(The Present)
If Death, itself, could procreate, it would have birthed the bastards charging the valiant Turian.
While his sniper rifle main-lined oblivion, pure and uncut, into the growing horde of Reaper foot soldiers, Garrus Vakarian's eyes snapped from target to target, but with each shot, the gibbering faces of their Indoctrinated foes edged closer and closer. First five, then ten, then twenty; soon where there had been a 'number', a wave crashed from the shadows and cracks of fallen buildings and blasted streets.
Slowly Garrus started muttering.
At first, he spit monosyllabic bursts of encouragement.
'Nice!', would follow a particularly spectacular shot.
'Yes!', when the round travelled through more than one enemy.
As the enemy grew in size and might, so too did Vakarian's challenges.
'Not so fast, beautiful!', followed the demise of a gruesome Husk.
'Gonna light you up!', acted as epitaph for a Cannibal.
Still all the peacocking in the worlds couldn't change the facts, and chief among those absolutes was that the enemy was winning. Finally even Garrus knew that the time had come to either fall back…or fall.
'We need to retreat, Jack!', Garrus roared over the hot noise of enemy fire.
Hearing no response, he continued to deal death in a manner befitting an archangel; all-the-while holding his ground, despite the surge of shambling frights descending upon him. For the briefest of beats, Vakarian believed that Jack had already fallen, devoured by a pocket of foes that had escaped their initial charge deep into enemy territory, but before that line of thinking could continue, the ground beneath him exploded.
Having no idea how he ended up lying on his side, Garrus went to retrieve his weapon, but his fingers paused over the gun's metal. With a flex of his mandibles, the equivalent of a human 'jaw drop', the Turian found himself with a front row seat to the show-of-shows.
As close as he was, Garrus could actually feel the tingle and heat of Jack's biotics, something he had never experienced during all of his crusades fighting beside the mysterious caste of 'magicians'. Energy, nearly white with barely contained holocaust, licked and raged along the woman's torso and arms. So powerful were her biotics that the waves of might seemed to animate her tattoos, making it appear as if her very skin rippled with nightmares.
Somehow, whether by her own choice or the sheer strength or her 'magic', she was nude from the waist up; her leather and cloth attire gone, and when each ribbon of power bolted up her neck, more of her hair curled and vanished in wisps of smoke. Soon, she appeared as he had initially met her, bald and terrifying.
With even the all-encompassing sight of the amped Subject Zero, Garrus found something else on which to marvel; something so compelling that even Jack's godlike visage dimmed. Around, and above, them, the Reaper horde twisted and wailed higher and higher into the English air.
Launched by the rage of Jack's biotics, the Reaper's cannon fodder fulfilled its duty in glorious fashion.
A second later, and the enemy was gone.
Dimly Garrus was aware of what sounded like artillery fire off to their right, but he quickly deduced that the 'shells' he heard were the bodies of the foes Jack had banished, falling back to earth.
With the area completely deserted, Vakarian finished the act of grabbing his weapon, stood, and slowly approached his companion. With each step the heat and 'charge' of her biotics intensified, until he was forced to stop five paces from her side.
'He's close,' the mercurial woman whispered, a barely audible statement not meant for Turian ears.
'Jack?', the former lawman and vigilante cautiously asked. 'I've never seen…never heard…Jack, what the hell was that?'
Keeping her back to Garrus, Subject Zero responded, 'The Beginning, Vakarian.'