Review reply: animexchick - Me, too. ;) In fact, you might notice I didn't want to paraphrase most of it, so this will take a few chapters (kind of why I planned to make it an epilogue and publish it separately before I restructured a few things in the story). Hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do.

Chapter 76: The Quiet Approach

Subtlety a shadow
A whisper in the winds
Few can hear it
But all feel the knife
When it caresses the unwary bones

"Are you sure you're OK?" Violet asked for the 15th time as she hugged her sister.

"I'm fine!" Terra assured her, finally drawing her to pull away, "If I couldn't handle a little ambush long enough for backup to arrive, I wouldn't have lasted long on Elysium."

"We're all glad you're alright, Shepard," Joker nodded, "But seriously, when this is over and everything's settled, we are gonna talk about this bait thing!"

"I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you that I legitimately thought you'd make it and I was planning to take them all with my omni-blade, would you?"

"Not really."

Terra sighed.

"Hey, look at it this way," Solana smirked as she stepped past her to lean against a window, "Falling through a fish tank is definitely gonna add some life and color to your war story repertoire."

"Oh, yes, it was very funny how I collapsed through the floor, taking all the fish with me, and then tumbled down 20 stories on broken windows and wall lights! I'm sure we'll all someday look back on it and laugh!"

"I'm looking back on it and laughing right now."

Terra rolled her eyes. "I am fine, by the way. Thanks for your concern, sis."

"Of course you're fine!" Ashley scoffed, "We know better than to worry about you. As evidenced by the fact that you immediately got up from that fall to methodically eliminate every last one of your ambushers in a skirt."

Terra defensively started tugging at the hem of said skirt, fighting the urge to glare at her fellow Spectre.

"You know," Tali sighed, "back during my Pilgrimage, I used to walk around near that sushi place and watch the fish through the window. I knew they'd never let me inside, but I kept telling myself 'Someday, when I've proven my worth to the galaxy, I'll go there for dinner!' And then…you broke their floor."

"As a matter of fact," EDI added, "the restaurant attack has made the news. Civilian casualties seem to have been restricted to…fish."

"Commander," Javik stepped in, "in my cycle, when we fled combat by falling through tanks containing aquatic animals, we usually…oh, right, we never did!"

When it reached the point that even Javik was making fun of her, Terra figured it was time to exit the scene. "Right, I'm talking to Wrex now." Leaving her current squad-mates to continue the jokes once she was out of earshot, she went upstairs to where the krogan was lounging. "I didn't get a chance to thank you for giving us a hand back there, big guy."

Wrex smirked. "Bet you never saw a shuttle get taken down like that before. Still got it."

She smiled as she sat down beside him. "You really do. It's gonna be nice to be working with you again. I've missed having a krogan behind me."

"Bet you have. Can't wait to show these mercs what we can do. They'll tell stories that will frighten their battle-mates for years!"

"Uh, Wrex? You have to leave survivors for that to happen."

"Oh. Well, then their corpses will frighten their battle-mates, same difference."

Terra shook her head with a smirk. She had really missed having a krogan behind her.

"Terra?" Garrus stood at the hall into the master bedroom, nodding her over.

She nodded back, briefly telling Wrex she'd talk to him soon before heading into the bedroom.

Before she could even ask what was bothering him, Garrus sealed the door behind her and started kissing her senseless. When he finally stopped to catch his breath, he held onto her as if he was afraid she'd slip away. "When Joker caught up to me and said you were in trouble, I couldn't move fast enough. I kept thinking I never should've left…"

"I'm here, love, it's OK," she quickly assured him, drawing him to lay his hand on her sternum to feel her heartbeat.

He sighed, shaking his head. "Yeah. So much for having a break."

She laughed. "It's the thought that counts. At least it's not Reapers this time. And we have a sweet new hideout to break in."

"Right, unless the bad guys look in the window."

She sighed. "I would point out that we could just replace the glass with a two-way mirror or tint the outside or something, but we're a bit preoccupied now."

"Aren't we always?"

"Not for long. I made a promise I'm going to marry you and never let anything get in our way again."

He smiled. "And you always keep your promises."

"I do. Especially for you."

"…16 years and you've never let me down." He watched her sapphire eyes gleam when she smiled again. No one ever looked at him the way she did. As if he needed proof she loved him. He pulled her closer again, this kiss less desperate and comforting, more hopeful and pure.

She beamed as they separated this time. "So what have we learned?"

"Never have dinner with Joker, it won't end well."

She laughed again. One thing she could always count on him for. One more thing she loved about him. "Come on." She took him by the hand and drew him downstairs with her to the holo-table by the kitchen. When she found Brooks and Liara standing next to it, she nodded in greeting. "Doing better, Brooks?"

"I was," Brooks shook her head, "until I realized I'm gonna have to write a report about getting shot. I hear those are really complicated."

Terra shrugged as she took Liara's side. "It's faster if you make a template."

Brooks blinked at her. "I think you get shot too much."

"…probably, yeah."

Liara shook her head. "If you're done, Shepard, I think I've found something."

Terra nodded, calling the rest of the team over. "What do you have, Liara?" she asked when they were all gathered around the table.

"A lead," Liara explained, "I called in some favors to run a trace on the gun. It led me back to a man named Elijah Khan. He uses his casino to smuggle weapons onto the Citadel. Immediately after the attempt on your life, Khan made a very interesting call…" She used her omni-tool to bring up a recording of the call in question.

"I'm cutting you off," Khan said, "I'm returning your down payment now."

"What's the problem?" a manipulated voice asked.

"Turn on a vid-screen! When I sell a gun, I don't want it showing up on the nightly news!"

"You won't be linked to me."

"Save it! Our association is terminated! Oh! And if you even think about coming after me, I've got intel on you ready for primetime, so you ponder that. Khan out."

"So that's our identity thief," Terra said as the recording stopped.

"Sounds like he's got an ID disguiser," Garrus said, "Those things are a pain to get around."

"And the mercs?" Terra asked Liara.

"They're a private corporation called CAT6," Liara answered.

"The Alliance classification for dishonorable discharges. Right. What about the call? How'd you find it?"

"Long story. But it involved the gun's biometric data, salarian intelligence, and a hanar prostitute with camera implants."

Terra blinked. "Seriously?"

"…no. But the truth is boring."

Terra smirked briefly before turning back to the situation at hand. "Khan didn't sound too friendly with that mystery voice. Maybe he'll share his intel with us."

"That would take some incredibly smooth talking. If he sees you, he'll probably assume you're looking for revenge. His casino has a panic room, he'll likely have gone to ground there. EDI could give us programs to hack the door, but the cameras and guards complicate things."

"Or worse," Brooks concurred, "If his guards ever open fire, civilians could get hit. …like I did."

Terra sighed. "Right. We'll have to play it safe. Small team, no weapons."

Suddenly, Glyph appeared on the holo-table. "Dr. T'Soni, this evening, the casino will be hosting a charity event to assist war refugees."

Liara exchanged glances with Terra. She could tell they both had the same idea. "Purchase some tickets, Glyph. Then call up a layout of the building."

The drone complied, changing the holo-table display to the requested layout.

"Score!" Joker smirked.

"I don't see how the blueprints help," Solana countered, "It's not like someone this paranoid would put a backdoor on his panic room."

EDI scanned the layout. "This airshaft bypasses the security gate and ends in storage. From there, the panic room's door-camera can be disabled."

"Too convenient," Ashley shook her head, "There's gonna be alarms all over that shaft."

"I might have countermeasures for the alarm systems," Liara assured them, "but I won't know for sure until we're inside."

"Who will go through the shaft?" Javik questioned, "They would need to be small in size."

"Yeah, that's not me," Wrex shook his head, "Too many snacks on roast varren leg."

Naturally, the room's attention turned to Tali, who quickly flinched back. "I would suspect my suit's built-in tech would be picked up on the security sensors."

A couple of them still turned to EDI, who shook her head. "My presence in the casino would arouse suspicion. Mechs are not allowed since they can have cheating software."

"If you need someone small, I can do it," Violet stepped up.

Terra sighed. "Not to do you down, sis, but have you ever actually hacked anything in your life?"

"…fair enough."

"Appreciate the thought and the bravery, but it's better you stay behind with EDI."

"What you need," Brooks surmised, "is someone trained in zero-emissions tech. No electronics, no metal, just undetectable polymers." She smirked. "We had a course back at Op-Int, disabling a bomb with these little tweezers. See, the bomb was filled with shaving cream—"

"Alright," Terra shrugged, "you're up."

"What?" She took a second to realize what Terra was saying. "Wait! No! What?!"

"You said it yourself. You've got the training, you're the right size, and the rest of us can't hide our gear. You're up."

Brooks glanced between the others for support in objecting to this plan, finally seeing there was no point and stumbling to compose her own argument. "But…I managed to get shot just coming to talk to you! Now I'm supposed to hack my way into a safe room?!"

"Not by yourself, no. You handle the vents and the door. Garrus and I will be right there to cover everything else."

"If that's settled," Liara nodded as she turned off the holo-table, "then there's only one last hurdle to get us inside."

Terra turned to her curiously. "Which is?"

"…black tie required."

Two hours later…

The list of things Garrus really didn't like wasn't long so much as dense. Among the top five things on that list would be not being with Terra and dressing formal. Turians were most comfortable in their armor, practically at home in it. Military culture that they were, they still had formal affairs, but the attire for such was usually uniform or so simple it was practically casual. Anyone looking around the Citadel would see the turians were mostly conformed to about three different styles where humans and asari had dozens. Garrus, in particular, felt wrong forcing himself into formalwear and leaving his visor behind for what must have been the first time in five years (while not as obvious as EDI, it was just as likely to be considered suspicious and he figured it was better safe than sorry). Frankly, he would've talked his way out of this situation entirely if it wasn't for the simple fact that his mate was in danger and his place was by her side.

And also because the sight of her when he caught up to her at the casino entrance was worth it.

Terra was a soldier, too, but she was also still an artist, so she had no qualms with making full use of her people's variety of formalwear. If anything, she seemed to have gone out of her way to have fun with this opportunity. First and foremost, there was the dress—light black silken fabric hugged her body, the hemline sweeping from her left thigh to her right knee, the neckline arching from her left shoulder to under her right arm, both ends and both sleeves embroidered with silver sparks, a stripe of pink over a stripe of gold across her waist that both narrowed on her right side. If that wasn't enough to catch the eye, there was also the matching black shoes seamed with silver. She had even taken her hair out of its traditional style and set it flowing in tree brown waves that bounced over her shoulders, though her bangs remained stubbornly fixed in their long since habituated position over her right eye and her hair also seemed to still be leaning to her left. Not to mention the way her sapphire eyes gleamed when they found his, making the actual sapphires in her necklace and ring seem dull in comparison.

It was all he could do not to be immediately all over her. He still smiled brightly as he took her side, wrapping his arm around her as if to proudly make it known to everyone who saw them that this beautiful, amazing human was his. "Looking good, Terra."

She smirked. "I did the best I could without a carapace or a crest."

"Your best has my mandible on the floor."

Brooks came in just behind them, purposely far less eye-catching than Terra in her simple blue dress, and headed straight up to the vent entrance. Their COMMs were still on, connected to everyone else as they moved in. Liara cautioned them to act casual, mingle with the guests to avoid arousing suspicion. In that case, Terra wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing that she was clearly far less recognizable in this getup. Either way, she went along with it, clinging close to her fiancé and making idle chatter when necessary. It was straight back to business when Brooks let them know she needed help, both of them hurrying upstairs as quickly as they could without drawing attention.

"Just like we thought," Brooks told them, "There's an alarm on the grate."

"Liara's got a workaround," Garrus said, discreetly synching his omni-tool with Terra's, "Passive tech scanner piggybacking on your text translator, should locate the security wiring."

Terra gave the system a brief test before disabling her omni-tool. Sure enough, she could see the wiring in the walls just as easily as she could see Alliance Standard on asari displays. "Nice trick. I think Kasumi did something similar on that heist we pulled."

"Too bad Kasumi isn't here to do all this for us."

"She really could." Terra turned to Brooks. "Wait here. We'll turn off the alarm." She quickly followed the wiring on the vent around a corner to a security junction. Naturally, it wasn't that simple. "I see the junction, but there's a camera on it."

"Don't worry," Liara jumped in, "I'm sending a hack to your omni-tool. It'll fool the camera if you can download it out of view, but it'll self-delete after a few seconds."

Terra checked that she'd received the code in question and slipped around the camera's view to perform the download. Once the footage was cycling, she moved in and spliced the junction. "Alarm's down."

"Checking…" Brooks confirmed, "…and in we go."

Now that they were underway, Terra went straight back to acting normal. Well, no, "normal" wasn't exactly her way, but she could still act. She played along with the party scheme, mingling as necessary to disguise how she was familiarizing herself with the wiring she could now see in the walls. She bided her time, still staying close to Garrus and waiting until they were needed.

"Commander!" Brooks finally called down the COMM, her voice dramatically lowered.

"What?" Terra whispered back.

"There's a guard right below me!"

"Don't panic," Garrus prepared to move in, "I'll get his attention."

Terra smirked. "No, wait, I've got this one." She took a second to prepare herself and then pretended to stumble into the guard. "UGH! I think I ate a steak meant for the turians! Am I gonna die?!"

While the guard started trying and failing to calm her down, Garrus smirked behind a wall. Well played.

After a fair amount of time had passed, Terra let down the act and assured the guard she'd be fine, sending him back to his patrol. As soon as he was out of sight, she jumped back to Garrus' side to turn her COMM back on. "You're clear, Brooks."

"We'll see how long that lasts," Garrus commented.

It didn't last long. Three minutes later, Brooks came back over the line. "Um…"

"What is it?" Terra asked.

"There's an obstruction detector and a pressure plate in front of me. You'll have to disable both of them before I can keep going."

"Give us a second to find the right junctions. We're right there." She followed the wiring, stopping in her tracks when she saw the end of it. "Well, the good news is I found the junction. The bad news is there's a camera right on it and a guard right on that."

"You are going to fix it, right? Because my legs are maybe starting to cramp a little…"

"Don't worry," Garrus stepped up, "Terra's still got the camera hack and I can distract the guard."

"Better move fast," Terra nodded, slipping around the side to discreetly move towards the camera.

Garrus waited until she was close to position to intercept the guard. "Uh…oh! A human! Perfect! I'm kind of on the outs with my human girlfriend. Think you could give me some insights?"

The guard just blinked at him. "…sir, I am definitely not an expert."

Terra smirked to herself as she finished applying the hack to the camera and moved in on the junction. Unfortunately, the wiring in this junction was less simple than the original alarm. "Ah, come on…"

Even more unfortunately, Garrus' distraction wore off just as she finished the splice. The guard caught sight of her just as she was withdrawing from the junction to let the camera hack self-delete. "Hey!"

Terra and Garrus both proceeded with the natural response of panicking and darting out of view.

Once they were around the corner, Terra started frantically devising a way around getting caught. She didn't think "acting natural" was going to do it this time. But maybe…

Garrus was attempting to strategize. "What do we do? Maybe if we make a break for it, we can lose him in the—"

Suddenly, Terra grabbed him by the shoulders, pinned him to the wall, and started kissing him like there was no tomorrow.

He didn't think now was the best time, but he knew better than to question her and went along with it, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her back just as fervently.

When the guard caught up with them, he started looking around for the ones he was pursuing. He glossed right over the two lovebirds in the corner and finally gave up, going back to his post and shaking his head.

After she heard footsteps trailing off, Terra tentatively withdrew from the amorous embrace to scan the area. Once she was certain they were clear, she sighed with relief and pulled away from her turian.

Garrus promptly gave her an astonished glare. "What was that?"

"PDA makes me people uncomfortable, remember?"

Seeing her point and that it had worked, he smirked. "Guess that depends on who you're talking about."

She smirked back. "We should probably change tactics. You're better at hacking and sneaking, I'm better at persuasion."

"Right. You point me to the junctions, I signal you for distraction."

"We got a plan. Let's go." Discreetly letting their left hands brush each other long enough to transfer the camera hack from her omni-tool to his, she started following the wiring to the other end. "Brooks, did we manage to turn off the detector?"

"Let me see… Looks like it worked. Just the pressure plate."

"On it." She rounded the next bend to find the junction. There was no camera on this one, but there were two guards. She could only distract one at a time without outright drawing the attention of everyone in the building, so they were going to have to time this perfectly. She nodded to Garrus to move in quietly. While her turian casually strode into position by the wall, she waited for an opportunity, carefully observing the patrols of both guards. When one of them was for sure facing away, she moved in to catch the second. "Hey!" she chirped, pretending to stumble into him, "Can someone tell a girl where to get a drink around here? I mean, really!"

The guard was predictably shaken. "Oh, boy. Uh, ma'am? I'm on duty. The bar is that way. That way. That—do you see it?"

Garrus smirked to himself while his mate played for time and allowed him to bypass the junction.

All too easy.

Once they were clear, Terra checked her COMM again. "How's it going in there?"

"I'm at the storage room grate," Brooks confirmed, "Just need to hit the lock."

"Be careful."

No sooner had she said so than a series of clatters erupted over the line.

"Brooks?"

"Uh oh. Infrared laser hooked up to a silent alarm. I didn't get it in time."

"Shepard," EDI jumped in, "I'll call the responding guard and tell him it was a false alarm, but you must stall him before he reaches Brooks."

"That I can do," Terra answered, rushing back across the floor. As soon as she caught sight of the guard, she intercepted him. "Hey!"

He groaned. "Hold on. I'm trying to do three different things here." The second he stopped moving, his omni-tool pinged. He checked it.

"Sir," EDI came through in a perfectly disguised voice, "we checked out the alarm in storage. It's nothing. Minor accident."

"Find out who tripped it and get them in my office by end of shift." He hung up and turned back to Terra. "Now what did you need?"

Terra blinked. "Oh. I'm sorry, are you security? I thought you were a friend of mine. You've got the…same…suit."

"That—you—" He sighed. "…enjoy your evening."

Terra smirked to herself as he strode past. "You're clear, Brooks."

Brooks breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks, commander. I'll see if I can get to the panic room."

Terra turned back to Garrus so they could return to "mingling." "We always work better together."

Garrus nodded. "Proven fact."

It was less than two minutes this time before Brooks came over the line to let them know they just needed to catch up to her at the door. The catch to this was that Brooks was only able to disable the security on her side and not on theirs, so they still had to hack a junction. Naturally, this was the hardest one yet since the junction was being watched by a camera that was being watched by another camera that was in plain view of a guard whose patrol overlapped with another one.

Fortunately, Garrus was able to come up with a way around this one. He leaned casually against the wall until the second guard was in range, then he rigged his overload to hit one of the lights across the room while no one was watching him. The guard, along with half of the other people nearby, immediately turned his full attention to this. "Alright, that should buy us a minute or two if you can get the other—" He turned to see his human wasn't there. "Terra?" He looked back around the wall into the room the cameras were in.

Terra was already distracting the guard, playing such perfect alligator tears that Garrus himself would've believed them had he not seen her genuinely cry before. "And then he said 'I just want to be friends.' And I said 'Are you breaking up with me?!'"

The guard struggled to formulate a response for a moment before groaning. "They don't pay me enough for this… I'm, uh…sorry to hear that, ma'am."

Garrus struggled not to start laughing as he snuck around to disable the cameras. In another life, his mate could've been a star at acting. After both cameras were down, Garrus hurried over to "drag" Terra away from the guard apologetically and then race for the door before the hack could self-delete. "Have I ever told you how brilliant you are?"

Terra smirked as she let the act fade. "Not often enough." After they were through the door, she took the front again, leading Garrus and Brooks into Khan's office. "Khan, I'm not here to threaten you. We need to talk."

Garrus, however, knew something was wrong the second they walked in the door. In C-Sec and as Archangel, he'd seen this enough to know what. So he moved in and turned Khan's chair around to reveal that the weapons smuggler was dead. "And here I had this whole bad cop routine planned…"

Brooks rushed over to check the computer. "Commander, there's a deletion order on the terminal. I don't know if it was him or the killer or…" She gasped. "When I tripped that alarm! Did I screw this up?" She stopped when she noticed that Terra wasn't worried and Garrus was scanning the terminal. "…what are you doing?"

"Checking for mistakes," Garrus answered, "He made that call tonight, which means this must have happened since then. They wouldn't have had time to plan this and…" He smirked as he found what he was looking for. "…would've missed things in the rush." He looked to Terra. "What was that word again?"

"Bingo," Terra smirked as she stepped in to check for herself, "And I'd say it was his name-o. Data's gone, but the COMM history is still active. We can see who that call was placed to if we—" She pressed the button.

The vid-COMM on the wall behind them turned on instantly. "Elijah. Come crawling back?" The image and voice were both disguised, but it was clear who it must be—their identity thief.

Terra turned to face them sharply. "Guess again."

"You! I see you've recovered from flopping on the floor like a fish."

She scoffed. "That's your most imaginative insult? You're gonna have to try harder. The last guy who trash-talked me was a few kilometers taller."

"Trying to rattle me so I'll slip up? You have nothing. All you can do is wait for the hammer to fall."

"Why? What did I ever do to you?"

There was a clear hesitation. Yet when they spoke again, the voice, even through the disguiser, was clearly determined and spiteful. "I'm gonna take everything you have and everything you are." Then they hung up.

Garrus growled. "Not enough time to trace the call. Just enough time to tick me off."

"Both of us," Terra agreed, "We need to head back. Pull the data drives."

"The ones that got wiped?" Brooks questioned, "You really think we can still find something?"

"If we give them to EDI? In a millisecond."