It's been a while since I posted any new chapters... engineering classes tend to leave little time for much else than homework. So, after so long, here's a new instalment of the Adventures of Big Al.
Alonzo, Omega, June 2185
This week was about to get much more interesting, though only one person this side of the Citadel knew that. News was spreading about a turian named Archangel, whose team of do-gooders were decimating the three main merc groups regularly with shipment raids and sabotage. Al held this 'Archangel' in high regard as he was one of the very few willing to try and change Omega for the better. He kept his head down for the time being, knowing that change didn't come that quickly here, and still skirted around mercenary patrols when they trooped past his salvage efforts.
Al was down in a lower level rooting through an abandoned room in an old apartment on this soon-to-be eventful day. He was moving through the building, looking for open rooms and, in them, hidden panels used to hide valuables. He wasn't having any luck though, and the not-as-distant-as-he'd-like snarls of hungry vorcha were unnerving. They had been getting more hostile, and increasing in numbers daily. Al wanted to take a refurbished shotgun and personal kinetic shield with him just in case…
Al was stepping out of the door to the fifth floor room he had just finished searching; the apartment had been empty, save for a 5 cred chit and a small charm bracelet, which looked very treasured to the person who had worn it. Hopefully, Al thought, that person will be able to return for it. A vorcha peeked its head around the hallway corner as he turned and closed the door. He looked back at it, and then it licked its (lips?) and disappeared back around the corner. Fuck. Al started running in the opposite direction, stashing the chit and bracelet in his pocket and un-shouldering his shotgun. It was a good thing he'd scavenged that set of personal shield units earlier this month; now he'd have to use the one he brought. He moved through the halls as fast as he dared, checking around each corner as he went, and always looking back for the vorcha that saw him. He got to the second floor without incident. Then, as he neared the main door, he slowed and crouched toward the foyer banister to look…
And saw a near-platoon of vorcha gathered around a krogan leader. The krogan was pointing at a station map and speaking in a vicious, guttural language that his VI couldn't translate. It pinged out loud to indicate this fact, and the krogan and several vorcha stopped what they were doing to look up at the balcony walkway Al was hiding. Al quickly shut off the translator and went prone, and tried to be as quiet as possible while backing away from the edge. Shit, how do I get out now? Back exits…the fire escape…roof? No, the fire escape would make too much noise… Back door is probably watched by more of them… roof it is. Al crawled back through the nearest doorway, and went back to a crouch, hiding behind the doorway. He listened to determine whether the group in the lobby was moving yet but heard nothing. That was enough for him, and he snuck in a crouch toward the stairwell. The roof was 5 floors up and Al had to get as many between him and the pack downstairs before they got to doing what they had come to do, which was probably to take anything valuable from the building (unless they had heard him).
He got as far as the fifth floor before he heard doors smash open at the bottom of the stairs. These were metal grate-style steps - far below safety standards – and Al could see blurs of movement through them. The blurs stopped, and Al could hear snuffling down the stairwell. They were apparently vorcha, and they smelled him now. All stealth aside now, Al bolted up the rest of the stairs, and threw open the door to the roof. The pack was climbing the stairwell at an alarming rate, and Al ran to the edge of the apartment. He looked down, and saw another building four stories down and 20 yards away. He looked left and right, to find the empty space of the central area and a 7 story building, respectively. Then he turned and looked at the door. There were shadows on the back wall now, not very much time to figure this out. Al backed up for a running start, then sprinted for the edge by the short building.
The vorcha were scrambling out of the doorway as Al jumped, hard, off the edge of the apartment with a yell. The first one lunged from its position at the door towards him, but was feet too short to reach. Al flew through the air for roughly twelve feet, and then started to fall quickly in the station's artificial gravity. He thought, ShitshitshitshitSHIT, and his vision grayed out around the edges as it had a year ago in the bunker. Al could only think about how he wanted to reach the roof of the building as he began to plummet… and then he was on it, kneeling in the center of a small depression where he had landed? There was no time to think about it though, as the vorcha on the roof were scampering back into the doorway they came from, and the rest of the scavenger pack from the apartment was likely to send out a few after him. So Al stood up and sprinted down the stairwell of this building. It was apparently a smaller, but better kept and still occupied, apartment. As Al descended, he heard screams from the rooms around him. Fuckin' vorcha! One of them, a fast little one, turned a corner at the other end of the hallway from him and snarled.
"HE'S HERE! COME HERE! OVER HERE!" it yelled back past its shoulder, and sprinted at him with claws out – there were too many of the creatures for each to have a gun. Al didn't want to reveal his abilities just yet; he kicked open one of the doors next to him and ran into the hallway of the room as it streaked down the hall. There was a large window on the other side of the main room down the hall; Al ran towards the window as the single vorcha came through the doorway. He got ready, and then jumped through the window feet first while grabbing the top of the window frame. This swung his feet out and he landed on them in the alley on the outside of the room.
Al stumbled a bit as his momentum took him across the alley and into a dumpster. He put his hands up to catch himself, and left a set of handprints on it. His hands were wet now, too. Looking down at them, he winced. The palms of his hands had pieces of plasteel embedded in them, and were starting to bleed freely onto the floor of the alley. Shit, they'll be able to track me now. Have to find that med station I saw on my way down here; have to get this shit out of my hands… He glanced back over his shoulder and, of course, the single vorcha was still running at him and just getting to the broken window.
"GAH! I can smell you, human! I'll find you, even if you run away from us!"
Al stared at it and retorted quickly, "Why are you trying so hard to get me? Can't you find someone else to pester, like maybe, Captian Gavorn?"
The little vorcha flinched at the name and hissed back to him, "Gavorn is too strong, him and his army always hunt us! We can't get him, but we can get you. You easy meat! COME ON, WHERE ARE YOU?!" It screeched the last out to its lagging comrades, just as Al was back-pedalling and turning at the same time. He started to sprint as fast as he could in the opposite direction, and peeled off his shirt. The shirt was only Terra standard cotton, and tore easily, for Al to wrap strips across his hands and staunch the blood flow. His hands were throbbing now, and he looked back to check if there were any of the group following him. He couldn't see any vorcha, but he could hear angry snarling and squeals from the alley he just left. The small vorcha was probably getting beaten for letting him escape, and Al didn't envy it, even if it was a vorcha.
Al slowed his foot speed after looping around many corners, through several main thoroughfares, and a stairwell leading back to C level. Not a few citizens grumbled at him as he pushed through the throngs in the more populated parts of the level. He pushed through and between as many tight-knit groups of humans and passed by all the food stalls along his route, trying to hide the smell of his blood from the vorcha that were probably still following him. It was still only C level, after all.
There were alleys upon alleys cutting between the buildings all over Omega. There were even catwalks on the stories above the main street. Al cut through yet another narrow alleyway on his route to the small med clinic that he got directions to from a turian merc guarding a warehouse door; the turian had eyed Al as he retreated down the street again with a slightly amused expression, though none could see through the polarized mask all turians wear. Always moving at least at a jog, Al still had to be careful coming around corners in case a drunken krogan or surly batarian thugs saw him.
Al finally saw the hologram marking the entrance to the med station. He sighed in relief, and slowed down a little; he had been jogging or running for at least 20 minutes with a steady ooze of blood from his glass-fragmented hand. It had stopped throbbing a couple blocks back, which probably wasn't a good thing, and Al finally stopped to remove the bandage. He looked down at his hand, lifted his other to start unwrapping his shirt fragment, then caught movement in the corner of his vision. He whirled, reaching for his shotgun, and was amazed that he still had it after all the shit he'd done today.
"Who's there?" Al called into the shadow of an alley he had just passed, as he slowly advanced towards the source of motion.
"Na-glarg-na-hnn-name? Wha…" was the only response he got in return. Then Al remembered he had a flashlight in his omnitool, and turned it on low setting.
And saw a turian-shaped blob, for lack of a better word.
