Kaiden's POV

I glanced at Wrex as he braced himself against the door to keep it shut as the things on the other side tried to get in. I brought up my Omni-tool and called Shepard, but the connection didn't go through. I quickly checked to make sure everything was working right. When I saw the problem I cursed, "Dammit!"

I drew in a breath and looked at Wrex. He was looking at me, waiting for an explanation. I moved my arms out to my sides in a large shrug, "Comms are jammed. That's probably why we couldn't reach Dazac and Liara."

"Probably," Wrex repeated as he held fast against the constant pushing from the other side. "Got any ideas how we get out of this mess?"

I slammed my back against the wall and let it hold my weight while bringing a hand to my head. I had a massive headache.

"I've got one," Wrex informed me, immediately drawing my attention. He grinned. A Krogan grinning is disturbing.

"Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?" I asked.

"Are you kidding?" Wrex said, "This will be fun." He looked at the door thoughtfully for a moment and then back to me. "Human's can go into Blood Rage, right?"

My eyes widened at the suggestion and I replied, shaking my head, "No. No, we don't."

"Oh," was the only reply that came from him. Several moments passed before he shrugged, "Well, just try not to get in the way then."

"The way?" I asked incredulously, "What is that supposed to mean"

Wrex replied by glancing over his shoulder at me with a dangerous look before turning back to the door. He started pushing against the door, groaning with the effort. I was surprised when he started glowing with biotic power. I hadn't realized he had biotics! With a yell and final push he used raw strength combined with biotics and blasted the door away, shoving back all the colonists... or former colonists that had been trying to get in.

He laughed and then bellowed loudly before charging straight into the mob. I decided to stay back and pick off any stragglers, or creatures getting thrown through the air, but not dying. I was using up all the heat the rifle could take just to drop one of them. These things were tough!

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Garrus's POV

"God," Ashley said, "It's like in those horror vids about the end of days."

"Well, unless you know something I don't or are hiding a camera somewhere," I said sarcastically while smirking, "This isn't a vid. Though, if they do make it into one, how much do you think I could get off the royalties? Thirty, or forty percent seems reasonable."

Ashley groaned and didn't reply, getting a chuckle from me before with both turned back to watching what was going on below. Shepard had told us to get to the highest point. The highest point just so happened to be the far end of a crane arm that was sat almost in the center of the colony. It didn't look like any crane I had ever seen, especially with that glass box at the bottom with all the levers and buttons in it. I figured it was probably a human thing.

"So," I stated, "Comms are jammed completely, meaning the jamming equipment has to be in the area. Shepard and Tali still haven't come out of that crate they went into, so there must be something of interest there. And finally we have Wrex and Kaiden... killing all the attacking colonists-turned-horror vid-monsters."

"You forgot one thing," Ash said, making me look away from my scope and to her. She pointed toward the east side of the colony as she continued, "Look's like the geth didn't want to miss the party."

I looked at the squad of ten geth start spreading out in a search pattern. I had to give them credit. They were efficient and didn't waste any time. "Meh," I said, "They're pry just here to crash the party. Take all the booze and run off leaving some kids explosives behind."

"Kid's explosive's? You give your kids explosive's?!" Ashley said in disbelief.

I shrugged and turned back to my scope, "They're turians, they can handle it. It's not like their going around blowing off their mandibles... usually. So, who do we go help?"

I heard Ashley making a quiet 'hmm' sound before hearing a snap I'd come to associate with humans snapping their fingers together. Spirit's know, how they do it.

"I've got an idea," Ashley said, a smile evident in her tone, "But it's going to require some very precise timing. Think you can handle it?"

I backed off my scope and blinked before turning to look at her with a smirk on her face. I couldn't help but smile back as I replied, "Challenge accepted."

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Shepard's POV

Tali ran her hand along the slimy growth on the wall as we looked around. "Keelah... what is all this?"

I ran my hand over it too and looked at it on the fingers of my glove. "I think we're close to the Thorian," I said.

I looked at Tali as her gaze turned to me. She asked, "Shouldn't we go find the others then?"

I nodded, "Yeah, we should." I stepped back from the wall, Tali following close to me. We'd just reached the bottom of the staircase and started up when I felt my leg tugging on something. I looked down to see a green, thorny, vine wrapped around my calf. I immediately grabbed at it to try and pull it off. It suddenly jerked me and I fell to the bottom of the stairs.

I felt Tali grab the neck of my armor and start pulling on it while I kept at the vine, but the damned thing wouldn't budge and I was starting to feel the pressure from its hold. I was suddenly jerked again and heard Tali shout out despairingly as I was dragged rapidly across the floor. I rolled onto my stomach and tried to grab at something, anything before finally getting a grip on the edge of a wall as the vine tried dragging my around a corner.

Clawing at the wall was only making me slide faster though. I cursed to myself for getting into the mess and then looked up at Tali, "Go get the others! Go Tali!" I tried to hold my grip and managed it for about half a second before I lost it and was dragged away. I heard Tali screaming.

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"We're lost," I finally admitted as Liara and I stopped to rest.

She nearly shouted, "Lost? How can we be lost when you know about the colony already?"

"Nothing's the same!" I yelled, my exhaustion and nerves making me lash out. I realized it a moment later and calmed down. "I'm sorry, it's just... this isn't what things were like in the game. This is all more..."

"Real?" she asked as she crossed her arms in front of her.

I sighed, "I was going to say 'complete' but 'real' works just fine."

Liara dropped her arms and took a few steps away. She shook her head as she brought a hand up to her forehead, "I can't believe this. We had everything ready, knew what we were here to do and how to do it. It was all planned out, but, now this... when we finally get to the others, oh, I don't even want to think of how embarrassed I'll be."

I heaved a sigh before replying, "Yeah, well, you know how it goes, 'the best laid plans' and all."

"The what?" she asked.

I looked at her to see her frowning at me in complete confusion. Then I finally realized my mistake. She was asari. I laughed at myself and replied, "Sorry. It's an old human saying; 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.'"

She smiled again finally, "I like that. Though, I think the 'men' part is a bit too specific for the modern era."

I chuckled and nodded, "Yeah, probably." I leaned my head back to look up at the ceiling and smiled at another thought. "Murphy's always gotta tag along," I said musingly and then turned to Liara. She was looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to explain. "Murphy's Law," I explained, "It says that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong."

Liara blinked for a moment before suddenly doubling over and laughing. I just smiled. She had a very light laugh, something that you enjoyed listening to. I wasn't quite sure what she had found so funny, but I wasn't going to complain. So I just stood there and smiled at her until she had settled down and we continued on our way.


A/N: It's odd. Initially I wasn't looking forward to writing Feros. I didn't really see how I could flare it up a bit. I considered going with a 'paragon' option that was originally planned but never went into the game where you could just injure the Thorian's nodes to within a certain amount and move on, that way it would be weakened and have to negotiate. I tossed the idea out though because I couldn't really see how it could make an impact on things.

So, I went for changing up quite a few things about how the mission itself goes. I made the colony bigger, because let's be honest, in reality it would be bigger. Most of the maps for places like that were very boxed in, simply because there were limits on what the games could do. So there will be more changes like that later on. I'm also changing the order in which things are done, as you probably already guessed, I'm dealing with the Thorian first. That doesn't mean there's suddenly no reason to go to exogeni. I am going there, and it's in those chapters that I'm planning something I think is pretty special:

A moral dilemma. Like the ones in the games. One where Dazac is going to have to make a 'paragon' or 'renegade' choice that WILL have an affect on things, and Dazac specifically, from thereon out. These sorts of choices wil continue throughout this story.

So, you can look forward to that, and I'll end this obnoxiously long A/N.