Shortly after witnessing the disturbingly graphic carnage take place below, Mar and the Marines followed the path down some ramps and linked back up with the Arbiter and the Demon.
The Arbiter addressed Mar, saying, "Major, lead the way."
"Yes, Arbiter," he accepted.
Mar craned his neck back toward the Marines behind him and nodded, then walked through the next door with the two of them in tow. The Arbiter and the Demon holstered their weapons and followed a few paces behind, ready to assist if need be.
"Your goal is just below!" the Oracle happily chirped to the team.
As he marched, Mar had half of his focus on the door waiting for him at the bottom of the sloped hallway, the other half focused on the guidance coming from within.
OK little brother, take this next room slow. Do not be overcome by your thirst for vengeance.
The door slid open and all at once, Mar's full, undivided attention was on the Brute Minor standing there.
"They're here!" it yelled out as Mar and the Marines charged down the rest of the hall.
The Minor pulled a spiker from its hip holster and started to raise it, but Mar batted the arm away and delivered a hard uppercut to its chin with a shiny, red armored elbow. The unlucky Minor was busy looking up at the ceiling, seeing stars, when it stiffened and howled in agony. Mar looked past him into the next room and saw two more holding spikers with smoke rising from the barrels. There was also a Brute Major in there, barking angrily at his trigger-happy subordinates.
"Cease fire! You're hitting Derbyis!"
Mar quickly pulled and aimed his plasma pistol over the shoulder of the dazed and wounded Brute in front of him and blasted off a few shots. One of the scorching green blobs struck the Major right in the chest and all of them scattered for cover. The instant Mar saw them fall from sight behind pillars and other various objects, he snatched the spiker away from the foe in front of him, then spun, throwing him onto the floor in front of the Marines. They tore into him with their bullets like a pack of wolves.
Plasma pistol in one hand, stolen spiker in the other, Mar kept the Brutes in the room pinned behind cover by continuing to fire. None dared even returning blind fire under the deadly hailstorm.
"Move up!" he yelled back to his teammates.
One by one, the Marines, the Demon, and the Arbiter filed past him and found their own places of cover in the next room. Mar had all the cover he needed, as well as a good firing angle, so he just held position outside the door. Meanwhile, the others were slowly, cooperatively, professionally pressing the enemy further and further back.
"Shit!" Wells suddenly cried as he switched targets from straight ahead to a compact hallway on the right side of the room. "We've got Jackals on our flank!"
Mar equipped and armed his last plasma grenade, then overhand tossed it over to where Wells was shooting. The grenade landed out of sight, but detonated with a violently bright thump and flash.
"Jackals are history!" Wells reported.
Mar decided that now was as good a time as any to use the remaining energy in his Sentinel beam, and was retrieving it when he looked up and saw that the Demon and the Arbiter had moved all the way up and engaged Brutes in close quarters combat. He wasn't worried; CQC was where they were known to work best. Mar moved in to take up a supporting position near Wells and Singh, but spotted another compact corridor, this time on the left side of the room. Squinting in suspicion, he readied his Sentinel beam and walked over to it.
Knew it.
Instinct, Mar. Always trust it.
Just like the right side, this one too had Jackals. A defender pair, both crouched side by side behind their overlapping yellow and blue gauntlet shields. This time however, he couldn't kill two birds with one stone. He'd have to do this the old fashioned way.
He swung the sentinel beam around the corner and lazed the entirety of the hallway until the beam ran dry. Then he moved in. What he saw was one Jackal burnt to a crisp and the other in a pain-and-shock induced daze with no shield, absently clawing at the air as it tried to decipher up from down. Mar took three quick, long strides towards the surviving Jackal and lifted the empty, yet still very heavy sentinel beam up over his head.
The Jackal squawked as the mere sight of this tore it from whatever stupor it was previously in, and instead of trying to flee, raised its arms in a meek defensive gesture that appeared more to Mar like groveling for mercy. It's yellow gauntlet shield snapped back to life as Mar was slamming the beam down and instantly busted again on impact. The Jackal collapsed to the floor from the blow, and was now sadly trying to drag itself away from the bloodthirsty Elite Major.
Mar dropped his weapon onto the Jackal's head, crushing it like a rotten grapefruit.