Graveyard Shift

[The Amalgam]

A box.

They had traveled here, been ambushed, nearly killed...and for a box. Leejun Forrwiirmeni had gone bad over a stolen box. They'd both risked death over a small box.

We probably could have been friends, once... the Amalgam thought, somewhat ashamed of the disgusting amount of sentimentality behind it.

She didn't often feel rotten about having to betray someone. She knew it was coming. She had felt a slight pain betraying that man on the space station where she'd nearly lost her life fighting Howard The Pirate.

Both of them risking so much for a box...the main difference was that Leejun had valued the box itself. [member="Lady Kay"] valued the box's contents. The Amalgam wanted to laugh at how much they had both risked. How many they had both killed for a box.

She played with the uncomfortable idea that perhaps they were too alike, despite her being royalty. She hated the idea as much as it intrigued her.

She didn't want to be similar to Kay. She had sacrificed a lot to gain this kind of power. Friends. Normalcy. Even Uri to some degree, though she planned to have her back soon enough. Just as soon as she got a few things out of the way. To be similar to any but one's chosen heir was to invite pity. Pity would get someone like her killed. She could not afford to have it. To own it was to own weakness.

Kay would have been far happier as a Dark Adept, the Shi'ido thought as Kay told her it was time to go. It was looking rather unlikely this was anything but a personal visit...but a box had once meant that much to her.

Her belief that sentiment was weakness was confirmed when the smoke grenades popped in and then the concussion grenades. The Amalgam's alchemized bodies were actually remarkably resilient. They had reflexes and stamina to match force speed and could keep moving even to the point of terminal decay. But it could only take so much kinetic punishment. Concussion grenades went off and slammed her into the hull of the rotting ship. She was heavily disoriented and couldn't find her pistol. She'd been distracted. Momentarily bitter at the fact she couldn't have friends.

And now she was paying for it as a boot from one of the masked archers in silver cloaks came down on her face...

(Skyfall by Adele plays)

(Trippy bond type opening sequence occurs)

The Amalgam snapped awake in five point restraints in a silver cell, utterly nauseated. She saw alkahest script written around the restraint bed. Her face was pale, drenched in sweat, eyes pale sulphur. Imprisonment wards. She supposed she'd be flattered if it did not hurt so much.

On of the Archers, distinguished from his bretheren by his gunmetal gray cloak, and black face mask, along with slightly more ornate leather gear approached with a clear syringe of a green, glowing liquid.

"Studies of your bodily tissues revealed an acute allergy to nullification resin..." the man said.

"If you want to study me so closely at least bring a bottle of Plague-Era Nubian wine--get the merlot, if you can though. Anything between one and two centuries is delectable. Anything at two twenty five and above is barely better than vinegar..." the Amalgam wheezed. "Oh, and you might wanna get rid of these runes. So I can drain and murder you, you see..."

The Archer snorted, pacing around her. "So you're the infamous Amalgam. End of dozens of specialized Jedi groups. Seducer of a thousand adepts to the darkness..."

"Two thousand. After taxes..." the shapeshifter joked. "Wait...no, its not quite two thousand. 'Cause y'know, I was sort of sleeping with a few of them beforehand and turning them just sort of happened as a result. I don't count those...probably more like one thousand, nine hundred and ninety five, and I know this because...well...I always remember the really good ones..."

"And her infamous wit. You are a walking plague."

"Only when there is no morning coffee. I'm a running plague the rest of the time, son. And even though I'm sweating like a pig here, I still look loads better than you. I mean seriously, archery? Archery, dude? That's where we're at these days? What happened, you got bored firing blasters?" Amy mocked. "Okay dipchit, what do you want? And where is my associate?"

"You mean the Queen of Commenor, Kay Arenais. Close by. Safe. It's you you need to worry about..."

The archer injected the Amalgam in the neck. She started to twitch and thrash, screaming in emotional torment as something quite foreign to her started to seep into her mind as the poison spread.

Compassion...

Meanwhile.

Kay had been deposited in a silvery suite of lush pillows and artwork. There was a table with a glass and a pitcher of cold red fruit juice and glazed donuts, along with Sapir tea bags and leaves and a fully boiled kettle. The Amalgam's screams as an alkahest-based emotion poison pried at every hidden doubt she had about the strength of the dark side would not reach Kay from here when she awoke. There was a selection of new clothes and robes for Kay to pick from when she awoke...

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay's light armour did well to protect her from some of the grenades. But not all of them. She fell into unconsciousness before [member="The Amalgam"] did, as the quantity of the grenades had proven too much for the both of them.

Everything went black.

The smells of boiled water helped to draw Kay out of her sleep. She knew that smell anywhere, just as she did with her tea. Through countless times of making tea, her body knew when it was ready and when to crumple the Sapir tea leaves. So it came at no surprise that she would awake now.

She awoke with a start, finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings. Was she still on the Graveyard? Or was it all a dream? She sat up in the bed and took a look around. There was nothing but luxury here, as though she was in some Royal Palace. Where the heck was she?

Kay slipped off the bed and directed herself to the tea set, already taking some of the tea leaves and crumpling them in a cup before she poured the hot water over them and let it steep. Her next step was to look at the clothing provided. All of the outfits were her size and of various styles. Yet she wasn't comfortable with removing her light armour. The two of them were attacked. Luxury or not, it was very possible that she wasn't safe here.

There was a knock at the door before it opened and a woman came in. It was one of their attackers. "Oh good, you're awake. Welcome to the Sacred Keep, Queen Arenais."

"Where's my friend? Where's Amy?"

"You mean the Sith that held you hostage?"

"Hostage?! She was my bodyguard! She was protecting me."

"That abomination isn't welcome here. We are seeing to it that she is no longer a threat."

"A threat? She only became a threat because YOU attacked us with no cause. All we did was come here for--" Kay suddenly remembered what she came here for. A wooden box that she had left behind in her mother's ship the last time that she visited many years ago. At first she didn't see it, but then there it was, on a nightstand next to the bed. She approached it quickly and opened it, letting out a sigh of relief as nothing inside was touched. Her attention turned back to the female archer. "We found what we came for. I'd appreciate it if we could go back home."

"You may go, but the abomination cannot. It's too risky to let her go in her current condition."

"Current condition? Where is she? I want to see her!"

"That's not possible until her condition improves."

Kay clenched her jaw, narrowing her eyes. Was she a prisoner or not? Keeping the box under her arm, she stepped past the woman archer and into the hallway. "Amy?! AMY?!!" She needed to find her and take her back home. This Sacred Keep wasn't safe for either of them.

 

[The Amalgam]

(DO YOU WANT TO SAVE YOUR PROGRESS?)

(YES)

(PROGRESS SAVED)



The silver garbed Archers that had been stationed to watch the Amalgam as the Alkahest poison did its work wanted to be sick. One guy had barfed already. "How much longer is this going to take?" one of them asked watching the various...shapes The Amalgam's face had taken as she screamed in agony.

"Her body chemistry is alchemized by the Dark Side. Too high a dose will kill her. Too low a dose will result in it simply either not taking or not lasting long. Plus, the poison has to recirculate in her body constantly." another archer explained, keeping his golden automatic crossbow trained on her.

"Are we sure it even will work? We saw the scans. Nothing natural about her..." one on an upper walkway mentioned...

The Amalgam screamed and screamed until she couldn't scream anymore, the poison digging deep, exposing emotions she denied or suppressed, encouraging them. It was unfathomable torment for a creature of the dark side to be forced to feel that which they did not wish. It had been made easier by her indulging in seeing it from Kay's point of view. She hadn't meant to.

It had never really occured to her before this moment just how lonely she was. She had dedicated her whole life to the Bogan. All of it. But to the exclusion of all company, to the denial of anything except that which honored it.



Uri Udinia smiled at her as a clean cloth full of disinfectant was applied to her cheek. Neither the monster that hid under the lie treating her nor the lie itself had ever been so proud of her.

It had always known she was special always known she was more clever, more ruthless than the rest. It had known ever since she had surprised and defeated Laertia, who made the monster...nervous...

She was magnificent, clever, tactical. Everything a follower of the Brain Demon should be. But it was enjoying administering aid. This was one of the few times it had a chance to be affable towards her. Uri needed strict discipline so she wouldn't falter, wouldn't fail.

The med facility was carved of stone, sun coming in through stained glass. Uri had defeated Lur Redtide for his ship. The monster under the lie was impressed. Uri's green eyes twinkled at her and the monster writhed, wanting to escape the lie so it could actually talk to her, convert her...but she was still trapped, the Lie having grown terrifyingly strong.

Uri smiled again and its heart went still...



The Amalgam, overwhelmed by those hidden feelings it wasn't as good as ignoring as it had once been...inverted. Disappeared for a while.

And someone else, something she had to fight before, something she found to her distress she could not quite kill...

...an inner weariness. An inner disillusionment.

...a desire to know what it was like to try and create...

Her suit burned suddenly, her face rearranging itself as her willpower against the poison failed. The archers took notice of this. "Is it safe?" one of them asked, uncertain.

"Don't worry..." a soft voice called out. "Even if I wanted you dead, I don't kill like the other. I'm quicker about it."

Meanwhile...

The one who had injected the Amalgam had been called after [member="Kay Arenais"] refused to be placated. He was irritated, but hid it well as he approached her in his darker, hooded garb approached the queen of Commenor. Of course the clean hands type would get squeamish.

"Your majesty..." The Archer spoke with a bow as he approached.

"I'm so terribly sorry...but what you are asking is simply not possible." The masked Archer explained, drawing to his full height.

"I am known as Adreean Falkon..." Falkon explained. "I am here with my sect of Jedi, known as The Archers of Ashla...and you were alone with an extraordinarily dangerous monster known as The Amalgam. Her crimes against the Jedi are many and bloody. We are...repurposing her. Whatever you think of her..." Falkon advised solemnly, reasonably, trying to make her understand.

"She's not worth it. She is an utter monster, a killer of innocents and innocence. She infiltrates groups, pretends to be one of them, making friends, mentoring, even--and then...she emerges...and kills them. This creature cannot be saved, only repurposed. And if you think there is so much as a flicker of something relatable, something human, then you are fooling yourself. She would only have stuck a knife in your back in the end."

One archer rushed in. "Sir! Its taken effect!"

"Ah, good..." Falkon remarked, bidding Kay to follow him.

"Your concern is admirable but misplaced. When you see what the chemical has done, you will see why she is far better off with us than on her own, where she can inflict harm just for the feth of it..." Falkon rumbled, striding down silvery, elegant passages that had been engraved in gentle swirls and curves, the floor polished black as he led Kay to the Amalgam's prison chamber.

She looked the same facially speaking, but her hair was different, now long, red and curly, dead purple eyes replaced by sharp, expressive blue ones. The archers surrounded her, crossbows aimed at her as she was sealed inside a black combat body glove, her wrists shacked by ribbed, golden cuffs that recirculated the alkahest poison in her, interfering with the Dark Side's efforts to re emerge.

She was sweating, dark circles under those clear blues, veins under her face tinged green as she swooned, clearly in great pain.

"Her body is mutated by the darkness...it can't quite handle what we've introduced. It'll kill her eventually, but she'll be of some use to us before she goes. Do you know why her body is mutated by the way?" Falkon asked Kay matter of factly. "Because its not hers. She took it. Stole it from another. Go on witch...tell her!" he gestured to the red head.

The woman swooned again.

"It...its true, I'm afraid, Kay. This body was never mine...I tore an innocent soul from it..." the red head got out weakly, unable to look at Kay or any of them out of the soul crushing shame the poison caused.

"So you see, your majesty..." Falkon added smoothly after. "There really is no need to leave with her. We are aware of your situation with the empire...you can leave right now, and there is no way they would hold it against you. Your concern is wasted on such an evil creature...only reason she's nice now is because of what she's been drugged with. Otherwise, the atrocities she's commited wouldn't bother her in the slightest."

"I may be light sided...but I know a control freak when I see it..." the red head spoke, her cells on fire.

Falkon turned to a nearby archer. "Up the dosage..."

"We're close to max..." the archer protested. "She'll break down even faster..."

"Up. The. Dosage." Falkon repeated.

The Reflection of the Amalgam stiffened as her dosage was increased by the archer through wirelessly adjusting her cuffs to deliver an increased amount. Her eyes rolled into her head, skinn gaining a deathly pallor.

"Oh, Laertia...Laertia..." The Reflection hissed to herself, remembering the other daughter, the one that caused the monster so much pain to be reminded of because she saw too much of herself in the injured woman, not quite coherent as she collapsed to her knees. "I've been so terrible to you..."

The Reflection wanted to be sick at how it had once treated Laertia Io. She would have cut her limbs off to beg forgiveness. And what it had done to Uri...the Reflection in her pained misery knew there would no undoing most of the damage she had done already. Part of her wanted to die, and let the poison do its work, if only so she would stop hurting her two daughters...

But the monster, buried, but not quite defeated, did not want to die at all...

"Laertia...Uri" she whispered as she was pulled to her feet...

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay stopped in the hallway as she was approached by one of the Archers. She bowed her head in return out of politeness, but that was about it. The Archer introduced himself, followed by himself trying to justify his actions to her. Repurposing?? What in the Force did that mean?

Just as she was about to ask, Falkon was interrupted by another. As it seemed that she was given permission, Kay followed, taking note of where she was being led, not to mention the strangeness of it all. Spells, magic, all of it was unnerving. She had only known of [member="Darth Prazutis"] and [member="The Amalgam"] using such things; so to her it was a Darkside art, not something for the Jedi.

Looking to Amy as she came upon her, it was very clear that she had been tortured. Kay knew very well what that felt like. Such an experience never leaves you. It can be forgotten at times, but the memories will always remain. It's a scar on one's soul as a part of it was removed.

As Falkon continued to speak, Kay's body tensed all the more, her eyes never leaving Amy. Darksider or not, liar or not, she had risked her life for her. And now Kay was to what? Leave her there to be tortured to death? That was unthinkable.

"How can you possibly think that this is okay?? How can you call yourselves Jedi when you delight in the pain and suffering of another person?? Don't you see? You have become the monsters that you fight!" Kay shook her head as she looked at each of them, clearly disappointed in their actions and their apparent solutions. "And what makes you think that everything would be okay if I was to return to Commenor without her? She is my escort!
She is their eyes and ears to be sure that I'm not undermining their rule! So to have her gone...they will kill my people! They already destroyed an entire city, ending the lives of over 8 million people as punishment. How many lives would be lost now? And all so that you could repurpose her for Force knows what and see that she goes through as much torment as possible?" She stepped forward to Falkon so that she was mere inches away from him. "YOU attacked US!
And all from YOUR prejudice without even learning anything about us and measuring whether or not we were a threat. That's not how Jedi are supposed to act! Instead you are acting like the Sith! Now do the right thing and let her go!" Her eyes narrowed as her anger grew, yet for now she kept it under control.

"I need her..."

Kay needed Amy for many things. But it wasn't like she was going to explain all of that to the Archers.

 

[The Amalgam]

"I'm afraid that won't be possible..." Falkon trailed, clearly completely unfazed by her condemnation. He wasn't about to let a prize like The Amalgam go. Not after all the Jedi she had killed. Besides, they needed her more.

She was about to be used to open up something...

Falkon clapped his hands and the Archers seized the now red headed reflection of The Amalgam by the arms and began dragging her out of the chamber to prep her for the dig site.

"Didn't you hear her you feths?!" The Reflection snapped woozily, her legs feeling weak. "You're endangering an entire planet! Is it The Jedi way to act so recklessly?"

"You are no one to lecture us on The Jedi Way, Cretin..." Falkon responded firmly before looking at [member="Kay Arenais"] and sighing.

"I do wish we could have done this the easy way. After she's dead, we'll give you what's left. We've been harrassing the Sith Empire lately. I'm sure they'll believe you when you say there was nothing you could have done."

Two guards appeared behind Kay with automatic crossbows. It was clear defiance would not be permitted.

"Please escort Queen Arenais to her guest quarters. Make sure she is unharmed..." Falkon ordered.

"The Sith are not going to believe a thing that woman says and you sure as chit know it." The Reflection spoke again defiantly, trying to struggle against the guards, but she was still too weak and got punched in the stomach and doubled over vomiting up black and glowing green blood, the light and dark now at war in her very cells. She was finally dragged out of the chamber when she got too weak to struggle...

...or so it seemed...

Later on...


The Reflection saw she was being taken to the hangar, she saw more silvery rooms with white lights filled with space ship parts. But she had other plans. She didn't want to kill these people like her regular self would have. But she wasn't above crippling them. Ah, the wonderful vagaries of alignments in The Force. She was being held by two people. Way less than they should have kept around. They were too reliant on the poison.

Though she knew it would only accelerate the decay, she called on the light, because she wanted to feel it at least once and to weaken the beast inside her. She felt great pain, bult also invigoration as she used Force Valor to heighten her speed, stamina, and reflexes, ripping her arms out of the grip of her captors, Force pulling a single bladed lightsaber out of one of the guards belts activating a blue blade and cutting off one of her captors legs. She had to rescue Kay. While she would not have fought these people under ordinary circumstances, and would have preferred death to hurting the only two people she could ever call her own children any further, (How she had treated Laertia under the influence of the monster within her sickened her) she could not allow a planet to come to harm just so she could finally have the release of death.

And she was not willing to let her new friend suffer the horrors of The Sith alone.

The Reflection was much better with Niman than the monster was, as well as much better with single bladed combat in general. She expertly deflected, relying on knowledged gained from Soresu as she fought her way through the sudden swarm of Archers that appeared as she dashed through a section of maintanance rooms, being fired at with both blaster and arrow as she retreated, deflecting some of the shots back.



Laertia Io stood in the middle of the temple ruins on Bpfasshe, facing the umbaran Sith Knight, clad in red gear, a curved hilt lightsaber in his hand. The Monster watched from behind the eyes of a lie from above at a distance, watching the teenager with the pale skin and spiky jacket, her very black hair in an odd moe cut that wasn't that dissimilar from what the monster itself normally preferred.

The Lie respected her, but the monster preferred avoidance. Laertia brought up too many bad memories of what she had once been. She avoided triggering those memories by keeping as much distance as possible.

Laertia had tracked this one for days. She had finally cornered him, destroying the cache of Sith Relics he had been gathering. He hadn't liked that. He seemed bemused.

"A padawan?! Months of attacking Jedi targets and the order sends a mere padawan to fight me?" The umbaran Sith laughed coldly, his yellowed, pointed teeth glaring from the sunlight that showed through the roof. Laertia said nothing in reply, simply taking out her weathered, black lightsaber hilt that she had collected from a previous Sith. Laertia lacked skill in most ranged methods in combat, but in melee weapins she excelled. She had chosen Soresu to use against the Sith, an Inquisitor, by the looks of it. The temple itself was older than The Gulag Plague, Filled with long deserted shelves and fallen, broken down Jedi statues. She had driven him here after engaging him on a roof in the Marketplace earlier, and had cut off all retreat. He wanted out? He'd have to fight her.

Snarling at her lack of response, the Umbaran fired multiple bolts of lightning at the padawan, who activated her lightsaber, a blade with an all green core and white aura, at the last second to block the lethal stream of energy. The Sith snarled and his red blade went active as he clashed against her, the red blade violently raining down on her in killing strikes from multiple angles. But the pale padawan had a tricky one handed take to her Soresu, using it to endlessly block and parry his lethal slashes, surprising the Sith by just how precise her defense was. He didn't know the half of it. Laertia utterly stunned the monster by how much she already understood lightsaber combat--she embraced the ancient traditions with a vigor that made the monster ashamed to call herself a lightsaber duelist.

Laertia's style with Soresu was a quick flitting thing, and against another lightsaber user resembled a more defensive makashi...the monster grinned with sadistic relish as she watched the umbaran Sith, who was himself quite muscular, consistantly fail to find a way through her defense, even as he varied his own pattern, switching between both saber and lightning to try and break the thuggish looking girl's surprisingly tight defense, the girl having put herself in the Soresu mindset of not meeting aggression with more aggression, Laertia's dark gray eyes flashing as the lightning from one of his hands came dangerously close to hitting her.

The Monster respected Laertia. It even on some level felt regret that it could not call her friend. But she was capable of creating so much turmoil and doubt it knew it could not allow itself to empathize with her.

The Umbaran Sith broke off his flurry of attacks and guarded. Laertia went back into a Soresu opening stance, her blade held horizontally over her head, pointing forward.

"Much conflict I sense you..." the Umbaran hissed, trying a different tactic.

Laertia's response was to telaport five meters away from him from behind swinging as she dashed forward. He barely caught her blade in time, and felt his arms shuddering as she slammed her blade down in the falling avalanche technique of Djem So, the man barely stopping her attacks by desperately drawing on his rage to meet the girl's extraordinary strengths as she gave no quarter in her assault, always striking to kill, her strange green blade furiously driving him backward, then to one knee, then to both knees. Fear at last entered the Sith's eyes as he defended with a now rapidly waning strength, Laertia bearing down on him like an angry wookiee as her strikes finally broke his defense, cleaving through an arm, then a torso. The umbaran Sith, dead in the span of a minute in a half, caught completely by surprise by the thuggish looking Padawan half his age, died with a look of utter astonishment on her face. The Lie liked that she used peace to exhaust the opponent. The monster liked that Laertia used war to break her foe. She would make a fine champion of The Dark Side, if she could be turned. The monster wanted to turn her, save her soul, if nothing else, than maybe she'd be more willing to mentor her.

Laertia breathed hard, standing over the sith, still clutching her active blade, which receded into her hilt. The monster felt disappointed as it watched regret play out on Laertia's face. It always played out when she killed, that regret. The monster wanted to find a way to shake her of that regret. She had nothing to apologize for.

If only she were not trapped...



The Reflection snapped out of her monstrous other half's memory. How much pain had she caused her daughter by being so distant? It tore at her, even as all these archers tried to kill her as she retreated through the work shops, sending bolts back at their sources, and dodging the arrows with the precise movements Laertia had employed to survive. Switching between Soresu and Niman whenever one of the archers, closed, and she parried using her force enhanced reflexes, wincing as she felt the light break down her body a little bit more with each second she channeled it through her body, coughing glowing green blood as she cut off the arm of the screaming archer that tried to match her blade to blade, dashing out of the workshops and ran onto a path back to the hangar, cutting off the limbs of those that stood in her way, her creativity allowing her to find a way around most of the lightsaber guards she encountered, a surge of electric judgement doing whatever her saber could not, an intense pain through out her entire body as she finally reached the hangar, pursued by archers the whole way. "Lock down the hangar!" one of them shouted as she used the Force to cloak herself, instantly becoming too weak to do anything but crawl on the floor as she desperately crawled away, the archers searching for her.

It would not be long before they would try sensing her, so she hid in the shadows of mechanical loading cranes and reduced her presence in the Force to almost nothing, everything hurting as she heard them coming closer.

"You can't escape, Monster!" One of the archers shouted as they spread through the hangar, looking for her. Stored in the hangar itself was a gunmetal gray J-Type barge. Her second daughter loved nubian ships. So did the reflection an extant

She mourned that if Commenor was to survive she would have to return there with Kay, and return as the Amalgam, and that she would go on hurting her children as a result. It made a newly freed heart break at the realization even as she kept herself from being sensed.

Struggling, she crawled with tired, breaking down muscles. That Falkon guy had put these golden cuffs on, there had to be a way to get them off if they were circulating this ashla poison in her body. Then she'd have to find some way of purging the toxin from her system...

But first she had to find a way to sneak out of here and rescue Kay. The Amalgam saw an old maintenance tunnel and crawled into it. Even weakened, even lightsided, these people were fools to think she could be so easily beaten...

That whole thing about capturing them earlier didn't count, The Reflection thought as she crawled through the electronics tunnel, dropping her force hiding to sense Kay before immediately clamping down on her presence again. She wanted to throw up from the strain.

"Laertia...I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry..." The redhead whispered mournfully as she crawled, seized by guilt...

(Plasmid Acquisition Theme Plays)

(Skill increased!)

(Skill Re-learned!)

(Amalgam's Single bladed lightsaber skill increased!)

(Amalgam's skill at Niman increased!)

Re-learned Skill: SORESU

Spoiler

Third classical form of lightsaber combat, used primarily for defense against all foes, whether melee or ranged. Lacks offensive options and range

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay took in a deep breath as Falkon denied her the right of having [member="The Amalgam"] freed. She clenched her jaw. The very idea that she would take joy in the torture of one that looked after her was absurd.

"Do I look like a pilot to you? Do you think that I know how to unlock her ship and access it successfully? And what's more, do you think that I can get her ship safely off of this world?"

Her words seemed to fall on deaf ears. They didn't care. None of them did. They had no compassion. The Graveyard seemed to have twisted what was supposed to be Lightsided beings into beings that just didn't care about anything but their own ideals. All others be damned.

Kay let herself be guided back to the guest room that she occupied earlier. All the while her mind was working on trying to formulate a plan. What she had said earlier was true. She wasn't much of a pilot and certainly not skilled enough to escape the Graveyard on her own.

As expected, the two archers took to their posts in the hallway on either side of the door to her room. Figures. She walked inside and slammed the door behind her, before making her way over to her belongings. "What am I going to do?..." Her words were spoken softly to herself. Yet already she was looking for some other way out. But even if she managed to get out...would she be able to find Amy and get her back to her ship?

How many more people will die?

Kay was beginning to feel really foolish now. And selfish. All this for her mother's remains.

Such a hefty price to be paid....

 

[The Amalgam]

(Alternate Character Theme Song Power Up)

Theme: "Nobody does it better" by Carly Simon

Spoiler

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uWWwKDttHnM

The Archers sweapt through the facility after [member="Kay Arenais"] had been escorted back with guards posted. Forty minutes checking every nook and crawl space and they had still turned up nothing. Nothing at all. Teams of them filed into rooms Falkon spitting fire that she had managed to escape. Every foyer, dining hall, training chamber in the silver and gold facility was strip searched, twice. They checked places even they would not have normally checked.

One squad, clearing out the spartan training section of the tentative academy they had built on the graveyard, entered another part of it that had been rendered pitch black. It made them all nervous. There was no sign of anyone that should have been there...staves lay abandoned, swords discarded. The only signs of struggle were the faint specks of blood that showed up dark against the gold embroidered floor tiles.

"Stay close..." The hooded archer leading the squad ordered, cocking his gaspowered auto-crossbow and moved slowly through each dorm room. No sign of the others. How had she gotten rid of them? And so quickly?"

One Archer lagging behind screamed as a vibroblade thrown from the shadows to his left lodged itself into his skull, dropping and killing him instantly, telekinetically yanked out and back into the darkness. The Archers, by this point having moved deep into the training section main foyer, lined with great statues in stainless durasteel of ancient Jedi at four corners, wheeled and fired at the direction, immediate calling for reinforcements, trying to sense her. They shined the flashlights mounted on their crossbows and sweapt the whole area.

"How the hell haven't we spotted her?" one of the female archers asked. To their credit, they all grouped together in a circle, facing outward. This would make it extremely difficult to ambush.

From the sides, not the above. The Woman dropped down from a chandalier and her stolen blue lightsaber activated right into a thigh, the red headed woman, paler and with one side of her face having partly broken down, revealing glowing green jaw muscles working against teeth as green lightning stunned the man in front of her, dodging the bolts at close range as the Reflection Force jumped out of another set of bolts, slipping into the her Ashlafied persona's knowledge of CQB and Atrisian Judo, snapping arms and flipping over people and hurling them into others, mixing it with her lightsaber attacks to remove limbs not killing any of them but incapacitating them so badly that they would not oppose any attempt to leave. The Reflection, knowing it would only make things worse, once more called on Force Valor to strengthen her slowly breaking down body, as she dived into combat with a savage ease. The Reflection was just as deadly as The Amalgam, it was simply that she chose not to give as much free reign to her instinct to kill as her other self did. Plus, she didn't want to shame her daughters any more than she already had.

Ribs and forearms snapped under expertly delivered pressure from her knuckles, her foot breaking a jaw and slashing a torso with a light cut, kicking it back into another, the blue blade removing more limbs that flew off elsewhere.

Ten seconds later, more than twenty five people lay incapacitated, two dead. She supposed she should be thankful she had not killed more.

If only they had not been forced to come here. If only Kay wasn't here, than the Reflection could keep the golden, poison cuffs on her suit until she mercifully died, or found some way to use them to stay in control and leave that murderess asleep--

But no...Commenor needed its Queen. Had The Reflection known what was in store for Kay she would have been even more torn than she already was. As it stood, she was in very great pain. If she kept this up she would not make it off the planet.

The cuffs had to come off. But there was no assurance she could even treat herself even if she did. She needed a dark nexus, and that was not happening while they remained here.

The Reflection grabbed one of the injured, feeling more headed to her location.

"The cuffs." She barked, slapping him. "How do I get them off?"

"Falkon...he...has the disable switch..."

"What does he want me for?"

"Ancient complex...needs a powerful light adept to open it...but none of us have the strength, even with the light..."

"Gee, with kidnapping and poisoning I wonder why. Its truly flabbergasting..." the Reflection commented snidely, though her tone went back soon to that crisp, no nonsense attitude. "So let me take a stab at this...Falkon, he comes across me, and since I'm way stronger than any of you jokers...he thought he could use the poison to cheat, make me light sided and strong enough to open his lock...then kill me...it's a good plan, actually. Refreshing whenever someone figures out a workaround...but you picked the wrong person to strongarm..." she growled, kneeing him. She felt Kay, felt her being guarded. More reinforcements showed and she was soon running, ducking into a service tunnel access that had not yet been sweapt, cloaking her presence and crawling along its length. She noticed the insides looked very old. Too old to have been set up by the archers. Given the state of the Graveyard she could only assume that the whole place had been repurposed from an older structure on the planet.

Even if they could figure out a way to slip out there was still the matter of the Archers catching them. They had been using the planetary spacial warps somehow to transit...they had been nearly overwhelmed the first time. They could simply try again.

Lonely and heartbroken and overstressed, both the knowledge and guilt of what she was agonizing to even contemplate, the shapeshifter, once something that had considered itself a Jedi, could only let a few, glowing green tears fall and run down a slowly ruining face as the faces of its inner, truer self's victims rans like a twisted river across her psyche. She saw Kadmus Riath's face and had to stop from letting out a hiss of pain at how her other self had executed the young Marksman. Uri would kill her for Kadmus alone. Laertia had had a crush on the man, and would have a similar reaction. And she would deserve it utterly if they chose to take revenge. She had destroyed her family. May she rot in hell forever for it.

But not yet...

The Reflection crawled, trying not to think of her daughters, yet feeling the pain of all the monster within had willingly done. She would never forgive herself for any of it, especially the petty stuff. She wanted to eat her own saber, but the horror of what would happen to Commenor prevented this.

Her stomach lurched as she thought again of Laertia, lonely and tending to her rabbits, growing more sullen and distant. The monster within had ruined it all...why could it not just stay asleep--?

The Reflection looked down at her hands as she crawled, feeling the skinn starting to break down there as well. She had to hurry...her veins burned...

The service networks were actually quite large, and went to many places in the complex. But the Reflection was after only Kay. Just Kay.

She finally stopped, wiping tears of poisoned blood from her face as she rolled and faced up, undoing the seals on the plate above and lifting it off the hatch.

Laertia's gray eyes stared from within, making the Reflection choke a little out of grief and all her lost chances. She knew there would be no redemption in the end. Not for her. And even if there was it would never come from Laertia. She knew her. Laertia would go insane if the truth came out. Because to her, it would all be a lie from that point forward, no matter how badly the Reflection would want it otherwise. She would rather be dead than to have to tell Io. She hoped Uri could kill the Monster. Because it would break her heart all the harder to have to die at the hands of the lonely street magician. The Monster had watched Laertia occasionally, but it was more out of fear and discomfort at their similarities than anything.

The Reflection rose up, more of the muscles on her face exposed as she silently slid into Kay's quarters, staring in alarm as one of her right hand fell off and started to break down into green, fungi ridden mush. The Reflection quickly spotted a towel and bundled her arm in it.

"Kay?" The Reflection called out in a whisper as she explored the large guest suite, her sharp blue eyes scanning the quarters before spotting Kay at her belongings. The Reflection, weakening rapidly, lurched a bit towards her.

"Kay...we have to leave...follow..."

The Reflection swooned as she approached, before collapsing to one knee, the skin on some of her neck glowing green and cracking. She scooted against the bed, sweating. Concealing her presence even this long was greatly accelerating her bodily decay. She would have to drop it and fight soon...somehow...

"We have to find out how they are controlling the warp anomalies before we leave. Otherwise they'll just pour reinforcements wherever we go..."

She could not take it. She dropped the concealment effect, catching her breath as she heard shouting outside. A stolen blaster shot the lock.

"That should buy a few minutes..." The Reflection grumbled. "We need to find a dark nexus soon. I can't protect you as I am for much longer. You're going to need the...the...the disgusting evil wretch that I normally am...within the next hour...or you'll be all alone with these fething idiots...they're sloppy. Shoulda had a ysalamir around my sorry ass at all times...Gods, I'm hungry...is there any food?" She asked Kay as she heard increased banging outside.

"I've never wanted one of my daughter's fruit topped pizza's so badly in my entire life...she..." The Reflection was lost a moment as Laertia's eyes again haunted the back of her skull.

"She..."

The door was forced open unexpectedly and the Reflection shot the two guards trying to storm them in the head.

"She really knew how to make someone smile..." The Reflection muttered disconnectedly, feeling the emotional knife pain of knowing one's life consisted almost solely of violence and murder, whatever her current persona, and knowing it would force her apart from her daughters driving the knife in that much harder. But at least she could protect a world from retaliation in the meantime.

The Reflection struggled to her feet, face now quite gaunt as she pulled out her lightsaber with a grim expression.

"Stay behind me..." The Reflection said to her as she exited out the suite. The alarm klaxons blared and the Reflection began cutting through archers that tried to attack them as she proceded deeper into what looked to be the research section, knowing any answers about the warps were likely to be found there...

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay was surprised to hear [member="The Amalgam"] 's voice inside her quarters. She was just preparing some tea as she always did. The tea helped her to think, helped her to relax and focus. But now there wasn't time for that. Amy was here and she was falling apart. Literally.

She abandoned her tea, looking to the door as the guards on the other side were heard trying to break in. At the mention of food, Kay quickly grabbed a handful of biscuits and brought them with her as she reached Amy's side. "Here...it's not pizza, but it's something." It was all that she could get at such short notice, especially as in no time at all, they were on the run again.

More violence, more destruction, and these Archers were supposed to be Lightsiders? It was absurd that they'd call themselves that with all of the wrongdoings that they had done. How long would they have kept Kay here? Would they have hoped for her to crash on her way out from trying to escape the gravity anomalies that the Graveyard had so that she'd be out of their hair? It was quite possible.

Kay followed Amy quickly, after picking up her box and slipping it into her satchel. She used a blaster on some of the Archers that Amy couldn't get, ensuring that they were not stopped on their way to the research wing. Not that she knew that that was where they were going. It was just a corridor, one that could possibly help them to get out. So of course with the first door that she found, Kay opened it and went inside. There were rows of shelves, each with different items, some of them marked, some of them not. "What are they doing in this place?...." There were creatures in there as well, some in cages, some in aquariums, all of them making noises at their sudden appearance. "Running tests...This is insane." She hoped that she didn't find humanoid test subjects as well. But with the way that they treated Amy, it was looking pretty likely that they would.

 

[Maple Harte]

Arrived in: Scarlet Phantom (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/124563-scarlet-phantom-modified-h-type-nubian-yacht/)

Wearing: Maple's Armor (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/126256-maple-hartes-armor/)

Absorbelt (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/102333-absorbelt/)

Armed with: Uri's Cane

Electrum Gaze (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/136368-electrum-gaze/)

A scarlet starship shaped like a chrome rocket streaked through the atmosphere of a troubled Graveyard, its pilot's mind just as troubled.

Weeks. Weeks of burning through what few contacts she had managed to cultivate to get even a whiff of the Amalgam's movements across the stars. A thousand corpses she had chased to find one who told her she would be escorting a VIP for The Saaraishash. A hundred more it had taken to tell her when.

She was taking no chances...one fight with the Amalgam had told her she would need to bring a game better than any she had ever brought before. The Amalgam was that dangerous.

And her obsession was that much of a mystery to Maple Harte.

She knew what the Amalgam was. A Shi'ido witch of the Darkness and highly trained assassin with as much red in her ledger as Maple's own, maybe more, and violently obsessed with Maple, killing her past friends. She'd found Hadrian last month. The Amalgam had videotaped the whole gruesome process. Maple had had nightmares.

What she did not understand was the why of it. The obsession this particular assassin had with Maple baffled the bounty hunter. But she could solve that question after The Amalgam paid with her life for killing most of her family. Skip. It was the future and the VIP the Amalgam was escorting, [member="Kay Arenais"] , had declared Maple to be turned into a weasel via magic. Skip. The Super Insects ruled all and Zombie Anakin Skywalker had beaten her in another dance off. All was lost. All was lost. Skip. Back to normal. Back to the reality she was fairly certain was real...most of the time.

Fighting the gravitic effects of the planet proved challenging to the former shadow, who had to keep a certain speed and approach at a certain angle to avoid getting her ship ripped apart. But she was an excellent pilot, trained by Ursula personally, who had been another victim of The Amalgam.

Maple was here to kill her. She wasn't here to ask questions.

Setting the ship down, Maple set about getting on her custom black and white armor, tailored specifically for this sort of mission, inspecting her weapons and ammunition, her ship scanners detecting the prescence of The Amalgam's ship nearby, about half a kilometer, along with life forms.

Maple then stared at the collage she had gathered of the Amalgam on one wall in what had been Ursula's bedroom, which was a stark all white color, highly organized, some photos taken decades apart but still bearing the homicidal maniac's gorgeous countenance, some in mid battle, others of her torturing someone with lightning, still others that were mere split second captures of her on a street camera, all nearly impossible to find. But she had eventually acquired them all.

The hunter stared at each smirk in each photo, the one that never seemed to leave the arrogant shapeshifter's face in any of the photos and vowed she would pay for every life. She'd screamed and screamed at what had been done to Hadrian.

She clipped the power pack to her back as well as the rifle attached to it via a clip over her back, taking out a lightsaber canee she had had custom made, taking a DC-17s Commando Pistol and heading out of her ship, determined to protect what was left of her family as well as her new loved ones from the Fiend's wrath. She had to. She was going to be The Mind-Binder someday right? This meeting was inevitable.

Maple was forced to move slowly in her suit while traversing fields of fungal bloom across a wrecked and mysterious landscape of ancient structures and mushroom forests and cold mountains.

She stopped, going into a crawl on her belly through the mushrooms. The armor protected her but she was still paranoid she was gonna wake up one morning and find mushrooms growing out of her liver or some other messed up chit. Skip. She was made of mushrooms. Skip. Zombie Anakin Skywalker was breaking down the door to her house with an axe. Skip. Maple was chained to a wall along with the Amalgam while the Brain Demon tortured them both. Skip. Maple shot the Amalgam to end her suffering. Skip. Laertia Io dropped The Amalgam into a lava river. Skip. Maple was a vehicle saleswoman just getting back from work from a long hard day.

Rewind. Pause. Fast forward crawling through the mushrooms. Pause. Rewind. Pause. Playback. Again and again Maple relived crawling through the mushrooms. Skip. Back to reality.

It was nighttime. She realized with a fright that she had been crawling through fields of mushrooms for hours in a daze. None of it had gotten through but the sudden rush of pain to her belly let her know her stomach had paid for it all the same. The power of the Graveyard was warping an already uncertain, fragile mind. She should not have come but statistically speaking, if one is going to kill one's arch foe, then killing said arch-foe while they are slowed and stuck with an escort mission is an excellent opportunity one would be a fool to waste.

So here she was. Wait...was she actually here?

Maple pinched herself just to be sure. Her schizophrenia could bite in unexpected ways. Wouldn't be the first time she thought she had been doing something important only to find she had just been staring into space.

Wincing in pain as the pinch told her she was really here Maple continued on.

Eventually, she came across The Amalgam's ship, guarded by men and women in silvery cloaks with golden bows and crossbows. Ten in all.

Maple slowly, carefully unhooked her rifle and pack from her, sensing some of the light within these archers. Some. Not a lot. She rose from her hiding place, switching her commando pistol to stun as she approached the archers, who went alert as they spotted the lithe young woman walking towards them. She held her cane up with her hands, their faces reflecting on the white lenses of her full white mask. The taint of The Amalgam's ship was strong and it made her swoon a bit. It carried the essence of rot in its very hull, despite its pristine condition.

They aimed their bows at her. "Who are you?!" One of the Archer women called out.

"Maple Harte. I'm with the CIS. I got business with the...woman...who owns the starship you are guarding. She's killed a lot of my friends."

The Archers snorted. "She's killed a lot of ours as well. But we have it handled."

"Where is she?" Maple asked. "I need to introduce her face to a blaster bolt."

"We have our own uses for her. You can have the corpse after we're done." Another Archer told her.

"I wasn't asking. No one kills The Amalgam but me." Maple responded quietly but with firmness.

"Its time for you to go..." one Archer warned.

Her hand shot out faster than his eye could follow and a stun bolt slammed him backward. Maple's cane moved as the arrows flew slapping them aside, Force Jumping and smacking her cane into the side of one's temple, knocking him out cold while her pistol shot three more. Their lightsabers came out but Maple noted it was a very basic application of Form One they employed. These weren't Jedi. These were specialists in other departments. Her cane and her body twirled away from them, the cane slapping away more arrows as she fired back, warding away those who tried to slash at her with hooking parries from the cortosis weave handle of her cane, Force Jumping again to avoid more attacks, holstering her pistol as she landed, engaging three who tried to attack her up close, the rest staying back to load or knock back arrows. The viridian shoto blades finally activated on Maple's cane, one exiting out of the bottom of the cane shaft, the other exiting from an emitter hidden in the ox-horn shaped handle. She was forced to anticipate their attacks and move to intercept early before they could repeat their swings with blue or green lightsaber blades, drunkenly dodging or twirling her cane to avoid their attacks, which came at a fast pace trying to overwhem her with numbers. Maple intercepted their slashes, mindful of golden arrows aiming at her. One of her twirls by spinning her cane by the handle caught a woman's arm, then her jaw broke from one of Maple's kicks, and Maple backflipped out of the strike, her movements and reflexes rivaling a droid's as she managed to knock out another of her attackers, smashing her cane shaft hard into his face before catching the blade from her remaining swordfighter, he lasted a little longer with calm, focused strikes before Maple's eye twitched under her mask and the fungal bloom underneath them shivered, rapidly growing over him allowing her to shoot him with a stun bolt ducking arrows from the last few archers and drawing her pistol, downing them into forced slumber also.

Maple breathed, holstering her blaster as she approached The Amalgam's vessel.

It was here she took out a wireless hacking device, attaching it to the hull. An ICE breaker. The hacking tool beeped and the hatch opened, Maple heading aboard, cane saber still active.

She stopped, staring at the pattern, a hideous familiarity with the floral pattern on her ship gripping her as she walked slowly through the tainted ship. The red leaf patterns were like those in the interior of her own ship but it was black and red instead of white and red. A cold chill traveled down her spine as she traveled to where she sensed the taint of the ship to be strongest. Despite the great beauty of the interior it was utterly ghastly to Maple's flawed senses. What did one have to do aboard a starship to get this kind of taint? A starship was supposed to be a home, not a den of evil.

Maple stopped at the door with the elaborate, jagged black moon seal on it. Why was she so hesitant?

Kadmus Riath's hesitance in getting into details about The Amalgam made her even more fearful as she entered, that chill in her spine turning to dread as she saw The Amalgam's bedroom...

(Love Is Thicker Than Water by Andy Gibb plays)

Spoiler

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HdJlmlbx65I&list=RDHdJlmlbx65I&start_radio=1

Maple trembled as she stared at the photos. The photos that were all over the ceiling, walls, and floor. Most of them were her. Long range most times. Others were so close that the Amalgam had to have been within striking distance and Maple had never known. There were photos of Veronika. Of Sawa. Of Siva. Of Matsu Ike. Of Laertia Io, performing on stage as a magician.

Taking cautious steps through the room of a woman with a mental illness as horrific as Maple's, she went through the armory, taking out a camera and photographing everything she saw, including the weapons. She stopped, feeling a surge of rage as she saw Ursula's all white combat body glove behind a Glasteel display. The Amalgam didn't deserve this. It wasn't hers. How dare she keep Ursula's suit!

Incensed at this more than anything else, Maple decided she could retrieve it after she had dealt with Amalgam.

Leaving the ship, Maple went back to where she left her rifle, retrieving it and then searching the unconscious figures, retrieving map routes and other intel. Taking one of their comlinks to monitor transmissions, Maple had no sooner tuned to the frequency then she heard orders from The Amagam and Kay's "host", Falkon.

"All Archers, reconverge on Quiver One. The Amalgam and the Queen have escaped! Shoot to kill!" Falkon ordered.

"The only one who kills you is me..." Maple vowed, fist clenching as she began the hike to the ancient compound the Archer's had taken over...

One hour later...

The Archers had chosen a rather impressive headquarters.

Kay and The Amalgam had been taken to a remote monastery that loomed much taller than the mushroom forests. To Maple's astonishment, the structure through her scope looked as if it was all cut from a small mountain. There were ancient figures carved into the walls and columns of the castle like monastery, searchlights beaming from the top. She was about four hundred meters away from the perimeter when she took out her rifle, spotting the archer sentries, the night breeze rocking her aim a bit as she refocused, switching to secondary mode. This would take as long as it had to.

Maple aimed at one man's head and fired as he passed by a searchlight, the invisible, high powered charric like beam cutting through his brain silently and dropping him where he stood.

Maple slowly began to pick off more sentries from the makeshift nest of mushrooms she sniped in. These guys had tried to kill another light adept, albeit a nominal one. She wasn't going out of her way to kill them but that did not make them any less fair game.

Another sentry was cut down and Maple was forced to take a few seconds to reload, someone firing flares into the air to try and spot her, but her suit rendered her invisible. She did not flinch as mortar strikes started to land nearby. Skip. Darth Vader struck her and her loved ones down while Maple screamed in despair. Skip. She shot the Amalgam to end her suffering. Skip. Back to reality and mortars.

Maple took out one man arming a mortar on a castle battlement and watched as he dropped the mortar round...

The blast erupted into a fireball that quickly spread, blasting chunks of the facade as what Maple realized had been an air-fuel mortar round set people on fire. That had not been intentional on her part but she kept patiently firing, reloading after every four shots due to her using the secondary setting on her rifle. She would reach that monster no matter how many she had to tear through...

Meanwhile...

The Reflection swooned after fighting her way into the research area, dropping her pistol and nearly collapsing, wheezing in her breath as Kay led her to the research wing. The food she had eaten had only given her so much energy.

This was definitely human experimentation they were doing. The Amalgam had set up such places herself. They seemed to be studying the long term effects of the portals from what she could see. The research wing had an Art Deco arrangement and design scheme to its shelves and tables and statues, grafted over ancient stone facades. It seems these guys wanted to be The next Resistors of Darkness. Kay thought this was insane. Poor Kay. This was tame compared to stuff she had done herself.

Struggling to move, the Shi'ido, face half broken down on one side revealing electric green muscles and blood painfully trotted to strange runed machines shaped like a ring to pass through. They had the same runes as the ones they had encountered earlier at the portal sites.

There was a rumble. A loud one that rocked the complex, and The Reflection's heart swelled simultaneously with love, regret, shame, and anticipation as she felt her. She had come to the Graveyard to hunt.

"Daughter..." The Reflection whispered softly, getting fire back to her step.

"We have to leave..." The Reflection said desperately as she looked for some means of operating what was obviously an alchemized portal machine. She could hear blaster and mortar fire but it wasn't for her.

"My daughter Uri Udinia is here. She's extremely dangerous. She will kill me when she finds me, and likely you if you try and stop her..." The Reflection explained to Kay, weakly moving, trying to find a way to activate the portal before spotting a small basin as the foot of the ring machine, along with instructions, but there was a problem. She took out a stolen knife with her remaining arm and handed it to Kay.

"Kay? I can't activate this machine. My blood...the machine won't take anything with poison in it. Just a few drops should do it. I don't know where it will take us, but neither one of us is ready to fight Uri at the moment, and she is gaining on us rapidly. And before you ask, I'm kind of in the Nexu-House with her, so, she reaaaalllly wants me dead."

The Reflection did not deign to explain why. She liked Kay, and didn't want her to look at her with the horror and disgust she rightly deserved to be looked upon with.

The Reflection spotted what looked to be mining charges prepped for an expedition and began arming them, planting on each wring machine and setting it for three minutes, the gunfire from the battle outside getting more frequent...

 

[Kay-Larr]

[member="The Amalgam"] needed more food. But what could be found here? Sure there were plenty of items on the shelves, but none of them looked very appetizing. Any one of them could be poison too.

Her eyes quickly went to the door that they came from when Amy said that they had to leave. The blaster fire and commotion from the fight in the corridors was easy to pick up on.
"I'm sorry that I brought you here, Amy..." This whole situation wasn't what she had expected. The Archers were new. If Kay was ruthless, she'd of just left Amy with the Archers; but no. She had developed a likeness for the Sith Witch due to how much she risked her life for Kay. It wasn't as though the Sith Empire wanted her alive. They'd of loved any excuse to have her 'accidently' die. Yet Amy was true to her mission and it was due to that loyalty that Kay was won over by her.

She took hold of the knife and walked over to the basin, slitting not the flesh of her palm, but instead cutting the ring finger on her right hand. Ring fingers were considered the most useless of all the digits and the least sensitive. She then lowered her bleeding finger to the basin and let the blood drip into it.
"What kind of Lightsiders use blood for machines anyways?" The answer to that of course was: no Lightsider at all. They were Dark Jedi at best, having lost their way some time ago. She had seen it happen before.

The portal machine was ready to activate. All that it took was hitting a few switches. Kay took hold of Amy's good hand. "Let's go in together, shall we? I don't want to risk us getting split up. And let's take the instructions with us so that she can't follow." How long would the portal be open, she wondered? Hopefully not for very long. But just in case...

Kay turned and looked to one of the shelves. She opened herself up to the Force, grabbing hold of it and then sent it over to the shelf, gripping it tight and sending it flying to the door. The shelf struck the door hard, the shelves' contents hitting the door and landing all over the floor. It wasn't enough to block the door, but it did well enough to at least hinder it somewhat to buy them some extra time.

"Okay. We go on three!...One...Two...Three!"

 

[Maple Harte]

Maple had ditched her rifle in a small cairn of rocks before approaching the massive, blasted open hole she had made in the castle. She saw the charred and ripped open dead, thankful her mask blocked the smell of death. The smell she had once been so used to creating. But it was different now. It was worse. She had fragged what was supposed to be her own side. Her own team. All to get at the woman killing her loved ones.

She drew her commando pistol, activating the camouflage function on her suit and slowly, patiently crawling and manuevering her way through twisted, burning wreckage and gore, until it finally opened up into the remains of a destroyed foyer, bodies strewn about. An undamaged speaker system allowed Maple to hear Falkon's voice.

"I can feel your addled presence even here, woman. Who are you and why are you killing my people?"

Maple uncloaked, pulling off her mask.

"I was known as Uri Udinia...once." Maple answered, knowing there were hidden cameras focused on her.

"Ha! The Golden Eye is dead. She bought it at Mimban...but...you speak the truth..." Falkon trailed over the speaker, sensing no lie in her words. "Age is about right also...alright, what do you want? Why have you gone insane and started killing your own kind?"

"This planet has corrupted you and your archers. As a witch, I've been exposed to enough blood magic to sense the presence of it in this structure..." Maple answered, shaking her head slightly as she crept up partly ruined steps.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye. The emaciated, female, faceless Togrutan with purple skin that stalked her in her sleep. It flitted in and out the corners of her eyes, running unnaturally long fingers across her pistol.

Maple shivered, trying to ignore it, hoping it was just the schizophrenia messing with her. On the flip side this was also a really really bad time for it to be the schizophrenia.

"You don't look so good, Golden Eye...a little...off upstairs, are we?" Falkon muttered. "You still haven't said what exactly you want."

"The Amalgam. She killed people I care about." Maple explained, tensing as she felt them massing above her. She put her mask on, turned on her suit cloak and began to move to a move upward, keeping the pistol trained in front of her.

"I'm almost inclined to just let you. 'Almost'...but I need her alive and kicking. I have something I need opened. Something amazing. She'll die...but after I get what I want."

"If you are hoping to uncover some secret on this world that will benefit the light you are only deluding yourself. This place is just a cesspit of the dark. Its making you see a reward that isn't there, like a desert mirage." Maple asserted. "Look, I'm sorry I wasted so many of your friends. But my beef with that witch is too personal to let anyone else kill her. Especially some band of wannabe specialists who are already halfway corrupted.

"This is no ordinary reward. This is...well...its over your head...turn back. I'll let this slide, give her corpse to you."

"No."

"You'll have to fight us for her."

"I was already doing that." (Sinister Boast: 40 XP)

She saw them filing out of various doors as she neared the top of the steps. She hid her thoughts, thinking of clouds, trees, anything to throw them off their game.

"A shame..." Falkon said over the announcement system. "The business corrupts everyone, doesn't it? Even the fearsome Golden Eye didn't stay pure."

Maple refused to indulge his condemnation any further, even though Falkon's words struck deep as she opened fire on one Archer, rapid firing her pistol at the other two. She moved constantly, her reflexes helping her lock on and down the next six that shot at her. A heavy sonic bolt made her duck behind a support pillar while she returned fire with an almost inhuman precision, nailing people even when they were partly behind cover. Her senses screamed danger as an Archer used Force Speed from another angle to try and flank her she barely managed to whip her cane into his face, breaking his jaw. She didn't dare risk losing momentum, and pressed the attack, the world seemed to slow as Maple's keen eyes found the targets, the barrel of her recharging pistol snapping from target to target as she advanced, the air filled with arrows and blaster fire that demolished the walls and ground she barely out ran, her cane swatting bolts from her body. She went into a rolling dive behind a security barrier, the heavy fire nicking her shoulder. The archers rapidly advanced on her position, still relentlessly pouring fire on it.

Maple activated the wrist charric on her suit, the hidden, mini-pistol springing into place and she pointed it at the group rushing the barrier she hid behind. The dark blue bolt that exited the wrist pistol slammed into one man's chest and drove him back into his one group. Maple spotted the Brain Demon again and froze, just long enough for an archer to get a bolt into her thigh. Maple screamed in pain and dropped, but her wrist charric found her shooter's head, making it explode. Maple fought through the pain, even as more Archers approached her position on the steps. The Brain Demon was next to her suddenly.

KillthemkillthemalldoitmysweetMaple she heard it hiss in her skull.

Maple saw a fallen archer some distance from her, armed with a rifle she knew to be powerful.

She shot six more archers about to overwhelm her position, and then struggled past her madness to try and reach the rifle with telekinesis. Skip. Zombie Anakin chewed on her left arm. Skip. Maple jerked in surprise as the hallucination threw off her concentration, and Maple was forced to kill another twelve, the first six advancing from below, the other six shooting at her from a turbolift they exited out of. Maple's pistol found them all but took an arrow into her shin, causing her to scream and drop her pistol, barely able to think, as another fifteen advanced.

KillthemallMaple.KILLTHEMALL. the Brain Demon hissed. IknowyoucanGoldenEye...

Maple fought through the pain, fought through the madness, even as the arrows and bolts pelted her position., stretching with the Force, past the weak signatures of her enemies. Her hands clenched into fists. She thought of how the Amalgam had hurt Kadmus, and Hadrian. The arrows all began to pull out of their impact points, and went still in mid air, her pain letting them find their targets more than conscious effort. The remaining archers became frantic, desperately pouring as much fire as they could on her position. Her pistol began to float and fire in all directions at random, forcing them back.

She blinked, straining, even as blasterfire tore off part of the durasteel barrier protecting her and the arrows moved, all pointing at her remaining attackers.

Swift impalement from dozens of arrows and crossbow bolts turned her remaining attackers into bloody porcupines.

Maple crawled out from hiding. She screamed as she pulled out the arrow in her shin, keeping pressure on the wound, pressing the hot barrel of her blaster to it to cauterize it. She removed a small pain killer hypo and injected it, feeling her legs go wobbly. She forced herself to stand, but it still hurt, even with the painkiller.

Maple reached out, felt for the Amalgam.

"Where are you?" She whispered.

"Impressive. A pity." Falkon said. Maple shot out the speakers, tired of his prattling.

Curiously, she DID feel the beast, but it felt...odd. like water forced to be around oil.

Maple staggered to wear she felt the altered taint...


Meanwhile...

The Reflection nodded weakly, taking the research notes on the machines as [member="Kay Arenais"] took her by the hand. She didn't know where they were going, but she knew they could not stay here.

The charges she placed on the machines counted down as she watched them activate. The warped distortion forming at their centers. She felt her daughter getting closer, and closer, like a hurricane, but no wind.

As Kay took her by the arm the Reflection turned, saw the junk Kay piled in the main entrance being ripped away by telekinesis, saw Maple burst through the door, her lanky but athletic figure and fierce green gaze locking onto The red head's disfigured face.

"LEEJUN!" Maple screamed at her, opening fire a half second after spotting her.

The Reflection looked at her sadly as she used one of the golden cuffs to deflect the bolt she didn't want to deflect. She then leapt through the portal with Kay.

Maple saw the charges and barely cleared the room before the blast.

The wind knocked out of her. Maple rolled on the ground, coughing and in pain.

"I can tell you where they went..." Falkon said over a nearby speaker. "You just have to play nice...""

Maple, deeply frustrated and angry, snorted.

"Name your price..."

Meanwhile.

The Reflection blinked, stood up in the snow with Kay, looking at their surroundings. She felt extremely cold.

"The mountains..." she realized. "The machines sent us to the mountains.

In front of them was a great, three story domed monastery of black stone. The Reflection's nose, or what was left of it due to the breakdown occuring, curled as she felt the darkness, saw reliefs of the portal machines inscribed into the monastery walls.

"We have to go in. She'll be coming for us. I have to get these cuffs off soon..." The Reflection said, before turning to Kay.

"For what its worth...my name...my real name...is Forrwiirmeni. Leejun Forrwiirmeni..."

(Clip of Bond Theme plays)

"Don't call the other me that...she won't like it." The Reflection explained, hesitantly walking to the front entrance...

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay couldn't believe the distance travelled. It was the first time that she had ever been through a portal. The feeling of being pulled through it was the oddest of sensations, much like getting pulled awake from a dream. But this wasn't a dream that she was waking from. This was real. They were in the mountains nearly knee deep in snow.

She shivered as she held onto [member="The Amalgam"] , with the monastery ahead of them. There was Darkness there, she could feel it. But whether that Darkness was a threat to them or not, Kay wasn't sure. Regardless there was a threat coming behind them, so they had to get to safety.

As they walked, Kay was informed of her real name. Quietly she responded, "I won't...Don't worry." But she would remember. Probably for always.

As they approached the monastery, the Darkness was felt even stronger. Kay shivered in spite of herself. She pushed open the heavy door and walked them inside. Some torches came to life, making the monastery even more eerie in appearance.

"How do we get the cuffs off? And you need some food." Was there a kitchen in this place? Kay highly doubted it.

 

[Maple Harte]

"I ain't got time to eat, trust me..." the Reflection answered. But as for how to get these off...

The Reflection stopped, beset by violent coughing as they crossed the threshold into the temple. The part of her that was The Amalgam yearned for the dark in the temple. Laughed at her from a deep dark place within knowing she would have to take the cuffs off eventually.

The Reflection tried to keep herself sane by thinking back to the day she and Laertia had gone fishing. The Amalgam disrupted it, not wanting to be inundated with happy memories. It was the monster within that made her suggest the next course of action as she staggered forward.

"We'll need to use blood magic. But my blood is no good. So is yours. But we can fix that. We need...a sample. To corrupt." The Reflection explained taking out a knife.

"We need a sacrificial basin first. These temples usually have one. Ten guesses as to how I know that." she joked, wincing in pain as she moved.

"That was my daughter we ran into..." The Reflection explained, observing the Sith reliefs on the walls. "She's schizophrenic, and its getting worse, so she's not in her prime...but that still does not mean we can take her head on. She's retains a great deal of her lethality." The Reflection pause. Her gasps of breath becoming more pained.

"After all the crap I've pulled with her she's got every reason to kill me. Don't think for one second I'm not the villain in that dispute." She got out stumbling down a right turn down marble passageways when she heard the sound of familiar engines flying overhead.

"I know those engines..." she wheezed, feeling out for the Dark Side. "That's The Scarlet Phantom. She's here..."

Meanwhile.

Armed with: Shadow Proclamation (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/142489-mark-one-shadow-proclamation/)

Coruscant Typewriter: (http://starwarsrp.net/topic/40644-tenloss-type-8-smg/)

Maple had been forced to take twenty of the archers with her, in order for the location to be revealed by Falkon. She had agreed, on the strict insistance that she be the field leader.

She could feel the witch faintly from within the temple, and knew this was a place she absolutely should not be going. Skip. Kittens! Skip. Back to the reality where she had just been not pregnant eight seconds ago. (Wait, had she just been a fething cat?)

Reality fast forwarded mercifully past the boring stuff, rewound a bit, then sped up past her snark filled exchanges with the archers that went nowhere, then fast forwarded past her jaunt through the snow, taking in the temple grounds. Skip. She was the queen instead of [member="Kay Arenais"]. The Amalgam was still protecting her. Skip. She shot The Amalgam to end her suffering. Skip. No, that wasn't real. Skip. She started shaking in a cold sweat as she realized she was in the temple deep with the archers.

"Split up!" She ordered them, covering over her confusion before barking out loud enough her voice could be heard.

"Kay?! Lady Kay Arenais! This is Maple Harte of the CIS! Now I got no quarrel with you but that fiend you're with? Me and her have history. Now if you give yourself up, I'll let you go, no hard feelings. But if you wanna fight alongside her...I won't hold myself responsible. I'll give you five minutes to show yourself and give The Amalgam...or I go in after you both, make you give her up, and damn whatever happens to you afterward. Its a better deal then you'll get from these archery buffoons."

Maple drew her pistol, waiting for and anticipating a 'no' from the Queen...

 

[Kay-Larr]

Magic. Dark Magic. Kay hated magic in itself. It was more often than not used against her, and soon after that she was often tortured in some way. Having to accept it that she'd have to take part in it wasn't very easy for her to do.

She kept hold of [member="The Amalgam"] for support as they walked. "Alright. I'm sure that there's a basin around here somewhere." More bloodletting. Hopefully it'd be the last time.

"Your daughter?" Well that was certainly shocking. To think that a mother and daughter could be so up in arms against eachother....But then she had gone through a similar circumstance with [member="Veiere Arenais"] when he had attacked Deneba. They weren't at eachother's throats, but they were on different sides. Hopefully that'd never happen again. "Surely she still loves you deep down..." That was Kay's hope anyways.

The sound of the engines caused her to look up on instinct, half expecting part of the temple to come crashing down. But fortunately it didn't.

The voice of [member="Maple Harte"] echoed through the temple just moments later. Kay closed her eyes. The CIS weren't her ally nor her friend. In fact she had had very little interactions with them at all. But this was a family matter and nothing political. So surely there'd be no repercussions. Kay couldn't give up Amy. Despite Amy being a Sith, she had done more for her than any other had.

"I'm sorry but I have to decline your offer! As I told the Archers, I have to have her come back home with me! There is no other way! My home is under occupation and I am under her charge! If I were to get back home without her, they would punish me and my people dearly. Save your quarrel for another time! Please...." Why did people always fail to understand? Their own personal missions blinded them to the plight of others.

That was a lesson that Kay was learning too...Especially on this trip.

 

[The Amalgam]

The Reflection was at once terrified to hear Uri's voice, dripping with wrath and insanity, while The Amalgam within was excited and overjoyed to hear Uri slipping to the darkness. Both were rather touched [member="Kay Arenais"] was sticking by them through all this strangeness. That had never happened before. Of course, Kay had her reasons...her planet was at stake. But both personas were touched all the same.

Once more The Reflection cursed her very existence. It wasn't fair. She finally gets a friend and its still too late to save her soul or undo the damage she has done to her children...but then what did she expect? She had been a butcher for years.

Uri didn't seem to buy Kay's explanation. Or rather, did not want to. She could feel the coiled hatred in Uri. The coldness. Uri was slipping.

The Reflection, knowing some heartfelt plea would not work decided to do what she normally did as The Amalgam. She assumed the spiteful, silken, calculating tone that had first spoken to Kay on Commenor, calling out from the safety of a thick stone pillar, far off where her voice could not be pinpointed, telepathically whispering to Kay to get in the shadows, tossing her the lightsaber she had taken from one Archer. She kept the pistol.

"Uri dear, much though I love to fight with you when we get into our little disputes, I'm afraid The Queen is rather correct on this. My bosses are going to be pissed if she comes back without me. Not pissed in the usual way either, like they normally are. They'll burn a few cities."

This earned only scorn from from her daughter.

"Oh, c'mon! They probably got people lining up to play Sith puppeteer! Once the Sith got you under their thumb, you are a cog. Cogs get replaced. I've seen it happen. Every underling thinks they are indispensable. Every underling thinks it would all fall apart without them. And then one day, their spokes don't click quite so precisely against the other gears. They get a little rough. They grind. The engineer replaces them!" Maple called back, taking cover, directing some of the archers to move upward, deciding to get these feths out of the way first.

As a matter of fact, something had not ground with Maple the whole of the time here, what with Kay conveniently being allowed to leave with just one guard.

"Queen Arenais! Think about it! Why would they let you leave with just one person? Why would they agree to it so easily? You are being played! They want you out of the way! They need you off Commenor! You think they care if you somehow manage to ghost one witch? They got a million savage little chits to take her place and you know it! They won't blink at her loss. And they ain't gonna burn money to punish you! They'll invent a way to get rid of you. Quietly. That's probably why they were content to let you slog around on this chithole. So they could have your government to themselves while you do whatever the hell it was you came to do. How many officials have they had to themselves?" Maple asked the Queen as the Archers began to close on their position in the darkness. "How many credits have already changed hands in anticipation? How many allies have they subverted? How many spies got onto the staff? That is what the Sith are doing right at this moment...laying the groundwork for your usurpation...and you handed them the perfect opportunity to do so."

Maple then got a very crazy idea.

"But lets humor you Kay. Lets say thats all true...sure if you come back without her, your planet suffers. But if you die with her, at the hands of a bounty hunter with no stake in the Sith Empire's actions on Commenor...I don't think the Sith will punish your planet for something they themselves couldn't have predicted. They'll just install a new ruler, your people shall sulk, and plant the seeds of hatred and rebellion in their children."

The Reflection was horrified by the calloused response. Not just because it was ruthless even for an already infamously ruthless former Jedi Shadow, but the cold, crystal logic of it.

"That's some cold blooded calculus, Uri, even for you. I wonder what Ursula would think..."

This earned her heavy grade blaster fire that took chunks off the pillar the Reflection hid behind.

"You have no right to even utter her name." Maple snarled.

"Uri, normally I would encourage this, but you are picking a really bad time to be selfish." The Reflection called back, half wondering if her daughter's assessment of the situation was correct. If the Sith had so easily agreed to Kay being offworld so they could corrupt it while she was away. It was a reminder to the monster within that it wasn't as smart as it liked to believe. The archers silently approaching through the shadows of the temple pillars were only twenty meters away. The temple itself seemed to react to the approach of bloodshed, for The Reflection started to hear whispers urging her towards slaughter, causing her consciousness to react painfully due to the alchemized cuffs on rapidly deteriorating limbs. She would be able to fight maybe another ten minutes more before she was spent.

The Reflection sprang from behind cover and popped two of the Archers drawing a bead on Kay, then shot two more. Maple, managing to pierce through her own madness long enough to sense where Kay was, pulled a Force Hunter tactic ripped right out of the manual of Atton Rand himself:

You don't shoot at the person you want to shoot. You shoot their allies, and force the person you want to shoot to get in the way. She did not shoot to kill, only enough that Kay would be in danger. But it forced her opponent from cover as she wanted.

"KAY! RUN!" The Reflection yelled, one of her ears falling off from the Ashla poison in her veins as she returned fire, forcing Uri to get behind cover and blind fire in their direction. The remaining Archers let loose with their golden bolts, forcing the Reflection behind cover.

Maple waited for her pistol to recharge, then switched it to its stealth setting, rendering the bolt both silent and invisible as she fired it at Kay's stomach, in a blatant attempt to kill the Queen of Commenor and the Reflection was forced from cover, still managing to gun down three more archers as the armor she was wearing caught the fatal bolt meant for Kay's head in the right thigh as the Reflection leapt in front of her, screaming in agony as she hit the ground, barely managing to drag herself to another pillar, rolling behind it just as more bolt impacted and pierced the stone floor. The pain was very great but she just barely managed to fire, forcing Uri behind cover once more. But they were getting closer. The Reflection pulled herself up to a better shooting position but Maple started firing again, trying to kill both. She hand signalled one of the Archers for a grenade. He tossed it, she activated and threw it, but then shot it mid-air, close to the support arches where Kay and The Reflection were.

The blast caused a partial collapse on the ceiling, and the Reflection again yelled at Kay to run as she was forced to dodge falling debris, everyone shooting at them.

 

[Kay-Larr]

Spoiler

One year!! Wow!

Kay quietly took hold of the lightsaber and moved cautiously behind one of the stone pillars while the two of them spoke. It was strange to be caught in the middle of some family drama, yet it was far better than some of the other circumstances that she had found herself in. Like being under house arrest by the very people that put her into power in the first place. It was as though the trap was always there.

As Uri spoke, her blood ran cold. In Kay's mind, the reasoning behind so few guards keeping her in check was because she thought it was all due to the ruthlessness that [member="The Amalgam"] possessed. She figured that it was due to the fact that no one else was required to keep her under control. But could it really be all for just getting her out of the way?

Kay clung the hilt of the lightsaber to her chest, clutching it as if for dear life as she continued to listen to Uri and Amy's good side continue to speak. Had her desire to get away and retrieve what was hers in a bid to escape her confinement for a time really done her in? What was to await her upon her return? What would her government and people be like? How many would have died?

The sounds of the blaster fire ricocheting against the pillars grew closer as the taunting between the two continued. More archers were dropped from where they stood and still Kay couldn't focus on the task at hand, but on what was going on back home. Had she really been so stupid?

"I can't get off here without her! I'm no pilot! Let us go!" She ignited the lightsaber, bouncing off some shots fired by the Archers, aiming them to hit the rocks above so that debris would fall on top of them. And that was when [member="Maple Harte"] took her shot at her stomach. Amy was quick to take the hit for her and get behind another pillar, of which Kay also dove. The entire temple seemed to erupt into sound as more blaster fire and even a grenade was added into the mix. The temple groaned and trembled as if in utter glee for the violence within it's walls. Reaching into her connection with the Force, Kay picked up one of the Archers and threw him into the remaining ones. Her eyes then leveled onto Maple as her free hand was held outstretched. Using a technique similar to Force Choke, she gripped Maple's heart with the Force and began to squeeze.....

 

[Maple Harte]

So [member="Kay Arenais"] had a little vinegar in her after all.

Maple realized she had been a bit stupid, completely dismissing the Queen as a threat, because her chest felt agonized. This was one of the prices of her focus on marksmanship. It was the same problem a lot of Sith Marauders faced: focus on the mastery of weapons led to a lack of skill in the Force.

Beyond the Amalgam and Maranon, it had been years since Maple had truly gone up against another Adept, and both times she would have been beaten if not for external factors, like allies.

But this time she wanted The Amalgam dead, and she would not be able to do it relying on others. Not totally.

The knowledge she had gained on instinct at Tattooine whispered as the pain increased, leading Maple to get desperate. Kay may have looked like a gust of wind could knock her down, but the look in her eyes told her the woman had survived floods...

She needed an out. A major one. And the light was not providing any.

Maple called on the Dark Side, using the pain from Kay's attack to fuel the hate in her own. The synthmesh in her suit burned her as it did, but that also was used to fuel her attack. Kay's will was too powerful to break for Maple, try as she might, so her best chance was to break her concentration.

Her hand stretched like Kay's. Her power was like Kay's but instead of crushing just one vital organ, it aimed to crush the whole body.

Maple threw out all her rage, and frustration, and hatred towards the Amalgam and her own mental illness and cast it out onto the Queen, trying to make the dark crush Kay's whole body, realizing she was turning her back on everything she had been taught. Kay was not her enemy. She didn't want to be Kay's enemy. But Kay was protecting a murdering, sadistic pile of slime. For that, Kay would die, damn the consequences.

The crush attempt was not powerful enough to kill--Maple was only a novice at the Dark, unused to tapping into its strength, her hatred of The Amalgam in of itself the only thing giving her focus enough to even attempt it. But the hatred Maple bore towards the Amalgam was a deep and powerful one, born of learning of the torturous deaths most of her comrades had suffered at the fiends hands. And that hatred was a powerful focus to Maple, determined to gain justice for her slain, even if it meant making a new pile of corpses.

The Reflection, the inner part of her delighted that Uri was using the darkness so willingly, was much more concerned about Kay trying to kill her. But what could she do? Maple had thrown down the gauntlet and Kay had a right to defend herself. And they were both tapping the darkness to do it. It was horrible and painful for the witch to bare witness to, not just because she ironically cared about both but because she was watch two people she didn't want dead possibly destroy themselves mentally trying to destroy the other. Kay was drawing on the dark despite rejecting it, which told the Reflection just how desperate the Queen was. Maple's words had found their mark (again, ironically) more than her blasterfire had...

But the Reflection had other problems, like shooting back at the archers all shooting at her position, despite the partial collapse...

But who would give out first, A woman whose new last name didn't match her actions, or a Queen forced to be heartless even while her daughter was literally trying to crush her with the darkness?

 

[Kay-Larr]

Kay was thankful for her light armour that did much to help against kinetic force. But when trying to stop the Force itself? That was a different animal altogether. The frustration and effort was clearly seen on Kay's face. Beads of sweat began to surface on her forehead as she continued to focus on [member="Maple Harte"] 's heart. Yet when it came to crushing her to death, that wasn't anything that she had wanted to do. She only wanted to incapacitate her.

Yet she felt herself getting crushed, the mere feeling of claustrophobia began to take over. Kay then released her hold on the woman's heart and gave her a hard Force Push to the wall instead. The move was so quick that she hoped Maple didn't have time to react. [member="The Amalgam"] still needed her, and was needed herself. But every attempt at escaping was being thwarted.

Why won't her luck ever improve?

 

[The Amalgam]

Maple snarled as she was hurled back by the Force Push. The Reflection took the opportunity to start shooting at her and the others as Maple hit the wall with a painful thud, having not anticipated it. She screamed in pain as a rib broke on impact and she was down for the moment.

She looked up staring as her hated foe continued to protect the future [member="Kay Larr"] shooting any Archer that got close, evading golden arrows and crossbow bolts.

There was something...

Something about that shooting stance...crisp, precise, practiced, yet...loose...like her own...

Maple's schizophrenia interfered with this train of thought, the squirrels that operated her spinal column suggesting she just shoot the witch.

Maple dug deep, trying not to listen to the Brain Demon, instead desperately trying to reach out to the Mandragora guardian spirit, but her access was blocked.

The naked, slightly emaciated, faceless creature resembling a purple, Togrutan woman was next to her suddenly, her vision darkening around the edges as it whispered darkly in her mind stroking her face as she rolled in pain.

IcangiveyouthefocusyouneedmydearsweetMapleallyouneeddoisask.

Pain and desperate hatred clouded her judgement, made her nod her head.

The Brain Demon seemed to shudder hideously in joy.

One of Maple's eyes turned sulphur yellow as a deep purple, almost black fire enveloped her as she got up.

The Amalgam within started jumping in joy, but the Reflection was horrified.

"Kay, RUN!" The Reflection yelled as Maple started to fire at them again. The Reflection retreated, still firing, not daring to expend any more Force energy. The temple fed of the conflict between the two, trying to conjure nightmarish...sights...at the corners of everyone's eyes.

Maple screamed for blood as she fired her Coruscant Typewriter, screaming as though she were a Picard who'd found some Borg, trying to hit the Woman who was possibly crazier than 'she' was. But it seemed like her legendary aim felt like taking a snooze, because none of her shots hit.

Maple went berzerk. At that moment of supreme frustration and rage, screaming and laughing she had gone precisely as crazy as Gary Busey in some of his better films, OOC wise.

Having loaded a drum magazine into this one, firing from the hip in a Berzerker-Busey-Fury, she still, interestingly, kept trigger discipline, firing in bursts. But because Maple was so frothing at the mouth crazy to get to the Amalgam, alot of those bursts were longer than needed.

"I run a charity!!" Maple shouted. "Am I not generous with my bullets?! AhhahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!"

Maple finally hit the Woman solidly in the thigh, and did a little jig of joy, twirling as she still fired her smg by accident, causing the Archers to duck. The Reflection, crying out as her left leg went almost useless as she ducked behind a support pillar, firing blindly, trying to buy Kay as much time to get away as she could for Kay. But Maple continued advancing drawing her pistol also and dual wielding it, the recoil of the heavy smg energy Slugthrower, throwing her aim off as she advanced, the sheer volley of fire she was pouring on her Nemesis's direction forcing The Reflection into full retreat, firing, and only self preservation for the sake of killing The Amalgam made Maple stop firing momentarily, allowing The Reflection to round a corner while Maple and The Archers pursued them in the cold, dark temple, lit only by gunfire. Sometimes, when the light flashed against the walls, there were more shadows of people on some walls even when there was no one to create it. Sometimes the gun fire would light up and a small crowd of people's shadows would be on one wall next to people as they moved. No one realized it yet, but one of the archers had already gone missing when one of the shadows on the walls had called out in the voice of his father...

The Reflection spotted at the end of a long path, the sacrificial chamber. That was where they needed to be--

SMG rounds enveloped in energy blasted apart the piller she hid behind and The Reflection began firing at the ceiling, not knowing if it would work as she hit the ground.

The ceiling collapsed, cutting Maple off from them. But The Reflection could barely walk, and she could already hear Maple shouting for grenades and det charges.

She staggered, trying to catch up to Kay, only to collapse to the ground as she dropped her pistol.

She could not walk. And she was bleeding...

 

[Kay-Larr]

It was one big chaotic mess of blaster fire and stony debris. That was what the temple had become. Kay kept thinking that she saw her enemies in the shadows. She even thought that she had seen her Father Tobias Larr, standing there disappointed in her using the Force; or cheating as he liked to call it. Ever since he knew that she was a Force User, he had cast her out of the family. That prejudice stuck with her ever since, holding her back from becoming what she could be.

Perhaps in some way she was always trying to gain his approval. A chance meeting in her adult life did little to do that. All of her accomplishments he figured was only gained by her coercing others into giving her such power through the Force. But that was false. Yet despite her efforts in trying to convince him otherwise, she failed to get that respect and approval that she had wanted. Most would try to just take it by force and instill fear, but the man was Imperial and such tactics were his. Kay didn't want to go that route. She wanted his approval to be real.

The sudden collapse of the ceiling and cutting off of the weapons firing caused Kay to stop in her running and look around. Where was Amy? Frantically she retraced her steps, seeing only through the flickering flames of the torches lit in the temple. It wasn't too long before she found her on the ground and bleeding. "Amy!" How could she of not seen her fallen? Her mind was too wrapped up in her distant past. Kay chided herself and hurried to the woman's side, crouching down and placing her hand over her wound. "Can you get up? We have to find another way out of here. Get on my back. I could carry you." Or at least for a time she could. As long as the rocks barred their enemies from reaching them, they had a chance at escape.

The Amalgam Maple Harte