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Post by Shala'Bekk vas Neema on Jan 13, 2014 5:07:51 GMT -6
Shala's Pilgrimage at the Asari colony was not entirely peaceful. A group of Batarian slavers attacked the colony, and the Asari made them regret it. Shala did have to fight as well, and one of the slavers she killed was carrying it. She took it as a trophy, and it caused quite a stir among her people when she returned; had she encountered the geth, just like Tali'Zorah had?
Shala was not injured, but this attack and her encounter with the Batarian in Chora's Den has not painted a rosy picture of them in her mind.
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Post by Shala'Bekk vas Neema on Jan 14, 2014 7:34:27 GMT -6
Shala ducked behind the desk, trying to make herself even smaller, the sounds of gunfire and explosions all around her. The asari were making the batarians work for their bounties, but a few had fallen to their electrified nets. When that hadn’t worked, harpoon guns and heavy gauntlets were used. And then there was Lylia; she lost sight of her shortly after the attack began. Where was she? Was she all right? Keelah, please let her be okay, she thought.
She heard a voice. Not the soft feminine tones of asari, but the heavy guttural noises that passed for batarian speech. Then the tone changed, he was excited. Had he found her? She made herself even smaller.
The heavy footsteps approached slowly. The batarian spoke again, his voice full of confidence.
Shala had never thought herself as a praying person, but now that was all she could do. She prayed for the batarian to go away. She prayed for someone to show up and save her. She prayed to go home. She prayed for her father.
Something nudged against her. Against her better judgment, she turned to look and found herself staring at a shotgun. But not just any sort of shotgun. It was a plasma shotgun normally carried by the geth. Even though she had never seen one until now, her parents had told her about it and all the other sorts of weapons their former servants carried. How had he gotten one?
A large hand seized her arm and yanked her up, and for the first time in her life she was face to face with a batarian. Even though she had never been so scared, part of her looked at his four eyes and wondered how his brain could process all the information they took in.
He released her arm and his hand traveled over her body, apparently gauging her physical condition. His hand lingered at her chest and groin; she tried to pull away and got clubbed by the shotgun as a reward.
He touched his uniform, up near his throat, and spoke again, only now she could understand him. “No good for breeding, not that anyone would desire someone who covers themselves up,” he said. “But with your skills, you should fetch a good price. Those asari are always more trouble than their worth, but you just made this trip worth it.”
He spun her around and pushed her forward.
She never wanted to be home so much in her life. The ship that had been her home was one of the original craft that had fled their homeworld, and looking after it required constant care from an entire team of engineers. But even with its creaking hulls and cramped quarters, at least she knew she was safe, among her own kind, not…here.
“I don’t know what you’ll face out there, my daughter,” her father said the day of her departure. “Maybe it will be peaceful. But if not, I have loaded weapons into your omni-tool. I hope you will never have to use them. Keelah se’lai, I hope you don’t.”
Looks like I will, Father, she thought. She ran through the list of different options. Combat drone? No, it would take a few seconds for it to become operational, more than long enough for him to kill her. Same for the sentry turret. Cryo blast? No, that would just slow him down, it had to be something stronger, something that would actually hurt him. Overload? No, that would only stun him for a few seconds. That only left…incinerate.
But where to shoot him? In the few times her parents had taken her to a shooting range, they always told her to aim for the center of the body, it was the biggest target.
Center of the body, on one…two…
She tripped. She was so focused on what she had to do she had not paid attention to her surroundings. She looked back to see what had caused her to fall.
It was Lylia. She lay on the ground, a pair of harpoons jutting out of her back, her eyes staring sightlessly at nothing.
"No!" Shala screamed, reaching for her friend.
“Get up,” the batarian snarled, grabbing her and yanking her up.
She didn’t remember even shooting him with the fire. All of a sudden, he staggered back, clutching at his face and crying out in pain.
I blinded him, he can’t see me! Joy the likes of which she had never felt before surged through her.
That joy quickly dissipated when the batarian, even blinded, one hand clutching at his ruined eyes, raised the shotgun and fired, three balls of white-hot plasma just missing her.
She got up and ran to her right, towards a large pile of rubble, and he fired again. This time one of the plasma shots grazed her suit, tearing it open, just as she dove behind the rubble. Seals automatically began working to close the tear, and antibiotics began pumping through her system.
He’s trying to kill me! Keelah, he’s trying to kill me! she thought, and suddenly she was filled with rage. What had she ever done to him? She was a mechanic, trying to fix things, and here he came determined to destroy everything!
She shot another fireball again without thinking about it. It struck him in the back, staggering him, but he still did not fall.
All right, time to try something different. The overload attack did indeed stun him, causing him to jitter about and, more importantly, to drop the shotgun. She darted out, grabbed it and aimed it at him.
“I have your shotgun now,” she said, proud of herself. “Now—
He launched himself at her, homing in on the sound of her voice. She squeezed the trigger on the shotgun.
Nothing happened. She wondered for a split second if its heat sink had been expended before she remembered the batarian charging her. She swung at him, catching him in the head, knocking him away.
This time she did not speak. She clubbed him again in the head, pressing her advantage.
And again.
And again.
And again.
When the asari found her, she was clubbing the blood-soaked ground with the shotgun and screaming incoherently.
When she returned to the Fleet, she did not tell her parents about that.
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Post by Maelstrom on Jan 14, 2014 11:13:39 GMT -6
Good story. Very well written.
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Post by Eric Lysander on Jan 16, 2014 14:52:15 GMT -6
Harrowing and tense. Great pacing. Cruendi'has had better watch his step with her!
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Post by Iregos on Jan 30, 2014 13:19:51 GMT -6
"She did not tell her parents about that." That's a nice touch. I liked how you described the fight itself.
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