Private The Parliament

[Laertia Io]

Wearing: Cultist Catsuit

Armed with: Nothing.

Aboard: Adrian-Class Star Healer


The Parliament had lain in her bed for days in shock as the reports piled in.

Betrayed by Arianna. By her sons. By her daughters. She didn't understand. Even now, she didn't understand.

If they had such a problem, why not just leave without the drama?

Because everyone loves drama. A good break up story. Ungrateful bastards.

Her house had been split in half. Her side had taken the worst hits since Tython. Her side now looked like it would have looked if they had lost at Tython.

Percival Io was dead, and a traitor, and her heart was broken over both facts. Phyre's son was dead. Her wife was worse than dead. Syd had absorbed her.

Syd always took away the people who loved her.

A furious Parliament had put a billion credit bounty dead on Starlin Rand and every single surviving family member he had left, even the ones he didn't know about. She put hits out on his friends. She put hits out on people whose only crime was being related to his friends. Hurting Starlin was a desperate flail, the only means she had left of truly hurting Syd, and they both knew it.

The Parliament trusted no one at the moment. She would likely never trust or put faith in anyone or anything ever again. All her notions of family had been stomped into the dirt. She would never regard even her still loyal children so uncritically as she had before.

And she would never again free any of them, just to be sure.

As for the still loyal citizens...

They still had their uses. But what was their loyalty worth? They had fought brothers, sisters, lovers in the streets. How could they have not seen that they were going to betray and destroy everything they had built?

In the days since, she has made it a treasonous offense to speak Percival's name out loud. The Carbine she had made to honor him would be removed from service.

And Thel Hahn would have a death earmarked out for him by the Cultists. When they caught him, they vowed, they would do to him what The Chorus had done to Percival. Then they would kill whoever he was living with.

The Parliament had then crossed a personal line and ordered The Collage to kill and imitate Moya Virtu . She had run out of feths to give. Moya should have stayed away. She probably should have ordered all of this years and years earlier but she had been trying to be diplomatic.

That was over now.

The Parliament finally found the strength to rise from her medical bed. Her medbay was a dirty place, strewn with the dismembered remains of captured members of the Doves. She was in a psychotic depression. All her love and trust had left her when she felt Elaine die.

She was never going to come out of it. Not truly. Oh, she might put up a good front, but the truth was that she had reached a state of mind that would have scared The Amalgam.

You broke my heart, son she thought as a Model 1 delivered her mail. Kanni Ugaiya Kilran had been made Empress. She had not been able to help the EOTL, still busy picking up the pieces to a civil war that had happened at absolutely the wrong time.

Even she knew she couldn't remain on this ship and sulk. Apparently correspondence said the new empress wanted to meet her for some reason. The Parliament almost refused, bloodthirsty for revenge on the Defectors. On her father. On Syd.

They had destroyed her world. She would destroy theirs even if it killed her in the process.

Going far from the corpse strewn med bay, The Parliament strode past her citizens, which saluted her. Her heart would have swelled at their loyalty once. It couldn't even twitch now.

Elaine was dead, and she was alone.

In a great irony, one major side effect of all this was that it had caused her to finally let go of her decades long vendetta on the Jedi Order. She simply no longer had the energy to hate them the way she now hated House Bloodscrawl and her father.

She no longer had a motive beyond revenge and chaos for its own sake.

Perhaps...she never had...

The Parliament kept these musings to herself as she waited Kanni's arrival in the hangar, clad in her skintight white catsuit with an oddly mirror like sheen to its surface...

As she waited, her thoughts remained what they had been for weeks...

Death to The Bloodscrawls...

 

[Kaanni Ugaiya Kilran]

Current Outfit
SFT-1001 'Nightwatch' Class Security Force Transport Shuttle en route to Adrian-Class Star Healer


"You sure this is a good move your grace?" Wrym clutched his DC-15 Blaster Rifle while Kanni leaned against the chair. "House Io-"

"Has been a reliable ally for us," Kanni finished face shrouded in her favorite hoodie. It was an outfit that she made so she can remain hidden. During her time as Empress, Kanni liked to walk among the Imperial citizens so she can get a better understanding on their needs. If there was one thing her father taught her was that the people are better allies than the Moffs. Win the people and you'll guarantee that your throne will be secure. So Kanni would wear her hoodie to eavesdrop on what her people were saying. So far, they were trusting her even if the people loved Velran. There were rumors of a cult in Vleran's name. She'll have Uncle Karl Von Strauss check it out, Kanni still didn't trust Zonn.

"At the orbit of Mon Cala," Kanni said. "I didn't stand a chance against that.... thing despite my enhanced abilities. Because of that, his team blew up the Eggman killing my father in the process. I have to get stronger Wrym."

"You're the most powerful clone your father created." Wrym said. "You did all you could, your father told you to leave."

Kanni bristled when Wrym said that she was created as true as it was, she did see Velran as her father. She had his genes after all. "It's not enough," Kanni said. "With the TAC having Jedi among their ranks and the Sith at our doorstep, I need to exceed their power. It's not enough matching it."

She did plan on retaking Tion eventually.

" Laertia Io will teach me her ways," Kanni said. "Magick is a powerful tool that I can use at my disposal."

"Your grace," the pilot said on the intercom. "We're approach starship."

"Excellent," Kanni said smiling. "Hail them please."

Laertia Io

 

[Laertia Io]

The Parliament's thoughts were only on how much she lost as the ship was given permission to dock.

House Io had torn itself apart, and she still couldn't understand why they hadn't just left without a fight. Were the Nuetralizer Model 0's really that much of a deal breaker? She had been having Jedi hacked to death in rituals on the very streets of Khemost, but they were the deal breaker?

Didn't they understand what they were going back to? Didn't they know the other side would never let them live it down, never ever let them forget? Didn't they know they were just running back to more of the same, with squabbling factions who do nothing but kill each other. At least with her everybody else was fair friggin game.

What could they possibly hope has changed? She had propped up those governments with her own blood, sweat, and tears. They were, as far as she could tell, still the same corrupt, self serving jackals she had been inspired to rebel against when they let politics get in the way of winning against an all consuming threat.

And those factions...they could point at her, at her House and say 'See? We told you it was a dead end. We told you she had no solutions. We told you she was no better than us, and actually a great deal worse.'

In becoming soft, in letting their morals overcome their pragmatism, in demonizing the necessary cruelties of the Cult they had all chosen to become the Galaxy's slaves once again.

Fine, she thought. She would recover. She always did. There were always more of the disillusioned out there.

And she would take a most terrible vengeance on her father when the time was right. But that time was not now. The ones who still believed (Or, perhaps, the ones who understood that the supposed greener grass the Defectors were fleeing to was an illusion) had stuck by. They would need to be reassured. Convinced.

She was informed of the Hail by a Droid, thinking of how best she could spite the desires of her now dead, disowned son Percival Io , who had betrayed her, betrayed Elaine, who had gone out of her way, violated her own programming to try and ease the burden of his lover being a Cultist.

It came to her. She wouldn't just kill Thel...

She would turn Thel into a Cultist. Scratch tearing his head off. He would be made to serve the Cult, programmed to hate Percival's memory. His Mother's memory. She would make him destroy every last photo and relic he had of either of them. Then she would make him kill.

The Parliament, her thoughts cold like ice, told the Droid to let the ship dock and that she would be waiting. No matter what, she could not project weakness. She had lost her most powerful ships. She had lost her own capital city vessel. All stolen by the short sighted moralizing of those like Percival, people who wanted to conform to some mythical standard of decency that's overturned by most societies the moment that decency becomes inconvenient. Black rage flooded her at how patient she had been with him. How understanding she had tried to be. How much she had tried to ease his suffering, only for him and those like him to pay back her attempt at a soft touch with blood and treachery. She had built him, and instead of being loyal to the House, he was loyal to this soft thinking she no longer understood or wanted to understand ever again. The Jedi wouldn't have even considered him an equal if he had lived! They would have considered him nothing but a failed experiment, evidence of a woman's hubris and insanity, nothing more. Every moment in their presence would have been condescension from them. Every second a mockery. And he has still chosen that, knowing!

Why?!

She knew it was petty, to go that far for revenge on a being she wasn't even certain had a soul as was traditionally understood. But Percival hadn't just been any Nuetralizer.

He had been Amy's son. Her gift to Darth Phyre, a reward for her tireless support. A union of House Io and the Cult on a physical and mental level.

And he had utterly self destructed in the end. By his own hand. She wondered if he had even wanted to survive that battle. Or if he had simply used combat as a convenient way to finally check out on his own terms?

As Kanni Ugaiya Kilran 's shuttle set down, The Parliament took a small step towards the craft. When the empress and her entourage arrived, The Parliament gave a small, curt bow.

"Your Majesty. A pleasure, surely. And what can this humble Brain Demon Cultist do for you?" she asked...



OOC: Sorry the reply took so long. RL hit.