Wearing:
Ursula's Armor
Armed with: Skin Shears (Purple Split-Saber)
Eternal Silence
Objective: BYOO
72 hours prior...
Coruscant...
The devastation by The Maw Brotherhood had left chaos in its wake. So much was still unrepaired, in addressed.
Coruscant was bathed in suffering and it was delicious to both Darth Phyre AND The Amalgam...
She had come in, solo, shielding her presence with Dark Blood Magic. She had expected a tough challenge. She hadn't been disappointed.
There were few things more deliciously ironic to The Amalgam than an enemy that did not know the value of something in their possession. Something that, had it been known what it truly was, would have been kept under lock and key a thousand times more elaborate than what she faced.
As it had turned out, what she was after (What House Io was after) was in an SIA Black Site vault in one of the ruined sections of Coruscant's Underworks.
She hated the Underworks. Only her affection for Laertia had made her go here...
The Amalgam was in disguise as an SIA officer she had slain and mimicked. All the puzzle pieces Laertia had quietly gathered at all the hot spots of the third Imperial Civil War, busily digging for leads in the aftermath of (and even during) conflicts like Ziost and Vjun had lead to this final puzzle piece, a search that had been conducted often right under The Amalgam's (and by extension, Darth Phyre's) nose.
Far from being enraged at being deceived, The Amalgam and Phyre were gushing at the lengths Xiphos had gone to, both to pursue her own goals against the Bryn'adul (The object of her obsession), as well as lay her hands on a lost Sith Treasure Planet all without them finding out what she was after until relatively recently...
Had Maple known? Even before Laertia had gone to war? That was what had made her curious...she hadn't expressed any surprise at Laertia hunting for Khemost. She had to have known far longer than she had let on.
But she totally understood the need for secrecy. Khemost wasn't Feth-You Money. It was far beyond that.
Xiphos had risked death to find it. If she had died at any point before, it all would have been for nothing.
But she hadn't died. She had lived. In spite of the odds,
Laertia would not give up. She had persisted, fighting through every set back, every soul crushing revelation about herself, AND on the losing side of a war. She had passed through trials that would have utterly destroyed others. In doing so, perhaps the powers that be had declared her worthy of the secret no other living being had laid claim to or seen in centuries.
The Amalgam had surprisingly little trouble getting past the front door of the safehouse, which had been savagely defended in the chaos. Magic Spells applied to her blood, eyes and skin had helped to fool the biometric screening. She even had a legitimate cover as to why she was here, thanks to
Lyssa Io
(who was also at the facility in secret, having secretly hacked the alarms and communications, sabotaging them with feedback signals ...they had learned the person she was imitating, a Devaronian woman, had to make a pick up here to transfer sensitive artifacts to a far more secure location.
She had played it perfectly to a tee as she was escorted past multiple barricades and turrets, and scores of heavily armed personnel, powerful scanners deceived by the Dark Side as she was escorted to a turbolift and then upward on the tall skyscraper in the Shadow of far greater ones. They guarded stuff like Sith Holocrons encased in Nullification Resin, Crystals and Archeotech in a large chamber. All of it paled in terms of value compared to the real treasure: an ancient, small golden statue of a naked woman holding a Lightsaber on a pedestal. It had no Dark Side Aura, and was composed of Solid Aurodium...or so they believed.
The greatest treacheries of the Sith sometimes lie in sticking secrets of great worth right in front of the feeble minded to taunt them. Sidious had done it throughout his whole tenure as Chancellor, sticking Sith Artifacts in his office in full view of any Jedi that came to visit like an absolute boss. That chit was hardcore AF, what he did. He was a beast, and for doing something that badass on its own merits he deserved his place as the greatest Sith of all time... every one that had come since, her included, would never live up to his greatness. Sidious would never have made the mistakes in this war that Darth Solipsis had made. But the Alliance had made every mistake the Old Republic had made and worse.
If they had only known just how much it would cost them, this one, tiny statue...they would have destroyed it, and possibly preserved the secret of Khemost's location, forever keeping it from her hands.
But they didn't know what they had.
Precisely at the agreed upon time, Lyssa had cut the alarms. The Amalgam's cover had been permitted to remove only certain artifacts. But not the statue.
That was when the Lightsaber, hidden in a cavity of her stomach due to her Shi'ido physiology, had come out. The purple blades sang through those they cut down after she reached the artifacts chamber, brutally killing those who had been there to supervise what was taking, only to be reduced to chunks by her constantly moving purple Lightsaber blades, savagely dashing through their weapons and bodies.
Multiple security teams converged on her location as she seized the small statue, hiding it in her stomach and planting a thermal Detonator with a magically enhanced baridium charge in the center of the chamber to annihilate all evidence.
(John Wick Medley Plays)
The Amalgam flipped over and ducked and dodged machine gun fire from the squads, ravenous in her blood lust, near impossibly beautiful figure a blur as she dashed through one of the guns then it's wielder, fists and legs slamming into heads and rib cages, using her elbows to break bones and jaws through their helmets. Her blades spun like those of a helicopter, activating and deactivating unpredictably through faces, decimating foes with powerful blasts of purple lightning when she wasn't executing them with headshots from a stolen slugthrower loaded with armor piercing rounds.
A whispered curse dampened all light in the area, but she saw clearly. They disappointed her with their courage but she delighted in the flashes of agony she experienced in their various brutal deaths that she chose for them. Each flash of pain was an endorphin rush to her. She eliminated the deadliest, most heavily armed threats first, parrying blaster bolts and sword assaults in equal measure. She always kept moving, each attack transitioning to the next fluidly. Inevitably, one by one, they fell, and then she was running for her life back the way she came, except she cut a hole into the wall and kicked it out, diving into open sky.
Surviving security reached the hole just in time to watch her wave bye as she cloaked herself with The Force...
She had a remote detonator in the hand she waved bye with.
The blast utterly annihilated the floor she had dived out of, and the three below it.
The repulsorlift belt she wore slowed her fall and she hit the street running, turning into a dog that ran down an alleyway as she uncloaked, diving into the back of an animal capture wagon driven by Lyssa, who piloted the repulsor truck away slowly as she saw unmarked black assault shuttles fly past them overhead. The Amalgam resumed her usual form, shifting her flesh to look like she wore a white catsuit. She slid a viewport open, saw Lyssa at the wheel.
"Security feeds wiped?" The Amalgam asked.
"Corrupted beyond all hope of data recovery." Lyssa confirmed.
"Dear
Lyssa..." The Amalgam cooed. "My protege truly outdid herself creating you. Oh, the damage we could have done together, if you had been available back in the day."
"I am quite familiar with your depravity."
"Which you make use of as a terror weapon against your enemies. C'mon, you must get a
teensy thrill from killing." The Amalgam teased.
"I do, but I'm usually quick about it."
"That's where you're making the mistake...the best kills are done slowly. You have to learn to savor pain and fear."
"I am a Nuetralizer, Amy..." Lyssa replied in a dissonantly serene tone as she turned a corner to the nearest star port. "I
am pain and fear."
"So am I, my dear Lyssa...but I've been doing it longer."
The pair both smuggled themselves by means of stealth onto a small cargo freighter. It would be seized on its route by a stolen ship via interdictor mine, where they would be extracted without the crew even knowing why they had been boarded...
A half hour before present...
Aboard the Leviathan of Sev Tok...
Darth Xiphos stared at the statue. It had taken more than two days of both The Amalgam and Lyssa transferring to random ships to make sure they had lost any potential trails.
The Leviathan was positioned over Hoth, where it had been quietly stationed the past few weeks.
The Matriarch of House Io examined the statue in the privacy of her utilitarian quarters, wearing a pitch black kimono. The Amalgam was close by lounging on a sofa eating grapes, along with Maple Harte, who had been the one to finally recover the pair, and Lyssa, busily doting on her pet rabbit, feeding it a little piece of vegetable.
Maple was more morose than usual. No one was certain why.
Xiphos reached forward, as the previous scraps of info she had obtained instructed, and twisted the golden blade the statue held clockwise.
The statue seemed to come apart in orderly sections, revealing a magically concealed cavity with a piece of parchment, the pieces of the statue hovering around it.
Xiphos slowly unrolled it, and smiled.
"We've done it. Khemost is ours for the taking." Xiphos said quietly, her damaged voice enhanced by experimental vocal chord workaround strips containing delicate circuitry. "I know where it is. We can go there any time. But one last thing remains..."
"Are you sure this place is as rich as you claim?" Maple asked.
"They would never have gone to the trouble of concealment if it were not. Especially the lengths they went to, in order to conceal it." Xiphos replied. "The Citizen Starships will always be a thing, in case we need to evacuate. But we know where Khemost is."
"What's the final remaining thing?" Lyssa asked.
"Quethold...Khemost has defense networks and a Planetary Shield Generator. There is an old tomb here where the IFF codes were hidden. We'll need them if we don't want to get shot at."
"Count me out. I'm on break..." Maple said, pulling out a flask and taking a swig.
Xiphos noted this extremely unusual behavior on Maple's part but let it slide. Everyone had been under severe stress since Rhand. Because of her.
"Take as long a break as necessary..." Xiphos said. "You've more than earned it, Sister."
"Whatever..." Maple said glumly, walking out.
"Lyssa, go see to Maple. Get her to relax somewhere." Xiphos requested.
"At once, Mother..." Lyssa replied, heading out.
Xiphos and The Amalgam were now alone in the room.
"Admit it: You're quite happy with me right now..." The Amalgam teased, eating another grape.
"I certainly have less reasons to strangle you."
"Awww, don't you know how much I'd love a good throttling from you?" The Amalgam retorted.
"I think you confuse throttling with something else."
"That's the beauty of it, my darling
protege..." The Amalgam said, sitting up with a demonic smile.
"In my world,
Throttling and
Something Else are totally
the same thing..." she hissed seductively.
Darth Xiphos scowled but headed to a nearby cabinet.
"For what you have done for me, I am prepared to overlook quite a lot..." Xiphos said, retrieving a special blade.
Xiphos presented it to The Amalgam...
"Ahhh, I was wondering what these were..." The Amalgam trailed, running her fingers over the blade hilt. It reminded her of a Darksaber. She pressed the activation stud.
It came on with a buzz like that of an electric shaver, a double edged shape to its purple blade.
"And I even like the color..." The Amalgam said, noting it's difference from a normal blade. It seemed more ruggedized and utilitarian than even an ordinary saber.
"Yet it has weight...this is no Lightsaber...it's some sort of energy sword..." she realized, shutting it off.
"Does it make me officially part of your little club?"
"Yes. I worked out a deal with Batty. As long as none of your cult inflicts it's depravities on
my citizens and whoever is a lawful inhabitant of territory I control, your cult will be allowed to operate in my space and no one will have the right to challenge it. But I know you wouldn't care even if I forbade you from ever setting foot in my territory again. So I offer one further incentive..."
Xiphos drew closer to her. The Amalgam's thirst meter went over 9000.
"Teach me Force Lightning..." Xiphos said an instant later, making The Amalgam's thirst meter creep over 14000.
"Oh
Julia..." The Amalgam trailed, dead purple eyes twinkling as they momentarily went the full sulphur of a Sith.
"Teaching you Force Lightning would be better than
Danuta...I'm so glad you reserved the honor for me..."
Yes, bringing her the statue
had yielded a true reward. The Amalgam yearned to draw Julia closer to the Bogan. If she only knew just how much Xiphos had planned this moment, this
exact moment out, even
she might have been given pause at just how scheming Xiphos had become.
But, just as Xiphos guessed, the chance to draw Julia closer to the Dark Side, and save her soul, in The Amalgam's eyes, was so overwhelmingly tempting that it blinded The Amalgam as to the
why now of it...
So overwhelmed by the emotion that came with asking for the knowledge, that she temporarily lost hold of Darth Phyre within, her face melting and shifting to an exotic looking redhead that would have been familiar to
Starlin Rand
.
Darth Phyre wrapped her arms around Xiphos's shoulders. Xiphos kept her expression neutral.
"One of these days, I'll win you over. And you'll see,
everything Amy did, everything
I did, was for the best..."
"One of these days, Phyre, you're gonna learn that having a thing is not nearly as stimulating as
wanting it." Xiphos replied calmly.
(Cutaway of Spock fighting Kirk in "Amok Time".)
"Not where you are concerned..." Phyre said breathily. "If taking such a big risk going to Coruscant doesn't prove how much you mean to me...what does?"
"Khemost is a massive payday: You get something out of it too."
"Oh,
hang the money!" Phyre scoffed, running a finger under Xiphos's chin. "You think someone like me
cares about
money? I'd blow up Khemost with a Death Star to keep you."
At this, Xiphos's lip trembled, but only a little. Even she had been affected by the response, despite it's source, and much to her own well hidden internal shame...
"Let's make sure it doesn't come to that..." Xiphos said.
"Now is not the time for fear...that comes
later..." Phyre chuckled. (Victory has defeated you: 90 XP)
"Tom Hardy quotes
won't win me over." Xiphos replied, her current mental health issues allowing her to break the fourth wall without thinking about it.
At the realization that Xiphos had broken the fourth wall, The Amalgam immediately seized control of her body again, warping Phyre's face back to hers, gave an absolute
squee of delight, jumping up and down in an utterly
childish manner before remembering Xiphos was still there.
"You're
crazy! You're finally
crazy!" The Amalgam gushed, seizing her by the arms.
"I don't know what you mean..." Xiphos replied blandly.
"Oh don't play dumb, everybody reading this saw it!" The Amalgam said fiercely, half of her face warping to Darth Phyre's for a moment before going back to her own.
The Amalgam's hands then gently clasped around Xiphos's face.
"Now we really have something in common. Just give in to the madness a little more and you'll enjoy yourself...I
promise..." The Amalgam said softly.
"My life isn't made for
enjoyment...it's made for purpose..."
"Then
enjoy your purpose..." The Amalgam replied softly. "I enjoy mine, certainly..."
"And just what is your purpose?" Xiphos asked.
"Beyond spreading the glory of the Dark Side? Saving the souls of the only two people I genuinely
love...so we can be
happy together..." The Amalgam replied.
"I wish I could believe you..." Xiphos said quietly.
"How can you not believe I love you?" The Amalgam asked in an unusually small voice.
"You misunderstand. I
absolutely believe you love me, in your own fethed up and twisted way..."
Xiphos struggled not to flinch as The Amalgam ran her fingers through Xiphos's raven-black hair.
"I meant the part where we can truly be happy together..." Xiphos elaborated, pulling away, and exiting her quarters.
"I'm-your-biggest-fan, I'll-chase-you-down-until-you-loooove-meeee..." The Amalgam sang softly, breaking the Fourth Wall as she followed Xiphos out.
"Pro-mise-I'll-beeee-kind, but-I-won't-stop-until-Xi-phos-is-
miiiinnne..." Phyre sang, taking control of the body momentarily before the Amalgam seized control once more...
Present...
The Shadow Bride, the infamous warship of Darth Xiphos, was too high profile to take to Quethold. They had instead come in a nondescript Assassin Class Corvette.
Xiphos had brought along one of her newest creations, one she had custom made. It lay resting on a table in a Kimono. She was shorter than most production line models of this new series...it might be strategically advantageous to have a warrior of short stature other than
Cameron Crownwraithe
...
"So..." The Amalgam asked after they landed in the bleak wastes. "What's this one do?"
"Spiritual Guidance. And ass kicking..." Xiphos answered, wearing dark blue robes reminiscent of a Jedi Temple Guardian, as she ran her fingers over the temple of the Chaplain Nuetralizer that was designated
Alessandra Io
.
"Wake up, Daughter...glory awaits..." Xiphos said softly.
"And loot!
Sweet loot..." The Amalgam said playfully...