Hey there people, here's Acolyte with another installment of Natural Biotic. Hooray! In other good news, I found a fellow author that shares a few of the same ideas as me. Introducing my new beta reader for this story, give a whole hearty thank you to Archerdood. With his mighty prod of doom, I should get something of a regular schedule going here before I crush it utterly and completely when I start to focus on this. Hooray for destruction! That being said, let's get this train a' rolling.
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Disclaimer: Despite me owning little in the way of… well, anything exceedingly valuable, really, Archerdood owns his prod of doom. Some guys get all the luck, eh?
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Chapter 4: Loss and Gain
Otherwise Known As: A Chapter in which Something Actually Happens
Naruto landed in a crouching position. Above him, a powerful rumbling alerted the blonde of the Normandy's Departure. A familiar voice boomed over his comm-link as the ship left his field of vision.
"Alright people, listen up. The Normandy's returning to orbit. Contact us once you find the beacon."
"Roger that Anderson. Ground squad out." Naruto turned to see Shepard responding using the communicator in his helmet. The helmet was a bit intimidating, really, Naruto mused. Its armored plating covered Shepard's whole face, with the exception of a thin opaque yellow band across his eyes. It let him see out, but no one to see in. Naruto couldn't read his facial expressions, something that Naruto hated. After all, how was he to know if the man was going turn around and gun him down if he could not read the man's face? Sure, the man had seemed to be okay so far, but that didn't mean the blonde trusted him completely just yet.
Naruto turned his attention to Jenkins. The guy was far more open, even using one of the older helmets. The old model did not really do anything to hide his face, using a wide mask of reinforced glass to protect his face. It allowed people to see his entire face, with only a transparent blue visor coming down over his eyes. Also, while Shepard had an aura of precise, cutting seriousness surrounding him, Jenkins had an over-excited feeling around him. It was as though this was a game to the new recruit. 'A game that will get the guy killed, if he is not careful,' Naruto thought. 'I'll have to help him fix that when we get back to the ship.'
Naruto's inspection of his teammates was interrupted by Shepard. "Alright, men, listen up. We need to find Nihlus and locate the beacon. Let's move!" Both other men nodded and fell into step behind the commander. Naruto was to his left and Jenkins to his right. Naruto took this time to survey his surroundings while they moved.
The sky was a pale and slightly smoky yellow, shadowing the landscape a bit. The sun still poked through a few of the yellow clouds. Unlike the rest of the team, Naruto did not choose to wear a helmet, and, therefore, he had no visor to shield his eyes. The reason why was that the blonde didn't really see much point. The air was perfectly breathable and there were no signs of airborne toxins. Also, helmets tended to cut off ones peripheral, leading them to have a blind spot that enemies could take advantage of. He also generally did not like helmets. They cramped his style.
Shaking his head a bit, Naruto continued to look around. The landscape was uneven, with seemingly random hills and valleys showing up all over the immediate area. Rocks also constantly shot up from the ground, giving the impression of small cliff faces. The grass was short and spread apart, allowing him to see the rust-colored dirt under it quite often. It seemed the area had been warn ragged by walking.
The group continued down a small incline and into a mini bowl-shaped valley. The rock walls were at least fifteen feet above their heads and the only accessible path was to their left. Shepard, however, noticed something to their right, deeper into the valley. "The hell?" he asked, though didn't really do much more than that.
Naruto turned to where Shepard was looking. He had to admit, he had never seen anything like this before. The thing looked like a balloon, basically a bloated white blob floating several feet off the ground. It seemed completely symmetrical, and had no eyes, or, well, anything to get a grasp of its surroundings. It looked like a floating jellyfish, especially when he factored in its short tentacles. A large number of others where floating in the same area, though were a bit off to the side.
Though in reality the blonde lieutenant's observations lasted for less than a second, his response to his commander's question as said man quickly brought up his sniper rife and took out two of the things without needing to look down the scope, one bullet for each creature.
"It doesn't matter what they are, if it's not human or can't identify itself as a friendly, just shoot it. Now we have a mission we need to complete, so keep moving." The two quickly followed Shepard's advice. While they moved, Jenkins began to speak.
"You know, those things were harmless. I'm from here, I would know. You did not really need to shoot them..." He eventually stopped talking after a blank look from Naruto and what he thought was a glare from Shepard (he could not really tell with the helmet in the way).
The group continued on, not really encountering any more trouble. They did run across a group of four more of the balloons, but the team ignored them after Jenkins' urgings.
It wasn't too much longer before they came into a sharp intersection on their path. The rock walls continued to rise up over their heads and in the distance was what appeared to be a cliff. They could see it continuing on to the left, leaving only the path available to the right. Unfortunately, they couldn't see what might be waiting that way.
The only contact they had made so far were those balloon things, which the group had deemed harmless, but that didn't mean that there weren't other potentially hostile creatures. Shepard soon made a choice. "Jenkins, take point. Be careful."
"Right," Jenkins nodded while turning the corner, assault rifle in hand. There was a few seconds of silence as the man continued to survey the area. Finally, there was a response. "We're clear, Commander." The man nodded and soon followed him out, followed by Naruto.
Once they were all out of cover, however, Naruto's ears pricked up as he heard a low buzzing sound. "Wait, I think I hear something." Shepard just gave him a look (that the blond could still not see, damn helmet) before he whipped his head to the right.
"Get down!" he shouted as he tackled Naruto to the ground and took cover behind a small rock wall. The blonde was about to protest, before he saw Jenkins shouldering his rifle. Time seemed to slow as the next few moments burned themselves into Naruto's brain.
Jenkins tried to leap to his right, back behind some rocks. Naruto saw his finger twitch, as if about to fire, before the roaring of a gun going off caught up to him. It lasted about three seconds, but that was all it took.
The blonde watched as blue lights came from several different directions, the bullets being launched at high speed and with deadly accuracy. There was a flash around Jenkins before his body started jerking around wildly, his rifle hanging limply at his side, hand barely grasping it, blood exploding in a mist from his chest and back.
The roar stopped, and for what seemed like a long time Jenkins just stood, mouth open in a silent gasp of pain. Then, he started to waver, before falling back, rifle falling from his grip completely, kicking up some dust with its impact.
Naruto felt Shepard get off of him as the man peaked over their cover and quickly fired three shots and falling back down behind cover with a curse, his rifle overheated. "Shit!" Naruto heard the dull roar of fire again as chucks of rock bounced off their cover, firing where the commander was. Naruto was barley paying attention though, still staring at Jenkins' body. "Snap out of it, Uzumaki! The bastards are closing in on us!"
Naruto barley heard him, lost in thought he was. Why was this affecting him so much? He had seen death plenty of times before, on his own squad and from hostiles, so how was this different? 'Because he was the best fucking friend you've ever had, and those motherfuckers just killed him,' he told himself. And it was true. He never really got along with anyone in his military career, but Jenkins was different. He was a rather lax and light-hearted guy who didn't think himself better than everyone. And now he was dead.
Naruto felt his blood begin to boil as his anger increased. He would make whoever did this pay! Popping up from cover, throwing caution to the wind, the blonde sent his hand forward, focusing on the floating white robots. Seeing that they were only drones made him even angrier. The bastards were nothing but mindless automatons!
He focused on a center one, a dark red energy soon becoming visible swirling around it, catching Shepard by surprise. Weren't a biotic's powers usually a dark purple or even blue? Naruto would have been surprised as well, if he was not too busy focusing on the drones. He had never seen a red biotic field before.
The power began to pulse, dragging in anything close; loose rocks, fallen branches, other enemies, everything in the area. They all crashed together, (ha, get it? Archerdood's idea.) forming a giant, sparking ball as the drones exploded. Using his control over the object, he launched it towards a small group that hadn't been caught in the gravitational field, destroying them in a burst of parts and electrical fire.
Naruto brought his gun into position, focusing on the lone drone that remained. He fired until his pistol had overheated and refused to shoot anymore, his bullets flying into the quickly dissipating gravity field, increasing their already impressive speed three fold, causing them to disappear in a flash of speed. They impacted the drone, shredding through its defenses, be it kinetic barriers or armor plating, like so much wet paper. The last of the drones fell to the ground.
Naruto's arm dropped as he remained standing, slightly panting. In less than five seconds, he had taken out eight drones single-handedly and nearly effortlessly. That didn't make the blonde haired man feel any better though. He slowly approached the body of his downed friend. Shepard was right behind him, a few questions on his mind. They could wait, though.
Naruto just stared down at the body of the corporal, not even acknowledging Shepard's presence as he peaked over the blonde's shoulder. In a deft movement, the commander move around him and crouched down to the body, bringing his omni-tool out to help him better inspect the downed man. With a growl he stood up.
"Damn. Bullets punched right through his kinetic barriers. He never stood a chance." The commander wearily shook his head from side to side. He had seen this too many times before to be considered healthy and wasn't as deeply affected by it as he should by. He had truthfully not known Jenkins very well, but he was still one of his men. So was Naruto, he thought, as he looked to see how the blonde was doing, leading him to his next comment. "He was a good man." With that, he placed what he thought was a comfortable hand on his lieutenant's shoulder.
"He deserves a proper burial." Naruto was quiet after that, leaving Shepard to put in his rebuttal.
"Yes, he does, but it can wait." The blonde fully turned to him now, listening closely. "We have a mission to accomplish. We all knew that there might be a threat as soon as we stopped receiving Intel from the colony; we just didn't know the scope of danger there actually was. Jenkins wouldn't want us to fail because of him."
There was a small, tense silence, before Naruto nodded, pulling his pistol into a ready position at his side as he walked forward. "I'm going to make those bastards pay, Shepard. Don't interfere when we run across more." Shepard just nodded. While Naruto's reaction wasn't exactly professional, he could understand that Jenkins had somehow become close to Naruto, and he was just forced to watch the man die right in front of him, unable to do anything. Yes, he could defiantly see where the blonde was coming from.
The two-man-group continued up the hill where their attackers came from, walking past the remains of Naruto's biotic display. Broken robots and pieces of shattered rocks littered the ground, and the blond just stomped on the shrapnel as he went, still angry at both the fact that there was still evidence of their existence and the fact that he had to leave his best friend behind. He swore he would make someone come back for the body.
It wasn't long before they reached the peak of the hill where there were more trees, reaching up at least fifty feet above their heads. They were about to continue on to their right, when Shepard noticed a white synthetic object near his feet. He let out a low whistle, catching Naruto's attention. "Nice shot. Looks like you hit it right in its central processor with all your shots." He indicated with his head down the object to give the blonde a better idea of what he was talking about.
Naruto spied the drone, letting a frown come to his face at how intact it was. However, his eyes lit up as an idea soon came to him. "Wait, let me see that." He wasted no time in crouching down and picking the drone up. It was lighter than the blonde expected, but that didn't stop the blonde from quickly finding the hatch that allowed him access to the innards of the drone.
Naruto quickly sifted through the, admittedly, sparse insides, before finding what he was looking for and quickly ripping it out. "What are you doing?" sparing a glance, Naruto saw Shepard standing behind him, still vigilant for enemies and a hint of impatience and annoyance in his voice. Naruto turned back to his work as he answered him.
"I'm rooting through this drones memory core to see who sent it and where they might be holed up. Maybe we can find out why they're here." With that, Naruto found the slot that would allow him to uplink the hardware with his own omni-tool. Within seconds, info started to pop up on his orange-glowing wrist.
Most of the data was junk files and spam, Naruto realized as he went through the files; it seemed that someone had prepared for this. But, something just wasn't adding up. Some of the information just didn't seem to belong, while other files just confused him. He knew that together (okay, two times might be too many, dood) they meant something, but he didn't know what.
Suddenly, his head started to hurt. In was just an annoying burn at first, but it soon felt like someone had set his head on fire. He grunted as he brought his hands up to grasp his throbbing head, trying to quell the pain in his futile attempt.
Shepard noticed this and was quickly by the blonde's side, grasping him by the shoulders. "Hey, Uzumaki, speak to me! What's wrong?" he was ignored, Naruto was too preoccupied with himself. He saw images flashing before his eyes, bits of data flashed on his omni-tool, all of it synching up, showing Naruto a similar pattern, before it suddenly stopped.
The pain was gone, and the blonde quickly jumped up, eyes wide as he looked at his commander. He breathed deeply, trying to find some fault in the information he saw. Looking to his omni-tool, he saw that it stopped flashing, all the information in front of his face, all drawing to the same conclusion that he already knew. It wasn't possible, yet, somehow, it was.
"Hey, Uzumaki, what is it? What happened?" Naruto looked up, only to shake his head in disbelief. Looking back at the memory core, her saw that it was fried; no hope in getting a second set of files to cross-reference. Finally, he spoke.
"I don't know how, but all this information suddenly makes sense; the junk files, everything." Naruto took a deep breath before dropping the bombshell. "All the information shows only one pattern that makes sense. This thing is a Geth."
There was silence as Shepard absorbed the information given to him before he answered in a speculative and concerned tone. "Geth haven't been seen outside the Vail for a long time you know. The implications of Geth showing up now, on a human colony with houses a beacon of Prothean technology… this could be bad. Though I'm curious as to how you suddenly know this, I believe it more imperative that we contact the others."
Naruto let out a small sigh of relief, glad that Shepard wasn't grilling him for details on how he knew what he did. Quite frankly, he didn't think he could explain it even if he wanted to. The blonde watched as his commander attempted to contact the Normandy.
"Normandy, this is the ground team on Eden Prime. We have some news for you." Shepard's response was met with static. He waited a few more seconds before trying again. "Repeat, this is the ground team on Eden Prime. SSV Normandy, do you copy? Joker, do you read me?" More static. Frustrated, Shepard switched his radio frequency in a last ditch effort to contact someone on the ship. "Captain Anderson, this is Commander Virgil Shepard. Please respond."
When only static greeted his ears Shepard growled in anger. This was just fucking perfect! They were down a man, they couldn't contact anyone, and they were on a planet with fucking Geth. The situation wasn't going well.
"Something's interfering with the radio. Looks like we're on our own, Uzumaki."
"Not necessarily. Quick, turn your radio to its original frequency." Shepard did so, and was surprised to hear a female voice on the other end.
"This is… -eif Ashl-… -iams. Und-… -eavy fire in… assis-… repeat… -eed of… -istance… -lease hurr-…" the transmission was cut off abruptly by static.
"Come on," Shepard said suddenly, heading forward, "That transmission couldn't have come from too far away given the radio interference. Maybe they can tell us a bit about what's going on here." Naruto quickly followed.
The two were met with little resistance, and the drones that did get in the way were either met by a bullet from Shepard's sniper rifle or a biotic attack courtesy of Naruto. It wasn't long until they came to a large open field.
There they saw it; a woman dodging bullets from no less than ten drones as she quickly dived for cover behind a small rock formation. She was dressed in white and pink form-fitting combat armor. The hail of bullets sailed right over her head while some chipped her cover, sending shrapnel every which way.
Waiting for a pause in fire, the woman quickly popped over her cover and fired a quick burst from her assault rifle, managing to take down one of the drones before being forced to duck down again. Seeing the woman's plight, Naruto decided to deal with them. This was also an opportunity to take out some more of his pent up anger.
"We need to hurry and help her."
"Agreed," Shepard said, nodding his head. "Go. I'll cover you." With that, the man crouched down in front of a pile of rocks in front of him and fired two concessive shots, managing to critically injure one of the still unaware drones.
Naruto wasted no time in firing his own weapon and sending a biotic attack, catching three of the drones in a field, now back to its regular color scheme for reasons Naruto neither knew nor cared about right now. The drones smashed into each other at high velocity, turning them into useless pieces of scrap.
This seemed to catch the other drones' attention, causing half of the remaining six to focus on him and the other half to continue to suppress the woman. Shepard's presence remained unknown, allowing him to pick off another of the drones harassing the woman.
The blonde was forced to duck behind his own natural cover as the bullets just barely passed by his head. He winced a bit as shrapnel came close to hitting him in the face a few times, almost making him regret not bringing a helmet, before he chanced a peek around the cover and fired, managing to disrupt the kinetic barrier of one of the drones.
However, they just kept advancing, and room was running out between him and them. It seemed as if they had finally wizened up to Shepard's game as two chased after him while one was doing a surprisingly good job at keeping the woman pinned. This wasn't good. They finally caught up to Naruto while he worried about the others, it seemed, as one appeared around the corner.
Not really thinking, Naruto threw a punch, focusing some biotic energy into his fist to give a bigger impact. He hit the drone and watched as its armor plating caved in and it was sent reeling in the air before it hit another rock and blew up. It appeared as if that was the one that had its barrier already brought down, so where was the other one?
His question was answered as he heard the sound of thrusters to his immediate right. Spinning around quickly Naruto found himself face to barrel of the enemy's gun. He was too far away to punch the thing and he doubted that he could get a shot off or dodge before the thing could at least injure him a good deal. As he heard the whirring of the barrel, however, something in Naruto's head just snapped.
Naruto's omni-tool quickly popped into existence and his eyes turned an inhuman orange, veins of red appearing in them. His omni-tool pulsed, and the drone shook in the air for a moment from an invisible wave of energy. Then, it just paused. The three remaining drones did as well, causing the other two people on the battlefield to stare at them curiously, then glance at the blonde.
As this happened, Naruto's eyes finally turned back to normal and his omni-tool dismissed itself. The blonde once again grasped his head in pain as he watched the drones turn and open fire on each other, shocking everyone present. When only one, damaged drone remained, it initiated its self-destruct sequence, leaving behind a small cloud of smoke and more shrapnel.
As the final bits of dust cleared, Shepard left his cover and began to approach the unmoving female. As he passed by his position, Naruto fell into step behind him, his head still hurting a bit. He was spared a quick glance, many questions running through the commander's head; questions that he realized could wait, he begrudgingly knew
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The woman seemed to snap back into reality as the two men finally got to her. As she did a quick once over of them, she noticed Shepard's N-7 armor and quickly realized that this person was more experienced than her. As such, she performed a quick salute and introduced herself, "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, ready to assist in any way possible, Sir."
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And that's a wrap, folks. Unfortunately, this chapter was originally gonna' be the whole Eden Prime experience. Of course, life then decided to fuck with me a bit, causing a blackout that made this chapter revert to its original save. I.e. the title. Then, I went five days with respiratory problems, nothing I couldn't handle, mind you, only to later find out that it was bronchitis. So I wasn't exactly in the mood to retype everything. Yeah. Either way, thanks to Archerdood again, and see you next time. This has been a chapter by your fellow author, Acolyte of Truth, totaling 4,107 words!