The way this story came about: I was reading someone else's SI story where I saw a golden point for them to use the information that Shepard didn't have. Shepard hadn't investigated earlier, but I knew exactly what could have been said. That guy didn't say it. But I will.

This is a slightly rewritten version, to remove the "amateur vibe" I had before. I got tired of mentally facepalming when I re-read past chapters.

Disclaimer no one bothers reading: I don't own this blah blah blah Bioware does.

Come one, Come one. Arghh, why do they make these credits take so freaking long? Still, much as I might complain, I still thought that Mass Effect was the coolest series ever. I had been playing the third game every chance I got, and completed it with every Shepard I had made, multiple times. It was too good not to play it again, but I wanted to make new versions of Shepard to use.

I had just completed the first game with a renegade biotic named Iron. Now, I planned to play as a Female paragon soldier. Not something I had done before, as I usually played one of the tech classes for fem-shep. It usually just seemed to fit better. Usually, I had done a warhero- spacer for my paragons, but I decided to go colonist-sole survivor this time around.

The appearance was harder to choose, but I kept it pretty much the same each play through. Shoulder length black hair, purple eyes, lighter skin than default, and I gave her a scar near her eye and on her chin. Other than that, I kept her about the default. Too bad nobody asks about the scars in this game. Looks like they could come from Akuze and would be interesting to have that option I mused. I decided to name her Raptor Shepard; I never had liked using normal names for my characters in RPGs. I had named other Shepards Shade, Shock, Omega, even a Hero Shepard.

Boom!

I jumped a foot in the air. Damn Lightning! I decided I better save and turn off the game with the storm. Once I landed on Eden Prime I saved and went to turn off the console.

There was a blinding flash as I reached it. The world spun around me. I felt like I was being stretched and compressed simultaneously. It stopped as suddenly as it ended.

"Move!" I heard a female voice say. I did a double, no a triple take. Where the X-box had been was some sort of rifle. The arm reaching for it, and I realized the rest of me, was covered in black and white armor. There was a flash of blue by my right eye and I instinctively rolled forward towards the Rifle and behind a rock. I looked at the rifle and it was like I had been punched in the gut. It looked like a Avenger Assault Rifle, like Iron had when I finished the game only 20 minutes earlier. I realized the armor mirrored The black and white Scorpion Armor he'd had been wearing. A bar on a heads up display over the landscape showed a three blue, and two now empty, bars next to a long red bar. What in the hell?

"Are you going to keep looking at that gun or are you going to use it?" Trying not to focus on the voice, and who it might be I poked my head around my cover and saw Flashlight headed robots before ducking back.
"Are those Geth?" I asked myself aloud, wondering if I was going crazy.

I heard the voice again, in an earpiece I realized "No idea, But they sure as hell aren't friendlies". I didn't know what I was doing or why I was doing it but I looked around my cover I saw the creatures overlapped with a red marker. I didn't realize it for a second but both the IFF tags and the Shield bars were being projected on to my eye. I didn't know what I was doing, only what it caused. I clenched my fist and my arm glowed with Blue Energy. I threw it towards the Geth, if that's what it was, and It flew back into a rock face behind it. It slumped to the ground and lay still.

Before I even really registered this, I had already raised the gun and took aim at another one, taking it down. I've never fired a gun outside a range, and now I'm a crack shot? Part of me wanted to stop and figure things out, but another part of me knew that these things were a major threat.

I took aim at another one, hoping whatever bizzare luck I was having would continue, only to see its head explode. What the hell? I didn't even touch the trigger!
I heard a shot behind me as another one of them fell. I looked back and saw two armored figures. One of them raised his arm, glowing blue like mine had, and I heard one of the hostiles go flying. He wasn't what caught my attention though. Next to him, with the sniper rifle clearly responsible for taking out the target I had been aiming for was woman in black armor, a red stripe on her arm, N7 on her chest, and a face I recognized instantly. I had created it only minutes before.

"Commander Shepard? Ashley Williams of the 212" Wait, if that's Ashley, and that's Shepard, which means the other guy must be Kaiden… I'm in Mass Effect!

I had a lot of things go through my mind, from shock to disbelief to having a sudden desire to laugh hysterically like Heith Ledger in the Dark Knight. But what it really boiled down to...

What the Hell just happened to me?