thisavrou_log | [closed] sorry bout it

[closed] sorry bout it

Who: Commander Shepard

backsassin
When: April 30th
Where: The bar!
What: Shepard apologizes for being a bitch, Zam tells her not to, they both drink.
Warnings: Alcohol in copious quantities, if we play our cards right.

[True to her word, Shepard shows up the following evening, and slides into a seat near the end of the bar. If they're going to sit and chat, it's better to be at the lower traffic end of things. She shoots a quick text to Zam to confirm her arrival, and waves down the on-duty staff for a drink.

When Zam does arrive, Shep gives a quick wave, a whisky on the rocks already half-empty on a coaster in front of her. She pats the seat next to her congenially.]

Hey. Hope you weren't waiting too long. [She reaches out her hand to shake Zam's] Let's try this again. Nice to meet you, Zam.

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[Zam arrive shortly after she receives Shepard’s text, quickly singling out her crewmate at a quieter corner of the bar. She glances at Shepard’s already half-empty drink with a slight smile. Looks like Zam’s already behind.]

Not at all. [She shakes the proffered hand. Another difference Shepard might notice? The man who greeted her coming out of the Ingress only had one arm. Zam has two.] A pleasure, Shepard. [She takes the seat next to her and flags the bartender. She gets a nod in return before they start working on her drink. Clearly she’s been here frequently enough that they know her order without having to ask.

She turns back towards Shepard.] How’s the Moira been treating you? The first few weeks can be rough for newcomers. [Especially for someone like Shepard who, as Zam suspects, may have not parted with her own world on the most settled of terms.]

[The additional arm does not escape notice, adding another mental note into the "ask about as tactfully as possible" column of questions. For the time being, she takes another drink, before turning to answer Zam.]

It's had its ups and downs. Lot of surprises, lot of disappointments. Never wished I studied engineering as much as I do now.

How about you? How long have you been here?

[Zam chuckles.] I know the feeling. [“Lots of surprises” is putting it mildly.]

I’ve been here about six or seven months now. I thought this place was the afterlife when I first came through the Ingress. [A shrug.] I guess it is, but turns out it’s pretty much the same as living. [A slight smile.] Just living weirder, really. It takes some getting used to.

I hear that. [She lifts her glass to Zam's statement, taking a big drink before continuing.] Pretty crazy how even the weirdest living starts becoming the everyday grind after long enough, huh?

So you said you though this was the afterlife at first? [For a moment, it seems like she might ask a follow-up question, but she opts instead for another sip, letting the question hang in the air.]

The daily grind with occasional bouts of insanity, [she says with a smirk.] Sums up this place pretty well if you ask me.

[The bartender brings over her drink, a pale green concoction smelling of fruit and spice. Zam takes a drink, aiming to catch up with Shepard’s head start. The taste is slightly off -- it’s not authentic daranu, but it’s as close as they can get given what they have on the ship.]

Yeah, I did. When I said I wasn’t having a good day when I arrived here, well… I meant it. [A shrug.] But I figure I’m lucky -- the people who get zapped here when they’re still kicking leave their entire lives behind. Not like I’m leaving much at home besides a handsome corpse. [It’s far from the view she originally held when she arrived here, but seeing her crewmates’ desperation to return to homes and families they can still live to see has given her some perspective.]

When I saw your armor, I figured you might be the same. If something did that to metal, I’d hate to see what it did to you.

[Whatever Zam's got, it's her next order. The smell is enticing, and she raises her eyebrows appreciatively at it as her bar buddy takes a sip.]

That's a good way of looking at it. Were you always this optimistic, or was that a post-life development?

[Her poor hardsuit. If it hadn't been for its valiant efforts, there wouldn't have been any Shepard left to get to the beam.] Believe it or not, the weapon that fused my hardsuit like that? It did me some serious damage, but I walked away from it. [Limped. Semantics.] The mortality crises were before and just after that.

[Zam shrugs.] Call it a necessary adaptation. [She had been a fairly optimistic person even before arriving on the Moira, though dying had put a considerable dent in that trait when she first arrived.

Zam gives Shepard a half-impressed, half appraising look at their story.] You must be one tough barve. [She takes another swig of her drink.] What kind of weapon was it? A fusion cannon? [Even if the exact term is unfamiliar to Shepard, it’s clearly said in jest.]

That's exactly what I'd call it. [Shepard nods at Zam, expression sympathetic, without losing its warmth.] Suits you, though.

[Chuckling at the joking disbelief, she shakes her head.] Reaper weaponry. It's a...[And here, she furrows her brow. Damn, what had the Alliance brains called it?] a type of magnetohy...hydrodynamic artillery.

[There's a pause as she flounders in terminology, then shrugs, knocking back the rest of her drink in one gulp.]

Means a beam of nearly-light-speed molten metal.

[Don’t worry, Zam doesn’t understand the technical jargon anyway. It isn’t until Shepard provides the layman’s definition that her eyes widen.]

And you walked away from that? [Zam’s almost inclined to believe that the woman is embellishing her story, but usually when people exaggerate, they still try and keep things at least somewhat believable. Zam chuckles and shakes her head.] Well, I think you’ve pre-emptively one-upped my own cause of death story. I just got shot.

[And not with any magnetohydrodynamic artillery either.]

Only barely — you could've knocked me over with a stiff breeze. I just-- [There's a pause, but it's not much longer than half a beat.] --had a job to finish. Wanted to make sure I saw it through to the end.

[She fiddles with her empty glass for a moment, then flags down a bartender.]

I'll have what she's having.

[Zam nurses her glass while Shepard talks -- daranu’s not the kind of drink you knock back in shots, though the effect’s about the same thirty minutes in.]

Oh? And what kind of job was that? [The armor says soldier or perhaps mercenary, and a very determined one at that.]

[Her face contorts into something resembling confusion at the question. Was "saving the galaxy" too melodramatic? It definitely was. After a moment of internal struggle, she settles on:]

Wiping out the Reapers.

[There. If she wanted to ignore it, she could, and if she wanted to ask... well, then maybe the galaxy thing could come up in a less-dramatic way.]

[The response gets her a blank and then curious stare. Zam remembers Shepard mentioning the Reapers when they first met, though she herself still doesn’t know what the word could be referring to.]

And who -- or what -- are the Reapers?

[Shep shifts in her stool, and cracks her neck almost as a reflexive action.]

The Reapers are a race of sentient synthetic machines, created from the bodies of organic races. They stay in dark space, dormant for periods of 50,000 years, then return to our galaxy, and wipe out all sentient organic life. The cycle has been perpetuated for millions of years, but our generation is the closest anyone's come to finally stopping them.

That's what I was doing, when I was pulled her. It was the final push, the final attack.

[There's a pause, and when she speaks again, her voice sounds almost as heavy as when she arrived through the Ingress.]</small. I just don't know if it worked.

[...Shepard, why does your life story seem to get crazier and crazier the more Zam learns about it? Zam stares disbelievingly at her] All sentient organic life? You mean they wipe out every single person?

[For a moment, you can practically see the gears turning in Zam’s head as she tries to process the implications of such an event. Just as you can very clearly see the moment when she decides to shut the door on that particular train of thought. She knocks back the rest of her drink and the grimace on her face has nothing to do with the taste.]

Damn. And I thought my galaxy had problems.

[She nods, gravely, just once.] Sentient synthetic life is either recoded, or destroyed — but organics are indoctrinated, and changed, or--[Here, she hesitates, eyes flickering to the side, as if she's avoiding looking at a picture in front of her mind's eye — but the look is as fleeting as the others.]--or processed, to make new Reapers.

[Shepard shakes her head, a low chuckle escaping on top of a sigh.] I really wasn't hoping to win the "worst galaxy" award when I showed up on this ship. Tell me about yours.

Ugh. Sounds like a horror holo. [The comment may be flippant, but Zam looks legitimately disgusted. Zam’s not a pacifist -- far, far from it -- but even she can feel disturbed by the thought of so many lives being snuffed out like that. A planet had been bad enough. She can hardly imagine a galaxy.]

Pretty sure we already have a reigning champion somewhere on the ship. [Zam says as she waves the bartender over for a refill.] You’ll have to take it up with them. As for my own galaxy… [She shrugs, eyeing her glass as the bartender fills it with the same drink as before.] It wasn’t like we were having an apocalypse or anything. Just a lot of bad politics and a reigning government with too many pilots to steer straight. [The bartender nudges Zam’s drink over to her. She picks up the glass and takes a slow sip.]

According to some of my uh, colleagues here, things boiled over just a little while after I bit it. A galaxy-wide war, a government coup, a secret clone army--

[Zam stops, seeming to remember something. She looks at Shepard, expression gone sly.]

Ah, that reminds me: have you run into your sister here yet?

Never thought I'd say it, but I'd take too many politicians over the Reapers any day.

[In her mind's eye, Shep pictures the scene, political backstabbing, doublecrossing, and idiot decisions finally setting alight a tense powderkeg of galactic strife. And a clone army? It was bad enough just having one. On the other hand, as long as none of Zam's threats were attempting to extinguish every sentient race that could do long division, it was still a preferable situation.

At the pause, she looks up, examining Zam's face, frowning, and shaking her head.]

She's not my sister. She's... me.

[Was it ever going to stop being weird? She guessed not.]

Alternate universe me.

Can’t believe it either, but I would too. [War was just apart of life when Zam was growing up. Not that she wasn’t glad to get away from it, but if it were galaxy-wide, she could cope. A race of ancient machines bent on wiping out organic life? That wouldn’t be so easy to endure.

Shep’s answer about her “sister” gets a surprised blink.] Ah. Well. That explains it. [Strange. There had seemed something more to it than that. But Zam supposes that explanation serves as well.]

I have to say, she doesn’t really act like you. At all.

[Picking up her drink, she turns it in her hand for a moment, before taking a drink. Strong. It wasn't a chugger, but it was guaranteed to go far.]

Well, we had pretty different upbringings, apparently. I'm just some military brat, and she... [Was there a way to put it more delicately?] her family was part of a human colonizing effort on a planet that another species, the Batarians, took umbrage to.

[She takes another drink, a little longer this time.]

The whole place was wiped out by Batarian slavers. She was rescued by an Alliance military response team.

That… also explains a lot. [Zam grimaces and takes a drink. Sounds like nasty business.]

She didn’t seem to have too much trust in the non-humans on the crew. Took issue with my habit of taking different faces. [She flashes Shepard a small smile.] Which you seem to be politely avoiding mentioning at all.

[Not that it bothers Zam. She’s seen some of the worst responses imaginable to her abilities and neither Shepards’ even come close.]

[Shep's eyebrows jump up at the call-out, before settling down into a amused expression. Caught.]

Hey, I was just waiting for the right time to segue it into the conversation. Didn't want to be one of those humans — you know, the "hey, look at that weird alien!" type.

[Zam chuckles.] Don’t worry, whatever you would have ended up saying, I’ve almost definitely have heard worse. [Not counting Shepard’s alternate universe twin, the crew at large has been surprisingly tolerant of Zam’s abilities. She hasn’t heard one whisper of “two-faced” since she got here.]

I’m a changeling. Definition’s probably obvious by now, right?

Ha, definitely. Sort of self-explanatory at this point. Also, sort of really cool.

[beat;]

Would it be weird if I asked you questions about it, or is that too much for now?

Why thank you, [Zam says, with a slight giggle into her drink. Yes, the reactions she gets to her abilities here are definitely very different to the one’s she’s used to at home.]

Depends on the questions. [Despite what people may assume, Zam’s pretty difficult to offend. They just don’t like to completely show their hand if they can help it.] How about this: I don’t mind you asking questions if you don’t mind me maybe not answering some of them. [A crooked smile.] Or not answering them truthfully. Sound fair?

I think that's the deal most people give me when I ask questions. Deal.

[She takes a sip of her drink, and hums softly.] Okay, this is what I'm really curious about: humanoid-only, or any form you choose?

Probably. I’m just being especially nice by actually stating the terms out loud. [And now that the daranu is starting to kick in, Shepard might get especially honest or especially dishonest answers depending on Zam’s already capricious whims.]

Any form I choose. [Partially dishonest answer number one, motivated mostly by Zam’s desire to brag.] Humanoids are the easiest though. Usually don’t even have to push any organs or bones around to get it right.

No animals though. [She wrinkles her nose.] Not if you paid me a million credits.

[There's a nod as she listens, and an arched eyebrow at the animals, alongside a small smile.]

Why not? Smell, behavior, risk?

Simple reason: I’m not an animal. [And she won’t pretend otherwise, for any price.]

Fair enough. [There's a finality in Zam's tone, but (and maybe it's just the drink) she can't help but ask a follow-up.]

What about animal-esque biped sentient species?

[Zam wrinkles her nose. That sure is a lot of big words from one mildly intoxicated person to another.]

Mm. If they’re sentient, what’s so animal-esque about them?

Uh... [Good point.] They share several key features with non-sentient animal species, like ears and muzzle, but they... live with other humanoids?

[She takes a lengthy drink.]

I guess it'd be case by case, right?

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