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They’re stuck in a ditch. Again.
“Well, I did ask if you could even see out the windshield,” Vetra says from the passenger seat, looking down at her omnitool when Arynn glares at her.
“Are you serious right now, Vetra?” There’s an edge to her voice as she struggles against the Nomad, trying to rock out of the ditch without flipping over, but the teasing lilt of her words is there as always. Jaal chuckles from the backseat, and Arynn groans. “Not you too.”
It takes a few minutes, but they work their way free of the ditch and head off, speeding across a vast frozen lake towards the navpoint for Techiix. They chatter about nothing for a bit, and Arynn cranks her driving playlist up as loud as her sensitive ears will allow. She and Vetra sing along with varying degrees of success, taking turns keeping track of the navpoint, and Jaal joins in the singing when a chorus repeats.
They overshoot the daar, and when Arynn tries to course-correct the Nomad careens into a skid, stopping with a soft whump only when they hit a snowbank. All three are silent for a beat as snow tumbles over the windshield, and then in unison Arynn groans again, Vetra chuckles, and Jaal roars with laughter.
“Why is it always me,” Arynn grumbles, leaning back in her seat for a moment before struggling out of her harness and into the snow. The other two follow, hissing at the cold, and Arynn plants her feet with her hands on her hips to survey the situation. The stubborn pose somehow makes her look even smaller than usual, but no one says anything, still grumbling about the weather instead. She looks skyward, as if she’d rather be anywhere but here, and sniffs petulantly.
“Let’s clear the windshield first, then you can maybe see what you’re doing,” Vetra pipes up, and Arynn nods. All three pitch in, pushing and heaving snow off the front end of the Nomad, their collective mood improving as the work warms them up a little.
Just before they’re ready to climb back in and try to extract themselves from the snowbank, Vetra stops, crossing her arms with a pointed look. “Now that we’re digging ourselves out of the snow, I’ve been meaning to ask. How much Nomad training was there back in the Milky Way?”
“None,” Arynn replies distractedly, trying to brush the snow from her armor. “I don’t actually have a license, not even for a skycar.” Her head snaps up as Vetra’s mandibles flare and her tongue clicks, the equivalent of a splutter from a human.
“You what?” There’s an accompanying stutter of shock over the comms as Kallo also processes what the Pathfinder has just said, and even Jaal’s mouth drops open in surprise - he may not understand the whole conversation, but ‘driving without training’ is apparently a bad idea to the angara as well.
“Uh, can we pretend I didn’t just say that?” Arynn asks, sighing heavily, but she looks more annoyed by the others’ responses than chagrined. Vetra shakes her head slowly, mandibles flaring in amusement this time.
“No, I don’t think we’ll be able to do that. Are you sure you want to keep driving after that?” Arynn nods, eyes squinted as she tries to figure out where Vetra’s going with this. But all the turian says is, “Well then. Let’s get out of this snowbank.”