<div class="floatleft">(http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2013/053/1/6/16765d6dbbab2fe707faca3315a8cea2-d5k4jy8.png)</div><strong>Jeanette Gagarin<br/>Alliance Stealth Frigate <em>Caen</em>, Mass Impact</strong><br/><br/>“Crumbling? Visions?” None of it made any sense, but she didn’t have much time to think about it at the moment. Another her shooting herself was bizarre to say the least. “Honey, I’ll come find you as soon as I can. The admiral might know something about this, and...”<br/><br/>Jeanette gave Mona a curt but friendly nod. The two were old acquaintances, going back to the start of this console generation. Mona was the kind of hard-nosed at-any-cost personality that Jeanette sometimes wished she was capable of. She was never sure if it was the player’s choices in Mass Impact that had formed her this way, or if it was natural. It was certainly<em>possible</em>to play the games differently, but Jeanette had never experienced it that way. Mona, on the other hand, had seen the worst and survived. They had worked together in the past and had developed a hearty mutual respect.<br/><br/>Besides that, Mona might have been an even better shot than Jeanette, though the marine would probably never admit to that.<br/><br/>“Just hang on and don’t die. I’ll be there as soon as I can, baby.” The pain of being unable to rush to her side bled into her voice before she cut the comm, saluting the admiral. “Sir. Welcome to the<em>Caen.</em>” Looking at the girl with a sympathetic eye, she remembered the tussle on the desktop earlier. “Yes sir. That’s one of the avatars.”<br/><br/>Kneeling in front of May, she put on her best talking-to-kids voice. “How big was the guy in black armor? Was he as big as me, or bigger? I just fought a strange man in black armor, and he was the same height as me.” Something about that nagged her, maybe something Roxi had said, but she pushed it aside for the moment. “If he was bigger than me, then I haven’t seen him…”<br/><br/>Standing again, she met Hatchet’s gaze. “My… uh… friend in Zero-G says someone attacked their game, Admiral. Could this all have happened at once by chance? Something’s very wrong here.” She gritted her teeth as she followed up, “and some jackass from the new DLC beat me in the arena.” The pilot laughed over the comm. “That’s probably the weirdest thing yet!”<br/><br/>“Stow it, Spade!” His confirmation was a laugh that cut off suddenly when he silenced the comm.<br/><br/>“Colonel,” called a soothing female voice. A small holographic woman popped out of the CIC’s central console. She was a cool cerulean, and appeared to be wearing a lab coat and thick-rimmed glasses, with a long ponytail. It was BIONA, short for Bio-Neural Ancillary, the<em>Caen’s</em>integrated intelligence construct. “I have analyzed the data from your recent battle, and have some interesting results for you. Your mystery opponent displayed techniques and reaction times very similar to yours during heavy armor training. I can state with at least ninety-four percent certainty that he has undergone that same training. He may be a former agent of A6, and is of comparable performance to yourself. There is no question that he was better armed than you.” She pushed up her glasses with a finger. “Don’t feel too bad, Colonel. You’re still the best soldier in the Alliance.” The snarky AI smirked.