Author Note: Another Mass Effect fic approachs to the open. It wasn't till recently that I got really interested in writing a Mass Effect Fic, especially one with reincarnation. I was planning to do a fic where the MC suddenly wakes up in the ME Universe but I decided againist it, I don't think I would've gotten far with that fic. This idea clicked to me, one where reincarnation happens and where the MC is actually the sibiling of Commander Shepard.

I plan for this fic to be based around adventure with some light hearted humour and family of course, the relationship between brother and sister. It will be a mixture with both seriousness and humouress moments.

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Vanguard and Protector

Chapter 1: Shepard and Shepard

Nick Right was in an endless void, he considered it to be a limbo of transferring from life to death. It was strangely peaceful, with the running of white noise and the heartbeat ever so constant in the background. He'd reflected on his past life, but he was never one to really go deep into it, he was going to miss his family - friends and adventures but the time in Limbo really had him move past all the grief. He lost track after twenty minutes or so being in the voice.

And when he did, he got incredibly bored. He wasn't expecting much after life and during death. But he was expecting a welcome from some being of higher standards to take him either to the good old down under or up to that big blue box in the sky but apparently not! No, instead he is stuck here. Maybe this is punishment. Eternal boredom. Great. If this was revenge for the time he accidentally stepped on the bug, that was not his fault!

He lived thirty years of his life in the United Kingdom, born in Brighton and moved to London to find work when he was twenty one years of age. Nick worked in the banking industry, but it wasn't particularly interesting and his social life was down the drain, he didn't consider himself to be an introvert but neither an extrovert, he had his small group of friends and that was that. He'd couldn't remember how he died and why in the fact, it all seemed like a mushed up blur mixed into one. Hm, maybe if something could come and get him, he could ask them how he died - otherwise, he'll make a story about some epic battle and dying for his soldiers rather than a banker who probably tripped up on the pavement and smashed headfirst into a lamp.

However, despite his humour, Nick found it odd that he was able to think. He felt like he had a physical growing presence but nothing happening mentally. He felt so small, so crumpled up. It was slightly claustrophobic, yet he had such freedom to think.

Limbo was strange.

As Nick pondered to himself, he felt a pull. Then another pull. It continued to keep on trying, and it certainly had a physical presence to it. Was this his time finally? Had something or someone found him in this strange black limboness?

He felt the pulling force stop for at least a minute and Nick was left to wonder what it was about before feeling another forceful pull and then a rush of both sound and cold wind hit him. He couldn't make out what was happening, everything seemed so overwhelming.

"It is a baby boy!" He heard right next to him, above him.

'Baby? What…?'

Nick concentrated on the physical presence, it felt like it was hugging him and holding him by his back. Alongside with that, a warm blanket like feeling enveloped him and he wasn't going to lie. It was nice.

'Oh! Oh! I think I can open my eyes.' Truth to be told, it was quite hard for him to do so, he managed to though. And he was shocked. Instead of finding himself in a godly (or non-godly) place, he found himself in a hospital of some kind. Around him, there were two doctors, though one seemed quite happy and the other seemed pleased?

He tried to open up his mouth and talk, but he couldn't - neither could he move his arms or legs. Though, he could barely keep his eyes open, he trailed down to his body….

I'm a baby.

Nick was in shock, he wasn't in an endless void! He was in a damn womb! How did he go from being a fully fledged adult to being a baby. How the hell is he even remembering this? Babies' brains aren't that developed! Too many questions ran through his head, those questions stopped when one of the doctors talked.

"Henry and Jane huh hon? Look, Henry has his eyes open. Aw, it is quite cute." The doctor, no Nick's father, said. Nick guessed he was called Henry and hoped he wasn't a female. He wasn't sure how he'd react to that. Nick has to also deal with the problem of having a sister and he somewhat wished that his parents….his original parents made another so that he could have experience.

Another problem is that he'll have to get used to being called Henry rather than Nick now, and he was sure that his last name wasn't going to be "Right" since the chances of that are quite slim. Yeah, Nick didn't like reincarnation and it certainly was going to be a ride.

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It had been around 12 months or so since Henry was born. During the first month and some of the second, he was still coming to terms of his reincarnation. Firstly, he was reincarnated into the Mass Effect universe, obviously he had played the Mass Effect games since he was near his late teens and early twenties. He didn't exactly have the best remembrance of the games but he was certain that this universe was the Mass Effect one. Secondly, his last name was Shepard, and he had a sister called Jane Shepard. His mother was called Hannah and his father was called Uriah. So it was either him that was going to be "Commander Shepard" or his sister.

He wasn't too fond of being in the military, even if it was Alliance. Henry knew about the backgrounds, and he was sure that they were in the...Spaced? Spacer? Background, the one where Shepard moved from post to post as both of their parents were in the Alliance. Honestly, he had hit the ball on that one, the other two backgrounds weren't very nice or good. One of them was about being attacked by slavers and the other being a part of a gang on Earth.

There are positives of having an adult brain in a baby, and there are also negatives. The body of a baby needs so much rest and he swore that he had at least napped ten times in a day, the positive being that he had an head start to get ready in the world. While he can't do anything physically, he can learn by watching, learning how the Alliance works, how the technology works and so on. The fact he can't move is quite annoying, he had to be carried everywhere! So did Jane but the point is that he lost his dignity since he will remember this and his sister won't.

Though, the benefits of being able to stay in a...cot is that their room has a window which looks out into space. It was quite amazing to see real life spaceships move around in space. Henry would've never thought about seeing this in his life. In his previous life, he should say. Thankfully, both his father and mother had been given permission to take leave onto a station to basically parent both him and Jane.

From what Henry overheard in conversations between Hannah and Uriah, Uriah was a Alliance Marine, he wasn't sure what rank but it could be considered high. This often meant that he would certainly see combat duty on the ground, especially since the First Contact War hasn't even started yet and Henry did not want to think about the Skyllian Blitz, but that is almost two and a bit decades away. It also explains why Uriah is quite a muscular man, the training must be quite harsh for him. Uriah did always like his brown beard and never was the one to shave it off.

His mother on the other hand was in the Alliance Navy, acting as a Lieutenant. Henry only heard about that after a call between his mother and a guy called Zabaleta and that she serves on the SSV Einstein. The name did seem familiar, obviously Albert Einstein but in terms of the Mass Effect game. Henry couldn't pinpoint it, was it important? Probably not, maybe it was mentioned in the background somewhere.

Henry snaps out of his daze, both his mother and father were in the room alongside his sister. They weren't in the cot but crawling around the floor and Jane was playing with their father. Henry wasn't planning to join in this "playing.", even if his parents tried to encourage it. No, he instead liked to sit back and watch. He is going to treat his early life as if he was retired! And no one will stop him. He did try to crawl out once from the cot though, that didn't end well for him.

"Jane! Ah, my daughter is standing up. Look, Hannah!" Uriah exclaimed. Henry looked from his mother to Jane as well, if his eyes didn't widen physically - they certainly widened mentally. Yup, his sister was standing before him.

'That bastard! She is standing up before me? What the hell!? How has my sister standing up before me? A fully fledged adult in a baby's mind and yet she stood up before me! What the hell?' Henry exclaimed in his head, that was it! He was going to stand up. He tried his best, pushed on the floor and slowly stood up.

Before he fell face first onto the floor. He sighed, mentally of course, in contempt. He did his best to glare at Jane and then at a snickering mother above him. Damn her. Well, at least his mother did try to help him up the second time - Henry swore if his parents brought up that he had to be assisted with walking, he would shove them out of the closest airlock.

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"Tom and Anna, could you give out the test results to everyone?" The teacher asked at the front of the classroom, giving the two pairs of stacked paper to both kids. Henry tapped his fingers on the desk, idly staring at the digital clock on the wall. Arcturus Station was quite huge and his parents just got stationed here around six months ago or so, therefore both him and Jane had to move as well.

It was not joyful being a kid again, especially having the mentality of a thirty year old male. Henry wasn't expecting to have many "friends" or actually care about any of this stuff. Like Maths! This was too easy! That did mean he could focus on the proper things such as knowing more about the history of different species, how the Alliance found the Prothean Archives which boosted our technology tenfold.

Ah yeah, the First Contact War happened. It was one of those things that came and went for Henry. Though it didn't have much of an effect on him, humankind begs to differ. The only time he did care is when his father was deployed during the First Contact War. That was a long three months, especially since his mother seemed to worry. She wasn't stationed on a warship since she had to take care of the kids. Fortunately, his father had come back from the war, a little bit scuffed up but he survived. Otherwise, nothing of interest really happened except for major things such as the humans joining the council and everyone getting a translator implant into their noggins. The animosity against the Turians is quite fresh and Henry is fairly sure to this day, he stills hear some kid talking about the "bird guys" being weak and the general sort of racism. Maybe if Henry didn't have the knowledge from his previous life, he'd be part of the racists and hate the Turians just like any other ordinary guy, but he always considered himself to be an open thinker.

He was also getting used to the fact that he now had American and Canadian descent (His father was American and his mother was Canadian), and he had to strike the balance of not speaking like an English bloke. It was in his heart that he was British, not like it matters anymore, Henry was sure that he'd get past it, the thing he wasn't sure is how he would wrap his mind around being reincarnated. Six years seems like quite a long time to think and dwell on it but it really isn't. He wasn't sure how he had retained the knowledge and why specifically this universe and he had to at least try to blend it and act curious about the world. (Which he was but not in the way a child would be curious.) His parents did seem concerned when he didn't make any friends or seem to be more "mature" than the other kids, he did give an half-arsed excuse of just not interested and having his sister as a friend. Yeah, that is something a kid would say but Henry should've expected the lecture from his parents about how he needed to expand out and enjoy having other people rather than family members to rely on.

Henry looked down at the paper that...Tom(?) gave to him. A one-hundred percent on the right hand corner of the A5 page, circled in red. The rest of the questions were ticked off, all correct. Maths around this year was stupidly easy, Henry was technically cheating but no one had to know that. The teachers called him a genius just because he got one hundred percent, Henry argued that he wasn't to his parents. He also wanted to make sure that his parents didn't focus on him too much as this "secret genius" of a boy and not outshadow Jane in the earlier stages of life. Jane, herself, was quite smart (even if Henry didn't help her from time to time.)

The time on the digital clock hit 15:00 (Arcturus Station time) and a minute after, the teacher told the class to pack up. Henry placed his stuff away into his bag and stood up. He placed his chair into the desk and waited for the teacher to dismiss them.

When the teacher did, he immediately walked out from the classroom and made his way to the front yard. Despite Arcturus Station being a military and political headquarters of the Alliance, it did include civilian sectors for people working in the station to use. Henry imagined it to be a smaller version of the Citadel. The atmosphere gave a similar vibe with the white painted walls and the blue flag of the Alliance being flown around. The station even had its own river for some odd reason, he was fairly sure no tourists would be here to see it. Maybe to give a feeling of "home", yet in this life, he never been to Earth. Henry made a note to see if Brighton had changed at all and how London is doing. He doubted that his previous house and apartment were still there, and he knew that "Nick Right", his family and friends didn't exist in this universe. He checked on his parent's terminal, (the benefits of being an innocent child) and he wasn't going to lie to himself, he did feel some pain when he couldn't find anyone that he used to know. It sucked.

Henry waited by the front gate inside the school's premises, leaning on the left white pillar. He idly watched as parents and kids walked out of the school or stood around and chatted about things. He was left undisturbed for the most part, thank god for that, he didn't want to explain for the one hundredth time that he was waiting for his sister. Thinking about his sister, he saw her, walking down the path to the gate.

Great. Henry thought to himself as he looked towards the company she was keeping. He didn't like Jane's "supposed" friends. He might judge too harshly but he really didn't care. Those kids were vile and he was certain they would turn more cruel. He didn't know why Jane kept them around or even talked to them. If Henry remembered correctly, there was a Paragon and Renegade system in Mass Effect, he never thought about things in the long-term but he didn't really want his sister to be a Renegade.

Jane departed from her group and approached Henry. He gave a small smile and a wave before pushing from the pillar and joining her in walking away from the school and back to the apartment they were living in.

"You know...you should probably not hang out with the group you do hang out with." Henry said, caution in his voice. He had to remember that he was talking to a kid, not an adult.

"Huh?" Jane responded, quite confused by what Henry had said. "Why?"

"Well, they don't really seem to be the best group to be friends with." Henry slightly winced, it was really hard for him to explain. "They are like...a bad sort of people to be with. Like Villains for example and you know how Mum's with your group."

"I know what Mum said and she is wrong." Jane retorted. "And so are you! They are my friends, their parents are like us. In the army, some others are in these really special jobs, the type that lead countries and even the Alliance."

"They are called Politicians." Henry cut in, a slight deadpan in his voice.

"Yeah, well you aren't a Politician!" Thank god for that. "Besides, you don't have any friends. All you do is sit around, read the textbooks and be alone. You don't know what it is like to be around other people."

"Ouch." Henry chuckled, but a frown did form on his face right after. "Ah, you wouldn't understand. Maybe when you are older, maybe not." To be honest, it was slightly lonely without people who he could actually converse with. The teachers treated him like a kid and truth be told, he did push other kids away, maybe they seem him as weird. Different. Jane wouldn't understand the pain that Henry had, but he wasn't going to be a downer.

"You are the same age as me!" Jane yelled, with a slightly annoyed tone. Henry's frown turned into a smirk as he shook his head. His own secret little joke.

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"We're home." Henry called out, he placed his trainers onto one of the shoe racks and made his way inside. Jane followed a minute after him into the main area of the apartment. It wasn't the smallest apartment but it wasn't the biggest. It had a normal sized living room, two bedrooms, a small kitchen and the bathroom. They made due to what they had and it somewhat had a homey feel to it. The view from the living room looked down onto the river, several apartments on the other side and there was a traffic of shuttles at most times.

"Welcome back, how was school?" Their caretaker, Joshua Kelt, asked.

"It was fine." Henry said, shrugging his shoulders as he placed his bag on the side of the wall. Henry didn't know much about Josh outside the fact that he was a guard for one of the Ambassadors on the station, he worked the night-shift and was close friends with his parents. Both Hannah and Uriah worked on the station, Hannah helped out with new navy recruits while Uriah was there as a reservist in case of a station attack, he did help out in other areas as well. They have to leave early in the morning and come back late at night, so it made sense for them to have a caretaker. Plus, Henry was sure that Kelt slept in the apartment when him and Jane were both at school. Jane headed to their room, probably to go onto her Omni-Tool or something. Henry didn't know why their parents bothered putting implants into them when he was certain they were gonna have it be modified later to fit.

Henry made his way to the kitchen, he looked up to the counter and frowned. He was too small to reach up to the kettle and he could barely open up the fridge. Henry never got used to being so small, and it took up most of his pride to have to ask to get something.

'Maybe if I could just… ' He jumped up and attempted his best to hit the on switch on the kettle, instead he just hurt his hand. Argh! Ow! He shook his hand and winced in pain, he

shouldn't have done it at full force. Alright, time for plan B.

Henry headed back into the living room, he looks towards Josh and speaks out. "Hey Josh, could you make me some tea and a ham sandwich as well? The usual will do." And there goes the last of his dignity.

"Still can't get to the counter? Ah, sure thing kid." Josh smirked and headed into the kitchen. Henry mentally gave him the middle finger. He hated asking other people to make him stuff that he could do himself. Henry stopped in his tracks for a moment, he had to deal with hormones as well. That was not going to be fun for anyone, mostly him though.

He headed over towards the couch, noticing that on the wooden team table that there was a book on Prothean Archaeology, Technology and theories. He picked up the book and started to read through it. The book itself was nothing fancy, it obviously was inciting the sites where Prothean technology was found and how it advanced all species' technology forward but at least twenty or so years. This book seemed to be updated with the Prothean Archives on Mars. While it was interesting, Henry was more interested in how he could use this in the future. Specifically if he didn't plan to join the Military, what would he do? He had decided on either becoming an Engineer or a Researcher. The later option seemed to be appealing to Henry more.

There was also the issue of the Reapers and all the events that will ensure during the later years. Before where Mass Effect Starts, what happens during it and so on. Henry was never a betting man, nor did he think of himself as one to change anything. He didn't feel special that he had been reincarnated, quite the opposite. He feels like the knowledge of his previous life wasn't meant to come with him, that he was meant to start life anew. He can't change that however, but he could make it easier on his sister and maybe live a good life. He was their family now, and he doesn't plan to let things slide away. If he was being honest, he didn't want to partake in events that happen during Mass Effect, but in a moral way, he couldn't have it weigh on his consciousness.

"You know, I think you are the only kid that I know of that reads complex stuff, for your age group, and acts more mature than usual." Josh commented as he entered the room.

Henry jumped slightly, more out of being startled rather than being scared. "Ah, well, I find these things interesting and as I said to my parents, my sister is my friend."

'That sounded sad, even for me.'

"I doubt you are telling the truth, kid. Besides, Jane has her own set of friends and I know how your mother thinks about them and I'm sure you think the same." Josh replied, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. "You really should try to branch out."

"That's exactly what Jane said to me. Except more bluntly and with no care about my feelings. I just think differently to everyone else in that school. I ain't interested." Henry shrugged.

"I am your caretaker but if you think that is for the best…" Josh trailed off, Henry didn't bother to give a reply to that, leaving them both in silence. After a minute or so, Josh went away from the living room to the kitchen, most likely finishing everything up.

As Josh entered back into the room, both with the tea in his left hand and the sandwich on a plate in his right hand, Henry stood up from the couch, closing the book and taking it with him. He headed over towards Josh and took the plate and the cup. Obviously Josh told him to be careful with it, and Henry,being the responsible kid he was, just rolled his eyes and nodded.

Henry headed to the bedroom, entering into it. Jane was on the right side on her bed, and as Henry suspected, on her Omni-Tool. Henry placed the tea and plate on a small table next to his bed, which was on the left side. He jumped onto the bed, sparing no glance to Jane and started to dig into his sandwich. Henry could not wait for the day where he and Jane get their own room. It would make life so much more easier on him.

After finishing up his sandwich, he laid on the bed, looking up towards the ceiling with his hands behind his back. Even after six years being here, he couldn't believe that he got reincarnated and even in a universe where everything shouldn't exist yet it does. He may become a researcher, but he will never research into how that sort of stuff works. It was beyond his own comprehension. He closed his eyes and slowly drifted to sleep.

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A/N: And that's chapter one done. I appreciate any reviews, follows and favourites.