Jane looks down at me with pure unadulterated anger steaming off of her. I actually can feel myself start to flinch from the daggers her eyes are giving me until the computer starts to ring. My eyes bounce across the room at the desk then back to her, she hasn't moved, taken a breath, or done anything but stare at me since I told her she was going to lose it.

"Jane, I um… I didn't mean you were going to lose it, I meant that you were going to…" The computer starts to ring again and I let my eyes dart back over to it. Immediately I start to pray that she isn't a biotic vanguard of some kind that's getting ready to slam me into one of the walls of the apartment.

"Can I see that thing in your hand?" The words have no inflection or emotion in them as Jane grabs the remote from me. I take a few steps, big steps, away from her as she moves towards the television. She starts to scroll through the options, pushing the buttons on the controller and trying to make sense of the menus on the system she's using. My computer rings again. "You might want to stop that, I'm not in the mood for interruptions at the moment." I can't speak, the only thing I can do is shake my head and move towards the noise that's going to get me shot by the highly trained professional.

"Can't talk." I answer the video chat without taking my eyes off Jane.

"Amber? It's almost 2 a.m., what are you doing and why aren't you answering your phone?" My boyfriend's voice echoes through the room as I continue stare at Jane, "You have someone over at this hour? I don't recognize her." I look at the screen and back at Shepard trying to decide how to explain the complicated situation.

"Maybe later when I can actually talk to you I can explain things." I mumble as I turn to face her again. She's playing with the hair color options with her mouth hanging open. "I really have to go." I say reaching to disconnect the call "I'll catch you up tomorrow I promise, I just don't want to piss her off right now." Dylan yells my name as the video call disconnects and I turn the computer off.

"I would never wear my hair like this, or like this. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea to make me look like that." Jane takes her eyes off the screen and looks at me, "I'm not the default, this is… Look at this hideous guy." She scrolls back over to John Shepard.

"Well, I mean the different sex makes for an interesting play though. Different love interests and reactions to things with some charac…" I cut myself off as I see her again giving me a look of death, "Yea, he's hideous. Why would anyone be John Shepard?"

"You can pick everything?" Jane scrolls past the physical aspects to the class selection screen, "Even this?"

"Yea, even your class. Speaking of which, what class are you?" I ask cautiously, trying to get her to give me a little information without provoking her into a tirade.

"Isn't it obvious?" She states plainly as she keeps looking at the screen in front of her.

"If it was obvious I wouldn't have asked would I? I don't need you going into some biotic conniption fit that I have to come up with some magic answer to explain later on." Jane ignores my attitude as she gets to the selection screen of her background.

"You have to be kidding me! You can choose what happened to me in the past? This is a joke!" Jane throws the controller at me, smacking me in the chest with a loud thud. I ignore the pain from the remote that was just tossed at me like a speeding baseball as she keeps staring at me, "What did you choose? Where is your Shepard?"

I look at her with a blank expression for a moment trying to decide the implications of my answer before I speak. "I uh, well…" I try not to smile, "I have a few Shepards. I mean I've played the game a dozen times, tried all the classes and romances. I've even…" Jane's hand was in my face and her head turned to the side.

"Just stop. If I hear anymore I think I'm going to throw up." She whispers as she starts to rub her forehead.

"So you're a video game character, or a really crazy lady that looks like a video game character." I shrug my shoulders and sigh, "Alright, we'll figure it out together. There are all sorts of choices that you could have been made about your background. Let's see what you got."

"What?" Jane sits on the bed, "You want me to tell you which of these preprogrammed options I am?"

"Yes, I want to know about you." I say sarcastically. "Like I said if you're some damn earthborn, survivor type, then I need to make sure and keep people from being sarcastic asses to you. I don't need someone asking a bunch of questions that are going to set you off on some rampage, I've seen what happens to those people."

"It hasn't stopped you Amber." Jane stops rubbing her temples and turns to look at me as she spoke, "I was a colony kid, born and raised on Mindoir. I watched my family and friends die in front of me." She blinks at me for a moment recalling the memory as she continued on, "Later in life I became some big damn war hero."

I nodded my head, "Alright, there's no need to open up old wounds or anything. I can't handle you getting emotional on me all of a sudden and you evidently don't want to talk about it more than that. I'm pretty familiar with those character options."

"Character options." Shepard little the words hang in the air before speaking again. "Vanguard, I'm a vanguard."

"Great, so you are a biotic type. Let's not have you all glowy glowy around anyone either. Space magic like that might not go over to well here."

"My turn to ask a few questions. Where is here?" Jane bit the bullet, "Where and when the hell am I?"

"This is Earth, it's 2013. We are in the United States of America and you are in my apartment." I sit on the bed beside her, "And it's late and this whole thing is flippin' crazy."

"This is Earth? This is 2013 and I'm on earth? I'm not even born yet." Jane laughs, "That's a new one. I've died a few times but time travel is something new."

"Glad you think it's funny Jane. Not like the sudden appearance of Jane Shepard with a gun in my face was my idea of a good time. Not to mention that fact that you sitting on my bed in the middle of the night is killing my weekend plans." I plop backwards on the bed.

"Excuse me for ruining your plans. I was the one thrown back in time after trying to grab the blue pillars of death on the Crucible. I knew that stupid Catalyst kid was lying to me." She grabbed the remote from beside me and looked at the T.V.

"Wait, you were going to be in control of the reapers? Why the hell would you choose that option?" I lifted myself up to lean on my elbows and looked at her.

"It's not as though I was given the best options in the first place. I could kill them, control them, or be one with them. I wasn't about to destroy everything and kill the geth after I just ended the war with the quarians. The idea of synthesizing and joining them just felt wrong, it wasn't a decision I would want forced upon me."

"Well you sure aren't my Shepard." I paused and watched her choose her own personal options, "So you decided to control them and got sent here. That's all you remember?"

"I don't remember actually grabbing the pillars. I walked up to them and the next thing I know here I am trying to steal your vehicle. Then you bring me here and tell me I'm a fictional character from some game."

"So you didn't choose anything?" I ask, "You were going to and you were sent back here. So the war was never finished?"

"Doesn't look like it matters anymore anyway, it's 2013. I have all the time in the galaxy." Jane sits back and watched the cut scene unfold in front of her.

"You're going to sit here and play that game? Don't you already know what happens?" I look at her quizzically.

"This gives me a chance to see what happens if I chose other options, it might even give me an idea of how I got here. Let's just call it scientific research." Jane gives me a smirk as she turns to face the game again

"Playing Mass Effect in the name of science, I think I've used that excuse before when I didn't feel like studying for an exam." I pulled a blanket over myself and watched Jane's reaction to the game as she played.