The Break in Reality

Reality shattered like glass. The shards flew like shrapnel from an explosion before disintegrating into dust. Grey particles of the previous universe melted from specks too nothing. All that remained was the stark whiteness of the endless void. Concepts like light, energy, and time ceased to be, but Beta Ray Bill persevered.

In this period Bills memory ebbed and flowed in a purgatory, chopped up like the universe from the chords of fate. His body heavily damaged from the collapsing of the universe, but slowly regenerating. His warhammer Stormbreaker, uru metal forged by the dwarves and enchanted by Odin himself, floated next to Bills battered body in the void. His consciousness flittered like his sanity in this endless moment devoid of time and space itself.

And then it ended. His transit stopped after endless and instant eons. Beta Ray Bills eyes snapped open in the blackness of outer space. He, along with his hammer, were adrift in the cosmic sea. A million billion stars twinkled in the endless darkness. Nebula painted the Vista of clouds, frozen in time, across the bottomless sky.

Bill knew these sights well. He had been a protector and adventurer across the cosmos for many a year. Bill extended his hand outward and Stormbreaker flew towards his hand; propelled by its own enchantments. When the magic hammer was finally in Bills grasp his tattered armor was restored to it's former Asgardian glory, and his fresh scars vanished in an engulfing yellow flare.

Now Beta Ray Bill was among the living; wreathed in goodly light. With himself restored Bill turned his attention to where he is, and where the korbinites are relative to his location. His cybernetic mind quickly picked out the Milky Way from his location.

Within Bills grasp the hammer shot off. Quickly the hammer, towing Bill, accelerated to light speed then beyond. Light speed was a strange experience, but Bill had grown used to it long ago. It was as if the universe wrapped around you; almost as if resisting you but being unable to really affect you as you rip through space time ahead of you; leaving vacuous and invisible rips in the void that quickly collapse from the outside pressure. Your view warps and you can only really see the destination ahead; periphery vision turns into endlessly blended and distorted light.

The Milky Way, bills adoptive home, came into sharper focus as Bill got closer. Within minutes Bill was inside the border of the galaxy, within seconds he was at the new home system of his people. The stars name was Hallius-235, and the second planet was called Korbin-3. This was the second time that the Korbinites had risen from the ashes. The first time was when Surter and his demons destroyed the burning galaxy, and the second was when Galactus ate Korbin-2

It is true Azaroth destroyed the last of the korbinites save for Bill, but Galactus took pity on Bill and created a female Korbinite. From her DNA Bill and S.W.O.R.D were able to make one hundred Korbinite clones. Using Scuttlebutt's databanks on Korbinite genetics the clones were made with enough differences in their DNA to be fraternally unrelated. Bill would have done this using his own DNA if he was still technically a Korbinite. The process required for Bill to become Beta Ray meant that he had his consciousness transferred to a genetically and cybernetically altered apex predator.

Bill stops when he gets to Korbin-3's orbit. What Bill remembered as a lush recently terraformed planet was a desolate wasteland of a rock. The youthful green vegetation was gone. Oceans of blue water were drained.

Frantically Bill flew down to the ashen surface. The complex that housed the twice reborn race was gone. The idyllic stream, the peaceful farm all gone. Replaced by a landscape blasted by radioactive dust and ash. Jagged crags jutted out into the grey sky. No life could live here, and no life had lived here

What happened? Why aren't they here? Where are they? Questions blazed through Beta Ray Bill's mind at blazing speed. Bill quickly decided to seek the Asgardians for counsel on what may have happened. With his expression steely and stance wide Bill began to spin Stormbreaker at his side. Faster and faster the hammer spun; almost igniting the air. The grey skies grew darker as a storm brewed. Wind began to howl, and dusty clouds swirled. Chemical rain falls from the filthy clouds.

Finally, Bill thrust the hammer towards the heavens. A blindingly blue bolt of lightning crashed down from the skies and connected to Stormbreaker. The world turned into an ozone scented whiteness for a second. When the second passed a confused Beta Ray Bill remained.

Twice more he tried to travel to Asgard, but he remained. Were the gods no longer answering his hammer, or do they no longer exist? Bill decided that the gods, if they even still exist, will not give the answers that he seeks.

Too earth then, he thought. Maybe the Avengers will have some answers? With a loud crack Beta Ray Bill left Korbin-3, headed towards earth.

-Line Break-

There Shepard sat with the final drops of his blood oozing from his myriad wounds. His three choices laid out before him. His first and most obvious choice was to the right. Kill them. Kill them all. The reapers, the geth, maybe even all life in the galaxy. He has killed before. Killed so many before for the greater good. All the bodies piled up, waiting for him to join them in hell. Why stop now? Maybe it's the cold embrace of death caressing his soul. The life of murder to make life crashing down on him as he remembers all his regrets. Could he bring himself to commit one last genocide with a squeeze of the trigger?

The second option. To synthesize life with machine. What would that do exactly? Would everyone live in a utopia devoid of death; where the reapers no longer hunt for life but protect it. Or would life become the twisted and unknowing puppets of the reapers, like Saren, aiding them in their endless and mad crusade to kill all sentient life so they cannot end all sentient life, or perhaps that was the backwards rationalizations of a race with long forgotten goals that escape our ability to grasp.

The third option. To become one with them. To control the beings from beyond time and reason with his half-indoctrinated mind. Shepard would put a bullet through his head before he allowed that to happen.

He supposed that that left only the first answer. The crucible "thing" that ripped its image from Shepard's subconscious continued its cold stare, but something within the commander's mind told him that the things patience was running short.

The soldier, with a sigh, tried to stand up once again. His muscles tensed, vision blurred and turn to red as his whole body ached with pain, his breathing turn labored as he struggled. His muscles relaxed, and his vision returned to normal as the commander found himself still on the ground. Blood still trickling and flowing from his wounds, his hand still holding his burning guts within himself. His blood collecting into a pool, slowly blooming outwards.

The thing, the crucible, was saying something that Shepard didn't understand. The alien consciousness stood over the commander. The holograms light illuminated the commander and gave him a cold blue tinge on his deathly paler. Shepard had bled too much. He was unable to stand once again. No matter his willpower he just could not stand. The crucible said another thing; then the hologram winked out of existence.

It was over. All the work; the sacrifice. So many dead, dead for the future of their species. It wasn't enough. This is the end. Shepard let's out a single soulless chuckle as he looked out the window. A silent tapestry of war played its horrifying image. Superheated metal flowed like blood from the bifurcated ship husks. Mass accelerated rounds, traveling at light speed, streaked through the blackness striking a reaper hull, and leaving a gash of glowing metal.

A reaper convulsing as combined slugs cause its skin and internal mechanisms to pop apart. Corpses of various aliens and humans drifted through the storm. Some were still and mangled while others writhed as their eyes popped and blood boiled. The air was violently sucked out of their lungs as a final anticlimactic scream within the silent carnage. Lasers rake the night sky gutting any ship in it's path. Missiles filled earth's orbit and riddled the battle with bright bursts of light and death.

The scene of pandemonium played while Shepard exhaled his final breath. His final stoic expression frozen on his tired face.

-line break-

Bill flashed out of FTL within earths orbit. He froze. His eyes widened in shock. "War has come to earth!" he blurted out. The battle churned in front of Bill. Ships he didn't recognize fought against other ships that he also couldn't recognize. One type was decidedly more sinister than the others. The many variations on a cephalopodan appearance with glowing sinister eyes. The others were of a more traditional spacefaring design.

Bill, in a split-second decision, rushed into the frothing fray in the defense of what he assumed where the good guys. He streaked through the void to deliver a crushing blow to one of the black ships. The cyborg smashed his hammer into the black ships "face". The metal of the ship shattered as a shock wave travelled deeper into the ships guts.

Now with a crater on its face the ship tumbled backwards in the zero-g environment. Bill gave his hammer a mighty throw and with the strap around his wrist Bill was dragged with it. Now a missile the horse faced alien dived into the stricken ship. He could feel the metal of the ships insides bend and shatter as bill shot through the ship. Bill passed into a bright light where gravity flexed and warped like water. Stormbreaker dashed the hot substance and bill continued to barrel through the ship.

Beta Ray Bill Streaked through to the other side then stopped and looked back. The black ship was still. Then the ship began to seizure as fire and molten metal bled from its orifices. An explosion then ripped the ship in two.

Bill permitted himself a grin until he realized that there were thousands more like it and tens of thousands of drones with them. The defending fleet was looking haggard. Thousands of ship husks floated in the void; tens of thousands of human and aliens' body's floated with them. The surface of the earth was lit up with explosions and mass accelerated slugs.

Bill could not be distracted for too long because another of those strangely organic looking ships had turned its focus on bill. The ship had noticed what Bill had done to one of its comrades and reared up like a spider ready to strike. Where its mouth would be a red glow emanated. A beam of plasma and light slashed through the night sky and impacted Bill.

Bill raised Stormbreaker up and the stream of molten plasma split and curved around the orb of force that the hammer had created. Bill grunted from the exertion, but when the beam had stopped he was still there. The ship paused in what appeared to be shock, but then reared up to fire again.

Bill swung his hammer around then threw all his strength forward, and again the hammer carried him with it. The ship fired its weapon again. Beta ray bill flew up the stream of molten plasma. The hammer again split the blast. Plasma curled and cooled in bills wake

The horse-faced alien slammed, hammer first, into the black ships weapon. The explosion hollowed the ships face and sheared off its first pair of legs. A chain reaction of explosions hollowed the ship. Bill burst from the ships crest, and the ships light flickered off.

Two down and thousands left. Bill was stationary. His Cybernetic brain stormed in activity. His vision flashed with a thousand targets. StormBreaker crackled with energy. Thousands of complex maneuvers were set up in the cyborgs brain; to better execute them in FTL travel.

With a blinding flash, a thousand enemies fell. A massive string of lightning marked the path of destruction. Beta Ray Bill phased back into visibility as a thousand black ships shattered into flames and superheated metal. Bills armor was scuffed from his attack but was otherwise fine. His path though the battle had him pass through several lasers.

The battle stopped; its combatants looked around at the ships suddenly turned to slag. Bills voice spoke out and could be heard on all ships coms no matter the encryption. Bill spoke in a language no one knew but all understood

"Foul beasts you are to invade earth. Vile raiders. Your corpses shall be black masses of slag. You shall be a new ruined satellite of earth. A testament of your defeat. My name is Beta Ray Bill. I am your end!"

Bills hammer was spinning and crackling with divine energy. His mind had already plotted a course. The god-like being flashed out of visibility. A thousand more enemies fell to StormBreaker. Lightning filled the void as bill flashed back.

Yet thousands of enemies remained. Bill was now more than scuffed. Various parts of his armor were bent, missing, or melted. The skin on his arms were burnt. Still Bill readied his hammer and his mind plotted another attack.

An oily voice spoke to bill from the void." What are you strange one? Why do you kill my children?"

"Your children slaughter earths defenders without mercy, so I destroy your progeny." Bill responded. An oily blackness clouds Bills mind

"You are powerful beyond reckoning, but misguided. I must neutralize you. ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL!" Bill reeled from the oily tendrils invading his mind. He held his hammer in both hands. The blackness burned at bills mind. Liquid fire pumped into Bills limbs as he lost control of them. He could see gleaming yellow eyes in the void.

Bills eyes and mind focused on the hammer in his hands. The hammer pulsed with energy. Bills eyes Glowed yellow. His mouth moved on something else's accord. "It is Done" Said the voice of a billion billion dead.

-line break-

There was sand and seawater inside of Bills mouth. His side pulsed pain. Hands that were not his own grasped sand as he desperately pulled himself forward towards a rifle. Unrhythmic footsteps followed behind him. Bill scrambled for the gun.

Grasping the rifle Bill spun around. Pain shot through his side. Bill leveled his rifle at the enemy but hesitated. The dull eyes of his former wife stared at him. She was some race that bill did not recognize but he knew that she was his wife. The wrinkles on her face told of her age.

She glowed blue from the nanites in her body. Her clothes were tattered and dirty. Her leg was mangled and metallic. The flesh on her stump of a right arm was pulled back and the bone sharpened. Bill could recognize his green blood on her arm.

Bill squeezed the trigger and did not let go until his gun overheated. Bill yelled out in mourning. His side hurt again, so Bill looked to his pain. Blood oozed out of a hole in his side. Covering his wound caused him to give a pained grunt.

Bill turned over to stand. His blood spilt onto the beach waters. The water pulled back taking the blood with it. Bill stood up and groaned at his creaking bones. Age was a ravaging force.

He knew his son was dead; had to be dead. One of the many orange-hot pieces of wreckage streaking across the blue sky. The reapers had made landfall.

There was nowhere left too run; left for him to go. His armor was piecemeal, and his gun was cobbled together from scrap; Bill was surprised it did not melt to slag when it overheated. His bright green blood continued to gush out of his wound. Bill felt so tired.

With quivering muscles Bill splashed back down in the water. He could hear screams from the city. The city was being immolated by laser. This was their final stronghold. The last place for his people in this universe. All the other colonies were wiped from existence. Bill had seen his home-world burn from the reapers harvest some time ago. That felt like a lifetime away. He yearned for the time before the reapers. When he could look at the stars and not see his doom. A time before spending every moment struggling against your own people's genocide.

The last of bills race were Burning too death, the smoke was black in the sky, bad way to go, but what way is not. Bill could feel his brain shut down. It was like falling asleep except knowing that you will not wake up and knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop it as your thoughts turn nonsensical then fade to black.

Bill as one of the last of his race closed his eyes. The tide carried his blood away in cyclical waves. As his thoughts ceased Bill never heard the world this quite and he never felt this alone as then when he and his people were ended.

The spike pierced Bill's abdomen and began to violently hoist him upwards. His eyes were open, but he could no longer see out of them. The Nano-bots scalded his nerves back into a working condition. He could feel his nervous system burn as dead cells were co-opted back into a pseudo life. The bots burned in his gut, Then chest, Then extremities. A fire lit up his spine as the cord tissues were pulped and replaced.

Finally, the fire touched his brain, and for a few seconds he was connected. He could see, see the plan, feel everything. All of them connected. His wife, his children, and so many more. He could hear them all screaming in pain.

All the dead in the galaxy a thousand times over writhed in blinding pain. The untold and forgotten races wiped of there right to think and exist; they cried in silent unthinking agony as that was all that was left of them. Now Bill's own race was joined to the many as harvested. Even the reapers cried out in pain; the million minds melted together to make them what they were.

The pain melted Bill's thinking mind. He was screaming, but not with his mouth as that was no longer his own. His mind evaporated to a singular unheard note of searing pain and joined with the trillions.

This was not bill but one of the trillions of souls melted to the reapers. He now knew what the reapers were. His eyes focused on his hammer

-line break-

"It is done" the voice repeated from bills mouth. Bills face twitched. Bills mouth moved again "It is don-". Bill twitched again. "It is d-" the voice tried again, as Bills body convulsed. "It is-… It I-… I … I … I". There was a massive black ship in front of Bill. The ships sickly yellow eyes gleaming like cursed gems in the darkness.

Bill Screamed in a rage-soaked voice "I Am The champion of Korbin Monster! I Have Watched Galaxies Burn in Hellfire! I Have Slayed Gods and Monsters! And I Will-". Bill tapped into his reactor powers. His body coursed with nuclear and divine energy. StormBreaker gleamed like a second sun. He threw all his titanic strength forward with a mighty yell "I WILL BE YOUR DOOM!". His eyes Glowed white and streaked as he flew forward. His Uru hammer boiled the void.

The creature fired its weapon, but Bill felt it not. Bills mind was blank in rage and focused on a single goal. The goal to destroy the monster before him. The monster of a billion billion lost souls. The butcher of uncountable lives. Burner of a billion worlds. HARBINGER!

The beasts shield turned to dust in Bills wake. Bill struck Harbinger with a blow that could shatter planets. The metal of the beast was but paper to StormBreaker. Bill let go of the hammer and let it continue his strike. The hammer streaked upwards. Harbingers face was dashed by the initial impact, and now the hammer split the ship open from face to tail. Machinery and super-heated metal exploded out of the ship corpse.

The gutted ship gushed fire like blood into earths orbit. Shrapnel and molten metal burst forth from the beast as it died. Stormbreaker streaked on un-phased by the destruction it wrought. A golden projectile of divine judgment.

Bill raised his hand and the hammer stopped then flew back towards its owner. His triumph was great, but it did not cease the rage that engulfed his mind. When his hammer returned to his grasp bill once again streaked across the battlefield as a death-dealing bolt of lightning. Another thousand of his foes fell.

The Korbinite was now looking even more worn. The machinery of his cybernetics could be seen through missing patches of skin. His helmet was now cracked and warped, but the reapers were in full retreat now. They scrambled in various directions at FTL. Most headed in a singular direction towards Pluto, and some in a random heading out of the solar system.

To escape from earth the reapers needed to punch though enemy lines. Earths defenders fired grievous blows into the backs of the routing reapers. Quite a few of the remaining black ships died from these volleys. The smaller drones who were incapable of FTL travel were left to fend for themselves. The drones were cut down by the human and alien fleet now that the reapers were gone. Bill joined in attacking the routing enemy, but their scattered nature limited his damage.

The battle was over. The rage that Bill felt cooled down to a simmer. Bills reactor safeties kicked in leaving the Korbinite drained. He rested for a few moments in earth's orbit before returning the battlegrounds to see who he could help. His finally registered the many communication hails from the humans and aliens.

The End

Authors note: Just a little side story I've been working on occasionally for the past few years. This is a one-shot; mostly because Bill is just too powerful for mass effect. Sorry for taking so long I got a job and you know this whole speel so I'll skip it. The next chapter of the thief story is about 60 percent done. I have scraped the new moon knight chapter, so I'll be re-writing that. I have a few other ideas that I haven't started on yet; mostly because I want to avoid writing another game of thrones crossover. I have a great hook for an elder scrolls crossover I'm just at a loss for a property to crossover with. I also have an idea for a non-crossover elder scrolls story set in hammerfell during the oblivion crisis. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully I'll have some more stuff to show soon.

Good bye.

Neutral-Man