Looking up at the display before her, Hayes could say nothing. The weapon that had been fired this day had never before taken a life, despite its power. Now the great Sword of the Southern Cross had tasted blood, and it was a bitter flavor in her mouth. In front of her, the Councilors were in awe. The weapon's fire had simply unmade so much of their work. Troops, ships, and weapons, all years in the making, and in that single instant, rendered to so much space dust. Silence ruled the chamber, until a voice rang out from Hayes' omnitool, the voice of the woman who had offered the turians a chance to avoid this.

"All ships in the turian fleet, the attacker has been dealt with, but I hold you all responsible for what has happened here this day. I shall offer you a final chance. Power down your vessels, and surrender them to me. If you wish to fight on, I shall grant you the death you crave, but know that it will be at best ignoble, at worst a waste. You have one minute," came the cold voice of Miriya Sterling, an open transmission to all her foes, even as further arcs of energy made their way up the arms of the SDF-4, forming four more bolts of light ready to fly.

"This is General Septimus, I officially surrender the fleet to the Terran Federation. All ships, you are hereby ordered to stand down, dump your cores, and await further instruction," came the voice of another turian, and within seconds, the few remaining vessels, even the two dreadnaughts, hung lifeless in space, radiating a few bits of heat and electricity into the void. The huge ship, seeing this, came forward, orders being given on how to go about surrendering, before Hayes lowered her arm, the image before her vanishing.

All at once, what had been silence turned into a cacophony of voices. Some turned to any turian in the chamber, be they in a military uniform or a government one, demanding answers as to how this happened. Others were screaming for them to take the woman in front of the Council into custody, proclaiming that it was her bullheadedness that had led to this. If she had simply been willing to allow a lawful inspection of her colony, no lives would have been lost.

To the Council, these voices and cries might as well have been the quiet of a graveyard. They heard none of it, for each, in their own way, was lost in thought. To the asari, this was a disaster of almost unprecedented proportions. A turian general had shirked his duty to the Council, and had shown how far their authority actually reached. To the turian, this was a disaster for another reason. The dreadnaught and all those ships destroyed. Ten thousand lives on the large ship, and thousands more on the smaller vessels, all gone in an instant. To the salarian, this was a disaster for the simple reason that the Terrans had won, with a weapon the Council simply had no counter to at present, and she had no time to plan for it, no time to send for spies, or to sabotage.

"This is a most distressing turn of events," said the Hayes, as she looked towards the Council before her.

"Indeed, perhaps a recess is in order for us to colle-" began the asari Councilor, only to be cut off as Hayes raised her hand, to silence her. Some in the chamber wondered at the impertinence of the gesture, but others worried, this woman's people had just shown powers so far beyond them, and now she commanded silence of their leaders.

"Twice now, you have offered my people war. First when we met, ignorant of who you were, and now here, in the full knowledge of us, but thinking us a simple race to be crushed under heel. As with the first, we will not accept this war, for that part of our nature we try to keep in check," the words seemed to echo over the chamber, as if being spoken by some demigod, and every word reverberated, being recorded by the orb and transmitted to the Citadel and beyond.

"However, peace is something we can offer you no longer either. So I will say this. The Local Cluster is our space, any Citadel Ships or peoples found in area after the end of the next month will be deemed trespassers in our space, and will be met as such. The batarians have that long to evacuate the two pirate bases they currently control in that space, before we come to claim the land as ours," the declaration was met with only silence, and so she continued.

"Farther, any unclaimed territory in the Skyllian Verge is now ours as well. We will not interfere in those colonies that already dot that area, and will remain out of those systems, but any place were your people are not, is now ours," she said this simply, and then stayed silent. When it was clear she would speak no more, the chamber erupted with shouts. Each seemed demanding a different thing. For the Council to execute an enemy of the state, for them to demand justice for the dead turians, and even for them to create a seat for these Terrans on the Council itself.

"I believe, we are done here," came Hayes' voice finally over the tumult, and everyone else went silent once more. She then simply turned and walked away, her shoes echoing as she walked in the once again silent chamber. She had made it almost a dozen steps when the turian Councilor realized she was really just leaving after making a statement like that.

"Wait a moment!" he shouted after her, but she didn't stop, walking like someone who was in a daze, dead to the world.

"I said halt! Guards!" a few of the armored soldiers, salarians interestingly enough, strode forward to block her way, and Hayes looked at them, before turning back to the Council. Her gaze didn't go for them though, instead she turned her eyes towards the floating orb that had been transmitting this entire scene to the Presidium far below. A single nod was her only gesture, before dropping to her hands and knees, as if she were injured.

The salarians, one with a look of true concern on her face, came forward to help the Terran up, only for a shudder to send her tumbling. In fact, every being in the chamber, from the Councilors to the aides, to the guards all felt the shaking, and all were knocked to the floor. The feared to rise, wondering if the Terran had used some dark magic to make this happen, and every eye searched the room to try and find the source of the shaking, only for Hayes to raise her beeping omnitool high, and an image to appear above her.

OoOoO

Far below on the Presidium, Shepard's eyes were glittering with tears she would not allow herself to shed yet, not until she was home, but in the meantime, her body had acted. Every joint of her armor was steaming, and one could smell the ozone in the air, if one had been so inclined to sniff. Few were focused on the sense of smell, however. Most were more visually inclined, as before them stood the Terran woman, a fixture on the Citadel that had yet to harm anyone, her fist still pressed tight against the Citadel Tower she had struck, leaving a single large crack at the site of impact.

"You," she said simply, looking down, and the C-Sec patrol that had been watching her since the events that had led to this began looked up at her, those eyes bearing down on them, as if she was going to crush them with the sheer weight of her attention.

"I don't have an omnitool, and I need to send a message, can one of you help me?" she asked, and her voice dripped with something. It wasn't a threat, it wasn't anger, and it wasn't power. It was a promise. A promise that should they try anything, should they poke her any harder than their leaders had already, she would not hold herself back, and she would not be gentle. Looking at each other, and then at her, an asari stepped forward.

"Do you know the frequency you want to contact?" she asked, and Shepard rattled off a set of numbers, which the asari dialed into her omnitool, before pointing the camera in the device at her.

OoOoO

"It was promised, when these negotiations began, that should we choose, the delegation from the Federation could leave at any time. You will allow Mrs. Hayes to enter the elevator, and she will come down to me. If this does not happen, I will be forced to rescue her, and that will not be good for relations between our peoples," said the image of Shepard's face, floating above Hayes. She said this in a tone of menace that shook those hearing it.

Any veteran soldier knew that sound, it was the sound of a soldier looking for an excuse to kill, and given what she had just done, Shepard would be able to do a lot of damage before anyone could stop her. Thus Hayes was allowed to stand, and walk towards the elevator, while below, Shepard picked her helmet back up. She didn't put it on, however, and just stood there waiting.

OoOoO

"It would seem this shopping trip is at an end," said Exedore, his tone one of sadness as he turned towards his escorts. All of them had seen what he had, and none of them were quite willing to face the rather of the giant, so all they did was nod at him.

"I believe it would be best if I returned alone to the embassy to gather some things I left there. Please, all of you, take care," he said the last in a friendly tone, trying to show that in spite of what had happened, he bore no one here any ill will. Then he took off, far faster than the turians in full armor could. As he went, everyone around him was giving him a wide berth, almost all of them witness to what was happening, and having no desire to become involved.

The turians who had been escorting him were quickly given orders, but in truth, they came from a dozen different sources. Some wanted them to seize Exedore, and hold him until he could be questioned, others demanded they leave the alien be, and still others began to order they shoot him, in honor of the fallen at Shanxi.

Taking command of the situation, Vakarian quickly ordered the group to disband, the target having already fled, and none of the orders coming from a source that they could say truly trumped the others. Quick to latch on to the excuse, the group went their separate ways, leaving Vakarian to his own devices. He considered returning with them, but thought better of it, and instead followed behind Exedore. There was someone he needed to talk to before she left.

OoOoO

A quick message from Exedore had Hayes and Shepard make their way back to the embassy they had been staying at. Behind them in the pavement, Shepard proved that she had indeed been holding back for the last week. Where before her footsteps had merely been small shudders, now they were quakes, and six inch deep impressions were left in the walkways as she passed, with a team of keepers following behind, doing their best to keep up with the damage, while a dozen of their number repaired the crack to the Citadel Tower.

She stood there impassive as the walls around her as her charges went into the building. She wasn't able to follow due to size, but everyone who came up gave her a wide berth, afraid of her in ways she had been trying to avoid the whole time she'd been there, but now relished. Of course, they might have been less afraid had they known that punching the tower hard enough to damage it had used all her armor's power, and the deep impressions in the ground were more the result of the armor's weight than her own.

"Excuse me," said a voice, and Shepard turned down to it, her face like chiseled stone. At her feet was a familiar form, but an unexpected one. It was the salarian Councilor, and her own features seemed set, as if to match Shepard's hardness with her own.

"Yes, Councilor?" asked Shepard.

"I have come to talk with Representative Hayes before she leaves. I am unarmed, alone, and promise that she will not be harmed," as if to demonstrate this, she opened her hands and held them aloft, so you could see that the robe she wore hung loose. Looking down, Shepard could hear an earnestness in her voice, and so stood to one side for a moment, allowing the Dalatress ingress, before resuming her post.

She stood there for minutes longer, wishing she had a way to listen in to whatever was being said, if only to distract her mind from all the horrible things running through it. The Citadel had threatened her husband, the man to whom she'd given her heart. Her children had literally been within a moment of dying, and had only been spared because her friends had been willing to give themselves up instead. If she hadn't had this assignment, she would have joined them, and to her shame, she wasn't sure whether she should be relieved she wasn't, or jealous of them for going out in such a way.

"Hello, Hannah," said a voice from below, breaking her dark train of thought, and snapping her back to reality. Looking down, she saw two people she wasn't sure how to feel about. They were friends. One had been with her, in a room, for two weeks, answering any questions she might have had, the others had been helpful in ways few others could be. Yet, their faces were the faces of the enemy, those who had killed her friends, nearly killed her family.

"Arus, Venari," she said to the two, looking behind her, and then deciding that for right now, for this moment, she wanted to be comfortable, and so she sat down, bringing her face closer to them.

"I-we came to say something, but right now, I can't for the life of me remember what it was," said Lieutenant Vakarian to her, as he mimicked her, settling down with his legs crossed beneath him, while his back was to the embassy wall. Underlieutenant Pallin didn't join the two, probably because his arm was still in that sling, and instead just leaned back, both of them facing her, as she looked down into the pool in front of her.

"I think we were going to say we're sorry, and if there had been anything we could have done, we would have," said Venari, and Arus nodded.

"Yes, something like that," he agreed, and then both waited for Shepard to say something. At first, she didn't, it was just her breathing in and out slowly, deliberately, as around her the Citadel spun on, like nothing had changed. Then she took a deep breath and sighed it back out, before turning to them.

"I don't know how to feel right now. I want to hate someone, anyone. One of your people attacked my home, my family and friends. If he were still alive, there wouldn't be a hole deep enough anywhere in the galaxy had could hide from me," she said at last, holding a hand before her eyes, and then clenching it tightly in a fist.

"But he's dead, killed along with far too many souls who trusted him to lead them. If it were just that, I think it would be you two who should hate me, because your people died like that," she continued this, and then turned down towards them, and you could see a small glitter in the corner of her eyes.

"It wasn't just your people though. I knew every single soul aboard the Phoenix. Katana Faraway, a hot shot pilot, best on Shanxi. T'Pol, a stuffy AI, but she was really good at keeping us organized. Tulley, a man just there for the paycheck, but a damn fine mechanic. And then there was Captain Jonathan Archer," as she spoke that last name, a single tear did finally fall, and she didn't try to wipe it away, instead leaning forward a little more, so it fell into the pool in which her boots were soaking.

"I named my son after him, did I tell you that, Arus?" she asked.

"You did. You said you respected him for his goals. He wanted to be a hero, just like his great-grandfather during the Robotech War. Jack Archer saved the lives of everyone in Greystone, and Jonathan wanted the chance to do something similar," repeated the turian, thinking back on the stories the two of them had swapped regarding their families.

"This wasn't the way he should have had to do it. There should have been a pirate attack, or an asteroid moving too close to the colony. Something were he could actually fight back. Not sacrificing himself and everyone else just because some psycho decides to fire at a bunch of civilians," she said this, and the sound of falling water came from above, the two turians just sitting there and letting her cry. This was the life of a soldier sometimes, to lose friends, even loved ones. To many, that should have made them harder to the pain, but for true soldiers, they knew it was something you felt all the more, and so they sat in silence, as she let herself go for that one moment.