Inventive uses of mass effect fields

Chapter 1: Stress-relief

The doors of the main elevators slid open unnoticed, allowing the woman to step into the CIC. Every time the Normandy prepared for a mass relay jump, the main decks level of activity went through the roof, with every man at his console monitoring dozens of statistics she would never understand, not that she cared. Nevertheless, most of the men would always find a moment or two to stare at her body when they didn't think she would notice. Because of course, not a single one of them would dare to cross her gaze. This time was different however. This time, nobody stared. This time, nobody sweat over their holo-displays anticipating the unbelievable acceleration and the stress it would cause on their body and the ship. This time, nobody was there at all. The dead calm of the CIC only added to the incredible tension already in the air as the Normandy began its approach to the large red mass relay. Jack wasn't sure she preferred it this way.

After staring at all the empty seats and the EDI-operated holo-displays for a minute, Jack started making her way towards the cockpit. God she hated space travel. Hated being stuck in a tiny fragile piece of metal surrounded by nothing but thousands of miles of deadly vacuum. It made her feel powerless, which was something she definitely hated even more. The fact everyone kept telling her this was one of the best ship in all space, Citadel or not, did not do much to appease her. Hell, they probably used to say the same thing about the SR1, and a fat-load of good that did when it came face-to-face with the Collectors. And now this so called new-and-improved version was about to go face the same enemies on purpose.

"This damn ship had better live up to its name" she thought. To help calm her nerves during space travels, she had ripped of small chunk of the toughest metal she could find on the ship and held it inside her left fist, constantly remolding it with her biotics. It kept her mind busy and reminded her of her true power. Some guy with an accent had tried to give her shit when he found out about the chunk. She offered to use one of his bones instead. He never came back down to her "quarters" and the beam was repaired during her next absence on a mission.

Truth be told, Jack wasn't sure why she had come up here in the first place. Maybe it was that she felt a bit useless. After all, everybody on the ship seemed to have a job except for her. The quarian, the geth, the salarian, the turian and the shady woman were all helping EDI fill the empty spaces left by the kidnapping of the entire crew while the krogan, the drell and the asari were doing some sorts of pre-combat meditations or something else just as useless to her. Had she not seen it with her own eyes, Jack would never have believed Cerberus would accept to work with so many aliens. "They must really be desperate" she thought, and then "Good for them". To her, all of them were little more than temporary co-workers. Considering the odds of survival on the mission, she didn't bother making plans for what would come after.

On the higher decks, The Cerberus puppy was making sure everybody's weapons were in absolute perfect conditions in preparation for the incoming battle. No matter how she looked at it, the ex-convict had problems figuring out that guy's use onboard. Seriously, anything he could do she could do better: Guns - from maintenance to usage, biotics, looking tough and most likely fist fighting too. Sure he had some leadership training and experience but it's not like he made any use of it. He basically seemed happy to be everyone's bitch. Give him a computer and he would probably be willing to replace that red-headed wannabe shrink as well.

Then there was the cheerleader. With the entire crew gone and nobody to order around, she was probably just trying to look important somewhere on the ship. Jack had to give it to her though, for all the pain in the ass the woman was, she had talent. Her flimsy arms probably could never handle the recoil of a real gun but Jack had had plenty of occasions on missions to see that she sure could fire a pistol, and barely ever missed her target's vital points. The same thing was true for her biotics: she could never hope to surpass the raw strength of Jack's powers, but the level of mastery she displayed with her own powers was well worth mention. This one time, she actually managed to hold in place the trigger fingers of an entire batarian commando unit long enough for Jack and Shepard to take them out even without any thermal clips left.

That's one thing the cheerleader was way better at than Jack: strategy. Fortunately, the ex-convict usually did not have much use for such fancy out-of-the-box thinking; her usual strategy simply revolved around the generous usage of biotics and shotgun shells. So far, it had served her well enough. "Too bad she's Cerberus to the core" Jack thought. If not for that, they could probably have taught each other a few things. As for the old geezer well... by now he was probably done burning alive on that ugly backwater world. Thinking back to that mission, it had been a real slap in the face for the tattooed woman. Is that all that waited for her if she stayed on her path to revenge? To burn alive and alone, consumed by the flames of a fire she would have started herself in her psychotic hunt for vengeance? Shepard sure had some balls leaving the had-been mercenary to die there.

Shepard. With the tiniest hint of a smile, Jack chuckled inwardly as she finally understood the reason she had come up to the CIC. Shepard. Her feelings about the resplendent man in full combat armor standing behind the pilot's leather chair were, at best, confused. When she had first met him on the purgatory, come to take her away in his brand new Cerberus ship, Jack had cataloged him as nothing more than another Cerberus sell-out. Her opinion of the commander soon started changing however as he kept coming down to her hole, asking about her and trying to lead her away from the path of violence and hatred she had been following for as long as she could remember. He was the only person on the ship who didn't seem afraid of her on any level. For the first time in a very, very long time, someone seemed to see her as more than a weapon or a goldmine.

Shepard's gaze had blown right through the barriers of tattoo she so blatantly displayed to draw everyone's attention away from her true self, and had little by little made its way to the scared kid still hiding somewhere inside of her. That was probably why she had asked him to go to Pragia with her. There, in the not-as-empty-as-expected ruins of the Teltin facility, she had granted Shepard access to the last dark corners of her self. The place all her nightmares were born from. The place all her now slightly-less-frequent nightmares still took her too. The place they had blown to bits together, finally. Shepard even had the foresight to break their usual trio and bring the drell instead of the cheerleader down to the rainy planet. While prowling her old room for one last time, she had come to greatly appreciate the assassin's way to disappear in the shadows.

Seeing him now, standing proud behind the pilot's seat and determination evident on his face as he checked on the status of the whole team through comm, Jack was finally able to forget about the metal chunk in her hand. Shepard had taken them all this far, he would not let them die before they could at the very least complete their mission. The Collectors would go down. And then who knows? Maybe she could pay him a little visit in his quarters. Use those biotic powers to mold something other than metal, maybe.

As the Normandy began its final approach to the Omage 4 relay, its eerie light began filling the entire cockpit until everything Jack could see was coloured blood red. Soon, the pilot's voice came on the ship's speakers.

"You better hang on to something people! Hitting the Omega 4 relay in five..."

Jack lets the metal chunk fall noiselessly to the ground.

"...four..."

She steps up next to Shepard, still calm and steady as his eyes transitioned from the holo-displays in front of the pilot to the ghastly glow of the mass relay.

"...three..."

Their eyes meet.

"...two..."

They nod to one another.

"...one..."

Their hands find each other.