Disclaimer: I own only whatever I create, so yeah. Nothing funny today. Nothing at all. … Why are you still reading this?
Liege Lord: Your obsession is at least entertaining, Lordy, I'm glad you approve. And with the Corruption changing thing, I hope Raegas will be able to control herself if she succeeds in even forcing the corruption out on its own in the first place, you know?
BAMS: Ah, BAMS, you know me well. Why wouldn't there be a battle next? It'll be exciting! ;)
Kachie Takahashi: Yeah, scientists can be real assholes when they want to trick someone- especially this nameless one we have that's screwing up Shepard and Raegas. And what's this about you not thinking of some idea? Ooh, I'm getting better at twisting you guys up! XP
Hopelessly Blue: yes, anticipation was what I was going for. I guess. … Okay, honestly, I wasn't totally going for something specific, but I got something across. In the end, we can all only hope Raegas will be able to control herself enough to not kill Shepard or something like that, you know? And with the hand thing, I'm glad to know you care, but I'll be alright; I'm tough, just like Raegas you know. ;) Thanks though HB, you make my day.
Razor T McCutchn: Congrats, you're my one-hundredth reviewer person! Yea! Anyway, thanks for the offer of using you character and such. Glad you liked. :)
A/N: Okay, let's get through this before my hand gives out. Onward, to height and glory!
But did that mean I liked her? I couldn't be sure at the moment, and it really wasn't the time to think of such things. Stowing that question away somewhere in my mind, I decided I'd have to release and control a little bit of the Corruption if only to save Shepard. Releasing it shouldn't be a problem, but controlling it was an entirely different story. I'd barely ever been able to shut it down after I'd lost control and went into a Bloodrage- and that was with Shepard's help.
But I had to do this; and the only way I could succeed was by using a finite amount of the stuff in a constant flow- like a leaking pipe or some such. With my mind made up, I took a breath and concentrated, unconsciously flexing as if to brace myself.
Slowly, I began to release the blocks in my mind and body, allowing small leaks of Corruption to seep through. It burned a little and with my weakened body, I was worried it would be harder to control. Still, I remembered Karamu's scolding me before and fortified my mind against the influence of the Corruption as much as I could at the moment.
"What's going on here? What are you doing?" I looked over to Dick in the doorway, his eyes widened, watching as I increased the flow steadily, causing my eyes to change. I felt my nails sharpen and my teeth elongate- but I was still me; barely.
"Oh, nothing." I drawled, my voice faintly duo-toned. "I'm just escaping is all." I finished, keeping the flow steady and small.
"Stop! You can't do this!" he tried, watching as I broke free from the straps around my wrists. Next, I snapped the ones around my ankles to give myself some leverage. Lastly, I gripped the straps on my torso and pushed against the table, snapping them in half, releasing me completely.
The next thing Dick knew, I was in his face, grinning maliciously with a quirked brow. He stuttered and began shaking a little in the knees, seeing me take a deep breath of his fear-laced scent. It was disgusting in such a way that I was satisfied in knowing I'd kill him slowly.
"Torture and a captured friend used for leverage equals what?" I inquired, gripping his collar and lifting him a foot off of the ground. The Corruption made me feel so strong, and I was only using a small amount…
"L-let me go!" he grunted. I sighed before flinging him into a nearby wall of glass, smashing it to pieces and sending him to the ground in a heap.
"Wrong." I chided, picking him up off the ground again, sensing his fear as he struggled against my grip futilely. I brought him close and muttered into his ear, "You get a very pissed off Raegas." Then I smiled, smelling his fear slowly climbing- along with his falling attitude.
I suddenly flinched, smelling blood from somewhere in the ship; not Dick's though, it was too faint. I glanced around and spotted a door down the way, where the smell was coming from.
It smelled so… familiar.
I looked back to Dick then and saw him still struggling against me. It was annoying beyond belief that he refused to accept my power over him at the moment and that made it even harder to control the strong urges the Corruption was feeding into me. I just wanted to beat him into a pile of bloodied flesh.
Thinking that, I went to cock my arm backwards, ready to punch him at least hard enough to snap his neck. When I was about to release the punch onto his face though, a voice faded into my foggy mind.
"Fortify your will, guard you mind, elevate your being and turn your curse into a gift- your own strength!" Karamu always had a way with words, that was for sure.
Taking a forced breath and inhaling all of the scents I could pick up, I dropped Dick to the ground in a crumpled heap. He cried out in pain as he hit the shards of glass on the floor and I ignored him. I thought on whom that blood scent belonged to when it hit me;
"Shepard." I muttered, realizing she could be in trouble.
Without a second thought, I started running after the smell of blood, hoping she'd be okay when I got there.
…
"It's never as easy as you'd think it should be." I sighed, looking at all of the guards in the ship. They were all clustered in front of the engine room's core, no doubt onto my plan of blowing this ship to hell. Their stubbornness was fun, but the robotic-like way they moved and accessed the situation was boring in the least.
I ought to teach them a lesson, then. I thought, smirking.
"You wanna go?" I called gamely, challenging them. They stood still as stone with their weapons trained on me, agitating my natural primal instincts; this was going to be harder to control than I thought- all of these dark thoughts were messing with me enough already, now I had to worry over my instincts.
"Let's go!" I yelled, launching towards them.
They immediately pulled their triggers and shot at me, obviously not the joking types. I thanked the Corruption's enhancing of my speed as I shot towards the group like a bullet, clawing my hands to prime them. It was almost funny to see them come just short of hitting me with their own bullets as I zigzagged in my path, too.
Seconds later, I reached them and tackled into the middle of the mob, too excited to even think about caution. The two men's faces that got caught in my hands met swift ends when I squeezed their heads like grapes, splattering brains everywhere. I dropped their bodies and went to the ground as well, throwing a sweep kick all around to trip up those surrounding me. I jumped back up as they fell and kicked the faces of three guys with a roundhouse kick, snapping their necks and smashing their faces in.
Someone grabbed me from behind but I leaned back a little and promptly bent down as I pushed my hips out to shoot the guy over me, slamming him to the ground. Another shot me in the shoulder from an angle and grazed the flesh deeply, causing me to falter. I growled at the pain and remembered the knife still stuck in my side when it shocked me, apparently activated by my movement. It stunned me for a moment, giving a guard enough time to land a solid metal-encased punch onto my face. I grunted and stumbled back, feeling m anger flare at the action.
In response, I glared at the guard, seeing his visor was broken, like the one from before, and spit the blood out from my mouth. This asshole gave me those sedatives when he helped kidnap me.
"Oh, you're as good as dead, human." I muttered, smiling darkly, feeling my Vertoakan side take over most of the rest of my conscious.
I shot forward and gripped his forearms. I pulled him toward me and down, raising my knee to meet his stomach, making a strange sound as I felt his organs bust on the inside. Next, I squeezed his arms until their muscles practically popped and the bones cracked, making another loud noise. I then gripped the guard's neck and held him up, smiling at the pain I saw in his eyes; he also helped in taking Shepard. And that I would not forgive.
I jerked my hand to the side and thrust down, sending his skull crashing to the metal floor, killing him almost instantly.
"What's it like to be a Vertoakan?" a voice asked, curiosity prominent in their tone. I sighed and turned to face them, lacing my fingers together.
"In what way do you mean?" I asked, quirking a brow.
"Like, are you stronger or always smelling everything, or have quirks unique to the Vertoak… that stuff."
"We are naturally stronger, faster and more burdened than the species living here now. We are under constant threat of succumbing to the Bloodrage and losing ourselves altogether and with our violent tendencies dealing with battle, we usually fade as we grow older." I answered, not wanting to say too much with the personal subject.
"Fade?"
"Our individual personalities; whatever things that make us who we are, eventually disappear. That's why we have Soulmates and that's why we find such value in relationships of any kind- friendships, rivalries, families… love." I was quiet for a moment, feeling their eyes on me, the intensity causing me to shift.
"Of course, it's the Soulmate that preserves who we are and, essentially, saves us from that fate. It works vice versa as well, though with other species it's a little different, obviously. Even so, as advanced as we are, the primal urges and such remain a firm way of Vertoakan life." I added, frowning.
"What's wrong?"
"Fael vensca'al kihgrat vul karao bi vragat tul. Fael'tre vensca'al gudei jas bi illik tul." I said quietly, looking to the ground. After a moment, I looked to my companion in the room. "A faded soul is none but a hollow shell. A Soulmate is none but the gift of life." I translated, smiling at the nostalgic feeling of those words.
I felt myself dropping back into my body and blinked several times, knowing my mind was still slightly fogged by the Corruption. I shook my head a little and looked around to see I was still in the engine room, standing over dead bodies that littered the floor in small piles. I had done this… Even though they may have been bad guys killing them so brutally wasn't like me. Maybe this lack of mercy was a side-effect of using the Corruption in its natural form. If so, I was going to have to figure out some way to change it before I really used it for anything more than emergencies.
"I need to blow this core and find Shepard before it's too late…" I whispered absently, moving toward the control console nearby.
…
"Come… on… you… stupid… wall!" Shepard yelled, smashing against the front of her cell again and again, refusing to give up in the slightest. Her hands were already bloody messes and both of her shoulders were bruised all to hell, so now she was kicking the thing as hard as she could.
Suddenly, an explosion sounded on the other side of the room's door, blowing it open. Shepard paused and watched as a figure emerged from the smoke-
"Raegas…!" she uttered, shocked. How did she escape? and why was she in a Bloodrage? The commander wondered, still happy to see her friend was alright.
"Hey Shepard, what are you doing here?" the Vertoakan smirked, sauntering over to the cell. "First you run off after screaming at me, and then you come to rescue my sorry ass; what's up with that?" she said, trying to use humor to defuse the tension in the air.
"Raegas, I-" she was cut off with another explosion that rocked the ship, destabilizing her for a moment. Shepard winced at the pain in her ankle and rolled her shoulders, finally becoming fully aware of the pain in her body now that she knew Raegas was alright.
"Look what I found!" Raegas called, holding up a pass card to Shepard's cell, crouched over a dead guard's body. The Commander breathed a small sigh of relief and held in her excitement as much as she could, knowing she was finally going to get out of the creepy cell and escape.
Raegas then came over and swiped it through the scanner, opening Shepard's cell with a smile.
…
Before I could even move, Shepard tackled me with a hug, holding tightly. I stood there, confused and too surprised to do anything more. Honestly, it was pretty comfortable and I was shocked at the draw I felt toward the Commander. Why hadn't I noticed it before? Had I really been that blind from the beginning?
A few moments later, Shepard pulled back hurriedly as if just realizing she was hugging me. I caught her scent under the grime and stress, finding it… easy to take in. The smell of her blood was even tantalizing in its warmth…
I came back to myself forcibly then, realizing I'd almost slipped into the Corruption's influence once more to drink Shepard's blood like some beast. The idea repulsed my very nature- the Vertoak were a people of unyielding loyalty and protection; there was no way we'd ever want to do such a thing to a loved one.
…Did that mean I really cared for Shepard? In that kind of way?
I couldn't be sure…
Shaking my head to get out of it, I took Shepard's hands and raised them so I could see. Blood was smeared all over her knuckles as it seeped through various tears, causing me to clench my teeth. She was that desperate to save me?
The thought alone scared the shit out of me, but… it also made me feel kind of warm and all… tingly inside. Was that normal, or…? Maybe I was just over thinking things.
"I'm alright." Shepard said, pulling her hands away, slipping them from my own. Odd; I felt a loss when she did that. "Are you okay?" she asked, looking me over. I hid the blade stuck in my side and the wound in my shoulder by redirecting her attention to the gun I was holding and gave it to her. Good thing I'd pick pocketed the dead guard.
"I'm fine, considering I'm injured, exhausted and struggling to control an infinite power of darkness." I half-joked, offering a lopsided smile. Shepard went to fuss over me again, but I waved her down before she saw anything; we couldn't afford distractions at the moment, and that included all of my physical problems.
"Kidding, Shepard. But really, it's a long story and we need to get out of here. Come on." I said, heading for the door leading to the escape pods with Shepard in tow.
…
"The escape pods are just ahead!" I said, finding myself a little out of breath. Using the Corruption was a lot harder than I'd originally anticipated, but with the wounds and that damned knife in my side (that I couldn't get out) it was more than taxing.
Shepard and I ran through the doors at the end of the hall and saw the escape pods still in service. I scanned the room and saw through the shadows and flickering, failing lights even as they dimmed. Distant explosions from the core's meltdown vibrated the ship and shifted the ground under our feet. In the middle of it all, I saw the one person I hated the most at the moment. I saw the one person I wanted to beat to death with their own arms.
In the middle of it all, I saw that dick scientist, smiling in that repulsive way of his.
A/N: Again, I'm very sorry for my recent slowness; this hand is killing me. Honestly, I wasn't supposed to be typing or writing at all, but I was worried about you guys not getting an update, so… Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter- I even made it longer in apology for my absence; please forgive me? ;-;
On another note, feel free to review and tell me how much you love me to make me feel better, okay? ;)
