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Where the universe is concerned, Olaf doesn't generally question its choices. Bad things happen. Good things happen. Strange things happen, but usually it all fits together in the larger pieces of the puzzle. It's why he doesn't really do so much more than shrug when instead of walking into Mike's bar, he walks into a party in full swing where he doesn't recognize a single guest.

It's not like this is the first time it's happened to Olaf. Generally, him recognizing someone in a crowd full of people is usually a start. Still, he has learned to go with the stranger events in the universe and no one's died as a result of this little left turn, so he grabs the joint he'd tucked away behind his ear and drifts into the throng of people, observing the summer-like nature of the party from the vibrant drinks to the decorations to the clothes everyone's wearing. Really, this could very well still be Auckland for all he knows and whatever he took earlier had been laced stronger than usual, but Olaf's sort of getting the feeling there's more to it than that.

With no shoes and a Hawaiian shirt fit for a king, Olaf feels like he fits right into the breezy, summer theme of the party around him. He might not know how he got here, but Olaf's never turned down a good party. This one holds a great deal of promise.

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There was an alarming crash as a previously charming table covered in saucers, cups, tumblers and two pitchers full of ice cubes and sweet tea, delicate containers of differing shades of granulated sugar each with its own tiny long stemmed spoon, and a carefully arranged floral centerpiece was tipped over and abruptly ceased being covered in any of those things.

Garrus Vakarian had been in the spotlight enough times, for reasons both awkward and dangerous, that there was a sort of reverse-thrill to it; a swift and overwhelming sensation of sinking downward as your spine tried to exit out of your back, that he never got used to or enjoyed.

The fact that he was in heavy grade blue and black armor probably didn't help matters. He'd felt conspicuous enough sneaking around the periphery, trying to figure out what kind of VR nightmare he was clearly trapped in, and how to snap out of it and get back to saving the day with Shepard. The Normandy had a lot of surprising spaces. He knew all of them by heart. An Earth hotel simulation room was not one of them. No simulation this advanced was.

"Sorry," he said, deep, rich but strangely unlayered voice raised along with two strange, short hands with five digits apiece. He'd fallen into a hedge and down a short flight of stairs so far, and he couldn't pick up a damn thing. His body was all wrong, all horribly wrong.

"Sorry. Sorry about that. Okay, Garrus," he continued more quietly to himself, pressing the broad, flat palms of his human hands against the sides of his angular but weirdly squishy human face, "you can wake up any time now."

Edited 2013-07-02 06:25 (UTC)

"Yeah, that is totally not going to work," April spoke up from where she'd been standing inconspicuously off to the side. In one hand was a sweaty glass of half-drunk lemonade, in the other was a sugar bowl, saved from disaster at the last moment.

"Go ahead, pinch yourself. Get a slap in. No dice, and I should know. I've tried it all and I've only been here like three hours."

Human female, youngish looking, he thought. Younger than Chawkwas by a lot, younger than Shepard by... an indeterminate amount. It occurred to Garrus that humans aged weirdly, when so much of their life experience was written in their demeanor and eyes more than anything else.

"Is 'pinching' supposed to work?" he asked doubtfully. Fleshy pink-tipped fingers with no talons didn't seem like they were going to accomplish much. Then again, when curled into a single fist, he'd seen human fingers do some impressive damage.

"I think barreling over a table would do the job, if physical stimulus was required. Do you know what this place is?"

"Fancy free hotel in an alternate universe," April replied. It was the best and most succinct answer she had. "Welcome, konnichiwa, bonjour. Killer tattoos you've got there. Think you could stand that table back up again?"

She gave the sugar bowl in her hand a little shake to indicate that she'd like to set it down.

"...Nmmh," Garrus intoned, managing to sound both perturbed and deeply skeptical, "why don't I like the sound of that?"

He knelt, with a little teetering as he figured out how balancing that worked, and easily righted the table. Strength wasn't an issue, his musculature was plenty strong, it just had no armor to it at all. Other than the armor he was wearing, but that was hardly the same.

"Although the 'free' part isn't so bad, I didn't exactly bring a lot of credits along. But that's assuming this isn't all a terrible hallucination, which I'm not-" he said, steadying the table before stepping back from it, gingerly, waiting for it to spontaneously flip over on itself again.

".....entirely convinced of."

"You don't like the sound of it because, one, it makes no sense, and two, it's too good to be true," April supplied as she carefully slid the sugar bowl back onto the righted table. She began to instinctively pick up the other scattered items, but was immediately waved away by two hotel staff who swooped in for clean up.

"So, what are you?" she asked the guy instead, stepping aside and motioning to the armor. "Some kind of space soldier?"

Garrus blinked, momentarily taken aback, then looked down at his armor. It was extremely well made, if patterned after standard issue Turian military. One of the more recognizable designs in the galaxy. He looked back up at the girl.

"An officer with the Turian military, yes. In the middle of a somewhat pressing situation, as it happens," he added, looking slightly agitated. He needed to figure out how to leave.

"What are you?"

"A high school student," April easily replied, even though it didn't apply so much just then.

"Sorry about the pressing situation," she added, and then pointed behind the guy to the far wall. "You should try a door and see if it gets you back there. To the pressing situation. It didn't work for me, but I was only taking a bathroom break when I got here, so not so pressing."

"A door," he echoed, and looked the way she pointed.

"...I will. Whether this is real or not, and I'm leaning toward 'not', I have to be somewhere. There's- Well. I have to be somewhere." It struck him that he'd skipped a step and he looked back to the little red haired human.

"Thank you for the suggestion. My name is Garrus Vakarian, by the way."

By the time the guy with the tattoos crashed into the tea tray table, Martha had managed to ditch the scrubs and even wash her hands thanks to the lovely if very pleasantly vague people at the front desk. She was therefore feeling slightly more herself, in the sense of being less uptight and more willing to adapt (outwith the disconcerting feelings of being here in the first place).

Apparently some people didn't adapt quite as well.

She had just finished a drink, and she was nearby, so she headed over to try to help the bloke up onto his feet. He sure as hell didn't smell drunk, for starters. "Are you all right?" she asked, surveying him for lacerations. "The glass didn't cut you or anything?"

"No," Garrus said, shaking his head a little and feeling unnerved at how unsupported his neck seemed, "and also, no, but thank you for the concern."

He managed to right himself, although he didn't shake off the assistance as it was offered. He needed it. His legs were all weird.

"You wouldn't happen to know if this is some sort of virtual reality prison, would you?"

"No, you're not all right?" Martha asked, because that usually wasn't the response she got to that question. Usually it was more like 'yes, but my body part feels funny', or 'I'm okay except for this pain in my blah-de-blah'.

She scrutinized him, almost on autopilot, but got hung up on the tattoos on his face. They weren't like any she'd ever seen or heard about, like Maori or other Polynesian ones. It made for an interesting puzzle. Maybe not an Earth culture, then.

"A girl I met said it's an alternate universe," she supplied. "It doesn't strike me as much of a prison, personally." Though perhaps it was like that telly programme with the Welsh village and not being a number.

"Well, some of the best prisons don't," Garrus pointed out, "I suppose it depends on the goal of custodians with regard to the captive population. But, ah."

He didn't know what to do with his hands. Ever time he gestured he was horribly distracted by how many fingers there were.

"...Anyway. Alternate universe you say? That sounds... That sounds problematic." She was human, that much was clear, she seemed to be not especially perturbed by the concept of alternate universes, which meant she might have been a student at an Asari university. They did exchange programs, although it always struck him as somewhat hilarious, sending fledgling adult humans who didn't even have fully formed brains into class with 200 year old Asari.

"Is that definitive? Does it explain spontaneously changing species?"

"True, I suppose it'd be an excellent psychological attack," noted Martha in mild agreement, though she really wasn't planning on dwelling on the notion lest she become rather paranoid. "But no, I do sort of doubt it, though I'm working on a hunch only, I must admit."

She took a sip of her drink, which was delightfully fruity, and pushed the mini umbrella to one side as it threatened to bop her in the nose. "They said alternate universe at the desk. Nothing about changing species, though I didn't really ask--"

She cut herself off, scrutinizing the man again. "Is that what's happened to you?" she asked, brows raised in curiosity. It explained the not-drunk issues with body movement, he was likely experiencing serious dysmorphia.

"As it happens, yes," Garrus sighed, rubbing a hand over his armor where it was missing its protective, if long-damaged, ridge.

"I'm a Turian. This is- being in a human body, I don't- This... I don't like this. Not that I don't like humans," he added quickly.

"Some of my best friends are human."

The armour did seem a bit over the top in general, in Martha's opinion, but she'd seen odder attire, and presumably it was functional. She wondered, vaguely, what the man...being, there, Jones, easy...looked like usually.

That is, until he said some of his best friends were human, and she started to laugh. The self-control issue was likely due to the drink. Or possibly because it was so damn classic, his statement. "It's different, I believe you," she said. "Sorry, it's just...I've heard 'some of my best friends' before."

"Ah," Garrus said, having sense enough to look faintly embarrassed, but only for a moment.

"You've spent time on the Citadel, then?"

"The citadel?" Martha asked, blankly, wondering if this Citadel was another prison, considering 'spent time'...maybe this alien guy was a a convict? He didn't seem particularly dangerous. She shook her head, a little wary. "I'm sorry, I haven't...it's just something that you hear, sometimes, from people around. Tories, usually, I mean. 'Some of my best friends are black!' before they reduce police brutality laws for the Met or something."

She paused, feeling a little sheepish, considering she'd actually broken one of the unwritten Doctor rules: your culture is not their culture. "I'm sorry, if you're not from where I'm from, that probably didn't make any sense."

"Almost none of it," Garrus confirmed with, all told, a fairly optimistic tone, "except the police brutality part. That's not a Turian concept, per se, but I was a member of C-Sec. Which is of course the police body on the Citadel, which you aren't familiar with. Ah, it's the galactic hub for all known space-flight-capable races."

That was a massively reductive explanation, which he got the feeling she would realize, but it seemed, with a certain universal gulf between their points of origin, the most expedient way.

"Is 'black' a clan qualifier? Something to do with skin pigmentation? Turians of course have some sense of colony pride, but we don't have a long history of... intraspecies conflict, I guess you could say. At least not the way I know humanity used to. Which, seeing as you're probably from the period of time I'm referring to in the past tense, is probably an immensely condescending thing for me to say." He could feel his human face pulling into expressions, but he had no real idea what it might look at. The humans he spent time with were rarely contrite.

"I apologize."

"Right," said Martha, slowly building the picture of the society he was talking about. Her eyes narrowed just a touch at the police brutality bit, and that he was a cop or an ex-cop, though she'd not had a problem with them much directly, thank god. Leo got stopped more than he should, and it was fucked up, that, but fortunately nothing else.

"Turians are your people, then," she said, face easing a little bit. "But you know humans, and you don't look a thing like this, usually. Right. Sorry to be sticking to basics but it's the easiest place to start; not exactly where my own time is at, or universe, or whichever it is. Forgive me for starting slow?"

She cleared her throat, watching him wince a little as he mentioned intraspecies conflict, and smiled wryly in response. "Would you believe I'm used to that sort of thing?" she said. "You're forgiven. Black's skin pigmentation, yeah, people with darker tones of skin, like me, to put it wayyy too simply. It's hard for me to picture a culture where there's not...intra-species conflict. Hard, not impossible."

"Well, when there's no abundance of conflict within one group, it's almost a guarantee there's plenty of it with an outside one. That, sadly, seems to be more or less a universal truth. So, you're from... Earth?" he ventured.

"Yeah," said Martha, with a wry smile. "London, if that means anything to you--no hard feelings if it doesn't, I promise. I take it you're very much not. From Earth."

Hell, he didn't even usually look like this, apparently. Clever girl, Jones. "And that the Turians therefore had outside conflict, unfortunately." Not to mention that likely humans had it now too, from what he'd said about the resolution of 'intra-species conflict'. She doubted it was with the Turians, though, at least in this instance--that kind of hate usually meant the guy would be seriously undone by turning into a human.

Edited 2013-07-07 21:10 (UTC)

He didn't mean to hesitate. The last thing Garrus wanted was to be the bearer of bad news, let alone catastrophic news, and anyway this was all a hallucination, but... He hesitated, and nodded a little, and wished he knew what human faces felt like when they were slipping into emotions so he could stop it from doing that. He ended up just looking slightly subdued.

"It does mean something. I know London," he said. He hadn't been there, but he had heard enough. London was one of the Earth cities the Reapers had staked out first, had burned in the first wave with Vancouver and Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro. It was still standing, sort of, as far as he knew, but if they didn't get to Earth soon, it would suffer the same fate as Cipritine. As every city on Palaven. The thought caused his unfamiliar heart to wrench around in his chest.

Martha's brow furrowed a little at his pause and tone--she could tell something was the matter, but not exactly what. Maybe a little of what, from context. "I take it it's not pleasant, where you're from," she said, taking this all very calmly. "Or when you're from."

"I've actually heard great things," he said in an attempt to be reassuring.

"But, ah. Well, let's just say this little detour is keeping me out of a very important fight that involves protecting every system, including Earth Systems Alliance Space. So whatever conflict may have existed in the past, we're all allies, as far as I'm concerned."

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legendthatwas - 2013-07-26 21:10 (UTC) - Expand

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