outer_divide ➠ APPLICATION

[femshep]

ooc information
NAME: Trace
DO YOU PLAY ANYONE ELSE IN OUTER DIVIDE? nope!

character information
CHARACTER NAME: Commander 'Jane' Shepard
FANDOM: Mass Effect
AU/OU: CR AU (previous-game CR from her last stint here in Outer Divide)
CANON-POINT: Physically, the end of Mass Effect 2 (that's when she came to Verdana the first time). She's been mentally canon-updated in her pod to the last ~hour or so of Mass Effect 3, when she passes out just after Anderson dies.
JOURNAL: femshep


HISTORY:

• story through END OF MASS EFFECT 1
  
• story from END OF MASS EFFECT to END OF MASS EFFECT 2
  
• story from END OF MASS EFFECT 2 onward
  
• SHEPARD'S personal wiki
  
• her SPECIFIC IN-GAME CHOICES and PAST TIME IN VERDANA can be found in AU HISTORY.

AU HISTORY:

part 1: DECISIONS in canon
(note that this list leaves off the final choice in ME3, affectionately nicknamed "CTRL-ALT-DEL". since her canonpoint is before this choice, it's not really necessary.)

part 2: Here's what you missed in Outer Divide...

• She was in the first wave of people waking up from the ship on Verdana.
  
• She fought in the initial attack by the Authorities.
  
• She started an underground resistance that met all of twice before a mole ratted them out.
  
• She tamed a triceratops with some rope and sheer biotic willpower.
  
• She tripped balls on the narcotic fog.
  
• She helped fend off the first dinosaur stampede.
  
• She fought off Attack #2 from the Authorities.
  
• She explored the old military bunker west(?) of the Old City with Charles Xavier (AU!Charles), tripping over a decently large stockpile of old food and medical supplies and nearly getting herself killed in the process.
  
• She watched almost every single one of her allies go back into their pods.
  
• She welcomed Kaidan Alenko to Verdana, which was hella strange considering he was supposed to be dead.
  
• She helped Kaidan begin to research the communications devices.
  
• She did not fight in the third Authorities attack. Instead, using her triceratops and a hell of a biotic push, she was the first to breach the Barrier, sending a choppy video message to anyone listening outside that mostly consisted of 1) she made it in, and 2) take off the enemy's masks. Within fifteen minutes she was subdued violently, hauled off to god-knows-where, tortured, interrogated, and collared. This was not your ordinary collar, though: This one was fused directly into her spine.
  
• She was returned a few days later and promptly picked up by Randolph Lyall, who hauled her off to the hospital.
  
• She was on involuntary house-arrest in the hospital until they could figure out what to do with her and the collar, which they could only assume was a surveillance device.
  
• She got sick and fucking tired of that goddamn room and utilized the sharpest object she could find (a scalpel) to threaten her way out.

(That was a few days before she returned to her pod, but nothing of terrible significance happened in that time.)

NOTABLE CR while she was here last time included Kaidan Alenko and Randolph Lyall (who are still here), plus the since-dropped Liara T'Soni, Stephen Hart, Charles Xavier (AU) and his respective AU Erik, Jocelyn Xavier, Fifth Doctor, Fox (OC), Wing, Judy... God, I'm forgetting a few but that'll have to do for now.

She'll be coming back with her same collar, which is sure to go over fantastically with all of the people who have no idea who the hell she is, amirite?

Aside from that, a lot of the psychological effects her last stint in Verdana had on her have faded in light of the events of ME3, but they'll return at least partially once she's out of her pod. For example, the Authorities scrambled all memories of her time in custody, and that kind of had a scrambling effect on the rest of her short-term memories, too. Her last couple of weeks outside of the pod prior to her year-long canon-update are going to be a tiny bit fuzzy, even the parts the Authorities didn't deliberately mess with. For a more positive example, it'll take quite a bit less time this time around for Shepard to get back into the repairing-and-scavenging mindset that living in the Old City entails. Things like clearing rubble, hunting for food, reverse-engineering old technology, etc. It was a bit difficult for her the first time--she was used to battle, battle, and more battle with the occasional solving of arguments mixed in. This time around, it'll seem familiar and she won't feel quite as restless with it.


PERSONALITY:

In order to tell you who Shepard is, I need to tell you who she was.

First and foremost, Shepard got the job done. Always, without fail. It was one of her greatest strengths, and something that others could agree on, whether they approved of her methods or not. Her lawless rank as Spectre and the fact that she cheated death itself once already sure didn’t hurt her determination. And determination is something she's always had a lot of—there’s almost nothing she wouldn’t do to save the galaxy, or even just a chunk of it.

Shepard was a soldier to the core, and it shows in the way she acts, talks, and thinks. She completed each mission calmly and efficiently, even if things didn’t quite go as planned. But beyond just being a soldier, she was meant to be in command. While others might play it safe and pull their squad from the most loyal and efficient of their race’s military, Shepard had no hesitation in crossing racial lines and even lines between stable and dangerous as she assembled the perfect crew, and oozed with the authority and conviction it took to sway each to her cause. And once she’d assembled her diverse band of convicts, assassins, and vigilantes, she found a way to relate to each of them, and through that she always knew exactly how to utilize their particular strengths and weaknesses. On the outside, she seemed fearless and always in control, and for that reason she was both admired and almost worshipped as the galaxy’s greatest hope.

All of this used to be true, profoundly so. She lost colonies, civilians, even allies—none of that stopped her from accomplishing whatever the hell needed done and from doing it without outwardly breaking a sweat. Until the Reapers marched on the galaxy, that is. When the Reapers took Earth, took Palaven, took Thessia, there was really nothing that any one person could do. Or even billions of people all across the galaxy. The Reapers were just too powerful. And Shepard slipped from defeating each obstacle she came up against to barely staying afloat while the galaxy fell to pieces around her.

Shepard came back from the dead and was raring to go, but this? This was starting to break her down. She couldn't be that Commander anymore. The one the galaxy can count on not to make mistakes. She lost entire homeworlds, and by now the galaxy just plain couldn't fathom her fucking up quite so badly. Really, from the very start of Mass Effect 3, you can tell that she's changed. Her tone's more subdued, more down-to-earth, and she's much quicker with the dry remarks. But it's not until she loses Thessia to the Reapers (and loses their last hope of survival to Cerberus) that things really start to come to pieces for her. Right before they leave what's left of Thessia, she gets a distress call on her earpiece comm. It's an asari soldier, one of the few left alive, and she's begging for help. Shepard tries to respond, to request a location so she can provide back-up, but the asari can't hear her. So as Shepard watches the enemy fly away with the key to civalization's survival, she's forced to listen to the painful deaths of soldiers who stayed on the planet exclusively to help her succeed. 'Where's Shepard?' One of them asks before the Reapers close in. 'Did she make it to the temple?' Because obviously if she made it to the temple, she'd be able to save the galaxy, and the asari wouldn't be dying in vain.

It's really just a big fucking mess for our heroine, wouldn't you say?

Like I was saying, that was right about when Shepard came apart. She leaned heavily against the wall and then the comms system when the asari councilor called, and through that entire conversation, her voice was flat, dead. She reported her failure. She reported that both Thessia and the Prothean Beacon were lost. She reported that she'd failed them all, and the councilor hung up before Shepard could even finish her useless apology. She was a mess, not that any of her crew really saw it. Liara put a hand on her shoulder down on Thessia (wrap your mind around that: Liara's entire world was destroyed, yet she knew that Shepard was in worse shape than she herself was) and Shepard just shrugged it off, turning to storm back to the ship. And by the time she faced any of her crew, she was hardened, almost harsh. Any attempts to reassure her were met with a steel-voiced, "It's my job to be prepared--no matter what."

The sum of it is, the failures and casualties of this final stretch against the Reapers wore her down in nearly every way. It's a funny thing about Shepard: You can learn a lot about Renegade Shepard from a Paragon playthrough, because in the conversations throughout this final stretch, the two only really differ because Renegade-Shepard shuts everyone out ("It's nothing." and other such responses) while Paragon-Shepard opens up with what's really on her mind. From Paragon-Shepard, we find out that throughout these last few weeks before the final fight, Shepard's starting to doubt... pretty much everything. She asked Anderson early on the big 'why her?', why was she the one they chose to save them all. Here in the endgame, she's wondering the same things tenfold. Who is she to decide the fate of the galaxy? How can anyone be ready for that kind of fight? If you romanced Garrus in ME3 (which I didn't--he was dead), he at one point asks her how she's holding up. Says it all must be taking a toll. She says, "There's only so much fight in a person. Only so much death you can take before you-..." She doesn't finish, but you can assume the rest well enough.

That being said, it's very unlikely that she'll be in this sort of state in a long-term way, in Verdana. Such is the nature of returning to a much more peaceful world than the galaxy she left. Some pieces of her endgame mindset will never undo, she can't nearly be who she was in ME2 again, but no doubt a sort of happy medium will be reached sooner or later. So I'll go through the rest of this assuming that happy medium, i.e. detailing a much less beaten-down Shepard.

As a general rule, she's always preferred to save lives more than end them, but she tended to revert to putting her gun in someone's face more often than not, before. Because let's face it guys, it tends to get a hell of a lot quicker results than trying to kumbaya her way to victory. She had… I guess you’d call it a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ tendency in Mass Effect (as shown by her decisions listed above, whoops), mostly fueled by how many times she got screwed over before she hit 20. That was still largely intact through ME2 and ME3, but it was more calculated. Now, however, she's facing down fact that even if she defeats the Reapers somehow, they still caused the genocide of unfathomable numbers of people, and it'll be hard to shake the 'we don't have any lives to spare, why the hell would we kill our own' mentality at first. That isn't to say her gun-waving tendencies aren't still there--it'll just take a bit for the effects of the war to wear off.

Another result of her past is that, while she’s excellent at rallying others to her cause, she at first wasn't so great at establishing friendships. This ties back to the fact that she’s always been first and foremost Commander Shepard, and only in ME2 started reaching out to others on a friendship level. Her closest friends are Tali’Zorah and Garrus, both of whom were on the Normandy through both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, and she even has a bit of a snarky companionship going with Joker, the helmsman (who also stuck around through both games, and was the first familiar face she saw in ME2). In Mass Effect 3, Liara and Ashley were added to that 'inner circle', and she was becoming a little more open with some of the others--Thane before he kicks it, Jack and Miranda, etc. That's not to say that they got the chance to help her when she was hurting post-Thessia (she's still Renegade, after all, and she shut them the hell out), but when you compare her relationships in ME2 and in ME3, the latter has them all on the same 'level', so to speak. She's their Commander, but for some of them, that's mostly in title rather than in practice.

But even when she’s not feeling too buddy-buddy at the moment, her crew can always count on her to help them out if they ask, whether it’s a dangerous side-mission for one of her squad or just picking up groceries for the cook. And when a fight breaks out, she’s the first to the scene, and while she usually seems pissed that they’re fighting to begin with, she always makes positive to solve the dispute in a way that both sides are satisfied with.

Once she’s comfortable around you, though, she’s almost an entirely different person. Still a little guarded, but (depending on the person) usually not nearly as serious, and she treats you like a person rather than a subordinate. You’ll actually see her smile (and I’m not counting the ‘you’re so fucked’ smile-ish thing she gets before she kills someone who royally pissed her off). She’s got a definite sense of humor (see: how bad she rags on Ash), although it’s sometimes dark and almost always dry, and when there’s nothing pressing going on, she really doesn’t mind cutting loose for a little fun. ‘A little fun’ usually either involves sparring or drinking, often both, although you could probably talk her into watching a good vid. Like I said though, this is assuming there’s literally zero work that needs done. No slackin’ on the Shep-ship.

Her lacking friendship-skills aren't the only weakness she has, though. While she's generally been outwardly calm and assured in their impending success, having the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders has had a definite effect on her from the start. She's at her best when she's keeping busy and leading her squad (or any squad, if it comes down to that), because she's a rational enough individual that when she's alone with nothing to do, it starts to creep into her head exactly how fucked they are (in canon, that is--her and what's left of the known galaxy versus the entire Reaper race), or even some of the choices from her past that she regrets. Shepard generally makes a point to keep the past in the past for that exact reason: It was the only way she'd ever be able to dig herself out of that hole of past guilt. With so much going on every day, Shepard really doesn't have the time to spare to dwell on things that can't be changed. Even if more of those things seem to pile up by the day. She blames herself for each planet the Reapers decimated, for each ally who was killed, for all of it.

She's definitely 'Renegade' though, and that shows itself in a few ways. Most obviously is how she addresses people--while a Paragon Shepard wouldn't exactly sugar-coat things either, Renegade Shepard tells it like it is. She isn't afraid to tell someone that their bitching and whining is just making them an easy target for the enemy, or that their plan is going to get people killed and it'll all be on their head, or equally blunt and potentially hurtful things, and she also isn't afraid to ask the questions that are going to sting. She doesn't do it to be mean, she does it to get the truth out in the open as quickly and efficiently as possible. Another 'Renegade' trait is how she prioritizes who to defend. In Citadel Space, she'd give the lives of any of her crew in a second if it would take them closer to destroying the Reapers, but in a brand new environment that she isn't duty-bound to save, when the going gets rough she protects her own before she protects the average civilian. If her group's relatively stable and none of their lives are on the line, by all means, she'll lead the defend-the-civilians rally, but until then? Yeah. It's not that she doesn't want the civilians to be safe, that's not it at all. But in a Reaper-free environment her loyalty to her squad and her allies runs deeper than that.

From the very start, Shepard has always had an incredibly open mind. Assuming she's got the time to stop and chat, anyone who strikes her interest gets questioned about their lives, their culture, all of it. She's not interrogating, but genuinely interested in learning everything ever. The other galactic species fascinate her, which sometimes seems to surprise them, not that it fazes her any. As far as her crew's concerned, she's even willing to disclose a little of her own personal backstory so it doesn't feel so one-sided, and to show them that she can relate. As another facet of her openmindedness, from the very start she's given Ashley shit for being wary of the aliens on the Normandy. Aliens and humans alike were people to her. And geth too, once Legion bridged the gap between Shepard and her former synthetic enemies and before they were destroyed. AI in general are just as 'alive' as any organics, to Shepard, and she'll defend that fiercely. At one point, a quarian admiral begins to discuss disassembling Legion for study, and Shepard warns, "I don't think you want to continue that line of thought, Admiral."

A few miscellaneous things that don't fit well in above sections... Shepard is actually really good at taking orders, believe it or not. If someone in power gives her any reason to trust them, she'll report to them and get shit done for them. Take for example her relationships with Hackett and Anderson in canon, and even with the Councilors in ME3. Her entire way of speaking and holding herself is different when she's addressing them. It's likely military training at work, but in those cases she falls naturally into a humble, subordinate role. Also, due to a set of videos she saw on an unwiped Cerberus computer detailing various aspects of the Lazarus Project which brought her back to life, she's come to harbor a sort of nagging doubt that she's even really Shepard at all. In canon, she suggests that she might be an extremely advanced AI who only thinks she's Shepard, but headcanon says she's probably settled on the much more likely 'semi-organic clone' hypothesis. As a final point, due to her canonpoint, she's waking up in her pod after being bombarded with an incredibly high dose of attempted Reaper indoctrination. Her last stay in the Old City gave her a more open mind about telepaths and the potential benefits thereof, but after all of this indoctrination bullshit flying around, she's firmly anti-telepath again. Sorry guys.

The Illusive Man tells her in late ME3 that she's wasting her time fighting a war that can't be won. "At least I'm fighting," she fires back, her voice fierce. And all in all, no matter what happens or how much shit gets thrown her way, she will never stop fighting to save civilization until the day comes where it no longer needs saved.

POWERS/ABILITIES:

• ᴡᴇᴀᴘᴏɴʀʏ ➠ Highly proficient with heavy pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, and heavy weapons (grenade launchers, laser cannons, portable black-hole shooters, you name it and she’s shot it). She carries one of each of the four on her person at all times.
  
• ʜᴀɴᴅ-ᴛᴏ-ʜᴀɴᴅ ➠ Thoroughly trained in various forms of hand-to-hand combat, having been raised in the Alliance military after they found her on Mindoir. Prefers not to let enemies get close enough to have to use this training, though.
  
• ʙɪᴏᴛɪᴄs ➠ The tl;dr of it is, she has an L5 implant in the back of her neck which lets her control her innate biotic ability, which she got from exposure to this super-valuable ick called Element Zero, or ‘Eezo’. As a Vanguard and capable of using weapons too, she’s not as powerful as an Adept, who uses almost 100% biotics, but she can still use a few biotic abilities: CHARGE (uses biotics to augment strength and speed and practically flies across the battlefield to collide violently with a target), SHOCKWAVE (sends out a series of explosive biotic impacts in front of her, strong enough to launch enemies into the air), and PULL (levitates enemies into the air, at which point they slowly drift toward the user).
  
• ᴄʏʙᴇʀɴᴇᴛɪᴄs ➠ When she was brought back from the dead, they filled in the spots they couldn't organically rebuild with cybernetics--synthetic materials that mesh with the body's organic ones. This has a few different side effects: For one, it enhances her strength. She can knock a krogan on its ass with a single elbow to the face (a krogan, for those who don't know, is a 2000 reptilian(?) tank). On top of that, she heals about twice as fast as the average person. There are other physiological effects, but those are the two major ones, and the others are slipping my mind right now.

POSSESSIONS:
☑ omni-tool
☑ full set of kestrel armor, in dark red (no longer properly fits--collar gets in the way)
☑ 4 1/2 packets Medi-Gel (started with 7 last time but used a few)
☑ shotgun (M-300 Claymore)
☑ assault rifle (M-76 Revenant)
☑ heavy pistol (M-6 Carnifex)
☑ heavy weapon (Arc Projector)
(Pretty sure these are all stashed somewhere dusty and obscure in the Old City from last time, though, rather than waiting for her on the ship.)

ARRIVAL: Ship, please. :)


NETWORK SAMPLE: [ icon: this. ]
[ The camera switches on, turning left and right briefly--she's looking the device over, because if she remembers right, she left hers in the dome and fuck if she'd ever get that back--then it focuses on a face. She looks... like she's seen better days, let's say. Shepard may have left her injuries on the Crucible, but she sure as hell feels like she came out on the wrong end of this one. ]

This is Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy SR-2. [ But it's flat, a forced formality.

This is the part where she asks if anyone reads her, asks for a status update, asks someone to put her the fuck back in that pod so at least she knows how it ends... No. None of that's going to happen. She settles for a slightly (just slightly) more emphatic: ] Somebody tell me how long I've been out.

[ Because somebody has to recognize her. ....Right? They'll recognize the OA collar around her neck, for sure. ]


LOG SAMPLE:
Any of the posts she started here. Additionally, this right here starts in brackets but most of the comments are prose.