Hey gamers welcome to my Indiana Jones au. Just a little preface, this will be featuring my personal Shepard bc like half of the fics out there do that and it's my fic so I can do what I want. She will be vaguely based on sole-survivor earthborn vanguard Shepard, so you have been warned.
Liara was having a bad day, to put it mildly. A wave of pain pulsed through her head, and with a groan Liara lifted her hands to massage her temples in an attempt to try to relieve the headache one develops from hanging upside down for too long. Sighing, she made a mental note to hunt down whoever came up with the idea of leaving traps out where innocent researchers could stumble into them.
A few hours ago she had arrived at what her most recent source had promised to be a 'well preserved Prothean temple full of artifacts and ancient writings.' Instead, she had found an abandoned mine full of some sort of unusual moss and poorly drawn graffiti. Liara felt herself shift as the sound of rope creaking filled the air, and looking down towards her foot she inspected the most recent annoyance of the expedition. Having apparently stumbled into a well concealed snare, her right foot had been snatched up off of the ground and dragged a good twenty feet up into the air. Now, several minutes later, it was beginning to go numb from the rope wrapped tightly around her ankle.
Craning her head back, Liara could see the rocky floor of the chamber far below below as she dangled in midair. Looking off to the right, a sizable boulder with a rope tied several times around it was now visible, and as she traced the rope all the way up to the pulley currently holding her in the air, Liara rolled her eyes in indignation at falling for such a simple trap.
The small motion of moving her head up and down to inspect her situation set Liara swinging gently back and forth, slowly rotating to her right. Grimacing through another wave of headache, she quickly activated her omnitool and considered her options. She could try to fold herself upwards to slice the rope with an omni-blade, but she doubted she could right herself with biotics before slamming into the ground and probably breaking a bone or some other mild inconvenience.
Looking around the open cavern, Liara carefully analyzed the cylindrical chamber around her. Honestly, this room had been the only chamber she had found so far that even remotely resembled Prothean architectural practices, so she couldn't really be blamed for not noticing the rope hidden under a thin layer of dirt in favor of inspecting the ancient stone walls.
Blinking, Liara refocused her attention on the many cracks and crevices riddled throughout the circular walls around her. In many places the cracks were several inches wide, revealing deep gashes in the structure of the room from several thousand years of presumably no structural maintenance. Between these cracks, several open holes boring through the walls were visible, ranging in size from being big enough for a person to crawl through to barely being the size of Liara's outstretched hand.
Her mind already racing with possibilities, Liara quickly began taking stock of every possible foothold and tunnel within reach. Confident that, with a little bit of acrobatics and maybe a rope burn or two, an escape should be very possible, she spread out her arms and started trying to calm her breathing before putting her plan into motion.
Just as she began to throw her arms behind her to start building up momentum, a sudden harsh chittering sound echoed throughout the chamber. Freezing in place as a sudden spike of cold dread sliced through the haze of her headache, Liara held her breath and strained her hearing in the dead silence that followed. Less than a minute later, another screech burst through the silence, this one accompanied by what sounded like chittering from multiple sources back towards the ground.
Looking back towards the floor, Liara felt her blood turn to ice as she spotted the bony carapace of a fully grown vorcha clawing their way free of one of the many tunnels scattered about the chamber. As it pulled itself free, the vorcha rose up to a hunched posture and let out a short, stilted phrase in a language that grated on Liara's aural cavities. An equally awful reply was fast coming from the tunnel it had just exited as two more quickly crawled out of the same hole at the base of the wall, shoving and pushing over each other as they bickered in their harsh voices.
Even from Liara's inverted perspective, it was easy to make out the glistening, dark liquid covering the hands and forearms of the three vorcha as they pushed and slapped each other around, hissing like angry cats the whole time. She squinted as the ever-working researcher side of her noticed that unlike other vorcha she had read about, all four of these vorcha stood with a conspicuous hunch and moved around on all fours rather than stand to their full height.
Heartbeat starting to quicken, Liara quickly looked back over towards the cracked wall in front of her, still a good ten feet away in any direction. The effort required to get herself close enough to grab on would have a good chance of attracting the attention of the vorcha below, and she had no idea how many others would be lurking throughout these ruins. An unbidden memory of her mother's voice floated through her head, derisively advising her to take a security team next time she went on one of her "little adventures."
Below, the angry squabbling of the vorcha grew even louder as a fourth hunched insectoid pulled itself free of the wall, angrily clawing any others in reach. Rolling her eyes in disgust, Liara slowly lifted up her omnitool to her face to avoid any unwanted swinging movement before exhaling one last petulant sigh as she decided to follow her mother's advice.
Opening up the extranet as quickly and stealthily as she could, a quick search of "Reputable mercenaries near me" revealed an alarmingly high number of groups for hire in the area. Scrolling past Eclipse, Blood Pack, and Blue Suns without hesitation, Liara's eyes narrowed as she started focusing on smaller groups in the system, hopefully with more scruples than their larger competitors.
Ignoring the growing sounds of short yelps and grunts below her, Liara's gaze caught on a listing. Opening up the page, she found herself looking at bolded text displaying the name "The Shepherds" in massive font and underlined twice with what looked like looping gifs of lines of flames. Brow quirked in skeptical interest, she scrolled down the page to read a brief summary of a small mercenary company with several glowing reviews from all manner of people. Another angry bark echoed up from the growing crowd below, and without reading any more Liara scrolled to the bottom of the page to push the "Contact Us!" button with the notion that she'd rather deal with a small team of mercs than a horde of erratic vorcha.
Typing as quickly as she can without misspelling anything, she quickly typed out a message and attached what she hoped was enough credits to encourage a swift rescue. Satisfied with her message, she quickly tapped the send button, waiting as the seconds passed excruciatingly slowly as her omnitool attempted to send a message from deep underground. An eternity later, her page refreshed itself automatically to display her message successfully sent as a cheerful Ding! echoed out through the chamber.
In the silence that followed, Liara slowly looked back towards the floor, her gaze now met by six blood-stained vorcha, all staring back up at her inquisitively. The silence of the room smothered any thoughts Liara could have come up with as she let out a soft, "Oh!"
Immediately, like a switch had been thrown, the ground broke into a frenzy of activity as the vorcha all began screeching and leaping up towards Liara, clawed hands extended and bloody teeth gnashing as they leapt towards her, falling short by only five or so feet. One vorcha, apparently slightly larger and more intelligent than the rest, quickly climbed onto the back of another before leaping off, talons extended and screaming the whole time.
Jerking her head back, Liara felt a gust of air as its wickedly chipped talons slashed through the air inches away from her face before the vorcha fell back down into the writhing crowd below. Deciding that she had officially overstayed her welcome, she wrapped her free ankle around the bound one and began pumping her arms back and forth as powerfully as she could manage. The creak of strained rope began to echo around the chamber as Liara slowly started swinging in larger and larger arcs, encouraged to even faster motion as she started throwing her whole torso into it, bending as far forwards and backwards as she could stretch.
From below her Liara heard a particularly pained screech, and looking back towards the floor she saw the same vorcha that had come so close to grabbing her before was now standing on top of two others it had apparently stomped down onto the floor to create a sort of launchpad for itself. Her vision blurred as she swung backwards, and as she slowed to a stop in the back of her swing she saw the vorcha crouch down as it prepared to intercept Liara as she started to swing helplessly forwards again.
Time seemed to slow as Liara's eyes widened, watching as the vorcha leapt up into the air, swinging once again directly towards her exposed face and neck. Anticipation and fear rising in her gut turned into a rush of raw power as every nerve along her body lit up a bright electric blue, and as she swung back into the bottom of her arc Liara lifted up a hand crackling with energy to meet the rising claws midair.
In a flash of light and a burst of power, the vorcha angry scream abruptly cut off as Liara's biotic blast instantly reversed its trajectory, blasting it directly into the floor in an explosion of dark energy and chitinous vorcha exoskeleton. The passage of time seemed to rubber-band back into full swing, now accompanied by a vertigo inducing sense of motion as Liara swung over the impact crater in the mass of vorcha below, propelled forwards now incredibly quickly from the recoil of the blast as she hurtled towards the wall on the far side of the chamber. With a final swing of her arms, Liara craned her head as far up as she could and stretched out her fingers to their limits as she reached desperately for one of the large cracks running through the walls around her.
Briefly weightless as her biotically boosted swing reached its apex, the split in the wall she had spotted earlier finally came into view, and with a grunt Liara lunged as well as she could towards it. Just as gravity seemed to reassert itself, her fingers slammed down onto the jagged lip of the wall exposed by the crack, jarring her shoulders and stretching her fingers backwards painfully as she only managed to land the first two knuckles of each hand onto the dusty, ragged stone. The strain of holding her position immediately started to make itself felt in her forearms as Liara now sat suspended almost completely parallel to the floor as her bound foot stretched out behind her. Directly below her now, the remaining vorcha howled in fury, shoving each other around angrily and dissolving into squabbles between each other.
Looking back up towards the crevice she dangled from, Liara glanced over towards her right, where about fifteen feet away one of the large holes punched through the walls opened up, right above the crack to which she was currently clinging. With a short, jerky motion, she quickly slid her right hand about one foot over, scraping her palm and dislodging several small pebbles that clattered down onto the screaming vorcha below. Repeating the motion with her left hand, she tensed her stomach as the sudden motion suddenly sent her bouncing up and down like an overstretched hammock. Wincing through the sudden pain in her lower back from bending too far and the ever-growing burn in her fingers, Liara tensed to once again move her right hand and continue her slow journey to the hole in the wall, when a sudden rise in intensity of howling below her drew her attention.
Bending her neck down to peer towards the floor from between her outstretched arms, she blinked as the once packed floor of the chamber seemed to be suddenly much less crowded with furious vorcha. A sudden scraping and scrabbling against stone filled the air behind her, and with a sinking feeling Liara craned her neck to peer at the far wall of the chamber. To her horror, several of the vorcha had begun copying her idea, sinking their talons into any cracks, crevices, or footholds they could find as they swarmed up and around the circular chamber like gigantic insects as they rapidly closed the distance.
Adrenaline coursing through her system, Liara abandoned her cautious shuffling across the room as she began sliding her hands several feet at a time, stretching out as wide as her arms would allow before following with her left hand, desperately attempting to rotate herself closer to the hole in the chamber wall. Even as the screeches and growls grew ever closer behind her, Liara refused to look away from the ledge she clung to so tightly, afraid even a moment's lapse of concentration would cause her to lose her grip.
Even with the pressure mounting, she was making good progress as the hole drew ever closer. Before she could completely close the distance, however, a sudden scream shattered her concentration as before she could even look over her shoulder a large, moving object slammed into the wall where she had been seconds before. Jerking her head to the left, Liara muttered, "Oh, Goddess," as the sight of several enraged vorcha clinging to the wall only twenty feet away momentarily froze her with fear. Before she could react, another let out a wail and launched itself towards her, talons outstretched. Liara desperately shuffled one more arms length to the right, causing the vorcha to plummet through the space her outstretched body had just vacated. As it narrowly missed her, a single clawed hand lashed out, slicing through her shirt sleeve and leaving behind a stripe of pain on her shoulder as it plummeted to the stone floor below and landed with a crunch.
With a pained grunt, Liara shifted her weight on her left hand to readjust her grip, when a sudden pulse of pain through the gash in her arm buckled her arm, causing her hand to slip completely off the wall. Her right hand slid dangerously towards the edge as she clung to the wall, body slanted to one side as all of her weight rested on her right fingertips. Looking towards the rest of the chamber, the encroaching vorcha continued to draw closer, spittle flying from their mouths as they screamed. One such vorcha flipped itself so its back was to the chamber wall as it prepared to leap, causing Liara to grimace as she forced her left hand back up onto the wall and took a deep breath.
As soon as the vorcha leaned forwards to begin its leap, Liara flexed her grip on the wall and contorted her whole body, twisting her foot against the rope as hard as she could. This brief surge of strength whipped her bound foot left through the air like it was sliding across ice, placing it directly in the path of the vorcha as it sailed through the air.
The vorcha slammed into the sole of Liara's boot, the impact nearly completely dislodging her from the wall. Liara let out a cry as she felt sharp talons scrabble across her left leg, desperately grasping for purchase and dragging painfully across her shin. However, its attempts to grab on were hampered by the very rope holding Liara in place, which the vorcha had run directly into with its face. As its grip on Liara's leg finally gave way, it jutted its neck forwards and snapped its jaw shut, missing her boot by inches as it instead sheared cleanly through the thick rope around her foot.
For a brief moment, Liara and the vorcha fell together as the rope supporting them both gave way and dropped the insectoid down to the floor of the chamber, screaming all the way. Liara herself slammed the full length of her body into the stone wall, knocking the breath out of her as her fingers slid to the last knuckle clinging to the jagged stone. Gasping as she forced air back into her lungs, Liara flung her right hand up blindly, looking for any sort of handhold at all. Her palm slapped down onto flat stone, and looking up she saw the hole in the wall had finally entered her reach. Still coughing as she remembered how to breathe, she swung up her left hand to join the right and, after pausing to brace herself, dragged herself painfully up over the lip of the hole in the wall.
Once her torso cleared the rim, Liara quickly rolled onto her back, pulling up her legs and swinging them out of the way of another vorcha, desperate to stop her from escaping as it slammed into the stone before plummeting out of view. Looking behind her as she rolled her wrists to try to ease the strained muscles, Liara found herself staring down a dark, vaguely circular tunnel, about three feet in diameter. Glancing back towards the chamber below, Liara saw the entire floor covered in angry vorcha as even more continued to pull themselves out of tunnels similar to the one she had just climbed into.
Figuring any place was better than here, she turned back towards the tunnel and started crawling forwards, activating her omnitool to light the way. As she dragged herself over the rough and uncomfortable stone tunnel, Liara muttered to herself, "If those mercenaires aren't the best I have ever seen, I'm getting a refund."
Shepard was having a pretty shitty day, all things considered. Her knuckles simmered with the familiar dull pain of punching armor plating, and judging by the ache slowly building in her right thigh she was going to be sore from getting stepped on by that krogan. She ran a hand through her short hair and sighed in annoyance as the disgruntled looking turian in a police uniform finally looked up from the data pad he had been reading for the past few minutes.
"Right, so it says here that you, and I quote, 'exploded an entire bar like it was a soggy piñata.' Would you like to make a comment, or do we wanna skip right to the paying for damages part?"
Looking past the turian, Shepard took in what at one point had honestly been a pretty good little dive bar, complete with an old human jukebox, a combination dance floor and lobby, and a loaded bar. Now, however, the dance floor had a suspiciously human-shaped hole in it, half of the bar was smashed to shards of sticky glass, and shattered remains of wood tables were scattered around like a woodchipper had gotten loose and developed a grudge against modern furniture.
Returning her gaze to the turian, she crossed her arms and shrugged as she said, "Those assholes tried to mug one of my crew, so we defended ourselves."
The turian's mandibles flexed in annoyance as he replied, "Yeah well you 'defended yourselves' so well that we're still picking guys out of the ceiling." As he spoke, the sound of crumbling drywall filled the air as a salarian, who until now had been half buried into the ceiling above the bar, fell to the ground with a dull thud.
A snort of laughter erupted from Shepard's right, and looking over with a deadpan expression she saw said almost-mugged crewmate trying to poorly disguise her laughter as a set of distorted coughs echoing through the mouthpiece of her envirosuit. Behind her, Garrus lightly slapped her on the shoulder with a reprimanding expression, despite how his own mandibles were trembling with suppressed humor.
With a roll of her eyes Shepard faced the cop once again as she set her jaw before saying, "Look, Tali, Garrus, and I just came here for a good time and honestly, I'm feeling pretty attacked right now."
The turian opened his mouth to protest, but Shepard cut him off with a raised hand, saying, "But, since we did let the fight get a little out of hand, I'll pay for whatever the damage is."
Eyes narrowing skeptically, the turian glared at the three of them before looking down at his data pad and swiping around for a few seconds before he turned the pad around, revealing a name and an annoyingly high price tag as he said, "Just pay this person this amount and get out of here before I actually decide to arrest you for something." Jaw flexing in annoyance, Shepard pulled up her omnitool and entered the name into it before confirming the payment, staring down the cop the whole time. Once the wire was sent, she turned to clap Tali on the shoulder and led the three of them out the remains of the front door, leaving the turian cop to stand around in the debris.
Once outside, Shepard turned to face the now-crooked sign reading "Spit-time Speedies" before sighing and turning to face her crew. Garrus was pointedly avoiding eye contact as Tali stepped forwards, awkwardly wringing her hands together as she said, "Shepard, I'm sorry I got us into trouble again. I can pay you back for the damages if you want, I've been saving up."
Shepard waved her hand dismissively as she replied, "Nah, don't worry about it. I'd be willing to pay a lot more to keep you guys safe."
Garrus snorted, saying, "Honestly, the expression that human made after you punched his friend into the ceiling made the whole thing worth it."
Cracking a grin, Shepard punched him in the shoulder and said, "You're just glad that it's not your fault we got busted for fighting in public again." As she spoke, she began walking out away from the ruined bar and down the side of the nearby road, her friends following close behind. The sky above was a nice, light shade of cloudless blue, and bordering the small colony the Shepherds were currently stationed in were rolling, purple hills of grain in every direction.
A quick vibration buzzed her wrist as her omnitool alerted her to new messages, and as she opened her inbox Tali muttered, "You'd think that since we're mercenaries we would make more money than we lose for fighting people."
Shepard huffed out a short laugh in response, before her grin faltered as she found herself looking at two new messages from her bank. Wincing, she opened the first to find a message full of cautionary language about nearing the bottom of her account and threats of overdraft charges.
As if reading her mind, Garrus spoke up from the back of the group as he asked, "So, Shepard, how are we doing financially after this one?"
Turning to look back over her shoulder, Shepard slapped on her most charming grin and replied, "We're doing as good as ever, don't worry about it."
In response, Garrus just muttered, "Damn, that bad huh," before Tali jabbed him in the side with an elbow.
Rolling her eyes, Shepard returned to perusing her messages, opening up the second bank statement as she figured she might as well get it all over with at once. However, instead of more threats of poverty related actions, she found herself looking at a deposit of 50,000 credits into her account. Brow raising in surprise, she quickly opened the third message.
Hello, my name is Doctor Liara T'Soni. I have become stuck in a rather dangerous situation, and I would be interested in hiring your services to ensure my own survival. I am unsure if this amount of credits will be sufficient, but I am willing to pay more once you have helped me escape. I look forward to a very swift response.
Confused enough to stop walking, Shepard read and reread the message, slowly feeling laughter bubble up through her chest. By the time Garrus and Tali started trying to peer over her shoulder to read the message, Shepard was practically bouncing on the balls of her feet with energy.
Turning to face the gang with a wide grin, Shepard looked both of them in the eye before saying, "We got a job."
Tali clapped her hands together happily as Garrus crossed his arms skeptically and asked, "Is this an actual job or another thing where we volunteer our services to help out some good people in need?" Looking down to see Tali glaring up at him, Garrus raised his hands defensively, continuing, "Not that I have anything wrong with helping people, I'm just curious."
Shepard slapped his shoulder amiably as she resumed walking, saying back over her shoulder, "Get your ass to the ship and I might decide to tell you." Confident her friends were close behind, Shepard cracked her knuckles, soreness from earlier already forgotten. It was time to go rescue a doctor.
The story begins for real! I'm having a pretty great time with this already but I also haven't actually written anything like this for almost four years so any tips or tricks would be appreciated! Or just tell me about your fav ME npc literally i'm down for whatever. I'll be updating this with more characters and ships as it goes along, but the main characters are gonna be Liara and Shep. As a final thing, i made a bioware tumblr for this so if any of you are on there feel free to follow me at shebberd. Anyways hope you enjoyed!