This is my new idea for a Mass Effect fic, to those reading my other story I haven't abandoned the fic I just needed to step away from it for a bit since I feel a bit stuck on it. I came up with the idea after reading another Mass effect fic by Soleneus. I also want to say that I have no experience with engineering so most of the things I speak about in the story are things I learned about from the wiki and my own thoughts on how it works. My brother also helped me out by editing the fic.

Hope you enjoy.


Prologue Part One

January 1st 2015 New York City

You know Sometimes I wonder if I should have just stayed home today. My name is James Racer, my name is a bit weird but I love it nonetheless. I'm lying here on the asphalt bleeding out profusely after being hit by a drunk driver. As I lay here I think about how I ended up in this situation. I graduated a year early from M.I.T and so I decided to come home before I would start applying for jobs. That plan had utterly failed. My friends, whom I haven't seen in ages wanted to celebrate on New Years. I really regret agreeing to that now. My sight slowly begin to fade as my friend Mark continued to yell at the driver who ran me over. Abby on the other hand tried to make sure I was okay.I could feel that she had wrapped her scarf around my leg to stop the bleeding. I could hear Rick calling the ambulance, however I could tell it was already too late I felt my body get colder as my vision slowly get darker until everything went dark.


October 20th 2154

Mindoir

As I came to, I could hear my heart pounding like a drum, by some miracle I was alive, however everything was dark- I could move but, I felt constrained- I could barely move my limbs. On top of that I seemed to be surrounded by a strange liquid. Let's ignore that for now and try to figure out why the hell I'm still alive, and if I'm guessing correctly I'm somehow a baby.

Before I could contemplate further- I began to move. After hours of resisted movement I began to see light. A hand stretched out towards me, and began to pick me up out of the gooey substance. A few minutes later I'm passed to the woman who had given birth to me who looked exactly like my mother just much younger. I'm really hoping that, me dying didn't just restart my life there are a few things I don't want to go through again. As I thought this I tried to speak to the woman only for it to come out as gibberish. Great, now I'm going to relearn how to speak, and I feel a bit tired now too. Screw it I'm just going to sleep.


Fourteen Years Later

October 20th 2168 Mindoir

It's been fourteen years since that day, being a baby sucked. Thank God that's over. Anyway, it didn't take me very long to discover that I wasn't reliving my own life, instead I was living in the Mass Effect Universe. I still remember my short celebration when I realized I was literally living in my favorite video game. Only to quickly realize I was in a universe with giant robot squids bent on destroying civilization. I still remember freaking out for at least a good hour or so before I began to rationalize my thought to calm myself down. I knew I had to make a decision on what I had to do while I was here. One option was to live a normal life, killed, then turned into a techno zombie. (Not a fun way to end up of course.) The other option was to try and make a difference in whatever way possible. Seeing as how I wasn't a biotic I decided to work with the technology instead. Studying and experimenting with the weapons, omni-tools, dismantling my father's skycar to see how it worked then put it back together before he even noticed. Due to my studies I was able to develop different kinds of technology like a jetpack. Using a much smaller propulsion drive powered by a mass effect field, I was able to make the jetpack more efficient however, -there are still plenty of bugs.

My two favorite projects that I've been working on for the last six years are the Atlas suit and and Lara. The Atlas is a symbiotic suit I began to develop using the idea of the Crysis suit-made to adapt to any situation. Despite my hard work, I've run into a few problems. Nevertheless I should have it ready in two years. Then there is Lara, (not sure where I came up with the name but.) She is an AI I'm creating to work in collaboration with the suit in order to direct most, if not all of the suits functions without my direct input. The major problem with that is developing a blue box which can give her a personality, rather than being an advance VI.

Instead of working, I was currently being dragged through Mindoir by Jane Shepard. Her reason for dragging me you ask? Her explanation is "I shouldn't be working on my birthday." However, she doesn't know that there are diabolical machines ready to enslave, kill, or turn us into zombies coming in less than two decades.

To my misfortune, she seemed to be dragging me towards the forest; a varren infested forest. They somehow got on the planet two years ago. Every time we think we've killed them all more appear like damn cockroaches.

"Hey Jane… where the hell are you dragging me anyway." I asked as she continued dragging me praying that we weren't going into the forest. Killing Varren on my birthday does not sound like fun.

"Hmm, oh to the forest of course. I'm taking you to that ship that crashed here a few days ago. I'm sure you're gonna want to take it apart for parts and to see how it works, so I decided to take you there as a birthday present. I'm a great friend right." Jane said to me with smile on her face. I quickly looked away from her I already knew what she was going to do and if I continued to look at that beautiful smile of hers I'd cave and agree to anything she says.

"Sure you are, you just want me to make something for you again. What is it this time... more explosives right?" She quickly looked away from me after I mentioned that. "I'm sure your parents are disappointed that they raised a pyro..." I would have continued but Jane decided to shut my mouth by throwing me to the ground. As I tried to get up she had grabbed me by the back of my shirt and continued dragging me literally this time.

"Don't talk like you don't like it too I saw that smile on your face the last time you made a bomb and blew it up outside the colony. You were grinning like a kid who just got the toy he wanted for Christmas." I smirked realizing that it was true. The longer I hung out with Jane the more I began to like explosions. I really hope I don't end up becoming a pyromaniac like her.

"Whatever, so how far is the crash site anyway?" I ask Jane trying to change the topic from my budding pyromania. She gave me a smile in victory before speaking.

"Not that far we're almost there, no wait we're here now." Jane tells me as she finally lets me walk on my own two feet. I turn around to see what looks like an alliance corvette though it's heavily modified to the point where I wondered how the owner could even get it to fly. My guess it was likely stolen or sold on the black market to pirates and they modified it thinking it would still run properly.

"So what would you have done if I came down here after the ship crashed?" I asked her as I approached the ship, intent on seeing what I could work with. She quickly responded. "You may like working on things like this but you and I both know you would hardly ever leave your lab if it wasn't for me. I bet you would stay there for the rest of your life." As she said this Jane began to chuckle likely imagining me doing nothing but working in the lab for the rest of my life. I simply ignored her and opened the door to the ship, it was a Rhone class corvette. They typically have one mass accelerator turret, two auto turrets, and a javelin disruptor torpedo launcher.

However, whoever owned the ship had tried to add more torpedos to the ship as well as a GARDIAN laser array. If they had added the array only they would only need to divert a bit of power to prevent it from overheating. I'm pretty sure the ship would of run just fine but, instead the ship likely overheated in combat and killed the occupants inside.

The moment I opened up the ship I could smell burnt flesh and decaying bodies, it made me wonder why no one else had come here to check if these guys were alive. But, I ignored that and ripped off a bit of my sleeves in order to make a face mask and passed it to Jane who nodded in thanks. I ripped a bit more in order to make one for myself.

As I moved through the corvette I could see the differences between this smaller ship and the Normandy, the star map was much smaller, and from what I could see there was only one room with a bunk everything else was just alliance sleeper pods or what I like to call space coffins. I moved towards the cockpit to get a copy of the programs used for the GARDIAN laser array I felt if I understood it I could develop something that could work at long range to deal with the kinetic barriers on the reapers, or maybe infantry laser rifles.

I began drooling a bit at the thought before I started looking around for Jane, just noticing she had disappeared sometime as I started downloading the ships programs. I knew she wouldn't mess with anything she didn't know about so I didn't have much to worry about, As I walked outside the ship to gather some of the nodes for the array I then heard an explosion go off inside the ship.

I threw down the nodes and ran inside the ship and began calling anyone from the colony just incase Jane was hurt in anyway. I had noticed she wasn't on the main level so I ran towards the eezo core.

I had found her unconscious from the eezo core overloading then giving out a small explosion. I began dragging her out of the core before there was another explosion. As I got outside I saw our parents with the colonies doctor. I passed her off to him before running off to the cockpit and routing some of the systems on to the emergency core just in case the ship itself decided to explode while we were nearby.

I ran back outside to find that the doctor had likely taken Jane back to his office, the only ones left were my parents who were waiting outside for me. My father Carl, a tall intimidating man standing at six feet and three inches, and still in good shape from his time in the alliance who stood next to my mother who was much shorter standing at five feet two inches was much shorter but no less intimidating considering the fact that she was also ex alliance. I gulped and hoped I wouldn't be getting my ass kicked today. Either way though it was a crappy birthday, even with the info from the ship.


So it turned out my parents decided to let me off, which was good and all but the only thing that I really cared about was how Jane was. And I was happy to say she was alright… mostly anyway. Turned out the explosion exposed her to element zero, and instead of killing her thank God it didn't it instead made gave her biotics. From what the doctor can tell the exposure made it so she could easily control her biotics even without an amp. Not to mention the amount of power she was giving off was closer to an Asari near in the matron stage. I would know the moment I said something that pissed her off she hit me halfway across the colony.

While that hurt like hell I could understand why some people could find that fun, as long as the person doing it is not trying to kill you anyway. Aside from that I was happy she was alive.


Two Years Later

July 4th 2170 Mindoir

Two years after the accident in that Pirate ship, both Jane's parents and mine were able to keep a lid on her biotic abilities. It was understandable considering the fact that that while the BAaT (Biotic Acclimation and Temperance Training) was closed down due to Alenko killing the instructor so called training that occurred in the program were able to reach the general public. I knew that it wouldn't reach the public normally so I had hacked into the alliance files and released the information. It didn't do much good but, it helped make the decision easier, and I don't regret it. But let's forget about that right now I need to figure out why Jane is messing with my prototype blaster.

"Put that down Jane just because it looks like a toy doesn't mean it can't kill you." I said to her in a monotone voice before hearing a large Pew sound followed by the sound of the blaster short circuiting and the Jane cursing as the blaster shocked her.

"I did tell you to put it down." I told her again before ducking as she threw the remains of the blaster at me.

She began grumbling to herself for a little I could see that she was almost imagining choking me I snickered a bit as she did so and watched as she finally calmed herself down. "Shut up anyway I got a question." Jane said before looking at the lancer assault rifle I modified with an increased vent system allowing it to fire longer.

"Yeah what is it." I answered as I moved back to my Atlas suit which I had just finished the night before. All that was need now was for me to put it on and the suit would take nine hours to adapt to my body to find the best settings to run.

"Why don't you ever try and sell these things? I mean your innovative ways in dealing with the weapons overheating issue and that coolant you made recently for ships could net you millions of credits. So why don't you ever do anything with them." Jane asked as she began taking apart the lancer before putting it back together and placing it back on the rack.

"I do plan on selling these slowly, I mean I can't just throw them out there if I do the plans could end up in the hands of terrorist. I would rather see it in the hands of alliance soldiers or in council hands, so while I do want to distribute them I need to do so in a way that prevents terrorist or criminals from getting their hands on them and using them to kill innocent people. Besides while I am comfortable with the guns since we were able to test them I'm not too sure on the coolant yet it's not like I own a ship to test it on." I told Jane as I placed my hands on the suit watching it turn into a silvery liquid covering my body. As the suit began to solidify on my body, I can feel it interacting with my nervous system, screening it like an x-ray , gleaning for details of my physique. Once its crystallization process finished, I looked at my hands and lifted my legs. The slivers of blue light peaked out in every fold of the suit and the rather cold black visage encapsulated the remaining portions of my body. I then entered a command into my omni-tool the suit faded back almost dissolving into my skin. I turned back to Jane who had merely raised an eyebrow at the strange sight. I looked at her almost confused as to why she didn't freak out like the first time I had tested the suit out.

"Lemme guess you're wondering why I didn't freak out like the last time this happened." I nod slowly. "Well this time that suit wasn't trying to kill you like the last time when it started choking you instead of doing whatever it just did. Besides I've been here so many times I've grown used to the insanity that happens when you work." She finishes with a chuckle. I would have retorted but I was stopped by the sound of an explosion going off nearby. Jane and I looked at each other before she grabbed two guns one that I made for her personal use, and my own. Both guns I had made using the designs from Destiny. I had made both guns using my own understanding of thermal clips. Hawkmoon unlike most pistols shaved off a much larger piece off the ammo block nearly triple the size of conventional guns. The added mass ripped through kinetic barriers with ease. I had given Jane, Hawkmoon I would have taken it myself but she was able to flash that smile of hers before fluttering her eyes followed by pouting then I caved.

Instead I had made 'The Last Word' though I made the single action that it worked with in the game optional since I couldn't just slammed down the hammer every time I wanted to shoot. Unlike Hawkmoon, 'The last word' only shaved off double the size of conventional guns, however the bullets travelled at a much higher speed thus able to do as much damage as Hawkmoon only in a different way

When we got outside my house we were greeted by a horrific sight. Most of the colony was on fire I could see Batarian troops grabbing people left and right and slapping slave collars on their necks. I had noticed most of the men had been killed; though many were still fighting back including my father Carl and Jane's father John. I immediately moved in to help switching the gun back to single action and firing off as many shots at the slavers. My first two shots made the heads of two of them explode ripping through their kinetic barriers before Jane joined in likely after getting over the shock of the sight of her home burning. We were able to put down quite a few before both our fathers grabbed us and pulled us behind cover.

"Look James I know you want to help but-" My father started but I immediately interrupted him.

"I can help there is no way I'm going to let these bastards destroy our home." I yelled, slightly angry at myself since I knew that this would happen.

"I know, I know that but if you fight you'll likely die I can already see the Batarians ships are preparing for a bombing run. If they can't capture everyone they'll simply make sure everyone here is dead. So I need you to get out of here find your mother, I forced her out the colony with John's wife after the initial attack. Now go make sure you and Jane watch out for each other alright."

I looked my father as if he was insane, even though I could clearly remember my father from my original universe he was an ass in simple terms, only showing up when he realized that I would be successful and then disappearing again during those times when I went through rough patches in my life. While both men shared the same name they were completely different, and I considered them man in front of me to be my father compared to that bastard. So I wanted to yell and scream that I would stay and fight with him but that look in his eye told me I had to go, I yielded before nodding to him. He gave me a smile before pushing me towards Jane who had tears in her eyes, however she had a hardened look to them as well accepting what was about to happen but was in no way happy about it. I looked to Jane's father who gave me a terse nod before turning back to the battle. As they did so, Jane and I began running towards the forest passing by the fields that were once filled with crops now torched beyond recognition. I could still hear the sounds of women and children screaming as they were likely captured by Batarians.

I did my best to ignore it block it from my head, knowing that the people getting dragged away were friends, neighbors, people I knew. I felt so useless running from the battle even though I could do so much.

Moments later we made it to the entrance to the same forest which I thought we were going into two years ago, and none too soon as the colony was soon reduced to rubble by the bomb dropping down onto it reducing it to rubble and flames. I could see Jane wanting to run back but hesitating so I grabbed her and ran as fast as we could into the forest. Doing my best not to look back at the destruction that was once my home.


About a half an hour later we decided to take a small break for some water by a stream. While we weren't very tired physically we did need a break to cope with everything that just happened.

Jane sat next to resting her head into my shoulder as she watches me look over the data in my omni tool. I was making sure I had the data for everything I made in the lab as well as going over combat programs to make sure they were ready just in case any Batarians found us out here. I was also going over how long it would take for the nanites that made the suit to be ready to use and see if I could speed up the process any. As I checked it over I noticed the only thing that was ready to use was the kinetic barrier which I immediately turned on. The little things that saved your life. Before looking to see if Jane had one, which she didn't apparently, right when I was about to see if I could create one using the fabricator on the omni tool, two varren popped out and began snarling at us before charging.

Jane reacted immediately pulling off a warp before killing the one charging her with a shot to the head. As she did so I rolled back and threw out an incinerate which made the varren recoil slightly before I pulled out my hand cannon to finish the job. The moment I did so Jane turned to me with a worried expression on her face.

"Did you notice the varren were wearing some kind of collar." Jane said to me before I looked back towards the varrens body.

"Yeah its not very large but th-" I stopped when I noticed a Batarian charging at Jane from behind and based on the fact that Jane's currently glowing with power I'd say one's charging me from behind as well.

Knowing there was little time I threw an overload at him before lunging at him with the omni blade. The super-heated blade cut straight through his armor killing him instantly. As I turned around I saw Jane still glowing with power as she punched the Batarian in the face turning his head to blood and brain matter that scattered all over the clearing. Is it wrong that I find that kind of sexy right now, not the blood and guts of course just the glow that seemed to surround her body. I shook my head before my thoughts could continue, it was better to not think those thoughts in the middle of the field who knew how many of these guys were left, and we still had to find our parents.

Shaking my head again and slapping myself lightly I walk over to her and rip my shirt sleeve (How many times have I done this now) and soak it in water and just wipe off the blood off of her as quickly as possible. She gives a nod in thanks when I'm done before I speak up.

"We need to get out of this clearing now, and find our parents. I would bet that these two guys were likely a scouts once they don't hear from them they'll start hunting for us. I'll start up the tracking program on the omni tool to find both our mother's omni tools just in case they got seperated." Jane nods as I finish not once saying anything which worried me slightly, I would normally say a corny joke to see if that could break her bad mood but I doubt I could even come up with one in this situation. Instead I run the program before seeing both together a mile north from our location.

I show it to Jane before we both began running in that direction.


When we finally made it to where are parents were shit hit the fan, fast. There were two squads of Batarians there, who had captured our parents though if one were to look at the number of bodies on the ground they didn't go quietly. Problem was though I had forgotten that Jane had a rather mean temper which had been building ever since we had run from the remains of the colony. She was the poster child for redheads with tempers. As soon as she saw our parents being escorted by two squads she threw a warp at the closest one before whipping out Hawkmoon and killing two Batarians who didn't realize what was happening.

Psyching myself up I jumped out throwing out an incinerate at the Batarian closest to me before pulling 'the last word' and switching it to double action knowing I would need both hands for this. I then shot four Batarians the powerful slug ripping through their shields before blasting through their skulls, before I pulled out an experimental plasma grenade. Hoping that it worked I threw it at a small group of Batarians hitting one in the face. The plasma grenade burned into his skin as he screamed in pain before it exploded taking out the three Batarians. I then ducked into cover before looking out and noticed the second squad had retreated shortly after Jane started attacking. Clicking my teeth I also noticed one Batarian who had to be mentally challenged, he picked up a rocket launcher and aimed it at Jane who had just finished off the remainder of the squad.

I ran towards her just in case I missed my shot and pulled the trigger at the idiot. The shot had hit him, but he was able to pull the trigger before I could do so. So I pushed Jane down not noticing the the rocket now hitting a nearby tree. As I began thanking God for being alive my world exploded in fire before I once again blacked out.