AN: Enough setup and filler, let's get to the story!

Shepard stood at the rear end of the shuttle, standing rigidly still as he focused all the anger and frustration into standing perfectly still rather than blowing the small compartment into spinning shards of metal. His efforts were minimally effective as the wall he'd leaned against earlier had unexpectedly started to sag, forcing him to remain motionless and a safe arm's length from the wall.

He tried mantras and chants and baseball scores, the later of which was the only item not made up on the spot, even visualized all his female crew members naked in a effort to shake himself loose, only to gasp in annoyance as his mind's eye flickered over one bald tattooed hellion staring at him angrily. The same form who now was laid out in the floor of the shuttle as they raced against theoretical maximum speeds and waived safety requirements demanding a full deceleration before sliding into the Normandy's shuttle bay. The vessel tried to bleed the last of it's momentum with a sustained reverse thrust, barely keeping the belly from leaving deep furrows in the deck plating as it settled with a thump felt through out the ship.

Opening the hatch, Shepard was slightly eased to the side by a frantic Chakwas who slapped a biotic neutralizer collar on the convict before pulling in the stretcher to rush the unconscious biotic to the med bay. The salarian doctor squeezed past the motionless Shepard, calling out as he moved, "Must quickly stabilize and evaluate, limited resources in shuttle bay requires egress, please move."

At this, Shepard stepped off the shuttle and waited at the hatch, watching the two professionals work to strap the patient down and in a impressive feat of strength and dexterity, both worked in perfect unison to elevate and rotate the patient to exit the shuttle without once needing to look where they were going or speaking a word between them. In less than a minute after landing, they'd maneuvered the stretcher out of the shuttle and were on their way to the crew deck, barely pausing to declare the med area off limits until the subject was stable.

"Until the Subject was stable," Shepard reflected over in his head, his mind automatically capitalizing the word, pulling memories of a few hours ago as they'd wandered the small eclipse base; her, Garrus, and himself making fun of the pathetic soldiers facing them as they'd easily taken out the competition, even going so far start placing wagers on the final area's complement. After taking out the two mechs and the small contingent of guards, they approached a small access shaft cut in the wall.

-.

"Okay, double or nothing, asari swimsuit models, held hostage by indoctrinated hanar." A answering snort from Jack made him smirk as Garrus warbled a turian chuckle,

"Fine, we find that somewhere on this base, you don't have to calibrate the main gun, but if you lose, you get to also help Miranda file the operations reports."

Hearing this threw Shepard's stride for a step, his helmeted head tilting for a millisecond before he asked, "For how long?"

"Rest of the trip." Hearing this, Shepard let a small curse slip over the comms, before he kicked at the wall in annoyance.

"Screw that, I'll be over later tonight to do my dues, just don't think I've forgotten."

Turning back, he say Garrus jerk both hands upward in a football goal gesture as Jack let out a, "Fucking know it all turians," before waving her omni in his direction to pass along his winnings.

'What, what?" Shepard could see Garrus fighting the good fight against his normal response, be was losing it, before guffaws began to echo the small room.

"He bet me he could get you to calibrate his gun for him with a threat of Cerberus bitch-itude. I seriously thought those double d's would make you stupid and you'd jump at the chance to do reports"

Jack's usage of his personal nickname for Miranda brought a smile to his lips as he replied, "Never bet against Garrus when it comes to my social life, the guy's freaking prophetic. Seriously, what were the odds he'd be right about Sha'ira inviting me up and then about her not even bothering to bill me? Eighty to one? Higher?"

Jack's widening eyes at the comment made Shepard a little embarrassed, "What, too low?" The incredulous look intensified. "Way, way too low?"

"She asked for you, and then you never even got a bill?"

"Yeah, and I can't get a straight answer out of anyone as to how much she charges, only that it's a little more than a happy meal."Jack felt a little discomfited at the notion of the asari icon alone with Shepard for a minute, but the idea that she hadn't billed him the equivalent of a new space ship for the pleasure was a little impressive.

"Don't worry about it, she probably just felt a huge wave of pity at seeing your stupid face." At this Garrus slapped Shepard on the shoulder and pointed at his "index" talon, the turian gesture of "right on point".

The group slightly settled as they finally reached the last security door, Garrus setting up the omni tool to link while the other two just watched in calm silence. A few moments later, the door slid aside to reveal a small cubbyhole in the rock, the only details in the room other than the roughened rock was a slightly glowing green console.

To Shepard, there was a moment of disconnect upon seeing the device, his eyes glazing slightly as he saw flashes of the prothean vision and the oncoming swarm of reapers tearing through orange skies like meteorites. His distraction didn't stop Jack who stepped forward to peer at the device. His face jerked for a second before he came back to the present and saw Jack take another step towards the console.

"Jack, no, wait!" Hearing him and seeing Garrus look up from his omni tools scans with surprise, she'd barely begun to turn way when she felt a force along her spine seem to press down on her, folding her in a small bunched ball as lightning bursts in her mind illuminated the impressed horrific visions of extinction across a galaxy. The screams of billions began to wail in her mind, everyone trying to force across time and language the warning of doom.

Shepard saw her freeze a millisecond before the green glow of the console surrounded Jack, the beacon this time forcing it's recipient down to the ground, splayed like a corpse as the visions began to pour in . In three seconds, the glow subsided, the convict's face a blank slate as she lay still for a moment. Then she opened her eyes, eyes covered in a biotic haze as she stared unseeing at the walls, her mind's eye focused on the visions.

She started to scream and suddenly was lifted by a small biotic field before slamming against the ceiling, her impact warping the rock above, starting a small cascade of falling rocks that the remainder of the team was forced to avoid while Jack flailed against the ceiling. A sharp snap from her arm as she'd impacted told Shepard she'd broken at least her arm in the massive collision, likely several ribs and her fractured skull. Another spark of power flung her against the side wall, the wall opposite her exploding out to reveal the base commissary. She was anchored to the side wall, her left arm and right leg splayed against the rock, her right arm and left leg dangling with obvious break making her shattered limbs seem insect-like in their unusual geometry.

"Jack, stop, wake the fuck up!" Shepard yelled to no effect, Still she screamed, her voice failing to keep up with the volume, her lungs unable to draw enough air to match the wail in her head. On and on it went, seeming a eternity to Jack, but closer to thirty seconds before Shepard relented and cast a stasis on Jack. Still her arcs of uncontrolled biotics fought his hold, his hand going to his head to massage his temple and biotic arcs flowing along his skin as he fought her chaotic flow of power. He gestured for Garrus to quickly grab their fellow soldier before they both rushed to the shuttle, Shepard hand on Garrus' back to keep himself in track as he focused on keeping Jack immobile.

Seeing Shepard fully taxed with keeping Jack from either tearing herself or them apart, Garrus called over the line to the Normandy. "Normandy, this is shuttle one on emergency approach, Jack has been incapacitated by a beacon. Have Chakwas in the bay and be ready with whatever biotic suppressants she's got, Shepard currently has the tiger by the leash but it doesn't look good.

Looking back, he could see his friend punch the small arms locker near the hatch, his current biotic use in stabilizing Jack lending unplanned strength to his blow and rocking the entire shuttle in a hiccup. Seeing his shocked face and chagrin for a moment, before his eyes rested again on the frail looking human, Garrus went back to monitoring time estimates and overriding the automatic safeties to allow them to rush right inside.

AN: So, been trying to do the whole "start a new paragraph when switching speakers" thing, and I gotta say the large amount of white space makes it look like a 3rd grader essay trying to fill a page. Guess I'm just used to reading novels and such where half a page being blank would be pretty silly. Hope it helps; anyways, if there's any other grammatical or formatting fixes that'd make this easier to read, let me know.