Getting the Band back together (closed)

Kirok had more holes in him than a retired battle-truck. Orange blood squirted from holes in his armor in tiny, almost polite spurts with every step he took as he limped across the greasy linoleum floor of the bar. His lame foot left behind a wide smear of brown-orange blood as he dragged himself across, a horrible ochre trail of regret and bad decisions. The krogan was lucky the bar was empty at this time of day; if any of the Omegan rabble had seen him, they'd have descended on him like a hunting pack of sharks. As it was, the mercs and troublemakers in the bar gave the krogan an appraising eye. They wouldn't attack him yet, not until they were sure he was down and out. But several grins flashed in the hazy darkness, and several pistols were pulled from their holsters, whisper-quiet.

The krogan tried not to smile. Smiling hurt too much. Instead, he managed to drag his carcass to the bar and, with only the mildest of grunts, seated himself on a stool. The Claymore shotgun he dropped on the bar caused a few glances of worry, but the dark, heavy sigh brought the hyenas back out. Ignoring them, the krogan pounded on the bar, a hammer of quiet determination.

"Hey. Barkeep. Ryncol an' Tennessee Whiskey. Toot sweet. An' set up some extras. I got friends comin'."

“Well ain’t that nice.”

The bartender’s voice cut across the ambiance like a butter knife against the grain of a flat-iron steak, a sound that suggested the larynx drew blood with every flap of a fibre. Slow, drawn out, with the patience of a sloth – there were only two things in the universe that could make that sound, and one of them had died out in the Reaper War.

Unfortunately for Kirok, the only other one that could was standing before – and turning to face – him.

If the past twenty minutes had been to unkind to Kirok, it wasn’t because it had forgotten Analina Sari. Bullet-scarred, homely and simpering as ever, the scar of a long, thin gash spread from her eye down to the v-neck of her unfortunately-revealing dress. The cartilage on one of her fringes had cracked and been smashed in, giving her entire head a lopsided look, and when she smiled, the only teeth that weren’t yellow were so white they were as fake as the ring on her finger.

That obviously hadn’t stopped the drug abuse, though, that was obvious; only a totally vacant mind or heavy narcotic abuse would take so long to recognize this old warhorse, and when she did, she didn’t cower so much as run towards him, arms spread to hug.

“Kirr-kirr!” she squealed, bottles of pungent substances dragging down her arms. “So good to see you how are you?!”

Seeing the spectre of death before you can put fire into any man's blood, and that hollow-cheeked asari face was as close to any ghoul as Kirok had ever seen. Before he'd even realized it, he'd drawn one of his gold-plated Carnifexes and had put it right to the screaming creature's forehead, eye twitching, determined not to let Old Stinger drag him down to krogan hell today, not today, no-

Oh. It was just Ana Sari.

Holstering the pistol, a tiny flicker of confusion danced across Kirok's admittedly empty mind. Wait, Ana Sari?

"What th'hell you doin' here?" he managed to spit out as part of him leaked onto the floor, the wounds closing up but the blood in them still flowing. "I thought your mangy, drug-addicted, needle-stuck ass left us behind on Tau Sigma Delta, y'old mummy! Thought y'were gonna 'do so many drugs y'met Volus Jesus so you could fuck 'im with a strap-on.' What, did that not pan out? I put ten creds that y'were gonna O.D. 'fore I ever saw you again. Damn. Now I owe that goddamned machine ten credits."

The loathing on Kirok's face was as plain as the devil. Every time he looked at Ana Sari, part of his soul wanted to throw up. God. he though asari were supposed to be attractive, wise, and eternally youthful or some shit. Ana Sari looked like something you'd beat to death in case it infected the rest of the herd.

Still. He needed some backup right now. Two was better than one, his wounds were still healing, he was in a den of hungry wolves, and there was worse after him. There was a rumble like an earthquake from his massive chest, and he resigned himself to his fate.

"Awright, fine. Go ahead and pour one fer yerself. I'm buyin'."

Ana put her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on her hands as she listened to Kirok berate her for her previous actions, grinning and shifting from side to side as he as he got into stride babbled about things Volus Jesus.

“Aww, aren’t’choo just adorable!” she exclaimed, flicking the barest end of his bloodied snout with a finger before sliding a mug belower her. “Actin’ like I wasn’t clean on that run, so naughty! And ‘sides, you left me when you had t’go to the little boy’s room. Or don’t’choo ‘member me screamin’ ‘noooo, wait for meeee’ as you closed the airlock?”

Ana grinned, despite the accusation; it was like she didn’t care if it was true or not. Which, given her current state, was quite possible. Filling both their drinks to the brim, she twisted it around, handle-first, as she slid it to Kirok and raised hers with an unsteady flourish.

”I did see ‘im, you know,” she said.

The others have almost certainly squandered their earnings.

Ensemble had been quiet for a while after Jil had explained where they were going, and the quarian was so focused on his surroundings for a change that he almost didn't notice the glowing pink text at the top of his HUD.

Well, yeah. I mean, show up somewhere legitimate with a bunch of creds all of a sudden and people are going to ask questions. Ill-gotten gains are basically made for squandering.

A number of Illium banks provide confidential accounting services.

It had been so peaceful, doing repair work on Rannoch with the occasional salvage mission thrown in for good measure. Ensemble had been something approaching cooperative, seemingly satisfied with the turn of events until, in a rare moment of agreement, both the quarian and the geth had realized that they were intensely, painfully bored.

Keelah. Don't tell me you invested your share. That... That completely defeats the point of living on the edge. We're supposed to be badasses, not investment bankers.

Many 'badasses' fund their reputation through careful investments.

Name five.

Dinroth Saget, Nor Krimtoh, Hernando Cortez, Jorgal Dwick, Warlord Kredak.

As the names were presented, Jil was provided with brief flashes of their biographies: A krogan who owned both a major law firm and an ultimate fighting complex, a volus (badass?) who'd won the Chresk Games and pimped himself out to every advertising firm in the galaxy ever since, some human, a fat krogan media mogul, and another damned krogan. It wasn't really fair; any krogan who was well-known was basically assumed to be a badass and they tended to live for millennia which means even poor investments would eventually provide a return. The geth was definitely cheating.

Thousand. I was trying to say, 'name five thousand.' You didn't let me finish.

That should keep him busy for a while.

Your vocal patterns indicated otherwise, but I will comply...

What followed was a blur of names and faces at speeds even a drell wouldn't be able to process.

Wait wait what? How did you find those so fast?

A simple aggregate of extranet results featuring proper nouns and variants on the term 'badass' in close proximity. Over five million examples available.

Never trust a geth. They cheat.

Fine, fine, you win. Investments can be badass. Let's move on.

Whatever Ensemble was going to say next was interrupted by a raspy squeal from farther into the building they'd just entered.

“So good to see you how are you?!”

Apparently the others were here already. There wasn't much of a crowd to shoulder through, but Jil still managed to bump into someone somehow, and so he missed Kirok's reply even as he came up behind the familiar massive form.

The massive krogan hadn't noticed the slim quarian, nor much of anything else at this point. Ana had the terrible ability to infuriate the krogan with a few words or even a disgusting smile. Of course, she usually kept going from there, too, which meant that being in the presence of both of them at the same time was essentially suicide; bad things had a tendency to happen.

In this case, Kirok was waving his arms around and bellowing as if he hadn't been riddled full of bullet holes, arms pinwheeling like a windmill who'd taken acting lessons.

"I never goddamn sed enny o' dat, an' you know it, you corpse-faced harpy! I believe my egg-zact words was 'Go throw yourself into th' pit of hell, you diseased asari buzzard!' I don't even know why they bothered t'call you in on this, ennyways, you syphilitic mold-fed demon-spawn-"

WHUD

Kirok looked behind him. TechOptryx was lying on the floor, a massive fist-shaped orange smear on his chest.

"Oh. Er. Hey, dere, T.O. I, er, din't see yas there. Lemme getcha up an' getcha a drink."

Ana merely parted her lips and blew, making "bfffpffpfffpf" noises as she failed to whistle and poured the cleanest turian spirits available.

"Shaddup, asari," Kirok bellowed as he extended his hand to the quarian. "Otherwise you'll be th' next one what gets whalloped."

*THUD*

Was... Was he on the floor?

You are on the floor. Get up before Kirok steps on you.

Yeah, this was the floor. Keelah. And it was filthy.

Get up, before Kirok steps on you.

It suddenly occurred to Jil'Korah that with nearly a ton of hand-talking krogan above him, being stepped on was a very real possibility. He jumped to his feet just in time for a massive hand to project out in his general direction, narrowly missing his faceplate once again.

"Oh. Er. Hey, dere, T.O. I, er, din't see yas there. Lemme getcha up an' getcha a drink."

Do me a favor and tweak down our kinetic barriers, see if you can't have them trigger next time Kirok takes a swing at us accidentally or otherwise?

Acknowledged.

"Hey, Kirok, Ana - good to see the both of you again."

Please don't hit me again, please don't hit me again, please don't hit me again...

An asari passed Jil a bottle, complete with an emergency induction port.

Modifications complete.

The bottle shattered as his hand closed around it, clear turian spirits flooding across the bar before the blue glow of his barriers had even faded.

Bit too sensitive, maybe.

It was just like old times.

As the bottle shattered, Kirok looked at the quarian with something verging on new-found respect.

"Looks like someone's been workin' out! Hah! Toldja he'd be worth somethin' once he put on a little muscle, y'stone-cold harpy, heh heh heh."

Kirok slapped Jil on the back and turned back to the bar, reaching behind it for another bottle of turian spirits - and a bottle of ryncol he'd just discovered. His wounds were feeling better already, but that was probably just the alcohol in him; every time he moved, orange smeared somewhere new. Handing the giant, orange-stained bottle of turian spirits back to Jil - and biting the top of the ryncol bottle off with his jagged, broken teeth - Kirok spat a bloody wad of flesh to the floor and raised his arm up high.

"Let's have a toast t'th' survivin' members o'th' Band. Long may we play. I was kinda 'spectin' Demon an' Songbird t'show up, actually. Didn't think they got hit THAT bad after th' Alliance found us."

When the bartender turned to deliver the drinks for Kirok's toast, it was not the man who had previously waited on them.

In fact, it was not a man at all, and the gimlet stare that fell upon the asari, the krogan, and the quarian was critical levels of frigid.

"You spent all the money, didn't you."

Kirok's face immediately did a very good impression of a confused goldfish.

"But-" was all he managed to get out for several seconds as his brain tried to think of all the ways this was possible. It wasn't quite up to the task. A concrete block had been laid down, and Kirok's intellect had run right into it.

"So... yer not dead?" was all he could lamely say as his mouth desperately caught up with his brain. Somewhere, Whitefang covered her head with her paws, thoroughly embarrassed.

"There was a seven-hundred-page memorandum explaining what to do after I left. Why would you possibly think I was dead when I explicitly told you, multiple times, not to spend all of the money so it couldn't be traced back to me? Did it not occur to you at some point, as you went through the instructions--"

The temperature had definitely dropped by a few degrees. Shirin's left eye twitched, almost imperceptibly.

"You never looked in the allocation terminal, did you."

A few dozen degrees, even.

"Okay. Do any of you have any conception whatsoever of how much work it takes to launder all those credits? The whole point behind the act is to avoid suspicion as to the source of the money, so when you suddenly spend absurd amounts of money on impulse buys you completely invalidate the entire act of laundering it. And when you do that, people start to notice revenue streams, and inspectors from Securities & Exchange start showing up in the middle of my totally legitimate side project and ask questions in front of potential investors!"

That may have provided an indirect explanation for the growing popularity of the Epiphany house of fashion, which had designed the frill-ruff / overcoat / feather and quill fascinator hat ensemble Shirin was wearing. It appeared to cost more than the entire bar they were in. (The shoes weren't visible at the moment, but chances were good you could throw in the lot the bar was built on.)

"Do you have any idea how difficult it is to quietly dispose of a body in broad daylight in the middle of a fucking megalopolis?!" she hissed through clenched teeth, trembling with barely-concealed rage. "Very! The answer is 'very', in case you're fucking wondering!"

This was one of those things that could end pretty badly.

It wasn't visible, what with the face plate and all, but Jil's jaw did its best to drop off and scamper away in the few seconds it took him to process the fact that Shirin was now standing in front of them.

Please greet Shirin appropriately on my behalf.

It was a few more seconds before he realized that he was one of those who had not, in fact, read the documents left behind, and was therefore part of the problem rather than the solution.

Please express my compliments on the well-planned and expertly laid-out nature of Shirin's departure memorandum.

The geth had read it. Of course the geth had read it. And it knew Jil hadn't. And it was rubbing it in while he was still trying to get his jaw off the bottom of his facemask.

Finally, the quarian found his tongue, and a fluid stream of khelish too rapid for the translator to pick up came flooding out of his speakers. It wasn't easy to make out, but the general sense of it seemed to be something along the lines of 'WHATTHEFUCKHOLYANCESTORSYOUREBACKOHPRAISETHEMAKER'. In khelish, which gave it a distinctly whiny sound by default, but still managed to get the message across before he ran out of breath and then went silent.

"She's not lying."

If Min had to admit, arriving at this bar wasn't exactly her first choice. Or even her second. There were a dozen similar eMails that sat in her inbox, all of them standing offers - and all of them were quite a bit less of a struggle to understand than the mess of abused letters that Kirok had sent her.

A small mystery how the hell that krogan even got a hold of her address in the first place.

Not that this was desperation. Not that those standing offers had lost a bit of their colour given some recent events. Not a couple hundred disappointed and rather bitter people on Earth. And not her renewed presence on a long list of recidivist terrorist elements. No, nothing of the sort. This was opportunity. A friendly reunion with some old...

Her eyes meet Ana's vacant expression.

Partners.

"Hello, everyone; Miss Vedral." A thin, polite smile. "Zhang Mei, as you may recall."

Ana made the trip from “barely disguised as bartender” to “barely disguised as bar-crawler” so quickly she almost took half a shelf of whiskey with her over the counter. With a blur of light she seemed to flash-step into the stool next to Kirok, spinning around with the momentum and hiding her head in a tankard - before reeling back from the acrid ryncol fumes he’d apparently left in the discarded container. Coughing a few times, she tried desperately to wrack her mind into high gear.

Nope. She certainly wasn’t going to say anything. Certainly not. Especially not about the ship the krogan left her marooned on in Tau Sigma Delta. Or the single working terminal on said ship from…Tau Sigma Delta.

Or its contents.

Or its instructions.

Or the microtransactions left for following said instructions.

Mostly because she had forgotten them.

…Really, when your account quietly starts piling up with creds, who are you to argue?

Raising a wrinkly hand, she gave a meek wave at their bartender-cum-most-likely-immediate-cause-of-death, giving the scarlet drell a meek, discolored smile that served only to pull the scar on her neck wider.

”Heyyyyyy…”

The door to the dive opened to reveal an armored turian covered in gore, his steps heavy as he entered hand on gun as he looked around until he found the band, huddled around the bar. There was a brisk walk as he made his way towards it.

"Sorry I'm late –" he slapped Kirok on the back, "– hey boss." he nodded towards Shirin, as if her reappearance was totally expected.

"Do you have any idea," he opened the visor of his helmet showing his face, "how bad pest-control can be for your social life. How long do we need to keep-up the act," of course he had read and followed the memorandum, "I know laundering takes time but that money could come in handy." He leaned forward a little, studying her face "wait you're upset."

*beat*

"What did they do?"

"They spent all the money, Aliquam. Of course they did! Given that I specifically said 'whatever you do, do not go out and buy fucking Rally-12's and luxury mansions within a month', what else would they do?"

At this point, it was not unreasonable to suspect that a bomb had been planted under the bar and they were all about to die in some kind of fiery murder-suicide. Shirin hadn't looked this agitated when she was being shot at.

"And so I had to spend an entire day schmaltzing an S&E examiner, getting myself cleared of suspicion, and then getting rid of my accountant and taking on a totally new one at little more than a good recommendation and fractions on the credit. An entire day, might I add, that was supposed to be spent putting together a p--a project."

The word that Shirin had tripped on was 'pattern'; having spent the past few months making a small name for themselves on experimental desert-chic couture pieces, Epiphany had their first ready-to-wear line coming out for the winter season. She was not interested in divulging any details of her post-'going straight' life, however, particularly not to this group.

Her emerald scales darkened very slightly, but the sheepishness passed in an instant. "Well? Explain yourselves!"

Kirok's brain was snapping back and forth like a squeaky toy in a den full of adorable, rambunctious puppies. First, Shirin was alive. Secondly, Shirin was pissed for some reason, and not dead. Thirdly, he was suffering extreme blood loss, for reasons he couldn't quite remember right now but had seemed awfully important three minutes ago. Fourthly... hell, he couldn't even remember the fourth part. It sucked at his brain like a loose tooth.

"Wait, we had money!?" was what he eventually chose to say, voice thundering loudly enough to rattle the light fixtures. "Y'mean I been doin' scut work an' bounty huntin' fer the last... however long it were fer nothin!? Y'mean all I hads t'do was open a goddamned account instead of scrapin' up lowlife bail runners like some kinda batarian security agent!? When was someone goin' t'tell me we had a 'mergency account, huh? Who's job was dat!?"

The krogan's bilious, yellow gaze slowly turned to Ana.

The Claymore on the bar suddenly seemed awfully close to Kirok's trigger arm.

Ana’s face had taken on a dreamy expression. Were this anyone else, it might have been due to the toxic shock from inhaling basically benzene and formaldehyde fumes from Kirok’s mug, but years of living from one opium den to the next had hardened her liver to all but the most virulent of toxins. In fact, her eyelids were drooping because her brain had shut down motor control – mostly in a manic attempt to examine possible escape routes.

”Well, hon,” she said, voice quavering a bit, ”I was gonna tell you?...but then there was this whole thing about a spaceship…”

Unfortunately that was a bit of a no-go. Her mind was in loops; it kept reciting Kick the Big Boy, cartwheel up, just wing it when the pubbies scatter, and for some reason that scenario always seemed to end with a drell sticking a knife in her throat. After all, she would have bothered to lay traps around the Legitimate Establishement, whereas Ana’s schtick had just been, well, just that – a schtick.

She’d have to work on that sometime.

“I didn’t really spend it, though? Just, like...the stuff that poured into my account- that was really small, by the way,” she shot at Shirin, shaking a thumb and forefinger in her general direction. ”Liiiiike, just enough for, like…blow and bus fare...”