Here's the second chapter. Enjoy!

* Review response:
Radji, SwarmQueen43, I personally haven't seen another story where Protheans are the first living aliens humanity makes contact with. There was a story where Javik was unearthed before the events of the third game, but... It still happened after the First Contact War.
Impstar, my own take on the Javik's assholeness is that he is more or less the true renegade who LOST. The Protheans from the earlier days shouldn't be as bad. They, of course, wouldn't be saints, but they would be noticeably nicer than the "Prothy the Prothean" we all (?) know and love.
edboy4926, MEEKVERSEFAN2.0, lordamnesia, davycrockett100, Lord Xantos A. Fowl, inuboy86, Siriusly Grim, Dymian, thank you for your reviews, folks!
incy789, no, no sequels. Just the next chapter. ;)
Watcher123, yes, the aliens are Protheans. And, yes, most of them are scientists. The ones that study "cosmic imperative" to be precise.
roughstar333, well, there was some mass effect tech in there too - there are three intact Prothean shuttles parked inside the bunker after all - but what are those compared to the actual living aliens? Also, because they have much better access to the Prothean technology here (through actual living Protheans) and for another reason (to be unveiled in this chapter), the humanity will have a different approach to building their fleet.
shadowrwriter, as I said in my reply to Impstar above, these Protheans are mostly scientists. And will be somewhat nicer. And - as it will be uncovered in this chapter - they will forewarn the humanity about the Reapers. The Protheans will also help the humanity prepare for the inevitable to the best of their ability (none of them know all that much about ship construction or weapon designing - they are evolutionary xenobiologists!)... As for other colonies... Well, I did plan on Javik being unearthed sooner than in the game, but... I actually don't know about including other survivors.

* Author's Note: In this chapter I'm taking A LOT of artistic liberty with how the UN summits work. Please, let me be forgiven for this.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Mass Effect" franchise. No profit is being made. Same goes for any books, video games, anime or manga I may or may not use for ideas.

"speaking"
'thinking'
"speech not understood by humans"

Guides for the Young
chapter 2: Awakened to the New World

For the second time in five years the news coming from Mars caused a major upheaval back on Earth. And this time around it was even worse: the reports about actual living extraterrestrials being found inside the Martian Ruins seemed to cause everyone lose their heads. While thousands of people in the streets were chanting about the Solar system being human territory and demanding the alien threat to be ended now, the politicians of all sorts were fighting over who gets what from that cache of alien goods. And, of course, over who gets to study the living specimen of the extraterrestrial life.

After a couple of weeks of listening to politicians going out of their way to reap the greatest benefits of the discovery for their countries and themselves, the scientific community had enough. And with some backing from the more level-headed members of UN, they took control over the situation. All those greedy slimy bastards that called themselves the representatives of the civilized world were told that no single country will be getting to study what was taken from the Martial Ruins by itself. Instead, the alien tech and the aliens themselves will be studied by an international teams on a neutral territory.

Such a decision, understandably, didn't sit well with those who wished to empower themselves and just themselves with alien technology. And even greater number of politicians were ...displeased with how the UN was stepping beyond its advisory role. The world was coming apart at the seams... Who would have thought that aliens could very well end the human civilization without firing a single shot? Thankfully, the situation wasn't allowed to deteriorate that far: with help from the European Union and, quite surprisingly, the countries of Latin America, the UN enforced its decision.

Once the situation on the Earth was back under control after nearly four months of intense political battles and various militaries flexing their proverbial muscles, the shuttles to retrieve the samples of the alien technology and the extraterrestrials themselves were finally sent to Mars...

~/ *** \~

Overseer Vashan Khalim slowly drifted back to consciousness. There was nothing strange about that: she had just spend a considerable period of time in cryogenic stasis, after all. What came as a surprise to the female researcher was the place she woke up in. It most definitely wasn't her facility on the fourth planet of the star system G12771. It didn't look like any facility built by the Empire either...

For a moment the Prothean woman wondered, whether those machine-devils – the Reapers – the beacon warned about had captured her to conduct some sort of sick experiments on her. She quickly dismissed this thought, though: the Reapers weren't known for studying organics. They either killed people of the Empire mercilessly, or brutally converted them into mindless technologically-enhanced zombies. No, something else must have happened.

Rising out of her stasis pod, overseer Vashan looked around. She was inside some rather small room, roughly twenty by eight ories. The ceiling was painted with white color, while the floor and three of the walls were finished with other light colors. The final wall of the room instead was a window of sorts. A small part of the cubicle was enclosed by a few panels of opaque glass. A lavatory maybe? As for the rest of the 'room',.. In addition to the stasis pod she was currently sitting in, Vashan could see a proper bed, a small table and a chair. On that table there lay a very primitive computer, which, through some strange coincidence, was shaped much like datapads used by everyone in the Empire.

Across the room from the table there was a strange construct with an upside-down bottle full of some transparent liquid – presumably, pure water – on top of it. A few small containers to drink from could be found nearby. There were no signs of edible food anywhere inside the cubicle, but there was a currently-sealed opening in a wall that was marked with a pictogram of some sort of a fruit on a tray: most likely, rations would be delivered through this slot.

All in all, while this room too small and too bare to beseem someone of the overseer Vashan's status, it did have everything that a sentient being needed to live. It was actually a bit more comfortable than the cells the Empire studied the specimen of primitive races in... Speaking of which, Vashan wondered, whether the facility was in belonged to the primitive race she and her men had been studying. So, stepping out of her stasis pod, she placed her hand onto the floor and tried to read this place's history.

She wasn't very surprised to find out that the cubicle she was in was an independent module and not an original part of this facility. Still, not being able to learn more about the place she was held at was annoying. As for the cubicle itself... While sturdy enough to hold a lesser being, it couldn't withstand a good push from any decently-powerful biotic. And while her biotics weren't all that powerful, overseer Vashan believed that she still was strong enough to break free from her current 'cell', should such a necessity arise. She wasn't going to do that right now, though: charging headfirst into the unknown was a good way to waste your life needlessly.

Plus, she was curious about the primitives that run this facility and their intentions. The 'experiences' she had picked up from the cubicle through the touch were insufficient – all they showed a group of primitives furnishing the room and another one sterilizing it; in both cases the primitives wore protective suits that hid most of their bodies, making the task of identifying them nigh impossible.

Not that it remained a problem for long: her awakening didn't go unnoticed with the people manning this facility and various scientists – along with some armed guards – began gathering around the consoles located outside of her cubicle. And given how much their appearance has change since she had seen them last, it wasn't really a surprise that it took the Prothean researcher a few moments to recognize these people as belonging to the same species of primitives that she had been observing. And, considering that they managed to step out of the cradle of their home planet, calling them 'primitives' might not be entirely right, even if their technology was still eons behind that of the Empire... 'Young'. Yes, calling them 'young' was much better.

Suddenly she was brought out of her thoughts by a small hiss coming from a hatch located on the side wall of the cubicle. Looking there, Vashan could see that the hatch was now opened, allowing her to access a small compartment that lay past it. Inside this compartment, there was a couple of ration bars, which were synthesized to resemble the Empire-issued rations from her outpost's food stores... Even though she wasn't really hungry at the moment, overseer Vashan nevertheless picked these rations up, reading their history through the touch in the process. Their quality wasn't that great, but these rations were the only food she had access to at the moment, so they'd do.

Once the scientists of the pri-... young race became sure that she won't be eating at the moment, they decided to go with the next experiment on their to-do list. And, apparently, it involved the primitive computer that was found in the cubicle. The thing came to life and now displayed a looping animation of a finger pressing a big green button at the center of the screen... Deciding to humor the scientists observing her, the Prothean woman picked the computer and pressed her finger against the thing's screen over the 'button'. Immediately, the image changed.

The screen was now separated into two parts. Its left half now held the '1' symbol, while a single orange circle was drawn on the right half. Ten or so heartbeats later, the second orange circle was added to the right half of the computer's screen, while the symbol on the left half was replaced with '2'. Then, a second string of symbols reading '1 + 1' appeared under '2'.

'They are trying to establish communication with me by teaching me their math.' Overseer Vashan realized. And, she had to admit, it was quite a good way to achieve that. The scientists of the ...young race had probably come up with it before they had discovered the Empire's research outpost next to their home planet.

Measuring time when all that you can see are the insides of some laboratory was not easy, but Vashan had estimated that it took the people of the young race – the humans – roughly a hundred and fifty standard Empire hours to teach her the basics of their language. Now, she finally could ask one of those researchers to get in direct contact with her so that she could 'download' the rest of the knowledge from his – or her, quite a few scientists were female – head through the touch.

"Let I touch you." She typed on the human computer. Using the data inputs so different from what she was used to was hard but... with her omni-tool broken, this was the only way. And while she wasn't happy about it, the Prothean woman had accepted that she no longer had her omni-tool: after all, it wasn't supposed to last for thousands of years – and she knew that she had slept for that long.

"Why?" Came a short reply from, Clare, the female researcher that was communicating with her today.

"I need learn." Probably not the way this was supposed to sound in the ...human language, but overseer Vashan simply lacked the knowledge necessary to write in a more refined way.

"You can really learn through touch?" Since she was asked this question, it appeared that the people of the ...young race didn't really believe that such thing was possible. Primitives...

"Yes." She replied. There was quite a pause, before the response came:

"Are you sure this is safe?" The message read. For a moment, the Prothean scientist was offended by the ...primitives questioning her control over the touch, but then she realized that Clare and her colleagues had other concerns as well. For example, they had no guarantees that they will won't get terminally ill from whatever microbes and viruses she carried on her body; likewise, they had no guarantees that something in the facilities atmosphere won't kill her...

"Yes." Overseer Vashan replied after thinking about it for awhile.

"Very well." Was the response. "Let me get the necessary permissions." And, once Clare was sure that her last message was received and read, she stood up from her workstation and walked away. Presumably, to talk to her bosses.

...She returned nearly two standard Empire hours later, accompanied by additional four soldiers. All well armored, but armed with rather strange weapons that, while definitely firearms, looked like they were designed to fire darts instead of bullets. Overseer Vashan then saw Clare say something to the people in the room. The civilians then backed away towards the exit from the chamber, while the armed guards took their positions. And their formation suggested that they were already familiar with biotics and their powers. Interesting, as there was no element Zero on their planet.

Once everyone was in position, Clare put on a flu mask and approached the cubicle and entered an appropriate code on the control panel somewhere out of Vashan's sight. For a second or two nothing happened. Then, there was a slight hiss and the glass-panel wall opened upwards, opening a way out of the cell. Careful no to provoke the armed men into gunning her down, Vashan stepped out of the cubicle she had been confined to until now, and placed her three-fingered hand on whatever bare skin of Clare's she could reach...

~/ *** \~

"Overseer!" A guard, whose rightmost eye was lost to whatever had left that long scar across his face and the carapace on top of his head, called as he entered the chamber.

"What is it, Davon." Vashan asked without looking away from the image playing on the holographic display of her workstation. "You are distracting me from an important experiment; this better be important." She added, now finally looking at the scarred guard.

"We've just received an important message. The Reapers have being observer entering this sector of the galaxy." The man reported. "It is projected that they will reach this star system within thirty standard Empire hours." Okay. That was serious. Even if the throne of the Empire had been destroyed by the initial attack of the Reapers, the people kept fighting on. And this research outpost, like quite a few others, was tasked finding a way to end the threat of the machine-devils; either by uplifting the primitives to fight for the survival of this cycle, or to make them into prepared rulers of the next. "Overseer?" Davon asked. "What are your orders?"

"Move the valuable equipment and goods to the vault. Half of the staff, including myself, will enter the cryogenic stasis down there as well. Set our wake-up timer to one thousand years. The rest of the staff is to imitate the normal work." Vashan ordered. "If someone survives the Reapers' visit, wake us up."

~/ *** \~

"W-What the hell was that?" Clare gasped once Vashan ended the physical connection between them.

"Those should be my memories that you've just witnessed." The human woman remained stunned for a few seconds. Then, she blurted:

"You can speak English now?" Until now, their communication has always been in a written form, and no attempts to teach the awakened aliens to speak English – or any other human language – were made.

"I've lifted the knowledge of your languages from you mind." Vashan replied. "Experiences leave marks, and my people have the ability to read them; we can exchange information and knowledge through touch. However, your... colleagues." She said, nodding towards the human guards who still had their weapons trained on her. "Were getting concerned and so I did not delve into your mind beyond this." After a pause, she added: "I still want some answers." There was a long silence as the humans were trying to process what had just been said.

"Very well, I'll try to answer your question to the best of my abilities." Clare said finally. "But please understand that I don't know everything, and the answers to some of your questions might be classified. Also..." Letting out a sigh, she added: "Wouldn't it be fair for you to answer our questions as well, now that we don't have much problem understanding each other anymore; there is much for us to learn about you and your people."

"That sounds... like a fair trade." Overseer Vashan agreed. "I will answer your questions if you answer mine." Clare nodded. "Considering that it wasn't my people that woke me up, but you, humans, I take it that the Reapers did destroy the surface part of the outpost... How much time has passed since then?"

"Several skeletons were found among the ruins on Mars; to our best knowledge, those are nearly fifty thousands years old." That information seemed to upset the Prothean woman.

"Almost fifty thousands years? That isn't good."

"Why?" Clare asked. "And what are the 'Reapers'?"

"So many questions... There isn't much known about the Reapers; they are a ...race of sentient machines that appear to have existed from the ancient times. They are the ones responsible for the final end of many sentient species that our galaxy gave birth to. We understood that only when they came to end our civilization and our Empire. They come every fifty thousands years from the Dark Space and harvest the advanced civilizations to increase their own ranks."

"That is... I just... I don't know what to say... How much... How much time do we have left?" Clare asked. Vashan squashed her annoyance at the human asking to many questions without answering any of her own in return – warning these ...young about the Reapers was more important, especially since the Empire truly was no more.

"Unknown. It can be as little as few decades or as much as a few centuries. Regardless, you need to prepare." There was a pause, before the Prothean woman continued: "Now, tell me, how much of my staff has survived to the present along with me."

"There were seventeen stasis pods still active when they were found in the ...vault of the Martian base." Clare replied. "I'm sorry to say, but two of those were lost before we managed to find a way to safely disconnect them from their resting places, and three more before we learned how to open them safely." So, Vashan thought morosely, out of seventy men and women that entered the cryogenic sleep only twelve – including herself – were still alive. And she couldn't even really fault the humans for inadvertently killing five of hers.

"Can I see the rest of my people?" The Prothean asked.

"Uhm... I'm not sure it is possible at the moment." Clare replied uneasily. "Eight of them have not been woken up from their cryogenic sleep yet, and the remaining three have been sedated due to their violent reactions upon awakening."

"Let me see those ...troublemakers." Vashan insisted. "My presence should keep them in line."

"You must also understand that I'm just a scientist here. I'm not the one running this facility." Clare continued. "I can put forward the request, but that would be about all that I can about this." The Prothean woman let out an annoyed sound.

"Then do so." She said after a short pause. "I'm the leader of my people, however few of them is left. I believe, this is the ...request that has to be approved." Vashan just stared at the human with all four of her yes. Finally, Clare got the message that this request was the thing she had to do one way or another.

"Very well, I shall go ask my bosses about this." She said finally.

"I shall be waiting for their positive response." The Prothean replied.

~/ *** \~

Despite the best efforts to keep this information under the wraps for now, the existence of the Reapers and their purpose of destroying all advanced intelligent life were soon leaked to the general public, causing wide-spread panic. Likely the greatest one in the entire human history.

Many believed that all technology must be destroyed so that the Reapers believe the humanity to be an underdeveloped civilization not yet ready for the harvest. These people pointed out that even the Protheans, whose empire was nearly as big as the galaxy itself, lost their war. Those, who were more optimistic about the future, argued that this was not the way to go. Instead, they said, the humanity must grow, improve itself, learn from their new 'friends' and find a way to stop the Reapers.

After several months of heated disputations, the UN finally reached the consensus, in which they sided with the people who believed in advancing the humanity in spite of the Reaper threat. This decision was, without any doubts, the most monumental one in the entire human history, and now it was the time to begin the preparations for emerging onto the galactic stage.

Alas, nothing was easy.

The Protheans, while definitely willing to lend the humanity a helpful hand – if only to avenge their late Empire – couldn't actually do much while stranded on the Earth: none of them had the know how of how to build the spaceships or their weapons. They weren't design engineers; they were biologists, two security officers and a maintainance guy.

That, however, didn't mean that the humanity will have to invent everything they needed from scratch. Overseer Vashan Khalim claimed that the designs for ships and weapons might exists within the communication beacon hidden in the Martian base's vault. The said beacon, though, worked on the same principles as the touch, and so only a Prothean could safely extract the information from it. Thus, a new expedition to Mars was needed. And, in addition to collecting any and all blueprints available from the beacon, this mission was also tasked with bringing the rest of the goods from the Prothean vault back to Earth...

For the six Protheans that went on this mission, the journey to Mars was painstakingly-slow: they all were used to being able to fly from one planet to another within the same star system in just a few hours. The human shuttle, the fastest one yet, needed just a little under four weeks... Eventually, though, the shuttle reached its destination, a landing zone – actually, just a very flat part of the plateau, marked with projectors to make it more noticeable – next to the Promethei Terra research station. From there, the ruins of the Prothean outpost were within walking distance.

And since the shuttle landed there in the 'morning', no time was wasted and the whole group from Earth headed straight there. The Protheans, of course, knew that the research outpost that had been almost like home for them in the past now was nothing more than ruins, but actually seeing it did prompt some noticeable emotions from them. They didn't have time for that right now, however, so setting those emotions aside, overseer Vashan and her men, as well as their human escorts, made their way towards the underground bunker hidden under the ancient facility.

Aside from a couple of not-so-nice comments on the crude way the human explorers had dealt with the door that opened the passage to the vault, the trip down there was spent in silence. And once the group finally reached the chamber, the Protheans went to work. And, the first they did was the stocktaking: they needed to know what has survived to the present day.

Most of the tech was actually fine – though not likely to survive for long once it saw actual usage – as was the horde of the Element Zero. Even two of the three shuttles were still operational. The third one had some sort of a hardware failure in its main computer, but otherwise was in a good condition too.

As for the beacon... It looked like there was nothing in the entire galaxy that could as much as scratch it; it was ready for use and, without any doubts contained the knowledge that would help the humanity both step out of its cradle, the Sol system, and prepare for the Reaper invasion... as long as that knowledge could be translated into some form that the Earth's scientists could work with: the Protheans' communication and data storage systems relied too heavily on their unique physiology and couldn't be used by the humans directly.

Thanks to the operational Prothean shuttles, the trip back took just a single day. And it was this slow only because no one was sure that the aged and overloaded with cargo spacecrafts would not break in the middle of nowhere under the high stress... Thankfully, there were no incidents and the joint Human-Prothean expedition to Mars returned to Earth safely. They were given a few days to recover, before being summoned before the UN summit to give the preliminary reports on their findings.

"Overseer Khalim, would you please give us the overview of the information you and your people have recovered from the communication beacon?" The USA representative asked, once doctor James Brown, the leader of the human 'half' of the expedition, finished listing the material goods that have been obtained from the vault under the ruins of the Prothean outpost.

"Of course." Vashan replied as she stood up. "Most of the data we got from the beacon is reports about the worlds conquered by the Reaper forces during the fall of the Prothean Empire nearly fifty thousands years ago. These reports, unfortunately, are not detailed enough to give any ideas about the strategies used by the Reapers." Making a second-long pause to take a breath, she continued: "Among the more useful data, we've obtained the blueprints of a direct-energy personal weapon." Activating her new omni-tool, she summoned a projected image of the particle rifle as a whole and separated into its components. "We are currently unsure, but we believe that with some modifications this weapon might be scaled up into a warship cannon."

"Interesting." The chancellor of Germany, who attended this summit in person, commented. A particle weapon no bigger than a standard assault rifle? Stuff like that existed only in sci-fi until now. "Please continue, overseer."

"There also were the designs for a massive super-weapon of unknown nature that, apparently, was originally developed by the races that came even before our own precursors, the Inusannon." Vahsan's omni-tool projected a new image, this time showing a ...thing that looked like a huge sphere with four long mechanical arms attached to it. "These blueprints are incomplete, though: the activation mechanism of this super-weapon requires something that is referred to only as 'the catalyst'. The scientists of the Prothean Empire have been unable to determine its nature."

"This is unfortunate indeed." The Japanese ambassador remarked. "But it would be foolish to discard this completely. One day we might find the information about this 'catalyst' and finally complete this super-weapon. And, who knows, it might be the thing that would let us win against the Reapers." There were murmurs of agreement among the summit.

"Agreed." The representative of the United States said. Then he addressed Vashan: "Overseer Khalim, is there any other information obtained from your communication beacon that you believe to be important enough to be presented to this body at this time?" There was a lengthy pause, before the Prothean woman spoke:

"Two, actually." At the man's nod, she elaborated: "First, according to one of the battle logs, a lesser Reaper vessel was destroyed during a battle in a star system belonging to the Argos Rho cluster. The destroyed Reaper vessel then fell onto an icy planet, not unlike Jupiter's moon Europe, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. While it is most likely that the husk has since been recovered by the Reapers themselves, this is a proof that conventional weapons can destroy the Reapers."

"Those are some good news." The UAR ambassador stated. "You can't win a war against an enemy that you yourself believe to be invincible."

"Indeed." Overseer Vashan agreed. "This message was intended to raise the morale of the remaining Prothean Empire's soldiers and the civilian militia." Making a short pause, she continued: "The second message that I believe to be of a great importance state that there might be a large Prothean cryogenic facility somewhere here." Her omni-tool projected a galaxy map with a large red dot over a star cluster some four kilo-parsecs away from the Sol system. "No further information about the facility's location can be found, aside from the fact that it is located on some garden world. I believe that, you should consider a search for this facility when the colonization efforts are conducted in this cluster."

"That sounds promising. We will keep our eyes open for any remnants of your people when we reach these systems." The USA representative said.

"Thank you, ambassador." Vashan replied with a small bow while silently praying that some people at that facility were still alive.

"And this body thanks you for your report, overseer Khalim." The deputy secretary-general of UN said. "We shall not take any more of your valuable time, overseer." With nod of appreciation, the Prothean representative headed out of the chamber, followed closely by her 'escorts'.

That's all, folks
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