Summary:
Shepard brings a pest aboard the Normandy
Notes:
Challenge Yourself: A Month Of Fanfiction 2017
Thursday 8/24's prompt: A challenge given to you by someone else
Daniscats challened with "bedbugs"
"Shepard!"
Shepard threw herself from her bunk with reflexes honed over a decade and a half of combat. Her body already in motion as she awakened, her tired brain struggling to both perform a self assessment, and achieve situational awareness even as she gained consciousness.
Data trickled in as she shed the last vestiges of sleep. She was in her cabin. Air and temperature appeared normal (she always checked those first now). There were no obvious threats visible. Liara was present.
Her arc was already in the downward part of its trajectory as she processed that information, coinciding with the arrival of the additional data that her left leg was still pinned under the asari. Also, the floor was rushing up to meet her face.
She almost got her hands up in time.
"Shepard!" Wrex' bellow penetrated the distracting sensations of her aching elbows and stinging nose.
"What!?" Obviously there was already an open comm, and she was currently in no mood for civility. Liara blinked blearily at her outburst. How she'd managed to sleep through Wrex' yelling, the commander had no idea.
"You've got a problem down here Shepard," responded Wrex as he ignored Shepard's obvious ire. "You need to take care of it."
"What is it Wrex?" She asked, slightly mollified. "The Council? The Dalatrass?" Her voice lowered, "You're not having a problem with Victus are you? I need him."
"Just get down here, Shepard. I'm in the cargo bay." The krogan closed the connection.
That was a surprise. The spectre glanced at the chronometer as she started collecting pieces of the prior day's uniform from the deck. The new day wasn't far enough along to justify a clean one.
"Shepard? What's wrong?" A sleepy question from the bed, as the commander slipped on her boots.
"Nothing. Go back to sleep." She might have three hours under belt if she was lucky, but if she knew her sleepy Shadow Broker, then Liara probably had less than one.
The maiden's response was an emphatic silence, confirming Shepard's hunch.
She tucked in her shirt as she rode the lift to the cargo bay. Wrex hadn't been on any away missions, and he'd seemed mollified by the primarch's son's sacrifice in eliminating the threat of the turian bomb. Her tired brain was unable to come up with any reason for the krogan to be calling her at this hour at all, let alone from the bay.
Stepping off the lift did nothing to clear her confusion. Cortez was nowhere to be seen. Not surprising, as he would be off duty at this hour. James was present however, leaning against his workbench with his arms crossed and an "I've got a secret" grin.
Wrex was in the middle of the bay, stomping around a pile of gear that looked like the field equipment she'd taken to Tuchanka. She was certain everything in the pile had been neatly stacked outside shuttle one the last time she'd seen it.
"Shepard!" The krogan turned at her arrival. "What's the meaning of this?" He pointed angrily at the assorted gear.
"Uh, what?" She ran her hand through her hair, nearly swearing when her fingers hit a knot. 'I must look absolutely spectacular,' she thought. "What are you talking about, Wrex?", she regrouped.
"This," he pointed more forcefully at the pile. "What were you thinking?"
She approached the pile for a closer look, not understanding what she was missing. "I don't see anything…" she was cut short by Wrex jumping into her path, blocking her way with an outstretched arm.
"Shepard," his tone turned condescending. "You took this gear to Tuchanka. You used it on the surface."
She looked up at him. "Sure," she agreed. "Liara and I were on the surface for three days until I turned command of the site over to Captain Graves. We bivouacked with the other marines and turian survivors until I was convinced the site was secure."
Wrex huffed in frustration at not getting his point across. "And you brought it aboard? You didn't decontaminate it?"
Now she was frustrated. "Kinda tired here, Wrex. Of course it was decontaminated. It'll need to be cleaned before it's stored, but there shouldn't be any bacteria." Although, if there were any bacteria that could survive an Alliance decontamination cycle, it would probably come from Tuchanka, she considered.
"Come here," the krogan approached the equipment he'd piled in the center of the bay. He pointed a thick finger at the synthetic canvas that covered the exterior of the tent she'd shared with Liara. "Look at this."
Shepard looked askance at Wrex as she got closer. "Still don't seen anything."
"Look again," more firmly this time, his finger almost touching the material.
This time she kneeled by the pile, and at the end of his finger, difficult to see against the desert camouflage pattern of the canvas, was an insect. It was perhaps a millimeter long, and moving slowly in the along a crease in the material.
"OK," she looked up from the deck. "It's a bug."
"It's a cinyphak!" He bellowed. "It crawls into the places where you sleep!"
Shepard got to her feet with a chuckle. "Are you kidding, Wrex?" She brushed off her knees as she straightened up. "It's a damn bedbug?"
He towered over her with a growl, "They crawl under your plates, Shepard. You can't get them out."
"Eww," she shivered. "That's disgusting. Let me guess, they bite? They live in there, lay eggs or something?"
"Wha? No, Shepard. Is that how things are on Earth? No wonder you people have so many colonies." He shook his head at the thought. "They itch. They itch until they die. Sometimes it takes a week!"
"Right." Shepard turned and headed back towards the lift. "Sorry about the big, scary bug, Wrex. We'll take care of them before we…" She jumped as her response was interrupted by an echoing blast.
She spun to see her gear on fire, engulfed in flame from the incendiary rounds that Wrex had just fired into it with his shotgun.
"Dammit, Wrex. That stuff's expensive." And it wasn't like equipment was easy to replace these days.
Wrex's look was unrepentant.
"I hate itching."