"Thinking"
"Talking"
"Impactful word"
True to her word, Akane departed the Migrant Fleet as soon as the operation was commenced. Feeling mostly invigorated, sated, and beyond all, relieved.
Her temporary charge, Hilo'Jaa vas Idenna, had survived the operation, though at the cost of his leg, and was on a slow road to recovery. She figured it had to be the one where the fungus had spread most prominently, the one even her chakra couldn't heal.
I've done all I can, she convinced herself, it is time to move on.
Golo, she had found out later on, was killed during an infiltration funded by none other than the outlawed black ops group Cerberus, who had been after the young, autistic, mind you, biotically gifted Gillian. The quarians were then left to deal with the aftermath.
Although Captain Ysin'Mal wasn't exactly specific about the events that had transpired during her time spent unconscious. The normal folk abroad the Idenna surely weren't as discreet once she was permitted to freely move wherever she desired. After all, there were casualties, and it rattled the Fleet's sense of security by the stunning fact of an attack on the Migrant Fleet itself.
Realising the time for conservatism was over, the quarians decided to follow the proposals of people like Mal, and planned to send ships off to search for new homeworlds - or a way to drive out the geth using a Reaper. A thought Akane defiantly disagreed with, but they wouldn't listen to her any more than to a child's ramblings if she decided to confront them about it.
The Captain did share that the Idenna had been selected as one of the first to leave, with a hand-picked crew. He had assured her that Hilo would be transferred to the Neema - another starship. As long as it wasn't the Rayya, which she remembered being the ship where Tali had been born, Akane had no reason to object.
If they had put him there, word would spread beyond the stale walls of the Idenna. And it might have attracted her friend's attention sooner than Akane was prepared for. She just... couldn't, not before sorting herself out. She'd imagine the disappointment Tali must have been feeling when the Uchiha left her hanging, without as much as a personal message, as she had done to the Commander.
Her self-consciousness still lapped at her for this to this day, but one small part secretly hoped that the Commander had relayed some of the message's contents to the rest of the crew.
Most definitely, if they crossed paths sometime in the future, much as Akane hoped, the first thing she would do was to plead forgiveness, and hope that her friend wouldn't renounce their friendship, even though Akane accepted any penance from those she had wronged.
Back to where things stood now, there was still much to be done in the wake of her recovery. The second month had leisurely strolled by a few days ago, with Akane preparing to pick up where she had left off before her plans had been resumed to right a rookie mistake that wouldn't have happened to her in the SSA.
Nevertheless, her progress stagnated in her apprehension of the Collectors, but the experience she had gained in its stead was doubtlessly invaluable.
She had learnt a great deal of how the Collectors did their dealings by having read Golo's mind at his apartment back in Omega, and to say Cerberus was better off in her books would pose as a splendid lie. Now that Hilo wasn't in her care anymore, there was enough time to skim through the files she had extracted from Pel's rented warehouse (wondering what might have happened to him since he wasn't reported to have been with Cerberus during the assault, even though it was his mission).
Akane reckoned she shouldn't be worrying about the undercover Cerberus operative because things on Omega rarely ended in anything else than death. It was one of the charming aspects, most residents would claim, of the multispecies station ruled by its authoritarian Queen - one she was careful not to cross as thing stood with her.
Her organization was quite strong and her men extremely loyal - at least for Omega's standards. Almost nothing that happened on Omega escaped her notice, causing mercenary groups to think twice before crossing her. As much as the Uchiha preferred democracy over dictatorship, she couldn't find much fault in the way Aria cemented her power in a land of outlaws.
No matter who Aria dealt with, she made sure she had the upper hand in the bargaining. She must have centuries of experience dealing with people who thought themselves being in better positions. Being a seasoned practitioner herself, simply by observing a person, Aria could easily read a lot about them and usually immediately spot lies. She was determined to always get the last word in a conversation, reinforcing her position and authority as Omega's ruler.
Akane supposed it was probably one of the only ways to keep some sense of 'order' in a land such as Omega - through an iron fist, or shall she say biotic fist? Her intelligence and observation skills were by far, not the only thing dangerous about her. If her piercing eyes wouldn't kill you, then her commando-level biotics would finish the job.
But enough about a person she had nothing to fear from (as long as she stayed in the shadows).
Her main concern should be on the 'Big Three' on her list. That being: the Illusive Man, Shadow Broker and the Collectors. The Collectors were still her main concern of course, but it would be most unwise to ignore two of the biggest players on the chessboard that was the Milky Way.
Compared to the Shadow Broker, Cerberus was definitely a smaller threat to her plans but considering their human-centred beliefs, however, she saw them as rivals as far as the secrecy and information trade went.
If TIM ever caught wind of her powers (although she thought she had done a fairly good job on keeping a low profile) and paired that up with her likeliness to humans, she would bet all her credits that they would be hot on her tail as the next candidate for a lab rat.
Furthermore, they kind of reminded her of the Reapers in the way they did things - falling behind the category: The end justifies the means and believing history would vindicate them.
Cerberus supported the principle that any methods of advancing humanity's ascension were entirely justified (turning innocent colonists into kara), including illegal or dangerous experimentation (experimenting on the Thorian creepers and Rachni), terrorist activities, sabotage and assassination.
Just imagining what they would do to her had a chill of dread running down her spine.
On the other hand, the most she had to fear from the Shadow Broker was that he would have her identity figured out, though even that, could be used as leverage. That was why, the moment she would gain their attention, it would be at a moment in time where she would have all the necessary security measures at her disposal.
So get a move on! The credits won't earn themselves!
"Ugh. It's not as if I was doing it for the money."
Hackett POV
He was starring at the bottles of alcohol that had amassed over god knows how long. His vision blurring.
Roughly a month had passed since Jane Shepard, humanity's first Spectre, Hero of Blitz, had been announced KIA and Hackett couldn't help but demand prolonged shore leave, which he had been easily granted.
He found it strange, how the disappearance of a person so fundamental to one's existence could impact him on a level he hadn't even experienced after the death of his mother.
He found it strange how the galaxy felt suddenly so cold even though he spent a larger portion of his life there. It almost seemed as if the stars had lost their shine, the suns lost their warmth.
Is this how it was supposed to be? This excruciating pain that only alcohol-induced oblivion could somewhat lift? This numbness after each passing thought of never going to see her smile again? Never going to listen to her voice? Never again be in her presence?
How would he go on without Shepard? Who Steven genuinely loved - yes, now he had said it - but now these words were for nought when the person they were meant to be told to was dead. The pain of loss came as witness, to bear testimony, to the realness of his love.
His last chance at love, he mulled depressingly. He would never seek out another woman even if this would have been what Shepard wanted of him.
He couldn't simply hope to move on from such an incredible woman. How could he ever hope?
In his drunken stupor, he hadn't noticed that somebody was ringing at his door. Quite for some time now by the insistent sound but the Admiral was so busted that it took some time for him to get the door and when Steven after much stumbling did, he was met by no other than his life-long friend Anderson.
Shepard's ward in the early days.
"Anderson?" Steven blinked a few times to bring his eyes to focus.
He was met with a frown on David's stern facade, "I was trying to reach you for the past few weeks."
David did? How could Steven know? He had checked neither his terminal nor his omni-tool so it wasn't as surprising to him that David would want to reach out to him.
At least someone did, came another mirthless thought (he could see the depression already coming).
Not that he felt starved of the company but he needed time for himself. To process the excruciating loss.
Even if he found that closure at the bottom of a bottle, as Anderson might have already suspected on his way here.
Choosing to shrug in the lack of a sufficient answer (or sober brain cells), the Admiral watched his best friend enter his apartment without waiting for his consent. While David was preoccupied inspecting his cocktail table, Steven went over to his kitchen to reach for a bottle of water in hopes of sobering up a bit. The water did little to rid himself of the burning sensations in his throat but did get a large portion of the taste out of his mouth.
"Steven," Anderson began slowly and by the sound of his given name, he knew he wouldn't like where this was going, "I know you and Jane were close."
Not as close as I wished to be.
The silver fox wanted to react, anyhow express his emotions but all it did was further trap him in the loop, where everything he perceived reminded him of the Commander. Steven hung his head, unable to press anything through his clogged throat.
"I am sorry. I know what you're going through. I always thought of Jane as family. I... I was as proud of her as a father any would be. As any father should be having Jane as their daughter. Hell, I couldn't even imagine a better daughter."
He couldn't prevent the tears anymore from escaping as they trickled down to his goatee, "Why are telling me this, Anderson?" His voice was thick with unresolved emotions. The alcohol in his blood was on its way to breaking the grip he had on his feelings.
"Because Cerberus is working on bringing her back."
...
Sorry, what?
Regardless of being slightly ashamed to be caught crying in front of his friend (and at his age), his head perked up involuntarily. He knew he needn't be strong in front of his friend whom he trusted with his life.
"Cerberus?" Steven's voice gained a new edge at the unexpected revelation. Worry replaced sorrow, and if somebody paid more attention to it, even a flicker of hope could be seen inside the icy blue of his iris.
"I don't know any details but one of the Commander's crew, Dr Liara T'Soni, has contacted me privately of their plans. Nobody else knows of this."
The Admiral stood, frozen on spot. He should rejoice, but the thought of Cerberus having the body of Jane made it impossible to do so. Different memories of Shepard's reports about Cerberus' experiment flashed his mind and he couldn't help how his intestines twisted on themselves. Whether it was from the quantity of the intoxicating substance he had gulped down or the reality of David's news, he was too far gone to tell.
"I am not any happier at the news, but I trust that a friend like T'Soni wouldn't willingly give Jane to Cerberus if they had something atrocious in store for her."
That still didn't actually help the fearful feeling growing inside the pit of his belly, which was by now grumbling to Steven with its litres of alcohol consumed. They were giving him back his Jane? But at what price?
He feared what they would do to her, now that they had her body at their mercy. The mere thought was enough for his eyes to search for his bathroom, in case his stomach decided to show his dread in another way.
"I know it's a hard pill to swallow," Anderson said, making the grieving man scoff, "and I tried to ask her where Cerberus might be keeping Shepard, but she didn't know either. All she could promise me was that she will keep me updated on their progress."
Nothing David said sounded appealing to him, but waiting for what was to become of Jane seemed to have given him the necessary motivation to keep going. He didn't dare to put his faith in hope again but he could wait.
Wait for her return— or for her funeral.
It was all he could do for her - his Jane.
It happened often that her mind wandered off, either into times that have long passed, times that were, or times that have yet to come.
After rescuing and escorting another batch of people from slavers, she found herself strangely unfocused, her mind persistent to bother her in ways that scarcely happened. She knew she struggled with her existence ever since danger wasn't a constant companion of hers, but the actual prospect of being the only one left of her kind never felt heavier on her recovering heart.
Especially considering the mystical parallelism between the humans that had been brought up on Eden Prime and the ones currently residing on Earth.
Perhaps it would help to recap her people's censured history that might shed more light on her conundrum.
Much contradictory to the humans raised on Earth, the study of anthropology was severely neglected until the Sage of the Six Paths - the Rikudō Sennin - forever changed her planet's inhabitants by sharing his chakra with the rest of her people.
Truly, her folk's history only began there. Rare must have been the records of anything prior to that, from the period before the Sage of the Six Paths, considering a large part of Shinobi history had been lost en-masse throughout the Warring States period and especially the Great Ninja Wars.
She distinctly remembered a fitting account of them in one of the school's history books: Times of great conflict. Of suffering and prejudice. Of innumerable death counts.
Dark must have been those times where self-preservation - of a Nation, of a Clan - was held above anything else. Above those things that would later form a culture. In that regard, if she were to draw a comparison with their nowadays counterpart, then the World Wars would be it. It seemed they vaguely shared the same drive for violence amongst their own.
Though back to her point, during her Reaper-free youth, there wasn't a subject that she had dived into more enthusiastically than History. She had always felt it paramount to know where her roots laid, to understand how the reality she had been living in came to be. As she had said back at the Citadel once, which felt like years to her, she reaped only benefits by her excessive study of it.
Still, the amount of knowledge that was lost felt immensely disappointing to a point where it sparked a small ember of anger. Of course she would feel like this, wasn't it her after all, who put history at the very top of the pedestal? And for it to be gone so pointlessly was, for her personally, a cause of great fury.
Knowing by heart that letting those embers fester would occupy her thoughts longer than was preferable, Akane trampled them down ere they could rise into a fire. There was no objection to pointing out where her people had failed, but she rather focused her thoughts on how they got better after the Fourth Great Ninja War.
Where before there had been no other educational institution other than the Academy. First put into action by the Second Hokage Senju Tobirama, it had been first and foremost, a facility with the sole purpose to train prospective ninja - children remotely gifted within the practice of utilising chakra for military purposes - as a means to protect the village.
That wasn't what school should be about, though taking into account the belligerent times they had been living in, it must have been silly to teach their children of subjects if they rarely contributed to a country's victory.
Alas, it served her nothing to point out what once had been when it hadn't influenced her own school years, where they had spent years taking the more conventional curriculum for granted.
As much as she wished it would, getting off-topic wouldn't give her all the answers her brain was seeking. Even so, Akane would welcome a professional's opinion over her own instead of indefinitely venturing into the realm of guesswork, but besides Dr Chakwas, she couldn't imagine trusting anyone to research her genes. Though a bit of clarity would make her feel indefinitely better.
If her people were supposed to be human once, how come they ended up on two different planets? Her kind's Earth and mankind's Earth weren't the same, that much became obvious. Could her folk still call themselves 'Humans' if they obviously weren't true humans - if that made sense?
Despite still being in the dark about her twin's Mangekyō abilities (remembering the way she had been taken back that she even had evolved that stage of the Sharingan), Akane stood by her belief that her sister couldn't have transported them to another dimension, even if she suspected it would have been within the realm of her possibilities, albeit how unproven that sounded.
The painful evidence of this was the continuous lingering of the Reapers.
They were, concluding from her prothean memories, Milky Way exclusive.
She had awakened from dormancy on Eden Prime - not Earth - which must have meant that the human colony was built on the ruins of Konoha - when in reality, after further investigation, proved that the idyllic agrarian world had been home to yet another type of species.
Unsurprising to the larger majority, it had been the Protheans, to the point where they too, fell victim to the Harvest.
There wasn't much to be jolly about, but regardless, she took small comfort in the fact that something of her people's origin was useful even after their extinction. There was little doubt in her mind that they had put the ruins of Konoha to good use - any use for that matter! As long as it had helped them resist the Reapers.
Now that she had somewhat connected the dots, she came to realize a crucial fact that hadn't crossed her mind yet. If the disappearance of the Protheans dated roughly 50 000 years back, then how far in the past were her people— was she? When all procured evidence (and a hefty amount of logic) proved that her people pre-dated even the famed Protheans?
Kami...
She must be wrong! There were still too many open variables that didn't add up to her fancy story - that didn't fall into place.
Yes, yes, a simple case of exhaustion from her taxing workload. That was it! Otherwise, she knew herself not to be one for speculation as far-fetched as that, though she proudly admitted to relying on her intuition as it had yet to prove her faulty.
In denial, huh?
She could feel the amusement in her other self ringing infuriatingly through her head. Skittish in its nature, almost like a child that caught the parent stealing from a cookie jar - not the child.
Refusing to accept things doesn't make them disappear.
She scowled fiercely, the scarred tissue of her face contorting with a sort of stiffness that shouldn't be found on a youthful girl, "Neither is it wise to dwell on matters that are beyond one's influence."
There were one too many things she expected her inner voice to say, but 'nothing' was neither of them. Swift retaliation, perhaps, but not this poignant silence. Before she could think how unlike it was of this other side of her to react this way, a small tinge of victorious glee made itself known deep in her chest, thinking she had finally won an argument with her-
Hm... good.
"W-What?!" She could barely hide the surprise in her voice. What was she on about?
It seems you are finally getting it...
"Getting what?!"
In time, you will see...
That did not really leave her with much satisfaction, but she had also learnt to halt her efforts in pursuing further conversation. Her other half, as expected, shared her aptitude with words and used it just as she had done on multiple occasions, to her advantage.
Her greatest enemy indeed. If she had her figured inside out, knew her better than she herself did, she figured. But she would rise to the challenge. Akane was determined to beat this mirror-self of hers. One way or another.
SHE was the master of her mind, and NO ONE else!
The Illusive Man POV
The middle-aged man sat at his usual chair at Cerberus Headquarters, his posture relaxed but mind whirling with temperamental thoughts. The first buttons of his form-fitting suit were loose, revealing skin that had long since forgotten what direct sunlight felt like, despite residing in the radius of a dying star to no days end.
A tinge of anger was palpable in the way he took more forceful drags of his cigarette, innocently unbothered that he was one cigarette short of smoking out a whole pack! It was as though two weeks hadn't already passed when he had been waiting for a report, after having dispatched Paul Grayson, with several Cerberus commandos, to retrieve his daughter Gillian from the Migrant Fleet, so that the Ascension Project may continue.
The red sand addict had convinced him to send him instead of someone more suitable to elevate the success of the mission. Later, he had realized, this had proved to be the decisive factor why the Illusive Man now found himself without both, the Migrant Fleet's transmission codes and Gillian.
That wasn't even the part that left him this infuriated...
After Paul's betrayal, TIM was surprised to get a rather brazen call from him. He had resigned with a sound warning disguised as a message: he was leaving Cerberus, and if anything were to happen to Kahlee Sanders (one of the people who made Gillians escape possible), he threatened to go to the Alliance with all he knew.
TIM remembered distinctly how reluctant he had been to agree against pursuing either Kahlee or Gillian, desiring nothing more at that moment than swift retribution because the loss of Gillian had set their biotic research back a decade. In the end, however, he swore to himself he would get Paul back for all the damage he had caused...
But it was not this day. When the risk of exposure was yet too great:
Not when Cerberus had many other projects to protect...
... among them being Project Lazarus.
At last, she felt as if she was making a difference.
After roughly three months of continuous effort on her part, the fruits of her tedious labour finally began to show in the distinct drop of attempted slave raids on remote colonies. Though of course, it was primarily based on a statistic she herself had so industriously put together as she had found those on the extranet mostly outdated and thus, unreliable.
The hefty amount of hard currency she gained from poozling through the stores of those slavers she had encountered during her patrols also posed a small problem for her - they began to take up a large part of storage. And it was definitely normal for her to feel uneasy to have SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND credits on her omni-tool!
Akane felt empowering, giddy even, to have that much money at her disposal, as she hadn't been born to a wealthy family, though the merest of it getting stolen brought her from her excitement fairly quick enough.
It might seem highly unusual for the level-header Uchiha to entertain the risk of theft on her person. But what options were left for her to choose from?
Electronic fund transfers were the norm, but for that, she would need to establish a bank account and that was far out of her reach as she wasn't of age, and she was under no legal guardian who could sign the papers for her. That would eventually rule out bigger micropayments as no manufacturer would accept the money any other way.
On the other hand, if she were to take the opposite route, hard currency could be stolen or counterfeited. More importantly, in physical transactions resided a better probability to avoid being tracked, making them ideal for tax evasion or the purchase of illegal goods.
As much as Akane liked to come up with a plan of her own, she was clueless on how to go about this one. Luckily she had just the person who she could safely ask for advice - for a small price, of course.
So, she settled for a premature visit to her favourite vendor in the Carrd district. Yes, the same one on whose address she had ordered the very clothing that now covered her damaged skin.
Akane came up to him, paying extra attention to micromanaging her posture. Elcors communicated on a different plain than those species who were naturally gifted with an oral instrument designed for speech, "Greetings Altin, I am sorry to bother you on such a busy day but I sort of found myself in a bit of a dilemma."
The greyish behemoth slowly turned to her, each step measured with practised ease, "Politely, how may I be of service?"
Leaning closer, Akane had to tilt her head against her spine's wishes to address the looming giant behind the counter of his shop, "If I sought after a forged ID," she lowered her tone, "who, here on Omega, would be the right person to turn to?"