Chapter Text
‘Does this unit have a soul?’ Legion’s voice reverberated around in her mind.
"Yes, you do." Shepard whispered, brokenly, as she aimed the glass.
She pulled the trigger again and again as she staggered forward, seeing the cracks begin to spiderweb outward.
The glass shattered, and a massive fireball bloomed. Shepard had no chance, she knew that. Yet still, she raised what meager biotic barriers she could with her reserves as drained as they were, nerves screaming in pain.
The fireball enveloped her, and, for an instant, all she knew was heat and pressure. Then she was rolling out of the way of an explosion and in nowhere near as much pain as only moments ago, coming to a stop in a crouch, pistol at the ready and biotics surging under her skin...
In a relatively intact city?
"The fuck...?" She muttered, baffled.
She looked around even as she took stock of her body. It felt better than it had since the original Normandy got torn to pieces.
Cerberus had, mostly, managed to piece her back together again, but Shepard had resigned herself to dealing with the chronic pain from bones that didn't fit right anymore and joints that didn't move quite how her muscles wanted them to.
The pain and awkwardness were gone now, though. The cybernetics were still there, she still had the HUD, her eyes were still utterly unphased by all the smoke and explosions erupting around her, and as she reached out and caught a blow entirely on reflex, she found that the strength was still there, too, as she effortlessly crushed the thing's wrist.
Hang on.
That looked like nothing she had ever seen before. Some parts were clearly human, but the mantis head and the extra set of arms protruding out from the thing's shoulders to end in wicked-looking blades very much wasn’t.
She shot it in the head to put it out of its misery.
Fucking Cerberus. What fresh hell had the bastards cooked up this time?
“Fear not,” Someone bellowed in Japanese, his voice deep and rumbly. “For I am here!”
Shepard turned to the owner of the voice and blinked. The man was built like a fucking Yahg. Only, he was very obviously human and wearing a goddamned skintight suit colored red, white, and blue, like something out of Joker’s comics.
Her first thought was that it was Captain America somehow, but the lack of a shield and the Japanese nixed that.
Caught up in staring, she barely registered the way her body leaned back from a punch and snapped the attacker's neck, running entirely on instinct, reflex, and hard-won muscle memory.
More of the Cerberus experiments arrived on the scene, and for a moment, Shepard braced herself for one of those fights. But then they fell in with Wannabe Cap and the civilians who, a moment ago, had been running around and panicking cheered.
Shepard was starting to get the feeling that Cerberus had nothing to do with this.
She stepped back into a shadowed sidestreet, her black armor ensuring she was just another shadow.
Shepard observed the mayhem going on. She didn’t know enough about what was happening to engage comfortably. There was no way to tell friend from foe, no uniforms, every combatant dressed uniquely and pulling off random crap that was neither biotics nor Reaper bullshit and which frequently broke the laws of physics as she understood them.
This was a fine mess she’d landed herself in this time. If only Shepard had some idea of how she got here beyond the vague: ‘The Crucible’s done something funky’.
So she observed, mentally breaking down what tactics were in use, how she could adapt them for her own use or counter them, all the different abilities she’d seen in use and any possible commonalities between them, figuring out who was fighting who and the possible groups they seemed to fight in, and generally trying to wrap her head around how combat worked here, and goggling over how desensitized to it all the civilians were.
Then someone with knives for fingers used a civilian for a human shield, and Shepard shot the bastard side on in the head almost before she consciously registered having raised her N7 Eagle, having already calculated where and how to aim so that her target would harmlessly spin away from the hostage.
Silence descended, sudden and intense, as all eyes turned to her, and Shepard figured, what the hell…
In for a penny, in for a pound, after all.
She stepped out into the daylight and shot all the other possible terrorists that she had seen fighting alongside Knife-Hands.
She glanced around and found no other OPFOR still alive, only Wannabe Cap and his team, so she holstered her sidearm but found that the magnetic clamp didn’t engage properly. She didn’t want to risk it simply falling off, so she tried the other mag-clamps and found that the one meant for a shotgun worked well enough.
She mimed drawing and aiming a couple of times, careful to make sure she didn’t point it at anyone and nodded, satisfied that it wouldn’t be too awkward to draw from there.
“Clear!” She barked loudly. Her voice startled everyone present, and Wannabe Cap and most of his team even jumped (some comically high).
Snapped out of their trance, Wannabe Cap and his team warily surrounded her, treating her like a hostile, which was unexpected. Shepard’s helmet had been blown clean off at some point during the Crucible debacle.
They should’ve recognized her.
She slowly raised her arms, palms out.
“I am Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance, a Council Spectre. Stand down.” She said, just in case they’d been living under a rock and had somehow missed the Reaper war.
“Never heard of any of it.” One of the team challenged her gruffly.
Well, shit.
“That’s… problematic.” She allowed, resisting the urge to laugh hysterically.
When was the last time she’d slept again?
It’d been three combat drops, so… at least five days? But no, she’d napped that one time in the shuttle…
“Oh boy.” Shepard muttered and reached up to pinch the bridge of her nose.
Someone attempted to remove her Eagle from the small of her back, and she just barely managed to stop herself from slitting their throat with an Omni-Blade, instead driving them to the floor in a vicious submission hold, the barrel of the pistol they tried to take shoved into their mouth.
Slowly, she turned her head to Wannabe Cap, having correctly deduced him to be the leader.
“ Don’t do that. I don’t tend to react well.” She warned them lowly.
She sighed and then, very slowly, pulled the gun out of his mouth, let go of the person who’d tried to disarm her, and put the pistol back at the small of her back. She considered standing back up because if these people turned hostile, the ensuing fight would be a lot harder from down here.
She didn’t, couldn’t muster up the energy for it. Instead, she slumped back in a half-reclining position that was much more comfortable, propped up on her elbows.
Spirits, Shepard was fucking tired.
“I,” She sighed. “I… am lost. I haven’t slept in something like five days, I don’t recognize any of this,” She gestured vaguely around herself, not entirely sure what she was pointing at. “You don’t recognize me either and I was something like the Galaxy’s poster child for the Reaper War. So could one of you please explain what exactly is going on and why you’re dressed like heroes out of some fucking comic books?” Shepard asked.
She was rapidly becoming more baffled because most of the nutjobs in front of her wore costumes made out of materials so thin there was no way in hell they would function as any kind of body armor. They certainly wouldn’t survive in a hard vacuum, that was for damn sure.
She could trace the lines of the big guy’s muscles straight through the suit! That wasn’t practical.
Very easy on the eyes though.
Shepard shook her head. What the hell was she thinking? The exhaustion must be catching up to her, especially now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
“Actually, can we postpone the twenty questions so I can sleep for a week first?” She asked wearily, already struggling to keep her eyes open, though she didn’t hold out hope.
That wasn’t how life worked, least of all hers.
“It’s a three-hour drive to UA. Nezu will know what to do.” Wannabe Cap told her, and she was just aware enough to notice over half the people he’d fought with shudder or wince and make excuses to be anywhere but near her.
That wasn’t comforting, but Shepard was N7. She was trained to resist advanced interrogation, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d put that training to use.
Nezu stared at the newest conundrum that one of his students had brought before him. For All Might was still very much his student, graduated or not.
The woman looked like a stiff breeze could blow her over, yet Nezu felt threatened.
Those eyes…
It hadn’t been nearly long enough since he’d seen eyes like hers before.