After our meal in the restaurant, Tali and I walked back to the bar where we were supposed to meet Shepard. I had a lovely time, to say the least. When we arrived, we saw Garrus, Wrex, Allen, and Thomas had finished their shopping, and were all sitting in the booth Shepard rented.
"Well, well, well. Look who's back. Paging Dr. Love, repeat, paging Dr. Love." Allen said, pretending to hold a microphone.
"What?" I said, trying not to embarrass myself in front of Tali.
"Oh, nothing." Thomas said with a long smile on his face. "Did you two have fun?"
"Um, yes." We both replied nervously.
"What did you two do during your break?" Allen asked intently with a shit eating grin on his face.
"That's none of your business Allen, so shut your trap." I said with frustration in my voice.
"Come on, Sean. We're going to find out sooner or later, just tell us." Thomas said with reasoning in his voice.
"I'm not going to tell you two anything. Those are not the kinds of questions you ask the likes of me." I said, seeing Tali nod her head in agreement.
"Alright, fine Sean." Allen said, dismissing the conversation. "So how much longer till Catherine is supposed to get back?" He added.
"Um, she's supposed to be back in about 10 minutes. Why?" I said, looking at the time on my Omni-tool and sitting down. Tali sat right next to me.
"The four of us have been waiting for half an hour. This place doesn't have much going for it in terms of entertainment." Allen replied in a sarcastic tone.
"Then just listen to your music." I told him.
"I can't." He shot back.
"What?" I said, confused. "Why not?"
"Well since I lost my ear buds, I can't listen to my music in silence. When I tried to listen to my music, ERCS came up to me and ordered me to shut it off. Said it was "disruptive" to the environment." Allen said with frustration in his voice.
I pretended to looked around the room, looked back at Allen and said, "What atmosphere?"
That got Allen to laugh. "Yeah, I told him the same thing, but he ignored me. Uptight assholes." Allen said, looking at one of the guards.
"How much do you bet we'll end up getting into a firefight with them before the day is out?" I asked.
"I would bet 50 credits." Tali said playfully.
"Your on, Tali." Allen said to Tali in a challenging tone of voice.
"Deal." Tali replied with a the same tone.
...
The rest of the time we spent just sitting in our booth, talking among one another. While we were talking, I noticed Tali had her hand on my lap. I didn't know what to do.
My mind raced. "Should I hold her hand? Should I ignore it? Aw man, I need to think of something!"
Then it hit me. I found out earlier that YouTube somehow still existed, and have found a really funny video. I sent Allen and Thomas the video, but they didn't watch it. I took advantage of that.
"Hey, I know something you two can do. I sent you guys a awesome video. You should watch it while you wait." I said in a serious tone.
"Good idea. Where was it from again?" Thomas asked while looking at the extranet on his Omni-tool.
"It was on YouTube." I said.
"Alright." They both said in unison, not seeming surprised by the fact YouTube existed here. I took advantage of this distraction and put mt hand on Tali's hand. She didn't say anything, but I saw her stir in her seat. I turned and smiled at her. I'm guessing she smiled back.
Our moment ended abruptly when someone stormed into the bar with a pissed off look on her face. It was Shepard. I'm guessing she didn't have much luck getting a garage pass.
"I see your meeting with the Administrator went well." I said with sarcasm in my voice.
"I spent two hours waiting to see the bastard, only to get blown off as soon as I entered. Asshole!" Shepard yelled under her breath at nobody in general, crashing into a seat.
"Well, then how are we going to get to Peak 15?" Allen asked.
"I could help." I heard from the other side of the bar.
"How could you help?" Shepard asked in an annoyed tone.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lorik Qui'in. I'm in charge of the Synthetic Insights offices, or at least I was." Lorik told us with disgust in his voice.
"How can you help us?" Shepard asked, interested.
"See, I found evidence proving our dear administrator is corrupt, but he got wind of this and instead accused me of being corrupt. So now, he has hired ERCS guards to raid my office in an attempt to find the evidence. If you can get me back my evidence, I will give you my garage pass." Lorik told Shepard.
"So you just want us to find this evidence and bring it back to you? What about the ERCS? They aren't just going to let us waltz in and take the evidence." Garrus stated.
"No they aren't, but they shouldn't be accepted bribes, ether." Lorik said with no remorse.
"Well Shepard, unless you want to spend more time trying a better way, I suggest we go find the evidence." I said reasonably.
Shepard thought about it for a while, and then asked Lorik, "What will you do with this evidence when you have it?"
"I will use it to have him removed from his position, of course. Don't worry, it'll be put to good use." Lorik reassured.
"Alright, fine." Shepard finally agreed. "Where can we find this evidence?"
"It's on my personal computer. Here take this OSD. Put it into my computer and it will download the evidence." Lorik said, handing Shepard the OSD.
Shepard signaled all of us. We got up and headed to the elevator.
"We'll be back soon." Shepard told Lorik as the elevator doors closed.
…
When we reached the elevator that went up to Synthetic Insights, Shepard unlocked it and we piled in. At the top, we were "greeted" by two ERCS guards posted to watch the door. Shepard worked her charm and convinced them to leave. The other guards would have to be persuaded to leave by more...violent means.
As the two guards we had met left, the other ERCS guards started taking up positions in an attempt to box us in. All of us broke off into little "teams", and engaged the rent-a-cops.
Moving from my cover, Tali covered me as we moved up. Two ERCS guards attempted to flank me, but were picked off by Wrex before they could reach me.
I took out my M-76 Revenant and killed two guards who were seeking cover behind a couch. They didn't stand a chance since couches aren't very good cover.
I saw Kaidan use a biotic throw on one turian, slamming him into a wall with a stomach turning "crunch".
Shepard was fighting like it was nothing, breezing through the ERCS guards like a hot knife through butter.
Thomas was covering us with his M-29 Incisor, drilling a hole into the skull of one human.
Allen was charging ahead with both his M-6 Carnifex Hand Cannons, mowing down three unlucky ERCS guards who were caught out in the open.
Everyone else was going an incredible job, clearing out the guards with ease. We reached Lorik's office less than two minutes later. When the evidence was finished downloading, we went to leave the office, we saw Sergeant Bitch was waiting with some more of her rent-a-cops flanking her.
I felt adventurous today, so I decided to do something really stupid.
"I'll take the Sergeant, guys." I said to everyone.
"What? Why?" Shepard asked, surprised.
"I can't stand her and her bitchy attitude. I wanna be the one to take her down." I said with determination in my voice.
"Oh, Keelah, I hope you know what your doing..." Tali said, face palming her helmet.
"Oh, I'll be fine." I reassured, patting her on the shoulder.
"Alright, she's yours, Sean. Don't hurt yourself." Shepard said, crossing her arms.
"Thanks." I said, as we stared walking again.
When we reached Sergeant Bitch and her cronies, she gave us the "You know what we do to cop killers on my planet?" bullshit, and Wrex shot back with the "You know what we do to dirty cops on our planet?" statement. Awesome.
When I saw her guards draw their weapons, I charged forward be fore her biotics could flare up, and tackled her to the ground. She punched me in the stomach, but I didn't really feel anything through the armor. She tried to land a blow on my head, but I dodged it, grabbed her arm, and twisted it backwards. She managed to hit me in the groin with her knee, stunning me for a brief moment, allowing her to land one good blow on my chin.
That really set me off. I yanked the knife out of my sheath and slashed at her. Her cheap armor was even worse at protecting her than it looked, considering I cut right through it, leaving a large gash on her side. She tried to grab my knife, but I took another swing, leaving a large cut on her face. She was pissed.
She attempted to high kick me, but I grabbed her foot in midair and pulled her off balance, bringing her to the floor once more.
She tried once more to charge her biotics, but before she could finish, I jumped on top of her, embedding my knife in her chest. She got a surprised look on her face, and stopped charging. She gave me one more nasty look before she let out a loud sigh and her head hit the floor. After retrieving my knife, I reinserted into my sheath, and looked at the others. They looked stunned, even Allen and Thomas didn't say anything about our fight.
"Sean, that was some of the most impressive hand-to-hand fighting I have ever seen." Garrus said, breaking the silence.
"You think so, huh? Thanks." I said, not noticing the fact that the process, the other had killed all the other guards.
"That was a incredible take-down, Sean." Ash quipped.
"Thanks." I replied sheepishly. "I vote we leave before more ERCS guards arrive." I said loudly to break everyone out of their trance.
"Oh, right." Shepard said, directing all of us to the elevator.
I had yet to notice I had blood splattered all over my armor.
"Yikes, I'll have to clean that off later." I said loudly. Everyone in the elevator let out a collective chuckle, even Wrex.
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Kaidan said. "You look like and axe murderer."
"Yeah, I'm not going on shore leave looking like this." I said to myself. "I could be arrested if I were to approach a child looking like this."
"Hey, at least your not covered with slime or nuclear waste." Allen said, knowing I obviously referenced Freeman's Mind.
"Oh, by the way, Allen. There's something I need to tell you." Tali said bluntly.
"What's that?" He asked.
"I win the bet." Tali replied simply.
"Dammit." Allen said, remembering their deal.
Author's Notes: Ah, long chapter is long. Combat writing is boring. I don't thing I'm very good when it comes to writing battle scenes, do I'll try to be a descriptive as possible. A little thing between Tali ans Sean at the beginning there. Ironically, I found it easier to write things between Tali and Sean than it was to write battle scenes. As always, please review, fav, and subscribe to my story. This is GIR, signing out.