Sometimes EDI was glad she was a synthetic. She didn't have to worry about emotions the way organics did. She sometimes felt she might learn to feel things—she already felt a deep attachment to Jeff, a different one to Shepard, she felt revulsion towards the Reapers—but most of what she 'felt' these days was simply in response to someone or other.
It wasn't something she wanted to think on just now. Right now, Shepard was in trouble. It (shorthand: annoyed) her that there did seem to be something to Shepard's aversion to vacations or extended leaves. It worried her that Jeff was stuck there, too. Shepard could hold her own, but Jeff was fragile. More than that, it (shorthand: offended) her that someone wanted to cause Shepard difficulties today of all days.
Somehow, she suspected, Shepard had relegated the date to the bottom of some column of facts and figures, knowing without really knowing that today was the anniversary of the Sack of Mindoir. With the war on, it seemed to have slipped to the periphery, and EDI was (shorthand: glad) of it.
She tapped her foot impatiently as the CRT car took the route to the restaurant, the profile of which she pulled up. Ryuusei was a nice place, not somewhere she would have expected Shepard or Jeff to go as a normal thing. It was upscale, serving a variety of sushi to a high-class crowd.
It wasn't somewhere Shepard or Jeff would go. If Shepard wanted company today, having the date suddenly dragged to the forefront of her mind, she would have spent the time with Garrus or Alenko in a venue she would consider comfortable.
The more she thought about it, the more she found that (subjective assessment: something stank)—and this from someone who did not assign positive or negative values to olfactory stimuli.
She found herself drumming her fingers on one arm, negative feedback hissing like static through her neural network. If someone succeeded in hurting Jeff, or Shepard, she was going to see whether she had a mote of creativity.
She had a sword. Ryuusei was a sushi restaurant. Surely she could find some inspiration for reciprocity.
She knew what this was: many people on the Normandy tended to react harshly when other members of the crew were threatened or injured. Shepard and Garrus came down like the proverbial anvil, as she'd once heard it described. Alenko and Liara were colder, but still heavy-handed when someone did manage to push them far enough (it took more to push Alenko, but his heavy-handedness was directly proportional to how far he'd been pushed). She knew that, were it feasible, Jeff would happily feed an antagonist a few blasts from the Thanix cannon.
Apparently this mentality had rubbed off on her. The Normandy's crew mattered. Some mattered more—perhaps it was better to say 'differently'—than others, but that was simply familiarity and possibly a synthetic's orderly mindset.
And that was also a drawback to being a synthetic: it took less time to think and process information than it did for an organic. (Subjective assessment: it made waiting more difficult.)
EDI climbed out of the (subjective assessment: too slow) CRT car, turned the safety on her submachine gun off, and drew her sword. The entrance to the restaurant was empty, though the lingering crowd waiting at a distance, clustered together, told her whatever was going on was in full swing. Organics tended to hover at a 'safe' distance when they felt helpless.
"Fine! You want to play that way? We'll play that way!" Shepard snarled.
Gunfire immediately erupted—incoming and outgoing—prompting EDI to jog up to the entryway. Benefit of being a synthetic: she could run audio analysis to tell her not only how many firearms were in use, but the models as well.
Shepard was behind a table, faced with six heavily-armored hostiles scattered in a loose string as if hoping at least one of them could get a bead on her. From the looks of the table, her shields had already taken one hammering.
Chaos broke out, rifle fire, Shepard's pistol, her own SMG. High speed capture photoreceptors kept her on top of the action, allowing pinpoint precision. One, two, three, four of the six assailants were down in seconds, mown through with precision.
She turned to relocate Shepard only to find her hopping back as one of the mercenaries—she turned up no affiliations when she ran them through any of the databases she could reach—opened fire at Shepard's feet.
Shepard looked up, made brief eye-contact with EDI herself. It was a frozen moment in which Shepard realized what the merc had in mind…and realized he'd succeeded.
EDI's aim was unerring, dropping the assassin just as the fractured tank beneath Shepard's feet collapsed, sending her down with a scream in a hail of fish, water, and broken glass. "Shepard!" EDI demanded as she opened Shepard's comm frequency. She bounded up to the edge, found she couldn't get close enough to see down. "Are you alright?"
She could hear Shepard panting, then something broke, giving way and eliciting a new succession of yelps, grunts, and groans. Another grunt as Shepard seemed to catch momentarily on something, then that too gave way. Another successions of pained sounds…and a very final thud.
"Shepard?" she asked softly.
Nothing but labored breathing. Pained unconsciousness.
There was only one thing to do. "Jeff? Are you alright?" she skirted the hole in the floor, resisting the urge to consult blueprints of the Citadel to find out exactly how far Shepard had fallen. She immediately checked, not so she could see the distance of fall but so she knew where Shepard was. The only way help could get to Shepard was if it was walked in.
Or unless she jumped down, herself. Resistant to damage as she was, she felt certain even her hardware would find the sudden stop at the bottom difficult to cope with.
"…my pancreas…"
