Jack shouldn't have a gun, there shouldn't be blood on the floor, Crow shouldn't look like he was going to bolt out the nearest airlock rather than spend one more second on the Normandy, Tali shouldn't look ready to commit murder, and Joker definitely should not be covered in brain matter, but one didn't always get what they wanted.
"What the hell is going on?" She repeated, because she honestly couldn't believe what she was seeing. The last thing she wanted to hear while she was trying to relax was EDI informing her that members of her crew were killing one another.
"She killed him for fun!" Glint piped up angrily. Crow placed a hand on him, pulling him back, and he disappeared. His gaze remained fixed on Jack, and the silver gun he held was still poised to be used if need be.
"Like I was going to take that 'unkillable' bullshit at it's word!" Glint reappeared but Crow forced him back into hiding immediately.
"Oh sure, so just shoot a guy in the back, that's always nice!" Joker finally spoke up. He looked-and sounded-like he might be in shock. He certainly wouldn't sass Jack while in his normal frame of mind. The biotic turned her glare on him, flaring her biotics, and the pilot wavered slightly.
"That's enough!" Best to get Joker out of here in case calmer minds didn't prevail. "Joker, med bay; no arguments. Jack, you're going to clean this with a toothbrush, then I want every toilet on this ship clean enough to eat off off by the end of the day, and you're scrubbing the sinks with a toothbrush for a week!"
Not really a big enough punishment for killing someone, but it wasn't a typical situation. If it were an Alliance ship, Jack would be in the brig awaiting court martial. She would take any excuse to get Jack off her ship, to be honest; the woman was insane, unstable, and had a nasty habit of putting the team in danger by going off on her own.
"The hell I am!" The convict scoffed, as Joker shuffled away hastily. Crow looked increasingly like he wanted to disappear.
"You will, starting now!" Shepard fought to keep her own biotics from flaring. "Tali, make sure she does it."
"Suit rat can't make me do anything!" Jack sneered at the quarian.
"Say it again bosh'tet!" Her old friend jabbed a finger in the other woman's direction.
"Could someone tell her to put a shirt on while you're at it?" Crow interjected hesitantly. "We're in space."
"Bite me, blueberry!" The psychotic biotic snapped, flaring. The silver gun was raised.
"Jack, get the hell out, now, and get the cleaning supplies from Gardner." Shepard got between the two of them. She had a gut feeling that Crow wouldn't pull that trigger even if he was a bit freaked out. Jack opened her mouth again-so unwise- and Shepard cut her off. "I mean it! You are so damn lucky we don't have a brig!"
The other woman gave everyone in the room one last sneer before leaving. "Pussies."
Crow's weapon disappeared when the door closed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause trouble, I didn't know she had a gun, I-"
"Calm down Crow, it's hardly your fault." What he said rang an alarm bell, but she didn't have time to examine it. "Tali, did she hit anything else important?"
"None that I can see yet." The quarian had turned to examine everything that the bullet might have hit after Crow.
"There was no exit wound, miss. Your equipment should be fine." Glint managed to dodge Crow's hand long enough to inform her.
"Then you... two, come with me." She still couldn't figure out how Glint did that or where he went when he did. "Tali, call me if Jack gives you more trouble."
Crow stepped hesitantly around the puddle of blood(it was an interesting shade of purple, not quite red but not quite the shade of quarian blood), and certain he was with her, Shepard led him out of engineering.
"You can put the gun away, now. Jack should be up in maintenance." She told him as they approached the elevator. He flushed a little.
"Sorry." He secured his weapon in it's holster as they waited for the elevator.
"Stop apologizing, that's what I should be doing. You didn't ask for Jack's attitude, and you certainly didn't ask her to shoot you." Shepard was tired of apologizing for Jack, and for several other people, now that she thought about it. "I'm sorry she did that to you. I'm going to put out a crew memo that shooting you is off-limits."
"I.. thanks?" He looked confused, but she was starting to wonder if that was the normal state of his face. The elevator opened, and Shepard hit the commands for her cabin.
"I think we need to talk." she said as he stepped in. He eyed her nervously as the doors closed. "Chakwas says it will be a while before she can clear you to fight, and I can't say I blame her, but there are some questions I want to ask."
"Like...?" he prompted.
"Where does Glint go when he disappears? What's the extent of his capabilities, and yours? What species are you, and how do our realities differ?" Granted, she had way more than that, but it was his first day. Glint appeared and hovered over Crow's left shoulder, and the yellow-eyed man gave his companion a 'look'.
"Well, where we go when we phase is contested, even among fellow Ghosts." the small drone informed her, giving Crow a 'look' right back as if to say 'see, I'm behaving now'. "Personally, I think we decompile into a quantum superposition, like a sentient frequency."
"The existence of sentient energy and similar concepts is purely theoretical." EDI chimed in as the elevator opened. "The implication that you can exist as pure energy or as a hardware platform at will is physically impossible."
"I wasn't talking to you, and yes, I can! See!" he proceeded to fly up to the nearest camera, and set himself to popping in and out of existence. Crow dragged him back down when he was in a solid state.
"EDI, give us some some privacy." she ordered the AI, beckoning Crow into her cabin. He entered warily. "Just grab any old seat. Don't mind the rodent."
He jumped when her hamster rolled his ball into the bottom of the stairs; Shepard had had to abandon him in favor of stopping the Jack crisis. She bent down and picked him up, motioning to the couch as she did so. "So, about those capabilities? I know you've got some sort of medical protocol, and I'd be lying if I said we couldn't find a use for it. We're up against some of the worst on this mission."
"I can only help Crow." Shepard paused with the lid of the ball half open. Figures. "He's my Guardian."
"You're going to have to elaborate on that." She tipped the ball slightly, encouraging Fred to step out into his tank.
"Ghosts were created by the Traveler about a millennia ago. Every Ghost spends their life looking for an individual that matches their criteria." Crow spoke up. "This person can be someone who's alive, but most often Ghosts are hunting for someone who's dead. When A Ghost find their match, they 'choose' them, and that person is able to weaponize the Traveler's Light. With practice, I mean."
"I was looking for Crow forever!" Glint added. Shepard placed the lid back on Fred's tank, and watched her pet burrow into his bedding with a frown, trying to wrap her head around what Crow was saying.
"So, you look for a dead guy, you choose him, and he's just unkillable from then out?" she fact-checked, coming around the wall and joining the two. "How does it keep you from healing others?"
"I'm made of Light." Glint told her from where he was perched on Crow's shoulder. "My Light is bonded with Crow's to make the Ghost Link. My ability to bring him back is dependent on it. It wouldn't work with anyone else."
"Okay. I think I understand." she would have to analyze all that later. Get herself used to the absurdity of it. "So, Crow, aside from making grenades, what can you do? Thane mentioned something about a flaming pistol."
"Hunters call it the 'Golden Gun'." he informed her, fidgeting with his gloves. "Glint, you can ditch the armor, I think."
Shepard took a breath to comment when his armor disappeared in a frenzy of particles, leaving him in the Cerberus uniform she'd had sent down to him. You know what... whatever. She decided to withhold said comment. He looked worse without the armor to hide his malnourishment, and there were scars lacing what she could see of his arms. More alarm bells.
"I can use the Light to make a barrage of flaming knives if the situation is too far spread for the golden gun, but I'm not very well practiced in either." The fidgeting didn't stop. "You already know I'm able to burn out Hive infection, and the grenade thing. The grenade thing usually works best if I have an existing grenade to work with, what I gave you was mostly overcharged energy ready to explode."
"Are there any diseases from your reality I should be worried about? anything the shuttle's decon might have missed?" she felt stupid for it not occurring to her before. Joker was covered in foreign blood, for pete's sake, it should have been the first thing on her mind! "Anything that spreads through blood?"
"None that I..." Crow seemed to be at a loss, and he looked to Glint.
"No. Your crew is safe." the Ghost reassured her. "Aside from the usual risks of handling foreign blood, at least. Guardians can't get sick, and they can't spread disease; their Light burns it away."
"So, I don't have to worry about getting you a spacer's cocktail?" That would be incredibly useful; with the amount of travelling this ship did, everyone who came aboard got enough cocktail variations to make them sick for weeks.
"Guardians can't get drunk. Unless it's a special City brew." Wrong cocktail.
"Spacer's cocktail's are inoculations." she corrected.
"Oh." He shuffled a little in his seat.
"So if a Guardian is someone chosen by a Ghost, what species are you exactly?" he looked so human, it was impossible.
"I'm an Awoken." he said, as Glint loosed what looked like a scanning beam over the prothean artifact on the table. Crow pulled him back. "They... we, first showed up after the Collapse, when most of humanity was destroyed by the Darkness. When the Traveler fought it, the battle had side affects, turning some humans fleeing the system into Awoken. I don't know much more than that."
"Humanity was destroyed?" Shepard felt like she might be sick. The rest of her questions seemed to go out the airlock. "What's this Darkness, Reapers?"
"I've never heard of Reapers, but the Darkness is the Traveler's ancient enemy." Glint was becoming more prone to drifting in the direction of her model ships, and Crow kept casually pulling him back. "The damage the Traveler took during the Collapse was the reason it made the Ghosts in the first place. Until a year before I was reborn, it was considered comatose. What's left of humanity built a the Last City beneath it, though; from what I heard, it still gave off ambient energy they could use, to power shields and such."
Shepard took a deep breath. The Last City? That sounded like a nightmare. Like one of her nightmares. The rest of her questions were definitly out the airlock. "Okay. That's... enough for now. You should go back to the med bay, Chakwas want's to keep an eye on you."
"Okay!" he sounded far too eager to leave. Glint shot forward, and managed to scan two model ships before his Guardian got ahold of him. "Sorry! Stop that Glint!"
"But it's new!" the Ghost beeped. It was actually a little cute, not that her currently shocked brain cared much.
"Stop apologizing for everything." Shepard berated, tired. "Go to med bay, get yourself something to eat on the way. Doc says you need more meat on your bones."
"I haven't done anything yet." Crow frowned. "For food."
ALARM BELL.
"You don't have to." she told him slowly. Something told her she would have to assert this point. "This ship has a rotating meal roster for each crew shift. Once I work you into one, you eat at those times, regardless of what you've done, and until then you can eat whenever you please. Chakwas will probably assign extra meals to you you."
"Why?" what kind of question was that?
"You're skinny as fuck." She officially didn't like this. She didn't like what she heard about Crow's reality, and she didn't like the implications of how he was talking to her now.
"Language!" Glint proclaimed angrily.
"Go eat, Crow." she asserted, standing up and ushering him towards the stairs. "By the way, you saved our asses-"
"Language!"
"-down on Eden Prime. You don't have to earn anything on this ship." He looked a bit overwhelmed at this point, and all he did was nod, before making his way to the elevator. Once he was gone, Shepard sat down heavily on the couch, and buried her face in her hands, trying to process what she'd learned.
Collapse. Last City. Most of humanity destroyed. 'Earn' food.
Ironically, her omnitool took that moment to remind her it was her lunch shift. I need to talk to Garrus. Maybe it was a cultural misunderstanding, but the way Crow had spoken, several times today, raised alarm bells that Garrus might be able to break down for her. He dealt with this kind of thing back in C-Sec, right? Finding out if something was seriously wrong about a person's situation?
Having Crow on the Normandy was quickly becoming complicated.
So Shep is smelling a smelly smell that smells... like spiders. And honestly, if Guardians could get sick we'd have heard of it by now. They travel to dozens of strange environments, get exposed to more questionable substances than a celebrity at a kegger, and have constant contact with aliens, alien blood, etc. Lake of Shadows dialogue implies that it's at least difficult for Guardians to contract disease or infection, there is a line where your Ghost expresses gratitude that you can't get tetanus.
edboy4926: Thank you.
Ebuc: I don't know about exos, that's a complicated question. Since they are technically human mind downloaded into a mechanical medium, with help from a paracausal medium. If not for Clarity Control's involvement, I'd say maybe the Reapers could try something, but there was paracausality involved. When you involve reality hacks like that, causal threats like the Reapers start to lose some of their more subtle edges.
I love Glint so much. He finally answered the question we've been asking for seven years; where do the Ghosts go when they phase. Best end dialogue for Astral Alignment, hands-down.
In other news, my Leopard Gecko is having full-on puberty. Leopard Geckos stop eating when this happens. They can do that. It's fun(not).
Fare Thee Well!