Hello, and welcome to the first entry in Project GS, known as Strike Heroes: Gendai no Seikatsu.

Now, a bit of explanation before we get going: yes, as my profile page says for this particular entry, the idea is based on the Weiss Reacts series by ElfCollaborator. No, I have no idea about how to mess around with tropes, but there's a first for everyone, right (besides, doesn't hurt to try it out)? And yes and no on Roland's personality: yes, Roland (along with characters from the Strike Heroes series) will be in this, but he will not be exactly like his Neuroi Witch counterpart (can't detail what I mean or else that'd be spoiling the surprise. Moral of the story: just look and see please).

Also, gotta make sure that I put this in: I do not own any characters in this story except for my own OCs (Roland and Draco at the moment), and as such all characters used here are owned by their respective creators.

Anyways, let's take a look and see what the first entry in this story has in store...

XXXXXXXXXX

Perrine's Effect

For Perrine, there was nothing else to be doing right now.

For starters, she had no one to really talk to right now: Yoshika and Lynette were in the backyard, tending to a garden the three had started about two weeks ago (the Gallian girl still couldn't believe that Minna's salary as a singer actually covered for the house and then some. Then again, celebrities were usually rich. Though luckily the Karlsland redhead didn't let the fame go to her head), Charlotte was busy in the garage tending to her motorcycle (affectionately named "Glamorous Shirley"), Francesca was being…Francesca (Her word, she wasn't sure where the Romagnan girl was; for all she knew, Francesca was asleep inside the garage or something. Made sense given Charlotte was in there), and Sanya was taking a nap inside hers and Eila's room.

Speaking of the Suomos girl, Eila was busy sitting against the wall in the Gallian girl's room as she was playing a game of Solitaire using a deck of cards. The Suomos girl was wearing a light blue T-shirt with a pair of gray tights over her legs. Perrine herself was wearing a navy blue polo shirt with a small etching of the Gallian flag on the lone left shirt pocket and black tights along with her signature glasses.

Okay, maybe the part about not having anyone to talk to right now wasn't exactly true, but Eila looked a little…engrossed in her card game. Also, the Gallian girl wasn't sure why Eila was in her room right now…

Moving on…next was Mio, but she had gone to the gym for a while (and apparently brought Gertrud, Minna, and Erica along with her. Judging by Erica's reaction, it wasn't exactly part of the Karlsland blonde's plans for the day). And Draco was busy playing a game on his 2DS somewhere.

Sighing, Perrine decided to get up off her bed (where she had been sitting there as she was trying to figure out what to do; she had just finished beating the Champion in Pokémon X and wasn't sure what to do next) and walked through the house, wandering into the living room.

Where Roland was busy reading something on his smartphone as he sat on the couch, blissfully unaware that the Gallian girl was around. He was wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of blue denim jeans. He also had a titanium-colored watch on his left wrist.

Deciding not to bother Roland for the moment, she made her way to a bookshelf the Liberion boy had taken to calling his "modest collection of games", which almost didn't live up to its name; rather, it looked like it was bordering on "huge collection of games, plus some board games on the bottom shelf".

The bookshelf in question was a small mahogany one that the boy had gotten off the Internet, which was about three feet by two feet by four feet and had two shelves, each shelf about three feet by two feet in area and being about an inch thick. The bottom shelf had some board games that they had been collecting for the times when they decided to have a sort of "Family Night".

The top shelf was where she was looking at for the moment, and soon she was browsing through some of the games the boy had gotten. They were even organized into which game console they were for.

Gamecube games ("Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door…Super Smash Brothers Melee, I think Roland and Draco play that a lot sometimes…"), PlayStation 3 games ("Portal 2…Mortal Kombat…"), Wii games ("Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympics Games…Super Smash Brothers Brawl...Wait, didn't I pass by that game in the Gamecube section?" She looked back at the section in question really quick. "Oh, different game. Okay, moving on…Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess…"), some PC games ("Half-Life. Isn't that a game Roland's played a lot before?"), some Wii U games ("Nintendo Land…Super Mario Brothers Wii U…I think Roland's getting another game for the system, but I forgot what it was…oh, right, Super Smash Brothers."), and Xbox 360 games.

"Left 4 Dead…" Perrine said to herself as she was looking at the games in the current category. "Left 4 Dead 2…Sequel? Most likely…" She then found a weird box inside the section and, upon pulling it out, looked at the title. "Mass Effect Trilogy…what's this?" She then looked at Roland, still looking at his phone (the Gallian girl was slightly confused on why he hadn't said anything about her talking to herself, but realized that he usually did the same thing himself. Would have been a little contradictory if he said anything about it). "Hey, Roland?" If anyone would know about the game it'd be the one who collected it in the first place.

"Hmm?" Roland asked as he looked up. "Oh, hey, Perrine. When'd you get here?"

"You're rather oblivious right now, aren't you?"

"Sorry, was busy reading something on Fanfiction. Anyways, what's up?"

Perrine showed Roland the game she had pulled out. "What's this game about?"

"Oh, Mass Effect? That's one of my favorite role-playing games. Anyways, it's…it's a bit hard to explain it without spoiling too much. I can help you get started if you want."

Perrine huffed. "I suppose I could have you help out. After all, you've played it, right?"

"Yeah, beat the entire trilogy with the same character from start to end, no Dee-El-Seas. Course, had to edit his facial features in the third one because the one I had for the first two couldn't be brought over to the third entry."

Perrine walked over to the Xbox 360 hooked up to the shared fifty-two inch LED television (referred to by the others as the "common TV") and, pushing the button to open the tray up, slipped the part holding the discs (there was a sort of cover with the box art over it) out, opened it up, located the first game disc (easily marked by the lack of a number), and set it in after a few seconds. She then grabbed one of the four wireless controllers resting nearby and turned it on as Roland worked on turning the TV on and adjusting the volume (they had watched a movie last, so the surround speakers, hooked up courtesy of Charlotte and Draco, were loud. A fact that made Perrine and Roland both cringe physically as they heard the sound of the system booting up). She then signed in as her profile, "LightningGallianNoble", and navigated the dashboard for a bit before the game loaded up.

She was then treated to the familiar screens showing who worked on the game before she got to the main screen. Pressing start, she reached the main menu and selected "New Game" before looking at the following screen.

"Roland?" the Gallian girl asked as she pointed at the TV screen. "What is this?"

"Huh?" Roland asked as he looked at the screen and saw what she was talking about. "Ah. That. It's simple, really. You can either jump right in as the default Commander Shepard, a Soldier class, or you can spend some time and create your own character."

Perrine huffed. Usually, she had to simply give her characters a name and that was it. They had to incorporate actual character customization? "Okay, I'll take some time. Besides, it's not that complicated, right?" The second screen she saw (the first was a sort-of animation showing that the "file" she was searching for was corrupted and needed some fixing) was saying something about looks. After a second of thinking, she went with a custom female, gave it the name "Perrine", and looked at the following screen, which listed the possible origins. "What's this?"

"That's the 'Origins selection' screen. Where you choose half of your character's backstory."

Perrine looked slightly confused. "…Huh?"

Roland sighed. "Are you a Spacer, a Colonist, or an Earthborn?"

The Gallian girl was still baffled. "Okay, what are they about? At least, a short version?"

"Spacers have been raised from ships to ships, Colonists were on one of Earth's colonies when…something happened, and Earthborns were part of a gang on Earth before joining the military. Your parents are alive as a Spacer but are dead or unheard of for the other two. There's also a Paragon and a Renegade bonus included based on what you choose." He noted Perrine's stunned and confused look and sighed. "Too much?"

"…How do you know that? Also, Paragon and Renegade?"

"Long story. Anyways, what do you want to be?"

"Erm…I'll go with Spacer. I don't like the other two origins, though Colonist at least sounds intriguing." She made her selection and was presented with a screen for her "Psychological Background". "Roland?"

"The other half of your backstory. This has to do with you military service. War Hero was part of a successful battle, Sole Survivor is…well, the name's self-explanatory, and Warlord…erm…""Okay…I'll choose War Hero." She made her choice and soon reached the screen for her to select her class. "Okay, what's with this list?"

"Classes you can be. There's the Soldier, all Combat; Engineer, all Tech; Adept, all Biotic; Vanguard, Combat-Biotic combo; Sentinel, Tech-Biotic fusion; and Infiltrator, Combat-Tech expert." Perrine looked confused, and the boy sighed. "Just select one."

Perrine looked through the classes and quickly skimmed through her choices: she instantly kicked Infiltrator to the curb (she noted that Lynette should be it if she ever played this, though. Then again, maybe the Britannian girl's played it already…) and Sentinel (sounded more like Gertrud's ideal class). Vanguard was also dropped because she didn't really feel like splitting talents into two branches. Engineer didn't sound like her thing, and Adept sounded perfect…until she realized that the weapons training didn't really help out too much. Nevertheless, it was her character, and she was going to be an Adept. "There." The next screen was set for actually customizing her character. After what amounted to ten minutes of painstakingly detailing her looks as best as the game would allow (Roland had went back on his phone before she asked him for some help in the department. Naturally, the boy was confused about why she needed help on figuring out how she looked but chose to oblige if only to avoid the back of his head aching for a bit from Perrine's wrath), Perrine finally got her character made and was soon treated to the options screen, which nearly made her scream in frustration. "Ugh, can't I just get to the game already? Besides, who even puts the options at this point?"

"I believe Final Fantasy Thirteen-Two did that as well, to name one example. Anyways, it gives you a chance to choose your difficulty level and target assistance."

"…What?"

Roland sighed and waved his right hand in the air. "Semantics, Perrine. Semantics. Just confirm and start."

"Alright."

As the Gallian girl and Liberion boy watched the opening sequence play out, Yoshika and Lynette stepped into the house, having planted some roses the Britannian girl had bought for the garden. Both girls had dirt on their cheeks, and their hands looked to be even dirtier from the soil they had been dealing with as well as on the knees of the jeans they were wearing. As for shirts, Yoshika was wearing a plain sky-blue shirt that fitted her a little loosely while Lynette's was more form-fitting and was as brown as the dirt outside.

"We got done with planting the roses, Roland-kun," the little Fuso girl said to Roland, using a nickname she had attached to him (while the "-kun" part was part of her culture, she still couldn't resist simply putting it under 'nicknames'. At least, for Roland).

"Oh," Roland told her. "That's good to hear, Yosh."

Lynette looked at the TV and noticed the game, asking, "Oh, you're playing it again, Roland?"

"Sadly, no. Besides, the tales of Level 45 Soldier Commander Roland Shepard would just be a rerun at this point. Perrine's playing it."

"Oh. That sounds great! Anyways, Yoshika and I are going to get changed really fast. We'll be right back." The Britannian girl led her friend off to go change into some clean clothes.

"Okay, Roland," Perrine said as Roland returned his focus on the game. "Now what?"

Roland looked and noticed that Perrine was at the very first dialogue choice in the game, replying with, "Well, you choose a dialogue path to go down. The right side usually advance the story while the left usually expand on details. Upper is Paragon, middle is 'neutral', and lower is Renegade." Perrine's signature look of confusion, followed by Roland's signature sigh. "Think of Paragon and Renegade as 'role model' or 'rebel'. Not necessarily good or bad, but just ways of thinking. A Paragon would usually do things by the books while a Renegade would rather get the job done by his or her rules. You'll see while you play."

"Okay, if you say so…"

Roland closed his eyes and sighed in relief as Perrine was left on auto-pilot. Maybe he could go and play on his 2DS or something. From his memory, he was working on getting his first Pokémon party up to Level 100 status.

"Okay, we're back," Lynette said as she and Yoshika came into the living room dressed completely different from what they were in last time. The Britannian girl had chosen to wear a pair of brown-and-green striped socks that went up to just over the halfway point of her knees and a brown polo shirt. Yoshika had gone with a sort of sailor's uniform that was over a swimsuit she was wearing.

…In case you were wondering why there was no description about what either girl wore for their lower half (or even how Roland knew about the swimsuit despite having been told about it when he and Yoshika had first met), there was a simple reason: the normal fashion allowed for girls to not have to worry about wearing something like pants if they chose not to, which dated back between 1936 and 1945.

Strangely enough, Roland and Draco were familiar with the idea but it seemed that the only boy affected was Roland, but he was at least able to handle himself nowadays. Then again, Roland found it weird that the girls only seemed to follow that trait outside of school and formal places (the latter obviously because it was a formal setting).

As for schools, well…apparently, they decided to implement a sort of dress code for it (most likely because the administration didn't need the guys being too distracted by the custom. Roland couldn't remember: he must have slept through that part of the orientation or something). Oddly enough, it didn't apply to colleges and universities (again, he couldn't remember himself).

So imagine Roland's brief shock when he opened his eyes, looked at Lynette, caught her white panties, and snapped his head back to the TV with a blush on his face.

"Thanks for the warning," the Liberion boy said with a groan.

"Sorry," Lynette replied as she and Yoshika took a seat on the couch, the Britannian girl on Roland's right side and the little Fuso girl on his left. "So, Perrine…what class are you?"

"Adept," Perrine told her.

"Oh. That sounds wonderful."

"Have you tried this game before, Lynne?"

"Yeah. I'm a Level Thirty-Seven female Infiltrator." The Britannian girl gave off a cute salute with her left hand as she gave off a smile to match. "Lynette Shepard reporting for duty."

"I didn't even know we had this game," Yoshika added.

"You don't even play half the things we have," Perrine countered (at this point, she had gone to the briefing room after taking a moment to chat with Navigator Pressley by himself and Corporal Jenkins alongside Doctor Chakwas).

"In her defense," Roland replied, "Yosh isn't exactly a hardcore gamer. Give her Pokémon or something simple to learn and play, and she's content with it."

"Yeah," Yoshika added. "I wouldn't mind trying to play it, though."

"I wonder what Yoshika would be if she did…" Lynette tried.

"For the first one?" Roland tried. "Engineer. If I remember correctly, they have the First Aid skill, which restores more health each time you use medigel the more points you put into it.. Combine that with Kaiden's First Aid skill in the beginning, and you're talking some fast heals. For the others? Depends on what she feels like playing."

"Okay, finally we get some more details," Perrine said concerning the game. She had gone through the whole dialogue sequence with Nihilus and had reached the portion about Ashley's distress call and the first sighting of a Reaper (well, at the time of the release, it was probably unsure what they were called; the main plot of the first one, if Roland remembered correctly, was trying to stop Saren from going through with his plans). "Though, I must say…what is that?" She nodded to the Reaper. "It looks like some sort of shrimp-squid fusion that someone threw armor in or burned it or something."

Roland looked at Yoshika (who was confused about what it was) and Lynette (the only other one who had passed that point by now) with a puzzled look on his face. "Should I tell her?"

"Probably not," Lynette said quickly. "You know how mad Perrine gets when people spoil things, especially you."

Roland mentally cringed: the last time he did that to the Gallian girl was when she was playing Portal, saying something about there actually being cake. Perrine scoffed at the idea, citing the whole "the cake is a lie" writings on some of the walls…until she managed to beat it.

Let's just say that the back of Roland's head met the scabbard of her family heirloom, a rapier (no idea why she had that as an heirloom, but Roland learned not to question things like that).

Oh well, could have been worse: could have been Mio's katana's scabbard…

Then again, he noticed that he lived with a group of girls that seemed to have weapons not considered "family" friendly. Or "the back of someone's head" friendly.

"Noted," Roland only said.

"Ugh…" Eila said as she walked into the living room, apparently having gotten bored with playing her one-girl game of solitaire. "I can't believe that Sanya's taking a nap right now…this is so boring…"

"You can join the club if you want, Eila."

"Depends…" Eila looked at the TV. "Mass Effect?"

"Yep."

"Perrine?"

"Uh-huh."

"She reach your bane of existence yet?"

"No. She's barely on Eden Prime, so give her about two hours of game time."

"What the hell are you talking about over there?" Perrine asked as she glanced at Roland and Eila.

Roland looked at the Gallian girl with a look of exhaustion."You'll see, Perrine. You'll see…"

Huffing, the Gallian girl continued playing as Eila considered her options, asking, "Hmm…what are everyone else doing?"

"Shirley's messing with her bike, Fran's with her probably taking a nap or something, Draco's off who knows where, Mio took the Karlsland girls to the gym…I think, Sanya's of course napping…"

"Like I didn't know that, thanks, Captain Obvious."

Roland chose not to reply to that comment. "Anyways, we're about the only people not doing anything. At least, not anything productive."

The Suomos girl gave off a sigh. "Alright. Beats being bored to death."

"Pretty sure that hasn't happened yet."

"…Yet…" Eila took a seat on the ground between Roland and Yoshika as her attention was on the TV. "So what gave Perrine the idea to play this?"

"Combination boredom and curiosity?"

"Aw, dammit!" Perrine shouted. "I just lost Jenkins!" She then drew her assault rifle and started firing at the enemy geth fliers (Roland wasn't sure what their names were right now and was losing focus on the game to talk to the others).

"Relax, Perrine. It's part of the plot. Besides, you're just making your weapons overheat the way you're shooting."

"…I-I know that!" Perrine noticed that her gun had overheated and switched to her pistol in order to take them out easier. That went about as well as the assault rifle (minus the spraying of "bullets"), but to the Gallian girl's credit she did take out one of the fliers. Kaiden ended up taking the other two out for her, and after interacting with Jenkin's corpse and moving on while picking off some more fliers, Perrine reached Level 2.

"Finally!" Perrine said proudly. "At least I can improve myself now." She then pressed start and went to her squad screen, where she applied the points she and Kaiden earned from leveling up. "Now to move on…"

"Somehow Perrine-san's a little boring to watch…" Yoshika said as she gave off a yawn.

"You're on the spectating end," Roland told her. "It's almost natural to feel like that."

"Oh. Hey, Roland-kun, want to have a quick Pokémon battle?"

"Sure. Which game?"

"Let's go Ex-Why."

"Alright. You two want in?"

"Okay," Eila said with a sigh. "Watching Perrine play this right now could use some tempering."

"Sure," Lynette added. "How about a two-on-two battle?"

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The next ten minutes was spent differently depending on who you asked.

For Perrine, she had acquired Ashley as a teammate and had moved on while learning about using covers more effectively (also applying skill points for all when she leveled up). She still had some difficulty handling enemies using her guns but learned that one of the best ways to help with that problem was using her abilities.

Namely "Throw" combined with a shotgun-toting Perrine (she reasoned that even a shotgun couldn't just miss its target. After trying it and learning about the aiming capabilities of said shotgun, she settled for just shooting from the hips for now). And when she had to let her ability cool down, she simply had Kaiden use his. As for Ashley, Perrine equipped her with a sniper rifle and let her loose. She found it really good for killing what the game called "husks" (the name sounded just about right to the Gallian girl).

Effectively, she just turned her time playing into something akin to shooting clay pigeons. Or shoving enemies about.

As for the others…well, since the focus for this story was on Perrine, the best that could be said was that after a while of playing Pokémon X/Y, their thoughts drifted into a fusion of Pokémon and Mass Effect.

"You think there could be a planet in that game that has nothing but Pokémon?" Yoshika asked as her Chansey (aptly named "Micchan") used Wish on her turn. She was paired up with Lynette against Eila and Roland and they decided to sit on the floor in a sort of circle for now.

"Not too sure," Roland replied as he had his Pidgeot use Fly for a turn. "If they did, then Nintendo would probably be thinking about how that could happen. Then again, I think I saw a fanfic about that once. The name escapes me right now, though…"

"Oh. That's a shame."

"Do you four have to be playing that right now?" Perrine asked as she got into a firefight with some geth and husks out in the open. "Come on, Ashley, just snipe them already. Kaiden, use your lifting abilities to drag them into my shotgun blast."

"Someone's sure getting a little upset," Eila joked as her Xatu used Psychic on Lynette's Doublade, which was not very effective.

"It doesn't help that my 'guide' decided to go play something else."

"In my defense, I can multi-task with playing a handheld game and helping you out, Perrine," Roland retorted. "Besides, Lynne can help you out as well."

"Yeah," Lynette said as her Doublade tried attacking Pidgeot but failed. "Oh man, forgot that your Pidgeot could use Fly."

Perrine sighed as she switched to her sniper rifle and tried using that to fire at the geth from a distance. Judging from the very shaky camera she got when she looked through the scope, she found herself getting slightly queasy. "Man, aiming a sniper rifle has to be a challenge?"

"You don't have any weapons training," Roland pointed out.

The Gallian girl growled before she left the scope...only to give off a scream as she was caught off guard by a husk that started giving off some blasts of blue electricity (or something; she wasn't sure what it was they were giving off, but blue electricity was the best she would get to it), hitting her shields and causing some lost health from what didn't get blocked by the now-down shields. "Dammit, Kaiden! Do your job better!"

"It's just a game, Perrine-san," Yoshika told her. A quick glance of rage from Perrine told the little Fuso girl to just keep her mouth shut for now.

"Let her," Roland told her. "The AI isn't exactly a gamer's best friend sometimes."

After a few minutes, Perrine managed to go farther into the area, finding Nihilus's corpse and some guy hiding behind a crate ("My word, why is he even hiding behind a crate?" Perrine had asked before she found an option to inquire about that fact. What she heard made her nearly balk. "My word, he's worse than Erica! At least she helps out around the place."). Once she finished with the dialogue, she fought more geth with her trusty shotgun (she somehow ended up giving her weapon of choice at the moment the nickname "Betty". Something she blinked in confusion for: "Where did I get that name from?"). The gun was also used in conjunction with her Throw power (and she learned how to actually Pull enemies now after leveling up). After that, she found herself fighting her way across a sort of bridge leading to a transport of some sort at the end…and a lot of geth between her and said transport.

She contemplated using her sniper rifle for the job but remembered her last attempt and settled for just rushing ahead and taking cover to recover her shields and use her powers and Betty. This took a while and resulted in Kaiden going down, the lieutenant getting back on his feet once the enemies were taken care of.

"Finally," the Gallian girl said as she sighed in relief and boarded the transport. She then watched a scene between Saren and some geth and learned about bombs being activated and rigged to blow. "Oh crap…let me guess: a timed fight?" Once she regained control of her character, she took some cover while looking at her HUD. She noticed that she had about four minutes to disarm four bombs (if she did the math right, she would have less than a minute for each bomb). "Okay, that doesn't sound too hard…" She sprinted out of cover and was promptly shot dead. "What? How the hell did that kill me?" She was soon greeted with the "Critical Mission Failure" screen. "I call bull on that! I'm gonna try again." She pressed the A button and tried again, suffering the same fate but a little faster (she forgot to crouch to get into the low cover and before she could do anything she was killed). "Again?! How the hell do they kill me quickly?" Once more, she got into cover once she got control and took a look at her screen before mentally face palming herself: she had rather low health from her rush across the bridge in the last section and had neglected to use medigel. "Oh, stupid me…" She applied some and soon went on with her mission, making slow progress in disarming the bombs (given Ashley had the sniper rifle for long-range enemies and Kaiden had the shotgun for when they actually tried flanking them, it still didn't help too much with the enemies across from them). Reaching the third bomb, she was gunned down. "Merde…Try again!" Coming back, she got gunned down again. "Nom de Dieu! Forgot to heal!" She tried again and took cover before she poked her head out to shoot and got shot dead. "Argh, dammit! Forgot to heal again!"

Unknown to the Gallian girl, her companions had given up on playing their Pokémon matches (Perrine's current rage was making it hard for them to focus on their strategies) and were now viewing her fails.

"She rushed out too early," Eila said as Perrine got shot dead after healing and running out of cover.

"Dieu!" Perrine screamed as she tried again.

"Forgot to heal." Perrine got killed once more at the start of the run.

"Shut up, Eila! Again!"

"Um, are you alright, Perrine-san?" Yoshika tried asking. Perrine got sniped by a geth.

"Mon Dieu! Of course I'm fine! Why wouldn't I be? Try again!"

"Okay…if you say so…" Perrine healed yet again and this time managed to get to the third bomb. However, as she was disarming it, she was smacked around by a geth and found herself dead.

"Dieu! Comment l'enfer continuent-ils me tuer?"

"Maybe you should relax for a bit, Perrine…" Lynette tried.

"Je suis au-delà de calme, Lynne!"

The Britannian girl looked at her friends. "I don't think Perrine's all there."

Roland sighed as he stood up and asked, "You want some help?"

"If you think you can do better," Perrine huffed as she handed Roland her controller.

The Liberion boy took a seat next to her and started the sequence, taking shelter and healing quickly. Soon, he took off and started disarming bombs while ordering Kaiden and Ashley to use their powers to help keep the geth busy while they moved. He left them to their devices as he disarmed the second bomb and stayed back as he switched to an assault rifle and fired, using controlled bursts (especially given Perrine's character's lack of weapons training) of two or three rounds to keep accurate and take down enemies. Once they had taken down the snipers with haste (Pulls followed by a flurry of bullets from the team), Roland moved ahead and disarmed the third bomb, easily taking out the last of the geth in the area with a quick heal while moving before disarming the final bomb and stopping the timer. He then stood there and waited for a bit before he paused and saved Perrine's progress.

"How the hell did you manage to do that without dying?" Perrine asked, both angry about not being able to do it herself and stunned that Roland had done it on his first try. With an Adept, a different class from his Soldier.

"Not too hard," Roland told her as he handed her the controller back. "I have fought as an Adept once or twice. Just have to use your powers with more creativity, I guess."

Roland's reasoning didn't seem to please the Gallian girl. "Are you implying that I can't be creative with how I fight?"

"Uh, no?" Roland then stood up and joined his friends as Perrine pushed on by herself. "Oh, and grab Betty again. You'll need it."

"Why? You just got through a firefight. Why would I—oh merde!" Perrine jumped a bit in shock and activated the weapons wheel in time to pause when she saw a husk rushing at her. She could also see some geth ahead, below them, but the husk really caught her by surprise. "Get them, Betty!" She resumed and felt the husk strike her, replying with a pull of the right trigger that caused it damage. Pulling it again, it fell before she saw more coming. "Dieu, can I get a break right now?"

Luckily for her, it was only two more husks and the two geth…that Ashley managed to take down with Kaiden's help.

Oh well, she wasn't going to complain. At least they were done with this place.

Perrine looked for things to check out for equipment (she had been doing it since she got on Eden Prime, since it only made sense to try finding items to make her team stronger) and gave them some better equipment (a better pistol for Kaiden, a sniper rifle and some medium armor for Ashley, a new shotgun for Perrine that she decided to stick with calling it by the name from the last one, "Betty", and a few other small details) before interacting with the Prothean Beacon (she had no clue what a Prothean was; according to the game she was playing, they were an advanced race from about fifty thousand years ago and were responsible for the technology the galaxy had. At least she saw a Mass Relay for the first time). She then watched the scene where Kaiden and Ashley examined the beacon while her character was calling the Normandy (another thing she learned along the way) and the part when Kaiden, after Ashley walked off to chat with Perrine, reached for the beacon and was caught in the beacon's tractor–like field. Perrine's character then rushed past Ashley and pulled Kaiden out of the way before getting caught herself. She then saw a lot of…visions would be the safest word she would be able to use before the beacon exploded, knocking her character out cold.

"Stupid Kaiden…" the Gallian girl said in annoyance. "You're not supposed to just mess with unknown technology…" She then sighed and watched a scene with Saren and some sort of alien woman (she had no idea who the woman was, and she felt that if she asked Roland she'd have to hear a lot of details. Details she didn't want to have spoiled) as they talked about what had happened to the beacon and "the human" (Perrine could only guess that it was Perrine Shepard they were talking about). Speaking of her character, the commander woke up on the Normandy and talked to Doctor Chakwas and Kaiden for a bit before Captain Anderson came in and asked to talk to her alone. Once her company left, Anderson talked to her about the mission, Perrine giving off the responses her character would have made based on the situation (mostly Paragon, though the Gallian girl did decide to get a little rough with how to handle Saren's involvement on Eden Prime). Once she got control again, Perrine chose to save and stop playing for now.

"So…" Roland was the first to say as she powered off the Xbox. "How was your experience so far?"

"A little mixed," Perrine told him. "Aside from Saren killing Nihilus, Jenkins dying too early, and the whole fiasco with the bombs…"

"And the jump scare you got from the husk after you got the controller back."

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me…anyways, I wouldn't really mind playing it some more. It's not a bad game to be playing."

"That's good to hear, Perrine. Anyways, what are you going to do now?"

"Well, I'm going to go tend to my marigold flowers." Perrine said as she stood up. "Sorry for being rather…loud."

"Not a problem. Just go relax for a bit."

"Right." She went into the backyard to go tend to her flowers.

Roland then turned to look at Eila, Yoshika, and Lynette. "Note to self: she's going to get a little upset."

"I can't wait for her to get to that mission with Liara," Eila told him.

"Oh dear…" Lynette could only say in surprise.

"What mission?" Yoshika asked innocently. She didn't have a clue about what they were talking about.

"Let's hope she doesn't tackle it first thing," Roland replied. "Even that nearly made me rage at the halfway point." He then shuddered a bit. "The horror…"

"What are you three talking about?" Ysohika asked, still confused.

"…You'll see eventually."

Meanwhile, unaware of the conversation inside at the moment, Perrine started tending to the marigold flowers.

I wonder how I'm going to fare in the next portion of the game… the Gallian girl thought to herself. Hopefully it's a lot easier from here on out. Though, knowing what Roland and Eila were talking about earlier, I better be careful.

XXXXXXXXXX

Alright, that is the first entry in Project GS or Strike Heroes: Gendai no Seikatsu!

...Maybe the title could use a bit more work, but anyways: I do want to explain more about the setting at the very least. While thinking of the idea, I was at a slight stalemate for what the world would have been like had the Strike Witches world and our world been fused together, mainly customs involving clothes. The best I could think of was what you've read above: a girl can choose to dress like the girls around GNW2 (Great Neuroi War 2) time except for a select few places, like formal settings and schools outside of colleges and universities. I think for now I'll limit the examples of acceptable places to around the house unless you guys like the idea.

Other than that, please read and respond and let me know what you thought of this first chapter as well as the ideas I'm trying out. And also please let me know if there's an error somewhere in the game logic (I have finished the Mass Effect trilogy with no DLC, but it's been a while since I last sat down and played it fully. I did look up information for it to ensure that they are right, but if there's an error somewhere don't be afraid to let me know.

Thanks, and I'll see you guys in the next chapter.