Entry tags:

!complete, garrus vakarian, pete wisdom

Who: Wisdom & Vakarian
What: Calibrations Strategic discussions on preparing for an alien invasion
When: This morning
Where: The Agency
Rating/Warnings: Low
Status: Complete!

Vakarian’s office was hardly recognizable - and cluttered, by a lot of things. A weapon modification bench imported from the Citadel, cases of rifles and pistols, various ammos and upgrades. The dormant space station had plenty, the Normady had one he worked on when he was boarded, but there was a necessity to have one here. And with the wires, tools, flexible lights and scraps of stainless steel, it looked like someone was walking into some kind of bizarre workshop - but he’d taken it upon himself to make sure every firearm was properly calibrated (to avoid jamming during shit times, you can thank him later) and equipped with the proper upgrades for maximum efficiency.

His jacket was off, sprawled in his chair, and his rumpled sleeves were rolled to the elbows. Attached to his head and right over his eyes was his visor, and his omni-tool was equipped but not activated; he’d turn it on for scanning later to double-check his work.

But the room had some personal touches, it really did. Mostly on the walls. A couple photos taken during the wedding and in the surrounding timeframe, because in that gooey human center was a complete sap, and the only picture of Bigby he had up was one with his princess of a wife.

He guessed he needed some kind of memento of that damn thing, but he wasn’t about to frame a picture of just the cat. Who the hell did that?

The day Vakarian framed a photo of his pussycat and stuck it on the walls of the workspace, that would be the day Wisdom planned an intervention for him. His own office wasn’t anything grandiose either, the personal touches limited to a couple photos, tokens from Lina, and a gold coin he’d pilfered from Hawke’s discovered treasure stash (one void of the man’s spunk, thank you), mostly because he didn’t spend a lot of time in it - clandestine operations meant that he didn’t really toil away at a computer all day, he was out in the field a lot; besides, that particular unit’s existence was kept very hush-hush anyway, not even talked about unless you had a very strict ‘need to know.’

Well. Right now he needed coffee, and he was going to assume Garrus did too. The stuff from the breakroom was shit, so on the way into the Agency he’d stopped at a small mom-and-pop cafe distinctly lacking anything sparkly on the menu to get two large to-go cups of the good stuff, nice and robust.

He brought the nectar of the gods offering to Vakarian’s office, standing in the doorway, silent as a cemetery and watching him in that stealth way. There may have been an eyebrow raise.

“What’s all this, now?”

“Guns,” Garrus plainly explained. Putting it simply, sure, but that was the gist - the ‘boxes’ were technically more like stainless steel crates, and the firearms themselves were individually and protectively cased from within. Others held the other pieces of tech, compartmentalized for easy findings. There was so much more on the Citadel. It could arm about a hundred Agencies and then some, but they did the best they could bring it cover. The other shipment was still on Shepard’s ship.

His eyes finally peeled away from his current project - an M-8 Avenger - and followed his initial greeting with a crooked grin. “Are both for you or is one for me? Don’t know how long those spontaneous night cravings are keeping you up at night, but I’ll gladly take one if you can spare it.”

Because, yes, the shit in the breakroom was equivalent to weak gasoline someone pissed in. The finest for government workers.

“I was feeling generous, so I decided to get you your daily dose of caffeine,” Wisdom responded, handing over one of those lidded paper cups. He edged further into the office, in order to find a place to rest his bum so that he wouldn’t be disturbing anything. “Alright, but so as for these guns - “

He finally found a surface to lean against, which was the desk, taking a look around at the various crates and offerings - if was like a wholesale weapons supplier in here, and yet Pete wasn’t even the least bit concerned. It was really just another Tuesday in the OC. “Are we going to war, and no one bothered to inform me?”

If so, then the principle still applied. Another day, another catastrophe - such was the nature of their lives.

How nice of him. Garrus wasn’t one to reject the morning nectar anyway, he took it gratefully and sipped. Hot but not searing to the point his mouth burned, and much better than the crap readily available to them. “Actually,” he said, lips pressed into a tight line as he surveyed the the room - the definition of an orderly clusterfuck. “You’re exactly right.”

He hadn’t had a chance to tell Wisdom, now that he recalled. Most of his time was spent out in a different system, taking everything and anything they could use - sometimes he’d spend a couple sol days out there. Then it was unloading, taking inventory, actually working on the weapons. The stubble shadowing his face was primarily because his time was so entangled in this mess. And maybe a little stress.

“Alien invasion in the horizon. Massive sentient spaceships wanting to commit genocide and annihilate the planet, and there’s a lot to do. This is just the beginning stages of preparation - making sure everyone who can hold a gun and pull a trigger has something powerful.” It’d probably be a lot of on foot henchmen too - the husks, the brutes (massive fuckers), the banshees, marauders (think of Reaper-like Turians), cannibals. “Happy 2016, by the way.”

Wait, wait. What the bloody fuck was Vakarian even on about? Someone said alien invasion and that usually took a few moments to process. Because as used to the bullshit as they all were, this was just something that still managed to blindside the likes of Pete Wisdom.

“Sentient spaceships,” he repeated, sipping on that coffee a little too fast so he ended up burning his tongue a bit but it was hardly paid attention to. “And genocide, even better. At least, conveniently, the fabric of our reality has equipped us with weapons to use to fight back. Suppose that was generous of metaphysics,” Wisdom toasted the air with his coffee cup, yes, your sweetness brought a tear to the eye, Orange County. “Sounds like it could potentially be a right mess if it’s not organised correctly though. You need help in that regard?”

Of course he planned to chip in with a space gun or whatever the fuck these were. But tactical sorts of things, strategies, those were all his strong suits too - he ran MI:13 in the land of dreams, and planned an operation to successfully take out Dracula’s invading army among other things. This was conquerable too.

“I’d take all the help I can get,” Garrus admitted, rubbing a tender spot on the back of his neck. He hadn’t been sleeping well or right. There were knots and aches in the most random of places. “It’s Shepard’s operation, mainly, and I know the objective right now is to import as many resources possible from out there to here.”

The Reaper War involved power coming from every corner - high in the air, on foot, on top of buildings. Small teams would need to be formed, medi-gel and healers on standby, and while that all seemed like enough, there was a quiet voice of cynicism that said otherwise. It was easy to pep up some team spirit or the fuck ever, but until people saw the exact thing they were facing…

He suppressed a sigh and for now, took a break from the modifications. A crate seemed like a good place to sit anyway. “We’ve got blueprints to this superweapon we built in the dreams. It took us awhile to make it, took a lot of people to make it, but if we can get it done before time runs out, we’ll be fine. It ended in the war there.”

Of course there was a superweapon. Wisdom couldn’t say he was exactly surprised. “Fine is a relative term, isn’t it?” He chuckled with dry amusement, cynicism and wry humour there. “But when it comes to genocide, I’ll take it. I’d rather be fine than not. So this superweapon and the blueprints - “

He didn’t know Shepard as well as he knew Garrus and, well, out of the two of them he’d rather just stick with what was familiar. There were a lot of talents he could offer, to help protect the planet humanity was steadily destroying with their idiocy anyway, and so did other people - but getting organised and knowing what you were doing was key.

“Maybe get volunteers, make a massive schedule, get the project done, put it together. How much time have we got, anyway?”

An ancient superweapon at that, the concept created by Protheans (the technical term for Martians, basically), something they couldn’t finish completing because time wasn’t on their side. But they’d found it in the dreams and finished it; it was their saving grace, their trump card. Garrus was happy to know it could be completed, and absolutely dreading when the time came to use it.

This was the sort of thing that people, a lot of people, could lose their life in. Innocents. Maybe even those they knew. He didn’t think it’d be as isolated as all the other incidents had been.

“A year, maybe a little less,” he voiced, furrowing those dark brows in thought. “According to our calculations. We destroyed it’s only way of fast travel to this system, so it’ll have to traverse through space the old fashioned way. We’re doing a mass recruitment for the Agency, and we’re getting some form of military back up.” Spare minds and hands that knew a little more than the Average Joe. “Don’t exactly know when Carter and Shepard plan to do an official announcement. We just work here. I’m assuming soon, though.”

Oh, right, the Agency recruitment thing. Pete thought he heard something about that from Romanoff, who had her nose in ‘Human Resources’ (as a cover gig) and about eighty other departments, he’d lost track by now. Basically, he just went where he was supposed to go, he did his job and he did it well - he had never been one for jumping in with a hooorah to lead a team to victory. Only X-Force, and he did a damn fine job with them plus MI:13, but in both instances he only stepped up to lead because they were out of fucking options.

“Grand,” he deadpanned, taking sips of his coffee. “I’ll keep an ear out for that announcement, then. In the meantime, you know where I live and work - you need me to do anything, you just tell me, alright?”

He trusted Vakarian to do that. They worked well together, always had, even when both were involved with the bounty hunting business. “The head of the Occult Division recently left too, and Lina’s obviously going on maternity leave soon. So they might need to find a new head, unless someone’s going to fill in for Loki.” No clue what was happening with that but it was probably low priority compared to the alien invasion and building a superweapon to prevent genocide.

“Really doubt maternity leave will stop your girlfriend from much,” Garrus snorted into his coffee, but he didn’t know much of what was going on with that either - all the departments were currently running with skeleton crews, and the whole point of the recruitment was to add a little more meat to it. “I’ll have to bring you along for some trips to the Citadel. Cindy’s been coming with me, but we could use more hands in physically transporting resources. I can safely say we’re good on that area as long as we can get it all to this planet. Could be a couple day’s trip, if that’s good with you. I know the clock’s ticking for Little Wisdom to be introduced, I don’t want to take you away from anything.”

Neal and him were about to be fathers in close proximity of the other. Had to be...what, a couple more months? Two or three? Not a lot, but spirits, time flew. Maybe once this whole debacle was over he and Cindy would prepare for their own offspring, but certainly not with this whole Reaper bullshit in the horizon. He hoped nature (and birth control) understood the reasoning behind it.

“Oh, I doubt it’ll stop her either - but she should at least take some time to recover from birthing our daughter,” Wisdom chuckled, since he imagined (and it was gruesome, what a steely sort like him imagined, nothankyou) that it wasn’t something you could just walk away from all right as rain. “Who is due to make her appearance in early June, so I’ve got some time for a trip that lasts a couple of days, no worries there.”

Given Lina’s ‘small frame,’ as the doctor kindly put it, there was always the possibility that Amelia could arrive early - but even so, they wouldn’t be panicking about a potential ‘drop everything, run to the hospital’ until May, at the very least.

He hadn’t even been to space, besides for Garrus’ wedding, so it would be an adventure regardless. “I’ll look forward to the grand tour from you, Vakarian. While we get shit done and stock up for alien warfare. Isn’t it sort of mad that it’s not the weirdest thing I could imagine happening here?”

Ah, good. Time on their side. Last thing he wanted to do was take Wisdom in space and then get that message of ‘by the way, you missed your daughter’s birth, don’t get killed by aliens’ while he was literally light years away. Garrus would take all the hands he could get, then, while they were around to be spared - he was already taking trips with Cindy, and they’d gotten some time for recreational purposes (combat simulator, the arcade). But it was mostly taking anything that worked.

“It’s not,” he chuckled. “But now I understand that degree of guilt people have when it’s something that belongs to your own dreamscape. One of the things that will always stick with me about what happened was all the people we lost because of those things. I don’t know at what capacity this will hit us. It could just be the one we saw, or an entire fleet that’d been hiding in the deepest corners of space.”

Even one was catastrophic enough. An entire fleet could take the planet it one sweep.

Which is what led him to his next point. “We need a bunker. Something sturdy to keep people who can’t exactly partake in this sort of thing safe. Family members, friends.”

Knowing the way things worked around here, you just couldn’t write off the potential of an entire fleet - but whatever veil separated their world from the countless others, it hadn’t thinned enough to the point where galaxies and worlds crashed together in a catastrophic collision. Meaning, things just always tended to work out - somehow, thanks to some cosmic force. That didn’t mean Wisdom would sit back and simply hope for the best. He was much too practical for that.

“I say we prepare for the worst case scenario,” he said, and that wasn’t simply the perpetual pessimism talking - it was strategy. It was warfare. “But a bunker, we’ve time to build that for certain if you say we’ve got a year. Where should it be? There are loads of Cold War bunkers left over in the county, actually - walled concrete structures, down deep. We could always build on one and renovate it for our purposes.”

Just a bit of history, but it sounded like history was repeating itself - war was war, no matter what kind.

Now there was an idea - Garrus didn’t even think about those structures, but Wisdom was definitely onto something. His brows lifted. “Good idea. The deeper the better, right?” No innuendos intended, but he guessed he couldn’t stop Pete’s mind from going somewhere weird with that. Last thing he’d want was for anyone to lose someone important to them, but Reapers meant war and he knew the number of casualties that had happened on the other side. They wouldn’t lose several systems and even an entire race, but the amount was uncomfortably high - the biggest massacre of their history.

He wasn’t sure how far Shepard was thinking when it came to all this - the whole Reaper thing put her in an emotionally sensitive place. “I’ll have to bring it up. I don’t know what’s been discussed about that, but if I haven’t heard anything then I’m guessing it hasn’t. We’ll have to prepare supplies for that too. Weapons for safety. Medicine. Places of refuge for the injured ones.”

Better to be safe than sorry, especially with this.

Another swallow of life-giving coffee went down his throat, and Wisdom thoughtfully sloshed the remains in his to-go cup with a flick of his wrist. “Deeper the better, sure,” he smirked. “Just let know what’s been decided, mate. We’ve got people who can help with the clearing things out down below, and expanding. Lina’s got spells for that and she might not be able to herself but I know she’s been teaching some to her colleagues. I can also ask Romany about charms and things, plus we can stock the place with both medicine and maybe some healing potions.”

Weapons were a whole other issue, but he was confident that they could both raid the depths of space and also congregate with others here, who had certain gifts that lended way to coming up with protective spells and the like. Especially for family and friends - they had to do everything they could to keep them safe, to hell with keeping the ‘nature’ of Orange County a secret by then.

Science and magic combined. Such a touching moment, wasn’t it? Making plans eased that tightly coiled stress in Garrus - his sleep had been total shit, reruns of what he’d gone through mixed with nightmarish configurations of his own subconscious. People dying, over and over, like the team he’d led in Omega. It was difficult keeping that reality and the emotions it brought separate from this; especially when it felt like a repeat of history, a cruel joke of the cosmos.

“The more hands we have on deck, the better we’ll be prepared,” he nodded. Strength in numbers was a necessity when going up against something colossal - literally. Their size was immense. “Science fiction doom aside, I didn’t mean to take a complete piss on your morning. Maybe we’ll have more moments of mundanity than discussing the best strategies of alien warfare preparations soon, much sooner. You’re doing alright?”

Maybe, maybe not. The way things were now, Wisdom couldn’t even imagine going back to any sort of charmed, mundane life. But he had to admit that the moments here and there, wherein he didn’t have a massive OC-induced migraine were appreciated.

“No worries about my morning, you’re free to come at me with alien warfare stories anytime. It’s got to be a lot to deal with.” And not only did they need to prepare for the more tactical side of things, but they needed to take care of each other too, in order to ensure they had a fighting chance to come out of it all alive - even this grumpypuss believed so.

Surprisingly, he was doing fine though. Actually looking forward to things? Disasters aside. “Things are alright on my end,” he clapped Vakarian on the shoulder, “Getting the nursery all set up and battening down the hatches for the final stretch. Time goes quick, doesn’t it?”

His coffee was finished shortly after, and the caffeine had given him that extra pump of energy - and a little more focus for when his attention was turned back to the monotonous routine of weapon modification. “Battening down the hatches,” Garrus repeated with a short laugh, a single eyebrow arched in amusement at that word choice. “Sounds dangerous. I’ll have to observe you and Neal, once the actually fathering commences.”

Take some notes, interview them, ask all the right questions, do all sorts of research. Then he’d know how to hold a baby correctly. There was a science behind that, wasn’t there? “You’ll be good at it, though. Those nerves about parenting ease yet, or do you think they’ll come back once the actual caretaking starts?”

There were a lot of odd gadgets during the unwrapping of presents when it came to the baby shower - things that did not seem from this Earth, but apparently were hot commodities at Baby’s R Us.

Pete was just as baffled by much of the baby shower gifts, and what he and Lina had even registered for when they were shooting things with the special laser beam gun. But all of it would come in handy - once he figured out how to actually use the complicated nursery mechanisms. “Oh, I’m sure the terror will return with a vengeance,” a grin flickered across those rugged features, “But overall, I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

Talking to little Amelia while she was hanging out in the womb was probably cute for everyone else, but Wisdom was aware he looked more than a little ridiculous. Still. She at least seemed to like the sound of his voice, or so he hoped it was actually that and not simply gas or whatever else.

“And I’d be glad to give you tips and tricks of the trade when it’s your time, mate. By then I’ll have learned many shortcuts.” Like ones for actually fitting in time to sleep and eat, with an infant to care for first and foremost.

Garrus did too, oddly - her and the unnamed son Neal and Emma were bringing into this world. It was fascinating, really, to see the little people that’d be sort of inheriting the legacy of the generations before them. He also planned for a healthy dose of spoiling when the time came, and he actually got used to being around the DNA combinations of his closest friends.

“Much appreciated - there’s plenty to learn, I’m sure,” he grinned in return. “Speaking of those pockets of mundanity in between the times of bullshit, you two lovebirds free for lunch? You can come out with Cindy and I. I’ll need a break from all this anyway.” A motion to the work bench, littered with all sorts of tech of various sizes. “I think the last time the four of us spent quality time together was during a moment of emergency.”

In reference to when his wife had died in his arms, that is. Better grasp every opportunity possible to be around friends when they weren’t bleeding all over the place, right?

Oh, Christ, it was true. The last time they were all in close proximity really wasn’t for anything fun. Pete remembered breaking laws of physics to dash over to the Vakarian household, with the hopes that he and Lina weren’t too late. Actual death wasn’t something that happened as a result of the dreams wasn’t something that he knew of happening, but it’d be damn cruel it to seep through and swiftly take a loved one for a reason such as that.

“Well, we all work in the same building now - I think we’re able to plan something,” he agreed. “Let’s get our kicks in while we can.” Who knew when the shit would hit the fan again - in mini bursts, before the final countdown to potential genocide.

But all that aside.

“How about subs for lunch?”

Not the fondest memory to go back to at all, but it made him value their time together here - when nothing was fucking them over and catching them by surprise. “Subs, subs are good. Anything that gets us outside of these four walls works.” And as long as there were vegetarian options too. Couldn’t forget the wife’s preferences after all. He was usually attentive of that kind of thing.

Garrus got off the crate, rolling his sleeves back up. They slid down, and he didn’t feel like tearing his clothes with the mess of sharp things he’d been dealing with. “I’ll bring you some gifts soon. Assuming you still use guns, that is.”

Plenty of vegetarian options, as far as Pete knew. Probably something with greens and hummus and all sorts of stuff meant for rabbits - he’d stick with meat, pile it on (as dirty as that sounded). “‘Course I do,” he slid off the surface he’d been leaning against. Time to go back to work on this glorious morning and leave Vakarian to his calibrating for the moment - but Wisdom would be back later in the afternoon, to see if there was anything he could do now that his own bullshit was taken care of.

“There might be a day where I can’t rely on those hot knives entirely, so I prefer to keep the other skills sharp. Can’t wait, though. It’ll be like Christmas all over again.”

“I’m pretty sure you and I have don’t have a matching description of what Christmas was like,” Garrus pointed out, adjusting the visor over his eyes again. Yes, Wisdom, everyone was aware of the damage done to the townhouse that morning. “I have less destruction in mind, for one.”

But he’d make sure his friends got good ones. By now he knew their styles, the kind that fit well into their hands, and they’d be armed well. One of a kind sort of gems. Calibrated with love or something, he promised.