Comeback of the Armature
Above a planet named Therum, a ship suddenly appeared. After dropping out of FTL, it's heat signature quickly dissapeared, allowing it to hide from it's enemies.
„We're here - Therum", a person in the ship's cockpit said as ominously as he could.
„Joker, scan the surface", a female voice said.
„Already on it, Commander", Joker, the ship's pilot, replied.
„So, Bob... Time put your knowledge to use. What can we expect down on Therum?", the female voice asked.
Bob shrugged nonchalantly. „Oh, nothing special, just a couple of geth... Some lava... Nothing that could possibly take you on, Shepard".
„Yeah, why don't you go lick her boots while you're at it...", Joker muttered under his breath.
While Shepard had seen many things, and survived countless battles, even she was quite creeped out by the way Bob seemed to worship her.
„Kid, we want to know more details. We already know that there will probably be something that wants to kill us down there," another man said with slight exasperation.
„But where's the fun in that, Kaidan?" Seeing the looks on others' faces, Bob quickly straightened his back and put on a more serious look. „There are about... Oh, I don't know... maybe 50 geth or so? Oh, and a couple of armatures, and maybe a colossus or two."
„Scan's complete. There's some sort of a structure down there, with a pretty strong energy signature. Might wanna check that out, commander," Joker said.
Bob pointed a finger at Joker. „Yep, that's where we need to go!"
Joker gave Bob's finger a mock-wary look. „Hey, look where you point that damn thing!"
„Oh come on, your bones aren't THAT fragile."
„How would YOU know?"
Shepard decided to step in. „Kids, let's focus on that weird thingamajib Joker found down there." The two quieted down. Shepard thinks a little bit, and then, with a child-like smile, says: „Let's take the MAKO."
Kaidan's face expressed pure fear. „Commander, the LAST time you had that smile, I had to coax out severed limbs from under the MAKO!"
Shepard only winked. „Well, that's half the fun, isn't it?"
„Is it smart to take the pyjack down with you? He looks like he hasn't even seen a gun before."
Shepard pulled Wrex and Ashley away from the MAKO, where Bob resided, and said, „Look, I know this probably isn't my brightest idea, but if he really came from where he says and really knows everything that we're going to face, he's going to be invaluable."
Ashley, dead set on arguing Shepard down from her idea, replied, „Wouldn't he be better use up here, talking to us through the radio, instead of compromising the integrity of the team down there and getting all of us killed with him?"
Wrex, supporting Ashley, said, „Williams is right. That little kid isn't of any use down there. He'll die down there, and drag us to death alongside him."
„I'm 23, you pathetic excuse of a dinosaur! I can handle myself!" Bob yelled from the MAKO.
Wrex only smiled in amusement at his comment.
Shepard gave an exasperated sigh. „Guys... I gave him basic combat training myself, or as much of it as I could. He seems dead set on helping us, let's let him. Besides, we don't really have any room for him, if he can't carry his own weight. Tali already said he's absolutely useless at anything technical."
„He also kept ogling at me," Tali said grumpily while walking past them into the elevator.
Ashley raised her eyebrow, knowing her point was proven. Though that wasn't going to stop Shepard.
By the time the MAKO had landed on the planet, Shepard and Wrex were grinning from ear-to-ear, Ashley was done yelling, and Bob was still trembling from exhiliration. „That was freaking AWESOME! The Mass Effect universe RULES!"
„I told you it would be fun!" Shepard yelled from the front of the vehicle.
„Commander, sorry to cut the party short, but that energy signature we picked up earlier? Well, now I'm also getting some really weird readings from the same location. Like, off the damn charts," Joker's voice said from the radio.
„All right, then. Let's get a move on."
After contact with the first of the geth, the MAKO had been bludgeoning it's way through the machines, with Shepard doing quick hit-and-runs, and Wrex enthusiastically blowing them away with the cannon.
„Commander, the radar suggest a compound up ahead. The MAKO wont be able to get through. I think there are gates, though," Ashley said after prolonged silence due to the team concentrating on their tasks.
„Is there a way to get the MAKO inside first?" Shepard asked, slightly concerned.
„Yeah, should be a way through the canyons. Sensors picking up some activity though."
Shepard, having made her decision, quickly forced the MAKO into the path in the canyons, and ran over the geth in there with apparent carelesness, while Wrex dispatched the turrets.
The MAKO stopped in the middle of the compound, and the team got out.
„Wrex, Bob. Look for the gate controls in the building, me and Ashley will keep watch."
„Come on pyjack, let's go. Don't get yourself killed," Wrex said with a low, unhappy rumble.
„Don't worry, I'm tougher than some random geth trooper," Bob tried to reassure Wrex with a beaming smile.
„We'll see about that," Wrex replied, snorting in amusement.
Wrex took out his shotgun, while Bob, with pistol in one hand, prepared the Overload program simply given to him by Tali after failing to teach him to make his own programs.
Wrex took cover at the door, and Bob gave him a funny look.
„You're not coming to kill some geth?" he asked.
„Shepard wants to see what you're made of, and you want to show her. What better opportunity? Don't worry, if you actually find something in there, simply scream, and I'll come save you," Wrex answered with a non-caring tone.
„Didn't take you for a coward, lizard..." Bob muttered grumpily.
Bob stepped in the dark building warily in a half-crouch, ready to drop the moment something comes out at him. He heard a familiar mechanic warbling, and just before a geth trooper walked around the corner, he rolled behind a crate, hitting his head against it. The geth of course saw the movement, and immediately opened fire on the crate, suppressing him, while another appeared and slowly moved towards Bob.
The moment the fire stopped, Bob rose up and launched the Overload at the closer geth, scrambling it's sensors momentarily. While the other geth took cover behind a crate to vent it's weapon, Bob started shooting, even though he mostly saw stars from the earlier impact with the crate, but at last managed to shoot the geth straight in it's head. Bob did an enthusiastic fist-bump, and the other geth rose up, only to have it's chest explode.
Wrex chuckled at the sight of the pyjack falling to the ground in surprise.
„What made you suddenly come in here? I had them by the balls!" Bob told him angrily.
„You were taking too long," Wrex shrugged.
Bob sighed in response. „Alright, let's find the damn controls..." His voice trailed off slowly.
Now it was Wrex's time to sigh. „Dammit, pyjack, was that control panel the one we were looking for?"
„...Maybe?"
There was a sizeable hole in the middle of said control panel, with smoke and occasional sparks coming out of it.
„Shepard is going to kill me, isn't she?"
„Yup."
They went out together to relay the bad news.
„What the do you mean, you destroyed the control panel?" Shepard asked in a dangerously quiet voice.
Bob visibly shrinked under her gaze. „I'm... I'm sorry... There were geth in there, and I tried to shoot at them. The controls were simply behind them! If Wrex had come in with me, it probably would have been fine!" Bob points a finger dramatically at Wrex.
„Hey, don't blame your failure on me, pyjack."
„You were the one who decided to sit on his lazy ass outside, while I alone kill all the geth inside!"
„I didn't think you'd be such a bad shot."
Shepard tuned out their bantering and asked Ashley in a low, rather angry voice: „See anything we could use to blast the gate open?"
„We could use the MAKO's cannon, but the noise would probably bring an army down on us, before we get through it..." Ashley said.
Apparently having ended their argument, Bob decided it would be the best time to add his own opinion, and raised a finger meaningfully. „I know how to get through it."
Shepard raised her eyebrow. „How?"
„First, we lug all the explosive stuff we can find in this compound at the gate, then Wrex launches a warp to weaken it, right before we use the MAKO's main cannon to blow the whole thing sky-high."
Shepard narrowed her eyes at Bob thoughtfully. „That could work... Alright. Everyone, spread out, find anything that might explode."
About 10 minutes later, all the explosive material in the compound was carried to the gate by a grumbling krogan complaining about being used as a pack mule.
„Alright Wrex, do it."
The krogan then launched a warp at the gate, and everyone got inside the MAKO quickly.
„Wrex. The honor is yours," Shepard said.
By the time the geth dropship came to the compound to investigate the loud noise, Shepard had already taken the MAKO through the hole in the gate to satisfy it's never-ending hunger for crushed body parts.
Shepard swore loudly when she saw the narrow road through the rocky canyon.
„Alright, dimension traveler, any insight on how to get the MAKO through this mess?" Shepard asked Bob.
„Sorry, Shepard... There's no way to get the MAKO through here... Millions of people have already tried it on game physics, so it sure as hell wont work with the real MAKO."
Shepard's grimace only deepened. „Goddammit. Alright, people. Everyone out of the MAKO, we're going on foot."
Wrex tried to cheer Shepard up by saying, „Shepard, there's nothing like a little action on foot to cheer a warrior up."
They got out of the MAKO, and started making their way through the canyon, slowly, but steadily.
The team only got so far, before encountering a patrol of geth.
Right when both sides spotted each other, Shepard yelled „TAKE COVER!" right before the mass accelerated rounds and missiles started flying.
The geth were slowly advancing on Shepard's team due to a sniper keeping them constantly pinned down.
It was Wrex who first noticed something missing.
„Hey, Shepard, where'd the pyjack go?!"
Ashley started swearing profusely. „Goddammit, that little shit! Right when we get in a tough situation, he hides!"
Shepard's N7 training had kicked in, and she only yelled, „Focus on the enemy, team!" while lobbing a grenade in the geth's direction.
The grenade destroyed a few geth troopers, and took out the shields of most others. Wrex gratefully lifted up a rocket trooper, and Ashley finished it off with her assault rifle.
None of them noticed that the geth sniper had stopped firing for a moment. But they noticed it when the sniper apparently started dropping it's fellow geth. The team, though extremely cautious, finished the geth off quickly with the help of their new ally, and slowly moved down the slope in hopes of finding out what the hell just happened.
Ashley's surprise was the biggest of them all when they saw that no other than Bob slide down the hill from the sniper's nest.
After Shepard got over her surprise, she looked at Ashley with a big shit-eating grin, and said, „I told you he might be worth something in the field."
Ashley had no choice, but to agree.
Everything had gone to hell when a geth armature dropped right in front them alongside a bunch of hoppers and troopers.
Shepard's team took down the troopers quickly enough, but the armature's shields regenerated too fast for them to do any actual damage, and a single hopper taking potshots at them from it's hiding spots made things much worse.
The hopper dropped Bob's shields, and made a mistake in thinking it could finish him off. It jumped right towards him, but Wrex lifted it using his biotics. They turned the hopper into a mess of metal parts.
After that, the entire team focused their attention of the armature, who had been slowly whittling down their covers made of crates and rocks. After a minute or two of taking potshots at the armature, it's shield were nearly non-existent.
Bob looked at the grenade Shepard gifted him for the excellent thinking he did in the earlier battle. He then looked at the combat knife requisitioned for him, and the pistol. He then remembered all the fan-fictions he had read about Self-Inserts and that same damn armature, and got the same idea as most of the other ones.
Shepard thought Bob was absolutely fucking insane when she saw what he was going to do.
Ashley was awed by Bob's bravery and stupidity.
Wrex wasn't even slightly impressed.
Bob threw the grenade right at the armature's feet, and waited for it to explode. When it did, he ran straight towards the armature, knife in one hand, pistol in the other.
He made it halfway there when the armature vaporized the upper half of his body.
Wrex ran in from the side, biotically pushed the armature off balance, rammed it's front leg in blood-rage, and finished it off with a few shotgun rounds to the optics.
When the battle was over and they looked at what was left of Bob, Ashley simply said: „I told you we should have interrogated him for every scrap of information on Saren and the Reapers."
Welp. That was the first chapter of "Arrivals In Effect". I hope that I will be able to grow this into a collection of the ends of the more... unfortunate Dimension Travelers. Tell me what you think of it in the reviews, and let me know about anything I could improve on, please!