A/N: Well this chapter is on time, that's a relief, anyway, I'm just going to put here a big thank you! As when this chapter goes up this story will have a total of 6,000 views, so thank you to every single one!
~ I don't own mass effect, bioware and EA does ~
12.03.05 PRW
The Citadel
Private Council Chambers
Councillor Osoba sighed in acceptance, the report that the Spectre's had sent back after they had a chance to review the evidence was troubling, very troubling. The Admirality board was quietly funneling vast amounts of Credits and resources into multiple different projects that were meant to have been shelved before the War, the fact that money was going in and nothing was apparently coming out was what worried him the most.
Combined with the fact that they had lied about the Cybernetics in Shepard's body meant that the Alliance needed to clean house, as there was clearly more going on than anyone was aware of.
It was now a matter of collecting evidence and political maneuvering in order to fix it quietly, without causing doubt in the public about the trustworthiness of the Alliance.
His focus returned to the outside world when the main door opened to allow in Councillor Irissa who, from the look on her face, was extremely agitated by something.
"Irissa" he said in greeting, giving a nod of recognition.
The Asari Councillor smiled back, giving her own nod as she sat down in her chair, pouring herself a drink of Thessian Wine.
They were soon joined by QEC; Councillor Shila'Ran, Councillor Kari Varn and Councillor Vail Quentius, Councillor Esheel entering through the same door as Irissa had come through.
After everyone had greeted everyone else, they quickly got onto the main topic: Zaire Shepard.
"Its going to be messy no matter how this pans out, Shepard had serious issues with the Old Council, and to her, we are no different, she will ignore our authority or keep away from Council Space, and to be honest, until the Alliance has been sorted out and everything has a chance to cool down, that's probably going to be in our best interest."
Osoba Sat back, wanting to gain some understanding of the rest of the Councils stance on the issue.
Councillor Vail Quentius was the first to speak up, leaning forward in his chair as spoke.
"That's it? Ignore one of the most deadly and influential people in the Galaxy? No, I say we see if we can contact the Broker, get hold of Shepard through him and talk to her, at least let her tell us her side of the story, it will immediately improve our standing with her, if nothing else."
Councillor Shila'Ran nodded in agreement, speaking up herself.
"Zaire Shepard is many things, unpredictable, connected, and deadly yes, but she always made her goals clear, ignoring her will only hurt us in the long run when she does something for the greater good without notifying us first. For all we know she may even want to retire, until we talk to her, we don't know what she wants."
Councillor Irissa looked unconvinced, "Shepard was always a wildcard, she used to focus that on the Reapers, but considering the damage she did before the war and who she is now working with now, are we sure we can to trust her?"
"Trust is not the problem, Zaire was always looking out for the Galaxies best interests, whether our predecessors liked it or not." Stated Councillor Shila'Ran.
"Agreed" added Osoba, hoping that that particular argument didn't come up again.
"Ignoring Shepard is a tactic that the Old Council used, any action we take must be open, Shepard does not let people intimidate her, just look at what remains of Cerberus."
Everybody turned to look at Councilor Esheel in surprise.
"I would think that you would want more intelligence before making such a statement Esheel, you normally want the STG ready to act" commented Irissa.
The Salarian shrugged at the claim, simply stating, "Shepard unpredictable, took on the Broker network and won, who knows what else she could do now that she has a Asari Lifespan."
"She what?" Sputtered Councillor Irissa.
Esheel didn't even blink, "during Shepard's time with Cerberus, she made several attacks against known Broker operations, Liara T'Soni herself working against him, however, after the Alpha Relay incident, the Broker began to remove several operations, stopped doing business with the Batarians, investigated Prothien history and extinction far more openly, and quietly began to support Shepard when she was on trial."
"You think that-"
"Shepard took on Broker, and won."
"This is a conversation best finished behind locked doors" stated Osoba, his mind already putting together things that happened in the War that had previously been strange.
"Agreed" nodded Councillor Irissa.
"Then let's get back to the original topic shall we?" Councillor Quentius commented.
"Let's put it to the vote, yes or no, shall we try to communicate with Shepard?" Finally stated Varn.
It only took 2 minutes to get the results, 5/6 for yes, so they would attempt to contact Zaire Shepard, and attempt to discover her side of the story.
Osoba showed no signs of being happy besides a slight smile on his face, though inside he was curious, Irissa was the one who obviously voted no, and he wondered why she was so set against talking to Shepard.
Outwardly however, he sat back in his chair and sighed, grabbed his own bottle of alcohol and asked the next question on the list.
"Right, with that done, we should get started on this Orthius group, Councillor Esheel? What does the STG have?"
As the Council representatives started to debate the political connections that the group probably had, Osoba simply listened and took notes, he was glad he was able to get Zaire an opening, it's the least he could do.
Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
Zaire Shepard groaned in pain as she came to, her head pounded with a headache and she felt slightly off balance, the last thing she remembered was Liara, she was on top of her, and things were just getting interesting when everything went black.
"Liara?" Zaire called out, her voice echoed, which was odd, as she swore that Liara's bedroom didn't echo before.
Opening her eyes, Zaire blinked as she tried to understand her new surroundings, they looked very similar to when she entered the Geth Collective, except everything was made of Crystal.
"Okay, this is going down as one of those unexpected moments that no one will ever believe actually happened."
Standing up straight, Zaire realised that she was dressed in her armours undersuit, the flexible, semi-bullet proof, knife resistant, skin hugging suit left her feeling far too exposed.
Taking a 360 degree spin, Zaire couldn't spot her girlfriend, and instead decided to take a closer look at the Crystal shards sticking vertically out of the ground.
From what she could see, they were less shards and more oddly cut, as they were flawless, with no cracks or imperfections on them at all.
Reaching one of the smaller pieces, Zaire found that it was nearly the size of herself, and could see a mirror image of herself in the reflection.
Coming to a stop face to face with herself, Zaire brought up her hand and placed it on the Crystal, expecting for it to be cold, and jumped back when instead if felt like touching another's hand.
What really freaked her out though, was that the mirror image of herself didn't move, staying with her hand touching the Crystal surface, a smile slowly growing on her, it's, face.
Her mirrored double then broke physics and stepped out of the Crystal and as doing so, her hair changing from black to bright red, with still that creepy ass smile on its face.
"And you are?"
Instead of answering, her double ganger brought her hands back and initiates a biotic charge, hitting Zaire like a bullet train and sending her flying, and hitting another large Crystal several feet behind her.
After giving herself a couple seconds Zaire pulled herself up and turned to see another clone pull itself out of the Crystal she had just hit, turning a bad position to a terrible one.
"Oh Shit!"
Backing up, Zaire started dodging punches as Readhead One and Two moved forward, attempting to keep her on the defensive. But that strategy obviously grew boring after a couple of seconds, and Redhead One Charged, getting behind Zaire and throwing a punch. Dodging Redhead One's punch she blocked Redhead Two's snap kick, before countering with her own low kick, sweeping out Red Twos feet from underneath it.
Spinning around to fully focus on Red Two, Zaire began to trade punches with her clone, though for every hit Red Two landed, Zaire landed two more, and it was clear that her clone was slightly slower and weaker than the original.
Getting Red Two into a headlock, Zaire attempted to choke out her clone, only for the clone to push backwards, sending Zaire into another one of those magical crystals and sure enough, hands appeared seconds later, grabbing her around the chest and stomach and pinning her back against the strange Crystal.
Red Two landed a blow to Zaire's stomach and used the brief few seconds to escape, and leaving Zaire to grapple with the clone still halfway in the Crystal behind her.
Red One joined Two, looking far less chipper now sporting a broken nose, but before the two could move Zaire got a good hold on one of the arms pinning her and heaved, pulling the third clone out of the Crystal and sending it flying over her shoulder and crashing into the ground at her feet.
"Fuck, what I wouldn't give for my bloody armour!"
And as if by command, her new N7 Armour slowly started building itself out of nothing, her arms and legs slowly being encased in ceramic armoured plating.
Her 3 clones obviously realised that they were soon to be at a disadvantage and rushed forwards, probably hoping to end the fight before she was covered in armoured plating.
Slowly moving backwards, Zaire continued blocking their attacks, letting her armoured gauntlets take the hits, while her own punches suddenly had more power, thanks to the inbuilt exo-skeleton somehow working despite half the framework missing.
One of the clones Charged, but instead of sending Zaire flying, the clone came out of the mass free tunnel and ate metal, having instead been clothes lined by Zaire with her armoured gauntlet.
Watching the clone hit the floor in a pile, Zaire missed the haymaker coming towards her head, and saw stars as she staggered backwards and tried to regain her balance. The two other clones didn't give her the chance and pinned her to the ground, her hands and legs held down.
From the way they were pinning her Zaire couldn't gain any leverage to escape and watched as the one she had decked after Charging picked itself up, suffering from a rather obvious head wound, though the clone didn't seem to care.
"Honestly" grumbled Zaire, trying and failing to shift the two on her back, "why do I always pick fights with things that have superior numbers?"
Of course, the clones didn't respond, whether they couldn't or wouldn't speak Zaire didn't know, but she watched as the only clone not sitting on top of her move towards the nearest Crystal and knocked on it as if it was a door, which, Zaire mused, was probably what they were.
After a few seconds Zaire watched as one after another, more and more clones pulled themselves out of the Crystal at a steady rate. The shear amount of clones made Zaire worry for her chances, as a straight up fight like before was now impossible, she would need to change tactics.
Liara groaned as she returned to conscious, she had a terrible headache and it felt as if the room was spinning. Slowly picking herself up, Liara kept her eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to keep her balance.
Eventually the spinning stopped and the headache subsided, letting her open her eyes. What she saw greatly confused her, as she realised that she was no longer in her bedroom, and that she couldn't see Zaire.
Recalling what they were doing last made her blush, but she persevered, and concluded that they were either in her, or Zaire's dream scape. To test who's mind they were actually in, Liara attempted to will the landscape to change from white floors and Crystal to grass and hills, but nothing changed, so Liara concluded that they were in Zaire's mind.
Taking a look around, Liara was curious, as neither she nor Zaire had talked about attempting a joint dream, which took effort and concentration to get right. The fact that they had apparently done it by accident was meant to be impossible, though with her bondmate, Liara supposed anything was possible.
Deciding to take a closer look at the crystals, Liara walked over to one of them, and as she got closer, Liara noted the almost perfect way they were cut, and that there appeared to be no scratches or cracks.
As she finally got close enough to touch, Liara noted that they didn't reflect her image, which she found odd, as the floor and terrain behind her was, so it was a deliberate act of her reflection removed.
Before she could do anything else though, the bright white of her surroundings suddenly darkened, with the floor turning a dark purple and the crystals a complete black. Shadows sprang up around her, and a mist started to spread out on the floor around her knees.
Liara instinctively looked around, settling into a classic Asari battle stance and flaring her biotics in an attempt to create some lighting. Her biotics however, barely created any light, and what light it did create simply illuminated the fog in a blue glow.
Realising that Zaire had changed the environment, Liara immediately knew that something was wrong and used what limited power she had in Zaire's mind to locate her.
After a few seconds she turned and started running towards higher ground, where she instinctively felt Zaire's presence. Though as she reached the hills apex Liara stopped in her tracks, narrowly missing falling over the sharp cliff edge.
There were hundreds of people moving below her, moving methodically though a maze of crystals, apparently searching for something. But from the hight Liara was at, she couldn't make out any distinctive features.
Liara was about to turn away to look for a way down when, as one, the army of people below her turned in the same direction and sergded forwards, looking like rippling water from Liara's vantage point.
After a few seconds passed Liara turned away and headed back, looking for a way to get down that didn't involve jumping.
Zaire kept to the shadows and stayed still as another couple of clones sped past, probably going to find out what happened to the 3 that she had accidentally bumped into a minute ago. Though an accident, the fight had revealed 2 things to Zaire, one: all of the clones were linked to each other, like the Geth. Second: the clones were weaker, most likely it was quality vs quantity, as she had recounted that at the start of the fight, her original clone was almost as good as her, though as they had multiplied, they had gotten slower and more predictable.
This meant that as long as she only confronted groups of three and four, she held the advantage in skill, speed and reaction time.
Confident that it was safe to move, Zaire set off at a jog, though she kept to the shadows where possible. Her current goal was finding Liara and escaping what ever the hell this place was, hopefully avoiding her clones all the way. She also stayed away from the crystals, preventing them from grabbing her and keeping them from zeroing in on her location.
Slipping past two rather large pieces Zaire found herself in a clearing, and looking up she saw a cliff made of the same purple stuff the floor was, with crystals sticking out at odd places, seemingly at random.
Deciding that higher ground was a good idea, Zaire turned to where the cliff sloped downwards and jogged towards a good place to climb, though dodging the crystals would be a pain in the ass.
Zaire huffed, but began climbing, aiming to move slightly to the left in order to avoid the Crystal above her, and climb quickly before a clone spots her and gets above or below her. The last thing she needed was to be trapped on the face of a cliff.
Reaching half way, Zaire starts shifting to the left, dodging a Crystal and continuing to make quick progress. Though when she does a quick check beneath herself her heart picks up speed. A clone is below her, not moving, just observing, which meant she had 5 minutes to hall ass before she's going to have to fight a couple thousand Shepard clones next to a cliff, and despite everything else that Shepard had done over the years, she really didn't want to push her luck.
Reaching the cliff edge, Zaire throws an arm out to gain enough grip to hall herself up and over.
As she pulls her head up, however, she comes nose to toe with a boot.
Apologses for my disappearing act, college is getting tough and I'm looking into which University I want to go to.
I'm going to release this chapter when I have another already in reserve, hopefully this should help me have enough time to wright ahead of my shot to pieces time table.
As always reviews are inspiration and motivation, so please feel free to leave one, even if it's just a 'Good chapter, keep it up' as it really does help.
~ JunkMail