Oh look, an update! Sorry again for the lateness, my excuse this time is that i had everything completely planned out, but only recently was able to write. The first half of this month was devoted to studying. I failed a couple of my classes and had to go back to school to rewrite some exams. Also, it is really hard to describe how to take a Turian's armour off. That part had me stumped. But alas, that is in the past now. Anyways, hopefully i will be better next time. I'm gonna say that I should have another update in the next two weeks. Also, if you ever want to ask questions/nag me for not updating i have a tumblr account under the same name as this one. Enjoy!
BTdubs: Mass effect, not mine. Belongs to Bioware.
The subway tunnel is dark and damp, the sound of water can be heard dripping against the metal tracks. The two girls walking along them make sure to stay away, aware that electricity still ran through them. All around them they can hear the scampering of rodents and other pests, running away from the girls and the alien that hung between their two bodies, its feet dragging on the ground. The wound on its face was still bleeding profusely, soaking Shepard's clothing with the blue liquid. The alien was heavy on their shoulders, and both had started gasp for breath as they became exhausted from hauling it through the tunnels back to the train they called home.
Once there they carried him over to the last car of the train, which they rarely used unless they needed a place to store junk that they were unable to take to the surface. They carefully set it down on the floor of the car, groaning as the weight is lifted off their shoulders. Shepard rolled her shoulders, letting her cramped muscles stretch. She takes off her pack, and sets it down on one of the train seats, collapsing into the one next to it, breathing heavily.
"I don't think endurance training could have prepared us for that." Williams said between her heaving breaths from her place kneeling on the floor. She looked up at Shepard through the hair the covered her forehead, making eye contact with the other woman and starting to laugh, Shepard joining her as the madness from her exhaustion began to kick girls continued to laugh, until Shepard looked over to the alien sitting on the floor, blood still flowing from the wound on its face.
"Come on Williams, we should do something about its wound." Shepard said, quickly sobering from her spontaneous fit of laughter.
"What?" Williams seethed. "I'm still wondering why we brought it back here in the first place!"
"It needed our help." Shepard retorted, rising from her seat.
"Our help? I'm sorry Shepard, but have you suddenly forgotten that these things are trying to fucking annihilate our entire species? We should be killing them back, not rescuing one and keeping it as some sort of pet." The other girl raged, getting up from the floor, and staring Shepard right in the face.
"We don't know that."
"Know what?"
"That they're trying to kill us all. They could be here for some other reason, one we just can't understand." Shepard reasoned.
"So what, you want to question it? Ask it about its motivations? They have no determinable spoken language, Shepard. They're like animals."
"Saying that they're animals indicated that they have no higher brain function. Yet, we know that they've developed superior technology than ours and also have a higher understanding of tactics and strategy that have we have been unable to discern even after the past two months. These things know war, Williams. If we somehow are able to communicate with it, think of all we could learn." Shepard argued, adopting a calm and assertive voice. Williams continued to stare at her, contemplating what she just said. They stayed silent for a minute before the other girl replied.
"Alright." Williams assented, walking away, hopefully to get some medical supplies. Shepard sat next to the alien, hauling its body so its back sat against the doors of the train car, its head falling forward. The brown-haired girl returned a couple minutes later, carrying some of the alien medi-gel, as well as a pair of metal handcuffs.
"Just to be safe." Williams stated, answering the questioning look the other girl was giving her.
"It's unconscious."
"It won't stay that way." Sighing, Shepard reluctantly took the cuffs from the other girl's arms, cuffing the alien's wrist to a pole, then looked back at the other girl for her approval. Williams nodded, slowly getting down on her knees next to Shepard. Silently, they began to remove the alien's armour.
The armour was held to the alien's body with multiple buckles, and separated in multiple parts. Each separate part was able to connect to the other, making it seem as if it was all one unit. They starting at the legs, which were held together by buckles running down the side, and were separated by upper and lower leg, cutting off just above what could only be described as a spur coming out of the back of the alien's knee. The part of it that surrounded the alien's shins came off almost like a boot, the buckles not actually separating the front and back halves of the metal, but just making them looser so that it was easier to take off. Taking off the armour revealed a tight, black outfit, almost like a wet suit, which probably made the heavy metal armour more comfortable to wear. The two girls were also surprised to see several small compartments that held extra ammo in them, and some devices that looked like they were some type of bomb.
The arms of the armour came off the same as the legs, separating at the elbow, and the part that covered its forearm coming off like a glove. On its left arm was a set of straps that surrounded its forearm, with a circular object resting on the palm of its hand. When the alien's hand curled into a fist, an orange-coloured holographic interface appeared around his arm. Shepard delicately removed it from the appendage, intending to study it later.
Finally, all that remained was the armour that covered the alien's torso, waist, and hips. Buckles at the sides of the alien's body separated the front and back halves of the metal, however it did not completely came apart. Unlike the armour that covered the rest of of its body, this part of the armour separated into many different plates, held together by relatively strong magnets, until the only armour that remained covered the alien's shoulders and surrounded its neck. This part was undone by two buckles that were located just above where the alien's arms were. Once unbuckled, the front plate fell right off, then the two girls carefully lifted the alien into a sitting position so they could take the back plate off the alien's body. Setting it back down, they stood up to take a look at their handiwork.
"I never thought they actually looked like that under their armour." Shepard admitted.
"What, you thought it was just a stylistic choice?" Williams teased. Shepard just shrugged her shoulders in response. "Come one, let's get this thing bandaged up."
Continuing with their work, the girls began to slowly apply the medi-gel to the half of the alien's face that had been damaged by the bomb. The alien never awoke as they continued their ministrations, but continued to breathe evenly through its mouth. Shepard couldn't help but notice it's incredibly sharp teeth as she applied the bandages to his face, then reached around his head to carefully to take off the visor that covered his left eye. Experimentally, she brought the blue object up to her own eye. There were several blinking warnings, all written in some kind of logographic alphabet, and she could hear some music coming from a small speaker located somewhere in the device. Taking a look around the room around her, the visor would instantly zoom into anything that her eyes would focus on, then when she glanced at the alien itself some other information that she couldn't read popped up on the screen. She removed the visor from her head, then set it on one of the chairs of the subway car.
"You hungry?" Williams voice broke the quiet of the underground train.
"Um, yeah," Shepard replied quietly, "You think it'll be alright?" She questioned, looking at the alien.
"I think that's all we can do." Williams replied, getting up from the floor, then offering a hand to Shepard to help her do the same. Shepard then followed her to the Living car, where they had left their packs before carrying the alien over to the other side of the train.
"So what do we got?" Williams asked Shepard as she started to take the cans of food she was able to take from their supply run.
"Alot of beans, come chili, that canned pasta that you like, and a few bags of instant mashed potatoes."
"That's it?" Ashley gasped.
"Sadly, yes." Shepard replied sincerely.
"Alright, lets heat up some of that chili. I'm starving."
Shepard nodded, then took a military knife from out of her back pocket, using it to cut the can open, then went to heat up the chili. In the first few weeks of the invasion, the two girls had realised how terrible it was eating cold food. So, in one of their supply runs they were able to steal a couple of pots, as well as a single induction cooking element from an abandoned apartment building. Once back at their subway train, Shepard was able to use the tracks running underneath the train to power the element, and they had been eating hot meals ever since.
The girls ate their supper right out of the pot it was heated in, hungry from the exhaustion that came from carrying the alien back to their underground home. For a few minutes all that could be heard in the subway tunnel was their satisfied groans as they quenched their hunger.
"What should we do about the alien?" Williams piped up when their eating became less ravenous.
"I don't really know. I guess we should keep an eye on it though, just in case it wakes up." Shepard replied.
"Agreed"
"I also want to take a look at that stuff we found on it. The visor, the gun he was carrying, and that device it had strapped to its arm. I think it's the first time we've found one completely intact, it'd be interesting to see how it works." Shepard continued.
"Alright TechnoFreak." Williams joked. Shepard stared at her is unamusement. The slightly insulting nickname was coined during basic training, when Shepard was surprisingly good at any type of technological training the recruits went through, especially given the circumstances of her life before her recruitment. She despised the name, but Williams would bring it up every once in a while when she did anything clever like using the subway tracks to provide electricity to the train.
Rolling her eyes in annoyance, Shepard continued to talk, "Anyways, I'll go watch it first, you get some sleep. Three hours seem like a good amount of time?"
"Yeah, I should be good."
"Right, I'll clean this mess up, you go rest." The girls sat up, and Shepard went to go clean everything off before going to watch over the Turian. opening the door of the end car of the train, she held the pot over the tracks, and rinsed it out with a bottle of water. Going back inside, she returned the pot to its original place, walked past Williams already asleep on the mattress, and back to the car where the alien slept, grabbing her tools along the way. She sat down next to the alien, spreading out its belongings on the ground around her. Picking up the gun, it expanded to its full size in her hands.
"Device responds to skin temperature, expanding and retracting for better portability?" She murmured to herself, looking at the alien next to her as if it would wake up and tell her the answer. "Or maybe its touch sensitive…" She trailed off as she began taking apart the gun, setting the pieces aside to put back later. As the eerie quiet of the underground train started to bother her, she continued to talk to the unconscious alien.
"I should probably hate you." She stated to the silence, looking at the alien to see if he had stirred. "Yet for some reason I find myself in the unlikely position of attempting to nurse you back to health."
The alien, expectedly, did not reply.
"No wonder Williams thinks I'm insane," She continued dryly, "If she were the only one here she'd put a gun to your head a put you out of your misery the moment she saw you. I'm probably gonna spend the rest of tonight dismantling this gun and wondering why I couldn't just shoot your brains out all over the walls of that alley. But no, Every Shepard could not just let another intelligent living thing die if she could prevent it, even the thing that just might be trying to wipe out her entire species." She stopped there, continuing her work in silence. Again, the quiet of her surroundings bothered her and she started to talk again.
"I've always liked taking apart guns." She said, "Something calming about it. It's easy, and repetitive. And you know that once you clean all of its parts, it'll fire better tomorrow, faster shots, and it'll take longer to overheat. Judging by the size, you've got yourself a sniper rifle here, which you seem to have outfitted with several modifications…" She continued talking to the air, fending off the unnatural silence.
About an hour later, she had finished taking the sniper rifle apart, and her throat was no hoarse from talking so much without any hydration. Taking a sip of water from a bottle, the alien next to her shifted, almost not noticeably, a groan-like sound coming from its mouth.
"Fuck, you're waking up." Shepard exclaimed, hurrying to kneel beside the alien. Slowly, it began to stir, moving its head from side to side as its breathing increased. Its eyelids began to creep open, revealing the blue eyes that Shepard had noticed before. It moved its arm to get up, the one that was still handcuffed to the pole. In the blink of an eye, its head whipped around to stare at where it was restrained. Its eyes widened in fear. Frightened, it started to thrash its body, trying to break the cuffs, and effectively hitting Shepard in the forehead with its hand. Reeling from the blow, she trapped each of his arms in one of her hands, and tried to calm it down.
It didn't work very well.