There's a stunned silence for a moment, and Shepard realizes they must make quite a scene. She with her heavy jacket and pants, kneeling with her hands behind her head. The turian in C-Sec blue, gun drawn and ready to fire. Fist, missing most of his skull, leaving a large-ish stain on his plush purple carpeting.

The turian officer in the visor advances on her quickly and carefully, shifting behind her. Then he kicks her between the shoulder blades and she falls face first onto the floor.

"The hell," she curses as he presses a knee into her back. "I gave up, you know. This is police brutality."

"Right," the turian drawls, pulling her hands behind her and cuffing them with fancy magnetic locks. "You can lodge a formal complaint when we get to headquarters."

"Maybe I will!" Shepard asserts, before mumbling, "Dick."

She feels his hands on her neck, long fingers, no gloves. They stroke along her neck, briefly delve up into her hair, then into the collar of her jacket and along her shoulders and arms. Even moving down her sides and into the small of her back.

"Getting fresh with a prisoner?" she asks, trying her best to look him in the eye. "This how you get through the day?"

He's looking at her coolly, but intently. Not in the eye, but focusing on his work. His hands move with purpose, not shyly, dragging across her sides, her thighs, and down her legs.

"Don't flatter yourself," he says simply. "Just checking for booby traps."

Shepard cocks an eyebrow. "Isn't it standard procedure to ask if I've got any, first?"

"Never really understood that," he says idly, drawing his hands beneath the back of her jacket. "Not like you'd tell me if you did."

"Well, quite frankly, I'm insulted." With significant effort, Shepard turns her head pointedly in the opposite direction and ends up staring at the still-intact bottom half of Fist's face. She rolls her eyes and then closes them. "I do your job for you, turn myself in, and then I get treated like a dangerous suspect? Whatever happened to gratitu–"

She opens her eyes to find a turian hand in front of her face. It's holding the pocket-stunner she keeps in the lining of her sleeve, rigged to go off if anyone touches it.

"Huh. How'd that get there."

His hand disappears and then she's being yanked to her feet. Not delicately.

"Watch it, bareface," she says, shrugging her shoulders in an attempt to right her jacket.

"Just start walking," he says. "Unless you'd rather I carried you."

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Shepard retorts as he pushes her forward.

She glances back and sees his gun is still out. Taking no chances. Smart, she thinks. Smarter than most. Not that she really intends to make any moves, but if there's anything she's learned, it's to always be mindful of changing circumstances. Especially if those circumstances have a gun.

They make their way out of Chora's Den. It's a mess. Tables overturned, chits and chips of various denominations spilled everywhere. Bodies are strewn throughout the club, all alive but in varying states of pain or consciousness. The krogan she'd laid out with a point blank concussive round earlier is sitting against the wall by the door while his partner squats in front of him and keeps asking him what day it is and how many fingers he's holding up. He gives her a death glare when they pass, and she gives him a smile in return.

"You're welcome, by the way," she says as they emerge from the club. There's a crowd of people outside, some from inside, some just gawkers come to see what happened.

"I should be thanking you?" the turian asks dryly. "For what?"

"Doing your job."

He barks out a laugh. "Right. Murdering a man in cold blood–"

"Murder?!" she blurts, jerking her head around to face him.

"–isn't my job."

"He was going for a gun!" Shepard says innocently.

"That you kicked over to him."

"How it got there is beside the point. The point is, I acted in self-defense. Or the defense of another! Both of which are thoroughly within my rights as a sentient being according to Citadel law."

"In defense of who?" he laughs. "Me?"

"Sure!" Shepard says as they arrive at an unmarked skycar parked opposite Chora's. "Who knows which of us he would have taken a shot at first?"

"Pretty sure it would have been you," the turian says, opening the rear door and directing her head down and into the car.

She looks up and gives him a hard, searching look. "You sure about that?"

The turian stares at her a moment, one hand on the raised passenger door. He's hard to read, one eye behind a shaded blue visor, but she sees the amused flare of one mandible and smirks right back.

Then he slams the door in her face.

Shepard slumps in the seat, hands still cuffed uncomfortably behind her back. She could shift them underneath and forward, but her officer wouldn't like that. Even though there's a metal cage and what looks like a mass effect force field between her and the front of the skycar, she's already getting the feeling that he's nothing if not careful.

It's been a while since she's been treated like a real threat. Sure, she's got a rep, and she doesn't exactly look like a shrinking violet, but she's more than used to being underestimated. Now she's being treated like she's dangerous.

Fine by me, Shepard thinks as her arresting officer settles into the pilot's seat. She likes being dangerous.

"You know, I didn't really expect you to show up so fast," she says conversationally, leaning forward. "Figured the girl would run and tell C-Sec, but that's some impressive response time."

The car lifts off, slowly ascending through the many layers of the ward.

"Girl?" the turian asks distractedly, keying at the controls and looking up to make sure they don't collide with another passing car.

"Don't play dumb," Shepard says. "The bartender. She was your contact."

The air outside the skycar blurs like heat wash as they pass through the limit of the artificial atmosphere of the ward and into traffic proper. "Sorry, no."

"What?"

"I just happened to be in the neighborhood. Heard gunshots, saw people running out of Chora's Den." He punches in some coordinates or other and then shifts his attention to the on-board computer, probably linked to the C-Sec database. "It's not uncommon, but it's rarely more than a few drunk krogan or batarians getting into an overzealous disagreement about who's picking up the tab. I didn't expect a war zone."

"Wait," she says, furrowing her brow. "So you were just on the beat? And then—"

"Nope."

Shepard blinks. "What?"

"Not on duty. Like I said, just in the neighborhood."

"Oh," she says loudly, "so you were walking on by, hear gunshots, decide to run on in without calling for any backup and handle the whole thing yourself?"

The turian nods, banking the skycar into a line of traffic. "That's about the size of it," he confirms, and then taps at the screen with one finger. "I was right—you're not licensed."

"Yeah," she sighs, "that's my luck, alright... I get a job too good to pass up, and I run into one of the 'thin blue line' types."

She sees his reflection smile in the glass of the windshield. "What's that human phrase? 'Cry me a river?' "

"And a comedian, too." Shepard braces her feet against the back of the pilot's seat and sighs again. "It keeps getting better."

A voice pipes in through the tinny skycar comm, a combination of letters, numbers, and street and district names. The turian punches in his comm code and says, "Vakarian here. I'll take it."

"Oh god, please," Shepard whines as the skycar banks to switch lanes, "you can't even get me to the goddamn station in a timely fashion? This is the worst arrest I've ever had."

"Are you going to shut up ever, or do I have to gag you?" he asks mildly.

She laughs. "You wouldn't dare."

He turns to look her in the eye, calm and serious. "Try me."

Shepard frowns, but says nothing as he turns around again. She has the distinct feeling he's bluffing... but he also ran into a crime scene, gun drawn, without backup, while off duty. She gets the feeling he's either the best kind of cop, or the worst kind, and until she figures out which one that is, she'll tread lightly.

But if he makes a crack about her looks or starts listening to vorcha dubstep or something, then all bets are off.