Wearing: Nothing
Armed with: Herself, Lightsaber, Ion Relic Pistol
With:
Westenra Mina
(Melissa, Melita, Melody Io)
Nuetralizer Model 1 (40)
Possible guest:
Esmeralda Io
Equipment:
Model 1 Disruptor
M-45 Repeating Ion Blaster
Plasma Grenades
Sonic Grenades
Objective: Save Sky-Walkers (Lyssa), Refuge Relief (Io Sisters)
Hours earlier.
Rhand had been lost in a desperate gambit by Mother that hadn't worked. The blood of thousands of slaves and her own allies was on her hands. She had destroyed the World Ship, but the price had been too high.
None of her former allies in the CIS saw the need for total unrelenting, savage war against the Maw. In Laertia's eyes it made them cowards. Only the EE had the stomach to do what was necessary for victory. So to the EE, Laertia had gone, bent on inflicting any damage she could against the two biggest threats to the Galaxy, and then getting revenge on the fools who had stood in the way of necessity.
Lyssa, for her part, wasn't certain she fully believed
all of mother's rhetoric. But as she read the reports of the spies from the comfort of Zakuul, how the Brotherhood planned to do to Copero what they did to Rhand, she couldn't help but wonder if Mother truly had a point that where the Maw was concerned, no savagery was too great to inflict in order to stop them.
She had decided to go for herself. And she was bringing her Aunt Melissa with her.
Lyssa did not feel compassion for people in great amounts the way her Aunt could. Her emotions were muted except where Family, particularly her Mother, was concerned. But even her emotions, dull as they were in most cases, felt nothing but disgust and hatred towards the Maw.
She would take a mild pleasure in gutting them like the dogs they were.
Lyssa's quarters aboard the Sarka Class Frigate, The Blood of Vjun, were sparse, utilitarian save photos of her mother and extended family. The photos were the only thing that held any value to her.
She was old enough to remember when
Syd was the love of her Mother's life. How Mother had grown more obsessed, more vindictive with every fight, win or lose.
She had no answer for her mother's pain then, and certainly didn't now. She was
trying to be a good daughter, and she knew Mother wanted to be a good Mother. She knew that.
But how can one be a good mother when trying, at the same time, to get revenge on the Jedi Order. Xiphos hated the the Maw and wished to see it destroyed by any means available. But she didn't consider it revenge. Business mixed with pleasure, certainly, and only
somewhat personal.
But with the Jedi Order it was
utterly personal.
Mother didn't want to rule the Galaxy. She didn't want to be an Empress. Mother had lived as a pure criminal for years before ever picking up a Lightsaber. She had seen what she could get away with just using a knife and a bit of ruthlessness. She had watched as Crime Lords, supposedly uncrushable, had been crushed. She had simply learned to apply that to all of politics. Empires and Republics fall. Even House Io would someday be nothing but a memory. All things fade in time. She considered it blasphemy that the Maw would try to speed it up, simply because they were ultimately just losers this universe didn't have a use for. Their supposed champions would have come to nothing better elsewhere. If they hadn't started using the promise of their Dark Gods as a convenient excuse to rail against their own irrelevance by killing for mere
promises, empty promises at that, they would have been rightfully ignored.
Lyssa wondered what their paradise even looked like, in their heads. Would such a people who had done the things they had done even merit paradise, true paradise? Their paradise would likely look like just more of the same hell they had made of everything else around them before dying. (Interestingly, this was similar to the opinion Darth Phyre had of the Maw: If
she were their Dark Gods, she would have made a tacit point not to honor any promise made, and just stick them in Hell as playthings to taunt about what suckers they were, taking a Dark God at their word.)
Lyssa rose from her bed, having been staring at her photos of Mother for an hour. She didn't need rest, didn't need sleep, but wanted a bed because organics have beds, and it made her feel Organic.
She checked her weapons. Her Ion Relic Pistol was self built, but the Lightsaber, a green bladed weapon, had come from Mother, then she went to her Aunt's quarters to find her.
Melissa, first of the Blonde, gold skinned Io Sisters, flesh molded to make it look like she wore a skintight metallic golden catsuit, had laid out a large plastic sheath on the floor and had cut her left arm off and severed it into two separate parts. Her arm was already regrowing.
It was Melissa who had given Laertia the sample of her own flesh that Laertia had used to create Lyssa. Even now, even after Rhand, Melissa was devoted still, if heartbroken that Xiphos had made that choice to kill all those slaves and her own allies just to destroy Gihinnom. But she believed Gihinnom's destruction as necessary as Xiphos did.
Lyssa felt strange, being advanced as she was, but yet not as advanced as her Aunt. But her Aunt was so advanced even
Mother feared how she would fair in a real fight against a Westenra Copy.
Any Westenra Copy. Even Lyssa elicited a similar wariness in Xiphos, though she hid it well.
After having seen Melissa fight, Lyssa herself knew she was playing catch-up. But she did love her Aunt: She and
Cameron Crownwraithe
had a particular rapport with her out of all the other Matriarchs.
Melissa spotted Lyssa.
"Lysandra!" Melissa called out happily, leaving the chunks of herself still leaking glowing red blood on the plastic tarp as she stepped over them.
"Hello, Aunt Melissa. May I ask what you're doing?" Lyssa said.
"Growing new Sisters. I've developed more advanced programming for my cellular structure. I've loaded it onto these samples..." Melissa explained, going to get a gamma ray lamp.
Melissa looked at the samples.
"What's it like, being essentially immortal?" Lyssa asked as Melissa shined the gamma light on the samples.
The severed chunks of her arm grew into Molasses like tissue and began to grow...
While it did, Melissa sat on her bed with Lyssa.
"Well Niece... that's a difficult question to answer." Melissa said. "I know in
some way, I'm immortal...but I will never be aware of it, truly."
"Why not?" Lyssa asked earnestly.
"Because the...
immortality...that our creator's gave to us is limited. We are only immortal in the sense that small pieces of us, left behind, can grow into another us. But when we ourselves die... that's it for us. The best way you'll ever know what it's like to be immortal...is to come back from a reserve sample."
Lyssa watched as the pieces grew larger, forming muscles and veins.
"Do we have souls? Like Organics?" Lyssa asked.
"I ask that every time I find out another copy of me died somewhere..." Melissa admitted. "Still don't have an answer...and you won't either...when it first happens to you..."
Lyssa hadn't really given a thought to her own mortality before that moment. She knew she wasn't invincible. But what Melissa had said just now crystalized it for her for the first time.
Even Mother was not invincible. Mother might even be going insane as she doubled down against the whole Galaxy, as much out of mad spite as her own twisted sense of justice.
The obsidian skeletons of the two new copies formed, standing up as the flesh began to cover them
"If I have a soul...is it tainted with me constantly killing people?" Lyssa asked.
Melissa looked right into Lyssa's eyes.
"Right or Wrong, it's a brand..." she said quietly. "A brand that
sticks..." (No more guns in the Valley: 90 XP)
The flesh on the new copies finished growing, taking on the same gold catsuit look Melissa had, but took on different facial features. Both were blonde, like Melissa, however.
"Lyssa, allow me to introduce your two newest aunt's..." Melissa said as the pair opened their eyes.
"Melita, and Melody Io."
Melita squee'd in delight as she saw Lyssa, being the first to hug the junior Assassin, followed by Melody.
"I have the weirdest family in the whole Galaxy..." Lyssa said under her breath, basking in the attention.
But it will make me fight those Maw Bastards all the harder to come home to them.
Present:
They had gone to separate deployments. 20 had gone with Lyssa, 20 had gone with Melissa to rescue people from the Maw at another planet close by.
Lyssa and team of the lethal Model 1 Nuetralizers had braved anti-space craft fire in their Assassin Class Corvette to reach the hide out of Skywalkers. The only reason the Chiss had let her through was because of what Xiphos did at Oyokai, desperately trying to rescue Chiss people from the Maw's spiteful delusions of another, better universe.
The only reason they're fighting so hard for another universe is because they're too lazy to try and save 'this' one... Lyssa thought to herself.
They had jumped out of the bay using rocket packs and the Model 1's, eager to expand their knowledge of how to kill Maw Warriors properly, were even more eager to reach the ground than Lyssa was.
They landed gently close to the outpost where Lyssa's spies, her less sophisticated Advanced Model 1 sisters had reported the outpost.
The goal of Lyssa was this: Offer to take as many Sky-Walker's with them as possible along with their elite Chiss Security while fighting the Maw. Hopefully Esmeralda and the sirens or even Cameron might show as eventual reinforcements. If not, Lyssa was no slouch at murder, as the NIO had learned at Generis.
She wirelessly directed 007 Model 1's to take up sniping positions at certain points in the ruins to hinder the Maw as much as possible. The Model 1's not as required to carry Anti-Bryn'adul Weaponry as much as previously, had opted to take the M-45 Repeater (They were having a mild love affair with this weapon). Every other weapon would be procure-on-sighting.
Lyssa and her own team of Model 1's began making their way to the outpost as the Sniper Units began to open fire at targets of opportunity, making a special point to aim at grenades, rockets, and Det Charges, causing terrible explosions to erupt amongst the invading Maw attacking the sanctuary. They stayed behind cover, gunning down Maw who spotted their position with sadistic enthusiasm.
Lyssa and her team soon began encountering Maw Brotherhood warriors on their own, one enemy unit having already blasted open a section of wall into the outpost when they spotted Lyssa, who had morphed her appearance to look like she wore a metallic silver catsuit.
Her arms formed into blades, and she rushed forward at the warriors, blades ripping and tearing into their flesh, her brothers taking advantage and heading in first to start killing every Maw feth they could get their hands on, Lyssa following soon after.
If she died,
she would be the only one getting rebirth...
Lyssa found ths inside terribly packed. The Chiss defenders hesitated when they saw her saving a defense position at the last moment from being overrun by brutally cutting apart the Maw, because they had been told she was coming.
Xiphos, even though she failed to save Csilla, and had only managed to save a few hundred at best at Oyokai, had sort of made friends out of the Chiss for at least trying.
The Model 1's inside were right in their element, as there were very few places to hide for the attackers as they established choke points, unrestrained in their brutality as they violently hacked apart or blasted Maw Warriors. Lyssa, however, had more pressing matters...
The Mongrel
Halketh
Klassht Hsirsi