AN: Harry and co meet Samara. It goes well.
"Hey, you coming to meet the Commander's newest hire?" Harry jerked, startled by the shout, and looked up at the intruder. Jacob stood expectantly, waiting for him to get up, and Harry blinked at him.
"New hire?" he questioned as he put the pad down onto his makeshift cot. "What new hire?" Jacob shrugged in response.
"No idea, we can't make a move on the assassin till he tries for his target, and that isn't for another week or so, but I don't remember us being assigned another dossier on Illium. Guess we should go find out..." The dark-skinned man jerked his head in the direction of the lift. "Come on." Jacob seemed to have assigned himself to watch him, Harry mused. Either that or his normal reserved personality was something Jacob looked for in a friend. Still, Harry couldn't deny that it did come in handy, and the other man was fairly good company in the bar. The time-displaced wizard followed Jacob toward the lift, leaving the starboard viewing port where he most liked to spend his downtime reading over the Cerberus reports, looking for any sign of magic. It was more of a hobby these days though, he had long since given up on finding even a single magic user. The doors to the lift slid open, revealing Garrus, who cocked his head at the duo.
"Going to see the Justicar as well, huh?" Jacob looked puzzled at this.
"The who?" he asked as he and Harry stepped onto the lift. Garrus sighed, and flicked his mandibles.
"The asari Shepard brought on board. Presumably to join us reprobates." The door opened smoothly onto the control deck of the Normandy, allowing the trio to filter out, walking round to reach the briefing room through the science lab.
"That rings a bell," mused Harry as they walked. Jacob looked at him with a curious expression on his face.
"Really? It's not ringing anything over here," he responded. Garrus looked like he was about to say something when the doors to the science lab slid open. Mordin was in, tinkering with a piece of technology as he muttered to himself in a fast-paced whisper, his black eyes narrowed in concentration. As the door hissed open he flicked his eyes up to the entrance to his room. Seeing the three walk in, he placed the part back onto the workbench and moved forward to greet them.
"Ah, and how can I help today? Garrus you usually do your own modifications, and Mr Taylor you have not needed my assistance before, however you Mr Potter have the most fascinating biotics..." Harry raised a hand, waving the doctor off with a patient grin as he interrupted the speeding train of verbal diarrhoea.
"I'm still not going to let you experiment on me Mordin." The Salarian seemed to slump a little, before brightening again.
"Then you must be here to meet the Justicar. Great privilege to work with her, odds of one agreeing to work for a code that is not her own are... small." Jacob looked frustrated again.
"There's still that word, Justicar. What does it mean?" The four crew-mates walked into the briefing room with Jacob still grousing that no-one would tell him exactly who their new team member actually was, while Harry's brow creased more as he tried to remember why the word was ringing warning bells in his subconscious. As they walked into the room they were greeted by Miranda, her face twisted into an expression of dissatisfaction as she saw the four walk into the room.
"This isn't a class trip, you know," her light Australian accent took some of the sting, but the ice in her tone was plain. Jacob stepped forward to greet her, deflecting her comments as the other spread around the room. Harry tuned out the other's voices more as he focussed on the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd had the feelings before and they'd always been right before too. He looked up, bringing himself back into the world as the biotic signature of Commander Shepard approached the room, accompanied by another of slightly greater power. Harry reached out with his magic, testing the feel of the other and finding it to feel like an asari matriarch's, except familiar. Harry's forehead creased again, trying to remember the asari matriarchs he'd run into, before his eyes widened in a panic. The door slid open and the red-armoured, blue-skinned killer who'd sworn to hunt him till the ends of the galaxy walked in. Their eyes met at the same instant, and a single thought ripped itself across Harry's mind. Well, shit.
The Justicar froze in the doorway, and for a brief instant the room was peaceful, the occupants turning to get their first look at the newcomer. And then the instant shattered, the asari flinging a dense biotic warp at the black-haired man on the other side of the room. Harry reacted with the same speed, throwing a blade of magical force straight through the speeding mass of twisted force, annihilating both of their attacks. He'd learned quickly to use nothing non-lethal against the massively powerful being, as she was easily skilled enough to overwhelm anything less than his full strength. A pair of heavy biotic blasts followed on the heels of the warp, and Harry mused that she'd only got faster in the last three years. He nullified the blasts with a heavy shield, rolling left to get more of the table in the way before retaliating with a spike of power aimed for her shoulder. The exchange had lasted little more than two seconds, and even as the Justicar negligently flicked the attack away Shepard's voice rose above the shriek of twisting metal.
"STAND DOWN!" The command came with references, as the commander simultaneously blindsided Harry with a gravity twisting push into the wall and knocked the Justicar's arms askew, ruining the biotic field she had been spinning between her hands. The break in combat was enough for Miranda and Mordin to have raised their biotics and omni-tool respectively and primed an attack on both of the combatants, neither having seen who threw the first punch. There was another pause as both the asari and the wizard clearly thought about fighting through the third parties, and then Shepard stepped into the middle of the pair.
"Stand. Down. Do not make me repeat myself." The pair looked at the redhead, noticed the extremely heavy shotgun she held and the biotic energy warping around her frame, and decided not to push her.
"Now then, someone is going to explain themselves," the obviously angry woman continued, "and it had better be a fantastic explanation." Harry rose to his feet slowly, still keeping his eyes on the statuesque woman opposite him, and cleared his throat nervously.
"It might be a little bit my fault," he said slowly. The Justicar snorted, clearly inches away from restarting the impromptu duel again.
"A little? You interfered in the one best chance I had in the last four decades. I would count that as more than a little interference." The Justicar was clearly willing Harry to restart the fight so she would have an excuse to continue. Harry straightened, his mouth settling into an unhappy line.
"And if I'd known what she was, then maybe I wouldn't have jumped in," he acknowledged. "But you started throwing biotics around in the middle of a crowded street. From where I was sitting, it was a random attack on no-one in particular."
"Okay, both of you need to calm down," Shepard had relaxed a little, the dark blue biotic aura retreating back into her implants, but she had yet to stow the shotgun, keeping it loose in her hands. She looked at Harry.
"You interfered in her hunt? And yet you're still alive." Harry smiled viciously.
"I'm tougher than I look," he responded. "And I still don't even know your name," he continued, gesturing at the asari. "After all, I doubt your name actually is Justicar." The crimson armoured woman stiffened slightly, before glancing at Shepard, the woman whose code she had sworn to follow. Although, she thought to herself, this was before she had known this being followed her too. Eventually she sighed and acquiesced to the olive branch the human had extended.
"My name is Samara." Harry nodded cautiously at her words, and responded as politely as he could while still keeping his guard up.
"Harry Potter." Samara nodded back to him. Seeing both of them had reached a truce, however temporary, Shepard let herself relax the rest of the way, packing the shotgun back up and storing it on her back. She waved Harry out of the room, judging that it was best to get the two flashpoints away from each other. As the door closed behind the mysterious young man she silently vowed to track him down and get some more answers out of him.