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Their Tomkah came to a stop and Pyrrha dropped off the steps onto the ground a foot or so down, sinking to a knee and looking around, rifle braced against her shield as she did.
They were on some sort of ancient, crumbling road of some description, with massive piles of rubble forming walls to either side of it. Like it had been cleared, to an extent, intentionally. Looking the way they'd come added to that impression, the ancient road lined to either side by scrapped vehicles like the Tomkah along with others, and rubble and rebar. It stretched on forever that way, eventually vanishing into a wash of brown, red and grey that blurred together in her eyes. The other direction, though, was blocked by a heavy, dilapidated tank, stacked up with crates and lined on their side by rubble.
"Defenses." Grunt offered as he came out and saw her looking, "Old tank is a good barrier, good armor. Crates add visual cover and so on."
"Turret might even work." Wrex added, gesturing at the blocky tank turret sequestered into the front, only protruding up enough to rotate and fire their way based on the way the tank had been parked. "But the damn fools pulled everyone away from here to fight the distraction."
"Foolish." She nodded, "Arrogant."
The only way forward, with the tank-wall blocking the road, was off to their side. A descent down into a small sort of camp, stuffed full of crates lined up against scrap walls so snugly she couldn't tell if the walls were meant to shelter them or if the crates were holding up the walls and their roofs. Both were as likely as each other, she supposed, on Tuchanka. In the center of the camp was a rough, metal roof held up by thick lengths of rebar, covering a dug out fire-pit surrounded by lumpy looking bed-rolls and discarded bones, tools and strips of cloth and leather.
"Vorcha camp." Wrex grunted, moving on as she hummed, "They don't need to be taken care of. Can live about anywhere."
The camp meandered for about half a mile, curving around steadily before suddenly ending at a straight path that lead back towards the road. It was lined on either side by more sturdy looking buildings, with rebar supports, thick scrap walls, and even seats and doors. She spotted a few rough melee weapons, mainly long knives and hammers, but other than that the camp was empty. It was capped by a simple, open gate that let out into the road, which continued on past the tank towards the massive complex she could see in the distance, shells impacting on one side of it in bright splashes of color and smoke.
"Coming?" She blinked and turned as Wrex and Grunt moved past her, out onto the road.
"Y-Yes." She nodded, "I'm just worried about-"
"Your Salarian won't die from that." Wrex assured her with a chuckle, "Bloodpack took an ancient hospital, from back when the Krogan first went to the stars."
"Before we nuked ourselves back onto Tuchanka."
"Point being," Wrex sighed, "They're damn durable, so a little light bombing won't-"
"Contact!" Grunt barked as they rounded a wall of rubble that stuck out halfway across the road and mass accelerator rounds peppered them. Leaning against the edge of the railing he growled, "Turret. Automated, looks like."
"Explains why they pulled the guards out." Wrex rumbled from the Krogan's side, waving Pyrrha forward. "You can handle it, right?"
"I can." She nodded, exchanging her rifle-form for her sword and rolling her shoulder. "I suppose this is part of you wanting a 'show' as you put it?"
"Mhm." He nodded, "Impress me, Human."
She rolled her eyes but nodded and slid past Grunt to take the cover he had.
When she leaned around it to look, the gun opened up almost immediately, rounds exploding around the corner of her cover in flashes so bright they had to be purposeful. To blind her, perhaps? Prevent her or anyone else from strategizing? It would be sensible, intelligent even, to employ such a technique. But surely it didn't have the time to lock onto her properly. Kneeling, she picked up a rock and hurled it out from her cover, smiling as mass accelerator rounds seared through the air.
"It tracks motion." She said, looking over her shoulder, "I'll charge, you hurl rocks, Grunt. Up, out that way, it matters little so long as it's all visible. Chieftain, if you would please use your Biotics to hurl the debris, that will match my size more.-"
"So it'll confuse its targeting."
"Among other things to do with my plan, yes." She nodded, "You don't mind, then?"
"Nah." Wrex rumbled, straightening and turning to eye the rubble-strewn stretching heaped up beside the road. "Smart idea. I see a few that'll work. Assuming I don't cause a rubble-slide, at least…"
"Um…" She grimaced, "Don't do that please?"
"Hah." Wrex snorted, "Good advice."
"Ready, Battlemaster." Grunt rumbled as Pyrrha rolled her eyes. He had an armful of rocks he'd picked up and, past him, Wrex had his hand on a roughly her-sized piece of rock, blue fire rolling off of him.
"Alright." She nodded, "Here goes nothing, then…"
"Or, well, hopefully a lot of something." Wrex offered with a wry chuckle when she sighed.
She was growing weary of smartasses…
She pitched Akouo up at the same time she heard Wrex's Biotic flare, and it sailed high along with the flung rubble and the moderate boulder Wrex had thrown. As she'd expected, when the turret opened fire, it proritized the large hunk of stone over the smaller ones. The heavier chunk spun as it was struck, dozens of small rounds ripping away chunks of it, but Pyrrha ignored it. Instead, with a flick of her Semblance, she brought her shield to a mid-air halt, anchoring it and leaping for in. Then she coiled like a snake, using her armor's metal to keep her up so she could aim, and then used it all in conjunction to launch herself up into the air, curving down towards the blocky, grey emplacement stacked up on the rubble a few yards from their cover.
It was an old, practiced manuever, and worked well here, bringing her down on top of it. She caught it by its barrel, hissing at the hear of it, and pitched back, throwing her weight and Semblance both into it as she pushed off its boxy, rock-covered base. The turret resisted, of course, trying to track another boulder as it came up and ignoring for some faulty program or another. It held for a moment, but then she saw a bolt holding the gun-case onto the blocky base shoot free, and suddenly, the entire barrel sheared to the side. She fell with it, dragging it down now, as the barrel ripped free of its housing and its blocky housing spun, smoking, in its socket.
As fire crackled and bubbled up from the holes she'd made, the two Krogan sauntered up and Wrex chuckled, "Well, damn if that didn't work."
"That was almost too easy…"
"Battlemaster," Grunt rumbled, "you should never-"
The dull 'whump' was all she heard or need, turning on her heel and flicking Akouo up from where it had fallen to catch the missile careening up and down towards them. It went off with a 'crack' and Pyrrha saw her shield fly away, calling it back to her as she watched the dozen or so Vorcha coming towards them, scrambling up the narrow passage between the two rubble-walls, using the random piles of rock and metal that had fallen from them as cover as they came.
One large one leapt up onto the rubble, reloading its blocky white rocket launcher, before it exploded in a mess of red and brown.
"Yeah." Wrex sighed, raising his other hand, a head-sized rock in it, and grinning ferally. "Never, ever say that, Nikos."
"Yeah." She sighed, calling back her shield and frowning. "Learning that…"
Even without their heavy weapons guy, the Vorcha kept coming, and Pyrrha charged to meet them. With memories of the Omega Plague fresh in her mind, she grit her teeth, shoulder-checked the charging assault Vorcha, and thrust her sword up, into its skull through the base of its jaw in one movement. Yanking her sword free, she let it tumbled and sweeping her blackened shield around and nearly decapitating another. A third and fourth exploded in sprays of gore, annihilated by Biotically hurled rocks, and two more were trampled by Grunt as he went screaming by. A Vorcha leapt onto him from the rubble, and Pyrrha threw her sword, burying it in its spine and then yanking it down with a flash of her Semblance, nearly carving it in two.
It was a slaughter, but the Vorcha either didn't care or - equally likely - were too dim to understand that, and fought until the last stumbled back over a rock and she stepped forward, extending her spear with a flick and taking out its throat as she passed.
By the time they were done, the three of them had made their way down the path to a wider, circular area, ringed by the rough shelters they'd seen earlier. Vorcha settlements, she assumed now. Past them, down a long, straight path, was a massive, heavily reinforced but open entryway into a long, rectangular section of the huge complex they'd come closer to. As they approached the wide, open, square area around it, they found it not only wide open, but unguarded - albeit with all the signs of defensibility, from unmanned machine gun emplacements to low walls and metal barricades scattered around it in an odd sort of formation.
Almost as if… "These are built to be used both ways?"
"Hm?" Wrex turned, eyeing the barricades, then chuckled and nodded, "Yeah. Never know when you'll need to pull out, so best to have cover you can use, too."
"Doesn't that make it easier to lose in the first place?"
"Sometimes." Wrex nodded, leading them towards the door and watching it closely as they passed over the threshold and into a long series of what Pyrrha could only call ruined cubicles, with stairs up and down to other floors she could see through hols in the floor held more cubicles. "But you have more defenses inside, too. And outside, you can use height to get past the barricades more or less."
"It's a risk." Grunt added, "But a calculated one."
"Indeed…"
They made their way in silence, after that, until they reached a winding staircase. Above it, the roof had caved in, burying the landing and blocking it off. So they descended, instead, ever-wary and cautious of running into anyone or anything left behind for them. They foud nothing as they descended into a lower floor and turned, following the hollowing away from the sequestered landing up towards a corner, where a single Vorcha sat, snoring quietly.
Wrex crushed its head in his hand, paying more attention to the locked, armored brown doors than anything else.
"Cells." Wrex grunted, "Bones outside - could be they keep prisoners in here. Dispose of them out there, for the Vorcha to eat."
"They'd feed people to those things?"
"Or eat them themselves, if times are rough." Wrex huffed, "This is Tuchanka. Meat is meat, as long as it isn't Krogan, for a lot. Not me and mine, of course, but… Well, Blood Pack takes all sorts."
"I see…" Stepping forward, she tapped a hand to either door and waved them back the way they'd come, frowning as she flexed her biceps and her Semblance surged inside her. "Could make some noise, this."
"They know we're here." Wrex grunted, "Vorcha they sent prove it. Turret had alarms."
"They just don't care we're in here." Grunt rumbled, "They want us here…"
They wanted them to come deeper - into a trap they'd laid once they realized what had happened. She wasn't too happy about that, of course, but what choice did that have? Remarkably little, which frustrated her to no end. And worried her, too. But she couldn't do anything for it… Aside from take her frustration out on the two doors, at least.
Which she did with no small amount of glee.
With a grunt of effort, and her Semblance coursing through them, the doors warped outward and groaned. The concrete around them cracked first, before it began to give way. And, finally, one snapped free, spraying concrete rubble as it came free. She let it slam into the wall off to her side and refocused her efforts onto the other door entirely. After a moment it gave way, careening into the wall and coming apart as it did, clanging and screeching across the concrete floor while Pyrrha grimaced and stared dead ahead, doing her best to ignore it until it stopped.
Finally, in the silence after, she sighed, "Well, there's that done…"
The first cell was empty, aside from a few already-dead Krogan that Wrex looked over with a frown, gesturing between each, "Urdnot, Gatatog and Wratmak. Urdnot and the Pack are enemies, but the latter are neutral… And Wratmak is bordering on laying with the Pack's clans with my rise to power."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the Pack are either traitors, which is likely enough, or…" He growled, "Or Wratmak handed that Krogan over for some other reason."
"How strange…"
"Chieftain." Grunt called, "Found something."
They came to join Grunt in the other cell and found two more dead Krogan, but also a live one, groaning and clutching his stomach in the corner. He was oddly small, to her estimation, and ignored them until Wrex knelt in front of him and laid a hand on his knee. Only then did he finally react - flinching away, half-turning and almost whimpering before he recognized the Chieftain and stilled somewhat.
Quietly, he asked, "C-Chieftain?"
"It's me." He nodded, voice low, almost gentle. "What happened to you, Ravnik?"
"I… Was scouting." He blinked, "I got caught. A… Few kilometers from here. They brought me here after they knocked me out."
"Don't worry." Wrex said, smiling almost paternally and laying a hand on the Krogan's shoulders. "It's safe, now. Head back this way, you'll find stairs up to the exit and a Tomkah about-"
"N-No!" He gasped, "I can't leave."
"You're… Safe." Wrex repeated, "There aren't any guards."
"You don't understand." The scout sighed, "It's… I'm not a prisoner. They captured me, but now… Now I'm here by choice."
"What?" Wrex scoffed, "I didn't take you for a traitor!"
"I am no traitor!" The Krogan snarled, though even that was weak. Frail. And he deflated right after. "I'm… Sick. Like we all are. But the Blood Pack- They're helping! Working on curing it. I'm helping them do it."
"They're… Curing what?" Wrex asked, something… Dark and heavy pushing under his words as he went on. "What are you helping them cure?"
"What else?" He scoffed, "The Genophage. They have a Salarian here- He worked on it. Recently. They… Changed it, so we couldn't adapt. But we're- We're changing it back. We'll cure it and bring the Krogan to glory!"
"Curing the Genophage…" Wrex murmured, seemingly stunned while Grunt snarled.
"Were it so easy." Grunt barked, "And the Pack are going to drag the Krogan to glory?"
"Y-Yes." The Scout murmured, "That's what they said- That I was helping all Krogan. Urdnot, too. I'm not a traitor! Like I said."
"Think, idiot." Grunt snapped, pacing back and forth behind Wrex while the Chieftain listened, face dark and head cocked to the side. "Whatever 'cure' they're looking for, I'm already it. I'm immune. They have nothing to offer Urdnot.
"I… You're immune?" He blinked, "How?"
"It's complicated and irrelevant." Grunt said, "The Blood Pack won't use whatever cure they're concoting here, killing every Krogan they test it on. Not for Urdnot. Or anyone but themselves. Urdnot will be slaughtered on their rise to power. A rise you're enabling."
"No…" Pyrrha could see the understanding, and horror, dawn quickly, though. Shaking his head, he staggered up, leaning on the wall for support. "I-I'm not a traitor! I-I love my clan, Chieftain! I-I only cooperated to help! Please, I swear it! Don't mark me out!"
"Incidental treason is still treason." The Chieftain murmured, rising. "I can't just shrug this off…"
"B-But… Please…"
"I'm sorry, Ravnik." Wrex said, fist glowing a furious blue. "I can't-"
Pyrrha stepped between them and met his eyes, frowning, "Chieftain, if I may…"
"What?"
"Look at him." Pyrrha argued, "He's weak, frail. He was captured sebring you, your clan, and look how much he suffered because he believed it would help you all. Would killing him here really be just? And besides, if you doubt his loyalty, what could better prove it than making it home now, sick, wounded and tired?"
"I…" Wrex frowned, but sighed after a moment and let his Biotics fade. Shaking his head he said, "No…. No, I suppose it wouldn't. And you make a fair point, too… Fine. Ravnik!"
"C-Chieftain?"
"Get back to camp." He snapped, "Alone. On foot. Do that or die. But either way, be an Urdnot Krogan again. You understand?"
"Y-Yes." He nodded, "It's far, but… I can do it."
"Any true warrior could." Pyrrha turned, offering him a small smile and a nod. "Show, don't tell. I believe in you, but you've much to prove."
"I will." He nodded, pushing off the wall. He stood on shaky legs, but after a breath, nodded and pushed past them. "I'm going."
"Fool probably won't make it…"
"He's a Krogan." Pyrrha countered the Chieftain, "He can if his will is strong enough. And regardless, better to leave matters such as these to fate. If he's a traitor, his fate will be to die out there, alone. But fairly. Unlike trying to fight you in such close quarters."
"Heh." Wrex grumbled, "You're more than I thought, I suppose."
'"Thank you…?"
"Welcome." He grunted, turning and stomping off, "Now come. We have work to do…"
Pyrrha frowned and watched him go, clearly irritated, but didn't say anything. She could guess where his sudden tenseness came from. And pushing him on it now would do little - it was possible they had just lied to the Scout, after all. Better to wait and see.
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Keenan Grauber :
It's just my writing preference - and besides, no amount of liking a guy a lot disqualifies one from being bi. Liking guys is PART of being bi. SO, liking Jaune is irrelevant. Hell, she could be gay and just doing what all us not-straight peeps do at that age - trying to conform anyways. It's called 'heteronormative behavior' and is a HELL of a drug.
Not what's happening here, but still, lol.
Fun fact - almost every single character in this story is bi. The only exceptions are Joker and Jacob so far.
Also, there MIGHT be a ship at some point. Part of the above reasoning is to let characters naturally and freely have their own chemistry, allowing me freedom in building them. It's a writing tool as much as anything else.
Captain Dick Scratcher :
Precisely. Personally, I lean on Ren's Semblance evolution most of all here - it out and out changed, lol.
Arguable Reader :
I was ignoring you purposefully, partially because of that change and also because I AM SOMEONE YOU WOULD CALL 'WOKE' probably, and we don't care about swear words. We care about SLURS. FF also largely only cares if you get reported - so someone reported them, and probably not for swear words.
Don't be a bastard for attention - good intentioned or not, it makes you the bad guy. Given you see me responding to reviews, you know I see them. Repeatedly berating me is neither welcome nor needed.
I do appreciate the concern and you liking the story, though.