Plank Sinatra

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

"Get up," the asari urged her for the third time, with an even more forceful shake of her hookup's shoulder.

The young human, her beauty only slightly marred by the open mouth and trickle of drool upon the chic pillowcase, stirred feebly at the imagined assault on her sleeping form. Her eyelids only rose, with great reluctance, at the implicit tingle of biotics that made her hairs stand on end and roused her to wakefulness. Her eyes rolled back into her head sleepily for a moment, with a yawning "Huh?" as she sat up and rolled her shoulders. Her black hair fell into her face, and when she lowered her arms she parted it over her forehead with a sleepy grin at the owner of the apartment she'd shacked up in for the night.

"Ahh, hey," she yawned again, craning her chin up and her neck back until she heard a pop. "Breakfast already?"

"You need to go," her one-night stand said forcefully, the telltale blue aura of a biotic wave slowly dissipating around her right wrist. "Now. My bondmate is getting off work in an hour, and she is never, ever going to know you were here."

"...Oh," the human mumbled, reaching over her shoulder and scratching her cocoa-colored neck half-heartedly. "You're really shouty this morning, huh. Do asari feel bad dreams worse than we do or something?"

"I didn't sleep at all. I was up half the night listening to you playing Galaxy of Fantasy next to me in bed. On a work computer, by the way, all that traffic goes back to the asari embassy. So thank you for that headache this morning."

"Okay, alright, I get it..." Lorena Aaliyah Negasi grumbled, standing up and scanning the floor of the apartment for her clothes. Through the window that stretched along the length of the bedroom wall, she could see the hustle of Citadel traffic; something in her tired mind sent off an alarm, warning her that she had, indeed, made her commute to her new assignment that much harder on herself. Her plan had been to pull an all-nighter and leave a few hours early, after some drinks and some fun at a club here in Tayseri Ward. Tayseri was an asari-dominated arm of the Citadel where drinks and fun seemed to come cheaply. But asari were much nicer at night, when they were looking to blow off some steam on humans they thought guileless, than they were when it came time for those humans to hit the road. She was learning that lesson to her chagrin now. Her punishment for drifting off in the middle of a game, she guessed. Her eyes located her outfit near where she had left her packed bags.

"Is it cool if I at least shower?" she asked, stifling another yawn as she padded over to where she had drunkenly left her clothes six hours prior. The asari's eyes followed her as she walked, which only reinforced the smug, if only semi-conscious grin on the human woman's face.

"No," the asari said firmly nonetheless, as Liyah lifted her clothes up in an artless pile under her arm and began sorting through them. "I don't want you leaving hairs in my shower, she'll figure it out the second she sees one. Volus have an eye for details like that."

"Wait, she's a lady volus?" Liyah asked curiously, pulling on her pants legs. The asari's lips - mmmm - retraced the last three words incredulously; she couldn't have looked much more shocked if Liyah had told her that her bondmate was killed in a traffic accident that morning. The human shrugged defensively as she wriggled the previous night's shirt back on, fingering the small stud in her navel just south of where her top stopped covering skin.

"I've just never seen a lady volus!" she protested. "I just didn't know they could be a thing. ...Why would she check the shower, then? How does the shower situation work around here? Actually, how does that work when you two-- "

"Get out, Lorena."

"Ahh, ehh...actually, just Liyah, I don't really like when--" she started, before the asari put hands on the small of her back and began physically guiding her towards the door. When she was in front of it, Liyah dug her heels in for just a moment and turned back. The asari had used Liyah's alabaster jacket as a buffer between her palms and actually being forced to touch the skin of the human she'd spent the night with, and when Liyah was within a boot's distance of the apartment's exit her one-time lover relinquished the jacket back into Liyah's waiting arms as though it were poison. "Okay, okay! Just really fast--you did log out of Galaxy of Fantasy before you turned the computer off, right? You're really not supposed to turn it off without logging--"

"Out." The teal fog of death had begun to congeal around the asari diplomat's arm again, and Liyah, taking her final hint, performed her walk of shame with arms raised placatingly all the way to the elevator, back to a CRT station.

---

Thankfully for Liyah, the cab ride to Bachjret Ward required little effort on her part apart from staying awake. Even if that had been a problem for her by the time the cab arrived, the view of the Citadel, even from the lens of stop-and-go traffic that she viewed it through, was more than enough to keep her transfixed. She had thought herself no stranger to the congestion and bustle of space stations, but even Tayseri Ward alone was busier than ten Arcturus Stations. And that was the seat of Alliance power!

Whenever she got too sick of looking out the window at the same skycars, she made idle chatter with her cab driver, a gruff turian who she nonetheless managed to charm out of his shell after a few minutes of earnest questioning about the volus sexuality and gender spectrum. It turned out the confusion that the idea fostered in her was galactic, not just limited to her ignorance as a human on the galactic scene. That made her feel a little better, even if afterwards she started to wonder if the turian had really been ignorant, happened to be an idiot, or was just fucking with her. She liked the idea that they were all equally stupid.

Her driver seemed skeptical that she had the district name right, and to prevent herself from looking like a hapless tourist she doubled down on the name Batia even though she had no idea if that pronunciation was anywhere close to right. Right or wrong, that's where he took her. The traffic lessened up here considerably compared to Tayseri or even Zakera Wards, although here and there Liyah could see telltale signs of the gentrification that had apparently begun to plague the latter. The inner workings of the five arms of the Citadel meant little and less to her right now, although subconsciously her brain was cataloguing the info her driver rattled off to her for future use. That was a habit she'd picked up even before her time onboard starships as a Corsair, back when she was skimming money off the top from clueless assholes in Arcturus who wouldn't miss it. It was always the smallest nuggets that gave the game away.

She found Livilla Towers in short order, and after a cheerful goodbye and generous tip to her driver - footed for her, knowingly or not, by her asari lover from the night before - she managed to breeze by the complex's security guards and into the elevator with zero fuss. Recalling the door code for the relevant apartment listed in her dossier, the human inputted the digits and walked in to find a small bustle of noise. Clearly, she had been among the last to arrive - with a little luck, not the very last. She dropped her bags at the first space that seemed unoccupied and used a boot to push them out of anyone's walking path.

"It's pretty crazy out there, huh?" she asked brightly, leaning against a wall and out of anyone's way. "Traffic from Tayseri was--oHHHH fuck."

She had turned at the rasping voice that came from the entrance of another room and jumped slightly to see a vorcha standing before them with a toothy grin. She jumped slightly; having spent the last year and change in the Terminus systems, she had encountered only a scant few of the aliens, but she had hoped each encounter would be her last. Quickly she managed to parse the use of proper pronouns and, overwhelming her immediate adrenal response, she realized this must be one of their teammates. With a little chagrin, she plopped down on the couch, kicking one leather-clad leg over the armrest of the well-worn furniture.

"Hey yourself," she grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, you're totally cool. I thought I saw a bug back on that wall, and I'm not great with bugs, so...okay, you freaked me out."

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

Liyah Negasi

LIYAH

QUOTE I try not to talk without a lawyer, but it's way harder than I thought.

PROFILE Full Name: Lorena Aaliyah Negasi Date of Birth: July 22nd, 2157 Species: Human Gender: Feminine Age: 26 Occupation: Alliance Corsair and Sexpert Service Rank: Second Lieutenant, Alliance Navy (Corsair) Profile: Engineer Powers: Overload Incinerate AI Hacking Combat Drone Belongings: Kassa Fabrications Polaris Omni-tool Ariake Technologies Katana Shotgun Ariake Technologies Raikou Pistol (White-and-gold colorway) Two spare datapads Well-worn Micah Black jacket (white-and-gold colorway, made from real shifty-eyed cow leather) Role: Electronic warfare specialist and financial crimes attache

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE

Liyah is a woman who wants to live life to the beat of her own drum. She tries to make acquaintances, not connections, and chafes at the idea of strings attached to her dealings with people. Her speech is informal, her relationships are casual, and her wanderlust is eternal; most of her life has consisted of meandering along a string of opportunities that seemed intriguing at the time but quickly grew stale. If something begins to sound and feel like commitment, she begins to subconsciously look for the exit sign.

The same can be said for her professionally. Her time with the Corsairs has taught her the meaning of expendable resources, and left her with one of her few deeply-held beliefs: that everyone sees each other as expendable. Though she probably wouldn't consider herself an example - or, more likely, she doesn't think about her own behavior deeply enough to really dwell on it - she exhibits this particular selfishness when things get tough. She has quite an aversion to snitching or brokering deals at the expense of others, but this loyalty only really extends when she's put under pressure by things she considers higher authorities. Instead of betrayal, she prefers escape. She has a knack for survival situations and talking herself out of certain permanent survival alternatives, and is skilled at overselling her value when in need of shelter or underselling it in order to appear innocent. Such innocent manipulation is characteristic of her, but it is genuinely done as a habit and without malice - whether that makes it better or worse is up to the person interacting with her.

But when Liyah can't talk, she's more than capable of vanishing. She does have concern for others, but it's usually fleeting; if someone isn't willing to take the chance to flee with her when they have the chance, she's usually not going to offer a second one. She always intends to be the one alive to tell the tale, which she will often do with heavy embellishment after the fact.

These self-centered, manipulative traits paint a negative picture of a woman, but much of Liyah's effectiveness comes from the fact that she's not an unpleasant person to be around. In fact, the opposite is true, as many of the ties Liyah has tried to escape from over the years were forged by people who found her enthralling enough to get close and raise her hackles. She is charismatic and quick-witted, always primed with a joke or one of the many factoids about human or alien cultures she aimlessly clicks through on the extranet in her off hours. During her youth - and even as a Corsair - she was often the mysterious benefactor behind much of the smuggled alcohol or recreational drugs that comprised the entertainment of parties, and she still keeps an itemized list of some of her favorite contemporary music in her head. If she can't find a party, one will usually form around her - although she'll also be one of the first ones to leave the scene, especially if higher authority rolls through.

Her skill with people helps ingratiate her in most social or group dynamics, and she provides a font of empathy for those in need of advice or grappling with doubts. This empathy is more than capable of being compartmentalized in order to protect herself, however. She refuses to let the problems of others, or others' problems with her, harm her emotionally, and is quick to remind people which certain uncomfortable topics are not her business.

DETAILED HISTORY

Liyah was born on Terra Nova before it was Terra Nova. At the time of her birth, the second and final child of two adventurous colonists, the quiet heart of the Exodus Cluster was but a first uncertain step for humanity at large. She was part of her species' first generation to spend its formative years outside its home solar system, and the same joie de vivre and desire to live ten lifetimes in the span of one possessed Liyah - still going by her given name, Lorena, in those early days of her life - the same way it had her parents. In her early childhood, this manifested as the usual childhood misadventures, but as she grew into adolescence, her mischief similarly blossomed into the much more daring, much more stupid escapades of teenagers testing the boundaries of society for the first time. She was the cornerstone of many a school prank or failed relationship in her teens, and as the Terra Novan capital of Scott began to blossom into a true metropolis, Lorena began to spend less of her time focusing on the future and more time drowning in the various distractions available to her.

By now, the kernel of dissatisfaction at her life path had bubbled over into resentment at what she saw as stagnation. On the surface, she was doing everything right; she had gotten herself into a prominent tech academy on Terra Nova, on the fast track towards success in one of the corporations capitalizing on the recent platinum boom in her home planet of Terra Nova. She found the idea distasteful, though - cementing herself on her homeworld and watching her life go by had been anathema to her own parents, so why were they trying to pigeonhole her down that path? She found the recent colonization boom on Bekenstein slightly more compelling, in a get-rich-quick scheme sort of way, but in the end even that was just the same corporate anchor on a different planet. To Liyah - the abbreviation of her middle name she now answered to almost exclusively - it was starting from square one, not a fresh start. So she went through the motions of her classes, grades slowly plummeting, while waiting for the perfect opportunity to knock.

She may have waited forever if not for the Blitz. In the aftermath of a pirate attack on Elysium, the Systems Alliance began an aggressive recruiting drive, touting the vigor and benefits of a life in the military. Vignettes of paradises such as Elysium and Eden Prime were also used, to lure in prospective recruits with tantalizing visions of the 'good life,' or at least a daring life exploring the stars beyond Citadel space. To Liyah, a better opportunity seemed unlikely to fall into her lap, and her eyes were admittedly swimming with the visions of a life where she would never be bored again. So she enlisted, one of thousands taken in by the promises of the vids.

Perhaps they came true for the rest of the recruits, but unfortunately for Liyah, someone had bothered to look at her technical aptitude tests - which she had, in a desperate effort to show her worth, decided to take seriously for once. Perhaps she had done her job too well, because she quickly found herself a systems analyst shackled to Arcturus Station. Besides Earth itself, Arcturus was the seat of Alliance power, and to many it would seem like a prestigious posting. But to Liyah, who felt she had been promised a life outside of simple Alliance comfort, the post felt like a death sentence. For months, she planned against cyberattacks that never came and updated systems long neglected by Alliance Parliament, its budget, and its political constraints. Underpaid and overworked, it became harder and harder for Liyah to keep her once-buoyant attitude afloat at all.

One night, tinkering around at her workstation to amuse herself, Liyah stumbled across a minor security blip on a parliamentary system. The Arcturus network had flagged a set of financial transactions directly from an MP to an unrecognized party - small amounts, but all placed simultaneously, broken up in an attempt to avoid notice. If the unwitting MP had simply bided his time between payments, it likely would have gone unnoticed forever; as it was, the computer only wanted a simple confirmation that Arcturus security had not been breached. Of course, it hadn't, so Liyah allowed the payments to go through - but to someone who would find a much, much better use for the money than the parliamentary mistress that inevitably came forward when her hush payments never arrived.

The theft had lit a fire under Liyah, and what's more, it had enlightened her - not only did the men wielding most of the political and military might of the Alliance not understand the tools that governed all their lives, but she did. She had no interest in selling state secrets to alien bodies or leaking anything to the press, but if they had all this money they were capable of handing out to secretaries and actresses, why should she feel guilty about making off with some of it for herself? It even had all the thrill and unpredictability she had even enlisted in the Alliance for, and so for the rest of 2077 she would occasionally use her security clearance and adjust certain purchases on networked extranet terminals, or perhaps divert some money from a proposed budget into her own pocket. Having learned from her unfortunate "mentor" in money laundering, she made sure to break up the payments and disguise them as expenditures for necessary supplies or public events. She was good at doing it, she was good at covering her tracks, she was making bank and she was having fun. She might have gone on with it forever if she could have.

Unfortunately for her, a freak twist of fate, much like the one that had brought her into the Alliance military, served as a second bookend for her time at Arcturus. The Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy, in an attempt at mutual goodwill, had begun development on a new class of frigate together, marrying the best of each military in an attempt to incorporate humanity further into the galactic community. Arcturus Station was the staging ground for this project, and though she knew little and cared less about the ultimate result of the project, she knew that the expenditures necessary to host turian engineers and soldiers on Arcturus, even temporarily, would be a great place for her to hide some paychecks. Her first such attempt, embezzling an amount of credits slightly more reckless than her usual amounts, was under the guise of special expenditures for massive amounts of dextro-amino protein food.

But the turians found themselves embroiled in some last-minute Council red tape, and their small delegation's initial trip to Arcturus found itself postponed by months. They didn't arrive, and neither did their food. But the Alliance had noticed they had footed the bill for it anyway.

By the time Liyah realized she was caught, it was too late to do much about her situation. Her work history was looked into and credits found, and she was stripped of rank and sent to an Alliance military prison, where she languished for several months, miserable and alone. But the rays of fortune turned on her again in the next year, 2078, with the raid on Torfan.

A brutal raid undertaken by the Alliance there had served its primary purpose - retaliatory measures against the batarians who many found responsible for the Skyllian Blitz. However, with the flight of the batarians from Council space, the Alliance realized it had only left the job half done - many of the pirate interests behind the Blitz, batarian or otherwise, had been armed with deep pockets - and most of that money was still out there. The Alliance had found little evidence of financiers from the Terminus Systems or Batarian Hegemony on Torfan, and after Torfan it was increasingly politically difficult for the Alliance to ensure its enemies couldn't fund a bloodier sequel to the Blitz. So, reluctantly, it turned to a clever money launderer they knew they had on hand.

Liyah was offered what the Alliance described as a sweetheart deal - she would be sprung from military prison and released on her own recognizance, but her service to the Alliance was far from over. She would serve as a Corsair, an initiative by the Alliance to store unscrupulous or problem soldiers under independent starship captains, to do jobs the Alliance refused to commit to record. She would be stationed on crews such as these indefinitely, until the Alliance felt she had worked off enough of her initial sentence to be given an OTH discharge - other than honorable, which, far from honorable, was at least not a life-altering kick in the ass from the military. Unwilling to waste the rest of her youth, Liyah did what she had done when recruitment was dangled in front of her - jumped at the chance, unsure if she would see another as good.

Unlike Arcturus, for the most part, Liyah loved being a Corsair. It was a badass title, for one, and she found a freedom under starship captains that she'd never known in Arcturus or even as a gifted student on Terra Nova. She served on two ships over the next few years, the Tin Hau and the Gungnir, investigating post-Elysium and Torfan financial transactions on behalf of major suspected batarian terror financiers, as well as connections to the disgraced pirate lord Elanos Haliat, Omega, or other Terminus System interests. Each ship found her service exemplary and was sad to see her go. But each transfer came as the feeling of being under the gun from the Alliance had begun to grow overwhelming, and at a point when Liyah was finding less satisfaction in doing dirty work around people who had begun to know her a little too deeply.

For the past eighteen months, Liyah Negasi has served ably onboard her third vessel as a Corsair, the Jannah, investigating reports of renewed Eclipse financial activity in the area of black market bio-mods. Now another transfer order has come in - not to a ship, but to the Citadel, gleaming white heart of the galaxy, and with an assignment that comes tailored to the bright, disaffected young woman's skill set - larger and livelier than Arcturus, with all the uncertainty of being a Corsair and the certainty of her own talents. She jumped at the transfer order.

Not that she has any choice.

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

Liyah Negasi

LIYAH

QUOTE I try not to talk without a lawyer, but it's way harder than I thought.

PROFILE Full Name: Lorena Aaliyah Negasi Date of Birth: July 22nd, 2157 Species: Human Gender: Feminine Age: 26 Occupation: Alliance Corsair and Sexpert Service Rank: Second Lieutenant, Alliance Navy (Corsair) Profile: Engineer Powers: Overload Incinerate AI Hacking Combat Drone Belongings: Kassa Fabrications Polaris Omni-tool Ariake Technologies Katana Shotgun Ariake Technologies Raikou Pistol (White-and-gold colorway) Two spare datapads Well-worn Micah Black jacket (white-and-gold colorway, made from real shifty-eyed cow leather) Role: Electronic warfare specialist and financial crimes attache

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE

Liyah is a woman who wants to live life to the beat of her own drum. She tries to make acquaintances, not connections, and chafes at the idea of strings attached to her dealings with people. Her speech is informal, her relationships are casual, and her wanderlust is eternal; most of her life has consisted of meandering along a string of opportunities that seemed intriguing at the time but quickly grew stale. If something begins to sound and feel like commitment, she begins to subconsciously look for the exit sign.

The same can be said for her professionally. Her time with the Corsairs has taught her the meaning of expendable resources, and left her with one of her few deeply-held beliefs: that everyone sees each other as expendable. Though she probably wouldn't consider herself an example - or, more likely, she doesn't think about her own behavior deeply enough to really dwell on it - she exhibits this particular selfishness when things get tough. She has quite an aversion to snitching or brokering deals at the expense of others, but this loyalty only really extends when she's put under pressure by things she considers higher authorities. Instead of betrayal, she prefers escape. She has a knack for survival situations and talking herself out of certain permanent survival alternatives, and is skilled at overselling her value when in need of shelter or underselling it in order to appear innocent. Such innocent manipulation is characteristic of her, but it is genuinely done as a habit and without malice - whether that makes it better or worse is up to the person interacting with her.

But when Liyah can't talk, she's more than capable of vanishing. She does have concern for others, but it's usually fleeting; if someone isn't willing to take the chance to flee with her when they have the chance, she's usually not going to offer a second one. She always intends to be the one alive to tell the tale, which she will often do with heavy embellishment after the fact.

These self-centered, manipulative traits paint a negative picture of a woman, but much of Liyah's effectiveness comes from the fact that she's not an unpleasant person to be around. In fact, the opposite is true, as many of the ties Liyah has tried to escape from over the years were forged by people who found her enthralling enough to get close and raise her hackles. She is charismatic and quick-witted, always primed with a joke or one of the many factoids about human or alien cultures she aimlessly clicks through on the extranet in her off hours. During her youth - and even as a Corsair - she was often the mysterious benefactor behind much of the smuggled alcohol or recreational drugs that comprised the entertainment of parties, and she still keeps an itemized list of some of her favorite contemporary music in her head. If she can't find a party, one will usually form around her - although she'll also be one of the first ones to leave the scene, especially if higher authority rolls through.

Her skill with people helps ingratiate her in most social or group dynamics, and she provides a font of empathy for those in need of advice or grappling with doubts. This empathy is more than capable of being compartmentalized in order to protect herself, however. She refuses to let the problems of others, or others' problems with her, harm her emotionally, and is quick to remind people which certain uncomfortable topics are not her business.

DETAILED HISTORY

Liyah was born on Terra Nova before it was Terra Nova. At the time of her birth, the second and final child of two adventurous colonists, the quiet heart of the Exodus Cluster was but a first uncertain step for humanity at large. She was part of her species' first generation to spend its formative years outside its home solar system, and the same joie de vivre and desire to live ten lifetimes in the span of one possessed Liyah - still going by her given name, Lorena, in those early days of her life - the same way it had her parents. In her early childhood, this manifested as the usual childhood misadventures, but as she grew into adolescence, her mischief similarly blossomed into the much more daring, much more stupid escapades of teenagers testing the boundaries of society for the first time. She was the cornerstone of many a school prank or failed relationship in her teens, and as the Terra Novan capital of Scott began to blossom into a true metropolis, Lorena began to spend less of her time focusing on the future and more time drowning in the various distractions available to her.

By now, the kernel of dissatisfaction at her life path had bubbled over into resentment at what she saw as stagnation. On the surface, she was doing everything right; she had gotten herself into a prominent tech academy on Terra Nova, on the fast track towards success in one of the corporations capitalizing on the recent platinum boom in her home planet of Terra Nova. She found the idea distasteful, though - cementing herself on her homeworld and watching her life go by had been anathema to her own parents, so why were they trying to pigeonhole her down that path? She found the recent colonization boom on Bekenstein slightly more compelling, in a get-rich-quick scheme sort of way, but in the end even that was just the same corporate anchor on a different planet. To Liyah - the abbreviation of her middle name she now answered to almost exclusively - it was starting from square one, not a fresh start. So she went through the motions of her classes, grades slowly plummeting, while waiting for the perfect opportunity to knock.

She may have waited forever if not for the Blitz. In the aftermath of a pirate attack on Elysium, the Systems Alliance began an aggressive recruiting drive, touting the vigor and benefits of a life in the military. Vignettes of paradises such as Elysium and Eden Prime were also used, to lure in prospective recruits with tantalizing visions of the 'good life,' or at least a daring life exploring the stars beyond Citadel space. To Liyah, a better opportunity seemed unlikely to fall into her lap, and her eyes were admittedly swimming with the visions of a life where she would never be bored again. So she enlisted, one of thousands taken in by the promises of the vids.

Perhaps they came true for the rest of the recruits, but unfortunately for Liyah, someone had bothered to look at her technical aptitude tests - which she had, in a desperate effort to show her worth, decided to take seriously for once. Perhaps she had done her job too well, because she quickly found herself a systems analyst shackled to Arcturus Station. Besides Earth itself, Arcturus was the seat of Alliance power, and to many it would seem like a prestigious posting. But to Liyah, who felt she had been promised a life outside of simple Alliance comfort, the post felt like a death sentence. For months, she planned against cyberattacks that never came and updated systems long neglected by Alliance Parliament, its budget, and its political constraints. Underpaid and overworked, it became harder and harder for Liyah to keep her once-buoyant attitude afloat at all.

One night, tinkering around at her workstation to amuse herself, Liyah stumbled across a minor security blip on a parliamentary system. The Arcturus network had flagged a set of financial transactions directly from an MP to an unrecognized party - small amounts, but all placed simultaneously, broken up in an attempt to avoid notice. If the unwitting MP had simply bided his time between payments, it likely would have gone unnoticed forever; as it was, the computer only wanted a simple confirmation that Arcturus security had not been breached. Of course, it hadn't, so Liyah allowed the payments to go through - but to someone who would find a much, much better use for the money than the parliamentary mistress that inevitably came forward when her hush payments never arrived.

The theft had lit a fire under Liyah, and what's more, it had enlightened her - not only did the men wielding most of the political and military might of the Alliance not understand the tools that governed all their lives, but she did. She had no interest in selling state secrets to alien bodies or leaking anything to the press, but if they had all this money they were capable of handing out to secretaries and actresses, why should she feel guilty about making off with some of it for herself? It even had all the thrill and unpredictability she had even enlisted in the Alliance for, and so for the rest of 2077 she would occasionally use her security clearance and adjust certain purchases on networked extranet terminals, or perhaps divert some money from a proposed budget into her own pocket. Having learned from her unfortunate "mentor" in money laundering, she made sure to break up the payments and disguise them as expenditures for necessary supplies or public events. She was good at doing it, she was good at covering her tracks, she was making bank and she was having fun. She might have gone on with it forever if she could have.

Unfortunately for her, a freak twist of fate, much like the one that had brought her into the Alliance military, served as a second bookend for her time at Arcturus. The Systems Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy, in an attempt at mutual goodwill, had begun development on a new class of frigate together, marrying the best of each military in an attempt to incorporate humanity further into the galactic community. Arcturus Station was the staging ground for this project, and though she knew little and cared less about the ultimate result of the project, she knew that the expenditures necessary to host turian engineers and soldiers on Arcturus, even temporarily, would be a great place for her to hide some paychecks. Her first such attempt, embezzling an amount of credits slightly more reckless than her usual amounts, was under the guise of special expenditures for massive amounts of dextro-amino protein food.

But the turians found themselves embroiled in some last-minute Council red tape, and their small delegation's initial trip to Arcturus found itself postponed by months. They didn't arrive, and neither did their food. But the Alliance had noticed they had footed the bill for it anyway.

By the time Liyah realized she was caught, it was too late to do much about her situation. Her work history was looked into and credits found, and she was stripped of rank and sent to an Alliance military prison, where she languished for several months, miserable and alone. But the rays of fortune turned on her again in the next year, 2078, with the raid on Torfan.

A brutal raid undertaken by the Alliance there had served its primary purpose - retaliatory measures against the batarians who many found responsible for the Skyllian Blitz. However, with the flight of the batarians from Council space, the Alliance realized it had only left the job half done - many of the pirate interests behind the Blitz, batarian or otherwise, had been armed with deep pockets - and most of that money was still out there. The Alliance had found little evidence of financiers from the Terminus Systems or Batarian Hegemony on Torfan, and after Torfan it was increasingly politically difficult for the Alliance to ensure its enemies couldn't fund a bloodier sequel to the Blitz. So, reluctantly, it turned to a clever money launderer they knew they had on hand.

Liyah was offered what the Alliance described as a sweetheart deal - she would be sprung from military prison and released on her own recognizance, but her service to the Alliance was far from over. She would serve as a Corsair, an initiative by the Alliance to store unscrupulous or problem soldiers under independent starship captains, to do jobs the Alliance refused to commit to record. She would be stationed on crews such as these indefinitely, until the Alliance felt she had worked off enough of her initial sentence to be given an OTH discharge - other than honorable, which, far from honorable, was at least not a life-altering kick in the ass from the military. Unwilling to waste the rest of her youth, Liyah did what she had done when recruitment was dangled in front of her - jumped at the chance, unsure if she would see another as good.

Unlike Arcturus, for the most part, Liyah loved being a Corsair. It was a badass title, for one, and she found a freedom under starship captains that she'd never known in Arcturus or even as a gifted student on Terra Nova. She served on two ships over the next few years, the Tin Hau and the Gungnir, investigating post-Elysium and Torfan financial transactions on behalf of major suspected batarian terror financiers, as well as connections to the disgraced pirate lord Elanos Haliat, Omega, or other Terminus System interests. Each ship found her service exemplary and was sad to see her go. But each transfer came as the feeling of being under the gun from the Alliance had begun to grow overwhelming, and at a point when Liyah was finding less satisfaction in doing dirty work around people who had begun to know her a little too deeply.

For the past eighteen months, Liyah Negasi has served ably onboard her third vessel as a Corsair, the Jannah, investigating reports of renewed Eclipse financial activity in the area of black market bio-mods. Now another transfer order has come in - not to a ship, but to the Citadel, gleaming white heart of the galaxy, and with an assignment that comes tailored to the bright, disaffected young woman's skill set - larger and livelier than Arcturus, with all the uncertainty of being a Corsair and the certainty of her own talents. She jumped at the transfer order.

Not that she has any choice.

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

I can live with or without a Discord server. As far as my CS goes, that'll probably be done tomorrow afternoon or tonight, I have a pretty major exam I need to knock out before then.

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

_{i think we are in rats alley / where the dead men lost their bones}

[ERROR: Data Transfer to PANDORA unable to complete. Suspected Signal Interference. Retry? Y/N]

Gypsy's cockpit came alive with the rapturous cries of sirens, a cacophony of alarms and lights that many on Earth had fretted would never have reason to go off. Her emerald screens were alight with orange, pings dancing like wildfires in a brush. Unlike many of the other Orbitals on the ground team, Chiron Works had designed Gypsy Soul's sensor suites for such an eventuality. The unknown signals were quickly parsed by her Orbital and identified for what they truly were - bodies in unfitting graves, no different from the pilots in their pods, men at war, or the old men on Earth, hundreds of years ago, left in wells to keep until spring. So it was not the reaction of her systems being overwhelmed by stimuli that disquieted Gypsy; it was the almost-emotional note from her machine itself at the feeling of parsing their new data, half in ecstasy and half in anguish.

//Engage communication suite? Y?N?//

"No." Her heart went out to her virtual counterpart, tempered with some disappointment of her own. True, it would have been a little too neat to knock out every one of her employer's primary directives all in one go, and then go about a life of lazy napping and caring for some unique little planets on the hydroponics lab, but such a climax to her life would have been as boring as the idea of death - convenient, and all too abrupt. "They're beyond hearing us now."

The fervor in her cockpit died down; lights stopped blinking, and the sirens ended like the piteous wails of a child, slowly tapering into a whimper. Only the ringing in her ears remained.

[UPDATE: Data Transfer f̵r̵o̵m̴ PANDORA completed. Cached tactical data dumped to PANDORA.]

<<Gypsy Soul, live, raw and uncut. My sabre is having power issues.>>

She weighed how best to put the momentary existential crisis of her Orbital.

<<Movement is unimpeded...but some of my systems are feeling a little down in the dumps. She likes to sleep through most big updates.>>

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

Yeah, I could handle this being either Casual or Advanced as well.

Mass Effect: Kingslayer

I'm almost done with my ME1LE playthrough and am very down to kill Every Accountant Left in the galaxy

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

"Wellllll..." Nicole giggled a little and let go of Penny's braid. Her fingers laced and she wrung her hands for a second, like she had a secret identity she was on the verge of finding the courage to divulge. "There is one more thing, but I kinda try not to brag about it. As superpowers go it's a little esoteric. I usually can't go out into the city for a night without getting something for free. Doughnuts, slices of pizza, drinks at clubs, every now and then people just drift up and hand me stuff. I dunno why, I guess something about me just clicks with people."

She favored them all with another one of Hasta's apparent trademarks, her happy-go-lucky wink.

"It's a little hard to believe until you see it in action, though. Guess you'll all just have to start going out with me more. We'll be drowning in stuff."

---

Nicole had been wrong, though. Her dream of the five of them, a tight-knit quintet of Ars Magi tackling Palmyra and finding their own fun, had quickly been derailed - as many things seemed to be - by Penny's ferocious little hammerfists. She and another girl had worked themselves up over some kind of ancestral little quibble that quickly turned into a full-on melee, and the team's resident foul-mouthed powerhouse had quickly found herself on campus arrest. The handful of little trips to find a good arcade or café that she'd made with Dana had ended in Dana, normally so irrepressibly happy, bummed out that Penny hadn't been able to accompany them. Dana had made them promise that they would wait to go out and do anything major until they were all a group again, and Nicole, a bit reluctantly, had agreed. But...

But...

Damn it, she just couldn't help herself.

What Palmyra lacked in the ebullient lights of her home, it at least made up in noise and sprawl. Every time she craned her head up to behold the brutalist skyscape, she felt oddly comfortable, like she was swathed in a weighted blanket. The concrete, advertisements, and language creole that barked every level of every building or street was more comfortable than any bed she'd ever crashed on, and every new spot on her to-do list recalled one of Nicole's beloved childhood or adolescent memories, even if they were poor reflections. She found a thrill out of finding every slice of pizza, deli, or noodle bar that even came close to the tastes of Hasta. She was delighted at the chance to practice her karaoke on setlists that only bore the slightest resemblances to those she'd memorized and nailed at home, thrilling at both the occasional universal pop standard and at the songs she'd never even heard before. There were movie theaters that would cycle some of her favorite bad movie classics, or the macho action bangers her father had raised her on, where she and other shlock, crap, and giallo aficionados would hurl classic movie lines at the screen so loudly they almost dubbed over the actresses. She lost herself for hours in shops, she battled gloriously to set old high scores on new arcade machines, and she sought out the coolest clubs that only the locals knew - an endeavor that was helped along considerably once all of the said cool locals realized they were dealing with a newly minted Ars Magi.

Maybe Palmyra would never quite feel like her home, but God damn it if Nicole Cognoscenti would allow it to become her prison.

Eventually, she managed to coax Astrelle out of the dorm for a night or two at a time - and later, even Vanna, as the two aristocrats and the middle-class glue that kept them together would go to some of the shops Nicole had spotted out or the occasional quiet bistro. She often found herself the one keeping those conversations going, but even so, she found it nice to just indulge in her wanderlust alongside some of the other girls - and especially learned to enjoy the rare moments she felt like she was actually bonding with one of her more aloof classmates. After a couple weeks, the day finally came where Penny and Dana would get to come along for Nicole's wild ride, and as another day of classes ended, she found it hard not to partake in the enthusiasm of the dynamic duo.

"And if I know Nicole, she’s already got a list of all the best places to visit!”

An elbow dug into Nicole's ribs, coaxing a rare bashful grin out of the girl normally so confident in her own skin.

"Mmmmaybe I cheated a little," she replied, as another trainee drifted into their friend circle, violet-haired and scarlet-eyed with a twinkle of mischief in her gaze and grin. "We should check out--oh!"

"For you, prekrasnaya," the lilac mischief said, pressing a cup into her hand. The other, fresh from stowing the Sharpie used upon the cup behind her ear, extended both pinkie and thumb by her ear and waggled. She drifted off as soon as she'd arrived, leaving Nicole to sip on the proffered cup - a white mocha - and peeked at the digits written upon her free drink. She giggled and took a longer, happier sip.

"Told you, right? This is an omen. Good food, great outfits, and plenty of bonding on the horizon, babes. The vibes are strong tonight."

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

Though her smile remained on her face as she listened politely to Priya and Dana's talk of gladii and swords, more of Nicole's focus was spent on mulling over Priya's account of her team's baptism by fire. Only luck and the grace of a few seconds had spared Penny from the same kind of mid-trial surprise that Amanda had prevented. They'd all been ushered into dark little corners of Palmyra, after all, where they'd been warned of potentially intense Void activity - but what else had there been? Something about diffusion levels, and allowing the manifestation of Voids to begin with. Had those levels been adjusted again during certain group's tests, like theirs or Priya's? Why? Another phase to the test? Some conspiracy, like Penny thought?

Her stomach ached a little as she sat up, languid above her teammate's heads. Her attention fell on Cara, violet eyes tracing down the length of the girl's neck and down to her chest before bouncing back up to her face. Vanna's roommate seemed less than enthused about her own thoroughly average test. She could be living proof of a coincidence or an unwitting member of a control group, as Astrelle had been positing since the minute their airship had been attacked. She might need to talk to both of them and see what they thought. But what good would that do tonight, when the adrenaline still fluttered in each of their bodies and they were celebrating their birth as Ars Magi?

Her gaze turned onto the top of the bespectacled little conspiracy theorist's head, stroking her hair braid thoughtfully for a second before her megawatt smile turned back on.

"We passed a few pizza places, actually," she added. "Well, count me in, but don't expect me to sit by idly and let you guys pick a bad spot. A true Hastan can pick a crappy pizza dive from space if she had to. We should grab Astrelle and Vanna on our way out the door, too."

Nova Lux: A Magical Girl Game

---

"If anyone is holding out on a giant robot, I'll forgive you, but you have to let me sit in the chest. That's where the heart of the team goes," came the laughing retort from the common room entrance. "Hey, everyone. Looks like they can't keep a good girl down."

Nicole Cognoscenti gave her team a triumphant smile and pumped her fist twice in the air. She was wearing compression leggings and a transparent windbreaker, like umbrella material, with a lime green sports bra underneath. She looked freshly showered; her scarlet hair, usually feathered so elegantly, fell in an artful mop along one side of her forehead, and some parts of her arms and midriff still glistened pink from heat. Along one side of her abdomen was the gauze they had applied to her cut in the infirmary, after an inspection of the wound that Nicole honestly thought had gone on way too long. She'd been assured that the wound wouldn't scar by the medical staff, but she also had been told to avoid any strenuous core exercises for the next few days, and a tummy like hers didn't sculpt itself, babyyyyy, so she had decided to start small and test herself on a jog around the parts of campus they'd been free to explore. In her professional opinion, being at least an undergrad in the study of Nicole Cognoscenti, she felt fine. Like herself. She looked down again to affirm there was no sign of creepy blood leakage through the bandages before she sat on the armrest of Penny and Dana's sofa in the common room.

Nicole grinned and nudged Dana's arm playfully with her elbow, favoring her teammate with a wink.

"Buonasera, slee-pyyyy-head," she jested. "From my vantage point, you kicked a lot of ass. I'm proud of you."

Nicole sprawled along the back of their seat, spine arced along the top of the furniture. She watched her fashionable running sneakers launch and fall in the air like neon missiles, kicking lazily as she listened to the ambient conversation of the Ars Magi assembled there. At first, it was just a chance to check out Vanna's roommate a little, but as they went on, and Penny and Dana tried to gauge her for her input on the conversation she had crashed, Nicole's lips had pursed slightly in contemplation.

"It was pretty polite of them to wait for us, don't you think?" she asked Priya and Cara's group, still draped across her perch. Stretching out like this felt like it also stretched out her cut, but the burning feeling the afflicted area gave off wasn't entirely unpleasant, so she propped herself up on one elbow to alleviate the worst of it and cocked her head. She pushed her hair off her forehead before continuing.

"Our session was normal until the second Penny passed her test," she explained, shrugging in the direction of their little bespectacled titan with another proud wink. "Then it mogged her. So did anyone actually get attacked in the middle of their test, or did they all show manners and wait for us to pass first? No one ever told me that Voids have manners."