Unwanted Acclaim

Forty-eight hours later, Shepard stepped silently into Hogan's office, to once again find the Major watching him, and absently sipping an unknown liquid from a glass identical to the one used at their first meeting.

"Shepard-how are you, my boy?" He greeted the assassin, gesturing affably with the hand occupied holding his refreshment.

"Alive. Ambivalent. Adequate, I suppose, or some suitable equivalent." Thaddaeus answered dryly, as he took the seat opposite his commanding officer.

"Well, you did a grand job on Terra Nova, Shepard. A grand job. You exceeded even my expectations." The Irishman said, toasting the N7 before taking another draught.

"Yes, I hope I've proven that I'm trustworthy, now?" The psychopath agreed, an easy, if cold, smile on his face, though he watched his superior carefully without as much as a blink.

"My dear fellow!" Hogan protested, injury in his voice as he gesticulated expansively. "How can you suggest that I might even have considered anything to the contrary? The very concept never so much as crossed my mind!"

"Of course not." Shepard agreed with a more genuine smile, the undercurrent of sarcasm in his tone indicating quite clearly that he didn't believe a word of it. "Let us say no more of it, shall we?"

"Quite, quite. Something to drink, then? A toast to your success?" The Major offered, producing a crystal carafe half filled with an identical caramel-hued liquid to the one in his glass, along with another identical drinking vessel.

Perhaps surprisingly, Shepard and alcohol were not on familiar terms with one another. He had sampled it before quite some time ago, enough to be able to identify the taste in case anyone tried to dose him covertly, and found that he didn't enjoy it, particularly. Furthermore, the very idea of impairing one's wits seemed downright foolish, especially when one had a list of enemies as long as he did. He sat, eying the offered beverage thoughtfully.

"It's Cointreau." The Irishman said reassuringly, filling the glass and proffering it. "An orange flavoured spirit. Decades old, rare, and quite expensive. I think you'll find it to your taste."

The N7 took the glass, held it before his face and examined the colour, before taking a cautious sniff of the drink, as he knew was customary. The aroma was not unpleasant. He hesitated before the sip, however, still considering. Hogan had no reason to want to kill him that he was aware of; in fact as a valuable asset he'd expect some sort of gesture to attempt to maintain a more affable association between them. Which could, of course, be what this was.

On the other hand, it was entirely possible that there was a key piece of information of which Shepard was unaware, which would alter his perception of the situation entirely. He was more than slightly tempted to just run a quick scan of the liquid via his omnitool, on which he'd installed and tweaked a number of programmes designed to detect substances that would be toxic should he come into contact with them. He was hesitant to show Hogan the true extent of his suspicion, however, as it could jeopardise their professional relationship. And the longer he paused, the more suspicion he demonstrated.

Ah, sod it.

He drank.

The liquid was indeed flavoured with oranges, and slightly sweet, but neither attribute was excessively obvious. The alcohol in the drink burned at the interior of his mouth slightly, but was smoother than he'd expected, likely a by-product of the drink's age. He savoured the small mouthful he'd siphoned from the glass for a few seconds, amongst other things trying to detect any flavour that could be associated with an illicit additive, before swallowing, feeling the heat travel down his throat to settle comfortably in his stomach. He considered the aftertaste for a moment, before nodding approvingly to Hogan, who had barely blinked the entire time, and taking another sip.

"You were right." The assassin conceded, mirroring Hogan's pleased expression as they raised their glasses.

"To victory." The older man said.

"Victory." Shepard echoed, before they both took another mouthful.

"How's that wound of yours, then?" The Irishman enquired conversationally. His eyes, however, had regained that speculative gleam that Shepard had noted on their first meeting. Thaddaeus put his glass down before answering to give him time to consider the implications of his answer.

"A gut wound. I sealed it with medigel, which kept me on my feet and did half of the fixing for them, but the doctors have put me on light duties for another few days to ensure that the healing process is completed properly. I, however, feel fine." If he was honest, Shepard wasn't thrilled at the decision. 'Light duties' meant remaining in his quarters, as he was still something of an outsider amongst the marines, and Hogan meant to limit what was known of the Butcher's presence if he could. He'd exhausted most of the potential ideas for keeping monotony at bay in a restricted environment during his time in the care of Henry Lawson, and he was, quite frankly, bored of that scenario.

"Tedious, isn't it?" Hogan commented. "Still, a couple of hundred years ago, something like that would have killed you."

"Yes, and perhaps a couple of hundred years in the future, I'd be able to simply shrug it off and go on as if nothing had happened, with no ill effects." Shepard retorted dourly. It irritated him that some people thought that the fact that the situation could be worse was a reason to be happy; surely, by the same token, the fact that the situation could be better should negate any positive effects, unless there was a flaw in the person's thinking. Which, of course, there would be. Furthermore, positive thinking never helped with a situation. Action did.

"Well, as it happens, I do have something for you that could technically qualify as light duties. Relatively speaking, in comparison to your other assignments, at least-if you're interested. It would also tell me if you're ready to go on another mission that I have in mind for you."

"Oh? Do tell." Shepard prompted, leaning forward.

"We've got another new recruit. A bit of a misfit, really, with a criminal record, although while he's been arrested, no charges have ever been brought, due to a lack of evidence. He enlisted to escape some charges that were more likely to stick, and was picked out for our division. He's an arrogant sort of fellow, too, and I thought, if you were amenable to the suggestion, that you could give us your professional opinion of him."

That meant sparring with him. A predatory glint entered Shepard's eye.

"I'll tell you what I think of him. What's his name?"

"Kai Leng."

Shepard rose, to leave and prepare.

"Don't you want to finish your drink?"

"If you want me to beat him; I think it best that I be sober at the time." Shepard grinned, before turning and taking his leave.

The two men stood facing each other in the sparring ring, a few metres apart, both lacking shirts, and barefoot. Shepard's wounded abdomen was smothered in clean white bandage, however, the dressing still allowed sufficient flexibility for his purposes. Beyond that, his torso was unmarked by the conflicts in which he had participated, unlike his face, although even there only a couple of scars were clearly visible in spite of his pale skin, the most noticeable being a couple of pale lines diagonally tracing the socket of his left eye and continuing on through his eyebrow.

He stood completely still, already in a combat stance, watching his opponent without blinking, analysing and assessing already.

Kai Leng was a smaller man, clearly of Asian extraction even if one was foolish enough not to consider his name, the other glaringly obvious clues being his skin tone and the structure of his face. A wild mane of long black hair was drawn back out of his eyes and into a ponytail. Unlike Shepard, his skin was entirely unblemished by scars, although he seemed to have a few generic tattoos, and he stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet, in a combat stance from which he launched the occasional feint, all of which Shepard ignored, or appeared to.

Both men had clearly defined muscle, but that didn't mean that either of them could ever be mistaken for a body builder. Their muscles were lean, and tough, purely for function, not aesthetic. Leng watched his foe with a gaze that was feverish in its intensity, a stare that Shepard returned flatly, giving away nothing.

Leng was the first to mount an offensive.

He charged forwards, and opened with a flying kick, of all things! Shepard merely raised an eyebrow and bent out of the way of the blow, before slapping aside a jab to the head, forestalling another kick with a precisely directed knee, and finally sending a fist into his foe's abdomen before disengaging, his breathing still light and easy, in clear contrast with his opponent.

"Do you honestly think you can beat me?" The Asian growled, before diving into a roll, pushing himself up on his hands and lashing out with a vicious kick whilst upside down that Shepard quite simply avoided.

"Yes." He stated flatly, heavily implying with his tone that it would be no great thing. Leng's momentum carried him onwards, allowing him to push himself off of the ground and land, upright on his feet, before sending a flurry of combined punches and kicks at the slightly older man. Thaddaeus responded almost exclusively passively, only acting offensively to pre-empt the few blows that he would have trouble parrying or evading. In essence, he allowed the recruit to exhaust himself with admittedly very fast and impressive acrobatic moves, which were simply not enough to get past his far more efficient and thus even quicker defences.

Grinding briefly to a halt, the younger man demanded the inevitable "Do you even know who I am?" Shepard would have rolled his eyes skyward, had he been foolish enough to risk taking his eyes off of a foe unnecessarily. Instead, he deigned to respond with another sighed "Yes," this one ever so slightly exasperated and rather more condescending. On the offensive once more, and apparently not interested in hearing his opponent's responses, the Asian boasted "I'm Kai Leng; the best killer in the Alliance."

That was a bit much to be allowed. Shepard clinically slammed a blow into the younger man's torso whilst he was partway through one of his many unnecessary leaps, sending him off course and off balance to sprawl at Thaddaeus' feet. He glared up at the man incredulously. "Sorry, old boy. That particular post's been taken, although I'm sure you could try for the top ten." The Commander mocked him icily.

Leng's eyes darkened, and his face was twisted and distorted by pure fury that heralded the total and utter loss of whatever self-restraint the man had had to begin with. He sprang to his feet, already consumed by a biotic aura that had Shepard eyeing him with unease. He was no longer entirely certain whether this was nothing more than sparring, ending with one man's submission, or whether Leng now intended to kill him.

This was very definitely a problem. If Leng was trying to kill him, then he wasn't going to mess around toying with him, or trying to beat him into submission; he was going to focus on killing or at the very least incapacitating him first. However, if he went too far when Leng was still sparring, he'd cost the division a potentially valuable resource, even if the man did need to be taught that he still had more to learn. That could have consequences that Shepard would rather avoid; according to the Alliance's databases, he was dead. No-one would notice if his body caught up with the records.

Jerking his mind back to the present, he evaded a blow that his opponent had reinforced with a heavy gravitational field, and decided that he had spent more than enough time being passive-aggressive, regardless of the Asian's intentions.

A good few minutes after his foe, Shepard went on the offensive.

The shift in the flow of the combat was immediate and obvious, and if Leng had even a shred of rationality within him, he would no longer be able to deceive himself into believing that Shepard had been forced on the defensive by the onslaught. That said, offensive action always carries risk; when attacking your opponent you are more vulnerable to being attacked, when enacting your own stratagems you risk opening yourself to those of your rival.

As such, Shepard began to receive blows as well as dealing them out; an overextended disorienting slap to Leng's head was caught by the Asian, who promptly attempted to place him in a lock, and drag him down to the ground. Going against the lock would dislocate his shoulder; whilst it wouldn't doom him, it would make victory a significantly more difficult proposition. Instead, with his right hand the Commander directed a blow into his opponent's abdomen, driving the air from his lungs and following up with a savage blow to the chin with the base of his palm that sent Leng's head snapping backwards, blood leaking into his mouth from his bitten tongue.

Despite his state, the younger man's grip on Shepard's arm remained firm; however, the N7 still had a contingency plan. Whilst Leng shook off the daze that afflicted him, Shepard went with the lock, pulling himself towards the ground and the other man with him, before suddenly launching himself explosively upwards into a flip that left his own arm straight and his foe's twisted. At this point, the assassin grasped his opponent's wrist in a grip of his own before he could disengage, fixed the man with a stare, and smiled.

Shocked out of his incapacitating rage by the feat, and the sudden reversal it had caused, Leng simply looked back.

"Who are you?"

Shepard sighed. "Not even a month dead, and I've already been forgotten," he tutted "Do you even bother to watch the news? I'm Thaddaeus Shepard." Kai Leng's eyes widened in recognition. "Oh, so you have heard the name..."

"The Butcher of Torfan. The Hero of Elysium." Leng said, something curiously akin to respect, perhaps even reverence, in his voice. This time, with his opponent trapped, Shepard did roll his eyes. "You did humanity proud, whatever the Alliance said. You scared the fuck out of those alien bastards, and got us the respect, the fear, that we deserve."

Intellectually, Shepard had expected that in spite of, or perhaps even as a consequence of, the collective revulsion with which the galactic community had responded to his actions on Torfan, he'd probably gained a few fans amongst the xenophobes, as well as those who were simply happy to watch the galaxy burn, for whatever reason. He'd never expected that he'd have to endure a conversation with one of them, though. Fortunately, in this case most of all, he could always resort to violence.

Catching Leng off guard, he yanked on the man's captive right arm, pulling him into a vicious kick that smashed into his diaphragm, doubling him up, a situation Shepard exploited by stomping on the back of the Asian's knee, sending him down to the ground, his breathing now coming in wheezing gasps. Gasps that, after a few seconds, were interspersed with hoarse chuckles.

"Do you yield?" Shepard inquired coldly.

"Not yet." Leng said weakly, then, in spite of his apparent difficulty in speaking, launched a biotic field at Shepard with his free arm that hurled him backwards forcefully. Shepard managed to complete a vertical flip that left him landing in a slightly awkward crouch, just in time to receive Leng's renewed assault.

He was tired, and aching, and having difficulty breathing, all of which made the Asian rather less inclined towards the acrobatics he had displayed previously. This actually made him slightly more efficient in his movements, and cancelled out his handicaps. However, Shepard was already plotting his downfall, realising that it would have to be done carefully, not simply putting him down, but preventing him from using his biotics to escape or regain the upper hand. This would require the element of surprise, as well as-

One of Leng's blows circumvented Shepard's defences, leaving him off balance and vulnerable when Leng dropped and swept his legs out from under him at knee height. Shepard fell, and Leng pounced-

To find their positions suddenly reversed, as Shepard deftly used the Asian's momentum against him, planting a blow that drove the air from Leng's lungs, and sent him continuing over the Commander's head before landing on his back, continuing the forward motion to sit up and begin to scramble to his feet and continue-

Only to find himself being pulled back down by the N7, his neck firmly secured in a choke hold and his arms pinned to his sides by Shepard's legs. Leng struggled to loosen his captor's grasp, futilely attempting to bash his head against the chest behind him despite barely being able to move it at all, his legs thrashing wildly, trying to gain the purchase required to lift himself and gain some leverage, all the while his need for air gradually increasing.

Desperately, he accessed his biotics, using them to send both he and his captor into the air a metre off of the floor, before slamming them back down again, causing a grunt from Shepard, and a further tightened grip around his neck, but no concessions, and no leverage. Dark spots swimming before his eyes, the blood pounding in his head, Leng put all of his strength into one last struggle, before he went limp-

And tapped out.

It took a moment for Shepard to register the feeble gesture, a moment more to interpret it, and another to consider whether it was wise to release his foe, who hadn't seemed inclined towards following the rules beforehand, and was unlikely to be a gracious loser, even to the iconic Butcher. Then, he decided that it was safe to let the man go, if only on the basis that he was now unconscious, and any longer might result in brain damage, amongst other things. Shepard doubted this Kai Leng had the neurones to spare.

Releasing him, he rolled the Asian's dead weight off of him, and got to his feet.

"Congratulations on yet another success, Shepard. Well, what did you think of him?"

Having showered and changed, Shepard was sipping from a glass of Cointreau as he considered. It dulled some of the aches that were still uncomfortably fresh from his bout with Kai Leng less than an hour ago. The consideration was more over finding the right words to give his verdict a suitable gravity than any uncertainty about the man he had just fought. When it came to this particular subject, Shepard was very certain of his opinion.

"Kai Leng is a liability. He's not without talent, I'll admit, but what he does lack is refinement, restraint, self control. He's a blunt instrument to be unleashed with a few simple directives to which his adherence is non-essential, because there's no guarantee that he'll end up hitting the target you aim him at. What's worse; he's a zealot. A xenophobe with tendencies towards neo-fascism, someone not to be trusted with anything important or delicate, if you intend to keep him at all."

"I do. What you say is all true, yet you forget to add one thing; he believes in the Alliance's goal, the preservation and advancement of humanity. He'll be loyal to someone other than himself, unlike some other operatives I've encountered," He gave Shepard a pointed stare that the N7 returned brazenly, a smirk on his lips, "And, he's got the capacity to overcome the other difficulties that you mentioned, under the correct tutelage."

"I sincerely hope that you aren't suggesting that I be the one to train him." Shepard said mildly, a quiet note of warning in his voice.

"You were one possibility, its true; after all, he already respects your achievements, doubly so because you bested him in the ring. However, I think we can both agree that your time can be spent far more valuably than attempting to reform and refine deviant individuals into useful weapons." Shepard inclined his head only slightly in agreement, yet somehow managed to make the gesture appear emphatic. "Particularly in the case of your next mission. Since the Skyllian Blitz, and your death, things between the Alliance and the Hegemony have settled down, at least on a public, superficial level. Talks are being held with the Council again, and there have been no further offensive operations on either side's part."

"I get the impression that I'm going to change that." Shepard remarked.

"Not quite." Hogan said with a grin that said that this particular machination had been one of his own devising. "A group of batarian malcontents has contacted us through roundabout channels via the Terminus Systems, some of them belonging to the Hegemony's bureaucracy, some to their armed forces. They want to set up an insurgency, and eventually to stage a coup. They're asking us to supply them with munitions and equipment, in exchange for which they will pass us information on batarian deployments, technological developments, future raids, etc."

"So, in effect, they're paying us with information for the privilege to be able to fight our enemies for us? Very well played, sir."

"I rather liked it myself. Now, obviously we have to take the munitions to them and make the exchange in Hegemony space, and some members of the Admiralty don't approve of dealing with the batarians at all, which means that this has to be a covert operation, making this our domain. This will require a delicate and versatile touch; as such, I'm sending you to handle it, although I would ask that you be discrete about your identity lest it provoke an... unreasonable reaction. Besides, I'm sure we both agree that it's best for you to remain dead." Shepard nodded, drained his glass, and rose to leave. Hogan forestalled him with a gesture.

"One other thing. Operating in Hegemony space carries with it a certain risk. It is imperative that the Hegemony not discover a human presence in their territory; they would retaliate, and we would lose our standing with the Council. You will do whatever is necessary to avoid detection. To facilitate this, the boys in the lab have managed to cannibalise that cloaking technology Charon was using, and incorporate it into your armour. It won't conceal you for long without overheating the power source, but it shouldn't be necessary in any case."