Considering the suspicions Vreta had beforehand, the events that immediately followed their departure certainly caught him off-guard. Attacks towards Freyr from an old woman in the crowd, followed by another from a man with meat hooks, and that agent shot both in short order. Vreta had not at all [i]actually[/i] expected the Skinner threat to be real. He had given that as a reason for meeting in person, but that was just a pretense. He saw no reason for a terrorist group with their goals to make an attack against Freyr. At least, not after the recent disaster in the Cradle. Yet, the agent had shot and killed two people in the middle of the market. He could not see that being a trick, unless…

Vreta, unfortunately, did not have time to investigate further. No matter what was going on, he still needed to move with the others.

[hr]

The picture of the situation unfolding around Vreta was becoming clearer, though unfortunately, that did come too late for Vreta to avoid being surrounded himself. Most of the lights had been disabled, so it was pitch black across most of the park, though Vreta was quite unperturbed by that fact. He was in his [i]own[/i] body now, and the low-light vision provided by his bionic eyes allowed him to see perfectly clearly. As such, he had no trouble witnessing the fact that these “Skinners” were making no effort to pursue their supposed target while the agent whisked Freyr away. That was something to act on, but first, he had some obstacles to deal with.

Vreta’s program had not yet found anything, but regardless, he re-dedicated most of his implant’s processing towards combat assistance software. Meanwhile, he left his program to monitor any communications passively, as well as to send a priority alert to the Rothian embassy. He doubted they would arrive in time to help him, but he still would have need of their help after this was over. 

“So, you are ‘Skinners’, then?” Vreta remarked. The Humans were moving from their hiding spots to take up positions all around him, which he allowed to happen for the moment. His own implants marked every target in his field of view, as well as identify the weapons they wielded. Knives, short blades, other sharp objects. They certainly [i]looked[/i] the part of a band of criminals within a city that had strict firearms laws, but most certainly, his previous opinion still stood. They had [i]no[/i] idea who they were dealing with. As a part of his defenses, his aural implants began emitting quick, ultrasonic pulses of sound, the echoes of which they could use to build a picture of his surroundings. “I’ll warn you, there are no laws in this city against me killing a group of terrorists in self-defense.”

The Humans had certainly left him with no escape with how they had encircled him, and they of course paid no heed to his words. All around him, many of his attackers did an admirable job of moving around, taunting, and generally making noise to confuse him, while two just within view to his left seemed to be the first to go in for their attacks with heavily-telegraphed swings from long machetes. Of course, his echolocation built quite a clear image of the man, light on his feet with hardly a sound to his step, rushing in behind him with a knife in-hand to go for a quick, precise takedown. 

Rather than turn to face his true attacker, Vreta held his hand out behind him so that the knife pierced through his palm, scraping past his metal bones and out the other side. Before the man could react, Vreta tightened his grip around the man’s hand and twisted, snapping his wrist to the point that his entire hand went limp.

“Remember, you chose this.” Vreta’s voice, and indeed his entire visage, was calm, cold, and devoid of emotion. He turned his body around with alarming speed for a being of his size and slashed his claws perfectly across the man’s jugular. He then pulled the knife from his hand, which dripped with [i]surprisingly little[/i] blood, and simply dropped the blade to the ground. He had no need of the weapon, as his own claws were sharper.

The swings from the machete-wielding opponents had been feints, but with their quick, safe takedown foiled, the rest of the Humans collapsed on Vreta all together. There was simply no way for him to avoid injury; he just had to be fast, decisive, and deadly. He picked two in front of him and met their charge with equal aggression. The man to his direct front held a knife, but Vreta’s arms still gave him more reach. Vreta thrust his arm forward, overpowering any attempted defense to jab two of his claws straight [i]through[/I] the man’s throat At the same time, he caught the machete of the woman to his front and left by its blade. To her credit, she was quick to let go of the weapon and try to step back, but he was simply too fast to avoid. He stabbed the machete into her chest with enough force to simply break through her ribs. 

While Vreta had stopped the two in front of him, even he could not avoid the attacks of all his assailants at once. He felt the pressure, though not the pain, of knives entering his back, the chop and metallic clang of a heavy weapon striking his spine, and a slash through his tricep from under his left arm. The last of those was the most worrying for him. While his bones, tendons, and ligaments were likely unbreakable for the weapons they were using, his muscles were not. They were enhanced in several ways and tougher than normal, but they could still be cut and damaged. Too much damage and he could lose control of a limb. Regardless, the damage was not yet that severe, and he could still fight. His health readout in the corner of his vision reported multiple lacerations, tissue, and some organ damage, but clotting agents and nanomachines were already flooding his system to mitigate the damage.

Having killed or incapacitated everyone in front of him, Vreta could turn and get everyone on the same side of him, at least for a moment. Although, by the time he turned around, he was met with another knife in his stomach and an improvised axe striking the very center of his chest. But again, that axe, after just a short bit of cleaving through flesh, met nothing but the metal of his ribs. Ignoring the axe, Vreta grabbed the top of the man’s head instead, squeezing hard enough that blood dripped from the point that his claws met his flesh. Then, there was a loud snap after Vreta gave enough of a twist for his head to face near completely backwards. At the same time, he went for a slash with his other hand at the Human holding the knife. While he was fast enough to bring his arms up to guard his throat, Vreta simply readjusted to slash across his abdomen instead. Vreta’s claws disemboweled the Human, spilling his innards out onto the grass.

While his combat software had alerted him, Vreta had not been in a position to react to the woman drawing a pistol just to his left while he was killing the other two. She fired her shot from close, hitting him directly in the side of the head. The superheated bolt of energy practically vaporized any flesh it touched. Yet, what was left was not a hole through the middle of his brain, but rather, the shine of the untarnished alloy that comprised his skull in the middle of a hole of burned flesh. She did not get time to land a second shot on target as he grabbed her wrist with one hand, then grabbed her arm farther up with the other. With a quick motion, he bent back her arm and snapped it [i]completely[/i] at the elbow, leaving it hanging just by skin before he pried the gun out of her grasp. Judging by her blood-curdling scream, he did not expect her to remain a threat, and there were still others that were a more immediate danger.

Once guns were drawn, everything moved even more quickly. The rest of the Humans were backing out from melee to draw firearms of their own, and Vreta’s combat program marked each of them based on which was closest to being able to fire. For the first, Vreta managed to take aim and put two quick shots into the chest before the Human could bring his own weapon on target. The second fired a shot before Vreta could transfer his aim to the new target, and it did find its mark on Vreta’s chest. However, all the shot served to accomplish was to burn away more of his scales and some of the flesh underneath to show a portion of his metal ribs and the armored mesh in between them, neither of which were meaningfully damaged by the shot. Vreta’s pair of shots again found the Human’s chest, and to much deadlier effect.

The third of the Humans to take aim had learned from the fight so far, as brief and bloody as it had been. Instead of aiming for what would usually be his vital areas, he aimed lower. Both the Human and Vreta fired at the same time. Once more, Vreta put two shots into his opponent’s chest, while the Human burned a hole clean through Vreta’s gut and out the other side. His health monitor lit up with a frenzy of warnings. Intense damage to muscle and other tissues, and especially intestinal damage. As well, there were burns from radiant heat on multiple other organs. The cauterization from the heat meant that bleeding was not catastrophic, but there was still heavy trauma throughout his abdominal cavity. His implants went into immediate, full-body damage control. His pain response had been suppressed before the fight even began, and now his implants were also sending chemical signals to discourage digestive function, as well as slow down the functions of other affected organs as much as was safe to prevent them from damaging themselves. Meanwhile, his implants began flooding the affected area with medical nanomachines to begin restoring the most vital of functions.

The shot Vreta had taken had caused damage that could become fatal to one who received no treatment, but ultimately, it was not going to drop him anytime soon. He did not so much as hesitate to take aim at his next target, but the final two attackers gave perhaps the smartest response he had seen out of any of them thusfar. Eight of their companions had been killed or otherwise taken out of the fight, and no injury they had caused seemed to even slow Vreta down. As such, they both dropped their weapons, turned, and began to flee. Vreta did take aim, but he still maintained his calm and refrained from shooting. His goal was not to kill his attackers, but simply to end the fight. Besides, the last thing he would want now would be to shoot them in the back and break any of Babylon’s self-defense laws. 

It did not take long after Vreta dealt with the ambush for a Rothian dropship to descend down from the sky and hover just above the park, shining a bright floodlight down on the grisly scene surrounding Vreta. The vehicle’s smooth, sleek design contrasted with the more harsh, angled plating and utilitarian design of many Human vehicles. In accordance with Rothian diplomatic agreements with the Outremer government, the Rothians were permitted to deploy peacekeeping forces for matters pertaining to their own citizens, sometimes to arrest them for crimes they had committed against Outremer, and sometimes to protect them from danger. Generally, they worked closely with local police forces, but of course, for an event as dangerous and pressing as a terrorist attack, there was no requirement for the Rothian peacekeepers to wait for Human police to arrive. Given the speed of Rothian dropships, they naturally arrived on the scene first. 

Vreta’s implant quickly established a connection with the ship above him. “This is Vreta’Sori, my condition is stable. Two of my attackers retreated into the park, capture them if you can.” He instructed, as well as transmitting images of the two Humans. “I want you to send another dropship to the food market in this park as well. We may need to carry out a rescue, but there’s something I need to check there first…”

At a full sprint, heading back to the food market would not be too much of a detour, but what he learned there would likely entirely determine what he did next. The ambush had been a quick, brutal affair. Just a few minutes had passed. He needed to see if the bodies of the man and woman that had first attacked Freyr, the ones the agent had shot, were still there, and if they were [i]truly[/i] dead.