A/N: The following is a first person telling of Shepard's story. Reviews and especially constructive critiques are appreciated. Updates and continuation will be based on feedback. Thank you, and enjoy.

*Mass Effect is property of Bioware. Many thanks to stnemele for all the great help!

Excerpt from Mass Effect:

So Pully, if there's a movie, here's the plan, the scene. You ready?

The interviewer replies, encouraging a continuation.

Let's set it: four badasses, one scarred turian, a scary looking krogan mutant, tatted up woman with short hair glowing blue, and one badass motherfucker named Johnny Shepard. The grass is waving in the breeze…blue skies with thunderclouds in the distance. Pre-fab shelters surround them... A giant rock covered ship looms in the distance. Swarms of small bugs circle the group, but don't notice them. The anti-bug formula has worked…

Ha ha ha, I should be a goddamn screenwriter! Damnit, it's like my goddamn story could be mass produced. Make a vid, hell an Extranet game out of it! Shit, Mr. Pulitzer, I'll even sign off the rights for it to you…I got no one else anyway.

Surprised question.

Fuck you, I'm not getting into that. It'll all come in good fucking time, okay?

- Former Alliance Commander John Shepard

Foreword:

We all know who the Butcher of Torfan, the first human Spectre, Savior of the Citadel, and Destroyer of the Bahak System is: former Systems Alliance Commander John Shepard. He is considered by some to be the hero who single handedly stopped the Reaper invasion, by others the greatest monster that ever lived, regardless of species. Commander Shepard requested an opportunity to tell his story prior to his trial for his war crimes.

The following is a transcript of the interview conducted by the most recent Pulitzer Prize winner in which Shepard recounts what he considers "his" story. He calls it "Mass Effect," the story of how he affected the whole galaxy through actions never meant for one man to handle. To say his is proud of his exploits is an understatement. "Mass Effect" is the story of a madman; it is violent, it is vulgar, and in some parts, scarring. Sadly, for millions - if not billions - of lost souls, it is all true.

- Percy Gillet (Pulitzer Prize for Journalism, 2188)

Shepard: Alright, you ready for this?

The interviewer is unintelligible.

I don't want any paraphrasing here. This is my story.

A faint acknowledgement.

So where should I start? My birth, because that would be goddamn boring. No one has to hear the sob story about a ten year old orphan living on the streets.

A murmur from the interviewer.

The Reds and not Eden Prime? Huh, that's actually a good idea.

He smirks.

Shit man, I haven't told this story in years. Hell… I've never told it. Alright then, I'll start with joining Reds...

Oh, the fucking Tenth Street Reds. I met the Reds for the first time in September of um...2166; I was twelve at the time, just starting transform into this magnificent form you see before you.

I remember the first encounter with the Reds quite well, actually. It was a particularly cool evening for Vancouver in September. It felt like you needed a jacket, but when putting one on, you didn't need it. There were clear skies despite the pollution… I could still smell some of the shit in the air, though. The moon was out en force and made a brilliant background for the skyline, one that can no longer be appreciated since the Reaper attack…

The interviewer comments.

What, the Butcher can't appreciate a good skyline? Who the hell are you to judge me just fucking sitting there trying to win your Pulitzer. Fuck you. I don't have to take this shit. I'll get someone else to take this down.

Muffled apologies from the interviewer.

You'd better apologize asshole. Remember, I chose you from a list of thousands. Anyway...

Vancouver; that city was my city. Vancouver had the potential to be a capital of the fucking world some day. Hell, might have taken it there if the Reds would have worked out. Fuck. You're going to make this difficult, aren't you Mr. Pulitzer. The price of telling my story, I suppose.

Back to that night…or day. Whatever. I had just returned from my daily routine: wake up, scavenge some food, rob some shit; you know, normal kid shit. I stole more than cash and other shit along the way… had a neat little stash at my humble abode. "Home" was the corner of a huge fucking warehouse in the Industrial District. "Drab" best describes the place... Yeah, I'll use the word drab. I have some suberplatives up my sleeve.

Anyway, drab is generous here. You know that gray color of smoke off a pile of burning…lets go with "debris?" You know what I mean though.

I mean bodies, ass.

Shepard offers up a wide, sadistic grin.

Well home wasn't even that color gray. It was as far away from white you can get and as far away from black. Gray that gray sucks. Oppressive, but, damn, that building was fucking huge to a twelve year old… A palace in the middle of the wasteland known as "industry." It was filled with just about everything you can think of: omni-tool upgrades, paper towels, diapers, and, I shit you not, rifle scopes…but no rifles. What's up with that? Would have loved a nice Avenger or even old-timey automatic rifle. A day with one of those would have made life soooo much easier back then. I mean I wasn't a crack shot or anything but someone on the streets with a rif...

Shit, getting sidetracked.

Well, it, being the warehouse, had racks that seemed to be a two hundred feet tall. I know they weren't, but I wasn't fully grown; the building looked like it stretched for miles from the inside…it was a good home. The facility was fully automated, so I didn't experience the risk of running into the living.

A dark look flashes across Shepard's face.

Except on Raid days. Raid Days, the days the Reds came in, were times to stay away. My little base was in the far corner of the warehouse, behind the goods that were rarely touched: antiquated toys known as "LEGOs," bundles of extremely ugly sweaters, and, for some reason, a couple grand pianos. Who the hell needs a goddamn grand piano anymore? I mean all music is synth and bass. Pianos? Yeah, okay. But, I was safe even if I was around when the Reds showed up. Not that I would go at them anyway, unless forced. Nobody messed with the Reds by themselves… I may have been twelve, but I wasn't fucking stupid.

Unfortunately, the Reds decided to have one of their Raid Days early that week in September. They caught me by surprise that evening… For some idiotic reason, three of them decided to check out the goddamn pianos. They just started pressing keys for noise like toddlers… Or mentally challenged varren. When they interrupted my dinner - delicious, delicious wild dog - I was startled, to say the least; it was kind of funny because I startled them, too. Three humans, late teens to early twenties, stood before me each wearing the signature deep ruby red ensemble worn by most of the Reds; had an"X" tattooed on their hands. All Reds did. They liked marking their own. Now these idiots were encroaching on my turf, right? I had to do something; defense, attack, whatever you want to call it.

It's kinda funny how I can forget the thousands I've taken down over the years but distinctly remember my first three. Two had dark hair and one had a shaved head with a nasty horizontal scar across his forehead. Not as bad as mine though!

Shepard grins, proud of his scars.

I remember the Dopey Duo and Baldy very well. Shit… Now that I think about it, I never bothered to learn their names. Ha, the nicknames are better anyway. The instinct to protect my turf kicked in immediately; I grabbed my shiny new pistol (stole it from an off duty cop a few days earlier) and shot each of them neatly in the head. One quick movement, like I was born to do it.

Pure luck, I'm not ashamed to admit, but they were my first kills, and damn good too. The beautiful pool of blood went well with their red uniforms and slowly drifted towards my feet. I bent down to touch it, because why the hell not? Being mildly crazy and not that brilliant... I mean, come on, I was a kid... I whooped at the success and regretted it instantly. No more than ten seconds had passed, a silent, breathless ten for me, before a female voice, my mentor's if you can believe it, was shouting orders to the Reds. I was probably fucked unless the next five minutes went perfectly. Luckily for all, they did.

Shepard smiles and gulps some water down.

I heard four of them coming, whispering orders with what I thought was the intention to kill me. So I held my pistol ready to take them out. Yelled out, "Back the fuck off! This is my home, so go away!" Now remember, I was fucking twelve and I hadn't gone through my puberty growth spurt yet.

A comment from the interviewer interrupts Shepard.

Of course I'm driving that point home! I was a goddamn kid, understand that. Get it through your head. You wanted the very beginning; I'm giving it to you.

Goddamn it… Where the hell was I? Something about size? I wasn't big then and certainly not intimidating. So when Porter and Smiley charged around the corner, I got tackled pretty damn quick. I did shoot the fucker Smiley in the leg though. Hearing whimpers from an adult was quite satisfying and I was grinning like an idiot despite the circumstances. Bit of a sadist, I suppose. I guess that's common knowledge now since the trial, though. You know that awesome snarl of mine?

Shepard offers a mock snarl, the interviewer squirms.

Well this was the first time anyone had heard it, ha. The fucker, Porter, decided that turning my arm to the point of dislocation was a brilliant idea. He wanted to "be in control" as somebody could put it. He wasn't, or at least, if he was I won't ever admit it.

While I was struggling, damn furious over my home being invaded, owners of the two remaining pairs of feet rounded the corner, much calmer than the first set. One was a particularly brutish man named Bongo... fucking retarded name, I know... and the other the Black Widow herself. Everyone and their mother in Vancouver knows who Willow Black is. The right hand woman of the Reds. One of the most wanted people in Vancouver, if not the country, in history… At the time, she had multiple national arrest warrants out in the UNAS. And each one was for impressive reasons. Cop killing, breaking and entering into a fucking military base, smuggling Red Sand before it was popular to smuggle it!

She was fucking slammin', and most males will agree. The creepy ass Asari would have agreed, too. She wore a full suit of black armor with red trim on that went quite nicely with her red hair and dark green eyes. Widow, as everyone called her, was built like a fighter, though. None of that dainty shit you'd see on old Alliance recruitment posters. I couldn't keep the fear out of my voice.

"Let…me…go… You'll be sorry if you don't!" Something like that... with something I considered conviction at the time. The words of a scared pre-teen when looking back.

Widow merely smiled and said something like, "Huh? Let you go after you killed my men? 'I'll be sorry?' You're tough, kid, but not that tough. Why should I let some ten year old that killed three of my own live? I figured one of mine would have killed YOU." Blah, blah, blah...I'm not good at paraphrasing, asshole.

"Twelve," I snapped back. Since I was small for my age, I was quite defensive about my age. Age proves maturity, right?

Widow continued to lecture me on killing "her boys," but I knew that there was a reason I wasn't dead yet. Suddenly, she stopped her casual pacing and looked at my fists, which were bunched up and glowing blue. My wonderful biotics.

A question in the background.

How'd I get my biotics? I suppose it started with my parents. Let me tell you about them now, before I forget later. I'll keep it short. My mother and father had me early in their relationship. I'm using that last term, "relationship," extremely loosely.

The interviewer asks their names.

I don't want to give names. I never have. And, despite the circumstances, I'll still withhold names because I don't want some distant cousin riding my coattails. I know of hundreds of "Shepards" of all different spellings claiming to be a relative. Shepard isn't even my real last name! Ha, ha, most people don't know that! You really want to know about my "family?" Okay...

I was pretty much a mistake, a result of a bunch of vodka and some drunken alley sex. Throw in a broken condom and, smack-bang-boom, you have the goddamn Butcher of Torfan. Bastard child of a future Alliance grunt and a wanna-be hooker, an ugly one at that. The asshole that was my father joined the Alliance to 'explorrrrre the galaxyyyyy' and escape the particularly hellish existence of being a father. That was around the early stages of colonization. He kept in contact with my mother, but just so he didn't look like a "bad guy." But he was. Sent home meager funds. Barely covered rent in our one room apartment. My father died during the very First Contact. He may have fucking sucked, but those goddamn turians took away any possible childhood.

Wow, just went on a daddy rant there…apologies. Fucking psychologists will probably love that for years.

Wry comment from the interviewer.

Yeah, you're probably right. Might as well talk about the other parent, then, huh?

A exasperated sigh comes from Shepard.

My mother was the important parent in my life… despite the whole hooker thing, that kind of sucks; certainly taught me how to treat women "right." She raised me, until her death when I was ten. Guess how she died? Go ahead, guess.

A murmur from the interviewer.

Errrr, wrong! Ha ha ha, she died of "side effects" from the Element Zero she was exposed to when pregnant with her little mistake! You know, the tumors that show up in most people's bodies after eezo exposure. The same shit that gave me my now brilliant abilities also killed my own mother. That shit still makes me a bit angry. It was a curse when I was young. The skills popped up during special occasions and freakish things happened during them. Anyway…

Back to the Reds. Right. Widow wanted those powers; her eyes focused on my fists. Those special freaky occasions? The night where I met the Reds was certainly one of those events. I actually concentrated on one of the metal beams holding a rack and twisted with all of my mental might. Success! It was the first time I was proud of what I thought was a disability. Widow's eyes had widened during the display. The Black Widow of the Tenth Street Reds wanted me because of the biotics. What gang wouldn't? If used correctly, I would be faster and stronger than others. I totally was, too.

After what seemed like a billion years, and many of Smiley's whimpers, I definitely enjoyed those, Miss Black decided to invite me to join her group; she really didn't give a shit about the deaths. Trading three idiots that were quite expendable, as every Red was, for a biotic could only be called brilliant luck. She extended her hand to me, for a handshake. It was my first one, handshake, I mean. I smirked despite the grip Porter still had on me.

I'm gonna try to do a sultry voice now. It might come off a little creepy, though: "Release him, Porter. Bongo, carry Smiley out of here." We shook and she looked me in the eyes... Deep green eyes. "Welcome to the family that is known as the Tenth Street Reds. It's a pleasure to have you with us, kid." Her first words aimed at me.

A long pause from Shepard.

Corny, right? Kid that got fucked by life, offered a new chance! Like that Oliver's Travels...Gulliver? The whatever I fucking want story. You wanted the intro… You certainly got it. I didn't even tell Garrus that much and he was the closest thing to a friend I had.

So that was the prologue of my Mass Effect, if you will. You want more Mr. Pulitzer? What's next, more Reds and how I joined the Alliance?

A/N: Thank you for reading. Updates be weekly, normally on Tuesdays. I hope it's a fun ride!