Tali'Zorah vas Normandy, Dracon trade Center, Illium

"Keelah," she growled as her fingers danced over her omnitool. "I can't get through to the Normandy. Whoever these bosh'tets are, they have a powerful block up."

"Well...that's fun," John sighed, leaning his head back against the outer wall of the building. Half turning, he glanced across the shattered front doors to Garrus. "Two on the upper walkway. Medium armor."

"On it Boss," Garrus nodded. He seemed to count to...whatever it was turians counted to. To her it seemed like it was a stromella. He dropped to a knee and leaned out of the door, ignoring the single shot that spiked up debris near his right foot. Two quick shots, and the turian nodded standing. "Scoped and dropped."

John chuckled and gave his best friend a grin. "Never doubted you."

She...thought it was 'best friend'. She was still working her way around human thought concepts. They were so alien. And yet so similar it was frightening at times. Either way, Garrus was John's massan, and that was really all that was important. After all-

*Boom*

Tali jumped as her thought processes were interrupted by the geth's heavy rifle shot. Her eyes shot to John, then Garrus, looking for the casualty. Stupid girl! Never should have let John bring the damned…

*Splut*

Once again she was interrupted, this time by a lightly armored body as it fell from above, hitting the stone steps. The salarian's armor didn't particularly help much.

"Apologies, Shepard-Commander," the geth looked at John as it lowered its weapon. "We noticed the adept powering its biotics as it lead out a window and felt there was not enough time to properly warn you via audio cue. We felt it more prudent to act."

"It worked," John shrugged, barely giving the body a side look before gathering both her and Garrus in a glance. "Main lobby is clear. I'll lead, we're going straight for the stairs at the far side. Tali, you're behind me, then Garrus. Legion, follow up and watch the six, got it?"

"Of course, John," Tali nodded. She wasn't pleased that they would be trusting their back to a geth, but this wasn't the time to have a conversation about it. That was later. And they would be having that conversation.

John

She wasn't pleased. To be honest, he didn't expect it, but the deep, visceral, reaction to Legion that John felt through the Bond took him a bit by surprise. They were going to be having a… conversation later, he could tell.

"Let's hit it," John gave a nod as he brought his tech armor into place and spun around the doorframe. He moved quickly, his eyes sharp as he kept his crusader trained.

It was stepping over the bodies. Most were probably killed in the explosion, but enough had been killed by the mercenaries that his anger began to rise. If Liara doesn't get this son-of-a-bitch, he had better hope I don't find him.

"Clear," he called as he hit the base of the stairs and glanced up. Behind him, his team echoed as they secured the area. "Moving up."

"Why didn't we bring our krogan?" Garrus asked casually, daring a slight peak over the duracrete planter he had ducked behind for cover.

He was immediately rewarded by a small hail of gunfire from the six mercs entrenched at the end of the hall that forced him to duck back down. However, the small flowering tree that had been in the planter didn't duck fast enough. Branches, fibrous wood and colorful flowers were thrown down over the turian.

"Well, this was supposed to be a nice little reunion of Normandy squad members," John shrugged. "Assuming Tali didn't try to rip Liara's face off again."

"Keelah," Tali groaned. "Seriously, John? I was having a bad week."

"No, no," Garrus held up a hand, closing his eyes for a moment. "He has a point. I mean, never, not once, has anything, ever, gone to sterkre for us. Everything always goes according to plan."

"Okay, you can fuck right off," John glared at his, supposed, friend. "We don't get attacked by merc armies every…." John trailed off as he watched Garrus's grin widen. "Okay, fuck off."

Garrus chuckled and looked to the other side of himself, where Legion had ducked into a broken out broom closet. "Hey, Murder-bot! How many do you think you can drop before they turn on you?"

Legion turned his glowing eye to the turian, the little flaps working slightly. John could actually see the optic iris focus slightly as it seemed to consider. "Judging by current fire output and location/cover, we surmise that we can eliminate four hostiles before our barriers are overcome."

Garrus blinked. "Did….did you just verbally add a slash? How do you even do that?"

"We do not understand."

"Forget it," Garrus chuckled, waving a hand. "Do your thing. I'll get the rest."

Legion simply nodded and stepped out of cover, its rifle already coming up. The first shot took a salarian in the eye and throwing the broken body back. The second punched a hole through the chestplate of a scarred turian. The third ripped the throat out of another turian. The fourth round took a human in the chest, the hole ripping open just above her heart.

As it had predicted, the remaining two mercs concentrated fire on the geth, the rounds ripping into its shields. However, before they were brought down, Garrus popped up and two shots of his own rifle quieted the last of the enemy.

"Spirits, I'm good," the turian chuckled, blowing on the end of his rifle.

"Pff," Tali snorted, standing. "Legion did most of the work. And why are you blowing on your gun?"

"Uh," Garrus looked at his weapon and shrugged. "Dunno, the action heros in those old terran movies Shepard makes us watch do that when they do something awesome."

"Yeah, well, you're supposed to blow on the barrel," John chuckled, jumping over his own cover. "Not the trigger."

"Why the hell would I want to put my face so close to the barrel?" Garrus sniffed, sounding offended.

Garrus

"Spirits, these things are like formicia," he sighed, two shots dropping two targets. "How many of these things does the Shadow Broker have?"

"Too many," Tali growled as she released her drone. The orb curved around the corner she had hid behind and moved up, zipping along the ceiling, almost unnoticed by the enemy squad. A few small explosions and the hall was quiet.

Garrus stood for a moment, looking the way the drone had gone. "Did...did your drone just shoot missiles?"

"Yup," Tali nodded, standing and deactivating the drone in question. "I gave Chiktikka an upgrade last time we were on the Citadel. This was the first chance I've had to test her out."

"Tali….I love you sometimes."

"I know."

"Clear!" Shepard called, making a small wave with his hand and pointing to two heavy desks, one on either side of the aisle between the cubicle. Well...what had been cubicles. It looked like this level was the main target of the bomb.

Tali moved up and dropped her back against the rightmost desk, almost before Shepard pointed. Honestly, that was getting a little weird.

Legion shifted up and to the left, its heavy rifle dropping on top of the desk and scanning the room, seeking a target. That was also weird. The machine slipped itself into the teams routines almost without a hitch.

"Garrus," Shepard dropped to one knee, his weapon trained forward. "Target ahead."

"On it," Garrus deactivated his rifle, swapping to a SMG as he moved up. And what he saw wasn't particularly encouraging. The salarian they had been looking for was splayed out next to the damaged elevator, his greenish blood splattered over the wall behind him. "Yeah, no. He's dead."

"Great," Shepard growled, walking up behind him to take a look for himself.

"He wasn't killed by the bomb," Tali added as she sat on what was left of a chair. "No burns."

"Bullet hole in the wall corresponds to the wound in the victim's head," Legion squatted next to the body, looking it over. "Lacerations pre-mortem. Jagged, hastily made."

"Somebody needed questions answered but didn't have time," Garrus nodded with a frown. "They wanted the data from him but knew we were coming. The bomb was hurried too. Probably a distraction, to give them more time to work."

"The question is: Did they get what they wanted?" a voice chuckled, snapping Garrus's head up.

"Vasir," Shepard nodded with a frown. "Any trouble on your way down?"

The Spectre grinned at the human. "Nothing I couldn't handle. Some mercs, nondescript, well armed. Decently trained though."

"Same," Shepard turned back to the body. "I'm thinking they failed to get what they wanted."

"Oh?" Vasir raised a brow as she approached. "Did you find it yourself?"

Something was off. Shepard was tense, on guard. Vasir, for all her posturing and show of casualness was wound up, her hand was near her sidearm.

Her hand.

Garrus's eyes narrowed as he looked at Vasir more closely.

Her armor was well used as one would expect for her career, but, right now, it was too clean. If she had been in any combat on her way down from the roof it left no mark on her. Except for the green stains on her boots. And fingers.

"He did not," another voice casually said. A familiar voice. "I made it here in time to see what you did. Or your people."

"Liara," Vasir's face twisted. "Had to make this difficult."

"Keeping ahead of you was not as hard as I would have thought," Liara stood beside the elevator, a heavy pistol aimed at the other asari. "Might be the things I learned with Shepard."

"Yeah, he's far better than I expected," Vasir shrugged, giving the human a glare that was half anger and half respect. "I didn't expect him to charge directly into a building a moment after it exploded."

"Yeah, you must not have read anything about him then," Garrus chuckled. "Doing the impossible is in his DNA."

"Seriously," Tali laughed along. "I've met his family. It gets ridiculous."

"Shepard," Vasir ignored the pair to speak to the man. Through her eyes never left Liara. "Just give me the data. The Shadow Broker has given me, all of us, intel that saved millions of lives. I can't let a resource like that go to waste."

"And I expect he pays well for little favors?" Shepard's hands tightened on his shotgun.

"Heh," Vasir smirked with a small laugh. "I can't exactly deny that."

"John," Liara said, a note of warning in her voice.

"John!" Tali called a split second too late.

Shepard was...gone in a flash of blue light.

"The fuck?!" Garrus cursed as Shepard's biotic charge impacted with Vasir's shields. He watched his Bond Brother wrap his arms around the asari as they both shot nearly thirty feet away from the building before spinning down to the ground below.

""John!"" Tali and Liara both yelled together as they ran to the edge of the window, looking on in horror.

John

Okay...so maybe that wasn't the best of ideas. When confronted with Vasir it didn't take much to realize what had happened. She turned up a little too conveniently. A little too...irritated.

Then Liara showed up. That had caught him by surprise. When they came across her informant John figured she was still a few steps ahead. He assumed she had gotten the data and gotten away.

But it was something in Vasir's voice. Some 'holier than thou' note. The arrogance. The willingness to kill an entire building's worth of people to get a damned data disk.

And now he was in the air. Falling. Fast. John twisted in the air, struggling with Vasir before they smashed into an aircar. Their conflicting biotic fields flared at the impact, bleeding most of the kinetic impact into the poor vehicle. The leftover momentum rolled the pair away, and apart.

The world spun around as John bounced, pain bursting through him once, twice, then he smashed into the side of another aircar. He felt the metal give under him as the door crumpled around his body.

"-pred!" a voice yelled at him. His eyes snapped open as he looked around frantically. He was still embedded in the car. Must not have been out long.

"John!" Tali yelled now, leaping over the hood of the vehicle, her eyes going even wider as she caught sight of him. "Keelah! John! No!"

"Ah….'m fine," John wheezed as he started to pry himself from the wreckage. "I'm fine...where's Vasir?"

"Getting away," Garrus grunted somewhere out of his view. "She stole an aircar and took off. But if it makes you feel any better, she looked worse than you do."

"Mmm...Not really," John grimace as pain shot through his side. "Fuck it," he snarled flexing out his biotics and shredding the metal. He picked the trick up from Jack.

"John! Are you alright?" Tali grabbed his arms, pulling him to her. "You're hurt!"

"Yeah, but I'll live," he smiled down at her. "Just having you here makes it hurt less."

"John," Tali blinked, her eyes softened slightly as he hands squeezed his arms.

"Creator Bonded pairs have the ability to bolster each other's systems, including the ability to cope with many ailments," Legion stood just off from the pair. It walked to them, holding out the crusader shotgun Jane gave him.

"Thanks for destroying the moment you metalic bosh'tet," Tali sighed as she let her helmet rest against John's chestplate for a moment.

"Thanks," John decided to stay out of that particular patch of weasels and simply took the weapon. "Jane would be fairly pissed if lost this."

"Shepard!" Liara's voice cut over the quiet roar of an engine as an aircar landed roughly on the parking platform next to them. "Hurry! She is getting away with the disk!"

"Fuck me," John grumbled as he pushed Tali and Legion toward the car. "Get in! Garrus! Come on!"

Liara shifted to the passenger seat as John slid into the driver's side. He gave a quick glance behind as Garrus moved in beside Tali, pushing her into Legion.

"Hold on," John said casually as he throttled the car forward, launching off the parking area before the doors had even closed. He chuckled to himself as his stomach dropped with the car, then bounced hard as he shifted into full flight mode, using the momentum to swing them up and into the flow of traffic ahead. The cries of his friends brought back memories that he would always treasure….

"GODDESS!" Liara yelled as she, along with Garrus, desperately struggled to latch the aircar's top hatch, clicking it in place just as a hard left threw her almost into John's lap. "I had not missed this!"

"This vehicle is not rated for the speeds we are accelerating to," Legion said quietly, as if to itself.

"Keelah, John!" Tali spat as she leaned forward to help Liara back into her own seat. A little too forcefully, maybe. "CAR!"

"I see it," John sighed, pulling the car tightly around the slower vehicle. "Anybody see our target?"

"I...there!" Liara pointed to the red aircar Vasir had taken. "We can't lose her!"

"We won't," John said, grimly as the car hit its maximum speed. He dodged around a pair of skyscycles then under a service truck. "I have a trick."

"Oh….no…." Garrus whimpered. "I don't like how he said that…."

"John?" Tali ventured nervously. "What are you going- AAAAA!"

Tali was cut off as John hit a program on his omnitool, activating a small program he had been writing in his spare time. The car's safety protocols were overridden, the engine accelerating dangerously as its passengers were pushed back hard into their seats.

As his air car shot up and over a small exchange of vehicles, John banked hard to the right and angled down. Horns blared behind them as he brought his car in next to the right side of Vasir's. He looked over to see her look back at him, a dark look on her face split into a smirk as she began to swerve away.

Until she changed her mind.

"Shit,"John spat as Vasir's aircar suddenly turned back, slamming hard into the side of John's. The impact hit hard, pushing John's car into the oncoming lane of traffic. He took the hit and turned with it, peeling his car down out of the oncoming lane and almost spinning out. "Fucking bitch…."

"John, she's going into the Palarin Tunnel!" Liara called out. "If we angle around we can catch her on the other side!"

"Only if she doesn't turn around," John sniffed, hitting the car back into forward gear. "The traffic in the tunnel will slow her down."

"No!" Tali slapped futility at John's shoulder. "John! No! John!"

"I got it…."

They were jerked hard against their seats again as the car shot between the oncoming lane, then out and over the lines of vehicles slowing for the tunnel. "Hold on," he almost snarled as he turned off the lift mass field, channeling the extra energy into the forward thrust.

Shooting forward, the car began to drop, but John used the extra momentum to angle just under the lip of the tunnel, only lightly scraping as they went by. "Oops."

Turning the car on its axis, John slipped it between a pair of shiney aircars, the type usually owned by the overindulged children of the wealthy. It would be a lie to say the look of terror in the asari's eyes as they shot past didn't make him feel a little pleased.

"TRUCK!" Liara nearly screamed as she half turned, wrapping her arms around the back of the seat. To add to the melodrama, she even put a foot up on the dash in front of her. "TRUCK!"

"I see it," John muttered as he reengaged the lift field and jerking the car up, at least six meters, before the long cargo carrier. Then he spotted her. "Got you…."

It seemed Vasir had seen him as well, as her car swerved to the left and climbing over the flow. She spun her car, slipping around an elongated sky-limo. A little too closely, judging by the sparks.

Or...on purpose. "Fuck me," John growled, pulling hard to the right. The limo Vasir had sideswiped overcorrected into the next lane striking a pair of cars and setting off a chain reaction that piled up behind Vasir, almost cutting off John's access. "Don't worry, I got this!"

"We are unable to compute a proper course," Legion said, strained. "We recommend calling the Normandy to intercept the target."

"I'm on it," John waved vaguely as he shifted the car down hard. They ducked under the snarl of damaged cars, parts rattled off the hood like rain as they came out under the wreckage. "See?"

"Shepard," Garrus's voice was high pitched, the dual tones making John's ears ache. "We need to be alive to catch Vasir, remember."

"No faith…." John sighed angling the car back up and cutting a curve hard. Just as they cleared the tunnel Vasir came back into view. Seemed like she had gotten a little confident when she didn't see John come out right away. Her funeral. It would be if he had any say in it, anyway. "Liara, grab the wheel."

"What?" Liara's eyes shot wide in a combination of fear and confusion. "Oh Goddess!"

As John popped the canopy, he kicked open the door and stood, one foot on the door frame, and one in the car itself. He gripped the edge of the windshield with one hand as he brought his biotics to bare, lifting his crusader with the other. The look in Vasir's eyes as the car slid in next to her's was something that he was going to treasure for his entire life. He gave her a small grin and fired.

Vasir's car jerked like it was a living thing as it seemed to wobble left, then right a little. There was a small explosion as black smoke began to billow out of the back of the thing.

Then John realized why he had made a mistake.

The damaged car jerked to the left suddenly, slamming into his car. Which, itself decided to follow the laws of physics, and go left as well.

Unfortunately, John was rather precariously perched as it was. And his body, against his wishes it was to be noted, decided to also follow the law and shot out of the car.

Luckily for him there was another car there to break his fall. Except it was on fire. And falling.

"Ah….shit…."

Quarian Lexicon

Stromella: Timing count based on electrical pulses from the drive cores of the Quarian Liveships. Equivalent to a human count to five.

Massan: Quarian equivalent to a best friend and confidant. As close as one can get without being on a life path. The paths of friendship can share similar paths as those of mating, and at times, they can blur or even switch, before the end.

Turian Lexicon

Sterkre- Turian for a piece of shit.

Formicia: Small insects that move in a swarm and burrow into dwelling and devour them before moving on. They eat through nearly everything from nonliving organic matter to light metals to duracrete. Despite their reputation, they only eat nonliving things. The number of deaths attributed to the insects in recorded history is less than one hundred.

AN: Listened to Reignite by Malukah on repeat. I love the song way too much.