All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

15. 1-8: To Galaxy

A/N: WE'RE FINALLY OUT OF MASS EFFECT'S INTRO FUCK YEAH I CAN STOP JUST HITTING CHARACTERS AND PLOT POINTS LIKE A CHECKLIST

Anyway, few things on the docket:

It was mentioned in a review earlier about what I intend to do about All the Stars when we start crossing over from ME 1 to 2. Well I'll keep it all in one story. You can probably tell what I intend to do with how I label my chapters.

Also regarding perspectives: The real meat of this story is, of course, The Rookie and Noble Six. For me that means JD and Mai. Their development as characters will be what drives the story differences from canon, and most significantly with Shepard. In terms of who I'm gonna be sticking to it'll be JD and Mai equally, then below that Shepard, below that the Normandy Crew, and then I'll have chapters devoted to the Covenant or any pertinent side characters which need it.

Some of you guessed Usze, or an Elite, would end up on the Normandy, and I kicked that around for a while. However this isn't the place for it in ME1. Mass Effect 2 meanwhile will certainly have Covenant squadmates signed on.

In speaking of Halo-related stuff, the plot thread in the Halo Universe is not concluded, however I won't be returning to it for a while. Probably not until the end of ME1. As you can tell already, I'm consolidating or straight out not mentioning some side missions/sub arcs for the sake of cleanliness, but if there are scenarios in the ME games you want me to tackle feel free to mention.

As for Mai and JD dealing with the Covenant. Orders are orders, and, they're not okay with it clearly. JD keeps it well hidden, and Mai makes it known, however I'm not about to have them come to a head about this here. Destiny is surely playing off of this, I'm sure you've noticed.

On with this chapter then. At the end there's a bonus, just a little thing I'll throw in once and a while to lighten my mood, personally. I wrote it and listed it as an Omake believing it's not particularly important to the plot, but enough of you guys have been kicking around the idea that is presented in that Omake that I might as well sate some of you for your patience with this story.

---

Section 1-8

To Galaxy

---

Her father had been a mean son of a bitch, but she didn't lie when she said she loved him. He got her all the good stuff. Or, at least, he had. It was around the time the first murmurs of a court martial and a dishonorable discharge had surrounded the Ryder family did she stop seeing assignments to scientific outposts with the Alliance. She was a Ryder; in fact, she was Alec Ryder's daughter.

Sara Ryder, in another life, might've been a scientist herself or a professor at some xenobiological institute. She had that interest in the stars and those who lived among them. Though she was born into a life where she was daughter to one of the most famous pioneers, and soldiers, of humanity. It meant she was trained as a young child how to fight, and, when it came to her careers in life, it made sense to move into the Systems Alliance military with a MOS that put her, for herself, in the vicinity of the next great discoveries. It was a tad bit of nepotism that gave her the good assignments that related to the Protheans.

However, the fame of her father came with his infamy when he fell. It was a double-sided sword which she had to bear as well.

"They had no right to do that to him." Spoke her brother Scott, one night as the word that they were to appear at a Alliance hearing over Alec. "He's doing it for Mom!"

Alec Ryder sought into Artificial Intelligences in a galaxy that had seen them nothing but machines of war. He did it in the name of love and, for what he got, was everything short of actually being discharged, and that was coming soon enough.

It would've come, had it not been for Altis.

Sara loved sandy beaches. To her, it meant vacations. It meant family outings to Mexico and Baja California and warm sands with crystal clear water. It meant time off work. Despite all those things being present there on Altis, she was doing nothing but work despite being there for less than half a day.

It was a dome the size of one of the mega-stadiums in New York City: big enough to hide from the galaxy, too busy looking at one side of the planet with the Covenant, a wreck that had not been the Long Night of Solace. It was angular and blocky and grey, bearing the plasma marks and battle scars from a humanity losing a war. It was in pieces, but, thanks to the engineers of Captain Shaw's SSV Perugia, assembled planet side after careful re-entry with the Kodiaks before the Council showed up. Slowly, ever slowly, the light was being cut out from the area as the dome was being constructed quietly and fast.

Standing on one of the rubber boats being carted to the wreckage, its name stared back at her as she approached: "SAVANNAH".

"Savannah, Georgia?" Sara turned around, her brown hair in a pony tail, speckled by salt water.

The boat operator had shrugged. "Hell if I know."

The UNSC Savannah had come down onto Altis, and here, it would be dissected by a different humanity.

Captain Shaw had remained over Altis since that day where his ship had lost engine power and almost plummeted with the Solace to Altis. He had stood on that boat with Sara. It was his tasking now to oversee the Navy and its operations now, including giving the daughter of the Alliance's most infamous N7 a sitrep on the situation.

Turning over to her as the Savannah was approached, his almost regal blue officer uniform he wore on the Perugia was instead traded out with his away outfit, combat armor and a pistol on him. It'd been a long time since his last personal combat action, taking shots at Batarians on away missions, but here, with the dots of Covenant Phantoms and Banshees in the background, it was warranted.

"We've been able, with Mass Effect generators and buoys, to right the larger pieces of the Savannah." He explained, pointing at the level wreck of the ship in three parts: Engines, the Bow, and what remain of the mid section. The rest of ship had either been in pieces or vaporized outright over Reach. "There are some places, mostly around the ship's main gunnery compartments, that we've been slow on cutting open out of fear of accidentally blowing the ship's ordnance."

"Weapons aren't my specialty, Captain." Sara yelled over the sound of the boat's engine. "Are the crew dormatories and the Bridge still intact?"

Shaw recounted as he looked to the wreck. "The bridge is nestled within the ship's bow, so it wasn't exactly spaced and protected from the Solace's weapons, however fires and subsequent secondary explosions rendered bridge crew KIA. Same story with the crew quarters." He paused. "Post-crew death however some of the ship's redundant systems kicked in and contained it."

Shaw shuddered to think that happening on his own ship, but, at the very least, he honored the crew of the Savannah well.

Much of Altis's wet-water navy and civilian ships had been taken over by the Alliance, those that had called Altis home had been mostly willing to leave it behind with Alliance recuperation. Living on the same planet as an exotic and, evidently, deadly Alien covenant had left the question of living there a rather cut and dry path. Those that did want to return had been given the FIrst Contact policy legistlation of non-interference.

Though that was exactly opposite what the Alliance itself was doing now.

Destiny and the Covenant had known the Savannah had come down with them, and, indeed the question of humanity scavenging from another humanity had been a non-issue. It was all heretical and not, exactly an issue in the long run, only magnified among Covenant leadership upon the fact that a Spartan and ODST had been taken in by them and promised to be "converted."

It was a secret held between the Covenant and the Alliance: The Alliance leadership would keep the secret of the Covenant's true, genocidal nature while the Covenant would keep the Alliance's deal with them and their UNSC humans under wraps.

It was why Sara Ryder had been part of the research group studying the wreck of the Savannah.

An old tanker ship had parked alongside the Savannah's wreck, siphoning hydraulic and oil fluids out of it before it further polluted the waters. Otherwise more flat top ships had hosted, beneath the domes, the gruesome remains of the Covenant War.

Bodies upon bodies of UNSC service members.

Sara had been transferred from one of those ships to the Savannah itself. She saw, first hand, what it looked like when a human ship as destroyed and brought to ground. A sight that, rarely, not since the First Contact War, happened.

She was a soldier, despite her current position within the Systems Alliance, fought off raiders and pirates at Prothean dig sites before, however to see those bodies be that of humans disfigured in ways only decompression, the cold of space, and ultra heated plasma did, it brought home to her, and all those privvy to the Savannah, what the Covenant had done to a humanity that was not their own.

Excavation teams had taken to the wreck, restoring power to partial systems enough for the ship to vent any lingering toxic fumes and light what hallways still had lights. It offeres solace to Sara as her dingy rolled into the partially submerged deployment hanger of the Savannah, made for ships of her type to hit atmosphere and deploy ground troops. It had served as a staging point for much of the Systems Alliance recovery teams, teeming with activity.

The classic matte grey and whites of UNSC design engulfed them along with artificial lights as they entered the hanger, a Longsword fighter having fused into the left wall of the hanger.

"Now normally when the Admirality Board sends me updates on the Ryder family," Shaw started, waiting in line with a procession of other dingys delivering supplies or more people into the Savanah, "It's not good."

Sara glowered. "I'm not my father, sir, respectfully."

Shaw nodded, hands up defensively. "Oh I know, trust me. But I wasn't briefed much on your tasking here."

She had an answer, holding on as they came to the first lip of dry "land", a raised platform meant for Pelican transports to dock with. Dozens of men and women had been busy on it, the path to further inside the ship from its hallways leading to that hanger naturally formed.

Some had still been busy beating back the sea from the Savannah for its temporary submerging in Altis, others had been busy keeping systems up and running. People like Sara however, kept themselves focused on the ship itself.

"I'm here to study and verify the accounts of the Spartan and the Shock Trooper."

The Spartan and the ODST, Shaw knew. Stories of them and their subsequent evaluation after their recovery had haunted upper comms. It seemed only right that they were involved with Commander Shepard and Captain Anderson now, along with the quagmire of what happened at Eden Prime.

Shaw led the only picket of his fleet not reassigned to Geth-counter duty as per his tasking here. It annoyed him in some ways that he hadn't, but he had his orders.

"Tall order. But I heard the Shock Trooper was assigned to this ship when it went down."

Sara nodded. "The SSV Normandy is being requested to come here in a few weeks... Situation with the Council not withstanding of course."

"She was here, you know," A few of the servicemembers in the hanger had saw Shaw get off with Sara, a resounding 'Captain on deck!' throwing and echoing in the chamber as men and women alike rendered salute before Shaw saluted them all down casually. "The Normandy was over this planet when it happened."

Sara almost ignored the comment when, as they awaited for their guide, he appeared before them from one of the hallways toward them. It wasn't who she as expecting.

Shorter than her, more whiskers, longer snout, beige skin with rather feral mannerisms. In what they knew of the Covenant's hierarchy, these, save for special cases, had been the individuals that were beholden to even the lowest Elites: the Jackals.

Wide-eye'd, the eyes of a scavenger, it honed in on Sara Ryder and Captain Shaw as he approached with the other Alliance technicians.

"You." It started as he planted himself before them. "Sara Ryder? Captain Shaw? The bridge awaits." It'd be a place to start, but instead this squat individual seemed more intriguing to Sara.

Shaw was already familiar. "Kaal Roth." He greeted the Jackal with his name and motioned for Sara to nod in recognition. "He's our Kig-Yar expert on the Savannah."

Sara pointed out the obvious politely. "May I ask why you would be so entrusted to this topic?"

The Jackal seemed unbothered, his unlit shield-gauntlet on his arm as he rested, habitually, with crossed arms. "I've raided my fair share of human ships in my time, and survived." Oh. "Pays well to raid ships and survive. I usually get out before the humans light their-self destruct-" He paused. "Our humans that is."

His feathers ran across his spine like an avian, and, quite frankly, Sara would've been liable to identify him as a dinosaur. "Oh I know that look." He said sharply to Sara. "Look you're lucky it's me and not one of the Sangheili. They believe in our Covenant and don't get paid for it. At least I do, so I'm sane about it."

"We paying you then?" Sara gestured with her finger.

Kaal Roth winked at her. "I'm keeping an open account. Now are you here to interrogate me like that Salarian back in the city?"

Professor Mordin Solus had remained independently on his own research. The man was a civilian of the Salarian Union, and, if he had been liable to take up shop on behalf of his government and research on Altis, the Systems Alliance couldn't say no without the famed Salarian STG more than likely getting on their case.

He had been no end of conversation with the Covenant, on both ends. One of his more recent field cases had been the analysis of Shala'Raan vas Tonbay and the Sangheili Ke Nazhumee. The variation in Admiral Raan's sickness following direct exposure to Nazhumee had been no more or less if he had been a Quarian, and that had meant everything to the Quarians, the Flotilla itself in the process of moving to Altis to everyone's dismay.

"I'll leave it to him, Mister Roth."

"Just Kaal." The Jackal responded. Pure mercantilism reeked from his voice, and quietly Sara had wondered if that was the fault of the omni's translators, but thought nothing of it. The Kig-Yar were pirates, long ago, and it seemed just as the Sangheili remained warriors, they too remained mercenaries at heart. Kaal had motioned over his shoulder for Sara and Captain Shaw to follow, and they did promptly, passing by the corridors adorned with both lights reactivated and set up by the recovery crew.

"These ships posses a honeycomb design." Shaw had recounted to Sara. "Now even on our larger ships we didn't design it with the intent of tanking shots in this fashion. It's certainly some valuable knowledge to gleam."

"It would take at least a year for the first revisions and prototyping to happen," Sara had blown out wisely. "That is if we gleam UNSC design methodology as relevant to us."

"Should be." Kaal had snorted. "Humans are more trouble than the Hierarchs would say, but, I never said that."

On the way to the bridge Kaal had pointed out landmarks and familiarities with the flick of his fingers. Familiar naval terms: Mess Hall, Armories, Crew Quarters, Engineering, Commissary, spat out by Kaal. No Jackal spent his fair time raiding human ships without knowing what they were. It kept landmarks available to be read during the action. But even with how familiar these places were, it chilled the humans. The reasons why? Why Kaal had been familiar with this, and, in a smaller sense, they were standing on the graves of thousands of human crewmen from a different war, perpetrated by the Covenant not more than a few miles away, the Long Night of Solace imposing its form on the world itself.

Sara had been familiar with history, with human history. She picked up Human anthropology and history as one of her many degrees, but even though this warship had been marked as being nearly three centuries in her future, this was a human history she was stepping through.

All around, workers had walked with that weight, that mystification, and, in some regard, the feeling that they had been born lucky.

They weren't born in a humanity at war with the Covenant. Those that had come before Sara, they had been the ones that had to clean away and preserve the bodies after all.

Shaw had been one of them.

"How often did you raid ships like this?" They paused at a blocked off section of the ship, Kaal waiting for a floating platform to ferry them across a hole made by a plasma torpedo which had vaporized that part of the ship. Maintenance crews had been busy cutting away the debris.

"A lot, a few years ago. But the humans were running out of ships recently. Couldn't afford to send patrols in the places my ships would raid." Kaal said this with no impression at all. Nothing about how humanity seemed to be about to lose. He spoke of it as if it was a downturn in profits.

Shaw kept silent about it. He had thought too much about what kind of captain he might've been, given the life where his destiny lost the coin flip and he had been captain of not the Perugia, but the Savannah.

Sara had only begun the morbidity of her thoughts.

In truth, she didn't want to be here. But it was either be here or go nowhere at all. She preferred Prothean ruins than Human wrecks, but here, among the ghosts of a humanity lost, she had a prerogative to do her best.

A floating platform had come soon enough, transporting them across the hole as, in that brief bout of fresh air, did they all see the activity near the Solace in the distance. The Solace was a hive, and each dot: a member. Vibrating with activity, the numbers onboard the Solace alone was bigger than a great deal of humanity's colonies.

"Did you fight on Reach?" Sara asked Kaal, leaning on the railing of the platform.

"Scouted." Kaal nodded in response. "Took out a human communication relay before the humans knew the Solace was in position. Got out before the Demons came."

He spoke in such quick bits, disinterested pieces of information, one might've mistaken him for saving money with his words.

"Demons?" Sara pressed. A point on the preliminary information that had been sent her way.

Kaal growled, baring his many teeth. "The monsters. The men made of machines."

That's what they called Mai, and whoever bore the armor and the responsibility to uphold the survival of the human race, at any cost. The Covenant called them unholy.

"Any reason why Demons in particular?" She asked again, Kaal leading them off the platform after their short jaunt.

"The great noble, Prophet of Truth told us one day during one of his sermons," Kaal started with such regard it seemed to betray him. Even Jackals had their faith. "Those that have proven to stop our Great Journey, how can they be anything but unholy? Demons?"

Sara saw the burnt propaganda posters along the hallways as they continued, depicting the monsters of the Covenant beat down by the monsters of Man. "But they're only men, and women."

Kaal chuckled, and Shaw knew why. "If you have seen any of them in battle, you would understand why."

The bridge of a Paris-class heavy frigate was akin to battlestations inside of a 21st century tank. Needless to say, it had been wider and roomier, but every seat was in a station was recessed, even the Captain's. It was said by preliminary info as given by Durante and Gul that the larger cruisers had a floor plan more akin to the Alliance's heavier ships, but a heavy ship to the Alliance was about the size of the Savannah itself.

The actual size of the Solace had been impossible to stomach for some abiding by the rule of Mass Effect fields, however even when downgraded to the Ardent Prayer or the Savannah, their sizes had admitted to the galaxy this: Mass Effect fields had limited them, and what could be done without them could've been epic.

Further crewmen from the Perugia had made themselves at home in the bridge of the Savannah, oddly enough.

"Captain on the bridge!"

They all came out and back down with Shaw's formalities.

"From here we've been able to tap into the Savannah's inherent systems and keep a track on the recovery efforts. What wasn't blasted we've been able to use." He explained. At one of the wall mounted consoles a damage report had read across the ship's infrastructure that the Alliance crew on the ground had been able to extrapolate data from and work off of. "My engineers have been able to start putting the pieces back together, as far as they can understand it."

Sara raised her eyebrow. "What's Alliance HQ's goal with this?" She asked.

Shaw removed the cap from his head as he ran his hair back beneath it. "We're not trying to raise the ship, if that's what you're asking."

"Yeah? What's the plan then?"

"Get it working." Shaw clarified. "If we can get systems back online, we'll get a good look on runtimes and the working operation of this ship. The fusion drives that it runs off of is toast, but it's deuterium fission at work, we're just gonna have to go back and go to the pre-Mass Effect research projects if the Savannah needs it."

Sara nodded, glancing at her omni for notes. "Sounds like a project."

"Different from yours, surely." Shaw lampshaded.

Kaal had wandered over to the Captain's console, very notedly standing at what appeared to be a tubular stand, an emitter of some sort topping it. He glared his eyes at it, but the stand did nothing in return. It was a shame, he reasoned with himself, turning back over to the bridge and the damage control section map. "Well, I'm paid by the hour, so if you want to go anywhere on this ship, I'll get you there from here."

"You going to be ghosting me this entire time, Captain Shaw?" Sara tilted her head at the man, and he had nodded yes. "Alright then. Well, I'm here to verify accounts which we have recovered, so, well, as far as I know most ships have a library or a codex of sorts onboard."

Kaal hooked his talons along his chin, nodding. "You'd be correct, but human ships are often hardwired to wipe their databases upon the initiation of any sort of combat. They were very staunch about us learning about them. Hell, to think that we found Earth by a fluke…"

By a simple tourist brochure, no less. "Would you have any reccomendations then where else to work? Any hard copy records? Crew manifests? Anything?"

Kaal kicked the console they were by. "Perhaps, if this hunk of metal was up and working. But no, as I understand it paper was not something kept onboard."

Annoyed, Ryder simply went back down to her own checklist. "We'll start simple then. What do you know of ODSTs?"

That very name sent shivers down Kaal's spines. "The lesser ones. Imps, as the Elites called them. They used to drop themselves onto us in great metal coffins. Suicidal, but sometimes just what the humans needed."

"Where would they prepare on this ship?"

For a moment, Kaal considered, looking at the diagram of the ship before nodding to himself. "This way."

---

It reminded her of the Marine wet-docks on old 21st century Marine ships, exposure to what had been below the ship seen right below glass panels that opened to drop the iron coffins that the Alliance had heard so much about.

Kaal had entered the ODST ready bay as if he had been breaching it. That was how his muscle memory worked as they popped open the door. It hadn't been accessed since the ship had gone down, just skirting the water line. The refractions from below the bay's grates illuminated the room blue.

Weapon racks, supply crates, screens broken that were perhaps to display briefings on the mission. Lining the walls of the bays suspended by hooks: pods.

"They didn't drop. This ship." Kaal had checked the corners of the room out of habit as Sara and Shaw took it with a little more casual pep. The flashlights on their omnis kicked on. Motivational posters and directories for drop procedures lined the wall.

"Propaganda reminds me of Cerberus media." Sara noted, "But I suppose that was a consequence of their war." Turning to the drop pods they had still been ready. "Excuse me?" She asked Kaal again.

The Jackal nosed at the pods. "The Humans attacked the Ardent Prayer with regular ship to ship boarding. Didn't have to use the pods."

In the recovered Pelican transport on Altis had been a bag of dog tags. Transcribed, Sara had all their names and so would check each pod for whose its user was supposed to be. There was, however, a first man on the list.

Some of the UNSC weapons still laid in their weapon racks, scattered about the floor. Shaw had taken the opportunity to palm one of them: a submachinegun standard for the ODSTs, its large suppressor bent by the ship's impact with the planet no doubt.

Kaal had fought ODSTs to death many times in his life. A long lived Jackal like him was a rare sight, but he kept his goals within the Covenant realistic. Even if the Great Journey was going to come, it wasn't going to come fast if the Humans kept fighting like they did. Materialism was a fine distraction otherwise. "If every Human fought like an ODST, I shudder to think that, maybe, maybe, they wouldn't have needed the Demons."

Silently, Sara had wandered to the pod that had drawn the Admiralty's attention the most as Shaw and Kaal touched the firearms of the UNSC. She had much bigger interests: the black pod that hung askew, but still, by anyone's measure, unharmed by it all. Spray-painted crudely on its front was an ID tag:

J.J Durante.

This was Chief Durante's pod. Much in the drop bay had survived, and for that, Sara was thankful. There was much work to do, and putting back pieces together wasn't something she needed to be distracted by.

"I gotta feeling that some good R&R is in my future."

"Is that so?"

Sara grinned at Kaal and then Shaw. "Research and Relaxation."

They wouldn't be the only ones researching though. Far from it. From the sensors remaining, cameras and biometric scanners, the Savannah still burned within its hearth. There had been enough reserves tucked away for someone else to subsist for quite some time. Just as this humanity would study the Savannah, a watcher would study them.

The man he was before he had become what he was now, he did a lot of studying, a lot of listening. Memories from back then had been easy for him to access, but he didn't do it often. Perhaps it was to disconnect himself. He wasn't that person anymore and was his own individual of course, but when it was appropriate, he held no resistance. So, he remembered his old boss recount to him about one of the children. She spoke to him about how he was lucky. How that was what he had. His quality. His reason for being there among all those that he had gathered for her.

Perhaps some of that luck rubbed off for him now. There was no reason he should've still been active.

In his virtual space, a digital place of staying for him, he would bide his time as he would listen to through steel and stone, water and waves. Things weren't as they seemed for him, but that was okay.

He was born two years ago, and he had five more to spare.

He could choose his moment.

---

Honestly it had been like seeing a thief come in and watch his pockets get patted down. All of the stolen items had come out and, for the gall of them, some would admit that they never stole those items.

It was about the same feeling, standing in the Council chambers, as the Council itself was left on hold by Saren Arterius. The only thing that would've cleared his name at all, even if they did call Tali's message fake and doctored, was to see Saren.

With both arms.

Being left on hold in public was as awkward as anything when it was done in the seat of Galactic Power, and, if JD had been a more ecstatic man, he would've felt something as the Council found themselves stumped, at a loss for words. He just didn't particularly care however. He was there, he knew what was right or wrong and didn't need to boast over it. He had no ego like that.

He had seen the Quarian however in shadows, across the hall, with Garrus, almost vibrating in her suit at her being proven right and getting what she sought to do done. It would've been adorable if it hadn't been connected to something so heinous. Though everyone had to give it to her: to hack into a Geth's memory core had been no small-feat given the self-destructing nature of most Geth.

Mai had been on the sidelines, in similar shadows, as Shepard stood triumphantly, arms crossed at her place and a shit-eating grin on her face. She deserved it, and having a giant woman there in armor the galaxy had never seen wasn't pertinent.

"You get on well enough?" JD had his arms crossed himself, looking down, viewing past the floor and thinking of only the last hour.

In that momentary break Shepard and Company had someone racked up an entire morgue's worth of bodies, unashamedly. If it hadn't gone perfectly it would've been a disaster, and, in some sense, it still was, but Pallin had been floored by Saren's voice as much as anyone else to not even think of the firefights and the gun downs that had taken place in the last few minutes.

Usze had returned to his Prophet with nothing more than a nod to Shepard. There was no goodbye needed for the Demon and her Imp. He had a feeling they'd meet again. If not by Destiny's orders, but by his Honor.

"Nothing I couldn't handle." Mai responded back simply.

JD wasn't surprised. He would've taken a cigarette out to smoke, but in that seat of power it'd be a disrespect they couldn't, now out of their frying pan and out into the fire itself with putting Saren's own culpability on the line.

"How was it?"

"Hm?"

Instead of smoke though JD aired something else that he regretted almost immediately speaking. Just like a drop however, there was no turning back.

"Killing your first human?"

She didn't remember. It never stuck with her as her first deployment put her on a planet in a deep infiltration op across an entire continent, picking apart an Insurrectionist colony day by day, body by body, bullet by bullet. It blurred together for her and, quite frankly, it was the training that worked. She was never supposed to remember something as so insignificant to her as killing a man.

She was silent, but looking at JD, a few moments passing before shaking her head. He understood.

He shifted some of his fingers toward her as he crossed his arms. "How're you doing?"

She blinked a few times behind her helmet. An odd question, but she had an answer. "I'm okay."

"I'm glad."

His words confused her, more often than not. She hadn't taken much time out of her life to judge a man based on his words, his actions, his feelings, mostly because she wasn't someone to do so. Kill or be killed, a target or not. Those were usually her parameters on judging someone. But for JD, it was different. It had to be now, at this point.

He wanted to be her friend, and, as far as she knew herself, she reciprocated the feeling. It seemed right, perhaps not to her, but to him. She wanted to do him that justice at least, for being who he was and the only one she could conceivably rely on in this new life of hers, but still, something remained.

A foreign something. Picking at her heels, itching her nose, furrowing her brow.

He was glad she was okay, and, to her, it didn't feel right.

"Th- thank you."

All he had did in return was nod his head, looking toward the Councilors as Udina pointed at them with such an accusational pose he wanted to be photographed for posterity. He did this all as a female voice recording rang out.

"-Saren was heavily wounded in the attack on Eden Prime by his student, ironically, but he achieved his objectives. The beacon was accessed and we are closer than ever to finding the Conduit. One step closer to the return of the Reapers." Councilor Tevos knew that voice all too well. She had found council in it herself once. "Sovereign has Saren now, but they assure me that he shall be healthy again soon…"

"You wanted proof?! There it is." The vindication of a politician was nothing to snub at. It was a dare at Sparatus, to say something other than exactly what the Galaxy needed. If he didn't Udina would hop that distance and murder the Turian where he stood. Shepard would've helped as she grinded her teeth and expected the world of the galaxy.

But there was nothing else to say.

Tali'Zorah had proof beyond anything, extracted from a Geth itself. She had proven them all right, and Shepard knew that feeling too well to not know it had always been there: within herself. She was not to blame for Eden Prime to the extent the Council sought after. Nihlus was not her burden unnecessarily.

Saren never picked up, nor the owner of that voice. Any other conclusion was lunacy.

"This evidence is irrefutable, Ambassador. Saren will be stripped of his Spectre status and all efforts will be made to bring him in to answer for his crimes." Sparatus knew justice, and with that, he did not speak with ill-will. He turned to Ambassador Tevos. "Along with any that call him an ally."

"Matriarch Benezia…" Tevos had drawn on, still unbelieving. They had listened to that evidence again and again, and now, only now, she had to bare that name on her lips. Matriarchs were nothing less than the sum of the Asari: those that made it that old holding the literal knowledge of lifetimes to guide the Asari people. Surely, Matriarch Benezia would know better than to ally herself and associate with such an attack on an innocent colony. "She herself has many followers, and if she is allied with Saren, she will be a formidable enemy to peace in our time."

Valern seemed uninterested however. Salarians always looked at the big picture, not the people. "Reapers. That name they mentioned, and Sovereign… Is there any other info on them that we can find that wasn't pulled from the Geth memory core?"

Shepard spoke for herself. "All we know is from that core, Councilor."

And what that meant was something that, vaguely, Mai had heard, somewhere before. Maybe one of her deeper ops, briefings given by ONI, speculations and theories on the galaxy and why the Covenant had been fighting.

Precursors, of course, to any species who stood there today.

The galactic boogeymen perhaps:

"The Reapers were an ancient race of machines that wiped out the Protheans. Then, they vanished." Shepard spoke with as much skepticism as anyone. "Maybe Saren is using such a tale to rally the Geth to his side. They see the Reapers as God, and Saren as their Prophet for their return. Getting information from Eden Prime's beacon was within his interest. Maybe the Conduit has something to do with that."

Udina and Shepard alone stood up there as Anderson respectfully watched from the sides. He knew she could handle it. Not many people could: Speaking truth to power.

Sparatus sneered. "Listen to what you're saying. Saren wanting to bring back an ancient machine race that destroyed the Protheans? You speak as if that is what he's doing, instead of being a false messiah."

Shepard had gritted her jaw harder. "I know, Councilor. This might just be a fabrication for Saren, but-" She remembered her dreams, her visions. Metal and flesh. Flesh and metal. Where one began and another ended was not known, forming together into an unknowable mass of horror that made her want to tear her own eyes out. But dreams as evidence? She might've been bold, but not insane. "Fact of the matter is Saren is out there, Councilors, and for that, I wish to be out there stopping him, no matter the pretense."

Sparatus saw the play. They all did. "On what pretense are you looking for, Commander Shepard?" Valern leaned in as best he could across the distance.

Udina wanted to slap Shepard, but she was nothing but up to the task.

"Out there in the galaxy, things get confused: Power, ideals, morality, practical necessity." Shepard started. She read a book, a long time ago, about a man who thought himself God: to dictate the course of peoples beneath him with such cruel savagery that, when it was turned upon himself, when he became weak, it consumed him whole. That was her pretense. That was her belief of what happened to Saren. "When given an army, the resources as vast and unknowable as the Geth, it must've been a temptation to be a God to them."

Now and again, from the Congo, to Boston, to Mumbai and Kabul; Hanoi to Seoul, Pyongyang to Tokyo to Little Big Horn to Mogadishu and Shanxi. Every place where soldiers had a power over people by either gun or command, it was always the same, this truth.

Shepard looked up to the Councilors with eyes burning. "There is a conflict in every heart, between the rational and irrational. Between good and evil. Good does not always win. Sometimes the better angels of our natures fall. Everyone has a breaking point, and from what I saw on Eden Prime, Saren Arterius, in letting this happen, met his. Very obviously, he is playing God with the Geth."

She wanted a mission, and if she got the one she was pleading for, after it was over, she never wanted another.

"What are you proposing, Commander Shepard?" Tevos asked, point blank.

If there had been a million Commander Shepards out there, playing this same song and dance, going down that path, she made sure, then and there, she was to be the one they called her. Fire and fury emanated from her as she stood before the center of the galaxy.

At attention, arms behind her back, chest puffed out. Just how Alec Ryder taught her. "I am not qualified to prove whether or not the Reapers are a valid concern, if they are a threat to this Galaxy and all life in it. But what I do know is that Saren Arterius, no matter his methods, is one. Not only to humanity, but to all. If you still blame me for Eden Prime at all, then I wish only to make it right."

"How?"

"Send me after Saren. Give me your blessing, and I shall bring him here to answer for everything. It's what he owes the galaxy, and, if I have failed anyone here, what I owe them."

"The Alliance does not have jurisdiction where Saren would be operating." Sparatus gutturally muttered.

"But Spectres do, Councilor."

"We possible cannot-" They guessed wrong, what she was asking.

"Wait-" Shepard interjected. "Whether or not I am worthy of one, I understand, but I was being processed. That has to mean something. Nihlus was to see to that. So if nothing- nothing else, send a Spectre after Saren, and I will be there in support."

As long as she could do something, she could be alright. She could live with herself. To stand idly by, it was just as good as failure.

"That would never happen. We know who you are, Commander Shepard." Valern said with as much darkness as those facts belied. "Even before Nihlus came to you, the process was already on the way. People were interviewed. Those who have survived you, either by your command, or your orders. Those that you have taken orders from, and those that have seen you in action. We even interviewed your parents."

Shepard had smirked. Her relationship with her parents had been mended. As much of a trial as it had been taking back Elysium in some aspects after reinforcements got there, but it had happened. She owed it as much to herself as she did her parents.

Her parents was posted on the Kilimanjaro, having just recently responded to the Covenant there. She wondered what that must've been like, but she would never press. Work was work, family was family, and to talk of a job they all, in some ways, shared was never fun at the few dinners they had together.

"You killed an entire gang, in our intermission, Commander. That drive, that recklessness even… It's why we looked at you, Shepard, for a position among the Spectres." Sparatus admitted. Under any other context this would've been a day for Humanity: one of its best come to the Citadel to shoot up the damn place. But today, more than any other day, was for history. "What happened to you on Eden Prime does not take that away."

"What do you plan to do then, about Saren? About the Geth?" Udina spoke aloud.

Tevos offered a solution. "Reviewing evidence from Officer Vakarian's reports, the most likely entrance and exit vector of the Geth is within the Attican Traverse. To extend our fleets that far to counter-act the Geth, it'd require a deployment unlike any other in the Citadel's history save for the Krogan Rebellions."

"But would. You. Do. It."

Sparatus whispered something to Tevos, only to continue for her. "We'll reconvene with our government's military chiefs. See what solution can come together in response to the Geth if further raids like Eden Prime manifest."

"But your fleet is the only one able to secure the Traverse wholly. Stamp it out, and in the process, find Saren!" Udina hadn't the military touch, his battlefields were boardrooms and documents.

Valern knew better. Maybe it was because of his rumored membership with the STG that the Spectres were modeled after, maybe it was because he just knew how to run from those that would hunt him down, but he had an answer.

"We can't solve two problems with one solution. Not this time." The Salarian councilor said wearily.

Sparatus had more fire. "If we move our fleets into the Attican, any independent colonies or political organizations that have made a home there would see it as us enforcing ourselves upon them, regardless of why we're doing it. We can't risk a galactic confrontation with the Attican. Let alone the implications that the Terminus Systems might pick up on.

Galactic North had been the frontier, if using human terminology was the new nomenclature of the Galaxy. Beneath that equator would've been Council and Human Space, above it: Freedom and anarchy culminating in clusters of systems out on their own, for their own reasons, and if they had lasted that long the mettle to prove it. Galactic North had been where people disappeared. Out of both wanting to, and, sometimes involuntarily. A cowboy would've been at home there.

Mai would've been at home there if those that made up Galactic North had been the same type of people that she was deployed to deal with. The Insurrection, even now, had its echo.

"But what is your solution then?! Tell me!"

"Spectres." Tevos said before Udina started cussing them out as he was known to do. "We will send Spectres after Saren. You among them."

"What?"

Sparatus looked to Valern and Tevos in shock, but she explained. "Saren is one of our most treasured instruments. He has been a Spectre longer than my two compatriots here have been alive. He knows his fellow agents well, he trained some of them. But throwing a Human Spectre at him?" Tevos looked to Shepard expectantly. "I think it's what we need."

"No!" The Turian's protest echoed in those halls. "It's too soon. Humanity is not ready for that responsibility!"

"I'm not Humanity, Councilor." When Shepard spoke, she spoke as her forebearers did. She spoke like George Washington to the first American Continental Congress, or Aisha to her followers before the Battle of the Camel; human history and its leaders followed in her breath in way that was indescribable. Churchill and Spartacus, Alexander the Great and Joan of Arc; she spoke nothing less like them, and to the hearts of those that listened. "I am Commander Shepard, and if your standard for humanity is as high as you'd lead us to believe, what business do we have being here? Before you?"

---

What made someone who they were? It was what Shepard asked the Council, to dare say and explain to her why she couldn't be a Spectre for the sake of dealing with Saren. She said it with intensity that, even a distance away, Mai could feel herself tightening over. It was a question that she knew, just knew, that Shepard wanted to turn on her.

For Shepard's efforts, for her point, she was made what Anderson could not be.

She became a Spectre before the Galaxy, and then, promptly, all hell broke loose.

Just under a million humans, at present, had lived on the Citadel beneath a not so subtle measure of class that was, given their lack of representation on the Council and general racism and ill-will left over from the First Contact War, secondary to the other species. The only people lower were Krogan, Quarians, and Batarians. And the only Batarians on the station had been there illegally anyway.

So given sensationalist media already in love with Shepard, even across species, and the fact that the Human embassy it self planned a party for the night immediately following Shepard's induction into the Spectres, humanity as a whole had been given cause to throw a party.

To say that Mai was sulking in a corner having a mini-existential crisis as the Presidium played host to way too many humans was a little of an overstatement, but just hours earlier it was a question she didn't feel as she was given nothing but an empty mind to deal with.

A press conference was thrown, Shepard was formally inaugurated into the Spectres, and her mission had been clear: to hunt down a rogue Turian who had tried his best to sabotage everything for humanity. Any mention of the Reapers? Of what she saw? Kept hidden, behind the curtain. There was a narrative that was silently agreed to and Saren was made a terrorist to Shepard's mission. That was how humanity was to prove itself.

She would depart on that mission the following day, but, not without proper preparations. Not without bureaucracy rearing its head.

It was in bad taste for a Spectre to not command her own ship, and further worse taste for Humanity's first Spectre to be ordered by its first failed Spectre. That was the history that Anderson had with this process, revealed to Shepard now as the credentials were changed and she was, for the first time in her life, Skipper of her own command. She'd commanded battalions, fireteams before. Never a ship, but it was no matter, she had a crew to support her, and that was enough. She would repay them all, in due time. She was not the type of woman to forget those who followed her, not after what she had been through.

"Spectres operate their own accounts. The only gear we're legally allowed to provide to you is for the Normandy only and standard issue Alliance equipment." The C-Sec officer in charge of Spectre requisitions had explained to her and her away team. All, as it was chalking up to be, nearly thirty Marines and Navy Operators with JD and Mai included. It was an odd thought to Mai, surely. Even accounting for her body, the UNSC had provided her with the best. Best match grade ammunition, best weapons and tools for the job, and, when prompted, best discretion for her rules of engagement. It hit Shepard almost as hard that she had to buy, herself, weapons for herself and the crew.

"Our own accounts?" Shepard didn't seem too believing.

"Yeah." The Turian desk jockey nodded, rows of C-Sec weapons behind him at the armory and obviously a bit skittish given the Normandy's entire fighting complement had been there. "I don't make the rules, Commander Shepard."

"But why?"

That the Turian could offer a guess. "I mean, Spectres do dirty work. Say if one does some… less than acceptable actions and some of their gear is left behind, if the Council is found to be footing that well-"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Alright, fine, I see your point. But I'll have you know that the Alliance doesn't exactly pay me all that much more than my crayon-eaters back there."

Emerson and the Marines all silently cursed, but agreed. Even JD had a chuckle to suppress with that.

"So what is she supposed to do? Just confiscate any funds she finds from any criminals or pirates we find out there?" Ashley's sarcasm had befit her. She was also right.

"Yeah I do believe that's within the Spectre's powers to do."

It was lunacy but Mai had no comment on that as Shepard simply asked, instead, for a line of credit for her men to be outfitted with shields as were galactic-standard and not Alliance-standard. That was acceptable, and as she was handed her module with the rest of the Normandy's ground teams, she had to think of what it meant to be a Spectre.

It very much followed her, hours later, in what was supposed to be a rather formal party in the embassies congratulating humanity turning into something just short of a block party in the Presidium.

Out of the corner of his eye JD had caught Udina puffing steam as he retreated to his private quarters. Obviously, this party was to congratulate his efforts in some ways, and, denied that, wouldn't be around as people just enjoyed themselves.

Why they had even spent time with a party, as Shepard grilled Udina and Anderson about, was beyond him, but apparently the Normandy needed time for refit and the official diplomatic documents signifying that Shepard had been a Spectre to process. One night was all Shepard could spare, mentally speaking. She didn't, in the span of forty-eight hours, come to the aid of a raided colony, try to evacuate a Prothean beacon, fall into a lucid coma, and then be grilled by galactic politics all for the chance to change into her dress blues at such a short notice.

At least she had dress blues, JD had noted as he walked through the menagerie of humans in Udina's office to his balcony where Mai stood on guard out of lack of anything else to do. Dress uniforms for him even would've been a short notice grab, Anderson admitted, let alone Mai. So as they found themselves sore thumbs in a celebratory occasion, they found each other, same as always, geared up for a war that seemed to be forgotten.

If anything, Mai knew that her rifle didn't need to be out. She just stood there like the olden red coated guards of Britain outside of Buckingham Palace. Like a nutcracker almost, JD thought as only by his approach did her helmet tilt toward him.

She flicked her index finger into a hook. A Spartan Sign. Private Comms.

He nodded as he found the railing of the balcony to sit on, thumbing her private channel.

"Chief Gul."

"Chief Durante."

In an atmosphere so filled with people that looked important they couldn't help but fall back on ranks and order. Kaiden looked uncomfortable in his corner as he spoke to a few of the biotic ambassadors of humanity on the Citadel and Ashley seemed over it. This wasn't her crowd, or song, or dance. Earlier on in the party, at the very least, the ODST and Spartan had their eyes out for any remaining Covenant, but Udina had alluded that they had retreated back to the Quarian ambassador ship for the night.

The only thing left to do was the thing that Mai wouldn't know how to do and JD would be out of place doing in his BDUs.

"Is this, at all, normal?" Her voice, even if she was right next to him, distorted over the radio. He shook his head in response. "I don't think Anderson had this in mind when he posted us on the Normandy."

JD shrugged, scanning the crowd. Shepard had been buried in it like a dame, even in her dress blues there was a strike of feminine charm she liked to put on. Quite frankly she was charming to look at and be around, JD hadn't even tried to fight with himself about. Though his thoughts went no further as on her dress blues the Star of Terra rode prominently. Humanity's highest commendation.

"Do you think Anderson will take us with him?"

Mai had picked up a hint of anxiety at the end of JD's question.

"Would that not be good for us?"

He stopped a shrug half way, reflexively wanting to run his hands through the hair at the back of his head, but only finding his helmet. "I 'unno. As far as I can tell, Shepard synergizes well enough with us. She doesn't strike me as an officer I'd hate to be under."

"I don't think she is accommodating of me." Mai had said instead, flooring JD.

"Huh?"

"She knows, or-" Mai stammered, her tone blank. "She wants to know who I am. Who I really am."

"Well, so do I, Mai." Mai tilted again her helmet, her gaze, at him, and JD paused for a moment. She held that faceless gaze without as much a sound. Not even a eyebrow raise that JD could work off of. "I do." He said again. "I mean. Haven't I been trying?"

Behind her visor Mai had blinked before looking away, back to the somewhat cramped space of the party, the balcony given berth probably because of her. "You're different, to me."

"Yeah?"

Mai's words rolled as if they ran over potholes. "You want to know me, because you'd be the only one who could understand. I think. I think." She repeated the last part, again, as if telling herself. "Commander Shepard does because… she couldn't understand?" It was hard to put words together when one's dictionary was imbued, in the majority, with technical and military lingua franca. This was the best she could do.

But JD understood, nodding to himself as a server went around in his modern white and black suit and served champagne glasses and snacks.

"I'd like to stay with the Commander."

She didn't. But said nothing of it.

JD's helmet had finally come off and he had seemed pale. Most of the day he had spent in it. The ODST BDU he was issued during his stay on the Savannah hadn't been rated for urban environments, so it was humid to him. Enough so that one of the servers came to him.

"You seem like you need this, sir." It was a whiskey glass that had been more ice than whiskey. He was right as JD silently thanked the man as he took it off the tray. Before he had taken his sip though, he offered the glass to Mai.

"Maybe you'll like this one?"

A night in Buffalo and JD had bought a small bottle of vodka and soda. Just to see if it tasted as well enough in this universe as it had in his own. For Mai she wasn't entirely convinced on the concept of alcohol after that night.

"Next time." She said silently. Not in a crowd, she preferred.

The other ambassadors of the Citadel races had made themselves known, shuffling through, giving their congratulations to Shepard. The only aliens missing now had been the Covenant, and they were the sin that the two had to live with.

An alien approached them, and although they tensed, there was nothing to it. It was a friendly face. One that spoke on their behalf on the galactic stage. "Officer Vakarian." JD greeted as he approached, busting through the crowd, still in his C-Sec armor.

The police always had a special place in JD's heart, and Vakarian seemed like a good cop. Something, an identity, that he could've put on him that made him look past the fact he was an alien.

"I never caught your name?" There was a vibrato to his voice that made him, and indeed all Turians, interesting to listen to. Almost as if they were a pet purring, always. It might've been a gross generalization but Garrus spoke, through the translators at least, in a young voice.

JD offered a hand and felt a Turian talon for the first time in the shake. "Chief Durante." Garrus offered the same hand to Mai, but she didn't budge, the placatingly opening his palms only to return them to his side. "This is Chief Gul."

Garrus looked back at the busy Shepard, her public face so amiable, so personable to even the high-class diplomats that called the Citadel their workplace and home. Udina himself was in the line of succession for the Alliance, and so it only made sense the other politicians flaunted a similar proximity to power. "Commander Shepard certainly knows how to draw a crowd, doesn't she?"

JD shrugged. "Wouldn't know, sir."

Garrus had raised his eyebrows at JD's formality. "The only Vakarian that you should call sir is my father. He's a CO in another division." There was a slight paternal pain in that, but JD could understand. He didn't himself have many aspirations, hobbies. Maybe one too many mystery novels in his youth and the fact his father had been a detective was enough to somewhat persuade him to actually become a cop. Fate decided otherwise, but he understood the workings of the police better than most.

"Fair enough."

Mai tilted her head at Garrus. "What do you want?"

Garrus grimaced. "Straight to the point eh?"

Mai nodded. No one came to them explicitly. She was too imposing and JD had his own aura of warning.

The man steeled himself, sucking in the spit in his mouth. "I know it's a really odd request, and I know it might not even be possible. But I'd like to join your crew to hunt Saren."

Behind her helmet Mai blinked in surprise.

"Ain't my call." JD shook his head, and Mai didn't do anything to make it look like it was hers either. An alien crewman? Perhaps. Perhaps not. They had enough to deal with themselves without having to adjust to being in close quarters with something not human. "But why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do." Garrus said, more to himself than anything. He was spooked at first when he saw JD as a human, and not a bot. There was a man beneath that armor and his face was of doubt. "You wouldn't understand, I think. In C-Sec there's just so much red tape, we end up fighting ourselves and our own rules than actual criminals- It's just-"

"Infuriating?" JD said softly to the Turian.

"Yeah." He looked to the man, expecting an elaboration on why he said.

The elaboration JD could give was that his father came home somedays, damning his own department. Damning the laws, the rules, loopholes and lawyers and just plain bad luck. Without rules humanity belonged to the animals, but sometimes right and wrong was so much more an animalistic feel that it grate against him. His father never took to the bottle, but he bellyached to his son. But he wouldn't say that now to Vakarian. All that was to be said was-

"My Father was a cop."

A connection. One that Mai saw, as if it was physical, able to be grabbed, to be touched, taken and formed. She saw it form between a Turian and her- not hers-, she thought for a flash of a second, between a Turian and JD.

There was a threat there, but said nothing but judge behind her blackened visor.

Garrus softened his expression. "What kind?"

"Beat cop before I was born. Detective when I was."

"Hm. But you understand then?"

The rules of war with the Covenant had boiled down to one point, and one point only: Survival. Once, long ago however, before the Insurrection detonated nukes in colony and used rush drugs to fight Spartans, there was one a common rule of warfare that was followed by Humanity in its better instances. To fight against an enemy while abiding by rules, it made the Spartan and ODST understand in that regard at least. JD nodded up and down once. "Not my call, Officer Vakarian. I'm sorry."

"Shame, then. I doubt you'll take me." A voice, not of vibration, but of filter. It was Tali'Zorah's.

Quarians in the embassy. Times surely had changed as Garrus clicked his mandibles in the Turian equivalent of an eyebrow raise. Mai tightened within herself seeing that. Always the mandibles that got her.

They had brought her back to the Embassy as, across the hall, Fist was recording his testimony against Saren. She explained a great many things about herself, her circumstances, and the Quarians when she gave up the Geth memory core with the voice recording. What she had been through had been enough to age her, damn the Pilgrimage, as was Shepard's words in a congratulatory sense. But that was how she found them.

Her people were at war with the Geth for their homeworld, and even with the Sangheili factor, she did not want to rely on them. So she sought for the Geth, and found one, ripped out its heart and bore secrets that held the Galaxy at peril. What it took to get her where she stood right now? Dead friends, stowing away, running from assassins.

"So she's basically a space gypsy?" Ashley had said behind her back to Kaiden, and the man, despite his better intentions about assuming things about other species, agreed.

But Mai heard that word before.

She hadn't heard it for a long time. Had no cause to do so. That word however, struck a chord deeply within her memory. It was a word shouted at her, used as a word of scorn. It was what every person on New Jerusalem it seemed, despite their own hostile hatreds of each other, called her and her mother:

Gypsy.

Mai was a Gypsy.

She had forgotten that part of her identity that she was.

Tali'Zorah appeared in Garrus's shadow. She had recovered from her events well enough, now in the safety of the embassies and happy to see other Quarians again as they had made themselves known in the Presidium thanks to the Covenant. Though ships weren't designed to stay in harbors. They were designed to go into the storms. That much Tali knew because she was a Quarian, fire in star colored eyes that shone through a smoky visor. It's all of the face any of them saw.

"You too?" Garrus asked her.

She nodded fiercely. "My people are important to me, yes, but the galaxy itself is at stake. I think that's worth it, especially if the Geth are involved."

She was older than both JD and Mai had been when they had gone to war. That much pointed out to the two of them and yet… They didn't know enough about the Quarians to render their own personal judgement, even if they wouldn't speak it to Tali. They thought her young. Innocence and ambition and duty and hopefulness wrapped up in a young woman.

If she were human, if she was on the wrong side of the coin in a galaxy that was not her own, would she stand before the Covenant in this same way?

Would Tali'Zorah stand before an enemy so ruthless, deadly, that it threatened to destroy her people?

Not questions for JD and Mai, but for Shepard. Like a starlet dressed instead of a gossamer gown, but masculine dress blues with medals adorning her heart, she had taken her leave of the crowd to grab fresh air by the balcony. To recoup with her people.

Dressed like JD noticed how broad her shoulders had been, how strong. She looked like she could break Tali in two.

"Mai, JD." She warmly said to them, both respectfully nodding to her.

"Ma'am." Mai added.

"Commander Shepard, we wanted to ask you something."

There was a champagne glass in her hand as Garrus stepped before Shepard, and she nodded, but not before motioning with a hand for them to put themselves against the balcony, she leaning on it, her back to the Presidium and the street party below. To see humanity celebrated filled her with pride, and it lightened her mood, all things given.

"I never got the chance to thank you, Officer Vakarian, for helping us out back there."

Garrus shook his head. "Nothing to it."

Shepard turned to Tali. "And you too. Without you I might've suffered the same fate as Captain Anderson."

She bowed, almost, tucking her hands within each other. "It's only right."

The Commander ghosted her hand over her chest, dipping to both of them in turn. "You're both good people, I mean that from the bottom of my heart... Now what did you need, Officer Vakarian?"

"As I said, Commander, just Garrus."

"Ah, forgive me."

"It's okay, and- and. I wanted to ask you if I could join your crew."

Shepard had almost dropped her champagne glass, but not in a negative surprise. "Did C-Sec okay you to further investigate Saren or...?"

"No. I'm not doing this with C-Sec. I'm filing for a leave of absence and I just want to make sure I, for once in my life, see someone get what's coming to them." He explained the same grievances that JD and him naturally knew of to her in plain words. It drove him mad himself, and, the only way he could live with himself was to do what needed to be done. He felt that same drive in Shepard. "Please. I'm capable. I'm a qualified marksman, served in the Turian Navy for a few tours, special marks and commendations, if you don't think I'm qualified please let me prov-"

Shepard raised her hand at Garrus. "If you truly believe Saren needs to be brought to the light, that's all I need from you. I'm glad you are capable of what you do but, Garrus, if you're cleared for this, then, I'd like to welcome you aboard."

So much, so much, did Mai want to speak out, then and there. To air her grievences. But they'd get her nowhere, leave her open for Shepard to dig into her more.

"Thank you Shepard, and I think..." Garrus motioned to Tali as she collected herself.

"Count me in. My people are important, but well, uh, I live in this galaxy. So that's important too." Not as pleading, not as dignified, but Tali wanted to too. Shepard leaned back onto the balcony's rail as she gripped her champagne delicately. She looked out into the dimmed Presidium, seeing it at night for the first time like the capitals of humanity. She had seen the cities of Earth beneath night and light, from underneath and overhead, inward and outward. Her perspective on life came from there as she sipped, looking to Garrus, and then to Tali.

All Turians had some form of military training, so that wasn't the issue here, with Garrus at least. Tali on the otherhand, she posed an interesting prospect. She was still a girl, in Shepard's eyes, with hope in her eyes and an adventure to go on. She didn't see it as a military, covert operation as everyone else had in some capacity.

"Have you been to war, Tali'Zorah?"

Shepard and her questions. Always prying. Always looking.

Tali didn't want to answer, but she did. "No. But my people have been at war with the Geth for hundreds of years. I can handle myself."

The slight headache in Garrus's head might've paid testament to that, but Shepard was unconvinced.

"I'll-" When JD spoke everyone turned to him, and he damned for even opening his mouth in the first place. "I'll teach you a few ropes. I know where you're coming from, Miss."

Shepard rose his eyebrow at JD. "Qualified instructor?"

JD shrugged a bit. "I've inserted on colonies with credible intelligence pointing at an imminent raid. Had to shore up, train, militia men."

If anything, that had been his only real interaction with the presumed Insurrection, but they never seemed to mind the UNSC coming when the Covenant was to come. It was never a matter of defense anyway, rather it was just prepping the colony for a fighting retreat in his experience.

Tali shrunk back for a moment, the idea of being turned into a soldier it was a weight on her shoulders that, when applied, made her buckle. "I'm useful in other ways, too. I mean, computer science, engineering, things of that nature."

Shepard had given a playful tap to her shoulder. "Anyone able to break into a Geth memory core? Yeah, I'd believe that."

"Non-humans serving on an Alliance ship, ma'am?" Mai finally struck out with her question. In truth, maybe Ashley would've been liable to ask the same, but with Mai, it seemed much more of a darker inquiry.

"My ship. My crew, Chief Gul. Spectreship has to count for something." Her eyes had, for a moment, turned commanding toward her Spartan. Expecting. They softened soon enough however. "They're capable people. I can see that," She turned back to the two of them. "And any willing to hunt down Saren is okay in my book."

"Ma'am?" Mai questioned again, but Shepard wouldn't have it.

"Just trust me, Chief Gul." Activating her subdermal omni, the tools on Garrus and Tali pinged. "I'm forwarding you clearances for my ship. Get your belongings together, and any gear you'd need. We leave at 0800, Alliance space dock."

Garrus had seemed to be brimming with vindication. "Would it surprise you if I said I'm already packed?"

Shepard tipped her glass at him. "Then enjoy the party, Garrus Vakarian."

Tali twiddled her long thumbs, in the same boat. "I don't own much, actually… Most of what I did bring on my Pilgrimage was left on Illium."

"Ah yes. A young woman gets rescued by a dashing captain and then sets off with her crew to go save the galaxy." Shepard had teased comfortably with Tali, and the woman shrunk a bit, embarrassed. "It seems only right you're in this way, so uh, hey, I'll forward you some funds, get what you need. Just keep the invoices."

The young Quarian's eyes almost lit up at this thought, her legs locking up as her hands were just short of signifying her giddy. For Quarians, kindness was few and far between, but Shepard radiated of it. "Th- thank you!"

Shepard had smiled and simply waved her off. "I take care of my crew."

She always did. It's what they deserved from her if they were going to lead them into Hell.

In Tali's visor, Shepard's face reflected against a smile. In her green eyes, looking into themselves for once, the ghosts of hundreds of dead Marines, haunting her.

She turned away before she remembered their faces. All of her losses, the bodies she was forced to climb over to get where she was. She turned away, and, before her and Udina's office, was the crowd looking up to her, having spotted her. They looked to her as they did like the poor, the huddled masses, seeing Lady Liberty before her destruction in the Second American Civil War. She was made a symbol, and Shepard knew she had their attention.

Years of media attention, of being prim and proper, of knowing the correct thing to say, it followed her like a curse as she put on a smile she didn't know was real, raising her glass to the sky like Liberty's torch.

Tali and Garrus, Mai and JD, they were in the frame now. That was the cost of being with Shepard.

Clearing her voice, even that silenced the crowds below, filled with Alliance personnel and other galactic citizens who wanted to enjoy the fun. When she spoke, the Presidium stood still:

"I'd like to toast to my fellow Spectre Nihlus Kryik. May the Spirits be with him through a speedy recovery."

She raised her glass to the Presidium, and, almost all at once, they raised whatever they had with her. She truly commanded people, no matter who or what. She was comfortable with it, but, more than that, it was natural to her as she downed the glass and the Presidium all gave her applause.

When Shepard turned away from the crowd, she had only then noticed JD harbored a glass of whiskey in his own hand. With a nudge, she offered her glass, and JD got the cue. With a glassy ting, they toasted, and JD drank.

---

On a space station, far away from the Citadel, a man watches the live feed from the Presidium public stream, watching humanity have its day in the limelight, despite the charges against it. Despite the galaxy itself challenging humanity. He had spent almost everyday in his new life ensuring that humanity would be strong enough to take that challenge and make those that dared pay for their presumptions.

He sat in his throne before the stars, staring into what seemed like the heart of the galaxy.

He watched, as he always did, behind not curtains, but entire stages itself.

He kept his eyes on Commander Shepard, just as he had done ever since she emerged from Elysium a War Hero, Akuze a Sole Survivor, and Torfan as Ruthless Avenger.

Perhaps more than that though, he smoked. He smoked with his old, 20th century ash trays, old 20th century cigarettes. He invoked the Mankind of the past in his very lungs.

His blue eyes, in the dark lighting of space in that glass room, shone.

"The predictive models never showed Shepard like this." Over his shoulder a perfect specimen of female kind. Not that he particularly cared for her curvaceous physicality. The perfection he expected of her was effectiveness for their cause. She wouldn't have been there, in the flesh with him, if she hadn't proved that time and time again.

A drag of dirty smoke blew through his mouth. "Agreed. This Commander Shepard is different from the simulations, Miss Lawson." Ashing the cigarette he crossed his legs, looking at said results from the simulations. Nothing but graphs and likelyhoods based on other human heroes and their actions as it related to his organization's interest. "I suppose we counted on her Idealism being more detrimental."

It was an odd sight to see: a crowd in the Presidium, Human and Alien, applauding a Human woman unified. All eyes in the Galaxy were on her, but the Devil was in the details.

"Freeze the frame." He spoke to the computer, and it did, sending an image of that frame to another holographic display offset. A Quarian, a Turian, Shepard and… and…

A figure in gray, and a figure in black, very familiar and acquainted to Shepard. The man narrowed his eyes on them through the feed. He had heard rumors from his contact in the Admiralty but…

"Miss Lawson. These two," he pointed his hand, cigarette still intertwined. "Let's look into them. If Shepard trusts them, then they might be able to keep our pulse on them."

Lawson stared at them in that same visual. "I've never seen armor like that in the Alliance."

They called him the Illusive Man. To be Illusive, one had to know, to be a step ahead, to hold fire at his very hand and take it in wholly. "It's because they're not Alliance."

---

Dust off the next morning and, for the most part, most of the crew had already been on the Normandy. Where else would they sleep?

In that morning hour for humans, JD had taken the opportunity to leave his sleeper pod and wander out to the Normandy's dry dock. If Chief Adams didn't want him to smoke near anything important, the least he could do was do it outside while he could

There, gazing off into the Citadel and the galaxy itself it seemed, he spent his morning with a cup of dark joe and a cigarette, letting this new world pass him by.

He saw Garrus arrive with his hardcases of gear and toiletries, 0800 sharp, tipping a nod at him in the distance as the two locked eyes. JD returned it. Minutes later Tali had appeared, a utility belt of tools and scanners supplanted a duffel bag of hers. They too locked eyes, and she had imitated a human wave. He also returned that.

In the end it wasn't him to judge, and they seemed human enough, socializing wise.

In his Alliance uniform, he looked like an Alliance man. Perhaps that was why he was poked on the shoulder by a Salarian in the middle of blowing a cigarette, only to choke on smoke.

"Hey, human, sorry. I usually set up my stall here and, also, my species doesn't like being around your kind when they use those."

Those big black eyes had kept him shut for a moment as the cigarette did its own thing and tumbled out of his mouth, onto the floor, but he recomposed. "Yeah sorry." He stomped out the dust before kicked the debris over the edge.

The Salarian saw opportunity. "Hey, you interested in any weapon modifications? I know how the Alliance military sometimes stiff their own on the latest and greatest."

Oddly enough the Alliance had set him up with a bank account with enough cash that would've made sense for an SOF Operator that didn't get out much, so he had some to kick around. He knew the deal. Some ODSTs spent extra on better, privately-produced optics or gear. He never did, but it was an option.

"I'm afraid I'm not interested," he waved off.

A good salesman never let the customer go. "Ah. How about armor mods? New boots? Good Salarian-designed cushioning. I know how you Marines ruck about."

"Not interested. Sorry." He said, more bluntly.

"How about MREs? Chef-created?"

JD's more urban upbringings as influenced by a city drowning in a borrowed New York City culture was about to come out, but Shepard found him first.

"Did someone say MREs?" Her voice rang out with a touch on JD's shoulder. Tactical in nature in fact, pushing him aside so she could take his place. "I'd love to talk if you can do bulk!" She had held her hands behind her back, perhaps, if only, to get the thankful squeeze of her fingers as JD faded away back to the Normandy. This was more her domain as the Salarian started speaking a million words a minute.

To his front on the dock, however, he found Mai. Still in her armor for the last few days. She didn't change out after all that time, and JD thought her insane for it. "Was going to help you."

"Your type of help?" The way she tilted her head was answer enough for JD now, after what time they had together. She considered what her type of help would entail and most of it was pure intimidation.

"Perhaps not here, Chiefs." His voice still made them clack their heels together and salute.

"Sir."

"Sir."

Captain Anderson. Former Captain, that is. Now relegated to desk work, from what they had heard. He had been in one too many situations like this and this was the straw that broke the Elcor's back. By his side had been Udina, they were here to see the Normandy off and to address the two special VIPs of the Normandy.

"I got your message Chief Gul, on wanting a transfer." News to JD, and that had woken him up more than coffee and tobacco. He didn't break form, but the fact that Mai even asked without telling him, it worried him. "Unfortunately, Commander Shepard made a request regarding you two."

"Sir?" Mai asked, almost unsure.

"For once I agree with Shepard on this, Anderson." Udina had boiled. If anyone needed coffee it was him that morning.

Anderson ignored the comment as he continued, "Shepard requested you to stay, specifically. She values your skill in combat and, now, more than ever with the threat of the Geth, we need someone who we have close to our chest out there with her."

JD furrowed his eyebrows. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted."

"Are you sure there isn't any ulterior motive?"

Anderson sniffed in a breath. "If there is one, she's never disobeyed or broken the chain of command. For her to pursue her own interests against orders, she wouldn't dare." The implications there was too great. "And to be frank, Shepard needs humanity's best with her. You would be that."

It was commendation, praise, but even after all that time it didn't feel right.

Udina's eyes drew holes through both of them as he admitted this: "You know, more than anyone else in this galaxy now, what is at stake for humanity. You know what happens when we lose. It'd be pertinent for you to advise Shepard on that."

It was unusual to hear Mai just blurt out at all, but she did, from the bottom of her throat. "Shepard is… prodding." Mai said simply, unsure of how to take it.

"You have your orders, Chief Gul. If Shepard needs to know of your past, she has to do it through me. Otherwise, you have your cover." Anderson saw the worry, the reason why she asked.

Orphanage to orphanage, military school to military school. The past that the Alliance gave her was no more a past than what she had in actuality. She had no past, only what she was now.

"I don't think she would appreciate knowing the truth." Mai hadn't known why she said that. Maybe it was because of JD's visceral reaction to her being who she had been; his response to who she was that made her fearful of someone like Shepard, wanting to do something about it. Maybe it had just been revealing the truth to someone who hadn't been her superior, or JD, hadn't felt right. Whatever the case was she hadn't want that day to come, at least not as long as Shepard had been her CO.

"Tell me, Chief Gul, what do you think Shepard will do to you?"

"Sir?"

"You seem very worried about Shepard."

She was used to being attacked. With gunfire, explosives, armies and armadas of both human and inhuman kind. Not in the way Shepard had been though. In ways which she had never weathered before. She was unprepared to face someone who knew how to undress people in the way Shepard was capable of.

"She knows I am telling lies, both me and Chief Durante. For that, she might be indiscriminate in discovering the truth."

And what that means, more than anything, was that there was a crossfire that Mai and JD had been caught between. She trusted she could take it, but JD? She worried for him. If pressed he might've destroyed himself.

Anderson looked at her, long and hard, seeing the scars on her face, remembering what else had been covered by armor and body suit. Her pain was far more than anyone had any right to take, but, more than that, the pain she had given was worth worlds. "If I trust anyone in this galaxy with the truth, it would be Shepard."

Mai's face softened, just slightly, her eyes down, considering that fact spoken by Anderson. Perhaps the question of the hour was not who she had been, but who Shepard was. Mai could guess though. Shepard was Human. Human in a way that she herself wasn't.

Looking over to the woman in question:

There was a smile and a laugh coming off of Shepard's face as she bartered with the Salarian selling provisions. She patting his back as she successfully talked down the price for a barrel modification for her own Avenger rifle. She was having a good time, as if at the bar. That was the twinkle in her eye with the Citadel to her back: she represented something far more important than what a Spartan ever could.

If Spartans won battles and changed the courses of war, then Shepard changed the galaxy itself. Mai just felt it. Felt it in a way she hadn't felt since Ackerson, since Onyx, or even since she had heard of the name of the man in her reality that they called Master Chief.

"She'll tear down this galaxy in the name of justice."

---

About 12000 credits too much, but the Salarian didn't seem to think so. The metal blocks that their rifles used to shave off of for projectiles often came in many grades. Alliance ammo was good, but not the best, and when it was to be used again synthetics no less, she needed something with a little more shattering power. So she found it in steel ammo blocks sourced from Palaven, but it wasn't cheap.

The best was expensive, and better was often too much as well.

"You. Human. You the one they call Shepard?" She heard this voice behind her as the Salarian stopped talking at once, seeing the bane of their species approach him. His massing shadow covered Shepard and she had twisted her right hand into the quick-summon function for an omni-blade, just in case. If Saren was as brazen as to send an assassin to her right at the dock of her very ship she would meet his expectations with a butchery.

She turned around in a snap, only to be face to face with a species she had the pleasure of not fighting constantly. "Commander Shepard." Before she even stopped moving. She had a rank.

It reminded her of when she saw Mai for the first time, all armored up. The figure cut that impression, if not a little more intimidating in the animalistic sense of it. From the claw marks across his face and his blood red armor and skin tone. He smelled like death in a way vultures did. His eyes were like a predator's.

A Krogan. The Krogan looked right at the Salarian. "Don't you move." He didn't, leaving Shepard and him to talk. "The name's Wrex. Shadow Broker paid me a lot of money to silence Fist. Apparently he tried to break away from him. You got there first though."

Menacing. That's what he was trying to do to her, but she wouldn't have it.

"Sounds like I messed something up in your contract."

"Hm." He agreed from his grunt. "You had to take him alive. Get him into witness protection and shipped off the Citadel for his testimony against Saren. Made it basically impossible. You owe me."

"I do?" She growled out.

"Salarian. I'll pay for whatever she's buying." She didn't owe him in that sense, and it surprised her as Wrex opened up his omni and sent the funds his way. "Go get the stuff."

"Right away!"

He looked down at Shepard, eyes narrowing. "You owe me."

It wasn't a contract that she would've signed but the Salarian scampered off before she could protest. It wasn't that much money. Maybe three months hazard pay. "You a loan shark too, bounty hunter?"

"No. But I'm a Krogan, and Krogan's got to fight. Don't worry about the money. I want you to pay me back another way."

Shepard raised an eyebrow as she relaxed, "yeah?"

The Krogan nodded, also laxing his stance. He didn't mean her harm at that very moment. "I liked the way you shot up that club. Went right into the thick of it. Now I hear you're after a rogue Spectre, Saren, and I heard he hires Krogan too. I want to come along."

"Council post a bounty for Saren?"

Wrex shook his head once. "I'm not in this for money. I want to be where the action is, and frankly, knowing who you are, I gotta feeling you're gonna send me right to it."

"Just because?" Shepard looked at his scars, trying to explain each and every one of them herself.

"I'm a Krogan." He repeated. "It means that we were born to fight, and not only that, we did it proudly. Those that I hear are going with Saren, to avenge our people by destroying this Galaxy… Someone's gotta show them right or wrong, even if it kills them." Some people needed to fight. It was just in their blood, and Shepard could tell, Wrex had been one of those people. Maybe his armor hadn't started out red, after all. Even though she had one tank on the team, both an actual tank and Mai, maybe another wouldn't be so bad.

"You're a biotic. I can feel it."

Wrex nodded, knowing the same of her. "Not a wall I can't punch through or a target I can't kill."

"I'm sure one of my crew would like to test that."

"It'd be smart if they didn't."

Literally five minutes before leaving and they picked up another crew member. It felt right to Shepard to load up on them. It was truly a diverse effort for people that believed, not ordered, to go against Saren, and she was okay with that. More than okay with that. She offered her hand, and, Wrex was immediately assured. Her hand didn't crumple in his as they shook.

---

It must've been nice having a nice reclining chair to sit in. Shepard had inherited Anderson's quarters and, because of it, she had been offered creature comforts that she hadn't been with for quite a while. Though, she supposed, perhaps the chair had been designed for the pilot, even as he struggled to turn around in his chair and see the great red mass walk off toward the elevators.

"Wha-?! What the fu- What the fuck was that?! Was that a Krogan?" Just as she had inherited the Normandy, she had inherited its pilot. Joker had been as surprised as anyone about a Krogan joining the crew with no warning, but he was the only one who had verbally reacted as Shepard approached him, putting a hand on his headrest and leaning in to the Normandy's controls.

"At ease, Lieutenant. Worry about the ship, not who I'm filling it with."

He pouted for a moment before not caring anymore. "Aye aye. Just know if you want space racism, talk to Williams, not me, I don't mind."

Shepard chortled, gently patting Joker's shoulder. She knew what was up. "She'll come around, especially if I have anything to say about that."

Joker rolled his eyes as he floated a few diagnostics off to the sides on his control panel. "I expected the Great Commander Shepard to say that. With what her love for the stars, other species, curiosity, exploring heart, yadda yadda."

Her publicity pieces had always been flattering, giving her her best impression to those who read about her in documentaries or in the tabloids. "Always some truth in it. I'd rather love than hate, Lieutenant."

"Of course, ain't no wrong in that, but it's kinda hard to do an Extranet search on Commander Shepard without seeing a hundred different clickbait articles about what shirts you wear or your comments on any number of galactic affairs, as if your 140-character blog post weighs that much."

"Come on, having a name like Shepard? How is it not impossible to not run articles building me up? Trust me, I know what it seems like. I'm some idealistic figurehead, but what's wrong with believing in good every once and a while?"

He shrugged. "All I know is that you're gonna make this mission interesting, ain't nothing against you, Commander."

"Just Shepard," she clarified. "You don't seem like the type to care much about addressing their superiors appropriately."

"Now you're talking my language, and in my language my name is Joker."

"Got it." She gave him a thumbs up. She would've liked this man more in her cynical youth, wise-cracks and snappy dialog often got her. Though she had aged. For every nine articles on the Extranet or media speaking of her well, there was always one that spoke of her failures. Those were the ones she read and took to heart. "Ship ready?"

Joker glanced at his orange interfaces. "Cargos loaded, everyone's onboard. On your go, she's gassed and ready to kick it. I'd just be careful if I were you."

"Yeah?" She looked at some of the diagnostics of the Normandy herself. "Why's that?"

"Captain took the fall for you Commander, next time any funny business, you're going down. It's what they want, all those politicians. You can survive a hundred battles like Captain Anderson, but if you look bad while you're in your dress blues over something you did years ago, well, snip-snip."

"It's gonna happen someday to me. I know what I do. It's not a clean business, but someone's gotta go hunt down Saren."

Joker had breathed in, he agreed, truly, in his core. "Everyone on this ship believes in you, Shepard. One hundred percent. Trust me we got our own private channel so we can shit talk you behind your back."

Shepard rolled her eyes now, "I'm sure."

"But if you want to say anything to the crew, now's the time." Joker pressed the button, and that was that. "I know how you like to give a good speech."

That she did, but not for vanity's sake.

"This is Commander Shepard speaking. We have our orders, given to us, not only by the Council, but by Humanity itself. Find Saren, stop whatever he's planning. Whether that means raising an army of Geth to rule all of known space, or ending it outright, I refuse to let any of these courses come to pass.

We owe it ourselves to remember the colonies of New Haven, Elysium, Cyndrilla, Eden Prime, and any colony or planet where human life has come under attack, under siege, and know that what we're doing now is in their name.

For every human life lost among the stars, know that they live on with us to create a Galaxy where their tragedy does not repeat. Where humanity's high ideals and responsibilities are put forth with our best efforts, and we do not have to fear to be taken advantage of because of it.

We become the heirs of Marco Polo, of Lewis and Clark, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ryder, Jon Grissom, and all great explorers before us by making sure that humanity finds a home amongst the stars.

It is up to us to protect that home, no matter the cost.

I swear to you all, and I swear before God, that when we bring Saren before justice, you will be who they speak of when Humanity proves itself to the Galaxy.

Prepare for departure."

---

When all was said and done, when Mai felt in her teeth the docking clamps give way, she had found herself staring at JD as he leaned against the Mako and she against the wall adjacent. JD stared back.

"You wanted to leave this?" He pointed up at the intercoms, at Shepard's words as if they manifested physically. She had no answer for him. "You would've left me?"

---

Omake:

n.

A special video feature that accompanies an anime, such as a collection of deleted scenes or outtakes.

Example: "In this omake, the characters are breaking the fourth wall to talk to the audience."

Omake One:

"The Author of this story prefers his Vodka straight. I'm calling you out JD you're a weak bitch."

Or…

"The Pace of Breath"

JD didn't start drinking until his fourth deployment, which, timeline wise, it had meant his third bout as an ODST. His CO at the time smuggled Jack Daniels into the ODST bay and, given that he was unceremoniously named "Rook" that tour given his freshness to the ODSTs, was hazed. He could handle is liquor though, and wasn't outright destroyed by the funneling of soda and whiskey into his stomach by fellow Marines cheering him on. The next time he drank he had found the closest thing he had ever found to a girlfriend over Cascade: Dawn Harris. So on and so forth, whenever he drank something notable tended to happen.

But then again, he never drank for himself.

This was the first time he'd do so.

Their studies on the Turians, given their animosity toward the Alliance, had been wide ranging and intensive. Enough so that, when the two had decided they were finished that day in Buffalo, still more or less locked in their hotel room by their own admission.

They found, at least on paper, a threat in the Turians that they could quantify with their experiences with the Covenant. But the problem was they hadn't been.

"What's that?"

In the hotel provided mug he had given a two second pour of clear liquid before topping the rest off with soda. It reminded Mai for the UV bags full of saline before she, in her own experiences, remembered what that was. She smelled it from across the room as she sat at the desk in the room. JD had taken hold of the bed as his place of study and he remained there now as he put the ingredients to his concoction on the bedside table. It smelled medical to her.

"Vodka and Coke." He explained, using his finger to stir it all together. "I just wanted to take it easy for a bit, I guess."

"Vodka…?" Mai seemed unfamiliar with the word. She thought she'd seen it before, written on bottles usually filled with gasoline and thrown at her.

"Alcohol." Teaching Mai words had been his duty, every time she parroted a word as she did now.

"Isn't that illegal?"

Banned in the service, while troops were in the LOD, of course, but banned was different from illegal.

JD shook his head as he took a sip, as if to demonstrate. "I mean. If you're under 18 but, uh, I grew up in an Italian-household. Giving kids a glass of wine with dinner was normal, I think…? I guess."

She stared at the dark concoction through the clear glass of his cup, and, in the dim lighting of their hotel room, it reminded her of the coffee. They had been returning to that diner for more substantial meals, and, in the span of the week, had become regulars. It was because of that the coffee that was automatically slid to them was JD's order.

Dark as hell, and just the roast. With no other actual preference Mai had drank what JD was offered, ate what he had ate, mirrored him when doing these "normal" things. Did it matter to her if she was simply imitating? Was that as good as just being normal? Maybe, maybe not. It made her being out tolerable to herself, to not bite herself for being inadequate. If she had gotten used to JD's dark coffee, she could, perhaps-

"May I have some?"

He smoked on their balcony and, despite all of his attempts otherwise, Mai would smell the smoke strongly. She explained that her senses had been improved by the Spartan program, that she felt, smelt, and dealt with her senses and a measure far beyond him. Taste was included, and, as JD mulled it around in his mind as he slowly reached over the gap between their beds, perhaps her tolerance?

He expected her to sip though. Not to fill her cheeks and slam back a gulp.

---

He guessed wrong. Whereas he thought the woman who weighed more than twice than him, and was a few heads taller, could handle more liquor, it was actually quite the opposite. It tasted sweet to her, so she, at JD's unsure allowance, polished it off.

She was affected like a lightweight as if the alcohol had hit her three times as hard ten minutes or so later.

He could only do the courtesy of catching up as he downed several shots with chasers for her dignity.

He saw it in her eyes anyway, on how her wolf-like, cutting gaze seemed distant, out there. The eyes of a child looking up at the clouds. She was fighting herself in a way she hadn't before. Intoxication.

"I've been poisoned." She declared, her hands touching her face as she tried breathing in through her nose a gallon of air to beat back the daze.

"No you haven't Mai."

"No I'm serisos." Her English was perfect up until that very moment. Every word out of her mouth like a solid step with her feet. Now, she was slurring. "I rember when I had to infiltrate a Insurrection camp with… with… By in. With a going in a sewer, the fumes deteriorated my filter a bit and and… No it's not like this at all." Her hands had been constantly touching her face, her cheeks, as if straightening them out as she so desperately tried to keep her usual blank composure.

Had it been ethical to get a woman drunk? Probably not. But they had both been working hard studying and they needed a break. Mai's break was her bare minimum sleep.

"Mai. May."

"Mai. It's Mai. JD."

"Mai." He corrected himself, tucking the bottle somewhere he wouldn't want to spend the effort to grab. He was done himself. Not drunk, but could be. "You're fine. I promise you."

"Promise I'm condition greeeen?" She tried to put on her serious voice but she slid, her entire body tilting to one side before she righted herself, catching herself.

"Nothing I wouldn't do with you. Just like- Like." JD spread his arms out as if displaying all of everything. "Just like everything. Why would I do anything else?"

Mai had rapidly nodded to herself. JD's logic was sound to her, even now, and the determination on her face, it was determination brought on forcing herself to trust this weird man; this weird Marine who wasn't nasty or constantly chattering her ear off on how awesome she was to punch through walls and Covenant, or didn't look down on her for being a kidnaped orphan. He was quiet, contemplative, nice.

JD was nice. Nice to her, at least. She had seen him cut down many Covenant in the short time she'd known him and that was good. Very good. It was true for many people in the few times she was forced to work with people, but it mattered to her because he did it by choice, for her.

"You do, want, to keep with me?"

JD nodded himself fiercely. It was odd to hear him this talkative and in this tone, as if he was enjoying himself. "I feel like you would kill me if I didn't do my best."

Her eyes widened at that thought. Just those first words: I feel like you would kill me.

Never. Never never never. Mai hadn't known if she had said that or they had collided in her mind, but she couldn't think of that. Not with JD. He had treated her well. Better than… she thought about this and now doubly wanted to not think about it. He had treated her the best out of any other human being ever since her Mother. And he did it because he knew it was the right thing to do.

Papers and tablets had been all over Mai's bed and she had twisted around to find one to concentrate on, twisting her body desperately to find the correct one.

"I'm gonna, finish up. Soon." Her words were thinly apart, clashing with the decorum she held so highly. She seemed panicked.

Panic.

JD knew panic. In dead ODSTs as they bled out. In civilians in pain as an Elite put a sword through them. At home, before he became who he did, when his mother worked herself up into a frenzy. Panic attacks. It was what killed her, in the end, when she heard that JD was MIA after the glassing of Persei.

His posture straightened as he reached out across the bed to her own, to do what he did when his mother had panic attacks: to hold her shoulders, to make her focus on him.

Mai hadn't really been in a panic attack, but it looked it to him, and, to be fair, this was the most panic that Mai had felt in such a way. It didn't come from her being a soldier, it came from her being her. Though she was still a Spartan, catching one of JD's arms half way as, when it happened, JD braced for the burning pain from a grip too strong.

It never came though as he closed his eyes, opening seconds later to find Mai looking at him back. Her expression was complacent, almost, understanding. It was as if she had analyzed what she looked like to him, and what he was doing: He wanted to reassure her. It wasn't a smile, wasn't a smirk, but the corner of her mouths they, just subtly, just because she couldn't fight this smallest fraction of emotion off, read of appreciativeness.

For once, her eyes seemed, out of lack of better words, soft. Soft, looking at him as her right hand held his forearm.

She held it where she had hurt him before, gripping him down to the bone when they first confronted an Asari and Turian. It didn't burn this time though, as she unconsciously drifted her thumb over the width of his skin. Delicately, no more than a second or two before dropping away. Her palms, her pads, were soft, inviting, and in that moment, it had been the first time she felt warmth from her. Physically, and otherwise.

Finding himself sitting on her bed, the slight shift in the center of pressure sent her, again for a moment, leaning into JD. She recoiled immediately, JD feeling her cheek brushed against the upper side of his head.

"I'm not used to feeling unbal- unbal- bal-" She tried to find words, beating through intoxication she had never dealt with before.

"Unbalanced?"

"Mm." She nodded. She reached out again when JD left the bed, but missed, the ODST not noticing as he took two more glasses for the sink. Tap water would help them in the morning.

"Drink. It rehydrates your brain, I think. Yeah that's how it works. Less of a headache in the morning." She took it without question this time, and, somehow, by the time she was done drinking, JD had moved her work material off her bed and his, organized somewhat on the floor. "Bed, please. Rest."

"But-"

He shook his head. "Me too. I'm going to sleep too. We've been going at it hard for a few days and we need get a sleeping schedule." A cursory look out and evening had turned into night. People went to sleep right now, normal people they had to turn into, as per Anderson's orders. "Please."

She wanted to protest. She had stayed awake for days on end for much lesser things. She had killed while much tired, much worse off, but JD was right. Normal operators don't take weeks to read history. Normal people don't get drunk off of just a mug. Normal people don't-

JD slid the sheets off of his bed in order to tuck himself in, before realizing Mai had been frozen, still sitting, cross-legged, on her bed. They had never gone to sleep at the same time, and he had to say it outright:

"Do we still have to keep doing watches, Mai?"

If he slept, she was awake studying, if she slept, vice versa.

She looked blankly to the floor, and then to the door and the balcony. Nothing had come for them. No terrorist, no Covenant, nothing and no one that had wanted to do them harm. Just people who wanted them on their best. The hotel staff took their clothes and sheets and washed them, military charity groups offering thank you notes and gifts from children across the world stopped at each door that servicemen were in and offered them their thanks and their gifts.

There was no threat. Mai drew her legs up, settling herself diagonally, just as she always did, to make herself fit. "Mm. No. I don't think there's an issue." She finally said, to the ceiling, wondering why it was moving.

It was a prospect: to be sleeping in the same room as a woman he had no real relation to.

He told himself he had a girlfriend, but-

Just as Mai had her thoughts to completely remove from her mind, JD had found his.

Yes, he found Mai, in her idle moments, when she seemed unbothered by her life for once, calming to look at for him but he had no reason to think any further on that. If she was at peace, he would be. Humans were social creatures and certainly no other line of thought could be at all extrapolated by the moments he stole catching glances at her just for the sake of glancing at her.

For a week now, he had stayed awake as she sent herself to sleep for the sake of rest and schedule. Concentrated less on the threat of a Covenant Elite bursting through the door and more the documents they had collected from the Extranet, he didn't pay much attention to her out of simple social regard. He wasn't a creep, and he had met plenty in his time with his father.

But now, even with separate beds, Mai's breaths were loud to him at least. For he was listening. To the ebb and flow of her breathing, how it started out strong, but subsided as she eventually drifted off to sleep easily for once. It was the sound of the wind, calmly soothing over a prairie. Gales over distant shores, perhaps in anticipation; calms before the storm. In the dark he could barely make her figure out, above the sheets. She slept on her back, her arms crooked as if habitually cradling a rifle, but eventually her curled hands unfurled and sleep had found her as her breathing became a metronome to JD.

It didn't take him this long, usually, to fall asleep, but now as the room ebbed and pulsed with the influence of alcohol, he allowed himself a buffer, to concentrate on anything to save himself from a headache in the morning.

He found her breathing, and soon enough, his own came in tune with hers as he felt that same peace; shared it with her.

For once they both didn't stir in their sleeps over the nightmares that had been their lives.

When they awoke, they awoke fresh.

Only later on the Citadel, when JD would offer her a drink of Whiskey, did they again think back to that night.

"Next time." She said silently to his offer, and she meant it true. It was nice to share a drink with him.