[Omega] Dead Turians Tell No Tales (Open)

Something about the dead - the stillness, the silence encompassing them - was astonishingly peaceful.

It was a thought that frequented Cerastes as he crouched in the middle of a deserted street on Omega, hands resting on his knees, head quirked slightly to the side as he stared at the corpse of a turian man lying face-down at his feet. The corpse was fresh; warm to the touch as he reached out to turn the head towards him. He stared thoughtfully into the alien's motionless eyes, watching as the glaze of death gradually overcame them.

Eventually, the drell rose to his feet and deposited his hands into his pockets. A body on Omega wasn't uncommon, but this one had had half of its face torn off; a quick glance to the side revealed one of its mandibles lying a few feet away. There were no fang or claw marks on the body, no flesh removed save for the tip of a fringe spike. The body wore a set of armor that looked expensive and clean, out of place for Omega's environment.

In short, it was a murder.

The sound of approaching footsteps distracted Cerastes; he raised his head and stared in their direction. A lithe, black stealthsuit hugged his frame, a pair of guns strapped to his back. In one quick gesture, the drell pressed a switch on his helm - a visor slid from the side and over his eyes in an instant.

He was prepared for trouble, as anyone on Omega should be.

Another night in Omega. Not that night mattered here. The lights never got above 300 lumen here, and everything was lit by the same shit orange color, day in, day out. Locals said it saved on energy consumption, kept the power recyclers from burning out just keeping the place lit up. Sounded like bullshit to Job, but if enough people said it, maybe it was true. Didn't matter anyways. All that mattered was that the lighting did two things:

1) It made the areas that were lit up look like some kind of... mechanical hell. Which was fitting.

2) It made the shadows that much deeper, and that much more dangerous.

Which was why he was cursing his goddamn luck at turning down this alley at this particular moment in time. Never take shortcuts on Omega he reminded himself for the hundredth time. Otherwise you get shit like this.

Holding his hands up towards the drell and backing away, Job tried to look as unthreatening as possible.

"Hey, man. I didn't see anything."

A civilian. Muscles gradually began to slack, scales shifting over flesh as the drell allowed himself to de-tense. Describing Cerastes as "relaxed" would be a drastic overstatement, but he looked less likely to pull out a gun and shoot Job's face off.

In the background, a lopsided neon display flickered tiredly. Cerastes stared long and hard at the human, just long enough, in fact, to make the air dreadfully uncomfortable.

"Neither did I," he rasped at length. Whether or not Job believed him was up for grabs.

"Right. Right."

Alleyway. Only one way to get out - back the way he came. That involved fleeing in full view of this drell. That meant the drell could easily gun him down - if the drell was armed - or do any one of millions of weird shit to make this a very bad evening indeed. Courtesy seemed to be working so far. Right now it didn't matter who killed whom; Job just had to get out of here and find someplace very far away from this before things went bad. It wasn't his concern.

Job kept his hands up. Nonthreatening pose. His heart was beating like a jackhammer.

"Look. I'm going to back away slowly. Okay? I'm going to go down to the end of this alley, and then you'll never see me again. Alright? I won't tell anyone. Do you understand me?"

Well, this was a conundrum. Two strangers standing off in the middle of a street, a corpse between them. As a drell who was diligent about the practice of discretion, the situation was relatively new to him; it had been years since he'd been caught in such in awkward position.

On the one hand, it was a random tourist that laid stone-cold at his feet. On the other hand, if this got out, Revenant would not be happy. Sensing the human's anxiety, he drew his shoulders back and matched his steps, one at a time.

"Tell anyone what, exactly?"

"Hey. Hey. You get one warning, drell. You stop moving. You don't have to make this into something. We can both go home. If you don't start anything, there won't be anything. Understand? I'm just going to back off and go, alright?"

Job kept backing up. His eyes flickered over the scene. Neon sign. Plastic waste receptacles. Deck plating. Rusty old pipe. Air vent.

He needed more time. Combat was something that Cerastes, in his line of work, was all-too familiar with, but there were implications and conseqences to this scenario that he hadn't confronted in the past. One thought after another flipped through his mind like a child spinning through the pages of a book; various endings displayed, the risks, the weight of the weapons at his back as he reached a hand back to rest his fingers on the assault rifle.

"It's a mere question," he began. "Who are you?"

A clattering sound echoed in the distance, but he could have heard a pin drop all the same.

The hairs stood up on Job's arms.




Shit.




Job flung his hands forward, kicking in the amp and summoning up his biotic reserves. The alley lit up robin-egg blue as a sphere of energy wrapped around the neon sign behind the drell, flickering like a cathode ray tube turned to static. One mental tug and the sign was wrenched off the supports, crashing down to the street in an explosion of glass, light emitters, and sparks. It wasn't enough to kill the drell - too far away for that, by far - but Job wasn't looking to kill. Just distract.

And down the street strolled Palmer, wondering where the hell she was. A glance over at the display crashing down and she strolled on, still wondering where the hell she was.

Cerastes had just enough time to catch sight of a human woman strolling down the street before a considerable something slammed into the ground behind him. Instrinct took over, directing the drell to duck into a roll to the side and keep moving; his booted feet pounded the cement as he limped away, anticipating a second blast any second. When nothing came, he skid to a halt and whipped his head around fast enough to crack the bones in his neck.

The fucking sign. Red eyes darted back, honing in on the man that, by all means, appeared to be nothing more than a street dweller.

It was a case of miscommunication on all accounts, but that didn't stop Cerastes from tearing a pistol from its holster at his waist (the rifle would have taken too much time, the knife was too impractical, and he had no biotic powers to speak of) and aiming it directly at Job.

Depending on the speed of the former's reaction, a bullet was about to take one of two courses: lodge itself into the meat of Job's leg, or shoot past him and whizz by the woman walking in the distance. Cerastes shot with tapered control, staring down the muzzle as though it were little more than a common household object.

Shit, his bad knee was on fire.

Job wasn't the kind of person who stood around waiting for a fight to get worse.

Distraction achieved; time to run.

Taking off as fast as his boots would let him, Job dashed down the entrance of the alleyway, shoving past the woman in a desperate attempt to get as far away from the gun-toting drell as possible.

"Get out of the way!" he screamed as he beat feet through a puddle.

Just another night in Omega.

And out of the way she moved, sliding about ten feet in one step, a vaguely annoyed look on her face now. Who was this man to shove past one such as herself? A derisive snort and then she looked over at the other person on the street.

Son of a bitch.

Cerastes grit his teeth in frustration; he took several bounds forward, slowing when the cartilage in his knee screamed in agony. The roll had been a bad choice. Worse yet, he had known that it was, and he did it anyways. He just hadn't put the damned thought into his response to avoid the repercussions.

The human had claimed he wouldn't speak of the incident, and it was likely that, on Omega, no one would listen even if he did, but Cerastes was a man who lived in the details. Leaving a loose end was... disconcerting to him, to say in the least. With his lips curled into a snarl, he raised his gun once more - arm straight, poised for the recoil - and shot again, this time aiming for the thigh. If Job got much further away, he was going to have to improvise.

The memory would make up for most of that. He could always find him again.

The trick would be doing so before the situation spiraled out of control.

The round hit his unarmored thigh hard. Blood spattered out, warm and black under the orange lights. Job tumbled, taking a nasty knock on the head as he did so. Shit. Shit. He wasn't a fighter, he wasn't a soldier, he was barely a biotic, and he just wanted to get the fuck out of here.

Scrambling to his feet, Job tried limping away as fast as he could, wincing as the pain caught up with his nervous system and set his leg on fire.

On one hand, the fellow as a human, same as her. On the other, why should she care? But then, human.

Choices, choices.

The human going down sealed it.

A gun was pulled out in a flash and the face of a butcher examined the drell, Now, I recommend you put away that weapon drell. Your species is close enough to extinction already. Wouldn't want to add one more to the list of dead would we?

Outstanding.

He'd managed to get Job down, but now another passerby was involving herself in the scene. Leaning heavily on his good leg, Cerastes drew several long, steady breaths, trying to calm himself and remove the flashes of red from his vision. He needed to take this slowly, lest there be a blotch on his career history for years to come.

"Your confidence is inspiring, ma'am," he began. The neon sign behind him had started on fire, quietly and without notice. "You can shoot me if you want, but I'm afraid it won't fix this."

Knowing that the woman was standing up in defense of her kinsmen, he kept his pistol trained on Job all the while.

"Care to talk, stranger?"

"Don't got. A thing. To say!" Job managed to say between clenched teeth. "Murderer! Alleyway!"

He clutched at the wound as he started dragging himself off. There was some omnigel in his bolthole. It'd leave a scar and he'd be limping for weeks, but it was better than dying out here between a gun-toting merc and an albino nutjob. He tried picking himself back up, trying to increase the distance between himself and the soon-to-ensue-carnage.

He'd have to hurry. He was bleeding.

Vorcha smelled blood.

Aint much to talk about beyond letting the human go.

"If he would stop for a moment, I would."

The drell's eyes switched to Palmer, staring her down. "If you're intent on being the only good samaritan on Omega, you might want to pause in the future to examine the situation more closely. How do you think the sign before me came down? You had to have heard it."

Gravel beneath his feet crunched as he steadied his grounding. He maintained his grip on the gun, temporarily prolonging the stand-off. "The turian was dead when I arrived. Estimation of between twenty and thirty minutes, as an educated guess."

He didn't have much time. Job was bleeding fast, and clean-up would be difficult if he had to put a bullet through the man's skull. The mercenary that had approached them had the stance of an experienced killer; he'd have to choose his words wisely.

Job just looked incredulously at Cerantes.

"Oh, no, don't give me that. I found you in an alley with a dead turian. I was ready to walk off and forget this, and you started approaching me. One of us is shot. One of us isn't. Doesn't take a genius to find out who's at fault here."