First part in a commission for  johnpm995! He wanted lorge aliens in the Mass Effect universe, taking part shortly after ME3, but this story has a much, much better ending.

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Abel & Crew ©  johnpm995
Story © c'est moi
Alien races, setting, and tremendously disappointing endings to Scifi sagas © Bioware

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Abel Kyren kept his hand hovering over his holster. In any other place in the galaxy, this would be the sign of a paranoid person, but in Omega, it was just common sense. Maybe other people were better at hiding it than Abel, but everyone, from the biggest gang bosses to the beggars in the worst wards, was armed in Omega.

One might wonder how someone like Abel got to a place like Omega. He was particularly mild-mannered, especially for a Turian. That probably had something to do with his build; the Turian race, the consummate soldiers of the galaxy, were known for being lean and sinewy, but Abel was almost sickly in his lanky build. His crest and metallic face were tattooed with white stripes, a sign of the respectable Clan Oraka, known for producing hardened warriors, a family in which Abel was the odd one out. The Hierarchy on Palaven, the government of the Turian empire, expected every Turian to rise up, to do their duty for the spirit of their society and volunteer in the military. But despite his best efforts, Abel just couldn’t reach the physical requirements expected of the military. He was a decent shot, and more than a little intelligent, but that doesn’t mean much when he couldn’t even fill out the standard issue battle armor for Turian soldiers.

The Hierarchy wasn’t fascist; there was no punishment for failing to serve in the military, but the social stigma was enough to make Abel run away from home and try to make it elsewhere. The fact he had ended up in Omega was a clear indicator that striking it out on his own had not gone well. Turians didn’t take much stock in individualism, so it wasn’t like Abel had many role models to look to. His pride wouldn’t allow him to go home, despite the increasingly agitated e-mails he received from his mother, so for now, he just had to make money scavenging and keeping his head low. He didn’t make trouble for Aria T’Loak’s enforcers, and they, so far, didn’t make trouble for him.

Still, as Abel went on his rounds looking for old electronics or discarded scrap in the semi-inhabited bowels of Omega, something seemed off. Omega station was hardly the hospitality capital of the galaxy, but the few other scavengers he came across seemed particularly agitated. There were concerned, almost panicked whispers hissing in every corner, and when Abel came across a grimy porthole, he saw why.

Omega had visitors.

There was a small fleet of ships at the main docking station, but he couldn't recognize their make. They definitely weren’t Turian, and he could hear muttered agreement from some older scavengers they weren’t Human made, either, so at least the remnants of Cerberus weren’t coming back for vengeance. The curves and white hulls seemed Salarian, but why would the Salarian Unions have a sudden interest in Omega?

All bets were off when blaster fire was heard in the levels just over Abel’s head. Some scavengers scrambled, deeper into Omega’s maintenance levels, but maybe some of the Hierarchy’s training and sense of duty rubbed off on Abel, because the scrawny Turian gripped his pistol and bolted for the stairs up to Omega proper. He came to the slums, and then he saw who had fired a blaster.

The invaders were a species that until this exact moment, Abel assumed were nothing more than an urban legend. They were huge, like some mix between a Krogan and an Earth gorilla, with meaty limbs and thick, leathery skin. They had four eyes on a flat, broad face set with a triangular mouth lined with needle-sharp teeth, and they were armed with heavy ordinance that could only be manufactured by the Krogan. These were the Yahg; an alien race that were one of hundreds of horror stories to rise up out of the Reaper Invasion. It sounded like some crazed conspiracy theory; sitings in top secret Salarian labs, and that a Yahg had even managed to become the infamous Shadow Broker until Commander Shepard, consummate hero that they were, vanquished him. These were stories that automatically made Abel skeptical, but there was little room for skepticism when one of those monstrous Yahg tossed Aria’s Enforcers around like rag dolls. Then the thing spotted Abel.

“Little Turian scum, what are you looking at?” the Yahg snarled, lumbering over to him, utterly dwarfing Abel.

The Turian had some military training, and didn’t even hesitate. He whipped out his pistol, and fired a laser round, straight into one of the Yahg’s eyes.

“Augh! Little bird shit!” the Yahg howled, his hand covering his eye, black blood trickling over his thick fingers.

Abel fired again, right at the Yahg’s chest, but his thick battle armor didn’t even dent. The Yahg smiled wickedly, bearing bristle-like teeth. His free hand shot out, wrapping around Abel’s throat. “Fly away, little bird shit.”

With little effort, the Yahg’s massive arm tensed, and he threw Abel into a grimy window. The Turian crashed through the window, glass shards cutting into his metallic skin, and slammed into a work table, chemistry equipment shattering and crashing to the floor. Dark blue blood poured out from Abel’s wounds, but the Turian barely noticed it, as he had been doused in a liquid tinted a light green that immediately began numbing his limbs as it soaked into his skin.

“Dammit!”

Abel looked over, only able to move his head as an Asari, clad in dented Justicar armor, and a Salarian dressed in a white laboratory coat stepped out from behind a slap-dash barricade of crates.

“He ruined it!” the Asari snapped, gesturing at Abel with a rifle.

“He was thrown, it’s not like he planned on it. I’ve got the formula, Valenia,” the Salarian said.

“The formula’s not good enough! The Yahg are already here, Salin!” Valenia shot back.

“Please…” Abel gasped. “What… what is this stuff?” He grunted.

Salin sighed, running a hand over her smooth head. “It’s a serum of my own invention. It’s supposed to inhibit growth regulators in the body, stimulate muscle cells, and produce a hyper protein cell culture. I… never had a chance to test it on Dextro-protein races, like you, Turian.”

“I can’t move my arms!” he declared, a sense of panic slowly overtaking his senses.

“Yes, well… there is a chance it could, uhm. Paralyze,” Salin mumbled.

“I-” Abel gasped again, trying to catch his breath. His heart was pounding, but then the numbness simply seeped away, only for a sharp, blazing hot pain to shoot through his body. “Augh! Spirits, you’ve killed me!”

“Oh, by the Goddess! That serum was supposed to be for me, and now we’ve killed some Turian kid!” Valenia ranted, pacing madly.

“No- no!” Salin shouted excitedly, grabbing her Asari friend. “Valenia, look! It’s working!”

Abel had never felt a surge of adrenaline like this as he clumsily clambered to his feet. He looked down at his scrawny arms, and to his amazement, they were growing. His head was swimming, and it felt like an eternity, but over the course of a few minutes, he was suddenly standing taller than a Krogan. He took some off-balance steps on legs that suddenly felt a lot heavier, looking down at arms that bulged with muscle, and a meaty chest, a pair of pecs full and taut with hard muscle that were stretching out his carapace skin. His cheap clothes had snapped off, leaving his body entirely bare before the two females.

“I…” Abel slurred a bit, shaking his head as he looked down at his own body in awe. “What a rush…”

Salin and Valenia stepped back, eyes wide. Abel now stood as tall as a Krogan, and looked like he would easily be a match for them in terms of raw strength. The Turian gave his arm an experimental flex, watching his bicep swell up spectacularly, hard enough that it forced his fingers to spread as he tried to pat it down. He looked over to the Salarian. “...Is this real muscle?”

“It better be, after all the work I put into that formula. Four years! I had three Dalatrasses breathing down my neck to get results.” Salin quipped.

There was the sound of cracking glass and bending metal, as a Yahg forced itself through the hole Abel had made. “Three more worms!” The lumbering alien pointed his hand cannon at the Turian, giving an ugly, hungry smile. “Let’s see that blue blood paint the walls.”

Abel’s survival instincts took hold. He dodged the Yahg’s first blast by leaping behind the work table. The hand cannon grazed the surface of the work table, and left a smoking, charred crater in the wall behind Abel the size of a Volus. The Yahg was lining up a second shot, but Valenia countered with a wave of biotic energy, knocking the huge invader back. She followed up with a volley of rifle fire, but her grim, teeth-clenched warface slowly faded away to fear as the Yahg simply stood back up, his armor and kinetic shielding completely shrugging off the asari’s firepower.

“Heh,” the Yahg chuckled. “You blue waifs don’t know when to quit.”

Abel glanced over the table to see the Yahg slowly backing Salin and Valenia into a corner. In a split second, he ducked back down and dug his fingers under the lab table, and with a desperate test of his new strength, wrenched the lab table out of the floor. His arms strained, newly grown muscle pumped and tensed, but he lifted the huge piece of metal over his head and threw it at the Yahg, which sent the brute halfway back out of the window, utterly knocked unconscious. Abel stood there, taking deep breaths as his thick chest rose up and down, pushing past his carapace.

“Well… you wanted to know if all that was real,” Salin commented. “Do you have a name, Turian?”

“Abel, Abel Kyren.” He offered his hand, but then immediately blushed when, following Salin and Valenia’s eyes, he was still naked. “...Sorry.”

“The only thing big enough for you is going to be Krogan armor…” Valenia commented. “And we need to get out of here. Now.”

“We?” Abel asked, his brow arching as he crossed his thick arms over his wide chest.

“We need you to come with us, Abel,” Salin explained. “We were in a race against time to get that formula done, and you’re the key to producing it for other species. Besides,” she canted her head out the broken window, where sounds of gunfights were echoing down Omega’s corridors. “Do you want to stay here?”

The big Turian frowned. “No… but what are these… things doing here, anyways?”

“We’ve tried to warn the Council that the Yahg have been fed modern technology for years,” Valenia explained. “After the Reapers were defeated, there was a lot of ordinance left lying all around the galaxy, and… not that many people to claim it. Once the Mass Relays were brought back into operation, there was… what do the humans call it, a gold rush? A lot of opportunistic smugglers and scavengers picked abandoned ships and military installations clean before the Council could reassert authority. I was hoping to join the Justicars, so I tracked some of the missing ordinance down to the Yahg homeworld, Parnack.”

“I’m a military scientist, and I was able to track some of my own inventions to Parnack as well,” Salin added. “When both the Salarian Unions and the Asari Republics refused to listen to us, we found each other through the Extranet, and we’ve been working to prepare the galaxy against the Yahg.”

“And your answer was a chemical mix that… does this?” He flexed his arm, bicep bouncing and swelling up.

Salin and Valenia exchanged glances. “Have you seen the Yahg? With modern weapons and armor to back them up, the only two ways to fight them is by using biotic powers, or create super soldiers. We decided on super soldiers,” the Salarian concluded.

“It’s the Krogan Rebellions all over again,” Valenia grumbled.

“And just like the Krogan Rebellions, you need a Turian to fix everything, right?” Abel smirked, bouncing his pecs as he took a step towards the two, feeling a rush of swaggering pride.

Valenia scoffed. She tried pushing Abel back, and looked decidedly frustrated when the Turian didn’t budge much. She tried again, managing to press Abel back with a wave of biotic energy. “Don’t get cocky. You’re stronger, Kyren, but a well-aimed rifle can still kill you. We need to get you in armor, and then get you to our ship. Unless you want to see if the Yahg find you so terribly impressive.” Valenia punctuated her statement by tilting her rifle down to Abel’s all too exposed manhood.

Properly sobered, Abel nodded, subtly covering up certain areas with his thick ands. “...Right.”

Salin and Valenia nodded to each other. “There’s a few shops nearby. Let’s get you suited up. What’s your weapon training?”

“Uh… I’m a good shot and I know my way around tech. Give me pistols and a tech blade… and a sniper rifle, and I can fight. I mean, I can now, with all this.” Abel grinned, raising up his arms, letting his thickened last spread out considerably.

Valenia rolled her eyes. “Salin, scan his vitals. I think he’s getting delirious.”

“It’s to be expected,” the Salarian said matter-of-factly. “There’s a lot of adrenaline pumping through him. I’m sure it’ll pass if he has time to cool down.”

“Well, he doesn’t have time to cool down, we need to get out of here.” Valenia countered. “He needs to be clothed and armed, then we need to move.”

“So, Krogan-sized armor and some weapons.”

Abel arched his brow again, starting to feel like he was being ignored. “Yeah, like I said, I need-”

“Pistols, tech blade, sniper rifle. He says he knows how to use them.” Valenia repeated, with a note of skepticism.

“Do we have time for even that, then?” Salin countered.

“We’re going to have to make time, unless Kyren thinks he can charge at the Yahg with nothing but what the Goddess gave him,” the Asari rolled her eyes.

“Hey!” Abel shot up. “I’m right here!”

“We know, Abel,” Salin reached up and patted his cheek, like she were telling a child how well-behaved he was. “You’re hard to miss. Just stay here, and we’ll be back before we make a break for the docks.”

It took a while to poke through the abandoned shops, but soon, Salin and Valenia found an increasingly impatient Abel armor that fit- if only barely- and the weapons he asked. The Turian had to manually break the neckpiece shaped for the humpbacked Krogan apart, the strong material first resisting Abel’s grip, but eventually breaking under his new, still untested strength. The armor was dented and rusted in pieces, and colored a shade of faded red Abel didn’t particularly like, but his true distaste, he saved for the weapons they had found for him.

“Batarian State Arms? Really?” Abel groaned, looking at the pistols stamped with the orange stripes of the notorious company. Its waste and corruption were legendary, and as a Turian, such a reputation left a bad taste in his mouth. No matter how unfit he had been for the Hierarchy, he still had some Turian stereotypes to live up to.

Valenia stared hard. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she began in a deceptively mild tone. “Would you prefer Armax, then? We can try their shop, currently located behind a wall of Yahg soldiers. Or maybe some top choice stock from Hahne-Kedar, or is Commander Shepard’s main supplier not good enough for you, either?”

Abel held up his hands defensively. “Easy, Val. I just…” the Turian sighed, feeling significantly smaller under the Asari’s withering gaze. “...Nevermind. These’ll do fine. For now.”

“I’m so relieved.” Valenia venomously shot back. Gripping her own rifle, she looked over her shoulder to Omega’s abandoned corridors. “We might as well get moving, then. The ship’s at the main dock, so we have to go past Afterlife. Maybe we’ll even see Aria’s head on a pike.”

Abel’s eyes widened further with worry.

“Oh, didn’t we mention that?” Salin grimaced. “The Yahg like leaving behind the heads of their victims. It’s meant to intimidate, and it reminds people of the Reaper’s impalers.”

“You’ve seen them attack before? I wasn’t even sure the Yahg existed before just now,” Abel said, keeping his voice low as he and the two females moved as quietly as possible through Omega’s slums.

“The Yahg are cleverer than they look. They’ve gone out of their way to attack colonies far away from Parnack, at opposite ends of Council space. A small human settlement on Eden Prime, a Turian garrison on Canrum, and an Asari outpost on Therum. They all happened at roughly the same time; no survivors, and bodies in Blue Sun armor strewn about the place. If it weren’t for me and Salin each looking at the attacks and noticing the bodies hadn’t been killed in the assault, it could be that we would have never found out something far worse was happening,” Valenia explained.

Abel grimaced. He had a good memory, and he remembered hearing about the attack on Canrum. A friend of his, a Quartermaster, had complained about resupplying the garrison. The young Turian had made nothing more of it. Maybe something could have been done if only he knew…

They were moving up from the slums. The Yahg had apparently swept through the lower levels of the station, because the corridors were almost abandoned, saved for half-traumatized survivors that dare not come out of their hiding places. The three of them plastered themselves against the walls, staying in the shadows whenever a Yahg trooper, dressed in noticeably shiny and impressive black and red armor, would pass, picking through the remains for any scraps of loot left, but they soon turned back, heading towards Omega’s center.

“Something must be going on at Afterlife…” Abel commented, as another Trooper lumbered back. “I imagine Aria’s giving the fight of her life.”

Salin gasped suddenly as she passed a porthole, pulling Valenia over. “Val, look! That’s our ship!” she hissed.

All three looked out of the grimy porthole with dismay; they could see the main dock of Omega, and there they saw three large, bulky Salarian-made cruisers gunned down the smaller ships, and Salin and Valenia groaned as they watched an Asari corvette blown up by the cruisers. “My lab!” Salin cried.

“Why are they destroying the ships?” Valenia demanded.

Abel’s face slowly fell as he slowly realized what was going on. He remembered this tactic from military classes. “They don’t want any refugees. They want to conquer Omega, take everyone, or… they want to kill everyone.”

The three exchanged grim looks. They wouldn’t find out until they moved further into the center of Omega. The Troopers seemed entirely centered around the glowing, neon and holographic signs of Afterlife, and Abel saw that the Troopers were focused on the club. All the Yahg were facing towards it, their backs to the two females and their hulking companion.

“Do you see anything?” Valenia asked Abel, who could see over the Yahg’s shoulders.

Abel blanched. The Troopers formed a circle around the vast plaza that the Afterlife Club sat on, and he could see it formed two purposes. The front half of the circle were trying to push through the formidable defenses Aria had set up. He could see the self-appointed Matriarch of Omega, hurling out biotic attacks with a vicious, furious look slathered on her face, and even her Krogan consort, the Patriarch, rallying the troops. But what had him more concerned were how the lower half of the circle were acting. The Yahg Troopers were herding captured denizens of Omega, gathering up groups, slapping on strange, glowing restraints, and marching them to the main dock.

“They’re taking everyone captive.” Abel finally said, shaking his head. “They look like slaves.”

“Slaves? That’s a bit of a jump, isn’t it?” Salin hissed.

“They can’t be hostages. Who would pay for random drifters from Omega? Aria certainly won’t shed a tear for them. And they’re not enemy soldiers, so they’re not taking Prisoners of War. Not that they look like the type to take enemies to start with…” Abel muttered.

“Maybe he’s right.” Valenia motioned to the docks, where groups of Omega citizens were being led off to. “They’re loading everyone on those cruisers.”

Salin nervously ran a hand over her head. “What’s our plan, then? We can’t save all of them, and we need to get out of here.”

Abel grunted, tensing his arms against the Krogan armor, causing the metal to creak as he grabbed his sniper rifle. “We take one of the cruisers.”

Valenia looked at him incredulously with wide eyes. “What, have you lost it? How are three people supposed to take a cruiser?”

“It won’t just be us. All their Troopers are focused here, right? There’s only going to be a skeleton crew on the cruiser. If we push through while they’re getting a new batch of prisoners ready, we can beat them to the airlock, close it and detach the ship, and we get the slaves already onboard to help us,” Abel explained.

Salin shook her head. “What makes you think they’ll want to help us?”

“They’re desperate and being forced into slavery. If we show we can take their captors down, they can overwhelm them. Omega people don’t have many virtues, but they like being free, and they love a good fight,” Abel said.

As he looked to his two companions, Valenia was slowly nodding. “I think I like this plan.”

“Wait, what?” Salin hissed. “It’s crazy! We’re going to hijack a cruiser filled with captives, the three of us?”

The Asari shrugged. “Do you have any better ideas?”

Salin hesitated, starting and stopping to speak a few times before she glared at the two of them. “Just because I can’t think of anything better doesn’t make this a good plan.”

“Noted,” Abel grunted, rolling his broad shoulders and preparing his sniper rifle.

The three stuck to the walls, hiding behind debris and refuse where they could. Because of Aria’s spirited defense, the Yahg were entirely focused on breaking her and rushing into Afterlife, allowing Abel and his companions to make it to the docking corridors. Plastered against the wall, they inched their way towards an airlock where one of the Cruisers were docked, and a fresh batch of captives had been loaded on. While more were prepared in the main plaza, the airlock was guarded by two Yahg Troopers, brandishing rapid-fire Krogan rifles. Abel took a deep breath, and lined up his sniper rifle. It took some adjusting, as the Krogan armor, and his new muscle underneath, was a lot thicker than he was used to. But, he lined up the shot and pulled the trigger, and one Yahg Trooper fell to the ground.

His partner gasped, and immediately spotted Abel with his superior eyesight. “Escaped slaves!” He roared into a commlink, summoning Yahg Troopers stampeding down the docks, making the metal walls shake with their approach.

“Ah, shit,” Abel muttered. He wasn’t strong enough to take all of those Troopers on. “Move, move!” The Turian ran towards the remaining guard, opening fire with his pistols, but the Yahg’s armor was too strong. Grinning evilly, the Trooper lined up his shot to the charging Turian, but a Biotic warp threw his weapon from his hands. Abel glanced back just long enough to see Valenia shaking off the remnants of biotic energy from her hands, before the Turian grappled with the Yahg.

“Puny Turian! You trying to look tough in that Krogan piece of shit?” the Yahg gloated. He tore at the old armor, pulling apart one of the arms, only to reveal Abel’s tensed, bulging muscle, which took the invader by surprise.

“What was that about puny?” Abel grinned, gripping the Trooper’s armor tight. He grunted under the effort, every part of his body straining, but with a defiant roar, he pulled the Yahg off his feet, and threw the huge brute into his back-up. Valenia and Salin came up from behind, the Asari summoning up a huge biotic shield as they rushed into the airlock, laser fire bouncing off the force field. They pressed into the ship, and Salin quickly closed them off, effortlessly tapping into the ship’s control panel.

“This is a standard Salarian Cruiser- get me to the main deck, and I can fly us out of here,” Salin explained as she detached the ship from the airlock.

“You can fly a cruiser?” Abel asked incredulously.

The Salarian wobbled her hand. “Well, I’m no Joker Moreau, but I can get us to the Mass Relay.”

Suddenly, the ship’s intercom crackled to life. “Personnel in Airlock, identify yourselves. You have detached this cruiser while the crew is still on shore. List your order callsign and personnel number.”

“Uh…”

After a tense moment, the intercom snarled back to life. “Stay where you are, intruders! Surrender and you will not be destroyed!”

“Get ready,” Valenia grunted, priming her rifle and aiming it down the corridor, ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. The corridor began rumbling, and as the first Yahg trooper came into sight, the Asari Commando opened fire, peppering her enemy with laser fire and then throwing him down with a biotic attack, as Salin picked away at him with her own pistol. Another trooper came from the other end, slamming into Abel, but the engorged Turian stood his ground, tensing his meaty arm and throwing a punch into the Yahg’s mouth that sent him reeling.

“How’d’ya get pas’ me?” The Trooper slurred, spitting out some of his needle-like teeth.

Abel narrowed his eyes, and then looked over his shoulder, as Valenia and Salin finished off one of the Troopers. “They’re holding the captives this way!” the Turian shouted, rushing down the corridor. They followed the corridor down to the cruiser’s hangar, the entrance under guard by one remaining Trooper. “Val, shield me!” Abel shouted as he began rushing the last Yahg.

Valenia grunted in agreement, throwing a sphere of biotic energy around the Turian. He shrugged off the rapid fire from the Trooper, and tackled him to the ground. They rolled into the hangar proper, and before a crowd of captives, Abel overpowered his opponent, punching the Yahg out. Breathing heavily, Abel growled, pulling at his armor. It had seen a lot of punishment, and was close too falling apart. He easily peeled some of the more constricting parts off, leaving his arms roped with pumped, heavy muscle and his thick wall of a chest bare. Looking to the captives, his blue eyes sharp, he grabbed the Yahg’s prone body, and with a last burst of strength, his bulging shoulders swelling up as his biceps jostled his forearms, that scaly, carapaced back tensing, he lifted the hulking Trooper over his head. “Omega! You wanna show these Krogan wannabes who’s boss?” he shouted in a challenge to the captives. Immediately, some jumped up, throwing their fists in the air and roaring their approval.

Abel dropped the prone Yahg, planting his foot on his fallen enemy’s chest as he tossed the Trooper’s rifle to one of the captives. “There’s still a few Yahg on this ship, so let’s flush ‘em out through the airlock!”

“Where are we headed from there?” Salin asked, tugging on Abel’s arm.

The Turian smirked. “Let’s start with ‘the hell out of here,’ and we’ll figure the rest from there.”