(Citadel, Tayseri) Guess my Name. (Closed)

Abomination, she thought with disgust as she stared at Raelon before refocusing her attention on Des'Keran, her glowing eyes narrowing into slits.

"Move," she growled. "Now."

"No." Raelon is very adamant about this.

Small cooling fans pop their vents, cycling air across his heating systems. Adrenaline washes the organic remnants of his body. He's scared of this strange quarian, having no reason to believe she won't shoot him. Having grown up on Omega, he has every reason to suspect she might.

"Anything you have to say to him you can say in front of me." It's a bold claim. And probably too soon, given the fragile fledgling nature of his potential relationship with Des. But like hell he's going to move.

He's burned in defiance of the Reapers; he can't possibly step aside for just one quarian.

Des was insufficiently afraid of his fellow quarian. He'd been raised to be insufficiently afraid of his own kind, told that serious threats always came from without. He was still more embarrassed than afraid and this was his mistake.

He put a hand on the cyborg's shoulder and stepped around him. "Listen..."

The drone behind Pariah had been intended as a last resort. A warning? It was really only a second between the female quarian catching the light in the corner of her mask and what happened next.

Kari saw the drone behind her and attempted to duck out of the way, cursing herself for falling for the same trick again. But her attempts at avoiding but what would have likely been a much more minor blow caused it turn much more catastrophic...

CRACK!

The sound of the drone colliding with her faceplate reverberated across the alleyway. Followed by the soft thud of Kari getting knocked on her rear. She looked unfazed as she quickly got back up, the quarian quickly getting back up on her feet.

And then she turned back around to face Des'Keran and Raelon...

Her faceplate was cracked. Not life-threatening at all, quarian faceplates were tough stuff. It would take a lot more force to seriously breach it to a life threatening level. Any rational quarian could see that.

Kari's eyes showed no such rationality, only what could be described as pure hatred as she started advancing towards Des'Keran, chest heaving, her omnitool flaring to life as she did so.

"look what you did," her voice was deceptively quiet, but so full of malice that any normal person's blood would start running cold. "Look. What. You. Did

She activated her omnitool and fired at him. Intending to short out his suit's systems while she grounded his helmet against the ground.

He winced when she went down-he hadn't intended to hurt his fellow quarian, and he had misjudged the distance badly.

Thank the ancestors, it didn't look that bad. "Check your sea-"

His atrophied survival instinct kicked in, and he managed to get his arms up-meaning the charge ripped through his omni-tool with a flash and a bang he couldn't hear. His microphones had cut out.

The hum of his suit went silent for five seconds as systems switched to backup power. For those few seconds, he couldn't hear or make himself heard, he couldn't see to the sides, and he couldn't believe one of the people had attacked him.

When Des's systems come back online he's going to be greeted by a very worried looking Breaker who is checking him over for holes in his suit, hoping she doesn't find any and not having the slightest fucking idea what to do if she did, whether it would be better to seal them without trying to treat the injuries underneath, which choice would be least likely to make the situation worse.

Raelon, meanwhile, sees the omnitool explode and knows what that kind of shrapnel can mean to flesh. And suits. With visions of firebombs dancing before his eyes, he draws his gun from the pocket of his robe, aims, and fires, determined to defend his friend or die trying.

Kari is lucky that Raelon's aim is...rather abysmal, actually. His monocular vision might be great for seeing where his target is, and providing all sorts of data on his heads-up display like wind direction and strength, target's heart rate, heat signature, radio emissions, etc, etc, but he's yet to be able to address the natural gawkiness and clumsiness of his organic bits, which means that it's going to take a small miracle for him to hit the broad side of a building, let alone a single quarian. His one kill by gunshot was to the back of the head of an unsuspecting Cerberus trooper; Kari is neither facing away from him nor unsuspecting. So unless she's very unlucky....

There are moments where, against all odds, lady luck favors you. Whether it is winning a game of clawball against a much more experienced person, or surviving the Reaper War and creating your own disgusting media empire.

In Raelon's case, it was shooting Kari. Dead center. Causing the quarian to flinch and stop in her tracks.

But any satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) Raelon would have gotten was short-lived by the tell tale ripple of a kinetic barrier. Kari wasn't stupid after all. She had turned the thing on way back during her stint in the dumpster.

But it did bring her back to her senses and made her realize how dire her situation was. She was outnumbered, she had no gun, and her visor was cracked causing the creature called panic was slowly starting to overtake the rage that had caused her to lash out at Des'Keran just moments before.

She started moving again...

Run. They are distracted by what you did to that ancestorless coward...

She started moving faster...

[i]You can break through them...

She broke into a run and ran as fast as her quarian legs could take her.

Des manages to wave Breaker off, pulling himself to his feet just in time to see Kari rush by.

He checks his own suit, but it's remarkably difficult to tell, since his suit has more than the one layer-the outer fabric on his left arm is clearly shredded, but no skin is showing through. He hopes the pain is bruising.

Des pulled a roll of tape (sophisticated tape, but still tape) out of a pocket and quickly wraps it around his arm-it shrinks to fit, providing an extra layer of protection. It was something he could do semi-automatically.

"I'm fine." Hopefully. "A lot of my systems are out. I can't fix this without a clean room."

"We don't have one of those at the range." Raelon's mind is racing.

"Do you want me to chase her?" Trex asks.

Raelon's thinking clearly enough that he already knows the answer to that. He doesn't trust Trex to follow orders. "No. Tango, you shadow her, make sure she leaves the area."

The big guy sets off at a surprising speed. He's not going to approach Kari; he's just making sure that she's really leaving, as opposed to coming back with a big pack of friends.

Security assured, Raelon says, "Do you have one or access to one?" He stops, mind whirring. He's got money, of course, and money can surely rent access; but their relationship is too tentative, and he doesn't want to insult Des by insinuating that Des is near-broke as the quarian stereotype would suggest. He makes himself wait, to see if Des can solve this problem himself before he forces more of his help on his friend.

In the meantime, he finds that he's less disappointed and more relieved that Kari had a kinetic barrier. He'd have felt horrible if he'd actually killed her. Face it, shaman, you're never going to make a real warrior. Be grateful you're a shaman and a techie...you're certainly not a soldier. The irony, of course, is that Raelon still confuses warrior and killer.

"I wouldn't expect you too." He covered a weak-looking spot on his side with the tape. "I know a place that rents by the hour. I don't know anyone who had a problem."

He has the money. But if attacks like this interfere with his ability to keep the shop open-well, this is going to represent the cleanroom budget for the next several months. "I'll grab my tools from the shop."

He looked back at Raelon. "...And thank you. This might be a good time for us to talk."

Raelon tilts his head. "You think it's okay for us to talk now? How fast do you have to fix that?" He feels as though his quarian-research isn't as thorough as it should have been. He has no idea if Des needs to race for the clean room now, if they'll be driving over, or if Des is going to sit in his business and make an appointment for a couple days from now.

He looks up, "Breaker, take Trex home in the car, if you would?"

Breaker narrows her eyes. "You think the enemy's gone?"

"Tango's tailing her. This isn't Denakot, Breaker, and I rather doubt she was part of a big armed gang."

He looks worriedly at Des for confirmation. If the two of them go inside or to the clean room facility, will it be safe without their little armed entourage?

...Talking, not gunplay. So why is Raelon so nervous all over again?

"I need a taxi, not an ambulance. But I meant, maybe you'd come with me? It'd be private, and the doors are secure."

He applied another layer of tape to his arm, then began walking back into his shop, picking up his tools and some spare parts. "If my suit is cut, it's cut, running won't make it any better. Worse, if I breathe harder and get my heart rate up." With a great deal of effort, he is able to sound calm.

One thing the galaxy seemed to have forgotten about her species is that, when a quarian starts running, few species can keep up with them for long. Those powerful looking legs just weren't for show or for extranet perverts to obsesses over after all. They were for running.

And Kari could run with the best of them.

Racing into a crowd, she started to slow, but didn't fully stop as she knocked whoever got in her away over and ignoring their protests as she continued on her way out of this awful, fucking ward.

She hadn't noticed Tango trailing behind her, probably for the benefit of all parties involved since firing an omnitool into a crowd would probably not be the smartest idea.

Finally, she saw what she was looking for, using one last burst of speed she raced up to the air-taxi terminal, knocking a salarian out of the way in the process, and frantically started calling for one to take her out of this terrible place, ignoring the salarian's shouts the entire time.

Home. Need to get home and into the cleanroom as fast as possible before that faceplate the bastard ruined kills me like it did her

"I'll definitely come with you." There's never any question about that. He puts the pistol back in his pocket and hopes that wherever he's going, they aren't scanning for weapons. At least he looks like an unassuming, probably eccentric religious type, at the very worst a mechanophile, rather than a gangster.

He gives Des a worried look. He can't even imagine a situation where deep breathing could increase your chances of mortality. But voicing it would just make this harder for Des. "Let me know what I can do to help."

Once Des is okay - or at least at work fixing things - they can talk.