Shepard had to take every single step with care and discretion now that she, Tali and Kaidan were currently crawling around the ship through the main emergency tunnel of the Normandy.
Knowing exactly what she was going to do to her evil clone once she found her, Shepard continued the route around the ship. With each knee moving forward, her hip's weight shifting in a circular motion, and adding the fact she was wearing no armor apart from the nanosuit, which was currently hugging up her body like latex, and the result was perhaps one of the most alluring curves both Tali and Kaidan have ever seen in their lives.
The two of them had to take a moment and look at her hips shift a few more times over, that is until Shepard had finally stopped on her steps and turned her head around to check up on how far her team was from her.
Just as she did, both diverted their gazes away as quickly as they could and instead focused their attention on the shadows of the enemy crew.
"W-We best be careful, we can't let the other Shepard know we're here." said Alenko frantically as he aimed his gun upwards.
"Agreed, yes..." followed Tali who had literally no other thing in her mind right in that moment but the way the suit favored Shepard's body.
She then realized she did not have to fantasize about anything like Alenko. Unlike him, she had managed to slip her fingers around Shepard's curves in more than just a single occasion.
"Keelah..." Tali murmured as her imagination started to run even wilder the more she thought of her time together with Shepard. The only thing that stopped her mind from going further into the gutter was the ship's engines kicking in, finally bringing her mind back to business.
"Right... but had you told me this morning that a toothbrush would save the Normandy, I'd have been very skeptical." mentioned Shepard out of nowhere, as if trying to clear their heads.
"Let's keep moving, we're nearly there"
In truth, she was aware of their glares the moment they entered the escape tunnel, and this only enticed her to add some more spice to her movements for the remaining meters before they reached the end of the route.
A win-win scenario according to her book.
Not a moment too soon after they reached the main escape gate located in the CiC room, all hell broke loose, not that such expression was overrated. Literally exploding the emergency gates from the inside out, Shepard's team made little work of the first bunch of mercs with the debris of the metallic gate alone. Before the enemy could even figure out where the explosion had come from, Tali and Shepard followed to get rid of the remaining few, except for the most armored of the merc group, which was Kaidan's job to finish. A single shot fired by his high-caliber rifle right on the merc's neck, where no armor could protect it no matter how thick it was, was all it took to finish the skirmish and retake control of the room.
"Clear!" shouted Tali from the other side of the room after doing a small recon of all nearby routes.
"Can we hook up EDI back into the Normandy?" Shepard asked through the com.
"None of that will matter unless we take full control of the ship again, Commander." advised then Alenko who was just aside of her, guarding her six. "I suggest we first get rid of the pilots."
"But then who will fly the Normandy—" argued Tali before coming to a stop on her own. She did not have to be in front of them to know what Shepard was thinking. "No, no, no, no—no way. Joker will kill me!"
Shepard on the other hand was already making her way to her at that point, who was just a few rooms ahead, and as Tali listened to her footsteps coming closer, she quickly entered a state of panic. "You can't order me to do this, Shepard!"
So she complained, but it did not stop Shepard from continuing her way until she was standing right in front of her, with those sympathetic, dreamy eyes of hers that reflected the quarian she genuinely love as both hands travelled from Tali's fingertips all the way up to her shoulders.
One last time, Tali attempted to stand her ground against such heart melting actions done by the woman she loved. "... You can't... um..."
However, it is hard to hold your head high when your back is against the wall, and your legs are threatening to give out all of their strength.
Shepard was cruel for using such tactics.
"The clone and agent Brooks are at the Cargo bay, please be careful."
Shepard nodded as she swapped her weapons for the merc's, reloading and picking whatever ammunition she needed. "Shepard... what exactly did you do to convince her?"
Shepard tilted her head over to him with a mischievous smirk over her lips as she changed the last clip.
"Let's keep moving, Lieutenant."
"Right. Sorry, Commander." gulped down Kaidan before picking up the pace, following Shepard from behind with a loud cough as if trying to shove the awkward atmosphere aside.
A few minutes later…
"Contact!" screamed a merc near the cargo bay door before he was put down by Kaidan, finally revealing of their approach to both the clone and Brooks who immediately made their way to the other end of the room, finding cover behind the ship's containers.
"Well, who would have thought? I knew I should have closed down the remaining entrance connecting the Normandy to the dock!" taunted the clone as she nodded to all six mercs hiding behind the cargo besides her.
"The price of getting cocky..." yelled Shepard out loud as she did the same gesture to Alenko, unbeknownst to her of course, and activated her omni-blade as she noticed the foot of one merc standing out from his hideout. "...but then again, you've never been out in the field before, have you?"
"I'll show you...!"
Enraged, the clone stepped out of her cover and started shooting at random before hiding behind the containers again, only managing to tell Shepard where she was located, rather than doing any significant damage to the place.
Shepard waited until the clone finished her scandal, and then pulled out her new gun, accurately shooting the merc's foot. The merc, now on his knees and groaning in pain, turned his head over only to witness how Shepard's blade pierced his left axilla, ending his life on the spot.
Kaidan did the second shot by pointing his rifle against the nearest container and repeating the same thing they did on the CiC, killing the merc hiding on the other end of the container with the debris.
Four now remained, and the clone and Brooks finally started to shoot know that they were well aware of their location.
The skirmish had begun.
"Commander, I'll cover you!" shouted Kaidan as he returned fired with his rifle, the aim was not to outright kill them but to keep them under cover while Shepard did the same procedure of before to end the mercs on her side. One died by a perfect shot to his head, while another merc plummeted to the floor after having his inner thigh shot, incapacitating him from the fight due the pain. The third one was collateral damage as the clone shot him in hopes of getting Shepard, and she nearly did if not for Shepard's biotic shields.
Muttering a curse, the clone hid again, clearly underestimating her opponent.
Up until that moment, the clone had forgotten about a very critical detail; she was fighting Chrisa J. Shepard, the human Juggernaut.
"Hands where I can see them!" the merc ordered with the most menacing tone he could muster, pointing his gun against Tali's head.
Tali did as she was ordered and assessed the situation as she turned her head gently around, letting her helmet do the rest as the mercs argued with one another.
"Shit, what are we going to tell the clone?" stormed a merc just a few feet behind the menacing boss of them all. Her helmet was perhaps not as useful as an omni-tool, but its job was not an all-around to start with.
"We don't. Nothing happened here, got it?"
With such outfits coming between them and the world, the last thing Quarians wanted to be was blind, no matter the situation or environment.
"This isn't worth the money—!"
Tali then did little work of the ship's main interface using her helmet, and with the mercs sidetracked by their argument, it was easy for her to turn the ship's cockpit lights off.
Spontaneously then, the ship started to jerk and quickly rose up to the skies, its speed doubling in seconds, just barely avoiding the traffic of vehicles and tall buildings as it flew without any real sense of direction.
Back inside the cargo bay…
Kaidan was able to kill the last merc just before the ship movements became too wild to have a proper foothold. Having to constantly switching his weight between one side of a nearby container to the next, Kaidan had to also avoid both the falling cargo and corpses the gravity was pulling
Thankfully, the ship never did turn itself upside down.
"Damn it. Bridge what the hell are you doing?!" screamed out the clone through the com just as she did her best to counter Shepard's moves.
"Bridge's been compromised!" shouted Brooks in response as she barely took a hold from one of the belts that kept the cargo attached to the floor, losing her pistol in the process. "We're on our own now—!"
The ship did then a quick turn and brought Brook's body back to the right side of the ship, but also twisting her wrist around the belt, dislocating it.
Almost in cue, Kaidan showed up from behind and pointed his gun against her back. He was just about to demand her surrender when he realized of her injury when Brooks hurriedly tried to grab for the weapon that had fallen from her hand, only to have his rifle pointing at the back of her head once she took a hold of it.
"Drop it." He commanded with a voice nearly full of pity. "Don't make it harder on yourself."
Brooks threw her gun off her reach, hissing as she admitted defeat.
"Clear—!" exclaimed Alenko before the ship's gravity had him jump a couple of feet up in the air, then slamming him back against the floor just as quickly as he had risen.
The ship had hit a building with enough strength to disrupt its balance one last time; this actually helped Tali get rid of the last of the five mercs on the cockpit by throwing his body against the edge of the metallic doorframe, knocking him unconscious despite wearing a helmet.
"Huh."
Tali shrugged as she took control of the Normandy once again, bringing stability back to the ship, not noticing the alarm ringing on one of the nearby panels, warning her the pilot was flying with the cargo bay door open
The bump that a nearby building had given to the Normandy's belly was enough to send nearly everyone but Brooks, who was still stuck on the container's restrainting belt, against the ship's back door. To the clone's fortune, this had actually saved her life, as Shepard was ready to slice her to pieces merely a few moments ago.
She quickly stood up and turned her omni-blade again, now fully ready to take the offensive. Shepard only smiled at this, as the resolve of the clone filled the whole conflict with irony.
Was her way of life truly enviable?
The ship took a final swift turn, finally balancing it back to its proper angle. However, as it did, the back door opened, letting everything that had remained against it to fall to the abyss of the Citadel. Guns, small and impossibly large containers as well as corpses fell off, and nearly did Kaidan as well if he had not grabbed from Maya's leg in time.
Those who were not so lucky was the clone and Shepard, who had just barely managed to hold themselves from the edge of the back door, their bodies threatening to fly off at the speed of the ship. Kaidan didn't waste any time and rose up to his feet, rushing to Shepard's aid.
The clone only glared, as despite everything, Shepard seemed to have been superior to her in every sense of the word. The sense of defeat grew stronger as she looked back to Maya who did not even seem to struggle with her restraint in an attempt to rescue her.
Things could not be clearer for her, and only one thing remained to be done.
"Give me your hand, come on!" shouted Shepard as to be heard just as she reached out to the clone.
Hesitant, the clone deemed it a trap and it only rubbed further amounts of salt to the injury. The enemy was taking pity of her.
"And then, what?!" so she replied, her fingers slowly slipping from their grip the more time she spent hanging on the ship's edge.
"And then you live!"
The clone bit her lip, not believing her words. "For what?!"
As she readied herself to fully let go and end her pathetic existence, she saw Shepard's expression change from someone who was worried and tired to someone who was angry and ready to burst out.
"You selfish—you think you have any right to choose when to give up?!" she muttered under her breath, quickly making use of her biotics to bring the clone back to safe ground, only to throw her out against a nearby container.
Shepard had finally lost it, her hands formed into fists as she walked to the clone and punched her face with her dominant hand first as she held her body with the other so as to hit her again and again as she screamed to the top of her lungs.
"You are not supposed to feel anything... You are not supposed to waver even once when in front of the enemy! You charge and hope for the best. Earth is counting on you, the whole galaxy is counting on your name, and all you want to do is give up when the chances are against you?!"
She raised the clone up to the sky again with her powers, and slammed her entire body against the floor, making a hollow sound echo through the entire room.
"... You already lost the right to give up the moment you declared yourself Commander Shepard!"
Shepard's rant continued, and though she stopped hitting her after blood started to ooze from more than just her mouth and nose, Shepard locked her in position by sitting on top of her chest.
"The moment you give up...!" Shepard gritted her teeth together as she faced her own weaknesses, and being practically yelling at a past version of herself, soon her eyes started to water. "… The moment you give up... nothing but ruins will remain from the life we know."
Though the clone could do little but to hurt of the pain on her entire body, she witnessed how Shepard slowly rested her head on top of her shoulder, her breathing became short and not a moment later, Sheppard sobbed against her armor, dulling her voice.
At this point, Kaidan had already helped Brooks out, knowing fully well when not to interrupt Shepard. Though he still heard her ranting, he could not bring himself to blame her for it.
The entire galaxy was depending on her, he was depending on her, and she had just watched herself admit defeat like it was the easiest thing in the world, clone or not.
The minutes Kaidan spent applying the med-gel on the clone's wounds, and helping Maya out with what little knowledge of human anatomy he had, were done in silence. It was only until both the clone Brooks were back on their feet that Shepard called out for the traitor.
"Maya Brooks..."
The woman flinched and straightened her back, looking with as much confidence as she could muster after such an embarrassing defeat.
"Don't pretend you didn't like the glares when they happened, Commander."
Shepard, who was just a few minutes ago crying her heart out, did not want to prolong things further. "Princess, I prefer it when I'm not trying to be killed by the same person that keeps eating me up with those pretty eyes."
Seeing her response had backfired, Maya tried to come up with the best snorting noise she could think of before responding with arrogance. "You honestly thought that I—"
"Enough, Maya. She won." interrupted the clone, her eyes looking down in defeat but also in remorse for having showed such weakness in front of her opponent despite all of her big talk.
"Shepard, what should we do with them?" called out Tali through the com, having heard everything until now, but barely understanding how the current outcome had come to be.
"She's Shepard's... I mean, she's... well, it's her call." Kaidan struggled, unsure on how to differentiate Shepard from her clone for Tali, when both were practically the same person despite the different appearances.
The clone, finally giving up on doing anything else, raised her head up again and approached Brooks, giving her a cold stare before her eyes softened up and turned around to face Shepard and Alenko once again.
"She may be a flirting cunt, but she did pull me out of the fish tank I was kept in. She stays with me until the end."
Taken back once again, Maya tried her best to counter the clone's claim. "… But that's not your call!"
"Should have thought it twice then when you released me from my sleep, besides she's telling the truth about you. You really are eating us up with those eyes that just don't know where to look."
Having watched and heard how Shepard and her clone interacted with one another, Kaidan could not keep his mind to himself and commented about their banter with Tali. "... You know, this might be a bit too soon, but I think they're not that different from one another."
"Oh, please." responded both Shepards systematically, much to their surprise.
Shepard gave up, in any given moment she was going to say something she would regret or doubt the decision of letting the clone free.
She was about to make her way out of the room when the clone quickly spoke out loud the one thing that had been bugging her since she realized who she was supposed to be.
"Wait... You told me that I—that we cannot give up, or the galaxy will be in ruins. But what exactly is keeping me from trying to kill you again?"
To this, Shepard tilted her head back around and shrugged in her response.
"I don't know, but even without my current memories I don't think I've ever been the type of woman that would backstab someone who bullied some reason into me."
The clone gave out a smile, which, had Alenko not known she was not the real Shepard, it would have made his heart skip a beat
"Judy."
Spoke the clone impulsively, repeating the name once more to let it sink in.
"Call me Judy. If I'm going to stick around with you I don't want people to remind me I'm not who I believed I could be."
"Judy Shepard..." Shepard repeated the name as though she too was trying to make it sink, not really used to the idea of someone who looked just liked to declare her singularity.
"Kind of an odd ring to it, doesn't it?"
"Well, it damn sure beats Chrisa, doesn't it?" replied Judy with a sass not often heard from a Shepard.
Both women glared at one another with venom in their eyes, and only came to a stop after feeling the Normandy landing back into its private docks with clumsiness. Courtesy of Tali, cutting their apparent natural rivalry short.
"... Let's just wrap this up. Tali, come to the main gate, we're done here."
"Yes, Commander."
Explaining to Tali what had transpired and how was it that either Brooks or Shepard's evil clone were in cuffs, and were now currently standing on each side of the real Shepard, was a hassle.
A simple it just happened comment, coming from Kaidan, was enough to tell her it was complicated, not that it wasn't when they first started the day.
If that wasn't enough, as soon as the Normandy's cargo gate opened to the outside once again, the first thing the new group noticed was Shepard's full crew now gathered around the ship, contemplating the fact there were now two Shepards coming from the ship like it was the most common thing in the world.
"First off..." started off Joker from among the crew, standing up in front of the rest with EDI's helping hand.
"You best give us a damn good reason why there are still two of you, Commander. Not to mention you still haven't apologized for using me as bait!"
"Well this will be good. Shall we, Ms. Brooks?" said Judy with an inviting hand and a raised eyebrow as if to tease her up.
Maya had to take a moment then and breathe deeply before taking her hand and walk down the ship.
She also had to admit this was beyond what they expected, and in truth she was genuinely relieved with how things had turned out to this point, now it was only a matter of Shepard convincing the rest of the crew to not shoot at them, especially EDI who seemed to be waiting the order.
"W-Wait, Shepard." hesitantly, Tali placed her hand over Shepard's shoulder as she called her over, preventing her from setting a foot off the ship after Kaidan, and though the helmet concealed her face, Shepard quickly noticed her concern.
"I'm fine, Tali."
"Like hell you are. Please, don't push me away on this matter."
Seeing how such answer wouldn't make her worry disappear, Shepard made sure to keep her back against her crew's point of view so only Tali could see just how much of a toll that whole ordeal just put her through.
"... What do you want me to say?"
"That you're not alright. It's this stupid war, Shepard. They keep shoving this responsibility to you, and they never bother to think that the woman, who keep saving the galaxy from itself, has had enough of playing hero for a lifetime." Tali's voice continued to break down, her hands travelling around Shepard's face.
Moreover, she was right. Shepard was tired in every sense of the word, and only but a handful of her crew knew that.
"… You surely jest, the only thing I've is an ungrateful council who can't even say thanks and now wants me to save their skin along with their planets, again."
"No, Shepard." Tali enforced with a saddened voice. "You saved so much more than that. Not just colonies, but entire worlds would have been decimated if not for you. You have saved billions of people already. Hell, you even gave my entire race a place to call their homeworld again." murmured Tali as Shepard embraced her, resting her arms on top of the quarian's shoulders.
"And yet, for every day that passes we lose a few billion more."
"Shepard..."
There was only so much Tali could do on her own, and she was painfully aware of that.
"The people I'm mostly worried about are my crew, and you... especially you."
Shepard said those words with so much warmth and sentiment, Tali could swear she would cry if things kept their course, but before she could allow herself to be guided by the current, Tali had to take something off her chest.
"... and your clone?"
Shepard took a few moments longer, finally managing to calm down and showing to the first genuine smile to her after a very long week. "Well, it shouldn't be such big of a burden if there are two of me now, right?"
Tali then giggled, she was relieved that Shepard was back to her old-self once again, and deemed it enough, for now.
"D-Don't..." Her body jiggled, following the rhythm of her increasing laughter, despite her best attempts to keep the matter at hand relevant. "We were discussing a serious topic here, you know?"
Finally ready to face off the rest of the day head-on, Shepard let go of Tali after planting a small kiss over her helmet. "I should go; I still owe Joker an apology."
