We'll begin here. I'm going to try to get an update a week out, but please don't hold me to that. I'll do my best. This will be a rybee story. It's set in the Andromeda universe, though I make no promises about how much it'll conform to canon. Most likely it'll be mostly sequential vignettes that take place behind the scenes of the actual in-game action. I've never been one for inviting comparison to canon. Thank you for reading!

Chapter 1

Ryder knows she's made a mistake as soon as she makes the jump from the Remnant spire, in the floating moment between her biotically-charged ascent and her fall back to the ground. The hot air around her crackles with biotic energy, threatening to combust. The pistol at the end of her outstretched right arm is aimed true at the kett she'd jumped to flank. These are not the problems.

She feels rather than sees the second kett, crouched behind a crate at the other end of the dig site. He rises to take aim at her exposed chest, and Ryder realizes in a flash that she has nowhere to go.

"SAM!" she yells, squeezing the pistol's trigger to down the first kett. She does not have to say anything more – they've fought together enough that SAM anticipates what she needs.

SAM cuts her into a new profile in an instant. Her biotic ability dissipates with a sucking sensation at the back of her skull that has her vision spinning. It'd knock her off her feet if she were standing, she thinks. The air around her settles, the biotic charge diffusing into nothing. Her blood thins with adrenaline. Things from there happen very quickly, but Ryder sees them in slow motion.

Her vision sharpens suddenly, her heartrate spikes, and she takes in several details at once. The kett she shot slumps against his cover, dead. Vetra is a wall in the middle of the fray, shields glowing bright and dangerous, staring down two more kett and roaring her fury with shotgun raised. Peebee, aglow with blue energy, is a blurred comet at the edges of the field, her sights set on the unfortunate kett sharpshooter she's flanked. And in the time between Vetra's shout and her trigger pull, between Peebee's satisfied smirk and the cut of her biotics through kett bone and flesh, Ryder turns fires her jump jet.

She hurtles towards the kett taking aim at her too quickly, and from too great a height. The action should leave her unconscious – she is aware in some corner of her mind that the gravity alone should hurt, never mind the speed of her descent towards the kett – but all she notices is a brief blurring of her peripheral vision. It comes into sharp focus the closer she gets to her enemy, more adrenaline surges in her left arm, and she draws the asari blade at her hip out and up in a quick, violent jerk. The kett fires his weapon. Half a beat later, she crashes into him, shields absorbing most of the shock and splintering into shards of light as they break. Her blade scrapes through the kett's bony carapace from one hip to the opposite shoulder, and catches at the end.

Ryder yanks the blade the rest of the way through the bony hindrance, neatly slicing the deceased kett in half. She returns the sword to her hip, hears it click into place, and swaggers backwards into the rock the kett had used for cover. Her heart thumps against the backside of her ribcage, and Ryder feels every cortisol-laced beat in every one of her fingers. Her stomach lurches and she fears for a moment that she'll puke on the kett corpse. Leaning her head backward against the hot, rough surface, Ryder tries to collect herself, and fails.

She rips off her helmet through sheer brute force, tearing through the maglocks with the help of the residual adrenaline in her system, and retches violently. Her body pitches forward so the mess lands on the ground instead of choking in her throat. She heaves and is sick again. Her stomach burns.

"Apologies, Pathfinder," SAM's cool voice in her head chirps. "That maneuver was too hard on your body, and I had to stimulate additional adrenaline to compensate."

Later, Lexi will tell her that the vomit and vertigo are the result of adrenaline shock, her body's attempt to bring itself back to within a livable chemical state too quickly. Now, she is aware only that it hurts. Her lungs and stomach are raw, her head burns. And there's nothing for it.

"Fix – it," Ryder gasps. She thinks her head might combust, so intense is the burning inside her skull. She claws at her scalp, but the sensation is inside, unreachable. She pukes again.

"Adjusting, Pathfinder," SAM responds, unperturbed as ever. "You may experience some additional vertigo, as I return your biological processes to normal homeostasis."

The dizziness that follows does nothing good for her tender stomach, but Ryder clamps her mouth shut and does not vomit again through sheer force of will. Her frantic heart finally slows, and she breathes in the warm, dry air in small, testing sips. When her raw throat does not heave them back out again, she permits herself some deeper breaths. And when those stay in her lungs until she chooses to expel them as well, she relaxes. Her shoulders slump against the rock behind her again, and she spits out as much of the bitter taste in her mouth as she can.

Her body recovers more completely the longer she leans against the rough surface of the rock, but she does not immediately go to rejoin her fellows in the sandy clearing.

"Pathfinder, I am still detecting an abundance of cortisol in your system, despite my flushing having completed successfully," SAM says. Ryder clenches and unclenches her fingers into fists, one hand after the other. It's not exactly enough stimulation to calm her, but it helps her answer.

"It's not the profile," she says finally. Her voice sounds far away, and she edges closer into familiar, muted panic.

"It appears my assistance has triggered a psychological event," SAM opines.

No shit, Ryder thinks but does not say, afraid hearing her voice farther away still than before will send her spiraling beyond her control. The mental state she's in is not good, but she has come back from worse without riding out entire episodes before.

She takes two fingers of her right glove between her teeth, tugging it away from her sweaty hand until it peels away. It's too hot on Eladeen; her face is burning already, she's sure. But her hand dries quickly in the arid heat, and she considers it a boon. Ryder folds her thumb inwards, pointing it towards her palm, and skates the end of her index finger against her thumbnail. The skittering friction the motion produces, tethers her back to her body. She takes several deep breathes and rubs harder, until her thumb begins to throb and ache from the odd positioning and her unrelenting scrape. Then she continues for two minutes more, just to be safe.

SAM does not comment. Ryder gets the distinct sense, as she often does when SAM is quiet, that he is cataloguing what she's doing for future use. She is too focused on the stim to give that much thought, but she appreciates the silence. SAM does not speak again until she has stopped her scraping, flexed her fingers to relieve the ache in them, and slid her sweat-wet glove back into place.

"I believe the battle is over, Pathfinder," he says then. "We should be able to search for the kett device without further interruption."

Ryder makes sure to snap her helmet back into place before going to look for Peebee and Vetra. She hopes that in the time it's taken her to kill the kett and compose herself, they've dealt with the rest of the pack. Happily, when she turns round the corner of the rock, she finds Vetra dead-checking kett Chosen. Peebee leans against a Remnant pillar nearby, utterly bored with the mundane task, and is the first to see the Pathfinder approach them.

"There she is," she says to Vetra, pushing her weight off of the pillar to stand. The turian looks up from the kett corpse at her feet, and in the direction Peebee indicates to her. Her mandibles click qne open into a smile as Ryder draws nearer.

"We saw that move you pulled," she says, clearly impressed. Ryder gives her what she hopes is a sufficiently gloating smile.

"I can't let you be the center of attention all the time," she quips. Her stomach flips with residual unease, but she forces her lips to stay open over her teeth in a smile.

Vetra doesn't seem to notice her discomfort, at least. She laughs, her gravelly mirth reverberating off the faux-canyon of Remnant pillars they're standing in. Ryder feels her smile relax, and she thinks it probably looks less forced now.

"Yeah, well, you put us to shame," Vetra says. Peebee scoffs behind her, but the turian ignores her. Ryder does not; she finds Peebee's gaze and holds it, quirking her eyebrows up in a silent question. She hopes she can see the gesture through her helmet's semi-opaque visor. The asari shakes her head.

"We should probably split up if we want to find that device anytime soon," Vetra continues, either unaware of, or politely ignoring, the exchange between her two companions.

Ryder agrees, though the look she's still getting from Peebee is a bit more immediately concerning than a piece of kett tech they're not even sure is in these ruins.

"Pathfinder, I believe splitting up will not be necessary," SAM says. The way her squadmates perk their eyes upward at the sound tells Ryder he's speaking to everyone. "Your scanner should be able to detect the energy path the device travelled when the kett brought it in."

"Handy," Peebee says. "You can do your pathfinder thing, and we can get out of this damned heat before we all shrivel up."

She looks at Vetra briefly before continuing. Ryder will think later that she should have known that look meant nothing good.

"Well, Vetra probably can't shrivel up any more," she says, lips perking up into a grin. Despite her nonchalance, Ryder can see her tense, waiting for Vetra to retaliate.

The turian only sighs. Ryder thinks she sees her roll her beady eyes behind her visor. Peebee straightens, her face the picture of confusion and, if Ryder isn't mistaken, disappointment.

"You're no fun, spiky," she pouts. Vetra laughs at that.

"And your insults could use a beta reader," the turian says. "I suggest my little sister. She's got a few years' experience on you."

"You probably shouldn't have told her that," Ryder laughs. "They'd get along famously."

Vetra clicks her mandibles together and sends a low buzz of agreement past her teeth. She clearly hadn't thought of that. Peebee beside her is looking mutely triumphant. Ryder makes a mental note to let Kesh know there's about to be a tornado on the Nexus.

"Okay," she says instead. She brings her omnitool to eye-level and holds the interface for her scanner. "Let's find this kett device and get out of here. I need a shower."