Authors note.

There is so much exposition needed that I intend to add codex entries to the end of every chapter. I would like to thank all the people and groups who have followed/favorited my work however I will no longer be doing it in these notes, I would never forgive myself if I missed someone by mistake. I still intend to respond to any questions either pm ed at me or in the comments. I do not think anyone really did not know this but I do not own either RWBY or Mass Effect. They are owned by Rooster Teeth and Electronic Arts respectively.

Ch. 3: Fish out of Water.

Yenna was now floating in the airlock which fortunately was currently filled with some sort of gas. She focused as she pressed against the inner airlock door and she pushed through. Her suit's scanners had told her the air was a nitrogen oxygen mix but she did not want to take chances so she stayed in her semblance. As she floated through the ship she saw one of the aliens. To her surprise it was a pretty young blue lady. Deciding to follow her she pushed into the elevator shaft. As they ascended the alien began to hum a little tune. The doors opened and she began to notice some similarities in the ships design to that of their own, just on a much larger scale. "Hmm, this seems too good to be true." She mused "The first aliens we meet look and think almost exactly like us." Of course the young woman could not hear her and continued to walk towards her destination.

Yenna followed the crewwoman until she reached what Yenna assumed were the captains quarters. At which point she saw the door open as a slightly older woman looked out and then around before saying. "Quickly Jess."

At this point Yenna was beginning to tire. She pushed her way down the floor to the airlock where she saw two more of the women looking at the suit. Her panic was overshadowed by one question "Why are only females on this ship?" The two women were calling somewhere on a com system. "We found a spacesuit. It is not one of ours, the 'human' was on the shuttle. We have been boarded." Yenna began to float away as they opened the airlock and pulled the suit in. With no choice left Yenna entered a storage closet and hoped the readings were correct and that she could breathe the air.

As she materialized she felt the weight of her semblance leaving and she immediately gasped for air to discover… that it was normal. She then laughed loudly "Ha blue women! Space is filled with blue women!" She then reentered her semblance and went towards where engineering should be. Once again she was in luck, engineering was empty save what she assumed were key personnel. She entered normal form near an alarm and, in a move that any high schooler would be ashamed to admit, she pulled it. The alarm worked and as the engineers scrambled to fix the 'malfunction' Yenna walked to a panel to gather information. Fortunately one of the younger ones (she looked to be seventeen) did not remove the portable hard drive and would likely forget it if it were removed. Not knowing what she was looking for Yenna decided to download everything oldest to newest. The computer complied, clearly only protected from virtual warfare from an external/malicious source. The drive in hand she took it back to the storage closet in her one chest pocket. Once there she thought of a question she just now realized she had not fully considered. "How do I get out of here?" She wondered. At this point she heard the voice of the older lady from before yell into the storage closet. "Come out. We know you are there." As Yenna looked around for a camera she missed before she had a horrible realization. "They can speak our language."

Jesthissa felt odd as she walked to Nylmia's room. Not about walking to the room, which had become common over the years, no what felt odd was this weird looming dread. When the door opened Nylmia pulled her in with her usual reaction. The trepidation over old taboos that held her back, but this time Jesthissa had a different motive than normal.

As she entered the room the alarms went off. There was an intruder on board. "Jess this is not the time." Nylmia sighed.

Jesthissa retorted "That's not what I am here for. Captain a few moments ago I felt a disturbance, just before the alarm went off."

"What kind of disturbance." Nylmia responded with the lighting pace of a family member at a tragedy.

"I do not know how to describe it. It felt like… do you ever get that feeling that someone is watching you even though you do not know that they are there?" Jesthissa asked.

"When I was your age." Nylmia answered. "I think it is probably nothing."

Jesthissa nodded as she got up to return to her post. Nylmia looking at her than said "But I think that even if it would normally be nothing when it comes to you your instincts are usual right on point. What is your thought on the matter?"

As she looked around her boss's Spartan quarters she had a realization. "We have no sensors in our storage rooms, and the stowaway is after information otherwise we would already have injuries. Therefore I think that she will go to a high data storage area like engineering, create a diversion and then attempt to re-steal her shuttle to leave."

"I agree, and maybe she did follow you for a while to try and find our patterns to avoid guards." Nylmia concluded as she got up and on the comm she heard that the Ezo core had been set to emergency dump in 10 minutes.

Jesthissa pointed at the storage room one level above engineering and they both knew that was where the stowaway would be.

Yenna opened the door to see the two women near her. Keeping her claws and weapon sheathed she murmured "Of course they know your language why wouldn't they, and why wouldn't they monitor storage rooms constantly, its' dangerous non weapon non fuel stuff in here."

While she mumbled fearing the worst of sci fi movies to happen to her the younger alien gently touched her hand and said "It's ok, the engineering staff stopped the core dump. No harm was done."

Yenna looked up at the young but still taller, damn even the alien women are taller than me she thought, blue woman and felt strangely enthralled. She quickly snapped out of it and asked "why did you come to our planet. What do you want from us?"

Jesthissa looked into her eyes and despite this being a completely new alien species she could still see the fear in her eyes. "I am Jesthissa the navigator/communications officer of this vessel. This is my captain Nylmia. This is the survey ship Suell."

Before they could continue Yenna interrupted "how do you speak my language?"

Nylmia took control of the situation quickly halting the spiral "I will tell you in my quarters if you would accompany us."

Despite the lack of guns carried by the aliens somehow Yenna knew refusal was a bad call so she followed them back up careful to not show that she already knew the way.

In the room there was a small couch and an armchair. The older one Nylima or Nylmia as Yenna remembered took the chair as she sat next to the younger Jesthissa.

"So why did you board our ship." Nylmia asked.

"Why are you in our system and how do you know my language?" Yenna retorted

Nylmia said "we are exploring this system and we found this planet just over a day ago. We know your language because of our translation software. Right now you are hearing a computer translation of my words." Nylmia forestalled "We have translated your language through the com data from your station and the colony below.

Yenna then asked "Where are all the men? Do you not allow them on the ship or something?"

Nylmia smiled slightly "I understand your confusion, you humans are sexually dimorphic, the Asari, that's our species, has only one sex. There are no men." Nylmia then asked the question that had been burning her up since the alarm first sounded. "How did you get through the airlock door? The outer door registered you opening it and we simply missed it with the distraction from your ship, however there is no indication that you ever opened the inner airlock door. If you were that capable of hacking our security your attempts in engineering would have gone unnoticed."

Yenna then stared at her for a second before saying. "I don't know the inner door was never sealed. I just walked through."

"Iminae, that's my chief engineer, has had some trouble with your ship's fuel supply." Nylmia asked. "We could not find any helium 3 and there was not even enough element zero for a trip to here and back on the ship."

"Man Earl is going to grill me if I forgot to fill the Ezo again." Yenna said.

"No it's not that, the reservoir is nearly full." Jesthissa clarified. "We mean that the reservoir does not have enough Element Zero to run a ship of that size even at low ftl rates.

Yenna then asked "Wait, what's helium 3?"

At this point Iminae came in not noticing Yenna there holding a padd with her report. "We have finished analyzing the ship, it appears to be a short range shuttlecraft, primarily for in system use. Its engine runs an FTL drive however we could not locate any fuel source while the vessel is powered down and as my initial analysis speculated the Ezo well is unusably small in comparison to what is needed for the mass of the ship.

At this point Iminae noticed the pale skinned alien sitting right next to her. Barely avoiding a blackout she said "Hi I'm Iminae, are you the pilot of the ship? I have many questions about it."

Yenna incredulous at the fact that she was still alive and that the hyper advanced aliens had questions about HER tech snarkily replied "Yes, I have heard the questions, why don't you just start it up. Heck if you are worried about it exploding in your face or something I can come with."

Iminae looked at Nylmia who nodded. Iminae now looking at the human wistfuly stated "That would be nice."

Down at the hangar where the shuttle had been pulled in a couple of older yet junior techs were still looking over the ship. Iminae beckoned them away. The both entered the ship with Yenna taking the pilot seat. "Ok can you start it up?" Iminae asked. Yenna turned on the engine and the mass effect core activated. As the process happened Iminae watches in surprise as the now active element zero fell in minuscule drops into the lower chamber that she thought was just burned slag. This pile of… well dust started to activate as well and she watched as the mass decreased to allow ftl travel.

Yenna was unfazed by the normal process of a starting engine. "See nothing to it." She said. "Just a normal ftl drive. I mean it doesn't have anything on yours. This ship is massive." She finished.

Iminae then asked still staring at the material in wonder. "What is that material that the Ezo is infusing?"

Yenna responded matter of factly "oh, that's just dust."

Codex Entry. The Remnant coalition: Remnant cleared the grim in the year 2020 galactic time, from that point on there was no grim threat to unite humanity. To prevent the slide into internal conflict the Remnant coalition was formed. This organization was focused on expanding humanity into space as well as fixing wild areas and underdeveloped areas at home. Until 2050 the second one was the only one worth mentioning. However a miracle happened in 2049. A piece of Remnant's shattered moon's orbit decayed enough for a dust engine to get within 1 kilometer of the fragment. In that year all of humanities scientific community worked to fix that last kilometer of distance. By 2050 a one way rocket was launched. The dust would not work on the way back down so the astronauts simply had to transmit the data back as best they could. Calli Arc was the first human to visit another world, even if it was only 6 km long. On that tiny speck of dust they found an artifact with only one piece of information, a way to locate deposits of one ore in particular. This allowed the coalition to find the element zero on remnant and traverse the stars. Currently the coalition has several planets and planetoids colonized in the sol system and one in the nearby Centari system. The census though imperfect puts humanities total population at around 17.4 billion of which approximately 8.9 billion live on Remnant.