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"Die, Human!" Yet another Vorcha snarled, barely armored at all and rushing her with naught but claws and pointed teeth, both bared to attack her.
Arms wide, it rushed through the door from the little vehicle bay and towards the stairs they were defending. Pyrrha met it, sinking to a knee and sliding under its clumsy, feral swipe and pivoting behind the creature. Her sword whistled through the air and the creature hissed as it struck true, hamstringing the alien and sending it tumbling back into her. She caught it on her shield and, with practiced ease, rolled onto her back and launched it back through the door in full force. It struck another snarling Vorcha that had decided to try its luck and, together, they were sent flailing through the door while she spun and pushed herself up with a hand.
Rising, she punched her shield forward and caught a third in the sternum. And while she couldn't be sure that Vorcha sternums worked the same way, the results were still as she'd hoped. Its snarl died in a hiss and it buckled over her shield before the force of her Aura backed blow hurled it across their little entry-way and into a wall where it folded in on itself and, dead or unconscious, slid into a heap on the floor.
A fourth leapt on her back, one claw closing around her throat and the other clawing uselessly at her back, but it didn't last much longer than the others. One of her hands closed around its wrist and she wrenched, the bone snapping as it was hauled over her and slammed into the ground. It snarled a threat but her blade bit down, punching through its shoulder and effectively neutering its ability to fight before running her fingers over the metal of its little vest thing and leaping back. Semblance motivated, the creature slid and was hurled away into the access tunnels, hissing loudly all the while.
"Raaaagh!" She leapt high and over the armored, charging Krogan and let it slam into the wall beside the stairs that led back up and into the base proper. Turning, the alien laughed, the booming sound intimidating and cock-sure as it blustered, "I've been wanting to get my hands on you since I saw your little fight. Now I get to show you how a real Krogan-"
Its words died in a pained scream as four swords shot into its side and wrenched it up, Penny, turning on a heel and almost dancing towards the alien. Pirouetting, the alien spun over her head and was hurled like a wrecking ball. A wrecking ball aimed straight at another Krogan, which was crushed against the wall with a wet snap and thunk. Neither got back up, laying in a listless heap beside the door, and Pyrrha sighed.
"So wasteful…" She thought to herself as she straightened and looked at the dead. "To die here…"
A Huntress' duty didn't end at killing Grimm, though. Criminals, fallen Hunters, and terrorists were on the menu as well. And so, ill as it made her and as much as she tried to merely wound and turn aside her enemies, she knew the eventualities as well as anyone else.
"My scans dictate that they are falling back once again, Friend Pyrrha." Penny reported, her hovering swords around her shoulders like a halo of colorfully stained death. Looking grim, she let her hands fall and the swords folded, sliding into her backpack again. "This is the twelfth attack we have turned back. A shame we can't pursue and seal the entrances to end this."
"If we do, they'll rush in and past whoever stays." Even Huntresses couldn't hope to simply stop them rushing by, and she knew they would try it. She and Penny had already repulsed one such attempt. "Together, we can keep them back."
"Just barely…"
"Yeah. Only just." Pyrrha nodded, twirling her sword in her hand and extending it into her spear form. Resting the base on the floor and holding it upright with her finger on the very tip, she forced a smile and went on, "But such is all we need to hold the ground and frustrate our opponents' desired advance."
"I hope so, Friend Pyrrha." Pyrrha gave her automaton friend a look, brows knitting in worry, and she flinched. Smiling wider than normal, even for her, and waved her hands between them to ward off her friend's worries. "I-I am alright, Friend Pyrrha. Merely worried, and disliking this manner of fighting. Battles against the Grimm and sparring with friends is far more gratifying."
"I think I understand what you mean, Penny. And I… Feel the same." She spared the dead around her a look and sighed, already exhausted. Luckily, the number of dead were few, and only those they'd been unable to repulse. Almost all Krogan, though, hurled against the walls to keep them from being overwhelmed by sheer weight of mass. "It's like fighting the Grimm…"
"Yes, as disgusting as it is to face them in such a manner." The android nodded, "And like the Grimm, they always come back.
Along with her words the android stepped forward, rolling her shoulders and flicking her wrists in one fluid, almost rhythmic motion. Her blades answered readily, floating under her arms as though she were winged herself. Like an angel, but bladed for dealing death rather than mercy. An angel of death, literally resurrected and sent to battle by an actual god of death and destruction.
It was almost funny, if not for the blood along the edges and the drumming of boots on metal and alien concrete.
This time, it was only Krogan who came through the doors, and two apiece. The Krogan hesitated for only a moment, but that was all Penny needed, her blades spinning into formation and blasting two with concentrated bursts of green energy. The aliens bellowed and charged, but only four of them took more than a few steps, the other two shuddering and collapsing in smoldering heaps, their faces and fronts melted almost wholly away.
A grim picture, to say the least, but not one she could dwell on at the moment.
The first Krogan bellowed as it reached her, heavy hammer raised overhead in two hands. The heavy weapon came down and she leapt, sailing high over the alien and hurling her shield into the soft meat of the top of its neck as the hammer bit into the concrete. The alien staggered as she landed and turned, spear held in both hands and used to brace herself as the second's slimmer, clearly industrial in nature, hammer slammed down on her. The force was enough for her to grunt and sink to a knee, but she didn't buckle, and she saw deep green eyes widen at that.
They really thought her fight against the Battlemaster had been faked, she supposed.
Raising one side suddenly, the weight shifted and the hammer slid to the side as she spun, punching the base of the polearm into soft flesh just behind the alien's crest. He snarled but staggered regardless and she lashed out with a hand, using her Semblance to rip the hammer out of his hand and hurling it into the face of the other Krogan as it turned. As it crumpled, groaning and unconscious, she turned to her last recovering opponent.
Only for it to buck to the side as loud, sudden gunfire carved into its soft side-head. Four shots there, right in the Krogan's weak spot - one of very few of them - it found the single track that led back to its redundant systems and carved a fist sized hole into tragically predictable results
"I heard you ladies were having a spot of trouble. Garrus asked me to come and give you a hand." The Commander said as she lowered her Carnifex. Looking over the battlefield as Penny hurled her opponent aside and twirled, dancing to flick her blades and clean them of blood, the woman whistled, "Looks like you were holding pretty damn well, though, if I'm honest."
"Holding, but not taking ground, Commander." Pyrrha sighed, calling her shield back to her and grimacing at the orange that had painted a full quarter of its surface. "Three doors, two fighters, we couldn't have held the room and sealed the entry-ways without letting them get in behind us."
"Not criticising, I get the problem." The woman nodded, walking down the steps and looking around her. "Gotta say, surprised you two were so… Ruthless. I thought you weren't the types to kill."
"A Huntress must protect people at all costs, and sometimes, fighting means hurting your enemies." Penny answered, rolling her shoulders and collapsing her swords into her pack while Shepard watched on, no doubt curious about what that was all about. "We avoid it when we can, but sometimes, spending time to merely wound or disable in a fight to save one life could cost several more."
"And you said these were not the kindly locals I feared facing." Pyrrha added, shrugging noncommittally and turning to the woman. "You said they were criminals tried and true, of the crueler and more dishonorable sorts. The kinds not deserving of as much sympathy as simple locals making a living. And ones we ought to make haste to deal with, now that we can, I would wager."
"Good point." Shepard nodded, replacing her half-spent thermal clip as she approached them and they talked. "Do you have ideas on our approach, Nikos?"
"I take the access tunnels here, you take the micro-tunnel over there, and Penny takes the parking zone. Whichever of us finish our areas first, " She'd have plenty of room to maneuver in there, she was sure, even if she did not like using her lasers so freely. Such would attract attention, but then, so would Legion, Shepard herself, and Pyrrha fighting with a spear, so such couldn't be avoided. "If you have disagreements, then now is-"
"Contact!" Penny shouted, turning to look towards the access area's door as a truly massive Krogan lumbered into view.
Decked out in bright red armor covered with somehow less scars than the Krogan's hide, the Blood Pack's leader glared hate at them and rolled his shoulders. Biotics crackled along his body and Pyrrha grimaced, putting herself between the Commander and the Krogan while it bellowed a challenge, "Little girl! How about a second fight with a Krogan Battlemaster? You did so well the first time, after all!"
"As if we'd be so-"
"I'll handle him, Commander. We don't have time for us to dally her any further." Pyrrha interrupted, striding forward and raising her shield. The Commander, swearing under her breath but not arguing with her, gave her a nod and she stepped forward, looking to Penny and nodding, "Seal the breaches and get back here. I will hold the line as a Mistralian ought to."
"Friend Pyrrha…"
"This is not like Beacon, I assure you. You needn't worry, I can handle this." She assured the concerned machine before Garm growled, trundling towards her. Luckily, the android listened, using her swords to punch into the roof and swinging around and across the room towards the vehicle bay.
"Your friends won't be able to break through my Blood Pack." The Krogan growled as he neared, slamming his fists together and sending blue energy crackling along the floor. Grinning, he added, "While you were thinning out the wages I had to pay, they were entrenching."
True to his words, she heard the crackling of gunfire in both directions and grimaced.
"They can handle themselves, don't worry about that." She assured the Krogan, flexing her Aura to take stock of it. Around seventy percent or so, if she had to guess. Enough to fight here, she was sure, with more room to maneuver than she'd had before. "As can I, more to the point. And you will find far more of a match in me now than I met before."
The Krogan's cruel bark of laughter turned into a bellow as he charged, shoulder down and teeth bared. Having learned her lesson about the power a Biotic could bring to bear, she dropped her hips and leapt to the side, turning it into a roll and pushing off with her hands to launch herself up and land back on her feet far and away from the Krogan as his shoulder met the steel of a crate beside the stairs and ruined it. With a flick to shift it, she raised her rifle and barked rounds into his armored back.
As expected, the rounds sparked off his Barrier, but her attack had the desired effect. Rounding on her, he charged again, and this time she held her ground. Literally.
Kneeling suddenly, she slapped her hand to the floor to touch the metal grating there and then lashed out and up, the metal answering in kind. Metal tore and spindled up like a thousand fingers and the alien's eyes widened as he tried to slow. To late, though, his massive frame bringing with it far more inertia than he could hope to stop, and his Biotics having fed the charge into something that only worsened his state.
The trap closed around him, ragged metal puncturing his hide in places as he slammed into it and, like a metal venus fly trap, it closed around him. Standing, she curled her fingers tighter to further tighten the proverbial noose, and the metal answered, roiling around him and cocooning him while he struggled and his Biotics sparked. The image was a rather twisted one, to say the least, the Krogan's eyes wide and feral and nothing else of him visible aside from blood leaking out of the intertwining steel of the floor.
"What the hell is this, you red-haired bitch?" The Battlemaster demanded as she ordered the metal to lift and move him, pressing him, trapped and helpless, into the corner under the stairs. She raised a hand and closed her fist and the Krogan groaned, blue sparking and sparkling around his head as she crushed him and he resisted for all he was able. "W-What the hell are you?"
"A Huntress, Garm. And someone that far out-matches you, as well." She answered simply, twining the steel over his mouth now while he glared hate and fear at her. "This," she pushed him back and the wall under the stairs groaned, "will hold you until the battle is over. If and when someone comes to free you, reconsider your chosen profession. And ensure that your little band of mercenaries knows not to get in the way of the Huntress again."
He, of course, didn't answer. Her metal made gag saw to that, as exhausting as it had been to wrench up several feet of metal out of the concrete had been. It was all a rather dramatic display but one that, she hoped, would keep the Blood Pack from hounding her the way killing him would have. If she simply killed him then his replacement would hunt her, for revenge or to prove his mettle, and that wasn't something she wanted to encourage.
Particularly not when she could simply trap him and leave him to escape later.
"Not everything needs to be a fight to the bloody death." She murmured under her breath as she moved to the door and manually sealed it, the heavy locks groaning as the thick, armored steel slammed into place.
"Nikos!" The Mistralian turned as the Commander rushed into the area, Carnifex in hand and no doubt hoping to help her. She paused, then, and looked around the room for a moment before murmuring, "What the hell happened here…?"
"I fought and captured Garm, a leader of the Blood Pack." And in the process ripped up half the room's floor and shoved him into a corner like some kind of demented metal spider. As a result, the room look like a bomb had gone off. But she elected to ignore that and press them to move on, "I trust that your path went well?"
"Yeah, nothing I couldn't handle." Pyrrha's eyes landed on a pitted scorch mark just under one of her breasts and the woman huffed, brushing a hand across it and shrugging. "Armor didn't breach. Don't worry, it happens. We should go and help your friend before she gets-"
"I am back, Friend Pyrrha! And I am successful, the Blood Pack forces have been routed and the access door sealed." The little android called as she skipped into the ruined room and looked around, mouth a little 'o' of surprise as she approached them. She noticed Garm, eyes all that could be seen now under the cocoon of metal, and waved at him. "Oh my goodness, Friend Pyrrha, but you really did go all out."
"I learned better than to try and actually fight Biotic Krogans." And at least wherever and whenever she could help it, she'd not bother. Easier to avoid or trap them, really, and far less costly in terms of time and Aura. "As our objectives are all completed, we ought to return to Archangel's side, no?"
As if on cue, the building shook and the Turian's voice crackled in their ears, "Blue Suns are making a move! They're coming in through the damn windows, floor one and two."
"Son of a- Zaeed, come in for air support right now. Enemy gunship in the air, get some fire on it. Once we clear out the infantry, prepare for rapid-exfil." Shepard ordered, turning and taking off with the two women on her heels. Talking over her shoulder, she ordered in rapid-fire, "Nikos, Polendina, you two take floor one while I reinforce Taylor and Archangel on floor two. Clear it, and come to support us and wait for pick up."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Got it!"
Together, the trio barreled out of the stair access on the first floor, and stepped into a war zone. A dozen of the blue armored mercenaries swarmed the wide, open room, spraying fire at the window of the office up top while Biotic fury rained down. An unfortunate woman lost her head as the Commander closed with her, Omni-Balade glowing hot as she ran by and ended her, but other than that the woman left those downstairs alone.
A fact they quickly noticed, turning and falling back and away from them to cover. Cover that wouldn't, in truth, matter.
Penny was the faster, sweeping forward with her lasers propelling her small but dense form. That density was soon discovered by a veritable bear of a man who she leapt into at all speed, feet planting in his chest. Blue Suns armor wilted under her sheer force and mass and he was sent flying as she bounced up and back, spinning in the air and lashing out with her blades to cleave apart a pair of Vindicators held by shocked mercenaries. One drew a Predator in the same moment his weapon was destroyed, but on seeing a trio of sword punch into his gut, the other turned and fled.
Now was Pyrrha's turn, and she made good use of it, launching forward to land on the low table and punching the rim of her shield into the woman taking cover there's helmet. Glass and steel shattered and the woman reeled, but a boot to her chin sent back and unconscious, slumped over the arm of the couch and safely not a problem for her anymore. She grunted then as rounds punched into her chest and sparked of Aura, the woman rolling to the side and collapsing on the ground for cover.
Smiling, she raised a hand and flicked it, hurling the metal-framed table through the air and crushing the trio of soldiers attempting to rush her under its weight.
As she rose, another massive mercenary slammed into her, belting a punch into her face faster than she could blink. The blow did little, though, aside from make the mercenary hiss in pain. Leaning in, she belted her own punch into his stomach, using the rim of his shield to force his breath out of his lungs. He crumpled over her shield and she snapped out, blade cutting across his chest and carving a furrow into his armor to make a point before snapping the rim up and into his chin. His head snapped back as he sagged as a long blast of green energy fried the last of the mercenaries, and finally the gunfire went quiet.
At least for a moment, before something roared and the building shook, and a woman was hurled over the edge of the window overhead. The tan skinned woman hit the ground and groaned, looking up in time for Pyrrha to knock her out.
"That damn gunship is keeping our ride out and away." Shepard called down, giving them a look and then pausing, as though considering something for a moment. Finally, she spoke, "I won't ask what the hell those energy blasts are, now is not the time, but can they ground that gun-ship, Polendina?"
As it turned out, she could, and the Mistralian was tasked with covering her as they stood in the open bridge area outside the building. Supposedly, she'd been meant to fend off rushing mercenaries while Shepard, Vakarian and Taylor. Instead, she'd simply used her Semblance to raise the metal and attached concrete and seal the hole. A far more effective and bloodless solution than simply beating down or killing anyone that came her way, she believed.
"I am ready, Commander." Penny reported once she was sufficiently prepared, kneeling in the open and with three sets of her little swords spinning in orbit around her head. "My energy blasts are charged for anti-armor usage, and if you have it brought around to me, I am confident I can eliminate the gun-ship."
"Bringin' it your way, tot. Don't fuckin' miss, either, we won't get a second shot at this little play of yours." The mercenary's gravelly, old voice answered in place of the Commander's own.
It took a few minutes before the shuttle came by again, screaming overhead and smoking from a hit to its side. A moment later, they could hear a second set of engines. This one was a pitch deeper, and thrummed evenly unlike the shuttle. As the gunship rounded the corner and came towards the Penny hummed gently as he swords begin to spin more and more rapidly, until the edges cut the wind so sharply it whistled. At a point the gun-ship crossed that only Penny understood or saw, the sword began to glow and long blasts hissed out of them.
The first went off course somewhat, carving through one of the engines but doing little aside from cripple that. The second and third, though, struck far more truly. One carved a long furrow along its stomach that smoked and sparked with fire. And the other struck in the cockpit itself, coring the machine and sending it tumbling as it screamed overhead and fell away, deeper into the bowels of Omega's forgotten districts.
She murmured a silent prayer that the wreckage would not land on anyone's home below and sighed as the shuttle returned to at last pick them up.
"Who the hell decided not to tell me the fuckin' midget had a GARDIAN hidden down her trousers?" Zaeed demanded as the doors opened and they began to load in, tired and dirty.
"A conversation we will all be having back on the ship." Shepard assured him as she fell into her seat, giving the two women a look across from her. In a terse, clearly curious but angry at not already knowing, voice she added, "We have a lot to talk about, turns out. You two can do some crazy shit."
Pyrrha only nodded, having fully expected that sort of conversation to occur at some point. Luckily, it at least came now along with very much impressing the woman. Better now than never, she supposed...
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Mild point of clarification, and I won't expound MUCH on it, but here you go.
Her issue previously was that she knows GOOD people enlist with the mercenaries, too. But with the clarification that these are not those kind of people, she would only really try to avoid casualties, not refuse to kill outright. She'll never be the 'Yeah, lol, I got fifteen kills!' kind of character. But if in a fight she has to stab someone to protect her friends, especially knowing the Reapers are a thing, she will.
Also, yes, sparing Garm will have consequences.
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Frosty Chops :
Glad you enjoy it! Big ups to Espa for Requesting it, as always.
Hotshot 6 :
Yeah, no, basically.
Team JNPR (Guest) :
A thousand and change year old Battle-Master that hits harder than any kind of Grimm is EXACTLY the kind of enemy to showcase how NOT indestructible she is. To note, though, here she bests normal Krogan with relative ease. In Mass Effect, Biotics are a force multiplier.