Ty:
I stood across from Hanako, watching zeroes line her entire body, spreading everywhere until almost every inch of her was covered before they began to move away. Every single zero that coated her body slid all the way to her chest, gradually combining to make a single giant blue zero. All the while her body was covered in a peculiar layer of white, transforming her from a girl to a bland silhouette without any discernable features other than the edge I could see surrounding her.
"Shit, she's removing all programmed barriers. We won't be able to fight her physically in a second." Saren said, appearing in front of me. "You need to do something now."
I looked at him but I couldn't think of what to do or how to go about this, there was no plan or possible way for me to think of something to counter it. Even with all my power, I was frozen by these thoughts and a wash of failure was over me, no matter what I do, I could never beat her.
"What the hell are you doing!? Improvise dumbass!" Saren screamed, his words immediately bringing me out of this wash and pushing me to move without thinking.
At full speed, I sprinted at Hanako with my fist ready and slammed it into her once I was close enough. The force collided with her cheek and knocked her back into one of the nearby chitten plates, giving me a chance to pin her with my leg. I then started slamming my fists across her head, doing something, anything to make a difference and to my luck was able to watch the white started to retreat.
I didn't or couldn't stop as I hit her over and over, something deep inside of me pushing my instincts forward. It wasn't rage or anger that drove my punches but something much more dear, more precious than anything else Tears streamed down my face during the entire attack, drawing blood from my enemies mouth and causing who knows what else for damage, not even pausing until suddenly my fist slammed so heavily against her and that her sprayed blood all over the chiton she was pinned against.
"Why… Did you… stop…" She suddenly asked, blood pouring from her swollen face as one eye barely cracked open, gazing up into my 'something' eyes as she coughed out another small batch of blood.
After hearing her words, I raised my gloved hands up to my face, shaking as I saw they were covered in Hanako's blood. "I… I didn't want to hurt you... "
"Then why… didn't you kill… me… I am in… pain with... every breath…" She said, red fluid spraying from her mouth every time she forced out more than three words to inform me about what I had done.
Anger suddenly filled my veins as I realized what my subsided Rage had caused, creating an increase in emotion pumped my blood rapidly through my veins. Both of my fists slammed into the chiton beside her head to pin her head between them and then, my mouth began to move with words I never knew that I had within me.
"We are all in pain! Death isn't that answer, though! It's a copout to accept it before pressing on because… because… Even pain is a god damn gift to us all!" I raised my fist and slammed against the chiton again to signify my point. "Pain shows us what we are doing wrong so we can stop! Pain shows us that we can still feel even when we don't think we can! If you keep feeling pain then it's your own damn fault and killing yourself destroys any chance you have of pushing past the pain and being happy!"
Hanako looked up to me with her only eye that wasn't swollen over as tears began to run down her face for a reason that I wasn't aware of, looking so powerless and weak and somehow I believed that I'd gotten through to her. That was until her legs came up and she kicked me away from her, forcing me onto the ground for reasons unknown to me.
I was up before she could get on me but she ran further into the ship instead, down a path I didn't know. "Goddamn it, wait!"
"Don't go after her, Ty. It's obviously a trap." Saren warned, but I didn't listen to him at all.
Instead I gave a smile before sprinting down the path she had taken. There was no stopping now as my goal was not going to be slowed or halted by someone who claimed that they wanted what was best for me. This was something that had haunted my dreams for the last couple weeks, warning me about outcomes and failures that I would need to make right if I was going to be a hero.
"Hanako! Hanako, don't run!" I yelled as I came to a cross section, stopping for a second before hearing some footsteps from the left.
"Get away from me!" Her voice echoed up and down the halls.
"Why are you running!? I mean I get why you're running but you don't have to! I won't hit you anymore!" I hollered after her, hoping she would trust me.
I kept running after her, trying to catch up, but she was faster than I. Eventually, her echoing steps were lost in the maze I had sprinted into and left me in the dark as to her true location. I glanced back to the path I had taken and sighed when I realized the doors closed had closed behind me the collectors were trying to push me toward something and I felt I knew exactly what it was as the hallways were beginning to appear vaguely similar to the same ones I had beencarried down to be experimented on.
"Are you seriously trying to lead me down there?!" I asked, trying to see if Hanako would hear my accusation.
There was no answer from her or anything, leaving me alone in the dimly lit hallway, at least that is what I thought. "We need to find a way backward."
I looked back to see who had spoken, only to see Saren leaning up against the wall, how he got there was a mystery but at least he was a familiar face "Looks like the only way to go is forward."
"If we go that way, there is no coming back. What if you break?" He asked, challenging me to answer him.
"I won't." I said, trudging forward with the intent of clearing the trap and returning to the ship.
"You need to stop." Saren warned, starting to appear every couple feet after I walked past him. "You don't have a plan or a way to move forward."
"Yeah I do,and that's by going back to where my life really started to get fucked up." I told him back as I walked into an open chamber and finding the bridge which appeared shorter than I remembered. Though, in the center was a large pillar I had seen before, but for some reason it was destroyed, almost as though something had attacked it.
"This isn't where it was, Ty." I walked through him this time to show I didn't care about what he had to say, I was going to finish this now. "God damn it, why won't you listen to me?"
"Because, it's my life first and your life second. I make the choices." I explained as I stepped up to the rooms center, taking a moment to look around before shouting aloud"Well, here I am! Who's gonna jump me?"
Nobody came to fight me or attack for as long, There were distant sounds of gunfire and fighting, but otherwise there was nothing. I knew it must have been Shepard pushing back to the ship, and it would be easy to catch up with a simple glitch jump, however there had to be a reason why I was led here, I just needed to find it out before escaping.
"I think the trap wasn't to jump and attack you here." Saren said, walking in from the edges of my vision, turning slightly as he pointed at various spots in the room. "Look, they've closed off every glitch in this room. I think the point was to trap you somewhere far off from Shepard so you can't make it to the Normandy."
"Yes, but they trapped me here so it's obvious that they want to keep me alive. If that is the case then I should try to screw with them here." I said while walking towards the edge, looking over it with a smirk as I knew there was still another way.
"Don't you dare jump from here." Saren said, pointing at me like a father scolding his child. "There is no way you could survive a jump from this high."
"Bitch, I can turn my armor into other video game armors. We can totally survive this." I said, searching my mind for a new armor I could to use to get down from the bridge relatively unharmed.
"That's not a good idea." Saren said, scratching his neck in thought. "For once, lets just get a plan ready to his thr gr-"
I stuck my arms out and let myself drop from the bridge before Saren could finish his idea cutting him off as I did not want to listen right now. The shock of the fall immediately made my breathing intensify and it quickly became difficult to see as my armor's face mask fogged up, meanwhile my suits internal body sensors couldn't adapt to my sudden actions and left me to pick out the vague shapes flying by my head through the white haze beyond the tip of my nose.
I didn't worry about my obscured vision as a collector flew up from a small hole near the bottom, rapidly closing the distance between us to reach me during my quick descent. It was thanks to the classic harbinger glow that I was able to see it approach and allowed me time to prepare for an attack. Just as we started to get close I took a deep breath and focused on overclocking my mind, improving my reaction time so it like every second was an hour.
Slowly, we flew straight at each other and he stuck his arms out to grab me while I threw my arms to either side, I started to spin to give myself just the right about of torque to keep from being grabbed by the collector. I felt his long and sharp claws rake against my armor and small sparks few in every direction, the resulting glow provided just enough light for me to pinpoint it's feet and quickly take hold of them with my hands, preventing me from falling to my death.
It was immediately apparent that the collector could no longer fly with the excess weight as once I took hold ofhis feet, we immediately began to sink like a stone. "Why do you continue this folly? You cannot escape and the damage from the impact will leave you broken on the ground. We will still have you."
"No you won't!" I said, depolarizing my visor so he could hopefully see my smirk at his suggestion. "If that was the case then you would have sent more collectors to come to pick my broken body off the ground. In fact, I bet that you're having them all hang back and wait for me to land so that they can start ripping me a new one. You're just here to try and convince me to give up and just stay on the bridge to avoid the fight."
"Wha- How did you-"
"And next you're gonna say, 'We will have you, no matter what'!" I said before letting go of his legs and falling again.
"We will have you, no matter what!" Harbinger replied as it stopped midair, confused about what had just happened.
"Ty, activate an armor now!" Saren yelled in my head.
I obliged him by doing as such and spread my legs out wide so my armor could morph around me, transforming my inferno armour into a set of t-51b power armor from Fallout 4 that immediately yanked me down and smashed my legs into the floor with enough force that it caved. It didn't seem like the collector's chitinous vehicles were necessarily made for carrying heavy equipment given how easily I broke through and that might have been my ticket off the damn thing.
I luckily landed on my feet thanks to the autocorrecting power armor, completely stable, unlike the chitinous debris crashing down from above. Once I had adjusted to solid ground, I began to look around, only to find a plethora of collectors now surrounded me. "Wow, I called it pretty well actually."
They all swarmed me within seconds, but I had a little present ready for them and thankfully didn't realize it. From my back, I ripped off a collector beam rifle I had 'collected?' and started strafing it across their lines, cutting through their bodies easily with a brilliant display of burning energy. The line front line was decimated by the first blast and sent a number flying back into their allies. Though it wasn't enough and I didn't know what else to do, so I charged straight into the army and let my power armor did the rest of the work.
The t-51b armor was a literal bulldozer, tearing through their ranks like a warm knife through butter along with protecting me from any and all bullets that flew from my flank. Unfortunately it was tiring to run constantly in the thing and I had to hope that my transformation timer wasn't running out any times soon, it usually lasted ten minutes but had run out a lot sooner when I used it too often.
Three loud beeps suddenly rang in my ear and I looked at the hud to try and figure out why. As I glanced down, it immediately became obvious why as my heads up display revealed my left arms armour plating had been destroyed. It worried me greatly as I didn't know what would happen to my arm if I transformed my armour back in it's condition, but I didn't dwell on it as there was no time.
I came around to another a glass hallway and drove my shoulder into the wall, smashing through it and dropping another ten stories. This time, I landed without any Collectors around, but there were still many chasing after me. "Alright, at least I don't have to bulldoze those guys anymore."
"Don't think, run!" Saren yelled, pushing me forward and off into the dark hallways ahead.
Not long after I had darted further in, I felt my armor shift and myself lower to the ground as the taller t-51b returned to my usual set of inferno armor. I glanced at my arm to see what damage had been and saw the metal plating was gone but the joints were still intact and underarmor still sealed, meaning If push came to shove I could still launch myself into space to get away.
"C'mon, think think think think-"
"Quit saying it that and just do it. Here's what I need you to do." Saren's voice resonated in my mind. "Call EDI, tell her to have the others meet you outside the collector ship. We can leap into space and have them grab us so we have an escape route."
I followed his instruction and called while I ran down the winding hallways. "Hey… EDI… I need you… to tell the… others to… pick me up…"
"Negative, Ty. We do not have time to pick you up with how the collector ship is activating. You will need to find some way to return to the shuttle by the time that Shepard arrives." She said, in a cold and calculating voice.
"Do the math! Do I have time to do that!?" I yelled over the mike, finding enough breath to do it.
"...No."
Her words created a moment of clarity as I realized I did this to myself and, I was strangely okay with it for some reason. Not okay that I could die or I was going to lose everything here and now to the collectors, but I was okay knowing I had to make some sort of final stand here.
I had to show the collectors they could try all they wanted to capture me, but my spirit was and would stay unchainable. Knowing this, I flipped around in my spot and threw my hand up to point at the oncoming swarm, they were too close to aim so I just started unloading everything I had on them. Data Purges fired off like bullets from a minigun with a release so rapid my arms began to flail wildly around , so much I had to put considerable effort into to keeping them under control.
The more and the faster I tried to fire, the hotter my arms felt and soon I wasn't even firing data purges anymore, it was all one continuous beam that launched from my hands and slammed into the onslaught of enemies. They all fell back like they were dominos getting hit with a fire hose, collapsing and tumbling into death. This went on for a total of five minutes before I somehow managed to cut my beam off and see I had been able to squash most of the bugs against the far wall.
More would of course flood in from around the corner to replace every single one I had killed, forcing me to turn around and start sprinting again. My legs were beginning to stiffen from all this continuous movement and my right side was killing me, each step felt less like I was running and more like I was shaking apart at the seams. There was no way I could keep going for much longer and they were hot on my heels, meaning if I stopped for even a second… then it would be all over.
"Ty, can you hear me?" Kasumi asked over the comm.
I couldn't answer her so I did the next best thing, splitting my focus just enough to create direct messages I could send to her via omni-tool. In the messages I told her everything that was going on and how screwed I was, I even mentioned my idea of leaping out into space so they could come and get me without too much difficulty.
"Ty… We are at the shuttle now and the collector ship is taking off. From where you are, EDI says that there is no way you can get out of the ship." Kasumi informed with horror, sounding like she was trying to find something to say something more but couldn't given how surreal the situation had become.
"Don't listen to her!" Another voice came in over the comm channel, it was Layla. "Ty, you've been in worse situations than this and figured your way out. Just let go for once and go nuts. There is no repercussions here because the collectors are cheating as well."
I looked behind me and thought about what she said, but I couldn't say anything back.
"Just, just…" Kasumi said, showing that she had no idea what to say.
"Ty, quit being a pansy and fucking shrek these motherfuckers!" Danny chimed in, I could tell he was smiling from the chipperness in his voice. "All you gotta do is get out of there and figure something else out on the fly. You know, improvise!"
That's when I remembered, remembered the move I had used before to make a wave go through the ground, I had never used it before now because I figured it was a surefire way to get me thrown into another game. Of course, given my current situation I wasn't left with much other option and so I thought there had to be a way I could morph it to my situation and slip through the ship faster.
