042; [fanfic] Mass Effect 2 -- The Pace Is on a Runaway Train
Title: The Pace is on a Runaway Train
Fandom: Mass Effect 2
Characters: Joker and EDI
Wordcount: 1,544
Notes: Spoilers for all kinds of things but especially the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Idea from chisotahn and frigoris.
For all the annoyances that EDI added to Joker’s everyday life, he had to grudgingly admit that there were some things she was handy for. The same could be said for Cerberus as a whole, really, but in the cockpit EDI was the most constant of the various turds Cerberus put in their collective cereal. She had the most annoying tendency to nitpick everything constantly, because I guess being an advanced AI made you perfect or something. (Well, okay... maybe it did.) Any time Joker pulled off some great maneuver and started patting himself on the back, EDI would pipe in with some annoying bullshit about how he should have considered diving instead of banking to avoid that oncoming space debris, or that the landing might have been less bumpy if he’d rotated the ship one-point-six-three-three degrees counterclockwise.
But yeah, there were a couple things EDI was good for. Through her Cerberus connections, she had access to all kinds of stuff that you couldn’t get on the normal extranet, and sometimes she grudgingly gave him a few minutes to search for whatever he wanted. (EDI being EDI, she knew he would just search for crazy porn. Come on now, seriously.) If he bugged her enough, she could pull strings and get upgrades for the ship that Joker would have only dreamed of back in the old days. But arguably the best thing EDI had access to was a tiny external camera that Cerberus had mounted on Commander Shepard’s helmet.
It wasn’t really spying, Joker told himself in his vague attempts at justification. It’s not like EDI would let him see anything juicy anyway. She pretty much only let him sneak a peek at the camera’s feed when Shepard was with an away team on a mission. It was kind of fun, if he had to be honest with himself, to watch his commander shoot down Blue Suns or intimidate some snivelling bastard who was stupid enough to lie to the greatest Spectre the galaxy had ever known. Arguably his favorite had been watching Shepard romance her way into Samara’s daughter’s apartment, though EDI had cut the feed almost immediately after the two had gotten there, ignoring all of Joker’s pleading and protests.
So if watching Shepard almost get freaky with some scary asari chick was the high point, this was definitely the low.
“Oh, god, no, what are you doing?!” Joker’s voice was pitched slightly higher than usual from a combination of technical indignation and blind terror. As soon as he’d seen Shepard get into the driver’s seat of the taxi, he’d known that everything would go straight to hell. After seeing all the dents and scorch marks that covered the Mako after every mission back on the old Normandy, he’d realized quickly that the commander, for all her talent and charms, was a terrible driver. Now he was watching this new scene play out, covering his face but still peeking between his fingers like a child watching a horror movie.
There was a loud scraping sound and Joker could swear that he saw something sparking at the edge of the camera’s field of view. “What is she even thinking?” he squeaked, wincing visibly.
“The probability that Commander Shepard would have piloted the car into another vehicle had she banked right rather than left is approximately seventy-four-point-nine-five-two percent,” EDI said, and Joker could swear that it sounded like she was enjoying this. “It appears she chose damage to the vehicle over possible civilian casualties. Whether she made this decision consciously is yet to be determined.”
“That’s our commander,” Joker said, rolling his eyes. He might have continued the joke, but was interrupted by the sound of the car’s drive core making a noise it definitely should not be making, followed by some loud protests from Liara. “Are there blinders in that helmet, too?” he exclaimed, giving EDI an almost accusatory look. “If Liara weren’t there to give directions, they would be dead. Dead.”
“If Liara weren’t there, then this reckless chase would not have happened, Jeff,” EDI pointed out, not missing a beat. He scowled and reluctantly turned back to the monitor. He hated when she called him Jeff.
Joker didn’t get motion sick; anyone who did wouldn’t last more than a day in flight training. Even so, his stomach kept flip-flopping every time Shepard made a sudden turn or drop. “Can’t you like, hack into the controls or something? I don’t think I can take much more of thi--”
His complaints were abruptly drowned out by Liara screaming “Truck!” and Shepard shooting back a flippant “I know!”
“Definitely can’t take much more of this,” Joker appended, pressing his fingers back together so he wouldn’t have to watch any more.
EDI made a noise that almost sounded like an indignant sniff. “The navigational programs in that vehicle are primitive. Hacking them would be a trivial effort. However, there are approximately zero-point-zero-zero-five-three milliseconds of lag time, which would not improve matters significantly were I to take control.” There was a brief pause, punctuated by the sound of the car ramming into something over the video feed. “Besides, I find these events to be rather humorous.”
Of course she would. “Won’t be so humorous if the commander blows herself up in a twenty-six car pile-up.”
“That didn’t pose a problem for Cerberus the first time,” EDI chimed in.
Joker sighed heavily. “Point taken.” He dared to peek through his fingers again, and oh god were those proximity bombs that Shepard was swerving wildly to avoid? It’s like this whole situation had been specifically concocted to give him a heart attack. He tried to focus on the dot in the distance that he knew to be Tela Vasir’s skycar, but even that proved to be fruitless when another giant truck entered the field of view, once again accompanied by Liara’s frenzied screaming.
“Goddammit, EDI! Couldn’t you Cerberus people have installed the ability to goddamn drive when you rebuilt Shepard?” Joker was practically flailing his arms about, vaguely aware that he looked ridiculous but too upset to care. “I don’t care about the input lag! Just hack the damn controls and let me drive the damn taxi!”
“I am not convinced that is the best course of action, Jeff,” EDI replied curtly.
“And I’m not convinced that you wouldn’t be better off as the Normandy’s hood ornament!” Joker snapped back. He spun around and put his hands in their familiar places on the control console. “Just do it before I rip out your circuits and toss you into the Skylian Verge! And stop calling me Jeff!”
There was a beat of silence before EDI spoke again. “Transferring Normandy to autopilot functions. Rerouting taxi controls to your own, Mister Moreau. I certainly hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Please, did you forget who you’re talking to?” Despite his best efforts, Joker couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Is this the part where I say, ‘Assuming direct control’?”
If EDI had been programmed with a face, she probably would have rolled her eyes. “I do not find that humorous, Jeff.”
He was far past listening, though. Skycar controls were largely the same as that of an actual spacecraft nowadays, simplified of course. That only made things easier for Joker, as there were only three or four controls that would actually do anything. But the process of controlling a vehicle he wasn’t actually in was much harder than he had anticipated. There was the input lag EDI had warned of, which he couldn’t completely correct for; on top of that, the view from Shepard’s helmet camera was limited, with almost no peripheral vision to speak of. What he could see out the front windshield was more or less what he had to work with. After a few seconds of awkward jostling, which really seemed to confuse the actual passengers of the taxi, Joker realized that it would be much easier if he just mimicked the gestures Shepard was trying to make, but executed them with more finesse. The end result was that the taxi swerved almost deftly out of the way of Vasir’s car, followed by the tell-tale screech and crash of a collision.
“Ha! Take that, you dumb blue bitch!” Joker exclaimed triumphantly as the taxi, and consequentially the view from Shepard’s helmet, swung around just in time to see Vasir’s car tumbling out of the sky, like someone had pushed the big red “Gravity: ON” button. It crashed and burned on the roof of a nearby building, and Joker mimicked Shepard’s gestures as she brought the taxi around to land next to the wreckage.
“The probability of that situation ending in the injury or death of one or more occupants of the commander’s vehicle was approximately ninety-eight-point-three-five-two percent. It appears that your intervention was, if not strictly necessary, a large factor in the mission’s success,” EDI admitted. Joker made a kind of scoffing sound in reply, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. “However,” EDI went on, an almost mocking tone in her voice, “the taxi skidded approximately three-point-zero-five-nine centimeters upon landing. If you had reduced the power to the rear thruster...”
Joker groaned loudly and covered his ears. “Don’t you have a damn mute button?”
Fandom: Mass Effect 2
Characters: Joker and EDI
Wordcount: 1,544
Notes: Spoilers for all kinds of things but especially the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC. Idea from chisotahn and frigoris.
For all the annoyances that EDI added to Joker’s everyday life, he had to grudgingly admit that there were some things she was handy for. The same could be said for Cerberus as a whole, really, but in the cockpit EDI was the most constant of the various turds Cerberus put in their collective cereal. She had the most annoying tendency to nitpick everything constantly, because I guess being an advanced AI made you perfect or something. (Well, okay... maybe it did.) Any time Joker pulled off some great maneuver and started patting himself on the back, EDI would pipe in with some annoying bullshit about how he should have considered diving instead of banking to avoid that oncoming space debris, or that the landing might have been less bumpy if he’d rotated the ship one-point-six-three-three degrees counterclockwise.
But yeah, there were a couple things EDI was good for. Through her Cerberus connections, she had access to all kinds of stuff that you couldn’t get on the normal extranet, and sometimes she grudgingly gave him a few minutes to search for whatever he wanted. (EDI being EDI, she knew he would just search for crazy porn. Come on now, seriously.) If he bugged her enough, she could pull strings and get upgrades for the ship that Joker would have only dreamed of back in the old days. But arguably the best thing EDI had access to was a tiny external camera that Cerberus had mounted on Commander Shepard’s helmet.
It wasn’t really spying, Joker told himself in his vague attempts at justification. It’s not like EDI would let him see anything juicy anyway. She pretty much only let him sneak a peek at the camera’s feed when Shepard was with an away team on a mission. It was kind of fun, if he had to be honest with himself, to watch his commander shoot down Blue Suns or intimidate some snivelling bastard who was stupid enough to lie to the greatest Spectre the galaxy had ever known. Arguably his favorite had been watching Shepard romance her way into Samara’s daughter’s apartment, though EDI had cut the feed almost immediately after the two had gotten there, ignoring all of Joker’s pleading and protests.
So if watching Shepard almost get freaky with some scary asari chick was the high point, this was definitely the low.
“Oh, god, no, what are you doing?!” Joker’s voice was pitched slightly higher than usual from a combination of technical indignation and blind terror. As soon as he’d seen Shepard get into the driver’s seat of the taxi, he’d known that everything would go straight to hell. After seeing all the dents and scorch marks that covered the Mako after every mission back on the old Normandy, he’d realized quickly that the commander, for all her talent and charms, was a terrible driver. Now he was watching this new scene play out, covering his face but still peeking between his fingers like a child watching a horror movie.
There was a loud scraping sound and Joker could swear that he saw something sparking at the edge of the camera’s field of view. “What is she even thinking?” he squeaked, wincing visibly.
“The probability that Commander Shepard would have piloted the car into another vehicle had she banked right rather than left is approximately seventy-four-point-nine-five-two percent,” EDI said, and Joker could swear that it sounded like she was enjoying this. “It appears she chose damage to the vehicle over possible civilian casualties. Whether she made this decision consciously is yet to be determined.”
“That’s our commander,” Joker said, rolling his eyes. He might have continued the joke, but was interrupted by the sound of the car’s drive core making a noise it definitely should not be making, followed by some loud protests from Liara. “Are there blinders in that helmet, too?” he exclaimed, giving EDI an almost accusatory look. “If Liara weren’t there to give directions, they would be dead. Dead.”
“If Liara weren’t there, then this reckless chase would not have happened, Jeff,” EDI pointed out, not missing a beat. He scowled and reluctantly turned back to the monitor. He hated when she called him Jeff.
Joker didn’t get motion sick; anyone who did wouldn’t last more than a day in flight training. Even so, his stomach kept flip-flopping every time Shepard made a sudden turn or drop. “Can’t you like, hack into the controls or something? I don’t think I can take much more of thi--”
His complaints were abruptly drowned out by Liara screaming “Truck!” and Shepard shooting back a flippant “I know!”
“Definitely can’t take much more of this,” Joker appended, pressing his fingers back together so he wouldn’t have to watch any more.
EDI made a noise that almost sounded like an indignant sniff. “The navigational programs in that vehicle are primitive. Hacking them would be a trivial effort. However, there are approximately zero-point-zero-zero-five-three milliseconds of lag time, which would not improve matters significantly were I to take control.” There was a brief pause, punctuated by the sound of the car ramming into something over the video feed. “Besides, I find these events to be rather humorous.”
Of course she would. “Won’t be so humorous if the commander blows herself up in a twenty-six car pile-up.”
“That didn’t pose a problem for Cerberus the first time,” EDI chimed in.
Joker sighed heavily. “Point taken.” He dared to peek through his fingers again, and oh god were those proximity bombs that Shepard was swerving wildly to avoid? It’s like this whole situation had been specifically concocted to give him a heart attack. He tried to focus on the dot in the distance that he knew to be Tela Vasir’s skycar, but even that proved to be fruitless when another giant truck entered the field of view, once again accompanied by Liara’s frenzied screaming.
“Goddammit, EDI! Couldn’t you Cerberus people have installed the ability to goddamn drive when you rebuilt Shepard?” Joker was practically flailing his arms about, vaguely aware that he looked ridiculous but too upset to care. “I don’t care about the input lag! Just hack the damn controls and let me drive the damn taxi!”
“I am not convinced that is the best course of action, Jeff,” EDI replied curtly.
“And I’m not convinced that you wouldn’t be better off as the Normandy’s hood ornament!” Joker snapped back. He spun around and put his hands in their familiar places on the control console. “Just do it before I rip out your circuits and toss you into the Skylian Verge! And stop calling me Jeff!”
There was a beat of silence before EDI spoke again. “Transferring Normandy to autopilot functions. Rerouting taxi controls to your own, Mister Moreau. I certainly hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Please, did you forget who you’re talking to?” Despite his best efforts, Joker couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Is this the part where I say, ‘Assuming direct control’?”
If EDI had been programmed with a face, she probably would have rolled her eyes. “I do not find that humorous, Jeff.”
He was far past listening, though. Skycar controls were largely the same as that of an actual spacecraft nowadays, simplified of course. That only made things easier for Joker, as there were only three or four controls that would actually do anything. But the process of controlling a vehicle he wasn’t actually in was much harder than he had anticipated. There was the input lag EDI had warned of, which he couldn’t completely correct for; on top of that, the view from Shepard’s helmet camera was limited, with almost no peripheral vision to speak of. What he could see out the front windshield was more or less what he had to work with. After a few seconds of awkward jostling, which really seemed to confuse the actual passengers of the taxi, Joker realized that it would be much easier if he just mimicked the gestures Shepard was trying to make, but executed them with more finesse. The end result was that the taxi swerved almost deftly out of the way of Vasir’s car, followed by the tell-tale screech and crash of a collision.
“Ha! Take that, you dumb blue bitch!” Joker exclaimed triumphantly as the taxi, and consequentially the view from Shepard’s helmet, swung around just in time to see Vasir’s car tumbling out of the sky, like someone had pushed the big red “Gravity: ON” button. It crashed and burned on the roof of a nearby building, and Joker mimicked Shepard’s gestures as she brought the taxi around to land next to the wreckage.
“The probability of that situation ending in the injury or death of one or more occupants of the commander’s vehicle was approximately ninety-eight-point-three-five-two percent. It appears that your intervention was, if not strictly necessary, a large factor in the mission’s success,” EDI admitted. Joker made a kind of scoffing sound in reply, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. “However,” EDI went on, an almost mocking tone in her voice, “the taxi skidded approximately three-point-zero-five-nine centimeters upon landing. If you had reduced the power to the rear thruster...”
Joker groaned loudly and covered his ears. “Don’t you have a damn mute button?”