Yeah - they've been working on that with Ani, actually, and there's some they'd like to loop Occlus in on now...

She has time.

Hopefully so...

(There's a lot to do, still, and the wheels of politics shift, and the world lurches into gear - )

(The attack doesn't come that day, nor the next, but there's something building...)

(Occlus has a creeping feeling that there is something else they're missing. Nothing she can name, nothing actionable.... but there, all the same.)

Time passes in the same tense pattern, and then one night just before moonrise that feeling...

Spikes, kind of, immediately before the world starts ripping itself apart in front of her.

Occlus stands clear, one hand on her saber and the other gathering power.

It's Jakkou -

Badly injured, scared - she tries to slam reality closed behind her - there's something odd about her eyes -

Always the eyes with these people-

Occlus hooks into the edges of the tear, helps drag it shut.

(But something already followed her...)

(It's a subtle whisper, wrapped like a vice around Jakkou's heart...)

"It wasn't Madara it's alive - "

And it boils up through her skin.

No. The Force flows through Occlus, her rage gives it focus-

-And she unleashes it in a pulse, stilling everything in the area. Nothing moves from its frozen state save by her will.

And her will is that this oily shadow leave the alt of her granddaughter. She prises its hooking tendrils out, flesh and spirit, to hang wriggling in the air.

It's hard to perceive. It's an absence, a hole in the world where existence once was.

It's strong, and everything that it is or can be is its will. 

(It feels familiar.)

She can remove it from within Jakkou. A single person is a controlled, defined space. Somewhere it has to concentrate itself to be more than a whisper. 

To hang in the air...

Well.

There's a lot of air in the world. A lot of potential, and absence isn't meant to be something with a defined location. 

It doesn't even try to slip away from her.  It simply stops trying to be something she can hold. 

Even here, even now, she is still Darth Occlus, a Dark Lord of the Sith. One of the great powers of the galaxy and studied in lore beyond the imagination of most. Two hazy beings step out of her body to widen the net she casts-

Three runes slashed in ethereal fire, quick as thought. A binding, a ward, a countering vacuum to drag and hold the interloper.

Occlus has the sense that something bigger than her is slowly, glacially turning its attention toward her. The shade - it'd been a passing thought, a mere wisp of an idea, a lazy hand brushing away the mightiest of the gnats.

This, though. 

This is more. 

The air hangs still, stiller than Occlus had commanded it - time seems to gasp to a stop - 

There's a flicker of amusement across the vast distance - 

And then the shade disappears, as the being's attention turns away. 

-Enough, Jakkou requires her attention. Occlus turns the lifebinder's arts to her aid.

Not a bad call.

She's fallen unconscious, chakra fluctuating dangerously, strange echoes lashing through her - on top of the blood loss.

...Which might have been self inflicted? Hard to say.

Perhaps in an attempt to exorcize the demon. As she works to stabilize Jakkou, Occlus sends a mental ping to Ani, alerting her wife to her location and telling her to send medics.

They arrive pretty promptly. 

(Nobody has any idea what the fuck just happened, but bizarre chakra poisoning is still chakra poisoning, and - yeah, they can treat this, though they want the two Force users to stay near Jakkou until someone capable of fighting Jakkou if needed shows up to guard.)

A sensible precaution. Occlus will stay nearby while they work.

'What happened?' her wife asks over their bond.

'Jakkou appeared in front of me, using her ability. She was- partially possessed by a shadow being. I tore it out of her and attempted to hold it, but it vanished.'

'There was the sense of... a greater power behind it, one that has not shown its hand before.'

'Are you alright?'

'I am- shaken. I have not encountered a power like that before.'