Massive Disaster 5-2 (Patreon)

Loud.

Not just loud like a concert. 

Or a ship launch or a bad day so many years ago back at the Hub.

No.

More a loud like the universe had decided to scream directly into his ear canal and keep it going until his brain threatened to leak out of his nose. The sound came with another blast of red, one that was aimed his w-

Searing light tore through the council building, force and fury from a good three kilometers away clipping the structure with a wide-angle beam of death.The instant the glass around him shattered, he was already in the air.

Before the force could throw him, his feet kicked off the crumbling ground with enough force to break it apart some more. His body spun in mid-air, ring finger glowing bright and blue as he aimed a palm at the screaming woman and officer falling with him.→ cast_area: radius(4m)

→ modify: local_gravity(0.18g) duration(1.4s)

→ apply: inertia_shear(phase_diffusion: 0.62)

→ landing_event: impulse_dampening(85%), kinetic_spread(omni)

“GRAVLACE!”Three stories passed by almost too quick to count as Zedd’s back hit the dirt—slick as grease and smelling like iron—and he went skidding hard, the world spinning into a mess of red mud and torn-up turf. “Fu-!” His boots, custom-treaded and reinforced, carved deep furrows into the Eden Prime soil as he scrambled back to his feet, gloved fingers digging into the muck.A full three seconds later, head pounding, and a cut threatening to open right over his right eye, the twenty-two year old forced himself up. “-uuuuck! Sh-shut up!”His head snapped to the right, glasses still in place, as he barked at the two people he’d risked himself to save, above all others. “You’re fine, shut up!” Morrison and the officer stared at him wide-eyed, the scream on their lips fading along with wisps of blue energy as they finally touched down on the ground beside him.“-e’re a-alive?”Zedd turned his back on the Councillor and looked over to his left where Kai, Kira and Nina stood, words on his lips almost dying to nothing as the third of them reached down and tore off everything below the ankles of her mud-splattered pantsuit. “...everybody good?”Nina pulled a face as she kicked off her one remaining heel and sent her jacket flying with it, expensive fabric too stained to be recoverable in the first place. “Zee…” She bit back a sigh before looking to the man standing just beside her. “Kai, do you…” 

The ninja stepped forward with a black container in hand, Nina taking the thing off him with a nod. The second her palm met it, the slim rectangle folded out, extending and expanding into a full-length weapon in just four mechanical sweeps. Blue-trimmed and black-bodied, the rifle finally locked into place with a final soft thump, the forward grip extending out the same instant the internal capacitors came to life.Nina gripped the thing tight as it hummed in her grip, his girlfriend shooting Zedd a grin that he couldn’t help but give back. “Thank you for the Christmas present, hun.”“Wasn’t the only one.”Honestly, looking at her bare arms as she gripped the rifle, he wasn’t sure which was more obvious. Actually… Judging by the way her biceps were bulging right now… yeah, it’s hard to tell.

Shaking his head, Zedd glanced down at himself, already feeling his mod drop. These Eden Prime people got me fuckin’ naked out here. His usual blue jacket—lightweight tactical weave, kinesis-treated mesh lining — was good for what it was, but it was not was a fucking VEST. 

And the only reason he didn’t have his Mk XIV on right now was the simple fact that Eden Prime’s leadership requested he leave his “custom-fitted weapons of war” off their colony. Not like my fucking ship can’t do way more but… Zedd bit back a growl, none of that mattering now. This just meant that for all intents and purposes, he was wearing tissue paper against the wall of war in the near distance tearing up said precious colony.“Incoming!”Oh come the f- “Kai! Gun me!”The white-bodied hand-cannon was already spinning end-over-end before the last syllable left his lips. “Catch.”

Zedd’s hand snapped up as the word hit him a quarter-second before the gun did, fingers closing around a heavy, blocky grip as he snatched the Hammerdown out of the air.The pistol was both heavy and familiar; both of those because he built the thing custom to feel like a brick of hate. “Kira’s?” The vents were already glowing blue, capacitors ready to punch a hole through anything that caught a full charge. “I brought my shottie!” The call came back, his blue-veined beau half-cackling as she unholstered said weapon from her back holster. “We’re good?”“Are we?” Zedd shot an annoyed look Kai’s way. “Are we good, Kai?”“You told me to leave yours on the ship, sir,” Kai’s voice was a ghost, barely audible over the screaming wind. “Now do what you do best and improvise.”

“Impro—I’M USING A GIRL GUN, KAI!” Said girl gun charged in his grip as he gripped it tight, the thing sounding like it was in heat with a hungry snarl of a hum that vibrated all the way up his elbow. Fine. It was no Mk XIV but he knew every inch of this thing like he knew every inch of its owner, and just like Kira, it was loud, angry, and it hit like a motherfucker. 

The air pressure dropped, the hair on Zedd’s arms standing up from static charge as the red clouds birthed nightmares worthy of screams.

Literally.

The councillor screamed as a good dozen distinct thuds shook the red mud of Eden Prime’s one pristine Council Plaza, geysers of wet soil spraying over his shoes. One hand wiped the grit from his aviators, the lenses already filtering the chaos as the ugly angular flashlight heads showed themselves. 

“Geth!” 

Thank you, sweetheart. We couldn’t tell!

The Troublemaker in Nina’s hands coughed kinetic pulses of cobalt blue hate as her compact rifle bucked against her shoulder, the dense weave of reinforced muscle under her skin absorbing the recoil like it was nothing. 

Three rounds sparked blue and one Geth Trooper found itself without a head as its torso became little more than scrap. 

Zedd shook his head. “Showoff.” He took off, Hammerdown already raised as the Geth to his far right did the same with its own weapon; the AI platform aiming at the biggest moving target. The heavy pistol kicked against his wrist, but didn’t move it; a sapphire slug the size of his thumb tearing out of the barrel through the air. 

The Geth platform erupted, a hole blown through its chest chassis big enough to put a fist through an instant before the machine crumpled to the mud.

Two. “Right flank!” Kira’s bark came with a grunt as the air around the Asari-modded human warped, light curving around her as she blinked.Half-annoyed and half-impressed, Zedd fired off another flash-forged MAG bullet as Kira slid sideways through the air, the biotic simply refusing to exist in the place the Geth Rockets were aiming at. Blue aura flaring, she thrust a hand forward.

The rockets stopped dead in the air, frozen like a bad glitch as the biotic specialist on their squad grinned wide and eager. “Return to sender!” Her wrist flicked back. The rockets spun the opposite way.If scrap metal could scream, it was drowned out by the resounding BOOM as Kira took down the last six Geth altogether.

“Clear?” Nina stepped over a twitching Geth arm, her stained and torn white undershirt fluttering in the wind and doing a terrible job at hiding her bra. 

“No.” Zedd blinked over at the ninja who hadn’t fired a single shot as Kai stood perfectly still by the treeline, his Nightletter held in a low grip. “Not clear.”

Even with his blood nearly as blue as Kira’s with all the Super Soldier Serum singing in his veins, he was still only so superhuman. Need to work on that. And after so many explosions back to back, the ringing in his ears had him fighting to make out what Kai was talking about. Blinking past the haze and smoke surrounding them, he glanced over at his primary bodyguard again. “Wha-”The fog chose that moment to scream.

“MOTHERFUCK!”

Not the synthesized shk-shk-shk of the Geth. This was the wet organic sound of a throat fucked with razors and told to sing. “Full auto!” The Troublemaker snapped to Nina’s shoulder as she ran forward and past Zedd, the kinetic pulse weapon singing out as she let the thing fly free; blue tracers stitching a line into the smoke.

The same instant, shapes lurched out of the haze; organic, humanoid, bipedal.But wrong.“MOTHERFUCK!”For the second time in five seconds, Zedd barked out a curse, eyes going wide behind his glasses at the sight of them. Grey skin stared back at him, dead flesh pulled too tight over wire-frame muscles, with glowing blue sockets and mouths hanging open in a permanent, silent scream.

Nina’s eyes went wide as she froze, civilian mind hitching up for a split second.Just one.That was all they needed as the lead creature screeched and lunged her way, sharp claws already out and swiping. No! 

Ninety miles an hour was nothing small. 

For something human-sized, it was something that pretty much deleted distance. One step dug a trench in the mud. The second sent him forward in more than a blur. The third launched him into a shoulder check that hit the grey thing with the force of a speeding groundcar.

The impact sounded off with a gross crunch, not the solid meat-thud that Zedd was used to when it came to hitting a person. Either way, the thing folded as bones and whatever else snapped, the creature flying backward into its pack.Zombies.  He didn’t stop, a blur of motion missiling into the front line of the horde. A fist met the face of the next one, no resistance agains his bare fist as the head simply ceased to be a solid object. The rest rushed him, shrieking loud enough to ripple the air as they surged. 

Too fast for dead things.Not fast enough for him.

“Keep them off the civvies!” He launched himself forward again, a roar leaving his lips as he spun past a slash to his gut. Momentum was life and a roundhouse kick was a second death to the monster that lunged at him as four tons of force transferred into a ribcage meant to hold a fraction of that.Techno-zombies. “I hate this planet,” Zedd spat a mouthful of bloody mud out, raising the Hammerdown again. “I hate the stupid farming, I hate the fucking air, and I specifically hate the zombie-cyborgs.”

“Behind you!” Kira’s Jawbreaker roared as she pounded the rack she specially requested for an ammo-less shotgun. Zedd felt the heat of the scattergun’s kinetic blast part his hair as a zombie trying to tackle him disintegrated into constituent parts. 

“Watch the hair, Ki!” "On it!" Kira was already in the air, violet light flaring around her body like a second skin as she hit the apex of her leap. She threw a hand forward. "Fastball!"

A biotic sphere the size of a softball hurled down in the center of the horde, yanking three of the zomb-borgs off their feet and into a collision course with each other. The second she hit the ground again, Kira leveled her pulse scattergun their way.

The Jawbreaker roared again, the dead tech-things shredded into half-dry pulp.

Zedd was still moving as Nina flanked him, the Hammerdown barking in his grip, while the Troublemaker machined off in hers. 

A second wave of the grey things crawled their way, neither of them flinching.

Bang. To the head.

Bang. Another headshot.

Bang. That one mostly missed, but at least he knew these things could survive a hole through the neck now. Bang. 

At his side, Nina moved faster than adrenaline should allow, fighting like a demon. She spun with the stock of her rifle, slamming the butt of the Troublemaker hard into the jaw of a monster that got too close. Momentum was her friend as she turned and drove a heavy knee into the chest of another. “Clear!”The shout came loud, but still nearly drowned out by the sound of her putting a final round into a twitching torso.Kai was… wait, where the fuck is Kai? As soon as Zedd had the thought, he caught sight of the former N7 halfway across the battlefield, a flash of obsidian with a sword and a near-silent pistol. A phantom blur appeared behind a zombie, the Nightletter letting out a single cough of a bullet and the thing dropped to the ground before it realized it was dead a second time.

“Morrison!” He yelled over his shoulder at a woman he hoped was close enough to hear, firing a blind shot that took a zomborg’s arm off at the shoulder. “Get your people back! Fall back t-”

“GRENADE!”

The scream was loud, coming from a terrified, shaking voice behind him. Zedd’s head snapped over as he spun to see the militia officer he’d saved with Morrison — the man’s mouth open and his eyes too wide — with a grenade in his grip.Zedd’e eyes widened to match the man’s. “NO!”Scream or not, the man had already pulled the pin on a frag as a shockwave ripped through the ground meters away, the force rattling teeth. 

The grenade slipped and hit the concrete lip of a barrier, bouncing across the field.

Directly between Nina — no — where she took cover behind a rock.

Four meters away, maybe five, with a fuse that had maybe two seconds left. An Alliance standard high-explosive, older model, but enough to turn a human into salsa. 

Enough to turn Nina, even with mods, into a memory.

“NO!”

Reason didn't get a vote as the world blurred to streaks of red and grey.A split second later, his body hit Nina’s like a linebacker — “Zedd, wha-!” — scooping her up and sending her flying far to his right and into the mud. She flew clear. 

He didn't.

Zedd tried to twist, tried to cast a spell, tried to bring the kinetic lining of his useless, lightweight jacket between him and the angry red beep.

He didn’t get a chance as the world turned white.