A/N: sorry for the delay; I kept having difficulty with how exactly to write this chapter. In future, I think I'll try to maintain at least one update every three days.

Sibling Rivalry

"Forgive the cliché; but I've been expecting you." English accent, although with the muffling effect of the mask I doubt I could authenticate whether it's genuine or not...

"I thought as much. Flattering that you would go to such lengths to get in touch with me."

"How could I not? Scipio met Hannibal, after all; you made me in much the same way."

"Not a brilliant metaphor; Scipio was the defender of the Roman civilisation, Hannibal the one intending to bring it down. Although, historically, there isn't really a suitable alternative."

"My conclusion exactly. Furthermore, in some ways, you're Scipio; here to eliminate the threat to your organisation, and I'm attempting to dissuade you. Moreover, with any luck, this won't end in the same way. We don't have to be enemies."

"Make me an offer. I'll deliberate and tell you how you can improve it."

Charon remained impassive, although Shepard thought he heard a faint undercurrent of irritation in the man's muffled and filtered voice, arriving with greater ease than the assassin would have expected in someone who claimed to be his pupil. "You're assuming that you're the only one with leverage here, Shepard."

"And if you've studied my personality, and understood that it's like yours, you'll know that I don't care any more for the civilians you threaten than you do. And death threats seem a little impolite, since the outcome will remain uncertain until one of us is dead. By the way, how long have you been following my career? Because if you only decided to emulate me because of the Torfan incident; that would be a little disappointing..."

"You don't remember me? I'm hurt..." The terrorist's hand twitched as if he had been going to clutch at his heart mockingly, as Shepard himself had done in the past, but the appendage remained within dangerous proximity of his right thigh holster, instead. Self control, check, sardonic humour, check...

"But then, that wouldn't really be surprising; you were focussed on threats back in the orphanage, and I didn't have enough to do with you to register, I suppose. Aloysius Walker (pronounced 'Allo-wishus'). You certainly registered with me. A kindred spirit; someone superior to those dreary plebeian people shuffling around doing nothing of significance, training themselves for their future lives... In any case, we both had our solutions to the boredom. You killed and then ran off to London to become Ombre, whilst I immersed myself in science, as much as was safe, and moved on when I was eighteen, committed a few acts of electronic theft to fund my research, and, lo and behold, a few years later you reappeared in the Alliance databases, which are depressingly easy to hack. I watched as you dealt with Torfan, nice work by the way, although getting caught was a little sloppy of you; had my own scheme in place to get you out of the court martial if necessary, then heard just about simultaneously that you'd been killed on Elysium and a Thaddaeus Shepard had been admitted into the N7 marine programme. At that point, I felt we should meet. Discuss a few things."

Plausible scenario; most are unaware of my time as Ombre...

"As I said; make me an offer."

"Partnership. Come with me, and I'll show you everything I've discovered, including the cloaking device, amongst other things that I have no doubt you'll find interesting; you can share your tricks with me."

"Aside from the issue of how to get off planet when you must know that the Alliance is screening all traffic, and the fact that I should think you know all of my tricks if you've been watching me so closely, what's your agenda? What do you need my help with?"

"I don't need your help; however, it would certainly make life easier having you on my side instead of trying to kill me. And as for my goal, I want what so many of us want, but only we happy few can attain. Meaning. And there's only one way to do that in a world where entropy always wins, in a world where everything you do is doomed to destruction and therefore doesn't matter. Only one thing lasts."

Morbid philosophy, check...

"Entropy itself. Chaos. Matter's natural state. And so, I cordially invite you to help me encourage the process."

Shepard blinked, the only indication of his surprise. Nihilism. Well, that's new...

He sighed with exaggerated disappointment and regret, although he did feel a little; the prospect of two of himself running rings around the galaxy had been an entertaining one, he did have to admit.

"And here I was, hoping we could be friends... Sorry, but, the idea of destroying civilisation doesn't appeal unless you're going to replace it with something that will function in a similar fashion. See, there are perks to civilisation. Food, alcohol, and the occasional bit of decent entertainment from those few individuals out there that aren't entirely talentless and brain-dead, even if most of them are long deceased. And if you're being even more literal and intending to try to destroy the galaxy itself, then not only are you overly ambitious, but you're also mentally unstable and not working in my interests..."

"You like this pathetic excuse for a world?" Walker said with mixed incredulity and contempt.

"Not as such, but I'd rather have it than not. I live here too, after all. I can't fault your philosophical argument, but meaning really doesn't mean as much to me as pleasure, which is difficult enough without being dead."

"You fear death." Walker concluded, apparently having trouble understanding thought processes that weren't his own. Shepard could understand that, and not just from an intellectual perspective; apparently the terrorist didn't have as much practice at dealing with people as he did. His first advantage.

"You're trying to treat me like everyone else all of a sudden; you should know that's not wise. And I don't fear death, it's inevitable and there is no point getting worked up about it. But neither will I welcome or encourage it, rather the opposite. Like I say, it's hard to enjoy yourself when you're dead, and when everyone else is a superiority complex is harder to maintain. Sorry old boy, but our interests just don't seem to coincide."

"You have no idea how sorry I am to hear that." The terrorist said, hands creeping ever closer to the holsters in which his weapons resided.

"I think I've a notion." Shepard replied blandly, his own right hand moving slowly up towards the sidearm beneath his coat-

Walker's move to draw suddenly accelerated, yet Shepard reacted immediately, and, being more experienced in combat, his draw was quicker, allowing him to clip off two rounds into the terrorist's face, causing the man's kinetic barriers to shudder, but not fall as the assassin had expected; clearly the man had made some modifications to his shields along with almost everything else.

Less than a second later, however, Aloysius' own weapons were raised and spraying an automatic barrage of bullets that smashed into Shepard's own significantly weaker barriers, bringing them to dangerously low strength almost immediately, causing Shepard to cast the case in his left hand at his rival, stopping some of the bullets as well as throwing his aim off while the man flinched at the projectile being launched at his face, before dodging aside, leaving the case to crash into the guard-wall behind him and clatter to the floor.

As well as buying Shepard a couple of moments for his outer layer of defence to recover, it freed his left hand, allowing him to draw a throwing knife from an inner pocket of his trenchcoat in a SEAL grip before closing the distance between himself and his foe, who had recovered and was opening fire again before he was forced to duck under a spinning kick from the assassin. Shepard followed up with a stab aimed towards the throat, which the terrorist simply knocked aside with an armoured forearm, before replying with a lightening jab to Thaddaeus' torso with the pistol in his right hand.

In spite of the fact that the blow did little actual damage, the force behind it was sufficient to force Shepard to give ground, and though he recovered nigh instantaneously, it gave his foe the space he required to-

Holster his pistols, before advancing on Shepard himself, a move that Shepard hadn't anticipated, his brief confusion serving to slow his response, leaving him insufficient time to simply evade the blows that were targeted at him, instead opting to guide them away before countering with blows of his own-

Yet as soon as he knocked a blow to his diaphragm aside, a brief electric shock coursed through him for the duration of the contact, forcing him to drop his weapons and retreat still further, rendering him off balance and dazed, a situation that the terrorist meant to take full advantage of.

Shepard realised that they were both guilty of underestimating one another; it seemed that Walker had placed circuits in his armour that would be completed on contact with another object, electrifying the surface of the armour and delivering a shock to the object in contact with it, rendering his strikes significantly more deadly; a good blow to the torso would stop someone's heart, a blow to their head could fry their neurones. The assassin counted himself fortunate that he was wearing carbon composite armour that acted as a reasonable insulator.

Shepard was hard pressed simply to prevent his rival from landing a blow that would incapacitate or kill him, let alone to avoid getting shocked at all; already his muscles were aching in protest and he had yet to land a blow of his own. He ducked a jab to the face and knocked aside the blow aimed at his diaphragm that he nearly dodged into, yet still received a knee to the kidney for his trouble, shrugged it off and stepped away from a blow to the groin, affording the terrorist the room to aim a spinning kick at Shepard's neck, demonstrating an impressive flexibility in full armour.

As it transpired, however, the attack was a mistake. Shepard continued his retreating motion, and caught the kick in a grip between his forearms, not risking grasping Aloysius' armour as his digits could easily become locked around the armour so that he couldn't let go; which wouldn't be good for the terrorist, but would be entirely disastrous for the assassin.

Instead, Shepard fought to maintain his grip in spite of the current flowing into his limbs, sending his muscles into weak spasms that nevertheless made his situation frustratingly difficult, whilst he pushed back on the limb in his grasp, disrupting his captive foe's balance and preventing a response to his predicament for the necessary few seconds it took for Shepard to activate his Omni tool and-

Send an electrical pulse into Charon's already activated armour, failing to penetrate the terrorist's protection; however, that wasn't the assassin's intention. Instead, he had overloaded and burnt out the circuits that were delivering the shocks to the surface of the armour; suddenly, the situation was rather more equal.

However, Shepard wasn't afforded any more time to exploit his advantage; Charon gave up the fight to maintain his balance, instead thrusting himself up into the air with his free leg, giving him a moment, even as he fell, to deliver a powerful, if shock free, blow to the assassin's diaphragm, winding him, and causing him to release his tenuous grip on the nihilist's leg as he moved backwards with the force of the blow.

Walker hit the ground, and immediately leapt to his feet, just in time to be on the receiving end of Thaddaeus' retribution, having his guard slapped aside and just managing to twist his head away from a crippling blow to the temple, instead leaving him seeing stars and open to a blow to the chin beneath his gas mask that snapped his head backwards, recovering himself just in time to block having his eyes gouged by a double fingered jab to the face from the assassin.

The terrorist attempted to regain control of the conflict with a blow aimed at Shepard's mostly unprotected face, which Thaddaeus shied away from, before blocking a follow-up attack to his now exposed throat, countering with a flurry of blows that Aloysius blocked and parried with relative ease, though none of his counters succeeded in breaching his opponent's defences, either. Shepard attempted to break the deadlock with a stamp to the inside of his target's knee, even as Walker simultaneously attempted the same thing with a head butt, of all things, both of which had their desired effect, the terrorist's balance destroyed by the stomp and the assassin's focus disrupted by the head butt.

Stalemate. They stood a metre apart, within striking distance, remaining in eerily similar combat stances, breathing heavily, each examining the other closely for any sign that the other was about to make a move.

Walker was the first to break the silence, enquiring through gasped breaths "Are you sure you don't want to reconsider my proposal?"

Shepard grimaced. "Sure you don't want to reconsider your goals?"

More silence, until they muttered simultaneously "This clearly isn't getting us anywhere." They glared at each other venomously, but Shepard couldn't help but grin exasperatedly at the absurdity of the situation, a grin that Walker found contagious.

"Well; if we're not going to be progressing any further here, I've still got a bio weapon to release, so if you don't mind-"

He stepped back away from his self-interested counterpart, and, before Shepard could react, leapt back over the wall, off of the balcony.

Shepard moved quickly to look over the edge, seeing that the terrorist had landed on a lower level, and was running quickly out of his line of sight.

He quickly moved to retrieve his pistol in order to be on more equal terms when he caught his quarry, then followed him over the edge.

Git...