A/N: I've edited a couple of weapon names to stay in keeping with the whole alien language thing. Akethak = Ether Daggers
A/N 2: Free plug to Warframe Effect, the best ME/Warframe crossover out there. Seriously, go check it out. Anyone wants to play a couple rounds Warframe or ME3 multiplayer PM me.
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Tali's entire family had been on the Cyniad when it had been destroyed. She quite literally had nothing left. So when, through a combination of enthusiastic gestures and doodled pictures, the Tenno asked her to join their unit, the answer was surprisingly easy to give.
She ran. She jumped. She slid along the floor. She shot and snuck and hacked and stabbed and crushed. Slowly but surely, she learned to be a Tenno.
The first thing Ellen taught her was sidearms. She had held up a pistol with an ornate handguard and twirled it in her hand a couple of times, then offered it grip first to Tali.
"Lato."
Tali held up the sidearm, examining it. Although the handguard was clearly designed for five fingered hands her three fingers were able to fit around it quite comfortably.
"Lato," she repeated, hoping she had got that right. In response Ellen nodded and gestured downrange, miming firing a pistol one handed. Tali aimed the pistol, putting her left hand on the base of the handle to stabilise it as she had been taught only to have Ellen tut disapprovingly and quite forcefully mime firing one handed, her left hand behind her back for good measure. Shrugging, Tali took her hand off the base of the grip, aiming one handed.
Unused to the one-handed grip, she missed the first couple of shots but quickly grew used to the feel of the weapon, her accuracy improving greatly as she settled into a steady rhythm. After a while Ellen held up a hand, drawing her attention, then mimed switching the gun from her right to her left hand. Frowning behind her mask, Tali followed suit, attempting to fire left-handed. She landed some hits but she was nowhere near as effective with her left as she was with her right. After considerably shorter time Ellen motioned for her to stop, handing her another identical pistol.
"Aklato." She mimed firing a pistol in each hand, then motioned for Tali to try. She took aim and started firing, alternating weapon every shot. Although her accuracy was almost perfect with her right hand, her left hand still missed almost half the shots she took. After a while Ellen had taken the pistol out of her left hand, just leaving her to fire right-handed. Tali wholeheartedly agreed.
She spent much of the first week learning the ins and outs of Tenno sidearms. As well as the Lato, she was educated on the Bolto, the Bronco, the Furis and the Lex, as well as experimenting with weapons such as the Vasto, Sicarus, Viper and Gremlins. She also tried her hand at the Hikou throwing stars and Kunai throwing knives, but quickly decided she preferred actual firearms. In return, with aid of a paper notepad and a lot of gesturing she taught Ellen and the other Tenno about the Council, the Protheans, Mass Relays and the Corpus war thus far. Fortunately for her they were able to fabricate dextro foodstuffs, though she didn't eat anything for two days while Ellen convinced her it was safe to remove her helmet and eat without getting an infection.
Another memorable event was on her sixth day with the Tenno, when Ellen led her down to the dojo's sparring ring, enthusiastic hand gestures leading Tali to believe she was going to watch a swordfight. What she certainly didn't expect was what she actually saw.
James and Ashley, as she'd come to know them, were slowly circling each other, both in full armour. Come to think of it, she hadn't yet seen any of the Tenno remove any part of their armour that wasn't their helmets. Kaidan was already sitting on the sidelines, watching them as Ellen and Tali took seats beside him. Ellen pointed at the weapon in James's hands, an enormous rectangular slab of metal that looked like it could cleave through a frigate's hull.
"Gram."
Then her finger shifted to point at the two smaller blades held in Ashley's hands.
"Akethak."
Nodding her understanding, Tali watched as the two combatants circled one another, occasionally feinting but never outright engaging. Even with her untrained eye Tali could tell what would go down. James would be depending on his strength, putting punishing force behind every blow whereas Ashley would stay mobile and try to whittle him down with small wounds while staying out of the way of his enormous weapon.
James held his weapon vertical with a two handed grip, stopping his circling and instead turning on the spot, keeping himself facing Ashley as she paced around him, twirling the dagger in her left around her fingers in an impressive display of dexterity while keeping the one in her right hand raised in a guard position.
She made the first move, sprinting towards her heavily armoured opponent and leaping over his ponderous swing as she struck downwards with both blades. To her amazement James dropped his sword, instead snapping his hands upwards so quick she could barely follow his movements and grabbing Ashley's wrists in a death grip. In that position her speed and agility were negated, James controlling the fight completely with his superior strength. He flipped, trapping Ashley underneath him and used his heavy helmet to literally headbutt her into submission. Ellen turned to Tali, her eyebrow arched as if to say, 'you see?'. Tali saw. Pulling out her notebook, she flipped to the page where she was writing a semi-serious list of rules entitled 'Tenno Doctrine'. To that she added 9. Play to your strengths and 10. Be unpredictable.
She watched a couple more fights between James and Ashley, quickly learning that James was the living embodiment of Rule 10. He trounced Ash almost every time, pulling all manner of crazy tricks to keep the upper hand. She could see Ashley was getting frustrated.
Ellen chuckled as she tapped Ash on the shoulder, taking her place in the ring with a long double bladed staff-like weapon she called 'Orthos'. She twirled the weapon a couple of times in her hands then rolled it over the back of her shoulders, demonstrating a seamless familiarity with the weapon that overawed Tali. She honestly had no idea how she was expected to match that level of skill. Then Ellen struck.
Tali didn't even see her move. One second she was facing down James, the next second the bulky Frost warframe was flat on his back, his Gram skidding away across the sparring ring floor as the blade of the Orthos rested ever so gently above his heart.
After spending almost the whole day watching the Tenno spar, Ellen split up her days into five sections. The first was sidearms, then melee combat. After lunch she would go down to the firing range to try her hand at the big guns, then train in stealth and agility on the obstacle course. Her evenings were consumed with learning everything she could about Tenno and Corpus technology.
She had to admit, her favourite part of the training regimen was the big guns, namely because Ellen set up the firing range to project holographic Corpus targets that moved and shot back just like the real thing. Gunning them down by the dozen was surprisingly therapeutic. There were literally dozens of guns to choose from, ranging from the compact Braton assault rifle to the enormous Gorgon heavy machine gun, but she quickly found her favourite to be the Sobek assault shotgun. The weapon had a brilliant feel to it and left Corpus in messy puddles of blood although the over-complicated reload procedure she could live without. Having enjoyed using the Sobek she eagerly grabbed the Hek heavy shotgun only to be sent flying across the room by the recoil as Ellen dissolved into paroxysms of mirth.
On day ten, she was introduced to the abilities of her warframe. The armoured shell was apparently able to do ... something. She had no idea what 'vee elko magàna tus matul voor emezées' meant, but it quickly became apparent that her abilities were rather impressive. After several aggressive hand gestures from Ellen, Tali had reached out to the nearest training dummy, closed her fist and jerked it sharply upwards, squeaking in alarm as the dummy was ripped from its stand and deposited in a heap at her feet. Over the next couple of days she learned to boost and drain shields, attract bullets to a target and she even imploded a training dummy.
When she wasn't training she usually spent her time tinkering with whatever tech she could scrounge around the dojo. Although she couldn't hold a conversation and wasn't yet comfortable removing her helmet around anyone except Ellen, the Tenno did everything so sociably she couldn't have been lonely if she tried. It didn't matter who she used to be. She was set on the path to becoming a Tenno.
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Ellen took a knee and bowed her head as the hologram appeared in the dojo's comm room. The Lotus's eyes were hidden behind her mask yet she couldn't help shake the feeling the woman was staring right through her.
"Report, Tenno Shepard."
She stood, still keeping her head bowed as a show of respect.
"Tali is integrating well into the unit despite the language barrier. She's already mastered almost every sidearm I can find and she seems to have fallen in love with the Sobek shotgun. Her melee is sound but unremarkable but her real strength is tech. I had EDI construct a Corpus type cipher ten times more advanced than any we've come across and she cracked it within ten seconds, plus she's already been tinkering with several devices. The mods she's been putting in her Sobek are really quite amazing."
The Lotus didn't outwardly react aside from shifting her hands to clasp them behind her back.
"Thank you, Tenno. I was asking about the intelligence on this coalition of aliens."
Ellen took an involuntary step back. The ice in the woman's tone put James's Avalanche to shame.
"My apologies, Lotus. From what we've been able to tell, this community of aliens were initially politically divided into several groups before the arrival of the Corpus, who they united to oppose. The Corpus at best estimate control around fifty star systems, all with resources and facilities comparable to the Origin system, and despite the massive increase in production and the acquisition of recruits the coalition of aliens are holding their own."
"Fascinating. How did the Corpus manage to leave the system?"
Ellen paused as long as she dared to collect her thoughts.
"An artefact left by what she calls the Protheans. We don't know if that's her word for the Orokin or a different species altogether. From what we understand it's some sort of structure that can instantaneously transport a spacecraft to a fixed location in space. I personally believe that the Corpus unearthed one of these structures on Charon."
The Lotus once again didn't move aside from a slight shift in her shoulders.
"Yes, that's a reasonable theory. You are dismissed, Tenno Shepard."
The hologram disappeared but did nothing to dispel the feeling of fingers tickling up and down her spine Ellen got whenever she talked to the Lotus.
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They came into her cell, two of them, punching her in the gut and winding her, then dragging her out into the lab. She tried to scream but couldn't, instead making a dry wheezing sound as they manhandled her struggling body onto the table, clamping thick metal restraints over her body as the drills and saws whirred and circled her immobilised form. Then hard, uncaring hands tearing her suit, leaving it hanging in tattered shreds, her throat already starting to close up as one of them forced his way between her thighs, screams turning into breathy gasps of terror, vision swimming, body screaming for oxygen as she was beaten, cut and violated over and over and over ...
She woke up gasping, sitting bolt upright in the pallet provided for her to sleep on, her heart pounding in her chest as she felt the familiar dampness of tears on her cheeks. She didn't tell the other Tenno about her nightmares - she wasn't sure if she was able to tell them even if she wanted to - fearing how they would react. She knew that although she had been rescued, a part of her was still trapped on the Corpus ship inventing ever more elaborate torments nightly based on what she had seen done to her friend's and family. The table dominated her subconscious, so much so that when she looked at Tenno script, the glyph that looked like a circle around a rectangle made her have to fight down a panic attack.
Gasping, she stumbled into the dining hall, fumbling open the catches on her helmet and stumbling over to one of the fountains that lined the room and splashing her face with cool crystal water, the cold shock washing away the remnants of the fear that had gripped her and instead bringing a deep, soul-crushing grief that drained her, making her slump to the floor and bury her face in her hands. Every time she woke in the middle of the night it rattled her, made her scared of failing the Tenno. Slowly but surely, her nightmares were eating away at her.