn't wait for the van to stop before getting out; she ignores the building's entryway, but darts around to the side and begins destroying a section of wall with her lightsaber, cutting first at a steady, measured pace, and then faster, abruptly, after the first handful of blows. DZ catches up to her just as she's putting the weapon away, and stands clear as the Sith grabs the damaged section with the Force and pulls, strewing rubble across the grass at her feet.

A figure in a nightgown scrambles out of the hole as she's recovering her balance: Deskyl's report that their target is another instance of herself seems to be literally true; the girl could be her twin, a decade younger and quite underweight. She looks around, and then flinches at something behind herself; Deskyl surges forward, protective, and scoops the girl up onto her hip as if she were a much younger child, 'saber out and lit again.

The Sith doesn't turn her back to the building as she and DZ make their way back to the van.