Last Updated: 14th March 2013

Thoughts

Normal

"Speech"

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Chapter 3

(revised)

Don't Forget

I have never been to Kansas, but I'm sure that this doesn't even come close.

Heavy gunfire thudded periodically against the wooden crate that separated Sky from a certain death. The meager cover shook and groaned from the assault as the teenager prayed for it to hold together. She was not, by any means, religious, yet she found herself sending out the desperate words more and more often as time went by. She briefly wondered if she was, as her best friends used to so eloquently put it 'finding her way to being saved' or if her brushes against death had made her seek out whatever help she could find. Whichever the case, her pleading was obviously ignored for the crate soon exploded around her, showering her with little bits of wood. She groaned as she duck and rolled towards the other side of the room, crashing into a brick wall that had given way during the fire, leaving a 3 and a half feet tall height that she could crouch behind.

The muscle and skin on the right side of her waist moaned in protest against her sudden movements. She sighed, grasping the still-very tender wound with her left hand while keeping an eye trained on the attackers ahead.

She was very thankful she was not alone, just as she was thankful that she was even breathing at that moment. Somewhere in the midst of the fight were two others seeking shelter from various inanimate objects. There was Owen: the handsome, dark-haired, yet extremely cold man with an assault rifle in his well-trained hands, seeking out opportunities to leave cover and return fire whenever possible. And then there was his cousin, Jane.

Sky struggled to find words that could describe the majestic way at which Jane fought. If she had not known any better, she would have assumed that she came from a background of fighters, not farmers. Both inside and outside of a fight, Jane was someone who radiated confidence and certainty. Despite being so young, at 16 years of age, she was the alpha of this little pack. Looking at her now, with her lips set in a grim line and her breathtaking eyes flashing with determination, she was a force to behold and a sight to treasure. Despite hating, hating all forms of confrontation, there was a certain beauty in the way Jane moved, hurdled and retaliated that made it difficult for her to tear her eyes away.

At first, Sky had assumed that Owen was the man that would lead this story into creation. He was not someone to take lightly either, having the ability to confidently switch between the assortment of weapons that he carried around with great efficiency and swiftness. The way he held himself, the way he walked, talked and carried through with his plans made him superior over Jane at first sight. And yet, as the week carried on, it slowly became blatantly obvious that the female Shepard had far more potential to be their hero. She was ruthless and unstoppable in a fight, but displayed an extreme amount of intelligence and rightly-placed kindness out of it. Sky slowly came to the conclusion that she was definitely the one Bioware had planned to save them all from the Reapers.

The three survivors were armed in a variety of weapons that they had managed to pick up from the dead bodies of their batarian enemies along the way. In Sky's grasp was a fairly simple handgun that was sufficient enough in power and offered little recoil, which was a good thing, considering little movements were still a discomfort to her healing wound. Larger steps, such as the duck and roll she had performed earlier, would sometimes leave her gasping in pain. Already her wound had split open twice during the course of the week. With the lack of medical facilities, painkillers, or medi-gel there was little either Shepards could do for her except help her along once in a while, albeit one more reluctantly than the other.

She thought over how quickly the past three days had passed; on the off occasion that she managed to take a breather she kept expecting, hoping to find herself back in her own bed. Sure, the prospect of being in the game that she deemed to be the best in this world was exciting for about the first 5 seconds, before the crashing pain of her wounds, added with the fact that they could very likely die if any of them were caught, replaced said excitement rather quickly. But no, all her praying and hoping were to no avail, and instead she opened her eyes to the same ghastly orange-red sky. Every. Single. Time.

So what else could she do? Jane helped wrapped her wound up as much as possible, but with the lack of clean cloth and disinfectants, the wound would not heal properly. They had enough to spare her a medi-gel pack every alternate day, much to Owen's protest, but she was pretty sure she would have died of the wound infection without it. She also managed to steal some clothing from several abandoned houses. Yes, she knew that one should not steal from the dead or missing, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

It also helped to discover that she was actually a rather good shot.

"When you're taking a photograph, you have to breathe out. If you hold your breath, your hands will shake. Breathing out gives you the stability to be accurate." The voice of her high school photography teacher resounded in her head. Perhaps it was not wise to apply the same lessons to both photography and blowing a batarian's brains out, but it hadn't failed her so far.

Absentmindedly, she mulled over Jane's decision to keep her alive. Having an extra body to feed, clothe and heal proved to be difficult. They had to run at a slower pace than they could before, and take breaks relatively often due to her wound. But Sky chose not to delve too much into her choice and decided to just be grateful that they allowed her to tag along, since she knew that she would not have survived otherwise.

A break in the rain of gunfire broke her out of her reverie. There was a clatter of equipment being reloaded. Taking the opportunity, Jane, Owen and herself leaned over whatever covers they had taken refuge behind and returned fire on the attacking batarian slavers. These fights normally take quite a while and usually resulted in one or more of them getting heavily injured. It was never a fair fight, they were virtually always outnumbered two to one and the three of them had nothing to offer them protection aside from the clothing on their backs and whatever ruins was left of the villages

The first time she ran into these aliens she had recoiled in horror and disgust. She could not have prevented it even if she tried; they were made of stuff that children back home had nightmares about. Four almost-pitch black eyes blinking in unison together with the many nostrils they seemed to have. She remembered how she had to resist all urges to scream in fright, but her auto-reflex had shot that one dead before she could even register the yellow, green blood that splattered across the floor. Her first of many kills. She used to wonder how soldiers in the front lines did it, but now she knew.

She glanced to her right and saw that Owen was signaling for her to cover him. She nodded and immediately started firing in the general direction of the enemy.

There are no second chances in War. She thought as she shot one of the nearer aliens through the neck.

"Nice shot." Owen complimented her in slight surprise as he vaulted over her brick wall to crouch down next to her.

"Thanks."

She wisely neglected to tell him she had been aiming for the other batarian.

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At times like these he often told himself to think of it as a dream; a very long, really bad, excruciatingly terrifying dream.

The events of the past week have been so suppressed in his memories that it occasionally took him by surprise to remember that he had a life before all this, before the shooting and fighting and deaths. The only time he allowed himself to think of his past was to relive the lessons he had learnt from hunting, anything else hurt too much.

Exhale, and shoot. He was careful to ensure that he only left his cover when there was a break on the other side. What he never understood was how come the batarians never thought of a better tactic to reload while the rest were firing. But hey, he wasn't complaining. One down, four to go.

After a moment's pause he could tell that the enemies were gaining ground. He knew that his position would soon be compromised should he continue to stay behind the metal case.

Looking around he waved and caught the eye of their newest 'member'. Nodding his head towards the enemy he mouthed 'cover me' and waited for the firing to start. Thankfully, her location was near enough and without much thought he ran towards her and jumped over the low brick wall to crouch by her side.

"Nice shot." He said in surprise as one of her bullets caught an advancing batarian in the throat, spraying the gooey blood everywhere as he went down. Throats were messy stuff.

"Thanks." She replied nonchalantly.

He wasn't really sure what to think of this girl. In short, she was quite the enigma. He could not sense even a hint of malicious intentions from her, yet her story, the things she told them about her past, just did not add up. In another situation he might have pressed further, to discover the truth behind her half-hearted lies, but there was no time to waste on such details.

Every day for the week had been a fight for their lives. Sure she was a burden, slowing them down from their otherwise accelerated pace, but he understood Jane's reasoning. The girl gave them hope; that if someone so helpless and clueless could survive through this onslaught, perhaps there would be other survivors as well: friends, family that they did their best to forget about. Against his better judgment, he felt himself becoming more accustomed to having the dark-haired Asian around.

Misery did love company after all.

"Status!" His blond cousin barked out at him from the opposite side of the room. Owen reached behind him to retrieve a small radio device that he had managed to tinker with to sync with the Alliance's frequency. Lifting the black box to his ear he struggled to listen to it over the deafening sound of gunfire.

"ETA, 20 minutes."

He watched her grit her teeth in frustration. This part was the worst, the waiting. The batarians had some sort of machine that disrupted the frequency of radio waves and it messed with all the distress calls they had sent through. Eventually, two days ago, they had decided that taking down one of the machines was worth the risk. It was very heavily guarded, and they had managed it in the end, but here they are now, cornered as they waited for help to arrive. "Why the hell are they still here? Shouldn't they be running the other direction if they know the Alliance is on their way?"

Owen shrugged. "I don't think batarians are known for their intelligence." Then realizing that that was quite a racist comment he corrected himself. "Or at least, this group definitely isn't."

"Heads up." Sky's softer, foreign-accented voice interrupted their discussion. "We have reinforcements."

At the enemy's side twenty other batarians joined their most fallen crew. He cursed underneath his breath. Five to six were a stretch, but nothing they hadn't done before. But over twenty? How the hell are they supposed to get out of this alive?

"Shit." Jane wiped the sweat of her brow using the back of her hand, obviously coming to the same conclusion, before tightening her grip on her weapon. "Okay, we only need to hold out for a little more than twenty minutes. We've managed to survive this together for a whole week. Twenty more minutes will be nothing."

Owen found himself nodding in unison with Sky. He shared a look with the younger girl on his right; nothing spoke camaraderie like a looming death threat and the frustration of survival being so damn close.

"If we ever get out of this alive." He muttered to her. "Remind me to apologize."

"Whatever for?" She asked, smirking slightly, knowing full well he was implying to how he had been quite an asshole to her.

Owen rolled his eyes and did not answer. He did mean after. For now, she was still that annoying burden.

Once again there was a break from oncoming fire; spurred by the motivation of help coming, all three were quick to retaliate.

Jane called out something that neither of them could hear over the noise. Seemingly more desperate, she screamed at them to hold their fire. Surprised, Owen stopped at once and leaned back down, pulling Sky with him.

"What?" he asked, frowning at his cousin.

She gestured to the enemy. "Listen."

There was a silence, and then a high pitch noise, like something being powered up. He stared at Jane's steadily widening eyes, before the source of the sound registered in his brain a second too late.

They had brought out the heavies.

Almost mechanically something in his gut forced him through the following motions without thought. He grabbed Sky's waist, ignoring her yelp of confusion and surprise, before shoving her with all his might towards Jane's direction. Her small frame quite literally flew from their position. Not surprising considering the fact that the girl weighed less than 100 pounds.

He watched Jane's mouth open in a scream, the fear and grief that had been riding up so close to the surface the past week finally breaking through, shattering her composure completely.

"Don't-" he began.

He felt the thin brick wall explode around him first, throwing him backwards. There was no way he would survive this impact, his luck had officially run out. All he was grateful for was that Jane won't be alone. There wasn't even time to register pain for everything went dark before he even reached the ground.

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Third chapter in three days? I'm on a roll. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did rewriting it. How does it feel for an action scene? Is it too slow?

Changes:

Those who have read my previous Vertigo would realize that my events now span over a longer period of time. I hope to get more character development and story in this way.

Also, I'm rather sad about Owen. I actually grew to really like him writing the these two chapters. =[

Ah heartbreak.

I also know that the past few (and possibly the next few) chapters has been and will be quite dark. I promise that the humour will pick up after. I hope you won't think of me as morbid or dark, because I really am not.

Again thank you Helljumper1337 and Nanobot5770 for reviewing. Also to everyone else for reading and subscribing.

Constructive criticisms are welcomed. This is a learning experience after all.

Until tomorrow then! (Hopefully)

Much love,

Fee

xx

Edit: Woah. Didn't do anything for this chapter. I actually quite liked it. Poor Owen though. =[