"What the fuck just happened!"

"...What the fuck just happened?"

"Yeah?"

"As the sole Pathfinder, the only person who succeeded in manipulating alien tech to completely terraform an entire world, your official response upon exiting your first Remnant vault was 'what the fuck just happened'?"

Sara shrugged. "I'm pretty sure Liam fancied up whatever went on record, but yeah. I stand by my words."

With the way Scott was shaking his head into his open palm, she was willing to bet he wished he was still in a coma. "You know that's worse, right?" he told her. "What you said was unprofessional, but whatever Liam decided you should have said is bound to be worse."

"You don't know that."

"But I do know that he's a chode, so..."

"He's not that bad." Except for when he was. But Scott didn't need to know about any of that.

"For a chode," her brother repeated.

"For a chode," she agreed. With smooth skin that appeared somehow even more flawless due to that pale, jagged scar on the inside of his left thigh that he supposedly got from a biking accident. Too bad the best beer he could think to scrounge up was IPA.

"So our shining representative for humanity hopped out of an ancient vault and screamed, 'what the fuck just happened'?" Scott snorted and slumped back in their father's chair still in the Pathfinder's cabin. It was too big for Sara, and one leg would inevitably fall asleep if she sat in it for too long, but it wasn't like they could just order a new one from Illium.

"I had to blind jump into a gravity well!" she exclaimed. "And my reward for doing the right thing was to have the place try to incinerate me when it reset. I didn't just say it to sound cool."

"That's a relief," he drawled. "Unless the definition of what is and is not cool drastically changed in the time I was out."

Sara rolled her eyes. "That's right." She flopped dramatically onto her bed. "You weren't there, you missed a lot. A lot of stuff was way cooler in the moment. All about context, Scott."

"Uh huh." But whatever disapproving scowl Scott may have started out with had melted into a grin. "I guess you'll just have to fill me in, then."

So, she did. The "cool" parts, anyway.

What exactly the fuck happened, was that it worked. Already, upon leaving the depths of the vault, Sara and her team could see the sky begin to clear, with clouds that were fluffy and white instead of sickly smears with fluorescent halos that blotted out the sun.

This made her a curiosity to Peebee who insisted on tagging along. It was an easy sell for Sara when she noticed Liam's hackles rising and Vetra's lukewarm reception. Peebee's assurances of, "datapad, toothbrush, clean underwear" to signify her low maintenance also pointed towards her being anything but.

But that was okay. Nothing worth anything ever came easy, right? Right.

By the time they'd located a suitable spot for an outpost, they bumped into that krogan, Drack, again and Sara was beginning to feel moody. Not because of the krogan- krogans were great! Everyone else was so fixated on feelings and appearances and morale, it was a huge relief to see someone solve a problem simply and efficiently: with a rifle. It was just kind of depressing to think that Sara was supposed to be an explorer and pioneer in this brave new galaxy, but instead of a multitude of new creatures and sentient life, the first new people she encountered was an asari and a goddamned krogan.

Was there anything that this Pathfinder would actually find?

Vetra worked her magic and convinced Drack to come with them before Sara had the time to think critically on the implications of an entire system having no real life other than robots (who weren't really alive- sorry, SAM,) and murder bugs. No birds, no animals, no sentient jellyfish that worshipped the Protheans. Either Sara needed to expand her scope of what counted as life or there was something very unsettling about Andromeda.

But Drack! Aboard the Tempest, Nakmor Drack now had the capability to extend his killing streak across multiple planets instead of containing it to simply Eos. So, a win-win for everyone involved. Except for the kett. They were the ones he was murdering. But, hey, you know.

Whatever earlier constipation Cora may have had in SAM node was relieved when she shat a brick over Peebee and Drack boarding. Sara didn't understand why bunk assignments were such a big deal to her dad's second in command. Her second in command. Maybe Cora was more miffed that the Pathfinder didn't back her, but that was not a hill worth dying on. They were all adults, sleep wherever and with whomever, just don't share toothbrushes or drink out of the carton.

Sara didn't feel up to dying on any hill if she was being perfectly honest. That particular brand of ennui seemed to have followed her around since being thawed and it bogged down any sort of forward momentum. It had her questioning if her crew was in fact insufferable or if it was just her.

It was just her. But maybe someone onboard would be generous, throw her a scrap that let her say it was a little of both.

It came in the way of Peebee's clunky pickup line.

"...Fool around?"

"Doesn't matter if you have something else going on, I can be utterly discreet."

"I'm sorry- hold up, you're serious?" As if bobbing in zero grav wasn't disorienting enough. Sara blinked hard. "Has that ever worked on anyone?"

"Two people blowing off steam, no strings..." Peebee laughed and then shrugged. "Yeah, actually it has. I usually reserve it for the shorter lived species, true, but that's because you have a bad habit of dying on me if I spend a century penning love letters."

"Wow."

"What? Was I too forward? Or do you mean the love letters?" Peebee twirled and stretched in the escape pod with the effortless grace of a ballet dancer as she reached for an ion charger that floated away from its base. "I didn't think you were into villanelles, Ryder."

"Limericks, mostly," Sara drawled. Her hair drifted around her face like blue tipped tentacles. She had thought the frosty color was funny when she entered cryo. A lame joke about getting frozen. Now, she just wondered if they thought to include any hair stylists in the Initiative or if fashion sense had been left far behind in the Milky Way.

"The bawdier, the better, right?" If Peebee was bothered by the letdown, she bounced back quick. "That's fine. Say no more."

Sara wasn't sure if that meant Peebee was fine with being spurned or if countless datapads of raunchy limericks would be discovered in the Pathfinder's bunk in the weeks that followed. Still, Sara respected her friend's request and kept quiet, if for no other reason than she found the zero gravity less soothing and more akin to a bad case of the spins. Peebee seemed to be enjoying it, at least.

Sara just had to relax. Enjoy the moment and try not to vomit.