Cerulean Stars - Chapter 136

Chapter 136 - The Birthday Party - Part 3

Striding dramatically out of the settling dust cloud, Raine's eyes scanned the crowd of Orions in the stands for a specific face.

“M… Mom?” Saya stammered out.

“One minute dear.” Raine returned in an overly sweet tone as her eyes locked onto Jellaa. “Mommy has a very naughty woman to punish for throwing her daughter into a death match.”

“It wasn’t to the death!” The somewhat familiar looking Orion teen that had been fighting Saya tried weekly.

Ignoring the throwing dagger tossed from somewhere in the stands that pinged uselessly off her barrier, Raine tossed a lift at the wide eyed Orion woman who just now seemed to be realizing what was going on.

Jellaa tried to dive behind one of the large Orions that had been flanking her seat at Raine’s gesture, a rather impressive instinct given the projectile-like tangle of dark energy that transmitted the effect was functionally invisible to the eyes of most non-biotics. In the end however it was a rather futile act, as the range was more than close enough for the Asari to still see her, and thus use her near instinctual control of the energy to guide the ability directly into her target.

Waiting half a second for Jellaa to float into the air, Raine followed it up with a low powered inverse throw that sent the Orion careening directly towards her.

Taking a bracing stance, she pulled her fist back, and the moment Jellaa reached her punched the woman hard enough in the stomach that she was slammed into the ground with a force hard enough to kick up another cloud of dust. 

“You don't!”

She kicked the groaning woman.

‘Kidnap!”

Another kick.

“My!”

A third.

“Daughter!”

“I think you broke my ribs.” Jellaa wheezed.

“You're lucky that's all I broke!” Raine growled. “An arena death match!? Seriously!?”

“It really wasn't to the death!” The Orion teen tried again.

“D'Vana's right mom.” Saya added in. “I was just going to wear her down.”

Raine twitched at the name.

“Na-ah!” D'Vana shot back. “I was going to wear you down!”

Recognizing people from Lower Decks was always a complicated thing because, with two exceptions, Raine had only ever seen those people as animated caricatures. And D’Vana rather exemplified that problem, as the only commonality the Asari could see with her animated counterpart was the hairstyle.

She kicked Jellaa again.

“You kidnapped our daughter to fight the family head’s prime daughter!?”

Gingerly holding her stomach with one hand, Jellaa used the other to push herself up into a more vertical position. “Stop kicking me, dammit!”

“Stop having done things that deserve being kicked then!” Raine yelled, getting ready to kick the woman again only for a new voice to interject itself.

“As amusing as it would be watching you beat my cousin half to death, I’m afraid I would be a poor family head if I allowed that to actually happen.”

Raine’s eyes snapped to the speaker, and even having seen pictures she couldn’t help but be impressed, because Shona Tendi had truly spectacular amount of cleavage.

“Tell you what.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the closed gates. “Open those up and let us walk out of here without the whole effort of me going through all your people and I’ll consider it a punishment served.”

“Tempting.” Shona admitted, making a hand signal of some kind to the woman who shared D’Vana’s hairstyle. “But the other families would never let us live it down if we let a Starfleet officer just barge in here, beat up one of our family, and then stroll out unharmed.”

“I'm not here in an official Starfleet capacity.” Raine countered smoothly. “I'm here because my ex booty-call kidnapped my daughter and her boyfriend.”

“Mom!” Saya exclaimed in embarrassment.

The older Orion with D'Vana's haircut jumps down from the stands and into the arena. “Been awhile since I fought a psychic. Since your girl's family I'll try not to kill you.”

With her right hand she unsheathed a black and silver saber from over her shoulder, and began to walk with purposeful slowness towards Raine. Rolling her eyes at the dramatics, she was caught off guard when the Orion threw a small disc from what the Asari thought was an empty hand.

A flash of light and sound disruptive enough to leave her blind and reeling momentarily filled the arena.

“A fucking flashbang!?”

When Raine had been in the early stages of trying to scientifically study her powers, she had happened upon a bit of a conundrum. Her instinctually generated barrier shouldn't have been able to do what it did given the velocities and angles of the various things it could activate to protect her from.

That question had hounded her up until the Academy, when she had badgered a classmate in the science track to help her figure it out. The end result of that scientific endeavor, was the discovery that Asari had a diffused field of dark energy surrounding their bodies. And the movement of mass through that diffused dark energy created a response that her dark energy sense felt and let her instinctively react to.

All of that was important because it meant that even temporarily blind and deaf her barrier was still perfectly capable of protecting her from the sword that tried to cut off her arm.

“Tsk.” The Orion muttered.

Raine weaved a few steps back to try and minimize further attacks until her vision could clear, even with that however she still felt two more strikes hit her before she could make out the blurry shape of the woman attacking her.

Unfortunately for her that was all Raine needed.

A lift hit the older Orion, and the Asari waited a moment for her to rise into the air before finishing the classic combo with an angled throw that sent the woman flying out of the Arena.

“Aunt D'Rana!” D'Vana yelled in shock.

“Dont worry.” Raine reassured her, rubbing her eyes to try and dispel the still fading spots from her vision. “I angled her low enough that she’ll probably survive.”

“Better for all of us if she doesn’t.” Jellaa muttered, drawing Raine’s attention to the side of the arena where her ex was now on her feet and leaning up against the wall.

“You shush!” Raine angrily yelled. “We could have avoided all of this if you had just stopped by for her birthday party like a normal person instead of whatever this is!”

“She’s trying to overthrow me.” Shona added in drolly.

“The fuck I am!” Jellaa retorted.

“Oh please, dear.” Shona waved off. “You’re not that good at keeping secrets.” She grimaced and her eyes flicked to Saya. “Though I’ll admit, the daughter was a surprise.”

Raine rolled her eyes. “Yeah, great, whatever, don’t care.”

“What!?” Saya exclaimed aghast.

“They’re one of the five families, Saya.” Raine patiently explained. “This sort of thing is Tuesday for them. They’ll fight it out, Jellaa will probably lose,”

“Will not!” Jellaa interjected.

“An example will be made of someone generally unimportant, and your father will be exiled to a job the warrior queen up there considers suitably punishing.”

“Enforcer for our black market operations on Ferenginar.” Shona offered idly.

“Truely a fate worse then death.” Raine agreed, shuddering slightly at the thought of having to deal with that for years on end.

Jellaa growled. “You know what, fuck this.” She looked up at the stands. “Boys! D’Rana’s down for the count! Let’s take our chances!”

With those words the stands devolved into open brawling as various Orion’s pulled out weapons and began fighting each other.

D’Vana glanced awkwardly at her mother. “So… Um?”

“Give it a moment, dear.” Shona reassured, her eyes flicking towards the arena’s gate in a way that made Raine glance over at the entrance and grimace at the quartet of Orion’s wielding flintlock-like disruptors that were raising the portcullis.

Raine dashed at D’Vana, and the Orion teen swung her blade, likely hoping the act would allow her to put some distance between them. Against a normal person that probably would have worked, the Asari however just caught the weapon in her bare hand using her barrier to keep the edge of the blade from coming into contact with skin.

In all her years experimenting with biotics Raine had been able to generate effects which could be seen as potential precursors to all but two of the biotic powers observed in Mass Effect. The irony of course being that those two, Dominate and Stasis, were the ones that would have been the most useful for her career in Starfleet given their distinctly non-lethal natures.

Dominate had been too risky to experiment with in general given the high likelihood of exploding heads. And the closest she had ever gotten to even partially replicating the effects of Stasis was when she had the bright idea to try and surround someone with an inverse barrier.

The inverse barrier had in fact been able to stop someone from moving, however it had never really joined her general suite of used abilities due the annoying fact that she seemed to be completely incapable of forming or maintaining a body hugging barrier around another person at range. 

Unfortunately that meant the only way she could actually put an inverse barrier around someone was when she was in direct physical contact with them. Which made it functionally useless for anything but fakery, intimidation, and party tricks.

But fakery and intimidation were exactly what she wanted right now, so the blue glow of the inverse barrier flowed out from the hand gripping D’Vana’s weapon and the Orion teen was effectively frozen in place.

“Tell your men with disruptors to drop them.” She demanded, staring up at Shona with a defiant look in her eyes as the blue glow of active biotics surrounded the frozen D'Vana. “Or else.”

“You’re bluffing.” Shona retorted, narrowing her eyes at the challenge. “A Starfleet officer would never hurt a child.”

“My mom's an Admiral.” Raine shot back with a faux grin of confidence that she hoped would sell the lie. “And she authorized me to stab as many people as needed to get her granddaughter back home safely.”

“The dubious quality of Starfleet’s admiralty is quite well known.” Shona smirked. “But I know a bluff when I see it.”

A loud thunk announced the gate being locked into place, and Raine growled. “Fuck it.”

She threw her free hand forward, and a somewhat anemic shockwave flew out to impact the ground the group of armed Orion’s was running through. Small explosions went off, and they were sent flying into the passage walls like pins hit by a bowling ball.

Grabbing D’Vana’s frozen form in an underarm carry so they couldn’t bring out any heavy artiller to use against them, she turned to her confused looking daughter. “Run!”

“But–” Saya began.

“Run now, explain later!” Raine yelled, waiting a moment to make sure her daughter was listening before following suit.

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Author’s Notes: As much as Raine might be able to fight off a good portion of the Orion’s, that comes with the addendum that she would also need to keep Saya safe while doing it. And well, the mission was to get Saya back, not take out the Orions.