EliteCommander

Mass Effect: The Face of Injustice

Raa'Kina, RK, and Avatar

---

Raa continued to work on her task, her mind ignoring the gunfire and fighting, while she tapped her three fingers on the keyboard. Her helmet glared while flashes of gunfire barely registered to her. They were nothing but background noise at the moment. Click...clack...click. Her ears filled with RK's soothing voice as she counted down the loading time for the virus, going from 100% to 98% completion, still trickling down.

Raa's attention was jolted when bullets impacted something outside the corner of her visor, her body jumped and head jerked to spot the shimmering barrier. Her heart had leapt into her throat and middle wormed in nervousness to see the bullet riddled wall. First thoughts went for Voira and Solares, her head imagining a feverish picture of the pair being hunched over and dead. It frightened her. Enough she started to shift away before RK snapped into her ear piece.

"Raa'Kina nar vas Rannoch! Get back to that console and help me get this virus uploaded!"

Raa paused and seemed to struggle with the choice she was forced into. Immediately, RK popped up a vital readings over Voira and Solares from their omnitool.

"They are fine, they know how to protect themselves but we need to download that virus. Now." RK spoke firmly, her task focused on getting Raa back to the terminal.

Trembling, Raa turned back to once more start to type again. 86%...83%...

A sudden explosion happened and with it, their hearing became deaf from the sound. It was the screaming that caused Raa to tear away from the terminal at 79%, her ears catching the sounds, and shouted back to RK. "Keep downloading, I'll be right back."

Her boots clicked over to where the diplomats were huddled together, her gut becoming twisted at thinking someone was hurt. Already, her hand was darting to pull up her medi gel stock, she was ready to administer it to the wounded.

As it had not been affected by disorienting nature of the explosion, Avatar had been on guard, its audio sensors listening for the distinctive markers of incoming footsteps. After approximately five seconds of detecting no erroneous sounds , it stepped over to the door and looked out into the hall, confirming that there were no hostiles currently waiting outside. As such, it could now dedicate itself to assisting with injured allies or gaining control of the security console, depending upon where its platform would be the most useful.

The most obvious signs of injury came from the corner of the room where the diplomats has been hiding. When Avatar approached, it saw that not all had escaped injury from the shrapnel. The Turian civilian had been on the ground, and while she still showed signs of a head injury from Donny’s takedown, she was otherwise unharmed. The Asari diplomat had been standing between the Turian male and the explosion, but her weak barrier had protected them. The Turian female diplomat, however, had been pierced by multiple shards of metal. She was lying on the ground with four entry wounds on her chest and abdomen, along with one on her left ankle. The blood had stained her formerly-white clothing blue, and she was wheezing, which indicated damage to one or both lungs. Raa was already moving to tend to her wounds, but the personnel file Avatar had for the Quarian did not list medical expertise.

“Do you require assistance, Raa.” It asked.

Raa nodded, her trembling hands reached to the bleeding Turian. Blue blood smeared over her hands as she reached for the Turian's sleeve and activated her omnitool knife. It flickered to life instantly then neatly sliced through the cloth, severing it from the uniform. She started to wipe away the messy blue liquid away causing her to turn to Avatar.

"I-I need help. I think...I think a lung is ruptured and even if I seal it up, she could still go into shock." Raa said trying to clean out the holes enough to check their depth and fill them in, wary of those near the lungs. "RK, I...I need a full medical file about Turian anatomy. Please."

"Coming up but it will slow the download, namely to talk you through it. It's only a file and audio mostly." RK replied.

Avatar judged that both hacking the console and treating the Turian were time-sensitive issues, so neither could be postponed. It possessed files detailing Creator anatomy, but not Turian, so it could not assist Raa’Kina as efficiently as RK. Therefore, it would be most efficient for it to resume hacking the console to allow RK to rejoin Raa’Kina.

Saying nothing verbally, Avatar made use of direct digital communication to inform RK that it could resume its previous task. Digital communication was more akin to directly exchanging thoughts instead of speaking, so they could hold a “conversation” in fractions of a second.

Naturally RK returned fire with her own arguments, but finally submitted in the end. The damn Geth was a logical machine and emotions, unlike her, didn't compute. She shifted to Raa's omnitool to assist her.

Slowly the AI began to talk the Quarian through the process, first sealing up the holes that seemed the worse. The ankle was the least concern as that wasn't life threatening like the chest wounds. RK determined that the Turian had blood rolling around in her lung though it wasn't easy to tell through sound alone and no tools to measure pulse or vibration in the chest cavity. Raa had already patched three of the four holes and had been about to start on the last when RK stopped her, causing the Quarian to flinch in fear.

"Raa, don't. Not yet. She's got blood in her lungs and you seal that up, it might make it fill faster. We need tubing or something hollow." RK noted, trying to determine what would work.

Raa's mind already was figuring out the puzzle when she realized one thing she could use. Gently she shifted her patient's arm over the chest wound. "Hold it there, and don't close it!"

Wasting little time, she started to fiddle with her helmet clasps. Before RK could give her a serious scolding or warn Voira, Raa had taken her helmet off with a soft hiss. She inhaled the air and immediately coughed, her nose cringe at the scent of blood and fire. Ignoring her own worries, she quickly jerked out and removed her air tube. There was several thankfully and each only a few centimeters wide on both ends.

RK, furious with Raa, instructed her further on how to position the head and elevate the arm to help the blood flow. Trying not shake her hands, Raa inserted the sterilized tubing into the wound. Instantly blood surged out and over what little white remained on the uniform. By this time, one of the Turians had entered. He promptly walked up to Avatar, working at the terminal, and addressed him. This caused Raa to jerk her head for his attention.

"Help, I need help!" She called out, her hands holding the tubing in place and preventing more bleeding. Her voice was loud, panicky without the helmet that usually muffled her voice.

While Raa’Kina and RK had been tending to the wounded, Avatar had picked up precisely where RK had left off, immediately after it returned to Raa’s omni tool. There had been some barriers to uploading the virus, as the station’s central computer was equipped with a virtual intelligence that managed the station’s functions. However, against a true A.I, it served only to slow its progress. By the time Tacticus had approached it, the virus had been uploaded completely. “I have isolated the console from its master controller, Tacticus Agnom. It is currently rebooting; I estimate fifty seconds before I will be able to access local functions.” It explained.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"Of course, we will have to start small." Meesei began. "I personally have seen the abandoned farmsteads far from cities while wandering Cyrodiil. Few people know nor care what happens to them. Not everyone has families who can maintain their land, so some of our number may reasonably be able to reclaim it. Still, you are correct that it will not be possible for most of the farmers. But, the business connections will be easier to use. Even new lycans can return to cities for a brief time if they transform beforehand, and that is often all that is needed for business deals. Over time, we can buy the land too distant and dangerous for the city-dwellers to farm. We will have the resources to fight this war."

Meesei found it interesting that Harriet's response was not entirely negative. She seemed to actually be entertaining the idea that Meesei's plans could work, not that it especially mattered if she agreed with Meesei. After what Harriet had done, there was no way she could be allowed to live. "But, it is not necessary to convince you. I do respect that you still care about this place, however. Will you give your confession and give the skeptics among your packs the closure they need?"

Blood Act I~ Ghosts of the Past

Just curious, has anyone seen Fallen recently?

Mass Effect: The Face of Injustice

After the enemy rushed into the room, the fighting was quick and bloody. The Asari who charged Voira raised her own shotgun, but Voira's reaction had been quick. The blast of biotic energy drained the Asari's barriers while stumbling her back. The Asari's weapon still fired, but instead of hitting an unshielded Voira, half of the blast missed entirely, while the other half impacted Raa, but was absorbed by the barrier Voira had placed on her. Several of the pellets flew through the holographic screen to Raa's left and embedded themselves in the wall behind it.

A slug from the armor-piercing rounds of Voira's shotgun cut through the Asari's suit with ease and found its way into her abdomen. It was not immediately lethal, but Tacticus' attack prevented her from retaliating. His biotically-enhanced blows imparted enough force to make her armor irrelevant. Regardless, she tried to fight back. Dropping his shotgun to engage in melee combat had taken longer than if he had simply fired, so she reached for one of her grenades, but he was not slow enough that she could activate it. When she hit the ground, her upper body covered in a a violet paint of her own blood, her hand still clutched the explosive with her thumb only centimeters away from the button which would have armed it.

On the right side of the room, Avatar, Solares, and a few of the cabal fired on the uniformed hostiles. Solares high rate of fire shotgun cut through the shields of a vorcha quickly, with the incendiary rounds burning through his flesh soon after. Avatar was crouched behind one of the overturned tables for visual cover and leaned out to focus on the closest hostile: a Turian. A warp from a cabal hit his shields, which, while it did not drain them completely, allowed most of the pellets from Avatar's following shot to break through. As its weapon was already on target, it was able to fire again at center mass before the Turian could return fire. However, the remaining Vorcha was able to focus on Avatar. All shots from the burst of his rifle, which was of the same model that Avatar had found in the hallway, hit Avatar's shields, bringing them dangerously low. Quickly, Avatar ducked behind the table, then moved to the side. The Vorcha's next burst easily penetrated through the thin table, but were not on target. Leaning out of its cover, Avatar used an energy drain on the Vorcha, bolstering its own shields while draining its opponent's. Both of them then exchanged fire, but as Avatar's shields were now stronger, it could hold up to the Vorcha's next burst, while his shields fell to the shotgun blast. The number of pellets which penetrated his armor did injure him, but the robust nature of Vorcha physiology necessitated three more shots before Avatar could safely consider him to be neutralized.

As it was ejecting a thermal clip from its weapon, a detonation of an alarming size shook the room, as well as those on the decks directly above and below. After 1.5 seconds, the cain mine which Donny had deployed activated. The Turians had saw Donny throw it, but as one of them was attempting to evade what he assumed to be a grenade, he stumbled over one of the chairs which Avatar had placed near the door as an obstacle. His weapon crossed the path of the laser being emanated from the mine, triggering its detonation. A five meter radius around the mine in all directions was consumed by the explosion. All four of the hostile Turians were killed immediately by a combination of the heat, shrapnel, and the shockwave. The walls, floor, and even ceiling in the area, having not been designed to withstand such force, had partially collapsed. Much of the wall leading to the hallway on the left side of the room had been blasted apart, there was a small hole in the ceiling, and a much larger one directly beneath the mine leading to a lower deck.

Unfortunately, the damaging effects of the explosion were not confined strictly to the hostiles. As they were in a confined space, the effective radius of the cain mine was amplified. Only two of the cabal were close enough to perhaps experience injuries from the pressure wave itself, but the shrapnel ricocheted much farther. Anyone with weak or drained shields at the time of the explosion could suffer injuries from said shrapnel. As well, the sound produced by the detonation was well above dangerous thresholds, so hearing damage was possible, though not guaranteed. Immediately after the explosion, Avatar picked up screaming from the direction of the corner where the diplomats had been hiding, but it did not investigate immediately. Instead, it kept its weapon trained on one of the doorways until it could determine if there were any more hostiles present in the area.

Mass Effect: The Face of Injustice

@cqbexpt is correct.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Meesei's plan had been forming since she had first learned of the problems plaguing the clan. It was far from complete, as there were many details that could not yet be determined, but what she did have planned, she knew could help the clan. "There is no single solution, not to a problem this complex. Rather, there are a myriad of changes which need to be made to turn this...elaborate camp into a proper settlement. We cannot continue to approach our situation with a pack-based mentality, no matter how natural that comes. Do you know what I was before receiving Hircine's gift? I was a Treeminder, something comparable to what you might call a shaman. In my village, the Treeminder was one of the leaders of our people, and I was trained from my hatching to take on that role. I learned not only of magic, but of people. I learned how groups of people can get along, or tear themselves apart in crisis. I learned how to manage the logistics of food and supplies, and how to keep the people calm when the floods washed them away. Black Marsh is every bit as harsh as these frozen mountains, albeit in a different way. I did not stumble blindly into the leadership of my pack; Hircine guided me to it. I believe it is no accident that I find myself in this position now."

Through her explanation, Meesei showed complete confidence in her words. Hircine had been guiding her ever since the beginnings of her pack, and had given her the authority of her title. If his hounds needed a war leader, then she would take on that role. "I will not change the leadership, apart from perhaps promoting a new lieutenant, but rather, I intend to change how they view their leaders. It could take years, but I will slowly strip away these barriers that have been raised between the packs of the different lieutenants. It will begin slowly at first, perhaps just sending them on hunts with one another, or scheduling tasks to place those from different packs to work with each other. I will ease them into the change, but I will show them that they need not view their brothers and sisters with suspicion. As for our supplies, there are many untapped resources I see that we could gain with relative ease. With a coordinated effort, we can clear the lower parts of these ruins to make use of the space, and the artifacts found within. In the short term, this could provide us with more growing space for food. But, for the years ahead, we just need to look to our own people. This is a clan of hundreds, from many places and different walks of life. Lycathropy does not care about the class or status of those whom it infects. How many of our people were farmers, businesspeople? They have connections, land, resources that they have abandoned due to their condition. We could help them reclaim it, for the benefit of the clan. The farmers alone could not only feed our people, but give us surplus to sell. We could have access to more land than many of the nobles who frequent Bruma's court. I will contact other clans like ours, and advise them to do the same. If Vile intends to wage war on us, then I am going to be sure we are ready."

Mass Effect: The Face of Injustice

As the grenade was directed through the right door, Avatar joined in the volley of fire on the left door. As the explosive had detonated less than a meter out into the hallway, it had likely killed or incapacitated anyone within the lethal blast radius, while the ricochets were likely to damage the shields of others farther away. On the left, the Turians outside were only able to fire into the room briefly before being met with overwhelming return fire. The shields of one were drained before she could react, and several pellets from Avatar's shotgun found their mark in her chest, along with a bullet from one of the Cabal. The other did manage to get back into cover beside the door, but as the walls were not built to withstand sustained fire, enough shots penetrated through that he was taken down as well. Avatar was prepared to eject a thermal clip if the hostiles resumed their attack, but its shotgun had only two remaining to quickly cool the weapon, so they were best used only when necessary.

Outside, there was the sound of footsteps moving away from the doors. They were unlikely to be retreating, but after a failed initial attack, they needed to regroup a safe distance from the doors. Inside the room, no one had yet been injured, but the situation was still dangerous. Both of the Turian diplomats and the Asari diplomat were hiding in the same corner of the room as the Turian civilian, while Raa was working on the terminal. None of them would be priority targets for the enemy, except perhaps Raa, but it would only take one stray shot to kill or injure any of them. And, for the duration of the fight, the Turian woman was still curled in a ball on the ground, clutching her head and crying out in pain.

It was less than a minute after the hostiles had backed away from the doors that there was the sound of running from down the hall, followed by low voices outside the room. Even Avatar's sensors could not distinguish the words they were speaking, but it appeared that the enemy had been reinforced. After the voiced died down, there were few audible sounds outside the room for approximately half a minute untill, all at once, the enemy attacked once again without warning. A streak of blue flashed across the room from the right doorway, impacting Voira. It was the biotic charge of a hostile, though unlike those they had been fighting, she was not Turian. She was either a Human or an Asari wearing one of the same black, full armor suits as the guards of the Asari who had been delivering orders during the ambush. Her charge had hit Voira directly, but it would take a brief moment for her to orient herself after charging across the room.

At the same time, the more hostiles, one Turian and two Vorcha, wearing the same uniform filed in through the right door, while four of the ununiformed Turians they had been fighting rushed through the left door. They were less organized, and perhaps less well-trained than the other group, so they were likely acting on their orders. The enemy was rushing the room all at once, and with the volume of fire that was likely to be exchanged, the diplomats, particularly Raa, were going to be in danger.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"We'll have our hunt soon, with the moons. Just...hold on until then." Ahnasha commented. She leaned her head back against the wall and let out a sigh. She couldn't say she was much stronger than Fendros, given that she had to leave that room as well. At least his emotion came from his beast spirit; for Ahnasha, the anger she felt was entirely hers.

"After that, after...all of this, hopefully Najirra can help us. I'm really no better off than you are; I just can go longer without hunting. We were recommended to him a few days ago, if you remember. Everyone in the clan seems to trust him, so...who knows what he can do?" She reasoned.

---

Meesei crossed her arms, with her overall demeanor maintaining a certain amount of resolve. "When a pack of wolves grows too large, their needs begin to outstrip their resources. They become unable to feed all of their members, so some of them will break off for new territory, or die in the process. I know all of this, and I see where you are going with it, but that analogy does not hold entirely. We are not wolves, Harriet, we are lycans. Animals cannot form and maintain civilization, but people can, and at our cores, we are still people."

Though she could not deny that the sheer size of the clan brought it into a dangerous situation, Meesei did not feel it was doomed. It would take time, effort and a lot of change, but Meesei intended to strengthen the clan's foundations. "You are correct, your confession alone will not save this clan. But, it is a small part of the solution. And I do have a solution. It may take years, but this clan will see many changes to keep it away from this...spiral into instability."

Star Wars - Scum and Villainy

After four days, it does not seem that all that many have expressed interest in returning. Unfortunately, things are not looking good for this RP.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Fortunately, it seemed like Ahnasha's show of tough love had worked. He quickly became submissive, then laid down on the ground. She leaned her head back out into the hall to see Lorag stepping out to investigate. She calmly waved him back into the cell with Galsek, then moved to approach Fendros. Though she kept a reasonable distance at first, once Fendros began to revert back to Dunmer form, she relaxed completely. He was of course regretful once he was back in his right mind, but Ahnasha tried not to take much of what he said to heart. He was being influenced by the primal, emotional nature of his beast spirit; although, the words he had said did not just come from nowhere. The scars of what they had experienced were still tearing at his mind, just as they were for hers. The only difference between them was that she had more experience controlling her beast spirit.

"You scared Rhazii, but other than that, no." Ahnasha answered as she slowly sat down beside Fendros on the floor. She put her left arm around his shoulders, while holding Rhazii in her right. He was not crying as loudly as before, but was still whining and had his face pressed against his mother for comfort, muffling the sounds he made. "So...what happened? What caused it, you think?"

---

Meesei nodded to Harriet. "You are not incorrect. You murdered Jerrick, the leader of the clan, in cold blood at the influence of one of Vile's servants. You took away the father of a boy who had already lost his birth mother, and killed the husband of a dedicated leader of this clan. You did so in cold blood, without giving him the chance to fight. For this crime, death is the only punishment. Vera has requested that it be a merciful execution, and I intend to follow that suggestion. If you still care about the clan, about the people who were loyal enough to you follow you to the end, despite everything that was arrayed against you, I would ask that you give a public confession of your crime. Let them have no doubts that might cause more hardship for them later. As you said, you are defeated, so there is no longer a purpose to lies and secrecy. But your now, tell me your story. Let me hear, from your own mouth, what you did, and why you did it. I do not think you will find Hircine's redemption will be easy to gain, but perhaps you can start now, before your soul departs Tamriel."