Fashion District (Nos Astra, Illium)

Miranda walked two piping hot coffees over to the viewing platform where she had left Shepard leaning over the edge, squinting in the morning sun. Her heeled boots clopped across the marble cobbles, and her ponytail swished with the motion.

It was already starting to give her a headache.

The bright city's skyscrapers sparkled in the early light. The pearlescent view would have been welcome any other day, had they not been nursing a pair of nasty hangovers.

'It's too bright,' Shepard sighed.

'This will help,' Miranda handed her a cup and swigged deeply from her own.

She muttered a curse when she discovered that they had forgotten the cinnamon sprinkles on her cappuccino. They sipped in silence for a good fifteen minutes or so, willing the caffeine to prepare them for their next mission.

Date night.

Or, more specifically, getting Shepard looking good for date night.

'Alright,' Shepard announced, crushing her cup in one hand and flying it to a nearby bin with a biotic push. 'Let's do this.'

'The Glowing Goddess' Luxury Spa (Nos Astra, Illium)

Miranda wasn't sure how she'd managed to pull it off, but she'd successfully talked the commander into luxurious facials.

Had she exploited Shepard's desire to look nice tonight and used the situation to cater to her own selfish needs?

Maybe.

But she reasoned with herself that a little pampering was well-deserved. Especially, she thought, after a heavy-duty day of shopping with the pickiest woman in the Milky Way. She had made a lot of apologies to shopping assistants on Shepard's behalf that day; there were a lot of lovely stores she'd never be able to show her face in again.

The two of them now lay collarbone-deep in individual pools of purple mud. Wispy tendrils of string music wafted through the air. Their faces tingled as though massaged by a thousand tiny fingers beneath their mysterious glowing gel masks.

'Remind me how we're planning to pay for this, again?' Shepard asked without budging.

'Well, since you only ever dip into Cerberus funds when fueling up or buying guns, we've got a massive untouched budget for team-building activities. Morale-boosting...things.'

'This is very effective team building,' Shepard sighed, relaxing and letting her tension seep into the warm purple mud.

'I can feel my morale-boosting more and more with each passing minute,' Miranda sang with faux sincerity, clicking her fingers and gesturing to the nearby attendee. 'Be a darling and top up this green juice for me, would you?'

The little asari woman took the glass and shuffled off. A blender started whirring in another room.

Shepard peeled up a portion of her mask and leaned over the side of her tub to face her companion. She tapped her shoulder, leaving a generous patch of purple mud on the exposed skin.

'Hey, Miranda?'

Miranda lifted her mask, realising with some surprise that the commander had just used her first name.

'Thank you for this. And for the drinks last night. I just want you to know, all jokes aside, that I owe you one. Whether you need someone to talk to, someone to drink with, or someone's ass kicked...I'm your woman.'

Shepard extended a sticky purple hand, and Miranda shook it quickly before any more brightly-coloured mud dripped from it and pooled on the floor between them.

'I just might hold you to that, Shepard.'

They replaced their masks and sank deeper into the mud, enjoying a few minutes of downtime, courtesy of Cerberus.