This prompt was requested by EPiCJB19. This prompt initially seemed like it would be a repeat of the "He's Mine" snapshot, due to the nature of it, but I found a humurous way to twist it and make it unique at the same time. So, here you go, EPiCJB19...enjoy! I hope its somewhat what you're after!
"Shit, she's broken free! Viking-2, Chariot-7...fall back and regroup! Target Gamma is loose! I repeat, Target Gamma is lo-"
The soldier never got to finish relaying his order as Shepard raised his rifle, took aim and pressed the trigger, watching the high velocity bullets evicted from his barrel punch through the side of his head, his helmet and already downed shields doing little to protect him from the deadly geth projectiles. A geyser of blood spewed into the air, a misty cloud that drenched the two men under his command, just behind him. The centurion collapsed, the crack of his rifle giving away his position. By the time the two troopers turned to face him however, Shepard had already ducked back into cover.
They didn't get much time to suppress the N7 before another, far more deadly foe descended upon them.
There was a shout, followed by screaming...then all other sounds from the Cerberus squad were drowned out by a cacophonous war cry. Shepard didn't need to peek out from his cover to know exactly what that meant. His primary objective complete, he turned to Tali and Garrus, who stood beside him, shotgun and rifle clutched between them respectively, covering his flank.
"Well, Aria's loose now and all the adjutants are dealt with," he confirmed to his squad, gaining their attention, "Rally on me and keep suppressing the left. Aria will deal with the rest, we can be sure of that much."
And the self-titled 'Queen of Omega' didn't disappoint. The corpses of an entire squad's worth of Cerberus troops lay strewn about the room, each looking more brutalized than the last. Aria had shown these soldiers no mercy, and this lack of leniency was left marked on the bodies of the fallen, each either missing most of their limbs, or their torsos and heads so badly sundered that even the armor was torn to ribbons. One soldier pitifully crawled across the ground, his legs reduced to nothing but bloody sinew being dragged across the ground, and Shepard quickly put him out of his misery via tap to the head with his rifle.
Turns out there were few surviving troops for Shepard and his team to kill. Aria, in seconds, had decimated the remaining forces there, her path of destruction a bread crumb trail of its own. Despite this however, the surviving Cerberus forces continued to fight on until Petrovsky finally ordered them to surrender over the PA system, which extended to the entirety of his army across Omega. Cerberus had capitulated.
A surviving unit of Cerberus soldiers, no more than seven or eight of them, emerged from cover, dropping their weapons onto the ground and holding their hands behind their heads to indicate they had surrendered. Shepard and his team lowered their weapons in kind, the spectre motioning for Tali and Garrus to begin collecting their weapons. Meanwhile, the surrendering combatants got on their knees, eyes looking mindlessly at the ground as they seemed to remain motionless. If they had stopped breathing, he probably wouldn't have noticed, they were that still. He shook his head.
The abominations the Illusive Man has created...these aren't soldiers, anymore than the Reapers' legions are. What little humanity they had left in them is gone.
He placed his rifle on his back, waiting for the magnetic lock to engage before he let go of it, feeling it cling to his back. He allowed himself a brief respite, removing his helmet and wiping the film of sweat clinging to his face away with one swipe. It had been a long day of fighting, but the Battle of the Apex was finally simmering down. Through some clever tactics of their own, their smaller forces had rapidly outmanoeuvred Cerberus' Hades Line defenses, sweeping around to crush their numerically superior army in a 'hammer and anvil' envelopment that make Alexander the Great proud if he were still alive. Petrovsky was a brilliant general, but even he was powerless to stop what the UGC had put in motion. With the majority of his army pinned, Afterlife was as vulnerable as it was going to get...and Aria, Shepard and his squad took full advantage of that.
It had cost them. Nyreen Kandros, the leader of the Talons and Omega's rebel forces resisting the Cerberus occupation, had given her life to stop surviving adjutants from escaping and slaughtering the station's populace. Aria, in a fit of rage, stormed Afterlife and slaughtered everything in sight, only to fall into a trap Petrovsky had set up and was imprisoned in a biotic stasis machine. However, Shepard and his squad were, after an intense skirmish, able to destroy the machine and free Aria...and moments later, Petrovsky had his army capitulate.
Five days...five whole days of intense fighting. Adjutants, Cerberus soldiers...whatever it was, they had fought them, and barely come out of it alive. The only reason they survived at all was because of the forces at their back, and the conviction of the rebels to see Cerberus kicked off their station. And now it was finally over, and they could rest...until the next battle, of course.
One campaign after another. The war for Omega may be over, but the Reapers and the Illusive Man have plenty more surprises waiting for us. No idea where this war will take us next. For now though...we can enjoy this victory at the very least.
Even as he took the time to catch his breath, his squadmates were cleaning the shop. The Cerberus soldiers remained on their knees, eerily silent, as they were disarmed. They put up no further resistance, which Shepard was glad for, as he didn't want to have to put down an unarmed combatants.
After a few moments of silence, Shepard taking a moment to wipe some excess blood dripping down the front of his armor, he felt a presence at his side and turned to see Tali walking up to him. He was barely a head taller than her, and yet he still felt like a giant when he had to look down at her to talk, "You've rounded up all the weapons?"
"We have," she confirmed, crossing her arms, her shotgun now holstered on her back safely, "General Golo just contacted us to inform you that the Hades Line has surrendered. A few continued to resist, but were swiftly put down by their own men. He's sent a battalion ahead to secure the rest of the Apex. They should meet up with us soon."
With his helmet off, he likely hadn't heard the communique, and nodded his thanks for being informed, "Good...that's good to hear. Hopefully we'll know soon whether or not all of Petrovsky's troops heeded his orders to surrender."
Silence prevailed for moments afterwards, neither of them having much to say about the events that had preceded their arrival here. The past week and a half hadn't granted them much time to talk outside of shouting and acknowledging orders, and their time had been made up of moving from one battlefield to the next, dismantling the Cerberus occupation across the station. Now they finally had a chance to speak freely, and there were few words to be exchanged. Exhaustion gripped them, and all Shepard really wanted to do right now was sleep. He had little of it since arriving on Omega, and right now a long rest was sounding quite enticing...not to mention shedding the heavy armor that now felt like he was carrying an anvil on his back. No doubt Tali and Garrus felt the same.
Tali, for the most part, was content not saying a word, simply staying silently by his side, the only sound accompanying her presence being the sound of heavy breathing through her vocalizer, which lit up with every intake of breath. Her posture screamed fatigue, her shoulders slumped and head subtly cocked to one side. Garrus' own battle weariness was less noticeable, although the lethargy that carried with each of his steps was a good indicator all the same.
Finally, following a moment of ameliorating his physical condition, he turned around to see if he could spot Aria, since the pirate queen of the Terminus' omitted presence hadn't gone entirely unnoticed. He frowned as he failed to find her in his view, and was about ready to call out to her when he saw the asari storming up the stairway, towards Petrovsky's previously shielded command position. With the shield now gone, Aria looked to be snatching her chance to get revenge for her loss of Omega, and for Nyreen's death. He couldn't let that happen.
Not only is Petrovsky an honorable man, but the SIA could interrogate him to get vital and damaging intelligence on Cerberus operations. His capture could turn the tide of the war in our favor completely. We need him alive.
He turned back to Tali, also motioning to Garrus as he approached, "I'm going to check on Aria, make sure she doesn't lynch Petrovsky. You two stay here and watch over the prisoners."
"You sure its a good idea going alone?" Garrus interrogatively asked him, the turian's tone skeptical and doing a poor job of disguising his mistrust of the asari, "Aria's a willful woman. If he wants to kill Petrovsky, she won't let anything stop her. She could lash out. Become a threat, even."
Tali was in accord with the turian, stepping forward to place a hand lightly on his shoulder, an action she had become more and more confident in doing over the time they had spent as a couple, "I don't trust Aria either, John. One of us should go with you."
He shook his head, "I can handle Aria. I've got my pistol...if need be, I'll put her down. I need you two here, making sure those prisoners don't escape or that any stragglers don't arrive to try and save their general."
Neither of them seemed satisfied with that answer, Tali least of all, "She's unpredictable, John. You might not see her coming."
Shepard just sighed. He was appreciative of her concern, but he had spent enough time with Aria, during this campaign and before it, to know that Aria was as predictable as they came. The days of her war with the Patriarch were clearly long behind her, and with them was her flexibility as a commander. While she was by no means a military genius, her dirty form of warfare had allowed her to turn Patriarch's forces against him by the droves, until there was nothing left but his hardcore loyalist elite. And then she took the fight to him personally, and by humiliating their leader before them, established herself as Omega's dominant ruler. The strategy had been callous, crude and cunning, and Aria had made wielded her people's reputation as seductresses to full effect. The result had been a war that ended in less than a few days, and with Aria as the undisputed ruler of the station for hundreds of years afterwards. He knew this because Aria had told him...he was one of the few who knew the story in detail.
But those days were long gone. The lack of would-be usurpers disputing her claim had allowed centuries of complacency to fester and grow, arriving to the point where Aria literally didn't know how to defend her claim against stronger foes anymore, just as had happened to the ruler before her. So when Cerberus arrived with a strong army, Aria was evicted within a month. And with Petrovsky in command, and the station protected by a heavily militarized corps of Cerberus assault troops, she couldn't pull the same tactics she had used on Khurdok. Aria's inadequacy as a commander was laid bare, which was why she came to Shepard in the first place.
That's how he knew she was predictable. Her tactics were crude and lacked flexibility. Brute force was the tool she wielded to wage war, but when your enemy has more sophisticated technology, a better equipped army and a far smarter commander, brute force means nothing. Even worse was that when Aria was provoked to anger, her actions became even easier to counter and predict. If it hadn't been for Shepard, or the many UGC sub-commanders that led the invasion, the entire campaign may have ended in yet another victory for Cerberus.
"Believe me...I will see her coming," Shepard assured them, "You two have your orders. I'll be up in the command post. Let me know when Golo's advance force arrives."
Tali and Garrus simply nodded their acknowledgement, the turian motioning for Tali to follow. While they may have held further objections to his current course of action, they knew better than to continue arguing with him, especially once he had made his mind up. Even Tali knew better than to take advantage of her position as his girlfriend and to push the issue, and was quick to snap to the completion of her task...no matter how much she may have objected to it.
During a mission, his word was law. Anywhere else, he would tolerate being questioned, but not here, and certainly not now.
They're right, though. Aria's dangerous. It'd be easier to give her what she wants, but that's not how this relationship works. I need Petrovsky alive. Nobody except Aria stands to gain anything from his death, and with Cerberus hampering our efforts to defeat the Reapers at almost every turn, capturing the supreme commander of their military will give us an edge we sorely need. I can't let her take that away from us just to satisfy her petty revenge.
Shepard wasn't far behind her. His gait was deliberately swift and urgent, anxious to get to Petrovsky before Aria tore him to shreds. He thought of all the things he could potentially say to get her to back down, but his mind mostly came up blank. Aria was a force of nature...a woman who refused to do anything anybody else's way, and when she finally did, it was through reluctance. Shepard could count himself among one of the few people who could successfully persuade her against her more vicious tendencies, but right now she was a war horse with a singular goal in mind. And Shepard didn't know if any argument he conjured up would be good enough to stop her.
So when he finally reached the command post, turning to the left to address his quandary, he nearly froze. There Aria was, body glowing an angry cobalt blue, two balls of dark energy gathering brightly around her fists, standing just infront of a wounded Petrovsky, who was already nursing what Shepard assumed to be a broken rib, the man impressively able to keep standing despite the blow. The general looked to be trying to dissuade Aria from what she was about to do, but the pirate queen showed no signs of backing down. When this became increasingly apparent, Shepard accepted that words wouldn't be enough.
"Aria," he hissed, surprising the asari enough to cause her to stop moving towards the Cerberus general, both of them turning to face the commander with entirely differing looks: the former with hatred in her eyes, and the latter with a plea for help. Shepard only looked at Aria however, levelling his own, severe look back at her, unwilling to allow Aria to murder his soon-to-be prisoner-of-war, "Stand down. You're not killing him."
"He's mine," Aria shot back, her tone not loud, but harsh and bitter, a tinge of hot poison lacing her words that was so viscous that he could feel the full force feel of its proverbial bite, "This piece of shit nearly cost me everything. He took my station. He took my people. And now...he took..."
There was a moment of hesitation there, the name Aria wanted to mutter just falling shy of being spoken. The pirate queen was a woman of well-guarded secrets, and among those secrets was emotional weakness. While she may have seemed largely uncaring and callous, and she definitely was, make no mistake of that, she still had things she cared about. Her indifference to Nyreen's return had clearly been a facade. By the end of the Omega campaign, her past relationship with Nyreen, and the daughter it produced, had been revealed to him by the late rebel leader, painting a very different picture of the fearsome ruler of Omega. Aria pretended she didn't care about Nyreen, but her reaction to the turian's death had been most telling. The same kind of reaction Shepard would have had if Tali had been killed.
But even still, in this moment, Aria was unable to let the name slip past her lips. It would be a sign of weakness...proof she was more than her reputation defined. She couldn't allow that, and that, more than anything, prohibited her from showing any outward signs of grief for her deceased flame. Instead, she snapped back towards Petrovsky, reaching out to grab him by the neck and slam him against his command console. Having taken his eyes off Aria, the defeated general grunted in surprise as he was pinned against the terminal, vision consumed by what seemed like a living, breathing lightning bolt of rampaging energy.
"Aria!" he snapped again, stepping closer, hand gliding to the pistol at his hip, "You've won. Cerberus has surrendered. The station is yours again. By the laws of the Citadel Conventions, specifically in regards to prisoners-of-war, Petrovsky has yielded, and he is my prisoner. I won't allow you to hurt him, not while he's under my care."
"We're not in Citadel space, Shepard," Aria snarled, Petrovsky's grunts of pain turning into gurgling as she began to choke him. Shepard knew biotics could enhance a user's strength, and that the general wouldn't last long if Aria kept that up, "Your laws aren't the laws of the Terminus Systems. And he's no prisoner...he'll be nothing but a corpse once I'm done with him, and then I'll have his body dumped into a waste dispos-"
He was out of options. Petrovsky's choking was becoming more desperate, oxygen deprivation taking its toll on him. If he didn't hurry, the general would soon be dead. Knowing he needed to act quickly, he knew there was only one action that would ultimately sway someone like Aria. People of her breed only understood violence...it was the bread and butter of their criminal empires, and what they used to keep their lackeys loyal. Fear and violence was the only law Omega understood, and it was that exact tactic Shepard was now going to be forced to use.
He didn't hesitate. His paladin heavy pistol left its holster faster than one could blink, the N7 closing the gap in those precious few seconds and bringing the weapon to bare against the back of her head, barrel pressed firmly against purple skin just tightly enough to grab her attention. The asari froze, stunned by Shepard's actions, having not expected him to actually put a gun to her head. A decision many who had dared to face her in the past had been killed for.
"Shepard..." she asked hesitantly, unsure of what was happening. He knew he had her in that moment, "...what are you doing?"
"I'm going to give you exactly fifteen seconds," he hissed, "I don't care what reasons you have for killing Petrovsky. I need him alive. He's my prisoner...consider it a quid pro quo. I got you Omega...you give me Petrovsky."
"I can't let him live, you kn-"
"Talking time is over," he interrupted, ice filling his tone as he steeled himself to do what was necessary, "You've got ten seconds left."
"You're bluffing. You won't kill me. You need me to rule Omega."
"I'll find someone else. Someone less temperamental, in fact," he returned, "And people like us don't bluff. You should know that. Six seconds."
"You're soft, Shepard. You're nothing like me. You're bluffing, I know it."
"Three seconds left. Better hope you're right."
Aria, thankfully, knew when she was beaten. Not willing to risk her life on the chance that the human pointing a gun at her might be lying, she released her grip on Petrovsky's throat, the sound following it that of a general pathetically wheezing and coughing as his body drew in as much oxygen as possible to refill its depleted storage. While he inhaled vast amounts of air, the biotic glow around Aria dimmed, her eyes returning to their usual color, fists clenching and unclenching.
He lowered his pistol, holstering it as the asari came to fully face him. To his surprise, he was met with a wicked smile, "I must admit, Shepard. For a second...I thought you would actually pull that trigger."
"You weren't wrong," he returned vaguely. If Aria had continued to choke Petrovsky out...he wasn't lying when he said he would kill her. He needed the Cerberus general more than he needed a rogue element like T'Loak. If push came to shove, he knew he would choose Oleg each and every single time, and that was just a fact.
Aria eyed him for a second, trying to find evidence that he was, again, lying in that regard: whatever she found in his eyes, it was enough to get her to abandon the topic altogether, turning back to the form of Petrovsky, on all fours, coughing up a lung onto the floor, "Just...get this filth off my station. I don't care what you do with him after this. I'm sure one of your interrogators will inflict more pain on him than I ever could. I'll take joy in that thought, since you've stolen my revenge from me."
He didn't bother entertaining her with an answer to that.
Minutes passed as the UGC advance force arrived, and Petrovsky was cuffed and taken to the Normandy's brig for transport to the Citadel later on. The rest of the place was cleared out on Shepard's orders, not wanting any conflict between Aria's men and the UGC/Talon soldiers to take place. Their alliance had been a tenuous one, and keeping the two parties apart was best for everybody involved. They had just won one war...they didn't want to immediately start another over a disdainful look or misinterpreted word.
Aria's speech to Omega had been short and brief, but was also a rallying cry to the people of the station. She emphasized that the greater war beyond was not yet over, and called upon every last capable man and woman to join the Talons and help fight the Reapers. Shepard knew that Aria was a woman of her word, and whether it be a threat or a promise, she kept it. She promised an army, a fleet and a mountain of eezo...and she provided that in abundance. He didn't know how things would run on Omega now with Aria back in charge and the station taking an active role in galactic affairs, but he knew, at the very least, that Aria would give the UGC what she promised.
Shepard had been ready to go down and return to the Normandy when Aria confronted him one last time, oddly sporting the same smile she had before when he had nearly put a bullet in her head, "You know Shepard, I've been thinking of what you nearly did to me. Nobody's threatened me and gotten away with it. Normally I wouldn't have time to be impressed, but ever since I've met you...I can't pretend you're not at least intriguing. You may not like it, but we share a lot of things in common...and I like to think one of them is having the balls to do what needs to be done. You took charge of the situation...you decided you wanted Petrovsky alive, and you were willing to fight me over it. Its the same fire Nyreen had...and I find it very attractive."
Whatever he had to say in regards to that comment didn't get to see the light of day as the asari's hands reached out and found purchase on his armor, pulling him forward and mashing her lips against his.
Like an idiot, his eyes comically widened as Aria kissed him, taken completely surprised by the sudden change of persona. And while it only lasted over a second, the urge to pull away had been strong from the get go. So when Aria parted from him, nodding at him out of some form of need to acknowledge that what had just transpired had indeed transpired, all he could do was stare at her emotionlessly as he tried to fathom everything that occurred in that second. Her taste lingered on his lips, unwelcome and uninvited, and his daze only lifted long enough for him to shake his head.
Ummmm...what just happened?
"Don't look so shocked, Shepard," Aria waved him off, turning back around to face the people gathered around in Afterlife, "It was a spur of the moment thing. Don't think this means anything."
"I don't," he gulped, finally able to produce a response beyond the dumbfounded and goofy look he no doubt had plastered all over his face, "I'm just baffled by why you-"
Before he could finish, he noticed a blur of movement just above Aria and behind her. Aria didn't seem to notice it, her back turned to the apparition, as she crossed her arms and continued to look smugly at him. Shepard, however, had ceased saying whatever he had planned to say, and looked up to see that same blur heading straight for Aria.
Then he saw the color of the blur as it emerged from the shadows. It was...purple?
It clicked a moment too late. What? Tal-?
Descending from the sky like a falcon on its prey, Tali fell upon Aria without the asari ever noticing. Shepard could only watch in absolute horror as the knife she had been apparently wielding slammed into the back of the asari's neck as she fell upon her. Aria cried out in pain, the full force of the quarian's momentum slamming into her back causing the pirate queen to fall face first into the ground. She landed with a thump, and Shepard just continued watching in total shock as Tali tore the knife from Aria's neck.
"Tali...what the fuck are you doing!?" he demanded, his voice a snarl.
More to the point...where the hell did she come from? She fell from the sky like she was using a jetpack...but she doesn't have one! And why would she climb all the way up there just to kill Aria? What the shit!?
"I saw this bosh'tet kiss you," she snapped back, straddling the pirate queen's back as she then proceeded to take her repeatedly through the back of the head, jackhammering the blade into her skull ad nauseum. Eventually Aria's body stopped moving altogether, but that didn't satisfy Tali apparently. The quarian he had served with all these years seemed like an entirely different person, the demonic presence laying waste to the late Aria T'Loak's head with enough contempt to purchase the Citadel itself. Purple blood flew in every direction with each consecutive slash, and the N7 found he could only stand there and watch as the steel blade plunged into the mangled skull with no end in sight.
"Tali..." he muttered, watching as, minutes later, she finally sheathed her knife, casually standing up and beholding her work proudly, the unrecognizable purple pile of stinking flesh littered with bone fragments seeming like a victory to her. Whoever this was, it wasn't Tali. Not the Tali he knew: she would never find glee in murder, "...what has gotten into you?"
"She kissed my neh'sah," Tali shrugged, grinning beneath her mask, "So I kissed her back...with my knife."
"You...you murdered her," he pointed out. Just moments ago, he had been talking to Aria casually, and now there she was on the ground, a soon-to-be cold cadaver, "That's...fucked up. Why did you do that? That's...seriously, what the hell is the matter with you?"
Before Tali could give him an answer however, there was a flash of white that blinded him.
He cried out from the sudden intrusion of light.
As quick as it came, the light was gone.
He blinked, quickly trying to ascertain what had happened, only to find that...
...Aria was stepping back from him.
What in the absolute shit?
A quick look around proved that Tali was nowhere to be seen, Aria was very much alive and stepping back from him, and everything was fine. In fact, the most out-of-place thing he felt was a strange sense of deja-vu. It didn't take long for him to figure out why.
He remembered this because it had happened but moments before. Aria had kissed him, and was backing away. Her taste lingered on his lips. As if to confirm this revelation to him, Aria spoke, uttering the very same sentence she had spoken to him upon breaking the kiss, "Don't look so shocked, Shepard. It was a spur of the moment thing. Don't think this means anything."
Well...that's creepy. Am I going crazy? I watched her die, and now she's here and Tali's gone and she's saying the same thing she did already? What the actual fuck?
Ultimately, it didn't matter why this was happening...only that it was. He also knew what happened next.
Quickly, he looked above Aria, turning to see if he could find a purple blur heading towards her. Deciding not to take any chances, and considering how quickly Tali had descended upon her last time, he stepped forward and pushed Aria behind him, protecting her, "Tali, I know you're there!"
Aria just stared at him puzzingly, "Your quarian friend? Of course she's here...you left her with Archangel downstairs. And yes, I know his name is Archangel. It didn't take long for me to-"
"Yes, neh'sah!" came the familiar sound of Tali's voice, but it sounded much closer, "I'm right here! Don't worry, I'll take out the trash for you!"
The voice came from behind him, not above, and he whirled in confusion to address the threat. What he found caused his eyes to widen to ridiculous proportions, his jaw feeling like it had crashed to the floor.
Tali stood behind him, and just beside Aria, but this time she wasn't carrying a knife...no, she wielded a krogan warhammer, the engravings of Clan Urdnot's insignia etched into the top of it, the entirety of the weapon easily a full four heads taller than she was. By the laws of physics, she shouldn't have been able to even pick it up, let alone wield it in a battle ready stance, the absurdly large weapon making herself puny by comparison. Yet her three-fingered hands gripped it with intent, sizing up her opponent in Aria. He had no idea why the situation had suddenly changed, but when he saw Tali prepping to swing the colossal hammer in her grip, he rushed to stop her.
Too late...again.
The quarian swung the hammer at Aria's chest, who just seemed to stand there and take it. The impact was felt from where Shepard was, feeling like a bomb going off in the distance, with the shockwave slamming into him and causing every bone in his body to shake. And Aria was unlucky enough to be burdened by the full force of it. With likely every single bone in her ribcage pulverized, the asari flew like a ragdoll across the command center until she slammed into Petrovsky's console, the impact sending a loud snap through the air as her spine was severed. She immediately fell limp, slithering to the ground in a heap. And still Tali was not done.
Back to square one, Shepard just watched as Tali continued her barbaric work, walking over and proceeding to bring the hammer down not once, not twice, not thrice...but four, five, six, eight, twelve, nineteen, twenty-seven times! By the time she slammed the hammer down into its final resting place, the point of the weapon dangling strings of practically disintegrated flesh from its edge, Aria was even less recognizable than before. She was essentially a puddle of destroyed bone, what looked like bits of skin, and numerous puddles of purple blood.
Tali once again, in direct contrast of Shepard's nonplussed demeanour, seemed overjoyed to see her 'foe' vanquished once again in bloody fashion, whirling to face her bondmate and smiling, leaning up against the warhammer she now had wedged in the ground, "There we go, my love...the trash has been removed!"
"You're fucking insane!" he spat, nowhere near as tongue-tied as before now that he had experienced it, "What is wrong with you? I understand she kissed me, but was that really enough to warrant bashing her to death? Where did you even get that warhammer? How are you using it!? How are-"
The flash returned. He was blinded once more.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous.
Well, the drill was obvious by this point. The moment the flash ended, as he predicted, he found himself face-to-face with an alive-and-well Aria, the asari pulling away from the kiss she had given him. Knowing he could not hope to predict where Tali would strike, he grabbed Aria by the arm and tried to run down the stairs, hoping to escape with her before Tali arrived.
But, right at the bottom of the stairs, stood Tali, "Neh'sah, there you are. And there's the bosh'tet hahriz da who kissed you!"
She whipped out a M-76 Revenant. She opened fire, and Aria was riddled with bullets.
Another white flash.
He took Aria's arm and leapt over the balcony this time, only for Chatika to appear and burn Aria alive with a series of incendiary blasts. He groaned, and closed his eyes before the flash even appeared.
Upon returning for another try, he opened a grating and went down through the vents with Aria. When they emerged, it was outside Afterlife. Shepard, believing he had finally evaded Tali's notice, turned to explain to a bewildered Aria what the hell was going on, only for him to see Aria's bissected skull slide off her head and hit the ground with a splat, Tali using her veil to wipe the blood off her ninjato, waving happily at him.
Flash.
He literally had bodyguards escort Aria to a ship in dock, and watched as it took off. His relieved composure was shattered as he watched one of the disabled defense guns turned and opened fire, obliterating the ship.
When did Tali become omnipotent!?
Again and again he tried, and again and again he was countered at every turn. Whatever this purgatory was that he was trapped in, it seemed this version of Tali was its mistress, because she was always there to counter every single new strategy he developed to protect Aria. In the end, blinded by frustration, he whipped out his pistol and killed Aria himself, not stopping until he had emptied the whole clip.
Tali didn't show up.
There!? Are you fucking happy, you little quarian psycho!?
The flash came for him one last time.
This time was different. When the flash dissipated, he found himself staring aimlessly at someone who was decidedly not Aria, and definitely far less attractive. As he discovered thanks to his vision zoning back in, the batarian he was looking at wasn't even looking at him, seeming totally oblivious to the attention he was getting. He continued wiping at the bench infront of Shepard, and it was here that the commander noticed he was no longer standing, he wasn't wearing armor, and he was holding a single, noticeably empty glass.
Huh?
Rightfully confused, he took a look around to try and garner a guess at his surroundings. He was in the lower half of Afterlife he realized, and as he looked around, he saw more and more people, all of them civilians, dancing and hollering and laughing. A few guards wearing Talon patches on their shoulders stood guard at the entrances, and the dancefloor was alight with color. None of this told him exactly how he got here however, and his brow only furrowed in further confusion at the sight of it all.
One moment, he was defending Aria from a rabid Tali who somehow managed to predict him at every turn, and kill the pirate queen each and every time without fail. Now he was in a bar, with neither person in sight, surrounded by dancing people with an empty drink in hand and no armor on. His head felt like it was swimming through an ocean admittedly, but that only amplified his growing frustration with...whatever the hell kind of purgatory he was trapped inside.
"There you are!" a voice announced to his left. He whirled to face it, but he quickly regretted that action, the swimming sensation in his head turning into a tsunami, nearly sending him flying off the stool he was on. Before he could fall though, he felt strong arms grab him, stalling his descent towards the floor. These arms hefted him back into his seat, and with his head being pulled up, he finally got a good look at the good samaritan.
It was Garrus.
"Garrrrrrruuuuus?" he slurred, burping slightly. A warmth filled his throat, suddenly and violently enough that it caused him to cough quite abruptly, leaving him to thump his chest. Once he was done, he turned back to look at the turian, trying to maintain eye contact but finding it difficult with the swinging-and-swaying of his posture, "What...the hell is...goinnnnng onnnn? TA-li just-"
"I just did what?"
He groaned, turning away from Garrus to find the quarian in question standing to his right, hands on her hips. He noticed that her body language screamed disappointment and exasperation, which was in total stark contrast to the gleefully murderous intent she had displayed earlier when she had so happily torn Aria apart. He raised a finger at her accusingly...or tried to, as his arm just flopped uselessly onto the counter, earning him another disappointed shake of the head from Tali, "Y-you! Where-you need to stop..."
"Stop doing what?" Tali asked, turning to look at Garrus, "Garrus, he's so drunk he can barely think straight. I think we better get him back to the Normandy."
"I know I technically challenged you to a drinking competition," his turian comrade acknowledged, reaching under one of Shepard's arms and slinging it over his shoulders, while Tali proceeded to do the same with other one, "But getting this hammered was a tad over-the-top. You had already beaten me by like...eight drinks!"
"So stupid," Tali sighed, the two beginning to move in tandem as they helped Shepard out of the bar who, to his credit, just stood and let them move him, putting up little resistance...not that he had much to give, "I really don't see the obsession with demonstrating how much more alcohol you can drink than the other. What's the point?"
I was...having a drinking competition? With Garrus? I don't remember that...
"A light weight such as yourself couldn't possibly understand," Garrus smugly retorted, "Its a custom of the male species. Its beyond your female ability to comprehend."
Tali didn't offer another jab in response to that, simply rolling her eyes, "Men. Perhaps its best this remains 'beyond my ability to comprehend.' I like being sensible."
"So do the boring," the turian returned.
All the while the two of them bantered back and forth, Shepard was left to ponder what this all meant...and he spent his remaining trip to the Normandy trying to do exactly that. Making sense of the insanity he had been engrossed in.
When he woke up the next morning, Tali was there. He groaned as his head, feeling like it weighed more than thirty elephants, could barely lift from the pillow. His bondmate had been kind enough to dim the lighting across the cabin, but the light from the fish tank still managed to bother his eyesight enough to force him to squint. If it wasn't for the pain he was in, he would have found the ethereal glow that outlined Tali's body, from where she sat on the edge of the bed, to be beautiful.
She seemed to be slightly more sympathetic this time however, although the exasperation was still present in her tone. She asked if he was okay, and he told her that he was, and that the confusion from the other night had finally been cleared up. When asked once again what he meant when he said he needed to stop her, he simply shook his head, groaning as he remembered that...moment of non-lucidity.
His response had been simple then, because it was really the only answer he had.
"Tali...I had a weird fucking dream."
A/N:
Well, it didn't take two days, I'll admit that. The reason this prompt took so long was because I got hit with a cold just a few days after wrapping up Snapshot 19, and it effectively murdered my productivity. All I was getting done after that was working and that's it. But, I'm feeling much better now, and with that improvement, I was finally able to write this and get it done. So apologies for the wait.
Snapshots 21 and 22 will come after I've done Chapter 13 for EQC. Right now, its EQC's turn.
Until next time,
Keelah se'lai, bosh'tets!