Their next mission was Feros and once again they had a full day before arrival. Alenko asked her for a quick word but she firmly told him to do his job. She refused to let him ruin her good mood that day. She'd spent it with Tali instead, discussing her pilgrimage and the intel on geth that Jo found on one of the missions. Tali wanted to present it to her fleet as a gift and Jo encouraged her.

In the evening Jo arranged one of those lazy poker nights in the mess hall. They played a turian game this time and Garrus was scandalised when Tali beat him at his own game. In this manner they drank and talked the whole evening away. At some point Adams and his guys wanted her to compare two bullets and tell them if there was difference in weight. They still tried to trip her up about measurements. At the first glace it were two perfectly ordinary Nr. VII Shredder rounds. It took a very close inspection to find a spot on one of them where the techies had shaved off half a gram. They'd obviously spent some quality time doing this, using their best precision instruments to leave no trace. The work did, however, leave a slight irregularity in the bullet form, which she told them. They were very impressed.

"In the name of interspecies cooperation," Garrus said at some point. "Shepard, would you indulge a question about humans?"

"Sure," she smiled.

"There is one thing about humans that turians don't have, and I was always curious about it."

"Me too," Wrex suddenly chimed in, his voice rumbling through all their lungs. Jo and everyone else looked back and forth between them. They'd been conspiring together, it seemed.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Your hair."

"What about it?"

"Well, I heard somewhere that you have no feeling in it, that's why you can cut it any way you wish, but…" Garrus sounded intrigued. "How does it feel to the touch?"

Jo kind of froze with half a smile on her face, as the other humans exchanged awkward glances.

"What did I say?" Garrus picked up on that. "Something inappropriate? Forgive me, I didn't mean to."

"No, it's not really inappropriate, it's just…" Jo chuckled. "Well, maybe just a little. You see, we consider beautiful hair sexy, so touching it is often suggestive. Unless, of course, you ask for permission like you just did, and the woman agrees in the name of interspecies cooperation." She reached up to her bun and took out the scrunchie holding it together. A moment later it fell down her back in long, magnificent, white-golden waves.

Garrus and Wrex were not the only ones to suck in a breath. Liara seemed to almost blush, and Kaidan was devouring her with a blazing gaze. Jo shook her head and let the blond waves take their natural form around her back and shoulders. Garrus looked taken aback by the implications of his request, but Wrex was not the shy kind of krogan. He reached over and took a handful of her hair. Eventually, Garrus joined him. Jo explained to them that pulling human hair hurt quite a bit.

"What you're doing right now could be a little suggestive, but not inappropriate. Unlike, say, touching a woman's breasts would be. But I'm sure those are nothing new to anyone who's ever been to an asari strip club."

"Have you?" Wrex grinned like a devil. Jo grinned back:

"For interracial cooperation reasons only, of course."

"Of course."

Kaidan shifted uncomfortably, as did Pressly, and other guys. Liara inched a little closer to Jo from behind, just as curious about the strange human feature. Jo smiled, as she watched Wrex run his claws through a thick strand of her hair, marvelling at the feeling, and she grinned, wondering what Joker would say if he were down here and not at his work station.

Soon Liara's hands joined in. Jo could see Kaidan shift awkwardly with a frown on his face. She knew he didn't approve of what was happening. He was one part jealous, one part appalled at all the rule-breaking, one part freaked out by the sensuality of the aliens' actions.

"So soft…" Garrus said thoughtfully.

"Such a strange texture," Liara said, bending a thin strand in a loop.

"How come there is so little of it when you put it up, and so much of it when you let it down?" Wrex asked, fisting a sizable chunk of it.

"It's all due to combing," Jo said, and demonstrated a few hairdos, a braid, even a two-braids-option. Everyone was now watching, mesmerised. Wrex shamelessly sniffed her.

"What is this scent?" he asked.

"My shampoo, Wrex. Apricot-scented. It's a fruit from Earth."

"I like it," the gigantic krogan declared with a lewd grin, and Jo shook her head at him with a grin of her own:

"Okay, that's enough. I think you're getting too attached to it. Shoo." She gathered her mane into the same knot she wore before it all happened.


Joker was watching porn. He was pretty much alone in the whole CIC at this point late in the evening and porn was his usual pastime in those moments. Except when the night shift came up the stairs, he noticed them agitated. They spoke in low tones, as if something unusual made the news.

"What's up?" he asked his relief pilot.

"You're the man with the security camera access, didn't you see it?" Crosby laughed, settling in the co-pilot's chair.

"See what?"

"The Commander undid her hair and let the aliens fondle her all over!"

Joker blinked.

"Come again?"

"Seriously, man, you should have been there! It was hot!"

"Okay, get out of here, I'll be working for a few more hours. I'll let you know when to relieve me."

"You're going to watch it?" Crosby grinned knowingly and Joker gave him a d'uh-look. "I'll watch, too. Once was definitely not enough."

"I said get lost!" Joker snapped. Crosby shrugged and walked away with a grin. Joker wrapped up all his programs and logged into the security system. He didn't have to go far back in the logs. Just, it seemed, twenty minutes.

He watched it from six different angles. His brain shut down completely at the sight of Shepard's perfectly blond hair flowing down her back, and Garrus, Liara and Wrex caressing it so erotically… He forbade himself to think or even acknowledge that he was hot and bothered more than by the porn he'd been watching just a few minutes ago.

When it was over, his brain switched to autopilot. He set to work deleting the twenty minutes from all cameras. Just a few minutes later the incident was erased from existence entirely, save a little copy that went to his private archive, were nobody would ever find it.

Next morning Kaidan wore a strange expression when he came to the cockpit.

"Why the long face? You didn't like our Commander letting other guys touch her like that?" Joker poked.

"It was… What was she doing, seriously? It was not appropriate. It's unlike her."

Joker didn't bother to tell the other man that the stunt was actually exactly like Shepard, Kaidan wouldn't see it.

"How do you know, anyway? Over security cameras?" Kaidan asked.

"Of course."

Kaidan paused for a moment, then started pushing buttons on his console.

"Don't bother, LT," Joker said seriously, without looking at him. "It's gone."

"What?"

"The footage. It's gone."

Bright red flushed over Kaidan's face, then it became blotchy.

"I'd never… What makes you think… Wait. You deleted the feed?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"So that this," he pointed at Kaidan. "-doesn't happen. She wouldn't like it."


Feros was confusing at first. The colonists seemed to be obsessed with odd things and spoke like they were demented. Jo helped them with supplies and water, but the geth blocking all communications needed to go. When they finally cut the claws holding the ship to the wall and the communication systems came on again, a voice cut through the interference.

"Normandy to the shore party, do you hear me? Anyone there? Come on, Commander, talk to me…"

Joker. Some bad tension in her guts suddenly relaxed at the sound of his boyish voice. Jo hadn't realised she was tense until his presence in her ear relaxed her again. She answered him with a grin, though some part of her pondered the curious sensation. There was writing on the wall here and someone wasn't reading it.

On their drive back to the colony they stopped to let Lizbeth meet with her mother on the Skyway Weigh Station. This Jeong person was seriously annoying Jo when he started shrieking like a crazy person that nobody would miss a few colonists. Jo took out her pistol and shot him right between the eyes.

"As if we don't have enough problems! Now we're shooting each other in the back?" Lizbeth's mother complained.

"In the back?" Jo said, unfazed. "I do believe it was a perfect shot straight in the face."

The woman opened her mouth to say something and shut it again.

"That was hot, Commander," Joker said in her ear.

Later, when the Thorian was killed and the green asari gave her the Cipher, she let her go. Her bloodlust was satisfied for today. She'd learned some interesting things about Saren and his ship, Sovereign, from Shiala. The indoctrination apparently came from Sovereign, not Saren. Even Benezia fell victim to it. Jo made a note to herself that it probably wasn't such a good idea to hang around this Sovereign for too long. She was a tough woman, but something told her it wouldn't matter in this case.

Back on the Normandy Liara jumped at the chance to unite their minds and Jo really hoped that it wasn't much like the asari sex. She didn't want to encourage the girl. Later she hung around Ashley for a long while, listening to her stories about her sisters, secretly wondering what it would be like to have sisters, or brothers, or parents, or anyone at all. She was actually postponing the moment when she would have to go back up, where Alenko would make sure to run into her again.

She was not disappointed, only he was not alone. Liara came, too. They began talking at Jo about concepts of jealousy and Kaidan's confusion at her alleged attraction to women. Jo's eyebrow crept higher and higher, the longer she listened. Were these two for fucking real?

"Make a choice, Shepard," Alenko attacked her. "If you're not serious about me, it'll hurt but I'll get over it. But until you tell me, I can't get over it."

Only then did they both look at Jo carefully enough to see her stunned, furious, icy glare.

"I don't know what the fuck you think is going on here," she said in a voice that sent shivers down everyone's spines. "But I sure as hell know that I have no time for this bullshit. Back to your stations, both of you."

"But Shepard," both Liara and Kaidan began protesting. Jo uncoiled the energy in her, raising her voice to a shout:

"NOW!"

They left. Jo took a deep breath, righted her uniform, smoothed her hair and cleared her throat. They would be the death of her one day. Once she was calm enough, she went to see Liara in her room.

"Liara, listen. I was not going to talk about it in front of other people, especially Alenko, I don't want him to get any false hope, but you have to understand that you and I are not going to happen. I believe I said so before."

"I know, Shepard, I'm sorry," Liara sounded and looked really sad.

"I am, too. I care about you like a good friend, but I'm not interested in more, I hope you understand."

"Yes, Shepard, I realise."

It gave Jo no pleasure to be crushing a young girl's hopes and dreams like that, but what she said to Joker a while ago was true. She was not into asari. Oh, she liked them just fine, they were a fascinating people, but she just didn't desire them sexually.

As Jo stepped out of the med bay, she saw Alenko watching her. He realised that she'd had words with Liara. Now she needed to crush another set of hopes and dreams.

He told her that he was not in high school anymore and could deal with rejection. Jo paused for a moment to consult her memory. High school. Vids and stories suggested high school was the place of the most difficult teenage romance drama, uncontrolled feelings, heartbreak over everything and nothing. Yes, that applied to this current situation, except Alenko was wrong. Talking to him felt exactly like high school, even though Jo had no direct comparison, having missed out on all kinds of school in her own life.

When he realised she wasn't angry anymore, he once again began talking her ear off with his sad childhood stories. About snapping and killing his turian instructor for picking on his old girlfriend. Clearly he was expecting some words of encouragement in-between, but Jo only listened with a frown.

"Maybe my intentions were noble, but I… lost control. I killed him, Shepard. Snapped his neck."

He was still talking, something about how Rahna shunned him after what happened, unable to deal with his outburst of violence and terrified of him, too, but Jo was not going to encourage his whining anymore. She listened in silence, then gave him her customary 'I should go', and went upstairs.

Joker nodded at her, busy setting course for their next mission: the planet mentioned in a suspicious note she found on Feros. She appreciated the silence he allowed her and thought back over the last ten minutes. Kaidan. He was controlled. He snapped and killed someone. People started fearing him and shunned him. All of that sounded incredibly familiar. Jo must have grown up with a completely different kind of people, though, because she snapped and killed on purpose all through her teenage years in the Tenth Street Reds to make people shun her. Be scared of her. It was her only way of protecting herself. In the military she got a lot more controlled, but even now she was snapping and killing people who annoyed her enough, just for the sake of it, like Jeong on Feros. Unlike Alenko, however, she didn't think it was a blemish on her otherwise pristine character. It was a part of her character. It made her unpredictable to many people, but she at least wasn't pretending to be someone she could never be. Being human didn't mean always being good. No, human nature meant many things, and violence and cruelty were just as much a part of humanity as nobility, humility, love, gentleness and forgiveness. When some people couldn't handle that duality, they became like Kaidan. Limited to one side and suffering unbearable guilt when the human nature prevailed and jerked them to the other side once in a while. He still had a lot to learn about what it meant to be himself, understand his own soul and accept it. He was not in the position to judge her. He was too limited in spirit for that. If she had been irritated by him before or even disliked him, it was gone now. Kaidan Alenko was nothing but a child to her. She couldn't be angry with a child for saying silly things. He would grow up eventually, and hopefully see that the only truth he could ever have in his life would come from inside him. Truth to his own heart.

"Thanks, Joker," she said, getting up to go.

"What for? I didn't say nothin'."

"For that. And for keeping other people at bay so well. This is the only place to really think in peace. And for the great company."

"You're welcome, I guess."

When they arrived on Nodacrux and found the small ExoGeni facility full with thorian creepers, Jo's heart dropped. There were many evil people in the world. She didn't have enough rounds in all her weapons for all of them.

"The creepers here were created using altered samples from specimen on Feros," Dr. Ross was talking, unaware of the arctic winter spreading in Jo's chest. "We discovered a way to turn them into docile, obedient servants."

Adrenalin began pumping through Jo's body faster and faster.

"Look, I know what we did here was wrong. I'll admit that. But it's over now, there is no sense in reporting this to the authorities, right?"

"I am the authorities," Jo said in a barely recognisable voice.

"Be reasonable, I didn't mean for this to happen. Besides, how does it help anyone if I end up in jail? I've got money. A nice little emergency fund I set up. It's yours if you let us go."

Jo's jaw dropped a little and she turned to her team, Tali and Wrex.

"Did she just honestly try to bribe me?" she asked them, incredulous. Tali was only shaking her head in disapproval at the doctor. Jo turned the same way: "You'll pay for what you did."

"Uh… I don't think so!" The woman and her team grabbed weapons and took cover behind crates, shooting at Jo.

"Wrex," Jo said, pointing at the crates. He got her without words. With two biotic pulls he removed the crates, leaving the scientists without cover. He and Tali took out the rest of them quickly enough, while Jo marched towards Dr. Ross and kicked the pistol out of her hand. "Look at me," she said. "I'm the justice of the angry galaxy that you upset. I will even out the scales now. Goodbye."

She kicked her in her scared face, sending her onto the floor. Then she emptied her magazine into her chest. Then there was blissful silence.


Joker was watching the feed, as always monitoring the mission. Even he felt the righteous anger when the woman tried to weasel out of responsibility. She didn't even try the usual "I didn't know what would happen", or "they hold my child hostage" or "it was temporary insanity" crap. She just admitted she was evil. But Shepard's voice sent a shiver down his spine. He wondered at her choice of words about evening out the scales for the upset galaxy. Usually she said nothing at all when she killed these bastards. She did sound like the spirit of the whole galaxy, righting a wrong.

"Commander, you have some seriously nuclear voice on you," he told her when she was back.

"That turned you on, admit it," she teased him.

"Would it turn you on if I said yes?"

She only smiled and tapped his shoulder before leaving.

Did she really just ask him if she was turning him on? Truth was – she definitely was. Not only because she had a hot body (though her ass was definitely hotter than Ashley's and Liara's put together, and he wouldn't mind… anyway…) but because she was a powerful woman. Dominating. All she needed was a black catsuit, a mask and a whip. He loved watching her in those moments when she was cruel to evil people, killing them without mercy. He was definitely turned on.

Great. He was hot for his Commander. He knew that before, of course, but now the realisation finally started to really sink in. It had been easier when they'd just met and he'd appreciated her fine ass just like every other female ass out there. But being turned on by one woman specifically? The woman he saluted to every morning? That only happened in vids, or to some dorks like Alenko. More so, it was dangerous. Seriously, what could possibly come out of it apart from embarrassing boners, unsatisfied desire and awkwardness? He was nothing if not realistic: he had no chance with a woman like that. It was better to squelch those desires in the root than crash and burn later. No one came unscathed from wanting that woman. He promised himself right then to never go there again, even in his mind. Instead he would be the friend she wanted and he'd have fun watching those who were crazy enough to risk it.


Immediately after that mission Jo got a message from Admiral Kahoku, telling her about Cerberus. They went to look for him and found his dead body in a facility that reminded her too much of Dr. Ross' lab and what happened on Feros and even Noveria to ignore. Her heart sank, when she found the admirable man's lifeless body locked in a cage with other tormented creatures. She didn't know him too well, but he always made an impression of someone who really cared. She personally carried his body onto the ship with all the respect the man deserved. To finish the business with Cerberus she ordered a course to Nepheron to investigate their bigger facility. It brought her a piece of encrypted information and a lot of headache.

"Take us to the Citadel, Joker, we need to deal with this."

"Aye aye, Commander. There is a transmission you're gonna want to hear."

"Greeting, Commander Shepard," a lying voice sounded in the speakers. She just knew he was lying. "I represent a party interested in obtaining information on Cerberus activities."

"Hello, Cerberus," she said firmly. The man paused, as did everyone in the CIC.

"I'm not Cerberus. As I said, I represent…"

"Don't tell me you actually expect me to believe that," she cut him off.

"I suspect I know less about Cerberus than you do. I'm merely an agent for the Shadow Broker."

"And I'm a fucking ballerina."

"You see, Admiral Kahoku contacted my employer looking for information on the location of any Cerberus facilities."

"Of course he did."

"We provided that information on the promise that he would turn over copies of all files gathered from Cerberus systems to us."

"After this little speech you still expect me to believe you're not Cerberus? Don't make me laugh. Oh, wait, I just carried the body of a great man in my arms. I'm not laughing!"

"Look, the Alliance is just going to file it in some archive. But no secret stays hidden forever. Eventually, someone somewhere will deliver it to my hands."

"Who said anything about Alliance? And who said anything about keeping it secret?"

That gave her opponent a moment's pause.

"Be reasonable, Commander. You gain nothing by keeping it, even less by making it public. I can pay you a lot of money."

Jo shook her head.

"Why would people assume I care about money? What is it about me that tells everyone: offer her money! It's so insulting that it's almost funny. Almost. Anyway, my clumsy Cerberus friend. You're not getting this intel from me. And tell your employer that when I find him, I will destroy him and his entire rotten organisation until ashes are scattered and dust is settled. And if you're smart enough, you will run like hell from that employer of yours. That's the only thing that might save you."

"I see this conversation has no point."

"It never had a point."

When they were on the Citadel, Jo gave the Cerberus intel to Alliance, to Kahoku's family to deal with as they pleased, to the Council, and saved it in the Spectre database. Anyone who wanted it could get it, even reporters. Cerberus was a freak show and needed to be dealt with, even though Jo had no time for them right now.