Blackhole
Nihlus made a quick decision that, he realized, was not the best of decisions. However it was, more importantly, an honest decision. Nihlus could have promised her he'd be right back, but he couldn't be certain that he would, and he wasn't the type to make idle promises. So instead, he simply said "Excuse me," and left the bar, knowing the gang would follow.
It was preferable to the alternative. If he left with her, and the group decided to try something, he'd have to worry about her safety, and having others rely on him, or vise versa, just wasn't his style. In all likelihood he'd ruined his chances for a pleasant evening, but it was easier to sleep with a clear conscience than another lonely soul.
Nihlus hardly needed to listen to the footsteps behind him as he left the club, the group was making their presence and intent obvious. Though he could tell there were less than the seven he'd seen in the club following him. So he'd already come to a stop when, with almost boring predictability, the missing three emerged around the corner to block his path.
"You picked the wrong club, cuttlebone," The one in the center growled. All of them had hair dyed an offensive shade of red, neon and unnatural. Not at all the easy crimson the woman had for some reason wanted to cover up.
"Actually, this is the only club that serves dextro drinks." Nihlus drawled, bored.
"First you take our clubs, and now you take our women?" The outrage in his voice elevated, as if OmniTonic served dextro drinks specifically for Nihlus. The thought of special privileges for him on the human homeworld was mildly bemusing. "You aliens are all the same; you come to our world and think you can do whatever you want. Well you forget, this is our world, our rules." The redhead kept talking, Nihlus stopped listening.
Saren's voice in his head drowned out the gang member's. "There are two simple rules you should always remember. The first, is never kill someone without a reason."
Nihlus had never encountered a human gang before. They weren't entirely different from turian ones, or any races' for that matter. Prejudice and fear cemented in the impressionable minds of a species' youth. Commander Shepard had been an orphan on Earth, raised on the streets, likely around gangs like these. Nihlus made a mental note to make any residual prejudice the first thing to break her of. Spectre's protected the entire galaxy, not just their own species. Sometimes he'd felt as though Saren forgot that.
"Two things we're gonna do, cuttlebone. The first, is teach you a lesson." The sound of a switchblade being drawn caught his attention. He marked it as the man behind him on the left.
"And the second?" Nihlus asked of both the gang member and his old mentor.
"Then we're gonna teach her a lesson." He leered.
"You can always find a reason to kill someone." Saren's voice chorused in the back of his mind.
The speaker lunged with a clumsy right hook. Nihlus spun and grabbed him by the wrist, twisting his arm around his back and trading places with him. The man with the switchblade had dove simultaneously, and consequently drove his blade into his friend's chest. The gang was momentarily shocked, and it was all the time Nihlus needed to throw both men into the remaining two behind him.
The two in the front recovered and leapt towards him with more brawn than brains. Nihlus dropped to one knee and swept them off their feet with a drop-kick to the back of their knees. It would have been an impossible move for a human to hit them both, but turians had more reach.
Their momentum worked against them and they crashed into their comrades, just as they'd been about to recover.
He could have easily drawn his sidearm then and fired six shots to eliminate the threat. He could have just as easily pulled the Spectre card and sent them running. He was debating which when he realized the flaw in his plan. Six shots, six men. He was missing one.
The absentee had likely stayed in the bar to antagonize the woman. Nihlus frowned, then started tying the groaning gang together with their belts and any other rope-substitute on them. He'd have to go back to the bar, and he'd rather not have to deal with a human screaming that he'd murdered half a dozen men, then explain to her and the authorities that Spectre status gave him the authority to remove threats to security as he saw fit.
A gang member struggled; Nihlus kicked him. This was tedious. Saren would have killed them by now.
The thrum of heavy booted footfalls drew his attention from down the hall. While he hoped it was security – where were they? – he doubted his luck would take a turn for the better.
A flash of red had him on his feet, but he stilled reaching for his weapon when he recognized Tequila stumbling over herself in her haste to get away from OmniTonic. Nihlus tensed, on alert for the last gang member, but to his surprise no one seemed to be following her.
She didn't seem to be capable of halting her momentum, so Nihlus caught and steadied her before she careened into him. "Supernova," She grinned lopsidedly, "Fancy meeting you here." She glanced at him, then at the bodies littering the floor. Nihlus inwardly flinched, waiting for a scream that never came. "Oh good," She continued, turning away from the gang disinterestedly, "You're okay."
Well that was… refreshing. Then he noticed the alcohol coating her breath. "You're drunk."
"Say that again when I'm sober," She finally waved away his help standing on her own two feet.
"I will," They looked at each other for a long moment before they started laughing, a reprieve quickly interrupted by a shout from down the hall.
"Stop right there, criminal scum!" Ah, there was security. Late and loud, as per usual. A man, spacer pale, with a helmet obscuring most of his face, rushed towards them with his gun drawn, hollering into his comm for backup. "Put down your weapons and take three steps back."
"I'm unarmed," Nihlus sighed, annoyed. Well, there was his sidearm, but that didn't really count.
"Then how the hell do you explain this?" He nudged one of the gang members with his toe. The man whimpered pitifully. Nihlus turned his palms up and unsheathed his talons in explanation, mandibles flickering in annoyance.
"A citizen's arrest," The woman beside him interrupted for him, sparing him from having to invoke the Council like the right hand of the Hierarchy. "They assaulted him." She continued.
The man relaxed, lowering his weapon, but eyed her suspiciously. He must have noted the collective red hair color. "They assaulted him?"
"I didn't do nothing man!" One of the more coherent gang members protested, straining against his hands belted to his companion's feet.
"They assaulted us," Nihlus clarified, putting an arm around the woman's waist. To her credit, she didn't flinch, and instead leaned into the contact.
"Ah hell," The security guard caught on immediately. He waved them over to him, away from the gang pile, and spoke a command into his omnitool once they'd crossed some invisible threshold. Gates crashed down from the ceiling, cutting off the small section with the gang from the rest of the hall.
"Impressive," Nihlus murmured. He didn't give idle praise.
"Anti-riot gates, our newest security upgrade until backup gets here. Look, I know this must be difficult for the two of you. We've had some trouble with hate-crimes against couples lately, and the station's really grateful to you for catching these guys."
"There's another outside OmniTonic. The entrance closest to here." Tequila chimed in, causing Nihlus to raise an eyeridge at her.
"I-see…" The security blinked at the unexpected information. He stared at her in bewilderment for several moments before continuing. "Well, if I could just get a statement from the both of you…" His backup chose that moment to arrive, crowding around either side of the riot gates. The squad leader mumbled a command into his omnitool that caused the gates to lift, and in the commotion the two of them escaped.
Nihlus steered her, willingly, down several twists and turns, past aliens and humans rushing to see what the trouble was about. They stopped in an empty alley on the opposite side of OmniTonic, an elevator patiently waiting for them to choose a destination buried in the far wall. A spacerat skittered away from them, squeezing itself into a ventilation shaft with a broken cover. Nihlus noted it with disinterest, idly realizing why this was gang territory.
His human's laughter broke him out of his contemplations, she was leaning heavily against his side, and he couldn't help but chuckle as well. "Unarmed my ass," She giggled, giving him a poke that was more of a punch.
"A citizen's arrest?" He countered with a snort.
"It worked, didn't it?"
"It did," He consented, "The one you mentioned-"
"Broke his nose and then some." She glared at the glistening gray walls, and it looked for a moment like she was glaring at the holographic OmniTonic sign lining one. Granted, it was a terrible ad. 'Your omnitool does everything, don't you deserve a bar that serves every drink? OmniTonic!' She tore her eyes away from the sign and glanced back up at him. "Is that why you left?"
"Yes," Quick and to the point. Her tone was completely blameless, but he felt the need to elaborate anyway, "I was going to come back-"
"I didn't like the atmosphere in there anyway," She waved away his explanation with a devilish look in her eye.
"My apartment is much more…" Nihlus' brain died on him. On an adrenaline high from his fight, a drunken high from his drinks, and a hormonal high from her proximity, his brain decided he must not be doing anything that required words anymore.
"Much more." Tequila affirmed with a grin. Thankfully, his brain was right. The two of them dragged each other to the elevator, and Nihlus keyed in the floor of his apartment. He leaned his back against the railing and pulled her towards him, raking her back and waist with his talons. Her hands immediately went to his neck, and he anticipated a strange sensation of too many fingers on his nerves, but felt only two sharp claws on either side drawing themselves across his skin.
He was wondering how much he'd had to drink that he was hallucinating her as a turian, when he realized she was only using two fingers on each hand for his benefit. With a growl, he buried his face in her neck and nipped at her flesh, only to growl again when the elevator chimed the right floor.
Unlike on the Citadel, human designed elevators were rushed, to get to their destination as quickly as possible with no time to enjoy the view. It seemed everything they did was rushed. The irony of that thought didn't escape him as he stumbled hastily towards his apartment with one.
Said human pulled a small flask from a pocket in her jacket and took a swig. "You want some?" She offered as he fumbled with the lock on his door, then quickly wrenched her hand away as she belatedly realized the amino difference. "No don't!"
Nihlus laughed deep in his throat, "I wasn't going to." The door swished open and the two of them stumbled towards his bed in the back of his apartment, but didn't quite make it and fell on the couch instead.
Neither of them could be bothered to notice or care. He caught her as she tumbled onto him and tore off her jacket, running his talons along her sides and enjoying the sounds she made before she yanked on his shirt. Scooting up, she leaned away from him as he pulled it off obligingly and he couldn't help the manly swell of pride as she whistled appreciatively. She ran all ten nails down the carapace of his chest, perhaps hoping to make up for being kept from his skin. "I'm gonna give you one hell of a First Contact," She promised, pushing him down to the couch.
She stripped off her shirt with deliberate slowness, before crawling lithely over him to lean into him and…
And stay there. She'd passed out. Nihlus groaned and dropped his head back on the armrest, mindful of his fringe. And that was why he didn't make idle promises. Nihlus threw his arm over his head, blocking out the light of his rented room. He was tempted to just sleep it all off, when he realized she couldn't possibly be comfortable, soft flesh balanced against carapace and spurs.
With a sigh, he rolled out from under her, intending to leave her on the couch, when the slight of his absence had her rolling off it. Catching her before she crashed onto the floor, he tried to resettle her in some stable position.
It didn't work. She slid, she slipped, limbs fell off the couch, limbs hit his face, his sides, his chest. Nihlus was growling furiously by the time he managed to get her twisted into a stationary position. He hovered for several minutes, expecting her to topple, but nothing happened. Letting out a whoosh of hot air in relief, he tiptoed away from her and stepped on the discarded flask. He glared at it, and gave it a vicious kick, blaming it for the ending to his evening.
With a sigh, he scratched the back of his neck to remove the phantom feeling of her fingers trailing over it. Retrieving a blanket from his bed, he draped it over her, half-expecting the contribution to send her rolling wildly across his living room. Nothing happened, and he was about to drag himself to his bed when he decided he needed a cold shower first.
When he finally threw himself down to sleep, he reevaluated everything that had happened. He'd gotten insight into Commander Shepard's background, had a good fight, met an intriguing woman, and even brought her home with him. He could potentially spend tomorrow, or even the rest of his leave with her. Nihlus pushed himself up on his elbows so he could see her on the couch in the living room, which doubled as the bedroom in his one-room apartment. Bad day, she'd asked… no, it hadn't been a bad day at all. He'd have to get her name, he decided as he fell asleep.