Response to the review by GrimKid98:Klin is unlikely to feature in this story again, alive at least.

Chapter 2.5: Shoot To Thrill

Saren glared at the assembled force. "We need to get down two floors, now," he barked. He looked at Alma and Jack. "You two are bloodthirsty psychos, you'll take point and if you live you're hired."

Jack, who had finally managed to compose himself, shook his head. "We're going to stay freelancers."

"I'll let you eat more people's psionic energy," Saren offered. "As much as you want."

Jack paused. Then he winced. "Yeah, I…I think I might not need that offer. Probably a good idea to avoid that for a bit. And I can just do that anywhere, whenever I feel like it."

Saren shrugged. "True enough, but you're still taking point."

Jack frowned. "But why me? You know what, we're just wasting time. Come on Alma; let's go educate people on their fundamental mortality."

Alma did not move. When jack turned to her, she was frowning. "The background psionic energy of this place is changing. It feels…wrong."

Kasumi frowned. "You think it feels wrong? That's like hearing Saren say 'Maybe we shouldn't kill them.' It just sounds unnatural, not that I've ever heard him say anything like that."

Saren glared at her. "Is that really appropriate? This could be an actual problem. We need to retrieve the artifact now so we can address whatever this problem is."

"Or you could handle it on your own since this job is all you've hired us for," Kasumi replied.

"Don't argue when there's an unknown threat in our vicinity," Zaeed ordered her. "Not only that but we have a small army behind us, and you want our two kid psychics leading the way? Not bloody happening."

Saren turned on him. "You are in no position to argue unless you feel like walking through that army gathering out front."

Zaeed growled, but didn't say anything else.

Alma held up her hand. "We keep going." She then walked to a position near the center of the dance floor and closed her eyes. Jack felt her power focus and spread out on the floor into a circle in the center of the room. Saren looked at his own psion and did nothing else upon seeing him shake his head.

Kasumi caught Jack's eye and he explained. "She's gathering power to punch through the floor." Jack then looked to Tali who was standing a short distance away. "How are things going?"

Tali continued working on her omnitool, which was plugged into a terminal behind a bar, as she replied, "Not well. Aria's army is already advancing up the concourse and exchanging fire with the turrets we control. I'm the network now, but now I'm seeing messaged from outside. The city is becoming a warzone. If this has anything to do with the psionic disturbance, then we need to get out of here. Aria and the auctioneers are still below us, but only because she was just forced to institute a city-wide emergency. All of the sections are getting locked down; even the trams and hover traffic are being stopped unless it's for one of the big groups. I think it might have something to do with keeping the pirate lords from fighting, but that doesn't make sense with us attacking her."

Saren hissed through his mandibles. "We need to find a secure location to defend ourselves unless we can escape. I purchased a priority license for Omega so that I could avoid having to be inconvenienced by these sorts of emergencies." He looked at Zaeed and Kasumi both. "What about you two?"

Zaeed nodded with a grunt and Kasumi smirked as her pulled up her omnitool for a moment before scowling and cursing. "Damin it! She rescinded my license!"

Saren, Zaeed, and the Turian psion all looked at their own omnitools and cursed. Saren glared at Tali. "Fix this, now!"

Tali shook her head. "I can't! Not quickly anyway! It's a separate system with its own encryption. I won't be able to get access any time soon."

"Can we lift the lockdown?" Jack asked.

"I…" Tali said, tapping away at her omnitool. "It's decentralized so that each sector is responsible for its part of the lockdown. We could issue a message ordering the lifting of the lockdown, but unless the neighboring sector commands listened to us it wouldn't help. Both sides have to agree to lift the lockdown for the doors to unlock. I think that I could open them if I had physical access to the systems though."

"I don't think everyone will have agreed to the lockdown, even if there is suddenly fighting in the streets," Kasumi said. "Many will see it as an opportunity."

"This is too fast," Zaeed said. "How could the situation deteriorate so fast? There was no sign of a city-wide conflict brewing on our way here. Not even this attack should have triggered that."

"Whatever –" Saren started to speak before a deafeningly loud shriek of tearing metal cut him off as Alma's gathered psionic energy smashed through the floor above and into the one below with a shuddering bang that shook the building and dented the floor below.

Alma shakily sat down next to the new hole in the floor. Jack walked over. "Are you okay?" he asked when he reached her once his ears stopped ringing.

"I am well enough to continue."

"If you're sure."

"I am sure."

Jack nodded and stood next to her in silence for several seconds as sounds of gunfire grew from the direction of the entrance.

Then Alma send out a large psionic blast into the gap and blasted another hole into the floor below the one they were one.

Before the dust had even finished clearing, there was already gunfire coming up at them.

"Go! Go! GO!" Saren roared as he leapt down into the hole, firing all of the way down. The rest of his team followed him as soldiers burst through the doors to the stairs and onto the club's main floor.

Kasumi stealthed, Zaeed rolled halfway to Jack and Alma before dropping a kinetic barrier, and Jack picked up Alma and dashed behind the cover Zaeed created.

Alma opened her eyes and filled the room with her hateful aura.

~+~B:F/M~+~

Saren crashed into a Replica that had been shooting at him, killing it instantly. Biotically charging forward, he knocked down three auctioneers and then killed them with his machine gun before they could react. He then spun, launching a spread of micro missiles through the large room and hitting the panicking crowd, though his focus was on Aria and her soldiers which were divided between his team and the drones that Tali had apparently hacked at some point recently.

Many of Aria's patrons were armed and one of them, a Krogan in teal armor, actually had a rocket launcher, though that didn't save him from a micro missile followed by a machine gun burst with incendiary ammo to the head.

Saren was adept at using chaos to his advantage, and so he constantly kept moving through the crowd, trying to get between or behind his opponents so that they couldn't attack him without risking each other while he used indiscriminate attacks of his own. However, all was not going his way and he noticed that one of his commandos was killed by a crushing biotic grip. He gunned down another patron and whirled to his left to face the location where his commando had died.

Before he could do anything else, a freighter of biotic force smashed through the room at and through him, sending him into the wall fifteen meters behind him. He groaned as medigel was applied to his abused body and his armor's automated repair system beeped warnings to him.

When he picked himself off of the floor, he saw an old acquaintance standing over him with a hand on her hip. She was an Asari clad in formfitting black body armor. Her helmet was sealed, with a white glow emanating its eye sockets. Biotic power wreathed her as she shook her head and mocked Saren. "You're a dangerous lunatic, too high on bloodlust to think things through, or even to care about them. Everything you've done has doomed Omega already! Do you have any idea about what's happening out there? Do you even care?"

While she was ranting, Saren surreptitiously used his omnitools to construct small bombs. He was actually somewhat concerned the way that the fight had started. She had managed to blindside him even though he had been on the offensive and now she had him corned. At least she was using the opportunity to rant and gloat. Behind his helmet he bared his teeth. Just as she started to finish her rant, he launched the grenades from his gauntlets and biotically charged to the other side of the room, where his psion was executing a wounded soldier. "Focus down Aria!" he ordered, before sending out a burst at her as he rolled away to the right, narrowly missing bolt of biotic energy which hit the wall behind where Saren was and crumpling it with a shrieking protest of bent metal.

His retinue and some of the drones turned their fire on Aria, but her biotic barrier was strong enough to shrug off the storm of kinetic fire and bend the laser attacks out of the way. She remained focused on Saren, using her biotic power to slam him into the ceiling hard enough to almost completely deplete his second barrier. A moment later she twisted the gravity so that he slammed into the floor hard enough to crush the ceramic tiles and dent the metal plates underneath them.

"I will squash you flat and grind your bones into dust," Aria told him as she gradually increased the gravity pulling Saren into the floor.

~+~B:F/M~+~

Jack scowled as he crouched behind Zaeed's failing deployable cover. After everything that they had been through, it was unlikely that they were in much danger. However it was annoying to have to huddle behind cover while people tried to kill him. Jack didn't want to continue minds if he didn't have to, while the rush was enjoyable it made him feel like something about him was changing, and he wasn't sure if the change was a good thing. Alma was his only example of what consuming others' psionic energy would lead too, and she wasn't very inspiring to him. Then there was the fact that Sovereign seemed to want him to eat minds, it had been the one to teach him how after all. Jack felt that it was safe to say that an entity that spoke telepathically with a chorus of voices and advocated eating essential parts of other people probably wasn't something he should trust.

On the other hand, if he didn't use said power, he could easily end up dead or injured.

So Jack again chose the option of delayed possible damnation over relatively likely immediate injury. He concentrated and focused on a Replica trying to flank their position. It was actually next to where Kasumi was stealthed with her active camouflage. She could take it down easily, but that would give away her current positon, so Jack decided to kill it for her. He sank psionic claws into the Replica's essence and ripped it out, drawing it back to himself and smiled at the rush of power. He wasn't sure why Alma didn't act giddy after doing this, but he assumed that was probably because she got used to the effect.

Smile growing wider, he continued ripping psionic essence out of soldiers and Replicas alike until he realized that he was about to kill Kasumi and stopped himself. There wasn't anyone else left alive.

"You are like me now," Alma told him. She was standing next to him, looking up at his face.

Jack took a moment to compose himself. "I'm not reassured."

"Neither am I," Kasumi noted as she became visible again in front of them. "Laughing like that while exploding heads was seriously creepy. Creepier than Alma."

"It might be battlefield stress, it does odd things to some people," Zaeed noted.

"He is being foolish," Alma said. "Jack, you should focus on specific pieces of knowledge or skills to take instead of just attacking indiscriminately. If you want to win, you have to focus on what you are taking. Before I learned how to do this the right way, I lost myself in it and allowed myself to be outmaneuvered and overpowered."

Jack slowly breathed in and out. "Alright. Sounds good. But why didn't they – it –whatever tell me this?"

Alma was uncertain. "I am not certain. Perhaps They Who Simply Are wanted you to learn for yourself. How you fought resulted in the mind being shredded. When the rest of the mind is shredded, the energies that give rise to demons overshadow the rest of what you consume. It is not a properly balanced meal and it is wasteful of the rest of their mind's essence."

"I think you should talk to Alma about this, Jack," Kasumi said. "Proper nutrition is important, especially for soul eaters."

"Stop wasting time and don't do that thing in the way that makes you laugh, Jack," Zaeed interrupted before anyone else could say anything. "We need to find the Patriarch and the artifact. Tali! Do you know where they are?"

Tali poked her head over the bar counter and shouted back, "Yes! The artifact is in the auction room with Saren and Aria, and the Patriarch was in a cell three floors above us, but I've freed him and am giving him directions to meet us. Apparently he's still a pretty good fighter…"

"Excellent," Kasumi declared, "now we just need to decide how we handle this thing with the army outside and Aria below."

"I've reprogrammed the flight routes for the automated traffic to send them into the ground of the concourse, so that's slowing them down outside," Tali informed them. "And given what I have on Aria's armor, it looks like she should be vulnerable to powerful psionics."

Zaeed looked to Alma. "Do you think you could do a quick cleanup down there? I can take you down with a grappling hook." Upon seeing Alma's tired nod, he looked to the other and continued. "The rest of you stay up here and meet up with the Patriarch. Once you have him, come down to meet us, we're not leaving out the front door."

"Got it," Jack said as Kasumi saluted and Tali replied with a "Yes, sir."

Then Zaeed grabbed Alma around the waste, attached a grappling hook from his omnitool to the floor at the edge of the jagged hole, and began to carefully lower the two of them down towards the auction room.

~+~B:F/M~+~

Saren's vision was cloudy as the pressure continued to grow to unbearable levels. He assumed that Aria was saying something, probably directed to her audience, but he couldn't be sure. He was however sure that the extensive cybernetic implants that he had implanted had been worth their exorbitant cost, since the gravity was likely well over what it would have taken to kill him if he had been unaugmented.

His augmentation did not offer a way out however. That was his biotics.

It was difficult, but after struggling, he managed to twitch enough to trigger a push. If he could still breath he would have sighed.

Then the pressure on him started to lessen.

~+~B:F/M~+~

As Zaeed rappelled them down, Alma scanned the auction room to identify the threats remaining. It seemed that two of Saren's people were dead and another severely wounded with Saren himself pinned by a biotic crushing field, while the Turian psion was dueling a powerful Asari biotic, presumably Aria. It seemed that he was keeping her off balance and using telekinesis in order to prevent her from catching him in a powerful biotic attack.

After everything, Alma's head was buzzing, but she was certain that she could defeat Aria relatively quickly. To that end, Alma aimed her mind at Aria and started putting psionic pressure. It was psionically resistant, but that strength was nowhere near as strong as that of Jack's mech due to how thin the armor was and how much smaller its power supply was. Alma decided that a powerful psionic push on her head from multiple directions, creating a psionic vise, would be enough to overpower Aria's defenses and end the fight. Alma would have tried to consume Aria's psionic essence, but with the shielding, it would take long enough for Aria to react, and given her demonstrated power Alma did not want to take the risk of allowing her a chance to attack even once.

Alma readied herself and just as Zaeed hit the ground boots first, Alma leashed out with her psychic attack. Aria's helmet crumpled and her corpse hit the ground before Alma did.

~+~B:F/M~+~

Tali was focused on seizing and controlling the Afterlife's electronic system. It was after all necessary in order to make sure that Aria's forces didn't storm the building and kill them. It was unpleasant, and if it weren't for her suit's waste disposal functions she would have vomited on the floor already. This wasn't what she had expected or wanted at all when she had left on her Pilgrimage, but it was too late now. She had already seen the messages containing the identities of the attackers being sent out from the club, and she was on that list.

But being on a list for anyone interested on getting revenge on behalf of Aria wasn't the least of her problems. She was essentially shackled to two insane psions. Alma had always been scary and dangerous, but Jack hadn't seemed that way at first. She knew that it had something to do with how he used his power and hoped that he didn't keep using it like that. She didn't want to have to deal with two Almas, especially since Alma herself seemed very possessive. She hadn't let go of the stuffed animal, and Tali doubted that she would let Tali go either.

Tali was so focused on her immediate survival against Aria's army and her own inner turmoil, that she didn't pay any attention to the corpse of the Salarian bartender who had died of a chest wound, and more importantly how it twitched, how its eyes started to move.

~+~B:F/M~+~

A/N: How much longer do you think that army outside the club is going to matter? ;D

One a note for my other stories, I am looking for music for the upcoming fight in Avatar Amelia, so if you have any suggestions please go to that story and leave a recommendation. After Avatar Amelia, I will do the next segment for Slash and Burn and then my Halo/Worm insert will get a follow up. After that the Dragonborn starts into faction quest lines and Miraak and company visit a land of magical friendship.

Before or between those two however, I have another story idea I might put down: "Born Again; Or the Curious Case of the Resurrection of Annette Hebert." Anne comes back with knowledge of what happens in Worm, powers from the Worm CYOA version three, and a mission to save her daughter and her husband from what she knows is coming. Preview: "But zombie mom, I'm sixteen!" "No backtalk, Taylor, you'll going to bed at your bedtime and that's final! And eat your brains!"

~+~B:F/M~+~