Crack! Fill for the ME kinkmeme – first impressions of humanity

'It's clearly asari. What else has those funny chest bumps? Maybe the non-blue skin tone was what Tevos meant by a rare genetic variation when she clammed up about the monastery on Kallini. '

Quintius' mandibles flickered in amusement as his roommate at the Hierarchy Diplomatic Academy continued his tirade at the vid footage from the turian scouting cruiser Impera. Quintius had seen the footage of this... "new race," but this was relatively new to Sparatus, who had only just come back as a junior attaché with the diplomat to the hanar, and the comm buoys along the route from Kahje were patchy at best.

Grainy but still distinguishable footage of an unknown vessel appeared on the extranet screen, zooming into the front windows, where a pale, feminine figure with a strange fringe was visible in the cockpit.

Quintius agreed that these beings looked superficially like asari, but with the skin tone of a pinkish salarian. Eurgh.

Then another figure entered the screen. Clearly masculine this time.

'And that? Salarian-asari offspring?'

'Ah, yes-wait, you're playing with me aren't you Quintius. Salarian-asari offspring would still be asari, Spirits. Maybe a hybrid mutant instead? Or unmasked quarians, who knows what's under their suits?'

Another masculine figure strode into view, this time with a frame-like contraption over its eyes.

'Four-eyes! The males must be batarian! As ugly as them too!'

Truly Quintius appreciated Sparatus' increasingly desperate attempts to avoid a war; although for Sparatus it was most likely to keep the status quo, rather than his own pacifist (not a pushover as his asari contemporary Irissa over at the Thessian embassy likde to say) nature.

More aliens came into view on what appeared to be the flightdeck. Male and female, of varying skin tones and fringe lengths; unaware that the turian vessel was recording one of the first glimpses of the " species " or what Sparatus was trying to pass off as a motley crew of pirates.

A rather hulking and red-faced variant came into view, yelling at its fellows.

'A krogan! Look at that bulk on its torso. It's angry, just wait for the headbutt! Wait for it...wait what is that creature doing by bending its claw things in the air when it talks?'

Because Sparatus just calls for crack. I'm not sure if he picked up the "air quotes" from humanity or after. (I only added the last two lines after I cross posted to kmeme.)

Also headcanon! that the human ship here wasn't fried once it was seen by the turian cruiser, because that crew was slack-mandibled with confusion about these squish aliens

PS may post another chapter involving 3yo Shepard and his impressions of aliens.