Private The Younger Sister

[Melinda Bloodscrawl]

Current appearance: This

Armed with: Herself

Current objective: Cheer up Nathan

It was Melinda Bloodscrawl's nature to be the most fun loving of her Sisters.

Much as Laertia had adored the original version of Melinda, Nathan had silently grown to adore this Melinda. Her core programming was to maintain family harmony and to function as someone to have a deeper insight into emotional states than most. She couldn't not latch onto her adopted brother, and want the best for him.

She had been fed data on his psychological profile, and had crafted her approach to winning him over based on that.

Nathan had lost family members in painful and traumatic ways. It had taken only a few conversations for her to figure out he had lost siblings in his youth.

She had first started by finding Brain Demon Cultists and butchering them in brutal ways. The equivalent of a cat bringing a dead bird to a human it likes. This had amused Nathan, who maintained a zero-mercy policy to all Cultists he encountered in the field. She had thrown herself into the task of upholding House Bloodscrawl tenants in every other respect. She wanted to know everything about his early life, and always pressed to know more. It was her passion to find relics of the Ancient House Bloodscrawl.

Gradually, Nathan had begun to share stuff unprompted. He shared limited stuff for now...he seemed to dance around certain memories. But Melinda probably knew more of his early life than most of the family. He had even gotten her a pet.

Melinda was even coaching him on smiling properly, something even his own wife had trouble with. It was still touch and go.

Coded to be the 'younger' Sister, Melinda was constantly thinking up ways to get her brother out of his cold and frozen shell. That was why she had brought him to a swoop race on Coruscant.

Nathan, who had recently lost his arm on Tython, had gotten a cybernetic replacement. He was in simple black biker gear, grim faced as usual. Melinda, in the meanwhile, had morphed her nanite body to make it look like she was wearing a red cocktail dress. Like her sisters, her default form was that of a woman with gold tan skin and golden blond hair.

"Swoop Race, huh?" Nathan muttered. "I wonder what made you choose this activity..."

"Opera seemed too pretentious for you to stomach. Laser tag too childish, and I have yet to see you enjoy a modern movie..." Melinda replied succinctly. "Racing struck me as a happy medium, Nate."

Nathan mused over this.

"Good guess..." he admitted as they waded through throngs of excited attendees from the lower levels. Melinda drew stares from both human and alien, women and men for her sculpted, youthful beauty, the way she glided through crowds with her brother.

She had gotten them great seats in the upper booths. It wasn't long before she flagged down one of the staff distributing over priced, sugary sodas and passed on to Nathan. He took a tentative sip, face wincing in curiosity. Sugar always tasted strange to him. He wasn't into sweets.

As they waited for the race to begin, the track under the shadow of the great skyscrapers, Melinda struck up a conversation;

"So, Nate...is the family all you hoped for?"

"I hope that someday we'll no longer need to keep to the shadows, even though it makes things easier. A lot easier..." Nathan admitted. "Do you like being in this family, Melinda?"

Melinda turned to him. "I love being in it."

"Because you were programmed to or because you actually enjoy it?"

"Can't it be both?" Melinda asked innocently. "You forget, one of my purposes is to act as a Sister to you. I wouldn't be very effective as a Sister if I wasn't capable of seeing what a good brother you could be if given a chance."

Nathan seemed to ponder her words. However, he didn't get to ponder them long, as he spotted a strange flashing in the commentator's tower.

"Lindy, did you see that?" Nathan asked.

Melinda focused her nanite forged eyes in the specific direction of the tower...

"I see two gunman in suits, with suppressed blasters..." Melinda said with growing alarm.

"I'll check it out. We cannot risk causing a panic..." Melinda said, irritated that her time spending with him had been interrupted.

Melinda stood up.

"Be careful, Lindy..." Nathan said.

Melinda ruffled his hair playfully.

"I'll have this all sorted before the race even starts..." Melinda assured, walking off through the seats full of people.

As she got out of sight, Melinda broke down into a puddle of liquid silver and flowed into an air vent in the race track stadium...

 

[Melinda Bloodscrawl]

The mass of silver nanites flowed through the vents, heading along a very specific route that would take the mass towards the race commentator's tower, overlooking the track in the Northern end of it.

It poured out as silver liquid on the base floor of the tower lobby, activating it's absorbed stealth tech so the liquid mass went completely invisible as it flowed across the floor, invisible gobs of it weaving around the feet of unaware staff and security teams as the nanites squeezed between cracks of the turbolift door, flowing up the walls of the turbolift shaft before flowing into the top floor where the Commentator's Booth waited.

She reformed looking like she was wearing an ultra-reflective crimson Catsuit and quietly, stealthily approached the hall to the booth, noting the cameras were disabled.

She broke down into a silver puddle, flowing between the cracks on the door, her nanites spotting two men that had killed the commentators and taken their clothes, setting up a rifle.

The Nanites cloaked themselves, observing how meticulous they were. Professionals. But who were they targeting?

The fear they were targeting her brother prompted the mass of nanites to react assembling back into her catsuit clad form and decloaking, her fingers turning into silver spikes, which she flung into their spines. They screamed in pain as they were paralyzed from the waist down, desperately digging at the spikes in her back, still linked to Melinda, burrowing deeper at every attempt.

Melinda applied pressure via her foot to one of their throats.

"Who are you here for?" Melinda demanded quietly.

"Informant..." The Assassin said. "Rodian fella...betrayed the exchange. Meeting his SIA contact today..."

"When?" Melinda asked coldly.

"Fifteen minutes...Top Bench, Row five..."

"Back up teams?" Melinda asked.

"Five..." The Assassin breathed. "Five people in each...two waiting in the lobby. One in the rows. Two in the parking lot. He'll never make it out of here..."

"We'll see about that..." Melinda said, her foot turning into an axe blade and stomping down, beheading him. Her foot turned back to normal as she stared at the other Assassin. Her hand took a clawed gesture and the spikes she had flung into the second assassin burst through his heart and killed him instantly, just as they did with the already dead assassin and merged with her. She searched their remains, pulling out a holodisc whose security her nanites cracked in seconds, siphoning the data directly. She knew who their target looked like in seconds and she instantly got on the rifle to look for him and the contact he was to meet.

A silvery tendril stretched out from her ankle, retrieving the comlinks of the two she had killed and hacking their signals to try and trace the other teams by pinging them...

She watched as multiple people in the crowd all reached for their comlink at the exact same time. She frowned. If she fired, she could cause a massive panic in the crowds.

She hacked Nathan's comlink.

"Nate, you there?" she called out.

"What's up, Lindy?" Nathan asked.

"I have a number of hostile teams here to kill a criminal informant. They set up a rifle and everything for a long distance assassination..." she explained. "The Informant is a Rodian looking to meet an SIA contact. The very top bench at row five..."

"I'll get the informant out of here..." Nathan started.

"No...the back up teams are present a few benches below you..." Melinda said. "Focus on them first..."

"Alright... point 'em out to me, and I'll...see to it..." Nathan said darkly.

"I'll try and reach you as soon as I can. Please be careful!" She cautioned as she watched through the scope...

 

[Melinda Bloodscrawl]

Melinda watched through the scope, guiding her brother through the Comlink via coded beeps into his ear piece. She smirked as she watched Nathan teleport them all one by one outside, with people so busy waiting for the race to start they didn't notice people next to them vanishing.

"Where did you teleport them, by the way?" Melinda asked over encrypted comms.

"I scouted this place about a day before you took me to it..." Nathan admitted. "Nice thick secure storage area that I realized would be difficult to blast through. Can't be opened from inside. A spell Mother showed me allowed me to use that as a focal point when teleporting someone." Nathan answered quietly. "They're quite trapped."

"Smart." She complimented, leading him to the next one, watching as one by one they all vanished.

"Hold on, I think I see the Rodian and his contact..." Melinda spoke, watching as a hooded Rodian with lime green skin sat on the top bench, joined by a dark skinned man in commoner's clothing.

Melinda had been programmed to read lips.

"Hold on. "I'll figure out what they're saying..." Melinda said, observing closely.

She was programmed for analyzing body language. That arguably told her even more than the lip reading itself:

"Awful risky, meeting in public like this..." The Contact said...

"I had no choice. Something crazy went down with my neck of the Exchange." The Rodian Informant said. "You know that company, Bacta-Works?"

"Yeah, they've been buying up property strategically across Coruscant and Fondor. Space Ports, Medical Facilities, research labs, Droid production. Weapons Factories. Low key, of course. Why?"

"One of their rivals has contracted a bunch of Exchange Operatives to break into a Data-Vault set up recently by them... happening tonight." The bug eyed Rodian said. "They're looking for something. Probably info on the CEO..."

"Good fething luck. SIA has been trying to find whatever it can on her since she first came onto the scene. But she's notoriously secretive. She could teach our boys a thing or two about sticking to the shadows."

"The Exchange has been trying also, but there is simply no record of her anywhere before she debuts on Susevfi with that medical college. It's like she didn't exist before that moment..." The Rodian said. "But that isn't all. They're sending a saboteur to that new Bacta-Storage facility they set up tonight also at the same time the Vault theft is supposed to occur to try and taint the supply. It could risk killing thousands if they succeed." The Rodian informant said, discretely passing a holo disc to the Contact.

The Rodian was extremely agitated. Melinda knew this wasn't a lie just by looking.

"I see..." The Contact replied, leaning forward, hands clasped together in contemplation after taking the disc. "You took a great risk coming out here. I'll be sure to get this to my supervisors..."

Melinda frowned. They had a serious problem.

"Nathan, I read the lips of those two. There's a raid on that Data vault Sera set up recently as well as a sabotage attempt on one of our Bacta-Storage facilities. Both are planned tonight. Informant just slipped the Contact a disc." Melinda transmitted.

"Go for the disc. I want to know what they know...I'll make sure the Informant leaves alive."

"There are two Back Up Teams in the lobby..." Melinda warned. "They really didn't want this guy to live."

"They won't be a problem." He assured. "Go get that disc. I've teleported a tracker into the Contact's jacket pocket. Your nanites should be able to follow him easily. Good luck, Lindy."

"Aren't you going to say 'May The Force be with you?'"

"The Force is always with you until it conveniently decides not to be." Nathan replied. "Better to rely on Luck. The Force is too fickle."

Nathan waited until the Informant and Contact split up before getting up and indirectly following the Informant. Melinda broke down into a silver puddle, flowing back out the way she came in order to pursue the Contact. The tracker signal had a frequency that her Nanites locked onto easily, and she was soon flowing out of the tower itself, sliding down it's walls in order to get back to where she had been when this all started.

The Nanite mass seethed with irritation. Her poor brother never got a break. All she had wanted was a peaceful day.

Not this...