Cleanliness Is Godliness [Tali]

Tagged : Tali | Words : 817 | Notes : Not my greatest starter ever, but it should do.

”Shepard got you doing heavy lifting now, Vakarian?”

The turian stopped short, beady eyes shifting up from the giant box of…who knew what that he currently carried in his talons, and not without effort. He didn’t know what was in the box, but whatever it was, they should probably consider loading it in the guns and using it against the Reapers. What – or who, rather – he found staring at him over the edge of the box was a human, a good eight inches shorter than Garrus, whom Garrus knew he should probably recognize. He was sure that his long pause and quick clear of his throat was enough to inform the human that Garrus did not recognize him well enough to remember a name. Despite all the talk about human genetic diversity, Garrus would never be able to see the big differences.

Oh, and he was supposed to answer, wasn’t he? He glanced down at the box again, trying to shift it under his arm if he was going to have to talk. ”Uh, no, not unless he wants to kill all of the fish in that aquarium by dumping in a few dozen different chemicals. Or maybe he wants to buff off EDI,” Garrus told the man blandly but good-humoredly, tapping a talon against the top of the box. ”This is…Tali’s box. Some cleaning materials she needs for a special project.” With how much seemed to be in the box, Garrus wondered if she was secretly plotting to scrub the whole ship instead of the singular room that she’d been granted by Shepard as a clean room. The human apparently wondered the same thing, as he raised one bushy eyebrow at the box. It was almost possessively that Garrus pushed the box under his arm a little further under the scrutiny. Apparently, it was also his job to avoid standing and holding an awkward conversation with the vaguely familiar man. He settled his gaze again. ”Tali was a little excited to get started, so if you’ll excuse me…” Assuming the man wouldn’t mind, Garrus trudged easily past him, taking one long glance behind him as he continued down the hallway to make sure he didn’t suddenly remember who the face belonged to. He still had no idea.

He’d returned the box to both talons, thinking the contents would eat right through the floor if he spilled them, by the time he reached the various passageways of the command deck and found the small portal leading back to the location of said special project that Tali had recruited his help to complete. Garrus remembered the room from before the Normandy had been impounded. The other Cerberus operative, Jacob Taylor – whose best asset was not being Miranda Lawson – had spent most of his time there, constantly “pumping iron” (as the humans called it) and keeping watch over the weapons in the armory. Now it was relegated to serving as little more than a storage closet, a good portion of its previous space having been repurposed as a portion of the frigate’s expansive war room. It was just as well that someone use the space for some purpose, and Garrus could think of no greater purpose than allowing Tali to tear out of her suit from time to time, as bad as living in such a personal cage sounded by the way she and other quarians described it. Garrus couldn’t call much of what he’d eaten in his life the best food in the galaxy, especially since turians seemed better at preparing rations than actual food, but he would still consider anything he ate, from talon to mouth, to be better than having to live off of the paste that quarians filtered from their suits and into their mouths. The thought of a constant intake of processed meals almost made Garrus’ spine plates shiver. If anything could give Tali a chance to enjoy such a simple part of life as food while she was on the Normandy, Garrus would have gladly taken apart the whole ship, much less agreed to help her sterilize a clean room.

He gingerly kicked a small box out of his way and finally lowered the box to the metallic floors, glad to have it out of his hands. His head swiveled, looking for the quarian, his one loyal friend in the world aside from Shepard and Liara…and sometimes Wrex...to see if she’d started without him. She would be hard to miss in such a small room – Garrus almost felt that if he moved his arms, he could hit any one of the walls that surrounded him. Still, he thought he heard her clanking around somewhere, with Tali probably close enough to hear him. ”Tali? I should never wonder how you have the strength to hold that shotgun anymore… Is it quarian tradition to carry around a decade’s worth of cleaning materials in a box?”

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; background-color: #171818; padding:20px; border-top: 10px #171818 solid; border-bottom: 10px #171818 solid;] Past the point of no return no going back now {WORDS } 1237 {TAGGED } Garrus {WEARING} ...I should change this to 'muse' or something...I WONDER WHAT SHE'LL BE WEARING *herp derps* Earth, the planet of Shepard, a good friend of hers had just been destroyed. She was an admiral of the quarian flotilla. The Reapers had started their hands on campaign to remodel the galaxy as it was known. And absolutely none of that was important at the moment. At that moment, nothing but a giddy feeling was swirling through the brain of one Tali’Zorah vas Normandy. For what might have been the fiftieth time, she stepped up to the door that would allow her access to the small section Shepard had given her permission to re-purpose, and typed on the keypad. Instantly the doors shifted to grant her that access, to which Tali simply stood there, her hands propped up on her hips, and savored the small space that was going to be hers. All hers. It was small, sure, but in her eyes it was already a little piece of heaven. That was, if Garrus ever got there with the cleaning supplies he had so graciously offered to get. …Or she had forced him to get. Perhaps both were correct, but at the moment her head was spinning so fast from her excitement that she could hardly focus on that topic to even remember quite how that had all gone. And once more her eyes flickered to the right of her visor to see the time, and the small timer she had set to run underneath it. Perhaps it was a bit obsessive to actually time how long it took Garrus to get the supplies she had sent him after, but hey, she only got her own clean room on a human ship once in her life. She had to make it count, didn’t she? “Come on Garrus!”, came the slightly agitated voice of a woman acting more like an excited five year old. Her two phalanges tapped at her hips while her thumb anchored them there, her toes tapping along to the same beat. Drum, look at the clock, drum some more. That had become her routine in her nervous excitement. Finally though, Tali actually stepped inside her future release from her torturous suit trap and allowed the door to slide shut behind her. As if on command, her brain was once more in action. “Perhaps…” Muttering to herself under her breath, Tali turned to peer out the tiny little window that was at eye level, showing her some of the outside world, then glanced down at where the same little keypad on the inside looked. A small “hum” under her breath came out as little more than static from her mouthpiece, before she tapped at her omni-tool to start it up. If this was going to be a clean room, there was going to have to be a way to really make sure she could filter out who could get in. And she sure wasn’t going to just have anyone in her room! Sliding her fingers around on the flickering orange orb that encompassed her arm, Tali started on the process of synching her omni-tool with the keypad and reprogramming it to only open when given a certain series of commands. One that only she would know…and only she could give to people that she wanted. That didn’t include Jack, either, or Miranda. Tali was convinced inside that there was diseases just radiating off of them, waiting to permeate anything that dared to come in contact with them. There were only two non quarians she would think of giving the ability to come freely to, though, and that was Garrus and Shepard. More Garrus than Shepard, too. She didn’t see him coming down to volunteer playing a maid in order to help her out. Swiping her clock to the side, Tali tapped at her omni-tool to get music going into her visor and in particular, her ears. Bobbing her body slightly to the beat of the music she had heard once in the Flux and hacked to download onto her own omni-tool, Tali started tapping at the keypad to put in the proper command, rewarded when the door slid open. With a wide grin behind her mask, she typed in the same command, watching the doors quickly shut and seal once more. With an eager little dance on her three toes, Tali made a circuit around her small quarters in a matter of seconds, before quitting and returning to the keypad. And out of curiosity, she started to type in different commands to see if it would work. Each time, she was rewarded with a sharp techno-y sound of denial, as well as a whirring of the doors that refused to budge. Leaving the door open, Tali trotted off to a different part of the ship, before pulling her omni-tool out and typing in her command to close it, seeing if she could do so from a different location. Instantly she heard the whirring of the doors, before trotting from her place of hiding and back toward the doors. Still, out of the side of her visor she saw that in closing the door, she had trapped a certain someone in there. A certain someone with the cleaning supplies to start this process of being able to finally eat something that wasn’t paste! Eagerly typing in the command, she waited a second for the doors to slide open, before dismissing her omni-tool and quickly jumping to where the door had opened to allow her access, her hands on her hips. His words were silly too! “Do not be ridiculous, Garrus! If we carried around all of the cleaning supplies that we actually have, it would take much more than one ship to fit it all.” As eager as a young girl in a doll shop, Tali rushed forward until she had reached Garrus and the box that he had just placed on the ground, hardly noticing that she barely had any space to maneuver once actually inside. “Do you know how long it took you?”, she teased (despite her voice having a lack of amusement for that very reason) while joyfully opening the box and opening the lid. “I thought I was going to wither away and be only old Tali-bones before you returned!” And after the box lid had been pulled off, Tali leaned forward until most of her upper body was suddenly lost in a sea of cleaning supplies, all packaged with care inside the box. Bringing a muffled “It is so beautiful!” {NOTES}I like goofy/silly Tali Also...italicized words are totally going to be highlighting her accent XD

table by CALIFORNIA DREAMING of CAUTION 2.0, lyrics by Evan’s Blue

Tagged : Tali | Words : 595 | Notes : Gotta get back in the Garrus groove...

It didn't take long at all for Tali to emerge from somewhere else in the room, looking like she fit much more easily within its confined walls than Garrus' turian stature. In fact, it felt like he was tucked back in some tiny, makeshift sniper's nest like the ones he'd crammed into back on Omega just to give himself the perfect vantage point. Even thinking about those sniper's nest made his legs cramp horribly... Tali's clean room didn't offer the same view, but he could stand up, which instantly made the whole arrangement better. Garrus couldn't think of anything Turian physiology hated more than bent knees. Maybe for the next time he got stuck sniping in a terrible, uncomfortable spot from the rear with the ground team, which happened all too often, Tali could help him build a "nest room" in return for his helping with this clean room that he could get Vega to carry from place to place. Sounded like a good idea, if anyone asked Garrus.

As Tali answered his question, Garrus peered around the floor to make sure he didn't step on anything and stepped closer with a knowing "hmm" in response. "Well, then, do you have a...cleaning supply fleet in the Flotilla?" While he realized Tali was exaggerating - probably - Garrus still thought it was reasonable that the Flotilla had reason to designate a fleet for their desperately needed cleaning supplies, given what could happen should any quarians be without the proper sterilization should something go wrong with their enviro suits. Plus, Garrus couldn't imagine anyone but Admiral vas Quib-Quib commanding the cleaning ships. Who else was qualified for such a...noble position among the quarian fleet?

Giving Tali the room she needed as she dug through her box, Garrus just watched her, mandibles turning up in curiosity at her eagerness. Turians didn't get this excited over cleaning supplies...a new gun or new uniform, maybe, for the ones who pursued the military life, and for the others, excitement came from...well, Garrus didn't actually know, because all he had ever known was the military life. He'd need to ask his sister, once she hopefully made it off Palaven, what she did for fun. A little amusement flicking at his mandibles, Garrus leaned against the doorway as Tali "complained" about how long it had taken him. "I'm surprised I didn't have to stop by the infirmary for my back after carrying that thing. My bones were the ones in danger," he told her, good-naturedly, as she...disappeared almost to her hips in the pile of cleaning supplies. Garrus found his eyes searching what was left of her from there down before he turned away briskly and cleared his throat. Seemed quarians had nice lower bodies even when turned upside down in a cardboard box. Suddenly, he became interested in something out the door, so he could look everywhere but at his rummaging quarian friend.

Well, he didn't want to make the situation even more awkward by not trying to continue the conversation, even if he wasn't sure she could hear him. Peering out the small window in the center of the door, he spoke up again. "So, what's the plan for the room?", he asked, before stepping the two feet of room he had to his left and rubbing a talon across a part of the wall, peering at it from floor to ceiling. "You know what it needs? Something defensible. You could make this part of the wall a cyberwarfare suite that could outperform the one EDI commands."