Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for the Overlord DLC. If you haven't played it, do so. Unless, you know, you don't care. In that case, you do you.
WHEN I LAST POSTED, I POSTED THE INCOMPLETE VERSION OF CHAPTER 15 INSTEAD OF THIS ONE! PLEASE FORGET EVERYTHING YOU READ IF YOU READ IT, I BEG YOU!
According to the codex he'd been researching when he wasn't learning about other thing or helping Dr. Chakwas, the Kodiak could uncomfortably seat up to twelve operators and two pilots. This did not take into account the presence of a teenage krogan or a heavily-armored turian who, quite frankly, was all elbows.
"Garrus, a little bit forward, will you?" Thane asked politely. Tali yelped when he did so; one of his ankle spurs had caught on her leg and nearly tripped her, and she grabbed Massani's face by accident trying to keep balance.
"Sorry, Tals."
"Get your bloody fingers out of my eye!"
"Lord of hunters, grant me patience."
"Shepard!"
"Anyone else hungry?"
"A little." Crow admitted to the last voice, who happened to be Grunt. He was partly the reason some people had to stand instead of sit.
"I know this isn't ideal, just hold it together a little longer." The Commander reassured. "Crow, hydrate."
Dr. Chakwas' conditions for him to go into the field turned out to be 'constant hydration' with the same kind of electrolyte drinks the biotics were packing, and if the mission took more than two hours and there was an opening to pack down a protein bar, he was to take it. Strangely, she had fussed over him until it was time to load up; it had reminded him of Glint, somewhat.
"We aren't on the ground yet." He pointed out. "I drank before we left anyhow."
"Good, just keep it up. And if you feel off-"
"I'll tell you, I know." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Why did they fuss so much? From Glint it made sense, but he hadn't known Commander Shepard or Dr. Chakwas long.
"Commander, we're nearing the landing zone, and I'm getting a transmission from the main facility." their pilot, whom Crow was not familiar with, announced. Shepard dismissed herself to join him in the cockpit, and the shuttle continued rattling as they made their descent. The rest of the team remained awkwardly silent, and Crow tried to calm his nerves with the match-three game Glint had gotten himself addicted to on the omni-tool.
"Hey, what's your favorite food?" Grunt suddenly prompted as he made a bad match. A massive elbow to the side made him realize he was the one being questioned.
"Um... I don't know." again, his standard for food had been 'edible', and not much else, until now. "The potatoes, I guess."
"I like spicy noodles." the krogan stated. Crow nodded awkwardly.
"Sounds nice." he commented, at a loss for what else to say.
"You should try them." Grunt told him. To his relief, Shepard chose that moment to reappear. He turned his game off.
"Okay, so it looks like what we've got here is a 'catastrophic VI breakout'. Our first order of business is to deactivate all transmission capabilities at the main facility before this thing breaks out into the extranet. There are geth on-site, and our inside man has neglected to mention why, but he did tell me that this VI is somehow controlling them, so keep your eyes sharp." She briefed, running a hand through her hair before realizing she had pulled it out of it's tie.
"But, that's impossible." Tali stated as the Commander pulled her hair loose and re-did it. "Geth can't be hacked like that, not even by the most advanced cyberwarfare VI's; I should know, my drone is programmed with some of the most aggressive anti-geth software I could make and find."
"Maybe it isn't a VI." Glint pointed out. Everyone in the shuttle looked at him, and the Ghost backed towards Crow's hood a little. "Just saying, if a VI can't do it, maybe it isn't a VI."
"Then why would our guy say it is?" Jacob challenged.
"He's got a point." Shepard shrugged. "It could be a lie, you know; trying to cover up another great Cerberus fuck-up."
"Language." Glint whispered, so only Crow could hear. He'd convinced his Ghost to stop yelling it, particularly in already tense situations, but after several centuries, saying it was entirely compulsive.
"It's a little soon to be judging so harshly, isn't it?" Miranda tried to point out. After his episode the other day, he still found her unsettling. "We don't know what's happening, you can't be so sure that it's a lie; or that this isn't a rogue cell. You never know with these situations."
"Right, because all of Cerberus' fuck-ups are because of rogue cells. I forgot." the Commander deadpanned.
"Landing in thirty seconds, all hands brace." their pilot had really good timing, Crow decided. Everyone did just that, though some of the people who had to stand threated to fall over when they touched down.
"Charlie, break off and secure the landing site. Everyone else, with me." Shepard ordered as the doors opened. Most of the mission prep for this operation had involved sorting out who went with who in the event that a break-off was needed. Shepard led Alpha, with, aside from herself, consisted of Miranda, Kasumi, and Zaeed. Garrus, if need be, would break off into 'Bravo', with Jack, Mordin, and Samara following him. Jacob, for 'Charlie', got Thane, Grunt, Tali, and Crow himself.
"Roger that." Jacob saluted once he was standing free of the seat restraints.
"Move out, people, let's see what this team can do." Shepard rallied, motioning for them to file out in an orderly conduct.
It wasn't orderly; Jack shoved Miranda out the door and called her something that nearly made Glint forget his new resolution about yelling 'language', and Grunt tripped and crashed into Thane when his turn came. Mordin's commentary about social hierarchy didn't help, and Crow could see Shepard regretting her decision. He tried to give her an encouraging smile as he passed, but was afraid it came out more like a pained grimace, as he'd never needed to encourage someone before(Glint was never a pessimist),thus making the problem worse.
It was a not-so-great start, compounded by Jack and Miranda arguing again when Shepard tried to rally her squad into formation. It was like watching a slow-motion sparrow crash, and even Shepard's 'military' yelling didn't seem to fix it completely. I get the feeling we're going to run more drills after this.
"All right, Thane, find a vantage for over watch, radio me your location when you're done. Tali, you're with me; Crow, Grunt, take the north perimeter. Make sure we don't have any guests trying to sneak up on us."
"Okay." he tried to swallow his nerves; being alone with a practical stranger wasn't an idea practice on the Shore, and though he did know Grunt better than he did others on the crew at this point, it was still an unsettling concept. He readied Hawkmoon, and, Jacob hesitated, frowning.
"How much ammo do you have for that?" He asked. "You do realized we don't have a way to get you more?"
"Glint makes my ammo from raw materials." I though I already mentioned this? Apparently not, it seemed.
"He can?" The other man raised an eyebrow. "Okay, then, as you were."
"Come on!" Grunt urged less politely, tugging his cloak with enough force that it nearly knocked him over. Grunt wasn't a very gentle individual, he was learning. He recovered, and made to keep pace with the overexcited krogan. At least the view is nice. And what a view it was.
Aite was about as alien as you could get, with grand, strange rock formations arcing overhead, lush feilds filled with strange insects, and the sound of distant, outrageous waterfalls echoing all around them. Grass brushed his boots, and the wind blew in his face, carrying the distinctive smell of mountain air, with just a hint of sulfur. The gravity was a little bouncy, but it was manageable with a personal mass effect feild, which was among the things Shepard had made him gear up with.
He still didn't see the point in wearing a sheild modulator when his Light and Glint would be keeping on top of things.
A particularly strong gust of wind hit his face, and he let himself close his eyes and drink in the sensation for a moment. It's nice to be in the wilds again, even if it's only for a moment. He was glad he'd listened to the Hunter half of his brain and agreed to do this, it felt like he was...
Decompressing? Was that the word Chakwas had used? Or was it de-stressing? Either way, it felt good, and he hadn't felt good in a long while.
"Don't tell me wind is what gets your blood pumping." Grunt decides to inturrupt his moment of bliss. He opens his eyes with a sigh. Well, I suppose I do have a job to get to. Still, he wouldn't mind enjoying this a little longer. Maybe if the mission went well, Shepard would let him have a quick wander? If anything, he wanted some alone time with Glint to discuss their situation where EDI couldn't hear them, and there were some... Uldren-related things he needed to get off his chest, now that he's had some more time to process that particular truth.
"I'm a Hunter." He scans the horizon for anything that resembles the geth he's seen pictures of. "Our place is the wilds."
"I don't get it." The young krogan grumbles.
"I like being outside." Crow simplifies, pausing mid-step when he notices vehicles covered and tucked against the outside wall. He taps his comments. "Taylor, we found the hammerheads a few meters from the landing zone, no sign of geth so far. Should we prep them?"
"Not unless Alpha says we need them. Carry on." comes the gruff response.
"Yes, sir." I should have thought of that. Idiot! If everything went well this would end with Shepard retracting that giant transmitter he had seen.
The transmitter chose to do just that as he and Grunt reached the back end of their route.
"Grunt, Crow, be advised; I can no longer see you." Thane warned over their comms.
"Consider us advised." Grunt... grunted, as they looked towards the dish. "Guess that's that, then-"
The dish came to a sudden, screeching halt, the raucous noise harsh against Crows ears. Grunt made a displeased noise and tried to cover his ears.
"You just had to jinx it." He tries to lighten the mood in the face of this setback; it usually seemed to work when Joker did it.
"Ha! More like good luck. We might actually get to fight something now!" The krogan declares happily, turning on the spot with strange ferocity in order to face the rolling field beyond, as if expecting geth to pop out of the grass. "Let them come!"
Crow follows him as he retraces their patrol pattern, at a loss for how to deal with a bloodthirsty reptilian teenager who wasn't getting the robot carnage he'd been hoping for.
"Crow, update." Jacob's voice demanded.
"Still no sign of geth, but Grunt is getting a little antsy." He informs his team leader, frowning at the young krogan's retreating back. The last thing he wanted to be on the receiving end of was a krogan itching for a fight. He tries to remind himself of Shepard's 'no killing Crow' rule, a reminder he's gotten better at giving himself since his meltdown in the AI core, but his brain still sees 'big angry lizard', so of course it keeps telling him 'danger'.
"Try telling him about your enemies. Loves hearing about other people's enemies, usually settles him down. Just don't slack off your watch." The human suggests.
"Okay, thanks." I'm not sure I have enemies, though. Not personal ones, at least... "Hey, uh, Grunt. There's a race of incredibly destructive time-traveling robots where I'm from, wanna hear about them?"
This was how Crow wound up spending the next hour telling Grunt about the Vex. Well, mostly stuff that Osiris had told him about the Vex. Their time-manipulation teleportation abilities, their machinoforming, their giant simulation engines-
"Yeah, yeah, but how do you kill them?" Grunt interrupted his explanation of the Infinite Forest and what it's purpose had been.
"Well, they've got these... juice boxes in their abdomens, at least most of them do. It's this glowing white thing, filled with their radiolaria." He described as they came around the hammerheads again.
"What's that, and can you kill them with it?" The krogan asked. Crow resisted the urge to sigh.
"Their mind fluid. You shoot it, and most of them will just collapse on themselves." Glint told him from his perch on Crow's head. "But not all of them have a juice box, so you go for the eye. Harpies and hydras are like that, harpies are just these floating, spinning things, but hydras are giant floating things with spinning sheilds, so you have to wait for a gap in them to shoot it."
"Are there any really big ones?" Grunt's eyes seemed to shine.
"I heard there's something called a gate lord, they're supposed to be pretty big." He racked his brain for any other knowledge on big Vex. "Taller than out shuttle is long, I think."
"That sounds about right, though I've never seen one myself." Glint comments.
"What's the biggest Hive you've fought?" The krogan suddenly asks, veering shocking far off-topic. In his minds eye, the Celebrant looms against the backdrop of The Howling, blade raised to sweep his legs out from under him, breaking them so the massive creature can throw him into the unforgiving wind in hopes that he would fall through the maddening abyss forever. He swallows hard, and forces his legs to keep moving.
"There was one I fought right before coming here." He admitted. "About as big as those YMIR's I've been learing about. We tracked it through the Ascendant Plane, but it had a way to open portals through that realm in order to escape if it was attacked."
"Ha, coward." Grunt scoffs. "Did you kill it?"
"I didn't, someone else did. I used my Light to sense where the next portal would open, and I blocked off it's means of escape." He gripped Hawkmoon tighter; he really didn't want to think about what had followed.
"Interesting." Thane's voice mused through comms.
"Thane? You were listening?" He hadn't thought his comms were on. "Glint?"
"They said they were bored." His shell shifts in an approximation of a shrug.
"They?" He queries.
"Most of us were listening." Tali admits.
"Yeah, there's not a lot to do out here. Not like we wouldn't see a geth coming from miles off if they decided to attack from this end." Jacob chips in. Crow feels his face heating up. He wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed, uncomforable, grateful that the others hadn't interrupted with the frequency Grunt had, or regret the fact he'd had an audience and neglected to make the story more exciting, despite the painful memories attached to it. Alpha team decided to save him.
By blowing up the transmission dish.
He and Grunt rushed to the best vantage point available when an explosion shook the air from that direction. The dish was folding, wavering, and exploding. Finally, it collapsed into a heap, not unlike a Vex with it's juice box shot out.
"Oh dear." Glint flits about his shoulders. "I hope they're okay over there."
"Pha, it'll take more than that to kill Shepard." Grunt scoffs.
"There's other people over there, you know." His Ghost points out.
"All Charlie elements, we're getting those hammerheads ready, and regrouping with Alpha inside the facility afterwards." Jacob orders.
"Is everyone okay?" Crow asks, unsure of how to respond if everyone isn't okay.
"Alpha reports a few bruises, but no casualties. They're fine." Their leader assures. "Oh, and Shepard says to hydrate."
"Told you so." Grunt tips his chin up triumphantly. Crow just sighs, and drinks his electrolyte stuff, grateful that he won't have to deal with a crew death, and all the emotions that might go with it, on top of the rest of the drama aboard the Normandy. That, and the realization that he didn't know any of the crew particularly well enough to feel properly sad if they died bothered him a little. It would have been awkward around the rest of them at best, while they tried to mourn and he tried to act appropriately downcast about someone he'd only known for a couple of weeks at best, with minimal or non-existent interaction between them...
"Let's um, let's just get those hammerheads ready." He tears his eyes away from the dust and smoke rising from the wreckage of the transmission dish, and gets to work. If they needed the hammerheads, things were about to get serious. Commander Shepard had been incredibly generous, sharing her ship, her clean water, her food with him, and thus far had given no sign of turning that into Spider-like 'generosity'.
Time to prove I'm worth the trouble.
Getting the hammerheads ready was easier said than done, apparently. Someone had dumped the fuel in all of them and removed the navigation VIs, perhaps to prevent them from being taken over the VI that had gone rogue. Crow decided not to point out that the geth could have just replaced both, if the VI had decided it needed the vehicles, and was glad he did so; they found the body of the man who presumably had done the work splayed out near the nose of one of the hammerheads, his face nothing more than a boiled dent in his head from geth plasma rifles.
This discovery sparked another task, one that Crow was actually used to; removing the dead. Spider used to have him remove corpses and docked limbs regularly, before he decided his pet Lightbearer was best used elsewhere. The only difference was that those corpses had usually been eliksni, and though he had seen plenty of dead corsairs scattered across the Shore, he's never had to touch a humanoid corpse before.
It was like his first human kill, back on Eden Prime. It's easier when they don't look like you. He tried to avoid looking at their faces, or in some cases, like the man behind the hammerheads, lack thereof. He tried even more not to wonder if this would be easier if he'd had a fireteam, in which one probably gained experience in dragging human corpses, though in that case it was usually to cover so Ghosts could rez.
He tries not to be bothered by the way he feels the dead muscles shift as he grips them, the click of stiff tendons and bones. He finds himself being subconsciously careful with them, even though they're dead and can't feel pain anymore.
"Anybody else hungry?" Grunt announces as Crow and Shepard heave a particularly tall man into a Cerberus casket, which would be prepped for transport via another vessel once the VI was taken care of.
"Grunt, I've told you once," she grunts as they drop the man in, and Crow tries rearrange his limbs, which are in sickening disarray, "I've told you twice. It's inappropriate to say that around sapient corpses."
The man's limbs are uncooperative, and Shepard stays his hand at another attempt. "Nothing we can do about rigor mortis, Crow."
"Why did this happen? " he asks as they close the casket, unable to think of anything else to say. All these people were dead, but why?
"I plan on finding out." She tells him grimly, before studying his face. "Take a break, go help with the hammerheads or walk the perimeter."
"Yes ma'am." He couldn't leave fast enough, and he decides to walk the perimeter so he can be alone. His mouth feels dry, but when he opens the canteen, he feels like he might be sick if he tries to swallow something.
"You okay?" Glint asks materializing and bumping his shoulder. "I know how much you hated cleaning bodies back on the Shore."
"They were never human, though." He pointed out, putting the canteen away. "It's harder."
"I know." His Ghost sighs, and it occurs to him that Glint has probably seen more bodies, in varying states of decay, than he ever will.
"Were you... did you ever find any that bothered you, as a stray?" He asks hesitantly. Glint doesn't talk much about the rougher parts of his seeking days, and Crow can't blame him; from what he has heard, being an unbonded Ghost sounded like the most dangerous, lonely existence imaginable.
"There were some... more memorable ones." Glint admits slowly, shell shifting slightly. "Especially after the major battles, a lot of us helped search for survivors. It was hard, at the start, when we finally realized we were being drawn to bodies and why. You... you won't get used to it, Crow. You can develop a stronger stomach, but you won't get used to it."
"I... I understand." He looks out at Aite's landscape, taking in the wind that is, thankfully, not blowing the scents of death towards him, and a new question lingers on his tongue. He hesitates, not sure if if he wants to open a conversation about Uldren yet, but ultimately he takes the plunge. "How did he die? The um, the other me. If you can remember that is, it's okay if you don't."
His Ghost sort of freezes, and regards him a few moments before speaking. "I think whoever killed him was doing him a mercy, to be honest. He was all kinds of messed up on the inside, it would've taken him hours to die, and it would have been painful. But someone shot him right in the heart, and it was definitely the cause of death."
"Okay." Is all Crow can say to that, at least now, out loud. What else could he say? That Uldren should have been left to die that slow, awful death? That he couldn't believe that the trigger was pulled out of kindness? Ask his Ghost if he knew who in their right mind would have tried to put the body through proper Awoken rites after all the pain and misery Uldren had-
Wait a minute. It suddenly occurred to him, that in all his avoidance of thinking about Uldren all the bitterness he felt towards the truth, he'd overlooked a very important factor of his past life.
"I have a sister?" He blurts out, unable to contain how surprising and strange the concept is.
"Um, yeah." Glint confirms. "Did you hit your head?"
"No, I just, I haven't though a lot about... that bit." He admitted. "Just the parts where he killed everyone."
His Ghost sighed. "I guess I can't blame you for it. We have had a lot on our plates recently."
"Why would she try to bury him with full rites, after all he did?" He can't wrap his head around it. She has to have been the one who did it, he certainly can't picture the Awoken people honering the man who killed their families. But he could have started a war with the Last City by killing the Hunter Vanguard, and he had gone straight from that to slaughtering his people and tearing what was left of the Queendom from the Taken and Red Wars into shambles.
"He was her brother." His Ghost shrugged. "She must have still loved him."
"Then why did we never hear about a search for a missing body?" Surely, if the Queen loved her brother enough to want to bury him after all he did, she would have been apoplectic when someone told her the body was gone.
"I don't know, Crow." Glint settled on his shoulder. "Try not to dwell too deeply on it, there are questions we can no longer expect to find answers for, not with the way home gone."
Crow takes a deep breath of fresh air. He's right. They were stuck here, and any answers he might crave, be that now or any time, were so far away, he should never expect to see them. He could spend the rest of his life wondering, asking himself all the 'whys' and the 'why nots', trying to comprehend the thought processes of individuals he would never meet, trying to reconcile the truth with everything he had ever heard about the Traitor Prince, and he would never be satisfied. All he would ever get was endless hurt and frustration.
Glint was right. But that didn't make it any easier.
So he kept walking, trying to stop thinking about corpses, Uldren, and sisters whose intentions and personality he would wonder about for the rest of his life. He tried to tap into in inner Light instead, trying to listen to the surrounding world as only a Hunter could. He tried to prompt the void to sharpen his senses; Glint said that skilled Nightstalkers used the void to help sense hostility and movement, making them even more difficult to sneak up on than normal Hunters.
He was starting to feel something approaching to his right when said something decided to speak and break his concentration.
"Walking with ones eyes closed is generally regarded as unwise by most." It was Thane, and Crow held back a frustrated huff. He'd been close to understanding the technique for the first time since he'd heard of it.
"I was trying to focus on the void." He explained, shuffling his feet and trying not to sound rude.
"My apologies for interrupting." The drell tips his head. "I noticed you looked troubled, and wondered if you needed an ear."
"I talked to Glint about it." He's unsettled slightly that he's so transparent, and finds it odd that Thane would offer to hear any sort of his problems. While he could admit he felt more comfortable around the drell than others(aside from Dr. Chakwas), he still didn't know him that well.
"And do you still wrestle with the issue?" The assassin inquired, motioning to indicate they should walk as they spoke. Crow tries to squash his discomfort, and follows.
"I just... need to process, is all." He admits. "Glint says I'll be able to stomach it in time. Moving bodies, I mean."
"Ah. It is hard the first few times." Thane nods. "Personally, I came to see it as a comfort, even with my own victims. Arranging a body may not seem like a mercy to the living, but the indignity of death is lessened for every man and woman you have put in those caskets today. They will be brought home, unfed upon by whatever nature would have brought, and their families will find measures of peace for ot."
"I guess." And I had just managed to put corpses out of my mind. But Thane was just as right as Glint was, wasn't he? He hadn't really considered the things the drell was talking about; when a body was moved on the Shore, it was never out of respect or a need for peace, it was always about moving the corpse so it didn't get in the way or attract feral war beasts. Crow had only asked 'what about the family' once, and Spider had made it clear he would never bother entertaining such witless questions again. "I'll try to keep that in mind, I suppose."
"Of course." The drell bodden. "Now, tell me of this 'void' you spoke of?"
I love the design for Aite's overworld. It looks like a Hunter's playground, it's the kind of place you want to explore every knook and cranny, and it seemed like the perfect place to send Crow for his first official mission with team Normandy.
In other news, I recently started a soft overhaul of my old Mass Effect series. I'm not continuing them for now, but I am laying the groundwork for a return. When and if the fic gets done, I'll probably finish up The Parting Shot before I even think about writing a third installment, and eventually I'll probably continue Out of Tricks.
Seyd: She is? Back when I first played, it was only Jacob and Garrus, unless I'm misremembering. Maybe it's a legendary edition change, like, I swear it used to be two missions till the crew was taken after acquiring Legion(so you could save Tali's loyalty mission as one of the last and bring him if you wanted), but now it's only one.
edboy4926: Thanks!
Draedon's Forge: Yup, Overlord was a missed opportunity to force-feed her some humble pie. The unsettling parallels that can be drawn between her and Gavon make it even better; both of them willing to do whatever it takes to make sure Cerberus's goals are made, both with younger siblings that they're trying to look after. Oriana is just as modified as Miranda, and could be used by Cerberus in a variety of ways. David was gifted, and there's no doubt in my mind he was used by his brother as a programmer or analyst, before he was used as a living computer. Showing her the Archer brothers would be like presenting her with the question 'how far could you go'?
Knightwolf1875: As do I. I spent a while racking my head on how to make the portrayal of David more realistic, while also making his takeover of Shepard via her cybernetics even creepier. It's a delicate balance, trying to make something that's forcibly overwriting someone's will over their body also seem like a sympathetic entity.
Hope you guys enjoyed this sizable nom of a chapter, I was initially going to break it up, but it flowed better together.
Fare Thee Well!