A/N: For all my minions, a protip. Mexican Indian fusion cuisine. For the love of your sphincters, don't.
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Lizzie stared, aghast, at the weapons the largest of the Silver Krogan, introduced as Grunt, was holding. Each one consisted of a gauntlet that reached up to his elbow upon which was mounted a scarily large Seu'Seun chaingun and a blade that looked like it outmassed Garrus, stretching at least six and a half feet. The strength required to handle just one of the gargantuan constructs, let alone two, must have been enormous. She doubted even a Seu'Seun could effectively handle the weapons, not to mention what looked suspiciously like the main gun of an Eagle APC slung diagonally across the monster Krogan's back, complete with co-axial machine gun. Looking down at her assault rifle with a sudden sense of inadequacy, she briefly debated whether adding an Omniblade to it would make it seem more or less pathetic next to the monstrosities carried by Hulk Krogan beside her. In the end she decided against it - it wasn't like she would use it in melee when she could bust out the ninja moves.
Ocean beckoned her over to a console. Looking at the captain all got up in her wargear, Lizzie was struck by a bout of armour envy. Ocean's armour was predominantly black, with blue lighting elements and the white Suns logo on the right shoulder. She had what looked like a flexible hood formed of ballistic fibre pulled over her crests, overhanging her face and casting it into shadow. Under the hood she was wearing a faceplate with a cluster of lenses over her right eye, each one shining with a prick of blue light. On her back was what looked like a grenade launcher of Batarian make and she had an SMG and a wrist flamer actually integrated into her left gauntlet, presumably leaving her hand free for casting biotic attacks. Her right forearm was encased in a device that consisted of a large box attached to a high end pneumatic launcher and a laser sight, with a nasty looking long serrated blade tucked underneath. As Lizzie watched, Ocean snapped a smooth, curved arm guard into place over the entire assemblage. It wasn't until the captain pulled the barbed bolt out and examined it did Lizzie recognise it for what it was - a harpoon launcher, presumably to impale enemies and reel them in, allowing the wrist blade to get to work. She could safely say that the Blue Suns sure as hell knew their way around their weapons, artfully mastering the casual barbarism of the Batarians, the high technology of the Earth block and the raw destructive wallop of the Seu'Seun and combining them into weapons that could make any gun nut cream his pants - and any foe shit them.
Lizzie nodded at the Blue Suns captain she had come to regard with a mixture of respect and terror.
"We ready?"
The Asari/Prothean nodded sharply.
"Yep. Soon as the fields are down, my crew will bring the dakka, you Normandy types will make like a sneaky sneak and hit their heavies from behind. And remember, you let one of my boys and girls get smoked I grab the nearest hammer and use it to knock a block of C4 up your cumpipe."
Blurting out a nervous sound halfway between a titter and a squeak, Lizzie applied an almost Herculean effort to resist the urge to place a hand over her groin and, after a moment to compose herself, replied.
"We're ready to go. Give the word."
The Blue Suns captain held up a finger, then jumped up onto a rock and addressed her troops. Eight Silver Krogan, one Asari who was apparently her body double, a regular Krogan and a Raachok looked up at her with something resembling both respect and devotion.
"Alrighty then. We are about to do something really, really dumb, so business as usual. When we get out, I want everyone to stay behind cover and stay mobile until the Normandy ninjas take out the heavies. I don't need to warn you, those railguns can one shot you if they can draw a bead and they have exactly no shits to give about shooting through their own dudes to do so. I don't want a single scratch on those pretty armour plates of yours, they're really fucking expensive. Now then, positions, m'dears. Curtains up in ten. Nine. Eight."
As Ocean counted down, Lizzie hurriedly joined Garrus and Ashley at the point they were going to rush out under stealth. As soon as she got to three, the barrier began flickering and Ocean screamed out a phrase in sadistic joy.
"Think fast, bitches!"
As the barrier curtain fell, the Normandy's stealth contingent were already in motion.
The stealth shroud Lizzie had pulled over her head blocked all noise from escaping, allowing her to scream a frenetic torrent of obscenities at the top of her lungs as she half sprinted, half climbed up to the position where the Collector heavies were situated. The space in between her and her destination seeming to contain more bullets than air, the frantic screams were more than justified. Nevertheless the three Normandy ninjas made it up to the raised outcropping without attracting undue attention. The heavies, weighed down as they were by the enormous Collector railguns, were almost completely useless in melee combat, allowing the three invisible warriors to take them out with little difficulty. Their heavy support gone, the remaining Collectors didn't last long against the fury of the Suns contingent.
Lizzie's elevated position let her see it first. Gulping, she tagged her comm.
"Ocean."
"Yeah?"
Her voice momentarily failed her.
"Spit it out, Princess."
"Boss fight."
"Wha ..."
Something erupted from the ground, an ear splitting shriek rending the air as an enormous mass suddenly filled the cavern. Lava flowed off its metallic skin, beneath which could be seen a tracery of cybernetic circuitry glowing a painfully familiar cerulean shade.
"Uh, Lizzie, that looks like a Husk to me."
Lizzie looked at the still rising mass of the gargantuan creature and commented in what struck her as a rather offhand way.
"Really? Because from this angle it looks a lot like a Thresher Maw."
Garrus blinked once, which was about as much surprise as he ever expressed. Had he not been invisible, the disruption to his combat poker face would surely have been noted.
"Soo ... A Thresher Maw husk."
Ashley spoke up, all three still staring dumbly at the still rising mass of the creature.
"Well that's not awesome."
She tagged her comm.
"Ocean. Any ideas?"
The Blue Suns commander came barrelling past them, swiftly followed by the rest of her unit and her sage advice.
"RUN THE FUCK AWAY!"
The Husk Maw's body seemed to split open, a mass of tendrils tipped with razor sharp barbs appearing from the cavity that snaked towards them. The Normandy team saw the value of said advice and decided to comply.
Legs pumping, heart pounding, lungs heaving, they sprinted down the rocky tunnel and towards daylight, pursued by the tendrils that snapped at their heels. At one point Ashley stumbled and was hauled to her feet by Garrus, mumbling her thanks even as she panted for oxygen. The twenty second sprint seemed to stretch into an eternity but eventually they burst from the mouth of the cave, finding themselves in a wide open lava flat just as the Husk Maw burst out of the mountainside in all its evil glory.
The monstrosity's head was dominated by a vertical slit mouth, arranged around which countless lenses clicked and whirred as they shone with the blue light of Reaper cybernetics. The mouth opened and Lizzie could quite clearly see that each one of the metre long, scythe-like teeth was mounted on a triple jointed arm, twitching and rotating inside the cavernous maw. The four primary limbs seemed even larger and the chitinous blades were split into monstrous scything claws that rubbed against one another with a sound that grated the inside of Lizzie's skull. A slit ran the length of the creature's body along its belly, no doubt the source of the tentacles that had pursued them out of the tunnel, and on the creature's chin was a separate pod that could sit flush with the thing's armour but was now exposed on a short arm and hinging open to reveal a bewildering array of gun barrels pointing down at them.
Lizzie could only stare in stupefied horror as a targeting laser illuminated the spot where she was standing.
"Lizzie, move!"
Heeding Garrus's warning, she leaped sideways. Without further ceremony she was bowled ass over tit by the force of the colossal burst of energy that emanated from the space she had previously been occupying, knocking the charge out of her kinetic barrier and the wind out of her lungs as she was unceremoniously deposited back on the lava flat, regaining he focus just in time to scramble out of the way of a blitz of particle beams that turned the rock she had been lying on back into molten slag.
Fuck me, she thought, it really is a boss fight.
###
Khåné bowed her head as the Holy One came to a halt before her.
"My Crusaders failed in their duty but died fighting the enemies of the Holy Ones. Their souls are in the Greater Dimension now. I submit mine to your judgement, as recompense for my failure."
The Holy One looked down on her with a kindly gaze.
"Your men fought bravely and sold themselves dear. They, and you, do the Great Work credit."
Khåné smiled. Unlike the cartoonish overlords she had expected of the Holy Ones, they cared deeply for every one of the Converted, and would not deny one of their own a place in the Greater Dimension as punishment for a failure. Instead, they simply reaffirmed their belief in their subordinates through the mental link they all bore, and gently pushed them to fight even harder for their faith.
"Rise, Priestess Khåné. I have chosen you for another ascension."
Her four eyes blinked as her mind registered the words. Ascensions were the greatest honours the Holy Ones could bestow on their followers. She was lucky enough to already possess two - her eyes could channel the power of the Greater Dimension to see that which mortal eyes could not, and her body was ascended to the pinnacle of physical fitness, never to decay through age or disease. She felt a surge of childish delight as she imagined what wonders awaited her for her next ascension.
She followed the Holy One to a raised circle in the ground, then knelt in the centre, closing her eyes as a four fingered hand rested on her forehead and an indescribable euphoria flowed through her body, her awareness of the outside world gone as she curled around the feeling. Eventually, after seconds or hours she didn't know, the sensation faded away, replaced by a strange feeling on her back as if something was there that had always been missing.
She raised her eyes to the Holy One, who extended a hand and helped her up. She felt a minor itch on her back and rustled a limb to dispel it. Then she paused, and experimentally moved the limb again. The Holy One gently turned her around to look at her image in the reflective wall.
Khåné, previously a Batarian of Khar'Shan and now a Priestess of the Greater Dimension, fell to her knees and wept for joy as her pearlescent white wings fluttered behind her.
###
The creature was nothing but anger and pain. Its mind was destroyed, replaced by the alien thoughts of its masters, thoughts that commanded it to crush the insignificant creatures below it.
Screaming a challenge, the Devourer slithered back underground, erupting almost directly underneath the largest of the creatures. This one was a tiny morsel encased in a hard metal shell, and proved to be quicker than the Devourer had expected, leaping away with tongues of blue fire belching from its back and calves. Undeterred, it flexed its claws, bringing them down in a brutal stab that made the creatures beneath it dive for cover. Having done so, it levered its body up, the pinging of small arms on its impenetrable carapace meaning nothing to it. The slit along its belly split open, tentacles slithering out and snapping at the prey beneath it. The tentacles proved to be more susceptible to their fire though, as first one, then two more, then all six above ground were wounded and pulled back inside its body to heal.
Roaring, the Devastator reared back up, its artificial eyes clicking and marking the positions of the prey. Three of them were clad not in armour but merely in skintight membranes that failed to conceal them from the all-piercing vision of the Devourer. It selected one as its next target and dove down, mouth agape as its feeding blades rustled expectantly.
The creature raised its weapon, firing at the feeding blades as it descended. Each time a bullet met one the relatively delicate tooth was shattered, the purposeless limbs falling off, rejected by the Devourer's body. Before the Devourer even had a chance to impale the impudent creature, all its teeth were gone. No matter. It folded open its oesophagus, one of the many sets of teeth that lined it sliding up to replace the lost set. Unable to see the prey practically in its mouth, it reflexively swallowed when it felt something enter its throat.
Moments later, it reared up in pain as the grenades in its stomach exploded, shredding its internal organs and knocking one of its tentacles out of commission until it had time to enter a regenerative fugue.
Shrieking in rage, the Devourer reared up again, its gun pod hinging open, firing first its concussion cannon, blasting several of the prey creatures off their feet, then the particle beams that they managed to dodge, though one of them was clipped by a beam and wounded. It fired again, hitting the wounded one again and incapacitating it though the prey's heart still beat. Before the Devourer could finish it off the largest of the prey sprinted in, picking up the wounded one and carrying it out of the line of fire.
Enraged, the Devourer was about to slither underground again when it was distracted by a sound from above. Looking up, it saw something descending from the clouds.
The last thought that ran through the dessicated neurones of its Reaper nanite infused brain was one of dumb surprise as the Seu'Seun bioraider bit its head off.