Matriarch Lantaya floated lazily on a cloud of indefinable sensations, drifting on the eddy and flow of a sleep so all-encompassing she could no longer distinguish between the sleeping and waking worlds. Her heart beat seldomly, and her body, frozen in stasis, had not moved in more than a millennia. The cryogenic fluid that pressed in gently on all sides kept the body from degrading, kept the muscle structure from atrophy. It also kept her mind dormant, her age, physical age at least, from increasing.
In theory.
In reality, the cryopods were designed with a very different biology from a Asari in mind. In a being with such a radically more advanced nervous system, the brain responded in subtly, and not-so subtly different ways. Cryostasis could practically halt the aging process, keep a body crisp, and clean, and a biological being suspended almost indefinitely. It could not halt brain function. A part always remained. In a human, it was the lower part, the deepest and darkest parts. The animal parts.
In a species so in tune with their nervous system as Asari, who could exercise conscious control over it for reproduction and to interface with natural biotics, there was another part. A wholly sentient, and logical part. A higher, lighter part. The mark of a transcendent, sophisticated species. This was especially true of Matriarchs, whose brains adapted over their long lifetimes to exercise greater control over body and mind. Increasing upon their considerable natural-born talent and power.
As a consequence, the part of her brain still functioning was larger than most. Still small, but far too large for comfort. Almost negligible in its capacity for rational thought, or self-awareness, or anything more complex than a single line of thought. Twisting, ephemeral and easily lost in the void of unconsciousness. But even something so small, so more akin to an insect than a sentient being, could still achieve some measure of self-awareness given enough time for the little processing power it had to worry away at the problem.
And inside Lantaya's immovable and immobile form, this sub-insectoid intelligence observed the abyss that existed somewhere below what constituted rational consciousness. What lay below the psyche of a rational, sentient species. What they had evolved out of and could once more return to when the largest part of awareness was stripped away. The thousands, millions, billions of years of framework that sentience had layered below itself in order to achieve its lofty heights. The Tower of Babel, realised as an abstracted truth.
This small, helpless intelligence observed itself in all its horrifying glory. It observed what fully conscious beings struggled to understand in their state of benign sanity. This substrata of psychic geometry was from an older time. Before consciousness needed the stability to support sentience and higher reasoning. It was so incomprehensible that entire fields of medical and scientific thought were devoted to plumping its depths, and seldom came away with any comprehensive sense of understanding. And over centuries this small speck of sentience drove itself insane in the presence of insanity, screaming its mental anguish into the void unable to turn away, encased in flesh, trapped in ice-cold fluid, entombed in cryogenic stasis pod.
It had remained this way for what seemed like an eternity, stretching backwards into what must have seemed to be the time before time began. So, when this insane speck felt itself expanding in scope and strength, it lacked even the context or the power to comprehend the meaning behind what was occurring. If indeed, such a small consciousness could make use of such a relatively complex concept as context.
Above the speck, a warm light blossomed into being. The consciousness of a sentient being, perfectly preserved within the confines of the brain by the cryogenic storage. It reached a roughly comparable size to the speck that still nestled far below in the depths, reaching something comparable to an insect. The insect became a small mammal, the small mammal became a large mammal. Control over bodily functions returned in a rush, as the ability to control the body was returned in a flurry of electrical impulses. Control of a mortal shell it had long ago lost any contact or comprehension of.
Cryogenic fluid voided from inside the pod it had filled for thousands of years, through gratings in the impeccable metal floor, and ancient lungs breathed their first breath of new, fresh air. Signals bounced up and down nerves like rush hour traffic on roads that had seen nothing but foot-traffic in years. It was an experience that could only be compared to the first member of a newly sentient species, as higher learning and reasoning burst into transcendent, scintillating beauty and semi-divine potential.
Then higher reasoning felt that small speck of itself approaching from underneath, long separated from the whole. It reached out eagerly to receive itself into and upon itself. Higher reasoning felt itself, it's subconscious compatriot merging with its conscious self. The happy reunion was not as happy as might be expected. Semi-divine consciousness was sexually assaulted by categorically insane subconscious in a merging of biologically based computational processes that could be adequately represented and visualised by tossing a boulder sized chunk of pure potassium into a river at a speed of Mach two.
Bricks were shat, blood vessels and capillaries burst, and lungs that had just filled themselves for the first time in thousands of years, now emptied themselves in a scream that tore strips of skin and flesh from the throat of the good Matriarch, and caused Courier Six, King of New Vegas, Conqueror of the Wastes, Long Walker, and human flesh aficionado to drop his coffee mug as goosebumps raised themselves on the back of his neck and arms. "What the fuck was tha'?"
As so often happened when he was extremely surprised, or indeed, effected by any emotion more extreme than usual, his accent bled through and caused him to drop some consonants. He was fine with this. But the fact that he had dropped his morning brew, he was not so forgiving of. He listened intently to the scream as his hand drifted towards the M1911 holstered offset to the small of his back, concealed by his long duster. The Courier, being intimately familiar with the very many variations and types of screams, yells, and war cries, spent a moment comparing this new and remarkable sound to his considerable catalogue of former screams of his acquaintance.
His feet set him in motion towards the sound as his mental process linked this sound with a similar ejaculation that had come from the mouth of a man he had known briefly in New Reno. Briefly, as in he had only been of the man's acquaintance for all of ten minutes before the man died. He had known him for relatively longer, if you counted the time it had spent the unfortunate soul to pass through his digestive tract. And the scream the man emitted as he died, being eaten alive by a hungry Courier, was at least part of the reason said Courier had become so adept at the quick slitting of throats. It had been piercing in its pitch and volume.
His long legs carried him quickly to his destination as he navigated confined hallways marked with alien glyphs and metal shelving, filled with all manner of oddly shaped junk. He finally arrived at a sealed metal hatchway and was astounded to realise that the scream had not yet petered off. His eyes brushed over the floating hologram above the door, an icon that denoted the section of the ship he was about to enter. His mind linked together the scream, it's source, the location, and his knowledge of his surroundings, and supplied the most likely explanation. "God fuckin' damn it all, Wanderer," He cursed, "Not even the common decency to wait 'til after breakfast."
He grumbled some more and brushed the open button with his calloused fingers. The entrance hatch rotated with a mechanical ratchet and hiss and retracted into the doorframe. The screaming, now unimpeded by the intervening obstacles, became even more thunderous in volume. The Courier stepped through, past the icon denoting Cryobay, and out onto the wide walkway that ran over one of the inside racks of cryopods. The inside racks were housed under the walkway so that the pods themselves could be inserted into the extraction frame and emptied via console. Racks of cryopods stretched from floor to ceiling, most filled with all manner of unknown mysteries. And surrounded by all of this he found the source of the commotion.
A small, blue, and abundantly female mutant rolling around on the grating at the foot of a recently emptied Cryopod, emitting a sound that seemed two sizes too large for her stature. Ordinarily, he would have entered and spent a good few minutes appreciating the view of naked, supple female flesh on display for his gratification, enticingly exotic despite, or perhaps because of its unusual pigmentation. But this was made quite impossible by the sheer volume of the sound assaulting his senses. This coming from a man who regarded moderation as a funny joke, and devastating explosions as an enjoyable evening activity. Right behind copious amounts of drugs and rampant fornication, or premeditated homicide. Sometimes all at the same time.
With his eardrums now developing the characteristic ringing that only became apparent once silence was to be had, he considered leaving and coming back with his Elite Riot Helmet, with all the advanced noise management built into its toughened exterior. Before he'd reached any decision on the matter, he met the eyes of the man who had clearly awoken the screaming banshee that was currently doing her level best to liquify his eardrums and cause them to dribble down his earlobes. The Lone Wanderer stood at the control panel for the cryopods in line to be uncorked and the contents summarily defrosted, utterly engrossed in his work apart from a quick glance up at the Courier as the clanking door announced his arrival.
"What's the story, Wanderer?" the larger wastelander enquired at a respectable shout. This remained unheard over the screaming. The Courier winced again for the Wanderer's benefit and gestured at the blue demon as if to enquire why this loud being was alive, and what he might be allowed to do to stop it being so. The Wanderer gestured back with a variation on Chinese Special Forces hands signals that he knew both of them were intimately familiar with, having read the special operations manual of the Red Chinese from cover to cover on many occasions.
"Affirmative, recording for intelligence."
The corners of the Courier's eyes crinkled in amusement.
"Intelligence?" He signed back.
"For research," the Wanderer confirmed, completely oblivious to how psychotic that seemed coming from a man who had just unfrozen a kidnapped mutant and was now recording her agonised screams for the purposes of study. The Courier, whose idea of dark comedy made most Russians grimace, barked out a gale of laughter. Unfortunately for him at the exact moment he started laughing the strange blue women paused to gulp in a giant, long overdue lung-full of precious oxygen.
The Courier found himself pinned in place by blue eyes that seemed shocked and outraged to hear laughter while she was reduced to screaming her guts out in existential agony. So outraged in fact that her extreme indignation seemed to have superseded her inclination to keep on screaming. There followed an awkward silence as his laughter petered off, he wrestled to bring his laughter under control. A more incredible feat than one might think, as the expression on her face and the comedy of inappropriate jocularity only added to his mirth.
His leathery face turned red, then purple, as he struggled to keep it under control. In desperation, he looked away from the aliens face, that looked for all the world like that of a scolding mother, eying him with disapproval. This proved to be a mistake. The Wanderer's perpetually deadpan visage, so comically out of place loomed before him, and with resignation the Courier pointed at the Wanderer and managed to choke out the words, "He started it," before bending over at the waist with his hands holding onto his knees for dear life, as he roared with unrestrained hilarity. Tears rolled down his cheeks from steel grey eyes screwed tight shut under long windswept grey hair, until they vanished in his salt and pepper beard.
The Wanderer, as oblivious to how inappropriate his companion was being as he was to how inappropriate he was being, just returned to powering down the newly emptied Cryopod. His mechanical digits swarmed over the physical and holographic control array with the precision of an automaton, as the Courier brought himself back under control and swept a hand over his face and into his long hair to clear the tears and smooth his hair back into place.
"I'll give it to you Wanderer, being around you is always massive craic."
He breathed out slowly, centring himself, calm once more. He turned his attention back to the strange blue mutant as soon as he was sure he wouldn't break down into paroxysms of laughter again. She was staring at them as if questioning their sanity. Or, indeed, questioning her own and wondering if the two odd wastelanders were in fact real at all, or just figments of her deranged imagination. To Lantaya, who at that moment was hanging onto sanity by a thread, it could go either way.
The Courier, rising now from his hunched posture was a tall man, much larger and anatomically different from the Asari she was familiar with. A veritable prize-fighter of a man, whose charming smile and silver fox hair made him appear mature and masculine to human women. To Lantaya, he looked like an aging primate with oddly patched hair, looming and menacing. But this was positively pedestrian compared with the Wanderer, whose views on cybernetic augmentation and enhancement clearly didn't make any allowance for aesthetics. It would be a mistake to say that he had more in common with a toaster than a member of the human race, as he was the wrong shape and didn't have a heating coil, but it was a near run thing.
It would have been completely reasonable for her to be terrified by their outward appearance alone.
The fact that she was in the throes of a psychotic break was the unfortunate deluge of gasoline on an already roaring forest fire. The Courier, ever perceptive, caught intimations of what might be going on behind her blue eyes, one that he noted with a casual alertness.
"You sure it's wise to be waking up strange mutants…..or aliens, all alone by yourself?"
The Courier considered seriously, for the first time, the possibility that she might not be a mutant at all, but an alien of some form or description. One he quickly dismissed. He looked too human for that, and he had seen odder things than her in the very many varieties of mutants and wildlife that made the wastelands their home. Perhaps she was a form of mirelurk? She certainly looked aquatic.
Or maybe even a sea spirit, like the tales of old that his clan passed around the campfires when he was as yet a child. Many clans and tribes he had known along the coasts of the Americas or Old Europa, spoke of sirens with the bodies of beautiful women, lying in wait under oceans blue.
"Any lifeform capable of challenging my combat capabilities unaided by technology would never have been captured and confined so long by the Zetan."
"So says the man who was abducted and confined hisself," The Courier replied with the playful innocence of a man who enjoyed poking and needling others when he knew he could get away with it.
"Affirmative," The Wanderer confirmed, "Then an escape was successfully effected, and the crew neutralised."
"Now ain't we a tough man," the Courier sassed back, despite the fact that it was largely pointless to sass the Wanderer, walking tin can that he was on occasion. Aside from his own gratification that is, and that was reason enough for the Courier.
"Still, you might let a man know when something interesting is about to happen? I came runnin' thinking some poor lass was being eaten alive by some beasty out one of the Cryopods. Dropped my morning brew and all."
"Operational effectiveness cannot be improved beyond a certain threshold," The Wanderer re-joined with all the personality and enthusiasm of a pebble, "Your collaboration is not required on this venture, and your biological form requires periods of inactivity for rest, recuperation and consumption of rations."
"When a comely mutant lass is involved in a venture, I very much do require myself to be involved alongside her," The Courier replied with a leer and a smirk directed towards the recumbent Matriarch, who shrank into herself and away from the scrutiny. It seemed that some expressions transcended cultural boundaries, as there was no mistaking the Courier's leer, or her expression of disquiet and disgust for anything other than what they were.
"Break my heart why don't you," the Courier quipped at her uncomprehending face, "You'll give a lad a complex with looks like that, lass."
Her only response was quiet tension, as his eyes roamed up and down her form in violation of all civilised social niceties. He had never been one for adhering to any other custom than his own. He had been a free spirit since early childhood, and as he grew older his inclination towards self-determination had grown, just as the ability of others to hinder him had shrunk. What resulted was a strange hodgepodge of traditions, idiosyncrasies, and customs that he had collected and cobbled together from fifty to sixty years of adventures on four continents.
As such, Lantaya had nothing to fear in the way of rape. She did not meet the criteria that his convoluted system of morality set aside to govern such things. His wandering eyes were simply the consequence of long years spent in the jungles of Africa and Asia, where many local tribes used clothing sparingly, and cared nothing for wandering eyes. They did, however, harshly condemn the wandering of hands.
Regardless, the Couriers' decision to advance towards her in such circumstances was a poor one. Ill-considered, foolish, and dangerous. He had been put so at ease by the Wanderer's reminder that the two of them were by far and away some of the most dangerous individual beings ever recorded by humankind, that he may have skipped some well-advised precautions. Precautions that the Wanderer, programmed with strict mission parameters and safe guards, might have suggested if his processing capacity had not been immediately reallocated towards shutting down the control panels and cryogenic subsystems, trusting in the Couriers' noted abilities in negotiation and combat to handle any situation with the recently unfrozen.
"But fair 'nough. Suppose she is just a tiny, little lass after all. Nothin' we can na' handle."
The Wanderers' Murphy Protocols triggered immediately upon hearing such positivity voiced out loud, subroutines urgently rerouting processing capacity back to combat functions to deal with impending disaster. He looked up just in time to watch a corona of purple energy swirl into being around the alien and fling the Courier bodily over the railings, into a rack of as yet unopened Cryopods, and ricochet off into the ground below. A stream of Gaelic curse words echoed up from below depths, as the Courier voiced his disapproval.
The Lone Wanderer shifted his gaze back to the strange being he had just defrosted, cybernetics eyes twisting and turning in his metal eye sockets. He switched through night vision, scanning dark corners for until-now unseen threats. He switched to thermal vision, noting with clinical detachment the fact that the blue being had heat radiating from the back of her head, at the base of the skull. Then through to the Electromagnetic scanner and watched the EM fields twisting and turning around her brain, and the distortions in the air around her outstretched hand. Finally, he activated the West-Tek Augmented Reality scanner, and regarded her with the unaffected calm of the machine mind, as information flooded his positronic brain.
Her damage threshold had soared to new heights, as her damage resistance remained relatively low. A force field of some sort, he concluded. On his belt he had a number of implements for the swift resolution of conflicts. He had tailored his loadout to fulfil the criteria programmed in the mission briefing for this operation. A singular biological being, low damage threshold and damage resistance, physically inferior and stripped of all technological equalisers. With his target now reclassified as possessing some form of personal psionic abilities, his weapons, consisting of spiked knuckles, a trench knife, and a sawed-off shotgun loaded with beanbag rounds, seemed rather anaemic.
He raised his hands, empty of all weaponry, and tried to look unthreatening. Or as unthreatening as you could look with coal black eyeballs inserted into black metal eye sockets, skin peeled off and eyelids cut away to prevent chaffing. Entire sections of coal black metal cranium exposed to allow access to maintenance ports and synthetic piping to hold fibre optic cabling. Criss-crossed with surgical scars on whatever natural skin was still left, pale and waxy in the bright lighting, while hair was kept perpetually buzzed down to prevent stray hairs from growing into the cybernetics.
His own mother would have been tempted to blast him with a flamethrower. And she had been a lifelong pacifist.
Unconvinced by his attempt at de-escalation, and more convinced by the feeling that she was becoming the main victim in a horror vid, Lantaya attacked. The biotic throw hit the Wanderer in the chest as he attempted to roll aside, lifting him off his feet and across the room, where he slammed into a flat metal wall with a terrific, resounding boom. He slid out of the massive dent his flying body had made in the wall and landed on his feet with a dull thud.
With deliberate motions, he reached behind himself and plucked the twisted metal remains of his only ranged, non-lethal weapon. The sawed-off shotgun, a modified version he had been given by the Capital Wasteland Regulators many years previously, was now a flat mass of compressed metal and wood pulp. When he was still human, this may have caused him some measure of sentimental grief at the loss of such a long-held companion. Now, he felt nothing as he tossed the remains aside.
The target was making ill-advised attempts at hostile action. His internal processor churned out, what to it, was the only reasonable response. It would have to be subdued. Forcibly.
A complex weave of synthetic and biological muscle mass tensed in preparation, skin churning as the body beneath shifted into specific configurations. Indestructible adamantine bones bore the increased forces generated by the unnatural flesh, as tendons and ligaments specially manufactured and calculated for this purpose, hummed like taut piano wire. And as Lantaya released another biotic throw his body dropped flat onto all four limbs as the Wanderer dodged under the purple projectile, pushing with his legs, and pulling with fingers digging metal divots from the floor. Propelled by his forward motion, he was up and sprinting in a split second, the world already slowing around him as his processor overclocked his perception of outside world into bullet time.
A sudden, overwhelming blitz had solved many of his violent encounters in the past, but unfortunately for him the Matriarch had a good few hundred years of combat experience of her own to rely upon, and while her mind might not have been in the best state, her muscle memory was still top notch. Swiftly manipulating the biotic fields twisted around her body to form a barrier, she moved her own body backwards to dodge the sweeping low kick that would have collapsed her leg in two as the force of the impact turned her kneecap to powder, snapped or tore all ligaments and tendons from their anchoring.
The kick made a clearly audible whistling as it parted air at blistering speeds, so quickly it would have thrown the Wanderer off his feet through shear centrifugal force alone, had he not pirouetted like a ballerina, launching a spinning kick that missed Lantaya's shoulder by a quarter inch.
He promptly had a chunk of his leg blown apart as the Matriarch responded with an as yet unseen ability, the biotic warp. Two conflicting biotic fields formed, warping metal and flesh apart with the extreme forces generated at their points of contact. And as they formed instantly at the target, with no warning beyond a brief flash of purple corona, he had no hope of dodging the attack. He landed with another satisfying bang of metal on metal, and Lantaya had but an instant to appreciate the short-lived feeling of satisfaction in her perceived victory before the Wanderer was rolling away, his weight still supported by what should have been an intractably severed limb.
By now, Lantaya's rational mind was catching glimpses of what was transpiring between her body, still functioning on almost pure stress hormone and instinct, and the metal clad demon from the depths of her most terror-inducing fever dreams. It responded to these glimpses by pumping chemicals into her bloodstream that increased neuro-conductivity in her nervous system, super-charging her biotics and brain function. This fight-or-flight response resulted in a massive biotic discharge that swept the Wanderer off his feet once again and sent him tumbling head over heels across the bay.
His processor crunched the numbers once more, and not liking what it saw, engaged the stealth function on his Chinese-made, personally modified Dragoon armour. As his body arched through the air like a frisbee, it faded from view aside from the rent section in his leg, which was quickly obscured as well by the activation of his stealth nano-bots.
He did not manage to stick the landing quite as well as he had managed after being hit the first time, but the wave of metal and miscellaneous junk caught up in the wave of biotic energy masked the sound of his armour-clad form tumbling down the walkway like the world's most expensive toboggan.
If anyone could have made out his outline when he finally came to rest, they would have been vastly amused to see how his feet were touching the back of his head, around which his black jacket was now firmly wrapped.
Still struggling with his jacket, he dived for cover, as Lantaya's heart pounded in her ears, and she wondered if she had imagined the brief glimpse of a heat haze moving from left to right across her field of vision.
Ducking away towards the deepest shadows he could remember in the Cryobay, where none but his own cybernetically enhanced eyes could possibly track him, he ran almost face-first into the Courier, who received the barrelling speed of the cybernetically enhanced super soldier into his wide expanse of chest muscles like a father being glomped by his over-enthusiastic child.
One meaty hand plucked the jacket from around the Wanderers' head as the other pulled him further into the shadows and behind a row of Cryopods, deeper into a dark recess in the bulkheads. How the Courier knew he was there was a mystery but needed no more explanation than it was the Courier who did it.
The wastelands most prestigious and famous mailman looked none the worse-for-wear from his unwanted and unscheduled flight through the air, his reputation for nigh-invincible endurance and a life charmed by whatever dark spirits the old tribal worshiped seeming less farfetched by the second.
"Little blue lass packs a punch, don't she just?" The Courier commented jovially, in a tone belying the violence in his eyes. The Wanderer laid a warning hand on the M1911 the Courier held in the hand that wasn't currently clutching a fistful of his tunnel snakes jacket.
"Take her alive," he signed to the grey-haired man. A moment passed, then the pistol vanished so suddenly back inside the Couriers duster that even the Wanderer almost missed its motion.
"Fair 'nough."
The Courier licked his thumb and smoothed one of his eyebrows absently, adjusting his duster with a flourish in order to make the high collar stand up straight. He peeked out of the darkness, at their guest who was now frantically casting around for the exit, wishing for nothing more than an escape from the nightmare she found herself in. The grey-haired tribal read body language like civilised people read books, from wild dogs to deathclaws, he could reach inside their souls and pluck meaning from the depths. His fingers brushed over a leather cord around his neck, upon which hung numerous fetishes and tribal icons. He smelt the wafting scent from the cutting of dried datura root, mixing with his own sweat, and felt the hold of his soul upon his body loosen.
"Well, you take a load off lad. I'll see if I can talk some sense into her."
The Couriers' bulky form eased itself out from the darkness and into the light. He felt the faint vibrations in the air, the feather-light footsteps of the Wanderer as the cyborg ghosted away from him through the darkness. He even imagined he felt the Wanderers' soul, twisted, and bent from the invasive augmentation of its physical form, whispers of his legend. It smelt like gun oil, metals shavings and the tang of chemical by-products, but the intimation vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Around his limbs and under his clothes he felt the lightest of touches, the spirits running wisps of dreamlike fog across the surface of his skin, making hairs stand on end and his nerves tingle. They called on him, urging him to take a few more cuts of the sacred datura and set them alight, to cut loose his soul from his body and drift away into the dream on clouds of fragrant smoke.
"Peace."
The words left his mouth like a sigh into the ears of a child awoken from a nightmare. The spirits stilled. He made no attempt to hide, combat boots striking the floor with smooth, graceful steps. His hands were visible, arms held outwards from relaxed shoulders, as non-threatening as he could contrive to be. This he managed to a more convincing extent than the cybernetically enhanced body-horror that was the Wanderer, whose appearance was immediately and obviously unnatural.
But there was something more to the Courier. He walked with the unconscious stride of a man convinced of his own goodwill, and happy to receive the same in return. His body seemed to be smaller, less intimidating, no longer puffed up with manic energy, or latent violence. His smile was the first breath of a spring breeze, his eyes the touch of summer sun.
It was convincing enough to have swayed some of the craziest, most murderous, or outright demonic denizens of the wasteland. Animals that were hostile to any other form of life in the wasteland other than their own, rolled over and let the Courier scratch their bellies rather than attempt to tear him limb from limb.
Men stopped and listened to his words in the throes of righteous fury. Those with nothing left to lose but their lives found meaning enough to carry on, despite the soul-crushing weight of despair.
He could reshape the past with his words, convinced those that what they remembered was an illusion, a fantasy.
The Courier had weaved such webs with his magic words that armies had fallen at his command, and with naught but an order he had spoken his world into being. No Gods, No Masters, save himself.
Catching movement out the corner of her eyes, Lantaya rounded upon him in a panicked rush, hand held aloft to unleash biotic fury as purple corona blossomed around her. What she saw was not the monster composed of metal and dead flesh, or the hairy savage creature that loomed over her with bright, sharp teeth framed with tangled and knotted hair.
The being approaching her looked old, radiating calm like rays from the sun. Searching eyes soft and free from lechery, a natural grey rather than the cold, unforgiving black.
"Now lass, you're all right. It'll be all right," his voice drifted through her ears as the smell of datura was faintly smelt in the back of her nose, "No-one's gonna' hurt ya. Yee can rest now."
It did not look or sound threatening in the least but brought to mind her own mothers from so long ago when they found her curled up on her side, the wetness of tears still yet to dry upon her cheeks. The expectation of a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders and an ornate mug pressed into her hands filled with pressed fruit juice.
The knowledge that everything would be all right, in the end.
"Peace lass, you're safe here. I swear it in sight of the spirits," the Courier said, using the same tone of voice he frequently employed to calm jittery animals. In her eyes he saw a great deal of fear, but very little comprehension of her surroundings or of what he said. He grasped now why she had acted the way she had, cocking his head to the side, and considering her movements and posture.
She was acting on instinct, and while instinct told you when an animal was about to pounce it also told you when the fight was over, the battle won.
"You've had a rough time of it lass," he said, calmly letting the words flow out, feeling his heartrate drop in sympathy with what he was trying to achieve, "The battles over, there's no need to be afraid of us now. I'm sorry for frightening ye."
The woman was still backing away, but noticeably more slowly. Her speed seemed to unconsciously match his own in the same way that a yawn spread, or a horse felt the mood of its rider, or how people in conversation with one another will sometimes copy their modes of speech or mannerisms unconsciously.
She hadn't seemed to have noticed that her hand was shaking, or that the purple corona had dulled, leaving her hand outstretched as if she was holding them back with her will alone. Or reaching out for help.
"I want to go home," she croaked, barely audible over her shaky breath and raw throat.
"I know, I know lass," the Courier replied, not understanding a word, but sensing through her body and through her voice that it was significant, "We're here lass, we're here to help."
And he meant it too. For a frightened animal not to read your intent, you needed to believe what you acted, and let that intent bleed into your body like drops of blood into clear water. The spirits also frowned upon the violation of oaths made in their name, within their sight. The datura had opened his soul, and they were watching from within and without, from before and beyond.
He slowed, and with her unconsciously mirroring his actions, still hypnotised by his voice, by his eyes, and by the faint odour of datura on the air, she slowed as well. He was closer now, and he could see the strength leaving her body, the crash after such an expenditure of nerves and energy approaching quickly. Tension was releasing from her body as her heartrate dropped back down to acceptable levels, and her spirit calmed. The purple corona of energy was gone from around her hand, which was shaking like a leaf in the wind.
It was at this point that her bare backside came into contact with a metallic, cold surface, with odd ridges, that made a pneumatic clicking sound, and depressed under her. They both halted at the sound, both his slow march forwards and her slow retreat backwards ceased in sudden puzzlement. Her head turned around through a dull haze of crushing fatigue, to see a Cryopod extend upwards from within the walkway decking, within which she could clearly make out an outline of a titanic being within the fluid, eight feet tall with muscular limbs; legs and arms thick like tree trunks.
It exuded a distinct aura of foreboding. The Cryopod hummed contentedly as it prepared to disgorge its contents.
Lantaya turned her head back towards the kindly old being, slowly. If this had been a Captain Cosmos cartoon, the animators would have added a humorous creaking sound for comedic effect. She found, not the kindly old being radiating love and understanding that she expected, but the Courier once more, who had bent over at the waist to look between her legs at the Cryopod and the switch she had unknowingly pressed, straightened, and tried to look like he hadn't also been getting an eyeful of her perfectly formed behind.
He shrugged awkwardly, as if to say, "Well, what're ya gonna do? Shit happens."
She responded with the dead eyed gaze and fixed expression of one too tired of everything now to muster an appropriate response. He sympathised.
"Allow me," He smirked as he placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her behind him, and importantly, away from the emergency release switch for the Cryopods. This she allowed, what fear she could still bring to bear now focused entirety upon the Cryopod, whose mechanical locking mechanisms disengaged in a flood of cryogenic fluid. The deluge dumped itself through the gratings at the foot of the pod, gurgling through pipes and sluices below to be reintroduced into the reservoirs.
The Super Mutant within, that had floated for some time in the centre of the capsule, now dropped to the standing position, its powerful arms grasping automatically at anything to help it remain upright.
Switching gears from understanding benevolence to extreme violence as easily as a man whose life had long contained an equal potential for both, the Courier wasted no time and stood for no ceremony. He attacked with the cackled cry of, "Wakey, wakey ya lanky cunt!"
The Super Mutant Overlord regained consciousness to a large human fist bludgeoning his skull directly on the temple, swiftly followed by an equal and opposite left hook striking it on the other temple. While these blows would have killed an ordinary, bog-standard mutant, driving shards of shattered cranium deep into vulnerable grey matter and wrenching the spinal column apart as the head whiplashed from side to side like a demented bobblehead, an Overlord was made of sterner stuff.
FEV induced muscle growth stripped Overlords of the dubious blessings of a functional neck. To such an extent that their most distinguishing physical characteristic was the fact that their heads were situated somewhere above their chests, but somewhere below their obscenely bulging shoulders. The first being perfectly natural, the latter being most certainly not natural, for those unfamiliar with humanoid anatomy.
The Asari present watched from the side-lines as the Courier savaged the imposing mutant in a way that should not be physically possible for a creature a full two feet smaller than the other. She sheer sound of the blows being landed on the green giant astounded her. They echoed around the Cryobay like hammer blows, swung with psychotic abandon.
The mutant, confused by its sudden defrosting, covered up its head behind long arms in an attempt to stave off the assault. This accomplished little more than the Courier switching his focus to body shots, slamming in uppercuts and left hooks with such force that the abdominal muscles ruptured in several places, and ribs crackled. With an agonised roar after no more than a few seconds of this abused, the Overlord charged, hoping to end the pain by tying its assailant up in its mammoth limbs and wringing the life out of it.
Rather than giving up and backing off from the threat, the courier gave up just a single limb to the mutants grasp, employing a rigid straight arm block with both arms to push the mutant back towards the pod. The maneuverer was a study in opposing forces. He was lighter than the mutant, he was weaker than the mutant, but he was smarter, and had better footwork. All the strength in the world wouldn't help if you couldn't apply it with traction and leverage. As the mutant struggled against the pressure, it's back impacted the interior of the pod with a bang. Now braced against a solid surface, greater strength told.
"PUNY HUMAN!" With a bellowed roar of anger and defiance, the Courier was thrown off. Now it was the Overlords turn to throw punches, muscles rippling across its back and pectorals. All it received in return was more cackling as the Courier ducked and weaved, delivering counter blows in lightning quick darting lunges, that met the mutants exposed body and jaw just at the point of full extension, maximising range and adding the forward motion of the mutants own punches to the force of the blows. The Couriers own knuckles crackled as the cartilage protested the forces it was being subjected to.
"WHY. WON'T. YOU. DIE!"
Overcome with a rage, the Overlord bent and tried to charged him down with its shoulder at the fore like a giant battering ram, and once more, the Courier demonstrated a complete lack of regard for his own safety. He met the charge head on before it could build up momentum, hooking his right arm in-between the mutants left arm and its body, receiving the shoulder directly onto his sternum. He could have dodged aside. He could have dodged aside easily and taken the mutants back, but he could still feel the vibrations of a pair of dainty, naked feet on the deck, the smell of her past the stink of enraged super mutant.
A promise made under the gaze of the spirits was sacred, after all.
His boots squeaked as he was pushed back, struggling to regain traction and arrest the force of the charge. They shuddered to a halt as the Courier grunted through the pain of a cracked rib and soldiered on through the pain. He pushed forwards again, grinding his aching sternum into the shoulder pressed hard against it, closing up the space between then so he could secure a wrestlers s-grip around the mutants' torso. Barely hanging on by finger strength alone as his arms stretched to their limit to keep the grip locked around the colossal mutants body, he felt a rush of anger as he felt the mutants free hand grasp at his long hair for purchase.
His mouth opened wide, and he took one of the green fingers off, along with the finger pad of a second in a single bite. The hand was pulled hastily back, but this only encouraged the Courier as his mouth filled with the tangy taste of Super Mutant blood, an acquired taste for ghastly scavengers who could actually digest the stuff. He had just such a taste, and his second bite took the mutants left ear off with a savage tug.
Blood spurted across his face in a warm deluge, as the screaming mutant beat at him with its free arm, sending more thick droplets of blood in wide arcs where they spread upon the surface of the deck, upon the control panels, and on the Cryopod. Some hit the Asari who still observed the struggle like a spectator at a football match, as of yet still undecided on a course of action. Idly, she thought that from this angle, it looked as though the grey-haired alien was ferally humping the giant green aliens leg. If it weren't for all the blood and screaming, the whole scene might be considered funny.
Hell bent upon bringing the fight to its conclusion, the Courier increased upon this resemblance by dropping down into a squat and adjusting the s-grip to a gable grip, hooking his joined hands onto the jutting pelvic bone at the Super Mutants hip. Then he extended his legs and torqued his body.
The Overlord puzzled briefly at the unfamiliar feeling of weightlessness that came with its feet leaving the surface of the floor and its body being propelled in an arc that reached its inevitable conclusion with the harsh crack of skull upon deck plate. The only thing that saved it from dying on impact as its neck instantly turned to powder from the extreme kinetic forces generated by such a throw, was once again its oddly overdeveloped shoulders. It was hard to toss the damn thing on its head when the shoulders kept getting in the way.
Nevertheless, the Overlord became in that moment one of the precious few Super Mutants to have been suplexed by a human being. Lantaya wisely snapping out of her fugue for long enough to throw herself backwards, narrowly avoided becoming the first Asari to be crushed by projectile Super Mutant.
Instantly the Courier moved to press his advantage but had to dodge the flailing limbs that almost wrapped around his leading leg. He felt the vibration of boots upon decking, the hint of gun oil and chemicals on the air, and instead of charging forwards, he stepped sideways to put himself once more between the blue women and the Mutant. He stood there, as the Overlord regained its footing, chewing on the Mutant's lost ear through a crimson grin.
His salt and pepper beard now had a thick coating of red that stuck the hairs together in lumps. The pain from his cracked rib was gone though. The flesh of his enemies had seen to that.
"I'M GONNA EAT YOUR ARMS… WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, HUMAN!"
"I'll eat all o' you when you're dead, mutant," the Courier growled.
From behind the mutant, a familiar heat haze coalesced into the Lone Wanderer, cybernetic arm cocked back with matte black, razor nail implants deployed into the ready position. The first swing cut the mutants left hamstring, dropping it down onto one knee. The second straight, plunging blow pierced straight through the mutants back, finally taking out its spine on the way through to its heart. The bloody limb burst outwards in an explosion of gore and fragments of rib cage, some of which were immediately smeared across the floor by the Couriers combat boots as he lunged forwards.
A knife appeared as if by magic in his giant fist, only to disappear once more all the way up to the hilt in the Mutants neck. The M1911 performed an equally impressive reappearing act, materialising just before emptying its magazine into the Mutant's maw, which was screaming soundless bubbles of blood and pieces of lacerated lung.
A confetti cannon of blood, bone and brain matter shot high into the air to rain down upon the three beings present, soaking them in foul-smelling fluids. The Courier held the pistol up to smell the wisps of gun smoke twirling from the barrels end. He sneezed suddenly and cleared his nose in a spray of snot and blood. "Fecker got up my nose, damn him."
There was an awkward silence, broken only by the morbid crunching of the Wanderer trying to extract his arm from the Overlords chest. The Courier and he were still holding the body on its feet with their respective weapons, but it had still slumped in death, wedging its cadaverous self all the way up to his shoulder joint. "Need a hand, Wanderer?"
"Assistance would be greatly appreciated."
Then the door to the Cryobay slid open.
"Hey guys, did someone drop their coffee out in…. the…. hallway…"
Former-Private Elliot Tercorien, late of the US Army, serial number 3477809, tailed off as he became the newest recipient of what was becoming the third awkward silence of the day.
Or was it the fourth, the Courier pondered privately? It was getting up there.
Elliott's wide, honest eyes ran over the charnel house before him. Junk scattered on the floor from wall to wall, left there from the waves of biotic energy thrown around by Lantaya. Blood, shards of bone and unidentified innards.
A stark naked blue skinned women with tentacles for hair, covered in a thick coating of viscera.
The Lone Wanderer, his leg still visibly knitting itself back together through a hole in his Dragoon armour, face impassive and unaffected by the devastation, peering out from behind the corpse of a Super Mutant he had his arm jammed through.
The Courier, still chewing on the Super Mutants ear, and demonstrating quite effectively why you should always do so with your mouth closed.
And of course, the Overlord itself, whose head by some involuntary motion of the knife impaled through its neck, or as the result of the Courier's warped sense of humour and dramatic timing, was also angled to stare at him through cold, lifeless eyes.
Occasionally, drops of blood and chunks of flesh sloughed from the massive exit wound and onto the ground with wet plopping sounds.
The silence endured for a few, agonising seconds as Tercorien goggled at the spectacle and tried to make sense of how all of this could have occurred since he left to have coffee with Somah. His eyes met those of the naked blue woman, and two beings, separated by species, culture, language, vocation, and age, found comfort in knowing that their was someone else in the room that looked just as lost as they were.
"Umm…I'll come back later."
The Courier smiled as he swallowed first bite of breakfast for the morning. "Appreciate ya, Tercorien."
The Wanderer finally extracted his arm with one final, visceral crunch, and the Overlord toppled face first onto the ground with a mighty thwap.
Lantaya promptly vomited.