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“Not so fast, Saren!” said Aladdin, a plucky grin spanning his smug face as he boldly crested a heap of geth debris.
Saren killed him.
It wasn’t hard because Aladdin was wearing only a pair of billowy hammer pants and a canvas vest – no shields or armor or other gear, nothing to prevent instantaneous death in 22nd-century combat. His monkey died too. The monkey was even more vulnerable, if that’s possible.
Shepard and Garrus saw this from a distance. The scene’s inanity settled upon them like a slow Tarithian fog. For a while, they were speechless.
“Shepard,” Garrus finally spoke, his intonation dewy with patient reservation. The two were uncomfortably huddled behind a metal vat that, from the smell of things, the geth had once used to store either battery acid or spoiled eggs. “Tell me again, Shepard, why we traveled back in time to recruit a spirited but technologically and militarily ignorant ‘street-rat,’ as I believe you vocationally labeled him, from your planet’s year 900 CE. Tell me why this was a good use of our time.”
“I dunno,” said Shepard, her brow arched in a pensive confusion. “I just watched his movie a lot as a kid – he had his own movie, with a genie and these zany songs – and I guess it just seemed like no one could stop Aladdin. And he’s cute. Or was.”
A pause. “I’m cute,” said Garrus.
“I mean …”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Jesus, Garrus. Do we have to have this conversation now?”
“Never a good time, is it Shepard?”
“Well, it certainly isn’t now – not when Saren has the high ground and we’re pinned down here …”
“And – and! And Saren just carbonized our only other team member – because we’re only allowed three team members for some bizarre self-imposed reason and you chose an unarmed, mostly naked man from the past and his pet monkey as one third of our task force.” He gestured at the smoldering corpses of the two primates. “A man who …” – words failed him for a moment – “whose only attack, apparently, is to jump into the open and yell, ‘Not so fast, Saren!’”
“Well, he did sound good saying it. He said the same thing to Jafar.”
“To who?”
“Never mind.”
They both paused.
Garrus cleared his throat. “I still think we should have recruited the fucking carpet instead.”
“Or maybe the genie.”
“Yes, or maybe the genie. The goddamn magical genie who could literally grant us anything we want in this particularly difficult moment. That also might have been a good move.”
Another pause. Fifteen seconds ticked by as a salvo of laser fire hemmed them in.
“Or the tiger,” said Shepard. “You know, Raja, the tiger?”
“Yes. Raja the tiger. Also a better choice than the naked dead guy with his dead monkey. A tiger is better than a naked dead guy. If you’re right about anything, you’re right about that.”