I laughed as I stabbed a Blue Suns turian with my bayonet over and over.
"Not combat oriented!" I barked out, "Legwork already done!"
"Who could have predicted that the slaver scumbag running this prison would betray us?" Garrus chuckled as he reloaded his rifle.
"Just keep yucking it up." Shepard grumbled, "You two should start a traveling comedy show. You're so funny."
Warden Kuril made a big mistake when he tried to capture Lord Death of Murder Mountain. We'd ripped and teared our way through this place almost as fast as a Doom Slayer through a hell horde despite the limit of only bringing three people aboard the station. I had yet to drop shields as I constantly pressed forward glowing orange from my holographic tech armor. Shepard and Garrus walked behind me in the garden of my turbulence.
"Let's just get Jack out of cryo and get off this damn station." Shepard gruffed while she worked the console to free Jack.
"Gonna release all the prisoners at once." Garrus commented as she hacked her way through the security.
"Good." I grinned under my helmet.
I'll admit the slow and elaborate release of Jack into the open was pretty neat, and I could feel Rick Sanchez making fun of me for enjoying it. Too bad I now lacked the finger required to hold up the peace between worlds sign for him.
The ultimate human biotic made her entrance in a fury of flashing blue mass effect bending power as she tore down a trio of YMIR mechs unarmed.
"A thousand credits says she never spikes this high again." I threw out there.
"Fool's bet." Garrus declined, "She is riding high on adrenaline and panic after getting taken off ice. Still damn impressive even if she is only half as powerful in normal circumstances."
"We have to follow her." Shepard ordered the squad as she headed for the door, "We can't afford her killing herself by biting off more than she can chew."
"Looks like she can chew a lot." I commented as we followed in the wake of her destruction.
The station VI kept us updated on the deaths of thousands of prisoners as sections of the space prison tore open and depressurized. Warden Kuril tried to get some semblance of order going on the intercom, but he was out of his mind thinking he could put down a prison riot and our mission at once. Hell, we could have fought our way out of here without the riot.
Then I saw the riot.
The game did not prepare me for the wonderland of hundreds of psychotic criminals trying to overpower the Blue Suns guards. The YMIR mech at the end of the room was turning them into hamburger meat and they still kept coming forward, picking up the guns dropped by their dead comrades like a line of Russians in WW2.
The Commander and I took pot shots at the mech with our disruptor mutated sniper rifles while Garrus gunned down anyone stupid enough to come at us. The big mech was so busy laying machine gun fire down on the rapidly decreasing inmate population it never got the chance to fight back against us.
Clearing this area was simultaneously easier and far nastier than it had been in the game. We didn't have near as intense a fight, but I had to thank God for the improvements to footwear traction made in the hundred and sixty years between my death and rebirth. The blood in the room was up to my ankles, and if I had to navigate this space tomb in my sandals I'd end up taking a dip in the drink. My human upbringing was repulsed by the gore, but my lizard brain just made me hungry. That was a lot of red meat we were trekking through.
My salivating tongue didn't stop me from nabbing a quick 1,500 credits from a dead merc with an unlocked chit while Shepard cracked a wall safe for even more.
We opened the door leaving the slaughter house behind only to jump right into a charnel house as Warden Kuril himself gunned down some convicts with a precision hosing of high velocity slugs from his M-76 Revenant. One handed.
The man had obviously paid for all the bells and whistles as the gun vastly outperformed the one Shepard would pick up on the collector ship, and the less said about the hot garbage she would find in ME3 the better. Few guns could make me feel envious while I carry my custom M-300 Claymore. Kuril's gun was one of them. I'd soon be fixing that.
Unfortunately for us. The shield towers in the room didn't put up an impenetrable barrier between him and us for us to take down while dealing with his men before the boss fight. Instead they operated as massive shield pylons with an IFF that only supplied over-shields to the mercs. Kuril supported his men with suppressing fire that even I couldn't just face tank. The towers also took more punishment than they did in the game. No quick overload to get rid of them.
For the first time in my resurrected life I felt real danger. Kuril kept his boys from fighting like complete amateurs and his own contribution kept our heads down almost as effectively as the combined work of his twenty man squad. It felt glorious.
I chocked that up to lizard brain.
We swiftly figured out that the towers shielded themselves and each other, so we dropped three overloads in rapid succession on one and blasted it with everything we had before dropping back into cover. We destroyed the first one, but Kuril started holding back his own fire until he saw us going for it again. Because of this it ended up taking us way longer to drop the last towers, but eventually we did, and the Blue Suns went from damn near invulnerable to very vulnerable. It heralded the turning point of the battle and eventually only the warden himself remained, his heavy personal shields and armor keeping him in the fight.
I charged the man as he failed to bring me down with a stream of fire from his gun, slamming the turian into the wall and striking him with a windmill of lefts and rights to keep him there. The wily bastard ignited an omni-blade on his right hand, something that had fallen out of use prior to the swarms of husks in ME3, and tried to sink it into me. Even in the grips of the blood rage I saw it coming and caught his wrist in the steel vice of my grip, forcing the razor sharp glowing hot blade against the metal wall of the station. From there it was just headbutts and punches till his shields broke as the turian struggled feebly against my massive strength.
As soon as his shields broke I lit up my own omni-blade and showed him exactly why you always wear a helmet in combat. All that impressive armor he wore to keep himself safe, and he left his head exposed. Better luck in your next life, chump.
I didn't have the time to hack the guy's likely loaded credit chit as the Purgatory Space Station exploded around us, so I grabbed his expensive gun and led the charge back to our ship where we found Jack having a freak out about the Cerberus logo on it. Shepard shot a batarian charging the distracted woman who apparently didn't know enough about combat to turn on his shield generator. Kuril had my respect for leading these morons as effectively as he did.
"What the hell do you want?" the near topless tattooed woman growled.
"You're in a bad situation. We're here to get you out of it." Shepard answered.
"Shit, you sound like a pussy." Jack countered.
I stopped them right there by walking forward.
"I got this, Space Momma." I renegade interrupted, "I speak prison bitch."
"The fuck you just say!" Jack shouted while flaring her eyes at me. Pretty hot.
"I like you. I want you. I am going to have you. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The choice is yours, but the answer is yes." I quoted the scariest mother fucker ever to grace the Kentucky prison system.
"Fuck you!" Jack answered while she swung a glowing blue punch that took a solid chink of my shields down.
Too bad for her she was in arm's reach and I had her up and over my shoulder faster than she could react, a firm grasp on that delicious booty.
"Let's go!" I shouted as she put up token resistance, the power dynamic established, "Don't worry, we aren't a Cerberus team." I explained to the psychotic biotic, "They just crew our ship and pay us to fight humanity's war against the collectors. They'll be paying you too, but if you don't want that dirty Cerberus money your new Lizard Daddy is happy to take it for you."
As we pulled into the air lock of the Normandy, Jack looked at the Commander and said something that would make me smile even years later.
"You gonna watch while your pet Krogan rails me, or are you getting in on this too?"
"Grunt, isn't going to be railing you." Shepard denied while the airlock opened to let us back onto the ship, "Non-consensual sexual activity will not be tolerated on my ship."
"Whatever girl scout," Jack flippantly insulted one of the most badass women in space while I carried her to the elevator, "I'm off to get fucked like a real woman."
I am pretty sure I heard Joker snap a vertebrae doing a spit take.
Double release this weekend. This is actually the first weekend since I started this story that I didn't have any of my in-laws staying with me. We can expect to see two or three chapters a week from here on.
As always I won't be writing explicit sex scenes unless something transformative is occuring during the scene. Since this isn't a Chinese Fantasy novel, no one is getting super powers by screwing.
Despite not writing smut, I never shy away from writing sexually active characters. If you want gynophobic protagonists you can always turn on some anime. I think that is still a thing. I haven't watched any anime in years. Let me know if that is still a thing or if the people of Japan have ascended to Chad status while I wasn't looking.