Author's Note: Two more Shepards up today, one on a side quest, and one on the X57 DLC. Which I only played because it came with the ME triple pack for the PS3, which I bought because my wife wouldn't finish ME1 on keyboard/mouse. Enjoy!
Angela was standing at the galaxy map, comparing the outstanding requests, anomalies, and outright orders, when Polarity came trotting up the stairs. "Hey, Angie, got a second?"
She turned, cocking one hip up onto the railing. "Sure, ponygirl. What's happening now? Jared steal your credits at poker? Gina make another crack about you constantly being horny?"
The unicorn sighed and shook her head. "Well, to answer the first question, I was talking with Garrus." She paused, obviously expecting a smart-ass response that Angela managed not to say out loud. "He got a lead on one of his old cases in C-Sec. Serious mad scientist salarian."
"Isn't that redundant?" Angela said, before wincing and putting a hand over her mouth. "Please continue," she said, muffled.
"Yeah. Well, this guy was cloning organs inside of people's bodies, and escaped the Citadel before they could catch him. Garrus found his ship transponder." Angela's omni-tool blipped in time with a tiny pulse from the horn.
"Let me guess – Garrus wants us to go in and take him into custody, with a strong hope for violent resistance?" Polarity nodded eagerly. "And you want me to go so you have a better chance of getting into his pants."
"Why would I be wearing his pants?" she asked cluelessly. Pressly's forehead smacked into his console. "I'm trying to get plowed!"
"I'll take that as a yes," Angela groaned. "Fine, sure, what the heck. I know there was something else in that cluster I was supposed to be doing. Where are we going?"
They arrived in the Herschel system, cruising around to scan the planets and pick up random floating trinkets. Every time she picked up a new turian outpost insignia, or another fragment of Dilinaga's writings, the selling prices on Extranet Auctions ticked up a little bit. Finally Joker cruised the Normandy over to the floating freighter, adrift near the asteroid belt.
Garrus and Polarity, along with Neville, were waiting patiently in the CIC as the docking procedures were completed. Already armored and armed, they moved quickly for the airlock, letting the adept take the lead as they moved in. "Is it just me, or is this place too quiet?" Garrus muttered, just loud enough to be heard.
"How many hostages did this bloke escape with?" Neville asked, flicking open the corridor door twenty feet away.
"A dozen, I think," Garrus said. "We never got a full count."
"They might all be dead by now," Angela warned as they stepped into the main bay. A moment later, an inhuman scream echoed through the room from a dozen throats. "Or not."
Around the corner of a giant shipping crate came what might have been a turian, once upon a time. The skin-scales were bulged outward, suppurating flesh oozing between the gaps, and a double set of mandibles stretched obscenely as he ran towards them. Polarity's sniper rifle boomed once, and his head flopped over sideways, barely still attached by a thin flap of muscle as he crashed heavily to the ground.
"I suggest we retreat into the hallway," Angela shouted, already backing off as she fired rapidly at what might have been a human or an asari; the skin was the deep purple of a bruise and mottled.
Spitting bullets, they waited for the crazed patients to charge them, Neville slowing them down with singularities and slams so that Garrus and Polarity could put them down permanently, while Angela mostly just slowed them down. Which was just fine with her, really. Once sixty seconds had passed with no further attacks, they relaxed slightly. "How many salarians did we shoot?"
Neville did a quick count. "Four turians, two humans, three asari, one batarian, and two salarians. Poor buggers." He pointed out the two salarians, and Garrus quickly looked over the corpses.
"These aren't him," he said quickly. "He might be at the bow of the ship, locked himself in for protection."
"Or they ate him," Polarity muttered darkly. Angela and Neville both winced sharply at that. "But let's hope he's still locked up. Hey! There might be more cool stuff in here!" As they walked cautiously through the bay, the unicorn was busy telekinetically throwing open cargo containers at random and examining their contents for profit.
Before long, they reached the front of the ship. "Gosh, three doors, and only one of them locked," Angela said. "Let's check out the other two first." Garrus gaped at her. "Look, he's not going anywhere, and on the off chance he's got some kind of dead man switch in there, I want to check out the other two compartments first."
"Sounds like a plan," Neville said. "I'll stay here and watch the door. I promise to only stasis the bloke if he comes out."
Sighing, Garrus followed Polarity into the crew chamber while Angela scanned the bridge quickly, taking a moment to disable the engines. They met back in the hallway, and with a ready nod from Garrus, she hacked open the door in about two seconds. "That's him. Doctor Saleon."
"I don't know what you're talking about! I'm Doctor Heart! All these patients went crazy, I think the food was contaminated or something," he stammered out quickly.
"So, you want to put a bullet in his head, Garrus?" Polarity asked.
"Did that horse just talk?" Saleon muttered, staring at her.
"I personally think we should bring this bastard in for proper justice," Neville said as the turian's hands tightened on his weapon. "Find out how many people he did harm, after all."
"I'm not going to prison," the salarian snarled, and started to draw a weapon. A moment later, an armored foot kicked him in the knee, his weapon sparking as he fell to the floor.
"Now stay down, you schmuck," the dark-haired woman behind the salarian said, using her biotics to put a little extra weight on him. "Garrus? Who're these people?"
Sighing, Angela raised a finger. "Ready? I'm Commander Shepard," the three of them spoke in unison.
"Angela, why is it that all of these alternate-Shepard people know exactly who I am?" the turian asked, slapping restraints onto Saleon.
"Presumably, despite our different backgrounds, everything between Eden Prime and their arrival went exactly the same," Neville said. "Aside from the differences in our species, Polarity and I did everything the same up until I rescued Burns, and she talked down Helena Blake."
"Wait, there's more of me around?" the new Shepard asked as Angela etched a 'T' onto her armor.
"One for every letter," Polarity said cheerfully. "So there should only be a couple left!"
"What's your first name?" Angela asked as they started back towards the Normandy's airlock.
"Talya," she whispered. "Oy vey."
"What kind of fighting move was that, anyway?" Garrus asked, kicking Saleon to the floor of the airlock while the decon cycle ran.
"I learned it from my mother. It's Jew Jitsu," she carefully enunciated to separate the words. "Um, why is Angela banging her head against the wall?"
"No idea, but she's been doing it a lot lately," Polarity said. "Personally, I think she just needs to get plowed," the unicorn stage-whispered, causing the banging to increase in intensity.
Angela was prepared to check out the other notable system in the cluster, when she got an emergency call from Hackett. "Shepard, there's an emergency at Terra Nova," he said without preamble. "One of the asteroids that was being brought closer to the planet for mining has accelerated past the safety margins and isn't responding to any communications. We sent a shuttle of Marines to investigate, and lost contact with them."
"So you need me to go bring a couple of my stunt doubles and fix whatever's wrong," she summarized.
"Well … yes," he said, flustered. "How many are you up to?"
"I just picked up Talya Shepard," she said. "Who is currently terrorizing the quartermaster about why there's no kosher food on board."
There were several seconds of silence. "Hackett out."
Pressly muttered something under his breath. "What was that?"
"Nothing, ma'am!"
"I thought so. Set a course for Terra Nova," she ordered.
They arrived several hours later, the fusion torches on the asteroid clearly visible on their approach. "Alright, Shepards! We have to take the Mako down. I'm taking Sachiko, Talya, and Quistis." A couple of the other Shepards groaned in disappointment. "Depending on conditions, we may be able to land more people, so everyone else be prepared for a hot drop into hostile territory. Be downstairs in five. Charles, don't scratch the paint while I'm gone." The dark-skinned soldier saluted with a grin.
The four of them dropped in the Mako, letting Sachiko drive and Quistis handle the guns. Which turned out to be a fairly wise decision, as whoever had taken over the asteroids kept their turrets shielded behind thick barriers of metal. "This is fucking cheating," Quistis complained as she ripped one of them to pieces with a second cannon shot.
"Is it bad that I'm tempted to just pull up near one and overload it to death while it shoots at an empty Mako?" Talya muttered.
"Yes," Angela growled, switching around a pair of shield capacitors in between rockets. "Unless you were planning to walk the ten kilometers to the next fusion torch."
"Ah. Point taken." The rest of the turrets were taken out fairly quickly, and they pulled up in front of the torch. Inside, they opened the door to see batarians. Both Quistis and Talya let out battle cries, opening fire with assault rifle and biotics, killing two of them quickly before return fire sent them both scuttling for cover.
"Just once, I'd like to catch an enemy completely off guard, no return fire," Angela lamented.
"Guess you should have gone for infiltrator training then," Sachiko said, before leaping her cover and charging straight up to one of the batarians, body slamming him with a shoulder to the face before putting a shotgun blast into his groin.
It didn't take long at all for the four of them to clear out the complex, find the controls, and Angela shut it down. "Shouldn't we, I dunno, redirect it?" Sachiko asked.
"No, we need to limit the acceleration, and the other torches still going will nudge it off course," Talya explained while Angela worked.
"Whatever," Quistis said. "Just find me some more fucking four-eyes to shoot."
On their way out, a trembling engineer fired a shot at them in panic, barely even enough to noticeably decrease Angela's shields. "Alright, mister, you've got five seconds, and then I let the angry Japanese vanguard tear you a new one."
"They're trying to kill the planet," he babbled. "If the asteroid hits, it'll take millions of years for the ecology to recover. But you can't just drive up to the other complex, it's surrounded by blasting caps."
The four Shepards glanced at each other. "Joker, the second fusion torch, ask Garrus to fire off something small and kinetic at it."
"Uh, sure Commander," he responded. "Can I ask why?" he added a moment later.
"They surrounded the place with improvised land mines," Quistis explained. "And a nice rumbling impact should set them off before we roll up and give some batarians a very bad day."
"We're on it," Joker said before disconnecting.
Back in the Mako, they raced for the next torch, watching as the Normandy cruised by overhead and fired a couple of shots into the ground around the station. When they topped the nearest ridge, they could see the destruction, a wide circle of torn up rock, and one staggering figure near the door of the facility, who promptly received an explosive cannon shot. "How many points is it if I hit him in the knee?" Quistis asked rhetorically from the turret.
"Can we just get in there and shut the place down?" Angela muttered crossly. They bounced and jounced over to the entrance, piling into the building quickly. Inside was yet another Shepard, another dark-haired Asian. "Grand, we're up to 'U'," she muttered as the four of them slid into cover quickly.
"Who the hell? Where are Alenko and Vakarian?" the new Shepard blurted out.
"Relax. We're Commander Shepard," Angela said, leaning out to slap a rocket drone with an overload at the same time as Talya.
"That can't be right, I'm Commander Shepard," she complained, only to have the other four join in on the last words. "Um, alright then. Overloads on three?"
Two engineers and the sentinel sent out electronic pulses at the same time, giving the soldier and vanguard open fields of fire as two more rocket drones exploded and the three remaining batarians all lost their shields simultaneously. All three of the invaders dropped swiftly, and the last two rocket drones capitulated to a trio of sabotage bursts, overheating themselves as their rockets exploded internally.
"So, what's your name?" Angela asked as she etched the 'U' into the new girl's armor. "Also, it's nice to have a Shepard I don't have to stare up at."
"Ubon. It's Thai." The rest of them made their quick introductions while they jogged up the stairs and Angela set about disabling the torch. "So, there's how many of us?"
"You're letter 'U'. Figure it out, genius," Quistis said sarcastically.
"Rowr, don't start a catfight," Ubon shot back. Angela banged her helmet against the console.
"Can we concentrate on killing the batarians instead of each other? Please?" their erstwhile leader complained. "Just once?"
"But we weren't trying to kill each other when we were blowing up rocket drones," Talya said obliviously.
Angela just groaned, and pointed back towards the exit. "Back to the Mako. Still one more torch left, and we need to check out those isolated spots the engineers should have been at."