[Omega] Return to Normalcy (Open)

Omega, sweet Omega. Kross was surprised there was still much of the station left in wake of Ceberus' assault from before the war. Even more surprised, his preferred establishment, the Libertine had managed to survive.

Silently, he walked up to the bar, Ol'Pierre was still alive as well, though he did notice the new prosthetic that had taken the place of his left arm.

"Wondering how I got this? Tried to help set up a bomb near a Cerbie listening post during the Resistance, premature detonation." The old bartender said. "Same thing as usual?"

"You know me." Kross said as Pierre poured a glass of pisco into the glass. He gave the glass a few contemplative sips, savoring the flavor. The Wreck had ran out of pisco a month after the relay went off-line, so this was indeed good.

He turned towards the entrance for a moment, wondering if any AEGIS members would find themselves wandering in, or barring that, someone on CDN. If that damned website was still functioning, so would that stupid Probability Vortex.

Ah shore leave.

Being on a wandering merchant ship as opposed to the pre-war wandering minstrel gig had some definite advantages. True, now he came and went from places on someone else's schedule, but the compensation was quite a bit better. Archie found he rarely had to pick someone's pocket to pay for his drinks now. Not that a quick riffling for a chit now and then wasn't fun. It was good to keep in practice of course.

That was when Archie recognized a familiar face.

"Well I'll be damned! You were with AEGIS on Sanctum right? That deserves a drink! Bartender get me a beer and whatever my friend wants here!"

With that, Archie took the stole next to Kross. The memories of Sanctum were something the medic tried to forget, but he could afford to show some appreciation for a man who helped save him.

Kross turned his eyes towards the interloper, half about to tell him to leave him be. But he did have a good memory for voices, and that accent of his was certainly noticeable.

"Yeah, I remember you. Quite an escape we had back there." Sanctum had a bit of everything that day, scared refugees shooting at anything moved, Cerberus experiments that perverted science and common sense, a talking head, and nearly getting overwhelmed by a horde of husks. All before breakfast too.

"Didn't know you were still breathing, kind of nice to see." He said before taking another swig from the glass.

Taking a swig of his beer, Archie tried not to think about just how desperate that fight got. Or the distant Reapers coming ever closer. Instead he focused on the present.

"Well somebody had to be left to clean up. Terrible mess those Reapers made wouldn't you say?"

The medic did a quick scan of the bar area. He didn't recognize any of the other people around, certainly not any AEGIS members he'd encountered. This piqued his curiosity.

"Are you still with AEGIS mate? Are they even still around? I'd imagine the war might be a bit disruptive."

Tromp. Clink. Tromp. Clink. Tromp. Clink.

Steel capped boots on a hard street into distraction; the distinctive walking pattern meshed with the various variables in the environment to form a repetitive series of clicks and thumps as the ghost of Terra Nova took his time, heading towards a certain street, there to wait for a while, and perhaps squander his money on some drink.

It was just one bar out of many, but the little details added up and played with his memories; nostalgia clashing with the hard realities of the postwar. The Bartender he had hardly spoken to in his life now boasted a prosthetic arm, some familiar faces were on the streets, some of them more disfigured than they had been before the war, a couple of the marks of the battle of Omega, too small to be worth paying attention to, were comfortably familiar...

"Whiskey, please" Jesse Smith said as he took a seat at the bar; "Don't really matter what sort"

There, out of the corner of his eye; couldn�t be, maybe� another familiar face, of a decidedly different calibre to the types on the streets

Can't be

The Citadel; flashes of a battle fought in the shadows of a high rise complex, of an Elcor crime lord, of gunfire and...

Holy hell, it is, isn't it?

"Yeah, we're still around, barely." Kross said rather gruffly, finishing off his glass, he requested a full bottle from Pierre. Any more reminders of how much they had lost, and he was half tempted to tell Archie to fuck off, pisco was too good though.

As he refilled his glass, his eyes turned towards another interloper, it was another borderline familiar face, but he remembered that job, one that involved an elcor crime boss high on novacoke.

"Smith?"

"Aye...Kross, right?"

Swivelling around in his chair, Smiffy quickly took in the sight of Kross, more out of an instinctual habit for confirming the absurd than for actually having any great need to affirm his recognition of who he was talking to.

"Small world" he suggested; he did not so much try to properly start a conversation so much as he blundered into one. Prior to the War, meeting someone he knew from some time ago would have been a situation in which he might have been able to start up a conversation fairly easily, here, his attempt just felt somewhat forceful, like he was disrespecting all the people he'd known who weren't sitting at a Bar stool after the War had reached its conclusion.

Overthinking it. You're overthinking the bloody thing.

"How's the universe treating you these days?"

Archie's natural instincts were to give little pity to the plight of a mercenary group, but it was hard to not admit that AEGIS had come in handy.

"Well at least you're hanging in there!"

The arrival of another human was interesting. Kross here was apparently a popular man.

"Hey there friend! Come on have drink, maybe we can all share tales of the daring escapes and exciting adventures we've all had! Or at least make up convincing sounding ones!"

Kross took another gulp before responding."Surviving, so, business as usual I guess." Kross normally didn't want to drink with two men he barely remembered off an extranet news forum, but, the chances of him doing something particularly foolish would likely decrease exponentially with some company.

"So, how'd you two make it out?"

"A really good surgeon, a lot of luck and being nowhere near the worst of it in the last few days of the war, I can't say I have any good ideas as to how I survived everything before that though."

Clink. A wordless interruption signalled the arrival of Smiths' order.

"Since then? Trying to keep the bills paid, basically."

"Oh lots of terror, screaming, and occasionally hiding. I was hold up with a bunch of survivors on the Citadel in this temple and it wasn't the most hopeful of situations."

The thought of this being the end flashed through Archie's memory. On the one hand, that had been a great example of a pessimist only be pleasantly surprised. At the same time, the Englishman thought he'd had enough of such misadventures.

"Can't say I saw the end coming like it did. A big blue light and bam! All the husks are suddenly our friends. If only that was how all of life worked."

Kross snorted as he refilled the glass again. "Sounds fun, me, spent the final days of the war stuck on the Wreck, had a hell of a time trying to keep order after the relay went off line."

The surroundings were almost surreal for him to take, barely a year had passed since the mother of all wars, and yet, life had returned to some semblance of normality. Well, except for the geth running around, he'd never get used to that, and the now no longer genocidal godsquid trying to clean up the mess.

"I don't like it, y'know, knowing the squids are still around."

"The Racni, the Krogan rebellions, the Reaper invasion..."

Smith sighed and took a long, distracted swig to start his drink off; pretty mild, as it turned out. Mild wasn't bad; Smith didn't want to get too drunk, or drunk at all for that matter; a quick drink would serve to pass the time a bit though.

"Thats three galactic apocalypses, and now the belligerents of all three are around and notably not sterile...maybe for round four we'll get lucky and they'll try killing each other off first"

The thought of a fourth galaxy-spanning war was quickly souring Archie on this conversation. Three was far too much already.

"Well, the last two invaders wound up helping against the Reapers. I prefer to think maybe the whole galactic-sized holocaust war is done."

The Reapers still being around could be unnerving, they had killed his parents after all. But at the same time there'd been enough death.

"And it's not like we would have the relays being rebuilt without the space squids. That's close enough to good as far as I'm concerned."

"Well, if worst comes to worst, we can push the flashlights against the squids and have them kill each other." He downed another shot, cheeks beginning to redden.

"Seriously though, the flashlights, don't trust them. Ever. Sooner or later, they're going to try something."

"I hear that, God knows half the damn ship won't let me forget it..."

He glanced at his watch, quickly enough that he hoped no one would notice. Still got a while

"...Still, bloody amazing things, horrifying mechanical bastards to be sure, but...take a look at the footage of them in action from back in the war, if you haven't already" Smith rambled, his mixed feelings regarding the Geth being lost to a slight wave of incoherency, not entirely due to the alcohol.

A tall asari in dark blue armour walked into the Libertine and swept her gaze over the various patrons. Considering Omega was still struggling to rebuild it's population following the occupation, subsequent liberation and the Reaper War, it seemed the establishment wasn't doing to badly for itself.
Her gaze settled on the human buy the bar sipping that Goddess-awful brandy he always favoured. A fond smile quirked across her lips and the asari strode over to Kage and rapped him lightly on the shoulder with a gauntleted fist.
"Buy a girl a drink, soldier?" Linala asked, her voice bright.

As reuinions went, it wasn't a terrible first line.

"Yeah, they were sure bloody amazing when they were impaling people, now weren't they?" Kross retorted, about to down another shot when yet another familiar voice interrupted. Only this time, he knew exactly who she was.

He gestured Pierre over "A Nevosian ale for my friend here." He said as the bartender left to take his order before turning to Linala.

"Hey"

Linala accepted the ale with a nod to the barman and raised it to Kage with another smile.
"Thanks, you have no idea how hard it was to get a decent drink on Earth." She said, taking a long pull on the bottle. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" She asked Kage, looking across at the other two humans he'd had been talking. "Gorik said you'd be here and I wanted to come see you." For a moment the asari's normally confident tone faltered. "I... I missed you." She said, quietly so only Bo would hear.

At that, Kross turned to Archie and Smith. "If you two don't mind, I'd like to catch up with my friend here." He said politely before gesturing Linala to an empty for a modicum of privacy, taking the glass and bottle.

"Figures he'd tell you about my usual haunt." He said, refilling the glass yet again. "...You know, I never doubted you'd come back..."