The engines hummed gently as it powered up. White and blue paint, moon and starlight reflecting gently off of it. It was a small ship, passenger vessel, but it still had weapons equipped, some sort of light cannon. He had seen something like this before on the Normandy, but they weren't quite this small. The airlock opened, air wheezing out as the pressure equalized, and the professor stepped in and he followed after, feeling the gaze of his son on his back. He would be taking a passenger vessel back to the citadel, he lived there now, working with C-sec.

The inside was much more lavish than the lab, well furnished, but the same annoying white linoleum, he listened to the professor's boots echo loudly. Why she wore such tall boots, he would never know. "So, you're coming with me to hunt a spectre killer. You realise that this person is killing spectres, right? Spectres." He leaned on the wall as she adjusted the pressure systems, shutting the airlocks. "And where is your pilot? Don't tell me you're a helmsman too." He yawned, his body was tired from being dead for so long. He even rested for two days as they tested him to make sure his cognitive processes were up to par.

"I can fly actually, I can man this entire ship myself. Would I? No. My job is to help you hunt whoever it is down, and kill them. I couldn't do it alone, I tried." She shut the control panel, locking it with her security code, and Thane was able to see how well manicured her nails were as she tapped away at the screen, in the deepest shade of crimson, contrasting with the blue screen. "The pilot is probably still in the ship, he never leaves here actually. Literally lives in the cockpit. It's my ship, but I let him. He's served me well for half a decade. Name's Kyre, a Salarian."

"You remind me of Cerberus." He said bluntly, folding his arms and looking to the artificial lighting. "You're bringing people back to life and doing… well, crazy things."

"Well I assure you, we're not Cerberus. We're nothing like them. We listen to the laws of the council where applicable, and we believe in interspecies cooperation for the betterment of the entire galaxy, not just humanity." She smiled brightly, leading him into the mainroom, the engines still powering up, but the humming becoming more subtle, "Phoenix is the best organisation I have ever worked for. Ever. We get the resources and funding we need, and everything is ethical, well for the most part. If anything we do is illegal, we make sure to do it outside of council space." She sat down on the red sofa, crossing her legs, "Though I am willing to answer any questions you have about the organization."

He sat down on the synthetic brown leather across from her. It still smelled new. "I don't have questions, I'll do my job. Although I would like to know how many spectres they have killed so far."

"Seven Asari, a Turian, and two Salarians. The council has yet to investigate. It's being blamed on the dangers of the job, but there's no way so many spectres could die in such a short time. We're talking about the most highly trained individuals in the galaxy. The chances of Batarian slavers actually being able to take them down are slim to none." She held onto her chair slightly as they begin to pull out of the port, "I hate this part."

The vertigo wasn't too strong, clearly the pilot was skilled, but Koi didn't look too happy, clearly it affected her more than it did him.

He looked out the window to see the desert world his ancestors had dwelled, Rakhana. He stood up to get a closer view, fingers laying on the glass, the view taking his breath away. He could make out their more populated areas, the land stained, still visible from space. That was over eight centuries ago. He couldn't help but wonder if there were still survivors down there, or the rest of the inhabitants had wiped themselves out entirely. If the Hanar hadn't rescued the 350,000 Drell that they did, they would have ceased to exist entirely.

That terrified him.

To owe one's existence to another race, to know that their decisions could have caused his species to cease to exist entirely. That was why they owed the Hanar, it reminded him of just how fragile their lives were. How a single decision could impact such a large number of people.

"Why are they killing spectres?"

"Very likely that they're doing it to revolt against the council. We're hoping it's an individual and not an organization. It seems to be so, it's much easier for an individual to cover their tracks. If it is an organization, they're very good. Frighteningly good, better than Cerberus was." She looked up at him over her right shoulder, watching as his heart reached out to try and connect with the home he had never seen. "You don't want to go down there Krios, trust me. I took Krios Junior down there as a favour, he got sick."

"I know. It is just strange to see it. I have always considered Kahje my home, but seeing it… It makes it more alive. reminds me that the world I was told of in stories is actually real, that we really lived here almost a thousand years ago." He turned back to face her, the world shrinking behind him as he sat down, not bearing to look at it any longer. It called to him, the golden soil, crumbling infrastructure of his ancestors. He wondered where they were from before the Hanar rescued his family from so long ago, where he would have lived if the Drell had been able to sustain their life there.
"Where do you think they'll strike next?"

"The only place they could take out three spectres with one bomb, The SR2 Normandy. It's currently docked at the Citadel, hopefully they don't move out before we can get there. I'm not sure if anyone has warned the living spectres yet, the council would be too afraid of a political blowback." She folded her arms, looking over to the closed cockpit doors, "If you want you can go talk to Kyre, I'm going to go down to the gym, the armoury is down there as well." She stood up, tapping her foot on the floor ever so slightly, nervous. He could see it, her muscles were tense, especially around the shoulders and neck. "Your cabin is on the upper deck, it has your name on the door so you can't mix it up."

"On the Normandy we had sleep pods." He stood up, looking over in the direction of where the Salarian pilot would be, "An actual bed is quite unusual for a ship."

"We have sleep pods as well, but this is a private vessel. We don't have to deal with those military regulations, the civilian versions aren't nearly as limiting." She slid her labcoat off and draped it over the couch, stretching her arms. "See you later." She headed down the hallway to the elevator, footsteps echoing loudly behind her. The way she walked reminded him of Shepard, that proud, confident gait.

Memories flashed through his head of the times he and the Commander had spent together. Beautiful memories. Violent ones, filled with blood. Moments they had spent hand in hand over his desk, discussing what trips to make after the war with the collectors was over. Trips they never got to take.

Because he died.

He didn't have the heart to meet the pilot, too much was happening right now, and above all, he felt the need to rest. That's all he felt. According to what Kolyat had told him, it was normal to be drowsy like this for the first few days.

He went up the elevator and found a metal door with green letters sprawled across the top, spelling "Thena". Clearly someone had issues spelling.

He opened the door to find a small room, furnished rather fairly. A comfortable looking bed in the far right corner of the room, a metal nightstand to the left of it, and old fashioned turian alarm clock, the dial had to be spun by hand every night to the amount of hours one wanted to wake up in, these relics weren't easy to come by these days. There were a few small manufacturers who still made them, for some breed of galactic hipsters. Apparently Ivy was among them.

He ran his fingers delicately over the soft fabric of his bed. The top sheet was crimson, like the woman's nails, the rest of the sheets and pillows were white. He almost felt like the crimson would stain their purity, like a few of the bedroom assassinations he had committed, or even the one in dead winter on Noveria.

On the left wall was the doors to a small walk-in closet, which he slid open to find a few uniforms of his size, similar to the ones he used to wear. There were even some more tradition drell clothing, and articles sold from all over the galactic community. He felt odd being presented with such gifts, they were all such high quality. It wasn't as if he had asked for them.

When he left the closet he noticed a gun on a metal desk at the foot of the bed, he walked over to it, recognising it as the sniper rifle his body had used to kill countless people. He picked it up carefully, finding it wasn't loaded, and his hands wandered instinctively to the trigger, where they had laid for countless hours on many occasions for his target to wander down the path he knew they would, before one final twitch ended their miserable life.

Now there was someone like him who was killing the defenders of justice of Council Space, and he would end them just like he had so many before.

A knock on his door snapped him out of his reverie, putting the gun back on the desk and turning to see the door being cracked open by a young Turian. The Turian was surprisingly pale, his face painted in the black lines of his home colony, and he was rather short for a Turian as well, which wasn't disguised through his armour. "Excuse me, dinner is ready… I know today has been long for you and uh… Well I made some steaks using a recipe I learned from a Drell chef, I can't eat it myself but I hear it's pretty good. I'm Ra Xycsavan, don't worry about the last name, no one can pronounce it anyway. I'm the Chef here aboard the Firebird, I wanted to welcome you aboard... "

"Ah, thank you. I am Thane Krios. Are you alright?" He had never met a shy Turian before, perhaps it was because this boy was young, because he had also never seen a young Turian. Perhaps he was scarred from the war with the Reapers as well.

"Yes, I am fine. It is just that I have never seen a Drell before. Well, I saw you when you were, um, dead. That's also pretty weird, seeing a corpse so… not dead. But Ivy assures me that you are indeed alive!" He smiled, laughing, the laugh sounding like two different colours pouring of honey pouring over each other, nothing put pure joy, another strange thing to hear from a Turian. "It's just the four of us on board now, this is a small ship after all… and I know you have some big mission defending the council in whatever way you will, I wasn't told the specifics. No one ever tells me the specifics. I think I'm trustworthy… But maybe I'm too young." He took Thane's wrist and led him back to the elevator, "Have you met Kyre yet?"

He didn't struggle, letting his body be lead by the young boy, "I have not." His enthusiasm reminded him of Mouse, so eager to please. "I have never met a Turian chef before, I thought you all had to join the military until you were thirty."

"Well, we don't, but we're not granted full citizenship if we don't. I don't exactly need citizenship when I'm all over the Galaxy with Phoenix. I also have zero skills with a gun. Kyre tried to teach me, but it just couldn't be done. He's like a dad to me, my parents died in the war on Palaven, but I was with Phoenix already at the time." He didn't seem remorseful over the loss of his blood relatives as he set the elevator controls, still holding Thane's hand. "He was with me the entire time, watching the broadcasts."

"I am sorry for your loss. I lost many friends to the reapers, though I can't imagine having lost a parent to them." It was a few seconds before the elevator doors slip open again, and the smell of well cooked meat hit his nose, sending him into a trance for a moment before the boy tugged at his arm again, leading him to a seat at the table, with food in front of it.

Ra then went back into the kitchen to cook something for himself, which didn't take long because he had apparently left it on while he went to get Thane, and he served it to himself, sitting down across from Thane, "They should be here any minute. They're likely beating up punching bags together."
"The professor can fight?" Thane didn't start to eat, although his mouth was watering. The hanar had taught him never to eat before his employer.

"She's really skilled actually at hand to hand, she also can use a sniper, but I don't think any other gun. She's pretty scary when she gets mad too, you know, knowing that she could break my neck pretty easily." This took Thane by surprise, the woman looked to petite and frail, not like a soldier at all. Though this was a trait of many assassins he knew, and it often made them quite good at their jobs, they were never suspected for the crimes they committed unless they left too much evidence behind. "She and Kyre practice when the ship is flying itself through empty space, which we go through so we don't trigger anyone's systems. We got raided by pirates once, it wasn't fun. Fortunately Kyre was able to get them away, I don't remember much though, I was apparently knocked out."

Thane was about to pose further inquires when he heard the familiar pressurized puff of air from the elevators as they opened, and he turned his head to see the familiar red headed human and a tall black-skinned Salarian, his yellow eyes standing out as they made eye contact. He even looked more muscular than a Salarian, perhaps he was a cross breed?

Apparently the Salarian was used to being gawked at, "I'm Lystheni, tell anyone and I'll remove your tongue. You don't need it for the mission." He said, sitting down beside him. "We're banned from council space."

"Sorry, I thought you were a Salarian. Ra said you were." He said, his gaze wandering to Ivy as she sat down as well, smoothing her skirt as she did.

"That's the cover story. We're technically Salarian, from the same world, but just further south. Because we have half a population of females, unlike them, they think we're some sort of savages. War broke out, we modeled our DNA to be more like a krogan, lost the war, and ended up banned from Council Space. Fortunately most of us still look Salarian, but we also live longer, so we can't stay in one place for too long. Salarians tend to notice when we don't age like they do."

"I've never heard of Lystheni… How interesting."

"We try to keep it that way, the more people that forget about us the better." He didn't waste any time picking up his knife and cutting into his steak, "Most of us now live in the Terminus systems. Think of the view between the Salarians and the Lystheni as… Humans and Neanderthals, except equally intelligent Neanderthals."

"I see…" He nodded, though still not understanding. What in the galaxy was a Neanderthal anyway? It certainly wasn't a space-faring species that he had ever heard of. He was about to continue when they all heard the Professor's pager go off, and watched as she slid it off of her belt loop to take a peek.

She studied it for a moment, her face completely blank, not giving a slightest clue to what the message said. "Kyre, now, change course for Erroz, Theta cluster." She put the pager back where she had found it, looking across the table to the Salarian-subspecies. "Our hit man just made another mark." He rose without question, blinking from the bottom up as the sentient amphibians did, and turned around on his heels towards the elevator, Ra jumping up to follow him, yelling something about checking the engines.

"They sure are lively." Thane said, taking a bite only after she did.

"Well I just told them we were going to quite the tropical planet. It doesn't have any landmasses, it's all small islands. Beaches to be specific. Hopefully they don't get too caught up in that tourist trap." She took another bite, Thane copying her actions, which she didn't seem to notice. "Well, I feel weird eating without them. I'm going to at least bring them their food."

Thane nodded, standing up as she did, picking up Kyre's plate as she picked up Ra's. "I have missed out on many beautiful places while my soul was asleep." He followed her into the elevator, and they went up first to see Kyre, who was already at work at the pilot's controls. "Kyre, we have brought you your food."

"Ah, thank you, just leave it on my chair." It turned out Kyre was one of those bizarre pilots who liked to stand while he worked, buzzing about quickly, pushing numerous buttons, "And tell Ra to stop messing with the F9 panel, he can't fix that midflight, at least without making my job miserable." Thane put the plate down where it was requested, putting his arms behind his back as Ivy laughed.

"It's your fault for teaching him how to operate those things." She said, barely leaning on the wall, "He just wants to be helpful."

"He's brilliant. It's a shame the Turians would have squandered his intelligence behind the barrel of a gun." He paused briefly in his work, his hand hovering over a particular button."Are we squandering his intelligence behind a gun?"

The professor shook her head, "Of course not, he is learning while he's here, and he's getting to see the galaxy. You know he loves that." He was probably down stairs singing about it as they spoke, dancing and swinging his arms in the air. "Well, we're going to go give him his dinner. Have a great evening." He nodded and the pair headed out, Thane still holding Ra's plate, letting her operate the elevator controls. "So you saw your room?"

"Yes, but don't you mean 'Thena's' room?" He asked, laughing, and Ivy started shaking her head.

"Sorry, one of us must have been drunk when we put those up, I'll fix it later tonight." She smiled when the elevator opened to reveal a singing Turian. It was strange on their ears, given how Turians had two voices, the predominant one people usually focus on, and a much deeper voice hidden underneath it. The boy didn't even notice when the elevator buzzed open, and continued his songs, spinning as he calibrated the machines.

It wasn't until Koi whistled did the Turian look over, stopping mid-step. "Ah, how embarrassing." He said, blinking rapidly. "everything alright?"

"Yeah, just bringing you down your dinner. Kyre also said to tell you to stop touching the F9 panel midflight." She watched as Thane set down the food on the maintenance desk, which was never really used. "You seem excited."

"Well ma'am, I've never seen an ocean up close." He said, lowering a few panels to sit down, yawning. "Plus, I am happy to have made a new friend that can help us serve the council… Even though they don't know we exist… Y'know, to serve the better whole of the galactic community." He took a bit of his food, his stomach growling almost as loudly as the engines.

Thane blinked, a bit baffled about how quickly the boy considered him a friend, but after a brief moment he smiled, "I am happy to help. I spent my life removing evil from this world, it seems only fit that I continue." Truth be told he actually wanted to stop and relax, experience the life that he couldn't before. He had once again left Kolyat behind, only this time he would be sure to stay in touch better.

Ivy turned around towards the elevator with a yawn, "Well, I'm off to get ready for bed, try not to stay up too late, both of you."

"Yes mom." Ra said sarcastically, taking another bite, laughing as she rolled her eyes and headed into the elevator. "She's funny." He looked up at Thane, "You should head to sleep too, not to make a joke, but well…. You look like a corpse." He chuckled again, pleased with his wordplay. "I will too, but don't worry about Kyre, Salarians don't require much sleep interestingly enough. That's why he's such an awesome pilot!" He jumped up, throwing his arms in the air, accidentally flinging his food across the room. He froze in shock as the plate shattered against the wall, "Oops."

Thane turned to see the collision, "I'll get a rag… Or something."

"Nah, it's good, this happens all the time!" He exclaimed, running to pick up the glass with his bare hands, surprisingly enough, he didn't cut himself. Instead he just slid the glass into the nearest trash bin, and swept up the smaller pieces with a dustpan, and got to work cleaning up the actual food, "I'm the biggest klutz in the galaxy."

"Believe me, I have seen some pretty clumsy people, and you're fine. You're just young." He smiled, Ra was probably about Kolyat's age, or just slightly younger. He knelt down to help as best as he could, ignoring Ra's pouting face at the assistance.

"You do know it is my job to help you and the Professor, not the other way around." He gently took the rag from Thane's hands, getting back to work, "And it's your job to kill the bastard who's going around killing the arm of the council, and make sure she doesn't die. You HAVE to make sure she lives, got it?" The met each other's gaze, and Thane could easily see the determination in the Turian's eyes, "There's so much she still has to do in her life, she's going to help a lot of people, and she can't do that if she's dead. We were able to bring you back, the the success rate for that kind of procedure is extremely low."

"I promise to keep her alive." The Drell said calmly, he could see the concern in Ra's eyes. He cared for her, that much was certain.

"But you have to stay alive too. We can't do this on our own. She can't fight much. That's your job… Just… If it seems like you're in danger, get out of there. There will always be a second chance to take this guy out. As long as there are spectres he'll keep going after them." They finished the cleanup, and Ra helped Thane up, extending a hand, which he took gratefully. "Well, I'll see you tomorrow. Did someone how you where the showers are?"

"No, are they on the same floor as the cabins?" He questioned, to which Ra nodded, stating that they would be at the end of the hallway on both sides, and that they didn't have male and female showers to double check to make sure it wasn't occupied, and after a brief nod Thane headed up to the showers, hearing the one on the right side of the hallway as on, he went to the one on the left.

The controls were easy enough to operate, so after he slipped his clothes off he stepped into the water, rinsing the toxic membrane that all Drell produced off of his skin. His instincts told him not to breathe in the steam, but given his Kepral's syndrome was cured, he fought that urge, letting the steamy air fill his lungs, enjoying how it soothed his throat and nose.

He let the water jet massage his back, reaching a hand to rub his neck, his mind replaying the events of the day with his perfect memory. Things he had missed the first time, he was able to notice now, the subtle things. Glances exchanged that he hadn't noticed, small ticks in his shipmate's behaviours.

He reached back to turn off the water when he had finished analysing what he hadn't seen before, looking at the clock, surprised that it had been an hour. He picked up his clothes, damp from the humidity, and wrapped a towel around himself, stepping into the corridor. He was surprised to see Ivy rearranging the letters on his door to spell his name correctly. She looked over to him when she heard his quiet footsteps, unphased that he was in a towel, and she in a simple night dress. "Ah, I thought you would be asleep by now."

He shook his head, reaching for the doorknob, "I was absorbed in my memories in the shower, I didn't realise time had passed."
"Ah that's right, Drell have perfect memories." She backed up from the door to give him space to open it, having completed her task of fixing the letters.

"Yes, we do. I often review the events of the day before going to bed." He opened the door, setting his clothing down on the bench by the door. "Well, I shall be going to sleep now."
"I as well, have a great sleep." She said with a smile, turning on her heels to head to her cabin, her footfalls completely silent.

Turns out bare feet didn't clang on linoleum like her boots did.