Chapter Two

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"Daddy?"

Turning his attention away from the produce he was examining for tonight's stew he wanted to make for himself, Michael rounded back and found Aliani standing there like she was the most innocent thing in the world. In her talons was a box of Frosted FLEET-Os. Complimenting her sweet smile was her eyes looking up to him; they wide and dilated as though she had found his weakness and was attempting to exploit it to the best of her ability.

"Look, it comes with a toy dreadnought in the box. It can hover annnd it launches missiles!" she exclaimed as though that was the selling point. "Can I please get it? Pleeease!?"

Michael's lips pushed together as he eyed her with mild amusement at just how well she was trying to sell it to him. He ignored the small throbbing ache in the pit of his gut. It was the exact same sort of sales tactic his human girls tried to use on him what now felt like an eon ago. It seemed as though regardless the species, a child was still just a child.

Doing what he did best: suppressing the guilt that he survived and innocent children died, Michael returned her toothy looking with one of his own and took the box from her and carefully examined it as though she had. Ali slipped her arms behind her back and stood almost on ceremony as she awaited his judgement.

"A toy dreadnought you say? It can hover and it fires missiles? That is pretty cool," he murmured with feigned interest. "Does it also come with a coupon for a discount for a dentist when your teeth start rotting? Do you have any idea how expensive turian specialized dentistry on a human colony world is?"

Aliani probably didn't have any realistic concept of what he was talking about, but she knew the gist of his conclusion: she wasn't going to be getting the box this time. Michael watched, trying not to wince or feel guilty as the expression of confidence she wore started to vanish, replaced by an expression of bewilderment that her old dad was not going to fall for her charms this time around.

"But…" she sputtered out as though she had been betrayed. "But I said 'please'…"

Michael nodded, lips pursed together as he handed the box back to her.

"And I appreciate you having manners… but I said no," Michael returned curtly as he dropped his hand on her shoulder. "We'll get it next trip, now please go and put it back."

He sighed; perhaps he should have gotten it for her. This afternoon must have been pretty rough on his girl.

It was about six days after Aliani came home in distress to admit what she was enduring, that Aliani finally snapped and took his suggestion about having talons to heart. Michael was on his jobsite when he was called in for a parent teacher meeting. When he arrive, he found Aliani with a bruised mandible, and just as he was about to flew into a rage, he noticed six girls with med-gel coating cuts on their faces, all them sitting with their parents.

True to his word, Michael did not let his girl take the fall. Instead he took the heat for what Ali did on his permission. The girls were all dismissed and he got to spend the next hour or so listening to the principal, teacher, guidance council and the parents of his daughter's bully's rail away at him like he was the bad guy.

He let them have get their say in. It felt only fair considering they were the ones who had children gently mangled by a foot taller turian; but when they stopped complaining, it was his turn, and he offered up quite the alternative look at the situation. Yes, he conceded his daughter was much stronger than the pack of human girls, but quietly he went into detail about Aliani's treatment at the hands of the girls who had taken it upon themselves to bully her. For how long it happened, he did not know. He doubted he would get an answer from Ali. She might have broken down and told him, but she was extremely proud, so he had no idea how long it lasted. As he talked he ignored the growing discomfort of the parents, and while, yes, while he conceded that Aliani had physically attacked a pack of smaller girls, the fact that it was not unprovoked became clear to every adult now involved.

As a result, now Aliani would not be the only one to be punished. For the next week or so, they would be doing lunch time detention with guidance councillors, attempting to work through their differences rather than straight out punish the group. While naturally Michael thought she didn't deserve it, he could understand the reasons behind it. Fighting was still fighting, and if there was a chance that some sort of good could still end up being salvaged from this incident, then it was worth a shot.

Placing a bag of carrots into his cart, he turned around and headed off in the direction of the dextro section of the market. It was still a new thing for him to get used, trusting her enough to let her go off on her own, or walk home from school. While he knew it was a natural part of growing up, it didn't easy the occasional flashes of panic it gave him, not having her in his sights.

Smiling briefly at an employee of the store, he froze as he heard it.

"My father was in the army. Are you in the army?" he heard his daughter speak excited in the other aisle. "Did you fight the Reapers?!"

"Ahhh no, I am not in the military."

The voice belonged to a woman, but even that didn't sate his worries. He sped up to intervene. Not so much for the sake of his child, but instead for the stranger she undoubtedly had cornered and was currently in the process of interrogating.

"Are you in the Navy?" Aliani asked with equal curiosity. "Fighting pirates and roaming space protecting innocent people?"

"No… I am a nurse..."

Rounding the cart around the aisle, Michael paused and took in the sight he found himself suddenly struck by.

Standing there was Aliani, and in front of her was a turian woman. She was very delicate looking (at least for a turian woman). She was easily a foot and a half taller than then Ali. Sheet grey, she wore angular blue clan markings, indicating her as a citizen of Palaven, or at least she was in her youth. It had been years since Aliani was in the presence of another turian, but it was bound to happen as Eden Prime was increasingly welcoming turians to the colony world after the events that occurred during the Reaper occupation.

"Oh…" she said, sounding a little disappointed that the military wasn't involved in the turian woman's life. Her mandibles flared open again to form an enthusiastic smile once again as she added. "Well, do you fight infections?"

The woman appeared stunned by the question, so Michael took pity on her and made his presence known as he approached the two of them. The woman looked up and stared at him suspiciously as he came to a stop next to the girl.

"You know, don't have to pester everyone you see…" he teased, placing a hand on Ali's shoulder.

He watched as the turian woman narrowed her avian style eyes at him as though he had been some sort of interference. It became obvious to him that she was a few inches taller than he was. The woman stepped forward and placed her talon on Ali's shoulder.

She's fine, sir," the woman spoke levelly, her subharmonic tone dropping a tone as it remained perilously indistinguishable between politeness and pointed dismissal. "We are waiting for her parents. Can I help you?"

Ali pulled herself out of both of their grasp on her and turned back to look up at the woman, who was still staring at Michael like he was in the wrong.

"This is my dad," Ali introduced him, leaning against him like he was a post, her arms crossing over her chest as she appeared almost like she was boasting. "He's used to be a monkey, you know?"

The turian woman's eyes widened and shifted away from the young turian girl to the father, who was rubbing the back of his neck. Apparently evolutionary biology wasn't being properly taught at school. He wasn't sure why he was struggling not to squirm under the intense pressure of her gaze.

He wondered if perhaps it had been because she was turian, which left him so worried. Humans didn't who dealt with the two of them more or less assumed he knew what he was doing, when in fact he was totally winging it. Now here stood a woman who could likely see through his bullshit.

"No… No, sweetheart, that's not how it works…" Michael deadpanned, struggling not to simply laugh out of sheer nervousness at the idea of being judged by a person he didn't even know. "That's…not at all how it goes..."

"-He let me beat up mean people," she cut across him with the exact same pride as before.

"And you got in trouble, remember?" he pointed out before she went into detail about how she more or less got away with clawing half a dozen girls with her talons.

"Aaand he doesn't let me have food I want to eat, which isn't very nice!" she finished as she pushed herself off him and turned to look up at him with an expression of annoyance.

"No… that's..." he started, and then stopped as he realized the turian woman hadn't blinked as she observed their interaction quietly. "You know what? You win. Go and get that sugary crap you want and go stand by the cart, right now."

Emitting a victorious war cry, Ali talon pumped and ran off to gather her box of FLEET-O's and she bolted to the cart just in case her dad decided to change his mind on her. With that, it left Michael alone with the woman in an awkward silence, Michael lowered his head to hide his small grin and rubbed his neck as he tried not to look at the woman appeared to be somewhat stunned and more than a little embarrassed by her barely veiled aggression from before.

Michael cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry if she was bugging you," he said, breaking the silence as he glanced back at his daughter attempting to climb into a cart designed to carry a young human. "… And for the record I do feed her. Sometimes she just thinks she's being so smart saying things like that…"

From across him, the woman's mandibles stopped clicking and normalized as she shifted her weight to one side.

"No that is fine, I had siblings like her, once. I should be the one to apologize if anything; I must have come off as rude to you," she returned in almost a demure fashion; sweeter than he had expected to hear.

Deciding not to let her wallow in the error, Michael chuckled and shook his head.

"No… no, it's completely reasonable to have had that reaction," he said, acknowledging the odd relationship he had with the turian girl. "I get it all the time, as you can imagine. Did she… did she even bother to introduce herself, or did she just sort of corner you decided to forego introductions to get right to the cool conversations?"

The woman pursed her mouth together as she attempted not to laugh. She failed and she emitted a small laugh as she causally shrugged her shoulders.

"She was far too enthusiastic about meeting another turian woman to give her name," she gently admitted.

Michael laughed as well, but it was much more exacerbated in tone. He had pretty much expected that from his girl. She had next to no filter. None of his girls did. It seeming to be very likely his own fault, then simply the rambunctiousness of children.

"Well, she's Aliani… Alianitius, but she hates using her full name… and I am Michael Rivers… Aliani and Michael Rivers," he introduced the two of them to the woman. He sounded stupid. Why did he sound so stupid?

Pushing the stupid as far as he could from her inquisitive conversation of him, Michael extended his hand out to her. The turian looked at it curiously before she extended her own talon out to him, albeit much more timidly. It was a gesture she probably did not do very often.

"Caessia… Caessia Altarius," she introduced herself to Michael softly.

Their respective appendages latched together. Caessia's fumbled inside of Michael's, as she struggled with the grasp. She smiled and chuckled nervously to him, but she did not let go. Instead the two of them remained connected, simply staring at one another as their grip on each other's respective hand and talon remained firm.

It was… nice…

"DAAAAAD, ASK HER TO COME OVER FOR DINNER PLEASE SHE'S SOOO COOL!"

Aliani's holler was all it took to break the connection. Both human and turian stepped back, tried to laugh it off and appear casual as the strange moment they share lingered in-between the two of them. Michael was brought to a stunned silence as he looked over the equally nervous Caessia Altarius.

Once again, Michael rubbed his neck. He must have looked like such a stupid cliché, but he needed to keep himself busy in case he did something stupid.

"I suddenly am starting to appreciate the Hierarchy's doctrine on childrearing…" he uttered under his breath, only audible to the woman in front of him.

The remark wasn't supposed to be funny, but he heard Caessia giggle, bouncing slightly in place as she glanced over Michael's shoulder. Michael looked back and found Ali was in the process of trying to climb out of the chart. As she got out, she shot the pair of them a smile.

The adults turned back to one another, now very aware that the child had gone ahead and got a ball rolling neither of them probably planned on doing when they entered the grocery store. For Michael at least, it had been a very long time since he did this.

Biting down on the fear building, he stepped forward.

"So… believe me, I would understand it if you say no…" he started, attempting and failing not to sound like a total incompetent. "But if you would like to… well… drop by our home… eat something that resembles turian cuisine… and get pestered by a turian girl with no boundaries for the duration of the visit. Would that be something you would like to do?"

"Absolutely-" she blurted out before there was as much as a pause between the two of them. She froze and then nodded, adding. "I mean… yes, yes I would very much like to do something with you… dinner. I have a shift tonight, but I would very much like to do that. In the near future, I mean. Perhaps we can… you know… arrange that?"

The weight of rejection was washed off him, and he took certain satisfaction that at least Caessia seemed just as bad accepting the offer as he had been extending it to her.

"Okay…" he said offering his hand out to her once again. "I'll see you then."

Caessia nodded and took the hand with a notably more confidence than the last time. Smiling back to her, Michael released the grip and stepped back and turned from her. He left, intending to join Ali once again, and attempting not to swagger as he found himself with a date in the very near future.

"Michael?" he heard her call out suddenly.

Michael turned back and found Caessia looking confused, perhaps a little lost. She waved her talon to him. It was the universal gesture of a beckoning. Glancing back to Ali for a moment, Michael stepped back to the turian, suppressing his confusion as he found himself standing with a very awkward looking woman.

Caessia's mandibles opened somewhat, her mouth remained close, like she was somewhat disappointed. She leaned forward.

"The offer is real right?" she whispered to him. "You're just not saying things to pacify the child?"

Michael squinted at her, his head tilting to one side.

"Of course it is…" he reassured her. "Why would you think otherwise?"

Caessia did not answer him, as though she was waiting for something to click in. Michael remained silent, waiting for the turian to explain what it was exactly that was bothering her. After a moment or two longer, she exhaled, like she was dealing with someone who was slightly short of intelligence.

"Well…I don't actually know you, Michael…" Caessia reminded him, her voice deadpan as she latched her talons together in front of her. "I don't know where you live, let alone how to get in contact with you. So... not giving me those things raises a lot of questions I would naturally have…"

Michael blinked as stupidly as he could as her words slowly processed in his stupid mind.

"Oh…" was all he could coherently mumble. His eyes widened as he realized how stupid he had been. "OH…!"

Caessia nodded, dropping her expression of disappointment as it became clear that he had made a genuine error. She softly giggled and shuffled in place, which only served to add to Michael's embarrassment. In a span of a few minutes he went ahead and placed this moment in the top ten of his most embarrassing moments over the course of his past thirty-eight years.

"I'm sorry…" he said sincerely as he activated his omni-tool and she did as well to digitally exchange contact information. " As you can imagine, I haven't done this in a very long time…"

"Likewise… please do not beat yourself up over it too terrible, It was…rather endearing, to be honest," Caessia returned as she closed her omni-tool, her talons clasping together as they rested against her pelvis. "How about if I were to call you tomorrow morning, would that be acceptable interval of time?"

Michael nodded, a half smile forming.

"Tomorrow morning… after your shift… an hour from now, whenever you want to call, I'll be happy to hear from you…" he said, a momentary spark of coy playfulness crossing into his voice.

He wasn't sure how he did it, but statement was enough to shake the turian's position as the more put together of the two. Caessia blinked and giggled again. It appeared as though she was flattered by his sudden – and certainly fleeting - burst of charisma on display.

"Oh… yes… Yes," she mumbled softly as she smiled back, her hand rubbing her neck as he had done before her. "I will call you tomorrow morning. I… would not want you to think I was too eager…"

Michael nodded and silently he stepped backwards several paces, giving her a small wave. As he turned back he noticed she returned the gesture and went to gather her own cart. Silently, he reached the cart and tried not to grin at his baby girl standing there watching the two of them with an expression of curiosity etched on her face.

"Dad, she's cool!" Aliani chirped happily as Michael grabbed the cart by one hand and wrapped the other around Aliani's shoulder.

As soon as the two of them left the aisle, Michael did a small jig, embarrassing Bird Daughter enough that she groaned, escaped the grasp of her dreaded Ape Dad and bolted away towards the safety the checkout machines.

Michael could only grin. Yep… he still had it.

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From the reaction I've gotten so far, I have decided to make this a longer story then the 5 chapters I had originally intended,

Thanks for reading!