Not-Yet-Xiphos smirked as
Rurik Fel
employed Vaapaad against her.
As a Light Sith in training, and finally starting to accept she was a Light Sith in training, Themis had given her training in this style, which Laertia had grown quite familiar with on the battle field, multiple Jedi having employed it against her.
She parried one of his swipes, the flashes of their blades highlighting her mutated eye, a dark green iris surrounded by bronze, its pupil reflecting the sculpted face of the Man of Iron as it fixed on him in a pinpoint
"What a lovely gathering this is. The glitz! The
glamour! " Not-Yet-Xiphos taunted with a quiet sarcasm, dodging a stab from his Vaapaad.
But there was a reason this method kept failing.
Because Not-Yet-Xiphos was a
Light Sith, and thus, twisted the Light Side to unnatural ends for her own uses, there was no superconducting loop for Vaapaad users to draw on, the twisted up Light in her messing the attempt up.
Not-Yet-Xiphos allowed herself to enjoy the exchange for once. He wasn't breaking. Finally, a decent fight. She had tired of carving through his Toy Knights.
The blades rejoined, parried, the SynthBreaker's inverted green blade (All green core, white aura) hissing swiftly through the air to deftly parry his Lightsaber strikes, cunning and viciously executed, but batted aside by the Light Side Marauder's immense strength. It had a higher chance of breaking other Lightsaber blades while remaining unbreakable by other Lightsabers itself. His hadn't broken. It held strong. For now.
The Sword of Surt'r, however, was the true threat to his alchemized armor. He failed to fully dodge or deflect slashes and chips of it came off.
"I don't need to break Iron, Usurper. If you chip, I'll just be the chisel and
sculpt your death." Not-Yet-Xiphos shot back.
Eventually he grew tired of his Vaapaad starting to work against him and hurled deadly lightning her direction.
She twisted The Light in her, conjuring a small, dark blue ball of roiling flame that appeared between her outstretched arms The Light forced to do her bidding, it caught the Dark Side attack, drawing it into itself. It was a power taught to her by Darth Themis at Atrisia. She called it Force Flare. It was sort of the inverse of regular Force Light, as opposed to radiating holy light to potentially harm any Dark Adepts exposed, Flare drew Dark Side attacks into itself, like a magnet. The user could then cast it at their attacker, where it had a slight homing effect.
She caught his sudden movement as he lunged forward, having not lost track of him in all the time the sphere was drawing the lightning into itself. She balanced it on her hand with a free finger, the rest still bent around her blade, as she executed a Makashi Parry, side stepping his entire frame elegantly after swatting aside his blade with her brutal strength.
"Well..." Not-Yet-Xiphos scoffed grimly, instinctively using Dun Moch to try and frustrate him. "A little bit of fire in you after all. I like that. If only your Toy Knights had offered me as much sport...c'mon, Rurik! Is this the best The Man of Iron can throw at me?! SHOW ME YOUR FULL POWER!" The Light Side Marauder demanded, having embraced an almost Amalgam-like hamminess, hurling the roiling, explosive ball containing his force lightning back at him, where it honed in on him slightly as it rushed forward.
Not-Yet-Xiphos let the power of her inner, icy self quake with telekinesis, ripping chunks of the wall and ceiling, straining as she attempted to pelt him by moving the chunks at him at odd angles that would be difficult to evade, skipping certain large chunks across the floor towards him. He could still evade or catch them with Telekinesis.
"FIGHT ME, USURPER! WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH!"
Meanwhile...
Syd Celsius
got a rare expression of rapidly growing alarm as
DT-0800
tanked the shots to his chest and grabbed her by the throat, preventing her from hissing out spells. Only her fingers clenching around his with all her might, kept him from breaking her neck. But even she couldn't stop the Neurotoxin attack.
Pig like metallic squeals elicited from her as her flesh shuddered hideously everywhere, the magic of her suit working over time to heal the damage but her power was indeed dampened momentarily, his grip tightened, though it made Syd only keep his fingers from closing even harder.
The sky was torn open, hell and death flying down. The Sith.
Those Maniacs!
Syd had heard about Ziost and New Adasta, how Laertia had barely survived the bombardment. Now it was Syd's turn.
The ground collapsed and they both fell, Syd finally wrenching free of death grip but absolutely
smouldering at his earlier laughter and flew at high speed as he fell, tackling him, increasing her flight speed to maximum, still dizzy from the effects of the Neurotoxin, but her own Nature as a Force Spawn as well as the suit rapidly fighting off the effects. Despite shrapnel wounds exposing glowing green blood, Syd had not been hit nearly as bad as what the Amalgam had gotten.
Syd screamed as some of his palm lasers glanced her face, burning part of it away, exposing the glowing green muscle beneath.
More of her shoulder was sheared off by a palm laser from DT, but she spun as she neared the bottom.
She hurled him to the bottom, stopping herself from hitting the ground herself.
DT smashed into the ground hard. Syd activated her orange blade, flesh still shuddering as she at last shook off the toxin effects. Part of his chassis cracked open from the impact on the front as she plunged her blade into the crack in his chassis, not hitting his power source but completely destroying and melting his teleporter unit which damaged other important systems inside from the slag as she charged her fist with incendiary magic, hoisting the heavy droid up telekinetically and punching it as hard as she could, hissing a spell that increased her strength, making her muscles swell to unnatural porportions as she did so.
The fist crashed into its head, completely destroying one of its photo receptors, hurled backward from her partly by telekinesis, partly by sheer strength as it slammed into a support beam at high speed.
"Still just another Battle Droid...when will they learn?" Syd scoffed, wounds healed up fully, as well as the suit. She spotted a fallen Ion Disruptor, clenched in the severed arm of one of Laertia's dead skeletal sons. She picked it up, took aim at the droid as she floated up and away from it, hissing a spell to momentarilly increase its destructive output, and opened fire without fanfare. War had taught her pragmatism.
No matter how badass a droid was, it wasn't usually more badass than an Ion Disruptor. They better have made him smart enough to know how to duck and weave, or he was about to meet Droid God...
Meanwhile...
DECEASED Erskine Barran
had royally pissed off
The Amalgam
. First, by somehow,
somehow, managing to get the Nuetralizers to go berzerk. Then, then by having the nerve to get knocked out, THEN getting up and telling them they were done. At the time, she had considered him too pathetic to kill, not saying a thing to his undeserved smugness.
The truth was, even she didn't know their full capabilities. Or what Erskine had done. Now had she thought about it,
Had they been about to kill her? Or had they simply been about to disobey her orders and rip him apart for even
daring to suggest they murder their own Mother?
These Nuetralizers...she had observed them...did they honestly care if they pissed off the enemy?
She would never know. So incensed had she been at Barran's unexpected Brave Face, she had detonated them before waiting to see. It might have been hilarious, him thinking he had staged a robot rebellion only to found out, 'Nope, you're getting ripped apart anyway and we're gonna wear your skin psychopath style'.
A pity she hadn't waited.
Uncertainty about how safe the Nuetralizers were to be around at the moment had made her fight her way to dropships in the North. She hated leaving the field, but she suddenly found herself doubting Laertia's work. She was in a gray zone for them admittedly. ALL Nuetralizers had suspended Kill-Upon-Sighting orders for the Amalgam. What if they had decided in that instant it had been 'Suspended' long enough.
Her purple blades dashed through Stormtroopers that had survived, lightning cooking them as she fought her way to the Drop Ships, deflecting Blaster Fire, coldblooded draining of Life Force to feed herself. In areas where patrols were too large, she resorted to sneaking past them. But this was rare for her. Even on her worst day, The Amalgam was a vicious, highly skilled killing machine. Few among the soldiers of Gallidraan even held her for more than a moment before brutally dicing them apart, relishing their suffering.
However, when she finally actually reached the Dropshops, after ripping apart so many victims to get to them, she stopped. Scorn and Pride took hold.
"Wait a minute..." The Witch said, boiling rage finally making her make sense of things. "I'm the fething
Amalgam. I
refuse to be chased off by a
Drunkard."
She was The Amalgam. The Nuetralizers would obey or be destroyed.
So she went away from the Drop Ships,
killing all the way back to the center of the city
(Character Theme Song Power Up)
(Theme:
"License To Kill" by Gladys Knight)
Halketh
seemed to like killing people with Zombies almost as much as she did, because her blades soon met many still struggling out of the burning cesspits made. They numbered in the hundreds, crisscrossed with actual, living NIO Spec Ops, firing charrics. The Amalgam gave herself completely to war, her blades moving around her body in a more aggressive, swift variant of what Laertia had seen as her student, when she was still trapped in the Jedi Persona of Ursula Sandraven. Much of Laertia's vicious blade technique came from The Amalgam, so there were certain correlations between them, despite the differences in their approach. There was the same, 'Always Strike to Kill Mentality' the same efficiency and study of opponents, the creativity of Niman, which 'Ursula' had always stressed to her Apprentice more than actual blade sequences in that style, a disciplined creativity that could be carried over to other Lightsaber styles.
Laertia would never have become the threat she was if it had not been for her beeing trained by one of the most dangerous, unhinged killers in the Galaxy loving her to smithereens as an adopted Daughter and teaching her everything she knew about the saber because that was the only way the Monster hiding in Ursula at the time could even come close to expressing affection. But she did feel it for Laertia and Uri, despite also wanting to torment and drive them as insane as she was to save their souls with The Dark Side.
An Imperial Knight challenged her in the din of Zombie slaying, She hissed at him like a cat, which drew the most absolutely perfect expression of 'WTF' on his face as she sliced through zombies to clash with him, who was horrified by the rotting miasma of the darkness in her despite her near-impossibly beautiful looks...
He struck at her in the Makashi Style, but The Amalgam had such a unique blend of her personal Niman and had such immense speed and reflexes that in spite of the style's traditional weaknesses she fended off his ghost-like ripostes and feints with an athletic, ballet like grace that astonished her opponent, not only dueling him, but deflecting blaster fire and dodging charric bolts nearly tricking him into being hit and killed by friendly fire, but he held on for a few more seconds, his expert blade being blocked and parried at all angles from her staff before her sudden, fierce wild aggression battered through his defense, viper slices from The Amalgam's purple blades singing through his neck.
Again and again she butchered, using everything she taught Laertia to crush lesser foes, almost not wanting to leave until a hail of Ion Disruptor bolts tore apart remaining foes nearby.
The Amalgam stopped as SOG Team 1, led by Martin The Nuetralizer stared at her.
"Buddies!" She called out playfully.
The Bandana wearing Nuetralizer strode up and neck lifted her.
"Tighter, please." The Amalgam chuckled.
"WHAT THE ABSOLUTE ROYAL FETH WERE YOU FETHING THINKING?" Martin roared. "Did you
really think Mother built us
That stupid? That we would turn on you completely because we're suddenly afraid of people we
like killing?"
"In the Drunkards defense, he
did make a rather impressive argument while so obviously inebriated." The Amalgam replied. "Besides, your brothers started approaching...what was I supposed to think? I don't know 'what' Laertia put into your heads."
"Oh, I don't know, maybe how about not immediately jumping to conclusions and blowing my brothers the feth up?" Martin sneered back, gripping tighter. But his suspended orders held.
"Well then why the hell did they all start coming towards me?"
"YOU BLEW THE CITY TO SMITHEREENS! MAYBE WE WERE GONNA DETAIN YOU BEFORE YOU COULD DO ANY MORE 'SURPRISES'!" Martin yelled, tossing her to the ground.
"Oh, c'mon, the scenery is an outright improvement, and you know it! Look at the blood! The smashed up bodies! The dead, worthless civilians all splayed out and chit! It looks
cool now!" The Amalgam complained, rubbing her throat. "Besides, half of you were buried by the sinking streets. I acted decisively."
"If that's you being decisive I'd hate to see you unsure." Isacc the Nuetralizer chirped from behind Martin, his girlfriend, The Arena bowing in reverence to The Amalgam.
"So...can you honestly say you knew what your brothers were going to do in that instant?"
Martin gave an electronic sigh, calming down.
"I suppose We will never know. I can't ask them."
"See? The Drunkard. I want him to suffer." The Amalgam stated flatly.
"You shoulda shot his ass." Martin replied. "Like when he was
unconscious."
"Too easy." she replied smoothly.
"I found something of his..." The Arena said, holding up pieces of the glass from his discarded liquor bottle.
The Amalgam smiled, getting up and going to it.
"So, He made a mistake..." she chuckled. "Perfect..."
The Amalgam ran to a damaged, abandoned Cataphract, handing The Arena back the bottle pieces. "Binding ritual. Now."
"Nature of binding?" The Shi'ido Sith Spawn resembling a beautiful orange skinned Twi'lek in a skintight white catsuit asked.
"Indecisiveness..." She answered, getting into the cataphract and finding one of their portable military computers.
She hacked its security firewalls in minutes. A skill she had taught Uri.
While the Arena drew a Pentagram of her own white blood on the ground, the Nuetralizers helping her arrange slaughtered enemy soldiers around it, the Amalgam hacked the comms network.
"Yoo hooooo..." she called out playfully, on all NIO transmissions...
"You didn't really think I was done with you, did you, Captain Cladhan?" She taunted. "I have a proposal. Why don't you just call it a day and feth off? I mean, what are you conquering? A blast pit?" she asked cruelly.
"Really, all this rebellion from you folks." She pondered as the Arena cast a spell, linking the DNA of
DECEASED Erskine Barran
on the bottle pieces to Barran himself.
If the ritual worked, he wouldn't have a sudden fog come over his brain. That would be too obvious.
Instead, it would attempt to make him the one thing he absolutely couldn't afford to be right now:
Indecisive.
"All this effort to conquer us...have you not watched your soldiers bleed enough?" She asked, not really caring as she silently sent out a telepathic signal to all other witches to prepare to enact illusion rituals of hostile reinforcements to try and make them waste their ammo.
The Arena finally triggered the ritual, and the bottle pieces containing Barran's DNA glowed.
"Either way, Barran, there's no way you leave here without suffering more at my hands...there's no way your soldiers leave here except with horror in their hearts..."
Willan Tal
Konrad Bolter