Well damn... didn't actually think I could pull this off with my current state of.. well, let's just say my head contains more snot than brains at the moment, and leave it at that.

In this chapter, I think there might be a few new things, maybe some tech, maybe something called a 'Sanity-check'. Who knows?

A mind injured

Zorya, Blue Suns Headquarters

Blue Suns Reformist forces

13:22

"Mow them down!" A Sun Loyalist shouted before a slug coated in phasic energy slipped clean through his barrier and his throat, leaving him to grasp at his ruptured jugular as he fell backwards onto the floor.

"Put pressure on them! This is it!"

"Firing!"

"Cooling down!"

"Grena-"

The hallways of the main facility were chaos, each one either filled with corpses, or people soon to be. Magnus slammed himself into the cover of a doorway as a HAS-trooper entered the fray behind him. He was just desperate not to get caught in the firing-line as the mech opened up with an oversized anti-vehicle gun wielded as if it was a man holding a regular weapon. While it lead to quick overheating, the relentless pummeling of the hostiles caused the defenders to recoil and scatter, ducking behind barricades and walls in an attempt not to be shot, or simply ripped apart. The noise was deafening as the shells, each the size of a human index finger, filled the corridor. The hulking presence of the armored suit was enough to make even friendly soldiers back away as it marched across the open corridor.

Magnus watched in slight awe as the enemy fire simply were absorbed by the shields on the thing. Behind a shielded and bulletproof shell of carbon-graphene made transparent, a Turian pilot was cracking his knuckles as much as he could beneath the electric gloves that transmitted his hands' movements to those of the mech. With what could have been a Turian grin, the pilot steered the mech into the straight direction of the corridor, then set the robotic form into motion in a way completely unexpected to Magnus. The mech simply ran forward in a speed that made a running human look slow. Normally mechs were slow or frail, but this thing, was neither.

"Here I come you slaver-bastards!" Magnus could hear the distorted voice of the pilot scream in a mixture of rage and simple combative joy as he used the weight and bulk of the bipedal mech to smash through the hastily assembled barricade, guns blazing.

To be fair though, it was more like pounding when considering the size of the gun as well as the ammunition it spat out. It was cruel, but also entertaining irony that the HAS-suit was from before he even started his career in the Alliance, a supposed 'relic' from the days of the Turian Slaver campaigns in the Terminus. It was, however, ridiculously lethal against foes who relied upon shields to protect them from the standard ammunition used in most weapons these days. Instead of firing that though, the mech seemed to utilize, not only a system of rail guns, but also gunpowder as filling inside each shell, causing it to detonate upon impact with any surface harder than skin. In the case of their current enemies, that meant blowing to hell when a shell hit the armor of a human Sun as he tried running away from the bashed-in barricade. It would have been a thrill to watch, had it not been so gory, when a single shell that had managed to shatter his shields, made way for the next one to simply hit the man square in the back and go straight into his body. There, it detonated, sending the man in five different directions as most of his torso was reduced to a splatter of gore, while his limbs were sent flying with trails of red after them as they hit and slid down the walls of the corridor.

"I am so getting one of those." Magnus exclaimed as he watched the HAS batter the opposition into mincemeat, the gun only firing in short, controlled bursts to make sure it never overheated. This in turn, was also one of the two main weaknesses of the suit. Due to its makeup as well as armament, it was exposed when facing off against hostiles with anti-vehicle weaponry. The main gun, a GAU-90, was a newer addition as it was added from the outdated AMP of human origins. The gun, as opposed to the human suit though, had remained in service due to one simple fact:

When you shot someone with it, armored, barrier or shields, they died. Just like that, and with no need to even aim at a specific body part. At least, that was what Magnus had judged after seeing it tear a fully shielded Turian in pieces with only two shots fired. The gun, or autocannon as it was more precisely labeled, was designed to tear apart its targets with a variety of projectiles. Mainly it was simply the standard slug the size of a thumb, but it could also field both the finger-sized explosive rounds, and the even bigger 250g high explosive rounds for use in anti-bunker, vehicle and long-range duty, making it a versatile weapon of mass destruction.

Still, a major drawback was that due to the suit being relatively light, it was also easier to topple than a standard VI-controlled Ymir-mech. The speed gave the drawback that, if the machine did indeed trip or otherwise lose balance and fell, and while the pilot, if not knocked out by the fall could still get the machine back on its feet, it would be incredibly exposed to enemy fire due to its engines and fuel-cell all being located on the back of the mech. This made the suit a rather unpopular choice for going deep into hostile territory, as a single bullet that slipped through the shields could detonate the back-up engines running on gasoline, a highly explosive liquid that would cause the entire suit, plus the pilot, to blow up like fourth of July.

As the mech powered through the barricades, the rest of the Reformists followed, Sidonis pulling Magnus up from his crouch at the doorway as the Turian sped past him. Magnus, not feeling like being left alone after the incident, followed quickly. The woman, a mere trooper, had been locked up with the rest of the prisoners taken by the crew of the Ashanti, in the storage-department of the Ashanti. It was a strange solution to let each ship handle their own prisoners, but Magnus assumed they would gather them all up at some point, rather than to leave it to chance that all ships were humane in their treatment of the prisoners.

They moved through the corridor in the cover of the mech, dozens of Reformists tagging behind the heavier assaulter as it provided both cover and took care of most enemies for them. Magnus and Sidonis were in this group, as well as Tara, now hefting a more simple, but still lethal sub machinegun. While she seemed to handle it well enough, it was obvious that she was not entirely confident in the closed quarters of the corridors. Ironic really, given that Quarians were living on cramped ships, in his opinion.

The Turian in front, safely nestled in his HAS-suit, had a dark grin on his face as he pointed the gun to the left where a group of four troopers had taken cover in a doorway. As they fired upon him, four assault rifles overheating in unison, he could see his shields starting to take a dip for the worse. After all, the HAS was not designed for heavy frontline firing, but rather, for routing pirates and slavers. So, instead of simply allowing them to keep shooting and "hurt his baby", he pointed the rifle at them. He then let loose with the gun, spitting out a short volley of shells as he chose the 120 high-ex shells. The rounds, capable of shredding a heavily armored soldier to the bone with one single round, tore into the group of troopers as they scuttled to escape the wrath of the pilot. He just grimaced in silent wrath as he removed his enemies from existence, leaving only a deep series of craters and cracks in the ferrocrete and steel that made up the walls of the complex. Thát, and a whole lot of red puddles and chunks of flesh lying around in neat, roasted piles, giving off a sickening sweet smell to those without airfilters. The pilot then turned his attention to the front of his suit again, discovering a trooper wielding a rocket-launcher, pointing it straight at him.

Not wanting to get his suit blown up, he leveled the massive gun at his challenger and opened fire, allowing several of the 120's to rip through the air. Unfortunately, the trooper seemed to have reached the same conclusion, and fired the rocket. Due to the fact that the rocket was an ML-77, he could not simply exploit the superior agility of his suit and sidestep the incoming threat. So instead he did the only thing he could. He shut down the most affordable of the suits systems in a last-ditch effort to pour as much juice into the shielding as Turian-ly possible. He watched as the meters signaled a 110% energy in the shields even as the rocket closed in on his HAS. The rocket, quickly followed by a number two and three even as the rest of the Reformists closed in around him and started firing their own weapons, impacted on his enhanced shields. The first one brought his shields from 110 to 47%, while the second killed the shields completely. The last one was stopped as he, in blind as the explosions obstructed his vision, brought up the left arm as an attempt to ward off the attack.

To some extent, it worked.

While the cockpit was spared the explosion that would have killed the Turian, the left arm was essentially blown to shit, everything but the elbow-joint being torn off as it functioned as a one-time shield. Needless to say, a lot of Turian profanities were shouted from within the cockpit, even as friendly forces cut down the remaining Loyalists around the shredded rocket-trooper. Still, the HAS was nothing if not able to adjust and a adapt to new situations, something quite unique in the Turian military.

The pilot grabbed the handle of the gun with the remaining hand of his mech, then used the stump of the left to lean it on, using it as a makeshift edge to support his weapon. While it was not as good as a hand, it was better than nothing and helped prevent too much vertical climbing as he fired the weapon on the ground right at a corner where he had just seen a trooper pop his head out. Going with the 250 high-ex, the resulting explosion tore the two nearby trooper apart, the ammunition being meant to take down bunkers. The screams, snuffed by the explosions were enough to tell him it was time to move forward.

Magnus just kept his head down, albeit with a small grimace of worry on his face. Not because he was afraid he wouldn't get near the action, as the last twelve hours had indiscriminately shoved him from gun-point to gun-point and forced him to kill more people in one day than he had ever done since... since Torfan, he supposed. Still, he remained, as they said, vigilant and kept his Vindicator raised and aimed at any of the doorways ahead of the mech, not being keen on having his face blown off by one of the troopers suddenly appearing with a shotgun, ready to blast him to Valhalla. Next to him, Sidonis followed suit with the rest of the group, his own rifle, a Turian Phaeston, aimed much the same way as Magnus's was. It made sense, as the HAS-pilot was more than able in the right and duty of routing the major hostile forces, even if it consisted of more 'destroying' and less 'routing'. The purple-marked Turian Sun kept his aim steady and his eyes steeled as they advanced through the corridors.

"Hey Sidonis, how many yet?" Magnus asked, trying to avoid the eerie silence that always made him itchy during missions. the Turian didn't answer at first, opting to simply keep his eyes on the doorways they passed, making sure each was either locked, or that the room beyond was empty. As the Corridor took a turn, the HAS-pilot came with some incoherent profanity as he let loose with the cannon. Following the repeated explosions that really only were the sound of the rifle firing, the sound of more explosions told of the impacts, and the screaming and crying of agony that not all the rounds had killed their targets. As the HAS stopped shooting, the Turian looked to the human Sun.

"twenty-one, not counting saving your ass."

"Damn, I'm at seventeen, also not counting, you know, 'friendly fire'" Magnus muttered as he saw a doorway open to Sidonis' right. Out came, at least he did until he found himself with a Vindicator in his mouth, a Batarian with a flamethrower. Sidonis looked on in, at first, shock, then it became a mildly impressed expression as Magnus had been faster in reaction when the door had opened. As they were the last in the rows of men, no one really looked back until Magnus smiled behind his helmet;

"Na ah ahh, you didn't say the magic word." He mused, the pressed the trigger, letting a few slugs go through the Batarian's head, and directly out the other side. While shields protected from incoming fire, they didn't do jack-shit when the enemy had the muzzle of his gun stuck between your teeth. As the Batarian's brain was sprayed out the other side of his helmet, making the Turian behind him recoil in surprise as Sidonis, with a more than casual movement, put his own rifle in-between the sides of the azure-shining visor and pulled the trigger even as a shotgun was leveled at his chest. Sidonis, carrying a fully automatic Phaeston Assault Rifle, had the benefit of squeezing off the most shots before the shotgun took down his shields in one blow, then shot the wall as the carrier had been killed in the time it took him to pull the trigger the first time.

Nodding to Magnus, Sidonis placed his rifle back in a guarded position and kept moving. The rest of the group was already far ahead, with a few of them turning to walk as well, having stood ready to shoot if the two had been overpowered.

"Eighteen" Magnus said, turning the Vindicator in his hands. They arrived, with the rest of the force, at a large bulkhead that had been dropped in the middle of the corridor, effectively cutting their advance short. At the front of the group, the familiar figure of Tara appeared, examining the bulkhead that was doing its best to prevent her from reaching her goal. Giving Sidonis a nod and a shrug, the two of them advanced to where the Quarian stood, past the smoking, but still operational HAS-mech. The pilot, probably wanting some less enclosed air, had opened his cockpit and now sat hunched over, seemingly considering something Tara had said.

"Hmmm... no, no ma'am, I don't think the 250 can cut it here. At least not without burning up all the remaining shells. If we had the Daisy-cutters, I bet we could burn through, but not with what I've got left."

"Great, and the torch was on the left arm, am I right?" Tara muttered, clearly annoyed and frustrated. This sort of thing probably never happened when she worked alone.

"Yeah... I don't see how we get through this thing in time. Vido is probably halfway to his personal shuttle by the time we can pound this thing down, and my baby lost her torch, so I can't do jack aside from trying to shoot the door." The pilot said, scratching his fringe with a gloved hand, causing the mech to mirror the movement.

"S'kak... hrrrrr, alright. I want..." Tara growled as she looked back at the forces waiting for her orders. Being in command, even if it was only sixty men plus a mech, could be a pain in the ass; "I want you, you, you and you, to see if you can find another way around this thing. Meanwhile I want whoever has training as an engineer to get on burning through this door." Tara said, pointing out the four people who's new jobs it would be to circumvent the bulkhead. It just so happened that Sidonis and Magnus were among those four chosen.

The other two were a pair of Turians with holographic armor covering their regular blue armor, marking them as Sentinels. That could turn out to be a good thing, as Sentinels were skilled in both biotics and tech-attacks. Magnus had never been around that type of soldiers much, aside from Kaidan that was, but from what he knew they were nigh indestructible, and well-suited for walking shields. They all four nodded at Tara before they ran, backtracking their course to find the first junction that would lead them anywhere else than into the bulkhead.

"Magnus Olafur and Lantar Sidonis, soldier and Operative level 2. Who are you two?" Sidonis asked as the group raced through the lines of carnage left behind by the HAS-suit and its pilot. For a brief moment, Magnus wondered what the 'level 2' meant, but he shrugged it off, having more important things to worry about.

"Plias Teranus and Troin Kerras. Corporal and Private second class Sentinels. At your service Sidonis." One of the Turians barked off, causing Magnus to frown under his helmet. Just how far up the chain an 'Operative' was, he had no idea, but it seemed to be above corporal. Still, he decided to stuff it for later, and nodded to the two Turians, both carrying large handguns and a shotgun each.

...

Meanwhile

Arcturus Station, Arcturus stream

Marlin's Diner and Drinks

19:25

Jane Shepard was not usually a woman you would expect to hang around diners. And usually you would not expect to see her hunched over a glass of good beer, chuckling as if she was an actual normal human being, not the biotic super-soldier she tried appearing to be through and through.

Of course, it could be due to the fact that she was having a rare good time. Rare, due to her life having been one long dragging through a moral and veritable Hell that was her career and childhood. In her early years, Jane had lost her entire family to Batarian slavers on the planet of Mindoir, when she lived in the similarly named colony. As a small child, watching a Batarian slaver put a round into the skull of her father, as well as watching her best friend being raped and killed, then her own mother dragged off to a life of slavery in the Hegemony, tended to make a person grow up, fostering a deep hatred for the Batarian society. True, in her heart and current mind she would not mind simply eradicating the entire race from the galaxy, but she also knew, despite not wanting to admit or let it decide others' fates, that most Batarians were in the same situations as those they enslaved.

The culmination of her hate, her anger, had been the Torfan Massacre. Alliance officials would have wanted her tried for it, had they found out. As it was, she owed her freedom, even in this galaxy, to one very specific man. A very specific man who, she felt assured off and certain of the fact that, she would never see again. Gunned down on the Citadel, her lover had left her alone in the galaxy in the month it would take for her to finally slip up on Virmire. The malfunctioning of the nuke had made sure of her demise, as well as Saren's, Ashley Williams, Wrex and the rest of her squad, Kaidan included.

Which was why it was a mixture of odd feelings she experienced as she and said Canadian sat at the Diner, sharing a few beers and talking. The feelings were mixed, as she had never taken all that much notice of him beyond the fact that she found him a warm and loyal soldier. Her decision on Virmire, not that it ended up mattering, had left her questioning one thing though.

Why had she really chosen to save him and not Williams?

"And then he decides to jump over the rails! I swear, he was in the hospital for a week after that!" Kaidan said, laughing as he finished the story. Jane smiled despite herself, not fully knowing why. It wasn't Kaidan's joke that made her smile, yes it made her laugh earlier, but that was not it. Maybe it was just spending time with someone relatively normal who wouldn't start glowing green, talk about bugs or how he came from another universe. Kaidan, she had once told herself, was so 0normal he was borderline dull. And yet she enjoyed his company.

"You're shitting me Alenko?" She asked, half laughing half just smiling before she took a sip from her beer. Kaidan held up his hands in the 'honest to God' way.

"Not shitting you ma'am." He said with a smile in both voice and face. There was a sort of charm to him, something his childhood should have destroyed completely. She knew he had had the most messed up youth at BAaT-camp, and that he had killed his instructor because the Turian son of a whore had beaten his girlfriend. A shame really, that the girl had then been too sensitive to appreciate the help, and had dumped him. Still, her loss.

"Damn..." She muttered, then took another sip from her glass as Kaidan fell silent. There was a look of contemplation on his face as he ran a finger along the edge of his own glass. Jane noticed, but remained silent in the confidence that he had something on his mind and would eventually say it. Either way, it was not her place to prod.

"Shepard... can I ask you something?" He said, a softer tone to his voice. This, of course, spelled either trouble or a deep question, neither which would be what Jane liked to hear or answer.

"Only if it doesn't involve my childhood. But sure, fire away." She said, putting the glass down with the remnants of the golden liquid flushing around inside.

"Well, you're a biotic." He said tentatively.

"You got me there Lieutenant." There was a crack in her mouth as she gave him a wry smile.

"What I mean is... and I know about the whole different dimensions and all, but... did you go to BAaT as well?" She could see there was an emotion in his eyes, in his voice, but she couldn't place or put a finger on it.

"No... but I could have just as well ended up there. There was a scandal, after what... well, what you did, and instead of that station, I went to Grissom Academy. Not as fighting-focused, but still enough that I learned a thing or two. Why?" She said, asking the last question with slightly squinted eyes.

"Well... just wondered if you knew... me, before the whole Saren-mess went down." Kaidan said, now starting to turn his eyes towards his glass instead of her.

"Huh... can't say that I did. I don't know about this place, but you only joined the ship a week before we went to Eden Prime." Jane said while taking a drink from her glass, a supposedly impossible action, but one she pulled off nonetheless.

"Right, where you got pulled instead of the commander."

"Pretty much."

They sat there in silence for a few more minutes as the waiter came by and they ordered a new round. Jane, now fiddling with an empty glass, often cursed herself for not being better at small-talking. She couldn't talk unless she had the excuse of a beer to retreat to when she ran out of banter. Wracking her brain, she tried coming up with conversation-material worthy of mention.

"What do you know about Fisher and our esteemed chef, Tengberg?" Jane asked, giving Kaidan a cautious look as two new, big glasses of beer arrived with a Salarian waiter in tow.

Kaidan nodded to the waiter before he took a sip of his beer, eyes closed as he considered the question.

"Not as much as would be nice to ma'am. Honestly I think you know him better than I do, you seem to get him on your team in most missions." Kaidan offered as he slipped his fingers through the handle for the glass, playing idly with the handle for a few moments.

"I meant out of duty. He doesn't talk to me that much when we're not deep in enemies. What makes him tick, in a professional way?" She said, aware of his reaction to her question. It was an old defense mechanism that had been with her ever since Mindoir. It had become sort of her emotional shield to be worried about what other people thought of her, but in the end not give a shit. There had only ever been, since her family was dead, two people who had provoked a real reaction from her.

One, of course, had been when Ash had confronted her about leaving her to die. Even if it had not mattered in the end, the decision had been made by Jane and Jane alone, to leave the Latin woman behind to die in nuclear fire. Meeting up with both a real, living Williams who of course blamed her, as well as the fact that she had been visited more times than she would ever admit, if at all admit the first time, by the ghosts of both the deceased Williams... and the ghost of Magnus.

That last one was the worst. Not because he blamed her, but because he didn't blame her at all. As surreal as it sounded, Jane would have preferred it had he berated her in the same manner Ashley had. It would have made her certain of the fact that she could have done something to prevent his death. Instead he was just unnaturally calm and compassionate when he had appeared to her, almost as if it was Jesus pranking her ass.

"Well... he seems nice enough, is nice enough too. I think he spends most of his time these days with Williams and the kid, seeing as they are going to Earth with her tomorrow. Other than that, it's difficult to just describe him. I mean, sure he's got Roku in there too, but honestly? I haven't got a clue as to what I'm supposed to think about... well, him." Kaidan said after some consideration.

"You mean the whole thing we saw as his helmet-cam from Pragia?" Jane said with a slightly lowered voice. There was a flash behind Kaidan's eyes as the word "Pragia" came up, but he didn't show more reaction than that.

"Yeah... yeah that one got my hairs standing. The way he just, I don't know, 'burned and cut' his way through I guess? I ain't never seen anything like it." Kaidan muttered, his gaze solemn as was his voice. It had been, to all of them, a somewhat horrifying experience to see the effects of Thomas' anger when he steamrolled human being with it, armor or no. Particularly the image of his hands, his fingers digging... no, digging would have been the wrong word. They were spearing and burning into the flesh, into the face of a female guard who had tried to stop him from freeing Jennifer Nilsdottir.

In a way, it was both a promising and a terrifying prospect the powers laid bare for them to behold. Promising as it turned the young corporal from fidgeting soldier to an all-out powerful badass with a license to, not just kill, but completely destroy his enemies. And terrifying because it could make him a target for every single person in the galaxy willing to cross whatever lines existed to get those powers, even if that would not be possible. As Jane had heard it herself from when she had been waiting outside the office of Thomas'... was it aunt of sister?

She had a hard time making her mind up on that matter, seeing as the difference in age... she could be his grandmother, and yet still he called her his 'little-sister'. In truth, it crept Jane a bit out.

"Me neither... well, I did see what he did to the assassins Cerberus sent... not pretty." Jane said, remembering how Thomas had at first just chosen to stay behind. She had been sure he was going to die to buy them time, but then all of a sudden he had come flying like the Green Lantern guy, slamming into the masked and armored assassins before they could even turn from aiming guns at Jane and Liara, the former keeping up a field of biotics to block the shots as well as press against the killers. Whoever they had been, the bad guys had been proficient in biotics as well, managing to keep even Jane at bay. And then he had just been there, hurling them across the room. What had then ensued was Thomas simply getting up... or maybe it had been Roku, forcing the body up and to point a gun at one of the downed assassins. After the execution of the two, Thomas had turned his, surprisingly sadistic, attention to the unconscious Asian man the assassins had been dragging along.

"Shepard, not to change the subject or sound rude or anything, but can I ask you something?" Kaidan said, clearly not as hype on remembering the gory displays of painful torture and executions from that day. A little disappointed, Jane leaned back in her chair with the beer in hand. She took a small sip from the drink before nodding.

"Fire away Lieutenant."

"How come I'm the one you tell these things to? Some would think you'd be able to connect better with someone who had tried the whole 'jumping' thing... not that I don't enjoy our talks or anything, but..." He trailed off.

"What makes me come back?" Jane finished. It was something she didn't fully understand herself though, thus providing an actual answer would be difficult. Lucky for her, Kaidan seemed to have grown more deductive over the months she had known him... well, this him, anyway.

"Probably because you need a familiar face who isn't going to shove it to you how this and that is different... which, coupled with the fact that you pretty much never go to the engine-room... or Garrus' workplace for that matter... Shepard, Jane, do you feel out of place on the Normandy?" He asked, causing both her eyes to widen and squint at the same time, something which should have been a biological impossibility.

"What? No, of course not! It's my ship, why would I feel out of place?" She growled. Silently though, his answer, or rather his question, unnerved her. Not because he had dared consider such a thing, or because it was as far from the truth as it could be. No, it unnerved her because he had hit the hammer on a nail she hadn't known existed until this very moment.

"But you're not the leader of it, the commander." Kaidan added with a curious, yet perceptive voice. Jane wasn't sure what he meant, or why he meant what he meant. And if there was one thing she didn't like, it was not knowing why or what people were saying and implying. The last time had been when Liara had almost lost a tooth because she thought the Asari was hitting on her.

And Jane Valentine Shepard was not a lesbian. monogendered race be damned, they had tits, which made them chicks. And she did not swing that way, not being what she called a 'carpet-muncher'.

"What's your point Alenko?" She said, her voice drifting towards the more business-like tone she used when talking with Udina, or having a person at gunpoint. One time those two had been the same thing, but lucky for her, there had been no evidence to point at her, and the body had not been found from what she understood.

"My point, is that you feel like you aren't needed on a ship where someone else has taken over control."

"I'm the Captain. I outrank John-fucking-Shepard, appointed by the Council or not." She replied, a scowl starting to form on her face. Kaidan though, was still calm as an Ukrainian governmental meeting. Though not the sort which meant they started tossing chairs at each other, crude as it was.

"Calm down Shepard. I think you took my intentions the wrong way. What I meant, with all this, is that a bit of your attitude might be due to you feeling replaced, and hence feeling like you aren't needed... which you are, just to put it out there." Kaidan said, holding his hands in front of him as a defensive gesture, in the case she would start glowing blue. Being a biotic himself, he knew the kind of damage the supposed 'space-magic' could wreck. It was only called that by the people who saw human biotics as freaks though, hence it had become a more and more rare thing to be called or to hear or see written. Of course, it depended on where you looked.

"So what if I do?" She asked, her voice void of emotions, but her eyes were still bright with annoyance as well as bitterness.

"Then you should stop it. Look, I know I don't have the rank to tell you what to do, but I... we care about you, even if you seem oblivious to it. That's why I'm telling you this, not as a soldier to his superior, but as one friend to another." He stated, obvious hesitation is some words, but honesty in them all. She knew honesty from lies, it was how she was still alive... practically speaking.

"Kaidan, I might have been important once, hell I might be again at some point, but for now..." She muttered, taking a long swig from her beer; "...I'm just a regular officer. Hell, half the shit I've lived through never happened here, so why should I be someone special?" She asked, resting her cheek in her hand. She was looking down at the table for the moment, this being the sole reason she didn't notice the look of anxiousness, of longing, in the lieutenant's eyes.

...

Zorya, Blue Suns Headquarters

Blue Suns Reformist forces

14:19

"And I'm telling you, I don't fit in there." Sidonis growled.

"For the love of- do you bird skulls even know how to crawl?" Magnus sneered back as he ducked into the opening of the vent. It was, like most of the grates that implied the presence of a ventilation-shaft, situated near the ceiling to prevent objects from obstructing it. That, or it was a joke from the administration to make it a living hell to access the vents.

Strange, now that he thought of it, that it hadn't been the ghoulish daughter of Loki who had bid him welcome in the arms of death when he had been shot. Or maybe she had retired, odd as the notion was.

"Turians don't crawl, it's not militarily honest to back down from a fight." One of the Turian Suns said. Both were wearing their helmets, so he had no idea who said it. He just knew it wasn't Sidonis as the Turian still kept his helmet clipped to his waist, his mandibles tight towards his face as he let his annoyance show.

"How you ever survived first contact with us..." Magnus grumbled as he crawled fully into the opening, only stepping slightly on the head of one of the sentinels. Locked doors had the advantage over lowered bulkheads that you could get past them by using the vents. Since most of the Suns leadership seemed to be Turian, he wasn't all that surprised to find no one had thought of blocking the vents between the checkpoints.

Sidonis didn't answer, instead just bowing down to check the equipment of the dead Loyalists they had encountered. Shields might be all fine against regular arms fire, but a Turian who smashed your chest with gravitational distortions as well as a miniature black hole that simply detonated upon contact with said incoming Throw, then sent the Suns in mention smashing against the walls with sickening cracks and snaps, tended to ignore shields. The purple-painted Turian didn't answer, instead just mumbled something about them having the superior discipline.

Magnus went prone as his feet entered the vent shaft, allowing him to snake his way through the narrow space. It was a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic, else he would have been more than the little uncomfortable he currently was with his surroundings. The entire shaft looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the day it was installed, making him draw as few breaths as he could for the wanting of not inhaling twenty-five years of dust and filth and Skjadi knew what else. If he ever took up hunting, be it sapient or not, he would probably have to start sacrificing to her as well.

"Gods... I thought I'd seen the shittiest place in the galaxy when I saw Omega... pristine compared to this crap..." He muttered as he inched his way forward, trying to ignore the impatient tapping of the Turians waiting for him to get the door;" At least there they have to remove bodies from the vents too often for there to collect any dust in the vents... lucky bastards...Should have brought the mech-guy, but noooo, he had to stay with Tara, snarky twart... still, nice girl... Gods, I'm talking to myself again..." He growled as he rounded a corner that would take him to face the grate on the far side of the door... as well as a dead Pyjak.

"I did mean intelligent bodies..." He stated dryly as he shoved the dry corpse past him and to his feet. Miracle of miracles, it was not rotten, instead more like a mummy. So, it didn't stink like... well, like dead Pyjak. As he reached the grate, he found it was screwed in place, just like the one they had pried off before. Wincing a little as he shoved his elbow ahead of his head, he activated the Omni-tool, forcing the multiple nano-forges to construct a slowly growing knife of red-glowing carbon with the thinness of a graphene-knife, but with the heat of a hot-knife. In short, it was a bit like a light saber from Star Wars, or maybe one of those plasma-katanas from the last C&C-game before they cracked in his opinion. Because seriously, Samurais?

The hot blade, when it was pressed against the grate's metal, started melting through it like a drop of magma on a good cheese... or maybe a sheep-head, despite not having had that in ages. Shrugging the thoughts of food from his mind, he finished slicing up the relatively thin metal grate, the punched it outwards as it stood with only a thin strip of metal to hold it. The rattling clatter as it hit the opposite wall and landed on the floor. He then edged his fingers, having discarded the Omni-blade, around the edge of the opening and pulled himself out of the vents, landing with quite the un-ceremonial bump as well as a few well-selected curses.

"Magnus, you through yet?" The voice of Sidonis said from his helmet, causing Magnus to scowl, if only a little, at the again impatient tone of the Turian.

"Yeah, I'm through... give me a moment to find the damn controls for this thing..." He tapped his comms. off again, not wanting the Turian, either of them really, to call him and ask if they were there yet. Ahead of him, aside from the small grate located on the floor, there was a chair with a laptop in front on a desk. Deciding that had to be the right one, he dumped himself into the chair, only to be slightly surprised.

And that was putting it mildly.

"I think so too."

"You there still?"

"Toruq, are you AFK again?"

"Hellooooo?"

"If you're on the crapper again, I swear..."

"Back yet?"

What he found himself looking at was the correspondence between the guard who had been there, and a human woman who seemed to be more than happy to portray her entire body on a picture attached to the messages. It was also obvious that, judging from the texts sent between those two on a program reminding him suspiciously much of Chat-roulette, that they had been 'smexting', or whatever it was called. It was also obvious, at least from the texts, that Turians had large cocks, if he had to trust the messages. With a wry chuckle, he sent a message back to whomever the woman was.

"why the hell are you writing with my husband!? I will find you, and I will cut off those fake tits of yours!" He cracked a, if a little maniacally, smile and pressed 'enter'. He could always imagine the reaction later on, and he shut down the site, only to have to press the 'exit' option through more than seven different porn-sites going from Asari-Hanar to a masturbating Elcor.

"Gods... this would make even Joker pale..." He sank, then rapidly clicked the exit-option again. There were times when he wished he could wipe his memory, and this was one of them.

Having closed the sites, he found himself with a disgustingly simple interface.

Open door?

[Yes] [No]

He pressed yes, then, as the door opened, pulled his sidearm and shot the computer, hopefully destroying the amounts of perversion that even the pilot of the Normandy would throw up at, and Magnus knew the guy had a sick taste when it came to... entertainment.

"Why'd you shoot the computer?" Sidonis asked as he came through the opened door, the sentinels flanking him with guns ready. Silly, really, as the door would never had opened in the first place had there been someone not friendly on the other side. Still, in a situation such as this, a good pile of paranoia would save lives, if it hadn't already done so. Still...

Magnus waited for the gun to cool down, the shot the computer again, causing it to fly away from the desk.

"Seriously, what did it do to you? Curse?" One of the other Turians asked with a raised brow evident in his voice.

"Trust me... you're better off not knowing... can't believe I found something more vile than Twilight..."

"Twilight?" Sidonis asked, prodding the wrecked laptop with his food.

"Again, you are better off not knowing." Magnus said as he started walking through the corridor, Sidonis at his side while the Sentinels took up a rather needless position at their six. Really, so far he and Sidonis could have done this on their own. Not as stylishly of course, but still on their own.

They walked after Sidonis most of the while, following him, who in turn followed the map projected by his Omni-tool. Magnus, after some thought, was glad they hadn't bought the HAS. The corridor was both too narrow and too low to let it operate, and it would just have been embarrassing to send the pilot back in his mech with the words 'You're too fat'.

"Alright, I think we need to go... right, around here..." Sidonis said, taking a turn to the left, where after Magnus grabbed him by the collar and redirected him to the actually intended direction. They turned the corner, expecting to see the closed bulkhead, as well as a computer with the same options as the door had had. Just, hopefully with less disturbing content.

Instead they bumped right into the backs of a squad of Loyalists, all of them turned facing the door with a heavy machinegun that really reminded Magnus more of a heavy GAU-Bolter than anything else. It just looked like it would one-shot the mech, and then tear their forces not one, but at least seven new assholes.

"Sorry gents, we-" Magnus started, but was interrupted as the Sentinels actually proved their worth and that they were needed for something else than blow their own armor up. Even as Magnus was in the process of aiming his weapon, the Vindicator, not the piece of crap Avenger he had had to discard anyway when a bullet hit it, a pair of blue and purple orbs impacted in the middle of the hostile formation. The cries of alarm that went out were, despite his hopes, not silenced by the thrumming noise that came from the distortions of reality, but rather they were changed, sounding like the people were on helium due to the oxygen that was being sucked away from the attackers and towards the black spheres that caused them to hover in the air, one still clinging to the handles of his machinegun as his body and legs were pulled the opposite direction of normal, which was mostly downwards.

"Well that's effective too, I guess" He grinned as he peppered the face of the closest Loyalist with rounds, the switched to the next one as his head was turned into a reddish foam, not exploding or raining down due to the change in gravity. Kinda like shooting on a space-station without gravity, he reckoned.

The others were just as he was, busy shooting the men and women in the process of coming to terms with the world having changed gravitational values. A few were shooting, simply to try and hit the attackers, but most were just flailing wildly, trying to get a grip on anything that would save them. The man who had his hands on the big machinegun was pulling himself downwards, but a shotgun to the chin, followed by said shotgun blowing up said chin, made him let go and hover as a macabre balloon. Sidonis just blew an imaginary tail of smoke from his gun as he raised it, an evident smirk on his... whatever the Turians had instead of lips. Magnus really neither knew nor cared.

One of the Sentinels kicked the last floating man from his singularity, then pushed his gun under his chin as he double-tapped the man with a handcanon that was easily large enough that he could have managed with just one bullet. Still, that was the advantage to practically infinite ammo: You could hardly waste what was infinite.

"Well... that was random, but I think we've all learned something important today." Magnus said as he activated the computer, thankfully without being subjected to disturbing and mentally scarring content. He knew he had to kick the next Elcor he saw in the balls. He knew it was wrong and would be uncalled for, but he knew he had to do it to get rid of the image.

"Which would be?" Sidonis asked with a snarky voice, reminding him a bit of Garrus, just some octaves higher.

"That a human, in any equal situation, is more adaptable than a Turian." He said as he watched the bulkhead slide aside, revealing the rest of the forces. Well, not the rest, but the rest of the token forces bestowed upon Tara to get the job done. Speaking of the Hell, beautiful as she might be here, the Quarian leaned against the HAS-mech as the door was finally fully opened. Even with the mask on, the surprise was evident from her body-language alone as she beheld the four Suns standing amidst the dozens of dead Loyalists.

"Keelah... you did that?" She asked even as she beckoned the other to press on through the opening. Beating the others to it, Magnus just shrugged;

"Well... it had to be us, since I doubt Santa was feeling in the mood to drop down and lend a hand."

"Who's... never mind, if it's important I'll find out." She said, slipping back into her 'leader' role. Magnus, having a pleasure in some of the more alternative areas, violence and infliction of said upon ass-hats being one of them, just grinned at her change, the desperate attempt to remain professional around him.

Still, it did make her kinda cute, in the lethal and disturbing manner that was.

Codex entry: HAS-Mech

Initially a human construct from the times of World War 3, as well as several campaigns against insurgents, both on Earth and her colonies, the HAS-mech has proven it's capability since it was birthed in its current form in 2172. The original mech was an unshielded model utilizing heavy armor and bullet-proof glass to protect the driver of the vehicle.

The mech was called the Amplified Personnel Carrier, and had originally been intended for use by engineers to use in the field, as well as heavy-duty carriers for use in the regular armed forces. Later on, in the third world war, it was introduced in service near the end of the war, in 2017. At the time, it was used solely for the purpose of lifting cargo and aiding soldiers with heavy weights.

In the year 2054, it was upgraded to serve as a protective suit of armor for the soldiers, complete with a cockpit, a mounted chain-gun as well as a pair of tridactyl hands used for grabbing. It served the United States' army in several occasions and in multiple armed conflicts. Most famous were the Cambodian Drug wars, and the Pandoran uprising.

Following a major defeat in 2154, the suit was placed in storage until further improvements could be installed upon it. After the peace following the First Contact War, a series of exchanges were made between the Turian Hierarchy and the Systems Alliance. In exchange for the designs for the Widow Anti-material sniper rifle, as well as the Omni-tool, the Turians were granted several human schematics and plans. The AMP-suit was one of these.

Little was known to the public about these machines of war until the campaign against slavers, carried out by the Turian fleets in 2172. Here the new and improved suits saw first action. Due to the new ownership, the AMP's had been remodeled and vaguely redesigned to accommodate the Turians' needs. A change was the design of the bipedal legs, as well as the cockpit which now gained a backward going antenna, much in the shape of the fringes adorning Turian heads. Additions made were as follow:

GAU-90 Assault Rifle

HAS-combat knife

Mounted burn-torch

Addendum: Reports state Turian Blue Suns made away with twenty-seven HAS-suits upon desertion from the navy. Current whereabouts are unknown.

Yep, still can't believe I got it out. Alright, I'm really pleased with the reactions for the "small" *cough, cough* hints I put out as to what will happen in the future of this story. there was one reader in particular who was... let's just say he/she was agitated about the reveal of certain malicious stones.

So far though, and I know I shouldn't say it here, but so far only one guy has told me his opinion on the latest chapter of "Avatar"... I have a tendency to think I have fucked up somehow then, even though he seemed to think otherwise. Just, you don't have to praise it, but even critisism would be nice. Thanks :)