Trish was in that half aware dozing stage when shuffling and a groaning sound from the other side of the bed gave her the last push into wakefulness. She turned her head to see Nikki reaching for her omni-tool on the bedside table, groaning again when she saw the ridiculously early time.

"You alright sweetie?" She enquired reaching out with a featherlight touch and Nikki rolled back round to face her.

"I was having the most wonderful dream and now I'm not. Why my body would decide oh-five-hundred is an acceptable time to wake up on a Sunday, on shore leave, is beyond me. I could be sleeping. I could be dreaming." The almost petulant response was absolutely adorable.

"What were you dreaming about?"

"A buffet." Trish certainly wouldn't have predicted that answer but the look of longing and happiness on her partner's face brought a smile to her own. "You know, like at parties. All the different sandwiches and sausage rolls, and the quiche. Oh the quiche! You know... I've never found anything that can even come close to my mom's quiche."

"You're a pretty good cook yourself you know."

"Not at quiche. I can imitate a few of dad's greatest dishes pretty close, but mom was a whole other level."

"So what else happened in your dream? You were at a party with food then what?"

"No, no party. No people at least, maybe it had ended already. Lucked out with that one, saved me having to try and avoid them all. Just this wonderful food and I had a plastic tub that I was filling up with leftovers to take with me and all of a sudden I was walking the dog. Stupid dreams and their jump cuts. Anyway, I realised I didn't have my box of food any more so I started climbing the stairs to get it back and I woke up... And now there's no buffet."

"You know... Some people believe our subconscious is trying to tell us things when we dream."

"Like... We can have a buffet for lunch today?" The spectre asked eagerly, but Trish dashed her hopes with a shake of her head.

"Nope, like that you should walk the dog."

"Why is it that whenever I'm home it always seems to be my turn?"

"Because when you're not home it's always my turn." Trish replied without malice.

"True." Nikki admitted before trailing a finger down her partner's arm. "Although... I'm sure Jude can hold on a little longer."

"Hmm, I'm sure she can. What do you have in mind?"

"Well... I figured, what with how many needles are involved in IVF-"

"Are you having second thoughts?" Trish asked softly.

"No, I'll do it." Nikki assured her quickly. "I just think we really aught to make 100% sure we can't conceive naturally first."

"Is that so?" Trish laughed.

"Mhmm." Nikki nodded with an impish grin.

"And you don't think the fact you've already started taking the birth control pills might limit our chances slightly?"

"Not really. I've heard plenty of tales about people getting pregnant while on the pill. Besides I think you're confused, my charts say I'm taking BCP, that totally stands for 'Baby Care Pill'."

"If you say so dear."

"I do."

"Well, in that case... I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try again."

...

Garrus finished clipping on his armour and started checking over his weapons. When they had landed on the planet his human CO called home he certainly hadn't expected this to happen. In fact he never in his wildest dreams imagined fighting this deep in Alliance space. All around him his squad mates from the Normandy were suiting up and on the opposite side of the room were a group of human soldiers making their own pre-combat preparations, all of them with a tiny N7 logo on their armour.

"This is a terrible plan." Shepard's voice came from the corridor outside, her now familiar footsteps coming closer.

"Would you rather we took you out drinking and got you a stripper?" Captain Anderson's deep voice was easily identifiable.

"No, I suppose not." The commander admitted as the two comrades in arms finally entered the room. "But it would probably be healthier for me. You realise if any of you numbskulls manage to injure me Trish is going to kill me for ruining the wedding photos, right?"

"Then don't get injured, simple." One of the humans stated and Shepard spun round towards the voice, face lighting up with a grin as she caught sight of her fellow N7s.

"Meyer you mad bastard! You're supposed to be in the Terminus, what are you doing here?"

"Well tomorrow I'm crashing your wedding and today I'm kicking your ass." He declared confidently.

"Pfft, in your dreams! Riley, Riz, Mals." The spectre nodded her head and clasped various hands and arms as she greeted the men and women who she'd been through hell with, many of whom she'd even worked with on missions together afterwards. "Damn, we've got the entire pizza squad here and then some."

"One day I will find out which one of you was responsible for that." Anderson grumbled, causing Shepard and three other humans placed randomly among the throng to shout out in near perfect sync: 'I can't answer that question Sir!' Laughter erupted among the humans at what Garrus assumed must be a private joke, certainly it couldn't be cultural because Ash and Kaiden looked just as lost as the rest of the Normandiers.

"Pizza squad?" It was Liara that asked the question the aliens were all thinking. Shepard walked over to them with a smile as she picked up her own equipment and started getting ready.

"Short version? One of the Villa courses dropped us in the jungle with full kit but no rations and only a week's worth of RDA tablets. Instructors told us to do whatever we had to to survive, then accused us of cheating when a few of us met up and ordered pizza via delivery drone."

"You didn't? I bet the instructors didn't like that!"

"Yep we did, and no they didn't. Two hours of push ups, monkey fuckers and "I can't answer that question"s later they realise they've trained us too well and we're not going to tell them who's idea it was. So, they confiscated our omni-tools and long range comms to make sure we couldn't do it again and threw us in the nearest river. We spent the rest of the course known as 'pizza squad' which was bull 'cos we never even tasted a slice." The spectre glared accusingly at Anderson who simply shrugged.

"Don't worry Shepard you didn't miss much, it wasn't even that good a pizza." The commander's inaudible mutter was interrupted by Meyer shouting across the room:

"Hey Shep, is it true what they're saying? You managed to write off a mako?"

"Why does everybody focus on that part of the story and not the bit where I drove through a mass relay? You've written off dozens of vehicles but I ain't ever seen you drive across star systems."

"Just give me the coordinates for Ilos, I'm sure if you managed it the rest of us can." Anderson could picture it now, half the villa spread out across the surface of Ilos in a variety of military vehicles, all gunning for the Conduit like a scene out of Cannonball Run. The victors suddenly popping randomly into existence on the Citadel and causing havoc.

"Are we going paintballing or not?" He asked in an effort to distract them.

"Well I don't know, Little Shep here might get hurt, we might have to use civvie rules."

"Oh that's it, you're definitely not on my team now." Nikki took mock offense even while everybody else agreed to abide by civvie rules.

"Speaking about teams, oh mighty spectre, how about Villa versus Normandy?"

"I'm sure we could manage that. Hey Anderson, you spent some time on the Normandy, want to be on the winning side?"

"I'm always on the winning side."

"Cough, First contact, cough." Joked one of the younger humans, at least, he looked younger to Garrus.

"That was a draw."

"Ok, let's make it three teams: Villa, Normandy and Anderson!"

...

Tali felt out of her depth. It was hardly a new experience for her, as a young quarian out on her pilgrimage she often felt out of her depth. The feeling had been getting rarer the longer she spent on the Normandy though. Shepard had a way of boosting people's confidence. In her, in the mission and in themselves. The one feeling that had remained consistent however was a sense of awe at the commander's military prowess. Whenever anybody questioned how she pulled off the previously considered impossible, Shepard's staple response was usually: "I'm N7, what do you expect?"

And now Tali was out here in the woods, with a dozen N7s who considered her the opposition. A dozen humans with the same training and proficiency for destruction as Shepard. It was more than a little unnerving. She wasn't even a soldier. She'd never been in any woods before. And she still wasn't even 100% sure what 'civvie rules' meant.

"No head shots, no groin shots, no grenades and no live ammunition." Shepard had stated when she asked.

"There's a little more to it than that." Kaiden had tried to add but the spectre snorted.

"You're up against N7s, they won't be keeping to any other rules, no matter what the agreement was. Hell, we'll be lucky if they can stick to those four." She promptly proved her point by taking the flag they were supposed to be defending down from its pole, removing the tracking device and passing it to Wrex to store in his armour.

That was twenty minutes ago.

The 'puht, puht' noise of weapons fire, or at least of the strange paint guns they were using in an effort to minimise casaulties, broke the eerie silence of the woodlands. There followed no shouts or screams, nothing signifying sentient life engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy. A minute later she heard what sounded suspiciously like an explosion. She gripped her shotgun tighter and checked her HUD for enemies.

Nothing.

There was nothing showing up on a thermal scan either but that didn't quell her sense of unease. A slight flicker caught her attention and she stared intently in that direction, nothing but trees and bushes and... wait, one section of log looked slightly closer than the rest of the same fallen tree that ran along the lip of a ditch. The quarian was still pretty new to this whole flora business but she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to look like that and she flung herself to one side just in time as there was an eruption of puht, puht, puht and the scenery to her left was covered in blue paint.

Invisible enemies were not her idea of fun and in her moment of disorientation she had no idea where they had gone. Panic gripped her for a second, but instead of firing wildly she reached for her omni-tool, sending out a localised EMP burst. The cloaking device failed revealing an N7 infiltrator less than thirty metres from her position.

Tali swung her shotgun round but before her finger could squeeze the trigger, pink paint appeared on her target, it appeared she had a guardian angel.

"Thanks Tali, I've been trying to track that one." Garrus' voice came over the comm bead. Despite suffering what would have been a fatal heart shot if they were using live ammunition, the enemy infiltrator had no interest in sitting the rest of the match out, throwing something grenade shaped in her direction. Once again her team was looking out for her as it was biotically returned to sender. The human barely had time to realise they were covered in their own paint before they were covered in krogan. Wrex holding them down while searching the body. Successfully finding a scrap of fabric he keyed up his comm.

"Shepard I found part their flag."

"Part?"

"Yeah, looks like its been torn in quarters at least."

"Those cheating little-" She was cut off by another explosion.

...

The final casualty report consisted of a dislocated shoulder (quickly popped back into place), a lost tooth (Meyer swore it was already loose, no way anyone knocked it out of him, either way he'd been restricted to closed mouth smiling for the photos tomorrow), and a large assortment of bruises that thankfully were all in places where they'd be hidden by clothing.

Nikki smiled as she washed a veritable rainbow of paint off her armour. Apparently last week Trish's friends had dragged her off to a spa day, her's had got her covered in mud and slime and paint. It had been great fun! She wasn't even disappointed by the result, secretly she'd never expected the Normandy team to win. After all, even Blackwatch squads tended to average only a 50/50 win/loss ratio against units composed entirely of villa graduates, and her team was made up of two civilians (highly talented sure, but still civilians), two standard marines who technically weren't cleared for combat duty at the moment and had never seen the inside of the Villa, a turian who'd done his standard military service but never even made Blackwatch before being transferred out to C-Sec on his father's orders, and a krogan battlemaster. When listed like that it was a wonder they'd succeeded in their mission against Saren at all.

But they had. Against all odds her ragtag team had survived and thrived. She was going to miss them when they went their separate ways. Still, that was a problem for another day. Today they were here, and tomorrow she was getting married.

...

Author's note: Sorry about the longer than usual wait between chapters, I know you're all waiting in various degrees of patience for the wedding chapter but it has been seriously kicking my arse. Hence this random, unplanned chapter. The next one will definitely be the wedding but I'm afraid I have no idea how long it will take to write, so apologies in advance for any delays.