A/N: Yeah, took a little detour with this one. Strangely enough, I had a dream where Damara was doing the Uncharted/Tomb Raider thing and thought it was simply epic, so I decided to write it down. And of course, you can never have archaeology without everyone's favorite archaeologist, now can you?
"Liara... why am I here?"
A tired sigh reached her ears, "Same thing you were doing five minutes ago, Shepard."
"Right..." Damara leaned forward slightly, peering off the narrow precipice she was currently inching along, wincing as she mentally calculated the distance between her and the rather deep looking water below her. "And I'm the one risking her neck because...?"
Behind her, standing in the stone doorway they had entered through, Liara chuckled softly, her fingers tracing a strange script and brow furrowing in concentration, "Because you're more athletic than I am." She stood up and brushed her hands off, shooting her an amused grin, "That and I'm not nearly as reckless as you are."
"Thanks babe..." Damara ignored the sarcastic 'Anytime' response and took a deep breath, concentrating on the cliff opposite her. She braced her elbows against the wall and crouched down slightly, closing her eyes, "I got this. Just a little leap. No big deal." She whispered to herself, cracking her right eyelid open and looking down and laughing nervously, "No big deal. Yeah right, I there is 300 meters and a jagged rock down there saying otherwise..."
She took one more deep breath before kicking her legs as hard as possible, her elbows shoving the rock behind her and propelling her forward. "Hooooooly shiiiiiiiiiit!" She called out, her chest slamming into the cliff and her arms scrabbling for a purchase. Her fingers miraculously found a crevice and dug in, stopping her backwards slide. She kicked frantically with her booted feet and scrambled onto the plateau, rolling onto her back and breathing heavily, thrusting her fists in the air, "Yeah! Yeaaahahaha!"
She heard clapping from across the ravine, "Beautifully done, Mara! All the practiced grace of a krogan in an earthquake..." Liara ducked as a small rock sailed overhead, yelping slightly.
"Alright Smurfette, what's next?" Damara grinned as Liara's eyes narrowed angrily at the use of her least-favorite nickname. She rather huffily pulled out a data pad, turning it slightly, "It would seem... there is some sort of mechanism for lowering that block overhead."
Damara glanced around, snapping her fingers as she examined a pedestal, "I think I have something here..." she touched the stone block and it flashed, popping a hand crank out. Damara hesitantly grabbed the handle and pulled, to no avail. She shifted her position, placing both hands on the handle and pulling with all her might. The crank inched slightly, mimicked by the block above the ravine lowering a hair, showering Liara with a cloud of dust and dirt. Damara moved to the opposite side of the crank and pushed, her deeply treaded boots digging into the dirt-covered stone as she inched the handle ever so slowly, bending over so as to put her weight into the effort.
Liara hid a grin behind her hand, her eyes fixed on Shepard's khaki-shorts clad bottom as it strained against the ancient mechanism. Damara emitted a startled yelp as the handle suddenly gave way, the rock free-falling from its perch and landing with a loud crash, throwing up a massive cloud of dirt.
Liara pulled herself to her feet, coughing and waving the dust away, peering Damara's direction, "Damara? Are you okay? Mara!" She inched forward, finding the slab of stone had miraculously landed in the slots carved for it.
She heard a groan, followed by a few short coughs, "Yeah... I'm dandy... I think I broke the... uh... doohickey here though." As the dust settled, Liara saw Damara hesitantly inching across the stone, her blue tank top now a shade of greyish brown, as was her normally crimson-red hair. She grinned and looked down at the rock, "I made a bridge though!"
Rolling her eyes, Liara retrieved her bag, tossing Damara's roughly at her midsection, "I'm so glad you're having fun, darling. Never mind you destroyed a complex stone mechanism created by a species that predates both of our species combined."
"Goddess, you're such a killjoy when you're in "archaeologist" mood." Damara huffed, flipping the bag over her shoulder and moving back across the bridge. Liara smirked again, noticing Damara's use of the term 'goddess'. They had quickly realized that, upon spending a few weeks together, they had quickly adopted quirks and oddities from the other. Liara increasingly found herself using the term "I should go" and "shiny" in place of her usual verbal outbursts.
Damara skipped energetically up the stone stairway, skidding to a halt as she reached the top. "A door! This bastard's huge!" she called out, her hands roaming the usual opening mechanism locations. The door was easily 40 meters tall and half as wide, clicked loudly and groaned on its hinges as it began to creep open slightly. Damara dropped her pack and squeezed through the door as soon as it had opened a tick, leaving a rather irritated asari in her wake.
"Sweet... Jesus..." She heard Damara exclaim. Liara dropped her pack and briskly slid through the crack in the door, almost tripping as her foot caught on the edge. "What's so impress-"her words died on her lips as she looked up.
They were standing on a balcony of sorts, below them stretched an enormous cavern, easily the size of the human station Jump Zero. Filling the cavern was a maze of stone high-rise buildings, some stretching all the way up to the ceiling, others winding up the cavern walls.
Damara grabbed her hand and let out a victorious howl, her free hand forming a fist in front of her, "Suck it, academia! Foolhardy, untrained rookies; 1, stodgy professors; zero." She laughed, staring out at the city. Her laugher died off and she looked down, back up, and over at Liara, "Uhm... now what?"
"Look for another switch. There has to be a ladder or a ramp or something that leads down from here." Liara carefully examined the ledge nearest her, her hands shaking slightly in anticipation. Damara, again, let out a victorious exclamation as her hand depressed a section of the rock. The entire ledge shook roughly, throwing both girls off their feet and throwing up yet another cloud of dirt and dust. After an interminable time, the shaking ceased and the dust slowly began to clear.
Liara pulled herself to her feet, coughing violently and trying to wave the dust away from her face. She looked down and saw, much to her excitement, that a stairway had materialized out of the rock-face, leading down to the city below. Damara had taken the liberty of grabbing their packs and they descended the staircase together, each with their own thoughts about what the city would hold.
They reached what appeared to be a communal square with four streets snaking deeper into the city. Damara whistled and approached a crystalline statue standing in the center of the courtyard, "That's... what is that?" She tilted her head, "That could be worth a fortune if you could move it. I wonder if it's fragile..." her touch caused the statue to crack loudly and shatter, reducing it to a pile of blue shards in a matter of seconds. Damara slowly pulled her arm back, "Uhm... well... answered one question... I suppose..."
Liara groaned and buried her face in her hands. This was going to be a very, very long dig.
A/N: Just a fun little chapter, didn't even bother establishing what race made the massive underground city, nor what our two lovebirds were looking for. Hope you enjoyed it, I plan on getting back to my primary fanfiction soon, just running into a slight mental block, but that should be sorted out soon. Cheers!
