She was born to a mother who had been forgotten by the system, a woman in deep debt and medical problems and crippling drug addictions. When Shepard was born, the stress of a toddler only added to her problems. When she was too old to breast feed anymore, she switched to solid food at her own expense. She began giving food to Shepard at the cost of not ever having enough to eat herself, slowly starving to death. One day she... Never woke up again after going to bed. This left a 2 year old Shepard to fend for herself. When her mother wouldn't wake and she began to get really hungry, she left the house. She was now a lost toddler on her own in one of the world cities in the world, with nary a hope to be found.

But hope found her anyway. She was found by some petty criminals who were in a gang, and they decided to take her under their wing. No major ulterior motive or anything, they just had sympathy. Not to mention she could be a loyal member of the gang if she was literally raised by them. So she was raised by the gang, with all of them helping to keep her fed. But more than that, teaching her how to live on the streets. How to spot an easy mark, how to use her disarmingly cute childish innocence to effortlessly take someone's wallet, how to snatch something while browsing in a store and walk out with it. This was her world now, the life of having to get by via criminality... All before she was even 5 years old.

One day, at 6 years old, one of the gang managed to get an omni-tool and was showing it off. Shepard was mesmerized. It was so pretty with how it glowed, with how part of it would always spin, all the cool tricks it could do. She wanted one, no matter what. But they were expensive, well beyond a petty criminal's price range. Especially a child's. But she was going to get one, one way or another. So she went to a nearby public library, of all things. She read up on them, absorbing everything there was to learn about them into her sponge of a brain. She learned how they worked, how they were made, what they could so. So she now knew how to make one... And set to work. Over the next year, she would dumpster dive all over the city to find pieces of scrap that could be used as material to make one. By the time she was 7, she finally had all the pieces needed.

And so she built, using all the knowledge of blue prints in her head. The rest of the gang thought she was nuts, but she persisted. She actually did it, built her own personal omni tool at seven years old. The others were in disbelief, how could a mere stupid seven year old girl make such a technologically advanced item entirely by herself with nothing but some books and public internet as teaching tools? It was unbelievable. Around then was when everyone started to realize that this girl might be some kind of prodigy.

Over the years, she improved it and upgraded it. Got better with it. It made her a far better petty criminal than she could have been without it. With it she could hack into bank terminals, hack through electric locks, even allow her to defend herself if she was caught. By 9 years old, she was already capable of lethal and fatal omni-tool based attacks. She never really used it, but the option was there. All this time, she was still going to the library to read. Reading everything and anything she could, her mind was like a ravenous monster. With it, she even managed to educate herself. She learned math on her own, science, history, even some philosophy. A nerdier gang member, you could not find.

At 13 years old, an older kid of the gang decided he wanted to have his way with her. She wasn't ignorant of sex, you can't grow up in a gang without being exposed to sex. Still, she had never partook. So she wasn't ignorant at what he was trying to do when he pinned her down and started tearing clothes off, but neither was she passive. She made it clear he'd better fuck off, but he just hit her and told her to shut up. He climbed onto her after that... Only for his face to suddenly melt off in a blast of extreme heat and flame. She had installed incineration tech into her omni-tool years ago, and had never uninstalled it. While not for this particular event, it was there for protection. After this, she started getting a reputation in the gang for not being soft and for not being one to fuck with... Literally. They knew her for a nerd, but they also realized that her omni-tool and her were no joke.

As time passed, she started to get a very strong sense that her lifestyle was wrong. In all the books she read, criminal behavior like hers was never looked at positively. All she had ever known of living was living in crime. She wasn't a bad person or lacking in morals, exactly. It was more just that, having been raised into this life, she simply knew of no other way to live. But the books she read started to open her eyes, made her begin to finally and truly question her lifestyle. Would the people in these books respect her or her way of living? Would real people? She sensed that they wouldn't, she sensed that she'd probably be one of the villains as far as these characters were concerned. So at 14 years old, she finally started to grow it. It being a sense of right and wrong, a sense she'd never had much of before because of how she was raised. After that, she started to feel bad any time she stole money or something from a store or a wallet. She kept doing it because she saw no way out, it was either that or starve and likely lose the only family she ever had in the gang.

At 16, she began to see a way out. Maybe the only way out. The Alliance, the supranational organization that is humanity's face and military for areas beyond Earth. She saw recruitment ads, ones that said that they'll take anyone with enough merit. That as long as you're good enough for them, they'll take you even if you have a sketchy background. So she got to work. She began training with an illegal pistol to learn to hit targets, she began studying even more to hopefully pass whatever tests they might have. She wanted to be certain that they accepted it when she tried at 18. Just like the same drive she had about making an omni-tool, her focus and will were razor sharp. She had already began separating herself from the gang, choosing to work at some shitty gas station for money instead of stealing. It was harder and far less lucrative, but it was work she felt she could be proud of. Work that the people in her favorite fiction stories wouldn't just her to be a villain for doing.

At 18, she went to an Alliance recruitment station. At first they were hesitant, some random street rat girl with a bit of a criminal background doesn't make for excited recruiters. But they noticed her onni-tool, and asked how she got such a thing. She told them she made it herself. They didn't fully believe her, but it was enough for them to humor her. They gave her an IQ test as an initial boilerplate test to see if she was even worth their time. The results were... Completely unexpected. The result came back of her having a ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY IQ. They couldn't believe it, they thought she must have cheated or something. So they made her do another one under watch, to be certain. This separate test came out to be 175 IQ, which was within the margin of error with the last one.

They went from humoring her, to basically bending over backwards to get her in. Not just in, but as an officer. They wanted her to go to officer school, to skip right past enlisted and go straight into officer ranks. They offered a full scholarship to one of the most prestigious schools, they wanted her in the Alliance and they were going to go all out to get her with an IQ like that. It was a dream come true. She never knew she was that smart, it was simply natural to her. Having grown up without any sort of REAL education meant she never took any tests, and thus had no idea about her own intelligence compared to most people. She thought back to when she made her first omni-tool and how amazed everyone was, and realized it might have been a sign in retrospect.

And so it was that the girl would later become the famous Commander Shepard finally left her life of crime behind for good, and got a real education and career in the military. Who would have imagined the lone toddler her stumbled out of the house in the middle of the night as her mother lay dead in her bed with the blankets up to her chin would go on to become such a person. She never did turn to crime again, she only did that in the first place because she was raised from too young an age to know better. Now that she knew it was wrong to live as she did, she would never become like that again. From there on, she was a paragon among people. But just like her gang learned after someone tried to rape her, good is not soft. Even a paragon knows when to crack the whip, she was someone who would not let people suffer if she could help it. So when a massive raider fleet showed up when she was on shore leave for vacation, she didn't hesitate to rally the colony and fight the entire fleet off with all the tactics and intelligence and skill she had. Afterward, people called her a hero. From petty child criminal to famous war hero soldier... Not a bad way for life to go.