1: I don't own any of the Bioware characters, settings and whatever else they got. I'm also not receiving any pay for this. Nor am I Friedrich Nietzsche, and so cannot lay claim to this chapter's title. I own the world, mother-loving spawn of daughters! It just doesn't know it yet.
2: You know what you should do? Review. Because I need validation, or the walls of my fragile world come crashing down around me. (And like every truly lazy animal, I hate loud noises. They galvanize me out of my happy state of sloth.)
3: I apologize profusely for the word Encomium, which I had no idea even existed before Janizary suggested it to me. Also, it was a bugger to work in.
Now, let's drop some night into your shiny day.
Deadly Resurrection
Chapter X: God Is Dead
Prior to taking this mission Han'Maani Vas Jezebel would never have suspected that something as mundane and harmless as the holographic manifestation of a synthetic mind would ever unnerve him. What was there to be afraid of, after all? It was just a complicated light show, a shape from which an otherwise alien will could be recognized by.
But every time the blue eyes of Shepard hovered on him he felt an inexplicable shiver of fear run up his spine and wished he was anywhere but there. Maybe it was the knowledge that it thought it was a man that did it, like some kind nightmarish Pinocchio. (Han had never heard the ancient human fairy-tale, but if he had then would likely have commented that it was no great mystery why humans grew up to be so strange. And that it was an apt comparison.) Or maybe it was the way Sae seemed to spend every spare moment looking at it, a faraway look on her face that made him at once jealous and wishful. It certainly didn't help that she seemed to be a bit... flustered whenever the hologram looked at her.
It wasn't as if it even did much beyond merely watching them in a way that hinted mild bemusement as they explained their situation to it. Well, as Lien explained it.
He was busy fussing over Sae, though the woman didn't seem to notice in the slightest. He'd even surreptitiously tried to cop a feel, and had felt all kinds of dirty when she hadn't react in the slightest.
"So what you're saying is you want me to help you out." He said at last, his face a mask of disinterest. "Help you fight against... Who, exactly? You've been very good at not saying."
Han watched as Lien averted her gaze as it stared unblinkingly at her.
"Well, er," Lien started, then stopped. Obviously what she was about to say made her feel more than little bit nervous. "Everyone, really. The Sol Concord, the Rannochian Combine, the Children of Spore and Song, the Khar'Shan-Palaven Alliance, the-"
"Yes, I begin to see why you might need help." Shepard interrupted, clearly more than a little amused at this. "Quite a list. You people are even better at making enemies than I was."
Lien drew herself up, indignation showing on her face.
"We only wanted to be left alone!" She protested angrily, before seeming to remember herself and adopted a more calm tone. "Things just got out of hand."
"Sounds like it." The hologram said, smirking slightly.
"The Legions said you'd help us." Sae interjected quietly, almost as if she were embarrassed to bring it up. "They said they helped you once."
That brought the blue eyes back to bear on the woman, and Han bristled silently when he felt the woman his arms tense.
"Legions?" He asked, quirking his head to the side. "I don't know any- Wait."
His voice lost all traces of amusement as recognition dawned.
"You mean the Geth, yes?" He asked.
"They don't like to be called that, but yes." Sae answered.
"Huh. So there's more than one now." He said slowly, as if considering the concept for the first time. "Interesting."
"They said-"
"I heard you the first time, girl." Shepard said harshly, cutting her off midstream.
"So you'll help us, then?" Sae said, and Han tried desperately to convince himself that she only sounded so hopeful because she was worried for their people.
The hologram snorted derisively, folding its arms in a manner eerily similar to the way Sahi would.
"Why should I?" He demanded, and Han shuddered slightly at the sudden shift in tone. It had gone from calm to anger so quickly, and the last thing he wanted to contemplate was a moody AI-thing. "So that a few centuries from now I can help clean up yet another mess? No. I'm done with that."
"What?"
That took everyone by surprise.
This was not how things were supposed to go. They'd travelled far from their homes in search of the shi- him, braved the depths of the ship and then restored him. There was such a thing as gratitude, after all!
"B, but we brought you back." Lien protested, giving voice to the disappointment at this.
"Yes, to fight a war for you." He retorted hotly. "Selfish reasoning, really."
"Selfish?" Lien sputtered out, her eyes wide. "Listen to me, you great big lightshow-"
"No, you listen." This was said as it idly lifted a hand.
Each of them rose in the air sharply, the mass effect fields suddenly shifting with little warning. Each of them made their respective noises of surprise or protest even as the hologram regarded them with a coolly indifferent gaze.
"I will not be ordered around by the likes of you." He said with vehemence, bright blue eyes glaring at them. "I killed Saren Arterius, I destroyed the collectors, I fought the Reapers and I won. Unless your situation threatens to destroy all sentient life, I don't see why I should care. I've already given more than enough."
The conviction of the words worried Han more than a little bit, as if he was prepared to simply let them all die. As if he didn't care at all about them. The swiftness in which he had gone from amusement to anger was more than a little worrying as well, but he supposed it was only to be expected. Synthetic beings processed things more quickly than organics could, so it would follow that what seemed like a mood-swing to him was actually just a faster reaction.
It was still frightening to see, though. AIs weren't supposed to be so emotive.
He had been prepared to accept that Sahi and her brothers were the exception, as developing alone had to have yielded something far different from what normal synthetic entities were like. But Shepard, or 'the' Shepard, had to have come into being long before the three of them for them to regard him as their father. And that was a thought he didn't even want to begin thinking about. AIs spawning? At least Geth had the decency to call them copies.
Han watched the hologram carefully as it allowed its hand to drop, though the three of them remained weightless.
"My only concern in this matter is this: Will you help me, if I help you?"
The three of them could only stare for a moment, trying to understand what it had just said. And then Lien gave voice to the silent question that echoed inside their own minds.
"What could you need? You're a sh-"
"What I am is of no concern." He warned sternly, cutting her off abruptly. "What I want is."
"And what do you want?" Han found himself asking, and almost kicked himself for doing so.
The hologram remained impassive for a moment as it considered its response. Then it smiled, like the sun dawning on the horizon. The three of them were dropped unceremoniously to the ground with that, each of them once again giving voice to their surprise in a variety of ways as they landed.
"Tali'Zorah." It said slowly, as if savoring the sound of the name. "Bring her back to me, and I'll fight for you."
An awkward silence set in as the three quarians tried to begin to understand what
"Is she... like you?" Sae asked after a while, trying carefully not to insinuate anything that might offend the biotics-wielding ship.
The smile faltered for a moment before vanishing completely.
"No, she's like you." He answered, annoyance plain in his voice.
"Wouldn't she be..." Lien began, then faltered as she struggled to find the words.
Han'Maani frowned, wondering what exactly the thing in front of them was thinking. Whoever Tali'Zorah might be otherwise, there was little hope of her being alive unless she was an Asari or Krogan with a very strange name. If he knew how long he had been dormant, he had to know that she had died.
"Dust?" He suggested, and immediately regretted it.
Shepard smiled mirthlessly as he answered, the blue gimlets of eyes boring into him like a physical force.
"Yes, she rotted away in a carefully controlled environment devoid of microbes." He agreed, the sarcasm dipping from his voice. "Because decomposition is like magic."
"He's right." Sae said with a little bit of a falter in her voice. "If the body remained on the ship, then the circulated air and lack of microbes would have led to the body becoming severely desiccated at worst, but well preserved never the less."
"Thank you." Shepard said, looking at her as if for the first time. It's holographic face frowned ever so slightly as he scrutinized her carefully. "You look very familiar. Have I seen you before?"
"I, er, was the one who brought you back."
The hologram stood perfectly still for a moment, it's brows furrowed in concentration.
"So, you're the girl in my-"
"Yes."
"But we-"
"Yes."
"Even Rann-"
"Yes." Sae said loudly and deliberately, a blush blooming across her cheeks.
"Oh." It said stiffly, then pointedly looked away from her. "Never mind then."
The hologram turned back to face Lien, its face carefully inscrutable.
"So? Do you accept my terms?"
"Uh," The woman hesitated in the face of the hologram's attention, "I don't think I can speak for-"
"Then tell me who can, and where I can find them." Shepard promptly commanded.
Lien cast a desperate glace to Han, hoping for some kind of moral support.
With a sigh of resignation the lone male of the trio dredged the information out of his memory. It wasn't hard, and he suspected the only reason Lien had forgotten was because of her acute technical ineptitude.
"The Second Fleet is currently in the Nemean Abyss, in the Nessian Shroud. Tracking will be difficult there, which is why-"
"When you say 'Second Fleet', do you mean a roving fleet that is the only home your people know?" Shepard suddenly demanded, his brows furrowed in what looked like anger.
"Er, yes?" Han hesitantly confirmed, unsure where this was going.
"Oh god damn it!" He cursed loudly. "What was the point of all that work if a few centuries later your right back where you were?"
The three of them exchanged looks of confusion and worry, wondering what exactly the man was talking about.
"What?"
"I wasn't talking to you." He told them, still a little irritated. With an errant flick of his hand some schematics blazed into existence in front of them. "Follow this route. It will take you to the bridge. Once you're there, strap yourselves in. We'll be moving fast, and things get a bit strange when that happens."
The ship lurched, or seemed to, as the mass effect fields warped and shifted around them. Her mind shut down as it tried to ward off the sickness that was building up in her as she felt herself pulled from a different direction with varying degrees of strength. At times she felt herself crushed against the restraints that kept her from being thrown around the room.
But one look out the window convinced Sae it was all worth it. Their surroundings was a storm of biotic charge and distortion of mass effect. It was a maelstrom of forces that she was not entirely sure she wholly understood. On one level, she knew that it was just the normal effects of using a mass effect relay.
On quite another level, one that still worried her, she knew that Shepard had never bothered reaching a relay.
He'd simply begun manipulating the mass effect fields and found, much to his surprise, that there didn't seem to be much of an upper limit on how powerful a field he could create.
And then the stars were streaking lines of light as they moved faster than light.
The amount of power that alluded to, the ability to make a ship the size of a dreadnought break the laws of physics with a thought, was terrifying. What would happen if Shepard - or the Shepherd, whatever he called himself, decided to weaponize that ability?
She began to realize why the Legions believed that a single ship could help their people end the war against the Second Fleet.
There was, however, a niggling doubt in the back of her mind, however. Why had nobody ever considered the possibility before? Biotics were already potent adversaries all on their own, surely scaling upwards had occurred to somebody?
Maybe manipulation on this scale simply wasn't possible for a synthetic mind. Or maybe Shepard really was different from an AI, possessing some quality that granted him enhanced ability.
It was unlikely that she would ever know unless she was allowed to study the ship further, and Shepard as well.
She tried in vain to stop the blush from forming on her cheeks as she involuntarily remembered their brief, confusing encounter.
They were his memories, she knew. And, in some hazy part of her mind, she recognized that they weren't hers. That the woman Shepard remembered in that dreamlike state had not been her, but Tali. That did not stop her from feeling... Somewhat attached to the memory. It was unique, something she'd never experienced before. And, though she would never admit it to anyone unless forced, one she would be happy to repeat.
All too soon they dropped out of FTL and were surrounded by the blood-red and golds of the Nessian Shroud.
"Huh, that's pretty." Shepard remarked idly. "And... There, found your friends. Anything you want to say to them before we get there?"
Sae found herself wondering, involuntarily, what would happen if the Admirals refused to agree to what Shepard demanded. He hardly seemed to be the most stable of individuals, after all.
She looked to her side, trying to convey the question to Lien without giving voice to it.
Thankfully she was spared any further efforts by the Voice of Legion.
The collective consciousness of the many programs petitioned her for the use of her voice, to speak to Shepard without accessing his systems. She hesitated only for a moment before she opened her other half to them, allowing them to access her body through her implants. Their presence became a subtle one, somewhere just on the edge of her awareness. It was somewhat akin to feeling them look at her from behind, just where she couldn't see them. The sensation was slightly unnerving to those who were experiencing it for the first time, but Sae had done it many times before.
"Shepard Commander." The Voice of Legion said through her mouth. "This platform will temporarily act as our voice for the purposes of this conversation."
Han and Lien spared her only a brief glance, though not much of one since they had seen something like this happen before. They were, instead, much more interested in seeing how their ship/person that had brought them here would react to such a thing.
Shepard appeared before them in a flash of light, blue eyes already at full glare.
"Legion?" He half-asked, half-demanded.
"Yes." They answered, emoting none of the uncertainty that Sae could almost convince herself they felt. It was subtle, but it was there. She was certain of it.
"Why are you talking through... Whatever her name is?"
Sae felt her blood heat up slightly that the man would have such an indifferent opinion of her even knowing that she had brought him back from the grave, which was a strange sensation when accompanied with the numbing feeling of sharing her body with Legion. The synthetic part of her, the part through which Legion was connected to her, tried to calm her down with logical reasoning. She hadn't met him too long ago, she hadn't introduced herself, Shepard was... Different.
But some unreasoning part of her insisted that the memories they'd shared should have- But no, that was wrong. She forced herself to remember that they weren't her memories. They were his.
Sensing that she had calmed down somewhat, Legion exerted control over her body once more to speak.
"We are unable to access your systems." They answered. "This platform has agreed to act as an intermediary."
"She has a name, you know." Shepard said reproachfully.
"Yes. Sae'Sorel Vas Neleros. We are aware."
The hologram stared at Sae for a long time, its ethereal form inscrutable. The blue eyes bore into her like gimlets as he simply watched her, looking for something. Finally, he shrugged.
"Fine." He said after what seemed far longer than it probably was. "What do you want to talk about?"
"We have come on behalf of Admiral Mira'Shaan Vas Melas and the Admiralty Board to seek your aid in our-"
"Yes, I know that part, thank you." Shepard interrupted. "And I'll agree, on one condition."
Even as distantly connected to the Legions as she was, Sae could feel their slighty confusion at this. She couldn't tell why, as she was certain that even if she had an even more potent connection established she would not wholly understand them due to the alien nature of their thoughts. Perhaps they weren't too sure what to make of the fact that Shepard had demands of all things.
"I want you to bring Tali back."
The distant feeling of confusion was instantly quelled in that moment, replaced by instead by... Something else. She didn't know what it was, had never felt it from the Legions before. Perhaps it was a part of what separated the Legions from the Geth?
"We agree." Legion said through her, and she was somewhat surprised. Such a quick answer was rare, especially on a matter so important. "Medical vessel Ilikad will be prepared to perform the operations necessary."
The hologram sagged visibly in relief, a weary grin appearing on his lips.
"Thanks, Legion." He said, and for a moment Sae was surprised at the... ease in his voice. She hadn't realized before just how high-strung he'd been before, but she supposed that was only to be expected. He'd only been revived a few moments before, thrust awkwardly into a galaxy he was no longer familiar with. "You don't know what this means to me."
"We concede this might be so." Sae could feel the Legions shift slightly, their minds slightly uneasy. "We must warn you, however, that her neural pathways may have degenerated. It is unlikely that-"
"I know." Shepard interrupted yet again. "I've already thought about it. If that turns out to be true, then I can help her. I can give back some of her. Maybe it will be enough."
The Legions were filled with... The only word Sae had for it was dread. But it was only an approximate for what the Legions were going through at the moment. They didn't feel fear, not as she knew it. But they were able to quickly compute and predict the various horrible scenarios that could crop up should things progress in a certain manner. And what most of them were beginning to point out that that the likely of something bad happening far outweighed the likely of something good.
"We will defer to your judgment." The Legions eventually answered. "We will depart and prepare the Ilikad for her arrival."
Shepard nodded at this, flashing a bright smile.
"Thanks Legion."
And with that Sae felt the Legions depart from her consciousness, forcing her to cough from discomfort. The Legions were notoriously bad at talking through organics.
"So you'll help us?" She asked, her voice rasping slightly.
Shepard smiled, and for the first time he seemed genuinely happy. The smile was infectious, as she seemed to be smiling as well.
"Of course." He answered, as if there was no other possible outcome.
The Ilikad was one of the most important ships in the Second Fleet, as it was where they mass produced the Lazarus Implants from which they were able to procure most of their trading goods from. Anybody interested in circumventing death either went to Rannoch, where they would likely spend years being probed and questioned by the officials before they were begrudgingly allowed to even make a request, or they came to the Second Fleet where things were a great deal more fluid. Anybody with something the exiles might want or need could, if they had enough of it, get as many of implants as they needed.
It was the primary reason so many groups wanted the Second Fleet destroyed. After all, nobody was interested in letting the more unsavory aspects of the galaxy cheat death. That just meant more of the worst that sapient life had to offer building up.
So when the Legions volunteered the Ilikad to receive the body of a single woman, the Second Fleet was more than a little perplexed. It was only when the crew of the ship, who almost to a man had some kind of medical training, became of the full extent of the work they would be doing that they realized why this would be necessary. After all, restoring a recently killed person to life was one thing. That could be taken care of in a matter of days, everything was still fresh.
The body of Tali'Zorah Vas Nedas was over three hundred years old. There wasn't a single organ in her body that hadn't been somehow affected by the duration, but thankfully most of the damage would be easy to repair.
At least, that was what they told Shepard. Or, as days drew on and people became more aware that they weren't doing this for a person so much as a ship, the Shepherd.
The Second Fleet was unsure what to make of that, really. From what the Legions had told them, most had been expecting a ship containing a cargo of either extreme value or incredible danger. A sentient ship was something else entirely. Some had called for its dismantlement, claiming they could use its materials more effectively in a ship of more modern construction. That idea had been swiftly dismissed when they all realized just how powerful its manipulation of the mass effects fields could be, as well as its apparent ability to vanish from most obvious means of detection with surprising ease.
And since the ship's profile and structure seemed to be vastly different from what the Legions had initially described, most were prepared to accept the new name with little protest. After all, the Nietzsche had been an ancient carrier ship while the Shepherd was so much more than that.
Nobody could really banish the disquiet they all felt when they looked out a viewing port and they saw the featureless black shape of the Shepherd, passing slowly along the fringe of their vessels like some kind of spectral visage of a real ship. It certainly didn't help to remember that there was only one thinking entity inside that formless ghost, and it was the ship itself.
Sae found herself staring out at it more often than she might have liked to admit, at times even going so far as to follow its course by moving from room to room of the Neleros. She was fascinated by it, him, and couldn't help herself from idly staring out towards the silhouette whenever she let her mind drift.
With some annoyance she realized that she'd done it again, and forced herself to look away from the window with some reluctance. Eventually, she thought better of it and pressed a button that would slide a metal shielding over the thick glass that would prevent her from being tempted. With that done, she resolved herself to finishing the mission report she'd been putting off for so long.
Her father had already received a pair from Han and Lien, and apparently what they'd told him had been enough to make him pester her for details. She was the only one who had any real insight into Shepard beyond the Legions, and they were hardly the most forthcoming on the matter.
And so it was that she continued dictating the events that had led to her touching the mind of the Shepherd, trying for hours on end to make some sense of what she remembered. It was difficult for her, considering that dwelling on those thoughts simply forced her to think more of Shepard and what he might think of her and-
She stopped her just as it reached for the button that would slide the barrier back once again. She frowned in frustration at this as she leaned back, trying to order her thoughts.
Everything had just become so strange since that encounter. Everything was different.
With a sigh she left her chair, and paused for a moment when she saw the Legion recharging itself in the corner. A pause that brought with it a ray of inspiration, a thought she had not considered before.
The Legions had known Shepard even before his... Transformation. That's what they said, in any case. And even if she was mistaken, they'd at least fought in the Reaper War. They would be able to tell her something.
"Legion?" She asked quietly, feeling almost ashamed for what she was about to do.
The robotic platform for the Legions instantly reacted to her query, its heard perking up at the sound and its cyclopean eye riveting itself on her and focusing.
"Creator Sae'Sorel."
She hesitated for a moment, wondering if perhaps this was the right thing to do. But then again, why wouldn't it be? Shepard hadn't said anything to suggest he would be adverse to someone learning more about him, and it would certainly be enlightening. It might also help her to decipher what she'd seen.
"Can you tell me about Shepard?"
The Legion was silent, watching her. She knew that it would be attempting to build consensus with the rest of its kind even as it weighed the various pros and cons of indulging her request. But a moment later it agreed to her request.
She spent the next few hours listening raptly to the AI's recounting of the Reaper War, marveling at how different it was from the account she'd been taught as a child. There was no speculation in Legion's voice, no doubt. There was only the factual recitation of events that she knew were either first or second hand retellings.
She learned of Shepard's genocide of the Collectors, and learned the names of those involved. She was mildly surprised to learn that Urdnot Grunt had been involved, though she dimly recalled that the Krogans featured prominently in almost all recounting of the war. She simply hadn't thought he'd been alive back then, but then again it made sense. He'd been a participant in the most important wars in recorded history, so of course that would help form him for the almost legendary reputation he'd built for himself since then.
She was told of the frenzied efforts to evacuate Palaven as Shepard and his ship fought against the Reapers in orbit, buying as much time as possible. The machine related the death of Garrus Vakarian, a self-proclaimed 'bad Turian' dying in defense of his people and screaming defiance even as a Reaper crushed him with its death-throes.
She heard of the disastrous second assault of the Citadel, where a trio of Reapers appeared without warning while the Hierarchy burned and destroyed the hub of galactic society in an effort to crush the resistance, and the efforts Shepard went through to rally the remnants of that selfsame society into a single forces under his command. And then, when he'd gathered all that he could from Citadel space, he did the same for those he could outside their influence. Krogans, Quarians, Rachni and Geth had all flocked to his banner as he offered each of them a better future. (Or, in some cases, the prospect of having a future.)
The idea of almost every major galactic power allying together was a foreign one to her, and but the Citadel had still been around, at least in memory, to them. Most were already united in manner or other, they simply needed to be galvanized into action and directed. Shepard had provided that galvanizing force and, had he survived the battle afterwards, would likely have been the architect of peace afterwards that the galaxy so greatly needed.
But that didn't happen. Shepard had been burnt to cinders when a fuel line exploded just as he was making his escape.
And then Tali brought him back in his current form.
Sae began to realize just how much the dead woman must mean to him with that, as she listened to Legion explain the scale of what Tali'Zorah had done to accomplish that feat. She'd forsaken her own people for him, made herself an enemy of her previous allies just for the chance of restoring him. And then, once she realized that she had only been partially successful, she'd stayed with him. She hadn't cared that he had become... Alien to her.
And imagine her surprise when the Legions expressed that they had once been hopeful that the two would 'stabilize' one another, the closest she'd ever heard them coming to outright playing matchmaker with anybody, and actually creating a primitive platform through which the two could interact implicitly for their use.
She hadn't realized before just how much of the history of her people had been... Modified, in some form or other. Most of the accounts she'd been told growing up had told of a nameless young quarian leading the fight, first presenting the evidence that would lead to the defeat of Saren and then escalating her efforts as time wore on, only to fall victim to insanity in the final moments of victory. It was one of those funny details that most people forgot, namely that that woman had actually been a person and not just a name to learn, that really made her think about it the situation.
She knew that the Legion's account of the war was accurate. How couldn't it be? They'd been there, fighting in the heart of it all. She wondered briefly if the inaccuracies cropped up all of those who'd shared the victory of the Reapers, or if it was just their own. It seemed likely that it was so. After all, everyone wanted to believe that their own people were the best in the galaxy.
And the more she thought about, the more interested she became about the woman Tali'Zorah.
And so she asked Legion about her.
The legion regaled her with a brief encomium of the woman and her deeds.
"Creator Tali'Zorah Vas Nedas was the only Quarian member of the Normandy crew. met Shepard Commander during the fight to stop the Rogue Spectre Saren Arterius, the heretic Geth and the Reaper known as Sovereign, or Nazara. Considered one of the three great heroes of the Reaper War, along with Shepard Commander and Garrus Vakarian. Returned to her people the first death of Shepard Commander with information that would prove vital to the reconciliation of the Creators and the Geth. Rejoined the Commander's cause when he returned, and aided in the destruction of the Collectors, was a motivating force for the reclamation of Rannoch and the formation of the Rannochian Combine. Exiled from the Migrant Fleet when she attacked the SSV Nietzsche with the aid of Cerberus or Hecate."
Sae raised an eyebrow at this, a wry smile on his lips.
"Cerberus or Hecate?" She asked, resisting the urge to smile. "Aren't you sure?"
The Legion gave an impressive imitation of a shrug, almost flawless mimicry of organic body language.
"The Geth collected evidence that could corroborate both organizations' involvement. Without further information we cannot confirm or deny the involvement of either party." Legion responded, almost reproachfully. They did not like to be teased like this.
Sae frowned at that, wondering what exactly it could mean if both Cerberus and Hecate had been involved in some way. The two were purportedly rivals and enemies, both vying for the destruction of the other. What exactly had happened on that day?
"What exactly-" But whatever she was about to say was cut off as the Neleros suddenly shook violently. She stabled herself against herself against the window, a free hand slapping down on the shutter control so she could see out into the nebula. "What is going on out there?"
The flaps around Legion's eye flared slightly as it conversed with the others before answering her, its voice tainted by the urgency of the situation.
"We are under attack." It informed her.
But Sae wasn't listening, instead staring out at the black spot out in a sea of red that was surging towards them with a speed she could only imagine, its shrouded form already crackling biotic charge. Whatever was out there, it would soon regret trying to hurt them.
AN: You can't say I didn't warn you. This chapter is late because of the potent time-consuming cocktail of exams (screw you, education), work (to anyone who enjoys the Nordic dish known as lutfisk: You people make me cry) and my inability to focus on one project at a time (screw you, brain). Next update will hopefully be up sometime around Christmas if I can be stopped from getting too much into the holiday spirit. Which is unlikely, unless I somehow manage to I get a regular dose of spirits.
Go me!
On a side note, I do not like this chapter. At all. Having to stare at it for hours on end before deciding I can't add on to it probably has something to do with it, though. I hate being less than inspired.