The Mother of All Psy-Pires
Wearing: Progenitor's Robes
Armed With: Hundred Handed Giant
Objective: Get in touch with Thelma Goth
Westenra Mina , better known as Lynda, The Demon of Jedha in the GA, walked the remains of an ancient temple in an Atrisian forest, wearing only a simple shirt, shorts, and boots. It was the place where Laertia's then-Mother, Moya, had been held captive after the Sith under Mythos had invaded. It was a decrepit ruin now, but she still remembered her and Laertia and the help of one other, a man named Taiden Keth.
It had all seemed so very simple back then.
It was after Exegol. Maw gone pretty much. No purpose. She had avenged the ones murdered at Coruscant, and how she had been buried alive. But especially, she had made the bastards pay for killing her pet rabbit and pet turtle.
She still felt hollow and empty. Her madness for Maw blood had at last quieted. But was not gone. But it was quiet enough she could think about something other than killing.
So she had gone back here. To where it had began for her...or a version of her. Hadn't she died a couple of times before Coruscant? She didn't remember anymore.
She might as well have been there. Her love for Laertia, and her pain at Laertia's treachery lingered no matter which version of "Westenra" she was.
Lynda felt herself crying, red tears of blood sliding down her cheeks, getting reabsorbed into the skin. She dropped to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably in the ruins.
She had to kill her. She had to kill her Sister.
"It seems my calculations were correct..."
Lynda turned, scowled with bloodshot eyes at her older sister, Vera Mina , looking immaculate as usual in her signature white dress...
"Hello, Sister."
"What do you want?"
"Can't I check up on my own Sister in person?" Vera asked.
"There is always an ulterior motive with you. Always..." Lynda snapped
"Why, West, you wound me..." Vera replied smoothly, gliding across over grown grass like a curvy wraith.
"I could have sent someone instead of me to collect you. But I show up in person, and instead of greetings I get suspicion."
"Because you're one of the few deadly enough to bring me in against my will."
"True." Vera said with a shrug. "But that doesn't mean I don't care for you."
"You barely understand the meaning of the term care outside the context of your blond girl-toy, Karlie."
"I'm getting better at it..." Vera replied in a huff. "What more do you want?"
"I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME SOME FETHIN' EMPATHY FOR ONCE IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE!" Lynda shouted.
"You've been outright defying your own empathy programming." Vera replied coldly, retreating into her prosecutor voice she used for court. "The old you would have been horrified by what you have done, what you've become. And you have not done anything I myself wouldn't have if someone had murdered Karlie. And you did all that ripping and tearing to avenge a primitive mammal and a reptile." she finished with a sneer. "So not only have you turned out to be as violent as I am, you've turned out to be even more petty. You have no grounds to call me out on anything, anymore."
"I WENT TO LAERTIA FOR LOVE BECAUSE I COULDN'T GET IT FROM YOU!!!" Lynda shrieked in resentment, the truth finally tumbling out of her after all these years.
Vera went uncharacteristically quiet, oddly expressionless, stepping back a little.
"OF ALL MY SISTERS, I LOVED YOU THE MOST!!!" Lynda cried out, tears of blood running down her face.
This made Vera's lips tremble.
"I related to you in a way I never could with Magnus or Meier! You know why?" Lynda asked, dropping to her knees at Vera's feet, unable to stop her tears from falling. "Because you were a masterpiece like I was! The heralds of a new age of artificial personhood! Strong and Beautiful! Wise! Almost able to escape the clutches of death itself! But did you embrace me? No. You thought I was your replacement! You treated me as coldly as you treated your other sisters. Magnus and Meier because they were nowhere near as advanced. And me because I was only slightly more advanced!"
In this, Vera had no counter argument. As much as it was an affront to her pride to admit, West really was the more advanced of the pair, at least in some ways.
"You know what drew me to Laertia though?!" Lynda asked with clenched teeth. "She had everything you had! But she was desperate for love! For Family! She wanted a family! She wanted a sibling. She didn't want to be a selfish killer who delighted in harming the innocent! She wanted to do something meaningful with the power she had!"
"How did that work out, Sister?" Vera asked, in a weak attempt at being contrary for it's own sake.
"She was your sister, too!" Lynda spat in rage, tears still flowing. "I couldn't help her because I didn't understand the level of pain she was in mentally! Even with my psychology database!"
"That she was..." Vera admitted in a rare moment of introspection.
"For all our amazing abilities, we still didn't understand people! We're abominations in the guise of demi-goddesses! Laertia couldn't have had worse siblings if she tried!" Lynda wept. "But at least I tried to help her! Did you?"
"No. Not really..." Vera admitted. "I...I wasn't capable of giving you or her what you both needed. My mind still enjoys the feeling of blood splashing against skin. Of viscera being torn. I...knew she needed to be institutionalized...that she was too ambitious. That her deeply hidden sense of pride would eclipse what little self control or rationality I observed. I...wanted to see what would happen. For my own... admittedly cruel curiosity." Vera said taking a step closer, struggling to actually reach out to Lynda on an emotional level.
"You were so convinced she could be a Force for Good. I saw only yet another rival to me taking over the House when Mother stepped down. To me being one of a kind. And I couldn't understand why you doted on her. It...threatened me. It made me want to prove you wrong."
"Congratulations..." Lynda replied cynically through heartbroken sobs. "You succeeded. I hope it was worth it."
Vera knelt down.
"It wasn't." Vera admitted softly, hand gently touching her emotionally destroyed Sister's shoulder. Lynda flinched, pulling out of her reach.
"I was wrong to give you no help. I was wrong to be so obsessed with proving my own superiority. I have been a bad sister. For that I am sorry..." Vera said, though it made her stomach lurch to apologize for anything, due to her Senate Rotunda-sized ego. But she was ignoring her pride, because West's pain had changed something in Vera upon witnessing it on full display.
It was Vera's first ever My God, what have I done? moment. It had come almost two decades too late.
"Oh Vera..." Lynda said, reaching out to Vera's cheek, fingertips running against.
"I wish I could believe you..."
Vera winced as Lynda grinded her fingernails down Vera's cheek, drawing gray blood. Vera staggered back, not in pain because she normally couldn't feel physical pain, but more that she realized Lynda had violated every last one of her own programming safeguards just to express her loathing of her older Sister.
"But I've had ten years to understand that you are and remain and always will be nothing but a scheming, self serving snake." Lynda hissed, rising. "Don't bother trying to change your scales now."
"I'm telling the truth!" Vera said with uncharacteristic pleading in her tone as Lynda walked away. The cuts on her cheek were already starting to heal. Yet Vera felt as though they were still fresh. Still unhealed.
Lynda stopped, turned to her.
"Even if you are...I absolutely do not care at this point." Lynda snarled. "Now stop with this farce of yours and take me to Mother. I know that's why you're here. I can smell her on you."
Lynda walked away from the ruins, Vera now touching the completely healed cheek and still feeling the cuts.
Later on...
Atrisian Hotel (The Sunrise Dogma)
"Chit. You need a weekend at Canto Blight...couple of Twi'lek dancers will turn that frown upside down..." Nine joked nervously, wearing her dark green hooded Kimono with white rose print. Her features were obscured, only the glint of purple at the center of her eyes visible as she sat across her estranged daughter at the dining table. She had captured one of Lynda's favorite kinds of victim to feast off of, a Final Dawn Stormtrooper. Nine herself was feasting on an ordinary Pizza Delivery Man, because he had cheated her in a card game. She wasn't going to kill him. But he was gonna lose a few of his happier birthdays. He was tied up and drugged into a state of unconsciousness. Nine had tied up and paralyzed the Stormtrooper, but not rendered him unconscious, as she knew Lynda preferred Stormtroopers to be conscious while feasting off them, as she despised stormtroopers and wanted them to be terrified during the experience, even if they wouldn't remember it afterward.
The room had a restrained splendor to it. The finest materials and silks. Nine lived comfortably, whatever else could be said.
"I trust your head is...a tad more clear, now that their are hardly any Maw left to fight?" Nine asked as Lynda fed on the gagged stormtrooper, who screamed a muffled scream through the gag.
"For better or worse..." Lynda replied, taking black metallic fangs out of his neck.
"It is good to see you again. I've been very worried about you."
"Translation, you're afraid my recklessness would get too much heat and they would discover Clan Li-Ves' part in backing House Io."
"That's not fair..."
"But it is the truth..." Lynda countered.
"Only part of the truth. You have never stopped being my daughter."
"What were you thinking?!" Lynda snapped in accusation.
"Excuse me?"
"What were you thinking, continuing to back House Io, even after she started killing Jedi? Even after she became wanted by every single major factions dead or alive, except the Eternal Empire and the CIS, and even the CIS kicked her ass out!"
"I had good reasons for supporting her." Nine said. "She was one of the most vocal in opposing the Bryn'adul. She was one of the most passionate about defeating that menace. Maybe the most passionate. All the factions that stood the most to gain from defeating them instead were all at each other's throats. And the Jedi couldn't be bothered if the Bryn'adul weren't spelled S-I-T-H. No matter how many the Lobsters were wiping out, the Sith came first. I was almost as disgusted by the Order's behavior as she was. Even you were at one point. Or has your memory become that self serving?" Nine asked.
Lynda glowered at her.
Nine sighed.
"But I made a terrible mistake. And once I realized how badly I had screwed up with supporting her little blood feud with the Jedi, I saw no way out but forward. Besides, they don't mind killing someone to fulfil their vision when it suits them. Turn about is fair play. I tried to use Maple to kill the bad influence, not understanding that the Amalgam didn't need to influence her. That she wasn't influencing her all that much. That bile came from within. But I'll not be beholden to her any longer. She must be stopped. I must save--and redeem--my House. I need your help to do that..."
"Maybe House Li-Ves deserves to perish for what it's done. What it took part in." Lynda replied somberly.
"If anyone deserves to perish it is me. But let it end with me." Nine replied fiercely.
"Nice, easy and convenient..." Lynda snapped, clenching her fists in anguish. "Why did you make me this way? Why have you never tried to create a daughter who wasn't a monster on some level?"
"Because I am a monster..." Nine admitted. "But even monsters need company. Monsters who can relate--"
"I would give up all my gifts here and now, on the spot, if it would help me earn the love of an ordinary person." Lynda hissed as a single glowing red tear slid down her face, the flesh reabsorbing it. "I have lived my entire life surrounded by monsters with pleasing faces and gorgeous figures. Admittedly, a few of them meant well more than others did. But there is something missing in those like us!" Lynda insisted. "Something essential... something...natural...that would let us understand... understand why our attempts to solve problems backfire...why we can't live amongst them without hurting some of them all of the time..."
Nine snorted at this.
"Oh please. You act like being ordinary is some great thing. Like they're so much better than us, because of their supposedly static, limited manner of affecting the world around them." Nine retorted, biting on the neck of her meal and eating his fourteenth birthday before removing her fangs.
"Give seven out of any ten ordinary people your level of gifts and they would shock even The Amalgam at the depths of the treachery and corruption they would exhibit." Nine retorted, pulling back from her meal. "Laertia and I are not so different, my daughter. At, least, our stories aren't. Like her, I too chafed under the Laws of the Jedi. I too found myself at a crossroads between obeying them and doing what I knew was right. And here was my 'reward' for it. To share the fate of my Mother...who was turned into a monster with a pleasant face by the treachery of one person's paranoia and his jealousy."
Nine bit into her meal again, eating a memory of an afternoon walking his dog in the park.
"Don't put 'Ordinary' on a pedestal, Daughter. Normal people have no special insight. Normal people allowed the Bryn'adul and the Maw to get so bad to begin with. It took monsters to put both those societies in their graves... because normal people on their own couldn't. Normal people take advantage of monsters in their midst all the time. Their rate of creating problems, creating headaches, is even higher than that of a monster."
She bit her meal again, this time eating a memory of him eating pizza last week. Lynda was silent, considering her mother's words.
"Ordinary people commit massacres, genocide, terrorism...yet you envy them because their flesh doesn't shudder or move when they engage in their bloodlust." Nine muttered cynically.
"What do you call what happened on Exegol, hmmm? A picnic day? It was a planned, systematic slaughter. Payback for every last thing the Maw had done. And they definitely deserved it. And that slaughter was planned by perfectly ordinary people." Nine continued with a snort of contempt. "The CIS condemned her for Rhand. I watched their leader order a midnight exigent on an infected zone on the world of Melida. I'm sure plenty of innocents died in both cases. And if you are going to sit here and tell me the Galaxy wasn't served by the Destruction of that Worldship, that it did nothing to significantly weaken the Maw, to that I say 'feth you'."
Lynda stared down at her struggling still screaming meal and casually strangled him with one hand to the point of unconsciousness.
"Laertia destroyed their birthplace, their cradle. A tactical Military asset coordinating thousands of slaving operations and who knows how many military efforts. A critical asset and symbol. Was she forgiven for making a hard decision? No! She was sacrificed on the altar of public relations." Nine snarled.
"I can guarantee you if someone like, say, Srina Talon had ordered the destruction of the world ship, she'd have been insulated from all criticism. Hell...they might have even found a way to somberly praise the snow haired little schutta for it. Laertia came back to help them even after they exiled her." Nine finished acidly, sliding her unconscious meal away from her across the table. "So no, daughter. I flatly and categorically reject your assertion that ordinary people have some insight cute monsters like us lack. Our existence may not be perfect, and can lead to tragedy, but at least we have the blessing of being able to do what they themselves would if given our abilities. At least most of us have the blessing of not having to sugarcoat the ugliness of it. At least a monster will--most of the time, anyway--own up to if confronted with their own evils."
"If being a monster is so preferable, why are you trying to use me as a diplomat so the GA or the Jedi doesn't try to exterminate our House?" Lynda asked.
"An excellent question. Let me ask you this: What would you prefer: a life where a monster like us can still do some good with what we are given, or a world where a monster like us is out only for ourselves?" Nine questioned, head twitching like a bird as she observed her.
"Whatever else, we know which side of that equation Laertia falls under..." Lynda replied, wincing at a happy memory of her.
"I made a terrible mistake with Laertia. I admit that. I'll go to my grave lamenting my failure with my last blood descendant. Because it's gonna end with her the way it ended with my mother, and I, fool that I am, failed to realize that pattern was repeating until it was too late. And I am sorry for the pain my failure and short-sightedness caused you, personally." Nine said gently, rising up and gliding over to her.
Lynda flinched as Nine grasped her shoulders but didn't pull away.
"I love you, West. And I am sorry for sticking you in the middle of this. I'm sorry for not being all that great of a Mother. But you still have a family, however flawed, and you might be one of the only people who can save us from my mistakes. If you want to wring my neck afterwards, I won't stop you. I probably have it coming. But then again, we all have it coming, kid. Even you..."
(Cutaway of Clint shooting Gene in the Saloon.)
"What must I do?" Lynda asked in a broken voice, pushing her meal away.
"As it so happens, we have a diplomatic in. One of our distant sires is a member of the Jedi Order. Coven was wiped out a while back. Been trying to figure out who did it so I could have them assassinated by Vera. But she is one of us. I want you to go to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, where she is, and request she meet with us."
"You think she'll accept?"
"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the reason she was born the way she was. Pretty good chance she will accept." Nine answered, pulling back. "I won't order you to do it. This must be your choice, West. I won't think less of you for refusing."
Lynda was silent a moment.
"When do I leave?" she asked quietly.
"Preferably ASAP. And would you mind wearing something nice? We don't want to scare her from having a relative show up looking ready to start some chit." Nine answered.
Present...
Lynda walked up to the front entrance of the temple dressed in something the old her would have preferred.
One of the temple guards recognized her...and was shocked at how regal she seemed. Gone was the blood splattered Warrior who made sport of the Maw.
But the horrifying, bloodshot eyes remained.
"What...what are you doing here?" he asked in suspicion.
"I am here in a mission of peace. I request to speak to a member of yours. A woman named Thelma Goth." Lynda answered quietly. "I will wait here if I must. But I must speak with her. Please."
Armed With: Hundred Handed Giant
Objective: Get in touch with Thelma Goth
Westenra Mina , better known as Lynda, The Demon of Jedha in the GA, walked the remains of an ancient temple in an Atrisian forest, wearing only a simple shirt, shorts, and boots. It was the place where Laertia's then-Mother, Moya, had been held captive after the Sith under Mythos had invaded. It was a decrepit ruin now, but she still remembered her and Laertia and the help of one other, a man named Taiden Keth.
It had all seemed so very simple back then.
It was after Exegol. Maw gone pretty much. No purpose. She had avenged the ones murdered at Coruscant, and how she had been buried alive. But especially, she had made the bastards pay for killing her pet rabbit and pet turtle.
She still felt hollow and empty. Her madness for Maw blood had at last quieted. But was not gone. But it was quiet enough she could think about something other than killing.
So she had gone back here. To where it had began for her...or a version of her. Hadn't she died a couple of times before Coruscant? She didn't remember anymore.
She might as well have been there. Her love for Laertia, and her pain at Laertia's treachery lingered no matter which version of "Westenra" she was.
Lynda felt herself crying, red tears of blood sliding down her cheeks, getting reabsorbed into the skin. She dropped to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably in the ruins.
She had to kill her. She had to kill her Sister.
"It seems my calculations were correct..."
Lynda turned, scowled with bloodshot eyes at her older sister, Vera Mina , looking immaculate as usual in her signature white dress...
"Hello, Sister."
"What do you want?"
"Can't I check up on my own Sister in person?" Vera asked.
"There is always an ulterior motive with you. Always..." Lynda snapped
"Why, West, you wound me..." Vera replied smoothly, gliding across over grown grass like a curvy wraith.
"I could have sent someone instead of me to collect you. But I show up in person, and instead of greetings I get suspicion."
"Because you're one of the few deadly enough to bring me in against my will."
"True." Vera said with a shrug. "But that doesn't mean I don't care for you."
"You barely understand the meaning of the term care outside the context of your blond girl-toy, Karlie."
"I'm getting better at it..." Vera replied in a huff. "What more do you want?"
"I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME SOME FETHIN' EMPATHY FOR ONCE IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE!" Lynda shouted.
"You've been outright defying your own empathy programming." Vera replied coldly, retreating into her prosecutor voice she used for court. "The old you would have been horrified by what you have done, what you've become. And you have not done anything I myself wouldn't have if someone had murdered Karlie. And you did all that ripping and tearing to avenge a primitive mammal and a reptile." she finished with a sneer. "So not only have you turned out to be as violent as I am, you've turned out to be even more petty. You have no grounds to call me out on anything, anymore."
"I WENT TO LAERTIA FOR LOVE BECAUSE I COULDN'T GET IT FROM YOU!!!" Lynda shrieked in resentment, the truth finally tumbling out of her after all these years.
Vera went uncharacteristically quiet, oddly expressionless, stepping back a little.
"OF ALL MY SISTERS, I LOVED YOU THE MOST!!!" Lynda cried out, tears of blood running down her face.
This made Vera's lips tremble.
"I related to you in a way I never could with Magnus or Meier! You know why?" Lynda asked, dropping to her knees at Vera's feet, unable to stop her tears from falling. "Because you were a masterpiece like I was! The heralds of a new age of artificial personhood! Strong and Beautiful! Wise! Almost able to escape the clutches of death itself! But did you embrace me? No. You thought I was your replacement! You treated me as coldly as you treated your other sisters. Magnus and Meier because they were nowhere near as advanced. And me because I was only slightly more advanced!"
In this, Vera had no counter argument. As much as it was an affront to her pride to admit, West really was the more advanced of the pair, at least in some ways.
"You know what drew me to Laertia though?!" Lynda asked with clenched teeth. "She had everything you had! But she was desperate for love! For Family! She wanted a family! She wanted a sibling. She didn't want to be a selfish killer who delighted in harming the innocent! She wanted to do something meaningful with the power she had!"
"How did that work out, Sister?" Vera asked, in a weak attempt at being contrary for it's own sake.
"She was your sister, too!" Lynda spat in rage, tears still flowing. "I couldn't help her because I didn't understand the level of pain she was in mentally! Even with my psychology database!"
"That she was..." Vera admitted in a rare moment of introspection.
"For all our amazing abilities, we still didn't understand people! We're abominations in the guise of demi-goddesses! Laertia couldn't have had worse siblings if she tried!" Lynda wept. "But at least I tried to help her! Did you?"
"No. Not really..." Vera admitted. "I...I wasn't capable of giving you or her what you both needed. My mind still enjoys the feeling of blood splashing against skin. Of viscera being torn. I...knew she needed to be institutionalized...that she was too ambitious. That her deeply hidden sense of pride would eclipse what little self control or rationality I observed. I...wanted to see what would happen. For my own... admittedly cruel curiosity." Vera said taking a step closer, struggling to actually reach out to Lynda on an emotional level.
"You were so convinced she could be a Force for Good. I saw only yet another rival to me taking over the House when Mother stepped down. To me being one of a kind. And I couldn't understand why you doted on her. It...threatened me. It made me want to prove you wrong."
"Congratulations..." Lynda replied cynically through heartbroken sobs. "You succeeded. I hope it was worth it."
Vera knelt down.
"It wasn't." Vera admitted softly, hand gently touching her emotionally destroyed Sister's shoulder. Lynda flinched, pulling out of her reach.
"I was wrong to give you no help. I was wrong to be so obsessed with proving my own superiority. I have been a bad sister. For that I am sorry..." Vera said, though it made her stomach lurch to apologize for anything, due to her Senate Rotunda-sized ego. But she was ignoring her pride, because West's pain had changed something in Vera upon witnessing it on full display.
It was Vera's first ever My God, what have I done? moment. It had come almost two decades too late.
"Oh Vera..." Lynda said, reaching out to Vera's cheek, fingertips running against.
"I wish I could believe you..."
Vera winced as Lynda grinded her fingernails down Vera's cheek, drawing gray blood. Vera staggered back, not in pain because she normally couldn't feel physical pain, but more that she realized Lynda had violated every last one of her own programming safeguards just to express her loathing of her older Sister.
"But I've had ten years to understand that you are and remain and always will be nothing but a scheming, self serving snake." Lynda hissed, rising. "Don't bother trying to change your scales now."
"I'm telling the truth!" Vera said with uncharacteristic pleading in her tone as Lynda walked away. The cuts on her cheek were already starting to heal. Yet Vera felt as though they were still fresh. Still unhealed.
Lynda stopped, turned to her.
"Even if you are...I absolutely do not care at this point." Lynda snarled. "Now stop with this farce of yours and take me to Mother. I know that's why you're here. I can smell her on you."
Lynda walked away from the ruins, Vera now touching the completely healed cheek and still feeling the cuts.
Later on...
Atrisian Hotel (The Sunrise Dogma)
"Chit. You need a weekend at Canto Blight...couple of Twi'lek dancers will turn that frown upside down..." Nine joked nervously, wearing her dark green hooded Kimono with white rose print. Her features were obscured, only the glint of purple at the center of her eyes visible as she sat across her estranged daughter at the dining table. She had captured one of Lynda's favorite kinds of victim to feast off of, a Final Dawn Stormtrooper. Nine herself was feasting on an ordinary Pizza Delivery Man, because he had cheated her in a card game. She wasn't going to kill him. But he was gonna lose a few of his happier birthdays. He was tied up and drugged into a state of unconsciousness. Nine had tied up and paralyzed the Stormtrooper, but not rendered him unconscious, as she knew Lynda preferred Stormtroopers to be conscious while feasting off them, as she despised stormtroopers and wanted them to be terrified during the experience, even if they wouldn't remember it afterward.
The room had a restrained splendor to it. The finest materials and silks. Nine lived comfortably, whatever else could be said.
"I trust your head is...a tad more clear, now that their are hardly any Maw left to fight?" Nine asked as Lynda fed on the gagged stormtrooper, who screamed a muffled scream through the gag.
"For better or worse..." Lynda replied, taking black metallic fangs out of his neck.
"It is good to see you again. I've been very worried about you."
"Translation, you're afraid my recklessness would get too much heat and they would discover Clan Li-Ves' part in backing House Io."
"That's not fair..."
"But it is the truth..." Lynda countered.
"Only part of the truth. You have never stopped being my daughter."
"What were you thinking?!" Lynda snapped in accusation.
"Excuse me?"
"What were you thinking, continuing to back House Io, even after she started killing Jedi? Even after she became wanted by every single major factions dead or alive, except the Eternal Empire and the CIS, and even the CIS kicked her ass out!"
"I had good reasons for supporting her." Nine said. "She was one of the most vocal in opposing the Bryn'adul. She was one of the most passionate about defeating that menace. Maybe the most passionate. All the factions that stood the most to gain from defeating them instead were all at each other's throats. And the Jedi couldn't be bothered if the Bryn'adul weren't spelled S-I-T-H. No matter how many the Lobsters were wiping out, the Sith came first. I was almost as disgusted by the Order's behavior as she was. Even you were at one point. Or has your memory become that self serving?" Nine asked.
Lynda glowered at her.
Nine sighed.
"But I made a terrible mistake. And once I realized how badly I had screwed up with supporting her little blood feud with the Jedi, I saw no way out but forward. Besides, they don't mind killing someone to fulfil their vision when it suits them. Turn about is fair play. I tried to use Maple to kill the bad influence, not understanding that the Amalgam didn't need to influence her. That she wasn't influencing her all that much. That bile came from within. But I'll not be beholden to her any longer. She must be stopped. I must save--and redeem--my House. I need your help to do that..."
"Maybe House Li-Ves deserves to perish for what it's done. What it took part in." Lynda replied somberly.
"If anyone deserves to perish it is me. But let it end with me." Nine replied fiercely.
"Nice, easy and convenient..." Lynda snapped, clenching her fists in anguish. "Why did you make me this way? Why have you never tried to create a daughter who wasn't a monster on some level?"
"Because I am a monster..." Nine admitted. "But even monsters need company. Monsters who can relate--"
"I would give up all my gifts here and now, on the spot, if it would help me earn the love of an ordinary person." Lynda hissed as a single glowing red tear slid down her face, the flesh reabsorbing it. "I have lived my entire life surrounded by monsters with pleasing faces and gorgeous figures. Admittedly, a few of them meant well more than others did. But there is something missing in those like us!" Lynda insisted. "Something essential... something...natural...that would let us understand... understand why our attempts to solve problems backfire...why we can't live amongst them without hurting some of them all of the time..."
Nine snorted at this.
"Oh please. You act like being ordinary is some great thing. Like they're so much better than us, because of their supposedly static, limited manner of affecting the world around them." Nine retorted, biting on the neck of her meal and eating his fourteenth birthday before removing her fangs.
"Give seven out of any ten ordinary people your level of gifts and they would shock even The Amalgam at the depths of the treachery and corruption they would exhibit." Nine retorted, pulling back from her meal. "Laertia and I are not so different, my daughter. At, least, our stories aren't. Like her, I too chafed under the Laws of the Jedi. I too found myself at a crossroads between obeying them and doing what I knew was right. And here was my 'reward' for it. To share the fate of my Mother...who was turned into a monster with a pleasant face by the treachery of one person's paranoia and his jealousy."
Nine bit into her meal again, eating a memory of an afternoon walking his dog in the park.
"Don't put 'Ordinary' on a pedestal, Daughter. Normal people have no special insight. Normal people allowed the Bryn'adul and the Maw to get so bad to begin with. It took monsters to put both those societies in their graves... because normal people on their own couldn't. Normal people take advantage of monsters in their midst all the time. Their rate of creating problems, creating headaches, is even higher than that of a monster."
She bit her meal again, this time eating a memory of him eating pizza last week. Lynda was silent, considering her mother's words.
"Ordinary people commit massacres, genocide, terrorism...yet you envy them because their flesh doesn't shudder or move when they engage in their bloodlust." Nine muttered cynically.
"What do you call what happened on Exegol, hmmm? A picnic day? It was a planned, systematic slaughter. Payback for every last thing the Maw had done. And they definitely deserved it. And that slaughter was planned by perfectly ordinary people." Nine continued with a snort of contempt. "The CIS condemned her for Rhand. I watched their leader order a midnight exigent on an infected zone on the world of Melida. I'm sure plenty of innocents died in both cases. And if you are going to sit here and tell me the Galaxy wasn't served by the Destruction of that Worldship, that it did nothing to significantly weaken the Maw, to that I say 'feth you'."
Lynda stared down at her struggling still screaming meal and casually strangled him with one hand to the point of unconsciousness.
"Laertia destroyed their birthplace, their cradle. A tactical Military asset coordinating thousands of slaving operations and who knows how many military efforts. A critical asset and symbol. Was she forgiven for making a hard decision? No! She was sacrificed on the altar of public relations." Nine snarled.
"I can guarantee you if someone like, say, Srina Talon had ordered the destruction of the world ship, she'd have been insulated from all criticism. Hell...they might have even found a way to somberly praise the snow haired little schutta for it. Laertia came back to help them even after they exiled her." Nine finished acidly, sliding her unconscious meal away from her across the table. "So no, daughter. I flatly and categorically reject your assertion that ordinary people have some insight cute monsters like us lack. Our existence may not be perfect, and can lead to tragedy, but at least we have the blessing of being able to do what they themselves would if given our abilities. At least most of us have the blessing of not having to sugarcoat the ugliness of it. At least a monster will--most of the time, anyway--own up to if confronted with their own evils."
"If being a monster is so preferable, why are you trying to use me as a diplomat so the GA or the Jedi doesn't try to exterminate our House?" Lynda asked.
"An excellent question. Let me ask you this: What would you prefer: a life where a monster like us can still do some good with what we are given, or a world where a monster like us is out only for ourselves?" Nine questioned, head twitching like a bird as she observed her.
"Whatever else, we know which side of that equation Laertia falls under..." Lynda replied, wincing at a happy memory of her.
"I made a terrible mistake with Laertia. I admit that. I'll go to my grave lamenting my failure with my last blood descendant. Because it's gonna end with her the way it ended with my mother, and I, fool that I am, failed to realize that pattern was repeating until it was too late. And I am sorry for the pain my failure and short-sightedness caused you, personally." Nine said gently, rising up and gliding over to her.
Lynda flinched as Nine grasped her shoulders but didn't pull away.
"I love you, West. And I am sorry for sticking you in the middle of this. I'm sorry for not being all that great of a Mother. But you still have a family, however flawed, and you might be one of the only people who can save us from my mistakes. If you want to wring my neck afterwards, I won't stop you. I probably have it coming. But then again, we all have it coming, kid. Even you..."
(Cutaway of Clint shooting Gene in the Saloon.)
"What must I do?" Lynda asked in a broken voice, pushing her meal away.
"As it so happens, we have a diplomatic in. One of our distant sires is a member of the Jedi Order. Coven was wiped out a while back. Been trying to figure out who did it so I could have them assassinated by Vera. But she is one of us. I want you to go to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, where she is, and request she meet with us."
"You think she'll accept?"
"It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the reason she was born the way she was. Pretty good chance she will accept." Nine answered, pulling back. "I won't order you to do it. This must be your choice, West. I won't think less of you for refusing."
Lynda was silent a moment.
"When do I leave?" she asked quietly.
"Preferably ASAP. And would you mind wearing something nice? We don't want to scare her from having a relative show up looking ready to start some chit." Nine answered.
Present...
Lynda walked up to the front entrance of the temple dressed in something the old her would have preferred.
One of the temple guards recognized her...and was shocked at how regal she seemed. Gone was the blood splattered Warrior who made sport of the Maw.
But the horrifying, bloodshot eyes remained.
"What...what are you doing here?" he asked in suspicion.
"I am here in a mission of peace. I request to speak to a member of yours. A woman named Thelma Goth." Lynda answered quietly. "I will wait here if I must. But I must speak with her. Please."
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