[Axaquilate Silver] Yo Ho Yo Ho (closed)

It's quite a change, going from infantry to navy. Leaving hard earth behind - well, hard space station deck plating most of the time - for the open sea. Uh, ocean. This metaphor's fallen apart a little, hasn't it? Either way, and despite the change, Aquila Maxentus was having the time of his life. Mostly due to the knowledge that he'd be stuck in a relatively confined space with Cass, whom would find no escape from his endless needling. Ahhhh it felt good to be an asshole sometimes.

"Come on, darling, chop-chop," Aquila said as he carried his pack across the dock, showing off blatantly with the fact that he was carrying it one-armed. The shimmering blue biotic field around said arm gave the game away a bit, but that was just a different kind of showing off.

The Accipiter sat in the dock. More poetic men would call it a beauty, an embodiment of the technology that let sapient life reach for the stars and touch those that they could never have touched in a thousand lifetimes without it. Aquila just thought it was the proudest penis-extension statement you could get without a personal dreadnought, but that was just him. He stopped halfway up the boarding ramp and turned.

"Pick up the pace or I'll get out the riding crop."

"Fuck you."

It was...4/10, half hearted at best. All reflex no spice, none of that fiery, foul tongue that made arguments with the turian oh so very entertaining.

...Truth be told Cass didn't really look so good. He'd lost weight. His plates had dulled. Oh he was still fit, still hitting the gym every afteroon, still pumping iron but there was something decidedly unhealthy about the way his jacket hung off his shoulders. About the purplish circles beneath his baby silver greys. Put up against the hulking metallic leviathan of the Accipiter, framed by the vast platforms of the Omegan docks and the crowds of similarly sapphired forms he seemed shrunken. Thinned. Alone.

"...What the fuck are you looking at."

Jacket. Shirt. Fatigues. Boots. Seabag for his personal effects. Armor and weapons in a long rectangular case at his side.

Battle buddy at the top of the ramp giving him the sauciest of saucy smirks.

Yay.

Fucking

Yay.

"I'm looking at a-"

Pause.

"You sure you're alright? You look like shit, man. Coming down with something?" Aquila set his seabag down and went back down the ramp in Cass' direction. He wasn't smirking any more. In fact, you might venture to say that he looked genuinely worried.

Beat. Heartbeat. A second.

Blink. Blink blink.

"...yeah! Yeah I'm fine. What, trying to sweet talk me already, before we're even shipside? Plus, ya know, I'm taken man. And even if I wasn't"

Here he was pushing past Aquila, shit eating grin firmly in place. Everything was okay. Everything was a-okay.

"still waaaaaaay out of your league bro."

See? Fine. Totally fine. No bad nights. No staring at the corrugated ceiling of the barracks as the bloody glow from outside seeped in around the cracks, around the seams. No faked enthusiasm or sweetly artificial laughter. No sitting in the rec feeling useless, there out of habit more than drive. No anxious waiting, reading the same page on the slate again and again as he waited for transfer orders. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week.

Nope. None of that. Peachy. He was just peachy.

Cass loved Omega. He loved the spires, the kilometers and kilometers of winding tunnels, the markets and shops and docks all packed atop each other. It felt alive. He felt alive.

But, and here was the but (nothing before it really counts you know if we're going to be perfectly honest just you and me)

maybe. Just maybe. Some time in the void, bouncing about between the all the vast expanse of the heavens, pawing through it's hoards would do him some good.

"I don't know what's sadder - that you think that was my sweet-talk, or that you think you're even approaching my league. Now quit being a little bit and get inside, we've got a schedule to keep."

Aquila elbowed Cass in the ribs and shouldered his pack once more. "Get pumped! It's an old-fashioned race to the buried treasure, matey. Trust me, this transfer is gonna be the best thing that ever happened to us."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

"I fucking hate snow."

Vistlun V was not a happy place to be. Aquila had not quite remembered that, while being the proper distance from the sun to be a proper garden world, its atmosphere was simply too dense for enough radiation to get through. One of those asshole 'almost but not quite' planets, something approaching a functional biosphere buried beneath all the ice and snow. Like Noveria.

Well, Noveria without forty different megacorps all brewing doomsday in their cauldrons. So really, quite pleasant compared to Noveria!

The complex was a mysterious beast. It was built quite squarely into the sides of a mountain, the tallest one on the entire planet come to think of it. Dubbed Facility X-42 by the captain, it was one of more than a few cases of old-cycle architecture popping back up. Maybe they'd heard about the Reapers going docile and decided to pop their heads out of their shells. In any case, Cass and Aquila found themselves standing on a wide metal platform bolted into the side of the mountain, extending out over a downright dizzying drop into the cold grey flurry of a raging blizzard. Behind them a door, practically quadruple-locked and awaiting the proper password. Or the proper moment, as the case was. The pair were freezing their plates off outside the big stupid door because, apparently, it was time-locked. Going by fragmented records and clues pulled from other parts of the complex, which the rest of the crew were currently ransacking, the door was set to unlock in an indeterminate time. The best frame they got was 'today'. Which was a thrilling prospect.

Aquila kicked the deckplates, which looked remarkably modern and Citadel-designed considering they were at least several millennia old. "So. Did you catch the game last night?"

Riveting.

"...ehhh."

...what that's it? Seriously?

"...I mean, was alright."

That is the literal best you can do?

"Lanterns for the win yeah?"

...Spirits I am so fucking disappointed in you right now I don't even-

eurgh. Fine. Fine. We'll go with that.

The ash grey turian shouldered his Vindicator for a moment to tweak the hood of his impromptu cold weather gear. Mainly just his normal Legionnaire armor with a few extra heating modules he'd scrounged up slotted in and some wraps of insulation to ward off the worst of the chill. Satisfied he let go of the thickly layered cowl only for a sudden burst of wind to promptly drag it back down again.

"..."

Well. 'Least he had his helmet yeah?

"So uh..."

The words were lean, anemic, almost inaudible against the roaring backdrop of the storm; the sheer black and grey rock swathed in sheets of dancing white.

A pause, a breath of thin, piercing cold air.

"...what d'you thinks even in here?"

Aquila's cold-weather gear wasn't much better. He still had a lot of his Cabal-pattern kit (or maybe they were good forgeries, either way it was a comfort thing), but it wasn't exactly toasty warm. Helmet sealed, hood and collar lined in synth-fur for the trendy mercenary. At least he had a higher core temperature than the other turian, what with the whole biotic thing.

"Hard to say," he replied rather emphatically without his beak chattering. "Six-dozen virgins? Nah, they probably don't have a very good shelf life. Depends what you're into, really. The finest in refined narcotics? Exotic sex toys?"

Aquila fidgeted with the hibernating recon drone he held in his claw. "Okay it's probably just some boring art or some shit that's useless to everybody but someone'll happily pay millions to have in their sitting room. Which'll be an enormous letdown but hey, payday!"

Shivering silence went on. There was no big neon readout counting down the seconds 'till the door opened. There wasn't a view, unless you liked grey and white blizzard. It was utterly fucking miserable out there and both turians felt it. So Aquila set the drone down and cracked his talons.

"Here." The blizzard seemed to turn blue in his immediate vicinity, dark energy swirling around his claws as he concentrated. He threw them up, palms out, as if trying to inspire Cass to raise the roof, or perhaps doing one fourth of the YMCA dance. A blue dome flared to life around them, perhaps three metres across. Within it, the snowflakes halted quite suddenly as the barrier cut them off from the howling wind that drove them. So, for a handful of seconds, it was benignly snowing within the dome.

"Better than nothing, right?" Aquila remarked, claws still outstretched. It wasn't exactly the limits of his ability, but the dome didn't need to be rated against shotgun blasts to protect them from a little cold air. Well it let the air in of course - Aquila wasn't trying to suffocate the two of them - but it was markedly less shitty than it had been without it. "No need to thank me."

"T-"

The glare lost a little something through the half frozen pane of industrial crystal. Like, you know, heat. Or severity. Or any real malevolence because, really no matter how hard Cass tried to smoulder his little heart out he still looked a little too much like a ralactalion someone had left out in the storm. Plaintively looking through the glass at the warm house, metal feathers drooping, plastered to the skin by the weight of the wet, slushy snow that mantled it's lean shoulders and

okay point is, he didn't exactly look like the embodiment of mercenary badassitude.

So he took the proffered warmth, and respite from the storm without much in the way of complaint aside from a general sullen silence. Talons tucked in his armpits, staring very, very intently at his clawed boots.

"...fuck are we even doing here man? Thought it would be, you know, tropical at least for some reason. Not another hellhole. Definitely not a frozen hellhole. Fuck, you know, why...why not just leave us in 9 Codo if that's all they were going to ship our way."

Why are you talking. Stop talking. Nothing good happens when you talk.

"Thought this would be...Iunno. Better. Less time humping it on mudballs blowing away innies. More time actually doing useful shit. Or at least, you know, different shit. But nah, nah all it is is the exact same useless fucking shit. Fuck man I was all excited you know, even got a little hopeful."

Cass. Cass no. Cass.

...Fuck you Cass. Fuck you. You're throwing it all away on this, on what, some bitching? Because things suck? Boohoo you fucking pansy, find your balls and gut it out.

"The Captain, am I right? Yo ho piratey adventures ahoy, not stuck in the same fucking slatbox, looking at the same fucking jungle. No, as it turns out all we do is kick it in the ship for transit and then go down around and stand in front of giant. Stupid. Doors."

A vicious kick to the deck plating, a resounding, clang.

Silence.

...Well then.

Aquila smirked behind his own visor as he was pretty sure he heard Cass about to thank him anyway. The grin slowly died away, though , as his comrade in arms began to vent. Quite honestly, to be fair. Aquila quite pointedly did not offer a sarcastic comment or witty retort - he just let Cass finish saying his piece, maintaining the biotic barrier as he did so.

"Yeah. It kinda sucks," he said eventually. "I was hoping for more high seas excitement too. But hey, it's just a first impression, right? Maybe there's worthwhile stuff in there? Maybe our next deployment is gonna be somewhere nice, like Virmire. Maybe we'll raid a party barge of sexy maidens celebrating their sexual liberty in a close-minded and bigoted world."

Aquila nudged Cass playfully with an elbow. "What I'm trying to say is that it's okay to be mad, but you don't have to just give up altogether. And hey, if we-"

Whatever he was going to say got cut rather short. Because at that precise moment, the door made a noise like a dying whale getting a stiff rodgering from another, even bigger whale. Mechanical parts millennia old were moving, performing their one purpose. A hairline crack that widened, a slice of darkness in the impenetrable bulwark that slowly widened. Aquila turned, letting the bubble down, and winced a little as the wind returned in full force.

"I think the door feels bad for you," he commented. He pulled up the recon drone, roused it from its sleep (mode), and fidgeted with its settings. Eventually the door stopped moving, a great gaping maw of darkness. Aquila activated the drone's luminescent strips and sent it in, allowing it to light the way with somewhat faint green light.

And you know the crazy thing? The really, truly, crazy thing?

He felt better. He felt loads better. Mandibles weakly twitched, the first vestiges of that weight, that ache slipping from his shoulders. It felt like waking up, like shedding a skin. There was a breath of silence; quiet in his own head. The telltale flush, the embarrassment already coiling around his shoulders, the bugbear climbing up his back again but for now, for those couple of minutes, the turian felt okay.

"...heh. You really think s-"

Aaaaand of course that's when the universe decided to interject.

Fucking wonderful.

Cass silently unslung the rifle from across his chest, checked the sinks and ammo block before thumbing off the safety. All one smooth motion, born of long, long hours of practice and training. Grenades jostled in his belt next to spare cartridges of heatsinks; his OT was active, micro-scale foundries and capacitors extended, bracing his forearm in a gauntlet of clicking, whirring, shifting metal. Geared up. Ready to move out

...against the door.

OoooOOOooOOOooOOOo spooky. Spooky spooky door.

Hey. Hey Cass, the door's trying to flank you, you should take co-

Shutup.

"Yeah, I'm sure it does."

A talon to an earpiece as he stood (well back) away from the opening that was looking more and more like some kind of crouching predator.

"Yo Ahmadzai, what've you got for us?"

"Shit, until you give me a second to configure things from here. There's a fucking murk in here I can't work around."

Beat.

"...did you guys drop this? Because seriously I'm not getting anything through the cams and-"

"No we didn't drop your fucking girlfriend techboy. If you'd like to haul your ass out of that bunker and come up the slope and check for yourself you're more than welcome to but otherwise-"

"Alright, alright alright. I...okay look here I think I'm getting something."

A window opened in their HUDs. True to tech support (don't call him that, he hates it when you call him that) the interior view was gloomy as hells. No lights. The only illumination the greyish, snow stained wash from without and (actually you know what I'll call him whatever I damn well please) that barely did the scape justice.

It was an empty room yeah. But it was a fucking huge empty room. The walls falling away the further you went in, the ceiling rising up into the ice mantled peak of the mountain itself. Alcoves, hollows, cells etched into the stone. Mechanical legs, cog-worked claws supporting bare pedestals.

"Oooookay bringing it around and-"

A flash of metal.

A blur of sharp edges and razored wires and sullen, cold lights. Sickly fire. Frozen plate.

The image went dark.

Ping.

Ping.

Ping.

The crumpled, crushed form of the drone bounced out of the wide open doors. Rolling, trailing sparks, the smashed little unit came to a rest against Aquila's boot.

Silence.

Aquila retrieved his modified Tempest, which was so modified it resembled a tiny carbine more than a submachinegun to be honest. He took the other side of the door, flexing his free claw to 'warm up' the dark energy that flowed through his body. A ghostly blue light flared around it, almost like a flame, dancing across his visor.

"I feel for Ahmmy, I really do," Aquila remarked. "It's so hard sitting in a well-heated bunker sipping hot chocolate while us dumb grunts mess around with his delicate equipment. But he does it so we don't have to, which I must respect." He let the aura die out around his claw and flexed it in a different mnemonic, making the drone feed full-screen on his visor.

Thus, when the thing fucking assassinated the drone, he jumped in surprise and reflexively closed the window. His first instinct was to make some very loud and very foul exclamations, but he didn't. Half because he didn't want to ruin his cred, and the other because the forlorn and thoroughly murdered drone bounced back to them like a ping-pong ball.

"Ahmmy's gonna be pissed."

Another pause.

"Alright, enough of this deep dark shit."

Aquila retrieved a glowstick from his webbing, snapping it against the edge of the doorway to activate it. It didn't look like much out there in the light (maybe it was just a leftover from one of his raves hurf hurf hurf), but that soon changed when he pitched it like a motherfucker through the door. It seemed to grow in illumination as it skittered across the floor, blue light quite similar to that of Aquila's aura filling the room. It was about on-par with the drone's light, but it had the benefit of a wider field of view. Which made it all the more obvious that whatever had killed their drone was gone.

Or hiding.

"Wanna make a guess on how long it'd take backup to get here?" he asked Cass conversationally.

"Too fucking long." The Vindicator was already snapped to his shoulder, the butt resting against the bony ridge of his cowl, grey eyes glaring at the hell-portal with a certain degree of self satisfied wariness.

See?

Fucking doors. Can't be trusted.

"Dunno how long we've got the iceball for and uh unrestricted access is at a bit of a premium here. Sooooo..." We're going through aren't we? "yeah we're going through the hell-portal I'm pretty sure, standing orders, etcetera etcetera." Door. "Hell-door." Same fucking different at this point let's be honest.

Cass took point (no jokes please), slipping into the position as easily and as naturally as a well oiled (I said no fucking jokes) gear. Leading the way with slow, steady, careful footsteps. Quiet. Wary. Fabric swathed blue armor draped in all the tools needed for started that metal slagging plasma burn. Click clack goes the rifle as he shifts his grip, switching on the barrel-light and his own halogen halo. He doesn't check to see if Aquila's behind him, he doesn't take his eyes off the shadowed space before him, the far reaches still shrouded in gloom. Battle buddies always got each other's backs. It wasn't even a fucking question.

Ping.

Text from good old Ahmmy in the corner of his HUD.

[Last Pic Pulled]

Attached image something...metal. Something ancient. Something insectile.

Something very

very

large.

Click clack, click clack goes the myriad mechanical legs as some shrouded mass shifts in the darkness. Decrepit mechanisms spinning into motion, a grind, a growl, a chirp, all snarled together.

"...Aquila?" A hushed whisper. Be reverent, you're in a tomb after all.

The lights slowly, oh so slowly, panned up.

His trust was well-placed. Aquila moved like a second shadow, mimicking Cass' every movement, the Tempest's stock telescoped to full length and thrust against his collar. Right claw tight on the trigger, left wrapped around the foregrip. The whole weapon utterly rock-steady - don't let anybody tell you that Aquila skimped on the weapon drilling in favour of his biotics.

... okay he did that a little but in the choice between noisy penis-extension machines and telekinesis, I ask you which one you would favour.

Their HUDs linked as they were, Aquila got the last-pulled-picture at the same time as Cass. Around the same time that a mechanical death-rattle began to sound from the dark corners of a tomb long forgotten by time. He looked up, around, and behind them. And saw it, half-illuminated by the ghostly glow of the glowstick he had thrown. Squatted on the wall just above the doorway like a fat mechanical spider. Reflexively, with instinct drilled by long hours of practice, he fired a burst right into its plated, shell-like head.

The mass accelerator rounds may as well have been bits of wadded-up toilet paper that Aquila was throwing by hand. The ancient yet no less deadly thing whirred, clicked and clacked, a myriad needle-like legs scuttling. Detaching itself from the wall and coming straight for them.

Aquila reacted appropriately.

"RUN AWAY."

And lo and behold for once Cass didn't kick up a fuss. No witty repartee. No smartass comeback. No- "OHMYFUCKINGSPIRITSWHATISTHAT"- objection on general principle. Just letting himself be shoved into a flat out pell mell run deeper and deeper into the cavern. Footsteps ringing out on the polished stone floor. The clattering of the mechanical juggernaut behind them, it's legs gouging furrows in the rock of the mountain; chips flying like shrapnel as it spilled forward.

The door, the glowstick, the light retreating behind them. The way forward picked out only in the flashes of their helmet's lights; the beams wavering and jumping as they sprinted farther and farther into the dark. Here another dozen low stone pedestals. Here a monolithic slab. Here Aquila's blue armored back. Here...what was probably the same slab holy fuck that was still going on.

Here an enormous chasm riving the ground a few meters away, not so much as a fucking safety rail between them in Oblivion.

Cass didn't swear so much as make a strangled yelping noise as he grabbed his battle buddy by his collar and physically dragged him to the side. Digging his boots in, the squeal of rubber on ancient tile, an awkward hop, an even awkwarder clinging to the guy he just oh so heroically rescued. The throat crushing silence as he came within a whisper's breath of the edge before steadying himself and running. Urging the biotic ahead of him on and forward.

There were more monoliths in this section, like the first they saw but smaller, maybe twice his height at most. The gaps between too tight for the sentinel to force it's bulk through after them.

"COVER."

One gauntleted talon pointing ahead, the other behind; shrouded in orange tracery. A moment. A pause.

FWOOOMP

And a sheet of flame exploded out from his wrist. Liquid. Oily. It splashed across the ground behind them and rose up into a wall of crimson light, the top fringed with sparks and embers. The air baked dry in the backblast. It was very impressive. Very stylish.

Probably between fuck and all use-wise considering the thing had shook off hyperaccelerated rounds like rainwater but, you know, at least it looked nice.

Aquila was almost glad that his kit was rated much lighter than Cass' - probably wouldn't save either of them from getting impaled on one of the horrible ancient robospider's legs, and it was nice enough not to get in the way while he sprinted for his life into the uncharted darkness of the tomb.

And nearly ran headfirst into a bottomless pit because he and Cass couldn't see where the fuck they were even going, but hey, baby steps. A whirl of desperate movement and they were running alongside the rift in the ground, taking cover behind the monoliths and hoping that there was something they could do. Things were so dire that Aquila couldn't even bring himself to be pissy at Cass over the fact that he had to duck very suddenly to avoid getting his head taken off by superheated plasma.

Unfortunately, Cass had been a little premature with his Incinerate. Maybe the pair had actually gained more ground than they'd realized. Maybe the guardian had somehow known to hang back. Whatever the case (hopefully the former), an Incinerate application just wasn't the same if the hardened target you were trying to melt just wandered through a flaming patch in the world's most flaccid indirect hit. Well, less 'wandered' and more 'burst through the flames unscathed like your worst nightmare'. Aquila was only just able to squeeze through and duck behind his own monolith before the guardian's legs stabbed through the gap, like spears as long as they were tall.

"HIT IT, CASS! HIT IT!!" Aquila yelled over the commotion, dumping his Tempest's entire clip in the thing's general direction. "I'LL SEE IF I CAN GET THE ANGLE ON IT!"