Regent Park Pub, Albany Street, just Northeast of the appointed rendezvous point...
If one were to forget the outside world for even but a moment and ignore the several heavily armed patrons seated and drinking around the establishment, it would be quite easy to forget that only a year ago that Regent Park Pub was a largely bombed out venue that had been the site of a few ferocious gunfights as resistance forces engaged Reaper abominations from a location with excellent fields of fire and a strategic retreat into the still defunct amusement park, and surprisingly still green parkland, and of course the waterfront, all of which still bore signs of hasty encampments and fighting lines on the periphery of the fighting, along with a sizable few trenches, carved out from the unimaginably powerful energy blasts of the Sovereign-class Reapers that had taken a notice to the surviving fighting men and woman that had thought they'd stand a better chance surviving outside of the chaos of the city streets.
Instead, the Pub was largely renovated by the volunteer forces that were acting as security and rebuilding personnel in the year since the war ended. Seeing as no one had anywhere to go to unwind after duty, it was pretty easily decided that to keep morale up and chaos contained, the decidedly non-essential drinking establishment was one of the first things in that corner of the city to be put back into service, and in a span of three weeks went from being a bombed out shell of a building to something of a pride and joy for both the workers and the locals who had survived the war and wanted to return home.
Liquor was largely brought in from outside of the city, from towns that didn't suffer nearly as extensive damage or even saw a Reaper in a handful of cases, and workers and veterans were each covered for one drink a night covered by the funds set aside by the municipal and federal authorities that were trying desperately to get the city up and running again a year later, and everything else was out of their own pocket. The arrangement kept the peace and everyone happy, to a degree. Ravanor Rykarn, one of three krogan in the establishment, was making the most of the last free drink he'd get out of the pub, since it was his last day on the job. As the one hour reminder beep from his omnitool went off, the krogan knew he'd have to get going to meet up for his potential new line of work. Apparently having worked for a Spectre before was an unexpectedly good networking solution for job prospects.
Rykarn didn't look all that out of place in heavy armour and covered in weaponry; he was one of many who had security permits to do so. The sight of heavy armed veterans still roaming the streets helping with the city's recovery tended to have a sobering effect on would-be criminals that had short memories that only a year ago, they were cowering from machines that wanted to turn them into monsters. The gunmen kept each other in line, reported to law enforcement frequently, and it helped placate species like the krogan who considered leaving home without an assault rifle to be a form of nudity. Given that krogan were able to lift and move heavy materials that normally would take heavy equipment that was in utterly short supply, and that the galaxy was still very wary of the species on principle, people weren't keen on telling the hulking aliens what they could and couldn't do. As long as the warlords kept their hordes in line, the krogan were agreeable, and given that the turian veterans who fought alongside the krogan actually were finding a surprisingly amicable relationship with their long-time nemesis, it wasn't hard to keep the krogan in general in line, outside of a few minor incidents here and there.
Drinking straight vodka and trying to not down his glass in a single gulp by accident, Rykarn's eyes were glued to a video monitor that was going through the news while listening to a pair of human vets excitedly recounting the time they killed a Brute by leaping on it from a second story balcony and shoving a detpack in between its plating to a pair of girls who were giggling and batting glassy-eyed fuck-me stares at the two soldiers. The krogan's attention was mostly on some statement that inbred pyjak leader of the Terra Firma party was going on about aliens on Earth. Clueless asshole would have been a Reaper smoothie and the planet destroyed to a man if it weren't for aliens, so he was practically pissing into the wind since most people knew that simple fact.
Unfortunately, it seemed his word resonated with the mental faculty-deprived sorts and Rykarn was suddenly aware of a smashed beer bottle across his crest, chunks of glass and rot-scented beer coating him.
"Go back to Toochankuh, you bloody twat!" A man wearing a bus-driver's uniform slurred at Rykarn, his hand cut from the splinted glass, the bottle neck still in hand. Rykarn turned in his seat to face the man only to find said broken bottle shoved into his face, which had all the effect of a toddler punching the reinforced hull of a cruiser. "You're not the brightest one in the room, are you?" he rumbled, feeling an acute annoyance building up within him. Not because of the human's audacity, but rather to headbutt him into the ground would largely be frowned upon. Humans were squishy, and this idiot would have found himself with a few broken bones. Faces were turned to face him, including the two women and soldiers who were probably going to go rent some seedy motel room in a couple of hours to see what he'd do.
Grabbing the man's bottle-carrying hand, Rykarn stood up and dragged the man, who was kicking and screaming about being assaulted by a damn filthy alien, out of the pub. A trash bin was mounted by the curb, and with the ease of a man picking up his unruly child, lifted the drunk belligerent and shoved him head-first into the mostly-empty bin, his legs dangling comically in the air. Rykarn's eyes caught those of a beat-cop who looked at him with a more bemused and curious expression than one looking to charge him for a crime.
"Might I ask why you're shoving that poor man's head in the rubbish?" he asked.
"Too much to drink, he got cut off." Rykarn replied, picking out a rather large chunk of loose glass from his collar and dropping it in the bin with the man.
"Right, well, don't make a habit of it. It's pretty plain what happened here, what with you covered in glass. Do you wish to press charges?" the officer asked. Rykarn shook his head.
"You've bigger problems to deal with. You'd be surprised how many times I've had this happen to me. Waste of hooch, if you ask me." Rykarn replied. He produced his weapons permit for the officer and carried on his way, a short jaunt to the Great Baker Street terminal, which was the next station over from the destination at Baker Street. Rykarn knew it to be open, albeit a bit flooded and collapsed in some spots, thanks to a few security sweeps to check for any Husks that might have avoided termination, and in one instance, to avoid the Reapers entirely. One of the Rangers he'd fought with was a London native named Charles Livingston who, prior to signing up with the Alliance as a response to the Skyllian Blitz, had a hobby of traveling the world to explore old abandoned subterranean city fixtures. He'd managed to map out a fairly accurate map of the obsolete London metro system for allied forces to plot the movement of men and materials so not everything was exposed on the streets. Prying open a flimsy accordion gate at the station's mouth, Rykarn descended down below, the flashlight mounted to his shotgun lighting the way.
It was a fifteen minute walk through the tunnels, only having to squeeze through mostly-collapsed sections on a single occasion, until he started to hear voices. Must have been others who were given the same offer as him, although he couldn't make out what was being said, some were certainly more frantic than others. The sound of an explosion filled the tunnels, the soundwaves bouncing violently off the walls, causing some of the already weakened foundation to shift and dust to pour down. Rykarn looked up and grunted. So much for a clandestine meeting.
A few moments later, the tunnel widened into the station, and the group of figures were standing around looking decidedly not relaxed, likely because of said blast. A human, a pair of quarians, a batarian, and a turian were all in attendance. There wasn't much rhyme or reason to those present, from appearances alone they didn't look like they had anything in common, but from hard-earned experience, Rykarn knew you should never make assumptions about anything. It's purpose would make sense in time. "I'm assuming none of you are the one who sent the invitation. Swell." He announced, placing a hand on the lip of the station platform and vaulting onto it with a surprising amount of agility for someone of his bulk. "And who's the idiot setting off charges? You're going to attract the wrong kind of attention doing that, namely police who think someone's making homemade explosives down here." he observed, reaching in his armour's collar to pick out more glass he'd missed.
When he looked up, he noticed the geth for the first time. That surprised him; he wasn't aware geth were even still on-world, or that anyone even associated with them. "Oh, don't tell me that's what prompted the bomb. You know we aren't shooting at the geth anymore, right?"
Auz
Spoopy Scary
Baklava
Silverwind Blade