The first waves had been simple to deal with, but as the survivors pulled into the crafts, being screened for vampires by the knights and Magnus's thermal vision, the wait time to transport survivors safely had taken their toll, and Bobbi had made the call to lower the great castle even more putting it in range of the mad undead, who scrambled and horrifyingly began to literally pile on each other as the massive mobile Castle lowered the knights still on board were forced to open fire ruthlessly to keep the undead off the hull of the ship, the landing struts extending for the rare incident of actually landing, causing survivors to make a mad scramble for the ship's now open hangar, and only the knights experience at identifying the undead Nine so hated allowed them to discern panicked survivor from infected trying a half hearted attempt to blend in, forcing the knights already on the ground to relocate closer to it to ferry the survivors to safety, along with Nine's "daughters"
Magnus, whose masquer "skin" disguised her as a pale, athletic woman with red hair and a black combat suit, had piloted her own ship to serve as a barracade in the middle of a large road fired at the undead with her arm mounted scavenged B2 battle droid blaster cannons, set to rapid fire. Meier engaged with two pistols, her targeting systems allowing her to independently hit undead in the head with her pistols switching directions rapidly. The knights on the ground were balletic with their straight, single edged vibroswords, dancing flipping, and cleaving around and through the undead. Magnus and Meier turned in a circle atop the crafts, their bolts hitting undead in a three-sixty pattern as the undead that tried to swarm them.
Magnus's vibroswords popped out of her arms and slashed viciously through the hoardes, shooting them when close range wasn't practical, her built in vibroweapons tearing through foes like tissue, drenching her in undead blood. As more survivors poured in through the hangar, the knights desperately keeping the undead away from the innocent, it became apparant that they would soon be overwhelmed, and would not be able to get everyone aboard. The Castle was their main base of operations. They absolutely could not afford to allow it to be taken by the enemy.
Bobbi, first among Nine's knights gave the order to the knights still aboard Castle Morpheus to raise the ship up. Just as well. The five hundred strong Knights were barely keeping the ravenous undead out of the ship and away from its hangar while survivors fled into its recesses. They could load as many others as they could onto the ships Nine's daughters had flown down on.
The Castle began to rise, the knights fanatically forming a defensive line around crowds of panicking women and children as they viciously sliced through the hoardes trying to murder them all, some of the knights still shooting undead off that managed to reach the hull of the Castle, other knights reinforcing the position of the daughters atop their transport, close to being overwhelmed, every knight drenched in undead flesh pieces and undead blood as they retreated, buying time for the surviors. Bobbi took out his bull pup submachine guns and went akimbo, saving Meier from being swarmed, as bullets tore through her foes. Magnus a relentless red headed whirlwind of butchery, legs and arms making contact with the enemy constantly, until blaster shots from other knights and even some civilians shot the undead off the top of the craft. Driving the hoard back for a moment and allowing the survivors precious moments to scramble aboard the ship the daughters quickly heading in and taking in who they could, while the knights on the ground some of whom were already dead, torn apart by the hoard formed a final desperate defensive barrier as the undead came charging, the Castle now once again too high in the sky to be caught by the undead or boarded by them, their submachine guns and assault blasters threatening to run empty as they guarded the two frieghter sized ships now laden with survivors against a rushing sea of undead, pulling their swords out when they ran empty, screaming fanatical war cries as they sliced through the living dead...
(Starship Troopers Theme plays)
Bobbi was the most relentless of the surviving knights, jumping and slashing like a spinning top covered in gore, shearing flesh and limb from the torso, watching out of the corner of his eye and seeing some of his brother and sisters die as their strength and stamina at last failed them. He still had a full clip in his remaining smg but as the knight chopped and hacked the undead to pieces he knew he was close to running on empty himself.
He yelled as part of his chest armor was torn open, and he decapitated the one who had done it as the first ship, Meier's at last lifted off. Survivors were still filing aboard Magnus's Saotome freighter, and Bobbi knew in that instant he was a dead man. To get as many as possible to safety, it was necessary he and the now fifteen survivors remain on the ground to push the hoard back as long as possible.
As Bobbi gutted five more undead, one of his brothers collapsed, firing her pistol, her guts torn out. Dying, she tossed him her thermal detonator.
"Damn them...damn them all...to hell..." she coughed before falling dead.
"I'm sorry...we can't take any more!" Magnus yelled, at last closing the hatch, even as survivors desperately banged on the hull, the surving knights down to ten as the ship finally lifted off.
Bobbi wasn't giving up. He shouted at the remaining survivors to retreat down a street that had not been flanked by the undead yet. The knights were sworn to defend those they were asked to defend to the end.
The surviving knights, now six against a sea, made a weak barricade for that one empty street and charged at the dead. The survivors, twenty and all, still ran for their lives, Bobbi taking a vibrosword from his fallen brothers on the ground and spinning them through the undead at all angels, heart breaking a little more as he saw each surviving knight be cut down and torn apart, until only he was left defending the survivors retreat, slicing maniacally into the crowds that tried to overwhelm him, some simply trying to run past him but Bobbi cut them off, slicing and hacking with abandon, the battle madness that had been part of the ancient Clan Li-Ves that both he and his "Mother" Nine had been part of seizing him as the street became a puddle of gore. Eventually the undead began to surround and attack from all sides, his armor being torn away more and more as he fought, acquiring severe cuts, bites, and bruises, but refusing to go down, screaming out of sheer hate and bloodlust for the undead as his twin swords continued to slice through bone and skin, the ground threatening to become slippery from the gore as he retreated, every second he stood allowing the survivors behind him a few more meters with every desperate second they sprinted. He did not know if they would survive...likely, they would be found and torn apart some other way. But it was his duty.
He didn't stop fighting, even when both swords were knocked from his hands. He used his fists and legs, breaking jaws and snapping necks. He didn't stop fighting, even when he had already triggered the timer on the thermal detonator and was seconds from vaporization. He didn't stop fighting when he was finally knocked to the ground, kicking dead bodies off even as other undead sank teeth into his flesh, his fists now worn to the bone from the punching. He didn't stop fighting even when he saw both ships in the air, out of reach of the undead, along with the massive mobile Castle that had been his home for decades, bleeding out and concussed, as the undead covered him completely.
Bobbi, like Nine, was from a clan that had once been one of the most feared on Atrisia for their brutality and fanatical, seething desire to kill as many of their enemies as possible. Dying fighting had once been considered the only proper, fitting death for a member of his clan, preferably with piles of their enemies around them just as dead.
Bobbi had a smile, still punching the corpses, even as his innards were torn out, knowing he had made his ancestors proud, his fingers still gouging out undead eyes as the world went white, the detonator at last going off...
Meanwhile...
He looks pissed Nine thought.
"KILL.... HER...!" [member="The Prowler"] shouted.
Yeeeeaaah, he's pissed. Go figure she mused as she began hacking and slashing once more, though she was pleased to see her psychic bolts had struck him before his hoards tried to overwhelm her. She called on Force Speed, the world slowing down as she cut into the dead, tomahawk and katana turning everything around her to chum as she ducked too slow swipes from her perspective, axe bashing through skull and katana effortlessly cutting thorough limb and torso.
A whisper in the Force and a distant boom delivered a message that broke Nine's heart.
Bobbi was dead. Her favorite and first knight was dead. Died doing his duty.
Nine looked at this man who'd just murdered the first person she had ever turned into a Psy-Pire...literally the first of the baseline species...and something snapped in her as she tore through the hoard.
A gutteral, inhuman scream, like that of a rancor, tore out of Nine's throat as she hacked, a dark, scorching, utterly feral hate she had never experienced for anyone...not even for the one who had turned her into this thought and emotion eating monstrosity seized her where this Prowler was concerned.
And that rage at the death of her first "child" made Nine break the one taboo she had never thought she would truly have to.
Since becoming a Psychic Vampire, Nine had felt herself unworthy of being a Jedi, and had refused to use a lightsaber. She had only taken her Knight Obsidian Lightsaber as a status symbol, having had no intention of actually fighting with it, being that confident in her Katana skills.
But now, as the seven foot vampire loomed ever closer to the wounded Prowler, forcing the undead back a moment, Bobbi's death made her stop caring about that hangup entirely. She sheathed her axe, gripping the lightsaber, sheathing her sword...
(Mick Gordon Doom Soundtrack Plays)
Its dark blue blade hissed out of the hilt and Nine slipped back so easily into her Makashi/Niman hybrid style it was as if she had never abandoned it to start with. Combined with her honed skill at traditional swordfighting and a now-near psychotic fury at her foe, Nine began to cut through the undead with a savage grace, the plasma blade eating through this useless garbage he feebily tossed her way as she hacked away screaming in tongues, nearly frothing at the mouth under her mask as she cut her way ever closer to him one handed her force speed making her a dark blur split by fans of dark blue plasma tearing into his minions, inexorable. Unstoppable. No zombie would fell this creature of the knight, not when the one responsible for killing some of her children lay in sight. He would die, slowly and agonizingly, for his transgressions. She would impale him on a spike. She would strip the flesh from his body, piece by piece, and make him eat himself to death. That Jedi had better either help or stay out of the way
The Mother of All Psy-Pires cut her way to her revenge with the cold determination of a hurricane about to strike a coast...
[member="Lark"]
[member="Priscilla Utorna"]
[member="Dubiety"]
[member="Tiland Kortun"]
[member="Ryder Zeshatt"]
