Jorge stood quietly at the top of the stairs, his eyes scanning the room for any Geth stragglers. Behind him, the team milled about as Shepard worked the console, using the override program provided by the Prothean VI Vigil on Ilos.
They'd been in contact with the fleets, both Alliance and otherwise. The Citadel defense fleet had been losing to the Geth assault, but with the Citadel under Shepard's control she was able to re-activate the relays and bring in reinforcements in the form of the Alliance's Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Hackett. Hearing how desperately the Destiny Ascension, pride of the Asari and transport for the evacuated Council members, had needed help, Shepard had opened the relay early and recommended that Hackett save the Destiny.
Privately, Jorge disagreed with this. Sovereign was still out there, trying to hack into the Citadel systems and open the Citadel Relay and bring the rest of its brethren through. It was the largest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced ship in the galaxy at the moment. Jorge knew, as someone who had fought Covenant and their technologically advanced ships, just how heavy the casualties were going to be. They would need every gun brought to bear, guns that Shepard had just committed to the battle to save the Council. Guns that should have been held back. Guns that would now take damage in order to save three politicians who had proven more obstructionist and obstinate than helpful in any way.
Jorge stopped to think about that for a moment. It wasn't because they were aliens, it wasn't even that they were sacrificing human lives to save aliens (though Jorge would have preferred that not happen). It was that they were 'obstructionist and obstinate'. He'd fought aliens for more than two decades now, had more reason than anyone he knew in this universe to hate them, but, he didn't. Sure, he preferred human company, and prioritized human lives over aliens, but his experiences with Garrus, and Tali, and Wrex, and Liara had opened him more than he would have ever expected. Aliens were people too. Weird people, sure, but they were no Covenant.
Still, he had lodged his protest, and Shepard had heard, even if she had ultimately decided against it. He did not have the authority to make this decision, nor was it his place to question her orders. The coming minutes would see whether or not Shepard's decision was right… or at least right enough to destroy Sovereign. He was reasonably confident that it would work out in the end no matter what- after all, it was only one ship, and the Alliance had several more fleets to call in. And as long as Shepard had control of the master console, they had all the time in the world.
"Wrex, Liara," Shepard called out. After a moment, she had everyone's attention. She pointed down towards the small atrium where Saren had fallen.
"Make sure he's dead," Shepard commanded.
Wrex was quick to put a bullet through the atrium glass before jumping down. Liara was slower, and appeared to be debating finding another way around before making up her mind. She glowed blue before gracefully stepping off the edge, floating gently down out of his sight on her biotics. A few moments later, a single pistol shot rang out in the cavernous room.
*He's dead, Shepard,* Liara spoke.
Good riddance. Jorge personally would have loved to have done the job himself. Still, the look of surprise on Saren's face as his barriers collapsed… priceless.
Movement caught his eye. Looking closer, Jorge saw half a geth platform twitch and spark. Unwilling to risk having it shoot them in the back, Jorge headed over to it so that he could render it further into scrap. He had just put the barrel of the gun into the twitching torso when an unearthly scream of pain broke his concentration.
He stomped the geth even as his mind went into overdrive trying to identify who was screaming in pain. Too low for a female, seems high to be Wrex, Garrus..?
Jorge rushed back up the steps just as the screaming stopped and the gunfire started. The comm erupted into confused chatter.
*I thought you said he was dead!*
*He was dead!*
*He just literally burned up! He doesn't have a jaw anymore for fuck's sake, how is he moving?!*
*-complete skeleton, Sovereign made a robot inside of him-*
*For God's sake shoot him!*
Saren was still alive? That was impossible, Shepard and then Wrex had both shot him dead in the head- no. Jorge needed to stop questioning what was possible and what was not, because apparently, anything was possible if you breathed wrong around here. Saren was still alive, and it was up to them to fill his corpse full of holes until he was nothing but swiss cheese. Then burn the body. Then maybe burn the station for good measure. It seemed that overkill should be the proper response in this universe.
Jorge made it back up the steps just in time to see the spar of deck that Shepard was standing on tilt violently, sending the Commander sliding down into the atrium. Surrounding the atrium area, the rest of the team looked in, omni tools glowing and weapons firing as best they could. From the way they swung their chosen implements, it appeared that Saren was once again a highly mobile target. Again. Jorge thundered over to the ledge and thrust his gun over the side, preparing to engage Saren.
The blur of metal that everyone else was shooting at only resembled Saren in the most horrifying of ways. The metallic skin and his armor were gone, as were his internal organs it would appear. All that was left was a metal skeleton, with other implants throughout the rib cage. The skull had no mandibles, or lower jaw. And through it all, the skeleton danced with an unnatural red energy, crackling and humming with power, the eyes glowing red with the eldritch energy.
Jorge didn't hesitate to open fire, but the skeleton Saren bunched itself up like a geth hopper and leapt at a rate fast enough that it was a blur, leaving Jorge to hit nothing but air. Shepard, Liara, and Wrex tracked it to the wall on the side he was firing, right where he couldn't see.
Jorge growled, then jumped down into the atrium, taking care to avoid the stream of fire originating from his teammates. He landed heavily on a small grassy mound, his boots crushing into the soil, before spinning with superhuman speed to train his gun on Saren- who was clutching onto the upper wall.
The moment the M2 came to life, Saren leapt again, this time clutching onto the ceiling beam like a limpet. Jorge automatically shifted fire, but hadn't gotten more than a few shots off before a red laser zeroed on his head. His enhanced reflexes were just fast enough to shift his chest, and he felt the heavy round impact both his shields and then the up-armor that he had bolted on to the left collar of his chestpiece. He staggered from the weight of the blow, but quickly began searching for his target again.
Saren, meanwhile, had moved again, and showed no signs of fatigue or even weakness in the face of the overwhelming firepower and people he was against. Overloads splashed against his shields without weakening them significantly, gunfire was simply absorbed as though they were throwing sand against a brick wall. The red-glowing robo-turian gave as good as he got, as well; whatever the Reaper had done to him, it was powerful. Red balls of what Jorge first thought were biotics spewed forth from Saren's ribcage, though instead of affecting gravity, they simply slammed into shields like a kinetic projectile, dealing heavy damage. Shepard took two and did not stick around for the third, leaving Liara, Wrex and himself to dodge the remaining blasts. By the time Jorge finished his dodge, his shield indicator still beeping red at him, and Saren had jumped again.
Liara screamed and stumbled backwards as the skeleton of the former turian began to stalk her like cat going after a mouse. Saren had been slightly larger than the average turian, but as they themselves were larger than most other races, Liara was facing down an opponent that had nearly a head on her in height and a great deal more girth in his skeletal chest. Add in that his claws had remained rather sharp, and the fact that it ignored even Jorge's heavy machine gun as inconsequential, and it was easy to fall prey to fear. The fact that it was doing so on all fours like an animal only added to the uncomfortable feeling that something very, very wrong and dangerous was happening.
Liara stumbled on a rock and fell as the monstrosity continued to advance. Lying on the ground, with Saren quick to extend a claw for the killing blow, Liara did the only thing she could think of, and it saved her life: she used her biotics. The claw swiped, but the biotic lift meant that it missed her throat by inches as Saren floated into the air, weightless and helpless.
The team was quick to capitalize on this by opening up with everything they had. After the damage they had managed to do before, Saren's shields finally fell, allowing gunshots through to the metal skeleton before them. Then Wrex threw a Warp, the opposing gravity fields between the warp and the lift detonating spectacularly and sending the skeleton flying into a wall.
The wall dented, but Saren recovered faster than anyone short of his fellow Spartans and leapt away. Red energy snapped and crackled as he moved, and Jorge's HUD showed that Saren's insane barriers had been recharged. Half strength, but based on the punishment it had already absorbed, that was plenty.
Jorge continued to pour gunfire into the figure, ignoring the red overheat bar of his gun. This HAD to work. They had already won, already taken him out once and seized control of the station, they had come too far to lose to some Reaper puppetry!
Saren leapt again, this time charging another sniper shot. Tali on the upper level was quick to dive out of the way, her shields falling even at the glancing blow. Then another jump, and Saren fired another barrage of red projectiles. Wrex barely managed to put up a barrier in time to absorb them; they were fully drained when the final projectile struck the battlemaster, singing his armor and knocking him to the ground.
His gun was well into the red now. Stopping firing, an idea occurred to him. Hefting the gun in one hand, Jorge reached back to his pack and opened the grenade compartment as best he could. Two fell out onto the ground, but he grabbed three more. Dropping his gun altogether now, he ripped all three disks from their detonators and threw them as a single mass towards the skeletal turian, who had focused on Garrus on the upper level. Saren jumped the moment he saw the three high-explosive grenades…
Jorge slammed his hand down on the triggers, crushing the little devices in his hands, but the damage was done; Saren was only halfway out of the blast radius and was flung through the air even as the blast wave from three grenades staggered most of the team.
Saren hit the wall, then flipped and landed on the floor like a cat. His shields were down, and Jorge was able to see a set of scratches on the metal skeleton's hips and legs, but that was it.
What the hell happened to him?! What the hell did they do to him?! Jorge thought desperately. Anything short of a Covenant Hunter pair would have been downed by now from the fire they had thrown at the mechanical turian. Three grenades hadn't left more than scratches, their weapons hadn't done much more. Biotics had stymied him only for a few moments. Their only hope was literally in Jorge's hands, in the anti-armor tungsten rounds of the machine gun, but Saren was shrugging off even his armor-piercing bullets.
"Biotics! Lift him!" Shepard screamed.
Wrex missed, but Liara hit true, and Saren floated bonelessly off the floor. The entire team poured fire into him, Jorge included, ignoring the heat warning on his gun that had been blaring since before he had thrown the grenades.
Blam*Blam*Blam*Blam*Blam*Blam*crackle
That didn't sound good.
It wasn't good. In has hands, the M2 had been stripped to the barest essentials, and would not protest any trigger command. Jorge enjoyed this direct connection, both for the familiarity to his old bullet machine gun and so that his gun could not be hacked or otherwise shut down. However, sustained fire built up heat; even in his old universe, excessive firing would warp and eventually melt the barrel. In this universe, it was much the same; excessive heat from the draw of the electromagnets lining the barrel caused melting of the barrel, the wiring, and the electromagnets themselves. In this specific case, the wiring insulation had given out first from the excessive currents, then shorted. With no safeties to speak of, the short began channeling all the current output from the onboard reactor. The result was an uncontrolled electrical fire halfway down the barrel, and no more sand grain-sized bullets flying downrange.
His gun was dead.
Worse, it was actively catching fire in his hands.
Jorge swore imaginatively, but before he could do more than that, a blur caught the corner of his eye. Saren had recovered, and was once again moving so fast that even the Spartan was having trouble tracking him. Now, in a move seemingly to add insult to injury, Saren had jumped towards Jorge, apparently deeming the man whose' gun was on fire a 'safe' area.
Time slowed, even beyond Spartan Time for Jorge. In that moment, that one timeless moment, everything hit him. The despair of being ripped from his home universe, his team, his family, even if by his own choice. The fear of finding new creatures, and technology, that could turn him into a mindless husk, or against his own mind. The annoyance and frustration of being a part of a team that seemed stonewalled by bureaucracy. The anger at having a target slip away time and again before finally catching him, only to find that he would not stay down. The universe was fucking with him.
Jorge didn't like it when people fucked with him. He got angry.
Very angry.
And just like that, Jorge knew exactly what he was going to do.
Saren had nearly cleared his head when Jorge's arm grabbed one of his feet. Every bit of enhanced Spartan strength went into wrenching the robotic skeleton down, slamming Saren into the ground hard enough to shake it.
Saren sat there for a moment, as though dazed, then swung razor sharp claws around, hitting Jorge's legs, trying to attack him. That ended a moment later when the robot became the target of a Spartan-propelled flaming machine gun to the face. With his gun now nothing more than a useless lump of metal and plastic (that was on fire), Jorge used it as exactly that: a bludgeon. Saren's ribcage made a good impression in the dirt as Jorge brought the flaming former gun down on him again; this time, the gun exploded in a shower of sparks as the gun split open, unable to handle the forces the Spartan was bringing to bear against the nearly indestructible metal the former SPECTRE was now made of.
Jorge barely noticed. He cast away the two fragments from his hands before grabbing Saren by the exposed ribcage. Metal claws connected uselessly with his shields before Saren was once more flying through the air. The robot hit the wall with enough force that any mortal would have been knocked unconscious, probably killed. Still, Saren was no longer mortal, and managed to get to his feet-
Jorge slammed into him, EVA shoulderpad first, with the force of a runaway truck. So much so that the metal wall now had a Saren-shaped indent in it. Deep enough that, even when Jorge pulled away, robotic Saren could not actually pull himself out of the impression his skeletal ribcage made on the wall.
It didn't last long. Jorge was faced with an opponent that was unusual; there were no nerve strikes that would disable his enemy, no amount of pain could cripple him, no martial moves that could disable his foe permanently. So Jorge fell back to the basics: beat the enemy mercilessly. His right fist slammed into Saren's skull with all the considerable force he could muster, slamming Saren's head into the metal wall and breaking off one of his two head spines. Then he pulled back his fist and did it again. And again.
To the rest of the team it must have sounded like a jackhammer, a rapid pounding of metal on metal as Jorge laid into Saren continually with his right fist, as fast as only a Spartan could. Saren's red glowing head was slowly driven deeper and deeper into the wall as he flailed, trying to gain any purchase on the giant that was pummeling him.
After nearly five seconds of savage beating, Saren's right hand shot up and managed to intercept Jorge's fist. While unable to completely stop the blow, it did resist it enough to reduce the force from 'jackhammer' to 'normal punch'.
Angered even further now, Jorge did the first thing that came into his mind: he grabbed the offending arm and yanked as hard as a frustrated Spartan could.
SNAP
Saren's right arm came off.
Jorge actually paused for a moment, confusion overcoming anger temporarily. Everything else had been ineffective; gunfire hadn't penetrated anything important, grenades had done nothing more than throw Saren around, and even his anger-fueled pounding had done nothing to Saren himself (though Saren was now literally stuck inside a wall). But pulling his arms off… had? This was the first real blow of any weight that any of them had actually struck against this reaperized skeletal Saren.
He needed to capitalize on this newly discovered weakness.
Jorge threw the arm off to the side and seized Saren by his ribcage; Saren, so deeply embedded in the wall that he could not free himself, lashed out with footclaws to no avail. With a hefty yank, Jorge popped Saren from the wall. With all three remaining limbs lashing at him, Jorge thrust him to the floor before planting a massive size twenty-four boot on his exposed backbone. His quarry now immobilized on the floor, Jorge was quick to grab one of the flailing legs and pull…
The leg was harder than the arm to get off, pulling it straight up didn't immediately work, though it did 'dislocate' the joint, for a given sense of dislocate. Saren, unhappy with the new direction this battle was heading, managed to shift the foot on his spine off to one side with his remaining arm, whereupon the robotic SPECTRE lunged up to attack him. Unfortunately, turian legs don't bend that way, and he bounced off Jorge's massive Grenadier chest plate rather than making it to Jorge's head.
Jorge was quick to bat the turian back down, this time hooking his boot as much as it would go through the ribcage. He couldn't get free now. Then, with the leg still clutched, he pulled out...
SNAP
Jorge cast the leg carelessly to the side before setting to work on the other.
SNAP
Saren squirmed and jimmied with robotic strength, red-glowing eyes looking for any sort of escape and remaining clawed hand doing its best to try to dislodge Jorge's boot from its ribcage hold. But with most of Jorge's one ton of weight pressing down on the turian, he might as well have tried to move the Citadel.
Jorge just grabbed the remaining arm, then pulled it free of its socket with the snapping of metal and the crackle of snapping wiring.
Even as nothing but a torso and head, the skeletal Saren continued to struggle. Deciding to end this once and for all, Jorge let his foot off the remainder of the former turian and once again grabbed the convenient hold of the skeletal ribs, lifting Saren to eye level.
Glowing red eyes stared hatefully back from a jawless mouth, not looking away even as the limbless torso jerked with what little struggles it could manage.
"Go to hell," Jorge told him.
He grabbed the turian's crest in one hand, and the head in the other, and pulled. For a second, enhanced muscles strained, stretching the neck, and then-
SNAP
The red energy crawling throughout the torso sparked once, twice, then sputtered out completely on the ground before him. Jorge continued to stare into the former SPECTRE's eyes as they flickered red, then dimmed, before finally going out. Jorge waited a moment longer, half expecting Saren to reassemble himself and be forced to rip him apart all over again. When nothing happened, Jorge gave a sigh and dropped the severed head.
That… had been extremely satisfying.
Turning around, Jorge tentatively massaged his knuckles- from experience, he knew that under the armor, they would be bleeding from the performance he had just given- and came face to face with seven different people staring at him.
Silence pervaded the room. Jorge didn't know what to say, and everyone else simply stared. It was finally broken as Shepard coughed.
"... I suppose that's one way to take care of Saren," she murmured under her breath.
-{[]}-
Outside in space, the massive dreadnought that was the living ship Sovereign faltered for the first time. The sudden and violent death of its puppet at the hands of Shepard's team had caused significant backlash to the Reaper's internal systems, enough so that systems began to fail and significant control was lost. The dreadnought began to float away from the tower as the appendages clutching the tower spasmed, into the growing debris field of the Alliance fleet.
"It's shields are down! Now's our chance!" the radio called. On board the Alliance dreadnought Everest, Admiral Hackett saw the same readings and reached the same conclusion.
"Hit it with everything we've got," he said over the command channel.
The Alliance fleet opened fire as one. Kilogram slugs accelerated to significant fractions of the speed of light flung themselves at the unshielded Reaper, and for the first time, did some actual damage. Eezo missiles were launched, and began warping armor. Warped armor, weakened by the shearing mass effect fields, was hit by slugs and shattered. Even so, the Reaper held together.
On board the Normandy, Joker wanted, nay, needed, to be the finishing shot. He maneuvered the small frigate around the wreckage of the half-destroyed fleet and shot up the long axis of the station. The fleet was attacking mainly the heavily-armored upper shell of the Reaper; he would be the one to attack the lighter-armored underbelly.
Deciding he was far enough, Joker activated the thrusters and flipped the Normandy on a dime. He punched full thrust; the craft, lighter than most already and with an outsized eezo core to boot, leapt forward like a prized thoroughbred out of the gates. With a bit of careful aim, and enough speed…
The main gun of the Normandy fired and Joker pulled up just in time. The shot struck the underside…. and kept going before blasting out the other side, finding a section of armor already weakened by repeated accelerator strikes and missiles.
It was the killing blow. The legs spasmed in death throes as an orange fire licked from the mortal wound, before the center of the Reaper brewed up in a fiery blast. The Reaper exploded, sending debris everywhere.
And as those on this ships cheered at their victory, no one noticed the section of leg heading towards the Tower…
-{[]}-
There were stairs to/from the atrium, it was found. They were cleverly hidden from the upper level, but relatively easy to find once one was in the atrium. The team, after checking the multiple pieces of Saren multiple times to ensure he was dead, used it to ascend to the deck even with the main control console. Shepard immediately headed for the console, to make sure the Prothean program was still blocking control from Sovereign. The rest of the team… well, Jorge immediately began checking the area for enemies and any Geth that had managed to come back from the grave with the assault rifle he had looted from Saren's… well, where Saren's corpse had initially landed when they killed him the first time. Wrex simply posted up to keep an eye on Shepard's back with a bored look on his face. The rest of the team seemed… a little shocked.
Still, as Shepard had reminded them, this was a warzone, they needed to be alert.
Tali was the first to notice. "Look!" she cried, pointing a suited hand towards the massive window that was behind the Council positions.
Jorge spared a look, and was gratified to see that the massive starship was twitching and convulsing, what they could see of it. Then, as everyone turned to watch, a shot slammed into Sovereign, causing a massive fireball as the ship brewed up and broke up.
The team let out a ragged cheer. They had done it! Galactic life, as they knew it, was saved!
It quickly cut off.
"That piece of wreckage… is… coming towards us…" Liara stated uncertainly and a little fearfully.
It certainly was. It was big, and coming straight for them. Everyone reached the same conclusion at the same time.
"Go! Go! Get back to the elevator!" Shepard shouted even as she began running.
Jorge waited a few more heartbeats, trying to calculate in his enhanced mind where it might hit, where it might be safest, but it was too big- it would hit everywhere, from what he could tell. Their only hope was to get as far away from the window as possible and pray that it didn't shear off the tower when it hit. Emergency shields would power up and prevent atmosphere loss only if they had power to do so.
The rest of the team ran like hell. Jorge… well, Jorge lagged. First, because Shepard was nearly twenty meters behind everyone else, and second, because he wanted to be the last man in the line. He was in a fully armored spacesuit with grav-boots and inhuman reflexes. If anyone could dodge something, it was him. If anyone could grab a crewmate as they got sucked past by the vacuum, it was him. If anyone could survive getting hit… well, it was him.
It moved fast. Jorge heard a massive smash as the piece hit the window when the team was only halfway to the elevator. Jorge spared a look over his shoulder- the entirety of the window was coming at them. Worse, the piece of Reaper was breaking up as it entered- fragments as large as aircars were splitting up and raining down.
Several were headed right for the team.
Shepard was already being bombarded.
Shit. "Move, move, move-!"
His shouts were cut off by the massive impacts nearby… and one that careened off the floor and directly into his back, slamming him forward and into the ground, knocking him into blissful unconsciousness.
-{[]}-
The first response team sent by the C-Sec to the Citadel Tower included one unusual man: Captain David Anderson. Thrown in a C-Sec holding cell after his stunt freeing the Normandy, he had been released when the Geth had attacked, and had helped organize the defense and evacuation from C-Sec Headquarters. When word came over the radio that Shepard, his protege, had been in the Tower when a piece of debris had struck it, he had been the first to volunteer to lead the team.
The elevator car initially had no glass, an explosive decompression of some sort- Anderson suspected from a bullet, if he knew Shepard. Fortunately, a backup car had not been long and soon the team was enduring the long ride to the top.
He was gratified, the moment he stepped out of the elevator, to see that the emergency generators had kicked in, creating a mass effect field across the massive breach to keep the atmosphere in. That was good.
The rest of the area looked like a boneyard. Massive pieces of black metal, some larger than busses, littered the area. From this angle, he could barely see any spaces between the debris. A little of the hope inside him died. Shepard had come unscathed across many battlefields, but the odds always caught up with you eventually. He could only hope that today wasn't the day.
"Captain! Over here!" came a human cry. Not far away, either. Anderson was there in a moment as the C-Sec rescue worker moved a piece of debris out of the way, exposing a small pocket in one of the larger debris chunks.
The omni-light flashed, and inside he saw the quarian girl, the krogan, and Ashley Williams, all looking a little worse for wear. Just the way William's eyes weren't focusing made him concerned for a concussion.
"It's alright, you're safe now," he told them reassuringly, helping the slight quarian girl, Tali, to her feet. She nearly collapsed when she tried to stand on her own, but one of the rescue workers caught her and began supporting her limp away.
"Captain! More survivors!" came another call.
After reassuring both himself and the survivors that they were alright, he made his way quickly to the new call. Here, he found the turian, Garrus, the asari, Liara, and finally, the massive form of Jorge. Garrus and Liara struggled, even against their own injuries, to free the trapped form of the unmistakable Jorge, against the floor with only his head free.
He and the two C-Sec workers were quick to lend a hand, and between the five of them, Liara's biotics, and Jorge's own prodigious strength, were finally able to roll the debris off of him.
Garrus immediately collapsed, cradling one arm. Liara also collapsed, exhausted but physically uninjured. As for Jorge…
Well, it was hard to tell underneath the armor, but he didn't limp, and seemed aware enough, though it was hard to tell under the helmet. He'd have to get them all to the med-station to be sure though.
But for now… there was still one missing.
"Where's Shepard?" he asked.
Garrus, in the process of being helped up by a rescue worker, hung his head and his mandibles moved into the position expressing shame and guilt. Liara, too, seemed to think that there was no possible way for Shepard to have survived, and that only shock was preventing her from breaking down into tears.
"Behind us," Jorge was the only one to reply. "Twenty meters."
Anderson, and indeed, everyone in the area, looked towards the area in question. It appeared to have been hard hit, with debris so large and numerous that it was blocking the rescue teams from searching.
Hope died within him a little more. But he forced himself to soldier on.
"Take them to the medical station, we'll keep looking for Shepard," he ordered.
"Captain, I-" Jorge began.
"Operations Chief, you've done enough. Let the search and rescue teams do their job," Anderson placated. "Get back to the medical station, that's…"
At that point Anderson realized that no one was looking at him anymore, they were looking past him. He was quick to look that way too.
On top of the largest chunk of debris, Shepard stood in all her glory, her red hair standing out like fire against the massive hole to space that framed her from behind. She cradled one arm to her chest, certainly, but her footing was strong and confident, and her face was not in pain.
Seeing the attention, Shepard moved towards Anderson in quick, nimble leaps.
Anderson smiled.
"Well done, Shepard. Well done."
-{[]}-
Well, here were are. There is going to be an epilogue, expect it to be posted no more than a day after this chapter, but beyond that... the story is finished. Jorge has successfully survived Mass Effect 1, helped prevent doom upon all the galaxy as we know it, made some alien friends, lost a comrade, been drinking, explored the galaxy, and successfully punched a robot to death. It's been a good run. For everyone who stuck around since the beginning, thanks for sticking around, for those who just discovered this, welcome, and I hope you enjoyed my little story.
To answer the question I am sure is on everyone's lips: I do not know if there will be a sequel at this time. At just over 4 years, this story has been a long slog for me, and with the new Halo stuff coming out, I honestly find myself caring less and less about the Halo universe. In my personal opinion the franchise is going the wrong direction, even if I don't know what the right direction is. Anyways, point is, there may/may not be a sequel. I have ideas, I have a direction I want to take the story, but I don't have the interest right now. I do have projects that I want to work on, but currently, the sequel is not one of them.
So, until next time, everyone.
P.S. The reason I had to get the Halloween Special out prior to this chapter is because, as I hinted in that chapter, Jorge is no longer the Juggernaut (bitch). Now he's the Hulk (JORGE! SMASH!)