AN: Hello and welcome back, anyone still interested in this story! The third mission references the events described by Matt in chapter 95 "Real face of evil".


Jo's personnel fine had several security levels to it, but Joker soon found out that he had access to the most detailed layer, only meant for the leaders of the Academy to see. The ten plus years of her time as an elite military agent were documented in text, audio, video, images, software, scans, measurements, calculations, speculations and more. There was too much data and no real place to begin. It depended on which aspect of his wife he was most interested in. The very first thing Joker chose to do was to look up something interesting from her training days, something he'd always wanted to know. He searched for the keyword 'tango'.

A lot of short surveillance vids came up. Most were from a big empty room with a mirror for one wall. Some files even had commentary in form of subtitles. Joker picked a vid labelled "Highly relevant".

Jo looked amazingly young at twenty-four. She wore a tight black dress and high heels as she moved across the room in the arms of Rashid Mohameddi, the black haired, stunningly gorgeous man from the vid Garrus had shown them on their wedding day. There was another woman in the room with them. Just like Joker's own dance teacher, she was the mistress of the music and a drill instructor in one. The two agents were learning tango steps.

Young Jo was very different from her current self. She was distanced, guarded and cold. Her heart and soul were not in the dance, only her determination. That girl was hiding behind a wall so thick that it wasn't clear if she even had a soul under all the ice. Rashid was her complete opposite: charming and charismatic. He was also perfectly aware of Jo's stiffness and teased her by pinching her now and then. That always earned him a punch, which he laughingly evaded. Just like Joker, Rashid knew how to handle Jo, which was perhaps the reason why those two had been paired up.

"Stop, stop, I can't watch this anymore," the instructor finally yelled and stopped the music. "Shepard, you're stiff like a rod again. What did I tell you last time? Get your head in the game!"

"What is the game?" Jo asked.

"You need a mission? All right, here's your mission. Seduce him. Make it so that the only thing he can think about is laying you out on a bed and going down on you, his own pleasure irrelevant. Can you do that?"

A note appeared in the lower part of the screen: "!Needs a mission statement. With it: complete turnabout of attitude!"

And Joker saw it. Jo took a second to get in the right headspace, and when she looked up at Rashid once more, she was a completely different person. Oh, there was more than heart and soul in those grey, brown-speckled eyes now, there was fire from the depth of hell. Joker saw that Rashid shivered from excitement. The music started again and the couple moved, the robot and the teaser gone. The dance became a battle of two seductors. Very soon the guy was sporting an erection, which Jo used shamelessly to her advantage. She was open and completely uninhibited in her role, as if she'd been seducing men all her life.

Another note appeared: "!Claimed during initiation that she could become anyone for a mission. Apparently correct :) Highly usable acting skill!" Whoever had written those notes probably thought himself a funny guy, using exclamation marks and emoticons for no reason. But when the music stopped, the main difference between the two dancing partners became clear. As soon as they separated Jo became her cool and aloof self. Rashid, however, waved his hand at her, hurrying toward the exit:

"See ya later, babe. This boner won't take care of itself!"

A tiny smile appeared on her lips at his words and the vid stilled, zooming right in on her face. Another note appeared: "!Real emotion? N2 Shepard, are you human, after all? ;P!"

Joker closed the vid. If all the data in her profile was like this, he'd probably spend years working through it. Not only did the Academy teach her everything they possibly could, they also recorded her every move, watched it, evaluated it, commented on it, found exploitable aspects, dug into the deepest corners of her mind and personality. Suddenly all those forms he'd had to sign when he became an official asset to Jo's new Academy started making more sense. People used to give themselves over to this organisation completely, they allowed intrusion, gave up privacy, agreed to be erased and rewritten. Behind each agent there had been a gigantic infrastructure, crafting perfect tools and putting them to the best use.

There was hardly anything similar in the new Academy, but then again... There was still Matt, a genius from the Academy's old days, who had access to all the information. And there was Dex, who, with his nearly unlimited processing power, could replace a skyscraper full of analysts, researchers, evaluators, planners and coordinators. Was the system still in place, only less visibly so than before? Joker wondered. Or had Jo deemed this aspect of the old training unnecessary? He honestly didn't know.

Jo woke up and found Joker deep in thought, still browsing her file.

"How is it going?" She curled up against him, inhaling his scent - her home.

"It's gigantic. I don't even know where to start and what to look at. It might take the rest of my life to work my way through all of it."

"Jeff, I think I know what you're looking for. The most interesting, juicy bits from my past. You should search my profile for the keyword 'controversial'."

Joker looked at his wife for a moment. An odd tension in her signaled a shift in her mood. He saw it in the way she closed her eyes instead of looking at him. He typed in the keyword and three missions came up. There were vids from helmet cameras in each, as well as from surveillance cameras in debriefings and therapy sessions.

Joker tapped the first one. It was a vid showing a com officer at his console, watching a mission unfolding live on his screen. In the middle was a satellite image showing a war zone. It was surrounded by sixteen small windows with helmet camera feed from a group of Marines. The setting was a destroyed village somewhere in the jungle and a field not far from what was left of the houses. The com officer reported, zooming in on the field:

"Lieutenant Shepard, the evac shuttle cannot land during daylight, the guerrillas have heavy weapons that cover the approach. We will have to wait until darkness. Confirm your report about heat seeking missiles."

"Confirmed." Jo's voice, distorted by her com device, came through steady and calm. The time stamp told Joker that she was barely past her N1 course, 22 of age. So damn young. "All missiles have been accounted for and neutralised. The guerrillas don't have any heat seekers. But we won't make it till darkness. We're sitting ducks, and Private Hanson is bleeding out."

"Do what you can. Help is on the way."

"'s only mo'nin!" She snapped. "'ll dark'leven hours!"

Joker smiled at Jo's slip into her weird gang speech for a moment there. At that age she was not completely over it, it seemed. He wondered how many times back then her squad mates had to translate her orders into proper English before following them.

"Help is on the way. Try to stay alive."

Colourful curses came over the audio, but the com officer muted his console until the outrage died down. Nobody cared about the opinion of simple grunts. The satellite image on the officer's screen zoomed further in. It showed outlines of Alliance Marines pinned down in the muck on the field, their rifles trained on the nearby trees. Occasional shots were exchanged with the guerrillas hiding there. In the middle of the field lay a lone figure. It was one of the Marines, wounded in both legs. The guerrillas had left him alive and Joker wondered why. The officer tuned into the team's coms and leaned back to observe.

Soon enough Joker understood the reason why the man on the field - Private Hanson - was still alive. He lay in the mud within sight of both opposing factions and kept screaming for help. Heavily bleeding, he knew he would die if someone from his team didn't get him some medigel soon. The only trouble was that anyone stupid enough to try and reach him would open themselves to the enemy. They would be easy pickings.

Hanson knew that and kept calling for help anyway.

The vid skipped two hours. The situation was unchanged, but the team was noticeably on edge. The com officer drummed his fingers on the table, listening to their murmurs. Hanson was whining about the horrible pain he was in and the other Marines could barely take it anymore.

"I'm gonna go in and get him," one spoke up.

"You'll be killed," another hissed.

"I can't listen to his screams anymore!"

"Mills, if you go, they'll kill you. That'll open our flank and then we're all dead!" Someone else hissed. "Have you forgotten the civilians in the ruins? We lose, they die. Do you want that?"

"But Hanson..."

"Shut the fuck up," Jo's voice.

The vid skipped some more time. The feed from the team's helmet cameras became jerky, as the Marines were losing their last nerve. Hanson's screams and wails were unbearable. Several people had called out to him to shut the fuck up, but he kept screaming.

"I can't take it anymore," a man declared. "If it only gets him to shut up, I'll go over to him."

"Lay back down, Corporal," Jo's voice coincided with the shake of the man's camera. He must have been lying in the dirt right next to her and she pushed him down. "Hey, Hanson," she called out. Her helmet camera showed her move her sniper rifle. "Where the hell are you? I can't see you."

"Lieutenant?" Hanson groaned with a new hope. "I'm right here, help me, please! It hurts so damn much!"

Her attention was caught by the movement of one of the dirt bumps on the field. The guy was covered in muck, just like the rest of them. She leaned down to her scope and a single shot shook the air.

Silence fell.

The Marines exchanged looks. They listened. Mosquitoes sang in the air, but nothing else moved.

"Hanson?" One of the Marines called out. Silence. "Hanson!"

"Don't bother," Jo's voice. "He's dead."

The com officer sat up sharply. Jo's team jerked as one. She reloaded her sniper rifle and lowered herself into the dirt again.

"Lieutenant, did you just kill him?" The man next to her whispered.

"Yes, I did," Jo confirmed steadily. "He was never going to survive until evac arrived anyway, and he was destroying the morale. You were about to head out there and try to help him, knowing you were going to be killed, no?"

"Well... yeah."

"Fuck," someone exhaled.

"I can't believe you just killed one of our own..." another voice.

"Blessed silence," someone else sighed, and the Marines all became quiet. Even Joker felt relief after watching only a few minutes from the vid. The people who had endured the situation live for hours... He couldn't imagine their feelings.

"Lieutenant," a whisper broke the silence. "You always say that you'll personally kill us if we don't shape up..."

"Now you know I mean it. He knew he was endangering the team, he was begging us to die with him. I don't feel that he was a good man, a good friend and a good Marine. I made a choice to remove one rotten apple from our ranks, rather than to lose any of you."

"Does that mean you consider the rest of us good Marines?" The person asking was smiling, Joker could tell.

"Mmm-maybe," Jo teased a little. "If we get out of this shit, I'll climb on a table in a bar and loudly profess all survivors good Marines."

"That's worth surviving for," someone laughed and more people joined in. "I'll hold you to that, Lieutenant!"

"Drinks are on me," she agreed.

"And what about Hanson's girlfriend?"

"We will all tell her that he died a hero," Jo stated firmly, aiming at the trees again, looking for any sign of the enemy. "She doesn't need to know that her man was a whining coward who willingly almost got his team and three dozen civilians killed."

The remainder of the squad, though feeling relieved and guilty for it, gripped their rifles tighter and settled in for another long wait.

"And the blessed silence..." someone whispered again.

The vid ended. Joker rubbed his lower arms to soothe the goose bumps. He looked up at Jo, who still pretended to be relaxing.

"Is this real?" He asked.

"Very much so," she said. He understood her tension. She was not sure what he would think of her now.

"Did you catch flak for that?"

"Some. The brass wanted to know if I regretted it. I regretted killing one of my own, of course. But I never regretted saving the rest of them from their own need to help. Who knows how many would have died trying to save him? Evac didn't come at nightfall that day. It took almost until dawn, and it was an ugly escape."

"But everyone else survived, including the civilians?"

"Yes."

"Basically, thanks to your killing that man there were no additional deaths on that mission."

"Yes."

Joker had no comment. She'd said it all. The guy really did seem like an ass, knowingly endangering his team. And it wasn't like she'd killed him on a whim. She'd taken over five hours of his screaming. But knowing that she couldn't save everyone, she made sure that everyone else survived. She made a difficult choice nobody else was willing to make. Joker thought she was amazing.

He tapped the next mission. It showed a vid from an interrogation room. Jo sat loosely at the table. Two high ranking officers crowded her. The time stamp revealed that she'd already finished N4.

"So how do you feel, Staff Lieutenant?" One of them asked harshly.

"I did what I had to do." She didn't let the men intimidate her.

"He was eight years old. Do you feel nothing about killing a child?"

"I didn't kill a child," she claimed.

"He was eight years old!"

"Look, I would never kill an innocent civilian, especially a kid. When that boy came running into the middle of the street, I held fire. Could have been running to save his life. When he dropped down by a terrorist's corpse, I held fire. Could have been looking for cover, could have been confused, could have been trying to help the man, I don't know. When that boy grabbed the man's rifle, I held fire. The rifle could have been empty, or broken. When that boy aimed the rifle at one of my people, I held fire. Maybe he didn't know how to use the weapon, maybe the recoil would have been too much, maybe he didn't mean it. But when he pulled the trigger and shot at my people, he stopped being a civilian and a child. The recoil didn't bother him and he knew how to reload and aim. He was about to shoot again. He became a terrorist. I took him out. I regret nothing. I don't feel bad. I will do it again if I have to. However, I do regret the loss of a young life. I wish like hell that it didn't have to happen."

"You sound like you want to do it again," the second man accused her.

"No, I don't. I sound like I know I'm in the right, that's it. I don't want to do it again. Don't make me sound like a maniac who enjoys murdering children. I do not."

The Alliance officers exchanged a glance before the first one sighed deeply.

"You're right, he was a danger to your team, which is why the charges were dropped. But I insist on extensive therapy before you go out on another mission."

"Whatever you deem necessary, Sir," Jo nodded and left the room. The vid ended.

There was nothing Joker could say that hadn't been said within the vid. He was shocked, of course. Jo would never harm a child, he knew it, and knowing that she had killed a boy (maybe even more than one in the course of her career) was distressing. But hers were not the actions of a maniac. The boy had stopped being a civilian when he picked up a weapon he had obviously been trained to use. Do whatever it takes: that was the Academy's motto and her instructors couldn't fault her for following that rule.

He tapped the next controversial mission. He saw a regular interrogation room. In it, surrounded by four guards and facing two interrogators, sat a young man dressed in bright yellow prisoner coveralls. His hands were shackled to the table, his head was shaven and his cheeks were gaunt. Joker barely recognised the man: Matty Cyco.

"You say you were suspicious of Agent Shepard. Could you elaborate, please?" One of the interrogators said.

"I was, from the start. Her prisoner dossier appeared out of nowhere in the system."

"Any other reasons for suspicion?"

"No."

"So when she claimed to be a cannibal in front of all the prisoners, did you believe her?"

Matt shuddered from head to toe:

"Yes, I believed her. She bit off a man's junk and wore his balls for a necklace, damnit. That was not acting, that was real." He retched, but managed to calm himself before puking. The vid cut to a similar room, this time with Jo facing an interrogator, but without any guards.

"I did what I had to do, what's your problem all of a sudden?" She snapped at the other woman.

"My problem is that you seemed to be too convincing, Shepard," the elder, uniformed (N7 patch on her collar) woman snapped back. "The guy you recommended for evaluation, the one who'd seen you in action on that mission and was supposedly your ally, is still puking his guts out."

"So I'm a good actress, what of it?"

"See, that's where I'm not so sure. Was it really acting? To put it in Mr. Cyco's words: you bit a man's junk off and wore his balls for a necklace. That wasn't acting, that was real."

"Look at me. I'm Cinderella. When you send me onto a prison station that houses the worst of the worst, and all of them are men, I have to do something extreme to succeed. And I did it. Hey, just a few months ago you deliberately locked me in a dungeon with a very real serial killer and watched him torture me. I had to pull all my mental reserves together to survive that, so why aren't you giving me shit for that?"

"Because you were supposed to win against David and that's what you did. You survived. But on this mission I'm not sure that it's not your psychopathic tendencies flaring up."

"It's not!" Jo sounded almost insulted. "I pretended to be a cannibal, I'm not an actual cannibal, and never would be."

"You were a little too convincing for my comfort." The interrogator lady crossed her arms, looking down at Jo from where she stood. "Just tell me the truth."

"About what?"

"Did you enjoy it?"

Jo's face turned cold as a nuclear winter. She rose to her feet and menacingly leaned onto the table to get closer to the other woman.

"Enjoy it?" She growled. "Have you seen the inside of that station? Did you see the body nailed to the wall in the cafeteria? He was one of the inmates and I didn't do it! Did you see the dismembered bodies of the guards, put up on crosses in the middle of their atrium, like artwork? Decomposing? How can you even suggest that I enjoyed being there! When the team of new guards finally infiltrated the prison - without losses, thanks to me! - they took one look at that display and started puking. They refused to go anywhere near. I was the only one who had the nerves and the stomach to cut those body parts off the crosses and put them together correctly. I'm sure that one day someone somewhere will find the words 'corpse Tetris' funny, but I don't! The inmates I was facing in there enjoyed what they did. I will be seeing those bodies in nightmares for the rest of my life! The only thing I enjoyed was putting an end to their rebellion. I saw one spark of humanity in that place and I'll do my damnedest to see that he never has to go back."

The interrogator lady nodded with a tiny smile on her face.

"That's what I needed to see, Shepard. Righteous indignation."

"So you believe me now?"

"Yes, I believe you. Mr. Cyco is still spooked by you, by the way."

"Oh, he just doesn't know me like you do," Jo shrugged and sat back down, more relaxed this time. The vid ended.

"Wow," Joker looked at his wife. "You actually caught flak for something you did. I didn't expect that. Honestly, I thought you were their golden girl and your instructors loved you for everything you did."

"I didn't get into too much trouble, but it did happen." They stayed silent for a few minutes. Then Jo finally raised her head to look at Joker: "And? What do you think?"

"To be honest..." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "This was exactly what I expected to find in your profile. Questionable stuff, ambiguous stuff. Stuff that many people would not be okay with. You've made decisions, difficult decisions. You're a hell of a survivor. I've always known that this is who you are and I love that woman. I just hope that you didn't think I would somehow think less of you after I've seen this."

"You never know how people might react," Jo muttered, but the tiny smile on her lips was grateful.

Next morning during breakfast Joker asked his wife:

"Will you announce my 'promotion' to the rest of the Academy eventually?"

"Yes," she longingly stared at his coffee, but stuck to the multi-vitamin juice Karin said was good for her and the baby. "As soon as you've read and signed your new contract."

"Just how much fine print is in that thing?" He chuckled.

"No fine print at all. When you're the boss' second, all the unsavoury details of your new job are given to you in regular print."

"So, there are unsavoury details, huh?"

Jo threw him a quick glance that made him shiver. It was the dangerous kind of look, a warning and a tease in one, a glimpse of all the secrets he was about to learn. And here he'd thought he already was privy to all the secrets. It scared and excited him.

"Of course there are," she said. "You'll get access to all my duties and privileges, except one. As long as I live, I will keep my final say in who gets the N7 rank and who doesn't."

"Duh!" Her seniority in this matter was understood.