A/N: Italics indicate internal thought.

Bold indicates Shepard Reaper speech

Bold Italics indicate Reaper internal speech

Please comment and review

This is my first attempt at a story, so I am open to constructive criticism. Also if anyone has suggestions for the story feel free to give them.


Lion's Roar part 1


Location: Illyria, Elysium

Date: 2nd June, 2183

Time: 1200 CST

It had been two years. Two years since Shepard had joined the Alliance auxiliaries.

It hadn't been an easy time by any means. Despite both of his parents being famous officers, John had opted to turn down the offer for officer training and joined as an enlisted soldier. While his family was initially shocked by this decision, his father yelling about him limiting his potential, but Shepard had reminded his dad that he had started at the bottom and worked his way up on his own merit, and stated that he sought to do the same.

While this was partially true, there was another reason for this. During his months with Cerberus, he had thoroughly studied the control that the Turian Hierarchy had over the Alliance. They observed all the Alliance's potential up-and-coming officers, to the point where Turian officials were present at all Alliance officer academies.

The Hierarchy 'claimed' this was so they could impart their centuries of experience in warfare to humanity, and help their military become stronger. However, the truth was these aliens were there to survey the ranks of the human military hopefuls for individuals that they believed would become problematic to the Hierarchy. These individuals would inevitably suffer accidents or acts of sabotage, leading to them being expelled… or killed. In addition, the trespassing Turians would work to increase the standing of their human puppets, thus tightening their stranglehold over humanity.

John knew that if he had gone straight into officer training, he would have inevitably caught the attention of those despicable individuals. As an enlisted soldier, he would be free from much of that scrutiny. Unfortunately, while the amount of influence the Hierarchy had over the Alliance officer training was much greater than basic training, it was still quite considerable. Something he learned during his time at Boot Camp.

His time at Boot Camp had been quite memorable. Despite doing everything he could to suppress his superhuman abilities, he practically broke every record there was. On the gun range, no matter the distance, he almost always made a bull's-eye with such ease, that it might as well have been a few inches away from the barrel of his gun. He managed to beat every speed record from the obstacle course to gun dismantling. In sparring matches, he made even the most experienced fighters look like rookies. John knew that there had been several people who had tried to find the secret behind his performance, but with the assistance of several Cerberus connections, he was able to ensure his powers remained undiscovered. Despite his obvious skills, he gained the respect of many of his peers, due to his refusal to act like anyone else probably would in his position. He never bragged, he never gloated, and he never acted superior to anyone. After all, he had been on the other side of that kind of behaviour.

However, although he was respected, he was quite isolated. To the other cadets he had come over as brooding and unapproachable, this in conjunction with his unbeatable prowess and well-known family name had resulted in many of the cadets being intimidated by him. John hadn't been that bothered by this and he might have gone through Boot Camp without making any friends if not for his fellow enlistee Kaidan, practically dragging him around to introduce him to some of the other cadets.

When John announced to him and Miranda that he was going to join the Alliance to establish a cover identity, Kaidan immediately decided to go with him to look out for his friend. During training he was second only to Shepard, but he had made it his mission to try and get the secret superhuman to interact with other people and not get consumed by his mission. He was also there to make sure John didn't lash out at the most detestable part of Boot Camp.

Whenever they were out doing drills or training, next to their drill sergeant was always a Turian. And the hinge heads did more to insult the trainees than the drill sergeant ever did. They would constantly make remarks like 'Turian cadets would have completed that course way faster' or 'Turians can shoot better than that in preschool,' it never failed to grate on John's nerves. They degraded him, not knowing that he could crush their heads in his hands like it was a stress ball.

It was in large part thanks to Kaidan's efforts that the two of them completed basic training without incident.

However, once they became actual soldiers, John gained a clearer picture of how bad things were.

They would receive distress calls from colonies, but could not respond without authorisation from their Hierarchy 'envoys.' They would claim they were verifying the threat to these colonies and delay the Alliance response. John didn't give much thought as to why they did this, but he knew the result. When they finally reached the colony, sometimes days after the distress call had been sent, they were far too late. All they could do was help clear the damage… and console survivors. In a few cases there were so few people left that they couldn't call the planet a colony anymore, and they had to move the people to another location.

Over the last two years Shepard had been sure to keep track of every attack done by slavers on human territory. And every new attack he heard about, every devastated colony he saw, every crying person he witnessed, only served to increase his impatience to end the suffering.

There will come a day when we will make them pay for every injustice they have made us suffer….and that day is coming soon.

He had recently been promoted to Corporal and now he and his unit were currently assigned to Elysium. He smiled as he sat down in a chair in the barracks. No matter his mood at the overall state of the galaxy, he couldn't help but feel happy right now, he had always wanted to visit this colony ever since he had learned about what his mother did here. How the 'Lion of Elysium' had rallied a defence of this colony, and driven back the invading Batarian and Turian forces, despite overwhelming odds.

John was brought out of his reverie by a message on his omni-tool. He smiled as he looked at it, not because of what it contained but what merely receiving it represented.

It was a message from Cerberus.


000


(flash back)

"A ghost bandwidth?" John asked Miranda. The two stood around a holographic design in a Cerberus R&D lab.

"It's how Cerberus has been able to make contact with its people in the Alliance… Sparingly," Miranda explained.

"As you know, we can't send messages within the normal bandwidth without the Council intercepting them. However, we discovered that the tubes of FTL at mass relays are capable of carrying a greater range of frequencies than the standard Citadel bandwidth. So, the solution was to send messages within this 'ghost' bandwidth. Thus, we created our own com buoys capable of sending messages at these frequencies.

John looked at the schematic. He frowned slightly, "the energy required for that… You wouldn't be able to prevent the buoys from being discovered".

"You are correct," Miranda responded, "with the energy required for them to function, creating even one of these com buoys require a huge amount of our resources. And with the risk of the Council intercepting them, we could only send messages that were of the utmost importance."

She turned to Shepard with a small smile on her face, "But with the new ARC reactors, the buoys will have the energy required to both carry out their main purpose and we can also incorporate the new stealth technology into them. We will be able to communicate with our allies in the Alliance completely undetected," she said as she gestured proudly towards the holographic image of the buoy, projected from the table.

John leaned forwards, getting a closer look at the holographic design. After a tentative pause, "communication isn't enough," he responded with a frown, "we need to build something that can tell us when enemies are coming. We need probes."

Miranda looked at him surprised, before gaining a thoughtful expression and resting her hand under her chin, "incorporating the function of a long-range probe? I'd never considered that…."

She was cut off as the hologram of EDI appeared, "I apologise for disturbing you," The AI stated, "Shepard I have completed the viral hacking algorithm you requested."

"Thanks EDI," Shepard responded in gratitude, before the holographic avatar vanished again.

Miranda turned to him, "algorithm?" She asked.

"One of the Illusive man's ideas," he said, "It's not directly dangerous, so cyber warfare programs won't see it as a threat. Essentially it will allow us to hijack any video display we broadcast to. Vid screens, omni-tools, if it has a screen, we can control what shows up on it," he stated with a grin.


000


John couldn't help but give a small smile as he read the message. It was a status report, detailing progress of the new weapon training, and integration of the new technology into the ships.

He deleted the message immediately after he finished reading it.

Quickly looking around to make sure no one was looking, John pulled out a small rectangular device about the size of a USB. He pressed a button located on the centre and the small device projected a holographic screen and keypad. Pressing a few keys, Shepard brought up an image of several folders. The names ATLAS, FALCON, TITAN were visible on some of the files.

John had been spending practically, all his free time, secretly designing new technology or training.

Hearing someone approach, John quickly deactivated the device and looked back at his omni-tool.

"Loco, you still reading those planetary reports?" a voice called out.

"Seriously man you must have read all of those at least twice by now," another joined in.

Two men walked up to him, the first was an extremely muscular man with several tattoos visible on his neck and forearms. The second man had dark skin, black hair and a small beard. Kaidan stood behind the two newcomers.

"You know I always like to do something productive Vega," John told the first man.

The second man spoke up, "come on Shepard you need to get out more. Relax. Make some friends."

"I made friends with the two of you," Shepard responded. His face then split into a grin, "I still regret the consequences of that."

All four of them burst out laughing. Shepard sighed as they calmed down, he hadn't had the best of luck making friends at boot camp. However, there were two that weren't intimidated by him. He'd been reluctant to form connections at first, believing it would cause complications further down the line, but Kaidan had kept hounding him and now he could say he was happy to call James Vega and Jacob Taylor his friends.

"Seriously though Loco, don't you ever think about going down to a bar and finding a nice girl," James asked, elbowing Shepard slightly.

John looked down at that, "that's kind of a personal thing James," he responded.


000


Location: Illyria, Elysium

Date: 3rd June, 2183

Time: 1000 CST

The four of them were patrolling the streets of the city. There was nothing to indicate that today would be different from any other.

But Shepard couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong.

"What's the problem Shepard, you're looking extremely scowly today," Jacob remarked, jokingly.

"Just got a bad feeling that's all," John responded in a grim tone.

Shepard turned his gaze skyward, and his eyes immediately locked onto several strange shapes descending towards the colony. It only took a second for John to realise what those shapes were.

"That's strange, there's not supposed to be any ships coming in today," he remarked, his eyes narrowing.

As the ships got closer, Shepard's eyes widened. He recognised those ships. They were the same type that had appeared over Mindoir.

"Those are Batarian ships," he yelled.

Immediately after saying that, one of the approaching ships opened fire. Shepard turned around, but he already knew what they were aiming at. A volley of powerful shots impacted into the Alliance base near the centre of the City. Several massive explosions erupted as the base was annihilated. Immediately alarms began to blare throughout the streets. Seeing the most immediate threat destroyed, the ships began to open fire on the city, while dozens of shuttles emerged from the ships and descended to the ground, deploying dozens of slavers of all species onto the colony.

"Attention, all troops" The omni-tools of the four soldiers activated as a message was broadcasted, "priority is evacuating the civilians to the raid bunkers. We have taken up several defensive positions to prevent invaders from reaching them. All unit's head to the nearest location highlighted on your omni-tool and provide support,"

The four nodded at each other and immediately began running down the street, while dozens of people ran in the opposite direction.

After running for several minutes, the group finally reached the front line. The Alliance soldiers had set up a makeshift barricade across the road and were using it for cover. Occasionally, a soldier would lean over the barricade and open fire at the oncoming forces. Some distance down the street, a large number of attackers were taking cover behind their own make-shift barricades or side alleyways. The humans were doing everything they could to keep the enemy back, but they were slowly advancing through their sheer numbers.

The four newcomers crouched down behind the barricade. "What's our situation sir?" John asked the sergeant present, Hudson he believed his name was. "In one word. Fucked," the sergeant responded. "The bastards have landed a ship on the outskirts of the city, light cruiser class we think. The other ships are bombarding the colony, starting at the outskirts and moving inwards," the man continued.

John clenched his fist, "driving everyone into the city centre, so they can grab as many slaves as possible," he seethed through his teeth. He turned back to his superior, "what happened to our defences?" He asked.

The sergeant grunted in frustration before responding, "nobody knows. The AA guns aren't operating, neither are the orbital defence cannons. We can't get in contact with the operating station."

An attack this large…. And the automated defences aren't working…. This is much more than a simple slave raid. He went over the scenario in his head.

"Who's in charge of the moment sir?" Jacob asked.

Hudson just shook his head, "no clue. Captain Tyson is presumed dead when the first salvo hit headquarters. No one can get in contact with lieutenant Sartor," he explained.

"So what we do sir?" one of the other soldiers asked.

Hudson gained a serious expression, "we are gonna drive this slaver scum back and off our planet. We didn't let Elysium fall before and we won't let it-krch," the sergeant was cut off as a round travel through his neck.

"Medic!" Shepard roared, catching Hudson before he hit the ground. The invaders used this as an opportunity to advance again and began moving forward. Acting quickly John positioned himself on the barricade and opened fire, his three friends and the other soldiers quickly joining him.

John quickly gunned down two Batarians and a Turian. But he didn't stop to acknowledge it, he readjusted his aim and fired at more enemies. His movements were rapid, he quickly found a new target before the previous one had even hit the ground. By the time the attackers had found cover again, he was certain he'd already killed at least twenty-five. As he ducked back under the barrier, he quickly noticed that the rest of them were staring at him dumbfounded.

"Damn Loco. That was crazy," James said, stunned.

"Never mind that now Vega," John responded before turning towards the medic, who was kneeling over the prone body of the sergent. "How's he doing?" he asked, "I've stabilised him, but he's lost a lot of blood. Guess that means you're in charge corporal," the medic replied.

Shepard paused for a second as he processed that. Shaking his head, he looked around and analysed the situation.

We've already lost too many men to the hold this line effectively for much longer. Why are we even setting up the defence here? he wondered.

"All right," he called out getting everyone's attention, "we're going to fallback two blocks, the roads there have enough space that we'll be able to position MAKO's and maybe anti-infantry guns,"

Two soldiers carried the unconscious sergeant as everyone began to slowly move backwards down the street. Keeping their weapons facing towards the enemy. That's when they noticed that Shepard had retained his position kneeling behind the barricade.

"Shepard what you doing? You said we're falling back," Kaidan said. John looked at him, a serious expression on his face, "someone needs to slow them down, to try and stop them here. You guys go ahead," all of them are completely shocked by that remark.

"Shepard you're crazy, you'll be facing an army by yourself" Jacob practically yelled at him.

"That's an order," John responded. After a second, he turned back to look at them, "if you got any thermal clips and grenades you can spare, I'd appreciate it."

The soldiers quickly dropped a bunch of items he asked for on the ground, John simply nodded his head in thanks. While Kaidan handed him some grenades he whispered, "you sure about this Shepard?"

"Yeah. Just remember to come back when you've setup a new defence," Kaidan nodded and joined the other Marines as they fell back.

With his comrade's gone, Shepard turned his attention back towards the invading forces.

My mother went through hell to prevent this place from falling…. she lost a lot of friends…. I won't let what she did be for nothing.

A group of four Batarians began charging down the street, John waited for all four of them to get into the open before creating a biotic barrier around himself, he stood up and opened fire on them. They were so shocked by the fact that a human had stayed behind, that by the time they decided to return fire, two had already had their shields overwhelmed and were gunned down.

Out of the corner of his eye, Shepard noticed two more attackers poking out from an alleyway on the right, preparing to open fire on his now exposed form. Without even looking, John primed one of his grenades and threw it. It landed at the feet of the two and detonated, engulfing them in a fireball. Shepard hadn't even stopped firing on the remaining two Batarians in front of him while doing it, his biotic barrier easily absorbing the rounds that hit him, he quickly killed both of them with another burst.

Taking a breath, he ducked back behind the barrier, but kept an eye out in case any others decided to advance. He saw multiple groups of attackers slowly moving towards him.

Come on you bastards….. a Shepard drove you off this planet before…. And today histories going to repeat itself.


000


Location: Illyria, Elysium

Time: 1700 CST

John rested his back against the barricade. Seven hours. He had been holding this position for seven hours.

The street was littered with the corpses of various races. Batarian, Turian, Krogan and even Asari. He'd maintained his ammunition supply by letting several of the attackers get close enough to touch the barricade, then looting any ammunition from their carcasses.

Hearing footsteps he peered over the makeshift fortification, he was met by the sight of two Krogan…..and one was aiming a rocket launcher at him.

The barrier exploded, sending him flying forward and crashing onto his front.

He lay there unmoving.

Noticing the lack of movement, the two Krogan walked forward until they were standing over the prone form of the human.

"Hah, finally got the bastard," one of them chuckled, "Little squirt was way more trouble than he should have been."

"Let's see if he's got any credits," the other said.

Suddenly the 'dead' human shot up. Coating his left fist in blue energy, he punched one of them in the throat, causing them to hack and keel over. He then jammed his assault rifle in the Krogan's already open mouth, while at the same time pulling out a pistol, and jamming it into the eye of the other one. He opened fire with both weapons. Both large reptiles crashed to the ground.

Shepard turned around, putting his weapons away, and sighed at the site of the barrier, now sporting a large hole from the rocket.

I'm not going be able to hold them back here any longer….. Those guys must have set up the defences by now.

He suddenly froze, as he heard the almost inaudible sound of rubble being disturbed to his left. From the corner of his eye he saw the air shimmering.

Reacting in less than a second, the human launched a biotic throw. The blue energy impacted something invisible, causing the air to shimmer even more. Before a figure suddenly became visible. It was a Turian wearing black armour, who was promptly launched backwards as the biotic energy hit him.

However, in an impressive display of gymnastics, he flipped over in mid-air and landed back on his feet. Shepard's eyes were fixed on the infiltrator, but they were quickly drawn away as four other Turians, wearing the same armour, appeared surrounding him.

Tactical cloaks… And that armour…. These aren't two-bit pirates…. These guys are Black Talon….A hierarchy black ops unit specialising in infiltration and maximum destruction. This is a lot more than a simple attack.

John had read about these guys in the Cerberus files. He knew he was going to have to be careful.

As the five newcomers raised their assault rifles, John quickly created a biotic barrier, practically a second before they opened fire. The barrier was effectively able to protect John, but he knew he had a larger problem.

If these guys are Hierarchy agents, then I can't show off my abilities too much…. I could attract attention if they got word back to their superiors.

John slammed his fist into the ground, sending a biotic shockwave in a 360-degree explosion . John deliberately made it less powerful and as a result it merely caused the Turians to stumble back slightly. But that was all the time Shepard needed to activate a biotic charge. He slammed into one of the Talons, smashing them against the nearby wall, his right hand gripped around the Turian's throat.

His opponent, having dropped his assault rifle, pulled out his pistol and started to aim at Shepard's head. The human quickly reacted by using his left hand to knock the pistol from the Turian's grasp. Without missing a beat, the Turian punched John with his left hand. Letting his head sift to the side in reaction to the blow, John used a biotic warp to kill the Turian.

His instincts kicked in and he rolled to his right, avoiding a burst of fire from the others, who had recovered. Landing on his knees, John pulled out his assault rifle and returned fire. In response, the black ops skillfully dived behind nearby cover. Seeing one of them to his left, John ran at him. Seeing the human approaching, the Turian raised his weapon, but John was too fast and quickly knock it out of his hands with a reverse roundhouse kick. He then tried to deliver a punch to the Turian's face, but it was quickly parried. John launched another punch, and although the Turian's arm impacted with the humans, he was unprepared for the human's considerable strength and was stunned as the fist, collided with the left side of his helmet. Seeing the other three begin to take aim at him, Shepard grabbed his stunned enemy and position him in front of him as a shield.

The other Turians didn't hesitate as they opened fire, filling their comrade with slugs. Shepard quickly threw the now deceased Turian away from him and dove back behind cover, readying his assault rifle.

Almost immediately, the small piece of barrier John was sheltering behind was peppered by high velocity slugs. John tried to peek around to get an idea of where his enemies were, but immediately had to duck down as another shot passed near his eye.

Dammit they're concentrating their fire to keep me pinned down. The three of them…. Wait a second..

Johns strained his ears and realise something; he was only picking up two bursts of gunfire. So where the hell was the third guy?

Shepard maintained his position facing towards the two Turians firing at him but kept glancing at his flanks out of the corner of his eyes'. And sure enough he saw the familiar sight of distortion. The third Turian was trying to sneak up on him. John kept facing forward as his would-be assassin stealthily approached him from his right.

The cloaked Turian raised his rifle at the human's head. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, John threw himself backwards, and fired a burst, point blank into the Turian's chest.

Shepard quickly hurried back to his original position and looked at the two remaining soldiers, they seem to have realised their comrade had failed, as evident when one of them primed a grenade. Seeing this, John aimed his rifle and using his impressive marksmanship skills, was able to hit the Turian's hand as he drew it back to throw the grenade and temporarily exposed it from his cover.

The Turian's shields flashed for a second, before a streak of blue blood came out of his wrist, courtesy of a new hole. The pain caused the Turian to drop the grenade at his feet, he looked at it for a second, frozen, before it detonated, engulfing him in an explosion.

The explosion sent the final Turian flying, and he crash landed on his front. The injured invader slowly pushed himself up to his knees, before a shadow loomed over him. He quickly turned around, and barely had time to scream as Shepard drove a knife through his visor.

As John stood up, retrieving his weapons, he heard voices calling out to him and saw Jacob, Kaidan and James running towards him.

They slowed to a walk as they looked at the massive number of casualties Shepard had been responsible for, "Madre de Dios Loco, you sure you're not some kind of Diablo?" James asked rhetorically.

"Everyone else thought we were crazy to believe that you were still alive. Ha ha. they owe us so many drinks," Jacob chuckled.

Kaidan's attention was drawn to the Black Talons like John he had also read the Cerberus files about these operatives, "these don't look like ordinary slavers Shepard," he remarked. "They didn't fight like common mercs either," John responded, "there is a lot more to this invasion."

"Well this invasion isn't gonna last much longer," James said, "we got a defensive perimeter set up further back, and we got word that reinforcements are enroute to the planet."

John turned his gaze back to the orbital defence canon in the distance, the building that was the operating station would be located near it. His eyes narrowed as he came to a realisation.

"Why haven't they taken it out yet?" He asked out loud.

"What do you mean Shepard?" Kaidan asked.

"The orbital defences. Usually when slavers land on a planet they destroy them so they can't be used against them. They haven't done that here," John explained, pointing towards the massive canon.

"Something tells me you got an idea why they haven't Loco," James said.

"Yeah, if they found a way to disable our automated defences, then maybe they found way to operate them to."

The other three humans froze at that theory, "son of a bitch. They're going to fire on the Alliance ships when they arrive," Jacob yelled.

"We have to get to the operating station and restart the defences before the fleet arrives," John said with a great deal of finality.

The other three looked at each other apprehensively for a second, before saying determinedly, "all right, let's get going Shepard."

John couldn't stop himself from smiling at them.


AN: sorry this chapter took so long, I tried to Elysium in one chapter but it became too long, will upload the second part in a couple of days.