DISCLAIMER: I own no recognizable material, except within the confines of my sad, twisted little mind.

REVIEW RESPONSES:

douchiesnacks: Thanks, man.

Zero612: Thanks. I'm glad you think so.

JustAFerret: I like Shara too; my problem, however, my problem is that I haven't the foggiest clue on how to work her into the story. Shara was basically intended as a throwaway character that I could simply use as a catalyst for Julian (ergo, story!me) to mount his prison break. I honestly don't know what to do with her now, but at the same time I don't want to just abandon her character, since that would feel contrived. See my problem? Especially since I now don't know how I would get her back in the story without it, once again, seeming contrived.

And on the subject of Tali, if the speed of public transportation in ME is comparable to he elevators, Julian may just be better off running. Holy crap, long response is long.

Repeat16 and BrintonTwinz (I know you're the same people): Thanks.

Thousand Tailed Holy FlashFang: *Too fat to move* Thanks… Urg, I will never look at oranges or cookies the same way, ever again.

Classy Cynic: Thanks.

A/N: Heh, heh… Sorry I took so long to update. *Dodges hail of knives, torches, pitchforks, axes, and other assorted sharp, pointy objects* I unfortunately have a chronic case of Laziness Syndrome. However, this new change to the site, stating that stories with lemons or large amounts of violence can be deleted without warning – which I am frankly (pardon my language) really fucking pissed off about – has inspired me to write more. Also, to those of you who are sending me messages or reviews asking that I add your names to the petition, kindly do it yourself next time, and put it up on your own stories or PMs or profiles as well; it'll get around more that way.

Anyway, onward!

I'm running down a thoroughfare, with the Markets in sight. Luckily, Shara's apartment was actually located within walking – or rather, running – distance of the Ward Markets, and I'm thanking pretty much every deity I can think of for that.

I slow down to a brisk walk when I get into the Markets, watching the holographic breadcrumb trail to see where to go. Damn me for not playing the first Mass Effect game; I could have gotten around much easier if I had.

The trail turned abruptly to one side, leading through a couple of doors and into a dimly red-lit alley. I duck in quickly, and blink owlishly for a moment before my eyes adjust to the lighting.

Well, this totally isn't a cliché clandestine meeting place at all. I can hear two people talking, and I draw my pistol as I head in their direction.

"-The Shadow Broker? Where's Fist?" That's Tali. I tighten my grip on the pistol, dropping to a crouch and taking aim as I spot the group at the foot of the stairs I am above of. Two salarians are standing off to one side, by some crates. A turian with a major "thug" vibe and facepaint that looks like a skull is standing out in the open, partially obscuring the smaller figure of Tali. Shit. I'll have to take out the salarians first; the way the turian's positioned, I could hit Tali by accident.

The turian runs a hand along Tali's helmet, and down her arm. Ew. This guy makes me feel like I need a shower, and I'm not even the subject of his… attentions. "They'll be here. Where's the evidence?" Dear God, even his voice is oily.

Tali slaps his hand away, and I cheer silently. "No way," she says, "The deal's off." At that, the turian backs off slightly, but the salarians both turn and start walking in her direction. Shit, this isn't good.

I decide to make my entrance. "Well, looks like I arrived just in the nick of time," I say, glaring down at the thugs from my higher position on top of the stairs and pointing my pistol directly at the turian's face. "Guess that makes me a big damn hero."

Tali dives off to one side, tossing a tech mine in the direction of the salarians, and ducks behind a crate. There's an explosion, and one of the two is thrown back and lands limply, like a marionette with its strings cut. At the same time, I charge down the stairs, bulling into the turian with a shoulder-check that throws him to the ground. I follow his collapse almost immediately, having lost my balance when I hit him.

We roll around on the ground, the turian swiping at me with his fingers curled like claws, catching me in the side of the head, hard, and dazing me momentarily, before I recover and punch him in the face; the punch lacks real force though, since I didn't manage to get any real torque because of the close proximity. Funnily enough, the collar on turian armour actually provides a great handle for grappling when fighting one in close quarters; I latch onto the collar quickly, and lunge forward to violently headbutt the turian in the face. He reels, head snapped back from the blow, and I take the opportunity to jam the pistol's barrel under his chin, ignoring the way I'm seeing stars. I squeeze the trigger twice, and indigo blue blood sprays from the back of the turian's head and he slumps bonelessly onto me, pinning me to the ground. My gut spasms uncomfortably as I look at the body, which is now leaking blue blood onto me; that's the eleventh person I've killed in the past twelve hours. I'm not sure if I'm happy or terrified that doing this will likely get easier with time.

As I struggle momentarily to move the – quite literally – dead weight off myself, cursing the lack of leverage I have, I see the remaining salarian moving toward me, pistol in hand and aimed at me. I shove the corpse off of myself and hurriedly bring my own pistol to bear in the thug's direction.

Suddenly, there's the roar of a shotgun firing, and the salarian bucks forward, stumbling from being shot in the back. He snaps around, pistol tracking, and I see Tali behind her crate, pumping the shotgun in her hands. She fires again, and the salarian collapses backward, his front spattered with viscous green blood.

Tali stands there, shotgun still readied, as I manage to shove the turian thug's corpse off of myself and stand up, retrieving my pistol from the ground, collapsing it, and putting it back on my hip. I put my hands up to appear less threatening. "Hi." I say. "Are you okay?" I'm looking noticeably down at her. Wow, either Tali's a fair bit shorter than she's shown in-game, which is possible, or I'mjust really tall. Possibly both.

"Who are you?" she demands, shotgun still pointed at me. "And who do you work for? Saren? The Shadow Broker?"

"Okay, first, if you could please put the shotgun down," I reply, eyeing the weapon in her hands. "I'm not here to kill you, like they were." I motion at the corpses. "My name's Julian, and no, I don't work for either Saren or the Broker. I'm just a good Samaritan." I paused, seeing her lowering the shotgun. "So, mind telling me your name, since I gave you mine?" I put my hand out to shake, before realizing the stupidity of the action and withdrawing it, before continuing, "And was there any particular reason why you decided that trusting Fist was a good idea?"

"My name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, though I would prefer just being called Tali. I- Doctor Michel told me he worked for the Shadow Broker. I was going to bargain for protection, using evidence that I found that proved that a turian Spectre named Saren was working with the Geth and attacked a human colony." Tali replies, looking away. She puts the shotgun away completely, and starts wringing her hands. "I wanted to meet with the Shadow Broker to be sure of it."

I shake my head. "Fist set you up. Everybody knows that the Shadow Broker never meets anyone in person. Nobody knows what they look like, or what their race is, even." Except for me, anyway. Fuck, that yahg was creepy. "I happened to overhear Fist talking to a certain Saren Arterius – I'm assuming he's the Spectre you're talking about – over a comm. channel in his office, and informing him of the location he sent you." A white lie, of course. It would be hard to explain why I, or rather, Aegis, was hacking into Fist's emails. "I imagine these guys" -I nudge the corpse of the turian thug with a boot- "were working for him."

"That bosh'tet." she hisses. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted him."

"Just wondering, Tali," I say after a moment, tilting my head slightly to one side curiously, "Why did you decide to give this information to the Shadow Broker? Wouldn't it make more sense to go to the Council, or the Alliance?" That was always confusing to me, why Tali instead tried to bargain with the Shadow Broker for asylum, rather than the more obvious choices. Of course, it might have been explained in the first game, for all I know, but whatever. "And how'd you get in contact with Fist, anyway?"

"I tried," she replies, looking down at her hands, which she's wringing furiously. "At least, I tried with the Alliance. I went to the human embassy, and I asked to meet with your ambassador, but they called security on me and threw me out. I didn't go to the Council because I thought they might have been involved somehow with what Saren did."

Behind the expressionless helmet, I frown, and after a moment, reply. "I can understand your thinking with the second part, I suppose, since Spectres work directly for the Council; it's doubtful that they would be involved, though. I don't understand though, why you would get thrown out of-" I then remember why, and I grind my teeth angrily for a moment. "Oh, right; I remember now. The 'vagabonds and thieves' quarian stereotype, right?"

Tali seems to give me a dumbfounded look. "How do you know that?" she asks after a moment. "I thought humans didn't really know all that much about us." There's a short pause, before she adds, "Sorry, I didn't mean any offense."

"Nah, it's all right," I reply easily. "I do a lot of reading on the extranet and the Codex."

"Ah," she says in response. "As for how I met Fist, I was shot by someone working for Saren when I reached the Citadel. I managed to find a clinic down in the Lower Wards run by Doctor Michel, and she helped me. I mentioned that I had information on Saren, and she suggested I could take it to Fist, because she said he worked for the Broker, and that he owed her a favour. I didn't take her up on the offer until after getting thrown out of the embassy, though." She glances back up at me. "I met with Fist, and he sent me here, promising a meeting with the Shadow Broker. You know the rest. The thugs came, and then you came, and then- then I-"

With that she looks down at the shotgun-perforated salarian corpse. I can visibly see her body lock up, and hear what sounds like her breath hitching. Oh fuck; the adrenaline rush or whatever analogue quarians have must have worn off. She's probably never had to kill anyone before, and I'll bet she's in shock.

Stepping forward, I release my helmet seal and take it off, and lightly lay a hand on her shoulder, both of which are now shaking. "Hey, hey." I say, quietly, gently. "It's alright."

I wince inwardly. You dumbass! It's most definitely not all right! Why the hell did you say that?

"Sorry, what I mean is, are you okay?" I ask again, immediately regretting my word choice again. Damn it, I'm not good at comforting people! Especially after five years without being around normal people, rather than guards and a bunch of "doctors" whose idea of a good time was to torture me in cruel and unusual ways. "Uh, I mean, it's alright to feel this way after having to kill someone." I should really just shut the hell up.

"I… I… Oh Keelah…" Tali says haltingly. "I killed them… I've never killed anyone before." She sinks down to her knees, arms hugging her abdomen as she continues to stare at the body. I kneel down with her, and set my helmet down on the ground next to me; I feel it's better to perhaps just stay quiet and let her deal with it in her own way.

After a minute, she speaks up again. "Does it… get easier?" she asks. I wince, and shake my head slightly.

"I don't know, Tali." I reply, looking her in the eye sadly, doing my best not to look at the dead turian and to ignore the uncomfortable clenching feeling in my gut and throat, and the faint nausea. "I killed someone for the first time not even a day ago, so I wouldn't know." I pause, before adding, "If it's any consolation, it could have been worse." I'm not sure at all that this will help.

"H- How?" she asks.

"It could have been another quarian you had to kill." I answer back. "It could have been someone you knew. At least with you," I glance at the dead salarians, "you killed in self-defense. They would have killed you with no remorse, given the opportunity."

…And that probably didn't help. Fantastic. Way to go, Julian, you've officially made an ass of yourself.

"Sorry," I say. "I'm really not any good at this." I look away from Tali uncomfortably, and I drop my hand from her shoulder.

"Thanks." It's said quietly, but I catch it and my head snaps back to look at her again. Tali meets my gaze, eyes glowing through the purple fog of her visor. "Thank you." She repeats.

I blink in confusion, eyes wide. What? "Wha-" I begin, before something occurs to interrupt me.

"What happened here?" Female voice, tone suggests human or asari; unidentified, possible threat. In the two seconds it takes to process that thought, I snap up from my crouch and pivot in the direction the voice came from, spreading my stance out for better balance and keeping myself side-on to the source to present a smaller target. Simultaneously, my right hand shoots up to one of the rifles on my back; I draw the weapon quickly, and have it pressed into my shoulder and aimed almost before it finishes deploying.

Five possible hostiles; a turian, krogan, and three humans. No cover close enough to get behind, and they have the high ground. Helmet's on the ground, so no shield indicator. No grenades, and my weaponry's basically bog-standard. In short, I'm fucked if they attack.

I take a moment to actually look at them, and I calm down considerably at what I see. The krogan has battered-looking red armour, and a set of massive claw-mark scars on one side of his face; Wrex. The turian's got a very familiar-looking visor over one eye; Garrus… again. Two of the humans are recognizable as Ashley and Kaidan. The human out in front, a woman, is unfamiliar; she's got red hair, pale skin-tone and freckles, and her eyes are a strikingly vivid shade of green – all in all, she's actually quite attractive. As to her identity, she's wearing N7 armour, so there's only one person she could be, especially with most of the Mass Effect 1 ground team with her. Shepard…

Oh, thank God, I'm not screwed after all. Though the fact that all three of them have weapons pointed at me is unnerving.

"Who the hell are you, and what do you want?" I demand. Gotta keep up appearances, since I shouldn't know who everyone here is. Well, except Garrus, that is, and even so, I should only know him as "Officer Vakarian", if I were to remember him at all; it's been five years, after all. "Are you working for Saren?"

"I could say the same," Shepard says. "And no, I'm not working for Saren. I'm Commander Shepard, Systems Alliance. We're trying to get evidence that Saren is behind the Eden Prime attack, and Fist told us that he sent a quarian with the information here." Ah, I love being right. "And you are?"

"Julian." I answer. Shepard raises an eyebrow. The gun pointed at me doesn't waver.

"No last name?" she asks.

"Yes, I have a last name, it's just…" I feel awkward; my last name is slightly embarrassing. "Fine. It's Love. Julian Love." The last two sentences are muttered under my breath.

"Sorry, what was that?" Shepard asks.

"Julian Love!" I yell out, irritated. There's an audible silence for a moment, before I add, "You had better not laugh." I glance back, seeing Tali looking uncomfortable. "And this is Tali; she's the quarian Fist would've been talking about, I believe. I helped her out of the predicament she found herself in here."

Shepard nods once to me, and then gestures to everyone with her. They put away their weapons, and I do the same with my rifle, before scooping my helmet up off the grounds and cradling it under an arm. "All right, then. What happened here, exactly?"

"Well," I start, "I was in Chora's Den, and I eavesdropped on Fist talking to a Saren Arterius over a comm. He was talking about Tali, who had come to him asking to meet with the Shadow Broker and bargain for protection, in exchange for giving over evidence that Saren was responsible for the Eden Prime attack. Fist gave Saren the location he sent Tali to, and Saren was thanking him for being of help. I headed to that same location myself, since I had heard of the attack and wanted to do my best to help bring the perpetrator to justice, in any way I could, and if I could do so by protecting the person with said evidence and keeping it from Saren, so much the better.

"Anyway, then I got here, and found Tali about to be killed by these guys," –I jerked my thumb back over my shoulder, pointing at the dead thugs behind me. "And we killed them. Tali's okay," I look back at Tali, and she's still glancing at the dead salarians, "albeit somewhat in shock, and she still has the evidence. Neither of us were injured; so, yeah, not much else to it."

Tali pipes up. "Saren's thugs would have killed me if he hadn't come along." I scratch the back of my neck at this, feeling extremely awkward. I didn't do that much.

Shepard nods, finally, before saying, "Well, I'm glad you weren't injured, Tali." She smiles. Hmm, I do believe we've got ourselves a Paragon Shepard here – sweet! Shepard then asks, "So you have evidence against Saren? Can you show it?"

Tali nods once. "Yes," she affirms, "But not here. We should find somewhere safer, less out in the open."

"Agreed," Shepard answers. "We should go to the human embassy. We can use Ambassador Udina's office; we won't be overheard there." Oh, great, venturing into the territory of the common Bureaucratic Asshole. Fun times will abound, I'm sure.

"Alright, let's go, then." Tali agrees. I clear my throat, not loudly, but enough to be noticeable.

"Uh, may I tag along?" I ask, hesitantly. Shepard looks at me for a moment, before nodding with a slight smile.

"I don't see why not." She answers. With that, she turns and starts walking away, motioning for us to follow, the rest of the group and myself trailing behind.

Oh, we're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz…

A/N: Aaaaannnnd, CUT!

Remember, y'all know the drill – review! Reviews keep authors like myself happy, well fed, and motivated to keep writing. I want at, absolute LEAST, five to ten reviews from you, my readers. Seriously, even if you just leave a basic two-word 'Great job!' it would be enough.

Also, do you think I should change the story's rating to M? I do have a fairly considerable amount of cursing included, plus some kind of graphic combat, and I'm highly paranoid that the moderators (*cough cough*Overzealous! *cough*) will delete this story and/or my account otherwise.

Additionally, should this story, or Lone Wolf, for that matter, be taken down, I will start posting them on a different site, most likely DeviantArt. Should the unthinkable happen and my stories are deleted/ my account is deleted/whatever, come find me on DA and I will post my stories there. My DA name is exactly the same as my FFnet author name (Blood-Hawk-531).

Anywho, Blood-Hawk-531 out. Ja ne!