I forgot this story existed. How rude of me.

Shepard stood in front of her squad's equipment lockers, her arms akimbo as she slowly gave each a discerning glare. They were all thrown open, their contents proudly on display, like a flasher with a gloriously open trench coat standing in front of you, goods on display, shame nowhere to be found.

Wrex was too cool to give a shit. He and the commander had just done their 'Wrex-Shepard-Wrex-Shepard' bit for a solid five minutes before having to retreat to his happy place to recuperate from the experience. It always went like that...way too long. Shepard was nothing if not socially oblivious.

Garrus was too busy playing 8-bit games on the small console by the Mako. He told people he was calibrating. He lied. When the games got boring, he read fanfiction on the extranet. In any case, he wasn't paying attention. Shepard seemed to take an inordinate amount of joy in breaking his down in the field when they were in the middle of a battle so she could open up a lock after yet another failed attempt at breaking in. He told her to practice back on the Normandy. She told him that he puts the lotion on his skin or else he gets the hose again. Garrus wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she had said it in a way that made his skin crawl, so he had kept his mouth shut afterward and just got better with pistols.

Ashley was nowhere to be found. Probably pooping. She tended to be full of shit, after all.

After a long two hours of shuffling equipment from locker to locker, Shepard stepped back to survey her work with a smug smile of self-satisfaction. Her locker was the best, of course. A small plushie of Blasto hung off a hook in the back. Ironically, of course. Before a mission she would give it a little squeeze and it would say things like "This one is tired of your shenanigans" or "This one is curious as to whether you are feeling particularly fortunate today." It didn't make her feel any better about plunging ass-first into yet another zany mission full of death and bullet storms, but she did it anyway. She wasn't sure why.

Also, she had decked herself out in the best Specter gear she could afford and just gave the rest of the squad whatever decent equipment they could pry out of their enemies' cold, dead hands. They'd do fine.

Ashley had returned and was going to get back to her station, but slowed to a stop by the lockers, which were still flung wide open. She narrowed her eyes at Shepard suspiciously. "Commander...what are you doing?"

"Redistributing resources." Shepard replied blithely, flipping her hand about. "I think I've got it pretty much figured out."

Ashley approached her locker and scowled. "Why is my assault rifle made of plastic?"

"Who cares? I never take you anywhere anyway." Shepard sneered at her. "Besides, you still have a perfectly fine shotgun and pistol."

Ashley gave Shepard a pointed glare as she snatched the shotgun out of her locker for a good cleaning. After a cursory glance, she assumed it had belonged to Wrex previously, mostly based on the fact that he had carved his name into the stock. She knew how much Wrex loved his shotgun, so she carefully put it back into the locker and made a mental note to trade with the Krogan later. She liked her trachea the way it was: not crushed. Instead, she went back to tinkering around with the assault rifle that laid on the workbench, perpetually disassembled.

"Well, I'm done staring at this." Shepard declared, looking rather bored. "Time to move on!" She positioned herself at the end of the lockers, giving Ashley a mighty hip check for good measure, before running along the length of the lockers with her arm out. She smacked the locker doors closed as she went by, finishing the scene with a Shepard-Wrex high five that made such a resounding sound of awesome that it probably reverberated throughout the entire universe. There were probably undiscovered species on undiscovered plants that just took a moment to go "Sweet high five, bro" while nodding to themselves, clearly impressed.

Shepard strode confidently to the elevator and punched the button, bouncing on her heels in excitement as she began her slow ascent to the CIC. She couldn't wait to get out to the field, flanked by her squad while they were all decked out in Phoenix armour. It was going to look sweet.

#squadgoals

I should go now.