Chapter Summary
Inevitably Nihlus gets a hold of everyone's attention. Their responses vary.
Chapter Notes
Lexicon:
Hideth Turram: A popular Turian sport, vaguely similar to capture the flag. (Credit: MizDirected)
Systems Alliance common – The modern spoken tongue of Earth, a widely expanded version of English with blending influences from many other languages. Nearly 3 times the size of old Earth English, at an estimated 2.7 million words in the dictionary, with a minimum understanding of 47,000 words required for full literacy.
Torin/Tarin: Male/Female adult Turian (Credit: MizDirected)
A/N: A big thank you to MizDirected, Recidiva, and AceQueenKing for official permission to use their mindcanons! Thankyouthankyou! (Isn't our fandom community just the freakin' best?)
See the end of the chapter for more notes
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While Garrus' presumptions about Saren's living habits had been generally correct going into this, disregarding a few unexpected quirks, Nihlus Kryik proved to be a creature of continuing... surprises. His habits were... not just over the top, but right out of the Hideth Turram field altogether.
"Annnnnnd I~~~~~~~! Will always luuuuv yooOooOoooOooOuuuu~~~~..."
He was... singing in the shower, the obscenely dulcet tones coming through the bulkhead from Saren's ensuite bathroom... in mind-bogglingly fluent Systems Alliance common. The reddish brown Specter was crooning... old Earth love songs. Garrus turned to look at their captain, who had on noise canceling headphones that were clearly insufficient, considering his vaguely haunted look.
"Yoooou~~~ my darling, you~ Mmmm~~."
He tried to refrain from laughing, and focused in on the data pad in front of him which displayed the coding for the main weapon's system. He was determined to re-calibrate it to handle better thermal uptake and cool down, having spent downtime over the past several days figuring out the finer points of the complex system. He'd tossed ideas around in the back of his head, and thought he had enough starting points to begin messing with the numbers. Not on the live system, of course, but on a copy of it he'd loaded to a datapad that could also run simulated test fires.
"Bitter sweet... mem~o~ries~~ that is all... I am taking... with mee~e~"
A sideways glance revealed that Saren was determinedly reading an article about the latest problems in law enforcement with illegal drug trafficking. Garrus made a note to peruse that one himself later. He turned back to the datapad, considering whether reworking the algorithms for the plasma containment field would give him enough leeway to allow more time for the high energy lasers to flash boil the contained hydrogen without slowing down the rate of fire.
"Ple~ase, dooon't cry. We both know, I'm not what you... what you ne~e~eed..."
He scratched a thumb talon back and forth along his jaw, just underneath the left mandible, considering what other options he had to cut down on the rate of fire. The new math for the containment fields would do wonders for the issues with stability of the electromagnetics if he put them in, but it also appeared to add nearly four seconds to the time between shots. Completely unacceptable.
"Annnnnnd I~~~~~~~! Will always luuuuv yooOooOoooOooOuuuu~~~~..."
'Ahah!' He thought, 'I can rework the way the capacitors time recharging both the containment shield generator and the high energy laser pulse.' He made a note to refine the power draw later, after he'd finalized the rest of the alterations.
"I~~ ho~~pe life... treats you kind, and I~~ hope... you have all you... dream o~o~of!"
A lightning epiphany struck, somewhere in the middle of reviewing the energy draw requests from the canon's energy capacitors to the ship's engine. Some of the electromagnetic energy given off during the release of the plasma bolt during the firing sequence was recycled, recaptured by a series of absorption panels around the mechanism, but he could make it better with some clever timing on the energy draw... Garrus typed furiously, indomitable focus bearing down on his calibrations. It was all coming together.
"But above all~~ this? I wish you... lo~ooo~oooooveee~."
'Oh, oh yes, I can definitely raise that a bit by... no, no wait, that's going to cause a feed back problem.' Garrus was a slave to his muse, happily, bound and determined to solve the self-given puzzle of mathematics and physics breaking.
"Annnnnnd I~~~~~~~! Will always luuuuv yooOooOoooOooOuuuu~~~~..."
He came to a stop. It looked... good. He ran the test firing simulation, fingers hovering like a hunter waiting to see what his prey was going to do. It came back with a vast improvement to the thermal issues, 8% faster rate of fire and a whopping 24% less stress on the heat exchange, but... damnit, some mild instability issues. He was returning to the drawing board just as Saren threw his datapad at the wall. Garrus blinked at him, the silver plated figure looked... even more unstable and hunted then he had a few minutes ago. His pupils were contracted, one eye narrowed more then the other.
"I will always l~ove youuu~..." came crooning through the wall, only slightly quieter.
Garrus set his datapad down with a mildly apologetic pat, and turned to Saren in a merciful attempt to distract the torin with conversation.
"He must be extremely popular at karaoke bars..." he said with a smile at the grumpy Spectre. Saren just gave him a flat look.
"He is popular at all bars, unfortunately."
"Unfortunately?"
"Yes. He has a bad habit of attracting people when we are in the middle of intel gathering, and then chatting them up for hours."
"Wouldn't that help gather information?"
"Not if he spends half the conversation charming them, then the remainder making out like a sex starved teenager."
"So... no information gets gathered." In flat tones Saren offered a grudging addendum.
"He tends to lift data off Omni-tools while he is doing it."
"Ahhhh."
Nihlus continued his relentless campaign of love songs in different languages, the man was apparently a natural polyglot, for another forty minutes before the water finally shut off. A few minutes later he came wandering out of the bedroom shirtless, wearing nothing but loose beige cargo pants hung low on his hips. Low enough for the upper edge of his pubic plates to peak over the belted waist line, a descending 'V' of layered carapace and scales nestled between deceptively thin bone structure. Garrus felt himself involuntarily swallow as he forced his eyes to move past the figure now leaning against the corner of the hallway entrance.
Between the communal showers and shared quarters in basic training, the disconcern for personal space or covering when wounded in the field, and being a species that had completely internal sex organs, Turians in general wouldn't know body modesty if it hit them in the face with a rock. That said, it had been a long time since basic training, over a month since he'd slept with anyone, and he'd caught sight of Nihlus' unusual full-body markings. Long white trails flowing over carmine colored keel and pectoral plating, down his torso as interlocking segments made way for just a short swathe of soft looking dark brown hide, all of it leading down, down, down...
Garrus immediately began forcing himself to calculate an entirely different kind of thermal dynamics.
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Chapter End Notes
[Author's Codex Entry] Turian Bathing Habits
As a species with very few sweat glands, but one that sheds larger amounts of superficial tissue over time, Turians need only clean themselves weekly if they do not become soiled from environmental factors. Though they are known to bathe once or more a day for the pleasure of warm water and feeling refreshed, most Turians will take a once weekly extended period to thoroughly clean themselves. This often includes rubbing bristled brushed into the crevasses between plates, a gritty salt scrub over hide, using a rasp to sharpen or shorten crest blades, and a file to do the same with talons. Oils are commonly applied post drying to seal and cure the semi-flexible portions of plate, and the flexible hide. This can be augmented by occasional trips to bath houses to have spa workers provide those services, and to have one's clan markings professionally redone. Spas also offer treatments to fill in grooves on worn plates, extend crest blades, and more recently have begun talon-blunting services for those who work around the more soft skinned species.
[Author's Codex Entry] Mass Effect Assisted Ship-based Plasma Canons
Plasma based weaponry operates by using a heating mechanism, generally provided by one or more lasers, on an electromagnetically contained mass of atoms, often noble gases, particularly hydrogen. The laser(s) flash boil the gas into a super-heated lump of plasma, shaped and contained by an electromagnetic field. Though this method alone only gives the round a short lifespan, as it rapidly cools once fired. Acceptable for ground fire situations, but impossible to optimize for ship-based warfare. Modern reinventions of the weapon rely on small attached mass effect field generators that are fired with the plasma, keeping it contained and retaining heat. This allows for not only larger, but long lasting plasma bursts to be fired at distant targets, based on the quality of the canon and the one-time-use mass effect generator.
Interested in reading about Hideth Turram as well? MizDirected has a wonderfully developed codex of sorts for it over at: Confessions of a Mass Effect Addict: Hideth Turram (google it)
Nihlus was singing Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You'. He nailed it.
Why yes, I did slip in a reference to both the Dragon Age: Inquisition's Solavellan romance AND Calibrations in a single line. I'm just that good. Can you imagine Solas saying those lines about indomitable focus to Garrus? It makes no sense, in or out of context, but I'd pay to see that scene. :D
I am inordinately proud of making 'thermal dynamics' into a euphemism for sex with Nihlus.
Fanfic Recommendation: The Reversal (23057 words) by Velasa (Saren/Nihlus)