"Thinking"
"Talking"
"Impactful word"
They'd been slowed down by a significantly smaller amount of geth than Akane expected on their way to the beacon. Well, that lucky streak came to a stoppage when they've reached the spaceport, over which the capital ship loomed.
"What is that? Off in the distance," Sir Alenko asked confused, starring at the giant dreadnaught he had never ever seen before.
"It's a ship. Look at the size of it!" Chief Williams exclaimed conspicuously, though the female Uchiha understood from where this was coming from. The Commander alone stayed silent at the display, though still impressed.
Not that she had any chance to react because once they'd set foot remotely near the spaceport, the enemy became aware of their presence and guess what happened next. The geth took the advantage of cover while the kara were running freely around, occupying their squad in both long-range and close-range combat. It was troublesome, but still not enough to seriously endanger the squad.
The three armed soldiers used their guns and unique abilities, which Akane wasn't able to identify, to hold the geth in the distance at bay while Akane secured their backs by destroying the kara that managed to pass through the crossfire. It took longer than most of their battles, but they were the ones who emerged victorious at the end of it.
After a short chat with some farmers who too, had fled to a nearby shed as Dr Warren and Dr Manuel did, they moved further ahead only to stop at the corpse of... Nihlus, apparently. The Commander wanted to inspect the body, but was warned of another presence hiding behind a bunch of crates by Chief Williams, "Something's moving! Over behind those crates!"
"Wait! Don't—Don't shoot! I'm one of you! I'm human." The worker jumped out of cover to reassure them.
"That must be Powell," Akane noted in a cool voice, reminiscing a part of talk Commander Shepard had with Powell's partner in crime Cole; the one who gave the pistol to the Commander which Akane was now equipped with (after a display of impressive persuasion skills on the Commander's behalf).
"Sneaking up on us like that nearly got you killed!" The Commander chided, lowering her gun.
"I am sorry. I was hiding. From those creatures, but I saw what happened to that turian. The other one shot him." The Commander's made sure to soften her steely expression a bit so Powell wouldn't fret under it.
"I need to know how Nihlus died."
"The other one got here first. He was waiting when your friend showed up. He called him Saren. I think they knew each other." Powell scratched his head, Akane knew very well where this was going.
"Your friend seemed to relax. He let his guard down... and Saren killed him. Shot him right in the back. I'm just lucky he didn't see me behind the crates."
"So a betrayal, huh... would explain the wound on the back of Nihlus' head though, and why there are no traces of resistance." Akane deduced.
"Where did Saren go after he killed Nihlus?"
"He jumped on the cargo train and headed over to the other platform. Probably going after the beacon." Powell pointed in the direction to his right. "I knew that beacon was trouble. Everything's gone to hell since we found it. First, that damn mother ship showed up. Then the attack."
"They killed everyone. Everyone! If I hadn't been behind the crates I'd be dead, too!" The worker confessed with a tremulous voice.
"How come you're the only one who survived? Why didn't anyone else try to hide behind the crates?" That was a question even Akane was most curious about.
"They never had a chance. I... I was already behind the crates when the attack started." The farmer stuttered with a hint of shame under his tone.
"Wait a minute. You were hiding behind the crates before the attack?" Sir Alenko inquired.
"I... sometimes I need a nap to get through my shift. I sneak off behind the crates to grab forty winks where the supervisor can't find me." Powell confessed slowly, much to the disgust of Sir Alenko and the Chief.
"You survived because you're lazy?" accused the Chief, who had trouble understanding how damn lucky that farmer was.
"If you hadn't snuck off for that nap you'd probably be dead just like all the others," reacted the Commander.
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I don't really want to think about it." He averted his eyes, shoulder slumping.
"You're Cole's contact here on the docks. For the smuggling ring." Akane wondered for a moment when the Commander was going to address that.
"What? No! I mean... what does it matter now? So I'm a smuggler? Who cares? My supervisor's dead. The entire crew's dead. It doesn't matter now, does it?" Powell answered, downtrodden. Akane felt a pang of empathy for the man, though her apathetic mask refused to let any of it to the surface.
Old habits die hard, she thought, though she always had a soft spot for Shirone if she had to admit. She had found it incredibly difficult to keep her cold front up when confronting her jolly sister.
Something Chief Williams was extremely bad at when she lashed out some curses at Powell who owned up to have stolen a few grenades from the military orders. She clearly wasn't any good at keeping her emotions at bay. Thank goodness that the Commander resolved the situation by demanding from the smuggler to hand over the grenades before Chief Williams' temper went over the rim.
They ran towards the cargo train, being approached by more and more geth the further they proceeded. In fact, Akane had to use the pistol (her stock of shurikens was quickly defecated), since launching into the heated gunfire without her Sharingan or Raiton: Chakura Mōdo would mean certain death.
Cursing when her shots were inaccurate, it didn't happen often that the Uchiha was next to useless during the battle, and man how she hated the feeling.
A shinobi wasn't trained to handle guns, rather, other weapons Akane was exceptionally proficient at. If she had her Sharingan at her disposal, she would have copied the Commander's style. Well, too bad for her that she had not enough chakra even after conserving a bit of it.
Wounded but still in one piece, even after a few geth destroyers launched some explosive missiles at the squad, they've reached the cargo train whereas they set off to the beacon. Nothing serious a medical jutsu couldn't heal, though they used something called 'medi-gel'. She took a short pause to take a look at the situation with her Byakugan.
She saw Saren giving out orders to the geth units before approaching a strange construction that must have been the beacon everyone was talking about. It had a strange chakra— no aura —to it and Saren stood closely in front of it as if waiting for something. What happened next raised more than just simple concern in Akane. He was being raised up in the air by the beacon's aura.
"No way..."
If things hadn't been already at their worst, then Akane wasn't surprised anymore when the geth deployed bombs strategically across the spaceport, intend to leave with a bang. This was no longer something Akane could keep to herself or it would endanger the colony, or whatever this was, and with it the humans that lived here.
Screw her precaution. Screw everything at this point on. She may be nothing more than a selfish, arrogant woman who murdered her own family and innocent people, but that person died the moment Shirone drew her last breath.
She won't let others die for her selfish reasons.
"Ma'am, the geth have planted four bombs around the spaceport, I can pinpoint their exact location," Akane informed the Commander with seriousness none of the soldiers expected.
"How do you-"
"I can explain later, you have to trust me!" The young Uchiha insisted as they arrived at the spaceport and were met by heavy geth resistance.
Fortunately for them, the first bomb was closely nearby so they saw that Akane was indeed telling the truth.
"She's right! These are demolition charges! We need to shut them down!" Sir Alenko walked up to one of it and began disarming it while the others drew the attention of the geth at themselves.
And this was how they had done it with the remaining three bombs until they banned the danger in exchange for Saren's disappearance. Though there were met by a pleasant surprise when they found out that he hadn't taken the beacon with him.
"Why hasn't he taken the beacon with him?" Akane wondered as they approached the beacon, killing any geth left around.
"Normandy, the beacon is secure. Request immediate evac," ordered the Commander through the commlink. Loosening up a bit, Akane watched as the Commander communicated with what was probably the pilot of the ship.
"Roger, Normandy. Stand by."
They were careless, and Akane, worn out from the fighting hadn't noticed how dangerously close Sir Alenko came to the beacon. Knowing what effect it could cause on a person after seeing it first-hand in Saren's case, she cried out, "Don't go near it!"
But it was too late; the beacon already used its aura to pull Sir Alenko towards it. Akane ran over to the male soldier and pulled him with chakra-enhanced strength out of the gravitational field of the beacon; using her last reserves to save him, though now left with no chance to escape for herself.
She felt the gravitational pull grow stronger, although she still felt to be pulled into the opposite direction by no other than Commander Shepard. She held Akane by her hand, refusing to let her go, but failing when Akane lost footing, ending up in the same position as Saren. That was when both of their minds were invaded by the beacon.