Characters: Shepard & Tali with a little angry Joker lol
Word Count: 739
Rating: T
Author's Note: I wanted to get something up earlier but between studying and my bf bitching about cutting the tip of his finger off I've not had much time to write. I swear he is such a baby! It was just the tip...haha, jk. Anywho! It seems as if Shepard shares my theories on repairs...

Kick Harder

It had been a few days since Shepard and her crew had destroyed the Collector Base. Everybody made it out mostly unscathed, but the Normandy had taken quite the beating. Which was why they currently found themselves docked at Omega. Nobody was happy about being on the seedy asteroid, but with the ship being in such bad shape they were left with little choice. Aria seemed to be pleasantly surprised that they actually returned and granted them a measure of security (not that it was really needed, nobody seemed too eager to mess with the Specter that had taken on a race that was only a rumor and won) while they got the ship up and running. Shepard wasn't dumb enough to take Aria's apparent kindness at face value, but she wasn't one to look a gift Asari in the mouth...though she wouldn't hesitate to stab said Asari in the heart if she was foolish enough to cross her.

Shepard limped about her ship to oversee the repairs as well as to lend a hand when needed. Everybody was still shaken up mentally as well as physically, but they threw themselves into their work. Rather this was due to wanting to get off of the hope-forsaken rock or so that they didn't have to think about their experience on the Base their CO couldn't say.

By the time she worked her way down to the engineering level it was well past noon and most of the crew was taking a well deserved break, all save for one. Joss weaved her way through the mess of wires, mostly broken beams, and tools until she was found the woman she was looking for.

"I see my favorite Quarian is still hard at work," she said with a chuckle as she kicked was looked like some sort of wrench towards Tali's groping hand.

"Oh, hi Shepard," Tali replied, not even looking up from the panel she was fervently working on. She tightened something then stood and began to fiddle with the keyboard. "Come on you little bosh'tet," she muttered to herself. The machine's swift rebuttal was a high pitched screech accompanied by a scrambled screen and a small plume of gray smoke. "Damn."

Joss laughed at her friend's mixture of profanities. "Maybe take a break?"

"I can't, not until I figure out what is wrong with this thing." Another puff of defiant smoke escaped much to Shepard's amusement. "I just don't get it! I've recoupled, tweaked, and reformatted it twice now! Why won't it work?" She received a whirling noise in reply. With a sigh, Tali brought her right hand up to rub at her shielded forehead in apparent annoyance. "Keeeeelah... Hmm, maybe there's an irregularity in on of the matrices?" another puff of smoke then, "Or a few. Maybe if I..."

Shepard drowned out the Quarian's tech-babble. I'm just a simple farm girl, I don't know nothin' 'bout fixin' none of these here fancy do-hickies, she thought to herself with an eye roll.

"What do you think?" Tali asked, pulling the Commander's attention back to the present.

"Well Tali, I'm not the most technologically inclined person on this ship, but there is one thing that I find to be somewhat of a golden rule when it comes to these things." She crossed over to the side of the panel. "And that, my dear, is to kick it until it works." She took her booted foot to the metal earning a yelp from Tali and what almost sounded like a growl from the machine. "If it doesn't work then you're probably not kicking it hard enough." She kicked again, this time with more force. The screen flickered for a moment before going green across the board.

Tail looked from the screen to Shepard then back again. "I can't believe that that actually worked."

Shepard just smirked. "Yeah, but let's not tell Joker that I kicked his baby, ummkays?"

"You did what?" Joker's disembodied voice demanded.

"Let me guess: that panel controls the ships comm system?" Tali gave her a quick nod. "Lovely," Shepard sighed as Joker continued to rant.

"First you drag her through the Omega 4 Relay where she gets shot to hell then you kick her? What is wrong with you woman? I swear... It's okay baby, she didn't mean it..."