Warning: This chapter contains spoilers for the Shadow Broker DLC. If you haven't played it, do so. Unless, you know, you don't care. In that case, you do you.
Crow watched the lights of Illium flash by as Joker drove them to wherever Liara's apartment was in order to drop off Tali. It seemed like, despite the dark of night, there wasn't an atom of the city that wasn't bright with neon colors or streaks of light. It was almost as mesmerizing as NLS travel, though that could be him crashing off his several-hour lack of coffee. Part of him want's more; the other part of him acknowledges that having that much energy might be detrimental.
They had first gone to a shooting range so he could blow off some steam, but the people in charge hadn't appreciated his Golden Gun setting their targets on fire, or the walls. Or that he had left a melty spot where he had been standing. Honestly, he doesn't think himself or any of the others had really thought it through, bringing him into public and using his Light where everybody can see it, but he no longer feels like he's going to burst, so at least he had that.
In the end, Joker and Tali had insisted on teaching him the basics of driving a skycar. The flimsy shuttle was even more disconcerting to drive than it was to ride in, especially when he knew he was bad at landing and his passengers were mortal. They insist he had done well, but he still couldn't land right, and he wonders how much the charges from the rental company will be for the damage he caused in his attempts.
They were halfway to the apartment when Tali gets a call on her omni-tool. She was silent for about a minute before responding to whoever was on the other end, most likely Shepard.
"Okay." she confirmed, voice hard, and Crow steals a glance at her. She was crammed between he and Gabby in the back seat of the skycar, and being in such close contact, he can feel her body tense up almost as much as his is when flying in one of these things. "We'll meet you there then."
Something must be wrong. He thought as she hung up and leaned forwards.
"Joker, change of plans; I need to go to the Dracon Trade center, ASAP." the quarian told their driver. "Shepard says Liara's apartment is a crime scene, and that's where she went after."
"Crime scene?" the man flicks the brim of his hat up with his thumb, and Crow can make out his scowl even as he locates their new destination on the navigator. "After what? What happened?"
"Someone shot the place up after she went home with that data Shepard gave her." Tali informed him. "There's no blood, so she should be fine, but it might not stay that way. You just drop me off and get back to the ship right away, same as we planned."
"Okay." he shrugged. "Figures, can't even go out with old pals without someone getting shot at."
"Shepard and Garrus went back to the Normandy to gear up, they'll meet me there with the Spectre who's investigating the case." the engineer further informed them. Ken turned in his seat to look at her.
"What's a bloody Spectre doing in the middle of this?" he asked, brows pinched together. "Sounds shady if you ask me."
"I don't know." she shook her head, leaning back and wringing her hands. "Maybe because it involves the Shadow Broker? If anyone were to get involved in something like this, it would be a Spectre."
"Still sounds iffy." the man sniffs, before turning back around.
"It won't involve us anyhow." Joker shrugs. "We're going back to the ship, remember? Who votes we use the transmat?"
"Three-hundred meter radius." Crow reminds him. "Is the trade center in it?"
A few moments of Ken fiddling with the navigator, and-
"Blast it." the man swears, voice dripping with disappointment.
"We have to pay for the skycar anyway." Glint points out, appearing in a flurry of particles.
"No, Cerberus has to pay for the skycar, remember?" their pilot reminds him. "I'm not paying squat for this thing."
"I can only imagine how much my mistakes from earlier have added to the price." the Hunter muses despondently. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't land a vehicle. Any vehicle.
"Crow, never feel bad for costing Cerberus more money." Ken scolded lightly. "That's a hundred credits more they won't be putting into some weird bullshite, like half-asari cyborg babies or something."
"Language." Glint muttered, before disappearing.
"Damn traffic." Joker muttered as he brought them down for a landing outside the Dracon Trade Center. Crow could actually see Shepard and Garrus making their way up from the main landing pad. "Shepard beat us here, I blame that guy in the truck. He was obviously on his om-"
An explosion blew out one of the floor on the trade center, the shockwave destabilizing the skycar. Crow grips his seatbelts, shocked, and Glint let's out a cry of fright, phasing into the saftey of their link.
"Keelah!" Tali shouted, as Ken and Joker swore and Gabby woke with a violent snort.
"Wha-" the confused woman barely got a word out before three more floors blew out in explosions even more violent than the first one. She screamed instead as the skycar bucked in the air.
"By the Light!" Crow exclaims as Joker fights for control of the vehicle. He grips the handle on the door next to him, bracing himself with one arm and throwing the other out to bar Tali from lurching forwards in her seat, since her restraints didn't include a shoulder strap. His stomach lurches into his throat as they wobble and spin, before Joker finally manages to set them down in the aftermath.
"What... did I wake up to?" Gabby whispered after a few moments of everyone in the skycar taking deep breaths of relief.
"Uh, Crow?" Tali said awkwardly, trying to remove his arm. "You can unfreeze now."
"Sorry!" he blurts as he remembers himself, releasing his grip and undoing his seatbelt before making a hasty exit from the vehicle. The others quickly follow suit as he takes stock of the scene before him.
There are people, scattered all around. There's paper and other debris, some of it burning, floating and falling all about the place, and the last of those who could flee were already making their way out, leaving only the eerie silence of those who couldn't scream with the crackling backdrop of various materials settling and cracking as they reacted to the sudden stresses they had been put through. A few broken sobs rose up in their air, and close to him he could hear a mound of burnt flesh moan pathetically.
"This is awful." Glint says through their link, snapping him out of his horrified stupor.
"Liara was in there." Tali breathed. Crow looks around at the scattered bodies as the others make their way around the skycar.
"Bloody hell..." Ken swears, looking about the place. "There's a first aid kit in the trunk, I reckon, but..."
But what could it do for all this?
"Get it." it takes him a moment to realize that words come out of his own mouth.
"Some of these people need an advanced scan." Joker pointed out, voice soft for once.
"We have Glint." Crow told him. "Yeah, I know it's a risk, but they're dying."
"I'll get it." Ken agreed, making his way around the back.
"Gabby, come with me." Joker said. "We'll need more than that, there should be aid stations in the lobby, if there's a lobby left."
The engineer nods mutely, and Crow starts checking the nearest victims. The mound of burnt flesh is dead now, and he can't tell what species they were, the injuries were so bad. The next person is a human woman who, more than anything, was going into shock. Glint appeared, out of her field of view, and scanned her.
"Just some superficial cuts and bruises." He whispered to Crow. "And in shock."
Unable to think of anything else to do, he starts rubbing her back in circle, channeling sol Light as he does so to warm her up. Chakwas had said that getting someone warm was important with shock.
"Hey, you'll be okay." he assures her, even as she fixes him with a bewildered expression. "You're okay."
"Shepard!" Tali's voice catches his attention, and he sees the Commander making her way over with Garrus in tow. "What happened?"
"Shadow Broker, we think." she answers as Garrus leans down to scan another victim. "You armed? Vasir is going to cover the roof, we need to find Liara, she could still be alive."
"I'm with you." the quarian nods. "The others are going to try their best with the wounded."
"There could be hostiles about." the Commander says slowly, looking over at Ken, who was approaching Crow with the med kit.
"She's fine, it's just shock." he tells the engineer. Addressing the woman, he continues. "I'm going to go see what I can do for the other now, just try to stay calm until the paramedics get here."
She nods shakily, still looking at him in that 'what exactly are you' kind of way that he's come to associate with the average galactic citizen when they see him. He stands and makes his way to the next person, a turian man who's curled up on the ground with cobalt smearing on his clothes and slowly pooling beneath him, as Joker and Gabby pick their way back from the lobby.
"Joker!" Shepard calls as the pilot very carefully gets down next to another fallen civilian. "Get back in the skycar!"
"But-"
"That's an order, there could be hostiles in the area. We need you alive." She commands firmly.
"What about them?" He gestures to the others defiantly.
"They need to be able to bug out fast, which means they need you at the wheel if it comes to that." She tells him, and the pilot clenches his fists. "The rest of you get the wounded behind cover, then get back to the Normandy."
"Yeah, right." The pilot bit out acrimoniously.
"Just stay in the car, Jeff." She sighed. "Tali, Garrus, you're with me. Crow, keep doing what you're doing but be ready to fight."
"Yes ma'am." He says, putting his focus back on the man in front of him and trying to block out Joker's bitter mutterings as he shuffled back to the skycar. The turian's short gasps sounded watery, and Glint shifted uncomfortably when he finished his scan.
"Broken rib, it's punctured a lung. And he's got a pretty bad cut from some debris." His Ghost diagnosed, shell twisting. Ken pulled fabric away from the debris wound to reveal the whole thing, and made to grab the long shard of glass. Crow grabbed his wrist.
"Apply the medigel around it, but don't disturb it. You might make it worse." He instructed. The man nodded, face white, and for once completely silent. As he did what was asked, Crow decided to risk probing the broken rib with his Light. The turian whimpered. "It's alright, we're going to get you out of this, okay? Just try not to panic, you're going to be fine."
It's funny how easily lies can slip from the tongue if they're meant to make someone feel better. Crow can feel the bone, snapped at an angle with it's immediate partners fractured or bent slightly, the organ it's ripping into and the blood pooling into it and the thoracic cavity. If he were to encourage his Light to repair the damage, he thinks it would heal wrong in the worst way. But what if he could... pull the bone free, and then heal the damage?
He examines everything in fine detail, makes note of how everything is, compared to how it's probably supposed to be. He's not sure this man can wait for a real doctor. He's not sure if he can make it better, or just make things worse, but if there was ever a time where he had to be brave enough to try healing others, now is it.
So he takes the rib with strands of Light and gently pulls it back into the position it's supposed to be, weaves the tears in the pleural membranes back together, forces the blood out of the cavity by willing it to no longer exist, and seals the hole in the lung. He tries to coax the bone to heal, but it fights him, so they will likely have to stabilize it in order to move him safely. He sits back as the man coughs and gasps, but it sounds like the good kind, the kind where someone was successfully clearing their lungs of an intruder.
"Did it work?" He asks Glint. His Ghost scans their patient once more, and then bobs in the air.
"Yup!" He declares happily, before bombing his shell against Crow's shoulder. "I could have done better, of course, but that's a really good first go at it, Crow. Well done!"
"Good." He sighs. No second livers. He looks at the carnage that's still all about them, and takes a deep breath to steady himself. Let's hope I can keep it that way.
"Crow, maybe we should..." Ken jerked his head in the direction of the skycar where an irate Joker was still fuming as the first response vehicles finally started descending on the scene. Crow looks up from the burn victim he's been applying medigel to, and Glint disappears. "I mean, people aren't really used to you, maybe we should let them take over."
He looks over at the line of people they've dragged away into cover, some of them laying limply while they waited for the real doctors, some of them already sitting up or trying their best to comfort and tend the others. Crow can feel his Light complaining after being used so much for something Hunters weren't typically specialized in. Tiredness grasped at his bones after both that exertion, and the sleepless nights spent working on the transmat. As much as he wanted to keep working, he had to concede that leaving might be the better option, not just for the reason Ken was pointing out.
Poor Gabby had gone back to the skycar as well, having been too distressed to work and dangerously close to vomiting.
"Yeah... yeah, okay." He agreed, smearing the last of the medigel carefully about the wound, before addressing the other victims. "The authorities will handle you from here, you'll be taken to a hospital. Just stay calm for them, and tell them what you can."
There's medigel and blood clotted all over his hands, and he tries to rub it off as they make their way hurriedly to the skycar. "Wait!"
He and Ken pause as one of the women stumbles after them. "Who are you?"
"Just Crow." He says awkwardly, before waving a hand at his companion. "And Ken."
"Thank you!" She says fervently, and something inside him twists and flips. "God bless you all, thank you!"
"Y-you too. I mean, you're welcome, I-I mean thank you, as well." It's the sort of gratitude he's not used to, complete and without dept or catch. That twisting feeling continues even as he straps into the passenger seat in the skycar, and becomes a sort of soaring emotion that has nothing to do with the vehicle rising into the air. He looks down at his hands, still covered with the consequences of his labor. It sort of felt like when he saved Osiris, but... different.
He didn't know the name of it, but it felt good. I did it. I helped them. And saved a few, of that he had no doubt. He felt a warm pulse of Light from Glint's end of their link. "Good work, Crow. You did brilliantly."
Thanks.
Suddenly, Joker swore and angled the vehicle down suddenly.
"Joker!" He shouted as Gabby yelped. It took him about half a second to realize that the pilot was trying to run someone over. An asari someone who seemed to be running from another asari. "What are you-"
The asari jumped over their vehicle at the last moment, and it jerked as it hit the ground sliding. Joker let out a grunt of pain as he was thrown against his restraints, and Crow found himself gripping the armrest hard enough to snap it in half. He willed himself to let go, and took a deep breath in an attempt to still his pounding heart. Gabby let out a sob.
"You good?" Crow asks their driver.
"I'm fine!" Joker snaps, scowling at him, and the Hunter winces.
"What the body hell was that?" Ken demands as the asari who had been chasing Joker's intended victim ran up and forcefully opened the door. Crow flared his Light, ready to burn her and calling for Hawkmoon, and she recoiled.
"Get out, all of you." She still demanded, eyes steely as Shepard and the others rush up from the building. "Now."
"Who are-" Ken is quickly cut off.
"Liara. Out, now!" She commanded, and they scrambled to obey. When Crow tried to leave, though, she pushed him back in. "Not you; you move."
She forces him over into drivers seat even as Joker hobbled out, to complaints of "'Stay in the car, Joker; get out of the car, Joker; hop on one foot while rubbing your stomach and singing the Alliance anthem, Joker.'"
"Shepard, get in!" Liara demands. "Drive."
"What?" He exclaims, staring at her while Joker says something along those same lines. Tali jumps into the vehicle, as does Shepard, who says something to the asari, but Crow can't hear them over the sound of his own dread engulfing him. He was snapped out of it when Liara gripped his shoulder and pointed at the yellow skycar zipping away into traffic.
"Follow her, now!" Her eyes are savage as a stormy ocean, her voice bites like a knife, and Crow realizes that this is a woman who can't be reasoned with.
"But I can't-" he tries anyway.
"He can't-" So does Joker.
"Liara, Crow doesn't know how to-" He can hear how wide Shepard's eye are going.
"Drive!" The asari snarls, in the exact sort of voice that Arrha would use to let him know his only other choice was pain, and he hits the accelerator by ingrained instinct. The vehicle shoots off into the sky, Shepard and Tali shouting to close the roof as the wind cuts through the interior.
Glint appears as the women shout, and starts interfacing with the vehicle. The skycar closes, and the Ghost turns briefly to address them all. "All of you calm down, and strap in! Crow, just pretend we're back in the Reef."
The Reef, the Reef. Yeah, it's just like dodging asteroids. Flimsy asteroids with pilots, with minds of their own, flying in uniform with thousands of each other. His stomach lurched along with the skycar, and he became hyper-aware of the vehicle in a way he definitely wasn't when someone else was at the wheel.
Crow's life back in his own universe had seen him have to use several different models of jumpship, all with differing controls, all of differing shapes and sizes. He was lucky to have Glint with him to help get used to each one, and that he had always found it surprisingly easy to adjust. He always thought that his other self must have been a pilot of some sort, it came so easily. But this thing? It was so small, so fragile, compared to the ships he was used to.
It certainly didn't help that his only lesson in driving one had only concluded just over an hour ago, even if the controls were fairly simple compared to a jumpship.
"Okay, the Reef." He muttered to himself as he shot out into traffic, eyes locked on the yellow eyesore that he was apparently supposed to be chasing. Evening traffic near the site of a bombing was nothing like navigating an asteroid belt, Crow was quick to discover. There were rules, first of all, and Joker had only taught him a few of them today. If you went too fast, you could hit someone and cause a wreck, if you went too slow you could do the same, and if you pulled crazy stunts or engaged in a high-speed pursuit, you could also cause a wreck that way.
Crow was about to do three of those four very risky things within the space of a few minutes. At first he tried getting in a lane, like the others always did, but that made Liara angry.
"What are you doing?" She demanded. "She's getting away!"
"I though I was supposed to be in a lane-" he tried to say, but the irate woman cut him off.
"She's not using lanes, get out and get after her!" She pointed harshly in the direction their quarry had went. Crow pulled up over the traffic, blood pounding in his ears, and Glint made an irritated buzzing noise.
"Miss, you need to take a few deep breaths and stop snapping at everyone." He lectured. "Crow is far more productive when people say 'please'."
"Then can we please catch that bitch before she gets away with my data? And can you please stop driving like an old woman?"
"Liara, he-" Shepard tries to interject.
"Language!" Glint puffed out his shell as Crow hits the acceleration. The sudden change in momentum pushes him and the others back in their seats. He feels like his heart is going to explode; it'snot just his own life in his hands right now, and though he roughly knows what he's doing, he has oh so very little experience. "Young lady, you'll not talk to him that way!"
"Liara, he only learned to drive today!" Tali cuts in. Liara turns in her seat, and though Crow doesn't dare take his eyes off the sky, he can easily imagine how wide her eyes were going.
"What?" She exclaims. "You could have warned me!"
"We all tried to warn you."
"You weren't listening to anyone."
"You're ridiculously single-minded, miss."
"I should have got in the back instead." Crow sighed. Suddenly, the skycar they were pursuing released something bright and possibly explosive from the back of it. Crow swerved upwards, and the others made alarmed noises. Glint hovered close to his shoulder as he approached again in a weaving pattern in an attempt to avoid any more mines.
"You're doing just fine, just do things your way." His Ghost reassures him.
"His way will lose us that data." Liara bit out.
"You, shush." Glint hissed before addressing his Lightbearer cheerily. "Just cut loose, you know? Like when you enjoyed this kind of thing."
"Please don't." Shepard entreaties.
"You're one to talk." Tali scoffs.
"I'm not that bad!"
"Yes you are." Liara and Tali say as one.
"We aren't the only ones in the car, Glint." Crow pointed out as they wove through a tunnel. An explosion too out a car near them, and armed transports floated at the edge of his rearview mirrors. "Hold on!"
Executing jumpship evasive maneuvers in something this small, in a tunnel with traffic, was hardly ideal, and for a moment he almost uses the wrong controls to pull them off, but he does it. Unfortunately, the truck far in front of them gets shot instead.
"Truck! Truck!" Liara shouts.
"I know!" He grit out, weaving around the fiery crash, jaw clenched and gripping the controls so hard he could feel the manufactured plastics cracking and slicing into his hand. As soon as they're out of the tunnel, he shoots upwards, deciding to take Glint's advice. "Is this thing armed?"
"It's a taxi, it has a fare meter." Liara snapped. "What are you doing, we're going to lose her!"
"I know what I'm doing, do you?" He shot back as he leveled them out. "How did you expect me to stop her once catch her?"
"Ram her into traffic." Crow shoots her a glare.
"Into innocent civilians? What's wrong with you?" Before she can reply, he flips the skycar upside-down.
"Liara, that's really drastic." Shepard wheezes. "Crow, why are we upside-down?"
"Got her." He needed to scan the area his own way, and come down on top of her. He's done this before, in jumpships; like a hawk, picking a target. The others might not have been able to spot her, but Crow is a Hunter with eyesight enhanced by the Traveler's Light. Picking out a target is easy.
Now came the hard part; taking her out. He thinks he knows how, but it wasn't going to be fun. He descended, staying upside-down, to what he predicted to be an appropriate intercept point. It was almost worth all the trouble to see the stranger's eye bulge as he comes nearly face to face with her. He pulls on his already strained Light to create a single, sort of pathetic Golden Gun, and he shoots the engine out.
Dizzy, he half relies on Glint to pull them upright again, and he takes them down to the rooftop the woman had crashed on. The moment he lands, he rests his forehead on the dash and takes several shakey breaths. It feels like his heart is pounding at his ribs like an angry Titan, and his Light is just as mad. Strained Light wasn't painful, per se, but it was uncomfortable and exhausting. A special kind of exhausting that made you feel like your very soul was spent.
"Hey, Crow." He peeks under his arm at Tali as Liara scrambles out of the car, and Shepard follows, shouting over her shoulder for him to return to the Normandy.
"Yeah?" He asked, trying not to let his voice shake.
"You're landing was perfect that time." He couldn't lie; he almost laughed. If he wasn't so exhausted, he would have.
I'm just going to start by saying this chapter was a nightmare. My lizard, Pippin, started psyching me out with a prolonged health scare about two chapters ago, and the problem consumed my attention to the point of writers block. Then, I couldn't decide on how I actually wanted the second half of this chapter to go. I almost wrote an alternative version just to see which one I liked more, but I stuck with this one because it got me off of Illium quicker, and because it actually made use of Crow's driving lesson.
The dialogue will always be unsatisfying. I tried several times to make it better, but it either made it too clunky and slow paced for a chase sequence, or made the chase more confusing. And how the heck do I even write a chase scene with real cars, letalone flying ones? I've never actually driven on a road before due to crippling fear, which I've sort wound up projecting through Crow for some reason. Chase scenes are easy when it's horses. Cars... the driver can't see everything around them. A highway is boring, even if it's a flying highway. Flyway?
I'm so done with this chapter. I'm glad to kick it out of the house. Maybe at some point I'll think of a way to improve it, and I'll come back to it, but for now, I'm done.
edboy4926: I might actually still kill Mordin. As nice as it would be to save him, his sacrifice is the culmination of his character arc, and one of the best redemption arcs since Zuko. It's also the first major crew loss team Normandy takes during the war. Narratively, it's not something I want to mess with, it's perfect the way it is.
NotLeviathan: Lol, totally not. Like, at all.
Jebest4781: Thank you!
Ebuc: It's just Hunters I would imagine having caffeine problems. By nature, they can't sit still, and my parents avoided giving us kids caffeine for a reason growing up(ADHD, all of us). Being all hyped up sort of made something click about arc Light.
Knightwolf1875: *Kronk voice* Oh yeah, it's all coming together. Joker with access to the power of teleportation? How much trouble could he get into, I wonder?
JGThorncross: Definitely the most significant thing Crow can bring to the table, but I'm not going to go too wild. I still want the Reapers to be an Avengers Level Threat.
Jctherebel: Glad you're enjoying it!
Next chapter might also be late, since as mentioned above my mind was otherwise occupied for the last couple months and I don't have a backlog of ready stuff built up like I like to. Pippin is fine now, though. Still can't get a better pic off him for my profile, though. I just thought I should drop a chapter this Wednesday as a little Christmas present for you all.
Fare Thee Well, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!