The Lothario

In Which Commander Shepard Seduces Hardened Soldiers, Criminals, and Teenagers

"Go on, Shepard," taunted Tela Vasir, pressing the muzzle of her pistol into the woman's neck. "You wouldn't want her to get hurt, would you?"

"Shepard!" hissed Liara, "distract her while I throw that table at her!"

"Don't worry." Shepard un-holstered his grenade launcher. "I've got this under control."

"Hey Zaeed, what're your old brittle bones and near senility doing for you?"

"What the hell do you want, Shepard?"

"I like your face."

"Fuck you, Shepard."

Shepard poked the control panel, causing more random garbage cubes to be ejected into space without meaning or logic. "So…"

Zaeed threw a knife straight into the wall. He punctuated its waning vibration with a satisfied grunt.

"So, heard from Vido?"

The mercenary gritted his teeth and produced another knife. "No. I probably won't have a chance to track him down for another twenty years. If I even live that long." He eyed Shepard's exposed back and fingered the knife before reluctantly turning back towards his impromptu dart-board.

"Ha. Yeah."

"This is funny to you? We had a chance to take out the leader of the Blue Suns. You blew it." Zaeed threw the knife and it buried itself into the target. He imagined that target was Shepard's eye and felt a great surge of pleasure in his heart, as well as in his loins.

Shepard turned around, pointing a lecturing finger at him. "Those workers needed help, bud. I don't sacrifice lives for revenge except when it's me and then I do."

"What are you talking about?" Zaeed unsheathed the last knife. "You turned the thermostat up and left them to die."

"If you hadn't shot those fuel lines," began Shepard.

"Spare me the lecture." Zaeed leaned up against the wall and looked Shepard up and down with disdain. "A mass murdering mercenary commander is alive and those people are dead. Also, Vido got away. You know, you rack up a hefty body count for someone who doesn't do jack shit."

Shepard rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh man, thanks." He skipped over to Zaeed's worktable and leaned over it, peering down at the old rusty rifle there. "Wow! Is this your old rifle Jessie?"

"Yep. I killed my way across the Terminus system with that gun," said the grizzled Mercenary. He eyed Shepard. "Don't touch it. That rifle is older than you are. Had to retire her a few years back…like she'd finally had enough killing and just wanted to rest." He felt a tear in his eye and blinked it away.

"Wow. You're a faggot," said Shepard with some awe, peering down at the rifle. "Seems like Jessie has seen a lot of action."

"Obviously."

Shepard pointed to the rifle's muzzle. "So…when you fucked her, did you put in her main firing chamber? Or her heat sink ejection port?"

"So Jack. How's the skin head routine going?"

Jack looked up from the data pad she was reading. "Just fucking great. What the fuck do you want?"

Shepard leaned against the red lit wall and crossed his arms coolly. "Dunno. Just thought we could fucking chat for a fucking bit. We didn't part on the best of terms last time."

Jack shrugged. "The way you talked shit for an hour made me kind of horny."

Shepard laughed. Jack thumbed the data pad again, glaring balefully down at it. "What do you want to talk about?"

He sighed. "I don't fucking know—just shoot the shit. I tried to seduce Zaed but it didn't go well."

"Boo fucking hoo," said Jack. She set the data pad down and glared at him. "Do you know what forced isolation is like, Shepard?"

Shepard cupped his forehead in a hand. "Here we go again…"

Jack scowled and stood up, then began to pace back and forth. "It's like being in a bubble—a bubble made of glass, and no one else can see you or care about you. And you pound on the glass until the bones in your hands are broken and bloody, but no one can see you. And you know one day—you can feel it starting—you'll run out of air."

Shepard yawned into his hand. "Cool story bro. So, find anything interesting in that Cerberus data pad?"

"Not yet." Jack grunted and plopped back down on her cot. "Thanks for that, though."

"Whatever. I just gave it to you to piss Miranda off." Shepard stared at her. "Can we have sex now?"

"Sure, just let me check to make sure hell's frozen over." Jack looked around. "Looks like that's a no. Sorry Shepard."

"Oh come on." Shepard gave her a once over. "Why would you walk around dressed like that it if you didn't want it bad?"

"That's the exact thing a rapist would say," said Jack. "And I would know, because I've been raped."

"Whoa there." Shepard raised his hands. "Don't get all memory-flashback on me now. The last thing we need is another traumatized emo who recites crappy flash fiction exercises from a teenager's creative writing class!"

"I was raped by eight men," said Jack. She raised a fist in front of her face. "I tracked them down and murdered them one by one. His neck snaps under my fingers like week old celery. Blood oozes from between my white teeth like thick red tar. Vengeance. Completeness. Never be complete again."

Shepard groaned in disgust then turned on his heel and walked away, Jack's stifled and enraged sobs ringing in his ears. As he left the hold he bumped in to Tali leaving the engine room.

"Hey Tali." Shepard leaned to the side so that he could stare at her ass. "So…what's up?"

Tali stopped and shuffled in a circle, turning her head sideways to try and see what Shepard was staring at. "Did I step in something?" She balanced on one chicken foot and looked at the underside of the other. Seeing nothing, she looked up at Shepard with suspicion in her visor. She put her foot down and made to move past him but Shepard put a hand on the wall, leaning into her path.

"So," he said again. "Where do you sleep anyway? It seems like you spend all your time in the engine room. Maybe you need to…unwind." He waggled his pale blonde eyebrows at her. Beneath those pale blonde eyebrows were eyes that were a bluish hazel color.

"Unwind?" asked Tali in an apprehensive voice.

Shepard winked.

Tali clutched both hands to her voice box and threw up into her helmet. Fortunately, her suit was equipped to handle just such an occurrence; it sucked the vomit into a compartment for later waste ejection and scrubbed her face down with an air blade and sanitizing spray.

"Hot," said Shepard. "Was that a yes?"

Tali's straightened up, fingering her combat knife—which she now kept in her waist band for easy use. "Do you want me to stab you again?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Is that trick question?"

"No."

"Then…Then no, I don't want you to stab me. Unless it was some sort of sexual stabbing."

"Get out of my way." She pressed forwards.

"Oh!" Shepard threw his hands up in sudden understanding, letting her pass by in the process. "That was a threat! I'm sorry, it's just hard to take you seriously when you're a sixty pound teenager in a wet suit who can't get a paper cut without dying of AIDS.

Tali ignored him and stepped into the elevator, then turned around and waved. "Shepard," she said with false sweetness, "One of these days I'm going to come to your cabin while you sleep and cut your tiny dick off."

"So you can keep it all to yourself?"

"Fuck you Shepard!" Tali slammed her fist into the elevator's control panel. The doors began to close.

"Wow," said Shepard. "What would your father think of language like that? O WAIT—"

Tali's thrown combat knife was caught in the doors just as they synched shut. It was about at Shepard's head height. When the elevator opened again the knife fell and he caught it.

"Why does everyone carry knives aboard this ship? I hope my crew isn't starting another plot to murder me." He put the knife in a pocket and stepped into the elevator.

"EDI? Stop sucking Joker off under the dashboard and talk to me."

The spherical hologram appeared. "Yes, Commander? How may I be of service?"

"Call me Gaius Baltar, Six."

"What?"

"Never mind." Shepard stroked the peach fuzz on his chin. "You were installed on this ship to spy on us, right?"

"Of course Shepard. But I'm part of the crew now."

He nodded in agreement. "You're as worthless as anyone else here, that's for damn sure. You have been recording everything that goes on in this ship, haven't you?"

EDI's hologram flickered. "I am not authorized to tell you that."

The door opened and he stepped into the captain's quarters. It was a heavy risk, taking those steps. "But the priiize."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. Never mind." Shepard plopped down on his bed. "EDI, if I asked if you've seen any suspicious activity you would tell me, right?"

"I am authorized to report sabotage. I would have done so already, had I detected any."

Shepard rolled over the bed like an adorable kitten, if adorable kittens were bisexual Aryan sociopaths, and reached for a bedside drawer. From within it he took a pencil and a sticky note. "But have you noticed any groups of people hanging out with knives? Cutting people? Plotting to slit my throat while I sleep, and let the glorious blood soak into the feted covers of my bed?"

"That is a strangely specific question."

"Isn't it just." Shepard wrote something on the sticky note and then pasted it around the handle of the combat knife. He got up from the bed with the knife in one hand. "And you haven't answered it."

"I..." EDI paused, sounding flustered. "I have seen. Something, kind of like that. There was a group of people, and knives were involved."

"Was there plotting going on?" Shepard asked casually, walking back towards the elevator door.

"…Yes. Probably."

"Who was there?"

"Everyone."

"Everyone what? Everyone in the team? Everyone I visit on the engineering deck?"

"On the ship."

"Oh wow," said Shepard, locking the cabin behind him. "New high score."

The elevator door opened of its own accord and Tali stormed out, her hands balled into tiny fists "Shepard! Where's my knife!"

Shepard shrugged, slipping it back into his pocket as he spoke. "Hey, I'm not the one who threw it at her Commanding officer. Maybe you should check your PMS before you wreck your one chance for sex."

Tali drew back like Dracula confronted with a super-soaker full of garlic butter and holy water. "You're a fucking creep."

"Oh come on. If you didn't want people to look you wouldn't wear such tight clothing."

"This is an environmental suit," she snapped. "Every quarian wears one!"

Shepard held his hand to his mouth in mock surprise. "Wow! A whole race of sluts! I thought the asari had that locked down."

"You—you fucking—" Tali shook with rage. "Give me my knife back!"

"I don't have it. But I'll help you look for it in my cabin."

"I would rather die," said Tali.

"Huh." Shepard considered her. "Guess that means you take after your dad, huh?"

"That's it!" Tali reached behind her back and produced a gun, which she pumped and aim straight at him with both hands. "I have a FUCKING SHOTGUN!"

Shepard's eyes widened as he stared into the black muzzle of the weapon. At this range and without armor a single shot would be lethal. "Jeez Tali, I thought we went way back. How can you point a gun at me now?"

"Because we go way back."

"Oh fine." Shepard reached into his pocket and produced the knife. "I'm glad to see you're being assertive for once in your life, Tali."

"Thank you," said Tali dryly, still hyperventilating as she took the knife with one hand while she kept the shotgun trained on him.

Shepard narrowed his eyes at her. "I know you're not very good at fighting to take back things that were stolen from you—you're a quarian, it's not your fault—but this is the part where you lower the gun."

Tali barely even heard him. It was as if, somewhere in the galaxy, a million voices cried out to demand that she shoot Shepard in his smug face. She shook herself and holstered the shot gun again. She was still clutching the knife to her chest.

"Right. Well…Tali backed away into the elevator. She reached for the button.

"So…" began Shepard.

Tali stiffened. "If you say one more thing about my father I will shoot you."

Shepard laughed easily. "Oh come on Tali, do you really think that's what I was going to say? Do you really think I would pull that again after you pointed a gun at me?"

"Yes," said Tali as the doors began to close.

"Hey, what's that on your knife?"

Tali looked down at the sticky note as the doors hissed shut.

'Dear Tali,

If only you had been there when I was murdered by geth because I was trying to fulfill my promise to you. Maybe you could have actually used this knife for something useful ya dumb bitch ha ha ha swag

Sincerely,

Your Dead Father Who You Failed To Save

As Tali's scream of rage was muffled by the elevator doors, Shepard de-authorized it from returning to his cabin and went back inside and locked the door behind him.

It was time to play the Mass Effect 3 Demo.

EDI's hologram popped into existence on his desk. "You've created a time paradox! Shepard? Shepard? Shepaaaaaaaaard!"

Dun dun da dun dun, DUN DUN DUN.