Objective: Revelin /March to Imperator Fortress
The streets were clogged with battle on all sides as Laertia, her new daughter Lura and CIS Marines fought through them.
Laertia functioned as a spear point for the charge, her inverted green blade catching blasterbolts from NIO storm troopers, teleporting grenades they threw, using her ionize abilities to redirect electronically guided missiles back to their source, killing scores of stormtroopers attempting to halt their advance. Lura, the first of a semi general production line of Nanite Based Assassin Droids had charged into battle at high speed against Imperial Knights, arms turning into blades to engage the surprised Knights, who had never seen nor fought such an opponent before.
Their Lightsabers clashed and skittered off her arm blades as Lura engaged them at high speed, dodging and flipping over their attacks, delivering her own with great strength, until, in a mathematically calculated and elegant swipe decapitated both, charging past their corpses at high speed which exposed her to the panicked fire of storm troopers who had literally no idea what had just killed their comrades, her digital mind calculating trajectory angles to dodge a good amount of the fire poured its direction, though some hit anyway, peppering her with blasterbolts, only for silvery liquid instead of blood to start leaking out of the impact holes, but Lura fought as savagely as ever as she landed in the middle of stormtroopers, her blades targeting the joints in their armor, one engaging her with a Vibrosword. After a few swings, chipping damage on the blades started to show, but Lura surprised the trooper by executing a spin kick, her leg turning into a sword that beheaded him as she landed, never ceasing the movements of her limbs and disemboweling Stormtroopers she rolled and flipped past, grabbing a pistol off one and John Wicking the last five with head shots.
Lura turned to her, visibly damaged., wounds sealing, but very slowly.
"Did you see that chit?!" Lura asked Laertia excitedly after turning two platoons standing in the way of them getting through to the streets beyond into gore, after Laertia herself had claimed an Imperial Knight's life by punching through his skull.
"Yes, I saw. Great work...I'm proud of you..." Laertia assured the Android, causing Lura to beam as Laertia caught caught a few bolts with her blade, teleporting above the shooters and bisecting them with great enthusiasm.
The words of
Vaulkhar
were not just heard by Imperial Knights, but by Laertia also. She felt some of the same sentiment towards the Sith, but that could wait until the Bryn'adul were dealt with. She didn't exactly scoff at them, but it wasn't that far from her actual feelings.
If these people didn't see the need to set aside their differences they needed to be swept aside. Laertia had no sympathy for any Imperial: The NIO were nothing but over ambitious upstarts getting everyone killed. Best to crush them now while they were on the back foot. Force the other powers to back off and possibly focus more on the Bryn'adul than each other. That in of itself might be a win...
Lura picked up the Lightsaber of an Imperial Knight she had slain. The nanites she was composed of scanned it as she activated its white blade. She ran her fingers over dead bodies, scanning them also for compatible technology. She found none, unfortunately. She soon rejoined her Mother as they charged forward, starting to encounter the Sun Guards of
Onansi of Thyrsus
. These warriors were not pushovers. Sun Guard were trained to kill Adepts, and they showed it actually repelling a good number of Laertia's attacks, one of them even managing to do what had taken the Sword of the Jedi himself a few tries and a nearly undefeatable attack and managed to score a blow, this time on Laertia's midsection with the tip of his vibrosword, ripping a few bits of armor plating away and leaking a large amount of red blood that quickly sealed and began repairing. Laertia grunted in pain, the Armor's brain wave regulators killing most but not all of the pain. She dodged his next slashing attempt with his Phrik alloy vibrostaff and broke his neck with a strong punch to his head. More Sun Guards engaged her, and Laertia was again caught off guard by how good they actually were, often forcing her to think her defense out as she parried absolutely ruthless slashes and stabs from all sides in Form Three, becoming the Eye in The Storm, letting herself sink into the Force past the slaughter and death she was helping the Sith inflict in a perverse irony to preserve a military front against an enemy that would not listen to reason.
Laertia let the Force guide her, deeply ashamed at having to help the Elder Compact kill such brave souls who wanted only to be free of the Sith. But the Bryn'adul must not win at ANY cost.
Laertia maneuvered past swings, counter attacking and killing as to an all out offense, as the Sun Guards actually were worth a damn in a fight, and she could see them handily cutting down lesser warriors all across the street. Even Lura was given pause at fighting them, forcing herself to rely on blocks and parries with her stolen lightsaber, sustaining multiple holes and slashes across her body revealing silvery, leaking insides, but Lura fought on brutally still, eventually graphically dismembering each attacker.
Laertia let her defenses carry her through the ferocious assault from the Sun Guards, her wound aggravated by constant movement and healing slower as a result. Surely there would be a scar by the time it was done, and it was irritating enough to distract now, letting another Guard get a slash in on her cybernetic arm with a Force Pike, only for Laertia to cave his chest in with a single punch in retaliation, shifting to Form Two to grant her more alacrity in her defenses, rapidly bringing each attacker down with swift, efficient strikes to the neck or waist, killing them instantly.
"Lura!" Laertia called out to her damaged daughter.
"Yes?" Lura asked.
"Seek out targets of opportunity. Kill any high ranking military opposition you encounter..."
"You got it! I'll ginsu their ass so hard a Five Star Chef would serve them on platters without blinking!" The Nanite Assassin Droid slowly becoming adored by its creator chirped with great enthusiasm, grabbing a pistol and breaking off to seek targets.
Laertia and the others continued to press forward to the Fortress, The Black Knight starting to encounter large groups of Imperial Knights, who seemed to recognize her on sight. The tales of her savage brutality towards them at Dantooine must have spread because not only was she suddenly fending them off, some using two blades at once, or a staff Lightsaber, but now she was fending off the aggressive, deadly Sun Guards also.
Laertia gave herself to the flow of pure Form One, her blade fending off deadly attack patterns that would have cut down lesser warriors, extending its length by a third to catch her fierce, deadly attackers by surprise, cutting some in half too slow to raise their weapon to vlock in time, giving her breathing room. One particularly fierce and well trained Sun Guard launched into a deadly, vicious flurry that caught Laertia's helmet, knocking part of it away, leaving a gash on the plating that exposed her eye. Laertia launched into a set of fast, strong slashes that quickly cut her attacker to pieces, biting through his reinforced armor after enough slashes, even as she fended off the attacks of others at the same time.
An Imperial Knight closest to her position caught the appearance of that eye, for it wasn't gray, but the mutated Bronze and Green of a Light Side Sith. He had only a second to realize the implications before a saber went through his face, though this cost her as another Sun Guard, managed to graze her shoulder, forcing her to draw her ash gray Dark Saber, telekinetically flinging it into its heart, the special blade burning through reinforced chest armor before teleporting back to her hand to catch the staff of a knight, her will holding her shoto in place as her other blade slashed through his neck, not decapitating him, but killing him instantly all the same.
Laertia's attacks grew more fluid, frenzy like as she drove her attackers back, teleporting behind them and catching them by surprise with a vicious, dual bladed assault that mimicked Syd's preferred fighting style, eventually cutting them all down, the Sun Guard's seeming to last the longest before being slain.
As the last Sun Guard in the area she was currently in fell, Laertia felt remorse. How many of them were parents, like she was now?
How different was she really from Darth Phyre, Laertia feared in the back of her head as she spared the corpses a momentary glance of pity and shame before pressing onward with the other troops, who had been cutting down storm troopers.
She marched to find whoever was leading these Sun Guards and Force Feed him her Sabers, along with possibly
Zakaria Black
and
Enlil
.
Laertia advanced on the Fortress, still tearing through scores of lesser warriors, blades flashing through any flesh they found to meet her targets.
Meanwhile.
Lura the
Advanced Model 1 since leaving her mother, had slowly repaired the damage she had suffered over the course of 14 minutes, by breaking down rubble in the surrounding environment for the raw materials her Nanites needed to effect quicker repairs. It had then been a matter of stealing a fallen speeder bike, searching for targets and soon came across one, a force of tanks and stormtroopers with NIO colors. The stealthy approach had been best.
She had observed a squad of storm troopers, paid attention to Armor color, Insignia, and voice as they engaged their enemies, and had quickly surprised them with arm blades from behind, as they provided support fire for the attack led by
DECEASED Erskine Barran
. So much Chaos everywhere. Lura loved it. Blades go slicey!
They were engaging so many SithSpawn, that she took advantage, manuevering through the throngs of fighters, killing some as they fought for their life as wel as Sith Spawn vanishing into a cloud of smoke from a burning vehicle and emerging as one of the Stormtroopers she had killed, grabbing a pistol and getting near one of the Cataphracts, depositing a few drops of herself on its hull as she gunned down Sith Spawn with headshots, the nanite sample leaking in through various crevices, quantum encoding of the nanites slowly working their way through the computer targeting systems of the Cataphract as she drew ever closer to Erskine, Digital mind calculating targeting for his general area.
At the perfect moment, she at last siezed control of the computer systems, and made the Cataphract fire on his position to the confusion and horror of the pilots within...
Meanwhile, on the Prosperity...
Lura was not the only Advanced Model Nuetralizer deployed that day.
Another Nuetralizer, deployed at high risk into enemy territory, had one directive.
Sabotage the SSD Prosperity.
Days of busy infiltration, had led to it managing to smuggle itself aboard via hiding as liquid metal in the insides of a Starfighter, dripping out of it slowly and forming into a silvery puddle that moved across the surface of the hangar, pilots taking final preparations and flight plans as it slithered past them without them noticing, though it left a sample in one of the Starfighters, having quietly hacked its systems with it, the stream of Nanites flowing into an alarm panel, traveling down the electrical systems to find something truly delicate to screw with on the ship
Ryv
was on. It soon began to find the wiring to actual security systems...