A/N: This is not a pretty chapter. Both in writing it, and I think in reading it, but it's harsh for a reason because its at the intersection of a few things: reader expectations, a glimpse back at the Halo universe, the graphics I put to it. But I think it's necessary and its a part of this story.

Anyway, review responses:

To Blackshield INC:

A part of Noble 6's canon, implied character, in which he is a Headhunter, and a Spartan-III, it very much infers that he spent much of his record fighting other Humans instead of the Covenant. It's a tragedy, of course, of the games not depicting Human enemies, but here, it very much is displayed. For all of Mai's perception of aliens, it kinda is a veneer, or a distraction, to her capability of killing Humans, and I'm glad you noticed.

To gamerdroid56:

You bring up an interesting point that many others have asked about in reviews, and about whether or not the Halo Universe will come over to ME's. The answer is no with consideration that you mean it as a whole "clash of galaxies" type of things, because that's not really interesting and not the intent of this story. I mean the Halo universe has come over to ME in the form of the Solace and Mai and JD, but I'm sure that's not what you mean.

As for power level stuff, I'd rather not comment. Especially in regards to Mai's own power level in relation to, say, the Chief. I write around the feel of it, not the outright technical objectiveness. As for ship to ship stuff, well, who knows, might see my interpretation soon.

To JJPGhost:

Usually I don't respond reviews like this because they're a little ignorant about JD and Mai and the overwhelming nature of their situation, one which I think, at times overrides their inherent xenophobia. Quite simply put I'm not blind to it or criticisms of JD or Mai getting "over it" a bit fast for who they are, and I do recognize it's not fun for me to write a character like JD with such internalized prejudices, but it brings me back to a story in Vietnam.

A black soldier from Alabama shares a foxhole with a white soldier from Arkansas, because they'd rather die together than die alone despite the racial differences common in that period. Their situation overwrites, at places, what they know, and their struggle and development is based around knowing that's the case.

To Obsequium Minaris:

This is probably one of the longest and most heartfelt reviews I've ever gotten and I'm glad you wrote it. I know it might be a bit to narcissistic to say, but not only does it flatter, but you probably help affirm other people as well in reading this. Thank you.

That being said I have never been or ever will be in the military, all the experiences I may depict in t his story are from research, anecdotal tales, or just straight up fictional crafting. There is another story in the ME section, I think that one battle chicken fic, that goes a bit overboard with stark military realism, and it kinda takes a hit with readability for it, but the genuine feeling I shoot for in terms of the militaria is what I aim for and I'm glad it ran true for you,

I'm also pleased you commented on my prose. It's highly inspired by Cormac McCarthy and, of course, modern fanfiction styling, and I'm just glad it adds to the story instead of detracts.

In General:

Altis is up next, and then the rest of Mass Effect 1.

Virmire is going to be a fucking doozy, I'll tell you that.

1-20

Imbued by their Creators

"We're not going to be your toys any longer!

"She's right! We're sick of your training."

"We're leaving! And you can't stop us!"

The only easy day was yesterday. That's what Cameron Masterson thought as he was jostled awake and told to get his duty handgun. Insurrectionists on Reach?!

No, Chief Mendez had clarified. Not an insurrection that he would know of, anyway.

The trainees were rebelling, a certain group of them however. 023 was the ringleader. She was a bright girl from Sargasso, eight years removed. She was fourteen now. All of them were fourteen.

Too bright, almost. "Cut them off at the exit! And don't kill any of them!" Mendez had yelled in his ears as Marines and security personnel were deployed to every exit. It wasn't enough however. They had just gone through their augmentations. Still Masterson wasn't one to argue against Mendez. He had done his fair share since he had been attached to the program.

It was a blur of beat downs and breaking: security apparatuses being broken and distractions being set. Half the damn facility was out of power and the other half about to be set on fire as, all at once, one trap had worked.

"They'll be here." Halsey spoke, planting herself in that hallway, the light of the exit to their back.

"You best be sure." Masterson had said in his western drawl, cocking his pistol. So many other scientists had come there as if it was a parade to watch, security guards prepped and ready to fight Humanity's best. There was apprehension there. As if today was the day they would die. Masterson felt it. He was an old man, so he knew the feeling. If death was to come it wouldn't be from them. At least not today.

When was Halsey ever not right?

She was very much right today as the trainees came rushing, and in their arms, their own pistols in their hands aimed at hostages, they had confronted them all. They were teenagers. Teenagers in the bodies of mythology's warriors.

Helluva standoff.

"Get out of our way." Daisy commanded, with all the realization that she was the supersoldier that they had molded her to be. "Please, we don't want to hurt anybody."

Halsey tilted her head, furrowing her brow. A few of their hostages had very much been roughed up, broken, being dragged by their heels. "And yet you have. You're made to do this now, don't you understand?"

It was an insult to them. Daisy's dirty blonde hair had bobbed as she jostled her own scientist hostage again, digging the muzzle of her gun into the back of his head. Her eyes were of an electric fire. All of their eyes now burned.

"We've seen what you did to Soren! To Fhajad and Serin! Simon died! We all saw it happen! We're nothing but assets to you. You'll just use us up and let us die!"

So many bodies, broken and twisted and seemingly mutated. The augmentation process did not go over well with a lot of the class. Enough survived, some died, some were put into comas. But just the sight of it: little bodies, children, in forever pain.

All this to fight terrorists out in the colonies.

Masterson had motioned with his hand for his security to move up, to raise their weapons.

Halsey had something else to draw however as she looked back at him and shook her head, palming his M6 down. From out behind her, like a shadow he didn't notice: a boy.

Masterson knew him well; from Eridanus II he was-

"Please, you can't leave us behind." The boy spoke by Halsey's side. That was it. He was a boy, just like them. Just like Daisy and Ralph. "We can take this together. We've made it this far just think about-" He paused, looking at each of them, remembering their faces. Things would never be the same after today no matter what happened, he know. "Just think about what will happen to us."

Punishment, mass punishment. The boy was pleading for all those that would be left behind.

"Then come with us!" Daisy cried out, gun in her hand still. "We have to go! And we have to go now!" Tear in her eyes, Daisy was pleading for her life, for all those who wanted out from the twisted game, twisted experiment, that the progenitor of which stood before them all and said nothing.

"We can't." John-117 uttered, forced.

Daisy only looked at him with sad eyes. The saddest Masterson had ever seen. "Let's go home."

Masterson had remembered them.

Chakwas raised her hand in the Normandy's comm room, surrounded by her peers. "I vouch for the Commander's capability with as much tact and understanding as I can in regards to your worries." She explained in the comm room. "She is up. She is mentally aware and cognitive to a degree which is typical for her, and, quite frankly, this move is ignorant of her extraordinary circumstances."

"She threw herself on a grenade, Doctor Chakwas!"

"That's the type of person Shepard is!" Kaiden's voice had risen as Emerson challenged Chakwas.

All hell had broken loose among the entirety of the Normandy crew and they were all had been shoved into the comm room, speaking about the woman they called Commander.

It was supposed to be a routine inspection. They always were of the sort. The Normandy would stop and frisk any ship that had an inch of suspicion about it. Shepard had her intuition about these sorts of things.

Ashley had put four rounds, center mass, into a Human gunman on that rickety old freighter as his body collapsed upon those cowering. On the floor, sitting and bound by chains, had been naked people. Skinny and demeaned and held like cattle. They all screamed or yelled out in agony and surprise as the gunshot rang out and the man's body dropped onto them, they trying to scurry away.

Kaiden pushed forward and kicked the dead man's gun away as he confirmed. "Good shot, Ash." Williams could take only the smallest gratification out of that as they stood above a sea of people, once bound for a worse life. "Commander Shepard, we're good on decks B through H."

"Jesus Christ." Ashley's words were needed as the decompression in her chest, of the wound-up air releasing from her throat, let go. The haze of combat hid horrors, and when the veil was dropped, she saw the reason why she was a Marine: To save the innocent.

Wrex put his head through the chest armor of a Turian as Tali had made sure that no one had gotten the shot on him in engineering of that ship, she standing at the ready with a shotgun as the rest of Hitman secured the ship.

That had left Mai, JD, Garrus, and Shepard, all cornering this one man.

Big, dark, almost black eyes the size of small saucers. Green skin, gills, wiped back heads almost similar to the Asari. It felt right, better, to Mai and JD to hold a gun on this person.

He was a Drell.

This entire ship had been full of diversity, all anchored toward its cargo: people. Humans.

The Drell had been followed by Shepard and her immediate team all the way to the crew deck of that old cargo freighter of Volus design. The stars were to his back as he dragged a young woman, a teenager, by her heels with a grenade by her head and his thumb on the thumb ring for it. Old Krogan design. There he stayed, his back against the glass in that metal corridor as the Normandy's Marines on either side of him converged.

"Stay back!" He yelled in his croaky voice, enough to give even Garrus a run for his money.

Shepard had signaled with her hands to the approaching Marines, having caught them midship.

She was up and at it again. Like a ghost, a living ghost, nay a problem with her save for the several day near painful ordeal she spent in her bed post-Feros.

"I'm hard to kill." She explained, and that was that. Everything about the moves to remove her from her position falling silent, but bubbling beneath. She wasn't Human. It wasn't an agreement reached around the crew, but a synchronicity throughout that they all came to that understanding: There was no way she was supposed to be standing and yet here she was, now presently, on the way to Altis, engaged against trafficking of the slave type.

In her kit, in her armor, she was Shepard again.

The Drell had looked at his own situation, surrounded, now way out. "I'll blow us all to the Deep! Come any closer and I'll- I'll-"

"We know." Shepard had answered. These hallways were meant for cargo, wide enough to put a cargo container between, wide enough for Shepard and her fireteam to stand on the opposing wall from the Drell. The young woman was wide eye'd in his grasp, tears streaming from her eyes as she kept rigid and silent, gasping for air between held breaths.

"Commander, may I?" Garrus had opened his mouth as the entire crew of them held their guns on. Mai had been dead silent, frozen, aimed forward.

She'd never had to consider this before: hostages.

JD had heard stories of this exact situation way too many times from his father.

"Go ahead Garrus." Shepard nodded.

"You're in Alliance space, kid," He was a kid. A kid enough that even Garrus could call him that. Not like Drell lived long after all. "You take the surrender here and the Alliance puts you in for thirty years. We can drag this ship about a few hours galactic west and then we can book you beneath Council authority. You want a Turian work station or a cushy Human jail? I know which one I'd put you in."

Another set of rounds, a heart to heart. Shepard and Garrus had their talks from time to time, same as she did with everyone. It was comforting for him. Comforting even as he spoke about the one that got away:

"Doctor Heart. Hmph. His version of a joke. Refugees would come to him hoping they'd help and he'd just… cut them up." Garrus was a police officer, and, JD understood where Shepard didn't, his failures was indicative of something far beyond him. They were of the system he served. That was why a Salarian doctor had been out there cutting up flesh, and Garrus had been useless to stop him when he could've been.

This hadn't been that operation, just trafficking of captured people, but it rang close for Garrus.

"I'll take neither," he screamed out, bucking the girl he was holding. "I'm protected by esteemed businessman Donovan Hock! He'll get these people jobs and safety."

As if that name meant anything, Shepard had figured. Maybe a gangster, some monopoly man with his hand outside of Alliance space paying big money with the old trade of suffering.

"Sure he will." Shepard started, pistol still aimed up. "How many will he turn into glue? Slavery? I know how it goes out here." Out in the wilds of the frontier, where Exogeni could test mind control and Cerberus could play zoo with Thresher Maws, Shepard very much understood the horrors.

"So, you should know who you're messing with." The Drell said with confidence.

"I know enough that he won't lift a finger to help you. You're just a two-bit courier, and this is just one ship."

"Please, Commander Shepard, I don't want to die." The young girl could only beg, finally spoken.

"We'll all be okay." Shepard assured.

Garrus had tightened the grip on his pistol, and JD looked away from his aim at him. He wanted to do something, badly.

The Drell had his head on a swivel as the girl continue to whimper: at the Marines on either side of him closing in and Commander Shepard herself facing him down. Let alone the metal monster staring him down.

Mai's voice spoke up. Not over the air, but in radio. A privilege that the two chiefs had in their armor. "I can put a shot through her shoulder into its lungs." Hidden in plain sight.

Shepard couldn't respond with the same clandestine strategy. She didn't care. "No!" She yelled asides, as if to the air. She didn't want to risk that.

"Headshots only." JD responded. "Thumbs on the trigger. Rigor mortis will do the rest."

"I want you all off this ship! Now! Or I blow us all sky high!" The Drell yelled out.

"You really think that's gonna work?" Garrus bit back.

"You're not going to like the alternative." The Drell responded.

A waiting game. Hostage situations took hours and days. The hostages deserved the rest of their lives. Shepard knew that this situation, this Drell didn't deserve the spit on her lip.

"Can't sit like here all day, kid, galaxy's ending pretty soon and I've got to go stop that. You don't make a move I will."

"You move this grenade goes off." Shepard sneered behind her helmet's mandibles at his threat.

He was scared. Fear was the same in every language, ever culture, every race. She knew this. She had seen this. This boy was afraid.

JD spoke now. "Shepard, I got a trick. Flashbang goes off on my belt and we go for it. Me and Mai have the visors for it."

Garrus had turned away for a moment, feigning checking another angle, hiding his mouth as he basically swallowed the mic to his radio to whisper. "He's got his back to glass. At this range any overpenetration spaces us all."

Shepard had done a visual scan of the area: it wasn't much more than what had already been observed. Just another hallway in another cargo ship. Sometimes simple was best and it was sometimes what was needed.

"Chief Gul?" Shepard turned her head.

"Ma'am?"

"Shield the girl. JD, Garrus, move off."

"Huh?"

Shepard's hands were of blue fire as she threw her gun away. The clatter of its metal in the hallway distracting all of them. Even the Drell. She moved with such urgency and twitch that Mai hadn't quite believed what she saw:

It gave Shepard time and space enough to rush forward and grab the grenade, tearing it out of his hand as the deadman's switch was let go and Shepard's hands were that of a blackness Mai had seen only very recently: that of a biotic bloom. She had ripped the grenade from his hand as she dragged the man out of the way and basically kicked the young woman free, curling into herself as a sphere of biotic energy was put into her arms and she had held the grenade close, doubling onto the ground, encompassing the grenade.

JD had twitched, turning his side over to avoid the blast of the grenade as Mai did as she was told and went for the girl with her own frightening speed, taking her in and almost running off with her down the hall.

The blur of a concussive crack, but the lack of a fiery explosion, made everyone double guess what had just happened as Shepard smoldered on the ground from her stomach.

The Drell was ripped away, surprised, screaming, confused and Garrus had been the first to do something about. The cop in him told him to not do what he did as Shepard keeled over.

But he didn't want to be a cop now. That was why he was out here.

The break of his finger over the trigger, the flash, a frozen image. Make sure it's steel to his back. His mind blanked, and when it returned the Drell was on the floor and he held a smoking gun.

Also smoking: Shepard, curled over into herself on the ground.

"Spirits!" Garrus had vocalized what JD or Mai hadn't been able to, the Marines on either side of the hallway rushing in as Mai passed the girl off to them, running to Shepard.

JD had basically flown to Shepard as they all realized what had happened: she had just contained the explosion within herself. Skidding on his knees, he turned her over and went through the mental checklist as his training kicked in:

It all stopped short as Shepard, armor blackened and smoking, reached out like a whip and held the sides of JD's neck through his suit's gaiter, fire and fury in her eye. Soot and ash had been on her lower face and the tips of her red hair had been singed, but she had been very much alive and angry. "I. AM. WALKING. OUT OF HERE."

JD had seen Hell in her eyes and he backed off on his ass, standing up as the impossibility of Shepard standing on her two feet, her entire midsection blackened and charred, born to the world. Still those eyes looked for something: the young girl, scared out of her mind, but within the safety of Hitman. That was enough as she felt the wracking pain in her gut as, in her burnt gloves, the broken pieces of a grenade. Biotics could very much compress matter and isolate it in such a way that made what she just did make sense in theory, but she wasn't a strong biotic by training. She paid for it in some way.

There was a black hole literally brewing over her stomach, petered out as she stood and smoked in her entire form.

"Shepard-" JD tried to interject, however she shook her head as she thumbed her comms shakily.

"Kaiden. Secure this ship. Report it to the nearest sector command. I'll be in Medbay." She croaked out.

"What?!"

Hitman had approached Shepard with an essence of fear. She looked, held herself, more like a wraith with smoke and soot dripping off of her, and she hadn't cared for it as she took her first step back toward the airlock, back toward the Normandy, as the rest of Hitman and her away team let her walk, pain in each step, back to her ship, down to the crew deck, and right into the Medbay itself.

Chakwas had been prepared to take in any of the kidnapped, to aid them and their mistreatment, but Shepard had shown up first with fire on her gut. The surprise on Chakwas' face had been palpable.

"Doc." She simply greeted before she collapsed at her desk.

There the entire crew had watched Shepard walk as if a wounded animal to the Medbay, and Emerson after the away mission was settled, had riled it up.

The discussion about whether or not Shepard was capable of dealing with her duties had been the only thing on anyone's mind, now having seen what looked like a mad woman having thrown herself on a grenade.

"That's the type of person Shepard is!" Kaiden had supported Shepard. Trusted Shepard. For what particular reason it was beyond him to even explain. A three-way table discussion that spanned the entire ship save for its subject: Those that believed in her, those that didn't, and those that hadn't been sure.

None could live with each other.

Not like this.

The duty of Marines and Seamen had been always on the thin line of service and dedication. The history of the Marines advised their present.

JD, looking from the inside looking out, and also the reverse, had decided this:

What was happening now was something that could've only happened in the Alliance.

The Marines that he had came from had been pragmatic and necessary to a T. The definition of law and conduct all built around a war that had to be fought and an enemy that held no regard to how war was fought. These Alliance Marines, these Humans, had yet to understand what order was in the face of extinction.

What did Shepard mean to people?

To those there on the Normandy, she was harbinger of the Reapers, and it scared people.

Pressly had tried to rile them all down, he did earnestly. This was a continuation of the last meeting immediately after Feros, not less than a week and a half ago, and it had come roaring.

"We have to hold this a vote. If we hold her to the book, we have to do this by the book!" He yelled, arms raised, gloves off now. And yet this wasn't something to be done by the book, not with everyone in attendance from Marine to technician, all trying to get their points in. It all sounded the same and yet unique at the same time. Everyone knew Shepard as something different and yet the base problem was visible, so much.

To count hands wasn't how it was to be done and Pressly had quit trying as he stood there, overwhelmed in the sea of the Normandy. The entire crew had been up in arms about what to do with Shepard and it had been beyond him. It was now, in a word, a situation.

"Who gives a damn about the type of people we are, respectfully. There is a book of rules, a code of conduct, which we all have to abide by and Shepard is not exempt." Emerson had stood chest to chest with Kaiden as the man poked his armored chest, half of Hitman had been holding their sergeant back as the other half held Kaiden back.

"Shepard is exempt by virtue! Don't you understand!?" Kaiden had shoved off the hands on him. "Her situation is so unique that the entire galaxy rests upon her! We have to support her! Of course we can't understand her!"

"What proof?!" Emerson had yelled out again. "Dreams?! Just because she's facing off against that Turian prick Saren doesn't mean anything about her."

Someone like Shepard didn't exist where they came from, JD and Mai knew. They either died in the first years of the war, or, JD privately thought, they were turned into Mai.

Caught in their own chairs on the comm deck, all the two of them could do was sit as the entire crew congregated into the comm room to voice displeasures and tribulations of unsure futures and, of course, of the Commander Shepard.

"She's been giving the graces of the Galactic community! That has to mean something." Kaiden had argued and Hitman as a whole had groaned. Even the aliens onboard had been there, witness, participants.

"The Council isn't here, lieutenant!" A Hitman yelled back. "We are."

Liara had leaned in to whisper to JD, having found herself in the middle of it all the same. Indeed most of the aliens had corralled around Garrus and JD out of familiarity, much to Mai's chagrin as she sat there in her full armor, unmoving. "Was the Commander's capability really in question?"

JD nodded. "It's… scary, to say the least. You know, her visions."

Liara had nodded once in her small grace. "I could… look into her. Help her."

Mai had, privately, not wanted that at all. She didn't want to snap another Asari neck.

"One thing at a time, Liara." Tali had whispered as another pair of Hitmen were disagreeing among themselves with some of the regular crew.

Garrus had crossed his arms as Wrex, on the other side of the room, just sucked it up.

"I love this shit." He said on his lips.

JD had bumped his still armored elbow into Garrus, his head tilted. "Use your words. I don't got that telepathy you and Chief Gul have." Garrus had chided, and JD had silently chuckled despite the tensity of what was happening before them.

"What's your call on this?" JD was honestly afraid to ask.

Garrus was afraid to answer. "I saw a lot of strange stuff, on my beat. I know what it's like for people to be insane. I don't think that's it for the Commander."

Mai went back into her memory.

She had the ability to make people go insane. She was the shadow in the dark, the mirage around the corner: the reaper come for men and women who flew the flag against the UNSC. She was unstoppable, and yet people fought and fought.

Tristone V, behind Covenant lines. Insurrection holdouts had threatened to not follow the Cole Protocal. Mai had been sent in by Ackerson to scrub the scene. She picked them off for a week. The very last survivor dug a hole for themselves and fired wildly into the forest, yelling of spectres and demons. She killed him in his own grave.

She knew what Shepard was going through wasn't insanity and yet there was nothing she could say. She had no opinion, nor any want to go to bat for Shepard.

"Hmm." Tali had been in her own thoughts, and she spoke quietly to them all. Liara and her shared a seat so she noticed first. "Back on the Migrant Fleet, the Admiralty board does stuff like this in the case of trials and culpability."

The crew spoke of Shepard, speaking for her, always for her. The only thing against her had been what they didn't understand. How much the crew had lambasted against the Council, they themselves were doing on their own, acting like them. That's what split the crew down the middle.

The case for her, the case against her. Did her own crew trust her to lead them into Hell?

One of the Normandy's Marine guard shook his head almost violently to Hitman. "I don't trust a damn whatever you guys say. You were part of Ryder's cult. He's a god damn traitor."

"We could say the same for Shepard being a Spectre," a Hitman bit back. "But we're all professional, here aren't we?"

"The Council trusts her." Kaiden said again, as if it meant something.

Emerson verbalized. "I don't trust the Council worth a damn. Not after what they did to our Commander." Hitman's Commander. Ryder.

"Don't talk to me as if I don't know the man or what he did. I knew their family! Ellen was the one who put this chip inside of my head!" Kaiden gestured to behind his ear where his L2 was in. "They were researching AI!"

Tali's head jerked up as Garrus looked oddly at Hitman.

"Alec was trying to save his wife!" Emerson yelled back, and Hitman had looked away, almost ashamed. "It was a tool. Just a simple tool. Nothing like the Geth, and the Council cast him asides because he was a Human who knew what he was doing in this galaxy. Just like how they cast asides Anderson years ago."

Early on, when Tali was fresh to the crew. It had hardly even been a month before they got to Feros, but it felt of years. Mai and JD had asked this of her, directly: "Why?"

The why of the Geth. Tali had been more than willing to explain, and even understand why the Galaxy had ostracized her people for it.

It had been because the ancestral Geth asked the ancestral Quarians this: Does this unit have a soul?

Mai had felt the slot in the back of her own skull distinctly in that moment, and JD had remembered the many smart AIs he had known on ships and in bases, managing Humanity where Humans couldn't. How real they were, how Human they were. JD had forgotten they were machines. And yet they died the same.

"The Geth are… worshipping." Tali interjected, loud enough to be heard, head bowed, avoiding the dozens of eyes on her now before she raised up again. "They are worshipping something. Me and Wrex saw it, on Feros. And, from what I understand, the Reapers are some sort of machine gods to them. AI." She switched off her translator at that last word: AI. Spoken in the Human vernacular. She wasn't quite sure why she interjected, but she found her way. She was smart enough, she told herself. "There is danger in them, so what happened to your last commander, I… Shepard, the Commander, she doesn't deserve this standard which you hold her too."

Emerson had looked at Tali, sitting in the shadow of Wrex. He hadn't spoken back however. It was Bannon in her South-African voice. "The standards we hold to Shepard, hun', are by far lower than the standards that this Galaxy knows of her. She is failing even that now by her retaining command."

"What would you do if you were Commander Shepard then?" JD spoke up, a question, not for anyone in particular, but for everyone.

What would you do if you were Commander Shepard, tasked with ancient knowledge, prophecies of doom, and told only you could stop it?

JD didn't need to say that.

Everyone knew what he meant.

Emerson turned away, as did most of Hitman. "That's unfair."

Kaiden had picked up where JD had led. "No, it's completely, she's only Human. As are you. You can imagine it, can't you? A mission that might save lives? Would you follow on it despite detractors?"

"She's not Human, though, lieutenant." Emerson cut back. "All of us. All of us!" He spread his arms out to everyone. "We're little people. We're regular. We live our lives, day by day, we are people with names and worries and wants and ideas that are normally understood. I want to live, I want to help this galaxy and Humanity the best way I can: by the book and the rule of law. But Shepard? She does not live by our standards."

"That's crazy-" Kaiden started by Emerson cut him off.

"Stop it." Emerson slashed his hand in the air. "You feel it too, don't you? The Commander? Just being in the room with her, it has never made me feel so secondary and she doesn't even try. She is bigger than life and yet she is down to Earth and she is- by God. I would follow her into Hell, but that's not a choice we can make. She just-" Emerson knew he sounded insane, but it made sense to almost everyone there. Almost everyone. "Following the Commander is to follow something bigger than myself, and I have to, because that is the closest thing to religion that feels real anymore, and it'll kill us all."

Shepard:

She stands at the barricades of war, at Elysium, a pistol in her hand and the blood of the fallen in her heart, charging against pirates come to one of Humanity's colonies. She saved the planet, and more importantly, saved the people that lived there.

She sits alone in a hole, dug with her own two hands as forty of her men and women died around her. Revenge is born in her heart and war begins in her mind as she survives and becomes a renegade paragon of the lost, gunning down those who would impress upon her horror without remorse. It was the right thing to do.

She leads her men with that righteous spirit into the dark hearts of the galaxy, against slavers and pirates as she paints stardust blood red pools that ripple out into distant empires and solitary hearts who look up and see-

"She's a hero." Chakwas nods, making sense of it. "I told myself, if the Alliance was to keep expanding, the Alliance needs its doctors. Good doctors." Chakwas stood against them all. "But the Alliance also needs its heroes. Humanity needs its heroes." She had strained, put on that entire last part as if she knew it from someplace within her so intrinsically it was at her very core.

JD had glanced at Mai. The word hero in his mind and he had thought of her, and all she could do was sit there, silently, biding her time.

Kaiden spoke up again. "The very fact that Shepard jumped on a grenade for someone she didn't know tells me she is as sane as she always was."

"If she really is as important as she is, and I know she's smart enough to know that, she wouldn't risk it! For all of our sakes."

"That is Shepard." Kaidan had pointed out again. "No one is too big for her. That's how I know she's the same."

"I'd hope I was the same."

The entire room had been to their feet for two reasons, both of them reactions. Reactions to what it was like to have been caught red handed, and another to have been in the presence of the CO on deck. She was there in her hoodie, a tired look on her freckled face, disheveled hair, but she looked okay. There was a juice box in her hand, standard for her biotic supplements, and she sipped with it.

Emerson had faltered with his salute as Shepard softly saluted everyone down. "How much did you hear?"

Shepard didn't answer as she shook her head. The crew had lined the walls of the comm room, even against its railing, as if making way for her to get to the center as fast as she could. It was the assumption that she was going to make a stand, take command.

She only looked to Pressly, an eyebrow raised, and then a shake to her head. Disappointed, but to what no one could tell as she had walked in small steps to the person closest to her.

"Hey, Annel." Shepard stopped at Barbara Annel. A sniper of Hitman. "Forgot to ask if the gloves I got you fit?"

Annel had been rimrod straight. She was Hitman's largest woman, just below the build of Hitman's autogunner Harris. And yet the mass of her relaxed. She was wearing the black, poly-fabric gloves now. "They're good, yeah. Thank you Commander."

Shepard smiled at her. "Oh yeah, I know what it's like with trigger time. Sometimes the gauntlets don't cut it for a rifle. That being said if, maybe, I didn't have gloves like some actually-practicing biotics here, I might've gotten out okay from that last bit."

Shepard drew her gaze out to the Normandy's biotics. They didn't wear gloves, more tactile response and feel for their abilities. "It was impressive, ma'am." One of the said, giving her credit.

"It was stupid. I get that." Shepard shook her head, getting a few laughs out, even from herself. "But you know if I was smart, we wouldn't be here, would we? I never graduated high school for pete's sake."

JD pursed his lips. Neither did he, to be fair.

Mai didn't even know what high school was.

Shepard had slowly made her way up the line, making small talk, easing everyone down as they all stood in silence and disbelief of a walking Shepard.

"Kaiden, getting so heated on my behalf? You in love with me man?" Shepard had joked.

Kaiden had shook his head promptly. "In love with the job, commander."

"Ouch. That's a rejection." That had garnered a wave of soft chuckles throughout the room. It was her magic: talking people down.

How are you? Get that letter from your daughter? How was the game last night? I tried out your mods on my AR but it's not my cup of tea. Yeah I'll see about that as soon as I can. Tali, holding in fine? How's the wrist? Shotgunning must not be easy for you. Hanging in there Wrex? Always? Yeah sounds about right.

There was nothing Shepard could say to Mai as she passed in front of her and JD, though she did spare a conversation with the shock trooper.

"How're they? The cigs?" Shepard tipped her head at the still armored man. "I'm not a smoker so I really don't get the nuances."

JD had taken the pack out from his chest piece, stuffed safely. Smushed, but not destroyed. "Like water in the desert, Shepard." JD had said with as much comfortable slick as he could muster.

"You got the habit actually?"

He did. Not that he would outright admit it. "Not a bad one to have. Truth be told."

"Fair enough."

It was JD that had been the last as Shepard had found herself at the other end of the comm room, right next to the holographic displays meant for telecommunications. It was a console all the same however. Instead a map of the Galaxy was thrown up, ETA to Altis thrown up: a week or so at current pace. Some stops in between, leads to chase, Geth to kill, favors to do. But that was fast. So much to do, all of it she had asked for.

Her people were silent, eased, but waiting. Shepard had reeled the crowd in from their barking at each other and made it silent. Made it calm.

They deserved more, she believed however. She gave it to them: an explanation.

"I don't get to choose what happens to me. Not at this rate. Not with what the Alliance has done to me. But that's the cost of service, isn't it?" Shepard turned to all of them, her voice soft, and yet stern. She knew the rumors, what Pressly had tried to do. She was a god damn N7 after all. And she wasn't dumb. She knew what she looked like, sometimes, and how ridiculous it might've seen. Yet this wasn't a process she hadn't been unaware of. This was what the Council's skepticism looked like when applied to people closer to home: her own ship.

"I get it. I do. There's something impossibly ancient inside of my head that it takes artifacts from an extinct race to interpret. My mind is a battlefield right now and, yes, that is a… consideration for me." Shepard's eyes darted from face to face, reading them all. "If I were in your shoes, I'd have this same question: Am I making the right choices for all of us?"

Shepard pursed her lips, licking them.

How many men and women had sent brought to die on in her life? She had failed to take care of too many. Far too many.

"Doctor Chakwas. You were just picking shrapnel out of my stomach, and before that, treating me in that last episode." Shepard's voice picked up to command. "Am I okay? Am I physically fit to serve and command?"

The Doctor had assumed her own usual persona now, in her own seat in the comm room, arms crossed over each other in her lap. She nodded. "Yes, Commander. You're still very much in prime condition."

"And mentally?" A cold sweep had gone over the room as people tried to look away. Shepard found no answer, only doubts. "Liara?"

Liara had shaken besides Tali as Shepard called upon her, scared almost to bare that weight. "Yes?" She finally looked up to ask what.

"Would it make sense for the Prothean beacons, for Prothean storage devices, to impart such debilitating conditions, madness, upon recipients? Is that something that happens in what we know of the Prothean relics in this galaxy?"

Liara had blinked a few times. This was academic talk. She was comfortable with this, going into the library of her mind. "No. The only danger would be of the information itself."

"How so?"

Liara had been quick to answer. "If it is… information that's too horrible to comprehend."

What that left had been something Shepard would never admit: that she was worthy to know it. And yet that was the implication throughout. She hadn't become Saren, after all. The jaws of all there had tightened up and looked away still, but they returned to Shepard with this after a silence gone on for long enough:

"I don't get to choose what happens to me," Shepard said again. "But I get to choose how I leave this galaxy, every day." The galaxy itself was to her back from the holographic in the comm room. "I never asked to bare this responsibility." She gestured to herself, to her head, to her heart, to her stomach.

Mai tilted her head up at Shepard. "But would you deny it?"

Mai had been the one to talk back and it had felt right.

It was such an odd question, silence surrounding Mai's words. She spoke for everyone and it was immediately cognizant that that had been rare as rain in space.

Shepard and Mai never talked in the rounds the commander took to visit the crew, this was the closest they had gotten: in the middle of the crew, all to bare.

It came so easily to her: "No." Shepard said softly. "I wouldn't wish this on anyone else. It has to be me."

Shepherd. A guide, someone who directs, who tends to those who need to be.

Shepard gazed out to her crew, and they all fell under her gaze. It was that of familiarity, of family, of humanity. It was the gaze that was distinctly of a type of motherhood and Mai had felt herself weak to breath at that moment. She had been healed by Chakwas after Feros, her ribs set back in place and her internal bruising dealt with, and yet then and there she felt her breath turn cold and her heart ache.

"I respectfully ask that I remain aboard the Normandy as its CO and Captain. I ask of you to believe in me as I believe in all of you. If not for my sake, but for this galaxy's. If this actually becomes a problem, feel free to proceed with whatever," Shepard had gestured her hands to the floor. "this was."

A rogue spectre on the loose, the Geth return from the Veil. Pirates and cretins, the Covenant; all contending with a ghost of Reapers. They were doing nothing to fight them in that room now.

"Any dissenters?" Kaiden had spoken up, looked around, and dared. None had.

Shepard had looked at each of them. At each of them. Her eyes did not lie, did not miss her intentions. She was on a mission, and her crew were the last people she needed doubting her.

"We're going to be enroute to Altis in a few days. We have away missions racked up, leads to chase, but Altis is our next port. If you have any concerns, you know I'm always willing to talk. Dismissed."

Data pod recovery here, QRF response there, Geth beat down over there, it was a busy week. A blissfully busy week between Shepard taking a stand for herself on the way to Altis. There was a certain amount of shame imparted on all of the crew ever since that day. That any of them could doubt Shepard. People kept their heads down in private, doubting themselves in turn, however that was the price that people had to pay to believe.

"Well that's very nice but given what we know of Saren, I seriously doubt he's been buying weapons. Even from Omega." Shepard had cut the line to a would-be informant at a comm buoy on the bridge.

Business as usual.

Business as usual for Shepard in regards to the Saren hunt however had been a little maddening, as sensitive as the term was nowadays. There was a plain and simple truth to Saren and his plans: that it was simple. He sought the Reapers, and that had been so far above any mortal, regular motivation that it was a one-page report in a field where conspiracies ranged histories. The Council wanted it to be more complicated. Fellow Spectres sought for it. And yet at the end of the day, from where she stood, there was no such padding to it.

"Ever been to that side of the galaxy, commander?" Pressly had tried for small talk, but Shepard hadn't been particularly enthused to talk of the miscreants in the Galactic East.

"Not my territory, Pressly. I'd rather stay close to home."

"Fair enough, commander."

Up in the cockpit, Mai had been dressed down, uniform, her tech suit below that as she sat in the secondary seat of the Normandy. She very much was a fast learner as far as Joker saw.

"You're an AI. You've gotta be." He stood over her, arms crossed, a cane in his hand. "I busted my ass for the entirety of my early twenties and all of the sudden you come outta nowhere and are able to do a partial discharge of our drives against a non-standard type comm beacon assembly. You know that shit took me five months to do."

It was like operating a computer more than flying as she knew it, but she was adaptable. She always was.

Hearing Joker's bellyaching, righteous or not, had been cathartic. That yes: she had been able to adapt even now.

She had let go of her breath in the reclined seat as she had locked the rotation of the Normandy, giving time for Joker to climb back into his seat as she raised from her own. "It'd be… advisable, if you keep your confidence if it comes down to ship to ship fighting, lieutenant."

Joker had, half-mocking, waved a hand at her as if to tell her to piss off. "Kinda hard when you're on my ass, spook… How old are you anyway?"

"Classi-" Mai had paused as Joker pulled away from the comm beacon back on route to Altis. "I'm 26."

Everything about her face, it didn't betray that. She looked young. She was a young woman.

26.

She had only realized in hindsight, in this universe, that she had probably been one of the youngest Spartans out of both the IIs and IIIs, and it left her oddly off-balance.

"When's your birthday?"

Joker was digging for information, Mai had taken to it with as much of her edginess as when she first showed up in this galaxy. "Why?"

Joker hadn't meant much by it as he flashed an image on his omni. "Birthday chart for the crew."

It was a quick flash, noted in her vision was a flash of a familiar name amongst a large list with the rest of the crew: J. Durante – Ju

It had gone away before she could finish reading.

"So, gonna spill the beans or will I need to be a Spectre?"

A strand of hair had fallen in front of her face by the minute movement of the Normandy going forward. Her eyes focused on it as her mind tried to find an answer. She found nothing. "Thank you, lieutenant." Said with as much brevity and professionalism, that was how Mai left Joker often after these quick, impromptu lessons of flight mechanics in this galaxy.

Passing by the crew, by Shepard even, Mai had been left alone as she was lost in her own memory. She knew, generally, that she was 26. She knew what year she was born: 2526. Though the exactness of it, a detail that she should know, it didn't ring. Lost in her mind, Mai didn't notice Wrex come up to her side as she waited for the elevator down to the well deck.

When she did notice her very veins expanded and Spartan Time had barely eluded her before she remembered where she had been.

Wrex had waited in silence, shoulder to shoulder with her as the elevator came up, depositing Harris and Bannon from Hitman, their jovial conversation cut short by being confronted by the Normandy's monsters.

With a shift of his neck, the two usual bombastful Marines had straightened their expressions and moved out of the elevator, giving Mai and Wrex right of way as they came in and made the elevator, without even signaling it to move, shift downward just the slightest. The door closed behind them.

"You look distracted." Wrex's bass-filled voice had brought Mai to attention fully. She had been.

She didn't give an answer save for raising her omni (how natural it had been to her now) and calling the elevator down.

A ten second ride. She could be civil and "normal" for ten seconds.

He couldn't.

"You're also tainted. Aren't you?"

"What of it?" Mai had spoke out with the grit she was known for. The grit that Wrex wanted.

"Everything." Wrex knew. He knew far more on intuition and Mai had seen it in his eyes. For the first time in a long time, perhaps her entire life, she had seen the eyes of someone who had fought longer, by far longer, than she had even been alive. She had realized that of Wrex in that second in the same realization that Humanity had been losing the war.

It spoke to something small inside of her.

"We fight. Or I tell everyone you're not from here."

Mai turned away. It was a tell. Tali had told Wrex that. ("Look Wrex, if you're ever telling me how to do something and I turn away and answer, chances are I'm wrong, lying, or ashamed.")

"It's true in some way, ain't it? You don't live as long as me without trusting your gut, your ears, and Hell, what I see with my very own eyes."

The door to the well deck opened. A mat had been already on the floor. Marines had been sparring and on the deck today had been Loke and Liara.

"Come on! What good is biotics gonna do you when you're dead tired and I'm coming for ya?!" Loke had yelled out with all the fury befit her as a pointwoman. Liara had buckled as she had been slammed down on the mat as Garrus and JD cringed (with along with half of the crowd).

That cringe went away as Mai was revealed in the elevator, and JD had, with arms across his chest, raised a hand to greet.

It was nice to be seen.

"Not gonna yell it out. I'm just gonna put it out there, day by day, person by person… Or I won't in exchange for a fight." They were two people who were always to the point, to the edge. It was how they survived. No bullshit, no arguments, just the stakes, the reason why. Wrex wanted a fight, and Mai, with her own intuition, knew he hadn't really cared about the reason of her and JD. "Better you take me on than the one who speaks with hands."

Mai's hand had reached out and grabbed Wrex's wrist before he had stepped out. His armored gauntlet felt the pressure that Shiala's neck broke under. He didn't mind. It was a taste.

"How." Was all Mai could utter through her teeth.

"No armor. None of that suit you got. Just me and you, naked as the day we were hatched. Or about, I understand modesty trust me."

She couldn't remember what day she was born, let alone the date.

"Now?"

"Why not?"

"How hard?"

"A fair fight. Not a deathmatch. I'm not trying to kill you if that's what you're asking."

"You won't."

"No biotics then."

Mai had shot a glare at him that would've killed lesser soldiers.

Wrex had smiled. "It's on. Ready when you are."

Ten seconds and a fight was what she got out of it.

Wrex had approached the Marines, and that had been rare. His place in the well deck had been of his stubbornness. He wasn't a Krogan to be fucked with in any regard, so the world existed around him: it didn't bother him in his private realm. Only Shepard had broken the veil and he had been, oddly, willing to entertain her with chatter.

They spoke of Tuchanka, of the Krogan, of home and of food.

Here today, Wrex spoke to the Marines of the Normandy and told them this:

"Me and her," he pointed at Mai. "We're borrowing this."

Liara had been half way knocked out, breath lost, being pulled to her feet before even she stumbled as the entire nearly twenty strong crowd observing in their PTs froze solid. It was happening.

A rock had been dropped into JD's stomach the second he realized what that meant.

"Woah. You know about this?" Garrus had elbowed the man softly as his expression went into shock.

"No." He hadn't hidden how worriedly he had half-jogged, half-shimmied over to Mai by the Mako. What had been easy to hide in plain sight was this:

He had tapped her shoulder as she came to the back of the Normandy, dragging out the case with her armor stored, crouched over and opening it. She looked at him, and he had known by the furrow of her brow that was on her olive face.

Both of his hands had brought his index and middle finger to his thumbs, rubbing them together as-

She had reached out, grabbed the back of his neck mid-sign, and JD had immediately wondered if this was half of what it felt like to die by her hand. He could hear the frustration on her breath as he had brought him to her level, her mouth almost against his ear.

"He might compromise us."

They had remained like that for a second longer than either intended.

"Oh."

"Mm." The hand at the back of his neck had let go and he had straightened his posture. "All he wants is a fight." She said as if no big deal.

JD had wanted to say so much, but Mai hadn't been a normal woman. Anything he could've said was stopped by the very fact that she had been a Spartan.

The IM service of the Normandy exploded, wrists exploding with activity. Those of the Normandy with flesh-implants for their omnis slightly off-put, but realizing why soon enough. Tali had burst out of engineering, locking eyes with Garrus as Liara, still winded, found Garrus's stool to collapse on in her borrowed set of PTs.

Rushing over she was half-excited, half in awe. "I can't believe-" She didn't even need to finish her sentence, basically hopping in front of Garrus.

"Yeah." The Turian rumbled before turning over to the spent Liara. "You alright there T'Soni?"

She held her face in her hands, blindly palming for a water bottle that was found as Garrus passed her it. "I'm good. I'm good… Whatever's about to happen, maybe it'll make me realize it won't ever be as bad."

"Hm." Garrus nodded. He was naked from the top half up for his own PT with Hitman. Only the Turian equivalent of shorts bared. Not that it mattered to the Normandy, his top half had been an armored shell already, technically. He only noticed again when he had caught Tali staring. "You rooting for anyone, Tali?"

"Huh- oh. Uh. Yeah. I mean no."

On the bridge Shepard hadn't been blind to what was happening, seeing the same messages pop up. She had started her rounds today, starting, as always, with Joker. It was there the event had popped. "Ahhhhhh come on Commander. Let me put the auto-pilot on, I gotta see this first hand."

"Joker." Shepard had sterned, motioning to his security screen on the piloting console. It was by far a good enough view.

"I've gotta be there though, taste the sweat and blood myself. Maybe if I start sucking up Chief Gul's stuff I'll get super powers."

"Keep on piloting Joker." It was odd to Joker that Shepard had remained so lax about this. They had just talked about cane designs and she seemed more empassioned about that as opposed to two of her most dangerous assets going at it in her own well deck.

Pressly's appearance had pressed the question. "Ma'am, are you seeing this?"

Kaidan had been in his sleep cycle at the moment, so he hadn't been there. Of course, something like this would've happened now but Shepard couldn't fault him. This was a long time coming.

"Should we get them to stop?"

In a proper, just, 100% by the book world. Yes.

Shepard didn't live in that world.

"Let them fight." Pressly had been shocked to hear Shepard say that. "I'll keep on the pulse of it."

"Hey, hey, hey, taking bets. Fight of the century. The cyborg woman vs the Krogan battle master. Come place your bets!" Ashley had been living it up as she rolled over and over a crowd, more mats put in place in the center of the Well Deck as storage had been moved asides or pulled up as seating. "You, Emerson, you have a hot opinion Chief Gul, what's your call?"

Emerson had been browbeaten and humbled recently, but his disposition remained as he poked at the inside of his cheek with his tongue. Hitman's older members congregating around him, wary of what was happening the same as Pressly up top in the command deck. He had no power or right to stop this, but he would be lying if he said he wasn't interested. "Always bet on Human. 25 creds."

It was all the pomp and exhuberance of seeing this fight that had started off all the commotion. Those off duty had shuffled in from the elevator soon enough, however all the conversation had died down as the weight of two giants set in. Silence before storms had never been so claustrophobic.

The fact that Shepard had yet to make an appearance despite the five minutes since the fight was announced only added to the unease.

She had been doing the rounds all the same, as happy and willing to converse and speak to the hearts of each of them as always, but after Feros? Nothing felt right.

Only the cold drum of space existed as sound, reverberating through the Normandy's hull as the sounds of metallic clacking armor being discarded, put asides, had been heard.

Today was a day for many firsts.

For many this was the first time they had seen a Krogan just about naked.

Just about.

"Quads are important." Wrex made emphasis as he patted the spandex like armored cod piece around his waist and noted section. Still, beneath that, his chest, his body, it spoke to natural armor. He was like a standing beetle almost, from dark colored flesh to the distinctive hood extending from his back. Wrex had been a dark maroon, scars and stripes all the same from hundreds of years of war.

It was when he straightened his posture something was revealed: Seven foot four. Taller than Mai's six foot seven out of her armor.

The figures they imposed had been like nothing anyone had seen as Mai was the last to disrobe on her side of the deck.

She was borne to all: Naked, but not as she was the day she was born.

All the men had looked, all the women had looked, and they saw the body of someone who had existed as something more. Like the molded statues of ancient religions and cultures, Mai had been the flesh incarnate of the body of a warrior. Every single piece of her that could've been a muscle had been a muscle strained and large and almost sculpted to a scientific image. On her breasts had been scars and bruises from battles in the past, injuries that would've killed lesser people. She was not lesser as her tech suit had gone to the floor and nothing else had been there beneath it.

She looked at JD, in all of this, and JD had seen the most Human she had been, physically, then and there. Forced in front of him and he had seen what she was as the entire Normandy saw.

Alone, they had remained, gaze locked.

Mai had paused for a few, stretched seconds, JD being brought into focus in all of this as he looked up at her and tilted his head, awaiting.

"Do you have medical tape?"

JD had nodded urgently, going into his pack and taking out the white tape meant for binding and splinting.

It was rare, and immediately noticed, that they had felt each other's skin. Her fingers grabbing the roll had felt his own fingertips and it stayed in her mind as JD looked away. He had just been about breast height with her and ducked down back into his locker. When he emerged, tape had been unfurled and the Normandy looked on and watched.

They watched the white lines of the tape wrap around her hands, her knuckles, torn by her teeth as she had gone from that to her chest.

JD had gone to offer something else but he had only been confronted with Mai again.

A hand had cupped at her chest, brought to her, her hand holding the tape moving in one circle around that hand.

Of the female ODSTs he knew, some had been as gifted enough to necessitate even this on the fly. They needed help. JD had never been as close to any of them to do as they asked, but he had gotten the gist, surprised that Mai had asked. Then again, if there was an underlying layer to it, a tension, she didn't know of it, didn't care for it.

Sucking in a breath, more than well aware that the entire Normandy had been watching, he had done his best as he had grabbed the tape and Mai outstretched her wingspan and turned around.

Tape was tape, he had to apply, pressing down upon her breasts from behind with it and wrapping them up.

One million things through his mind: his proximity to Mai, the way her bare skin smelled or how she had felt as he had wrapped her chest in tape. By God, what would his parents think (what would Dawn think?) if they saw this.

She smelled like death, permeated it.

His hands brushed against a necklace. A wooden wheel. Hers.

"Why-?" Garrus had sat by Tali on his table on the other end as she also pulled up, absent-mindedly leaning her own head against his shoulder in a quickly. He had leaned in return. The nuances of Quarian and Turian physicality lined up in certain ways. It wasn't particularly affectionate, but rather an acknowledgement of comfortability next to him as he scooted a bit to give her room. He had gestured to what Mai and JD had been doing.

Tali had answered before the rest of the question came, absent mindedly adjusting her own suit around her relevant area. "She has quite a bulkhead, by many standards." Tali quietly whispered into his ear canal. "Bigger is better, usually, but uh, a lot of… loose tolerances might come into play with what we're about to see." Mai was proportional to say the least.

Garrus crossed his arms as he had taken the opportunity to look Mai up and down. "Hm. Well, at least I'm not feeling anything looking at this."

"You mean in, like, feeling things looking at a Human female or just the idea of…" Tali had glanced at her omni and at the translator overlay that was there just in case, making sure the word for- "Boobs?" Had turned out as she intended to.

Garrus shook his head a few times as JD finished wrapping Mai's up. He knew his type: A woman that could beat him up, surely, but if Mai was in that position, he wasn't quite sure. "I like to keep an open mind, I guess. I've uh, always been up to new experiences, clearly." He gestured up to the entire mission of it and the now: a Krogan about to throwdown with a Human super soldier.

"Hm. Noted." There was a little overblown seduction put in her last words on purpose. For a few seconds Tali had thought Garrus was going to let that past, but he had done a double take in due time. Intrigued, but also realizing what she was doing: teasing. The tone gave it away as she started to giggle.

"You're mean… and no. I mean. Look at her. Does any of that look natural to you?"

"Keelah." Tali had responded almost dreamily. "If I had that sort of body…" Liara had taken Garrus's stool, basically in between their legs with how people were grouped up along the sides to watch. She turned around, giving the Quarian an odd look with an eyebrow raised. "I mean, just… Look at me. I'm skin and bones. If I could be like her, fight like her, I could've been my Pilgrimage gift to my people."

"I want to tell you not to do this." JD knew her as she finished getting ready. He had known her better than anyone in the last twenty years had, as low of a bar as that had been. Because of that however he knew that he couldn't do anything.

"Will you?" She looked down at him. Binded at her chest, shorts, strained and also tied with paracord around her waist, put on. Her expression was soft, not the serious he expected heading into battle, into a fight.

"I know the answer." There was no privacy for them save the privacy given by waiting and sound. He spoke lowly, both in tone and for that privacy.

Mai wanted to respond, to assure, but she had known him too. It was in his nature to worry. A slight tapping motion had bobbed against her sternum. She had forgotten the feeling, lost with how long she often went with it clamped down between her skin and her techsuit.

Her necklace. The Wheel of Dharma made from wood. Made, forged, in the downtime after her first deployment as a Headhunter. The person that made her do it inside of her had done it as her last breath: making her existence physical in this world along with the memory of her last name: Gul.

Mai didn't know why she had done it, why she had carved up this very memory of something she remembered her mother wear. It served no tactical purpose and yet… She wasn't supposed to understand. This wasn't hers. This wasn't the Mai Gul that her mother knew that had made this necklace.

She wondered, vaguely, if it was a birthday gift to herself.

It was unnatural, the feeling of her reaching behind her neck and taking it off, holding it in front of her and seeing it exist away from her.

This had been the first time in over ten years it had been removed from her. She thought of, time to time, between upgrades and renovations of MJOLNIR, that she might've taken it off, held it someway else because of the inherent issues with the techsuit's seal and necklaces. Though when she tried, and she did remember these moments, she found it wrong to not do so.

The difference between then and now had been-

"Can you hold onto this for me?" She had offered and JD had felt it deep. She had felt it deep in her what she had just asked and it stirred her stomach.

He nodded urgently, brought from a brooding, a palm up and out. Gently, she lowered it, paracord rope and wooden image, into it.

"Thank you." She said so quietly it had barely manifested in air.

JD had been silent, looking at her, and then it.

This was a piece of her. Something that existed outside of her being a Spartan and she had, for a reason he didn't dare confront, trusted him with it. Maybe it was because he was the only one she could trust, maybe it was just tactical in nature. Maybe he was just reading too into it as Mai looked down on him and was assured.

The wood, and he had known his fair share about it from high school vocational education, was not meant for the shape she had molded it into by knife about the size of a cracker. Crude, unrefined, but a shape nonetheless.

The shape meant to represent rebirth, souls, a constant cycle of suffering and living.

It wouldn't fit in his pocket well, he didn't trust his grip with it, there was only one other place he could carry it himself: Around his neck himself. "You don't mind?"

She shook her head. Far from it. Far enough from just minding that she was captivated by how it sat on his own chest, a bit long, yes, given the differences in their own proportions, but it just felt right to her as he had tucked it into his shirt alongside his dog tags.

"What's the hold up?" Wrex had called out to them from the other side. "The sooner we do this, the better."

Rationally, he was correct, and Mai's complacent face had gone hard at that moment, leaving JD to follow in her wake.

As Mai approached, the sparring mats that had been put down had, even when the space was doubled, seemed wholly inadequate. The space got darker, the lights got brighter, and with nothing left to wait for Wrex had found himself on one side of the ring.

Ashley had been the usual ring leader for sparring matches. Sparring matches, on Garrus's and Emerson's recommendation, had been a regular thing during PT and not unheard of across the Alliance Navy. Everyone knew what they looked like.

This wasn't sparring however.

This was a fight.

Ashley stepped in to moderate. "Okay best two out of-"

"Shut up." Wrex had shut her down as she tried, and she eked back out.

Mai had entered through a hole in the crowd, made for her, JD filling it as she entered, opposite of where Garrus and the rest of the aliens of the Normandy had watched on from.

Emerson had appeared with several of the Marines, not solely from Hitman. They had guns in their hands. "This gets too out of it…" He didn't want to finish his sentence.

"I think you'll need more than those for one of us alone." That, Mai had stubbornly agreed, was true. "We go until we see who wins."

And what the hell did that mean, no one knew.

Shepard hadn't shown up yet, but the momentum had been too great to stop.

There was no initiation to combat, just an understanding. There was always that understanding between the two of them: that there was something killable beneath themselves. That they had existed as special in their respective warfighting categories and, more than that, they had been the final words of their profession.

More and more the crowd of the Normandy had backed up, more and more. It was becoming less about watching and more about not getting in the way.

That's why Mai didn't start when Wrex walked forward, into the center of the mats, a meter and a half away, looking her over as a prey does, tilting heads, narrowed eyes, taking all of her in. "A thousand years of living, and there's always something new to fight."

Mai hadn't assumed a stance, not yet, tilting her head as well as she moved, walking, in an orbit around Wrex. One step at a time, it had been like she was in slow motion, looking at him. Wrex was unmoving, almost soaking up the attention as he stared straight ahead.

She reminded him of a Hunter. And yet she couldn't be as impersonal as that. This was a person.

As loathe as she was to admit, she knew that now: every single one of these aliens was a person.

This galaxy had changed them.

She had completed the rotation, standing front to front with him.

"Tell me, your armor. What is it?" Wrex had motioned to the case.

"A force multiplier." She answered. "And yours?"

Wrex had his own case with his family armor, still there by his corner. It was his bed now: a sheet lain on top of it. "A memory."

"Let's go." Her hands had formed fists, covered with medical tape.

Wrex nodded, his voice neutral. "Right."

First shot advantage. That was what they taught her at Onyx.

So, she had stepped forward first, arms up, almost crossed, right arm posed to swing down as she moved. The air had responded, the woosh of their movements heard.

For something so big, Mai had been surprised Wrex had backpedaled as fast as he did. The look on his face changed from his stoic, to a smirk. As her right fist came down, she rotated her arm, using the momentum to bring her elbow to bare as she kept moving forward, going to swipe at his head.

Elbow met elbow as Wrex stopped backpedaling and took it, sending a swipe of his own bony elbow to meet. The force of the two meeting had thrown both of them asides the mat in the same direction, yet their footing had stayed true, remaining in front of each other as on the uptake they both threw hooks at each other, only to see them coming, both rolling back.

There was no moment of pause, to recognize that the two of them had been better than expected. There was only more fighting.

Wrex had been on the forward movement as Mai purposefully moved back more than she needed to recover. She saw his fisted claw reach out at her toward her neck for a punch, however a hand of hers rose, not to grab, but to direct away as she moved the top half of her body back, moving around his reach, only to take her own momentum and move behind him.

It wasn't to her advantage however. The Krogan body was made to weather hits from the back. So she did nothing as Wrex turned around, back hand seen by Mai in the movement.

Like a clamp, both her arms had gone up, catching his punching arm in between like a vice with her forearms.

In the first flurry of movement and attacks which the crowd had barely been able to process, it was this that had caused them their first pause.

Wrex was pleased as she did it, knowing the hand closest to his face having balled up and-

A thwack. It was if the skin had become bone and the bone had broken.

With all the mass of a vending machine Wrex took the punch, stumbling the side as the first shred of fist wrap came undone.

The claws on his feet tapped against the mats as he readjusted from it. Barely enough time for him to see Mai come at him again. Her arms had been the weapons, held like bars almost, her elbows point of attack as she had thrown out his arms to bare his chest and face to herself. Every attack meant for his head had been an upward swing due to the height difference, but every punch that landed had been like punching stone.

Wrex, angling his body from the onslaught, had let her punch flatly, unable to follow through with her movement, stopping her as he leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her before she could react.

Twirling her around in her grasp, Mai had been thrown after three revolutions, barely off the mat as Wrex followed her flight, putting his foot down on her side and rolling her back into the mat's space as the crowd nearest scrambled away.

Mai rolled further, forcing herself to keep going before she righted to her feet, a crouch at least. That was all she could manage before Wrex had rushed over like a bull and put a knee, almost to her face. Her arms had put an X over her face as she blocked it, being sent back again as she felt Wrex's mass be put into every strike.

It was a familiar mass. Again, like a Hunter, or even a Brute, but there was so much more refinement in Wrex that Mai had recognized.

The skin on her knees had been torn off by the pure friction of her taking a knee, taking another blocked strike from Wrex's armored knees before she pushed back against from her position, sending Wrex back.

Her bones felt like steel. Wrex could tell. If he was rock, she was the metal, bent and burnt on Tuchanka.

She rushed forward, arms out as Wrex tucked himself down, refusing to be picked up as Mai seized his midsection. The mat was torn beneath him as she put his foot down and met her full stride. His own elbows landed strikes against her back, breaking her down in her grip around, but she refused to let go as the pain of bone breaking blunts threatened to tear her backside apart.

She growled, twisting her body, like an crocodile's death spiral, finally sending Wrex off his feet onto his head as she slid down again and grabbed his legs, hoisting him up.

She hoisted him up.

That, by itself, was a statement.

Returning the favor, she had tossed him onto his side a few feet opposite. Running up to him his hand only reached out to punch her ankle. He had caught it, and it would've torn off her foot had she not been who she was. Falling over him into a roll it had given Wrex enough time to get back onto his feet, charging at her as she returned the favor and met him half way:

Two bulls had met, growling, spit in their mouths dripping to the mats as Mai was overpowered and sent to the ground again, pinned. Not a second passed before Wrex wound his hand back for a punch into her gut. Mai couldn't avoid it, but she had turned, offering her side profile instead of her stomach as the punch came down and the Normandy rumbled from the strike through her. Lifting her legs up beneath Wrex, she rolled him up and over, now he was on his back as Mai had gotten up.

The second her pathways from stomach to mouth had been straightened a piece of her lunch had been spit back up with globs of blood.

Wrex was the type to not let up, so he had been back at her the second he had been able. It was time enough for Mai to plant her feet and remember his weight.

Every attack he had leaned into. His advantage had been his top half.

In this charge at least, she had jumped, clearing the seven feet necessary and landing on the other side of him. Wrex didn't need to turn, he was turned by her as she took one of his shoulders and threw him out open again.

How many hearts did Krogan have? One might've stopped as Mai wound up her own fist and threw one forward, dead center. The sound of what might've been ground breaking, of a crag shearing, was heard as Wrex let out one big gasp, and at the mat, his very skin had dropped like shards.

Beneath her feet it had pierced her soles, but she cared nothing for it as she continued onward before Wrex processed the pain. Taking one of his arms again, he tried pulling her back, however her head flying forward had only meant his own sternum in a blunt, making him recoil down as she reached up to the back of his head and down to her knee.

"Fuck!"

The first word of the fight had been as elegant as how it turned out to be, Wrex using his free arm again to Mai as it grabbed the knee that opened up a vein in his nose and pulled it out from beneath her.

Like a windmill, Wrex dragged her beneath himself, throwing herself up, holding her, her momentum held and focused onto the ground where she hit with another reverb that could be felt through the Normandy.

Mai's head bounced against the patted floor, and even then, it wasn't enough as Wrex dragged her again by her leg and repeated the motion in reverse.

She tucked herself in, despite seeing the haze and the echo of her brain being tossed in her own skull, bracing for each swing, back and forth until the claws of Wrex slipped, cutting a bright red line across her thigh as she sucked in breath in pain.

It had been a long time since she had suffered an open wound like that, but it was no matter. The feeling kept her alive as she moved onto her belly, clawing herself forward and onto her feet again.

Nothing else in this world mattered. Nothing was there. It was just the ring, and Wrex.

His expression had been that of someone enjoying themselves.

Hers was the same.

She rushed forward again arms up, throwing her full mass into just being against Wrex before twirling around, her own backhand thrown as it made contact with Wrex's side. She didn't know the anatomy of Krogan, but her knuckles through her tape felt bone.

Contact made a whipping sound, Wrex moving his arms down to try and seize or break her arm. She wouldn't have it as her red drenched leg came up to his midsection in a kick, upwardly focused.

Spartan Time had long since kicked in, and yet, despite this, Wrex still moved with a quickness that betrayed him. She savored him being on his back and his stomach exposed as she brought her leg up and did what he couldn't: land one mid.

She didn't stomp him. She wanted to stomp the floor beneath him, metal and all, and she very much tried as Wrex tried to catch her leg, barely stopping her from doing her full damage as they both felt some internal organs inside of him get bruised.

Wrex tried to push her off from her leg, but she wouldn't dare, in between her toes as she pressed down on him she felt the very internals of his body shift and move and there was no hiding the wince in his eye.

Wrex only twisted her again, but it didn't send her to the ground. Like a ballerina she found her footing as Wrex, hunched over, stood front to front with her again.

"45 seconds and we're already bleeding, huh?" Wrex wiped his claws across his face.

His nose was dripping with Krogan blood, yellow and oranges combined, adding to the red spotting the field from Mai's leg.

Mai's fingernails bit through the wrapping of her hand as she raised them again.

No conversation. Wrex nodded, emulating, before going right back at it in a storm of arms and beating.

The best the crowd could describe the next five minutes was give and take and elasticity. As in no one had known how far they could stretch themselves before something broke.

Every punch, every hit, it seemed like it broke something. Every hit was a wince amongst the crowd as those more squeamish backed off even further as the perimeter of the mats no longer was set in stone.

And yet still they kept fighting.

Mai had gotten Wrex to hunch over more, a flurry of strikes coming between his eyes at once in between being banged against her knee. However he had taken each and every single one with a knowledge of pain. This was nothing new as instead on the uptake from a knee strike he charged forward again, getting Mai onto her back and held as he winded up another punch and landed it on her upper torso. The first one took her breath away. The second one took the expression out of her face as she bared her teeth and blood erupted from her nose herself.

Breath. Just breath.

There was no sound to her life now. Her senses shutting down, donating themselves to the fight.

Any sound that she could hear was muted as she closed her eyes and felt another strike come down against her chest.

Chakwas had fixed her already. It took an hour, but her ribs her set in stone again. It wasn't as if Wrex had implicitly aimed for her lungs, but this was a fight where nothing was sacred.

Mai's legs fell in between Wrex's as he was held over her, forcibly spreading her own wide had put Wrex's in a spread that he couldn't take, only to fall on Mai fully.

Mai had slid from beneath him, carrying whatever had fallen off or from him all the while.

Going in naked was right. It was getting messy. The smell had been of sweat and blood.

No one would be remised to say however that this hadn't been what they expected.

Mai hadn't gotten far enough away as Wrex had singled out an uppercut. Square of her face. The whiplash again had sent her to the ground on her back, but her teeth had cut into his own knuckles on his claws.

She tasted his blood in her mouth. That was the first thing she noticed before she realized she had been on her back again and her body automatically rolled away from him to be righted.

She swallowed it, panting.

Seconds, minutes, hours, maybe days. That's how long it felt like they had been fighting now.

And for what? A secret?

For Wrex, he remembered what he told Shepard:

"Do you do what you do because it simply is something you have to do?"

For Shepard, it meant she had to be Shepard, and whatever that meant.

For himself, it meant that he had to fight, because he was a Krogan. It was within his blood to fight, and to keep fighting, and to keep finding a fight. It was why he was here on the Normandy in a part larger than he would let on.

Some of Mai's blood had gotten on his claws, and he had seen its deep red. He ran his face down with it, and it matched oh so well with his own natural color.

What was her do? What was this human's why?

Maybe it was the same as his own. It was perhaps a reason why she had been fighting him to a standstill.

Only Matriarchs and Spectres had ever given him this much of a fight, and even then, it would've been over by now. This felt like it could've gone on forever.

Not that that was a negative. No. It was a testament to his opponent.

Mai had run a black eye now. A side of her face engorged and darkened from a strike.

Some of his own chest plates were shattered and broken now, his scales tender and almost ripped off.

Despite that, there was an unspoken agreement that had been made even midfight: No biting, no tearing, no gouging. There was a respect there that had been established.

Not that this fighting had looked respectable.

Mai came at him again, going for his chest. It was the largest target, and he had only done his best to be a wall. Any movement left or right, to dodge, would be far more disadvantageous to him. She knew how to grapple, even with someone as big as him.

Even if he didn't tell anyone, he himself held within him that she learned to fight not of this galaxy. He could tell with each blow, with each strike, with each-

Some shards from a plate had stuck to his skin, only to be punched in by Mai as she landed a strike, and he had felt the lightning of pain. The only thing that can kill a Krogan is another Krogan, so this was a little closer on the mark than herself. He reached up, trying to dig into his own flesh to get those shards out, but Mai wouldn't let him, attacking his arms instead with altering punches, putting more and more strain on thousand-year old bones.

He had something to prove here as much as she did.

He felt for her last punch, the one she put into this last series, and instead met it half way with her claws, seizing her fist.

He assumed his stance, that of ancient monsters, and planted to the floor as he put his shadow over her. Squeezing her fist in its ball, he had put his strength into it as she was forced into a kneel.

"Your bones, ghoul, they would've broken by now. Who are you?" The spit in his mouth pattered her face.

It was as if her fist was being compressed by a vacuum chamber as her other arm went up to try and dig beneath Wrex's claw and get rid of the grip, but there was nothing but skin and bone being compressed into a ball.

Her breaths became ragged as pure pain came through her veins. Constant pain, coming from her hand.

If this was war, a real fight, she knew what she would've done. Nothing could break Wrex's grip and the hand had been lost. If her blade had been with her…

Her mind in the blur of adrenaline had iron-blooded pain found its solution as she ripped herself back and swept her legs beneath Wrex, sending him to the floor as she wrest her hand free, the distance between them big enough for Mai to tuck her hand into her stomach to numb.

He was top heavy. Top heavy. The emphasis in her mind replaced the pain.

Wrex had roared. For the first time in this fight, he roared. He challenged her. She opened her eyes truly and saw him, and all she could do was roar back with a ragged voice. The loudest she had been in that galaxy yet.

With the force that could've compromised the Normady, the two locked together in a charge. In a headbutt, that, as the two recoiled from it, Mai had assumed who she was.

As Wrex recoiled back, Mai had let her body take over from her own daze and her leg reached out, not trying to slip Wrex out and to the ground, but his upper thigh. The first kick against his right leg and made his standing waver, but before Wrex could do another Mai had been out of his sight. He could only feel a strike against his leg again as he kept turning to try and face her.

He could only feel the pain as his leg buckled beneath kicks.

Mai was circling him, teeth bared, slowed down. Anytime Wrex tried to face her down she had robbed him of his firm footing by landing hits against his leg. His own body worked against him as he kept trying to turn, but kept falling, getting up, but buckling all the same.

What did it mean to be brought down to her level?

Even Mai didn't know, but to see Wrex below her, it did something to her. This was how it was supposed to be.

For a full minute, this cycle went, stuck in this motion as Mai assumed a more ominous form, looking down on Wrex as he tried to stand on his feet. He was ineffectual until Mai had let him stand.

They stood opposite of each other again, but no attack was pressed on either side. The only sound was of their breaths, hot and heavy. It was just a moment, of recognition: That they had been driven to this point by each other.

Breath. Mai remembered how hard it had hurt when her own was taken from her.

No Elite had ever gotten her to this level, that was for sure.

Wrex had taken a slow step forward to attack again, but then he had bursted forward.

Mai had been too far gone however, she was now silent, intangible, as each punch was met with nothing in return, only the flashing visage of her dodging each punch, being slightly out of his reach.

The flame that burned twice as bright, lasted half as long. A flame that burned for over a thousand years was perhaps overdue.

That was all Mai would let Wrex do: attack. Attack and attack and attack until the nearly imperceptible fatigue had set in.

It was on that beleaguered punch she sprung.

Right into his lungs, his neck.

Any breath he tried to draw in, it was robbed.

"Center your breathing, match mine."

Mai matched Wrex's.

Each time he had tried to take a breath, Mai put in a punch. Each one measured, slowed down from what she had done earlier. Each inhale was replaced by a strike, each morsel of air replaced with pain as Wrex knew what it was like to drown.

By the time Wrex had been truly breathless, bent over to allow his lungs to fill at all, Mai had found her chance: With her elbow again, torn up and bloody, she had swung up against Wrex's neck, sending his whiplash back as he spit up.

He seemed slower as he stumbled back, a glossy look in his eyes as Mai didn't rush toward him, but walked:

He put up his fists again.

Mai had put another punch right between them.

His head jostled back again, and he was slower still.

He wanted to keep fighting, hands up, but his wrists were limp.

Another crack, and Wrex had been continually stepping back, his footing uneasy.

His claws hadn't even gotten half way up as his back hunched over unknowingly.

Every crack was like thunder through a canyon, and each of these against Wrex now had been that of meat being processed.

Mai had taken in a breath, and Wrex tried to breath in his. He didn't.

No cheering, no booing, nothing. Throughout the entire fight people had been dead silent as they saw two monsters go head to head. There was nothing to be said, and only everything to be experienced.

Each hit resounded in their heads as if they had been hit. Each punch striking through teeth. Everyone there had realized how fragile each of themselves had been.

Tali had rolled herself up next to Garrus, holding her legs at her knees as if keeping herself together as Liara looked on in horror. Garrus, the career law enforcement officer, had seen varren and vorcha fighting rings softer than this.

The rest of the Marines had only stood there, wide eye'd and unbelieving, on two measures:

A human, with only herself, had been going toe to toe with a Krogan battle master with everything to show for herself.

The other measure had been this: Mai did not need her armor to fight like she did. She fought without mercy. Without that toward her enemy, and toward herself.

She looked terrible.

Absolutely terrible.

Like a spear, her last punch seemingly went right through Wrex's head as he, momentarily, went limp, and collapsed onto his arms, on his back, with Mai's shadow over him.

Victory?

No.

Not yet.

Mai had kneeled down and taken him by his natural collar, rolling her fist back, and all those there had learned what a Krogan's head looked like as a punching bag as Wrex's arms gave out and he collapsed on his back, held up only by her grip.

It wasn't a wild flurry of hits. Just three punches. Each one a period on that fight.

As if it was the last few before the surface broke.

On the first: The elevator to the well deck opened.

On the second: the crowd dispersed, having seen enough, and far more than they ever bargained for.

On the third: Shepard was there, over Mai, mouth open, about to say that was enough. Mai had opened her mouth first.

"I'm done."

Shepard was taken aback, eyes wide, as Wrex below had laughed a laugh meant for joy. No rhyme or reason, just laughter, echoing throughout the well deck that was of triumph as he had rolled over to his side and shown his new face: broken and bent askew, but still very much distinctly him as it dripped with blood.

The Marines had melted into the shadows and the only one who dared stand where he had during this entire ordeal had been JD.

One of his claws had reached up, patting Mai's shoulder. "Deal's a deal."

Behind Shepard had been Chakwas, the look on Shepard's face: unamused. "Doc?"

Mai and Wrex stood ramrod straight despite everything. They were still ready to keep fighting, even if Wrex had an eye nearly out of his socket and Mai had bruises on every inch of her.

The mats below were ruined and wet. Half Mai, half Wrex. Organic fluid gotten loose and it had been an issue of hazmat beyond the Normandy's proper capability.

Chief Weston was sought out near the Mako by Shepard as the Normandy's requisitions chief. He knew the deal, eyeing up the mess as Chakwas waved her omni up and down the two fighters. "Don't clean it up." Shepard had said with a sharp bite. "But order new ones for Altis. Sparring is a proper PT activity, but this… This was…"

"They're…" Chakwas couldn't believe her readings. "Nothing too permanent. Nothing broken."

"Not out of lack of trying." Wrex had spoken and, surprisingly, Mai had nodded.

Chakwas had gone to apply bandages, aid, but Shepard had stopped her. "You two. This kind of fight, you know very well that this was out of line."

"Why'd you let it happen then, Shepard?" Wrex posed.

There was a glare to her eyebrows. "Because the second I was on an away mission you would've tried. You would've jumped Chief Gul." Shepard knew, and she wasn't wrong. "At least this I knew how and where it was going to happen."

Wrex snorted in admission.

Shepard turned to Gul. "Chief Gul, you're so wrapped up in red tape and black ink I don't even think I know how to reprimand you officially for this." Mai had been emotionless even as she bleed from everywhere, slowly pooling beneath herself. "But this wasn't official, and neither is this. You two, clean this up, you get no help from anyone else… Chief Durante!"

Shepard snapped at JD and he had responded with a snap to attention. "Yes ma'am."

"Unless she's about to drop dead, do not help her. I know how you are; god bless you, but not here. Not now. The only people healing them are each other."

It was that that made Mai twitch in her face.

If it hadn't been for the veil of sweat and blood, Shepard would've noticed. The tell however had been far beyond physicality. The tell for Mai's displeasure was JD's reaction: he was torn. Between two things. What those were, Shepard could barely taste, but it was there, and it fought against him.

She remembered JD's introduction to Liara after Therum. Perhaps…

"Private!?" She said with a tone of command as JD was conflicted.

"Ma'am!" He responded. He shouldn't have.

Wrex had chuckled as the silence that followed his report echoed.

Cameron Masterson stared, eye to eye with Doctor Halsey. On her glass table, a letter of resignation. The year was 2531. The Covenant had begun their crusade and he was done with Humanity. He had a ranch back on Earth, far away from Reach, where he was planning on spending the rest of his natural, god given life. It wouldn't be long, after all. What the scotch was doing to his liver wasn't kind.

He was completely sober when he had stormed into her office that last day on Reach however.

"I'm not the one you're to do this with." She said dismissively, not even looking from her report of god knows what. "HR is in the other wing."

Masterson hadn't cared. "Oh no. I know this. But you're the reason why." Masterson slid his papers for resignation in front of her:

I resign from any involvement and position within the SPARTAN-II Program, effective immediately.

"Unsurprisingly, honestly." Halsey still hadn't looked up, using a stylus to continue writing notes as on another datapad statistics came running in. "We know your communications with your superiors have been distasteful ever since they were augmented."

"You're a heartless bitch, you know that? Hiding behind this veneer of necessary progress and the need for Spart- for whatever this is." She was hardly perturbed by his insulting, working ever onward. "God dammit." Masterson said to himself, slumped into his chair. "I can't believe it."

"Believe what, Masterson? That it took you twenty years to realize what you were doing, and then delude yourself into think that this wasn't for the greater good?"

"Greater good?!" Masterson snapped in his chair. "What greater good is there that justifies me kidnapping children?!"

That was his original tasking when he was assigned to her: He was the procurement specialist. He was the one who went into the colonies and stole the children from their homes. He was the one who took them, and they never knew.

"Saving the Human race. Have you not seen what they're doing out there? How much hope they inspire and what damage they do?"

"But at what cost?" Masterson pleaded with her. It was as plain as day to him, and wherever he went on Reach, to Mendez or his peers, all that he had seen were people who justified the very base fact that they had kidnapped young children and indoctrinated them into war machines. All of it was dressage for that base fact.

Halsey had sighed. "An ONI agent with morals? Don't be so vain. You've done the deed once, that will never be undone. None of this work will ever be now. You're a hero for what you've done. You did the hard things that enabled all this progress."

"And I wish I never did. By God." Halsey said nothing, justifying nothing. She would give Masterson nothing to respond to. It wasn't his place to be there, or to say the things he did. But he had to. It tore at his soul and he needed to cry out. If not for him, but on behalf of those who called themselves Spartan now. "Do you know that the head office has some new directive in place for them?" Halsey had known what he was about to say. He knew because she stopped what she was doing, as if to brace for what he said next. "Any Spartan casualties will be labeled as missing in action, regardless of what happened to them."

"A morale booster to be sure. Truly my Spartans ability to impose on the battlefield deserve such impression."

"God dammit woman," Masterson stood up, pushing his chair back. "God dammit! Don't you see? Spartans never die. Isn't that a tragedy?"

"Is it?" Halsey glared at him from her seat. "It sounds like a blessing in war."

Masterson had been hysterical, raising a hand to his head as it shook, disbelief on his face. "One of the most Human things that we can do is die, Halsey. We've taken that from them."

Masterson had a family; he had a daughter. Had a daughter. Colette Holmes Bannon. She was a lieutenant in the UNSC. Too strong of a heart to do the dirty work her father done, but still wanting to serve. She served. That's all he knew. He couldn't even know how she died. All that he knew was that she was lost to a Covenant glassing in a far-off colony.

She had died, fighting for Humanity, because she was Human.

These Spartans, they couldn't do that, and he was very much to blame.

Tears were in his eyes and Halsey had no care for it. Everyone who worked in this program dealt with this in some way. There were always going to be those who didn't have the will strong enough to go on.

"Is there anything else, or shall we part ways here? I'm very much busy planning for the second class of Spartans."

She was cold and desolate and… she deserved this war. "I will remember them. All of them."

Numbers. There were numbers on her datapad, reporting the successes of them all. The one she had attention to in particular: 117.

By God, the tragedy of it, it had made him falter where he stood as he remembered his young face. The fun he had with his friends, as a child, thinking nothing of the reality of life as it turned out. Peace was robbed of him.

His name was John. "I will remember him for who he was, and what he could've been."

Halsey was right. She was always right. Masterson would never live to see to what measure, but Halsey was right on a technicality and maybe, just maybe, if he were alive to see that would've been his sweet revenge.

"This boy will save the galaxy. You'll see."

The boy did save the galaxy. The boy did ignite a Halo to wipe out the Covenant. The boy did end the war. The boy did rise up more broken in his name and send Humanity down a path where its next step was fundamentally poisoned. The boy would follow orders to the very end as a machine.

But more than that however, that same boy would live to end the galaxy.