[Various, MSV Azure Wheelbarrow] Drell make poor whales.

Wow. Even if Jil hadn't just seeded the drell's ship with microviruses inspired by the geth, the other man's paranoia would be entertainment in and of itself. An information broker without all the information, a perfectly controlled voice even amidst the sounds of shuffling and telltale snaps and hums of electronics being reconnected. This was going very well indeed!

"Given our relationship it'd probably be best if you started, since you already have more information about me than I do about you, but sure, I'll play along."

With the tap of a button, Jil opened and then closed the door behind Cerastes. No need to overplay things early, just maybe keep him a little bit jumpy.

"Here's something you might not know: the geth saved my life! It's not a big secret or anything, but I don't advertise it. Now, how about you fill me in on something I don't know about you."

The sound of Cerastes whirling around on his heels was as clear as a whipcrack in the hot desert sun.

Red eyes honed in on the door behind him, staring at the aftermath. There were two possibilities at present. One, a ghost had gotten into the Eidolon; but he did not believe in ghosts, much less souls, so that was out of the question. Two, that fucking quarian had hacked into his ship's hardware. He didn't know how (although he would find out, oh yes), but he did know that this was going to be a tremendous problem already.

"And it is connected to your envirosuit," he returned, voice still level. "Some of the lines in your defense system are well beyond the scope of a quarian; Reaper-based tech, how very devious of you."

There was absolutely no way that Jil was going to get any secrets out of him. The room continued to grow warmer and warmer, but as a drell, he was still feeling fine, if a bit snug for his tastes.

The retort that came was laden with annoyance. "I am an albino."

"Only in my defense system for this little exercise, you'll notice. My suitrider didn't take part aside from making sure you didn't get into anything that could potentially kill either of us. This particular battle of wits has been just you and me, my treacherous new friend!"

Jil didn't immediately make anything else around the drell go haywire - his control was actually a bit more limited than he'd expected, but that was alright. He knew where to improve on future versions of this particular technique, now, and it would probably come in handy somewhere down the line.

Instead, he let the drell simmer. In Jil's head, Cerastes was already questioning whether he'd imagined the door, but that again was the difference between when something strange happened to Jil'Korah and when something strange happened to someone who could never, ever forget that something strange happened.

"See, I knew you were an albino, that one doesn't count. Not hard to figure it out given that I saw you, right? Even so, you apparently didn't know that I knew, so me telling you that I knew counts as having told you something you didn't know. Your turn again."

"You are an idiot."

This was unfair to Jil. The quarian had managed to hack into an information broker's ship, which was no small feat, particularly when said information broker had spent roughly twenty years in the business and knew his way around a string or two of code. Still, Cerastes did not feel particularly engendered towards him; adding on to this sentiment was the fact that Jil was, well, making some rather silly assumptions.

"What happens if I tell you nothing?" asked Cerastes.

He paused briefly at the door to his office, then ducked out (careful not to get snagged in the doorway in the meantime) and headed back to the kitchen in search of more coffee. He could never get enough of the stuff.

"Ouch. Really, I mean it, that stings. Here I thought we were playing a friendly game, and you're name-calling and rage-quitting."

As he spoke, Jil'Korah began the process of interfacing his omnitool with the terminal in front of him, getting ready to transfer the worm's control interface for ease of use. The omnitool never would have been suitable for the hack itself, given the complexity, but now that the infrastructure was in place it could serve perfectly well as an ersatz command console.

"I don't suppose anything would happen, though, if you did end up deciding that a rage-quit was the best way to go. That said, given the reputations of our respective species', it might be a failure from which you would never recover, especially given that it would always haunt you. Forever."

The quarian didn't bother muting the speaker as he chuckled, letting Cerastes hear exactly how much he was enjoying himself. Meanwhile, after a few quick taps on Jil's newly-mobile control, the Eidolon kitchen VI somehow confused 'hot' and 'cold'.

Jil was taking his sweet time to get to the point. Cerastes arrived in the kitchen in the midst of the quarian's speech, well-aware that quitting this little game for now would result in infinite frustration for him. He still hadn't quite figured out what was happening, but he knew it wasn't something he was going to like.

What he would like, however, was another steaming cup of coffee. The machine brewed another mug for him as he surveyed the kitchen, eyes squinted in suspicion. At the sound of the "ding!", he reached over without looking and moved the now-filled cup to his lips and...

... promptly spat out a mouthful of ice-cold coffee.

There was a moment of silence. The quarian had gone too far. No one fucked with Cerastes' coffee.

"Alright, Mr. Jil," he said, voice unusually friendly as he turned to get a paper towel. "Let's play."

He stalked across the kitchen, knelt down, and started to briskly swipe up the coffee spills from the tiled floor.

"Your crewmates' use of fire as a threat was ironic, although assuredly unknown to them; in 2182, I was doused with gasoline and set alight by the butt of a cigarette." The memory threatened to overtake him, but he swallowed it. "Luckily, I shot him through the teeth a second later and was able to quell the flames before they caused any real damage."

He stood and took several long strides towards a small trash recepticle next to the fridge, where he deposited the used towlettes. The floor was clean, for the most part, but it wasn't as pristine as it had been when he'd first entered. The blemish bothered him.

"Now, Mr. Jil, would you like to tell me about this 'missy18quarigirl' that you commune with so frequently?" His omnitool sprang to life before him. Reading from a document, he continued, "'I slowly sheathe my cock in you and you moan, you feel so good, so tight, so hot. I begin to thrust. The clean room is perfect, we're gonna fuck like varren.'"

"Like varren? What the f-"

No. This was not the time to get annoyed with bad translation software. It wasn't what he'd said, not even close - in khelish his words had been flowing and beautiful. Nonetheless, that probably wasn't the point Cerastes was trying to make.

"Okay. You've obviously got a file on me. Interesting stuff, I'll bet. Or maybe not. Depends how much of it is accurate, I guess."

Perhaps this hadn't been such a wonderful idea after all... Even if Jil wiped the information broker's databases, which he wasn't at all sure he could do under the current setup, Cerastes had *seen* the file and was a drell. Suddenly the quarian wondered what had gotten into him.

Ahh, the sweet relief of control. It had been painfully absent over the past half hour or so, but its return in the form of a quake in Jil's voice was like sweet music to Cerastes' reptilian ears.

"You will return the kitchen to its normative state." He took a seat at the nearby table, reclined with his head tilted back to look at the ceiling. "If you refuse, I can go on - the part about her gushing some 'bittersweet fluid' is particularly interesting."

Eyes closed, he allowed himself a small, pleased grin.

"Should we play another game?"

"That... might be a good idea. Maybe something a little bit less mutually destructive this time around."

Escaping this with some dignity intact would probably be an acceptable exit for most people, but not for Jil'Korah, oh no. He'd won some small victories here, and he was going to milk them.

"Okay, your kitchen VI should be aware of what 'hot' and 'cold' are now. That said, I can reverse that or any of a dozen things basically any time, so don't go thinking it'd be a good idea to spread my information around."

He thought about it for a second.

"...Uh, assuming any of it is in any way accurate, which that bit about varren most certainly was not."

"And here I was, thinking we were becoming such good friends."

Hands folded in his lap, Cerastes counted various aspects of his environment: how many knobs were in the kitchen, specks on the tiled ceiling, the ways he was going to humiliate Jil until the quarian gave up on his little endeavor. Okay, so the last one wasn't really part of his environment, per se, but it was still counted nonetheless.

"I have a wonderful idea for our next game, Mr. Jil," he rasped in the dark. "Here are the rules. I ask you a question about your crewmates, and for every question you answer, I resist the tremendously tempting urge to forward a chatlog. So, with these rules in mind - what is your connection to Ms. Ana? In your own words, please."

Oh. Oh that wasn't good. Wasn't good at all.

Time to fight dirty.

"Okay, you win, I'll answer all of your questions."

With that, the lights in Cerastes' kitchen started flickering violently in what may have been binary.

The lights flashed, and Cerastes' pupils seized in answer. He couldn't see quite as well in such bright, flourescent lighting, and the constant flickering was leaving bright spots across his vision. With mild annoyance, he drew both sets of his eyelids.

A sigh. "You are not answering me, Mr. Jil. Are you intentionally breaking the rules?"

"I'm answering. Don't tell me you can't convert from binary to khelish to galactic standard? Man, what kind of terrible eidetic memory do you have? I hope you're taking notes. For the record that was no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash. Did you get all that?"

Jil'Korah sincerely doubted that anybody would have gotten it.

"Anyways, if you like I can go back to switching your temperature controls randomly, or opening all sorts of doors at inopportune moments, or even just blinking rude sentiments at other ships with the exterior lights. You can probably humiliate me, I can definitely infringe upon your sense of order and security in all sorts of different ways. Near as I can tell, this is something of a stalemate. All because you wouldn't stop breaking shit on my ship."

But Cerastes did get it, for he is a drell, you see.

"I believe it was no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, no flash, flash, no flash, flash, no flash."

A pregnant pause ensued. Cerastes was smug.

They had, indeed, reached a stalemate - a Kahjean Stand-Off, as the drell were wont to say. He hummed deep in his throat, the sound scarcely audible to Jil's ears. What to do?

"Quite the predicament," he rumbled. "What do you propose we do, Mr. Jil? And might I remind you: your crewmates were going to set me on fire."

Uuuuuugh. Fucking drell with their eidetic memories. Jil could almost feel the smug coming off Cerastes, even from light years away.

"Okay, you got it, good. Always saddens me when people miss the essential truth of that one."

The set me on fire thing was tricky. Jil couldn't very well say "oh, they weren't serious about that", because that would totally undermine Shirin and he knew the two drell were still dealing with one another. On the other hand, they hadn't been entirely serious about that.

Damnit. All the quarian wanted was a little bit of revenge, and he wasn't going to have it.

"Okay, okay, point. They were going to set you on fire..."

They totally weren't.

"...taking that into consideration, I suppose I could forgive you the extra week or so of work you stuck me with..."

He really didn't want to, though.

"...in which case, assuming you don't unduly embarrass me with your entirely false allegations, I can probably resist the urge to reprogram your food processors."

For now.

Eidetic memory might have had a phenomenal amount of downfalls in Cerastes' case, but the upsides were far too great to bear sacrifice. The drell listened thoughtfully to Jil's proposal, and although he'd immediately conjured a response, he refrained from responding for several moments in order to cause a sense of dread. One, two, three, four, five...

"That is acceptable, I suppose," he droned. "Although it's truly fantastic what wonderful little details you can find about the lives of others, all with a few clicks on the keyboard."

If Jil had been feeling the smug before, he was overwhelmed by it now. Cerastes allowed the remark to sink in, then continued, "This has been a most enlightening discussion, Mr. Jil, but I'm afraid I have an appointment to make. You'll have to forgive my departure for now; I'm assured that we will speak again."

With that, he stood, retrieved the ominous briefcase from his office, and escaped from the Eidolon's interior. He had one more assignment to accomplish, and then he'd be off for Illium - a vacation he knew would be less than pleasant.

Fin