[color=yellow]"He seems fine. I'll get you a distraction though. Make the most of it, yeah?"[/color] Alex’s voice came over the comms, somewhat crackly due to the interference of the biotic field. True to her world, the vanguard medic was soon engaging the batarians, drawing their attention in the most devastating manner possible. Peaking out to ensure the coast was clear, Iosef came over the channel.

[color=SteelBlue]"Tanya, take the MG, got an idea!"[/color] he said, and Tanya caught sight of him leap-frogging between cover towards the vehicle. Well, here went nothing. The engineer hurried around to the bed of the vehicle, leaping up to grab the siding and landing with her foot on the oversized tire, and in another quick motion had cleared the side, landing rather ungracefully on one of the bench seats that had been crudely bolted to the truck bed and hitting the deck on a knee and her elbow. The low profile wasn’t entirely a bad thing as it kept her from getting picked off from a stray shot, and she moved forward towards the mounted gun, some turian-made thing that looked large and cumbersome. Activating the weapon, its stock shot backwards and barrel assembly extended. A cushion on the back of the turret ring gave her position to rest her feet on the two pedals that traversed the ring left or right. As she was adjusting to the new weapon, Iosef cried out an expletive as the door slammed shut. 

Looking towards where the sound of gunfire was coming from, Tanya traversed the turret to the 9:30 position and took target of a group of the batarians rushing out of the housing complex. There were seven of them, some of whom were clearly quite drunk. One of the more competent ones was on a knee and firing steadily at the truck, and was a likely candidate for the one who shot Iosef. Tanya gritted her teeth, buried herself into the stock, and opened fire on the group. The muzzle flash on the gun was so great that blue flame blinded her ability to see and she only caught fleeting glimpses of where the rounds were kicking up dirt. Two of the batarians, however, were caught in the salvo and the heavy rounds of the heavy weapon tore through their shielding and buckled their armour, ripping ragged chunks out of the their bodies. 

The others began to spread out, sprinting for whatever cover they could find. [color=cyan]“Iosef, you alright?”[/color] Tanya asked, walking more shots towards the larger of the fleeing groups. [color=cyan]“Hang in there, we’ll you patched up. How bad is it?”[/color] she asked, genuinely concerned. What he did was a brave risk, and it would be a damn shame if anyone were incapacitated, or worse, their first outing as a team. There was no time to think about it. Seeing that the warehouse’s fighting was now indoors, only Twin Star bodies outside, Tanya prepared to send shithead after her targets when a heavy sounding shot rang out and dug into the plating of the vehicle, just left of her chest. [color=cyan]“Fucking hell!”[/color] She exclaimed, surprised. The sniper’s shot had peeled back a considerable amount of metal, her mind flashing back to Lewis, behind a collapsed wall with his own sniper rifle, saying he had a visual on a sniper, when suddenly... 

When the second shot rang out, she flinched, expecting the worst. Instead, Tonka’s gruff voice filled her headset. [color=39b54a]“You look away for two seconds, and some pyjaak is suddenly shooting from the window you cleared. You alright?”[/color]

Tanya found herself breathing heavily, sweating despite her suit’s air condition. She knew if her hands weren’t locked on the heavy gun, they’d be shaking. [color=cyan]“I’m… I’m okay.”[/color] She lied, trying to will the ghosts to vanish. There was no rhyme or reason of why Mindoir decided to come back to her, and the only respite she had was to try to push it away. [color=cyan]“I’m guessing I owe you a drink.”[/color] she replied, counting to ten between bursts of machine-gun fire, the heavy gun making a satisfying low fire rate chugging sound. 

~~~

[color=39b54a]“Or ten. You’ve never seen a krogan drink. [I]Heh.[/I]”[/color] Tonka said, drawing back the manual charging handle to vent the rifle’s heat. When the indicator faded from orange to blue, the krogan resumed his watch. So far his tally was five, most of those window dwelling scum who lingered a seconds too long. A human proverb came to mind, [I]curiosity killed the space cow[/I]. Tonka always figured the animal in question resembled Klixen or Keepers more than the bovine creatures that humans had back on Earth, the dumb-looking things, but there was no denying that the generally harmless space cows were prone to stealing from settlers, for whatever reason, and caught a bullet for their troubles. Stockpiles of pilfered goods had been recovered in stashes near grazing grounds for the animals, and nobody knew why the hell the space cows wanted their ill-gotten gains to begin with – there was still a debate if they were even sentient or not.

As Tonka’s mind wandered, a batarian face peeked out from behind the bar’s counter in his sights. He slowly squeezed the trigger after taking a long breath, and on the exhale he watched as the batarian’s eye disappeared in a ragged gash and the wall behind him was coated in a chunky red spray. The bottles of liquour, now covered in viscera, were still quite drinkable, were one willing to overlook the previous owner’s last contribution. As he scanned the bar, his eyes caught sight of an all too iconic white and green chunk of metal. 

[color=39b54a]“Shit.”[/color] He muttered, pushing himself from the wall and scrambling to move from his position, tipping over the side of the ledge and beginning a descent that was a rough set of slides and bounces off the rock face until he planted hard against the ground, his rifle cradled in his arms. As he looked up, a rocket exploded off the wall where he’d been moments before, showering chunks of rock in all directions. A fist-sized chunk bounced off his helmet, prompting the krogan to curse. A fun fact about shielding was it did nothing to stop low-velocity projectiles, such as those dislodged from a rocket propelled grenade’s blast radius, and the krogan was grateful for his armour’s plating and his own natural resilience. Getting to his knee, and shaking his beat-up rifle free of dust and debris, he raised the comms. [color=39b54a]“Tonka to all signs, I lost my vantage point. Advancing on foot to share a few words with the pyjaak with the anti-armour weaponry. Iosef, recommend you get that pile of bolts and rust moving, or you’ll be picking shrapnel out of your ass for the next three weeks.”[/color] He said, sprinting hard towards the fence, the force of his impact and the combined weight of his body and armour creating a sizable bend in the metal that it sloped enough for the krogan to begin to climb over. It was time to get his hands dirty.