Private Heretic Station: The Aftermath

[Westenra Mina]

Armed with: Herself

Delivering: Tie Diplomatic Prototype


Current Configuration: Stealth (See Bio)

One week after Heretic Station Attack.


The Android had visited the Morgue of The Castle for the first time.

So many of her brothers and sisters dead, in body bags. The bodies they could recover anyway.

She had started crying bright red blood uncontrollably at the sight not a minute after entering the place. She had known them only briefly, yet her grief was overpowering. She had never felt pain like this and she could not stop crying.

That murdering psychopath The Amalgam had destroyed half the capital, killed millions. It was her first time seeing an atrocity. She would see many more.

Nine had split her meager forces in half, dispatching half her Veteran Knights to Castagne's capital in an attempt to evacuate as many people from the bombardment of Rigor Pylons, as they were now being called, as they possibly could.

They had been forced to kill hundreds of infected to evacuate thousands. When they ran out of ammo they fought with swords, and when the swords broke they started killing undead with their bare hands. One by one they had fallen, each killing four hundred with their bare hands to buy time for evac shuttles, and then between another three and four hundred when they had been completely surrounded. Only one had made it out alive, by being forced to literally kill every single undead in his vicinity...there was nothing left of his armor yet was miraculously uninfected. A new recruit named Shawn Byene.

He was maybe the one spot of good news despite his near fatal injuries--he had been forced to collapse a building on himself with det charges to halt the remaining undead about to overwhelm him.

But Westenra still could not stop crying at the losses. She wept and wept at what had been done to her home, her family. They hadn't even located Vera yet, there were reports she may have been killed, Magnus and Meier had sustained heavy damage shooting down the pylons in space combat.

The place was heavily damaged on all decks, having blocked the vast majority of the pylons. As bad as what had happened in the city, it was nowhere as bad as what could have happened had The Morpheus not been in the path of bombardment.

As such, The ship had limped into Castagne's orbit heavily damaged, most primary systems compromised. Round the clock repairs were not even started yet, just jury rigged emergency power and life support as damage was still being assessed.

Westenra had spent the past few days clearing debris and bodies out from the lower decks with surviving crew, with scattered trips to the surface to scrounge for enemy technology that was essential for repairs. The whole supply chain everywhere had been disrupted.

Westenra was now due back on the surface. They had recovered the data from Nine's confrontation with The Amalgam and Rigor and was planning to take it to the surface to Ian Sade personally...as well as bring him a tool to aid him. Mother had commissioned it, as a way of thanking him for his help on Azterri. She had actually been planning to give it to him before Heretic, knowing he would need a way to keep him alive in the dark days ahead.

Westenra had not meant to stay so long in the morgue, but she had been overwhelmed by the week of nonstop work and the Morgue was now the only place that was quiet. She had gone here in desperation to clear her head. She regretted it now.

The biot, what blood fell on her body, was quickly reabsorbed through the skin. Her body was in its stealth form, a curvy but athletic woman with dark brown skin and hair in a short braid with pink eyes, appearing to wear a yellow and black leotard with long gloves and boots, appearing to be in her mid twenties. He recognized this form.

Westenra composed herself after five minutes and went and headed for the Morpheus Hangar, still damaged from the crash landing Ian had made. The vessel had undergone final checks before coming here, a long white oval with a frontal fin. Elegant, Beautiful. Deadly underneath. Just like her.

Perhaps Ian might appreciate that...

Westenra got in the ship, Its controls designed for a pilot, simple, intuitive, easy to learn, hard to master. She had stopped crying, but her pink eyes were still bloodshot from grief as she activated the shuttle snd headed to IBI landing coordinates as agreed. It was too dangerous to transmit this over an open channel. Besides, The Morpheus communications array was heavily damaged still.

The IBI landing pad was discrete, settled in a grove just outside the city, where Nature still was somewhat unmarred. Westenra didn't mind it.

Besides, she got to make googly eyes at Ian...

The ship set down on the pad and Westenra was soon out, IBI agents waiting as they stared at her, not fully able to believe she was a droid until they saw how she walked. Precise, unnaturally precise yet fluid. She greeted them and she was led into a small cabin to wait for Colonel Sade.

 

[Vera Mina]

Wearing: Mercenary Dress (Damaged)

Armed with: Law Abroad (Damaged)

Objective: Hide out and escape the wrecked capital.


She had been trapped on the surface for days.

Actually adhering to her vow to harm no citizen of Castagne so as to not jeopardize her relationship with Karlie Lynn Destat was proving increasingly difficult. Dead blood could only stave off her turning feral for so long, and the corpses were rapidly clearing out daily. The Authorities were jumpy, arresting anyone acting even mildly suspicious. Vera had resorted to setting traps to bait and catch stray birds to drink their blood. It had barely staved the hunger, but it was still too starved for nutrients and it was too dangerous to use her civilian guise.

Vera had hid in the ruins of the burned out capital for days now, her armored dress torn and dirtied, trying to find some way, any way, of re-establishing contact with The Morpheus to no avail. Most of the equipment she could scavenge was not electronic, and what was had been damaged nearly beyond repair. As Vera huddled in a corner of a burned out building, sucking the blood of a Castagne Falcon one subject had started to occupy her mind more than even re-establishing contact with The Morpheus...

Karlie.

No doubt the fact no corpse of her as her Lawyer self had turned up had raised a few eyebrows. Karlie clearly hadn't believed Ian when he had exposed her as an Android. But with no corpse turning up, the fact that Karlie realized "Rom" was an android was now surely turning her wheels as to who else was an Android on Nine's crew.

Vera had soon drained the endangered specimen dry and discarded its corpse. Barely enough blood to keep from malfunctioning for the next forty eight hours.

A sound in the distance, with her enhanced hearing, set her on alert. She peered out of a wrecked window, her currently blue flesh occasionally wriggling due to not getting enough nourishment.

Her telescopic functions in her eye zoomed in on what appeared to be Castagne Soldiers. Maybe. She saw no service patch, blaster rifles looked cheap, made of stamped parts. Could have been acquired anywhere.

Something told Vera they were here for her...

Vera crawled out through the window, dropping below, but though her thoughts were primarily on ascertaining if these people were a threat or not, the rest of her processing power was still currently devoted to trying to save her relationship with Karlie. How was she to explain her survival? What she was?

Vera was a monster. A brutal brutal monster that had drank innocent people, sued people, and enjoyed both. Only around Karlie and barely her own family was she motivated to even attempt to be more than a literal bloodsucking lawyer.

The artificial sociopath darted behind rubble, watching potential prey. She could not risk the possibility these were Castagne natives so killing was off the table. Disable, interrogate, then potential disposal or feeding.

She crept up behind the squad of fifteen men, getting a better look through their equipment as they moved through the dust choked ruins of the capital. When she saw they were indeed making a beeline for her hideout, she acted, sprinting forward, slipping effortlessly into disabling combos from all her onboard martial arts programs, delivering a bevy of non fatal punches and kicks at superhuman speed. Normally she would have already drawn blood. But the need to be absolutely sure they were not the enemy forced her to use not only less lethal moves, but moves that would not leave too many bruises or injure them too badly that they could not quickly recover. A few shots got off, but Vera dodged them by reading the muscles of her opponents or using her hearing to tell when a trigger was being pulled her direction. Flat open palm moves and traditional wrestling and kickboxing got her through it, but when she disarmed the last soldier and was holding him at blaster point, a whiff of a scent caught her nose.

The trembling, terrified soldier went still as the Biot sniffed him.

"You..." Vera trailed throatily, sniffing him again. "You were around Karlie...passed by her..."

The soldier took a terrified step backward. Vera followed, sniffing the air around him.

"Where is Miss Destat?" The Vampire asked.

"I...I'm with Castagne IBI. We were sent to retrieve you..."

"Retrieve? For Karlie?"

He didn't dare lie. "Yes."

Vera dropped her rifle carbine and fell to her knees.

"I surrender. Take me to her. I have wandered among the lifeless long enough..."

Vera smiled as the confused, terrified soldier, hesitantly got out his restraints as her hands went behind her back. Apparently they all knew what she was, because she heard his heart rate increase as he got close enough to put on the cuffs, then darted away as she chuckled evily, scrambling for his rifle, and calling for backup on his link. Meanwhile, the rest of the soldiers moaned in pain...

 

[Ian Sade]

Hard (adjective; solid, firm, and rigid; not easily broken, bent, or pierced)


"Lieutenant...." Ian acknowledged her when he entered. She had been waiting for some time now partly on his account. Ian had-
.....difficulties concerning this model.

Of course the woman had no official rank as he understood it. She were one of @Nine Live's many creations which din't have any real rank, but that of daughter. If anything, it seemed more based on a family's pecking order, rather than rank and file. Of course that pecking order between these so called daughters, surprisingly worked..

Yes, Ian had come to understand Nine in the few short interludes they had shared the last couple of months in grasping at the concept as to why the matriarch saw them as daughters. It had finally sunk in...took hold in his skeptic mind that these unique creations were truly daughters. The bond between these varied biots and their creator were just that; mother/daughters.
Only-
Only regrettably they weren't human daughters. Well, neither were their mother really. But Nine were once human....or close to one. Frak, at least she were the only one that had been of real flesh once, than any of her creations...especially Westenra.
Yes, Westenra whom he had waiting for him. His eyes did not once look directly into her intoxicating orbs (eye to eye contact). Ian could not look into those eyes and not feel anything.
And no, no pheromones were about to taunt him. He bore his own cross, and bore it well..

He made sure to present a practiced run of the mill smile, when he acknowledged her. The kind of smile one might give as a courtesy to a retail clerk bagging his sox at the local haberdashery. Well, if he would have ever shopped in one. Ian's suits weren't the kind coming off the shelf type, including the majority of apparel and accessories... they were like most of the executive operatives custom tailored.
Still, one gets the idea of the acknowledgement he gave Westenra on his way to the command center.
Oh yes, and as to the 'Lieutenant' reference; it had been something which he had somehow come to tag her with that seemed to have stuck.
That particular biot just seemed to naturally take charge and call the shots so naturally that he once, and just once mind you in a sarcastic fashion, replied with a 'yes sir, madame Lieutenant' . And that somehow or other forever stuck. Of course that had it's roots on Azteri.

Azteri...
It were when he first encountered Westenra.
Azteri...she chocked him unconscious the very first moment. Now, one must point out that chocking a man will sometimes-
Well, with the given intoxication of pheromones she had drenched the old factory rooms followed with the choke hold-
HEY now, who the hell knows what set him off to have taken to the biot. Maybe that all had nothing to do with it. But whatever it was that set the hook.... it had taken.
The only regret he had of that Azteri crisis had been seeing her fully undressed. Ok, not undressing in a sense of what one would expect of a woman, for Westenra was not at all human. But undress as to come apart from her human female form to melt into something resembling vomited chopped meat... in an organic and controlled fluid matter of course-
Wait...wait...
Why was he back on this? Rebooting again....

Ian cleared his thoughts of her for the thousand times. This was a creation, a weapon...an allied asset...nothing more.
Got it...
"Ahem... good you are here. Sorry to have kept you waiting. There were events coming together that needed my coordination." Half truths...

"Now it you will Lieutenant, come with me." Yes, it helped being formal, rather than utter her name.

He lead her through a few level's of security within the IBI building structure. Ian could hear her footsteps...so fluid... rhythmic...his mind visualizing her walk as he kept his eyes and attention ahead.

"Incidentally, Lieutenant... you inspire this plan." He felt the need to break their awkward silence as he lead her to the control room.




The better mouse trap....

"Alright gentlemen..." Ian greeted the operatives as he entered the control room with Westenra.
"... lets get this mouse back in the box." Code phrase for securing the biot which escaped the IBI coroner's office.


"But first.....where..." Ian searched the many pic-in-pic monitors that wallpapered the entire control room.
"...now where is our blond standing at the present moment?..."

"Agent Lynn is in her personal speeder, westbound on 1-97, Colonel." An operative pointed to the monitor that had the hidden camera in her dash.

"Ah yes... on the way to her bungalow. That'll work.
The box. Where the laundry box with her lingerie?...
Ah...yes!" He spotted the box of the blonde's discarded lingerie and clothing that the house keeper were instructed to collect from Karlie's suite. Incidentally, until he got the call that the local authorities may have located the other biot's location, a few days worth of Karlie's laundry had been collected.

Now with the blond apparently heading the opposite direction of their found target, it was time to put the plan into action.
Ian already had a team assembled and at the ready.
They had been called in and all had been instructed as to the plan and of the possible risks involved. One. One of the men would be the bait, the savory cheese to the mouse they needed to catch. The man was brought in and taken to a clean sterile room where he and he alone opened the box.
Yes, one would think it was a perverted plan, concocted by our ICI agent Ian. THAT would certainly be a good guess.

The man in the sterile room took out the blonds's used lingerie and rubbed it on his uniform...repeatedly and certainly every item, from dedicates and otherwise. he then put on a kind of lab coverall...the kind that could be easily ripped off. He sealed in Karlie's scent before he came out of the sterile room.

One could have guessed at Ian's perverted plan...




Of mice and men... or to put it in perspective; Of biots and men...

Security. It were why Westenra were with him in the first place.
Did Ian trust the biot Rom-jin?
Well, that question was a difficult one to simply answer at the moment. Ian had experienced the biot Rom-Jin in the Vera Mina form on the Morpheus during it's feral stage. And as far as his ravens had been able to collect, this biot had not particularly fed on it's dose of suppressant/addiction...fresh human blood. Enter, Westenra; sister of feral biot.

"Evening, Rom..." He addressed it as such, being in tasty blueberry fashion.
"...no doubt you remember your sister?" Of course it did. only it were looking past him and Westenra for...

Nope, no Karlie followed them in when they entered the biot's holding cell. And definitely no Karlie scent on either of them.
Ian had used Karlie's scent on the security officer he had sent to lure the biot in surrendering itself. A trick he picked up from Westenra and her seductive, sweet hard hitting pheromone trick.
Whoa, easy there Ian...we're not going there right now. Stay the course... He had to stay focused.

 

[Westenra Mina]

Westenra smiled at the pet name Ian had come up with for her. She blinked her pink eyes at him, the faint purple glow at the center of her eyes being easier to spot as he addressed her, telling her to follow him. She sat up ever so silently and fluidly to do so, suppressing a giggle at how hard Ian was trying to pretend he 'wasn't' interested in her.

As they walked Westenra decided to fill him in on the situation at The Morpheus.

"Repairs are slow at the moment. We are still clearing out wreckage. A lot of our security forces were killed, but we will recover, albeit barely. I ordered some of the clans Mother once formed on Atrisia to lend assistance with the wounded on Castagne, providing doctors, medical supplies, whatever we could spare." she said as they walked. "I'm so sorry about your planet, Colonel. The Morpheus tried to block as many of Heretic Station's Pylons as we could, we even disabled The A.I. on the ship to keep it in the path of bombardment longer, but in the end we had no choice but to order it out of the Stations firing trajectory or the next few hits would have punched a hole right through the armor and destroyed the main reactor."

She had seen the horrific devastation on the capital. Men, Women and Younglings butchered by rotting knights. The Amalgam was truly an evil, sadistic beast that needed putting down, just like the rest of her wretched cult.

"By the way, that ship I flew in on? Its something Mother had been intending to give to you before that vile monstrosity kidnapped her." Westenra said, completely using the term unironically, as by some people's standards she too counted as a humanoid abomination of sorts. "She felt it would be of use to you, given your particular duties." She added, quietly handing him a holodisk filled with the schematics of the vessel.

As Ian led her to the control room, Westenra's eyes widened in surprise as she learned the situation with Vera! Her sister had been found! They also had a plan to bring her in that could be summed up in two words: Pure. Squick.

"I have to admit, Colonel, that's a very...novel...solution. My sister is completely yandere for the Blond. I'm so pleased to have inspired you, Colonel. I've never been anyone's muse before." She said almost flirtatious, but at the same instant indirectly telling him I know you like me, handsome.

Oh, Ian, and his Nineties Heart-Throb looks. Westenra had more than once caught herself idly imagining a dating scenario. It would be awesome. A boat cruise through a river cutting right through a city. Him, in some impeccable suit drinking a fruit smoothie, her, feeding on a hogtied First Order Officer stripped to his undies (With a pile of other hogtied First Order or Imperial Officers in case she felt like seconds), The Morpheus Knights playing a violin or something equally sappy in an already sappy fantasy.

So sad that they had so many other things to do that it was likely a long ways off, maybe never. Still, a woman can dream...and subtly, indirectly flirt in the meantime. She wondered how Vera had been seduced by Karlie--was this how it had felt, suddenly thinking about someone a lot and liking it?

She pondered the question for a long while before Vera was brought in...encased in a cell with walls of three feet thick reinforced transparisteel. Vera, still in her blueberry form, looked cross as her repulsor cell was carted into the control center under multiple guards armed with the most powerful handheld weapons they could carry, many of them pointed at Vera's cell. Vera clearly didn't care at all about them, interested only in seeing Karlie's face, and disappointed at not finding it.

The leader of the team, nursing a bruised but unbroken rib handed Ian Sade the mission report.

"Wasn't even a contest..." the man muttered. "We captured her only because she smelled Doctor Destat on your bait hook. She didn't even break any bones--"

"You're welcome." the biot called out in clear arrogance. "Really, after all the risk I took protecting Karlie on that hellhole station, you'd think they'd be courteous enough to make the cell walls only a half foot thick. Not like I actually want to escape."

Ian greeted her and Vera focused on him with a cold smile.

"Colonel Sade...it would seem you've found an excuse to have my lovely sister around you once more. Convenient. Really, is all this necessary? I might be a killing machine but even 'I' know its bad form to feast on your allies. Mother would be very cross with me if I maimed or killed any of you. And worse, Karlie would never talk to me again."

"Sister, about Mother...I have terrible news. The Amalgam has kidnapped her."

Vera was silent, her programming...safeguard Nine and her interests...was currently being defied.

Boiling, murderous hatred, worse than any she had yet known, nearly as powerful as her affection for Karlie Lynn Destat , made Vera clench her fist. She scanned the transparisteel, looking for weaknesses with a combination of her X-Ray and telescopic modes.

She got close to the cell wall. Her hand held straight and fingers pointed an inch from the cell wall itself. Then she thrust forward with her hand at superhuman speed, closing into a fist that impacted against the wall with super strength.

A massive fault line developed in the cell wall that spread like a spiders web through the whole structure before quietly shattering.

The freaked special forces members backed away and pointed their weapons at her. Every agent in the control center pointed blasters at her, completely horrified at how she had bypassed one of their strongest safety measures almost without effort. Vera stood in the middle of her cell, looking bored, brushing transparisteel fragments off of her shoulders and hair.

"I will make a deal with you." the biot spoke quietly but tersely, an indication of just how homicidal she now was at the Amalgam kidnapping the woman who had allowed her to meet Karlie to begin with.

"You may have the corpse...and oh yes, you shall have it, after a few months in The Morpheus Dungeon. But the blood of The Amalgam? The blood belongs to me!"

"Does it take a lot of effort to be that dramatic, Sister?" Westenra asked innocently.

Vera shrugged. "It gets easier." she admitted dryly.

She looked around at the shards of her cell.

"I'm not paying for that." Vera said plainly. "Say you guys got any animal blood you don't need?"

"It's times like this I thank Mother for not making me a blood drinker like she did with Vera." Westenra admitted. "Of course my diet is hardly one to tout..."

 

[Karlie Lynn Destat]

She knew Westenra were here.
Here, planet side on Castagne.
Only Karlie could not stomach seeing her.
No no, was not like that. Not like that at all.

Karlie liked Westenra...she were a friend. As close a friend as Rom Jin had been. Both Rom and Westenra had risked their lives for her on many occasions. Only now Rom were dead, stolen or whatever. Yes, she had seen the security recordings. That was not Rom. At least that's what she finaly had to tell herself when her efforts at finding that biot that escaped the IBI coroner's office came up zilch.

Karlie's heart were also very broken. Broken for she had lost her wonderful beautiful Vera to the attack. Vera, her beloved Vera whom had also sacrificed her life to see her safe.

It were as to why she couldn't face Westenra. Westenra had lost her sister Rom and Karlie had lost her heart Vera.
To come face to face with Westenra would completely break her down. Karlie knew she could not comfort Westenra for the loss of Rom and of her mother Nine Lives. And at the same time, she didn't believe Westenra could comfort her in her two losses; Rom and Vera....

Karlie had taken off to catch her breath, get a few moments to herself. Actually maybe a day or two of binge drinking and crying herself to unconsciousness. Her beach bungalow..her beach house was the only thing she knew would give her some comfort.
Her father was too busy to hold her in his arms. She was no little girl anymore. yes, he firmly had held her for a long moment and then some when she returned to Castagne. She felt as safe in her father's arms as she had felt safe in Vera's and Rom's.
Ok, even that Colonel Sade. But lately he- ...he was just- Arrrg, never mind. Best not think of him at this time. He could be so sweet and then he could be a jerk! And a jerk he were the last two days, keeping his distance from her for one reason or another. He was jealous! Had been jealous of her interest in Vera. It were the only explanation.. the jerk!
So, so many things were bouncing around in her head as she headed the speeder down the coast line.

"Frak'n fodder..." She came up to a check point. her credentials somehow weren't letting her through.
Karlie settled her speeder down toward the Marines.
"Miss Destat.." The sentry came up to her open speeder.

"It's agent Lynn." She coldly replied, drawing her hand, her wrist crono that certified her credentials.

"Yes, my apologies... agent Lynn. This sector's closed at the present time. We've been instructed to keep this area secured."

"Secured from who? I've got complete unrestricted access to where ever I please."

"Yes, I understand that. But I've got my orders from the cabinet."

"Kryton..." she uttered, not wasting her time arguing with a grunt. Frak, she had Marine training herself and knew once these stone heads got an order...
Karlie didn't reply , but rather got on her comm...a direct line to her father.

What was she doing in Goma Gochi, he asked, seeing her location from where he were.
Didn't she have some research to complete? There had been a sample drawn from the biot before it's disappearance.
"Dad-..." She were about to correct him. Rom was not just a biot, but her friend. Only she didn't get into that at the time. Not with the jarhead by her speeder.

" ...ahem...I got the sample with me. I.... I need some quiet time to analyze it..break it down..you know...tinker with it." Tinker with it...sheesh. No, it were not what she planned on doing with it. but she didn't want to tell her father as to what. The jarhead next to her speeder, right.

Yes, he knew she had a small backroom lab at the bungalow...a small closet, more like it. hell, the girl had come up with the Sebrix project and other breakthroughs sucking on a lollipop under the Castan sun...at her beach house.

"For you.." She directed the hologram of Tarssin to the marine, whom came to full attention. There wasn't any need for an elaborate exchange between her father and the Marine. She were given immediate clearance with a healthy salute.


Minutes later...

Karlie came over and did a fly-by before setting her speeder down behind her beach house.
It were strangely quiet... serene, for the other houses she had passed over were all vacant. This time of year was the start of summer in this part of the hemisphere and it seemed she were the only one.
"Kowabunga!" it were her first real happy exclamation since meeting Vera on Castagne, before everything went to shiet. It were a short lived moment seeing her beach house again.

Karlie were no introvert and quite enjoyed other sun worshipers. But in lieu of the facts of what had just transpired on Castane not a few days ago...she needed some time alone.
it were where she could come to terms with her loss and that of her countrymen. Ok, more so her loss of Vera and her friend Rom.

Her first reaction to stepping out of her speeder was to kick off her shoes and bury her feet in the warm white sands... It were like her favorite place on earth were warmly welcoming her back.

"Oh Vera...." Karlie's heart ached for her Vera. She had plans. Had it planned out after Vera arrived on Castagne and after showing her the secret hidden lab that were found on her estate home to bring Vera here. Here, both of them...alone... under the Castan Sun.

Karlie dropped to her knees and cried...her hands covering her face to block out the sunlight. Her mind playing images and heart touched clips of Vera...

 

[Ian Sade]

Well, there you had it.
If one were to judge a system's elite security agency by the actions of local police, one would be standing in a control room full of plasteel debris.
Shiet, they were.

With the majority of the ICI/IBI agencies busy with homeland security and coordinating collective cleanups, the use of local police manpower was pretty much what Sade were left with in finding that resurrected biot Rom Jin., aka Vera Mina.
Oh, if only that blonde knew. Then again, maybe it were better if she didn't, he were thinking. Sade knew all bets would be off when inevitably Karlie would get her head out of the clouds and discover that fact for herself. Still, it weren't likely going to happen today. He made sure of that.

Sade did his best in remaining unmoved by the slapstick comedy stunt which unfolded after the biot had been brought in. And of all the restraining options the Bureau had, the local police had brought her in a psycho containment chamber...the one designed for crazies, zombies or just outright cannibals, not military grade biots. Sade almost rolled his eyes, taking the report from the officer. But he kept it professional. After all, these were no ICI, nor IBI agents but local police. He had to make due with what was currently available, and make nice.

And just as it were predicted...like a glass jar, it fractured. Sade had known to stand a bit back after the biot were given the heads up on it's creator, Nine. And rightly so he did, as their municipal brittle cage shattered.
"STAND DOWN...." He found it necessary to raise his tone to the bumbling idiots, lest they all get dropped by the biot.
Ahh...so that was what Karlie were talking about when she complained with the use of local magistrates. The IBI were an internal Bureau, an executive investigating branch of the Castan Cabinetry and most often had to work/coordinate with local municipal authorities... like for arrests, high profile investigations etc.
His Bureau on the other hand were military/externally based and rarely did they have to deal with these 'idiots'. Yes, he now understood as to why Karlie had often referred to the local authorities as bumbling idiots.
Not dwelling further on the lack of skilled professional operatives among municipal police, lets move forward.

"Gentlemen... please....." Sade looked over to Westenra first before continuing. "...lower your weapons."
He knew these two biot's capabilities; the police didn't. Vera's reaction to her creator being taken had been unpredictable to say the least. Sade figured some primary directives were burned into her framework. After all Nine didn't build them for fashion shows.
Westenra on the other hand kept to her tempo. She hadn't yet given him any signs of grandiose like the Vera model. It were quite interesting a comparison these two, he were observing... learning... analyzing West-...er, the two biots.
Westenra in his limited experience seemed more reserved, not over the top... better programming no doubt. Sade took to wonder if Westenra would have ever swallowed his bait, like Vera who had taken it hook, line and sinker.

"The situation is under control." Yes, that were his cue in dismissing the police. " Now if you will, officers..."

Exit the reluctant police, who with a slight gesture from Sade got ushered out of the control room by a few ICI operatives.
Sade, and the biots were alone.

"Vera, Vera, Vera..." He stepped over the debris, walking up to one of the now deserted control desk. He were checking up Karlie's location again. Her speeder indicated she had indeed reached her beach house. Good, one primary fuse was at least safely distanced from the powder keg.
"I applaud you for your uncanny lack of retraint." He then turned to Vera.
"Now I'm going to either have to put those poor idiots on ice till we get their memory wiped... or euthanize them on their trip up in the turbo lift." He weren't joking. Those idiots didn't need to know about these two, especially about Vera who had little self restraints. There were galactic treaties concerning military grade biots that could self repair. He couldn't chance them talking and expose his ally's (Nine's) illegal tech.
Still, he would have to detain the officers and have the Bureau do their best in getting their recollection of events...modified.
"Frak...that'll be more red tape for me to file..." No, he weren't disposing the assigned police task force. They did believe that they were doing their job well. And they had done their part, both in the attack and in the aftermath, finding and retrieving Vera for him. He had to give them credit for that. Besides, the Bureaus were currently short handed as they had lost many in the front lines of the attack.
They were tapping in on the local authorities for mundane manpower. They had to make due with what they got.

"Bots-" More so Vera than Westenra.
"I mean Ladies... are you finished with the soap?" As entertaining as Westenra's witty replies were to the late model, Sade couldn't be drawn into what ever game programming they were simultaneously running.
Shoot...were he eyeing Westenra again?
Back to Vera.

"First off, I don't make deals." He were lying of course. It were part of his purview. Ahem, that's not his perversion mind you. Although he could perhaps evoke the late model Vera in upchucking (vomit) that white substance again, which he seen her do on the Morpheus once. That is, if the biot ever got a chance to witness him at his most sadistic means of retrieving info.
"Any detrimental decisions concerning the said Amalgam and her replication of what was to represent Darth Rigor (no proof yet it were the real Rigor) would be between my Cabinet Head (Tarssin) and Nine Lives. " Good stall on any commitments between him and these two biots. He understood they were Nine's top creations. One especially were difficult to see as being a replicant..
"What we can agree on is in formulating a joint effort in not only retrieving your creator, but to permanently neutralize this Amalgam and her creations with extreme prejudice." It were difficult to tell if he had both biot's attention or if they had any notion of compliance with what he were saying. True, he were not their master, nor was he certain they had any concern for his existence other than what their creator had set as far as standing programmed orders.

Still, he had to set down a viable structure that would enable them to function together.
" This isn't to be about vengeance and rehashing old vendettas. Lady Lives and Castagne share a common enemy. Lady lives is Castagne's ally and friend. Until we secure her within our envelope, we are to work together with our combined resources. One party does not compromise the other... otherwise our enemy has already won."

 

[Karlie Lynn Destat]

She had originally come here to shed her sorrow... do some binge drinking for the most part.
But she put the Wryren's Reserve down after the first two sips.
Yes, Karlie knew she were a lightweight. But that's not what stopped her.

No.
No, she couldn't let one precious memory string get fried, even if those memories only brought her now sorrow and pain.
Those feelings were a reminder to her that she were alive. Alive because of Vera's sacrifice at the estate and alive because of Rom's sacrifice on that horrid station. Two entirely different entities, one a beautiful woman (Vera), and the other a wonderful biot, Rom. A biot she had known as a good friend. Both had given their lives to save hers.
No, these feeling, this pain were a tribute, an everlasting memory burned into Karlie that she would never forget.

She had put the glass down, leaning herself over on the table for support, looking out at the sea.
It's serene gentle surf reached her ears. It were calming, like a mother's whispering to a troubled child. Karlie had loved the sea all her life. She had been attuned to it since she could walk. Her mother Karla and she often walked along a similar shoreline...hand in hand most times if not collecting shells and building chains of sand castles.... 'empires' her mother used to call them. Karlie adored her mother when she were very young. Thought the world of her. Karla were the center of all things to Karlie... and she were taught wondrous games.

"Empires..." Karlie repeated those words. Funny she just remembered that, she thought.

"Oh mother... you were a crafty one. Were you a witch?....a sith?
What in Berkana's (God's) name were you? And for that matter, what was I?" Karlie asked looking over beyond the thin surf line. "Was I just really the means of you to live forever?"

Karlie had discovered a long time ago after her mother had been removed what her mother's plan for her had been. But even in her absence as she were growing up, her mother's influence, her teachings had connected her to the force. Karlie were a prodigy, a young sithling whom had lost it's master, but not the strong connection by which her mother had bound her to the force. And as a growing child, she could feel the force growing stronger within her. And along with that came the hauntings...the nightmares of her mother calling to her...wanting to posses her....wanting Karlie's life as her own.
These haunts didn't break Karlie though. No. they did the opposite. It gave her inner strength and motivation to not only resist her mother's ghost, but to find the means to sever that connection to the force...altogether.
Then all became silent in her head. The only person there was herself. The feeling of detachment were a greater feeling than that of the binding force. And of the force, it could no longer be felt. She were free of it. Free like the air itself....

And Karlie could no longer feel what she had once felt; could no longer feel the surge, the tidal forces that rivaled both moon and the sea itself. And she remembered what once had coursed through her veins. And she remembered the feeling she had, once free of it. Karlie whom had without thought once embraced the force, now feared it..hated it. It were unnatural to her now. It were a disease... a virus in her eyes.

"FRAK!" She pushed herself away from the table she were leaning on. Why was she thinking about that again?
"I didn't come here for this." Karlie walked over to the deck. the sea breeze gently caressed her golden sun struck hair. She took in the sea fragrance, the salt, the very essence of the sea itself. It was no doubt calming. It were all she could feel of the sea and it's power.
"I gave you up....I gave it all up because I AM NOT LIKE YOU!
I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU! You hear that, sea? You hear that sky?
You go tell that hellish creature, my MOM, wherever she is, that I will never be like her!" She shouted to the sea and wind.

It were from what she remembered her mother telling her as a child that the power of the sea and wind were at her beckoning. That the sea lapped, knelt and bowed before her tiny feet, while the sky carried her voice across the heavens in the form of wind. Karlie had been told that it could carry her voice, her will even, all the way across the galaxy. Her mother at the time were bonding her daughter with the force, connecting Karlie with it, in the same manner as it connected to her.


Next morning after crying herself to sleep....

Karlie had fallen asleep in the living room and had been awake for some time now, since the first rays of the Castan sun had nudged her eyes open.
She remained there nestled comfortable on one of the ottomans, looking out at the gentle sea...thinking. Were she to bury her head in the sand, sulk all day, all week for Berkana knows how long, or remember the good, all the moments she had spent with her Vera and friends. But would that be enough?

No. No, she were certain Vera and Rom didn't save her for her to just sit around thinking of them. They save her for a reason.
Karlie had to get back into her grove...her research. She had been one damn good scientist and if it weren't for her research, she wouldn't have discovered how to live free of the virus midiclorean. And of the viral research and development. It literally could save millions of people. And of course levee the odds in destroying millions of hive life forms that were also plaguing many systems.

Her eyes slid over to the table before her. The hermetic flat case she had brought over with her was right there where she set it down the day before. There were samples the agency had wanted her to examine and process.
Work.
It were her job assignment following the clean up. She was after all an investigator for the Bureau. These bio-samples collected were in her line of expertise. The included both samples from the orbiting station as well as those from other undisclosed donors.
unbeknownst to her, they included samples of Vera from the estate collapse and that of Rom Jin before she reanimated. Karlie had packed them up and brought them with her. It were the only way she could justify leaving the IBI Bureau's headquarters following Castagne's ordeal. And that was by taking the work with her.

Karlie had worked remotely before and quite successfully. Reason her father and Cabinet Council gave her such leeway.

Getting off her comfort ottoman and making another Castanian vanilla coffee, she activated the eye security scanner, getting the case to open.
There were many micro vials of samples inside. They were categorized from urgent to just plain curiosity and just coded labeled.
"Sigh...seriously? Like who's side do they think I'm on?" The micro vials were coded in what was a random fashion. Only the Cabinet, most likely her father, had the conversions. There was no code to break to find out where each sample was taken from.
This made her mad. Still, it were her job to analyze and break down the samples...see if there was a need to reverse engineer what samples were formulated and not in natural form.
Normally she would be outraged enough to demand full disclosure. But she were in no mood to fight with her directors, least of all with the Cabinet and her father. Karlie were still grieving her two lost friends. Oh yes...and the other people, whoever they were that had died in the attack. She had to make an effort of caring for those too....Oi.

Simple genetic viral mutation...most of them. They had been the virus that had reanimated their own dead to rise up against them and spread the infestation. Karlie was quick to analyse their coding. And it were of no surprise it had similarities to the Melida/Dan virus design and sophistication. The samples she went through were apparently designed by the same.... "You witch!"
Her mother?

Her mother.

"Frak!" Karlie pushed herself off the small desk and sub-fractional bio-analyser.... the compact condensed version of what she normally had in her main lab back at the Bureau.

It took an hour..maybe more before she settled down enough to at least finish the rest of the samples. She figured they would all pretty much be similar and she would at least be able to complete them before high noon. Maybe get some sun afterwards. Reluctantly she sat herself back down and continued to process the rest.

"Wait a second... where did they take you two from?" She asked herself.
What were these two? They were entirely of a different and unrecognizable matrix at first examination. It were apparent that these two samples were...different.
They had no association with the rest.
"Hmm..." Now this peaked her curiosity and interest more. They definitely weren't from any Castan elemental charts. And they at first analysis indicated they were bio engineered...with a kind of matrix coding similar to DNA. The samples upon further study showed her they were a hybrid. Both organic and elemental..alloys in fact...living bio-metallic structured matrix.
Again, the coded labeling on the samples gave her no clue whatsoever as to where they were from and from what.

Well, it mattered little as to where they were taken from. Karlie would soon discover exactly what they were and for what purpose/function they had....

 

[Vera Mina]

The two Androids had been given a temporary stay at IBI headquarters over night after debriefing what they knew from personal encounters with The Amalgam, Vera taken to the lab for analysis and to be given her precious supply of blood. They had rolled in preserved animal blood, hooked it to an IV drip, and Vera had been feeding on the tank of blood, since, her systems rapidly stabilizing.

They really could not get around the scans. Ian Sade was providing extremely generous terms to work together. They were allies. Allies learn things about each other. Westenra was happy to cooperate. So was Vera if it meant seeing the lovely Karlie again.

Scans were conducted from afar for the most part. Unobtrusive. Westenra had chosen to keep her sister company. She would rather flirt heavily with Ian, but if Vera went berzerk due to malfunctioning, Westenra would almost certainly be the only one who could stop her without massive loss of life.

As it was, Vera had lazily reclined on a sofa, skin rippling as blood was continually fed into its system. Westenra could tell her older sister was still smouldering.

"I'll skin The Witch. The sharpest knife I can find." Vera snarled.

"You would not like her blood, Sister, too acidic. Tried some of it after I destroyed one of her bodies on Azterri."

"She kidnapped Mother. She touched Karlie ('Rom''s face visibly contorted in rage after saying this). I don't care how acidic it tastes. I''ll drink all of it."

"Many of our family are dead because of her." Westenra said, clearly devasted still. "The Castle's a mess."

"We'll start by breaking the bones. Then we seal her in a hyperbaric torture chamber. We'll let Ian do some sort of forbidden ritual from one of Mother's texts so her soul will be cursed in death." Vera suggested.

"While wearing a clown suit, so her death will be that much more humiliating." Westenra added.

"I'll wear that devil outfit Karlie likes." Vera muttered, planning the horrible scenario Darth Shojo's droid K1 had taught her involving multiple torture instruments and manure from the Five Sacred Islands of Chinn. This was what would be used to actually kill her. At least if they took her alive to do this.

"What should I wear?" Westenra asked, lazing on top of a bed in the large but bare quarters they were provided.

Vera glanced at her.

"You're already wearing it." she replied.

"How are your error checks going?"

"Systems stabilized. You don't have to worry about me snacking on them."

"Just checking."

Meanwhile, in an adjacent room, soundproofed, various members of Castagne's scientific black ops research specialists had been called in to examine the results of scans and samples taken from the two biots, both on Azterri and here.

Colonel Sade had been called in over holoconference so they could present their findings to him.

The head of IBI R&D, an old, frail looking scientist adjusted his glasses, a five o clock shadow on his face. He had gotten no rest since the attack.

"Well, this is what we've managed to uncover so far, Colonel." He spoke wearily. He had the reports and photos next to him.

"Quite simply put, these are the single most advanced HRD's we've ever encountered. The first one only has a few electronic parts, and even passed most of our medical scans as human. The second one has no electronic parts at all and passed all but our most sensitive scans as human..." he explained. "The woman who created them doesn't think like most weapons developers. These have human like learning capacity. They both pass the sentience test. The blue skinned one has a psychological profile you would expect in a high end assassin droid, though it seems fixated on Doctor Destat. The other has a more human persona, indicating it has more of a requirement to interact with people. The second Android allowed us to test her capability on an internal exercise course. Approximately seven times faster than a champion athlete. We probably all move like tree sloths from her perspective. Tissue samples from the second Android indicate a very strong resistance to heat and cryonics. Blue skinned one doesn't seem to have that. Samples from both indicates vulnerability to ion and microwave. Genetics indicate its all vong based from what we could observe of the approach of the designer. There are alot of things we don't understand such as the programming language...we also are not sure why the designer went to the trouble of designing artificial vampires. I suppose the ability to generate fear is a plus...but there are impracticalities to this approach. They are absolutely lethal in the right circumstances but you cannot field an army of them for many of the same reasons they are so effective as singular units. But just studying their cellular architecture has given us ideas for new technology...but not many Castagne facilities are extant that could handle the research, and frankly, Colonel, the technology is so alien we could hardly make heads or tails of it. Fortunately they have chosen to cooperate for the most part. Plus there is no way we will learn more unless we do an up close examination and frankly, the only one who could do it easily is Doctor Destat. Has she sent back to any word on the samples so far, Colonel?"

 

[Ian Sade]

Sigh... why did it have to be her?

Ian had listened patiently to Dr Dejenko, Karlie's senior Bio-Medical Director.
The girl had interned under him, spurring her interest and passion in bio-sciences. The doctor often referred to Karlie as being top of his class, if he had a class. No, Dr Dejenko had and still was considered their 'go-to' man. He worked alone, for many of the best top scientist could not be more than assistants to him, for their lack of vision in the complex matrix of bio-engineering on a near atomic level. But Karlie had not only picked it up, but seemed to have surpassed the Dr Dejenko in all levels and standards.
But his former protege Karlie, despite having surpassed the doctor himself in bio-science, was one tough pill to swallow and control....er, to work with rather. At least that was the consensus of the ICI, with Ian not too far behind them.
Karlie was IBI, an Internal threats and affairs bureau. Ian was with the ICI, an intelligence agency which for the most part was military based, foreign threats etc. The two bureaus were part of the executive branches that kept Castagne's power balanced and in check.

"I see..." He replied. it were no sense asking Dr Dejenko if he could find other alternate avenues in deciphering these unique bio-engineered sentients.
So according to Dr dekenko, these two biots were more than just your high end military grade androids. Rom and West were two very unique individuals. it seemed. Even different from one another. They were not at all mass produced but handcrafted as the scientist tried explaining to Ian.
One could say two entirely different subspecies as far as sentient went.
Ian quite understood this. Understood nearly up to Dr Dejenko's level. But the key master again seemed to be Karlie. Karlie, Karlie Karlie.
The disappointment was clearly in Ian's features.

"I'm sorry Colonel, but I've reached a pinnacle that's beyond my comprehension. Any further advance in the molecular construct of this matrix could take months...possibly a year to fully understand it. My suggestion would be to get Karlie Destat on these two HRD samples. She had unlocked what was thought possible with her Sebrix Project. Her research and finding have changed my own perspective on our ancestry." The doctor once more pointed out to Ian, Karlie's superior mind set and insight on molecular level bio-sciences and genetics.

Ian went silent for a moment. He had already calculated the contingencies and scenarios surrounding Karlie's revelation. concerning Rom. It all spelled out disaster. The girl had been distraught over loosing both Rom and Vera, believing the latter version had been human.
He knew there was no telling how that crazy blonde was going to react, discovering that Rom was in fact Vera. Deception, lies within lies...

Yes,Ian recalled he had err on Azteri when he tried to disclose what Vera was. Lucky for him, the girl had her blinders on for the biot at the time, and had tossed his accusation out the window.

"Well, in a way, she has." Ian finally replied.

"I don't understand, Colonel. She has, what?" Dr Dejenko asked.

"Karlie were given the same set of samples you were to analyse. She took them with her to an undisclosed location." Of course Ian wasn't going to tell anyone outside the Cabinet and 'need to know' of Karlie's whereabouts.

"Oh?..." The doctor adjusted his glasses. This changed everything.
"When did she leave with the samples?" He asked, as it had taken him and his team of dedicated scientists a week now to come up with what he did.

"Yesterday... by the afternoon, I believe."

"Hahaha... then my dear Colonel, our girl has already unlocked the secret to their matrix designs. Has she not reported these findings already to you, being from the two HDRs that she seems to be attached to?"

Ian's brow lifted. Dr Dejenko seemed to have implied that Karlie would have broken down the coding to the matrix of Nine Lives's two biots overnight, with what had taken Dr Dejenko and his team a week to come to a dead end.
"No. No she would have no reason to report her findings stat. The samples were given random file coding. My own deception."
Hindsight; Ian was relieved he had randomly encoded the sample's origins in the hermetic case Karlie were given.

"Well then... I don't know what else to tell you Colonel, but to get a hold of Karlie and ask for the findings. I know her well as far as bio-sciences go. If she looked over the samples, then she got immersed in their matrix design. They are as unique as she is in her present free midi state. She could not rest till she unlocked these secrets in the samples. And believe me; she could do what we could not in a matter of hours."

"Thank you Dr Dejenko... I will certainly follow your lead." Ian got up, adjourning their meeting.




20 minutes later....

Knock...knock.
He normally would have entered without knocking, given that the two occupants were after all, non-human...androids to be exact. But his new found understanding of them gave him a new outlook for both. They were as Dr Dejenko explained, viable new species. that of course was based on the scientist's understanding...or lack of full understanding of these bio-engineered life forms. Karlie were said to have the final prognosis.

He stood outside when the door opened from the inside, asking if he could enter. It were obvious he had a new disposition about his person.
"Ladies...." He entered when gestured in. "I think before we go any further with our plans, we must come clean with our key player...Karlie."

-cut scene-​

Ian had returned to the main control room with both Rom and Westenra to check on Karli's speeder location. It were still at the girl's beach house.
"Ok, so far so good. She's still over at her beach bungalow."

He then got on the comm, hailing the Cabinet head, Tarssin.

The hologram image of Karlie's father soon appeared. With a short formality, which included introducing the two biots next to him, ian got to the point.
"Sir, permission to send over a drone to confirm your daughter's location?" He asked.
Sure he had the authority to check on anyone outside the Cabinet level. But this was Tarssin's daughter and a key element in all that had transpired here on Castagne. Ian wasn't one that would take liberties on a Destat.

Of course her father knew she had taken the speeder by which he had initially authorized a tracking device.

"Yes sir, her speeder is still in that location." Ian confirmed.
"But somehow we can no longer track her crono. It's...it's been upgraded."
Unfortunately, Ian had failed to disclose to Tarssin that Karlie had been given a new enhanced crono by Nine Lives.
Ian had no doubt tried to persuade Karlie in retaining her original for the very reason that the Nine version was currently untraceable at the moment by choice. It would only send out the unique distress signal if it's bio-ware sensed Karlie were in distress...physical distress. or at any time the girl decided to turn her location on.

"I see, Colonel. We'll need to discuss this matter soon.
In the meantime, send over your drone." Tarssin hologram then faded out.

"Ok..." He turned to Rom first, as she seemed a bit more anxious in locating Karlie.
"Lets see where and what our girl is working on at her beach house."
Dr Dejenko had given Ian reason to believe Karlie would be fixated on the two samples and working to unravel it's bio-matrix design.


Some minutes later...

A whisper quiet dragonfly zipped across the shoreline, making a beeline toward Karlie's bungalow at a sniper bullet's velocity. Coming within 100 meters of it's destination, it suddenly froze in mid air, leveling off, going on a programmed simulation approach toward the house. it hovered about, drawing closer and closer to the house catching flies and insects like a real dragonfly would. All the while it's ultra-HD multi lenses were picking up everything, including Karlie..whom were sunning on the lower patio by the fresh water pool.

Ian's brow lifted as the dragonfly zoomed in on her.

"Shoot..." He sighed, looking over to the two biots that were there with him.
Mainly he focused on Rom, who's sudden change of mood from looking bored to full undivided attention.

Ian hadn't expected Karlie to be sunning herself outdoors.

 

[Vera Mina]

When Ian Sade had walked in, Vera immediately pulled out the blood IV in anticipation, full quenched in thirst.

Westenra grinned at the sight of him and with some sort of athletic wizardry twirled herself off the bed in a spin and stood up, and smiled some more.

Vera maintained her reserve. "Colonel Sade. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

When Colonel Sade explained that the only way to go further was explaining everything to Karlie Lynn Destat , Vera realized her charade had come to an end.

"Damn."

"She was going to find out, sooner or later. Ian found out, and he probably wasn't even trying." Westenra pointed out.

"Mother said she walked him through it." Vera replied.

Westenra blinked. "Really?" she asked.

"Yes. But much as I am loathe to admit it my dear sister has a point..." Vera trailed. "But I want to be the one to tell her. Personally."

"She's gonna chew you out..." Westenra pointed out. "Probably worse than she chewed Ian out."

"I...am prepared..." Vera said hesitantly. "Should I change?"

"I would." Westenra answered.

She looked at Ian.

"All I need is a white bodyglove and boots. And possibly your speederbike."

"You forgot to say please." her sister joked, following Ian out.

"Please..." Vera grumbled, following in a huff soon after.

Fifteen minutes later...

Both biots followed Ian into the main control room, Vera finally in a change of clothing she had requested.

When Ian had introduced them to Tarssin Destat , Vera felt herself blush a little. She had no doubt the Viceroy had a keen awareness of where his daughter was and who she was with at all times. He had likely seen her face days before she had seen his.

No doubt he was aware she was crazy about Karlie. Westenra, having nothing to be concerned over due to not liking the Viceroy's daughter, but rather his Colonel, simply waved happily at him. Vera facepalmed in embarrassment. She would never live that down.

The next few minutes of drone surveillance had Vera bored out of her skull, though she did like Karlie's house...

But her processors got 'very' warm as the drone spotted Karlie sunning herself...

("Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer plays)

"Ian, you genius! They aren't paying you enough!" the Biot hissed in excitement, on the verge of salivating. She was commiting every pixel of the feed to the section of her memory database she reserved for Karlie related memories.

She looked perfect. Safe. It made killing those inferior copies of her worth it.

"I'll give her a courtesy of three hours. Then I'm going to her..." Vera said. It wasn't a suggestion. She was going to come clean in private and in person.

"I'm a Biot, about to stand, in front of a girl, and tell her--what the feth am I gonna tell her?!" the Biot exclaimed worriedly to Westenra and Ian. (Four or Five minutes: 90 XP)

"We have some time to think." Westenra said.

"Should I bring a present?" Vera asked.

"No present is gonna smooth over ''Murderous Bloodsucking Android', Vera." her sister replied bluntly.

"Well how the hell DO you tell humans the truth?" Vera wondered.

I've found in my experience candy grams are a nice way." Westenra replied. "But Karlie will be distraught and she won't want candy. She'll want likely complete honesty, done as non-standoffishly as possible. You cannot bribe your way into her forgiving you either."

"These rules are strange..." Vera trailed. "But okay. What next?"

Westenra paused. After a moment she shrugged.

"I cannot lie to you Sister, because I love you: You are pretty screwed." Westenra finally admitted, keeping her tone non offensive, but conversational somehow. "You have completely miscalculated this at every turn, and now you are running around like a fething spider on fire trying to figure out how break the news to your crush that you're into Extreme Cosplay, just like I am."

"I don't need a rundown, what I need is advice."

"Look, I don't even have access to my psychology programming in this form, and I can still tell you that there is no good way to break the news you are an Android Vampire. Even Ian found out by shooting me." Westenra replied. "She would have gotten suspicious at never seeing you eat food with her, never mind the dozens of other things regular humans do that you simply can't biologically speaking. Can you even tell me how you would have hidden your diet?"

"That issue was a work in progress." Vera replied smoothly.

It was Westenra's turn to facepalm.

"If only we had two weeks coaching..." Westenra muttered. She turned to Ian.

"You must forgive my Sister. She was never designed to feel this way. I'm not even sure what Karlie did to cause Vera to fall for her."

Vera developed a distant, happy look to her and sighed wistfully.

"She fooled my ability to read her emotions, and then sicced dozens of droids on me...no one had ever gotten the drop on me like that except this one pirate but Karlie was the hypnotic sway of the cobra before it strikes...and no one has ever succeeded in hypnotizing me since...she's...I'm addicted to her..."

Vera turned to Ian.

"How should we proceed?"

 

[Ian Sade]

Seriously?
The blonde were basking in the sun, while all of Castagne was busy with the clean up, recovery and what-not and the girl was just catching some rays
Ian could feel a migraine starting to creep up on him.

Oh wait, no...that was the biot coming up next to him. He looked over to it a moment realizing it were Vera. It were transfixed on Karliel.
"Heh.." Yes, of course, Vera. His off color tactic in reeling Vera in had been based on her fixation of the very blonde. Now once more she seemed to be crushing on a cheerleader, like a school girl.
He controlled his reflex to have a chuckle escape.

A three hour lead, it said.
It were what Vera would give her girl, projected up on the holo screen. The grace period before revealing itself to her. Vera might as well hit Karlie over the head with a mando breast plate.
Ian slowly nodded to self knowing quite well whatever the biots were cooking up was going to be utter failure. he knew Karlie. Had dealt with her anger and tantrum when it came to such matters. Folding his arms over he leaned his derriere on one of the dressers. This was going to be interesting, listening to what the two biots were cooking up.

Now mind you, Ian had his eyes open on Azterri concerning these two. Especially when the more agile one, Westenra, had dropped him. He had not expected it to be on their side at the time. had thought it as one of the adversaries that had attacked Karlie's limo on Azterri. Still, as keen as he were, the biot (West) had gotten over on him physically. That damn thing was strong...bull-servo strong, despite her soft human curves. But that was not why he were keeping his smirk in check. Ian anticipated what was about to transpire between these two, more so from the unit Vera...

The two assassins started on what were a comical exchange between two lost girls navigating through what could be construed as dating advice. That, and how to do the backstroke to keep from being pulled under from a sinking vessel in turbulent waters. Nine had hinted to him of her daughter's innovative thinking when treading new waters. Sure they were built for destruction, but their processing abilities came that of humans. Only they too, like humans, had to learn to navigate through social landmines. And this was one such volitale ordinance: Karlie.

At first, he simply laid back with folded arms, observing the two go through what perhaps two siblings would in the same situation...as two freshmen in a high school. He had to admit, the West model seemed to have a little more sense and sensibility. then again, he was bias on that model. It had the properties that triggered his primal mating urges. Aherm...now where in the story were we?..

Ahh...
Of course Ian was no relationship expert by any means. One could label him as a neanderthal when it came to relationships. You see, Ian were more a free agent, a bachelor in those matters. He weren't one to fold on his own so called virtues just get a piece of ass. Sure, a man like Ian could be mesmerized, be hit by a thunderbolt by a good looking female like any other virile human male. It were as they were designed by the Creator...to propagate the species.
But then his primal male instincts and nature would work him through that fog.
No, Ian were one who looked for a return on his investment when it came to females and relationships. He were in all aspect of the sense a 'bad boy'.

"Haha..you're asking me?" Ian finally had a chance to interject.

"Ok..well, if it's not of national security... you don't.
You don't tell her the truth. Not the complete truth anyway...not to (he was going to say 'the opposite sex' but in lieu of the biot's gender... yea) females." He said. Of course for a moment he could have had two heads and it wouldn't have gotten a different perspective on him.

"The truth comes out of the weak... when everything which binds your person as a whole has broken down, you spill out the truth." Of course that came out of his experiences in interrogations.
"You don't divulge your entire arsenal of skeletons in your closet...ever." Did the bots even know what he were implying? Still, Nine had indeed enlightened him on their innovative formulation of deduction.... understanding figurative speech.
"You'd then be stripping yourself of integrity, leaving open your vulnerability...your weaknesses."
And in a way, he were feeling out Westenra more so than the Vera model. West were his eye candy despite being a figurative of a man's imagination. Well, his imagination anyway...

"If it were me up against those butt-cheeks; I'd most certainly leave out the Murderous Bloodsucking Android portion out. You know...No tell, no lie." That was a no brainer. At least to Ian it wasn't.

"Think about it... you Vera, you never said one part of your design or another were or weren't the other. " That were true.
"With females, you have to turn it around on them." Oh oh...the Neanderthal man were coming out.
" It were her lack of perception. Females are emotional beings. Knowing that, you can play it out that it were her fault for assuming...after all, you were there in all of your capacity to assist and help her. You can play it as it stated out as an assignment...then work it on her that it became something more. Something quite unexpected and definitely something you never felt before. This makes the female think she were special..one of a kind in your eyes. Trust me, it works on their emotional state of mind, especially when they have experienced a broken heart. Broken hearts hurt more than one could imagine. And that heart wants to mend..heal in the worst way. Females are more to buy what is a doctored up excuse than an outright truth. Truth when it comes to matters of the heart with females comes up as weakness."

"Me... I would show up, lock onto her eyes for however long it would take till she flinches...and then go take that woman...devour her whole till she is stripped of bone and flesh.." Yes, he were a wolf, an alpha male alright.
"Of course I don't mean that literally. "

"Anyway....candy...flowers..gifts...they are all signs of weakness. You bring those things to negotiations as a gesture of exchange. You can't exchange a gift for affection...there are prostitutes who have that market cornered. Karlie is a virgin, if you didn't know that." he knew that. He had a go at her when she were indoctrinated into her bureau the IBI. He were ICI and it were her first joint venture.
So as not to recant over as to how it didn't go down, lets just say at this time that a man like Ian desired experienced females. He certainly wouldn't want to be the one to take a woman by the hand and walk, talk her through her first sexual experience. Hell that!

"What?!" Ian exclaimed as he knew he didn't have two heads protruding off his shoulders.
"You asked... I gave you my take on it..."

 

[Vera Mina]

Vera listened intently to the imput Ian Sade had to offer. It was a keen insight. She struggled not to salivate at the idea of metaphorically devouring Karlie Lynn Destat just like Westenra hid how she salivated at the thought of metaphorically devouring Ian.

"I shall factor your imput heavily, Colonel. Thank you." Vera spoke. "Now...I need to...prepare..."

Vera headed off to work out a strategem.

"She's doomed..." Westenra said, facepalming.

Then she turned to Ian.

"Soooo...take a woman and devour her, eh?" she asked slyly, winking at him. "Strip her to the bone? You certainly get points for passing all my prerequisites." she whispered, slinking off to the quarters they had provided to Transition to another guise...

Three hours later.

Vera had never been truly terrified before this point. Even her first death had barely illicited more than a 'meh'.

But to face Karlie. To let her know her beautiful sweet Vera was an artificial fantasy cooked up by a mad scientist vampire samurai ex-jedi (A Comedic Relief variant at that!) was slowly dawning on Vera as to how much of a nail in the coffin this could be for their relationship.

She was deeply genuinely distressed as she sped to Karlie's home. Her cognitive upgrades in addition to her slowly developing more sophisticated thinking that was starting to override the effects of the shapeshifter circuit on her brain's empathy center, and she was struck with real guilt for the first time at just how much she had lied to her.

But she had never heard anyone say they needed her before meeting Karlie on the Morpheus. She did what was expected . Often what she was paid to do. She was wanted for her services.

But Karlie had needed her.

She had not known to react at first. Before those words, Karlie had just been another meatsack complaining. But those words and then trying to kill her...the Android had not been able to resist her. Code cracked. By Karlie. By motherfething accident.

Vera suddenly hated how Mother had made her. Her own nature as a vicious killing machine could tear them apart forever. Much of that was Vera's own fault. But it wasn't Mother's fault the machine she had originally designed only for lawyering and killing had decided to explore matters of the heart.

Strange...she hated how Mother had made her, yet could not hold her responsible for the fact it might all be ruined. The old her almost certainly would have.

There was no Obi-Wan to blame if Karlie turned against her. She would have done that herself.

(Cutaway of Obi-Wan cutting off Anakin's limbs.)

The wind whipped the blood red hair on Rom's face as she sped to the location on her bike. She could see the devastation that murdering psychopath The Amalgam had caused. The old her would have delighted in this.

But it was Karlie's world. The Android knew it hurt Karlie to see her planet like this, so it hurt Vera as well. The scientist was proving a slowly widening window into empathy towards others. She didn't acknowledge this consciously.

She finally reached it. She stepped off the bike, absolutely terrified, yet knowing she must go in. Surely some camera had already spotted her on the property but Vera knocked all the same...

 

[Westenra Mina]

Current Configuration: Gladiator (See Bio)

The scientists currently studying the biots watched with a mix of horror and scientific curiosity as they watched Westenra transform in the quarters they had been given to share. The biot was standing, flesh bulging and shifting and melting and shifting again in a slow and nauseating manner everywhere on its body as its programming reconfigured, pigmentation and hair color and type changing.

"What do you suppose the triggering mechanism for the transformation is?" one of the scientists asked quietly.

"Chemical. Has to be. Deep within the cell walls I wager." one theorized.

"Her designer studied The Octopus. I'm positive of it. This Nine Lives has altered the skin to act like a high quality version of Octopus skin cells." another added

"Why does it move like that?" one more asked.

"Reconfiguring the durability, strength, and energy output of her muscles must require a lot of careful tweaking. There are probably error checks, chemical regulation and redistribution, musculoskeletal rearrangement. I'd be more surprised if we didn't see something like this." the Head of the research division replied as he watched the horrific looking transformation, clocking the exact time it took (Around five minutes) and uploaded the scans to Ian's Datapad on an encrypted signal. (The Head Researcher that had helped mentor Karlie had amusingly titled the message 'YOU GOTTA SEE THIS CHIT OMG CREEPY!!!')

The transformation soon ended and a slender but beautiful woman with an athlete's figure no less defined than her previous state stood up, her skin programmed to look like she was wearing a gold catsuit. The Biot exited out of the quarters, instantly turning heads...

(Character Theme Song Power Up)

(Theme: "Simply Irresistible" by Robert Palmer)

The Biot strode down the corridors of the headquarters, deciding to relieve her boredom by going to the hangar where the TIE/DP awaited after having been delivered to IBI headquarters. She got out her comlink.

"Colonel Sade, I don't suppose you'd like to come down here and finally have a look at this sweet ride, would you?" She asked flirtatiously, leaving it ambiguous as to what kind of 'ride' she was talking about, deliberately trying to make him 'think'.

She found it amusing that she was getting positively smitten with Ian. She'd liked him ever since Azterri, ever since she had forgotten to strip him of his weapon. She thought she had incapacitated him the first time. Ian had been the wake up call that not every ordinary person would fold instantly in a fight against her, even if they seemed at a heavy disadvantage.

He was unafraid, despite how utterly he had lost in their very first encounter, shooting without hesitation. That made him interesting. That made him an equal.

Him shooting her had had the same effect Karlie siccing the ddroids had had on Vera, and it was even more of a turn on for the Android because unlike Karlie, who did her best damage indirectly, Ian Sade had attacked her himself.

The Nineties Heart Throb looks were the deal sealer though. She was hooked...

 

[Karlie Lynn Destat]

Castagne....

One wouldn't think it a world plagued by industrial machines, factories and mines being drilled, pumped and spewing toxins into the air...but less than 8 centuries ago, it were just that.

Castagne today is a green world, free of toxins and factories. All remnants of it's industrial past, along with it's dark history had been razed to the ground. What could not be recycled were sent into it's star to be devoured in the fires of fusion.

Castagne through the latter part of the Millennia had been transformed into a jewel in the Castan System. A beautiful world, with clean air, lush and bountiful forests, meadows, grassy plains, white sandy coastlines, seas dotted with beautiful exotic islands...mountains..lest not forget the backbones of the mainlands capped with snow and clean fresh mountain lakes and streams. It's new cities started to gleam like crystal towers reaching for the heavens, not 3 centuries ago...
But what fueled this monumental endeavor through the ages?..who?..who had been the architect behind this world's transformation? Who had envisioned this world to become what it today; slowly and meticulously taking Castagne through the centuries out of the darkness and into the light?
Penance... had it been atonement for it's dark past?

Why then punish it like a disobedient child as Rigor had just done?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The warm Castan sun on her skin was both therapeutic and relaxing. Karlie had been basking under the star's bright rays for hours...
Yes, hours.
Our girl wore no sunscreen either, only natural moisturizers...
Aa cool refreshing drink lay by her side. She kept well hydrated out under the hot sun. Karlie's skin, although exposed for hours, didn't burn under the Castan sun. Incidentally, no one burned under the sun on Castagne. Not unless they were out there over 12 hours and not once turning over.
You see, Castagne's upper atmosphere during it's transformation shift had also been given a dense protective layer of Ozone and like matrix, which had been designed to filter out all the UVR, UVB, UV rays,-whatever... only allowing a minimal amount for plant life to flourish. Of course, current plant life on Castagne had to adapt, evolve accordingly. Those which couldn't had been replaced with engineered or imported plant/tree life.
Now getting back on our girl and her beloved Castagne...

There it was again... that strange whirl....like a buzzing insect. Karlie perked up her ears, trying to listen, distinguish where that nasty bug was. Only it were difficult with the surf gently lapping the beach.
Reaching for her drink, she found it empty..just rattling ice and little fluid.
"Sigh..." She finally sat up on her towel giving the beach another sweep. The whirling noise seemed to have moved on again...maybe back to it's nest in the foliage a few meters from her bungalow.

Looking at her crono...Nine's crono. She treasured it as it were a gift. A gift from Nine which her Vera had presented her before everything got shot to hell.
She had fallen asleep it seemed out there in the warm sunlight. Two hours. Two desperately needed hours of sleep that she had needed. Sleeping for her following the attack and loss had been very difficult. Her grief were in line with what she once remembered when her mother were said to have been killed in a shuttle accident. Karlie had been but a child. But in reality that had been the soft version of what happened to her mother. Her father Tarssin greatly understated it. Then again, she was but an innocent child. Tarssin had tried to soften the blow of Karlie loosing her mother. It weren't for many years following that Karlie learned of the truth and as to why she had developed nightmares..haunts.

It weren't so much as the afternoon was progressing, but she had set her mind on getting to her work...analyzing those unique samples.
So Karlie gathered up her towel, her skin moisturize,r and the rattling empty drink container and headed back inside. Also, a shower was called for, as she had perspired somewhat...


Some time later...

"Heh..."She uttered as she reached for her tall drink glass. Karlie had come up upon a block... an engineered sequential code which made analyzing the sample through normal means impossible. She knew the samples had been drawn from the re-animated corpses and possibly downed adversaries that may have helped orchestrate the attract as these two distinct samples were definitely not of the same designer. And for certain, they had not originated from Castagne.

"...gulp..gulp..gulp....slurrp...slurp." she had come to the end of her tall drink when at the same time came a knock on the glass slider.

Karlie looked up as the doors were kept open...for a nice ocean breeze of course.
But who could be knocking?
"Hello?" Karlie stood up from her comfy couch trying to see who it were...only the white silk drapes blowing about and in were obscuring who it was standing there.
"Who is it?... you can come in, you know.." But oddly enough there was no reply. The silhouette Karlie were seeing behind the curtains told her it were female.

"West?..." Karlie blindly asked as she approached the woman behind the curtain. The sea breeze were swaying, billowing the curtains toward the blonde.
Again no reply. The woman just remained standing there not crossing over the threshold.
"Come on....I'm not into playing games today.." No she weren't. She had lost two of her best friends...
But she weren't afraid either, as to the strange woman's presence.
It didn't even dawn on Karlie that it could even be a straggler..a reanimated corpse that had not yet expired as the majority of the hordes had once the Heretic station were sent into the Castan star. Yes, Castagne sent a lot of refuge into it's star...past and present.

"Seriously- "As Karlie were about to part the curtain, she froze both in mid sentence and in her tracks.

No, she couldn't see the woman's features clearly through the sheer curtains, but her mind, her heart had already formed...imagined whom it were.

"Gasp...." her fingertips that had come in contact with the fabric, readying to part it, pulled away. Karlie pulled away..backing up a step or two...no, no... she staggered back a few steps like a typical blonde cast in a horror flick that was about to fall flat of her ass.
But she neither tripped, nor fell. Karlie just stood there flabbergast a moment as her heart raced.

"No.... No, you can't be." The more she stood there with that image in her mind the more details of the features behind the curtain were registering.
Until finally the sea, the wind, or the gods who were tired of the extended suspense blew the curtain away and to the side a moment.

"Frak...FRAK! You're dead!" Karlie backed another step.
"I....I saw you fall... I saw you die...." Right at this point, Karlie didn't know what to do, what else to think

Did she want to embrace her? Yes. She had realized she had loved her.
Did she want to run? Yes, as she had experienced her own mother come back to life.

"H...how?... how could you come back?" Not a scratch. Not a blemish. Vera was a radiant as her best memory of her heart's desire could ever have imagined it.
Karlie had grieved, had been distraught, had not at all thought she could go on without her and here she were standing there looking sorry without so much as a hair out of place...
Karlie was so...so freakin MAD!

Yes, the blond surprisingly and without planning it, suddenly rushed her.
Karlie tackled Vera in a manner she would have tackled ...uhm, say her drill Sargent Boriskno Fel Set when the general at the time had found the right button to push.

"Arrrg!..."Karlie lunged at the biot, grabbing hold of Vera's hair, while at the same time (like she were taught), her knee came up slamming into Vera's abdomen. Karlie were small framed and wet, weighted... ..er well, she never talked about her weight.
Karlie used her momentum, the kinetic energy in her pounce to somehow unbalance the biot...or so it seemed. Although it could be argued that the biot hadn't but resisted a joule, but allowed the blonde to push her down on her back with Karlie on top wailing at her.

"Can't....
....believe...
...you put me through hell..." So her words like her fists flew, as Karlie straddled Vera, seemingly pinning the biot to the patio floor.
Of course, the curtains which had first obscure the woman's identity got ripped off the balance and were entangled between Karlie and Vera, and this what fueled Karlie to strike at her forcibly, for if she had seen Vera's eyes looking up at her as they did, she would have collapsed on top of her in tears.
Karlie had gotten off two...
...three good shots before progressively her anger and frustration quickly became spent.
..4..

......5...


............6, they were nothing more than exasperated motions.

"You...sob..sob...sob... you died...
...you died..."

 

[Ian Sade]

In Tarssin Destat's office...

"...yes, I agree with you sir. I too think it is the only means for her to come to terms with what this Vera model configuration really is." Ian replied to the head of the Cabinet, Tarssin Destat
"My previous attempts at informing her were met with disbelief."

"She became defiant...angry at you Colonel?" Karlie's father more or less were making a statement than asking.

"I had observed that in the past, yes." Ian replied.
Yes, he had experienced Karlie's temperament before. Actually, on her first mission assignment. he of course had been paired up with her unknowing by Tarssin himself. if there was anyone Tarssin could trust with the daughter of an enigmatic sith, it were Ian.

"Yes...
I too... only from Karla..." The older gentleman seemed to drift off to another time for a moment.

"...only, that Karlie is not her mother..." Ian knew that to be true. Not by facts, but by gut intuition.

"No... not at all like her, no. " It were half his truth as his daughter reminded him of his once beloved Karla. The Karla he had fallen in love with. Karlie had those very same characteristics in both appearance and of what he had perceived of his wife's empathy. Only his daughter's were genuine.
This meant that at one time..so had been Karla's.

"It kills me to authorize whatever means it takes to abolish Rigor's existence.
I don't wish my daughter to come to any harm, Colonel. This portion of the game is not negotiable."

brrrrr...brrrrr...brrrrrr...
Ian's comm alerted him of an incoming message. It were from the Bureaus analytical team.

"Any progress on our friends?" Tarssin asked, reading Ian's expression when he opened up the message.

"Uhm..." How were he to explain what he were seeing again? Yes, the Colonel had seen it before...had seen it from the Vera model on the Castle Morpheus.
"Perhaps you should look at this with your own eyes, sir." he replied handing the holo comm over for Tarssin to see with his own eyes...
"Guess I have to thank the stars and you Colonel, for having these units and their creator as our allies."

brrrr.....brrrr......brrrrr... another message were felt emitting from the comm, that Tarssin were holding now.
"I believe this is for you, Colonel.." Karlie's father then handed over the comm back to Ian.

It were Westenra.
The biot had requested Ian meet her at one of the hangars.
Tarssin gave him the nod, excusing the Colonel to do his biding.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It wasn't till he were out of Tarssin's chambers that he replied to Westenra.

"Impeccable timing, Lieutenant...was just thinking of you." Yes, he and Tarssin saw the raw side of a lethal assassin android...with shape-shifting abilities. He knew of Vera/Rom interchangeability, but had never seen West's. Actually what had been sent him had not been the complete transformation but midway metamorphosis, as the techs had sent over readouts and such mundane data that he couldn't at all really understand, nor really care to know. But the mere fact that this West unit could morph like Vera/Rom was...was a bit..sigh..how is one to describe the Colonel's thoughts?...disturbing.
...more on this soon...

It took but only 20 minutes for him to walk from the main complex to the hangar bays that served the complex center. It were a big complex...tall government building with spires reaching up the heavens..that sort of shiet.

"Captain..." Ian acknowledged one of the current officers in charge of the bays.

"Colonel Sade..." the man saluted the agent. Although Ian was levels above any said rank, the Colonel had somehow followed him. It were just a formality many had picked up to address him by.
"...I believe you have an authorized guest in bay 23C."

"23C...thank you Captain." And so off he walked over to the said bay.

His first reaction were to look around the bay for Westenra, as the woman standing by what looked like a stealth fighter of sort was not-

"West?.... Lieutenant, is that.....you?" His eyes could well have been his hands the way he followed every curve, every perfection up to her orbs.
Westenra, yes. She had her eyes.

"Yes, I see..." There was a hint of disappointment in his tone, as he came up to both the vessel and her. His eyes coursed over the fighter. But not anywhere near the way they had lapped up the woman, trying to find West in that guise.

Disappointment. That would be the word to describe missing somebody else he had expected to meet.
Yes, yes...this supposedly was another version of the same West he had come to...to, you know; know.

Sure this version could be said to light a man's fire, especially in his britches..if men secretly ever doned them on . But ian were human and he was in fact a man.
Ok, so he were more like a wolf in man's skin, but he nevertheless was a man. And men, like women...an inherent weakness in the race mind you... could develop attachments. Hell, the blond (Karlie) did at the worst of times, so would it be unthinkable that with all that he had gone through with West that Ian hadn't ..you know, taken a liking to West?

But not in this form. Not West in this guise. weird he even thought of himself for not jumping on this opportunity that he had often played out in his teens...multi gorgeous women all abound around him. yes, that had been his fantasy...as a young man. But even a wolf like him at one point gets refined in taste. Even a man as virile as he could come to favor just one female among the many.

Wait-
What was he doing?
Ian realized that he had wanted to see the West in the form he had come to know. Even in his effort to subconsciously convince his self that in this guise, west had no more changed a style of dress or whatnot.
it was a whatnot. Ian shook his head, shaking his self out of the pit he just found himself kneed deep and sinking.
Strange he thought... another pretty face..another perfect form...but no West. His Lieutenant was missing.
Oh the woes of men are no different than those of their counterpart. The human heart is twice fold more complex than the most sophisticated piece of any machinery devised by man or god (Nine Lives).
His eyes settled on the skin of the vessel...the TIE/DP

"Very nice..." he were looking over the ship.
"...even pretty if one must say so..." No he weren't really speaking of the ship, of course not. The ship itself had this old nostalgic aura to it. Maybe perhaps he could acquire a taste for it, as he had acquired a kind of familiarity to a version of the West android. Sure, he guessed anything were possible.
It were then that he withdrew his hand as he had been feeling it's leading edge with his fingertips. The vessel's skin felt unique...like none that he remembered feeling. It were of an alloy of some kind...rare.
It were a gift from Nine Lives

Ian turned a moment to West then back to the vessel. He could figure the vessel were as unique as the biot whom had been tasked with delivering the ship to him.
Yes...
Yes, that were the reason as to why Nine had assigned the biot. It were no more than a delivery droid in a new costume.
Droids...right.
Yes he had to remember that for himself. They weren't human, but were designed to look like them. Ian now understood Karlie's confusion as he himself had been smitten by one.
Like the ship in the bay, these biots had a function. One was to deceive, distract... play with an opponent's mind.

Disappointed he was.
So it were toying with him, then? Why else had it morphed into another woman? Ian was disappointed that it calculated to toy with him... and at the same time grateful she weren't spewing pheromones in the air like it had demonstrated on Azterii once.

"Westenra." he then abruptly broke his thoughts and turned to it.
his tone had changed, no longer playful.
"Inform lady Nine that this gift is an exceptional one and that I am honored. Also, inform her ladyship that I was also pleased in the manner it were presented to me by your person.
Tell her, I truthfully find her creations and taste inspiring." Yes, Ian distanced his person from the current version of the biot West. He weren't playing it's game, as he knew it weren't Nine's game. Not with this blonde version anyway...

Perhaps these biots should share among themselves much like adolescent humans do when encroaching upon new territories concerning human hearts and feelings...
Like the time Karlie were appalled in thinking she were being passed on to another woman by Vera; Ian was disappointed to find the West he had taken a notion to, had presented itself in another form. It were not like they were on a mission requiring them to change their appearance.
he knew it shouldn't have made a difference in what skin she wore at the moment...just that he had gotten accustomed to the one he shared experiences with. Damn biots and their mind tricks...

 

[Westenra Mina]

Westenra observed the reactions Ian Sade had to the craft...and to her.

She really should have known. But the thing is, much like Vera, however better programmed Westenra was personality wise, even she had non-human thought processes. She had yet to fully grasp that what was normal to her was extremely macabre or odd in some cases to others.

Damn, first screw up.

"I will, once we rescue her..." Westenra answered. Ohhhh, she must have thrown him for a loop bad if he had completely forgotten that detail.

"In many ways, it's one of a kind..." she said explaining its features.

"Stealthed Weaponry and a system that hides you by ripping you out of normal space for thirty minutes at a time. Life preservation systems..."

Westenra sighed. With an athletic hop she jumped to the top of the craft.

"I don't human very well, do I, Colonel?" she asked bluntly. "It's funny, isn't it? I criticize Vera over her lack of understanding humanity yet here I am...completely not understanding you at all..."

She paced about the top of the craft.

"When you have so many faces to choose from, you never are truly sure which one is really you. I mean...I 'feel' like myself...but yet...ugh...how do I describe it to someone who has only ever known one appearance--?" She asked out loud, pinching the bridge of her nose as her databases strained for a way to articulate it...and coming up dry.

"I never understood what Vera loved so much about wearing different faces until I tried it for myself. Began to experiment. To...see what type of face I enjoy having the most. Can't change that. Won't change it. Anymore than I would try and change you. This is 'me' speaking by the way. Not Nine's daughter and scion of a Royal House.

She executed a masterful jump that let her twirl in the air five times before landing silently in front of Ian.

"You gotta be you. I get that. But I gotta be me. Point is, Colonel Ian Sade ...I like you. Ever since you shot me on Azterri like a Boss because I was dumbass enough not to strip you of your weapons, just like I was dumbass enough to slip into another face. I'm not this crude matter...but as long as it is subject to my whim, subject it shall be, to sculp and reshape it, to be all I can be. But more importantly...Gods you are hot when you are so dismissive..." Westenra trailed with nigh-feral lust, indiscretion filter momentarily failing as she beheld his Nineties Heart Throb looks, closing her mouth so he would not see her fangs visibly coming out, forcing her to back off and push them back in their upper jaw sockets, going beet red in the face from sheer embarrassment. Epic fail. EPIC. FAIL.

"I'm going to shut up now." She said, completely humiliated that her passion filled dramatic exposition had been utterly demolished by being unable to hide, for one instant, just how much she wanted to be devoured by Ian. She began quickly striding out of the hangar.

"Instruction manual is in the cockpit..." she called out almost timidly, clearly embarrassed still.

 

[Ian Sade]

Wow...

What had just happened?
Ian stood there looking at the open side exit door. The blonde version of Lieutenant-....er Westenra, had left him standing there dumbfounded.

"Shiet..." he uttered to self, shaking his head clear of his own mishap.
The freakin thing had picked up on his own shortcoming, his perversive fascination with the artificial version of it's design.
What was he thinking?..why had he found his self sweating over a particular version of the biot?
I mean...it weren't really human now, right?
Like..say if the version his eyes were averted to was say..uhm a Ferrachino (a classic Castan super speeder). Some Ferrachinos shared the same platform... same turbines.. all that good stuff that made it an exotic racer. But some versions had different body styles, looks...skins, as many enthusiasts call them.
Yea...yea...that's right....same engines, but different skin designs.
Ok, yea, he was on to something here. Maybe he should have thought of that while the biot was laying it to him...damn it.

Hell, he did have an eye on the Ferrachino Diablo, in red with black kadu skins on the interior, over the other versions. Definitely didn't have a taste for the Raspito, nor the Melenchello... with their gaudy finishes. Certainly wouldn't get in one sporting any yellow...
Yea..yea that's right.... same platform and engines but different skins. Why not, right?

Damn...the nerve of that blond biot calling him out like that.
Why he had a good mind to put a slug through that processor cranium of hers. No wait, one better: this could call for the use of an illegal nanobot round...maybe two good shots to the blonde's cranium to make certain it'll (the blonde West) never regenerates...
[Guns and Roses- I Used to Love Her]

"Shiet, Sade...what are you thinking?" he shook that theme song out of his mind.
The biot had hit him on the mark. She had somehow unnerved him.
Ian ran his hands down his features. That was crazy thinking. Besides, he'd never get away with it...not while the biot was on Castagne.
Like... the biot would be missed by the others for sure. But seriously...it couldn't be too tragic a loss among the other biots-
No no, they were allies. Ian knew at this point that he had better step back a moment, and think this through. Did he really want that biot silenced?

....

"Ian?...
...

Ian! " his better self jarred him to reality.

"Sigh." No....
No, he didn't want to dispose of the West version that he liked. I mean...why would he want to test drive a Ferrachino Melenchello? So what it was the same speeder under the hood.
Hell THAT!
He wanted the Diablo or nothing... he wanted the West version of the biot that had caught his attention. The one he had a mind set of test driv-

He stopped right there mid thought and turned to look at the vessel, that hadn't left him hanging like that in the hangar.
"Shoot.."he had a one track mind sometimes, he realized.

And to top it off the same biot had pointed out that her creator Nine Lives still needed rescuing..
"Damn it!" He side fisted the ship's hull. That damn biot had successfully distracted him. It were as to why maybe he felt challenged.
He'd have to step up his game from now on if he were to roll with it in the field.

Shaking his head in a kind of defeat, he too then walked out of the hangar...

 

[Vera Mina]

Vera had thought she would be prepared. Thought she was ready for the fury Karlie Lynn Destat would express towards her.

But nothing could prepare Vera for actually seeing the emotions play out on Karlie's face. The absolute hurt and disbelief shook the Android to the core. She didn't fight when she was grabbed and pummeled, at a loss for how to resolve it. She felt none of the blows except a registration of impact without the associated pain. Karlie was furious and hurt.

She had also exposed a truth.

One of Karlie's fists had found a mark with the nose.

"I am sorry for causing you pain, Karlie..." Vera said quietly. "I am sorry for a lot of things...chief among them is not being what you thought..."

Karlie's fist had caused a bloody nose.

But it wasn't red blood.

It was white.

"I don't die easily..." Vera admitted. "My mother, Nine Lives, built me far too well to die easily."

The Android remained on the floor, unmoving, allowing Karlie to back away as she saw fit.

"Until I met you, I was leading a shallow, materialistic, albeit comfortable existence as my Mother's Lawyer and Personal Assassin..." Vera spoke. "Admittedly, when I first met you, I was not...what I am now. Mother didn't even design me for that. But you fooling and then attacking me...it did something...it made me see you as more than a client..."

Vera decided to outright show her what she was speaking of. She had used her newly installed heat sink to absorb the heat release from a speedy transformation to Vera. Now the reverse.

She triggered the transformation process, her skin bubbling and wriggling everywhere, skin pigmentation shifting from fair to dark blue, hair from black to blood red in a matter of seconds. Then it was not Vera lying on the floor, but Rom-Jin.

"Mother's designs are incredibly flexible. My sister Westenra is merely her latest work, as capable of changing appearance as I am. My programming forbid me from telling you the truth until now. I was hard coded to preserve my cover. And when everything between us took off...it was easier to pretend to be something I'm not. So maybe Mother's programming had the final say...but it wasn't like I was exactly fighting it..." she admitted.

'Rom' stared up at Karlie.

"I know you are so furious you want to disintegrate me. Part of me wants you to, strangely..." the Biot admitted. "Because I was little more than Mommy's Little Monster when I was first made. No capacity for love, really. I can't go back to that. Even though it would make things easier for me to give up any idea of love, I can't. Because of you. Insufferably sappy to say. Probably meaningless now. But please...if you disregard everything else I have said...please believe me when I tell you I am actually, genuinely sorry for once. About lying. About being a genetic, partly electronic monstrosity. But what I really am sorry about...is not being what you thought."

Vera stood up.

"I am Vera Mina. Born to Kill. To Ruin. Daughter of The Arch Psy-Pire Nine Lives. Heir to House Li-Ves. My structural perfection is matched only by my hostility towards my foes. You are the only living thing I have ever apologized to beyond my own Mother. I am a brute. I am still a brute, even now. But you make me not want to be one...sometimes..."

Vera waited for the scathing put downs, dreading them...she knew no amount of words could fix the damage that had been done, but damn it if she had not tried to at least to explain it...

 

[Karlie Lynn Destat]

The first two blows had been right on the mark... they had anger, fury and emotion from a scorned woman behind it.

Before the third made contact, Karlie grabbed at the tapestry, the curtain that had been between them when she lunged at Vera, and ripped it away to get a clearer shot at the woman pinned below her...Karlie was so angry....so, so furious...

Clear target in sight, she came across (not down mind you. Berkana forbid, as she didn't want to kill the queen, no) with the third punch to Vera's nose. Karlie had been taught, trained in hand to hand as to break noses properly and by varying degree by Boriskno. Incidentally, the general had firsthand demonstrated to the blonde, by breaking her own nose. It were a lesson she learned to pick up quickly lest she get it broken the fourth time in those exercises.

She were trained to not let up a second during an assault, instinctively remembering (thank you General Fel) that there were quite a few ways to handle an adversary's nose, depending on what one needed to do in accomplishing the right outcome.
One of course was to drive the nasal bone up into the skull to cause a brain hemorrhage (that was not in Karlie's agenda though). The other is to just fracture it in varying degrees to get her point and frustration across. Being Karlie, the girl went for the latter; the classical nose bleed.
"Rafa-caka-motha-frakn-lying-too-timing-tooty fruity-(hey, they were just angry half senseless words flying out of Karlie's mouth like her fists were at Vera) deceiving-queen -she-devil and a half...etc...etc...."
Angry...
Very angry words and in her most frustrated kick-ass mode. So, so scorned she was....

POW!...fist across clear and present nose.
CRACK...fist hitting some goddamn hard mofo-frakin bone or something...quite unexpected!

"Ahhack..." Karlie creamed in pain as her knuckle slammed across Vera's hard cartilage under her nose...or so it felt. Shiet, THAT hurt her more than the nose she just broke...again her thoughts.

"Ouuuwww..." She shook her bruised hand, before putting it under her armpit, it hurt so bad... " ..you queen..." Yes, she were still in a rage.

That punch had come across Vera's nose like that of a seasoned boxer (featherweight boxer, as she were no heavyweight), hitting it at just the right angle to disrupt what capillary veins were supplying blood to it. What was underneath was by far not cartilage. Hell if it were as it felt like she had struck rock or something.
Karlie had wanted to see red. A deeper red than what Vera were sporting on her lips.

Only instead of red corpuscles, there oozed out-
"Gasp!"..was that? Did she just beat the snot out of her?
Oh shiet, that was not nasal mucus, that flowed like blood she had seen on Rom.
Needless to say, in Karlie's rage and now pain and surprise, she hadn't registered one word the conniving queen below her was saying.

Karlie remained straddled over Vera's chest as the mass underneath her suddenly buckled and transformed.
To her further shock and bewilderment, it were her friend Rom she were staring down on. And yes, Rom's nose were bleeding as before. Of course Vera/Rom had been trying to explain as to what they were, only that Karlie had been too hot tempered to pick up on anything the woman below her were trying to say. You know, with all that exotic cussing conjured up from Karlie and all...

"R...Rom?.." She didn't know whether to scramble off the girl or what.
"..but... you...
No...NO!" Karlie screeched out in what felt like she were ultimately defeated.
She was.
This was too much for Karlie to process, even for a genius looking down on her one good supposedly dead friend. But Rom wasn't dead and neither was Vera.

"FRAK!" Karlie took to lay a half fast pound to Rom's collar bone with her good hand. The other was still tucked under her arm. It still hurt like hell, it did.

Karlie couldn't continue to hit her friend, be it Vera or Rom. ..her fury were spent. She finally got herself off the Chiss, plopping on her butt next to her. It were obvious Karlie were in pain...possibly maybe having broken a bone or two in her one hand.

"Rom!... Oh Rom...Frak, I'm so sorry..." Karlie were coming down, fast. No she didn't mean to punch or hurt Rom in any way. So Rom lied to her like that hot she devil. But Rom had been there for her getting decimated-
Wait, that was Vera too.
"Frak!" She screamed again, it was so confusing, confusing the two..the same two..the same one.

"Why?...why?...did you both get a good laugh out of it? Was I just a joke to her?" To her? Yes, Karlie were talking to Rom about Vera.

"Gah!" She tried to kick Rom, but her sitting position just barely had her foot tap the Chiss' thigh.
"Oouuuw...you broke my freakin hand...you know that?!" Well, karlie wasn't really certain, but it sure felt that way. It hadn't ceased throbbing and the pain was now traveling up to her arm and shoulder. For the most part, it was kind of immobilizing. Karlie kept her hand tucked between her torso and forearm...it seemed to hurt less that way.

The blonde didn't do well with pain...not in her present form anyway. Funny that Karlie felt more raw pain after her midi purge. Then again Vera/Rom had experienced the blonde in pain several times...it were real, Karlie's perception to pain. She seemed to have no discipline over it. Maybe...just maybe the girl needed some mind over matter meditation... the kind of that a master of arts could guide her through. After all, being a primeval human again didn't come with instruction manuals...

Back to said broken hand...
Karlie knew it were her own doing trying to hurt Vera..trying to let the woman feel her wrath. Only that Karlie had not counted on the fact that Vera was anything like Westenra...or Rom.
Still...
Karlie turned her face away from Rom a moment. She were in tears. Tears of joy, relief and hurt, all at the same time. But Rom and Vera were alive... ALIVE.
She then leaned over to Rom, whom herself had sat up, remaining next to her, and with her good arm wrapped it around Rom. The Chiss could feel the tears, the subtle sobbing of Karlie. The blonde was hurt in so many ways.
"Oh Rom....Rom..." Was all she were uttering, eyes closed, holding dear her friend once thought lost.

It were an emotional mix of feelings clashing within the blonde....

 

[Westenra Mina]

Westenra wandered the halls of the IBI, having shifted her guise once more. She still looked like she was wearing a golden catsuit though.

She was, of course, surreptitiously observed every place she went in that facility. Cameras viewing her in multiple spectrums followed her as she entered a training chamber.

"Android has entered sparring chambers..." the security chief in that area mentioned over encrypted comms to Ian Sade .

Westenra selected hand to hand training droids, set them to max speed and strength, and adopted the style of the Atrisian White Crane.

Mother had programmed Westenra with many Animal styles, unlike Vera, in order to distinguish their combat tactics.

West's current style was defensive in nature, redirecting or absorbing the attacks, dodging, striking at joints only when necessary. First it was three attacking her, then five, then 007 droids were attacking her all at once, determined to break her defense. But it was graceful and balletic, bird-like.

One by one, slowly but gradually, she broke each droid, redirecting and twisting around their attacks in a deceptively liquid manner until all were disable. Westenra had taken no real hits.

The security personnel watching the recording were horrified by this.

"Did you see that? It's like she wasn't even trying!" one of the security watching the recording exclaimed.

Westenra picked up a staff as she activated more droids. These had double bladed dull edged swords.

The Android's twirls were lazy, her parries contemptuous. Still, none of them hit her, her staff propelling around her body at lightning speed, deflecting sword strikes.

She was bored. Insufferably bored. The droids were going by fine programming but little else. She had better programming. That was the problem.

In minutes they too were disabled. Once again, Westenra had no mark on her.

"Okay, right off the bat, you really need to think about joint improvements and better processing speeds..." Westenra announced to the hidden cameras she knew were present. "Also, who the hell wrote the algorithms?! Felt like one of those generic hallway fight scenes everybody seems to like so much these days. Seriously, your biggest flaw is they always go for a vertical strike on the first attack sequence. Give me a challenge!"

A wall panel opened and out stepped a dozen Magnaguards.

"Oooo, such big servos!" Westenra gushed in mock-lust. "I bet your logic circuits are top of the line...its enough to make an HRD get all kinds of urges..."

The Magnaguards all took a step backward, clearly squicked by this statement before readying their electrostaffs.

Westenra scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, what do any of you know. In a general robot uprising I'd be a God to you." she joked, readying her staff.

"Bring it!"

The Magnaguards all charged.

Meanwhile...

(Passionate soap opera music plays)

"No. Karlie...you were 'not' a joke. I swear it." Rom said passionately. "We...I...I could not tell you. My programming simply would not allow it."

At the thought Karlie had broken her hand, Rom used her X-Ray vision to see the damage.

"Its not broken. Slight fracture. But not broken. Oh, I am so sorry...you must hate me..."

The Android was now starting to question herself, hurting Karlie in this manner, playing with her heart, the emotional distress...it had all never registered to the Biot until right then, just how much pain she had caused. Not just to Karlie. But to others.

Her brain, stretching the limits of its capabilities to empathize felt a soreness of actual guilt developing, a strange and new a cruel thing whose feeling she did not like. She could barely feel it. But it was stronger than before.

Karlie then broke down, hugging her. This caused such confusion her face twitched as she held her close.

"I'm not good at being a person, Karlie. I was made as a weapon first. I could only barely pull off being a person around you. But I will do my best to be there. I am so sorry for hurting you. I want to earn your forgiveness. But I simply do not know how to. I have no idea what to say or do except to say that any who threatens you or your father or Ian or Castagne will die by my hand. For I never felt until I looked at you."

(For Your Eyes Only by Sheena Easton Plays a few seconds.)

Rom put a hand on the arm of Karlie Lynn Destat

"Let's get that arm treated. My skeleton was engineered to be more resistant to kinetic impacts and slugthrowers. Sorry about that."