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Focusing on what she's doing has gotten hard since she woke up. Not that she thinks Thán or Curre or whoever it was messed up and took away her attention span - but there's so much to unpack in her mind that real things she has to do, preparations to leave, haven't hit the forefront of her mind yet.

What happened to her still feels like it's too big to take in, to even understand fully. She's never before wondered much about afterlives and mortality, not simply taken oblivion for granted, but now she almost wishes she had. Because now she feels totally clueless. And that's not something she--

"Ow--" Back in the real world, there's blood snaking down her thumb and a glistening wet utility knife. She blinks at it - refuses to let it remind her of the bright stain spreading on her uniform, the heaviness of blood filling her chest - and steps back from the cargo ship's open electrical panel.

The cloth she'd had on hand for cleaning hasn't been used yet, so she's about to use that when...

"Oh - sorry. I didn't see you." Or notice the telltale mechanical rumble of his presence that still oddly reminds her of the cat blanket Miles once gave Niko for her.

There's a beat of stillness. A skip of sound. Rinzler steps a pace closer, and the dim glow of lights inside the fog sharpens to a familiar hunched frame and circuit pattern. The contents of the flight deck have been his task since he was first installed in this system, and since the crash, he's been monitoring anyone who gets near the ships.

With the entire system broken, there's not much else to do.

Still, Tali'Zorah is authorized, and the vehicle she's been modifying doesn't even fall into the shared domain. Even if she weren't, apology seems like an odd response to observation. If probably still better than alarm. He shrugs, a faint twitch through the usual hunch, and redirects attention with a nod towards her cut hand.

She might want to take care of that.

She idly finds herself wondering if Niko kept that cat blanket after the crash, because now that she's made that association with Rinzler's one vocalisation (if you can call it that), it really won't go away.

Rinzler and her haven't spoke in months, but in that time, she's maybe just gotten used to him - the idea of him - or something, because his movements don't make her jumpy. Stepping towards her, the twitchy movements of him shrugging and nodding - it doesn't matter. She's not nervous. Maybe, in a weird way, dying made her realise she has far worse things to be nervous of than a program who won't harm her as long as she doesn't harm him.

She flashes him a wry grin. "You weren't there for very long, were you? I wasn't trying to ignore you, I just wasn't paying attention." She holds up her bloodied hand to illustrate.

The bag of assorted tools and supplies she has sitting on a rock didn't have a first aid kit in it when she first packed it, and doesn't magically spawn one as she goes rummaging around in the thing either. Eventually, she gives up and merely ties the cloth around it with a mixture of her mouth and other hand.

The difference is noticeable. As much interest as Tali'Zorah has shown, as willing as she's been to work together, there's always been the faint lag of tension filling up the space between. Fear is hardly unusual toward the enforcer, and he counts hers sensible enough. But it's gone now, and Rinzler tilts his head, a little curious at the ease that seems to have replaced it.

The question itself is more straightforward. Rinzler shrugs—he's been there for a while, but being unobserved is no concern. Generally, he counts it as a skillset. Her self-repair method gathers a dubious skip in his rumbling, but as crude as the patch looks, it's far enough outside his function that the program's not going to judge. Much.

He will, however, turn his helmet pointedly toward that bag... then back to the ship she's fixing. It doesn't take a scan to see there's more than just repair tools there. Going someplace?

She pulls the cloth tight with her teeth, catches Rinzler's...eye? Helmet?...and shrugs. She'll go to the med tent at some point, but for now, it's not that bad. And she has things to do - things that Rinzler has clearly noticed, as he very deliberately looks from bag to ship in such a way that he doesn't need words to be understood.

"Right," she says, following his gaze. "I'm leaving the crew. We are - Niko and I."

It's not something she's told many people, not yet - closer to leaving, she'll let the right people know, but for now, as far as most people are concerned, she's just really focused on fixing this little transport ship after the explosion.

"As soon I finish getting the ship supplied and ready for deep space."

The answer isn't surprising. Not with her actions: the bag she's packed, the precautions she's been taking. Not with the situation all of them are in. Crew requires a ship, requires a system, and the incompetence of the Moira's admins has crashed theirs in a mess of faults and failure.

Rinzler doesn't move, doesn't react—because it's expected, because it's sensible. Because whether here or at the Portal, soon all of them will have to do the same.

The ticking rattle gets a little louder, though. After a moment, he reaches for his communicator.

Destination?

Tali tended to be most active on this planet during the early mornings. "Tended to", as if she had been here, alive, for more than a few days.

Early mornings were when the other races on board tended to be the least active, and for now, that suited Tali just fine. She could gather supplies, work on the ship, anything she needed, without anyone around. Seeing other people, talking to them, anything, might make her change her mind about leaving - again. She'd dithered and put it off for so long - they had to help the crew, what if the Moira needed the two of them, what if they weren't safe out on their own - so many stupid reasons that had made her stay. And how had staying ended up being any safer?

Back on the Moira, filling their small cargo ship's water tanks would have been done easily and quickly, and lasted them months. Now she has to build a water purifier to make water from the planet usable in deep space. She hasn't built one in years, and scavenging up the parts without using anything the Moira crew needs is taking a while. She's walking the length of the camp, absorbed in a blueprint on her omni-tool, Charmander scampering around her legs snapping at bugs attracted to its flame, when she has to quickly step around something as it blunders into her path.

At first she barely looks up. "Excuse--" And then she stops. Turns. Stares in front of her at a leg, then lets her gaze drag up to the body of the giant...animal? meandering past her without so much as having realised she was there.

And it looks familiar. Really familiar, but she can't place it - another planet the Moira had visited, maybe, or the CDC. She closes the blueprint, opens her scanner...

...and stares between the scan result and the pod crab still completely oblivious to the attention it's getting.

With a broken shoulder and one piece of her already fragile identity shaken (she still hasn't figured out the MID outage), she hasn't been sleeping well. When she wakes to find one of the two living creatures who actually likes her missing, of course she's going to go look for her pod crab, despite the early hour.

Not having named it this harder than it should be, as she can't call for it (and she refuses to call it 'crabcakes' like Shepard had). So she's resorting to wandering around the makeshift camp of the Moira's wreckage, just looking, occasionally fidgeting with her collar cuff. It's sheer luck that the light of an omni-tool and a tiny fire catch her eye, drawing her gaze to the crab.

"There you are," she says to it, hurrying over. She's so focused on the crab that she only notices exactly whom the light belonged to once she's up close, and then her lip curls in distaste which she can finally openly show. "Let's go. I don't want you spending too much time around her."

Slowly, one claw at a time, the crab turns around. She can never really tell when it's looking at her.

She's still staring at the bizarre...thing - can you really call it an animal? Who knows - when someone who she thinks for a moment is Shepard comes hurrying over. She's about to say something, ask why she's keeping a pet pod crab now and how did she never notice the thing...when she nearly recoils at the expression on "Shepard's" face.

That look isn't something she'll ever get used to. Even knowing it's not really Shepard.

"What?!" She blurts out before she can think of anything else to say. There's a moment's worth of silence where she almost literally flails her incredulity, and then she has to just go ahead and be a smartass. "You know that's a Virmire pod crab, right? Virmire's a planet, by the way, it's in the Attican Traverse." She tries to deliver that in the most pseudo-helpful tone she can muster, but there's a little too much annoyance there to pull off the sarcasm.

"I can't give it my alien germs - it's already got its own alien germs."

Charmander had been in the middle of beelining for who he too clearly thought to be Shepard - maybe they even smell the same - but at the sound of their voices, he falters a little.

"I know what Virmire is," she snaps reflexively, letting this cover her surprise at the crab turning out to be not only from her own universe, but from a fairly significant planet in Shepard's past. By this point, she feels like she shouldn't be surprised that one more thing in her life somehow comes back to Shepard.

The crab makes a croaking sound that she's come to recognize as it not being too pleased, but starts to make its way over to her anyway, which she'll take as a win.

"Doesn't matter where it's from, anyway. I'm not from Earth." In fact, she doesn't even know which system the space station she was created on was in. "The Shepard in my timeline's from Mindoir. It's an animal, not a person."

So she doesn't mind its crabby germs, as evidenced by her resting her free hand protectively on it once it finally reaches her.

She rolls her eyes at the snapping, but before she can do more than that, the crab makes the most bizarre noise she's ever heard - Tali starts in alarm - and starts to move towards the clone. For a split-second, she doesn't want to let the poor thing go anywhere near her - Cerberus will happily experiment on or kill or both anything not of Terran origin - but what can Tali do about it? She's not taking it with her. Luckily, the creature's big enough to look after itself. (Just maybe not smart enough - she distinctly remembers the Mako flat out running one over because it blundered into their way.)

"Ah, so I'm a person, at least. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me." If she were a bit more cruel, she'd have snapped back that no, the clone comes from a test tube, so everything's alien to her. But she's not, and besides - why prove the clone right?

The clone even rests a hand on the crab when it reaches her, and the look Tali gives her is nothing short of incredulous. "I'm not going to eat it, you know."

But, slightly hypocritically, she chirrups wordlessly at Charmander, who immediately scampers back over to her, tail flame whipping about everywhere.

It's done. The ship's fueled and supplied, she's at the very least messaged the people she knew on board, if not really gone and talked to many of them. It's easier that way; the more people she actually talks to, the more likely she is to change her mind and not want to leave after all - until the next crisis.

But right now, she's excited about it. It's not a feeling she's known too much over the past two years and it's hit her now, hard. She can't suppress the grin on her face and she wouldn't if she could.

She's not expecting to be seen off. Walking around the ship, doing one last safety check - force of habit - she's focused on that so closely she doesn't pay any attention to Shepard approaching.

It was lucky that he didn't know the trouble that would follow; he would have again be urged to stay, help out his friends, at least attempt to give them a ride. But instead he was just damn eager to get the hell out of there for good.

Niko was lounging in the pilot's seat with a magazine from his world, something brought from Liberty City that had been stowed away on his pacdisc, just waiting for Tali to declare things ready to go. He didn't say his good-byes face to face. Mostly he left letters saying he'd miss people. He didn't figure anything else needed to be said.

It would have been too easy to talk him into staying.

At first, she walks straight up — but catching Tali's pre-occupation, she takes the opportunity to slip by, rounding the ship. By the time Tali reaches to the fuel cells, Shepard's there, leaning against them. She gives a little wave, and straightens up, walking over to properly meet her friend.

"Hope you didn't think you were getting away without a proper send-off."

It's said by way of greeting, rather than as admonishment — Shepard's demeanor is warm, encouraging — far be it from her to let anything less show when Tali's face was aglow. Stepping aside to let her best friend continue the safety check, she continues amicably.

"Everything ship-shape? How's Niko doing?"

She only realises Shepard's even there when she actually looks up at the fuel cells...only to find Shepard there right between her and them - and when Tali notices her, she grins broadly, the pleasure at seeing her closest friend nigh radiating off her. There's a creeping feeling of sadness, too, though - that this may truly be the last time Tali ever sees her (though, maybe, not the last time Shepard sees a Tali - which is actually a little comforting).

"I was going to come and see you!" she protests, laughing and gesturing - her omni-tool waves about so the orange light dances.

For a moment she doesn't bother with the fuel cells, has forgotten them entirely. "It's almost done, I'm just doing one last check and then we can go.

"Niko's... Err..." She jerks her head at the ship, indicating the inside of it. "He's probably just waiting for me. Here, I'll get him." She can't message him, not with the MIDs down and only Tali having an omni-tool - she'll have to fix that - but she can set off a shrill alarm inside that'll probably bring him out to find her to shut it up.

What they have the good fortune to hear from the front when the alarm goes of is a string of Serbian swears along with a thud as he stood up too quick. Then another couple of thumps as he tried to do knock some sense into the console as though it were an alarm clock. And then when that didn't work, he came back towards where Tali was.

"Tali, did you push a button that- hey, Shepard..." He raised a hand, leaning heavily on the "r" in that word as he was inclined to do with his accent. "Like I was saying, you accidentally clip something back here?"

No, he had no idea that it was only meant to summon him.

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RINZLER

Sorry for taking so long!

ahaha no, I will always be slower, don't worry <3

All aboard the snail train?

hell yessss

\o/

CLONEY

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SHEPARD & NIKO

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