Can't Catch Me Now
Kaidan swore. "How many men does Cerberus even have?" They'd been playing cat and mouse with the troopers for over an hour now. It was a never-ending game; every time they cleared an area, more troopers rocketed in, blocking the way to the objective. His patience and resolve were being tested, and not just by the Cerberus troopers.
Shepard appeared next to him again and a rocket went whizzing past the spot where she'd been seconds earlier. He saw her eyes go wide as she realized that an Atlas had joined the fray, and he groaned inwardly. A normal person would react with fear, or annoyance, or any general feeling of discontent when greeted with the knowledge that a giant armored mech had entered the battle. But Shepard? No, he knew that beneath her breather mask she was grinning like a kid in a candy store.
She switched her assault rifle out for the Black Widow, her head bobbing out of cover momentarily as she did so. Out of the corner of his eye, Kaidan saw her kinetic barrier flicker as it deflected a bullet, and he grimaced. She murmured something, and he had to do a double take when he realized that she was purring at the sniper rifle.
"Please tell me you did not just do that."
He saw the skin around her eyes crinkle through the visor, and he could tell that she was making that grin again. That wolfish grin that sometimes sent his thoughts straight to the bedroom, and other times gave him grey hairs.
It was doing the latter now.
"Me and Precious here are going to hijack us a ride out of here," she nodded with the rifle to a perch across the battlefield where container boxes were stacked – the perfect place to line up a few shots at the mech, but without much in the way of cover to protect from flanking. "Can't catch me now!" she whispered, and before he could protest, she had activated her cloaking device and shimmered out of sight.
Kaidan sighed, covering her exit, and not for the first time, reflected on the toll her inability to stay in cover was taking on his sanity.