Private Reconnection: Percival Io

[The Deluge]

"You still haven't answered me..." The Deluge said, grinning again as he grabbed her arm.

"Ooooo, some attention!" she hissed playfully, rolling her eyes as he said he could do it.

"You still haven't answered my question...are you willing to kill The Battalion, who argued the hardest for your freedom, harder than Arianna herself did? Are you willing for your Mother to be robbed of the one person who helped her recover after Kerest? Who rescued Galahad?" The Deluge questioned, only grinning as he said they could survive and become stronger.

"And what if your mother doesn't want to let go of the Cult?" she asked. "What then Percival? She came to us. Because the "heroes" were worthless. All they wanted to do was what they usually did. You think Themis will pick up the slack? Themis is concentrating her efforts to subverting the Ashlans. That means her resources are all concentrated there. You need a Force Order, and no one here is gonna want a peaceful one."

She yawned at his accusations.

"Arrogance? Self Importance? I merely state the truth of your situation. Of the House's situation. There's something I believe Denithel said to Rebecca once. Old Proverb. 'The truth comes as a conqueror to those who do not embrace it as a friend.' And what's the truth, dear Percy?" she said possessively and infuriatingly calmly, siezing his face with a sudden deadly strength and locking it in her grasp like a titanium vice.

"The truth is that House Io has made enemies of everyone worth making enemies of. Who among them would make peace with the House after what we have done? We butchered their friends and loved ones in every battle we fought, as sadistically as possible. Xiphos signed off on it. If anything, you're the arrogant one, thinking the pieces would fall into place just for you and whoever else you've roped into that little conspiracy everyone will immeditaely suspect you're behind the moment you start trying to implement it. And You're also the self important one, so casually dismissing how our sympathizers will react. You refuse to accept the real nature of your Mother, of this house. However much you love Rebecca, that doesn't change the fact she knew! And she went along with it. Let her husband go into those battles, and kill and destroy..." she said, voice going to a lethal hiss. It was impossible to tell whether it was the witches or Rebecca from within, pointing this out about herself.

"She may have...I...I...may...have..." The Deluge hissed, shuddering in clear pain herself as she remembered her own glorious, horrendous birth.

"But...It...takes...a special kind of resolve...a special kind of ruthless...to use nukes...to go in there..." Rebecca hissed through The Deluge, in spite of herself, in spite of being revolted at an otherwise twisted logic.

"And know...you won't come back.." Rebecca said to Percival Io through the maniacal face of the Deluge, whose eyes were rolled into her head horribly as she grasped Percival.

"Did you know that level of rage was in Rebecca at all?" The Deluge asked, gaining control back as she floated away from him...

"But go on. Keep telling us how we are no longer relevant, when we helped House Io change the fate of the Galaxy at Tython. And our name is not stupid!" The Deluge said in a suddenly childish manner, in contrast to the super calm voice she had a millisecond prior before it went straight back to that.

"Its just...it's an Exactly-What-It-Says-On-The-Tin sorta approach. I mean, we could have gone with something shorter, more mysterious maybe, but everything we tried just sounded way too pretentious. Even our Goddess likes the straightforward approach. You know exactly who you are dealing with so any feth-ups are precisely and only your fault, not ours. We even go out of our way to warn people how it could end for them. They deal with us anyway."

She floated back to the ground.

"But I digress. While we are arguing, the meeting time with Moya grows closer...but we'll see whose faith is stronger, Percival. Someday."

 

[Percival Io]

Percival reluctantly released her arm, restraining his anger and disgust. He would not allow it to get the better of him.

But the things she said… this thing which bore the face of his beloved was like a beautiful snake trickling her venom into his ear. Her hands seized his face, holding him in a tight grip, but her words were what caught him.

“I am willing,” he said. “I am willing to end them all. I must be. Unless… unless the Cult were to reform, completely changing their methods…” He trailed off. He was grasping at straws, desperately seeking a way out of the vow he had just made, the truth he had just admitted. She had him trapped in her vice.

“You know the pain and suffering they’ve inflicted better than I do, Rebecca. You know why it can’t be allowed to go on,” he said, appealing to whatever was left of her humanity. “Even if Mother stands in the way… Look at what she allowed to happen to you by inviting the Cult to stay under the House’s roof. She may have been angry at what they did, she may have banished the Amalgam, but none of that can change the fact that they took you away from me.”

When the convulsions began, with her eyes rolling into the back of her head, Percival instinctively reached out to steady her. But she regained control and floated backwards, away from him.

The rest hardly mattered. Childish quibbling over the name of the Cult, claiming that Tython wouldn’t have been saved without the House’s sacrifice. Percival felt numb to it all and didn’t bother to respond.

“Let’s go,” he said, heading for the exit.

The Deluge​

 

[Nathan Bloodscrawl]

SELECT DIFFICULTY

CAN I PLAY, DADDY?

DON'T HURT ME

BRING 'EM ON!

DO OR DIE!

CALL ME TERROR-BILLY!

I AM DEATH INCARNATE!

MEIN LEBEN

YOU SELECTED (UGH, HOW PREDICTABLE): MEIN LEBEN


Wearing: Nothing.

Armed with: Nothing.

Objective: SCREAM LIKE AN EFFIN MANIAC

Day of The Attempted Annihilation of Tython.

The reality tears Darth Solipsis inflicted on Tython had far reaching consequences. Consequences that wouldn't fully be felt or understood for years.

One such consequence was the way the tears connected invisibly to many places, the fluctuations from them sending ripples across known space.

One such ripple due to the presence of a particular combatant, traveled all the way to Dantooine, where it affected the site where an ancient murder had taken place.

He had watched his wife be murdered, and drained of life until she was a husk. Then he had been murdered and dismembered.

Suffice to say, he remembered it, remembered being dead. Remembered the pain he had taken into the black...

A dirt covered fist punched out of the soft dirt covered by grass.

He clawed his way out, coughing up dirt and wet mud in the thunderstorm. And the first thing he did was scream. He didn't move. Didn't do anything but scream.

He screamed until what little reason was in him MADE him stop. Because it knew if he didn't stop screaming right then, he never would. (Salvation: 700 XP)

Something made him crawl. To where, he didn't know. But the scrapes across his knees eventually made him stand up and start walking through the thunderstorm.

He had neither sense of time nor direction. His thinking was in a haze.

He walked until it no longer rained. He'd never even paid attention to the lightning strikes.

He didn't even notice the skeletons at first. Not until his foot crushed a skull. He looked down, saw the scant remains of an ancient battlefield. Crashed, ancient wrecks of starfighters and piles of skeletons still in Imperial Uniform.

He advanced through the field, having an endemic shortage of feths to give.

As he walked amidst the bones, he came across an old durasteel shack, long abandoned, and quickly went inside it.

It had been an ad hoc homestead. It wasn't far from the battlefield...someone had been laying low, building it near such a morbid place.

Much of it was still intact. Built well enough to keep the weather out. There were rusted over cabinets, footlockers. He struggled to remember how to open them before he yanked each one open, looking for something he could use.

He found old tattered clothes and went blank until he remembered how to put clothing on and then went to a footlocker, pulling out a small gun case. The key was taped to the side.

He stared, mystified at the object and how it worked before remembering it's function and open the box by turning the key.

He stared at the pistol inside , a single spare clip of ammo with it, unloaded. He took it out, set it aside, then searched the rest of the shack, before he found an old spear and shield resting in a corner.

He spent the rest of the day in that shack, shivering and shaking...

Percival Io

 

[The Deluge]

The Deluge happily skipped through the snow, letting it fall on her tongue as they headed back to the apartment to await Moya. She tried not to bother Percival Io much

The Deluge floated in the air like she was resting on a Hammock in the living room. Eventually she heard the crunch of heavy Droid Footsteps in the snow outside. The Deluge opened the door and saw Hadrian, The very first Nuetralizer ever built. General of The Nuetralizers. He had been in command of the Leviathan of Danuta at Tython, and had helped deal one of many fatal blows. It was arguably because of him that they had only lost almost all of Battle Group A at Tython instead of all of Battle Group A at Tython. They had barely lost anyone in Battle Group B due to The Assembly commanding the Leviathan of Sev Tok.

"Deluge..." Hadrian said in his scary James Spader voice, her face reflecting off his shiny, reflective Golden Chassis. He was taller and broader than a Model 1 but not quite to the level of a Model 2. "I've come to talk to my brother. He and I have some business to discuss."

The Deluge knew how high ranking the Droid was, his authority being very close to that of Xiphos herself, Tied with Lyssa...who was also present, her form shaped like she was wearing silvery reflective biker leathers with black spikes, an inversion of apparel her mother wore in earlier days.

The Deluge shot a look at Percival, shrugged, and excused herself.

The Golden Nuetralizer scanned the place, green photo-receptors darting about in his skull. Lyssa examined the place herself, head swiveling robotically.

"Hello Percival. I want to apologise for the cloak and dagger nature of our visit." Hadrian said sincerely.

"Likewise." Lyssa added in a creepy, serene manner that even the very droids derived from her, the Advanced Model 1, found creepy. She didn't mean to menace, her coding was just different, the technology that allowed her to function so alien even Xiphos barely understood it.

"We're not angry at you for earlier, for what it's worth. Even we have taken issue with some of Mother's decisions, especially in the past few months." Hadrian quickly added, his golden skeleton gleaming.

"I would have killed Amy years ago, if I could override my programming..." Lyssa said. "But I'm sorry...that's not why we're here."

"We're here because we have learned Moya wants to talk to you. Did she say for what?" Hadrian inquired.

 

[Percival Io]

The walk home was quiet. Percival watched the Deluge catch snowflakes on her tongue, and remembered an occasion where Rebecca had done the same thing.

He was helping her move into the apartment—that is, he was doing all of the heavy-lifting, since she was at that point very pregnant with Thel. During a pause in their work they went out onto the balcony, where snow had begun to fall. He watched her tip her head back and open her mouth.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Catching snow,” she replied with a grin, closing her eyes.

Percival dutifully kept track of how many flakes she caught, observing as the snow melted and disappeared on her tongue, until she opened her eyes with a shudder, clutching her belly.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“He’s kicking harder than usual,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Her breath hitched as Percival slowly reached forward, splaying his hand over her stomach. At first, he felt nothing through the soft weave of her sweater. Then a spasm of movement rippled across the surface of his palm, as what might have been a tiny shoulder or a knee pressed outward against her skin.

His eyes met Rebecca’s. Her cheeks were flushed red.

“I’m sorry,” he said, retracting his hand. “I didn’t mean to impose. I have a… fascination with organic reproduction. It must be because I was manufactured in a factory. All Neutralizers are made that way. We are not born from our Mother the way your kind are.”

“It’s okay,” she replied softly, giving him a little smile. “As long as you’re gentle, you can touch me all you want.”

The sound of heavy footsteps drew Percival from his reverie. He was sitting on the couch with his knees drawn up to his chest. As the Deluge moved to answer the door, he lifted his bowed head. Only his eyes were visible as he stared at Hadrian and Lyssa, his gaze intense.

"I've come to talk to my brother. He and I have some business to discuss."

Percival rose to his feet. “I am here, General,” he said, watching the Deluge depart the room out of the corner of his eye.

Both Hadrian and Lyssa apologized for showing up unannounced, and clarified that they weren’t there because of what had happened during the meeting. No—they clarified that they weren’t angry with him for that. After all, who wouldn’t have tried to shoot the Amalgam’s hologram after she had forcibly converted someone they loved into her evil Cult?

Percival crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for the punchline.

"We're here because we have learned Moya wants to talk to you. Did she say for what?"

“No,” Percival replied. “But she will be here in a matter of minutes. If you plan to do something, you had better make it fast.”

The Deluge​