[As-Of-Yet-Unnamed-Ship] Sing-Along?

The auxiliary maintenance control of the As-Of-Yet-Unnamed ship was a cacophony of noise and clutter, most of it coming from the small holoscreen someone had set up in the corner. The floor panelling had been torn up in at least three places and the scent of ozone tinged the air, and through the midst of it all Jil’Korah vas Dasegar worked tirelessly.

“…and immerse yourself in the pain of Canio, the wretched clown,” came the voice from the unwatched holo, before the speaker broke out into a song which Jil’Korah gleefully joined in on.

“VEEEEESTIIIIIIIII LA GIUUUUUUUBBAAAAAAAA---“ came the joint voices of Marz’Rah and Jil’Korah, the sole exception being that Jil’Korah didn’t stop when the presenter was so suddenly interrupted. He’d apparently heard the song before.

You are out of tune scrolled the text across his hardsuit HUD.

The singing continued, though the note changed.

Your attempts to compensate have failed. You are out of tune.

Words forgotten, the quarian effortlessly segued into incoherent vocalizations roughly following the tune.

I can provide the lyrics if you so desire.

Poor Ensemble went completely ignored as Jil’Korah struck a repeated note and moved into vocalizing a different musical piece entirely, engrossed in his work. Anyone approaching would have found him knee-deep in the cables and electronics of the small ship, working a pair of haptic screens as though they were an extension of his own body and singing loudly (and badly) at the top of his lungs.

Please stop.

The communications grid on the ship sprang to life. There was a deep, rumbling, unhappy voice on the speakers.

"WILL WHOEVER'S DOIN' THAT CATERWALLIN' PLEASE SHUT UP? YER SCARIN' TH' BABBIES! GOLDAMN IT, THIS SHIP'S MADE'A METAL. SOUND CARRIES, ASSHOLES!"

Whether through ignorance or indifference, Jil'Korah continued to sing loudly and boldly, though entirely out of tune.

Kirok is complaining.

The lights flickered as Jil picked up two previously disconnected cables and plugged them into each other, pausing his still-incomprehensible aria just long enough to nod with self-satisfaction, turn, and begin tinkering with another set, resuming the musical accompaniment with what was quite possibly a different song entirely.

Maybe to quarian ears it sounded wonderful? Only Jil'Korah would ever know for sure.

The speakers roared with life again.

"I KIN STILL HEAR YOU. LOOK, I KNOW THAT'S YOU, JIL. JIL. JIIIIIIIL."

There was only the strained, cackling sound of the quarian's singing, and the sound of whining varren pups on the other end of the speaker.

"THAT'S IT. I'M COMIN' DOWN. I'M COMIN' DOWN, JIL, I WARNED YOU. THIS IS'A WARNIN'. THIS IS'A WARNIN' THAT I AM COMIN' DOWN."

The speakers cut off with a burst of static. Somewhere, a krogan was looking for something long to poke and possibly swing with.

As the speaker crackled out the quarian stood up again and stopped singing for a moment, almost as if he'd heard someone call his name. He waited for a few seconds to see if the possibly-sound repeated itself, and when it didn't he shrugged and went back to his work - and his terrible, terrible song.

You have a surprise coming. I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Jil continued on, enthusiasm undiminished by the geth's attempt at ominous humor. This was his most productive day in a while, and he was rewarding himself!

"LARGO AL FACTOTUM DELLA CITTà..."

Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump Thump ThumpThump Thump Thump

Kirok's feet echoed through the corridor as he stomped his way to the source of the noise, cradling a tiny gnashing ball of teeth and scales in his hands. Whitefang followed behind him, whining at the strange noise all around her. So loud! So off-key! So BAD! It was BAD NOISE! She had tried growling at it to stop, but it kept going! Now all she could do was hope the big person who fed her and let her kill things could stop it.

Judging by the look on the krogan's face, that was definitely going to happen.

Still. Jil was a crewmate. This meant he got more leeway than most folk. So instead of immediately stomping on the quarian's legs hard enough to break the bones and then feeding the remains to his varren, Kirok instead stood next to the pair of legs and cleared his throat. Loudly.

"AHEM. AHEM."

The clearing of a krogan throat is something akin to the sound of a volcano erupting, and so it was enough to get Jil'Korah to stop tinkering and look around frantically, though he continued humming to keep his place.

"What the- oh! Hey Kirok! Grab a seat, I'm just rewiring this security node and listening-" as he glanced at the holovid Jil realized that it wasn't Marz'Rah anymore and quite possibly hadn't been for some time, "-well. I had been listening to Marz'Rah. Quarian who does opera stuff, meant for kids but it's great!"

He frowned inside the suit as the show seemed to have been replaced by a rerun of The Life Egregious. Elvis was talking. Ugh. Jil finally looked directly at Kirok, and the expression on the krogan's face was plain enough to see.

"Right, sorry, I'll change the channel before Reave comes in. Is that why you're here?"

Ensemble was oddly silent.

Across the ship, Shirin Vedral, a pillow clutched over her head and blood vessels steadily beginning to show around her irises, thanked whatever merciless god was watching for the brief silence.

She rolled over, pulling the covers over her head, and held out hope that it would last.

Kirok stroked the tiny varren pup. Whitefang started panting, now that the source of the noise had stopped. But the krogan had a long memory. He knew what would happen if he left.

He knew it would happen again.

"No, no that ain't why I'm here, Jil. See, there's this noise that's been botherin' me in th' ship, right? This kinda high-pitched, off-key, nasal whinin' sorta sound. Reaaaaaaal, reeaaaaal annoyin', put m'varren in all KINDS of a ruckus, right? Now, I think I've found th' source of th' noise, an' I was wonderin' if you could fix it."

The flat yellow of Kirok's eyes remained dangerously narrow. In his hands, the tiny varren pup yawned.

"Uh, sure, yeah, I think I can do that. One sec."

Jil punched a few buttons on his omnitool and the holoscreen flipped shut, Elvis mercifully silenced once again.

"There ya go. You could've just asked me to do that over the intercom, y'know."

Where was Emsemble? This was the longest the geth had ever gone without chiming in.

Kirok just leaned in towards Jil, eyes barely slits, mouth set firm and thin, varren pup nibbling at his thumb. Patience levels were dropping rapidly.

"Well. I would've. 'Cept that ain't the sound I was talkin' about. No, this was more of a... what d'ya call it... a singing sound, right? Reeeeeeal loud. REEEEEEEEEEAL annoyin'. An' funny y'should mention the comms, because I did ask y'bout it. TWICE."

Villagers abandoned Kirok Island in droves, and virgins were being sacrificed en masse. Kirok Island was about to blow.

...and it was at exactly that moment, as realization dawned over Jil and he struggled to find the words, that Ensemble struck.

Sound assailed the quarian from every direction, the internal speakers of his suit entirely co-opted to bombard him with a recording of his own voice mangling so many of his favorite songs. All at once.

His hands flew to the sides of his head, a mixture of shock and dismay coming over him as he tried desperately to make the noise come to an end. Jil doubled over, tugging at the outside of his suit as though that could somehow put an end to it. Suddenly he longed for the blessed silence of space.

And then it stopped.

I did warn you.

It must have been quite the scene, especially as to the outside world it had all played out in silence.

"I see."

Surprisingly, Kirok had backed off at the sudden seizure. Not much - Kirok had seen worse - but enough to show that he recognized something was wrong.

"Well, good," Kirok said, frowning like an earthquake. "Don't do it 'gain. Least not loud 'nuff that it upsets m'varren, an' I value m'hearin'."

Giving the quarian another stare - this one clearly said 'what a weirdo' - Kirok pumped back down the corridor, varren in tow.

By the time Kirok stepped back out into the hallway, Jil had recovered enough of his senses to figure out what had happened.

"Oh! Hey! Kirok, wait!"

The quarian bounded out to catch Kirok, reaching into a pouch at his waist and producing something, which he abruptly held out to the massive krogan.

"Sorry about the singing. I used to do a lot of EVA work and in space nobody can hear you sing. Anyways, I noticed when we jacked the ship that your shotgun was kicking a lot. I know, you're krogan, you can handle it and so on, but it could throw off your aim at a bad time or something. This is a quarian shotgun mod, should cut the kick by about half - we're not so sturdy as you and we used to have to make do with whatever was lying around, so there's a lot of this kind of stuff out there that only we really bother with. It might help?"

Kirok looked down at the quarian, and then at the mod in his hand.

It looked like someone had taken a set of industrial compensation springs and mated them with a can opener. Well, that's what it looked like to Kirok, anyways.

"Uuuuuuh, okay," Kirok said as he gently picked up the mass of metal and industrial plastics like it might come to life and assault him. It was strange-looking, like all quarian equipment. He couldn't make heads or tails of the thing. "I... uh. Where would... this go onna hotgun, 'xactly?"

Sometimes it was a good thing the faceplate was an actual plate in Jil's case, rather than just the polarized plexiglass most quarians used. If it hadn't been, Kirok might have seen Jil's expression of astonishment.

"Oh! It uh... If you detach the barrel, this should slot in right underneath it, and the barrel can go back on top. If it gives you any trouble I can take a look, but it should be easy enough."

Jil turned to head back to the control room, but then turned back. "And if you have any requests, let me know!"

Kirk looked doubtfully at the device. It looked... foreign.

"Here. Hold 'im fer a sec. Whitefang, heel."

Kirok passed the sleeping varren pup to Jil, then pulled out his shotgun with his free hand. He stared at it, at the device, at the shotgun again, and at the device again, face wrinkling with confusion.

Whitefang yawned and curled up at Kirok's feet, bored. The varren pup, however, woke up and looked at Jil expectantly. Tiny dagger teeth flashed at Jil's faceplate.

The krogan cast another doubtful look at the quarian, seconds before the varren pup wriggled back to life and started gnawing at Jil's hands.

"Are y'sure? They don't look compatible, Jil. Hell, looks like it'll get stuck right in th' heatsink, see?"

Jil did his best to hold the varren pup with one arm while taking a closer look at the shotgun with the other. It didn't work out as well as he'd hoped, but "luckily" the pup helped out by latching onto one of his reinforced gauntlets. It almost made the quarian panic for a minute - fully grown varren could tear through the suit like paper - but the pup just... gnawed? It wasn't doing any damage, so in the end Jil just let it happen while he checked out the weapon.

"Oh, I see. Okay, this is using an old-style mounting for the heatsinks. No wonder you're so strong. Newer models of this gun are a lot lighter without losing any of the punch. I uhm - I'm not sure I have anything kicking around that I can sub in right now, but gimme a couple of days to look over the stuff we grabbed from those pirates. I can probably fix this up really nice for you. It's not a family weapon or anything is it?"

If he hadn't put enough emphasis on 'old' the first couple of times he'd mentioned the gun, that last sentence certainly should have made the point.

I am pleased to see that you have resumed a normal conversational volume.
Yeah, this is real funny. Thanks for giving me a seizure at the worst possible time.
I am always willing to facilitate your interactions with other organics.

The potential ramifications of that incredibly unwise question were thankfully averted, because just as Jil'Korah got done inadvertently calling Kirok an old man, Shirin popped into the hallway.

"Your fucking wailing woke me up. And then kept me up for thirty minutes straight."

Apparently the drell had just now gotten out of bed and left the cabin, since she was in shorts and...that was it, really. Not that it mattered; being a reptile, there wasn't exactly anything to show off to the aliens. Unless they were into throats and whipcord-like muscles.

"Not that I'm bitter about it or anything. Seriously, though, ship's looking really good. I'd say we're making some solid progress towards..."

She broke off in mid-sentence to yawn.

Kirok looked at Shirin.

Eh. Too skinny. Also, too young. Also, too drell. Eh.

"Hey, don't blame me 'bout wakin' you up," he said, the mental 'would I hit it' checklist he had quickly filed away. "That was numbnuts here tryin' to ... sing... what th' hell WERE you singin' ennyways? Sounded like someone wuz drownin'. Drownin' forever."

Kirok handed over his shotgun to Jil and took back the varren.

"Fix it. An' stop callin' me old. I'm only 668, gol'dammit."