December 1st

Inwardly I was practically sagging with relief, but I forced myself to show no outward signs of it.

I stuck my pistol back on my hip and walked past the line of Blue Sun troopers to stand with the other new recruits. The looks they gave me and each other seemed wary at best, but I studiously ignored them. The turian recruiter turned around to face us all. "Alright then," he began, mandibles slightly flared out, "Five rookies. We usually have more, but I'll take what I can get. Now, this doesn't automatically make you a Blue Sun." I had suspected so, but it was still disheartening to hear. "The point of this was to look for anyone with either the training or guts we need and weed out the obviously unsuitable. Now we need to see if you're actually competent enough to join. In one hour, we're going to be picked up by a transport and taken to a combat zone. I'm not sure where or against who yet, so don't ask me. There, you will be told to achieve some objective. You will be in a team. My team," he indicated to the other four troopers in the room, "are going to be there to complete the objective in case you all screw up and die. Any questions?"

My mind drew a blank, but the black-armored turian spoke up, voice still eerily calm. "When are we meeting our teammates?" I hadn't noticed before, but his sub-harmonics were rather soft, to the point of being almost inaudible.

The recruiter let out the turian equivalent of a chuckle and gestured to all of the mercenary recruits. "You've already met them."

Oh. Wonderful.

I looked at my now-teammates with a more critical eye than before. I would have to be able to recognize them on sight after all. The batarian with the gun was pale by human standards with a slight greenish tinge to him. He had a small scar above his top right eye. The other batarian had darker skin, almost brown, with what looked like red tattoo stripes over each eye. The salarian was a light green color with soft beige markings, giving him a dappled sort of complexion. His eyes were large, like most salarians in general, with barely visible orange irises. The turian had skin that was a dark gun-metal gray, white colony markings I couldn't recognize, and pitch black eyes that were staring right back at me, analyzing me just like I was him. I was a little perturbed, but didn't break eye contact.

If turians were at all like humans, looking away would be admitting weakness and I would rather not start a working relationship that way.

He probably thinks I'm just another dumb primate in his way, like everyone else here. Hell, being both a human and a female is likely to cause me all kinds of trouble. Why did I think this was a good idea again?

I wasn't sure how to go about this. I was not a people person, and I was not at all used to working with a team. Outside of combat at least, I could apply a little of my strategy for online gaming here. Be cordial and polite, be willing to assist if I can, but don't trust them with my life or personal information.

The staring was becoming uncomfortable, but I didn't give in. I had no idea what he was thinking, I knew only a little about turian facial expressions and he seemed to have an excellent poker face. In my peripheral vision, I saw the two batarians and salarian look vaguely at each other before turning to watch my little contest with the turian.

The recruiter made an odd noise that was probably similar to a human clearing their throat, as my turian teammate broke eye contact to look at him. I and the others followed suit.

"As I said we have about an hour until the transport shows up. If you need repairs of any kind," he looked at me specifically at this, "you should see Doral before we leave." One of the helmeted troopers nodded, indicating that they were the aforementioned Doral. I still couldn't tell if he was a human or a batarian. "Otherwise, I'd suggest you all get to know one another." He sounded positively amused. Having finished his spiel, the recruiter went to the desk in the corner, sat down and turned on the terminal. The other troopers wandered off to the far side of the room and starting quietly chatting; leaving the newly-formed team to its own, very awkward devices.

Very much wanting to avoid 'getting to know one another', I tried to approach the one called Doral. Before I even opened my mouth, he cut me off. "Something about a busted omni, yeah? Let me see." The question of whether he was a batarian or a human was solved with his unmistakably Australian accent. Though it was a little racist of me, knowing that made me feel a bit more comfortable. I carefully unsealed and removed my left glove to show him the omni-tool's hardware. His 'tool activated and scanned it over. "Yeah, that'd do it. Looks like it was shot. Guess you weren't lying 'bout being in a firefight. Give it here." Once he had it in his hand, Doral pulled a tool like the on the volus had out of a storage compartment on his armor and cracked the casing open with it. He whistled when he got a good look at the device's innards. "You did a number on this thing, it'll take me a while to fix it. Why don't you clear off and go make some friends?" I really didn't want to, but Doral walked off with my omni-tool back to his teammates before I could make an argument.

With a strange feeling in my stomach that I could only describe as having my organs liquefied, I turned and went back to the group of rookies. They appeared to be very busy looking oddly at each other, and I was automatically included into the group effort of being uncomfortable together. I didn't look directly at the turian, hoping to avoid starting another staring contest. Instead I watched the batarians, who at least seemed just as disgruntled and wrong-footed as I was, and the salarian who was vibrating so much I was worried he might disappear from the visible spectrum altogether.

And we just… looked at each other. I was really hoping that someone would start talking, say something, anything, but no one else was forthcoming.

No, no, don't do it, it's dumb, I don't know what I'm doing, what would I say-

I let out a very deep sigh, turning the group's attention to me. "Alright, well… I'm Shawna. How 'bout you?" I made a vague gesture in the group's direction, hoping one of them would take over and I could stop feeling like my liquefied organs were being slowly sucked out of my body through a straw.

The brown, tattooed batarian spoke up. "Well, my name's Javern."

He glanced over at his companion, indicating for him to go next. The other batarian said simply "I'm Brek," before falling silent.

Recognizing that Brek wasn't going to say anymore, Javern looked back at the rest of us. "We've known each other for a while."

Everyone's eyes went to the salarian, who seemed disturbed to find himself the center of attention. "O-oh, umm. M-my name's Mannovai Ertil Ren Olvey Sul Yovu Hyrn." He stopped, probably sensing that we had barely kept up with that. "O, I-I'm sorry, I- you, I f-forgot, um. I-I'm Hyrn, I guess."

Wait, Mannovai? Wasn't that mentioned in Mass Effect 1? The name was very familiar, from the mission on Virmire. Captain Kirrahe used it to name one of the teams, for morale because…"Isn't Mannovai one of the first three salarian colonies?" I blurted out.

Six pairs of eyes were suddenly on me. Hyrn's orange eyes got even wider. "H-how- where did y-you…?"

My feet were suddenly extraordinarily fascinating. "I, ah, read things. On the extranet. It's very interesting. I learn stuff." I could feel the blood go to my face.

Eventually, the crushing weight of so many eyes was lifted from me and put on the turian, who looked around at us with glittering black eyes. "I'm Vilnius."

And with that, we fell back into awkward silence.

We stood there, quietly sizing each other up, until there was a shout from the other side of the room. "Hey!" I turned around as Doral came up to the group of rookies. "I got your omni fixed." He handed the small circular device over to me and I reattached it quickly.

After activating it and seeing that it was indeed functioning properly, I nodded to him. "Thanks."

"Yeah, that bullet did some damage, but nothing I couldn't stick back together." The mercenary clapped his hands together. "Just so you know, fixin' that's coming out of your first paycheck."

"I figured." I put my glove back on and checked over the seals, making sure everything was properly connected. Doral wandered off back to his group and I turned to face mine. I went through my combat programs and made sure my hotkeys were all configured correctly, seeing as I might need them soon.

Sabotage, overload, dampening, omni-blade. Yep, all there. At least I wouldn't be going into this test with less than half of my arsenal.

I deactivated my 'tool and looked up. Javern and Brek were looking at each other and quietly whispering. Vilnius was watching the four mercs across the room from us. Hyrn was staring at the ceiling, bouncing on his feet slightly. I felt horribly out of place. After a few minutes, Vilnius stopped studying the Blue Sun troopers and instead turned his gaze on Javern.

"You said you're a biotic?" he began without preamble. He sounded warily curious. Those five words probably contained more emotion than I'd been able to pick up on from him this entire time.

Javern met Vilnius' eyes. "Yeah? What about it?" His tone was just as cautious.

If I remembered right, turians had very few biotics and generally isolated them from the normal military, resulting in a bit of a stigma.

But Vilnius didn't show any sign of hostility. He seemed more interested than anything. "What can you do?"

"…well," Javern looked like he hadn't been expecting that. "I... haven't gotten much formal training. I've managed to learn a few things on my own, though. I can throw people or objects if they're not too heavy or I can make them float. I also figured out how to shred things. And I can make a barrier that stops bullets like a shield does."

Throw, lift, warp, barrier. I probably shouldn't think about this in terms of game mechanics, but I'm not really sure how to classify this kind of stuff otherwise.

"That sounds… useful." Vilnius muttered, head tilted slightly. He then switched his attention to Hyrn. "You said you knew something about demolitions?"

Hyrn appeared startled at the sudden inquiry. He seemed less nervous overall, but that didn't stop the stuttering. Maybe that's just how he talks? "Ah, y-yes. Maybe. I-I think so, a-anyways. I m-made a shuttle e-explode, once. I wanted to see h-how the shuttle's m-materials held up." He was staring off into the distance, likely remembering said event. After a brief moment he turned on his omni-tool, which was an odd aquamarine color I hadn't seen before, and pulled up several schematics for the fabricator. They were of explosive devices, from grenades to bombs. "I-I can make e-explosives of m-many kinds." He scrolled through the schematics, showing off larger and stranger designs. I couldn't be sure, but one of them seemed like it was meant to set an entire room on fire. "I j-just need some r-raw material and t-time," Hyrn finished, closing his omni-tool.

I had previously categorized Hyrn as a non-threat, someone who was not to be taken into consideration. I was revising that categorization now.

Vilnius turned to Brek. "How good are you with your assault rifle?"

"I hit what I aim at." His voice was slow and measured. I was getting the feeling that either he was on the low end of the intelligence spectrum or he pretended to be. Which would mean he was smarter than everyone in the room. That was unlikely, but within the scope of possibility. I decided to stop thinking about it for the sake of my mental health.

Javern suddenly chimed in. "He's a good shot, and really damned tough. A krogan punched him once and he just shrugged it off and slugged him right in the face. It didn't do much to him, but it was still impressive."

My eyebrows involuntarily rose. I'd been punched by a krogan before and had some broken bones for my trouble. If he hit him right back after that then he was a hardy son of a bitch.

Vilnius must have been similarly impressed, because he simply nodded and then shifted his attention to me, making the slow suction of my liquified internal organs finish in a hurry and leave behind an uncomfortable hollowness. "And you mentioned something about combat programs?"

I took a few seconds to rally my thoughts, during which everyone decided to stare at me.

"Uhhmm, yeah. I've written a few programs meant to help in a fight. I can make someone's weapon overheat or overload their shield capacitors. And if they have an omni-tool I can force it into shutdown mode. That's about it." Vilnius nodded. "So, do we pass inspection, mister military-trained professional?"

That was definitely a word that could be used to describe Vilnius: professional. Calm, reserved and intelligent were others. He acted a bit less calm now. He jerked his head back a bit, and the ridges that he had where a nose on a human would have been moved up swiftly. After a moment, he relaxed. So, he has issues with the military. Okay then. It wasn't my problem, but it was better to know these things.

He opened his mouth, but it was at that exact moment that the recruiter walked up. "Okay, people, transport's here. Let's get going."

[Edited 3/2/2017]