Disclaimer: I own nothing except for Sazzy and the plot.

Beta: Michelle T.

Chapter 1: A meeting of the explosive kind

"The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense."

- John Steinbeck -

You look at the boy from across the room.

Small, filthy. There are no holes in his shirt and scruffy shorts, but you can see that they need a good washing and the tears on the edge need patching. Blind. He's not born blind. The blindness is not permanent.

At least, you hope it's not.

The fever brought on by the local strain of tropical disease is getting on a dangerous level though, and if not dealt with soon, you have no doubt the blindness will become permanent then.

If they ever sell him, it won't be for a good price, which begs the question as to why the slavers picked him up in the first place.

You don't know much about the local slave trade to be honest. It's something you have been trying to turn a blind eye to; if only to keep your temper in check and stay on course with what you need to do in this country, do it quick, then get the hell out before your sanity frays. You know you are not a hero, and you definitely don't want to change the world.

But even you understand, without anyone explaining, that child slaves are needed for different reasons than the adult kind. You have seen enough organ trafficking rings on the Verge during your one-year tour to put the pieces together. Young organs are simply better. Lower rejection rate and a far longer shelf life.

He's sick though, so they will have to sell him at a discount. And they won't hold him in inventory for long either. These businessmen have no use for goods past expiry date.

Quietly, you think to yourself; for all that your world is richer, bigger, its citizens having more rights, and the power ladder while taller is also more balanced, they aren't so different at all when you get down to the basics. The greed. The willingness to cash in on other's expenses.

Which is why you are here actually.

A man walks pass where you sit, huddling in the corner trying not to draw attention to yourself. The door opens and they call the name… number… of the next piece of ware.

A woman called yesterday, crying and shrieking in hysteria about her boy, whom you know, who dragged you in from the waves off the archipelago coast a mere one year before, caught by slavers when he ventured too deep into their cove.

Young boy—he was nine last you saw him—who got too curious for his own good.

The mother doesn't know much about you. She took you in when you washed ashore after your ship crashed, fed and clothed you for a week, maybe two. Afterwards, you left. You are fully capable of taking care of yourself, and you had no wish to incur on the family more than you already had.

You don't bother with names, because you don't want the attachment that comes with them. When you need something to address them with, you call the mother 'Madam', the father 'Sir', and the boy…

… 'Boy'...

You are not terribly creative. Nobody has ever given you reason to care though.

But yesterday, they gave you a call. Not because they thought you could fix it, simply that they knew you worked for the government—junior researcher of the second scientific division, working on experimental marine navigation technology—and that you somehow could… do something.

You don't know what exactly they hoped for when they called you. People are often times misled by their hope. But now that you can't turn your eyes from the festering slavery in what is supposed to be the most beautiful, prosperous part of the world—it's staring right back at you.

So… now you are here, have been here for a little less than half a day, but you still don't dare approach the boy. You are dressed the part, of a freshly caught slave that is, but you have a little more sense than to go and get cozy up to your rescue target.

Well, the time is close now, real close, so you have no doubt you are going to have make the tap soon. You came in here with your eyes fully open. You got yourself tangled with the slavers. Easy, just find the nearest seedy women-unfriendly pub. You let them bring you in, let them think you are a harmless pretty woman worth a sack of creds or two. You may even have manipulated them into thinking you are a virgin just so the transport goes faster and you run less of a chance of getting to your target after he's already been sold.

You know your look is considered exotic here, combined with the 'fresh produce ready for first use' factor, you fetch some decent price. It all has to do with how your genetic structure and material is separated by several thousand light years in physical distance and about the same amount in chronological genetic development from the local people, but of course nobody here knows that but you.

You wait some more, sitting quietly in your corner, your eyes never leaving the boy, not for even one second. A couple other slaves… slaves-to-be, which they won't be if you have any say about that today…. try to pick up a chitchat with you, just to calm their frazzled nerves, but your stolid silence turns them away.

At last, they call your number.

"Fifty-four."

You stand up, adding a small sway to your feet to compliment your 'ditzy ninny' image. You wear a slightly dazed expression on your face, as if you cannot believe what is happening. People tend to let down their guard near those they think are either stupid or not all there.

They lead you out by the chain connected to the collar around your neck. You follow without protest, the perfect picture of a docile little lamb being led to the slaughter house, the length of chain in front of you hung in a nice bell curve, never once pulled taut with resistance.

You are the second-to-last on offer today. The last one, the star of the show, is a mermaid they brought in a couple hours after you have numbed your bum on the cold concrete floor of your cell.

Pretty young thing that is going to cost someone upward of seventy million Beri, the local equivalent to the star system creds. She said her name was Keimi something-or-another… and that her friends would come for her soon, all that in between hysteric yells and sobs you managed to read from her lips through the gigantic reinforced fish bowl. Maybe. In your experience, such statements have fifty-fifty chance of turning out either true or false. Either way, it doesn't really matter. As long as said friends don't interfere with you and your plan, you'll leave them be.

You pass her by as they lead you to the stage where you'll be sold.

Then the moment comes when you stand before the closed curtains and you think to yourself. If you want to quit… now is the time. It would be easy. You are an infiltrator and you are damn good at your job. Escape and extraction are among the least of your abilities. Stay, and you will blow the government researcher cover you have worked hard to create and maintain within the last year.

You understand events have been forced on you. Going by the timeline you were working on before the call yesterday, it would take at least another half a year for you to stage anything like this and kiss your cover goodbye. Do this and your plan will be forced forward half a year early. Not good as far as planning goes. That kid, Boy—the one you have been staring at for nine-plus hours without blinking once—is the start and cause of all this, and while he might have saved your life, the soldier in you knows that sometimes lives can be… must be... sacrificed for the sake of the mission. You have done it a couple times before too and while you had the usual grief that soldiers in command go through, you understand it is necessary. And so do your subordinates.

And boy do you have a mission to accomplish. A mission you have prepared all your life for. A mission for which you stay and stick it out for in this crapsaccharine backwater planet. A mission which may just see you to your grave but if this is the end for you, you don't really mind either.

But on the other hand…. what would Shepard say if she knew you had the chance to save that boy's life and you walked away from it? What would Shepard do if she found out a young child, regardless of whether he saved her, regardless of whether Shepard even knew him, was being forced into a life of slavery and she had the chance to do something about it?

You know the answer of course. It runs in your blood. The same blood as hers. The same blood that was taken from her.

Shepard would blow it all skyhigh. Political fallout be damned. Which is why she's not… and never will be… popular with the Batarians.

It's simply what she does. Most powerful Vanguard specialist of humanity and all. Vanguard Biotics. God, but they are a flashy bunch. Naturally you don't have the same kind of…biotically explosive flare, but this time, you think you can put on an adequate light show.

So… you stay, standing still as the curtain raised in front of you and the people sitting in the auditorium stare at you. You see surprise in their faces as well as a couple gaping jaws. You have gilded yourself up specifically for the occasion, blonde wig, fit body clothed in a blue dress that goes down to your ankles, blue and green heterochromia contact lenses. You know you wow with your appearance. But the majority…. their gazes are judging, gauging, the expression of shoppers deciding on an item of considerable worth.

There are special guests in the crowd, your optical nano implants inform you. A family of Tenryubito—good—and a couple pirate crews—even better. Kidd and Law crews they call themselves.

Other than that, a couple late-coming stragglers from the… Straw Hat crew?

So Keimi's friends did show after all.

You keep your eyes slanted downward, as if you are afraid. On the floor are smudges of blood, the leftover of a hasty wife-off. You heard the offering before you, a grizzled pirate captain of some name, decided to off himself before his buyer could get his hands on him. Bit his tongue clean off and died.

Apparently he decided a life of slavery was worse than death. You can't say you disagree, but if it were you, the person you would be offing would not be yourself but the bastard who dared entertain the thought of owning you.

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what you are going to do.

"Boy is this a good one…" The MC of the show starts rattling off. Some guy named Disco. Has really crap security. They didn't even check you for concealed armaments, too taken in by the image you projects. He flashes his star shaped shades and takes your hand and twirls you around so that the crowd can inspect you in full.

"Feast your eyes upon this rare exotic foreign beauty from a far-off land. So far-off we haven't even a name for it. She was caught off a ship coming in from the famous New World! Check out her perfect shape and these eyes. One blue and one green! Have you ever seen such beautiful eyes before? Truly a trophy worthy of adding to their best collection of decor slaves. Her uses are multitude..."

You tune out the rest, not really interested in the spiel the MC was spewing forth. The foreign part is your doing. Speak a couple lines from a strange language, Asari common tongue to be exact, and immediately the slavers take you for a foreign traveler and consequently fair game for their trade.

The bidding starts when a man places an opening of one million… then it stops immediately when a Tenryubito—a 'Saint' Charloss, according to the computer implanted in your brain and eyes—shrieks an outrageous number of fifty-million, effectively silencing out other bidders in the house.

You only half listens to the banter going back and forth between 'Saint Charloss' and his father about wasting money on overstocking his harem and gilding you with real gold to make a living statue to show off at Charloss's next party. Instead, you inspect him.

Rotund, and possessing of seemingly no combat abilities, except for the very prominent primitive but gaudy looking sidearm on his hip, you deem Charloss a non issue. The fact that he is a Tenryubito means zilch to you except that he will make an effective hostage if it comes to it… which it won't … because you have no intention of taking this waste of human space prisoner.

Oh no sir, not this one, not today.

You have seen firsthand what the Saints of this world can do on a daily basis and it amazes you on levels that even the most sleazy politicians of the Inner Worlds fail to evoke.

You have been holding back for a long time. Now that you are offered the chance to vent, how can you refuse?

The gavel comes down and you are sold. Charloss makes a motion to come forward, excited to inspect his new toy and you prepare to disabuse him of the notion….

...Then things start happening. Things outside of your plan.

It begins with one of the pirate crews in the house—the Kidd crew, leaving—the captain muttering about how screwed up this world was, his mutters only audible to his crew and you via your cybernetically enhanced senses.

Another pirate crew passes him by the door going in. More members of the Straw Hat crew and one fishman.

The fishman draws the attention and the disturbances start.

You stand there on the stage, quietly observing.

Yells and panicking racist people.

Bet these guys are real popular with the Hanar if this is how they react to a blue guy with a couple extra arms.

Eustass Kidd backtracking to watch the Straw Hats wreak havoc simply by being there. Five supernovas in the house—you pay them a little more attention, going over their files in the marines wanted list in your head.

Then Charloss, who can't keep his mouth and superiority complex shut it seems, shoots the fishman and all of a sudden the tension skyrockets. The fishman coughs up blood and gives tearful goodbyes to his pals. You watch the arm muscles on the little kid with the Straw Hat, the captain of the Straw Hats in fact, quiver with suppressed aggression, trying and failing to rein in the anger and Charloss pointing his toy gun at the kid, berating him for blabbing his mouth off at a Tenryubito.

That's not good.

Monkey D. Luffy has a reputation as a spanner in the works and now that he is here, smack dab in the middle of your plan, you would rather not have him go ballistic before you get what you want.

So you step in, right before either the kid punches Charloss's face in or Charloss tries to shoot his brains out.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Your voice rang, carrying loud and clear in the auditorium. It's your captain voice, the one you put on when you want to put the fear of god into seasoned N6 Alliance marines, the voice of a soldier, a commander, the one with which your authority is absolute, and it completely contradicts the image you are wearing. The effect is so disconcerting that it momentarily breaks the ensuing standoff between pirate captain and Tenryubito.

The attention shifts to you, the completely unexpected interferer.

"Huh…" says the Straw Hat kid. He looks as if someone just snapped him out of a stupor. Charloss gives you a glance and is about to completely dismiss you when you speak up again.

"I'm not talking to him, Charloss. I'm talking to you."

Now he turns around and looks at you for real, mouth hanging in shock at the casual way with which you address him. His family look at you too, as if they just now notice you are standing there and apparently can talk.

You decide to up the ante.

"Yes you, you fatass son of a bitch. I'm talking to you."

You are completely straight faced despite the fact that this is not your usual conduct. It is old news for Shepard the original though. Shepard, shining paragon of humanity that she is, can't seem to give up her pastime hobby of pissing off sleazy, corrupted politicians.

But she's a vanguard, one of rare power and skill, and so is usually protected from the subsequent fallout even before the ascent to her fame and legendary status. You, the watered-down copy, on the other hand, don't have the same luxury.

You have only your guns and your tech and even if the political carte blanche ever extends to you, your gunwoman principles don't allow you to go mouthing off at random people, sleazy politicians or not.

Gunman rule number twenty. Be professional. Be polite. But… have a plan to kill everyone.

Gunman rule number twenty-one. Words are cheap. Ammo are expensive. Only mouth off to stooges who you think deserve your bullets. Otherwise, be mindful of finances.

Which… in this case, Charloss does qualify. And now that you have let Charloss know how you think of him, you feel oddly satisfied, especially with the way your simple and to-the-point description of Charloss has somehow rendered most of the audience bug-eyed and jaw-dropped. Even the pirates are throwing double takes at you.

Once Charloss finally gets off the shock, he takes off at you, gun pointing right ahead, snarling all the while. From the look of it, he wants to get right up close before blasting your head off. You still appear chained and collared—a petite slave woman to him after all—so he thinks nothing of the potential danger of getting too close.

But that's fine. You like planning but you can go with the flow too.

When he's close enough, you finally move.

Two steps forward, quicker than he can react. One sidestep as he squeezes the trigger on reflex, the bullet zipping harmlessly past your ear. Your hand shoots out, break his grip on the gun, send it spinning in Charloss's hand until its muzzle points right back at him and its trigger is in your grip.

You shoot him in the neck.

He goes down in a spray of blood and complete silence, right before the eyes of a speechless audience.

The screams afterward are loud but you are used to the noises and occasional explosions so they don't really get to you. People start running out the slave house auditorium, yelling out about the barbarian slave woman who killed a Tenryubito. You let them, busy with inspecting the gun in your hand.

Primitive pistol model, with little stopping power and almost nonexistent accuracy from midrange and above, single chamber with 8 jacketed lead bullets, at least it's not a flintlock. At this range and indoor however, your skill should negate its subpar specs.

Your attention to your surrounding never wavers of course, even when your eyes are not on them, so when more of the Straw Hat crew land through the hole in the roof, you know. You look at them, then at the squashed Saint Roswald underneath a Straw Hat crewman with the Pinocchio nose, then at the hysterical Saint Shalulia… who is pointing her gun at you.

You move. Het bullets spray anywhere but at you, their trajectory already perfectly calculated in your head as you effortlessly sidestep them. This is not a trick you will ever try to pull with firearms of your world of course, unless you are in a suicidal mood… which you never are really, but the pedestrian musket balls and ordinary-as-dirt bullets of this world, your brain chips and enhanced cybernetic physics can handle. More than the very real danger of dealing with trigger-happy people, you want to put the fear in them—these Tenryubito who profess themselves saints but act anything but. You reckon few have ever managed the feat in this world and once you are through, you want to have instilled a little respect into their vapid little heads.

You break Shalulia's grip and take her gun, backhanding her so hard she spins on her feet. Then you lock her in a textbook hostage hold, hands at her back and face forward so she acts as an effective meat shield between you and the rest of the panicking people.

You don't intend to use her as hostage though. The pistol muzzle goes up to her back. You shoot three rounds through her, hitting the three suit-clad body guards with visible guns in their heads, effectively taking them out of the playing field.

Pinocchio boy clears off real quick when you approach. You put a bullet in Roswald's neck to make sure he's down for good, then Shallulia. You let her fall to the ground, freeing up your hand.

You do all this within the span of forty-two seconds exactly and by the time you are done, the auction house has cleared of everyone but you, the pirates, the three bleeding Tenryubito, their dumbfounded guards, one traumatized MC, and a whole lot of slaves in the backroom.

You give the room a once over. Nobody is giving you trouble at the moment. The auction house guards, who are only equipped with spears and swords are still too deep in shock to do anything about you just yet.

"Woaa!" the Straw Hat kid says but doesn't make any move towards you. His pirate pals are watching, more curious than wary, some standing, some sitting. The polar bear in the yellow boiler suit in the back rows makes a noise that sounds like a muffled oohh.

Talking bear. And walking skeleton. These are more local specialties that sometimes remind you of a Salarian geneticist lab on high caffeine.

You drop Charloss's gun, now empty, and hold Roswald and Shalulia's pistols in both hands. Roswald's gun is locked and loaded with a full magazine. Shalulia's is half full after her trigger-happy bout. Between them, you have roughly a dozen bullets. A cursory look tells you there are more than 30 guardsmen standing. Well… you have dealt with worse odds before. You cock an eyebrow at the shaking guardsmen as if asking them 'When are you gonna get a move on?'

"You dare!" One shouts halfheartedly at you from a safe distance. Another nudges his pal forward, shaking.

You can never comprehend why the people of this world fear the Tenryubito so. As far as you can see, they are your run-of-the-mill militaristic dictators. Nothing special really. Those come a dime a dozen in the long and bloody history of the galaxy. These guys are not even that good. Aside from the obvious power of their world-expanding navy, they have little personal power of their own, no cybernetics, no gene mods, no mutations, no biotics, no awe-inspiring intellects, not even the charisma of true world-shaking tyrants. Nothing. They are simply spoiled children who have ridden on their ancestor's coat tails for the last eight hundred years.

Oh, you understand the rationale behind it well enough. Their power and corruption have entrenched into this world's political system and culture for centuries. They are the institution, the power that be in these people's eyes. It's hard to see someone as vulnerable or touchable when one has been born and raised in a society that reveres them as gods in the flesh for centuries.

But to truly comprehend that bone deep fear, that terror-filled awe that must be in these people's heads since birth…. hah, no thanks.

Already, as you watch, a couple of the guards drop to the knees in tears, wailing that the marines and other nobles will have their heads for letting a barbarian murder three saints in their care.

Witnessing you dropping three of their gods in human forms like flies within the span of five minutes, from Charloss to Shalulia... without pausing once, without a care for the consequences at all has shaken them up real bad… even worse than you thought. It must truly never have entered their mind that someone would have the guts to actually stand up to these guys, much less harm them in open daylight when their Mariejois powerbase is a stone's throw away. And now the unthinkable has happened, it shattered their sense of reality completely.

"Well, if you are not going to move, then I will." You state matter of factly when you see that none of them are bulging, then march towards them.

The guns dance in your hands, moving in perfect synchronicity with the movements of your body. They are not simple tools, but an extension of yourself. You are as aware of them, and the bullets that escape them as you are aware of your arms or your legs. A constant knowledge and sense of self-possession that has cost you many, many years of unceasing physical and mental conditioning to achieve.

You were born from Shepard's blood and flesh, born from a glass tank mother in a cold, sterile lab. You are the blood of a legend given life. Biotics are by no means truly rare in this vast galaxy, but they are not so common as to be dismissed with a wave of a hand either. Especially ones that were of Shepard's sheer power and skill. There was much hope for the groundbreaking biotic potential of your batch. That, you know from the countless documents leaked after the incident that exposed the illegal cloning lab to the rest of the galaxy. Among your faceless litter sisters whose liquidated corpses now do the rounds in the resurrected Citadel biocycles, you are the failure, bereft of the power to warp reality to your whims. Out of them all, you were the only one born as an ordinary, vanilla human.

You remember a time when that was a crushing fact for you. Such time has long since past. More than anything you know of her through the media and through first hand accounts of whatever teammates that could stand the sight of you, Shepard is the symbol of true self mastery, of excellence, of the human will and potential honed to its max in the face of adversity. It is this part of her that you hold closest to yourself.

So failure that you are, you took up guns—the one simple tool that, if wielded correctly, allows you to influence a little of the world to your taste. Your first gun was a sidearm semi-auto pistol model KATVA-201, vanilla, disconnected line by ATRUE ARMS, and it gave you—for a split second in a nameless night in a nameless alley on a lawless space station on the edge of Terminus Space—the first taste of power. Heady, addicting, hot and heavy and sweating-like-crazy-in-the-cold-blood-reeking-simulated-night-on-a-down-on-its-luck-space-station power.

Power in your hands. Power from steel, heat-vent clips and gun engine. You held it there for a second in your tiny chest and then let it go.

You don't want to be one of those adrenaline junkies who get their high from make-believe power. You don't want power that comes and goes with each gun mod or hardware upgrade. No. You want something more. Something that will only be parted from you in death. You want power that you can possess truly and completely. Power made so intrinsic you can feel it in your breath, in the staccato tempo of your heartbeats.

You want that absolute sense of self possession and control, of poetry in motion you saw in the countless clip recordings of Shepard amidst combat.

You want to be like her, a soldier who is also an artist. You want to dance the dance that she does and though the moves are different, you set about learning the steps anyway.

So you took up the guns and vowed to yourself that you would learn to wield them with as much artistry and deadliness as Shepard wielded her biotics.

You drop two guards on the first step. Sideways.

The bark of gunshots shock the rest of them into action, finally scrambling from where they stand to do something about you. Half of them rush forward, mad with fear while the other half tether between running and egging each other on.

You let them come to you instead of seeking them out, taking full advantage of the fact that they are equipped with simple spears and batons and you have in your hands the weapons you are most comfortable with.

The weight of the guns in your hands is a familiar friend. So is the symphony of gunshots, triggers cocking, panicked screams and casings clacking against the floor. The scent of floating gunpowder is nostalgic of old weapon displays you frequented in the past.

You are the eye of hurricane, ever moving, weaving between men two, three times taller and bigger than you, dropping them one after another with your bullets and the occasional neck twist or joint lock break when the opportunities present themselves. Your movements are clean, economic, militaristic, ruthlessly efficient. Not a motion nor bullet wasted, nor a move out of plan. You are always exactly where you need to be, and they are always exactly where you want them to.

This dance you have honed in the past twenty years has an edgy, utilitarian beauty only appreciated by those spirits kindred to you.

When you have mowed down somewhere between a third and half of them, the rest beat a hasty retreat out the door, too demoralized and leaderless to stand up to the likes of you.

You let them go. They don't figure in your plan either way. It's good too since you only have one bullet left in Roswald's gun and while you can bring out the big guns and flash-forged monoatomic omniblade, you would rather keep things nice and clean for now.

The auction house is quiet once more, the silence broken only by the panting and sobbing of a hysterical auction house MC.

"Wait, you bastards! Come back and take her out!" Disco wails forlornly at the back of his fleeing ex-employees.

You pay him no attention. Instead, your eyes are on the rest of your audience. The pirates.

You gaze is quiet and coldly questioning.

Are you gonna give me trouble? You ask without saying anything.

The captain of the Law… Hearts… pirates just gives you a nonchalant shrug, hands still at the back of his head, while his crewmen eyeball you with gaping jaws. His counterpart on the Kidd pirate gives no reaction but doesn't look like he's going to give you either lip or action.

The Straw Hat….

Monkey D. Luffy himself is running towards you with a face-splitting grin on.

"Whoaa! That was…" He gets two steps in before hands pop out of the ground and hold his legs and another pops out from his shoulder and slaps him in the mouth, stopping whatever he is going to say right there.

"Luffy!" The woman is Nico Robin, the Devil Child. She looks at you and her eyes are one among the few pairs in the room that show more wariness than curiosity.

You have shown these people with your impromptu performance just now that you are not one of those spray and pray the bullets hit type. Your bullets mean business, and that the wariness is well-deserved.

"You… "She begins, a frown marring her face as she studies you. "I don't know you but… you are no mere slave."

Nice deduction Ms. Detective. You shrug wordlessly and turn away, satisfied that they will stay out of your way for now.

You drop the gun, walk to where Charloss and Shalulia lie bleeding and grab them with both hands. You drag them from the middle walkway to where Charloss lie at the edge of the stage.

It's there that Disco finally gets the guts to confront you himself.

"Slave!" He shrieks, pointing a remote at you… or rather, the slave collar around your neck. "You'll pay for this." Then he pushes the button.

Nothing happens.

Disco looks at you, eyes bulging from his skull. He pushes and pushes some more to no avail. Nothing is going to happen of course. Slave collars! How inane. As if there aren't a thousand ways to render such cookie-cutter security measures obsolete. The one around your neck is the first one you cracked. A little hot wiring was all it needed. It is practically child's play for an infiltrator of your calibre.

You cock an eyebrow at him, then bring your hand up, grip the collar, squeeze. Metal and wires come apart in your cybernetically enhanced hand.

That seems to have done it for Disco. He slinks backward and away, sobbing in shock and horror. Well, good riddance. As long as he doesn't do anything stupid, he can keep his life. Quite obviously you can't be bothered to gift bullets to every worm that crosses your path. You have better things to do with your time than that.

With a kick, you send both Shalulia and her father rolling beside Charloss, right at the same time Disco shoots back at you from a safe distance.

"The marines…" he says, snivelling. "...the marines will get you. Just you see. We've already called in an admiral. How dare you! You have declared war on all the Tenryuubito!"

Ah… now that is something to worry about, unlike these brainless thugs in flimsy tin cans.

You quicken as you hear this. You have prepared for this eventuality of course. Would be foolish not to seeing that the marine admirals, while only making up a tiny percentage of the total military number under the Tenryuubito, are actually the primary source of their militaristic might.

All Logia types—all battle hardened veterans with proper military training instead of the chaotic, brawny brawler room style combat you have seen the pirates here favor. You know full well of their power and the risk they pose against your plan.

You think that you can take them, one on one. At the very least make them spin real good if decisive victory is not possible within set timeframe. Still, ego and cockiness are no proper ground to take undue risk. You are, after all, a battle-hardened veteran yourself. You are by no means the most powerful of humanity nor truly and completely undefeated in your long service years. You have weaknesses and you know full well others can exploit them to bring you down. But on the other hand, you are secure in your sense of self, secure in your perfect knowledge of just what exactly you can do that you have no need to prove to yourself or anyone else that you can kick ass and take names whenever you want to… if you want to.

And so, for the simple sake of simplicity, you have scripted the blueprint of your scheme around and over them. The marine admirals.

Stepping over the bleeding bodies, you walk back to the stage. It's as good a vantage point as any, as long as you don't let anyone box you in of course. Besides, you need the open space for the next stage of your plan. The slaves in the backroom have yet to break out, still chained by the weight of their exploding collar to risk doing anything just yet.

You turn around, keeping alert eyes on every able body in the auction house, then raise your hand and with a pull, your dress comes free, tumbling from your shoulder to your feet. You stand there in your underwears and nothing else.

There's a wolf whistle from the Kidd pirate and a Straw Hat crewman, funny looking guy with swirly eyebrows (is that a fad here?), actually grows hearts in the place of his eyes (how is that even physically possible? More and more you are convinced the particular strain of homo sapiens they have here are actually all covert mutants). And the talking, walking human bones… sputters that someone is really going to show him her panties?!

You pay them no mind of course. There's no place for body bashfulness when you practically grew up on military ships where coed showers are the status quo instead of the rare once in a while in either very progressive or very frugal human settlements. Besides, at twenty-nine years old you are hardly a blushing hormonal teenager who can be affected when others pay a little attention to your body.

You pull off the blonde wig and your bright red hair, army-cropped to just a little right under your ears, tumbles free. The single blue lense goes next and now your eyes are just green instead of green-blue.

Your omnitool comes alive without a sound, orange and glowing and with a series of click on its hard-light haptic interface, 'your dress' wiggles on the ground, then comes apart in streams of moving black nanomachine liquid.

Immediately, the wolf whistle stops and the heart-eyes go back to just being normal, non-mutating eyes.

Your armor, your shield, your weapon, your second skin, your Mark XXII infiltrator nanomite warframe, all rolled into one. It slithers and closes itself around you, sealing you tight from feet to neck in its confines. Parts of it go to your back and reassemble into your weapon load, hand cannon, assault rifle, plasma shotgun, and… of course, your baby sniper rifle 'Rogue'.

Only until you feel the weight of your guns on your back and the cool, smooth caress of your infiltrator frame around yourself do you finally feel as if you can breathe right again.

It doesn't stop there though. The last of the black nanomite liquid breaks off into a thousand branches until it forms your mobile hacking station and disruptor signal broadcaster.

You have come prepared and this last form the nanomite takes is your ace to dealing with the marines and their monster admirals.

With a flicker, the holo screens come alive, streaming the marine com channels to you loud and clear.

In the first month of your crash land down into this world and subsequent infiltration of its central government, the Den Den Mushi, those living, breathing, slug-shaped phones-slash-cameras-slash-recorders-slash-listening-devices, were the one thing that threw you the most.

Sure you hadn't expected to find a whole planets-worth of homo sapiens on the far uncharted side of the galaxy where, by all rights, your kind shouldn't ever have stepped a foot in, but there was a certain logic to the world you found here. A structure of all things that hearkens back to home. The people, the government, the rich and the poor, money, war, life, the endless cycle of the universal rat race that translates without fail from culture to culture, species to species, planets to planets.

The package was familiar despite being covered in strange wrappings. That, you could deal with.

The worldview and power structure here… nothing you haven't seen before. The galaxy after ARW, after-reaper-war, was still not a nice place… despite Shepard's sacrifice to save it from its own doom.

The power, so-called Devil Fruits and the mysterious Haki you have only heard about while possessing of strange basises… weren't really that strange compared to what was back home (experimental technologies, gene-mods, variant biotics, species-specific abilities, nanomites, transhumanism, etc… you have seen it all) if you only look at their effects and characteristics.

There is a logic there that you can see and grasp. And if push comes to shove, you know you can shoot their user's brain out with the right bullets (Seastone isn't that hard to come by for a government official with the right paper and authorization seal).

But those snails! Those frigging snails!

What?!

Living phone snails?! Naturally occurring biomechanical creatures tamed and used for purposes as mundane as phone calls, taking photos, recording clips and listening in on other people's conversations?!

Just what? Like… what the flying fuck was that?

By the time you left, true marriage of organic and synthetics was still a pipe dream, a goal to strive forward to at the end of a long, hard road. Countless scientists of all species dedicated their lives to figuring out this 'true union' that will theoretically erase the rift between organic and synthetic forever. The holy grail of xenoscience and any scientists whose pet theorem involves the final path of universal evolution, as it has been termed.

And here? Of all places? It's like somebody took the rachni and made a pet and mundane communication tech equipments out of them. Rachni-phone!? Except smaller and … cuter? And they aren't liable to melt your face off with acid… ludicrous!

And… and… snails? Why the heck snails? Why can't it be like… oh… hamsters instead, or fishes... if one was going for small, harmless pet types?

Eventually, you got over that though. The ruthless pragmatist in you wouldn't let you dwell on something so inconsequential for that much longer, especially once you started figuring out the basis of how those snails work. As long as you discard the fact that they are living, breathing organisms (frigging snails?!), they aren't that much different from twenty-first century Earth's basic communication technology. They have got the whole package: phone, listener, camera, recorder, TV—anything and everything to do with digital-analog technology.

The waves they emit aren't quite the digital-analog basic comtech of twenty-first century Earth though. Rather, an organic version of such waves. Still, the functional principles are the same. Knowledge and progress achieved from the willing participation of the rachni on instantaneous and galaxy-spanning communication gave you another leg up on decoding the snail phone of this world only that much quicker.

In the next month, you had all the Den Den Mushi you could get your hands on at your beck and call. You discovered that there was so much the locals didn't know about their own pet snail phones, so much potential left to waste. This interested you because as an infiltrator, hacking, comtech, information gathering, and cyberwarfare are your turf, and what are the snail-phones if not the primordial wetware form of cyberspace and the interweb of this world? In the third month, you reckoned no one on this planet knew more about these snails and what they can do than you. In the fourth, you started building a true network out of them, your very own version of the interweb, made out of countless organic nodes. This would eventually act as the battleground and wartool for your infiltrator-hacker-specialist skill.

You are only one woman hellbent on an impossible quest, one soldier without backup, in a world of billions. You figured you are going to need as much preparation as you can get. Even back then, you knew that you would not be able to put up with it for much longer.

The holo-screens lit up, glowing. Voices. You hear them playing the practiced melody of systematic alarm to your ears.

The screens show two images, the marine communication headquarter (noisy, chaotic, and full to the brim with panicking marine com specialists) and the inside of a dome room where two top marine officers stand talking.

"... Connection has been severed from the garrison at the human sho… ah… I mean, public employment security office," says one marine to the other, the perfect picture of a subordinate reporting to his superior.

"Whooaaa! How did you do that?" one of the pirate bellows. You don't even glance at him. There's a shift to the room ambience, a heightened sense of wariness and curiosity radiating from the your audiences. Your guns are ready, but you keep your fingers flying on the holo-keyboards and your eyes on the screens.

"According to reports, not only are the Straw Hat pirates there…" the marine keeps going at it.

"Whoa…. he's talking about us!" "Stupid Luffy! See what you did!" "But wait! I didn't actually do anything! That lady over there did it all!"

"... but also Eustass Kidd and several of his nakama…"

A bark of laughter from the Kidd pirates.

"... as well as Trafalgar Law and several of his nakama…"

The bear behind Trafalgar Law made a funny grumbling sound. The marine reporter isn't done however.

"A total of thirteen bounty heads have been confirmed. And five of those thirteen are rookies worth over a hundred million. The one who killed the Tenryuubito however is an unknown. We do not know whether the murderer is associated with some or all of the three pirate crews present. At any rate, with three Tenryuubito dead, it is clear that this is an incident of unprecedented severity." The marine reporter hands out blurry camera shot of you, clearly taken from a safe distance. Your face is obscured, and only parts of your body is seen but the brilliant blonde wig you wore back then was clear as day. It is here that the marine head—the top guy who always goes around with a goat that you have seen a couple of times from far away—shows the first sign of shock and fury.

As if to compound on the weight of the situation, the noise level in the marine com room raises sharply, with specialists screaming for onsite military forces to instill order and prevent the ensuing mass panic caused by the cold-blooded murder of three Tenryuubito.

Then comes the voice (one out of the possible three) you have been waiting for, a cool and oily baritone laden with age.

"I will go myself. It won't take long…"

This is the voice that you have been waiting for. You have studied up on him, them, his ilk. And so it is here that you intervene and enact the next part of your plan.

"Admiral! We have an emergency report from the East side of the Archipelago. Code yellow. Rerouting to you." You speak into the receiver of your mobile sabotage frame. Your voice is even, almost bored. But the voice that escapes from the other side of the onboard audio synthesizer (and heard by by the two marines in the dome room and one admiral patched in to the side) is decidedly male and on the verge of panicking.

"Petty… petty officer Chikoku reporting in sir! From the East Shabondy Archipelago garrison. Grove 21." You keep speaking, now in a different voice through the synthesizer, also male, but the pitch was higher and so is the edge of panic. "We have encountered hostile forces led by the… the Tenryuubito Murderer…"

The reaction is instantaneous, from both the marines and your audience in the auction house. You disregard their looks of shock and dawning realization in favor of carefully watching the marines top brass.

"What? How can they move so fast? We received the alarms minutes ago!" The underling marine squawks. His boss, the Fleet Admiral however, is far unfettered. Unlike the murder of previously thought untouchable nobles, here is something familiar.

"You hearing this, Kizaru?" He says.

"Loud and clear." Comes the reply through the patched-in com line. "Keep speaking Petty Officer."

"..Ye… ye… yes… sir." You humor them, reading your lines from a prepared script. "Our squad have been pushed back through the onsite garrison." The audio synthesizer plays the background music of gunfire and screaming to back up your words. "Overwhelming hostile forces. The murderer is… accompanied by three other pirate crews, the Straw Hats, the Kidd pirates, and the Heart pirates."

You flick one finger immediately as you say this, sending a metallic ball the size of a toy marble flying.

"What?! No we did not!" "Hey stupid Seagull guy! We are standing right here! Don't you listen to that liar!" Indignant cries explode from the Straw Hats at the same time as your toy marble hits the floor and automatically deploys a translucent temporary Geth shield. You have been in delicate maneuver situations before and are confident in your ability to handle sudden hostile reactions if needed. The mobile hacking station limits your combat mobility however, what with its many screens, fragile transmitters, and spidery legs attaching to you and to the ground. So you figure a little extra safeguard just in case somebody here decides to be stupid isn't going to hurt any.

Just in time too as immediately after there is movement in the backrows, the captain of the Kidd pirates moving and one of the Straw Hats crewmen unsheathing his sword.

"Bitch!" Eustass 'Captain' Kidd growls. Unlike the Straw Hats, this guy is no talk and no antics. This you know through his reputation and yard long rap sheet.

You make no move in reply and don't pay him any more attention than you do the rest of your gaping audience however. You have checked up on his aces, and they are nothing you, or your temp kinetic barrier, can't handle.

Before the kid (just got legal enough for Krogan Ryncol last you checked, plus anyone with a surname and moniker like that is just asking for it) can do anything stupid though, his pal/rival from the Heart pirates stops him cold with a hand and a coldly asserting statement.

"You kill her, you lose the only credible witness who can testify that we have nothing to do with whatever suicidal scheme she's pulling." Trafalgar Law levels a calculating stare at you. He doesn't get any special treatment either. As long as they stay exactly where they are, you are happy to let the kids keep mouthing off all they want. "Or do you want to have marine admirals after your hide this early in the game for a charge you didn't commit simply because the main culprit is already dead and they need someone else as scapegoat?"

Good. That is exactly what you want them to think.

"Let her live and the heat will be on her instead. There's nothing you can do right now, Eustass-ya, that won't make it worse for us all… except to let her do whatever she wants. She has us exactly where she needs since the moment she started talking." But the cold grin spreading on the pirate's lip says Trafalgar Law isn't about to sit still and let you do as you please if it affects him in any way he doesn't want. Oh no. Not if your name isn't Sasch Lu and you aren't one of the best damn infiltrators on this side of the galaxy. This one is all bite and no bark. You put a mental note in your head to have one of your drones keep surveillance on this one. He sounds like potential trouble along the line for you. "The dice is already cast, might as well enjoy the entertainment, no?"

A glance is all you need to confirm that there's not going to be trouble at the moment in that direction. For now, it seems logic has won out. You return your full attention to the marines, who have until now been discussing the involvement of three other Super Nova pirate crews.

"You stay right where you are Petty Officer" Says Kizaru. "I'll be there in a moment."

"Sir… sir…" You interject, keeping on the charade. Your voice hasn't changed, but this far in the script, the audio synthesizer automatically up the panic level. "We are being pushed back, there are too many of them. I saw… I saw…. the Tenryuubito—"

More explosion and gunfire sounds synthesized to add spice to your monologue. You know you have the marines on your hook now. Powerful as they may be, they are still little better than Government Lapdogs and will come running at the barest hint of danger to them.

"They have them sir! They are alive! Bleeding! They have the Tenryuubito as hostages." You push, not giving them time to fully process this new piece of information beyond surface panic. "They…. ahhh…." Gunshots and explosions. The synthesizer transforms your very unenthusiastic 'ahhh' into a blood chilling scream that ends with the line dropping into static.

And that concludes your ace to dealing with the marine admirals. Hardly a sweat off your brows. Now you watch the panic unfolds in their faces and observe the strings of events pulling at their heads and their hands. Their responses are textbook perfect and would have been wholly appropriate if it weren't for your little tweak in the line there. Having never come to the full realization of the potential of their basic com tech—or even the faintest vision of a decentralized information network and the cyber warfare that goes with it like bread and butter—these people have no clue as to what you just did to them. The possibility that they have been hoodwinked by their own bizarre com system never even entered their minds. So when they send away one of their top commanders with a sizable portion of their onsite forces, they never even think they have played into your hands perfectly.

But it doesn't just end there of course. Now… now the real fun starts. Half of the mobile hacking station disassembles in a series of whirls and clicks. Your right hand stays on the other half, flying through the haptic interface to input your last order into the system, intercepting several emergency calls to the marines from the auction house itself (looks like Disco has been busying himself with tasks of futility).

Your audience is bigger now you notice. The slaves, who have finally scrounged up enough courage to crawl out from the pens in the backroom, stand in gaggles in the back of the auditorium and from where you stand you get a full view of their pitiful visages. A veritable gallery of human fears and uncertainties.

"I would much prefer..." You speak up, drawing their attention. Several of the slaves fall to their knees and cry as they spot the bleeding Tenryuubito at your feet. "... that you do not panic." You stand up straight from your crouching position, leveling a heavy stare on them.

"I intend to bring you no harm." Your voice is soft but the edge of authority in it is unmistakable. "Allow me to enact my plan in full and we all shall be free of this wretched hive."

"How can you say that you intend to bring us no harm?" An old slave yells shrilly. "You killed the Tenryuubito. They will hang us all for this!"

"I have not." You say simply, calmly. You speak in soft, slow tone, as if you are talking to children. "I shot them, in the neck. There is a difference."

Then, and only then do they start to notice the incredibly gentle but definitely there raise and fall of the Tenryuubito's chests and if they pay enough attention and the room is adequately quiet (which it is not right now with the furious whispering back and forth going on among the slaves and some of the pirates), they can hear soft groans escaping from the lips of St. Sharlulia.

"They are not dead. Yet." You continue. "They simply cannot move and cannot interfere with what I will do unto them. But that does not mean that they cannot feel. In fact… I want them to feel… everything." Your voice suddenly drops, low and cold and heavy as arctic ice. You don't mean to of course. But you have been keeping tabs on these world nobles and the accounts of their… 'deeds'... so it is hard, sometimes, to keep your personal feelings under wraps and remain professional.

"You severed the cervical vertebrae… with your bullets." A voice interjects. The captain of the Hearts pirates, again. "No. Not sever. If you did that, they would have been dead right now. Damage. You caused a type B Tetraplegia. That takes surgical precision. Too much and they wouldn't be able to feel anything. Too little and they would choke to death through respiratory failure. And you did this in the blink of an eye, during combat. One perfect shot after another."

He pauses here, slowly looking you up and down as if he's taking full stock of you, then he grins, baring teeth.

"Impressive marksmanship."

You get the impression that the little brat is thinking of dissecting you in his head… which does fit his 'Surgeon of Death' moniker.

"I have never seen anyone do that before… not with guns and bullets anyway." He comments.

You go quiet for a couple seconds. You did not expect for the subtlety of your skills to be correctly appraised so early in the game and be told to so many people. A couple feet away from Trafalgar Law, half the Straw Hats look pretty stoked at this revelation ("Woaa! That's super awesome! Say, do you want to join my crew cranky looking lady?").

"Guns…" You say finally, eyeing Trafalgar Law one last time—"... deserve more respect."—before turning back to the slaves.

"I seek one among your number." You announce. "A new slave. Fresh catch. A child. Called Knees."

It's not his real name of course. Knees is a nickname that came about during one of your… interactions… with the boy. He is a clumsy child… and way too exuberant for his own good. Fell and skinned his knees on the sand way too many times and for whatever reason he felt, he always came to you to snivel and sniff as you put even more bandages on him. Once, when the annoyance overcame your mental conditioning and your usually politely detached demeanor, you spat out the word to his stupidly grinning face.

There are ripples in the slave crowd. Then the half joyous, half wary shriek of a child.

"Sazzy!"

He fumbles and elbows his way out, falls and skins his knees. Your eyebrow twitches and suddenly you itch to go over to him but refrain. Instead, with a tiny roll of your shoulder, your Carnifex X12 Hand Cannon unfurls from your back loadout and comes right into your hand. Ready. You go down on one leg and make a patting motion on your thigh, as if saying 'come' in the most non-threatening way you know.

Your eyes are on the crowd—on Disco who is cowering in one corner, and on the pirates—as the Boy stumbles his way to you.

Your warning is unvoiced, but loud and clear.

'Make one move on the boy...' It says, through the rigidness of your posture and the everwaiting Carnifex X12. '... and I ventilate your fucking head.'

After what must be the slowest stretch, the Boy comes to your side through the shield. He grips you, smiling. His face is flushed with both surprised joy and an oncoming fever. Your hand finds its way to his forehead before you even know it, comes away too hot for your liking. The fever is worse than you think. He will need medication.

"I can't believe it!" Disco's voice breaks your thoughts in the middle. "You madwoman! All this… for a child?!"

He appears on the verge of hysterics, but you can see the very same question reflected in many faces among the crowds. You have never felt the need to explain yourself to anyone (comes with the territory of being a clone of a galactic legend), so you turn away without saying a word…

… or rather, that is what you intend to do. To your surprise, you find yourself eyeing not only Disco but also the crowds and the pirates. You feel… disgust… and pity… for them. They are used to rolling and over and taking it, used to kowtowing to the authority. Even the so-called pirates. Disco shifts uncomfortably under your gaze, then you hear yourself speak.

"No one takes anything from me… and gets to walk away." The words are soft and barely more than a whisper, but there is an indescribable weight to them and they bounce on the walls and fill up the silence in the auditorium. You feel a lightness to your being as you watch the shock ripples on the faces of the slaves around you. They are not shocked at your words… rather, at the simple fact that you are wholly prepared to back them up… at any cost.

To be honest, it surprises even you yourself.

Then the blue-haired cyborg erupts into volcanic tears and wails and you are snapped back to attention.

"Uuuggghh Guuuhuuuuhhhaaaaaa….. This is so touching! The love of a mother for her son is so strong that it will take on the rulers of the world! I can't take this! I forgive you for framing us with the marines! Guuhhuuhhuhuhugwaaaaa!"

Then his captain follows. "Woaa! You are super cool, cranky lady! Now I want to get you on my crew even more! Join my crew!"

Then the… whatever that orangehead girl is. "Shut up, idiot! Don't go around asking wackos to join our crew! If you take her on all the marines will be after our heads!" Then she turns to you, and her eyes…. in a feat of impossible physical transformation… turn into the symbol of this world money... complete with a ka-ching sound effect. "... unless, of course, you are willing to hire us for protection and our vessel as transportation for your escape, in which case we can work out a deal."

In reply, you turn your hand cannon up, and shoot. The thunderous BANG silences the Straw Hats shenanigans.

"While I am all for the advancement of performance arts, bad standing comedy included, aren't you here for something Straw Hats?" You drawl. "Your friend, the mermaid Keimi, is waiting for you in the back."

"Woa! We totally forgot! Keimi! So she's here after all!" One of them warbles. "You sit tight there, Keimi! We are coming for you!"

Having rerouted their attention, you turn yours back to the slaves then, and with a couple clicks of your fingers on the Omni-tool, you have their slave collars unlocked and click-clacking harmlessly on the floor.

"You are now free to go." You say over the din of surprised gasps and jubilated yells. "Though I advise that you do not do so just yet."

The leftover framework of your mobile hacking station displays the outside of the auction house on its many screens, tapped right from the public surveillance Den Den Mushi network.

"The marines have surrounded us." You gesture with a slight nod of your head. "They will shoot any who steps out from these gates." You eye the pirates who are still watching you, some with something like glee on their faces. You reckon you must be the best entertainment this bunch has seen in a long while. "While some of you probably have no problem with that, please also pay attention to the fact that the marines are landing extra soldiers on the island from their headquarters… as well as their new human weapons."

The screens show a row of the newly unveiled Pacifista cyborgs, each slowly getting off the marine ship and onto shore.

"That's a Shichibukai!" Says one of the pirates. "Bartholomew Kuma! What's he doing here? And why are there so many of him?"

You waste no time on answering the question. You are on a tight schedule and while you like to aim for minimum senseless loss of human life—as Shepard wanted, as Shepard did—if any of the ones standing here are too stupid to help themselves, then really there's little you can do to help them.

"There are three things that prevent you from safely getting off this island."

The holo-screens disintegrate to make ways for a 3-D geographic map of Sabaody Archipelago, clear for everyone to see.

"One, the marine admiral Kizaru..." A yellow number one pops up on the map, moving slowly from the port to the Eastern side of the island. A hovering screen shows flashes of Kizaru on the streets of Sabaody Archipelago, flanked by marines at his sides. "- who is enroute to Grove 21. He will soon find that he has been misled. Kizaru is famous for his speed. He can cross the entire island within seconds if he so needs to… and I have no doubt once he finds out he has been duped he will make for the last known location of his target—i.e. this auction house—with haste."

"Two, these Shichibukai knockoffs…" The corresponding number immediately shows up through your synced neural links without needing manual input on the system itself. "... while nowhere near as tactically dangerous as the original version, more than make up for it with their sheer number. They are currently used as sweep team to control outbreaks of violence and riots."

"Three, port controls..." A neon red belt flares around the outline of the Archilargo. "... marine headquarter has forgone manual control in favor of stationing a belt of dreadnoughts around the archipelago. There will be no sabotaging port control crews to sneak people and ships through. The marine dreadnoughts are under order to protect the quarantine belt at any cost. Any and all ships spotted disembarking from Sabaody ports, be it marine ships, merchant transport vessels, or pirate boats, are to be gunned down with no exception."

There's a panicked squeak somewhere in the Straw Hats crowd, who have relocated to the backroom gate where Keimi's bowl is, and muffled sobs scattered among the slaves.

You sweep your gaze on your audience, who have, until now, paid you the needed attention, if only because the information you offered pertains to their safety. But even then, you know you are running out of time. To be honest, you are surprised things have gone this smooth, for the exception of the Straw Hats and your premature start of the plan, until now. Which… only means that you need to quicken it up before something truly beyond your control occurs.

"Well, you seem to have all the information in your hand, and us at a disadvantage…" Trafalgar Law draws from where he sits, still with that nonchalant expression on his face. "You got us in your pace. I assume you have a grand escape plan in motion."

Calmly, you bend down, pick up Knees, and heave him up to your shoulder where he scrambles to get a foothold on your warframe. The nanomites, synced with your neural pathways, immediately shifts to accommodate him, creating handholds and foot rests on your back until the boy finds a comfortable position right on top of your weapon loadout.

"I will create a distraction." You say succinctly. "One that will draw all three obstacles, the admiral, the Pacifistas, and the dreadnoughts, away from their positions, leaving the field clear for escape."

Your hands come up. The sounds, soft little clicks and mechanical wheezes that may have been missed if one does not pay attention, your infiltrator suit makes are a familiar melody to your ears. Your baby sniper rifle 'Rogue' detaches itself from your back loadout rack and comes into your waiting hands.

Its weight is an old friend, and through its scope you smile. Your first smile in a long while. A flare of giddy delight burns in your ribcage. It has been so long. More than a year in fact, since you never had need of Rogue during your journey from Council space to this backwater planet and even less need of it when you arrived. But now that it is in your hand, it feels as if a part of you has returned.

This is you.

This is you and your guns and impending, spectacularly beautiful explosions. Whatever in Shepard's blood that makes her love flashing her novas so much must have been passed onto you, and through you, manifests into this love for fire and brimstones and things that go boom.

Rogue, as you have taken to calling your anti-material sniper rifle model M-124 Widower, is a beauty that packs a lot of boom in her throat. Coming in at one point six meter long at full length and 68 kg without custom mods. Manufactured by Kassa Fabrication as an upgraded descendant of the legendary M-98 Widow and the Spectre issued Black Widow line. Rogue is the preferred weapon for infiltrators on high-risk, high-payoff assault missions and the perfect weapon of choice against Krograns, armored vehicles, and low-flying, subsonic velocity aircrafts.

A mechanical beast of monstrous size and devastation, it was never intended for human use. Any ordinary, vanilla human who tries will, at the very least, shatter their arms upon recoil. That is, if they can lift it in the first place.

You, on the other hand, aren't just any ordinary humans however. You are the clone of the commander and even if you are only a watered down version of the real deal, there is weight and there is responsibility, a responsibility that you take to personal level, to stand up to that name.

You heard that Legion, the first Geth unit to gain true sentience, was the only member of the original Shepard team, which also included a perfect Krogan specimen and a Quarian machinist with a thing for shotguns, capable of truly wielding it.

You also heard that Shepard was pretty pissed off at the fact that she couldn't.

"If I were an infiltrator…" She once said on the screen of Channel 5 Alliance Heroes, your fav action show. "... that would have been my baby."

Well it's your baby now. And despite the fact that you picked it up mainly because of that one line from the 7 years old and running Alliance Heroes show, it doesn't change that Rogue has grown to be your perfect companion over the years.

Sturdy, reliable, and always ready to deliver devastating results upon your enemies, you couldn't have asked for a better sniper rifle.

Rogue now uncoils from her compact form, butt stock against your shoulder, a full meter of high precision barrel jutting proudly in the air, muzzle facing the closed door of the auction house.

Your legs go down into proper standing form. Time slows as your breaths fall into trained tempo and you take sight.

"I will…" You say, quietly, not wanting to disturb your fragile breath control. The aimbot software pings successive rounds on the holo-map before settling onto the target. It is more than enough to compensate for the distance of your shot and the various obstacles in between.

"... sink Grove 21 to the ocean floor."

Time slows as your adrenaline rushes. You watch as the mouths of your audience drop in shock, their eyes widened to comical levels at the majestic sight of a fully unfurled Rogue. You feel a tranquil quiet settles over you until the only thing in your ears is the soft flutter of your breath. You squeeze the trigger and hear Rogue's voice sing a triumphant war cry.

The auction house door disappears in a blinding, soundless flash. The aimbot software flares a bright yellow on the holomap as your shot connects with the several hundred kilos worth of synthesized C6 explosive powder you left in a nondescript crate in the center of Grove 21. Your surveillance screens go white, several blinking out as the Den Den Mushi whose visions you have been tapping in die out from the blast.

Euphoria fills you with the afterglow of a good shot.

Then all the sounds in the world come snapping back into your ear drums along with the quake of Rogue's recoil.

"Oh my God!" "What the hell?" "Did she just…" "Unbelievable!"

The crowd go wild around you. The leftover half of your hacking station buzzes like an angry beehive with incoming signals from marine communication chamber. Several of the pirates have their weapons out, but they are all gawking at the demolition path left behind by Rogue's shot. The Straw Hats pirates captain and his pet raccoon have stars in place of their eyes and are salivating… at you (are the Straw Hats all made up of covert mutants with defective eyes? you wonder)

You tune them out for a second, breathing deep and slow, letting your body work out the recoil force. Then you reshelve Rogue, letting it cool off in the recess of its nanomite sheath. You turn around, and see that the second half of your hacking frame which has detached itself earlier has finished what it was programmed to do. It hangs now in the air, tethering a trio of Tenryuubito from its hooks. They are no longer bleeding, courtesy of the omnigel dispensed from the very same hooks that keep them from falling to the ground. The amount is just right of course. You have no intention of healing their paralysis but you don't want them to bleed to their death either. In fact, deaths are too good for the like of them.

A translucent forcefield encases them and as you check out its integrity, one of its subjects stirs.

"You…" Says St. Sharlullia. You blink. You can't help yourself but be amazed. God truly does favor the fools… or in this case, ingrates with delusions of grandeur. "... I don't know… who you are…" She wheezes through a mouthful of blood. Good, feel the pain, feel it. "... but we will find you… the marines will find you...and raze your…"

You laugh then, loudly and uproariously. Soon, your laughter draws the crowd's attention even over the din of marine admirals barking orders to reroute troops to Grove 22 area.

When you finally stop, you take a step closer to a flinching Tenryuubito, grab her by the hair and give a good yank until she is eye to eye with you.

"I will tell you who I am." You say, softly, gently. You pity her, you really do. This is a little girl who simply does not know better, does not comprehend the insignificance of one single individual in the scheme of the galaxy.

"I. am. Shepard."

The name weighs down on your tongue. It is filled with adoration, longing, and guilt.

"Commander Jane Shepard of the Normandy SR2. N7 Alliance Navy and Council Spectre."

You do not stop there.

"I am the Sole Survivor of Mindoir, the Butcher of Torfan, the Scourge of Reapers. I am the Star Killer and the Murderer of a million lives." You see that you are getting to Shalulia now. Your voice is freezing and while others may disagree, you speak from memory.

The Protheans say that all lives and all experiences are biological markers. Your whole body is a marker of Shepard's life. The technology was not perfect then, but the memory bleeds, and sometimes, you don't know whether you are Sasch Lu, Alliance N7 Infiltrator and rookie Spectre candidate, or the legendary Jane Shepard, the missing savior of humanity. So when you speak these epithets, it is the crushing weight of experience, of blood and battle and danger narrowly averted, that powers them.

"What is one more life to me, little girl?" Your hand is now around her throat and she is actually crying. Against your better nature, you want to see the likes of her writhe. Your assassin training equips you with the know-how to make a person feel what true 'hurt' is. You might have done that just then, pain inducer needles ready at your fingers, but then you remember Knees at your back and your still-in-motion plan. And so you wrap it up.

"Remember that you yet survive this day because I allow you too. Your bodyguards couldn't help you. Your fancy toy guns couldn't help you. Your Tenryuubito title couldn't help you. Your marine lapdogs couldn't help you. And they never will. Nothing can stop me from getting to you."

Your words echo the now dead quiet room.

"I want you to live. Live and watch helplessly as your power, your wealth, your authority is stripped away by the vultures that are your brethren. Live and suffer. Because death is too good for the likes of you. Remember my name and live the rest of your life in fear of me."

You release your hand and let Shallulia slumps into a sobbing, shaking mess. You turn your attention back to your motley slaves and pirates audience.

A good part of them have fled you see, and from the outside of the auction house you can hear scattering gunshots. The map shows that the marines, with the help of a couple pre-scripted false Den Den Mushi reports of massive battles being waged in Grove 22 to 26 area around Tenryuubito hostages, have responded exactly how you want them to. Kizaru is stuck. The Pacifista team redeployed and the quarantine belt broken after the massive waves set forth by the sinking of a portion of the island sent several dreadnoughts careening off course.

You click a series of last orders onto the haptic interface of your Omnitool and set in motion the last part of your escape plan.

"I suggest you move along. The field won't be clear forever. And I will blow this place sky high in a couple minutes. Your chance to escape lies within the short time before the marines can regroup."

Your Omnitool winks shut. The remaining half of your hacking frame shifts and reassembles into its final form. An electromagnetic bomb with enough power to sink this whole wretched hive to the ocean floor. The sigh of it sends Pinocchio boy running and shrieking. Smart one.

"You are welcomed to disregard my advice and stay around of course." You say to the stragglers who apparently either haven't got a clue or are death seekers. "Do whatever you feel like doing. Fight, rob, pillage, kill. Slaves or pirates. I do not care who you are. I do not care what you do." Knees squeezes his little arms around your neck, holding on as your entire Infiltrator frame quivers with preparation. You give him a little reassuring squeeze. By your calculation, you have exactly five minutes to cross the island and get him to the safety boat that will bring him and his family off this place. You need your Warframe on speed mode for that. Damn that Tenryuubito for wasting your time. Damn your temper too, and damn Shepard for giving it to you in the first place.

"Just know that anyone who gets in my way…" You say softly as your Carnifex hand cannons come into your hands, locked and loaded. "... dies."

End Chapter 1

In the spirit of One Piece no-hugging, no-kissing rule, there will be no truly serious, mutual, adult romance with a good ending going on with any characters except those who are already in an established relationship in canon…. except for anything Sazzy may or may not feel for her Shepard - mother - sister - idol - savior - goal of her entire life - whole reason for living - source of guilt and the occasional bouts of inferiority complex.

Sazzy is very large harm this chapter. There is a plot-related reason for that.

This fic is basically an experiment of mine to see how far I can take a concept idea and a different writing style. As anyone who have read my stuffs and know my style, I like to 'experience' a lot and have the unfortunate combination of an overactive imagination and a lack of attention span (Tis Femina, Mirror Mirror, Paradox, Cognates of Heaven, Ascend, Book Air fans, please be patient. Your turn will come.)