Two against Everyone

[The Amalgam]

Aboard The Corrupted Flesh (Vintage X-70B Phantom Class Yacht)

Character Theme Song: "License To Kill" by Gladys Knight.

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/ZnSbrx5YByY

The Amalgam did not have many hobbies, mainly because her devotion to the Dark Side...but she still had some.

She sat in a luxurious leather seat, wearing her black combat suit, staring at the photos of the woman who stirred this intense hatred in her, and another feeling...one she was very familiar with and hated even worse than the woman she had photographed.

It was a feeling that had haunted her in her youth, when she'd just been a nameless shapeshifter haunting the underworks, everyone and no one. Everywhere and nowhere. (OOC: DARKMAN 4EVS!)

It was the one feeling that stayed with her, no matter how much she stole to eat, or how many she killed, either for money, vengeance, or survival: (Back then, it had never been about pleasure and the first time it had was the one that had scared her into trying to be normal, go legitimate...for a short time.)

The feeling of loss.

She sipped on seltzer water--she never drank alcohol--and stared at the woman she hated, but did not know why she hated her. Why was it so personal?

It wasn't that the source of her obsession was a weakling. All beings were weak before placing their faith in The Dark Side. She had been weak herself. Weakness was no reason to hate a creature. That was where she disagreed with many Sith...hating someone for weakness conveniently ignores the fact they were once in the same boat. Weakness was to be purged in people--it made them better once you did--and society was improved, because strength brought order.

It was not that her target was stupid--The Ex-Shadow was schizophrenic, but highly intelligent--The Amalgam actually respected how she had briefly turned the tables on the Shi'ido at Felacat, exploiting a miscalculation The Amalgam had made by choosing an area with lots of foilage for her first encounter with the object of her hatred. The purple-eyed woman was actually embarrassed by the mistake she had made on Felacat.

But as she stared at the photos she had gathered of the woman she was to enlighten by taking away everything she loved, photos from as far back as when the bounty hunter had come out of retirement on Alderaan, some from her efforts on Katanos Seven to aid the Confederacy, having spied her as she assisted in the clean up of the cyber-corpses. And then as that vampire [member="Sawa Ike"] had seduced her in that underground palace-tomb of Lady Maranon, having captured images of them as they had both left the tomb. And before even that on Dantooine, when she had met and befriended the head of Sasori, close ups of Matsu working at the archeology site when Maple had crossed her path. It had not just been the Kinrath that had killed alll those mercenaries.

There was also photos of Maple fighting [member="Kurenai Yumi"] on Orenda, and that incident told The Amalgam the former assassin's close combat skill was not dead.(The Shapeshifter noted with a strange amusement that Maple seemed to like Atrisian women.) There were photos of everyone she had killed on Coruscant during the fall of the galactic alliance, including the Knight of Ren she had killed, but only just barely.

The Amalgam would have loved to meet Uri Udinia in her prime. Would have loved to fight her at her most deadly. And then corrupt her. They'd had so much in common before Uri had gotten soft and started second-guessing her lethal talant, rejecting the delicious madness in her skull. So disappointing. The Amalgam would have quite happily guided such a cold-blooded woman to the Dark. But she had missed that golden opportunity. Now she would have to cut through all that pesky humanity Uri had developed. An annoyance, but not impossible. She'd done it before.

The photos completely covered one side of the black bedroom, covered in curving, twisting red floral patterns that helped her relax as she communed with The Unholy Spirit.

Uri's face was covered by red circles, the shapeshifter having obsessively marked every image of her face, not understanding why that wet, almost innocent green gaze drove that loss feeling and that frustration. She wanted to hurt her...strangle her, train her...She would never admit it out loud but she was very confused where Maple was concerned.

She relaxed lazily, sipping more seltzer, rolling a pair of durasteel bearings in her left hand. One large photo of Maple was in the middle, taken from when she had been on a beach, walking it alone with her staff, staring out into sea, crying because she was all alone. That photo brought her no pleasure. It only made her angrier. She didn't understand why, nor did she understand why she did this to herself, stressing herself out staring, feeling she was on ther verge of understanding something important. Something vital...and never reaching such an understanding.

Why was it so personal?

She found herself hyperventilating, hadn't realized she had been doing it and got out of the seat, hearing the ping of the comm terminal in her room, in orbit over Korriban.

It was never a human that spoke. Her instructions came in an electronic voice.

"Good morning. Here is your assignment."

The Instructions came in large bold letters. Short simple sentences and attached files.



PLANET: RAXUS SECUNDA, DRAGON FINANCIAL CENTER.

VIP: VITTORI INGMAR

NOTE: VIP POSSESSES MULTIPLE CONNECTIONS TO BANKS OPERATING WITHIN EMPIRE. DONATES SIGNIFICANT SUMS OF MONEY TO MILITARY VENTURES. VIP MUST BE KEPT ALIVE AT ALL COSTS.

TARGET: MARGALO TAVE

NOTE: MARGALO TAVE IS A NOTORIOUS ASSASSIN WORKING FOR REBEL ALLIANCE COMMAND. KNOWN SHI'IDO. PREFERS CLOSE RANGE ASSASSINATION VIA STRANGULATION OR MAKING ASSASSINATIONS LOOK LIKE ACCIDENTS. COMMON VICTIMS ARE VETERANS OF THE IMPERIAL SPECIAL FORCES AS WELL AS CURRENT HIGH RANKING MILITARY PERSONNEL.

ORDERS: OPERATIVE IS TO TRAVEL TO RAXUS SECUNDA AND BEGAN SURVEILLANCE OF VIP, THEN INFILTRATE BANK LOCATION DURING CELEBRATION OF BANK OPENING, EXPOSE REBEL ASSASSIN'S COVER AND DISPATCH BEFORE VIP IS COMPROMISED. COVER OF ASSASSIN CURRENTLY UNKNOWN. EXERCISE EXTREME CAUTION. ASSASSIN IS VERY SKILLED CLOSE COMBAT SPECIALIST WITH A MINOR SKILL IN ADMINISTERING POISON.

OPERATIVE IS TO BE PAIRED WITH AGENT SEBASTIAN THEL FOR DURATION OF OPERATION.

RELAVANT FILES ON OPERATIONAL DETAILS ENCLOSED.

The Amalgam smiled. A job.

Anything to take her mind off Maple Harte.


Later on...


She had arrived on Raxus a day before the gala opening just as planned, walking into the expensive Hotel Black Squid, clad in a black dress and stockings and black shoes, her normal, curvy appearance unaltered save for her hair, now a curly, fiery red. She registered as Karol Destrin, the cover Agent Sebastian Thel had been told to look for no doubt during his own form of briefing. She was carrying a travel bag that had her ultra-light, skintight combat suit and Laser Pistol, the two halves of her double bladed lightsaber hidden in pockets she had created in her arms thanks to her malleable flesh. There was also listening equipment and more clothes for when she infiltrated the bank itself.

She did not know if Thel would be there already, but she was already curious about the man...didn't seem like the type Intelligence usually picked, but that could very well be her own bias showing.

The Amalgam headed up the turbolift after confirming the resignation with her expertly forged fake ID. She headed to the room...a honeymoon suite, as that was their cover...and walked in with the passcard, alert for danger. She had managed to stock up on a Shi'ido, who she had been altering carefully in case she needed to inhabit her later. Missions had gone pear-shaped before. Her current body was healthy, but as always, slowly, imperceptibly decaying...unless she used life draining in two weeks it would start to rot. Badly.

Not that Thel needed to be informed of such gruesome details, she thought as she looked for him in the suite...

 

[Sebastian Thel]

The seconds ticked by with the tapping of Sebastian's fingers as they raced across the keyboard. Sharp beats contrasted with the beep of the terminals mounted on top of a side table where he established the network to be used by Imperial intelligence for the length of the operation. Security guards stood outside the door and monitored the hallway while he worked. Entering commands into the server, he generated a node connecting his communications equipment with that of the agent escorting Vittori Ingmar from his room within the hotel. An alert beeped on his headset and informed that his associate had arrived.

"Personnel approaching premises." An automated response was sent to Sebastian's headset as the security cameras picked up The Amalgam's presence in the lobby. The signal generated a profile of the woman from the intelligence database, which appeared on Sebastian's screen for him to review.

"Authorization confirmed, send her in." Holding the mouthpiece to his lips, Sebastian sent a command to the security guard who stopped The Amalgam at the door. Monitoring the hallway from his station, he watched through the planted camera as the man waved her aside. The channel which Amalgam and Sebastian would use to monitor Ingmar's entourage waited to be encrypted before the agent connected the the two. As he watched Amalgam enter, he disconnected his headset and placed it aside. Taking another moment to review the profile, he inhaled as he prepared to meet the imposing woman.

"Hello Lady Amalgam, I am Sebastian Thel of the Saraaisash, it is a pleasure." Standing upright, Sebastian smoothed out the front of his plus fours and extended a hand for The Amalgam to shake. He stared directly at the wall past her head and failed to completely make eye contact with the woman. He withdrew his hand and recoiled as she motioned forward, having not expected his fellow agent to be a Sith. "I'm linking up our communications equipment with Ingmar's entourage to allow us to monitor his journey." With an affirming nod, Sebastian sat back down at his station.

Swerving around to the terminal, he set his fingers on the keyboard and continued to piece together the code he had left behind. Expanding on the algorithm which made up the nodes, he calculated the prime number at the end of the encryption which secured the channel. Sifting through the symbols, he calculated the inverse of the number, which he used to generate key at the end of the algorithm. With a few taps, sent the key to The Amalgam's communications equipment to allow her to access the channel. Her device would immediately connect to the channel of Ingmar's entourage.

"Connection between Imperial channel and Ingmar entourage secure." Speaking in affirmation, Sebastian entered the final line of code into the system. He relayed the signal to Ingmar's entourage and connected both his channel to that of the entourage. Opening up a channel to Amalgam's network, he routed the connection to her device and completed the connection of all three networks. On one of the screens, the security camera displayed a live feed of both Ingmar's hotel room and the corridor outside. Placing his headset back over his ears, Sebastian listened to the conversation taking place between the escorts of the oligarch.

The frequency meter waved up and down as the transmission was fed into Sebastian's console. Watching the Vittori prepare in his hotel room, Sebastian switched the feed to the corridor outside where the entourage waited. Pressing one hand against his headphone, he listened intently to the conversation between the two security guards standing in the corridor. Both of them looked directly at the camera, almost as though they were attempting to catch Sebastian's attention. With his lip resting on his fist, he recoiled with concern as one pointed at the camera and then instructed, with one sentence for both of them to turn off their comms.

"That was fishy, I'm going to try and get lead on these guys." Sebastian said to Amalgam as the transmission terminated. Immediately clicking on the address linked to the channel which both of them were using, he followed the route to the channel interface, which displayed each name of the men in the form of encrypted text. Upon clicking the names, Sebastian was lead to blank pages each time.

"Both of their channels are linked to false accounts." Shoving his headset around his neck, he spoke to Amalgam as he opened up a program in a new window. "Give me a minute and I'll have their source addresses." Sebastian said as he sent the links to each of the false address into the program, which ran an analysis test and displayed the bank end of the first page in the form of code. Numbers ran up and down the screen as the page was disassembled. Stretching his hands, Sebastian prepared to make sense of the mess which enemy slicers had concocted to confuse Imperial intelligence.

As he typed away, Sebastian rounded the verbose primes placed at the end of each cipher and found the inverse of their values. Working backwards, he pinpointed frequencies in the integers and reorganized them in the form of letters. While majority of the text remained encrypted, he was able to pinpoint names and locations, which were easy to isolate in any language. Margalo Tave was revealed to be the employer of the two men, who had been hired to lure Vittori into the trap which they had set for him at the financial center.

"The two bodyguards are working for Tave, they're leading Ingmar into a trap." Sebastian said to Amalgam as he scanned the text. He picked up on characteristics of a holo-net site, which he isolated in a separate window. Upon decrypting the sentence, he found a link leading to a channel being monitored by Margalo Tave herself. He entered the link into the operating system and the channel interface opened. The addresses of the two bodyguards were present among the addresses occupying the channel. "They're operating from a network which Tave herself is monitoring." Sebastian affirmed and placed his headset over his ears.

The channel was encrypted, disallowing Sebastian to understand what Margalo and the Rebels were saying. Distorted noises flooded his headset as the frequency meter printed out a reading. Decrypting the transmission was not what he was interested in, but rather a confirmation of the identity which Margalo would be using for the raid on the financial center. "There's a live feed, they're transmitting footage of Tave." Watching the footage appear on the screen, the channel revealed a shot of the Assassin and her current location.

"Got her, she's assuming the form of a Twi'lek with orange skin." Leaning back in his chair, Sebastian gestured towards Amalgam and allowed her to take a look for herself. With a few clicks, he recorded the footage and sent the feed to Amalgam's communications device. "Miss Amalgam, I need you to take out the two bodyguards and assume the identity of one of them." Sebastian explained his idea as he continued to monitor the enemy network. "Take over their comms and assure Tave that everything is under control." With his headset around his neck, he nodded to the woman and allowed her to dissect the information.

"That way, Margalo won't be so quick to change her appearance again." Sebastian said as he collected the code which the frequency meter had sent to his terminal. "I'll monitor the network they're using to orchestrate the raid." With a nod, Sebastian looked up at the Sith woman and waited for her to offer her own suggestions.

[member="The Amalgam"]

 

[The Amalgam]

Well, [member="Sebastian Thel"] was here after all. The suite looked nice...Sebastian himself was a bit of a looker, but the Darksider was, for the most part Asexual...itd have to be a 'really' interesting man to get her attention, which rarely occured. She was beginning to understand in part, why he had been recruited...not the fighting type, by the looks of it. Wasn't likely to get cocky. Strictly support.

The currently smoking hot shapeshifter gave a small, bemused smile as he rose up to greet her, not daring to stare her directly in the eyes. The smile widened only slightly as he addressed her as 'Lady Amalgam'. She decided to put him at ease, not just because she wasn't interested in killing him (It would have been pointless, like focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass just to kill an ant.) but because he had chosen to aid the darkness: he was making society a better place.

"No need for titles. 'Amy' for short will do quite adequately." she spoke calmly, slinking into an unnaturally precise feminine grace as she stepped forward, watching him recoil with internal delight. He may have been on her side, but she still got a kick out of his fear, though she was polite about it as she took out her own monitoring equipment and watched as the man linked his network to it. He had dizzying speed at computers. The Amalgam was no hacker, but she could admire the mental gymnastics it required. If what Thel was doing was any indicator, he was a gold star athlete in that sense.

The Amalgam watched with an almost childlike fascination as Thel went to work. Bogan forbid this man should get control of a missile platform...unless he was using it on Jedi. Then she'd be saying Go missiles!

"Maybe its the layman in me speaking but you're rather...fast..." she complimented in that dark feminine rasp of hers as she watched him point out what the guards were doing, even locating Margalo herself, in the form of a curvy orange Twi'lek in a blue evening dress.

"Well, can't fault her fashion sense..." the Shi'ido quipped, though the creepy rasp she had offset any humor that might have been derived from the comment. "My dress is cuter though..."

When Thel offered up his suggestion, the purple-eyed woman eyed him. "Sound plan, but the timing will have to be precise so Tave doesn't realize one of them has been replaced. See if you can cause a temporary shutdown of all the lights when I give the signal. Do not lose Tave's location. See if you can cause an image loop on her end at key points where Ingmar and his 'entourage' are standing still. When you turn the lights off, try and disrupt her systems for about ten seconds. That's what I'll need for what I have in mind..."

The whole time she was speaking while behind him, she had been undressing her curvy form twisting and melting, reshaping into something hideous for what she had in mind. Her current form was rail thin, emaciated, and hairless. Her face simply nothing more than an open, lamprey-like maw with no eyes, fluttering revoltingly as she talked, her dress and shoes left on the floor, along with a lacy bra and underwear.

"If my plan works, Margalo won't even realize one of them has been replaced...good luck, Agent!" she said in a hideously enthusiastic manner as she turned invisible, making strange hissing, chirping, snickering noises as she passed, solely to freak Thel out as she exited the suite, stuffing her comm piece into a rearranged ear as she sped through the passages at full sprint to reach the entourage before they could leave the building.

"Lock the front doors to the hotel and all emergency exits..." she ordered Thel as she sprinted. "How far are they?"

Meanwhile...

Margalo Tave did not like assignments such as this.

Most of the time she targeted military personnel. Killing a banker felt dirty but the Rebels had paid her triple her usual rate, which was a million per kill. So she had left her island estate on Alderaan to carry out the hit.

She had turned the guards. One with money, the other with seduction. They were to isolate him for her once Ingmar, a scrawny, bookish billionaire that wore clothing that looked to expensive, with a full head of short, graying hair.

She was trying to be nice to this one, had picked the quickest, most painless poison in her arsenal. Ten seconds. He'd be unconscious after the first five.

She hated this work sometimes. Hated when civilians got involved enough with these bastards that it made it necessary...

But as she stared at the guards escorting him to his doom, she knew all that guilt wasn't louder than three million credits. At least he would see someone cute before he died. She'd give him that much.

Gods, she hated her job sometimes, she thought as she tested her high heeled shoe, which had a blade pop out of the sole, coated with the lethal poison.

OOC: To get an idea of Amalgams current form, think something similar to The Creep from Fear 3

 

[Sebastian Thel]

With a few clicks, Sebastian isolated the line between Amalgam and himself, with the channel Margalo was using, ensuring that she could not tap into it while they were monitoring her. He hit the modular function and wrapped around the letters making up the address, rearranging them based on the inverse operation needed to divide them, before extending the address with a large and impossible prime number to securely encrypt the line. Leaving the feed open, Sebastian turned around and allowed Amalgam to look as he watched Tave in real time.

After wiping a layer of sweat off his brow, he released a satisfied sigh and shook the cramps out of his wrist. Sitting shyly in his chair, he watched Amalgam's face draw back in awe as she watched the feed. Her fascination with his skill reached an uncomfortable level when she gave him a compliment, a very real compliment, which was enough to make Sebastian turn the colour of a Sith's lightsaber. Wringing his hands, he avoided Amy's gaze and looked all over the room, almost in a panic as he struggled to think about what to say to her.

"Well, I mean, all I did was find a live feed of Margalo, that was all we needed to confirm that it was her" Sebastian shrugged. There was no "thank you," just a simple explanation of the difficult procedure he had used. "From there, I was able to identify the guards in her server." He said, pointing to the accounts of the two guards, which he had used to confirm that they were working for Tave. Now, with their identities confirmed, Amy could assume their appearances and enter herself into Margalo's plan, although it would appear that Amy had a different approach, which Sebastian was honestly glad to hear instead of another compliment.

"I can do precise, Ma'am." The mathematician said confidently.

Pulling on his headset, Sebastian turned back around to face to computer and began to altar the rate at which the feed projected the footage of the corridor, converging it around the timeframe when both guards were standing still. Number by number, the feed closed in, until it repeated the same footage of the guards over and over, appearing just as though they were doing their job in real time. Tapping away, Sebastian set the feed in sync and uploaded it to the server, where Margalo could see what her accomplices were doing.

"Timeframe converged, I've uploaded the feed and have it playing on a loop of the guards." Sebastian affirmed. When he turned around to show Amy the screen, she was, to his horror, standing right in front of him with no clothes on.

"Kark me! Do that elsewhere, would you?" Sebastian cried. While the Amalgam's figure would have any other agent on his knees, her looks were all but lost on Sebastian, who spun around on his chair and turned away.

Once Amy had changed into her disguise, Sebastian opened up a line of communications between them and encrypted it, ensuring that Margalo could not slice their comms. As the Sith left the suite, Bas raised his hand in a mock salute and bid her farewell, before returning to the live feed of Margalo. While it played out, he entered an access code into the light system of the hotel, which opened up the nodes representing the lights in each room. Now all he had to do was wait for Amy's signal.

[member="The Amalgam"]

 

[The Amalgam]

The Amalgam raced through the now darkened halls invisible, her hideous new form concealed by the Force as she rushed to intercept the entourage of Ingmar, [member="Sebastian Thel"] making sure Margalo did not slip away. She was still amused by his reaction, though greatly surprised he hadn't just outright screamed his head off. Guy must have seen a lot.

It was not long before, racing silently down passages, gliding past confused people in elegant clothing, little more than a gust of wind marking her passage by them that she at last spotted Ingmar and his confused pair of bodyguards. They had retreated into the hotel lobby, their blasters drawn. The Amalgam had to think a moment before acting, dropping her hold on the Force and singling out one in a black suit. She matched the texture and color of the background in the dark to reduce the chance of being spotted. Humans sometimes caught her off guard with how good their nightvision could sometimes be. She ducked behind a lobby couch as one guard turned on the flashlight mounted on his rifle, the beam shining over her hiding spot.



The Monster watched Uri Udinia from deep behind the eyes of the Lie, its heir sneaking through the hotel she had singled out on Canto Blight. There was a good reason Uri was learning to sneak through hotels packed with people, a million random variables. It kept her sharp, and forced her to learn how to enter and leave a place without leaving clues.

It watched as the Lie observed Uri sneaking through the ludicrously expensive hotel via a military telescope with X-Ray functions from a nearby roof. The padawan was a white glow in the telescope, broken only as she moved silently from room to room, moving and taking a single piece of candy from the dish in each room, and eating it. It was part of the game she had been taught. The Monster felt an undeniable surge of pride at how quickly and silently she moved from room to room, evading the expensive hotel's latest security, breaching it with clever use of security spikes and micro breaching kits. How it wanted to talk to her. How it longed to rip apart this lie it was trapped in and spirit her to The Brain Demon's inner sanctum.

But circumstances forced her to remain in hiding. For all Uri had advanced, she was not yet ready...

But still, to get a glimpse of just how deadly she could be...the Monster had never pulled off robberies that quick. It made its black little heart swell in pride...

The Amalgam, shaken from the sudden, unwanted intrusion of her mind, could not help but gasp. It was a small, tiny thing, but it was enough.

"Huh?" One of Ingmar's body guards called out.

"What is it?" The slender looking Vittorri Ingmar asked in a meek, nerdish voice that grated on the ears. "I can't afford to be delayed like this!"

The Amalgam cloaked herself with the Force again, moved swiftly from her spot just as the light was shown over it and sprinted silently, making a small tap on the wall of a passage that led out of the lobby and into the spa section. The guard followed the sound and her when Ingmar told his man to investigate. She had to draw him away from the others, so she kept making a light tap sound as she entered the luxurious, tiled spa with bronze statues of rancors guarding the four corners of every Jacuzzi inside, steam hitting her skin after she used telekinesis to turn on the water, hopefully to make it harder for him to aim and acting as a lure revealing an outline that the bodyguard caught out of the corner of his eye as he moved in after a few minutes, rifle slowly, casually swinging to that direction after he gulped at the unexpected presence of the steam. But the Amalgam was no fool, reading the blank look that betrayed his intent and ducked as he opened fire, not taking him down just yet as they needed to think he was still around when she was done. She circled around him as he opened fire with his blaster rifle, blasting off portions of the walls and engraved ceiling with a halo of orange lights, grabbing his throat with the Force and uncloaking as she strangled him with a Force choke silently into unconsciousness, until he dropped to the floor. The Shi'ido grinned and dragged him off into the steam as the second bodyguard came to investigate...

"Today's your lucky day..." the Shi'ido whispered as she dragged off her prisoner in order to memorize his features...