Epilogue


Even though it was two days since Normandy had returned, Shepard was still a little high from the achievement. Despite spending moths lost in the infinite infinities that was the multi-verse, EDI had finally gotten them home. It had taken thousands of years' worth of copied scientific knowledge and a little magic, but Shepard and crew were finally back in their galaxy of origin.

And standing in the space station that used to be known as the asteroid X57, standing in what were apparently the new Council chambers, Shepard was beginning, just a little bit, to regret it.

"And then, after abandoning your posts, deserting the galaxy at large, you dare return sprouting nonsense about having visited other universes?!" The councillor's barbed words would have hurt less if they had come from someone other than the new human councillor who had replaced the late Anderson and Udina.

They had been lecturing her even before she had said where she and her ship had gone, but now they had new material to deride her with.

Really, Shepard had been looking forward to returning home so much that she found herself tuning out the councillors tirade, instead fantasising about a long vacation. Hmmm… first Rannoch, then Sur'Kesh…

"Are you even listening, Shepard?" The Turian councillor spat, so furious that spittle was flying from his jaws. "Do you know how much of a PR disaster it was when you, the saviour of the entire galaxy, when missing post-battle?!"

"I'm sorry my personal misfortune caused so much inconvenience for you." Shepard snapped. "But, really? At this point I'll agree to anything to go home and sleep for a week or two."

"Oh Shepard, really? You should hold onto your guns a little longer. Really rub the impossible in their faces. It'll be good for them."

That voice didn't belong to the councillors or the Normandy crew.

With a bright flash, a new arrival appeared on the scene. Brown hair, mischievous eyes, wearing the uniform of a system alliance admiral.

"Who the HELL are you?" The human councillor yelped in surprise.

"Oh, just shut up." The new arrival commanded making a weird hand gesture. With another flash, the councillor's mouth disappeared, replaced with unbroken skin. Wild stares locked onto the man now frantically grabbing at his own face, muffled screams coming from below his nose.

"My name is Q, as it happens." Q walked over to Shepard, his pointing finger leading the way. "And I have a bone to pick with you."

"Me?! I don't even know who you are!" Shepard retorted angrily. She was home. The Reapers were dead. It was all supposed to be over now.

Q made the same hand gesture as before, and one wall of the new council room changed into a picture of a starry void, in which floated…

"Voyager?" Shepard asked, confused. "Were you onboard?"

"I was watching." Q snarled. "Time is already twisted into a pretzel thanks to that stupid temporal cold war, the last thing we need is some outsider meddling in events that sit on unstable time loops –"

"Am I interrupting something?" Came a new voice. All the rooms' inhabitants, including Q, swivelled around to stare. Standing on two skinny legs, the new creature resembled a small, black T-Rex. Somehow, it had appeared in the room without anyone noticing.

"What in the name of the Great Bird of the Galaxy are you?" Demanded Q.

The creature smiled, as much as it could with those jaws. "I am Drode, servant of Crayak, a being far mightier than you."

Q raised an eyebrow. "That's a big boast to make."

"Are you here about Voyager as well?" Shepard asked, forcing down her panic response. This would hardly be the first time she had demanded answers with beings far more powerful than her – Sovereign and Leviathan came to mind.

"Not in the slightest." The being replied smoothly. His facial expression slowly changed into frustration, with a hint of fury. "I am here about an invasion you ruined."

In the corner of her eye, Shepard could see the councillors pause in the slow movement towards the door to mouth "invasion?" at each other.

"The Yeerk invasion of Earth, to be precise." Drode continued, and suddenly the room was filled with transparent phantoms of what Shepard recognised as Hork-Bajir and other Yeerk Controllers. On some unheard signal, the phantoms started fighting with someone on the other side of the wall, exchanging intangible fire.

"Because of you, the Yeerk war machine is in shambles, the Andalite fleet is back in position, and my master's greatest servant, the One, will die before achieving anything meaningful!" Drode was still speaking in a language Shepard's implant could translate, but there was definitely a growl going along with his speech that reminded Shepard of the dinosaurs Drode resembled.

As suddenly as they had arrived, the phantom fighters disappeared. Despite having a muzzle rather than a jaw, Drode still looked murderous. "But the solution is trivial, really. You left, and here the Ellimist's rules don't apply. A little tug on a cosmic string, and you never existed. All the problems you caused will be negated."

To Shepard's surprise, Q spoke next. "Now look here you under-evolved barely-ascended boot-licking lizard. I'm all in favour of teaching her a lesson – she caused me some headaches as well – but she's hardly going to learn if you remove her sum existence is she?"

Drode turned to Q, fixing him with the same "I will bite you in half" grimace on his face. "My master doesn't want her to learn, he wants her out of the way."

"Aw, that's not nice at all, mister Dinosaur! You need to learn to live and let live already." Another unfamiliar voice intruded.

Q and Drode both sprouted strained grimaces, Drode with some difficulty. Looking up toward the balconies above, they found a young human-looking girl dressed in a uniform Shepard and crew recognised from their last trip – the same school uniform Suzumiya and the others had been wearing. She also had a smiley face badge clipped into her brown hair.

Q rubbed his forehead with his hand, before realising what he was doing and stopped. "Okay, who are you and why are you here?"

The girl grinned like a million-watt bulb. "I'm Yasumi Watahashi of the SOS brigade! Haruhi was wondering what happened to you, so I came to look. Good thing too, those guys look mean."

Shepard tentatively chalked Yasumi as friendly.

Q frowned. "What, are we gonna have to take turns with Shepard? She seems too popular for her own good."

Drode gave an angry roar. "There shall be no turn taking! I shall delete her and that shall be the end of it!"

There was a pause for a few seconds as the extra-universals stared at each other; Q with annoyance, Drode with frustration, and Yasumi with wide eyes and a huge smile.

"Nobody else showing up? Good, three-" Q's commentary was interrupted by a roar as space was not-at-all-subtly ripped apart, revealing purple tones and a… creature. Honestly, Shepard didn't know how to describe it. To her surprise, her Omni-tool did.

"Arceus, the Alpha Pokémon. According to legend, Arceus hatched from an egg before the universe existed, and then shaped all that is." Shepard was surprised that her Pokédex app was still running in auto-recognise mode. It was probably a good thing she had forgotten to turn it off, though.

"Oh, oh!" Yasumi cried. "There's one more!"

"And what is your problem?" Q demanded.

Arceus growled at Q unintelligibly.

"What do mean, 'your children'?"

Peeking out from around Shepard's ankles, Ashley and Mordin the Eevees yipped. (Shepard had brought them in the hopes that bringing an unknown lifeform would stop her from being dismissed out of hand, but she'd forgotten how blindly stubborn the Council could be. Or was that stubbornly blind?)

"Is that all?" Drode growled. In the span of an eye-blink, the two Eevees were suddenly sent hurtling across the room in Arceus's general direction.

The sudden movement startled a cry out of Shepard, who reached out with a Mass Effect field to catch the two as gently as she could, slowing them to a halt in the air before Arceus.

The Alpha Pokémon turned its head so that its eyes met Shepard's for a moment, evaluating her. It must have found something it liked, because it turned its head away again to focus on Drode. It narrowed its eyes at him, and let out a long deep growl.

"Ungrateful primitive little –" was as far as Drode got before Arceus launched a Judgement attack.

Hundreds of points of energy erupted from a point above Arceus's head, all lunched with enough speed that they looked like beams. Each curved around as if to crush Drode from all sides.

The pseudo-dinosaur stepped back and held out his claws, and the attack disappeared as if it had never existed.

Yasumi let out a whoop as a pair of giants formed themselves out of translucent energy in the chamber in front of her. The two Celestials bent down, hands reaching out for Drode.

There was a flash of light, and suddenly Drode seemed to be kilometres farther away, despite the chamber long being one to two hundred meters wide.

"Settle down!" Q snapped. "Are we going to handle this like civilised beings, or –!"

He didn't get to finish his sentence as he was suddenly sent hurtling into the path of Arceus's next Judgement attack. The beams of light smashed into his form, then exploded.

"You wish to help, primitive? Take out the animal that thinks itself a god." Drode snarled. "I will destroy the dreaming whelp."

"This dreaming whelp, you mean?" Yasumi said from behind him.

Drode yelped as the fist of a Celestial smashed him into the floor, breaking through the alloy plating and leaving a large hole.

There was another flash of light, and the smoke clouds left by the Judgement attack suddenly dispersed to reveal Q none the worse for wear. He snapped his fingers, and faster than the human eye could see a meteor burst through the chamber roof to slam into Arceus. It never made contact, however, as Arceus's Rock Plate blocked the attack.

"I've seen gas lifeforms scarier than you!" Q scowled, clearly not happy about being blown up. "You really want to cut loose? Because win or loose, everyone on this tiny chunk of rock will die if that happens. How good are you at bringing back the dead? Because I'm a little rusty."

Arceus roared at Q, and this time the beams of Judgement that shot out were each a different colour, each a different element.

There was a mighty crash, and Drode stepped out of the lower floors, suddenly 30 metres tall. With no more than a glare, the two Celestials were simply deleted, and the creature reached down to grab at Yasumi –

– which is when the rocket Shepard launched hit him in the side of the head and detonated.

For a moment, the entire room went still, then Drode turned to glare at Shepard as if to say Did you seriously expect that to work?

"Surprise!"

Drode roared as a reformed Celestial grabbed his arms from behind, pinning him in place. The giant of energy held the struggling creature off the ground, holding him out towards Arceus.

"Light him up!" Yasumi giggled.

The next Judgement attack was not a short-lived burst like the ones before – the beams of light continued to relentlessly pummel Drode for over a minute. The arms of the Celestial moved in closer, crushing the pseudo-dinosaur even as the Alpha Pokémon exploded and crushed him.

Eventually, there was nothing left of him at all. The Celestial faded out to nothing as Arceus ceased its attack.

Q looked left. Then he looked right. Then he rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Right, so getting back to teaching you a lesson…"

"Aw, come on mister Q! Shepard's pretty smart you know! I'm sure she understands already." Yasumi said, casually leaning on Q's side with a smile on her face. Behind him, Arceus growled in warning.

Q's own smile became rather fixed, the fight still fresh in his mind. "Well, I suppose if you're sure…"

"Besides, it was pretty rude of us to break all of their stuff just now. We should probably fix everything up before we go, huh?"

Q groaned. "Well, I hope you remember to keep your nose out of other dimension's businesses in future." He said, affixing Shepard with a glare. Then with a flare of light, he and the other two gods (?) were gone.

And for one whole minute, there was complete and utter silence.

"Commander Shepard." came the utterly unexpected voice of the human councillor. Whirling around, she saw the unexpected sight of all four councillors back behind their lecterns.

"The council will now vote on the complete and permanent ban of any information and technology relating to extra-dimensional phenomenon."

"Seconded!" Came the voices of the other three councillors, more unified then Shepard had ever heard them.

"The motion is passed. Commander Shepard, you are hereby ordered to destroy all devices and techniques relating to extra-dimensional phenomena."

Shepard raised a hand, ready to protest, then looked around the room. It had been utterly trashed by entities that had come looking for the foreign element that had passed through their domains.

She put her hand down and sighed. "Aye-aye. Can I go home now?"


Yay! I finished! (These last two chapters have been half-finished since 2014. I only now got off my backside to complete them!)

It wasn't the greatest of fanfics, but it was my first serious one, and now it's done.

Chapter 1 universe: Mass Effect. Patron Deity: Unknown.

Chapter 2 universe: Star Trek. Patron Deities: The Q.

Chapter 3 universe: Animorphs. Patron Deity: Ellimist.

Chapter 4 universes: Halo (Mentioned), Babylon 5 (Mentioned), Team Fortress 2 (Mentioned). Patron Deities: Unknown.

Chapter 5 universes: Warhammer 40,000, Black Adder. Patron Deities: The Emperor, Chaos Gods.

Chapter 6 universe: Spelljammer (Dungeons and Dragons second edition setting). Patron Deities: Lots.

Chapter 7 universe: Pokémon. Patron Deity: Arceus.

Chapter 8 universe: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Patron Deity: Title Character