A Woman and her Wolf

So, just stop me if you heard this one before, but I was a normal guy, lived a normal life and had a normal dead-end job. Played video games in my spare time because I was not much of an athlete, to put things lightly, so sports and more out-door related activities were far out of my league. But, as that does not make a good story, the powers that be decided one day to 'spice up' my life in ways I never imagined.

I open the door to my apartment, located on the third floor of one of those ugly grey blocks they built all over the place in the 50's and 60's because they thought they were the future. Bet they regret that now, the amount of money they spend of trying to remove the damn things is likely higher than what they spent to build them. But honestly, right now I don't care. This is what I call my home; meaning I'm not at work so that's good enough for me.

I'm sure you know somebody who has told you this before, but whatever you do, don't work in retail. Having to deal with problem customers all day is not something I would wish on my worst enemy, it's honestly that bad! I always wonder if those people always act like that or if it's some sort of show they put on just for us. Makes me feel all special. I would like to say I'm a nice guy, but people like that bring out the worst in me.

Talking about me, I guess I should give myself a proper introduction. My names Andrew Cooper, I'm 21 and I have been living in and around London for about my entire life. You might think that would make me a bit patriotic about the UK, but I never really felt much for my home; too much of an urban sprawl for my taste. I'm a die-hard gamer too, with a particular focus on strategy and RPG's, with an occasional character action game so I can just phase out and do cool things that defy any and every law based around physics.

I'm feeling for playing something tried and tested today, so the Mass Effect games are looking pretty attractive right about now. Though now I'm stuck on which one to pick, as they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Come to think of it, why play one? It's a series made to be played from start to finish (as lacklustre as that finish is) so why not start from the top just one more time?

I grab the disc from the first Mass Effect, and put it in my ancient Xbox 360. I have no idea how this thing is still going strong, but it saves me money, so who cares right? My console makes some loud noises of protest, but the game loads up fine. I mash my way into the character select screen, where I am hit by what you could call a fey mood. I almost always make a Male Shepard with adept powers, because as sad as it sounds, I can pretend it's me saving the galaxy with magic powers. Not this time tough. I think I might just go a Female Shepard this time, only feels fair considering the effort Jennifer Hale put in on voicing her. I don't modify her at all, keeping her as basic as you can get. Looking at the classes, I think Soldier might be the best choice here. There is something to be said for the badass normal in a world full of pseudo-magic and crazy tech.

I picked the spacer and War Hero backgrounds, planning on going full paragon from the get-go. And with that, character creation was completed and the game started proper. I'm sure you know how the game goes, so I won't bother with the specifics, not like anything important is happening anyway.

*CRASH*

Well, that's a thunderstorm if I ever heard one. Sounds like it's getting closer too, but I should be fine, just hope the power doesn't cut. Oh shit, why did I think that, laws of casualty will now be coming for my-

*CRASH*

Oh fuck! I think that just hit the apartment block, all my electronic equipment just went dead as a doorknob, so it must have hit something important. Looks like I am just going to have to wait this out, I have heard too many stories of electronic equipment exploding in people's faces due to lightning over-charging the thing.

I have been waiting for about five minutes now, how long until-oh. All my equipment has flickered back to life, which is a tad odd in its self, but what takes the cake is my Xbox. It's turned back on to where I left it, as if the power did not cut at all. This needs closer inspection. I reach out slowly with my hand towards the console, mere inches away from touching it, tensed up and ready for almost anything. My hand lands on the Xbox and a whole bunch of nothing happens. Don't know what I expected really.

A quick glance at my clock reveals it to be about midnight. That is not a good thing, I got work tomorrow and I cannot afford to be late. Well, seems like I need to go to bed, hit the hay, or whatever you want to call it. I save my game, turn all my stuff off and collapse into bed, falling asleep in seconds.

I was not dreaming about anything tonight, my sleep was undisturbed by even my own brain, and this was likely the deepest I ever slept. Eventually my blissful slumber had to be interrupted, though not by the usual alarm clock. Instead I could hear someone talking to somebody else, which is not that strange in an apartment building, only question it's raising is whether or not I missed my own alarm.

As my sight comes into focus, my room seems a lot more white than usual. A hangover might explain that, but I didn't drink last night, so something is wrong here. My sight has been fully restored to me, and I'm shocked. Not with just what I see either, but with my sight itself. Everything looks as if it's a 'higher quality' than usual, like those jokes people make on upgrading to HD real life, except it's happening before me right now.

And then there is the actual room itself. First thing I notice is that it is obviously not my room. The fact that it's all bright white and silvery chrome is a dead giveaway. Then I notice the actual content of the room. It's got the kind of thing you would not be surprised to see, a few chairs and a desk, with what appears to be a keyboard on it, but it all has this weird sleek Sci-Fi aesthetic to it.

I feel the need to articulate my puzzlement at the situation in an articulate and precise manner.

"What the fuck." The voice that came from my mouth was not mine. It sounded slightly robotic and lacking in emotion, while being strangely familiar. Actually, thinking about my mouth, I can't really feel it. I can't really feel anything! Well, that's sort of a lie, I can kind of feel my body, but it's as if someone else is relaying what my body is feeling to my mind, as if this sensation is 'second hand', as if I am having a mild out of body experience.

I guess I need to examine my own body now. I fear the worst, considering I'm in a strange room I don't recognize and something is clearly wrong with me. Ok, let's count this down.

Three.

Two.

One.

Go!

Ok, sounding a bit like a broken record here, but, what the fuck!

My arm, leg, whatever, is no longer what it was. What used to be fleshy limb is now a metal paw or claw or something, looking like three blades, gunmetal grey in colour, coming out of this ball joint, which in turn is attached to a matt black limb. It's giving me some weird Déjà vu, even though I'm pretty sure I never had an appendage look anywhere near this.

I spy a mirror to the side of the room, one of those ones that are held at a slight angle so people can admire their outfit and that kind of thing. Due to being to its side, I can't see myself, meaning I'm going to have to move over to it. I'm sort of afraid to stand up, I don't know what's going on with myself and I don't want to get up from where I am, fearing something bad might happen, like I might snap in half. I decide to crawl over the mirror, allowing me to move to my goal without facing my fear. The motion of crawling is far too natural to me, and fills me with alien sensation from limbs I should not have. Before I know it I'm in front of the mirror and what I see is, different.

The sight is instantly recognisable, as it's a character from one of my favourite games. I am in the form of a robotic wolf AI, named Bladewolf, from the game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The body has a very vicious feral design to it, with sharp edges all over the chassis, with blades and knives on the legs and spring-loaded super-heated knives. Under all the dark black metal, is the artificial muscle tissue, a sort of dull grey in colour, and looks as if it's almost a real wolf's bones and muscle under there. The face is very angular, a sort of triangle in shape being extended by what looks like two large wolf ears, which can slot over the face to form an augmented reality mask. The mouth has jagged metal teeth and a long thin metal tongue, the use of which I am unsure. Visible over the back is the long tail, ending in three dextrous cables, used to grab objects and manipulate keypads and similar things. The odd one out in the reflection is the large chainsaw running along what I guess is my back now. Bladewolf does have the chainsaw in question, but only on his first body, which I am not. I have the second much cooler Bladewolf design, but it should not contain the chainsaw.

Is that really what I should be worried about right now? The fact I do not resemble the canon design through and through? Just ignore the fact that Andrew is now gone and Bladewolf is now my body? I should be freaking out right now, but for whatever reason, I'm not. Perhaps it's because I did not have much to lose in my life, or even something as simple as I think Bladewolf is really cool. I don't know and I'm going to try to avoid thinking about it too hard, in case I do start flipping the fuck out.

Well then. I'm Bladewolf, and there is nothing I can seemingly do about that right now. I guess I might as well make the best of a bad situation and try to have a bit of fun. I think I should start simple and go from there. I bound along the edge of the room, seeing how quickly I can do a lap. I know exactly how long each lap is, down to quite a few decimals, likely due to the fact that I am now a robot wolf. I'm getting a bit of a thrill from this, and I suddenly have the strangest urge to howl. Not really thinking about it, I decide to let myself howl, and the noise the comes from me is very realistic, making me think that the howl might be recorded as opposed to a sound I made myself.

"Did you hear that?" Shit. I forgot I heard people talking when I woke up.

"Yeah I did, sounds like a dog or something" More than one voice. Great.

"I'm going to check it out, sounds like it came from my room" Who knows, perhaps this guy is nice and won't be mad at me being in his room.

"Whatever you say Boss, just be careful, perhaps it's C-Sec here to arrest us" C-Sec? You have got to be kidding me here.

"Last time I checked, C-Sec doesn't employ dogs. Just stay here and guard the shipment, be back in a second" Well this just got weirder. Somehow. Ok Brain, or is it computer now? Doesn't matter. Let's review this. I'm Bladewolf. Outside this room are at least two people. They are criminals, likely smugglers, by the sound of that 'shipment'. They are afraid of C-Sec. C-Sec stands for Citadel Security, the police force from Mass Effect. The room I am in fits the Mass Effect style, in fact, it's a dead ringer for the copy pasted rooms used in a few of the side missions. Probability of this being within the Mass Effect universe? Higher than I would like to admit.

I need to find somewhere to hide, and fast. If what I have concluded is true, then this guy will not be friendly towards me if he finds me. The room has a pretty Spartan design though, with the desk being the only object that can break a line of sight. Desk it is. It's like being six all over again, but with more criminals and robot wolves.

The door makes a little ding, similar to a bell, then a louder but still rather quiet wooshing sound, so you know it's got to be futuristic. I hear a few footsteps, the noise they make is quite loud and hard, so this guy is got to be wearing boots, or something. If I could figure out how to activate AR mode I could see him through the desk. As if by magic, AR mode activates. It might be controlled by my thoughts then, which is helpful. AR mode feels weird to me, as the world goes blue and covered by a sort of Heads Up Display, while all nearby people are red silhouettes. I can see the 'Boss' slowly look around the room, holding some sort of weapon in his hand.

"Come out little doggy, I just want to play" His voice sounds something like a chain smoker who ate a bag of gravel, that kind of so absurdly gritty voice that you just can't take seriously. Not to mention what he actually said is possibly the most cliché' phrase I think I have ever heard a person say. He is moving closer to the table now, so I'm making sure to keep low and keep my tail (Damn it's weird to say that) out of sight. "If you don't want to come to me doggy…" That does not sound good "Then I will have to come to you!" He then kicks his own table to side, revealing me, lying on the floor. I deactivate VR mode so I can see him better. The guy is in a hardsuit, which adds more evidence for the Mass Effect theory, with a sort of desert camo pattern all over it. It honestly looks quite stupid, like those wannabe military types who played a Call of Duty game and suddenly think they're a Navy Seal or SAS. The guy is also wielding a shotgun, again with the Mass Effect design, and aiming it in my general direction. I need to defuse this and fast.

"Please don't shoot me." My voice does not sound convincing at all, sounds like I'm doing taxes or something.

"Holy shit! AI!" Oh right. This has got to be Mass Effect, too much evidence otherwise. It looks like this is going south quickly. Camosuit confirms my hypothesis of shit is about to get real by firing his shotgun. Don't know if it was surprise, fear or incompetence that caused him to miss wildly, but I will take what I can get. I leap onto him, and the resulting force of my metal frame crashing into him at high speeds throws him to the ground with a loud thud. I fall back on instinct, though I guess you could call it programming, and use my tail to grab the chainsaw off my back, and begin to cut him into teeny tiny pieces. Before he becomes mincemeat however, he gets out a loud bloodcurdling scream. This is quickly put an end to when I start cutting him with the chainsaw, splattering blood and gore across the room. I imagine this would make me feel sick, but I don't have anything to be sick with, so I end up feeling oddly calm about having chainsawed some guy into dog food. Hehe. Dog food.

"What the fuck?" Oh yeah, the other people.

"B-Boss?" That's a different voice.

"Get up there now!" As is that one.

"What's going on?" I'm going to have to fight these people, aren't I?

Activating VR shows that there are six people in the room outside of here, one of them gingerly moving a hand towards the electronic holographic lock that you see in all the Mass Effect games. Now I get to show these guys a few new tricks. The chainsaw I have is known as a High Frequency Chainsaw, or HF Chainsaw for short, meaning all the little teeth on the chainsaw vibrate rapidly, allowing it to cut through almost anything with ease. So I stab the HF chainsaw through the door and into the guy on the other side, spearing him onto the blade, chopping up his insides into a sort of slurry, showing me he is all kinds of dead.

"FUCK!" I would call them out for not being very imaginative with their surprise, but I did the same thing, so whatever. I then retract my chainsaw and cut apart the door, with almost no resistance whatsoever. A quick push makes the whole door fall apart and allows me entrance into the larger room. Turning VR off again, allows me to see that the larger room is an exact doppelganger of those warehouses in the first game, which showed up in almost every other side quest. I'm currently on a balcony of sorts, with some stairs down of to the side. Looking around reveals everybody here is in fact human. I feel like I have to specify this now, considering how similar to Mass Effect this is getting.

One of these smugglers is standing right in front of me, just one floor down. I, quite literally, get the drop on him, cutting him in half as I land, spraying more liquid life all over the floor. Two down, four to go. Looking for more people to hunt, I spot two criminals who just saw what I did. They are both pointing the iconic assault rifle design from the first Mass Effect right at me, which is not good news. They are shaking like crazy though, which might help.

"P-P-Put the weapon away!" Bladewolf is not made for direct combat, and I'm not entirely sure how much damage I can take until I kick the bucket, so I comply with their request.

"It actually did it? Don't think that will save you, you hunk of junk!" Hunk of Junk? Seriously? "You killed our friends! I'm going to enjoy tearing you apart!" Well I cannot have that. Being intact is pretty much my main goal right now. My tail has moved a little lower than my chainsaw mount, as they have all eyes on that, and has moved towards the super-heated knives on my rear legs, and pulled out two, slowly and carefully. The left criminal saw though, and shouts what I assume was meant to be a war cry, but was so shaky and high pitched it sounded more like a squeal. Acting on what has been programmed into me, I throw the two heat knives at the current threat.

Instinct and luck allowed the two knives to dig their way into the throats of the two scared smugglers, dropping them like sacks of potatoes. I quickly go retrieve the knives, as I imagine I will need every one I can get. But it's not over yet. There are two more I need to deal with; I just need to find them.

As if on cue, two lowlifes poke their heads out of cover to see what happened. I don't think they were ready for hyper violence like this. The differences between seeing a guy get shot and seeing a guy get torn in half is monumental. They clearly thought so, as they ran, screaming, out of what I assume was the exit.

A quick succession of gunshots follows. Seems like there is somebody else here that is opposed to what's going on here. I hope I don't have to kill them too, would be nice to calm down for a bit. Whoever it is, they seem to be coming in, so I make my best effort to look as non-threatening as possible, by sitting in the middle of the room and staying still. I can hear multiple sets of footsteps, moving slowly and carefully, I don't think I would have picked up on it if not for the whole robot thing.

In a swift manoeuvre, two figures pop out from cover, aiming a sniper rifle and a shotgun into the room, allowing them a look into the room proper as well as allowing me a look at them. I can only see their upper bodies, as the crates they are using as cover obscure the rest of themselves. But I can see enough. The one on the left is wearing an environmental suit with a domed helmet, gripping her (easy to tell, due to body structure) shotgun with two fingers and a thumb. That's a quarian for sure. Even has a grey-purple shawl over the mask.

The figure on the right is a turian, easy to tell due to their height and avian features as well as the plating over their skin. This particular turian is holding a sniper rifle quite tightly in his hands. His armour is blue, which I'm pretty sure is C-Sec colours. He even has a visor going over one of his eyes.

Oh. Oooh. Alright, shot in the dark here, but I'm pretty sure that's Garrus and Tali. I hope I'm right, because otherwise that will make the first things I thought while seeing aliens slightly racist.

"Shepard, you need to see this" Says Garrus. Yeah, score one me.

Author's Notes

Hello people. I don't know why you have read this far, but if for whatever reason you have, please leave a review, positive or negative, so I know what I'm doing wrong/right. This is the first proper story I think I have ever written, so it's likely full of errors and weird syntax. I wrote this really stupid story because I thought to myself once how Bladewolf would do in the Mass Effect universe and the thought has stuck in my head for about a year, till I got tired of it and decided to write it down.

Few things worth mentioning, this is not a Self Insert. While it follows the general style of a SI, Andrew is not me, in more than just name. He acts different, does different things, has a different job, all that stuff. About crossovers, I don't think this has enough to verify as a Metal Gear crossover, as while the body of Bladewolf is in the story, the Character is not. If you do think this enough to count as a crossover, please tell me and I will consider changing it.