"Do you want to go get Deskyl now? Because I'm probably going to keep having more questions as long as you have patience."

DZ looks around - "We can move to that empty booth, if you want to keep talking to me, Ma'am? And I'll go get her."

"Empty booth sounds good!" She heads over there.

Deskyl turns out to be a tall woman with short brown hair in a comfy-looking black outfit with red embroidery on the collar and sleeves and a weapon holster at her waist. She seems overwhelmed and occasionally disoriented walking through the bar, but follows DZ without complaint and slides onto the bench the droid leads her to.

   Deskyl, this is Margaret, DZ signs. She's a friend.

Droid, Deskyl signs back, sizing her up curiously.

    She's an uploaded biological.

Droid, Deskyl signs again, more emphatically.

    "I'm sorry, Ma'am. She can usually sense peoples' emotions, I think it's confusing her that she can't sense yours. She doesn't mean anything by it."

"I don't mind. I'm pretty similar to droids, from what I can tell. Pleased to meet you, Deskyl; I'll try to have an emotionally readable voice." (She does have a very expressive, if slightly tinny, voice despite her immobile and rather minimalist facial features.)

DZ signs a translation as Margaret speaks, but Deskyl squints at her anyway and then takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, leaning against the wall to steady herself.

"Um? Are you alright?" She looks at DZ.

"She's doing something with the Force; probably just sensing it. She won't hurt you."

And, indeed, Deskyl opens her eyes after just a moment. Strange Force here, she signs.

Yes, Ma'am. But it's safe.

    Safe? Safe safe safe?

Yes Ma'am. You can rest here as long as you need.

    Best.

Yes Ma'am.

    Deskyl looks back to Margaret, but continues signing to DZ. Droid.

Yes, that's Margaret, she's a friend.

    Deskyl gives her a slightly offended look.

Sorry, Ma'am. You can talk to her yourself, the translation effect works on signed languages.

    Languages hard.

"Would you like to tell me about yourself? I hear you have cool powers."

Deskyl shrugs. Sith. Weak Sith, right now. Questions?

"I don't want to bother you with questions if you aren't feeling well; I can just talk to DZ if you both prefer that?"

Deskyl shrugs.

    "She's doing fairly well today, actually, and she'll stop you if she gets tired. But if you'd rather talk to me, she won't be offended."

"I'll just ask piles of questions and either one of you can answer me until you tell me to go away, how about that. So what kind of work do you do for Deskyl, translation stuff?"

    "I was assigned to her after the first time she was injured, and I mostly take care of her and her suite; her master isn't expecting her to do very much right now."

Hiding talking. Kill him.

    "She hasn't needed me to translate anything for her because she hasn't been speaking to anyone; she's been waiting for him to underestimate her recovery and let his guard down so she can kill him and we can escape."

"Woah. I take it he's the one who hurt her? Are you worried he'll find the door you came in?"

"One of the bar's features is that time is paused in patrons' worlds while they're here. But yes Ma'am, he's complicit at least."

"Oh that's good, you can probably hide in here until you're more recovered. At least if you can find a way to buy food and stuff; I can only stay a little while, since I didn't bring any money except what's on my student ID."

DZ nods. "I think Deskyl will be able to hold the door for me while I go for our escape bag; hopefully the credits in it will be enough for a few months. Even a few weeks might be enough of an edge, though."

    I'll be a nasty surprise.

"That's good. If you want any engineering done while you're in here, I bet I can make some things you'll find useful. One of the first things I made, back when I was meat, was a partial exoskeleton that gave me better strength and control when my arms were weak. That's just an example, though, I can do lots of stuff."

Deskyl squints, as if offended, but then softens. Think about it. Thanks.

"No problem. So DZ, if you're all software, does that mean you could fork if you wanted? Obviously there are lots of reasons you might not want to, but would it be possible? It turns out I can't." 

    "Fork, Ma'am?"

Duplicate. Not sure.

"Fair enough. What are you two planning to do after you escape from that awful guy? I want to start a business, eventually."

    "We'll have to hide for a while; because of the way Sith inheritance works, his other apprentices will be trying to kill Deskyl too, and she won't be able to defeat them without the element of surprise. We don't have any plans yet, after that."

"I wish I could say that's a disappointing amount of violence, but people with powers on my world keep trying to kill each other too. Everyone at my school has to take self-defense classes because of how likely it is that someone will try to kill us eventually."