What did you do today in ME?

"Commander!" Tali shouted. "It's dead. You can stop shooting now!"

Ahmed Shepard was dimly aware that his hands were clenched tightly on the sticks as he maneuvered the Mako around the prone Thresher Maw.

"Fire again," he ordered.

"Commander?" asked Garrus.

"Do it!" Garrus barely nodded and fired the main cannon, ripping another chunk out of the giant worm's body as it lay on the ground. He fired another volley from the mini-gun, its bullets ripping holes through lifeless flesh. The Maw stirred due to the physical force of the attacks, but it would no longer attack under its own power. It was well and truely dead.

Ahmed stopped the tank and lept out the vehicle, his pistol drawn. If that thing so much as blinked...

"Shepard, are you all right?" Tali asked with concern.

"I'm fine," he snapped back. "Garrus, put that fire out!"

"Yes sir," he replied. During the attack, the Maw had spit at the Mako. Thresher Maw spit was quite acidic, and it had burned through the Mako and fried some of the wiring. Ahmed had learned to hate and fear Thresher Maws, ever since that one night.

"Shepard!" Ahmed glared back at Tali. She was persistent. "What's gotten into you?"

"Akuze!" he shouted back. "Look it up!" Then he turned away and continued walking towards the Thresher Maw, the remains of the mangled tank, the lifeless bodies, and the signal tower. Admiral Kahoku had pointed them to this planet to find his missing men, and they had followed the signal to the wrecked tank surrounded by bodies. Then the Thresher Maw leapt from the ground and tried to drag the Mako under. Luckily it missed and they fought back. Ahmed was glad he had a tank this time.

Akuze. Shepard had earned his reputation at Akuze, the lone surivivor of a Thresher Maw attack that left all his close friends and comrades dead.

Friends like "Cowboy" Greg Lao. Cowboy was actually a colony kid with Korean ancenstry, but he liked to wear cowboy hats and talked in a southern Texan drawl that he taught himself to use. He loved watching old westerns, and he nearly shot his own leg off when he tried to show the unit his quick draw.

Friends like Gidget Anderson. Her real name was Bridget, but she hated that name and everyone just called her "Gidget". Someone once asked her if it was true that she once punched a shark. "Yes," she replied, "but it was on land." Oh, so it was dead when she punched? "Not until after I punched it."

Friends like Titus Washington, who once chugged 24 cans of beer, then still beat everyone at darts. Or Keeshawn Tucker, who once ate a live scorpion on a dare, then ate another one 'because the first one tasted so good'. Or Adam Toombs, a corporal who had been transferred from another unit. On his first mission his new unit, he was so nervous about trying to fit in, that he threw up in his helmet. Because of the toxic environment, he could not take the helmet off, so he completed the entire mission with his lunch still inside. That earned him a lot of teasing and a whole lot of respect from the rest of the unit. He fit in just fine.

And then Akuze. It was night when the ground shook. Ahmed fell out of bed and rolled, putting his hand on the nearest wall for stability. Something loud crashed outside and he heard a roar. Then another. Then screams and shouts and gunfire. No time to suit up, he grabbed his rifle and ran outside to see large shapes coiling about the camp. One of them rose up into the air and crashed down into a vehicle. Metal screeched and tires popped. Ahmed began to smell something burning.

Somewhere a woman shrieked, before it was suddenly cut off, like she had been--

Ahmed was knocked down as the ground erupted behind him, something dark and twisted rising up like a living tower that then swooped down. He rolled out of the way, the monstrosity just missing him but something still slashed his face. He felt blood.

He began firing at the large shapes. Something hissed and he felt something burning as his boot melted. He screamed at the pain, but forced himself to keep moving, limping as fast as he could, trying to run on one leg. He held down the trigger, his training forcing him to stop firing before his gun overheated.

Close by, he heard the familiar sound of a tank minigun firing, and he saw one of the large shapes recoil and twist away, before it tensed and slammed into the offending object. The minigun stopped. Ahmed continued to move, to fire, but he never heard the minigun again.

I need to get away, he thought. Then suddenly he was weightless, and he see saw only sky and dirt before he hit something solid that took knocked the air out of his lungs. He gasped desperately for breath, while coughing at all the dirt surrounding him. He tried to crawl and desperately move away as fast as he could.

When his lungs finally worked again, he hurried to his feet and stumbled away, his chest burning like fire at the recent lack of oxygen. His gun gone in the calamity, he could not fight back at the creatures that had attacked.

Someone grabbed him and threw him inside a building. Ahmed was disoriented, but the person shoved a gun into his hand and told him to start shooting. So he did. The enemies were large and many, so he shot as many as he could. More weapons were nearby so he took one in each hand and braced them against his body the best he could and fired, fired, always firing, until one of the shapes turned and flew into the building.

The impact was loud and forceful, the walls twisting and ripping apart. The man beside him bellowed in agony and all firing stopped. Ahmed's vision blurred, and he lay still, waiting for death. He closed his eyes, listening to the shouts, screams, and guns diminish over time before finally stopping. Eventually the sounds of the giant worms subsided and disappeared. The only sound remaining the rise and fall of Ahmed's steady breathing.

A captain once called Thresher Maws a 'Hentai nightmare', all tentacles and teeth. Having lived through the Akuze massacre, Ahmed Shepard thought that description was too tame.

Back in the present, Ahmed pistol-whipped the lifeless Thresher Maw as he passed, then shut down the beacon with a few shots. He was not going to bother shutting it down gracefully.

"These were Admiral Kohaku's men," Tali noted. Ahmed was annoyed that she had tagged along behind him, but that was his fault for not telling her to stay in the tank. "They were lured here by the beacon. We better inform the Admiral."

Great, Ahmed thought. I'm sure he's just going to love this news.

"What do we do?" Tali asked, concerned.

"Find something we can use," Ahmed Shepard replied. "Someone up there needs my boot up his ass!" Ahmed vowed to shove his boot so far up Haliat's ass, he would taste leather every time he talked.

Ahmed had followed the probe's signal into the mine, before a series of blasts had dropped rock on the way they had come in. A pirate leader named Elanos Haliat then gloated about it over the comm. Apparently this was some sort of revenge for the Alliance stopping the Elysium Blitz all those years ago.

Ahmed took out his Omni Tool. The probe had been rigged with a nuclear device by the Alliance over two decades ago, as a failsafe. The old protocols were no match for current technology and Ahmed disarmed the nuke, before dismantling the rest of the bomb. Now to actually find a way out.

As luck would have it, the back exit had not collapsed during the cave-in. One of the detonation charges must have failed. Ahmed and his team took the exit out of the mine and back to the surface.

They came out at the top of a very large hill. Ahmed would have to check his Omni Tool for the map, but he was not looking forward to the long hike it would take to get back to the Mako. He walked to the edge of the hill crest to survey his surroundings.

The descent was steep, but manageable. It would not take long to get down. Down the hill to his right, he noticed that the pirates had set up camp. So they were here, he thought. And then he looked left and noticed the Mako.

Ahmed narrowed his eyes in anger. Those bastards took my Mako! Then another thought formed, and he smiled wickedly.

"Shepard!" Tali shouted as Ahmed jumped down and half-ran, half-slid down the hillside. Tali and Garrus followed as fast as they could.

Shepard hit the ground and rolled, then sprinted to the Mako. He was nearly at the Mako when one of the pirates noticed him and they began firing, but they were too late and too far away. Ahmed climbed inside and began activating the Mako. Tali and Garrus filed in soon after.

"Ready Garrus?"

"Hell yes!" Garrus opened fire on the pirates, the Mako's minigun and cannon ripping them apart. The pirates were left exposed as Shepard moved the Mako to cut off their access to their vehicle. Eventually, only Elanos Haliat was left. Shepard moved over and took the gunner position from Garrus.

Ahmed smiled.

"My boot, your ass!"

Ahmed fired.