1.2 Barfight

Omega – Club Afterlife

"Goddammit, Shepard!" Miranda shouted, swinging her guns around toward the Blue Suns mercenaries and peppering the club walls and tables with bullets. The sound of the battle was nearly drowned out in the drumming bass of the vibrant music. Flickering and flashing red and violet and pink lights made the flurry of movement and gunfire a surreal hazy whirlwind of action. Glass exploded, people screamed in a commotion of scrambling and fleeing.

Jack, decked out in her biker-like black leather, her back to the side doorway, paused to admire the moment through her visor shades, which prevented people from seeing her eyes. The smell of smoke and alcohol filled her nostrils. She smiled then curved her stubbly, shaved head around to see a Blue Suns merc hiding behind the ravaged bar. With excitement and hard liquor filling her veins, she spun out of the doorway, swung her legs over a table and swept up all her biotic energy. She hurled it like a side-winding curveball. "Fly, bitch!" she screamed as the pulsating blue force hit the merc in the back and sent him hurtling helplessly into the air. She cocked her head toward Shepard, "Batter up."

Vince crouched and grinned like a wolf. His yellow-green eyes flashed with ferocity as he lunged. He shot forward in a blaze of violet energy and slammed into the floating thug. The mercenary was blasted backward and crashed into the tables. He dizzily struggled to move in the mess of shattered glass and clattering metal before seeing that Vince was standing over him with a burning shotgun muzzle. The blast lit Shepard's scarred face in a pretty flash of orange and yellow.

"Miranda, box 'em up!" Shepard ordered. "Jack! Time to go bowling!"

Miranda frowned. Her polished black Cerberus armor made her nigh invisible as it reflected the moving and flaring lights around her. The remaining Blue Suns had already begun to cluster near the front entrance. She set her jaw, gripped her double Locust submachine guns tightly, and sprinted from behind the bar, sending another stream of bullets leaving sizzling melted polonium holes in body and table alike. The Blue Suns scrambled desperately to move, knocking into each other in a perfect tangled mess of a target.

On either side of the circular bar, Jack and Vince moved into position. Jack rolled her biotic energy like a literal bowling ball. It curved through the air and exploded into the cluster of mercenaries, sending them flying up in all directions, the biotic energy release slowing their bodies to drift temporarily through the gravity altered space… Vince's shotgun blasts tore through the helpless thugs, rending them out of the air, one fiery blast after another.

He turned and began walking toward the other end of the bar as the last charred mercenary body hit the floor behind him. "Fish in a barrel," his golden eyes were on Aria's window.

Aria reclined on her posh leather couch, arms outstretched along the back, her legs crossed. The asari watched Shepard approach with strained patience. Her masculine, relaxed posture did not fool Vince. Her cold eyes withheld her ferocity the way only a woman could. Her jaw clenched. "You shot up my club."

Her collage of bodyguards stiffened around him, hands on their weapons. She continued to stare him down as he stopped in the center. He looked around at the guards and then his yellow-green eyes rested on Aria and he shrugged. "Cerberus'll foot the bill."

Down a few steps from Aria's spot, Miranda and Jack stood observing his interaction. Jack sneered. "Hear that, cheerleader? Cerberus is feeling awful generous today."

Miranda's large blue eyes turned on Jack with that feminine kind of restraint. She forced a smile. "Why not? We've already covered the drinking binge-inspired barfight you and Shepard indulged yourselves in. Or perhaps you could chip in from all the bank terminals you two kept stopping to hack while we were trying to find the doctor in the middle of an epidemic?"

Jack's red painted lips glistened in the ruby club light and she smiled slow and wide. "Who would've thought taking Cerberus for everything they've got would be this much fun?"

Miranda's gaze was steady. "I was right in thinking you should've been our last priority. I should've known this stinking piss-hole that is Omega would be just too enticing for a girl of your quality. Perhaps you'd prefer the extra months sleeping peacefully in your cyro-suspension." She turned her back on Jack, dismissing the ex-con, and her attention to the commander, hoping he was about finished chatting with crime bosses.She turned her back on Jack, dismissing the ex-con, and turned her attention to the commander, hoping he was about finished chatting with crime bosses.

Jack clenched her tattooed fist and grit her teeth. She could sooo punch this bitch in the back of the head. When she felt biotic energy starting to flare up in her fists she released them, but only a bit too late.

Miranda's micromesh suit picked up the dark energy and spurred to life her body shield. The Cerberus agent turned slowly, her eyes incredulous behind her omni-visor. The Cerberus agent turned slowly, her eyes incredulous. behind her omni-visor. "Are we going to have a problem?"

Jack squared off, her shoulders set, her fists clenched. Blueish energy pulsed out of her skin, radiating off her in swirls. "Give me a reason, Cerberus bitch."

"Ladies!" Vince cut in, "Plenty of time to argue later." He held an omni-pad in his hand. "I traded the list of Aria's defectors for this."

Both women stared blankly, if impatiently. He continued, "I asked for a name or location of the guy the prison warden sold us out to." He smiled, the jagged scar on his unshaven skin stretching into a little grin. "Aria had both."