An update? Yes. A miracle, I know.
Just a quick note: if you plan on sending a message about how they're all OOC, don't bother. I already know that.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm not making money off this. Blah blah blah.
A single bead of sweat slowly crawled down Shepard's forehead, all but ignored as she stared intently at the door panel in front of her, her hand hovering centimeters away from the console. She absentmindedly swiped at the perspiration with the back of her other hand and blinked rapidly as dust from the now silent mercenary base fell into her eye. There was the possibility that it was ash too, though. She had grown rather fond of using that wicked incendiary ammo mod she had picked off someone's dead corpse along the way… she licked her lips and tried not to think about possibly having dead people in her eye.
"Come on, Shepard, we've been standing here for five minutes already!" Garrus crossed his arms and huffed in irritation. "Just hack the door already!"
"Would you shut your face, goddamnit!" Shepard growled back and narrowed her eyes, not looking away from the door. "I don't have enough omnigel to use if I screw this up, and I just finished selling all the useless shit. And you know that I was never good at Simon Says games…" A look of distaste crossed Shepard's features as she recalled that particular part of her military training. Her demeanour lightened significantly as she also recalled hurling the small electronic game into her instructor's face, causing a broken nose and black eye.
"Then don't screw up." Garrus shot back, earning an angry snarl from his commander.
Tali shifted uncomfortably. "Er, Shepard, I'm pretty good with electronics. If you want, I can-"
"No thanks, Tali. I won't be defeated by four goddamn blinking lights!" Shepard nodded curtly to herself, a show of strengthened resolve, and resolutely activated the console with a solid punch. Her omnitool activated and began the hacking program. Four coloured circles were displayed, and the battle began.
"Green, Shepard! Green!" Tali squealed, pointing insistently at the bottom circle.
"Yeah, I got it!" Shepard snapped back as she hit the corresponding button on her omnitool. Almost immediately the yellow circle lit up.
"It's yellow, Shepard." Garrus chimed in, not bothering to hide the patronizing tone in his voice.
"For fuck's sake! I know the colours of the fucking rainbow, damnit!" Shepard hit the yellow button with extreme prejudice as she grumbled irritably to herself. Another bead of sweat had trickled down her forehead, and she wiped at it angrily. "Do you think I'm goddamned colour blind or what?"
"It's blue, Shepard! Hit the blue!" Tali screeched and pranced uneasily in place. Shepard's eye began to twitch as she hit the blue button.
"Green! Purple! Orange! Black! Red! White! Grey!" Garrus bellowed, his voice reverberating eerily through the silent building.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Garrus!" Shepard roared and turned her back to the console so she could face Garrus, who involuntarily took an unsteady step backward and prayed that he wouldn't be taken to the Citadel and forced to ride the elevators for hours on end.
"No Shepard! Red! RED!" Tali flailed about nervously as Shepard stared at her blankly, startled out of her rage towards Garrus. "RED, YOU BOSH'TET!"
Shepard's eyes grew wide as she realized what Tali was going on about, and she flung herself around with a frantic 'oh shit', but it was already too late by the time she had turned around. She was locked out. "WHAT THE SHIT!" She pounded on the door angrily and let out an enraged screech before slowly turning to face Garrus. She narrowed her eyes dangerously at him and held out her hand. "Assault rifle. Now."
Garrus blinked dumbly at her a couple times before responding. "Uh…what?"
"Give me your assault rifle now." She ground out angrily as she flexed her hand in the universally acknowledged 'gimme that' motion. Her glower intensified exponentially as he clutched his rifle to him and took a half step away from her.
"What? What do you need my rifle for?"
"What the hell do you think, Einstein?" She didn't care that the reference was lost on him. "Besides, I gave you that rifle, and I can take it away." He looked as though he was going to argue, but quickly shut up as she kicked her glare up a notch. "I can make that an order, Officer Vakarian."
Reluctantly, he held his rifle out to her, a look of profound loss and regret on his face. Shepard unceremoniously snatched the weapon away from him, removed the upgrades, and held the gun up to her omnitool. "Okay little buddy, omnigel the mofo!"
Through a process that defies any explanation, be it logical, fantastic, or batshit insane, Shepard's omnitool converted the gun into four equally sized and equally disturbing piles of a gelatinous consistency and questionable origin. Shepard gathered the omnigel, most likely with some sort of omnigel vacuum app on her omnitool or something equally strange (Omnigel Scooper v.3.0.1?). She then proceeded to take said gel and haphazardly slathered it over the locked door console until the door flew open. Who knew gel could be so criminally lucrative?
"Huzzah." Shepard wiped her hand off on the wall before proceeding into the room, not so closely followed by Garrus and Tali, and tried to not think about how that just worked. It seemed she spent a vast majority of time trying to not think of things. She supposed that it was either that or wonder who the hell thought it would be an awesome idea to make a locking mechanism that could be bypassed by smearing gel over it in the event that you failed the simple flashing colours game. That would be a horrible thing for her to think about, because it would inevitably lead to her wondering why she always seemed to fail at the incredibly simple flashing colours game, and that train of thought could have only two conclusions: depression, or a homicidal rampage brought on by insanity.
"This had better be worth it…" Garrus grumbled darkly under his breath as they searched the room. There were some nice armour and weapon upgrades, a nice stash of medigel, and a small cache of credits in an empty cereal box hidden behind a broken computer console. The only thing left to investigate was a small weapons locker in the far corner.
"I call dibs!" Shepard trotted over and dropped to one knee to get a closer look at the crate. "Shit!"
"What?" Tali looked up from the computer terminal she had hacked (she was checking to see if she had any new messages on an all-Quarian dating site) and flinched slightly as Shepard jumped to her feet and gave the crate an angry kick, obviously frustrated.
"The damn thing is LOCKED!" Shepard roughly ran her hand through her hair and looked at Tali, an almost malicious glint in her eyes. "Hope you're not too attached to that shotgun."
What's up with all the gel, anyway? Medical gel, magical fix-it-all gel…well, I guess that's only two gels. Well…there goes that point right out the window, which would probably be made of some sort of gel in the game. Meh.
If there's any horrible spelling mistakes, please tell me. Most grammatical mistakes were noticed and duly ignored.