Over the last few months, Jaina had become scarily used to not being able to move when she woke up after some sort of attack. This time, though, the situation she found herself in was problematic at best, and terrifying at worst.

Above the room where she'd been knocked out by the Shamed One was what looked like a ship's bridge. She was hanging from hooks that grew from the inner bulkhead, suspended over the floor between carved statues of Yuuzhan Vong gods, and she couldn't move. At all. Paralyzed, all she could do was blink, so getting out of here herself was out of the question at the moment. Since she seemed to be the center of a sacrificial altar, this was a problem.

She called out to Luke and Jacen through the Force, but they still had their own fighting to do. For now, she was on her own, and for all she'd been complaining about feeling helpless, this was an extreme realization of that issue.

The Shamed One turned toward her, and she realized he seemed to be able to sense that she'd put out the call to her family. "I know you can hear me," he told her, "because I gave you only a taste of the poison encapsulated in my fang. Just enough to render you inert. I'm grateful you elected to pursue me, Yun-Harla. At last we have an opportunity to meet on a level battlefield. Both of us in captivity. You, hostage to my paralytic toxin; me, to the half-a-lifetime of injustices you saw fit to heap on me."

Um. After Myrkr, Jaina had begun associating herself with the Trickster goddess Yun-Harla in an attempt basically to mess with the Vong. At Borleias it became a psychological warfare campaign, making everyone believe she was the incarnation of Yun-Harla. She acted the part, made everyone treat her as if she were a goddess, and the ruse had done some good. But that had sort of fallen apart over the last year, and she was just Jaina again. If he still believed that ruse...

The toxin hadn't worn off enough to move, though she focused enough to at least manage to open her mouth and form words. She got as far as "I'm not-"

He cut her off, too busy with his rant now that he believed he finally had Yun-Harla here. "Who was more faithful to the gods than Onimi? Who was more faithful to Shimrra's domain than the shaper who discovered the truth that the eighth cortex was empty, and that the species Yun-Yuuzhan and the rest of you created was doomed to extinction? Yes, our ancestors utilized the gifts you supplied to make war on those who would have vanquished us, but instead of rewarding our attempts to rid the galaxy of such infidels and machines, you drove us from the ancestral homeworld, bled us of further kinship with you, forced us to wander for generations in search of a new home."

Oh-kay. Jaina didn't now what he was talking about, except that he blamed her for the destruction of the Vong homeworld and basically for the entire war. Something told her reason wasn't going to work here.

"In your omniscience, you know that's why I risked grafting yammosk cells to my own neural tissue: in the hope of being able to discover some way to escape the rack on which you had mounted us! But instead of rewarding my having the courage to emulate your bold works of creation, you condemned me. You granted me the powers to speak through the mouths of others, to manipulate them at will, to control remotely, as your yammosks do, and yet you punished me with physical deformities that shouted to one and all that my attempt at self-escalation had failed. You Shamed me so that I could no longer consort with nor move among the elite. Not only did you deny me the rank of master shaper, you prevented me from being able to contribute to the salvation of my species. That was when I chose to turn against you, Yun-Harla. I was not alone in this rebellion, and yet, as if to increase my torment, you rewarded the others, while you left me to suffer in silence through the years of drifting. The long years of watching our society crumble; our creche-born starve; our warriors turn on one another... and then you dangled before our eyes a galaxy, filled with habitable worlds. At last it seemed a blessing- proof that you had not abandoned us in our time of need. But I soon realized that you were merely setting the stage for a new form of torture."

She'd had bad guys tie her up and go on and on about their plans before, but this was special. This actually scared her. There was no way Onimi was entirely sane, and she opened her mouth again to protest, but she was shut down again. It was like he either didn't register her trying to speak, or didn't care. Now that he had her, he was going ot make her hear him.

"Only by means of the powers you conferred on me was I able to reach out for Shimrra and make him my puppet! My most audacious act yet. But when I saw that you were either powerless to prevent it or welcoming the opportunity to do open battle with me, I knew that I was right to attempt to overthrow you in the same way. When Zonama Sekot was found once more, and this time made to appear to have been bestowed on the Jedi, as a weapon, I believed for a moment that you were actually testing me. But I soon grasped the greater truth- the same one that had already been glimpsed by the heretics and some of our priests: that because I had grown past your control, you had decided to
topple me." He looked hard at her, and she might have shivered if her body was capable of it at the moment. "Even now I can see the glow of the divine in you, Yun-Harla. As Yun-Yammka glows in the Jeedai called Skywalker; Yun-Shuno in the Jeedai called Jacen; Yun-Ne'Shel in the Jedi called Tahiri..."

He paused for a moment, and Jaina struggled to speak again too late. When he looked at her again, he almost seemed amused. "Shimrra is dead," he announced. "Your god-cohorts have killed him, Yun-Harla." He needed to stop calling her that. "Now let us hope they will pursue me, as well. Then not only will I have the satisfaction of outwitting you at Zonama Sekot, but I will also have the pleasure of killing you, as my first act in exterminating everyone and everything in this foul galaxy."

That was when Jacen arrived, standing and taking in the scene, and for a moment Jaina wished she hadn't called for him. The Vong had always been set on pitting them against each other, making them fight to the death as a sacrifice. Onimi was just planning on sacrificing Jaina, period. She'd be lucky if she got off just getting her throat slit. With what the Vong did, she was potentially in for much worse. But if he had Jacen, too...

"You will find no integrity in me, Jeedai," Onimi greeted him. "Trust that everything you perceive about me is a lie. Shimrra was Shimrra. I am I."

"The Supreme Overlord," Jacen inferred.

Oh, sure. Jaina would go chasing after the actual Supreme Overlord and get herself captured. The absolutely crazy, murderous Supreme Overlord, who was willing to kill the entire galaxy for revenge. Prefect.

"Vergere told Nom Anor that you are the most dangerous Jeedai of all," Onimi went on. "And well you should be, since you carry Yun-Shuno within you- the betrayer of all I have sought to create. But soon, when I have killed you, you will be my passage to godhood. All you hold dear will have been destroyed. The species that gave you its blood and died to bring you worshipers..."

At this point Jaina tuned out. It wasn't that she wasn't trying to listen to what his plans were, but if he was going to take the time to monologue, she was going to let Jacen handle that while she drew inward on herself, trying to see if she could dissipate the poison in her system. She was decent at this; she could get rid of a hangover it she really wanted to, but couldn't seem to manage to save herself from post-gremlin bite embarrassment. She was going to need concentration-

She lost the concentration the second Onimi started hurtling objects at Jacen through telekinesis, the statues flanking her suddenly flying through the air towards her brother. Jaina's eyes flew open, and she watched as Jacen didn't even try to deflect the objects, probably because he didn't want to send anything flying her way. Instead, he pulled everything into orbit around him safely, which only infuriated Onimi more. He turned his attentions to creating cracks in the bulkheads, as if trying to rip of pieces of yorik coral and bone to add to his arsenal. Instead, Jacen just repaired the cracks as soon as they appeared. It was impressive- if entirely nerve-wracking- to watch.

Onimi charged. He ran at Jacen, forcing him into a physical struggle, and Jaina would have screamed in frustration to wanting to help if she could manage it. Instead she tried to lend some of her strength to her twin, who gave her the simple message to save it for herself. It drove her crazy, but she had to trust Jacen to handle it. He seemed to be doing really well for himself already, after all, and Jaina began again trying to run the toxins out of herself in order to make herself useful.

When she looked next, still failing at being able to make herself mobile, she saw that Jacen wasn't having any trouble. Onimi was the one who seemed to be undergoing an actual physical change with the exertion of fighting him. Jacen was very simply becoming one with the Force, using everything that Onimi threw at him against him. For a moment Jaina was suddenly afraid, watching Anakin do something like this on the worldship over Myrkr, defending the rest of the strike team against the Vong warriors perfectly, just before he died.

But Jacen wasn't going to go that way. He was going to win this one.

Using the Force, Jacen pulled Onimi into the whirlwind of objects that was still going strong, perfectly controlled, and pinned him high up against the bulkhead. Jaina had never seen what was happening to the Vong before; his deformed features even changed, leaving him a writhing, drooling mess, and then he slid to the deck, seizing as his own poisonous internal fluids just dissolved him.

And it was done.

Suddenly Jaina didn't even care that she'd done nothing here. It just didn't matter.

Everything seemed eerily quiet now, and Jaina waited as Jacen pulled her down from where she'd been hanging, carrying her in his arms because she still couldn't walk herself. "You wouldn't let me help you," she said, though it wasn't as accusing as it might have been earlier.

He explained, "I needed you to help yourself."


[NFB, NFI, FBI, OOC okay. Dialogue from The Unifying Force by James Luceno, and have I mentioned I hate writing action? And yes, this is how it really goes down.]