legionworld | I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

Entry tags:

I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

Who| Garrus and Shepard
What| YOU HAD A FISTFIGHT IN THE CAFETERIA??? ~~You'd better have won.~~
Where| The hallway and then someone's quarters?
When| Post mess hall fight and Kid Q meeting
Warnings/Notes| Probably nothing, will edit if that changes

"You're never going to believe what Archangel did," says the staffer, and Shepard pauses halfway through a pull-up. The only thing that naturally travels faster than light is gossip.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure I will," she doesn't say...though it would probably have been a more effective bit of diplomacy if she'd bothered to slap on her poker face rather than close her eyes and sigh.

Long story short, Shepard's now standing outside Garrus's quarters, in possession of a scant handful of facts, the most salient of which being that he had a fight with another Legionnaire and nobody's dead. At least the latter makes for a refreshing change of pace, though picking a fight with an ally strikes her as out of character for the new and improved post-Sidonis Garrus. Shepard knows that technically she's not his CO anymore and shouldn't be getting directly involved, but she also knows Garrus, and if he's decided he doesn't respect the Legion leadership, she's going to have to weigh in. Best to get the facts--and to see whether the turian discipline or the Vakarian rebelliousness won the battle in Garrus's head during his chewing out--before deciding how to play it.

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She isn't going to have to look all that hard to find him. He's already back in his quarters, settling in after getting a once over from the medical staff and a lecture on protocol from Kid Quantum. He'd taken off his shirt, started the sonic shower, and had begun to inspect the damage for himself when his door chime rang.

It's pretty apparent from the moment the door slides open that it's been a long day. His left forearm is wrapped in bandages and covered with a compression sleeve, and there are angry, dark blue bruises blossoming on his right side, a little below his sternum. Fortunately, that seems to be the extent of the injuries - unpleasant, but ultimately superficial.

More than anything, he just looks tired - though that quickly becomes a little more apologetic, almost embarrassed, when he sees Shepard standing there.

"I take it you heard about the little incident in the mess hall."

Shepard's eyes flick to the injuries. A fracture and some bruising is nowhere near the worst she's ever seen on him--she firmly pushes the memory back down as the image of Garrus lying motionless in spreading pool of blue pops to the front of her mind--but still...

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," He assures her. "Some deep bruising, but that's about it."

Considering Rico was armed and he wasn't, that's a fairly lucky break.

Shepard nods. The Medbay staff would never have let him out on his own recognizance if it had been serious, but she still feels a little rush of relief. For all she keeps reminding herself Garrus isn't on her crew anymore, a part of her won't stop insisting he's one of hers.

"Mind if I come in?" She hangs far enough back to make it clear that 'no' is an acceptable answer.

"Be my guest." Garrus replies, stepping out of the way and ushering her inside. As far as he was concerned she didn't really need to ask. He was one of hers, and after everything they'd been through a shift in the change of command wasn't going to change that.

His quarters are well-kept aside from the messy, un-made bed - a habit he had dropped pretty much as soon as he was out of a barrack because it seemed like pointless effort if he was just going to sleep in it again anyway.

"So," He says, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you probably want an explanation for all of this?"

For pity's sake, Garrus, making your bed takes ten seconds.

"Yeah, I do." Shepard leans against the wall, folding her arms. "You're not the playground fight type, Garrus. What happened?"

Eh.

"Playground fights don't usually involve dirty cops threatening to break a kid's kneecaps." Garrus says darkly.

That synopsis puts a new spin on things.

"...Not Beeny, was it?" She's dubious. America is the only actual peace officer Legionnaire Shepard knows of, and while she sits way over on the far end of the law and order spectrum even by Shepard's dutiful standards, she's certainly not dirty, nor would she have threatened a kid.

"No," Garrus shakes his head. "Same uniform though. He's new I think. Goes by Arbitraitor, but as far as I can tell his real name is Dredd."

Fitting. Not because Rico scares him, but because of course the guy who swings his weight around like low-rent street muscle has a name to match.

"Apparently he thought Kubo's performance was an unlawful assembly and instead of warning him or writing him up, he went with public humiliation. Things went south from there, and by the time I stumbled into all of this he was about to club Kubo with a nightstick."

It isn't hard to pick up on the disgust in Garrus's voice. As they'd discussed, the Legion's policy of accepting kids didn't sit well with him. Too many ways for it to go wrong and too many threats for a child to be expected to protect themselves and their teammates. But of all the possible dangers, he didn't expect that the teammates would be a part of that list.

"Even if the lunchtime shows needed a permit, Kubo's completely harmless. You think that's why this Dredd guy targeted him?" It sounds like the kind of shakedown someone would try on Omega or the very worst parts of the Citadel, and her disgust mirrors Garrus's. Shepard takes a dim view of authorities using their position and the letter of the law to harass people, and she's shot a few crooked cops at various points in her galaxy-spanning escapades. If anything she feels even less guilt about them than about the piles of mercenaries she's also killed. The mercs might be trying to murder her, but at least they aren't playing at being the good guys while doing it.

"Maybe," Garrus shrugged, "but honestly, I don't think it would have made any difference if he'd run into someone else. Apparently Kubo wasn't the only person he's given a hard time."

His talk with Kid Quantum had left him with the impression that at least one complaint had crossed her desk before Garrus wound up in her office.

"No, I think Dredd was just looking for someone to step on and Kubo was the first person who talked back."

Because while he's certainly seen things like this on Omega, this wasn't a shakedown. A shakedown gets you something. Money, supplies, access to a building, a front - whatever it is, there's something you're gaining from it.

Dredd didn't get anything out of this except the satisfaction of grinding someone into the dust with the weight of his 'authority.'

Fair enough, and Shepard nods. Garrus was there and his instincts are good, especially after the informal crash course on reading humans he'd gotten when he'd signed on with the Normandy the first time.

"Okay, walk me through. It didn't just go zero to nightstick."

She hopes.

His informal crash course on reading humans and Shepard's handy primer on how not to jump the gun and do something you're going to regret.

... not that he had the opportunity to apply that here, but ...

"It was already at nightstick by the time I got there."

Sorry to disappoint, Shepard.

"The first thing I heard was Rico telling Kubo that he wasn't breaking his kneecaps out of respect for the Legion." Garrus said, disgust creeping into his voice. "Kubo called him out for the bully he was, and ... ah, well, Dredd didn't take it well."

As much as he respects the kid for sticking up for himself, this wasn't the fight to pick. Probably no way of knowing that ahead of time, but hopefully Kubo's going to learn how to handle guys like Rico a little better in the future.

"I managed to throw a barrier between them before the nightclub could connect, and I warned Rico to back off. When he tried to accuse me of obstructing justice, I told him the Legion brass was going to look at it differently."

"I was hoping appealing to his sense of self-preservation would give him second thoughts," Garrus's mandibles shifted slightly as a hand came up to scratch his chin. "No dice."

For a moment, a smile tugs at Shepard's lips when Garrus explains how Kubo stood up for himself. If they have to have children in the Legion, they could do a lot worse than that kid...while the new Judge could not have done worse picking a target. Kubo's not what anyone would call scary in a fight, but a whole lot of other Legionnaires have got that ground covered, and the vast majority of them share Shepard's opinions on people who punch down.

"Okay, so far, so good." Some people just refuse to be talked down, and she can't fault a teenager or Garrus for not pulling it off, especially since it sounds like the only thing that would have appeased the new guy would have been groveling.

"Why'd it turn into a fistfight? You have trouble keeping the barrier up?" Even the weakest biotic should be able to withstand a few melee hits, the energy involved trivial next to that of a mass accelerator bullet, but Garrus's new powers work oddly enough by biotic standards that Shepard doesn't want to make assumptions.

Garrus definitely respected the kid's guts, and he was glad to see that he wasn't the only one who stepped in when things got ugly. It went a long way towards convincing him that, by and large, the Legion are people he'd trust watching his back.

"Not exactly," Garrus replies. "When his attention was on me and there was some space between him and Kubo, I dropped the barrier. I figured that having all eyes on him now that this was becoming a scene was going to keep him in check long enough for him to realize this was a bad idea.

"Maybe I was giving him a little too much credit," Garrus admits, "I thought I was dealing with someone like Harkin - a lot of big talk, but no bite when you actually had him backed into a corner."

And obviously, he'd misjudged that -- something he was still kicking himself for.

"When he actually took a swing I didn't exactly have time to measure a response, and the powers are still new. Reflexes kicked in and I caught him under the chin with a knee. He wasn't out, but it stunned him long enough that I could put a bubble over him and call it in."

Edited 2017-07-27 06:40 (UTC)

"Fair enough." Shepard herself probably would have decked the guy under the same circumstances. She nods at the bruise decorating the center of Garrus's chest. "That wasn't the end of it."

"Not exactly." Garrus replies with a chuckle.

"As soon as he went down I called for back-up. I figured it'd be better to get more hands on this, get some official attention and hopefully get official punishment."

Big shock coming from him, he knows.

"Of course, he pulled out his comm and told everyone that it was under control. Before I could let everyone know that he was actually the problem, he got up and walked through my barrier like it wasn't even there."

He gestures towards the bruising.

"We kind of picked up where we left off from there."

"Well, hell." Shepard can't help but admire the audacity of calling in an all-clear when you're the one causing the problem in front of a roomful of witnesses...and lesson learned on the guy's powers, she guesses. "How'd it finally shake out?"

That had been his reaction too. He'd almost admire the guts that took if the guy behind it wasn't such a massive asshole.

"Eventually, some other people stepped in. Beetle broke it up initially, then someone else came in as the voice of authority. Freelancer, I think."

"Either way, Rico calmed down pretty quickly. I'd want to say he realized the odds were against him, but he was too confident for that. I think he figured the higher-ups were going to see it his way."

Shepard gives a sharp laugh. "The senior Legionnaires might be kids, but they're not idiots."

She shakes her head, pushing off from her spot against the wall to pace. "I don't get it, Garrus. How does a career cop misread a room that badly?"

"I didn't say it made sense." Because to anyone with a hint of awareness it didn't. That's just the thing though - he's not sure that Rico has that.

"Best case, I think he's gotten to used to everyone playing by his rules." Garrus replies, scratching at his chin while his mandibles shifting thoughtfully. "If we're being honest though, I think he's just plain delusional."

"Oh, great," Shepard says in the tone of voice she usually reserves for responding to 'the Council is calling, Commander.' "Guess we get to find out just how desperate for warm bodies the Legion really is, huh?"

"I'd agree, but something tells me we already know the answer."

He's just praying to whatever happens to be listening that they get the message sooner rather than later, and put Rico in a cell until this whole thing blows over.

"At least he's pretty good in a fight," Shepard says dryly, glancing at Garrus's injuries again. "How hard to you have to hit to bruise a turian, anyway?"

"It's a little easier when you have a nightstick, but yes. He can definitely hold his own."

If Garrus seems a little bit rankled, it's only because he is. The fight was a lot closer than he wanted it to be, especially considering just how badly he'd wanted to wipe that smirk off of Rico's face.

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I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

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