Survival of the Fittest

Query: What is the most dire situation you've ever been in, and how did you survive? How does this experience affect you today?

This has been a query courtesy of Revenant Corp. All responses are public and subject to adhering laws.

At the 2180 Symposium for Galactic Psychiatric Health hosted by the CSMHP, I had to attend a six-hour presentation on attention deficit disorder's manifestations in elcor and the exhaustive review of tested treatment procedures and drug regimens that accompanied it. I survived by building a solar filtration shelter out of the digital handouts and drinking the blood of the less fortunate until rescue arrived.

Outstanding, Ms. Ana.

Well, shit, I was going to tell the story about how I tricked three krogan into beating each other up over a cupcake while I escaped via crane, but I think you got me beat, Ana. Damn.

Already mentioned it.

As for how it affected me, physically, the bullet broke my bone, and I had to get a couple of weaves. Mentally....

Around 60-70 years of on and off night terrors revisiting those hallucination filled days trying not to die of disease and chemical weapons.

Yeah, it wasn't fun.

In Garvug, in 2185, I was punched through a heavy metal window grate. I fell down an eroded hill, hitting rebar and god-knows-what that punched through my armor. My ribs were shattered, I had perforated tissue and I lost around three liters of blood. I remember the pain of trying to breathe and stay awake on that fucking hill- And how fucking stupid my mission was. The whole fucking thing was a wash - Only he and I made it out alive- He carried me onto the Kodiak and we flew out. I was on the operating table and in a coma for months afterwards- During which they fitted me with prosthetic replacements of the heavily damaged tissue.

I had to learn to walk again, I was on an oxygen tank for a while- and my issues with my employers was already deteriorating by the time they called me back in. I decided to just wash my hands of them and left, and I've never looked back since.

My wedding was....interesting.

In retrospect while I respect Mister Gavaar's conversion and study of islamic law and theology very much, perhaps I should not have chosen him as our imam for the ceremony.

Palaven. You all know when.

And no, I don't know how I survived. Malnutrition threatened us more than once, when Reapers, husks, and our shrinking medical stockpile wasn't enough for the job. Seven year old girl collapsed on our way to a safe zone. I tried to pull her up, and her arm was rotted. Came off in my hand.

I guess I was lucky.

Critical time for me? Down in Rio. We were among the teams sent there to flare the resistance and do attrition.

We scampered like rats on those ruins, playing hide and seek for days on end. Hellish times.

My slot was squad sniper and demo man; I am a decent shooter, but good with charges. We used to set up traps along a path, lure reapers in (buggers always would chase) and scythe them. Or, you know, set small ones on cover points, shoot a few, they scamper to cover and boom. Plastic and a decent drill are the most flexible tool there is.

when London started, we were told to go on the offensive at any cost. We ambushed a platoon of them. This time I was decoy, and my mate switched the remotes and blew the wrong one. I was off most of the killzone so only got thrown down and pretty stunned, but the chasing marauders that should have been cut down - weren't. One of them got a full auto blast in, and I went out.

I was totally lucky it was the day it ended. My team finished them off, but without evac the next day (I heard there were threats of finding the controller and shooting his kneecaps if he didn't send it) I'd be a goner.

Results? Less one kidney, some severe patching up, and I figure I've spent all my lucky coins. Not getting into shooting again if I can avoid it.

The skies over Rannoch, fighting the Geth. I survived because I'm lucky. I wasn't even injured.

How does it affect me today? I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people.

You know, you people have some really odd ideas about what counts as "dire". I mean, nearly dying is one thing, but sometimes you're in a situation which is just *awful* in every way. There was this really awkward family get together about eight years ago - that's a long time for us, you know? - and one of my brothers started talking about a new trend in the outer marches, regarding some asari-produced bio-implants that he thought were unnatural. Like they were totally contrary to salarian nature and a disgrace, that sort of thing? Well, our clan was in negotiations at the time to have one of our other brothers mate with an influential female - a dalatrass-to-be, basically (I won't go into the details because like anything salarian it's three times as complicated as it needs to be) - but the point is, her mother was deeply invested in promoting the trend, because it was something like a sixth of their current profits on some worlds, how he missed that I don't know, but...well. Our mother thought he'd jeopardized the whole arrangement, and I had to jump in and sort it out, because I was the only one who he ever listened to and everyone's glaring at me like it's my fault. I think I broke out in hives.

I was assigned to assassinate a political figure who is very popular with her (heavily armed) people and personally has a kill list longer than my arm. I didn't manage to do it before I ran afoul of her second in command, who's the kind of guy who doesn't exist, because he was part of a unit that doesn't exist, or wouldn't except that every once in a while a gentleman comes around to do psychiatric evaluations and make sure he's not terrorizing the populace.

Getting my gun taken away by that guy is I think about as dire as you can get.

Oh, and there were husks and stuff THE WHOLE TIME.

Well, there was that time where I gave birth to another human being.

You might say that was something of a strenuous event. Delia also proved to be an impatient baby, since she arrived a week early, so I wasn't anywhere near a hospital at the time. Thank God for modern transportation, that's all I'll say.

Over the past three or four years I kept thinking I was in the most dire situation I'd ever been in, and then it kept getting topped. Here's hoping that another major crisis doesn't emerge the moment I post this.

So far, the most dire situation I was in is when the Reapers seized the Citadel and moved it to Earth just before the end of The War. I'd only just survived the Cerberus Coup Attempt by the skin of my teeth, and then I had to deal with the damn Reapers and their horrors as well. Definitely not my year (or anyone else's for that matter.)

Anyway, how did I get out if that situation? Combination of factors: lots of firepower, my fellow officers and some civic minded citizens watching my back, and making a bee-line straight for one of the shielded emergency shelters as soon as possible. While we could fight off Cerberus, we had no way of challenging an army of indoctrinated creatures; it would have been a suicidal battle. So we just had to sit tight, lay low, and wait for rescue; basically pick a dark hole and guard it with your life.

Overall, it seemed like a pretty hopeless plan at the time. But then rescue actually came and the galaxy was saved to boot, so what do I know? As for how it's affected me, how does the old saying go? Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger? If that's true, by this point I should be able to lift a dreadnought with all my strength.

Worst situation I was in, the Omega Occupation. Before they started mass producing the brain panned troops, we were stuck with engineering, trying to clean the holdouts in the ventilation and maintenance networks. I still wake up remembering the Vorcha ambushes, and the screams from the men who met the other things hiding in there. Husks were a godsend when we got reassigned. Whenever I go to Omega I can't sleep, I just try to get off as quickly as possible.

I really don't have anything of any particular note to offer on the factual side, and Ana's already put her stamp on answering in jest.

Still, for what it's worth - like a great many people, it was the Reaper War (specifically the invasion of Illium), and I survived by being evacuated into what turned out to be a well-enough-defended city that they didn't break through before the energy wave did whatever it did to their crazy synthetic brains. The closest I came to immediate physical danger was during the battle of Nos Varda when they got into the city, but evidently none of those things felt like trying to break into a blast-door-sealed cabaret club. (I have been directly attacked on occasion - a handful of random attempts at mugging, mostly Omega, in which I basically just broke away and legged it - but an opportunistic thief in person doesn't quite seem as 'dire' a situation in hindsight as a giant army of synthetic undead backed up by insane evil war engines, even if there is a wall between you and them in the latter case.)

How that threat affected me? From an objective viewpoint, I don't suppose in any way that'd be considered unusual, given what happened. Stress, relief, uncertainty, gratitude. I feel the whole episode, the examples of many around me, led to me reevaluating my priorities somewhat, wanting to make more of a contribution to society in general than just dispensing random happiness and not being a bother to anyone - but again, I'm hardly alone in that regard.

I was thinking a lot what to put in here. A drink helped me.

I could easily tell some story from the Reaper War but that’s a given for nearly anybody I guess – unless you were away exploring uncharted systems maybe.

Then I thought about that event back home on Nevos, a long time ago, when I was repairing this gun for a… influential person. Only to find out last second that she had tampered with the accelerator, unintentionally making it a bomb with a very short fuse…

Or that day I had to play through an important pildavi match with a sprained ankle…

But then I realized, I currently am in the most dire situation of my life. I am caught in love with two people.
I know, some are now laughing. (yeah, I don’t care) This is no physical danger but I feel like my [translation approximation: did you mean= soul?] is in danger as well as the wellbeing of others who depend on my behavior. The outcome of this will affect my entire life to a frightening degree.

I thought I had resolved the situation with cutting ties to one of the involved but it is not working. Not at all. I am still trying to collect and put together the pieces with the other one and each day I realize more how deep and different the feelings for both are. Since neither of them frequent these boards, I thought I could put that in here…

I am not sure if I get out of this half the person I am now, this is no given at all. So, I am afraid I can’t really answer the second part of the query yet. But I am out there, still swimming.

I should stop drinking while on the extranet.

Those who would snicker at your predicament are those who haven't lived enough yet. Good luck sorting this out ms Taleeze.

Stepped on one of those children's building blocks.

I was in the hospital for weeks. They had to amputate.

I was paid for a raid on a pirate base. Undeveloped world that somehow got itself a varren population. The raid went well, a few injured, none dead, and we found a beacon we could set off, call back the ship. Get our employer to leave what was left to the varren.

It ended with us running out of rations, having to hunt varren to survive. Not too bad, except this was the time before thermal clips, where a gun needed repairing every so often, because otherwise, the parts would warp. None of us were real gun techs, so the inevitable happens, and we have to draw back to the base. Food gets scarce, and fights break out. There were twelve of us on the take. Within a day, there were five of us. there were two biotics who teamed up, and the rest of us retaliated by stashing the varren meat. They starved out quick.

The last three, myself included, were left with running around, trying to find what was left of the meat and hunting each other down. The hunt ended quickly. One of them collapsed in the open, and the other came out to finish him. I tackled them to the ground, and kept hitting. And hitting. And hitting. Broke my knuckles on their face. And I still kept hitting. I was blinded by anger, hunger, fear.

By the time their death rattle came up, a shuttle touched down. It was an agent of the one who employed us. As it turned out? They didn't think the call was urgent. They overestimated the supplies we had.

The one who collapsed ended up recovering. Batarian. We had drinks on Omega afterwards.

The incident taught me that I was an animal, deep down. All the terrible things I did, over some rotten meat? Pointless. Senseless. Violent. But it happened.