It took a few moments, after breaking through into the stinging daylight of consciousness again, for Kargad’s head to stop ringing like a bell. It took a few moments [i]more[/i] for him to stop laughing about it. 

It wasn’t short, and sportive, either: he came shooting back into the waking world with a belly-full of mirth, a laughter which shook him like a mountain on a fault line, so hard and deep that he felt his core throb almost as hard as his jaw was. It only seceded when he realised the atmosphere about him had grown suddenly dire. Playtime, it seemed, was over. 
As they rushed to exchange their gear- Kargad said a tearful goodbye to a shotgun he never made good use of, and promised someday to rectify that- he probed his lower jaw absently, chasing the taste of alkaline and copper. A tooth on a thread – cracked down to the root.
[color=#D54122][i]”Damn,”[/i][/color] he murmured, with weight. He couldn’t help but smile to himself. He spat a molar into the sand just before they boarded the shuttle – that one would take the best part of a month to take root again.

He sat himself down across from Firu, and smiled bloodily, with surprising cheer, before the briefing properly began. He was impressed. No – he was [i]delighted.[/i] 
[color=#D54122]“You hit like a freighter being driven by a truck,”[/color] he told her, quietly and in earnest. It made him itch beneath the plates. He could feel the stuff of Tuchanka- those small specks of irradiated char, the colour of earth, and stone, and blood- broiling in his veins. Kargad liked humans, but realised he had underestimated them. He’d expected them to be brutal, and fierce… but squishy. He’d never been so glad to be wrong. He liked this one.
[color=#D54122]“We’re gonna have to go toe-to-toe again – you’re going to have to realign my jaw.”[/color]

--

He grew a little more reserved when he heard tell of the stakes, and felt the disapproval of some select teammates as it went on. Here they were, in what was effectively a [i]real[/i] hostage situation, and they all thought he’d made an ass of himself. Well, maybe he had. 
He wrung his hands quietly, and tensed his jaw – then winced and promptly stopped. 
What had happened here was, he felt, a fatal misunderstanding of cultures. Krogan were not brutal savages, contrary to popular belief. They bled, they loved, they thought. But they [i]were[/i] tribal. What had happened here was, for everybody else, an example of his combat ethic – but to him, in that moment, it had been a clan bonding experience. He had been trying to gauge their worth, and show his own, in his little... Krogan way. Appear strong, reliable, and prove that he thought the same of them. Of course he was more responsible in the field – he was still [i]alive,[/i] wasn’t he?

He caught Naryxa’s side-eye, and visibly shrank. Waved at her nervously, and tried to smile apologetically, although there were few smiles a Krogan could offer that didn’t seem tainted with menace. She wasn’t the first Asari to judge him – Revixtia's family had never approved - but he couldn’t help but catch his daughters in her face. 
[color=#D54122][i]”Ah, shit, is that [b]racist?[/b] Sorry girls.”[/i][/color]
Would they have been embarrassed? Dad, acting up at an Asari function, [i]again?[/i]
He turned mutely to his faith. Clasped his hands together, and not unlike Firu, murmured a little prayer.

It brought him strength in small degrees of indignation. At first he thought it was the Krogan in him, flaring up as it often did. But no – this was unmistakably his wife. He heard her voice, clear and loud and angry.
[i]”Who gives a [b]fuck[/b] what they think?”[/i]
And she was right, of course. She was always right. They thought he was just another reckless Krogan. Good to throw at an enemy now and judge later. But was he? Did it even matter?
There were no [i]Krogan[/i] out here, no [i]Asari,[/i] no [i]Humans.[/i] Not the way he saw it. This was somewhere strange, and new, and brilliant – here they were all just denizens of the Milky Way. Truer than it ever was before, they were all expressions of the same cosmic thought. 

--

On the ground, Kargad was quick to hang his hammer at his hump. He would do it right, this time. 
[i]“That Fiend needs to go down fast - I don’t know if Kargad or myself stand even a faint chance until that thing has gained a few pounds in tungsten… if it gets close to us without eating metal, I’ll see you all in heaven.”[/i]
[color=#D54122]“If that thing gets close to us without eating metal, we’ll ride it all the way there,”[/color] Kargad took up his mattock. Then he caught Firu’s glance, and flushed with an instant of embarrassment. Felt the heat rise beneath his armour. He wasn’t making a tonne of great first impressions today.
[color=#D54122]“I- what? It’s not the gun, it’s what you… let’s just kill this thing,”[/color] he grumbled.
[i][color=#B77600]“Didn’t realize your mom was here.”[/color][/i]
Scratch all that stuff about being impressed by humans.
The Krogan laughed lowly, and shouldered his rifle. He grinned at Clyff on just the one side of his face: [color=#D54122]“You kidding? My mom’s [i]way[/i] scarier,”[/color] he snorted, [color=#D54122]“She could bench press that thing.”[/color]