//------------------------------// // Omni-tool // Story: Mass Effect: Element of Kindness // by CommanderApplejack //------------------------------// Chapter 8 Omni-tool [Talk to Tali] 36% Fluttershy looked over at the mess' kitchen but quickly turned away again. No Fluttershy, you're better than that. As to avoid any further temptation Fluttershy turned away from the mess and walked towards the elevator, knowing just who she wanted to talk to. The elevator opened up in the Garage where she found Garrus sitting on top of the Mako having connected a computer to the main cannon of the vehicle. On the other side of the garage, Wrex was laying against a wall snoring loudly with his shotgun in his hands. Ashely not that far from the sleeping krogan was busying herself with cleaning her rifle. Neither Garrus nor Ashely seemed to notice Fluttershy's arrival so the pegasus just turned to the right and made her way to engineering. The door opened to the large chamber that housed the drive core, a machine that still rightly baffled the pegasus. It was constantly rotating and maintaining a piece of energized element zero that could be used to get the ship flying at speeds faster than light itself. Tali was standing at one of the consoles looking at the data the core was giving of as Fluttershy approached her, "Tali?" The quarian jumped and let out a yelp as she got pulled from her trance, "Fluttershy! Uhm, w-what are you doing here?" Fluttershy cringed back at the quarian's nervous response. Did I scare her that badly? "N-nothing, sorry to have bothered you. I-I'll go now." Fluttershy stammered as she turned to make a swift exit. Though she didn't make it far before she felt a hand on her back stopping her. "Wait! Did you want to talk?" Tali asked as she sat crouched next to the pegasus who slowly nodded, "I know a place where we can talk in private," She said as she stood up and motioned for Fluttershy to follow her. The quarian making her way out of engineering but instead of taking one of the doors that lead to the garage she flashed her omni-tool making the wall open up into a small workshop that had various machines, tools, and materials strewn about. "Wow, are there more of these?" Fluttershy asked in wonder of the previously unknown room. "Not that I know of, this one is only accessible to engineers as we use it to repair various components of the FTL drive," Tali said as she sat down on the floor along with Fluttershy as an uncomfortable silence fell between them. "I-I'm sorry if I scared you." Fluttershy stammered while looking down at her forehooves, fearful of the response the quarian could give. "I'm not going to lie, what you did terrified me but Wrex did kind of bring it upon himself," Tali answered, "Though I don't see you using it lightly since if you did you would have been able to paralyze us when we first met." Fluttershy weakly nodded, "Though I could have hit him with a less powerful version, I'm such a terrible friend." "No." Tali resolutely stated, putting her hand on the pegasus's shoulder, "If you were a terrible friend you wouldn't be beating yourself up right now. Yes you might have been able to use a less powerful version of what you did but you can't change the past, only learn from it and not make the same mistake in the future. Trust me, my people know this better than any." Fluttershy moved forward and hugged Tali, "Thank you," She sniffed as tears welled up in her eyes, Tali returning the hug as Fluttershy's wings wrapped around her. "No problem, Fluttershy. Those of us who don't have a homeworld to get back to should stick together," Tali said as she moved her hand through Fluttershy's mane, staying like that for a moment. Though after a while the quarian got an idea, "Say Fluttershy, would you like to get an omni-tool?" The pegasus looked up at Tali,"Can you do that?" She asked with curiosity, she had seen the crew use the tools to perform various tasks but hadn't given any thought about getting one herself. "Definitely!" Tali squealed as she stood up and grabbed a box from one of the racks and pulled out a tool that looked like a gun, "Now for this to work you're going to have to get a couple of one-time implants." Fluttershy cringed back a bit, "Are they safe?" Tali nodded, "Even my people with our weakened immune systems use them, though we have to be much more careful when we first implant them. Now please hold out your left foreleg." Fluttershy hesitated for a moment but held out her foreleg anyway as she trusted Tali not to make a mistake. "This will sting a bit." The quarian warned as she brought the tool down on Fluttershy's foreleg, quickly firing it in three different places. Fluttershy yelped and rubbed her lower foreleg as Tali put away the tool again. "Was that all?" Fluttershy asked, the three spots where the machines were implanted had already closed up due to a small application of medi-gel along with the implants. "Yes, though it doesn't have a fabricator or any of the surrounding hardware so it'll only work as a basic computer interface," Tali explained as Fluttershy looked at her foreleg. "So how do I use it?" She asked since it wouldn't be a very useful tool to have if she wasn't even able to activate it. "It has to connect to your nervous system first," Tali explained, activating her own omni-tool and pushing a couple of buttons. The three implants suddenly started to tingle momentarily. "Just think about opening the tool around your leg. Don't worry if it doesn't open at first its responsiveness will improve over time as it adapts to your body." "Okay," Fluttershy said as she held out her hoof, concentrating on getting the device to activate. For the longest time, nothing happened at the pegasus intensely stared at her foreleg but just before she was about to give up she felt the implants tingle all of a sudden. The orange hologram sprung to life around Fluttershy's foreleg, several of the tool's lights blinking. Seeing this the pegasus experimentally moved around her foreleg, "This is amazing!" She said as she turned the omni-tool on and off. "I'll disable a couple of functions so you won't have to worry about hitting a wrong button when you're trying to get a hang of how to control it," Tali said as she tapped a couple of buttons on her omni-tool, a light suddenly started blinking on the quarian's tool indicating a call. She shut off her external speaker before answering, "Hello Shepard, do you need anything?" "Yeah, we got a distress call from the alliance. A colony has been attacked by the geth and we're going in as a first response unit since we're the closest alliance asset in the area. I want you along in the ground team due to your hacking experience," He explained. "Got it. Anything else you need, Commander?" Tali asked. "Well, have you seen Fluttershy? I went to check on her in the medbay but she never went in there, I'm starting to get worried." He said, Tali looked at Fluttershy who was still toying around with her new gadget. "She's in the engineering's workshop with me right now trying to get a hang of her new omni-tool," Tali told the Commander with a grin as the pegasus let out a squeak due to having accidentally activated the device's flashlight. "You got her an omni-tool? How is she even going to be able to use it without hands?" Shepard asked curiously. "She's going to have to learn how to control it by neural input but if she shows the same dedication to learning how it works as she has been doing with doctor Chakwas' medical work then I wouldn't be surprised to see her able to effectively use it by the end of the week." Shepard stayed silent for a moment, "Well, that's good." He answered, "Anyway, you should start preparing for the mission and Fluttershy should be getting up to the medbay. I think the colonists could use a pair of doctors when we get there." "Understood, I'll be up there in a bit Commander," Tali said, closing the call and re-activating the external speakers. "We need to get back upstairs, Fluttershy. The Commander got a distress call from a planet which we are headed to now and he wants you and Chakwas to be ready to help with any medical needs the colony may have." That immediately got Fluttershy's attention who stopped playing with her new toy, "Oh my, that's terrible! I'll get back up there immediately!" Tali nodded and opened the door to exit the workshop, the pegasus immediately heading back up with the elevator as Tali went over to her locker to retrieve her weapons. Doctor Chakwas was packing a large backpack with supplies as Fluttershy entered the medbay, "Ah Fluttershy, could you come over for a moment?" The doctor asked as she pulled out two bags that were attached to each other like a saddlebag, "It's a bit botched because I don't have the supplies here to build a good one," She said apologetically. Fluttershy looked at the set of bags and tried them on, it definitely wasn't the most comfortable she had ever worn but it definitely wasn't bad either. "Thank you, Doctor. They're just fine." Chakwas chuckled, "That's good, I had pulled the design from the extranet a couple of days ago but lacked the needed materials to completely build it. I'll improve on them after we're done on Feros." She said as she helped detach the set of bags from Fluttershy's back and put them to the side, "I've already packed anything that we might need, you should get as much rest as you can so you're fresh when we get to the colony." Fluttershy nodded and made her way to the medbay's storage where she had her mattress, after entering she turned to her sleeping spot but stopped as she heard someone sniffing. Turning to the source she saw Liara sitting at the desk with her face buried in her hands, 1. Are you okay, Liara? 2. [Get Shepard] 3. I'll talk to her tomorrow [Vote link]