Cosmetic Surgery
Paul was walking with Commander Shepard on a snow-covered catwalk. Even Tali in her suit was shivering.
The only one not visibly affected by the cold was Urdnot Wrex.
They only got to walk a few dozen meters, before they were stopped by a bunch of armed guards.
Their leader, a woman, motioned for them to stop, and spoke.
„That's far enough. Your ship was not scheduled to land here. Who are you?"
"Commander Jane Shepard, a Council spectre," Shepard answered.
"We will have to verify that," the woman said, "But until then, you'll have to relinquish your weapons."
Shepard's team had their weapons up and aimed at the guards almost instantly. They raised their own guns as fast as they could.
"Good!" Wrex exclaimed, "My blood has been freezing out here. Finally, something to kill!"
One of the guards, a blonde haired woman, only scowled and tightened her finger on the trigger.
"Careful, Wrex," Paul mock chastised. "If you eat them in public, you'll scare off all the businesspeople."
Suddenly, the intercoms blared.
"Captain Matsuo, stand down! We have confirmed Shepard's identity! Spectres are allowed to carry weapons here!"
Everyone took it as a signal to lower their weapons, albeit rather warily.
Captain Matsuo bowed her head slightly.
"You may proceed, Spectre. I hope the rest of your visit will be less confrontational."
"Behave yourselves," the blonde woman added with venom in her voice.
Wrex only responded with a low growl before moving towards the facility.
After searching for about half an hour, Shepard's team finally found Administrator Anoleis' office.
Only to be denied entry.
"I can't be bothered to entertain some primate from Earth who thinks she's above the law," he said over the intercom.
Gianna Parasini, his assistant, only gave them an apologetic shrug.
Shepard was only angered.
"Look, administrator. I am a Spectre. If you don't let me in now, I can and will use my status to bring down a shitstorm of the likes you've never seen. If the council finds out you've been nothing but an obstruction in an investigation to bring down a rogue Spectre…" she trailed off to let Anoleis to finish the thought.
A sigh could be heard over the intercom.
"Fine. Fine! Come in, but don't expect any favours from me!"
Shepard grinned.
"Stay here, I'm going to have a little talk with that salarian."
Then she walked into Anoleis' office.
"Wouldn't want to be Anoleis right now," Paul said after she was gone.
"I hope he gets eaten," Wrex said, seemingly bored at the moment.
Everyone suddenly stared at him. Parasini's horror was barely concealed, Tali took a tiny step away from him, and Paul was doing his best not to start giggling.
"What is your fascination with eating other people, Wrex?" Tali asked with a frustrated voice. "So far you've wanted to eat everyone who anger or frustrate you somehow."
Wrex only shrugged at that. "If you're hungry, why not? Not like you're gonna' miss them, and it's not cannibalism either. I don't see the big deal."
Paul couldn't take it anymore. He leaned against a wall for support while breaking down into a giggling mess.
Tali couldn't respond to that however, because they suddenly heard a loud slam followed by a raging red-haired woman.
"That good-for-nothing varren fodder! The piece of shit didn't give me a garage pass!"
She looked at her team, and motioned for them to follow.
"Come with me. We're going to break into the fucking garage. If Noveria's got problems with that, they can send the council a fucking bill for damages later!"
She was stopped by Parasini, who jumped up from her chair and ran in front of the Commander.
"Wait, I have a better idea. Instead of you blowing up all the doors leading to the Garage, and the garage itself, how about we work out a deal. Meet me in the Hotel Restaurant." She then scurried away.
Shepard only looked back at her team, who were slightly intimidated by her earlier yelling, and gave them a shrug, before following Parasini to the restaurant.
After some talking and shoving away the occasional snotty company official, they were inside an elevator that was lifting them up to the Synthetic Insights offices.
"Task after task after task. Everyone wants something from me, everyone!" Shepard yelled at no one in particular.
"You do know you could just use your Spectre status to bypass all security protocols, get any pass or security clearance or whatever for anything, right, Shepard?" Paul asked her.
"Yeah', but it wouldn't look very good on my records if I simply scared the shit out everyone I met," she said, and murmured something silently as an after-thought.
"I'm sorry, what was that, Commander?" Tali asked.
"Nothing, Tali." Shepard answered a little too quickly.
"Didn't sound like nothing. Almost sounded like your mom would kill you, if you weren't nice to people," Paul said with a grin.
"Shut up." Shepard said sharply.
Before anyone could say anything more, the elevator doors opened, and the team was greeted by gun barrels.
Paul stepped forward.
"Hello. Does Captain Matsuo know you're here?" he asked with a knowing voice.
The guards looked at each-other, and then one of them said: "You didn't see us, we didn't see you," before walking into the elevator.
"It's kind of funny," Shepard said while going through a datapad.
Only Wrex wasn't occupied with anything but guarding the entrance and grunted questioningly.
"We, I mean Paul kicks the corrupt ERCS guards out who were ransacking this place for the evidence, and now we're the ones ransacking the place for the evidence."
Paul, who was going through the turian's, Lorik Qui'in's computer, said, "Well, we're doing it for a good cause." Then he started snickering.
"What are you laughing about now?" Tali asked.
"Who in their right mind would hide 50 gigabytes of porn in a folder named "Family Pictures"?"
Shepard, who was now smiling, answered, "I guess that's how he mixed up the human saying with "Fly in the lotion"."
"Yeah, I was wondering about that. Got creepy images for the next ten minutes after he said that," Paul said.
"Paul, instead of staring at someone else's porn collection, maybe you should find that evidence," Tali suggested.
"If you see any krogan-on-asari action, download it onto your omni-tool. I like those shows," Wrex spoke up with a grin.
Paul was about to retort, when suddenly Wrex's expression went from amused to serious faster than a lightning strike.
"We got company. Just came out of the elevator. Looks like that blondie from the Normandy's dock is here, too."
Shepard frantically looked at Paul and Tali. "Please tell me you got something."
Tali looked calmly at Shepard, and said, "Don't worry, I just started the download of the evidence 10 seconds ago. Most of the time is going to wiping it from Lorik's systems." She looked at her omni-tool, and closed it. "Done."
Shepard nodded, and pulled out her Assault Rifle. "Alright, let's roll."
Paul whispered something in Shepard's ear, and she nodded. Then she motioned for Tali and Wrex to go with her. As they descended the stairs, Paul was looking at the new arrivals.
Shepard stopped in front of them, and the blonde lady spoke up. "What do we have here? Commander Shepard."
Shepard bowed slightly. "You have me at a disadvantage, miss?"
"Now you show the proper respect? Sergeant Kaira Stirling. What are you doing here, ransacking the offices?" She asked with anger she didn't even bother to hide.
"What?" Shepard asked incredulously. "Your own ERCS thugs were paid off by Anoleis to shake this place down! Don't throw the blame at me!"
Kaira only snorted. "So where's your smart-mouth guy? You know, the skinny black-haired bastard?"
"He's enjoying his drinks at the bar," Shepard answered.
"We'll have him soon enough for being an accomplice. Do you know what we did to cop-killers on my world?"
Wrex already knew where this was going, and threw a warp at Kaira's face.
At the same time, Paul jumped down from the upper floor right on top of Kaira, only to take the warp straight in his face.
The raging blonde woman couldn't get up fast enough to avoid getting her face re-arranged by shotgun rounds, and her friends were killed in less than three seconds.
After the shortest battle on Noveria, they looked at Paul, whose brain was now slowly being torn apart by Wrex's Warp.
Wrex nudged him with his foot.
"Shepard."
"Wrex, don't even start! You just killed our own squad member! Sure, he came out of nowhere, but still! You have a lot to answer for!"
"…I'm just wondering if he downloaded that porn."
Sweet Baby Jesus, this one took long. only 1400 something words, and 'only' two weeks... Have I ever said how much I hate my literature teacher right now? We're being forced to read book after book after book after book. "Estonian classics" they said. It will be a fun read, they said! It's not like, you know, half of them are exactly like the fucking soap operas on TV. The only thing missing was the occasional long-lost brother/sister showing up from nowhere!
That said, I won't abandon this story out of the blue. If I can't continue it, I promise I will post a notice instead of just leaving you people to hang off a cliff waiting for the new chapter.
And as always, I will see you in the next Chapter!
PS. I really am sorry for the long wait.