Pulsar
"Ah, you're awake." Well, that was news to her. Shepard groaned and pushed herself upright, blearily taking in her surroundings. She wasn't in her apartment, though nor was she face-down in the bathroom of OmniTonic. Her memory fogged by her dreams and hangover, she ran on autopilot, throwing off a blanket – blanket?
No restraints, no weapon, no cover. Flanging voice - turian, weapons unknown, threat level-
There was no threat level. Supernova. She was in his apartment, he was in the kitchen.
Shepard warily made her way across the living room, which heralded an actual window, she noted with no small amount of envy. Settling herself onto a stool, she stared at the brilliant image of Earth stretched beneath the glass. It looked like a different world from here. The clouds seemed whiter, the oceans bluer…
Shepard was so distracted by the view she didn't hear her turian moving about in the kitchen, and almost fell off the stool in shock when his painted face popped out of nowhere. She swore colorfully and glared at him.
"I had to go out for this," He announced, ignoring her, and slid a plate across the counter dividing the two rooms. "I didn't have anything you could eat-" He stopped and chuckled to himself, "Well, no food at least," Shepard ignored him. "But the salesman assured me it was a human delicacy."
Shepard blinked down at the meal her turian had placed in front of her. A dubious sallow mass stared innocently back up at her. Real, honest-to-God eggs would have cost a fortune. Even vat-grown was pushing it. Powdered then. And he'd ruined them. Somehow.
The bottom was burnt to a crispy removable layer. The top seemed was torn between liquid and solid. They even smelled like ass. Shepard held her breath and leaned across the counter to peer at him in the kitchen. He was distracted with making his own breakfast. Maybe she could dump them somewhere… but where?
"Last night was that good huh?" She said distractedly, and glanced about the room. The kitchen was divided from the living room by the counter she sat at. Everything was made of the same steely gray that coated most Earth stations. His couch was black, as was the bed and cushions of the stools. Solids were a human favorite in décor, and the apartment was thankfully human in design. She'd seen turian art, and the less said of it, the better.
The far side of the living room dissolved into the bedroom, a few meandering stairs leading to the bed smugly centered on a raised dais. The only other room she took for the restroom. Shepard suddenly felt green with envy and not with nausea. His own kitchen! Her hotel room boasted all of a cooler and a military cot. Even her World Wonder Window was outshined.
"You made quite the impression." He sounded like he was chuckling. Shepard resolved to figure out why later, right now she had to get rid of her eggs before they got rid of her. Her eyes settled on a nearby planter. Genius.
Grabbing the plate, she leaned out of her stool and shook the offending muck into the pot. "I've never worked so hard to get a woman into be-"
Her turian stopped mid-sentence. Shepard turned her head to see him standing at the exit to the kitchen, staring at her with a completely blank expression. Shepard's mouth hung open in surprise, while her plate hung half-buried in dirt.
"You put eggs in my plant." He noted with no small amount of disbelief.
"I put eggs in your plant." She repeated.
He looked dumbstruck. "Why did you put eggs in my plant?"
"… I don't like eggs." She tried lamely.
"And my plant?"
"I didn't want to hurt your feelings."
"So you hurt my plant?"
"The lesser of two evils."
"But now you've done both."
Shepard huffed, finally moving, and put the now-empty plate back up on the counter. "You're feelings aren't hurt."
"Crushed, in fact." He corrected her.
They stared at each other for several moments, when much to her dismay, Shepard broke first and started laughing. He shook his head with a light chuckle and took a seat next to her, his own meal a strange mixture of burnt solids and liquids. Maybe it was turian cooking. Or maybe he was just a bad cook. Probably both. Shepard scooped the ruins eggs back onto her plate, and dumped them into the trash compactor.
"Do you mind if I…" She gestured to his kitchen with her empty plate.
"Be my guest," He shrugged, waving the strangest looking utensil Shepard had ever seen in acquiescence.
He'd left the box out, so she picked it up and squinted at the instructions on its side. Shepard was no chef, but she was certain she could manage better than the culinary catastrophe her turian had created. If nothing else, she was certain she couldn't take the blow to her pride if she failed.
"So last night…" She tried again as she made eggs half-dressed in his kitchen. Both her memory lapse and choice in lingerie annoyed her. She tugged idly at her sports bra. Sexy Shepard. Real Sexy. Then again, female turians didn't have breasts, so maybe it was.
"A night to remember," Supernova offered evasively, after taking just long enough to chew his food to be grating but not long enough to call him out on it.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing happened," He allotted at last, cleaning up his plate. Fast eater. Good fighter. Clearly a soldier like he'd claimed. Couldn't believe everything you heard on a one-night stand. Or everything you heard from a turian? "You passed out on the couch," He placed the dish into the automated washer, a deliberate pause. "I slept on the bed."
He stopped behind her; Shepard turned and pointed her yoke covered spatula at him, raising an eyebrow. "So it means I owe you one."
He smirked. At least she assumed he was smirking. "So it would seem." Shepard was momentarily thrown. She looked a mess, had been trashed then crashed in his apartment, and was probably overstaying her welcome making, ruining, breakfast. Despite all this, he seemed ready and willing to pick up right where they left off. She'd have to get his name.
Shepard grinned, a little lopsidedly. It wasn't everyday you woke up hung-over with a stranger and called it a good morning.
It was then, when they were standing there smiling stupidly at each other, that she realized she smelled smoke. And burning.
Eggs! Eggs were burn-
An explosion from the front of the apartment immediately dropped her to the floor, more out of reflex than necessity. The gentle chime of metal on metal, in the uneven rhythm of wind chimes, filled the aftermath of the blast, when a secondary explosion went off. The flash-grenade lit up the entire apartment and rang in her ears, almost blocking out the suppressing fire that followed.
"This is why we can't have nice things," Shepard joked to calm her nerves. Inwardly, her mind was in a panic. How had the Reds found them again? Had security released them from custody already? Why would they want them dead so badly?
"Group of four, alternating fire," Supernova's voice flanging voice interrupted her, though he seemed to be talking to himself. He ripped open a cabinet door as he spoke, and recovered a stashed pistol.
Shepard didn't recognize the make, and that spoke volumes. It looked to be prototype technology based roughly off Armax Arsenal's Brawler. And it was only a back-up. "Low-grade explosion to bypass the lock," He must have had the omnigel security upgrade. Now is not the time to be jealous Shepard…
"No tech expert, local mercenaries, poorly outfitted." He rolled out to the side, and took a few quick shots before darting back into cover behind the counter with her. A heavy risk considering he was devoid of kinetic barriers. "Four." He muttered in confirmation, as shots peppered the space he'd occupied moments before.
"Flash-and-clear procedure. Ex-military." Shepard added. His tactical analysis of the situation helped her get her bearings. They clearly had nothing to do with the Reds. Not wanting to be useless, Shepard fumbled blindly under the cabinet to no avail. The pistol was his one and only. His other weapons were in the locker in the front hallway, now crowded with mercs, not an option.
Her pistol and omnitool were still in her jacket, which she could only guess was lost behind the couch. Several meters away with no clear cover between there and the kitchen.
The turian didn't seem to need her help. He darted over the counter, around the side of the wall, took shots amidst the spray of assault rifles, never from the same cover twice. She heard a scream from the entryway for his efforts.
This wasn't going to last. Sheer luck and ballsy determination had kept him from getting shot, but with no kinetic barriers a single bullet would be the end of him. If she could reach her jacket, she could add tech mines and cover fire to the fray, try to even the odds, but reaching it was suicide. If she could manage a barrier, she could probably make it to cover behind the couch.
Her biotics made a mockery of the skill. She hadn't been to BaAT, hadn't been a navy brat able to hire a formal tutor, or a colonial rube with the fortune to find an informal one. Dusters had more biotic potential than she did, she remembered DI Ellison once bellowing at her. Her L3 implants had been required once she was identified in basic, and not even an afterthought afterwards.
All basic and N7 training couldn't help her achieve more than comical flails and fails when she tried to use her abilities, and they'd quickly given up. The Normandy even had an alternate, formal biotic assigned to her, Shepard remembered bitterly.
There were some things she could do, of course. More violent things… things formal training was meant to cull and avoid until a biotic was more skilled to handle their talent. Red things. On a molecular level, Shepard could rend flesh, barriers, and armor with her biotics almost as fast as she could with a gun. When it worked.
Her turian fired from cover again, and several rounds barely missed his pretty painted face. Shepard made a decision. Trying to think of a barrier on a molecular level, something she would defend against her own warping and rending attacks, she pumped her arm across her chest in the barrier mnemonic all human biotics were taught. Nothing happened. She tried again, and continued to try. Thankfully, Supernova was too absolved in the fight to notice her awkward air pumping that made her look more like a bad mime than an Alliance biotic.
Finally, after switching arms multiple times, it worked, barely. A mass effect field wavered unsteadily about her, looking like a dying light bulb as opposed to a capable shield. Giving it its first field test, she threw herself without warning across the apartment. Rounds fell on her like rain, the barrier fell half-way across the room, and without waiting to see if she could make it, Shepard dove and rolled straight into the far wall.
Pain blasted through her shoulder as it took the full force of her crash, graceful as it may have been from military training. Her arms had been glanced, more from shrapnel than bullets. Her leg was bleeding, another glance, but there were no serious injuries. Digging her jacket out from behind the couch, she slipped her omnitool onto her hand and gripped her pistol firmly in the other.
She didn't bother to try a barrier again, and doubted she ever would. Instead, she quickly rigged her omnitool for a tech mine to overload kinetic barriers and fry any standard weapon's VI, forcing a brief lockdown while the temporary virus insisted the weapon had overheated. Her enemy was trained, ex-military. This was a clean, professional sweep. They knew to expect resistance. They expected their enemies to be smart. So instead, she decided to be stupid.
Rather than fire from the cover of the far wall and couch, she emerged from the side she'd entered and launched her tech mine at her nearest enemy. His kinetic barriers fizzled and died, which left nothing to protect him from the three shots she put past his armor and into his head.
"Multiple hostiles!" Screamed one of the two remaining mercs. And then he just screamed. Supernova darted up from his newest cover and loosed what must have been almost his entire thermal clip into the merc's torso, before switching to fire on the sole survivor.
He cried out a "Retreat!" to no one in particular before stumbling out of the apartment and vanishing into the halls of the station.
The turian wasted no time in emerging from the kitchen and heading straight to his locker. He quickly threw on his armor, a lustrous, well-kept mix of red and black, as his civvies had been. It, coupled with the assault and sniper rifles strapped to the back, made him look much more imposing and professional than the flirty turian she'd met in OmniTonic. "Stay here; explain what happened to security when they arrive, you can leave or stay afterwards."
"What, exactly, just happened? Do you know who they were? Why they tried to kill-…" Shepard paused briefly. She wasn't sure who they'd tried to kill. "-us?" She settled on. First the Reds, and now a mercenary group. She didn't see how the two were related. Reds didn't hire mercenaries; they liked to do their own dirty work. But Shepard also didn't believe in coincidences.
"No. I'm going to find out," Kneeling beside one of the mercenaries, he rolled the dead man over and quickly hacked into his omnitool. The second omnitool flared to life beside the first, and he flipped through screens and files on both faster than Shepard could keep up. She assumed he was trying to find the mercenary group's local haunt. Better to be sure than potential get lost chasing the survivor. "Stay here." He said again without looking up.
"Like hell, I'm coming with you." Shepard grabbed her jacket and shrugged it on, ignoring the dull ache in her leg and shoulder.
He muttered, "I work faster on my own." Shepard ignored him and pulled down the emergency medkit above his locker, sealing her leg injury with a slab of medigel.
"And die faster," She frowned, throwing a belt of grenades from his locker over her shoulder. He stood up, transferring a file from one omnitool to the other, obviously having found what he was looking for. "Let me help, I owe you."
"You can help me by reporting what happened." He hadn't made from the door yet, but Shepard knew it wasn't out of hesitation; it was simply because he knew she'd follow him. His green eyes narrowed in barely suppressed irritation, and then, to her surprise, in concern. "You're bleeding."
Shepard followed his gaze to her hands, where the blood from where she'd been grazed was dripping down her fingers. She wiped them off on her pants. "It's nothing."
"It's something," The anger was gone from his voice, and he steered her towards the restroom. The abrupt switch made her wonder if he wanted her to stay behind out of fear for her safety. It was sweet, and annoying. She was about to tell him as much when without warning he shoved her into the restroom, the door slid closed behind her, and the lock turned red.
"Consider us even." He called through the door and left.