Miranda & Grunt in: "Tank Bred"

"TAKE THEM DOWN! DON'T LET THEM NEAR THE PACKAGE!"

As Miranda Lawson and Commander Shepard took cover after dismantling the initial volley of Eclipse mercenaries with a timed neck snap and exploding crates, the newly birthed Grunt, not wanting to be shown up, charged at the survivors with a roar. A salarian far away was only able to unholster his pistol before the young krogan shot him square in the chest with a high-energy concussive shot. The salarian shot right off his feet and slammed into the wall of crates with a crunch, audible all the way from the other wide of the arena, and collapsed on the floor.

"HA! RIGHT ON YOUR ASS!" Grunt punched the air, watching his attempt at making the scaly enemy fly, then turned his attention to the last man standing.

The sole survivor, a batarian with a surprisingly quick hand for someone shaking like a leaf, was able to pull out his assault rifle and unload half his thermal clip into Grunt, bouncing off his shields in explosions of blue light. With a scream that the two humans didn't know a batarian could make in such a high pitch, the half-ton krogan slammed into him, crushing the side of one of the crates apart, blood and microprocessors spilling into the air. Grunt lifted himself off from the pile of gore that used to be the batarian and walked over to the salarian. He crawled on his elbows, legs limp behind him, reaching for his pistol. The krogan opened up his shotgun, a Claymore almost as big as the salarian, and turned the head and shoulders of the salarian into pulp.

"Clear!"

From Miranda's estimate, the krogan turned the remaining mercenaries into grease stains in less than a minute. As she stepped out of cover and watched the krogan wipe his boot heel clean of bits of meat and ligament, she started to consider that maybe Shepard was right to send him with them after all.

In her defense, it seemed like there wouldn't have been reason too bring such firepower—all she expected was to watch as Niket escorted her sister and her foster family to the space port, to be transferred away from her father's reach. She argued with the Commander from her office to the shuttle bay, never breaking stride.

"Isn't the Executive Officer supposed to follow my orders?"

"In matters with the ship and overall mission, of course, but this is my sister I'm talking about. I am not going to jeopardize her safety with such a...heavy risk."

"Sure, Grunt's a bit..."

"Of a sociopath?"

"I was going to say 'difficult,' but perhaps. I don't know, I'll leave the disorders up to Yeoman Chambers." Shepard stepped into the elevator with her and pressed the button to the shuttle bay. He turned to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Look, he'll follow my orders, and I figured you'd want the biggest hard-hitter you can to keep your sister safe." His eyes looked down to see his hand still on her shoulder and moved it away. "You know, besides me." He grins in a way that would make her want to slap him, if she didn't feel like that already.

"Okay, what about Garrus?"

"A sniper would be helpful, but he's got his own personal stuff he's working through right now."

"Zaeed?"

"Do you really want him anywhere near your sister?"

"...Good point."

"Miranda, Grunt is the epitome of violence, but he has never once harmed anyone that wasn't in the way of accomplishing our mission." The two stepped out of the elevator and stopped to the side, away from Grunt, already prepped and waiting next to the shuttle. "I promise you we will do whatever it takes to protect your sister."

"Shepard..."

"Okay, you know what, I'll get someone else real quick." Shepard pressed a button on his visor. "Jack, gear up, there's been a change in—"

"Okay, fine! Let's take the krogan and get this over with." Miranda walked away with Shepard a step behind.

"Never mind, Jack. Just messing with Miranda. I'll talk to you later." Miranda rolled her eyes, vaguely hearing Jack's raspy yell through his communicator about needles and her "bubbly butt." "Oh, and Jack says 'Hi.'"

So Miranda watched Shepard continue to be proven right as they progressed through the cargo bay filled with Eclipse mercenaries. Grunt was a fantastic distraction—tearing through heavy troopers and vanguards like tissue paper as Shepard and Miranda picked off the strangling engineers with their guns, tech and biotic attacks.

Finally, they made it to an elevator, and as she tapped into the mercs' communication frequency, she saw Shepard turn his tech armor off and suddenly her stomach was in a knot. They haven't known each other for long, but she's learned that usually when he turns his armor off, it means he wants to talk. Without looking at him, she explained how she wasn't telling the whole truth about her "younger sister." A more explicit explanation of her father's...intentions.

"I was not the first he made—I was just the first one he kept."

Shepard was more understanding than she sould have given him credit for. She looked into his eyes and she wished she had trusted him the truth before. It was...unsettling. But what unsettled her the most was Grunt. Since they met her contact in Eternity, Grunt had no opinion on anything that didn't have to do with eviscerating anything and anyone that shot him. At that moment in the elevator, she could feel the krogan looking right through her.

The elevator door opened, and she moved out. No time to think about why the Commander could do that to her or why the krogan was dissecting her with his eyes. Oriana needed to be taken somewhere safe, and she was going to get it done, even if it killed her.

Weeks later, Tuchanka orbit:

Miranda Lawson found very quickly from their vid-chats together that Oriana was so much funnier than her. When her younger sister told her about her days at the Citadel, it wasn't curt and specifically detailed like a mission report to the Illusive Man, but warm and full of tangents about her life; her schoolwork, her friends, their boy troubles, her boy trouble singular that the younger Lawson thought she was being so coy about...

Her parents, who loved her unconditionally...

Miranda was finding that her face actually stung from the smiles that her sister pulled from her. Her sister, and the man who went out of her way to save her...

The buzzer to her office door sounded. She sighed.

"I think duty calls. I'll talk to you later, Ori." She signed off the vid-chat and pressed a button on her console, unlocking the door. "Shepard, what can I—"

Grunt stepped through into her office, almost not fitting all the way. It struck her odd that the krogan would walk into her office of his own free will. But as she thought through her time on the ship, the only person who actually visited her regularly was...Shepard.

"Grunt," she replied, pulling herself back together. "I thought you were planetside."

"I was."

"...Is there something I can do for you?"

"Yeah. Shepard figured out what was wrong. Turns out it was nothing. Just need to do this 'Rite of Passage' thing, get into one of the krogan clans, something like that."

"And this being a krogan initiation, I assume that's going to involve a lot of shooting at the deadly wildlife?"

"Hah! Got it in one, Lawson." She wasn't sure if she liked his new short name for her, but she learned long ago to pick her battles. "Rules say that my Battlemaster and another warrior of the same clan can fight by my side."

Miranda nodded and shifted back in her seat. "I understand. Do you need help looking for one of the crew? I'll ping them and—"

"I chose you."

Miranda studied the krogan's face as he leaned over to face her. She observed his comings and goings on the ship with her security feeds, as he became accumulated with the rest of the crew. If there was one thing she could say about the krogan, it was that he had no poker face. He had no ulterior motives, just the need to fight and to win. As an operative, it limits his usefulness to be nothing more than a convenient meat shield, but it also made him brutally honest. She looked in his eyes, and she knew he wasn't lying.

"Why? Surely someone else would be more useful. My skillsets are more useful with humans and mechs. If you want someone to take down a pack of rampaging varren, I'd recommend Zaeed—"

"Shepard has similar training."

"Yes, but he's trained himself to be a walking tank. Alliance would have likely made him a vanguard if he wasn't just as good at ripping people apart with an incineration blast. I'm more trained in long-range and espionage combat. I..." Hand stiff, she placed her hand on his own. "I appreciate the thought, but I am not the best qualified for this...and you know that, don't you?"

The krogan stood back up and started walking away. Miranda stood up from her chair to catch his forearm with her hands.

"Tell me the truth, Grunt. Why did you want me?"

The krogan shifted his arm and tore her grip from him. He looked away for a moment, seemingly collecting his thoughts, and turned to look at her, towering over her,eyes inspecting her like he did on the elevator on Illium.

"You are a different species, but you are tank-bred, like me. I am going back to that worthless, radioactive rock to prove what I am. A warrior, worthy of a clan despite the means of my birth." His eyes...didn't so much soften, so much as shifted, like a knife turned away from it's deadly end. "Figured you wanted the same."

As Grunt turned to walk away, Miranda focused hard to bring her breath back, eager for the door to close so as to avoid what had just happened. But as her breath returned, she sprinted out of her office.

"Wait!" Grunt stopped and turned. "Let me get my gear ready." Miranda nearly blanched as she saw him grin.

"Heh heh heh. Don't take too long, Lawson. Glory awaits us!"

"Son of a...is that a bleeding thresher maw?"

"NOT YET IT ISN'T! HAH HAH HAH HAH!"

If she was asked how she was feeling at the moment, Miranda Lawson would have to say that she was feeling a little less put together than usual. She had to deal with wave after wave of varren and some strange bug things that looked like what would happen if the Keepers and the rachni had freaky bugsex. If she had not reconfigured her overload field to deliver neural shocks to organics, she would have been overrun a few times. Shepard seemed to not have many problems, from what she could tell.

Grunt, on the other hand, was having a ball. She had never seen a being that was so happy to have the entrails of it's kills drenched all over him.

"I WILL RIP IT'S HEART FROM IT'S CHEST! FOR TUCHANKA!"

Exchanging his shotgun for a Vindicator assault rifle, he shot at the thresher maw, shots pinging off it's scales and eyes like pebbles.

"Like the confidence, Grunt, but I don't think that's going to work," Shepard said as he pulled the M920 Cain from his back. "This might. Grunt, I want you and Miranda to keep it distracted while I get this bad girl primed." Shepard ran to cover behind one of the broken pillars, taking one last look at the krogan who he's fighting for, and the woman who was the last person he thought would be in this pit. He started warming the megaton device, as fast as he could.

Grunt heeded the words of his Battlemaster and started running towards the stories tall monstrosity, blasting away at it with his assault rifle. Miranda ran behind him, despite the fight-or-flight instinct telling her to run the hell away, shooting warp fields and rounds from her heavy pistol at the beast before ducking into the nearest cover.

Grunt, on the other hand, kept moving closer, aiming for the weak spots that were imprinted into his brain by the Old Man. The soft, exposed bits of flesh hidden underneath heavy scales, the tusk like teeth exposed outside of the creature, and, of course, the eyes and the inside of it's acid-spewing mouth.

With a roar that made the ground tremble, the thresher maw disappeared back into it's hole. The air was still, silent except for Shepard's curses at the experimental weapon and Grunt's pacing.

"COME OUT YOU COWARD!"

"Grunt, the thing has a brain the size of a pea," Miranda replied as she popped the heat sink of her Phallax, "you can't appeal to it's honor."

"I'm not. I'm trying to RIP THAT PEA-SIZED BRAIN FROM IT'S SKULL."

"And we will, Grunt, just try not to get in the way of Shepard's nuclear warhead gun."

"Think that little thing'd kill me, Lawson?"

"I'd rather not find out—"

As Miranda smiled at the krogan, the ground rumbled once again and she was cast in shade. She didn't need to look up to see the thresher maw was by her side, but she did anyway, out of sheer dumb human habit. After taking a second to gape at the creature that she didn't have, she ran from her cover and made a bee-line for another column she could hide behind. She could hear from behind her a lighter, almost fizzier rubble from inside the thresher maw.

She knew what was going to happen—she had seen the files from when a Cerberus cell experimented on the creatures on Akuze—it was going to launch it's acid like spit at her. It will burn straight through her barriers and shields, burn straight through skin and muscle and bone. It will be like she never existed, quick and painless—and that was if she was lucky. If even her barrier stayed up, it would just burn through her slowly...

Miranda decided that if she was going to die, her last thought would be of Oriana. She had made a lot of mistakes, did a lot of things she wasn't proud of, but at least she did one thing right. Her sister would have the normal, happy life she never had.

But then she heard the other human scream her name, and her thoughts went to Shepard. The big, charismatic man who she spent the past two years bringing back to life. The orphan with a chip on his shoulder who became a hero to the galaxy despite being more than a bit of a smartass, who helped make that life for her sister possible, for no other reason than she asked. She thought of his big grin, his quick wit, the way he fought and...

The last thought as the acid was about to rain on Miranda Lawson was Oh bollocks I'm in love with the bastard.

And then she felt something large and heavy push her down and enveloped her as the acid spilled onto the ground. Miranda opened her eyes to see Grunt above her. She got her bearings again and saw the acid coating and burning through the krogan's armor.

"Had a good nap, Lawson?"

Miranda was about to reply with an equally smartass remark when she heard the gurgling from above them all. The maw was about to spit again, and the krogan stayed put above her. She didn't know if he could take another volley like that without his shields or armor in place, but she didn't intend to find out. Miranda glowed as she opened up her biotics.

"Grunt, fire everything you got at the right eye of the bastard."

The krogan nodded, turned towards the beast, and fired his rifle at full volley. She could see his aim was true, the rounds bouncing off it's eye, but if she was right, she could also see where the eye was starting to rip from the slugs. In her hands she formed a warp field, and then pushed herself further, intent on making it as big as she could. Sweat would have poured down her, if the crackling energy didn't evaporate it before it could start to form. Finally, the field was as wide as her shoulders, burning her hands as she held it.

"Duck!"

Grunt did as ordered and dived down as Miranda threw the field, praying to every god she ever heard of that she aimed it right. The ball of warp field energy flew through the air, arcing to the right and diving right towards the eye of the beast. The field crackled across the eye, tearing through the jelly of the eye and exploding in a sea of gore.

"Perfect," Miranda said.

The ground shook once more as the thresher maw screamed and thrashed. Miranda looked over to Shepard as he was aiming the Cain at it.

"Get to cover!"

Grunt and Miranda ran towards a collapsed pillar and dived to it's side. Miranda watched as the high velocity slug shot from the cannon, and the next second Shepard is pushed back and obscured by a gust of wind and dust. When the dust clears, Miranda peered over her cover to see the thresher maw, slumped to it's side with half of it's namesake atomized.

"Miranda!"

The operative turned to see Shepard jogging towards her, eyes wide and frowning.

"I'm fine, Shepard, nothing that an hour-and-a-half long shower won't fix. Grunt took most of the damage." They turned to see Grunt was jumping and pumping his fists, yelling at the dead thresher maw.

"YEAH! WE KILLED IT! WE KILLED THE FUCKER! HA HA HA HA! WE ARE KROGAN!"

"I'm gong to go ahead and assume he's fine," Shepard said, offering his hand to her. Miranda was about to wave it off to get up herself, but then she looked right at him, his hazel eyes and his stupid little smile. She took his hand and let him pick her up to her feet, feeling the warmth from the touch, much to her chagrin.

"Alright Grunt, let's get back to the Urdnot compound," Shepard said as he reclamped the Cain to his back. He started to walk back, and Miranda tapped the newly-minted krogan and got him to walk next to her, a few steps behind the commander.

As they neared their vehicle, Grunt walked closer to Miranda and for the first time from her perspective, talked softly.

"So, feel more like a warrior now, Lawson?"

"I'm a fighter, Grunt, there is a difference." She paused, thinking about the past hour. "I know I'm more versatile, though, so there's that." She put a hand on the krogan's arm. "And...thank you, for saving my life."

"You are krannt. Besides, we tank-breds have to stick together, right?"

Next: Samara & Thane in: "Cops & Robbers"