A Fair Fight
A/N: This was originally written as a response to a kink meme prompt for Shepard owning Kai Leng in a swordfight. I decided to tweak the parameters of the prompt a little. I hope you enjoy this little fight between Kai Leng and a Slayer-style Shepard. The swordplay is hardly as realistic as Going In For Guns, but the body mechanic works, and I, at least, found the choreography to be a lot of fun. I certainly hope you do, too.
"He did warn you not to overstay your welcome," drawled Kai Leng, distortions smudging the air about his hand as his palm cannon vented heat. The assassin swiveled with leonine grace, exposing the monoblade in his hand. It was a challenge as bare as the blade.
Shepard's lip curled. "Leng," he spat, slapping his helmet's visor down. The Shade suit's VI immediately tagged Leng and painted him with a red glow, tagging weapon systems, shielding, and other combat multipliers with contrasting symbology. Enough to understand, too little to distract. Thanks, Spooky. "Everyone stays back," he ordered.
"Shepard…" flanged Garrus before Shepard cut him off with a shake of his head.
"No, Garrus. If he could take Thane, he'd have no trouble with your 'top-ranked hand-to-hand specialist' plated ass." Three years ago, Shepard would have seen a Turian's mandibles flickering. Now he read the embarrassment painting his friend's face as easily as he would a blush. "You've never even come close to beating me. You'd just get in the way."
"He's a cheating bosh'tet!" protested Tali. "Let's just shoot him and be done with it!"
That got a grin from Shepard. "So he is. But we know he's got tough enough shields to make it across the room, under fire and take out at least one of us." Besides, mused Shepard, I cheat too.
"Three at least," sneered Kai Leng. "If I was suicidal."
"Well, look who got an extra scoop of raisins in his cornflakes today. But it's going to be zero." Shepard grabbed his monoblade's hilt and pulled it free from his back, the suit disengaging the magclamp. "Because the Illusive Man built him to kill me…and I know he's not good enough." His fingers caressed the control buttons that governed the monoblade's imbedded systems, triggering a self-test routine. "So I'm going to offer Leng the thing he thought he'd never get again after ICT. A fair fight. And when Mr. Gunship realizes that he's gonna die and pulls in whatever support he's got hiding, you all are going to kill it…and I'm going to kill him." The self-test light winked green.
"You're slower, weaker, and older, Shepard. But if you want to die like the drell, far be it from me to stop you." Leng stalked forward, monoblade resting against his shoulder. Shepard matched his steps, blade tip low and forward. As they came into range, Leng's blade came to a ready position above his shoulder, bodyweight resting on the balls of his feet.
Shepard let his blade remain low, on the centerline. It invited attack and leveraged the speed of reflex action against deliberate action. Leng knew this, of course, but the younger man seemed to have issues with dominating his opponents.
Leng's attack hissed in at his shoulder, his opposite shoulder. The assassin was good, executing the footwork necessary to redirect the attack as it came out. The mass effect drive in his blade popped on and off as Leng used it to shape his bladework.
Shepard disappeared into a flicker of dark energy, reappearing a few feet back. That…had been unexpected. He knew Leng was good. The others had comforted themselves with the myth that Thane, the only squaddie that could give Shepard trouble in hand-to-hand, had been slowed down by his disease.
Shepard knew that was bullshit. The fight was too short to trigger the symptoms, not that Thane didn't have the discipline to fight through them. Thane had been killed on equal terms. Or at least as equal as terms could be when one man had a pistol and the other had a sword.
Frankly, after that exchange, Shepard suspected Leng had been toying with Thane.
A calm voice filled his ear. "Administering medi-gel,"
The hell? Shepard swore as he felt the squishy sensation of unset medi-gel coat his pectorals…and an impossibly thin icy brand that exploded into fire as the medi-gel set. His eyes narrowed as Kai Leng flicked his blade, a red drop falling from the crimson patch at the tip. That's not good.
"First blood, Shepard." Definitely had been toying with Thane.
"Last counts for all, Leng," Shepard snapped his blade up and around his head, triggering the eezo nodules in his nervous system, ignoring the tearing sensations that made it through the painkillers. As the monoblade came down from over his shoulder he twisted it down into a flourish that uncaged the biotic energy he had just built up, and forced it out the tip of his blade. A battering ram of biotic force thundered towards the assassin's face.
Leng charged through it.
Spooky, the Shade armor's VI, updated the symbology overlaid on the assassin. "Warning: Hostile equipped with kinetic sumps." Shepard twisted into a teleport forward and to his left, slashing behind him as he emerged. He felt the blade tug at something, but it was tenuous. Stepping back and turning on his other leg, he caught the results of the cut as he reestablished his guard.
Nothing more than a cut in Leng's coattail.
Shepard afforded himself a silent growl. He might have been one of the deadliest hand-to-hand combatants alive, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Kai Leng was simply faster than him. And now, with the k-sumps, his advantage of biotics was blunted. The Illusive Man really had built Kai Leng to kill him. And for a fraction of a second, Shepard wondered if the assassin really could do it.
Fuck that, Shepard. We've got no room for that talk. So he's faster, and your biotics can't hurt him. Find an advantage. Shepard stepped into the space behind a slash, cutting down at Leng's forearm. The assassin twisted and rotated in midair, displacing his limb and contorting himself into a rising slash that would have opened Shepard from groin to chin if the N7 hadn't flared the drive in his monoblade, letting the increased mass drag him backwards. Strength is a fools game, and you don't even know if you're stronger than him. He's arrogant as hell, but you talked yourself into this fight, so let's not fool ourselves into calling that an advantage.
Shepard fell back on his training, twisting himself in the air, winding up a full-strength biotic slash. There's an idea. He held the energy a quarter second longer than normal, smashing the vortex of biotic power into the floor between the two men at an oblique angle. Glossy ebon synthetic cracked, shattered, and flew like a storm of obsidian shards at the assassin.
Leng contorted, dancing through the rain of blades. Shepard charged in, lightstepping across exposed conduit. One of the floor tiles, having weathered the biotic slash, detached and twisted beneath his right foot. The N7 went with it, pulsing biotics through his foot to grab onto the tile, and planting his other leg ahead. His right leg came up and Shepard released the tile, giving it a dark energy shove on its way to Leng's face.
The assassin cut it out of the air, halves whistling past each shoulder.
It was exactly what Shepard was waiting for. Passing forward, he cut down at Leng's shoulder.
It should have ended there. Blade low, reflexes confused by motion in his peripheral vision on both sides, the monoblade should have cut into the assassin's trapezius and glided down through his ribcage. It's arc would have carried it into the pericardial sac, lopping off a ventricle, clipping the vena cava and aorta, before sailing out of the body and pruning Leng's blade hand at the wrist. Kai Leng should have died in a massive rush of blood.
But the monoblade skittered off a sapphire buckler projected from the assassin's left hand. Even as Shepard let his stance sink and his blade glide to intercept the assassin's, he could see Leng's wrist twist and the glow in his palm turn towards the N7's face.
Shepard had no wish to test his armor and shields against that most literal handcannon, especially not at point-blank range. Teleporting would take too long, and a biotic charge into Leng, inside the palm gun, would only spit him on the assassin's monoblade, only for Leng to turn his wrist and blow out the back of Shepard's skull.
But Shepard had other options. Biotics weren't just good for applying force to your enemies. They were also good for applying them to yourself. The N7 was one of the Alliance's foremost experts on self-applied biotics, and while Leng's k-sumps would draw off any classically-empowered biotic strike, like any good student of the internal martial arts, Shepard had a fine understanding of the concept of kinetic linkage.
In one perfect moment, Shepard appeared to rip lightning from space itself, kinetic energy flowing up his legs, through his torso, and out into a fist that speared into Kai Leng's side. It was an act that would have killed any normal biotic. Liara, even had she trained for it, would have shattered her skeleton and shredded muscles in the attempt. Kaidan, had his L2 afforded him the control necessary, would have done the same. Neither, as biotically strong as they were, could handle that much force. Call, yes. Survive, no.
But Shepard's 'unbreakable' carbonan woven bones and deeply reinforced tissues were up to the task. Barely. Pain followed the wave of force in a rush of molten gold. Spooky slammed painkillers into Shepard's bloodstream, specialized neural blockers clearing out extraneous, crippling information. He could hurt when the battle was done.
But as bad as it was for Shepard, it was worse for Leng. He had been enhanced, upgraded. His cybernetics were more advanced. They were better. His muscles were stronger, tougher. His bones were more 'unbreakable' than even Shepard's.
And the shards of three 'unbreakable' ribs were tearing his liver to shreds.
Any natural human would have died right then and there as the massive bleed dropped their blood pressure like a stone. But Cerberus had gone further than anyone could have imagined with their research. Leng would survive the wound. He would fight through the pain. He would hurt Shepard. Kill him.
But he might need some back-up.
As he shot through the air with velocities more commonly associated with aircars, he triggered a go order to his hidden troops, passing through Shepard's watching squad. Then he hit a viewscreen with a tremendous bang and ruined a fine example of the electronic engineer's craft before slumping to the ground.
Riding the wave of the pain, Shepard grunted it back for the moments it took the painkillers to bury it. He knew better than to hope that he had killed Leng. He needed to capitalize.
"New hostiles detected." Spooky painted new symbology over his vision as jump jets flared and Cerberus troops dropped from the ceiling.
"Weapons free on the troopers!" snapped Shepard. "I'm on Leng!"
The roar of four mass accelerators and the hiss of one particle rifle filled the room as Kaidan and Liara threw up a barrier in front of the squad. Blood sprayed as the hail of fire ripped troopers from their feet before they could even return fire. An unfortunate engineer spasmed as a coherent beam of charged particles cooked him. When a centurion tried to regain control of the forces, he was knocked sprawling by a miniature missile courtesy of Chikkita before losing his head to a cloud of razor-edged flechettes.
Even as Shepard began to step towards Kai Leng, a pair of phantoms dropped in front of him. The first was met with a rising slash that whispered through her, hip to shoulder, before her feet touched the ground. Stepping to the side, he put the falling corpse between himself and the other one, tugging her with his biotics into a stumble. Grabbing the wrist of her steadying arm, he twisted it with an explosive pop, sending the reflexive palm cannon shot into the temple of an engineer. His monoblade sunk point-on into her breast before he twisted it and ripped it out through her shoulder, robbing her death-cut of all of its power. A kick sent her corpse flailing away into a trooper.
Shepard was fast, but the phantoms delayed him critical seconds. Leng was back on his feet and lunging at the rear of his squad. Garrus and Tali were spinning, but too slowly. EDI's fire sparked off Leng's shields, but it would never be enough. Shepard had to make a call. He hoped it was the right one. He hoped they'd obey. "Kaidan, Liara, drop barrier!"
They did, ironclad trust in Shepard not letting them hesitate for a moment. Better, they both instantly snapped to a biotic barrage to keep the Cerberus troops disrupted.
Shepard had to stop Leng. But a biotic charge would get him killed. Leng would read the biotic corona and spit Shepard on the monoblade as he came in. A gun would take too long to draw and unfold, and biotics would just be shrugged off. And Leng was already raising his blade to cut Tali down, judging her shotgun to be the more dangerous close-quarters threat.
Shepard could see the sequence of events unfold in his mind's eye. Tali would fall, followed by a lightning-quick throat stab to Garrus. Leng would step forward, sweeping his sword through the backs of Vega and Javik's necks, severing their spines. His palm cannon would blast EDI's chassis apart at point-blank range as she moved to engage him in hand-to-hand. Kaidan and Liara would spin inwards, and Liara would reflexively toss biotics at him. He would ride the negligible force that would get through to him into Kaidan and body-check the edge of his blade into the L2, swiping it out and through the man. Liara would fall to concentrated fire from the remaining Cerberus troops. And Leng would have won.
So Shepard tore the barriers from his body, focused them into the device on his palm, thrust his arm forward…and blew the footing out from under Kai Leng as he stepped forward to kill Tali.
The assassin went down in a tumble , blade scoring Tali's hood as she leapt away. A wild palm cannon shot knocked Garrus sprawling as he turned towards Leng, catching him right in the chest. A centurion dropped from the ceiling behind the squad to support Leng.
Shepard charged. His elbow annihilated the centurion's throat as he smashed into the soldier in mid-air, slamming him into the same viewscreen that Kai Leng had smashed. Shepard's free hand shot down and grabbed the man's tonfa, powering it on and tossing it at Leng, who threw up his shield to deflect it.
Shepard teleported. To deflect large objects, Leng had to contract the shield into a buckler of sorts. That meant it couldn't cover all the angles at once. Even as the tonfa sparked away from the shield, Shepard appeared behind and to the side of Leng. The assassin was too fast to land a killing blow on, twisting and spinning to bring the buckler and blade to bear on Shepard.
Just as Shepard had wanted. An ICT trained monoblade fighter would have gone for the kill, and Leng would have opened their belly as their blade was deflected by the buckler. But Shepard had started learning the way of the blade as a swordsman. It was an archaic hobby. But here and now, it proved its worth as Shepard angled his blade perfectly, and Kai Leng dragged his shield hand through Shepard's blade.
Half a palm, fingers attached, fell to the floor, along with the first knuckle of Kai Leng's thumb. Even as the shield evaporated in a flurry of sparks and the remains of the palm cannon blew apart Leng's forearm as its power systems detonated, Shepard's free hand caught the assassin's slash by the wrist. Shepard twisted, wrapping Leng over his body in a beauty of a shoulder throw, stripping the sword from Leng's grasp as he flew into the Illusive Man's chair.
Even then, Leng tried to raise his hand to blast Shepard with his second palmcannon. A thrown monoblade pinned his wrist to the ground. Only then did Shepard check to see that his squad had finished off Kai Leng's backup. Garrus groaned, pulling himself to his feet, a deep scar marring his heavy armor, but undamaged. Shepard raised his visor, and his squad gathered around him, staring down at the beaten Leng.
"How?" grated the assassin.
Shepard bounced the monoblade's flat against his palm, appearing to give it more thought than Kai Leng. After a second, the N7 looked down. "Did I beat you? Please. You might have been stronger than me, faster than me, an expert with that blade," he gestured towards the blade that pinned Kai Leng's arm to the ground before tapping the blade against his shoulder, "and given technology tailored to kill me. But at the end of the day, I'm smarter than you, better looking than you, and no matter how good you were with a monoblade…I'm a swordsman, and you're just a thug with a blade." Shepard twisted the sword down into a flickering cut.
Kai Leng's head thumped to the floor.
"That was for Thane, you son of a bitch."
A/N the 2nd: Well, there it is. I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please tell me. If you didn't, likewise. What worked, what didn't?
I don't know if I'll ever come back to this Shepard, but he's certainly fun to choreograph for. We'll see. Till next time, folks!