Author's Note: So...
This is the result of a Frozen obsession and a Mass Effect binge. Not much past that. Some inspiration from various one-shot fics that have Elsa's powers make her immortal, and have her in the modern world. Decided to take it further.
As for the topic of an update schedule: there is none. I wanted to do weekly updates at first, then twice weekly, now I'm just gonna update when I can. My creative juices don't exactly flow. It's more like an unstable explosive compound. I can prod it, light a fire under it, throw explosives at it and it might never go off, but then it just goes off at random when I'm least expecting it. And least able to write it down.
Have a question? Ask away. I think you do that through reviews, which I'd love by the way. This is my first fanfic, and constructive criticism is always appreciated.
The fires raged on, blackening the once-white surfaces of the Presidium. The choking smoke, made slightly orange by the fire, pervaded every cubic inch of the once-pristine air.
That is, except for a bubble of clean, cold air that poured forwards from Elsa's palms. The icy winds smothered the heat of any flames it came into contact with. This was much to the astonishment of the collection of people who followed closely behind her.
Damn the secrecy, Elsa thought. No secret is worth a person's life.
The motley crew of Asari, Salarians, Elcor and even a few Turians that followed her would surely agree. They dared not question this icy angel's existence, or why she was protecting them. And protect them she had, as a trail of ice-mangled Geth was left in their wake.
They had come to investigate the abnormal heat and energy signatures, specifically, the lack of heat and high amount of energy. After the first encounter, the group had been designated "hostile" by the consensus.
Elsa and her accompaniment rounded a corner, and straight into another platoon. A wall of ice was raised, which weathered the oncoming storm of gunfire admirably. What as storm it was, a mix of gunfire, rockets and even a siege pulse launched by the platoon's accompanying Armature. Unfortunately for the Geth, properly formed ice was stronger than steel.
Magically made ice on the other hand, was even stronger. The ice wall exploded outwards on Elsa's command, icy shrapnel piercing, cutting and tearing the robotic assailants asunder. The area grew loud with the robotic groans of dying geth, the catastrophic damage forcing them shutdown left, right and centre. The only Geth to absorb the hailstorm was the big one, the four-legged Armature.
The Geth consensus upgraded the designation to "dangerous".
It readied another siege pulse, the crackling blue energy charging in it's maw. It did not get the chance to let it loose however, as it's weaponry warped and cracked from the ice the expanded within it. A forest of ice stalagmites grew rapidly beneath it, piercing it's armoured hide and striking deep into it's internal systems. The killing blow was the volley of ice spikes that erupted from Elsa's fingertips.
All in all, the battle had lasted less than a minute.
The group moved on, climbing over the ravaged robotics. They passed by another Avina station, still spewing useless advice about the nearest evacuation zone. The Citadel's arms had closed. There was no evacuation possible.
But still they soldiered on, looking for some way to get off the Presidium and into the Wards. From there, they could get behind the C-Sec cordons and find safety. From there, they would be safe from the Geth.
A cry rang out from behind Elsa, thoroughly derailing her train of thought.
"Aunt Elsa!"
"Aunt Elsa!"
Elsa whirled, catching a glimpse of the red-headed streak blazing towards her before it enveloped her in a tight hug. Said speed and said hug had the unfortunate effect of disrupting her balance. Although a fierce battle raged between gravity and balance, gravity won the day, forcing Elsa to conjure a pile of snow to cushion the fall.
Idunn Bjorgman, even at only three years old, was quite a handful.
After a playful struggle between the strength of a full-grown woman, and the energy of an excited three-year-old, Elsa settled for sitting on the floor. Of course, an energetic three-year-old was an easily-distracted three-year-old, and Idunn had begun rolling the snowpile into a snowman. Easily her mother's daughter.
Where is Anna? Elsa thought idly. Where Idunn goes, Anna is hardly ever far behind.
Letting Idunn continue with her snowman-building, Elsa quietly left the room. After asking a maid to watch over her young niece, she made her way to Anna and Kristoff's bedroom, which they had shared since their marriage four years ago. Just as she went to knock, however, a familiar sound came from behind the door.
The sound of someone being quite violently ill.
Elsa had become intimately familiar with the sound during Anna's pregnancy, the "morning sickness" as it was called. Anna had called it "the worst part of pregnancy" several times during the stage where it was present. The birth had proven her wrong.
Elsa was sure that if she was the one who had been giving birth at the time, Arendelle would've found itself in another premature winter.
Just as Elsa turned to return to Idunn, the door opened. Much to Elsa's surprise, Anna stood in the doorway, looking the worse for wear. Her hair was a mess, her eyes seemed duller, and her skin was beginning to rival Elsa's in it's paleness.
"Oh, Elsa." Anna said, in a pained tone of voice, devoid of her usual energy. "I was just gonna look for you."
"Anna, are you alright? You look sick." worried Elsa. "Do you want me to send for a doctor?"
"No, no, I'm fine. 's just a stomach bug. Kristoff has it too."
The retching sounds emerging from behind Anna backed up her claims.
"'s what I wanted to to talk to you 'bout, actually." Anna continued. "Will you mind Idunn for a while? 's just that I don't want her catching it too."
"Of course, Anna."
Anna closed the door, shooting Elsa a small smile as she did. Elsa returned it for only the briefest of moments, before it became a worried scowl. This illness had come on incredibly fast. The night before they had been fine. The thought occurred to Elsa that maybe this was some sort attack, a plot by Hans and his twelve brothers-
Elsa shook that final thought from her mind. Ever since word had arrived of Hans' lack of punishment by his family, the stray thought that he would return for revenge plagued the underlying thoughts in Elsa's mind. Although Hans wouldn't be able to stage an assault on Arendelle, the man was good at manipulation and subterfuge. He could be working against them, ready to strike at any time.
Of course, Elsa reasoned, this is likely the result of a lifetime habit of worry being hard to break.
She smiled softly at this, the simple fact that she didn't have to worry anymore. For the last six years, life had been perfect. She had Anna back, control over her powers, acceptance from her people, and a young niece waiting for her in her study. Before she returned to Idunn however, she sent a footman to fetch the royal physician. Even a stomach bug deserved some slight medical attention, in Elsa's opinion.
Or maybe worrying was simply part of her nature.
Elsa came awake at a jolt, a slight bump in the movement of the transport. Of course, the shields should deflect any foreign objects or pockets of turbulence, lending to a smooth flight. The ship jolting, barring any failure of the shields, could only mean one thing.
She was back in Arendelle.
She departed the transport swiftly, refusing the Royal Guard's offer to take her luggage. She had packed light, and the awaiting sky-car wasn't situated far from the terminal. From the corner of her eye, she spotted several more Royal Guards dressed in plain clothes. Extra security measures. She wondered if all members of the Royal Family were getting this treatment, or if it was being done especially for her.
The sky-car ride was mercifully short, and landed directly in the courtyard of the castle. Although Arendelle City was now made of tall, imposing spires, the castle itself was much the same. A modest building in terms of castles, a dull grey square in the middle of a vibrant blue fjord. The same fjord she had frozen so many years ago. The same castle she had grown up in. And despite the Guard insisting on leading the way, she knew where she would staying. The same room that she had hidden herself away in.
Nostalgia always gripped her when she returned to Arendelle, but never more than when she returned to her room. The blue rosemaling was still all-to-familiar, even after all this time. The room she had spent so much of her early years in, so many years avoiding Anna, hurting Anna, protecting Anna from herself.
More time than they had spent together.
The bright blue biotic blur that had streaked across the battlefield reformed into Commander John Shepard with a resounding thump of displaced air. The kinetic energy of the biotic charge had to go somewhere, of course, and it's destination was the body of poor Eclipse Engineer that Shepard had rammed into. It was the sort of assault that would hamper a Krogan. The Salarian it hit hadn't stood a chance.
Pumping a shotgun round into the corpse for good measure, Shepard began the usual post-combat ritual: searching every nook and cranny for anything they could use. It was a habit he had gotten into back in the Saren days. Spectres operated on a level of freedom unheard of by any military, but as a result they were denied all but the slightest bits of funding. Cerberus was better in that regard (they transferred some funds after every mission) but the Normandy had made a dent in their bank balance that would take time to recover from.
Thus, he was back to looting everything useful that he could find. There wasn't much to be found however: some platinum, a safe full of credits. Not the biggest haul he'd ever found, but decent enough for a small base. What interested him more were the usual event logs that could be found pretty much everywhere in the galaxy. Even a mercenary group needed to send reports and expense sheets, and Eclipse wasn't any different.
What the reports contained, though, was very interesting. They'd managed to kill the Cerberus Operative they'd captured, and they hadn't been able to gain the cipher needed to decrypt the data that had come with him. They had, however, known what the data contained. Ceberus reports on Rachni experiments.
He remembered those experiments. He was the one who shut them down. If this information got out, Cerberus would be ruined publicly. It would be back to the shadows for them, and thus an immense drop in recruitment and outside funding. Perfect blackmail material for Eclipse.
Perfect blackmail material for Shepard.
He transferred the data to the Normandy's servers before wiping it from the Eclipse computers. Shepard didn't plan on being in Cerberus' good books for long, and it always helped to have leverage when you planned on leaving a group who'd rather you didn't. That wasn't a mistake he'd like to make again.
"So, Garrus. How'd you think he did?" Shepard asked, turning and pointing towards their newborn adolescent Krogan comrade. This was his first taste of combat.
"Grunt? He did good. Kept his cool, no berserker rages. A bit chatty though, and the mercs probably recognized that he was Krogan the minute he stepped into the room. No need for him to tell everybody." Garrus replied with a wry smile.
"Look who's talking. I'm pretty sure that most of them did see you coming." Shepard said, returning the smile.
Garrus chuckled for a moment, and gave Shepard an amused stare before speaking again.
"I should go."
Shepard watched his friend turn and walk away, stifling a laugh all the way to the Kodiak. A frown of confusion dented his features as he did so, not knowing why Garrus had left the conversation there.
Why is he laughing?
"Shepard?"
Shepard stopped halfway across the shuttle bay and turned to face Grunt. The newborn Krogan was only a few hours old, but had emerged his tube an adolescent. Okeer had provided him with a lot of information about Krogan culture and warfare, but he was still naturally curious about the world around him. This inevitably led to Shepard fielding a great many questions from the young Krogan.
"Yes, Grunt?"
"I've been searching the extranet, and I searched for Normandy. Why is the ship named for a place on Earth?"
"Well, this Normandy is named after the first Normandy-"
"Destroyed by the Collectors."
"Yeah." came the soft reply. A pensive look crossed Shepard's face momentarily, not that Grunt would notice. "The first Normandy was an Alliance ship, and the Alliance has rules for naming ships. Carriers are named after people, Dreadnoughts are named after mountains, Cruisers are named after cities, and Frigates like the Normandy are named after battles."
"So, the Battle of Normandy. Was it a great battle?"
"Yeah, pretty much. It was the turning point of World War Two. I'll send you some holo-vids on it."
Grunt, well, grunted in approval, and continued his path to the elevator. Shepard watched him go, a small smile creeping up his face. He'd never really thought about it, but Normandy was a pretty good name for a ship going up against a seemingly invincible enemy. Normandy had been the point where the Western World stopped seeing the Nazis as an invincible juggernaut, and started beating them. Probably wasn't what the Alliance had been going for, though. The Normandy Landings had also benefitted hugely from the element of deception.
Shepard followed his squadmates into the elevator, taking it to the main level and depositing Grunt and Garrus along the way. The Armory being on the main level was one big difference between the Normandy SR-1 and the Normandy SR-2. Alliance protocol was the Armory would be located in the Hangar Bay, so that ground crew could pick up their gear on the way to whatever transport the ship carried. The key difference between Cerberus vessels and Alliance vessels was that the Alliance had on-board security. Cerberus ships depended on the crew to repel any boarders, who usually entered through the Hangar. An Alliance vessel would have it's Armory seized by boarders almost immediately, but the security personnel would be able to repel it. If a Cerberus ship was like that, nobody would be armed enough to try.
Still didn't make up for the fact that it was awkward as all hell for people who didn't keep their weapons and armour on them all the time.
Mentally filing those thoughts away for later (in a little mental folder he called "Anti-Cerberus Tactics"), he made his way to the Galaxy Map. Finally, he was able to head to the Citadel and meet with Anderson. As long as he picked Miss Goto up along the way, there was really nothing left for him to do. No out-of-the-way pickups, no emergency missions for Cerberus-
"Commander, the Illusive Man would like to speak with you in the Comm Room."
Dammit.
