A/N: Hey there, been a while, I've actually spent this time stockpiling quite a few chapters. But as far as why I haven't been around, it's because I am writing for a few more projects.
One of them is "Dawn: An Animated Aerowar Audioplay". Check it out if you were a fan of Project Wingman. So yeah, I can't exactly be as up to snuff on these fanfiction writings like I used to, but I'm still rather committed, all things considered.
I've been getting a few complaints about pacing, and I'll address them now:
Yeah.
Pacing is a bit slow, and it's not going as fast as I naturally would like, but I do have a counterpoint if you would hear me out: Chances are if you're reading this story, you're not exactly interested in the Mass Effect story per se. As in we know the twists and turns. We know, generally, that yeah Saren is going to be stopped, the Reapers will come, Shepard will save the day and find solutions to keep her plot going. Chances are the main draw remains the interaction of the Halo elements to this, and then Mai and JD's progression as opposed to the events they find themselves in.
It's for that reason I put a lot of work into them as opposed to, perhaps, them being more intensely into the plot of Mass Effect. Generally, I treat them as Mass Effect squadmates in this sense. As in they are very much in the background (until they're not).
Anyway,
Two more chapters or so for Noveria after this, and then, off to the Citadel, back to Earth, and then, Virmire.
1-27
Walk the Walk
"Paperwork is fine." The blasphemy on Shepard's lips is a testament to something more on her behalf as she sits in her quarters with those designated looking on. "It's the monotony of an office job that really kills me more than any hostile will."
Mai doesn't know if Shepard is literal or not. Still, the idle comment as Shepard sifts through the digital files of a Spectre-issued subpoena to Anoleis swims through her omni at blistering speed makes her think back to her universe: to reports she's filed with the automated help of AI. Even Spartans like her were required some time on file to record events that they could only perceive in the heat of battle. Paperwork is how every polite society operates, and here Shepard finds it even in the cold of Noveria.
"Cash could help." The Spartan blurts out.
Every time that name, the very mention of a different type of VI manifested on the Normandy is brought up, the resident Quarian twitches in her skin. They are all there in Shepard's quarters, lounging as if office workers waiting for word from the top down. Shepard is that top-down. Quietly, a guitar strums an ambient beat from Shepard's console, surrounded by pictures of family and friends, of orphans and fans all wishing her well. This room was once Anderson's, but like all things, Shepard has made it her own.
The Normandy, upgraded, form fit for its crew, bear rug out in the mess hall and drop pods ready to deploy, is prepared for everything. Everything but Noveria, that is.
Shepard shrugs. "Eh. I tend not to delegate anything involving my signature to VIs. You'd be surprised how many people try to steal my identity. I've got one of those type of faces that's easy to look-like." She sucks in her breath afterward, putting down anything related to the long hours ahead of her as she squares herself and looks to her people. A Turian, an Asari, two special Humans, a Krogan, and a Quarian. "Alright. You all have my Spectre clearances for this place. It'll take me a few days at least to get through these forms and dig up what Saren put down here so I'm relying on you to put your ear to the ground and see what's squirming. Look into anything related to Saren and the Geth, simple as."
Everyone there is silent.
Away mission done alone under their guidance is one thing: that is a military affair and easy to reckon with. Go to X spot and kill Y people to get Z items. It's formulaic and expected. This is new, unprecedented. Most of them there tell themselves as if they wouldn't feel 100% confident if it was Shepard personally leading them.
She sees their doubt on all of their faces in light of this and realizes just the same.
"It'll be fine. You've all led away missions without me. Real hardcore, gun up type of stuff. This should be a walk in the park. If all else fails, I'll just be in your ear if you need me."
They had just spent the hour prior speculating, going over what they had observed: Someone like Anoleis was corrupt. Even if it was a stereotype, how could someone on that planet in any leadership not be? They didn't know it for sure, but it could be proven and, perhaps, leveraged upon for information. That entire planet stank of corrupting in its most insidious way: formalized. Even Omega was more honest about its nature.
There is something simple to fighting the Geth, or pirates, or viral infections from sentient plants. There is no complication to shooting at them.
Here the lines blur, the rules of engagement are different.
"Your guess is as good as mine." Shepard admits. "It's the only reason why I'm asking this of you as I clean up the messy backend."
Who are they to say no to Shepard?
Garrus is the one that steps up, arms crossed, looking to those in there. The Turian training in him makes him recognize the chain of command that, somehow, lands on him in the absence of Shepard. At least in this situation. "I've got a few ideas if you wouldn't mind listening?"
JD affirms, and that causes the initial walkout to plan their next moves. Shepard stops one, however.
"Tali?" She says aloud, and the Quarian pauses behind Garrus to look at Shepard. "Could you stay for a second?"
The rest leave, the Quarian, and the Commander remaining.
Late-night chats and away missions define their relationship. Picking data off of Geth data nodes and the occasional pointer about stance and shot placement. According to Adams, she's still performing very well in engineering. The Alliance has much to learn from Tali singularly about what it means to be efficient about thermal management and shipboard algorithms.
That would've been the simple life that they might've lived in a simple galaxy: Commander Shepard and her trust engineer Tali traveling the stars.
This, however, was not that simple life.
After a few moments squaring away final details on a form she was looking over, she turned her chair over to Tali.
The Quarian perked up, shoulders square, but even then that couldn't prepare her for the point-blank question:
"How're you feeling about Cash?"
He's there at times, talking to Chief Adams in his structured way as he builds his vocabulary and query functions for the sake of the Normandy crew: reports about engine diagnostics and automatic macros for the Normandy that should shunt in given specific conditions derived from those reports. In little ways, Cash has made life on the Normandy just a little easier. Even Chakwas and Doc, taking care of an oversized crew, benefit from Cash as an impromptu secretary.
"He's never wrong with measurements." Chakwas confides in Shepard one day on her rounds.
Joker benefits as well, talking at the action figure-sized apparition of a man in the cockpit. The transitive property also means the crew is sparred some of Joker's less usable material.
The only stand out is Tali.
She refuses to speak with him.
It's pretty obvious why.
"I'd rather not interact with it, if I can help it, Shepard." Shepard tips her head up as Tali speaks, arms crossed as if bothered to admit it. "It's very… lifelike, sometimes."
"He's not an AI." Shepard tells her, but it doesn't exactly help.
"We didn't think the Geth were either at first. Not as they are now that is." She looks and finds herself staring at a picture of a horse, a younger Shepard brushing its coat. It was a picture taken from Mongolia and her time there, bringing a horse farm back to its glory. "When that… construct, can hold a conversation better than Mai, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to give it the cold shoulder."
"Tali, I'm not here to fight you on this, but the crew is finding Cash rather useful. Just don't get left behind. Just think of him like any other interface or computer."
"But see? You're calling it a "he"." It's accusatory, but it's a motion that comes with being a Quarian.
Shepard mulls the thought in your head, and Tali is correct. She has been referring to Cash, talking to Cash even, as if they were a person, flesh and blood. Maybe it's a habit, maybe it's human comfortability when it comes to talking, but Cash, even if he was just a VI, is treated like a person.
Please and thank yous. Patience and cadence. They talk and regard Cash as if a man at times, as he blinks in and out of existence on holopedestals or comms. Questions asked, which he answers immediately, tactical evaluations, and reminders. All this could be done with any automated system, but with Cash, it is done better.
"I don't mean anything by it." Shepard brushes her red hair behind chaffed ears. "Just wanted to bring this up."
"It's not an issue, Shepard. Promise."
Shepard mouths an affirmative, and that's that. She trusts her crew, and if Tali will find a way to work around Cash, she counts it won't be an issue.
There is a confirmation on Shepard's omni. Information verified, and suspicions brought to light: The manifests of arrivals in the last month. Over a week ago: Matriarch Benezia and her entourage, with cargo.
Liara's mother.
Another issue for another moment; for now, it's Tali.
One last thing:
"I do have to ask Tali, what're your plans from here on out? We're not going to be on this mission forever, and as wonderful it would be for you to be by my side doing Spectre duties for the rest of our lives…" Shepard led off, and Tali picked it off.
"I have a duty, to you, Shepard, for saving me on the Citadel. I have a duty to put Saren in the ground." Her voice is hoarse, saying that of the enemy. "But in the end, I have a duty to my people."
Quarian solidarity is unique among the stars, making even the most right-wing Human group or Turian military junta pale. It is something built into their very blood, at least her generation and dozens of generations before her. Everything she does is for her people, in the end.
Even taking readings of the Normandy's stealth drive.
Of all the battles that Shepard takes, it's not one of Tali.
"If, well, let's say the Migrant Fleet and the Covenant mobilize for an immediate liberation front against the Geth. I hope you understand that if that happens during this mission, we might not be in the best position to transfer you off."
Tali's eyes, they narrow, but not toward Shepard. Her eyes move to her feet, and she is thinking, pondering, wondering. "It's okay." She says finally. "I don't think I really want to be a part of that invasion."
Shepard raises an eyebrow, tilting her head. A surprising thing to hear, and Tali knows that Shepard expects an explanation at some point. If not now, then when she inevitably does her rounds.
"The Covenant." The word comes off of her like sandpaper.
Cash, idly browsing a Turian mental self-help site, is pinged immediately just by his filter. The Covenant has been referenced inside the Normandy, and his sensors inside of Shepard's cabin immediately go alight. He listens.
"The Sangheili, they do not deserve Rannoch. Rannoch is not their homeworld. For them to just swoop in with their Covenant all of the sudden, I would've thought the Admiralty would've been a little more cautious in taking them on… even if they promised an army."
She's seen the reports. Mostly from Alliance Intelligence, the Covenant Round Table is more than willing to outline its exact force strength. In short, the Migrant Fleet's active combat forces have been dwarfed by the arrival of the Covenant. Even more intriguing is that the number is going up. The Unggoy, Grunts, are much to blame for that.
Several million Covenant, a fighting force yet to be fully seen, and the Galaxy waits with bated breath on what they look like full bore. The only other subject that garners such interest is herself, on the journey to find Sarne.
"Tali," Shepard looks at those photos on the wall and the thousands of stories that cannot be shared through them. "The first time I helped out a Turian was back in the academy. A real proud son of a bitch. Sorta like Garrus's father from what we've heard of him." Proudly Turian, with all the rigidity that comes with their species against those that would challenge them. Tali finds herself sitting back on Shepard's bed, and the old motions in her head, getting ready to listen to Shepard, they fire off. "He didn't want my help. Far from it. Hell, he spent more effort trying to stop me from helping than he did helping himself… In the end though, he got it, and eventually, he was thankful for it."
"Oh? What did he need help with?"
It's something very childish, very beyond her nowadays. The humble face that Shepard puts on is equal parts embarrassment and pride. "I helped him ask out a cadet!"
Human-Turian relations always pique some interest in Shepard. It's been a long time; she would admit to herself gladly that she's been on "the market," however, even in her mellow and lonely thoughts, she does wander to the idea of affection and intimacy inherent in love. She doesn't think of those thoughts often, the depth of herself coming out and freezing the skin, from the inside out, eventually after.
Tali giggles. "Oh, Shepard? A matchmaker are you?"
She shrugged in response. "If they need it." It's the last smile she gives as she remembers how many love lives she has seen from the distance, third-wheeled, and maybe even kicked off. Those fall away, however, as she comes to the point: "But look, Tali. I don't pretend to know what you feel, between Rannoch and the Covenant, but I can tell you that you shouldn't be too proud, or too resolute, to not accept help. I don't quite trust the Covenant as well, but with the correct oversight, you have so much to gain."
Every time Shepard says the word Covenant, it burns the back of her throat and pin needles in her veins. She glances for her bottle of pills but beats them down for now. It's only a flare-up of a hatred inside her she has seen only once before on a desolate rock known as Torfan.
Tali, her head is bowed down still to the floor, ashamed to hear Shepard's words. She knows the Commander is right, but it's not what she feels, and now, more than any other time in her life, she has been more assured of what she is: a soldier. She doesn't pick her head up as she hears Shepard get out of her chair and take gentle steps toward her.
It is too late by the time that she has found her hands on her, holding both her arms above her elbows, knelt eye to eye with her—nothing to be said, just an assurance that things will be okay.
A memory:
All these years later, Tali doesn't know how her mother died. No one tells her, and she does not want to know. All she knows that it was unkind and violent. The memory that she keeps of Angi'ya nar Rayya instead is of the last time she was tucked to sleep by her.
Once upon a time, Tali wasn't always a wiz-kid engineer. She once struggled. She struggled enough to be scolded by her superiors as a teenager. It's one rough day of grading after a mechanical design class regarding Batarian chassis retrofitting that she cannot sleep, and Angi is there for her.
"You know, my daughter, I didn't know how to take apart a model ship until I was on my Pilgrimage." She says softly, rose-colored suit contrasted against the cramped greys and steels of the Rayya. Tali can only sniffle, chuckle, and look up at her mother with her starry eyes. She takes her by her arms and holds them tight before bringing them into a hug. "You're going to do great things one day, Tali… far greater than just being able to weld together dirty Batarian ships."
"Okay mama…"
Tali leans in for a hug, but Shepard doesn't notice as she is up and away, back to her desk, pouring over documents.
She is not her mother, and yet…
"Tali, do you mind telling Liara I need to see her?"
One of the cruelest questions ever considered by sentient minds: What would your mother think of what you've done with your life?
She puts it away as she stands and nods. "Okay, Shepard."
Five minutes later and Liara T'Soni is back in her quarters. On her face: dread.
She knows what this is about.
"I'm sorry Liara." Shepard preempts, but Liara has always been smart about what's happening to her now. It was a certainty, and just like the Reapers she knows from the hours and hours of further research done, she knows it is something to be confronted whether she wants to or not.
Liara nods once, and the door to Shepard's quarters close.
With the way Wrex has a bag over his shoulder, one might think he was leaving the Normandy.
"No such luck, human." Very few individuals have Wrex's respect on the Normandy. Shepard for her loyalty. Tali for her tenacity. Mai for… being Mai. Everyone else exists on a layer beneath. This includes Ashley as she spoons away at a cup of shaved ice and strawberry flavoring. One of the few comforts of being in port in Noveria, as discovered, is ample supply of ice. The ex-Marine that heads security detail was willing to benefit some of Hitman, currently holding security.
Ashley commented, wondering if Wrex was disembarking for good, opening her mouth. It's not her shift, and one of the few pleasures of restricted shore leave was to eat unbothered at the mess.
JD and Mai are there with Ashley, omni notes being combed over. The Krogan only gives his regards otherwise to Mai, and surprisingly she gives the nod back.
"Mai."
"Wrex."
It's enough for Ashley and JD to share that surprised glance, but it's over and done with as Wrex shoves a few MREs into his bag and is out the door. Distantly Cash reports over the PA that the airlock hazmat runs and goes.
Eventually, the Spartan divulges.
"It's not his first time on the planet. I suspect he's going to ask his former contacts here about Saren."
They talk in single words and suggestions, light physical jabs, and aggressive accusations. It's a language that they can understand: as a Spartan and a Krogan.
JD would prefer that she become a bit friendlier with Garrus or Tali than Wrex, but he respects her decisions as he nods to his effort and continues on their own:
One of the many positives with having Tali on the crew is that her cryptography as a subset of her hacking skills allows them, after a certain amount of nondescript hacking at a nearby node, the manifest for security and their assignments. Business bullshit is an area that Mai and JD want to avoid entirely, so the next best thing is patterns of security in the port and the surrounding facilities.
Garrus's plan isn't that dissimilar to Wrex's. He would work through former C-Sec security guards if there are any and, at worst, work his charms—exact words.
Not that JD doubts him, but he has his nose down in paper trails rather.
It stings a bit nostalgic to him: remembering his father during late nights at the station, seeing him toil over case notes.
"There seems to be an abnormal amount of clothing boutiques here." Mai has been pouring over the more objective details of Port Hanshan and Noveria. She can make heads and tails about numbers and positioning, not something as abstract as business intent and motives. She's not a detective, and JD is only marginally better with the blood of one within himself. Maybe he is more perceptive than most, as some of his ODST squad mates used to tell him. However, he believes that he is now as he looks at digitized paper and documents detailing corporate routines, financial statements, publicity stunts, and media pieces meant to avail the average person of the Galaxy that they are doing their jobs correctly.
Nothing of the darkness beneath, of which Saren is involved. It's one thing to find the darkness; it's another to wade into it and find the exact shade.
Ashley leans over, almost into Mai's space; however the Spartan is surprisingly ambivalent nowadays. She has beaten most of the ship to a pulp at some point, and so it is their limits that have to be kept by them, not herself.
The Marine's nose is held up at the brochure of a formal boutique on Mai's datapad, on the table.
This season's styles still must be accounted for out here.
She scoffs, scooping more flavored ice into her mouth as JD and Mai toil over it and other documents trying to find some sort of secret.
The old expression: Devils wearing Prada, and JD has to see something in it right now.
"Even under orders you could never get me into a dress." Ashley admits freely. Fair enough, JD gives her that as he leans back in a chair that does more damage to his lumbar than any pod would. "As much of a fan of action as I am, Shepard's been putting us down on the ground enough. I think I'll leave it to her for this super spy stuff. Props to you spooks."
Spooks as they still are.
"Mm. Change of pace." JD airs outback.
"Change of pace." Ashley echoes. She's lost in her thoughts as well, and JD knows it the same in any Marine. Marines like her don't go deep, don't reach down, at least, not while in uniform. It's a mechanism that comes with deployment that makes them assume a certain character to not be lost in the conflicts that may be. He's the same. The self-fulfilling prophecy of him being the quiet man in a loud war, he's not quite sure where it began and where it ended… At least the manifestation that kept him silent for days even out on deployment. "You know, I had a PMC recruiter use that as an argument for."
"What for?" JD is half-listening, half looking at a selection of boutiques that cater more to Turians. Surely Saren needed a suit at some point here.
"My family thought about that for a while. You know? Going private. We had enough grief in the Alliance because of our… history, that we almost wanted to just say screw it and go someplace where no one cared about a bad call, a long time ago." She puts another spoonful of sweet ice in her mouth, unbothered. This conflict in herself was one she fought a long time ago. A Marine like her, to fight is her normal, even from something like personal history. "But you know, I think we're just better off serving. Us Williams, we'll never run from a fight again, especially in the name of Humanity."
It is not JD that listens intently to Ashley, but it's Mai, looking up from her data.
"For the rest of your life?" It is her question that brings JD out of it as he glances up at Mai, an earnest look on her face that he sees only when she asks him the same questions: the same questions that have broad answers that, somehow, every person had their own answer for.
The Marines across from her, she shrugs. "Eh. We'll see. I ain't built like you, Chief, so I'll serve as long as I can."
It takes a long while for Mai to respond, but she looks over Ashley fully, up and down, and for once, her gaze is not biting or that of a predator. She has evaluated Ashley. "Hmph."
It's approval.
JD knows its high praise, but he stays quiet with a smirk on his face as Ashley, stuttering with the realization that Mai approves of her, finishes up her shaved ice, and goes a little lighter of her step into the well deck.
After another half-hour JD gets something in his head, in his leg, bouncing up and down.
Shepard is good with paperwork. He isn't.
"Mai." She tilts her head up at him across the table. "Going for a walk, come with?"
After taking one last overview of their work as of late, she nods. She's not in the habit of leaving JD alone on foreign worlds, either out on away missions or even something as mundane as corporate colonies. The idea of assassins flair in her mind, being an assassin herself. That's the worst-case: the idea that Saren and his allies would openly attack them in public again like back on the Citadel. All things given, she is the only logical counterpoint.
It's a short jaunt down to the well deck for their "casual" gear, pistols, lower strength kinetic barriers, and, with JD, the visor.
"Howdy folks." Even in Mai's earpiece, he rings out.
"Anything interesting today Cash?" Behind the Mako, they speak to him in soft tones. JD makes the idle conversation.
"Nothing really." His voice has the magnetic tone of the West, of a man enjoying himself. "Was trying to track down the point of divergence between us and this place but I got distracted."
"An AI getting distracted?" Mai is skeptical.
"Imagine, if you will, being told to kill a hundred Grunts, but as you're doing it, you see the flash of an Elite or something. Something like that, Little Lady. Except my Grunt killing fields is an information net nearly ten times the size of all of the UEG and the UNSC's, civilian and military."
Mai doesn't quite understand the idea that Cash is going on, and, without a proper face to direct her confusion, she raises an eyebrow instead at JD.
Late nights, browsing on a datapad in the ODST bay about any stupid topic that would keep him awake when he couldn't afford to nap advises his answer: "The civilian net was under war-time restrictions. Wasn't really too fun to be on…"
"Jonny-boy is right. Unrestricted information, organic growth, a culmination of culture and society as nature intended: an extranet. The Wild, Wild, Xeno West. I'm loving it."
"I see."
Conversations with Cash are easy all the same, however. Pick up and dropped at a moment's notice. For Mai, it comes easier than it does to JD because of Onyx and Deep Winter. She grew up with a machine for socialization, bare as it was. JD's first real communication with a military-grade AI with a personality matrix hadn't been as graceful.
To him. AI like Cash had once been Human. Habit had turned them into nothing more than talking interfaces.
The novelty of holding a conversation with an AI is one he entertains because the idea of Cash amuses him enough.
Maybe, just maybe, JD thinks as he sees Cash blip in his visor, that how he treats AI is a little like how the Quarians treated the Geth long ago.
They flash Shepard's Spectre permissions, and they're let in.
Stepping out of the Normandy without her armor is something she has to get used to, Mai tells herself, the weight of an SMG that's, to her, sized like a pistol on her hip. She carries it like a tote bag with its sling as JD simply has his pistol holstered.
The port guards give them a wide berth as they wave them through.
Port Hanshan, and most of Noveria's dots of civilizations, is built into the craggy mountains. Inhospitable to even the most ardent of frontiersmen, enough credits were thrown at the Noveria project that, eventually, the colony bore fruit by way of unrestricted patent research. Money goes where money is needed, and those with money find a place to use it still in the frontier.
A million credits does no one anything in the middle of nowhere, and so commerce and luxury were brought to Noveria.
Concrete sidings fade between wooden support columns trying to bring class to the brutalism necessitated by the original foundations, glass and steel, and wood and concrete only make Port Hanshan feel cold as, leaving the docks and the administrative areas, brushing past suited men and women of all races and species, they find themselves in rolling visages of hotel lobbies copy and pasted over and over again.
It's done in blocks almost, all of the sections of a facility made and morphed into something more livable than the prefabs they were built on.
On the prefabs built into the side of the mountain, great glass windows show off the same desolate, white landscape.
None of the bystanders who live here spend too much time looking out at a planet that wants them dead.
Instead, they look inward toward the designs that speak toward wealth and commerce.
People walk around in their bubbles, concrete footsteps, sometimes the only annoying noise.
Asari, Turians, Humans, the odd Hanar, security staff and crew and office employee alike. Everyone has their head down, and because of that, not too many pay heed to the two of them until they're too close, and from there, they back off.
In public amongst aliens still, it is easier to fear them (or, at least in JD's head, when they fear Mai).
Mai doesn't ask if JD has a precise destination. That's not her prerogative as she walks with him.
JD has none to give if she asked; they only walk forward, through stone channels and walkways, going through districts named after investors in every civilized tongue.
Eventually, word gets out that they are on this walk, and their omnis buzz with updates, alerts, requests:
TZNRayaa: If you see any self-service service kiosks, plz mark them. I'll see if I can pull data from them if G can charm his way into a security access key.
LT'Soni: JD, Chief Gul, I am visiting an old academic acquaintance of mine that has a development firm. Would you mind meeting up with me at this location and time?
GVak: The dextro-amino food here is garbage, but I suppose it tastes better if it's all business expensed.
As JD glances at those messages, he also glances at his bank account and confirms with Garrus's snide observation that, yeah, maybe macaroni and cheese dusted with gold tastes better if he's not the one paying for it. It's a specific example that both he and Mai glance at as they walk in front of a Human café in a shopping district.
"Five-stars, still, apparently." Without even saying, Cash advises them both in their ear of the current rating of "Bart's Bistro."
Even with that, JD would never think it's worth it.
The price of a "tagliatelle covered with a hefty portion of white truffle, brown butter truffle froth and grated parmesan cheese" remains in Mai's mind, however(what any of those words mean she doesn't care for). It's just that number.
She's only felt rich once in her life.
It's her childhood, back in New Jerusalem, and she and her mother are making their way from one district to another. The police are cracking down on vagrants again, and they have to move from one alley to another.
With wooden sandals that have carved callouses in her feet, she feels the crunch and sees what her desperately tired mother cannot as they shamble in the shadows of the city.
A banknote: five dollars, crumpled, half-torn because of her step, but still legible, still usable.
Tearing her hand from her mother as she leads the young Mai, she picks it up in its damp and muddy glory.
For that moment, she is rich.
Habits clash, and she reaches out and touches his elbow to speak to him. Normally only done for signing, but communication between them has blurred down now in margins so thin it still feels natural. "Was your home, your city, was it a rich place?" She asks as they stop in front of one of the clothing boutiques they had seen data about earlier:
Trimalchio en Paradiso.
Human and Asari. Italian suits of that modern age. No mannequins for some stores, only models, hired, stand on the displays behind the front windows of that store, nestled between so many others, and look good in the products sold.
JD sees his reflection on glass polished to a crystal sheen, and he remembers early high school days where young kids like him would peruse the more affluent districts of Cirsium City and look at designer electronics, speedster Warthogs, purebred pets, and pretty much anything that would cost more than a month's of their parents' salary. They'd go there and simply look, and imagine, a life with better fortunes.
The idea of money, of commerce, as understood to him as a child of a middle-class family, has fallen away for the value of life, his life, on the battlefield. The zeros no longer matter.
"It was… well off, I guess." He looks out the window, expecting to see Earth, but instead, it's just snow. "We benefitted by being so close to Home."
Home. The pale blue dot.
"Prices were never bad because we leeched a lot from Earth." There was always turkey for Thanksgiving. Always steak for Christmas. Always enough food in the fridge and money in the bank. Beyond becoming a Spartan, he remembers, her life was still a tragedy of poverty and race. Something he might've neglected. Something that was still a part of her in some way, buried deep inside, brought up by the light of beautiful people and their beautiful clothes.
She remembers her hunger all of a sudden. It is a hunger that she has not felt in years, and Ashley's flavored ice is in her mind.
She was a hungry, impoverished, dirty child once, and now she stands with millions of research and development grafted onto her flesh and bones, known for a suit that costed entire fleets.
There is a word she has become familiar with, more and more lately. Every time they interact with the Covenant, every time they have to lie, every time they have to remember that they have to use their experience and yet conceal their nature:
That word is irony.
She hasn't heard the way her stomach grumbled, but JD does, cracking a smile on his lips for a second as he tips his head over for her to follow still.
She does without thinking, following him to a stone bench beneath an artificial tree from an Asari planet they do not know.
"Hungry?"
The sound that comes out of her throat is the closest thing to an answer she will give to something as Human as wanting lunch. "If… If you are in need of food as well we can go back to that Bistro establishment and-"
JD shakes his head, rather confident in himself, glancing at his omni. "Wait a few minutes."
There is very little doubt in her about JD, so she does not pose a question; she does not think to herself otherwise. All they do is sit, side by side, and wait.
His presence has always calmed or at least centered her. Today is different, however. Maybe too much time has passed since their friendship began that she has to assume that now, they're wasting time with the silence. So much do JD and Garrus talk to each other, so much do even JD and Cash talk idly to each other that she thinks she's missing something. For someone whose accuracy is well above inhuman, it doesn't sit well with her, and she concentrates on that as opposed to the way JD slacks himself against the stone back of the bench or the way his arms go to lay upon the brim of it, his right being behind her.
A topic, something unrelated, she finds and speaks the first that comes to mind.
"Do you mind if I ask you something? JD?" She asks, rigid and yet trying to be liquid.
It's his turn to answer his comfortableness with the request. "I don't mind."
"Why did you grow your facial hair out?"
Unconsciously he brings his hand to roam through it. It's far thicker than he ever thought it could be. Normally he doesn't think that stress impedes THAT much on the body, but apparently, it does given their shore leave on Altis… Also, secretly, he might've applied (and thus bought) some hygienic elixir of sorts for the express purpose of growth.
"… 'Swas curious how'd I look. Is all. It doesn't mess with the seal on my helmet, and my grandpa, he said he had a beard like this when he was my age. I wanted to just see if I could… Why, uh, what do you think?"
"I like it." It comes out of her too fast, and she tries her best to hide that fact by staring ahead as if it wasn't a mistake.
Maybe it was the fact that those with beards, Arabic men, in New Jerusalem, were those that were kindest to her and her mother; maybe it was some deep intrinsic preference of hers that formed her aesthetic preferences, she combs through the reasons in her mind, racing embarrassingly close to Spartan Time. The answer she finds she has the steel not to say aloud: It was because it was on JD that she liked it.
"Oh." As soft as it comes out, JD lets it slide as well as he relaxes in Mai's presence. Spartan as she is, it is just his natural evocation of reverence that comes with being UNSC Marine that gives him that ability, even alone out in Noveria and its cold business society.
1:00 PM, Noveria Standard Time.
One of the models of a boutique, a Human, steps down from his display from the glass windows, remerging out the front with much more sensible clothing: slacks and a hoodie. JD taps Mai's elbow, and she follows as the hand that touches her slides flat, pressing down at the floor.
STAY INCOGNITO.
A Spartan Sign.
There is a constant stream of people there on Noveria walking those pathways that count for streets. Everyone walks everywhere. For Mai, she sticks out, so JD's order is not the best followed; however, it cuts both ways as their unsaid objective is found:
They are following that model.
He is a brutishly beautiful Human male, his hair cut so sharp, it matches the cut of his masculine jaw. It is strength on his form that is not functional but for the sake of beauty. After so long seeing him, and people like him, dressed in the clothes of the affluent, to see him in something more humble is odd to Mai.
For JD, however, it's a truth about how the world works that he knows.
They follow him. Five minutes. Through the district out toward the outer prefabs of Port Hanshan until they get to one of the hangers. At some point, the crowds have transformed from the higher life executives and managers that sustain the shopping districts' higher spending to a different kind of population.
One that's more slouched in their forms, whose existence isn't quite cutthroat. Suits turn into uniforms, and those uniforms are jumpsuits and loungewear, tracksuits and pants.
Turians, Humans, Asari.
The difference here as JD and Mai follow that model into a loading dock, a cargo freighter currently onboarding and offloading, is the same across all races: They are workers.
Amidst security booths and great cargo trains, kiosks are set up as seamen of the cargo ship intermingle and mix with locals:
In Port Hanshan proper in its districts, all of its air is so refined and airconditioned; it ends up smelling dead.
Here the grease, the unfiltered middle ground between the planet, the exhausts from the machinery, and the people gathering, it's far more alive and amiable.
The model disappears, but his purpose was fulfilled.
"Let's see if we can't get something to eat here." JD finally says.
Kiosks are set up, street food by any other name: flat-top grills and small ovens attached to batteries and jury-rigged machines: no lofty names, or even simple ones at that. On a planet that sells ideas to investors aiming at high-minded futures and dangerous ideas, the most understandable one comes in English for Mai and JD written on chalk: Crispy Cheese Bacon Toast. Price: 8 credits.
The same signage is seen up and down, noodles, dumplings, steamed vegetables, or fried potatoes.
It's reductive maybe to JD, but this is working-class food.
"How did you…?" Mai isn't sure what question to ask as they walk again along pathways as people wait in line for meals at costs far more affordable than where they work.
"My first job was as a waiter at a higher end restaurant. I could never afford to eat there, actually, so I followed the kitchen staff out on their lunchbreaks to where they went… Was much cheaper." It's an admittance he's bashful about. He tries not to think that "cheaper" might've killed his Dad, with his salmonella poisoning from a cheap place like this, though a lesson was there before the tragedy. "The people who can afford those suits aren't the ones who work there."
He is supremely comfortable amongst this crowd, even if it's not entirely Human. Side by side, the carts are without segregation.
Turian food is all wraps and easily hand-held, meat steamed and tied up in whatever equivalent grain they have. Turian food, built on martial culture: quick eats for presumably battlefield consumption with little waste. It's what JD and Mai concentrate on the cart over as they make their slow shuffle in the line they find themselves.
It looks like overcooked steak that the Turian cart specializes in, wrapped in some oily covering, and Mai barely remembers that they can't eat the same food.
Eventually, they get to the front of their line, and the cook's eyes behind the kiosk bulge. "Jeez' Louise' Lady. What're they feeding you in the labs? What should I put on five?"
She eyeballs the sandwich he makes. Cheese, bacon, eggs. "Three."
JD nods. "Eh I'll take two. So five anyway. I'll pay."
"Five for the happy Amazonian couple, got it."
Only very annoyed does JD flash his omni for the pay; paper plates were drawn up as five sandwiches are unceremoniously deposited in their greasy goodness.
Seating is communal if it can be called that. It's crates that have never been claimed and stools stolen from different departments. It doesn't take much guessing that this food market isn't officially sanctioned by Hanshan's authority. However, the security guards present don't seem to mind, and, in the end, it's a solution to a problem that those who own Noveria don't want to concern themselves with.
Napkins are their pants, and they share a plate, sitting on a crate meant for mechanical arms for drones. In a place no bigger than a lobby of a doctor's office, almost two dozen people sit shoulder to shoulder or stand, scarfing down food to get them through their day. Because of Mai, none stray too close to her, but even then, a Salarian has to sit, almost petrified, sipping from a steel canteen some muddy liquid.
As JD eats first, Mai follows. This food isn't like spaghetti; it's just a sandwich.
Somehow, it's certainly better than the constant MREs they go through on the Normandy.
Mai has to ask eventually as she downs a sandwich in three bites. "This… isn't exactly healthy is it?"
Yolk and melting cheese come off of the side of JD's mouth as he chews through to answer. "No, but we'll burn it off… Probably."
"Burn it off?"
"Calories. Fitness. Not really anything we have to worry about." He taps his stomach. He's still often surprised about his fitness at times, but it's that of survival.
"Hm." She goes for another before JD has finished his first. Of course, she knows of caloric intake and maintaining her body, but outside of that mechanical maintenance, she has always been expected to. No UNSC cafeteria or caterer would ever give her what she's eating now.
They know Cash's about to talk by a habitual ping, barely perceptible. "This is one of the few things I miss about being flesh and blood: eating. Like I know what eating is, I have the synaptic impression and cognitive memory of taste, of eating, satiation and all that good stuff, but I will never actualize it myself. 'Darn tragic if you ask me."
He's ethereal in a way, familiar with Human tendencies, yet not even there, not even real.
"…If I understand correctly, when you're slotted into Mai, you… feel her?" JD has to ask.
"Something like that yeah. Say if I was slotted in now, I'd get something out of her eating."
For Mai, there is an unsaid other half. She has an aspect of the machine that she knows of, feels of, the automatic survey which glazes over her eyes in battle.
It was always there for her, and yet, for Cash, she feels it more.
It's the difference between .5 and .005. So marginal mortal men could not know, but she has the burden of seeing that divide and knowing its absence.
For all her extended senses, there is no deeper detail for her eating away at her food.
Between how efficient she eats and how delicious the food is, JD and Mai are done before long. Faster than most, the rest of those that have come out here taking every excuse they have not to go back to work.
For the two of them, this is work.
"Listen for a bit, okay?"
And Mai does upon JD's ask, the man settling himself downward, onto the floor with the crate to his back, arms crossed, eyes closed. She knows this of him as his most comfortable position, liable to fall asleep anywhere.
He's not napping, however.
Anything but.
Conversations and voices from a working-class are a sound field he is far aware of. He had a childhood amongst these types of people once, had a father who emphasized listening over almost everything.
To Mai, however, it is danger, a cacophony of unknown.
The battlefield is where she can center herself amongst gunfire and explosions, yelling men and aliens. Here, the casual conversations grate at her.
She doesn't know what overtime is; checking in, checking out, overzealous supervisors, and returns are among words she knows their literal meaning, but not their retail meaning. The subtle hints of the annoyance a shelf stocker has overdoing their bare minimum confuse her; for she does not know anything else but a job done right and without complaint.
Here people air their complaints of being the working class.
"Jonah cut our hours again."
"Shit? Why?"
"Ah who knows, maybe he just wants to spend more time with that new hire he's trying to get with."
"Do you ever wonder why we're here?"
"Still no raise and it's been two years for me. I like the company but-"
"It's always the same three customers. We don't have anyone else. They come in once a month and make our sales quota. I dunno something's fishy."
"There's this Hanar that just keeps loitering in our store. Really weird, ya know?"
"Quite a bit of Asari are coming over. Apparently, they're just returning the favor some of the companies did in building Peak 15."
"Favor?"
"Being eye-candy, that is. I don't think they get much time outside of that place, especially since that Matriarch swung through. I think a few of the big bosses are invited, maybe our own?"
JD opens his eyes, and Mai's boot nudges his shoulder. They heard the same thing, their eyes narrowing where their ears piqued. A Turian and a Drell. Both are rather well-suited. Managers, it looked like, chowing away at their respective meals before they leave and the two of them follow.
Again, it's tailing. For Mai, it's almost like tailing rumors of Tali again, backing crooked cops into corners. It's more police work than it looks. Perhaps that's why JD looks so comfortable as they stalk their way, a few meters distance behind them, bringing them to another formal clothing boutique.
Hellacon Designs.
Those two managers make their way in, and then, after a few minutes of distance, JD and Mai make their way in as well.
It's well let and more natural in lighting than outside in Port Hanshan proper. Wooden floors and warm lightings, highlighting dark clothing that's as sharp as it is pricey. Thankfully, with guns on their hip and a somewhat classy air about them, the manager on duty, the Drell, nods at them from behind his counter, welcoming them.
"Hello!" He says, voice croaky. "How may I help you today?"
JD takes point as Mai stands off, her eyes doing that uncomfortable scan across the entire store, shelves gone in the place of entire glass cabinets showing off what was on sale. Sleek lines, prismatic colors. Fancy is the word she gets in her head as the two talk.
Swallowing his spit, customer service is a Human formality JD recognizes, forcing himself to be comfortable with being upfront with a Drell. Memories of the one that Garrus had put a bullet through, holding a girl hostage, come to mind, and so he knows what a dead Drell looks like.
"Just browsing. We're new in town."
The Drell, blackened eyes unrevealing, gives them all an up and down. "So it seems. I'll go see if our Human representative is around. Perhaps they can help you better than myself."
Is that resentment? Relegation?
Perhaps business as usual. Drell are more in Human form than Turians or Quarians, but JD doesn't assume and thanks the Drell as he returns to the back of the counter and silently phones someone.
It gives time for Mai and JD to move off, to go on, to walk among examples of higher-class sensibilities. There are no measurements given. Everything would be tailor-made in record time according to the labels on each glass case.
"6'1, 193."
"Hm?" Mai makes the sound in her throat, hearing the numbers out of JD's mouth.
"6'1, 193 pounds. Those are my only measurements I know of."
She's at the upper limit of 280 pounds, most of it muscle. Out of her armor, she's 6'7.
Between the two of them, she knows that JD is the one most likely to have an easier time suiting up here.
There is a dress for a Human female adult present, and it's all crystals and silk, a slit along one side torn as the mannequin shows off their leg through it in plastic grey.
Both of them think about how Mai would look in it, faces reflected in the glass in that quiet store.
Eventually, she speaks:
"They wouldn't let people like me into these places at all."
There's a memory there. Her mother is trying to put in a job application at a place far below in stature of the one they are in now and being driven off by the Jewish shop owner. New Jerusalem inherited its prejudices, its history, from the old world just the same, and it spat down on those like her.
It bubbles within her, warmly, weirdly, like an ember, to know that in the end, she has finally stepped into such a shop, and there is satisfaction, morbid as it is. Her necklace burns her skin beneath her shirt, and, just for a fleeting moment, she hopes that her mother knows that she has done this.
He looks at her and her profile, the lights above shining off her black hair. "Remind me, when we both get some actual downtime, to take us out to a place like this."
"Hm?" She tilts her head as JD touches upon his sleeves, imagining himself wearing a formality he hasn't quite caught onto yet. The business styling of this Galaxy and their own are far different, even with the several century difference.
"Someone once told me that money that's just sitting around doesn't do anyone good."
That person was a stockbroker turned ODST after his planet fell to the Covenant. Abe Keller. Sergeant. JD's not quite sure how he died, having been adjacent to his squad during an offensive to try and reclaim a planet several jumps from Harvest. He disappeared into the city fighting, like so many others that deployment, and of all the things he has left behind, it is his financial wisdom.
"I… don't have a plan for my finances." Mai admits, blankly staring at her omni and the information stating how many credits she has. The number is meaningless to her. "It doesn't matter to me, I believe."
"Course it does." JD checks the price tag on the grey suit, and he realizes that another milestone has been reached: he understands that he has finally identified what "overpriced" is in terms of credits. "Even if you become a lifer, Mai, it's just not possible you can go the rest of your life with the military providing everything you need… Not the Alliance that is. I checked."
"Is that why you're looking at C-Sec?"
"…A little bit."
"Then what, mostly?"
JD considers his words, but they come easily to him for this. "Citadel reminds me of home, is all."
There is something so wrong to Mai about the idea of JD being removed from her, out of her sight so completely by way of a career change, of leaving the military, but she holds her tongue. She holds her tongue and lets that abstract ball of taut feelings and disagreement pool in her chest.
It's not right, but nowadays, that statement is amended by: to her.
It's not right to her the idea of a UNSC ODST, in a galaxy with the Covenant alive, to remove himself from the life of the service and become something so civilian as a police officer among a galactic capital.
"I still don't have my dress blues." JD sighs. "We keep forgetting to requisition."
"We don't need them. I never had them."
"Never attended services? Never had medals pinned to you?"
"No."
There is no formality for her.
Only war.
She hears the footsteps behind her before JD does, and she snaps around with a crack, causing the well-dressed woman associate to squeak in her heels.
"Oh my."
"…I'm sorry." Mai turns away, back to looking at that dress as JD takes over again.
"Hi, I was wondering if we could talk to your upper management for a moment?"
"Oh… can I ask why?" The woman seems a little discouraged, realizing that they both have guns with them. "If it's about what Elias wants that's-"
"We don't know an Elias. I just want to talk with management. I hear you have upcoming festivities."
"Hrm." It's this planet that has everyone on edge, just about themselves. Not about the Geth, or Saren, or even the threat of war. It's just the way of life here. "I will see if I can connect you with my boss, but, while we wait, can I offer you a fitting? Free of charge. Here we can do it electronically, and it's even more accurate than hand-tailoring."
She has written off Mai as a bodyguard, and by the time she has placed her hand on JD's shoulder and coaxed him over, he is gone, led to a corner of the store, in public view, leaving Mai alone.
She feels so naked, so scattered, just standing in the middle of that boutique. It is an overwhelming quiet, slithering at her through the tall grass like a snake as opposed to the loud cacophony that is walking artillery fire or plasma rounds trying to find a bead on her. She is less prepared for this than she is for a whole Covenant division.
She stands there, among pale white figurines of men and women, alien and Human, and is frozen like them all. She stands among facsimiles of flesh and blood, and she cannot move to define herself otherwise.
The time passes, and she doesn't know how long it is when she is summoned again.
JD finds her where he left her, and he thinks to himself, this is what it must've looked like for his mother to find him standing in the aisles of a grocery store alone.
Without a helmet, she cannot hide how pleased she is to see JD again.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, she allows herself to feel something for someone else that isn't baked into warfare and mission objectives, and for once, she does not fight herself in letting it happen.
JD nods at Mai with a hand signal, and she falls in behind him as they leave for more stores.
"They say that anyone who's going to the party is taking the day off in preparation. We'll see if anyone else around might know about it. See if we can't tag an Asari at it." He finally explains. But he doesn't need to in the end. She trusts him to do the work they need to do.
They walk the lay of the land, shoulder to shoulder with those who dare, knowing that there are eyes on their back.
They think they see Wrex out of the corner of their eye, giving gruff words to another of his kind, but they don't stop to check.
War is easy. UNSC tactical planning and heads-up displays always put markers and waypoints from commanders and officers who think they know what they're doing: Get to the position, secure, or some offshoot of that. Here there is no guidance. Not even the wind.
Eventually, it leads them to the windows, looking out on Noveria and the wilds they might be more overtly familiar with.
"Snow is the worst for drops." She's been on edge; he can tell, based on the way her hand rests on her SMG. Talking about the war calms her.
With the shuffle of her gun, she's looking at him, and he continues, staring into the cold.
"Sometimes you drop and just get buried in it, up to your neck, snow compacts around pods and you have to hope the explosive charge lets you kick your way out. Being buried alive in your own pod isn't great. I can tell you that."
"Has it happened to you?"
"A few times."
Those were rough landings. Mud buried, snow buried, quicksand, and the like. Of all the ways to go, going buried in his pod wasn't one he looked forward to as he primed the exit charges and threw himself at the glass, clawing up from whatever he was getting sucked into, thanking god it was usually a firefight that greeted him.
Those times back then are enough for him to grab a cigarette now.
"I've… taken a look at the Normandy's pods." She's something of an engineer by necessity. Her time on the Sabre project still rising up in between quick flight lessons with Joker or whenever an away mission needs a second opinion on machinery (either in the destruction or in repair). "They're a bit more… safe, than the SOEIV."
"Really?" The cigarette is lit in his mouth, and he puffs. "They look about the same."
He hasn't stepped in one yet. The less time he spends in a pod, the better, and never did he think that he'd have to do it ever again after he and Mai came barreling through Slipspace over Altis.
"Internally the materials are stronger. They've been treated with Element Zero even, reducing strain on drop. It is a better design."
What's old is new again.
Maybe the pods are a little like them, JD muses. Same outside, new insides.
Footsteps again approach them, they both turn, and this time their edges aren't waved off as a Turian in a white and blue suit approaches them, regards them before leaning on the railing adjacent.
He's in their space, and he knows it, staring out at the whiteness of Noveria through that building-sized window. It gives Mai and JD time not immediately to jump at him, but it's not long enough that he lets them have their guards down. Taking in a breath, he leans on that railing toward them, toward JD, in particular, after the cursory glance at Mai and her size.
"I heard smoking was something archaic that Humans did."
So it would seem in the Alliance. There were other ways to take an edge off, to let a tobacco buzz through themselves. JD had studied it more than he would admit.
"I've never tried them before Human, mind if I?" A talon reaches out, and for once, they don't need to lie about being uncomfortable with aliens. It is a reminder that they have gotten too comfortable with Garrus, with Tali, with Liara, and Wrex. It is a trick of familiar men and women that has beat back the undeniable fact that aliens are among them now: A Turian reaches his claw out to JD, within his space, and he freezes. Mai takes in a large breath, a half-step away from breaking the arm that bothered.
A moment, frozen, like the snow outside that window.
This Galaxy has changed them.
Eventually, JD is the first to thaw in those uncomfortable few seconds between motion and ask. He shakes his head, feels the sweat on his brow move, and tells himself the Humanity of it: someone trying to bum a smoke off of him.
"Yeah, sure." A stick is out of its carton, but the Turian is quite uncomfortable, not knowing how to hold it. The maneuvering that JD does, trying to find out how the lipless man will approach this, is awkward, a little uncomfortable, though he's a soldier, so brute force and upfront is the solution to most of his problems. "Hey, uh, here."
He fakes the motion with his mouth as the Turian does, and, carefully, like priming an explosive, JD places the cigarette in the Turian's mouth.
To Mai, this looks like insanity.
To JD, this is just the old motions going through his mind as, instead of a lighter, he superheats his omni instead with a small blade.
The Turian, having seen enough old films from Earth, takes it from there, balancing the cigarette between two angular mouth plates, finding its steady as JD finally presses the light to the cigarette's white end.
"Breath, hold it in the lungs, and then out." A tutorial in smoking. About the same he got for his first cigarette.
This Turian is older; however, his face, still unreadable to the two unused to Turians outside of Garrus, taking in the smoke as some leaks out the side of his face. Eventually, he does hold it in his lungs long before blowing out. There's a little confusion on JD's face as he sees that a lot of smoke just did not make it out.
Turian physiology, maybe. Turian lungs would be different, avian as they are.
"Hm. Reminds me of the after taste of-" The translator can't quite pick it up enough for the Human tongue and ear. Turian harmonics do that enough; with Garrus, JD is familiar with words and phrases that cannot be so cleanly translated: most of them about food, about religion, about idioms and phrases that have their equivalents but can't be made in the time of natural dialog as given. "That being said no one eats that for the after taste."
"It's not… uh, dextro amino… I should've told you prior."
The Turian shrugs, unbothered.
"Smoke is the same on every planet. Same physical principles, at least. I don't think a puff of this." It's a wasted cig, maybe a handful of puffs, and it's down onto the ground and crushed beneath his heel. "Wow, that's much more satisfying than I thought."
A Turian's first smoke. Perhaps a celebration would be in order, but that's not what was going to happen.
"Who… are you?" JD finally asks the Turian who wasted a perfectly good cigarette.
"I just heard you were asking around boutiques about this party. You're not really subtle about it, asking if you know who's in charge of the festivities like some desperate first year… You trying to ruin the fun?"
"Means to ends." JD summons his cigarette again. He doesn't feel too scared about being strongarmed with Mai there. "There might be a few people of interest there and I'd like to ask them some questions." How strong he sounds, saying that it is he that wants to ask them questions about Saren. He almost convinces himself that Shepard's mission is his own.
It is, but not with such a charge as Shepard wields. He could never rob that from her.
"Your name." Mai is more upfront with their alien acquaintance.
No names, but he's useful all the same as he finally answers.
"I'm a manager at a media consultation firm specializing in industrial projects and pitches. I'm one of those people invited to that party, with the Matriarch's entourage being present for… recreational reasons."
"Ah. How are invitations given?" JD asks with perhaps too forward a curiosity. He doesn't have Shepard's grace or her social wits about her.
"You've just got to have that… air about you. Soldiers like you two aren't usually ones to have it."
Soldiers.
Mai perceives. "You know who we are, don't you?" Or, at least, the face version of who they are.
The Turian nods. "The Spectre's crew, yes yes. I know. All of the Port knows by now. But you know around places like these that really doesn't count for much."
"… Even a Spectre?" Mai blinks.
The Turian nods with an air about him that's all too comfortable with this cold world.
"This place, Noveria, it's already outside the law for the sake of business and money. Those who are exempt for it are hardly special." He's not impressed. "What's important here is people in the know, and people who walk with power. Invitations aren't given, they're assumed; not just at this party but at every function really. If you show up and people look at you weird, you know you're not it. People who expect to be invited aren't it. So if you walk in there, you've just gotta know you're it."
"You talk like a Human." JD notes.
His mandibles flare for a moment. "Business is better as a Human, than a Volus, I'll tell you that… Besides, you Humans have so many idioms that can apply anywhere, like now: Can you walk the walk?"
"So, it's like that huh?" JD finishes off his cigarette, burning it out on the floor before sweeping both of theirs into a grate on the floor. "Can we at least know where it is?"
A woman walks to the opposite side of Mai. Her dress is pink, the brightest color on that entire planet, and it hugs her body to the point of skin. She doesn't seem to mind Mai, monster as she is, as she leans on the railing.
"Hotel Menagerie. Ballroom."
"…Why are you helping us?"
"Before I was a manager, I was a soldier for the Hierarchy. I served. I heard too many of my comrades tell me what they'd do to people like… well, who I turned out to be." He seems distant, and on that cold planet, everyone harbored secrets. "Many of them turned out to be Spectres, and I know what they're capable of."
"Trying to save your own skin?" JD asks earnestly.
"You, know, out in the battlefield. You don't get a choice in how you react to do just that." That JD understands. That Mai understands even. "Thank you for the cigarette. I hope to see you there. Bring more people even, cleaning up the food and drinks after the party is such a pain."
"Mm. Thank you."
And he's gone, and off, into the grey of Noveria. As JD turns over to Mai to decompress what just happened, he sees past her and the woman who came. They both turn to her, and her head is cocked. It's not often that Mai is ignored entirely, but now is one such time as the dark-haired woman looks at him with eyes meant for hawks and sparrows.
"I do hope to see you there at the party as well."
It's an exotic accent—one of Empire.
JD sniffs, scratching his beard. "This really is just the type of place where people are always eavesdropping."
"Oh, only when it concerns a handsome man."
Oh.
Mai is caught in between as JD straightens his back, a shock through it that hasn't exactly been triggered in a bit, given his current situation and emotional battlefield between being in a new universe and the Spartan before him.
"Aboutta hundred different other men here that look like me… got something to tell us specifically?" She walks past Mai, the distance between them inches.
"No. Nothing much, I just wanted to see this little curious soldier for myself before he got himself all distracted by a high-life party."
She's very fulsome, that much JD notices as she comes chest to chest with him, hands laced with that same pink fabric, coming up and adjusting his collar.
He can't bear to glance at Mai's face out of fear of what she might be looking like right now. It doesn't occur to him why he would think like that before his collar is folded over again neatly.
The woman before him looks at him as if he is already hers, and that very sweet perfume marks him.
To make a general statement in his head, JD knows that women love their soldiers on shore leave. Right now, he probably doesn't look any different.
"Walk that walk, and you'll find what you're looking for there at that party." Her breath smells of ice, and it threatens to burn JD down right there as she winks and moves away.
"Mind if I have a name, at the very least?" His masculine wiles do show when they need to, and here it's enough so for this woman to lean into his space, her face almost against his cheek as she whispers a warm breath.
She tells him so quietly that even Mai cannot hear.
With a dignified straightening of her back, curving her form, she continues off and on into the crowd behind them, and JD doesn't mind the lingering look on her as she disappears. When Mai looks at her disappear, she imparts her image in her memory like a battle plan and never lets go.