-Jeremy Strauss P.O.V.-

“You’re serious?” I asked, a smirk on my face, yet my tone was dry and flat. “You really think you’re gonna take my weapon off me?”

“Nobody gets in armed,” the man said warily, seeing one of his companions beside me cringing at what he surely felt was inevitable violence.

Not that he was wrong, after all the man beside me had made the grievous error, along with his comrades, to attempt to rob me. My team and I had taken offense to that.

I chewed on the unlit cigar, eyeing the man and his fellow gatekeeper. They were burly fellows, equipped with shotguns that they nervously cradled in their arms.

So far they hadn’t aimed a weapon at us, so I was willing to be reasonable enough. The watchtower above that overlooked the surprisingly well put together barricades housed another two men. No single one aimed a gun at us, perhaps due in no small part to the group of six other people trailing behind us, beaten and bedraggled.

Though, they did nervously set their eyes on the nearly three meter tall power-armored man near the back of my group. Yomar was attractive like that.

“Lemme go over this, just humor me for a second,” I said, straining my patience already, “your policy is saying that you’re gonna take the guns off a bunch of folk that clearly have much better guns than you do, better armor than you do, and some of which can dismember folk with their bare hands.”

Eyes shot back to Yomar who cheerfully waved, the long grooved blades that protruded from his forearms gleaming in the light.

The man said slowly, “that, uh, yeah. Yeah that’s pretty much it.”

Tension mounted as I drew a very deliberately slow, deep breath. I glanced backwards to the group that we’d captured before shaking my head. “Well, I wanted to give these people back, but I guess we can just feed ‘em to biotics instead.”

“L-lets not be hasty,” the man that I’d kept next to me spoke up pretty quickly now that his neck was on the line. I wasn’t even sure if I was joking at this point. This city so far has gotten under my skin in a bad way. I never thought I’d look at the politicians back home and miss the fuckers. They could sort this crap out later, after we opened the door for Bulwark to come in and get this under wraps. Which was exactly what I hoped we were doing, Legion had no business running someone else’s city.

Thank the gods for that.

“Just send a runner to Gerry, tell him we got some out of towners in for a visit,” the man thought fast, “tell him they’re planning on taking care of Benjamin and Mack.”

The two guards looked on unsteadily, seemingly to me for confirmation of what was said.

Idly, I pulled the cigar from my mouth, bringing their attention to it. I pulled one of my favorite lighters from my pocket, plated with silver and bearing a skull with a lotus flower in bloom behind it, bullet clenched in its teeth. “You know, it’s a good thing I have this cigar. Helps me with patience,” I leveled an impassive, cold glare at them as I allowed the words to hang in the air.

They seemed to get the idea, quickly sending a runner off to talk with their boss. I intentionally took very slow drags of my cigar, turning back around and moving closer to my team.

“Well, that’s theatrical,” Allendra murmured as I approached, “picking up some of the Reaper’s habits?”

I allowed a smirk to break character, “I figured it’d be better to come in a little heavy than not heavy enough.”

“I still vote we blow up the gate.” I heard Denise say, and judging by the uncomfortable shuffle at said gate, I think they heard her too.

“We’re trying to secure a helping hand and some information,” Adam’s eyes betrayed the calculated thoughts sweeping through him, “if they think we’re too strong to offend, they’ll at least be willing to listen. That’s probably better than relying on their potential good will.”

“Though I still think we could have tried that,” Sammy said, “we haven’t really had any evidence of the contrary.”

The young man preferred a lighter hand when it came to social interactions. For all his capability as a scout and his capacity to shred biotics without remorse, he was surprisingly averse to conflict with people.

“I agree with Sammy on this one,” Jackson shrugged with an expansive gesture that included his hands, “for all we know these other guys were just really dumb.”

He was talking about the people that we’d knocked around. It was easier than expected, actually, they were armed but hardly armored. Moreover, when we didn’t capitulate to their demands, we found rather quickly that the group folded to our much more practiced skill and offense readily.

Half of them had fled us as they realized they were outmatched, mostly due to Yomar laughing off rounds from handguns and basic hunting rifles. Even alone, he’d have been able to take care of the whole bunch of them.

The rest of us weren’t quite as well armored, but none of us were outfitted in anything less than a mesh suit, often with bits of exo-suit grafting to help enhance and reinforce even our most lightweight members.

“Usually, I’d agree with you, but we don’t have time for dallying around. I’ll bet Reaper’s almost done with his task by now.” I took another steady drag from the cigar, “I figure it’s best for us to ruffle a few feathers now. Imagine what he might do if they shut the gate in his face.”

There was a brief moment of contemplation at that. None of us thought that would end well.

Yomar snickered, “ah, that’d be interesting.”

I shook my head in bemusement.

“I hope they’re at least willing to see us.” Sammy let out a suffering sigh, “honestly, the whole no-man’s land around the Obelisk is just a pain in the ass.”

None of us responded to that, but our sentiment was the same. We’d checked on the condition in the center of the city on the way over, but it was clear that there were some pretty hefty defenses there. Ostensibly, it was to keep the other group from interacting with the Obelisk, just in case sabotage was possible.

In reality, they formed more or less a ring around the Obelisk. There were a decent number of elites on hand; power armored individuals and weapons more advanced than what the rest of the city had access too on hand. None of us knew if there were any accessible sewers in the area, but that likewise wasn’t a tenable solution. From what we’d gleaned from our captives, the sewers and other tunnels beneath the major camps and the city center were trapped with everything from claymores to more advanced and insidious designs.

We might be able to get through in time, but time is not something we had abundance of. As much as this trip to Sunvilla was necessary, Argedwall was under critical threat of biotic incursion. We’d confirmed already that Sunvilla would probably survive, albeit not well, as there were no major biotic threats in the area.

Of course, we’d stumbled across a few of the cat-like biotics on our way here, they weren’t harmless, but with a little armor they lost a great deal of their capacity to instantly kill someone. If they had to peel a few layers off, first, then most people should be able to kill it first. They rarely occurred in numbers greater than two or three. Yomar demonstrated for the team twice how his back-spikes were quite useful, and highlighted that these things had a very strong tendency to attack those in the farthest back, regardless of how durable they were. Maybe later they would learn, but for now that learned tactic worked directly against their chances of any meaningful damage.

I was almost done with my cigar, making sure to show the state of my treat to the gatekeepers as it burned down.

I did, however, neglect to speed up the process. Realistically it would do us no good to brute force our way into the city. We needed to be recognized as strong, not as psychopaths.

Finally, though, someone approached the gate.

My eyebrow rose in surprise at the individual, black clad power armor adorned their form, an ominous look that matched the large axe on their back and the bolt rifle beside it.

They slowed to a stop, a feminine voice ringing out from within, “Gerry wants to meet with you all, and extends his respectful greeting.”

I frowned in confusion at that. We’d effectively just shown up at his doorstep armed and dangerous, but I highly doubted that most people would extend any kind of cordial greeting in that condition.

“That so?” I chewed the end of the cigar before spitting it out and stamping on it, “well, far be it for me to neglect any hospitality. Please, lead the way, Ms.?”

She let the helmet slide back on her head, revealing a fairly common-faced young woman with short cut brown hair and the tell tale pale-skin of a career mech-fighter, “you can call me Pat.”

“Pat,” I greeted, “call me Strauss.”

She nodded to me and stepped aside, gesturing into the camp, “if you’ll follow me, I’ll lead you to Gerry.”

We stepped through the gateway, trying to not show the wariness of the situation in our stride. For all intents, we succeeded, in spite of the sense that we were walking into a trap.

As we moved through, we noticed that there were eyes on us at all times, just as cautious of our presence as the reverse. It was strange that we were only escorted by a single individual in power armor, especially when there were clearly many more around.

We passed a cluster of five men in a variety of high-grade gear, exo-suits and mesh suits all. They gave a friendly and good natured greeting to our guide as she passed, and scarcely gave us a second glance.

“You guys get visitors often?” I asked, hearing the chuckle from Pat as she looked to me from my side.

“Not exactly.” She began, “we’re just a bit more open about who comes in. Gerry’s always made it a policy not to harass people who come into camp. Otherwise, we’d never grow. Outside of the camp is different, though, we still have troublemakers who don’t know any better.”

The man next to me that we’d captured almost seemed to gulp audibly at that insinuation.

“In other words,” I cast a sidelong glance back to Sammy, “we could have just walked in here without it being a major issue.”

She hummed thoughtfully, “yes and no, you’d still have to surrender your guns. We don’t get visitors like you often, most people have basic rifles and such that aren’t a huge deal to not have around. Everyone gets their stuff back-” she paused and gestured to our group as a whole, “-but you wouldn’t know or trust that if you weren’t in-towners.”

Timothy Foster, the man who’d defected from Mack’s group and came with us, spoke up, “with how things are these days, rumors aren’t always the best thing to rely on.”

Her eyes shifted to him, “that’s true enough.”

For a few seconds she paused, staring at the man longer, “wait, aren’t you one of Mack’s guys?”

“Was,” he cringed, “I’m lucky not to be dead.”

“He was sent to frame us,” I trimmed the unnecessary details from the story, “but decided to defect instead.”

“Honorable, brave, maybe stupid,” she nodded, “good combination in a person, in my opinion.”

My eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly at that.

“Don’t mind me, just blowing smoke,” she laughed, “c’mon, it won’t be far now.”

“Speaking of,” I turned my attention to the man next to me and those that were still silently trailing Yomar, “we don’t actually need you guys to come with us, at this point. Feel free to leave anytime.”

It almost amused me how quickly they went from downtrodden, to confused, to very happy to leave the area as soon as humanly possible.

“You could have used them as hostages, you know,” Pat said, though the amusement in her voice told me that she was far from serious.

“That was already nearing the limit of what I consider acceptable conduct,” I grimaced in disdain, “I’m not keen on underhanded tactics.”

“Good, we’ll all get along just fine, then.” Seriousness crept into her voice, “there’s more than enough of that going around in the other camps. They can keep it.”

Small talk filled the rest of our walk, though my attention shot around automatically as we went. The building’s so far had been fairly well kept, albeit many of them were conspicuously silent. They were out and about in other parts of the camp, being that these were the areas where people lived, rather than carried out their daily lives. The core of the camp was the residential area, Gerry preferred to keep everyone as far from their walls as possible. Apparently some early abductions with the biotics had made it clear that the defenses weren’t exactly perfect.

It was better by far, now, but the occasional disappearance didn’t surprise anyone anymore.

We approached a squat structure, one that reminded me of a small office building. It surprised me that this plain, grey and unimpressive building belonged to the man who proclaimed himself to be the leader of the encampment.

Pat smirked, “expected a palace?”

“Partly,” I admitted, “after hearing about the other two jokers in power here.”

Her mood fell at that, “yeah, they’re bad news. If it weren’t for them, I think we’d all have the situation here well in hand. But…” she trailed off, shaking herself from that line of thought, “well, I figured that was why you were here.”

“Mm, we’ll see,” I said, following her in after glancing around. There were more people with better weapons in this area, and a few with power armor.

Though, the quality of the armor seemed several notches below the one Pat wore.

We headed straight to the back, past a guarded checkpoint and through several spaces with maps and less sensitive information on them. From my glances, I could tell that this operation was run as smoothly as they could. Everything from organizing hunting teams to disseminating resources.

It was almost like looking at a younger, less equipped version of the Legion. Pat seemed to notice my approval, “we do what we can. We’ve already lost everything once, nobody wants to go through that again.”

That was a respectable approach, I thought.

There were several things that had been modified in the building, I realized, as we moved to the back of the building. Anywhere a power armor wouldn’t normally fit had been cut out as neatly as possible, something that I hadn’t truly appreciated until I tried to squeeze through regular buildings and doorways. The cond thing I noted was that there were a few hallways that were much more accommodating than a power armor needed.

Which was something I didn’t need to wonder the reason why too, as we entered what would have been an a meeting room turned office. A man about my age was busily sorting through some kind of information, pins on the wall showing several points on a map, some nearby, others far.

What drew my eye predominantly, though, was the hulking mech suit that sat behind him, currently curled up as compactly as possible and still taller than I was by no small margin.

“Gerry, these are the visitors,” she stepped to the side, gesturing for us to file in.

He looked up, cool grey eyes betraying a very interesting fact.

Gerry was, to what all effects seemed, blind.

“Welcome!” He smiled, “come, sit. As you know, I’m Gerry Brueter, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”