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Living on the Normandy was sometimes a challenge. A fine change of pace for some, but there was always a couple days that reminded Specialist Samantha Traynor that the Normandy, literally the ship at times, and her crew needed to constantly be on their toes. Such as the situation she found herself in after the Commander came storming onto the ship, head held high in an armor she'd never seen before. She walked like she had a purpose, driven to do...something. the Commander tended to have a bit of a stick up their ass sometimes, but today she seemed off.
She walks up to the Commander, datapad in hand, and clears her throat. “Hello Commander, I'm very sorry to bother you while you look busy but I-”
The Commander turns on their heel and Samantha's jaw promptly closes with an audible click, she brings the datapad up to her mouth. “I'm going to ask you to do me a favor,” she nods. “Get off my ship.”
Everything freezes for a moment, and Samantha begins to replay every moment in her head, the knowing glances, soft touches, even the chess matches ending in Shepard’s pitiful defeat. They’d grown close, very close, as far as she was aware. And for her to throw it away?
While Samantha ponders her existence in the past month, the Commander’s expression goes from ‘pissed at everything' to ‘sickly sweet smile’, Samantha immediately stammers out, “A-are you, you you, you can't be serious! After all I've done, everything we’ve been through-you're just going to toss me off the ship like a sack of potatoes?!”
“I will. You have two minutes. Maybe next time you’ll think about fraternizing with someone above your station.”
Her breath is taken away as the Commander saunters by to the bridge. Samantha’s fists ball up at her sides as every fiber of her being is filled with anger and rage. She hitches a ride to the bridge, stuffs the remainder of her very little luggage into a carry-on bag and rides the elevator back up to Deck two. There’s another woman on the way down as Samantha leaves the elevator. She has a soft smile and she’s in full Alliance gear. The woman waves at Samantha as she leaves. There’s a million things racing through her head,some out of her mouth audibly. Mostly variants on her telling the Commander to ‘shove it up where the sun doesn’t shine’. She leaves the bridge and the door shuts behind her, locking her out.
“She- she can’t be serious, telling me all sort of lies-I can’t, I don’t even...wait, what?” And here comes the woman of the hour herself, the Commander. She runs up in full N7 armor, her gun in hand, Ashley and Liara on her back, guns drawn as well. Samantha balls her fists into a tighter grip and storms up to the imposing Commander. “You, You! How can you even look me in the eye! After all that we, I thought we, and then you fire me for fraternization!” She yells, turning her body and pointing back at the airlock of the ship. “You kicked me off the ship with barely enough time to grab my toothbrush!” There’s a pregnant pause while Samantha glares at the Commander, and the Commander visibly looks very, very confused and slightly hurt at the accusation. The Commander surges forward and locks lips with Samantha, gently cupping her face in her gloved hands, Samantha tries to pull away, but Shepard rests one hand over Samantha’s lips and says succinctly, “wasn’t me, evil clone.” as if this has A, happened before, and B, is a regular occurrence.
Samantha searches Ashley and Liara’s face for answers, trying to channel her anger and confusion into words, but only “but,” and “what” emerge.
Ashley is hacking the door on her omni-tool, leaving the Commander and Samantha to work things out. Liara helpfully says, “We should probably hurry.”
The Commander nods, and squeezes Samantha’s hands gently before dropping them, turning towards her team. “I can explain more later. For now…”
Ashley unfortunately can’t get the door open. It locks and makes an ugly chime. She scoffs, “It’s sealed.”
“The Normandy is about to take off Shepard.”
“I know, I know.” Shepard turns to Samantha. “Is there anyone on board who can help us?”
“No, uh no, not anyone that I’m aware of. I was only on board because I helped with the Normandy retrofits back on Earth. Everyone else should be on shore leave.”
“You know this ship inside and out Sam, can you get us inside?”
Samantha wracks her brain for a moment, before a figurative light goes off in her head. “There’s an emergency exit hatch,” she gets down to her knees, feeling the ground for the panel. “It should be right...here!” She finds the catch in the floor and pulls the panel up and off. It’s sealed.
The Commander kneels and Samantha stands back. “Manual lock, Omni-Tool says it’s only meant to be opened from the other side, any other ideas?”
Liara quickly chimes in, “I could try a biotic field, but I don’t think I have the fine control required to trigger it.” Another pause as Shepard makes a grunting sound.
Another light bulb goes off in Samantha’s head as she grabs her bag from where she dropped it onto the floor, grabs her brand new toothbrush, the 6,000 credit Cision Pro Mark IV, and holds it aloft, activating the tiny but strong mass effect fields that breaks up plaque and massages the gums-
Samantha stops retelling her story as she’s interrupted, “Wait, wait, wait, you’re telling me you saved the Normandy with your toothbrush?” Joker asks. “Like we where that close to losing?”
“Yeah, she got the hatch open and we literally crawled in through a hatch in the Normandy and had a big gunfight on the bridge.” Ashley says.
“I can believe that but a toothbrush? Like the thing your brush your teeth with?” Joker shakes his head, “wait, ok, so back up, then what happened to it?”
“To what?”
“This legendary Normandy saving toothbrush! We gotta make it a squadmate for all its done by this point.”
Samantha laughs despite her rather sad answer, “The feedback from the metal shattered the head. It was brand new too.”
“Shit, you oughta tell Shepard to put in a requisition to get a new one, need all the help fighting Reapers we can get.”
EDI chimes in, “I have already taken care of that Jeff, Shepard asked me right after I reboarded and retook control of the Normandy.”
“What did I ask you to do EDI?” Joker jumps when a hand is placed on his shoulder a bit roughly. Commander Shepard is behind them, leaning, her other hand resting on EDI's opposite shoulder.
“To purchase a new Cision Pro Mark 4, Shepard.”
“Aw, thanks EDI,” Shepard moves from one couch to the other, sandwiching herself between Ashley and Samantha, the latter of whom she's tossed an arm around. “Anything for our dear Specialist.” She says in a sickly sweet tone, kissing her girlfriend on the cheek.
Ashley rolls her eyes and Samantha blushes. “Samantha was just telling Joker about the ordeal with your clone, she was about to tell us another story.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, what did you say it was?”
“It was when you met Polgara T'suza, at that Kepesh-Yakshi tournament in the Arcade.” EDI reminds her, helpfully.
“Oh!” Shepard perks up. “The snobby Asari, that was the one where you kicked her blue ass right?”
Ashley chortles, “You kicking a biotics ass? That I'd love to see.”
“It was figuratively!”
“Nah, I think it'd be mentally.”
“Semantics.”
Joker interrupts, “Okay, tell the story from the beginning.”
Shepards eyebrows lift, “Everything? Like hot tub an-” Samantha clasps her hands over Shepard's mouth.
“We were going on a date, I got there early, and I saw a Kepesh-Yakshi tournament.”
“What's Kepesh-Yakshi?”
“According to Asari documents, Kepesh-Yakshi is most similar to the human game of chess. It translates to ‘Blade of the Night Winds’.”
“It's very chess like, but almost with that Battlefield game mixed in. Or was it Battleship? Anyways, when you lose a ship it gives you an electric shock to simulate losing a cruiser.” Samantha explains, “It's an Asari strategy game. To teach Asari commandos how to organize battles and so on.”
“Sounds utterly militaristic.” Ashley makes a sound similar to a scoff, but not as dismissive.
“It's been found to be an effective way of teaching young Asari to organize battle, it is easier to teach as a young child in an interesting way than to use more boring strategies. Not to mention it’s quite fun.”
“Props to the Asari to teach kids boring stuff though.” Shepard adds.
“And they made sure most of their games are accessible, even to colony kids like me.”
“Anyways-” Jeff begins.
“Oh right. Well anyways I figured hey, I'm early, the tournaments right there, why not?”
“And you won right?”
“I had just finished winning the semifinal match, and then-”
“I walked in.” Shepard said with a coy look. “We were supposed to meet for lunch actually.”
“I'd completely lost track of how much time I spent in the tournament. I was about ready to drop but then my longtime rival,” Samantha narrows her eyes in a mock angry way. “T'suza.”
Shepard tries her best to match the tone of the Asari rival. “Traynor.”
Samantha loses her composure and laughs at the utterly terrible impression.
“Shepard, according to extranet records of how miss Polgara T'suza sounds, that wasn't even close.”
Shepard shrugs, utterly nonplussed. “I'm good at a lot of things, impressions aren't one of them, sue me.”
Jeff rubs his hands over his face. “Please continue, I gotta know how this ends. It’s literally killing me.”
“Jeff, your vitals are perfectly fine.”
“Figuratively EDI.” He says with no bite.
“Oh uhm, well she said she could eliminate me in under twenty moves. I was getting quite down when Shepard made it uh-” she blushes and stammers: “she made it very clear that I had to win.”
“Oh? Do tell the details?”
“I like hot showers, I can’t help it.”
Ashley laughs and knocks back some of her drink. “Of course she did.”
“Shepard looked at me straight in the eye,” Samantha mimics it by looking straight at Ashley, and repeats the words Shepard said to her earlier in the day: “My shower is for winners.”
The duo of Ashley and Jeff make a collective inhale. “Damn Shepard, that’s harsh.”
Shepard merely shrugs. “I have the uttermost confidence in our Specialist. I knew she could win against some snobby Asari.”
“She’s knocked me out of four tournaments prior Shepard.”
“And you not only saved Grissom Academy and one of my long-time squadmates, you’ve saved countless lives in real war time.” Shepard winks and kisses her girlfriend on the cheek. “I knew you could do it. Just had to make the stakes high.”
“You two are too into each other, cmon I wanna know how this goes!”
“Oh, well I knew using a strategy that was common was absolutely stupid, she’s an expert on Kepesh-Yakshi, so I instantly gave up a frigate.”
“Like a whole frigate.”
“Yes.”
“And you won this tournament, correct Specialist?”
“I did! Long story short we were about ten turns in, I had a frigate, a small Kodiak cruiser and my homeworld left, T’suza had three frigates and her homeworld left. She started going on and on about how Asari have more ‘respect’”, she puts the word in air quotations mockingly, “for the game and its tactics. And that because I’m still young I’m invaluable and so on so forth, anyways, Shepard just looks over my shoulder and straight at her and goes: In her most deadpan voice, Shepard repeats: “So your job is playing games?”
Samantha laughs, recalling the event. “She got so flustered at that, I swear if she had eyebrows they’d be covering her eyes she was pouting so much!”
“I’m afraid I do not understand exactly how you can win in this situation Specialist Traynor.”
“Yeah, I’m a bit lost myself.” Ashley adds.
“Well you see, I kept her on her toes for so long, I sacrificed my last frigate, my final hope and destroyed her entire homeworld.”
EDI makes a face of surprise. “I see! You sacrificed a small group and minimized losses to completely cripple your opponent! A very apt decision.”
“It gets better, trust me.” Shepard says, trying to contain some of her laughter.
“Oh right. You know how I mentioned an electric shock? Like if you lose, it’s like a conditioning tool to prevent you from carelessly destroying or sacrificing your units?”
Jeff leans forward on his seat, a skeptic look over his face. “Yeah…?”
“Well when you lose such a large loss as your home planet with some of your units, especially your frigates in this case, the game tends to, hm, how do you say, completely incapacitate your nervous system and temporarily make your flounder like a fish out of water.”
Shepard wipes some tears. “I was so proud of her when everyone clapped.”
“So you didn’t kick her ass but you won over your biggest rival, and made her make a fool of herself in the process?” Samantha nods at the question. Ashley high fives in response.
“You two at least got lunch right?” Shepard and Samantha laugh in unison at the question, so genuine coming from Joker. Suddenly his head perks up. “That’s what the spiky trophy is for?” Ashley shoots a look that can only be interpreted as ‘no shit sherlock’.
Shepard recovers from her laughter and stands up. “I’m gonna go check on the other groups, make sure no ones bringing down the apartment. Hey Ash, make sure to tell them about when we went out, yeah?”
At the mention, Ashley pales and hangs her head in her hands. “Shepard…”
Joker and Samantha lean over her, sly looks over their faces. “Ashley, come on I told you my stories, and Joker told you his! You have to tell one!”
“Do I really?”
EDI smiles, “I would like to hear the story from you as well.”
Ashley leans back into her seat, suddenly looking at her drink with utter disgust. “Just let me make one thing perfectly clear. I will never, ever drink with Shepard ever again.”
Joker and Samantha are both gasping. “You didn’t challenge Shepard to a drinking contest.
“Ash,” Joker starts. “She doesn’t have a liver or kidneys like we do, they’re totally synthetic. She can out drink small Krogan.”
“I forgot! And she challenged me-she’s good with her words.”
“She call you a princess again?” Ashley glares at Joker with the intensity of Shepard staring down a Reaper. “You didn’t insult her did you?” Ashley then looks away, shrugging and sinking back in her seat.
“You insulted her dancing didn’t you?” Samantha asks, her hand over her mouth to contain her giggles.
“I would never…Well anyways, we had a Batarian and a Vorcha come up to us, Shepard punched them and I woke up with a hangover. The worst part? Not the worst one I’ve gotten from a drinking contest with her. Even in the early days she could hold her liquor.”
“You’ll have to tell us what Shepard was like before we knew her Lieutenant.”
Ashley laughs. “Maybe I will. Maybe later. Now EDI, you gotta tell me about what you two did.”
After the party dies down and everyone heads to bed, Samantha crawls into bed next to Shepard, a soft look on her normally stressed features. She’s still drunk from the liquor, and knowing the hangover will be immense tomorrow, she snuggles up to Shepard, kisses her on the lips and quietly adds a ‘I love you, goodnight’, before she finally falls into sleep herself.
