Wolf in Shepard's Clothing 2

by cmitts93

After losing some of the people dearest to me and cheating death so many times I've lost track, I've finally found a bit of peace working as a bounty hunter on the Citadel. However, when the man who inspired me to become what I am today asked me to jump back into the fire by his side, how could I possibly say no?

11. What Does the A Stand For?

"Holy crap what took you guys so long?"

Chelsea stepped out from the Mako and greeted the three of us who had spent the last half-hour in an awkward silence with a friendly slap to the back of my head in particular. "I dunno Wolf, it's almost like we had to drive across the fricking moon to fight a rogue VI's army of mechs and drones."

"Shit Chels." I rubbed the rear portion of my skull with a wince. "Could you maybe punch me in the armor next time? That hurts a lot less." Popping up from my seated position, I joined the rest of the Normandy ground crew as we piled back into the Mako. "I just hate waiting. Plus, the company could be better too…although I'm sure they'd say about the same thing."

To give them credit, Ashley and Garrus didn't bother taking my extremely obvious bait and instead gave a little shrug that more or less just meant yes. "Awww, I'm so sorry to hear that Wolfy missed his commanding officer." Chelsea teased as she went from nothing to full throttle on the Mako, not even bothering with the whole concept of gradual acceleration.

"Technically I'm pretty sure Caleb's our CO…just throwing that out there."

"Yeah I hate to agree with Ashley but I'm pretty sure he's the lead on this."

Caleb chose that moment to jump in over the channel as he watched from his sky perch in the Normandy. "That's because I am."

"Well it's too bad you're not here then isn't it?" She made a pleased little sound at the put-down of her younger twin. "And now that we're all back together like one big happy family, we can go blow up this last core!"

"Gee I really hope there's more rocket drones to deal with! It's just such a joy holding up a Bio-Cade under the brunt of those things."

"Quit complaining Wolf." Shockingly, it was the quarian who responded. "Weren't you just talking about how bored you've been?"

The team laughed at the seemingly shy quarian's put down and even Wrex gave a little chuckle of approval. "Heh. With everything that's happening, I'm starting to think better of you quarian. Not that that's saying much, your species is so squishy."

"I have a name, krogan."

That actually got a belly laugh from the massive red-plated alien. "I'm glad I decided to sign up for this. Might be fun after all."

"Speaking of fun." I recognized the edge in Chelsea's voice. "Hold onto your seats because we've got more turrets."

Great. This whole thing again. Well, at least I'll be able to add, "vomited on the moon," to my list of accomplishments. Or maybe that's a low.

LINE BREAK

"Wrex. Wolf." Chelsea pointed to me and the krogan. It had taken a few minutes but we had taken out the defenses with little issue and were now ready to make the final push. "Stack up on the door. Wolf you'll be providing biotic support primarily so prep yourself for that."

"Roger." Now that we were finally in an atmosphere with oxygen, I took off my mask and downed a smoothie designed specifically to replace the nutrients used during biotics. I also think I now know how I'm going to steal this data…not quite sure why I didn't just think of taking off my mask earlier. That solves the whole issue of them watching through my hood's data feed.

"Wrex, you're going to be slamming them with biotics and shotguns so stick right behind Wolf."

"I'm a krogan. I don't need some human meatshield to absorb blows for me. I take the hit, kill them and regenerate after my enemies are crushed underfoot."

"Trust me Wrex, I'd much rather be behind you too buddy." I heaved a sigh. Why the hell did I ever come up with this stupid technique anyway? My skills just had to tailor towards being a movable wall.

Chelsea practically pounded her foot into the floor and I could feel her teeth grinding with how clenched they were. "Wolf will be going first. Wrex will be right behind him. Ashley and I will be on the flanks. In the very back will be Garrus and Tali. Are there any more questions about how this is going to go down?"

"None whatsoever." Chelsea scared me. I didn't mess around with women who scared me.

"Good. Fucking open this door then when you're ready."

"On three then?"

"Sure." I looked to Wrex who pulled out his shotgun. "Here's your chance Butcher. Don't disappoint me."

"Right. That's just what I need to hear." I heaved a sigh and pulled out my pistol. "One, two, three."

Once again, we piled into the following room and I immediately took center stage, throwing out a domed barrier that allowed the team to get into position behind solid cover. "Great." I muttered to myself as I sloppily dove back behind a pillar, heavy machine gun fire littering the floor where I just stood. "Hey Chels, they've got a fucking YMIR mech here."

"I picked up on that Wolf." She threw a handful of grenades that only slightly pestered the towering metal behemoth as it lumbered towards us.

Vakarian sarcastically chimed in on the comms. "I'll bet you wouldn't mind those rocket drones right about now huh Wolfert?"

"Good one Garrus." An explosion hit the back wall, missing my little hiding spot by just a few feet. There's the rocket drones making their appearance. "Hey how about you wish for like, an entire platoon of Marines or for all these fucking robots to just spontaneously combust next time?"

Swiveling out while commentating, I fired my weapon until it was almost overheated and then threw out a couple warps. From the corner of my eye I could see Tali launching a drone of her own that dipped in and out of the enemy ones, firing little bolts of electricity that arced through each one as it passed. Eventually it made its way over to the lumbering robot and began to pester it which made me chuckle despite the situation. It was like watching an elephant being harassed by a little fly, except in this case the animals were armed with weapons designed to kill in a half-second of course.

Thankfully, this opened up an opportunity for the rest of us and apparently Chelsea had the same idea. "Wrex, Wolf, I don't care what you do but work together to take down that big-ass mech right the fuck now. We'll make sure the rest of these things don't bother you."

I just barked out a quick nothing as Wrex responded, his words punctuated by blasts from his massive Claymore shotgun. "It's about time."

Charging out into the open, I was greeted by a LOKI mech that was caught in between the two of us who were now advancing. "Wrex, blast its head off."

Instead of the shotgun I was expecting, his fist glowed with a blue hue as he surged forward and literally knocked the thing's head off. Guess that works too. As the droid started to seize up, I focused mentally and picked it up with my biotics before hurling the ticking time bomb at the larger target in front of us. The timing was near perfect because as soon as the two made contact, a bright orange flame burst from the already damaged mech that engulfed the other in its intensity.

That actually earned a little chuckle from Wrex which made me sigh in relief. I was a bit worried about how he'd react to me giving an order as well as putting him in immediate danger but I guess I should have realized just who it was I was dealing with right now.

Speak of the devil, his deep, throaty voice rang out over the din of battle. "I'll finish this one off Wolf."

He surrounded himself in an intensely bright biotic aura and simultaneously yanked his fist backwards, pulling the now staggered YMIR mech towards him as he launched forward in a charge. As the two met in a clash of titans, to my immense shock, the bulky synthetic practically splintered from the force of the krogan's attack as it flew backwards into the wall and immediately deactivated. I guess the combined force of the pulling and pushing had a rather devastating effect.

I was practically slack jawed from the display, just letting my body run on the combat autopilot I'd become so familiar with as the member of Clan Urdnot just shrugged it off like it was no big deal since he followed it up by grabbing a shambling LOKI mech that had wandered too close and crushing it underneath his massive armored heel.

He must have sensed the adulation or something because as he fell back in line with me he gave a cocky little nudge. "Ever seen anything like that before?"

"Not in my life." I couldn't even bother playing up my own accomplishments as I gunned down a rocket drone with my Mattock. "I've done some tricks combining my Bio-Cade with a Charge but I've never accomplished anything quite to that level of destruction and force."

"Heh, it's a Battlemaster technique passed down for those worthy. We call it, 'Impactor.'" He playfully prodded me once again, which coming from a krogan was not so playful. "It's a lot trickier than it looks, some other whelps have tried it before fully grasping it…you can imagine the results."

"Yeah I think so Wrex." I turned to look back at the rest of the squad who had been systematically making their way up to join us in our now advanced position, making sure that we couldn't be flanked by some bot slipping in between. "Chels! You have any idea how many more of these things there's supposed to be? Not like I'm worried or anything but fuck, they must have had rooms of these things just piled up to the ceiling."

"You sound like you're complaining about a bit of target practice Wolf." As I stood behind cover and let my biotics recover a bit, I watched as she gunned down three or four drones with pinpoint shots from her machine gun before pulling out dual machine pistols, N7 Eagles if I remembered right, and hosing down another couple with akimbo fire. "How about we make this interesting and keep track?"

"I'm in." Wrex, Garrus and I all simultaneously answered without hesitation.

"I've got a tracker modded into my visor that keeps live kill counts, I can reset it right now if you'd like?" As if it was no big deal at all, he just kept firing away with his Mantis as he talked, each booming shot causing another drone to fall to the ground in a flash of bursting machinery.

"Winner gets to decide a punishment for the three losers?" I launched a Lift orb that caused another bipedal droid to slowly drift through the air before Ashley savagely downed it with a Carnage shot from her weapon.

"I can't let Chelsea be the only woman represented in this little competition."

With a slight sigh, Tali cut in. "You can include me I guess. I'm not going to be the only one left out."

"Perfect, it's all set then."

There was silence for a moment as all of us waited for Chelsea's official count. Thanks to the simplicities enforced by programming software, cutting down mechs was boring, monotonous work so this should be extremely promising. Thanks to their lack of tactical awareness, the enemy just slowly advanced almost in waves, making this practically target practice. The only real difficulty so far had been the giant one and even that was just thanks to the sheer firepower it brought into play, get caught in the crossfire and you'd be torn to shreds by its twin weapons or rocket launcher in a matter of a second or two. This however, was a turkey shoot in its purest form thanks to them being funneled right into our kill zone.

All of the sudden, Chelsea stood tall, hands filled with rather explosive looking weaponry. "Start it now!" As I shouted in protest, she threw out what had to be a half-dozen grenades that littered the battlefield and almost instantly she was in the lead, laughing the whole time. With a few button presses after that, her armor released an orange Newtonian fluid which immediately coated her entire armor. I recognized this specific piece of gear from back in The Villa, training with other Spec Ops candidates but it had been a little while since I'd seen it deployed in the field. It was a fortification module, assigned only to the heaviest of the heavies that the N school taught or a select few who had otherwise set themselves apart from their peers. "Move up team! We're bringing the fight to them now."

As she walked forward, machine gun spitting out bullets at an amazing rate, I vaulted my own cover along with Wrex and started going to work. Focusing on the grounded targets first since they made much easier prey, I zipped in and out, a flurry of knives, biotics and pistol shots. I was just preparing to sink the talon dagger I had received years ago from Daxy into the optic center of another droid when a bright sphere flew past me, blasting it with an overload that caused it to seize up and fall to the ground.

"I had that one, it was my fucking kill!" An accented giggle came over the comms. "That's no fair at all, that kill should not count towards Tali's number."

"Overruled," Chelsea blasted away again with her N7 Typhoon before tucking it onto her back and just punching the head off a droid that had wandered a bit too close. "Tali manufactured the drone so it counts as hers."

"Should have been faster Wolf…" The quarian trailed off in a teasing, sing-song voice.

"Tali I swear-" Running forward, I launched a throw orb at another droid that had wandered into my field of vision. Pulling out my shotgun, I prepared to blast the thing to pieces when instead it fell from a single hole that punctured its chest. From what I'd seen, only one person was that good with a sniper, although I wouldn't put it past Chelsea to be a crack shot considering how precise she is with everything else in her arsenal. "Garrus. You son of a bitch."

A distinctly turian chuckle sounded over the team channel and I exhaled sharply as in a flurry of motion, I Charged into a group of two droids, simultaneously blasting the first one apart with my N7 Piranha and then hitting the second with a Lift that floated it upward only to bring it back down to the ground with enough force to shatter it where it landed.

After letting off a bit of steam, I turned to see Ashley quickly fire three rounds from her semi-automatic sniper that practically blew the torso off a mech from the repeated sledgehammer blows before chucking a grenade that exploded with a fiery blast that consumed a couple flying drones with the flaming flechettes.

"I think that's all of them." My eyes were drawn to the elder Shepard who had one foot on the chest of a mech as she blasted it away with a burst from her Typhoon. "That's your cue to go on ahead and plant those charges Wolf. I trust you can handle a straggler or two if that rogue VI decided to keep a few in reserve but if you get overwhelmed we're just a shout away."

"Roger that Chelsea." I pulled out my pistol just in case, my mind ablaze with the sudden realization that the moment was now right in front of me. Sighing internally, I pulled off my Recon Hood, deactivated it and tucked it into a compartment on my armor before grabbing a power bar to snack on. Nothing like a good old biotic supplement to take the edge off a blatant act of treachery. "You guys don't work too hard out here while I'm in there setting up all the fun stuff."

The hazel-eyed woman with the massive amount of weaponry just grinned at me. "Of course. Just try not to blow yourself up Wolf. I'm not sure how much of you there'd be left if one of those things went off while you were still in the blast radius."

"Awww, it's heartwarming to know you care so much about my welfare." I smashed the button next to the door, making sure everything was in the clear, which it was besides a couple engineers who looked to have been cut down by machine gun fire from the machines that had been taken over by a haywire program. Poor bastards never had a chance. "I'm sure you'd be real disappointed if anything happened to damage this scarred old mug."

Giving a final grin that I really wasn't feeling at all, I headed down the hallway and towards the server room. Only one doorway stood in my way now and as I stepped into the room, I paused a moment, just taking in what I was about to do. "Fucking hell Wolf." I muttered to myself as I took out the memory stick that I had received from the unknown Cerberus operative aboard the ship. For a moment I just stared at it before plugging it into the mainframe before I could even change my mind. With a sharp, frustrated exhalation, I opened up my omni-tool, hit a quick few buttons that indicated I wanted to isolate the data and just waited as the information was ripped from the drive for me. Thanks to the practically automated hacking module Miranda had given me, the contents of the device were going to be there for the taking in a manner of just a few seconds.

Even though the wait wasn't that long, I couldn't help but look at the last recording that was sitting there, tantalizingly dated for just a few days ago. If I'd learned anything in my life, everything that ever went wrong in situations like this had its last moments recorded for people like me to wander in and watch. As I pulled off the explosives and started to attach them to various points on the mainframe, I let the video play on my omni-tool while I worked.

It started off typically enough, the scene was a techie-type with his omni-tool opened, speaking into his own wrist-mounted device. The video was actually fairly unremarkable, just some standard Alliance eggheads huddled around speaking technobabble as they screwed with the machine in front of me. However, when one of them mentioned the simple phrase, "AI research," my ears perked up quite a bit. Fucking hell, now I know why the Alliance wanted this whole thing destroyed with nothing recoverable and why Cerberus is so interested. This easy of a job could have been handled by a contingent of Marines extremely quickly but if this sensitive info somehow got out, humanity could face some nasty repercussions which means sending in a Spectre with an elite group of commandos to destroy what little evidence remained was the obvious answer since the fewer people that know, lessen the chances of this stuff leaking to the public. For the rest of the world this will just go down as a tragic training accident, I'll be one of just a few to know the real shit that went wrong.

With a quiet little ding, my omni-tool notified me that the information storing device had done its job. Guess that means that it's finally time to blow this garbage sky high and get the hell out of here before anything else goes wrong. As I pulled the device out of the hardware and tucked it into one of the most secure armor components I had, I couldn't help but think about how many people would kill for the information I now possessed. If I cared more about the actual game I was playing and wasn't just doing this because I was practically coerced into it, I would be ecstatic at the amount of power I just had in the palm of my hand. Thankfully for the rest of the galaxy, that type of supremacy didn't really appeal to me. I'm just happy being a ground-pounder who goes in, kicks the door down and goes back home at the end of the day knowing he did a fucking kick-ass job. Once I find a way to get Cerberus off my back once and for all, I'll be able to do so happily as long as no one I care about gets hurt in the process.

A loud yell interrupted my musings. "Wolfert!" I was wondering for a second why Chels didn't just signal me over the comms but then I remembered the rather simple fact that I had taken my mask which also coincidentally held my earpiece off. I guess it's really not harmful anymore though since my traitorous work is done, at least for the moment. "Am I gonna have to come in there and hold your hand as you go through, 'Explosives One-Oh-One,' all over again?"

"Hah!" Putting on a sense of bravado that I did not feel by any means, I strolled confidently out the server room door, finger held very far away from the detonate button. "I'd bet you'd like that wouldn't you? Just me, you and a whole bunch of explosives?"

"I'll just take the last one thank you very much." I faked a dejected sigh as I finally met up with the rest of the group, her voice no longer having to echo through the hallways to me.

"Well in that case." I offered up the holographic screen to her. "Would you like to do the honors my lady?"

She covered the visor of her helmet with both hands. "You'd really let me?" In the blink of an eye, she had wrenched my wrist around and practically dragged me out of the blast zone, signaling for the rest of the team to follow behind. "Jeez Wolf, you really do know just what to get a lady."

"Can we just finish this thing and get out of here Chelsea?"

I was about to retort to the turian but the female Shepard beat me to it, winking as she did so. "Aww I'm sorry Garrus, I'll make sure next time that you get to be the one I drag around."

"Th- that's not what I meant." The turian blanched at her proclamation which only made his blue streaks of paint stand out even more, causing me to laugh a bit at the sight.

Once we finally got to a safe distance, she whirled around and simultaneously smashed her finger into the blatantly marked, "detonate," button. Hey when it comes to stuff like explosives, the simpler the better in my book. The feeling of heat hit me almost instantly as flames shot out of the room I had just been occupying a few minutes ago along with a slight shudder that I could feel in my boots.

"We should probably keep moving." Tali voiced exactly what was on my mind. If Torfan taught me anything it's that explosives underground tend to cause things like the ceiling collapsing and trapping those unlucky enough to be caught in the blast, intentional or otherwise. Fucking hell that reminds me, I have to check in with Mitch to see if he's met up with the snarky Brit we used to be squadmates with, Talia Hawkeye. Poor girl was paralyzed from the waist down after sacrificing herself to make sure that Mitch and I got the job done and it's been way too long since we've talked.

"I agree." The gunnery chief seconded the young woman's suggestion. "Having needless casualties after a successful op like this would be a complete waste."

Wrex just grunted in…agreement? I hadn't been around him long enough yet to pick up on the various nuances of his different vocal rumblings but since that seemed to be the majority of what he said, I think I'm going to have to sooner or later so now's as good a time as any to start.

"Fine." The lieutenant commander groaned as she tore herself away from the sight of the orange-red inferno that had engulfed the hallways. "Team, make sure to grab anyone you can reasonably carry on your way out. These men and women deserve to at least be buried back where their family can properly mourn them."

Shit, I gotta say I wasn't expecting that from her. "I can use my biotics too Chelsea, probably carry an additional one or two that way along with slinging them over my shoulder."

"And I can carry a half-dozen of these poor whelps myself." Another surprise. I wasn't expecting Wrex to voluntarily pitch in either, seeing as how his species valued strength and power above all else. Guess there's a lot about my new squad that I'm going to have to learn as we go.

Holding down the rising sense of nausea, I picked up two women in Alliance gear whose blue uniforms were stained from the brutal robotic killing efficiency shown in repeated gunshot wounds in the chest and threw one over each shoulder. With a loud grunt, I activated my biotics and picked up another couple that were slumped over a piece of machinery. "I'm ready to get out of here when you are Chelsea."

She took in the sight of everyone weighed down with as much humanity as they could bear and gave a solemn nod. "Good work team. Let's get back home to the Normandy."

An important thought crossed my thought. "Wait. Wait wait wait. We forgot something."

The other five turned to look at me with Chelsea being the one to answer. "What's up?"

"Kill count."

The female Spectre hesitated for a moment and scratched her head. "Oh, right. That."

"Chelsea?" Tali cocked her head, picking up quite quickly on the pause from the woman.

"Well, it's just that." She muttered under her breath. "I had li'l bro look over everyone's feeds and tabulate kill counts from the moment we touched down since he insisted that we do it that way, factoring in set-ups as a half-point and…"

"I won right?" The most smug grin crossed my face. "Tell me I had the most bots taken down."

"We tied." Holy shit, you would have thought somebody had just kicked a baby in front of her or told her that a family pet had died. I've never seen the fucking spitfire of a human being that was Chelsea Shepard so gloomy.

"Hey, it's alright Chels. Just think of it this way." I sidled up and put my arm around her shoulder, consoling the downtrodden Special Forces agent. "You can blame it on the fact that your teammates were just that much more competent than mine and I simply had more targets to choose from."

"Hey!"

As Ashley's protests fell on my deaf ears, I just sighed happily. It's good to be back with a team I could call my own.

LINE BREAK

Thankfully we all got back to the ship without any further incident and apparently my thievery was a complete success, at least I assume so since no one's made any mention of it to me as of yet. After our little post-op recap, I quickly went through the process of getting stripped out of my armor and cleaned up after the filth and grime of battle. We had even met up with another Alliance ship and transferred all the dead that we had recovered on Luna so they could be taken back to their families and given a proper burial which I was glad for. Everybody at least deserves that little bit of respect no matter who you are so I'm glad that we could at least do much for these unlucky soldiers who were the victims of people messing around with shit that they probably shouldn't be.

Whistling contentedly as I stepped into the communal room that the male members of the ground team shared I scratched my head as I walked, only to give a little start at seeing Mitch messing around with my locker. "Woley? What's going on man?"

Although basically every bone in my body was screaming in a mixture of panic, alarm and a clusterfuck of other emotions, I tried to play it off as normal. The fact that all the information I had just stolen was mere inches away from him was freaking me the hell out. "Hey sorry Wolf." He held up the datapad that I had been using to communicate discreetly with Cerberus via little notes and gave it a little shake. "This and a couple other things fell out of your locker when I accidentally brushed it and I was just picking up after myself."

The fact that Woley could be the Cerberus plant on the Normandy hit me all of the sudden with all the subtlety of a slap to the face. I had just placed the stick there a short while ago, it would make sense that whoever it was that had been tasked with retrieving it would seize it at the first potential opportunity. However, this was not a possibility that I was going to even consider right now, just making normal conversation was the current objective. "Hell Mitch, you'd think an N7 Infiltrator would be a bit less clumsy."

Walking over to the shorter blonde, I helped pick up the other personal effects that had fallen out. "Usually I would, but I just saw the opportunity to annoy you so I let it happen."

A tiny little wave of relief swept over me as I saw the starkly white drive still there and put it away with the rest of my stuff. "Now it all makes sense." With the contents now safe in my little cabinet, I started to change from my more casual gear into the Alliance sanctioned workout clothing I had kept from my days back in the armed forces. "What do you say we really take it back to the old days and go have a workout in the jail cell/workout room downstairs?"

"I guess I wouldn't say no to that." He gave a little shrug and started to perform an attire change of his own. "We sparring or what were you thinking?"

"No no no, I'm much too tired for that tough guy." I gave a quick little bark of laughter. "I was just thinking we beat up a couple heavy bags, maybe do some movement exercises and see what else we get up to. I could probably stand to build up my biotic stamina a bit too while we're at it."

He gave the little smirk that I knew meant a wisecrack was coming. "It sounds more like you're propositioning me right now but yeah, that sounds like fun buddy."

"Well if that's the case you wanna grab anybody else and make this thing a real party? Maybe a certain asari scientist that you happen to be chatting up pretty frequently?"

"Too far Wolf, too far." I grabbed my two knives and tucked them into my pockets before we headed out and towards the elevator. "You always manage to take a funny little joke and just stretch it out that bit too far where it's uncomfortable. It's a unique skill of yours."

"Thanks, I've always prided myself on shaking things up so I will most definitely take that as a compliment." As the doors opened in front of us and we prepared to head a level down, I heard a loud shout interrupt us as the doors began to close. To my surprise, I saw Shepard himself with his hand held up and trying his best to not wait for the elevator to resurface. "Sorry commander, didn't see you there otherwise I wouldn't have made you rush like that."

"It's no problem Wolf." He waved me off and turned to the lieutenant, giving him a little nod. "From your gear I assume you two are going to work out, mind if I join you?" Both of us gave a shake of our heads as he jammed his finger into the button. "Great. I haven't missed a potential combat scenario in years so you could say I've got a bit of extra energy I need to get rid of. Plus, being able to step down a bit from the limelight and just be a regular grunt going through a training regimen to keep myself sharp like everybody else is great, it's a nice break now and then."

Damn. After that statement from the man, I was feeling a little stupid for not thinking of something like that earlier. Being the poster child for the Alliance, hell it was probably humanity itself at this point, for the last seven years has to take an incredible toll on a person. It was basically like being a celebrity except you get less pay, probably about the same amount of people chasing you everywhere you went, oh yeah and you had to deal with the fact that you stared death in the face every time you did the job you were so well known for on top of that shit. How's that for an everyday life? Can't say that I really blame the guy for just wanting to kick back and be, "one of the guys," every now and instead of the icon known as Commander Shepard.

Since I was a bit too mired up in my own thoughts, Mitch spoke up for the both of us. "Yeah that sounds good commander. We were just going to run through some basic stuff anyway so if you want to not have to worry about things it'd be a good time to do it."

"Excellent." As soon as the doors fully closed behind us and it was just the three of us, he slumped back against the bannister surrounding the elevator, just taking in a few breaths as he let his posture fully relax for probably the first time I'd ever seen him. "Besides, I promised Wolf I'd teach him how to Shockwave," my ears perked up at that, "and while I can't exactly do that on the ship, we can at least go over some theory today." He gave an eager grin at seeing my own expression, it seems that I'm not the only one who really enjoys learning some new biotic tricks.

I couldn't stop a grin from spreading across my face. "That sounds just fine to me. It's been years since I've taught anybody but if you want I could try to share my Bio-Cade or Palm Crush. Not that you really need it, I mean that thing you pulled back on Therum was probably the most terrifying biotic display I've ever seen."

"Oh, yeah." He winced at the memory. "Using that technique is usually the last resort I go to but I just wanted to get the hell out of that place as soon as humanly possible."

Now that the elevator ride was finally over, the three of us filed out and stepped into the empty prison room that served as the makeshift training facilities for the crew. "And by technique, you mean Terror right?"

I smirked as Shepard just stared straight ahead, only the slightest of grins crossing his face. "No. I definitely didn't mean that. And going forward I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear anything you said just to keep this conversation moving forward."

Woley was the first to step up to the heavy bag and I promptly circled around behind the thing and held it in place as he started to go to work. At first he worked the lower part with what would have been body shots, just warming up a bit with some light taps. As the blows got more intense and the diminutive sniper started to work in some kicks and more vicious blows, Shepard began to talk again. "Before anything else, I want you to back up and hold that thing in place with your biotics Wolf."

"What?" I looked at him curiously.

"Your pure power or surge, whatever you like to call it, is still top-notch for a human biotic but your reserves are awful to put it bluntly." Well, he certainly doesn't mince his words. "I can't say that I blame since I would guess you haven't had any prolonged skirmishes in a long while but now that you're back with us, I need you to at least get back to where you were before you left the Alliance and hopefully even better."

That's fair, I hadn't really used biotics for a prolonged period in a very long while so it made sense that my biotic muscles fatigued fairly quickly now. For the last two years, I had fought brutal but short skirmishes that required quick, overwhelming application of force but there was really no need for prolonged usage as I had typically been able to end the battle before my reserves ran dry. "Will do Shepard. I'll make sure to come down here and train as much as possible just holding Barriers."

"Perfect." He nodded. "Tell you what, you don't even need to do that. Whatever you're doing while on the Normandy, I want you to have your Barrier up, just holding it. There's nothing that builds up the stamina like constant usage."

"I can do that."

By now, Woley had started to tire out and he gave me a nod as he wiped a bit of sweat that had pooled on his forehead. "Your turn big guy."

"You can go ahead and take a seat Woley, I'll hold it for Wolf."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

As the blonde toweled off on a nearby bench and watched, the commander surrounded himself in a blue hue as I took my combat stance and started to launch attacks on the inanimate object in front of me. "I've made up my mind Wolf, I know what it is I want in exchange for me teaching you how to Shockwave."

"What's that?" Grunting, I slammed a left-right-left followed by a front kick that would have broken ribs if it was a human in front of me.

"I've been thinking about this vision you mentioned." Huh. That wasn't what I was expecting at all. "What can you tell me about it?"

"Really not much to say." I gave a little shrug as I stepped back from the equipment for just a moment before stepping back in. Now I was pretty much punctuating each short sentence with a volley of blows. "Pretty sure I already told you the details of how it happened right?" He nodded. "Good. So what exactly did you need to know then?"

"Specifically I want you to tell me about the last image you saw." I gave a little nod before striking again. "The one you said had the Reapers in the background."

"Right. I mean there's not much to say unfortunately." I paused and took a step back to breathe in deeply. "The scene wasn't clear but now that I've been to the Citadel I recognize it as the location. There was a man in full armor." Stepping in I struck again with sharp staccato breaths added to the sound of the blows. "He was stepping up to some sort of device. Reapers were all around in the background blowing shit up. A few seconds passed, guy pushed a button and started screaming in pain. That's it."

Fully exhausted from the repeated punching, I stepped back and took a seat next to Woley. "So this…person, could you tell if they were human?"

Giving a quick nod to the commander, I leaned back against the wall. "Yeah. Definitely human. The hair kind of gave it away but other than that I couldn't see shit. Everything was from the back and the only reason I could tell the person was in pain was the convulsions and wrenching. There was no sound or color either so I can't even give you a clue there."

"I see."

He had now joined us so all three of us were sitting on the bench. There were a couple seconds of silence before Mitch, who had been pretty quiet this whole time, asked a question. "Could you do it again if you had to? Recreate the vision, I mean."

"I really don't know. If I had to I could probably recreate the circumstances since all I really need is enough energy to hold a Charge for way too long but whether I'd see it again is a whole different thing. Hell I don't even know if this was some kind of freak one-time deal or what, Liara mentioned something about asari, 'seers,' who meditate and come across shit like this sometimes but apparently it usually takes a long-ass time which we don't really have. Plus, I was in a state of rather…heightened emotions and adrenaline. Guess what I'm saying is I just don't know if this is something we could really recreate in a test scenario."

"That's understandable." Shepard had been taking everything in as I said, not interrupting me and just letting me hash it out which I appreciated. "Hypothetically, if you were going to try this again how long would it take you to recover?"

Shit, I don't even know. "A few days at the very least, a couple weeks at the worst. Really can't say unfortunately. Besides though, I mean it could have just been me tripping out from overclocking my biotics, like I said I wasn't exactly in a great state of mind back then."

"For the record, if you would be willing to try it again sometime I think it's more than worth the risk but I'm not the one on the line here so I'm not going to make you do anything." Standing up, the gray eyed man pulled both me and Mitch to our feet with a big smile. "However, I'm somewhat biased towards believing in visions considering my own circumstances so if you can find something to give us a little nudge in the right direction, it would be much appreciated." With that out of the way, he snapped into instructor mode and assumed a much more professional tone. "Now you'd better get that Barrier up and hold it while I hit this bag. I said I would improve that stamina and I don't like to lie so I'd better not see that thing falter one bit."

With a grin of my own, I concentrated for a split-second and surrounded my person in a biotic shield that was as strong as I could make it. "Roger that Shep."

A/N: So school is still school and I dislike Biology just as much in college as I did in high school. Also, thanks goes out to Logical Premise once again and his Encyclopedia Biotica, the "Impactor" technique is one I borrowed from his book there.

Another thank you goes to Ranger Station Charlie for continuing his kickass Beta work.

Review answering portion:

RSC: Same here man, I'm not usually a mecha guy but I loved Gurren Lagann.

Dekuton: Welp, I already PM'ed you about the similarities but yeah, I was just playing a few games of Overwatch last night and now that similarity is stuck in my head, lol.

Guest: The Cerberus/Miranda subplot is definitely something that will be explored more as the story goes on and will only ramp up as things progress. Glad you're enjoying that particular bit of the story!

Fallout Fan: Yeah I never really liked the way the game handled it, so I just tried to go about it logically. I get that there's limitations since it's still just a game after all but the repercussions of what went down at Eden Prime would be much more influential and could also give a little bit of insight as to why Ashley's butted heads with Wolf so easily.