OK, time to break the silence! It's been really hard for me to write lately, with Uni and everything, but now I've gotten the next part of the story going! With regards for how this next part is going to be, I see it as a bit more comedic, since it won't be such a lonely adventure from now, and there will be a lot more "good" characters to write about.

This is just a sneak peek into a bit of the action, I hope you find it enjoyable. The first chapter is already up, and the fic is called "We live in the flicker", hope you like it!


"How many mechs does this guy have?" Jane exclaimed as a rocket flew over her cover to land a few meters away. The blast disabled her shields and she grunted as the shockwave dazed her. Before the mech could lay out more suppressive fire, its weapon's own eezo cores warped themselves and the guns were rendered useless. Kasumi materialized on the mech's shoulders and overheated her hand cannon on its neck. When the head was hanging by wires, she pointed her gun into the exposed circuitry and cycled the thermal clip before shooting again. She then jumped towards the cover Shepard was hiding behind, landing just in time to shield herself from the shrapnel the exploding mech blasted in all directions.

"I think that's the last one in this place, or at least Hock has nowhere else to hide another one," Kasumi told Shepard as the two got up to find a way out.

A few guards stood outside Hock's mansion. "Do you think the mechs got the fuckers? Hock sent pretty much half of us into the vault."

"I sure as hell hope so, wouldn't want to try shooting at someone who got sent three mechs because nobody else could get them."

The conversation was cut short as the door to the vault behind them blew open, the two metallic panels flying towards them and flinging them off the loading area outside the mansion. Kasumi walked out with her submachine gun raised before turning around to frown at Shepard. The commander shrugged, "What? You were taking too long hacking the door open."

The Master Thief was about to respond but her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a gunship approaching. ATLAS mechs started marching towards them, accompanied by Eclipse mercenaries as the roar of Hock's gunship's miniguns filled the air. Kasumi engaged her cloak immediately as Shepard blind-fired over her cover. She activated her omnitool to see where she was shooting as she crawled along the concrete walls standing between herself and the endless gunfire, to avoid staying behind cover that was far too deteriorated. Atlas mechs fell one by one, falling victim to Shepard's biotics or Kasumi's surprise attacks.

"Shepard, help me clear a path to the gunship, I can disable its shields permanently!"

Not needing to hear it twice, Shepard pulled the grenade launcher off her back and took aim at the group of mercs standing between her and Hock as bullets ate at her shields. She pulled the trigger as her shields failed and a chip of metal touched her shoulder plate, blowing half of it apart. She was back in cover before the grenade was even able to hit its mark. The smoke and dust the grenade's blast had lifted cleared as Kasumi's invisible figure sprinted through it. The thief's legs whirred almost imperceptibly as synthetic muscles helped her leap ten metres into the air, right on top of the ship. She looked into the cockpit to see the hate in Hock's eyes before the shield systems were overloaded and he spun to shake Kasumi off. Her grip on the canopy was strong but her body was inevitably pulled to the side.

Two kilometres away, Garrus opened the blast door of the Kodiak and extended his sniper rifle, having just loaded a Tungsten-Osmium cube into it. The gun whirred as the mechanism shaved off a large piece of the cube to accelerate and the turian took aim. He could clearly see the gunship as Kasumi jumped on it and the ship spun to the side, trying to make her lose her footing. I trying to drop her, Hock had just aligned himself perfectly for Garrus to take a shot. Letting out air through his nostrils, he pulled the trigger and the recoil made him step back, out of breath. The gun's thermal clip was expelled and the system's protested after having fired in an anti-vehicle configuration.

Kasumi raised her eyebrows seeing the cockpit's inside coated in red and the fist sized hole in the canopy. She jumped off onto the platform as the gunship swerved and fell to the ground far below it. Soon a Cerberus Kodiak arrived and the two women jumped in, heading back for the Normandy.