"Anyone ever told you that you have a giant fucking head?"

Garrus' visor slipped down Jack's face for about the third time since she had put it on, giving the turian yet another small heart attack before she caught it and readjusted it over her left eye. Even in the dark lighting of Afterlife, it was easy to make out the jovial gleam on her face as she watched him stress out over her handling of his expensive gear, the soft blue glow of the display illuminating her expression. It was probably letting her know every time she made his blood pressure spike.

"Just be careful with that, alright? It's custom."

"Relax, Vakarian. I got it," she assured distractedly, having already shifted her attention to the crowd of people on the far end of the room. Garrus could see the targeting systems working busily to magnify and focus on the distant objects from where he sat on the barstool beside her. "How much booze would it take before you agreed to show me how to snipe with this thing?"

He gave her a sideways glance and a good-natured bark of laughter, finding it difficult to picture her demonstrating the patience required to handle a sniper rifle. He was pretty sure he'd never seen her with anything other than a shotgun and that massive Carnifex pistol. "A lot more than I've had - that's for damn sure."

"Figured that much." She smirked and immediately pounded her fist on the counter to get the attention of the salarian wiping glasses clean a little way down the bar. "Hey, bartender! We're dry over here."

Garrus only shook his head. The small remaining part of him that still thought like a good turian soldier was nagging him, doubting that Shepard would be too ecstatic about coming back to find the two of them on the wrong side of tipsy.

But not so much that he would refuse the offer of another drink.

He wrapped his slender fingers around the one that was already in front of him, lifting it just enough to swirl the brightly colored dextro-amino liquor around the glass a few times before he brought it to his mouth. On the way to downing the last of it, however, his eyes caught on Legion and something about the geth made him pause. It was sitting, completely immobile, in the seat on the other side of Jack, its optics anchored rigidly on something across the club. Garrus set his drink back down.

"Legion?" It gave no response, spurring a flutter of anxiety in the depth of his gut. "Legion! Is everything okay?"

It turned its head toward him then, its metallic voice barely reaching him over the throbbing bass of the music. "We have located the human."

"Right. Great. The human. That narrows it down," muttered Jack. She was slumped with her arms crossed on the surface of the bar, her chin resting neatly on top of them as she watched the bartender refill her glass with a clear liquid that smelled overwhelmingly of paint thinner. It was only another moment before she perked up, suddenly looking significantly more sober and alert as she narrowed her eyes in Legion's direction. "You don't mean…"

She and Garrus exchanged a glance before they both turned back to the geth. "You saw Phillips?"

The AI looked slowly from one squadmate to the other now that it had their full attention. "Yes, the target," it replied, before turning its head back toward the crowd on the far side of the room. "The target is here."

After hurried goodbyes to Aria, Shepard scrambled back down the staircase that led to the club floor. He wanted to believe that he had nothing to worry about, that Phillips and Jack had not yet seen each other, and his team could still duck out without incident to regroup and form a legitimate plan. However, if all his time as commander had taught him anything, it was to be a firm believer that anything that could go wrong would undoubtedly do so.

For that reason, he was not in the least bit surprised to find that Jack was already out of her seat when he practically skidded to a stop at the foot of the stairs and she finally came into his view, her gaze fixed on a scruffy-looking man who was making his way across the floor. There was no picture in the Alliance dossier he had been studying, but the look on the woman's face was more than enough conformation that this man was who they were looking for.

And of course, he was on a path that would send him right past where his squad was sitting.

"Don't do anything stupid," he breathed, and as if she had somehow heard his plea despite the deafening surroundings, Jack turned her head and caught his eye.

He could practically see the gears spinning furiously in her mind, though her expression betrayed none of her forming plans. She took half a step backward, away from both her commander and the approaching criminal, her eyes flicking from one to the other and then back again. Shepard got an absurd flash from some nature show that he had watched days before – a cornered lioness, furrowed and ready to bare her teeth and leap at the nearest throat.

He took another step but froze at the look that Jack shot in his direction, one that very clearly said "stay the fuck put." Another beat and an unfamiliar voice rose up above the music, an audible end to any semblance of control he had on the situation.

"Jack?"

"Jack? Is that you?"

She clenched her hands into fists at the sound of her name and turned her attention back to Phillips. He had stopped walking and was staring at her with hopeful recognition in his bright blue eyes and this big stupid grin on his youthful face, making her wonder why the hell he seemed so happy to see her. He looked almost exactly how she remembered him, his hair still cropped short, but not quite short enough for him to not get called a fairy if he had ever been straight-laced enough for the military. His features were sharp, almost feminine, and only balanced out by his lean, muscular form and stubbly facial hair that made the fair skin of his face and neck look gritty. He still looked like a fucking kid in a beard, just a filled-out version of the scrawny ex-duct rat she had met years before.

This was the new scourge of the Terminus systems? She would have appreciated the hilarity a lot more if she, Phillips, and Shepard weren't currently forming a triangle of impending clusterfuck.

The pirate twisted to follow Jack's ambivalent gaze and locked almost immediately onto Shepard. His grin disappeared, his formerly exuberant face going a little slack as recognition seemed to wash over him. Of course. What outlaw nowadays wasn't living in fear of turning around one day to see the galaxy's first human Spectre breathing down their neck? "Is that…?"

"Bet your ass it is," she muttered, meeting Shepard's gaze once more and noting the fact that he looked about ready to burst from the urge to swoop in and save her like the knight in shining armor he had always been before. It was sweet - sort of endearing, she finally admitted. And also hopelessly misplaced.

While Phillips' attention was away from her, she gave the man a brief smirk, trying her best to reassure him that this was all still under control, despite appearances. Well, okay, there was that and the thought that he probably would have called her ape-ass crazy for even thinking of letting loose the scheme that was beginning to take shape in her head. See, some people just got way too caught up in details. They had been trying to find Phillips, and guess what? It turned out to be a little easier than they had expected. Jack didn't see the problem, only the opportunity this presented. Sometimes diffusing a situation was unnecessary.

Sometimes a clusterfuck was exactly what was needed.

Garrus wasn't paying any attention to her, was still sitting tensed with one hand hovering over his firearm as he waited for Shepard to make the first move. So when she yanked him straight off of his stool, he didn't even put up a fight.

He let out a strangled yelp as Jack drew him into a headlock and pressed her newly-drawn pistol to his temple. Their severely mismatched heights were forcing him to twist at an odd angle, bending him sideways enough that he couldn't gain enough leverage to throw her off and ensuring that he would have, at the very least, a rather uncomfortable crick in his spine when this was all over. When he tried to struggle, she only tightened her grip, a mass effect field shimmering over her skin to compete with his turian strength. "What are you-?"

"Shut it!" she hissed, then raised her voice so that both Phillips and her dashing knight could hear her. "Take one more step, Shepard, and I'll blow this guy's fuckmothering face off!"

As soon as she grabbed Garrus, Shepard had drawn his gun so fast it was like a knee-jerk reflex, the barrel pointing steadily at her forehead as the two of them stared each other down. She was oddly pleased with his reaction, a little part of her wondering whether he had it in him to actually shoot her if she had been serious about plugging his best friend full of lead. A couple seconds passed in tense silence as her comrades seemed to be catching up to her train of thought.

The crowd had begun to take notice of them. She could feel them eyeing her nervously as they all began shuffling back and out of the way of the potential shootout. There was a murmur of anxiety passing steadily through the room, but there was minimal running and screaming; it was Omega, after all. No doubt Aria's men were all keeping a very close eye on her as well. They had probably only let things get this far at all because they recognized Shepard and his crew.

She spared a glance over at Legion, noticing it was still standing around like a useless idiot. It was hard to tell since, y'know, it didn't really have a face, but it didn't seem to be sure which side it was supposed to be supporting. She had told Shepard that she would bring it along, so she would. It was the least she could do, seeing as she was probably on her way to driving him to an aneurysm at the moment. "Want to help me out here, Chicken Legs?"

Legion turned and focused on her, tearing its gaze from where it had been on its leader, probably waiting for new orders from him. It was unresponsive for a moment, before its almost maddeningly emotionless voice rang out again. "We are unable to reach consensus. Please specify request."

"Just point your gun at somebody, will ya?" she growled.

With minimal hesitation, Legion leveled its rifle at its own Commander. Phillips, looking increasingly bewildered as the situation progressed, also aimed his gun in Shepard's direction.

"Jack, what's going on?" the pirate demanded. Jack might have been impressed by the guts he was suddenly deciding to show if his shooting hand hadn't been shaking like a leaf. She smothered a grin. He was buying the act. And why wouldn't he? Who out of her old "friends" would have ever suspected that she was actually working for Commander Shepard instead of on the run from him?

"You got a ship on this rock?"

He gave her a brief smile, something flickering in his eyes that she couldn't quite place. It made her a little uneasy. "Is that your way of asking for a ride?"

"No. It's my way of saying, 'you leave me stranded on this station with a fucking Spectre and I will hunt your ass down.'"

"Fair enough."

"Jack." Shepard's voice drew her full attention back to him, back to those cool blue eyes focused on her from over his pistol. "It doesn't have to be like this."

She thought he might have just been acting, throwing a few lines in to make the scene more believable, before she realized that he was serious. He was giving her a way out, a second chance to change her mind and just let him beat the shit – and as much information as possible –out of the kid. It was actually tempting. She was probably going to be gone for a few days, tops. Just long enough to get some manipulating done before Phillips dropped her off at a fueling station somewhere. But even so… hell, she'd never admit it to anyone but herself, but she was going to miss him.

"Yeah. It does," she responded decisively, soaking in his presence for a last couple of seconds before giving Garrus a good shove. The turian stumbled into the man, knocking him momentarily off balance and giving Jack the opportunity to send them both flying with her biotics. A couple of screams pierced through the crowd, civilians afraid that a fight had finally broken out; it was a good signal that it was time for her and her ride to leave.

With a nod to Legion, she grabbed a hold of Phillips' collar and tugged him toward the nearest exit. She weaved quickly through the clustered dancers and drunkards, the pirate and the AI following close behind her.

Left to the mercy of Jack's throw, Shepard and Garrus landed in a heap a few good yards away from where they had left the ground. Shepard grunted as the sniper's elbow jabbed into his gut on their way to untangling themselves and Garrus mumbled an apology as he sat up. They ignored their continued audience, getting quite a lot of space from the confused and frightened group anyway. Shepard gingerly rotated his shoulder, making sure that everything was still moving properly after the area took the brunt of both his and the large alien's fall.

"Guess it never occurred to her to pull her punches." He winced a little, finding the spot that was undoubtedly going to form an impressive bruise by the following morning.

"I noticed that," Garrus agreed, rubbing at his neck where he had been rather forcefully held in the headlock. "Said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: really glad she's on our side."

Shepard grinned just a little, looking over toward the door through which Jack and Legion had left. He was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. "She's going to be fine."

"Yeah," Garrus began to chuckle, "Yeah, she's going to be fine. Phillips, though?"His laughter continued, grew, then quickly spread to the man beside him until the both of them were breathless where they sat on the floor of the club, their leftover adrenaline making them almost giddy.

The next time the commander looked up, the patrons who hadn't already left were giving them looks like they had lost their minds. He finally sobered up the best that he could, though doubted his stoic tough-guy aura could be saved, and climbed to his feet, holding out his hand to help his friend up.

"Come on. Let's get back to the Normandy before we lose the tracking signal."

"Fine." Garrus grasped the offered arm and stood. "But after this is over? I'm going to need some damn shore leave."

The docking bay was as busy as it always was on Omega, filled nearly to the brim with mercenaries, smugglers, and the odd honest merchant looking to make a few credits. It would have been the perfect place to get thoroughly lost in a crowd if Jack had thought the three of them were actually being chased. Phillips had taken the lead once he had pulled his head out of his ass again, seeming quite eager to get as far away from that station as was physically possible. She couldn't really blame him for that. Jack was behind him, her patience quickly wearing away to nothing as she pushed her way through the teeming sea of people to keep up with him. Legion was bringing up the rear, or at least it had been when she had last checked. She had put as much effort as she was going to into bringing it along. If it fell behind, she wasn't going to waste any time waiting for it.

"There! That one's mine," Phillips called back to her, pointing to a ship that was coming up on their left. Jack craned her neck to get a better look at it, struggling to see over the heads of everyone around her until they came nearly all the way to the airlock. It looked… like shit, actually. Like he had literally gone around collecting space debris and piecing it together until it was in the general shape of a ship. The armor panels were mismatched where they weren't almost completely obscured by dirt. The hull was deeply scored with scratches and scrapes, along with the occasional scorch mark that was probably left over from some vicious space battle or another. Jack had heard of war ships that would forego the typical superficial repairs meant to keep them looking shiny and new for the sake of intimidation. In this particular case, though, she couldn't really tell whether Phillips had meant for the hunk of junk to look scary or if he was just being a tightwad with his credits. In any case, the only reason she was afraid to go near it was because she suspected that it would fall apart the second she set foot on the gangplank.

But it had outrun an Alliance ship, hadn't it? If that was true, then there must have at least been something decent under the hood. Before she followed her new companion into the airlock, she caught the name of the vessel, scrawled in white letters across that scarred and dust-covered hull. Scylla.

"She's great, isn't she?"

She gave him a look like he was delusional, hearing the jarring clang of metal against metal as Legion stepped in beside her and the automatic door shut behind them. "Not really the first word that comes to mind."

"Don't let her appearance fool you." His features lit up momentary as the decontamination sequence started up. "This is the fastest ship in the galaxy, right here."

Let's see her outrun the Normandy, she thought, though kept it to herself.

"Speaking of appearances," he continued, "We didn't really have time for proper greetings back there, did we?" He took a step closer to her, his eyes wandering south of her face for as long as he dared to let them. For fuck's sake. She was on his ship for ten seconds and he was already eyeing her up? "You look good, Jack."

She arched her eyebrow, the picture of indifference though she tensed subtly under his stare. Now this was the seedy, arrogant ass she remembered. Funny how he got that cocky swagger back as soon as he was out of Shepard's sight. "Yeah? Wish I could say the same for you."

"And charming as ever, I see."

She clenched her teeth as a grin split his face, silently reminding herself that she wasn't allowed to cause any bodily harm. She still needed him. For the next few days, at least. She only had to reign in her temper for a few days.

And either he had forgotten how hard she could punch or he could somehow sense the dramatic increase in her self-restraint; she could see from the self-assured spark in his blue eyes. Blue like Shepard's except… not at all like Shepard's. Now that she was able to get a better look at the man, she couldn't help but compare the two of them. And hell, maybe she was a little biased, but there didn't seem to be too much of a contest. Shepard's eyes were the color of the sky on Pragia right before a rainstorm hit, from what she could remember of glimpses stolen through the skylight outside of her cell. More grey than blue sometimes, depending on the lighting. They were eyes that could make a girl forget where she was. Phillips' eyes were brighter, more saturated, like the color of hard candy. They looked fake, and the trend continued past their shade. There was always something going on behind those eyes, some weasely, underhanded little scheme that always seemed to end with someone getting stabbed in the back.

Back in the old days, being the lust object of a ship's captain was good luck, made things infinitely easier on her. Any time she needed anything, she would know exactly how to go about getting it. Now, though…

She was thinking that she would rather put a campfire out with her face than use any of that kind of persuasion on him.

"This how you treat every damsel in distress you pick up?" She wrinkled her nose at the thought. "Leer at them until they're either desperate enough to drop their pants or they smack you?"

He shrugged with a smirk. "It's worked out alright for me so far."

"Well, I'm warning you now, Roy. You touch me, and you'll be spitting your teeth out your asshole."

He held both his hands up where she could see them in order to placate her, then gave her an "after you" gesture with flourish as the door to the bridge finally whooshed open. She headed through it and he moved to follow her, but slowed when Legion fell into step beside him. He looked at the geth as if only really noticing it was there in that moment, silent as it had been, giving it a suspicious grimace when he seemed to realize that its optics had been tracking his every move.

"The hell is that?"

Jack glanced over her shoulder at the two of them staring each other down and frowned. She knew that bringing Legion along was going to make things more complicated. She was never gonna let the boss man live it down if her little synthetic bodyguard blew her cover. "VI. You're not allowed to touch that either." She was glad that the synthetic seemed to know enough to keep quiet.

"Not like any VI I've ever seen. Where'd you get it?"

With a sigh, she stopped and turned completely around to face him, crossing her arms impatiently. "You really gonna make me stand here and play twenty questions, or are you gonna show me where I can bunk?"

"Plenty of room in my cabin," he offered, earning another glare.

"Engineering level will be just fine, thanks."

All the way down to the bottom of the ship, the crew of the Scylla stopped what they were doing, stared, nudged their mates, sized her up as she walked by.

Well… a good portion of their attention was probably saved for the geth that was, for some reason, being allowed to wander around freely, but she felt like all of them were staring at her. Living on the Normandy for so long had lowered her guard, inch by inch, so that returning to the hostile environment in which she was raised was as shocking to her system as getting dunked into a tub of ice water. She was surprised by how much it was affecting her, how much she must have changed in the past months, despite herself. However, she still didn't regret coming onboard to play the criminal again. Maybe it would be good for her, keep her sharp.

She had seen what happened to people like her when they didn't stay sharp.

"So," began Phillips, jerking her abruptly out of her thoughts. He glanced back at her briefly, then left her staring at the back of his uneven haircut when he faced forward again. "Last I heard of you, you were getting shipped off to Purgatory."

"Is that a question?" would normally have been both the beginning and the end of her response, but she had been sent with an agenda; it probably would have been counter-productive to tell the guy to shut his pie hole. It wasn't likely that she'd be able to get anything useful out of him without a little patience and effort, so if that meant small talk, then… ugh.

Shit, who was she kidding? What had she gotten herself into?

"Well, Purgatory's just a few hunks of floating scrap metal now."

"Yeah, it was all over the news when that place got wrecked," he replied, chuckling. "And I'm sure you had nothing to do with it."

Jack shrugged modestly and suppressed a grin, a swell of warm feelings coming over her when she remembered the utter chaos that had helped to get her blood flowing again when she woke up from cryo. "What about you? How the hell did you find someone stupid enough to give you a ship?"

They reached a staircase and descended, the light dimming and the low hum of the engine growing louder as they did. So far, the interior of the ship wasn't much prettier than the outer shell. It was all dusky catwalks and exposed piping, a vessel that Tali could have had a field day with if the amount of flaws her untrained eye picked out was any good indication of how well things were running. When they reached the subdeck, though, at least that felt familiar; in her experience, they all looked about the same no matter what kind of ship they were on.

Dark, quiet, and hard to find. It would do.

Phillips was quiet until they reached level ground again, ducking under a low-hanging beam as he led her into the room, empty aside from a few storage crates stacked against the wall. "Guess I was just lucky enough to find someone who saw my potential."

He turned toward her and, again, she caught that look she had noticed back in Afterlife and felt a tug of anxiety in the pit of her stomach, her hackles rising on the back of her neck. Why had it been so easy to convince him to let her tag along? They had lived on the same ship together, they had hijacked, stolen, and killed together, but they still had never been particularly close. She had never been friendly enough to warrant any kind of debt and had never been hostile enough for a vendetta. All the same – instinct had kept her alive so far, and she wasn't about to turn her back on it. He was up to something.

Jack narrowed her eyes. "What potential?"

For once, she wasn't being funny. But Phillips seemed to take it that way or else was avoiding the subject, not offering anything more than a mockery of a wounded pout as he turned back toward the stairs.

"I'll make sure the crew knows not to bother you," he assured. "I'm short enough on men without you smearing them all over the walls."

He left her question unanswered, hanging uneasily in the air as the biotic and the AI listened to his footsteps disappearing into the upper levels of the ship.

Author's Notes: This chapter gave me problems. Unforeseen circumstances dragged me away from writing for a while so this was written in little bits over a looong period of time, which screws with my head. Eventually, I stared at it so long that I just had to post it or go insane. Next chapter's coming pretty easily, though, so it won't take as long as this one did. Pinky swear.

Also, figured out that I can turn to the show Dexter when I find need for creative cuss words (ie: fuckmothering). I love Debra Morgan.