Author's Note: Jessie finally appears! Along side - could this be a tragically doomed love interest backstory? Why yes, tropers, I believe it is!

Zaeed set the stack of folders down smartly on the desk, drawing a loud sigh from the man behind it. "Corporal, you work too hard," he complained.

"Somebody's got to, Staff Sergeant," he replied without rancor. "After the whole drunk tear-up last weekend when three squads decided to go snipe hunting."

The older marine sighed dramatically, levering himself out of the chair. "Massani. Unless a new batch of drug runners set up shop in the hills, nothing ever happens. Go to the gym or something, holy fuck." He ambled out the door. "I'm gonna get a burger. Don't let anyone start a snipe hunt without me."

He gave a second-head salute – that is, made a salute with his hand over his dick – and plopped down behind the desk himself. He closed out the porn extranet searches and pulled up the armory database, updating the information, though he logged the spent ammunition as "Training Exercises" and not "Waste/Fraud" despite the greater accuracy of the second.

His pocket comp beeped at him, and he pulled it out to answer a call from Jimmy. "Zaeed, brother! Still wasting your time at work?"

He cracked a smile. "It's not even 1300, you chink. What's happening in the vehicle pool?"

"Not much. Was thinking about taking this old Tiger out for a spin," he grinned, "drop by the main colony, pick up chicks. Figured I'd see if you wanted to introduce any of the local girls to the suicide bomb in your pants."

"The only bomb in my pants will be from the chili I just had at lunch," he shot back. "When you leaving?"

"I dunno, an hour or so? Need to gas up the old broad, load some shells in just for fun shooting at rabbits, that kind of thing." Jimmy shrugged, gesturing to the armored truck behind him, a twenty-year old relic before the colony was founded.

"Sounds good. Gimme twenty to finish filing my goddamn paperwork, and I'll meet you over there."

"It's a date then," came the response in an annoying sing-song, before the call cut off.

Zaeed, still chuckling, shook his head as he finished typing everything in. So far, over the last year, he'd managed to completely cut out three useless calibers, getting replacements either in the new mass effect weapons, or combining everyone up on 7.62-chambered weapons. He took one of the new assault rifles, playing with it for a minute to make it unfold and compact.

"What the hell, maybe I can impress some dumb piece of jailbait," he muttered to himself. Whistling to himself, he stepped out of the armory, locking up the building, and striding to his barracks. It was a still warm fall day, unseasonably warm to hear the locals bitch about it, but he thought it was perfect. It took a few minutes for him to change into some cargo pants and a tank top, tucking the folded assault rifle into one of the large pockets on the leg.

Armed with a wallet full of Alliance credit slips (the colony still lagged behind in electronic banking), he headed over to the vehicle pool, stepping inside the open garage door and nearly ending up run over. "What the fuck, Jimmy?" he shouted as the other man waved out the window. "It doesn't count if she puts out from fear of getting goddamn run over," he groused, climbing into the other front seat.

He waved it off, kicking it back into gear and rolling out the door. Six wheels, shiny armor plates with tiny removable firing slots, and a messy pile of blankets to help pad the seats. "Relax, just driving up in this will impress the women. The ones I don't run over, anyway," he grinned. "I've got a couple on the line already. We're going to pick them up near the terraforming center, then head out near the firing range, let them feel the guns fire."

"With your reputation, that won't take too goddamn long," Zaeed retorted, pulling out a pack of gum.

"It's ok, Massani, at least I know what a girl is for. You'll probably spend two hours trying to size her chamber for the right caliber." Waving a hand in acknowledgement of the superior insult, he hawked and spat the gum out the window, narrowly missing the wall of the sentry gatehouse.

"Ever think this whole base is a goddamn farce?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically. "The Alliance is paying millions of credits to keep us housed on a planet where nothing ever goddamn happens."

"I think some politician watches too many bad alien-invasion movies," Jimmy said. "Thinks some species wearing rubber prosthetics waving around CGI tentacles are going to drop asteroids out of the sky on us."

"Heh. Bring it on." He patted the pocket that held the assault rifle. "I've got the new guns now."

"Awesome, you gotta let me fire that off! Hey, there they are." Jimmy slowed the armored truck to a crawl, jumping out to help two girls into the back of the truck. "Alright, ladies, this is Zaeed, he works in the armory. This is Wei and Jessie."

"Charmed," he said, smiling and trying to hide his nervousness. They both twittered that slightly-annoying oh-I'm-so-quaint laugh, but Jessie certainly seemed to be interested in him, if her constant look-then-glance-away meant what he thought it did. "You ladies ever get to fire a real gun before?"

Wei just shook her head, blushing slightly, but Jessie shrugged. "My dad has a little twenty-two for shooting the rabbits. Does that count?" He and Jimmy both chuckled.

"Not what I had in mind. Good enough for rabbits, yeah," he unzipped the top of the pocket and pulled out the new M-8 Avenger, leaving it compacted for the moment. "This, now, is the future of weaponry."

Both girls admired the weapon for a moment, then Jessie looked up and caught his eyes. "Are you going to sit here and talk all day, or are you going to show me how to handle a big thing like this?"

Zaeed was glad the back of the seat kept his sudden reaction from sight, though from the twinkling in her eyes, she knew exactly what had just happened. "Keep your shirt on," he growled out, trying not to trip over his own tongue. "Don't want to scare the locals by shooting off in the middle of the street."

She snickered politely at that, and when Wei started asking Jimmy questions about the vehicle a moment later, he couldn't have recalled what she said if a rubber-forehead alien had held a laser gun to his head. He was too busy staring at Jessie like an idiot, so at least he would have been able to perfectly describe her jade colored eyes, her tiny, freckle-spotted nose, or the tiny scar at one corner of her mouth.