Fic: Three Times Too Many (Mass Effect)

[lightofdaye]

For the maybe one person on my list that might be interested in this.

Title: Three Too Many
Fandom: Mass Effect
Rating: PG-13
Characters & Pairing: Shepard, Garrus, Grunt, Thresher Maws
Word Count:665
Content: PTSD
Disclaimer: The characters, settings and Mass Effect Franchise as a whole are owned by EA/Bioware and not by me. I make no profit from writing this piece of fanfiction.
Summary:Shepard does not like Thresher Maws at all.
A/n: From a prompt at: masseffectkink, SoleSurvivor!Shepard reacting to the Thresher Maws she faces in the game.


It all happened so fast, one moment the Mako is rolling down the slope of a hill towards Admiral Kahoku’s men, next there’s a titanic rumbling and it appears, roaring and looming over them and Shepard might as well not be on Edolus but on Akuze itself.

Suddenly Shepard was very glad to be wearing thick armour. It hid the shaking of her hands, the fake that every once of colour had drained from her face. Next to her, the Turian cries out in alarm and dismay as the Mako engine roars as Shepard throws into full reverse. She ignores him, Vakarian hasn’t seen the acid of a Thresher Maw eats straight though a Mako just like this one and the platoon inside it.

She’s at the very peak of the hill when she throttles down and rests at what she can now see in the edge of a Thresher nest. The signal was coming from a damn Thresher nest, she swore at herself inside her thread for not noticing it. She should have known.

The team were looking at her expectantly. As far as they could see she had only retreated to avoid the gush of acid from the creature’s mouth. Clearly had no doubt at all that their commander would eagerly come to grips with any monster that crossed their paths.

Her heart hammered in her throat, her stomach churned and her mouth was full of the metallic taste of fear, even so, she did what they expected. She opened up the throttle again, moving to circle it, and armed the mass accelerator cannon.

She just wished it was a hell of a lot larger.

-


The Krogan Rite Of Passage had seemed like a cakewalk at first. Just Varren to Pull of their feet and Klixen to fill full of holes, while sadly having to keep your distance. The only downside was resisting the urge to throttle Grunt, his eagerness to come to grips with the enemy was annoying. She was only reloading her guns and letting her barriers recharge before touching the damn touchstone for godness sake.

Then it appeared and Shepard stared at it, frozen. Not even the meagre hull of the Mako between it and her. The Locust in her hand suddenly felt like a peashooter. Inferno ammo or none. The beast’s hide registerd only as the heaviest of armours on her display. And it was well out range of her charge, though she had never wanted to close the range on something less.

Grunt laughed and roared challenge to the monster not even noticing the blankness of his “Battlemaster’s” face.

Garrus placed his hand on her arm, just long enough for her to notice the gesture of comfort and then moved ahead of her. His rifle already raised and tearing chunks out of the beast with tungsten ammo, shielding her while she got her breathing under control.

After it was dead, the fight with a centuries old Krogan Battlemaster was… relaxing.

-

“Kalros, mother of all thresher maw.”

Even after all this time, the words made her gut tighten and she was devotedly glad she was stuck in the catacombs instead of the Maw chased convoy.

And then they all decided the best thing to do was for the to bring the damn thing here to fight the reaper. Long discipline and habit and muscle memory was the only thing keeping her going and fighting the huskfied batarians, turians and rachni in her path. All the twisted ingenuity of the reapers were arrayed in front of her. And nothing scared her quite so much as the unaltered creature she was summoning to the battlefield.

She slammed the first Maw Hammer down as the Reaper made an ungodly noise. People kept telling her she was the only thing the reapers respected, the only one they even slightly feared.

Well the reapers we going to learn better. They were going to see exactly what scared her.

The fucking things deserved each other.

Comments

[mayorhaggar.livejournal.com]

For most of my first playthrough of ME1 I feared the threshers about as much as Shepard does here. When I first got control of the Normandy, the very first place I wound up going (unknowingly) was the planet where that trap was set. So after only doing Eden Prime and then the stuff in the Citadel, I walked headlong into that thresher maw nest and was summarily slaughtered over, and over, and over again, until I realized that I didn't NEED to be on this planet and could simply leave. For a LONG time after that I avoided not just that planet, but every single unexplored planet for simple fear that a maw was going to pop up and annihilate me. So, fair to say I understood where your Shep was coming from here!

Kalros taking on that reaper was awesome though. Heck, pretty much everything on Tuchanka was awesome.

[lightofdaye]

Ha! I went there first as well. Though since I played ME1 last the impact was lessened

Thanks for reading!