A/N: This is (sort of) my first fanfic, so any response and advice is welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Mass Effect Trilogy and any other franchise I make references to. Sadly.

"Holy shit. He did it."

The Crucible glows a faint orange, as the Citadel's arms open wider than ever before; it forms a five-leafed flower of metal, glass and plastic. The remaining Alliance and Salarian ships, followed by a few Terminus vessels, scurry out of the way of the colossal Wards, almost being crushed. A ball of orange...energy? Forms at the centre of the massive array, expanding rapidly and disabling Reaper and Geth ships. The galaxy's "Final Stand" is over, it seems, as ships jump to FTL before getting hit by the wave.

"Joker! Get us out of here! We can't get him now!" - Garrus shouts in desperation.

"No! I can still-" He replies, but in his heart he knows the Turian is right. His shoulders sag, and he maneuvers the Normandy to the nearest relay.

3..2..1..FTL.

"DAMN", I think, "this ending cutscene is even more intense than the last moments of gameplay!"

Then I see the Normandy on an uncharted world. It looks fairly beat up. Joker stumbles out, followed by Tali.I sure am glad that she survived! I would never admit it to anyone, but she was my favorite character, not quite as a LI, but as a character of strong will, tech savvy beyond compare, a sweet soul and cool accent.

The cutscene end on a brighter note, leaving me overall pleased. Roll the credits, play the song.

The touching moment is interrupted by my cat, who, being the annoying but lovable furrball she is, scratches on my door. I look up to the clock. "3 AM.." I mutter. I shouldn't really be up this late, but with my parents away for the next 2 weeks and no school for the rest of the summer, I had no better thing to do, apart from bicycling around Moscow and working on my cosplay N7 - ish helmet. For now, however, it stood on the table, waiting for the last layer of paint to dry.

The scratching on the door became more and more insistent, accompanied by a few meowls. She would not lay off, it seems. I sighed, getting out of my chair and stretching my legs. As I open the door, I hear a strange sound coming from my living room. That would seem to be what scared the cat, for she, as soon as I opened the door, zoomed in and hid under the bed. Then, a strange clattering noise. I am not a coward(much), but being alone at home at night and hearing noises can do truly wierd stuff with your imagination. I decide to investigate further, but, assuming it might be a burglar, I grab my red shiny crowbar off the shelf, more a geeky Half Life reference than a weapon of self-defense, but in lack of a better option, It will have to do.

"Here goes", I whisper, and say out loud:"Who's there?"

Wait.

No one responds, but that was expected: no normal robber would be so dumb.

The noise becomes louder, though, and sounds like whirring wind in a confined space. I grip the crowbar tighter with my - now sweaty - palms and slowly advance.

I enter the living room, and, expecting a person, am surprised to see a glowing ball -no, a sphere- of blue-purple light. It seems to be the source of the noise. I reach out to touch it, put rapidly pull my hand back as I feel a slight tingling on my fingers and palm. The feeling subsides slowly, but I got goosebumps along my arm and spine nonetheless.

" 'The hell IS this?" I ask no one In particular. The sphere begins to pulsate and grow, and the lights begin to flicker. I take a step back, still unsure what to do, but decide to wait and see; one thing is for certain: I won't need the crowbar, so I lower it and stare at the sphere in amazement, mesmerised by the amazing display of light and sound. It has now reached the size of a hoola-hoop and still grows.

"This is some trippy shit" - I mutter.

Suddenly, the sphere collapsed into a single point and a wave of white light washes over me and burns my eyes.

"Shit!" - I scream as I flinch and cover my aching eyes. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over: the light was gone, the sound stopped. I uncovered my eyes, but it was as dark as it was when they were closed.

Have I gone blind!? I looked around the room in a slight panic, and my eyes adjusted to the dark. The sphere must have overloaded a fuse and blew out the lights or something. Wait.. the sphere!

I look to where it was, but there is no sphere there. Instead, there stands...a woman!? I still cannot make out the details, but it seems that she is about my hight and wearing a hood.. and helmet with a tinted visor and a light on the mouth area.

It can't be.

Can it?

She looks around her frantically, and brings up her arm, as if to check a watch. Instead, though, her arm lights up orange and she types a few thing into it and starts scanning the room.

It is!

I walk up to her slowly, still not believing my eyes. She has not noticed me yet. I stop a metre or so away from her, and call out:

"Excuse me?"

"Keelah!" - she shouts, almost jumping away in shock from being startled. I retreat too, taken aback from this sudden reaction. That voice sounded familiar...

She seems to calm down a little, but is still very agitated as she turns to me and speaks...gibberish. I realise, I don't have a translator! I wave my hand for her to stop, and ask, assuming she does have one, very slowly: "Can you understand me?"

She nods quickly. "I can't understand you. Can you translate with that thing?" She hesitates, apparently thinking, but then nods again and re-activates her tool. She types a few words in her language and presses a few keys. She shows me the result and I read..or try to. It's in spanish. "I can't read that. Try English" -I explain.

She repeats the same operation and shows me again. It reads:

"Where am I? This place looks like an antique shop." I nod and reply: "This is Earth, Russia. We are in Moscow. This is the year..2014." She stares at me in disbelief for a moment, then bring up her tool and, after a few moment of scanning, types again and gestures for me to read.

"Looks like you are right. Do you have a communicator of some sort? I can modify it to speak directly to you."

I think for a moment, and silently hand her my mobile phone. I'm actually a bit surprised that it hadn't suffered from the spheres EM radiation. I'm a little worried about my phone, but I trust that it will be ok in her hands.

It takes her a few minutes to mod it,so I sit dow on the sofa, trying to calm down and try to wrap my head around what happened. Recap: A glowing ball of... something appears in my house and from it comes a video game character. Crazy! Yet.. here she is. I glance at her; my now accustomed to the dim light eyes study her: she is wearing a new environmental suit, the one she wore in ME2 and ME3, but it looked...newer. I still couldn't quite believe all this had happened. I must have fallen asleep in front of my screen. Is this a dream? Slapping oneself seems to never help in works of fiction, so I spared myself the pain. Alright. What Would Mister Spock Do? Analyse the situation. Right. I am thinking of this, aren't I? Therefore, unless it's an inception dream (BWAAHH) it is all IRL. If it isn't, well, let it last!

Interrupting my train of thought, Tali waves to me; it seems she is done. She points with one of her three fingers to a new...app, I guess? With a blank icon on my phone. I take it and press it, then bring it up to my ear. She speaks again, and I can still hear her voice, speaking in an unknown language, but with a moments' delay, her voice, now speaking english with an accent from...Rannoch, maybe?

"...Hello? Can you hear me?" She asks. I reply , not sure whether to speak into the microphone or directly to her:

"Yes. My name is Alex *******. How did you get here?" I already knew her name, but I had to be sure, "What is your name?"

" I am Tali'Zorah vas Neema. I-I'm not sure how I got here... My crew and I were investigating dark energy in the Haestrom system, and.. there was some sort of radiation pulse from the star, and it fried our ships systems. We were being pulled into its gravitational well, and I jettisoned in one of the escape pods, and then... here I am. Last i remember, i was in the pod. This might be difficult for you to understand, but i'm...from the future. 2185, by your calendar."

I knew, but had decided to play along. I raised my eyebrows and pretended to be surprised. That wasn't hard, considering that I was surprised, only for a slightly different reason. "Uhm..Can I get you some tea, then? Coffee, maybe?" The answer was obvious to me: no. Dextro-amino acid life forms cannot ingest levo-amino's(humans, for example) food. Best case scenario - Stomach cramps and diarrhoea, worst case - death. But I had not decided how and when I would explained the whole 'fictional character' business, so I would have to keep my trap shut and not reveal that I know anything.

"No, thank you. Is anyone else here?"

She asked, shaking her head.

"Just me and my cat."

Meow.

Speak of the devil.

The cat, who I had just mentioned, had walked over to the new guest. It always had a very outgoing personality and took well to new people. More so than even I did, in fact.

Tali looked uncertain what to do, so we both just looked at the feline as it began rubbing against her curved-back calf. The whole situation was becoming rather comical, as it was obvious that Tali'Zorah had never seen a cat before. She looked from the cat to me and back. It was difficult to read her facial expression with the mask and all, but here eyes gave away an expression of confusion. I could hold it in no longer, and what had started as a slight grin had grown into a burst of laughter. Seeing, however, that Tali looked even more confused, I tried to regain my composure and explained, still smiling:"That's the cat. It's my pet. Totally harmless. In fact, it seems she likes you." A slight purr could be heard from the cat. I walked over and picked it up.

Purr. Purr.

"ok..?" She relaxed her stance a little.

I decide to say something to release some of the awkward tension: "anyway, there must be some way that I can help you in,"-I wave a hand towards an armchair,- "take a seat."

She sits, and the cat immediately jump into her lap and snugs up to her. I can't help but chuckle at Tali's reaction: she raises her hands above the armrests and stares at the cat.

"Just pet it behind the ear and on the back." I say amusedly.

She starts awkwardly petting the cat, eliciting louder purrs despite her inexperience.

I cense this will be a long discussion.

Aaand, that's it for now. Tell me if you like it or not. Any-and I mean, ANY response would be welcome.

Peace out!

-agardner99