Sooo… I thought I should hurry up and get another chapter out since you waited so patiently for the other one. I know it's been a week, but I've had a lot of stuff going on. Thanks so much for caring and reading! Remember, reviews make me go way fatser! This chapter will expand on Shep and Ridley's relationship, and I think you'll find their dynamic interesting. Presenting… Chapter 5!

Shepard POV

This was strange. When we landed on Feros at Zhu's Hope, I wasn't sure what we would find. But it definitely wasn't what we did find. Those people were being hit by the geth, and hard. Despite their assurances, there was something up with that place. I'd also been getting up on a weird vibe around the colony. Like they were covering something up.

Even Wrex was picking up on it. And Ridley, well, she just had that look on her face. The same look she gets when she's judging a person, calculating, but not cold.

Ridley is the most interesting person I've ever met. She gives off the façade of trust and comfortableness, but the minute you ask her a truly probing question, she deflects it, instead probing you with questions.

And then there are her scars, some jagged, some clean-cut, some small, some large. I've only seen a few of them, but they are impressive, and painful-looking. There are so many mysteries about our resident professional killer that I spend most of my time musing on where she could've trained or where she came from. She doesn't seem to be ex-Alliance, and she said once she was a colony kid, like me, but besides that, her life story is blank to me.

But there's something about her. Sure, she's mysterious and sexy, but it's more than that. She has this way about her, a kind of grace. She gets along with damn near everybody on the ship, even Wrex. They seem to have found some kind of common ground with each other. Probably has something to do with their shady pasts or a mutual love of destroying things.

As we talked to the colonists tediously, I found my eyes drifting to her subconsciously. Like she was pulling me to her. It had been like that the entire mission.

Clearing the tower was relatively easy, but I was still racking my brain as to why the geth were here. The colonists said they didn't find anything of value, but this is an ExoGeni colony. They are notorious for their antics and don't invest in anything without foreseeable profit.

My mind started to wander as we talk to Davin Reynolds, but I tried to focus. After I apparently offend him about something or other, he launches into a lecture about his colony and how unfair all of this is, and after that my mind is lost to me, roaming the space around me, muddled and unfocused.

It came to rest as it had the entire day, on Ridley's face. But that time, I was too bored to tear my eyes away and pay any attention to what that self-righteous colonist had to say. She, however, seemed to be paying attention to the man, obviously absorbing the information and making an opinion on him, like she does with everyone she meets.

My eyes began to move of their own accord, dragging along my mind with them. They studied her hair, out of its usual ponytail for this mission, instead falling down to its actual length, just past her shoulders. I felt myself become mesmerized by her appearance.

My eyes veered to her nose, elegant and small, which led me to her lips. At this point, I had no control over my thoughts or anything else for that matter, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss those lips.

My brain and my eyes didn't seem to be listening to me when I briefly snapped out of my reverie to realize what I had just thought. But by that time, my mind was enraptured by the woman standing next to me. It admired her jaw, her lithe figure. It was hard to imagine how powerful and lightning fast that body was just by looking at it.

My eyes came back up to look into her own eyes, and I felt myself become even more entranced. They were a blue, a deep blue, like the bottom of the ocean. They defined her entire face and added to her beauty. While I was beguiled by the enormity of her appearance, the man stopped talking- what was his name? Reynolds? – and I tore my eyes from Ridley's face and thanked the man for his time.

As we walked away, I snuck a glance at Ridley to see if she had noticed my previous intense gaze, but she had her usual anticipating and searching face on. I knew right then and there I wouldn't be able to focus, no matter what this mission threw at us.

…

That turned out to be a lie.

"On your left!" Ridley shouted at me, and I fired anti-Thorian gas at the incoming colonists.

The way we got to this point is long and complicated, and would probably take at least an hour to explain, so I'll make it short and sweet.

While we were taking the mako up to the ExoGeni facility, we ran into a group of people even more paranoid than the ones we met at the original colony. We talked to them for a little while, but the only thing we could get from them was that there was something secretive about this colony, and they were all hiding it.

When we got to the facility, we met a few geth (nothing we couldn't handle) and the daughter of a doctor we met at the makeshift encampment. She was the one who finally tell us what was going on. This Thorian thing that we're fighting now is a plant with telepathic powers. A little far-fetched, I know.

Once we figured that out, we made our way back to the colony (not before having an armed confrontation with those ExoGeni scientists. Turned out a few of them went insane) and en route we met a few of the Thorian's cronies, creepers. They looked alarmingly like husks.

We've come to the point where myself, Ridley, and Wrex are armed with anti-Thorian gas grenades and tried as hard as possible not to shoot the colonists (who had gone kinda insane, if you didn't get that already).

As soon as the last colonist fainted due to the gas, I ran to the controls, and used them to lift the freighter, exposing a staircase leading down.

Not long after, Fai Dan showed up with a pistol, but strangely enough, he looked more in control than the other colonists. I checked my grenade number and saw that I'd used them all. Shit.

Fai chose that precise moment to speak, and my head jerked up, "I was supposed to protect them…" he managed to get out, and it seemed as if he was on the verge of tears. He struggled with himself, an internal war obviously occurring.

"I couldn't protect… ExoGeni… I didn't know until it was too late. It's too strong, we never stood a chance…" He looked as if he was in pain, and winced every so often.

"The Thorian? Is that what you're talking about?" I asked, grappling for an answer as to where the plant was.

He grunts, his words coming in a rush, "Yes… it controls us, it has a hold over us. We do whatever it says. Whatever it says…" As he trailed off, his eyes lowered to the pistol, slowly lifting it inch by inch to my face. Ridley stood nearby, her gun trained on Dan with deadly precision.

"You don't have to do this! Fight it, you know you can!" I yelled at him, desperate not to take the measures Ridley was expecting.

"I can't…" he blinked, trying to fight the Thorian, but losing horribly.

"We can help, we can kill it, make it let you and the rest of the colonists go! Just trust me, Dan." I yelled at him, taking steps forward.

"It's… it's too strong! I can't fight it anymore! I failed to protect them… I failed…" he looked to be in a rage, his internal battle reaching its climax.

"Dan, please-" But I was cut off by his pistol being raised.

"No! I will not be a pawn! I will not disgrace Zhu's Hope any longer! I will not kill our only hope of returning to normal!" Before I could say anything, he lifted his pistol and took the shot, but it wasn't at me or my squad. He had shot himself.

I turned to Ridley, "Did you… see that coming?"

"Not really," she said with a shocked face. She quickly strode over to the staircase leading eerily downwards, "Who wants to go down first?"

"I don't know, maybe you should go first." Wrex replied, smirking in his krogan way. The one where he could snap your neck in the next second, or buy you a round of alcohol.

"I vote we just get on with it," I said, eager to just get off of Feros and back on my ship.

"Agreed." Ridley stated with a smirk. Her lips… Snap out of it, man! You have to go kill a hostile plant. You can't daydream about her, no matter how much you want to! As my thoughts argued with themselves, we took our steps into the musty underground.