Kolyat lay on the ground, momentarily stunned by the force of the Brute snatching him up like a doll and slamming him into it. He could hear Siu and McVie shouting—the one asking if he was okay, the other probably shouting to the rest of the team over the radio—but his head swam, depriving the words of concrete meaning.

Pain pulsed through him as he tried to ascertain whether the impact with the ground had broken anything. Toes worked. Fingers worked…but some of his ribs burned, and every movement seemed terribly slow.

He rolled onto his side, still dazed, found his pistol some ten feet away. Clearly, he hadn't held onto it as he thought he had.

"He's still moving!" Siu shouted. "Kolyat! Get off the floor!"

"Krios! Off your ass and on your feet!" McVie bellowed, the sound almost lost in the Brute's roar.

Siu gave a yelp.

Kolyat found his friend, or rather his friend's hologram of himself. The Brute apparently either couldn't see Siu as well, or couldn't differentiate between the hologram and the human, because it charged the hologram full speed and ended up ramming into the wall behind.

Hands appeared under Kolyat's arms and helped him stagger to his feet. "Frag grenade was a good idea, but I don't think we can get away with another one," McVie announced, thumping Kolyat's back.

Kolyat gasped, the pain threatening to wipe his mind blank…but it cleared again. He wished the wooziness would also clear. "How's that restart coming?" he called to Siu.

"It's not!" Siu answered aggrievedly. "I can't work while this thing rampaging around!"

Kolyat brought his pistol up and put several rounds into the Brute's oversized body, for all the good it did. The Reaper simply recollected itself and turned on him. It was an ugly piece of work.

Two things caught Kolyat's attention: the Brute seemed to have trouble prioritizing enemies, as if its little brain just wasn't equipped to handle decision making and it had to decide ad hoc which opponent was most important based on which opponent did the most damage. The second thing was the girdling array of armored plates around its middle, one of which had a gap about the size of his fit between it and the adjacent plate.

Kolyat shook himself, hoping his head might clear a little, but that tiny gap, that crevasse in the big bruiser's armor, held his attention. It seemed to him the only way to stop the thing: from the inside out. "I've got an idea!" he said, aware that the sound was louder than it should be, because his audial wells felt funny.

"Is it a good idea?" McVie demanded over the bark of his rifle.

"Probably not," Kolyat answered quietly, producing the other grenade. If he could stuff the thing into the gap in the Brute's armor, he would be stuffing it into the Brute itself. He highly doubted the Brute was as tough on the inside as it was on the outside, and there was no way those massive appendages it thought were hands could get through such a tiny crack to remove the grenade.

"Whatever you're gonna do, do it quick!" Siu said shrilly, his own handgun joining McVie's.

"I need your hologram!" Kolyat called. "Something to get that thing's attention!"

Siu was silent, but the hologram appeared, blinking onto the battlefield a moment later. Siu stopped firing, but McVie, who seemed in the same general direction as the hologram, didn't.

Kolyat eased himself into the Brute's blind spot as it advanced on the hologram and the very real gunfire apparently coming from it. He was sure he could get in close, if the monster was sufficiently distracted, but he wasn't sure he could get out of the way once he planted his grenade—and he had never had to put so much faith in his shield as he was about to have to. Tough outsiders or not, even Reapers weren't meant to survive damage from a frag grenade going off internally.

Still, it was the best and only idea he had, and if he didn't do something soon, this one Reaper was going to kill him, and McVie, and Siu without having broken a sweat to do so.

Kolyat darted forward, aware of the less than agile quality of the movements involved. He pulled around at the last moment, not bothering to stop until he collided with the Reaper, his hand going through the gap in its armor, sinking in up to his elbow.

The Reaper let out a bellow, which was probably surprise and discomfort. Beyond the plate was something that smelled hideous, and which—only because of the force with which he'd struck—gave way under protest. All he could think of were how intestines coiled, and his mind was full of the picture of himself sunk elbow-deep into the things intestines.

Kolyat pulled his arm free with effort, but the Reaper knew exactly where he was. It caught him a terrible pivoting blow with its claw-like arm, sending him flying.

He wasn't sure what he hit.

-J-

What he was sure of was that when McVie brought him around, the man was covered in Reaper gore, Siu—similarly bespattered—peering over his shoulder. And there were more voices, the rest of Sheffler's team.

"He's awake!" McVie called.

Sheffler appeared a moment later, grinning. "You fed a Reaper a frag grenade?"

"…something like that," Kolyat answered, attempting to sit up. The pain nearly wiped his mind blank.

"Careful, Krios," Sheffler chuckled. "You stick with effective unorthodox explosions as a tactic and you'll end up making a career out of them."

Kolyat nodded. "How badly am I hurt?"

"Couple broken ribs, nothing that won't heal," McVie assured him. "But you'll be on light duty until the doc says you're good to go."

Kolyat groaned.

"Hey, at least no one's threatening to tell your auntie," Sheffler chuckled.

Kolyat could only assume he meant Shepard, and groaned again.