[color=dodgerblue][h3]Storm Front Hazan and Serena Virmire[/h3][/color] [color=dodgerblue]"Well colour our position fucked then. I'm gonna draw them away from our pos, you get in contact with the other three."[/color] That said, Hazan vanished, his hands whipping out his shotgun from his back harness. He'd be back. [color=hotpink]"What do you mean 'draw them away' they can barely see us as is. We should just- Haze!"[/color]Serena hissed, angry and helpless, as the turian disappeared into the rainstorm. [color=hotpink]"Fucking bastard."[/color] She wanted to, very badly, activate her shields and retreat backwards, putting distance between herself and the enemy. But the shields would put a beacon on her, even in this rain, and she had no idea when she'd suddenly stumble upon a cliff. So she simply crouched low and watched the approaching smugglers, about five if she was picking out the correct shapes, and trying to control her shaking as bits and pieces of their conversation made it's way to her. "Why..fuck...here?" "Are....turret!" "So? Nothing.....it's....." "Bullshit it is....New..." Serena didn't dare make contact, not yet, not while they were close enough to hear her. And if they were close enough to be audible, they were close enough to be seen. Truth was, Hazan hadn't gone far. Just far enough to get up in a tree to make it seem like Serena was all alone. He waited in the pouring rain, silent as he watched the dark blobs of the smugglers approach their camp. His visor and electronics were off, and he watched with his shotgun in one hand. In his other he held a frag grenade. As the group of smugglers advanced towards their makeshift camp and poked around, he clicked down the activation button on his grenade. It glowed red in his hand as he threw it in the opposite direction. Then he hunkered down in the branches and waited until the grenade went off, which it did with a thunderous explosion that drew the full attention of the other smugglers. Past the rain he couldn't hear much of their surprised comments, and immediately after the air was filled with gunfire. Serena eased carefully backwards as the smugglers drew closer, barely daring to breathe despite the downpour. [color=hoptink]"Del,"[/color] she whispered eyes on the smugglers. [color=hotpink]"activate Tres Amigos. Wait for Haze's signal, then open fire. Lure them away."[/color] A thought occured to her as Del moved into position. [color=hotpink]"Sarah, voice scan and copy. We'll need it."[/color] They didn't have to wait long for Haze's signal. A grenade exploded in the distance behind the smugglers. They immediately dropped into crouches and took what cover they could find. They were close enough that Serena could clearly make out their alarm. "What the fuck was that? A bad throw?" "How the hell should I know? Think it's a trap?" "How could it be a trap? They didn't know we were coming." "We [i]did[/i] blow up their turret rather publicly." "And what would you have done? Made friends with it? It was going to-" Their conversation was cut short as Del opened fire. Bullets pinged off of shields and the smugglers cursed, hitting the ground or pressing against boulders. "How many of them are there?!" "Three I think! All behind us!" "How the fuck did they do that?" "We probably walked by them in the storm!" Serena edged farther backwards, waiting until the shapes of the smugglers were barely noticeable, and their words completely drowned out by the storm, before contacting the other three members of their group. [color=hotpink]"Guys? Guys, can you hear me? We've been compromised. A fucking tree landed one of our turrets and damaged the other. It fired on us. We managed to disable and then repair it, but the gunfire it caused drew a squad on our position. Five smugglers, from what I can see. Haze is attempting to draw them away. My readouts on Tonka say that he's being fired upon, his shields are low. And-"[/color] She stopped talking as a gun went off behind her, and her shields suddenly frizzled out. [color=hotpink]"FUCK!"[/color] Serena dove to the ground, more bullets whizzing past her. [color=hotpink] [i]Disrupter Rounds? Really? Fucking smugglers.[/i][/color] She turned around, throwing a sabotage and an overload programs at her assailant in quick succession. At the same time, her assailant stabbed her in the shoulder with his omni-blade. Serena screamed in pain, instinctively gathering her biotics to throw him off. He flew a couple feet back and Serena scrambled to her feet. Then it hit her. God she was tired. She could only barely do that much heavy lifting with her biotics on a good day, and now she just felt empty. Her head pounded with a headache. Her pistol was gone, lost when she threw him off of her. Her left arm hung for a moment, burning pain through the shoulder. She thought she could use it, but didn't have time to find out. The piercing scream cut through the storm front, drawing Haze's attention. Only one person could've screamed that high pitched. [color=dodgerblue]"Serena? Shit."[/color] Hazan leaped off his tree perch and landed in the mud. The drones' gunfire masked his approach towards the rear of the smugglers' group. With shotgun cocked, he snuck up behind one of the unaware smugglers and dropped him with a sharp butt stroke to the back of his head. The man fell, unconscious, as the slender Turian caught his limp body and dragged him into the bushes, binding his wrists with gel from his omnitool. The man was already on his feet, coming back at her with the omni-blade in seconds. Desperately Serena drew her own omni-blade. She was a bad fighter to begin with, and now she was crippled. She managed to deflect or block his first few slices, but then his knee slammed into her gut and she was only saved from being stabbed through the neck by lurching to one side, and he still cut her. She scrambled backwards, bleeding heavily from her neck wound, praying it missed an artery, as the man advanced on her. His omni-blade glowed an ominous yellow as he approached. [color=hotpink] [i]Isn't everything ominous when you're about to die? Oh the things that pop into your mind when you're about to die.[/i][/color]Serena thought she could see him smiling through the rain, read to take an easy kill. [color=hotpink] "Fuck you."[/color] She spat, bringing up her omni-blade, it shifting into a bow to kill- [b]Crack![/b] Her nose broke as his boot connected with the front of it, and his hand slapped the bow out of the way and down, quickly pinning it to the ground with his other boot. Serena screamed again as the omni-blade lifted. Not from fear, but from pain as she willed her damaged shoulder to move, aiming the second omni-bow at him and firing. It punched into his chest.[color=hoptink] [i]Oh god I hope that wasn't an explosive bolt.[/i][/color] She thought, somewhat dazedly, drawing a feeble shield around her as she sat up and tried to scoot away. The man stumbled backwards, looking somewhat surprised. It was. The bolt exploded, showering Serena with gore as it broke her shield and sent her stumbling along the ground and collapsing in a heap. Her ears were ringing, breathing (along with literally all of her body) hurt, she wasn't sure if her good shoulder wasn't dislocated, she bit her tongue to all hell, and she could feel unconsciousness approaching. azan heard the second scream and his head lifted. He bolted forwards and threw a concussion shot at a nearby Batarian. The blast lifted him high in the air and against a nearby tree. Unconscious, but not dead. He handled the last smuggler, a scrawny looking Salarian, as he turned around. A quick smack across the face with his shotgun dropped the last man, but still he wasn't finished. He dashed across to Serena's still form, covered in gore from the explosion. As the downpour washed the blood away he hoped that most of the remnants weren't hers. Thankfully she was alright, her shields had taken the brunt, but when he made a cursory examination he found her shoulder and neck oozing blood. Stab wounds. They weren't pretty. He caught her eyes as they panned up to him, seconds before she lost consciousness. [color=hotpink]"H-hey Haze? I'm gonna pass out now. Just got my ass-"[/color] And then she was out. [color=dodgerblue]"Handed to you, yeah I got it, thanks!"[/color] He keyed his mic while pressing his omnitool to her shoulder. The omnigel within burst from his palm and sealed the wound as he tried to hail their ship. [color=dodgerblue]"Borealis? It's Haze. Serena's unconscious and bleeding out. I'm stabilising her but we're compromised pretty badly out here. We got made by about three, four smugglers from the camp. I KOed them all but I can't move Serena on my own without risking her life. We need help, ASAP."[/color]