Chapter 1: Do You Want to Build a Krogan?

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within the body of a giant space lizard man, floating within a life sustaining clear ice blue fluid. Getting flushed from a tank fully grown has to be the best reincarnation ever. I got to skip all the boring chapters of being a baby adjusting to disability and infirmity after a vigorous life as a manly man, didn't have to go to school and pretend to be a kid while providing commentary that's borderline if not outright predatory. No. I got to skip right to the meat of the journey. Disorienting as all hell and I ended up with far less fingers and far more reptilian than I was used to, but the biggest question I had came out of my wide mouth.

"How the hell did Okeer get me in this suit of armor?" 

"That's what you are thinking about right now?" Came the breathy voice of Jennifer Hale.

I raised my gaze up from focusing on the bare metal suit of armor I'd been born in, to see the ginger space Jesus herself, Fem Commander Shepard, sporting a revamped model of her classic N7 suit with a face marred by glowing cybernetic scaring. She stood in the Port Cargo space of the Normandy SR2, the fictional space ship I loved most. I'd spent long hours piloting different versions of her male counterpart through three games that defined my love of scifi as a teenager. Hopefully this isn't a never meet your heroes moment. It'd be a shame to squash the woman like a grape, though the shotgun in her hands makes me think I may be dealing with a more canny actor than appeared in the games. Despite being a clever reveal using perspective in a cut scene, holding a Predator pistol to the armored stomach of a krogan with an arm across your neck is a zero chance position to start a fight in right along with already in the maw of a Thresher Maw. 

"You had to be thinking it too, right?" I told her trying out my dinosaur like mouth, working my soft scaly lips into what I think is a smile but might just read as the nonverbal equivalent of 'you look tasty, in the I eat people way', her not firing on me makes me think I've achieved some success with it, "The logistics involved in dressing me while growing me in a tank are mind boggling. And the reasoning behind it? Was Okeer some kind of fifteen hundred year old prude? I get it kind of, I don't want to spend my days looking at ass crack, quad sack, and pipe either, but he could have just frosted the glass if that was the case. You get that this is the biggest mystery of Okeer's breeding facility, right?"

"I get that this is bothering you a lot more than anything else right now." Shepard non-committed, facially, tonally, and shotgun-ly. 

Smart woman. 

"There is only one thing that tickles my mind more than that." I said and placed a hand on the release mechanism for one of my bracers. 

"What are you doing?" She asked while taking a step back from me, eyeing the bracer in hand, ready for me to throw it. 

"Come on. You have to be curious too." I grinned as I dropped that fresh pearl river grey piece to the grated metal floor panel below with a satisfying clang that didn't get me shot. 

Trigger discipline saves another life. 

Commander Shepard's stony composure slowly broke as I removed more and more of my armor, finally twisting into a 'I can't believe this is happening right now' as I reached my goal.

"Haha! That is a great pipe!" I shouted as I verified the most important information in regards to my happiness in this reincarnation.

"Eh." Shepard expressed her lack of impressment and deep annoyance, "I've seen bigger."

"Hehehe," I laughed helicoptering my smooth lizard cock, "I haven't started puberty yet."

"Then color me impressed." She changed her tune, "Now put your pants on before I have you jettisoned."

"You should be." I grinned, taking the compliment and ignoring the threat, "I think I am already over two hundred kilos! Gonna be a real big boy when I'm all grown up."

"I'm so glad your future as a mountain of meat covered in lizard skin and crab shell looks bright, but I came to recruit Okeer for a reason, and you are all I have to show for it." Shepard explained to me as I reversed the undressing process "I am going after the Collectors and need all the help I can find."

"Not even ten minutes old and already being asked to partake in my first genocide? Glorious." To my lizard mind, it really was.

This new life, everything is different already. Just my field of vision alone is enough to hammer home the alienness of this new existence. For all the fear Krogan put into the hearts of the other sentient species, many of whom we are known to devour, Krogan are prey creatures on their homeward, and have the wideset eyes to prove it. The better to see the predators coming with. 

Sensory inputs already have me struggling to adjust, just imagine the hormones, those base chemicals that carry messages throughout your body, millions of years of biological evolution telling you what to do and how to feel. Completely alien. I'd never been a particularly normal human, but when confronted by a gun or even a knife, even if I didn't feel the same pants filling terror as everyone else, I still felt my pulse raising, my body tensing. Now, a Sci-Fi marine with a gun that could turn the old me to a chunky red mist just makes me feel... annoyed, angry, maybe... hungry. 

"I didn't say genocide." Shepard shook her head, "I just need to stop them from abducting human colonies, and I'm not about to let a self admitted child get involved in a potentially suicidal mission." 

"You're the one who said she needs 'all the help I can get', and I'm a child as big as a full grown adult, stronger than that adult too, and with an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare." I sold to the desperate woman, "Rana Thanopris - I could just kiss that mad Asari scientist - was very thorough in carrying out Okeer's command to hypno-educate me in everything I needed to know to become the ultimate ground pounder. He gathered all available tactical information he could get his fifteen hundred year old hands on and burnt into my mind over and over again so I could never forget it. I was not made to be a person, I was made to be a weapon, and one mission is as good as any other so long as I put what I am to motion! Turn me loose on the galaxy if that is what you feel you must, or get me the funds yourself and I will turn myself into an unstoppable minister of death, praying for war."

Shepard took a deep breath, then let out a sigh of relief, collapsing her shotgun and stowing it on a lower back mag clip "Then welcome aboard. I am Commander Jane Shepard. Commanding Officer of the SR2 Normandy. Do you have a name?" 

"Grunt." I told her with a smile, "Who else have you recruited for this glorious cause."

"You're the first, Grunt." she said and my hearts fluttered.

"Did you just say that when your worst enemies need killing, you came to me first?" I asked while pressing a three fingered hand to my wide armored chest like a smitten school girl.

"I came for Okeer first." She ruined the moment.

"Don't take this from me." I 'grunted' (see what I did there?), "I am fifty percent sure that is the kroganese equivalent for confessing your undying love to me."

"Fifty percent?" She questioned, cocking a ginger brow in an expression that still sent a thrill down my sack despite the brand spanking new foreign import of a meat suit. 

Glad to see some things never change, even if everything else has. Even lost in a brand new universe, I can always rely on my cock to lead the way. 

"How would I know about krogan courtship?" I told her with a low rumbling chuckle, "It never came up in Okeer's one track attempt to turn me into the perfect rage hulk, but considering the stupidity that I do know about the culture I can't be too far off with that. So are we going to bang, cause you already know how fast I can strip out of this getup?" I indicated down to my re-armored form.

"No." Shepard firmly denied, "Talk to Miranda Lawson up on the crew deck about funding requests. I want the minister of death up and running yesterday."

"Are you sure you aren't trying to convince me to mate with you?" I pulled my lips up into a grin again at her, "Cause that has to be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said in that spot."

That got a smile from her. Poor thing seems rather high strung. Just my type, right behind those who pass my intelligence checkup. So long as they don't have that, they're mine. Coming fully armed for this meeting precludes that most primary of statuses, but I'm a man who knows how to work for what he wants. 

"You can try to woo me later." she laughed, and it sounded like the first time in a while for her, "Right now focus on getting mission ready." 

"Will do, Commander." I agreed as she left, giving off a rumbling growl as I watched the custom formed plates cupping her perfectly sculpted booty rise and fall with each step. 

Lord give me strength. It's going to be hard as a mother fucker stomping aliens and outlaws with a stiffy following this woman into battle. Better take up the vanguard. Can't let my love of thick cheeks get me clapped in combat. Daddy Okeer didn't build a dummy. 

Each of my steps sounded like a thuds of a horror movie monster as I made my way to the elevator and hit the oversized holographic orange button to take me up to the next level. Cerberus didn't exactly build the emergency ladders for beings of my particular dimensions though I bet I could rip through the top of the box and climb the shaft if I had to. Krogan strength is no joke, and I was made to be the strongest. The Captain America of Krogan. 

I emerged onto the crew deck, where everyone eats, sleeps, and some people work. Had a good time scaring the jumpy crewmen and women on the way to Miranda's office. Just a clockwise trip around the elevator shaft and off to my left, the only door in sight. I pressed the green holographic interface and the door split into seven pieces as it opened, retracting into the walls and floors around it. 

"Lotta moving pieces in that system." I noted as I entered, keeping an eye on the woman in the black and white body suit looking out the small window to space, "Looks like a drag and a half to keep working." 

Keeping an eye on the massive cheeks that make the alternate title of this game, Ass Effect. Looks like I'm at the cake shop today, boys! Halleluiah! Slow enough to not set her off, I somehow managed to fit my wide reptilian ass into the chair in front of her desk. The woman turned her head and fixed me with a shivering cold glare. Or maybe I'm shivering from excitement. 

I introduced myself with another willful flex of my mouth grin, "I am Grunt."

"And I am Miranda Lawson, Chief Cerberus Officer on this mission and second in command on this vessel." the gorgeous woman spoke. 

I'd carried a torch for Yvonne Strahovski as a teen, and though Bioware might have done a lesser job modeling her for their games, the reality of a woman with her looks engineered to be perfect got the dogs in me barking. Or is it varren now that I'm a krogan. Either way, the feelings inside got me wanting to tear it up. Take up my belt as the Heavy Weight Champion of the Bedroom Arts. Hell'ova lot more heavy now. I'll really have to take care when I bring the thunder.

"Good," I intoned as the woman crossed the room with a finger biting good stride and sat behind her work station, "I found the right place. Shepard let me know you are the person to talk to about funding."

"I manage the milestone crew funding provided for this mission as well as additional funding requests." Miranda confirmed and crossed her hands in front of her face, "I need to know what you need funding for before any credits move."

"Murder, slaughter, genocide." I answered while tracing my jaw with finger and thumb.

"How very krogan." Miranda sniped at me, obviously unamused. 

"Thank you very much." I grinned and spread my three fingered hands in a 'I've got the whole world in my hands' gesture, "The sass was nice. Almost made me forget that I am aboard a human extremist vessel with a mission to kill all the Collectors."

"Our mission is to stop the Collectors from attacking human colonies, not wipe them out." Miranda readjusted the framework.

"Probably can't do one without the other." I replied, finding the grin coming to my new face muscles easier every time, "Which is why I need a quarter million credits."

"You must be as insane as the rest of Okeer's rejects if you think I am going to hand you over a quarter million credits." Miranda shook her head in refusal, causing those ebon wavy tresses to rile me up. 

Good thing I'm a lizard, and able to remain so perfectly still as to become unobservable. Especially the emotions blazing just under my thick skin. 

"Okeer was insane." I countered, readying to hit her right where she lives "He created me in his warped idea of krogan perfection, and burned everything he believed I needed to know into my brain. He envisioned some super krogan hulk able to overcome any kind of foe albeit warrior, biotic, or tech. He never thought that I would see the tech he wanted me to overcome and want it for myself. I can be so much more than big guns and brute force. Give me the funds and a week, and I'll show you that krogan battlemasters are pushovers. They say they are worth ten warriors of any species. Pathetic. I'll be worth hundreds. You and the Commander will follow in the wake of my annihilation of the Collectors. Relegated to supporting roles in this most excellent space opera we find ourselves in.

"Hahahahaa!" she laughed in my face, so rude, so sexy, must maintain self respect under the onslaught of hot chicks, endure! "You certainly don't lack confidence. I can authorize thirty thousand credits for you, any more will have to come as we complete more milestones for the mission."

"Doesn't make me Lord Death, but certainly gets my feet on Murder Mountain." I nodded my head in agreement, "If we stop by someplace where there are a lot of guns and people no one cares about, I can probably stretch that out with some salvage."

"Our next stop is Omega." Miranda informed me, "It is the biggest station full of everything you described and then some."

"Good. Omega is good." I grinned, finally feeling perfectly at home in my new scaly skin.

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Oooooo that feels good! I knew that it would! 

I've come to roll my eyes at rewrites in fanfiction, but I gotta good feeling about this one. Maybe because this is a second draft, not a rewrite. I didn't fuck the original story up, I just want more. 

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