A/N: Thanks for all the reviews and everyone who's stuck with this story! In honour of you all, have an extra long chapter.
Chapter 28
"If I threw Sephiroth off the top of HQ, what are the chances he'd survive?" Shepard asked, swirling the dregs of a lukewarm beer around the bottom of her glass. Next to her Guzzard snorted.
"Depends. If he had a gravity materia he'd be fine," he said, ruminating on the contents of his glass. This dark little pub, tucked away on the corner of the plate where nobody important thought to look, had become one of her favourite places in Midgar. She didn't come here with any sort of regularity, but it was the only watering hole she did visit. She got the impression Guzzard came here all the time.
"What if he had no materia?" she mused. "Gravity is a vengeful bastard; would the fall finish him off?"
"Probably not. He walks off fatal injuries all the time. It's like he's a lump of lead."
"Or a cockroach," she said, looking philosophically at the ceiling.
He gave her a crooked smile. "What did he do, get a scratch on your gun?"
"If he'd done that, we would all know exactly how much blunt force trauma he could survive," she said darkly before finishing the last of her drink.
Guzzard leaned back on his stool and gave her a questioning look. "What did I miss?"
"Think of it as interdepartmental squabbling, but more so," she said, waving down another beer from the young and jumpy-looking bartender.
"Don't tell me." Guzzard waved off her explanation. Not asking questions was still his MO.
"You know, I was considered for general once?" he said, staring vacantly at the wall.
She choked on her drink. He laughed at her.
"What?" she choked out, thumping herself on the chest.
"They'd only just decided SOLDIER needed one instead of just answering to the Director. I was the front runner until Sephiroth tore through the ranks," he spoke wistfully, wearing an odd smile that pulled at all his scars. "I didn't take getting passed over very well. I remember yelling at Heidegger, something especially petty about shirtless teenagers in need of haircuts." He snorted a laugh at himself. "And that's why I'm a sergeant now."
"Damn, I'm sorry."
He waved off her apology. "I would have made a shit general. SOLDIER doesn't use ranks properly; I have about the same duties as a sarge that I did as a major. And Sephiroth turned out to be pretty good at the job –even if he does still need a haircut."
"It's one thing to be a capable general during peacetime," she said darkly. "It remains to be seen if he can claim the same with a war raging."
"True," he said with a tilt of his head. "Glad you're alive, by the way." He leaned both elbows on the bar. "Could have done without the war, though."
"Me too," she said with a snort. "Ready to go invade Wutai?"
"No," he looked at her like she was crazy. "You?"
"Of course not." She took the first sip of her drink, and savoured it. "I just finished a war; I don't want to charge straight back into one."
She probably shouldn't have been talking about it. It was meant to be a secret after all, and Guzzard was certainly aware that no major wars had been fought recently, but she didn't see the point in pretending. He'd probably already guessed. It wasn't as though he was going to tell anyone about her bizarre secrets.
"Do you know what happened to my face?" he asked after a moment of comfortable silence. Moody blues music was crooning out of the radio, drowning out any nearby conversations. "Why I'm so damn pretty?" He dragged a hand along the scarring on his left cheek. The scar tissue trailed down to his chin and all the way to the side of his neck, making his stubble splotchy and uneven.
"A terrible shaving accident?"
"Fort Condor." He finished his drink and set the glass on the bar with a sigh. She hadn't heard this story. "They've always been independent out that way, and proud of it too. They didn't want mako power; it was all coal back then. All the old pictures of the mountain had a giant smoke stack in the background and a big ugly black cloud above it." He shook his head, looking wistfully into the empty glass. "Shinra didn't like that."
"How long ago was this?"
"About twenty years," he said, scratching his stubble. "I was a Third then, tail end of the first generation of SOLDIER. 'Go and take Fort Condor,' Heidegger said. So we did."
"Did they put up much of a fight?" She leant against the bar.
"Yeah. They grow 'em tough out there." He gave a bark of bitter laughter and shook his head at himself. "My first taste of real combat. I was so keen to see some action, show them who called the shots. They showed us a thing or two as well." His hand traced his scars again. "Wasn't much left by the time we were done."
She silently waved down another drink for him and listened. The bartender slid it along the stained wooden surface.
"They still hate us for it. We have to keep a garrison out there now, 'to discourage violence.'" He sighed heavily and stared at the grimy bar. "I guess we'll be 'discouraging' Wutai too, soon enough."
His new drink arrived, and he took a long draught.
"I destroyed the Alpha relay," she said quietly.
He wouldn't know what it meant. Even those that did know rarely understood it. The destruction of an entire solar system felt too big to grasp, hundreds of thousands of civilians, just minding their own business, all snuffed out in a moment. To the Batarians she was the worst war criminal in history. She didn't regret it, but it ached inside her anyway.
"It bought us time," she continued, "valuable time that everyone needed to prepare for the invasion. But they didn't prepare. They put their fingers in their ears and pretended everything was fine."
Perhaps that hurt the most: that the sacrifice had been mostly wasted. Guzzard was watching her with his brow drawn down.
"Did you win?" he asked, surprisingly softly.
"In the end," she said roughly, a scowl cutting at her face. "Nobody ever listens."
He sighed and looked away.
"Damn kids," he said, taking an exaggerated swig of his drink.
"Bloody rookies," she agreed, taking a drink as well and letting the sombre moment slip away. "Excuse me, Commander Shepard?" the bartender interrupted, finally gathering enough nerve to approach. He was acne-ridden and no older than twenty. He held up a scrap of paper and a pen. "Um… my sister's a big fan. She'd never forgive me if I didn't get an autograph."
Guzzard chortled.
With a resigned sigh she signed the paper and handed it back to him. He scuttled away with a burning blush.
"Goodbye, sweet anonymity," she said wistfully, "You were nice while you lasted."
"Hey, Shepard!"
She turned to see Kunsel running up behind her.
"I wanted to catch you before I left for Junon next weekend."
It had been a busy month. Shinra had thrown itself completely into preparations for the war, and she'd barely had time for training anyone. They wouldn't actually launch the invasion for another month or so – invading an island nation on the other side of the globe wasn't something done on a whim.
Kunsel, along with most of the troopers she had worked with, would be heading for the SOLDIER academy in Junon.
"I'm glad you made it. You've earned it," she said with a smile. She had said it before, but it was worth repeating.
"I wanted to thank you." He ducked his head, and she imagined his helmet hid a blush. "You've taught me a lot. I really appreciate it."
"Happy to help." She continued walking, and he kept pace with her. They were headed to the firing range on the training levels. "So, how long till you're officially in SOLDIER?"
"It's already official, but I won't get any enhancements until I've have six months of mandatory training, and then there's another three months after that."
She nodded. "So you won't be anywhere near the front lines for at least nine months."
It was probably unfair of her, but she was incalculably grateful for that. He had handled Rocket Town very well, but he was quieter now, less eager to pick up his weapon. It would take time for him to accept the realities of the job, better for him to do that in an academy than on a battlefield.
"Yeah." He scratched the back of his neck. "It feels a little cowardly: to be safe at home while others charge off to fight. But at the same time… I can wait."
"You were in the first skirmish of this war; you know exactly what's waiting." She looked straight ahead, and he ducked his head again. "In the meantime, you have a lot to learn."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Apparently, in the second half of training you get to pick what sort of sword you want," he began tentatively, "depending on how training has gone."
"Any ideas?"
"I don't think I want a sword."
She smiled at that and patted him on the back.
"See how the training goes. You might be a natural."
"Maybe," he allowed with a tilt of his head, "but I like fighting at a distance. It's like a bubble of calm where it's easier to think straight, see all the pieces, and make the right call."
"You're a man of good taste," she said with a sharp smile. She'd had a little cluster of snipers on the Normandy at one point: herself, Thane, Garrus, and Zaeed. The competition had been fierce, and they'd left used up heatsinks all across the galaxy.
"I want to be ready for next time," he said.
"If you do decide on a rifle, I'd be happy to continue training you. I think there's even an official system for it."
He stopped walking. "You want to be my mentor?"
"Only if you need one," she said with a shrug. She would hate to see the only other sniper in SOLDIER discouraged for lack of proper training. "You've got a lot of potential. I'd hate to see it wasted."
"Thank you, Shepard," he said, sincerity making his voice quieter. "I'm off now, but I'll let you know when I've decided." He started for one of the other exits.
"Kunsel?"
He turned to look back at her.
"You've achieved a lot, you know. You are allowed to celebrate."
"I guess so."
Neon lights flashed, women in very short dresses danced with their arms in the air, and music that heavily resembled emergency alarms blared through massive speakers.
Sephiroth was in hell.
"Come on, it's through here," Genesis said, pushing through the crowds. "The others must be there already."
He steeled himself and followed.
He didn't see how this could possibly be termed 'fun', let alone a method of celebration. But Genesis insisted that the Goblin Bar was the perfect place and who was he to argue? He wasn't the one who had just been promoted. Genesis and Angeal had finally recovered from their First Class enhancements and the former had demanded they celebrate properly before they were shipped out.
Sephiroth had not expected to be included in the proceedings. He wasn't entirely sure how he had been talked into it either. The two of them were still a mystery to him.
They took the stairs to the VIP room. The bouncer froze for a moment at the sight of them. Sephiroth wasn't wearing his pauldrons but looked no less recognisable in his leather coat. Genesis stood proudly in the red leather coat he had started parading about in since his promotion.
The bounced swallowed and then opened the door without a word.
Inside was, thankfully, much quieter. Most of the crowds were left outside, along with the multi-coloured strobes and laser lights. Instead of a writhing dance floor and a bar heavily guarded by long queues of sweaty people, private-looking booths ringed the room and the wide circular bar of black granite in the centre. The lights were all purple for some reason.
One of the walls was made entirely of glass, overlooking the dance floor below.
"There they are," he said, spotting Angeal and Shepard in one of the farthest booths. They were already drinking and joking together. Half the other occupants of the lounge were sneaking covert looks at the four SOLDIERs.
Angeal looked perfectly healthy, having been cleared from the infirmary and completed his new enhancements. One would never know he had been at risk of being a cripple for the rest of his life only a month ago.
Shepard was laughing. Not the barbed chuckle she gave in combat or the bitter smile he had seen a lot of recently, but actual happy, throaty laughter. It was a rare sound and oddly compelling.
Convincing her to join the war effort currently stood as one of his greatest triumphs and the best tactical decision he had made in years. She brought an entire civilization's worth of revolutionary strategy to the table. He would unleash hell upon the Wutai, who would have no idea how to counter it.
But her help, while granted in full, didn't come without a price. For a brief moment, they had fought together back-to-back; now they planned a war from opposite sides of a room, and he had never before noticed how cold his own office could be. The brief glimpses he had seen of the woman behind the rifle were gone. She was a creature of war, intense and completely focused, and that was all she permitted him to see now. It felt a lot like having his security clearance revoked.
The sound of her laughter was strangely freeing. He had underestimated the weight of her disapproval, and her steely gaze was exhausting.
He felt it settle on him.
Genesis sat with as much ceremony as possible and summoned a waiter. Sephiroth glanced at the menu and ordered the first drink that didn't have a stupid name. Genesis went straight for a bottle of champagne.
Shepard was halfway through a foamy beer while Angeal sipped on a fruit cocktail that boasted a wide array of colours.
Genesis' lips quirked at the sight of the fruity concoction.
"It comes with little umbrellas," Angeal said stoically.
Genesis shook his head, and his gaze shifted to Shepard's drink of choice.
"Really?" He said, "You're in the most exclusive bar in the city and you drink cheap lager? I know you like to pretend you're boring, but this is getting excessive."
"They used up all the little umbrellas on Angeal's drink, so there was no point getting anything else," she said airily.
A little later, after several long and drawn out toasts that exhausted numerous bottles of champagne – to First Class, and then to SOLDIER, then to not being in an infirmary, and finally to having met an alien without being abducted, which Shepard found hilarious – some sort of game started up.
"Alright," Genesis said, leaning against the glass wall next to him. "Most illegal thing you've ever done?"
Sephiroth didn't know what this game was called, or if it even had a name, but the point appeared to be outdoing everyone else in whatever category was arbitrarily selected. He was surprisingly good at it.
"I, uh, used to steal as a kid. Just food, fruit usually," Angeal said, ducking his head. "But I stole a chocobo once and took it for a joy ride."
Genesis laughed and shook his head in mock disapproval..
"I put it back afterwards!" he said, hunching his shoulders. "I even cleaned out its stable and bought it new greens, the poor thing."
"Your idea of breaking the law is illegally feeding someone else's farm animals?" Shepard asked with a fond smile.
"Having just ridden it through the countryside at four in the morning and then getting stuck in a ditch for two hours," he said, scratching the back of his neck.
"I have never broken the law," Sephiroth said. Was that winning? Or was the point to be the biggest criminal?
"Neither have I," Shepard said, leaning forwards and picking at the bowl of deep fried potato bits.
Genesis gave a bark of laughter. "I don't believe that for second."
"Hey! It's true. I am a law-abiding citizen."
"I'm impressed you can say it with a straight face," Sephiroth drawled. Since she was finally relaxed around him tonight, he found distinct pleasure in prodding her for reactions.
"I'm a spectre," she said with a sharp smile. "That means Citadel law doesn't apply to me, so everything I do is, by definition, legal."
He choked on his drink. Just how highly ranked was she?
"Like a Turk?" Angeal asked, his brow creased.
"More public than that,, and they recruit solely from military sectors."
"What about before you were promoted?" he asked.
"Spectre status works retroactively," she said with a shrug.
"Aren't they concerned about what such a loose cannon might get up to without supervision?" Sephiroth asked. He certainly was.
"Only my enemies need to worry about that." Her smile could cut slice through anything.
He glowered at her. She returned an easy smile.
"I currently have about seven thousand gil worth of unpaid traffic fines," Genesis said.
Shepard was having a great time. She put down her empty glass, and a waiter immediately replaced it. She had needed this. Even Sephiroth's arrival hadn't dampened her spirits, because the sight of him trying to identify the bright green drink he had ordered was hilarious.
"Weirdest thing you've ever seen," Angeal issued the challenge.
She snorted. "I could describe my office supplies, and you would think they were weird."
"They probably are, knowing you," Genesis said. Angeal had told him she was from off-world, so finally, they could all stop pretending.
"I saw Scarlet trying to flirt with Sephiroth yesterday," Angeal said.
The man in question rolled his eyes, and Genesis laughed.
"Shepard," Sephiroth said.
"What?" she asked.
"You're the weirdest thing I've ever seen," he said dryly.
"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," she said, looking at him pityingly.
He scowled back at her. Point, Shepard. Oh yes, she was having a great time.
"That's nothing," Angeal said, a wide smile on his face. "I went on a mission to the Gongaga area back when I had only just been promoted to Second Class. I was supposed to find another SOLDIER who had gone missing in the area."
Genesis froze and gave his old friend a look that promised bloody murder. Angeal ignored it.
"It's all jungle out there, teeming with weird wildlife. I stumbled across a nest of frogs, but there was something off about it."
"We should have left you in Rocket Town," Genesis said bitterly. "You can tell the Wutai your funny stories."
"There was one frog, a red one, trying really hard to hop away from a horde of little green ones, but they kept herding it back to the nest."
"So…?" Shepard asked, not seeing where this was going.
"There are strange rumours about the animals out there, so on a hunch I cast esuna in case there were poisons or hallucinations or anything else going on." He was trying to hold back a smile and doing a poor job of it. "The red frog morphs into Genesis, dazed and confused and covered in frog slime, sitting in the middle of the nest."
"I was not," Genesis groused, his shoulders hunched and glaring at his drink.
"What?" she asked, completely confused.
"Touch Me's. I'd assumed they were just a myth," Sephiroth said, watching Genesis with a smile. "A type of frog – a single touch is supposed to transform a person into one of them."
"He was still surrounded by the frogs, though, so a second later they transformed him back. I recast esuna and the frogs did it again," Angeal said. "This went on for about five minutes."
"You're making this up," she said, sending disbelieving looks between the two men.
"Yes, it's all a ridiculous story, the product of Angeal's absurd imagination," Genesis said.
"No, I think I recall a couple of suspiciously non-descriptive mission reports from Gongaga," said Sephiroth.
"It was years ago!" Genesis cried. "How could you possibly remember?"
"What were the frogs doing with you, Genesis?" Angeal asked. "They seemed very determined to keep you as one of them."
"How should I know? I don't speak frog."
"Although, I do remember that the nest was mostly made up of female frogs," Angeal said thoughtfully.
There was a second of silence, and then Sephiroth snorted and Shepard burst out laughing.
"I'm going to kill you," Genesis said plainly to Angeal.
He didn't seem very repentant.
Genesis turned pointedly to the glass wall, muttering something about a 'good for nothing traitor.'
"Oh look, Zack just passed out," he said, looking down at the floor below. "On the losing side of a drinking competition."
"Is he all right?" Angeal asked, trying to lean around over Shepard to see.
"Kunsel is carting him out," she said. She was sitting opposite Genesis, also next to the glass wall. "He'll be fine."
"That boy." Angeal shook his head, before finishing another cocktail. Mako meant it didn't affect them at the same rate as a normal person, but the alcohol was slowly starting to kick in.
"He's not your problem, you know," Genesis said. "If he wants to drink until his liver explodes, that's his problem," Genesis said, flicking his hair.
"And how many of those have you had?" Angeal asked, looking pointedly at the dozens of empty glasses piled up around them.
"I am enhanced."
"Yeah, we know; you won't stop going on about it," Shepard muttered, taking a swig of her drink. He sent her a frown.
"You've adopted a pet recruit as well, haven't you?" Genesis asked.
"No, I've adopted a terrifying sniper-in-the-making, and I'll take your apology in writing when he saves your life in the field one day."
Sephiroth snorted.
"Never going to happen," Genesis said with a shake of his head. "But you are welcome to enjoy your little fantasies while they last."
"Think what you like."
"Are you still training the infantry? There won't be much time with a war on."
"You think wartime calls for less training?" she asked wryly and grabbed the last onion ring.
"Well, there is only so much time in the day," he said.
"If someone is going to shoot me, I'd prefer they do it on purpose."
"I thought it was the recruitment age you didn't like," Angeal said.
Sephiroth sighed heavily and finished his drink. Clearly the algae-coloured substance was growing on him because he signalled for another.
"Apparently, that makes me unique here," she said dryly.
"Well, yes. It does," Genesis said. "Do no teenagers fight where you're from?"
"Plenty fight. Most die. I had a couple in my crew who were young, but they were special cases," she said, trying not to sound too bitter. This wasn't the place for reality, surrounded by free-flowing drinks and brightly coloured little umbrellas.
"And under what circumstances did you consider it acceptable to ignore your legal minimum age?" Sephiroth drawled, because of course he did.
She wanted to roll her eyes but resisted the urge. "EDI is about three years old, but age isn't really an issue for an AI." She took a deep swig of her drink. "And Grunt was technically a newborn but, then, he was made in a lab as an fully grown adult so he may not count."
They all looked at her in shock.
"What do you mean made?" Sephiroth asked, his proud indifference momentarily replaced with fascinated disgust.
"'Tank grown' and it is very much illegal. I opened the tank and woke him up. He didn't much care for his maker's agenda and instead decided to join my crew." It wasn't really her story to tell, but these people would never know him. And besides, she was proud of him. "He's almost two years old now."
"Now you're the one making things up," Angeal said.
"I am not. He's a great guy; he was leading his own company last time I saw him."
"But what use would he be?" Sephiroth asked, clearly fascinated. "Wouldn't his muscles have been weak from disuse? How could he know how to talk, let alone be capable in a fight?"
"He was designed for combat. Apparently, he was as close to physically perfect as anyone can be. Neural implants taught him how to walk and talk and fight as well as his designer's political agenda and the great legacy he was meant to fulfil." She finished off her drink and smiled. "Instead he named himself Grunt, picked his own clan, and chose his own enemies."
"Huh," Angeal said, still looking disturbed.
"And what does physical perfection look like?" Sephiroth asked.
"He isn't human. Did I not mention that? He's a krogan. And I don't know what defines krogan perfection, but I have been assured that he smelled right."
Genesis cleared his throat. "Well. I have no idea what to do with that information."
"If you woke him up from his tank, does that make you his mother?" Angeal asked, a smile tugging at his lips.
"I was his battle-master, which is far more important to a Krogan," she pointed out with her glass. "Although, I did buy him his first shotgun and I am the one he calls when he gets into legal trouble, so maybe I am his mother."
Genesis snorted. "Sephiroth wins. Shepard's definitely the weirdest thing here."
"Surely that means I win?" she challenged.
"I'm not sure you realise just how bizarre you are."
She sighed in resignation. "Fine. Biggest scar." She gestured at herself. "My entry is all of me."
"I have the sense not to get hit in the first place," Genesis said, relaxing back in his seat.
"Heh, yeah, that's exactly what it means," she said, hiding her smile.
"My turn," Angeal said before leaning back and hauling one of his legs up on the table. He knocked over several empty glasses and a bowl of peanuts before rolling up his trouser leg to reveal a series of long surgical scars running up his hairy leg. The scars were all well-healed but still pink.
"That's okay – I wasn't eating or anything, Angeal," Genesis said, shifting the remaining bowls of food and lifting his drink before it too was knocked to the ground.
"That's the new one?" Shepard asked.
He nodded, trying to twist his leg to best show off the new scar tissue. Genesis and Sephiroth leaned over to see his new trophy. "The other leg isn't so bad," he said. "And I'm not sure what this lump is, but it feels like a metal pin."
"It's probably holding the bones together," Sephiroth said.
Genesis poked it. Angeal jumped and promptly removed his leg from the table.
"Hmph." Sephiroth stood and took off his coat, then turned and held his hair aside.
Two massive surgical scars ran the length of his back, on either side of his spine, with a series of smaller scars plotted strategically across his back.
"Damn," Shepard said with a whistle. That must have been painful. She'd seen him without his coat before, but his hair must have hidden it. Funny how something so big could go completely unnoticed.
"What happened?" Genesis asked.
"Reconstructive surgery," he said, sitting again but not bothering to put his coat back on. It was getting stuffy. "It was meant to be a simple mission, before I was in SOLDIER. I got swarmed by tonberrys. I killed them all, of course, but the last one managed to latch onto my back."
"You should have extensive spinal damage," Angeal said, still looking disturbed.
"That's what the surgery was to prevent, presumably."
"So they sliced open your spinal column?" she asked, dubious at the entire notion. This planet was terrifying.
"Take it up with Hojo," he said with a shrug.
"I'd rather not."
He smiled, probably pleased with himself for silencing them, and finished off another of his toxic green drinks.
"Toughest fight," he said.
"Nope, I'm not touching that one," Angeal said, shaking his head.
"I fought a grand horn armed with just a sword and a fire materia," Genesis offered, twirling an empty glass. He'd switched to wine after they'd gotten through the third bottle of champagne.
"What did you need the materia for?" Sephiroth drawled. "I have taken down high dragons with just a sword."
"You know the occasional escaped specimens from the science department?" Genesis replied, not missing a beat. "I hunted one down into the slums once; the reports afterwards called it 'Lost Number,' and–"
Sephiroth snorted.
"It was heavily mutated," Genesis growled.
"I'm sure it was," he replied lightly.
"It was larger than any dragon," Genesis insisted.
"I didn't say it wasn't," Sephiroth said with a patronizing smile.
"I arm wrestled a krogan once," Shepard said before Genesis could snap. "One dislocated shoulder and three broken fingers later, I was officially declared the loser." Taking on Wrex was for the bold and stupid. She qualified as both sometimes.
"I expected more from someone with so many scars," Genesis said, momentarily distracted from his single player game of one-up-manship.
"Those aren't fun stories," she said, returning her focus to her drink. It was empty. Damn.
"Come on, the challenge was 'toughest fight,' not 'most embarrassing defeat.'" Genesis said.
"That was nowhere near my most embarrassing," she said with a chuckle.
"Well? Are you all talk, after all?" Sephiroth drawled. Apparently alcohol turned him into an underhanded asshole – so not all that different from when he was sober really, but after about the fourth drink he'd stopped being subtle about it.
"You must have some stories to tell," Angeal insisted, still bothering to be polite.
There was no way she was going to bring up the actual hardest fights she had survived. Not here. Those weren't stories for drunken revels in a night club, no matter what these green soldiers thought, those stories were for quiet vigils held over liquor so strong and disgusting that for a moment the horror wasn't so heavy.
But if they wanted to hear about a tough fight, a real one, she could accommodate.
"Long slogs are usually the toughest," she said, leaning back and crossing her arms. "Anyone can kill a monster; sleep deprivation is far more dangerous. I do a lot of extraction missions, so it's usually straight in and then straight back out, but I once spent eight days pinned down on a Salarian colony."
They watched her closely, Angeal leaning forward on his elbows. Sephiroth listened with his brow drawn down.
"Go on," Genesis prompted.
"We were defending a group of civilians who had barricaded themselves inside a shelter. There were nearly five hundred of them in this bunker, a solid fortress of a place with a low roof and only two chokepoints in and out. We had plenty of food and ammo but no medi-gel, and the only combatants were myself and two of my crew, against an entire horde of Reaper troops."
"What did you do?" Angeal asked.
"We held the line," She said with a shrug before taking a deep draught of the new beer the waiter brought over. "Garrus and I alternated covering the entrances – he's another sniper – and EDI controlled the GARDIAN laser towers so they couldn't just bomb us from orbit."
"It doesn't sound that difficult," Genesis said cautiously.
She snorted."Of course it doesn't. You've never been under siege so you've got no idea what I'm talking about." She threw one arm over the back of the booth and ignored his scowl. "Reapers troops don't sleep, eat, or feel remorse at crawling over their own dead. Eight days of vigilance in the dark, constantly fighting sleep, husks screaming the whole time…" She shook her head at the memory. "I could barely unwrap my hands from my rifle by the time air support cleared the way for evac. I barely even knew what planet I was on by then."
"Did the five hundred make it?" Angeal asked.
"They did," she said with pride. Most of them probably died when the Citadel fell a month later, but nobody here needed to know about that.
Genesis released a long breath and finished off his drink. The weight of Sephiroth's stare didn't leave her.
"Well, I'm still reeling from having a plane land on me, to be honest," Angeal said, scratching the back of his neck and looking at her sympathetically.
"Surely you can do better than that," she said quietly, trying to regain her enthusiasm for joking. "Can't you?"
He chuckled dryly. "Once, I told Genesis I didn't like Loveless."
"And that's where the northern crater came from," she finished for him.
"Oh, hilarious," Genesis said, crossing his arms and scowling at the two of them. "Most impressive fight. Not simple difficulty, but grandeur." He narrowed his eyes at her. "And we've already heard about the eight day siege; you can't use that one twice. Or is that the best you've got?"
She snorted. Then she grinned and got out her Omni-tool.
"I could tell war stories all day, but I don't have to. I have footage." She called up the video she was looking for. A small holographic screen projected out of the Omni-tool.
"Meet Kalros," she said with a lazy smile.
The wastelands of Tuchunka flickered to life, broken and barren under a furious sun. A Reaper stood guard before a thin tower. The echoing blasts of its laser made the Omni-tool shake. Then a strange hiss crackled through the speakers, and Kalros sprung up from the earth, the mother of all thresher maws, a huge armoured worm that tackled the Reaper to the ground. It was only a short clip, filmed from one of the fighter ships of Artimec Wing as the Reaper tried to evade the giant thresher.
In a moment that always made Shepard happy, Kalros' length coiled around the Reaper, crushing its legs and hull like it were a mere insect and then dragged its broken corpse deep underground.
The clip ended, and she sighed in satisfaction.
"Goddess," Genesis whispered.
"Are you that tiny speck?" Sephiroth asked, leaning forward to point at the frozen picture.
"No, that's Garrus," she said, skipping through the frames and then pointing. "I am this speck here." They were just tiny dots next to the two titans wrestling in the air.
Genesis recovered himself. "It doesn't count."
"What!" she exclaimed.
"You didn't kill it; the worm did. It wasn't your fight."
"The hell it wasn't," she said.
"What is that thing?" Sephiroth asked, still starring in fascination at the holographic screen. "The metal one? Is that… some type of Geth?"
"Oh no, that's a Reaper."
"You held those off for eight days?"
"We held them off for almost a year, in fact. But let's not talk about that." She finished her drink. "You've got enough war on your hands already."
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews feed the muse.
Next Time: The Invasion
