The plan had not gone nearly as well as Kasumi had hoped. If C-Sec hadn't been more prepared the second time that Grunt got stuck in the railing then maybe the plan would have succeeded and Miranda would be out of confinement, but it didn't, and now Grunt, Zaeed, and her beloved Jacob were all in there with her. She hated to admit it, but she was out of ideas. Maybe with some more time, she would be able to come up with a better plan, but time was running out and Shepard was bound to notice them all gone sooner or later.
She took a deep breath before leaving her hiding place and entering the elevator. When she emerged, the crew was milling about as normal, admiring decorations, shaking their presents, getting yelled at for shaking their presents, or just sitting around and talking with their friends or people that weren't their friends but they were too polite to ask to go away.
Shepard was on the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table and Tali asleep with her head in his lap. She looked so peaceful that Kasumi almost hated waking and/or disturbing her, but she knew that what she was about to say to Shepard would result in one or the other.
"Shepard! Hello!" Kasumi said with feigned cheerfulness.
Shepard seemed surprised to see her after her extended absence. "There you are! Where have you been hiding all this time?"
"I wasn't hiding from you! I was just doing some Christmas shopping...for um...a few days..." Shepard seemed to catch on that something was wrong and suddenly had a suspicious look on his face. "Okay, so I haven't really been shopping, but there's a funny story about where I've been all this time, and I promise you that eventually you're going to look back on it and laugh...eventually."
"Kasumi, where's Miranda?" Shepard sounded displeased, like he'd worked out a long time ago that something was wrong and that no one had bothered to tell him.
"Oh, she's with Jacob," Kasumi replied. "And Grunt...and Zaeed..."
Shepard had his arms crossed over his chest and was giving her a deeply accusatory look. "And they are where?" He put one arm on Tali to still her when she stirred slightly, disturbed by their conversation.
"Well you see, Grunt accidentally got her a little bit in trouble with C-Sec, so we all tried to break her out, and now they're all stuck in there and I can't figure out how to get them all back out again..."
Shepard stared at her for what must have been about a minute. "I'm sorry, but where did you say they were?" he asked her bluntly. Kasumi had a feeling that this was not going to end well for someone. She just hoped whoever it was, it wasn't her or anyone she cared about.
"Okay Frank, we've got a three elcor pile-up in the Presidium. Tell the guys down in medical we need a crane and a full team of paramedics, stat." Bailey was in awe once he finished with his orders. He stood next to the pile of elcor, hand clamped over his face and periodically sighing. "How does this even happen?"
"They all turned the corner too fast to see each other and couldn't slow down in time," another officer informed him.
Bailey slowly turned his head and stared at him. "Going too fast to slow down?! They're elcor!"
The wounded elcor struggled to stand up, but they were all a tangled lump of limbs and flailing body parts. "In great pain: Please tell them to hurry faster," one of them pleaded.
Bailey noticed that the holiday crowd was moving in an odd pattern, as though trying to get away from a predator making its way straight through. A volus with a clipboard and two chatting asari backed out of the way as Shepard pushed his way past and made a beeline straight for Bailey. Kasumi and Garrus followed closely behind him, both rather amused by how everyone seemed to flee from Shepard's path.
The chatter between two turian officers responding to the scene of the accident died down as they both noticed Shepard in their presence and slowly they turned their head to Bailey to watch the conversation unfold.
"Shepard! Did you need anything?" Bailey asked, taking note that Shepard seemed to be a seething ball of rage at the moment. His burning hatefire was almost detectable by heat seekers at this point.
Shepard feigned a smile, trying to at least pretend to be pleasant with someone who had been helpful to him so many times before. "Bailey, I've been told that you have some of my squadmates detained at C-Sec, one of whom has been in there for a few days at this point?" he said with a strained friendliness.
Bailey remote linked into the names of those being kept in the holding cells. "It's the holidays, Shepard. We have a lot of people detained. Could you be a little more specific?"
"Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Urdnot Grunt, and Zaeed Massani."
"Hmm...well we have three of them on record, but your friend Mr. Massani seems to have put down 'Ur Mum' where the form asked for his name and no one bothered to correct it."
"You have them filling out their own booking records now?" Garrus asked.
"Only when it gets really busy like this. We're not supposed to, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to Pallin or anything. The guy's enough of a hard ass as it is."
"If you can help me get my crew out, I'll gladly forget everything you just said," Shepard agreed.
"Done. Follow me, please."
"And leave us with the elcor?" one of the turians complained.
"Well it isn't like they're going anywhere anytime soon!" Bailey pointed out as he walked away.
Taz and Micah were both sitting at the front desk. It was surprisingly quiet, especially considering the chaos of the past couple of weeks. Taz looked up briefly from his magazine and did a double take when he saw Bailey and quickly got his feet down off the console in front of him.
"Did you need something Captain?" Micah asked, similarly trying to make himself look like he wasn't momentarily slacking off by using the C-Sec console to play Cookie Clicker.
"Yes. I believe my friend Commander Shepard here needs his squad back," Bailey replied. He motioned towards Shepard standing next to him.
"Hey Taz, Micah," Garrus waved. "Glad to see you two haven't been fired yet."
"Screw you, Garrus!" Taz snapped.
"Wait wait, back up..." Micah said. "Did you say Commander Shepard? As in you're Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre?" Suddenly he and Taz both seemed a lot more nervous. "And you say we have your crew..."
"I'm just going to need you to release Miranda Lawson, Jacob Taylor, Urdnot Grunt, and Ur Mum from their cells, please," Shepard replied casually. He glared at them both. "Now..."
Taz hit a few buttons on the display in front of him. The holodisplay turned orange as it brought up what he was looking for. Bailey turned the screen around towards him so he could read it. "Let's see...your friends are facing charges for a failed attempt at a prison break, and your friend Miss Lawson seems to have been brought in even earlier for petty vandalism after she destroyed a rare, Thessian fruit tree and one of the tomato plants at the community garden."
"And C-Sec held her for several days for that?" Garrus asked.
"Of course not," Taz shook his head. "We held her for several days because she then tried to make a run for it, tripped a C-Sec officer, pushed a volus into a fountain, and biotically knocked over a group of hanar trying to host a charity drive to benefit drell orphans."
"I see..." Shepard nodded. "Alright. Here's the deal. Taz, was it?" The turian nodded. "I'll gladly pay whatever bail or fine or whatever it takes for you to release my squad right now if you tell me one thing...I'm their commanding officer. How come I was never informed that any of them were held here?"
Taz and Micah both exchanged a panicked look. "Um, see, I'm sure we tried to get through to you..." Micah tried to answer.
"Really? Well apparently you weren't really trying all that hard because we've been docked here for almost a week now and I haven't heard word from anyone that any of my crew members were being held here at C-Sec," Shepard pointed out. "They could have been reported for abandoning their posts, and that would not fair well on any of them, don't you think?"
"No, sir," Taz shook his head.
"What if someone was looking for them and panicking that they might be dead somewhere? You didn't think it was important to let me know that you had them?"
Micah replied, "Well, that's not really our call..."
"Well then whose call was it, Micah?" Bailey asked him. "Because I'm pretty sure that informing relevant parties is a standard part of the booking process."
"Considering they didn't even fill out the proper forms themselves, could you really blame them for missing that step, though?" Garrus pointed out. Both Taz and Micah suddenly looked at the floor when they realized that everyone was aware that they weren't even doing their own jobs properly.
Taz avoided looking Shepard in the face as he hit a few more buttons on the screen, which turned from orange to a deep blue. "We'll uh...let them off with a fine this time," he replied. "Just make sure Miss Lawson stays away from the community garden."
"Why?" Shepard asked in a low, icy tone. "Did the tomato plants take out a restraining order on her?"
"What about their cellmates?" Kasumi suddenly spoke up. "The turian and some krogan named Zipper or Bowtie or something like that..."
"You seriously want us to let Korvus and Buttons out too?" Micah asked like she was crazy. "Buttons will be back in there within a week and I'm pretty sure Korvus ate one of his previous cellmates at some point..."
"All we found was a boot and the words "help me" written in blood," Taz added.
"Yes, I seriously want you to let them out. Oh yeah, and the salarian. I think Zaeed called him Sparkles?"
Micah and Taz looked at Shepard. He nodded like he expected them to be let out too. They then looked at Bailey who stared them down. "Just let them all go, Taz," Bailey replied. "Shepard's not going to leave without them and I'm sure Micah wants to get back to clicking on cookies."
"You're playing that game too?" Garrus asked. "I've been up all night with that stupid game!"
"I know! It's so addicting!" Micah nodded while Taz was busy organizing the releases of Miranda's cellmates on his console.
They were waiting just outside C-Sec when Bailey walked Shepard's discharged squadmates and Miranda's former cellmates out. Sparkles was still unconscious and was slung over Korvus' shoulder.
"Bye, Taz. Bye, Micah," Buttons said on his way out.
"Goodbye, Buttons..." both of them grumbled.
Miranda was relieved to finally be out of there, at least until she saw Kasumi standing next to Garrus and waving at her. She suddenly wished there weren't so many witnesses around to see her flay her alive.
"So..." Shepard began, looking at Miranda. "Apparently you pushed a volus into a fountain?"
"He was hogging the walkway!" Miranda replied defensively.
There was only less than a day before the Normandy Christmas party and everything was almost ready. The missing squadmates were all back home, though Miranda was avoiding Kasumi currently. Jacob seemed to have forgiven her surprisingly quickly much to her delight while Zaeed and Grunt never really seemed to care about their quick stint in the C-Sec brig.
Mess Sergeant Gardner reassured Shepard that all of the cooking was done and the cookies were baked and ready to be placed on festive trays. The decorations were all set up and inspected for potential fire or falling hazards after Grunt's seemingly endless mission to destroy every light strand on the ship and not once did the tree fall over on someone's grandmother and have to be nailed to the wall.
Really the only thing out of place were the three stowaways who had followed them back to the ship. "Hey, can I bum a ride to Omega off you guys?" Korvus asked before walking on with the unconscious salarian in tow. "Kay, thanks," he said when Joker opened his mouth to say something.
"I love what you've done with the place!" Buttons said while he looked around. "It looks just like the decorations at C-Sec!"
"Um...I think we're stuck with them until after the party," Miranda said while they watched her cellmates make themselves at home in the lounge. Korvus had thrown Sparkles over the back of the couch like a throw blanket and was currently using him as neck support.
"The bar is restocked," Shepard said as he aligned the last bottle of vodka on the shelf next to some odd, dayglo pink liquid with the consistency of nail polish of mystery origin that had apparently come with the bar.
"And Wrex isn't around to mix the drinks, so we shouldn't have a repeat of the last Normandy party," Garrus added.
"Wait, what happened at the last party?" Jack inquired.
"Shepard got blasted out of his mind, started freaking out, and ran through the Normandy pulling his clothes off and screaming that they were haunted."
Shepard clamped his hand around Garrus' mouth. "We agreed never to speak of that again," he said darkly.
"Wait, that was you?" Tali spun around. "Joker told me a homeless batarian snuck on board the ship!"
"Don't even get me started on you, Miss 'Takes Three Sips of a Turian Beer and Forgets How Chairs Work'!" Shepard retorted.