Slums Lockdown (Open)

[chupi]

((Figured I'd help inject some activity with a good old fashioned gang of NPC mooks for players to gun down. If this is overstepping my bounds as a standard member, somebody please tell me.))

Blood Pack territory on Omega never seemed to have the best reputation for hospitality or cleanliness, but just now in one sector these slums seemed less inviting than ever. The streets and halls were eerily quiet. And if one were attentive enough, they'd notice the blood and bodies where the local residents hadn't cleared out fast enough.

The Blood Pack had something. Something they wanted to hold on to for the time being it would seem. As they'd put their own territory under a self-imposed lockdown, violently defending the area from anybody who might enter who wasn't part of their fold.

Down in one alley was a group of three particularly scrawney looking vorcha, angrily snapping at each other as they yanked back and forth on a human male's corpse with a nice peppering of holes in his chest from a close range shotgun blast.

[Kasespaetzle]

((I am assuming that this takes place a few days after the bar thread. I know that thread wasn't exactly finished, but I only have one character and things need to keep moving. Just clearing that up so no one thinks Neralya can be in two places at once lol)))

Of course, the one time in a good while that she'd decided to take this particular route home, and it had to be when the Blood Park was being particularly.. well, themselves.

Neralya cursed as she ducked into a conveniently placed groove in a nearby wall. Normally she would have taken the longer way home. The one that was significantly safer by Omega's standards and not run by Blood Pack. Or under apparent lockdown. Unfortunately, lethargy combined with the good deal of alcohol still running in her system from a recent clubbing escapade had shut down the logic part of her brain, and she'd taken the stupid route anyway for convenience sake.

Stupid mistake. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Always keep the logical part of your brain awake.
Or else you end up in a stupid situation like she was in right now. Having to fight your way home when you were significantly intoxicated and lethargic was never fun. Neralya liked her doing her fighting while sober. It tended to improve her odds.

The turian took a moment to peek out from behind her cover to find a vorcha far too close for comfort, and cursed as she took her shotgun and blasted the sucker. It promptly fell to the ground, and Neralya gave a silent thanks the shotgun gods for making such a wonderful weapon. One that she didn't have to have as accurate, non drunken-wobble aim with as say, a sniper rifle.

Of course, that didn't help with the bastards that were much farther away. Neralya ducked into cover again, knowing very well that she was basically pinned down at this point.

So fucking stupid.

[chupi]

"Over there!" Yelled out one of those recognizable, small growling voices. It seemed the loud boom of a shotgun hadn't gone unnoticed as two vorcha slowly crept toward their fallen brother. Speaking on some sort of comm, one sent out the word. "Intruder! South entrance, he armed!" They hadn't actually come across Neralya yet, but they were getting ever so much closer...

[Kasespaetzle]

Fuck.

Neralya heard the transmission, clear enough, and took a second to quickly peek out at the vorcha- who thankfully didn't seem to notice- before ducking back under cover. Now that it was known she was here, there was no way she could stay. She was pretty good at killing things, sure, but she wasn't a one-man army.

Knowing she had to at least kill the two vorcha before going anywhere, the turian stepped into action. After a quick shield adjustment on her omnitool, she emerged from cover. Shotgun in hand, she quickly blasted one of the nasty little buggers, watching it fall to the ground in a flaming, crumpled heap as she drew closer to the second.

Of course that gave the second vorcha time to react. With flames.

With a rather loud "AH, SHIT!" and a very poorly aimed second shot that unsurprisingly missed, Neralya found herself backpedaling rather clumsily due to her not-so-sober state. Her shields quickly started beeping rather wildly due to the extremely high heat, but thankfully enough, she managed to fire her shotgun again, this time hitting her target.

This one, too, crumpled to the ground, and Neralya took the time to exchange her gun's heatsink with a new one as her shields took time to recover.
The vorcha she'd just shot wasn't quite dead, and was making rather horrific garbled sounds, but wouldn't be a threat any longer, so Neralya took this opportunity to continue what was likely to be a very long, very hectic journey home. She hoped she'd have a clear pathway, but she knew better than to listen to that hope. Not with the damned vorcha having given away her location.

Fucking Omega.

[chupi]

"Turia-!" That second vorcha had only had time to scream that over the roar of its flames before getting its chest and throat opened up the the scattershot of the shotgun, leaving the gangly alien to gargle on the ground as it went orange with blood.

His radio still seemed to be working, though... As a crackling voice came up over it with a sound of panic. "Turian!? Gavorn, go away! Not today!" The radio was abuzz with the sounds of freaked out vorcha. Then came an authoritative krogan. "It's just a turian! We'll get him soon enough, search in groups!"

[Kasespaetzle]

Neralya drew her mandibles up to her face as she heard a voice that was distinctly krogan emitting from the radio.

Vorcha were a nuisance enough. The last thing she wanted now was to encounter a krogan. It didn't surprise her, not really, but it was still not news she needed.

Well, no, it was good to know at least, so she could try to avoid what could end up as a very bad situation.
Deciding now was a good time to quicken her pace and get the hell out of the area, the turian took the radio with her on the off chance it would give her warning of areas to avoid.

[chupi]

The poorly lit paths of this sector were broad at least, giving Neralya a sense of not being so closed in. But narrower corridors and opened doors to vacated apartments were plentiful, giving her the mixed blessing of having plenty of potential places to take cover and plenty of places for her enemies to pop out and flank her from.

The radio would at least give her some vague sense of company as the vorcha could be heard jumping at their own shadows in fear of a turian sniper they'd come to know so well on Omega. ... And then there came an echoed sound as it reverberated through the corridors ahead and over the radio. The sound of a sniper rifle shot, followed by panic, and another shot. Then silence. Immediately, the krogan barked out the order. Soon the area ahead of the turian would be flooded with vorcha looking for her.

[Kasespaetzle]

Neralya briefly froze at the recent sounds, then almost instinctively took cover in a narrow corridor. The radio was being helpful so far as giving her a good idea of where the majority of the Blood Pack members were, but beyond that...

Well, beyond that, it was essentially just telling her she was fucked. Again, she was no one-man army.

The turian sighed. She was so close to her neighborhood, too. If this stupid lockdown weren't going on, she'd probably be home already. Now it seemed her best option, if she wanted to live, would be to backpedal and deal with taking the long route home, like she should have in the first place. It would be a bit easier now, even, now that the adrenaline from her last encounter was still flowing through her and created a bit of a sobering effect. She started to move out of her recessed nook in between the apartments. If she left quickly enough...

Almost as if the karmic powers of the universe had listened to her thoughts, she spotted another group of Vorcha closing in.

Shit.

[chupi]

"Mm, the liar." A vaguely familiar and echoing salarian voice would say from behind Neralya. Coming from... The wall of one of the apartments. Dasim was in the vents. "You're the turian they want? Somewhat disappointing. Gavorn would have been an easy ally. You may want to get behind or inside of something."

[Kasespaetzle]

In an instant, Neralya had turned around towards the sound of the voice, shotgun aimed, only to find... a wall. Then all the pieces of information gathered together- the echoes, the familiarity of the voice- and clicked, and while the turian kept her guard up as always, she did at least lower the shotgun.
Her thoughts were "Ugh, that fucking weird salarian again", but her actual response was more good-humored. Or it seemed so, if you missed the slightly condescending tone.

"Hey, come on, I can't help if you were dumb enough to fall for that story.

Still, she wasn't arrogant enough nor was she too drunk at this point to not take decent advice at least, and after making a quick switch of her ammo, she made an attempt to find another, less-crappy hiding spot... but of course, the vorcha had gotten significantly closer at this point. Their obnoxious shrieks, hisses, snarls and talk of 'GO AWAY GAVORN' were a pretty good indication that they'd spotted her. So apparently, it was shotgun time instead.

Thankfully, she was very good at shotgun time, and proved so by nailing the closest vorcha right in the chest, sending it flying into two of it's comrades. She grinned as she took this opportunity to finish the other two with another shot and took cover again behind a nearby set of stairs. While fire was nice, sometimes she just really fucking loved sledgehammer rounds.

Which was good, because judging by the next, much larger group of vorcha, she was going to need them.

[chupi]

"You misunderstand," now the voice was closer, and near the ground. And if she were to look down, she'd see Dasim's face poking up from behind a drain vent. "I take no offense, I call you 'the liar' as a title, because I have no other name for you." Soon, the vent swung open. "Come, come. Vents, sewers, so cliche' yet nobody ever uses them or searches them anymore. Sloppy."

[Kasespaetzle]

Neralya looked between the incoming vorcha- who thankfully hadn't spotted her- and Dasim, then back at the vorcha again. She probably could take them, but...

With a little reluctance, the turian joined him in the vents. It's not like it was the first time she'd done this, but.. well, it's not one her childhood habits she wanted to return to. She made a briefly made a face, pressing one mandible against her face as the other kind of wavered, and shut the vent cover behind her. Hopefully the vorcha hadn't spotted her.

Attempting to wipe a bit of vorcha blood that had spattered on her armor, she spoke in a hushed tone.
"No offense taken, not really. Call me what you will, but my name Luciera, for future reference."

[chupi]

"Alright. Well, follow me." As Dasim led Neralya back through the vents, the sounds of the frustrated vorcha would come and go as they passed right by them. Until they reached a maintenance access point and were able to stand back up, at which point Dasim pulled out his sniper rifle to extend and examine it.

"I'm sure I don't need to explain the situation in full, but needless to say I must kill your 'family.' And would much appreciate any help you could give me. They took the parcel, my clients will not be pleased if the Blood Pack gets it back to their's." He glanced at her shotgun. "Even on Omega most residents do not have to use weapons nearly as often as you obviously do. Your firearm is battered and looks almost abused, as well as far too customized for a casual owner. Therefor I must assume that you either work for Aria or one of the other groups of Omega, that you're a gun for hire, or that you do other less-than-PC activities that could make you a worthwhile ally at this moment. What are your fees, merc?" He didn't even stop to take a breath, cocking his head to the side as the sounds of footsteps could be heard pass by.

[Kasespaetzle]

((Gaaaah sorry for the late reply, I made new characters in Skyrim and then I had real life socializing to do. Also for Nera's prices I'm kind of pulling them out of my butt, kinda gauging them by the price of an average gun in ME1... not that I can really remember them, but if it's totally way off feel free to correct me and we'll assume Nera said the right price instead lol))

Neralya couldn't help but grin at the reference to her little story from before, and she kept that grin on her face, though she was tempted to scowl at the mention of her gun seeming 'battered' and "abused". She didn't, though, keeping that smarmy douchebag smile on as she waited for the nearby vorcha to pass, then fiddled with her omnitool.

"There you go, being all observant again. Yes, I happen to be a merc around here. A damned good one at that," she added, though made a mental addendum of 'when I'm a little more sober', before seeming almost, almost professional as she listed her fees.
"Basic fee is 40,000 credits, if there's more vorcha than I think there are it might be a bit more than that. And if you want me to deal with that krogan I heard earlier, it'll be 90,000 credits at least. I doubt you'll be wanting any of them alive, so I won't bother listing those fees."

The turian stopped making her adjustments now, taking a moment to tilt her head at the salarian. She wanted to ask what Dasim was being paid for retrieving that parcel. Probably more than she'd get paid for this little act of pest control.
Neralya knew better than to ask though, given the situation she was in. He had a few advantages here, and probably knew it. If he also knew that she saw an opportunity to make more at his expense, chances were high that he'd try and kill her off as soon as she cleared the area.
For now, she decided it was best to play dumb. Which admittedly wasn't too hard, judging by her actions so far this evening. It wouldn't totally erase the chances of him trying to kill her off later, but seeing how he'd been decent to her so far, it was likely to better her odds, at least a little bit.

She still needed to make sure she was at least paid something, though, and figured this might also be a good opportunity to keep up that dumb facade.
"I'll need some sort of collateral," despite me being at the disadvantage here, "And a name, i we're doing this, though."

[chupi]

"Hm." The prices were troubling, but did Dasim really want to turn away potential aid? "Fine fine, the prices are acceptable. We will negotiate the exact details when the job is done." He'd had an old fashioned mod in his hand that looked like it was going to go onto his sniper rifle, but he sighed and put the rifle away. Instead he hooked it up to his hand cannon, then handed it to Neralya.

"M-6 Carnifex, I assume you are familiar? Modded with an old High Explosives ammo modifier, not found on the open market anymore... One shot with that and the weapon will be overheated. You must eject the thermal clip immediately. Two shots without an ejection and you will ruin the weapon and possibly blow yourself up. Understood?" He liked his little lectures. He also really liked that mod, and was not particularly fond of the idea of potentially losing it to this Luciera doing something stupid.