Garrus gasped in pain when awareness returned in a snap, crying out when he registered the full extent of the agony his right leg was in; something was burning through his armor. Shoving hot metal off of himself, he tried to pull the limb free to to avail. The sheet of metal that was pinning it down was, indeed, on fire, and cutting into his armor. Blue blood seeped from the injury, staining the gray padding that was supposed to protect his leg, and adding an evil glint to the metal that was cutting his flesh.

To top it all off, everything else was on fire, too. He shoved at the metal, clenching his jaw as more pain shuddered up his hands and left wrist, witch was also bleeding, though more so than his leg. He felt like he'd been beaten half to death, which all but solidified his opinion of winter gear. Crappy with a side order of crappy. He shook his head and pushed harder, deciding that he must have hit his head harder than he thought. No duh, genius! You're in a shuttle crash!

"Vakarian!"

"Here!" His response was slow, not used to hearing Javik using anybody's name, except for Shepard's on the rarest of occasions, and Liara's later on. But really, he could care less at the moment.

Mostly because he was this close to becoming a turian steak, well-done, drizzled in cruel fate and lightly seasoned with irony, with just a pinch of failure for added flavor.

The prothean came in beside him, shoving metal aside, and removed the debris pinning his leg with a flick of biotics. Wouldn't it be nice if my life was that simple? Just a twitch of the wrist and *poof*- problem solved!

"We must leave!" Javik grabbed him by the arm(which hurt tremendously), and practically dragged him away from the wreckage. No shit, Sherlock! Garrus thought with all his might, knowing Javik would hear the remark because of his contact telepathy. Sense. Thingy.

Yup, he'd really scrambled his brains this time. Scrambled them like a bilgesnipe egg-

The shuttle's explosion sent them flying, the sharp smell of ozone reminding him Javik's biotic barrier was the only reason he didn't get impaled, scorched to a crisp, blasted to bits, or whatever other pleasantness that would have happened otherwise.

When his head stopped ringing, he rolled over on his back, and sat up to look at the wreckage. He glanced at Javik, whose armor was blacked in places, still brushing snow off his shoulder plates and looking more irritated than he was injured. Anger started bubbling up, right from the marrow of his bones.

"Grand. Just grand fun for everyone!" he fumed, staggering to his feet. He was sore all over, but the only major pain was in his leg. "Once, just ONCE can the friking galaxy not be against me!?"

"Yelling at the continuum will not change our situation." Javik told him. Garrus rounded on him; he was picking a peice of shrapnel out of the back of his hand with a look of disinterest.

"You!" he pointed a talon in accusation. "Why couldn't you just wait for another shuttle, huh? This is exactly why I didn't want anyone following me!"

"You are-" the prothean was cut off by the sound of engines- engines that were too close for comfort. A fighter in colors he didn't recognize rose above the smoke, and guns primed in their direction. Reflexively, he reached over his back to grab his rifle, only to find it gone. Likely melted in the explosion.

"Run!" he shouted, eyes scanning the open area for any kind of salvation. There. He felt like his brain was firing too fast for his mind to keep up, and the jagged outcroppings only looked like shelter; for all he knew he was heading for a deathtrap. But hey; if Javik was making a beeline for it too, it had to be a chance. Bullets skipped the ground and kicked up snow, and Javik ran with one hand raised, the prothean's biotics the only thing between them and becoming swiss cheese.

But of course, his initial worries about their target shelter being a deathtrap had to be proved true. The moment he tried to stop, his bad leg gave out, and he tripped on icy rock. Javik snagged the cloak attachment of his winter gear, and Garrus twisted to try to get a grip on the cliff. Ice and snow broke off everywhere he tried to put weight on, and the rocks were either too icy or too smother to be of much use. Javik kept a firm grip on his cloak, but was otherwise too focused on the barrier to pull him up; his footing was also starting to slip.

Garrus glanced down. It was a far drop, but with biotics on their side, it might be survivable. "Jump!"

"What?" the prothean gave him one of his patented 'you primitives are idiots' look.

"Make it look like you slip! Trust me, I'm an expert at this kind of thing!"

"At idiotic plans?"

"At faking my death."

At that, he reached up, and yanked Javik's arm, pulling him off balance and over the edge.

One moment, he was preparing to launch a biotic wave at the attacking gunship and prove no such idiotic plan was needed. The next, the turian was pulling him off the cliff, which was unhelpful, dangerous, and made his already abused body hurt more.

"YOU IDIOT!" he had half the mind not to use his biotics to stop their fall. It would be payback to the turian, and he himself wouldn't have to go through the trouble of convincing the sniper to let him go about his business. But he supposed that would be too easy, and as much as he loathed Garrus' actions, he'd rather not have any more allies die on this planet in particular.

Besides; now he was curious. As much as he hated wasting more time than he already had, the situation had reached a tempting level of 'interesting', and he might as well see what the fuss was about.

The ground approached fast, so fast he almost had no time. It didn't help that the whole world was just a blaze of white. Javik shoved his hands out, throwing all his energy into stopping. He made sure the blast of energy was wide enough to catch the turian as well, and hitting the ground was like a slap. A slap made of pure cold, wet unpleasantness that made the light burns from the crash sting, and he hated it! Humid, hot, wet, or cold, he could deal with, but snow was cold and wet, and there was no worse combination. It was like the white powder had been invented just to annoy him.

He dug himself out, throwing snow in annoyed showers across the area he'd landed in. He'd only just managed to extract himself completely, when Vakarian tackled him and shoved him back into the white fluff. He shouted, trying to shove the turian off as he buried them both in snow. He was here to die, yes, but not in a way so undignified as suffocation by snow.

"Shut up, Javik, they're looking for us!" he stilled, and true enough, the sound of a gunship passing overhead filled the air. Squirming in the uncomfortable space, Javik shuttered inwardly as snow slipped under the weave he wore under his armor, cold and slimy against his skin. SNOW! Oh, how he hated it.

As soon as the gunship had passed, he shoved the turian off of him.

"Do you take pleasure in humiliating me, turian?" he demanded, seething as he tried to dig snow out of his armor. It was melting, and it was perfectly horrible. This would make a perfect form of torture. I should remember that. Well... it wasn't like he was going to need any torture techniques later, since he would be dead, but at least he could say he'd learned something new.

"Well, you have to admit, it is kind of fun." Vakarian shrugged. "And I've never really jumped off a cliff before, so that's one thing off my bucket list."

"You are unbearably immature." Javik glared at him.

"Yeah, well, get used to it." the turian tossed his head arrogantly and limped to the edge of the overlook. He felt something inside him twist. This looked too familiar... surely not?

He stepped forwards to get a better view. It was. I hate the continuum.

"Looks like Tarak and his men have set up down there." the turian observed. "I knew they were on the planet, but not exactly where. Guess my dumb luck strikes again."

"So it seems." Javik muttered. The landscape had changed drastically in the last fifty thousand years, but he would know this place anywhere... even after he'd shot it to oblivion from orbit. A prothean never forgot what a mission objective looked like, and one of the mountains, though larger than it had been, still matched the basic profile it had had when he first touched down on this miserable rock...

With his crew in tow.

Impossible! I thought I destroyed this place... But there they were, the primitives that had just tried to kill him had set up some sort of excavation site. He could only hope the entire facility had collapsed when he fired on it from orbit, but even that didn't guarantee there wasn't still technology that could be salvaged. The old mission objective rang through his head, clear as day, for the first time in ages:

"Draw off Reaper forces at any cost. Secure the bunker, and if all else fails, destroy it to prevent its fall into Reaper hands. They must not know of the technology we were building."

It had been the promise of a high-tech bunker stuffed to the landing zones with new weapons that could turn the tide of their fight with the Reapers. And he had failed; his crew had turned out indoctrinated, and he had proceeded to bombard the facility as per his instructions.

The mountain range still bore the marks of his failure.

"Someone messed this place up a long time ago." the turian commented, snapping him out of his dark reverie, recognizing the signs of bombardment for what they were, even with how old they were. I hate it when you show your intelligence. "Looks like Tarak's gone digging for gold."

Javik simply stared at him.

"It's just an expression." he clarified, waving one hand and looking back out at the area. "We're going to need a closer look at that place."

"I have an idea of what we might be facing." he might as well be honest... to an extent. Vakarian looked at him in surprise. "Your cycle has an interest in artifacts of my people? There was a base on this planet. I only saw it once, but they could be interested in its remnants."

Vakarian blanched as much as any turian could, and swore loudly, looking back at the excavation site. "This is worse than I thought. Tarak running around with plasma lasers? No thank-you."

"Am I correct to assume you know this 'Tarak' individual?" a dark look crossed the turian's face. No, not dark; 'dark' didn't even begin to describe it.

"No, I don't 'know' him. But I know what he can do. And if I hadn't made certain mistakes, he'd be dead and we wouldn't be having this problem." He glared at the dig site. "Liara picked him up on her radar, and I insisted on taking him down."

"And the reason you did not want backup? Only a fool runs into battle without allies." The turian's actions made no sense. He had proven before that he was a wise tactician, so why would he plan to do something so incredibly stupid? Who are you to judge? You came here to die. He shook the line of thought off before it could continue.

"Tarak killed my team because of my mistake." The words were a worse cold snap than the icy weather. "And if there's one thing Shepard taught me, it's that you should clean up your own messes. I'm here to clean up my mess, and I didn't want to risk anyone else. This guy isn't just your normal level of 'bad person'. He's a cannibal, a murderer, and an insane sociopath with a side order of actually crazy."

He fixed Javik with a hard stare. "Would you take that risk?"

"Your plan is still stupid." he settled with, unable to come up with anything better to say in the face of discovering someone else's ghosts in bed with his own. "And your arm is still bleeding."

"You know what? I still have the cain!" the turian threw his hands up in surrender. "Come if you want, but please try not to get yourself killed? I've seen what this guy does to 'exotic specimens'."

"And exactly what does he do?" Javik asked skeptically.

"Did they have taxidermy in your cycle?"

"So, this facility you were talking about? Any back doors, secret entrances, the like?" Garrus asked as they picked their way down the mountain. He'd slapped medigel on his wrist, and the bleeding on his leg had stopped. His omnitool had blown up in the crash. His omnitool. No sniper rifle, and no omnitool; his day just got better and better. He was lucky the cain hadn't exploded between all the action. To make matters worse, now he had to take Javik with him. He felt like he was marching the prothean to his grave.

It didn't help that a blizzard had started to pick up. They were walking under an overhang, but it only helped so much.

"Do not be so stupid. Why would we need a secret entrance?" the sniper rolled his eyes. Typical Javik. There had been a strange moment, though, back on the overlook, as if the prothean had seen a ghost. He had schooled his features quickly, but the look had been there.

"So covert ops could get in and out without anyone above their pay grade knowing." It would make sense; the protheans would have had a ranked information system to hinder indoctrinated infiltrators.

"We did not have 'pay grades'." Javik called back to him. "But there may be a hangar entrance in the side of the mountain."

"'May be'?" Garrus shook his head. "I need a 'there most certainly is an entrance in the side of the mountain', not a 'there may be'. How do you know this place even exists if you've never been here long enough to see the entrance?"

"I was briefed on it." the avatar answered icily.

The ice creaked ominously.

"Crap." Garrus said as the ground shifted beneath him. He was waist-deep in snow. Could his day get any worse?

Apparently, yes, it could. The(glacier, cliff, cheapskate path, or whatever it classified as) fell out from beneath him. Biotics threw him forwards, nearly face-first into the snow on the other side of the break before he could fall. He rolled over just in time to see Javik jump across with his biotics.

"You should watch your footing." He commented after he landed, making no move to help his companion up. Garrus rolled his eyes.

"I don't know about you, but I choose to blame nature on this one." he jested as he tried to get upright in the meter-deep snow. The stuff was everywhere, and as much as he hated the winter gear, but the environmental control made things a little less miserable. But only a little; it was still freeze-your-fringe-off cold, and his leg was throbbing.

"We should find some place to hole up until this passes." He called. "Storm's getting worse!"

Javik looked him straight in the eye and replied with the blankest of faces "No shit Sherlock."

Garrus' jaw dropped to the ground. Javik just... make a joke?

"Did you just make a joke!? Are you sure you're feeling alright?" he hounded. Oh, there was no way he was letting this go!

The prothean made a look that clearly expressed he regretted opening his mouth. "Yes, yes, and no; I am currently freezing to death on a forsaken planet in the middle of nowhere. Why would I feel well?"

"There's a cave over there with our names on it!" he pointed at said cave, which was roughly thirty or so meters ahead.

The prothean muttered something in his native language that might have been something along the lines of 'just kill me now'. They continued on, and Garrus started racking his brain for ways to convince his sort-of-friend to stay as far away from Tarak as possible. He needed Javik to just stay in the cave. Surely, it wouldn't be so hard to convince him to?

Actually, it might be; the prothean was irreversibly stubborn, and he hadn't really listened to anyone except Shepard before. And if Garrus tried to give him a 'it's for your own safety' spiel, all he would probably get was one of those 'you primitives are idiots' looks. If I want him to stay in the cave, I'm going to have to give him a bastard reason for it, or the sorriest, shittiest, most far-fetched excuse that actually makes sense in all existence.

That was as solid of a plan he could think of.

Among other things, I made it so that Javik didn't escape the shuttle unscathed this time, and I removed/changed some dialogue that seemed a little too OOC for the situation.

Fare Thee Well!