Hi, all. I figured I'd reward all of you with another chapter without making you wait another year. Next chapter should take longer to write since I have to write it completely from scratch. Hopefully it won't take too long. I might just make it shorter so there will be less of a wait. I don't know yet.
Some people told me that they weren't a fan of the geth dreadnought mission because it was unrealistic. Well, I thought this scene in-game was a little unrealistic so I tried to "fix" it a little. Still a little unrealistic, but hey. I sincerely doubt whether soldiers have heart-to-heart discussions in enemy territory. I'm sorry if my endeavor upsets anyone or if I failed miserably. The first part of the chapter is okay but I don't like the second because it was and feels a little rushed. Hopefully it doesn't seem that way to you guys / gals.
As to the last chapter... should've said this before, but Mass Effect just wouldn't be the same if it weren't for everyone's daddy issues. So, I gave my Shep some daddy issues of his own. Hope that's okay for you silent stalker-readers out there. ;)
One final thing... REVIEW please! I like feedback and so should you! :D
Chapter Nine :
Taking Small Steps
oOoOo
The UT-47 Kodiak caught the first rays of sunlight as it sped over one of Rannoch's seas, leaving a current of foam in its wake. Slowly, so slowly, Tikkun peered over the distant horizon and gripped the entire world in its fiery glow.
From his position by the window, Shepard observed the roiling waves below, the wide expanse of desert sand, and the distant rock formations, and he inwardly concluded that Tali's stories were right; Rannoch was surprisingly beautiful. Despite its harsh environment, it was one of the most beautiful planets he'd ever seen.
Eventually, the Kodiak passed over a gravelly stretch of shore, where the intermittent crash of waves upon rocks could be dimly heard. From there, the shuttle would only require a few minutes to reach the facility ultimately responsible for broadcasting the Reaper command signal to all planet-side geth. However, because the geth scanners would pick up their emissions if they travelled any further into the continent's interior, they would need to land somewhere nearby and travel the rest of the way on foot. The trek itself wasn't far; if they travelled at a steady pace, it would probably take them an hour at most.
The Kodiak drew to an abrupt stop over a relatively flat beach and, as it began to lower itself to the ground, the shuttle's thrusters threw up a sizeable amount of sand. But Flight-Lieutenant Cortez put her down gently, as he almost always did, and gave his passengers the "all-clear" signal that they'd been patiently waiting for. Garrus promptly threw open the door and leapt out with his primed M-92 Mantis in hand. Shepard quickly followed suit. He sprang from the Kodiak and immediately turned around, only to offer his gauntleted hand to Tali. Garrus, of course, rolled his eyes (a movement which Shepard didn't fail to notice) as Tali gratefully accepted his proffered hand and gracefully dropped to the ground.
With that accomplished, Shepard turned to his faithful pilot. "Any words of wisdom for us, Cortez?" he asked with a small grin, over the dull drone of the shuttle's engines.
Cortez didn't even look up; his dexterous fingers continued to dance uninterrupted across the Kodiak's holographic interface. Still relatively new to their death-defying missions, he chuckled uneasily. "Yeah," he replied, without skipping a beat. "Don't get shot."
Shepard nodded. "Sounds simple enough," he remarked, dryly. Then, he waved Cortez on, and the Kodiak's doors closed. Without wasting any time, the shuttle quickly regained altitude and darted away in order to await instructions at a safer location, kicking up another cloud of sand in the process.
"Stay safe down there," Cortez told them over the Normandy's private channel, before disappearing into the glare of the sun.
Shepard watched him go, and rubbed away the sand that had settled on his brow. He also tugged idly at the collar of his N7 armor. Once under Tikkun's harsh glare, he almost wished that the Systems Alliance had decided upon a lighter material for his ablative armor. Almost, because he knew the protection it offered outweighed everything else.
They had a long walk ahead of them, and he dreaded to know how hot it could get in his combat armor when Tikkun was settled directly overhead. He hoped they'd never find out, because he planned to reach the facility long before the planet really heated up.
All in all, it wasn't an altogether unattractive planet. It was actually quite pleasant. In fact, he could easily see himself living here by the sea, enjoying the heat . . . He'd travelled to many cold planets in his lifetime, and too many that were simply too dry to support any life. This one felt right.
By then, Shepard could fully feel his friend's disapproving gaze upon his back, and Garrus coughed for additional emphasis.
In response, Shepard simply offered a lopsided grin as he turned to confront his turian friend. "What can I say, Vakarian?" he jibed. "Unlike you, I'm a gentleman."
Garrus was examining their surroundings through his rifle's scope, but paused long enough to snort derisively at Shepard. "Who cares about gentlemen?" he scoffed. "Ladies love the scars, and I have plenty of those." That said, a turian grin spread slowly across his scarred face. "Funny thing is, I don't see half as many on you, Shepard."
Shepard frowned. As much as it pained him to admit it, Garrus was . . . well, right. The Lazarus Project had stolen many of his hard-won scars from him, leaving ugly facial scars in their place. And this, of course, only added to the list of reasons why he hated the organization. Fortunately, he had won some scars back since then, and rid himself of those demonic facial scars, but they weren't nearly enough to compensate for those lost.
Still, Shepard couldn't let Garrus — Garrus, of all people! — win. His sense of personal honor would never allow it. So, he grinned, and pretended to be unaffected by his troubling lack of scars.
"That's probably because I know when to duck," Shepard justified. "And I've never taken a rocket to the, you know, face."
"And lived," Garrus stressed, cheerfully. "Don't forget that part. Doesn't sound half as impressive when you do." He paused again, only to smirk at his old friend / rival. "I've taken a rocket to the face and lived."
Shepard stared at him dubiously and folded his arms across his chest. "Uh-huh. Well, I died, in case you've forgotten."
"And that's one hell of a blemish on your record, isn't it?" Garrus asked, smugly.
Stunned, Shepard's mouth moved, but he couldn't think of anything clever to say in response to that last jab.
With Shepard floored, Garrus grinned, triumphantly. "Vakarian, one; Shepard, zero!" he exclaimed.
Shepard didn't even dignify that with a reply. Instead, he turned to find Tali so he could commiserate with her about Garrus's ridiculous nature; likely something to the effect of 'Can you believe this guy?' His expression, however, immediately softened when he saw that she wasn't paying attention to their argument at all. She'd actually wandered a few meters away and sat squatting on the ground, carefully scanning the ground with her omni-tool. She seemed remarkably intent upon her work . . . and only then did Shepard realize the historical significance of the moment. (He almost wanted to kick himself for his stupidity.)
This moment marked the first occasion in which a living quarian stood peacefully upon Rannoch in over three centuries — that is, not counting Zaal'Koris's brief excursion planet-side (which had been anything but peaceful). More importantly (to him, at least), this was the first time Tali had ever stood upon Rannoch, and he couldn't quite imagine how she was feeling right now; if she felt overwhelmed, or whether the home-world had even lived up to her expectations. (He knew better than most that disappointment was a bitter pill to swallow.)
Several years may have passed since he commanded the original Normandy, but Shepard still remembered those late-night conversations in which Tali regaled him with tales of Rannoch and her people, evidently passed down from one generation to the next. (Even now, thinking about the earnest, mystified way in which she told them was enough to warrant a small smile.) Of course, he'd shared stories about Earth in return, things he'd both read about and been told by various crewmen he'd known, but he knew even then that nothing could compare to Rannoch. Not for her. Not ever.
He also remembered her father's promise. After Tali's trial and Rael'Zorah's funeral, while he held her in his arms as she sobbed, he swore to himself that he would do everything in his power to reclaim Rannoch for the quarian people. They deserved that much. He'd even build her a house, if she wanted. (He didn't know why she would, of course, seeing how he was much better at destruction than construction.) At the time, he figured that it was a natural course of action because she was a loyal friend and it was the least he could do for her. He should've known then that he was denying his own feelings, that there was more to it than friendship. Now that they were more than friends, he's never wanted to do something for someone else so strongly.
With this in mind, Shepard completely forgot about Garrus and their argument, which seemed trivial in comparison. Garrus, meanwhile, saw where his friend's attention was focused and turned away from them in order to give them some privacy, fearing that flirtatious banter would soon follow.
Luckily, nothing was further from Shepard's mind than that.
For a moment, he watched Tali as she fed a miniscule sample of soil into her omni-tool. Eventually, he sighed.
Although she was trying very hard to suppress it, her excitement was obvious; bubbling just below the surface. Moreover, it was contagious. It made him feel jittery and heady. Deep down, he felt torn; the man who saved the Citadel wondered if he was right to concede to her request, if she wasn't a danger to herself and to others in her current state, but Nolan never doubted his decision for a second. Her happiness was well worth it.
Despite their limited time-frame, he didn't blame her for being so preoccupied. In her place, he probably would be, too. But there was a twinge of remorse in knowing that he would have to interrupt if they were to get a move-on in their mission. (Was she smiling behind her visor? he wondered.) They still had a job to do, and it was critically important that they finish it as soon as possible, but . . . once it was over, he could prolong their stay on the planet's surface by putting off Cortez's inevitable pick-up. Once the mission was over, he'd gladly give her as much time as he could to become reacquainted with her home-world.
He'd give her all the time in the galaxy, if he could. Even then, he had a feeling that it wouldn't be nearly enough.
oOoOo
"Tali? You okay?"
"Hmm?"
Tali was so absorbed in her work that she almost didn't register Shepard's voice at all. Honestly, it wasn't what he said that mattered, what first caught her attention, but the genuine note of concern in his voice that did. So, she looked up from her omni-tool's scrolling screen, and saw that he was already approaching across the sand.
Because he'd opted to leave the Normandy without his helmet, the sand had already settled into the furrows of his face, thereby accentuating his wrinkles and whitening his hair, which somehow made him appear much older. Only his kind eyes remained.
"You okay?" he asked again, audibly concerned.
Tali didn't answer him immediately. Instead, her eyes were drawn back to her omni-tool's interface because it had stopped scanning altogether. Remarkably, the results of her scan were better than she expected. Evidently, the geth had taken better care of Rannoch than other species normally did, because there was a minimal amount of toxins in its soil and atmosphere. Less than any other potential home-world her people had come across in their 300 years of exile.
All in all, her results reflected the perfect set of conditions for re-colonization.
"I . . . I just need a second," she murmured, quietly. Then, almost to herself: "I can't believe it." Her voice was filled with a combination of shock and amazement. "I don't think it's really sunk in yet."
She glanced at Shepard again and noticed that he was looking at her expectantly. "The home-world," she said aloud, savoring the way her lips formed around the word. Strangely, saying it now felt different than the dozens of times she'd said it before. "My world."
Shepard subtly nodded towards Garrus, and Tali interpreted this gesture to mean he wanted to keep moving.
Understanding completely, she closed her omni-tool and stood up abruptly. Then, she began to trudge towards Garrus. Shepard walked beside her, with his M-99 Saber held loosely in his arms. Garrus saw them coming and took point. In this way, they began the long trek.
As they moved, she looked at the sky, which was a beautiful shade of blue, and realized then that there were simply no words to describe what she was seeing or how she felt. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make Shepard, or even Garrus, understand and this in itself was a depressing thought. But that didn't mean she wouldn't try.
"Look at the sky," she urged, cheerfully, before her attention fell upon a new subject — the oddly-shaped rock formations further inland. "And the rock formations? My ancestors used to write poems about them."
It was amazing . . . Simply amazing. She'd heard about these things from her elders, even seen some of them in old holos and vids, but only now was she really seeing them for the first time. And she was one of the first to do so in over 300 years. Ultimately, Rannoch didn't just live up to her expectations; it surpassed them.
Meanwhile, Shepard rewarded her enthusiasm with a sidelong glance and a small smile. "When we're done here, maybe you'll write a new one," he suggested.
It wasn't a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. Whether the poem would be a good one was another problem altogether.
"This is Rannoch, the world of our ancestors," she told him, still sounding awed. "Our bodies carried the seeds that spread the desert grass."
(In retrospect, she was as surprised as he was by her breach in language, using 'our' instead of 'my.' She didn't quite know why, or even when, she'd begun considering Shepard as one of her own people. He was anything but. She only wanted him to understand how happy she was, but she was incapable of putting it into words.)
Then, she turned to him and examined his face intently. "You've heard me say 'Keelah sel'ai'?" she went on, rhetorically. Only like a million times, she inwardly amended.
He nodded. "Of course."
She shrugged, helplessly. "Well, the best translation I can come up with is, 'By the home-world I hope to see someday.'"
They'd had similar conversations in the past about their translators' inability to key into certain words such as "bosh'tet." She'd even tried to explain them to him using other words but failed miserably. Mostly because she couldn't quite convey the words' importance when it was exclusive to quarian culture. Furthermore, she absolutely refused to try "bosh'tet."
Interestingly enough, there were also human words that Shepard's translator couldn't convey. He, too, tried to explain them, but without much success. (For example, he once attempted to describe "pizza," but in his definition he'd stumbled onto other words she didn't understand, like "cheese" and "dough," which only confused her and forced Shepard to give up on the endeavor completely.)
Luckily, this was not one of their failures. Shepard seemed to understand the phrase's incommunicable importance and brushed his hand against hers to prove it. When she looked at him, she saw that he was staring at her with an unusually affectionate look upon his face. "Looks like you're seeing it today," he told her, gently.
Tali nodded, and then stopped suddenly because something behind him caught her eye. She stepped away from him, towards the bank of a small trickling stream, and raised her hands to form some kind of boxy gesture with her fingers.
Shepard must have stopped, too, because she couldn't hear his footsteps anymore.
"The living room window will be right . . . here," she said, quietly. And for a brief moment, she could see it: Her house on the home-world. It was admittedly small but it was perfect. When she woke up in the mornings and looked out the window, the first thing she saw would be the sea. . . .
"Something I should know?" Shepard asked slyly, with a hint of amusement in his voice.
"I just claimed the land," she admitted sheepishly. "I know it doesn't mean much, but once this is over, I'll have a home."
(With that, Shepard looked around and put the landscape to memory, making a mental note to mark the property for future reference once they returned to the Normandy.
Then, a thought seemed to occur to him and he frowned.)
"The quarians have spent centuries living as nomads," he told her, slowly. "Do you really think you can go back to living in one place?"
Tali considered the question. Then, she bowed her head and intertwined her fingers — a sure sign of anxiety.
The way he asked seemed to imply there was something he wasn't telling her, like he had some personal stake in mind. And the more she thought about it, the more she understood. Like her people, Shepard was a nomad, too. He'd already admitted to never knowing a place he could call home. Not on Earth, not on any colony or planet they'd visited, nor any ship he'd served on . . .
But like her people, she hoped that he could learn to settle down, too . . . with her, preferably. Then, they could learn together.
"We have gotten used to carrying our homes around with us," she conceded, nervously. (Shepard didn't realize, but she wasn't just referring to her people.)
Hearing that, Shepard walked to the water's edge and bent over, obviously searching for something in the streambed. She watched him, curiously. Eventually, he fished out a smooth stone which he seemed to like, because he then came back and handed it to her.
"Then, here," he said, placing the stone in her hand and curling her fingers around it.
Tali understood his intentions and smiled widely, although it was a real smile he wouldn't be able to see. "Well, that's a start," she said, brightly.
Then, they began moving again. Shepard's eyes were intent on the path ahead, where Garrus eventually gave a signal. Beyond this point, Tali realized, they required limited communication because they were approaching the geth facility and there was a higher risk of running into enemy patrols.
Before going in, however, Shepard shot her a familiar smile, which was both confident and reassuring.
"Let's go," he said, before passing Garrus and taking the lead.
Wordlessly, Garrus and Tali followed suit.
Acknowledgements :
1. Tattoo'd : Many thanks, my Minion. It will take some effort, but I will try to rebuild what I lost. :)
2. Tom80 from BSN : Thank you for understanding, my friend.
3. Tali Zorah Fan : Yes! Romans, join my legion and soon I'll have enough minions to march upon Canada and force BioWare to write the ending Mass Effect deserved! Mwahaha- ...Eh? Too much Total War for me, I think. But I thank you all the same. :)
4. Chidoriprime : Thank you for the support, my friend. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. I'm just hoping my family will be able to get through this rough time. It really sucks that I can't be there for them during the week because I live in the college dorms and can only go home to comfort them on weekends. My mom especially since she feels like the entire world's given up on her. But... do what you can, right?
That is a kind offer, and I really appreciate it, but I think I have recreated most of my lost outlines already. Strangely, I was inspired to do this by listening to Fringe videos on YouTube... all in one night! I remember there being 31 or so chapters in my old outline, and my new one only rounds up to 29, but I'm sure I'll figure out where I went wrong. Sadly, I haven't gotten to your recommendations yet. I WILL get to those eventually... I promise! If I don't, you have my permission to stab me with a fork. Only... not too hard, please. Anyway, thanks again. :)