Time Adrift Among Open Stars

Tali had been spending some of her down time over in Nos Astra, mainly to get a hold of some dextro foods and some mechanical components she couldn't find in Fandom. It was hard to spend too much time there, though, to be honest; indentured servitude was legal (like most things) on Illium, and it was hard for her to see other young quarians on their Pilgrimage, forced to put themselves under contract to pay their way. Getting indignant on their behalf wouldn't help -- it would be different if Shepard was around, she thought with a wistful pang, because not only would Shepard intercede without a second thought, she'd have about a thousand percent better chance of having people listen to her. Most people on Illium wouldn't bother to give a quarian the time of day.

There was also the matter of her first trip to Illium: all she'd wanted to do was get the evidence of Saren's treachery to someone in a position of authority, and instead Nos Astra's docking officials had given her and Keenah'Breizh the cold shoulder for several hours before they were even allowed to dock. In retrospect, it had been stupid of her to think that anyone would take her seriously. Maybe she should have listened to Keenah, he'd warned her about that, but -- no, if she hadn't been ambushed by Jacobus's mercs here and had to flee to the Citadel, she'd never have met Shepard, and she probably wouldn't even be here now.

. . . so, essentially, spending too much time on Illium stirred up some complicated feelings.

She'd managed to scrape together a decent supply of food and bits of salvage with her limited funds (seeing about a job in town might not be a bad idea), and had enough left over to make the inexplicable impulse purchase of a Prejek paddle fish from a souvenir kiosk near the taxi port. Why? Maybe just because it was bright and colorful, she didn't know.

The point was that she was sitting on the floor of her room with a small pile of electronic components and other materials, trying to build a decent-sized tank for the fish. Maybe something with a built-in VI to make sure it got fed on time?

[OOC: I couldn't resist poking fun at the saga of Shepard's ongoing struggle to keep the fish alive, and Len said I had to. Open, though it'll probably be slow since the new Fallout 4 DLC is currently happily eating my head.]

Well, this was it. It was a good thing that the Portalocity terminal had somehow managed to emerge unscathed from the battle with Sovereign, even if huge swaths of the Citadel were going to be a smoking wreck for months to come. They'd all survived the battle, ( which only made leaving a little bit harder, but Tali was glad everyone had come to see her off. )

[OOC: . . . a half-assed post that's like 10% establishy, 5% an excuse to appropriate a bit from the Citadel DLC, and 85% just an excuse to poke fun at how many ME1 side missions you can get by snooping around on other people's computers, really. There were originally four longer posts recapping the entire last three missions of the game and then I randomly decided to exercise restraint for once. NFI/NFB, OOC okay!]

I will try -- TRY -- to keep it kind of succinct. Kind of. But yeah, this one is probably necessary. And includes multiple YouTube video embeds mostly because I wanted to.

( Tali: The Engineer )

And now, the quick re-summary of my other on-island girls! But I am too lazy to add pictures for them this time.

( Cosette: The Lark )

( Éponine: The Wolf's Daughter )

There's also my two alums, brat_inslayage and weetuskenraider, but do you really need that info again?

And finally, me!

( The Weirdo Behind the Curtain )