Mass Effect: The Leprechaun's Attack

Commander Shepard and his crew go investigate an ancient prothean temple. Inside however they are shocked find something disturbing.

As the small scout ship came down for a landing, the three figures inside prepared themselves one final time to make sure that they would be suitable to face whatever potential threats or dangers may be waiting for them outside. Snow and wind whipped around the small ship as it came down, settling into edge of a snowy bank where it then shut off the engine and unlocked the front doors to allow the occupants to step out. Commander Shepard, Liara T'soni, and Miranda Lawson stepped out into the freezing cold with their guns drawn and their armored suits covering their bodies to provide some insulation.

Otherwise, they would not have been able to stand walking around in such chilly weather without the danger of pneumonia or worse creeping up on them. The threesome looked around, keeping their eyes peeled, but they could only really see so far when there was so much mist, fog and snow swirling around them. Miranda cocked her laser gun and fired it off, rather carelessly into the tundra ahead of them. Both Shepard and Liara jumped back from her.

"What in the world do you think you're doing?" Shepard barked at her.
Miranda smirked playfully. "Oh, I was just making sure we weren't being watched...and scaring off anything that might have been."

"That was unusually risky of you, Miranda Lawson," Liara remarked with a irksome hint in her tone of voice.
Miranda shrugged. She wasn't in a very good mood today, as much as her smile might have hidden that. They had arrived at this terrible place for the sake of doing one thing and one thing only.

Investigating some dirty, old ruins that no one had inhabited for years. Miranda understood the importance of Prothean technology and artifacts as much as anyone, considering the usage they might have in combating the Reapers, but she had wished that Liara and all of her Shadow Broker knowledge could have picked a far better place for them to investigate rather than here. James Vega, that lucky son of a bitch, was able to stay back up on the Normandy itself while she was being dragged down here. She had agreed to help Shepard, but she didn't know why he had to drag her around to places like this.

"Come on, I believe I can see the ruins from here," Liara said as she lowered the binoculars away from her face.
The trio hurried along, wanting to get in there, remove what they could find, and get out and back up onto the Normandy, where it was warm and safe, before they started to lose all feeling within their hands and feet. Shepard took the lead of course, being the man of the group as well as the literal leader of everyone aboard the Normandy as it was.

They found the temple that Liara had been looking for, half-submerged underneath piles of snow, but still accessible enough for them to get inside without much trouble. They came across some curious statues and hieroglyphs rather quickly as they went deeper into the temple. There were statues that seemed to resemble large, curvaceous alien women with enormous, hourglass-shaped bodies, their hips and chests flaring outwards to resemble massive mounds of stone, at least that was how the statues themselves depicted it. Beside both of them were smaller statues oddly depicting a strange creature.

It was short, with long claws, a beard that cascaded down the front of its chest, and what appeared to be a top hat sitting on its head. Both of these smaller statues accompanied the larger alien woman statues, which neither Miranda nor Shepard could make heads or tails of. The hieroglyphs that Liara attempted to read made little sense to her either. It seemed to be some kind of language long since forgotten about.

She took a photograph of it, however, to make sure to have some samples handy when she later checked the Shadow Broker archives for information about them.

"So are we almost done here? There hardly seems to be anything useful here, much less anything devised by the Protheans. We may have just wasted our time." Miranda remarked with a pitiful shake of her head.
Liara and Shepard ignored her and headed a little further in.

Eventually they came into a room that had more of a clearing, a large round room. Sitting in the very center of the room, which was oddly lacking in the same amount of debris that they had been climbing over and under for the past few rooms beforehand, was another statue. It was another one of that weird little creature from earlier, only this one seemed almost...like it had been alive at some point.

Its entire body was frozen solid, its skin looked like it was made from stone but it had icicles hanging off of it too. Clutched in one hand seemed to be some sort of bag. While Shepard and Liara continued to search through near-darkness to find more passageways to explore through, Miranda decided to preoccupy herself with the curious statue of the little monster in the fine clothes and the bag in his hand.

She tried giving it a pry, but she found that for a statue, its grip was quite strong. Yet the bag did not seem to be intentionally part of its person; she could hear something jingling inside. With her vast amount of knowledge, she could quite easily tell that this was supposed to be gold inside.

"Wow...this might be the actual jackpot that I've just come across, hmm..." Miranda felt a little smile dance upon her lips. She wondered if she could convince Shepard and Liara to take this weird thing back with them. They wouldn't be able to remove the gold from its hand just like this, and the longer she stared at it the more she started to find it kind of...cute, in the ugly sort of way. Maybe they could find some eccentric buyer at the Citadel who would buy a statue of a gremlin-like beast as this one, and they could keep the bag of gold for themselves.

"If you two haven't found any useful artifacts here, then...why don't we just take THIS guy back as a prize? At least to say we got ourselves SOMETHING."

Shepard and Liara didn't really want to take such an ugly and unappealing-looking piece of ancient alien artwork onto the Normandy, but it seemed that they didn't have much of a choice since Miranda had already begun to explain to them her whole plan about selling it for some money. It certainly wouldn't take very long for someone with the entire black market network of the Shadow Broker under her wing to find a potential buyer. Probably some rich and out-of-touch sociopath who wants to fill his rooms with loads and loads of 'antiques' as a way of displaying his obscene wealth openly to his guests. Whatever worked best in getting them the supplies they needed to combat the Reapers, the better, in all honesty.

Miranda wanted to see if she could remove that bag of potential gold from the statue's hand too. Not that she mentioned anything about it to her two comrades, of course. They simply thought it was part of the design.
Upon bringing the statue onto the small scouting ship, while Miranda took to the controls, Shepard and Liara looked over the one single thing they had managed to scavenge and bring back.

Neither of them were very happy about it.
"What in the world is this thing? I have studied all types of alien lifeforms, existing and extinct, but I do not believe I've ever once seen anything quite like this...creature." Liara drew her face back in revulsion after staring too closely at the statue for too long. She didn't like that sort of maniacal, crook-toothed grin that it was wearing, like it was planning with meticulous glee on how it would break out and attack her at the very last moment that she expected it. She'd faced numerous creatures head on, but she didn't particularly like this one very much.

"You know, I almost could say...that this thing...it almost resembles a leprechaun." Shepard suddenly spoke up from behind her.

"A leprechaun?"
"Yeah, it's, uh, how do I put this, it's sort of like a myth, or a mythical creature, that was made up on my home planet of Earth."

"Interesting. I had no idea that you Earthlings thought grotesque midgets in top hats were some kind of mythical creature."

"No, they're kind of different from that. They're mostly well-known in a certain part of culture, but everyone else has heard about them one way or another because of it.

We even have a holiday that sort of involves leprechauns, second-hand anyway. I wouldn't say I've ever once seen a leprechaun that looked quite like this one though. It looks like it's been stepped on the face several times by particularly angry Krogan, for one thing.

I think the leprechauns we like to depict back on Earth were more friendly...more pleasant-looking."
"So what are leprechauns able to do? What makes them so 'mythical' in your culture?"

"They're said to be in possession of pots of gold, which they cherish almost more than their own lives. They hide it at the end of a rainbow, where they assume no one would be able to find it. They're greedy little bastards, that's for sure. But they're not unwilling to play fair when they know they've been had. It's said that if you manage to capture a leprechaun, it's able to grant a wish for you."

"That's an incredible amount of power."
"Heh, you should hear about things like big-foot or genies sometime. Look up more about Earth culture whenever you want."

"Maybe I will do just that...and possibly find someone who would be mad enough to pay a high sum for this ugly statue to get it off of our hands."

"I'd prefer to do that, because this thing is starting to give me the creeps," Shepard remarked aloud.
"Do you not like it? You're the one who was able to conceivably recognize it as something?"

"No, of course I don't like it, this thing is pretty much disgusting. I don't want to have to look at it any longer than I could help it." Shepard shook his head. He turned away from it. "Let's get it onto the ship and start figuring out a way to get rid of it if we can do that."

As soon as the ship had arrived back at the Normandy, Shepard and Liara helped lift the statue of the leprechaun-like monster onto the main ship, while Miranda simply strut past them to return to her own room. They would probably have to have a personal talk with her later about being more of a team player.

She might have been someone who had been picked up right from Cerberus, but that didn't mean she could act however she wanted. No doubt, karma would catch up with her and her 'perfection' eventually, but right now was not the time for anyone to worry about that. Shepard and Liara left the statue to thaw out and help melt away the ice on its surface in the corridor near the cargo bay. It seemed like the best place, they would have to inform Joker and the rest about it later. They didn't particularly want to explain how they failed to find anything particularly useful on the ice planet after wasting the time and expenses to go and explore it.

"I think we should examine the gold inside of the bag," Liara said, removing the bag from the statue's hand with a quick tug.

"You think so?"

"Well, we need to make sure it's real gold, of course, not to mention whether there's anything potentially useful about the gold that we can use it for. As well as...checking it for potential viruses. After all, germs can easily linger on coins for many years if they so wished. We have little knowledgeable of what was on that planet beforehand or who the beings were that once lived there before we arrived there."

"Very well, but we should be extremely cautious, then. Don't take any chances."
"Of course not, Shepard."

Liara removed the bag of the gold coins to take it back to her room, where she would use the massive information network that she controlled as the Shadow Broker to get more information on the coins, their potential origins, as well as what they might worth. She could also look up about the statue too, but it was still more likely they would make more money off of the coins than off of the repugnant statue. Nonetheless, it certainly didn't hurt for her to give it a try anyway.

However, as Liara walked away with the bag, she failed to notice a small hole in the very bottom of it. As the coins jostled about inside of the sack, the hole itself began to tear open, due to the many coins that rubbed up against it, and suddenly, the hole opened wide enough to allow a single gold coin to come falling out of the leather container it had been sealed within. The single gold coin hit the ground and bounced away before rolling off down the hallway, going completely unaware by the Asari scientist herself. As the coin rolled, it went past the feet of the leprechaun statue it had been held by earlier, eventually reaching the end of the corridor, where it came into contact with a door.

When it struck the door, the coin bounced one final time before finally coming to a complete stop on the floor.
The warmth of the cargo bay began to help melt away the thick, chilled layer of ice that covered the leprechaun statue. However, not only that, but a crack began to form over the statue's face, like a deep, black scar that broke apart its gleeful smile, making it seem almost somewhat sadistic in nature instead. The leprechaun statue was not exactly what the members of the Normandy had believed it was.

In fact, it was no statue at all, but a monster, sealed away by the dying civilization in a desperate attempt to save themselves. Not that even Shepard, who knew about leprechauns, could have been able to know this much about the power that the mythical little imp possessed. In fact, he had never believed that leprechauns could exist, nor that they actually lived in space. However, this was going to be the beginning of a scenario that none of them could have ever anticipated...nor would be able to fend themselves against. It was all because they had made the dire mistake of taking the leprechaun's gold. Unlike the stories, this was a leprechaun that would never allow anyone to have his gold, not if he could ever help it.

James Vega soon began walking down the corridor toward the cargo bay, where he typically spent his time working out or tuning up his weapons for any upcoming battles. He usually liked to keep to himself anyway, at least when it came to doing his hobbies. However, it didn't take very long for him to come across and notice the rather bizarre-looking leprechaun statue. A pool of melting water had already begun to form around it. The crack on its face had gotten larger, wider.

James immediately recoiled after taking a closer look at the statue. "Ugh, what the hell is this thing? Looked like it got pulled right out of a bag of nightmares. Geez, I'd rather stare down a freaking Reaper than have this thing hanging around on our ship. Shepard said that they'd found something on the planet, even if it wasn't Prothean technology...but really, this thing? Ugh. For crying out loud."

James shook his head. He stomped right past the statue, deciding he no longer would want anything to do with it. He'd heard that it had been carrying some kind of gold currency on it too, which he was curious about, but he'd wait until Liara had finished analyzing the stuff to see if it was really worth anything. James came up to the cargo bay door. He looked down and saw the single gold coin lying there, as if it had been waiting for his arrival all this time. Looking over his shoulder a few times, James decided to reach down and take the coin for himself.

Why not, right? It was only a single coin, he doubted Liara had the chance to count them yet and know for sure just how many were in there. Besides, if the coins turned out to be worth a lot at the Citadel, then he could cash in this one and make himself a little extra on the side for himself. No harm in that. James slipped the coin into his back-pocket and stepped through the door.

At that very moment, as the final icicle dissolved away from the tip of the leprechaun statue's nose, the statue itself began to tremble. The crack on its face started to travel, at a rapid speed, down the length of its body. The rock and clay coating its skin crumbled away to reveal the true monster hiding inside. The leprechaun was coming back to life to retrieve its gold once again.

The leprechaun's bulbous, golden eyes flashed with a sadistic, maniacal glee. Even though he may have appeared somewhat human on the outside, he was certainly no human in terms of thoughts and morality. He had no intention of letting anyone who thought they could possibly get away with his gold live. Of course, that meant dealing with the entire crew aboard this rather fascinating-looking ship.

While the leprechaun did want to retrieve his gold from that blue bitch, he knew that he would never be fully satisfied unless he had ever single coin back together. Even if it meant one single coin, he couldn't simply stand by and let that go. So, while he intended to go after his bag of precious gold eventually, it would be best if he went for the lone coin first, considering how close he was and since he knew exactly where the person who had taken it had gone. The leprechaun turned his eyes onto the cargo bay door behind him.

All he would have to do was go in there and get it back...but what would be the fun in that, not to mention, it could potentially be dangerous. The leprechaun wasn't someone who would simply go about the normal way of handling a situation, not when it came to dealing a painful and excruciating end to someone who had crossed him. The leprechaun sneered, revealing jagged, uneven yellow teeth. He would have his fun with this one.

The leprechaun sneaked into the door of the other half of the cargo bay. James, who had been working on cleaning his pistol at the time, overheard the sound of the door sliding open. He looked over his shoulder. He expected to see Shepard or Garrus or anyone else standing there, but it appeared to him as if he was still all alone inside the room. James's eyes narrowed. He had been down in this section of the cargo bay almost every day, either working out to stay in shape or fixing up his guns and his armor to ensure they were at optimal work. However, not once had the door ever opened on its own like this. James shook his head. He went back to looking over his laser pistol.

Suddenly, he overheard several more sounds, coming from closer by. He could have chalked it up to something in the pipes, but he didn't think it was exactly that either. If anything, it was starting to put him on edge; while he did know how to relax, he was still a seasoned soldier, and he was someone who had always been ready to jump into a fight at the last second. He heard the sound again. It was even closer. Like it was right behind his work-bench.

The Normandy may not have been the highest-grade of space ships around, it wouldn't have ever had any sort of weird malfunctions like this. James knew he was probably being paranoid, but he was always looking for a chance to use his guns and test their strength anyway. Anyone who was SUPPOSED to be on the ship would have made their presence known long ago.

"You there!"

James nearly jumped and pulled the trigger on his gun, he was so surprised. The voice was coming from behind the bench. James rushed around to get at the intruder, only to find that he was already gone.

"You! You're the one who took my coin! I heard you, loud and clear! You were the one who picked up that loose coin! Well, I won't let you get away with that! No one can get away with taking a leprechaun's gold and not expecting some punishment for you! You probably think you can get away with keeping it from all of your friends, now do you, you greedy little bitch? Well, I won't have it! None of you are going to get my gold! None of you at all!"

James had no idea what the guy was talking about. He heard the sound of something rattling behind him, so he spun around and aimed his gun, but still, he could not see anyone there. Whoever this little bastard was, he was moving exceptionally fast. Not a good sign, for one thing. James began marching slowly around the room in wide circles, his eyes darting back and forth in hopes of catching even a glimpse of the intruder. He thought about leaving the room to contact Shepard and the others, but doing that would leave this little bastard to slipping out and going to some other section of the ship before they could find him.

"You think you can kill me? Ha ha ha! You don't even have the skill to lick my boots! You're just pathetic! Absolutely pathetic! Ha ha ha! I love it! Makes a good victim for an old, crotchety leprechaun like myself! Now, if you don't mind, why don't you just stand still like a good boy...and let me kill you!"

James looked up. He had heard the voice of the creature, this 'leprechaun', announce itself from above. Just before he could even raise his gun high enough to shoot at it, the leprechaun came crashing down on top of him. In one clawed hand he was clutching some sort of grate and a handful of wires, which he'd probably been holding onto the entire time he was hanging from the ceiling. With a crazed laugh, the leprechaun struck James in the face and then barreled straight into his chest, knocking him backward.

James couldn't even save his own balance as he tumbled straight into some sort of water tank. Considering the Normandy was a space-faring craft, it would need its own supply of water to be able to sustain its crew during travel, especially when it was travel that could last days or even weeks at a time. It was stored in the cargo bay because it was the only appropriate place to put it, as the water inside was pumped through filters and pipes that flowed through the ship and into the various rooms that needed it. James rubbed the back of his head. He hoped he hadn't gotten a concussion from that.

The leprechaun landed down next to him. He had already thrown away the grate and was now holding a hose in his grimy hand. It was a hose that was attached to the water tank. With a sadistic sneer dancing so playfully on its dry lips, the leprechaun wasted no time to climb up on James and thrust the hose into his mouth. He forced it so far down, the man nearly choked. The leprechaun cackled. He had made it so far down that James would not be able to pull it out without risking the potential of physically harming himself. The leprechaun waddled over to the lever that helped move the water inside the tank.

"Now, now, don't get so upset! I'm not trying to SCARE you or anything! This should be quick and painless! Well, okay, not really, but besides, you look like you could use a drink, so why not help yourself, eh..?"
With that remark done, the leprechaun flipped the lever. Almost immediately, the water began to gush down into James Vega's stomach, and soon, he started to swell himself, like a balloon. The leprechaun stood back, laughing evilly at the top of his lungs, even rubbing his hands together for good measure, as he witnessed the expansive scene unfolding before him. James tried to get the hose out, even knowing what it might do, but he couldn't pull it out now that the water was pumping into him at such a powerful force.

His stomach started rising upward, bloating out, getting bigger and bigger. His white tee rolled up, and then it began tearing apart, as his man boobs got too large for his shirt to even attempt to contain it anymore. He felt his rear becoming larger and much wider. His stomach flopped down in front of him, forcing him to spread his legs, as his stomach continued to reach farther, spreading like a mound of dough across the cold, tiled floor.

James was panicking. His arms and legs were beginning to lose their definition as well, chiseled and abundant muscle becoming replaced with swollen bubbles of flesh as he inflated from every corner of his body. He gasped as he felt his balls expanding to the size of two round basketballs. The leprechaun's magic was enhancing the properties of the water on his person, to make him grow bigger than it ever could have done to him otherwise. James couldn't even cry out for help. Because he hung around in the cargo bay so much, there was little chance that anyone would appear to help him, even by the sake of coincidence.

James' pants split open revealing his already huge yoga ball sized butt cheeks, even his jeans wouldn't be able to keep him decent now. His boobs where getting so large, he could not see over them even if he craned his neck. He was already rendered immobile by his own massive, sloshing gut, and yet he continued to get larger. James' face was becoming puffier, fuller, too.

He felt himself be raised up as his backside and his legs were filled with so much excessive fluff, there was nowhere else he could possibly go but up. He was beginning to look like huge sumo wrestler at this point, no, bigger than even that. He was almost as big as the water tank that was filling him up.

Most of his clothes were gone now, rendered to little more than worthless shreds on his swelling person, but with his stomach so big and so wide, he was pretty much covered from immodesty as it was. James moaned, his eyes rolling back into his head. He didn't even know how to feel anymore, or what to think.

His whole brain felt like it was starting to black out. He could barely keep conscious anymore. His belly-button popped out, going from an innie to an outtie. His arms and legs were basically useless, too swollen and puffy, too engorged by all of the growth around them, to even be flexible or anything close to that. His rear kept him lifted almost a whole half-foot off of the ground. James went pale in the face. He didn't know how much more water he could even stand to intake. If he ingested any more, there was a real, genuine fear in his mind that he end up popping, just like the very balloons he so closely resembled.

Pleased with his handiwork, the leprechaun approached the water-inflated James Vega. He tapped the side of the man's body, seeing how his finger bounced off of it as if the human's skin had taken on the consistency and texture of rubber. It wouldn't be long now.
"Three...two...one..."

James Vega erupted in an abrupt and intense burst of water, dousing the entire cargo bay. The leprechaun, while drenched himself, could only laugh.
"Boom!"

Looking around near the work-bench James had been working on, the leprechaun found the coin, which he'd taken out of his pants pocket recently. Good thing too, or else it would take quite a lot of work to find that single coin through all of the mess that the late James Vega left in his wake. The leprechaun giggled as he slipped the single coin into his pocket. One coin retrieved, over a few dozen more to go. Not to mention, a whole crew of space-faring gold-thieves to take care of, too. The leprechaun was excited for this. He was going to make sure all of them paid in a similar manner to poor, dear James. As long as they thought they could get away with taking his precious gold, then none of them would be safe. He would see to that personally.

The cargo bay door slid open. The leprechaun quickly scampered away for the nearest cover that he could find. Jack, a woman who was one of Shepard's current crew-mates and a former plaything of Cerberus', stepped into the spacious room. She looked around. There was water everywhere. She looked down at her boots and stomped in the puddle that had surrounded her feet. She had no idea what had happened here, but it definitely looked like something wrong had happened to the water tank. James, who she was sure she saw walking down this way, was nowhere to be seen. Jack stepped toward the water tank to inspect it. If there was some kind of damage to it, making it leak, then that was a problem that would affect everyone aboard the Normandy.

Hidden in the shadows, the leprechaun watched her closely. He knew that this woman wasn't someone who had taken his gold, but still, he did not doubt that she would have taken it if she had been given the opportunity.