Resurrection Fic: Mass Effect, Training Day

grant

Well-Known Member
#1
Note, this is written purely to up the number of fics for Zerohour's idea. Don't expect much from it.


Training Day

Present Time

08:80, Galactic Standard Time

Jane Shepard had always thought herself a patient woman. Perhaps not the most pleasant or sociable or reassuring, but she would argue that patience was something she had in ample supply. One could not be a decent sniper and be impatient.

The situation she found herself in, however, was depleting her stores of patience at an incredible rate.

"Ma'am," she began from her position underneath a bush "I understand that a Spectre will face many varied threats from across the galaxy in the line of duty. I can understand that at times, many times, a soldier will face disadvantageous situations. What I cannot understand-"

"Shepard!" Spectre Tela Vasir hissed from her own hiding place behind a car. "I think I hear it moving!"

"As I was saying, I cannot understand why a water cooler would be armed and mobil-"

"Goddess, it's at the coming out the window! Look o-"




----

06:52, Galactic Standard Time

Earlier that day...

In retrospect she had probably been expecting a bit too much. It was pretty clear that the Council didn't like been pushed into giving a human Spectre status just to avoid further embarrassment, so setting up impediments really wasn't that surprising. One would think that pursuing a renegade Spectre already responsible for one attack would be a priority, but these were the same people that had concluded the entire investigation on Saren in roughly one day.

She was getting the feeling that her new bosses didn't react well to unexpected events.

So they had decided to bring up a technicality. Shepard had never actually gotten through the observation period that all Spectre candidates go through before being declared an operative, mostly on account of her mentor coming down with a severe case of death.

Because of that she was required to first spend a period of time at Spectre HQ for "training purposes". Initially this would have been for a full six months, but Udina's anger had actually come in handy. Accusations of attempts to sideline the first human Spectre and ignore the threat of Saren with the Geth had been enough to reduce the amount of time to one Galactic week.

One week was still a very, very bad idea in her opinion, but there the Council had held firm. She had seen more than enough of military politics to know that something else was going on in the background, but whatever it was it was enough to even withstand a full blown Udina-rant.

So here she was, standing in front of possibly the most gaudy special operations HQ she had ever seen. Perhaps it was some bizarre taste of the asari, or maybe a subcommittee had pushed it through to benefit the local guild of insane hanar artists.

There were gigantic pillars standing in front of it. Shepard wasn't even sure what the pillars were there for. They weren't holding anything up. They weren't even arranged in any kind of geometric position that she could see. Even worse were the colors. They were a horrible mess of brown, orange and purple stripes on a green background. And was that glitter dumped on them at random?

Sadly somehow less weird, each pillar had a vending machine standing by it. Why? Why would there be vending machines out there in the open, in front of the building? Who would think it was a good idea to keep them outside, instead of in the building where there would be hungry workers ready to spend their pay on cheap, unhealthy bagged foods?

"Look out!"

Distracting her from her thoughts was a biotic wave suddenly knocking her into the bushes that dotted the landscape as well.

Scrambling out from under it she spied a a distinctly blue hand waving in her direction from underneath a nearby car.

"What the hell?" she called, nicely as she could while pulling leaves out of her hair.

"Stay down!" the voice, presumably an asari, called back. "Tela Vasir, Spectre! A mechanized enemy is moving through the building!"

Wait, what? Geth? At the Spectre HQ? How bad were their standards?

"Jane Shepard, Alliance! I was sent here for observation!" Shepard called back, crouching underneath the bush with more care. "What's the Geth doing?"

Vasir's voice took on a slightly embarrassed tone now. "Well, it's not exactly the Geth."

Shepard looked up from the hacking program she had been readying. "What do you mean it's not the Geth? How many mechanical invaders do you have?"

"Well, technically it's not an invader either" Vasir's voice had definitely taken an embarrassed tone by now. "It's..."

Just then a sniper rifle extended from the window, with the machine manipulating the weapon behind it. The view was a bit difficult, but Shepard was fairly certain that she could see a jug of water on top of it. Turning around, she stared at her new comrade in disbelief.

"It's one of our water coolers." the asari admitted.




---
Present Time

10:17, Galactic Standard Time

"Flanking us! Three o'clock!"

Shepard cursed and let out a burst from her sidearm, desperately praying her omnitool would hurry up and recharge. Somewhere along the way the psychotic machine had somehow recruited the vending machines, which all just happened to be armed with shotguns and mobile as well. It had them pinned down with a sniper rifle, while the vending machines advanced. Fortunately they didn't seem to be as smart as the water cooler, shown by the fact that they were trying to fire at the two with shotguns from a good forty meters away.

Unfortunately, all evidence suggested that her ally was about as intelligent as the vending machines. Tela Vasir had broken cover from the wreckage of the pillar they were under and was biotically charging straight towards them. Normally this might sound like a good idea. What she could see of the technique suggested it was a pretty devastating blast and Vasir's shotgun wasn't much use at long range either. However Vasir hadn't seen fit to take into account that there were seven of the things, and at that range their shotguns were also now effective.

"Vasir!" she shouted. "What the hell are you doing!"

"Trying to stay alive!" the asari called back, desperately clinging to the back of one of the remaining five vending machines.

Shepard couldn't exactly fault that. The one Vasir was on was flailing about, unable to remove her. The other four were trying, and failing, to find a position where they could shoot her without hitting their mechanical comrade, not at all helped by their limited minds constantly making them run into each other. It'd be funny, really, if not for the fact that both of their lives were in danger...

Thwack!

Especially because the water cooler had repositioned itself and was taking shots at Vasir and the vending machine, showing itself to be much more ruthless than the new recruits. Or maybe it would be different if they had been water coolers instead.

"Shepard! I can't hold on like this!"

With a sigh Shepard lifted the sniper rifle, which had finally cooled down enough to use. Sighting down it she noted the enemy's armament. Looked like a Volkov, nice. Definitely a hell of a lot better than the Hammer the Alliance had seen fit to equip her with-

"Shepard!"

She pushed down the thought that maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she just let the cooler take the shot, raised the rifle to point at the thing's absurdly long extension cord and lightly pressed down on the trigger.

The water cooler staggered as though, well, as though it had been shot and slumped down. As Shepard turned to Vasir, she noticed that the vending machines had fallen as well. Some kind of hive mind thing where the death of the water cooler killed them as well?

In any case the thing was dead. Smiling she got out from under the pillar and walked over to the asari currently stomping on the machine she had been clinging to. Insanity aside, they were both alive, she counted the pillars thoroughly trashed as a win for Art and maybe Vasir would be grateful enough for saving her life to overlook switching the Hammer for that thing's Volkov. Spectre's deserved better equipment after all-

"Down!"

Shepard really wasn't sure what to make of that, being abruptly knocked to the ground by her mentor and rolled underneath one of the machines lying against a pillar. Vasir's hands were up her shirt and pressing Shepard's head pretty closely to the asari's chest plate. Was this some kind of asari gratitude ritual? Because she had to admit that the alien was a lot softer than she had originally thought...

Thwack!

And fantasies about exotic blue women were shoved aside by a familiar sound. Raising her head cautiously, she peered out from under the vending machine to see an awful sight.

There, rappelling down the wall with its extension cord... somehow, was the water cooler.

"Vasir?" she whispered with horrified fascination.

"Yes Shepard?" the asari whispered back, taken advantage of the human's distraction to reposition her head closer to Vasir's chest again.

"How is it moving?"

"Well, that's probably because all you did was sever the cord connecting it to the building. All refreshment machines in the building are equipped with an autonomous power source."

Shepard looked up, disbelief written all over her face. "Oh, come on. You cannot be serious-"

Boom!

This time she was interrupted by an even worse sound. Stumbling away from the now-burning wrecks of the vending machines and running for new cover, all she could do was raise her head and scream.

"Grenades? Who would give a water cooler a supply of grenades?"
 
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