Chapter 14: Time
Date: June 6, 2189
Location: Zareth / Zora
Kellina looked at the calendar's date on her blue omni-tool and sighed. A year ago her people had made a huge mistake in attacking a planet that, to her knowledge, was innocent of any wrong doings against her species. She moved a piece of blue hair out of her face as she went back to filing out reports for her government. These reports were damages done to the planet and it's citizens. She was almost done when she heard a knock on her office door. "Enter," she said without looking up from the latest estimates on how long it would be before the planetary defence grid was completely finished. "Miss Kellina?" came a soft voice.
Upon raising her eyes from the datapad she saw a slender asari woman standing before her in a black off the shoulder dress. "Yes Seri?" she answered as the woman meekly walked into the room.
"The festival of lights is about to begin, are you going to be attending?" Seri sat down the couch that was in front of Kellina's desk. The festival of lights was an asari festival that allowed merchants to created illusions out of crystals from Thessia. It didn't matter what kind of. crystals they were; if they were able to conduct electricity they could be used. This usually meant that element zero crystals would be used.
"Is Commander Shepard going to be attending?" she inquired. The asari woman looked uncomfortable at the name of the human Spectre.
"She may." she stated, not making any eye contact. Kellina felt her feline eyes narrow in on the asari. This made Seri wiggle a bit under the Neko woman's stare. "It's been rumored that she might be pregnant." the asari woman scoffed at the idea. "Which is perposterous because her husband is a turian and she's a human. Dextro and levo species cannot reproduce together."
"Execpt for asari." Kellina smiled as Seri paused in her rambling. "But yes, it is quite impossible for her to be pregnant with her husband's baby." She poked at the asari in jest, but the asari woman's eyes widened at the implications.
"You think she could be pregnant by IVF?" she asked.
"If the rumor is true, then quite possibly." she paused at looked at the holo clock on the wall. It was an hour before sunset. Sighing softly she turned her attention back to her datapads. "I have much to do tonight." she said sadly. "I will not be going, but you should have a fun time. I hear the Creassions will be coming to join the festival tonight."
"Of course, but..." Seri began but with a swift glare from her boss she nodded and left.
Looking back at the clock Kellina estimated that she had two hours to get her final reports in to her governmental boss back on her home planet of Colelara. She was to have it finished by morning their time or an hour after sunset, her time. Looking back down at the set of datapads she went back to typing on the terminal.
Faith groaned as she buried her face into the pillow. Opening an eye she saw Garrus sitting on the bathroom floor with her. "You okay mellis?" she looked up at him, his eyes twinkling with untold emotions as his left hand was resting on her ever swelling stomach.
"Do me a favorite amatus," she growled, which caused him to smirk. "Next time I say I want a baby, hit me over the head with a thresher maw."
Gwaffing lightly as his shoulders shook Garrus leaned his forehead against hers. "Your idea," he countered. "Besides, I think it should be Grunt or Wrex or Safe that hits you with a thresher maw, not me."
Groaning lightly Faith sat up. "I'm not married to them." she countered.
"Tell them that!" he laughed.
"Ugh!" she cried out as he face suddenly turned green and she turned back towards the toilet.
"Another good thing about turians, we don't throw up," he chuckled.
"Fuck you..." she grumbled as her curse kinda got lost in the toilet, which cause Garrus to laugh harder before he stood up and began a cool shower for her. When he turned back towards Faith he got a good look at her. She was wearing one of those silky nightgowns she had begun wearing because her other night clothes no longer fit. The swell of the baby was what made him smile the most. Looking up at him through the mirror she spotted him starring at her. "What?" she inquired as she turned towards him.
"You're beautiful," he sighed as he pulled her close to him.
"I'm as fat as a hippopotamus," she grumbled against him.
Tipping her chin up she saw his blue eyes seemed to sparkle. "No, you are beautiful amatra."
She felt tears starting to come down her cheeks as at the same time a blush dusted her cheeks. "Damn it," she grumbled. "I hate it when you see me cry," which caused him to chuckle as he left her to shower. Upon walking over to their personal terminal on the Normandy, Garrus tapped it to check the messages. There were four of them. One from Dr. Monroe, two from Joker, one from EDI and one from Anderson. He tapped the one from the doctor, who was taking care of Melina; who had a fever the night before. Upon reading the message he found out that the little one was much better and was even eatting solids once again. He sighed as that weight was lifted from his shoulders. He shuddered to think what could've happened had Monroe hadn't been there to take care of her. He knew Faith couldn't catch a dextro disease or illness, but the stress would've been too much to contend with in her condition. He tapped Joker's first message only to find out it was a joke, which did lighten his mood a bit. The second one was a message indicating they were ten minutes from docking; which had been sent thirty minutes ago. EDI's message was an inquiry to speak with Faith alone. Anderson's message was labled with a private logo, meaning he wanted to talk in person with Faith. "What's on the docate today?" came her smooth voice as she exited the shower in what she called her prego-clothes.
Exiting the terminal he smiled. "Just two things." This caused her to raise a delicate eyebrow at him. "EDI wants to have a talk with you and Anderson wants you to come to his office for a private meeting."
"Tell EDI later and tell Anderson I will...tomorrow." She chuckled as his brow plates raised slightly. "Tonight is the Light Festival; which for the first time in asari history is being held here on Zareth. Tomorrow I'll work, today I'm going to play." He laughed as she walked out of the room towards the elevator.
"Spirit's save us, Commander Shepard is going to take a day off!" Faith playfully hit his chest and laughed as the elevator doors closed.
Narima looked up at the eco crystal chandelier that was now at the Creassion embassy on Zareth. She'd been promoted from a captain to a damn politician, which actually felt like a demotion. The chandelier was made of the four basic eco crystals with a single large light eco crystal in the center. She then heard a whistle and looked over her shoulder to see Jak and Daxter behind her. "Hey baby ya miss me?" Daxter flirted.
"Hey Daxter," she greeted. "Where's Tess?"
Upon hearing her name said ottsel came out from hiding behind Jack's leg. "Hey Narima!" she greeted. The tiny ottsel was wearing kahki pants and green/brown shirt.
"What's going on out there?" Jak ask as an asari woman went rushing by the windows carrying boxes in her arms.
"Yeah foots, what's the big hubbub about?" Daxter said as he jumped upon a nearby table.
"The Festival of Light," she said chuckling at the two. "It's an Asari festival. I don't know much, but now that I'm Ambassador Vol'com I guess I should."
"Yeah, I heard about your promotion," Jak said as he rubbed the back of his neck.
"Feels like a damn demotion," she sighed as she looked back at the chandelier.
Tess' ears fell back as she looked up at Jak who's own ears seemed to be tipped back a bit. "Uh..." he began. "You going to go to it?" he asked sincerely.
"Have to. It's required of me to go," she said as she did air quotes for dramatic effect.
"Do you have an escort?" he inquired.
"Nope, nobody asked," she commented before her head perked up towards him. "Why?" she asked with uncertainty.
"Uh..." he began. "I mean, if you want to...I uh...I could go with you?"
"Are you asking on a date or asking if you could come?" she inquired as she raised an eyebrow.
"A...a date," he stuttered nervously.
Her eyes widened. "Oh!" she said in surprise. "Um...okay." she smiled as she walked up to him. "Sounds like fun." he chuckled as he offered his arm and began to escorted her outside to the festivities.
M-Angel: Sorry for not updating lately fellow readers, but the last few weeks have been hectic. Now this was just recently brought to my attention and I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend you read this.
Apparently the administrators of FanFiction have, as of June 4th, started to take down stories that have extreme to moderate lemons or have extreme violence. I am going to be blunt and honest here and say that that is just plain STUPID. Do you have any idea how many wonderful stories I have read that only have one or two lemons in them yet the main reason I read them is for the awesome story content and plot. You can't just take down a 100,000+ word story just because it has a lemon in a chapter that is only 1000 words long or whatever amount it is. Most of this is a copy and paste from another author but I urge you all to read this petition below, sign it, and repost this to your own story if you have any and if not, post it on your profile. So far none of the stories I have read (to my knowledge) that have this type of content have been taken off...yet. Hopefully that will continue. Please help us with this because if we make enough noise everything will hopefully return to normal. Thank-you.
Greetings to the fine folks that moderate our site.
Myself, along with many, have been writing and posting on your fine site for years now, some of the better examples of up and coming writers out there are now suddenly finding some of the stories we've come to love are at risk of being removed without the chance to even rectify our errors.
For some, that means the permanent loss ofa story. While I don't have anything that I believe violates your terms of use, there are those out there that are never able to recover a story in its original form, this is something I find to be almost worthy of a legal action, as while we cannot claim ownership of a character, the stories are OURS and simply destroying them is something that is inexcusable.
It's quite easy to simply add an MA rating, additional filters to read the stories presented here, and would cut down on hateful anonymous reviews and posts at the same time, so I have to question as to why such a thing, in all this time, it simply wasn't added?
If you're worried about falsification of a registration then have an appropriate disclaimer and then there can be non-dispute, you took your steps and the PARENTS didn't monitor their children, if that is even your concern. If it is more of a personal view or desire then please at least let people know and give them a chance to remove a story that you and yours find offensive, most people on the site are actually rather cordial when it comes to such requests.
While I cannot say for sure if this letter will even reach those that may be willing to listen, of if it's more akin to a wide spectrum purge in preparation for something bigger, please understand that you are going to be losing a LARGE number of your writers, and thus your income from a lack of readers if there is not some level of action taken to help with this situation.
For those that may agree with this, please feel free to sign on and send this to the support server, maybe we can get some movement on this.
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xoxoangii
xoxoangii: And I apologize for the late post, I had this chapter for a couple of days, but didn't have the chance to post it until now. *puts up poster for lost laptop charger*