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far from nowhere
"the trees rustle in the evening when we stand uneasy before our own thoughts."
With the events of Del Pascia behind the Moira, things are only now beginning to settle—and not very well. Through the combined efforts of some of the crew, D-E-L and her permanent residents were incinerated into the dust of space. While it’s not the most peaceful end, it is one, and not many are going to be thinking back on how nice Del Pascia’s facilities were for quite some time. Repairing what they could of the ship’s interior and putting as much distance between the Moira and the prison as possible, those aboard are informed by Navigation that they are approaching another planet. This means, of course, the potential for better supplies, as some things are beginning to dwindle, and the Captains elect to dock so long as the crew follows protocol. WELCOME TO AMISSIS-RE
Amissis-Re is an unregistered planet with no documented histories or signs of life. The Moira’s Navigation crew have scanned the planet for any usable resources and have discovered a faint signal emitting from beneath the surface of Amissi-Re. Using the transporters and any other crafts located in the Cargo Bay, the crew are able to travel to the source of the signal. Upon arriving in its exact location, they’ll find a small series of lakes that lead to a tower-like structure that appears to be in use. Crew must cross a poorly assembled bridge system that sways and dips when weight is applied to it in order to gain access to the entrance. Once there, a woman comes out to greet them and explains, excitedly, that she is so very happy that they have come to Amissis-Re.
Everyone can go home.
Their host insists that she has done the impossible and has somewhat fixed the Ingress that’s been built on Amissis-Re a long time ago, and what’s more, she can send crew home for short bursts of time. Upon following this woman inside, crew will find that the planet is not, in fact, barren at all. Diving deep into the underbelly of Amissis-Re, it’s like an eternal factory of machines, and while vast, for whatever reason, it also seems incredibly welcoming...
☄ LEAP OF FAITH ( 05.01 and on ) The barren planet of Amissis-Re is devoid of vegetation and organic life except for a lone woman, and the planet itself is an intricate honeycomb of machines that go for miles below the surface. Yet, that seems insignificant and unimportant in comparison to the news that the crew has just received. After Thán has looked at the Ingress, he tells the crew that he cannot say for certain that it is properly functioning, but Emiri native, Ben Link, will volunteer to test it out.
An elevator takes crew down to a glass platform that overlooks an inverted Ingress portal. In order to return home, the Moirans will have to take a leap of faith and jump in. Ben, in order to show his commitment to the crew and willingness to help get them home, takes that jump with Captain Thán seconds behind him. Jumping feels like dropping through wind; lights swirl, it’s warm, and a soft buzzing encompasses you as you fall. You don’t feel the landing. One moment you’re falling, and the next, you’re in a new world.
A few hours pass before a similar elevator rises from below and to the left of the Ingress, stopping beside the platform. Ben and Thán step out unharmed.
It works, and everyone can temporarily go home. Will you jump? ☄ COMBINE THE EXTREMES ( 05.01 and on ) The woman that greeted the crew and led them to the platform will allow anyone that wants to go home the opportunity to go. There’s only one catch: it’s not permanent. She’s worked for years to fix the Ingress so that she can return to her own home but hasn’t been able to make the trip an everlasting one. Everyone always comes back. Always. They go for a few hours, at first, but that amount of time increases with each visit.
The one guideline, she says, is that you can’t go alone. Each trip requires a partner, or it becomes too much for the mind to bear. These rules are simple: the world takes shape depending on who jumps first, but if crew go hand-in-hand and leap at the same time, the worlds combine. This new world will be populated with people that existed in both and may appear to be a jarring combination of both worlds. It may seem unusual, but if the woman is asked, she’ll explain that the combined world does exist as there are more universes than can be imagined. The Ingress tries to take the person to their own home, their original home, but when jumping together, it finds the closest possible match and deposits them there instead.
From that point on, you can travel the world together or split up, but remember, this world is a living, functioning world. It doesn’t matter if it’s the home of one crew member or a combination. You meet other people. You can get hurt. You influence and are influenced by others.
Be cautious, and enjoy your visit “home”. ☄ LINGER ON ( 05.05 and on ) The more times the Amissis-Re Ingress is visited, the more it seems that your trips last longer and the experience becomes even more vivid. More real and harder to distinguish from the current reality that you know. It’s difficult to explain why, but you get the feeling that maybe if you went without the aid of the host, that perhaps you’d be able to stay. Forever. It takes some subterfuge, but in time, you see your chance: she’s nowhere in sight, and you take it.
The world you are in now is completely your own, whether another crew member accompanied you or not. The people you know are there, everything around you is exactly as you remember. A few hours pass, and you don’t feel that familiar tug, that invisible hook at the base of your spine that signals that your visit is over. Even more time goes by, and you’re still in that world, your home. When the first day has passed, you begin to question if you’ll ever go back, or if life on the Moira was all a dream. The person with you won’t be able to convince you otherwise, and they’ll start to feel less real, a stranger that you used to know.
There’s only one way to go back to the Moira. Someone from the other side has to come in and retrieve you both. Once in, contact with a third will jump-start a link through the Ingress, and it will pull all crew back to the platform.
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thisavrou_log2016-05-01 09:04 pm
Tali'Zorah | Open
So something like this feels like it's been dropped personally into her lap. A chance to go back and see - without having to stay. The decision of whether to ever truly go back is left up to some time in the murky, distant future. If ever. She shows up to this planetary Ingress in her uniform, with her quarian mask and visor on over the top, her head wrapped in a scarf. No one back home would look twice. Unless she walks right onto the fleet.
And her eagerness to get there means she's grabbed the first person who looked half way willing too pair up with her and begged and cajoled them into coming. Congratulations, you're it.
"See you on the other side," she calls back - and jumps.
"Omega has no titled ruler and only one rule"
She hasn't even opened her eyes - she isn't quite aware of when she screwed them shut - before she smells smoke, rust and the oddly distinctive smell of eezo. They're in what seems like a semi-enclosed hallway - the ceiling is high and rocky above, and though they're mostly hemmed in entirely by metal structures, walls made of metal of different ages and from different planets welded together, there's a vantage point at one end that seems to look out onto a contained oblivion. They've barely begun to get their bearings when Tali has to jump out of the way of a surly-looking armoured lizard on two legs. Two of his seven feet height is made up of a huge hump that makes him look like a squashed up, reptilian camel. A krogan. He's a krogan and he's wearing Blood Pack armour and--
She can't help it; she laughs. She's never been here, to this station, but she knows - everyone knows Omega. Everyone who's never been to Omega wants to go to Omega, and here--
"What are you laughing at, quarian?" She looks around. The krogan has stopped and turned, and he's glaring right at her.
Welcome to the Presidium. Allow me to be your guide.
So many lakes. So many walkways over the lakes. For a space station, the Citadel Presidium is the most ridiculous, lavish thing Tali's ever seen. She only got to come up here a few times, and never without Shepard. So this? It feels like she's out without supervision for the first time.
"This is the Citadel," she tells her company, if it's not somebody who would already know. "It's like the capital of Council space. This part is... It's pretty exclusive."
Read: She's not allowed up here, you're not allowed up here, and their exploring time is limited to until someone realises those facts.
Then: "I've never been up here without somebody who's connected to the embassy." She turns to face them, eyes narrowed into crescents as she grins behind her mask. "Let's have a look around."
"Azure is slang for a part of the asari body in some areas of Illium."
Illium is the closest thing Tali knows from home to a classic city anyone else knows. The skyscrapers reach into the upper atmosphere, shuttles fly in designated skyways, park on the sidewalk. The main difference? The sidewalk is a mile or more off the ground. The metal structures of parks, sidewalks, shuttle parking, shopping stalls and street side cafés curve elegantly around and between the skyscrapers. The sidewalks are rimmed in a chest-height barrier that lets pedestrians see the bloated, clouded-over sun as it sets.
"The last time I was here, I was on the run from assassins," she calls back as she walks straight to the edge of the walkway and grabs the metal barrier so she can look off the edge.
It's dizzyingly high - she can't see the ground for clouds.
"I wanted to find work." It's not often you find someone talking nostalgically about that time they nearly got murdered.
((OOC: I'm fine with any of the prompts here, anything from this post or wildcard if you know Mass Effect canon and want something else! Fusion with any of these is fine by me as well!))
Closed to Shepard
Swamp land. They're standing on the beginnings of an estuary, rivulets of water over spongy land running together into wider rivers approaching the sea. In the dim light of sunrise, there are few animals of any kind to be seen - but they can be heard, everywhere, all around them - alien chirps and cries and--suddenly, in the far distance, somewhere beyond the forest behind them, the bellow of something too big to be allowed. Its cry is followed by a moment of quiet around them, as if everything around them is poised and listening. Then, in a moment, they're off again, as noisy as before. Just visible in the mouth of the estuary is a small island, rising out of the mist in a dark shadow.
It's beautiful. It's wild. And Tali's frozen.
"No," she murmurs before she's aware of the word leaving her lips. She looks around wildly, trying to convince herself that that this isn't what she thinks, that she's just imagining things, that--
She's been here before. She's been literally here, in this swamp land, by this estuary. There's a stagnant pond several metres behind her, and she has a vague memory of something in stagnant water being dangerous. Something that lived there, on the water's surface. But then, isn't everything here dangerous?
Is the planet Macha less dangerous to those who aren't trying to destroy it?
Her breath had stilled in her throat sometime in the last few seconds; she let it out with a huff of a breath, slumping a little as if defeated.
"This, ah..." She licked her dry lips. "This is Macha. I've been here before."
But the last time she saw it, it was gone. Destroyed entirely.
no subject
The jump is exhilarating — a good rush of adrenaline, both from the drop, and the chances in the balance. Where would they end up?
Nowhere I've ever seen. At first blush, it seems to be your run-of-the-mill garden world, with a heavier atmosphere than Earth's — more oxygen, more water, and over-sized growth. As if to confirm her thought, a roar echos out, ripping through the natural buzz and chatter of fauna. Definitely over-sized.
"No," she hears Tali say. No, her body posture and movement scream, and Shepard is reaching for her gun before she even knows why. "Macha? I haven't heard of it. What system is it in?" She keeps her voice even, but there's a buzz in her head, an alarm set off by her friend's behavior. She takes in her surroundings slowly, hand rested comfortably on the grip of her pistol.
no subject
But the multiverse, it seems, has one hell of a sense of humour. And she's the butt if the joke.
"It's not in our galaxy." She sounds nauseous, but somehow calm. As if they're not on a planet that shouldn't have existed for over a year now. As if her brain was already, a long time ago, resigned to knowing that she's never going to escape this universe, or what she did here. Not for good.
"We visited it - the last crew I was on. We were stationed here for months."
She's marching in the direction of that island before she's even finished speaking, splashing through a stream and kicking mud halfway up her legs. A cloud of insects rises from the mud behind her, buzzing furiously, but somehow she ignores them. The thrill of revulsion at the bugs just isn't important now. In seconds, a bird flutters over onto a nearby bush, eyeing the swarm hungrily.
"The water's waist high or so around now," she tells Shepard, an urgency in her voice that wasn't there before. Her breath is short and painful in her throat. "There's a village on the island. Can your armour handle the water?"
no subject
"Hardsuit'll handle it, no problem." Although she'd have a lot more cleaning to do before she turned it back over to her duplicate, there was very little that would crash a hardsuit. Her concern, however, was less for possessions, and more for her partner, who now seemed on the verge of a panic attack. Lengthening her strides, even in the water, she catches up enough to walk side-by-side. "Tali, what's going on? Talk to me."
no subject
The water was warm. She hadn't felt it before. It felt like something almost welcoming. The weight of the air seemed to blanket around her, and if only it helped her freezing cold hands.
"When we came here..." She slowed only because she had to as the sloshing water reached her hips. "It was like the whole planet hated us. Animals attacked us on sight, insects ate through my suit, the trees started screaming at one point and they just wouldn't stop."
Waist height, and a fish swims past her, dark in the vivid blue-green water. She stops and nods to the island. Now that they're closer, small grass-and-wood buildings are vaguely visible along one side, on the low cliffs.
"They attacked too. The Neraki." She sucks in a breath sharply and keeps going. "They only had spears and knives and arrows, but they came at us anyway." She was determinedly not looking at Shepard, focused on reaching the opposite shore.
"We had assault rifles, heavy vehicles, magic. They didn't stand a chance." Her voice wavered, more than just with exertion. "Especially not the children. The ones they gave spears to."
She's never been so glad to be wearing a mask.
I'm so sorry this took me so long. p_q
Her first instinct is to reach out — but Tali's so pointedly not looking at her, she drops her hand, stays quiet, and follows. But the waver in her voice is too much. Shepard places a hand on Tali's shoulder, first to steady her, then, grip a bit firmer, to slow her.
"Hey. Where are we going? What are you looking for, right now?"
Direction, first. There's no pressure for Tali to meet her eyes, but her expression is calm, concerned, and open.
"I'm here if you need me."
And I've been taking my time too sob
Shepard's hand on her shoulder slows her, but she doesn't stop, not entirely. Her deep breath sounds like a wave of its own, filtered through her Mark's mic.
"The Neraki - one type of Neraki - live on this island. I visited it once, for a few days, just."
They're still what seems like an impossible distance, but it's not so far. She's walked this before, she knows.
"We were supposed to scope out the village, talk to the people, find out more about them and maybe convince them to stop fighting us.
"We were there to make peace." She nearly laughs at the cruelty of it, but then, finally, answers Shepard's question. "I want to see the Neraki village here - it--it shouldn't be here. We're in the past. It's not here anymore.
"We destroyed this whole planet a year ago."
Her voice doesn't just waver now, it breaks entirely on the last word.
Omega
She doesn't, though, and she's been in seedy places before. Two months ago, the sight of so many aliens (or natives? Anthropologically speaking, she knows enough to know that she's the alien here) would have confused and frightened her. But now, the whole experience is treated with an expression of interest and moderate caution on the young girl's face.
Her expression doesn't change when the Krogan questions Tali. She looks over the large, reptilian alien for a moment - first eyeing his hump, and then his legs - before she turns to Tali.
"Is he someone we're supposed to be afraid of?" She asks. Her voice isn't lowered, though, and her tone pretty clearly tells that she isn't actually all that intimidated by the sight of him. It's quite possible that she really should be, but she doesn't know anything about the Blood Pack or about Krogans.
omg robin
For a moment, she stares at Robin, somewhere between horrified and...inexplicably close to laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it. The krogan seems to actually swell with anger, but there's a moment where he's obviously as caught off guard as Tali.
Before he can do anything at all, she steps between him and Robin, a hand on the shotgun strapped to the small of her back. It's not yet activated, and right now it looks more like a twisted block of metal than a real weapon, but the gesture's unmistakable. And it draws attention to her bare hand; the krogan squints in that direction - Tali must be only quarian not in a full environmental suit in the whole galaxy right now, and it didn't occur to her that somebody would notice.
"I'm not interested in--" Before she can so much as get halfway through the sentence, the krogan barks in loud, genuine laughter that makes passers-by - aliens themselves - stare. A merc threatening people isn't worth staring at - this apparently is.
"Am I--" He laughs again, and there's something about a krogan's voice that makes him sound simultaneously contemptuous and ready to punch you into oblivion, even if he's snorting through the words. Tali...isn't sure what to do at this point, but not taking her hand away from the gun seems like a good idea, so she goes with that.
"You tell me, pipsqueak." The krogan lumbers forward a step or two, ignoring Tali as if she isn't the one with the shotgun. "Am I someone you should be afraid of?"
#sorrynotsorry (cw: Robin's weird superpowers)
Unfortunately for everyone involved in this situation, she doesn't really buy it.
"I don't know, that's why I asked." She says with a shrug, looking up at the Krogan. Her expression is passive enough, but she isn't foolish enough to blink at the sight of someone threatening her.
If Tali is paying attention to the Krogan's body at all, she'll notice something peculiar. Several sets of arms - small, human-looking arms - growing out of the Krogan's legs, and several more growing out of the ground around them. A disturbing enough sight, to most, although if Robin notices them she doesn't seem to be that concerned.
"Let's find out."
That's the only notice Robin gives, before the arms make their move in a surprisingly coordinated assault. Four arms slam into each of the Krogan's four knees as hard as they can muster, while the limbs on the ground reach upward, grabbing the alien's legs and pulling him further down. Caught off-guard, the Krogan topples forward, instinctively reaching his own arms forward to catch himself - only to discover them suddenly held to his sides by a dozen or so more of the human limbs on either side.
The end result is the Krogan slamming hard onto the floor in front of Robin - all the while, the little girl continues to watch unblinking. Once he's on the ground, the limbs all vanish into thin air, as if they were never there.
"You don't seem that scary from this angle," she says, looking down at the Krogan with an unimpressed look on her face. He really chose the wrong child to intimidate.
you are perfect, this is perfect
Either way, maybe if she can get a shot in before he puts up biotic barriers - or worse, goes into a blood rage - maybe it'll stop him long enough to--
"What the..." At first she thinks of insects, thinks insects are suddenly swarming the krogan. But it's not - it's arms, miniature humanoid arms sprouting from the krogan's body, from the ground - she staggers backwards with a sharp intake of breath, although they're clearly not focusing on her. Tali turns to Robin, a question on her lips--
But the sharp movement of the attack stops her, and the sound of a full-grown, armoured krogan hitting the ground with an almighty metallic clang makes people still around them.
By the time a crowd starts to properly gather - Tali registers some raucously laughing mercs she thinks might be Eclipse among the rubberneckers - the hands are gone. It's just Robin, perfectly calm and very unimpressed, a stunned krogan and Tali, her shotgun active and...
"Keelah-- let's get out of here, come on--"
She holsters the gun - it compresses before it's even on her back - and grabs for Robin's wrist to tug her along with her into the crowd, out of the way. Bright lights, people, a big building with a turian bouncer on the door... Easy to lose one krogan.
Sure, if Tali knew more about Omega, she'd know she was about to take a small child into a nightclub, but details.
"What was that?!" she asks as they duck around tall aliens and short aliens and large four-legged aliens, and there's an incredulous laugh in her voice. It might just be adrenaline, but seeing Robin bring down a krogan like it was nothing? That's...cool.
Well, I try.
As interesting, bordering on amusing, that this whole situation might be, though, there's little doubt that this situation is a dangerous one. Even if that large alien hadn't been trying to threaten her, Tali's the one who had been to this place before, and she's certainly acting as though they're in danger. Which is why, when the quarian grabs Robin by the wrist, she doesn't make any noise or sign of objection and quickly follows her into the nightclub.
At her question, though, Tali will only get the same neutral expression in response.
"That? I don't know, I've never seen an alien like that one before." She says. Is she being intentionally obtuse? Why, yes. Yes she is.
"He didn't seem to be as scary as he thought he was, though."
no subject
"That was a krogan," she says, stopping them for a second. "He didn't get the chance to do anything, but he was probably biotic - so he could hurt people with his mind, sort of - he had guns, he was insanely strong..."
She ticks them off on her fingers - but she only has three, so it doesn't take long to run out. "And they have this thing called a blood rage, where they get even stronger and they just don't feel pain anymore.
"They're really scary, trust me. Unless they can do what you just did, whatever it was..." Her voice rises in a question.
no subject
At the same time, though, he's hardly the first (bounty hunter? mercenary? schoolyard bully? Whatever he was, it's really hard to tell sometimes) to approach her with a threat. As scary as that situation can be, Robin's developed something of a method to dealing with them: Completely overwhelm them with her powers before they have the chance to do anything. And, as Tali has seen, it's a pretty effective method.
"That was my ability," she says, just loud enough for Tali to hear her over the club music. Carefully, she looks over their shoulder, through the door to see if they were followed. It's a well-practiced motion, but as she does so the tiniest bit of her stoic facade begins to fade.
It's back, though, by the time she turns back to face Tali.
"I ate a Devil Fruit. The Flower-Flower fruit - it lets me create copies of my body parts wherever I want," she explains. As she says so, another arm blooms out of the inner part of her elbow to demonstrate.
"It doesn't really matter how strong he is, I had him surrounded - I could have grabbed him from anywhere, with any number of arms. I wouldn't have let him shoot at us."
That's sort of the beauty of her powers. It takes a little bit of focus, but she's technically got everyone surrounded, at all times. Being able to reach out from anywhere really has its advantages.
no subject
Robin has three arms. Two-point-five arms? The exact number is quibbling, but the point stands; Tali lets out an explosive sort of gasp and looked around again hurriedly, in case someone might have appeared in the room since Robin looked herself. Seeing no one, she looked back, transfixed on the extra limb.
...And she's got a point. The krogan never stood a chance.
"And they're just like normal arms? You can feel it, you use it like normal?" Robin has probably been asked these questions before, but apparently it's Tali's turn. "I mean - when you grabbed the krogan, you could feel...his armour, his skin - all at the same time?"
no subject
"Yeah, I can could feel with them and move them like anything else. They're just regular arms." Well, as regular as a limb can be when it's growing in places it shouldn't be. "I have to be careful they don't get hurt, because I can feel that too. But I can also make them disappear whenever I want, so that's usually not a problem."
As a continuation of her demonstration, the extra arm growing out of Robin's elbow vanishes entirely, leaving behind only a few flower petals fluttering to the ground as proof it had ever existed.
"Its kind of complicated moving them all at once, but I'm used to it."
Presidium
With the thump of heavy steps behind her, Megatron takes a quiet look over the wealthy-looking courtyard as she speaks. Cybertronian ships and buildings never had much opulent decoration. Not since the war. He would have considered it a complete waste of space were he not intentionally trying to be a little more open minded about these organics and their ways.
"We have a Council as well," he adds,"Although we were blacklisted from joining them."
no subject
But Megatron is not going to take over the ship, kill all the organics or anything else she can think of. Actually, for a giant robot he seems downright prim and proper. She's a lot less on edge than she could be.
"Funny - so are my people," she tells him, then: "Well, the council isn't exactly open membership, but we had to close our embassy too." She turns to look up at Megatron, struck even more with him 'only' about two feet taller just how alien his entire design is. "Do you mean there was an alien council back where you're from...or those factions you were talking about?"
The one he defected from? She can't exactly remember, but before she can think more about it... She freezes. There's a couple of asari and a salarian walking along one of the bridges towards them, talking so earnestly they haven't noticed the pair of them. Yet. "Wait. Actually. I need to tell you--"
The salarian looks up and slows as he approaches. The asari, following his gaze, slow in turn.
"Damn it." Two seconds of quick thinking, and it doesn't dredge up much in the way of good plans, but-- "Don't talk, stay still."
By the time the three approach, Tali's standing in front of Megatron, bare hands hidden in her pockets, staring up at him thoughtfully.
"Excuse me," the salarian says, and there's a thin layer of contempt in his rapid-fire syllables that makes her hackles rise immediately. "I don't mean to be rude..."
She can sense a 'but' coming.
"...but that had better not be what it looks like."
Tali looks up at Megatron, begs him wordlessly to play along if he doesn't want to get shot by C-Sec, and turns on the salarian. She doesn't have to put on the affronted tone, it just is.
"Yes, exactly, it's a giant geth. I improved the design and brought it here as...as performance art to protest how people treat quarians." She's never done this 'fake, overblown outrage' thing before. It's kind of...fun? "It's a VI, you idiot. That holographic thing they have over there is terrible, so they contracted me to make a proper mobile guide to the Presidium.
"Don't worry, nobody's treating us like equal citizens yet, you're just using us for cheap labour."
...She couldn't resist the last bit, and the salarian looks very slightly cowed. The asari exchange brow-raised, 'well, excuse me' sort of looks, but Tali ignores them.
"Just don't ask h--it..." That was very nearly 'him'. "...any questions yet, I didn't program the information in. You can ask it to recite pi to a few million digits, though, that's fine."
The salarian is looking at Megatron. The asari are looking at Megatron. Tali realises belatedly they actually want something to happen and she might have just dumped him in it.
no subject
He's amused at Tali's outrage, however. As part of the Decepticon infiltration protocol, he's taken on many disguises: a tank, a gun, a space bomber. This will be the first time he can tack 'quarian performance art piece' to that list. With the tension in the air thickening, and the stares of the offended presidium residents becoming expectant, he figures he should say something to correspond with her story. After a few seconds of awkward silence, he opens his mouth...
... And let's out the rapid-fire, untranslated whirrs, chirps and deep thrums of neocybex. Electronic nonsense to organic ears. The first phrase ends, pauses, and then something that might sound like counting begins, if they're really paying attention. He wasn't sure if these geth had a language, but he doubts their visitors could tell the difference. If Tali's MID was still functioning to some degree, she may notice the translation begin to come through (in text, hopefully).
I am not an engineer, I hope you realize. One, two, three, four...
The count continues to around thirty.
Should I continue?
no subject
She doesn't know the noises Megatron's making, but she recognises them as some kind of mechanical language, and glances down at her MID surreptitiously as the salarian and asari recoil like he's pulled out a gun. Not an engineer. Got it.
"See?" she says airily, turning to the horrified aliens. "It's counting. Stop," she says to him, pretending her giant VI accepts voice commands, because why not?
"That sounds like a geth to me," says the salarian uncertainly, and Tali huffs an explosive, exasperated sigh.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was talking to an expert." She puts the affronted tone back on, and the salarian scowls at her. "Either go away or you can explain to the committee why this project is running late. I'm not taking a pay cut because of stupid questions."
Hopefully they don't ask which committee. But with that, she steps over to Megatron and starts fiddling with her omni-tool for all the world as if she's working on something vitally important to do with his programming. Muttering to himself, the salarian turns to leave, trotting to catch up with the asari who have already lost interest and walked off.
She manages to wait until they're out of earshot before bursting into soft, disbelieving laughter.
"I can't believe that worked."