The Battalion
Another Brick in Syd's Wall
The Battalion slaughtered ruthlessly, gutting a Jedi, when The Darkness shouted danger at her.
She whipped her blade to the direction of Bithia and Jaina, not sensing true life in any of her opponents. Android's. Xiphos swore by robots and gynoids. The Battalion didn't understand it.
The Machine Gun rounds came and she snarled, her enchanted blade blocking the solid rounds, vaporizing them on contact rather than causing splash damage, though one managed to graze her shoulder and leg, leaking white blood as she advanced. She grew concerned. A small but powerful group had breached the temple, likely for sabotage to prevent Xiphos's escape.
Why, oh why, couldn't you listen, Xiphos? I told you this would happen... she thought to herself, as she advanced on them, flesh on her body bubbling and shuddering as she conjured a large ball of lightning, still blocking the bullets one handed with her blade, and hurling the ball lightning at them. It traveled relatively slow but surely towards them, hurling random Lightning Bolts once in a while.
Sisters The Battalion called out in The Dark Side. Jedi Maggots have penetrated the interior. Work with these misguided Light Sith and cleanse the area.
A contingent of Witches, along with some heavily armed Model 1's, departed the combat area, but not before warning their Model 2 brethren to pick up the slack. Model 2's formed circles facing outward, allowing them to heavily sweep the area around them more often, acting as mobile armor for clone troops. But the situation was bad. A massive chunk of the second wave was already dead, but so were a large chunk of the Defenders. They were still in they fight...maybe they could hold against two more waves. But it still looked bad. But Xiphos hadn't gotten this far by being unprepared...
The Battalion was certain that even this situation was something she had prepared for...
Meanwhile...
The Model 1 known as Todd was enraged at the destruction of his brothers, their parts strewn everywhere as he led a team of his still active siblings and white catsuit clad Witches.
His rage was an organic type of rage, not the files most droids had that merely allowed them to simulate it. A Model 1's brain was a special thing. If it was only known just what exactly was involved in the process of creating one...
Model 1's at this point in their war had discovered their own preference when it came to Jedi Killing.
Their favorite ranged Anti Jedi weapons were solid ammo shotguns or the SFOR Carbine. For Melee weapons, they had started to develop a fascination with Tremor Swords, Electrostaves, Force Pikes, and the Amphistaff, which a great many Model 1's praised as superior for it's adaptable nature. The difficulty was in acquisition.
Todd's rage only amplified as his processors heated up. The Jedi would pay for the death of his brothers.
He kept his pump action shotgun at the ready as he took point, one of the Witches warning him she sensed danger.
A blue Lightsaber erupted through the Witches chest as a Jedi Shadow who had put all his points into Sneak and Pickpocketing uncloaked, using a Force Push that sent half a dozen of his brothers hurling into stone wall, along with himself, deflecting a cold beam fired from a Model 1 into nearby Witch, freezing her solid.
Todd fired his shotgun but the Jedi froze the pellets in stasis, and Todd felt himself gripped by the telekinesis of his foe, hurled violently into a wall. This was no pushover. This was from the third wave of the Jedi. A Level 35, easily.
Todd was Level 20, and had all his perk points in ranged and melee. You can see why this is a problem.
Todd was up Chit Creek.
A Witch engaged the Jedi, only to be burned by Force Light. Todd, seeing no choice, released the Bio-assault sprayers in his chest, but the Jedi conjured a Force Bubble that intercepted and blocked it.
Dark Blue Lightning struck the bubble, overwhelming it and hitting the Jedi, who dropped in shock as he was temporarily cut off from the Light, not in pain but merely heavily stunned and nauseated. It was one of Xiphos's students, a woman who had lost her whole family at Sev Tok to the Bryn'adul. The Jedi could never have sated her desires for bloody revenge. Xiphos could promise her what the Jedi never would. Todd wasted no time, whipping his shotgun to the Jedi's face, and blowing his head clean off.
"There are more..." The green robed woman with blonde hair and pale skin said emotionlessly, her feelings locked away deep, her eyes the same bronze and green that Xiphos had. "We must hurry. They must not be allowed to sieze control of the interior. They are attempting to block the exits."
"Remember..." Todd growled, hefting his shotgun. "Shoot first and shoot quickly.
The other Nuetralizers and surviving Witches managed to recover and followed Todd to the part of the temple that had been converted to a minifacturing area. Though it would be immediately obvious to any present that this microfactory couldn't possibly be her main production facility, it could still churn out about two dozen a day. More a large workshop than a true factory. A few of the third wave Jedi were dueling a highly skilled War Knight with a Double Bladed Lightsaber along with apprentices. The Jedi were having zero success getting through to them, not just because of Xiphos's training, but because with extremely few exceptions, all Light Sith recruits were victims of the Bryn'adul, incensed that the Jedi were prioritizing the Sith rather than the ones who had destroyed their planets. The conflict of Light versus Dark, of retaining moral integrity to fight all evil equally, meant nothing to them. The death of the Bryn'adul was all that mattered. Which is what made it so easy for them to utterly reject any entreaty to surrender, just like Xiphos could.
Most of the War Knight's were surviving former Jedi primarily from Sarka, but also from multiple other conflicts where they had personally suffered from what they viewed as incompetence in the SJC's fight with the Bryn'adul on multiple worlds, and it showed. There was a rawness to the War Knight's style. An Echani might have perceived it as the War Knight's trauma somehow bleeding into his use of Soresu, which in of itself deeply confused the Jedi: Most Sith did not fight in such an oddly restrained manner. There was no explosion of emotion, no fury. It cost one Jedi her life, too used to fighting Dark Sith that she had no answer for how to battle someone who used the Light (albeit in an extremely unnatural manner) AND believed firmly that the Jedi were not worthy of living any longer. It was her own slightly higher aggression than his which cost her her life, as she was tricked during a lunge for his chest into decapitating herself. The other Jedi managed to wound the War Knight with a strike to his side which crumpled him, and another Apprentice was exposed to Force Light, only to shrug it off and run the truly powerful Jedi attacking him through, the Jedi dying with a shocked look on his face. But many apprentices were dead or incapacitated by the half dozen Jedi trying to wreck everything, and the War Knight's were barely holding out.
The Apprentice charged beforehand, locking down her emotions, firing Dark Blue Lightning at the Jedi, while Todd, the Witches, and the rest of his brothers opened fire as well.
The Apprentice fought without remorse. She didn't view the Jedi as people anymore. Just things standing in the way of killing the Bryn'adul and wiping out their species, along with any race that would serve them. Many of the Light Sith had a shred of honor, and the Jedi who survived that day sometimes survived because their opponent saw no honor in striking them down after removing a limb or two.
The Apprentice had no such scruples, because there was no one left to make them worth maintaining. She attacked with calm, cold logic, entering a strange battle trance that allowed her to match her opponents fierce fighting style as she dueled, taking the same calm, patient, emotionless approach as she defended using Makashi, while Todd and his brothers unloaded on another... The Witches, in the meantime, partly split up, some moving to hunt down any Jedi Guarding the entrances and exits, using magic and the Force to camouflage themselves...
Meanwhile...
As the battle raged, Darth Themis was busily preparing the ritual. Runes drawn in glowing green blood decorated the whole chamber as the Force Spawn in the purple catsuit with black boots and gloves, a combat cowl obscuring already unrecognizable features, searched the Force for a vision that led out of the deadly situation. But the intense Dark Side radiated by just The Amalgam alone made this immensely difficult. She was forced to focus on the now, much to her disquiet.
It was moments like this that Themis was forced to acknowledge that Moya De Lifte really was dead. Her old self would have been horrified at what had been wrought here. She had been horrified to learn Xiphos was working with the very cult that had killed her parents as well as her, but getting Xiphos to acknowledge the necessity of inevitably trying to kill them was getting increasingly dicey. Xiphos...seemed indecisive where they were concerned. But Themis, when she searched herself, really didn't feel as sorry for the Jedi as much as she might have in the past.
This isn't how she wanted to reintroduce the Light Sith to the Galaxy. Xiphos was a warrior, but not a diplomat. And as much as Themis tried, she hadn't had much success in changing that. She knew, deep down in this moment, something in her training of Xiphos had gone terribly wrong, that the focus on the Bryn'adul at the expense of all else had backfired badly, making the earlier words of Maple Harte sting all the harder.
Before she could kneel in the center of the ritual circle, she sensed a disturbance. Three of the third wave Jedi had entered the chamber, sabers active.
"This one is powerful...yet unknown to us. Perhaps you are Xiphos's true master?" The hooded leader mused. "Ah well. It matters not. By the authority vested in me by the Jedi Council, you are under arrest. For crimes against the living Fo--"
A tentacle of water snaked around his neck. Themis didn't even look at him before she broke it, and Themis's green bladed spear saber was in hand as she engaged the other two...
Meanwhile...
Syd Celsius sped to Kerest in The Scorched Earth, utterly lamenting her failures with Laertia. It had all gone so horribly wrong after fixing her voice. She simply hadn't thought of the consequences.
Laertia was a Lion who had lacked a voice that could move others, and now it was used to hurl invectives and denouncements. Syd had gone back to that day so many times. What would have happened, had she not fixed the voice? Would Laertia had still have had the will to go to Dantooine and fight?
Likely. Laertia didn't back down from anyone. She didn't know how to back down. It was part of the reason Syd had fallen for her initially. And to the very end, Syd believed she and Laertia had a destiny together.
But all of that, all of it, might have been forever ruined by both their actions. She had believed they were destined to fight a great evil, only for Xiphos to emerge over Laertia at Sarka and be the cause of great evil, all because she couldn't accept the Jedi's priorities. All because of what she had suffered at Nar Kreeta.
Syd loved Laertia. She had to save her. Somehow...Syd knew there HAD to be a way that Laertia could still be reached. She couldn't bear the thought of Laertia being sentenced to die, or spending the rest of her life in a cell.
How ignoble an end that would be, one who had fought with such a fervor against the Sith once upon a time, doomed to die a traitor with a her good deeds forgotten. Syd had to stop this however, because Laertia's failings were Syd's also...
Her ship came out of hyperspace and approached Kerest...just as she saw a HWK-230 ship...one that should not be here because she recognized it... come out of hyperspace as well.
Syd thought her grief over Laertia was playing tricks with her mind at first, but when it went into attack position, firing, Syd was forced to evade, but the low agility of her craft made this next to impossible, and her armor and engines took highly damaging shots that caused her to gun the remaining engine, using the omni-directional turret of her craft to frustrate his attempts at pursuit as as she dived into Kerest's atmosphere...
Starlin Rand
Cameron Crownwraithe
OOC: Will post a response for Laertia's side of things when others get around to their own responses
She whipped her blade to the direction of Bithia and Jaina, not sensing true life in any of her opponents. Android's. Xiphos swore by robots and gynoids. The Battalion didn't understand it.
The Machine Gun rounds came and she snarled, her enchanted blade blocking the solid rounds, vaporizing them on contact rather than causing splash damage, though one managed to graze her shoulder and leg, leaking white blood as she advanced. She grew concerned. A small but powerful group had breached the temple, likely for sabotage to prevent Xiphos's escape.
Why, oh why, couldn't you listen, Xiphos? I told you this would happen... she thought to herself, as she advanced on them, flesh on her body bubbling and shuddering as she conjured a large ball of lightning, still blocking the bullets one handed with her blade, and hurling the ball lightning at them. It traveled relatively slow but surely towards them, hurling random Lightning Bolts once in a while.
Sisters The Battalion called out in The Dark Side. Jedi Maggots have penetrated the interior. Work with these misguided Light Sith and cleanse the area.
A contingent of Witches, along with some heavily armed Model 1's, departed the combat area, but not before warning their Model 2 brethren to pick up the slack. Model 2's formed circles facing outward, allowing them to heavily sweep the area around them more often, acting as mobile armor for clone troops. But the situation was bad. A massive chunk of the second wave was already dead, but so were a large chunk of the Defenders. They were still in they fight...maybe they could hold against two more waves. But it still looked bad. But Xiphos hadn't gotten this far by being unprepared...
The Battalion was certain that even this situation was something she had prepared for...
Meanwhile...
The Model 1 known as Todd was enraged at the destruction of his brothers, their parts strewn everywhere as he led a team of his still active siblings and white catsuit clad Witches.
His rage was an organic type of rage, not the files most droids had that merely allowed them to simulate it. A Model 1's brain was a special thing. If it was only known just what exactly was involved in the process of creating one...
Model 1's at this point in their war had discovered their own preference when it came to Jedi Killing.
Their favorite ranged Anti Jedi weapons were solid ammo shotguns or the SFOR Carbine. For Melee weapons, they had started to develop a fascination with Tremor Swords, Electrostaves, Force Pikes, and the Amphistaff, which a great many Model 1's praised as superior for it's adaptable nature. The difficulty was in acquisition.
Todd's rage only amplified as his processors heated up. The Jedi would pay for the death of his brothers.
He kept his pump action shotgun at the ready as he took point, one of the Witches warning him she sensed danger.
A blue Lightsaber erupted through the Witches chest as a Jedi Shadow who had put all his points into Sneak and Pickpocketing uncloaked, using a Force Push that sent half a dozen of his brothers hurling into stone wall, along with himself, deflecting a cold beam fired from a Model 1 into nearby Witch, freezing her solid.
Todd fired his shotgun but the Jedi froze the pellets in stasis, and Todd felt himself gripped by the telekinesis of his foe, hurled violently into a wall. This was no pushover. This was from the third wave of the Jedi. A Level 35, easily.
Todd was Level 20, and had all his perk points in ranged and melee. You can see why this is a problem.
Todd was up Chit Creek.
A Witch engaged the Jedi, only to be burned by Force Light. Todd, seeing no choice, released the Bio-assault sprayers in his chest, but the Jedi conjured a Force Bubble that intercepted and blocked it.
Dark Blue Lightning struck the bubble, overwhelming it and hitting the Jedi, who dropped in shock as he was temporarily cut off from the Light, not in pain but merely heavily stunned and nauseated. It was one of Xiphos's students, a woman who had lost her whole family at Sev Tok to the Bryn'adul. The Jedi could never have sated her desires for bloody revenge. Xiphos could promise her what the Jedi never would. Todd wasted no time, whipping his shotgun to the Jedi's face, and blowing his head clean off.
"There are more..." The green robed woman with blonde hair and pale skin said emotionlessly, her feelings locked away deep, her eyes the same bronze and green that Xiphos had. "We must hurry. They must not be allowed to sieze control of the interior. They are attempting to block the exits."
"Remember..." Todd growled, hefting his shotgun. "Shoot first and shoot quickly.
The other Nuetralizers and surviving Witches managed to recover and followed Todd to the part of the temple that had been converted to a minifacturing area. Though it would be immediately obvious to any present that this microfactory couldn't possibly be her main production facility, it could still churn out about two dozen a day. More a large workshop than a true factory. A few of the third wave Jedi were dueling a highly skilled War Knight with a Double Bladed Lightsaber along with apprentices. The Jedi were having zero success getting through to them, not just because of Xiphos's training, but because with extremely few exceptions, all Light Sith recruits were victims of the Bryn'adul, incensed that the Jedi were prioritizing the Sith rather than the ones who had destroyed their planets. The conflict of Light versus Dark, of retaining moral integrity to fight all evil equally, meant nothing to them. The death of the Bryn'adul was all that mattered. Which is what made it so easy for them to utterly reject any entreaty to surrender, just like Xiphos could.
Most of the War Knight's were surviving former Jedi primarily from Sarka, but also from multiple other conflicts where they had personally suffered from what they viewed as incompetence in the SJC's fight with the Bryn'adul on multiple worlds, and it showed. There was a rawness to the War Knight's style. An Echani might have perceived it as the War Knight's trauma somehow bleeding into his use of Soresu, which in of itself deeply confused the Jedi: Most Sith did not fight in such an oddly restrained manner. There was no explosion of emotion, no fury. It cost one Jedi her life, too used to fighting Dark Sith that she had no answer for how to battle someone who used the Light (albeit in an extremely unnatural manner) AND believed firmly that the Jedi were not worthy of living any longer. It was her own slightly higher aggression than his which cost her her life, as she was tricked during a lunge for his chest into decapitating herself. The other Jedi managed to wound the War Knight with a strike to his side which crumpled him, and another Apprentice was exposed to Force Light, only to shrug it off and run the truly powerful Jedi attacking him through, the Jedi dying with a shocked look on his face. But many apprentices were dead or incapacitated by the half dozen Jedi trying to wreck everything, and the War Knight's were barely holding out.
The Apprentice charged beforehand, locking down her emotions, firing Dark Blue Lightning at the Jedi, while Todd, the Witches, and the rest of his brothers opened fire as well.
The Apprentice fought without remorse. She didn't view the Jedi as people anymore. Just things standing in the way of killing the Bryn'adul and wiping out their species, along with any race that would serve them. Many of the Light Sith had a shred of honor, and the Jedi who survived that day sometimes survived because their opponent saw no honor in striking them down after removing a limb or two.
The Apprentice had no such scruples, because there was no one left to make them worth maintaining. She attacked with calm, cold logic, entering a strange battle trance that allowed her to match her opponents fierce fighting style as she dueled, taking the same calm, patient, emotionless approach as she defended using Makashi, while Todd and his brothers unloaded on another... The Witches, in the meantime, partly split up, some moving to hunt down any Jedi Guarding the entrances and exits, using magic and the Force to camouflage themselves...
Meanwhile...
As the battle raged, Darth Themis was busily preparing the ritual. Runes drawn in glowing green blood decorated the whole chamber as the Force Spawn in the purple catsuit with black boots and gloves, a combat cowl obscuring already unrecognizable features, searched the Force for a vision that led out of the deadly situation. But the intense Dark Side radiated by just The Amalgam alone made this immensely difficult. She was forced to focus on the now, much to her disquiet.
It was moments like this that Themis was forced to acknowledge that Moya De Lifte really was dead. Her old self would have been horrified at what had been wrought here. She had been horrified to learn Xiphos was working with the very cult that had killed her parents as well as her, but getting Xiphos to acknowledge the necessity of inevitably trying to kill them was getting increasingly dicey. Xiphos...seemed indecisive where they were concerned. But Themis, when she searched herself, really didn't feel as sorry for the Jedi as much as she might have in the past.
This isn't how she wanted to reintroduce the Light Sith to the Galaxy. Xiphos was a warrior, but not a diplomat. And as much as Themis tried, she hadn't had much success in changing that. She knew, deep down in this moment, something in her training of Xiphos had gone terribly wrong, that the focus on the Bryn'adul at the expense of all else had backfired badly, making the earlier words of Maple Harte sting all the harder.
Before she could kneel in the center of the ritual circle, she sensed a disturbance. Three of the third wave Jedi had entered the chamber, sabers active.
"This one is powerful...yet unknown to us. Perhaps you are Xiphos's true master?" The hooded leader mused. "Ah well. It matters not. By the authority vested in me by the Jedi Council, you are under arrest. For crimes against the living Fo--"
A tentacle of water snaked around his neck. Themis didn't even look at him before she broke it, and Themis's green bladed spear saber was in hand as she engaged the other two...
Meanwhile...
Syd Celsius sped to Kerest in The Scorched Earth, utterly lamenting her failures with Laertia. It had all gone so horribly wrong after fixing her voice. She simply hadn't thought of the consequences.
Laertia was a Lion who had lacked a voice that could move others, and now it was used to hurl invectives and denouncements. Syd had gone back to that day so many times. What would have happened, had she not fixed the voice? Would Laertia had still have had the will to go to Dantooine and fight?
Likely. Laertia didn't back down from anyone. She didn't know how to back down. It was part of the reason Syd had fallen for her initially. And to the very end, Syd believed she and Laertia had a destiny together.
But all of that, all of it, might have been forever ruined by both their actions. She had believed they were destined to fight a great evil, only for Xiphos to emerge over Laertia at Sarka and be the cause of great evil, all because she couldn't accept the Jedi's priorities. All because of what she had suffered at Nar Kreeta.
Syd loved Laertia. She had to save her. Somehow...Syd knew there HAD to be a way that Laertia could still be reached. She couldn't bear the thought of Laertia being sentenced to die, or spending the rest of her life in a cell.
How ignoble an end that would be, one who had fought with such a fervor against the Sith once upon a time, doomed to die a traitor with a her good deeds forgotten. Syd had to stop this however, because Laertia's failings were Syd's also...
Her ship came out of hyperspace and approached Kerest...just as she saw a HWK-230 ship...one that should not be here because she recognized it... come out of hyperspace as well.
Syd thought her grief over Laertia was playing tricks with her mind at first, but when it went into attack position, firing, Syd was forced to evade, but the low agility of her craft made this next to impossible, and her armor and engines took highly damaging shots that caused her to gun the remaining engine, using the omni-directional turret of her craft to frustrate his attempts at pursuit as as she dived into Kerest's atmosphere...
Starlin Rand
Cameron Crownwraithe
OOC: Will post a response for Laertia's side of things when others get around to their own responses
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