Ahhhh…chapter 6 people! Finally a bit of action is to be had! This should run into Thane's mission and will give us the first taste of Six's good ole' combat skills. That is after the fluff of course.
I've decided that I will only ever use the Shepard and Six viewpoints for long periods of time. Other views may be thrown in, but they will be temporary.
As far as pairings are concerned…they will remain secret for now and only be implied. Later…maybe they will become of more import.
Lastly, I would like for naming ideas for Six. It'll be a while until she tells anyone, but it seems like something that would be included into a loyalty mission later.
Disclaimer: I don't own this stuff, it owns me.
Six was pacing.
She had thought that she would have enough room and privacy in the cargo bay, no one else was in it after all, but between the Krogan, she had learned its name was "Grunt", staring at her from above with a savage glee and the various crew members that had glanced at her as they walked through the hallway above her, she was starting to feel like a lab experiment. Granted, she was one, but still it was uncomfortable.
At first she had practiced with Emile's kukri and made the Krogan perk up with a massive grin (at least she thought it was grin) on his face, but then the red-headed woman she had seen as she left her talk with the Illusive Man and before she had dropped the small shield generator of her armor off in the brunette woman's, she had learned that she was "Miranda", room had come down and, after delivering her new armor, asked her question upon question about her life, roots, and friends...she was uncomfortable with the questions but tried to answer them as best she could, it wouldn't pay to antagonize a fellow crewmember.
After being interrogated, a voice she assumed to belong to the pilot came over the intercom and announced that they would be revisiting some planet called Illium to pick up some more crew. By that point, Six had finished disassembling and reassembling her new weapons enough times to do it in her sleep, sharpen Emile's kukri enough that bones were cut as easily as paper, and had jogged around the room enough times that she could close her eyes and visualize the spacious chamber from every possible angle, evaluating its defensibility in case of boarding.
Then, she got inexplicably and extremely bored.
And so, she paced.
Occasionally, a brief shudder would run through the ship as it passed through a mass relay. These rarely happened more than once in a dozen hours. It had taken three of these jumps for Six to realize that she was tired. She paused in her pacing. It had been a long time since she was tired. Granted she had felt physically tired a large number of times over the previous weeks, both on Reach and after she had arrived in this different universe, but for the first time, she was too tired to think straight. Her mind wandered as she turned about face and walked silently towards her makeshift bed.
She thought of at first her life before becoming a SPARTAN, granted that had been long ago and most of it was blurry to her now, but she did remember one thing, her mother. She supposed that she looked a lot like her mother, at least in facial structure, but other than her looks, what she really remembered was that her mother would always tell her a little poem before she went off on her next deployment.
She had liked some obscure guy from the 1800's and what was then the British Isles. His name was Rudyard something or another, Kipling, she thought, and he wrote mostly about imperialism. It struck Six that she had fought the Insurrection and briefly chuckled at the thought of her favorite poet from her mother's side. Slowly, Six began to recite one of her favorites.
"For God and the soldier we adore,
In time of danger, not before!
The danger passed, and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted."
It was a short thing, but it reminded her of more peaceful days, when neighbors would both complain about there being too much of a military presence and there not being enough of one. They had never said it to her face, of course, but eavesdropping was a skill she had developed early on. She remembered the peaceful days, and, with these thoughts in her head, pushing out the shock from the Illusive man, she flopped onto the collection of cushions she had found and assembled and slept voluntarily for the first time in a week.
Meanwhile, back in another relevant area of the story, Shepard was pacing. It may have had something to do with the fact that he had forgotten to do everything the first time he had gone to Illium, it might have had something to do with the newest super-soldier addition to his crew, or it may have had something to do with being forced into meeting a certain blue-skinned Asari that had changed so much over the previous two years.{A/N: My money is on the third option...any takers? No? Damn, they saw through my facade!}
He still had a picture of Liara sitting on his desk. It had been a simple matter of downloading the picture off of the extranet. He had been shocked to say the least after meeting her when Miranda had needed her sister saved. The change his blue love had undergone when he had died made him disgusted with himself. It was his fault she had changed so much. Still, he pushed this feeling to the back of his mind, he couldn't have such thoughts distracting him on a mission.
He glanced towards the clock, they were due to arrive at Illium in 4 hours. He sighed and started to equip his Kestrel armor and pick the ground team out at the same time. Briefly, he thought, "Urban combat, mid-to-short range fights...Tali," and highlit the image on Tali on his personal terminal. He pulled on his glove and then paused a moment before highlighting an image of Six. He muttered to himself, "nothing fixes trust issues like trial by fire."
He fit on his last piece of armor and scanned the dossiers of the two he would pick up, the Assassin and the Justicar. The Assassin was a Drell by the name of Thane Krios...hopefully he went by Thane and not Krios, what an odd conversation that had been with Wrex. He had slowed recently but was rumored to have a contract on Illium. Shepard highlit his dossier, if he was a professional, then he would likely be done rather quickly with what was going on. The Justicar could wait a day.
Shepard fit on the helmet and sent a message to Six and Tali, telling them that they were up for the next mission. After that he sighed, glanced forlornly at his picture of Liara and left his quarters for the armory, it was time to pick out Six's guns.
Six hefted a rather large gun. It looked worn and old, but oddly soothing, as if it was just the right fit for her. She glanced over at Jacob, who had quickly given up pointing out weapons to her and just let her have free reign of the armory, and asked, in a voice that betrayed her true curiosity, "What's this one? And why do I like it?"
Jacob glanced up from his issue of Badass Weekly and smirked. He walked over to her and took the gun from her hands, well, asked for it without words and she complied, he wouldn't ever be able to take something from her, and clapped it on the side once, venting its thermal clip, before handing it back to her and saying, "M-96 Mattock heavy rifle, not top-of-the-line, but damn reliable and fairly versatile," he paused, looked at the rifle again and continued, "It's semi-auto, has a really heavy punch, and it one of the more accurate rifles. Only problems you could get with it are up close and personal, thing only fires once per trigger pull and has a lower ammo reservoir."
Six just grinned. She could handle pretty much anything up close, and she preferred picking her shots to spray and pray. She pressed a button on the side that Shepard had shown to her before he went to wait by the airlock, and she watched the gun fold up before setting it onto her right shoulder blade. She then walked over to another table and picked up another weapon, this one for exactly the opposite reason of the Mattock. It was eerily similar to another set of alien weapons she had been forced to use over the years. From its purple color to its sleek curves, the gun screamed, "Covenant!" to her.
She heard a huff behind her and Jacob appeared over her shoulder to repeat the process he had done with the Mattock, before continuing and describing the weapon in detail. Eventually she settled on it as well. She thought she saw heavy weapons for a second, but they were in a cabinet marked "Shepard" and she respected his property.
After putting the shotgun on the small of her back, she waved a goodbye to Jacob, who just smirked and went back to his magazine, and stepped out into the CIC.
It was smaller than most of the ships Six had been on before, with the exception of an ONI prowler that was about the same size, but the smooth curves, calm lighting, and plain colors were a much nicer experience in total that the blocky mess that made up every UNSC vessel. She passed the Galactic map with little more than a wave to Kelly and a glance at the hologram. They had had that kind of tech in her universe, but never so...beautiful before. She continue past CIC and made her way up to the bridge, ignoring the glances that came her way from the crew at their stations, and walked up behind Tali.
Six sided to the right of Tali and tried to look down at Shepard without looking down on him. It was not easy being tall. Shepard glanced at her and said, in a condescending tone, "Glad you finally joined us, Six." At that Tali looked to her right and jumped in surprise. The Quarian yelped out, "Keelah! How can someone so big be so quiet!" Six frowned at her and said, in a playful tone she had yet to feel again after the talk with TIM, "That hurt my feelings Tali, I'm very sensitive about my weight." Tali must have seen something in Six's stature that said, "I don't feel like funniness now," because she turned back to Shepard quickly.
Shepard then sighed and began to relay the mission details, finishing before Joker piped in, "We're through the Mass Relay, should be hitting Illium in five minutes." Shepard only nodded and the three occupied the next few moments looking at their respective omnitools. Shepard scanning through Thane's dossier again, Six reading up on Illium, and Tali looking over the footage of Six's escapade again.
{A/N: Hope nobody minds, but I'm going to skip most of the talking, though there will be references to it later}
After what had seemed like hours of wasted time to Six, during which Shepard had ran around the city seemingly randomly hacking consoles and them running over to another one and uploading something, involving himself in a weird altercation between a Krogan and an Asari, or the amateur vigilante that Shepard showed the error of his ways, Six and Tali had to deal with a severely awkward atmosphere as Shepard talked with some Asari information broker named Liara T'Soni.
She knew something was up when they first walked in and the mood of everyone took a turn for the worse. Tali's shoulder's slumped slightly, Shepard's voice lost a touch of its commanding tone, and there was a glint in the eye of the information broker. Judging from the way the Asari and Shepard's respective hips moved, they had had something in the past. Had Six not been bored out of her mind, she would have found it unnatural and weird, but oh well.
Eventually, Shepard got the information he was looking for and Six decided, as they walked down the stairs of the information broker's office, that she had been quiet for long enough and that if she continued someone might ask her as to what occurred in the conversation with TIM. Get ahold of yourself, Noble Six! Depression is not your forte! Say something sarcastic! Six turned towards Tali as they walked down and asked, in as innocent a voice as possible, "Tali, do you get the feeling Shepard might have had something with that nice alien lady?"
Tali almost visibly stiffened and Shepard actually stopped walking. Slowly, Tali turned to Six and said, in that was laced in something most certainly not camaraderie, "Drop it."
Six was almost taken aback, after all, while she knew that the alien didn't like her, she never suspected her able of outright distrust. She bit back a retort that would have served to make the situation worse and turned forward again, motioning for Shepard to continue to walk.
Shepard frowned slightly and moved on, reaching the bottom of the stairs and turning right around to travel through the hallway to the contact in the carport. He would be the first to say that he was worried. He knew that Tali and Six wouldn't get along at first, and thus had hoped that working together on a mission may get rid of some of the tension between them. Tali had seen the video of Six's past after all, she knew why she had acted the way and say the things she did.
They reached the door at the other end of the hallway after parting the civilians in the hallway like only three heavily armed individuals can and Shepard made a brief prayer...not that he was having much luck with those recently, that Six and Tali would reconcile.
Shepard walked down the steps with the two others in tow and logged a complaining Salarian's rant in the back of his mind before catching a name he had heard before, "Nassana Dantius" and swore. Whenever she was involved, head would roll. He just hoped that he wouldn't have to encounter her when looking for Thane.
Shepard was sitting next to Seryna and mentally slapping himself. Of course the assassin would be after Dantius. If her business practices haven't changed over the years, then murdering rivals is one of the best ways to draw an assassin. He was broken out of his reverie by Seryna saying next to him, "There they are: The Dantius Towers," she paused briefly and Shepard glanced over at her, noticing in his peripherals Tali and Six each trying to catch a glimpse of the objective, before she continued, "You'll have to get up the second tower and cross the bridge to the penthouse. Her mercs will fight you every step, but it's your best chance."
Six, meanwhile was ignoring the conversation and trying not to get too close to Tali, she didn't need for another conflict after that fiasco on the stairs, while trying to see the towers. She would never tell anyone, but even New Alexandria didn't have skyscrapers as tall as these.
As the case was, however, she wouldn't need to tell anyone.
Being a SPARTAN had the downside of not really learning to control your facial features. As such, the look of awe was still on Six's face when they landed and stepped out of the aircar. As the vehicle sped off, Shepard turned to look at them and smirked briefly before saying, "You'll catch flies that way, Six."
Tali managed a brief, "Wha...?" and Six closed her mouth before a wall lifted, revealing a pane of glass behind which Salarians were being slaughtered by mechs, two humanoid and two canine. The mechs then turned their heads and, noticing the three strangers outside, turned away from the dead and dieing workers to attack the new hostiles.
After a moment of pause, the fireteam pulled out their weapons and shot through the glass.
Six was the first to open fire, her reflexes allowing her Mattock to be up and firing before the mechs had even fully turned to them. With a brush of her hand, Six activated one of a few special attacks she had bothered to integrate into her weapon and loosed a concussive shot. A millisecond later, a piece of sand-sized metal shot past the relatively slow-moving shot and broke the window, allowing the special ammunition to send the front-most canine-mech flying back into one of the humanoid ones.
By then, Tali had activated her omni-tool and summoned Chiktikka vas Paus in the midst of the mech units. The fast-thinking drone quickly zapped the jumble of robotic parts that were once two mechs and they promptly exploded, knocking over and back the last humanoid mech, sending it plummeting towards the ground several dozen stories below.
As an anti-climactic end to the battle, Shepard gutted the last canine mech with a shot from his Mantis sniper rifle, punching through its faceplate and blowing out its "tail". The mech fell faceplate-first, slid up to Shepard, and exploded, causing Shepard's shields to flash and repel the force.
There was a moment of pause, and then Six piped up, "Totally badass."
Tali would have rubbed her temples if they weren't under a helmet that kept her from dieing and retotred, "Shut up, Six."
Shepard just sighed, it was going to be a long way up.
Now to commence with the self-deprecation!
Me: So you guys may have noticed by now, but I have self-confidence issues.
Other Me: No, they wouldn't have noticed that! You only rant about how terrible your writing is the entire beginning author note, what could possibly give them the idea that you hate yourself?
Me: I don't hate myself! I'm great!
Other Me: Do you hate me?
Me: Well, yeah...a lot.
Other Me: And I'm a figment of your imagination! Ergo, you hate yourself!
Me: Well...damn.
Other Me: And now you have been outsmarted by yourself...are you planning this this way?
Me: Probably, I don't know.
OM (A/N: It's tiring writing that out all the time): God...your lazy and hate yourself.
Me: What do you mean?
OM: The fourth wall doesn't apply here.
Me: Well...fuck. See you guys again in a week or two for chapter 7! Until then, I'm going to keep fighting with myself, bye!
OM: Go die in a hole.
(I think I may need help...oh well.)