Ashley and Liara stood in front of Shepard in the comm room.

"You must choose," Liara said. "Ashley or me."

"We're not married, Shepard," Ashley said. "You wanna get involved with some alien, go ahead. It's none of my business."

Shepard mulled this over for a moment. "Wow, this is strange... Apparently all a guy has to do to make you think he's interested in you is listen to your boring-ass poetry and stories about your family."

Ashley looked at him, shocked, hurt.

"All I was trying to do is get to know you," Shepard continued, "just like I try to get to know everyone on my ship. I guess you were so desperate, you took it the wrong way. Liara, I don't need to choose, because I never even considered Ashley an option."

Ashley's eyes filled with tears. "You're a scumbag, Shepard."

She stormed off.

Liara quickly filled the awkward silence. "I do not think this situation required you to be so cruel, Shepard."

Shepard glowered. "She had it coming."

Afterwards, Shepard went down to the engineering and storage level to continue the tongue lashing—away from Liara's judging, all too compassionate eyes.

In the middle of it, Ashley retorted, "Well, at least she looks like a woman."

This was more than Shepard could handle. He punched Ashley in the face. She punched him right back. Garrus and the requisitions officer ran over to pull them apart, but, unable to stop the fight only one-on-one, other soldiers came running over and finally pulled the two apart.

"If you say one more word like that about her, I'm throwing you out an air lock," Shepard said.

"I'd like to see you try."

Shepard, having calmed himself, brushed himself and stalked off.

Ashley muttered under her breath: "I guess the whole inter-species thing just does it for some guys."

"Go fuck yourself, Williams," Shepard said, not even looking back at her.

"Hm, isn't that basically what they can do?"

Shepard whirled around, glaring at Ashley with contempt. "That's it. You're fired for insubordination. Throw her in a containment cell."

The three soldiers by Ashley started hauling her away towards the elevators.

"You're a disgrace to human kind, Shepard," she yelled as she was dragged off. "I can't wait to see how they react to this back on earth!"

On Virmire, in the middle of Shepard's stand-off with Wrex, Ashley shot Wrex in the back. Shepard watched in shock as Wrex collapsed onto the sand. Ashley aimed at Wrex's head.

"Ashley, stop!" Shepard yelled.

She fired.

Shepard looked at her incredulously.

"Did I order you to do that? No. Would I have ordered you to do that if I thought it was necessary? Yes! I do not need you to "protect" me, Ashley. I think I'm plenty well equipped to protect myself."

"He was jeopardizing the mission," Ashley said.

"He was trying to help his species! Oh, right, you don't care about that stuff since you're such a racist, heartless bitch."

Ashley scoffed, started to retort—

"You're off my crew," Shepard said. "Not the mission—the ship. As of now. You are not to set foot on it again."

" How am I supposed to get off this planet?"

"Not my problem." Shepard marched off, joining an unsure-looking Kaidan.

"I'm not letting you do this mission without my help," Ashley said, marching after him.

Shepard turned to her. "Like hell you won't."

He raised his arm, lashing biotic force fields around her arms and legs, pinning her in place. She struggled against them. "What are you doing?"

Shepard walked off.

"You're just leaving me here? Are you crazy?"

"Shepard, you can't do this," Kaidan said.

"You wanna be next?" Shepard growled as he marched on.

Kaidan looked back at Ashley, then reluctantly followed Shepard.

"Kaidan! Please! Shepard!"

Another force field whipped Ashley's mouth closed, muffling her cries.