Mass Effect How the fate plays us

by Sandbox47

This is a full story of ME, ME2 and ME3 that starts at 2177 and ends with the death of the Reapers. It is NOT centered around Shepard but around Min, though the characters you know and love will be in it.

6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: In the clear

'I'm so sorry.' I said as we watched the frigate orbiting the planet, looking for our shuttle. 'I didn't mean for them to blow up the prothean base.'

She laughed in a way that suggested she didn't think it was my fault but was still upset.

'At least we got some of the information on our omni tools.' she said, copying them to the shuttle's computer just in case. 'And we have pictures and...' she cut off.

This was really tearing her up. She grieved for the loss of something so ancient and mysterious. And I couldn't help but grieve with her.

We were hiding out on one of the moons belonging to the planet. We couldn't leave, not yet, because their sensors would pick us up instantly. As soon as they had realized their error they had activated their trackers and instantly zeroed in on our position. It had taken me a bit of very crude and destructive hacking to shut down their scanners long enough for us to hide.

'But what really bothers me... ' she said in a quiet voice. '... is that if you hadn't come with me. To this excavation. I would have been dead now.'

I thought about this. It was true that they would have come either way. But there was nothing that suggested that she wouldn't have managed as well on her own. She might even have saved the base. I told her this.

'I barely overpowered the two men who followed with me down with my biotics. I wouldn't have stood a chance against them all.'

I laughed tiredly.

'Why do you people always think that direct fighting is the right way to solve things?'

'Well, to be honest, you idea was extremely far-fetched and well-executed.' she said. Ah, the praise. If only my head would stop hurting so that I could bask in the praise.

'Well, I'm just that kind of person, you know.' I said, trying to sound smug. 'Hey. This shuttle has a first aid kit, right?'

'Yes. Here.' she pointed towards a red and white kit under the driver's seat.

'Oh goody. Give me the medi-gel.'

'Where are you hurt?' she asked in alarm.

'I'm not. But it turns out that this stuff has painkillers.' I replied tiredly. The night of sex and no sleep seemed like a stupid idea now.

'Go to sleep.' said Liara soothingly. How she could keep her own eyes open I didn't know. It took no persuading at all to make me sleep now.

A person. He has long black tubes in his throat. He needs them or else his throat will collapse and his digestion will poison him. A list of toxins flashed in my mind. A woman with broken bones. Her eyes are blind. A list of chemicals flashed in my mind. A child playing in the sand. A list of people flashed in my mind. A man with a pistol to his head. A man with his hands clutching his head. A woman with her husband. A happy family. A list of dead people. A song with words I did not understand. A song in a voice that would be a whisper had it been any softer. Steam and pipes. Engines and bridges. Birds and planes. The Alliance and Akuze.

I woke up with a start. The images were still flashing in my mind, only now I could pinpoint them, if briefly. But the voice. The one who had been talking to me in my sleep. The one who had been explaining the images. I shook my head, scattering all the images. I didn't want them anymore. They were too much trouble.

I looked around to see where I was exactly. Waking up in new and strange places was becoming way too every-day for me. I had to slow down on this life-style.

Liara was sleeping next to me, sighing gently in her sleep. It was a troubled sleep. She was dreaming of the prothean base. I sat still, listening to her sighs. It took me a while, but I was certain that it wasn't a nightmare and so I let her sleep on.

What was the frigate doing? I launched the shuttle's scanners. There was no ship orbiting the planet anymore. I frowned. This was too quick. I decided to check all the moons. Just in case the new captain had a brain-wave.

Damn it. They were scanning the moon on the other side. There were three moons in all and I had no idea if they had scanned the one to our left or not. Either way, we had little time left. I huffed. What to do now?

The mass relay wasn't that far away. But a shuttle can't beat a frigate in a race. And it would be obvious that we were heading that way. I thought this through carefully. There had been enough power going through the transistor to trick us into thinking that it was a generator. There had been an array of controls attached to it to enhance that idea. Could I duplicate that effect using our shuttle? Hmm? No? Alright. Could we engage in a fire fight? No weapons. Maybe use the mining laser? No, we'd die too soon for that to work. Could I hack them? With a lot of time and effort, yes, but again, I wouldn't be quick enough now that they were prepared for hacking attempts.

Maybe try and talk to them? And then get kidnapped? Liara had her rich mother. No, that plan was wrong on too many levels. What would happen if I did nothing? They would find us and either take our shuttle or just shoot us down.

What would happen if I hid our all of our heat emissions? They wouldn't find us. Could I hide them? No. Ah, but I could make them think that we had died.

I scanned the surface of this moon. Then the next. Fine, I couldn't make them think that we had died.

I'd planned to heat up rock, or a piece of debris to make it look like our shuttle on the scanners. And then we would hide just behind it. When the frigate fired they'd destroy the debris and the remaining heat, that came from us, would simply look like phantom radiation. But alas, no debris.

We were stuck between a rock and a bunch of greedy and angry pirates.

Wait. Did this mean that they had stopped scanning the planet? I ran a few flight simulations. The angle we were at right now would hide us from the scanners if we flew towards the southern pole of the planet. There would be a thirty, maybe forty seconds gap during which we'd be exposed enough for them to track us. Could we get away?

It was a huge risk. I looked over at Liara who was still asleep. In retrospect, falling asleep had been a dangerous idea. I thanked all the gods I didn't believe in for waking me.

I had to make a choice soon. Should I go for it or should I take my chances with running away to the mass relay?

I could always try to intimidate the pirates. And then I could loose my hair and become an asari. Or an elephant. Or did elephants have hair? Surely a little. Did this make asari non-mammal? No, I was sure that they were still mammals. I couldn't be sure of the things you needed to posses for mammal-hood.

Focus, Min! Were turians mammals? Never mind.

Was there a way to boost our shuttle to outrun the frigate? I checked the engine and the mass effect core. No. Not even if I pushed from outside. Did we even have shields? Yes. Just enough to survive the first shot. Did we have holographic projectors? Yes. Hmm. This was interesting. And how far could I throw the shield generator from this moon? I did the math on the omni tool. It looked very promising.

Here was my new and improved plan. I would remove the shield generator, project a hologram of a shuttle around it and send it at full speed towards their frigate. The generator would be on full strength and I would add some more power cells from the shuttle so that it would survive two shots, in case they had the chance to fire.

My hands shook as I started removing the shield generator.

'What's going on?' asked Liara, the noise waking her.

'Ah, you know. The usual.' I said rather hysterically.

'What's wrong?'

'Well, the pirates are scanning the moons. I doubt that we have a minute if that left to live so I'm trying to convince them that we died. And... no, that was really it.'

She sat very still for a second.

'What can I do to help?' she asked, fear pushing her of the shuttle seat.

'Ah... scan in the hull of the shuttle and make it into a hologram.' I said, gesturing around to indicate the shuttle in general.

I finally got the shield generator out of the bunch of hardware and power generators. The mass effect core in the shuttle was a tiny and pathetic thing. Would we really need it, or could I use it to enhance the shields? I did more math on the omni tool. The energy the back-up generators provided wouldn't take us to the mass relay but they would take us to Port Coulai, where we had rented the shuttle in the first place. Or very close to the port anyways. I winced as I realized that we would have to pay for all the damage made to the shuttle. Ah well, better broke than dead.

I shut down all the power for a few seconds to remove the mass effect core, Liara watching the whole thing skeptically.

As the shield was up and running, the holographic projector attached to the generator, we got into the cockpit and vented the cargo. And out came a perfect duplicate of our shuttle. It started to drift away and we had to intercept it to stop it from going anywhere.

'Now what?' asked Liara, looking curiously at the shuttle. The frigate was finishing up with the scan of the other moon.

'Now... let's hope that the shields hold.'

We turned the shuttle to the angle my omni tool indicated for the propulsion of the holo-shuttle to be aimed straight towards the frigate. I suddenly had a horrible pang of anxiety, feeling that this was a stupid idea and would never work. Luckily, I was good at ignoring my instincts. Because as we started up the engines, the blast shot the shield generator away with something twice the speed of sound. If sound had existed in empty space.

Instantly I set the FTL drive on and felt the internal dampeners be reduced to nothing (though of course that was not true) as we accelerated to the speed of roughly nine hundred thousand kilometres per second in an instant. I was pushed back into the seat of the shuttle. The speed held steady for somewhere around a minute when the power died. Completely.

Without the signal enhancers provided by the shuttle I couldn't scan the space around us to figure out if the frigate was after us or not. But I could see, out of the shuttle's window, a planet just ahead. It was just a small, green and blue spec from the distance, but I knew that we weren't that far away and that we were keeping a constant speed towards it. If only the air supply didn't die on us we would be fine. Or if the frigate didn't catch up. I would have called in help from the port, but again, no enhancers.

'See if we cans scavenge power from anything.' I said to Liara, checking how much oxygen we had left.

'I don't know how.' she looked around curiously.

'Ah, right. Your omni tool has a scan for electron activity, like when the electrons on the exterior shell of iron shift position to conduct electricity. Anything that gives a spike on the scan can be used as a power-source. Then you check for where the connections go and whether there are alternate routes to, say engines or life support.'

'How do I extend the scan radius?'

'You can move it, though that would ruin the scan or you can put in the graph coordinates here.' I showed her the panels for where to enter the information it wanted in exchange for the information we need.

'Ah. So I can just move like that? No. Oh, on the cross thing, alright.' she nodded and started searching for anything useful. 'Alright, how do I reroute?' she asked, satisfied with some find.

I was done with checking the shuttle for oxygen, information that yielded me no end of stress, and looked at what she had found.

'Ah, there are no leading routes, see? The spike ends there. If there had been a route then it would have increased at the end.'

I looked around to figure out what was the source of power. It was just the gun that Jonathan, the pirate, had brought with him.

'Liara.' I said in a falsely calm voice. She didn't notice.

'Yes?'

'We have about thirty more minutes of oxygen left.'

'Alright.' she looked towards the spec of a planet. 'Are we going to make it?'

I drew in a deep breath and thought. It was unlikely. We could fall asleep and drag it out for about five hours, but would we have arrived by then? Seemed stupid to remove the mass effect core in retrospect, but our false shuttle had to look convincing. I wondered whether they had simply shot it down or whether it had hit the frigate without them even noticing it.

'If we fall asleep now... then there might be a good chance for us to make it.' I sounded evasive instead of certain. 'And then the patrols can pick us up.'

I wondered at the range at which the patrols flew. It was probably just outside of the planets gravitational pull, so we weren't too far away form them.

She realized that we were int trouble. Again.

'What if we found more power?'

'Well, we could give it to the life support. That would buy us some time. A day, if we're lucky. But without the core...' I shrugged.

'Don't we have H3 fuel as back-up?' she frowned.

'This is a shuttle. H3 is kept in huge cylinders with loads of cooling around them. This shuttle wouldn't be equipped with it unless it was built for exploration of stars. Which it wasn't. Stupid terminus systems.'

'Alright. Asleep. Ok.' Liara was wide-eyed with panic as she lay down on the folded back seat.

I searched the first aid kit. No sedatives. I still gave us some omni-gel because I had a head ache and because I suspected that Liara had one too. And we fell asleep, too tired to wait up and too powerless to do anything else.

I sniffed the air. It smelled good. Like a field of flowers or berries. I recognized the smell. That's how Liara smelled. It was nice. But when I opened my eyes, to my confusion, I saw a turian looking down at me. He seemed to be frowning in a worried sort of way, but one can never tell with turians. I sat up and looked about the place. Liara was asleep just beside me.

'Good morning.' said the turian casually.

'Good morning – is it morning?'

He shrugged.

'It was when you arrived. Now it's more like lunch.' he checked something on his omni tool. 'Numine Shin'ichi, right? And that is a very interesting companion you have. Benezia's daughter. I doubt that Liara's mother will approve of her partner, but...' he shrugged in a way that suggested that it wasn't his call.

'Ah, look, can you tell me what happened?' I was fairly sure I knew, but the way he behaved seemed strange to me.

'We found you shuttle, it burned up on re-entry by the way, and took you to the space dock. Then we found your stash and now you're on the colony, under arrest for murder.'

Oh hell. How did this happen? Death, explosion, death, suffocation and now arrest. I'd bet my life on that death would come after arrest. Seeing as it skipped the last turn.

'Murder of whom, exactly?'

As a reply he took forward a gun. It was that pirate's gun. I thought back to Jonathan himself. He'd been wearing gauntlets, or gloves. Maybe they wouldn't find his finger prints on it. But nor would they find ours. And we had no gloves.

'This gun is a custom made, Binary Helix, Whisper. It's a low caliber, high-heated thing and very rare. And the one carrying it is wanted all over the Terminus.'

'Ah, well the one carrying it died on that planet that we visited with our shuttle.'

He blinked.

'Jon died?'

'You know Jon?' I asked, nodding fervently. I couldn't tell if this was going for better or worse, but he believed me.

'Yeah. A human ass hole, much like the most of them. No offence. Been paying the higher-ups for years. Are you sure that he's dead?'

'Go back to the planet and check our excavation site. If he's dead then that's where his remains will be.'

The turian nodded and went off to speak with his superiors. Before he was within reach however he turned back to us.

'Ah, you two will need to be locked in there. I was about to bring you there when you woke up.' he pointed towards a cell. Damn.

'Liara, get up.' I shook her gently. She was so soft and warm that I felt an irrational heat rise up to my neck.

'What? Are we there yet?'

'Yes. And we're under arrest.' I said dully.

'What? Why?'

As we were led into the cell I explained it all to Liara.

'I have the worst of luck.' she shook her head.

'Yeah, but look at it this way... You've got me.' I said shrugging.

She hugged me and we resigned ourselves to spending the time assigned in the cell calmly while the security sent three war ships to investigate, after we had told them our full story.

The cell was rather comfy, with soft, or soft-ish, benches and beige walls. It reminded me for some reason of the hospital.

'I think that we need to talk.' said Liara, her head on my lap. I was stroking her blue spikes, gently tracing the contours.

'We do? Oh yeah. We do.' I pretended to know what she meant. 'Do you want to start?'

She smiled and shook her head.

'I meant about us. Me... and you.'

I would have huffed had it not seemed to be offensive. I thought that "we" were pretty great at the moment.

'Are you worried that I'll leave now that we are done?' I asked plaintively. 'Because I won't. I think that I like doing this digging and searching.'

She scowled at me.

'I promised to help you and I will.' she said rather heatedly. 'But I do worry. I don't want you to do this kind of thing because of me. You've been through a lot in a very short amount of time.'

This I had to agree with. It seemed as if every turn I made hid a trap somewhere. So far, I had avoided stepping into the trap. Unless you count the cell, but what choice did I have, really?

'It's not so bad.' I joked. 'Our nights help ease tension.'

She shook her head in mock-sadness.

'You have the emotional processing of a salarian, you know that? And their thought processing as well.' she mused. 'Maybe you are in some way related to them? Maybe you were traumatized enough for it to affect how your brain works and improve it's... functioning.'

'I doubt it. As best I can tell, I've gotten thicker than I was before. I mean, who sends off a shield and the mass effect core? That's just stupid.'

'Wait. How did the shuttle go into FTL if we sent away the mass effect core?'

'Well the engines themselves are mass effect technology, aren't they?' I shrugged simply. 'To reduce the affect on acceleration and deceleration.' I explained as Liara frowned. 'So that the dampeners won't get wrecked when you leave FTL?' she was still frowning. 'Oh never mind. It worked, didn't it?'

She nodded, her expression clearing.

'But I side-tracked us. What I meant to say is that you have done a lot for me but I don't want you to stay if it's only because of the... relationship we have. There is nothing I can repay you with.'

I wasn't really good at heavy conversations like this. Logic and theories were fine, there was always a rational solution to them. But this... I couldn't tell if what I felt affected how I felt or if I really didn't mind being with Liara and our relationship was just a bonus.

I searched my feelings. I could instinctively tell that, friend or foe, she was too interesting to be let go. I wanted this. To fight instead of shutting myself away. To live for just a moment. But I also wanted to cut all the loose ends with my past. To figure out Akuze. It was curiosity more than anything else that made me want to figure it out. I was sure that, even if I did, there was no way to avenge my mother. I felt a stab as I realized that... She had wanted to see my boyfriend, always asking me who it was. I had never had one, I think, until now. I wondered how she would have reacted. Would she approve? I couldn't be sure. And now there was no way to find out. And father had no say in this matter any more. He had no more say in my life at all unless it was at gunpoint.

'I wonder...' I trailed off, realizing that I would only kill the mood. Come to think of it, there wasn't really any mood here as this was a cell, but still...

'What?' she asked, looking curious.

Said A, have to say B. Damn.

'I wonder what my mother would have thought of you.'

She frowned.

'You don't think that she would have liked me?' she sounded worried.

'No. It's just not something I've ever considered. And I don't think she did either. You know, since Akuze was a human colony.' she nodded in understanding. 'But I think that she wouldn't have minded much. Not you, at any rate. She'd probably think that you are a very nice person.'

Liara laughed a little uncomfortably but pleased all the same.

'And your mother?' I asked before I could stop myself.

'I don't know. I have no idea what her take on humans is. I don't think that she dislikes them, but...' she frowned, thinking hard. 'She would support my choice, I think. Because I am young and you are so short-lived. No offence.'

'None taken.'

'But I don't think that it really matters at the moment.' she added, vaguely gesturing around the cell.

'You're right.' I agreed, taking a deep breath.

I wondered whether there was any food for us. It had been a very long time since I last ate. I didn't even want to think how long. And I really had to pee.

'Ah, guard?'

'Yes?'

'I have to go to the bathroom.'

He gestured towards the toilet in the cell. I pressed my lips together.

'Please?' I looked at him pleadingly, not entirely sure whether he could tell my facial expression.

He deliberated for a moment and then nodded.

'Fine.'

He opened the cell and escorted me to a real bathroom. Liara stood up to follow.

'And where are you going?' asked the turian, pushing us both back into the cell.

'Ah, bathroom.' she said, wide-eyed.

He squinted at us.

'We can go separately.' I said, siting back down.

I had to really struggle in order to wait patiently and the turian wasn't in any hurry, though when he finally let me out he didn't bother running after me as I dashed towards the bathroom.

Inside were loads of stickers and leaflets with the words "Blue Suns" written in impressive letters that were intended to attract attention. They seemed to be some sort of mercenary defence organization.

I shook my head, leaving the bathroom. How could anyone put themselves in front of bullets for money? That must take a real idiot to agree to something like that. And then I saw the Blue Suns logo on the guard's armour. Of course. We were guarded by mercenaries.

As if the guard had read my mind, there were two trays of food when I returned to the cell. It was some kind of warm mush, but it smelled nice and it tasted fairly well.

It was a lot like goulash that someone had spilled flour on. And the drink was something alcoholic.

'You're giving us beer?' I asked, very amused.

'No. I'm giving you trudgar.' he shrugged.

'What's that?'

'It's a cocktail of different drinks that they serve in the Asteria, down on the colony.'

'But why give us alcohol?'

'You don't like it?'

I had to mold this one over. Did I like it? I couldn't tell. I had only one other thing to compare it with and I couldn't really remember what Liara and I ate and drank "our" first night.

'It's ok.' I shrugged.

'Well then.'

'Good man.' I offered.

He grinned and walked away to his desk to watch some sit-com.

'Interesting how we are the only criminals here.' I pointed out to Liara.

'The real criminals are kept on the higher levels.' she explained. 'If they are not sure, they tend to be lest strict with security. And as we were able in impress enough to start an investigation, they must feel that we are pretty harmless.'

'You've been here before?' I asked, shocked.

'Yes, once. I was travelling with a quarian and they threw us in this very cell for vagrancy. Of course, he had been innocent but it had taken four day to clear it out.'

'Four days? If he was innocent then a check should have been simple.' I said, frowning. Mercenaries indeed.

'You don't understand. Quarians are... they are not trusted. It's... They tend to leave their, ah, less than honest people on planets where there are other people. Which makes others think that all quarians are less than honest.' she summed up what she had wanted to explain.

I just nodded. It seemed like a long explanation to do in a cell. We'd have time later.

We spent another hour in the cell until eventually the scouting warships returned.

'Well?' I asked, eager for news. Were we free or condemned?

'We found his body. Tried to chase the frigate but a warship's no match in speed against that thing. The ruins have sunk down into a stream of magma that was located a few kilometres below them. The blast had been that powerful.' the guard opened the cell. 'You are free to go, seeing how there's no case for connection between you and the gun after what you've told me.'

'Thank you for your understanding.' said Liara formally.

'Yeah, well... don't let that happened again.' shrugged the guard.

I noticed that he was the only one in the group who didn't have a Blue Suns logo on his armour. It was C-Sec blue and not Blue Suns blue. Maybe they were just inspired to have justice in the hardest to save parts of the galaxy.

Out of the guard tower we were free to roam the colony. I finally had a chance to take a look at my account. It had a little over eighty thousand credits. Wow. Where had father gotten that much money from. I checked to see if they were all from him. But there was a note attached to forty of those thousands.

"Blue Suns bounty fond offers: Numine Shin'ichi; a bounty for: Elimination of Jonathan D. Ericson. Thank you for your assitance."

'Huh.' I said, pleasantly surprised.

'What is it?'

'We got paid for getting rid of Jon.' I said, shrugging and showing Liara the message.

'Oh. They are quite generous with bounty it seems.' she said in an impressed voice.

'He might have simply been a big-shot.' I reasoned.

'I certainly hope not.' she shuddered.

'Why? Does it really matter? He's dead.'

'But if he was a big-shot he must have had a syndicate under him. His opposition might not care about us, but his supporters certainly will.'

I tried not to dwell on those facts. We were free from trouble for now and that's pretty much what I wanted at the moment.

'We'll cross that bridge when we get there.' I said, sounding certain.

'What bridge?'

Agh. And I'd thought that I'd get to sound cool for once.

'It means that we'll deal with it when we get there.' I explained, my ears red.

'Oh. I suppose that you are right.'

'So, as you've been here before... How about a tour? We could do with a hotel room that has a shower.' I sniffed the air. 'You were right. Hygiene is hard to maintain in this tact.'

'We don't need a hotel room.' she shook her head. 'With your skills I am sure that some work camp will let us stay the night.'

I looked at her in shock. And waste a perfectly good night on sleeping? No way.

'Let's treat ourselves.' I winked.

She seemed torn between wasting money and not wanting to sleep without blankets. Eventually she caved.

'Very well. But only for one night. Then we must leave before they come collecting the money we owe for the shuttle.'

That killed my good mood instantly.

'I wonder how our distraction worked.' I mused. 'Do you think that they realized that it was a hologram or did they really believe that we died? Because if they did, then Jon's supporters won't be coming to call.'

Liara's eyes widened.

'You are right. They believe that we are dead, seeing how we weren't pursued by the frigate into FTL. I should have seen that one.'

I felt smug at having avoided so many of the traps set for us, intentionally or not.

The hotel we chose was called The Silver Mist. Because it was standing on a depleted silver mine. Ironic and very fancy.

After a shower. And then another to get all the dirt off us. And then another because we could. After all those showers we decided to head out and explore the place. We were stuck here for another twenty four hours, so why not? Liara seemed to feel that staying at the hotel was safer until I pointed out that the only place our names were registered in was the hotel, which would make it the target for any bullet heading our way.

The colony was much like a city, with farms surrounding it. It was protected by a chemical cloud that neutralized the toxic rain before it fell. The environment suffered, but there was no other life on the planet aside from the turian colony, so there was no moral issue to deal with.

All of the shops contained turian technology, art, literature (even a Sun-Tzu, Art of War edition in turian) and food. There was little of other species aside from things that were from different asari colonies. The female turians were a lot smoother than the reptilian males, with a slightly more flourishing scalp and seemingly larger eyes, though I couldn't be too certain of that or if it simply was their generally smaller bodies. I couldn't get over how much they all looked like Garrus, both males and females.

'Can you tell the turians apart?' I whispered to Liara as we passed a group of them.

'Of course. But I suppose that, you having nothing in common with them, would have a harder time of it.'

I frowned.

'What do you have in common with them?' I couldn't see any resemblance between the turians and their asari mates.

'The spikes on the scalp, the colour, many of the insinuations used in dialogue, the body language. It's small things really, nothing that I can really give a description of.'

I tried to see it but... The asari were just so much like human that I couldn't agree with her.

It occurred to me then that love with asari must be the ultimate kind of love. Because when you fall in love with someone of your own species, it's often justified by being biologically correct. That is how we are supposed to be and how we are supposed to act. But when you break that tradition, when you choose to give your love to someone with whom you have no biological relationship then it can't be explained on a genetic level. It can only be described as – love. And this made my head spin so much that eventually I just put it out of my mind and forgot about it.

All in all, though rather rough and formal, the colony was a nice place to live. The turians didn't seem to like humans, but by letting Liara do all the talking I noticed that generally most of them were nice people.

And then we entered the plaza. Or the equivalent of one. In the centre of it were three turians, two females and one male, fighting each other while a large crowd of spectators cheered.

'What's going on?' I asked, starting to make my way towards them to end the fight.

'Calm down.' said Liara, laughing at my reaction. 'They are just sparring. It keeps them in shape.'

I looked in disbelief as a one of the women and the guy teamed up on the other woman and attacked from either side but were, in a flurry of arms and legs, knocked down to the ground. But she didn't stand for long either as the man knocked her down and started an assault on both of them. It was quickly cut off by a few jabs to his ribs and the women were now fighting it out. They were interrupted by the man who had done a kind of quick strike towards their ribs and they were all a flurry of arms and legs once again.

'They are going to kill each other!' I exclaimed in a worried voice.

'Turians are much harder than humans or asari. Their bones and their skin can endure a lot more than either of us could ever hope to survive.'

'But look! She just broke her arm!' I said, squinting towards them.

'No. It just bends that way.' said Liara, but she sounded far from sure. She was right thought because the turian returned to fighting, both arms whole, in no time.

The stress was too much for me to deal with. If either of the was hurt or killed...

'Let's go.' I said, leading Liara away.

'What's wrong, Min? You look pale.'

'It's... nothing. I just don't like fighting.' I said, swallowing. I had to take a few deep breaths to calm myself.

Liara still frowned worriedly at me as we made our way towards the hotel. Once we were back we decided to plan our next step.

'You still haven't told me what you need my help with.' said Liara, curious.

I thought about it. Was now a good time to tell her? It didn't feel like that? What if I got her in trouble. What if we were captured and questioned? She could deny knowing about anything this way. But I wanted her to know. I needed someone to share it with. Someone who was near me. Someone who had been closer to me than anyone else. But I realized that I couldn't. Damn.

'I can't tell you everything, Liara.' I said and her face fell. 'Because, well... I don't think that it matters, but if it does, then not knowing is a lot safer.' I tired to explain.

'So you want me to enter the unknown? An unknown where we might or might not have to kill someone?'

'Ah... no, of course not. But it is a precaution against that which can hurt you the most.' I frowned. Was I making sense? No? Good.

'But what is it? Why is it so dangerous? Who exactly is the danger?'

I didn't know that one. And I told her so.

'I don't know, Liara. I am going almost as blind as you are. Which is why I want to go to Akuze. It think that we'll find answers there. And if we do, then I suppose I can tell you.'

'But you won't trust me now?' she was angry. I tried to come up with quick ending to the argument before it escalated.

'I want you to be safe. And... if what I am doing is a mistake, then I don't want you facing the consequences of my actions.' I said quietly. It worked. She was soothed.

She sat down next to me and hugged me tightly.

'I don't know what's going on Min, but I will be there for you every step of the way. I owe you that much.'

I nodded. Then I realized what she had said.

'Wait. How exactly do you owe me?'

'You helped me start up a prothean database, dig to it in less than two days and then saved me from looters. On top of that, you also payed my debts and... gave me companionship.'

I shut my eyes, thinking. Was she, in fact, indebted to me, or was it her natural masochism bubbling to the surface? The way I saw it, most of what had happened was my fault. The destruction of a prothean base hadn't been necessary if I had been able to prevent Jon from calling that stupid orbital strike.

'You owe me nothing.' I summarized. 'Or rather, I owe you just as much and I call it even.'

She opened her mouth to object but I cut her off by simply kissing her. It was nice, knowing that I could do this now. I recognized the taste of her lips from somewhere but couldn't quite put a finger on it. Aw, heck with it. We had a whole night to figure that out.