Cenotaph I: The Morrow

by Rob Sears

Roahn'Shepard was always doomed to an abnormal life. As the daughter of John and Tali, she would always be overshadowed by her parents' heroics, but at home... her father is no hero. He is distant. Withdrawn. But when a new threat arises, she and her father are forced to confront their differences and Roahn will soon discover what it means to be the daughter of Commander Shepard.

15. Chapter 15: In Deference to the Future

"Mr. Koenig, your social media profiles paint you as a very exuberant and a rather profane individual—traits which are admittedly not all that uncommon amongst CEOs—but the way that you proudly display such attributes, while not appearing to take into account your relative importance that you supposedly represent within the government, tells us that your overall demeanor is not suited to your industry. Especially taking into account your rather… generous penchant for alcohol that you've been so keen on self-documenting."
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

"You going to give me a lecture on drinking too, ma'am?"
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"We're now merely trying to ascertain whether it was your behavior or your company's performance that enabled Chimera to win over the Alliance contract as its premier service operator. Based on just this swath of evidence, it is rather evident that the Alliance has elected to ignore your brazen outlook on life in favor of the opportunities they feel Chimera is able to provide. But I'm not sure if that tradeoff appears to have been worth it."
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

"Let me get this straight… you're reevaluating Chimera's contract with the Alliance purely from the fact that I like to go out and drink with friends?"
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"You call it just drinking?"
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

"Yes, Senator, I do."
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

"Mr. Koenig, your 'friends' videotaped a minute and a half long video of you continuously throwing up outside of an establishment that appears to be a bar on the island of St. Barbados. 'Just drinking' vaguely implies that your encounter was more casual. The video evidence sort of indicates that you had gone further than casual, in contrast. Would you say that the end result in that video is a regular occurrence for every time you frequent a place that serves alcohol with your friends?"
Sen. Ibanez, EU – Spain

"Can you define 'regular occurrence?'"
Erich Koenig, CEO – Chimera

---

Tuchanka

A six-wheeled, three-story behemoth of a transport, the tomkah was a sight to behold as it scampered along the crusted and battle-scarred ground of Tuchanka. Its massive shock absorbers were designed to withstand punishing variances in terrain, meaning that it could scale small buildings without taking a significant chunk of its top speed away. It was lightly armed, by krogan standards, with only a singular turret rotating upon a swivel up top. But what the tomkah lacked in firepower, it made up for in armor. It could even withstand the detonation of a nuclear explosion from up to a few miles from the epicenter. Granted, such a test of its abilities had not been put to use for some time, but the krogan were never one to half-ass their weapons of war.

Remains of stone foundations and crumpled pieces of other disabled tomkahs littered the road, despite the krogan's best efforts at cleaning up over the years—their centuries of constantly procrastinating with tidying up after themselves had resulted in quite the mess for them to overcome. The tomkah ran over all obstructions without worry. A few pyjaks also had the misfortune of wandering directly into the path of the encroaching vehicle, drawn by the sound of the engines. Their primitive brains had still not yet deciphered the fact that a bull-rushing tomkah did not have the ability to spare anything the courtesy of slowing down to allow errant animals to cross its path safely. These pyjaks were also run over, barely registering as a bump to the driver, who probably had not even saw fit to reduce his speed any. Survival of the fittest ran supreme on Tuchanka.

The tomkah was only travelling for about ten minutes after clearing the center of the Urdnot camp. At its top speed, the vehicle had the ability to reach over a hundred miles an hour quite easily, despite the terrible terrain. There was still enough of the original highway infrastructure still standing to allow a fair bit of traffic to roam across the land, which was what the driver of the tomkah dutifully kept onto. After ten kilometers of road had been covered, the brakes on the tomkah gradually applied themselves, producing a fierce squeal as the wheels slowly ground to a halt. The tomkah jerked violently once as all its kinetic energy finally departed, leaving the idling vehicle standing still.

A hatch opened between the first and second wheels, allowing the occupants to spill out.

"Feels like yesterday since I was back here!" Wrex crowed as he jumped from the black insides of the hatch, happily stretching his arms out.

"No doubt," Garrus groused behind him to the others as he exited, a hand rubbing at a sore spot upon his neck. "We only have a tenth of his lifespan. A year probably feels like a day to him."

Shepard shared in that sentiment as he clumsily managed to extricate himself from the tomkah. The ride over had not been a comfortable one, as the krogan had not exactly built the tomkahs to be at all luxurious. He had accumulated many cricks on his body as a result. A tomkah on Tuchanka made an Alliance Mako feel like a pleasure yacht. The ride had been all around awful from the jostling and the constantly vibrating interior panels, not to mention that the seats lacked cushions to pad themselves from the turbulence. Throughout the journey, the tomkah had always seemed to be two seconds away from completely splitting in half, for it was so shoddily built. There was "military-grade" and then there was "krogan-grade." Shepard made a note to never complain about the quality of an Alliance vessel ever again.

But maybe Shepard felt that he had to chalk some of his injuries up due to age, as Roahn managed to hop out, seemingly unaffected from the ride. Her attitude towards him had cooled to the point where she was not actively avoiding his presence, but it was still rather difficult to make eye contact with her.

Roahn made a beeline for Wrex, who was standing near the guardrail at the edge of the highway. A thin staircase trailed down to a stone plaza, where a pyramidal structure stood tall amidst the haze of smoke and ozone that stained the otherwise caramel sky.

Now that they were out in the open, Shepard could now perceive the array of Alliance dreadnoughts in the sky a lot more easily. They hovered many miles off the surface, yet their gargantuan shape threatened to blot out the scorched sky, the hazy light casting their hulls into a perpetual shadow. The closest warship drifted lazily over the charred and blasted battleplain just a few miles away, although Shepard got this uneasy feeling in his stomach that if the dreadnought were to even twitch just a bit to the right, it would be right overhead his position.

He had developed a phobia long ago of being underneath large ships. After seeing so many fall out of the sky, blasted in half from gigantic war machines, the sight of such enormous vessels miraculously hanging in the air filled Shepard with dread more than it did hope, regardless of whose side these Alliance ships were on.

The stone building was the only thing left standing on its own devices in the area, or at least it was the tallest object. Another kilometer past it, from where Shepard was standing, he was able to see a stripe of metal debris, spread out over tangles of ancient and hardy ruins. The cold metal clashed with the warm sandy color of the rock—evidence that its previous form had not been a part of Tuchanka since the beginning, for Shepard knew that what he was looking at had been an enormous metal structure, spear-like, that had once punctured the clouds swirling high above it. It had collapsed years ago, its shiny innards dispersed along the ground for the sand to reclaim it—the old Tuchanka swallowing the new. In its death throes, the collapse of the structure had taken out a larger ingot-like fabrication beside it, cracking ore and rock in half and grinding them to powder.

Past Wrex's outstretched arm marked the birthplace of the rejuvenated krogan, but Shepard knew as well as Wrex did, that this was also a gravesite. A mausoleum for where his tortured memories frequently came to roost.

"Our next reconstruction phase will begin here in a few years," Wrex was saying as his arm beat a trail through the swirling winds of dust. "A short while for you lot, but not that far off for us. The Shroud did a lot of damage when it came down. Took out both the maw hammers, not to mention a fair amount of the temple. Left quite the mess behind. It's something that we've been putting off too long, admittedly, but our affairs over at the main camp took most of our attention away. They have since been addressed, for the most part. Now some of the real work can get done."

It was sort of difficult for Roahn to exactly know what Wrex was referring to, because Tuchanka's landscape was not all that forgiving for a newcomer to comprehend. Mile after mile of shattered buildings textured the ground, skeletal remains of satellite dishes crumpled amongst the boulevards, and mountainous sand dunes had been blown in from the nuclear winds, absorbing everything in their path. Even the krogan had not yet found a way to completely mitigate nature's bite on Tuchanka, evidentially. On any other world, they would be well suited as conquerors. Here, they were struggling to keep from being conquered. Yet krogan were at their best when challenged—it was always good for them to have an antagonist to rally against, even when their foe had no corporeal form.

"Have the other clans shown any anger at the loss of this site?" Liara asked as she leaned her forearms against the guardrail, staring off into the shattered plain. "This was a significant area before it had been destroyed."

Wrex rumbled out a laugh. "Actually, it's only grown in legend after the fact. We're not liable to forget the site where Kalros dragged a Reaper into the heart of Tuchanka, whereupon it's still being digested, probably. And despite the Shroud crushing a lot of original architecture when it fell, the remaining site holds a lot of importance thanks to Mordin curing the genophage there. If anything, we're all too eager to finally restore this place, give it more significant touches."

Roahn, standing by, absorbed the talk sagely. So, Kalros had been here, specifically, and she had killed a Reaper—the only thresher maw known to have done so. Reapers were quite large to begin with so any maw that had the ability to bring one down would ostensibly command universal respect. No wonder the krogan spoke of that thresher maw with such admiration. It must have been quite the sight to have witnessed a maw the size of a capital ship thrust itself out from the ground and to drag an entire Reaper underneath the earth. A god of flesh consuming a god of metal. Twin titans in a ferocious clash, much like the legends of old! A duel straight out of a fairytale. Roahn could almost picture the battle in her mind—the sharp tang of ozone from a Reaper's blast, the high-pitched scream of a thresher maw, hot blood being splattered across the crumbled face of a pyramid, the tortured wail as the Reaper was coiled up by the maw's lengthy body. The girl shivered, awed at the images her imagination was able to conjure.

Dark clouds were now starting to gather on the horizon, the color of burnt firewood. Even through her mask, Roahn could smell the charred and smoky aroma of scorched sand as the front blew her way. Her enviro-suit protected her from the stinging pellets being thrown up and she could hear soft pings echo away as each individual grain tapped against her mask.

"Storm's coming," Wrex commented as he analyzed the changing climate. "We'll have some more protection down below."

Everyone else grumbled their agreements and began to follow Wrex down the staircase towards the entrance to the ruins. Roahn, still transfixed by the radioactive landscape, lingered a bit more upon the side of the highway, gusts of wind tugging at her small body and sehni, almost forcing her back a step had she not been clinging upon a guardrail for support.

Her sixth sense gave a slight twinge and Roahn imperceptibly shifted her head a bit to the side, her peripheral vision picking up a person standing right next to her, having moved into place without her realizing it.

Roahn looked over and saw Shepard leaning over in the exact same pose she had adopted, staring pensively out towards the shifting sands, watching the low-cropped waves of powder swirl close to the ground like liquid gold. She slowly blinked as she appraised her father, but did not shy away. An icicle began to well up in her heart again, but the fiery blaze of indigence was melting it simultaneously. She stayed where she was.

"A lot to take in, isn't it?" Shepard asked, with the air of someone nearly about to ask how they found the weather.

Roahn just mustered a bitter shrug. "It is," she admitted, unable to manage even a white lie to her father. "Look, dad… I—,"

"You don't need to say anything," Shepard interrupted as he turned to face Roahn. "I do, however."

This was it, Roahn figured. She braced herself, ready for the scathing tone her father was surely going to adopt in berating her presumably for acting in an immature manner yesterday.

"I need to apologize to you, Roahn," Shepard said instead.

Roahn had already prepared a sharp retort back that she had almost unleashed it after her father finished speaking, only to stuff it back down her throat when she realized just in time that he had not taken the route she had thought he would pursue.

"I've been asking a lot of you over the last couple of weeks," Shepard continued as he folded his hands behind his back, oblivious to Roahn's shock, "and I know that things have been… quite difficult for us. If you want to blame me for all that's happened, I can't say that I'll disagree with you there. But you have been behaving so admirably regardless that it's been easy for me to forget that you have limits. Had I known better I would have worked to break things to you earlier. If only I'd known."

The girl did not know what to say. All along Roahn had convinced herself that her father had been completely blind to his inability to connect with her on a basic emotional level, and now he just openly admitted this very fact to her. To say that she was at a loss for words now was an understatement.

Shepard took his daughter's silence as a sign for him to continue. "My fears have only been compounded over the years, Roahn. For too long I've deluded myself to a line of thinking that life for us would always be peaceful, that there would never have been an occasion to relive my experiences to you, because you there would never have been a reason to learn from what I did. I saw you back then as my bright, earnest daughter, and I didn't want to corrupt that with the memories that have infected my head. But then your mother died… and now with this Chimera business… I've been punished for my delaying. I've had to unload so much knowledge unto you that I never once tried to put myself in your shoes. I never realized that you could be overwhelmed so easily by the decisions I've made, the things that I've seen. I've been forcing you to grow up too quickly and it's my fault for not preparing you earlier."

With a great deal of effort, Roahn turned to the side so that she could appraise Shepard fully, now gracing him with her complete attention. "If we weren't being chased across the galaxy, would you still have told me about your life?"

It took Shepard a few seconds to formulate a careful answer. "Perhaps eventually," he admitted. "Probably not this soon, but when I felt for certain that you were ready." He leaned the side of his body against the guardrail as he kept his hands clenched together. "Yet… after all that has happened, and after all I've already revealed to you, you have proved that you have indeed been ready for some time. I only needed more time to break things to you more slowly instead of at this rapid-fire pace. It's unfair to you, Roahn, and that's why I'm sorry."

"But… I need to be caught up at this fast pace," Roahn emphasized. "Don't you see, dad? I have to learn all about you. You've turned on a tap and you can't turn it back."

"Roahn, it's unhealthy—how much I've told you—,"

"No," Roahn pointed. "Dad, it's not unhealthy. It's necessary. I still don't understand everything, and that's the problem. It's because I didn't understand that I got angry at you on Thessia. I'm constantly coming back to the lessons taught to me by my mentors: 'anger does not matter when your position is wrong.' After talking to Liara and Wrex, I'm only now starting to get the big picture. Especially when Liara told me about Akuze… how you were the only survivor of your unit. Everywhere I turn, with each new person that I talk to, there's always something for me to discover. Every new thing that I learn only makes me realize your rationale and… and who you are as a person."

The mere mention of Akuze caused Shepard to curl his lip, once again dismayed at the reminder of that terrible day, but he still kept his gaze magnified upon his daughter, waiting to hear her complete thoughts.

"Seeing all this," Roahn swept her arm out, gesturing to the apocalyptic wasteland stretching beyond their field of vision, "just hammers it home for me. I now realize just how tired you were after the war, that you just wanted everything to… to go away. That you and mom just wanted to hide in some corner of the galaxy and disappear. If anything, I haven't been appreciative for what you've been doing for me. What you've already done. For the first time in my life, you haven't been treating me like a little girl. And… what I'm trying to say is that… I don't want you to stop."

Shepard's smile came naturally to his face. There was just so much about Roahn that was reflective of his own experiences. The novice continually seeking out others for clarity, for knowledge. It was what he had done with Tali when she had first joined the Normandy—his natural interest in her and the quarian lifestyle had resulted in him making many frequent trips to her workstation at the drive core, eager to learn something new about her upbringing and society, unknowingly offering many chances to grow closer to her.

This natural desire for knowledge was still very much present in his own daughter. Roahn did not want to lessen up on these metaphorical taps anytime soon, he realized. She had been hanging on his every word since they had left their ruined house on Rannoch, absorbing each and every meaning with a sage-like composure. Roahn feasted on this new source of context, threatening to drown in the cascade of revelations being heaped upon her. Only now did Shepard realize that she had been bearing this overload of information very stoically, inwardly, as if she had been embarrassed to show weaknesses in front of him.

That part threw him for a bit. Should Commander Shepard's daughter be allowed to falter? Did Roahn realize that failure was not an issue for him? Or was she determined to be better than he was, to rise above his mistakes so that she could find her own purpose and be free of her parents' shadow?

Shepard let the moment linger silently in the air as his fingers curled and tensed, projecting his current mood quite transparently. "I take it that you'd still like for me to treat you as an adult—to continue to explain to you more on who I am—even though you might not agree with what I've done in the past? I'm just warning you again, Roahn, in case you're still harboring second thoughts."

"That's over and done with," Roahn shook her head, Thessia still fresh in her mind. "My answer has been the same since Rannoch. I want everything, dad."

"There's still so much to say. Just… be careful what you wish for."

---

Shepard knew that he could not recount the history of Tuchanka well enough to Roahn to do it justice. Wrex was the best person to approach for that sort of information, honestly. What he was confident in was his own perceptions of the world as an outsider and how his experiences had shaped his understanding of how the krogan homeworld was viewed, his own lens becoming sharper and clearer after he had wiped it free of the nebulous smoke that naturally came with his initial ignorance.

The land they treaded upon was rich with memories, many of them clear enough to Shepard that all he had to do was to close his eyes and he would be instantly transported back in time, to when he was tightly clad in his N7 armor, fire and glassy hail raining down upon him in a hellish cocktail, a thick shadow of a Reaper blotting out the sun before him. Already he could feel his palms become damp with sweat as he recalled the explosive heat from a barrage of laser beams bearing down on his position. As he told Roahn about how he had carried himself that day, he made sure to tone everything down so that he did not seem so heroic. Roahn did not deserve to have this warped sense of her father growing up—that film on Thessia had done the both of them no favors, and Shepard had been quite irked at the impeccable image it had presented of himself. This galaxy would not allow him to have any flaws, but by god, he was going to hammer in some cracks in his own image if it was going to be the last thing he would do.

Roahn would speak nary a word as Shepard told her about the Shroud, the metal spire that had been erected by the salarians to circulate the genophage, and how he had planned to use it to dispense the eventual cure to the genophage, as that had been Wrex's lone concession to acquire the support of all the krogan clans against the Reapers during the war. He told her about how the salarian leader—Dalatrass Linron—had tried to tempt him with an offer to sabotage the cure in exchange for the full support of the salarian fleets, fearful at what fresh dangers the cured krogan could potentially bring to the galaxy. Knowing that Roahn would be skeptical of his decision to rebuff such an offer, Shepard felt that he had to devote a lot of time to explain exactly why his decision had been the best one.

Wrex had been a friend to him for years. The krogan people had shown him their worth time after time, proving that they had found the capability to understand why they had been punished and that they knew what they had done wrong so many centuries ago. The dalatrass was an unknown to Shepard. She was conniving, arrogant, and had a shadowy agenda. Not to mention that she was a career politician—a perfect storm of all the qualities that Shepard loathed. He had no loyalty to her and, to be honest, he had been insulted that she had approached him with this offer at all. At the first chance he had gotten, Shepard had told Wrex about the clandestine deal, thereby ridding himself of the anguish he had of possibly keeping such a deal a secret while amplifying Wrex's trust in him. Out of all the heavy choices he had made, Shepard felt that his decision in that moment had been one of the easiest he had ever considered in his life. His principles had been too far solidified for anyone like the dalatrass to even have a hope at budging them. The krogan would be rewarded mightily.

As Shepard had expected, Roahn was slightly surprised when he had mentioned to her that he never bothered to inform the Alliance brass at what the dalatrass had tried to pull on him. As far as command knew, he explained, the talks of their partnership with the salarians had simply broken down. He was never pressured to give a full accounting of what happened, at least not until Raynor Larsen had come along. Shepard had told Wrex the whole story, but the obstinate krogan had a more measured response than he would have figured—Wrex had deemed to let the matter lie and hope that the dalatrass would not stick her nose where it didn't belong a second time. A mature decision and one that Shepard deemed admirable. If the dalatrass had somehow secured a second chance, then it was only right that the krogan receive one as well in the form of their cure.

Roahn had been slightly angered when Shepard revealed that the dalatrass was still in power on the salarian homeworld, Sur'Kesh. Roahn had figured that news of the ill-timed deal would have gotten out eventually, but Shepard maintained that he was the only one, besides Wrex, with the full scope of the devastating arrangement. The knowledge that he had in his head had enough explosive potential to have the dalatrass removed from power, but to Shepard, that was exactly the sort of situation he had been hoping to avoid with the asari. If he stifled his knowledge and let the galaxy move on, he figured, then eventually their misdeeds would be overlooked and everyone would have an equal chance to rebuilt and solidify a stronger future.

It was a bright future that awaited the krogan, and although it had cost them a few friends to get this far, the trek had been worth it. The salarians, much like the asari, had been punished enough. Shepard had to reiterate to Roahn that he had been foolishly confident that no one would ever try to seek him out for his involvement in these matters, a mindset that had been upended when Chimera had burst onto the scene.

Shepard simply hoped that he had conveyed to his daughter that he had secured a better fate for the galaxy by his adamant refusal to reveal the truth. To tell a lie in order to prevent disaster.

All he had to await now if his lie would prove to have halted such a calamity… or would have merely postponed it.

---

The two of them had nearly caught up to the group by then, both having to walk fast in order to cover a fair bit of ground. Everyone else had made it to the large temple, the only remaining stronghold that had not been crushed by the toppling Shroud, and it was there that Roahn and Shepard were headed.

But before they entered, Shepard placed his hand on the girl's shoulder, halting themselves just before the door.

"I have something for you," Shepard said as he reached behind his back, his actions slow and arthritic.

Roahn was about to ask what it was but stilled herself, letting her anticipation build, until Shepard finally extended his arm, the Predator pistol lying on its side within his large palm. The girl glanced up from the offered weapon to her father's face and back down to the gun, wary that there was some sort of trickery going on here.

"Go ahead," her father urged as he nudged his arm in her direction.

Roahn did not understand the occasion, but even her caution could be mitigated by her natural impulses. The quarian, her happiness concealed, finally reached out and snagged the Predator by the grip, her hands remarkably tiny as she flexed her fingers upon the handle. Despite the fact that she had been in contact with this weapon for such a short time, Roahn realized that this had been the exact same pistol that her father had snagged from her friend back on Rannoch. He had been carrying it with him all this way.

Finally, Roahn could no longer bear keeping herself in suspense for much longer. "Why are you giving this to me?"

The first time she had even held onto this gun, or had knowingly been in its presence, she had been fighting back tears as her father had raged at her, berating her for improperly respecting the power of such a weapon beyond his watchful eye. This gun had borne witness to an embarrassing moment for her, and Roahn could not help but recollect the moment when her father had been towering over her, red-faced and imposing, as he had nearly shouted her into sobs in the foyer of her home. Her guts gave a painful wrench and she shut her eyes glumly, a prickle encroaching at the back of her jaw.

"It's just something that I've been considering for the past week," Shepard answered. "Also, Wrex has been startlingly good at providing some much-needed advice. In any case, I felt that you've earned the right to hold onto this."

He didn't say that I had the right to use it, Roahn noted, but she let the semantics slide. Obviously this was going to come with a caveat of sorts, but she was not going to ply for any of those catches. She was not stupid. She was, however, grateful that her father had seemed to have been paying attention to her and had finally decided to reward her for dutifully following his orders.

Or… the girl thought, maybe I'm just being a jerk for even thinking that I deserved to be granted this pistol. Maybe I should just be grateful. Dad just wants to help.

Roahn clicked for the weapon to retract itself into its carry mode, and the pistol made a few quick movements before the grip folded upward and the barrel retracted. She then set it against the magnetic holster on her hip. The folded gun looked like an oversized battery pack, skewing her center of gravity to the side.

"Thank…" The words had difficulty coming out. "Thank you."

Shepard narrowed his gaze, sizing Roahn up with that mysterious sort of look he was bound to give every now and then. Roahn had trouble deciphering what that meant and what kind of thoughts were going on in her father's head.

"Prove to me that you can be responsible for this," he merely said before ushering Roahn through the temple doors.

I will, Roahn solemnly thought, but did not voice it out loud for some reason.

The interior of the temple beyond the gigantic stone doors was something of a marvel, continuing to represent the larger-than-life personalities of all krogan. The building was four stories tall, but each story was catered to the height of a krogan, meaning that Roahn felt like a marmot just standing in the middle of the level that she was on.

The four stories of the temple formed a U-shape over the ground floor. The interior was comprised of the same sand-colored stone that had been cracked and weathered from the elements. Shepard and Roahn had entered on the second floor, which had deposited them upon a balcony that overlooked the base. A few Urdnot guards patrolled on the upper two stories, relatively unconcerned and placid. A four-meter tall statue of an imposing warrior sat smack-dab in the center of the ground floor, a circular base rimming the depiction with skulls and bones of conquered enemies. There was no far wall on the opposite end of the structure. Instead, the entire section was an open-air design, allowing anyone on the lowest level to look out for miles across towards the fertile valley in the distance. From here, Shepard had a clear view of the Urdnot camp as well as the remains of the Shroud as storm clouds churned and spat lightning in the distance.

Roahn bustled down the stairs to get a better look at the magnificent view. Wrex and the others were waiting for them down below.

"Thought we had lost you there for a second," Wrex said in his deep baritone of a voice. "My guards said you had spent a lot of time up on the highway. Hopefully things were all right over there."

"We've made some progress," Shepard explained with a knowing wink to the krogan. "Roahn and I aren't on the same page just yet, but I think we're finally coming to an understanding. One could say that the guidance I received has already started to pay off."

The krogan gave a toothy grin, bouncing almost imperceptibly in uncharacteristically silent laughter. "You can thank me later, Shepard."

"Hey, when you're right, you're right."

Shepard then twitched his head over to the side, a delayed reaction, as he finally caught on what the statue in the middle of the temple was depicting. The human frowned, puzzled for a moment before his face melted into an expression of complete vexation—mouth a thin line, eyebrows heavily lowered.

"Wrex… what the hell is that?"

The krogan obviously knew what Shepard was referring to and could not resist breaking out into another smile of anticipation. "I think that I don't need to say much on that. You like it? Had it installed here just about a year after the war."

Shepard was lost for words as he put a hand to his mouth, simultaneously shaking his head ever so slightly as he appraised the perpetual form the statue had been carefully shaped into.

A thick, white stone. Creamy yet speckled with grains of a glass-like substance. A cross between marble and granite. Any roughened edges had been sheared away by the architect before Tuchanka's notoriously rough weather could have a try at it. The figure stood atop a massive slab, upon which Shepard was able to see a lot clearer, that was rimmed with a variety of skulls from every race imaginable. The base bore no inscription but Shepard did not need any caption to indicate that he was looking at his stone doppelganger.

Whoever had shaped the statue had done a rather good job with the resemblance, Shepard had to concede. His height had been scaled up some, yet that was natural for depictions such as this. The statue portrayed him as clean-shaven, decked out in his bulky yet aerodynamic N7 armor. His hands were shown to clutch an Avenger assault rifle as he gazed confidentially out towards the horizon—in the direction of the bright future ahead.

"My god…" Shepard muttered to himself as he stared into the statue's stone eyes. "What have you done, Wrex?"

Wrex idly glanced at the statue, not at all affected by its presence in the room. "I did say that your name would come to mean 'hero' all over Tuchanka many years ago. We simply figured that we would leave a more lasting impression to give the young ones an idea of who you are."

"Yeah, but what's with the rim of skulls everywhere? Why the morbid imagery?"

"Oh, that was my idea," Wrex admitted. "Krogan like it when their idols are accompanied by their trophies. It gives them credence in their minds, makes them believe that they were successful warriors during their hunt."

So many descriptors regarding Shepard's true opinion of the statue's existence were running through his head so quickly that he was unable to simply pick a few out of thin air. It was like wherever he turned there was always a lingering reminder of his previous occupation: a killer. Now the krogan had gotten in on glorifying his image, perhaps in a tawdry yet earnest portrayal. Standing upon the bones of his enemies, his image struck a magnificent pose, thin cracks seemingly oozing black while the figure's eyes seemed to burn like hot coals. Shepard shuddered, put off by the whole thing.

What would Tali say of this? Would she say this is who I truly am?

How many memorials were going to be constructed of him before everyone would have enough? Could they not just extol their own ability to have survived instead of placing all their admiration upon his tired body? Yet organics did have the tendency to look beyond their own mindset in search of understanding. Placing their trust in others was one of many unique idiosyncrasies that could never be ironed out completely. People needed heroes. They needed deities, beliefs. Something to put their faith in, be it a god or science.

Am I god to these people? Shepard thought miserably. How long will it take until religions start popping up in my name?

"It's not bad," Shepard said haltingly, uneasy, a shaky appraisal of the craftsmanship that had been provided unto the polished rock.

"Look on the bright side," Wrex affectionately jostled Shepard's shoulder. "At least we didn't carve you out riding a thresher maw."

Wrex really could be a smart-ass sometimes, Shepard figured, but it was all in good fun for the krogan. He was actually about to make a snarky remark of his own before his daughter suddenly piped up from near the overhang.

"Wow!" Roahn was leaning over the guardrail in excitement. "That's incredible!"

Wrex glanced over to Shepard, his bright red eyes squinting in mirth. "Sounds like she's noticed another one of our finest architectural feats."

Shepard just squinted his eyes, suspicious of the krogan's mirth.

The krogan then clomped over to where Roahn was lingering upon the overhang. Roahn was rapturously gazing at an enormous dam that had been erected in a thin canyon several miles away. Even from this distance, Roahn was able to spot a thin stream of white water spray down in a tall flume, sending up a cloud of mist near the bottom of the waterfall—the presence of water on Tuchanka at all being a mind-bender for the young girl. The dam itself spanned half a kilometer in length and dredged the entire area of the canyon, a thick and impenetrable stone barrier.

Shepard also slowly drifted over to appraise the sight, once again taking note of the array of dreadnoughts punctuating the waning evening sky. He shoved his hands in his pockets sourly as his ears picked up the faint rumble of sublight engines. Despite being so far away, he had no trouble pinpointing the telltale sound of a warship's engines igniting.

Roahn was more transfixed upon the mechanics of the dam, though. She had her omni-tool open and was shuttering through several images in a harried pace, showing them all to a patient Wrex, who had become the target for her rapturous elation.

"…just like my idea that I presented to my mentors! You've used an arch-gravity dam here—is that to compensate for the amount of water flow or was that a choice used in anticipation of diverting larger water stores to that location? Was the rock stable when you were analyzing where to put the dam? Did you have any concerns that environmental factors might have with the dam's placement? Did—,"

Wrex only chuckled, politely cutting the girl off. "I'm the wrong person to ask on this crap, Roahn. All I do know is that some Alliance engineers," he gestured up at the dreadnoughts hovering overhead off in the distance, "did the bulk of the designs."

"Oh," Roahn looked crestfallen.

"Ah, sorry I can't help you there, kid. But the whole dam has probably been our most important addition to Tuchanka since the war. You see, that dam provides the entire water supply to the Kelphic valley, our most fertile area. With the underground well tapped and under our control, we've been able to focus more of our efforts on rebuilding the surrounding area. The whole valley's been a locus for wayward clans to roost, allowing us to bring them in under our wing."

"Still," Roahn perked her head up. "It's an impressive design. I've never seen one like it in person."

"Yeah, your mother told me a long while back that you had an interest in this sort of stuff. Came up in our calls all the time. Tell me, you still looking to become an architect?"

Ordinarily, Roahn would have considered herself to be someone who would hold their beliefs and dreams steadfastly, allowing little room for spontaneity or sudden shifts in goals. For years she had harbored the desire to work on civil architecture, to manufacture impregnable and fastidiously designed structures meant to provide her people a better life on Rannoch. Hydroelectric dams, solar farms, saline plants—Roahn would have given anything she had owned just to be allowed a glimpse into that life.

But what Roahn did not realize until now was that such a desire had slowly been sapped away from her day after day. A new yearning had taken its place, one that strove to be more ambitious in its nature, to hold a stronger potential that could affect the most change.

It was the fact that her initial plan to work in civil engineering now seemed rather… quaint. It was no longer bold to her, not when she realized that there was a chance for her to enact a more grandiose vision. There were bigger problems out there more onerous than just what her people on Rannoch faced. Issues more demanding, the scale of which was impressive to a degree tenfold above what she experienced on a daily basis. It required a formidable sort to rise above the set limitations, to face more arduous tasks ahead.

And it all stemmed from her father.

There were still problems out there in the galaxy that a hammer and a nail could not hope to fix. How could she possibly sleep at night when a place like Omega, filled with depravity and squalor, continued to exist? Governments were exploiting their own people, corporations were running roughshod over established laws for profit, and decay borne from destruction still continued to exist upon all civilized worlds. Would helping only one world be a better use of her talents, or could she help several? To make a positive difference in the galaxy, to make a big ripple in such a large pond—if she had such an ability to do so, then why not take it?

Roahn's hand aimlessly drifted near the pistol strapped to her hip. Her father had done so much with a mere gun, pointed at the root of all evil. He destroyed his problems by blasting them from all existence, and the galaxy had been saved because of it. He had stopped the Reapers. One man had done the work of a million lifetimes—her father had achieved the impossible.

To live up to that—to strive to do better—was a far more worthy goal. If Roahn felt that she had the panacea for many of the wrongs in this sorry galaxy, then she more than likely had an obligation to do something about it.

Build a dam, stopper a well… or administer a vaccine to the corruption and the plutocrats who fed that infernal growth.

"Perhaps," Roahn finally said. "I don't know. We'll see."

There was a pregnant pause in the air, certainly an affordable time for Roahn to explain herself to Wrex, and her father as well who was standing nearby. The quiet rush in through the open cavern of the temple forced her words back down her throat as she felt a little twinge at the base of her spine, realizing too late that she was being forewarned.

Danger. Here. All around them.

Above them, the sounds of a scuffle became apparent as the krogan guards appeared to be occupied with something up in the rafters. There were soft grunts, sharp but nearly silent slashing noises, and soon one was able to easily pick up the breath of the wind once silence overtook them.

Such a draft felt wrong. On Tuchanka, silence only meant that trouble was about to spring up.

Wrex apparently had the same idea as he wordlessly handed a submachine gun to Shepard, taken from a spare slot upon his back. Shepard quickly checked the weapon to find it filled with thermal clips, ready and awaiting, his hands already going through practiced motions that age could never iron out.

Very soon, the temple gave a wheeze only for the stillness to be split apart with a blast as something dropped down from the top level, a gray blur, and smashed into the ground in front of the statue of Shepard. Hydraulics whirred, servos hissed, and the ground crackled from where the object had impacted into it, fissures erupting into the rock as the floor failed to completely take the weight of the individual that had hurtled down from the heavens.

From out of the cloud of dust, burnt amber eyes blaring fiercely in an array of fiery comets, the Legionnaire stood up from the chalky mist, pristine and daunting, apparently unarmed as he strode towards Shepard and everyone else, who were all congregated near the overhang.

Up on the top level, the Urdnot guards had all vanished, now having been replaced by armored humans, all holding powerful assault rifles whose laser sights cut a path through the murky air, positioned directly on everyone's chest. Wrex, on the other hand, had at least three separate people sighting on him due to his size.

"Roahn," Shepard uttered as he held up his submachine gun at the slowly approaching Legionnaire, "hide."

"What about—," the girl started to protest.

"Run, now!" Shepard urged.

Looking around the crowd of her father's friends, Roahn saw from Garrus, Liara, and even Wrex, that all were silently bequeathing her to follow Shepard's orders. A child should not be this close to danger.

Unfathomably torn, Roahn gasped a tiny little cry as she scampered down the closest stairway, her pleading eyes lingering upon the angry and determined stare of her father that bled in the direction of the Legionnaire.

Less than ten meters away from where Shepard stood, yet still did not fire, the Legionnaire finally halted, every one of his optics trained upon the weary human. He appeared to be clutching something in his hand, and it was only when the cyborg raised his arm did Shepard realize that the Legionnaire was holding the severed head of one of the Urdnot guards. Fresh blood dripped from the cut neck, quickly splattering a puddle at the Legionnaire's feet. The wound appeared to have been finely cut, with a laser scalpel, and the krogan's eyes had rolled all the way up into his head. Wordlessly, the cyborg dropped his arm and tossed the head in Shepard's direction with a horrid plopping noise. The head spat blood in all directions as it rolled, stopping just short of Shepard's feet.

"I see that your strategy, when confronted with your mortality, was to flee to the refuge that your allies could presumably provide," the Legionnaire hissed, the binary tones of his voice grinding against each other in a hellish cacophony before appraising every member of the group in turn. "You've amassed old faces since we've last met. Did you think that they would be an adequate deterrent for me? Should I be flattered?"

"Shepard," Wrex rumbled as he brought out a Claymore shotgun, "is this the fool you had warned me about yesterday? The one who's been chasing you?"

Recalling the terror of having the cyborg burst through the front doors of his house, solid matter barely acting as an interruption to the behemoth, Shepard gave an involuntary shudder. "Yes, it is."

"Urdnot Wrex," the Legionnaire said in a self-satisfied voice, "your participation will only be a distraction to me. I've waited too long to be hampered from any outside interference this time—there is no point in trying to protect your friend. Walk away and be spared."

"You might be disappointed!" Garrus growled as he stepped into the fray, his rifle at the ready. Liara joined alongside the turian, her head tilted behind the sights of her own weapon, body rippling with biotic energy.

The Legionnaire just appraised the group as casually as one might consult what food to pick from a buffet while weapons clicked in readiness all around him. "The legendary team, brought back together. You should all be assuaged to learn that I am not here to harm Shepard at all. Having him dead is not my objective. On the other hand, I must point out that if you do decide to step in to protect your friend, I might not be so lenient. I might even get carried away."

"You won't even touch him!" Liara snarled, her brow furrowing in anger.

Next to all of them, Shepard wanted to voice his profound thanks to his dear friends. Even after all this time, they still showed him such devout loyalty, such staunch affection and love that they could not even comprehend, even for a nanosecond, abandoning him to this thing. His mouth had run dry due to anticipation, however, and Shepard's finger nervously quaked as he lightly positioned it upon the trigger. He had seen the Legionnaire in action and he knew what the cyborg was capable of. He had nearly been torn apart the last time and the Legionnaire had not even been armed at that time!

Did everyone truly understand the danger inherent right now?

"I'm not surrendering to you," Shepard found enough strength to snarl, confidence overriding his nerves. "Larsen and Chimera won't have me willingly."

In amusement, the Legionnaire tilted his head by a fraction of a degree. "You know I don't need you to be willing, Commander."

"Enough talk!" Wrex bellowed as he racked the slide of his gun. "I say let's kill this idiot and be done with it."

The Legionnaire subtly wilted, as if he had been expecting this line of dialogue to have generated a beneficial outcome in the very end, no matter how hopeless the outlook had been. In fact, the cyborg almost seemed to be disappointed.

"So be it," came the metallic beast's cold reply.

Quick as a flash, the Legionnaire hunched down into a striking position while a variety of flaps sprung open upon his shoulders. There was a harsh whining sound, reminiscent of an engine spooling up, and suddenly twin blasts of flame erupted from the Legionnaire's back—two rocket boosters propelling him across the ground faster than anyone could react. There was the acrid tang of rocket fuel in the air. Smoke funneled across the ground.

Wrex was quick on the draw, but the Legionnaire was faster. The cyborg had reached Wrex's position, easily ducked the shotgun blast that seemed to split the air in half, and whirled in a strike that knocked the shotgun clean out of the krogan's hands. Before Wrex could counter, the Legionnaire roughly grabbed at the collar of Wrex's armor, slugged the krogan once in the face—breaking Wrex's nose and causing a spurt of blood to gush down his front—and brought his head to within an inch of the krogan's face.

"Have fun," the Legionnaire whispered.

The cyborg then abruptly pivoted, thick heels pounding and squealing upon worn stones, as he gripped Wrex's armor, now lifting the krogan up from the ground. Hydraulics wrenched and vibrated torturously in the Legionnaire's arms, but the cyborg was able to pick up two tons of krogan quite handedly. Wrex, bleeding profusely from his nose, had no idea what was going on, for he had been so stunned at the Legionnaire's brazen attack. The Legionnaire then gave a punishing wrench and swung his arms in a wide throw that hurtled Wrex into the air. The krogan flew upwards, clearing several stories until his arc finally catapulted him upon the third floor with a crash, a mushroom cloud of dust lazily puffing over the balcony as Wrex sailed out of sight.

Shepard had been staring at the display with a stupid expression—he had assumed that Wrex would have been able to mount a decent defense against the Legionnaire, but he had been dealt with careless abandon. Fear pooled in his belly, spiking upward towards his chest in a black mass.

A wordless roar punctuated his lips as he finally held the trigger of the submachine gun down. Bullets lazily pinged off of the Legionnaire's armor, throwing up microsecond displays of sparks. The Legionnaire slowly turned around to face Shepard, almost as if he was oblivious to the fact that he was being shot. The shields and armor draping around him were holding strong enough to contain the brunt of the assault. Certainly he regarded Shepard with an air of amusement, like the gun the human was holding in his hands was nothing more than a toy throwing up a veneer of noise and light. Flickers of impacts spattered across the face of the cyborg, illuminating him with frightful flashes.

The jerking of the gun in Shepard's hands jolted up his arms, his muscles scrambling to contain the bite of the recoil. This was all real. The panic, the sounds, the anger. But the Legionnaire was shrugging it off like he existed in a dream-like dimension, unable to be harmed from his pitiful attacks.

The Legionnaire growled, his shields singing as Garrus and Liara joined in the fray by peppering him with sustained fire. The cyborg bounded behind a stone pillar, his hands still weaponless, giving his shields some time to recharge.

Liara sidestepped, eyes dead set ahead, as she prepared to flank the column. She maneuvered behind another pillar after ejecting her thermal clip. Garrus and Shepard both reloaded too, the twin clangs of their ejected clips clinking delicately upon the ground.

But the Legionnaire had heard the tell-tale signs of the three reloading their weapons at the same time. Bursting out from behind the column in a frenzied rush, there was that spooling up sound again, and the Legionnaire was suddenly propelled right in the direction where Shepard was standing, his own submachine gun off-center as he worked to get it in line.

It was too late, as the Legionnaire skidded to a stop just a foot from Shepard's reach. "You'll be dealt with in due time," the cyborg uttered as he swiped a hand forth, a thin smear of gray coloration that scraped across the breadth of Shepard's vision. Shepard felt something clip the side of his head, a glancing blow, and the world unexpectedly turned the wrong way up. He was knocked backward, tumbling down a series of steps to a sublevel of the temple, a fresh cut on his forehead bubbling hot blood that trickled down his dirtied skin.

The Legionnaire watched Shepard plummet down the stairs but did not pursue. Instead, he directed his attention to the other two individuals in the room who were still continuing to level a fair amount of fire his way.

Garrus raised his assault rifle slightly as he yanked upon his secondary trigger. A slow moving projectile shot out of the under-barrel with a puff, scything through the air as it left a thin streak behind. The Legionnaire did not move to avoid it and simply let the concussive projectile hit him square in the middle of his chest. The projectile impacted with a bang but the Legionnaire was still standing in the aftermath. Soundless, the enormous cyborg had simply been forced back a few feet, his heels leaving white gouges in the ground as he had bent his knees to take the full brunt of the kinetic energy. With a clanking noise, the cyborg's knees unlocked and he straightened back up, electronic warbles rumbling through his vocabulator. Cantankerously, the Legionnaire plodded forward once more.

His eyes wide behind his visor, Garrus ceased fire for a crucial moment before regaining his wits again. He thumbed a control on his omni-tool and the Legionnaire was suddenly lit alight as an electronic pulse zapped into him, momentarily stunned from the overload burst. Electricity fizzled and briefly arced away, wrapping around the cyborg in a harsh embrace of deadly energy. Garrus tasted ozone on his tongue. His nose wrinkled.

But the Legionnaire was not one to be overcome so easily. The burst eventually trickled away, leaving him with full functionality again. His armor did not appear to have been scuffed nor did his chassis seem discombobulated from the burst. Garrus then realized that the overload blast had merely affected a sizable chunk of the Legionnaire's shields and not any of his physical functionalities, harmlessly warping away at the invisible surface while leaving no lasting damage to his actual enemy.

The Legionnaire growled, his optics slanting dangerously as he was becoming a little annoyed with these constant interruptions. It was time to switch things up a bit.

In two powerful strides, the Legionnaire had made it to Garrus' position whereupon he roughly shunted out a hand, his alloy palm impacting firmly upon Garrus' chestplate, cracking a few ribs instantaneously. Garrus was shot in a straight line across the ground until his back finally collided with a firm pillar responsible for holding up the heavy ceiling. With the wind knocked out of him, he crumpled.

That just left Liara as the last person standing in the room, and even though Garrus was now out of commission for the time being, she did not let her panic clearly show upon her face. Being slightly longer lived than most species, and given her experience with the mantle of the Shadow Broker, Liara had already mastered the art of concealing her expression in the face of such horrific danger.

Yet such training was useless when said enemy had no facial expressions of their own to counter.

After Liara's pistol coughed a few times, producing no effect, she finally stowed it with a scowl. So, if conventional weapons were not going to do the trick here, perhaps it was time to move on to more unconventional means.

Liara closed her eyes, deepened her mind, and calmly drew from the well of limitless energy that infested her cells, absorbing the dark power that leeched from the nucleus of her own being as she swirled the force into a rotund ball between her fingers. Thick tendrils of biotic energy blazed from her fingertips and an aura of throbbing invisible energy pulsed in the palms of her hands. She spread out her arms and flowed her stance into an effortful push, creating a singularity of hunger between her and the Legionnaire.

The rip in space-time tore the dust from the walls, levitating pebbles and stones in its wake. The Legionnaire was close enough to the black hole that had been composed of intense mass effect fields to be influenced by the gravitational chaos in its wake, but claw-like spikes burst from his feet, anchoring the cyborg to the ground while the singularity feasted upon all matter. Liara began to sweat as she held the hole open, her muscles already starting to burn as she concentrated her mind to this task. But no matter how much Liara persisted, the Legionnaire was unaffected by the influence of the singularity. The cyborg held his ground, still bolted onto the stone floor, as he patiently waited for Liara's energy to be sapped as she futilely continued to hold the singularity open.

With a final gasp, Liara dropped her arms and the singularity collapsed on itself with a fierce crackle. There was a springing noise and the claws on the Legionnaire's feet retracted back into his legs, allowing him to continue stalking forward.

"You won't take another step forward!" Liara roared as she clenched a fist, pulling more strength from the power that fueled her body, causing her entire limb to glow a brilliant shade of white-hot purple as the energy of the universe gathered around her skin. She then unclenched her fist, and at the same time a furious field of pure white segmented light blanketed the Legionnaire, completely dousing him in a stasis field.

The Legionnaire briefly halted, his body microscopically jerking in protest as the field inhibited his movements. Liara strained from both the force of holding the field and from the sheer power the Legionnaire was flexing in his attempt to escape. Liara's lungs shriveled as the breath left her. Something ruptured in her head, causing blood to pour out of a nostril. She wheezed, gray spots dotting her vision. It was hopeless—she had not allowed herself enough time to recover after creating that singularity. Her energy reserves had been sapped. The stasis field was failing—already she could see it straining against the outline of the cyborg trapped beneath the vibrant display, sparking and hissing.

Then a cruel voice reached her ears, insanely able to pierce the haunting glow.

"You don't have a choice."

The Legionnaire burst free from the field with a roar of victory. The stasis barrier shattered to the sound of breaking glass, the force rippling out from the epicenter in a wave of pressure, sweeping Liara completely off her feet with a cry. She had not been strong enough to hold a man of metal and sheer will. His rage and power had far outmatched hers at every turn.

Still flung from the detonation, Liara's head swam as her brain fought to make heads or tails of her orientation. However, her head met something hard and then everything momentarily turned black.

Liara's foe, after seeing her collapse into unconsciousness, did not revel in his victory. He instead turned on a heel, the opposition pacified, as he made his way towards where he had flung his quarry down a steep set of steps. Only when he finally reached the staircase, the Legionnaire discovered that the space down below was empty. No body lay at the foot of the stairs.

A light blinked near the Legionnaire's visor and a noise reminiscent of a construction siren automatically escaped him. No matter. Shepard surely could not have gotten very far. Also, with his friends in danger, would he really be so callous to leave them like this?

"Now…" the Legionnaire purred in anticipation. "Where did you go, Shepard?"

---

Just a few levels above, Wrex shook his head, dumbfounded at his predicament, rubble coursing off of him like water. One moment he had been squaring up against the most monstrous humanoid he had ever seen, the next he had been weightless through the air, traveling upward at a speed unknowable to most krogan. He had impacted against a nearby wall heavily, but that had not hurt much. He did not even think that he was bleeding, aside from his nose, which the impact of a quite heavy fist had apparently ruptured something.

But was he mad. A blazing anger that so naturally came to him, filling his breath with fire and coursing through his veins like a pleasure drug. Oh, the indignity of being thrown like a sack of meat! That bastard Legionnaire would rue the day he laid hands on Urdnot Wrex! No one threw a krogan and lived to tell the tale!

That would have to wait, for Wrex was soon aware that a squad of Chimera troopers were bearing down on him, rifles at the ready. They did not fire yet, because most humans had learned by that point that bullets just tend to make krogans mad when not in sync with each other. Wrex groaned as he rolled himself onto his stomach, pushing himself up with his fists.

"On my command," the lead Chimera mercenary growled, his voice scratchy through his mouthpiece, "we perforate him. Three… two…"

"One!" Wrex finished as he lashed out with an arm, a biotic wave sweeping out from the gesture and catching three Chimera mercs across the chest. Two of them were launched over the side of the guardrail to plummet three stories down. The third was propelled so hard and so far that he had been launched directly into a statue of a krogan wielding a sword near the far wall. The unlucky solider slammed into the statue, the stone point of the sword impaling the man in the back of the neck and out the front of the jaw, cracking his face in half and sending a mutilated mass of shattered bone and torn sinew gushing to the ground. The man gurgled once as he hung upon the sword, gave a single jerk, and abruptly died, his entire torso slick with blood.

The rest of the Chimera troopers on the floor looked at Wrex's handiwork and then back to Wrex, now understandably weary at the thought of engaging a warlord like him in open combat.

Wrex had no time to gawk, for his plates were itching for a fight, every single nerve wired red-hot in his body. His strength returned, he leaped to his feet and lunged over to where another statue of a famous krogan warrior held an actual battle-hammer—an extremely dense and sharpened stone, nigh un-crackable, that had been sculpted to fit a thick staff able to heft its weight. Wrex gave a yank and the statue offered the hammer to him easily, the bust's arms crumbling away from the rude force.

With a laugh, Wrex charged into the mass of troopers and gave a wild swing with the hammer as he embarked upon his savage melee. The first strike caught a human upon his side, carrying him across the ground, only for the man to impact into a wall. The force from the hammer then met the wall a split-second later, cutting the human in half and liquefying his insides. Wrex twirled the gore-stained hammer as erratic bursts of fire cut stark paths in his direction, his skin stinging as hot pellets sliced at his skin.

The pain was good. It merely served to fuel his anger.

Still roaring with laughter, Wrex leaped forward to embroil himself once more into carnage. He became a whirling dervish with the hammer; one swing took a man's head off, another blow shattered every bone in a trooper's leg, all the while screams and pathetic coughs filled Wrex's ears.

Wading into glory, Wrex could only grin as he hefted the hammer for another blow.

This was fun!

---

Meanwhile, Roahn curled into a fetal position, the booms from upstairs easily making their way down to where she was hiding. Streams of dust trickled down from the ceiling. The stone hallways seemed to shift. Sharp crackles echoed in her mind. Panic rose within her.

She had dutifully obeyed her father's order to run away, but she had become so hopelessly lost after turning corner after corner that felt she had gained no ground at all. At the first shadowy corner she ran into, Roahn wasted no time in stuffing herself where the shadows were thickest, hoping that she would become invisible, to disappear into thin air as the chaos from above continued to reign.

Too long. The sounds of battle had been going on for too long. Roahn groaned to herself, a self-serving cry of despair meant to echo her frustrations, her fears. Her father… was he all right? Was Garrus? Liara? Wrex? The very thought of the Legionnaire doing her heroes harm was unfathomable, but deep down she knew it was possible. Based on the terror that had laced her father's voice when he had told her to run, Roahn knew that the Legionnaire was no ordinary enemy. This was a force that could kill on command, break through every barrier.

And Roahn had left everyone there to deal with it.

Angrily, she shunted a fist into the wall, only to cry out when pain flared in her knuckles. Who knew punching rock would be a wasted effort? Roahn tried not to let any tears spill forth, frightened beyond belief as she raised her hands to grasp her helmeted head, her fingers briefly brushing the pistol strapped to her side.

The pistol…

It was not the weapon that spurred her mind so, but it gave way to a new train of thought that send her down on a roller coaster of congruent ideas. Did she not decide that she had wanted to make a positive difference in the galaxy just earlier today? Well, she might not be the most accurate shot with a gun, nor did she have a hope of providing any assistance with such a weapon, but maybe there was another route for her to take. Something that played to her strengths a bit better.

Fumbling fingers opened her omni-tool, and her glowing eyes shot back and forth as she realized that the orange glow now lit up the black corner she had wedged herself into, but she had to sacrifice something to get this done. Roahn opened up her applications to find what she was looking for. Her geologic survey rider! Her academy project! She had a bunch of blueprints that were mostly prototypical and academic at best, but there were still some functions that were shared with her omni-tool already.

A multi-spectrum scanning tool, for instance.

A radar-like dish icon then booted up upon her tool, emitting a flat circle in a projected radius of little more than a dozen meters. Her fingers then set the filter to detect localized electrical pulses, namely those that were densely grouped upon one figure. Her radar came back with a singular ping—a lone red dot on the display.

That must be the Legionnaire! Roahn realized. Her scanner had isolated him from everyone else. Now, if she remembered her studies correctly, high-concept technologies and electronics were more susceptible to high-frequency wavelengths in order to prevent malfunctions. The Legionnaire would be hardened against such wavelengths, obviously, but if she initiated a concentrated band of waves of lower energy and a longer wavelength like… say… microwaves all congregated into one area, she could perpetuate a large scale of energy traffic that could potentially interfere with the Legionnaire's systems, like a DDoS attack!

Roahn pummeled the button to begin the transmission, but to her chagrin, her omni-tool was telling her that she did not have the range to keep up a steady attack stream. The stone walls here were also a problem, her microwaves were having trouble penetrating them and reaching up to the next floor.

"Bosh'tet!" Roahn cursed as she clambered to her feet. She was going to have to get closer.

---

Something was wrong.

The Legionnaire felt it before his systems diagnostics could detect that something was amiss. It started with a tiny little flicker on his HUD before several attributes lining his vision abruptly darkened. Targeting, data streams, visualization programs began to reboot all at once. This was certainly unexpected.

A recorded snarl emitted from his vocabulator in reflex as the Legionnaire gave his dome a tap. Slowly, his display was returning to normal, but this was a glitch he could not afford to have right now. At the very least, this meant that the techs back at Chimera HQ were going to have to take a look at him once this was all said and done—and the Legionnaire did not like the threat of such a prospect one bit.

Now… back to the matter at hand.

Just then, a smoke grenade rolled at the Legionnaire's feet, lightly nudging at the polished metal boots. The cyborg glanced downward idly only for it to detonate in his face, obscuring the area with a heavy, noxious fog. The Legionnaire's air intakes automatically filtered out particulates for him to breathe, so there was no coughing reaction involved here. The cyborg slowly rotated in place, using his advanced optics to peer through the fog, taking note that, aside from the hissing grenade, the area had become unusually quiet.

"You can't hide forever, Shepard," he taunted, his voice sounding like he would be gnashing his teeth if he had any. "Nor can you sneak up on me. We both were born from fire and combat, but I was built for it. If you think that you're able to get the upper hand, you are mistaken!"

To prove his point, the Legionnaire spun around just in time to catch Shepard stepping out from behind a column, already unleashing a concussive burst towards the cyborg. The Legionnaire sidestepped the projectile, keeping his head fixed in Shepard's direction, swiveling only when he had to wrench his body to the side.

"Sloppy of you, Commander."

Weathered from fear and rage, Shepard's face relaxed into an intense stare of determination as he held the trigger down on full, his submachine gun barking as it unleashed a hail of fire that exploded from the short barrel. The Legionnaire jolted as some of the shots slammed into his frame—he then realized that Shepard was using armor-piercing rounds, which were much more effective at keeping him pacified compared to what anyone else had been doing. Withstanding so much fire would eventually take a toll, which is why the Legionnaire decided to ramp up the speed of his attacks, no longer keen on taking things at a laborious pace.

Darting from cover to cover, the Legionnaire ran ahead of the spread that Shepard was able to lay down with his gun. Shepard was a fantastic shot, but his reflexes, enhanced or not, were no match for the cold calculation of machinery. The Legionnaire leaped and jumped from column to column, bullets leaving chunks in the pillars behind him as he traversed the open space of the temple. Upon nearing Shepard's position, the Legionnaire dropped from the sky, a hand ripping at the stone tower to slow his descent, sending chunks of razor-sharp rock flying.

Shepard moved out of the way just in time before the Legionnaire landed right where he had been standing. There was no time left, however, for him to retaliate because the evasive maneuvers had clumsily knocked off his aim. The Legionnaire then reached out and encountered little resistance in ripping the gun from Shepard's hands. The cyborg flexed the weapon in his hands and easily cracked it in two, spraying metallic innards, shards of polymer, and a slew of thermal clips across the floor.

While the Legionnaire busied himself with tossing the two halves of the ruined submachine gun to the side, Shepard shuffled his feet and scampered over behind a stone bench, his eyes fruitlessly scanning for a weapon to defend himself with. His escape routes were blocked by the mechanoid—there was nowhere to run without rushing headlong into the cyborg's arms. Any attempts to formulate a plan fizzled out in moments within his head, the strands of thought unwilling to be connected.

The manlike reproduction stopped just a few meters short of Shepard's cover, all geared up in preparation to strike, yet the Legionnaire held back.

"You haven't been as deferential as I had hoped, Shepard," the Legionnaire taunted. "Your rashness is only jeopardizing the lives of others not in our immediate proximity."

That claim sounded ludicrous to Shepard and he nearly poked his head out from behind the stone bench in confusion. "How the hell do you figure that?!"

"Simple," the Legionnaire hissed as he made a gesture in the air, booting up an image upon his omni-tool and blasting its size up so that Shepard could see. "I've been holding a trump card all this time."

Now Shepard leaned out of cover to ascertain what the Legionnaire was referring to. Upon the viewscreen, he was able to observe a singular item located in a dim room. Static occasionally warped the image but Shepard had a good interpretation of the item being shown—a rotund item, a little less than a meter in diameter, with a few red blinking diodes upon the top hemisphere. A stand kept the object up, preventing it from rolling away as an unreadable timer impassively clicked down.

Shepard's blood ran cold. He had been exposed to far too many of these items to treat them with disdain. The feed that the Legionnaire would not be a simple recording, but live. This was not a joke, no trickery involved here. He could not make out the immediate surroundings of the bulbous object, but Shepard intrinsically knew that he, along with everyone else, could be in the most terrible sort of danger ever imagined.

"You have a nuke?" Shepard uttered in horror. "Where?"

"Oh, somewhere out there," the Legionnaire rasped as he let loose a cruel laugh to accompany his confidence. The cyborg made a sweeping gesture out towards the open air behind Shepard, a broad signal that stretched out towards the horizon. "The only question is… where, exactly?"

Against his better judgment, Shepard craned his head over to look out towards the stretch of canyons far below. The Legionnaire simply stood by, patiently waiting for Shepard to come to a conclusion on his own terms. From what Shepard could see, and from what he was able to frantically determine, was that there could be an innumerable amount of places where the Legionnaire would have planted such a device. A nuclear bomb—what madness was Chimera planning? All of Shepard's body seemed to ache wearily. His eyelids drooped from fatigue.

A broad stretch of the krogan border was all within sight of Shepard's position. He gazed to and fro, ignoring the collection of Alliance dreadnoughts dotting the sky, as he thought battle strategy. Where to place a nuke? What was Chimera's objective? Maximum casualties? Resource denial? As far as he could tell, the only viable target in his line of sight was that dam down below—blowing it up would not only take away a much-needed source of energy, but would also flood the heavily populated valley that it served. Thousands of krogans would die—men, women, and children. Yes… the dam was the likely target.

"You… animal," Shepard mustered, infuriated at his impotence. "You would kill thousands just to get to me?"

"I'd kill as many as it would take to get the mission done," the Legionnaire retorted. "Tactical deployment, low radius nuclear device. The blast zone won't take us, but it might bode badly for others. I told you before that you were the only thing standing in my way. I will finally fulfill my destiny once I take care of you."

"How did you even get the nuke? Chimera's not supposed to be a nuclear power!"

"Spoils of war from STG. They were the first to illegally take possession of the nuke to begin with. You could say that I took it off their hands. Saved them the trouble of having to cover their actions up."

The Legionnaire then shut off the feed of his omni-tool and proceeded to lift his left arm, his thumb making a clicking sound as a pulsating haptic button began to strobe upon his palm.

"We've talked long enough, Shepard," the Legionnaire said as his thumb tauntingly inched closer to the button, which Shepard presumed was the detonator. "Surrender yourself and we can avoid any potential messiness from occurring."

A bevy of options ran the gamut in Shepard's head, overtaking one another in their bid for permanence. Give up and save many lives, or keep on fighting while sacrificing innocent people in the process… not to mention that victory in his case seemed lightyears away. Still, Shepard was nearly about to metaphorically spit in the Legionnaire's face by telling him to go fuck himself when a battle cry from the far end of the room interrupted him.

"YAAAARRRGGHH!" Wrex roared as he vaulted over the railing of the third story, a purple outline wrapping around him—a biotic field—that slowed his velocity so that he could land on the ground safely. The krogan hefted the war hammer in his hands as he gnashed his teeth, red eyes rimmed with the lust for blood. "You think you can threaten my people? Threaten Shepard? You're dead, pyjak!"

Bellowing, Wrex ducked his head in a fierce charge and practically leaped all the way across to where the Legionnaire was standing. The cyborg had been so absorbed with Shepard that he had initially paid the krogan no mind, but it was not until the ground started to quake from the onrushing Wrex did the Legionnaire partially rotate his body, irritable at the interference.

This time, the Legionnaire was the one who was too slow. Wrex had already swung the hammer down in a massive strike, the edge of the substantial stone creating a whistling noise through the air right before it smashed down onto the Legionnaire's wrist. Armor cracked, wires sparked, and a few of the cyborg's fingers were smashed out of alignment while the hammer finished its strike by embedding itself into the ground, creating a miniature shockwave in the process.

The Legionnaire briefly looked down at his maimed hand, his omni-tool now shorting out along his forearm. The armor was scratched and gouged, several of the components were exposed, and the barest amount of functionality remained in the limb.

Wrex was not finished, as hundreds of pounds of muscle all flexed in his massive arms, and he twisted his body to yank the hammer from the ground, gentle trails of dust trickling off the head as it lifted up, and whirled in a fearsome sideways blow that seemed to part the very air entirely. The krogan's mouth was open—completely soundless—as the hammer screamed on target towards the Legionnaire's head.

CRAAACK!

More armor bits flew and the Legionnaire staggered a few steps, electronic-sounding feedback escaping in a fearsome warble. The cyborg immediately clasped his working hand to where the hammer had struck his head, his breathing now coming in faint rasps. Shepard could see that the right side of the Legionnaire's metal skull had been crumpled inward slightly, several of the panels now being bent out of alignment. All the oculi on that side had either darkened or had been shattered outright. The armor there was scuffed, and a few errant sparks dripped out from the dark gaps. The faceplate of the Legionnaire had also been badly warped—Shepard could now get a cleaner view into the bloody bone-like structure that lingered beyond the metal partition. A disgusting marriage of organic and synthetic that slowly wept blood.

The Legionnaire coughed as he stumbled away from Wrex, his remaining eyes all trained upon the krogan. Ruffling himself up, much like a bird of paradise, the cyborg straightened, growling continuously like a fearsome beast that had been backed into a corner.

And a cornered beast was more dangerous than one out in the open.

"Oh… you fool," the Legionnaire rumbled in laughter, his voice even more distorted now that his synthesizer had been ruined. All that came out was the treble timbre, making the Legionnaire's voice seem like a horrid and light whisper. "Did you really think that my omni-tool in my arm was the key to the detonator? You could never have stopped this, anyway."

In a cruel demonstration of just how unfair this galaxy was, the Legionnaire gave a twitch of his head, a brief radio broadcast emitting from an antenna within his body.

Shepard froze, a sigh barely escaping his lips.

Then the sky turned ruby.

Sound seemed to escape the air, like a vacuum had sucked all of the noise out from Tuchanka itself. Shepard had to turn away as the light of a billion candles flared at his back, deepening the sky to a crimson color. It was as if the very atmosphere was dripping blood. For a fraction of a second, Shepard felt heat flare at his exposed skin and he dropped down to the ground, covering his head as he did so.

Yet… something was amiss. The warmth from the blast was too cold. Colder than he expected. The light had been blinding, but not completely debilitating. And Shepard had still not heard the actual explosion itself. From the distance to the dam, Shepard should have heard it at least ten seconds after the actual detonation.

Bewildered and disorganized, Shepard straightened up from where he had collapsed upon the ground, despite recalling in his training to never get up in the event of a nuclear strike. Dread encroaching upon his bones, he turned in place to get a better view, only to gape in astonishment at the sight.

The dam was still intact. It had not disappeared underneath a veil of smoke, dust, and fire. It had never been the target at all. Instead, a lick of orange flame off in the distance caught Shepard's eye and he leaned over the guardrail, half his body hanging in open air as his jaw dropped. Something was falling out of the sky. One… no, two… no, five ships were tumbling to the ground several miles away. The cloud cover between Shepard and the far away ships had all been evaporated from the blast, allowing him to view everything in clear, pristine air. But those ships… who did they belong to?

It was only when the shadowy outlines of the vessels fell across the path of the sun did Shepard feel bile rise up in his stomach. Those were the Alliance dreadnoughts that had been blown out of the sky, crumpled to pieces from the nuclear explosion. Hundreds of crewmen and women, all gone down with their respective ships. Chimera had just bombed the Alliance. Shepard could only stare, helpless, as the warships smashed into the rocky earth of Tuchanka, secondary explosions rimming the horizon as more and more of the frigates joined their brethren in death.

"Monster…" Shepard wheezed as he turned around, his body movements slow and murky like he had been submerged in gelatin. "You motherfuck—"

It had been an indelicate decision when the chemicals in Shepard's brain had set upon him the desire to face the Legionnaire in open combat—without a weapon—but logic gave way to instinct as the mushroom cloud of the explosion started to furrow upwards behind him. Shepard whirled just in time for a bevy of armored Chimera troopers to collide at full speed with him, forcing his back to bend at an awkward angle against the railing. Heavy gauntlets forced themselves at his arms and soon Shepard felt the bite of omni-cuffs eat into his wrists. He jerked in the grip of the troopers, but his strength had finally been sapped—he could no longer mount an effective resistance. That did not matter much to the mercs, as one of them was getting fed up with Shepard's struggling that he reared his fist back and punched the hardened veteran in the jaw. Shepard felt his mouth fill up with blood. He tasted iron.

"No, no," he heard the Legionnaire call out. The troopers eased off a little but still kept their grip on Shepard. "He's not to be badly damaged. We can't have any evidence of physical coercion."

The mercs then rudely deposited Shepard onto the ground, where he could only roll about like a pathetic worm.

"You bastard," Shepard gritted after spitting out a mouthful of blood, a single strand dribbling down his chin and staining his beard. "You tricked me."

The Legionnaire just placidly stared back. "You made an incorrect assumption, Shepard. That is something that I cannot be held accountable for."

Past a swirling mass of smoke and dust, Shepard's eyes twitched over in the direction of a shadow that had parted the clouds as they limped towards the Legionnaire. Wrex, bloodstained and angry, hefted the enormous war hammer in preparation for one, final blow.

But the Legionnaire had detected that Shepard's eyes had focused onto something entirely, and spun so quickly he could have been a top, locking murderous gazes with Wrex just before he could lay into his foe. The Legionnaire's good arm shot upwards and knocked the hammer out of Wrex's grip, sending it crashing to the floor. Wrex, now with no weight to counterbalance, stumbled forward, momentarily caught off guard. The Legionnaire used this opportunity to call out the anodized blade housed within his wrist. With a shink, the blade slid into view, dying sunlight melting across its polished face. Almost carelessly, the cyborg swiped upward, the point of the razor searing mercilessly towards Wrex's face.

There was an explosion of blood and Wrex howled. Somewhere off in the distance, Shepard could have sworn he heard the echo of a scream.

Wrex backed away, yowling, as orange ichor profusely dripped from his face. The krogan momentarily lifted his hands away for Shepard to see that the Legionnaire's blade had scraped across Wrex's right eye, putting it out. That eye was a black pit now, oozing and useless. Wrex sank to a knee, surprised at the amount of pain that could have come from such a quick wound.

"No!" Shepard roared as he called his second wind into play. Leaping to his feet, he was able to knock away the Chimera thugs holding him back while his cuffed hands grabbed at a Paladin pistol holstered upon one of their waistbands.

Shepard leapt forward, eager to unload the entire clip into the Legionnaire's head, but the fearsome mechanoid lunged across and backhanded Shepard hard across the jaw, sending him flying and rolling to a stop at the base of the statue of himself. Solemn stone eyes stared into Shepard's blue ones. His posture, forever embedded in rock, etched a contrasting picture of the man collapsed before it. Shepard's strength waned, his body refusing to move.

Taunts of failure filled Shepard's head as he groaned, dazed. Cruel laughter lingered as his disappointment in himself festered within his soul.

Meanwhile, Wrex was stumbling to his feet again, eager to engage the Legionnaire again, but the cyborg had long noticed the danger rising within the krogan, which was why he had unlatched the automatic shotgun that had been hanging upon his back the entire time, the heat bleed-off system already connected to his chassis.

The Legionnaire pointed the gun at the krogan.

Shepard gagged, his chest hurting too much, preventing him from screaming.

"Enough of this," the Legionnaire spat and he fired once into Wrex. More orange blood erupted and blossomed across Shepard's vision. Wrex's left arm, blasted off at the elbow, crumpled to the ground. The krogan gave a final bellow, the stump of his arm dribbling freely, before collapsing into the pool of his own blood. Shepard tried to cry out again, but his terrible wince at seeing his friend so grievously maimed stole the energy out of his lungs that enabled him to speak.

Standing atop the writhing krogan, the Legionnaire bent down to address the fallen Wrex. "Don't get back up. You are not the one who will end up killing me. That right is apparently not reserved for you."

His head clearing, Shepard found the strength to sit back up but not before more Chimera soldiers came out of the woodwork to push him back down again, slamming his back repeatedly against the ground before they grabbed him underneath his arms to raise him on shaky feet.

Shepard continued to grapple against his captors, but the Legionnaire snapped his metal fingers together as he stalked away from the one-armed, partially blinded Wrex. "Stop your struggling, Shepard, or I might have to get a little more creative if you don't."

"Go to hell!"

"Your prolix vocabulary leaves much to be desired. Fortunately, I've learned a long time ago that actions speak louder than words."

Additional Chimera troopers marched out of a side hallway.

With a smaller figured clutched between them.

"Dad!" Roahn cried out as she struggled to free herself in the grip of the two soldiers, nearly sobbing as the firm clenching of the men bit into her wrists.

"Roahn…" Shepard rasped, all the fight leaving his bones, surrendering himself unconsciously in an instant.

The Legionnaire glanced proudly between Shepard and his daughter, the fingers of his still-working right arm twitching in anticipation.

"There are many ways to break one's spirit, Shepard. A family is simply the weakest link in the chain."

The gargantuan metal monster then knelt down to Roahn's level, bringing his cracked faceplate to within a few inches of Roahn's visor. Roahn squeaked in fear, finding nothing but pure loathing reflected in the solitary and damaged gaze of the cyborg. She tried not to look into the blackened hole where a bloody mass seemed to reside past the metal barrier, finding nothing but evil personified in that space. Shepard instinctively twitched in the Legionnaire's direction, horrified that such a beast would even think of getting so close to his daughter.

"Don't you touch her!" he bellowed, his throat nearly tearing for how loudly he screamed.

The Legionnaire did not respond at first, for he simply amused himself by gently lifting the Predator pistol away from Roahn's holster. The gun looked like a child's toy in the Legionnaire's hand, and he carelessly tossed it to the side to collect dirt, the frame tumbling end over end upon the stones.

"Come along with us, cease your resistance," the Legionnaire hissed to Shepard, sliding out the blade in his wrist for good measure, now angling it towards Roahn's throat, who whimpered in sheer terror. "And she won't be hurt," he finished.

Shepard's heart seemed to be collapsing in on itself at the very sight of his daughter being so forcefully threatened. Not Roahn… not her. Anything else could come to pass, but she could not be hurt. He promised Tali that nothing would happen to their child. He needed to keep that promise.

My baby. Don't hurt my daughter.

Shepard went limp.

A chuckle escaped the Legionnaire and he made a short gesture to the troopers holding Roahn after he retracted his blade back into his body. The soldiers rudely deposited the girl onto the floor, who cried out again as her shins smacked hard ground. The Legionnaire just stepped over her as he made his way to Shepard, who was now listless, his eyes glazed over as his skin turned clammy and his vision heavily grayed.

"I wouldn't worry too much," he spoke to his prisoner. "In no time, this will all be a distant memory. You'll be reunited with your daughter very soon and you might just have the chance to forget all of us."

"She… pard…" a low-pitched voice grumbled from afar.

The seconds seemed to dilute themselves as both the Legionnaire and Shepard witnessed Wrex stagger back to his feet, using the war hammer as a temporary crutch. Blood continued to flow from the stump of Wrex's arm as well as all down the right side of his face, staining his armor a sickly color of orange. The krogan then tensed his arm one final time, lifting the entire weight of the hammer up off the ground and into the air, readying it, steadying himself, as his knees bent in preparation.

The Legionnaire shook his head in disbelief, but brought out his wrist blade again anyway. "All for one human…" the monster whispered as he stepped away from Shepard. "You can always sit down."

Wrex seemed insulted that he was being addressed in such a condescending manner, and he bared bloodstained teeth in response.

"I'll never have a more glorious moment," the krogan coughed, knees trembling as they nearly locked. "To die as a krantt… would be an honor."

"Wrex, no!" Shepard shouted, but his plea fell on deaf ears.

The Legionnaire impassively growled. "You will only be another obstacle."

Shifting his feet into a combat stance, the Legionnaire gave a singular nod, a brief acceptance towards the challenge that Wrex had posed. The cyborg raised his arm up, levelling his blade parallel to the ground. He cocked his elbow back, pointing the tip straight at the krogan, a flare briefly glimmering upon the sharpened point.

A carnivorous bird gave a harsh cry.

The wind buffeted a funnel of dust across the plain.

Dreadnoughts crumpled to pieces in fiery explosions many miles away—a second sun that warmed the baked crust.

A peaceful instant briefly flared amongst the detritus. Lingering amongst the glorious light and the dry temperatures that soaked into the skin, a perfect moment was to be had here.

Life was just the pursuit of these fleeting moments, anyway.

Wrex leapt and swung his hammer one final time, pure air trailing behind the stone in its fearsome wake.

The Legionnaire broke from his stance at a sprinter's pace, sending a miniature sonic boom reverberating through the tangle of columns in the temple.

The hammer arced. The blade swung.

There was a brief mote of light that shimmered between the two combatants. A speck of illumination that seared as flesh and metal collided.

A swath of blood spewed out in a straight line, spattering the wall.

Both Wrex and the Legionnaire skidded to a stop opposite their original positions—Wrex panting hard while the Legionnaire stood perfectly frozen in his stance.

Another perfect moment slipped futilely by, unable to be clutched in a matter-based grip.

The war hammer finally slipped from Wrex's grip, emitting a clong as the stone of the tool shattered the tile below it. A singular drop of blood fell from the krogan's chin. Tasting the sun upon his tongue, Wrex gave one final gasp before he pitched forward, his knees giving out from underneath him.

The krogan fell.

Shepard did not even realize that he was screaming. He could hear Roahn's own cries above the cacophony of the melee, but not his own. Even as he was being led away by the troopers while watching the Legionnaire carelessly clean his blade after stepping away from Wrex, Shepard could not take his eyes upon his collapsed friend. He screamed and screamed until he finally went hoarse.

The last thing that he saw before someone shoved a hood over his head was a thick pool of blood, its bright color burning its way into his eyes.

He heard his daughter cry out for her father, but he could not answer her back.

---

Minutes skipped by in tortured beats as Roahn crawled along the floor. Chimera had deserted the temple only a minute ago, but it had felt like an eternity to the girl. Shivering, tears streaming down her face, Roahn tenderly grasped at the ground to drag herself forward as dust bit into her enviro-suit, staining it a light shade of brown.

It was only when Roahn had reached a part of the floor that had been darkened from blood did she finally stop.

On her knees, Roahn sat up, hesitantly reaching out and touching cold, scaly flesh.

Wrex was crumpled before her, blood still leaking out of the large wound in his neck. The dying krogan seemed like a mountain to the girl, for his armored form dwarfed her at every turn. Still Roahn continued to lay her hand upon the arm of the krogan as the pool of blood slowly widened, nearly reaching her knees. She forced herself not to look at the fatal gash in his neck, knowing that there was nothing she could do to save Wrex.

His pulse seemed to reverberate in her very mind, ebbing and waning. It thrummed a faint beat, interlocking with the pounding of her heart. Roahn could not stop herself from crying at the sight. She lowered her head in shame, one of her hands barely able to wrap around one of Wrex's giant fingers.

"I'm sorry…" she whispered to the krogan, not knowing if he could still hear her. "I'm so sorry."

Roahn dissolved into sobs again. It seemed unfathomable—the death of a hero. With each final breath that Wrex was able to take, it felt like Roahn's own breath was being sucked out of her lungs. Her heart shattered and she wept. She cried for Wrex's pain.

Just then, Roahn felt the barest twinge of a reaction flex in Wrex's hands. A lingering, closing burst of energy before the end could overtake the krogan. The tears in Roahn's eyes stemmed just long enough for her to perceive Wrex's lone eye focusing upon her. He could see her—he knew she was right there. Roahn hiccoughed, not knowing how she could comfort the krogan in his last moments.

"Sh… Shepard…?" the softest breath carried through Wrex's ruined trachea.

He was asking for her father.

Painfully, Roahn shook her head ever so slightly. "N-No… n-n-no, W-Wrex. I'm… I'm… I'm R-Roahn."

But the krogan's solitary eye continued to stare at her with intent, his head nudging forward just a millimeter. The grip on Roahn's hand barely tightened. A denial.

"…Shepard…" Wrex whispered. Firm. Clear.

Wrex's hand slipped from Roahn's as the krogan used all of his remaining energy to muster his index finger into a point. The finger arced, marking a definite path through the air to impact straight upon Roahn. The girl looked at herself then back at Wrex, momentarily not understanding.

Wrex's lips slipped into a smile.

"Shepard."

His arm finally flopped down. His eye lidded shut. A long note of exhalation wisped through his throat.

Wrex fell still.

Roahn looked at her hands and saw the blood that had stained her suit upon her palms. Clumsily, she stood, but no more tears fell from her eyes. In a daze, she stumbled away from Wrex's body, but after giving him one last forlorn look.

Gentle hands gripped her shoulder and Roahn did not resist. It was when she saw that the hands holding her were draped in smooth blue scales. Liara. Roahn looked up to find Liara nursing quite a large bruise on her cheek. Behind her, Garrus was groaning as blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. Both said nothing to Roahn and Liara was trying her hardest to conjure a sympathetic word to the girl, but like Roahn had felt earlier, none of them could escape the sight of their friend lying dead at their feet. It was like they had all come to the realization as to the futileness of their purpose and the fleeting grip that life held over them.

"He tried to save him," Roahn finally managed, her eyes helplessly locked onto the corpse.

"I know," Liara whispered. "I know."

"My father," Roahn continued. "He was only trying to help my fath—"

With a start, Roahn cut herself off, only now realizing what the krogan had meant with his final word. It had encapsulated what Wrex had been able to see all this time, what should have been obvious to Roahn… but she had deliberately blinded herself to such a fact.

Wrex had not been asking for her father, Roahn understood. No, he had simply stated what Roahn had unknowingly wanted to hear.

I can protect those I care about. Those I love.

The whine of a shuttlecraft's engines igniting caused Roahn's head to whip all the way around. Her sehni caught the breeze, forcing her back a step. From the overhand, Roahn could see the dull silver of metal fins start to rise up as a nearby ship began to conduct liftoff preparations. Chimera. They were getting away. With her father.

But… from what she could see, the embarking ramp was still open, even as the shuttle levitated off the ground.

I can do the right thing.

As Liara's hand briefly lifted off from Roahn's shoulder, she seized her chance.

The young quarian, without warning, suddenly darted out of Liara's reach, her eyes thin and full of determination, her mouth locked into a fierce grimace as growls started to uncontrollably emit from her throat. She ignored the shocked cries of her name from Liara and Garrus behind her, and she briefly stooped down to pluck up the Predator pistol from where it had been deposited earlier. With the weapon in an iron grip, Roahn hurled herself forward as she pushed herself as hard as she could towards the outcropping of the temple that was just about to line itself up with the ramp of the shuttle.

Roahn's calves began to burn as she mustered her muscles to move faster than they had ever gone in her life. Her lungs strained and felt like they were about to burst. Sweat clung to her skin, itching all over. She gasped in her efforts, imagining that she was ripping herself to pieces. It was like she would collapse into several parts, ruined beyond belief, as she held the open ramp in her sights, desperate with her frantic panic.

Five steps to go.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Roahn screamed as she leaped, her last step curling around the lip of the stone ledge, her toes clutching at solid matter before she let herself be taken by the open air. Her stomach plummeted. Her eyes watered. Her hands strained themselves as they stretched out of her sockets and she let loose another howl in her agony.

A second clicked by. Roahn still flew.

The ramp of the shuttle slowly came into her reach.

Her fingers then grasped something solid.

---

A/N: Dun. Dun. Dun. Another one bites the dust. (...I am so sorry!)

Playlist:

Legionnaire Battle (Cyborg Theme II): "Angering Mantis" by Justin Burnett from the video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Wrex's Last Stand: "We Stand Ready" by Neal Acree from the video game StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

Roahn Leaps Aboard: "Like a Fire" by John Ottman from the film X-Men: Apocalypse