Author's Notes: Welcome to my sparkling brand-new fanfic, one of two, featuring... me! I finally bit the bullet and decided to go for the obligatory self-insert that seems to be so popular in the Mass Effect fandom. Featuring action, drama, incompetence, and following along the game plot – with a few twists, to keep things fresh.

The idea for this fic was straightforward enough. Being transplanted into the Mass Effect universe, as things start to go South and the reapers make their move, is probably the most common self-insert. I have a few ideas to keep the reading fresh, and unpredictable. To a point :)

I had another idea, where plot diverges very strongly, and which I will be putting up – and writing – in parallel to this one. I figured hey, it's my fanfic page, why the heck not? Double dose of ego feeding. If you'd like to read something quite different from the plot-following self-inserts, that may be more your thing. "My Effect: Divergence".

One of the most distinctive features of this fic, I think, will be me.

…

Yeah, that sounded better in my head, let me explain. By the time you're done with chapter, dunno, say five, you'll probably feel a strong urge to stab my incompetent face. That's normal. While everyone likes their self-insert to do well in whatever it is they're writing, I figured a more... candid representation of how things usually go down for me, while in the Mass Effect universe, would be more entertaining to the reader. And serve as a good plot device to all the changes that are going to happen due to my meddlesome self.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. And thanks for reading!

Red explosions. That's what I got; red explosions which magically turned all the reapers off, destroyed every relay, and then some nonsense about the Normandy crash landing on a planet and all that.

Holy hell. Suddenly, all the crying and gnashing of teeth on the internet made sense. This was worse than the end of Knights of the Old Republic II. And that's saying something! And I was watching it in glorious HD, sixty inches of 1080p and 5.1 surround sound.

"Holy hell, what a disaster."

I took to the internet as I reloaded, and started perusing the official forums. It wasn't my first look, but I had tried to stay a little away from it until I was done with the game. For what I could see, some people liked the end. A lot more were up in arms.

"Shit, who can blame them?" I muttered, looking at the pages and pages of unshackled bitching.

Meanwhile, I had re-done the final bit, and my TV was blaring with green explosions. Green. I watched it go for a few seconds, I wasn't sure whether I had chosen a different end, or just my TV was having colour schizophrenia. But when Joker hobbled off the Normandy, followed by EDI, I saw it was indeed a different ending.

"How the hell can this be an ending?" I yelled at the TV. "Shepard choosing to overwrite the whole galaxy's living beings because he says so? You can't be serious! He'd never do that! And it looks the bloody same!"

A deep breath later, and I had calmed down. I really didn't want to throw the controller at the TV. Damn, that was bad. I wondered whether they were rushed by EA to finish it no matter what, and ended up with that.

As I read the forums, I hit several posts with people re-writing the endings. From small paragraphs to full-blown fanfics. That was an idea. I could fix that. Of course, not that I was thinking I could actually fix anything; while I think highly of myself there is a limit to my hubris.

I think.

Sinking into the sofa, I put my legs up, and then put the laptop on my actual lap.

"Okay, okay, I can fix this," I muttered. I fired up LibreOffice, and started thinking. And as I often do when thinking, I started talking to myself out loud. Yeah, I do get a lot of looks, specially because I think better when I'm on my feet, so I'll be taking a walk on the park, and muttering to myself half the time.

I'm thinking of getting some really old clothes for when I go out. It'll probably help. And be amusing.

"Okay, what do we have? The starchild." I took one of my paper pads, and wrote that down. "That's got to go. I mean seriously, it's a literal deus ex machina, no foreshadowing, nothing, and all it does is talk to the player."

I crossed the starchild on the paper. It felt better than it should have.

"Then the reapers," I wrote them down. "Do we even need to know why the reapers do what they do?" I stopped to think about it, and came to a realization. I was lacking on background here. I took the paper and wrote down a note next to the reapers – read more Lovecraft.

So really, it came down to the organics vs. synthetics hoopla, and the Reapers being somewhere in between.

"Maybe it's all about the conflict. The reapers show up and win unless organics and synthetics stand together. Maybe that could work."

I jotted it down. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Okay, I can fix this," I said again. "What about the rest of the game? If all that happens is that the relays blow up... Heck, that pretty much makes the rest of the game pointless." I was reminded of the Star Control games. Yeah, if only Mass Effect 3 had been more like those. A dynamic fight for the galaxy somehow.

But that was beyond the scope of a fic. I'm not a games designer, and not much of a writer to begin with – I do fanfics, after all. I'm good at other stuff, which pays the bills.

"I can fix this," I muttered. I was feeling rather sleepy, which really shouldn't have been surprising. I had stayed up waaaay too late. It happens, once one smells the ending coming, it's hard to just wait. Maybe I had poor self control.

I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but I came up with a very vivid dream. The inside of a spaceship, I could tell as much. There were stars outside, and some of them were moving. Not in a "starfield screensaver" kind of way. They were drifting along in several different directions.

"Are you sure?"

It was a feminine voice. Then the owner came into view, not sure if I turned or not. Dreams feel funny that way, and not in a "cannibal asks another if the clown tastes funny" kind of way. She was... I couldn't quite make the features. White. White hair, pale skin, blue eyes – bright blue – kinda almost glowing.

Somehow, I knew what she meant. Mass Effect. Well, it was my dream, so it was hardly a surprise I knew what she meant.

"Sure. It's really not hard to come up with a better way to end it."

She smiled. Then there was a bang, and I woke up.

The first thing I noticed was that I was laying on the ground. Weird, I didn't remember falling off the sofa (I mean, duh!). The second thing I noticed was that the ground was really hard, which is odd because I have very thick carpet all through my house. And a quick look told me I wasn't in the kitchen or the bathroom. In fact, a quick look told me I had no clue where I was.

I was pretty sure I hadn't been out drinking. Even if I had been out drinking, I've never woken up in a place I didn't know – I really don't drink that much. Taking a look around, it looked like I was in one of those shipping containers, reconverted into a house. A bed, a seat and a table, and odd-looking locker of some sort...

Wait a minute.

Before I could put that somewhat muddled thought in order with my sleep-addled brain, another bang like the one I had dreamed of rang through the air. Then more of them, and screams.

I rushed out of the container, and found myself face-first with a whole mob of people running around like headless chickens. I didn't notice at first, but they were dressed weird.

"What the hell's going on?" I yelled. I'm all for headless chicken running, but first I'd rather know the reason for it. Makes it more fun.

"We're under attack!" someone yelled back.

Any chance of making out who had said that was cut short when an explosion rocked the whole mob. I had never seen a large explosion up close, and I had definitely never been thrown back by a close explosion. I was completely lost for several seconds, my ears were ringing, and everything was spinning.

When I got my bearings back I saw I was one of the lucky ones. There were body parts strewn around, and a hell of a lot of blood too.

I was so shocked, I didn't even move. All I could do was look at the carnage, like my brain couldn't quite make out what was happening. The illusion broke when some sort of ungodly roar sounded from the distance, loud enough that it caught everyone's attention. Everyone who was still in one piece.

That's when I turned and saw it. Shrouded in clouds and red lightning, a deep black, large enough that it towered way above the distant buildings.

A fucking Reaper.

I knew. I didn't know why, or how, but I knew. I knew it was real. I knew it was a Reaper. I just knew it.

Mass Effect.

"Are you sure?"

The words from my dream came back to mind. With the image of that girl, woman, whatever. Someone had put me in the Mass Effect universe.

And the Reaper. The image started to make sense in my head. I had seen this before, although with worse textures. Eden Prime.

Eden Prime, the day Sovereign attacked. And that massive black ship in the distance was Sovereign himself.

"That pale glowing bitch!" I shouted. "Why the fuck did-"

New screams interrupted my pointless tirade. And the sound that I came to recognize as gunfire. Futuristic, mass accelerated gunfire.

"What are those things?" someone shouted.

The flashlight heads were quite the clue. "Those are geth," I said. And without another word, I turned around and ran. If it isn't obvious why, think more geth than you can shake a stick at, me unarmed and unarmoured, and not a clue what to do.

Ever heard that thing about being attacked by bears? You don't have to be faster than the bears, just faster than the other people running from the bears. Not that I was thinking about that, because all I was thinking was that I had to get the hell out of dodge. Until Shepard arrived.

Shepard. Dammit, where the hell is he? He didn't show up until the colony was beaten up I think.

I did put some distance between me and the trouble. I may not look like it, but at 6'2", I have long legs, so I can really make hay when I have to. I stopped only when I thought my legs were about to buckle under me, and I couldn't take another step to save my life. Literally.

"Dammit," I muttered, between fast and heavy breaths. I had no idea where I was, there was noone around that I could see. No geth, no colonists, nothing. A few buildings around, and the one I had stopped in front of caught my eye. I stumbled inside with unsteady steps, it was another one of those container-like prefab buildings, only this one was a lot bigger. And packed with stuff. Several lockers lined up one of the walls, tables, benches, it even had proper rooms, with a shower at the back.

The lockers were locked, ironically enough. All except for one. I don't know what I expected to find, guns and armor maybe. That's what one always finds in the game when looking inside containers. I mean, you could be exploring a fifty thousand year old prothean ruin on a planet that has been cut off from the rest of the galaxy since the rachni wars, and the next container you open there will have a shiny new Tsunami shotgun waiting for you.

That makes sense.

In the meantime, I found that the locker did have a suit of armor, and a gun. A pistol, at that. I chuckled softly when I saw it, because it really shouldn't have surprised me at all.

"Well, at least I can get myself some protection," I said as I took the armor out of its place in the locker. Several pieces fell on the floor, which really put the situation in perspective. I had no clue how to put that thing on properly. Also, it was pink. Well, white and pink. "Goddammit, this is Ashley's armor!" I said, rooting through the pieces. To my relief, there was no boob armor. It wasn't Ashley's, but it was the same type.

And yes, it was in pieces.

"Okay, okay, calm down," I said out loud again. "There's got to be a manual somewhere on how to put armor on."

There wasn't. I tried several parts, first the boots and the gloves, which I realized was not going to work over my clothes. So I got down to my T-shirt and boxers, and started again. Chest piece, then started trying to attach the extremities. When I fastened the left glove, a big glowing thing popped out of nowhere, and I may or may not have made a sound like a little girl squeaking.

It was just an omni-tool, which was really cool. I got distracted by it for a few seconds, but since I couldn't figure out the functions, I went back to putting my pink armor back on, this time starting with the helmet. Immediately, the HUD blinked to life, and a message flashed atop the visor.

Please connect to omni-tool for additional functions.

"Uh, what?" I muttered.

I flicked the omni-tool on (which took me a few tries, and must have looked hilarious from the outside, me poking and prodding my left gauntlet trying to bring the thing to life), and started looking for the right option. Nope. There were a lot of options in that thing, I managed to find the VI suit synchronization menu, but I couldn't figure it out. A red dot started flashing on a corner of the hud, I changed the colours of the display, and even shuffled a few things around, but it wasn't actually syncing.

Whatever. I had a small diagram of the armor in a corner, with like half the joints in red – which I assumed meant they weren't properly fastened – as well as all the missing parts, and a gauge for the kinetic barrier. It didn't look like the ones in the games, so I had no idea how good my kinetic barrier was.

I was concentrating on trying to get the thing going so much that a whole platoon of geth could have walked in and I wouldn't have noticed.

Which is why I nearly jumped out of my armor when a roar of rushing air passing overhead sent the shabby construction shaking. There were some shooting sounds outside, and stupid me – me, who was not particularly familiar with what to do in a warzone – rushed out to see what was going on.

Then I saw her. Overhead, just caught a glimpse of her as she flew by. It was enough to recognize the sleek lines.

The Normandy.

I probably would have stood there like an idiot watching it until a geth shot me in the head, but it disappeared fast enough that I didn't have time for it. What I did hear was the sound of fighting, close enough that I could follow it. And when I turned towards the sound, I could see the combatants. Geth, of course, and... a turian.

It was also my first time seeing a turian. Not that I saw him for long, he disappeared just as fast as the Normandy had.

Now, I could say that I was too shocked to do anything. But that'd be redundant, again. It was starting to become a habit. What really happened is that I realized, as soon as he was gone, who it was.

That was Nihlus.

If Nihlus was there, the worst of the attack had passed. The geth were probably on their way to the spaceport to get the beacon, and-

"Oh crap, Saren! He's going to kill him!"

I went back inside and threw the last pieces of armor on, fastening them in whatever way I could. The shots in the distance reminded me I was on the clock, and that Nihlus was about to get his face blown off. I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea, I wasn't even thinking about deciding whether it was a good idea or not. Thinking about canon and whatnot really wasn't something I could do while in the middle of a geth attack.

I took the pistol from the locker, and made sure it worked – it unfolded automatically, and it didn't take me long to find the safety – and off I went. I had shot a pistol before about three times in my life, and always at the range. Shotguns, I had used more often, but hunting shotguns of the 21st century are probably not quite the same as the ones in the Mass Effect universe. But that pistol was the only gun I had found, so I took it. Clipping it to my right tight was easy enough, the magnetic clip worked without having to do anything.

And I ran. Again. The armor was freaking heavy, so all I could really do was jog. I always thought that the way the games don't let you sprint for more than a few meters was rather stupid, since Shepard's probably quite capable of running a very long distance. But with how heavy this armor was, it started to make more sense. And it freaking rattled too.

Dammit Jim, I'm just some guy, not an athlete!

It was a good thing that the guns in this futuristic universe were so freaking loud, because I didn't have the first clue as to where I was. As it turned out, the Eden Prime colony near the spaceport looks nothing like it did in the game. Lots more buildings, actual streets, and people. A lot more dead people.

I tried very hard not to look at the dead. When I came across the first set of dragon's teeth with human corpses impaled on them, I had to stop to throw up.

If you think the dragon's teeth don't look particularly scary or intimidating in the games, then be thankful for low resolution textures and polygonal models. Because in real life – if this was truly real life – the whole thing is sickeningly grotesque. And the smell. Dear sweet triforce, the smell! I moved away from them as soon as I was done heaving, and moved on. I had yet to see a single living geth, but there were quite a few broken ones.

Nihlus' handiwork, I hoped.

My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the turian in the distance, talking with a couple of humans. He gestured towards one of the buildings, then took off running in a different direction.

"Nihlus!" I shouted. He didn't hear me, or didn't care, because he didn't stop. "Shit."

I kept my jog, despite the fact that I was starting to be out of breath. The two humans had seen me, and while they had gone inside the crappy prefab building Nihlus had pointed them to, they kept the door open, and were gesturing for me to come too. It was two of them, a man and a woman

"Are you with the garrison?" the woman said as soon as I got to the door.

"No," I replied, speaking between gasps. "Why?"

"Well..." She looked me up and down, leaving the obvious answer hanging in the air.

"No, I just found this stuff. When the geth attacked. Dammit, where did the turian go?"

"He said he was going to find the beacon. Come in, we should be safe here."

"There is no safe place," the man interrupted. "None of us are safe. We will be judged today."

I looked at him, and everything clicked. It had been a while since I played Mass Effect one, but those two I remembered. Some guy that had gone crazy, and a random colonist. In the game they were just filler; here, they were two very scared survivors.

"Just stay in there. Which way to the spaceport?"

"Wha..." She seemed surprised by my question, but she recovered quickly. "Just go down the hill, you can't miss it. The tram will take you there."

"Great, thanks. Lock this thing and stay down."

I heard the door swish closed behind me as I legged it towards the tram. Luckily it was all downhill, so it was easy enough to do it despite the extra weight. That part of the colony was pretty much as it was in game. Downhill, a weird looking platform... and two turians talking on it.

Saren.

He was easy enough to recognize, that with being taller, grey, evil-looking, and half machine pretty much. They were talking, then Nihlus looked away while Saren moved behind him. He drew his pistol.

"Fuck," I said, and got my pistol out. I was way too far, had been running, and was breathing really hard, but I had to try. "Nihlus!" I shouted, then started shooting.

I was not sure whether it was the luckiest moment of my life, but it had to rank up there. The very first shot I fired hit Saren right on the arm. Not that it made it past his shields, but it threw his aim off, and the bullet that was destined for Nihlus skull ended up shooting wide and far.

When Saren turned to look at me I felt my stomach tightening. Sure, he was pretty far, but I knew what that bastard was capable of. If the games were anything to go by, which at that point I was pretty sure they were. I mean, duh.

Luckily, Nihlus was a much more pressing danger. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but Nihlus had gotten his shotgun out, and they were shooting each other with real glee. I kept running until I was too close for comfort, and hid behind a crate when the first bullet pinged my shields.

And pretty much took them down.

"Saren!" I heard Nihlus shout. That was the only thing I could understand really, I had no idea what he was shouting, but Saren wasn't uttering a single peep. More shots. I was waiting for my shield gauge to fill up again, and it was taking forever.

After a coupe of seconds my shield was full again, and although I really wasn't relishing the prospect of sticking my neck out, I was pretty sure I had little choice. Like an idiot, I had gotten myself in the middle of a firefight, and Saren wasn't going to stop until Nihlus was dead – and me with him. He didn't want witnesses.

Now, if only Shepard would show up, between his squad and Nihlus, maybe they could take Saren down.

Shit, that could end the game right here.

A couple of pellets landing by my feet reminded me not to count my chickens before breaking the eggs to make the omelette, which was as mixed-up a metaphor as I was feeling at the time. With a deep breath, I peeked over the side of the crate, found where Saren was taking cover, and without much hesitation I brought my pistol up and fired as fast as I could until the gun overheated.

All I accomplished was letting Saren know where I was, and getting a look from Nihlus, which I had no idea how to interpret. I got back in cover, and hunkered down even lower when a bullet clipped the crate right above my head.

"Saren!" Nihlus shouted again.

There was no answer, but out of the corner of my cover I saw a bright flash of blue light, and then, all hell broke loose. Crates were tossed around left and right, and Nihlus and I went with them. I hit the railing painfully with my hip, and tumbled over, falling a good five meters to land on my back.

Goddamit, it hurt like a bitch. Assuming said bitch had been tossed around by biotics, cracked her hip on a metal railing, and fallen to the hard floor from a good height.

Then, I heard shots above me. I cursed and groaned, trying to get up. My entire body was protesting against my brilliant idea of standing up and wandering off after the fall, but those two shots had sounded very ominous. I realized there were even more shots now, an honest to goodness firefight.

"Dammit! He's running away!" I heard a female voice shouting.

"There's too many of them." A male.

"Commander, wait!" A different female. I probably could have deduced who was who, given my knowledge of how things went in the game, but as it was I was too focused on getting moving.

The cavalry had arrived.

As the sounds of battle died down, I managed to get up the ramp, and what was waiting on the other side just blew my mind. Nihlus was on the ground, with two people in full armor fussing over him. One of them was wearing a black armor with a red and white detail on the right arm. But the shocking part was how everything had been blown to hell atop the platform. And I mean even worse than it was before. Like Saren had dropped a fucking bomb, and cleared the area with it.

The third person I recognized immediately because she wasn't wearing a helmet. Ashley Williams. The same pink armor we all remember, black hair held in a bun. She looked a lot like the games, but, well, real. I probably would have considered her attractive at the time, except that she looked at me for a moment with a sort of surprised expression, and then her face contorted into an angry snarl.

Before I could react, she charged at me, hit me on the stomach hard enough I doubled over, then slammed me on the floor face first.

"Don't move!" she shouted, and pressed something to the back of my head. Which turned out to be a gun, and I didn't even need three guesses to figure out. "Who the fuck are you?"

Great first impression, was all I could think.