So I had this sitting on the hard drive for awhile and decided to polish it up and post it, obviously Fem!Shep and she looks fairly close to what Jane does on the boxart of ME3, but slightly more along the lines of Cait from Fallout 4. Anyway, if you'd like more, please review, if I get enough reaction to this we'll follow Joanna through bootcamp, her biotic training, and the raid on Elysium.

Joanna Shepard stared up into the darkening crimson skies of Mindoir with a hint of melancholy as she walked the well worn dirt path leading from the colonies small schoolhouse back to her families homestead. Colony life was honestly rather, well... boring really, but it was what they had and she told herself she wouldn't trade it for anything else. She had her friends, she had her family, and the local Systems Alliance recruiter mentioned that he could possibly bend a few rules to see if she could join the medical work study program a year earlier then normal if she kept her grades up.

All told the emerald eyed teenager felt pretty pleased with herself despite her growing wanderlust, slipping a lock of auburn hair behind her ear she turned to her traveling companion as he kept rambling on to himself fully aware yet not caring that his best friend was ignoring his enthusiastic banter.

"I'm tell'in ya Jo the Avenger series is where it's at! The cyclic rate of fire is superb and don't even get me started on all the optics options!" Rolling her eyes the young woman shook her head as she decided to humor her friend with an appraising smirk.

"Nick, the entire Avenger line is plagued with over heating issues my Da' said so himself, really the M-6 is a piece of shite and most likely will get passed over. They need to figure out how to dissipate the waste energy in a manner that won't burn a man's hands off, I mean really-" She was cut off as the raven haired teen shot out his annoyed reply.

"And you're just looking at raw stats Jo, ya ain't look'in at what's really important about that beast!" More amused then not she paused long enough to lean against a fence post and address her oldest friend with a barely restrained grin.

"Oh and what's that?" Smirking Nick leaned towards her, the pearly white sheen of his teeth clashing heavily with his dark complexion and the waning daylight as he did so.

"Simply put JoJo, holding that masterpiece makes you look like you've got style!" Snorting she swatted her friend on the back of his head while kicking off the post, this was ruined of course by her mirrored grin.

"You're incorrigible you know that Nick?" Dropping the "street" accent he'd previously been sporting, and likely lifted from some poorly acted out film he'd watched the night before on the extranet, the young man rushed before his friend and spun on his toe once as he began walking backwards.

"You know you love it Jo," his normal Irish lilt ever so much like her own rolling across his tongue as his usual devil may care smile made itself known. Rolling her eyes yet again she leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek causing him to pause and sputter as he nearly lost his balance.

"I'll talk to you later Nick, tell your mum and dad I said hi!" Nick stood there in the twilight a few moments before bellowing out a reply.

"That's not fair! Thaaats nooot faair!" Snickering to herself Joanna continued on to her home going over what she needed to do before she could get some sleep tonight. Eating dinner was a must, mum would't have it any other way regardless. Make sure the cows were milked, easy if not irritating. Double check the auto-irrigaters, gods be damned things nearly drowned their radish crop last week. See that-

"JO!" Stopping just outside of her families prefab shelter she was tackled by two red headed blurs who pulled her down to the sweet smelling grass in a shower of giggles. Groaning in fond irritation she pulled her twin brothers up with herself forgoing the usual tickle attacks, today had been a long one and she just wanted to finish it off quickly.

"Monty, Norris, you should be helping Da' with his chores, you can pester me later, just let your poor sister get a bit of dinner in her belly first all right? The two ten year olds threw her a pair of salutes and went running off to the barn, rolling her eyes she tapped the key to the front door and winced as the bright light washed over her.

"Joanna dear, glad to see you made it back in one piece!" Jo really didn't know if it was teenage hormones or honest irritation that caused her to roll her eyes yet again, it wasn't like there was bears or anything on this planet.

Really, outside of the occasional drunken spacer and the like Mindoir had to be the most boring place to raise a family in the entire Alliance. It and countless worlds like it drew adventurous souls to their promises of frontiering and independent living every year. When they settled down the participants of said folly found themselves in a borderline luddite existence where they got to supply the nearest civilized planet with potatoes. Yay them.

"Hey mum, how was your day?" And with that mother and daughter exchanged inane stories of their inane days, it was...gods be damned boring, but it was hers so Jo would not take it out on her family. Someday, hopefully someday soon she'd join the Systems Alliance and actually do something with her life. Until then...milking cows, making sure the radishes didn't drown, and picking potatoes to be sent off world was the culmination of her existence.

Eventually she helped her Mum and Da put her brothers down for the night and nursed a cup of tea as she updated her homework for the next day as the fog of boredom set in her brain.

She could never have realized how much she'd miss this simple life in a mere few hours.

As the alarm went off Joanna sat up from her warm, if stiff bed and glared at its digital display in irritation. 5:30 am, which meant she had a half hour to feed the animals and set the automatons, twenty minutes to check the perimeter, and after that she had twenty minutes to shower, and ten minutes after that she had to meet up with Nick and get to town before the rest of her class.

Why. Why the hell did she let that bastard talk her into becoming class president on top of all the other crap she had to deal with? Snorting she shook her head once as she slid her black cargo pants and t-shirt on. The answer to that was easy, because she loved the bugger and he knew it, ugh. With that she slipped into her work boots and her olive drab utility jacket while snapping up a black billed cap pulling it snugly against her head, she really had no desire to mess with her hair this early in the morning.

Yawning Jo smiled as she inhaled the heavenly scent of life giving coffee, mum must of have set the machine before she went to bed, go her! Reaching the kitchen in record speed the teenager soon poured herself a rather large serving of the black liquid. Smiling happily she cradled the steaming bounty as if it were a slumbering child she didn't wish to disturb. Padding towards the prefab's only exit she glanced at her dads old Mattock rifle hanging on a high wall peg and quickly walked past it hitting the switch to cycle the door.

Wild animals weren't really an issue on Mindoir discounting the occasional drunk so she really didn't see any point to lugging the weapon along today. Regardless she had a combat knife and some training in its use, both gifted to her by Sergeant Piers the local Alliance recruiter. She should be fine, and if the situation required more then that there was always her secret weapon.

Jo grimaced at that, the less people knew about her biotic abilities the better, her parents had insisted she keep the talent hidden until she enlisted for her own good, when she was younger she didn't understand. Now? Well the extranet articles never straight out said it but the truly talented had a habit of vanishing, and it didn't take a conspiracy theorist to guess that a vivisection or weaponization...or both was involved for those sorry individuals.

Best to let it not even be a thing until her first Alliance physical, after that she was on the grid and part of something big enough that it would be too hard for her to disappear. Were they paranoid? Perhaps, but as her dad liked to say 'just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get ya'.

Stepping outside she shuddered in the dim morning light while her breath hung frozen in the air before her; oh yeah, today was going to be one of those days. First thing was first, entering the cow pens she activated the drone that would feed the docile animals, and much to her pleasure it didn't break down or explode in the process.

That was the funny thing about growing up on a frontier farm, as much as you get to enjoy modern automation nine times out of ten the cheaply made equipment would catch on fire and explode killing everyone you ever loved in the process. That's why people like Jo, being the unfortunate eldest, woke up before everyone else to keep an eye on the soulless machines and make sure they did their job without the unintentional murder. Yay her.

Stifling a yawn Jo hopped on the absolutely ancient dirt bike kept around solely for her next chores purpose and rode the rickety machine out to the perimeter beacons to make sure they were still broadcasting. The machines were, for all intents and purposes, science fiction cattle prod fences, but just like everything else on Mindoir they were built by the lowest bidder so daily checkups were a must.

Midway through her circuit she more felt then heard something she'd only experienced a few times before, slowing the bike down and killing the engine she paused and waited. There it was again, weird. On occasion freighters would enter atmosphere too fast breaking the sound barrier in the process, this caused an odd Doppler effect when mixed with the ships mass effect field and well...you got the strange warbling feeling in the air she was currently experiencing.

Thing was...why hadn't it stopped? Reaching into her saddle bag she pulled out an old dented pair of binoculars and zoomed in on the horizon just in time to see the colonies small spaceport explode. Eyes widening she panned the lenses about and finally noticed several alien gunships strafing the area, disgorging armed men the entire time who immediately began firing on the early rising colonists.

Pirates.

"Oh God I have to get home!" Tossing her binoculars back into the saddlebag she restarted the bike and revved the engine for all it was worth, not thinking of anything other then saving her family. It took a heart pounding few minutes to get back in sight of her home, and what she saw took her breath away.

A large APC had pulled up into their front yard, completely destroying the fence and her mum's meticulously pruned flower garden, several men were milling about as the apparent leader fired a shot at the door and began yelling. Killing the engine Jo let the bike fall to the ground and dove behind a cargo container, thankfully no one heard her approach due to the chaos at the other homesteads and the burning town center.

"Come out now, you'll only make things harder on yourselves if you fight back!" The mans voice had a weird warble to it, like he was talking through some voice distortion device, but he wasn't wearing a helmet his bald head made that apparent. The man turned to address one of the pirates behind him and Jo took a sharp intake of breath in horrified realization.

A Batarian, these weren't pirates, they were slavers! Before she could think of what to do the mans head exploded in a spray of bone, blood, and brain matter. As his limp body fell she couldn't help but compare it to a marionette whose strings were just cut. The resounding echo of a gunshot and the slight glow from the open bedroom window told her exactly what she needed to know, her Da' had just taken one of the bastards out.

She was so glad she hadn't taken the rifle with her today.

"FUCK! Take him out!" One of the slavers yelled as he dove for cover but was too slow, three hard cracks came from the house, the first two shots were stopped by his kinetic barriers, the third shot wasn't. As the man fell over with a gaping hole in his chest the other slavers opened fire on her home and Joanna could only watch in mute horror as the thin prefab walls were torn apart as if they were made out of paper.

If they were lucky her family got under cover, the kitchen table was a huge thing made of thick durable steel and was heavy enough to shake off the mass accelerator rounds that were peppering the building. With this reassuring thought she slowly inched forward, hoping to catch one of the slavers off guard.

Then one of them fired a rocket launcher into her home, the building vanished as her cry of anguish was taken by the clapping sound wave following the explosion. Ears ringing Joanna fell to her knees and stared at the smoldering ruins of the only home she'd ever known, a place she'd been desperate to leave since she gained her sense of wanderlust. Gone.

"YOU IDIOT!" One of the batarians screamed as he slapped the rocket launcher out of the hands of her families murderer, "What good are dead colonists you fucking sand-head!? We can't sell bodies as slaves fool, who knows how much money you just cost us!"

As the man went on to defend himself one of the surrounding group finally noticed Joanna, leering he turned to the still ranting slaver and yelled out, "Yo boss! Look at the goods!"

Pausing he turned to the still stunned teenage girl and grinned viciously, "Well, not a complete loss eh?" He walked towards Jo and stared down at her with a hungry look in his four eyes, tearing her hat from her head he grabbed her chin and jerked it to force her to stare up at him.

"You killed my family," was all she could think to say.

The slaver nodded in disappointed agreement at this, "Yeah fucking idiot doped himself up on red sand before the raid, this is definitely coming out of his cut, and what a cut it would have been too with you here. Redheads are always in demand and those eyes, well, many a man would pay a fortune to have those beauties staring up at him while having his dick sucked. Pity you're probably a virgin, worth more that way but I wouldn't have minded a test drive."

What? No. She...no she wasn't... As panic began to set in he sighed and cuffed her heavily on the back of the head sending her sprawling. "Collar the whore and lets get moving, we've already been stationary too long. Balak says the Alliance will be here within the hour, we need to wrap this up." As a rough pair of hands pulled her back up into a kneeling position she felt something boil beneath the surface of her skin, something she was told to always keep reigned in.

But what did it matter? Her Da', her Mum, her little brothers, they were all dead, she was all that was left of the Shepard family. Her family. Her family was dead.

Time stood still, she felt the numbing shock of the past few minutes fade instantly as an electric like tingle swam through her nerves. The building pressure in her skull was only matched by her rage, and when the smirking batarian before her grabbed her hair and pulled her head back to snap a collar around her neck, he froze.

Her eyes were glowing blue. A moment later her entire body was covered in arcs of untamed azure energy and she clearly heard one of the slavers bark out a shocked "SHE'S A BIOTIC!" The warning didn't save them, with more speed and grace then she thought herself capable of she plucked her knife from her boot and buried it firmly in the skull of the slaver before her.

Turning she saw the man who fired the rocket that killed her family, with a grin she charged forward and suddenly she was standing before him, letting out a roar of unyielding rage she felt a pulse of power leave her sending everyone sprawling. Snatching up a dropped rifle she approached the triggerman and sprayed him with the automatic weapon, his kinetic barriers already weakened soon failed leaving him nothing more then a twitching bloody mess.

She felt...odd while red marred her vision she felt herself weakening, the three survivors were getting to their feet though and that just wouldn't do. Charging forward again she snatched her knife out of her first kills head and stopped before the man who had thought she'd make an excellent sex slave and in one smooth motion slit his throat.

She was really feeling woozy now but her families murderers were still alive so she couldn't give up now, snatching a round device off the slavers belt it only took her a moment to realize what it was. She had no training on how to use weapons, only what her Da' had taught her with his old rifle and plinking with Nick's mum's pistol, but any kid who watched a war vid knew how hand grenades worked.

Priming it she tossed it at the two now standing slavers who managed to get a few shots off at her but seemed to have missed, then they were gone in a thunderclap of smoke and fire. Swaying back and forth she walked towards the remains of her home to see if maybe, just maybe her family had survived but she stumbled and fell to her knees.

That was odd, why couldn't she move? The dull aches she'd been ignoring soon became agonized pains, staring down at her blood stained hands and her soaked through jacket she suddenly realized what happened.

"Oh...I've been shot...a lot..." With that her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed, staining the burnt soil crimson around her.

Commander David Anderson stared down at the broken child in the hospital bed before him, sighing he rubbed his eyes slowly as he shook his head warily. Out of a colony of a thousand people, only four were found alive, everyone else either died fighting back or were taken as slaves.

Four survivors. The other three, well...one was an old man who ironically slept through most of the raid, another was a teenager who managed to lock himself in a janitors closet, the third well... The girl was pretty, and the slavers were cruel, she might recover, she might not.

The fourth survivor though, she...she was something different. Joanna Shepard, a simple farm girl who had managed to hide her biotics from everyone, something that would only be feasible on a colony world as remote as Mindoir, where regular checkups weren't enforced.

He understood why some of them hid, there was a superstition that if you showed an affinity for strong biotic powers you'd be 'disappeared', and there was enough unconfirmed precedents to justify their paranoia. The trade off was they were usually untamable balls of destruction whose own bodies would be flayed by their uncontrollable powers when they finally let themselves go.

Or you could, like the girl on the bed before him, use every reserve at your disposal and go on a killing spree against a large group of men each three times your size. And win, mind you. To put it simply the girl intrigued him, the drones that had been following the slavers around had been recovered by the Alliance first responders and their recordings were interesting to say the least.

Without an implant or biotic amp, much less military training she had managed to kill five hardened soldiers, and they were soldiers of course. The Batarians liked to pretend that these little slave grabs were unsanctioned but everyone knew better. Sadly, the Council as always proved how ineffective bureaucrats could be on a regular basis and did nothing but offer their condolences whenever the matter was brought up.

"David," the Commander started as a calm voice spoke behind him, turning he smiled lightly to the doctor who looked like death warmed over at the moment. The old mans fingers were twitching as if he was desperately in need of a cigarette and knowing what the surgery he'd recently finished entailed, he probably was.

"Doc, how's she looking?"

The doctor sighed and fell into his seat wincing as he did so, old bones creaking slightly in the process, "She'll live, the L3 implant should be stabilizing her powers now which will help greatly. Kind of ironic, her biotics were what saved her, and then nearly killed her. As for the gunshot wounds they'll heal up, the damage to her organs was luckily superficial but she's going to have some scarring."

Anderson nodded at that, they likely wouldn't be the only scars the girl carried after this mess.

He was about to respond when the girl groaned out in pain, "Monty, Norris! No! I..." as the machines began beeping they automatically began feeding sedatives into her IV sending her back under.

"She keeps calling for her family, occasionally sobs about it being her fault, or she just starts crying uncontrollably about 'So much blood'...David do we have any idea who these bastards were?"

He sighed at that and fell into the chair next to the doctor, "Captain pulled a few strings, says that more then likely we'll never know who they were. While we've been able to work over the bodies left at the Shepard homestead they haven't really told us anything. No IDs and the Batarians refuse to release any data associated with them so that's a dead end. I hate to say it Doc but, it's looking to be another tragedy in a string of tragedies that will never be resolved."

"Shit," was the doctors rather succinct response, David snorted in return.

"Quite, when will it be safe to wake her up?" The doctor shrugged at that as he glanced at his terminal, Anderson saw him running calculations through his a head a moment before the man nodded to himself.

"Eh, around the time we hit Arcturus Station, I want her implant incisions fully healed before we tell her everything, it's rather likely she won't take it well." Anderson nodded but was interrupted by the doctors questioning voice before he could respond, "Why do you care so much about her David? I know what happened to her was horrible but you seem to have taken a special interest in her. Why?"

He took in a deep breath and held it a moment before replying, "She's alone Doc, completely alone. Everything she's ever known, her home, her family, her friends, hell her entire colony is gone. She's obviously got a killers instinct and she has the power to act on it and a very real reason to hate the entire galaxy. I want...I want to help her, save her from herself before she even starts down that path, because if I don't go out of my way to be there for her, who will?"

The doctor stared at him a few moment before snorting and slowly taking to his feet, "You're a good man David, better then most, I wish you the best of luck on your little pet project because honestly? I think you're right."

Turning back to the thin teenager wrapped in layers of bandages Anderson took her in with tired eyes, "What will the future hold for you, Shepard?"

Name: Joanna Shepard

Rank: Commander in Systems Alliance Navy

Class: Vanguard

Place of Birth: Mindoir (Colony rendered inert)

History: Hero of Elysium

Status: Renegade