Right! I thought it was about time for a third chapter! Funny how I always write these things when I have homework to do...
Disclaimer (because it's about bloody time): Everything belongs to people other than me. By 'other people' I mean 'Bioware' and other respective owners. Thanks for making up an awesome universe full of awesome characters for me to twist and corrupt into something evil and vaguely humorous! Yay!
Shepard sighed heavily, trying her best to keep her eyes open. It wouldn't make a very good first impression if she fell asleep while standing in front of the Council. She briefly checked her wrist, which normally had a watch strapped tightly around it. Not this time. She just bought some sweet-ass heavy armor, and the watch strap wasn't long enough to fit around it, so she had taken it into a small shop to have it extended. She rolled her eyes, much to the displeasure of Udina. She briefly contemplated how he managed to catch every little 'inappropriate' thing she did while managing to disappear mysteriously the moment she did something noteworthy. She crossed her arms and began to tap her foot loudly as the turian councilman began his part of the horrendously long Specter Induction Speech™.
"Specters are exceptional individuals who represent the best their race have to offer!" He bellowed melodramatically, gesturing widely with his arms and left foot. "Specters aren't made…they're born!"
"If my parent's didn't take the time to make me in the back of that theater, I wouldn't have been born in the first place." Shepard muttered darkly, fully aware of what the turian meant. Apparently, she muttered in her outdoor voice, because everyone grew silent and stared at her with expressions that didn't exude any sort of positive emotions.
"What was that, Commander?" The turian narrowed his eyes at her (well, she sort of assumed, since his eyes were kind of small) and the councilman was a fair distance away), a darkly suspicious sound to his voice.
Shepard faked a cough into the back of one hand while looking around furtively. "Oh, nothing. Just something in my throat." She flashed them a toothy grin, ignoring the withering glares she was receiving from the Council and Udina. She cleared her throat nervously and glanced at her wrist again. "Oh, look at the time! It's already half past green!" She pointed to her wrist, which was indeed covered with green armor. " Funny how time flies during long-winded speeches, eh?" She tittered in a rather frantic tone before blathering on. "Well, I'm sure that there are things you have to get done, seeing as how you're the Council and, well, I'm sure that you're kept rather busy on a day to day basis with all the things you have to do for the people who as you to do things and stuff, so, it's an honor to be the first human Specter and I don't plan to let you down and, well, all that other shit you expect me to say! I hate to just run along like this, but there are things to do, people to hunt down and slaughter without mercy, ya know? So thanks for everything! I'll talk to you later, I'm sure!"
She had begun to usher her party members down the steps as she spoke, and ended up bellowing over her shoulder from the bottom of the stairs while continuing to shove Alenko and Williams along. She pointedly ignored their annoyed cries and pushed them in the elevator's general direction.
"Hey! Look at that guy!" Williams took a few quick steps so she was outside of Shepard's reach and pointed at a nearby salarian who was to engrossed staring at a Keeper to notice Williams all but screaming about him.
Alenko dug his heels into the floor and stared off in the opposite direction. "What guy?"
Shepard let her shoulders sag in defeat, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Williams walked over, grabbed either side of Alenko's head, and wrenched it sideways until he was looking in the right direction.
"Oh! That guy!" He replied, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his neck was bending at a completely unnatural angle. "What about him? You think he's hot or something?"
"What!? No!!" Williams seemed repulsed at the very idea. "Look at what he's doing to that Keeper!"
"Holy crap." Shepard deadpanned as she looked at the salarian. "He's looking at it. How could he."
Williams huffed angrily. "Look! He's doing something with that scanner!" She had gotten uncomfortably close to Shepard and was whispering in her ear. Shepard, who was thoroughly creeped out by it, whacked Williams in the face with the back of her fist.
"Don't ever get that close to me again." Shepard hissed, pointing at Williams menacingly. Williams was to busy tilting her head back and pinching the bridge of her now bleeding nose to notice. "Oh no, he's scanning the Keepers. What the hell do you want me to do about it!?"
"Well, it is against the law, ma'am." Alenko replied, snapping his neck back into a more natural position.
"Yeah, but he's just scanning it." She gestured towards the man, who was happily pressing buttons on his little scanner. "It's not like he's touching it inappropriately or something. Besides, even if he was, we're not here to investigate Keeper sexual abuse! All we could do is report it and move along! And, as I have previously mentioned, he is NOT doing anything of the sort!"
"What if he's making some sort of nasty Keeper porn or something?" Williams had managed to staunch the bleeding enough to speak. "I should just go over there and punch the bastard's eye out!"
" 'Nasty Keeper porn'?" Shepard replied skeptically. "First off, all the stupid thing is doing is working at a console. Secondly, I don't think there's much of a market for Keeper porn." Williams pouted angrily. "He's not doing anything explicitly wrong, so let's just leave the stupid bastard alone, m'kay?"
"Are you sure we should do that?"
Shepard turned to Alenko, her eye twitching. "Yes. Quite sure."
"Oh come on Commander!" Williams threw her arms up into the air in frustration. "What's the use of being a Specter if you don't open up a can of whoopass once in a while?"
"No!" Shepard crossed her arms angrily and scowled.
"Come on, ma'am!" Alenko chimed in. "Think of it as testing your new abilities as a Specter!"
Shepard rolled her eyes and sneered. "Fine! If it'll make you two morons shut up, then fine! I'll talk to the goddamn scanner guy!"
Williams grinned and gave Alenko a small nudge. "Peer pressure works every time, L.T."
"Peer pressure?" Shepard echoed sarcastically. "Since when did you become my bloody peer?"
Williams sneered angrily. "Sorry ma'am." She spat back dryly.
"Apology accepted, whore." Shepard replied humorlessly. She strode over and stood in front of the salarian, arms akimbo. Like, she stoodright in front on him. The salarian took a few steps backwards and looked around nervously.
"Yes, can I help you?"
"What are you doing with that scanner?" Shepard barked, tactful as usual. The salarian hid the scanner behind his back and did a very bad impression of a nonchalant shrug.
"Scanning? Who's scanning? I'm not scanning."
"Don't you lie to us!" Williams stepped over and jabbed a finger at one of his very large eyes. "We saw you scanning this Keeper!" Williams bent down and hugged the Keeper, which kept working away at it's console. A nearby Avina console activated.
"Please do not disturb the Keepers."
Williams flipped the VI the bird. "Piss off!"
"Please do not disturb the Keepers." Shepard rolled her eyes and hauled Williams off the poor creature.
"I, uh, really don't think I should tell you about it…" The salarian rubbed the back of his head while shooting Williams disturbed glances. She snorted derisively in response. Shepard sighed tiredly.
"Let's examine the situation objectively, shall we?" Shepard paused to look the salarian over. "You have a scanner." She glanced at her team members, standing on either side of her. "We have heavy weaponry. Unless you think you can scan us to death before we draw our weapons, I suggest you talk."
The salarian swallowed hard. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you."
"It'll damn well hurt if you don't." Shepard spat angrily, resting a hand on her pistol.
"Yes, I'm sure." The salarian wrung his hands nervously. "Well, a colleague of mine and I managed were working for a company. We found a prototype scanner that was capable of scanning things that couldn't have been scanned before, so we…we stole it. After a few alterations, we came up with a model that was capable of scanning the Keepers."
The was a pause. Shepard raised her eyebrows skeptically. "And?"
The salarian looked confused. "Don't you see?"
"See what?" Williams asked, sounding perplexed. "Did I miss something?"
The salarian rolled his eyes at the stupid humans. "They've never been able to scan the Keepers before, and we weren't allowed to get samples! They self-destruct when you try to dissect them, you know." The salarian shuddered. "We lost a lot of good men that day…anyway, with this information, we'll finally be able to find out where the Keepers came from!"
"What the hell does that have to do with anything?" Shepard asked, looking just as confused as Williams. The salarian simply shrugged in response.
"I don't know. I figured I could find that out after I got all the information I needed."
Shepard thought for a moment. "And how much information do you need?"
"About twenty-one more unique scans. Why?"
Shepard grinned in a most unpleasant manner. "I can help you. I'm a Specter, so I can do whatever the hell I want, including scanning the bugs without getting into trouble."
The salarian's eyes grew wide. "You'd do that for me?"
"For a price, of course."
The salarian nodded vehemently. "Oh, of course! Here, just press this button here to scan any Keepers you come across, and the information will be uploaded directly to my database! I'll make sure to send credits your way after every unique scan."
"You better…" Shepard grumbled darkly while looking over the scanner. The button he had pointed out was a large green one. Right beside it was a smaller blue one. "What does this button do?"
"No! Don't push that one!" The salarian made to snatch the scanner back, but Shepard held it away from his grasp.
"Why not?"
The salarian gave up and sighed. "Bad things'll happen, okay? Just…just don't press that button."
Shepard stared at the button for a long while. "Feh. Fine." She looked at the scanner for a few more moments. " Well, I'll get to it, then."
"Yes, good luck!"
"Ah, shut up, you molester." Williams hissed. Shepard gave her a good smack to the face, which started her nose bleeding again. "Shit! I need Kleenex!"
"Suck it up, wuss." Shepard growled before making her way to the elevator. She pressed the down button and did her best to tune out the insipid music being pumped into the small room. She examined the scanner closely. "I wonder if it works on other things as well." She turned to Alenko, who looked quite alarmed, and pressed the green button. There were a couple of soft blips, punctuated by a shrill beep. "Huh. It says you have emotional issues."
Alenko scowled and crossed his arms, looking out the large glass windows of the elevator.
"Ha! That thing's good!" Williams chuckled, giving Alenko a punch on the shoulder.
"Shut up, you." Shepard turned and glared at her. "I hate you so much."
"Nice to know I'm loved, ma'am." Williams replied dryly.
"Next time I'm just going to shoot your fucking nose off." The elevator doors inched themselves open and the three made their way forward, keeping their eyes open for Keepers.