John Shepard, Alarei, Quarian Migrant Fleet
"All Right, Jack and Kasumi, go right side. Grunt and Miranda, go left. Tali and Garrus, you're with me, and we meet at the far end of the ship, here," John was projecting a holo map of the ship from his omnitool. He had picked it up from the Rayya's systems when Captain Kar'Danna had given him access to the ship's systems. "Be thorough, but try to make as little collateral damage as you can." He eyeballed his destructo-twins.
"Pff, yeah, whatever," Jack crossed her arms and looked away.
Grunt looked from Jack then to John and puffed up somewhat. "Ha! I will be precision! Like a laser scalpel! And I'll get there before the puny human."
"Oh, no you didn't!" Jack glared at the krogan as blue energy rippled over her. "Bitch, you couldn't keep up with me on your keeping-est day!"
"Keeping-est isn't even a real word!" Grunt took a step forward.
"Oh, yeah?!"
"Yeah!"
"Children!" John growled. "Don't make me turn this geth infested ship right around!"
Miranda and Kasumi couldn't help but chuckled while Garrus and Tali shared a confused look. It wasn't until almost a heart beat later that he realized that Tali was behind him, and somehow, he knew she was confused. Probably just obvious...human turns of phrase can be confusing…
"The three sections of the ship will come together here," he indicated a point on the map. "After that is a short passage to the bridge. When you are moving, try to gather as much data as we can. Anything that can prove Tali's innocence has priority after survivors. Questions?"
Then, with a nod, the team broke up and moved to their assigned corridors as John hit a counter on his omnitool. "Alright...we roll in three...two...one…" There was a small explosion on his right, as John's HUD registered Jack's biotics flaring. It was followed almost immediately by a voice yelling 'I am krogan!' to his left. John let out a long suffering sigh. "...go."
Jack, Alarei, Right Corridor
"...one."
Jack's face lit with a feral grin as she threw an overcharged warp field forward. The dark matter collided with the metal bulkhead of the door, twisting it into a spiral pattern, almost as if it were water being pulled down a drain.
And...to be honest, it was a bit much. Even for Jack. She had gotten so worked up over the teacher's pet lizard, that she built up too much of a charge. Ah well, she mentally shrugged.
At the moment of her power's impact, Jack saw Kasumi shimmer out of view. Probably was going to be moving behind her and collecting data and other bullshit.
Her little reverie, however, was broken as hyper velocity rounds began to pop on her barriers. Which apparently, was odd.
Biotic barriers where, by nature, so similar to armor's kinetic shield systems, that they can interfere with one another. And the concept of both was to absorb the impact of round projected by a weapon's mass drivers, either richotting away with greatly reduced force, or absorbing it completely, leaving the round to drop to the ground harmlessly.
But not Jack's. Unlike the Cheerleader's barriers that had this weird throbbing effect, or Shepard's ridiculously over tight barriers, Jack's power raged out of her like a storm. Tendrils flickered out of her rippling barriers, damaging her surroundings, while the bright light she gave off meant she wouldn't be sneaking up on anybody. Which is how she prefered it anyway. She was a god damned biotic hurricane!
With a contemptuous sneer, Jack stepped over the ruined remains of the door and reached out, grabbing two of the geth in her power and smashing them together., before throwing the limp, sparking bodies at the third geth in the room.
"Yeah, bitch, let's see that fat fucking lizard beat my score!" Jack cackled madly as the next room opened, dumping more geth into the room she stood in.
Miranda Lawson
"...one.."
When Shepard hit the mark, there was a small explosion in the distance. Jack…
"I am krogan!" Grunt almost immediately bellowed as he rushed forward, only to skid to a stop in front of the door. He then reached out for the door release, pausing just long enough to glance at Miranda. "Shut up…."
Miranda shook her head for a moment and realized she had laughed. She was...smiling. It must have been Shepard's ridiculous influence. When this mission was started, Miranda knew who and what she was. She knew who she worked for, and why. Humanity needed to step up to the galactic plate, otherwise it stood a chance of being left behind.
Now...now it was all a blur. She was beginning to see the darker side of her organization. Not that she hadn't been aware of the things Cerberus had done. But that was all on paper. It was just numbers. And, after all, the needs of the many outweigh that of the few.
Besides, sometimes projects went rouge. Cerberus gave people a lot of leeway in how they ran their specific cells, and as long as they were getting results, command, or, she was beginning to realize, The Illusive Man, turned a blind eye.
Or so she thought. After being on the ground and seeing some of the projects in person, like with Overlord, or meeting the direct victims of experiments gone wrong, like with Jack, and even Shepard's Akuze after effects, she was beginning to think that the Illusive Man was deliberately making the projects panic. Driving them into a corner so that they would push their projects harder, seeking results faster, and damn the consequences.
Then the doors opened and Grunt stormed ahead, crushing a geth trooper under foot as he took another in the lower body with his shoulder and flipping it up, and over himself, sending it crashing to the floor in front of her. And so, with a small savage smile, she put two rounds in its head.
Garrus Vakarian
"Tali... can you do something about this damn red emergency lighting?" Garrus grumbled. "It messes with my vision."
"On it!"
Shepard chuckled from next to him as the human's SMG cut down another geth. "Sure Garrus, blame the lighting. We all know you are losing your touch in your old age."
In response, Garrus turned to look at him, and pulled the trigger. He didn't need to look to know his shot went straight through two of the geth that had lined up. And honestly, it was always nice to see Shepard speechless.
"Seriously," Shepard shook his head. "You've been waiting to pull that off, haven't you?"
"What can I say? When your good, you're good," Garrus let his mandibles widen into a grin.
It wasn't like Garrus was going to admit that it was a shot that he had been trying on pretty much every mission they had been on since this crazy adventure started. Second adventure? "Hey, Tali, do you think this current Collector mission is a new adventure? Or is it part two of the Original?"
With a final twist of the holo display, the ship's lighting shifted to standard, is slightly dimmer, white. Which was a Spirits be damned relief. The red spectrum light like general gave some turians headaches. Himself included.
"Can we just go?" Tali said terse. "I need to find my father."
Wincing slightly, Garrus nodded as he dropped another geth. "Yeah, of course Tali. Sorry."
Tali reached her hand up and her omnitool flared for a moment. In response, the last geth stood up, put a gin to its head, and pulled the trigger. "No..sorry, I know you were just trying to distract me so that you could get more kills."
Shepard snicked as he gave Garrus a pitying look. "Heh, my quarian just schooled you!"
Garrus stood and gave Shepard another grin. "Your quarian, is she?"
Watching Shepard's face drain of color easily made this whole thing worthwhile. "I...uh...I mean...you know, part of me, er, our team…" the Great Commander Shepard stuttered.
"What are you two babbling about?" Tali yelled back as she began to work on the next door. "I know you were trying to ease some of the tension, but we need to hurry!"
Kasumi Goto
"I call this one 'Lawn Chair in Midnight'," Jack laughed as her biotics twisted a geth into a rough approximation of a chair.
Kasumi made an amused snort as she hacked into one of the terminals. "I think you should keep your day job. Sculpting isn't for you."
"Yeah? What do you know about art," Jack sighed as she tossed the broken machine aside.
She didn't say anything. Instead she just turned to look at Jack with an incredulous look.
"Okay, right," Jack coughed. "You know a bit."
"More than a bit, my psychotic amigo," Kasumi laughed as the last firewall in the terminal gave way. "And I'm in….let's see...six thousand credits...they won't miss that. Email...email...grocery list...Aha! Log entry!"
The file Kasumi brought up blurred as she skipped it, before stopping at a pair of quarians talking in a hall.
"Rael'Zorah wants more units brought online," the first was saying.
"The system won't be able to control that much data that fast. Everything is getting bogged down as it is!" the second answered.
"I brought that up already. Rael said to disable some of the firewalls if we needed the extra bandwidth."
"That...seems a bit reckless. I mean...we don't have enough to build a real network, but still…."
Clicking off and downloading the data, Kasumi turned to Jack. "Think I might be getting an idea as to what happened here."
"Yeah, no shit," the biotic spat. "Fucking scientists. Should just shoot them all and be done with it."
"Oh yeah?" Kasumi laughed as she opened the next compartment and stabbed her omniblade up into the first geth, while stepping aside for Jack's next rampage. "Without those scientists, we'd still be in a cave trying to make fire work."
True to form, Jack hit the next room running, her power coming up and swirling in a cyclone. The force tossed everything not bolted to the floor into the ari and spun it around Jack's body. And, Kasumi noted with a mix of amazement and fear, a few things what were bolted down.
"Better than what they did to me…" Kasumi heard Jack say quietly enough that she was probably not meant to be heard.
Grunt
He was in his element! Glorious battle! Around him, the scattered remains of his foes lay, their life fluids covered his body as his foot crushed down on the head of one of their feeble warriors, trying to desperately crawl away! He took pleasure in watching the...flash..light...thingy...dim….
The life drain from his enemy's eyes!
*boom* *crack* *blam, blam*
"If you're done playing around and making sound effects yourself, I'm almost done with this data draw," Miranda smirked at him. "Maybe you can go back to singing your own theme song when we get moving again."
With a weary sigh, Grunt dropped the geth torso he had been waving around. He had jammed its fingers into the grip of a gun and was holding its arms as if it were a puppet, making it fight the ancient, glorious battles that rolled through Grunt's mind.
"Bah, human's don't appreciate good battle music. Shepard knew. He showed me the adventures of the great Battlemaster Gorge!" Grunt threw his hands in the air. "I don't know how Okeer missed such an important and powerful krogan warrior!"
Miranda, poor, simple, weak Miranda, just looked at him. Her dull dark eyes held only a glimmer of understanding the true pleasure of battle. I certainly wasn't pity.
"Isn't BattleMaster Gorge a morning children's cartoon?" Miranda was definitely not looking at him with pity. She was just stupid.
"Oh, look," Grunt pointed at the console. "Looks like a log was left open!" Without waiting for Dumb Miranda, Grunt turned it on.
A single quarin stood working on the console Grunt was in front of when a second quarian ran up to him.
"Who's running that diagnostic?" she demanded. "I didn't authorize...wait...how many geth are networked?"
The male looked between the female and the console. "Umm..all of them. Rael'Zorah wanted-"
"Keelah!" the females cut him off as she shoved the male aside, and began working. "Shut it down! Shut it all down! They're in the system!"
There was a sudden flash and the sounds of something booming as the female seemed to rock forward into the terminal, then it went to static.
For a moment, Grunt looked at the console before looking to Miranda. "Well, that went poorly."
Tali
"It would help if we had more to work with," a male was saying to her father. "Maybe if Tali sent back more complete units…"
"No," Rael held up a hand, forestalling the quarian. "I will not risk putting my daughter at risk if there is political blowback. I've...I've failed her enough. I promised her and Meru that I would build them a house on the homeworld, and I mean to see that through."
Off camera another quarian voice shouted, "Rael, we have the collection Tali sent from Haestrom! Nothing particularly useful, except this repair drone. And...it looks like some of the cybernetics that had been put into Xera'Raan."
Taking the box, Rael opened it and removed what was left of Xera's right arm. "Yes, I got word from Reeger. She is most likely going to die from infection, but the implants kept her alive for a rather extended period. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of data was recorded."
Rael cleared the table he was working at, and began to hook the arm into his systems. "Wait...there is a lag in the systems...Who is running….No...Keelah…" There was a rocking as the lights on dimmed for a moment before the red emergency lights came up. "The data in the arm was corrupted! Get the power down! Now!"
The display cut out as Tali stood mutely in front of it.
She should feel...fear? Revulsion? Maybe anger? But she didn't She didn't feel anything. Nothing at all.
Her father. It was some sort of misguided… He thought he was… He…
"Tali," John's hand lightly touched her's, and she felt his strong will touching hers. It lifted her up and gave her resolve. Blinking back the tears she didn't know she had shed, she stood tall again and turned to her saera. "I'm alright. I'll have time to be upset later. Right now we need to figure out if any of the crew survived. And we need to figure out how to shut the geth down before they find a way off the ship."
John half smiled as he gave her hand a squeeze. "Alright, let's see what we can find."
She looked into his eyes as she looked back into his. As always, he looked through her visor. As always he saw her. He saw everything that she was. He…
"Okay, if you two are done mooning over each other, I'd like to get moving before Jack and/or Grunt blow the ship out from underneath us," Garrus interrupted. He then approached the pair as he wrapped an arm around the two of them, gently pulling them to him as his voice dropped several octaves. Plus the sub tones below human hearing. "Unless we can all cuddle…."
Tali's eyes narrowed as she gave him an answer. Right in his gut.
The turian doubled over and gasped, before holding up a thumb. "Good...one…" he squeezed out.
John
His omniblades danced through the cluster of geth as he hit them harder, and faster than a human should be capable of. That's assuming your even human at all anymore…
A thrust to the torso of one. Duck under a swing. Stab the armpit, cutting the joint. Grip the arm and pull it in front as the next fires into the first. Drop it and stab both blades into the second. Sweep arms wide, catching two more as they came in.
Then, with a thunderous crack, a shot from Garrus's rifle dropped the last.
"Spoilsport," John panted lightly. "I had them."
"Right," Garrus shook his head as he approached. "And you don't even know you're bleeding, do you?"
John frowned for a moment as he looked down at himself, seeing nothing unusual. There had been some near misses, of course. Cracks and gouges in his armor, where some shots had managed to get through. Some scouring and plasma damage. Even a spot on his right shoulder that had melted. Made the shoulder difficult to move. Well...more difficult. Gerald hadn't been kidding when he said the armor would be uncomfortable to fight in.
"Stupid bosh'tet," Tali cursed behind him as she shoved his shoulders forward, bending him over slightly.
Ah. There's the pain, John bit back the urge to yelp. He was going to be a dead man before he gave Garrus the satisfaction.
"Stop wiggling," Tali ordered as she jabbed a knife deep into the wound on his lower right kidney, killing him almost instantly.
He wished.
After three years of torture, and his finally giving up his grandmother's cookie recipe, Tali jerked back, pulling this organs out of the wound. Then, as she tossed the six inch piece of bloody shrapnel onto the table in front of him, he felt the cooling blissful magic of medigel injecting into his wound.
It was the moment that the doors to either side of the room his group was in, that he realized the position he was standing in.
Tali had half bent him over a small table as she worked on his injury. Her right hand gripped his hips, to stop him from moving as her left withdrew the bit of metal. And him being as tall as he was, Tali was pressed up against him.
"I told you we would make it b...e...fore…" Jack's banter slowly ground to a halt.
"Ha! There is no way that you could beat…uh…" Grunt seemed to be confused.
Miranda coughed quietly as she fought down a laugh. "Should we come back later, maybe?"
Then there was a flash. "There's one for the ship scrapbook!" Kasumi exclaimed with glee.
John let his head drop to the nice, cool table as he considered taking the shard of metal that had been in his back a moment ago, and cutting his own throat with it. "I hate you guys so much right now…."
Which was, apparently, the final straw, as Garrus collapsed to the ground laughing.
Tali
"...Tell them we're sorry!" the desperate female cried. "Johnah! Moma loves you very much! You have to be strong for Daddy, alright? I-AHHH!"
Tali slammed her fist into the console and was rewarded with a small burst of sparks as it went dead. "Damn it!" she cursed as she struck it again and again. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
"Tali, stop!" John grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face him. "We have to keep moving! We need to stop the geth!"
Biting back her words, Tali growled deep in her throat. She could feel her claws flexing inside her gloves as she slowly approached the body.
Her father's body.
"He...he left me to clean up his mess, John," Tali almost spat. "This is how he loved me? All these deaths? All this destruction? All the laws broken? If word of this gets out into the Fleet, he will be exiled."
"How do you exile a dead guy?" Jack asked thoughtlessly. Or...maybe not so thoughtless. Her tone was subdued. It was more that she didn't know how to handle somebody actually caring.
"He...would be stricken from the records of every ship he had ever served on. His name would never be spoken. His deeds would be held up as an example. 'Don't do this!' " Tali squatted down over his body.
"...Oh," was Jack's reply.
Tali sniffed lightly and laughed. "It's fine, Jack. I know you're trying."
"I...I ain't…" Jack faltered for a moment before she kneeled next to her. "I got nothing. We can go break stuff. Just you and me, if you want."
The tears she had been holding back cracked finally as she began to sob. Her hands clutched at her father's hand. She remembered when it had seemed so big. She remembered when he had taken two weeks worth of sickness so that he could hold her in his arms when she had gotten an infection. She remembered his hand on her shoulder, trembling, as he tried desperately to be strong for her when they let her mother's ashes go into the stars.
It was Jack, of all people. Jack pulled her into her arms, squeezing. The convict's hand gently rubbed her back as she rocked slowly. "I'm not going to tell you it's going to be alright. It won't. It's gonna hurt. I'm not going to tell you 'he's in a better place now' because it isn't better. I'm not gonna tell you 'shit happens for a reason' or 'there is a cosmic plan'. That's all bullshit. But you're alive. We're with you. We'll get through it."
A small laugh escaped Tali as she patted Jack's stomach. "I thought my people were thin," Tali sniffled.
Jack froze for a moment before slapping Tali's shoulder and pushing her away. "Oh you fucking bitch. You fucked up my makeup."
Smiling in spite of herself, Tali looked up at the crazy human, and laughed. Dark streaks ran from under Jack's eyes, and down her face, as she desperately wiped at them. Instead of cleaning it, Jack ended up making an even bigger mess.
Taking a deep breath, Tali moved to her father and tapped into his omnitool. "Thank you Jack. I knew you weren't as terrible as you seemed."
Jack sputtered for a moment before huffing. "Everybody gets hurt. Even I know there are limits."
"I got it," Tali said after a moment as an image sprung to life. It was Rael'Zorah, as he was in life.
"Tali, if you are seeing this, then I failed. There was something in the data from Xera'Raan's arm. It bridged the gap between the geth, letting them unit themselves. By the time we realized what was happening, they had begun activating platforms and assaulted the crew. The central hub is on the bridge, but it was the first place they locked down. I am attempting to open it, but if I don't make it, you will have to do it.
After you do, get the data. Get it to Daro'Xen. She will know what to do with it."
Then, the message just...stopped.
"That was it?" Tali could feel John's anger. It lit a spark inside her, pushing at her own anger.
"That's it, John," Tali confirmed as she stood. Her anger fanned his, which in turn rose her's. But she knew it for what it was. It was feiz'tiyl. "Let's finish the geth. I want to go home. To the Normandy.
Garrus
"Well...shit," Garrus sighed right before a large metal fist cracked into his face, and knocking him a couple meters back.
Across the room, the blurred outline of a geth hunter moved and danced with the flickering form of Kasumi.
Shepard arms wrapped themselves around two troopers and he heaved, lifting both machines off the ground and spun to face Tali, as the quarian's omnitool sparked bolts of electricity through both frames.
Grunt and Jack, at the forefront, and over eager, had been swept up in a small tide of geth, but the crushing and shredding of metal from the corridor behind him gave testimony to the vicious battle.
Before Garrus, however, was the Geth Prime. Its blood read armor was dented heavily from the rounds of his mantis sniper rifle. The machine raised the rocket launcher and fired.
Instinctively, Garrus closed his eyes. It was ironic that a rocket failed to kill him before, but now it would surely end his life.
But...it had been a good run. He wouldn't trade a moment of it for anything in the galaxy. Except maybe Shepard's driving. He'd love to forget that part. Maybe suffering through that would be enough to wipe away a few of his sins. Seriously….that man couldn't drive his way...Also...he wonder what Miranda's waist felt like...Why am I not dead"
His eyes opened as the geth's rocket struck the bright blue biotic shield that had dropped around him. The fire and shrapnel shimmered briefly, before falling away to reveal the seemingly confused Prime unit.
Then, a black booted foot landed squarely on Garrus's right shoulder and pushing off as Miranda lept high over him. It was an image that would be burned into his memory.
In the air, Miranda's long black hair trailed behind her as a snarl seemed to twist her lips into something feral looking. Her left hand was out before her as her right arm twisted her whole upper body back, the hand encased in a bright, almost white ball of energy.
Then time snapped. Miranda's right hand, now encased in nearly a ton of mass, struck the Prime unit on the top of it curved head. Buckling under the pressure, the geth's head folded in and Miranda's fist continued down and slammed into the main body, shearing in half.
Landing, seemingly lightly, Miranda turned to look at Garrus with one of her trademarked arrogance smirks as the two chunks of geth crashed to the ground.
"Told you I could take a rocket."
Garrus blinked a moment and made a sub-harmonic tone. A tone one normally made when one was...interested. Luckily, human's couldn't perceive his rather embarrassing slip.
Except, Miranda gave a small frown as she rubbed at her ear. "Are you okay? What's with that sound?"
"Ah...shit."
John
Please, she had said. Please, you can't give them the data! It would ruin everything my father accomplished! You know what is at stake!
But, if you get exiled… he tried to say, before she laughed bitterly.
Let them. My home is the Normandy. With you. I don't need anything else.
"Were you able to find anything that would exonerate Tali'Zorah while on the Alarei, Captain?" Shala'Raan asked. Her voice sounded almost desperate under the strong 'Admiral' persona she wore.
John looked at Tali as she stood looking back at him. Her hands twisted in front of her as her large glowing eyes begged at him.
"No," John said at last, turning back to the Admiralty Board. "And I shouldn't have to. Tali has sacrificed everything for the Fleet. I spent countless hours with her, listening to her describe the quarian people. From her words I came to respect you. From her words I learned that there was more to your people than the words of a selfish, childish galaxy.
But it's her deeds. All that she has done. She faced geth. She faced krogan, mercenaries, and pirates. She faced Saren himself, and put the final round through his body.
It's what she has suffered. Her mother. Now her father. I;ve seen the wounds she has taken. I've had her blood on my hands as I staunched her wounds. Just as she has mine.
I saw her boldly stand before her wounded soldiers on Freedom's Progress, facing down relentless mechs.
I saw her weep over the lives lost on Haestrom. Lost on a fool's mission!
I saw her scoff in the face of a Reaper itself.
If she asked it, I would give her the breath from my lungs, just as I know she would do anything for her people or her crewmates.
If that isn't enough for you, then to hell with all of you. She is a member of my crew. I'll be damned if I let you take her from me."
The Garden was quiet. Quarians stood around John and his battered team. None of them moved. None of them spoke. It was still.
Then an impact. John looked down as Tali's arms wrapped around him in a crushing grip. Her visor pressed against her side as she shook from the tears.
Then there was sound. He wasn't sure where it started, but it began with a single foot stomp. Then it spread. Two, ten, fifty, the entire crowd seemed to be stomping in a thunderous roar.
"I guess this is there version of a slow clap?" Kasumi wondered aloud as John and his team looked about them.
"Yes," Tali sniffed, looking at the theif. "Yes, it is."
John smiled for a moment before he looked back to the Admiralty Board before them. The three quarians, one by one, opened their omnitools and made their choice as the stomping slowed, then stopped.
Shala'Raan stood for a moment and looked over the crowd before looking at the display on her podium.
"Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, in light if extenuating circumstances, the Admiralty Board finds, uncontested, and unanimously, that there is no evidence to convict. You are cleared of all charges.," This time, Shala was unable to keep the pride out of her voice. "Keelah Se'lei."
Tali
He had saved her. Again. Now with words to add to the weight of his deeds. John had saved her.
His words….as she replayed them in her head, Tali couldn't keep the blush from burning her face. There was no way he knew what his words meant. The symbolism behind what he had said. There was no way...but she was happy anyway.
As John stood, giving orders to the ground team and splitting them up, Shala walked up to the pair and bowed her head. "Thank you, Captain," the emotion was thick in her gravelly voice. "I cannot express my gratitude for what you did for Tali."
John seemed to think for a moment before he allowed himself a small smile. "I simply stood between Tali and harm, from the empty quarters of the stars."
Shala laughed quietly as she inclined her head again. "So you did, Captain. So you did. It must be the hands of the Ancestor's themselves that brought children back together again. For this very moment."
The wording struck Tali as a bit...odd. "Shala," she began. "I may have been on my pilgrimage, but I was hardly a child."
Pausing, Shala looked from her, to John, then back again. Then, she laughed. "Ancestor's do have a wicked sense of humor! I see Meru's devious little fingers in this!"
Still cackling, Shala brought up an image on her omnitool. In it were two women. One human, with long red hair, tied up in a large bun. The other was a quarian with a green realk, the pattern, the same as Tali's. They both were young, close to the same age as John and Tali were now.
In front of the human woman stood two children, one girl, her hair as red as her mother's with a light spinking of freckles over her nose. Next to her was a boy with short blonde hair, one of his hands was pressed against one of the bubbles her people kept younger children in, before they got there first suit. Inside the bubble was a young quarian girl, her hand pressed against the against the inside of the bubble, over the boy's.
While the women, and the girl smiled for toward the person taking the image, the boy and the quarian girl only looked at each other.
Quarian Lexicon
Saera: Term used when speaking to ones lifemate. Literal translation: My souls soul. Other meanings include, but are not limited to: Keeper of my soul and My souls protector. Most commonly used word throughout the fleet by a quarian when speaking privately to their lifemate. Though unconfirmed by any quarian, there are implications that this word holds extreme intimacy as well as absolute trust. No single human word or phrase encompassed all that this one short word implies as it appears to contain both dominant and submissive traits.
Bosh'tet: Animal, native to Rannoch. With no insect life, other species of life had to fill the niche's that on earth fell to the insect. One such niche was the dung beetle. A bosh'tet falls into the category of roller on earth as it moves the dung found to a central location. Though differing in colors, from the green/yellow of the cooler climates to the blue/white in the more tropical areas, they are the same species. Known for apparent inability to distinguish between dung and small rocks, it is considered extremely stupid. Many have been found dead, surrounded by small rocks, as it tried to feed on them.
Felz'tiyl: Term of courtship. Literal translation: Pathway to the soul. Third of three: Signifies the period in which the two slowly realize that without the other they are incomplete. Once this phase is entered only ones death can stop the bonding.
Realk: Cloth covering used by the quarians. It is used to describe not just the hood seen on most but any material adornment.
AN: Again, sorry for the roughness of this and the last chapters. My beta reader is still out for the moment. Now you all see the shame that is my writing before anybody gets to it before I post!
Normally I would have put them off for a bit, but I was at a part that I really wanted to finish while it was hot in my head. So, Tah dah!
Also, as you can see, I was playing a bit of a long game with the It Must Be Fate story :)
