You can fight like a krogan, run like a leopard...

[So she's been awfully absent from the public view for a while now. Mixed in are the disappointment of not getting onto the draft but shrugging it off, and the whole stagnation she's been experiencing lately due to her inaction. This clearly needs to be fixed as soon as possible, and she has just the way to do it... So now she's out and about, ready to do a little snow shoveling since it's already piled up around the house.

...Suffice to say, she's not having a pleasant time of it. Housemates and visitors alike can see her trying to clear the general vicinity of the house.]

How the hell did this build up so quickly overnight?

[Once that's done and over with, she starts on her usual routine, albeit decked out in her suit of armor due to the chilly weather. One can find her running around the town, stopping now end then at various places--wherever people run into her is up to them.

Of course, there's always bothering her when she makes her voice post on the journals.]

Anyone have recommendations for a hot drink to counteract the winter? I don't feel like taking a cup of coffee to my desk today.

Name: Shepard, Alia (Commonly known as Commander Shepard, FemShep to fandom)
Origin: Mass Effect
Sex: Female
Age: ...Approximately 20s, maybe early 30s.
Pre-Service History, and Psychological Profile: Colonist, War Hero
Pre-Service History and Psych Profiles here.
History for her actions in the first Mass Effect here.
History for her actions in the second Mass Effect here. Current history is from the Prologue, all the way up to recruiting Tali, Thane and Samara, and exploring the Collector ship.
Class: Soldier, through and through. Soldiers in the ME world are dangerous firearms experts. Shepard is a special case, in that she can handle weapons that would normally snap off the arms of a normal person, i.e. the M-920 Cain, or the M-76 Revenant.
Events that affected the ME universe for this Shepard:
She convinced Wrex to help her destroy the base on Virmire. The context: Saren had developed a cure for the Genophage, and Wrex wished to cure his ailing bretheren. Shepard convinced him, by virtue of having the krogan's grudging respect, that it would only cause more harm than it was worth, and that the genophage cure would just bind his race to the rogue Spectre's cause. End result? Kirrahe, the commander of the operations on Virmire, Shepard, Wrex, and the rest of the squad come out of it without any issues.
She left Ashley to die on the same planet. Context: Shepard was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Ashley was locked down at one of the AA Towers that kept the Normandy from bringing a nuclear bomb to the site. Kaidan was stuck with said bomb, fashioned out of a drive core, and out to keep the geth from dismantling it. Shepard chose to save Kaidan, though in the end, the gunnery chief never regretted the commander's decision -- choosing to fight to her last breath.
She has feelings for Kaidan, which influenced the above decision.
She released the Rachni Queen.
And she sacrificed part of the Alliance fleet to get the Council out of danger.
She intends to torch the Collectors’ home once she and her crew get there, that much is certain...and she is not going to leave anybody behind when they make their way out.
She also kept Maelon's Genophage data for later.
And she pistolwhipped Gavin Archer for torturing his brother.

Personality: Shepard is...an interesting case, in today's age of protagonists acting as stand-ins for people. The woman in question has alignments that can be determined by the player, "Paragon" and "Renegade". (Paragons resolve their conflicts by using their innate charm and charisma. Renegades have the same effect by being very imposing, not to mention threatening; it helps that Shepard is usually armed to the damn teeth when she confronts anybody off-ship.) This particular Shepard has elements of both -- majority of them Paragon, with low-key Renegade tendencies for someone particularly unfortunate. She's good-hearted in nature, with a general preference for avoiding conflict. It comes with being very, very empathetic for someone born in a world full of antagonistic aliens, and someone who wound up being thrust into a war with supernatural entities. Surely, any other person would have a nervous breakdown once all is said and done. Regardless, if it comes down to it, she's willing to get harsh should anyone really cross the line. One moment, you could see her talking sense into someone that's under the control of a sentient, abusive precursor for a machine, and in another, you could find her helping one of her crewmates with some serious trouble (look up the Loyalty Missions for examples of this), or even helping some bum off the street that's in need. Shepard is willing to extend a hand to anyone in need, and willing to try and defuse any bad situation (the hostage situation involving biotic extremists in ME1, for example), as long as they don’t do anything stupid, and try her patience. Of course, some people are just that much of a jerk, or really not willing to listen to reason – in which case, the other option she has a tendency to go for is pointing a gun in their face or punching their lights out. Certainly, a far more effective form of diplomacy, and if Shepard is anything, she’s effectively diplomatic. In many occasions, one could find her sticking right up for her crew regardless of alignment, and making sure she's heard whether or not she’s harsh about it. Suffice to say, when someone’s pissed her off enough, they don't normally live to tell about it, unless she's feeling especially patient, or if it would actually cause more trouble than it's worth.

Abilities: Physical: Shepard was already quite athletic – it comes from being trained not only as a soldier, but as Special Ops – but the modifications made to her during her revival at the start of Mass Effect 2 have made her incredibly durable, not to mention strong. She’s capable of speeding her way across the battlefield, taking punches that would have killed anybody else, and, in one instance, headbutting a krogan, a dino-like species with really hard bones, and coming out with only a slightly strained neck.

Mental: Shepard is very hard to dissuade. Hell, she may be the most difficult person to throw off course bar none; when she wants something done, she’ll do it herself, quickly and efficiently. She’s well-versed in military strategy – so much so, that she only needs a good squad of three, including herself, to take on entire armies of foes. She’s even capable of beating out said armies on her own, as shown by her War Hero service record; the woman is a one-man army, plain and simple, and depending on how the player handles her men, Shepard can mold them to become absolutely dangerous in their own right.

“Biotic ability”: Making things even worse for her foes is that Shepard is trained to utilize her mind in unique ways – biotics. Biotics, to paraphrase Mass Effect’s Codex, are people, alien or human, capable of creating mass effect fields on a whim, using them in various ways such as using telekinesis to blast people off a bridge, kinetic fields to send foes hurtling helplessly as target practice, or, worst of all, localized black holes to toss them around, opening them up for everything up to a tandem biotic strike. In Shepard’s case, this power primarily manifests in the form of manipulating her and her squad’s ammunition to punch through kinetic shields and armor with greater ease – Warp Ammo, as it is called. She can also be trained to lift her opponents with a mass effect field, and smash them into the ground (the Slam ability), to create a shield around herself that can take some of the hurt for her (the Barrier ability), and later on, the power to drain the life out of a person gradually with mass effect fields (the deadly Reave ability, currently inaccessible to this Shepard)…the list goes on.

…At any rate, to sum up her mind-over-matter powers: just think of it as the aforementioned telekinesis. Stopping things before they actually touch her, tossing people around like ragdolls, and such are par for Shepard’s course.

Problem areas: Physical: For all the super-powerful badass she was made out to be, due to her capacity as a Spec-Ops trooper, for all the dashing, ducking and weaving she does on the battlefield, and for all the butting heads with vicious krogan she’s done, Shepard has a rather…mocking weakness. She can’t even dance to save her life. She has very little in the way of coordinating her footwork for the sake of grace, and it shows whenever one lets her go about dancing in Flux in ME1. Put her in any sort of situation that needs her to dance and she’ll look like a deer in headlights trying to tap dance out of harm’s way.

Mental: Shepard has very few weaknesses mentally, but there are times when she’s more vulnerable than normal – more emotional. Carrying the weight of the whole galaxy on your shoulders is no small feat, after all. It makes sense that she’d wind up gradually pressured by it over the course of the games. (…ME3 aside; Mun doesn’t want to play it, much less see what they did to screw up the ending.) The problem is, she’s very good at hiding her woes. Few can really see into what’s going on in Shepard’s mind and actually understand what sort of burdens she carries.

Personal issues like the death of her family on Mindoir are a real scar on her mind. She’s more-or-less moved on by the time Mass Effect 1 starts, but one can’t help but get the feeling she has some lingering measure of guilt left-over. This goes hand in hand with another issue: her inability to open up, to tell her crew of her issues. Sure, she gives a lot of support to everybody else, but when it comes to herself – more specifically, her crew prying into those sensitive details…she starts feeling that no one needs to know about what’s happened to her – that she doesn’t need to drag anyone else into her own messes. (This is only made more evident by how she only relates her problems when she deems it necessary. In "I Remember Me", she uses her experiences to try and get Talitha to understand that it's not necessary to stay as a broken shell.) It only adds to the stresses of guarding the galaxy, and she clearly hates it.

…She's carrying a handful of sillier issues, too. In particular, she can’t help but question how people ‘get on the dance floor and not make complete idiots out of themselves’, as she’d put it. She also hates how people have to give her a job before they actually help her out with something. It's as if the world doesn't respect her (although, given her current situation as of ME2, being forced to work with a terrorist group and all, they're not unjustified in being distrustful of her. Worse, they don't really know the truth behind the matter, just helping along their trust issues towards someone who was brought back from the dead.). This line says it all:

“Just once I’d like to ask someone for help and hear them say, ‘Sure, let’s go. Right now. No strings attached.’”

Shepard is a quirky girl like that.

Sample: [Shepard groaned, rubbing the back of her head, unfocused emerald eyes trying to pull themselves together as she sits up and tries to regain her senses. What a headache...feels like the morning after shore leave, and she'd had too much of a ball with the alcohol. Where is she? ...Wait, this isn't the Normandy, nor is it the shuttle. How did she wind up in a forest? ...She didn't go back to Pragia somehow, did she? She couldn't have. She tries to call out to her crew -- Joker? Garrus? Tali? Anyone? -- but she gets no response. ...What the hell.] Where the hell am I? What is this place?

[She looks around, rubbing the side of her head to try to get that damnable migraine out of her skull. As she gets up, she eventually realizes that there's something that's been added to her back...and tries to stretch them out, like a bird would. ...Well, that's just dandy.] The Illusive Man better not have paid to turn me into some weird bird-woman while I was asleep. That'd be mundane even for him. [...Boy, she doesn't realize she's being heard over the journal network, does she? :| That's pleasant. ...Then when she looks again, she realizes she's not in her armor -- nothing more than a sundress. ...What.] ...Snatched my armor and weapons off me, too? What, does he have some secret obsession with me?

...Wait. He did spend a ton of money just to bring me back... [Tiny little shiver, once the implications really get to her. Great, she just creeped herself out by implying that the Illusive Man wants her as more than a 'savior of humanity'.] Alright, throwing that mental image out of the window...and riddling it with several tons of metal.

[Shaking her head, she straightens out and looks around, trying to sift for her gear.] He'd better have at least left it somewhere convenient. Having nothing to fight with besides my fists isn't the most fun thing in the world. [Still completely unaware of the journal, too. At the very least, she has her Cerberus uniform sitting where she can reach it... the less of this sundress, the better.] ...Alright, less bumbling around, more trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do.

Third-Person Sample: ...Well, this is awkward.

Shepard found herself staring at the streets, moreso the people passing by than the buildings themselves. They looked outdated, nowhere near like the sturdy steel firmaments she was so used to seeing whenever she walked through the Citadel. Don't even get her started on how different it was from the interior of a Collector Ship or Base, either. That wasn't even half the bother she was preoccupied with, either way. Oh, no. What she was concerned about was the entire species -- or is it simply a group? She's got a lot of reasons to doubt, given that she's in the dark... -- of winged people she just got added to. Perhaps it was just a mild dash of uncertainty. One would have to pull a double take if they saw other people who had the same wings as her, right -- just coming in different colors and such? But then, if they had those strange wings added to them, too, then doesn't this make it unlikely that it wasn't the Illusive Pervert that added her pair?

Well, that's what's going through Shepard's head, at least. Girl's gotten a lot of trains of thought just from glimpsing all this, really.

This looks like something Mordin would have a field day with. She mused, as she finally willed herself to walk on, continuing to look through the crowds. She's seen a lot of alien races before; Asari, Turian, Batarian, Rachni, Quarian...name it, she's glimpsed it at least once, or had a close encounter. But this? She's a fish out of water, if anything.