Miranda Lawson, SR-2 Normandy, Prison Ship Purgatory

"One mission, Commander," Miranda smirked as she watched Shepard struggle with his armor. The once silver and red stylized armor was now mostly blackened with plasma burns. Deep pits had been blasted out of it, along with deep furrows carved during the 'Battle for Tali' as the crew had been putting it.

"Shut up," Shepard grunted tersely as he worked a particularly warped plate onto his upper leg.

"Just saying…." Miranda leaned back against the bulkhead and tapped a finger to her lips. "I could swear there was somebody, somewhere, that kept telling me I needed heavier armor…."

"I don't want to hear it, Miranda."

"I think they said something about playing it safe?" Miranda let her eyes glaze over and adopted a vapid expression. "And...I think that big, strong man has gone through three sets of armor, and little me has been hurt...mmm...I dunno? Do you know Commander?"

A deep dual toned laugh came from the door as Garrus lost his battle to keep himself together. She kinda liked his laugh. It had an interesting range to it, especially past the standard human hearing.

"She has a point, Boss," Garrus snickered as he began to help Shepard pull his armor together. "It's lucky this isn't a combat mission, because this suit?" The turian held up the armor's right bicep plate while sticking both of his fingers through it.

"I thought you were on my side," Shepard stared at Garrus, his brows dropping into a line. "Instead you turn on me and join Cerberus?"

"Shepard!" Garrus gasped, dropping the plate and staggering back, a hand clutched over the center of his chest, where the turian heart resided. "It's all a clever trick to seduce their women to our side! Only my beauty, wit, charm, grace, elegance-"

"Yeah, yeah," Shepard grunted sourly, though he was unable to keep the small tug at the corners of his mouth from creeping up. "Does that include our devastating XO?"

"Well, of course, I mean, have you seen her waist?" Garrus chuckled as he moved again to assist his Commander, this time clipping on the cracked back plate.

That startled her. It could honestly be said that Miranda was a cool headed person. She was able to keep a calm collective when most people panicked. She was able to set aside her emotions to make the best choice for a situation. She was routinely referred to as 'The Ice Queen', after all. Now, however, she just stared and blinked.

Human and turian couples did happen. But not often. There was still a lot of sore feelings on both sides from the First Contact War. And that didn't even take into account the significant biological differences.

"Miranda."

The dextro amino acid issue, by itself, would cause a lot of problems. Allergic reactions would be the biggest threat. Holding hands and such wouldn't be an issue of course. Well, come to think of it, Miranda frowned slightly as she brought her hand back up to her mouth, this time, actually thinking. If you really get down to it, there would be very few instances where that would be an issue.

"Hey….Miranda…"

It's not like turians kissed, seeing as how they lacked lips. Miranda's frown deepened. The biggest threat would be mixing up food. Other fluids would be fairly easy to….

What the hell was she thinking?!

With a furious shake of her head, Miranda looked back up at the two men.

Shepard stood, his battered helmet in his hand. One eyebrow was cocked as he watched her with a lopsided smile. He looked like some sort of asshole Black Knight.

Behind him, Garrus blinked a few times, his mandibles flexing slightly. In his hands was Miranda's SMG. Then there eyes met.

Miranda could feel the hot rush of blood up her neck. She could feel it swirl about her face as she snatched her gun from Garrus, spun on her heel and walked quickly away.

John Shepard, SR-2 Normandy

"Uhhh…." Garrus looked back from Miranda's fit to look at Shepard. "Okay...what am I missing?"

Unable to keep the grin off his face any long, John chuckled as he turned to regard his friend. His best friend in the whole galaxy. Especially right now.

"Garrus, my bosom companion," John slapped an arm around the turian's shoulders. "You just gave me one of the greatest gifts possible."

For a moment, Garrus stood, his mandibles waving slightly as he waited for John to continue. Then, when it was clear that he wasn't, Garrus frowned. "Okay, I'll bite. What did I do? And what was up with Miranda? Her face looked like it was about to catch fire. And what does it have to do with mammaries"

"You embarrassed her," an amused female voice laughed as Kasumi decloaked. "I didn't think it was possible, but it looked like your seduction comment hit her right in the girly bits."

"I..uh..what?" Garrus looked between the two humans. "Like...seriously?"

John shrugged. "She's used to being beautiful, and using her beauty to get what she needs at the given time. To her it seems to be more of a tool. A burdensome tool."

"But I'm guessing the idea that nonhumans would notice had never crossed her mind," Kasumi added with a nod.

"Yeah, so your joke about her being attractive got her blind spot," John chuckled again as he clipped his shotgun to the one working mag plate on his back.

"Oh…" Garrus's mandibles pulled in tight as he frowned. "Well….as a female, she does have a nice waist."

"I…" John paused for a moment before sharing a surprised look with Kasumi. "I had no idea that waists were important…."

"Anyhoo," Kasumi said loudly as she clapped her hands together. "You boys have fun. I'm looking forward to seeing our new psychopath!"

"Oh really," Garrus chuckled as the mood shifted. "Not coming along?"

"Really, G-Bear?" Kasumi looked up at Garrus from the edge of her hood as she shimmered out of sight. "I didn't become the best thief in the business by going into prisons voluntarily. I'll keep Grunt on stand by for when it all goes wrong."

Laughing, John slapped Garrus on the shoulder as he lead the turian out of the armory. "What could happen on a prison ship, in the middle of space? Honestly, i'm looking forward to a simple pick up mission for once."

Tali'Zorah, SR-2 Normandy, Engineering

Skimming over the engineering logs relaxed her. It let her mind stretch. All the numbers, computations, formulas….honestly, she found it difficult to understand how non quarians didn't see the numbers. They could look at, say, a flower, and not see what they referred to as the 'fibonacci sequence'. Quarian just referred to it as normal. They didn't see the symmetry in the universe, the beautiful rules and equations that made reality so...reality!

Instead they saw flat pictures. Must be a hard, and sad way to live, Tali sighed in her head. Not being able to really see.

And yet….

And yet humans were able to build fantastic things like the drive core. They were able to push through the centuries of lag to nearly catch up to the rest of the galaxy in merely half a century. It's a bit frightening when i stop to think about it….

"Umm...is there anything you need, Miss Zorah?" the male power engineer shifted uncomfortably. He was very good at his job. In fact she had met quarians without the skill he showed. And he did it with a nonquarian brain and viewpoint!

He also looked very nervous.

"What?" Tali blinked a couple of times then shook her head lightly. "No, sorry. My mind just wandered. And I believe I asked you before to call me Tali?" She gave a quiet laugh. "Quarians don't use the clan name as a personal one the way humans do, so it's a bit weird."

"Ah!" Donnelly, that was the name! Chuckled. "Sure thing Tali. If I can ask without it being too personal…"

"I appreciate the concern," Tali cut the man off with a raised hand. "I have my emotions under control. I was just thinking about how sad it is that you have to do all this work while being mentally handicapped."

Donnelly stood for a moment, his eyes slowly widening, and his mouth opening. From behind him, the female, Daniels, slowly leaned out to stare at Tali frowning.

Then Tali realized what she had just said.

"Keelah…." Tali muttered as she slapped a hand over her visor. "That came out way wrong."

"What exactly did you mean then?" Daniels asked with a bit of edge in her voice. Though for his side, Donnelly looked more amused now.

Taking a deep breath Tali looked first at the ceiling, then at the drive core before looking back to the pair of humans. "What I meant is that you, and by you, I mean pretty much all nonquarians, as far as I know, don't see or think the way my people do. When we look at something, we see the math. We don't have to think about it. We don't really need equations. Even Khelish. It's difficult for nearly any nonquarians to learn, because of the numbers of syllables, or the correct spacing of words, that kind of thing. So, I mean, you have to do more work to do what I just see."

Pausing for a moment, Tali tapped a finger on the side of her helmet contemplatively. "Maybe it's sort of how you can see pink?"

Daniels stared at Tali for another minute before breaking out in laughter, followed shortly after by Donnelly. If fact, the two laughed so hard they had to lean on each other is keep standing.

"Humans…." Tali rolled her eyes before turning back to her boards.

John

"I'm sorry, Commander," Kurril's voice spoke over the loudspeakers in the 'processing' room. "But I'm afraid that I have received an offer for your capture that, honestly, just couldn't be turned down."

"He doesn't really sound all that sorry," Garrus muttered, almost breaking John's poker face and making him laugh.

"Shut up, " John hissed, with a bit of the humor leaking through. "This is serious! We are trapped!"

"Yes...they will be very pleased. Very pleased indeed…" Kurril's voice took on a strange obsessive edge.

"Wait," Miranda blinked for a moment before slowly looking around the room. "Did you notice where we are?"

Garrus slowly looked around the room before looking back to Miranda. "A sealed room that has convenient low cover?"

"Yes," Miranda rolled her eyes before pointing to a windowed bay, and the computer terminal in front of it. "But we are also locked in the control room."

John frowned as he walked over to the terminal and glanced into the room below the window. "Huh...Miranda's right. We are right over the cryo area."

Stepping back, John moved to the terminal itself and began skimming through the commands and accesses. "Well...this is pretty basic stuff. I can crack it, but might take me a few minutes. And Tali isn't here so...Edi?"

"Yes, Commander?" the AI's cool voice answered almost immediately.

"If I set up a bridge, can you cut the ship's security?" John asked.

"One moment, done," was Edi's response. "My main purpose is ship to ship cyberwarfare. Connecting to the Purgatory is not difficult. What would you like me to do?"

"Okay, I'm impressed," John chuckled before moving back to the window. "Can you thaw out Jack? It would be a waste to get all the way here and not have anything to show for it."

"I can, Commander," Edi's voice then took on a warning tone. "I feel it is important to warn you that doing so will also release the security systems through the whole ship."

"What?" Garrus asked incredulously. "That doesn't even make sense! Who design a security system like that?"

"The copyright stamp on the system is connected to a volus cyber security firm that went out of business six standard years ago under a series of class action lawsuits. Apparently, all the systems had a admin back door for updates, but the password on all of them was 12345."

"Well. That answers that question," John sighed. "Just do it Edi."

Garrus Vakarian, Prison Ship Purgutory

"So….simple pick up, huh," Garrus sat calmly behind a riot barrier and looked pointedly at Shepard. "I believe the exact words were, 'what could happen on a prison ship in the middle of space?'"

"Not the time Garrus," Shepard sighed, dropping back behind the barrier next to Garrus.

"Really? When would the time for the 'I told you so's'?"

A pained look crossed Shepard's face as he replaced the thermal clip in his SMG. "Preferably, never."

"Ah...well, Let's see…" Garrus looked up at the ceiling in mock thought. "You, myself, and Miranda, went on board a spaceship full of the worst of the worst scum the galaxy has to offer…."

Grunting, Shepard popped up, firing downrange and forcing one of Warden Kuril's guards back behind his own cover.

"We followed along to the entire opposite side of the ship from where we parked the Normandy…."

Blue flashed as Miranda gripped a charging krogan in her biotics and threw him over the railing, to crash onto the floor of the cafeteria below them.

"We don't notice that our comms disconnected…."

The guard that Shepard had driven back tumbled into view as a pair of salarian prisoners piled on him. The ball of thrashing limbs rolled out of view and down a hall.

"And now we are trying to catch up to a psychotic human woman with insane biotic powers, and is literally smashing her way through the prison ship we happen to be on. Sound about right?" Garrus glanced up as Shepard shot down one of the salarians as he charged back around the corner, his hands and mouth slick with fresh blood.

"..." Shepard stood in the momentary lull, his arms going limp. Then an angry sneer twisted his lips as he kicked the barrier a couple of time before looking at Garrus. "Fine, you were right. Now can we please shoot our way out of here before I end up spaced. Again?"

Grinning, Garrus stood and clasped his human friend on the shoulder. His best friend, truth be told. Spirits be damned if he told the man that, though. "Let's go shoot Kuril in the face and get going!"

Still grinning, he looked over at Miranda, as she walked up to the pair. She was wiping the sweat from her brow, but also ended up smearing soot across her nose. It was kinda cute, really….

Catching his gaze, Miranda's eyes shot open as her face flushed again. With a whirl, the woman turned away and began storming off as she called over her shoulder, "Come on, we don't have all day!"

Smirking, Shepard half sat on the top of the barricade. "That's the wrong way, Miranda!" he called after her.

Not even missing a beat, Moranda spun on her heel and walked back, then right passed the pair. "Shut it."

Wait...did I just think a human was cute?

Jack, Prison Ship Purgatory

Her biotic aura flared and rippled wildly around her small frame. Tendrils of power lashed at the walls and floor, and where each touched the material would warp or corrode, the very molecular structure ripping apart.

Damn but it felt amazing to finally let her mind flex again. She had spent so long under that drug, or a neural shock collar. Then she was iced. Now that she could let it loose, she almost couldn't control it. Which suited her, just fine!

"Rrrraaaggghhh!" Jack screamed as her biotic assisted leap carried her, hurtling onto the chest of a YMIR mech. She reached back, her muscles straining to turn her fist, before crashing it into the machine.

Had anybody seen it, they would not have believed what happened as the the painfully thin woman's fist struck the steel plating of the mech. They wouldn't have believed how the swirling biotic power drove deep into the mech. The metal twisted, like some enormous drain was pulling it inside of itself. How, as the Jack dropped to the ground, the mech sparked, shuddered once, then fell limply onto it's back. The singularity Jack had driven into it's chest having gutted the thing.

"That's what I'm fucking talking about!" Jack cackled as she paced back and forth, like some sort of predatory beast. "One more piece of shit machine! I'm gonna rip all you-"

A greenish ball of energy crashed into Jack's field. Compared to her roiling bubble, it was almost nothing, but it did get her attention.

"Told you it wouldn't work," a deep rumbling voice laugh preceded a rather small krogan. Well, small by krogan standards. He was still a head taller than Jack was. And he was ugly. His plates were tattered along the edges. Cracks here and there ran along them and...oozed.

"Shut is Vorn," a tall, slender salarian sniffed. He stood tall and straight. Almost formally so. If it wasn't for the fact that he didn't have a nose, he would be looking down it. His green tinted biotics waved slightly, giving visuals to his irritation. "I think we both owe this...woman."

"Pfft," Jack let out a breath as she shook her head. "I thought I might get to actually have a fight, but it's just you two morons."

"Don't make fun of me!" Vorn snarled, taking a stomping step forward. "Only Lollin gets to make fun of me!"

"Yeah, whatever," Jack spat, disgust dripping from her words. "I'm surprised you guys could stop sucking each other's dicks long enough to try something."

"Lollin!" Vorn turned to the salarian. "Rip off her arms and legs! I wanna do her slow while she dies!"

Blinking slowly, Lollin sneered. "Normally I would inform you of how that with a human was akin to bestiality. But this time…" Lillin pressed a small tube to his nostril and inhaled deeply, his eyes flashing with green power. "This time I think that would be quite enjoyable to watch!"

Another green warp flew and crashed into Jack's barrier. This time, however, she was forced back a couple of steps.

"Oh...kicking your balls into each other's throats it going to be fun!" Jack grinned as she pulled power into her hands.

Then, the psychotic biotic and the pair of mass murderers charged each other, their clash shaking the entire ship.

Tali'Zorah vas Neema, Prison Ship Purgatory

"I should have gone with them," Tali muttered under her breath, for probably the twentieth time as a crazed prisoner came screaming down the corridor that led the the Normandy's gangway. She swung her shotgun up with one hand, firing a shot through the man's chest, and absorbing the recoil as her arm swung back around. She never even looked up. "What if they get hurt…."

"Huh," Grunt blinked as he looked a bit impressed at the quarian before shrugging. "Injuries happen in battle. Scars are something to be proud of. After all, look at what his armor was like after the Battle for Tali."

"The Battle for WHAT?!" Tali spun on the krogan, waving her shotgun at him wildly. "What the hell are you talking about? Who's calling it that?"

"The crew have begun to colloquially refer to the incident on Haestrom as 'Shepard's Battle for Tali' or, more often, simply 'The Battle for Tali'," Edi explained over the comm. "It seems to be a popular topic amongst the crew."

Tali could feel her lip curl into a small snarl. "Don't talk to me, AI," Tali spat. "Shepard may trust you, but I do not."

"I understand," said Edi, simply. "Logging you out."

"I'd suggest against trying to fight it," Kasumi laughed quietly over the comm. "It would probably just make things worse. And really, if you think about it, Shep did pretty much drop everything and come flying to your rescue."

"I…." Tali's mouth moved for a moment but she simply couldn't find the words. Her heart beat so hard she was sure Grunt could hear it. Her soul sang for a moment as she considered the implications. "He...I...Keelah…."

"When we get back to the ship, come down to my room and I'll give you some pointers on human men," Kasumi's voice was full of good humor. "Besides, we're the only other girls on the ship. We should have some us time."

"What about Miranda?" Tali asked, confused. "And Kelly? There is Daniels in engineering…."

"Yeah? And how many of them aren't Cerberus?" Kasumi came back. "I mean, you could probably count Doctor Chakwas and Mordin's assistant, but they are either old, or really weird."

"Fair point, maybe I will come by, Tali laughed a moment before her eyes widened. "But I mean...just...just to chat. You know. Talk. I don't need...I mean human men...Shepard isn't, I don't….Keelah…." Tali suddenly felt the urge to smash her head against the wall in embarrassment.

"Heh, saved by the enemy," Kasumi chuckled even quieter than before. "Found Shep. Garrus, him and Miranda are fighting a turian with weird forcefields. Gonna go dark and save them."

"Battlemaster doesn't need saving," Grunt muttered under his breath. "He's the best. My battlemaster can beat up anybody's battlemaster…."

Jack

"Cerberus," Jack snarled as she saw the ship docked to the Purgatory. It was too big for her to fly alone. Killing the crew would be easy. It always was. Blowing it up would be fun, but then, really, all she had to do would be to leave it. When the Purgatory went, it would take the Cerberus ship with it.

Breathing hard for a few moments, Jack grabbed hold of her raw anger and fed it to her biotics. The power coursed through her as her wild aura whipped up around her as she turned to the door that lead to the gangway.

In, kill all the fuckers, grab a shuttle, get out, she growled again as the plan ran through her mind. But even that was difficult to hear through her rage.

Then, the door opened and Jack felt her power blink away as she looked at her hero.

Shut the fuck up, Jack she slapped herself mentally. It's Cerberus tricks. They know you, they know how to fuck with you!

But her body wouldn't move.

The figure in the door was tall, and broad. He wasn't a knight in shining armor, she never bought into that bullshit. That whole thing was fucking stupid. That was the kinda assfuck that let everybody else do the work and claim the glory.

Not like my knight….

This knight's armor was once silver, and maybe even shining. Once. Now though, it was covered in battle scars. In many places it was almost black. There even looked to be holes in parts.

How the fuck did he survive what ever did that! Jack swallowed as she felt herself...well….Fucking hell….

The knight took a few steps into the room, making Jack back quickly away. Then she saw the bitch. The bitch with Cerberus logo, all proudly on her tit. Nice tit though….

And...a turian? When the fuck did they start working with turians? Slave or something?

The knight re folded and placed his SMG onto his hips magclamp as he reached up slowly and removed his helmet. With a bit of difficulty, she noted. From the battle damage?

Then she felt her breath leave her again.

He's fucking perfect!

The man had blonde hair cut short. Was handsome in that rugged way, but still somehow had that innocent look that just made her wet. And the eyes...She dreamed about the color of those eyes. When in the facility, she dreamed of the sky, the ocean. She dreamed of those eyes.

"My name is Commander Shepard. I am a Council Spectre, and I am here to rescue you," his warm, even baritone said to her. And she nearly melted right there.

Then the actual words caught up to her. "The fuck?" she asked eloquently.

AN: So, side effect of posting more as I write, is less editing. Though reading back through some stuff, fuck all, if you people are amazing for putting up with all the typos. I'm going to have to take some time at some point and go back through EVERYTHING and fix a lot of it.