Displaced Nobility (A:TLA/ME)

[ZiPeppe]

Time to have backups. It has been a few days since I started thinking about posting this story here too, and now here I am. I hope you guys enjoy:

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Prologue


What is the difference between a Hero and a Villain?


The first thing Azula noticed when she woke up was not the different seat she was on; it was the noise. It had interrupted her ... meditation – meditation, definitely, she had most certainly not been sleeping on the history scroll she was supposed to study. It was constant in the background, always changing but never stopping. Curiosity and annoyance both demanded the discovery, and appropriate punishment, of the culprit. Any ill intent she might have felt, however, evaporated when she opened her eyes.

She was somewhere outside, and – more importantly – no longer at home. She jumped up from her seat, panic threatening to overwhelm her before she remembered who she was; a member of the royal family would NOT act like a scared peasant! Once she regained some control over herself, she started examining her new environment: she was in a small and badly maintained garden, surrounded by a tall wooden fence on three sides, and a small two-storey building made of bricks with a wooden door on the last. Its style was unfamiliar – something made by the Earth Kingdom maybe?

Had they managed to kidnap her? As preposterous as the thought of some lowlife barbarians accomplishing such a feat was, it also remained the only logical explanation. Though the lack of restraints or guards made no sense. After all, someone capable of snatching her from one of the most, if not the most, secure place in the Fire Nation surely could be not be THAT incompetent. It would be insulting; and rather shameful, too. Well, if they WERE that incompetent, she would gladly teach them the last lesson of their miserable life; and if they were not, they would survive her retaliation.

Probably.

Azula opened the door silently and entered the house. The interior wasn't lit but it didn't look like it was in the same state of disrepair as the garden. However, the house was clearly old, and looked empty. Azula, not taking any chances, kept moving as silently as possible, exploring the house until she arrived in a slightly bigger room. It contained several cushioned chairs positioned around a strange rectangular contraption on a wooden shelf.

"Strange," muttered Azula as she got closer to the object. "What is this?"

Curiosity and caution warred within her. Curiosity wanted to examine the strange object; given its central position, it had to be important, and could give her some clues on the identities of her captors. But caution demanded that she secure the building before poking around for clues.

In the end curiosity won, as more information on who kidnapped her would help her fight them more effectively. Hesitantly Azula got closer to the object, and, trying to determine the materials it was built with, she ran her hands over its surface. Suddenly the thing started speaking in a weird language and – even more disturbingly – people appeared inside it.

Panicking, she started to press everywhere on the surface, hoping to stop whatever was happening; but as nothing happened, she took a more direct approach and threw it down, breaking it. Suddenly a faint sound, almost like an angry hiss, reached her ears. Azula, reacting instinctively, rolled to the side, barely dodging a club aimed at her head; she ended the roll in a crouch, and let loose a fiery blast towards the attacker, striking him in the chest.

.*.​

John Doe was a thief, mostly he did small time stuff, but recently he had had a stroke of luck and managed to rob the house of a really rich guy, the theft even managing to catch the attention of the local news agencies. For the moment he was laying low, hiding in a house he had bought under a false name, and he was waiting for everything to calm down before selling the most unique things he had taken.

He was sleeping when the noise of a door opening woke him up; he was alone in the house and nobody knew he was here, so it was probably someone that had seen the empty-looking house and thought it an easy job. Whispering a few curses, he grabbed his baseball bat and stealthily climbed down the stairs, ready to deal with the intruder, who had apparently decided to watch some television judging by the sounds. Apparently the trespasser was a child – he couldn't tell whether the kid was male or not – but he was clearly trying to shut down the television. John almost snorted in derision. If you fucked up like that, you didn't stand around waiting for the angry owner to bash your skull in.

Any resemblance to current situations was of course purely coincidental.

It was at that point that the kid decided to smash his rather expensive TV – an antique he was rather fond of – to silence it. With anger running through John's mind, he raised his bat, a faint hiss of fury escaping his lips, and struck. The kid, though, had already dodged, and John was turning when a burst of flames hit his chest.

He fell down; the pain was unbearable, he couldn't even scream. As he managed to focus a little, he realized he needed help immediately if he wanted to survive. John reached for his omnitool, hoping to call for help, but his body was going numb, his focus slipping, and a moment later everything went black.

.*.​

Azula was not amused. A commoner like him, not even a bender, trying to kill her? Insulting, really. Talking boxes quickly forgotten, she began getting closer to the man; she did not want to leave a potential enemy at her back. As she got closer, she saw the man's forearm briefly encompassed with a transparent orange construct, a moment before he died. Very surprised, Azula tried to look for whatever had produced such a phenomenon, but the memory of what had happened the last time prompted Azula to secure the area first.

When she reached the second floor, she found an open window, and was reaching to close it when the unexpected view completely destroyed every assumption she had made. In the distance gigantic towers could be seen, nothing like anything the Earth Kingdom had ever built. Flying vehicles were darting everywhere, and the people were dressed like nothing she had ever seen. A deep sense of dread settled in her.

Where was she?



Prologue Part 2

Inconceivable! It was impossible! And yet it was true: she was in a house with things the best scientist and engineers of the Fire Nation couldn't even dream of, and that was without mentioning the marvels she saw out of the window. How long she had just stared at the city like a slack-jawed idiot? Azula shook her head; she needed to focus if she wanted to find a way home. And to do that, the first thing she needed to know was where she has been taken to.

Wherever she was, she must be in a land very far away – somewhere beyond the Four Nations, even; otherwise rumors of a civilization capable of such things would have reached the Fire Lord's ears. Or maybe not, she corrected herself – it would have been judged ridiculous and the messenger warned not to waste the precious time of her grandfather with such wild tales or else. Which was something she would have agreed with, until a few moments ago.

Wild tales or not, she was here, and she needed the information. Maybe there were some clues inside the house; it was a long shot, but she was reluctant to go outside. As far as she knew this was hostile territory, and the less she was seen the better.

.*.

The search did not go well at first. There were plenty of books and various objects similar to the one she had smashed, but ignorance hid her prize. She did not know the language these people used and she had no intentions to stay long enough to learn it. She returned back in the room with the smashed device, and sat on one of the chairs, trying to keep her irritation from the recent failure at bay. She would try one more time in the house – see if there was anything she had missed – if she found nothing useful again, she had no choice but to venture outside and …

"You have mail."

Alarmed by the strange voice, Azula jumped out of the chair and landed in a roll, ready to blast the interloper, but – to her great surprise – she was alone.

"Whoever you are, if you show yourself right now I promise to be merciful," said Azula in her best commanding voice.

It was then that she noticed the glowing device had reappeared on her assailant's hand, only for it to flicker away a few seconds later. Cautiously Azula approached the corpse, and examined the arm where the thing appeared. All she found was a device strapped on the arm. She couldn't understand how something like that could be linked to the semi-transparent orange construct she had seen, or the voice, but it was the only thing present on the man's limbs aside from his clothes.

After a bit of fiddling she managed to remove the object from the dead man's arm, and put it on herself. As soon as she put it on her arm, it immediately activated, coloured panels appearing on her forearm from thin air, and started talking.

"Greetings, new user. Thank you for purchasing..."

"Great! You too speak that weird language," interrupted Azula, frustrated.

"User language recognized, rebooting using new base language. Loading ... Loading complete. Greetings, new user. Thank you for purchasing the Ariake Technologies Omnitool Artemis Mark Four. This is the personalized V.I. you requested."

"I ... I can understand you! How?!" said a stunned Azula, an inkling of hope growing inside her. Maybe she wasn't as lost as she had thought she was, if this people knew her native language.

"The voice sample provided matched a language present in the database; the software rebooted using the new base language."

"You mean you have knowledge of this language?"

"The language is present in the database."

"I'll take that as a yes ... And if you have that knowledge, then you must know its origins."

"The information requested is not present."

"Don't lie to me!" Azula nearly screamed growing angrier. "If you know the language, then you must know where it came from - it is as simple as that! Speak, entity, or I'll destroy you!"

"The information requested is not present. If the user is unsatisfied, please contact the nearest authorized seller or contact Customer Service through the Kassa Fabrication extranet site."

"Extranet? How do I go there? What is it?"

"Extranet access is available on this omnitool, and vocal commands are possible. The manual activation requires ..."

The explanation was exhaustive and complete, even if the entity seemed a little dumb. She couldn't understand exactly what the extranet was, but right now that wasn't important – she needed to find a way home. After going through the "tutorial for a safe navigation of the extranet" a couple of times, Azula felt ready to use it and hopefully discover where in the world she was.

"Open extranet access," said Azula, and then suddenly a thought flashed through her mind: why not see what the previous owner of this "omnitool" had been doing? It surely couldn't hurt. "Resume previous session." A 'screen', as the entity called it, appeared and an unexpected scene appeared on the screen.
"Oh God! YES! YES!"

Her eyes widened so much it seemed they were about to fall out and her mouth opened slightly; two women were … were … "Close session! NOW!" Suddenly snarled a quite scandalized and angry Azula, she would have nothing to do with such … disgraceful pastimes. After a few moments to let the anger subside she began searching for a way home again.

This time, she was careful to open a new session.

.*.

The truth she found left her numb. The geography was wrong, the nations were wrong, her country didn't exist, THEY didn't exist; Mother, Father, Zuzu, that tea-loving uncle of hers, Ty Lee and Mai, everything the Fire Nation was and had accomplished had never happened here, never existed. Even her status as nobility was nothing. Humanity was an interstellar government, and bending as she knew it didn't exist; on the other hand, aliens existed! Aliens! Some looked like humans, like those blue women, but others were quite different, to say the least.

Her mind was thrown for a loop; she couldn't understand how it was possible for an entire world to disappear, and yet it had. She shut off the omnitool and sank down onto the nearby couch, staring at the wall. Slowly the reality of the situation sank in and an indescribable sense of loss and fear took her.

Azula could feel tears welling up in her eyes, but every time she blinked them away in stubborn defiance. She kept wondering if she would ever see her home, or anyone she knew again, until she fell asleep, exhausted. It was dawn when Azula woke up, and felt shame for her loss of composure; she was taught to be better that this, she was better than this – self-pity accomplished nothing.

So what if she was in a world so different from her own? She was smart, and she still had her firebending; there was nothing to fear. She would find a way back; she would learn all the secrets of this strange world and bring them home with her to further advance the glory of the Fire Nation; and if she ever discovered who or what played this 'prank' on her, she would make him or it pay, no matter what.

Having objectives to achieve made Azula feel better already, she was finally taking back control over her life. As she was considering her next move, the first obvious thing to accomplish was the disposal of the body – for the short term, at least. The huge cold box she had found during her exploration seemed a good option for now. Dragging the body downstairs wasn't easy – more than once, she considered making some fire knives to chop it down to more manageable pieces for her small frame – but she made it. As she was making space for the body, she noticed something strange: the omnitool kept activating each time her hand lingered over some of the writings presents on the boxes, the translation of the writings appearing on a small screen.

Azula then remembered the entity mentioning a "database", which had to contain both this language and her own, at the very least. The possibility of learning this new language – thus eliminating a rather annoying weakness – and knowing more about this incredibly useful tool excited her; she wanted to start as soon as possible.

Which was as soon as she managed to shove that thrice-cursed overweight waste of flesh into the tall cold box, and after some time and much effort, she managed to do so.

.*.

For once luck seemed to be on Azula's side: investigating the various omnitool functions, she found something called a universal translator. With its help, it was relatively simple to find out the name of every object foreign to her that was present in the house. Once she had the new name, it was easy enough to look each one up on the extranet for more information.

The presence of the Virtual Intelligence also helped immensely, though if she was having difficulties believing that it was an artificial construct. She couldn't even begun to fathom how such a thing was possible, but she was determined to understand it. Unfortunately, this meticulous process took several hours, but in the end she had at least some basic knowledge of the things she had found in the house.

This included the computer where the now deceased former owner – a certain John Doe – had kept some kind of diary where he recounted his deeds. Rather pathetic deeds in her opinion; but his diary described them like they were criminal masterpieces. This man surely had an oversized ego.

The most interesting entry of this diary was one of the most recent: he claimed to have managed to ... "acquire" and sell some really expensive valuables – including a top-of-the-line omnitool with a customized V.I. that he had obviously kept. The money would have allowed him to live comfortably for a few months while the false identity he had set up – someone called Jeremiah Shepard – would have provided needed security from the – in his opinion – local overworked and understaffed law enforcement.

This was all Azula needed: an adult name to hide behind – though she had to admit, Azula Shepard, niece of Jeremiah Shepard sounded really weird – enough money to get her by until she got a better understanding of the world she was in, and time to plan her rise to power.

'I am coming, world.' she thought. 'Prepare yourself.'

'Not that you have any chance anyway'.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Chapter 1

23 August 2161

"It's been a bit over a month since my arrival on Earth, it's still a very strange situation and I still having problems adapting. I keep missing references of all types when I overhear conversations, from historical to the recent play on the television.

Because of that unfamiliarity I avoided going out unless necessary as a way to limit my interaction with other people, a drastic measure maybe but a necessary one. In the mean time I will keep learning what I can about this place from inside the house and keep practicing the new language with this diary. Relying on the omnitool's automatic translator would be odd – I think – and it is a weakness I don't want.

So, to make a long story short, I need to be at least passingly familiar with the language and the culture here before really starting to go around and interact with other people. Following what passes for entertainment here should do the trick and the reruns of the Simpsons might be a good place to start. Its return seemed popular on the local extranet.

Zuzu, stop recording and use base encryption 3."

"Acknowledged."

8 October 2161

"... I also found enough credited online courses, books and information on the extranet to give myself at least a basic education. Given how much everyone relies on computers, I thought it best to focus my attention in that area. It should come in handy in the future."

"Alert: Gym appointment with Sifu Cisneros. Alert: Gym appointment with Sifu Cisneros. Alert … "

"Yes, yes, I have heard you. Stop the alert and erase it. Oh, well. I guess I'll continue after I come back."

8 October 2161

The lesson with Sifu Cisneros, not as bad as I imagined but not as good as I hoped. It was not one on one like I was used to, but rather I was taught along with a lot of other children. Of course I was the best of the class, however this also meant Sifu Cisneros could dedicate more time to the others. I expected that, but I'm afraid this will take a toll on my training.

Right now I only hope I can skip ahead, because looking at the other morons I was saddled with trying to kick or punch is just painful.

11 June 2162

My first birthday here. It's … strange, somehow. Bought myself two litres of ice-cream as a treat.

12 June 2162

I shouldn't have eaten all that ice-cream.

15 June 2163

I am ashamed to admit I only just discovered how dire my financial situation has become. I mean … I never had to think about something like that, I was a princess and I … am no one now. I have solved it temporarily by selling a few items present in the house on the extranet, but it obviously can't be a permanent solution. On the other hand I am too young and without any kind of ID or paperwork to find a job, and the prospect of ending up in some institution dedicated to help 'orphans' does not sit well with me.

Doing that would also make me unable to continue my self-training in firebending, something I find completely unacceptable. It is already slow going, I can't and won't tolerate any delay in its progress.

In other words I have to find another solution.

16 June 2163

I may have found the solution to my financial problem. As far as I can see it is the only other option open to me, no matter how … distasteful I personally find it. Yet it's better than the alternatives I have. I'll start today, it shouldn't be too difficult for someone trained in martial arts like me.

16 June 2163 – Several hours later

I was almost caught! He … He must have felt my hand slipping inside the pocket, or the credit chip when coming out, I don't know! I was lucky there was a suspicious looking man right behind me, and he immediately caught the attention of my target. I used the distraction they caused and my small size to slip away unnoticed, but I could have been … caught.

----​

The man turned around faster than she believed someone of his size could, his eyes zeroing on the scrawny tattooed youth that was behind her.

"You! Give it back!"

"What? What are you talking about man?"

"Don't play coy with me boy, the credit chit you took from my pocket, give it back and I will forget this."

Unnoticed by the two men and the crowd forming around them, a small figure quietly made its escape.

----​

It is inconceivable! I am a princess of the Fire Nation, I shouldn't BE here or doing anything like THAT! I want … I want to…

Breath in … breath out … Breath in … breath out … Breath in … breath out … Okay, okay.

What I want is irrelevant. I am here to stay and nothing will change that. For the moment I'll keep pickpocketing as last resort and keep selling what valuable objects I possess. Priority will be given to refining my computer skills, maybe cracking ATM machines will prove to be a less risky and equally lucrative venture.

Zuzu, terminate session.

10 July 2163

Betting on the computer skills was the right call. A bit of old fashioned disguise and spreading the hacking all over the city at random intervals is keeping me from being identified. Making a copy of Zuzu and using it as a training dummy was also fundamental in my success.

Hopefully things will not get any worse.

3 January 2164

I am a teaching assistant now.

When Sifu Cisneros realized I mastered everything he taught faster and better than anyone else, he had no choice but to 'promote' me. It is a great honour and a sign of respect, however it also mean that now I am saddled with the more helpless cases. The ones in need of … remedial lessons.

There is one that is especially grating, she is a complete klutz and even has the bruises to prove it. Sifu initially believed she was the victim of abuse, that assumption lasted until she tripped on her own two feet. Along with other accidents of course.

At least she is upbeat about it, and keeps a good mood despite her difficulties.

----​

"No no no. Stop. It's like this, you see? If you don't you'll … "

"OW!"

"Faceplant on the floor."

"At least I'm making progress."

"You are?"

"Yep! The floor is starting to crack."

"Heh."

----​

20 July 2165

I made great progress with my 'students'. Sifu Cisneros lauded my ability and responsibility and decided to teach me some more advanced moves. "You have earned it." he said.

On a less good note, the klutz – her name is Clara by the way – started calling me Senpai or even worse Az-Senpai. While I appreciated the show of respect – regardless of the fact it is in the wrong language – I wasn't as grateful of her butchering my name. I objected of course but in the end I can't exactly stop her from talking however she wants.

----​

"It's not my name!"

"Pleeaaaseee!"

"NO!"

At that the lower lip started quivering slightly, the eyes brimming with unshed tears barely visible due to her bowed head."Please?" She whispered, even the voice was trembling slightly.

"Whatever," grumbled Azula after a few seconds.

"YAY!"

"NO HUGS!"

----​

9 January 2167

Clara invited me to her birthday party. I couldn't say no because she is turning sixteen and apparently it is some kind of important event.

Whatever. I just hope they don't expect me to do something like this when I turn sixteen.

And now I also need to buy a good dress. Did I mention I hate shopping for clothes?

28 January 2167

I … Oh spirits I'm so tired I could sleep for a millennium. I went to Clara's party tod-- no, yesterday. It has been yesterday for quite some time now, and I have to admit it has been kind of fun for a little while. Then alcohol popped up and everything – or better yet everyone – became annoying. People started drinking way too much – Clara included – and started doing whatever their alcohol addled minds believed to be a reasonable course of action.

Just to make an example a couple decided to get inside a huge inflatable filled with helium and started making out. Thankfully I noticed and sabotaged it, otherwise Clara could have discovered a couple of dead morons at the end of the party. Speaking of that klutz even she got into trouble, even if – to be fair – wasn't exactly her fault.

----​

"N-nooo, it's too early to go to bed! It's my party and I want to dance and drink and dance and drink,"said a voice with an obvious drunken slurring, even when heard trough a wooden door.. "I want to drance! Or danke?"

Before the other occupant of the room could respond, the door slammed open. Pieces of the metal lock slightly glowing in the dark and rapidly cooling off.

"What the … "

"I believe," said Azula, "that you should leave her alone."

"Oh look, my heroic senpai," giggled Clara from the bed she was on. "Are you here to save me too?"

"I already told you, Senpai is not … " Whatever Azula was going to say, it was truncated by the boy roughly grabbing her shoulder. "Listen pipsqueak," he started to say while trying to push her out, his breath thick with alcohol. "Why don't you ..." Only to be rather decisively interrupted by Azula breaking one of his fingers.

Not one to let the advantage go, Azula pressed on and kicked the older boy right in his family jewels, turning the beginning of his scream into pain filled whimpers as he crumpled on the floor.

"Az-senpai?"

"Just a moment Clara," said Azula, staring right into the boy's eyes. "I have to make something clear with this one." Her glare hardened making the young man curled up on the floor whimper some more.

----​

End of the day however, it was nothing I couldn't handle and ignoring the last part it wasn't an unpleasant experience.

1 February 2167

Today Clara offered me a lift from the gym to my home on her new car. A gift from an old childhood friend of hers she said. I didn't refuse of course, but I did take the precautions of making her stop some distance away from my accommodations.

She seemed all right, and I am strangely relieved about that. Anyway I hope she manages to avoid any disaster with that thing.

Still calling me Senpai or Az-Senpai despite my protests that it is a japanese term and my name is not Az. She is stubborn almost to the point of being infuriating, but I will not give up.

3 September 2167

Since I arrived here I have been spending as much time as possible catching up with the sciences and technology available, however today for the first time something else was at the forefront of my mind rather than the simple acquisition of knowledge.

It began with the news about the ban of certain types of genetic engineering and the various discussions around the law. Some saying it was the wrong decision, as most of mankind advances were born from attempts to push the boundaries, others saying that one should be careful when using advanced technology such as that.

It was then that it really hit me: how we would look like in the eyes of the Alliance? Just the omnitool, an everyday object, is so far above anything we have it may as well be magic. Is this how the Fire Nation looks like to the other barbaric countries back home? An incredibly powerful nation, backed by marvels of science they barely understand?

I…

Time limit without input reached. Recording paused

Recording Stopped

11 June 2168

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy Birthday dear Azula
Happy Birthday to me....




I miss them.

Stop recording.

12 June 2168

Clara and I just spent half an hour going trough every inch of her car looking for the present she said she bought for my birthday. She swore up and down that she put it inside this morning, I never saw her that upset. I said that it didn't matter and just the fact she thought about it was enough, and she calmed down a bit.

Apparently it was some kind of recurved knife with an ornate handle, nothing too fancy though. Maybe it was stolen? Nothing else was missing, but while Clara is a happy-go-lucky klutz she isn't air-headed and is quite smart. I guess I'll keep an eye out and see if the thief tries to get inside her car again.

28 June 2168

Today I caught someone trying to break in Clara's car. I gave chase but the slime-licker pulled a gun on me.

----​

Azula silently started to get closer to the figure bent over Clara's car, when the noise of the gym's door opening made the thief turn his head.

"Hey! What are you doing!?"

Clara's shout startled the thief, who immediately stopped messing with the car's door and started running.

"Damnit Clara!" muttered Azula to herself. She would have words with her about things called 'Surprise attack', 'Ambush' and how one shouldn't ruin the ones their allies are setting up after this.

The thief was fast, but Azula was faster and steadily shortened the distance between them. The thief, realizing this, dived into a back alley promptly followed by Azula a scant few seconds later.

And ended up facing the business end of a pistol held in a tattooed hand. An holdout one from the looks of it her mind supplied.

Reacting without conscious thought, Azula fell on her knees and bended backwards as much as she could, turning the full tilt run she was in into a power slide. As she was sliding forward she could have sworn to have felt the grain sized bullet's shockwave as it passed right above her face, the poorly aimed and hasty shot disappearing somewhere behind her.

Sliding past the thief and not wanting to wait around for a second shot, Azula rolled behind the closest cover she could find and readied a fireball in her hand. If the shooter tried to press the advantage he would have discovered that she wasn't as unarmed as he thought she was. After a minute and no sign of him, Azula risked to peek behind her cover only to find no one inside the alley.

With the danger gone and thief alongside it, Azula began walking back to the gym and Clara to relay the news. Leaving out the getting shot at part of course, no need to worry her for nothing after all.

----​

He used the time I was behind cover to ran away, but I think it is highly unlikely he will try anything like that again with Clara's car. I'll keep an eye out for a few more days, but I think I can safely say this story is well and truly done.

30 August 2169

"… And so checking in on John Doe's contacts proved to be a waste of time. Not one of them is good enough to provide a good enough I.D. at least not at the level I want and need it to go. I might actually need to find– "

Incoming Call. Caller ID: Spencer. Tagged as: Urgent.

'Oh spirits, what does he want this time?' She thought after glancing at the holographic screen on her desk.

"Pause recording"

Paused

Azula took a deep breath and tried to chase her annoyance away. Tearing apart one of Clara's friends because he was sleazy, lecherous …

'Right. Deep breaths Azula, deep breaths.'

"Put him on," she said turning to face the holographic screen.

Online.

"Hello Spencer, how are you?"

"Hi Azula. I'm fine thanks," the brown haired teen said. "Uhmm … Are you seated over there? Calm? Everything all right?"

"Yes, I'm seated and calm. Why?" 'And why are you trying to not look in my eyes?'

"Sitting is good, calmness too. Can't hurt being calm and sitting down. People really should try to … "

"Get to the point Spencer."

"Yes, the point. Why I called you. A very important reason. I thought of being there in person," he kept rambling. "But then thought better and changed my mind."

"You are starting to irritate me, stop going in circles and spit it out!" her voice raising a bit to underscore the last three words. 'And thank you for not gracing me with your presence'

"Clara is dead, killed by drug runners. Pleasedon'tkillme!"

It was several seconds before Azula managed to find her voice. "You do realize that I'm going to really hurt you for making such a stupid prank, right?"

He visibly flinched at her venomous tone, but it didn't last long as he recovered quickly. "H-Hey! She was my friend too you know? You really think I would do something like that?" He raised his hand in front of the camera, as if to stop any reply. "No, don't answer that. You don't believe me? Fine. It's on the news now, channel 47."

'He's angry. Really angry,' thought Azula before replying. "What does the news have anything to do with this vast amount of bull – "

"Do it. Turn on the TV."

"Fine, fine," relented Azula. "I'll turn it on. Then I'll track you down and put you into a world of hurt." With a few taps on the haptic interface of the viewscreen, she opened up the TV application and tuned it on the local news channel. "Just a friendly warning," she sarcastically told him, also using the occasion to make him flinch again with a glare.

The images showed an aircar crumpled on the ground, by her estimate it was unlikely anyone survived – or survived long for that matter – given the amount of damage it showed. Her attention was suddenly wrenched off the crashed vehicle when the on-site reporter suddenly mentioned the name of the victim.

"Pause and reverse. 30 seconds," Azula immediately ordered. She couldn't have heard right. It was impossible.

" … According to eyewitnesses the victim's car had just been flanked by another one when the occupants of the second car opened fire. The driver of the first vehicle – a young girl called Carla Christoff – was hit and lost control of her car, crashing it on the ground. Shortly after the paramedics arrived she was transported to the hospital where, unfortunately, she died due to the numerous injuries received. It is still unknown – "

Azula's mind did something terrible: It completely and utterly emptied itself. All sounds simply didn't register, as if they were even less than background noise, the eyes unfocused and looking at nothing. Nearly half a minute had to pass before she was able to work past the initial shock.

'What.'

"What."

"I'm – I'm sorry you had to find out this way. I wanted you to hear it from a friendlier face, but … " Azula was utterly oblivious to whatever Spencer was saying, her attention fully devoted to the part of the viewscreen showing the news channel.

"The police so far did not release any information about this most recent act of violence," continued the journalist. "However indiscretions says a package of Red Sand was found inside the car, perhaps the motivation behind the … "

"WHAT?!"

"Uh, yeah. There is that too."

"That's preposterous!" said Azula nearly shaking with rage. 'How dare they. How dare they!' "HOW DARE THEY!"

"Woah!" taken aback by her outburst he raised his hands in a placating gesture. "Calm down, ok? Maybe they are wrong, or maybe … " Spencer trailed off, and then fell silent.

"'Maybe'. What. Spencer?" Growled Azula.

"Maybe we didn't know her enough." He said in a low voice.

A few seconds of silence passed before Azula answered in a utterly calm and toneless voice."What do you mean by that?"

He looked at her like she had just grown a few more heads while he wasn't looking."Haven't you heard the news?!" Spencer said in an incredulous tone of voice. "She was … "

"Yes! I have heard the news!" heat once again present in her voice. "And I would sooner believe the moon is made of cheese and the clouds made of cotton candy than that!"

"Really?" Her questioner said in a disbelieving tone. "Don't you think … "

"This conversation is over," interrupted Azula in a casual tone. "Call me again and I'll remove your kneecaps with a grinder machine." With a swipe of her hand Azula terminated the connection, removing the stunned face of Spencer from the viewscreen. She stared at the monitor for a few more seconds before she started pounding the desk with increasing strength. Fury and pain were rising inside her, with the latter fuelling the former. As strange as it might have sounded to her just a few years ago, she came to care for the klutzy girl – spirits only knew why. But now she was dead and she was feeling her grip on those emotions slipping more and more.

Incoming Call. Caller ID: Spencer. Tagged as: Urgent.

Whatever slim control she still had, disappeared. With scream of pure rage Azula grabbed the wooden desk with both hands and threw it all the way across the room, shattering many of the objects on it and severely damaging the desk itself. The thrown furniture barely had the time to land on the floor that a stream of blue fire hit it, incinerating the parts the flames touched. Her fury and fire spared nearly nothing inside the room. By the end of it even the walls were damaged and a few objects so deformed by the heat to be completely unrecognizable.

Azula sat on the floor in the middle of the destroyed room; her emotions once again under her control.

'She is dead,' she thought, and while the admission did bring pain and anger it wasn't as overwhelming as before. Her hands curled into fists, but this time there was purpose behind her every movement. Someone used Clara to his or her own ends and she died for it, even tainting her memory by associating her with drug trafficking.

'I will find them, Clara. I will find them and make them pay. I promise.' She even had a lead: the gang member that tried to steal from Clara's car. Faint and quite probably a very long shot, but it was the only thing she had. Worst case scenario there would have been one less scumbag on the face of the planet, not something she would lose any sleep over it.

She would pay him a visit.

*-*-*-*​

Tracking him down had been a rather a little time consuming but easy task, keeping known meeting points of the gang under surveillance using web-cameras and old fashioned binoculars did the trick. Unless he was dead or in another city entirely, she would have found him. And found him she did: Jeremy Jenson, nineteen, member of the Crossed Snakes gang, holder of a curved knife with an ornate handle and a ring at the end of it. Currently in trouble. Azula smiled a little at the sight of the person tied on a metal chair, bag on the head and fiercely struggling for freedom.

In a huge amount of trouble.

Snagging him had been the simple part. A kick to the solar plexus quickly removed any thought of fighting back from the young man, but Azula went a step further and tasered him too. After that, securing and stuffing him the stolen car's trunk had been a rather easy task. And now here he was: naked and tied to a suspended metal chair.

"Hello Jeremy."

"Who–? You son of a bitch, get me out of this thing! Do you have any idea who you are pissing off?! I'm … " A rather vicious punch from Azula quite handily interrupted Jeremy's monologue.

"I know who you are and what you are, Jeremy. Could you please don't waste my time with pointless posturing? I have you at my mercy and there are better question you could make."

"What do you want?" Jeremy spat out after a few seconds. Azula did not need to see his face to recognize he was not yet feeling fear, the anger and his arrogance were clear in his voice, even when muffled by the bag.

"Now that is a much better question, Jeremy. Can I call you Jeremy?"

"Can you suck my big fat co–" Again a punch stopped the young man from finishing the phrase, this time with enough strength behind it to send the chair wildly careening around.

"That was stupid of you, Jeremy."

"Get fucked by a hor–"

"Very very stupid," interrupted again Azula in the same way.

"You think this is the first beating I got? Go ahead, do your worse you dumb motherfucker. I won't talk."

"Jeremy, Jeremy, Jeremy," said Azula using her best disappointed tone, not that it mattered much with the voice synthesizer she was using. "Worms like you should really learn when to shut up. You are asking for the worse? Very well." She leaned forward and whispered the last part in his ear. "You'll have it."

Azula started using a crank mechanism to further lift the chair, then she slipped under it a box from which angry hissing and mewling could be heard.

"What's this," spoke Jeremy. "Talk or the kittens get it?"

"Something like that," replied Azula before carefully dumping over him the contents of a bucket.

"What the fuck?!"

"Oh don't worry Jeremy, it's just pig's blood."

"Pig's what?!"

"Pig's blood," repeated Azula. "It's to make you more appetizing, think of it as some kind of sauce."

"WHAT?!"

"What did you say before? Talk or the kitties get it? You were more right than you knew. I spent quite some time catching and properly starving all these cats." With the prisoner completely drenched in pig's blood, Azula dropped the bucket and removed the top of the box. The felines inside, driven into a frenzy by the scent of the blood, now could be heard clearly. "Let me tell you, finding the proper balance between making them hungry enough that they won't care what kind of meat they eat, and not making them too weak to actually eat you, it's harder than it may sound."

"What."

"Talk," she said in a stage whisper "Or the kitties get you."

"YOU ARE INSANE!"

"So you admit I'm capable of doing it?"

"THIS IS IMP–" Once again he was interrupted by a sudden and intense amount of pain, only this time it was on his foot and felt less like punch and more like claws.

"Oohh look at him! Look at the jump he made!" cooed Azula. "The first to get his prize. Good kitty!"

"MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A–" Screams once more replaced Jeremy's words, as he felt something bite into the soft underside of his foot and tear off a chunk of flesh.

"Here lies Jeremy Jenson, eaten alive by a swarm of household pets," continued Azula. "You know what? I think you should go for it, it's a really funny headstone epitaph." That said Azula once again started using the crank mechanism and begun lowering the chair into the box.

"NO! NO! NO! WAIT! I'LL – AH! FUCK!"

"You what, Jeremy?"

"TALK! TALK!"

"Smart boy." Smirked Azula.

-*-​

And so he did. After dumping some pieces of meat inside the crate to sate the hunger of the famished felines, he answered to everything Azula asked and more just to be on the safe side. At the end she let him go and ordered him to leave the city or he would have finished feeding the cat. He ran so fast he even forgot to apply the medigel on his wound. Having the very same cat that took a bite out of him on her lap as she fed it some meat, might have helped with his decision to postpone medical care to a later date.

With Jeremy's information she now had a clear enough idea of the situation that she could fill in the blanks herself. Someone had the bright idea of using ordinary people with no link to the gang to act as unknowing drug couriers. Put the package inside an hidden compartment, wait for the person carrying it to reach his or her destination, a place the victim went to regularly – the home, where they worked, or in Clara's case: the gym – take the package and make it look like a theft if caught, so even if someone witnessed that 'drug trafficking' would not be on their mind.

To do all that however it required two things: The keys and a good mechanic. A good thing about being friends with a friendly and chatty person is that they have a tendency to tell you nearly everything they have done. Or happened to them. Her aircar required a mechanic in two different occasions, and only in one it was bad enough that a stay in at the shop was required.

"What do you say Dexter?" she spoke to the purring cat in her lap. "It seems I have some breaking and entering to do." The newly christened Dexter only purred more as she stroked his silvery-blue fur. "But I guess I have no choice, not if I want to find out who killed her and why." She grabbed Dexter as she stood up and looked back at the box containing the cats she captured. "I should call the local Animal Shelter too I guess."

*-*-*-*​

The mission went quite smoothly, she was not caught and there was quite a lot of encrypted data to go through. It had been done with commercial software of rather high quality, but thanks to her – or more accurately, John Doe's – contacts and so much money it left her almost broke, she now was the proud owner of an outdated military-grade encryption-decryption program. Nowhere near top of the line, but still more advanced than nearly everything available on the civilian market.

With luck it would decode the computer memory core and the datapads, before they finished investigating the fire and discovered something was missing. Azula leaned back on the chair and closed her eyes, now all she had to do was wait.

-----​

Getting inside the workshop had been easier than she feared and worse than she hoped. The relatively low security – being just a machine shop all things considered – and John Doe's equipment offsetting her relative inexperience, even if not by much. The skylight window had a pressure sensor on the frame, so if someone carelessly opened it would have triggered the alarm. Some omnigel to make a physical bypass neutralized the alarm, allowing a quick and easy access to the building itself. And more importantly to the box relaying the camera's feeds back to an external data storage.

If she wanted her actions to remain unknown – at least for a little – she needed to deal with the camera in an non-obvious manner, luckily she had the right tool for that: it was an interesting gadget in John Doe's possession, a small pincer that – when applied correctly – would hijack the data sent through cables and store it in its own memory unit, allowing the user to modify the information stored if and as he or she wished.

And when it was ready to be sent through it would block the normal feed, transmitting it's own instead. Obviously this came with two evident drawbacks, especially for a now obsolete model: It left a physical mark on the cables themselves and it created a sometimes noticeable – depending on the quantity of data copied – lag issue. An unfortunate situation for sure, but something Azula was perfectly fine with.

After applying the device she waited a suitable amount of time and after a few minor corrections, she activated the device and rappelled down on the floor. She quickly found the main office and went to work disassembling the computer present there, rapidly extracting the main data storage unit and replacing it with a new one. After putting away the stolen computer part she activated her omnitool, which begun projecting an orange light as she begun to scan for hidden compartments.

Of course she really did not expect to find any – not with the limited experience with this equipment she had – but it was worth a try. After all she did not really believe that anyone would leave something incriminating around in the open. As soon as the scan was finished – with negative results as she expected – she glanced at the clock to check how much time she had left before the doctored data from the camera ran out, she had something in mind that might help in finding any hidden compartment. With practised ease, she focused her mind, touched the floor and started spreading some heat. If there was a "cold" empty spot, that was probably where an hidden compartment was.

Luck was on her side, within a few minutes a suspicious spot was found and revealed itself to be an old small safe. Of course she couldn't exactly extract it like she did with the computer data core, but the relatively simple lock revealed itself to be an easy obstacle to overcome. Soon the contents were exchanged with some decoys and the originals found their way inside the same bag with the data storage unit.

She did not need to check the clock to know that time was running out, and begun running back to the garage. Once inside the workshop area however an idea to further cover her tracks struck Azula's mind: she was in a building filled with electrical equipment and combustible substances, sparking a fire to muddle things up even more shouldn't be that hard.

Working fast she knocked on the ground a few things that looked flammable, spilling the contents on the ground, and threw on top of it a cable she ruined to expose the wiring. Once the charade was complete, she climbed back up to the roof, and launched a well-placed fireball to start the conflagration. To make sure the flames destroyed as much evidence as they could, she circled back after a bit – mingling among the curious watching the firemen containing the fire – and stayed only long enough to manipulate the bonfire, making certain her traces had been erased.

----​

Decryption Complete.

The computer voice startled Azula into wakefulness, she stared bleary-eyed at the viewscreen for a few seconds before the meaning of those words truly sank in and kicked her brain into overdrive. The occasion of finally perusing the data, of being one step closer to exacting her just revenge on whoever killed Clara, drove all leftover sleepiness away.

'Ok, let's see what you've got.'

The files inside the office computer held nothing particularly incriminating. Suspicious? Definitely, since some of the clients that used his services were marked. The rest was just related to his "day job" so to speak: parts needed to be acquired, workers turns and stuff like that, everything using some kind of technical jargon. The actually interesting bits were in the datapads she found in the safe.

Secret accounts were she deposited money she was paid to make her expertise available, more than few ways to contact people dealing in … shady businesses, and what Azula could only classify as blackmail or as a bargaining chip or both. Photos, videos and registrations of every single illegal business deal she ever made, along with a plethora of other information she must have uncovered using other ways. Azula couldn't help but laugh out of loud at the discovery. Her quarry was there, all she had to do was go over every single file and he or she would have been hers.

Again luck seemed to be on her side, and indeed within a few minutes a very interesting video started playing out.

"So, we are alone and you checked out, what's your proposition boy?" The owner of the voice could not be seen, probably the proprietor of the shop considering her words.

"Hey!" another voice outside the field said. "Don't disres –"

"Jeremy." The name was spoken firmly and without raising the voice, yet it stopped the other one right in his tracks. He turned slightly to look at Jeremy to better convey the message. "Stop." The "Or else" went unsaid but was perfectly heard.

"Sorry Colin, you are the boss."

"Exactly," the boy called Colin said. "Don't forget that." The freckled face turned back towards the machine shop owner, crossing his arms as if he was trying to look more intimidating. However that movement also uncovered his forearms, revealing a familiar set of tattoos. A very familiar set in fact.

Azula barely listened to the rest of the video, as they slowly came to an agreement over something she already figured out. Her attention was fully focused on the this "Colin" person, engraving in her mind every single millimetre of his face.

"Hello Colin," Azula whispered. "We finally meet." She wanted to go out right now, find this Colin and introduce him to her firebending; but the more cold and analytical part of her stopped that line of thought. Better if she saw the rest of the files and then made a plan to properly consign him to his rightful … reward.

As she continued examining the contents however, a question slowly wormed its way to the forefront of her mind. Yes, she had what she went for, but there was so much information that she hated the thought of not using it. She would get her revenge sure, but what after? It's not like she could just turn all this over to the pol–

'And why not?' Was the sudden treacherous thought. 'Why not use all this for the purpose it was intended for?A bargaining chip to obtain something in return AND get my revenge in the same stroke?'

The idea was intriguing, and she would be lying if the challenge it offered did not enthuse her to it. Slowly, hesitantly, Azula closed the window showing the contents of the datapads. She had some background checks to do.

-*-​

A few weeks later

Incoming Call. Caller ID: Unknown. Tagged as: Urgent.

"Wharrgarbl." Wharrgarbled a voice from under thick layer of blankets.

Unable to comply. Command not listed.

More incomprehensible muttering could be heard from under the blankets, before a more understandable "Hold." was heard.

Holding.

Slowly a female figure disentangled itself from the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed she was laying on.

'Whoever this is, it better be very very good.' "Okay, put …. whoever on."

Online.

The holographic screen turned on, illuminating the room, but instead of a face it displayed an error signal. Before she could even speak, an artificial sounding voice immediately started talking "Hello, you should check you mail."

'Wha..?' Before she could even formulate a response the connection was cut, leaving the woman in the darkness. 'Sure Dana, do what the creepy fucker told you to do, seems legit,' Dana snorted in derision. "Call Gordon-Work."

Calling... Online.

"Hi Gordon," she said to the balding man on the screen. "How is it going?"

"Dana? I'm fine thank you, but why are you calling? Didn't you take a couple of days off?"

"Yes, but I need a favour. Some creep called me and told to check my mail, it's probably nothing but could you see if you can trace the call?"

"It would be against regulations," Said the man. "But what the hell? I owe you, so I'll do it anyway."

"Thank you Gordon, you are the best."

"Don't you forget it," he answered smiling.

Shortly after the call ended Dana went to her computer, checked her mail and downloaded the attached file. "All right mystery man," she muttered to herself. "Let's what you sent me."

As the video played, she could feel her eyebrows rising all the way up to her hairline. It wasn't dynamite, but if it checked out it would deal a good blow to the criminal underworld. 'Why though? It's not because …' Dana looked the sender ID. ' … Arcee is a good Samaritan – no need for this charade if that was the case – and he or she is certainly not using this for blackmail.' She nodded to herself, her mind coming to the obvious solution: Someone wanted to "buy" something from her and sent this little morsel forward as a bait and sign of good will.

'Well,' She thought. 'If whoever this is, keeps delivering stuff as good as this, I don't think there will be many problems doing that.' She glanced at the mail; this Arcee wanted a reply and given her rank in the police department she was perfectly within her powers to establish a contact without immediate approval from her superiors.

She immediately began writing her response.

-*-

Azula entered an Extranet bar she had chosen at random, and sat in an empty seat. A few credits in hard currency granted her access to the machine and its connection. All these precautions seemed silly to her back at her house, but now that she was actually doing this she couldn't help but feel a bit nervous and thankful for the forethought.

Idly scratching her fake beard, she checked the mail account she made only for the reason of contacting the police officer and couldn't stop from smiling.

From: Siegfried
To: Arcee
Re: Interested?

Yes, what do you want.

'Soon Colin.' her smile changing into a feral grin. 'So very soon.'

-*-*-*-​

1 October 2170

Colin woke up at the sound of someone banging on a door. It was difficult to concentrate on the sound – or on anything else for that matter – he felt like the morning after a colossal drinking binge for some reason, but he only drank a couple of glasses before going … home? A flush of adrenaline helped him focus more, as he realized that this wasn't his home.

He jumped to his feet only to stagger a bit from the sudden movement, and leaned on the wall for support. It was then that he noticed the smell of smoke, something was burning. Looking up from down the stairs it quickly became obvious what was on fire.

The house he was in.

With a panic driven strength he leapt from the wall he was leaning on and ran towards what looked like was the main entrance, guided there by another set of louder knocks by the mysterious visitor. Colin slammed the door open and tried to run, heedless of the rather tall woman right on the doorstep. A few moments later his face was once again kissing the floor with no idea of how he got there.

"That's not the way to greet a lady you know?" spoke the woman. "You should learn some manners."

"The 'ous' … Fire." the new sudden impact with the planet did no favour to his headache and it had been difficult enough just to spit out those three words. The woman reappeared in his field of vision some time later with a grim expression on her face, hopefully the bitch broke a nail.

"I really hope you have a good lawyer kid, murder is not something that can be overlooked because of your young age."

What?

*-*​

Dana was annoyed. She went to this house on the word of her informant, 'Arcee', to acquire some new vital information on an old case, but so far it hasn't been a smooth deal like before: like e-mails or dead drops for more sensitive information. First it looked like the occupant was absent, then this strangely smelling young man almost ran her over and now apparently the house was on fire. A quick peek inside confirmed that and armed with the fire extinguisher she had in her car, she went inside to see if there was anyone else still stuck inside.

The fire didn't spread particularly far – it was more smoke than actual fire, with a bed being the biggest conflagration – so Dana was able to quickly extinguish it. It was only after the smoke from the fire extinguisher dissipated that the body could be seen. It was badly burned and thus impossible to recognize without an autopsy exam, but that was not the point. The point was that someone died and this milk run just became an incredibly complicated mess.

She went out again and found the boy … no. 'The young man' she told herself, still on the ground and massaging the temples only to look up and glare – or at least attempting to – when he heard her coming.

"I really hope you have a good lawyer kid, murder is not something that can be overlooked because of your young age." And he really was in a gigantic heap of trouble. Programs existed to help young people like him to get out of the overcrowded slums they lived in, the petty crimes committed during that first period of life basically washed away. But not for murder.

Dana waited patiently for him to work trough her words, she needed to see his reaction. In his state the reaction he would have could tell her a lot. And tell her it did: First his eyes widened so much she actually believed they would pop out, his mouth opened slightly and he became even more pale than he was.

"I in't u it! I in't u it!"

Well, that sounded like a denial and unless he was a grade A+ actor that was genuine surprise and rather understandable fear.

"That" Dana said. "Is something the investigation will determine."

*-*​

And apparently he really did it.

At least the report on the evidence found said that. His clothes were saturated with the same combustible used to start the fire, apparently he tripped on his way down the stairs – A faulty step on the stair was apparently responsible for that fortuitous accident – dropping the container with the flammable liquid he used, and knocking himself unconscious at the same time. 'The trauma interfering with the correct formation of the memories' Fancy words to say that what knocked him unconscious also gave him retrograde amnesia. Getting hit in the head again so soon also didn't help things.

End of the day? Between him squealing like a pig about every single criminal/gang he knew or heard of, the medically proven amnesia, and a decent lawyer he should be able to avoid the worst. Still it will not be a nice stroll in the park, especially for a teenager like him, but it surely was better than life imprisonment.

"You have mail"

'Who the hell send messages … '

From: Arcee
To: Siegfried

We need to meet.

'Damn straight we need to meet,' Was the angry thought going through Dana's mind as she typed the response.

"When?"

The ringing of her entryphone and the mail-notification system from her computer mixed themselves into one sound.

"Now."

Dana stared at the message displayed for a couple of seconds; the timing was either spot on – and very creepy – or a really incredible coincidence. She pushed the viewscreen button and the image of a teenager girl appeared on the monitor.

"Hello," the girl said. "I'm Arcee, we need to talk."

Let's upgrade from creepy to unnerving.

*-*​

"So" Dana passed some juice to her new guest – the only non alcoholic drink she had that wasn't coffee – while she took some coffee for herself. "We finally meet face to face."

"It was necessary," was Arcee's short reply.

"Really now?"

"Yes. I'm here to cash in the favour."

Dana hid her surprise by taking a sip. The nature of their relationship was based on a barter of some kind, 'Arcee' provided information – sometimes random, sometimes pertinent to a case – and in exchange of that she would get a favour. An anomaly as far as most informants were concerned, money – and sometimes more information – was the usual payment.

"Before we go anywhere near that." Dana said using her most serious tone. "There is something else we need to talk about."

Arcee – or whatever her real name was – simply looked back at her saying nothing.

'A real poker player this one.' Dana thought. 'And those golden eyes could be really unnerving to many other people.'

"The latest delivery turned out to be a bit more … problematic than usual. Care to explain why?"

"Did the man refuse to hand you over the package?" Said the girl frowning.

"He refused to be alive."

"Ah."

----​

Getting her "housemate" John Doe from his freezer had been a more difficult task than she thought. She had to be careful not to damage the body too much, or not even her plan to manipulate the fire to destroy all evidence of when he died would work, complicating everything way more than necessary.

----​

She had to give it to the girl, she hid her surprise quite well. Barely blinked at the revelation and if she wasn't paying attention she would have missed even that. "I hope you had nothing to do about that."

----​

She had already seen this Colin when she was hunting for dear old Jeremy. At the time – focused as she was on her quarry – she didn't pay him any mind beyond making a note about his presence. However now that she took the time to truly observe him, it was easy to spot the deference shown to him and the two bodyguards that followed him everywhere. No driver though.

A very poor decision.

With the aircar unattended putting a gps tracker on it was a child's play, allowing her to track and document all his stops. With the complete knowledge of his schedule, slipping him a date rape drug at the right moment – when he usually went back home – and abduct him while still under its influence was an even easier task.

----

"Of course not," answered Azula without missing a beat. "I had no reason to kill him."

'Does that mean that you would have done it if you had one?' Thought Dana, but chose to not express it.

"He was supposed to hand you over a memory core with some data concerning the activities of a gang: it went from hidden accounts, money laundering and other things like that, to personal records and E-mails. I commissioned its theft and he was the man that carried it out. If I were to venture a guess I'd say they killed him and retrieved the data or attempted to do so."

Dana didn't hide her frown at this. "How something like that would have helped with my case? It's a murder one, not … "

"It also contained correspondence pertaining a case you once worked on," interrupted Azula. "Data that would have proven the innocence of the victim. She was unaware of the red sand trafficking."

'Red sand trafficking, female, probably dead and happened not too long ago' Of the many cases she worked only an handful met the criteria, and of those only one did not fit the profile. "Did you know her?" Said Dana after a few seconds of contemplation.

"Saw her once or twice," Azula lied smoothly. "At one time I saw someone trying to get inside her car, but a couple of days later she denied anything was stolen from her when I asked. After the murder I dug a little and found out they hid the packages inside the vehicle and even had a copy of the key. What better courier than one that doesn't even know what they are actually doing?"

"Ingenious," Dana grunted. "If someone saw that, they would think 'thief' not drug running. Not for big packages though, probably only for local suppliers."

"That was my hypothesis too," nodded Azula. "Now if your curiosity is satisfied...?"

"Just one last thing, why this delivery was done differently from the others?"

"Not my choice," shrugged Azula. "I was given an expiration date from Mr. Doe, and I was not able to make it in time. I was out of the city for security reasons."

"Well, that should be everything. So, what is this famous favour of yours then?"

"I want out."

Dana looked quizzically at the young girl, that answer said everything and nothing at the same time. "You do know that programs like that already exist, right?"

"Yes, I know. But I want more than that, I want a blank slate with a new name and a new beginning. And more importantly, I want to join the System Alliance."

Dana's eyes narrowed at that, it didn't take genius to see the suspicion rise its head in her eyes. "Kid, if you have done something that bad … "

"Nothing of the sort," said Azula. "But my activities as your informant may have … no, I'm sure they have created many enemies. A new identity should be enough to throw off anyone wanting to find me, as I did not leave behind many loose ends."

"Understandable I guess," grumbled Dana. "Ok, you have a deal. I'll call a couple of people and see what I can do, but I can't do anything with the Alliance. You are on your own with them."

"Acceptable and … understandable."

"Before I start this," asked Dana. "Do you have any preferences for the new identity?"

"The name if possible. I want it to be Azula, Azula Shepard."

The older woman looked at her quizzically "Why Shepard? Isn't that the same fake name of the thief you hired?"

"Yes, I liked it. Why?"

"Nothing, just curiosity," Dana said. "I'll contact you as soon the paperwork is done. Until then stay safe Ms. Shepard."

"You can call me Azula," she said with small smile.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Excerpt taken from the personal files of Sgt. Max K. Hardberger.

… talented and she knows it. Normally I would be quite excited about it, but she likes to subtly rub her "superiority" everyone's faces. The fact that she can actually walk the talk, only makes the entire situation even more insufferable for the people she is platooned with. And if anyone manages to get ahead of her in any of the fields she took an interest in, you can bet your as… house that she will push herself even harder to catch up AND surpass him or her.

She probably thinks of herself as some kind of God's gift to mankind, but apparently God is not amused: I am here too, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve on how to deal with people like her. Fair is fair however: as talented and prideful as she is, she certainly does not like to rest on her laurels. Hell, she should rest more on her laurels!



Vetus System, SSV Montecassino 2176

"... What is wrong with you?!"

Azula could barely contain her smile. Everything was going according to plan. "They are waiting, waiting to see how our own squabble will end."

"What?!"

"Have you ever studied Earth's ancient history?" asked Azula. "The history of the Roman Empire to be precise."

"What that has to do with this … treason!?"

"The Praetorian Guard," she continued, seemingly ignoring the question. "Was supposed to be a force of loyal bodyguards protecting the Emperor, elite soldiers dedicated to their duty. However as time marched on, things changed; it reached a point when them and not the Senate – or anyone else for that matter – were the one deciding who would become Emperor. The throne was sold to the highest bidder by the Praetorian Guard like a common item."

Azula paused for a moment, seeing how everyone present paid close attention to her words. "What do you think it's going on here?" she continued. "Do you think you can match my price?" She reclined on her seat and steepled her fingers together. "Well?"

"Ok, now roll for intimidation," said the man she was talking to.

"With pleasure," a deft stroke on the haptic panel in front of her started the dice roller program, the eyes of everyone around the table – and even a couple of bystanders – were glued to the result screen.

"Damn," one of the players murmured when the dice rolls appeared on it. "Thirteen successes out of fifteen rolls."

"What can I say? The spirits favour me today," replied Azula with a hint of smugness, ignoring the few angry mutters that followed her statement.

"Okay, okay settle down," the game master said. "The secret police chief is obviously sweating and looks at you fearfully for a moment, before kneeling in front of you, 'You've beaten me at my own game,' he says."

"Don't flatter yourself," Azula answered, remaining in character. "You were never even a player."

"A fourth wall joke? Really? I … "

"Attention all hands, attention all hands," almost everyone in the mess room went silent as the loudspeakers activated. "We will reach Elysium in forty-five minutes. Those with permission to disembark must return to the ship within forty-eight hours," the silence was broken by the loud cheering, almost covering up the second part of the announcement.

"You are one of those able to leave the ship, right?" asked the game master. "Then go prepare, we can finish next time," he continued after her nod.

"Hey Shepard!" a female occupant of a nearby table called loudly. "You going to catch some birds down there?"

"I don't know," Azula replied over the raucous laugh the comment provoked from some of the crew members. "Are you going to stop being a myopic small-minded tainted spawn of a syphilitic swamp hog?"

Azula did not wait for the woman to finish puzzling out what she said, she had better things to do than pay attention to some racist moron. Like collecting what she needed to bring with her for her training excursion and renting a suitable vehicle.


Outskirts of Illyria.

Azula sat cross-legged on the snowy ground, slowly exhaling and inhaling as she meditated under the sun of the Elysium colony, her armour keeping the cold at bay. She still remembered the first time she traveled with a starship and landed on an alien planet with an alien sun: a faint sensation of something dimming when traveling and something returning as something slightly different when finally inside the new solar system.

Of course she did not notice the differences right away, but only with time and experience. Like a gourmet would not be able learn how to differentiate all the various flavours of a dish at the beginning of the career.

Azula snorted at the thought. Did she really just compare firebending to a dinner?

"Okay Azula, stop daydreaming and get back to work." Rising smoothly from her seating position she assumed the stance she was trying out and activated the omnitool's recorder.

"Lightning bending test number 147, I'm attempting to manipulate chi to the point of giving it a positive and negative polarity. In this test I am also adding a rotatory movement with both arms, as just keeping still and apart proved to be impossible; the hypothesis is that it may help with the polarization of the chi." Azula drew a deep breath, trying her best to calm her mind. "Commencing test."

Azula raised her arms parallel to the ground and started to move them in a circle, hoping to produce the lightning that would have finally marked her as a master firebender; but that hope was crushed again by the small explosion she produced, sending her sprawling on the ground.

"DAMN IT!"

She rose from ground into a sitting position, brushing some of the smaller rocks that hit her off the armour, and glared at the smoking crater she had just made. Exhaling slowly, she closed her eyes and began meditating, trying to ease her anger enough to make another attempt.

She knew a composed mind was necessary – after all, lightning was also called "the cold blooded fire". Unfortunately – without a master to teach her – she had to figure out all the other necessary steps on her own, sometimes using what she had learned here to fill in the gaps in her knowledge.

For example, she had gotten the idea of positive and negative chi from reading about natural lightning; and since firebending drew power from that and other natural phenomena, it seemed logical to apply the same concept to lightning bending. Her problem now was that she did not know how to properly do any of that, a difficult task that she was starting to find quite annoying.

Even the idea to move the arms in a circular motion had come from her research in the field of electric generation. The simplest generators were coils rotating inside a magnetic field, and it was her hope that the same concept could be applied to lightning bending.

A derisive chuckle escaped her. Here she was, using science to develop her – as the locals would call it – magical kung fu skills. If the situation wasn't so frustrating she could even have found it amusing.

"Okay, no more wool gathering Azula," she muttered. "Focus."

She took another deep breath and tried again, quelling her emotions, caging stray thoughts, progressively ignoring all the sounds around her and … there was something at the edge of her awareness; it was familiar and managed to set her on edge too. It wasn't a smell - a quick sniff confirming that – and it wasn't a sound exactly, it felt more like … a vibration. From the ground.

A very small regular tremor, nearly undetectable through the armour plating. A very familiar type of tremor too. She felt a similar one years back when she was training on some moon during a mock low-gravity battle: she was a member of the defender team, and during the exercise some obsolete ground-to-orbit guns fired a few times. While the moon was airless - making those guns eerily silent – she never forgot how the earth shook when those massive cannons fired. Now she was feeling that same sensation, even if it was fainter due to the distance.

The colony's defence guns were firing. Somebody was attacking the colony.

Quickly she ran back to her rented air car and turned on the radio. The one she had on her armour was too weak to receive anything, but the one on the car was powerful enough to … She stifled a curse as no matter how much she fiddled with the controls, she could hear only static. For the GTO guns to start firing it would mean that the Montecassino was either dead along with the orbital defences or retreating; which in the end meant the same thing as far as everyone on the planet was concerned.

Not only that, but this was a major colony. No way a random pirate raid could achieve this level of success, and she had only her knife with her to fight her way to a friendly unit.

"Just what any soldier needs fresh in the morning," she muttered as she opened up the car's survival gear box. "A pirate raid." She rummaged for bit - taking all the useful gear she could put on her person - and then climbed in the car. 'Hopefully,' she thought. 'They won't make landfall soon.'

-*-

'I should really learn to stop thinking things like that.' Azula thought as with a wild manoeuvre she dodged another burst of machine-gun fire from the gunship tailing her. Not a few minutes after she reached the city and tried to arrive at the closest police station - or anywhere people would begin organizing the defence, she wasn't that picky – a gunship appeared and tried to shoot her down. Her paranoia – should she call it that if she was right? - reacting immediately when something tickled at the edge of her perception, was the only reason she has been not riddled with bullets right then and there.

However she was still in a civilian car and her pursuer was still in a gunship, if she kept flying she was dead. The problem being that even if she stopped the gunship was still hot on her tail, and on foot she would be an easy target.

Right on cue the air car frame shook violently, and a myriad of red warning signals appeared on the holographic console. The quick cursory glance she gave it while wrestling her control back, revealed that while a lot of systems had been compromised it wasn't anything immediately vital. She still had full mobility and could still buy some time to find a way to escape.

But how? She could not exactly … An idea flashed in her mind. Something crazy, but probably crazy enough to work. She hastily located a good enough target and dived against the front of the building.

-*-*-

"HOLY SHIT! Did you see that?!" A human in rather colourful armour shouted.

"No, Sam. I did not," sarcastically answered the gravely voice of a batarian.

"Aw man. How could you have missed that? You have four eyes! And I'm not talking about glasses."

The batarian simply glared at the human with all his four eyes, trying with all his might to burn a few holes through the helmet and wipe that smug expression he knew was there. The human enjoyed getting a rise out of him way too much for his tastes.

"Satil Three, picking anything on the scanners?" Kell asked the pilot on the radio, cutting off the brewing fight.

"Nothing sarge," the voice of the pilot crackled on the radio. "No active eezo and the fires from the crash are playing merry hell on the thermal. Guess you have to do this the old fashioned way."

"Perfect," muttered Kell. "This is getting better and better," she allowed herself an annoyed sigh before starting to address her soldiers. "Okay, listen up! Satil Three scanners can't pinpoint where the target is, so this is going to be done manually. Same as before: you two," she pointed her finger at Ethan and Malius. "Stay on the lower floors, make sure the target does not try to slip away. ," her flanges opened up a bit in the turian version of a grin as she unfolded a shotgun. "We are going hunting."

"What? Why boss? Dude's dead. No way he survived that crash," a distressingly familiar voice spoke, standing out among the chorus of acknowledgements.

"Because I told you so, because Marlok said to take out and then investigate anything out of the ordinary, because if you don't I'll tie you to the gunship and see what breaks first: your head or the buildings," the turian looked straight at the human, daring him to do anything but obey. "You are still not checking your equipment."

"Yes Kell ma'am," muttered the cowed Sam.

"We are dropping in two," the squad leader continued, without missing a beat. "Ethan, Malius, you two cover the lower floors. Sam, Balram you two are with me. I didn't like the way the crash happened, so keep your eyes open and don't do anything stupid."

The gunship circled around the ruined building - searching for a good landing spot – before finally settling on a small patch of road not entirely covered in debris, and begun hovering just slightly above ground. Right on cue, five armoured figures jumped down from the crew compartment and started running towards the building; at the same time the gunship gunned it's engines and took off again, disappearing behind it before they even reached the entrance.

Without losing any more time the pirates split up, and started quietly climbing the stairs. "So, why a 'he'?"

The other two froze at the sound of that voice echoing down the empty corridor and both turned to stare incredulously at the human. "What? What did I say?"

Stifling a curse the turian ignored the human. "Balram . Rearguard position," she ignored the grunt of acknowledgement from the batarian and whirled to face Sam. "And you," she said injecting as much loathing and venom as she could in that word. "I want silent and in the middle. Am. I. Clear?" No way she was going to have this guy guarding their six.

"Yes boss," he mulishly acknowledged. "As you say." Refraining from commenting about how long that would last, Kell resumed her march. And indeed just a couple of minutes later he spoke again. "Boss."

Having just enough of him, she turned around ready to either shoot him and be done with it or go through with her promise of tying him up to the gunship. Then she noticed that Barlam wasn't there with them.

Sam was already scanning the corridor for any sign of the Batarian or of the enemy, and Kell joined him a moment later. "Sam, move ahead to the corner," she whispered. "I'll cover you," Sam nodded and cautiously started moving ahead, "Barlam!" he called out. "Come on buddy, this is not the time for this shit."

Kell barely had the time to hear the faint sound of boots behind her before something hard smashed its way through her head and into her brain; her shotgun immediately falling off her limp hands.

Sam heard the sound of the weapon falling on the pavement ,and turned back just in time to see someone wearing an Alliance armour kicking Kell's body towards him. Acting on instinct and desperation, he swung his rifle, with all the strength he could put into the blow. Luckily for him Kell wasn't as heavy as she may have appeared, and the body was even slightly thrown back from the force of the impact.

That move delayed his attacker just long enough for him to get some breathing room; allowing him to see a strangely shaped knife going for his throat. Adrenaline pumping, Sam grinned savagely under the helmet and caught the wrist holding the knife and pulled it sideways, creating an opening big enough for him to slam rifle's muzzle at the gut of the soldier.

Not wasting any time he pulled the trigger; however what came next however was not the sweet sound of bullets tearing through flesh and armour alike, but the warning chime of an overheated heat sink. Caught by surprise by the mechanical failure, he instinctively glanced down at his weapon, taking his eyes off his opponent for an instant. An instant he could not afford to lose.

Before he could realize his mistake, with a deft movement of the hand the Alliance soldier placed the curved blade on his wrist and yanked down. The extremely sharp blade easily slicing through armour and the flesh beneath; the synthetic flexible material covering the joint simply too thin and too weak to stand up against it.

Sam barely had time to realize he just lost his hand before the knife rose up and slammed through his helmet and tongue. The sheer force behind the blow lifting him up before being slammed down on the floor with a resounding crash, ending him.

*-*

Azula stifled a grunt of pain as she rose up after dislodging the knife from the pirate's head. Her unusual parking manoeuvre had been more … problematic than expected, but quite within her tolerance level. Plus she still had two more targets inside the building that needed to be taken out. 'Quickly too,' she thought as she heard the gunship engines; it would not be long before them or the gunship would attempt to contact the group she just killed.

Thankfully they were kind enough to bring her more suitable tools for the job. The rifle was a goner unfortunately; in her haste to jam it, she had used way too much power and severely damaged the cooling system. Sure, It would have been of limited use against the gunship, but it was still better than a knife and would have given her more options. Luckily the turian's weapon suffered no such problem.

Pushing any further thought about 'What ifs' at the back of her mind, she moved down the stairs; and in a minute she was looking at the backs of two very bored, very distracted pirates. Not one to look too hard a gift horse in the mouth, Azula quietly waited for the gunship to come back before running towards one of the guards and pressing the muzzle against his head before firing.

The other guard managed to turn and raise her his weapon halfway to his target, when Azula kicked it away from her and pinned it to his thigh near the hip. Taking advantage of the situation, Azula used his leg as a pedestal to propel herself up into a backflip and knee the pirate in his face.

Out of balance and stunned the pirate fell, and Azula wasted no time in shooting him as fast as she could pull the trigger. The first and second shot were blocked by the shield; the third shattered them and the fourth penetrated his armour, making him scream and curse from the pain before another shot ended his suffering.

Azula breathed out loudly, the air shimmering from the heat she absorbed from the gun and was expelling. 'Ok,' she thought sarcastically. 'Now the next easy part: bring down a gunship without using heavy weapons.'

She was running out of time and she knew it. It wouldn't be long before the pilot realized nobody could answer him anymore and decided to run or bring the whole building down on her head. And considering how her luck was going, it was probably the latter.

Poking her head out of cover, she examined the gunship as it made another passage around the building, trying to find a weakspot she could exploit. 'A bullet right up the engines?' she considered. 'No, the bullet would melt from … the heat.' If she wasn't already hurting everywhere, Azula would have seriously considered slapping herself for being so dense.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on feeling all the sources of heat near her; eliminating each source one by one until only one pair remained. A pair that was circling around her position. She took hold of one and poured as much power as she could into it; making it brighter and more powerful.

Right at the same time, the pilot of the gunship was suddenly thrown in a fight for his life. The sudden boost in one of the engines was throwing him off course and almost turned the vehicle upside down. His attempts to compensate for this however, started working against him when suddenly the other engine went into overdrive instead.

Unable to adjust to the change in time, the vehicle slammed against the ground with a thunderous crash. The sound of it made Azula smile as she got up and hurried to reach the downed gunship.

Miraculously it landed - for a certain definition of it at least - somewhat upright. A relief for Azula as she wanted all the information contained in the computers and she wanted them fast.

Moving cautiously she reached for the emergency canopy release. And as soon as the canopy was blown off, she wasted no time in shooting the pilot's head off with her shotgun. No sense in checking the vitals and possibly exposing herself to an enemy while doing it. Now it was time to gather some Intel.

Accessing the data within was rather easy, unfortunately it did not say much. Only that they were supposed to reach a nearby subway station and shoot down anything flying - or generally moving out in the open - as they made their way there. 'Terror tactics,' Azula thought. 'Or trying to shut down any attempt to regroup and re-organize.'

Either way it shed new light on the situation. This gunship was designated "Satil Three," implying that at least two more where around. And despite her advantage she did not want to have a repeat encounter with one; but with flying out of the question, she did not have many other viable options. As skilled as she was, she could not have a significant impact defending the colony by fighting alone and without coordinating with others.

As she mulled over this, her eyes kept going towards the subway station's coordinates. Discovering where they operated from was both very useful information and another crazy idea, but it worked for her once; why not one more time?

*-*

The subway station was not very far from the gunship wreck; half an hour going at a walking pace at best, and she would be going faster than that. Decision taken and not wanting to waste any more time, Azula started moving towards the subway station; forgoing trying to hotwire a car to avoid further trouble with gunship patrols.

Just to be sure however she would stop regularly along the way, and try to pinpoint their location through the engines' heat. Of course other fires were going on, inevitable with so many small battles raging all around her, but she was confident she could spot the difference.

The journey have been both nerve-wracking and eerily calm. In the distance Azula could clearly hear continuous gunfire, yet here nothing and no one could be found. It was lucky, and she had stopped believing she could have lucky breaks such as this.

Paranoia rising, Azula decided to make one last stop before scouting up the security around the gathering point. Choosing a place out of immediate sight, she crouched and tried once again to pinpoint the heat sources of a gunship. This time something pinged on her sense, Several gunship engines and something bigger and stronger than those. And getting closer to her position too; she did not have much time.

Barely refraining from cursing loudly, Azula ran inside one of the abandoned building. Whatever it was it felt like a convoy of some sorts, and she would bet half of her remarkable amount of savings that it had a far tighter security that the patrol she took out.

With no time to properly get away, Azula took a snap and risky decision: moving she quickly deactivated all active eezo cores and then started focusing on her own body temperature; lowering it, taking the heat away from the surface and focusing it inwards. Her body was sending all kinds of danger signals - feeling feverish and freezing at the same time - but her mind, her will, was nearly completely absorbed by the task of not making the illusion of a corpse a reality.

The convoy went past her position not even a minute later, two gunships scanning the buildings and the road ahead and another one hovering protectively over a truck with the logo of a local company on the sides. Immediately Azula stopped lowering her body temperature, allowing the heat to flow back and fight the numbness she was feeling.

Forcing her body to move she rose; at first a bit unsteadily on her feet, but then she began moving around and soon the numbness reached tolerable levels. Not wasting any more time and wanting to take advantage of the attention the convoy arrival would attract, Azula ignored the protests of her body and double timed towards the roof of a nearby building overlooking the city square where the subway station was.

-*-

The plastic of the binoculars melted slightly in her hand as she watched what was happening in the small city square below. Dozens of people - some still being offloaded from the truck - had been rounded up like cattle by the pirates, whom had started a quick selection process. Every once in a while they picked one and shot him or her right where he or she stood.

They were slavers - probably Batarians or Batarian backed – making them the lowest form of scum currently available in the galaxy. She had access to more information than what was commonly available on the news, and knew what happened on colonies their kind raided without filters. The atrocities she saw on those files offended both her practical and her more moral side.

'If I am ever captured,' she swore to herself. 'I'll fry my brain to a crisp.'

Pushing those thoughts away, Azula kept scouting the rendezvous point trying to spot a weak spot in their defenses; something she could use to slip past their perimeter. Unfortunately there were too many sentries backed by drones around, however there were some subway grates nearby. Given how heavy the defenses were on the surface, hopefully the underground would not be as heavily guarded.

After making her way back to street level, she opened a subway grate and dropped down onto the rails below. Thankfully - as protocol dictated – no civilian train traffic was allowed during an emergency. The idea behind it said the subway system should be used by the military – or others emergency services – to provide quick transportation of whatever was needed, be it supplies or manpower, without civilians getting in the way.

Naturally such level of disorganization was never taken into consideration, and now the very system that was supposed to help protect the city and it's citizens was being used against them.

No alarm sounded as she hit the floor, no guard shouting or shooting. Her hunch about the level of security below the surface proved correct, as no slaver was sighted. 'They probably think nobody in their right mind would willingly put themselves in a narrow tunnel with an incoming train,' thought Azula.

With no guard on sight, Azula moved towards the station proper; using the low ground to cover her approach. When she reached the station, the slavers where already loading people inside a train. Keeping close to the curb and avoiding the few bodies dumped between the rails, she went near the rear bumper and waited patiently for the group to start the train.

*-*

The voyage was thankfully a short one, and right before the train entered the station she released her hold on the bumper and let herself drop on the ground. 'Must do that again,' thought Azula as she winced. 'It was fun,' she took a few moments to rest her arms, but then she head loud voices coming from the station.

Forcing herself up, she cautiously walked towards the station using the curb again as cover. Taking a calculated risk, she peeked above the platform to have a better idea of the situation and of her enemies.

"Derek, you are in charge of dealing with the equipment!" yelled a batarian - probably the squad leader - at a short human.

"Sure thing boss," the human readily responded, waiting to see the back of the obviously furious batarian disappear from view before turning around and glare at a turian standing near the subway car's doors.

"Augustus! You deal with the equipment!" he brusquely ordered the other slaver.

"What?!" the obviously displeased turian stiffened in surprise and anger. "Tolak ordered you … "

"No, what he did was putting me in charge and I decided to give you the responsibility," the human interrupted. "So now you have three choices: Go whine about it to Tolak, whine about it to my gun, or just do it." His hand moved up to his hip where a collapsed pistol was magnetically attached. "So, what it will be?"

After a long tense moment, the turian deflated and muttered a barely audible "Fine."

"I knew you would do the smart thing." Derek said as he moved the hand away from his pistol. "Good boy!" his parting shot leaving the turian shaking with rage.

"Good boy!?" the turian hissed seething with anger. "I'll show you how 'good' I am. Let's see how your gun you will fare against a few dozens drones!"

That instantly attracted Azula's attention, maybe she should wait a couple of minutes instead of heading out outside. She waited until he was inside the subway car before climbing up and following the furious turian; he walked down a couple of wagons and then finally reached one where rows of drones – an old Alliance model, probably sold as surplus – were stowed.

The turian brought up his omnitool and started furiously tapping on it. "How about a small modification to the IFF program? HOW WOULD YO … "

Whatever point he was trying to make against his team-mate, it was interrupted by Azula's hand covering his mouth. Taken by complete surprise he offered no initial resistance; then a continuous stream of fire going entered his mouth and went down his neck, annihilating his vocal cords and part of the spinal column. Azula was still holding him so he could not fall on the ground - and thus making a racket – when he went still and started suffocating.

"Die in agony," Azula whispered as she gently she lowered the turian on the floor and started working on his still active omnitool, ignoring his wheezing attempts to breathe. She immediately began transferring the running program to control and manipulate the drones systems to her own, and used it to tweak their IFF and set a timer for their activation.

Doing that took very little time, and then she ordered for her "update" to be spread among the other units. Satisfied with her work Azula dragged the turian out and threw the body under the train. No need to raise the alarm earlier than necessary after all.

That job done, she ventured forward. There was still a slaver's camp to further sabotage.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Part 5: Surprise Motherfucka! Edition

-*-

It seemed that not a single guard was anywhere near the subway exit. As she cautiously moved up the stairs, Azula could hear a lot of screaming and crying coming from outside. She wondered if the guard were busy with an attempted revolt, but when she finally poked her head above the concrete railing the reasons of their sloppiness became clear.

Apparently nobody wanted to miss the 'spectacle' currently occurring in the middle of the street: the captives had been herded in several small groups, the slavers then disrobed the prisoners and started putting them through a rather accurate examination; all this while their 'esteemed' colleagues mocked the examinees.

A few each group did not pass the inspection, and was promptly executed by the examiner; their bodies then dragged away by a couple of guards and thrown into a growing pile, right next to some slavers armed with flamethrowers.

But what had caught most of Azula's attention was the cruiser sized ship parked near the street, and above a large amount of rubble. It looked like a civilian model retrofitted to house military systems; the additional armor plates covering the most vulnerable parts like what should be the engineering section, and the military grade turreted GARDIAN lasers dotting the hull clearly gave that away.

Not something that would make it a threat for any ship in any standing fleet, but a liner or a merchant ship would be easy prey for it. Civilian design or not however, it was a fortress as far as lonely old her was concerned.

The loading ramp was cluttered with empty cages normally used to hold slaves, but her trained eyes easily spotted the armed turrets mounted inside the cargo bay, and the guards keeping a close eye on the prisoners from the ramp; suicides or last ditch attempts to flee would severely cut into the profit after all.

Using the rubble littering the area as cover, and the jeers and the catcalls made by the spectators to mask the sound of her movements; Azula started circling the ship. If no other entry point was available, the only option left to her would be retreating to look for help.

Thankfully between being in the middle of their own temporary base and the debris making the terrain difficult to traverse even on foot, surveillance was rare and mostly cursory. Still, her problem remained: no other entrances existed beyond the loading ramp. Not willing to push her luck more than she already had, she started to climb a knocked over building in order to exfiltrate from the area.

Just as she reached the top however, the new perspective showed her a possible weak point: there was an airlock roughly on the same level as she was now. It was quite some distance away, normally too far for anyone to reach it but it was not a problem. She had a trick up her sleeve that she could use and wanted to try for quite some time.

Azula crouched to keep a lower profile as she considered the situation. Since the length of the jump was not a problem, what might give her trouble would be the airlock door and the sloped hull. If the door had been upgraded to military standards, getting in would simply take too much time to be feasible. Before she should worry about that however, she would need to find a way to anchor herself on the hull long enough to do the job.

Being able to get past the airlock would be quite useless if she fell immediately after landing on the hull. "Oh, what I would give for an earthbender right now," she muttered to herself. A staircase or a fortification a stomp of the foot away? Sold. Before her mind could further wander off more however, her eyes suddenly widened as the solution just made itself known.

"Why is it that the most obvious solutions," she wondered aloud, "are always the most difficult to reach?"

She took a moment to gather her power, then a huge plume of flames erupted from her feet and hands propelling her towards the hull of the pirate ship. Towards the end of her trajectory she cut off the flames and brought her legs forward so that she would land feet first.

Her aim was true, managing to land on the ship right on target; but a second after that, she immediately started to slide down. A quick movement of her hand however, activated the magnetic locks on her boots; the soles immediately felt as if they were glued to the hull, and stopped her descent.

Normally that system should be used only during EVA operations, just outside the hull of a spaceship while in – rather obviously – space; even so they offered just enough traction to spare her a potentially nasty fall.

Azula remained immobile for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if the spectacle she had made was detected; and as soon it was clear that nobody heard or saw anything, she started working on the airlock door.

The systems to close or open the door were easy to interface with, and immediately she started taking a look at the programming. She did not have the time to do an accurate scan, but it looked like a bad news/good news situation: bypassing the sensors monitoring the door and the airlock itself seemed like a relatively simple work to do, but there was an hard wired alarm linked to the opening or closing of the external airlock door.

Azula frowned as she considered her options: she could try to find a way to override the alarm, but it would take time and time was not something she had in abundance. Or she could try and scavenge something able to blow a hole in the door. A plan that naturally had problems all of its own.

She had another option really, but if the door had been reinforced she would need to either abandon the whole thing or risk it with the override. 'What the hell,' she thought. 'It's not like it is going to cost me anything if I try after all.'

Carefully moving so she would not slip, Azula leaned forward and positioned her finger above the door. She took a deep breath; muttered a prayer, and concentrated her power in the smallest area possible right on the tip of the hovering digit.

The results were immediate and impressive, as the metal heated up and a clear crevice started to appear as she moved her hand; by some small miracle, the metal of the door was not reinforced. It was still the same lower quality alloy and the same thickness normally found on civilian vessels.

Energized by this small victory, it took only a minute to cut a hole big enough for her to get trough and land inside the airlock itself. With her improvised bypasses holding, Azula wasted no time getting inside the ship and started heading towards the ship's bridge.

-*-

It was most fortunate that nearly all civilian ships were roughly similar in design - barring a few minor differences changing from race to race – as it allowed Azula to reach the bridge door – a big and heavily armored one at that - quickly and without encountering the rare of crewman still on board.

'This is it,' she thought. 'This is where I win or where I miserably lose,' recalling her training, she took a few deep breaths, and focused. 'Let's make it a win,' with a smirk on her face she opened the door ready for everything.

In an instant she took notice of everyone's position in the room; one right in front of her 'Batarian, male. Armor,' - her mind automatically categorizing each target - two near a console 'Human, male, standing. Asari, biotic, sitting. No armor both,' and the last one a bit farther away in the pilot's seat 'Turian, female. No armor.'

Before anyone could react to the sound of the door opening, Azula leapt forward and buried her knife in the head of the batarian. The two near the console barely had the time to turn – their eyes widening in fear and surprise – before she ran forward beyond the still falling Batarian. A brief glance to make sure nothing important was behind her mark and then fired her shotgun 'Biotic priority target,' set to maximum bullet velocity.

Most of the blast hit the head of the Asari, splattering it all over the console she was previously hunched over. The rest hit the side of the human who bent over in pain, thus giving Azula enough time to reach him and smack the pirate with the shotgun's handle on the nose; sending it and some bone fragments directly in the brain with a satisfying crunch.

The sound of gunshots brought her attention to the last enemy remaining, currently busy with pressing the trigger as fast as she could. Letting her shield tank the few bullets that were accurate enough to hit her, she turned the shotgun against the pilot and instinctively almost pulled the trigger.

The alien was standing in the cockpit however, and all around her where present instruments Azula wanted intact. With her shield still able to withstand a couple more bullets, she smoothly continued her motion by raising the shotgun above her head; took aim, and threw the shotgun at the turian's face with as much strength as she could put in the launch.

Taken by surprise and still in a panic the alien did not react in time, and the weapon ended up hitting her face mid-barrel; even drawing blood. The pilot felt the hit and flinched from the pain, giving Azula time to arrive within arm's length. Moving too fast for the stunned and panicking pirate, Azula first grabbed the wrist where the turian was holding the gun – keeping it away from her body – while at the same itme her other arm went under the alien's crook of the elbow, until she was pushing her hand against the pilot's shoulder.

Taking advantage of the situation Azula slammed the pirate against the wall, stunning her, and applied even more pressure on the alien's arm holding the gun. Without an hardsuit and with Azula using her own limb as fulcrum, the bones in the turian's forearm broke; leaving Azula free to grab the gun and executing the pilot by shooting her at point blank range several times.

With the bridge free of enemies, she clasped the pistol to her side and wasted no time running back to the door and locking it. No security measure stopped her from doing it; in fact those very measures now were working against the slavers, as the bridge door looked specifically made to keep people out if locked.

'That,' Azula thought. 'Should keep them busy for a while,' Moving among the various control consoles, she examined and discovered - to her malicious joy - that not a single one of them was locked; all systems were hers to play with.

The first thing she did as she sat down, was connect with the drones she sabotaged and activate them prematurely. She watched them on the screen for a little bit, as they rushed out the subway and started massacring the surprised pirates. She would have loved to see those vermin die like they deserved, but she had other problems she needed to deal with first.

While the drones created chaos among the slavers outside, she turned her attention to the ones still inside the ship. One security measure - among the others she discovered - was the ability to raise and lower the gravity in various areas of the ship; that - along with the internal sensors - made it unbelievably easy for her to literally crush like bugs the few slavers left on board, leaving them unable to breath, let alone stand, right where they fell.

With the most urgent threat taken care of she once again turned her attention to the outside, where an apparent free for all was going on. A few more slavers were dead - probably too slow to duck into cover after the first few moments of surprise - but what caught Azula's interest were not the slavers or the drones. It was the prisoners.

More than a few were shooting at the slavers, using weapons taken from the dead ones to exact bloody revenge. And for each prisoner that fell, another took it's place, while the pirates numbers kept dwindling. It was a magnificent show of either hatred or courage - Azula cared not which - and letting someone like that die felt like a huge waste to her.

She ran to the weapons control console and powered up the GARDIAN lasers, setting them at the lowest output possible. She then designated the pirates as enemies, the prisoners as friends and allowed the targeting computer do its job.

Bolts of energy started raining down on the slavers outside; cutting them down where they stood or driving them out of cover, where the drones and the prisoners riddled them with bullets. With nowhere to go, the battle was over in a minute or so.

Satisfied with her work, Azula went to the door and unlocked it. With that many determined fighters on her side and the ship hers to command, there was a lot she could accomplish in this battle now. The faintly blue glowing fist hitting her square in the helmet faceplate, and sending her flying certainly came as a surprise to her.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Part 6 - Meh, I can take him

Batarian biotics are a rarity outside the Hegemony. It is said that you could spend an entire lifetime travelling trough the Terminus Systems, and never meet one. This is because in the Hegemony every pregnancy within - and around - areas with high chances of eezo exposure, is strictly controlled. Because of that, biotic children very rarely happen to escape notice.

Some fall trough the cracks that every bureaucracy of that size has; or a family unwilling to give up their child is able to successfully bribe the doctor performing the examination. Even then many of the lucky ones simply avoid using their talents - unless backed by powerful individuals or organizations – out of fear.

In the Terminus Systems many tales go around by word of mouth, from the most outrageous to the most plausible. This one is generally considered to fall roughly on the middle, and speaks of how the Hegemony hunted down any "rogue" batarian biotics, sometimes even offering bounties for turning one in.

Between the Hegemony's reputation and the fear of abduction, all free batarian biotics – outside and within the influence of their homeworld - become very cautious with the use of their abilities. It was not exactly a secret that the Hegemony was very jealous of their stock of biotics, and was always looking for new recruits.

Torval was one of those exceptions, born in an agricultural colony with little oversight. When he reached adulthood he left for the Terminus, and there he managed to find a patron powerful enough to shield him from would be hunters. Good thing he did too, as just a few months after joining Tolak's crew, he was called to his office. There he found his boss and three bound and gagged batarians.

Tolak told him then that those three were part of a squad sent to capture him, and drag him back to the Hegemony for 're-education'. He remembers his boss giving him a knife and a gun, then telling him that now their fate was in his hands instead. Torval could still hear him saying. "Cut them free or not. It is your choice and your right."

It was the easiest decision he ever made.

Tolak granted him security, freedom and even revenge for living so long in fear. And because of that his loyalty to the man in charge was absolute, and unwavering. And that same loyalty turned him into Tolak's right hand man, the one he trusted the most to lead and supervise when he was absent.

When the attack came he was in the brig - taking care of a recruit that went too far with the new cargo - while Tolak went to the bridge to deal with a missing gunship problem. As he was working on the recruit he heard what he thought were gunshots coming from the inside of he ship, and went to investigate keeping his biotics at the ready. When the gravity was suddenly raised his readiness and reflexes were what saved his life.

He counteracted the artificially generated push of gravity, with his own manipulation of the mass effect fields; sending him on his knees from the strain, but still breathing and alive. This went on for what felt like an agonizing long time, until - right when he thought he could no longer keep up – the pressure disappeared.

He dropped on the floor panting, his whole body trembling as if he had just completed the most grueling physical activity ever. Trying to gulp in air like a starving man does with food, he removed his helmet as if it was suffocating him and remained on the floor - breathing heavily - waiting for the trembling to reach a manageable level. While he laid there resting his body, his mind went to work; thinking about what the hell just happened and how it could have happened.

Torval was a normal batarian, not a genius or particularly gifted but not stupid either. He did not take long to make the connection and reach the obvious conclusion: someone was playing around with the security systems on the bridge. The realization hit him like a ten ton hammer, sending a flush of much needed energy through his body: An enemy made it to the ship's bridge!

Still a bit unsteady on his feet, Torval rose up and started making his way to that critical part of the ship, his stride started getting more and more sure as he went along, until he finally was in front of the locked door, confirming his worst fears. The bridge was locked, and somebody - not of the crew - was using the ship's system against them.

More importantly, Tolak was dead.

Rage filled his being as the notion finally sunk in, a faint blue aura appearing around him as he clenched his fists. He had never wanted someone dead this much, feeling an all encompassing fury that threatened to overrun his sanity and turn him into a berseker.

And then the door opened revealing a human female clad in an Alliance armor. His rage gave him speed, and surprise did the rest. His fist - faintly enhanced by his still recovering biotics - connected squarely with the ta'far's helmeted face.

-*-​

The hit sent Azula crashing with her back against the same console where she had killed the batarian, and only her instincts allowed her to narrowly dodge a second punch to the head. Doing that however prevented her from avoiding the knee going for her belly, hitting her with explosive force and making her very short on breath as she folded around the offending limb.

Taking advantage of the position she grabbed both his attacker's legs, then lifted the batarian while ignoring the blows raining on her back and ran towards the wall. The impact was strong enough to crush the batarian's guts between the wall and her shoulder, eliciting a satisfying grunt of pain from her enemy. An instant later Azula slammed her head on the chin of the batarian, the blow forceful enough to make his head bounce off the wall.

Using the breathing space she had just gained, Azula momentarily disengaged to assess the situation. The first thing she noticed was that her helmet visor was cracked due to the first blow, and it was impairing her vision. The second was the batarian, carrying a weapon on his back and wearing light blue armor. 'Probably the origin of that,' she thought, remembering something blue around his fist.

All that took less than second and she was already running out of time, with the batarian mostly recovered. Using the few precious moments she had left, Azula jumped back again and pressed the helmet's quick release button, just in time to use the ruined headgear as shield, holding it in both hands to parry the incoming blows. The tactic working quite well until a particularly savage kick wrenched it out of her hand.

The time it bought however had been invaluable, as it allowed Azula to study her opponent and change her tactics accordingly. He was strong, his hits powerful, but he was wild, enraged. Remaining on the defensive with dodges and evasions, giving him the illusion of victory as he tired more and more was the best course of action. And if he started to slow down, she would try to provoke him with some rapid counterattacks.

A punch was deflected and a quick jab to the unarmored armpit left her opponent snarling. One of his kicks was turned into a stumble, allowing her to hit him on the jaw again. She feigned a misstep, so he would attack and leave himself open to a punch on the groin.

It was not long since the start of this dance, that she noticed her opponent no longer responding to her taunting attacks with the same speed; his stance and attacks getting more and more sloppy. Feeling victory close, she tried to psych him out into making another mistake: she allowed a smirk to appear on her face – mocking him - and tried to project as much smugness as she could.

The ploy seemed to work, as the batarian started to literally vibrate with rage. Then a fist, clearly glowing blue, streaked towards her face at incredible speed. Surprised as she was with this unexpected development, Azula managed to narrowly dodge the wild haymaker; it passing so close that she even felt the air displaced by the blow on her skin.

Now however, with him so exposed and unbalanced, she felt it was her best chance to deal the finishing blow. Committed to the attack, she aimed for the undefended flank and stepped inside his guard. She did not have time to react as the hunched shoulder of the batarian rammed her straight in the face. The distance was not that big - so the power behind he hit was not as much as it could have been - however it was still enough to break her nose and force her to instinctively jump back.

She was not a stranger to physical pain, and a broken nose was the least of the injuries one could receive during almost any active career; be it training or real action. Still she could not stop herself from being dazed for a moment, as she mentally pushed the pain to the back of her head.

Time however is a luxury in any fight, and this one was no exception. The glowing fist she dodged started coming back as a backhand. And when she noticed, there was no way she could avoid it in time.

Hoping to minimize the damage she raised her shoulders, covered her head with her arm and tried to lean to the side, attempting to turn it into a glancing blow as much as possible.

When the hand hit, she could feel something in her shoulder giving and then breaking under the blow; then she was airborne again. Pain still had yet to make itself known, and she used those few feeling-free moments to twist mid-air and not land on the floor like a sack of potatoes.

She managed to avoid hitting the floor with her broken shoulder, and took advantage of her momentum to slide on the floor and rise into a semi-standing position; right next the turian's body. Just in time to see a Kishock harpoon gun unfolded and aimed straight at her.

Panic swelling and with no chance to dodge, Azula turned to firebending as a last ditch effort to defend herself. In an heartbeat years of training and drills took over, allowing her to raise her arm in a fast, smooth action and unleash a torrent of fire aimed to the batarian's head.

Whatever the batarian was expecting, a plume of azure flames erupting from Azula's hand was certainly not among them. Surprised as he was however, he was not without combat experience himself and an attack was an attack, regardless of the form it could take. He saw the arm rising fast, and a mix of reflexes and instincts made him pull the trigger a moment before fire erupted from the human's fist.

The jet of fire enveloped his head – making him breath in some of it because of the sudden pain - and charred his face. Blind, on fire, and suffocating, Torval stumbled back and flailed around in pain; fruitlessly trying to save himself. A few seconds later he finally fell down and moved no more.

The pirate's aim however, was true: the spike the rifle spewed out hit Azula's hand dead on – deviating and tearing off a couple of fingers on the way – went through her shield and armor, and then buried itself in her guts.

The force of the impact threw Azula back - making her stumble and fall - and only a chair behind her spared her from of an unceremonious landing on the floor. The impact jostled the spike, finally opening the mental floodgates holding back the pain of all her injuries.

Unable to stop herself Azula screamed and writhed on the chair, as if she was trying to escape the torment she was in. Gradually however – with the adrenaline starting to push everything back – she regained some control over herself; enough for her to take stock of her wounds and improvise something to keep herself alive.

Grabbing the spike with her still functioning hand, she mentally prepared herself for what was to come and started counting to three. Then - with a powerful exertion of her will - ripped away a good deal of heat from the harpoon-like object and particularly around the hole it had made.

A circle of ice instantly appeared around the hole in the armor, fixing the projectile in place. Gasping with pain filled breaths, she waited a few moments to recover before opening a particular compartment in the armor. She grabbed the three small medigel injectors stored there, then clenched her teeth and administered one near the spike; one on the fractured shoulder and the last one on the neck.

Deed done, she dropped the last syringe on the floor and relaxed on the chair, as the painkillers integrated within the medigel started to do their work. Indeed a few seconds later Azula let out a breath of relief, as she could feel the pain ebbing away until it reached a far more manageable level.

Turning the seat around - careful not to further upset any of her injuries – she sluggishly activated the haptic interface, and worked to slave all the ship systems to the one she was in front of. Thankfully the operation was completed with minimal fuss, as keeping her focus was taking nearly everything she had.

Immediately she started using the rerouted communication console to look for Alliance frequencies, she needed a medic and needed one now. She was drowsily checking something tagged as TacNet before her vision went black and slumped on the seat.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Part 7

==

The first thing she noticed when she woke up, was the relatively lack of pain. What previously was an all-encompassing presence in her mind - making concentrating arduous – now it was dull enough to… to… 'Fuck, it's still the most pain I ever have been in!' she thought. Still, it couldn't be the work of simple medigel.

The second thing she noticed were the voices, maybe the Alliance found her and administered first aid? The possibility of pirates helping her out of the goodness of their hearts was incredibly unlikely after all.

"…wake…"

Nope, not the Alliance, that sounded a lot more like a turian voice. The odd reverberation in their voices always gave them away. 'Wait,' she thought. 'If they are talking about me I should probably listen.'

"With tense seriousness: I am a nurse, not a soothsayer Jorim."

'An elcor? And a nurse elcor at that? Really universe?' Azula rambled. 'Oh, lost track of the conversation again. I really should stop doing that and start communicating. And open my eyes too while I'm at it.'

"Wharrgarbl," she communicated while trying to open her eyes. '…Eh, close enough.'

"Hey! She is coming about!" a young and grating male human voice shouted. "You did it dude!"

"With annoyed exasperation: I am a girl."

The indistinct light of the consoles around her greeted her, as she finally managed to lift her eyelids. After blinking away the blurriness, she lifted her head and finally looked at her rescuers.

A turian was crouched by her side, busy covering the stumps of her fingers under a thick layer of gauze; the human was talking to the elcor, trying to profusely apologize for his mistake; and the elcor was being an elcor, in other words doing his – 'Her,' she mentally corrected herself – best imitation of a small, annoyed mountain.

They were all dressed as civilians with various degrees of dirt and tears in their clothes, the ones on the human were even a bit mismatched. They had been prisoners probably, with the clothing damage a testament of the ordeal they had gone through.

Switching her attention from the one sided conversation - and unwilling to distract the turian taking care of her wounds - Azula turned her attention to herself. Checking her wounds she found the Kishock's spike still lodged in her abdomen, but far more securely held by bandages and tape; her shoulder was firmly locked in place, and a couple of bags - of obvious medical origin – were dripping their contents down a plastic tube and into her arm.

And then there were her fingers. Or the lack thereof.

She could only stare numbly at the two spots were the missing digits should have been present. 'This should be freaking me out,' she distantly realized. 'Why it's not freaking me out?'

Azula tried to flex them, but a sharp and powerful stab of pain quickly dissuaded her from trying again. "…killers," she heard someone say.

"What?" she shook her head trying to force herself to focus. 'Why it is so difficult?'

"With sincere sympathy: Don't worry human, it is normal. Emotional reactions can be delayed by shock and painkillers."

Azula turned to look at the elcor and raised an eyebrow. 'Oh yes,' she thought. 'the one who "did it," my true rescuer,' the elcor seemed to preen under Azula's scrutiny, doing their equivalent of puffing up her chest. "Proudly: I am trying to get a job at the Citadel Presidium hospital, I was here to get the qualification necessary to work on humans," she explained.

Azula took a look at the bandages covering her and snorted in amusement. "I can safely say you passed," she had said. It was the first time she said anything longer than single word, and the raspiness of her voice – as if a long time has passed since she spoke - came as a complete surprise.

"With evident worry: You should save your strength human; those wounds are bad enough on their own, worsening them might kill you," rumbled the monotone voice of the elcor.

"Damn straight!" the human piped up. "When I found you, I thought you were a goner. If it hadn't been for Gladys here," he paused a moment to slap the elcor's massive shoulder - much to the annoyance of said non-human - "You would have been too! She told grumpy face there," he said indicating the now seated turian, which earned him a glare. "What to do and saved your ass!"

"With resigned annoyance: My name is not Gladys."

'Sweet Agni, but he is annoying,' Azula mentally groused. "I am quite aware of my current limitations," she heatedly started to say. "they are not a … "

"Do you have a plan?" the sudden interruption of the - so far silent - turian took everybody by surprise. Azula looked the alien in the eyes and uttered three words, "Yes, of course."

-*-​

The TacNet was a communication network dedicated to sharing and requesting information between the various pirate groups attacking the colony: sightings of possibly lucrative objectives; requesting reinforcements against brewing resistance groups, so they could be squashed before they grew too large; notifying which areas one operated in and even the option to call in some fire from orbit.

Best of all, it was not hampered by the jamming going on. They could use the ship to set up a command post right under the pirates' nose, and use it to strike against them in a far more organized fashion. All that was left was finding the scattered troops around the city and to point them against the attackers.

With the plethora of information available to her, finding and safely guiding those soldiers to her newly acquired base of operations was easy. As was directing them against the pirates. Convincing some of said soldiers that no, it was not a trap? Well, that happened to be far more difficult.

"Listen," a rather annoyed Azula said, "I gave you all the codes, the passwords and useless Alliance trivia you asked for. What more do you want?!" she screamed at the object of her ire.

"No, you listen lady," a particularly stubborn one drawled. "I don't know if you noticed, but the situation does not exactly lend towards trusting the first voice you hear on the radio."

"How about this corporal?" she nearly growled. "There are three enemy gunships coming your way. Now, you can ignore me and die when they arrive or you can reach the coordinates I sent you and meet up with sergeant M'bala. Your choice. Shepard out."

Azula closed the channel and tiredly slumped back on the chair; she was cursing quietly those few scattered, bullheaded morons left, when she noticed a few small brown splotches on the console table in front of her. She winced at the sight and started wiping the blood from her mouth and the table, before grabbing a medigel syringe and injecting herself with it.

"You should let someone else take over you know? You can't go on with just medigel, painkillers and antibiotics," the now familiar voice of Jorim broke the silence.

"And who exactly should take my place then?" Azula answered the turian. "Those that were supposed to take command were obliterated along with HQ, and everyone who tried to organize something was annihilated before it went anywhere.

"Face it Jorim," she sighed wearily. "So far I'm the only one that somehow managed to coordinate our efforts and NOT get blasted into oblivion. And yes," Azula said warningly. "I know it sounds quite the ironic thing to say."

"I said nothing," the turian responded a little too quickly. "The problem remains though, you can't go on like this. You need a real medic and when this is all over, a surgeon too; and you will need them yesterday as you humans say."

"You can avoid the medic part and jump straight to the surgery Jorim," she said. "Sadly we are fresh out of surgeons."

"Team Turtle-duck to Command, come in Command." a voice came from the loudspeakers.

"Sorry, Jorim," said Azula, ending the conversation. "Duty calls," she turned back to the console and opened up a new comm. screen. "This is Command, I receive you Zukauskas. Please report."

"We achieved all objectives, but we have taken heavy casualties: unexpected hostile gunships were at the site. We request reinforcements and new objectives."

'Another one with information that incorrect?' Azula thought. 'It is the fourth team in a row,' she rubbed the bridge of her nose, thinking. 'I guess it is time for a change of plan.'

Decision taken, she started to relay her new orders. "Negative on the new objectives Zukauskas, bullshit is now in effect. I repeat: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit."

"Bullshit acknowledged Command, we are on our way. Over and out."

"Jorim, go talk with Gladys about the transfer to site B, and…"

"Already on it," Jorim interrupted her. "Started to be too good to be true huh?"

"I believe so and I don't want to wait around to see if I was right or wrong," Azula waved her 'good' hand at him in a shooing motion. "Now get to it. I have a few calls to make."

-*-​

Elanos Haliat was a very angry turian. He had organized this whole operation with painstakingly patience and precision; gathering information, allies, favors – even acquiring a few debts - little by little, so not to suddenly appear on anyone's radar. And when the time came, he had played all his cards to perfection.

There was one more ship than usual, but one or two extra Alliance ships were already considered in his plan. Captured and converted freighters opened up their cargo doors and started launching a massive wave of torpedoes; a wave immediately followed by the most agile and fast ships at his disposal.

The Alliance had valid ships, equipment and crews - far superior to what he had – but quantity was a quality all of its own, and they had only so many guns they could use. Taken between the massive torpedo wave and the pirate fleet, all the Alliance ships were quickly destroyed along with their escape pods.

That left the planetary defence grid, but it was not a problem for a mobile force in control of the orbit to crush that too. It certainly took its toll on his forces doing that, but overall the losses were still well within an acceptable range.

Even the ground assault went without an hitch. The exploitation of a breach in their defenses quickly led to his forces destroying the Alliance leadership and scattering their soldiers. Rudderless and uncoordinated they were no longer a credible threat, and the pillage of one of their most successful colony could truly begin.

Then everything started to progressively go wrong. Sacks of resistance suddenly managing to escape annihilation; convoys carrying meat and loot destroyed and their precious cargo lost. And now his allies were being attacked and killed in their own temporary bases.

One could have been a fluke, two a worrying coincidence but three was enemy action. However it was impossible. It required coordination and deep insight on their own operations, and the humans had none of those; he made sure of that.

Still it was the only logical explanation for the sudden turn of events. Nearly fighting himself every step of the way, he issued a few sharp orders and implemented a contingency he never thought would be needed: he started manipulating his TacNet to isolate the leak in the communications.

He manipulated the information given to one group, did not for the other one, and the different set of responses should help him trim down the list of culprits. A lot of people would be angry at him, and he could not even tell them why he was doing that or risk his ploy failing. But he was sure they would understand the reason why once the leak was found, and he could freely explain himself.

Slowly and patiently - ignoring all the new reports of defeats and slaughter of his own allies – only an handful of candidates remained. Among them, one of his subordinates. He ignored the chill tingling down his spine as he read the name, and barked an order. "Communication! Tell the Cadrega to call me immediately. Morlok! Keep up with the screening and remove that ship from the list; I'll deal with Torlak myself."

Elanos drummed his fingers on the armrest of his seat as he waited for Torlak to appear on his viewscreen, but minutes passed and there was no word from the batarian. Rage filling him Elanos started to open a direct line to Torlak himself, when his communication officer shout stopped him cold.

"Contact from the Cadrega! They are under attack by multiple sides!"

"Show me!" Elanos barked. 'Is this proof that Torlak is innocent?' he wondered.

Dutifully, a bird's view of the furious battle currently going on around the Cadrega appeared on his screen. Tolak's men were defending themselves with all they had, even using the Cadrega GARDIAN system to fight the enemy. That however had the unfortunate drawback of having much of the battlefield obscured by the dust and debris kicked in the air by the laser blasts.

Elanos watched with rapt attention the fight, when he started to sense that something was wrong. He narrowed his eyes and studied closely the battle going on, trying to put his metaphorical finger on what had triggered his mental alarms. He was looking at some strange movements among the troops on the frontline, when he spotted what he was looking for: there was a repetitive pattern in the laser attacks; it looked like it was blasting at the enemy, but it was not.

There could be a million perfectly sensible reasons for that, but his suspicions were growing and he decided to take a closer look where the fight was most intense. The dust generated usually hid a lot of what was happening, but it was not impossible to see what was really going on if one paid enough attention.

What looked like wounded people were given to "his" men, transported in the base itself and then down the subway. At the same time, able soldiers left the ranks of "his" men and reinforced the "attackers." It was a farce. Whoever was down there figured out what he was doing, and set up this whole thing to keep using his Tacnet and make a fool out of him.

"Gunner," he said in a glacially calm tone, "aim at these coordinates and open fire."

"Sir, that is dangerously close to our own for… "

"THEY! ARE! NOT!" he furiously roared; everyone on the bridge instinctively trying to look smaller at his outburst. "The Cadrega is lost. Obey my command," Elanos continued in an apparently far calmer tone.

"Y-yes sir!" too scared to further question his orders, the gunner carefully took aim and fired a shell from one of the side cannons. The projectile following the path perfectly and smashing straight in the middle of the biggest "fight."

At least it would have done so, except a bluish shield appeared right above them.

"I knew it," Elanos hissed as he watched everyone down below throw all pretense away, and start evacuating post haste. "All guns! Open fire on the Cadrega! NOW!"

Dutifully his gunner fed new targeting data to the computers, and soon an hail of projectiles flew from Elanos' ship and crashed on the Cadrega's shield. The barrier withstood the onslaught sent its way, but after an handful of seconds another one hit it; then a third. At the fourth the barrier broke, the shells going through and easily shattering the hull; the fifth pulverized the remains.

Elanos Haliat was watching the destruction of his enemy with malicious glee, when a series of alarms blared on the bridge. A lot of ships had just dropped out of FTL; very close to his own severely depleted fleet and were already moving to cut off all escape routes. He did not need to see the IFF they were broadcasting to know they were Alliance.

He had lost. All the preparations and his meticulous planning, and he had lost. He wanted to scream, to kill everyone around him for their ineptitude, for failing to carry out his perfect plan. "Signal the retreat then get us out of here," he said instead.

Illyria, Kassavidis Memorial Hospital

"A ceremony awarding Lieutenant Azula Shepard with the…"

"…we were basically blind and deaf, we wanted to fight those fuc***g ass***s but we had no idea where they were. Then the Lieutenant v…"

"The property damage is stag…"

"…tens of thousand of cas…"

"The hell is a turtle-duck?"

After shutting down the TV screen with an annoyed wave of her omnitool, Azula flopped back on her hospital bed and closed her eyes. She did not mind hearing the praise at first, but after four days of forced bed rest and with the same interviews and footage shown on TV… Well, she was getting a little bored and stir crazy. The superior medical care than what could be scavenged from the pirate's ship infirmary certainly helped with her improved health and consequent desire to do something. Pain be damned.

She started drumming her fingers on the bed after a tune she heard on the TV, when an unexpected voice broke her reverie.

"I am not disturbing you, am I?" her visitor said in a deep voice.

Azula opened her eyes and then froze when she recognized who the intruder was. After a couple of heartbeats, she quickly stopped doing her best interpretation of a deer in the headlights and tried to salute; only to be immediately stopped by her guest. "Considering your condition, I think we can dispense with the formalities; what do you think?" captain David Anderson asked her with an easy smile on his face.

"Ah! Y-yes, of course captain, sir," stammered Azula, utterly floored by the captain's sudden appearance in her hospital room. 'FOOL! You are making a fool of yourself!' she internally screamed at herself. 'Pull yourself together!'

"I'm … honored by your visit, but, if I may ask, what brings you here?" Azula managed to ask without accidents. "Sir," she then belatedly added.

"Anderson is fine if you want Lieutenant," he said, setting Azula a bit more at ease. "And yes, you may ask. I am here because my ship was close enough to render aid - even if not for the battle itself – and because I have a proposition for you."

"A proposition?" she said puzzled. "About what?"

"I have read the reports and I have talked to the people who met you," Anderson spoke, giving no sign he heard her misstep. "Unfortunately there is no recording of your fight inside the Cadrega," 'So that was its name,' Azula thought. "But even just what you had done before and after that raid makes you more than qualified for this," he said putting a folder - with the letters 'ICT' stamped over it Azula noticed - on the table near her bed.

Azula eyes were glued to the folder, a whirlwind of emotions going through her. This was her big chance, what every soldier in the Alliance aspired to. An invitation to enter the "Villa" training facility and be trained by the best to be the best.

"Are you ready for it?" Anderson's voice cut easily through the maelstrom of thoughts going on in her mind, and focusing it all on a simple, important question. 'Am I truly ready for it?'

Being chosen for training at the Villa – regardless of success - was already a source of great honor and prestige, but it was also a one time chance. You fail, you are out for good. It was an incredibly tough training even at the starting level, and with her forced bed rest a noticeable decrease in performance was inevitable. It also took time to…

'To what?' she thought stopping the rampant speculation cold. 'There are no ifs or buts. Am. I. Ready?' she asked herself.

'Yes.'

"Yes," Azula said, unwaveringly looking Anderson in the eyes.

"Good," he responded with a proud smile.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Interlude 1

From: Mr. Pink

To: LorLor

Here is a couple of juicy emails I managed to get my hands on.

===​

From: Major Donal Donato

To: Colonel Lin Radenko

Subject: Possible gain

Sir,

I would like to report that candidate 4247C A. Shepard is exhibiting much higher than normal performances after the successful administration of the standard ICT gene mods. I have already examined the patient using all the procedures regulations allow, but the candidate vehemently refused any more in-depth exams.

I feel that being able to understand why the mods took so well is of enormous importance to the Alliance. The increased effectiveness on all our troops – even by half - would increase both their combat capabilities and their survival rates.

In light of that I would like to request permission to make attendance to more comprehensive exams a direct order. I know it is unusual, but I believe the possible gains are more than worth it.

Respectfully awaiting your reply,

Major Donald Donato

ITC Medical Department


From: Colonel Lin Rodenko

To: Major Donald Donato

Subject: RE: Possible gain

I sincerely hope you are joking.

In case you are not: The answer is hell no. She refused, she is in no danger of dying, therefore it is well within her rights to refuse and I won't push the issue.

I strongly recommend you drop this.


From: Major Donal Donato

To: Colonel Lin Radenko

Subject: Candidate Shepard

Sir,

I have to repeat my request of ordering candidate A. Shepard to submit to a deeper medical examination. The subject's agility score is the highest I have ever seen, and in all the other areas the subject is no slouch either. Given these results I decided to take a closer look.

Her DNA was in the database and on closer examination it showed several minor mutations. Those mutations might be the key to superior gene-mods for every soldier in the Alliance and every human, but I can't do anything worthwhile with just computer data.

Please, think of the possibilities and give the order.

Respectfully,

Major Donal Donato.


From: Colonel Lin Rodenko

To: Major Donald Donato

Subject: RE: Candidate Shepard

I distinctly remember telling you to drop the issue. Since you seem incapable of following this order, you will be transferred to another facility and an official reprimand will appear in your official file.

===​

Good enough for your Shadow Broker boss, Lorina?

From: LorLor
To: Mr. Pink

Yes, payment will be at the same spot at the same time.

.*.​

Audio log taken from the office of the CO of the SERE training facility on Io.

"…She is fucking insane! I want her out of the program! NOW!" a very angry voice shouted.

"Oh really? What for?" the calm and collected voice of the base commanding officer responded.

"What…? What for?!" outrage and disbelief were equally present in the voice. "She threatened to blow up the lava containment wall if we did not release the squad! The whole FOB would have been destroyed!"

"Oh? And how exactly she would have done that? I don't remember her squad having any high explosives within their equipment."

"She … She commandeered a M29 Grizzly," the instructor said, his voice faltering.

"And how did she manage that?"

"She attached herself to the tank we had to send to track her when she escaped into the lava fields. The tank computer reported damage to the transmission and was driven to the garage."

"So let me get this straight. This woman manages to evade capture and survive in that lava swamp,"

.*.*.​

Azula was keeping a metaphorical eye out for heat sources as she traveled through the volcanic landscape – foot burns from stepping in a hidden lava puddle were not uncommon in this training – when she sensed some small, moving, and strangely coherent heat signatures.

Normally she would not be able to feel something – from a certain point of view – that cold; but if what she remembered was right, firebending draw its power from all sources of heat. Not only the sun - usually the biggest and most abundant one – but also volcanoes.

Earth of course had more of them, but Io was also several times smaller and had more than 400 active volcanoes. That much energy concentrated in such a small package greatly enhanced Azula's firebending.

That hesitation and that awareness of the 'enemy' team's positions proved to be invaluable when two of the 'enemy' ambushers near her, were hit by a burst of training rounds as soon as they revealed themselves.

With the others busy with her teammates and with a sudden hole in the ambush, they had no time to stop Azula from slipping away. It was not a situation they had never encountered before, but what they did not expect was the direction Azula took. After all who in their right mind would willingly go in a swamp made of lava?

.*.*.
​

"get into your base undetected,"

.*.*.​

Even a blind person could feel the vibrations made by the tank following her, giving Azula ample time to prepare her surprise hitchhiking. The lava right next to the path was not of the liquid variety, but rather a dense and viscous one; allowing her to freeze solid a coffin sized platform, push it back in the thick molten rock and then freeze the lava on the perimeter, slowly building a rocky cocoon with an open top.

Out of sight and hidden from sensors, Azula waited for the slow going vehicle to arrive; and when it just passed her hiding place, she jumped out and latched to the belly of the machine. From there it was pretty easy to sabotage the vehicle just enough and force it to return back to base.

.*.*.​

"then steal a vehicle,"

.*.*.​

Once the tank stopped and the crew left, Azula slithered out from below the vehicle and right behind the only mechanic in sight. Unaware of Azula's presence as she was, it was not difficult to put the mechanic in a sleeper hold for a couple of seconds. Not enough to make her lose consciousness, but more than sufficient to make sure she got the hint.

"Hi," Azula whispered in her ear. "Lieutenant Shepard of trainee squad 7. Can I trust you to not make a fuss and play dead?"

The other woman nodded and sat on the floor. "You could have just tapped me on the shoulder you know?" she angrily whispered back.

Azula simply raised an eyebrow and stared at the mechanic. "Yes, fine. You are right," she capitulated. "I would have at least cursed and attracted attention."

Pretend dead enemy grousing taken care of, Azula started to look at the vehicles parked in the repair garage. Maybe there was one she could use.

.*.*.​

"and use it to free her team from the enemy's hands."

.*.*.​

Driving the M29 Grizzly tank around was the most fun she had had in a while. She could not stop herself from giggling, as people jumped out of the way while she made her way to the containment wall. After a particularly exhilarating drift that left the flank of her tank facing the wall, she turned on the external loudspeakers.

"Hello everyone! I am a member of the squad you guys just captured and I want you all to look at the lava containment wall," Azula just finished speaking when she pressed a button and the cannon fired in the direction of the wall, the carefully aimed shell flying way over its edge. "Next one is going to hit it, unless you free my squad and surrender to me!"

.*.*.​

The CO steepled her fingers as she regarded the instructor. "It may be just me, but considering that chain of events, it seems the only one who fucked up is you."

.*.​

LV-426, N7 candidates combat evaluation.

LV-426 was a small moon not even worthy of a proper name, the only remarkable thing about it was its above average heavy metals deposits. Of course said deposits attracted a good number of miners, which in turn attracted a good number of pirates and less scrupulous mercenary groups.

The job of the SSV Canberra was to keep an eye on those settlements on the fringe, and generally be a deterrent for all those undesirables. Sometimes those patrols were used to throw some N6 soldiers into combat situations, and most of the time nothing in particular happened; other times it was very different.

"Krogan incoming!" yelled Azula's examiner. 'No, really?!' Azula sarcastically thought. 'How did I miss a ton of angry, rampaging lizard.'

"Fire in the hole!" she instead replied as she rolled a few grenades right between the krogan's legs. She immediately ducked back into cover to dodge the return fire from the vorcha horde, and a moment later she was rewarded by an explosion followed by an enraged roar of pain.

Peeking behind her cover Azula saw the krogan – sans legs - trying to get closer crawling on his belly. She waited for a couple of seconds then shot the krogan in the head, the bulk of its corpse would make an excellent extra bit of cover.

"It was certainly nice that I brought all these grenades and weapons, isn't it?"

.*.*.​

"Lieutenant Shepard," commander Da Silva said. "What in the name of God are you doing?"

"Preparing for the ground mission sir," she responded. Ignoring at the same time the look of disbelief on the officer's face.

"Lieutenant," he said patiently. "We are going against ill equipped pirates, not the Turian military. You don't need … all that." All that being several packs of grenade material for the omnitool nanoforge, a shotgun, a curved knife, two pistols, a sniper rifle and an assault rifle. All complemented by a block of ammunition for each weapon.

"You never know sir."

"All right," De Silva sighed, knowing his subordinate would not budge. "All right, you win. It is your back that has to carry all this stuff after all."

.*.*.​

"Shut up and keep firing!"

.*.​

Earth, Paris. Video of a Cerberus operative recruiting Dr. Donato (see attached file for background), made by Shadow Broker operative Mr. Yellow.

Donato was in a bar, sitting alone and nursing a drink when a balding black man sat at his table. "Hello, may I sit?" the man said in high pitched voice.

"This table is occupied," a morose Donato said. "Leave me alone."

"Don't worry Mr. Donato, I won't take long," the man smiled without showing his teeth. "In fact I think my offer might even interest you."

Donato snorted at the declaration of the intruder before sarcastically replying, "I highly doubt you have anything I want."

"Not even some fresh tissue samples?" the operative said sliding over a datapad. "Come on, take look. I bet it seems familiar to you."

Annoyed, Donato took the datapd in hand and started reading it. As he progressed his eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up almost all the way up to his hairline. "Where did you get these?!" he excitedly exclaimed.

"Given how tough the training is, injuries are inevitable. It was easy for my – and yours too if you want – organization to take some extra samples without anyone noticing."

"What is the catch then?" said Donato suddenly alert and alarmed since the word 'organization' was mentioned. "I highly doubt you would be doing this out of the goodness of your heart.

"Of course not," the man smoothly replied. "You are not a fool and it would be insulting of me to pretend otherwise. That said, the catch is not as bad as you may think doctor."

"Still, you have not said what it is."

"We simply want you to work on other, highly stimulating projects too," the Cerberus operative explained. "We work to protect and strengthen mankind's position among the stars doctor, and to do that we need brains like yours."

"Tell me more," said Donato.

.*.​

Tattoo parlor, Arcturus Station.

"Come on, what is with this sudden resistance? It's tradition!"

"I care not for this tradition and I never agreed to have my body punctured by sharp implements!"

"Oohh, I think someone is afraid…"

"I. Am. Not. Afraid. I simply see no reason to have ink forcefully shoved into my skin. Being worthy of the N7 insignia is something that will not go away, and needs no memento."

"So you are saying that the honor of being chosen and promoted for the N7 rank, is not worthy of celebration?"

"No. Yes! But not like that!"

"Then you are saying that every other N7 graduate who did it are honor-less scumbags, who desecrated…"

"Fine! Fine. You win Azula. I'll get the damn tattoo."

"I knew you would Marko."

.*.​

Arcturus Station, Docking bay 47.

It was one beautiful ship.

She was not a fan of the turian design, and the big boxy human ships were not exactly the best looking in the galaxy; but this one somehow managed to blend both building doctrines into something better than the sum of its parts.

Azula kept watching the ship as she went through the shield keeping the docking bay pressurized, and perfectly aligned herself with the docking ring in one smooth maneouvre. 'The pilot,' she thought, 'Seems to be as skilled as his dossier indicates.'

As soon as the ship was secured Azula wasted no time in walking down the tube connecting to the ship and stepping inside the airlock of her new home for the foreseeable future. When the decontamination procedure ended and the doors opened she found herself looking at a very familiar face.

"Permission to come aboard, sir," she said, saluting the man in front of her.

"Permission granted, commander," he answered before smiling at her. "It's good to see you again Shepard."

"It's good to see you too, Anderson," she replied. "It is good to be on board the Normandy sir."

 

[ZiPeppe]

Chapter 3 - Part 1 and 2

SSV Normandy, Infirmary

"OW! How long until this torture ends?" snapped Azula.

"You missed the last two appointments commander," doctor Chakwas calmly answered. "In which case the regulations require a more in depth check up of your prosthetic fingers. By the way can you feel that?"

"Yees, I can feel that," Azula managed to say through her gritted teeth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you."

"Absolutely not," Chakwas responded sharply. "But if a bit of pain now will remind you to come to your future check ups, then all the better."

'Oops, wrong move.' "Sorry doctor," Azula said. "I just got so used to them I forget they're artificial."

"Well, it's good to know that at least you 're no longer having acclimatization problems," the doctor said, mollified. "Still you could have requested cloned parts, the surgeon must have told you about the disadvantages of cybernetics."

"They did," admitted Azula. "But it was the fastest way I could go back to active duty, and afterward…" she shrugged the only shoulder she could move. "Well it did not seem that important."

"Anyway everything seems to be in order," the good doctor said after putting away her instruments. "Just remember to keep them clean and, please, to come to your check ups."

"I will, don't worry doc," said Azula smiling. "In fact, why don't…"

"Commander Shepard, if doctor Chakwas is done with you, meet me in the comm room," captain Anderson's voice crackled from the intercom.

"Aye aye captain," said Azula. "Well doctor, duty calls."

"Take care of yourself out there commander."

The trek from the infirmary to the comm room was not a long one , and she arrived at the same time of their very own Specter – A turian called Nihlus Kryik with a dark carapace and white tattoos on his face – assigned to the Normandy for her shakedown voyage. Normally it wouldn't bother Azula that much but he had this annoying custom of showing up unannounced; like he was doing right now. Because of that habit of his, since he came on board Azula had to basically stop practicing her firebending.

"Hello commander," he greeted her in a friendly manner. "I was hoping you'd get here first; it will give us a chance to talk."

"Sure," replied Azula. "What do you want to talk about?" 'Are you finally going to explain why are you here?' she had her own theory of course but it was just that: a theory.

"I'm interested in this world we are going to," he said as he paced back and forth. "Eden Prime, I heard it's quite beautiful."

"I've never been there myself, but I know that corporal Jenkins is from there. I can call him down here if you want." 'Where are you going with this?' thought Azula. 'What does Eden Prime have to do with you and me?'

"There is no need, commander," he said. "What I want to talk about is what Eden Prime represents, not its physical peculiarities."

'What Eden Prime represents?' thought Azula, suppressing a frown. 'If he is trying to make a point, he is certainly taking the long way around to reach it.'

"What it represents is the proof that humanity can not only establish colonies across the galaxy," he said, "But also protect them. But how safe it is really?"

'That is not racism speaking,' Azula realized, she had seen him interact enough times with the crew to know that. Granted, turian body language is not easy to read and he was a Spectre, but to have no faith in one's own abilities was as foolish as underestimating the enemy. 'So what he is really hinting at?' she thought. 'What he is really asking?'

She thought about the question for a few moments, before looking he turian in the eyes and answering him. "No planet is truly safe, not even Palaven." Azula said. "All soldiers protecting their planets are like a bodyguard charged with protecting a VIP: it can deal with most threats except a sufficiently motivated attacker or something entirely new."

She paused for a moment – waiting for Nihlus to speak up – but when he remained silent she took it as a sign to go on, and continued with her explanation. "Using Earth as an example, if the Batarians decides to throw all their fleets at it at the same time then no, it's not safe or protected enough. Likewise something entirely new like a workable dreadnought sized laser – to use an extreme idea – is also something I'm not confident any fleet can defeat for certain."

"Well said commander," spoke Nihlus with a smile. "Indeed the galaxy can be a very dangerous place and the Alliance needs to be ready for it."

The turian looked like he was going to continue when the door opened and captain Anderson walked in, interrupting what he was going to say. "I think it's about time we told the commander what is really going on," began Anderson.

"You mean the artifact retrieval mission we are doing?" spoke Azula, enjoying the looks of surprise on both men's faces. "What? He's a Spectre," she said as if that explained everything. "There are not that many things that can catch the attention of one of them; and considering that Eden Prime is a growing colony, a Prothean artifact unearthed during an excavation seems to be the most likely explanation for Nihlus being here."

To their credit, they collected themselves fairly quickly, except Nihlus. He started to sport the turian equivalent of a very, very smug grin. "Good job, but it seems you missed the second reason I'm here commander."

'A second reason?' thought Azula. 'What else could he need to do on Eden Prime?' "And what reason that would be?" she asked Nihlus.

"You, commander," answered instead Anderson. "He's here to evaluate you on the field, see you in action."

"That sounds quite close to my N7 test," she said. 'Is this really going where I think it is?'

"Something like that, yes," confirmed Nihlus.

"You don't need me to tell you how important this is Shepard," interjected Anderson. "The Alliance wants more say in the Citadel Council and a human within the Spectre's ranks will show how far the Alliance has come."

"Your actions on Elysium were decisive in repelling the attack and dealing a massive blow to all pirates operating in the Terminus Systems," continued Nihlus "It requires both great courage and incredible skill to pull something like that, and you showed you had both," he paused for a moment, as if he wanted to underline how important what he was going to say next was. "That is why I put your name forward as candidate for the Spectres."

It required all her willpower just not to grin like a madwoman right then and there. A place within the Spectres ranks was something she never even dreamed of! Not trusting her voice she simply nodded keeping her face as impassive as she could.

"I need to see your skills for myself commander. Eden Prime will be the first of several missions together," said Nihlus.

"You'll be in charge of the ground team. Secure the beacon and get it to the ship ASAP," continued Anderson. "Nihlus will accompany you to observe the mission."

"I'd like to bring corporal Jenkins with me captain, his local knowledge would…"

"Captain! We got a problem," Joker interrupted from the intercom.

"What's wrong Joker?" Anderson said.

"Transmission from Eden Prime sir, you better see this."

"Put it on screen."

Soon the sound of gunfire filled the comm. room, and several armored figures could be seen fighting something just off-screen. The transmission did not last long as it was suddenly cut off, but Azula kept staring at the screen; right there towards the end of the transmission, the camera showed something massive coming down from the sky.

"Reverse to 38.5,"Anderson ordered and suddenly the mysterious enemy revealed itself, and it looked like a giant metallic hand, wreathed in red lightning, coming down from the sky. "Status report!" barked Anderson.

"Seventeen minutes out, no other Alliance ships in the area," Joker supplied the requested information.

"Take us in Joker, fast and quiet," Anderson said grimly. "This mission just got more complicated."

"A small strike team can move quickly without drawing attention," Nihlus spoke with confidence. "It's our best chance of securing the beacon."

"Well," Azula suddenly said. "It seems something new just decided to knock at our door."

SSV Normandy, hangar bay.

"…then there are the gas bags. They're harmless unless you are really close and the gas filled sacs rupture, then you are going to feel quite sick for a bit. It's not dangerous but very unpleasant."

"Anything else on the terrain Jenkins?" asked Azula.

Jenkins shook his head. "No sir, I did not visit the part where our drop zone is very often. My family and I lived quite a bit away," corporal Jenkins was someone that wore his heart on his sleeve, and his anxiety at having his homeworld attacked was there for everyone to see.

"Don't worry Jenkins, whoever is attacking the colony is going for the beacon," Azula said trying to calm the soldier down. "If your family remains indoors I'm sure they will be ok at the end of it."

"You are right commander," Jenkins said after a deep breath. "I must…"

"Commander," Anderson's voice interrupted the corporal. "We are approaching the drop zone; is your team ready?"

"Yes sir, just say the word."

"Good, your team will be doing the heavy lifting during this operation commander," said Anderson. "Go in heavy and head straight for the dig site. Recovering the beacon is your number one priority."

Lieutenant Alenko – a biotic still using the L2 implants, according to his dossier – looked ready to ask a question when Joker's voice interrupted him. "Approaching drop point one," the hangar doors opened at the same time the pilot finished speaking; the roar of the winds cutting off whatever Alenko was going to say.

Right then their esteemed guest – and Azula's ticket for the Spectres – made his appearance. "Nihlus? You're coming with us?" Jenkins asked.

"I move faster on my own."

"Try not to get killed," said Azula half-jokingly. "It would look horrible on my resume."

"I've survived worse commander," he answered her after a brief laugh. "Keep your eyes open and good luck," then he jumped off the ship and disappeared from view.

"He will scout ahead and feed you information," spoke Anderson, focusing their attention on him once again. "Otherwise I want radio silence. Stealth and speed are key to this operation."

"They won't even know we were there captain," said Azula. "We will get the beacon and be back before you know it."

"I sincerely hope so, Shepard."

"One minute to drop point two," Joker's voice was heard again from the loudspeakers.

"Good luck out there," said Anderson looking straight into Azula's eyes. She only nodded in response and as soon as Anderson turned his back, she activated the helmet's camera. Technically something to avoid at all costs during highly classified operations, but with the possibility of becoming a Spectre on the line she wanted a little bit of extra security.

Just in case things went pear shaped and people started looking for a scapegoat.

.*.​

Joker's piloting proved to be excellent as always as the Normandy hovered just a few meters from the ground, making the drop a very easy one to make. Once on the ground Azula immediately unfolded her sniper rifle and scanned the clearing they were in, a paranoid precaution maybe but the Normandy's arrival had not been exactly stealthy; an ironic statement if there ever was one.

"Let's move, people," Azula ordered once she was sure the area was secure for the moment. Both Alenko and Jenkins moved ahead of her, towards a rock outcropping next to an incline, and stopped under its cover. There were a lot of boulders of all sizes and form littering the slope that could be used for cover, and more importantly no enemy sighted yet.

With a couple of hand gestures she signaled Alenko to provide overwatch, and Jenkins to move forward so he could take cover behind some of those rocks. He almost in the middle of the path when she started to hear a low whining sound. "Down!" she yelled almost at the same time she understood what that sound was. Thankfully the corporal followed that order without any conscious thought on his part, and that instinct – drilled in him by the Alliance instructors – was what saved him from being torn apart by an hail of gunfire.

His desperate dive may have saved his life, however it did not fully spare him from being hit; the warning came a little too late and the drones who appeared had already been firing. Azula ignored his screams of pain and along with Alenko she started firing at the handful of drones that had just appeared, making short work of the weakly shielded machines.

"Area secure commander," the lieutenant spoke after a few seconds.

"Go check on Jenkins," ordered Azula. "I'll keep an eye out."

He quickly ran to the fallen soldier's side and started examining him while at the same time trying to comfort the downed soldier. With the corner of her eye she could see as Alenko reached for Jenkins' medigel reserve, and applied it to his shoulder and somewhere around the hip. It wasn't long before the injured soldier quieted down and Alenko rejoined her.

"Good news and bad news commander," Alenko immediately said, keeping his voice down. "He'll live but I don't want him to move around. One of those drones clipped him on the hip and it would be better if he avoided putting any weight on it. He was also hit in the shoulder but the bones are untouched and the artery has not been damaged."

'Fuck,' Azula eloquently thought. 'Not even five minutes in, and I'm already one man down.' "We can't do anything for him and we can't call the Normandy back." Azula said. "We'll put him behind some cover and give him some of our medigel supply, then we will continued to the dig site."

"What?"Alenko said, shock and surprise clear in his voice. "Commander, we can't just leave him here," he pleaded.

"And what exactly is your proposal lieutenant?" Azula coldly replied. "We can't drag him around, and with all the fighting going on around the colony I can't risk the Normandy again for an extraction," Azula sighed deeply before continuing. Alenko's loyalty and empathy for his fellow soldiers did him honor, but there was a time and a place for it, like for everything else.

"Look," she said. "I know it's hard to accept, but I can't risk over two dozen lives for one person, especially not when doing so would also put the whole mission in jeopardy," seeing that Alenko was still not fully convinced, she tried another approach. "Listen, the dig site isn't far from here. When we secure the artifact we can call in the Normandy and then go get Jenkins, not to mention we are supposed to be under radio silence until we secure the beacon too."

"Aye aye ma'am," Alenko softly replied, capitulating.

While Alenko did his best to leave Jenkins as comfortable as possible, Azula accessed her weapons software and increased the speed of the bullet when it was shot; with one man down the increase in firepower would be sorely needed. After a nod of confirmation from Alenko that everything was ready, they began walking along the small trail leading into the small woods up the hill.

The trip itself through it was rather uneventful aside from a communique from Nihlus and a few scattered enemy drones. Their first real encounter with the enemy assaulting the colony – not their equipment like the drones – happened almost immediately after they got out out of the woods and reached the top of a ridge overlooking a clearing.

From there they heard the familiar sound of the flying drones and gunfire rapidly approaching. There was barely the time to reach for cover when a figure in blue armor appeared from behind some rocks, chased by those flying machines and a couple of humanoid figures. The human – with no Asari reported on Eden Prime, the possibilities of being another race were pretty slim – noticed them and quickly dived to the side behind a large rock formation, giving Azula and Alenko a clear line of fire to her pursuers.

"Alenko! Target the drones!" ordered Azula.

Moving without hesitation the biotic glowed and slammed one of the drones right into another one, taking both of them out. Azula was not idle either as she dropped into a crouch and placed a shot in the torso of each creature, whom garbled some kind of electronic sounding screech when they died. The rescued human did her part too, taking out two drones with precise shots from her gun. The whole fight took less than a minute, and soon after Azula and Alenko joined the recuperating solider down the clearing.

"Thanks for your help commander," she greeted Azula, still taking deep breaths. "I didn't think I was going to make it."

"Not a problem soldier," said Azula. "I'm lieutenant commander Azula Shepard and this is staff lieutenant Kaidan Alenko."

"Gunnery chief Ashley Williams of the two-twelve. You the one in charge here ma'am?"

"I'm in charge of the artifact retrieval mission, yes," answered Azula. "Can you give a status report chief?"

"I don't know much beyond what happened to my squad," she answered. "We were patrolling the perimeter when the attack hit, and have been fighting for my life ever since. We tried to get off a distress call, but they cut off our communications."

"Is the rest of your squad around?"

The gunnery chief shoulders dropped slightly, her voice tightly controlled as she responded. "No, I... I don't know. We tried to double back to the beacon, but we were caught in an ambush. I think I am the only one left."

"I am a man down myself and I could use the help," Azula said as she approached the other woman and put an hand on her shoulder. "Do you want to honor your comrade's memories by blowing up a few more of those things?"

"Damn straight ma'am," Ashley hissed, her voice tinged with barely restrained rage. "I'm ready to blow those Geth to kingdom come whenever you want."

'Geth?' Azula took a better look at the things she just killed and noticed the physical resemblance to the Quarians. 'What are the Geth doing out here? Or more importantly: what's inside that beacon that is so important?'

"The Geth hadn't been seen outside the veil in over two hundred years," Alenko piped up. "Why are they here now?"

"The beacon obviously," answered Azula. "It is the only thing of any relevance that happened here."

"Yeah, that must be it," agreed Ashley.

"All the more reasons to hurry up and reach it before they do then,"Azula said.

"Yes ma'am," Ashley said. "Follow me, we are not far from the dig site."

"Lead on chief."

The trek to the dig site was short one and devoid of any enemy, something that boded ill tidings in Azula's opinion. And indeed her pessimism was proven true when they arrived at the dig site and not only discovered that the beacon was gone, but also found a lot of corpses freshly impaled on spikes mounted on a tripod; some of those bodies placed them were even still twitching. Most of the remains had civilian clothing, 'Workers and scientists,' Azula theorized, but some still had armor on them, Alliance issue armor.

"No… Penny…" If the armor was not confirmation enough, Ashley's whispered denial sealed the deal: Some of her teammates were among the impaled corpses.

"Classic terror tactics," Alenko grimly commented.

"Alenko, Williams," Azula said softly but firmly a few moments later. "We need to go. We are going to kick the Geth's ass and then we will be back to get them down from there, but we need to go now."

"What about Jenkins commander?" asked Alenko after looking away from the horrifying spectacle.

"Who's Jenkins?" inquired Ashley, latching on the question. "Is he the guy who went down?"

"Yes," answered Azula cutting off Alenko. "He was too injured to move but in no danger of dying, so with the battle going on I was not willing to risk the Normandy – our ship – more than necessary," she waved her hand, cutting off any potential comment from the pair. "I'll call the Normandy; Anderson will know if it is safe enough to do a medevac. Williams, you know the area, where could they have taken the beacon?"

"There is a train system not far from here, we will need to go through the scientists camp to reach it though," she answered, gripping her rifle a bit tighter than before. "We just need to go up that ramp to…"

"Change of plans Shepard," Nihlus voice interrupted Ashley. "There's a small spaceport up ahead and I want to check it out. I'll meet you there."

"A spaceport," murmured Azula.

"That's where the beacon must be," Alenko said, finishing her thought.

"We don't have much time," said Azula. "You two go ahead while I make the call, if the Geth are monitoring the communications they won't go after you."

"Commander…" started Alenko.

"Stop questioning my orders and move lieutenant!" snapped at him Azula.

"Yes ma'am," he simply said before moving out.

Azula watched their retreating backs before opening up a channel to the Normandy. "Ground team to Normandy, requesting medevac close to drop point two. Recruited local garrison member. Continuing the mission."

She had just finished her transmission when the sound of gunfire came from the camp overhead. She barely was halfway up the slope when the gunfire stopped and she heard Alenko's voice on the radio. "Commander! If you're still near the dig site, destroy those spikes! They turn people into some kind of… mechanized zombie."

Alenko barely finished the word 'spikes' when Azula turned and lobbed a few grenades into the cluster of those things below before continuing for the camp. What he said sounded pretty ridiculous, but in every interaction she had with him he felt like a very grounded individual. At worst she blew up some corpses, at best she just made sure no enemies would appear at her back unannounced.

The scientists' camp had been devastated, with charred corpses and destroyed buildings everywhere. Not only that, but it also sported the same spikes the dig site had, only this time those things were retracted and bullet riddled corpses were sprawled on the ground. Their skin looked gray and there were glowing blue lines running all over their bodies, also tubes and other mechanical additions could be seen all over the bodies. 'Alenko's description was quite correct,' thought Azula. 'Those things do look like mechanical zombies.'

"Commander," Alenko called her from a shack at the edge of the camp. "We found survivors!"

"Tell them to shut themselves in, then let's get moving," ordered Azula. "The beacon is our top priority and there are no more hostiles here."

The lieutenant poked his head back inside the shack – presumably to speak with the survivors – then jogged back to Azula and Ashley, right on time to see an impossibility. In the distance a gigantic ship – the same ship seen in the distress call in fact – could be seen rising from the ground, red lightning running around its frame. A ship landing – even one looking like a cuttlefish a part of Azula's brain noted – was not unprecedented, a ship bigger than a dreadnought doing it was another matter entirely.

Azula had fair bit of grounding about ships and what made them work, and every bit of knowledge she had was telling her that the requirements for what she was seeing were enormous; big enough to slide in the realm of the impossible. Their gawking however was brought to an immediate end by the sound of metal grinding against metal and a hail of gunfire from a few Geth units.

"Alenko, Williams! Take care of those zombies, I will deal with the Geth." Azula ordered briskly as she unfolded her sniper rifle.

There were two dozens of those blue and gray mech-zombies – 'Workers and passengers,' Azula realized – who immediately started charging up the hill towards them, howling as they made their mad dash. Alenko immediately went to work using his biotics to either launch those … husks of men and women against each other or tripping them, creating tangles of mutated limbs each time. And each time he did it Ashley was ready to throw some grenades in those groups – blowing them to bits – or taking them down with short and precise burst from her assault rifle.

At the same time Azula was not idle either, keeping the Geth from making a few extra holes in her comrades. One was too slow when reaching for cover and had its light-bulb head blown off in one shot; another thought the metal railing was enough protection against Azula's overclocked sniper rifle, and found itself sadly mistaken. The last one was hiding behind a stack of crates when Alenko biotically pushed the heavy crate away, giving Azula a clear shot.

After a minute it was all over and the group cautiously relaxed the grip on their weapons. "Damn," murmured Ashley. "Those zombie things are really creepy."

Thinking back to those unnatural howls, Azula could only agree. "Yeah, they are, so keep your eyes open unless you want to know if their bite is as bad as their looks."

"Commander," Alenko interjected, pointing at something. "Isn't that Nihlus?"

Looking down at the train station Azula saw what Alenko was pointing at: a distinctively dark turian-like body was lying on the floor unmoving.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Chapter 3 - part 3

Azula very nearly broke into a full blown run to reach the turian body, only her ingrained instincts – drilled into her during training and honed in battle – made her slow down and keep at least a basic awareness of the battlefield. As she got closer however it became more and more clear that against all she had hoped, the body on the ground was that of Nihlus. A gunshot wound ran along the side of his face, going from the back of the head to the eye at the front.

As she looked at the body, Azula could not hear Ashley's questions or Alenko's saddened response. Her mind was whirlwind of rage and worry; about her career basically being shot in the head like Nihlus had been, and her hopes of spectrehood slipping right through her fingers like the blood dripping from Nihlus wound.

'Wait,' Azula thought. 'Why there is so much blood around? And why it's still… dripping?' While head wounds usually bled a lot, usually it happened because the heart was still pumping large amounts of blood to the head. When someone dies the hearth stops working and the blood starts obeying the laws of gravity; slowly drifting downwards within the body.

Azula's eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing could mean, and quickly activated the basic medical diagnostic scan every military grade omnitool had. It was nothing particularly complex or accurate – unlike those used by medics and field medics – but to see if a bone was really broken or if someone's heart was still beating, it was a more than adequate instrument.

When the omnitool reported a faint heartbeat Azula's hands moved in a blur as she grabbed the medigel from Alenko's side and crouched, spraying the substance it in the open wound. She was almost done when her own ears picked up a suspicious sound behind the crates in front of her, and almost at the same time Ashley shouted a warning.

"Movement!" she yelled as she and the rest of the group pointed their weapons in the same general direction.

"Wait, wait! I'm human! Don't shoot!" a male voice was heard from behind the crates.

"Get out in the open slowly and with your hands in the air!" Azula ordered the man from her crouching position, pistol ready in hand.

"Here! I'm coming out, please don't shoot," the owner of the voice walked out in the open, trembling and with his hands way above his head. He took a look at her group and seemed to wither under Azula's angry glare. "Identify yourself!" Azula ordered the man.

"My… my name is Powell, I work here and I was behind those crates when the attack came," he said as if he was trying to justify himself, only to be met by silence and still pointed guns. "I was still there when I saw your friend getting killed by that other turian," he fearfully blurted out when the quiet became too much for him.

'Wait,' Azula thought. 'Other turian?'

"Describe this other turian," Azula brusquely said lowering her gun. She was imitated by her companions a moment later.

"Well, I didn't see much from where I was," Powell seemed to relax a bit now that he no longer had guns pointed his way. "But he was all gray and had those antenna things turian have on the side of his face," he briefly described. "Your friend seemed to know him too, called him Saren he did. Then this Saren guy goes behind him and shoot your friend in the head."

'Shit,' cursed Azula in her mind. 'This is worse than I thought!'

"Can't really disagree with you on that, ma'am," Alenko said.

'I just thought that out of loud, haven't I,' Azula thought, balling her hands into fists.

"That Saren guy used the train to leave just a minute ago," the dock worker spoke in less scared tone of voice. "The next stop is the spaceport, if you hurry up you might be able to catch him."

"That's where the beacon must be," Ashley piped up.

"Then it is where you and I are going," said Azula. "Alenko!" she barked interrupting him right as he was opening his mouth to speak. "Stay with Nihlus, find a first aid kit or anything like that and do your best to keep him alive," she turned to look at him straight in the yes, making it clear that no, this was not something he wanted to discuss with her. "I don't care what do you have to do. Keep. Him. Alive."

"Yes ma'am," he replied, wisely keeping anything he wanted to say to himself.

"And you," Azula whirled around pointing her finger at the dockworker, making him nearly jump out of his skin. "Show him where you hid, help him out and then forget it happened. As far as you're concerned and if anyone asks, this turian is dead. Do you understand?"

"W-What? No! Why…?" whatever he was going to say was lost in a squeak the moment Azula jumped over the crate and invaded his personal space. "Oh? Do you have something else in mind?" she said with obviously faked curiosity. "Let me guess, is your plan to run away?" the way he cringed right when she asked that question might as well shouted his intentions to the world.

"Let me offer you a choice then," Azula continued ina glacial tone of voice. "You can hide here with the heavily armed, biotic soldier or you can run away, hoping you don't end up turned into a cybernetic abomination like your friends," she pointed at one of the turned bodies, "maybe like that one."

"Commander…" she heard Alenko's reproaching voice, but paid him no attention. Nihlus had been shot in the back with an handgun, and if he could not see how big of a mess that implied she was not going to hold his hand and explain things to him; not right now. If keeping Nihlus alive – along with his testimony – required leaning a bit on this guy, so be it.

"Well?" Azula said, pushing the dockworker. "Have you reached a decision?"

"You bitch," Powell murmured, eyes downcast. "YOU GIGANTIC BITCH!" he angrily shouted looking up a moment later, tears freely flowing from his eyes.

"I'm pleased to see you chose well," she replied ignoring his outburst. "Help Alenko, keep silent about the turian's survival and everything will go just fine between you and me," what would happen if things did not, went unsaid and left to the man's imagination. Not that she would follow up with the unspoken threat, she had better things to do than explain to a random civvie the value of discretion after all.

Ignoring the crying man, she turned to look at Alenko's disapproving scowl and Ashley's restrained anger. "Alenko, if me and Ashley don't come back or you receive no communication from us within a reasonable timeframe, assume us dead and call the Normandy for extraction. Ashley, you're with me."

Alenko kept his scowl fixated at a her a little longer, then wordlessly walked past her and started a whispered conversation Azula could not be bothered to follow. Ashley remained still and kept glaring at her, her whole expression and body language declaring to the world the righteous anger she was feeling at the moment.

"Move it, Chief," Azula said as she went past Ashley, prompting her to unfold her rifle and start following Azula.

The place where they had found Nihlus' body was not far from the train loading station, and after easily dispatching a few Geth the two of them found a still functioning, open topped cargo train. As they made their way to the control panel at the other end of the train however, a giant Geth – easily twice the size of any of their footsoldier unit met thus far – rose from behind a row of seats and shot a fireball-like blast at her and Ashley.

Acting before her consciousness fully elaborated the threat, Azula kicked Ashley out of the way and used that same motion to push herself into safety. The attack hit exactly where they stood just a moment before, exploding in a concussive blast that barely missed them. Between herself and Ashley, Azula was the first to recover and see the big Geth charging down the train and right at them.

It took a moment for her to take hold of the heat present over the train's pavement and brusquely pull it out, creating a slim sheet of ice on which the giant Geth immediately lost traction and fell. Azula immediately released back the heat she took, melting the ice, and jumped on her feet; then – before the machine could mount any kind of defense – her and her companion started unloading their guns on the helpless Geth.

"That," Ashley observed after giving Azula an odd look. "Was one lucky fall. If the floor had not been wet we would have been in serious trouble."

"Than lets thank the spirits for our good luck and let's move," Azula replied, dismissing what happened with a wave of her hand. "We already wasted too much time."

A bit more cautiously than before to prevent any further surprises, the two women finally reached the control panel and started the train. "Better find some cover," the Gunnery Chief said. "It won't take long to reach the spaceport and I bet the Geth will be waiting for us."

Indeed Ashley's estimate was not wrong and in just a few minutes they reached the spaceport docking station, a structure made with two platforms separated by the train rails and connected by a bridge in the middle. Both Azula and Ashley carefully peeked over the thick metal plates made to hold the cargo, and attentively examined their surroundings looking for signs of Geth activity.

"This is strange," Ashely said, rising up from behind her cover. "They must've known we were coming, why they haven't attacked?"

"Oh great," Azula groaned in dismay. "Why don't you ask what could possibly go wrong while you're at it Chief?"

"I didn't think you were the superstitious type Commander," Ashley said, amused, while they left the train and started going up a ramp.

"As the saying goes, walk a mile in my shoes and then we'll see if you are going to keep taunting the universe that way," Azula dryly retorted. "In my experience…" Azula trailed off right before going over the bridge connecting the two sides of the station, and peered suspiciously at the crates on the other side.

"What is it Commander?" Ashley asked, raising her rifle automatically.

"Those crates, look at how they are arranged," Azula said, pointing at the objects in question.

"Nothing on the bridge, crates arranged for maximum cover…" Ashley muttered. "This is a trap, isn't it," she declared after a couple of moment.

"I would be very surprised if it isn't," Azula agreed, putting her weapon away. "I'm going to try something, cover me if they wise up and start shooting."

"What…" Ashley started to ask, when Azula cut her off by jumping over the railings and shimming her way under the bridge. "You're crazy!" Ashley yelled into the radio.

"Sanity is for the weak," Azula happily replied as she made her way towards the other side. "It was a trap all right," she said over the radio when she reached the middle. "There are motion sensors here, if we walked down that bridge the Geth would've caught us with our pants down."

"Can they be disabled? It would be nice to turn the table on them at least once," Ashley suggested.

"No, I don't think so. Not if we want to hurry," Azula replied after taking a closer look at the sensors. "Still, they aren't looking down here so we can keep going with my original idea."

"It would be nice to know what idea it is," Ashley groused. "ma'am," she belatedly added.

"Just watch for the fireworks Williams," Azula smugly replied.

After carefully covering the last few meters distancing her from the platform edge, she gripped it with one hand and lifted herself up so she could plant a grenade on one of those suspicious crates; the adhesive coating made by the omnitool's fabricator working perfectly. Planting the explosives took very little time, and as soon as Azula was at a safe distance she detonated them.

The crates shattered in a million pieces, the debris – turned into shrapnel by the sheer force of the explosions – tearing apart the synthetics hiding behind them. At the spectacle Ashley rose from behind her cover and let out a wild cheer, but a few moments later half a dozen more Geth came from the entrance right in front of the bridge. Out of cover Ashley immediately became the target of all the new enemies, all the Geth firing with mechanical precision and draining her shield in a matter of moments.

It would have been her end right then and there had not Azula popped out from under the bridge – holding her shotgun with one hand – and killed two Geth with as many shots. The sudden attack gave the synthetics a far more pressing concern, and Ashley the time to duck back into cover and recharge her shield. However Azula's attack may have diverted the Geth's attention from Ashley, but now they were focused on her and opened fire as soon as they had her in their sights.

She did not wait around for them to test how tough her armor was and as soon as she saw the synthetics turn, Azula dropped her shotgun – catching it with her feet – and used the support beams under the bridge to get away from the line of fire. The Geth garbled something in that language of theirs and started to move into more favorable positions to shoot her; doing that however exposed them to return fire from Ashley, forcing them once again to shift focus or to seek cover.

With her attackers no longer pinning her down Azula then moved from one side of the bridge to the other, taking shots wherever she could. With only a few units left and their ambush properly wrecked, the Geth did not last long despite fighting to bitter end. After a few seconds after the last synthetic fell and no more eezo signatures appeared on the sensors, Azula jumped on the bridge and a rather incensed Ashley Williams caught up with her shortly after.

"That was insane," Ashley tersely said. "If any of those flashlight-heads so much looked in your general direction when you dropped down, it would've spotted you."

"It was a calculated risk," Azula replied, shrugging to dismiss the other woman concerns.

"A calculated…" Ashley started to say, eyes widening in disbelief.

"There was no way to hide a spotter and if one was actually poking his head out, we would have seen it."Azula interrupted. "Also if one of the Geth decided to take look, you would have seen it and I would have dropped down between the rails; outside their firing lines."

Seeing Ahsley's still wasn't convinced, Azula placed her hand on the other woman shoulder and gave her a small smile. "But your honesty and concern are appreciated. Now let's go, we wasted enough time as it is."

Ashley's lips twitched upwards for a moment, then she let out a resigned sigh. "You're right Commander, let's go. The beacon should not be far from here," Ashley's words proved to be true as they found beacon just after the station's exit, miraculously without any enemy being present.

It was a tall obelisk – two or three times Azula's height – resting on a pedestal made of the same material of the beacon itself. There was something looking like mist rising from the pedestal and climbing over the beacon itself, and from the top a beam of light shined towards the sky. Azula found herself admiring the simple but elegant lines of the artifact. 'Whoever the Protheans actually were,' she thought. 'It seems they had an eye for aesthetics.'

"Strange," Ashley spoke, "it wasn't doing that when they dug it up."

Azula narrowed her eyes at the news, and examined the beacon more closely before fixating her gaze on something partially hidden by the artifact's bulk. "And I'm pretty sure it didn't have one of those," she grimly said, pointing her finger at the out of place object.

Not wasting any time Ashley moved to the side of the beacon – while keeping a respectful distance from it – to take a better look at what Azula pointed out, only to start cursing when she had a better view of the object in question. "It's bomb ma'am, they must have rigged the thing to blow," she angrily said. Azula in the mean time wasn't standing idle either, and had activated her omnitool to take a scan of the bomb. "Worse than that Chief," she said grimacing when the results appeared on the screen. "It's nuclear and it's active."

"Shit!" Ashley said, summing up the whole situation. "They want to take out the whole colony?! Is that thing really that important?!" she nearly shouted.

"Good question, Chief," Azula said calmly. "And I have all the intentions to poke a few holes in this plan of theirs, but I need your help."

Ashley straightened up and turned to look at her. "Just say the word Commander," she said full of determination. "Whatever you need."

"Nothing particularly dramatic Williams," Azula said smirking slightly. "Just watch my back while I call the Normandy and see if we can disable this thing without damaging the beacon."

"Shooting bad guys in the face if they show up?" Ashley said with a smirk of her own. "Can do ma'am," she finished while hosting up her rifle.

Azula nodded then once again opened a channel to the Normandy. "Normandy this is Ground Team. We found the beacon, but it looks active and there is a nuclear device near it. The artifact may have been rigged to blow, and I'm requesting assistance in disarming the bomb," SOP required in cases like this at least another bomb expert to be present, either physically or through a comm channel; the idea behind it being that two sets of eyes and experience were better than one.

"Negative ground team," Captain Anderson's voice crackled through the comm channel. "Too many hostiles flying around in your area and we can't keep the channel open too long or we'll risk being discovered," there was a moment of silence on the other end, then Anderson started speaking again; his voice clearly apologetic. "I'm sorry Ground Team," he said quietly. "You'll have to do this on your own."

"That did not sound good," Ashley commented without turning around.

"No," Azula admitted. "But easy and I never seem to go well together, so nothing new there."

She ignored the faint muttering from the Gunnery Chief and cautiously started getting closer to the beacon and the bomb. She was just a few meters from it when the artifact started glowing and pulsed with an unknown energy, she barely registered what happened when she started feeling something tugging and pulling her towards it. "Oh, fuck!" Azula cursed while fighting to get free from the telekinetic grip reeling her in.

The curse made Ashley look back, and after a moment of surprise she immediately started to run towards Azula. "Commander!" Ashley shouted as she ran.

"NO!" Azula shouted back, stopping the other woman in her tracks. "Call the Normandy! Code 4247C A, it's…"

The beacon finally won the struggle against Azula and lifted her up in the air; she tried to struggle further, but she was unable to move of talk. For a second nothing happened then she felt something strange, like being touched but felt as if it came from the inside. The sensation grew stronger and stronger with each metaphorical poke. It started as a sense of discomfort centered in her head, then grew until it became pain and then agony. And just as she could no longer form a coherent thought, a vision started.

A series of images going too fast to make sense flashed in her brain; she could still see the beacon and the train station with her eyes, but at the same time she was also seeing and feeling a jumbled mess of … something: Pain, despair and something metallic, artificial. Each sequence of images however felt to her as if she was losing her fingers all over again, and just as the strain was starting to be too much for her to bear the beacon suddenly – and gratefully as far as she was concerned – exploded, launching her through the air and into blissful darkness.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Chapter 4


SSV Normandy, Infirmary.


Contrary to what is usually seen in many vids, awareness came slowly to Azula; similar to a submersible emerging from the deeps. It was all muddled at the start – sounds and feelings getting all mixed up – but as minutes passed her focus returned and with it a gigantic headache. 'Oh spirits,' she thought while curling up a bit and gripping her head with her hands. 'No more drinking contest with Batarian ale, I promise.'


"She's awake!" a female voice cried out, making Azula cringe at the volume. "Not so loud? Please?" she … courteously requested. Definitely not whined. No sir.


"Sorry ma'am," Ashley apologized in a much quieter voice.


"Thank you," Azula said. 'Wait, what?' she suddenly backtracked, eyes opening wide in surprise. 'Ashley?Who…' then everything that happened on Eden Prime came rushing back; Jenkins, Nihlus, Saren and then the beacon with its vision and destruction. Azula shot up from her bed in a second, wide awake and with her head whipping around searching for the turian Spectre.


"Nihl…" she started to say when she spotted his still form next to another sleeping body, but it was all she could say before an heavy wave of nausea hit her. Thankfully for her – and anyone on janitorial duty – a bucket appeared under Azula's nose just at the right moment, and spared her quite an unfortunate accident. The people around her either wincing in sympathy or – in the case of the good doctor – waiting patiently.


"Okay," Azula said, voice still a bit shaky. "Moving fast? Bad idea."


"That would be wise, Commander," Chakwas drily said. "Based on my scans, your brain took quite the beating. I have already given you the appropriate medication to alleviate the worst symptoms, but I am restricting you to the infirmary until we reach the Citadel; there should be no complications, but I believe it's better to be safe than sorry."


Azula looked pensive for a moment, the only other time she had been restricted to bed was after the Skyllian Blitz. 'Just how bad was this beating?' she thought.


"It was bad, Commander," Ashley spoke up, surprising Azula. "When I got to you, your eyes were rolled all the way back and you were … twitching," she said after a slight hesitation. "It was not a nice spectacle ma'am," she finished, looking quite uncomfortable.


"What about Nihlus?" Azula asked, slowly turning to look at him lying on the infirmary bed with his face completely hidden by bandages. "And what about the bomb too? I remember the beacon exploding, but what happened to the bomb?" she added a moment later.


"I managed to keep him stable," Alenko answered. "Powell knew where to get a first aid kit and I did what I could, without his help I don't know if I could have done it," he said, looking pointedly at Azula. "After a little while we heard a huge explosion and felt a tremor, like an earthquake; then a team from the Normandy showed up and took us to the landing zone. I don't know much else beyond that."


"The explosion was the bomb going off," Ashley dejectedly said. "I had no idea how to disarm it, so I loaded it on a train and then sent it in the middle of nowhere. It…" she looked down at the floor, her voice lowering down to a whisper. "It didn't go far enough." she finally said.


"Bollocks," Chakwas said in a tone that broke no argument and drawing everyone's gaze to her. "I looked at the preliminary reports and while there are people injured by the shockwave, and something will have to be done about the fallout too, without you there would be no one around to worry about those things."


"She's right, Ashley," Azula said softly, catching the Gunnery Chief's attention. "Letting someone with no experience or guidance fool around with a bomb is a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one. No if or but about it," she added when the Chief looked ready to argue the point. "Think of it this way, would you let anyone with zero training poke around a fusion reactor?"


"I know, but…" Ashley started to say before letting out a sigh and visibly deflating. "You're right ma'am. I just feel I could've done things better," she said looking at nothing in particular,"done more."


"If it bugs you so much," Azula finally said after a moment of awkward silence. "I could train you in demolition and bomb disposal. I never actually bothered to get a teaching certificate, but in the mean time I could show you a couple of things," Ashley's head shot up at that, eyes as wide as saucers "Unofficially of course," Azula added.


"You would?! Ah! I… I mean, thank you ma'am!" Ashley excitedly said, a big grin appearing on her face.


Azula gave her a small smile before turning towards doctor Chakwas, smile gone. "Now let's go back to my original question, how's Nihlus?" she asked.


"Not well," the doctor answered. "But not as bad it may look," the older woman activated her omnitool and a three dimensional image of a turian head appeared. "The bullet did a lot of damage, but for the most part it's limited to the skull," she said as a reconstruction of the wound appeared on the holographic image. "I think he was starting to turn around when the shot was fired, but it was enough for the bullet to avoid the brain and still look like a fatal wound."


The doctor shut down the simulation and looked sadly at her turian guest. "What actually worries me are the bone fragments embedded in the brain. I took care of those I could but I'm no neurosurgeon; he needs specialized help and equipment if he's to pull through this."


"He will," Azula spoke quietly, "You don't get to be a Spectre by being of frail constitution," everyone remained silent, looking at Nihlus, when Azula suddenly broke the silence. "Doc, can you tell me how bad the damage to his brain is?"


Chakwas looked at Azula oddly for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. "I don't really know," she answered. "The fragments seems to be localized near the parts dedicated to movement, but I've no idea how extensive the damage to his motor functions will be. It could be nothing or he could never be able to have a normal life ever again."


"So his memories should be intact right?" Azula asked.


"I believe so," Chakwas answered. "Why?" she curiously asked.


"Good, good," Azula said, either ignoring or not having heard the question. "How's Jenkins?" she asked while climbing down the bed, wobbling a little and refusing the help with a shake of her head before steadying herself.


"He'll need to go through a lot of rehabilitation in the future, but he's going to be fine," Chakwas answered. "He started to get really agitated when we brought you in, so I had to put him under; at this stage it's better if he doesn't move around much."


"Alenko I need you…" Azula started to say when she was suddenly interrupted by the infirmary doors opening, revealing the form of Captain Anderson.


"So, how's our Commander doing?" he asked as he got closer to the group.


"Quite well Captain, she even already started scheming again," doctor Chakwas drily answered, while studiously ignoring the affronted look on Azula's face.


"That does sound like our Commander all right," Anderson said in a serious tone of voice, only his eyes giving away his amusement at his XO's silent outrage. "Well, since she seems to be well enough," he said turning serious. "I would like to hear her report about what happened down there."


Taking the hint, both Alenko and Ashley saluted and left the infirmary while doctor Chakwas retreated in her office. "It's a damn mess Shepard," Anderson grimly said as soon as they were alone. "The beacon destroyed, a nuke going off near the colony, Nihlus almost killed and quite possibly crippled for life," he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "The Council and the Alliance both are not going to be happy about this."


"Have you seen the wound on Nihlus, Captain?" Azula asked, taking the captain by surprise.


He looked at her for a moment in confusion before narrowing his eyes. "What's on your mind?" he asked, cutting through to the chase.


"The wound was made by a pistol," Azula explained, pacing back and forth a little. "A rifle round would have done a lot more damage than that."


"And a pistol would've never gone through his shield with just one shot," Anderson murmured a moment later, quickly understanding the point Azula was trying to make. "Nihlus knew the attacker; knew it well enough to trust him with his back."


"And at that point it was child's play for the attacker to put the gun close enough to bypass the shield, and then shoot," finished Azula.


"God damnit!" Anderson cursed, passing his hand through his short hair. "This is even worse than I thought."


"There is a silver lining tough," Azula spoke up. "A surviving dockworker heard Nihlus say the attacker's name and even gave me a brief description," she paused for a moment, then continued once she had Anderson's attention. "The name is Saren and apparently he's a gray skinned turian with flanges on the sides of his head. I'm no expert but that is a quite rare mutation, isn't … it?" she trailed off towards the end, as she noticed her captain's eyes narrowing and briefly darkening with fury.


"Are you sure," he said in an extremely calm and controlled tone, "that the name is Saren?"


"That's the name the dockworker, Powell, heard sir," Azula answered, suddenly very alert. 'What is going on? Who is this Saren?'


For the first time since she knew the Captain, Azula saw him getting angry enough to almost lose control; hands balled into tight fists and his nostrils flaring. Then he took a deep breath and slowly shook his head. "When it rains, it pours; doesn't it," he finally said, speaking in a low tone of voice and obviously lost in a memory.


"Captain," Azula started to say after a few moments. "Anderson," she corrected herself, "I don't want to pry, but…"


"Yes Shepard," he said interrupting her, already knowing what she was going to ask. "You can say that I have a bit of an… history with Saren," Anderson paced a bit, obviously collecting his thoughts, then he leaned on an empty bed and looked at the sleeping form of Jenkins. "I did not want to talk about it, but if it was him… Well, you have a right to know," he finally spoke. "You are right in the middle of this mess after all."


"Thank you," Azula sincerely said, it was obvious to her that no good memories were attached to that name, memories that he was going to revisit.


"To make a long story short," Anderson started to speak. "Saren is a Spectre, one of their best," Azula nodded at that. A famous and trusted colleague would make sense as far as Nihlus fate on Eden Prime was concerned. "And he was my examiner when I was chosen to be the first human Spectre," Anderson then finished.


Azula's eyes widened and had to forcibly relax her locked up muscles at that revelation. 'I can see Anderson being chosen to be a Spectre, but failing to pass whatever test they had?' she thought, still a bit stunned. Azula opened her mouth to ask exactly how that happened, but quickly changed her mind and said nothing. He already told her the need to know information she asked for; anything more would be entirely up to him and she was unwilling to push the issue.


"We were in a refinery," Anderson continued, a faint trace of bitterness coloring his controlled tone. "He blew it up with everyone inside and then blamed it on me by saying I tripped an alarm; his accusation alone destroyed my chance at being a Spectre."


"So the Council is far more likely to side with Saren and sweep this under the rug, rather than truly investigating the situation," Azula cynically said.


"With a nuke going off on a garden world inside Citadel Space, that may not be the case," Anderson answered, shrugging his shoulders. "But I wouldn't count on it."


"Captain," Azula said after a long stretch of silence. "I have something in mind for when we'll talk to the Council, but I'm going to need your help to pull it off."


"Always with a scheme ready, aren't you," he said with a small smile.


"You know me best Anderson," she answered, mirroring him.


"Let's hear your plan then," he said.


-*-


The Citadel was magnificent, just as the descriptions said it would be: an enormous structure with five long arms attached to a ring and surrounded by the glowing Serpent's Nebula. Many off duty crew-members were already gathered in the cockpit, watching the space station getting closer and closer. Unfortunately Azula had more pressing concerns in the infirmary than a bit of sight-seeing from the pilot's seat, no matter how much she would have liked to see the famous station too. 'Hopefully,' she thought. 'This will be the first of many visits.'


"Do you understand, Jenkins?" Azula asked the Corporal currently lying on a modified stretcher in the infirmary.


"Yes, Commander. But I have to say all these bandages are not going to make it easy," Jenkins rightfully complained, trying to scratch at the gauze covering half of his face before Azula slapped his hand away.


"It's only for the trip to the hospital, after you are in a secure room you can remove them," Azula explained. "Also think of it this way: you are going to get some of the best medical care around; you'll get back on your feet in no time. Hell, if you manage to impress me with your recovery rate, I'll treat you to some really delicious tea I got from Palaven," she teased him slightly.


"Tea?" he asked her in a disbelieving voice. "From Palaven?"


"Well, technically it's classified as a mild natural anesthetic there, but it doesn't do much to humans beyond being really good tea," Azula said. "And color your tongue purple," she hastily added at the end.


Jenkins turned his head towards her general direction, and somehow she could feel his deadpan stare even through the thick layer of gauze. "Really?" he said. "Purple?"


"Oh, don't be such a baby," she mirthfully chided him. "It goes away within a couple of days."


"I'll stick to coffee, thank you," he finally said in a flat tone.


"Philistine," she mock-haughtily said, passing judgment on his tastes.


Jenkins opened his mouth to reply when he hesitated for a second and then closed it. "Not fair," he mumbled after a second. "I can't mouth off my superior officer."


"And that is why tea will always win," Azula proudly declared.


"We are getting close to the Citadel," Joker spoke from the internal loudspeakers. "Better get the show going."


"Did you hear that?" Azula asked, rhetorically. "Time to play your part," she said, while pushing the stretcher out of the infirmary.


"Yes ma'am," said Jenkins before putting on a deactivated oxygen mask and then lying unmoving on the stretcher.


The trip to the airlock didn't take long and just a couple of minutes later Alenko along with the rest of the Normandy's marine detail arrived, just in time for the start of the pressure equalization procedure. When the airlock door opened a few seconds later, Azula and her entourage found themselves face to face with two rather distinctive groups: one composed of people mostly dressed in white and another with the distinctive blue armor of C-Sec.


"Commander Shepard," a stiff looking – and sounding – Citadel Security turian Sergeant started. "We have been…"


"In a moment Sergeant," Azula interrupted the officer. "Why don't we let the good doctors there take care of the wounded first?"


"…Of course," the turian said, somehow managing to straighten himself even more before signaling the doctor, whom immediately rushed forward.


As they did so Azula grabbed the turian's arm and gently but firmly led him away from the doctors, which were currently engaged in a whispered conversation with Alenko. "So," she said to further distract him. "What you were saying?"


If the whole situation looked suspicious to him or he felt in some way bothered by it, he showed no sign of it. "I was saying," he started again. "That we have been dispatched by Executor Pallin to guard a VIP currently on board the System Alliance Ship Normandy," he enunciated clearly. "I was to receive further information once on site."


Azula nodded in acceptance; so far the plan was working. "Yes, he is in the infirmary," she explained to the Sergeant, who looked politely attentive. "He has been gravely wounded while on a mission," she paused for a moment, hesitating, before looking around as if to make sure there were no eavesdropper and then leaning in, voice down to a whisper. "He is a Spectre," she announced, enjoying the first true reaction from the overly formal and stiff soldier as his eyes widened. "And a witness said a gray turian, with long flanges on the sides of the head, called Saren shot him."


If he showed surprise before, now he appeared positively stumped; his mouth and "cheeks" hanging slightly open and with his eyes open so widely they looked ready to pop out of their sockets. 'It seems he either knows or knows about Saren,' Azula thought, keeping her face neutral to avoid showing her suspicions. 'Might he be a possible agent of his?'


"Spirits…" Azula barely heard him murmur. "What do you need us to do Commander?" he then asked – apparently recovered from the shock – tone and body language less stiff and formal and far more serious.


"We are waiting for a specialist to arrive," Azula said. "Until then you'll guard the infirmary along with a couple of my people; make sure nobody… disturbs our doctor as she works to keep him stable," she hardened her gaze, making sure he fully got the message. "And I mean nobody, not even you or your men. Is that clear?"


"Yes Commander," he nodded. "But how I will recognize the specialist?" the turian asked.


"I'll be with him or her," Azula clarified. "Now go, Private Khaled will take you to the infirmary. And remember: Until I come back with the specialist, nobody enters," she said, reiterating her previous order.


"Yes Commander," he nodded. Then he saluted her and went back to his squad.


"Commander," Anderson called her from the passageway attached to the Normandy's airlock.


"Captain," Azula greeted the man as he walked closer. "Any news?" she asked.


"Yes," he said. "I just spoke with Ambassador Udina; the Council will be ready to receive us tomorrow afternoon."


"That late?" Azula asked a bit taken aback. "Considering the situation I thought it would be sooner," 'Like today,' she thought.


"It's exactly that the reason of the delay," Anderson explained. "They want to have a better idea of the situation before hearing us out," he hesitated for a moment before casually continuing. "I hope it's not a problem."


Azula held her chin as she thought about the new development; would the delay hinder her plan? And if so, would pushing the Council for an early meeting be worth the risk? "No, not really," Azula finally answered. "It helps as much as it creates trouble," she added trying to remain as vague as possible. Anderson nodded and started to turn when Azula's voice stopped him "One more thing sir," she said. "Unless I'm needed elsewhere I would like to accompany Corporal Jenkins to the hospital."


Anderson raised an eyebrow and looked at her for a long moment. "Reason?" he finally asked.


"Jenkins was wounded under my command, Captain," Azula answered, slightly bowing her head. "I feel I should at least see that he's properly taken care of."


Anderson looked aside for a second before turning to look back at her. "Granted," he said. "But don't take too long, Ambassador Udina wanted us in his office as soon as possible. Something about preparing us for the hearing," he added with a smirk.


-*-


"Is that all?" Ambassador Udina said as the video taken from the camera on the helmet stopped.


"I say it's enough," Anderson hotly replied. "How many gray turians with Sennis' deviation called Saren are around?"


"The word of a scared to death dockworker and a couple of frames of a figure seen from a distance?" Udina scoffed, dismissing everything with a wave of the hand. "It will never work. Find something more solid than your personal opinion and at best circumstantial evidence, then we can talk about nailing Saren to a wall."


"That bastard almost nuked a human colony," Anderson said, leaning forward and the volume of his voice raising considerably. "Are you seriously going to let him walk away with that?!"


Udina's eyes widened for a fraction of a second before narrowing down in a fierce glare. "Let me make something absolutely clear, Captain," he said crisply enunciating every word. "I am very well aware of what 'that bastard' almost did, and that is precisely why I want every T crossed and i's dotted," at some point during his tirade, Udina got up from his chair behind the desk and started looming over the impassive Captain. "What I do not want, is him getting away because of some poor evidence or careless behaviour; We have exactly one shot at this and I will not waste it," he finished nearly trembling in anger. "Is. That. Clear?"


"Gentlemen," Azula calmly interjected. "I know that recent events put everyone's temper on an hair trigger, but that's no reason to jump at each others throat," she waited patiently for both men to relax and mumble what may have been an apology. "Ambassador," she then continued, as if the outburst never happened. "While I agree with you that it won't be enough to convict Saren, it should be more than enough to prolong that farce of an investigation they have going. Am I right?"


The Human Ambassador reclined on his chair, obviously thinking about the evidence and trying to predict how the Council would react. "It just might," Udina said after some time. "Not for very long though, they want this over with as soon as possible."


"A colony…" Anderson started to say.


"And it will not work if it's not presented the right way," Udina brusquely interrupted. "And your history with Saren, Captain, will make things far more difficult than necessary," he paused for a moment, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly upward. "You will notcome to the hearing," he finally declared.


"What?"Anderson exclaimed in outrage.


"Ambassador, Captain Anderson was my CO during the operation," Azula said, trying to project an air of reasonableness. "Shouldn't he be present too?"


"Usually yes, his presence would be required," the Ambassador answered. "But as I said, he has a history with Saren, and not a good one," he paused briefly as if considering expanding on that, before shaking his head. "No, his presence it would taint the whole hearing."


"I guess it's up to me then," Azula replied, "If I make a good enough impression, my Spectre candidacy might still get through," she added as she saw the frown on Udina's face turned her way. "After all a Geth invasion and then getting mind whacked by a malfunctioning Prothean device are quite the extenuating circumstances."


"Yes, they are quite outside the normal parameters, even for Spectres" Udina agreed. "Speaking of anomalous events, what exactly happened between you and the beacon?"


Azula stifled a groan at the prospect of prolonging her stay in the Ambassador's office – especially when she still had a lot to do – but she soldiered on and let none of that show on her face; giving him a pleasant smile instead. "It's quite unusual, but I have found a possible modern equivalent of what the beacon did that should explain things," she said, piquing the Ambassador's interest.


"Oh? Do tell," he said, putting his elbows on the desk and clasping his hands in front of him.


The meeting went on for a few more hours, and by the time Azula and Anderson went outside on the presidium the artificial lightning had been dimmed; simulating an evening. "Spirits, finally out!" Azula exclaimed, a few popping noises being clearly heard as she stretched her back. "For a moment I thought he would keep us there through the night too."


"At least it went well," Anderson pointed out, walking at her side. "Just don't ask me to push people's buttons like that again. At least not of one of our people," he added at the end.


"Sorry about that," Azula apologized. "But I needed to present myself as someone diplomatic enough to talk with the council for more than five minutes," she glanced away from Anderson, silent for a moment. "And I wanted to gauge his reactions, see if he had ties to Saren," Azula finally admitted.


"That's a tad paranoid, don't you think?" Anderson replied, a single raised eyebrow the only outward reaction.


"It's not paranoia if your opponent is the most successful Spectre of this generation," Azula sharply retorted.


"Fair enough," he said, shrugging his shoulders.


The conversation ended when they both spotted a turian in a C-Sec armor hurriedly walking in their direction. 'More trouble from Saren?' Azula idly thought as he examined the turian's body language. 'No, there is purpose and tension there but not about us; not directly at least,' she corrected herself as the turian came to a stop in front of them.


"Commander Shepard? Captain Anderson?" he asked, "Garrus Vakarian, Citadel Security. I'm the one investigating Saren," Garrus said after a nod of confirmation from Azula and Anderson. "I would like to ask you some questions about Eden Prime Commander, if you are ok with that Captain," he belatedly added.


"It's fine by me," Anderson agreed. "I'll leave you two to it then," he said before going away.


"Can this wait, Mr. Vakarian?" Azula asked after a couple of seconds, she had really no intention of going through another interrogation. "It has been a really long day."


His cheeks twitched in the turian version of a grimace, as if he had just eaten something truly unpleasant. "I'm afraid not, I'll have to pull an all-nighter as it is given how little time I have to finish the 'investigation'," he bitterly said.


"All right," Azula capitulated. "Where then? I don't think you want to do this in the middle of the Presidium."


"How about we do this over food?" he proposed, obviously trying to appease her. "I know a place where we can have a discreet conversation."


'Well,' Azula thought as she suppressed a smirk. 'As bribes go this is certainly the most original one.' "You certainly move fast, don't you Mr Vakarian," she said, highly amused.


"Well of course. There is not much time before the … meeting," he trailed off right at the end, the different take on what Azula said and his offer to dine with him finally sinking in. "NO!" he nearly shouted, eyes widening in a comical manner. "Not that way! Strictly professional!" he continued as he shook his head and hands in denial.


'Oohh, I'm going to have so much fun with this one,' Azula thought as she watched the spectacle.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Here is a new segment. I have decided to cut Chapter 4 in two parts and the next part (in the final phases of cooking) will be the end of the newly christened Part 1.

=====

"That's all?" Garrus asked, his voice was level and calm, but Azula could still clearly hear the disappointment; it didn't take a genius to understand he had hoped for a break in the investigation. He certainly seemed to be dedicated to his job like his dossier indicated, and distracting the poor man by teasing him until Anderson could send his review of it to her had been fun too.


"I'm afraid so," she answered. "Sorry I couldn't be of more help," she diplomatically added.


"It's fine," he said, leaning back on the chair and releasing a tired sigh. "It was a long shot anyway."


"You look like a resourceful sort," Azula said truthfully, putting her hand over his. "I'm sure you'll find the truth," she quickly finished, as not to give herself away with a laugh. When she touched the Turian's hand he froze and started staring at her hand, as if it was a poisonous animal ready to bite. 'Oh, am I a bad person for enjoying this?' she thought, internally laughing at Garrus' obvious discomfort. 'Bah! Who cares,' she mentally shrugged. 'After Eden Prime I needed that.'


"As entertaining as all this was," she said while releasing Garrus' hand – to his great relief, "I'm afraid we have to cut this short; I'm still the XO of a ship after all."


"I understand, but please don't leave the Citadel until the investigation is over," Garrus automatically said. "Also I need your contact information," he froze just up a moment later – a moment too late – as he realized he gave her another opening.


Graciously Azula spared him further embarrassment; she had her fun picking on him now and then during the dinner, but she did not want to push things too far. "Certainly," she said instead, activating her omnitool to do as he asked. "I have all the intentions to see this through to its rightful end," she made to leave when a sudden idea made her stop. "Speaking of investigations; as far as I understand the situation, you need more time, right?"


Garrus looked at her, hesitating briefly due to surprise."Yes," he answered. "I barely have… had a couple of days and with a Spectre – especially one as renowned as him – as the subject, calling that time limit inadequate is like saying that Krogans are prone to violence," he said with barely restrained contempt. "Absolutely true and utterly underselling it."


"Then may I use your name to at least push for more time?" Azula asked.


The turian stayed silent for what felt a long time, staring at this empty plate until he finally looked Azula in the eyes. "Sure," he said. "Saren is dirty. I know it, I can feel it in my gut as you human says; so if with a bit of heat from the higher ups I get a decent chance at nailing that barefaced bastard?" he made the turian version of a grin, his eyes gleaming at the prospect of possibly arresting Saren. "Then bring up the heat."


"Be careful about what you ask for, Mr. Vakarian," she said with a smirk right before she left. "You might actually get it." A snort of amusement was the only answer she got as she walked away and headed back to the Normandy.


The trip back to the ship was thankfully an uneventful one; and as soon as she emerged from the airlock, she was immediately greeted by a serious looking Ensign holding a datapad within her hands. "Today's paperwork sir," she started. "Also Captain Anderson wants you to know he took care of the C-Sec guards downstairs."


"Thank you Ensign, you can go," barely noticing the crew-member saluting her and walking away, Azula unlocked the datapad and started reading the Alliance's dossier about Saren Arterius on the way to her quarters. 'Just a bit of light reading before bed,' she thought sarcastically.


The blaring buzz signaling an incoming urgent message brusquely woke Azula up. Still a bit bleary from the sleep she pushed the bed up the rails on the wall – turning it into a couch – and slid out the desk, automatically accepting the call.


"Whoever you are," she said, eying the clock and taking note that it was really early morning, "You better have really important news."


"Commander? It's me, Jenkins," the corporal answered, instantly gaining Azula's full attention. "It's Nihlus ma'am, he woke up."


Azula's eyes quickly widened, as the significance of the news hit her, then narrowed just as fast. "I'll be there in five," she declared and closed the communication. She barely had the time to grab her uniform when the alarm for an incoming communication blared again. "What is it?" she brusquely said as she accepted the call.


"It's me again, Commander," Jenkins spoke. "I… Uh, wasn't finished ma'am," he nervously spoke.


A million scenarios took form in her mind, but she ruthlessly squashed them. "You are right, I didn't wait," she paused for a moment, taking a deep breath. "Go ahead, Corporal."


"Nihlus did wake up, Commander," he repeated. "Was aware too, but fell unconscious again soon after. Normal sleep, not a coma the doctor said," he hastily added at the end. "If there are no sudden complications, he should wake up in one or two days."


"Good. Talk with anyone who knows and make sure they understand the need for secrecy, Corporal," Azula said, her voice turning very serious. "It is now more important than ever to remain vigilant and keep the news of his recovery from spreading," she paused for moment, as she considered her options. "However I think I'll be sending you a package," she said as she cupped her chin. "Just in case."


"A package? What… Oh, that kind of package," Jenkins said. "We will keep an eye out ma'am, Jenkins out."


As soon as the Corporal closed the communication, Azula sighed and then glared at the watch; it was almost time for the morning crew switch. "Well, no sense going back to sleep," she muttered. "Time to finish reading the dossiers."


When Kaidan and Ashley arrived to accompany her to the hearing with the Council, she was busy fitting an heavy duty shield generator under the dress uniform. Kaidan opened his mouth and shut it a second later, choosing to remain silent; Ashley instead merely raised an eyebrow as she examined Azula's clothes and then turned to look at the armor she and Kaidan were wearing.


"You two aren't in the spotlight, I am," Azula answered the unvoiced question. "In a surprising twist, getting within spitting distance of the Council while wearing heavy armor and carrying a few guns is frowned upon. Go figure."


"That… makes sense," Kaidan replied, looking a bit embarrassed. "I guess we aren't expected to be interviewed then?"


"Not as far as I know," Azula shrugged. "What you witnessed I for the most part witnessed too," with the last button of her dress uniform closed up and the shield generator unseen under it, Azula grabbed an heavy looking bag and started moving towards the airlock.


"What's in that ma'am?" Ashley asked as she started to follow her.


"My safety blankets," Azula drily answered.


*-*


After a long elevator ride the group finally arrive at the top of the Presidium Tower, where the hearing would take place. Kaidan and Alenko stopped and waited in the area immediately after the elevator entrance as Azula made her way towards Udina; the ambassador looking as if he just bitten on a particularly bitter lemon. 'More than usual anyway,' Azula thought


"Ambassador," Azula politely greeted him.


"Commander," he replied in an even tone.


"Is something wrong?" Azula asked, frowning herself.


"Saren is going to be present," he replied curtly. "Not physically of course, but I was hoping we could do this without him."


Azula remained silent for a moment, considering how more… complicated things could get with Saren there to run interference. "It's going to be a bit more tense than I would have thought with him present, yes," she agreed. "Still it may be an opportunity to trip him if we can needle him enough."


Udina somehow scowled even harder as he looked at her. "I don't think a Spec…" a chime from his omnitool cut him short. "The hearing is about to begin," he said. "Follow me, we must not be late," without saying anything else he turned and started going up the stairs leading towards the Council. Even from a distance Azula could see a faint shimmer surrounding three figures – probably the Councilors – standing on a balcony. 'Either an incredibly powerful shield, or several placed one after the other,' Azula thought as she walked. 'Probably the latter. One giant barrier is certainly flashy and impressive, but it is like putting all your eggs in one basket: not a wise move.'


Udina led her past what felt like a couple of barriers and onto a small, suspended platform right in front of the Councilors. 'Sparatus, Tevos and Valern,' Azula thought as she eyed them. 'The bad cop, the reasonable cop and the good cop.'


"Welcome, Commander," the Asari Councilor greeted her. "I'm glad to see you recovered from your ordeal with the Prothean beacon."


"Thank you," Azula answered. "Your concern is appreciated."


The asari smiled briefly before schooling her features in a more serious expression. "I guess it's time to begin the hearing about the events on Eden Prime then," she said, nodding at someone Azula couldn't see. Immediately after the holographic image of a turian appeared: a gray one with a set of Turian spikes on the side of his head. 'So,' Azula thought, carefully keeping her face impassive as she studied the turian. 'That is my enemy.'


"Council Spectre Saren Arterius present," Tevos said, "Lieutenant Commander Azula Shepard, System Alliance present; System Alliance Ambassador Donnel Udina present. The recording will start now."


"Commander," spoke the turian Councilor. "For the record, could you describe what happened during the mission from your point of view?"


"Certainly, Councilor," Azula promptly answered, she then complied with the request and started making her report.


"In what state was the human, Commander?" Saren predictably interrupted as Azula reached the point his name was mentioned.


Instead of answering Azula ignored Saren and looked at the Councilors, making sure not to smile when she noticed one of Saren's cheek-flanges twitch slightly in annoyance. "Unharmed, coherent and obviously scared and shaken," she answered after Tevos gave her a slight nod. "Unlikely to be the culprit or to have misheard the name; too uncommon on Eden Prime."


"Stick to the facts, Commander," Saren spat out, unable – or unwilling – to hide the disdain in his voice. "Speculations like that have no place here."


"And yet I was asked to make an evaluation on that same subject," Azula answered, looking straight into the eyes of the holographic form of Saren. "But we are getting away from the topic at hand," she said, going back to giving the appearance of ignoring him and his presence.


"The topic at hand is…" Saren started to say when the voice of the Salarian Councilor cut him off. "Enough," Valern spoke, his voice stopping Saren in his tracks. "The Commander has a point, the time to examine what happened will come as soon as she can finish her report."


"Apologies," Saren grumbled, "It won't happen again."


"You may continue, Commander," the Asari Councilor spoke.


"Thank you, Councilor," Azula said, slightly bowing her head before resuming speaking. 'Not that there was much left to say,' she thought. 'My encounter with that accursed beacon isn't that far away.'


"So you interfaced with the beacon?" asked the Turian Councilor asked as she finished talking.


"Not voluntarily, but yes," Azula answered. "A mass effect field seized me as soon as I tried to get close enough to defuse the bomb; a feature of the beacon I believe."


"Your heroism in trying to save the colony has been noted and appreciated, Commander." Tevos interjected. "However I'm afraid there is a more urgent matter that requires our attention."

 

[ZiPeppe]

Here is the last segment of Chapter 4 Part 1. The talkiest bit. I hope I got everyone right.

"Your heroism in trying to save the colony has been noted and appreciated, Commander." Tevos interjected. "However I'm afraid there is a more urgent matter that requires our attention."


"Your wild accusation against me, to be precise," Saren contemptuously said. "Trying to cover one's incompetence by blaming someone else is the oldest trick in the human book, Commander; one that has been used already by your mentor," he paused for a moment, metaphorically looking down at her. "You should really have tried something different if you wanted to continue his vendetta against me."


"So you're calling Nihlus – or his teacher – incompetent," Azula said, leveling a glare of her own at the turian.


"I said no such thing, and I suggest…"


"That is exactly what you did, as it was Nihlus that chose me as a candidate," she interrupted him. "Isn't that how usually things go with Turians?"


"Mistakes," Saren grounded up, the implied 'like you' clearly heard, "happen to everyone."


"Indeed. And that is exactly what the attacker did," Azula said with a confident smirk, enjoying the fact that she managed to catch Saren tensing up for a moment. "Not only did he leave Nihlus for dead, but he was caught on camera."


"What?!"exclaimed Saren, immediately followed by similar expressions of surprise from the Councilors.


"I had my helmet camera on," Azula revealed. "And even if at the moment I was distracted by the dreadnought sized Geth ship lifting off, there is a clear image of the attacker within the recording."


"You were recording a classified mission?" Saren hissed. "Do you realize how much trouble you are in?"


"Do you?" she said, looking the turian straight in the eyes.


"Against the protocol as it may be," Valern, the Salarian Councilor, said. "It certainly helps right now. But given the fact you haven't already provided us with the footage, am I right to assume it does not give us a clear and precise identification?"


"You are correct, Councilor," Azula said, "But it is merely a part of a bigger picture."


"Then show us this 'big picture' of yours," Saren sarcastically interjected, even finger quoting her.


"With pleasure," Azula spoke, ignoring the sarcasm. "But before I show you the video footage, I would like to talk about the wound Nihlus received," with a few taps on her omnitool an image of a turian head appeared between her and the Councilors; the very same image she saw on the Normandy after she woke up in fact.


"I would like to bring your attention to the size difference between the exit and the entry wound," began Azula, highlighting the area on the holographic image. "That, Councilors, is not something made by a rifle or anything bigger than an handgun. Anyone with even a shred of experience can tell you that," she continued, pacing back and forth as much as the small platform allowed.


"And now you are all thinking: 'but what that has to do with anything? What is the point?' The point, Councilors, is that an handgun – no matter how powerful – wouldn't have penetrated the shields in one or even two hits, and it certainly couldn't happen without Nihlus reacting in some way," Azula paused for moment, turning serious and giving her voice a more somber tone. "Councilors, There is only one way to do achieve this: fire the gun from the inside of the shield bubble, bypassing that defense entirely; and that is something only someone Nihlus knew and trusted could do."


She stopped talking as soon as the three leaders started murmuring between them, obviously discussing her tidbit of information; however the other person participating in the hearing was not as considerate. "That's it?" Saren interjected, silencing the Councilors in the process. "I expected something more out of it, Commander; after all you should know that a lot of stranger things happened on the battlefield," he said in an obviously condescending tone. "Everything, from a depleted shield at the wrong time to a new technology, could have happened to poor Nihlus."


"Valid concerns," Azula answered, not allowing herself to react at his tone. "Too bad the Geth don't use the same type of ammunition we do, as the latest medical reports from Eden Prime seems to indicate. Nihlus meeting the only Geth on the entire planet with a non-Geth weapon? Quite a far fetched theory," Azula paused for a moment, as if trying to calculate the probability before shaking her head. "No, the most logical conclusion is a traitor," she raised her head, looking directly at Saren. "A renegade."


"Human," he spoke, his voice dripping with disdain. "That is the most bizarre fairytale I have ever heard."


"Interesting opinion, Saren," Azula shot back, no longer able to contain herself. "Are you going to back that up with something concrete anytime soon? Or are you going to blame Nihlus of incompetence next? Oh wait," she pointed her finger the turian, a big, happy, fake smile on her face. "You already did!"


"You should really stop talking about thing you don't understand, human!" Saren snapped angrily. "Nihlus is a friend and was a pupil of mine; and if there is an incompetent here, the person responsible for the destruction of the beacon and the nuking of one of their own colony looks like a good candidate!"


"A pupil of yours, hmm?" Azula said, cupping her chin in thought. "That would explain why he trusted you with his back."


"We still have to see some definitive proof of that," the Turian Councilor said sharply. "So far we have seen only circumstantial evidence at best."


"Because the human has nothing, Councilors," Saren spoke in a far calmer tone. "She's wasting your valuable time," he said, turning to glare at the offending human. "And mine."


"The C-Sec officer assigned to the case has a different opinion; in fact," Azula said, turning to face the Council. "He asked me to bring a request to the Council. He says he needs more time to properly complete his investigation," she added after a nod from the Asari Councilor. "I'm not privy to the progress made so far, but given the situation I doubt anyone would make a request like this lightly."


"Thank you for bringing his message to our attention, Commander," Tevos said. "Before making a decision about it however, we would like to continue this hearing."


'In other words,' Azula thought, 'if I screw this up they'll stop the investigation too,' she took a deep breath – disguising it with a short bow of acceptance – letting the rising doubts out with it. 'No pressure,' she sardonically thought.


"Are you truly considering letting this farce go on?" Saren asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "A C-Sec officer is hardly someone I would call qualified to go over the actions of a Spectre."


"Are you accusing someone else of incompetence again Saren?" Azula mocked him. "I'm starting to see a pattern emerging."


"A police officer doesn't have the necessary background to properly handle everything a Spectre does," Saren answered acidly. "And that is a fact, Commander."


"As you don't personally know the officer in question, wouldn't that count as 'Speculation'?" Azula verbally poked the turian, finger quoting him in the process.


"It's my past experience talking, Commander," he grounded out.


"If we could go back to the subject at hand…" Sparatus, the turian Councilor, spoke chidingly.


"Of course, Councilor," Azula said. "As I was saying Nihlus' wound suggest the presence of someone he knew and trusted enough to give his back to that person."

"Reasonable assumption," the Salarian Councilor interrupted, gaining a semi-glare from Saren.


"The final piece is the camera recording," Azula said, tapping a few commands on her omnitool and making an image of the back of a gray turian with lateral flange crests appear on the monitors in front of the Councilors. "This is an image taken from the footage," she explained. "The video is of course available if you want to see it, but I must warn that it's pretty gruesome in certain parts."


"This is… most troubling," Tevos slowly said.


"I agree," Valern added gravely.


"Councilors!" Saren surprised exclamation rang clear in the space contained by the shields. "You can't possibly be thinking…"


"We haven't decided anything yet," the Salarian Councilor interrupted him. "But the coincidences keep piling up, too many of them."


'YES!' Azula quickly went into a parade rest stance to keep herself from pumping her fist. 'Should I push a bit more or let things run their own course?'


"There are hundreds of thousands Turians with those same characteristics," Saren said, raising his voice. "And anyone with access to a decent medical facility could alter the looks well enough to fool others."


"It should take more than a bit of surgery to fool someone as close as you said you were with Nihlus," Azula interjected, internally gloating at Saren's discomfort. 'Should I mention Nihlus' recovery?' she looked over Saren and the Councilors as she pondered her decision before mentally shrugging her shoulders. 'Better not push mine or his own luck.'


"I suggest," Tevos spoke interrupting Saren before he could speak. "A small recess while we examine the evidence and come to an agreement."


Azula bowed slightly and walked away from the platform, while the hologram of Saren blinked away. "That went well," Udina said, breaking his silence for the first time since the start of the hearing. "Could have gone better, but still a motive for celebration," Azula glanced his way and merely made a general sound of agreement as they walked closer to Kaidan and Ashley.


"Good news?" Kaidan asked a soon as they were close enough.


"Please tell me you nailed that son of a bitch to the wall, "Ashley added. "Ma'am."


"Perhaps," Azula answered, cutting off Udina. "I doubt they'll nail him to the wall, but I think they'll at the very least keep the investigation going.


"The best we can hope given the circumstances," Udina said, scowling at her.


"Anyway," Azula said, ignoring the Ambassador. "Anything new and exciting happened around here while I was away?" she asked with mock seriousness.


"Strangely enough, yes," Kaidan answered. "Kind of at least. Ashley here spotted a Salarian scanning one of those Keepers, but he saw her and ran away."


"There is not much room for an escape here," Azula pointed out, eying the huge room with a single exit they were in.


"Didn't want to make fuss ma'am," Ashley answered, shrugging her shoulders. "I figured a chase wasn't worth the trouble."


"Good call," Azula said, immediately followed by a nod of approval from the Ambassador. "Given the situation we were handling, you were right in not making waves," he spoke, looking at Ashley.


"Speaking of good ideas," Azula said while looking at Ashley. "I think it's time I keep my promise to you, and start with your demolition training."


Ashley blinked, then she frowned in confusion."Here, ma'am?" she asked hesitantly. "Right now?"


Azula couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes. "Theory, Williams," she answered. " And yes, right now; we have time and it would be foolish to waste it," she made a few shooing motions with her hands, getting the two of them moving. "Now let's find a bench so we can get comfortable."


The lesson went on for quite a bit before Udina's omnitool alarm went off, warning them that recess was over, and soon after Azula and Udina were once again in front of the Council.


"We have examined the evidence brought before us so far," Tevos started to speak. "And we've reached the conclusion that it's insufficient for a guilty verdict."


"And justice is served," gloated Saren, as soon as the Asari finished talking.


"However," started the Turian Councilor, stopping Azula from speaking. "There is more than enough to grant the C-Sec officer's request."


"What?!" Saren exclaimed.


"Therefore a two weeks period for the investigation is granted, with the possibility of further extensions if the situation warrants it," Sparatus continued, ignoring the Spectre outburst.


"This hearing is adjourned," Tevos spoke, ending the the process. Azula took the occasion to smirk victoriously at Saren, a second after the connection was cut and the hologram disappeared. She was just walking past the last mass effect barrier, when the chime of an incoming call came from her omnitool. Still in a very good mood she wasted no time in answering and immediately the familiar face of Garrus Vakarian greeted her.


"Officer Vakarian," Azula said, smiling, "I have great news!"


"I… have not," the turian spoke, anger and guilt coming off him in waves even through the screen. "I need help, Commander," he continued, speaking slowly. "I… messed up."

 

[ZiPeppe]

Okay here it goes.

Chapter 4 – Part 2


"What do you mean exactly with 'messed up'?" Azula harshly asked, her mood quickly turning sour. 'What the hell happened now?'


The turian flinched and averted his eyes as he started to talk in a low voice. "I was following a lead, a Quarian girl claiming to have information about Eden Prime and Saren," he explained. "The last location she had been seen was a clinic in the wards, but when I arrived there…" he paused for a moment, as he took a deep, steadying breath; Azula almost told him to get to the point, but held herself back and allowed him to continue at his own pace.


"When I arrived I noticed a few people entering the clinic and I recognized one of them," he continued in a more normal tone of voice. "He was a thug working for a local criminal called Fist, owner of a bar called Chora's Den: he normally works for the Shadow broker, but I heard rumors he betrayed the Broker and was working for Saren," he immediately raised his hand, stopping Azula from speaking. "I'll explain later why I didn't go to him first," he said.


"Anyway I… didn't follow procedure and called for backup, it would've become a siege and I thought that speed was of the essence; so I sneaked inside the clinic without them noticing me," Garrus continued. "However as I was getting close to them another group of people entered and immediately opened fire on me. I dodged, but the other goons thought they were under attack and fired back," he said, grimacing visibly. 'Probably reached the important part,' Azula thought.


"During the firefight the doctor, the person I wanted to talk to, was hit and killed," he nervously passed his hand over the head crest in a very human-like gesture. "However I overheard enough to know that the Quarian and Fist are connected, but I can't go to his club myself. After what just happened…" he shrugged his shoulders apologetically. "My boss isn't going to let me go and I can't exactly go storm that place alone anyway; if Fist really betrayed the Broker he is going to have a lot of armed backup there."


"Did you recognize anyone from the other group?" Azula asked. 'Saren is making a move; we must be getting awfully close to him,' she thought with a certain amount of satisfaction. "I mean the ones that started shooting."


"Not really, no," he said, shaking his head. "I bet C-Sec has records about them, but I have no idea of who they are or who they were working for."


Azula shrugged her shoulders, it was worth a shot. "Well, I'm done with the Council; so I'll head there immediately."


"One more thing," he said, stopping her. "There is a Krogan mercenary called Wrex that is going after Fist too. If you can find him he might lend an hand."


"I certainly wouldn't mind having a Krogan fighting with me," Azula said, nodding. "But if I can't find him on time I will go ahead without him."


"Fair enough," Garrus answered. "I'll send you what I have on him."


"Good, I'll head to Fist's club immediately then," Azula hesitated for a moment, then continued. "And good luck with your boss."


"I'm not the one going into a firefight, Commander," he said, giving her a small, humorless smile. "But thank you anyway, and good luck."


Azula nodded in thanks and closed the channel. A quick look around revealed Udina busy talking to an Alliance Admiral, whom was speaking rather animatedly with the Ambassador. Magnanimously, she decided to not bother the occupied Ambassador and made a beeline for her team; currently loitering near what looked like a Sakura tree.


"They did not condemn Saren," Azula preemptively said as she reached them, stopping the two soldiers from voicing their questions, "but they agreed to extend the investigation period. Now come," she said, motioning them to follow her, "we have things to do and I'm going to need my bag."


"Here you go, ma'am," Ashley said, giving Azula her bag as they reached the exit elevator. "What's going on?" she then asked as the doors closed.


"We've got a lead," Azula answered, opening the bag to reveal her armor and weapons. "Officer Vakarian was on the trail of, apparently, really hot information about Saren, and we need to retrieve – probably rescue too – the one carrying it," she continued as she got out of the dress uniform and started putting on the armor. "A Quarian, name unknown. A local criminal with ties to Saren is searching for her; we need to assault his base located at the Chora's Den, discover what he knows and neutralize him."


"Neutralize how, Commander?" Kaidan asked as he passed her her weapons.


"That is entirely up to him and how the circumstances will evolve," Azula answered, making a final check to her equipment at the same time. "But I don't want him to pull any last minute stunt, so we will use any means necessary to avoid that. Understood?" she turned to look at her subordinate, giving him a pointed look. "This is not about Eden Prime anymore; now there is someone living and breathing on the line, and I want that someone to remain that way if at all possible."


"Understood ma'am," Kaidan nodded in acceptance. "Any idea where this Chora's Den is located?"


"Not one," Azula shrugged. "I figured we could look it up on the extranet, or ask that Citadel V.I.; Alina wasn't it?"


"I think so," Ashley answered. "Any idea of what kind of opposition we are going to face?"


"Nothing military grade I believe," Azula said. "And with a bit of luck we might even get a Krogan backup along the way."


"No offense, but I hope not, Commander," Ashley grimaced. "When Krogans get involved things tend to become a little… messy."


"We'll know when we arrive, and if we arrive there," Azula said, glaring at the elevator panel. "At this speed we might die of old age instead."


"It's not that bad, Commander," Kaidan said, chuckling.


Azula stared flatly at the lieutenant for a moment before going back to glaring at the panel, not dignifying his answer with a rebuttal. Thankfully they didn't have to wait long; and after retrieving the information they needed, the group made a beeline for the nearest taxi console to summon one of the many aircars available.


The bar itself was right next to a market and in front of a bottomless pit; Azula and her group stood in a nearby alley, watching the door leading to the bar and preparing themselves for the assault using some photos of the insides found on the extranet. Not that they expected to be shot at right from the moment they stepped in, but it didn't hurt to be careful. They were in the final phases when the sound of heavy footfalls closing in interrupted them.


Wordlessly they spread out as far as the alley allowed and positioned their hands not far from their respective weapons; waiting for the interloper to appear. A few seconds later a massive shape appeared at one of the entrances and stopped there, apparently looking inside the alley.


"Relax," a deep voice – obviously coming from the Krogan in front of them – spoke. "I'm not here to fight. Not you at least," he added at the end.


"And you would be?" Azula said, she had a very good idea of who this Krogan was, but she did not want to give anything away or make things easy in case he was not the person she was thinking of.


"Name's Wrex," he said, not moving from his spot. "I know you are going after Fist and so do I; so, since we are both going after the same person, I figured we might join forces."


"Commander…" Ashley started to say, as she saw Azula's hand moving away from her weapon.


"Welcome aboard Wrex," Azula spoke, ignoring the soldier's unspoken request. "We've just finished going over the internal layout of the place, do you want to take a look too?"


"No need Commander," Wrex said, unfolding a shotgun. "I've been already inside in the past."


Azula raised an eyebrow at the sight of the gun, and then looked at the imposing Krogan. "You should be aware that we are not going in guns blazing," she said drily.


"And if we are not getting shot the second we set foot in there, I'll put it back;" he answered. "Until then," he patted the weapon, "I'm keeping this in my hands."


Azula remained silent for a second, quickly considering the value of pushing the issue, then shrugged her shoulders. "Suit yourself," she answered, then started walking towards the establishment.


"One last thing," Wrex spoke as the group reached the door. "Fist is mine," he declared. "I have a contract to fulfill that has his name over it."


"After I extracted the information I want," Azula answered, turning slightly to look at him and emphasizing the first word,"After that," she repeated, "I won't care if you dress him up in a pink tutu and push him off the Council Tower," a chuckle and a nod were her only answer, and she took that as her cue to finally open the bar's door.


Very loud music immediately assaulted her ears as she surveyed the room, easily spotting a couple of bouncers more than a few people carrying badly concealed weapons, and – more importantly – a door probably leading to the bar's personnel area; a door currently guarded by a rather large Krogan. Thankfully she had a large Krogan of her own in the form of Wrex.


"One o'clock, door with Krogan," she announced to the team.


"He won't be a problem," Wrex said with bored confidence, rolling his shoulders as he eyed the other Krogan.


Already aware that a quartet of armored strangers was definitely NOT good news and not exactly subtle, Azula discarded any attempt at trying to mingle with the clients and made a beeline for her objective. She was halfway there when quite few of the "clients" suddenly drew their guns and attacked her, the suddenness and sheer amount of firepower almost taking her by surprise. She had expected Fist to try an maintain at least a veneer of legality by responding to her violence, not this… panicked reaction.


'Too bad reality doesn't care about what you think and expect,' Azula thought as she jumped behind the counter right next to a dead Asari bartender, probably the victim of the poor aim of Fist's goons. A quick glance around showed that both Ashley and Kaidan had found refuge behind the counter like she did; and judging by the snarls and crashing sounds, Wrex was entertaining his enemy on the other side of the room. Unfortunately all three of them were pinned down by the amount of firepower directed their way, despite how inaccurate it was.


Ashley and Kaidan were firing back the best they could by sticking out their guns from behind cover, but with more than a few civilians still present the use of grenades was out of the question. A situation like this could be resolved with a bit of time, but time was something their objective might not have; especially if they took too long and C-Sec got involved.


As she was wracking her brain to find a quicker end to the battle, her eye fell on the cooling body of the bartender and an idea suddenly made itself known. With quick practiced motions, Azula took the extra shield generator she had on herself and put it on the Asari's body before activating it. Normally two kinetic barrier could not shield the same object at the same time, as the fields would interfere with one another; however by putting a bit of distance between the two fields, that particular problem could be circumvented.


As the sniper rifle unfolded, Azula rose up holding the corpse up with one arm and placed the weapon's barrel on the body's shoulder. Bullets immediately started raining around her and on her meat shield, but she ignored them and shot her first target; the powerful shot ripping through cover, shield and body alike. Absorbing the heat produced as fast as she could, she aligned the rifle for another shot and took out yet another enemy. She had barely the time to fire one more time before her hardsuit's shield dropped to a dangerous level, and had to duck back into cover.


But now there were three less guns firing at them, giving them more freedom to properly place their shots. And indeed less than a minute later all their enemies were laying on the floor dead or dying.


"Clear!" shouted Kaidan after scanning the room, immediately echoed by both Azula and Ashley.


"About time," Wrex's voice rumbled from behind them. "I was starting to think I had to do your part too."


"Just common courtesy," Azula fired back as she dropped the mangled body on the bar counter, and then turned to look at the slightly bloody Krogan. "We wouldn't want our guest to feel… inadequate, wouldn't we."


Wrex answer was an explosive and amused, "Heh!" before he turned and went for the door previously guarded by the now dead Krogan, closely followed by Azula and her team.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Here is the next segment, sorry for the beastly delay.

=====

Wrex answer was an explosive and amused, "Heh!" before he turned and went for the door previously guarded by the now dead Krogan, closely followed by Azula and her team. The area behind it looked like a storeroom of some sort, filled with metallic boxes and – thankfully – no enemies. A quick look around revealed a couple more storage areas, and another door from which a pair of muffled voices could be heard.


Wrex immediately started fiddling for a moment with his shotgun before pointing it at the door. In other situations she would have agreed with the Krogan's plan to simply shoot through the unarmored door, but she felt a more careful approach was required and quickly signaled Wrex to stop. Thankfully he merely frowned before complying and moving away, giving Kaidan and Ashley the chance to silently position themselves one at each side of the door in a crouching position.


Azula joined Ashley and leaned forward, activating the door's control panel and revealing two armed men right behind it; two armed men at that. Neither Wrex nor Azula hesitated in immediately opening fire at that sight, not even giving the two minions the time to realize what was going on before killing them. The group moved inside the room after a few seconds and congregated around what looked like the entrance to Fist's office.


"Locked!" Ashley angrily exclaimed as the green holographic interface suddenly turned bright red.


"Did you expect something different?" Azula asked rhetorically , as she moved in front of the door. "Let me get a look at it, maybe I can…"


"Clear the way Commander!" Wrex shouted, crouching and looking ready to charge; something that immediately gained Azula's full attention. She had barely moved to the side when with an angry bellow Wrex ran straight into the metal door shoulder first.


The door, while probably secure from hacking attempts, was not so secure from a large, adult Krogan in heavy armor slamming into it. The sheer force of Wrex's ramming action ripped the door from its placement, and threw it into the middle of the room; naturally this also put Wrex right next to the now bent metal sheet, and right in front of two armed turrets and one human. He immediately dived onto the floor right next to the fallen door and hoisted it up, using it as a makeshift shield from the incoming bullets. Barely a moment after that an hail of bullets punched straight through that sheet of metal, but that wasted kinetic energy gave Wrex those extra few seconds necessary for Azula and her group to deal with his attackers.


'Krogans,' Azula thought in exasperation as she saw Wrex's charge rip the office's door from its frame, and then make him stumble right into the middle of the room. The whine of a turret swiveling to track a target and the consequent torrent of bullets, quickly drew her attention back to the more immediate problem. She poked her head in, omnitool at the ready, and sent over a program designed to scramble the turret's coding; in this case, their IFF system. The results immediately became evident as the automated weapons turned on each other and opened fire, shredding their internals in just a few seconds.


A quietly cursing male voice could be clearly heard in the silence that followed the turrets destruction as Azula and her team entered the office. The criminal called Fist was huddling behind a rather massive desk, fully kitted out in some heavy armor, holding a gun, still cursing and completely not paying attention to Azula as she got close; however that quickly changed when she pressed the barrel of her shotgun over his ear, making him stand still as a statue.


"Would you kindly drop the gun and get out of there very, very slowly?" Azula said pleasantly , putting a bit more pressure on his ear as she spoke.


Fist nervously – and very, very slowly – complied and stood up with his hands in the air, walking until he was a few step from the front of the desk he was hiding behind. His eyes were wide with panic, and couldn't hide a faint glimmer of desperate hope from appearing as soon as he took in Azula's Alliance issue armor.


"I surrender!" he cried out. "Please don't kill me!"


"Despite of your ill advised attempt to kill my people and myself, I'm not actually after your miserable life," she continued, keeping up the polite tone. "What I want is information, information about a certain Quarian girl that was sent your way," she could see the flash of recognition in Fist's eyes and his badly disguised nervous swallowing. 'Garrus' information was true,' she thought with satisfaction.


"I don't know…" that was as far as Fist got before a powerful kick from Azula hit him in the midsection; the blow being strong enough to send him flying through the air until his lower back hit the desk, sprawling him over it. A bit dazed by the impact, he barely had the time to gather his bearings before he saw Azula lean over him, pinning him down, and then felt something sharp and pointy enter one of his nostrils.


"Would you kindly answer truthfully this time?" Azula asked, her voice being at the same time very sweet and dripping with menace to Fist's ears.


"Wanted to meet the Shadow Broker! Set up a trap with Saren's men in an alley near the market!" Fist quickly shouted, as he suddenly discovered that he was very fond of his nose. "The one right before the entrance, can't miss it!"


Azula smiled and removed her knife from the criminal's nose, eliciting a small yelp of pain from him. "See? It wasn't so bad, wasn't it," she said as she took a few steps back.


"You… You are not going to kill me?"Fist asked, almost disbelieving his own luck.


"I do have better things to do with my time, you know?" she said as she picked up the shotgun from the floor where she dropped it. "Offense fully intended by the way," Azula added before turning towards Kaidan and Ashley. "Well then, time to go."


"What about Fist ma…" Ashley's question was cut abruptly when Azula grabbed her and started dragging her towards the exit.


"People to be saved, justice to be done, and so little time to do it," Azula cheerfully said right before she started to glare at the soldier. "Now get your ass moving and double time it, Williams."


The whole team had just reached the door leading out of Chora's Den when they heard a muffled gunshot coming from behind them; both Kaidan and Ashley briefly stopped and started to turn, only to halt their motion when Azula glared at them and gestured to keep moving. "Not our concern," she bluntly stated. "The information and the Quarian are," Kaidan grimaced and Ashley just nodded stoically, but they both started moving again without any further comment. They were just outside the establishment when an alarm blaring from Azula's omnitool made her stop instantly.


"Commander, what…" Kaidan started as soon as he noticed she was no longer walking.


"The hospital is under attack," Azula replied curtly, Kaidan simply nodded and remained silent, not wanting to disrupt her concentration.


"You two," she spoke a moment later, "will go after the Quarian, I'll call Officer Vakarian and head for the hospital."


"Ma'am we can't let you go there alone," Ashley objected, the volume of her voice a bit higher than normal. "If it is bad enough that they need help…"


"All the more reasons for you to go after the Quarian," Azula interrupted the Gunnery Chief. "Now go," she ordered them, putting as much authority as she could in her voice as she could.


"Yeah, don't worry about the Commander," Wrex rumbled from behind them. "I can go with her if she wants."


Ashley glared suspiciously at the Krogan and looked ready to say something, when suddenly the mercenary spoke again, stopping her. "You did me a favor with this job, Commander," he said, shrugging his massive shoulders. "Helping you out in return with this problem of yours sounds fair to me."


Azula remained silent for an handful of second, thinking about his offer. "Very well," she said, looking Wrex in the eyes. "You'll come with me."


"Commander!" Ashley half-shouted in surprise.


"Are you sure about this, ma'am?" Kaidan quietly asked her.


"I'm not going to turn down free help when offered," she pragmatically said. 'And if Wrex really has the intention of betraying us, I want him right where I can kill him.' she thought, mentally going over what little she saw of his fight. "You know what you have to do," she continued. "Go do it."


As soon as both her soldiers departed at a jogging pace after saluting her, she turned towards the Krogan and motioned him to follow her. "You have a plan?" he asked her a few moments after they started moving.


"Make a call," she said after a nod of confirmation, calling a certain Turian in C-Sec.


"Commander," the half bust of Garrus Vakarian spoke to her from the holographic screen. "I've heard a firefight ensued in the Chora's Den and that several units are converging, I suggest…"


"No time, Central Hospital is under attack, Spectre Nihlus is there," she said, ignoring the quickly silenced choking sound behind her. "Unknown number of assailants, but if my soldiers are asking for help it must be bad."


Garrus gaped at her for a moment before shaking his head as if he could throw the surprise off him. "But…" he started to say before starting again. "Commander, there has been no alarm or request of help coming from the hospital, and with most available units converging towards Chora's Den…" he said, trailing off at the end.


"There is no one left to help us at the hospital," Azula grimly finished for him.


"Also I wouldn't have the authority to send any kind of substantial reinforcements anyway," he continued. "But I can still do a couple of things for you, Commander," his hand starting to input some command on his omnitool. "I can give you my C-Sec override for an aircar and… my personal assistance," he said after a small pause


Azula almost asked what would the consequences be for him if he could not even be present during the raid at Fist's hideout, but she stopped herself at the last moment. 'What would be the point?' she thought. "Every bit of help is welcome," she said instead, nodding her head in thanks. "We'll see you there," she then closed the channel and sped up for the nearest aircar call panel.


The override she was provided with made an aircar arrive almost immediately and, quite conveniently, also disabled nearly all limitations normally employed on civilian vehicles; the deactivation of the speed limiter and being able to ignore most traffic laws among them. They jumped in and in just a few minutes she and Wrex arrived at the hospital building, where a small crowd and the recognizable form of a Turian in blue armor stood in front of the doors.


Azula landed in the parking lot near the entrance, climbed out the vehicle and walked with Wrex towards the Turian; the people parting in front of Wrex as he and Azula got closer, "Situation?" Azula asked as she reached Garrus.


"The emergency lockdown is active," Garrus started explaining immediately. "The whole building is sealed from the inside and all calls are redirected to other hospitals; and yes, my clearance is just high enough to get us in," he said, anticipating her question.


"Ok, let's push aside the civilians then we get in," Azula said.


Garrus nodded then turned to the small, murmuring crowd. "Everyone!" he shouted, catching everyone's attention. "We're going inside to investigate and we need you step aside from the doors," immediately the people milling around the hospital' entrance quickly moved away, obeying Garrus' order – greatly enhanced by Wrex glaring at the few stragglers. "Thank you for your cooperation," he shouted again once they cleared out the entrance.


"Ready?" Azula asked Garrus as he returned.


"Just give the signal, Commander," Garrus answered, a small, grim smile on his face.


"In three, two, one, GO!" right after her order, the red holographic panel turned green and the door opened, letting Azula and her rag-tag team inside the hospital.

=====

On a side note I have been searching a good template for how an adult Azula should roughly physically look like (body, as Dolmheon already covered the face) for quite some time, but I think I finally found a good one.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Here is another segment. Sorry for the delay but I had to look for another house, then exams started and ended not particularly well. As a crappy excuse as it may sound, it was something that sapped my motivation.


====

"In three, two, one, GO!" right after her order, the red holographic panel turned green and the door opened, letting Azula and her rag-tag team inside the hospital. They moved quickly past the empty reception desk that was facing the entrance. As they approached the small corridor leading to the large waiting room behind it, they were brought to a halt by the sound of people talking.


Hugging the corner and carefully peeking past it, Azula saw a helmeted humanoid and a turian bickering over some loot; another was lounging on a sofa, smoking and with his weapon a few paces from him; and the last one was a large human apparently fiddling with some kind of antennae. Luckily for Azula and her team none of them were paying any attention whatsoever to the entrance, giving her ample time for a quick scan of the room before pulling back.


"Two hostiles sideways to us, one more on a sofa smoking and another fiddling with a device," she whispered softly. "Dumb and Dumber are mine; Garrus, you get Smoker; Wrex, you take on Techie. I want the device intact. All clear?" at their nods she turned leaned past the corner again and took careful aim.


Moments later a hail of bullets ripped through the shields and armors of the two bickering mercenaries, killing them nearly instantly. Both their living teammates flinched and did not immediately move – their gaze fixed on the bodies of their friends – as they worked through the shock and surprise; by the time they started reacting however Wrex had almost reached them.


The one on the sofa dived for his weapon only to have his back pierced by the larger caliber bullet of Garrus' rifle, the force of the impacts slamming him to the floor and causing him to quickly bleed to death. The human working on the device pivoted on the spot and started to raise his pistol, when a huge three fingered hand firmly grabbed his arm and pulled. With a small grunt of effort Wrex twisted, sending the human flying through the air and then shooting him mid-flight. With the hostiles dealt with, Azula and her group waited a few seconds – weapons at the ready – to see if anyone came to investigate; moving to examine the device only when no one appeared.


"I think we found the jammer," Wrex said after getting a good look at the piece of machinery.


"At least one of them," Garrus commented. "People with the resources to trigger an emergency lockdown without anyone outside noticing are not a group that wouldn't have at least some form of backup."


"Groups like that wouldn't be caught with their pants down like this either," Wrex shot back, kicking one of the corpses for emphasis. "Not by squabbling over some near worthless loot."


"Point," Garrus agreed, grimacing slightly. "Then how…"


"Pointless," Azula interrupted. "Our objective right now is Nihlus." Gripping her gun tightly, Azula hit the the jammer with her rifle stock – knocking it down – and then started to stomp on the delicate instrument, destroying it utterly. "Let's focus on that, shall we?"


Wrex shrugged. "Fine by me," he spoke, while Garrus simply nodded.


"This way then," Azula said, as she started to move at a brisk pace; quickly followed by both her companions.


The path to the V.I.P. Ward was a relatively short one; passing beyond sealed hospital rooms and a couple of security checkpoints, ignoring the guard's – and a couple of mercs' too – corpses decorating them. As soon as the door of the last checkpoint opened the sound of an ongoing firefight exploded in their ears; almost at the same time they all raised their weapons and started advancing towards the battle ahead.


The new section Azula and her team were in consisted of a long, main corridor with several smaller ones linked to it leading to the intensive care rooms; gunfire and muzzle flashes made it quite obvious where the battle was going on. A quick look behind the corner showed her the attackers huddling behind some mobile covers and columns, just poking their guns out to blindly fire back at Azula's soldiers.


"So," Wrex asked, "What's the plan?"


"Right now we have them between your soldiers and us," Garrus spoke, "I say we attack from here; much safer and may even force a surrender out of them."


"After what they did?" Wrex snorted in derision. "Not gonna happen. They'll become desperate and charge the soldiers, probably thinking that if they get some hostages they might make it out of this mess."


"And make their situation even worse?" the turian shot back. "A siege like that usually does not end well for the criminals attempting it, you know?"


"I do," Wrex answered. "Do they?"


"We will attack," Azula spoke up, interrupting the argument. "Wrex, you take point and I follow; Officer Vakarian, provide covering fire."


Garrus hesitated for a moment, before simply nodding; Wrex instead looked at her with a huge grin. "That's fine by me Shepard," he said, "but can you keep up with me?"


"Get ready," Azula simply answered, giving the large Krogan a flat look. Still grinning, Wrex turned the corner and sprinted down the corridor, Azula hot on his heels and covered by his bulk.


The first mercenary to notice the charging Krogan was a Salarian and Wrex's first target. Before the alien could recover from the shock, Wrex rammed him; his companion; and the cover they were using, sending all three sprawling on the ground to become quite the easy target for the Krogan's weapon. With Wrex's entry grabbing everyone's attention, no one noticed Azula's smaller figure following him until she too opened fire with her assault rifle killing two more mercs.


Slightly panicked by the appearance of an hostile Krogan and by the surprise attack in general, one of the mercenaries grabbed the familiar shape of a grenade and armed it. He rose up slightly from behind his cover to get a better view and angle for his throw, however that action also gave Garrus a clean line of fire to his head. The bullet went through the shield and hit the visor straight on, shattering it and the merc's head; making him slump on the ground with the live grenade still firmly in his grasp.


"Grenade!" Azula shouted, training taking over as she dived to the ground.


The grenade exploded just as she landed on the floor and she immediately rolled to the side, not wanting to remain still longer than she had to. Once on her back she was ready to lay down some covering fire so she could get up again, only to see the team she had come to rescue take advantage of the confusion and charging; quickly taking down the few remaining survivors.


Azula rose back up to her feet and took a moment to look around, noticing for the first time a couple of the specialized wheelchairs – called eezo chairs – used by hospitals to move patients around without aggravating their injuries. These however held no sick or wounded, but she noticed that they were strategically placed to provide as much cover as they could; a faint shimmer created by the air violently displaced by a mass effect field around the edges, gave her an idea of the reasoning behind their use.


Approving of the improvisation and mentally making a note to commend whoever came up with that idea, she walked towards the highest ranking soldier she could see. "Sergeant," she called, getting the woman's attention. 'Sergeant Vasquez , Jenette,' Azula quickly recalled, "Give me a status report, Vasquez."


"Ma'am," the asian woman saluted, a bandage with a bright red spot right where the ear should be around her head. "We took heavy casualties, Commander," she started, pointing at a few bodies covered by a white sheet. "And if Lieutenant Huang didn't set up a patrol we would have been taken completely by surprise," the Sergeant paused and swallowed, clearly trying to recompose herself. "Marlow, Bishara, Visconti, Artemov, Huang and Jenkins all… all perished," she quickly rattled off, only faltering at the end.


Azula nodded, remaining silent for a moment to give the soldier the chance to better compose herself. "The V.I.P?" she then asked.


"Unharmed," Vasquez answered, straightening up a little. "Still out of it, but unharmed; those motherless shi… Uh…" she started to swear before stopping and starting again, a bit of a blush appearing on her cheeks. "Those hostiles never made it past our defenses," she said, nodding towards the modified eezo-chairs. "Jenkins idea," the Sergeant added. "He figured that if those things could hold up two or three people, they could be used as shields if overcharged; it basically ruined them though."


"I could care less about some piece of equipment, Sergeant," Azula said. "If doing that was necessary it is fine by me, and that is all you need to worry about."


"Yes ma'am," Vasquez replied, a touch of relief entering her voice. 'And for damn good reason, those things must be really expensive,' Azula thought before shrugging off that line of thought. 'I'll just send the bill to Udina, this was to protect Nihlus after all. Speaking of which…'


"We'll remain here until C-Sec shows up, just in case there are still any mercs around that we missed or there is another attempt," Azula spoke, raising her voice slightly so everyone could hear her. "And while we wait, you can tell me how all this happened," she added in a lower tone of voice, the perspective apparently making the Sergeant flinch slightly.


"Yes ma'am," she answered, in a low subdued tone.


"Come," Azula spoke, gesturing towards a corner away from mostly everyone. "You can begin with how Jenkins died."


The Sergeant followed Azula and leaned on the wall, letting a couple of seconds pass before answering "He tried to do too much too soon," she finally said. "First as 'cover' for the patrol, then later trying to help the wounded and even taking a couple of potshots at those motherfuckers," she said, rage clearly coloring the word. "We were all too busy to stop him, until in the end his condition worsened and we couldn't do a thing to help him," she met Azula's eyes with a small self-deprecating smile on her lips, as she shrugged slightly. "It's not like we were in one of the most advanced hospital in Citadel space, were we."


Azula merely made a small smile of her own, and clasped a hand on the other woman's shoulder. 'I should have brought Alenko,' she thought. "And the others?" she instead asked.

=====

For the record, no it is supposed to end there. The next segment will have as main focus Alenko and Ashley.

 

[ZiPeppe]

RISE! RISE! RIIISEEEE!



-------

Ashley glared at the retreating back of the huge alien accompanying her Commander; silently fuming as they quickly disappeared from view.

"Don't worry about the Commander," Alenko spoke, startling her. "She can handle him if he gets strange ideas."

"She would handle him better with someone else along…" she muttered even as she acknowledged his point; N7 designations were not given away frivolously after all.

"Can't argue with that," Alenko said, smiling a little, "but we really should concentrate on saving the Quarian."

"Yes sir," she said after taking a deep breath. 'Worry about the highly trained commando with top of the line gear later, would you Ash?' she chided herself, as she quickly fell into step besides the Lieutenant.

A couple of minutes later they finally reached the back street Fist spoke of; the sounds of a busy market clearly reaching them there. "Alley right next the market's entrance, this must be it," Alenko spoke as he carefully looked inside the gently curving alley. Some tubes, crates, and exposed machinery were cluttering it, but there was no sign of the Quarian.

"She must be further in," he said, speeding up as he ventured inside the alley. "Better hurry up."

"Right behind you," Ashley responded, matching his pace.

Thankfully the alley did not branch off and a minute later they spotted a female figure – clad in what looked like an envirosuit – walking ahead of them. The Quarian turned to look behind her and froze for an heartbeat before grabbing something from her belt, and throwing it on the ground between them; the object detonating in a blinding flash as soon as it hit the floor.

"Wait!" Alenko shouted, blinded and stumbling backwards. He could hear the Quarian running away and after a few moments he heard Ashley taking off as well. He silently cursed as he leaned on the nearby wall and waited for his sight to return; getting his neck broken because he couldn't see where he was going and tripped over some stairs or random junk would help no one. A couple of seconds later his vision cleared enough for him to start running after Ashley and the Quarian, quietly cursing every stumble when he failed to notice an obstacle in time.

Soon enough he spotted the two, just in time to see the Quarian waving the Omnitool on her arm, causing a jet of steam to explode from the wall right behind her and hitting Ashley. The woman instinctively slowed down and covered her head, but the hesitation lasted only a moment and then she was hot on the Quarian's tail again; Alenko himself barely slowed down, using his biotics to keep the steam away from him.

"I swear," Ashley panted as he caught up with her, "when all this is said and done, I'm going to punch her."

Alenko winced as he saw Ashley's reddening face; he wanted to point out that it was a pretty good move – wading through high pressure, hot steam without some ulterior protection was not something most people would do – but he held his tongue; wiser to save his breath and… His train of thoughts halted as soon as he came around a corner. Three unknowns – two Salarians in armor and a Turian in civilian clothes – were coming from the other way and the Quarian skidded to an halt the moment she spotted them.

Alenko immediately noticed the rising weapons carried by the newcomers and stopped, starting to charge his biotics; Ashley however kept going and tackled the now backpedaling Quarian. They both ended up rolling on the floor from the impact, and barely avoiding the shots fired from the Turian's gun. The two Salarians aimed their weapons at the two women's prone forms – following the lead of the Turian – prompting Alenko to let loose a biotic push and flung their apparent leader against one of the armored aliens, knocking them both on the ground.

The other Salarian instantly turned his gun towards him and started spraying bullets in Alenko's direction, forcing him to duck and scramble for cover. His victory however was short lived as Ashley and the Quarian managed to disentangled themselves enough to draw their weapons and open fire, quickly dispatching him. A moan of pain grabbed everyone's attention, only to see the surviving Salarian throwing his Turian accomplice off him and start running away. Ashley immediately raised her gun – imitated by the Quarian a second later – ready to finish him off.

"HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Alenko shouted.

Ashley obeyed, keeping the fleeing figure in her sights but not pulling the trigger; a move hesitantly imitated by the Quarian as the fleeing alien disappeared from view. With his departure Ashley and the girl they came to rescue carefully got back to their feet, while keeping a wary eye on each other.

"Are you both okay?" Alenko asked them as he joined them.

"Yes sir," Ashley answered as she went to check on the Turian. "No injuries to report."

"I'm okay," the other girl replied. "I… guess I should thank you for helping me."

"Not a problem, miss…?"

"Tali, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," she paused for a moment to study their armor. "You're Alliance?" she asked with a hint of surprise coloring her voice.

"Yes ma'am," Alenko answered. "I'm Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, and she is Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams."

"Oh. I'm sorry I…" she said, glancing quickly at Ashley's reddened face as she rejoined them. "This was not the first attempt on my life today; sorry," she murmured at the end.

"It's alright," Ashley replied, relaxing slightly. "It just looks worse than it really is."

"Still, I may have a way to apologize and repay you," Tali said, activating her omnitool and turning towards Alenko. "This is why you were looking for me, right?" she asked as a familiar voice started speaking.

By the time the record finished playing, both Alenko and Ashley had huge smiles on their faces. "Yes it is miss Zorah, yes it is." he said. "Just let me call the embassy for a pick up, you'll be safer there."

"Thank you," she said, bowing her head slightly. "And it's Tali."

"Excellent," he said with a warm smile. "Let me call the embassy for a secure car and we'll be off, Tali."

Their ride arrived after a little while, and thankfully the voyage back to the embassy was very short and without further complications. As soon as the three of them landed in the embassy compound a couple of guards immediately escorted them to a waiting room next to the Ambassador's office. After some time they were finally admitted inside, and were greeted by the sight of Udina furiously tapping at the holographic keyboard; the human Ambassador barely sparing them a glance when they entered. After a minute or so Tali looked ready to speak up, only to have Ashley gently grip the Quarian's forearm and minutely shake her head.

They waited went on for a few minutes more before the ambassador finished his work and turned his attention on the trio.

"Sorry for the wait," he began, "but I was dealing with the matter of your arrest warrants."

"Our what?!" both Kaidan and Ashley chorused.

"Yes, your arrest warrants," Udina said, ignoring their outburst. "Apparently killing everyone inside a bar and murdering a fellow Quarian are crimes around here."

"I didn't kill…" Tali started.

"We were follo…" Kaidan began

"What the hell you two were thinking," Udina suddenly stood up, shouting and interrupting both. "I am not here to clean up after some gung-ho ground pounders with less sense than an Hanar in a religious frenzy! Especially when they decide to start a massacre in a bar full of civilians!" He sank back in his chair, tiredly rubbing his eyes; as if the rant drained him of all the energy he had. "And then your commander had to top it all of by being involved in an hospital shoot out."

"She what?!" Ashley nearly shouted.

"Not important right now," he said. "Not when I've heard that your… 'little jaunt' might have produced important results," he finished, turning to look directly at the Quarian.

"Before…" Tali began, her voice wavering a little. "Before we begin I would like to say that I did not kill Keenah; an assassin, probably hired by Saren, killed him," she paused for a moment, bowing her head. "He was my friend."

"I'm sorry to hear that Miss," Udina spoke in a more gentle tone. "With your help we can hopefully bring Saren to justice for that too."

"I will do whatever I can to help," Tali said looking at Udina straight in the eyes. "This is some data I managed to extract from a Geth memory core before it self-destructed," her omnitool activated and soon the voices of Saren and another woman filled the room.

"Eden Prime was a major victory! The beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the Conduit," a typical Turian voice came from Tali's omnitool.

"And one step closer to the return of the Reapers," a female voice continued.

"Your experts should easily verify that it has not been tampered with and it is authentic."

"I must thank you again, Miss," Udina said after a moment of silence. "I don't recognize the woman, but the other voice is certainly Saren; this may exactly be what we needed to finally nail him," he said, some energy returning to him. "It will take some time to organize an hearing with the Council, so while we wait you are free to stay here if you want."

"I would like that, two assassination attempt in the same day are enough for me," Tali said, shuddering a little.

"Very well," Udina nodded somberly. "I'll tell the staff to prepare a room for you and have some food and drink brought to you; Turian only I'm afraid, a Quarian guest is unfortunately quite the rare occurrence. In the mean time," he continued over Tali's mumbled thanks. "Lieutenant Alenko and Gunnery Chief Williams will help you with whatever you may need and will provide protection until the trial is over."

The office's door opened, admitting a woman dressed in civilian clothes whom nodded at the trio. "Miss Winters will show you your accommodation; now – if you'll excuse me – I have a lot of work to do." The words 'Because of you' going unsaid, but clearly heard. "You can go now, Chief Williams," he continued when Ashley hesitated a couple of seconds, prompting her to quickly exit his office and join the others outside.

"If you don't mind me asking," Tali started once they settled in the guest quarters, "why your commander was involved in a hospital shooting?"

Ashley grimaced at the question. Technically it was still classified information, but secrecy was not particularly relevant anymore with both the attack at the hospital and Tali's involvement. She turned to look at Alenko who had a similar expression on his face.

"It's not something we can yet speak freely about," he said diplomatically. "But I guess I can say that someone tied to the case against Saren was being kept at the hospital."

Tali nodded in acceptance – evidently not pushing for more information, much to the relief of both humans – "Could you please tell me about the Commander then?" she instead asked.

"Sure," Alenko said after a moment, shrugging his shoulders. "I have not known her for long, but I can tell what I know."​

 

[ZiPeppe]

And here is the lat and final part of tha chapter. Short, but it was just mostly wrapping things up.

-----

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Is it going to take much longer?"

"No."

"Have we arrived yet?"

"No."

"You would tell me if we arrived, right?"

"YES! WE ARRIVED!"

"Excellent!" Azula said, immediately getting off the C-Sec aircar and then cheerfully waving at the Turian Citadel Security officer that drove her to the base of the Citadel Tower, enjoying his twitch of annoyance. 'Hold me in a cell for 'security reasons' will you? Impound my armor and weapons as evidence too?' she thought as the aircar took off and left. 'If I didn't have bigger concerns I would enjoy making you incompetent lot pay.' Azula sighed and pushed her irritation back; indulging in some petty revenge may have been a good way to pass the time until now, but she needed a clear head for the upcoming meeting with the Council.

Thankfully the elevator ride to the top of the Citadel Tower was a long one, giving her more than enough time to center herself; when the elevator's doors finally opened Azula confidently strode out fully calm and composed. Immediately she spotted Ashley and Alenko waiting for her along with a slightly nervous Quarian girl if her slight fidgeting was any indication.

"Williams, Alenko," Azula greeted them both. "And miss…?" she trailed off, looking at the suited alien.

"Tali'Zorah Nar'Rayya," Tali promptly answered. "but you can call me Tali, Commander," she hastily added.

"Well met, Tali," Azula spoke. "I assume you are the Quarian Fist spoke about? It's good to see that you are in good health; I would have come personally but… Another equally important matter required my attention."

"I understand," Tali answered truthfully. "And your crew did a pretty good job saving me from my own mistake," she added, nodding in Ashley and Alenko's direction. "Despite some initial… Difficulties."

Azula almost asked for clarification – if there had been problems, she needed to know – but the slight twitch upwards of Ashley's lips and the general humorous feel she got from Alenko and Tali quelled her initial instinct. If anything actually relevant or important happened they would have already made her aware of it. 'Something to look into later in any case,' she thought, feeling her own smile forming. 'It may be worth a laugh.'

"It's good to see that things turned out ok in the end then," Azula said. "While we wait though, I was wondering if you could indulge my curiosity for a moment, Tali."

"Uhh… sure," Tali said, shrugging her shoulders. "Why not? I don't know how I can help you, but ok."

"Why go to the Shadow Broker first instead of the System Alliance?" Azula asked bluntly. "I know this may sound a bit biased coming from someone like me, but I'm pretty certain that dealing with us would have been a better choice and a lot more safer than with the Shadow Broker."

"We tried," Tali answered quietly after a moment. "After I recovered the data we tried to contact the authorities on Ilium, but they kept us on hold until Saren's people found us and killed everyone from the Honorata but me and Keenah. We tried telling C-Sec and they ignored us because we had to stowaway to escape Ilium and we were not far from where C-Sec detained us when I was shot and Keenah fatally wounded," she stopped and looked Azula straight in the eyes. "I went to the Shadow Broker because nobody else listened, believed or cared."

Azula held her gaze with Tali a moment longer and then nodded, "Fair enough," she said. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry that I poked a wound so fresh."

"There is no need for apologies, Commander," Tali said after a deep sigh. "It was something I would have asked too in your place."

Azula opened her mouth to answer when she spotted Ambassador Udina coming in her direction, "I guess it is time to see if our efforts amounted to something," she said instead, looking at the rapidly approaching Ambassador.

"Shepard," Udian started, looking grimmer than usual and ignoring all pleasantries. "The Council has reached a decision and they are going to make a statement soon; they also requested for you to be present when they will do so," then – without any further comment – he turned and started walking away.

Azula didn't need any further encouragement to follow the Ambassador; his discourtesy utterly irrelevant given the importance of this meeting.

"Good luck, Commander," Alenko suddenly spoke up, soon accompanied by a nod from Ashley.

"Ancestors be with you, Commander," Tali said, surprising her.

Azula merely smiled and continued walking, until – once again – she was in front three of most influential people of the known galaxy.

"Commander Shepard, Ambassador Udina," the Asari Councilor began. "We have have examined the proof you brought and heard the testimony of the Spectre Nihlus…"

'Nihlus is already awake?' Azula thought, caught a bit by surprise by the news. 'Spectres really are a tough bunch.'

"…and since no proof of tampering or fabrication was found, we could reach only one conclusion," Councilor Valern spoke, dragging Azula's full attention back to the proceedings.


"We find Spectre Saren Arterius guilty on all charges," the Turian Councilor said, continuing on. "His Spectre status will be revoked and all of his assets seized."

"But that will not be all," Tevos – the Asari Councilor – spoke again. "We also recognize the danger he and his allies pose to Galactic stability, therefore we decided to grant you, Commander, the status of Council Spectre."

It took all of her willpower not to break into exultant laughter right then there as she heard those words, only a wide smile slipping through her control and betraying her true feelings.

"During this investigation you have shown all the qualities that all Spectres must have to be successful with their duties," Sparatus continued, his flange cheeks twitching a bit.

"You will be given access to all the privileges and resources befitting your new status," Valern spoke. "And you will need them, as your first mission is of the highest priority and difficulty."

"Uncover Saren's plans, stop them and bring him to justice," Tevos finished.

Azula's smile that appeared when they declared her a Spectre grew to a full grin as soon as the Asari Councilor gave her the mission. 'What delightfully vague orders,' she thought as she bowed slightly and thanked them for the honor bestowed upon her. 'They clearly want him dead quietly and quickly, but they don't want to actually say that out loud.'

She mentally shrugged and pushed those thoughts back as the meeting came to an end and she rejoined with the trio back at the elevator, sharing the good news with them. It was not the right moment for such things after all; now it was time to savor this victory she and her people worked so hard for.

 

[ZiPeppe]

Chapter 5

Run! Hide!

… The ^3&# screeched at her

Safe…

Anyone?

Azula slowly woke up in her cabin back on the Normandy, barely stifling a moan of pain as the migraine increased the more aware she became. "Spirits above," she complained to the empty room. "Even my eyeballs hurt!"

After taking the pain medication doctor Chakwas had given her, she dressed up and started going through her daily messages and paperwork as soon as the painkiller started to kick in. After dealing with most of them, three messages stood out: one from a Council attache, one from Admiral Hackett and one from Nihlus himself. Unable to resist her own curiosity Azula opened the last one, which contained a simple invitation to meet Nihlus in his hospital room when she was able to.

'Why would Nihlus need to see me in person so soon?' Azula wondered. 'If he just wanted to thank me he could have done it with this message.'

A quick look at the other two messages – an appointment with a Ms. Nuraari at the Human Embassy and some congratulations for making it in the ranks of the Spectres – showed that she had plenty of time to visit Nihlus at the hospital. The increased security made reaching his room take a bit more time than she expected, but soon after she was in front of his room's door.

"'Ome in!" a muffled voice spoke as soon as she finished activating the door's holopanel.

Nihlus was reclining on his bed – his back supported by a large amount of pillows – and waved her in as soon as the door opened. "Greetings," he spoke. "Nice see you."

Seeing the lifeless left side of the Turian's face Azula hesitates for a couple of seconds, unsure about what to say and masking it by reaching for a chair. "Well," she started. "I have to say I'm surpirsed to find you already up and about," 'Yes! Good start!'

"Lucky," he replied, attempting to shrug both his shoulders. "Alive. Not 'rain dead. Is good."

"Well then, now that we dispensed with the pleasantries," Azula said. "Why did you want to meet me in person? I don't think it's just to say thank you right?"

Expression turning solemn, Nihlus simply nodded. "You hunt Saren," he spoke, taking care to enunciate each word as correctly as possible. "I can hel… aid. 'any contacts, fa'ors owed;" he added, prompted by Azula's raising an eyebrow. "Also counsel."

"Counsel?" Azula asked. 'Is he talking about politics? Inter-office ones maybe?'

"Yes," he answered, a ghost of a smile appearing. "Situation: Saren's assets seized to your gain."

Azula froze for a moment, mentally cursing herself for missing something so obvious she could do. 'Well,' she thought. 'Nobody said I don't learn from my mistakes.'

"Tell me more," she spoke, reclining on her chair and giving the older Spectre her full attention; at her declaration the part of his face that was still mobile split into an enormous grin.

The impromptu lesson in Spectrehood nearly ate all the time she had left before her meeting with Udina and the Council attache, causing her to barely make it in front of Udina's office in time. The door opened automatically as she approached, admitting her into the Ambassador's office currently occupied by Udina himself, Captain Anderson, and an Asari she had never seen before in an elaborate dress.

"Ah, Commander, you're here; please take a seat," Udina spoke, resuming only as Azula sat down by Captain Anderson. "May I present to you the Council representative, miss Nuraari," the Asari in question made a small bow at the mention of her name. "Who is here to brief you about you duties as a Spectre."

"Don't worry, Commander," Nuraari said smiling. "This won't take very long. In fact…" she rummaged through the folds of her dress for a bit before pulling out two datapads and giving both of them to her. "Here, one is for your eyes only and the other is a clue we've found after going through former Spectre Saren's files," she explained.

"That's it?" Azula asked after putting the personal datapad in a pocket inside her uniform, unable to completely hide her surprise.

"That's it," the Asari confirmed, still smiling. "A Spectre is already allowed a great of deal of trust and is expected a certain level self-reliance, so – for this – overcomplicated security measures are usually waived."

"All right then," Azula spoke, pushing her lingering doubts down. "Before you go though, can you pass this along?" she asked, activating her omnitool and sending the document she and Nihlus wrote.

"Certainly," Nuraari said, activating her own and starting the transfer. "I'll pass it along as soon as I can. Have a nice day."

"Something we should know, Commander?" Udina spoke.

"Not particularly," Azula answered nonchalantly. "Just getting a head-start on the self-reliance angle. In any case," she continued, straitening herself up on the chair. "There was something you wanted to talk about, right?"

"Yes," he replied, only a slight narrowing of his eyes giving him away. "Analysis of the Quarian's recording just came through and the female voice has been identified."

"Apparently she is an Asari Matriarch," Anderson interjected. "Her name is Benezia and she has a daughter, an archeologist called Liara T'Soni; her last known location was somewhere in the Artemis Tau cluster."

"That's still a pretty big chunk of space to look through," Azula spoke, chin held in thought. "There must be something else that can narrow the search down."

"The file on her says that she specialize in Prothean history and artifacts," Udina said, reading from his holo-screen. "Focusing on planets with confirmed Prothean ruins yet to be excavated should be enough."

"Indeed," she said, reclining back on the chair. "Was there anything else?"

"Two things actually," Udina spoke, giving Anderson a quick glance. "There have been sightings of Geth activity near our colony on Feros; nothing confirmed so far and with the Alliance is stretched pretty thin investigating other similar reports, it may take some time before a proper task force can be assembled."

"What makes Feros stand out?" Azula asked. "Prothean artifacts?"

"A whole megalopolis," the Ambassador answered. "Plenty of scavengers already went through it, but if the Geth are poking around there…"

"There might still be something in it," Azula finished, "Yes it makes sense. However that was one thing, you mentioned another," she continued, observing the Ambassador reactions; she did not miss the his previous glance at Captain Anderson.

"Captain Anderson is stepping down as commanding officer of the Normandy," Udina spoke, his tone remaining neutral. "The ship is yours now."

The news threw Azula for a loop, almost missing Anderson giving her small nod. 'First becoming a Spectre and now even getting my own ship?' she thought as she recovered from the surprise.

"She's quick and quiet and you know the crew, Commander." Anderson spoke encouragingly. "It's a perfect ship for a Spectre and she'll serve you well."

"Are you sure about this, sir?" Azula asked, looking her former Captain in the eyes.

"My chance at this already came and went, Commander," he answered, giving her a small smile. "Now it's yours. Besides it was time for me to get off that chair."

"Thank you, sir," Azula said sincerely. "I won't let you down."

"That would be all, Commander," Udina suddenly interrupted. "I guess you have a departure to schedule."

That I do," Azula said, "But first I want to pick a few people up."

 

[ZiPeppe]

Azula walked towards the Normandy's cockpit, the ship – 'My ship, her mind added – was fully resupplied and staffed; she was ready to go as she could be. Joker greeted her from his seat as soon as she arrived.

"Just making the final checks before clearing the dock, Commander," he said, his hands flashing through the lists and commands on the holographic console. "If you want to make a speech, this is the moment."

Azula paused for a few moments before nodding in agreement; she and her crew didn't have a particularly long service record together that would make such things unnecessary. "Here you go, Commander," Joker said as she activated the intercom.

"This the Commander," Azula began, leaning towards the microphone; her voice coming through the loudspeakers on every deck of the ship. "By this point I'm sure you have have heard the news and guessed what probably our mission will be, so allow me to remove any doubts that may still linger: We are going to hunt Saren down and give him our appreciation for his treasonous acts." Azula paused her speech, discreetly looking at the crew behind her and taking note of their pleased reaction.

"I'm not going to insult you all by saying that it's going to be easy, if it was they wouldn't have chosen us to go after him. We earned our fame by saving Eden Prime from destruction, and with the help of our allies, we will earn it once again by foiling his mad plans and bringing him to justice."

"Nice speech, Commander," Joker commented as soon as she finished. "Just be careful not to end up on the chopping block like Captain Anderson because of backroom politics."

"Advice noted and appreciated Joker," Azula answered. "But if Saren is any indication, as long as the results I produce outweighs the troubles that may crop up I think I'm pretty solid with my position."

"Can't argue with that," he spoke. "Undocking procedures complete and we are on the way to the Mass Relay; we got a destination?"

"Feros," Azula replied after a couple of seconds. "Keep your eyes open, though, unconfirmed Geth activity has been reported in the area."

"Aye aye, Commander," Joker said. "If they were any more open they would pop out of my skull."

"As long as you don't ruin the seats..." she said as she started walking away.

"This cheap stuff?" Joker replied to her retreating back. "They should pay me for the improvement!"

Azula rolled her eyes at the irreverence of her pilot, 'At least he's skilled enough to afford it and smart enough to remain professional…' Her musing however were suddenly interrupted by her XO, Pressly, coming towards her with a serious expression on his face.

"Commander," he saluted as he reached her. "All crew is accounted for and we are fully stocked."

"Very good, Pressly," she replied as she continued to walk, mildly curious about the real reason he approached her. "Was there anything else?" she continued, trying to prompt her officer in stop stalling.

He hesitated for a moment before speaking; a faint expression of distaste appearing and then immediately excised from his face. "It's those aliens, ma'am," Pressly finally spoke in a low tone of voice. "I can understand the Turian…"

Azula could feel everyone's eyes on her as she strode through the C-Sec office towards a particular cubicle inhabited by a familiar – if slouching – Turian.

"Hello Mr. Vakarian," she said as she reached her destination.

The Turian turned briefly to look at her then went back to putting several items inside a box in front of him. "Hello, Commander," he spoke softly, a dejected air clinging to him like a cloak.

"I heard you are in the market for a new job," Azula said in a cheerful voice, ignoring how he suddenly tensed up. "And what do you know, I am looking for highly trained manpower," she couldn't stop her smile as she saw him turning to look at her no longer slouching, but standing straight and with hope shining in his eyes. "Interested?"

"…He basically is military and they were involved in the construction of the ship from the beginning, but the Krogan?"

Finding a specific half a ton of Krogan muscle on the Citadel was – strangely enough – more difficult than she imagined. Apparently everyone with even a whiff of power and/or money wanted a Krogan bodyguard looming behind them; treating them as some kind of status symbol like one would with a famous painting or a rare artifact.

Thankfully, her target was notorious enough for her to track him down with relatively little difficulty; especially after leaning a bit on C-Sec, who probably kept a lot of eyes on Wrex after being forced to release him due to being involved in "Spectre business." There was so much bitterness and hatred around that particular affair among the C-Sec personnel, that she could almost physically taste it.

'Still worth it,' she thought as she slid a tall glass along the bar counter and right next to a large three fingered hand. The owner first looked at her then grabbed the glass and sniffed it cautiously, before grinning widely and downing a quarter of the contents in one gulp.

"Ryncol, Commander? And of decent quality too?" He spoke, still sporting a large grin. "Where you managed to find something like this on the Citadel?"

"Some would say a wild and poorly spent youth," Azula replied, sipping her own drink, even if a far less extreme one.

"Ah!" Wrex snorted in amusement. "Okay, I agree."

"What?"

"Alcohol produced by my people, Spectrehood and a really big and tough loose end that needs to be taken care of," he paused for a moment as he turned to fully face her, clearly enjoying the situation. "You were going to offer me a job," he concluded.

Some of her emotions about the abrupt derailment of the conversation must have showed on her face, because he suddenly began to laugh uproariously.

"And a Quarian too, of all people?"

The embassy's guest rooms thankfully were not far from Udina's office, and the presence of two armed guards just outside the door of one of those apartments made it obvious which one was occupied. After having her identity verified she was allowed access, and was greeted by the sight of Chief Williams facing off Tali over some kind of holographic board game.

"Commander!" they both exclaimed at the same time, Ashley even jumps off the couch to salute her.

"Ah, Chief Williams. Just the person I was looking for" Azula spoke, snapping off a salute of her own.

"Ma'am?" A confused Ashley replied.

"These are your transfer papers," Azula continued, giving her a pad. "Gather your gear and give them to Pressly back at the Normandy."

The woman numbly accepted the tablet and simply kept staring at Azula, only half strangled noises coming out of her. "I suggest you start moving Chief," Azula spoke, barely keeping her lips from twitching upwards. "We are scheduled to depart the day after tomorrow and there is a bit of paperwork to be done to complete your transfer," she paused for a moment, then continued in am ore serious tone. "That is if you…"

"Yes, ma'am! Going now, ma'am!" Ashley interrupted her and then bolting out of the room after saluting Azula again.

"Now Tali," Azula spoke after taking the place on the seat Ashley just vacated. "You've done a great service to me and the Alliance, there is anything I can do to repay the debt?"

"You saved my life, Commander. That's payment enough," Tali answered, curling up on her couch. "But… Can I join your crew?" she asked, speaking so quickly it almost sounded like one word. "I understand that I'm not a Human and not a soldier," she kept going. "But I can look after myself, I'm pretty handy with an omnitool and I'm pretty good at handling the Geth too!"

"Okay," Azula simply answered.

"I promise I won't get in your way and… Oh, you said yes," the young Quarian pressed her hands on the faceplate of her helmet. "I'll just shut up now."

Pressly shook his head, his mouth set in a sour expression. "They are a huge security risk, the lot of them."

"I understand your concerns, Navigator," Azula answered calmly. "Let me assuage them one by one and let's start by the young Miss Nar Rayya," she continued as she stopped just outside the Bridge, out of earshot of the crew manning it. "Someone smart and capable enough to successfully ambush a Geth patrol and extract valuable data from them.

"Not to mention the Quarians as a whole have much bigger problems and heavily different priorities than worrying about anything our guest can uncover," she paused for a moment to give Pressly an occasion to interject and continuing when he didn't. "Continuing on with Garrus Vakarian, who – as you said – is a Turian and I can assure you that he sacrificed a lot while helping us prove Saren's guilt.

"And last is Urdnot Wrex; leaving aside his mercenary reputation – which I checked and is very good – he is an excellent combatant and a biotic to boot. Considering the magnitude of our mission, I don't need to tell you how valuable as an ally he can be, do I?" Azula asked.

"No, ma'am," Pressly replied, looking as if he just bitten a particularly sour lemon. "I understand."

"Good," Azula spoke with a smile. "Carry on then."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, saluting and walking back to the bridge immediately after.

Azula kept watching his retreating back for a second before turning and continuing on towards Anderson's cabin – now her own – nodding and greeting the crew along the way. Once she heard the door closing, however, she let her composure drop a bit; trying to massage her stiff shoulders back to normalcy as she sit down at the desk and turns on the monitor.

"Orianna," she spoke out loud, leaning back in her seat.

"Available," the synthetic voice of the on-board V.I. replied.

"Initiate a search in all available archives, parameters: Feros, colony, history, background, economy," Azula said. "Put them in written format, one tab for each document."

"Complying… Download complete, displaying,"

Immediately several pages started appearing and Azula's eyebrow rose as they kept going for a few moments more.

"Orianna," Azula spoke. "Play some music, list A3,"

"Complying," the V.I. obeyed as the notes began to fill the cabin.

'Well,' she thought as she began reading the first document. 'At least I have something to keep me occupied during the voyage.'

She was already past her first pruning of redundant or pointless articles when the chime of an incoming message distracted her from it.'Nihlus?' So soon?' Curious – and a bit thankful for the interruption – she opened it.

Hello Commander,

I heard about your mission and I know you'll have your hands full, so I'll make this quick. I made some inquiries about one of your leads – Dr Liara T'Soni – and I managed to find where her expedition went; the location and some information about the planet are in the file. However the bad news is that someone hired a merc to capture Dr. T'Soni.

I suggest you hurry.

Nihlus.

"Joker!" Azula immediately barked in the intercom after reading Nihlus info. "New heading! Knossos system, max speed!"

"…Yes, ma'am," he replied, his voice obviously filled with puzzlement. "But we'll have to backtrack a bit."

"Get it done!" Azula replied harshly, "And do your best Joker," she continued in a smoother tone of voice. "One of our leads is about the get a very unfriendly visit."

"I won't let you down, Commander," Joker answered, for once in complete seriousness. ​