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Requested by :

Espacole

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"Kasumi, what is-"

"I'm going as fast as I can, okay?" The woman sighed, kneeling in front of Legion's cage and working quickly at a holographic interface twice as big as her head was. Fingers flying over the glowing thing, she growled, "I'm having to make programs and punch them in on the fly. That's not exactly easy."

"I… I understand." She sighed, pacing behind her anxiously while the woman worked. "I apologize, Kasumi, I'm just…"

"Worried about your, uh, friend." The thief nodded, leaning forward to slap a little black brick about the size of Pyrrha's middle and index fingers put together against the machine and then returning to her console,"I get it, I do. Don't get how you're friends with a Geth, but hey, not my problem to- Ah!"

Pyrrha opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but was cut off by the lights overhead flickering faintly. As they settled, the machine entrapping her Geth companion shuddered and hummed, and then fell silent. As its lights winked off one by one, Kasumi smiled and stepped back, eyeing it curiously. After a few moments, though, that smile faded and she hopped up onto the cage, yanking at the large locks fastened around each of Legion's limbs, chest and neck.

"Problems?" Pyrrha asked when the thief grunted and pulled on them again.

"Yep." Kasumi paid her a look, hummed, and hopped out of the way. Pointing at one of the locks around Legion's shins, she explained, "These are powered to move by remote order, but the actual locks are mechanical. No power, no unlocking them, but if I power it on then the internal motion and alarm systems will trigger if I unlock them."

"You can't deactivate that?"

"I'd have to switch 'em off and synthesize the standing green-light it's sending out to do that all at the same time." Kasumi explained quietly, "As is, I have the green-light powered by an Omni-Cell. Unless it gets an alert from the locks or motion sensors, which is hardwired so I can't disable that without tools to cut this open, we should be fine."

"Should?"

"Should." Kasumi nodded, "I didn't come prepped for this, tool or program-wise, so 'should be' is as good as you'll get."

"Bilk programs?"

"Run of the mill bypasses, work-arounds, access spindlers, system crawlers- And you have no idea what I am talking about, so not gonna keep going." Kasumi sighed and shrugged anxiously, ". Point is, I should've prepped more generally instead of just prepping for Hock's systems. Anyway, we need a way to get these open."

"We can destroy them, yes?"

"Yeah." She nodded, raising an eyebrow, "But I don't even think your Krogan friend is strong enough. Unless you have explosives, but they might damage the Geth."

"Legion." Pyrrha corrected, setting her weapons aside and stepping up onto the cage. "And worry not, I'll handle this."

Climbing over her friend, and using Kasumi as a guide to find them all, she felt out each of the locks and laid a hand against them. There were a lot of them, three to each leg and arm, two on the neck, and four around their torso, but she found them all. Then she stepped back and, one after another, snapped each of the locking mechanisms with her Semblance. They were hardy little things, each needing a moment of focus and effort to break, but as always, her Semblance did its work.

As the last block broke, her mechanical companion toppled and she slid forward to catch it, kneeling in the same motion to lay the Geth out on the floor more gently.

"I'm just… Not gonna ask about any of that." Kasumi muttered while Pyrrha straightened her friend's limbs in what was almost certainly a wasted effort to make them comfortable. "Instead, I'll ask what we do next."

"Find what you came for." Pyrrha answered, "Then, we get the hell out."

"Already have it." Kasumi answered quietly, grinning when Pyrrha turned a raised eyebrow on her. "It was in here, snatched it while you were dealing with the locks on your friend. Figured 'why wait', ya know?"

"Well… I suppose that's one more problem solved, then." Pyrrha sighed, raising her voice and calling out, "Grunt! Come here, I need a favor from you!"

"Battlemaster." The Krogan rumbled less than a minute later, trundling into the room with his new shotgun cradled in his arms like a particularly lethal newborn. His gaze flickered to the Geth and then back to her and he quirked his head, confused and seemingly amused at the same time, "What do you need?"

"This is Legion, a dear friend of mine." She explained as an answer, smiling sheepishly and adding, quietly, "I was… Hoping you would carry him out of here for me?"

"I'm not a pack mule…"

"I know." She reassured him, smile deepening into a frown as she spoke, "But… Well, I want you to get Kasumi, Penny and Legion out of here for me while I handle something a bit more personal."

"Like what?" Kasumi asked quietly, sliding around to stand beside the Krogan and cocking her head. "I imagine you'd have said if you had business with Hock."

"I would have, yes, but I didn't have anything to mention at the time." She turned to her inactive friend and nodded meaningfully, "But Hock captured Legion, and I aim to know how and why. If Aria betrayed us…"

"Aria as in Aria T'Loak?" Kasumi blinked and then blinked again when Pyrrha nodded. "Okay, uh, well… Yeah, that would be her m.o, to say the very damn least. But she's not someone you want to go after, Nikos."

"I know." She nodded, "Just… Trust me, alright? Take what's yours and go. Grunt, protect my friend. When my business is done, I will head outside, to where we landed."

"I guess trying to smuggle that out the front door like lost party-goers trying to evacuate would be hard, yeah…" Kasumi sighed and shrugged, "But this is not a good idea, Nikos."

"I will do what you want, Battlemaster." The Krogan rumbled, kneeling to roughly toss the mechanical explorer over his shoulders. As he rose, he added, "But if a fight starts, better expect me."

"I will." She nodded, "Kasumi, can you-"

"You're all insane!" The woman interrupted with a small shout, pinching the bridge of her nose and then sighing. "Grunt, take the little laser girl and get gone. If Nikos wants info, she'll need someone that can crack his security systems and get it. I'll need a distraction, though."

"Oh, that won't be a problem." Pyrrha smiled, recalling her weapons with a flick of each hand and more than simply enjoying the weight of them. "That won't be a problem at all."

When they left the smaller Vault, Penny was waiting patiently and dutifully. She'd embedded her blades in the ceiling above and was using the cables as a sort of seat in the middle of the vault and was using them to watch the room. While she swung back and forth, legs kicking gently as she hummed to herself. She spotted them and smiled, leaning back and falling out of the seat. As she tumbled through the air she yanked her blades free, letting them hover behind her with their fellows when she landed.

"Best Friend Pyrrha! You will be pleased to know that nothing about the Vault's status has changed!" She beamed, eyes flicking to the motionless machine on Grunt's shoulders. They had never met, but Pyrrha had told her about her Geth friend, and she blinked excitedly on seeing him, "Is that-"

"Yes, and I need your help." Penny nodded immediately, already completely in on whatever Pyrrha was going to ask. "It's, um, hard to explain but… Kasumi?"

"Hock got Nikos' friend, here, somehow and she wants to head back up and find out how. I'm gonna do the 'finding out how' part and she's going to distract them for me." The little thief explained quickly, pointing at Penny and the Krogan and going on with a thin, forced looking little smile. "You two, sneak out somehow. Get in our shuttle and get gone. Grunt, did that tank… Teach you to fly?"

"Not well."

"But it did?" The Krogan nodded and Kasumi sighed, "Good. Get gone. I want to get off this planet sooner rather than later, and you hanging around won't help."

"I don't think I like this idea, Pyrrha…" Penny murmured quietly when Grunt took a step to leave. When Penny hesitated so did Grunt, turning to look at her with a clear question on his face. "I do not like leaving you behind."

"I'll be fine, Penny. I just want to find out what happened to my friend." Pyrrha smiled, resting her shield hand on her friend's shoulder and saying, "You don't need to worry about me, I promise. But I need to make sure Hock cannot come after Legion again. Alright?"

"Alright…" Penny still looked put out by the idea but, after a moment, she turned and smiled at the much larger Krogan. "Shall we then, Friend?"

"Mhm." Grunt nodded, lumbering off quietly while the small gynoid bounced along beside him, skipping and humming brightly while her blades hovered just behind her.

Pyrrha took a step to follow them back to the elevator and felt a hand on her shoulder. Stopping, she turned to meet Kasumi's eyes, and the woman said, "You sure about this, Nikos? This might get.. Rough."

"I'm certain." She nodded, "If you don't want to help, you don't have to."

"And what will you do to get your info then, huh?"

"I… Will have to think of something." She shrugged unsurely, frowning when the thief only raised her eyebrows challengingly. "I haven't the faintest idea what I will do, alright? But that isn't the point I was getting at."

"I know, Nikos. Just wanted you to be as sure about this as I am that you are absolutely the craziest person in the room." The woman sighed, strutting off with one of the Locusts they'd stolen in her hands. Tossing a look over a shoulder, the thief smiled and added, "Luckily, I like crazy. Keeps things fun."

"I… Suppose it does."

The elevator ride back up was slower than the one down, marked by the occasional tremor that rocked the steel box they were in. And brought back foul memories of Beacon, and the battle that had seen her time on her homeworld come to a very pointed end. She shook off those memories, though. This wasn't that kind of fight, she knew, and she had more to hand to stave off that kind of ending besides.

Still, though, she felt the anxiety spiking inside of her…

Small, cold fingers wrapped around her forearm and she turned to meet Penny's patient, pure little smile. Squeezing her arm, the girl said, "You're okay, Pyrrha. Do you want me to stay behind to help you?"

"...No, Penny." She said after a few seconds to collect herself. Nodding, she turned back to the elevator and added, "Thank you."

"Grunt, Penny, you head back through the service halls we came in through." Kasumi said as soon as the moment had passed. "Security sensors say it's fine, and the fight was more in the party area than out in the hall headed outside anyway, so should be clear. Just, uh, smash any security you see. Probably won't hold the door for you, if you catch my drift."

"Sounds fun." The Krogan laughed, "I'll get it done."

"Heh…" Penny snorted, explaining when Kasumi gave her a look. "That… That rhymed."

"Huh." Grunt blinked, adjusting Legion's body on his broad shoulders. "It did."

"We'll go out the front then, lady thief?" Pyrrha guessed, bouncing Milo and Akouo in her hands readily.

"One, I'm no kind of lady." Kasumi chuckled, waving Pyrrha off when she gave her a look. "And two… Yeah. You first, though. I'm going to duck out the way and let you have your fun out there. Also, you're a bit more bullet-proof than I am."

"Just a bit, yes." Even if she had taken a solid slug earlier she was more than recovered by now. "I'll handle it, Kasumi. Just let me know when you are done, and where Hock is at."

"Cool, cool. And don't kill Hock, yeah?" She gave the woman a shocked look and the little thief laughed as the familiar sparks crawled along her length and hid her from view. "Planted a little surprise down in the Vault for him. Trust me, you'll, uh, wanna see it play out."

"I'll take your word for it…" Pyrrha sighed, "Whenever you're ready, Kasumi."

"Hock is at the back of the party room." Kasumi said quickly as the elevator doors on both sides whirred open. A lightly armored engineer was standing outside the door, arm glowing while a pair of mechs stood behind him. "And, uh, now."

"Son-of-a-"

Pyrrha's spear snapped out to lop the head off the Loki on the right and she pivoted, bringing her heel up to kick it away and then slamming the same foot into the side of the Engineer's bare head in the same motion. The other Loki simply seized and fell, chest sparking as its power unit was seemingly overloaded and fried its internal workings. Stepping over the lot of them, Pyrrha found herself in what had been the art room Hock had set up for the party. Most of the art on display had either been destroyed, or had been taken down, laid and stacked on a large rolling cart right in front of the elevator.

Which was probably what the Engineer had been doing…

"I'll just…" Invisible hands rolled the cart into the empty elevator and Kasumi chuckled. "There. Now we can get to work."

Outside of the enclosed little room, the rest of the party area was in a similar state. The bar was utterly ruined, buried under a massive chunk of roof and the upper floor that had been brought down on it and a handful of guards that had tried to fight there. The rest of the room was a mess of burned furniture, scattered masonry from the ceiling above and ruined Loki mechs, but no actual mercenaries. But Pyrrha wasn't sure whether that was because of their skill, Garm's focus on Hock, or just cowardice.

"But where is Hock…?"

"Uh, Nikos…" A wary voice murmured in her ear as something heavy trundled up from behind her. "I think I found him."

She turned and backed away, looking up as the large, bulky form of a machine trundled into view. Its feet were blocky and wide, set at the end of digitigrade legs. Its chest was just as large, wide and boxy with a glass cockpit criss-crossed by metal reinforcements. A single large cannon protruded from just above its right shoulder, while its arms ended in rough looking hands gripping the firing handle of large heavy machine-guns whose thick cooling belts ran through the air and into a large crate on its back.

"Miss Nikos?" Hock said, voice laced in the static of the machine's interior to exterior audio transmitter but sounding no less surprised for it. "What are you doing here?! You were supposed to have evacuated with the rest of the guests!"

"Just be cool, and I can disable its-"

"I'm here to find out why you had my friend!" Pyrrha cut in, blood boiling now that the man that had so clearly enslaved her oldest friend in this world was right in front of her. Pointing her spear at the man's mech, she snarled, "How did you get them, Hock?! Why would you… Enslave them so?!"

"Your friend? Surely you don't mean Garm, so…" He sighed, "You are why my feed of the Vault is down. I worried you might have found my little pet project."

"Pet project…"

"I bought the overcomplicated little hard-drive off of some… Well, let's say mutual acquaintances of ours, along with this prototype Heracles." He answered, raising its arms pointedly while the gunfire outside echoed dully through the wide, shattered window behind her, "Which I was just about to test on your friend outside."

"Garm isn't my friend."

"I'm in his room." Kasumi's voice crackled over their line. "There's security up here, but I'm working. I'll deal with 'em if I have to."

"No?" Hock grinned and laughed, oblivious to the invisible woman. "But now it seems you released him."

"He may be my enemy, but he didn't deserve slavery. No one does." Pyrrha argued simply, pacing back and into the wider room where she had space to move. And more importantly, out of the narrow hallway that gave Hock's heavy machine guns way more threat than they were naturally worth. "And what 'mutual acquaintances'? Aria?"

"T'Loak?" He guffawed, "No, I wouldn't give that bitch a single good credit. But I don't think I'll risk telling you who sold it to me. Even after I have you chained up in my room, they'd kill me out of principle. Instead…"

Without a word of warning, the heavy cannon on its shoulder slammed down. She leapt up over its shot as it slammed into the floor, annihilating it and showering her back in heat and shards of concrete and wood. His arms snapped up before she'd even hit the floor, and she hissed. Tossing her shield to the side she latched onto it with her Polarity and used it to pull her to safety as the weapons roared to life, spraying fire through the empty air and out the shattered viewing window.

She hit the ground and rolled, coming up on a knee and kicking off towards the corner as the machine lurched forward. Hock was no expert with it, she could tell from its laborious and awkward movements, but he wasn't an idiot. He didn't round the corner, though. Instead, he shoved an arm around it and sprayed her with heavy mass accelerator fire that sparked along the concrete and her Aura alike.

It stung, too.

But thank the Dark Brother for her shield, which was able to weather the storm impossibly as she rose and charged. The arm retreated as she came but she leapt faster, grabbing onto it and scrambling up to his machine's shoulder as he trundled into the room and spun to try and throw her, crushing mechs, furniture and scattered masonry underfoot.

He couldn't shake her before she managed to get a hand on its shoulder, though, and then she leapt free. She landed a few feet away and brought her hands up, calling on her Aura and fury to yank its left arm up and to the side, against its own joints. Metal screamed in protest as armor buckled and Pyrrha sweated, heaving for breath and sinking to a knee for sheer effort.

Finally, though, the arm wrenched free of its socket and collapsed in a heap behind him, still attached by its cooling belts.

"What the hell…" He hissed, his Heracles staggering back and forward as his inexperienced hands fought for control. Rising, Pyrrha paced towards it slowly and Hock snarled, turning and firing his heavy cannon at her.

She leapt up once more, dodging the explosive shot and landing closer to him for it.

Hock, though, was off-balance without his other arm. His machine stumbled back, then he stepped on it and tripped, collapsing backwards in a heap of groaning metal. He tried to rise, but its arm and legs only kicked and floundered uselessly. Apparently, the Heracles couldn't get back up when it had fallen over.

She leapt onto the cockpit and met his scowling gaze before he smirked, "I may be down, but you can't get me in here-"

Calmly, she knelt and grabbed the metal rim of the cockpit. Using her Polarity again, she crushed it, showering him in broken glass and loose scraps of metal before hurling it aside. He watched it crash to the floor a few feet away and blinked. Then, he drew a Predator and tried to point it at her, before she recalled her rifle and flicked it to its spear form, and buried its head in his shoulder.

"What are you…?"

"Angry." She snapped, twisted it and yanking it free. Dropping into the cockpit she made a point of kneeling on his stomach with her armored knee digging into his ribs and asked, quietly, "Who sold you Legion?"

"W-Who?"

"The Geth."

"Cerberus." A familiar voice barked, drawing her attention out of the downed mech. Wary, she rose, and met Garm's gaze. He was exhausted and covered in more than one shade of blood, but smiled as he paced around the machine and surveyed the damage she'd caused. "Cerberus caught it trying to sneak into somewhere it wasn't s'posed to be. Hock bought it off 'em."

"You stupid, overgrown-"

Her foot cracked against his jaw and Hock fell silent. Turning, she climbed out of the wrecked hulk and dropped in front of the Krogan.

"Thank you." She said warily, keeping the spear between them. Which seemed to amuse the once-warlord, since he rumbled a laugh for it. "What now?"

"You leave, I kill him, and we don't talk again until I try to kill you later." He answered simply, raising a spiny eyebrow and adding, "Unless you want to brawl now?"

"I don't." She answered, lowering the spear after a thoughtful moment. She turned to leave, always watching him, but paused to ask, "But if I may? I suggest leaving him. My… Partner in this left him a present in his vault. Soon, the authorities will know everything about him, and I would rather relish watching him lose everything he has."

"Hmph." The Krogan considered it, for a moment, and then shrugged and nodded. "Fine, but I get to break his legs first. This all started 'tween me and him, I made a bit of a promise in that direction."

Normally, Pyrrha would have never allowed someone like Garm to do something like that to someone that was very much out of the fight. But… He was an evil man, she knew that more than clearly. And after what he'd done to Legion?

Silent as the grave, she turned and stalked away.

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The fight there at the end feels… Kind of chaotic to me, but I hope you all enjoyed it regardless.

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Jctherebel :

Glad you like it!

Frosty Chops :

Lol

TPoynt :

Yep!

Zince :

Glad you like it! XD