"And just a bit to the lef- Nononono stop!"
"You said to the left!"
"Your other left! Now just slide it back... slowly... slowly... slo- stop! Hold it... hold it... Yes, that's perfect!" Crimson crowed, quickly typing in a command on the portable terminal, sealing the two parts together. He flashed Striker a thumbs up. "Perfect. Four down, twenty more to go."
There was a crash and the counter buckled as Striker slumped against it, muttering obscenity under his breath.
"Oh man up," Crimson said, not looking up from the code flashing across the terminal. "They're not that heavy."
"Yeah, but they're flimsier then shit," Striker shot back, vents... venting his pent up frustration.
"That's why your helping me," Crimson replied cheerfully. "No offence, Cherno, but you are, literally, not made for the delicate jobs."
There was a dismissive rumble from the couch, muted slightly by the sound of gunfire from cheesy Turian action movie playing on the HS.
"Well what about Gipsy then?" Striker asked angrily.
"Uh..." Crimson glanced up from his work to Gipsy, who stood on the other side of the counter with her arms crossed, visor blazing as she glared at him. "If you want to ask her, be my guest," he said, quickly averting his gaze back to the terminal.
"Fuck that shit," came the reply. "... fine, let's get this over with."
Nodded in satisfaction, Crimson resumed typing in the complex code sequences used to connect the two devices. Or rather, he tried to. No matter how hard he tried, he could still feel Gipsy's glare burning into him. After thirty seconds of trying to ignore her he gave in, slowly lifting his eye to meet hers.
"I... take it you haven't forgiven me yet?"
With a creaking of joints, her head very slowly shook from side to side.
"I said I was sorry!"
Her visor darkened slightly, her non-existent eyes narrowing dangerously.
"You mean that didn't even help?" he asked meekly, gesturing to the Revenent machine gun resting next to the terminal on the counter. Her head started going from side to side again, paused, then started turning in a circle in a weird combination of yes and no.
"It also has... incendiary mods," he added hopefully.
Her head tilted to the side, a quizzical glow on her visor.
"Basically, it super-heats the shots as they leave the barrel, so you're shooting flaming, armor piercin..."
The weapon was wanked from it's place fast then he could blink, the bedroom door slamming shut followed a few second later. Crimson stared at it, horror slowly dawning on his visor as the muted sound of rapid fire drifted through the walls, along with Gipsy's excited shouts.
"What... have I done?" he whispered, horrified.
"You just signed our death warrants," Striker answered in the same tone. "You. Fucking. Idiot."
Suddenly, a glowing hole appeared in the wall as a flaming grain of sand punched through, breezing within an inch of Cherno's head, through the HS causing it to flicker before embedding itself in the wall behind it. The three Jaegers stared at the smoking bullet hole as a whimpering keen worked it's way out of Cherno's chassis.
"We're doomed," Crimson whimpered.
The door whooshed open and Crimson saw his brief life flash before his eye as Gipsy charged out straight towards him. But the quick and painful death he'd been expecting never came. Instead, he felt Gipsy's arms wrap around him in a strut breaking hug as her endlessly repeating "thankyouthankyouthankyou" echoed in his audio receptors.
"So... you forgive me then?" he asked hesitantly.
She stopped, let go and stepped back, Revenent cradled in her arms. "Can I keep it?" she asked back, her innocent and sweet voice voice covering up the low, barely audible threats of eternal damnation.
Crimson nodded frantically.
"Then yes," he replied, visor glowing in a sweet smile.
Crimson felt his knees go weak in relief but somehow managed to remain standing. He mentally thanked whatever deity had possessed Kriln to give him the weapon before they separated after their little adventure in Naven's warehouse before letting out a great sigh of relief.
"Thank you for that," he murmured, straightening up. "Now, let's get this thing set up, shall we?"
Now that Gipsy was lending her help, the process sped up drastically. Soon, the three Jaegers stepped back, admiring their work with pride... somewhat.
"It's a box," Striker groused.
"It's a cargo scanner," Crimson corrected.
"I just made a fucking box?"
"More like you tried to," Gipsy added teasingly.
"Fuck off."
Holding back a groan at his teammates antics, Crimson couldn't help but feel a little let down as he took in the scanner. It was, as Striker had said, a box. Or, more accurately, an empty box. The whole thing was made up of thin metal tubes connected on the ends to form a near perfect cube.
His shoulders slumped as he stared at it. It was a rather anticlimactic reward, considering all he'd gone through to get it.
But honestly, what had he'd been expecting? Some large computer of sorts with a lot of pointless, flashing buttons like in star trek? Actually, once he thought about it, this seemed like a logical design. Build it into the walls of some hallway so it could scan everything that came through it.
But the fact still remained that he risked his life... for a glorified cube.
"Well," he announced, clapping his hands together as he walked over to the terminal that came included with the scanner, "let's get this thing fired up shall we?"
"Yeah, you do that," Striker drawled, turning on his heel and stalking away, muttering under his breath. "A fucking box. From Kaiju killer to fucking box maker!"
"Wow, you really have sunk low," Gipsy quipped, earning a rumbling chuckle from Cherno.
Tuning them out, Crimson focused on the terminal screen as his fingers danced across the keys. He couldn't figure out why exactly the whole set up needed a connection to the main company server to function, but it wouldn't let him start the thing up until it did. Biting back a growl, he eventually found the apartment's pubic extranet connection and patched it through. He watched as a quick software update flickered across the screen before both it and the keyboard flickered and vanished, replaced by a floating grid that hovered in the air.
"So... does that mean it's working?" he asked himself, eye darting between the scanner and the display. Shrugging, he reached for the closest available object, which just so happened to be Gipsy's Revenent, and tossed it into the scanner. Instantly a model holographic Revenent appeared on the grid, bouncing around the exact same way the real one did in the cube.
As it came to rest, a shimmer passed over the hologram and the model became transparent. Then lines started to form inside it, forming the individual components one by one. Before long, Crimson nodded in satisfaction as a complete x-ray image of the gun hovered in the air. He flicked at the projection experimentally and the model spun in the air, then flickered and vanished.
He blinked, beginning to pull up a diagnostic screen before he looked back and scowled.
"Gipsy, I was using that."
She glared at him, backing away from the scanner with the Revenent clutched safely in her arms.
"Mine," she growled dangerously.
"Not that I needed it anymore," Crimson said quickly, holding up his hands in surrender. "Please calm down."
There was a loud creak as Cherno heaved his bulk off the couch and stomped over, rumbling a question as he did so.
"Well, a basic scan I guess," Crimson shrugged. "One of us steps inside and we see what happens."
There was a pause as the four glanced around at each other. Then Cherno shrugged and carefully stepped into the box. Instantly shrill alarms blared from the terminal.
"Oh what now?" Crimson exclaimed as he whirled around and stared at the screen. The words 'Data Overload' flashed across it with a small 'do you wish to proceed?' button beneath it. He pressed it and the alarms stopped, then, slowly, a rough outline of Cherno appeared. Crimson waited for a full minute, but nothing else seemed to happened. Then the image flickered, the outline becoming more detailed with Cherno's thick outer plating. After another minute the same thing happened again, but it was only scratching the surface of the mighty machine.
Crimson frowned. What was taking it so long? He reached to put up a diagnostic before something occurred to him. As he considered it, the answer became more and more apparent.
"So that's why," he murmured, eye bright in realization.
The others looked at him in confusion and Cherno let out a questioning groan.
"We're still the same," Crimson replied, mind racing the with implications.
"Huh?" Gipsy asked, head tilted inquisitively.
Crimson turned around to face them and pointed to the scanner.
"We are the same," he repeated. "Whether we're giant robots or small like this, we are the same. Our builds haven't changed, nor or the materials we're made of, the only thing that has changed is our size."
"Again. Huh?"
"Alright, uh, we were big, right. But now, we're small. Our bodies are still the same as when we were big now that we're small. So, with that in mind, take a screw and hold it in your hand. That screw is a fixed size, alright. Now, when we were still titans, we had millions of those same screws in our bodies, but the number hasn't changed now that we've shrunk, they've only gotten smaller. So, a regular sized screw is... probably comparable to bacteria at this point. And that goes for everything, wires, cables, nuts, bolts, everything!'
He pointed to terminal where the model of Cherno had barely made any progress at all. "This scanner is trying to scan an entire two hundred and fifty foot machine the size of a Krogan."
"Uhhhhhh... Oookay?"
"Oh for crying out loud! What about this aren't you getting?!"
Striker crossed his arms. "Uh, the part where I ask 'why the fuck should we care?' Sure we've gotten smaller, so the fuck what?"
"It means," Crimson said grimly, "that fixing us is impossible."
The others stared at him for a good long minute before Cherno rumbled.
"Well, I'd like to see you find a screw that's one eighth of a nano-meter!"
"And a screwdriver too."
Crimson's neck creaked as he glared at Gipsy, who only shrugged. "What? You need a screwdriver for screws, don't you?"
"...Yes. And... a screwdriver," Crimson deadpanned.
"But seriously," Gipsy continued. "I don't really see what the problem is, Crimson. Sure, everything about us is smaller, but as Striker said, so what?"
Crimson took in a deep breath, holding it for a moment before letting it out.
"Because," he said in a much calmer tone, "of what happened to you, Gipsy."
"Uh... What about m-"
"Your arm," Crimson interrupted. "And your... disappearance."
She stiffened, visor going bright with fear. "U-uh- but, I..."
"Just calm down, please," Crimson said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "We just need to know more about how you were repaired is all."
"S-such as?" she stammered.
"Well, while you were knocked out, I noticed this... bluish gas inside you. I noticed it earlier too when I... did something stupid, long story, but it seems to be the catalyst for our repairs."
"So we're being fixed up by celestial fart gas," Striker deadpanned. "Great. I feel better already."
"We don't know that yet," Crimson interjected, giving Gipsy an apologetic look. "Normally I'd run the scan on myself, I could be considered a subject of its... treatment, but none of you know how to run this thing so..."
"I-its alright," Gipsy interrupted, looking relived. "I understand... kinda."
"Right," Crimson nodded, shooing Cherno out of the scanner. "Just step in and we'll get started."
Following his instructions, Gipsy stepped into the square enclosure, reluctantly handing her Revenent to Crimson as she settled for a long wait.
"Alright," Crimson muttered to himself, fingers flying over the keys of the terminal. "Connection established... resetting parameters... data overload corrected and... go."
The scanner hummed quietly, the tiny processors inside struggling to comprehend what was inside. Soon a rough outline of her outer plating appeared above the terminal. As the minutes dragged by, the model became more detailed as the scan reached deeper. It was moving faster then Cherno's, maybe on account of Gipsy's thinner armor.
"There we go," Crimson murmured as the scan reached her shoulder joints.
The scanner could read every element on the periodic table, and it easily recognized the metal composition of Gipsy's body. But in the area of her right shoulder there was a mass of flashing red hovering over certain components. Crimson recognized them as parts shredded by the shotgun blast she'd received. It must be that gas.
As the scan continued he pulled up an analysis program, setting it to scan the gas itself. It took another minute, but soon the results came back, leaving him gaping.
"T-that's impossible," he stammered. "You can't have thirty different elements, metals no less, in gaseous form."
Cherno gave a low, questioning rumble.
"Well," Crimson said slowly. "According to the scan results, this gas is made up of thirty different elements, all of which are found in Gipsy's body, including metals. Which should be impossible. There is no such thing as gaseous titanium. Aside from that, there's-"
A loud beeping cut him off as more alarms flashed across the terminal screen.
"Oh what now," he groaned. Then froze as he saw the source of the trouble.
The scan of Gipsy was finished, a full 3D representation floating in the air. Her internal mechanisms were as complicated as you would expect from a two hundred and fifty foot tall machine shrunk to the size of a regular human. The pockets of gas were an oddity to be sure, but it didn't compare to what the scanner had just found.
There, buried in Gipsy's chest where her nuclear core should have been was a large black spot. A space so dense the scanner couldn't penetrate it.
"So," Gipsy asked in a small voice. "What is that?"
"I have no idea."
-Linebreak-
Gerald Henderson yawned, eyes drooping as he fought to stay awake. He'd been working for hours... if sitting at a costumer help desk that was rarely ever needed was considered working. The pay was good and the hours were standard, but it was boring as hell.
Spiex was one of the best companies in the industry, leading the competition in all things scan-able. They had contracts with C-Sec and dozens of the other companies based on the Citadel, all wanting their top of the line scanners. To land a job with Spiex was the best things to happen to him, despite the boredom.
He yawned again, leaning back in his chair, staring at his terminal with half lidded eyes. Small alerts flashed across it's surface, messages and reports from their scanners all across the galaxy. It was policy that all of their scanners be connected to a main server, both to provide the data to recognize materials and to allow them to update the server with anything new that they found.
That was also part of Gerald's job. On top of being costumer support, he also monitored the main server. It wasn't anything difficult. The most existing thing that had happened was when a scanner had failed to recognize a new type of red sand, which had sent alarms blaring across his screen. But that hadn't happened in years.
He was just beginning to drop off to sleep when his terminal started bleeping with an alert. He blearily opened one eye and glanced at the screen. The flashing words instantly drove away his drowsiness.
"Data overload?" he murmured, straightening in his chair. That had never happened before. Sure the scanners sometimes had problems with materials like hard lead, but not enough to cause an overload.
Entering his administration password into the server, he browsed through the resent scans that had just taken place, searching for the one with the overload. He soon found it and pulled it up, then gaped at what it was.
It was a mech unlike anything he'd ever seen. Large and bulky, with a bucket shaped head, the armor was so thick the system was having trouble getting any deeper.
He blinked rapidly, then scrambled to save the data to separate file. He knew some people who might be interested in this. As he did, the alerts vanished as the scan was cancelled.
"No no no no," he muttered. "Bring it back, bring it back."
As if his own fairy godmother decided to grant his wish, the monstrous machine came back... no, it was a different one. This time, as the scan progressed, he saved it all, watching in growing excitement as more of the machine came to light. He didn't know what the red spot were or what the black anomaly in it's chest was, but some others might.
After triple checking the scan was saved, flicked on his omni-tool and called a number he'd been giving a long time ago. He waited impatiently as the ringtone sounded, then brightened as a voice spoke.
"Hello, welcome to Certa pharmaceutical. How may I help you?"
"Uhhh, yes," he replied awkwardly, trying to remember the pass phrase he'd been given. "My, uh, wife has been having some troubles with the pills you prescribed us."
"I see," the voice said. "Which ones, exactly?"
"The ones for pet allergies."
"For which animal?"
"Dogs."
The voice paused. "How many heads does your dog have?"
He swallowed nervously. "Three."
"Transferring you now."
The line went dead, leaving him waiting in nervous silence. He had never called this line before. His... second job was something he rarely thought about. It payed him well and only required him to keep an eye on things, reporting in when necessary.
He was pulled out of his thoughts when the line let out a burst of static before a toneless voice sounded. "Agent Henderson, your report is unscheduled. State your purpose or your contract will be terminated."
"Uh," he stammered. "I, uh, found something good, like, really good. And I, uh, thought it was too good to wait for the next report."
A short silence followed his words. "I see. Send the files to this address."
He did so without hesitation. The long silence that followed left him a nervous wreak as the controller examined the scan.
"Interesting," the voice said at last. "Thank you, agent Henderson. You will be well compensated for your contribution. The Illusive Man will be pleased."
-Linebreak-
The garbage reeked of something terrible, she was just to busy to think of it. Aniya grimaced as she crawled through another pile of junk. She could feel some sort of wet gunk getting smeared on her chest plate and tried not to think about what it was. Around her the mountains of garbage towered over head, lit by the occasional strobe light hanging from the ceiling far above.
While most considered the lower levels to be inhabited by the Blood Pack and other unsavoury groups, they would be wrong to think it was the very bottom of the station. Beneath the Vorcha infested basement was a place that very few people outside of Omega even knew about and even few people on Omega even cared to know about: The garbage bay.
A truly massive place miles long and filled to brim with trash that had built up over thousands of years. It was like stepping onto another world. The piles of trash reached to the ceiling, hundreds of feet high, forming canyons and hills of all shapes and sizes.
Few, if any, came down here willingly. To think you could find a fortune in the garbage was stupid, as many had found out. The only people how managed to make it down here were scavengers, rooting through the fresh dumps that came down through tubes in the ceiling for anything valuable to survive. It was hard life, even harder then in the upper levels where gang wars were common and you could die from a stray bullet.
At least, that's how it had been a short while ago. The scavenger business had all but dried up in the most unexpected of ways. She had gotten a tip from one of her old contacts, a weapons maker, about shipments of scrap metal coming in from the scavengers down below coming to a halt.
This wasn't uncommon. With different groups fighting over whatever they could find the shipments tended to be sporadic and varying in quantity. But never before had there been a total black out of all recycled materials coming from the garbage bay. Since raw materials were hard to get on Omega some relied on the stuff scavengers were able to sell; scrap metal, broken mods, anything that once had value. Some groups of scavs were well off because of this, managing to pull a profit despite the odds.
But now, the garbage bay had gone completely silent. Every day things went in, but now nothing was coming out. Her contact had been desperate enough to send a group of hired mercs to see what they could find for him. When they too sent silent, her contact asked her as a favor to find out what happened and, if possible, if a way to help scavenge his business.
She accepted. She owed it to him for all the help he gave her all those years ago.
On her way down her mission had changed from simple recovery to espionage. Rising Maw troops filled the area. Every entrance to the garbage bay was barricaded and guarded by no less then twenty heavily armed Krogan.
Being part of the GI-7 anything the Maws did was her business, her contact could wait. She got in easily enough, and it would be next to impossible to track her through he mountainous garbage piles. Now she was just sneaking around, looking for any trace of what the Maws were guarding.
She thanked the Goddess for her helmet covering up the smell as she crawled through another pile of wet refuse. How the scavs could stand to be down here she didn't know.
As she reached the top of a hill she stopped to take her barrings and noticed for the first time a glow over the next rise. She looked up and saw the lights far above had burned out long ago. That must be what she was looking for.
Growing more careful with her movements, she crept forward, Black Widow clutched tightly in her hands. It took her longer then expected, moving slowly so as not to disrupt her active camouflage or any of the precarious piles of trash. When she finally made it to the top she froze, spellbound at the sight before her.
The hill she had just crested stood over a bare patch of deck plating three square kilometers big, clear of the trash that had covered it's surface for the past thousands of years. In this was a camp made up of thousands of prefabs, all bearing the markings of Volvan Colonial Supplies. Around it all was stretched a chain-link fence with sniper towers equipped with strobe lights set up every fifty feet. Barricades and other means of cover lined the fences as well, making the camp seem more like a fortress then anything else.
Then she saw the people.
Staggering between the prefabs were hundreds of slaves, pushing crates filled with scrap under the watchful eye of Krogan guards. As she watched, she noticed a large group of slaves along with their guards returning through a gate in the fence. They had large satchels strapped to their backs, filled to the brim with scrap metal. The stopped just inside the perimeter, struggling to stay standing under their loads as Krogan moved in and dug through their bags. Then they divided the slaves into two groups, apparently by what they had gathered most of. With prodding, the first group followed an escort to a small courtyard with tables set up where they proceeded to dump their loads. The second group, however, were led deeper into the camp towards the largest of the prefabs. They had smokestacks stuck to their roofs that belched black smoke into the air. The slaves were led inside, and she lost sight of them.
Still reeling from what she was seeing, she noticed that only half the camp was filled with slaves. The other half was filled with Krogan. Thousands of them.
Grey armor clashed with black as they mingled together, doing who knows what. But what really caught her attention was the vast courtyard in the very center, where no less then six thousand Krogan were pressed shoulder to shoulder for inspection.
Through her rifle scope, she could see that their armor and weapons were new, shinning under the lights of the camp. A great pit started to form in her gut, just as a figure flashed across her scope. Curious, she tracked it and beheld the biggest monster of a Krogan strolling along the line, no less then ten feet tall. Beside it was one of the smallest Krogan she'd ever seen, looking more like a child alongside the massive beast. As she watched they stopped, turned to face each other and exchange some words.
As she tried to read their lips, she never noticed the near invisible blurs that slowly approached from behind. There was a sharp pain at the back of her head, and she know no more.
Again, this took way to long.
I am honestly quite disappointed with myself. I had originally planned for Rising Maw to be a lot longer, but found I just couldn't do it. So this will be the condensed version. Get to Shepard as soon as possible where the plot of mass effect can support my struggling imagination.
Hope you enjoy.
DJ out!