Approaching the peak of his leap, Emiya crossed his arms and peered down. Far below him the snaking rift twisted and turned through the dead landscape into the far horizon.

An ugly scar on the surface, the remains of a large-scale strip mining operation that had been abandoned some decades past. Dozens of kilometers long and two hundred meters deep at places, it seemed like a dark, toothed abyss waiting to devour whole anyone who thought to fall inside. And in this case, appearances most certainly were not deceiving. Those people at the bottom had no hope of climbing out, even with the low gravity and multitude of handholds and footholds to be had.

He counted fifteen automated turret nests and six anti-hovercraft guns along the length of the rift, overlooking the mining gear and workers.

Or rather, slaves, Emiya guessed.

The heavily armed and armored figures patrolling along the ridges and openings, overlooking the mining operation didn't seem like the type to ask questions before shooting either. Anyone trying to escape or approach the rift would be lucky to get as much as shout out before they were shot. Not that it would matter, given the lack of sufficient atmosphere to transfer sound.

Invisible and three hundred meters in the air, it was thus none of them could see him as he began to descend rapidly from where he had been looking them over. Given the lack of good vantage points, he had instead simply opted to jump straight up. Thankfully the lower gravity meant that the impact of landing was minimal, entrenching him only down to his calves in the loose top-soil of the dead moon. Getting himself loose, he rushed for the cover and concealment of an outcropping of rocks that must have been blown out of the rift at one point or another.

A few seconds later the invisibility cloak from the gear he had pilfered off of the salarian operator wore off. Even with all the stacked batteries he had put together, the cloak still only lasted a handful of minutes before it needed to recharge. But while it was active, it did offer him very good optical camouflage. One that had been good enough to fool even his hawk-like eyes in the dark, aboard the asari cruiser.

He hoped it would be enough to fool the four-eyed batarians as well.

Just then, he sneezed. The unexpected sensation left him off balance and confused, and before he realized it he had tried to rub his nose through his helmet. Blinking, he shook his head. Someone must be talking about me...

The Dusk Raptors' base hadn't been difficult to find once he had been pointed in the right direction.

They controlled a large section of Torfan, fenced off and away from most of the other groups. They had neither open markets nor publicly available services, like some of the other gangs had.

So he had had to sneak inside their territory and take a look for himself, since even the high-spec cameras of the Janiri's Sickle in orbit could only show so much. Most of the interesting things would be happening in-doors or hidden from such easy surveillance, he suspected.

Looking around, he found that they had two large separate hangar facilities with numerous starships of various sizes and designs docked, and what seemed like hundreds of batarians milling about armed to the teeth on patrol. And similarly to the frigate he had encountered on Dretirop, there seemed to be a rather strict enforcement of communications discipline. Short-range squad comms aside, he couldn't find a single point of entry for his cybernetics for the installations' systems by either hangar, meaning he had no idea what to expect on the inside.

Attempting to infiltrate either hadn't seemed particularly appealing as his first attempt, so he had continued looking around with the Janiri's Sickle.

Which had lead to this place; a small mining operation run by seemingly the same group of batarians, quite a ways off from any of the other facilities they had. They seemed to be extracting rare-earth minerals and metals; materials there was always a need for like lithium, platinum and copper.

Or so he guessed. It was difficult to tell from such a distance.

On a planetary scale, the output of such a mine would be insignificant. But for a group the size of the Dusk Raptors, there was no way they could move all of the raw material gained by slaves alone. They would need transportation, since even if they had the facilities for the further handling of those materials they would still need to transport it elsewhere for processing and use.

But there were no landing pads for hovercraft anywhere in sight.

Did that mean there was a hidden tunnel somewhere along the rift, leading to one of the two hangars? But there must be at least a kilometer between the mines and the nearest hangar...

Exhaling and noting that the cloak had gotten enough charge back to hide him for twenty seconds, Emiya shrugged and lay down. Cloaking, he astralized and jumped out of his invisible body. With two long leaps he had dropped down into the rift and among the ranks of the miners milling around at the bottom.

Closer up, he could distinguish between the hardsuited figures much more clearly even as he moved at a rush.

There were three types of people here; the armed guards keeping an eye on the workers below and the surface above; the workers carrying power-tools, walking with purposeful strides and doing the mining; and lastly the most numerous among them, the slaves whose job was to dig through the broken soil and rock for materials and carry it to hover-carts.

Batarian guards; batarian workers; turians, salarians—or possibly lystheni , he couldn't tell— asari, humans and a few batarians as slaves, he noted. It seemed like the batarian slavers did not discriminate based on race.

How admirable, he thought coolly.

Racing through the bottom of the valley, he scanned hundreds of meters before he finally found what looked like a tunnel leading in the general direction of the hangars. It had been bored through the soil at a depth of a hundred meters, wide enough for a pair of shuttles to fly through and fitted with a mag-rail for transportation. Having confirmed his suspicions, he turned on his heel and raced back to his body.

Inhaling as he opened his eyes, Emiya quietly waited five minutes to see if his out-of-body-experience had raised any alarms before attempting to move out. At the same time, he considered what he now knew. Even if Henell isn't here, I'll have to do something about this. But given the scale, will I have to kill a few thousand batarians by myself...?

He needed more information.

Which meant going inside, given the lack of any centralized and easily hackable computer.

And since his spiritual core was in the condition it was, that meant he had to physically penetrate one of the facilities. Meaning one of the two hangars, or the rift... They all have their pros and cons, huh.

Usually one would perform long-distance reconnaissance at first. Observe the target sites, try to find a location where one can remain hidden and see everyone entering and leaving the area without having to move around too much. Write down the schedules of the guards, try to identify the shift rotations, their gear and methods, and even try to divine any individual patterns and habits of the guards.

But since there was an underground tunnel which lead who knew where and possibly even to one of the two hangars, that might not be possible. He wouldn't have any method of checking if guards were moving around, as long as he remained outside.

Slow observation was useful.

It allowed one to gather information without revealing much of themselves in the process. But it was still relative. He was one individual, looking at what was nominally an organization with hundreds, possibly thousands of members. It could take him weeks, if not months to find a weak-point to use, if he were to take it slowly. And I do have a cloaking device, don't I...?

The cloak was fully charged again, his little jaunt out of body not having drained it too much this time around.

"So, direct penetration it is."

And since the rift was the closest anyhow, he might as well start there.

Getting up and out of concealment, he engaged the invisibility once more and dashed forward along Torfan's surface. Three great leaps—each following step covering more than twice than the proceeding one—was enough for him to get enough speed. Landing for the fourth step, he sprung upwards again.

But rather than seek to gain enough altitude to just look down along the length of the rift, he instead arced himself such that he would be landing down inside the mining area. But not on the floor-bottom, among the workers and slaves, as his landing on would kick up dust and rocks; much too noticeable.

As he began to descend more quickly, he turned his body in the air by kicking outwards to give himself some spin. With the low-to-none density of atmosphere, he couldn't just angle himself against the air to control his landing.

This method of entry was necessary he judged, since he was fairly certain the surface near the edge of the rift had been mined and trip-wired with pressure sensors. Trying to walk closer while wasting time on finding a safe path wasn't an option, since his cloak would run out and he would just be spotted.

The wall of the rift approached at a sharp angle as he fell headfirst toward it. Extending his arms, he reached out and 'fell' against the wall almost as if he had jumped forward on the flat ground and rolled forward on his back. Getting his feet against the wall, he successfully dissipated the force of his 'landing' as he sprung again down to the wall on the opposite side of the rift. These kinds of maneuvers would have been too loud for a stealthy approach normally, but the lack of a sound-transmitting medium gave him quite a bit of wiggle-room.

Five seconds of cloak left, he reminded himself as he landed on all fours against the wall, and this time he let all the force be absorbed by his limbs. For a second, he simply lay against the wall as if he were Spider-Man before falling straight down along the wall, his hands and legs brushing at the sediment and rock zooming past him.

He landed down on the bottom of the rift behind a heap of rock and soil. Dashing for better concealment in a dark corner, he hid himself in a narrow crevice between two large and jagged boulders left behind by explosive mining.

The cloak disengaged and Emiya exhaled.

He didn't have a kinetic barrier on his suit, just the bare essentials for life support. But that would still be enough to reveal his position to the scanners in any of the hardsuits or the omnitools the guards had if he tried to walk out without the cloak engaged. But at the same time there was a two hundred meter gap still left to cover to the tunnel he had seen earlier, meaning he couldn't rely on just the invisibility cloak either.

Eyeing one of the slaves, Emiya focused.

"—Trace, on" Taking in every detail, he exhaled and spoke the words under his breath. The longcoat disappeared, as another guise began to materialize in his mind's eye.—begin projection,

He didn't have to worry about all the functionality, just the appearance of one of the cheap environmental suits they wore, on top of his own hardsuit would be enough. Enough to pass by a casual glance at least, he hoped. It didn't seem like there was any great effort put into monitoring individuals, or having identification and surveillance over their number, meaning it should be easy enough to slip in and work among the crowd of slaves to slowly make his way towards the tunnel. A benefit of the natural formation, he supposed.

Of course, this would be relatively slow and tedious. But it was the best way he could think of, since the tunnel entrance was much more heavily guarded at all times.

Finding the right timing when no one was looking, Emiya slipped in among the myriad slaves working to carry away rubble and find pieces of metal in the soil that had been blasted or beaten loose. Since he was quite tall and wearing double-suits, he made extra effort to seem as beaten and pathetic in body language as possible.

But given that as long as he kept his eyes low and his arms filled no one so much as gave him a second glance, that seemed a needless consideration.

Fifteen minutes of back-and-forth walking and carrying while pretending to work later, he had managed to make his way to the hover-cart closest to the tunnel. But it was still forty meters from the tunnel entrance and there were dozens of guards lazing about, along with two cameras overlooking the best route he could see.

And by the entrance was a door, which may or may not be locked. He hadn't been able to check while running through in his astralized form.

Need to get rid of the camera first, he thought as he crouched down. Jumping out in his spiritual body wasn't an option; it would attract too much attention if his body fell down, or slumped over. And attention was the last thing he wanted right now.

Finding a suitable rock, he exhaled and pushed out his magical energy into the piece. The flat piece would have been excellent for skipping off of the surface of water, but right now it would have to do as a sharp projectile. Grinding down the edges until it was razor sharp all around, the flat piece of rock had essentially been turned into a small shuriken in his palm.

Continuing with blending in with the beaten and bereaved slaves, he waited for an opportunity another ten minutes until finally no one was looking and he was in a blind-spot for both of the cameras.

With a flick of his arm, starting from the hips and shoulders, rolling outwards through the elbow all the way to the tip of his hand, he launched the sharpened piece of rock at the exposed wire of one of the cameras.

Silently, without anyone except Emiya noticing, the camera unceremoniously lost power and died.

Satisfied with that, he turned around and started to walk towards a corner where no one could see him, in the blind-spot created by the now-dead camera. The moment he crossed out of anyone's line of sight, he dispelled the disguise and re-applied another a second later, this time a guise in the likeness of the hardsuits worn by the guards.

Since the guards had tinted but still transparent visors, he added the likeness of a batarian face on the inside. From a distance, it would probably be enough to fool them, but up close it would be immediately apparent it wasn't actually his face.

And finally to finish the disguise, he also projected a hollow rifle in likeness of what the guards carried.

That done, he turned a hundred-and-eighty degrees, marching back the way he had come only a second prior. Only this time, he walked with his back straight and projecting the same lazy cockiness the other patrolling guards all seemed to possess.

Instantly people saw him.

The crowd parted before him as everyone turned their gazes away from him the instant they noticed him. Fear and terror was so heavy in the air it was almost impossible to breathe without tasting it.

How had he missed it?

Of course, he hadn't. Don't think about it. Just walk to the tunnel, past where they're loading up the mag-rail cart...

A salarian stumbled in front of him and fell over, scattering rock and debris on the ground, with more than a fair few pieces hitting his armored legs and torso.

Immediately the tension in the air seemed to explode off the charts; space itself seemed to freeze as everyone paused to see what would happen. Fear and sympathy radiated from those around him, as they could already perceive the beating the salarian would be sure to receive in their own minds' eyes.

Emiya clicked his tongue in dismay, meaning to ignore the salarian and continue on his way.

That would have been fine, except now some of the guards were watching, seemingly excited to see where this would be going. He couldn't break character now; he knew—ignored—how the guards treated the slave workers here, he had seen it for himself already. Damn it.

Exhaling and steeling his mind, he reared back a leg and lashed out with the tip of his boot. Catching the salarian by the shoulder, he sent the diminutive alien spinning through the airless space thanks to the mass difference between them. Or so it might seem; it was just a glancing hit, looking worse than it would actually feel since very little of the force would have been actually transmitted into the salarian's body. Most of it had simply gone into spinning the salarian.

That should have been enough, but he could sense that the guards were merely amused.

They hadn't been sated yet.

Stalking over to the salarian, Emiya grabbed it—him, he was forced to acknowledge—by the neck and lifted him up so his legs were helplessly dangling without anything for purchase.

Pulling back his free hand, he let loose a mighty underhand blow to the salarian's mid-section that would have surely shattered ribs had he not pulled at the last instant. Using the hand around the neck, he threw back the salarian as if the blow had been so strong that his own grip failed him and sending the salarian back onto the ground.

Whether the salarian realized something was off or not, he curled up on the ground, covering his head and neck in expectation of further beatings. Emiya glanced around without turning his head, noting that that seemed to have been enough of a show for most of them.

Turning around, he continued his faux-patrol as if nothing had happened. Heading for the tunnel entrance, he noted that his disguise seemed to still hold, though the workers were giving him an even wider berth now. Walking past the tram the workers were loading up, he looked deeper into the tunnel. He'd be able to head deeper just past the loading area with his disguise.

But, there he noticed his next problem; there was still that locked door up ahead along with a sealed blast door over the mag-rail. Even continuing on foot, he would need to get past the door if he wanted to continue exploring the tunnel.

And he didn't even know what he needed to open it.

Things were so much simpler back when people used physical keys and locks. He didn't even need a lock-pick set back then; he just projected the key he needed in his pocket and that was that. There wasn't even anything for him to hack, either. So it's like a key-card system, or something. But I didn't see anything like that on any of the guards, and I don't know what the system is based on either. It might even be something like a DNA sample, or a surgically implanted bio-chip...

He noted that someone was staring at his back now; he needed this door open before someone realized he wasn't supposed to be here. Turning around to confirm who would only raise further suspicions.

Instead, he acted as if he knew exactly what he was doing as he walked to the door. Reaching out, he placed a hand against the smooth metal frame.

"—Trace, on"—begin synchronization,

His magical energy pushed outward and time slowed down as he washed away his extraneous senses. Focusing only on the schematic of the door before him, he analyzed the electrical wiring and automated systems until he found what he needed.

Usually regardless of how complex a system was, its function could be broken down to a simple switch. The one system which everything else built on top of; the one circuit which when powered would adjust the lock.

And having found that one circuit that governed the state of the door, only a single push of his magical energy was all that was necessary. Just like the first car he had ever hot-wired with his magecraft, the door before him activated. Emiya strode inside as if nothing unusual had happened, reaching out with his hand to reverse the exertion he had pushed on the door to make it close behind him.

As the gaze on his intent back was finally cut away followed by the door closing behind him, he let out a nervous breath he had been holding.

That could have turned into a complete bloodbath, if anything had gone wrong. And with the guards so spread out, it was likely the captives and workers would have been caught in the crossfire. Maybe the slow method was used for a reason, after all?

Dismissing those thoughts, he started walking down the tunnel at a brisk pace. A minute later as there was no end in sight, he started working up his speed until finally he was running as fast as the tunnel and low gravity allowed. If it leads all the way to one of the two hangar bases, then it should be a pretty long trek.

But he was proven unexpectedly wrong as after a bend in the tunnel he arrived at another blast door.

By his estimate, it couldn't have been more than half a kilometer from the entrance. There was another locked gate, only this one was manned by a bored batarian sitting above, behind a sheet of armored glass. Looking up, Emiya nodded at the batarian and hoped his projected fake-face would bear the scrutiny at this distance.

The guard peered at him, before finally nodding back and pressing a button, returning to whatever it was that he had been doing as the large blast door began to rise up and allow him entry into an airlock. The mag-rail tracks seemed to end there, but he didn't care about that.

Another three armed batarians were standing around, one of whom turned to look at Emiya with apparent interest.

"What is it?"

Swallowing down his apprehension and hoping the voice-modifier would work this time, Emiya spoke simply as he motioned toward the tunnel at his back.

"Camera outside got busted."

The batarian blinked, turning to look at his companions. It seemed there wasn't any protocol for such an event and that it wasn't a common occurrence either.

"Gonna get someone to fix it," Emiya continued and turned to walk towards the stairs at the other side of the airlock. By now the air pressure had been normalized and the door on the other side lit up green to reflect that. The batarian trio shrugged at that, seeing no reason to either intervene or assist him that task.

Leaving them behind, he didn't know what to expect.

More hallways certainly wasn't it.

Twenty minutes of aimless walking later, he gave up and admitted that he was very much lost. This place is huge...

Hallways, halls, mess halls, armories and workshops, sleeping pod rooms filled to the brim with pods... And there were batarians everywhere. This wasn't just some small-time gang, this was practically a small—and very well armed and run—army he was dealing with. At least no one gave him so much as a second look, even as he continued walking along and with his helmet still on indoors.

So he wandered around, trying to get his bearings and slowly expanding his mental map of the facility. It was like it had been built to be intentionally confusing, with multiple routes everywhere leading to plenty of moments of walking in circles on Emiya's part. But that gave him plenty of time to Structurally Analyze some of the walls and foundations, noting where the bundled up lines for power and fiber-optic communication ran. Though there weren't that many of the latter, a curious thing he thought. How do they communicate from one side to the other? Wireless signals will deteriorate underground too much to work...

And they would need communications.

Because it was starting to look like those two hangars weren't separate at all. Rather, it seemed like what could be seen on the surface of Torfan was only a fraction of the Dusk Raptors' true capacity. Well, I guess this is one way to protect yourself from cosmic radiation. No need to invest in expensive screeners or expensive radiation-rated prefab walls when you can just dig deep instead.

He found some relatively large—and currently empty—holding cells, where he suspected the captives were usually held when not mining, and after some more walking around in the same general area he found another similar area filled with sleeping people. On closer inspection, he realized that this was the only actual slave pen and they were worked in two shifts. During the rest hours, the other half would remain here, while the others were suited up and herded outside into the rift.

Is Henell here?

Given that it was locked and there were armed guards on watch—mostly just watching something on their omnitools by the looks of it—he couldn't exactly just waltz in and start looking for Henell among the sleeping captives.

But on the other hand, the batarians on Dretirop must have sought out Henell and her team specifically. There must have been a reason for that. Thus they wouldn't throw them in with the other captives who were being used for cheap labor, right?

The blaring alarms broke him out of his thoughts just then.

"We're under attack! Man all stations!" One of the batarians guarding the slaves shouted, and suddenly everyone was up on their feet and running somewhere.

Emiya blinked as he stood in the eye of the storm while everyone around him seemed to know where they had to be, for a second not quite registering what he'd heard. Then he scowled, turning around as he continued walking. Just what I needed...

Or perhaps this was a chance.

With everyone focused on the outside, he would have an easier time penetrating deeper into this facility. He just needed to find a damn computer and he'd finally start getting some actual solid information on what was going on here.

And while he was at it...—begin projection,

Emiya checked that no one was looking as he projected a sword, and then rammed it hilt deep into the wall. Magical energy crackled as he charged the blade. It expanded and cracked with a hiss inside the wall, before he snapped off the hilt. The piece in his hand vanished, leaving only a small mark where the sword had been plunged into the wall.

"I might as well set up while no one is looking..."

;

Shepard frowned, pressing the comm-button as she spoke, "Hey, what's with the radar glitching?"

A second of silence, during which she continued to peer into the flat wasteland before her. Was there something there, or...?

"Sorry ma'am, I've no idea. The forward team reports there's nothing there, though."

"Alright, keep me posted if you figure anything out," she cut off the comm with a frown. All this lying around was starting to wear on her.

Six hours of waiting and watching.

She leaned back down and put her eye to the scope of her sniper rifle, going over the section of the long, winding rift that she could see from her position. There were forty-one N7's here—her included—all of them being experts with the long-range precision rifle.

They knew what the job was—one shot, one kill; no misses allowed.

She wasn't feeling the jitters, as much as she felt the rising tension and was itching to get to it already. Resisting the urge to check her weapon again, she continued observing the rift.

Same old, same old. Batarians being bastards as usual, their slaves working apathetically and no orders to move out anywhere to be had.

Shepard sighed and before she realized it, she was range-tuning her rifle again on a batarian guard.

The Avenger III wasn't a bad rifle by any means, but she wasn't a huge fan of the long cooldown. On paper it could fire 1.3 shots before overheating, but with the mods that had been brought down to 1.03 shots which would extend the cooldown cycle quite a bit. It was possible to take another shot immediately after the first of course, but that would overheat the rifle immediately and extend the cooldown cycle further. The glowing red-hot rails would also be warped, meaning that accuracy and power would suffer to the point of likely failure to acquire a kill if she kept doing it.

So that wasn't an option.

It was necessary to secure a kill with the single shot she would get. It was the same for all the other scattered N7's, located all around the edges of the rift.

Six hours of slowly crawling forward, disabling perimeter security and staying hidden as they observed the mining operation below. Six hours of simply watching as those four-eyed bastards beat down and harass their 'workers', of holding back while telling herself that it wouldn't be much longer.

Soon.

Taking a slow deep inhale, her control reasserted itself and she continued looking through the scope at the bottom. Her crosshairs centered on a lone patrolling guard, who was lazily walking into view now. "Boogie walking up passage 4-C, preliminary id... Tango-31."

A few seconds passed, and there was a confirmation from another sniper, across from her on the other side of the rift.

"Tango-31 confirmed, matches physical profile and previous patrol pattern," the rear-support technical officer replied. All of them were doing the same, keeping a running tally of who, where and when, which was relayed to a map in the corner of her HUD.

It was all necessary.

If she tried to simply storm the rift head on, civilian casualties would be inevitable. The batarians would use them as shields and hostages for their own protection while gunning any in front of them down without hesitation.

And since the batarians had their slaves constantly working in two shifts, there wasn't any possibility of a night-raid to avoid civilian casualties either.

Six hours, four of which they had had adequate eyes on site to start collecting intel. They had counted the number of guards, identifying each and observing their patrol routes and patterns. That way once it was time to go, they could drop forty-one batarians in one moment. In one fell swoop, the force below would be crippled and lose over half of their fighting force. But in the confusion that followed, there would still be another thirty-two additional guards to take out, along with the other automated defenses. But they had Engineers for those.

Optimally in the three seconds that followed the first shots, it would all be over already.

And if that failed, the asari commandos were on stand-by to immediately rappel down and attack. This kind of low-g environment with very little cover was supposedly one of their preferred hunting grounds.

But like hell were they going to leave any for them; they were N7. The best of the best, and this was their operation. There wasn't going to be an armed batarian with a pulse in that rift by the time the asari moved out, if she had her way.

That was why she would have preferred a Volkov, Harpoon or even a Helix rifle, fitted with a much more aggressive cooldown cycle. Rifles like those could take two shots and ride out the overheating, easy. But she wasn't anywhere near the best sniper here, so she had to do with an Avenger. It was fine; as a commanding officer on site, her job wasn't to do the heavy lifting, but to function as over-watch and control.

That she was also functioning as a sniper while acting in that role was only further proof of the scale of this operation. There was no room for fat; everyone who could put boots on the ground was needed. Even having brought bear its full might here, the Alliance Navy was still getting stretched out.

Thus she had taken a forward position where she could eye the loading area just in front of the tunnel entrance, where the Avenger's much—comparatively, of course—poorer accuracy at longer distances wouldn't matter. She would take her one shot and then focus on keeping an eye on everything, or move in to secure the site, either was fine. There were men here who had dedicated themselves with an almost religious zeal to the art of perfect, pin-point accuracy with their rifles.

She could trust them to handle the second shots.

Continuing to observe the faceless shambling crowd of slaves, she counted the number of guards and reported them to the rear-support who kept a running tally and simulation of the rift. In the corner of her helmet's HUD, she could see a small map with annotated dots moving around. They would change color, based on line-of-sight and whether there was a rifle aimed at them.

Six hours of waiting.

Because of a logistical error.

They had been ready to go two hours ago, but one of the other sites wasn't ready. Because of a mismanagement of crates, one of the portable kinetic barrier shipments was now on a warship on the other side of the system, guarding the Mass Relay.

It was a fucking mess, and every additional second they had to wait here only compounded that. Hurry up and wait; you have to excel because others will always fuck up!

She chuffed at that, before chiding herself and clearing her mind of extraneous thoughts.

Thus it was only because she wasn't focused on any one thing, that she managed to catch the tiny spark that flashed right at the edge of her scope. She frowned, raising the rifle to try and figure out what it was.

Pausing, she licked her lips at the sight.

"...Entrance camera 2 offline."

The reply came a few seconds late. "Confirmed, entrance camera 2 offline."

The technical officer sounded just as perplexed as she was. How had that happened? No one had taken a shot, so what had disabled the camera?

A hunch.

She zoomed back out, taking in everything she could see and focusing on nothing. The whole crowd gathered in the rift, visible from her point of view came to sight. Someone down below must have done it, but who? And why?

A crowd of workers, dotted with a few lazing guards. Nothing out of the ordinary. She didn't even notice the lone hunched over slave walking over and away from the group, not until he suddenly changed color. Her scope didn't move, only her eyes registered the change as her pupils darted to the hidden corner.

Her breath halted as her mind froze, recognizing the figure.

A featureless black helmet, the form-fitting black hardsuit with white highlights—

"It's..."

—That man! The man from Mars! The man from Ares Station!

"Please repeat?"

She didn't hear the request, her mind having been thrown into complete chaos as she almost jumped to her feet before realizing what a terrible idea that would have been. She licked her lips, trying to figure out what to say. Should she ask if anyone else had eyes on him? Why was he here? How was he here? When had he showed up? Had he been there the whole time?

And then his appearance changed again; the perfect likeness of a batarian guard taking his place, rifle and all.

Shepard watched on, almost as if she had been detached from her own body and could affect nothing beyond her eyes, as he turned around and walked back the way he had come. The complete change in body language, the beating he gave the salarian slave, it all washed over her numb mind.

It was only as he headed for the tunnel that she realized that she had blanked out.

Anger filled her, a bottomless well of hatred seeming to burst out from her chest as the singular thought came to her mind; the man from Mars might have been working for the batarians all along. Just like—

Her mind blanked out in anger for a second.

Even though she could hear the comm-chatter, of snipers trying to identify the new boogie, and the technical officer trying to figure out who the hell he was and where the hell he had come from, it all seemed to wash over her as just background noise for the sound of rushing water in her head. She drew a bead on the back of the mysterious man in black, halting her breath as her heart seemed to pound through her whole body. There was no finger on her trigger, as she simply burned in his likeness into her mind. I've found you...!

She almost pulled the trigger then, except...

The salarian who should have broken most of his bones by the look of the beating he had received, stood up in the corner of the scope.

Her finger paused, aching to pull the last millimeter.

Yet, something about the surprised demeanor of the salarian washed away her anger. Calm down, something about all of this is wrong.

Finally, she spoke, with a calm cool edge to it that seemed to freeze the very blood in her veins as she exhaled. "New boogie, designation Tango-74. Check all tangos, running tally to confirm new boogie."

"Roger, checking logs."

She distantly listened as all the batarian guards were counted, identified and placed to confirm that the new boogie was indeed someone that hadn't been there a minute prior.

She watched through her scope as he opened the door and entered the tunnel, reporting that he had left with an artificial detached cool brought about only by her rigorously controlled breathing.

"Confirmed, Tango-74 has been added. Tango-74 has left operating theater."

After that, her pounding heart seemed to lose track of all passage of time.

She ran on auto-pilot as she listed out and updated patrolling guards, like a spring coiling further and further with every passing second. Come on... Come on... He's getting away, how long can it take...?

Suddenly those six hours seemed like nothing. And they were, in comparison.

Two years.

For two years she had had access to the footage from Ares Station, footage which had flipped her world upside down. She thought she had gotten over what had happened a long time ago, but when she realized that someone related to that incident was still alive, someone who might know what had happened in that house and was probably even the root cause behind her friend's death...

She needed to catch him. At all cost, even if—Calm down. Focus on the mission.

Two years she had tried to find that man. All she had had was a few seconds of video footage of the man appearing in the security center of Ares Station, but that had been enough to propel her forward in a new direction. To make new contacts. To search new avenues of training.

The Citadel knew something, she knew as much. But they had been tight-lipped, even as they sent salarian ambassadors to endlessly prod and question the Alliance about the Mars incident.

But now she finally had a lead on that man, here! But that didn't mean she could cast aside everything else. She still had an important job to do; lives depended on her.

And then finally the signal from up top came. It was time to go. She inhaled once, speaking barely above a whisper.

"All call-signs, set. Repeat, all call-signs, set. Match 15 seconds and counting."

The HUD adopted a fifteen second timer in the upper corner, as everyone acquired a target. The mini-map in the corner of her eye flashing as numerous targets were lit up.

Five, four, three, two...

One.

The rifle soundlessly roared in her hands in sync with every other rifle in position their sounds lost to the thin atmosphere, and in the same instant the batarian she had had under her crosshair keeled over with a gaping hole in his chest.

"Tango-56 down," she reported calmly.

"Tango-56 down, confirmed."

But she wasn't listening anymore, collapsing the rifle as she was throwing it over her shoulder and drawing out the assault rifle in the same motion.

"All units, move out and engage at will."

She dashed forward, only half-listening to the incoming reports of the automated defenses being taken over by the Engineers. That was good, it meant she didn't have to worry about being turreted down, but she was already thinking about her own part.

Resisting the urge to jump into the rift—that would only slow her fall down to the bottom needlessly—she dropped down over the edge as she drew her shotgun from the small of her back. Raising both of her guns up into the air at an angle, she pulled both triggers to further accelerate her fall down.

The less time she hung in the air unable to move, the better chance she had at not being turned into Swiss cheese.

Bullets must have flown past her, as shattered pieces of stone and debris hit her back and head. Finding the source, she dropped the shotgun and grabbed the rifle in both hands. Her breath slowed as her heartbeat stilled for just an instant.

The assault rifle buzzed in her hand, spitting out a stream of hypersonic slugs that collapsed the batarian guard's kinetic barriers a second before it tore through his neck and chest in a spray of blood and bone. The recoil pushed her towards the wall and she could feel it grinding against her back now, but that was fine.

Her suit could take that much.

"Tango-15 down," she calmly reported, scanning the rift and her tactical mini-map. He should have been a priority target. Were his kinetic barriers too tough, or did someone miss...?

She dismissed those thoughts for now.

Her descent had slowed down due to shooting downwards which had negated some of her acceleration, leaving her as something of a sitting duck again. But at the same time she no longer dared to shoot upwards, in case someone was coming down. It couldn't be helped, she would simply have to trust her kinetic barrier. She sighted Tango-47 running down the length of the rift and she raised her rifle, but a fraction of a second later a sniper round took him down in one clean shot.

He had been one of the unlit targets who hadn't been aimed at in the opening salvo, having been judged a junior member of the guard and more likely to panic and run rather than stand and return fire.

They had obviously been right.

A blue blur passed her by.

Shepard blinked, distantly realizing that it was one of the asari commandos. They had jumped in after her, but had easily overtaken her on the way down somehow.

As they jumped from wall to wall, in perfect control over themselves, Shepard had to admit she was impressed. Two of them spotted another running batarian guard at the same time and in the space of half a second had used their biotics on him. The batarian was turned weightless and slammed into a wall with enough force to shatter his visor nearly instantly. Biotics, huh. Now I see what Major Kyle meant. With their mobility, hitting them would be nearly impossible, and with their teamwork in biotics they can take out targets nearly instantly, even behind cover.

By the time her boots hit the ground, it was already all over.

"All hostiles down."

"Secure the area. Set up a perimeter at the tunnel entrance immediately," she ordered, almost shouting due to the adrenaline running wild in her body.

Without any atmosphere it was impossible to talk normally, and since the captive workers' suits lacked radio sets, it might come down to body language and hand gestures to calm down the throng of panicking workers. In that regard, the presence of the asari commandos seemed to come in handy, as some of the asari slaves seemed to realize they were being saved.

Shepard grit her teeth, staring at the tunnel entrance for several long seconds, before she exhaled and turned to face the crowd. First things first...

Raising her omnitool she projected the holo-text onto the rift wall so everyone could see it. Written in fifteen languages, in large easily legible text, it should hopefully suffice in calming down them for now.

But once I'm done here, just you wait for me, mystery man.

;

"What the hell kind of death trap is this place...?" Emiya muttered incredulously under his breath while walking.

The deeper he looked, the more this place left him confounded.

He had thought the additional routes were for flanking maneuvers, or perhaps to facilitate better airflow given the central life supports for each sector. And while that probably was partly the case, it turned out that half of them were built so shoddily that they might well collapse from their own weight any second now. He could probably reach out and tear out pieces of the walls. Hell, he could probably bust through one tunnel into another if he really tried.

This entire damn facility was one mad board of snakes and ladders set into a cave in danger of collapse.

Only a handful of tunnels seemed to actually be made with the proper supports a place like this needed, and the batarians seemed to be sticking to those as much as they could.

If that was all, then he wouldn't be so exasperated.

But then he found out that the slave pens had been rigged up to tanks of an airborne agitant of all things. He only heard about that from one of the batarians who had been laughing about the idea of siccing the slaves against whoever was attacking, if they ever got this far. Some sort of gas, that would throw all of the slaves into a maddened frenzy, so that the batarians could just open the doors and force anyone outside to deal with a literal wave of crazed people.

He still had no idea who the hell was invading, but there was no way in hell he was letting something like that happen.

So the first order of business had been finding those tanks and sabotaging the delivery systems. Permanently. Getting anything out of those tanks would require changing out every part of the delivery systems now. Because he was sure as hell not dealing with something like that right now, on top of everything else. There still was the issue of life support, which was centrally controlled and was shared for the slave pens and this general wing of the installation.

But as long as the batarians held this part of the whole facility, he doubted there was any danger of that being purposefully destroyed. The invaders would be wearing hardsuits, as would the defenders. The only ones inconvenienced by the destruction of those systems would be the slaves.

And the batarians had a vested interest in keeping them alive, namely one of finance. He didn't know the going rate for slaves, nor did he know how easily the batarians could 'top up' any losses to their mining work-force, but he hoped it was enough to keep them from doing anything stupid.

If something did go wrong and the life support systems went offline... Just thinking about it made him frown.

And since there were only enough environment suits for the slaves who were already outside, that meant that Emiya couldn't just leave the slaves alone either. But at the same time, he did want to continue further down in the installation, since he suspected Henell might be further down based on some of the talk he had heard.

Something about ancient black market artifacts being shipped in and ferried down to the lowest levels.

"Hey, you! Get back into position! I won't tell you another time. They're already right outside, they'll be coming in any minute!" A batarian without a helmet shouted at him.

But since everything had gone into lockdown, sneaking in wasn't going to be that easy anymore. There were checkpoints and barricades everywhere. Especially since everyone thought he was a soldier and kept ordering him to get back to his station. He had tried to get in deeper pretending to be on an urgent matter, but already at this first choke-point he was being told to turn around and go back.

"They're outside? Who?" He asked, surprised that the batarian seemed to be more aware of the general situation than he was. There hadn't been any announcements, nor did there seem to be any local comms. Do they have some kind of comms, after all?

"You bastard, are you questioning me? The mines have already been taken over! Get the hell into position, you sniveling low-brow before I cuff you!" The batarian shouted, stalking towards him with squared shoulders as it was obvious he had gone through the alien's patience.

Emiya blinked.

If the mines had been taken over, that meant that the fates of those slaves outside had already been decided.

If it were a rival faction, or perhaps a corporate clean-up operation, it was entirely possible all of the workers in that rift had already been killed. His fist clenched at that thought; that he had been so close and unawares of a possible tragedy, which he had accidentally and unwittingly allowed to happen. Though, on the off-chance that it was some less unscrupulous force attacking and the slaves had been liberated... It was the kind of vain hope he might have clung to at one time.

No longer did he hope; he merely planned. It doesn't matter either way—it's already happened. If they're dead, I shouldn't waste their suffering, then.

Since someone was invading, and the Dusk Raptors thought it a credible threat, that meant that if he played his cards right and played off the two sides in this conflict and drew it out, he might be able to bleed both parties to death from the shadows. And once the dust settled, he could have the remaining slaves in the pens come out unharmed from it all. That way, he would save those still alive at least. Though, that meant he would have to start hollowing out the defenses before the invaders got here.

Which meant he would probably have to give up on looking for Henell.

To hell with it then, Emiya thought and dropped the rifle, surprising the batarian who paused three steps short of him. Raising his left hand until it was level with his shoulder, Emiya stared down the eight batarians in front of him.

"—Trace, on"

They were suitably grouped up already, he noted. But first he had to take out the camera.

—begin projection,

The bare-faced batarian growled at him, stalking another step towards him.

"Pick up that rifle and get back to your position, before I beat you to death with it, you—" The arrow through his skull shut him up before he could finish that threat, the projectile flying with sufficient force that it flew straight through and embedded itself into the wall behind him, taking out the camera mounted there in the process.

The others had time to just realize what had happened, when Emiya had already loosed another four arrows in two double draws, leaving just two more hardsuited figures opposite him standing.

Eight eyes widened as two pairs of arms began to raise their rifles, but they were just too slow, as the bowstring sang twice more. The crackle of failing kinetic barrier mixed with the sound of shattered ceramic plate pieces hitting the floor, as Emiya exhaled and lowered the bow.

All the arrows had already dissipated before the last batarian hit the ground.

Since he could project nocked and ready-to-loose arrows just as fast as he could loose them, his rate of fire was considerable. While he couldn't match a machine gun in sheer volume this way, he could easily out-shoot a soldier taking individual aimed shots in both accuracy and rate of fire. And given that his arrows could knock men clean off their feet, he was practically firing an anti-materiel rifle.

Looking around, he confirmed that there were no more cameras around one more time, before getting on with it.

There should be a security station nearby with this sector's cameras, since the wiring is too compartmentalized for one central command room. Just like the life support systems.

The plan must have been so that each sector could defend itself independently even if every other sector of the base was taken over. That meant someone would be coming to check out what had happened.

Crouching down, he searched the mouthy batarian's body and took his omnitool. It took some fiddling around with to get it to open up, but once he got a signal access to it he could finally hack it open and get past the password screen. Before he could start digging through it however, his ears picked up the sounds of approaching feet. Four batarians, running, wearing hardsuits and rifles. That's faster than I expected. Did they realize that something happened here, or is it just personnel being sent to reinforce a position irrespective of my actions?

Standing up, he pocketed the omnitool.

Raising the bow again he looked down the hallway where they were coming from. Four lighter arrows appeared on the bow, already nocked and ready. Drawing back the string slowly, he inhaled in parallel with the motion. The four came into view—or rather, the three as the fourth had lagged behind for whatever reason and was still out of view around the corner.

—begin synchronization,

Modifying the spine and weight of each arrow to customize their flight path, he minutely adjusted their nocking points on the string with his fingers while turning the bow slightly more horizontal to control the sideways spread.

They had just enough time to spot him as the string was released, sending the four arrows at supersonic speeds into the three batarians with enough force that two of them were nailed to the wall behind them, while the third was nailed into one of the two batarians. The fourth batarian's footsteps came to a halt, as he obviously hit the brakes and intended to turn around without coming into view after having just seen his entire squad getting killed.

That was fine.

Projecting another arrow, he modified it before he had it even nocked this time. Thirty meters to a 83 degree turn to the left with a slight incline upwards, based on his footsteps he was probably around...

Another arrow appeared on the bow, unusual in its construction in that its fletchings were in the middle of the arrow rather than at the end near the nock.

Drawing back the string and loosing the arrow in one motion, he exhaled and turned around. Half a second later, the sounds of the arrow piercing hardsuit, followed by the hardsuit hitting the floor was heard. He dismissed all the arrows a second later, but kept the bow in his left hand as he turned towards the route back towards the slave pen.

The new modified tips seem to work pretty well, he noted as he walked past three dead batarians, glancing at their cooling corpses with detached and analytical eyes. Back in his time, since armor was mostly limited to chest and head protection which he could aim around, generally he only had to worry about his arrows being efficient at killing. At the poundages and speeds he loosed his arrows, they would just punch straight through a body if he used any normal tip. Even large broadheads tended to pass through far too cleanly, performing with less than adequate lethality unless he hit just the right spot to bleed them out quickly.

When it came right down to it, arrows just weren't very lethal on impact.

So, he had taken cue from hollow-point bullets and designed arrowheads which shattered right after impact and expanded rapidly to create a greater wound channel, and to impart as much of the force as possible from the arrow into the target instead of flying clean through.

Since he never re-used his arrows and it made their deaths quicker, it seemed like a justifiable enough action. Of course, that had been brought up in his trial more than once as evidence of his malicious mutilation of enemy combatants. They never did figure out that he used arrows though, thinking all the way to the end that he had just been using some massive custom hollow-point bullets, even if they never managed to recover a single bullet.

But Dretirop had showed him the ineffectiveness of such arrowheads against the hard ceramic plates most hardsuits used, as only the ridiculous force of his bow and the weight of his arrows had been enough to punch through. Those hadn't been clean deaths, so now he had added a armor-piercing point that collapsed and expanded inside the body after penetrating twenty centimeters or so. Of course, for that kind of penetration he needed to push the FOC up another 10%, which meant the arrows would take a hit in long-range performance. Meaning getting a dozen arrows in the air and to hit at the same time, like he had on Dretirop would be a bit finicky.

But that was an acceptable enough trade-off for his basic arrows he supposed, especially since in-doors he would never be able to utilize his maximum range anyhow. He would have to re-design his arrowheads for long-range sniping sometime soon, probably.

Shaking his head, he pulled out the omnitool he had just put away and began fiddling with it again.

It took him about twenty seconds to find and download a map of the facility—Yeah, this really is one huge maze, huh—and ten more to realize what was going on as he finally managed to figure out how the Dusk Raptors were communicating despite being underground.

They were using vibrations through the ground, since the thick walls and solid earth created insulation which no wireless signal could hope to pass through. The omnitools were hooked up to seismographic stations which received and sent minute tremors through the ground using a form of encryption that Emiya had never seen before. Possibly a batarian state funded code or something, since it seemed almost counter-intuitively different from anything the Citadel races used.

He scoffed, almost like rabbits, thumping out warnings against the ground.

Which meant one couldn't simply snip a few wires to sabotage their communications then, as any one 'thumper' could talk to any other 'thumper' within range. That would make hamstringing the batarians' defense a bit finicky. But with his spiritual hacking, he could probably do something if he jumped directly in, like he had in Parnitha.

Though given the current circumstances and his own limitations, it seemed a little bit too risky to just try out. What if someone found his body and it was gone when he came back? Accepting that, he instead began reading through the logs of recent comm-traffic to figure out what was going on while moving on, leaving the dead behind where they lay.

Emiya had to blink, as he realized who it was that was attacking. He would never have guessed; the very same Navy he had been a part of and deserted some half a decade ago.

...The Systems Alliance had to choose just now to attack? Are they after me? No, that made no sense. Even if they were after him, could they have chased him down that quickly? Or did they have a fleet presence in the system already? No, no.

The numerical force necessary to invade this installation was too big; the Alliance simply didn't have the numbers for a whole fleet to just be lying around. This must have been planned weeks in advance.

So, it just came down to bad timing on his part. His luck had always been like this, getting him into the strangest of circumstances and most tangled of troubles.

But it did change his situation considerably.

While the Systems Alliance wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, in comparison to the slaving and raiding defenders they were practically squeaky clean. Which meant he should focus his attention on the Alliance achieving a decisive and easy victory. Hollowing out the batarians' defenses from the inside so that they could be easily and cleanly knocked down.

He huffed, turning around a corner and coming into view of the batarian barricade up ahead.

"Huh, who is that?" A batarian asked up ahead.

What pretty words he had used in his head to describe the situation—what he really meant, was that he should kill every batarian he ran into and destroy every security center he found to destroy the batarians' ability to coordinate a defense. In for a penny, in for a pound...

"Fine, guess that's how it'll be."

Emiya raised the bow and loosed six arrows, hitting six targets absentmindedly with unerring aim. One more, behind cover.

"We're under attack! I repeat we're under attack in section—"

At this distance, arrow drop won't matter—quadrupling weight and removing fletchings to minimize drag—drive weight towards tip to ensure maximum penetration, adjusting depth of expansion trigger by 600% to compensate for cover, Reinforcing bow by 15% to increase power...

The bowstring sang once more, as the lance punched through the pillar as if it had been made merely out of loosely packed sand, its immense momentum unstoppable until the mid-section had expanded and tripled in size and bringing it to a complete halt. Cracks ran through the pillar from the internal stress, as the rear end of the arrow sticking out still vibrated in tune with the string of his bow, while the batarian on the other side let out one last bloody gurgle before he fell ever-silent.

Confirming that they were all dead, he reined back his thoughts onto the matter at hand and considered his tactical position while walking inside the security station.

There were screens showing the feed from various cameras in this sector, along with a large cylindrical machine in the corner of the room. He could sense minute and constant vibrations through the floor from it, while at the same time there was heavy comm-traffic coming in through fiber-optic wires.

So this is a thumper, huh, he observed coolly.

Connecting to it directly through the omnitool and going through the logs, he could get the gist of what was going on; the batarians were under attack from every direction, and all but one of the entrances had already been taken over by the Systems Alliance. And that one was currently being shelled from orbit; so it was more of a pooling pile of molten slag and rubble than anything else at the moment.

So he was trapped in here.

"Great," Emiya grumbled before glancing at the still-locked slave pens through one of the camera feeds.

He had intended on opening the pens to make sure everything was alright, but perhaps it would be better to leave them there for now? Especially since checking through the profiles he noted that there weren't any older asari among them. So keeping them safe and out of danger would be easier, if they all stayed in one place. And at the same time, if he made sure the Alliance couldn't get to them immediately, then he could slip in and try to escape the encirclement hidden among them? Project a wig to hide his hair and pretend to be a recently acquired slave?

It could work. So, I need to keep the Alliance away from the slave pens, then...

Well, that was easy enough. He had already set up the broken phantasms along the way in the fragile tunnels, hadn't he? The idea had been to collapse it during heavy fighting to take out both sides, but now he figured it was a better idea to keep the Alliance completely out of those routes for their own safety.

He already had two of the four routes to the slave pens charged, but another two still needed to be taken down before the Alliance managed to push that deep.

That way, it would take hours of labor to open up the path to the slaves for them, giving him plenty of time to do his work and then return to hide among them.

"Let's go with that, yeah."

Emiya closed his eyes and focused.

In his mind's eye he could see two swords balanced on their tips, barely remaining upright like spinning tops. Fragile and volatile, any sudden motion might well tip that sensitive balance and destroy them. He could feel a thin tether formed between him and those blades, and he took a hold of it with a mental effort.

One sharp tug and both fell over.

A second passed, nothing. Then a rumbling tremble ran through the walls and floor as the seismograph went haywire with all the 'noise' beside him. Another second later the shockwave through the air hit him as a strong gust of wind, and then encrypted comm messages from batarians began reporting that two tunnels had suddenly collapsed.

With a sniff he walked out of the security center, projecting another sword and slowly charging it up in his hand as he spun it around lazily. After ten seconds, he turned around at the doorway and lobbed the sword inside. It hit the floor tip first, sinking a few centimeters into the material.

Five seconds later as he walked away, the sword exploded and turned the room into a melting pile of slag and sparking broken circuitry, destroying the surveillance system and the thumper in one blazing fire.

Two down hallways, two to go, he thought with little cheer as he began running down the hallway towards the nearby mess halls. After all, his hands would be soaked through in blood at the end of this day.

;

"Advancing!"

"Covering!"

Shepard rushed forward, her assault rifle spewing ferrous hypersonic slugs at rates so fast that she could already feel how much lighter the gun had become after a mere hour of fighting. What's taking rear support so long with those damn ammo blocks...? We'll run out at this rate.

Making it to cover just in time as the batarians ahead noticed her having gotten out of cover and being out in the open, she slid the last meters in down on the floor just as her rifle started to overheat. Dropping the rifle on the ground and leaving it to cool down on its own, she grabbed her shotgun and raised it over her shoulder and blindly let loose four shots from the Storm IV. Her hand ached from the recoil, and her head pounded from the sound.

But in these tight quarters it all came down to firepower; the number of shots thrown down-range at anything resembling relative accuracy.

That was the nature of warfare involving kinetic barriers.

With both sides practically having run out of grenades twenty minutes into fighting, it was all about keeping up a continuous stream of bullets. If a gun wasn't on cooldown, it was being wasted. Dropping the shotgun next to the cooling assault rifle, she took her pistol into her off-hand while grabbing the Avenger-sniper rifle in her right hand.

Any second now...

"Advancing!" Came the expected request behind her and she replied before the shout had even finished.

"Covering!"

She rolled half out of cover, hugging the ground as she extended the pistol and let loose four shots in the general direction where she last remembered seeing batarians. A head popped out, and her eye fell down to the scope of her rifle as she dropped the pistol and corrected the barrel for—

—BOOM!

She winced at the roaring echo that reverberated through her whole body. In these tight quarters, she could practically feel it in her every bone every time she pulled the trigger on the big rifle. But it was worth it, just to see the bastard's head splash all over the walls.

"Hell yeah!" She heard someone shouting behind her.

The batarians opposite them shouted at each other, telling someone to move into position to cover the opening the kill had created, but focused firepower by the Alliance soldiers kept them from getting their formation together. And five seconds later as her cooldown cycle was complete, she could only take potshots at the retreating batarians' backs with her rifle.

Another little victory, another little breather.

"Hold this position!" Shepard had to shout as some of the N7's with her almost started chasing after them, intent on repeating the cycle. "Fifteen minute break, freshest take point and hold watch. Others, drink and self-status check. I don't want anyone to drop on me or run out of ammo in the middle of a fight. Get the wounded back to the entrance, and bring back more ammunition blocks. I'm starting to run light here."

She took a swig of her water, feeling as if ice was being poured down her throat given how hot she was running. Cooling off a little, she considered the overall scheme of things. They were making progress and getting faster. It almost seemed like the resistance had been getting weaker for some reason, like there was a problem with their chain of command or something.

Still, it was little comfort given how intense the fighting had been.

Fourteen wounded and six dead, she thought to herself.

All for three hundred meters of drab hallway beyond the blast doors. At least they had managed to take twice that number down on the way, even if the bastards kept falling back and giving ground when their cover was too chewed up to protect them any more. And the resistance she was meeting here was apparently light, compared to some of the other locations. The northern hangar was still being bombarded, since the kinetic barriers and turrets still hadn't been taken down.

Another tremor ran through the ground and she had to look up. Two seconds later the gust of air coming towards them from further within the depths of the installation kicked up dust with its passing. Are they closing off tunnels to minimize fronts they have to fight on?

But until now that had been to the batarians' advantage. With knowledge of the terrain and prepared defenses on their side, they could control the flow of fighting. In contrast by having numerous unknown routes all around them, she and the Alliance soldiers had to advance extremely cautiously. If they carelessly pushed forward without securing their rear, the batarians could flank and attack them from both the front and rear.

Are they sacrificing that tactical mobility for some long-term strategic advantage? By limiting the number of fronts the batarians had to defend, they would be able to fight much longer. With the right personnel rotation and enough supplies... If it came down to that, the fighting could easily go on for weeks or even months down in these hellish hallways.

Shepard glanced at the pillar she had taken cover behind at the end of the firefight.

The back of it jutted out at a right angle offering plenty of cover for a batarian, while the front was angled away. Which meant that when an Alliance soldier tried to use it against the batarians, it offered less than half the amount of protection it had afforded the defenders. And that was without consideration to how chewed up the cover would be by the time they got there.

Their own suppressing fire would destroy the very cover they would need against the batarian, mere meters later.

And the portable kinetic barrier fences were already starting to run low on power. She had ordered them to take the battery packs out of the fallen batarians' hardsuits and to use those, but it wasn't sustainable. And once they lost those, they would be wide open for a counter-offensive.

She let out a tired sigh, before emptying her flask.

"Hmm... Kinetic barriers, huh..."

Something about that thought was scraping at the edges of her mind. An idea of sorts, even. Hailing to the rear-support officer with her omnitool, she patiently waited for a signal to get through properly as it piggy-backed from one omnitool to another down the length of the tunnels.

"Lieutenant Shepard, what can I do for you?"

"About those asari commandos, are they still there?"

"Yes, ma'am. Seem antsy, too," the 1st Lieutenant opined to her.

"Good. Tell them to report here, pronto. And regarding those mining charges they were using in the rift, they still there?" At the Lieutenant's confirmation, she grinned. "Even better. Tell the asari to bring it over while they're coming."

;

Now.

The moment no one was looking, another sword was projected and rammed into the wall. Sinking in like a hot knife into butter, the magical energy poured forth like a river of molten steel making the blade warp and expand as cracks ran through it.

Careful, careful.

There was always a danger of the broken phantasm exploding in his face, when he did this. Broken phantasm. The concept of Reinforcement taken to its extreme to maximize what could be achieved, at the cost of the object itself. A transient refinement where a singular virtue could be demonstrated at its peak for a single moment.

That, or one turn things into bombs.

Which was how he generally tended to use it. Much easier to fail spectacularly if one did it on purpose, really.

He didn't have the know-how or resources to use gemcraft, but once he realized he could just use noble phantasms in a similar manner, suddenly a new world of tactics and techniques had opened up to him. It took him years to work his way up to actually turning noble phantasms into exploding arrows and fire them from his bow. What he had started out with were simple faux-grenades and mines such as these.

Snapping off the handle and leaving the blade embedded in the wall, Emiya kept moving through throng of batarians as if he hadn't just stopped to plant an explosive in the main support structure of the tunnel. A few of the more well-rested batarians around nodded at him, but most of them were too busy with setting up their defenses to care. The Systems Alliance was pushing forward quite aggressively, and since he had already demolished several of the tunnels, the batarians were grouping up for defending the remaining choke-points. Seems like they don't suspect my infiltration and sabotage yet.

He froze in the middle of his step, his brows furrowing as he turned towards the tunnel leading towards the active battlefront against the Alliance forces.

This build up...? Why would someone be playing biotiball here, or—

His eyes shot wide open and he turned on his heel, dashing forward. Four batarians who had been engaging in a silent staring contest protested as he jostled them. Not caring that every quad of eyes was now solidly drawn to him, he rushed for one of the tunnels at a dead run, having crossed the entire open area in two seconds flat.

"—Trace, on!"—begin synchronization,

The only reason he could think of someone powering up such a ridiculous biotiball smash here, was to deliver a payload of some kind.

For that reason he forced magical energy into his projected external disguise-hardsuit, hardening it and sealing it completely so that not even a single crack or weak-point remained, as he threw himself down on the ground.

Dozens of curious quads of eyes turned to regard him for one second, and then the next second the space went white as an explosion went off, shaking the walls and floor even worse than when he had detonated his broken phantasms. He couldn't feel any of the heat or the pressure, but his body was picked up and blown away. He rolled on the ground while protecting his head and neck with his hands until he hit a wall.

Seconds passed, and it seemed to be over.

Opening his eyes and noting that he was still alive, Emiya exhaled as he reversed the hardening on the external suit. It wasn't as bad as I expected. What the hell was that? Military-grade explosives would have had way more of an effect...

Getting up on his feet, he looked around and noted the casualties.

Since everyone had been wearing hardsuits puncture wounds were nearly non-existent, even among those caught up literally in the center of the blast. But the pressure wave had not been nearly as kind; even the concrete walls were cracked and showing signs of collapse. Even as he noted that a large block fell loose from the ceiling and struck down a batarian who had just dazedly gotten back on his feet.

All around the floor lay more, bleeding from their eyes, ears and mouths. Those who had been foolish enough to take off their helmets or even just raise their visors had taken the full brunt of the over-pressure wave. Even with all the hallways branching away, this was still basically an enclosed space. Even 10 kilo-pascals of pressure could cause fatalities, and from the looks of the damage to the reinforced structure of the hallway this must have been closer to 60 or 70 kilo-pascals.

Anyone unprotected nearby would have certainly died.

Even a hardsuit couldn't protect you, if you didn't wear it when it mattered.

Walking forward and crouching down to examine a fragment of the bomb, he frowned as he recognized it. The mining charges?

He didn't have any more time to ponder the matter as he heard the sound of pounding feet, coming from the direction the bomb had just been thrown their way. "Tch, I really don't need to get caught up in the crossfire. Who the hell is their commander, pushing this aggressively?"

Those among the batarians who were still alive were finally getting up, but no one paid him any attention as he quietly moved to leave. Mentally tugging a string, another rumble went off as the broken phantasm he had planted exploded behind him to seal the way to the slave pens. A much more muted affair, the batarians seemed convinced it was an after-shock of the explosive that had just been thrown at them.

Which was more than fine.

The longer he remained unnoticed, the more he could control the batarians' efforts to effectively fight back.

Heading for the tunnel leading further into the installation, he paused for a moment to observe the Alliance force as they arrived and cleaned up the remaining batarians. He blinked as he realized that leading the charge were a trio of asari commandos, carrying large make-shift shields of some kind. What the... Why are there asari here as well? And don't they usually avoid these kinds of slug-fests?

In a prolonged firefight they wouldn't last; their biotics far too energy intensive to be of use in continued fighting, and usually their equipment was far too light and lacking to continue slugging it out after they'd exhausted themselves. Light hardsuits and pistols did not belong on the front-line.

It was when the three asari slammed down the shields and plopped stasis fields over them, he finally realized what was going on. They've created a cover that won't break down, allowing the Alliance soldiers to advance under cover!

No wonder they were moving faster than he had predicted. A method like that would allow them to overcome the defensive advantage the batarians had.

The Alliance commander wasn't too bad, it seemed.

Enough, time to move.

Turning around, he retreated while ignoring the squawking batarians who thought he was a superior officer running away. The combined effect of the Alliance blitzkrieg and his perceived escape would do a number on the batarians' morale here.

With the routes to the slave pens blocked off, the Alliance would be herded more into the direction of the rest of the installation. That should keep the slaves safe and out of the fighting for the moment, keeping them focused on the two hangars instead.

But that wasn't where he wanted to go.

He wanted to go down, deeper underground. But he hadn't even found any access points he could reach on the maps he had been able to get his hands on. There was just a single freight elevator near one of the hangars, but that had already been shelled and collapsed. And since some of the more recent thumper logs kept mentioning the lower levels, that must mean there were still ways of moving around there.

"Here?"

Crouching down, Emiya stared at the grill in front of the ventilation shaft. No, this one goes up and to the left somewhere...

Moving on, he checked another six shafts before he finally found one that seemed to be going down, even if was at an angle. Removing the grill, he stuck his head in and sighed as he noted that it was in fact going down.

"This is going to be a tight fit... Probably would be a good idea to check if it even goes anywhere first."

Checking left and right first to make sure he was alone he exhaled and closed his eyes while pushing outward with his magical energy. Structural Analysis wasn't really a spell suitable for long-range recon like this, but it was his most commonly used spell and his experience from using it every day made him quite adept at it even at something like this. Rather than trying to gain a broad spectrum understanding of the ventilation shaft or the wall and floor, he merely limited his pattern of understanding to seeking out where the material of the duct continued.

Slowly, in his mind's eye a snaking and twisting map formed.

Inhaling as he opened his eyes, Emiya grimaced. "Left, left, right, down-left, right, right and left, huh... This isn't going to be fun."

The shaft would get him down thirty meters into a much deeper part of the facility more easily than the conventional way past all the batarians, but it wasn't like it would be easy to go down it either. There were at least three dozen fans and reinforced grills inside the shaft to prevent just these kinds of intrusions. If he wasn't careful he might just get sucked into the air purifying machinery in the life support systems along the way, which would be more than just a little painful.

And that wasn't even considering the fact that he would barely even fit in the vent.

But he would fit, if only barely.

With a sigh, he dispelled the disguise hardsuit and checked himself one more time to confirm that he really would fit, measuring his own circumference once more. His normal hardsuit, the diamene weave armor he would still keep on, as lacking any rigid parts and being as thin as it was it wouldn't get in the way even in a tight ventilation shaft. In fact given that the material had a lower friction coefficient than his skin, it might even help.

It would also keep him from getting scratched and keep him separated from the worst of the grime and dust in the vents, which was going to be a definite plus judging by what he had seen so far.

Don't they know that cleaning your ventilation system is imperative if you wish to maintain air quality? He groused to distract himself from what he was going to do.

Getting down on the ground he sighed as he glared at the vent one more time, before finally pushing himself in head first with his arms extended. Mentally turning on the flashlight he had installed on the helmet to give himself some more light, he grimaced at the dirty surface of the downward slope.

It took a bit of work to get himself actually inside the shaft, and even once he was in it wasn't like he could actually move further down or anything since his shoulders and hips were pressing against the shaft's sides. Or rather, he realized he was stuck at his hips. With a frown, he extended his magical energy with Structural Analysis until he noticed that it was the pistol at his hip that was getting caught. With an annoyed grunt the holster was dispelled, allowing him to move again and leaving behind the gun as he finally got completely inside the vent.

Things... were, so much... simpler when I could just astralize, he grumbled. This wasn't going to be pleasant, he was already getting slightly dizzy from breathing so shallowly as he slowly inched forward. Just forty-five meters more of this to go.

;

"Site secured, ma'am."

Shepard nodded, looking around at the carnage left in her wake. Dozens lay dead, having bled out from every orifice due to the pressure of the blast. It had literally squeezed their internal organs into mush, causing eyes and ears to rupture in the process.

Contained explosions were nasty; she had learned to always keep her hardsuit on and properly sealed after having seen the results of that the first time.

"Good," she said after another moment. "How are your commandos?"

"They can still press on, if that is required of them."

Somehow, Shepard doubted this Anatha's word on the matter, given that most of her subordinates seemed ready to fall where they were and seemed to be staring at her back with wide, panic-filled eyes at those words. So, she merely nodded.

It had been a good idea to consult the asari, she noted. While the results were gruesome, it had been much quicker and more efficient than just trying to push forward had been. But it wasn't sustainable either.

Continuous use of biotics was simply too tiring, she realized now.

"No, they can rest for now. Having breached this far, going any further would be stretching us thin," Shepard shook her head.

In the plans Major Kyle had stressed the importance of sealing the exit route over actually pushing further in on this front. Mainly for the purpose of gaining a PR victory from freeing the slaves. The AIA had interviewed dozens of former slaves prior to the operation to gain a basic understanding of where the slaves were kept, as being able to announce that they had successfully freed them would make them look good regardless of anything else that happened here.

So in that regard what she had accomplished so far was fine.

She had even managed to capture some of the higher ranking batarians alive for questioning as the defenders' morale had long since hit rock-bottom, which was another definite plus. Glancing at the bound up and stripped down batarians being led away, she inhaled slowly.

Yet somehow it didn't feel like she had managed anything personally.

That man she had seen wasn't anywhere to be seen and the passage to the rest of the slaves had collapsed, meaning it would take hours still before they could actually get to the slave pens, though there were no indications that they were in any immediate danger. The situation was fine, yet somehow she felt she had been utterly played the whole time.

"Your attentions seem elsewhere, is all well? It is unbecoming of a warrior to be so absentminded on the field of battle."

Shepard blinked, turning to look at the asari commander who seemed to be chiding her.

"I... Was just expecting to find someone here."

"The slavers you captured seemed certain that the slaves were still in good health." The blue-skinned woman smiled maternally at her, somehow managing to be comforting without seeming to break her cold facade which still criticized her inattention to matters at hand.

Shepard had to smile. "Thanks for the pep talk, but it's not that."

The asari stared at her, as if her words had somehow been unexpected, so she continued in an effort to explain herself.

Or perhaps it was just to clear up her own thoughts on the matter. Who knew?

Anatha did not seem to object, at least.

"Five years ago a friend of mine died. Since then, I'd moved on until a job opportunity showed up. Which I took immediately, because it was something that seemed both challenging and worthwhile. Only thing was... I ended up finding out something unexpected about that friend's death and I realized that I might not have been as over it as I had thought, after all."

The asari frowned, inhaling slowly but saying nothing.

"So, there's someone here who probably knows something about that time. It's complicated, and I can't really explain it properly, but I..."

She what?

Why hadn't she reported what she had seen? While she was the highest-ranking officer on the site, that didn't mean she had complete autonomy either. Sooner or later he would probably show up, and then it would be only a matter of time until all the footage was reviewed and it became clear that she had seen him. It was surely caught on the cameras, so even if she did find the man, then what?

And she suspected there was something more going on, too.

It was that feeling of everything somehow working out a little too well, that bothered her.

The batarians had put up a hard front at first but had begun to crumble as the fighting went on, she had noted. And now some of the Alliance soldiers scouting around were reporting that they had found the burned out remnants of a command center, along with dozens of dead batarians in sections the Alliance hadn't even pushed for yet.

Someone was helping them on the inside here. But could it really be that guy...? But why?

What was he even doing here?

"Your kind are so short-lived, it is difficult for me to fathom your grief. Yet I can tell that it is not that which troubles you, but some choice you are hesitating to make." Anatha said quietly, pausing for a moment as she looked around at all the human soldiers. "All I can say is that the things one tends to regret in their old age are the things one did not do, rather than those one did."

"You might have a point there... I do feel like all my regrets are like that too." Shepard huffed, glancing at the asari commandos and then at the Alliance personnel bustling all around them. Maybe if she had done something different back then, things would have turned out differently?

It didn't matter, the past was long gone and would never come back. I've done what I have to... So what's wrong with just trying to find him on my own now?

It wasn't like she could properly coordinate with the other assaults this deep anyhow, so it should be fine. Her comrades were plenty capable of holding this position.

"How many of yours can still keep going?"

"They are all capable. I will personally attest to that," Anatha replied almost testily, as if their training and stamina had been questioned.

But Shepard grinned, seeing past the prickly exterior and recognizing the proud warrior's confidence within. Anatha was not angry with her, but rather bashful that her commandos appeared exhausted, more than anything. She's not a bad sort, huh.

"Good. We're low on personnel, but some of the other hallways still need to be combed for stragglers. Grab your gear and follow me."

Leaving some last orders to the other N7's, she and six asari soon headed out into the empty corridors again.

;

Emiya punched loose the grill and pushed out his hand, reaching all around for anything to get a grip on.

Grabbing a hold of the corner of the vent, he painstakingly slowly pulled himself out of the shaft and onto the floor, spreading the dust and grime all over the surface as he did. He rolled his shoulders, feeling out to see if anything had been dislocated or stretched too far during his crawl, while at the same time trying to get the worst of the dirt off of him.

Trying to wipe his mask's visor only made it grimier and spread the stuff around, making him feel like spitting dust out of his mouth even though he had been breathing from the hardsuit's capsules the whole time.

He was completely drenched in sweat from the exertion of crawling through the vents, taking deep breaths for the first time in half an hour with greedy gasps as he focused on recovering. His vision swam as leaned back against the wall to recover for a moment. There had been several moments when he had almost gotten completely stuck, or when he had had to remove fans while inside the shaft. And since there was no space to go around any of the stuff he had to remove, he had to push it all the way until the next fork in the ventilation shafts.

And that was just the fans meant to facilitate proper flow of air. The electrified tripwires and mines actually set up to be a hazard were another story entirely.

"Never again," he re-assured himself with a tired sigh, yet he knew he would probably be eating those words sooner or later.

One thing he had learned that even if it was dumb, he would keep doing it as long as it got him results.

Taking one last deep breath, he got his head back in the game. Looking around, he noted how much nicer the hallways looked down here. Compared to the utilitarian and bare surfaces above, the fine frescoes on the domed ceiling and the many-colored floor-tiling seemed much more ornate and pleasant to the eye.

He almost felt bad for getting it all so dirty.

"Must be the VIP part of the facility," he noted dryly while getting up on his feet again.

Dusting off the worst of the dirt on him, he started walking. This probably wasn't the deepest part of the facility given that it was connected through the ventilation shafts, but it would still probably allow him to go around some of the active combat blockade-fronts.

Probably.

The maps he had gotten didn't include this section of the underground installation. But he did know that there was another thumper nearby; he could feel the minute vibrations in the ground.

Of course, just following the vibrations without a map to consult wasn't exactly useful since...

"A dead end, huh."

He thought about trying to bust through the wall, but shook his head after a second. Who knew how many meters of rock and soil might still be in between him and the thumper.

Looking around he only found another suite and some storage rooms filled with boxes full of supplies around this end of the hallway. He opened two of the cardboard-like boxes made out of thin sheet metal, but upon finding that the contents were merely some kind of batarian processed food he had lost interest.

Poisoning supplies was a valid tactic in a siege such as this, but it became difficult to do on a large scale when every meal was individually packaged and already distributed.

Turning back around, he returned the way he had come, only to freeze after he came around the last corner to where he had begun exploring.

"I think I see light up ahead," a small voice echoed strangely ahead and Emiya froze.

What the...? That wasn't Batarian, who...? His eyes shot wide as he realized that it was coming from the ventilation shaft he had just come through earlier. Blinking twice, he realized it that if he could hear it, then whoever it was must have been pretty close.

His hand almost clenched around the pair of hilts in his mind's eye, before he exhaled and shook his head. That was English... So it must be Alliance personnel? No reason to kill them, but I probably can't explain my presence here to them either. But, I can just... hide?

Emiya looked around the hallway that stretched for twenty meters in either direction. It was honestly gorgeous, but at the same time it was rather sparsely decorated. No expensive Ming large vases, no potted plants, not even any IKEA end-tables or cupboards or large drapery to stand behind.

In other words, nowhere to hide.

Oh, right. Invisibility cloak, he chided himself after a moment of looking around. Except... The grime is still on top of the cloak? Damn it, this won't work at all...!

A gloved hand reached out of the vent, mirroring his own efforts from minutes prior to pull the person it was attached to out. Emiya let out an explosive sigh and kneeled on the floor, practically kowtowing as he turned off the cloak to save energy.

"—Trace, on"—begin projection,

A second later, a perfect replica of the sheet metal boxes he had seen was around him. It was dark inside, but he could still hear perfectly fine what was going on outside the box.

"Phew! Finally out. Whoa, what is this place...?" A somewhat familiar voice said with obvious cheer, as the sounds of someone in a hardsuit trying to get the worst of some grime and dust off of themselves, with little success. "You need a hand?"

Yes, it worked!

"Thanks," another strangely familiar voice replied, seemingly from the vent. "Ugh, so filthy..."

This time he recognized the hint of Serrice dialect immediately, realizing that it must be an asari. What the hell...? They actually had biotiball players there...?!

Emiya shook his head, trying to focus as he narrowed his brows while trying to listen.

"Is it secure? Of course it is secure, I cannot hear any guns or explosions..." A third voice, one with an Usaru accent spoke this time as the second person was finally pulled out of the vent. "Goddess, the things I do for the Matriarch."

"Aren't you glad you've got, what was it she said...? 'Tiny tits and no ass' like the good Lieutenant here? We fit right in Shiala, unlike everyone else." The second, Serrice-born asari quipped with obvious good humor.

"Tryna! If you cannot speak civilly, then do not speak at all," the Usaru-born asari harrumphed with obvious indignation, as the first who had spoken English merely sighed.

...What the hell is this conversation? And... is someone sitting on the box?

"I didn't mean to offend her, it just sort of came out that way. I mean, I kind of like her."

"Like her? How? That old crone is a pain in everyone's ass, even if she is a bloody legend," the Serrice-born asari scoffed. "And even if she is—mad, that is—it was totally worth it just to see her face. In my two hundred years working with her, I've never seen her purple up like that! Never once! Hahahah, 'if you can't even get your breasts in, how do you expect to get your butt then?' Hahahah, what a legend!"

"...That's not exactly what I said..." The first complained as the the second laughed with obvious cheer. "And wait... 'two hundred years'? How... How old are you?"

"Huh? I'm five-hundred and thirty. Why?" The Serrice-born asked. "What's that look for? Anatha is like, nine-hundred and fifty already, so I'm practically a Maiden still!"

"...N-nine hundred?" The first stuttered with obvious perplexment.

Meanwhile, Emiya frowned. How long are they going to just stand and talk there?

"Let us cease the meaningless chatter here." The third sighed then, having obviously finally resigned herself to the fact that there would be no getting the grime and dust off of her hardsuit any time soon. "Do you truly believe your mark came this way?"

"Yeah," the first answered seriously, having recovered from her astonishment. "You said the gun was a rare Spectre-only line, right? Something like that wouldn't just show up out of nowhere in a place like this. Especially a place like this.

"And you saw the insides of that ventilation shaft. Someone must have disabled all those traps and ripped loose those fans to get here. Not just anyone could do something like that."

...Huh, they really are after me. That... was faster than I expected, Emiya thought sullenly. Was there nowhere in the galaxy he would be out of the Council's reach from now on?

"...Right you are. Very well, lead the way."

"You don't think the obvious dirty footsteps aren't suspicious? Like, what if he went the other way?" The Serrice-born suggested, finally at least half-serious.

"And how would he achieve that? You see how dirty we are, don't you? And he went first, taking most of it with him. There's no way he could have gotten clean already," Shiala calmly retorted.

"Well, I guess... But this looks like the personal quarters of the officers, doesn't it? All the batarian frescoes and stuff, right? He could be taking a shower right now."

The first among them spoke up, turning the mood serious finally. "Enough talk, let's go."

They got in a three-man formation as Emiya could hear the sounds of firearms being taken out and expanded, as they moved out and towards the dead end he had moved towards previously.

A couple of seconds later, he let out a deep sigh as he dispelled the box he had hidden in. Things never could just be simple, could they?

Well, no reason to stay and wait for them to come back.

Standing up, he moved out in the opposite direction with long loping steps that silently crossed the hallway in a handful of seconds. Ignoring the various rooms, suites and storage rooms, he found the end of the hallway and the only elevator on this floor.

Projecting Bakuya and forcing open the doors without calling down the elevator by cutting through the latch mechanism, he peered inside the darkness of the elevator shaft curiously. No cables or emergency ladder. Cab must run with mass effect fields or magnetic rails. But plenty of space inside even if the elevator cab comes this way, no danger of getting pushed aside.

Nodding to himself, he slammed Bakuya inside into the side of the shaft and stepped on its protruding hilt into the darkness. Turning around while supporting himself against the wall with one hand, he closed shut the elevator doors behind him. Then he projected another mundane sword, this time inside the door mechanism to lock it properly, and finally even used his Reinforcement to weld the metal door shut just in case. That should keep those three out of my hair. I mean, who the hell just jumps down an open ventilation shaft?

With another aggrieved sigh, he shook his head before he looked up and then down the elevator shaft.

"Down it is," he said with a smirk and dispelled the sword he was standing on, free-falling down into the yawning abyss.

;

Codex:

7. [ Nameless Longbow ]

Early on in his career, Emiya mainly used firearms and relied on conventional tactics, only using his Projection and Reinforcement magecraft to supplement those means when possible.

However as his confidence rose and his opponents began to grow tougher, his methodology had to change. While firearms are recognizable and carry great authority in many parts of the Earth of the 21st century, they also have numerous downsides. Ammunition and maintenance requires contact with proper industrial facilities, and in many parts of the world carrying firearms openly may be illegal or attract too much attention for dealings of the moonlit world. Or they might simply be too anemic to put down some of the threats that he had to face. Beings which shrugged off small arms fire as mere annoyances, while not all too common in the modern world were still a regular occurrence for him to meet.

To that effect Emiya sought to master the use of his bow in conjunction with his magecraft. Through liberal use of Reinforcement, it becomes possible to wield bows at a level where they are even able to out-perform most commonly available guns. Additionally, bows are extremely simple to make in comparison to firearms, be it by hand or through a mental image brought to the real world through magecraft.

But the fact remains that bows are highly inefficient weapons in comparison to firearms, even with the use of Reinforcement magecraft to enhance the power and Projection magecraft to alleviate logistical problems. After all, a bow is only as powerful as the man who can draw it. And it is a much simpler matter to Reinforce a bow than it is to Reinforce oneself. Thus, a limiting factor remains. What meaning is there in creating a bow ten times as strong as any normal bow, when it becomes impossible to wield?

The three pillars of good archery as he had learned in his youth still applied; the accuracy to hit, the endurance to keep loosing arrows and finally the piercing strength for one's arrows to be able to strike through. The first was merely a matter of focus and training.

But the second and third required diligent training of his body to enhance.

But Emiya struggled with this issue, seeking to master his own body to push that limit further, seeking to match the potential his bows could reach with his own body. Even at the height of his potential as a Servant in the Moon Cell, his physical might remained unremarkable. The limits he could reach as a bowman were set by the strength with which he could effectively pull a bow.

Unable to cross that threshold, he would never be able to match those heroes of the bow whose might transcended modern understanding. But he had that advantage of modern understanding; of human advancement on his side.

One such advantage was the understanding of force draw curves and how different bows worked both in practice and in theory.

Simply put, a bow is an apparatus for storing potential energy and transferring it to a projectile as efficiently as possible. To that effect, warriors wielding the bow have long sought to master bows of extreme poundages to ensure that their arrows be imparted as much power as possible. That is to say, the more difficult to draw a bow is the more powerful the arrow loosed can be.

But the major problem with this, is one that is not intuitive or easy to understand without the use of a force draw curve. A conventional bow is at its most powerful when at full draw, meaning that every centimeter leading up to that state requires more strength to pull.

To put it in another way, if a man can draw a certain maximum then anything below that maximum is a waste. A bow has only so much distance to impart an arrow energy within; the power stroke which defines the kinetic energy of the projectile. If the first half of the draw is trivially easy in comparison to the last half, then the arrow will likely have already departed the string before then in its acceleration. Meaning that all that energy put in during the first half of the whole draw is wholly wasted.

In the 1960s a man by the name of Holless Wilbur Allen sought to challenge this paradigm, creating what became known as the "compound bow" after the fact. Using a set of wheels, a longer string that looped around the wheels and created a set of pulleys, it became possible to utilize much more of the draw to impart even more energy into the arrow. This lead to a renaissance of archery, with hundreds of new designs and principles brought into the new compound bows, each more powerful and able to fire faster arrows than the last.

And it was in studying these contraptions that Emiya stumbled upon an idea that revolutionized his use of the bow as a weapon. The concept of "let off".

Simply put, since for a conventional bow the point of the full draw was where it was at its heaviest, it was also the most tiring position to keep the bow in. Thus, with the help of the shape of the cam wheels on compound bows, bowyers of the new world of archery reversed that principle. Unlike conventional bows, a compound became easier to hold at full draw, to help the archer aim and hold the draw as long as possible. It was the idea that a bow did not have to perform in a specific way; it had stages of functionality, and if he knew what he was doing he could flip things around. It meant that a bow did not always have to release an arrow at the same draw weight as it had been drawn.

This concept of the "let off" could also be applied to his magecraft and he immediately sought to test out his idea when it came upon him.

The idea was simple; to draw a bow and hold it at full draw, and only then Reinforcing it. In effect, creating a bow which required only a normal human's strength to draw but upon release could show off the potential of a bow that had been drawn by someone ten times the archer's actual strength.

That first experiment almost killed and blinded him, as the compound bow literally exploded in his hands. The snapping cable nearly severed his arm and leg in lashing out, the bow's limbs exploding into shards and leaving him pelted in carbon splinters. After that incident, he took much more care to keep his distance from his experiments. A policy that proved itself very wise when he began to learn how to create broken phantasms.

After that, he sought to not only Reinforce the bow's output but its durability as well. It was a period of driven experimentation and thorough documentation. Finally, he had to accept that even when he created a bow that could handle the output and used arrows perfectly matched to the poundage of the bow, he could only show off a third of the maximum extent of what he could actually Reinforce the bow to. There were simply too many materials and too many moving parts; something would always give way. A small ball-bearing might be crushed, or the string rest could be shattered, or the limbs might tear themselves off the riser. Something would always fail; the weakest link in a long and complex chain, as the compound bow's marvelous design turned to become its greatest weakness.

Accepting the bitter compromise, he moved on while using a combination of conventional arms and his new mystic code. But even so, he never stopped experimenting and trying out new things.

After all, the compound bow was only the most recent of attempts by humanity in creating a more efficient bow. From east to west, every culture where archery saw wide-spread use, there were efforts in creating a better bow.

Notable bows which Emiya experimented with were the Japanese yumi, the Korean gakgung, the Chinese Manchu bow and finally the European longbow.

While they were made using many different ideologies and purposes in mind, out of a variety of materials and construction aims, they all bore similar ideas and designs in a variety of ways.

Generally, if one wanted to increase poundage it might become necessary to make a bigger bow to ensure the material could handle the strain. But in doing so, the weight of the limbs would increase and sap out energy from the draw, lowering overall efficiency. Thus, using means of reflex—a forward bend to the unstrung bow that placed a higher threshold for the draw weight before the bow was even drawn, leading to much higher poundage—might be better since it kept the weight of the limbs down, at the cost of putting an incredible strain on the bow. But to handle such drastic shapes, simple materials might not be able to handle the strain in any case, necessitating using a variety of laminated layers to keep the bow from shattering instantly.

But once one made a bow too reflexed, it would easily reach poundages that were impossible to draw at anywhere near the full draw. Thus non-functional recurved tips—sometimes made out of a different, lighter and harder material, commonly called siyahs—could be used to act as levers on the end of the bow's draw to ease the end to achieve a force draw curve similar to that of a compound bow. But such tips, as the name "non-functional" suggested, would also add dead weight to the bow, balancing out their function as a lever.

Some of the most powerful bows in the world were made like this, sometimes requiring exotic materials and construction methods to make function without breaking.

The yumi, depending on size, were large bows that used both reflex-preloading and composite materials. They were tools he was familiar with from a young age, having practiced kyudo during his school days. But such bows were too large at higher poundages, and he had long since moved away from method of loosing arrows from the thumb-side of the bow.

The gakgung on the other hand were small bows, heavily reflexed to the point where when unstrung the tips of the limbs would touch on the other side of the bow. But such bows tended to be very low in poundage, using very light arrows for firing at long-distances. Like the yumi, it was also a composite bow, made by laminating various materials together, and also loosed arrows from the thumb-side.

Using a similar design base as the gakgung, the Manchu bow was optimized for launching incredibly heavy arrows for short distances. More similar to the long yumi in size than the gakgung, it was an extra-large reflex bow made using laminated materials. But since it had a much higher natural draw weight, the non-functional tips had to be made much longer as well which add a considerable amount of dead weight to the limbs. For this reason, it was inefficient at firing lighter arrows and suffered somewhat at a distance, as its power could only be fully realized when using heavy and long arrows that would not fly long distances very well. And much like the yumi and gakgung bows, it also loosed arrows from the thumb-side.

Emiya tried all of these bows using his Reinforcement let off method, and while all of them showed incredible results, none of them were ultimately any better than the compound bow when he arrived at the balance-point of output and durability.

Additionally, there were other problems as well.

Having gotten used to the method of loosing arrows from the knuckle-side of the bow, he could not go back to firing on the thumb-side any more for a variety of reasons. Primarily, having the arrow near the eye allowed him to actually aim, which further enhanced his prodigious archery skills to wholly new levels of accuracy.

In urban combat, where the fields of battle are cramped and often filled with numerous obstacles, line of sight is exceedingly important. Sometimes all a rifle-using sniper needs is a small hole in the wall, to peek outside and take a shot. With firearms, the trajectory of the bullet often becomes parallel with the line of sight of the eye at short ranges. With a bow, using the thumb-side release this is not the case as the arrows is loosed at a slight angle from the body, correcting itself in flight to hit the target.

If one stood near a door and took aim at a target inside a room beyond the door, the performance difference was immense. A gun would always fire in a practical straight line. The arrow might well hit the door-frame and fail completely. With the compound bow, having grown used to firing by aiming using the tip of the arrow and a set drawn length, he had come to realize what a difference this little thing made. Minor issues such as the time it took to nock another arrow after loosing one were made irrelevant through the use of Projection magecraft. For him using a quiver was a hindrance, regardless of which side he loosed arrows from.

And the construction methods of those bows became a problem for him, just as it had been for compound bows. Be it the compression resistant belly, the flexible back, the recurved tips or even the glue holding all those parts together—something would always give way. Even at the performance level he had reached with the compound bows, de-lamination would begin to occur in the yumi, gakgun and Manchu bows.

And all had the issue of the bowstring slapping against the frame of the bow, which was both loud and incredibly painful as the shock of impact would go straight into his wrist. Unlike the compound bow with its parallel limbs, the composite bows at full power might very well shatter his entire hand if he shot them at their full potential.

A less than optimal condition for a weapon.

And this would only get worse if he tried to shoot lighter arrows than matched the poundage, since not enough energy from the bow would be dissipated into the arrow safely. So his variety for arrows took a sharp hit, as he had to match them all to the bow and the specific poundages he intended to Reinforce it to meet. He had had literal notebooks full of lists and calculations during those times to ensure he didn't kill himself by firing too light an arrow and blowing up the bow.

For each style of bow, he sought surviving museum pieces and old bowyers who still crafted such bows in the ancient methods, but he found few answers to his problems even after learning their methods and ideologies for weapon creation.

So he needed a bow that was both tough and powerful. What he arrived at was the European longbow.

Termed a self-bow, for it is made out a single material—excepting the string and possible hardened nocks to ensure the string did not shear through the bow itself when strung at high poundages—he had never found them of any particular interest. What point was there in a bow with straight limbs, when even a simple recurve bow was much more efficient, without even speaking of the numerous bows he had sought to make his own previously?

The one-wood longbows he knew of were only notable in their ease of construction, he had thought. That was until he had a chance to examine some of the bows found aboard the sunken warship Mary Rose.

And it was then that he realized the error of his ways. After all, most of those bows were actually reflexed, only becoming either straight of limb or acquiring a set and string-follow after heavy use. Many of those bows, when new had been much better than he had ever thought.

It was after that visit that he had finally had that thought.

"What if I made a bow with an absurd amount of reflex out of a single material that will not de-laminate or break apart?"

But such a bow couldn't possibly be made, could it? Even by blending a variety of materials with differing properties on the back and belly of the bow, there was only so much reflex a bow could handle, especially if it was made from only one material. Even the English longbows were made using the yew wood, with its dual-propertied heart- and sapwood.

Right?

It was only as he began to research materials for such a bow that he realized how much he had been influenced by the thoughts and beliefs of ancient bowyers and archers. Because as it turned out, the material the bow was made out of was only relevant in what it allowed the bow's shape to be and how much it weighed.

If a bow could be made to a specific shape and poundage, then the material difference seemed negligible. The virtue of composite bows lay not in their apparent power, but in their durability to operate at that level of flexion.

So much like the compound bow, that strength became a weakness when Reinforcement was introduced to the equation. With Reinforcement, it was simply that much easier to comprehend and enhance an item made out of single material. Even his first prototypes using steel or carbon proved much more successful than he had thought possible, but not at a level where it could replace the efficiency of a compound bow.

Many a half-successful prototype later, Emiya finally stumbled on something that changed everything.

Graphene.

It was light, insanely tough and strong, capable of both flexing and hardening in different configurations. It seemed like an obvious choice, and he didn't put much thought into his first try beyond the rote attempt at a new angle on a project that had been failing for years.

Only when he made his last prototype, a slim straight-limbed and only slightly reflexed in the middle longbow with a D-shape made completely out of graphene, did he realize the sheer potential of that material. In that first firing test, he thought he had stumbled into disaster when the arrow accidentally fell off the bow string and the bow dry-fired. A disaster for any powerful bow, as all the force that should go into the arrow would instead go straight into the limbs. Bows exploding into pieces were not uncommon occurrences when dry-firing. He had been sitting behind two feet of concrete wall and still he had felt his life shorten a little at that moment.

Except.

The damn thing held.

He had been afraid to approach the thing for minutes, until he tried again. And again. And again. Until finally he had to try putting his absolute highest output Reinforcement on the longbow to see how it would behave.

Emiya still wasn't sure where that arrow from that time flew; he had blinked and it had vanished from his sight.

It was around that point he realized his new longbow design out-performed the compound with ease. Even if the compound bow was more efficient in the draw, it simply could not approach the sheer potential of the pure graphene self-bow. After that he made numerous design changes and tested out his new bow in a mad frenzy. He made the bow even larger and more robust all around, since graphene was so light that the increase in limb weight was minimal.

Normally a smaller bow was more efficient than a larger bow, since the amount of energy in a draw being lost to moving the limbs would be less. Meaning when excluding all other factors affecting efficiency, a longbow with an output of 10 power could lose to a smaller bow with only 9 power, as the difference in weight could result in a net loss of 3 and 1 power respectively. But with Reinforcement this problem would be thrown on its head completely, since even as the power increased the weight would remain the same. If suddenly both bows were made 10 times more powerful, the longbow which would have lost by 1 in power to the short bow previously could suddenly have an advantage of 8 in power as the loss from weight remained static.

Additionally, as the arrows began to reach supersonic velocities the considerations for limb movement grew as well. Simply put, for the arrow to reach a certain velocity the string must also reach that same velocity. For the string to reach a certain velocity, the tips of the limbs must first reach that velocity. A chain of dependencies, of one thing feeding into the next in the long chain all the way down to the arrowshaft. At regular velocities this would not be a concern, but as he approached the sound barrier it became imperative that the limbs be force to move as little as possible. Thus with the longer limbs, for the same draw length of arrow, the limbs had to move through less air thus resulting in a higher net output.

Thus for him, bigger was absolutely better, which lead to some interesting and colorful comments in the later years of his life when he pulled out his bow.

But, as having the entirety of the limb be graphene would make it too stiff for him to draw, even while using Reinforcement on himself. If he made simple flatbow limbs; thin and wide sheets that he had the physical strength to pull, then the bow would end up easily bending sideways after a few arrows. To stabilize the bow and ensure that the string remained in line with the bow itself, a thicker shape was necessary for the limbs. Finally, he found a solution to his liking, from modern bow risers, that often drilled holes of various shapes into the bow to minimize weight while retaining sufficient stiffness. Unbound by the limitations of contemporary technology with his Projection, he could hollow out the inside of the bow, while still keeping the external shape to his satisfaction. With this, he managed to sharply decrease limb weight even further—which allowed for greater top velocities for the limbs and thus subsequently any arrow loosed—while only lowering the stiffness to the point where he could actually draw it.

Emiya continued to experiment with external geometry and internal topology for years, changing the outer shape of the limbs to something that seemed closer to sword-blades than anything ever seen on bows before, further raising efficiency and minimizing vibration. He took inspiration from various blade profiles, using his almost intuitive understanding of blade tapering to create the optimal limb shape for him. This also had the unexpected side-effect of increasing Reinforcement potential, as his affinity for blades and blade-like objects gave him a slight edge. At the same time, more and more of the insides were continually hollowed out and replaced by an ever-increasingly complex latticework. As he could analyze the stress points on the bow in real-time and then modify and re-create his bows with the snap of a finger, optimizing the bow was hardly difficult. Just very time-consuming. Some days he went through hundreds of refinements, improving efficiency by only fractions of a percent at a time.

But it all added up, as he trained his body to match the bows' draw weights.

Having finally settled on the shape and internal make-up for the bow, he then began to reflex the bow to further improve its efficiency, until it was finally a perfect circle shape with the limbs curving in on themselves and meeting back at the middle when unstrung to maximize the draw weight. Completely foregoing any recurve, he simply went for the highest poundage he could handle, to maximize the benefits of Reinforcement. As an additional benefit, lacking the recurved tips the string never came into contact with the bow when released from a full draw, keeping it nearly soundless when matching poundage and arrows suitably.

With nearly all whole of the length being functional it is practically a full compass bow, but the bridged riser dramatically increases stiffness in the handle and minimizes vibration and shock to the bow hand, further increasing accuracy and lowering loudness. Lacking an arrow-rest, it is capable of loosing arrows from both sides. While he ultimately came to prefer the western method of loosing arrows for the gains in accuracy and line of sight, there were still times he had use for the thumb-side draw. Particularly if he wanted to accentuate the archer's paradox and make arrows curve to the left for a specific shot.

Of course, all that power did not come without its own share of problems, among them the foremost one known simply as Newton's third law. Basically, every time one loosed an arrow a force is exerted in two ways; one which sends the arrow flying forward and another which pushed back the hand holding the bow. This is an inescapable law and one which governs all motion, even for a magus who bends the laws of the material world to his advantage. Normally when wielding a bow this is never a problem, as the weight of the arrow and the speed with which it is loosed are minimal compared to the weight of the archer shooting it. To give a simple example of this principle, every time a gun is fired the gunman will experience the equivalent of a single punch's worth of force pushing him backward in the opposite direction of where he fired the gun. The gun is only lethal because the bullet's force is distributed over such a small area, meaning that the force could just as easily be just as lethal if applied with a knife with a similarly sized impact area.

But as the power of the bow increases exponentially and as the weight of the arrows increases—especially as Emiya began to fire modified swords from his bow, creating arrows that could easily weigh fifty times as much as any modern ordinary arrow did—this would become a massive problem. Simply put, firing a sword that could easily weigh well over a kilogram out of his bow at velocities exceeding the speed of sound was going to create an absolutely immense amount of kinetic energy. More than enough to bowl him over and make him lose his balance.

While at times this could be useful, for example when jumping and shooting at an angle downwards it became possible to "jump again" in the air by firing a heavy arrow, most often it would merely inconvenience and unbalance him. At the very least it would throw off his aim if he did not account for it, at worst it could leave his limbs and upper body aching for days afterward if he did not carefully Reinforce his own body to handle that power, limiting the potential of his wondrous bow yet again.

So he found a solution yet again in modern human methods, by copying firearms technology. He created his own custom "muzzle brake" into the bow's riser. While it appeared to be a strange shield that would scrape the arrows and only exacerbate the archer's paradox to even most trained eyes, it is in fact a vent which absorbs a part of the force applied to the arrow. By taking in the airflow from the arrow, turning it around and pushing it back out through two exit vents in the top and bottom of the little shield, it would function as a stabilizer. In effect, a fraction of the arrow's power would be lost and turned into a stream of air which pushes the bow forward in the hand when an arrow is loosed, fighting back against the push of the massive arrow being slung forward at ludicrous speeds proportionally to the arrow's own force. Though only a fraction of the efficiency of a muzzle brake in a gun due to the open nature of its construction and relying on the airflow of the fletchings, it did improve handling and accuracy immensely noticeably.

Of course, if Emiya wished to use the full recoil of the bow then through Reinforcement it is possible to close these vents to disable that function. For example, when firing down at the ground from a position in the air or when firing upwards with a solid surface to brace down against on one knee, unleashing the full power of the bow is no problem. Of course, as this function is dependent on air to function, it requires an atmosphere of a certain thickness to function, a problem Emiya had never had to consider while alive.

But when it came to super-long range sniping, it still wasn't enough. To loose an arrow at sufficient speeds over distances exceeding several kilometers, the full potential of the bow was necessary. A problem he solved finally after months of experimenting with different options, making use of the hollowed internals.

By projection, it is possible to fill the empty insides of the bow with an extremely dense metal called Osmium at the last second just before the arrow is loosed from the string, making it possible to "negate" most of the recoil. Much like how a heavier gun will feel more pleasant to shoot than a lighter one, the suddenly massively heavier bow will not kick back with nearly as much speed due to its suddenly increased mass. Then once the recoil is spent, the Osmium can be dispelled to restore the bow to its lighter configuration. In practice, this projection and dispelling of the Osmium core is performed in a space of time that less than half a second. Combined with the open vent in the center, this allows the bow to be used at full power with relatively manageable recoil, though it requires immense concentration and makes it difficult to switch to close combat quickly, necessitating thoroughly securing the final firing position when sniping at such ranges.

Thus it is a bow made to fit every situation, being highly adjustable when it comes to brace height and poundage, allowing it to launch a wide variety of arrows without issue.

As n aside, during this time he also created several social media accounts to reach out and discuss possible ideas with other amateur bowyers on the internet. His most active account was on a popular video hosting website, but due to the usually low production values and esoteric ideas regarding bows he never reached more than a few hundred watchers. After his trial and execution, it was quietly removed from the site.

Regardless, the end result was Emiya Shirou's one and only true mystic code; a massive black longbow of such ridiculous potency it could launch arrows at supersonic velocities even without the use of Reinforcement. If his compound bow had been equivalent to an anti-materiel rifle, then his longbow was to the main gun of a tank.

And with Reinforcement he practically removed the concept of the arc from "archery" with the kinetic energy available to him. Having gotten down to his final build on the longbow, he decided to perform a distance test using everything he could think of. An arrow as light as possible that started out as a Sears-Haack body lacking fletchings for the initial hypersonic launch that would then turn lighter by dispelling its outer shell and reveal a superbly light flight arrow, with a 0% FOC and optimized fletchings for long-distance flight once it would slow down below supersonic velocities. He had equipped the thing with a GPS tracker and shot it at a 45 degree angle, hoping to get at least a thousand kilometers out of the thing. As it turned out, the GPS satellites lost track of it within half a minute and it hadn't even started to arc yet, meaning it was lost somewhere in space completely beyond his sight.

He never did find that damn arrow.