[center][h3]Firuzeh and Kargad Begin Their Murder Picnics[/h3][/center]

Firu and Kargad Murder Picnic #1

Firuzeh flashed a look to her side, her breathing quickening as she felt the rush of adrenaline surge through her body, her teammates were beginning to act, Khosin charging into the Kett as though seeking as quick a death as possible. She grinned to herself, relishing the battle soon to come. "Right then." She called to Kargad, biotic energy swirling around her, "Down with the big ugly!"

She charged at the enemy, slamming into a nearby Chosen, driving her armored fist into its chest, biotic energy swirling around her arm. She felt the bony plates covering it crack and splinter under the impact, and she allowed herself a small moment of satisfaction as she saw its broken form hurled from her, lying dead in a crumpled heap against a rock.

Hefting her weapon, she unleashed a torrent of gunfire upon the Fiend, trying to draw the beast away from the main firefight, out of the danger zone for her squadmates, where she and Kargad could take down the thing. She grimaced, watching the bullets slam home into the thing's armored side to minimal effect, and doubled down, aiming to the best of her ability for the exposed sections on its back. 

Out of the corner of her eye, however, she caught sight of another Chosen taking aim with its rifle, and she felt two rounds impact her shields in the split second it took her to dodge out of the way, before countering with another charge, her gun hissing as the heat sink overloaded, the hail of gunfire reducing the bony carapace surrounding its head to an unrecognizeable mound. Whirling around, she refocused on her primary target, the Fiend. 

Kargad had remained in Firu's dust for a short moment, mouth hanging open as he tried (and failed) to think of some way to respond to Naryxa. He at least wanted to [i]appear[/i] to be entertaining the prospect of a totally tactical approach, but he found it difficult to reach for the words when he was meeting her gaze. Something about her energy towards him after that morning's exercise seemed... hostile, almost. It made his hump itch, in that way uncomfortable situations always did. But the awkwardness only lasted a sharp moment - in the instants after Firu had left, Kargad mutely shrugged, jaw still slack, and then hastily pursued her. 

He made similar movements across the battlefield, cloaking himself in a familiar field of glowing blue, which moved about him with the rising weightlessness of a neon smoke. He knew himself to be slow - but when he charged, he looked as quick as he did dangerous. He zig-zagged towards Firu's position, jumping between (and subsequently hammering) two Chosen, uppercutting the second with momentum enough to behead it, and send its head sailing over the battlefield. Kargad took half a second to appreciate the spectacle- it's the small things in the universe that make you appreciate the grand design- and then found his footing a jump left of his tag-team Fiend wrestling partner. He stowed his hammer and brought up his Mattock - incendiary rounds on, of course, why spoil the trend?

Although battles often left him hot beneath the plates, this battle was not one of them, not yet. Not until he was [i]wrestling[/i] this fiend, his arm around its neck. The closest he might ever come to fighting a beast fit for Tuchanka again. So Kargad found his calm - on the advice of [i]everybody[/i] else- and found himself just a little less embarrassed of his high impact, low heat gun... small though it was. He felt the sand shift beneath his feet as he changed his stance, and took his aim - and then began to try and hammer away at the spaces between the Fiend's plates. 

Over the rattle of gunfire, Kargad yelled to his left: [color=#D54122]"What do you suppose the odds are we can charge this bastard from either side and [b]flatten[/b] it?"[/color]

Firuzeh looked at the Fiend standing between her and Kargad, and weighed the options available to her at that moment, her mind walling out the cacophany of gunfire as she poured ammunition into the beast standing between them. It was visibly weakening, the bullets slamming home and burying themselves within the thing's flesh clearly having [i]some[/i] effect on it. As her gun beeped at her once more, venting steam as she ejected the glowing heat sink and slotted another in, she felt a surge in the bloodlust bubbling just beneath the surface, and grinned. "Let's do i-." She growled and then grunted, cutting off midsentence; her voice a markedly different one than that of a few minutes before, low, aggressive, a primal killing instinct creeping in, edging out the reason and logic that normally guided her. She felt her control slipping, and struggled to reign it in. 

Shutting her eyes, she turned to the side, two Chosen once more attempting to flank the team, and charged at them, slamming a fist into the head of one, smiling to herself at the satisfactory snap of a neck, and turned to the other one, biotic energy swirling around her fist. The chosen lunged at her, lashing out with a blade of its own that missed her by a hair, and she grinned wider, the energy visible about her entire body as she sprinted forward, driving her fist, omni blade extended, into the thing's chest, pulling it out as blood droplets showered the sand beneath them, and plunging it into the eye before letting the corpse crumple to the ground. She looked back, and with the reflexes of a woman running on pure adrenaline, dodged the mad charge of the fiend as it barreled towards her, jump pack flaring as she cleared its path with less than a half meter between its outstretched claw and her legs. 

Landing roughly, she stumbled, taking a moment to right herself and catch her breath. 

"Kargad." She called through the radio ,"Let's kill this motherfucker."

Kargad, juxtaposed to the chaos before him, smiled collectedly. It had been a long spell- 600 years, even! - since he'd last had the chance to fight alongside somebody who enjoyed a  good scrap quite so much as Firu seemed to. The thought warmed his heart. The thought, and the boiling blood rushing through his breast. War blood, the sort that rushed to a less secure Krogan's head. The sort that bred the [i]blood rage.[/i]

Kargad hadn't felt that rage since Tuchanka. He found that it diminished his ability to appreciate the glorious brutality of battle. Tearing the limbs off of some alien behemoth lost its edge when viewed through a red haze. But he could recognise it in others - he could hear it in Firu's voice. There was a smile in his, as it crackled back to her through the comms: [color=#D54122]"[i]"You've got quads for days, human - I [b]like[/b] it."[/i][/color]

Kargad's shape- now at the Fiend's hind- was visible for moments at a time as the beast kicked up dust, and sand. Desert dyed dark beneath its growing wounds. He was carefully returning his mattock to his back, and rolling the joint of his wrist about as he tested the weight of his hammer. Thought his next move through.
And then in the next instant he was in the air, engulfed in a voltaic fog and dropping like a stone: [color=#D54122][b]"Krogangram!"[/b][/color]

Firu grinned, relishing the experience. She could tell, even through their somewhat limited communication, that she and Kargad gained the same enjoyment from the rush of battle and the death of an enemy. It had been too long since she'd shared something like that - over six hundred years - but even beforehand, only for a month or so had she known someone, Krogan or not, who relished the violence of battle but wasn't a mere brute. 

"I don't think that's how biology works, but I'll roll with it." She shot back, her breathing steadying as she slipped once more into the calm serenity of pure bloodlust. Biotic energy began to swirl around her once more as she summoned all her might. "Tell you what, though, feel free to tell me all about quads after we've killed this thing. Wonder what it's got, might make a good trophy for that hammer!" 

She too shouldered her weapon, the bulky machine gun nevertheless clipping tightly to the magnetized sections of her armor as another omni blade formed around her wrist, customized to match the devastating force her cybernetic arm could deliver. She looked enviously at the hammer Kargad held. Perhaps, if things ever cooled down enough, she could acquire something like that for herself.

And then she was gone, leaping into the air as Kargad did, jump pack flaring as it delivered her into a lofty position above her quarry, and a split second later she plummeted back down, biotic energy crackling around her as she hurtled forwards. She aimed for one of the weak spots on the creature's back, driving herself and by extension, her omni-bladed arm, into the exposed flesh bleeding profusely from the hail of gunfire it had been subject to. Grinning, she braced herself, driving into the Fiend with an unstoppable force behind her.

In an astounding show of biotic talent, Firu managed to land the first of the final hits on the thing - torrents of alien blood rising to meet Kargad as he brought his hammer down on the occipital portion of the rearing Fiend's head, bearing down with the the weight and momentum of a small but determined car. Then he heard it, the satisfying [i]thunk-crack[/i] of his hammer breaking carapace, sending small, fine cracks across the beast's chitinous helmet, which broke further when Kargad landed on them, and clung to the struggling monster's shoulders.

For a second, Kargad felt satisfaction. Pride at a job survived. And then, dread. Because the thing was still moving - and now he'd mounted it. He reached forwards in a blind panic, grasping for any edge he could find, and seized the crusts of the Fiend's stony brow, then began to pull, wrenching the thing's head back with all of his might.
[i][color=#D54122]"C'... c'mon, you overgrown pyjack! We'll rip your head right off'a your shoulders!"[/color][/i]

Firuzeh grimaced, her hand and forearm buried in the mangled flesh of the fiend, blood pouring over her. She wrenched her hand free, the omni-blade having already shattered and dissipated within, greenish blood flowing freely from the wound she had inflicted. And yet, the beast refused to die, and she flashed a look to her side, noticing Kargad struggling to finish it. She too was holding on for dear life as the thing bucked and shook ferociously, trying to fling the two of them from it, and she caught sight of Kargad's discarded hammer on the sandy ground below, making a split second decision. 

Launching herself from the beast, she landed on the sand with an awkward and poorly practiced roll, jumping to her feet and dashing forward, seizing up the hammer. Again, the blue, whispy aura of biotic energy floated around her, and she launched herself into the air, jump pack flaring, taking aim at the thing's head. With a shout of pure adrenaline fueled, bloodthirsty glee, she hurtled forward at the thing's head, bringing down the hammer with every ounce of force she could muster. 

Kargad was pulling the Fiend's head up with all he had, so when the hammer hit, like a meteor on a handy-dandy stick, it rocked the Fiend's skull forwards again with so much sudden force that it got whiplash. Tendons in its neck audibly snapped, muscles tore, and Kargad- yelling Krogan curses above it all- pulled it back again, twisting and jerking until skin, stretched to marking, finally began to tear about its throat, spewing black-green plasma from between the gaps. If Firu's last blow had broken the things neck, Kargad had just near torn its head off. Then it lurched, and Kargad- biotics at the ready- hurled himself in a blind charge to the desert floor, some few feet away. He struck solid ground just in time to hear their enemy collapse into the sand behind him, kicking up plumes of blood-dyed dust. 

It took a few seconds for him to find his centre and rise to his feet again. He felt hot blood on his face. Copper. Why did every alien's blood seem to smell of copper? Was it all part of the same blueprint? He supposed it must have been. He plodded back over, breathing heavy, and then sharply kicked the unmoving beast in the jaw. The head pivoted back on a half-severed neck, but the life and fire in its eyes were gone. This creature had returned to the celestial furnace in which all things are forged.
He exhaled. A battle well fought. Then he scratched at the stony outcroppings of his chin, as he traced the torn flesh of its throat. The thing was half-way decapitated. 
[color=#D54122]"Say, you were talkin' about trophies earlier, right? Think they'd let us hang this in the barracks?"[/color], Kargad asked, staring down at their war-crime with a balmy pride spreading between his eyes.

Grinning widely from ear to ear, Firuzeh paused in the midst of the raging firefight around them to admire their work, sheepishly passing back Kargad's hammer before responding. "Hmm... I don't know if it'll fit through the door, truth be told. Maybe if I distract them, though, you can drag it off somewhere and we can build a pyramid of kett skulls." She winked playfully, pulling her rifle from her back once more and scanning the rest of the fighting. "What say you though, work together and show the rest of 'em how it's done? Or should we get a contest going? See who can take down more of these uglies before the fight's over?" 

Kargad, totally missing the joke, was already visibly designing a ziggurat of alien bones behind his eyes as he took back his hammer, and bounced it once or twice in his palm.
[color=#D54122]"Hard to say! On the one hand, you're [i]real[/i] fun to work with,"[/color] he supposed, smile wide and strangely warm, given it was celebrating a brutal combat kill. [color=#D54122]"But then, you did realign my jaw like a typewriter, so I figure - gotta earn my honour back somehow, right?"[/color]
He laughed, puffed out his chest, and struck it with his hammer. 
[i][color=#D54122]"Bet's on!"[/color][/i]

"I win, we get me one of those hammers. You win... Iunno, we'll jury rig a barbecue somewhere and I'll make whatever you want." She grinned, "Bet's on."