The first sign that things were about to go wrong was an alert on his omnitool about a busted navigation light as he was making his burrito. He set the notification aside so he could task someone with it when he was done eating. He wasn't Shepard; he kept lunch and paperwork separate, if he didn't he would forget to eat all together, then Chakwas would overreact and wax poetic about taking care of himself again. The second was that he got another one on his way to the observation deck, where he planned to hide and enjoy his food.
Now, the thing about maintenance notification alarms was that, for some reason, the last fourth bit of text wouldn't display. So if an asteroid hit nav light PN2-A, all you would get was 'Maintenance Alert: Navigation...'. You had to open the notification to get an ID on what needed fixing, unless you were in engineering, where all maintenance alerts were displayed on a screen on the wall until they were assigned to someone. It was a minor issue, but it led Joker into thinking the sensor was busted and kept sending repeat alerts. So he sent a notification of his own about that particular bug, and continued with his business.
Then he sat down, after notification five about what he assumed to be the same nav light, and finally got annoyed enough to turn off his omni-tool's notification vibrations. And then, as he was just beginning to relax...
There it was. The gremlin. He opened the notifications, staring down the geth that was sitting pretty on the wing of his ship. Half the nav lights along the keel, and it was going for the nacels.
"No!" Joker cried. He'd just entered the bliss zone! Even as he said it, biotic field encased the prime, and yanked it...
Right towards the hull.
"EDI, who's out there?" Because he certainly hadn't sent anyone out yet.
"XO Lawson-"
"Bull! I'm In charge! Why didn't you tell me, you know the alert texts are cut off!" Figures. He tries to take a little breather, and not only is there a geth on the wing, Miranda had literally jumped ship without so much as a casual 'I'm off to toss a geth'! No backup!
"This remains a Cerberus vessel, and you are not recognized as an official authority, as you are not part of the official chain of command. You are the pilot." Joker was this close to actually trashing the AI Core.
"We're going to have a conversation about authority; me, you, and Miranda." Just because he was 'the pilot' and generally hated having authority in the first place due to the circumstances, didn't mean he appreciated disrespect. If this were the Alliance-
Joker shook his head, wincing as the prime slammed against the hull. Can't do to get into those thoughts now. He would rather let any nascent guilt for joining Cerberus fester for now; he'd fell better when he unpacked it if he left it long enough to make him want to scream.
A hand, large and ugly with wires drifting from it, reached down from somewhere unseen to slap itself onto the glass like some kind of horror vid monster.
"Nope!" Joker bolted to his feet so fast that it hurt, tossing his burrito aside and dashing to the blast shield faster than he should medically be able to achieve. "Nope, nope, no no no no no no no!"
He hit the emergency button so hard his hand hurt, and the shield slammed shut. "Frick! Ow..."
The disembodied hand drifted and bounced between the window and the blast shield, lending an eerie backdrop to his pain, both physical...
He glanced at the trashed burrito morosely.
... And emotional.
This is why I can't have nice things.
He spent the next hour being fussed over by Chakwas and watching Crow get his ass kicked by Glint at go fish. It probably didn't help that he was distracting them both.
"And then, he saw it, right on the nose of the plane." Joker pressed, thoroughly enjoying himself; they were a good audience, he'd give them that much, even though Glint was multitasking. He can't even properly hide his cards, and he's still winning! They were propped up at an angle by a pillow, and Crow wasn't even bothering to use Joker's distracting presence to take a peek. He couldn't tell if the awoken was a moral paragon, or just oblivious to the advantage he had.
The two leaned forward slightly as Joker deliberately left a pause in his story as Chakwas ran another set of scans on his hip.
"Red eyes. Glowing like tracer rounds. Hands longer and bigger than a man's, body all scrawny like a bat with mange that'd been locked in a box." He leaned forward and stretched his arm out, fingers claw-like. "And it reached for the glass-s-s-s-s."
" Mr. Moreau."
"Shit!"
"Language!"
"Commander Shepard has cleared the Alarie, and is heading back to the ship. It is recommended that you put on your exo suit."
"Casualties?" Chakwas demanded. Glint made the cards disappear, and Crow stood with a 'lets see what disaster this is' kind of look.
"No quarian survivors were found. Chief Engineer Zorah has a minor ballistic wound." Ahhhh, shiiiiit. Tali's dad was dead. He was now, officially, in the danger zone. If he screwed this up, it wasn't just Tali's life he'd ruin; she'd personally make him miserable if he said the wrong thing. He'd never had a friend lose a dad before, what the heck did he say?
She wasn't even that close a friend. Sure, they hung out, but they didn't pour their hearts out to each other. He wasn't the 'heart pouring' kind of friend, he was the beer pouring kind. He didn't like handling other people's baggage, and preferred to keep his to himself.
Still, if the pressure hadn't been on before, it certainly was now.
"Poor Tali." Glint beeps sympathetically. "Her dad was on that ship, wasn't he?"
"Yeah." Joker sighs. "Doc, you gotta let me go or chain me to the bed, which is it?"
"Just bruises, you can go." If he could jump off the bed, he would. "No more jumping or slamming things. Or burritos."
"Oh, come on-"
"Is the risk of constipation remotely worth it?" Um, yes? An unfortunate, occasional consequence of his deformed hips, but sometimes, you just needed to eat shit you weren't supposed to. No pain, no gain, and all that.
"Is that a serious question?" He decided to walk backwards out the door just to infuriate her(he had spent a long time perfecting the art of doing this safely, just to freak people out). "Let's put a pin in that conversation, because it can't be a serious question."
Nor could Crow's faint 'What's a burrito?', muttered under the final din of Chakwas' parting scolding as the door closed.
"Jeff Moreau, watch where you're going!"
"Um... do I want to know what happened?" The mission had taken longer than he'd expected, but still...
"Just a spot of trouble with a door." Tali informed him sweetly, though it sounded like she had been crying. She pat Shepard's soot-covered shoulder, and tugged a coolant-covered Garrus after her as she made her way to the infirmary.
"Help." the turian hissed as he passed.
"I heard that!" the quarian sang, pulling him towards the elevator.
"No, really what happened?" there's a bruise forming on her forehead that bears resemblance to somebody's elbow, and her own hair is clumped with coolant as well; no burns, so it must not have passed through the engine yet when she got sprayed. Always a risk with boarding hostile ships. Some of her shoulder plating had been forcibly removed as well.
"Look, don't under any circumstances, offer evidence from the Alarai." She told him gravely. "Her father was... into some pretty fucked-up experiments."
"It's geth, how bad can it get?" It wasn't like you could inject them with thresher maw acid and it would hurt.
"I don't know how they managed it, but they managed to torture a race that's barely sentient in such circumstances. On purpose. He was using geth parts to build geth." she made a face. "They won't care about tortured geth, but they will care about the danger he put them in willingly by building living models. He'll be struck from records and banished post-mortum."
"Damn." that was... heavy. And it sounded like there was more to it.
"We're coming with you for the last part of the trial." Shepard suddenly told him, clearing her throat. She looked... nervous. "And uh, I'm sorry for..."
She trailed off.
"Sorry for..." Joker prompted, getting a good feeling.
"I'm sorry for being... a stubborn bosh'tet with head issues and a pole up her ass." Tali, you beautiful creature, I could kiss you, I love you, you're perfect in every way! It sounded like his suited friend had finally taken matters into her own hands, because that was a 'say this exactly or I'll know you didn't do it' apology."
"Graphic, but I'll take it!" finally, something went his way today!"You won't be able to speak up at the trial, though, some kind of legal technicality. What happened over there, anyway?"
"I don't want to talk about it."she grunted, marching past him. She nearly slipped on her way down the helm, and her boots squeaked like wet sneakers in a high school hallway, eliciting a few smirks from those brave enough to find it amusing. The others must have managed to avoid not stepping in the stuff.
"EDI, tell maintenance we'll need some cleanup on the CIC deck." he came up to Richards, bitterness striking through him. It's my shift, I should be the one flying! Stupid exosuit, stupid quarian politics, stupid Miranda, stupid Shepard, all of it stupid. "Richards, dock us with the Rayya, tell them we need ten to address injuries, and that their cruiser has been reclaimed."
"Aye, sir." Okay, so maybe he liked the sound of that. Guess it isn't all stupid...
"Sir, they aren't aren't responding to our hails." Crap.
"Give me comms." he requested. A click let him know he was live. "Hey, Rayya, this is Acting Captain Moreau speaking; let. Me. Dock. Now."
"Normandy, you are cleared to dock. Trial reconvenes in five." came the response after a few beats of silence. Joker breathed deeply through his nose. Five minutes. Five!
"EDI, inform Tali that's she's going to have to settle for field dressings, or whatever it is she does to seal a would temporarily." This was the last straw. His bullshit tolerance meter was officially full, he wasn't taking anymore. No more Mr. Diplomatic Acting Captain Moreau.
They were getting Joker the Asshole Pilot.
"We have no reason to believe that she's alive!" One of them was saying.
"OBJECTION!" Joker screamed at the top of his lungs. He might not like this lawyer stuff, but hey; there goes one more thing off his bucket list. "We just requested to dock five minutes ago!"
"Annnd he said we needed ten for medical. Bosh-tets." Tali did not sound okay. She nearly tripped on the stairs instead of him, and had to be pulled back by Shepard and Garrus as she tried to get in the Boards faces, and waved finger at them. "Sorry we're late."
"What did Chakwas give her?" he hisses to Garrus. The turian shrugged hopelessly.
"I think she has a fever." he hissed to the pilot. "And I might have been a little too liberal with the medigel when it happened."
"Dammit, Garrus!"
"Ahem." Admiral Raan cleared her throat, and briefly cast her gaze in Admiral Xen's direction. "I'm sorry to see the information wasn't relayed to us in a timely manner."
"Well, she did it. She took back the Alarai; how much more loyalty do you want?" Joker challenged, gesturing to his woozy friend. And trying to think of a way to play this when she was so out of sorts.
"Her loyalty was never in question, only her judgment." Admiral Nasal stated stiffly.
"Perhaps Tali'Zorah can offer something to encourage more trust in her judgment?" Admiral Raan suggested calmly, as if she wasn't implying that Tali was incompetent... while she was high on medigel. He heard the quarian take a breath. Oh boy.
"I'll show you poor judgment in trust!" she declared. Kill me, just kill me! But at the same time, a wicked idea bloomed in his head as the crowd passed whispers between one another.
"As you can see, she's currently delirious from overmedication." Joker let that sink in for about one second, he had to overdramatize the shit out of this if he was going to make the situation work to his advantage. He offered a resigned shrug in the direction of the crowd. "I guess if you had given us those ten minutes we asked for, she'd be fine, but what's a little infection compared to your political aspirations?"
There was a cloud of disapproving whispers making it's way through the room, mixed with some sympathy. Good.
"Then perhaps you could give us something, anything, so that she can go back to the Normandy. Did you find something?" Admiral Zhao pressed.
"Look at you." Joker sneered, doing the best approximation he could to spinning on his heels(for dramatic flare), cranking his 'Asshole Alliance Pilot' dial to eleven. "You cake-eating REMF, you don't care about Tali! All you care about is burying this so you can get your people blown up over Rannoch!"
Shocked gasps echoed through the chamber. "REMF!"
"Yeah, you heard me. Not sure if you hanar-humpers speak Alliance, but that stands for 'rear echelon mother-fucker'!" more scandalized gasping and very vocal protests. Shepard grabbed his shoulder.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded.
"Just trust me." he hisses back, shrugging her off. He points at Admiral Nasal. "And you! Geth-hugger! You really think throwing the woman who saved the Citadel, who made people a tiny more reluctant to call quarians suit rats, who just beat the shit out of cruiser of gremlin robots, is the way to get everyone to take your hippie-ass politics seriously?"
"This has no relevance to the issue at hand!" Admiral Xen raised her hands to try to signal for calm. "If you have no evidence, then we will render judgment."
"You... actually, you're just insane." Joker dismissed her and turned to the crowd, feeling like going for the throat. "If they don't care about Tali, who's to say they care about you? They just want this mess cleaned up so they can keep pushing what they want. In fact, this attack turned out for the better, eliminating one of their competitors like it did-"
"You dare!" Admiral Gerrel roared. Nasal held him back from physically launching himself at the Normandy's pilot. Joker grinned, and slow clapped.
"Excellent show of self-control. What were you saying, about personal judgment?" he waved an arm at Gerral, like a salesman trying to pitch a product. "Behold you glorious leaders, about to banish the one person who knows about about the geth than anyone; and I would know, I dropped her into most of those conflicts. I know exactly what she's done, from Feros to Virmire, from that shit-fest on the Citadel to now. She's not just the greatest asset you'll have against the geth, she's the best you'll have against the Reapers, too, and your Admirals want to kick her out!"
"Enough!" Raan cried. "Order! Order! If you've really no evidence... admirals, render your-"
"He's right!" a single voice pushes to the from, bold and nervous. Oh, stars, it's Crow in quarian form. The poor guy looked like he was going to shake himself out of his suit, and seemed to instantly regret speaking now that the crowd was looking at him, arms wrapped around his body, like he was trying to shrink. Unlike Crow, though, he couldn't disappear at will when the attention was on him. "T-Tali saved me, on Freedom's Progress! I saw what happened there, we need her if they come for us!"
"Don't forget Heastrom!" another sharper voice demanded when Raan looked like she was about to try speaking again. This man was... could quarians be ripped? How did one even tell? "If you banish Tali, you're pissing on everything I fought for! Everything our unit died for!"
The crowd was in a frenzy now, and it was all Joker could do to avoid rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain, sitting back, and just drinking in the chaos. Yes, that's right... be angry... let them know what they're in for if they vote wrong.
"Admirals!" Raan demanded. The other three brought up their omni-tools and started typing(rather violently in certain cases). "Order, order!"
Next to him, Tali does this awkward thing where she presses against Garrus' side. He can hear her suit go squish against the coolant he's still covered in(Joker was here to offend people, bringing filthy door-kickers covered in muck on board was a perfect way to do that). The turian pats her head awkwardly, and exchanges a look with Shepard. What happened on that ship?
It took all of five minutes for the crowd to settle down again, and by that time, the Admiral had all deactivated their tools. Please work, please work, please work...
"Tali'Zorah, in light of your history of service, we find insufficient evidence to convi-"
"FUCK YEAH!" Joker cried, unable to resist grabbing Garrus and shaking him(and by extension, Tali herself as well). It's over! It's finally over! "I win, bitches!"
"...You are cleared of all charges." Raan took a steadying breath. "Acting Captain Moreau."
"That's Joker to you, I'm done with this captain shit." he drawled. He was just done. He wanted a second shot at a burrito, he wanted to lock Miranda in her room and firewall EDI from helping. Most all, he really just wanted a nap.
"Yes... thank you for taking the time to represent one of our people." He could hear the fake smile in her voice. "You have done a great service, and if you would allow it, we will repair the Normandy's damages free of charge."
"One scratch and you repaint the whole thing." He threated. "Otherwise, sure, I'll take it."
"Damages?" Shepard whispered.
"Long story." he said back. "And with all due respect... she's one of my people. We're keeping her, by the way."
"Yeah!" Tali chose that moment to stop being drowsy. Shepard vainly put a hand over her vocal port.
"So it appears." Raan observed dryly, staring down at the quarian hugging a turian while a human commando tried to ensure her silence and a foul-mouther pilot won her place in the Fleet back. "Your presence has been... enlightening. This hearing is concluded; go in peace, Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy. Keelah S-"
"Whoo!" Tali pumped her fists in the air, Garrus and Shepard tried to lower them.
"Alright, med bay, before Chakwas sends in the cavalry!" Joker tried to shoo them towards the stairs. "Yup, keep going, there's beer later for the well-behaved!"
Now all he needed to deal with was Miranda. Stars, I need a beer and a nap!
Not gonna lie, I had writers block on the med bay scene, but once I got to the part where Joker unleased his chaos, I really got going. Watched each way the trial could go in-game before deciding to go with a Joker-flavored 'rally the crowd' mixed with a little bit of Renegade energy. I had fun experimenting with Joker's POV, his is a surprisingly difficult headspace to get into, but I'll be happy to get back to Crow. It's long past time he went out and shot stuff.
In other news, Witch Queen and Horizon: Forbidden West are good. Kamikaze moths and robot dinosaurs are both 10/10.
Edboy4921: yup man.
Guest: ty!
Draedon's Forge: Same, he's one of those characters there's never enough of. So far, Witch Queen is great, and so is season of the risen. I'm just in love with how they're writing Crow's story, not just now but in the past, it's showing us the true kinderguardian experience(we're the player so we don't get traumatized, make fuck ups, or go through the equivalent of an angsty teenage rebellion). So 10/10 so far.
Whether we wanted it or not, Joker has kicked off his law career. Hopefully you all enjoyed his stint in the spotlight; I certainly did. And dang, is that fav/follow tracker for real? Is it because this is a small crossover catagory and people are starved for more of it? Or am I actually good? Whatever, guess I'll keep writing.
Fare Thee Well!