Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all related concepts and characters belong to Bioware; I'm just having fun in their sandbox.
Prompt: What a beauty
Notes: For the Weekly Insanity Round at me_challenge on LiveJournal. Also, I love infiltrators, as should be obvious from reading this. Heh.

There really hadn't been enough time to properly examine the sniper rifle she'd found on the Collector ship – she'd been trying to absorb that once upon a time said Collectors were once Protheans, there was the issue of where the hell the ship's damned crew was, and then the whole fighting and running for her life thing. All Commander Anastasia Shepard knew as she, Garrus, and Tali practically threw themselves into the shuttle that got them back to the safety of the Normandy was that the rifle was monstrously large, had equally monstrous recoil, and exploded the heads of Collectors very prettily.

In short, she loved it.

Once she'd finished giving the Illusive Man a piece of her mind about the mission, she turned toward the armory. She had cleaned the rifle herself once she was back on board and the Normandy had escaped the Collectors, and taken the time to look it over carefully, but she didn't recognize the model, and neither had Jacob or Garrus. Jacob had said he'd look it up in the databases when the call had come in from the Illusive Man.

Shepard sent one last mental curse the Illusive Man's way as she entered the armory and walked over to the table where her new sniper rifle had been set up. Garrus was staring down at it in a frankly admiring way and Jacob looked impressed himself for a man who wasn't a sniper. She nodded to Jacob as she came up beside the pair (and noted with some satisfaction that though he still came to attention for a moment at least he hadn't saluted) and flashed Garrus a quick grin that the turian returned.

"Well, boys, what have we got?" she said.

Jacob actually smirked. "Ran the serial number on this lady," he began, gesturing to the rifle, "and it turns out she's a genuine M-98 Widow Anti-Material Rifle."

Garrus made an "oohing" sound and reached out to touch the rifle's barrel. Shepard slapped his hand away; the turian grumbled but didn't push it. She smiled and said, "From both your reactions, I'm going to guess that's impressive. Please enlighten the resident zombie."

Jacob blinked at the comment, still not quite used to her peculiar sense of humor, but Garrus took it in stride. "The Widow's a relatively new model, only came on the market about a year ago," the turian said. "Damn hard to get a hold of as it's in limited production; I've never seen one before. It's primarily used for taking out armored vehicles. Krogan, too, come to think of it."

"Isn't designed for human use, either," the Cerberus operative said. "The recoil's strong enough to break bones."

Shepard tilted her head curiously. "I noticed the recoil back on the Collector ship, but it didn't seem that bad."

Jacob nodded slowly. "I managed to pull up the specs of a Widow fresh from the factory and when compared to them, it seems that this model has been modified. The Collectors might have been trying to adapt it for their own use and didn't get too far, thankfully. As it is, this one could likely still shatter an ordinary human's arm, but with the cybernetics you received, Commander, you probably only have to be careful you don't dislocate your shoulder on occasion."

"Duly noted," she said cheerfully, leaning down to examine the rifle.

"She is a beauty," Garrus said. "You know, I could–"

"No."

"But–"

"Mine."

"Shepard–"

"Mine."

Garrus rolled his eyes but raised his hands up in surrender. "Fine, fine, no modifying your new baby." Shepard ignored him and Garrus rolled his eyes again, though he couldn't help but smirk when Jacob edged away from the commander as she actually started to coo at her new Widow.

Women and their rifles. Good to know some things would never change.