My Big Fat Quarian Wedding

A Mass Effect fanfiction by Andrew Joshua Talon

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan based work of prose. The Mass Effect series is the property of Bioware and EA Games. Please support the official release.

Based off of the "The Airlock is Ajar" snippet thread on Space Battles dot com, this is a storyline I and Damar wrote together. Please enjoy.

Rannoch

Eight to nine weeks later, the house was finished. It was supposed be finished a month earlier, but Imp attempting to correct the plumbing caused everything to be flooded.

Now Imp was restricted from any self-driven action that went beyond nodding, responding to anything with 'Yes Jinn/Creator/Shepard-Commander/None of the previous listed' and giving positive commentary.

Or else it would get the hose again.

So when Tali asked for Imp's opinion on a human house feature referred to as a 'jacuzzi', it was little better than talking to herself when it came to unbiased opinions. With the house sterilized, and the geth programs in her suit working double-shifts, Tali was able to walk her around her home without a faceplate. Though it was still in easy reach on her belt if Shepard became bored and would take her out into the wilderness in the Mako, and when the day of sightseeing ended, make use of it's sterilized interior before finally returning to the home.

The roadtrips became more frequent, and while every single one was wonderful, Tali began to fear Shepard was getting bored, and perhaps impatient. Occasionally in bed, she caught him looking down to her abdomen, with a distant stare and quickly explaining how he just loved that part where her torso met her hips, but clearly hoping for something. Something that was impossible, and she became sad when thinking about not able to give Shepard what he wanted, angry as if giving herself wasn't enough, and than depressed again as she wanted it too.

The jacuzzi was an attempt to brighten both their days, and yet when it reminded her even more of the worries, so much it made her feel ill. Very much so.

"Creator Zorah, you appear pale, do you require medical-"

Tali shook her head. "No, thank you Imp, I'm perfectly fi-" And than without warning, everything she had eaten in the last two days, including the turian chocolate she secretly ate because Shepard made mean jokes about enjoying seeing Tali getting even thicker thighs, exited her mouth in a violent eruption.

When it was over, Tali was left shivering and trembling on her feet, while Imp was left confused, and covered in the former contents of the quarian's stomach.

"-Assistance?"

To say Shepard overreacted to the event was an understatement. Walking into the room and confronted with the scene, he instinctively punched Imp, and swept a still recovering Tali off her feet and hauled her to the Mako to get to the nearest medical post. Jinn arrived just moment later, and slapped Imp on the high probability that the geth platform was somehow responsible.

The Mako had gone as far as five miles before Tali managed to calm Shepard down by crawling into his lap and making him worked up about something else entirely. That and nearly avoiding death when Tali's distraction made Shepard almost collide with an oncoming geth Colossus that fired warning shots in the air in lack of a klaxon and a middlefinger to show how angry it was at the near-miss, the Commander finally put the Mako to a stop alongside the road after putting enough distance between them.

The immediate panic over, Shepard realized just how much screwed up by taking a sign of the quarian being ill, as an life-or-death emergency, knowing how much she and other quarian females hated being treated like a fragile flower that could die at the first sneeze, even if that was true in some cases. "Tali, I'm sorry. I just…panicked."

"…It's alright. I was scared too for a moment." And even more scared when you talked about calling the STG and Alliance Medical to get ships to Rannoch get now or face his wrath. Though it was cute, in a sadistic way. Maybe she should get suddenly violently sick more often. "It probably just was a relapse of my immunity system, you can't force quarian bodies to adapt to Rannoch that fast."

"Or there could be something viral in the air, some bacteria or virus that evolved or mutated in the 300 years your people have been away."

"Or it could be that unhygienic hairy alien who keeps ravishing me every single night, and most afternoons too, with his sweaty hands touching every inch of my body, who is contaminating me with slimy saliva as he drags his tongue across my skin, and I haven't even mentioned the disgusting things he does with his-"

"Okay okay! I get it." Shepard laughed a bit uncomfortably, and leaned back into the chair as Tali placed her head on his chest.

"John, I was a teenager who barely begun her Pilgrimage and who stood besides you against Saren and Sovereign. When I finally got the courage to tell you my feelings, I followed you into the Collector's Base, almost certain to die, but came out alive, with you. And than the Reapers came, and my people and the geth went to war, the only thing that kept me from giving into despair was knowing you wouldn't give in either, and you would find a way somehow to save us all. Which you did. So if you think a bad case of the flu would be enough to take me away from you and what we have…now that would be damn right insultin'."

Shepard chuckled as he started the Mako. "We're still going to see a doctor, just be safe. And for the record, I find your imitation of Kal'Reegar damn unsettlin'."

"I had to have gotten the hots for someone before I met you, John, and Kal was pretty much the military's posterboy with thousands of young female fans, including me. Did you know that Kal'Reegar-themed nerve stimulation sims were very popular in the fleet and now still on Rannoch even before those commercials?" The Mako suddenly whirled out of control for a moment, more than usual.

"What!"

"It's true. And when I last looked when shopping in Zero, they have a Commander Shepard version now too, in two different versions. The Shepard Blue Edition and Shepard Red. Blue is the standard erotic sim, gentle caressing, slow thrusting, that sorta of thing. And Red is the more 'intense' version, with simulated biting and everything. It's especially popular with older married women…"

The Mako once again spun out of control, as Shepard had let go of the steering in order to place both fingers into his ears, loudly yelling the lyrics to Modern Salarian Scientist to drone out Tali's overabundance of information.

The physician at the medical post was an older quarian, who while very greeting of Tali, barely acknowledged Shepard being in the same room, and the first thing he asked was if the medical emergency concerned human STD's. When corrected, he took some scans and downloaded her suit's biosensor records, and retreated to the other room to analyze the results. Shepard questioned if the doctor disliked humans for some reason unknown to him. Tali guessed so...

"Or maybe his wife downloaded Shepard Red to her suit."

The doctor returned to a sour-faced Shepard and a smirking Tali. "Miss Zorah, the results are in and…oh my, how very interesting."

"Why? Is it something worse than a flu?"

The doctor laughed. "Oh no no, it's not the symptoms of a disease. Far from that. The scans confirm you are in fact, in the first stages of being with child. And let me be the first to congratulate you, and whatever quarian husband you will make happy with this news."

Pregnant... Pregnant... Pregnant... Keelah selai... But... How...?

Shepard had been silent since the doctor's pronouncement. He seemed almost numb as he and Tali walked out of the clinic. Shepard reached up and opened the hatch to the Mako, and Tali slowly walked up into it. She sat down in a passenger seat, her hands coming together to squeeze in a mixture of fright and elation and... Well a few other emotions that she couldn't sort out.

Shepard shut the hatch, and slowly sat down next to Tali. He didn't look at her. Indeed, he didn't seem to be seeing much of anything as he wrung his hands together.

"John, you know me," Tali said earnestly. "I would never betray you like this."

"I..." Shepard shut his eyes and leaned back in his seat, his hands gripping the arm rests tightly.

"Never! You know me, you trust me, you love me and I love you and you know, you know that I would never do this," Tali said. She laughed a bit hollowly. "I wouldn't have had the chance anyway."

"I... Yeah..." Shepard shook his head. "I just don't see... How..."

"Neither do I, but please know, please know," Tali said earnestly, reaching across to hug him tightly. "Please know that you're the only man I've made love to."

"It's just... Impossible. How could this happen?" Shepard asked, a trembling hand resting on Tali's shoulder.

"... We should probably consult Dr. Chakwas," Tali said. Shepard nodded.

"Right... You're absolutely right," Shepard said. He made for the driver's seat and revved up the engine, still not looking at her. "Let's check with her."

The business like manner he did this in hurt all the worse, and Tali bowed her head. If he was angry, that she could deal with but this... This closing off to her was even worse than his wrath. It was like she'd broken something in him and as an engineer this was absolutely unacceptable.

The Zero City hospital was the best outfitted facility in the Rannoch system, far more advanced than the local clinic they'd visited. It had an FTL comms relay set up that was connected to every medical scanner in the building for quick off-world consultations.

Tali and Shepard were put in an isolated room with an advanced scanner setup. Shepard stood to the side as the instruments went over Tali, scanning every inch inside and out. She stood there anxiously, trembling as she felt Shepard's eyes not resting on her.

"It will take a while to process the results," said the nurse. "But we've sent them off to the Normandy. Doctor Chakwas will be responding via hologram soon."

"It's that close?" Asked Shepard.

"Yes, it's near enough to a mass relay while it's undergoing it's refit that we can do this in near realtime," said the nurse with a smile. "She's quite remarkable!" She turned and left the room, the door shutting behind her.

A hologram of Dr. Chakwas soon appeared. She smiled brightly.

"Well Commander. You've really outdone yourself this time. Coming back from the dead, making babies with aliens-"

Shepard's eyes popped wide, and he staggered back as though he'd been struck. "You... How...?"

"But how is that possible Doctor? We're... We're not even the same species!" Tali gasped, even as hot tears came to her eyes.

"I've looked over the genetic profile of the fetus," Chakwas said. "It's not pure quarian. Look! These genetic markers are distinctly human, albeit reversed from levo-amino to a dextro-amino configuration. It's really quite fantastic-"

"But how in hell did that... How is that even possible?" Shepard asked in disbelief. "How did you find that out that fast?"

"Simple. The subject header was that Tali was pregnant, and we've got your genetic profile on record here Commander," said Chakwas, looking almost impish. "I decided to go on a hunch, and there it is. Definitive."

"Impossible," Tali gasped. "I haven't cheated on Shepard and yet...?"

"I believe I might be able to shed some light on the circumstances," said a familiar voice from the door. Shepard, Tali and Chakwas all turned their heads to look at their visitor. A visitor who smirked slightly.

"Long time no see, Commander Shepard, Tali'Zorah," said Miranda Lawson.

For a surreal moment, Shepard thought every other person who served on the Normandy would follow behind Miranda as some kind of planned celebration party. But they didn't and it was just Miranda, in a new suit that was barely was an improvement over the old one, form-fitting leather pants and a white top so tight you could tell whether she was wearing a bra or not.

"Miranda, how, what…why are you here?"

"Oh Shepard, did you really think I would stop reading your mail? If only for my own interests rather than Cerberus's. The moment you alerted Chakwas, I directed my shuttle to the nearest Mass Relay and went straight for Rannoch. Not that I was too far off to begin with, I've been keeping an eye on you two ever since Miss Zorah came on the Normandy."

"Again, why for God's sake?"

"Because I wanted to know if my own private improvements on you, Commander, had worked." Miranda looked down at Tali's abdomen, who instinctively clutched it to protect it from the woman's gaze. "Because I needed to know if you were capable of giving a child to anyone."

"…Lazarus! You did something to me at the Lazarus Project, that did this to Tali, wasn't it?"

"Oh relax Shepard. You make it sound like I made you impregnate Tali with a mutant hybrid that will eventually tear it's way through her chest and create an army of rape monsters. Cerberus closed down that project decades ago." From her tone, it was impossible to determine whether she was joking or not.

"Than what is my…child?" Tali cautiously asked.

"The only the best of you and Shepard, simply compensating for the levio and dextro-amino difference, and other biological barriers that would have made conception impossible. Or even dangerous considering quarian immunity systems. You should thank me, wasn't easy to reengineer that many sperm cells into being 'applicable' to most humanoid species."

Shepard thought about the rapid series of events. He never really did suspect Tali of having gone seeing someone else behind his back, no matter how embarassing her worship of Kal'Reegar was. He did have dark thoughts about her going to the efforts of finding a donor to artificially impregnate herself, just to give him a child. That wasn't a child out of love, that was a child out of desperation, and he felt guilty of having forced the issue on her with his stupid selfish daydreaming.

But now the dream had become reality, and it only took for him to die and have several billion credits spent on him being reconstructed, and a mildly creepy obessesed with fertility scientist to make it happen. He wanted to kiss Tali to show his relief, but the quarian preempted him by removing her faceplate, quarian hospitals were very sterile, and kissed him first, deeply as she had been even more worried this entire time.

When they finally recovered, Shepard turned to Miranda who was looking expectantly with her arms crossed.

"Thank you Miranda. I don't know how to repay you."

"I do. By returning the favor."

Shepard blinked. "…And what exactly does that-"

"Did you really think I'd go through all the effort just so you could go knock up Miss vas Normandy? Everything I've done was in the hopes of you being able of giving me a child as my father made damn sure I could not get one naturally. I had hoped you'd fall in love with me to make the process easyier for both of us, but now with it's effectiveness proven..."

"You mean..."

"Yes. Penetration. Ejaculation, all in the proper order. And I'm not taking a no for an answer. But to show you I'm not being unreasonable..."

Without warning or any shame, she pulled the white top over her head and discarded it, confirming she indeed had not been wearing a bra as suspected. And for a moment, even Tali was silent and awed by what genetics engineerd to perfection could do for a human female's body, as everything was perfect to the point of appearing computer generated. It was Shepard who finally refound his wits to talk again.

"Miranda, I-I understand your plight and your-your dedication to having it fixed...but perhaps we should slow down and talk about it first."

"No!" Miranda's right hand flashed with biotic power, and the tense stressed glance in her eyes was turning shockingly close to obsessed psychotic. "I've waited too long, suffered too much dissappointment to only now be stopped by a man preferring suit rat tail!"

Shepard acknowledged Miranda was being very emotional about something he knew that affected her very much, and with proper patience, could talk her down from both her current attitude and the demand to impregnate her right here in the hospital. However, as he balled a fist, nobody calls Tali a suit rat.

Tali saw Shepard tensing up, and how much she would enjoy watching him hit that admittingly amazingly well-endowed cheerleader's face, things were running too hot for there to be a normal solution to the problem, not right now and not with potentially endangering patients.

"Don't be too hasty Shepard, I'm open to sharing. Miranda, just let me talk to him for a few moments about how important this is for you, I'll even get him started up for you!"

"Thank you. Finally someone is being reasonable..."

Tali dragged Shepard away to the corridor outside, waited for a moment to see if Miranda was following them, and than pulled Shepard close.

"Run!"

They took the emergency stairs, the elevators took too long and were an unacceptable hazard. To their credit, they already had reached the parking lot where they had parked the Mako across four spaces, with a quarian marine already busy typing a quadprle parking fine, when they suddenly heard the shatter of plexiglass and barely avoided being showered in the shards. Looking up, they saw Miranda leaning outside the destroyed hospital window, thankfully having put her top on again, and ablaze with biotic power.

"SHEPARD YOU BASTARD! GET BACK HERE AND HAVE SEX WITH ME!"

"Keelah se'lai, leg it!"

Elsewhere in the hospital, an extremely "talented" quarian widow was wringing her hands anxiously as her young son sat on an examination table.

"Oh Doctor Namtar, will my son be all right?" She asked.

The doctor emerged dramatically from the shadows, his blue glowing eye shining almost ominously from behind an eyepatch. He examined his omnitool, projected over his white lab coat.

"I'm afraid he has... The chicken pox," Doctor Namtar intoned. The widow gasped, holding her hands to the sides of her faceplate.

"Oh no! Chickenpox?! What is that?"

"A human childhood illness," the geth doctor said solemnly, "harmless to them but deadly to quarians."

"Oh no! What can we do?" The widow gasped, hugging her son to her bosom. The boy for his part looked quite bored behind his faceplate.

"There is only one thing to do," Doctor Namtar said, as organ music rose in the background. "We must recruit the greatest hero in the galaxy to obtain the cure!"

"You don't mean...!" The quarian widow cried.

"Yes," Doctor Namtar said, clenching its' fist and raising its eye to the heavens. "Commander Shepard!"

The door to the examination room burst open, and Tali'Zorah and Commander Shepard ran in.

"Excuse us, keelah selai!" Tali cried, as she ran to the window and opened it. Shepard helped her out through it, and jumped out himself.

"Sorry about this!" Shepard shouted.

The quarian mother, her son, and Doctor Namtar stared after them. As did the camera crew.

"... We do not believe that was in the script," Doctor Namtar said.

"SHEPARD!" Screamed a human woman. Again, all eyes went to the door. Miranda Lawson ran through, using her biotics to shove the geth out of the way. "GET BACK HERE AND MAKE BABIES WITH ME!"

She dove through the window herself. There was the sound of a crash and an aircar alarm going off.

"... Nor that," Doctor Namtar commented, now lying upside-down against the wall in a heap.

"Wow mommy!" Said the quarian boy. "I want to be Commander Shepard when I grow up!"

His mother sighed and patted his head. "Everyone does, dear, everyone does..."

"Haa... Haa... Haa... I think we lost her," Tali gasped through her mask as she looked back at her mate. Shepard took deep breaths as he looked back over his shoulder.

"Sheesh... Haa... She is pretty persistent," Shepard said.

"Keelah selai! She worked for years to bring you back to life and apparently to make you capable of impregnating anything!" Tali said. "'Persistent' is an understatement!"

"Good point," Shepard sighed, slumping down and rubbing the top of his head. "Still... Doesn't mean I'm just going to wham bam thank you ma'am her." He smiled up at her. "I mean, what, she just thinks she can demand I give her a baby just because I made it so we could have one?"

Tali stared at Shepard for a while, before she sighed. "John, sometimes you can be a real bosh'tet."

"Huh?"

"Miranda's freak out aside..." And here she rested a hand over her stomach, "having a child with you was something I dreamed about. Even with how impossible it was... And Miranda has made it possible." She smiled widely. "Is it really that much to let her live her dream too?"

"Yeah, but it'd be my baby too," Shepard protested. "I'd want to be involved in his or her life!"

"And you could be... But imagine being married to her," Tali said flatly.

Shepard went silent.

"John! John, you haven't done all these chores properly!"

"Sure I did! I cut the grass didn't I?"

"You burnt it to ashes!"

"And it'll take a while for it to grow back! A lot less work for both of us!"

"And fixing the dishwasher does not mean adding mass effect generators to it!"

"Yeah, but I can fly it to the moon now! Tracy really loved it!"

"Urrrgh!"

"Actually, it doesn't really seem all that different from our normal relationship," Shepard said. "Except there would be sex and kids."

Tali sighed. Shepard smiled and hugged Tali tightly.

"But the biggest difference is I love you, not her."

"Still," Tali said, snuggling against him. "It does seem the least we can do for her."

"True," Shepard said. "We could just do artificial insemination then."

"There, see? Perfectly reasonable," Tali said with a nod.

"There is one problem with that," said someone else.

"What?" Shepard asked. His face paled as did Tali's, and they looked up. Miranda was hanging from the ceiling above.

"If it would work with artificial insemination don't you think I would have just used a semen sample?" Miranda asked. "I'm afraid it only works with actual..." And here she licked her lips, "coitus."

"Oh snap," Shepard muttered.

And sex did ensue. Boy howdy did it ensue.