Hello there,
If you enjoy my stories, you can read up to 15 chapters in advance per story on my Patreon page / patreon.com/Samael61.
If you like how Shepard is a total genius badass, you should check Arrival : Ruptures to enjoy more of the same.
—
Omega
Afterlife
With the dreadnought secure, Shepard's first order of business was to assist Samara in catching her fugitive, who turned out to be her daughter.
Morinth and her sisters were apparently suffering from a rare asari genetic condition called Ardat-Yakshi, Demon of the Night Winds. Their constitution allowed Ardat-Yakshi to overpower their mate's nervous system during mating, causing hemorrhaging in the victim's brain, killing them.
Asari diagnosed with the genetic condition were sequestered at a monastery and lived their entire lives in isolation from the greater galaxy.
Samara's daughter, however, was too free-willed to be locked up and escaped from the monastery, leaving a trail of bodies across the galaxy for decades, all the while evading her mother and any other justicars she came across.
Whether a space station or not, Omega was still too big a place to search from top to bottom, so Shepard went to the one person who knew everything happening in the station.
Aria.
"An Ardat-Yakshi here? Believe me, if one of them was here, I would know. Nothing leaves a body quite so…. empty…. as they do." Aria shuddered in disgust. She had seen before what one of those little monsters could do.
"Then can you find the individual?" Shepard requested the favor, as Aria owed him a significant debt.
"That should be doable."
Shepard nodded to the justicar. "Samara, if you would."
One of the batarians took the datapad and returned a couple minutes later with information loaded to it. "She is in the station. Here is her address."
"Appreciated."
—
"Let me handle this. She is less likely to think about trying to escape from me." Shepard offered.
Samara agreed. Morinth would be a fool to try and run away from a warrior as accomplished as Jonathan Shepard.
"Indeed. I will be lying in wait. And Commander, please leave her to me." This was Samara's responsibility as a parent and a Justicar to fix.
"Got it."
Shepard pressed the doorbell and waited, suspicious as a human opened the door. "Hey there."
The young woman's eyes glowed, and she panicked. "Oh my god, Commander Shepard?! What are you doing here?"
Giving the woman a reassuring smile, Shepard looked inside for the asari. "I am looking for Morinth. Is she in?"
"Uhh, yeah, sure, please come in." The woman turned around, trying to fix the place in a hurry while calling for the asari, "Morinth, there is a guest here for you."
So she was here, and with a partner no less.
"I am coming." A voice responded from upstairs, and Shepard readied himself in case things went south.
"Shepard?!" Morinth, a carbon copy of Samara, a detail that he was not aware of, screamed in shock.
"That's where I knew her from." The only photo Samara had of Morinth was a really old one, and even then it wasn't a good one.
Seeing her in person, Shepard finally connected the dots.
Morinth glowed with biotics, suspicious of who the female Shepard mentioned was. "Her? Did you bring my mother here?"
Shepard shrugged, seeing no reason to deny it. Not like Morinth could escape now. "Yeah, we were actually looking for you. Heard something about you being an Ardat-Yakshi?"
The asari nodded, already planning to take her partner and escape, but wasn't sure how to do it. "I am, or rather, I was."
"I thought it was incurable?" Shepard felt like he was missing something. Perhaps there was a side to the Ardat-Yakshi that was not known to the asari?
"So did I. Yet the day after we mated, I found out my condition had changed." Morinth explained, and the remaining mystery of how Shepard was alive after spending a rather long night with the asari in question was solved.
Morinth's partner stumbled at the admission. "Wait, wait, wait. You banged Commander Shepard?!"
Oh my god, her lover had spent a night with the legendary Commander Shepard?! How great was that?!
"It was years ago."
"Samara, there is a situation; you better come in." Shepard called his teammate in. Things had turned really weird again, and he knew this would be a headache for him.
"Morinth." Samara greeted her daughter coldly, hands glowing with biotics.
"Mother." Morinth replied with hatred, ready to fight her mother to death.
"Easy now, don't start a fight with a civilian here." Shepard warned, and both asari stood down.
Samara still decided to give Morinth one last chance to come in peacefully. "Surrender now. You have nowhere to escape."
Her daughter sneered at the offer.
"Samara, do you remember me asking if we ever met before?" Shepard asked, mentally tired from the drama.
"Yes?"
"Well, it wasn't you, but your daughter I knew, from that night we spent in Palaven." He revealed. The night itself was actually really good, except for the slight headache he had the next day.
Samara's hostility turned to bewilderment, not that Shepard had mated with her daughter, but that he was alive to tell the tale. "That is not possible. She should have killed you."
The other human in the room intervened, coming out of where she was taking cover after Shepard stopped both asari. "Are you talking about her condition? Morinth told me it's no longer active."
"It is a genetic condition, not something that can be turned off." Thousands of years of asari science could not cure the condition, and this human must have been tricked.
Morinth pointed at Shepard, the culprit behind her current condition. "You may thank Shepard for it. Mating with him changed something in me. No matter how many times I mate with someone, I can't overpower their nervous system anymore."
"She is right. I mean, we've been together for two years already, and we spent a lot of time in the bedroom." Melissa blushed, realizing just what she had said.
"How is that possible?" Samara looked at Shepard, then at her daughter, then back at Shepard again, unable to make sense of the situation.
"You know what? Why doesn't she come in for a checkup in Normandy? I'll have Mordin compare Morinth's results with her previous medical history and the scans of other Ardat-Yakshi. We'll see if something has changed." If not, he would just subdue Morinth and let Samara deal with her.
"If she promises to leave us alone after it, yes." Morinth accepted. She had been tired of being hunted down by the justicars, and especially her mother.
Samara hesitated. "You have the blood of hundreds on your hands, Morinth. Even if you are no longer an Ardat-Yakshi, you will face judgement for your crimes."
The code had not prepared her for this situation, as all Ardat-Yakshi not sequestered in a monastery were considered hostile, and curing them was not possible.
"Make me, Mother." Morinth's biotics flared again, though she had stopped due to her partner's horror-filled face.
—
The Normandy
The drama that unraveled was something Shepard didn't need. Morinth had chosen not to tell her partner, Melissa, the number of mates she had killed, only saying her condition had been cured. Melissa, upon learning that her mate had been a serial killer, bolted out of the house after hastily grabbing her things.
Morinth, seeing as a fight was futile, had surrendered and was taken to Normandy for her medical.
The results, after Shepard acquired the necessary records by threatening to visit the monastery to do it in person, verified Morinth's claims.
Her brain structure had undergone significant changes after mating with Shepard. While her biotics and mental fortitude had increased greatly compared to other fugitive Ardat-Yakshi recorded, Morinth's ability and urge to kill were gone, completely.
"Let me see if I get this right. Shepard literally mated an asari, one genetically born to kill, into a normal one?" Garrus, who had come to pick Shepard and Samara up, followed them to the lab.
And it was a brilliant idea.
"In simple terms, yes. Fascinating study." Mordin confirmed his words, and the turian left the room before laughing.
More hyperactive than ever, Mordin turned to Shepard, excited like a kid in a candy shop. "Shepard, request permission to examine your brain."
"No." Shepard refused, crossing his arms.
"Perhaps later." Mordin ran scenarios through his mind, trying to find a way to outlive Shepard and study the human's brain after his death from old age.
"See, Mother? I am no longer an Ardat-Yakshi." Morinth would look triumphant, but her first stable relationship had just gone down the drain.
Samara rubbed her temple to relieve the headache. "This does not make any sense. I must inform the Matriarchs in charge of the monastery."
—
"I don't believe this." Tali'Zorah grumbled while everyone else, except Mordin and Thane, was rolling around the floor, laughing. Even Grunt, who was too angry for some reason, had been caught off guard by it and was busy banging his head on a wall as he bellowed in amusement.
"Hey, maybe he can fix the quarian immune system too." Garrus said, half serious, half joking, as he leaned on a wall, his mandibles aching.
The turian's little joke sent the crew into a fresh fit of laughter.
"Shut up, Vakarian." Tali hissed. Ever since she rejoined the Normandy, the quarian and Shepard have been spending a lot of time together, which started as lessons first before evolving into something more.
"Or the krogan genophage." Zaeed added fuel to the fire, causing Mordin, who was just smiling, and Thane, who was trying to ignore everything, to join the rest of the crew.
"I hate you all." The quarian stomped off.
The crew laughed harder.
—
"Shepard, I don't know what to say." Samara, who was trying to meditate in her room aboard the Normandy, had come to find Shepard after not finding success in it.
Shepard just sighed, deleting several messages offering him a fortune in return for sex. "Please don't say anything at all then."
He was being treated like a sex god/gigolo, and it didn't feel great one bit.
"I understand." Samara could not claim to understand how Shepard was dealing with the fallout of the situation.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Several of my sisters have taken Morinth to be examined to see if what happened to her could be replicated to cure other Ardat-Yakshi." Unconsciously, a smile of hope graced her face. Perhaps her other daughters, who had been in a monastery their whole lives, could be free now.
"Great."
The justicar stood next to Shepard, looking out the window of the cargo hold, a turmoil of emotions in her heart. "When I stepped on Omega, I thought it would end in the death of my eldest, bravest daughter. Yet today was a day of…." Samara did not know how to describe it at all, "surprises."
"Yeah." He didn't really want to talk about this ever again.
"Whether it is the Reapers or something uglier that may rear its head, you may count on my help, Commander, always." Samara promised. It was the least she could do.
"Thank you."
—
MedBay
"Jeff, enough."
"But I can't help it, doc." The pilot said, switching between laughing and groaning in pain.
"Is that so?" Chakwas narrowed her eyes before injecting enough anesthesia to knock the pilot out long enough to treat him.
Their pilot, who had brittle bone disease, had broken his arms due to rolling down several stairs as he was laughing at Shepard.
Chakwas herself had taken sedatives to treat Joker, because she too was unable to control herself.
Poor Shepard.
—
The Citadel
Council Chambers
"Where are Tevos and Udina? Are we not supposed to be discussing the Reapers?" Because no matter how much Sparatus would have liked to, there was no denying that there was an armada of hyper-advanced sapient ships seeking to destroy the entire galaxy.
Valern was amused at his colleague's state but did not show it. "Udina is out of commission, trying to assure people he can't convince Spectre Shepard to mate with them."
"And Tevos?" Sparatus grumbled. At least the asari should have been here.
The Salarian chuckled this time. "Trying to find a way to convince Shepard to mate with the Ardat-Yakshi."
Sparatus groaned, letting out a long-suffering whistle. "Spirits guide me. This is like one of those human circuses, only it's entirely authentic. I've already seen several turians with Corpalis syndrome trying the same."
"Pity. If there was a way to replicate meld and connect Shepard to people suffering from different neurological issues, it might actually present solutions." And Valern wasn't saying it as a joke, because there were already considerations among the STG.
The turian councillor just groaned louder.
—
Citadel
"The asari want what?" Steven Hackett asked just to be sure, because the words did not make sense to him.
Anderson sighed, reiterating his earlier words. "They want Shepard to mate with several asari suffering a genetic condition that makes them kill their partner during mating."
"What the fuck for?!" Hackett screamed, something Anderson had only seen him do when it was about Shepard.
"Apparently he already slept with one of them and fixed her condition through sex." He replied hesitantly, still not quite believing it himself.
Admiral Hackett, one of the greatest leaders in the Alliance history, past and future, took his cap off and threw it down with a "God fucking damn it."
Gathering his composure, the admiral of the fifth fleet tried to calm himself. "Anderson, I am not some sort of pimp. If the asari want Shepard to have an orgy with them, that's their business, and I don't want to hear a single word about it again, ever."
"Yes, sir. I just called you because Councillor Tevos requested us to inform you, as we two are some of the people Shepard listens to." Tevos had only called him after Shepard refused to answer her calls.
"Not my fucking problem, Anderson. Hackett out." The admiral ended the call, and Anderson just slammed his forehead on the desk.
"The call did not go well?" Udina, who had just pushed his way through a crowd of aliens begging to contact Commander Shepard, asked his secretary.
Anderson did not even raise his head. "It went exactly as expected."
"There are already swarms outside, hoping sex with Commander Shepard might cure their condition." Udina, for all his dreams of rising up in the political world, wanted to crawl into a small space and sleep for days now.
"He is having something serious with Tali'Zorah, a first in his personal history. No way anyone can convince him for a galactic orgy." Anderson said, before he snorted and began to laugh, holding his stomach in pain.
"What is so funny?"
"Galactic," Anderson laughed even louder, "orgy. Can… can you imagine… that? How…ridiculous." David barely finished his sentence through laughing, the stress of Shepard's actions finally giving him a nervous breakdown.
Udina cancelled all their meetings for the day and just ordered a bottle of something sharp to get both humans drunk.
—
Citadel News
"News that Commander Shepard had cured a rare and unknown asari genetic condition through mating with an individual suffering the disease has sent the medical community of the galaxy into turmoil. Across the Citadel space and beyond, individuals with incurable diseases are seeking Commander Jonathan Shepard's skills…" The turian, whose mandibles were twitching the whole time as he relayed the news, stopped. The reporter's serious demeanor broke, and he began to laugh on live stream, falling off his chair.
The screen went black, and ads played out, citing operational problems.