Duel Granddaughter Versus Grandfather

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Wearing: Prototype Armor

Armed With: Nathan's Saberstaff

Objective: Fight Alessandra Io

Denon.

The Jedi Code had absolutely no say with Nathan where the Cult of The Brain Demon was concerned.

The way he saw it, and not without a certain level of justification, what the Cult had done to him, murdering his wife, murdering him, completely, totally corrupting his daughter into one of them, wedding her to his own parents killer...there was simply no objectivity. No way to separate himself.

The Cult must die. Afterward, Nathan didn't really care what happened to him. Certainly not the consequences of engaging in his lonely crusade against an enemy that had already totally defeated him centuries ago.

This Skyscraper had called a meeting of Brain Demon Cultists to discuss what to do about Nathan. The Parliament had ordered him brought in if at all possible. But he was kind of making that difficult.

A Cultist ran out of the boardroom where he had crashed down through the ceiling, Lightsaber Staff moving it's blue blades in a deadly frenzy. He was out a second later, having massacred the others at the meeting, and gunned her down with a spray of void stone pellets from a now empty shotgun. He was in his father's armor, face obscured by a crimson helm. But the House and the Nuetralizers already had a briefing on what equipment he was spotted with.

Let the Corpos scratch their heads on this. He was busy getting closure, one thoroughly kicked ass at a time.

But for Nathan, Witches were not the only threat in the building...

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Equipment: G1 OmniLink
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

The Demon was here.

Grandfather.

And yet, he was no dad of hers. Even if he was, Alessandra was not above patricide when it came to Jedi and those who sought to bring her family harm. While the Chaplain was all too aware of his history with the Cult, she could not excuse his crimes or his allegiance to a corrupt Order which had proven to be complicit at best and outright deceitful at the worst.

The corrupt financiers, monarchs, despots, and politicians in the galaxy had no greater defender than the befouled Knights of the Jedi Order.

Leaping down into the boarding through the hole in the ceiling, Alessandra slowed her momentum via her repulsor cells as she took in the mangled forms of the Witches, chalk white blood splattered and pooling across the floor in copious amounts. After only a few seconds, her digital-biological processors had identified the manner of death for each of them—shotgun and lightsaber blade for most. However, one unfortunate Witch had a pencil gouged deep into her left ear, presumably before her entire body below the collarbone was blasted to mangled chunks of flesh with a shotgun.

The bodies were fresh. He wasn’t far.

Activating her energy shield with a silent command, Alessandra floated out of the boardroom, tuned into the sensors on her neck piece and her own physical senses as she did.

A ping registered in her awareness. The Demon was only a couple rooms down the hall.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan attacked in deadly bursts of swift left-right-spin combo Attacks against two Cultists, moving brutally fast as he quickly eviscerated his first witch after a short, vicious trade of strikes, but quickly beheaded the second opponent.

Two more. Not enough for every second his wife had suffered.

The Force Whispered a warning to him and he spun around where he sensed an undefined, quickly approaching threat. He guessed it was yet another of his daughter's infamously deadly Androids.

When he spotted her he went into a defensive posture.

"Yet another misguided progeny of my insane child." he said coldly to Alessandra Io as he backed up a bit.

"These Witches stole every ounce of hope and joy in my life. This is me simply filing a complaint with HR." he growled. "Your business model sucks by the way."

"Tell me..." he asked. "Is it programming or loyalty to these fiends that motivates your hand? You Nuetralizers are a curious bunch. Not at all like a typical Droid. Surely you see how evil these monsters are. Surely you know they stole your Mother from me and my wife, and warped her into the Psychopath leading you. Yet you follow their orders. Why?"

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

Alessandra entered the room just as the Demon decapitated a Witch, her still-expressive head sent flying before hitting the window wall on the far end of the room with a wet thunk and sliding down to the floor, leaving a trail of white blood in its wake.

"Yet another misguided progeny of my insane child."

“You should have stayed dead.” Alessandra hissed.

"These Witches stole every ounce of hope and joy in my life. This is me simply filing a complaint with HR." he growled.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m taking it.” The Chaplain replied, as she pulled one of her chakrams from its place on her hip. She wanted to attack him right away, but something compelled the gynoid to let him continue speaking.

"Tell me..." he asked. "Is it programming or loyalty to these fiends that motivates your hand? You Nuetralizers are a curious bunch. Not at all like a typical Droid. Surely you see how evil these monsters are. Surely you know they stole your Mother from me and my wife, and warped her into the Psychopath leading you. Yet you follow their orders. Why?"

“Love. Loyalty. Empathy. Faith.” Alessandra continued, her photoreceptors turning a luminescent pink hue as she spoke. “Concepts that a Jedi couldn’t begin to understand, much less…”

Suddenly, twin beams of fiery pink energy lanced out from the Chaplain’s gaze in a one-second burn, intended to strike the Jedi in his chest from 12 meters away! She had let him speak, for a time. Nevertheless, her resolve was thus far unshaken.

“A Demon!”

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan sneered under his mask at Alessandra Io .

"Me? A Jedi? That is a thing far out of reach for me. Deep down, I'll likely never truly be one ever again. I don't act in the Order's name, what I do here. I'm here for me. I'm here to make sure what happened to me does not repeat upon some other poor soul." Nathan spat as he spun his staff, prepping for attack, sinking into the Force. "You really think I'd let the Jedi Order, or it's Code, stop me from getting my hands on as many Cultists as possible at this point? I'll chase these wretched beasts and your House Io across the Hydian Way and past the Daragon Trail, and round the remains of Csilla and through PERDITION'S FLAMES BEFORE I GIVE YOU UP!" (He tasks me! He tasks me and I shall have him!: 90 XP)

Her laser beams lanced towards him and he dashed forward, using his saber to reflect both beams back on Alessandra Io in an attempt to strike her right in the legs.

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

The Chaplain’s pink maser beams lanced out from her photoreceptors with lethal intent. On the surface, they seemed no different from a typical laser fired by a beam cannon. However, the kinetic energy the maser beams carried meant that they had far more momentum than a laser. As such, Nathan might find that deflecting them was incredibly difficult and that reflecting them back to their source was almost impossible. It was only the special customizations made to his lightsaber—intended to enhance blaster deflection—which made the former (but not the latter) feat possible.

As he did, Nathan would find that he had redirected the beams into the window wall at the far end of the room, causing it to shatter. Suddenly, strong winds rushed into the room, unleashing a howling chorus of air as Nathan charged forward. Alessandra immediately answered the threat by unleashing a repulsive burst of gravity towards his upper chest from a couple meters away, which was not only intended to send the man flying back, but also carried a high enough pressure differential to possibly rupture organs or shatter bones.

“So you’re even lower than a Jedi.” Alessandra said with a nasty, uncharacteristic snicker. “They’ve made you their dog. Valery Noble and her sycophants are all too happy to exploit your trauma to do their dirty work in the Outer Rim, while she holds parties with monarchist parasites in the Core.” The Chaplain hissed.

“You waste your strength serving them, grandfather.”

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan was caught off guard by the Master Beams. Of course it was fethin' Maser Beams. Nothing but the best for the Matriarch's Children.

Ths repulsorlift blasts effects were only withstood because Nathan used the Force to reduce his injuries, going from shattered ribs and minor organ damage to a bruised torso and a fractured ribcage. He was still tossed backward but was up a second later.

"Who the feth is Valery Noble and why the feth should I care if she is kissing some king's ass to get ahead?" Nathan snorted, refusing to show pain or any expression of it in his voice or posture as he prepared to attack again. "You think I fething care what this era's politics are? No. I don't. It's the same nonsense it always is, in any era. If anything, they'd try and stop me from taking this path. Jedi don't exactly sanction lone vigilante missions. I wouldn't ask for their permission in any case."

He pointed his blade at her.

"I doubt they know or care about me enough to try exploiting me one way or the other...and besides, it's my strength to waste." Nathan grunted, shifting his weight.

"Your Mother's wife murdered my parents, Your Mother's Master murdered my wife, murdered me just to get at your Mother. That's who you serve. Murderous, selfish parasites who steal what doesn't belong to them, hiding behind a pretense of extracting justice from the Galaxy on behalf of a wronged party that's become as bad, if not worse than the people they rebelled against and ran away from!"

He angled his blade.

"The Jedi are a bunch of arrogant, selfish pricks who've gotten as many people killed as they've rescued over the centuries! Most of their marching orders are crap! Most of their policies are crap! I've even discovered that the food in their mess area is crap! But I'd still rather suffer through that than accept the world view of these beasts that allowed them to steal everything from me. That allowed them to turn my own child against me. Can't you see that they drove her insane?!"

Nathan reached out and teleported a Cultists corpse above the head of Alessandra Io . The corpse began to fall towards her rapidly...

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

She should have seen it coming.

He had done nothing but talk, and yet, rather than punishing him for it, Alessandra found herself compelled to listen. In doing so, she had been left stupefied, shocked, and most alarmingly, indecisive.

It was a feeling she could not even begin to fathom.

The putrescent, bloated corpse of the Witch landed on top of the diminutive gynoid with a sudden thump, causing her to collapse to the ground. The body’s sickly, rotting smell filled Alessandra’s olfactory sensors with readings too disgusting to conceive, but nothing could have warned her for what came next.

The body exploded.

Acidic blood—chalk white in hue—covered the Chaplain from head to toe. The force of the blast was sudden, but it was ultimately not enough to do more than temporarily disorient her. The true damage came from the blood. Via its mildly acidic properties, the substance ate through small portions of her bodysuit, before coming into contact with flesh. Alerts suddenly flared in her awareness as the damage was inflicted across her body, inflicting hideous acidic burns across the parts of her flesh which her bodysuit had failed to protect and causing it to melt in goopy chunks off of the right side of her face, her right leg, the right side of her torso, and portions of her right arm.

Why hadn’t she seen it coming?

The Chaplain floated up from the ground, the skeletal structure on the right side of her face almost entirely exposed as she shifted her gaze back towards the Demon.

Her grandfather.

“You’ll pay for that, Demon.”

The Chaplain’s dovin basal heart began to race inside her chest as it generated a powerful swell of gravity around Nathan. Gravity compressed around him, threatening to rend him apart and squeeze him in the manner of an invisible, gravitic fist, in the hopes of causing his body to implode.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan grunted in extreme pain as the gravity effects generated by Alessandra Io threatened to crush him.

He called the Force again, taking a few moments to summon the discipline.

The formerly crushing strength on his body was reduced in severity of damage, though his lungs burned, and he felt like he was in a vice grip the whole time as he struggled towards her calmly and at his own pace, refusing to show any pain, any weakness to an enemy. You had to be more than a man. You had to be an idea. (You burned my house, and left me for dead: 700 XP)

She called him Demon. He decided to play up that.

"You're right..." he seethed as he took a step towards her. "I am a Demon. Vomited up from hell to pass judgement and sentence. Upon your whole house. To drag my traitorous, psychopathic Progeny back to hell with me!!!"

He rushed her at high speed, snarling more out sheer, animal determination to break the strange thing his daughter had built even as one side of his ribs cage fractured from the tremendous forces she imposed on him.

His fist came at her exposed skull like a freight train, even with the gravity swell. That's how much the Demon wanted her dead.

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

"You're right..." he seethed as he took a step towards her. "I am a Demon. Vomited up from hell to pass judgement and sentence. Upon your whole house. To drag my traitorous, psychopathic Progeny back to hell with me!!!"

“Droids don’t go to hell, grandfather.”

Alessandra’s dovin basal heart raced inside her chest. The Demon rushed her in spite of the otherwise crushing pressure wrought by the gravity swell, a snarl on his lips as his fist came flying towards her face. In response, the gynoid harnessed her heart to shift what had previously been a crushing gravitational pressure to what might feel like colliding with a steel wall or running within a vat of molasses—a small inhibition field focused around her opponent, in an attempt to slow him down. Simultaneously, the Chaplain leveraged her repulsor cells to dash five meters to her left, thereby pirouetting away from the punch in the event that her inhibition field failed to slow him down.

Then, as soon as she landed, a terrible sonic scream tore free from her throat from five meters away, directed straight for the Demon’s chest.

Waves of hard sound distorted the air in the manner of a sonic stunner, carrying enough force to blow open organs and shatter bones. Outside, the Demon appeared largely unharmed. However, Alessandra had made it a point to inflict terrific levels of sheer, pounding force on him, in the hopes of bleeding him out from within.

“Only demons do.”

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan held up his arms in an X-formation as he concentrated, swearing in a very non Jedi like manner as Alessandra Io taunted him.

"Don't be so sure." he sneered at her, gritting his teeth as pounding waves of Sonic Force slammed into his body, breaking another rib, ripping off loose bits of armor.

He still struggled forward, even as more armor was blasted off. His ears rang painfully, he struggled to maintain his footing and balance.

"You're advanced enough...you can burn, Biot, same as any other soul. Whether it's made of silicon or not. Devil ain't picky."

He got closer, the pain almost unbearable, even when using the Force to reduce the extent of his injuries, propelled not by the Jedi Code, but by the death of his wife.

His face could be seen better as the helmet was damaged. His eyes betrayed no Jedi Serenity. No restraint. His face would have told her the future held no meaning to him, nor even the present.

It was his green eyes that betrayed how much of a machine he was in comparison to her. Not murder, but complete, unwavering single mindedness not unlike the look some of her fellow organic Nuetralizers had when set to a task. The resemblance was ironic, uncanny, and unsettling in the same breath.

"And I am the one who will escort you to him. Now die, you thing..."

Nathan teleported behind her , drawing a piece of sharp shrapnel to ram into her spine. If it connected he would keep trying to stab her as much as possible.

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

She had found his weakness.

Unfortunately, the Demon disappeared in a flicker of light before Alessandra could exploit it. Suddenly, damage warnings lit up her awareness, accompanied by a pair of invasive sensations that caused her photoreceptors to widen with alarm.

She was being stabbed.

Almost instantly, the Chaplain launched herself forward via her repulsor cells, carrying her body ten meters away from Nathan and out of his reach, before coming to a floating halt as she spun around to face her assailant. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. Her legs went slack and most of the left half of her body—which had largely escaped devastation from the acid—had lost feeling due to the injuries to her spine. By now, it went without saying that the damage her body had suffered was extensive. The weaponized organs in both of her arms, including the ARC Casters, the plasma blades, and the tractor-pressors, were now effectively disabled, damaged, or outright destroyed. The acid had eaten through her right photoreceptor, not only blinding her in that eye, but also compromising its offensive capability.

Under normal conditions, Alessandra might have sought to escape. However, the vigorous, accelerating rhythm of her dovin basal heart spoke to a cold hatred that threatened to freeze the one subjected to it, in both a figurative and literal sense as an inhibition field was projected once more in an attempt to hold the Demon in place or at least, slow him down. Simultaneously, a little less than 2 seconds after Nathan had stabbed her in the spine, a terrible sequence of three sonic shockwaves tore free from the Chaplain’s throat from ten meters away, intended to strike the Demon in his head so as to overwhelm his senses and potentially, compromise his ability to focus on harnessing the Force.

The gruesome potential the shockwaves had to physically rip and tear the Demon apart was only a bonus.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

"Gaaaahhh!"

He'd been too slow. These damn Androids were stupid hard to put down, but then again, he supposed that was the point. But she was dangerous, even now.

The Sonic attack shredded off the upper right half of his jacket and broke his helmet, burning his skin somewhat. Only belatedly calling on the Force reduced the damage from getting any worse.

The pain of watching his wife die, of his life ripped apart, steadied him. It made him struggle forward to Alessandra Io , no longer able to concentrate on anything except reaching her.

He had a trick of his own, though. His saber had a duel phase function. He whipped it out when it seemed he was farther from her than he should be to use. In one smooth motion. One of his arms was broken, but he was not giving up.

The blade went double the normal length as it left the emitter, just enough for a good portion of it's tip to try and reach her throat...

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

Alessandra didn’t have much left.

The Chaplain raised what was left of her right arm—little more than a mangled flesh and bone—and used it to intercept the blade as it erupted to twice its normal length, pointed towards her throat. With the thick scent of burning flesh in the air, her arm was severed in the attempt, but it had served its purpose in staving off a more terminal fate. It would regrow after all, if she managed to survive.

Having sacrificed one of her arms, the Chaplain shifted towards her right via her repulsor cells, before crashing through the door leading out of the room in an attempt to escape. Simultaneously, her left photoreceptor (the only one which was still fully intact) began to emanate an azure glow, but the gynoid didn’t stop even as she reached the entrance to the stairs, at which point she pushed her way through the door and began to fly down one flight of steps after another.

At some point, survival became more important than pride.

Spoiler: Loadout

• Eversor Bodysuit
  
  • Energy Shield
    
    • Phase III “Force Avenger” Energy Shield
• Eversor Rings
• Tönn Rándýrsins | Fang of the Predator (2)

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

Nathan didn't miss a beat despite his attack not succeeding, and immediately tried a follow up attack, gaze the crazed stare of a man who had nothing left to lose. The only reason his second attack missed was because she used her flight ability mere microseconds before the blade would have connected flying down a flight of steps down the tower they were in.

Nathan didn't teleport, deliberately choosing to stay behind her even though he could have used it to cut off her escape.

"DEAD OR ALIVE, YOU'RE COMING WITH ME." Nathan called out to the fleeing biot harshly and with authority. He went at a walking pace following her down the steps, and he began to whistle a strange melody that just screamed 'I'm gonna kill the $#@+ outta you' as he followed her. The oddly sinister melody traveled down the seemingly endless steps, reverberating and echoing, a primitive, unconscious shadow of the singing Alessandra and her siblings engaged in.

Nathan pulled out a blaster pistol he had taken and occasionally, casually fired down the steps where he could see her. He wasn't aiming. He wasn't even trying to hit her. He just did that to toy with her, taunt her non verbally over her predicament. He didn't try to hurry. It was a very slow, casual pace, mixed with whistling and random gunfire on Alessandra Io

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

Alessandra kept moving, even as blaster bolts struck behind her and the Demon’s strange, eerie whistling began to echo through the stairwell. Such impetuses only compelled her to go faster, though with the lack of feeling in the entire left side of her body, running was out of the question.

Nevertheless, the Chaplain could still fly. And fly, she did.

She flew until she reached one of the lower floors of the building, at which point the stairs spat her out in a foyer area, emerging to a chorus of screams as civilians took in her horrific, mangled appearance, flesh bubbling in a bizarre, eerie sight as her body sought to heal itself, albeit slowly. Many civilians ran, but others pulled out their mobile devices to take pictures or video, to share to millions, if not even billions of people.

For her part, Alessandra scanned across the crowd, her sole working photoreceptor still emanating an azure hue as she took them in.

23 people were left in the foyer. That gave her 23 possible chances to escape.

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

As he walked down, Nathan's exhaustion and injuries fighting Alessandra Io began to take their toll.

His legs wobbled. The Nausea and migraines from the pain he had used the Force to suppress until now hit him like truck and he doubled over in agony from all Alessandra Io had put him through.

It felt like he could simply collapse in a heap at any moment. Only his need to destroy the Cult kept him awake, forced him to stand.

Lysandra's face mummified by Phyre made him keep walking. Seeing his daughter turned into a Cultist made him clench his fists. Seeing these perversions she had wrought on the innocent--and oddly enough, in a distant part of his mind he counted Alessandra among those innocents--it made him grip his lightsaber.

He pulled out his comlink.

"Dulcinea..." he called out. "Begin collection."

"Roger." came the reply from the Soldier Biot.

He staggered out of the building, battling unbelievable vertigo and nausea. He spotted her in the distance.

Civilians.

Chit.

He could have ended it in an instant, had he the strength to teleport himself. He didn't have the strength. He held himself upright, walked very slowly and calmly to her. He stopped at a respectable distance, barely able to point his blade at her. Civilians flashed their cameras at him. It was a sham. He was minutes from collapsing in exhaustion. On the other hand, the Biot wasn't doing too well either by the look of it.

"I can bring you in active, Biot..." he snapped. "Or I can bring you in as a glorified mannequin. Your choice!"

Meanwhile...

No one had wanted to risk the publicity of an assault shuttle on Denon of all places. They didn't need the kind of attention it would have brought from the local corporations, many of which were scum.

Dulcinea Mina had instead dropped from a great height, from a civilian shuttle in a wingsuit. She felt the wind whip about her face through the mask as she descended to the bright lights, an ocean of them and streams of flowing neons in different colors.

At two thousand meters, she deployed the parachute and glided in on the rectangular device, landing and rolling elegantly on the rooftop Nathan had when starting the massacre of the Witches.

She dropped in through the hole he had made, the effects of going full Frank Castle in an enclosed area terribly apparent.

Dulcinea whistled a bit, going through the carnage.

She pulled out a set of biohazard containment bags, and began collection of witch organs and blood.

However, she stopped as she spotted the arm of a witch.

"Yoink." Dulcinea muttered, grabbing the damaged arm and throwing it in...

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

"I can bring you in active, Biot..." he snapped. "Or I can bring you in as a glorified mannequin. Your choice!"

“You don’t have the strength, grandfather.” Alessandra spoke in an eerily calm tone. As if to bring force to her words, the weight of gravity was brought down upon Nathan via the Chaplain’s dovin basal heart. Given his compromised balance, it had the potential to bring the Demon to his knees or even force him down to the ground entirely. All the while, Alessandra used what little power she had left to raise her left arm before snatching the closest civilian off of his feet and drawing him slightly in front of her via a precise, yet strong tractor pulse, roughly akin to a Force Pull.

“You never did.” The gynoid continued. The civilian—a teenage boy who had gotten far too close to the scene in order to impress his friends—let out a panicked yell before he was suddenly silenced with a choked gasp as an invisible force closed in around his neck, threatening to crush his throat.

“Leave, or the boy dies.”

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

The gravity swell upon his body made him double over, like his insides were being pulled out.

Blood came out of his eyes and ears. He clutched his side.

"You don't have the strength, Grandfather..."

He dropped the shotgun because it weighed a ton, threatening to pull his arm out of his socket.

"You never did."

He fell to his knees, barely able to see the panicking hostage.

"Leave. Or the boy dies."

Blinding pain wracked every muscle. He could barely breathe. His red helm fell away, revealing his grizzled bearded face. Eyes bloodshot. He barely looked human.

"What are the Three Directives of a Bloodscrawl?" his father asked in some distant section of his mind.

He saw his wife's face mummifying.

"What are the Three Directives of a Bloodscrawl?"

"Direc-tive...One...serve the..pub..lic...trust..." He wheezed, forcing himself to pick up the shotgun through sheer will.

"Di....rec...tive...two...prot...ect...the...in...no...cent...."

He aimed the shotgun at her face with one arm. He gritted his teeth, felt tendons, small bones snapping as the strain of holding it threatened to make him black out.

In his delirium of agony he saw his wife, making a clutching gesture behind Alessandra Io .

"Di...rect...ive...threeeeeeee...."

He raised his other arm at her terrified hostage, who was not sure whether to be more scared of the thing holding him or the person going through such pain and refusing to surrender.

"Up....hold...."

"I'm pregnant, Nathan." his wife said in a sacred memory

"The...will..."

"Why did you refuse Elaine, Nathan?" His wife asked.

"Of..."

His ribs shattered. Blood poured from his mouth. And still he stood to his full height.

"The...Force..." he hissed in a whisper.

On instinct he used the last of his strength to Force Pull the terrified boy out of her grasp, firing directly at her face.

 

[Alessandra Io]

Location: Skyscraper Building - Denon
Dialogue Legend: <<Technopathy Link>> │ “Verbal”
Tags: Nathan Bloodscrawl

An eerie chill.

There was neither twist nor grimace in Alessandra’s ruined features. Only dispassionate contempt. Bloodlust. Disgust.

"The...Force..." he hissed in a whisper.

On instinct he used the last of his strength to Force Pull the terrified boy out of her grasp, firing directly at her face.

Before Alessandra could say anything, her auditory receptors registered the subtle click of a firing pin, at which point a hail of buckshot exploded out from the barrel of the Demon’s shotgun on a trajectory to strike the Chaplain in her head. Leveraging her last defense, Alessandra let go of the teenage boy and activated her shield, manifesting a shimmering barrier of energy that intercepted the blast mere inches from the gynoid’s face. Simultaneously, a bluish beam of cryogenic particles lanced out from her one remaining photoreceptor, the beam swiping across Nathan’s face in an attempt to flash-freeze and shatter the eyes inside his skull.

In effect, the two combatants had attacked each other at the same time. Alessandra was only stopped from holding her photoreceptor on target for longer than a few milliseconds by the Demon’s shotgun blast, at which point much of its kinetic force carried through her shield to send her flying back, before crashing to the ground.

Dazed, Alessandra stumbled back onto her feet. Sparing only a glimpse towards her grandfather, the gynoid glanced at the now-retreating crowd before using what was left of her energy reserves to take off from the ground via her repulsors, thereby launching herself skyward.

Then, she was gone.

Final Post.​