Chapter 21: Sharing is Caring
"A wizard is never early or late. He always arrives precisely when he means to" Gandalf the Grey stated popously as he brought himself up to his full height while pompously gazing at the hobbit that had confronted him at the entrance to the Shire. They stared at each other in mock seriousness as the seconds ticked by before Frodo broke character first. The hobbit's smile slowly creeped up his face, soon matched by his wizarding friend before both of them embraced in joy.
"Bullshit…" Harry muttered under his breath, reminded a little too much of his old headmaster to be able to fully enjoy the scene. The thought that any of the magical species would get along enough to hug with the centuries of bad blood between them was enough to make him laugh. His internal pity party was ended abruptly by a light smack to the head by a blue hand, attached to the asari Pathfinder who was making a 'shushing' gesture to him before turning back to the main view screen. The shuttle was absolutely filled with turians, each sitting on the floor in rows as their eyes remained glued to the movie playing on the display.
The five day voyage was absolutely torturous when there was barely enough elbow room. Strained tempers had reached the boiling point by the second day, almost resulting in fights but for the lack of room for anything but a quick punch or heatbut to be thrown. Sarissa had quickly purposed playing movies to keep everyone entertained, an idea Avitus wholeheartedly agreed with as he desperately tried to calm down the crew. Fleet and Flotilla was quickly requested by the birdmen, followed by Blasto 5. "Enkindle this!" had echoed through the shuttle, accompanied by dozens of cheers, as the overgrown jellyfish turned spectre proceeded to single handedly blow away over a hundred krogan who had attempted to take over the citadel. Kesh grunted unhappily from her spot next to him as they sat against the back wall of the shuttle. "I can't tell you how annoying it is to always have my people play the bad guys in vids" she said quietly, her brow furrowed as the krogan battlemaster moved in to fight Blasto. "Just once, I'd like for them to be the hero."
Sarissa had opened up her personal media library and conferred with the asari on Kesh's crew before putting on a few of their favorite movies. Harry had come to a startling realization by the end of the third asari film, they were all romance movies! Horror film? Sure, as long as you didn't mind the romance developing between the asari heroine and the mass murderer. Buddy cop film? They had that too, with the two partners falling in love despite the taboo for asari to date each other. There even was a film about the rachni war based on a huntress who had developed feelings for two of the krogan she had lead into battle and had to choose which one to save. Needless to say, the blue women were in tears as they watched. Sarissa took advantage of the moment to cling to Harry's arm after discovering that the wizard had a hard time saying 'No' to a crying female.
The only other human from Kesh's team had broken out his collection afterwards, starting with the Jurassic Park trilogy. The occupants of the room had sat stunned as they watched the ultimate battle of 'man vs nature.' The man was quickly requested to supply more, prompting him to bring up the Hobbit, followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The sole wizard on the ship was bombarded for the rest of the day with questions about the species on the show and if his magic was like that of Gandalf's. It grew so bad that Harry had volunteered for lookout duty to escape the curious aliens, taking over the pilot chair to monitor the instruments that made sure they wouldn't blunder into the scourge accidently on their trip.
A blinking red light pulled him from his daydreaming, prompting him to bring up their flight plan as it updated itself. Excitement washed over him as he quickly deactivated the media system while turning back on the overhead lights, much to the ire of the other occupants. He raised his hands above his head, calling for silence. As the muttering died down, he uttered two simple words that everyone had been waiting to hear. "We're here!" A loud cheer rang through the cramped space as the crew climbed to their feet, quickly checking equipment as they prepared for the next step.
Sarissa and Avitus quickly took possession of the two open chairs next to the wizard, the asari taking over flight controls as they dropped out of FTL and got their first look at the new turian home system. "By the spirits…" came a gasp from one of the crew behind them, the exclamation soon echoed by multiple voices as they stared in horror at where the planet should have been. Harry hadn't expected a garden world after his previous experiences in the Helius cluster. Habitat 7 had been storm ravaged, Eos had been a radiation bathed desert, and Voeld had tried it's best to freeze his bollocks off with it's ice age. None of this prepared him for what he was now staring at though. H-047 was shattered. A third of the planet still remained in one piece, though it was shaped more like Omega back in the Milky Way instead of the normal sphere it should have been. The rest of the smaller debris was already starting to spread out, a new asteroid belt slowly forming as the planetoid no longer had the gravity necessary to pull in the surrounding space rocks to its mass.
The wizard was brought out of his shock as a metallic glint could be seen farther into the solar system, the reflected sunlight barely strong enough to reach them. "Avi.. Avi!" He punched the turian hard in the shoulder to bring him back to the here and now. "Do you think that's the Ark?" he asked as he pointed towards the distant object.
"I can't tell from here" the former spectre said as he squinted at the new target. "No better time to find out though. Can you take us there?" he asked Sarissa as the asari scanned the shattered planet with the shuttle's sensors. She wordlessly turned them towards the object before engaging the engines, not trusting her voice at the moment as she tried to overcome her shock at the broken planetoid.
"Yes… YES… YES!" Avitus pounded on the seat in excitement as the familiar shape of an Initiative Ark began to resolve itself as they came closer to it. "We found it!" he called over his shoulder, prompting a subdued cheer from the turians. The view ports were soon packed with faces pressed up against them, turians shoving each other for a chance to view their people's ship.
"You called it husband" Kesh muttered as she leaned over his chair, her eyes narrowing as she took in the battered ship. "It's barely holding itself together. I have no idea how it managed to make it all the way out here without tearing to pieces." Large gouges littered the hull, exposing decks below to hard vacuum. Internal blast doors were the only thing preventing the rest of the atmosphere from venting into space.
Sarissa pulled the shuttle up to the Ark's main docking bay before placing the controls in standby and rising to her feet. "Scan's show at least fourteen thousand lifesigns remaining on the Ark at this time. Avitus" she addressed the turian leader, prompting him to stand with her a the front of the ship. "You're the lead turian and it's your people's Ark. This is your show. Tell us what you need and we'll make it happen."
Avitus gulped as he felt every pair of eyes settle on him, everyone silent as they awaited his orders. 'For Macen' he told himself before straightening his spine and clasping his talons behind his back. "Teams of five will follow the pre approved paths to their destinations and check the status of the critical systems. Be sure to document all damage along the route, but leave it alone if possible until we can ascertain the ship's status." He waited for acknowledgement from each of the team leaders before continuing the briefing. "Kesh's engineering team will be on standby for now, but will respond to critical repairs as they are reported. I'll leave the priorities in your expert hands" he said to the krogan, getting a grunt of approval from her for the recognition of her position and skills. "Sarissa, Vitesa, and myself will work our way towards the bridge and SAM node to try to find out who is in charge and what their status is. Contact us immediately if you find any of the bridge crew or Pathfinder Barro." He turned towards Harry, watching as the wizard put on his helmet and sealed his suit. "Are you sure you don't want anyone accompanying you? You'll be in possibly the most dangerous position of all of us."
"Don't worry" The wizard assured him, patting the turian on the back as he walked towards one of the view ports that faced the hull. "This isn't my first rodeo. I'll start with the obvious stuff that we identified as we flew in. Someone will either need to get the SAM node to tell me the ship's condition more thoroughly or fly the shuttle to do a manual scan if you want me to fix the small stuff though. This is a hell of a long walk as it is without playing explorer on top of it."
Avitus nodded, filling the information away in his head for after he made contact with SAM. "Then that's everything. Questions?" He was met with silence as everyone remained quiet, awaiting the next order with baited breath. "Let's go save our people!" he ordered, slamming his fist on the door lock controls. The airlock rolled ponderously to the side, revealing a dark hall barely lit with flickering emergency lighting. The turians formed up, marching forward in teams as they disappeared into the darkness.
Avitus turned towards the wizard who was watching the procession from his spot to the side. "How are you going to get outside? I can fly you ov…" Harry spun in place before disappearing with a loud crack that echoed around the cabin. He could be seen standing on the hull through the viewport window, waving back at them for a moment before starting his trek towards the closest hull breach. "I forgot he could do that…" the turian observed, impressed despite already knowing some of what the wizard was capable of.
"I haven't" Kesh grumbled under her breath as she led her team into the ship.
XXXXX
Harry whistled to himself as he strolled along the hull, happy to be back in semi-familiar territory as he stopped at the edge of a large gash in the ship. He reached into one of his hardsuit pockets, pulling out a deck of playing cards. Using his thumb, he pushed the first two cards out of the deck and nugged them slowly towards the ship's wound before casting a finite. Two large deck plates now slowly circled in space before a repario pulled them to the hull, encouraging them to spread out and close the gap.
Harry frowned in thought as he began his trek towards the next target, staring at his palm while he walked. Repeated casting of a spell acted almost like magical muscle memory, making it require less wand motions or spoken word to direct the magic to perform as he intended. His approach before now had been to simply overpower the reparo spell, the extra energy making up for the lack of wand or verbal cast, with the remnant jewel in his palm helping to amplify the effect. His way of telling how powerful the spell was cast was simply by how drained his magic felt afterwards, each spell taking at least a little bit from his internal magical energy since he had no planetary ambient magic to draw from. So how was it that he was only just now noticing his magic starting to diminish after repairing over a third of the ship already?
Arriving at the next hole in the Ark, the wizard pocketed his playing cards. Raising his palm, he cast the standard fix-it spell with a little extra power to make up for the lack of available resources. The metal quickly began to knit itself back together, significantly faster than he remembered ever seeing happen on either the Hyperion or Leusina. 'I need to look into this' the wizard thought, sitting down cross legged on the hull and casting a sticking charm on himself for safety.
Shutting his eyes, he turned his mind inwards. Grasping onto a strand of magic, he followed it's route back to where it originated in his core. Wizards always used different comparisons when attempting to describing how they perceived their magical core. Hagrid had once described his as a boulder, firm and unmovable, which possibly reflected on his half giant heritage that used their magic to amplify their already naturally thick skin to be magically resistant. Professor McGonagall had compared her core to that of a large jungle cat, calm and confident but ready to react with power and violence just like her feline animagus.
A wave of force was the first thing Harry perceived as he entered where his core was contained. It was like a giant glowing white ball hovering in the center of the chamber. It pulsed at a steady interval, almost like a heartbeat as it let off waves of magic that washed over him as they passed by. At first glance, Harry couldn't see any major difference from his last self examination besides the size and intensity increasing. Closer inspection revealed a half dozen, small, purple balls of light that orbited around his core in random paths. Each time the wave from his core washed over one of the purple balls, the magic was visibly intensified before it continued on it's trajectory. They were obviously foreign, yet gave off a familiarity that drew him closer. 'What the bloody fuck are those?' Harry thought, slowly reaching for the nearest one. His fingers almost brushed it as it flew by, causing him to impatiently wait for it's orbit to come around his core again. The wizard stretched his fingers towards the purple sphere, almost….
"HARRY!" Said wizard's head shot up as he felt his shoulder get roughly shaken, his vision suddenly filled with a frantic turian's visage behind his own helmet. "Oh thank the spirits! What the hell is your problem you damn primate? Were you taking a nap or just deciding to not answering your comms?"
Harry cancelled the sticking charm and pushed himself to his feet, wavering to the side as he tried to regain his equilibrium from a such a sudden position change in zero g. "Sorry Avitus. Sorry…" He shook his head to clear the cobwebs from coming out of the trance so abruptly. "My magic was acting strange. I had to take a moment to check on it. Everything looks good though, so I'll get back to it. What'd I miss?"
"It's been an hour since we lost contact with you Harry" the turian huffed in exasperation as he turned away to look out into space in an attempt to calm himself. "We found the bridge partially destroyed, but Kesh and her team have assured me they can get it up and running again in the next cycle. Sarissa and Vitesia are back on the shuttle to report our status to the Nexus. The rest of the teams are reporting heavy damage to most of the ship but it'll fly again if you and Kesh can hold true to your promises…" Avitus trailed off, running out of things to update besides the one subject that he was mentally avoiding thinking about. "Macen's dead." He took a deep breath, unable to suppress the shudder that ran through his body.
"How?" was the only word spoken by Harry. The wizard had never met Macen in real life, but had already started to build up an image of what the turian must have been like from the various times Avitus had described him. To find out that the turian Pathfinder hadn't survived after all affected the human more than he had expected it to.
His turian companion turned away, attempting to compose himself before answering. "All we found were recordings taken by SAM. His body isn't even there any more!" He slammed a fist into the side of the hull, the pain barely even registering. "SAM had to blow the atmosphere to try and suppress a fire in the cryo bay. As near as I can tell, he took shrapnel in his chest from an explosion after waking up when the Natanus hit the scourge upon entering Helius. His last act was to make it to my group of cryopods and set us to abandon ship before the fire reached us…"
He closed his eyes, almost able to picture Macen's last moments as if he was standing there instead of asleep in his cryopod. "SAM was damaged when Macen died before he could transfer it to me. It decided to upload itself to me while I was in proximity but I can barely tell what it's trying to tell me." He tapped the side of his helmet with his talon, indicating the AI's new home. "All I'm getting are disjointed images and phrases. It's how I know what happened to Macen. I watched his last moments from SAM's perspective played over and over in my head for half an hour before it figured I'd seen enough. I just feel like there is something I should have been able to do to save him..." he trailed off, unable to express the thought fully.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Harry stood up, slowly making his way over to stand next to the turian and take in the view of the shattered planet off in the distance. "When I was just a teenager" the wizard said, "my godfather died in a battle while protecting me from dark wizards who wanted to kill me." Avitus turned towards him in surprise, able to see the human's skin turn pale as he recalled the memory. "He took a spell to the chest that sent him falling through a death gate that killed him instantly. It happened right in front of me, just a few feet away. Yet there was nothing I could have done to change it."
He looked over a the turian "I blamed myself for months afterwards. It was my fault he was there and my fault that I wasn't good enough to save him. It took a friend sitting me down and explaining that it was my godfather's choice to fight and he would gladly have given his life if it meant that I could keep mine. That's what love really is. When you care about another person so much that you are able to sacrifice your own happiness for thiers. I know Sirius would never want me to spend my life moping around so I try to remember the good times with him and all the fun we used to have together doing pranks."
Avitus smiled fondly as he attempted to try and remember the good times he had with his friend. "I used to hate going out to bars with Macen when our duty was over for the day back in the military. He could have been dressed in a sack while I had on my best uniform, but all of the girls would flock to him and ignore me. I seriously began to resent him for it until he took me aside and explained that he wasn't interested in any of them. Apparently the only one he had eyes for was… me." He stopped as he heard Harry snort in laughter, the wizard gesturing for him to carry on while his shoulders shook with silent laughter. "Laugh it up monkey. You have no idea how terrible it was when the only person physically attracted to you had the same 'weapon set' that you did. We eventually talked it out, but I don't think his feelings ever really died off all the way. He was my best friend until the very end."
"Well at least I know why you panicked so badly when I gave you that chocolate bar earlier" Harry observed with a grin on his face. "You really thought I was trying to court you, didn't you?"
Avitus nodded warily, recalling the incident back on the Nexus. "All I could think was 'Oh Spirits no... it's happening all over again!'" His hand flew up, catching an object in his gloves that had been hurtling at his helmet. Making sure that there wasn't anything else on it's way, he glanced down at the object finding another bar of turian chocolate. His head shot up, only to find the wizard power walking in the opposite direction as fast as he could across the hull.
"You may be the Pathfinder, but you'll always be the bitch in our relationship Avi!" the wizard called over his shoulder with a cackle. A snarl over the radio indicated that his turian friend was in hot pursuit, just as he had planned. Nothing like a good prank to get someone over what was making them sad.
The wizard chuckled to himself as he raced past the main antenna mast before slowing to a stop as he stared off into the asteroid belt that bordered the Ark. A weight slammed into his back as Avitus finally caught up before he was slapped upside the helmet. "Who's the bitch now human?" the turian gloated as he stood up straight before noticed that the wizard wasn't even paying attention. "What do you see Harry?" he questioned as he tried to see what had caught the human's eye.
"That's not one of ours" Harry responded with mounting dread, as he pointed towards a large asteroid that was slowly spinning in the distance.
Avitus squinted at the indicated asteroid before the front of a kett ship slowly drifted into view before it was eclipsed by the space rock again. "Fuck!" he turned around, immediately making his way back towards the shuttle. His mind was racing a mile a minute as he considered the position his team was currently stuck in on the disabled Ark. "Harry. You can do that disappear/reappear thing from here to that asteroid right? It's only a couple hundred miles away…" he trailed off at the deadpan look the human was giving him. "That too far or something?"
"How the hell should I know?" the wizard groused as he stared at the asteroid looming in the distance. "The farthest I ever did was across the English Channel back when I was a teenager. Why the hell would I apparate over there anyways? That's an entire ship full of bad guys and I'm just one wizard."
"Exactly!" the turian exclaimed excitedly, the plan falling together in his mind as he began to lay it out on his omnitool. "They won't know how to fight your magic. That's a kett scout ship from what I've learned from Initiative records. We need to take them out before they consider us enough of a threat to call in more ships! You head over now and start using your unique brand of skills to distract them while Sarissa, Vitesia, and I make our way over in the shuttle on the dark side of the asteroid to mask our signature. We'll back you up as soon as we can get there. I'll tell the others to speed up the repairs in the meantime incase they already called in our position."
"Son of a…" Harry hung his head in defeat. There wasn't a choice for the wizard. Over fourteen thousand lives depended on him. "Fine!" he called at the turian's retreating back before tensing himself for the longest apparition he had ever heard of. "If I get stuck part way there, you guys better come get me!" He turned in place before disappearing, the deafening crack lost in the vacuum of space.
Harry slowly opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented as he slowly spun on all three plains. The Ark slowly drifted into his view in the distance, now barely the size of his thumb. 'Not bad' Harry preened to himself as the continued rotation brought the much closer asteroid into view . He had made it almost half the distance in one jump with barely any drain to his core. "One more time" the wizard mumbled to himself, twisting his body to begin the apparition process only to realize he had no surface to turn on. The wizard slowly floated in place, flummoxed at what to do next. His next rotation to the Ark revealed one of the remaining holes in the ship's hull by the engines. A brain wave struck the wizard as he made a mental note to finish the ship's repairs as soon as possible. Pulling out the deck of cards from his pocket, Harry released a single card into space before transfiguring it back into a ship hull plate. Activating his magnets on his boots, he slowly moved towards the plate before sticking to the surface with his feet. Turning towards the asteroid again, Harry spun in place on more time before disappearing and reappearing on the space rock's surface.
The wizard craned his head upwards, the kett ship now orbiting only a few miles above him as it tried to hide its presence behind the asteroid. Aguamenti spells from his palms soon had him breaking the asteroid's minimal gravity and on a path for the front of the kett ship. Redirecting the spell at the last second, Harry slowled himself down enough to land near the front of the ship with a soft thump. He remained motionless for a minute, holding his breath as he waited to see if his presence had been detected. When no kett came out to confront him, he began his trek towards the front of the ship. He cast a quick cutting spell at what looked like an antenna, all sorts of expensive looking equipment now rendered useless as it slowly floated off into space.
Finding what he was looking for, the wizard dropped to his belly. He inched forward until he was able to look through the top corner of viewport to the bridge, taking a moment to observe a dozen of kett as they worked furiously to discover what was going wrong with their ship. 'Might as well say hi' he reflected as he pulled a vanishing grenade from his hardsuit. Standing up, he boldly walked out over the deck wide view port until he was standing directly in the center of it. He patiently waited as one-by-one the kett broke off of their work to stare speechlessly at the human brazenly standing outside of their ship. Harry gave them a quick wave before casting a sticking charm on the grenade and pressing the big red button. He made a show of placing it on the view port before deactivating his boots and kicking off of the ship to get some distance. 'Three… Two…' He couldn't help but grin as a white dome engulfed the front of the ship before collapsing into itself. The atmosphere of the bridge now explosively decompressed outwards, taking the kett with it as they were hurled out into space.
A quick water jet sent him into the now empty bridge before a quick reparo had the view port whole once again. 'Now what do I do?' the wizard thought to himself as he looked at the different screens, the alien language making it impossible to tell what their purposes were. He felt the floor shudder underneath him followed soon after by a loud alarm that echoed across the ship.
"Harry?" Sarissa's harried voice could be heard over the comm, the sound of gunfire audible in the background. "We've breached the cargo bay. What's your status?"
"I have the bridge" was his simple reply. He took a moment to cast a quick locking charm on the rooms door, followed up with an unbreakable charm. It wasn't a moment too soon as he heard pounding start on the other side. "Where do you need me?" he asked, feeling useless just standing around while they were fighting.
"Stay right where you are!" Avitus cut in, excitement clear in his voice. "We already cleared the engine room and are making our way up the decks. If you can keep them out then we'll trap them in a pincer attack and end this!"
Harry sighed in boredom, lowering himself into the captain's chair. "Sounds good to me" he confirmed before using his feet to get the chair spinning in a circle as he watched the room slowly rotate around him. He put his feet down, stopping the rotation as he noticed how silent it had gotten. The pounding had stopped. The wizard slowly rose to his feet, pulling out his pistol as an electrical field seemed to flow through the door, making his spells collapse. The holographic indicator on the door flashed green before it slid open. A kett ascendant as it calmly floated onto the bridge, his body wrapped in a protective sphere of bioelectricity. The door closed swiftly behind him, indicating his sense of superiority that he would not require assistance to handle the intruder.
Harry took offense to this, unleashing an overpowered bombarda that utterly destroyed the electromagnetic field and dropped the alien to his ass on the deck. Being at command level, the kett had the wherewithal to realize that a human pointing a heavy pistol at him was a bad thing. It quickly rolled to the right and took cover behind a station, catching a round in it's shoulder on the way.
Ignoring the pain, the kett commander pulled out it's own pistol. It emptied the magazine at the human who brazenly stood in the middle of the deck, tanking each shot. The human's shield collapsed near the end of the barrage allowing the final shot to plunge into his shoulder. The commander stood up as he felt his bioelectricity almost fully recharge, a smug smile on his face as he indicated his own shoulder wound as if to say that they were even now. Harry's response was simply to raise his hand, summoning the sand grain sized bullet out of his shoulder before his hand glowed green, healing the wound completely to show unmarked skin before the suit repaired itself.
Realizing that bullets would not have the stopping power for this brand of alien, the kett commander charged forward, managing to catch the human's shoulder with his hand before activating his bioelectric field. The human was meant to receive a massive jolt that would disable it's nervous system, allowing for an easy capture. All Harry did was allow the power to flow inside of himself, his core recharging even quicker than if one of the angara had helped him out. The wizard raised an eyebrow at the panicking kett as if to express just how underwhelmed he actually was with the whole fight so far. Deciding to wrap it up, Harry cast a point blank stunner into the alien's chest. The blast hit hard enough to propel the kett into the far wall where it slid to the floor in an unconscious heap. Now it was time to knock one more thing off of his bucket list.
A few minutes later, the door to the bridge slid open again as Sarissa charged into the room with her shotgun cocked and ready. The room's only occupants were a tied up kett laying on the floor and a wizard standing with his leg propped up on his prisoner as his hand held his chin. The asari blinked a few times as if trying to process the scene in front of her before a grin slowly slid across her face. Stowing her gun on her back, she slowly walked towards the wizard while putting an exaggerated emphasis on her hips and ass. "My hero" she cooed in a sultry voice before leaning in and kissing him lightly on the lips.
This was the scene the two turians saw as they came onto the bridge. "Oh!" Vitesia exclaimed excitedly as she clapped her hands together. "This is just like the ending to the Die Hard movies we watched on the way here!" She turned towards the new Turian Pathfinder with a frown. "How come you never do anything like that?"
All Avitus could do was stare.
XXXXXX
"So you actually stowed away in a cargo container... just to get picked up by a kett destroyer… which was run by a disgruntled angara with delusions of grandeur?" Harry shook his head in disbelief as he watched the crew of the Tempest engage in a shoving match to fit in front of the vid screen as he spoke to them. "What happened after that?"
"We went on the attack. Working our way through the ship to release the hostages and destroy his power base" the Pathfinder explained. "I also just want to go on record as saying the entire mission was Liam's idea and plan, so therefor his fault as well."
"You mean my success!" said ex-cop quickly interjected, attempting to salvage his credibility. "We took down a major criminal in this region of space, and even had one of the colonies step up to help us out. If that doesn't show that the Initiative is finally on it's feet again, then I don't know what will."
"All that means is you got lucky that Bradley was willing to pull our butts out of the fire" Sara quickly corrected him before she shoved her way to the center of the screen. "From now on, all intel will be run by Scott or myself before acted upon. Now speaking of missions Harry, what have you been up to?"
The wizard panned his camera slowly around the atrium he was currently sitting in before panning the view to catch a plaque on the wall proudly declaring the ships name to be the Natanus. "Just finished rescuing my third Ark" he huffed, rubbing some imaginary dirt from his shoulder guards. "We're on our way back now with the Ark, fourteen thousand turian colonists in cryo, and a new turian Pathfinder to help take the load off of Scott."
"That's great Harry!" Vetra chimed in, taking the camera over as the twin's fight escalated into a full fledged wrestling match in the background. "You're a hero to my people for this. I'll have to make sure to give you a good reward when you come back to the ship" she said, giving him a wink. She looked over her shoulder as a crash was heard, before quickly leaning in and giving a kiss to the camera. "See you in a few days Harry."
The wizard chuckled to himself as he deactivated his omnitool before looking out at the stars on display as the Natanus made best time for the Nexus. He had found the same location on this ship that had been his favorite spot while awake on the Hyperion, allowing him to enjoy a little nostalgia for when everything was so much simpler.
"Was that one of the two you told me about earlier?" Harry turned towards the voice, finding Avitus walking towards him accompanied by Vitesia.
"The older one" the wizard confirmed, before pushing himself to his feet with a groan as he felt his back pop in multiple places after sitting on the ground for so long. "Everything ok?" he questioned, unsure why they had tracked him down only a few hours into the trip.
"There's no emergencies" Avitus was quick to assure him, correctly reading the human's expression of alarm. "Dinner is in half an hour and we all decided to meet in the dining hall to eat together as a real crew would. This is a team we can all be proud of after all."
"Spoken like a true Pathfinder" Harry said with a smile, patting the turian on the shoulder as he maneuvered around them to head down the hallway. "I'll see you at dinner" he said with a wave before the doors closed shut behind him.
"What a strange yet wonderful human…" Vitesia commented as she moved to stand next to Avitus as he took the wizard's former spot to gaze upon the stars. "If only there were more like him, than our peoples might have begun getting along much sooner."
"I've met a few like him already on this trip" the turian Pathfinder said with a shrug. "I think we're all ready for a fresh start where old prejudices are left behind in the Milky Way." He scratched at a dry patch of scales under his suit, his talon's brushing against something that he had forgotten about in all the excitement of the last few days. Pulling out the dextro-chocolate bar from his pocket, he looked over at Vitesia before mentally saying 'Fuck it' and handing her the bar. His companion gasped in shock as she held the prized treat before staring a hole through his head as he continued to gaze out at the stars. Apparently a decision was made as she stepped closed to Avitus before looping her arm through his and laying her head on his shoulder.
Avitus Rix, Turian Pathfinder, played it cool. The only action he did was place his arm around her waist, pulling her in to lean against him as he enjoyed the view. Inside his head though, he was doing a victory dance with a gun blazing in the air and multiple pelvic thrusts like he had seen in the human videos. 'Maybe that wizard isn't half bad afterall' he thought to himself, unaware that multiple pairs of eyes were all watching his private moment.
Some turians cheered as their leader finally got the girl. Other's booed as they lost bets on if he ever would notice the opposite sex. "I don't get it" the wizard growled as he watched the two on the screen. "He even told me about how he could never land a woman before now, even with being a Spectre. How the hell did you two know this was going to happen?"
Kesh crossed her arms with a smug smile on her face, enjoying the fact that she had finally one-upped her husband-to-be. "It was the right time for it. You get a feel for these things if you've seen enough of them."
"Forget that" Sarissa scoffed, dismissing the krogan's explanation. "She wanted to claim him from the start of this trip. The right opportunity just never presented itself until now. He's belongs to her from now on."
Harry threw his hands up in defeat. Sometimes this kind of stuff just went over his head. "Fine" he said, looking downtrodden at the aspect of paying off the bet that he was realizing had been deliberately left quite open ended by the females. "What do I owe you two?"
"A Date!" both said at once, before turning to stare each other down. A new rivalry had been born.
A/N: I don't like taking sides in politics in America. Both sides have been disappointments in the past. On that note though, I find it absolutely hilarious that some of the House of Representatives are bringing up the fact that Trump's old lawyer, Michael Cohen is a known liar. Don't throw rocks in a glass house. Politicians giving lawyers a hard time about lying makes about as much sense as pornstars ripping on hookers for swallowing.
Rant aside, this chapter wasn't all that easy to write. Giving Avitus a little more background to try to make him a real character instead of just another NPC is a real pain in the ass. Turians seem to have about as much depth as stormtroopers or anyone wearing a red shirt in Star Trek.