Massive Disaster 5-3

Heat and force lifted Zedd off his feet, two hundred and eighty pounds of modified human tossed through the air as the world spun.

Just sky, mud, and bright gunfire before his back collided with something hard, and the lights in his head flickered.

Wet.

Mud. Or blood. Probably both, as he tried to blink it out of his eye. The coppery tang on his tongue meant it was probably the second one of those.

Not for the first time since he’d stepped foot on Eden Prime, Zedd felt like he’d just come out screaming, crying and covered in the blood of the womb, the feeling of being this exposed itching at the back of his neck. Without the heavy plating of the Mark XIV or even the Mark XIII, he was little more than walking meat.

Strong meat, fast meat, tough meat; but still meat that could be cooked, sliced, or filled with holes if he ever slipped up.

Zedd coughed up a mouthful of red and pushed himself back up to his feet. Fingers dug into mud thick enough to sink him, his eyes drifting skyward as he stared through the lenses in his cracked glasses. Fuck.

The damage to his glasses was nothing, nano-materials already fixing it up, but the sky… the sky was deserving of all the fucks he had in him.

For one, it was barely a sky anymore. 

Black smoke churned across the bloody bruise of the sky, the orange of burning agri-plots below it a massive wall of disaster. And hanging in it, giant and booming with the same sound that made his hair stand up, was the massive metallic cuttlefish-hand that had been hanging over Eden Prime for so long.

“Status!”

The word ripped out of his throat, raw and jagged as his eyes swept the ridge.

“Zee, are you o-!” Nina’s voice cut through his comm, but a grunt from him had her go quiet.

“I’m fine, doll.” One hand wiped at his forehead, the wetness of fresh blood making his face turn down. There wasn’t much to frown about, considering he could apparently survive being a few feet from a grenade. “Just… d-dizzy.” Can I still get a concussion? That wasn’t something he tested but then again, he never really expected to get potentially lethal overpressure to the face outside his battle-ready armor either. Everybody has a plan, I guess…

“We need to push!” Zedd shook his head, already in his motion as he pumped forward. “Ship’s only a couple clicks north!”

“North? Zee~eeeeee!” He scooped her up, one arm tossing her over his shoulder. “Z-Zee! North is ove-”

“Over by the ship, I know!” He barked back through tightly gritted teeth, arm tight around her hips. “What’s our other option right now?”

Kai and Kira behind him, Zedd kept his legs pushing as they crossed through the graveyard of a settlement; commissioner and officer doing their best to keep pace as they followed from the slaughter field.

They passed by burning prefabs, crushed rovers and bodies in the street; colonists, militia, and the grey-skinned things that probably used to be both. The air, thick with smoke, was enough to sting his eyes even from behind the aviators and blinking eyes streamed tears down his face as he shot bullet after bullet into the few Geth and the zombies that pushed their way into their path.

Tears that had nothing to do with Nina throwing one-handed punches into his spine demanding he “put her down already!”

A blue bodysuit landed hard next to him, Kira grunting as she threw a burst of biotic energy that cracked a heavy Geth platform apart. “We need to move faster!” Sweat slicked her forehead, mixing with the soot, the effort showing as obviously as the dark energy around her. “They’re only making their way here faster!”

“Put. Me. Down!”

“You are barefoot!” Zedd didn’t even listen to the complaints of his Director-General, too focused on moving through the chaos as quickly as possible. “Shut up!”

Another explosion tore apart the street in front of them, Zedd gritting through a scream as they ran straight into a Geth entrenchment; portable shields deployed and firing wild down the residential block. 

“Pincer move incoming,” Kai’s voice drifted over the comms. “From the other side of the residential blocks. Thirty seconds. We’ll be boxed.”

“Not if I can help it.” Kira’s jaw was set, blue veins in her face standing out as she held her fists out at her side. “Zedd! Give me an opening! A big one!”

Big opening. His eye twitched at the idea that came to mind as soon as she said the words. Yeah, I can do that. He could, that was for sure, but It would cost him a good bit. His thumb rubbed the silver band on his index, well aware that it had its limits. 

Forget the ring, he had his own limits. As much as the serum boosted mind and body both, fucking around with psions wasn’t something couldn’t just push through like some muscle soreness.

Alright… fuck it. “Kira! Get ready to push!”

She flared blue, dark energy gathering around her like a storm cloud as she revved her biotics ready.

Zedd took a breath, deep and full, one hand tightening his grip on Nina as the sapphire ring glowed in the other. Code Sequence: Wide-Area Kinetic.

The starting structure was always simple, and usually unnecessary. Just a codifying of what the basis of the spell function was.

Unfortunately, it was only usually unnecessary and that didn’t apply to the bigger showings.

→ emit: pressure_void(length: 25m, width: 7.5m)
→ prime: overpressure_wave(intensity: 9MPa)
→ release: forward_vector(360m/s)
→ on_hit: concussive_displacement(heavy), armor_stress++

Energy poured out from him, a weight sinking deep in his gut, as he slammed his palm out with a scream. “Breakfront!”

If biotics was an explosion, this was a distortion. 

A wall of pure kinetic force from a single thrusting limb, the psionic construct screamed through the atmosphere with no brakes. The pressure drop was a sound on its own, ears popping and air sucked clean as the Geth emplacement vanished to nothing, portable shields shattering into glitter.

Troopers were lifted bodily and thrown backward, limbs cartwheeling, and armor crumpling. The wave of zombies behind the Geth front flattened and flew, already-dead bodies pulped along with crates, cars, and so many bodies scattered in a violent, radial spray.

“Now!”

Kira was a human missile wreathed in dark energy as she slammed hard into what little that was left of the fractured formation, the landing impact a biotic shockwave that sent everything else scattering and shattering apart.

A hand clawed at a near wall, Zedd’s chest heaving as he struggled for breath; his vision full of gray spots fighting the rest of his vision. Yeah, d-drain’s real. Drain’s really real. 

“Zedd!” Nina slapped at his shoulder. “Move!”

Air forced itself into his lungs with one heavy breath and he gave her a nod she couldn’t see and kicked back into motion. “Moving.”

It took barely a minute before they rounded the final corner, Zedd’s personal Grande staring at him from across a large field.

Unfortunately, in the middle of that same field was another hellscape, a hellscape that was home to a dig site and much worse.

“Fuck.” Kira’s eyes went wide at the sight of Alliance Marines thrown all over; discarded toy soldiers with their armor scorched, and bodies riddled with shard holes. 

Almost all of them unmoving.

And most of those few that were, weren’t standing.

“-hell is that fucker doing?”

Zedd blinked as Kira spoke again, her words pulling him out of his head as he followed her line of sight and found himself frowning. There it is. In the center of the pit, rising from the earth like a monolith of forgotten gods, was the beacon that had ruined his day from the start.

He still didn’t give a shit about these Protheans, not really bothered by another set of ancient aliens when the Asari were old enough for him already, but he couldn’t deny… those guys could build some shit. 

Like the shit they built here; the thing pulsed in place, the green light coming off it moving in a way that made the thing look like it was pulling you in.

At least, it was definitely pulling someone in.

Zedd blinked as he realized Nina was right. What is that fucker doing?

Moving towards that pulsing beacon and swaying on his feet, was a figure in blue armor, the N7 on the chestplate standing out to Zedd before anything else. Blood slicked the marine’s side, the man clearly wounded but still pushing forward in a stagger of a run on a direct path toward the relic. 

Toward the beacon.

One hand stretched out and reaching for it like it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

Kira saw the man nearly a full second after Zedd but, unlike him, she wasn’t silent about it.

“MOTHERFUCKER!” Her veins might have been blue, but the anger in her face made them look closer to black from how hard they were bulging in her forehead. “GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!”

She raised her hand, biotics flaring, ready to throw him back, to stop the contact.

Too late.

The N7 didn’t hear her. Either that, or he didn’t care. Whatever his reason, he didn’t look back as he took the final lurch of a step and his fingers brushed the glowing metal.

The world went white.

The beacon erupted, a release of green energy torrenting upwards and lifting the Marine off his feet. He hung in the air, suspended in the beam, body convulsing as if he were being electrocuted by the universe itself.

His mouth opened in a silent scream, but Zedd didn’t see anymore as his lenses dimmed, shielding his eyes from the over-bright light. A half-second later, Kira slammed a biotic barrier down in front of them, the blue field shimmering against the green onslaught.

By the time the lenses of his aviators shifted back to something close to normal, the light had already died to nothing and the Marine slammed back to the ground, smoke rising from the seams of his armor.

Zedd lowered his arm.

“Well.” He clicked his tongue. “Shit.”