Greetings, humans! I am He who is AWESOME, and I present to you my first fanfic! It is a Mass Effect future fic, set after the end of Mass Effect 3. If you want, RedHawk09's story "Mass Effect 3: Deception" is kind of a prequel to this, showing a different ending to Mass Effect 3; I'll wait here while you read that. Fair warning: the characters here use a combo of ME1 and ME3 equipment, like for example a ME1 Avenger X sniper rifle with a ME3 Sniper Rifle Concentration Module III, so keep that in mind and there shouldn't be any confusion. Oh, and brackets [] are for in-story author's notes. Anyway, enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Mass Effect franchise or any of its characters or concepts; the name of this website makes that kinda obvious.

Mass Effect: The Marathon Files

Chapter 1: Ah, Memories

Purgatory Lower Bar, Citadel, July 9, 2213

"Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!"

That was all I heard from Rex and Boomer as I struggled to beat Rage in a hotdog eating contest. I lost; don't know why I thought the end result would be any different. No one in the Alliance could beat former 2nd Lieutenant Dwayne "Rage" Carlton in any kind of eating or drinking contest. Considering we've been trying to do so all week and failing, it should be taken as a fact.

My name is Lucas "Luke" Rider, 2nd Lt. of the Systems Alliance Marines and second-in-command of Fireteam Neo. First Lieutenant Aaron "Rex" MacAdams, leader of Neo, Gunnery Chief Robert "Boomer" Thomas, and I were on liberty leave on the Citadel, visiting Rage after he was discharged from the Marines.

-About two months earlier-

The thing about pirate suppression raids is that you never know how they're going to go. Case in point: right now. Our ship, the SSV Marathon, was sent on what we assumed was going to be an easy mission: go to a pirate base that Alliance Intel recently identified as the source of some recent attacks in the Attican Traverse, and destroy it. We…kind of underestimated the firepower that these pirates had.

These pirates had a pretty sophisticated operation going on here. We were supposed to go in by Mako, but there was a high-tech surveillance and security system that Alliance Intel failed to tell us about. The four of us managed to get close to the entrance of the base before pirates with guns and rocket launchers had us pinned. Our only cover was a few large rocks and the Mako itself. We were holding our own pretty well, that is until a rocket hit the ground and exploded near Rage, severely injuring him. We got him to safety, even though this pirate band of batarians and humans (rare combination there, even in this day and age) were starting to close in on us. We may be good -I myself Sabotaged and sniped most of the guys with rocket launchers- but sometimes even Neo needs help.

About four minutes earlier, Rex called in an airstrike on the base: the Marathon was busy engaging the pirates' ship (couldn't have been any bigger than a corvette), and would be delayed. Four minutes later, as these guys were closing in, Marathon swooped in from the sky, fired a single disruptor torpedo at the base, and launched the Kodiak shuttle, all in about 2.4 seconds. The Marathon's dramatic entrance and explosion of the base distracted the pirates for a split second, giving us an opening to start mowing them down, with the help of the shuttle's guns of course.

We got the hell outta there and got Rage to the nearest Alliance base, where his injuries ended up costing him most of his left leg, as well as more tragically (his words, not mine), his flawless complexion.

It was just one 2-inch scar over his eye; drama queen.

-Back in the present-

So Dwayne was honorably discharged (he had a pretty good service record), got a robot leg, and found an apartment on the Citadel. He got lucky; after repairing the damage inflicted upon the Citadel during the Reaper War, apartments on the Presidium are still pretty cheap. The Marathon docked at the Citadel six days ago and Rex, Boomer and I were given a week's liberty, so we've been hanging out with Rage all week. As it turns out, Dwayne "Rage" Carlton can go from complaining about a 2-inch facial scar to using it to pick up chicks at the bar not just for himself, but for all of us. Maybe I should get a scar on my face, too. Hmmm…

Rex stood up and held out his hand. "It's been good seein' ya, Rage," he said, "but I think it's time we got back to the ship. If we wait till tomorrow I have a feeling that the captain'll have all our asses."

We all had a laugh at that. We all shook hands, said our goodbyes to Rage, and headed back to the docking bay. When the elevator came to a stop at the gangway, we had a surprise waiting for us…

-x-x-x-x-x-

So? What do you think so far? I promise it gets better and the action scenes will be more detailed in the coming chapters. The first chapter's usually the least entertaining, so feel free to leave a review. Chapter 2 is coming up! Estimated time to arrival: I don't know; I don't really estimate how long this will take me, but since spring break is almost upon those of us who are in college, I wouldn't expect to have to wait very long.