Investigation 03

Current Active subsystems: Durability, Reflexes, Charm, Intuition

"Out of the way, pink skin," a vorcha hissed as it tried to elbow me aside and stalk past. I didn't actually move of course, but it was the thought that counted.

"Lovely place here, with lovely people, and lovely manners," I commented.

Missy snorted. "What did I say, a wretched hive of scum and villainy."

"I still don't get that reference. Repeating it isn't going to magically grant me the knowledge of the movie."

As the vorcha sauntered past us his companion, a volus, looked back. His suit lights blinked rapidly and the diminutive fellow grabbed the vorcha's arm, hauling the larger alien to the side. "That was a human you *gasp* fool! Never *gasp* insult a human! You don't know *gasp* which of them can turn you into *gasp* paste!"

I turned back to Missy as we left the not-so-fearsome-twosome behind. "Is our reputation really that bad out here, Aunt Missy?"

A step behind me Tali shrugged. "Humans are regarded with wary concern from what I know, but that did seem extreme."

Legion's light blinked. "Legion agrees, Shepard-Commander. Self-interest is important, but the sentients were over-reacting."

"Hmm?" Aunt Missy glanced behind us to the volus still staring our way and shook her head. "Like them, I don't think it's that bad. It's more of a healthy respect thing. Most of us stay in Sol yeah? And of those that leave, it's usually people like Lung, Cassie, Vicky, or RCB. So heavy hitter types, or negotiators going with strong protectors. The galaxy is learning not to mess with us because we hit back hard as a rule. It's one of Taylor's lessons."

"'If someone hits you, hit them back hard enough so they don't hit you again,'" I parroted.

Tali looked between me and Missy. "I feel like so much more about humanity suddenly makes sense." The light in her suit dimmed momentarily as she glanced at Legion. "If your AI rose up, you would just smack them, tell them off for being naughty, then pat them on the head, and give them an electronic cookie wouldn't you?"

"I'm pretty sure that Dragon's done that a few times when her kids got uppity, yeah," I said.

Missy chuckled. "You weren't born yet, Jane, but a few decades back some of the Dragonites got it into their heads that could build a mini-black hole gun. They nearly blew up Titan in the attempt. Taylor went ballistic."

"Seriously?"

"Oh yeah." Missy laughed. "She really likes Saturn. Thinks it's romantic. Don't mess with Saturn or you'll incur your mom's wrath kid."

"I've heard…"

"What were the repercussions, Warper-Emissary?" Legion asked.

"Well, Taylor yelled at them for about five hours. Each. Then she reassembled the moon herself, put them all on house arrest for six months, made Dragon personally oversee all of their future projects for two years and sulked for almost a week before Madison was able to get her to calm down. I got to tease Simmy for months afterwards that Madison succeeded where she failed. Haughty, flying, cheating bitch. Served her right."

"Holy shit," I muttered. I knew my mother had a 'thing' about the ringed gas giant, but that was impressively extreme.

Tali cooked her head to the side. "I…have to ask. Did they get the gun working?"

Missy grinned wide, showing all of her teeth and sending a cold shiver down my back. "We call it the Blackstorm."

The music blaring through the club hit me like a rock; one of Aunt Cass' rocks. How the hell did anyone hear anything in Afterlife? Shaking my head I tapped my ear and grunted as I shifted some of myself sideways so that I could mute some of my senses. Finding a workable world was…difficult, but [Intuit] was already here so I followed some of paths that it had naturally blazed. There were a few realities where the asteroid was hollowed, but not heavily populated. That worked. Sighing in relief, the volume died down to a manageable level.

Missy grabbed shoulder, her eyes narrowed in concern. "Jane?"

"I'm fine. It was too loud. I had to do some quick adjustments to compensate."

Her eyes narrowed further and the line of her mouth nearly disappeared. "It's not safe for you to do that sort of thing quickly. QA was very clear on that."

I shook my head. "It's fine, Aunt Missy. I didn't do anything major with my subsystems - I don't have a full senses enhancement active - only my form. I just altered some of my expressions in this specific instance. I 'moved' my ears sort of 'sideways' a tad. It's…hard to explain."

"That's even more dangerous, Jane."

Tali's fingers flew across the air punching numbers into her glowing omnitool. Her helmet lifted and she met my gaze through the fog inside her faceplate, her eyes wide. "You're not human."

I sighed. "I am. Just not entirely. It's…complicated."

Missy let go of my shoulder, her frown not leaving her face as she pinched her brow. "You're actually okay, kid?"

"I'm fine, Mom. Really. It's simple, I just moved a tiny part of myself away from this reality into somewhere quieter. Yes, it makes it harder to react and interact here while I have to keep everything straight between the two - especially on a damn asteroid space station that only exists in a tiny fraction of all realities - but in a place like this, it's easier than not being able to hear. I'm weird. Okay? Can we move on? Please?"

Missy stared at me for another few moments, sighing. "You're not…" she trailed off waving her hand in the air. "Floundering?"

I bit back the first reply that came to me. Then the second and the third as well. Finally, I took a deep breath and let it out slow. "I learned my lesson. I don't shift enough of myself to flounder. Ever. I would rather die. Okay?"

[Horizon] verifies.

I shot a glare across the not-space towards the shard. It didn't even deign to respond to me, only continuing to reassure Missy.

She nodded. "Okay."

Tali lowered her omnitool and leaned closer to me. "Can I ask you some questions when we get back to the ship? Would I be overstepping?"

"No, Tali, that's fine, just…later. Legion? Do you have any comments too? You're the only one that isn't goggling like I'm a fucking fish in an aquarium."

The Geth cocked its head. "Why would Legion have an adverse reaction? Dragon-Prime advised that Shepard-Commander was unique in manufacture."

"She did, did she?" I would have to have a talk with Aunt 'Resa about sharing personal information.

"Human." I turned towards the gravelly voice behind me, glaring.

"We were having a conversation."

The krogan laughed, the dull red of his hump shaking. "I love your species. You look so breakable, and yet you have spines stronger than steel."

"Currently my spine actually is stronger than steel. Can I help you…"

He waved over his shoulder. "I'm the Patriarch. Aria saw you and yours chatting down here and decided she wanted to talk to you. Follow me."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, that's convenient. We were actually coming to talk to her, so this makes things easy." The krogan just shrugged, turned and started to amble away. As we fell into line behind him I asked, "So what are you a Patriarch of? Is that a Krogan thing or an Omega thing?"

"It's an Aria thing," he snorted. "I ran this station for over 300 years. Then she beat me badly enough I was down to my last lung and only one heart. When I dropped out of my blood rage I found out she hadn't even had the decency to give me a warrior's death. She renamed me instead."

Missy winced. "That's cold. So you're not even a glorified enforcer huh? You're what, a reminder not to fuck with her?"

"That's Aria for you. She doesn't waste what she can use. And she can be vindictive as hell. Some free advice from an old krogan, Steel Spine, stay out of the blue bitch's way."

I nodded. "Yeah, thanks." He nodded, waved the way up the stairs that we had come to and walked off back to a corner of the large bar. I saw a few of the exotic dancers head in his direction and sighed. "Man, poor guy."

"Well," Tali said, "he did run a Terminus station for 300 years. He couldn't really have expected it to end well. I'm sure that this isn't how a krogan warlord would like to die, but…"

"Yeah," I said. "Alright, come on guys." Turning, I led the way upwards.

When we got to the top, two goons held out their arms and started to move towards me, omnitools already out in what looked like a scanner formation. I just raised my eyebrows and glanced over their heads towards the Asari lounging on the couch. "Really?"

She smirked, a small chuckle reaching my ears. "It's standard practice for anyone meeting with me. You can't really expect my men to not follow normal procedures now can you? Why, some of them are barely trained! What would they do if I shook things up now?"

As the scanner ran over me I snorted. "I'm about 95% certain my sister passed through here already. You can take my gun if you want, but we both know that that's not going to do anything to stop me if I want to hurt anyone."

"Of course it won't. It wouldn't even slow me down and I don't have your benefits of cheating quite so spectacularly. It might be slightly more effective with Miss Short and Angry there," she said gesturing towards Missy, "but I doubt it. Or perhaps…less, depending on…you are, Jane Hebert correct?"

"Finally, someone in this galaxy isn't calling me Shepard," I muttered. Louder, I replied, "Yes." The men finished, stepping aside and letting all of us pass, not bothering to take any of our weapons.

Tali and Legion stayed standing as Missy and I say on a second couch across from Aria. The asari nodded. "Well, in that case, it's a pleasure to meet the second daughter of the great and power Goddess Taylor herself."

I blinked. "I'm not sure if I should be offended by that or not." My Intuition wasn't helping me at all here.

Aria chuckled. "Good."

"So you asked to talk?"

"Well, you can't just saunter into my club and not expect to come up here. Not as the daughter of one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. Did you know that your mother is apparently cloning herself just so she can go terrify the Citadel Council now? Oh if only I could learn that trick…"

I smiled. At least this was more familiar ground for me. Pulling on Charm a little I leaned back, spreading my arms. "Mother is good at being casually terrifying. Half the time she doesn't even realize she's doing it."

"Mmm, what an intriguing woman. Perhaps you should convince her to stop by Omega one of these days."

Wait, what. "Well, she has a lot to do, what with running Sol and watching over all of our people…"

"Then perhaps I should saunter over to Sol myself for a quick visit. I'm sure I could justify the trip by getting an enhancement or two to keep my rule here cemented for a few centuries more. Maybe I could even improve the station itself using some of your technology. Your mother likes…trades doesn't she?"

Okay, hard stop. Hard stop. "I try to stay out of that sort of thing to be perfectly honest."

Aria laughed. She glanced at Missy and raised an eyebrow. "Is she always this easy?"

Missy shrugged. "First real time out of the system. She's learning, I'm supervising. Don't try to hurt her or I will literally leave your head shoved up your own ass."

I groaned while Aria's grin just widened. "Oh I like you. You both are far more entertaining than your fellow family member. Innocence, naivety, and bloodlust. It's an excellent combination." She leaned back laying out her arms over the back of the chair. "Shame you aren't intimate."

I grimaced. "Thanks for that image. Now I'm going to have nightmares. Do you mind pointing us in the direction of my sister? We're not here to impose and we have no desire to upset anything you have going on. We're just trying to meet up with Enola and get her out of your hair."

"Assuming she has gotten the data she needed," Missy commented. "She'll probably have it by the time we get to her, but if she doesn't we might be around for a few more hours while she works."

Aria tilted her head towards Legion. "Considering you have a Geth with you, that was fairly obvious. Normally I require favors for my help, even for something as simple as information exchange."

"But…" I said.

"But," Aria leaned forward, her eyes narrowing and her elbows coming to rest on her knees as her gaze caught my own. "I don't like having three different Emissaries of Herbertology on Omega. I don't like it one bit. One is fine, one I can stand. One brings me notice, power, and esteem. One is good for business. Two stretches things. Three, well that's just a powder keg waiting for a spark. My normal reaction is to get someone or something to force the offending parties off my station. The thing is, I haven't survived this long by being suicidal."

I nodded. "We really aren't here to cause trouble and my sister isn't - actually, okay, my sister, might cause it entirely by accident. She gets consumed by her work and doesn't even realize she's poking her nose where it's a good idea not to poke things."

"You don't say," Aria smirked. "That's exactly what she is doing right now. She's somehow managed to incite the Blue Suns into going after her. I'm not a fan of the current iteration of the Blue Suns, so I don't actually mind this. But any war started could spread which I do mind. I also don't want your little family to tear apart my station with your little spat. So, here's my information: if you want your sister, you'll need to get to her before the Blue Suns do. Either sneak past them, destroy a hefty majority of them yourself, or find their leader and talk them down."

I frowned. "Do you know why they're angry at Enola?"

"It's actually not Enola Hebert that they are angry at. It's her friend, the turian. He saved some girl that they were trying to kill for a client. They took umbrage at that."

"Ah. I see." Well, so much for diplomacy. I wasn't going to go paying off mercenaries that had accepted an assassination job. "Can you provide a map?"

"Your quarian already has it." Aria leaned back again and smiled. "Good luck. Do try not to blow up my station. I will be quite…perturbed and likely find some way to kill you before I die if you manage to do that."

"Noted," I said, standing and barely managing to avoid rolling my eyes.

As we started to walk away, Aria called out one more thing. "Oh, Jane? Don't forget to tell your mother that she should really come visit Omega some day!"

I swallowed and hurried down the stairs. No. Fucking. Way. Was I going to get involved in my parents' sex lives. No. Fucking. Way.

AN: I have a Pa tr eon and Ko-fi now! If you want to support my efforts and see some work-in-progress chapters a bit earlier as well as have a say in what I focus on please feel free to take a look. Both are under my other pseudonym 'Slider'. More descriptive links are in my profile.