Chapter 2: New Encounter
Location: Utopia System; Orbit around Mass Relay; Mind's Eye Station.
"Checkmate."
"Honestly... when did you ever get this good at chess?" Regula lamented, his five-hundred games winning-streak had been utterly shattered – undefeated until this fateful match with the beaming Ultimo who now raked in the goodies the two of them had wagered with a ruby gauntlet.
It was a little bit of a surprise visit to have after weeks of being cooped up in this little satellite that was for the time being his home. It only had about ten rooms/sections, but included an observation deck that provided an excellent view to the native mass relay, an alien artifact among many identical twins of unknown make. Some might call ten sections to be rather roomy, but not when you shared that space with thirty others.
Those thirty were all his assistants for when something passes through the relay, alien ships which crews he had to use his Noh to disable and make sure they return to wherever they came from without memory of ever seeing anything unusual in this corner of the galaxy. The rest of it prepared to bring war upon them even now, so secrecy was of utmost importance until they prepare sufficiently to ward off the inevitable invasion.
Ultimo giggled softly, a musical tune that made the cores of those who listened flutter with every syllable. As always the red-maned dôji was a being of stunning beauty. Almost irresistible a treasure to behold. "I have been practicing a bit."
"No doubt." Regula groaned and kept his gaze on the king of his that Ultimo had so neatly cornered, as if the Grand Aspect that represent human capacity for Goodness could bewitch him with a look – that was not too far from the truth. It was fortunate that Ultimo was rarely inclined to be flirty or he'd be unstoppable – they already had one of those. "My crew's probably in a riot right now. I can almost hear them now..."
"Even the most immovable can't remain so forever Regula." the other noted fairly with a raised claw, regal like a great lion.
He dipped his bald head a little further, "Truer words cannot be spoken."
"What an exaggeration~"
"Sir!" the voice of his adjutant Elia called in via the intercom.
...
"What is it?" Regula glared at the device in question.
"A reaction. The relay is reacting, something's about to come through!"
His expression dominated by a frown, he turned to the view and watched as the rings at the relay's heart span a little more rapidly – speeding up almost imperceptibly. "Oh... bloody."
"Language." Ultimo noted with a slight look of disapproval. Ever a paragon.
Regula rose from his seat, gauntlets splitting at its nonexistent seams as he hastily approached the window. Powering up his Noh, memory manipulation, while he waited for whatever would come soon.
Abruptly, the relay's rings quickened and span around one another till something blasted into real space in a storm of pure blue light that for a fleeting second after transit enveloped the craft that just came through – a large ship that amounted to the hull of a cruiser. In general outline it faintly resembled the relay through which it traveled, only reversed and much smaller.
But there was something wrong with it, which was the only reason Regula had not yet deployed his Noh.
Ultimo stood up at the scene of a ship on the verge of breaking into pieces, explosions rippling through its bullet-ridden hull as it careened past the satellite. "Dispatch a rescue, immediately!" the kindhearted Grand Aspect demanded urgently.
"Sir?" Elias voice came again.
"Do i-" Regula seconded before the rings on the relay's rings span again and disgorged another cruiser in a show of riveting light – this one quite pristine. Neither of these had come here to explore. It was a chase.
Question was though, what was it about?
For a moment, this newly arrived one just stopped and seemed to stare at them... until it started to turn. Apparently in an attempt to retreat through the relay again. But Regula was adamant that they would not do so, and reached out with his Noh to their several dozen crew members and in the ensuing memory sweeps canceled all that they intended to do over a minute of hard effort, "Ship captured. Move in and secure it."
Below, his adjutant rapidly organized both a rescue attempt and a capture mission. And soon after, both of their shuttles detached and went on each their respective missions. One of these however seemed to be doomed as the wounded ship, before the shuttle could reach it, suddenly jumped away in a burst of light and movement.
"One just got away!" Elia reported.
"How reckless." Ultimo sadly said as he looked in the general direction in which the wounded ship went. "Their ship cannot take any more!"
"Elia, send a broadcast to the Tenjo." Regula went and ordered, "A ship slipped away, so be on the lookout for it."
"Aye!"
A suspenseful thirty minutes passed by while the other alien craft was taken hold of and all its crew herded together. More people whose memories he had to alter. It did not take long before it was gleamed why these people chased that other cruiser. It's a pirate ship. Criminals, outlaws and terrorists.
That ship saw this relay and plunged through heedless of wherever it might take them. And according to duty, its pursuer followed.
"Tenjo Command found it." Elia called in, "It just entered Eden Prime's orbit."
"Quite fast. But why there?" Regula wondered.
"It's the only habitable planet here." Ultimo told him. It made perfect sense. "If they plan to disembark, that is the only place they could go to. Have a team pick them up and..."
"No longer possible, my lord. Tenjo Command just reported a massive explosion on board the alien ship... it's falling into the planet's atmosphere, and breaking up."
Though crewed by less than reputable people, the Grand Aspect lowered his head in brief despair. "Any survivors?"
"Not that we can detect, my lord."
"We weren't quick enough." Regula whispered, "I apologize for that."
Ultimo sighed, "You are not at fault, old friend." as he slowly walked to the hatch. "I will be going back to the Tenjo... see what we can salvage from this tragedy."
He smiled sadly as the Grand Aspect quietly left. "Good luck, but do come back again. Got to pay you back for beating me."
The tender smile Ultimo went on to give him before he left was like a star in the sky. Such that no farewell was needed to be said. Once again in a fight to keep his composure, Regula turned back and focused on his task.
Location: Utopia System; Eden Prime; Oinari Village.
Gargants are wonderful beasts. Huge, heavy and exceptionally meaty. Every part either edible or could be used for something unrelated to the filling of innumerable hungry bellies. They were powerfully built, difficult for native predators to take down, and rather slow in all but brief bursts of movements that still required great forward momentum first.
Unfortunately they could be rather aggressive and would severely smash anything they happen to catch up to – either by luck or accident. The current apparent Alpha had tried to run Lyta Lyle down, but all he needed to do was to dig his heels in and extend an arm against its hammer-like forehead to stop the cumbersome beast in its track.
What happened to the last Alpha? He cooked and ate it, almost every ounce of its twenty thousand pounds of weight, and built up a hefty arsenal of viable recipes doing it. A regular organic would have gotten enormously obese at such an amount of food, but as a dôji the kind of fuel all that material was converted into took much less space.
If anything, it made him more energetic. Not something to complain about.
"Down boy..." Lyta Lyle demanded as he twisted his gauntlet and in that motion tilted the beast onto its side. The beast eyed him angrily, but mellowed slightly as he pulled along a cart full of a menagerie of vegetables and other greeneries along with the occasional small animal. Gargants were omnivores to an extent. It stacked itself back in its six legs and gaped its jaws to dig in. "Good boy." the dôji cooed, "Grow nice and fat for us."
To house such beasts required more solid accommodations, so the fences used in this enclosure was the only part not made of wood. Much more solid things were needed for the fifty or so Gargants he had managed to acquire.
Much of his work in regard to these though revolved around the study of their life cycle and see how long carriage lasts among other things. If the information on animals that used to exist on Earth is anything to go by, the time between generations could be rather long.
Meaning they can't eat too many at once. Needed to be done rather sparingly.
"Now then... with all the beasts fed. It is about time I make some plans for myself." Lyta Lyle spoke to himself as he wandered in among the herd and took away the carts that were eventually emptied. "No matter what, the kid I'll have with whoever the next guy will be, I gotta raise him not on stories of the battlefield and war... but on the virtues of agriculture so that he's more likely to stay with me."
He turned to one of the female gargants that could not possible care less about the dôji's family plans, "Isn't that a wonderful idea?"
It merely chewed disinterestedly on a ton of lettuce-equivalents, and ignored him flatly.
"Fine, be that way." Lyta Lyle dismissed as he dragged the pile of carts out of the large pen. "I got a guy in mind... too bad he's already taken. It's so infuriating." If he had a handkerchief in hand right now, he'd tear at it like crazy. Instead he simply fumed. "How annoying."
He was halfway to the barns when the peace of a perfectly normal day was rudely interrupted as a slight red tinged the sky. Lyta Lyle looked up searchingly at whatever it was and spied as several trails of fire blasted through the skies, with massive trails of smoke billowing in their wake. Some of the pieces were coherent enough, even from this distance, to identify as artificial construct and not a meteorite.
Most of these passed into the extreme distance, some came a little closer. All universally passing to the south, all but one fragment that seemed to have split from the main one. The dôji watched with strange fascination as a pillbox-shaped object came spinning hap-hazardously to an area beyond his village. But even as it seemed as though it'd come for an abrupt and very rough landing, something radiated from the thing a ghostly blue.
It crashed merely a second after that – just a short distance from the far side of his farm if his estimation was right – with a noted lack of dramatics. There was not even a boom or other rapport of impact.
A safe landing probably.
Rather interested in whatever this could be, curiosity driving him, Lyta Lyle lit his thigh-mounted boosters and shot himself off to see whatever had come on down so close to his property. The dôji kept himself low as he crossed the distance, with no one else apparently interested in this strange thing – if they had even noticed at all.
He arrived there shortly, and set down at the edge of a small burning crater that was dominated by the pillbox item. It was not all that big. Lyta Lyle went in close to check up on the deceptively undamaged machine, until he found the hatch, complete with a little but fortified window... peered inside, and saw that its interior's on fire.
And in there, he also spied a body. A body collapsed in its harness, apparently unconscious. It was covered by both armor and helmet with one-sided visor... so he stood no chance in identifying the creature without at least removing the latter.
Except that it would die unless help is forthcoming.
With a little yell, Lyta Lyle tore his claws through the hatch and in a screech of tortured metal ripped the hatch out, tossed it away, and reached in to rip off the harness and pluck the body out... which he put on his shoulder before he turned to run when ominous beeping echoed from the apparent escape pod.
He barely got away before the thing shorted out and exploded fiercely, sending fragments of utterly ruined metal and electronics everywhere. All that was left whole, was the body that in its current state could only grunt and groan in a notable baritone accent incoherently.
"You're still alive, huh?" Lyta Lyle smiled as he comfortingly patted the being, "That's good."
One immediate idea was to bring him to authorities, but another idea occurred to him that he ended up liking a whole lot more. And following it, the dôji smiled rather smugly and turned to head back home with this alien in tow – leaving behind a rather scorched landscape.
Back and forth is just as far they say. It's the truth in terms of raw distance, but not if one took traveling speed into account. With an alien slumped over his shoulder, he took caution and went homeward on foot... which logically took a while. But he handled it and wandered without complaint, only briefly sighing in relief when he finally arrived and went through the routine of scraping dirt off his shoes – and checked if the alien's armor was clean as well - which it thankfully was if slightly scorched – before he stepped inside and put the alien onto the bed of what used to be Sullivan's room.
"Now then, I wonder if you have some sort of identification." Lyta Lyle muttered quietly as he sat next to the alien, probing the suit for any hint. But who was he trying to kid? It was a spacesuit, not some jacket with a bazillion and one pockets.
Thankfully the being's breathing was even, with little hint of pain or discomfort. It was jostled, but not damaged.
Only one way to really know for sure though, so Lyta Lyle very carefully and experimentally attempted to undo the suit safely. But it had no visible locks or bolts, which rather annoyed the fair dôji. So after a few attempts he felt as though he'd like nothing more than rip the thing open by force when he lifted the right arm and was abruptly startled by a holographic interface of green light popped into place.
"Mm, you got a few surprises there and there~"
Surprise soon replaced by interest, he tried to interpret the information which the tool so helpfully displayed... except there was one critical problem in this investigation. One that Lyta Lyle recognized as he finally withdrew his gauntlets from the comatose form.
"Oh. I can't read it." he lightly cursed at himself and got to thinking of a way to solve this difficulty, "But that does not necessarily mean all is lost. If I remember correctly... there's a wandering salesman downtown with just the goods I need."
Brightened by the possibilities he went to collect a few select stuff, but not before he put down a mug of water in the bedroom and locked the door so that the alien won't go wandering if it woke before he came back. "Right! I'll stop at nothing!" Lyta Lyle psyched himself up as he left for town.
What a sleepy town...
Bill lamented quietly as he sat in a corner of the newly sprung Oinari village. As a son of Avaro, it was in his nature to seek opportunity, and this had seemed to be it. With goods important to the widespread construction effort prioritized it was hard to get everyday commodities. Trinkets of interest and some such that would eventually be mass produced and made available as soon as sufficient industry's built to support it.
That in mind, the wiry dôji had secured what few of these special interest items he could gather and set out to places where it'd be even harder to get such items – places that are all on the frontier or across the countryside such as Oinari village. Except... it did not prove as lucrative as he had once hoped with only one thing sold to a little kid before a parent had come and pulled him away with some admonishment. In short, that was the brightest part of his experience here.
"How annoying." Bill complained as he pushed himself off the ground and hefted the big bag, where all his goods' are kept, onto his back – so big it looked almost comical on his short frame. Shrugging off the few odd looks he got, Bill started to make his way for the transportation point so he could try again elsewhere. So far as he was concerned, he and this village was through.
"Hey, shop still open?"
He was almost there when some person came towering over him from the side. One not that much bigger, but so pretty already with just a look from the periphery of his vision that he pushed his gaze to face this one fully. As a whole, the village only had a few hundred people. But even then he did not remember many faces, but one had to try hard to forget a figure like this one.
Bill nodded slightly, remembering the name that belonged to this person, "Ah, Lyta Lyle I presume?"
"That's me." the dark-haired dôji smiled dazzlingly, "So are you open for trade?"
"Pardon, but I am rather closed." he was almost hesitant to say no, "About to leave."
"Do make an exception." Lyta Lyle pleaded calmly and inclined enough that they met eye to eye, "There's something you might have that I'm interested in."
Unable to tear his gaze from the other one's eyes from this close, Bill stuttered as he almost lamely let his sack hit the ground, "W-why of course. Name what you need."
He smiled a little wider, "I would like to have linguistic information on languages of known alien species. I believe you had a data pad with that information."
"Oh that." the wiry dôji's narrow eyes widened with recognition as he turned – without letting his newest customer out of his sight. Almost blindly he opened the bag and dipped his claws inside, rummaging the space until he pulled out the data pad in question. "Such information has spread widely, thanks to the diligence of com dôji. And it will eventually be open to everyone. But not everyone has it yet, so you now have the chance to catch up and impress friends that don't have it." he flipped it around from claw to claw in his palm, "Aiming to become a linguist?"
"I'm just a farmer with a few hobbies."
Bill mentally drooped. If Lyta Lyle said he'd use it for future business opportunities it would allow him to push up the price. It was a simple but clever answer that he could not freely challenge. Clearly the customer was not one to take lightly.
"Alright..." he ran the delicious numbers in his head, which were somewhat tainted by unclean thoughts about parts of Lyta Lyle's curves that appealed to him the most. "That will be a thousand credits."
Out in the galaxy, it'd sound miniscule. But the dôji economy is very small at the moment. Right now such a sum amounts to a small fortune.
"How about I pay you five hundred credits." Lyta Lyle offered, smiling as he hefted something out of a bag at his side: A seemingly uninteresting frozen package. "Along with it I offer this. A full thirty pounds of treated Gargant meat. Perfectly preserved and likely to sell well as it will take some more time before it becomes available for widespread consumption. Real honest to father meat, not an approximation."
Bill was about to balk at such a small offer of coins, but came instead to stare at that package which was complete with its own simple self-preservation mechanism. He clasped his jagged teeth and free fist tightly as the offer did have great merit. The wiry son of Avaro had to fight the temptation of having that for himself.
Right now such a food was worth its weight in gold.
Great enough in value that if he offered it up to the right aspect... Bill's cheeks grew fiery red at the very thought of the possibilities.
"Hoh.. all red are we?" Lyta Lyle asked, a smirk on his hips as he had come even closer then the smaller without Bill noticing it. The realization sent the salesman up against the nearest wall in a moment of burning heat.
"N-no, no no no!" he protested, "I'm p-p-perfectly fine!"
The taller dôji put his free gauntlet against a hip, "So how does the offer sound? Not good enough?"
"It's fine. Perfectly fine!" Bill almost shouted, "A-actually... I'm feeling rather generous at the moment... so three hundred credits along with that packaged meat."
Both five hundred credits and the meat was on the table, yet he made this reduction in price anyway. It was like an impulse, a desire to see what happened if he decided to make such a decision. A desire not at all disappointed, his core fluttering as the cut-down offer clearly delighted the other.
"Why thank you~" Lyta Lyle said as he fished out a number of coins and put them atop the bag along with the package before he came onto the wiry salesman and leaned in close, "But I guess I can't let such an abrupt cut-down come along without a proper 'thank you'."
Bill felt as though he could break out in hives by sheer heat of the moment if he had been an organic as the more regal-looking Lyta Lyle pressed and trapped him against that wall with that sultry gaze he gave. "W-what," amazingly his voice still worked, "do y-you offer?"
"This..." the taller dôji leaned fully in and the son of Avaro had to fight to make sure he did not lose control of himself as the son of Slow kissed his cheek. It was not on the lips, but right now it made no difference. Bill was lost in his bliss, and sagged almost limply to the ground as soon as the other broke contact. Looking on lamely as the haunting dôji accepted the device from his grip and turned to leave.
Lyta Lyle sang to him, "Glad to do business with you~"
"Please come again..." Bill barely stopped his voice from breaking into a plea. He could barely believe a son of Slow could be so seductive in a casual setting, "J-just one question... who was your father?"
"It was Slow, of course."
"And the other...?"
The farmer smirked, "Désir."
With that, it made a whole lot more sense. Bill slumped with sudden exhaustion and rested. For the moment unable to care that a transport had touched down and left during their negotiation, mind momentarily drowned in an old urban myth that existed between those two aspects as he watched the departing farmer.
What a lucky break.
"Here I thought I'd be spending most of my money." Lyta Lyle stated in triumph to himself when he got back home and stowed away the two hundred credits he ended up keeping after the deal was done. "Was ready for it, but never expected him to turn that way. Pleasant surprise."
And he kissed the guy for it.
"Oh my, better focus on what I went all the way there for..."
Quick to put all that behind him, Lyta Lyle stepped over to the currently used bedroom and entered after a twisting of lock. Luckily the alien was still there, and still sounding healthy despite all the trauma it went through.
Once again he sat on the bed and brought up his newly bought device to activate and browse through its pages, made a few queries and accessed language files – bringing up several sets of scripts and symbols.
The alien's interface was set on next, the fabled Omni-tool that the alien civilizations most commonly used. Lyta Lyle spent the next few moments comparing the writings, from one to the other, until he finally arrived at the language that matched it.
"Hoh... not one of the aliens species represented in the group that helped us out on Earth." he whispered in fascination to himself and read up on the word that corresponded with the written language: "Batarian. Huh. Let's see what information you got, mister Batarian."
He licked his lips as he focused his mind and carefully read the passages listed within the omni-tool. Enough information listed in it to fill several buckets had it been converted into lengths of paper. Some of it was interesting, but a whole lot of it was less than fine.
"Not the most reputable person are you?" Lyta Lyle wondered in distaste but not diminished interest as he read, "Numerous thefts. Terrorist bombings. Propaganda. Counts of murders in the triple-digits. And illegally downloading a movie. A garbage list of crooked things."
"Guess you fled here to escape from justice." he continued while standing back up, "But you did that only to meet with me, so I can apply my little justice to you. Get yourself ready, for you're all mine now mister Batarian. And I will as surely as the sky here are blue make use of you~"
In its own way, this is going to be glorious.
Author note: The first of the Mass Effect characters to enter the picture here is rather an unconventional one suffice it to say. Try to guess which one.
For first-time readers, some dôji may seem rather... ahem... forward. Despite being synthetics and thus genderless, they are quite given to rather sexual behavior at times, along with other desires one would normally associate with organic beings. But dôji mimicking organic society, one where the sins and virtues are openly accepted without much kept in the closet, is part of the dynamics in this series that contrasts the other synthetic species in this setting; the Kurozu and the Geth.