A/N: I've updated the chapters, hopefully they're more readable and enjoyable, please leave any feedback to help improve it, thank you.

Arcturus

Chase Jarrett

So, it turns out when you have little to no possessions, it only takes about five minutes to get ready. That left us with about three hours to kill, well Shepard three hours to kill, because I had a bunch of forms sent over to me that I had to read and sign for me to take custody of Shepard. Holy crap, two hours later and hundreds of forms later I'm finally done, at least with those damn forms. I have to wait until the Family Services gives me the green light, so technically I'm only her temporary guardian, but I'm not too worried about that.

Suddenly, I get a message from Lt. Jacobs, the same officer who did my citizenship processing, to come to his office to tie up some loose ends. I knock at his door, which in the future is just a button like a door bell, thankfully because I really don't want to bang my hand on solid steel. The door opens, and he signals for me to take a seat.

"Mr. Jarrett, I see you've been busy since that last time I saw you." he said.

"I have?"

"Yes, I've been informed that you'll be taking Cassandra into your custody, congratulations."

"Thankyou" I replied.

"Well since you're her new guardian you'll be assigned help while on board Arcturus. The duties of the person are to show you around Arcturus, show how to sign Cassandra up for school, introduce you to the doctor that'll be helping Cassandra, and how to pay your bills, etc. I'm also here to transfer credits over to you, as well as the first month's credit for taking in Cassandra".

I look down to my omnitool, and two transfers come in. The first is for 5000 credits, and the second is for 1500 credits.

"I'll also send you the information on the cadet that'll be assisting you, and she'll be waiting for you when we dock at Arcturus." Hmm, Cadet Tiffany Smith, that sounds oddly familiar.

"I've also been informed that you can pick up your weapons from the quarter master."

"Thank you, Jacobs, I can't thank everyone for all that they've done." Thanking him.

He, like the doc, puts his hand up, "Chase, I'm just doing my job, and I'm just happy to help." We shake hands, and I leave his office and head for the Quarter master.

Leaving The quarter masters, I make my way to the Med Bay to grab my bag of clothes, and to get Shepard.

"Hey Shep, let's go".

"Thank god!" she replied, "I was getting so bored, but where are we going, we don't dock for another 30 minutes".

"Well" I said, "I want to get one last free meal before we get out of here" I said with a smirk on my face. All Shep could do was shake her head in disappointment, but I saw her smiling. The meal was rather uneventful up till now, but I did decide to go on the extranet to see how much my money from 2017 was. I had a crisp 100 and 50, two 20's, a 10 and 5, and a couple of 1's, and a single 2-dollar bill. I tried to spend cash, avoiding my debit card as much as possible, to reign in my spending. I also have some change, and a 1-dollar coin. Going online to auction sites, 20's and 10's goes for about 11-12 thousand credits each, 5's are around 3 thousand a pop, and 1's are around a thousand. The 50 and hundred go for about 20 thousand each, but the 2-dollar bill could sell for about 100 thousand. All my misc. change adds up to about a thousand credits, but the one dollar coin is worth 10 thousand, of course this is all for money in excellent condition, which mine was. So that meant retail my money could fetch me nearly 190,000 credits, it's a good start.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Shep asked.

"Oh, I'm just going over finances in my head, and ways to raise a good bit of money."

"Why would you need to raise a lot of money? I thought that the Alliance was going to give us some to start out, plus don't you get some credits for taking me in?" Well, she's a perceptive one.

"Yeah that's all true, but something tells me getting someone to train you in biotics isn't going to be cheap." She looks at her plate, in a sad manner, man her being sad for things out of her control is really starting to piss me off.

"I'm sorry" she said, "I don't want to be…."

"a burden?" I interrupted. "Look Cass," I grabbed her chin to make her look into my eyes, "I don't see you as a burden, and I choose to do this, you didn't force me to do anything I didn't want to do. So please, stop feeling bad for things out of your control."

The rest of lunch was peaceful, I pulled out my wallet and showed her my 'collection'. That really got her to feel better. Looking on the extranet I could see that old firearms from my day that are in working condition go for between half a million, to upwards of two million, depending on the condition of course. Now that's a good start for my plans.

"Attention crew, we will be docking with Arcturus in five minutes, I repeat, we will be docking with Arcturus in five minutes."

"Well that's our que Shep, let's hit the road."

Once we reach the docking port it opens, man talk about good timing, and so we both walk into Arcturus, and talk about massive. I know it's 5 kilometers long, at least in the game, but the description doesn't do it justice, I can't even imagine the citadel. Looking around, I couldn't find the Cadet, so I grab Shep and head over to an information booth. There, I get a map of Arcturus, look over to Shep, whose looking like a fish out of water.

"Wanna go see our new home?". She just nods at me with a smile and we start walking. It's about a 20-minute walk from the docks, and we're finally standing in front of the door. I open the door and walk in, it's a studio apartment, with a galley kitchen, and a small living room with a couch and T.V., and what I'm assuming is a bathroom through the door. I go and lay my bags onto the couch, and look over to Shep who's still taking in everything.

"You can take the bed Shep, I'll take the couch." She looks over to me and realizes that there's only one bed, and grins.

"You know, we can just share the bed. I don't bite." she said with a smile on her face.

"Probably," I replied, "but I can already see the first meeting with Family Services, and sleeping with an underage girl I've just taken custody of, even if it's just platonic, won't go over well." I ended that with a wink, getting her to look away, cheeks blushing. So, she's a bit of a flirt, learning new things every day.

"How about we do a first come first serve thing, and the last person to bed gets the couch?" she said.

"That's not a bad idea, I'm fine with that if you are."

With a beep, I look down and see my omnitool light up, it's a message from the High School principal, saying that she took the liberty of enrolling Shep into her senior year, and that school started two weeks ago, and that she's slated to begin school in one week. It also says that if I think that she needs more time to just message her and that she'll push back her enrollment date.

"Let's go shopping." I say, looking at Shep.

"What?" she shot back.

"Look, you start school in one week, and we don't have any real belongings between the two of us, we kind of need stuff."

Using my omnitool I found an antiquities dealer that specializes in old currency. Apparently, this guy thought I was an idiot, and only offered 100 thousand credits for everything, except the 1-dollar coin. After bartering for about 15 minutes, we came to an agreement of 160 thousand credits, not bad considering market price is 180ish thousand. I plan on keeping the one-dollar coin, and making it a necklace for her birthday, I couldn't help but notice her gawking at it in particular when I showed her what I was selling. After about 2 hours of clothes shopping, and some small furniture shopping, we needed dressers.

This trip ended up costing me 2500 credits, including food and some groceries. We went and grabbed some lunch at the Red Rocket diner, and I really had to hold my tongue at not making a Fallout 4 reference. While we were shopping I got into contact with a doctor onboard that was recommended by Dr. Singh and set up an appointment with her for the next day. The rest of the week went by relatively uneventful, I did end up meeting with the cadet, apparently, she had a bit of a medical emergency and couldn't meet up with us, and contacted the principal, which now makes sense why the she contacted me. She eventually found us and has helped me set a lot of things up.

On Shep's first day of school she was quite nervous, but I was able to calm her down and get her off to school for some resemblance of normal. Now I started my planning, and first thing I need to do was go to the recruiting office and join the marines. When I get there, let's just say it's not what I was expecting. I'm sitting down with this guy, who is not much of a talker, and looks scary as fuck. He's like the exact opposite of a recruiter back in 2017.

"So," he started, "why do you want to join the marines?".

"I want to server humanity, sir" I deadpanned.

He just looks at me and scoffs, I'm starting to not like this guy. "You ever kill anyone son?"

"Yes" I replied.

"Okay, not terribly uncommon from ex-gang members, but have you ever been in a combat with a life or death situation?". This guy is clearly trying to scare me away.

"Yes, I have" I say.

"Where?" is all he could reply, clearly not expecting that answer from someone as young as me. "Back on Mindor when the Batarian slavers invaded".

He just looks at me and nodded, giving me a look of respect? I'm not sure, I suck when it comes to being social.

"Okay kid, what kind of gene mods do you have?"

"None yet" I replied.

"Alright, I'll put your paperwork through, you'll be shipped off about month from now. Now for gene mods, enhanced strength and endurance is a requirement for all alliance military, it's recommended that you get them before boot camp, and if you complete boot camp you'll be reimbursed for those 2 gene mods only. If you don't get those two ahead of time, you'll get them after boot camp on the Alliances dime, understood?" I nod.

"Is that it? I thought this would be a longer process." I asked.

"Yeah that's basically it, our V.I.s do most of the work." he looks at me and shoos me away. Like I said, not what I was expecting, plus it only took one hour to set all this up.

After the recruiter's office, I went to the same antiques dealer to see if I can sell my 1911, I don't want to, but the money is an absolute necessity. I get there, and we barter for about half an hour, and shake hands at 700 thousand credits. I know for a fact that he still ripped be off, because on all of the auction site this gun sells for 1.5 million credits, without bullets. Once the transfer is complete, I pull out the pistol, eject the magazine, unload the loaded round and hand him the pistol.

"Magazine and those bullets please" he said, reaching out his hand.

"For what? We agreed to the gun price, that did not include these" I say, pointing at the magazine. "Look, I know you're going to get at least 1.4 for this, so send me another 350, and we have a deal."

He did, reluctantly, but it's rather sad. I really hope that all the merchants in this universe aren't as greedy as this guy, or at least obvious about it. Later in the week I take Shepard out to dinner, to celebrate me getting into the Alliance, which she seemed ecstatic about.

"So what branch did you join?" she asked.

"I'm joining the Marines, and I leave a month from now, about 5 days after your birthday. So, what do you think about the Alliance?" I asked, catching her off guard.

"What do you mean?"

"Look Shep, ever since I told you I was going to join the Alliance back on the Einstein I could see that your interest was piqued, that and every time I looked over your shoulder you were looking up stuff about the Alliance, so what you up to?" I asked, with a devilish grin on my face. I already know she wants to join the Alliance, it so obvious.

"Well, once I graduate school, I was thinking about joining it. I just don't see myself going to college, or just working some job. And nothing you say will change my mind!".

Now that surprised me, did she expect me to not let her join?

"Listen Cass, I won't lie, I kinda wanted you to go to college after high school." She puts her head down in a mopey manner, "however", she raises her head, "what I want more importantly is that you'll be happy, and if you think that's the Alliance, then you have my blessing. After all, we're in this together, right?"

That picked up her spirits. We enjoyed the rest of dinner, and I enjoyed a few beers, but maybe a few too many. We made our way back to the apartment, I stumbled in and passed out on the bed. I wake up the next morning, and load and behold, Shepard's lying next to me. I poke her to wake her up, she looks at me then starts to stretch.

"Good morning" she says. I don't understand someone who stays up all night can be a morning person.

"Morning" I say, "So how'd we both end up in the bed? I'm pretty sure I'm not that smooth of a talker while buzzed."

She turns to me, and slugs one at my shoulder. "Ouch"

"I'll have you know I tried to go to sleep on the couch, but I just couldn't fall asleep, so I came and slept in the bed with you." I sighed at that, quite noticeably.

"This is going to become a thing, isn't it?" All she does is smirk and shrug her shoulders.