Life Travelling Through Fiction

Before we could take on the Shadow Broker's base we needed to get more familiar with our new abilities and fighting styles. We had to practice with guns, biotics, tech, and mix past abilities.

For guns, I was already an old hand with them so all I needed was a bit of a refresher. Suki and Toph, however, needed more practice. They had the memories of how to use guns, but it took some time for them to integrate the muscle memories from their origins and perks.

Biotics was something we all needed to practice. Suki had an immediate grasp of moves that needed fine control but had a very hard time using her full biotic potential. Toph and I were the opposite. We are biotic monsters fully capable of destroying whatever we could see. We didn't exactly have finesse though. Either way, we got better with time.

Tech skills we're primarily for Suki and me, but Toph didn't have a lot of built-in tech memories. She had to practice basic tech literacy. Suki and I quickly incorporated our natural tech abilities. We also spent time going over common equipment. For first aid medi-gel, an Omni-tool as a very useful multitool, and Omni-gel a portable fix-all.

Finally, we began mixing in past skills with new ones. For Suki and Toph, this meant bending. For me, this was a bit more in-depth. I started by downloading a comprehensive chemical compendium.It was filled with the chemical structures for all sorts of elements, molecules, and other larger structures. I couldn't use creation in my AI body because it didn't have any fat. However, I could still turn into my human form and practice that way. In that form, I practiced complex material generation. The most difficult of which was the formation of element zero, and despite the name isn't a single element. It is exotic matter that causes anti-gravity fields when an electrical current is applied. It is a single material but it is fundamentally different from the others. Instead of protons, electrons, and neutrons element zero, eezo, is made up of a complex series of quarks. With my quirk now at peak performance I then transitioned to incorporating my bending. Unfortunately, I found water bending particularly unhelpful right now. Blood Bending could be replaced by biotic stasis. Regular water bending was just less destructive than firearms. There were still some minor clever uses and healing, but for now, it didn't seem like it would make up a significant portion of my arsenal.

Unlike me, Suki and Toph both found their bending incredibly useful. Toph was mixing biotics and bending to great effect. Either bending absolutely enormous hunks of earth by lowering their weight, or by launching pebbles at speeds approaching the speed of light. Suki also hadn't found many direct combat applications, but she did find ways to use air bending to augment her movement. She used small focused air blasts to propel herself very quickly, and air shielding to block larger debris. Suki also incorporated biotics into her bending. Showing off her biotic finesse she did 2 major techniques. First, she applied biotic mass effect fields to lower her own weight. This increases her speed, her ability to boost, and even limited flight. The second was lacing her the wind she generates with her biotics. This can slightly affect the mass of people or objects caught in it, either speeding up or slowing down projectiles and people caught in the winds. Seeing their progress with bending biotics inspired me to try again, but for now, training was over we had an info broker to kill.

We geared up and made our way to Factory Defect. I was back in my AI body, and I was carrying Great Reason, my valyrian great sword, as well as one of my water bending skins. In addition to my past equipment, I also added new armor and several mass effect guns. The armor was in addition to my already armored body. For guns, I had a Mattock heavy rifle and a Piranha Assualt Shotgun.

Suki had lighter armor that she could supplement with tech and biotic abilities. She also had an M-6 Carnifex Heavy Pistol and the M-98 Widow Anti-Material Rifle. In addition to her regular weapons, she had a specialized Omni-tool carrying her advanced VI to assist with hacking and tech skills. Finally, Toph was decked out in earth kingdom green heavy armor, because she didn't even notice the extra weight. She also had a Piranha Assualt Shotgun and an N7 Typhoon Light Machine gun.

After departing the vault our first step was crossing the galaxy. The base was in the Hourglass Nebula, on the opposite side of the galaxy, and required us to take four primary relay jumps. Unfortunately, traveling through the Terminus System lived up to its reputation. As we were preparing to use a secondary relay to get to our final destination we were attacked by a frigate 3 times the size of our ship.

"Attention S.S Factory Defect" A gravely voice readout with disdain across our communication channels "Surrender now, and we will spare your miserable human lives!" I look back at Suki and Toph grinning. Suki seems resigned but Toph looks like she's having trouble holding back her glee. "Alright! Alright! We surrender just please don't hurt us!" I tell them back doing my best to sound meek.

The communication line goes dead as the ship approaches and docks with us.

"Come on you guys, don't we have better things to be doing than playing around with pirates, " Suki said tiredly.

"Suki how could you say that. These are slavers. It's our moral imperative to stop them" Top gleefully countered.

"And I'm sure it has nothing to do with how much fun you're going to have crushing these unsuspecting idiots"

"Is it so wrong to enjoy doing good in the world?" Toph replied with a face splitting grin.

"I'm going to have to side with Toph on this one Suki. Plus who knows how many captives they have on that ship."

"Fine, let's just get to it then," Suki said just as airlock doors opened revealing 5 Batarian slavers. Who pretty quickly realized this was not in fact a civilian human ship. 'Five Batarian slavers board a corvette and find a rouge AI, a Quarian, and a Krogan waiting for them' sounds like the set up to a solid joke. I think Toph was the only one with a punch line though because she was the only one laughing. Suki remotely accessed the door control and kept the boarding passage open. As Toph laughed she started a biotic charge and violently launched the boarding party back onto their ship. As we boarded them the paltry resistance of the ill-equipped crew did not last long. Less than 25 Batarians ran the ship, all of them were outfitted with bootleg armor and weapons, and the best among them were poorly trained.

Unfortunately, there turned out to be no real reward for our victory. We checked their logs and found that they weren't slavers. They had just intended to kill us and scrap our ship. Not that that's any better, but it did mean this frigate was primarily filled with trash.