[Omega] The Losing Bet

Fucking hell. The only way this could have gone worse so far was if a Reaper had dropped down out of the sky in a screaming ball of fire, but given that the murderous synthetics were presently working on repairing damage from the war without explanation, Cerastes was spared that detriment. Barely.

He had a failsafe. He always did. As Shirin took her ill-fated shot, the older drell knelt down and aimed his left hand directly at the fallen Anbel, his right clutching the same pistol he'd shot moments before. Teeth grit, breath coming in hard, he activated his omnitool and opened the bypass program he'd created this morning.

Five seconds.

The sound of the Blue Suns pounding down the street rang heavily in his ears. He watched as Anbel's own omnitool flickered on unwillingly in response to his.

Four.

Eyes twitched to the side as Shirin leapt off the balcony; he'd have to follow her, which meant his knee would be out for the next few days.

Three.

The omnitool shifted and re-oriented, the percent of completion rising.

Two.

He pulled the trigger.

One.

After what felt like a millenia, it was done. Cerastes whipped around, not bothering to see whether or not he had struck Anbel, and leapt off of the balcony after Shirin. He stumbled as he landed; painkillers might have spared him the blinding agony he would have felt otherwise, but they did little to repair years of damage.

Whether or not the omnitool gleaned any important data from Anbel's would remain a mystery until the drell found a safe place to investigate, but at this rate, it was better than nothing. Stumbling still, Cerastes chased after Shirin and towards what he hoped would be a successful escape.

The world thundered as Rom Anbel tried to get on his feet. The migraine was instantaneous. His breath was ragged. His breathing apparatus choked and squealed under the pressure. His body ached. Aurora's flashed before his eyes as he pushed himself off the ground. There was the sound of weapon fire in the distance, but his barrier was crackling with the excess energy he'd dumped into it to end his jump. He'd dropped his cane. He couldn't worry about it, he had to move, had to run.

Each step was a stagger, and he stumbled forwards onto his hands. Honored Tribal Ancestors, why had he thought this was a good idea? The people around him buzzed and blocked his path, trying to get out of the way of the gunfire. He shoved himself past them as best he could. He'd only made it a few feet when he heard a voice from behind him.

"Hey pal! You fell on me!" It was a turian voice, and angry.

"A *ksssssssssss* thousand *kssssssvvvtkkk* pardons," Anbel said, not turning around. "Can't *kssssssttttKVRRRRR* stay *ksssssst* sorry *kssssst* gunfire-"

A glove-less claw gripped the collar of his suit. It held the heavy plating and caressed with the tips of its bladed fingers the thick rubber skin of the suit.

"Rom Anbel?" The turian asked.

Oh, shit.

Time to go, time to go, time to go. Shirin wasn't particularly amazing in a fight (with guns or otherwise), but she had two advantages over most of her competition. One, she usually planned well (although hubris occasionally got the better of her contingency-making ability, as it had today), and two, when the chips were down, she could move.

Simply roof-running all the way to the next district wouldn't work, though; she was right out in the open and a reasonably good marksman (which the Blue Suns had in considerable numbers) could simply shoot her down from the window. As such, the drell reached the edge of the next building, dropped down to an awning, and bounced off it to the street, landing next to a confused elcor.

"Confused: Wha--"

Today's events would forever be a mystery to that elcor, as Shirin took off running. The Suns displayed unusually good trigger discipline and didn't fire wildly from the arcology, and so within minutes she was halfway to Juni and well out of finding range.

She stopped at last to catch her breath next to a dimly lit warehouse, leaning against the wall for a moment, and found just enough oxygen to curse a streak that would've peeled paint off a starship's hull. When the most you could take from a venture like this was "well, at least I survived", then that venture was officially a catastrophe.

"Elegance" was the furthest word that came to mind when describing Shirin and Cerastes' escape.

While Shirin raced blindly above rooftops and essentially parkour'd her way through the arcology, Cerastes followed below on the streets, his black-clad form flickering in and out of sight with every charge of his suit. The painkillers flooding his system kept him moving; muscles strained beneath scales, pushing far beyond their capacity to propel him through one alley after another.

By the time they'd cleared the Suns' territory, Cerastes' breath was coming in fast and hard, his lungs struggling to keep up with the rest of his body. He weaved through a series of dumpsters and ducked around a corner in pursuit of Shirin, stopping only when she ducked into an abandoned warehouse that looked as though it might collapse at any instant.

As the adrenaline pumping in his system gradually dwindled, Cerastes came to a halt a few feet away from the younger drell and braced his hands above his knees, his lower back leaned against the wall to support his weight. The two remained in stasis for several minutes, simply recovering.

Eventually, Cerastes braced himself more fully against the warehouse and reached up to release his helmet from the rest of his suit. The helm clattered to the ground unceremoniously. Red eyes gleamed in the dark, half-lidded with exhaustion. Without bothering to look towards the other drell (a mistake, that), he raised his right arm and activated his omnitool so that he could investigate just how much data he'd gotten in the emergency download.

Now it was Cerastes' turn to bemoan a failure to take certain possibilities into account.

In this case, it was the possibility that Shirin would take the foiling of her assassination attempt incredibly personally, and that a pistol-whip would come surging towards his head with what Malory used to call 'great random'.

Numbers flashed in the encroaching shadows of the warehouse. Cerastes squinted as his eyes rebelled against the light, sensitive as they were. His lips parted in astonishment for approximately half a second before, at complete fucking random, a pistol struck forth from the darkness and promptly bitch-whipped him right across the face.

It was not a good moment. Hell, as far as moments went, this one was probably rated shortly above the time five fellow brokers ganged up on him and beat the royal shit out of him for three hours. Cerastes' head snapped to the side from the impact, blood erupting from between scales.

There was a brief moment of silence. The drell turned his cheek back towards Shirin, teeth grit furiously and stained by his own blood.

"That hurt."

Retaliation came quickly then. With the pain killers still active in his system (he estimated they had at least an hour and a half left), Cerastes whirled on Shirin and lashed out in an attempt to grab the wrist holding the gun, the other balling into a fist to strike at her jaw in turn.

When you stole things professionally, you quickly learned cost-benefit analysis, and one aspect of that was knowing a shell game when you saw it.

This was one of those times. If she kept the Paladin safe, she'd probably get decked, but if she focused on deflecting the palm strike, he'd get the gun. A simple decision. Shirin turned in place and went with the momentum of the strike, in the interest of minimizing its impact, and made sure to keep the pistol far away from the other drell's grasping hands. She couldn't risk him getting ahold of the barrel - small-joint manipulation was harder on their species than on most others, but torque a finger hard enough and you'll get results.

The strike, of course, hurt. She wasn't jacked up on painkillers and he had a slight size advantage. But it wasn't crippling, and it definitely wasn't a knockout blow. Excellent. Now to disengage and put distance between them - after all, she was the armed one.

Either he faked the limp (which would be reasonable, considering he kept up with her all the way here) or the leg was bad. Excellent. Use it. She twisted to one side, dragging Cerastes with her so he had to balance on his ostensibly-bad leg, and threw a knee lift right at his ribcage.

It was a blur of motion.

Aside from the obvious social monuments, drell were known for two things: agility and speed. As such, Shirin and Cerastes tangled in blinding combat in the dark, scales flashing and limbs flying as they engaged. He'd almost secured a hold on her Paladin when the younger drell twisted deftly, dragging him with her.

Even through the pain killers, he felt it. Fuck, did he feel it. A sudden pressure erupted in his kneecap, eliciting a strangled, deep-throated snarl from the broker as he struggled to follow through with the pull. For fuck's sake - he thought his leg would be done for a few days before; it was starting to look more like weeks at this point.

He scarcely had enough consciousness about him to tug back when he saw her elbow racing towards his midsection. A step backwards managed to avoid most of the blow, although she did scrape his ribs in the process; in the midst of the motion, he pulled back sharply with his arm, attempting to tug her against his torso and into a chokehold.

Drell martial arts focused heavily on a few things. One was clinch striking (knees, elbows, etc), but more importantly, the other was momentum-based techniques. Drell were thickly muscled as a species and possessed considerable proportionate strength, as well as low centers of gravity--not quite krogan-caliber, but still respectable. For this reason it was difficult to forcibly maneuver someone in a way they didn't want to be maneuvered, much more so than simply utilizing their momentum and natural range of movement.

This was how Cerastes had successfully parried Shirin's strike, leaving her throat cinched into a rear naked choke. It was also (fortunately for her, since the blood flow to her brain was steadily being cut off) how she moved to counter.

With trapped blood pounding in her ears, the drell moved quickly - a necessity, since blood chokes could work their magic in mere seconds. Striking sideways with her heel at one of Cerastes' ankles, she carried through with the motion and dropped her weight, then heaved forward with one shoulder. It was a simple technique, one that used the range of movement in the arm joints. There was really only one way Cerastes could go, unless he was able to keep himself stabilized, and that was up and over.

And then to the ground, at which point there would be some serious pain awaiting.

A crucial issue that one should never forget in combat is the creativity of the opponent. As Cerastes reared back, his forearm pressed roughly against Shirin's frill, he lost himself in the moment and made that exact mistake.

The element of surprise worked well in Shirin's favor. He spat in pain as she kicked his ankle, his form bending over to compensate for the blow. It was then that she utilized his weight against him.

Fortunately for Shirin, the move did partially pull through. Unfortunately, Cerastes caught on quickly - you had to, in his line of work - and grappled with her as she attempted to tug him over her shoulders. The result was a tangled mess of drell clawing at each other on the ground; he'd twisted his body mid-attack in such a way that the two of them had lost balance and slammed on their sides, at which point the fight became a free for all.

He wasn't even sure what he was hitting. All he knew was that Shirin was struggling to get on top of him, likely so that she'd have a better view of his face when she (theoretically) pressed her pistol between his eyes.

After all the goddamned work he'd put into this, he wasn't about to let that happen. To any bystander, the engagement on the ground likely resembled a pair of moxies scrapping for territory; it was definitely one of the less-graceful fights that had taken place on Omega.

It was like one of those dust clouds of violence in cartoons. The world was a darkened tangle of limbs, teeth, and knuckles.

Shooting point-blank was definitely an option, but it was risky; Shirin had seen more than one incident in which someone on the ground had discharged their weapon into their thigh, or something equally embarrassing, in the middle of a scrap. As such, she settled for throwing a number of elbows, punctuated by the occasional strike with the Paladin's hilt, as she jockeyed for position and tried to hold Cerastes down.

"It was one simple task," she snarled, drawing back and kneeing Cerastes somewhere - probably his thigh, but there was always the chance of striking gold, so to speak. "Give me the volus, let me kill him, and then you get his assets." And again. "And somehow--" And again. "--you just had--" And again. "--to find a way--" And again. "--to completely fuck this up, didn't you?!"

One more time, for good measure. Apparently, even if fighting prowess wasn't hereditary, viciousness was.

Somehow, she got on top.

All jokes aside, to say that Cerastes was disappointed by this development would be a grave understatement. He'd put considerable effort into trying to roll her over, but the other drell was younger and much more agile than he. Still, even as her weight settled on him, he didn't give up: the broker punched roughly at her shoulders, throwing her back temporarily before her knee collided mercilessly into his balls.

Never before had any man in any galaxy across all time been more glad for having worn a cup. Cerastes' eyes actually widened in mild horror as she continued going after him, her knee occasionally missing and striking him in the thigh instead. Had he not thought ahead, he would have been vomitting at this point - thank the god he didn't believe in that he'd come prepared.

"The fuck," he rasped, jolted with every strike, "do you think was going to--" A sudden exhale. Wow, that one hurt. "-- happen if I let you go ALONE?! You'd lose EVERYTHING!"

Better to take advantage while she was distracted. His hands scrambled over her armor, searching wildly for any clasps that could release a portion of the hardsuit. In hand-to-hand combat, Shirin had a definite advantage otherwise: while she was completely protected from head to toe, Cerastes' stealthsuit leant itself well to soft-spots. Eventually, he managed to find an apparatus at the back of her neck, which he promptly slammed his palm against in hopes that it would release her helm. At least then he could punch her eyes out. The outcome of the attack was he essentially headbutted her into his chest, resulting in an uncomfortable expulsion of air from his lungs.

As soon as he took in another gasp, he shot his knee up in turn and attempted to strike her between the legs. Turnabout was fair play, after all.

"What the fuck, 'lost everything'? You saw exactly what was--"

Shirin paused as they scuffled again, striking blindly (but not wildly).

"--going to happen, I would've shot him and left, and everything would--"

At this point, Cerastes struck creatively; he managed to hit the release on her helmet while distracting her with the knee. She was wearing a hardsuit, thankfully, so it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, but that would probably leave a few bruises. Worse, the helmet fell free, and that left quite a bit more exposed than she was comfortable with.

"--MOTHERFUCKER--"

In a true display of Nemean parentage, Shirin caught the falling helmet with her free hand and brought it down at Cerastes' face in a full-on overhand strike.

"You don't--" there was a hiss of air as her helmet released, "--have the SKILLS--" the metal dropped on his chest, "-- to have possibly gotten the data--" he reached up, grabbed at her frill and pulled, "before his wipe kicked i--"

BLAM.

She'd moved so fast he'd hardly had time to process what she was doing. Cerastes' head slammed back against the ground with a brutal CRACK as her helmet rammed into the front of his skull, resulting in a double-pronged attack that left him reeling. For a few precious moments, the drell twitched on the ground helplessly, his vision rendered useless in the aftermath of the blow. Red was the first color to creep back into the world; he was bleeding. Next came a flash of green - was he still on Omega? -- and then the agonizing realization that he was in a very, very bad position.

He still had a hold of her frill, but his grasp was more desperate than determined at this point, as though he was holding on for dear life. Finally, with one last muster of strength, he snarled like a wild animal and heaved against her with all of his might to try and roll her onto her back, so that maybe, just maybe, he could pin her and regain some of his composure.

That, at least, had stunned him.

"Are you retarded?!" Shirin half-screamed, giving serious consideration to hitting him again. "There wasn't any data! It was all over the way he acted! He said it wasn't on him because he was trying to save his ass - it didn't exist! How the fuck did you survive this long without choking on your own--"

She had, perhaps, been slightly over-focused in educating Cerastes on the error of his ways, because the helmet went rolling a second later as he flipped her in place. Shirin landed hard on her right shoulder with the other drell precariously on top - it wasn't exactly an unassailable advantage, but she was dazed enough from landing that countering conventionally wasn't much of an option.

The Paladin clicked between them. There was no way of knowing if the barrel was pointed in the right direction - that'd required looking down, and she wasn't glancing away long enough to give him an opening - so this one would mostly boil down to nerve.

Lady Luck, for the first time in decades, favored Cerastes.

Still half-blinded from the devastating blow she'd delivered to his fucking face, Cerastes half-heartedly managed to get the other drell down and onto her back. His right hand wrapped around her wrist, holding it limply while his forearm settled on the ground to the left of her shoulder; his weight followed suit, distributed between that arm and his right knee between her legs (the left was, at this point, a complete loss - it would be a shock if he didn't need to have reconstructive surgery again after this, should he survive). The broker panted in exhaustion, his bloodied forehead coming down to rest on the ground to the left of Shirin's head.

Fuck. He could barely keep himself up. That last push had taken almost everything out of him; he wasn't as young as she was, he needed time --

Click.

Tiredly, he lifted his head and stared her down. Seconds crawled by, heartbeats ravaging in his chest. This could be it. He could die like a rat in the heart of Omega, with no livelihood to speak of... or he could barter with her.

"He lied."

Her father would not have glanced down. In fact, he wouldn't have been in this position in the first place; the minute he'd managed to get a solid mount position, he would've tossed the pistol away and beaten Cerastes to death with his bare hands. And he would've done it without saying a word.

Shirin glanced down, discovered that the gun was wedged to one side and wouldn't have even winged the other drell, and briefly reflected on how much of a genetic failure she'd turned out to be.

She was exhausted - running across the district, followed by a frantic struggle with an old broken-down man who really had no right to be as tenacious as he'd turned out to be, had taken a lot out of her, and her scales would definitely be sporting an extensive bruise pattern in the morning. Cerastes looked like he'd had about enough, but the longer you fought, the more of a chance there was to end up getting killed by some whim of random chance.

Plus, if he was talking, he might be interested in ending this without having to go any further.

"Of course he lied," she hissed, easing the gun out from between them. "That's what I've been saying. He lied about the information because it didn't exist. We're on the same page here."

He wasn't ready to roll over. Not yet. Shirin was a dirty fighter - the numerous kicks to his genitals had proven that - and he was not yet convinced that she wouldn't shoot him the second he gave way.

A roll of his eyes followed her declaration. His head ducked for a moment, scales scraped against her shoulder pad; he wanted to rest his head again to ease the swimming in his skull, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, the older drell rumbled in his throat and shuffled more of his weight onto his left forearm, his good knee skidding a bit on the ground against hers.

"You don't get it," he rasped. "That's not what's - nngh -" spots of apoxia flashed in his vision, "-- what's important, what I mean."

His eyes twitched towards the gun. To his surprise, it was pressed uselessly against his side, not pointed at him. Odd. She must have been wearing out, too. A terse moment passed, in which his eyes locked on hers, communicating more in a glance than words could have ever accomplished.

"If you're not going to kill me," he grunted, reaffirming his hold on her spare wrist even so, "I am fully capable of relaying my success - unless you want to lay here all evening, as fun as this is."

The dry tone to his last sentence indicated that it was not, in fact, even remotely fun for him. He shifted, pulling his hips up and settling further onto his right knee so that he could hold his body above hers rather than on it; it was less awkward, and at least this way he could maintain some sense of propriety after what could have been called the Galaxy's Least Dignifying Fight Ever.

Well, maybe not a total loss.

"Okay." This was probably a mistake, but the only way they were both going to get out of this alive and with their dignity at least mildly intact was to exercise a semblance of trust. "The gun's pointed away. I'll count to three, and we disengage. One..." Wait, no. She had to clarify. "I mean not on three. Like, 'one, two, three' and then we disengage."

It seemed pedantic, but she had seen a reasonably competent operator get trach'd because of this exact mistake. Granted, the other involved party was a vorcha, but still.

"One. Two. Three. Now."

She pulled back sharply, scrambling on her elbows, and quickly pulled herself upright on the wall, leaving Cerastes to move back in turn. All right. The advantage of distance was now lost, since he was armed and had plenty of time to pull out his weapon as they separated. If she committed now and resumed hostilities, things would likely get lethal fast - considering the possibility that the other drell had information she wasn't privy to, that was an untenable risk.

And so, she holstered the weapon. "All right. What'd you mean?"

A rough-sounding chuckle escaped Cerastes at Shirin's correction. "Alright," he conceded, then politely waited for her to finish her countdown.

It was surprising how quickly they moved once the stand-off had ended. Shirin was up against the wall in no time; she'd fared better than he had during the scuffle. After she scrambled out from underneath him, Cerastes groaned with a mixture of exhaustion and relief and rolled into a sitting position. Now that the threat of death was removed, he could intimately feel the throbbing of his left knee, the warmth of his blood as it trickled between his scales. Fantastic. He probably looked like a serial killer.

With a grunt, he eventually pushed himself up - one hand on his lower back, the other held out to maintain his balance - and looked back to Shirin. Her gun was holstered; he returned the favor by keeping his hands far away from his arsenal.

After her inquiry, the other drell was treated to a rare sight: Cerastes grinning (and rather like a jackal, at that). It still didn't reach his eyes, but it was something. "Let me figure that out."

He'd bluffed and won. Satisfied, he limped towards the wall and activated his omnitool. A holographic screen sprung up in answer: thousands of files rained down, all acquired during the bypass. Cerastes's eyes darted back and forth as he read over the material, lips mouthing something occasionally.

"Ms. Vedral," he said at length, pulling up a video of a krogan, "I can't state for certain what I have here yet, but... we are in business, as the saying goes. If you'll allow me a few days to find this gentleman, I think I can get you on the right path. There's..." He paused, flicked through a series of images and something that looked like... a prototype design? It would have to be examined closer later. "... considerable data here. Nothing he would have deemed valuable, but then again, people rarely know what they have until it's mine."