Head for the lights. 65%
The tomkah cruised lazily along Tuchanka’s wasteland with Rainbow behind the steering wheel. She’d been navigating the cracked terrain since their escape from the crashed Blood Pack ship towards the lights that still lay in the distance but were getting closer steadily. The rainbow maned pegasus herself looked about as crap as she felt as she’d stayed up to steer the truck to its destination. Blood had dried up on her face mixed with mud from the crash and fight along with many sore spots and, of course, her maimed right wing. This all combined with minor sleep deprivation and the fact that she couldn’t get the images of the massacred krogan out of her mind made her a very unhappy pegasus.
“Hi...” Dash looked behind her to see Fluttershy standing there with a concerned expression on her scarred face.
“Hi,” Rainbow replied, turning her head back to the outside world to avoid driving into a ditch.
“Mind if I join you?” the yellow pegasus asked carefully, sensing that Rainbow was in a foul mood. Dash shrugged and nodded. Fluttershy took a seat next to her oldest friend and remained quiet for a bit as she looked for something to ask. “So… What do you think of Garrus?” She eventually settled with.
“He’s nice, I guess, must be one heck of a coltfriend if you got out of your bubble to ask him that,” Rainbow replied as she steered around some rubble.
“He’s not completely unlike you, a bit hotheaded but very loyal,” Shy said with a goofy smile on her face. “We’ve been through a lot together...”
“Is that how you can be so cold about killing those krogan?” Dash asked bitterly, not even taking her sight off of the terrain outside. “I knew you’d changed from everything I’ve heard and seen before getting here, but the stuff in that ship… that’s cold Flutters.”
Fluttershy’s eyes teared up and her face hardened. “Have you ever seen what happens if a group of krogan catches you? They rip you apart and eat you.” She shot at her friend. “And don’t you dare say I don’t care, the burden I carry from all the death I have caused is immeasurable.”
Rainbow swallowed nervously as Shy glared her down. “It’s just... You’ve changed so much... there’s nothing left of that pony that used to jump at the sight of her own shadow...”
“That version of me is long gone Dash, I’m not that innocent pegasus anymore, but I’ve taken great care not to become a monster. I don’t enjoy any of the violence, but I’m not shy about using force if I or my friends are threatened,” Shy said, her tone softening a bit. “I’ve seen and experienced things, Rainbow... I hope you will never have to, but I fear that that’s not up to me.”
“You mean the reapers, don’t you?” Rainbow asked, looking at Shy with a saddened expression. “I got the memo from commander Shepard.”
At the mention of that name Shy’s eyes went wide and she nearly tackled Dash off of the driver’s seat. “The commander’s alive!? Where is he, how is he alive?!” She questioned, only to be flung off the chair as the brief moment of lost control made the truck swerve. “Oh uhm, I’m sorry. I owe him a lot, he’s a good friend I thought lost.”
“I ran into him on my first day here, he helped get me out of, uhm... trouble.” Rainbow smiled sheepishly. “I have been running with him and the new Normandy until we found Garrus on Omega. From there we went after a lead on you that led us here.”
“I take it he’s busy with the reapers again?” Shy asked with a smirk, allowing Dash to continue to steer the truck.
“Eeyup, he’s been fighting the collectors who have a suspicious amount of reaper tech backing them up.”
“Sounds like him,” Fluttershy chuckled, falling into silence again after as she gazed out of the window out at Tuchanka. “Did any of the other girls come?”
Rainbow shook her head. “No. The princesses initially only wanted to send captains of the guard only. I might have flipped and might have jumped the gun?...”
“So you came alone...”
“Well, no. Shining Armor, Twilight’s brother, came along with me as well.” Rainbow admitted. “He was supposed to be here as well but he stayed on the citadel because Councilor Anderson and Admiral Hacket had a job for him or something.”
“Most have been important, I guess...” Fluttershy shrugged and glanced outside, the lights in the distance were now very clear in the ruins ahead. Her eyes narrowed suddenly as she spotted something. “Dash, stop the vehicle.”
Rainbow looked at Shy with a raised eyebrow but did as told, shutting the truck down looking out over the plain. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s something out there. See the ground? It’s completely flat and perfectly cir- Oh no...” Fluttershy paled slightly as she remembered what she knew about the planet’s wildlife, “Rainbow, we’re in the territory of a thresher maw.”
Dash looked at the area in front of her eyes also widened. “Horseapples… what do we do?”
“Pray that it’s either a small one or that it hasn’t noticed us yet,” Shy said as she backed off and shook Garrus who was asleep at the weapons control station.
“Huh, wha- something wrong little angel?” he asked, Rainbow looking back at the two of them with a massive grin on her face, sticking out her tongue at Shy who looked back with a red face before turning back.
“I think we’re in thresher maw territory,” she told him, Garrus cursed and immediately hit a couple of buttons on his console which lit up.
“We should get out of here as fast as we can then, can you act as another pair of eyes for Rainbow?” He asked, the turret on top of the vehicle buzzing to life.
“Definitely,” Shy told him and moved up to the front again, glaring at the still grinning Rainbow. “Not a word, you.”
“No ma’am,” Dash said mockingly, starting the tomkah’s engine and slowly rolling the vehicle over the plane. Tension built up in the truck as everyone was looking out of the windows or through cameras to spot any unusual activity, the ground continued to stay quiet as they crawled across the terrain.
“Shit… Girls, we have another problem. There are two tomkah’s parked on the edge of the plain in the ruins.” Garrus stated as he zoomed in on them, the radio crackling to life as well.
“Tomkah, Identify your clan or be fired upon.”
Dash stopped the vehicle again but right at the very moment she did, the ground began to shake. Rainbow wasted no time to push the throttle to maximum and yank the steer to the right, the truck making a sharp turn to the right and shooting off. Behind them, a very large thresher maw shot up from the ground. Garrus had already turned the turret and fired while Shy grabbed the radio.
“This is the tomkah, we’re not part of a clan! Please provide assistance!”
“Why would we waste ammo for anyone who’s not allied to Urdnot, much less outsiders?” The krogan on the other end questioned. Garrus and Shy looked at each other in surprise while Dash was too busy evading the thresher maw that was chasing them.
“Who’s your current clan leader?” Shy asked, hoping for the best.
“Urdnot Wrex, ignorant fool,” The krogan growled, Fluttershy just smiled.
“Well, have fun explaining to Wrex how you let two of his friends, Fluttershy and Garrus Vakarian, die then!” The pegasus shouted into the mic right before almost being flung from the chair as Dash made another sharp turn to avoid becoming thresher food. But the beast was so close at that point that she wasn’t able to avoid its acid spit which immediately melted through the turret on top of the craft, disabling it.
Right as the thresher maw tried sinking back into the ground two shells hit its body. “Oh yeah! Take that you overgrown worm!” Dash shouted as the beast roared and immediately took the opportunity to race towards the two vehicles that were now helping them.
“Just know that if you’re lying we’re sending you back to feed that thresher maw.” The krogan didn’t speak further as the battered tomkah drove out of the thresher’s territory and up to the other krogans.
“That was way too close,” Dash grumbled as she shut the engine down again to disembark and speak to the krogan face to face.
“Don’t worry Dash, with a bit of luck you’ll get some RnR soon,” Garrus commented. “Now let’s go see how that old krogan has been doing for the last two years...”