010 ⌥ VIDEO

[femshep]

[The feed turns on, revealing Shepard's face, over an incredibly clean and unnervingly uniform backdrop. It's either a tunnel or a hallway, the shape's a bit hard to tell, and every ten or fifteen seconds you see a flash of bright, of words on a screen on either side, but you can never quite catch them before they're gone. Shepard herself looks worse for the wear--one eye's blacked pretty bad, and there's a smear of blood all down one side of her face, though from the video you can't see the origin.

The entire transmission is incredibly fuzzy, and the audio skips up to half of the words at times, but she makes the gist of it pretty clear.]

We- [-can-] -beat them. T- [-ake off their-] -masks. I repeat, take off- [-their masks.]

[There's a droning in the background, at first sounding almost like static to back up the poor-quality feed, but it's now recognizable as a siren. Shepard shoots a glance over her shoulder, then back at the camera, letting out an exhilarated sort of laugh.]

I'm- [-in the d-] -ome. Shit, I'm in the dome.

[She seems almost dazed, dazed and just a bit too euphoric, and that's the first sign that something's wrong. Shepard's never dazed. Not on a mission like this.]

I don't- [-know how-] -many of- [-them are-] -still out there, b- [-ut I've-] -got 'em on my tail. Just can't see 'em yet. I--

[She takes a deep breath, though with her physiology, it's near impossible to be out of breath to start with. Not so soon. And she blinks, entirely too long. Like she's trying to clear her head.]

[Shit, the-] -air in here. I don't-- [Shakes her head a little.] It's, - [It's-] -too much. Can't even think. [Think straight, anyway, but it's the worst thing in the world (as far as she's concerned right now, anyway), to know you can think your way out of a mess but to be too inhibited to be able to.

She's silent for a second, brow furrowing, and then she's glancing to the ceiling. Searching.] Think they're gassing me. I could swear--

[But whatever she was saying is cut off by a distant but authoritative:] YOUR RESISTANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

[Her attention jerks to the hall ahead, and she quickly slows down to a stop. A glance behind her seems to prove fruitless--it's safe to assume the OA's got men that way, too. Shepard lets out a low, tense laugh, little more than a preparatory exhale, and glances at the feed for the last time. Her lips twitch into the shadows of a grin, though it's probably almost entirely fueled by whatever they're pumping into the air.]

Well hell, here goes nothing.

[And she sets the device on the floor, now giving a pretty good view of the Authorities blocking the hall in front of her. Just in case they didn't catch the start of her transmission (seeing as she can't get much more than static from the outside, herself), she's going to do her best to demonstrate.

Shepard steps forward, squaring off against them for a second, although from the over-careful balance of her stance, it's almost safe to assume that serious vertigo is a side effect of either the gas or just the overoxygenation itself. (It's also safe to assume that the blood on her face is from her hands--it looks like the entirety of both palms is gone, from the heel of her hand to just about the tips of her fingers, leaving a mess of blood in their wake.)

Then she flings her hand out, her pinky and ring finger curling right back in as she activates a biotic pull, and one of the Authorities is jerked through the air toward her by a crackle of blue. It drops him partway, which isn't at all supposed to happen, but she doesn't have time to worry. Throwing a shockwave down the hallway at the others, she leaps toward the one she's singled out. There's a brief brawl (they're alarmingly strong, up close; she's never gone hand-to-hand with one before), but before the others can get back up, she seizes hold of his mask and jerks it off his face.

The man's movements become erratic, from panic rather than any sort of pain, and she releases him, to let him stagger a few feet back. You can't see his expression, Shepard's blocking most of the view, but his hands lift to his face, a very telling sort of gesture. Past the two, the Authorities that were making haste to get back on their feet are now significantly less concerned. It's like he's dead to them now.

But that's not enough. Not yet. Shepard's head tilts just slightly, and she lifts one bloodied hand toward his face. It almost looks like compassion, but for the fact that even in her semi-drugged state she knew how he'd react. Because without another word, the man she unmasked turns tail and runs. The others part slightly, letting him by, then close-rank again to face Shepard. Distantly, you hear a shot fired, muffled by some sort of silencer but definitely there. It's safe to assume that her buddy without the mask isn't too worried anymore.

From there, it's a matter of less than a minute. They're closing in, and she can't seem to jump-start her biotics again, not with whatever she's breathing in her system. She spends most of this time staring them down while her mind races for some way out, but when it comes down to the wire and they're too close to ignore, there's really only one option left. And she's on them, a whirlwind of fists and ferocity, but though her first victim goes down rather quickly and her second very nearly does too, she's vastly outnumbered.

Then they've got her, jerking her arms firmly behind her back where they can't do any more damage. It occurs to her that she should've been smearing blood rather than punching, after the way the first guy reacted, so her teeth close down on her tongue, and she spits a nice wad of blood at the nearest Authority's mask. He doesn't react, though by the way the others seem to pause and glance his way, she knows it had some effect. Even if that was just to make them nervous. Fuck, she hates that the worst she can do right now is make them nervous.

And then one of them's on her with a syringe. Apparently, they got sick of waiting for their narcotics gas to beat out her cybernetic immune system, because this is most definitely a sedative. It takes all of ten seconds of further struggle before her body relaxes, unconscious.

The communicator is picked up. Loud and clear:]

YOUR RESISTANCE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

[And the feed shuts off.]

[ ooc note - shepard won't be replying for obvious reasons, but feel free to try to get in contact with her anyway, or use this to talk amongst yourselves or something. :|b also, dear god am I sorry that this got so long. ]