Starts my story, Shining Bright
Hope you'll find the style alright,
As I pick up pen and write,
On this cold and winter's night.

Commander John Michael Shepherd slammed through the doors of Chora's Den after adding his own special brand of interior decoration to the lounge. The new decor consisted of blood stains, corpses riddled with bullets, holes in the floors, scorch marks from tastefully thrown grenades, and screaming women of both human and Asari breed who were entirely under-dressed for the occasion.

"Oh well," he thought as he dashed to the right and ran past the lighted sign which contained the silhouette of the Asari dancer seated upon an invisible lounge chair. He did not care for gentleman's clubs. Oh of course back when he was a military brat going from station to station with his parents he had the typical adolescent illusions about such places, back when sexual feelings were new, and oh so intense. But after a forged id and a brief flirtation with one of the dancers who no doubt suspected his under-aged vulnerability he couldn't help feeling that there was far less to it than was proclaimed by all his older and more 'mature' friends. The bodies were gorgeous of course, but was that all?

It was a foreshadow of things to come, but he was entirely clueless as to this hint from the author at the time.

That had not been his only foray into the love affairs with the opposite sex. He had always been energetic and athletic; never running the fasted, but always running fast; never jumping the highest but always jumping high. He never was quarterback at the big games but he was half back often enough. He a good balance of strength, constitution, and agility, coupled with a keen eye and swift thinking, which enabled him to be both a good soldier and good leader. Adding the rusty brown hair, deep emerald green eyes, and a firm chin he had always been attractive to most of the girls at the bases. And so he had often dated, and that taught him one of the hard lessons of life, that being that pretty and superficial almost always meant exactly the same thing when found in the opposite sex. Sooner or later you get tired of kissing and want to talk about something other than someone else's girl or boyfriend.

So to suggest there was a slight grin on his face as he blew up Chora's Den trying to get to the owner named Fist, and blew it up some more as he dashed out trying to stop another murder or worse in an alleyway nearby would not be entirely untruthful.

Turning left down the elevated walkway and then a sharp right into an open foyer which contained more doors to other shops and stairs to an upper level he paused and quickly scanned for the nearest entrance to a back 'alley'.

"That's the door there!" shouted Garrus, the tall blue grey Turian on Shepard's five. He was in C-sec on the Citadel

The Citadel was the great space station which hovered near the inner edge of the Goldilocks zone of the Galaxy. It was supposed to have been built fifty thousand years prior by a race known as the Protheans, of which little was known, and it was maintained by a collection of big green bugs who were known simply as keepers. There were none of them any where else in the galaxy, save the Mass Effect Conduits, and no one could explain how they got there, or how they had maintained the place after the extinction of the Protheans. Efforts, both foul and fair to examine them had turned out exactly the same, the creatures died and quickly transformed into a brackish smelling goo which stained the floor until another keeper came along and cleaned it up. No one even knew how they reproduced or where or even if they wanted to.

C-sec was the abbreviation of Citadel Security and it made perfect sense for Garrius to know where the door to the nearby alley was, where the rough, dark, cruel, and not particularly polite affair was about to be done. As a member of C-sec, he knew his precinct of the ward like the back of his crested two fingered one thumb hand, and that meant more than a passing familiarity with all the back-ways and dark alleys of the dirty deeds done dirt cheap variety. He was tall and vaguely humanoid in that he had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. But his legs were placed more on the side of his lower torso which enabled Turians to run for a far longer time than humans with less fatigue. Which of course was one of the reasons why he had pointed out the door after a running firefight and race against time without so much as a brief pause to pant, let alone catch his breath. Covering his body were various chitin plates which were under standard issue security armor for the most part but likewise formed mandibles on his cheeks and crests upon his scalp. There were not enough toes on the feet, by human standards anyway. And to top it off, there was something vaguely leonine in the Turians in spite of appearances. Even though they looked nothing like cats, you thought cat when you saw them.

So Shepherd and his team dashed through the door into an alley lit with a reddish tinge as if to say, 'here's the perfect venue for subterfuge and betrayals and murder most foul.' If Shepherd had not been busy trying to save a young Quarian's life, who was just twenty five meters in front of him next to a Turian and security robots, he might have made some comment about feeling like he was in some dramatic police vid or - god forbid - computer game.

The young Quarian was named Tali'Zorah Nar Rayya. Like all other Quarians she was encased entirely in a suit with a helmet and large visor. The Quarian immune system had suffered severe deterioration over the past 300 years, since they had been driven from their home world and colonies by the Geth, a race of androids who had initially be created by the Quarians for service in their galactic territories. As a consequence, only a handful of Asari and Krogans could remember what Quarians looked like before they had been forced to wear those protective suits. There were of course, illustrations in ancient books on xenobiology which could have been found in some of the more ancient Asari monasteries, but those were for the most part inaccessible and for non-Asari, fraught with perils unanticipated by ordinary humans. But fortunately for you gentle reader, your author was not one of those ordinary humans and he knew exactly what Quarians looked like, and in particular Tali whom he will now describe.

Quarians resembled humans in many ways, more so than Turians, but not as much as Asari who were almost entirely identical save for the head crests and blue gently scaled skin. Quarians were just a bit more alien. Tali, like any human female, possessed a mouth, nose, cheeks and chin, a pair of eyes and a head of hair. Her torso likewise resembled woman save that her waist was a bit more narrow than ordinary women and her hips were a bit wider. Her arms and thighs were likewise similar, but unlike humans, she had two fingers and a thumb on each hand. Each leg had two knees, one in front and one in back, for they were similar to a gazelle, deer, or antelope. Her feet were very much like those of climbing mammal, and indeed they were initially designed for that purpose. There were two toes, one on each side of the foot pad which formed a narrow triangle from the ankle to the front and were narrow. And then a prehensile thumb set further back. Had the toenails not been trimmed, they eventually would have curved and narrowed to form a rather tough claw. Tali's ancient ancestors had be able to easily climb the trees of Rannoch, the ancient home world, to gather the fruits, flowers, eggs from the nests, and small edible mammals which nested in such trees; run from predators, and leap from large branch to large branch or from rock outcropping to rock outcropping. It would have reminded an ancient observer of a pretty monkey.

Her front teeth were small and similar to a dog's front teeth, rounded in the center with two small points on each side and the canines just a fraction longer before one came to the molars. Since they were smaller, there were two more of them between the canines than those of a human, but when she smiled, it lent a certain delicate quality to the smile. There were ears behind the jaw in the same place as found on humans, but there was no edge to them, no cup of cartilage and skin like that of a human or other earth animal. Rather, a small hole enclosed by the slightest hint of ridge. Consequently, Qurians could not hear as well as humans, though the differences were slight. The next variation was the hair on the head. It was not a single strand like humans, but reminded one of the ends of ostridge feathers, light and soft. Under a microscope, each hair strand would have looked like a close up of a rat's tail, only prettier, or squirrel tail, only less bushy, or a cat's tail, only less hairy. The hair did not rest flat on the head, for it's natural bush thickness caused it to billow out, encasing the face in a thick soft frame. Tali's hair was black, so black as to seem to have a blue sapphire shimmer to it. Her skin was pink. Slightly pinker than the European English skin tones but her entire body was covered in that thin black feathery hair. Outside of the scalp, the hair was so thin and short that one would only know it was there when one looked closely with a magnifying glass. The only evidence that the casual observer would have of it was the faint purple or blue cast of the skin, save for a collection of black V whorls which worked their way down the neck and torso and the arms and legs where the hair was a bit thicker. The overall effect was that the skin was incredibly soft to the touch, reminding humans of kashmir wool. Had a human painter or sculptor tried to paint or carve a classical image of a Quarian, they would have promptly drawn inspiration from the ancient greek renditions of mythological satyrs, fauns, and nymphs, though Quairans had no horns and their hair was not so thick upon the legs as that.

The hair of the Quarian race had served a very essential service to the Rannoch ecosystem. For there were no insects upon Rannoch and cross pollination was performed by the birds and mammals of the planet. The Quarian hair was perfect for catching grains of pollen and small seeds and carrying them for a distance before air movement or vibrations shook them loose to fall or drift to a new flower or spot of moist soil. The tangible result was that when they had been on Rannoch, they had often smelled of flowers and young trees. While Quarians assumed that the absence of perfume on the Migrant Fleet was due to the need to save all resources for survival and not frippery, the real reason was that the Quarians had never needed it and consequently there was no cultural catalyst for it's invention.

It was the eyes of the Quarian which caught the attention of most however. Unlike the eyes of any of the other races which possessed obvious visual appendages, the Quarian eyes were a single surface packed with optic nerves which surrounded the protein crystalline rods which caught and reflected the light. This not only gave the Quarians exceptional night vision, but the ability to see detail to almost a microscopic level. This impressive visual talent was offset by the fact that unlike the human eye, Quarian eyes were set. They could not move their eyes to focus on subjects on the edge of their field of vision. The Quarian had to directly face what they were seeking to observe. From the observer's perspective, the eyes seemed to glow, especially in the dark. It was the precision eyesight of the Quarians which was one of the chief reasons why they were so skilled at technology. When you can see the micro of the micro-circuitry so well, you know how to repair a lot of things other races would be forced to just remove and re-cycle the components of. They also had the potential to being the greatest jewelers gem cutters of the galaxy, but the reality of the Migrant Fleet precluded that from happening. And it would be a few more years before the galaxy discovered just how deadly Quarian snipers could be.

None of this was known to John or his team. They burst in just as Tali knocked aside the hand of the Turian who had been caressing her head and said, "The deal's off." The Turian had pulled his gun, the security androids had likewise produced weapons, Tali had gracefully leaped behind a box which seemed to be in the ideal position to have a gun fight behind. In fact, like some cheesy butch vid, there were more than a few crates and boxes perfectly placed about and every one got something to hide behind as the shooting began in earnest.

John swore silently to himself. This was not the place to have such a fight, only Kaiden knew his code talk for combat, Ashley had just joined the team on Eden Prime and the fighting there had not been sufficient to train her well. Wrex, the Krogan and Garrus the Turian were both entirely new to him, and already Wrex had shown himself in need of training given that Fist had been shot by him after Fist had not only surrendered, but had answered truthfully about the Quarian. Had Fist not cooperated, they would not be here now and that Quarian would already be dead. Not a good way to start a camaraderie, that Krogan. Garrus was, however, clearly used to fighting with out backup and by keeping an idea of who he was targeting, Shepherd knew where to support and where to move independently. Almost immediately he knew what had to be done, for Wrex charged the Turian bellowing, almost oblivious to the bullets breaking down his shield's resistances. If the commander didn't do something quickly, he would save the Quarian but loose the Krogan.

"Blue!" shouted Shepherd over the comm. "Lift your one!"

Kaiden, the only team member of Shepherd's who had been with him since prior to Eden Prime, knew immediately what Shepherd wanted. He applied his biotic lift power on the box just slightly to his front and right from where the Turian was shooting. The Turian, suddenly bereft of cover, found himself the repository of more than a dozen Krogan bullets followed by a head butt. He was pretty much dead by the time his body decided to fly backwards from the head slam.

"Raugh," observed Wrex. His too wide to be real mouth grinned and he hopped a bit from one foot to the other, a sort of "I killed everyone think I get to dance now" thing.

Shepherd walked over to the Krogan.

"Wrex, what the hell were you thinking doing that charge!" he snapped. "You were that close to death you know that?"

Wrex grinned.

"Shepherd you have never fought with a real warrior before so I'll let it slide," he said.

"I didn't know catching bullets with one's body was the mark of a warrior," mused Ashley, "I was trained to duck them myself."

"There's a time to charge and a time to wait!" insisted Shepherd to the Krogan. "I pride myself in the number of former friendly corpses I don't pile up. Got it?"

Wrex nodded and shouldered his assault rifle. He might not understand objections to a charge, but he did understand wanting to preserve the lives of fellow soldiers.

Garrus in the meantime, had walked over to the crate, now somewhat riddled with bullet holes, from where the Quarian had been shooting.

"Well well," he said reaching out his hand to help her up. "Looks like I get to save a second woman from death today. No need to thank me of course. I'm just that good a cop."

The Quarian pointed her pistol at his face.

Garrus wasn't a fool. He knew the stresses of victims, especially those who had just narrowly escaped death, if not rape as a prologue to execution. You didn't get to be that good a cop not knowing that sort of issue and how to handle it.

"Now you hurt me to the core," he said nodding his face to the side and shouldering his sniper rifle all the while directly facing the Quarian. "How you could confuse a handsome and suave hero of the citadel with that scum over there presently showing off his personal bullet collection escapes me." Garrus gestured to the dead Turian who had just threatened the Quarian prior. She turned her face in the direction of the gesture, only briefly, and then turned to look back at Garrus.

Once again Garrus proffered his hand. The Quarian took it and was helped up. As soon as she was up, Garrus let go of her hand and she withdrew it. She looked around, adjusting her feet if necessary to see each of the five members of Commander Shepard's team.

"Humans," she thought. "Three of them. I hope they've taken showers because I've heard humans are really dirty and my filters need replacing."

John walked over to where Garrus was standing and looked at the Quarian, who was now looking directly at him. He noted that all he could see through her visor was the very faint outline of her nose and two pale white glowing eyes.

"The name's Commander Shepherd," he began. "This is Garrus, of C-sec. That is Wrex, this is Kaiden, and that is Ashley. I understand you have information on the Geth which includes evidence against Saren."

As each name was mentioned, Tali looked over the faces, her head facing each one. Garrus and Wrex's expressions seemed non-committal, Kaiden and John's faces seemed to express curiosity, but Ashley's face seemed hard and distant.

"She doesn't like me," thought Tali.

"I am Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," she said. "And yes, I am trying to trade information I have. I was supposed to meet with the Shadow Broker here, but that Turan didn't seem to act as if he was going to show up."

Shepherd found that her voice had a chirping quality to it, which he concluded must have been the consequences of the filter translation system she was speaking through. He wondered what her voice sounded like without the filters.

"He wasn't," said Garus. "You were being set up. While Borla Von still works for the Shadow Broker, Fist betrayed him and set you up for a hit. If we hadn't beaten the truth out of Fist, you would already be dead."

"I knew I couldn't trust him," said Tali. She then muttered something under her breath which was too faint for the translator in her filter system to catch and broadcast.

"From what Von told us," added Shepherd. "The Shadow Broker never is seen publicly. He always works through agents. Even if you had been given a right contact, you never would have met him directly, only his agent."

Tali bowed her head and her shoulders drooped a bit. Then she looked back up at Garrus. Garrus, tilted his head towards Shepherd. She turned to face Shepherd. "I need to make a deal with this information," she said. "I'm on my pilgrimagh and I was hoping this would fetch a sufficient price that I might be able to get a gift for my people and return to the fleet. Some food would be nice to."

"Pilgrimage?" queried Shepherd. He wanted to make sure since she had not ended the word with the jeh sound but rather had ended it with a guh. It might have been her accent, but he was not sure. "We humans have pilgrimages too. I went on one. I walked to Santiago de Compostela when I was eighteen. It was before I joined the N7 forces. It helped me make the decision."

Tali tilted her head.

"Did you find a suitable gift?" she asked.

"Gift?" asked Shepherd. His jaw hung slightly loose and he just looked at Tali's visor. "I suppose the insight that I should join the N7 was a gift, but I was pretty much already go on that so I don't see how it really . . ."

"You got a gift?" asked Tali. "I have to find a gift."

"Ah!" replied Ashley. "Two different pilgrimages we're talking about. We take pilgrimages to gain spiritual insights . . . Or at least I guess we do. I've never done one. I probably should . . . someday."

"It's different for Quarians," answered Tali. "In order to prove my use to my people, I have to leave the fleet, find something to help the fleet, and then return with it and present it to a ship's captain. If the gift is good enough, he will take me as a crew member."

"That," said Shepherd. "Is what we call a quest."

Tali looked at Shepherd for a moment. Her eyes seemed to glimmer.

"I'm sorry," she said. "My translator does not understand this word . . . Quest."

"To seek a great treasure," suggested Ashley. "To find the holy grail."

Then she smiled ever so slightly and said, "Arise, go forth, and conquer."

"Tennyson?" queried Kaiden.

"Yeah," replied Ashley.

"I had a hard time with Tennyson," admitted Shepherd. "I like Tolkien."

"Meddle not in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger," he quoted.

"I thought it was 'Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup,'" offered Kaiden with a slight grin.

"No," suggested Ashley crossing her arms and shifting her weight to her left foot, her facial features suggesting they wanted to express an opinion by making a loud hooting snorting sound.

Tali's head was shifting from Shepherd to Kaiden to Ashley as each one spoke. She noted that Kaiden and Ashley both had the same color hair, black. She also noted that Kaiden seemed to be a happier sort. Ashley had scars on the inside

"Duck," thought Shepherd to himself with a slight smile. "She makes me think of the ducks on the pond behind my grandmother's house."

"We need some place safe for this," suggested Tali. "I've been shot at twice now and the last time was too close to call."

Shepherd and Garrus looked at each other. They both knew the medical center where the Tali's first wound had been treated. It had been the first gun fight of the day and the first women saved from certain death as well, a french accented nurse who's name escaped Shepherd though he could have sworn she should have been named Lelianna for some obscure reason or other.

"Ambassador Udina will need to hear this evidence," suggested Garrus.

"Good call, Garrus," answered John. "We need to get there now."

It was a short walk down the alley to a open area where a public transport auto taxi site was found. It took two vehicles to get all six of the team members and Wrex took up the whole back seat so Kaiden and Ashley sat in the front of his sky-car while Shepherd, Garrus, and Tali, who sat in the back, took the other. And then it was a five minute fly to the embassies and the Ambassadorial office was up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to an open balcony office.

Ambassador Udina was one of those older men who had made the mistake of pursuing power for it's own sake back when he was young and energetic and as a result, thirty years later, he was old, wrinkled, and bitter. He wore white which matched his hair color but the rest of him was a hoary angry in cast.

"What are you doing to me, Shepherd!" he snapped as the team walked in. "Shoot outs in Chora's Den, bullets flying in the medical centers, hysterical nurses, and angry Asari ambassadors!"

"Making your day Ambassador," replied Shepherd smiling. "We found evidence which links Saren to the Geth attacks on Eden Prime."

"You had better explain yourself now," retorted Udina. "And likewise how does this Turian, Krogan, and Quarian come into it?"

"Tali?" asked Shepherd looking at her.

"You're on girl," encouraged Garrus.

"The Geth have stayed behind the Perseus Veil for hundreds of years so when I heard they were moving beyond it, I thought if I was able to gain some information on how they had changhed since we had been driven into exile, this would give us an egh in any effort to retake our home world. So I tracked down a patrol of Geth, followed them until one of them became separated from the rest of the unit. I disabled it and extracted it's memory core," said Tali.

"Wait a moment!" said Captain Anderson, who was Commander Shepherd's direct superior and commander of the Normandy, the ship they had come from Eden Prime on, "When the Geth die, I thought they wipe their memory core so that nothing can be extracted?"

"My people created the Geth," replied Tali. "If you are careful, fast, and lucky, you can save something.

Shepherd whistled.

"Smart girl," he said to himself.

Tali might have heard him, she seemed to tilt her head towards him, but she faced Captain Anderson and continued.

"Here is the important data from the Geth's memory," she said as she turned on her Omni-tool. A recording played from the Omni-tool.

"The beacon on Eden Prime was a major victory," said Saren. "The information has put us one step closer to the Conduit."

"That's it!" cried Captain Anderson joyfully.

"The council will need to hear this!" Agreed Udina.

"But there's more," added Tali.

Both men stopped their brief happy dance and turned back to Tali.

"And one step closer to the return of the Reapers," added a woman's voice from the Omni-tool.

"Who is that?" asked Captain Anderson.

"What are the Reapers?" demanded Udina.

"According to the Geth's memory core," explained Tali. "The Reapers where a machine race which wagged a war of extermination against the Protheans 50,000 years ago and when they had won, they disappeared. The Geth worship them as Gods and are working to bring them back."

"Yes!" cried Shepherd. "It is starting to make sense somewhat. My vision of the beacon on Eden Prime told of the Reapers."

Tali's head was moving from Anderson, to Udina, and then to Shepherd trying to make sense of what they were talking about. It was clear that there was more to this than her data. She had no knowledge of any beacon's and visions. She wanted to learn more.

"I will contact the council, there will be a new meeting," stated Udina. "But it will be at least 24 hours. Commander? Give yourself and your team shore leave until I contact you. Rest, relax, and get ready. Anderson? We have plans to make! Damn this day! We have too many possibilities threatening!"

"I knew you would be happy," said Shepherd with just the faintest whispered hint of "you are such a turkey" in the tone.

Udina was too busy cursing his good luck to notice.

Shepherd and the other five walked out of the office and stood in the hall.

"Twenty-four hours of shore leave," grinned Kaiden. "Par-Tee Time."

"There's a really nice sushi place in the Silversun Ward," suggested Ashley. "Or at least the Galaxy Tour E-Mag says so."

Tali suddenly hopped.

"Can we even afford that?" asked Garrus. "And by the way, we haven't exactly formulated things here. Are we actually a team now? Or do we have a few beers, tell a lot of stories of our adventures; your's mostly made up of course, which I pretend to believe so you won't feel so insignificant, and then we all head our separate ways? Or is this the start of something a little more serious?"

The shift from egotistical jocularity to sudden sternness required Shepherd a full two seconds to assimilate before he answered.

"Kaiden and I were assigned. Ashley? You're the perfect wing-girl for the flank, you kept your head on Eden Prime and remembered what you were best at, so yeah, you're on the team. Wrex? Scarey Krogan is always nice to have on point. But you charge when I say charge; not before. Show yourself capable like that and I want you bad. Garrus, you're smart, calm, and keep a cool head under fire and take initiative. You're in with spades. Tali? A hacker geek is always an asset, especially since it looks like we're getting to play against team Geth. Not only are you smart enough to beat the death wipe, but I saw that leap of yours. You'll be best on my six."

"Six?" asked Garrus, Tali, and Wrex, almost simultaniously.

"And here comes boot camp," groaned Ashley.

Kaiden laughed. "Gonna see your pretty little butchy ass in the mud are we?" he suggested to Ashley.

"Only after I shove a grenade up yours!"

"He'll just fart louder then," groaned Shepherd.

"Feel the love," crooned Kaiden.

"Okay team, I like the idea of a meal. Where?"

"The Sushi place is a bit pricy," reiterated Garrus. "Though the French waiters are very stylish. And you need reservations about a week in advance on most nights. But Silversun is not a bad idea. There is this steak house just up the walkway from Ryuusei's Sushi which serves not only human, but Turian food as well, and that means Tali can eat with us since both Quarians and Turians can eat the same things."

"Steak? If there's beer I'm in," said Kaiden.

"If it struggles before you stab it, I'm in," said Wrex.

"French waiters?" asked Ashley. "Sushi is Japanese cuisine. Why French waiters?"

"It was started by an American firm," finished Garrus.

That explained everything.

Once more there were three to the taxi. But at Garrus' suggestion, they stopped a few hundred feet before the steakhouse, named Bullrush, to walk along the way passing Ryuusei's Sushi.

"They have windows filled with fish," he explained.

John loved aquariums. He had tried to start several when he was younger, even developing a friendship with the various pet store sales clerks as he went from base to base. Most of his fish had died however. He kept forgetting to feed them when he was younger and as he got older, his ideal aquariums were always bigger than his pocket change. He paused and watched the fish for a good three minutes.

He then turned and noticed Tali was looking at the fish too. Or was she? No, she was looking through the aquarium into the inside of the restaurant, watching the line of people in front of the maitre de. She seemed to do this intently for an extended pause. There was what he thought a brief sigh. Then she tossed her head, and turned and sashayed right by him.

"Tali?" he asked, baffled.

"What?" she replied looking at him.

Bullrush Steakhouse possessed a dark wood exterior and tinted windows which obscured all but the lights inside. The silhouettes of people were but brief flickers. Walking in it had the sounds of any restaurant but there were the additional twangs of steel guitars and the voices of young women singing of motherless boyfriends in prison for drunkenness while their pickup trucks rusted in the rain outside by the railroad tracks.

Ashely listened to the music for a moment and sighed while John whispered to himself, "Lord Jesus? Please, kill me now."

"Commander!" snapped Ashley, who had apparently heard John's under the breath prayers. "This is music about real life."

Shepherd groaned.

"Sorry Ash," he said. "I just can't get into it."

"Tell me about this music, Ashley?" queried Tali.

"Why do you want to know?" replied Ashley. Her tone of voice suggested a curious struggle between the attraction of mutual interest and suspicion.

Shepherd moved to the head waiter and signaled table for six, the man looked at the Krogan and led them to a table for eight.

"Ah!" Bellowed Wrex when he saw the table. "Arm room!" He slammed his fists upon the table which responded with a clattering of silverware, the falling of three glasses which rolled across the table before being rescued from certain death by team members and the groans of wood beams and linings suffering a bit more stress than they were designed for.

"Tell me about . . . these pickup trucks she's singing about," continued Tali to Ash.

"Well . . ." began Ash who had never been required to explain her love of country western. "It's a two seated vehicle with a flat bed in the back supported by four tires which is used . . ."

"She's an interesting girl don't you think?" queried Garrus to Shepherd, leaning in.

"You like her?" asked Shepherd to Garrus.

"Yeah Waiter? I'd like the New York Strip, medium, and what are your lagers? Ah, I'll take this one, Wisconsin Snowfall, on draft? Great!" said Kaiden.

"And your order sir?" Said the waiter to the Krogan.

"Um, yeah, I'll have four of the twenty ounce filet mignion with a pinch of basil and cayenne pepper rubbed into the texture. Drizzle just a bit of worchester sauce on it upon searing. Now just sear the outside with the skillet, a good 900 degrees, but don't let it cook in. Keep it rare on the inside. And if you have ryncol? No? Hmmm . . . I'll have the Pinot Noir, year 34, two whole bottles if you would," said Wrex to the waiter.

He paused. Everyone was staring at him open mouthed except Tali who's mouth was unseen (though it too was open).

"What?" he said, part as a query and more as a challenge.

"And what would you like?" asked the waiter looking at Tali.

Tali was looking at the menu.

"Keelah!" she said. "I can't order any of these, they are so expensive."

"It's on me," said Garrus, John, and Kaiden simultaneously.

"What am I?" fumed Ashley. "Chopped liver?"

"Liver Pate," suggested Kaiden who ducked as Ash threw a balled up napkin at him.

"No I can't possibly . . ." began Tali, her eyes behind her visor seeming to show a slight shade of pink.

"You are Such A WEENIE!" bellowed Wrex facing Tali. Several nearby tables paused in their dining, looked at Wrex, and scanned for exits.

"NOW HEAR ME LITTLE QUARIAN!" He continued waving a clenched stoney fist right in front of Tali's visor. "YOU WILL ORDER THE BEST DISH ON THIS MENU. YOU WILL EAT IT! YOU WILL ENJOY IT! YOU WILL ORDER A GOOD DRINK TO GO WITH IT. I WILL PAY FOR IT AND IF YOU DON'T DO THIS I WILL SLAM THAT LITTLE BUCKET HEAD OF YOUR'S SO HARD YOUR GLOWY EYES WILL BE SPITTING SPARKS FOR THE NEXT WEEK!"

"Okay," said Tali in a tiny voice as she seemed to scrunch as low into the chair as possible.

Shepherd was trying very hard to hid the chuckles he was suffering from behind his hand as he looked at Garrus who seemed to remain calm and sedate except for his mandibles which were twitching spasmodically. Kaiden was resting his forehead upon his right hand's fingers and seeming to have intense visual interest in the plate on the table in front of him. Then his shoulders jerked.

"I'll have . . ." began Tali in a quiet meek voice. Then she paused and stared intently at the menu for a moment. Ashley began to fidget.

The waiter, like all the waiters on the Silversun ward, was skilled in reading customers. He now interjected.

"If I may suggest ma'am," he said, "The blue round. It is supposed to be seasoned like the ancient recipes on Rannoch and is very popular with the ship captains and admirals of the fleet when they make stops on the citadel."

"Are you sure it won't be a bother?" began Tali as Wrex turned to face her and raised his fist.

"I'll have that," she decided trying to sound as if the threat of her bucket being rattled until the sparks began to fly had nothing to do with her decision. "With your sugyestion of wine."

"Very good ma'am," he said and finished with the other orders. After he left the table, Ashley sighed as she looked at Kaiden, Garrus, and John looking very amused and Tali trying to both hide from embarrassment as well as contain her excitement at the thought that she was going to get a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant on the Silversun strip.

Everyone looked at each other for an other moment. Wrex sat with his elbows on the table grinning a very toothy grin.

"So about this V-8 enghine," began Tali once again facing Ashley.

Slowly conversation started to pick up again. Wrex and Kaiden began talking about good drinking games and war stories while Ashley struggled to explain the technological principles of V-8 engines on pickup trucks and diesel engines on rail road trains to Tali, who's questions were extremely exacting and showed a quick grasp of the workings of machinery.

Garrus leaned back over to Shepherd.

"I was asking you about Tali earlier and I believe you were asking me if I like her?"

"Yes I was," answered Shepherd.

"I would have to say that while I find her very . . . Um . . . Cute?" He wavered for a moment trying to balance invisible weightless intangible lawn gnomes upon his open palms looking for a way to say it. "I find myself attracted to her like I would my little sister. She's obviously very smart and capable, but even so, she tends to bring out the 'protect me' gene in all of us."

"We did all offer to pay for her dinner," mused John. "And even Ash has picked up on it."

"Yes she did," agreed Garrus. "You can see Ashley struggling with wanting to explain country western music technology to Tali there as a kindred soul while at the same time her hands are twitching like she wants to strangle the poor girl."

Commander Shepherd looked over at Ash. He noted that she was applying more torc to the hand napkin than was considered normal.

"I think she will regard Tali as a rival," suggested Garrus in a low whisper.

"Regulations prohibit fraternization with fellow soldiers," replied Shepherd. "It's not smart even in the best of circumstances."

"True enough," agreed Garrus. "But Commander, you may not have thought out just what is going to happen tomorrow if the council agrees with our evidence. The only person who can take down a Specter is another Specter. You won't be a soldier any more, you will be a Specter and there are no regulations which bind you."

"There is no guarantee that I will be made a Specter tomorrow," answered Shepherd.

"Nor is there any guarantee that you won't. And if there were a pool I know here I'd put my 100 credits."

"Even so, Garrus. I don't see me and Tali. She's not my species. My Church regards marriage as an institution which is open to life for life. We can't have kids, so there would be no marriage."

"There's adoption," answered Garrus.

"It isn't going to happen Garrus," answered Shepherd. He had to admit that adoption, or a willingness to adopt would probably satisfy the Church.

"Kaiden perhaps. He's been talking tech with her too now that Ash has run out of illustrations. Notice how he's smiling?" finished Shepherd.

Garrus looked at Kaiden's efforts to explain the piston process in both steam and internal combustion engines to Tali who was following his hand gestures and trying to imitate the noise either engine made.

This could have proven to be yet another bit of amusement since Tali seemed to have a professional interest in being able to not only understand the noise which the engines made but duplicate it with her voice. But just then the food arrived and everyone discovered just how starved they really were.

Both John and Ashley crossed themselves before tucking in while Kaiden just tucked in. Wrex looked at the fillets upon his plate and then picked up the knife and fork.

"Stupid pokey things wouldn't hurt a pyjak," he said and tossed the silverware over his back. He picked up one of the fillets with his fingers, popped it into his mouth and began to chew contentedly. Ashley's eyes were wide open watching this. She realized that an entire fillet, a nicely cut piece of tender beef, required cutting into fifteen to twenty bite size pieces for a human to consume.

Tali just looked at her plate for a moment. Her meal had been processed into a set of tubes which fit into her mask. The tubes were obviously well made, and embellished with silver. They had been set into a plate which had indentations to hold the tubes in a circular pattern. The entire meal was arranged in such a fashion as to suggest that it's placement was as much a demand of proper cuisine as any other meal laid out upon the plates.

Wrex chose to forgo the wine glass. When the waiter had proffered the cork to him to smell, he simply had popped that into his mouth and chewed it up and eaten it.

"Perfect bouquet," he had said. Now he simply poured the bottle into his mouth.

Tali reached for the first tube of meat, inserted it into her visor's receptacle, and began to chew as it slowly emptied. The white points that marked her eyes blinked out for a moment. The tube emptied. She looked at her plate, and selected a vegetable tube. She inserted that and it too was quickly emptied.

Shepherd looked down back at his steak and potatoes and ate for a moment when he heard a sudden 'whift whift whift whift' and a meeping sound coming from Tali.

He looked up. Garrus was looking. Kaiden was looking. Ash was trying to ignore her and keep eating.

"You okay little Tali?" asked Wrex.

"You are all . . . So . . . sweet to me . . . This is the best meal I've had since I left the fleet," she said. Her shoulders twitched, she bowed her head for a moment making a few more little meeping noises, and once again there was the 'whift whift whift whift' sound which Shepherd realized was some automatic visor cleaner removing something from the interior of her visor plate.

He concluded she must be crying.

"Damn," he thought. "Either she is the sweetest girl I've met in ages or she's refined the manipulation of men tactic to masterwork quality."

Tali took one of her four her wine tubes and drained it.

"I'll be okay (whift whift whift), no really. Thanks (whift whift whift). Just give me a sec- (whift whift whift) -ond to get myself in shape here (whift whift whift).

Ashley commenced to apply such pressure cutting her steak that there was a faint scratching of the knife upon the porcelain. Kaiden later swore that he saw dust flying from where the knife cut into the plate.

"This is really so gooood," Tali continued. She reached for another vegetable tube, finished it off, grabbed another wine tube, drained that.

Shepherd and Kaiden exchanged glances as if to say, "there she goes." They pretended to eat for a moment, trying to enjoy the flavors of the meal while keeping at eye on Tali.

Tali however, apparently oblivious to her peril asked new questions.

"Just what happened before you rescued me?" she asked. "I've heard about visions and Eden Prime but I'm not sure just what the history is back here."

"Well," began Kaiden in a smooth tone. Shepherd decided to let him do all the talking since Tali already seemed to be responsive to him.

"We were assigned to the Normandy a week ago back on Earth per Captain Anderson's orders. The Normandy is a new Alliance ship, cutting edge technology. You'll get to see it since you are part of the team I hope."

"A new ship?" chirped Tali. She was busy working on her next meat tube. It was vanishing faster than the first one.

"Brand new," enthused Kaiden. "I've never been on one that new. I mean even the sleeping tubes don't have that sweaty stink you find on every other ship."

"Way to go, Kaiden," joked Ashley. She was noticing Tali's interest in Kaiden and was starting to lighten up. "That's the way to make a girl feel right at home."

"Hey!" retorted Kaiden. "I'd think any girl would be thrilled to know her sleeping pod wasn't going to smell like drunken sailor sweat and vomit when she climbed into it the first time."

"So what happened then?" asked Tali, who had put a new wine tube into her visor and was sipping the contents with her eyes half closed.

"We were sent on the shakedown cruise to Eden Prime," continued Kaiden. "Me, Jenkins, and Shepherd." He paused and grinned facing Garrus. "And a specter named Nilhus. He was a Turian like you Garrus, only more ugly and scary."

"Hey what do you expect?" answered Garrus. "We Turians work hard on the ugly and scary thing, it's what made us so great in the galaxy."

"I really like this wine," cooed Tali. "And the steak."

"It is a good side of meat isn't it, Tali?" answered Garrus.

Shepherd didn't know if Garrus was smiling. It was hard to tell with Turians.

"Our mission, which we did not get to decide to accept, was to go to this Prothean dig site where a Prothean beacon had been found and ship it back to some egghead institution for study since it was found intact. Nilhus was there to evaluate Shepherd who had been put forth as the first human specter candidate."

Tali looked at Shepherd. Her wine tube was half empty and seemed to just hang there under her visor. He noticed her eyes were focused directly on him.

"So we get into the briefing room as we approach Eden Prime," continued Kaiden. "And Joker, our pilot and all around really cool jerk, throws this message at us about how the dig sight of this Prothean ruin is being overrun with Geth. We get distress warnings from the 212 . . ."

"That was my team," said Ashley quietly.

"Had you ever fought Geth before?" asked Tali. She was sucking down the wine in her tube now quite rapidly. It was emptied and she pulled the last vegetable tube from her dish and nearly inhaled it in a single gulp.

"No," said Kaiden. He paused. "Jenkins never knew what hit him."

Tali reached out and gave Kaiden's hand a brief squeeze.

Shepherd, for just a brief moment, felt a twinge of jealousy. He frowned and shook his head to clear it.

"Then it was just me and Shepherd," continued Kaiden. "Until we see Ashley running like the devil himself were after her."

"I was conducting a tactical retreat!" insisted Ashley.

"You were running like your cute little tush was on fire, girl!" insisted Kaiden.

"I am a MARINE!" snapped Ashley. "I DON'T have a CUTE tush. And I DON'T RUN like it's on FIRE!"

"All Marines run like that," said Kaiden with his eyes a twinkle. "Everyone in the ARMY knows that."

Tali was busy finishing her last meat tube, then set about working on her third wine tube. And noticing that she had a fourth wine tube available, decided she would have that one as well.

"All the while Nilhus is busy ahead of us giving us recon and letting us know his 20," continued Kaiden lifting his hands to express himself better. "Then we get nothing from him and we don't know what happened until we get to the docks and find him dead with a single bullet hole in his head."

"Ouch," muttered Garrus.

"Saren had shot him in the back of the head," stated Shepherd. "There was a single dockworker who had seen it all."

"So knowing that Saren has already got a march on us we double time it to the location of the beacon, getting shot at most of the time and trying to disarm four, count 'em, four nuclear bombs which were set to go off."

"Did you disarm them all Kaiden?" asked Tali, who was clearly interested for she had just drained her last wine tube without even seeming to notice it.

"Well I . . ." Kaiden blushed a bit and shrugged while holding his hands palms up.

"Kaiden and Ashley both provided me with cover fire so I could disarm the bombs," interjected Shepherd. "Without Kaiden on my six I would not have been able to do it. We would have all been dead along with thousands of Eden Prime civilians."

"And missing out on this really good steak dinner," added Kaiden who was lifting his stein of beer and draining the last inch of it.

Suddenly Tali turned and focused entirely on Shepherd.

"You disarmed them? That was so (hic) brave of you," suggested Tali. Her head seemed to go slightly loose on her neck for a moment before she straightened it.

He hated to admit it, but he kind of liked her looking at him like that. Once again Shepherd cleared his head and tried to focus on Kaiden's storytelling skills.

"And then we reached the beacon after killing all the Geth," interjected Kaiden "And that's when . . . it happened."

"What?" asked Tali, leaning forward. She placed her hands upon the table to support herself, but they seemed to suffer from a lack of friction and she started to slid forward and down. She hiccuped again, a light chirping sort of hiccup which Shepherd had to confess struck him as rather cute. She worked her arms back up the table and stuffed them under her chest so she wouldn't lay down on the table itself.

"Ash walked up the beacon and it seemed to catch hold of her and lift it up, and then Shepherd leapt across the way and threw her away from it and then it caught him. And that's when he saw that vision," finished Kaiden.

"So that's three women this team has saved from horrible fates so far," mused Garrus. "One of them twice in a single day. Keep this up and I'm going to accuse the author of over using a trope."

Tali hiccuped again.

"Hey little bucket head," said Wrex grinning. "You cleaned up your plate. There's nothing left. I knew you would eat it if you were made to."

"Sooooo good (hics)," she agreed.

"Heh," grinned Wrex. "You were starving girl. Glad I could put some meat on those skinny bones of yours!" He gave her a friendly punch which nearly knocked her off the chair.

"Now Wreeeeeexxxx," drawled Tali trying to grab the table to hold herself up and missing. "Don be so rough on a girl . . . We're delicate floooooeeerrrrs (hic).

"Heh," said Wrex who put his arm around Tali to hold her up.

"Looks like I got the girl in this chapter," he continued grinning as Tali's head rested upon his shoulder. "Krogan's rule, humans drool."

"Wait!" stammered Kaiden. "What just happened?" He grinned helplessly.

"My heart is broken . . . shattered . . . irretrievably," deadpanned Shepherd.

Ashley was smiling.

"Ahh Commander (hics). I'm sorry I broke ye (hics) your heart."

"Somewhere . . . there's a sun . . . shining. I shall find it . . . someday . . . If I can make it through the overcast skies," continued Shepherd remaining as unemotional as he could. Garrus' mandibles were twitching again.

"When you walk, through a storm, hold your head up high," sang Kaiden with a smooth whiskey tenor looking sweetly at Shepherd. "And don't be afraid of the dark."

"At the edge of the storm is a golden beam," joined Ashley. "And the sweet silver song of the Laaaaaark!"

"Walk on through the rain,
Walk on through the storm.
Though your dreams may be tossed and blooooooooown!
Walk On Walk On, Walk On Walk On,
And you'll never walk alooooooooooooooooone!"

Shepherd looked nobly into the distance and placed his hand over his heart. Kaiden, Ashley, and Garrus all were now laughing. Wrex simply grinned and Tali giggled.

The meal finished, Shepherd signaled for the check and paid for it all much to the protests of Kaiden, Wrex, and Garrus.

"On me tonight," he insisted. "We don't know when we'll have another time to unwind. Things are moving in the shadows behind the thrones. I suspect this is our last night for a long time."

There was a brief period of silence as each of the team members considered his words for a moment, save Tali who was quietly, delicately, and demurely snoring on Wrex's shoulder.

They left the restaurant and took the taxies back to the docking bay where the Normandy was waiting.

Decades later in his life, Shepherd would remember this night and muse, "Had I only known. But then he always likes surprises."