Mass Effect: Hunting Wraiths

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samanthinator

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(( Yep, crappy title. Whoops. ))

You know, Alex couldn't remember the last time he'd looked out a window. While on a ship, at least. Leaning up against the reinforced glass, he knows that it's been at least a couple of years since he'd been on anything but an Alliance ship, and they didn't have them. Structural weakness.
On the occasion when his CO practically forced him to take some time off every couple months, he'd just stayed local, avoided work for a while, and came back. This time, though, she'd insisted he need a real vacation.
So, here he was. An off-duty Alliance engineer currently making his way to Elysium on a civilian transport ship.
Sighing, he forced himself to dredge up one positive thought about the whole situation.
There was...Well, he'd get time to tweak his omnitool's settings?
Damn, he was terrible at optimism.
The five foot ten man stood up straight. His hair was dark, cropped well within regs. Dark blue eyes glance toward the door, then at himself. He was still in his BDUs. Dammit. Must have slipped his mind when he was leaving base.
Bah, oh well, he thought, it's a vacation. I can wear what I damn well please.
 
Finally, recycled air that doesn't smells like sweat. If those fancy vacation cruisers had something was a neat atmosphere, and some really nice looks... And I'm not talking about space... Thought Vasily taking a thoughtfully look at a pretty Asari passing next to him. Luckily for him, the dark glasses in his eyes covered his intentions, otherwise he would have been slapped more than twice now.

But what does it matter anyway? He was on vacation, and hell, some well earned vacations! So it was time to forget all about his failure at the N4 tests, put on the most terrible looking Hawaiian shirt and enjoy a couple of weeks off. Besides, being N3 qualification wasn't all that bad; sure you didn't got a shiny N7 badge to brag about in the uniform, but still you got to see quite a lot of action, plus being Vanguard versed with the use of blades proved to be quite an explosive combination.

Mesmerized by the rhythms of some of the dancers, Vasily walked into one of the clubs of the cruiser, proud of his ridiculously gaudy attire, and went to grab some drinks. With enough luck the night may end up being more fun than they used to be back at the Villa.
 
Alex turned away from the window, away from the dark depths of space. Well, they were currently in FTL travel, so he couldn't see much but pulsars and black holes. Still, it was space. It was the environment he lived and worked in.
Bah, I need a drink.
He walked out of the observation deck, glancing around. The ship's bar was...what way, again? Choosing a direction at random, he walked down the hall, noting once again how much bigger the place was than he was used to. Ah, the benefits of comfort over efficiency. Then, there was the bar. Multiple bars, actually. Not something you'd ever see on an Alliance vessel. Hah, they just don't want the on-duty staff getting wasted.
Eventually, he made his way to one of the clubs. Moving through the crowd a bit awkwardly, Alex made his way to the bar itself and leaned up against it. He asked the bartender for something strong; hell if he knew what the drinks available here were.
 
Sneaking between the crowd, Vasily couldn't avoid to get lost into a couple of conga lines before getting to the counter. Never knew what those things had, but there was something about them that sucked Vasily to follow them. Still humming the last happy song from the club, Vasily finally got where he wanted to be, happening to land just next to a... Grumpy alliance marine? Well, guess some soldiers never get used to shore leave time.

"Hey! Beautiful!" Said him cheerfully, almost instantly getting the attention of not only one bartender, but the two of them and a Krogan not far from there. Yeah, that one was kind of odd. "What can I get you..." The Asari bartender stared at Vasily shirt for a couple of seconds and after a shy chuckle she looked at him once more. "... Handsome?" Said her. "Mmmm... What about one of those crazy colored drinks? Oh, and you have those little umbrellas? Hmm?" Wondered Vasily out loud, making no effort to hide his accent.

Not that it was hard to understand him, it was quite easy to hear his voice. It had to if he wanted to be heard in the battle field, but still, it held heavy Russian accent all over his words. "Sure we do." Replied the Asari bartender as she went to find his 'crazy colored' drink. "make it two umbrellas then!" Exclaimed Vasily, unable to hide the laughter of his own ridiculous demand.
 
Oh, God.
He'd barely even arrived, and he'd already been stuck with the super happy vacationer. A Hawaiian shirt? Really? Ugh, and he was loud, too. Reminded Alex of a man he'd served with the year before. Poor kid had been killed by pirates in the Skyllian Verge. Although, he'd been a kid and excited to go out on active duty for the first time, not a flirty Russian man.
Looking at him, Alex evaluated the man with a practiced eye. He was mercenary, maybe marine. Or just a fitness freak, although he doubted that. Someone on shore leave just had a special air around them, whether negative or positive.
"Hey," Alex offered, looking at him. Socializing was apart of vacationing, right?
 
Surprised at first, Vasily looked at the Alliance marine. "Hey!" Replied Vasily. Not that he wasn't sociable, jut that the guy had caught him by surprise. Even with the party music on the background, the silence was getting so awkward it could be cut with a sarcastically invisible knife. Luckily for them, or at least, so Vasily thought, the ship jumped out of FTL, or almost crashed out of it, quite abruptly, making some of the passenger fell to the ground. Next, the music went off, which was quite a relief, and finally, the lights went on, lighting the place with a pretty intense white light.

"Mmmm... Well, that's unusual...." Muttered Vasily, regaining some 'Englishness' in his still hard accent. "What happened?" "Oh my dear! Are you alright?" "Oh, my butt hurts!" The crowd began to talk and replace the loud music with equally loud chatter. A simple core issue, probably, thought Vasily. See? Totally engine sounds... Though him as some shots could be heard being fired from the hallways outside the club.

The people was about to panic and scream in awe, when a fair amount of highly armed men appeared into the scene, firing rounds at the ceiling, making everybody start to run like headless chicken from place to place, trying to hide behind tables and columns. "I hope you've actually earned that uniform." Said Vasily looking at the marine as his arms and shoulders began to blur in that mild blueish and cloudy mist usual in biotics.
 
(( Taking a few liberties on how omnitools work...Also, using the combat drone from ME3. :P ))

Alex almost replied with a sarcastic comment, then his combat instincts kicked in and he bit it down. His omnitool came up automatically, flash-forging a couple of sentry turrets. He threw both quickly, then dived behind a table so he could create his holographic combat drone in relative piece. Damn, I need to tweak my omnitool. He'd gotten a new one the month before and hadn't hat time to really mess with the settings and customize it yet. So, properly coding the commands would take longer than usual, but he'd still be able to make it through the fight without a gun. Hopefully.
"Go get 'em, Max," he said, finishing up the coding and entering the command and grinning.
The drone moved out from behind cover, firing a small incendiary rocket at one of the armed intruders. The rocket sailed over the panicking populace, exploding once it reached its target.
"Yes!" Alex grinned again at the successful shot. Now, to find a gun...
 
(( It's cool. ^^ ))

Relying his recently acquired friend, Vasily ran sneaking behind the panic, tables and chairs until what it seemed like the most smart pirate of the group realized something was not going as planed. In any event, if you let a Vanguard be that close to you, it meant you may not be as smart as you though. Before the bad guys could actually respond to the threat, missiles were starting to fly and turrets to fire. And to put more wood into it, Vasily had vanished in front of the attackers eyes, making them realize stuff was about to hit the fan, and it wasn't to be pretty.

Materializing in the middle of three of the pirates, Vasily began to give away precise and painfully looking hits to the three around him. Without any blades or weapons it was tricky to really make an armored target dead, but what he did managed to do with ease was to knock two of them down and leave the third one floating in the air helpless. "Hey! Drone boy!" Yelled Vasily trowing one of the pirate M99 to the friend marine before he charged from side to side of the club, making more enemies fly across the area.
 
Alex caught the weapon, then looked at it. The M99? Oh, the damage he could do with this rifle. He could winder how the pirates (at least, he assumed that was what they were) got the Alliance weapon later, as now he was more than a bit busy.
Supplying a bit of covering fire, he managed to nail one of the pirates in the chest and another one in the head.
A flash of blue drew his attention, however, and he looked toward the other Marine. He was a Vanguard? Hell yes. Alex didn't share the distrust of biotics that much of humanity had. They'd saved his ass too many times for him to do that. He didn't exactly like them, but he wouldn't shun someone just on that reason.
 
It wasn't long before the both of them had cleared the place of bad guys good enough to make a move forward. Wasn't a good idea to stay in the same place since boarding a ship this size sure would require a force much more bigger than just a few spoiled pirates. Once the place was taken care of the pirates, Vasily went to stack up next to the entrance door when the whole ship trembled painfully, forcing him to juggle in order not to fall to the floor face first. "Hey! Drone boy! Come on! I don't think those guys intention is to keep the ship in one piece!" Yelled Vasily, hard to take seriously with his shirt, even if he had been putting quite a nice biotic show a few seconds ago.
 
Standing up, he did a quick survey of the room. His drone wasn't moving, so he doubted that there were any enemies left in the vicinity.
"Yeah, I got that, Meathead."
The drone and the sentry turrets fell to the floor, deactivated by a quick command entered into his omnitool. Alex walked over to the Vanguard, looking at him. "We escaping, or trying to save the ship?" Saving the ship would require going up to the bridge and trying to get the ship away from the pirates. Not recommended, considering that neither knew how to pilot a ship. Of course, he was assuming that about the Vanguard, but Alex was pretty confident that he was right. Escaping was the dick move, but it was the safest option.
 
Vasily looked at the hallway and chuckled. "Escape?" Wondered him taking another glance at the hallway. "And where is the fun in that?" Said him chuckling once more. "Besides, there's civilians in here...." Was then when Vasily noticed the Krogan from before was on the other side of the door, looking at them and at the hallway. Growling in what it could be understood like agreement, the Krogan nodded at Vasily, who was still a little bit puzzled. In the most odd of the silences, Vasily gave the Krogan the handgun he had stolen from on of the pirates during the fight, not too much use for something who uses his biotics as a weapon.

The Krogan grabbed the gun without saying a single word, holding it quite professionally, and then kept looking at the hallway. "Come on, let's see if we can find a way to crush into their party." Said Vasily moving outside the club, followed by the Krogan.
 
Krogan always unnerved Alex. Maybe it was because they were so much taller than him. Maybe it was because they were reputed to be some of the most vicious fighters in the galaxy. Maybe it was because he'd fought with one before, and he really hadn't come out looking pretty. Still, he preferred handguns to rifles, no matter how great the rifle may be.
He offered the Saber to the Krogan, squishing down his nervousness at even the thought of interacting with the giant...creature? Person? Man?
"Trade you."
If they were going to be rescuing civilians, he'd need a lighter weapon. Carrying too much killed his focus, and since he needed to type commands in manually, he needed his focus.
 
The Krogan grunted once more, probably showing approval since he took his gun and rudely traded it by the rifle. Not that he didn't liked the idea, just that was the way Krogan seemed to do things. The group kept moving forwards, taking down every enemy that got in their way. Bad guys had this strange thing of getting in groups small enough to be taken care of with ease, plus add a Krogan and the party is served. "Over here." Pointed out Vasily, finding a man dressed with fancy robes. "P-- Please, help." Begged him.

Vasily made the usual movement to provide medi-gel, only to be reminded his flashy shirt didn't had any compartment for it. 'Vacations' "No-- The S--- Salarian counselor... They took her... Must... Treaty..." That man had more of himself in the land of the dead than aboard that ship.
 
"These pirates took the Salarian councilor?" Alex said in disbelief. No way. They were heavily armed, sure, but taking someone that important? They couldn't just be pirates. Besides, what value would pirates see in a civilian vessel that isn't even carrying cargo? Dammit. Pushing that line of thought to the back of his mind, he told himself that he'd think it through later. Right now, there were bigger concerns. He looked down at the fancily dressed man on the floor, then crouched beside him. "Where?" he asked, tone serious.
 
"D--- Don't know..." Replied the dead man. "I'm betting that's where." Said Vasily looking through one of the many huge windows. On the other side there was a pretty messed up ship, the size of a small cruiser. It looked like made from the parts of different ships, and knowing how pirates were, it wouldn't be too crazy to say some of those parts were glued at each other with gum. "Let's hurry." Said Vasily walking fast towards one of the multiple V.I. in the ship.

Quickly arguing with the interface, Vasily asked for oxygen masks and the nearest escape pods. Lucky day, it seemed that in this kind of civilian vessels both things went together, and it wasn't far from here. "Come on, let's move." Hustled Vasily. "The pirates... or whatever those guys are sure have too much advantage over us." Said Vasily as he walked, or almost ran, through the corridors. "Couldn't avoid to notice you were an engineer. See if you can change the trajectories of one of those pods." Said Vasily as they finally reached the escape pods area. "Make it aim there." Said Vasily pointing at the pirate ship.
 
Changing a pod trajectory? Easy enough. He shoved the pistol in one of the pockets on his uniform, remembering how much he loved the "Done. Gimme a minute." Alex stepped up to the console, pulling up his omnitool and typing in a few commands. Dammit, he had to rack his brain for the coding. See, this is what happens when I get sent on shore leave, he thought to himself. I forget all the important shit. After bypassing the safeties, he grinned and looked at his new friend. "Got it," he said, putting in the coordinates. He pulled the pistol back out, then nodded toward one of the shuttles. "Hacked that one. Let's go."
 
So, the shields shouldn't be a problem, the pod would not be fast enough for them to even rise. Now the armor, let's be honest, a rock tossed by a five year old would punch a hole through it. Now the gravity once the hull was punctured... That sure would be fun... "Big guy, you may wanna stay here and help the civilians... unless you know how to handle yourself in Zero G." Advised Vasily looking at the Krogan. The two legged tank grunted in dislike. Sure he would like o go kick some pirate ass, but a creature that size wasn't built to fight while floating around a ship without the proper equipment.

A shame anyway, Vasily was starting to like that guy. "Come on, ready to pull out some N grade stunts?" Said Vasily giving the other marine the oxygen mask, disturbingly eager to do something that could potentially erase him from existence.
 
Alex took the mask, grinning widely. This was going to be interesting. If anything, the engineer enjoyed combat. It was one of the few occasions in which he could actually focus his thoughts into something cohesive, and not the messed up jumble they usually were. Even though the pair were likely heading into certain death, he managed to drudge up a sarcastic comment. "After you, sweetheart," he replied, then pulled on the oxygen mask. It was strange to be accepting oxygen from anything but his typical N style helmet, but Alex just shoved that to the back of his mind to join the rest of the things he'd deal with later.
 
After the hatch closed, the pod made that 'pop' sound of detachment and the force of the thrust correcting the trajectory and launching the little piece of metal straight to the pirate wreck-ship. The little trip wasn't any long-lived, in less than a few seconds, the pod crashed against the other cruiser, punching quite a hole and successfully transporting both marines to the enemy ship. Of course the fact that they got there alive didn't meant they got comfortably.

The only source of light inside the pod was the crimson little light of emergency next to the exit door, and to be honest, that vampire-vision made it quite hard to focus. "эй! You awake?" Said Vasily as he moved through the narrow debris towards the entrance. "Come on, get up. No time for a nap now." His arms began to glow with the usual dark energy handled by biotics, and after a sudden release, the entrance flew off and the gravity went nuts, making everything began to float. "Whoa! Never got completely used to this..." Even if he was trained in Zero G combat, the fact of feeling weightless was always odd. "Let's hurry. Sure they noticed that hole by now." Said Vasily pointing out that where before there was a hallway, now there was a hole made by the pod.
 
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