Pharah doesn't drink. Alcohol dulls the senses, and from the youngest of ages she has been taught to keep those sharpest. Otherwise how is she supposed to do her job? Not well is the answer. Which doesn't explain why the woman is presently sitting at a bar with a duo of shots lined up in front of her. The reason being that Pharah no longer has a job to do, because she's been fired.
"And they wouldn't even let me back on the premises to look for my mother's pendant," the woman laments, reaching for one of the shot glasses. Resting the smooth rim against her lip, Pharah tips back her head and knocks back the liquor all in one. She's observed friends and co-workers handling their drink long enough to at least know how it's done.
"That's pretty harsh."
Pharah coughs roughly in response; her throat certainly agrees with that statement as prickly heat washes down it. A friendly chuckle comes from beside her, followed by the flat rhythm of a palm against her back.
"Take it easy. You're supposed to be drowning your sorrows, not yourself."
With a hand pressed to her chest, Pharah gives a shake of the head and blinks moisture out of her eyes. "Thank you," she says to her impromptu drinking partner. The woman merely shrugs and smiles. Pharah sets down her shot glass, eyeing the next somewhat apprehensively. "I shouldn't even be drinking," she says then, "I'm breaking her rules."
"Rules?"
"My mother made me promise her two things," Pharah explains, "never to drink, and to always finish the mission. Today, I've broken both."
The latter in the very early hours of that morning, to be precise.
Lieutenant Fareeha Amari stands in the security command centre of the Giza Plateau's top secret A.I research facility, hidden away in the technologically transformed depths of the Temple of Anubis. Save for her helmet, she is fully suited up in the Raptora Mark VI. Outfitted explicitly by Helix Security International for combat situations, Fareeha is so proficient in its embrace that the woman inherits the call sign 'Pharah': she who takes to the skies at a moment's notice and scorches the earth beneath her.
Unfortunately, Pharah is not enough to stop the intruder.
There is no subtlety about it, not even an attempt at a covert entrance; he simply walks right through the front door. Alarms are triggered, cameras hastily swivel to pin their lenses to every brazen inch of the trespasser, and Pharah stares at the feed with eyes pulled wide in complete shock. There he stands, tall, hulking and armoured entirely in gold plating, an opaque neon-green strip etched across the front of his sleek, burnished orange helmet. And equipped with a giant cannon for a right arm.
Samus Aran. Her hero.
"You looked up to him?" Pharah's drinking partner asks at that point, as she recounts the event. One that she certainly should not be telling in the middle of a crowded bar, but dammit if Pharah is going to drown her sorrows she's going to do it properly, and that means giving up all her cares for the world for the evening. She practically scoffs at the question.
"How couldn't I? After the war? After what he did for us, for the whole Federation?"
Tales of his actions on Norion, coupled later with the almost single-handed destruction of an entire parasitic planet that would have served to be a devastating blight on the Galactic Federation, spreads far and wide across its territories. Earth is no stranger to the story of Samus Aran. By her late teens, Pharah is practically a scholar. Which is why she can do little more than watch as he walks through HSI's security personnel with a seeming lack of effort.
Balls of light spit from the barrel of Samus' arm cannon, folding men and women in half left, right and centre. Electricity crawls all over their powered, HSI-branded suits and bones turn to jelly, firearms clattering to the floor of the facility's atrium. Pharah is both terrified, exhilarated and rooted to the spot in a state of flux between the two. And it is only when Samus incapacitates the last of the security forces that she remembers she has a job to do. Lives, property and potentially the future of Mankind to protect.
Finish the mission, as Pharah's mother would have said. In the end, that's the only thing that matters.
"A good motto," her drinking partner says, "it'll get you by."
Pharah, however, makes a face.
"You don't agree?"
She lifts the second shot glass to her lips, though this time nurses the liquor more carefully. "Not when it gets you killed."
Powerful thrusters boost Pharah high into the air as she enters the atrium, crowned with her helmet and a combat HUD displayed on the visor pulled over her eyes. She manoeuvres around Samus' welcoming shots with relative ease, returning the greeting via a volley of explosive rocket rounds. They tear into the floor of the atrium, chewing into pristine white tiles and scattering jagged chunks metres in every direction. Not a single one meets its intended target, however, Samus bounding away in his own display of evasive skill. It's disconcerting how fast he can move given the sheer bulk of his armour, but their initial exchange gives Pharah a boost in confidence. The skies are her domain, and up here nothing can touch her.
Except the guided missiles that are promptly belched from the black maw of Samus' arm cannon. Plural. Five of them, to be exact, launched at such velocity in the relatively enclosed space of the atrium that Pharah's combat HUD doesn't quite know what to do with them all. So she dodges the first, the second, shoots the third right out of the air – but the fourth and fifth sneak out of sight amidst the confusion, delivering an explosive one-two punch to the Raptora's thruster jets.
Pharah is falling, her wings aflame and her senses in pieces. Her ears ring like shattering glass and the woman can't tell up from down. The ground is the sky and the sky is the ground, and the sky seems to looming ever closer extremely quickly. Maybe she'll land on her back, snap her spine and be cruelly rendered immobile for the rest of her life. Or perhaps an armoured foot would swing out of nowhere like a professional footballer's boot, catching Pharah squarely in the chest.
The Raptora suit protects her one last time; that kick would have caved in her ribcage and no doubt come out the other side. Unfortunately, there is nothing to save the Raptora suit. It crunches with a horrible metallic whine, screeching along the floor as Pharah's downward momentum becomes horizontal.
"Sounds like he saved your life," Pharah's acquaintance remarks.
"And made it much easier for HSI to give me the axe in the process," she replies. "That suit was a prototype, one of a kind. Very expensive."
The woman beside her sips her drink. "Well, personally I'd prefer wearing the final product, not being the experimental phase. Too many things that could go wrong generally do."
Pharah arches her brow. "You speak from experience?"
"Just a little."
More than a few stars dance across Pharah's vision after the woman rolls violently to an eventual halt against a wall, stars Samus Aran has no doubt visited in his lifetime, stars she'll never see in her own. Because she must finish the mission. Rocket launcher nowhere in sight, combat HUD little more than fuzzy static painted across a severely cracked visor, Pharah reaches blindly for her thigh, aches and pains assaulting her all the way. But then an arm cannon is pointing directly in her face, along with the sole of a heavy boot that comes down ever so slightly to pin her wrist between it and the floor.
"Don't."
A single word, spoken in utter monotone like a command issued from a robot, sends a chill down Pharah's back. She could disobey; she should, in fact. That is her job. What she ought to do is detonate a concussive blast, using the distraction to buy herself time to reach for the service pistol tucked away in the Raptor's thigh compartment. And then? Then she would fight, then Pharah would finish the mission. Except she wouldn't, because she couldn't. Because as much as she strived to follow in her esteemed footsteps, to live up to her proud memory, Pharah is not her mother.
Sometimes, one's life was not worth sacrificing.
The weight of Samus' boot mercifully dissipates as he lowers his arm cannon and turns away. Pharah knows he could have ground her wrist to paste in an instant. That Samus would choose to walk away without doing so evidences the fact that beneath that opaque, neon-green visor are eyes of piercing intelligence. The fight has gone out of her – not from cowardice, but understanding. This is a battle she could never have won.
"What are you going to do?" Pharah calls after Samus' retreating figure. "Do you even know what's down there?"
He pauses, first crouching on one knee for some reason Pharah can't discern, then turning to look around huge, golden shoulders. "Do you?"
Asking what Samus was going to do is a redundant question, in retrospect. Pharah has heard enough tales; wherever Samus Aran goes, destruction is sure to follow. She does the only thing she can think of in his absence and limps off to call for help. It's already on it's way, given the number of alarms Samus triggers. But by the time it arrives the damage is already done, calculated in years of research and untold millions in investments.
"Did they tell you what was down there?" her friend for the evening asks.
Pharah looks across at the woman. She's been doing that pretty frequently while regaling her.
She introduces herself as Sam when she comes up to the bar, perching herself on a nearby stool. Pharah assumes it's short for Samantha. Either way, she can't help but take note of Sam's physical attributes, firstly because before sitting down she is the tallest woman Pharah has ever seen. Not to mention the broadness of her shoulders. No doubt they'd easily bear Pharah's weight on the journey home when she fell deep enough into drunken stupor. Calloused fingertips lightly clutch a half-empty glass, strong, seasoned hands that would probably know just what to do with her. So would those full lips, slowly following the line of Pharah's jaw as her head lolls back against a soft pillow. And she certainly wouldn't mind winding her fingers into Sam's long, thick hair, enjoying the sight of the woman's face trapped between her thighs.
Wow. Oh, alcohol is definitely starting to do the thinking now. Sure, Pharah has a thing for older blondes (she's certain Sam is the more mature between them, even if she does glow with good health) and ponytails, but that would make for an awkward conversation with the good doctor tomorrow morning. With a shake of the head, she reminds herself of Sam's question.
"A.I research," she replies, "that's all I was told. Research that would be of great benefit to us in time."
Sam gives a wry chuckle. "That's all they ever tell you, until something goes wrong and the cavalry get called in to clean up the mess."
Pharah tilts her head, eyes narrowed a little. "Private military, right?"
Sam laughs after a moment, casually swirling her drink. "Yes, I suppose you could say I am."
"Thought as much," Pharah says, almost with a sigh of relief, "it was either that or a very well built tourist."
Eyebrows arch above amused green eyes. "Was that a compliment?"
Pharah quickly downs the remainder of her shot.
An hour or so later, she lurches out of the bar, supported by an arm linked through hers. The night air is warm and there's a pleasant buzz in her stomach. Pharah is content to lean against the strong shoulder helping to keep her upright as cars trundle by amidst the city's illuminated nightlife. "So," Sam says, "am I walking you home?"
Pharah gives a heavy sigh, then lifts her head up off the woman's shoulder. "I can't," she replies. "Sorry."
Sam gives her an understanding smile. "Taxi it is, then."
It doesn't take long to flag one down. Pharah groans as she gets in, feeling as though her head just grew too heavy for her neck to support. Her eyes are squeezed shut as she rubs at her temples, so she misses the interaction between Sam and the driver. But there is certainly a reason Pharah gets home via the shortest route possible and the man does not move an inch from the kerb until the door shuts firmly behind her. Before then, however, Pharah is treated to her own, one she isn't likely to forget for a long time.
"Lieutenant."
Pharah slowly opens her eyes, and turns to look out the window through which Sam is leaning, extending a hand into the taxi. Not once tonight had she told the woman of her rank.
"I believe you dropped this."
Pharah stares, for the longest, quietest moment, and then silently cups trembling hands underneath Sam's. From out of which tips her mother's pendant. And she remembers: Samus Aran crouching low to the ground, before turning to answer her question with his own. She remembers how tall he stood, as outside the car Sam straightens up, how intimidating even the blank stare of a neon visor was as she meets the woman's green eyes. The width of her shoulders, upon which she had laid her pounding head dreaming not at all appropriately, and finally Pharah remembers the stories, the many hours of her youth spent wondering what it would be like to meet Samus Aran. To see him in the flesh.
Or rather, her.
Pharah doesn't know what to say, or even how to say it, and she is given no time to put the myriad of thoughts whirling chaotically through her head into words. Samus slaps the top of the taxi twice, and the driver takes off.
The video call comes as a surprise to Angela, not due to being unplanned – a long distance relationship is hard work and both women are dedicated to maintaining it – but due to the fact that Fareeha appears on her screen holding an icepack to her temple.
"Goodness," Angela says, immediately concerned, "what happened to you?"
"Good morning to you too," the woman replies with a grimace, "and please don't shout. I'm hungover."
Angela blinks. "Hungover?"
"Yeah."
"But you don't drink."
"I did last night. Far too much, to be perfectly honest."
Angela pauses. "Is everything alright, Fareeha?"
She sighs, momentarily lifting the icepack away from her brow only to think better of it with a twinge of discomfort. "Well, I have some bad news and some good news."
"Okay," Angela says slowly, "what's the bad news?"
"HSI fired me yesterday."
Angela lifts a hand to her mouth. "Oh no. Fareeha, I'm so sorry. What happened?"
"That's the good news," the woman says, offering a genuine, if albeit slightly pained smile. "Since I'm a free agent now, I'll be flying out tomorrow to come see you."
Angela, taken aback by the abrupt decision but still pleasantly surprised, watches as the woman's smile grows, her left hand rising to play with the pendant looped around her neck.
"You're not going to believe just who got me fired."