Someone jogs Shepard’s elbow, and for a moment, he’s sure it’s an attack. He pivots, microgestures activating his omni-blade, world gelling in that distant slow-motion blur, and he wonders if this is another damn nightmare, a screaming Prothean prophecy shoved in his skull, Or a flashback to the Collector ship. Or maybe an insane asari matriarch with a head full of bugs has decided to rip open his psyche.
Hey. All in a day’s work, right?
He’s got just enough time to see that the man next to him is wearing a three-piece suit, looking the other direction, just starting to turn in alarm, and he manages to click off the omni-blade. Hell, he even manages not to deck the careless son-of-a-bitch. That’s progress. That’s better than he managed the day KhalishaAlJilaniWesterlundNews cornered him on the citadel when he was two weeks off the slab and still warming up, still dealing with headaches and weird sleep things and skin the consistency of clay, with light seeping under his flesh as he shaved and the aching recital of twenty names, twenty more people he’d survived, more or less, through no fault of his own. The damn reporter had opened fire, so he hit her, before he remembered it was just words, and she was only a damn civilian. He’s not proud of that.
He hit her, but he doesn’t hit this guy. Gives him a smirk, and says, casually, “Watch where you’re stepping.” Then, because his arm is still forward between them, he pretends it was on purpose and shakes the man’s hand. “The name’s Shepard. You got any idea what the Hell is going on here?”
Revised Third Person Sample
Hey. All in a day’s work, right?
He’s got just enough time to see that the man next to him is wearing a three-piece suit, looking the other direction, just starting to turn in alarm, and he manages to click off the omni-blade. Hell, he even manages not to deck the careless son-of-a-bitch. That’s progress. That’s better than he managed the day KhalishaAlJilaniWesterlundNews cornered him on the citadel when he was two weeks off the slab and still warming up, still dealing with headaches and weird sleep things and skin the consistency of clay, with light seeping under his flesh as he shaved and the aching recital of twenty names, twenty more people he’d survived, more or less, through no fault of his own. The damn reporter had opened fire, so he hit her, before he remembered it was just words, and she was only a damn civilian. He’s not proud of that.
He hit her, but he doesn’t hit this guy. Gives him a smirk, and says, casually, “Watch where you’re stepping.” Then, because his arm is still forward between them, he pretends it was on purpose and shakes the man’s hand. “The name’s Shepard. You got any idea what the Hell is going on here?”
He can keep it together. One victory at a time.