Ty:

I looked across the table at Kasumi and crossed my arms thinking of what I could and wanted to tell her. "Yes, Layla and I were together. Now, though, I don't know."

"How could you not know if you are together?" She asked, bringing some of the noodles to her mouth.

"It's not as simple as just, yes or no anymore. She… She disappeared on me and I was left with a very confusing note. It wasn't like we weren't happy or anything just she was up and gone on me. Worse, I had no idea where she went or why. Then, after two weeks of not seeing her or anything from her, I ended up on this adventure where I met her again." I dished up some noodles from the pot for myself.

"Yeesh, even for a woman those are some serious mixed signals. I'm sorta jealous of her ability.."

I didn't reply and instead gave her a flat look for a few moments. "Look, why are you asking this question anyway?"

"I have my own reasons which I will share when I feel the time is right. So, keep talking, what was it like to be with her."

"It was… I don't know how to describe it. Most people say that the feeling of being with the one you love is hard to describe because it's magical but that wasn't it. It was like, we both had flaws when it came to life. She was a overzealous about what she was doing and always needed to have a project. I was… Huh, kinda difficult coming up with my own flaws from a time before this whole merry band. I guess I was unambitious. Didn't really have any plans or projects. More or less coasted through life."

"So how did that lead up to you being a…*sigh* User, and ending up with Shepard?"

Tapping my finger to my lips, I replied. "Nuh uh, you haven't been that good of a friend yet."

"Who said anything about friendship? Maybe I'm just using you for your cooking." She said, though it was pretty obvious she was kidding.

"Yeah, still not gonna talk about it. Man's gotta have some mystery to him now. I mean, it's not like I could just lay everything out before you and still have you wonder about me. Staying up late just thinking about all the layers that make me up and the experiences that have crafted-"

"Oh my god, you read my copy of Fifty Shades of Blue, creep."

"No, I just read the summary online and found that quote." I laughed, finishing off the last of my first bowl.

"I'm tempted to ask why you'd want to do that."

"Well are you? Because I might tell you if you ask me in the right way."

"Pretty please tell me why you did that." She rolled her eyes.

I drank the rest of the broth in my bowl before dishing up another one. "Because, I wanted to see what turned you on. That way, I can mess with you more effectively."

"...Note to self, setup a macro to auto-delete extranet history."

I sat down my bowl in front of her and put a hand on her arm. "Don't worry about it. I'll do that after I'm done downloading it." She looked down and saw that both our omni-tools were active and I was doing a data extraction.

"Okay, really glad I was kidding about still needing to do that."

"Lets see here. Looks like we have quite a few recent tabs of lingerie sites. Most of them are… Okay, I'm gonna stop this now."

"What? A girl has to find something to spend her illicitly acquired credits on."

"Yeah, by the way, I recently noticed that my account was a couple thousand lighter. Don't tell me you pulled it just to get this one called, naughty teacher."

"Nah, I was planning on using Miranda's credits on that one."

"What did mine go to then?" I was hit with a real quick was of nausea but it passed as quickly as it came. "Uh, that was weird."

"What was weird? Did you see another one of the outfits I was looking at?"

I shook my head while rubbing my temples. "No, it's not that. Just I'm feeling sick."

"Oh crap, did you screw up while cooking? Because I am so not in the mood for food poisoning from my favorite food."

"I never screw up on food." My eye twitched as I started giving her the death glare. "It's gotta be something else. Maybe the new arm isn't sitting well with my brain."

"...What, like it's gonna go evil and try strangling you?"

It hit me again, this time I doubled over and the ramen I just ate came right back up. "Uh, that didn't taste as good a second time."

She looked down at her bowl, and pushed it away, a disgusted look on her face. "Want me to go grab Doctor Chakwas?"

"No!" I began to violently shake and I couldn't hold my own weight. My knees just buckled and I was convulsing on the floor. Pain was assaulting my every nerve from toe to ear and I couldn't keep it together. It felt like something was coming to the forefront of my mind. Something that I tried to forget a long time ago.

"I told you it would take a while Ty. You are gonna have to go back." Saren's voice rang in my ears and I let out a scream in agony.

As I lay there, convulsing from the pain, the room around me started to fade away and I shifted positions to laying on a bed. I looked down at my chest and saw that there was something in it. Just looking at it, I could tell it wasn't a data insertion but this thing was stuck into my body through an opening in my chest.

The thing looked like some sort of collector tech and blood was leaking slowly from the wound. Raising my hand, I grabbed the object but regretted it as it dug down into my chest farther forcing me to gasp in pain. All I could do was sit there and keep cursing Saren as the machine dug farther and farther into my chest. Each time it moved, I met it was a gasp of pain and a small spurt of blood from its entry point.

Thi wasn't a short process either, the tech was about two feet out of my chest and I felt it contorting as it crawled down. I was laying on the damn bed for ages until the thing finally stopped crawling and put a small cap on its entry point. Once it was finished, one of the collectors possessed by Harbinger came in followed by three standard drones.

"The process is complete. Throw him in with the other subjects."

They picked me up off the table and started dragging me off down several corridors and down an elevator or two. Everything began to blend together as the pain in my chest grew. It felt like the device was attacking my organs as constant stabbing in my stomach lead me to believe. Luckily, we finally got to the cell and they dropped my amoung a few other people with similar things in their chest.

"Ah, those fuckers." One with an Irish accent said from across the room. "We already got eight people in here, there is hardly room for anymore."

He and the others looked like they had gotten used to their implants as I couldn't see any visible signs of pain. All in all they looked like a very ragtag group consisting of three women and four men. Well, now five including me.

I began to sit up by the pain in my chest kept me from moving. Instead, I began to look up all the people in the cell with me. There were two guys that were obviously twins but you could still tell them apart since one had a full grown beard while the other was still sporting stubble. They were both holding a similar build, a bit lanky but you could see some visible signs of muscle. Luckily, they also had pants which accounted the same for the rest of the guys in the room.

To the left of them was one girl, she had long curly brown hair covering her face and a very torn dress. She looked so sad and depressed, my first thought was that she had been broken by the collectors. The only other noticeable thing about her was that she had circuitry like scars going up and down her arms.

The Irish guy looked a lot more like he was still pretty fresh compared to the others. He had fire engine red hair and was built like an ox. Also, his outfit wasn't torn at all, the worst he had was a broken zipper on the front of his jump suit.

There was a woman next to him, and when I say woman I mean a woman. Full lips, curves in all the right place, and red lips to accentuate her lips though she obviously wasn't happy. Her face was covered in stress lines and just worry was written across her body.

The last two people were old guys that looked to be at the end of their lives. One of them looked about ready to kill over at and second. All his hair was gone and he was so wrinkly that you couldn't see his eyes through the squinting and loose skin. The other looked like he belonged in Florida since he still had all his hair and his skin wasn't very pale.

Something told me that I couldn't show these guys too much weakness so I forced myself up and looked around at them. "So, something tells me that I didn't just get invited to join the mickey mouse club."

"Oh, very funny jerkoff. You know we're all gonna die here but keep making jokes. I'm sure we'll be laughing all the way to our graves." The Irish guy got off the wall and was obviously trying to assert some sort of dominance.

"Alright, lets drop the tough guy act. Doesn't really work on me." I said, putting my hand out to call the guy into a halt.

He looked back at everyone then immediately went into a swing to hit me. I tried to move but the pain in my chest caused me to freeze and take the hit. The guy was strong enough that one punch to the face sent me careening across the room and into the long haired girl. She softened my landing but I wasn't happy about that at all.

I got up and looked down at the device, it was beeping now but no blood was pouring from the wound. Next, I turned to the girl and looked her over. "Hey, you alright?"

"Listen up you little shit. If you don't want any-"

"Fuck off man!" I said, looking back at him for a sec before turning back to the girl. "Speak up. You alright?"

I moved her hair out of her face and forced her to make eye contact with me. All she did in reply was look behind me and have her eyes widen. It wasn't hard to guess what was about to happen and sure enough, a hand went around my neck, lifting me to look the IRish guy in the face.

"Alright, shi-"

"Datapurge." I blasted the guy across the room and into the wall. Luckily, I kept it light so he wouldn't get hurt but I was done with this shit. "Now, you listen up. You don't screw with me because if you even want a sliver or a hope of a chance, then I'm your man."

I stood up and looked around at everyone but they all just looked away and went back to doing their own thing. The only person still looking at me was the girl that I landed on. As soon as she saw that I saw her though, she pulled her hair back over her face and took the fetal position against the wall.

"Yeah, wonderful. Glad to see you all have a little hope." I deadpanned.

Cody:

Cody ran into the next area with his rifle at the ready and started making a beeline for the exit. It was definitely possible that they could make it before the column collapsed on the quarian defenders. All he had to do was reach it and get everyone else through the opening. He came around the corner and saw that he could make it.

Then, he looked back at Shepard and the team to see their leisurely pace and sighed. He would never say this out loud but John and his team always lack the hustle that trained soldiers have. Most of the time they were moving slow enough that the enemy was always able to get into flanking position and that is what really angered Cody. He and Ashley always kept moving at top speed in the simulation environments, no matter what the danger. That's not to say that they rushed either, just that they didn't allow the enemy to get enough ahead of them that they were pinned down.

Shepard finally caught up with Cody just in time to see the column fall on the defenders and seal off their only exit. Now, they'd have to go throughout the area and find the stupid bombs to unseal the entrance. It was going to be annoying to say the least, but maybe Cody could turn this to his favor.

One of the things that Cody noticed that Ty was usually on these missions as a wild card. He made sure to review all the previous recruitments and the first thing he saw on each one was that Ty wasn't really there to cover anyone. He always screwed with the enemy more than helped the others and then focused on a virus type enemy.

"Shit, they screwed over the quarians and blew up the column." Cody pointed out.

"Edi, how is it looking from the air?" He asked into his ear.

"It looks like that is the only way to Tali'Zorah's location. I cannot reroute you." She replied in her robot voice.

"Damn, how can we get through that column?" He asked, running all the possibilities through his mind.

This was Cody's chance to look like a wild card, at least to make Shepard feel a bit better about bringing him on missions. "Explosives."

"What?" He asked, glancing over at Cody.

"Well, looking around I see a lot of mining equipment all over the place. That means there has to be some mining charges somewhere in all this mess. If we can just find those, maybe we can blow through the fallen rock with little problem." He said, getting approving nods from the others.

"Great plan, assuming that there are charges nearby." Shepard said, pointing over at a small building in the center of the area. "Alright, Cody and Grunt, go check that building and Miranda and I will search the large on over there."

"Yes, sir." Cody confirmed and started off with the heavy footfalls of Grunt behind him.

He brought his rifle up to the shoulder and waited for anything to jump out and attack him. Though, the entire place was clear once they entered it. Cody followed his gut and began looking around the place, behind the vehicles and such, hoping to find something but no Geth were waiting for them. Then, Tali's voice made him jump.

"Shepard once used a mining laser to drill underneath-" Grunt had activated her audio logs.

"Hm, looks like she had the same idea as you." He walked away from the log after shutting it down and looked around more.

"Yeah, funny." Cody said, glad that Ty managed to keep all the new people in the dark about their knowledge. "I'm not seeing any Geth around here."

"Me neither." He looked on the desk across the room. "Is that the explosives you said we were looking for?"

"Yeah, it is. Funny how the Geth were just hitting this area with everything they had and just up and disappeared ain't it." On cue, when he picked up the mining charge, three Geth Destroyers and a Prime landed right outside their exit, blocking the escape.

Grunt took hold of Cody and threw him into cover before activating his fortitude and moving there with him. "Ragh, they have shields and I don't have anything to deal with them."

Cody pulled up his omni-tool and activated overload rounds. "Alright, good thing I do. I'll drop the shields and you drop them with your inferno ammo."

"Got it." He activated his new clip and gave Cody the nod to go.

He shouldered his assault rifle and dipped out of the cover. The Prime was taking the lead and Cody was able to unload the entire clip. He smirked as the shield started to drop but he was out the the open too long. The Prime auto targeted him and fired a volley of shots right at him. They collided with Cody and forced him back into cover by Grunt.

"Are his shields down?"

"Not even close, he's got his sights on me before I could do any real damage." Cody pulled up his comm. "Shepard, we got the explosives but we are also pinned down by the Geth. Can you assist?"

"Negative, the second we found ours, Geth started flooding the place. You're gonna have to get yourselves out of this one."

"Roger that." Cody got a little angry and smacked the car they were hiding behind which activated his power.

"Woah, uh, what's happening?"

"It's my User power, pray that the vehicle becomes a tank or we might find ourselves a bit closer to the Geth than will be comfortable."

"Wow, never thought anyone could give a longer explanation than Ty."

"Oh, just wait till you meet Tali."

Hey guys, this is getting ridiculous with me promising to try harder next time and no matter how much I try, I'm not feeling it. Truth be told, I'm losing steam right now. Big time actually on all my Mass Effect stories. So I'm gonna have to keep this at a bi-monthly upload while I let myself recharge a bit. Luckily, just because I'm losing steam doesn't mean I've hit a writer's block. On a whim I started writing a RWBY fan fic of the OC variety and I'm really enjoying it. I might upload it, especially if you guys want to see what I can do in an anime fandom. Anyway, I'll talk to you 1473I2.