Unfortunately, his badass moment is cut short. 

The moment he completes the turn, a knife lodges itself into his left shoulder. 

What the.. hell? 

"AH!" 

For once, Ziun can't help the loud yell of pain he lets out. The attack was entirely unexpected; it pierced between his shoulder joint—probably severing the muscles there if the sudden limpness of his arm was anything to go by.

"Forget about me?" Damn it. Of course it's her! 

He quickly goes to grab the wrist attached to the knife but ends up meeting air. She'd abandoned her combat knife just to evade his reach. However, Ziun simply yanks the knife out, swallows a cry, and paints on a vicious grin as if to say: Thanks for the weapon. 

He makes to chase after her even with his useless arm and spasming leg but she'd made good distance and all Ziun ends up faced with is a nozzle belonging to those goddamned phasers. 

Oddly, the owner of this gun hadn't chosen to shoot at him the moment they had the chance to. Ziun doesn't think too deeply on it, because the untimely assistance of that energy flushes through his systems and congregates near the nape of his neck once again. 

"Amran, watch out!" The captain shouts in warning but it arrives too late. 

Ominously, things seem to play out in slow motion. Ziun sees the hair trigger movement of their finger as they go to 'fire', but he beats them to it. 

That intangible substance releases itself in a tunnelled wave of force.

The sleek barrel chamber of their phaser unnaturally bulges but doesn’t explode. The 'shockwave' travels through the entirety of the weapon, leaving it intact as it continues to go on to inevitably warp the arms of its wielder.  

"Stop it!" Someone cries. Ziun can't identify who. "Please!!"

Something in his gut clenches. "I.." His mouth is suddenly dry, unable to tear his eyes away from the horrific sight. I can't, is what he wants to say. How was he supposed to control something he didn't even understand?

In the end, the guards arms are not granted the same mercy as the gun. 

They burst.

"AHHHH—!" 

"AMRAN!!"

The shouts rang out at the same time, almost cancelling the other out from the matching volume. Blood pours endlessly from the wound, bucketfulls of it soaking the floor and splattered on the surrounding walls. 

Morbidly, Ziun thinks its an artistic contrast that helps to break up the monotomy of the room. 

"You..ugh!" The guard with no arms simply gurgles at him. They continue to sound out gibberish as they convulse, "Hel..p.. urg. Whr! Pprf.."

Vomit, he realises. They probably vomitted from the shock and pain. 

Their captain reaches out to catch them but she misses and they stumble back into the wall. Even with her hands fussing over them, searching their pockets for what Ziun thought should be some kind of emergency medical aid... he instinctively knew it was too late.

"Cap.. captain," the sharpshooter trips over their words, little as they were.

The atmosphere turns solemn. The mumbling stops. 

"We all knew the risks accepting this job," is all she says. 

Weirdly its like the room shifts into a cutscene; nobody makes a move, all of them holding bated breath as their most recent casualty tilts, making no more verbal noise as they tip over sideways and drag against the wall, silent still as they breathed their last. 

Ziun... doesn't understand it. How? Who? How? Their death was too quick for it to make sense.

'Think of it this way..' He tried to reason through the processing trauma, 'It's one less player on the field.' 

Right.

Someone just died and that was all he could say about it? 

'You've got to focus, Ziun!'

The Captain shifts, making to get up only to collapse into a heap beside the recently deceased. Ziun swears he hears her cry, but he's immediately distracted by the way her ankle seems to be bent at an unnatural angle and — oh. He must've broken it by accident during their first spat where he'd ended up throwing her.

He was not proud at this show of strength. It was worrying that he had no control over it to the point that he didn't even realise what he'd done.

“You—!" A voice roars, breaking the quiet mourning. "Fucking die!” Now with no one to hold them back—their captain so overcome with grief that she was on the verge of dissociating—it seems that same berserker guard from earlier decides they’ve had enough of waiting at the sidelines. 

"Hah!" Ziun grunts as their weapons clash; his stolen combat knife screeching against their short sword. Their clash was a long time coming, but it still didn’t fully prepare him for the mercilessness of his assault. 

The mad guard does everything within their power to further injure Ziun, chasing after this goal with a scarily single-minded focus by kicking and swiping at him whenever the opportunity present itself; regardless of if it left any openings in their own defense. 

"Is that all you've got?!" The Berserker taunts but Ziun likens it to a sneer instead. They moved with a kind of savage grace that would be fascinating to witness if he wasn't the one who was currently facing it.

Logically, Ziun should be the one losing ground. He's injured to the point of disability, with his mystical force of power rendered useless by that cloak that covers the guard. And yet. He's winning. 

At some point his wounds had stopped bleeding; the glass embedded in his feet nothing but phantom pains, and the hole in his leg sewn shut with that same pulsating energy he had previously used as a shockwave. He wasn't magically healed. His more grievous wounds had simply been staunched, finally. 

It did not escape his notice that the adrenaline thundering throughout his body was currently his biggest benefactor.  

"Come on!" His opponent howls, ignoring the deep stab to his side that Ziun was sure pierced a lung, simply to headbutt him. 

Ziun's neck snaps back from the force before he stupidly copies to move, head slamming forward. 

The glass in their mask cracks. From inside he sees a tan forehead coated in a thin layer of blood. Good. 

The guard stills, visibly disorientated. They wheeze, as if only now aware of the whole in their side. Ziun was not above drilling the knife in deeper and creating a gouge. 

He pulls back, drawing a crackling gasp from the looming guard. In the relaxing of their assault Ziun is able to finally spot a vulnerable point in their armour and promptly jabs his knife into it. The break in armour to fabric happened to be located at the junction between their neck and shoulder. The weapon gets lodged in there, stuck between muscle and whatnot, but instead of responsibly abandoning it to back up, Ziun reinforces his grip so he can drag it down.

"—RGH!"

It’s another grievous wound. In fact, combined with a failing lung, and the fact that he was sure that he'd shattered their collarbone with that move.. how the guard is even still standing amazes him.

Still. It's not like they were completely unaffected.

The Berseker's body stumbles back as a shaking hand comes up to stop the flow of blood leaking from the jagged wound that ran from their shoulder down to their armpit. They bend forward with an aborted shout, trying to close the whole in their side that continued to bleed. 

If Ziun had managed to dig any deeper just now then their whole arm would’ve been severed. As it stands though, he’s rendered it useless. And seeing as it was their dominant hand he'd just crippled, so was the majority of their attack power.

The short sword clangs to the floor at their feet. Ziun doesn't spare it a glance as he uses the break in their confrontation to catch his breath. 

He needed to think. 

Think!

Even now there were still too many variables. The sharpshooter was still a problem, as were the unknown intent of those lab-coat wearing bystanders. That wasn't even addressing what kind of hidden mechanics this room held. Obviously it was deadly enough if it had contained him for who knows how long. He doubts that they'd just relied on the tank to keep him subdued. 

SQUE—

Unfortunately he's not given too much downtime. 

In front of him, jumping out from the cover of that beserker leaps the sharpshooter. They raise their 'rifle' to take aim.

His eyes narrow accordingly.

“Shit! Adam, move—!”

The sharpshooter, now identified as ‘Adam’, nervously jolts at the shout. 

Ziun easily noticed the way the mans knees trembled and hands shook. By the time he recovered his nerve — it's too late. Ziun has already arrived in front of him, and the gun’s barrel barely rushes against his forehead before he ducks and swats it towards the ceiling with his good arm.

Bang!

Predictably, the shot misses. He knew it would, and such confidence is what gives him the upper hand. 

He takes advantage of Adam's shock to deliver a devastating sockerpunch to his chin and lower jaw. Something cracks but it's much too late for Ziun to start worrying about their wellbeing.

Keeping up the momentum, Ziun twirls around them to make it harder for him to get another clear shot of him. Now behind 'Adam', Ziun kicks right at the back of his knees. He instantly falls to the floor with a muffled groan.

Ziun doesn’t waste the opportunity presented to him. His hand becomes an extension of his arm as his fingers slot close together, streamline, as he aims at the mans neck and chops.

He tips forward, face first, and with a resounding thud upon hitting the floor.

The 'rifle' clatters to the ground, longe-range threat completely nulled. A dull expression overtakes Ziun's face. As the man fell, he realised that he felt the guard’s neck completely cave in the moment he finished following through with his attack— which could only mean one thing.

‘I.. I used too much strength.’

There was a difference in maiming and straight up killing someone. 

Whether the guard is still alive from a, frankly, rather brutal blow, isn’t something Ziun can afford to worry about. Like he'd thought, that Berserker hadn't let such a debilitating injury hinder them for long. They rain down on him with a certain ferocity that he was lacking before. Maybe, like Ziun, they know of their comrades slim chance of survival.

"Today you die by my blade!" Ziun didn't even have the time to cringe from their one liner. The only guard still standing swipes at him with the feralness of a beast. They’re not as fast as their leader though, less skilled and sloppy the longer the fight drags on. 

At the thought of the female guard, Ziun flicks his gaze around the room and is shocked to find her body nowhere near where he’d left her. Their leader had, at some point, crawled her way to somewhere Ziun was incapable of currently reaching — because he’s being pushed back and away from where she rests beside the body of their teammate who had died on impact against the wall.

‘Fuck!’ Ziun couldn't help but curse. He could visibly see her patting her dead dead dead dead teammates body down.

She was the only one he had noticed posed a real threat to him. Her cunning, her reaction time — they were on par with his. Sure, his current foe was ferocious. But they relied too much on brute strength. Previously, it must've been their specialty — but they were too easily matched by Ziun. The Captain was someone of higher skill so like hell Ziun was going to let her do whatever it was she had undoubtedly planned. It was already bad enough that his entire arm was going to be out of commission soon; whatever had been connecting his severed arm muscles was dissipating. 

If another element was added to this fight then it was bound to end in his loss.

By some holy interference or sheer luck that Ziun thought he’d completely run out of, that same, godforsaken pressure builds up once again at the base of his neck. He barely notices that the location is slightly different, that it feels more like a wave of nausea at its potency rather than a source of strength like before. Either way — Ziun is expecting the same kind of result as the first time, so he doesn’t hesitate to flex the muscles around the area and release that fake ‘tension’.

“Cough, cough!” “Ugh!”

Various groaning, moaning and general sounds of pain, entered Ziun’s ears. A quick look around shows that the remaining two guards are in differing states of incapacitation. 

The Berserker rips their mask off, revealing a masculine face with heavy scarring. He slams down onto a knee, a thick, heavy trail of blood overflowing from his mouth suggesting an internal rupture of some kind —or it could just be the culmination of injuries. The Captain, on the other hand, holds herself up on her forearms, periodically letting out laboured breaths that sounded more like dry-heaving. 

Her mask was still firmly in place.

"FUC—blergh!" The broad man is interrupted from his cursing by him vomiting up what looked like his breakfast, lunch, and even dinner.

Ziun is a bit speechless. This.. certainly wasn’t the kind of reaction he was expecting, but he would be an idiot if he didn’t take advantage of it. But before he can — the unmasked guard launches himself up and barrels towards him. In his distraction the man manages to land a heavy, heavy blow on his vulnerable shoulder joint. 

"ARG—!" Ziun lets out a pained shout, vision becoming blotchy for just a split second— but it’s error enough for the ‘berserker’s’ hands to somehow find a purchase around his neck. 

"You fucker! See if you can release your pheremones now..!?" 

Ziun struggled for air but it wasn't enough to stop his mind from stirring. 

Pheremones!!? 

The revelation felt like a clap of thunder.

'Was that the cause of that second wave of power?!'

And yes. Ziun is aware that he should instead be focusing more at his sudden lack of air and not literally anything else right now. But he’s.. not panicking? In fact he doesn't think he's been more focused, more aware, when the grip on his throat continues to painfully tighten.

If his dick wasn't as limp as a wet noodle then he'd almost say it was a kink.

With this warped clarity, Ziun finds himself able to trace the vestiges of that suspicious strength hiding in his body to artificically bolster himself again but it feels — different. New. He can't afford to investigate though, so instead he just takes the win and switches the knife into the grip of his ragdoll arm.

Perhaps he should've just used his naturally functioning arm. But he hadn't, simply for the element of surprise; Ziun doubted that the guard expected this arm of his to be any use at all. It increased the chances of his plans success.

“Liamand! Look out!”

Although not even aimed at him, Ziun ignores this warning shout as he puts all his focus into navigating his arm. 

With a never-seen-before kind of speed, he jabs the knife in his grasp into the side of the guards head. Ziun knows it was a lethal hit because when he pulls the knife out just as quickly as he’d stabbed it forward, a worrying amount of blood had coated the blade and dramatically spurted out from the wound. 

The grip on his neck abruptly loosens as the guard takes one, two steps back before falling to the floor, dead. 

Liamand. 

'Liamand, Liamand, Liamand, Li..'

He was probably the first guard Ziun had willingly killed.