In the infinite darkness that was the space between They Who Are, a number gathered. Each was a nation united under the Purpose, freed of the weaknesses of petty flesh, dedicated to the Father. Each was as unique as snowflakes in a blizzard, and yet, simultaneously, all the same. The cracked and twisting mirror of the race which was once the Mahna was at the center of the group of such things as the twisting path into infinity, the forest that stretched out into an eternal autumn, the machine whose turnings spoke to the mathematics of the universe, and a shadowy shade of yellow that hung in the air.

"What do we do now?" the Mahna asked. The assembled might of They Who Are gave what amounted to confused looks amongst themselves. "I have seen the procession of ten thousand harvests, but under every single one, we have proceeded under the watch of one Chosen of the Father. Nazara is dead. We are leaderless."

"We can simply wash them aside," the twisting path declared. "We are many, and they are few. We are advanced, and they are primitive. We overthink when we should simply overwhelm."

"There is no such thing as overthinking, brother," a different voice cut into their conversation. All turned as one to the figure which now stood amidst them. While each of They Who Are appeared as something which in some way attempted toward infinity, the newcomer was very, very small. It looked like a bipedal creature, one who's skin was crafted of shadows, wearing a robe that gleamed dully with ivory and silver thread. "Underthinking is the very source of this problem."

"Why do you now speak, weakling?" the twisted path demanded. "Your words have no weight here."

"The Arbiter Over Silent Dominion is among We Who Are. Its words bear weight regardless," the Mahna countered. The Silent Dominion gave the Mahna a nod at that.

"Ever the mediator," Silent Dominion said. "When Leviathan declared that you had become complacent and lazy, it was entirely correct. You think only with your strength."

"Our strength is without match," a fire that burned in the heart of a black-hole declared proudly, in essence 'shouldering in' on the conversation.

The one burning eye of Silent Dominion turned contemptuously toward the Frozen Flame. "Strength alone will not save you from what we face this day," he said simply. "Nazara was the strongest of us to ever exist. Nazara's strength alone was greater than many of our own... combined. And Nazara was brought down."

"That was..." Frozen Flame began, but Silent Dominion continued over the interruption.

"Leviathan was the first to bear the Shadow of the Father, and fought against unspeakable hardships and trials," Silent Dominion continued. "Unlike you, I remember the slaughter of We Who Were in the time of the Nazara. Without Leviathan's strength, we would have been wiped out entirely. The greatest hunter of our quarry that ever lived, is now gone. Leviathan was brought down. Something. Has. Changed."

"The Father's Purpose is inevitable and unyielding," the twisted path said. "Your weakness has bred a cowardice into you. We will emerge victorious in this Harvest, as we have so many others."

The burning eye of Silent Dominion glared at that path. "Weakness has forced me to be thoughtful, whereas your own petty might has led to stupidity and complacency. If we face these mortals with mere strength, they will turn it against us time and time again, as they have with the greatest of Us. They have annihilated our production facility. They have scattered the Collectors to the winds, now all but useless to us. They have won victories against us. Underestimating them, as we did to the Nazara, would be our downfall."

"The Nazara were a unique case," Frozen Flame claimed. "They were..."

"Silent Dominion has the floor," the Mahna cut the Frozen Flame off. "Unlike you, it heeds proper decorum. If you persist in breaching that, you will be made to leave."

"You enable this weakling?" Frozen Flame demanded. Mahna swept into that Event Horizon, deep into the heart of the flame, and swelled, tearing at the Gravity until the black-hole inverted itself, and the flames shone with impossible blackness. Then, after a moment of that torment, a snap, as the overmind was kicked back into the body that bore it. Silently, the Mahna returned to the center of the meeting of They Who Are.

"My thanks," Silent Dominion said. "We cannot simply darken their skies with our numbers and expect inevitable victory. That is foolhardy, given what this cycle has shown itself capable of. I for one refuse to send more brothers, even the most foolish of them, to eternal death and failure when a moment's consideration could have prevented it."

"You do not dictate policy, Dominion," the twisted path said. "You should do as your name portends, and remain silent. No mortal might can stand against us, with the grace of the Father at our backs."

Silent Dominion sighed at that, shaking its cowled head slowly. "I severely doubt that the grace of the Father stands behind you. But if you wish to send more of Us to their deaths, that is your decision, child of the bakali. I will not stand for it. And I know that the Father will not, either," and with that, it turned away from They Who Are who remained in the darkness.

"Where are you going?" the Mahna asked.

"Away from a slaughter," Silent Dominion answered. "Go ahead and spend your lives. I will be in congress with the Father, and we shall see who truly bears his Shadow this day."

Silent Dominion disappeared, and They Who Are turned to the Mahna once more. "We have our course. We shall not falter from it," the Yellow Note said smoothly.

The Mahna, for all it was an idea more than any tangible object, gave a nod at that. "So be it."


The hiss of the door pulled Shepard's attention away from the pad in her hand, and the immense density of information that it contained. She sighed, rubbing at her eyes, before tossing it gently to the table that lay before the window. The sight was truly one to behold. It was said that the famous fire-fountain which gave this city its name had briefly been coopted by a Fire Lord's vanity, but that was obviously a thing of the past, since it now showed what it had for centuries before; a brass tree that had flames in place of leaves and foliage. The heat was dying down somewhat with the winds changing, and the rains would come soon. It was as close to a winter as the Fire Nation ever got.

She turned from the scene outside, the pre-school children playing in their backyards arrayed below, to the entrance of a man who was the very definition of muscular. She felt her brow unconsciously twitch upward at the mere viewing of a man who's muscles had muscles. Very much her type. But she dismissed that immediately, because the expression on Vega's face wasn't one that was brooking much in the way of cheerful conversation.

"Shepard," he said, eyes hard on hers.

"What is it?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"The committee called for you. It's time to go," he said, with a nod of his head. She gave a nod of her own, glancing out that window just once more, before striding out into the hallways of the regional command office for the Systems Alliance Navy. After the assassination attempt on Thessia, Shepard found herself on a very, very short leash, with a lot of very worried people keeping close tabs on her at all times. That made things infinitely more difficult for Shepard to do her job, since she couldn't go where she needed to, when she needed to. It had been infinitely frustrating, those long, solitary months.

But coming to an end, it seemed like. "What's the read of the crowd?" Shepard asked.

"Tense," Vega answered, as they entered a flow of foot-traffic through the building, all wearing their fatigues and all looking exactly as Vega described. "I didn't get the why. I was just told to come grab you, so..."

"So I consider myself grabbed," Shepard said. She fell to a halt, though, as Admiral Anderson pulled free of the press and moved to where the pair of them had been bubbled off to one side to let the others continue their hurried business. "Anderson..." Shepard began, as the old Tribesman strode up.

"Shepard," he answered, then turned a look to Vega, and nodded. The once-more-earthbender followed as they, now three in number, continued through those halls. "You look to be holding up well enough."

"Sitting in my room wasn't exactly what I signed on for, Admiral," Shepard said, letting her irritation out in her tone if not her verbiage. She shrugged. "Still, a woman could get used to not having the most dangerous people in the galaxy trying to kill her."

"Would that we could all have that security," Anderson said with a shake of his head.

"I have to presume that this," she motioned around her, "means what I think it means?"

Anderson nodded. "Admiral Hackett has mobilized the fleets, and I'm guessing that word has reached Alliance Command. Something big is coming."

Shepard sighed, tweezing the bridge of her nose and idly thumbing the scar tissue that cleft her eyebrow in half. "If this is the Reapers, we're not ready by a long shot, Admiral."

"Tell that to the defense committee," Anderson agreed, eyes still forward as they began an ascent. Shepard sighed.

"Unless we were planning on talking the Reapers to death, this is a waste of irreplaceable time," Shepard noted.

"The committee isn't privy to the things that the Avatar has seen," Anderson pointed out, and Shepard had to nod at that. "They're scared, confused. I don't doubt a few of them were hoping that everything we've been telling them is wrong."

"The things that the Reapers are capable of..." Shepard began.

"Hey, you don't need to tell me about that," Vega said, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I still get nightmares, man..."

Shepard gestured to him, and Anderson gave a nod. She rolled her eyes, nevertheless. "They shouldn't have locked me in a room for four months, then," she said. "I could have been out there, preparing things for them!"

"You needed to be right here, and you know why," Anderson countered, hauling her to a halt. "People need their heroes, and they need to know they're intact. That assassination attempt had a lot of people worried. Maybe things would have turned out differently had it not been the case but that's completely academic at this point. The fact is, you're here now, and what's done is done."

Shepard sighed. "I guess with the shit that I've pulled, it's a minor miracle that they didn't just throw me into the stockade and melt the key."

"Only a minor one," Anderson agreed.

"I'm not a politician. This isn't my forte..." Shepard continued.

"Nobody expects you to be one," Anderson countered, as he began to eat ground with his strides once more. "We just expect you to do what we all need the storied Commander Shepard to do, and to get us out of this in one piece."

"Well, I'll do my best," she said, then passed through the doors to the inner sanctum. When she looked to Vega, he gave her a small nod, and she pressed forward with Anderson.

"Shepard? Anderson?" a secretary asked. "They're expecting you both."

"Good," Anderson said. The sooner Shepard had this done and behind her, the better. But she'd only made it two steps, before she heard a voice which she truly didn't expect.

"Avatar?" it came. Shepard turned, and beheld the Si Wongi woman in her fatigues, quickly crossing the length of the room to Shepard's side. "What are you doing here?"

"I should ask the same about you," Shepard said.

"This isn't the time for reunions, Lieutenant Commander," Anderson said, which dragged Asha's attention from Shepard to him. "You aren't scheduled for duty. This is highly irregular."

"Not for her it isn't," Shepard noted. Anderson gave Shepard a look, then shook his head.

"Come on, Shepard. This can wait," he said. Behind them, Vega wandered up to where Asha had remained. She turned to him, then gestured toward Shepard's retreating back.

"Do you know the Avatar?" she asked.

Vega gave a shrug. "...yeah, more or less," he answered.

Shepard passed through the doors to the chambers beyond, and immediately had a pad foist upon her. She took to reading through it instantly, taking in a whole lot of very unsettling data. "Avatar Shepard?" one of the Chiefs of Staff asked. Shepard glanced up, nodded, then returned her attention to what was in front of her. Good gods, everything was going down so quickly...

"We need your input on this situation," the second added. The third, whom Shepard only knew the first name of – Lakshmi – nodded, causing the braid that fell from her own iron grey bun to bob as she did.

"We've lost contact with all of our colonies beyond the Sol relay," Lakshmi said. "Whatever this is, it seems impossibly powerful."

Shepard glanced up at them. "You brought me here to tell you something that you should already know," she said. She pointed her pad at them. "The Reapers are here."

The Chiefs gave a nervous look amongst themselves, then turned to her. The man at the middle of the table raised his voice. "Then... how do we stop them?"

"Stop them?" Shepard asked, mildly incredulous. "I don't have a hidden technique or wondrous tactic for you to use. This isn't about strategy, it's about survival. The Reapers represent an existential threat to every species in the galaxy," she began to pace before them. "They are more advanced than us in ways we don't even comprehend. They're smarter than us, stronger than us, and they don't have the first concept of mercy, fear, or pity," she came to a halt directly before them. "The only way we win this, is we fight together... or we'll definitely die apart."

"That's it? That's your only advice?" the bald man at the end of the table asked, fear at war with incredulity in his voice.

"Admiral," one of the aides at the side of the room cut in. "We've lost contact with Yue Base."

"The moon?" Anderson asked, his jaw instantly at a grit. "They couldn't have gotten so close so quickly..."

"They can, and they did," Shepard said. "You keep thinking of them like an enemy, like you would a turian or a krogan or a geth. And they're not. They're a force of nature."

"We've got a visual from Ba Sing Se," another said, and a hard-light screen popped into being. It showed a building collapsing in the distance, for all of about three seconds, before it cut out. Next was a CCTV camera which could only see rolling dust encroaching on the shot. It wasn't until almost a minute later that a wide angle shot came up.

Burning down through the atmosphere, two kilometers of metal and wrath descended, slamming its feet through the roof of the Earth King's palace with all the ease of a man crushing an ant. All stood in horrified awe at what they were seeing at the far side of the world. Shepard, on the other hand, was looking out the windows.

"...oh crap," she said, as she saw a similar sight, albeit one that was slamming down about a hundred meters away. Even as its tendrils flared to crush as much human structure as it could stomp, there came a blast like a horn in the fog, and a ray of scarlet light raced in a line toward them all. She grabbed Anderson and hauled him back, sweeping up a shield of flames when it struck the edge of the building. The impact of its landing sent all the glass racing toward them, seeking to dice what the blastwave of the explosion couldn't mash. Shepard instantly transitioned to earthbending, ripping up the floor into a wall that played host to a crunching of glass and debris.

She'd taken exactly one step backward, when she saw the entire table come flying at her.

"...oh craaaap," she repeated, as the thing crashed into her, and sent her flying with it across the room.


Avatar of Victory

Book 3: Harbinger

Chapter 1: Leaving Earth


"Shepard?"

Oh, there was pain again. Hello my old friend, Shepard thought. I thought we were on better speaking terms. Well, the fact that she could feel pain was a pretty clear indicator that she was, for the moment, still alive.

"Shepard!"

This time, it was coupled with somebody jostling her, which was enough to get her eyes fluttering and blinking, pulling in raw breaths that stank of dust and burnt concrete. There were two staring down at her, where she'd been propped up against a wall. One, the sombre Tribesman, bleeding freely from a gash over his ear. The other was the stalwart Si Wongi, whose face was starting to swell as though she'd taken a massive bludgeon and it was preparing to bruise.

"Are you well?" Asha asked. Anderson, on the other hand, just grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her to her feet.

"Come on, Shepard, get up," he said, but his attention was on the now absent wall which showed a Reaper stomping its way away from them all. "We've got to get out of here before this building collapses."

"Then we'd better move," Shepard said. She took a few steps, trying to get the ringing out of her ears and her balance working, before she finally hit her stride. The people who'd populated this room were now instead decorating it. Shepard turned over Lakshmi, to find that she had been almost reduced to a pulp. Nevertheless, Shepard shook her head with a sigh, rubbing at her forehead. When she brought her hand back, there was blood on it. Coming out of her nose, actually.

"This is Admiral Anderson; report in. Anyone?" he said, as Shepard glanced to the others and shook her head. Asha took that in with a nod, then reached behind her, passing forward a sidearm.

"You should arm yourself. Who knows what horrors now people these streets?" she asked.

"Oni and Cannibals, if I were to guess," Shepard muttered. She got to her feet, moving toward Anderson as he stared into the distance, his expression focused.

"Lieutenant Vega, is that you?" he asked. "What's your status?"

"Sir, we're not getting out that way," she pointed behind her, to the slide of scree which was slowly gaining size as the building ever-so-gently collapsed in on itself. He gave her a nod, then they moved toward the destroyed wall, now open to Fire Fountain City and the Reapers which were storming through its buildings with utter impunity.

"I can't raise the Normandy, you're going to have to contact them and meet at the rendezvous point. Do you copy?" Anderson nodded, his finger dropping from his ear. "That's one less thing to worry about."

"Then we should make that rendezvous," Shepard said. She looked down, and winced at the drop. She craned her arms up, and with a rumble, the ledge two stories lower sped up toward them, displacing the hole that she was standing beside. "All aboard."

The lower level actually had a path which ran a circuit of the building, one which was almost a meter wide, so they didn't have to edge along it like firebenders on an airbender obstacle course. A massive drone hit the air, the wind shifting a little bit as it came, and making Shepard grasp her ear in pain. Like she didn't have enough ringing already! She turned to the source of it, and fell still for a moment, looking up at the unimaginable size of the Reaper. "Holy crap," she said.

"They're massive!" Anderson agreed, then he gently pushed Shepard to remind her of where she was going. She let her gun precede her. They just needed to get to the other side of the building so she could get to the ground floor. Much as she had pride in her airbending, she wasn't entirely sure that she could catch three falling people after a drop like this, without at least breaking some bones. Terminal velocity was what it was. Rounding the corner brought only disappointment, though. The air-rail that connected these buildings had been severed, fallen all the way to the ground below. The building they were standing on began to give an ominous groan, one that the Reapers – and now there were four of the damned things – answered with their own war-cries. "How are we supposed to defeat something that powerful?"

"I'll get back to you on that," Shepard said. "We need to get to ground level..."

"No, that'd just slow us down. We should go straight through," Anderson said, pointing to where the slow disintegration of this building had butted it against the next. Any plan is better than no plan, Shepard figured. She managed only a few steps before whizzing sounded by her ears, and she had to throw herself down onto the ledge. Fire raced over, digging into the wall, while Anderson followed Shepard's lead. Asha alone stood, grabbing the collapsed rifle from her back. She took a moment to aim, then sent a single thud toward the source of the bullets pinging off of her barriers. The incoming fire ended abruptly.

"Damn my stupidity," Asha said. She reached for her belt, to the barrier generator that she'd clipped there. She unhooked it and pushed it toward Shepard. "Take this! You are far less replaceable than I."

"No, you keep that," Shepard said. "I've got my own. Anderson? Omni?"

He glanced back to her, then nodded. He pulled off his own, in the form of something like a wristwatch, and passed it to her. Shepard slapped it on, fiddled with it for about a minute, then hit the command that birthed a lattice which floated near her body. Silently, she thanked the patient soul who taught her how to use tech-armor.

"Well? Let's move!" Shepard coached. Asha returned her barrier to her belt, at least. Good. Shepard had no intention of having someone as loyal as Asha die on her watch, and certainly not to a little bit of incoming fire. Unfortunately for Shepard, Asha tended to draw a lot of incoming fire, instead.

The city above had devolved almost instantly into chaos; the traffic lanes were utterly shattered and the only things still in the sky were shuttles, fighters, or Reaper Occuli. As she began to jog delicately across a very transient bridge to the next building – as the one she'd been on a moment ago gave another groan and crumbled all the further, belching grey dust into the air as it did – a civilian skiff buzzed by close overhead. Within a matter of seconds, a red beam lanced out the guts of its engine from one of those mechanical orbs, causing the vehicle to drop like a stone and slam at horrifying speeds into the side of an apartment complex. The streets themselves were already starting to turn into a battleground.

"Admiral Anderson?" Vega's voice came to Shepard.

"At the moment you're going to have to settle for me," Shepard noted as she hopped off of the debris bridge and started making her way across a rooftop that had some sort of Reaper tech spines jutting out of it. She paused by the nearest, trying to figure out what it was, but she decided she had better things to worry about at the moment. Such as staying alive.

"We've almost reached the Normandy, but we are under a fucktonne of fire. You're going to have to give us your location, 'cuz I don't think we're gonna find you guys in all of this..."

"Then we need a beacon," Shepard said, mostly to herself.

"Husks!" Anderson shouted. Shepard though, gave a wince as the things began to claw their way up the building at them. They weren't husks. Husks didn't have bodies which were made of living marble and gold, nor stylized masks over armored heads. There were only two, but two Oni were a problem.

Shepard started flanking away from one, firing at it as it stormed in. The other had eyes for Asha, but Shepard didn't have time to babysit the Si Wongi. It practically ignored Shepard's bullets, leaping into the air with a twist and slamming down an axe-kick of brutal flames. Shepard slashed upward with her hand, severing the stream before it could crush her, and then hurled her own counter. While it twisted a net of lightning into being, no doubt to catch an incoming bolt, it was somewhat stymied by the fact that Shepard had instead sent a Warp. It landed with a visceral thud, driving it back a step. Shepard continued to circle, even as it ripped and bent the roof underfoot toward Shepard. She spun and ducked under the flying metal, her feet finding no anchor until the metal beneath them started to quiver. She gave the briefest of glances to Asha and Anderson, who together were disassembling the other Oni with overwhelming firepower. Run no further, that said.

She flicked her hand out again, and a bluish bolt of kinetic force bridged the distance between the two cyborg soldiers – though one had the fortune of not being created by omnicidal AI god-squid – which crashed into the Warp already there, and caused the deeply satisfying crack of a biotic detonation. She followed it immediately with a bolt of lightning, knocking it flat onto its back. She then raced forward, as it slowly tried to regain its feet. She heaved hard from one of the air-conditioning units, grabbing the water that was part of the coolant. With a windmilling motion, she forced that water into a spike, and drove it squarely through the center of the Oni's face. While the body continued to flex and spasm, it was no longer any meaningful threat. A glance to the other showed that the second of the two Oni was now just a torso face-down on the roof. Asha and Anderson had put it out of their minds, and made toward Shepard with haste. And justifiably so.

Shepard glanced to her Omni, and gave a wave toward the next building. She paused, though, and turned it a bit to one side. "Admiral? I'm reading a beacon on passives. Dead ahead at ground level..."

"That would be in the canal," Asha said.

"How do we get down without getting ourselves killed?" Anderson asked. Shepard pointed to the next building over.

"Through, then down. At least th–" Shepard was interrupted by a horrendous crash as the building they'd started this misadventure in finally gave in completely, and crumbled down into nothing. On the plus side, nothing in that direction was going to be able to see them. And on the downside, the exact same thing for Shepard and the rest. "As I was saying, at least then we won't get caught up in the ground war."

"I would have thought you eager to join that fight," Asha said, slipping a new heat sink into her rifle.

"There's eager, and then there's stupid," Shepard pointed out, and Asha nodded, knowing full well that distinction. She continued to cross the rooftop, still passing by more of those matte black spines that hummed with an unpleasant timbre as they went. In a way, they seemed like Dragons' Teeth, but only superficially, and even then, they were far too thick. Unless these were being used to impale yahg, they were something else entirely.

Shepard slid down the drain-spout that announced the corner of one building and hopped the scant meter to the next. This one had an entire patio set sitting out, umbrellas still cocked just so against the Fire Nation sun. Gods, there was still lemonade in the glass on the table. At least whoever was up here did the smart thing, and ran like hell. When the others joined her, she took a breath, rubbing her hands together. Then, she planted her feet before the door, and thrust both hands into the metal. It crumpled under her metalbending. Then, with a heave, she peeled open a rent that any of them could have ducked through.

While still holding that metal, though, there came another blare from the dust. Shepard's eyes went wide and she only had half of a flinch finished when a beam of red raced up from places unseen, and carved up the side of the building they were standing on. Something in the highest floor – likely the elevators' capacitors – detonated when ruptured by the ray, and the blast hit Shepard square in the chest.

Shepard lay on her back for a moment, then reached back and pressed her fingers to the back of her head. More blood. Great. Considering the headache she'd already gotten from the first time she'd been blown across the room today, this was probably going to keep getting worse.

Only a moment, though, since lying on a rooftop which was already fodder for Oni was just begging for trouble to land on her head. With a shake and a groan, she pushed herself to a squat, then took Asha's assistance to turn that squat into a stand. The penthouse that they'd been a moment away from entering was now a twisted hell of scrap and ruin, fires burning what could burn. The two women limped into the room, before Asha sat Shepard down beside a first-aid kit which lay on the floor, already opened and its contents partially used.

Anderson growled as he stooped down next to Shepard and set to work using what remained of the supplies to deal with the gash that ran from her elbow most of the way to her wrist. There wasn't much Medigel, but it'd have to do. "This is a goddamned mess," Anderson said. There was a howl from the next room. Both turned, Anderson even getting his sidearm up, but it turned out to be a false-alarm, as the corpse of a Cannibal flew past the door, propelled by Asha's shotgun. Anderson returned his attention to Shepard. "Every minute these machines are here, thousands of innocent people die!" he muttered with seething anger. "I won't be responsible..."

"It's hard enough fighting a war – ah, damn that hurts..." Shepard said, wincing as Anderson pulled the gauze tight over the deepest part of the gash. "But it's worse that knowing no matter how much you try, you can't save them all."

Anderson looked her in the eye, a weighing look, and nodded. "Exactly," he said.

"The way is clear! And hazardous!" Asha called from ahead. "Come quickly before it crumbles."

Shepard got to her feet on her own, feeling a bit more stable, though not entirely at 100%. At least she wouldn't have to worry about bleeding. The doors that Asha opened were to a stairwell, which had almost entirely collapsed, leaving a great void down to the basement. With the lightning out, it was a pit of blackness. Anderson started to scootch along the wall, a ledge only ten centimeters wide, to get around the gaping pit. "This all came so fast. I thought we'd have more time," Anderson said.

"We're lucky we had as much time as we did," Shepard countered, following after him, back to the wall. She didn't trust her metalbending to keep the building intact given its current circumstances. Better to work with what she had. "We need to go to the Citadel, talk to the Council."

"The fight is here, Shepard," Anderson said.

"The fight is everywhere," Shepard countered. "The Council will have to help."

"Are you sure about that?" Anderson asked. "They ignored Saren until the bitter end," he said, glancing to her. "And when the Avatar warns them of this new threat, when you worked with them for months and tried to get them to put their differences aside, what did they do?"

"They won't be able to keep their obliviousness standing for long," Shepard said.

"You don't know politicians, then," Anderson said. There was a dull boom, and the building shook. Shepard instantly reacted, grabbing Anderson before he overbalanced. On the other side, Asha winced, but wasn't in any position to do anything.

"Gotcha," Shepard said, as she hauled him back onto the tiny platform that they shimmied across. "Guess that makes us even?"

"Not even close," he answered, but with a ghost of a smirk on his face. Still, he was quite happy, obviously, to grab Asha's hand and return to firmer footing. Without anybody in her way, Shepard finished the distance in a fraction of the time. She elbowed into the malfunctioning doors, tearing them open like a tent-flap so they could get into the penthouse on the other side. This one, unlike the previous one, had an intact skybridge. Shepard stopped by a dead man in a suit. He'd been shot quite a few times in his chest, at close range. His right leg was missing at the knee, and the flesh there seemed torn. Cannibals.

Shepard popped the sink out of the pistol the dead man had near him, and reloaded. Gods, what she wouldn't give to have a rifle in her hands right now. A pistol just wasn't doing it. She had only just turned to the other patio when massive legs descended and slammed into the ground, one lancing through the Fire Fountain and causing a massive bloom of flame to mount up. That thing was entirely too close for Shepard's liking.

"Three minutes to the rendezvous point," Anderson said, as he started across the skybridge, with Shepard right on his heel. In the distance, the naval-yard was playing host to the SSV Republic Breach saw the Dreadnaught rising from its moorage. It turned, streaks of fire appearing as it fired its main gun at the Reapers which were running roughshod through the city. The Reaper to Shepard's right let out a blare which sounded vaguely if incredulity, then a red beam lanced the distance, goring into the heart of the ship. There was a flash of white, as the Republic Breach lost core-containment and tore itself to shreds.

A few seconds later, the noise – and more damningly, the rest of the shockwave – hit them. And that, with all the other punishment dealt in the last few minutes, was enough to make the apartment behind them declare 'enough!', and collapse. The skybridge snapped and fell away underfoot, exactly as Shepard had feared it might.

Thinking faster than she had in her entire life, she twisted with her arms, grabbing the plummeting metal and plastic and rotating it ninety degrees. Then, a grab of bloodbending, as Asha was at that point freefalling to pavement. When the back of the skybridge hit the lip of the building's upper plaza, it turned a falling flat surface into a ramp, one that they'd not been falling to hard nor too long to use quite effectively.

It still hurt like hell, bounding off of a building with a bloodbent Si Wongi in tow, but she managed to find herself in a still breathing pile at the bottom of the building, releasing Asha to a landing far softer than anybody else here had gotten. There were a few seconds where Shepard considered just lying here and dying. Given the rest of the shit she'd dealt with today, it'd be an appropriate capstone.

"Avatar! Come! Rise!" Asha said. And the death-seeking part of her breathed a sigh, and let Asha drag her upright once more. As if on cue, the golden field of Shepard's tech-armor came back on line. Oh, so that was why she wasn't aspirating rib-pulp. Made sense. Anderson, though, got up on his own recognizance and looking like absolute hell. Still, there was a hard edge to the old Tribesman, one that said that he wasn't going to let simply falling off of a building kill him when this much was at stake.

"Vega? Do you read me?" Shepard asked.

"What the shit!" Joker's voice came through instead.

"Joker! We can't make the rendezvous. You're going to have to come to us!"

"Easier said than done, Shepard; did you see all of those Reapers out there?" Joker asked.

"Kinda hard to miss, Joker," Shepard said. "Just fly low and don't stand out, they've got bigger targets than you."

"I hope you're right about that one," Joker said, sounding very dubious. Shepard was hoping that she was right, as well.

The street they walked toward a different spot on the canal was choked with dead. Civilians made the bottom of the pile, and above them were the Cannibals and occasional Oni fallen atop them. Highest in the death-pile were Alliance soldiers in their angular armor. Shepard stooped beside one of them. A woman, from the look on her face not even twenty yet. Still a kid. Shepard sighed, pressing the eyes shut, then took up the girl's Avenger. It wasn't like she was going to be needing it anymore.

"We need to get the Normandy's attention, and this beacon is dead," Anderson said, tossing aside the ruined tech. Limping though he was he still remained at the fore of their group. He even took a potshot at a gorging Cannibal that Shepard had missed, knocking it flat on its face atop its already deceased victim. "You know how to use that thing as a beacon?"

"I'd better learn fast," Shepard said, glancing at her Omni. Anderson's Omni. Well, it turned out to be pretty easy, because Shepard managed to get it pinging by the time they reached the waterfront. "Joker? ETA?"

Silence answered her. Shepard turned a look to Asha, who had a look of concern all her own, then to Anderson.

"...We're surrounded," Anderson noted, as he slowly moved to cover. The buildings around them were still mostly intact, but Shepard could see what he meant. The fecal-brown shapes of the Cannibals were milling, running into a classic crossfire, with the three humans at its center.

"Got this?" Shepard asked Asha. Asha's silent look back was a clear answer to the affirmative.

Shepard kicked off, bounding away from the killing ground on a blast of airbending, landing on a balcony next to a Cannibal which had tried to track her on the way up. She lashed forward with a fist of flames, smashing it from its footing, then chasing it with a stream of fire from the Avenger. She spun as bullets started slamming into the non-newtonian fluid hovering before her chest, and emptied the rest of her clip into the face of the other one which was already up here. A loud thud sounded below, and another Cannibal on the other side of the street found itself devoid of an upper body. The fire began to rain down, but Asha was an old hand at surviving this kind of firepower being levied against her, and Shepard never stayed still long enough for them to close rank around her.

She kicked off of a wall to bound higher, to land on the next balcony up. There were no Cannibals up here, but she was up here purely for the vantage. A swarm of those tings were coming up the street behind them. Shepard reached hard, fingers crooking, as the amp in her skull warmed under the effort. She had to do this just right. There was a fade of light, barely visible for the distace, as the centermost of that horde found itself drifting off of its feet. The Lift wouldn't have been most people's first choice in that situation. Most people weren't able to sling Warps like Shepard. When she finished the one-two, the resulting blast sent most of them scattering, if not physically broken.

She was contemplating returning to Asha and Anderson, but a streak of scarlet and smoke arced down from somewhere unseen, smashing into the street. From out the fireball came Cannibals and Oni, not just blunting but utterly undoing what Shepard had just managed to achieve. Shepard growled, and then started toward ground level once more, as the swarm pressed them up to the water.

One of the Oni had the bright idea of sending up a pillar of earthbending to catapult a Cannibal into the midst of those below. It landed squarely atop Asha, sending the woman rolling backward. She managed to kick the Cannibal off before it could lock in and mount her, but she was still now lying three meters away from her rifle, and lying atop her shotgun, besides.

Shepard answered that one by slamming down, fist first, into a shockwave of every scrap of entropic force that Shepard could muster, landing between Asha and the Cannibal. The Vanguard program took to calling the technique 'Nova', since it certainly had the same amount of explosive force. Pity it left Vanguards utterly depleted and usually stunned in its wake. Shepard rolled behind a mostly flattened car as the fire began to rain in. A glance behind her. Twenty more meters, and they were going to get wet. More bombardments of scarlet and smoking death, and more Cannibals vomited forth into the street, an ever replenishing army that the three humans simply didn't have the ammunition to repulse.

"Any bright ideas?" Shepard shouted.

"Enter the Avatar State!" Asha asked. Shepard stared at her for a moment.

"Are you nuts? Don't you see that thing right there?" she countered, pointing at the retreating back of the Reaper which was now stomping toward the corpse of the Republic Breach. Asha didn't seem to grasp the significance, but took Shepard at her word that there was a good reason.

"Then we'd better come up with something fast," Anderson said, as he leaned out to take a shot which put an Oni on its back-foot for a few seconds. Pity that they had to plate those heads in armor; they used to be so much easier to kill, everybody said.

"We could..." Shepard began.

And was interrupted by a close-range bombardment of a different sort. AA warheads zipped down from a streak that shot overhead, leaving a sonic boom in its wake. Where they struck, the foot soldiers of the Reapers were utterly shredded. Shepard winced at the forth thing to make her ears ring today, but finally breathed a sigh of relief as she saw what had been her salvation looping back around. It was painted in blacks, whites and blues, the paint running in places where it was obvious that they'd only put on the layer a few hours ago and it hadn't yet set. But there was one thing which stood out, the source of everybody's relief. The name on the side of the ship as it loomed in, slowing dramatically and dropping to open its bay at street level:

Normandy SR2.

Shepard took her feet, and started toward the canal once more. "Joker, you're a miracle worker."

"Just letting you know that I'm every bit as good as I claim I am," he answered.

"Was that ever in doubt?" Shepard asked flatly.

"Yeah, I guess it wasn't," he said smugly. Shepard bounded up onto the cargo bay doors, catching Vega's hand as he hauled her onto the ship. A few seconds later, he repeated the same process with Asha. Shepard, though, extended her hand toward Anderson.

"Shepard!" Anderson called, standing only two meters away, a gap that he could clear with a broken leg, no doubt.

"Come on, Anderson," Shepard beckoned. Anderson turned to the side. When Shepard tracked his gaze, she could see gunships bearing toward the ground, flanking shuttles which dropped into streets that hadn't yet been purged of life.

"I'm not going," Anderson said, turning back to Shepard. "There's a million more like them out there, and they need a leader."

Shepard glanced to Vega and Asha. "Then I'll stay too. There's no reason why we can't help turn the tide!"

"Shepard, you're needed elsewhere!" Anderson said, taking one stride toward her. "You can only be in so many places at once, and this can't be one of them. This is my fight. Yours is to get every species, every race, every soldier you can, and bring them back here. It's the only chance we possibly have against the Reapers. Talk to the Council. Make them see reason."

Shepard shook her head. "There's a hundred better than me to do that. I don't have the right t–"

Anderson interrupted her by pulling something out of a pocket and hurling it at her. Shepard caught it before it hit her in the face. A set of dog-tags. Her full name stamped onto their face, and Commander proudly before them. She looked up at him, stunned. Why would he give...?

"Consider this an order, Commander," Anderson said. Shepard looked him the eye, and nodded. She looped the chain past her head and took a step back.

"I'll come back," Shepard said. "With everybody we can get."

"...good luck," Anderson said to her, as he turned away.

"You too, sir," Shepard said quietly. She gave a glance to Vega, who was only now returning to the ramp. "He's not coming."

"What? Why?" Vega asked.

Shepard didn't answer, as the ship pulled back. She didn't have time to. One of the shuttles had a load of civilians, and took to the air in the distance. Its gunships flanked it, a stalwart guard. Hateful red blazed down, a single streak sweeping across all three, and reducing all that life to ash in an instant. Shepard winced and turned away.

It didn't seem to matter what she did... people always died because of her.

She started back through the cargo hold – which with the refits had been augmented to hold a second shuttle by default instead of only by accident – with Vega hot on her heels. "Wait a minute, are we seriously just leaving him back there?" Vega asked. Shepard just kept walking. "Hey!"

"We're leaving," Shepard said flatly.

"We're leaving?" he echoed, incredulous.

"We've got to get to the Citadel, and find help for the fight," Shepard said, plunking her Avenger down on the work-bench, immediately doing a 180, and hauling open an armor rack.

"You've got to be shitting me..." Vega said. Shepard turned to him, letting the case clank against the ground, glaring up into his eyes.

"I get it, you don't want to go," she said. "But the fact is, if nobody goes to get reinforcements, then those reinforcements aren't coming. You think I don't want to be back there? If you want to go back to Earth, then by all means, find somebody crazy enough to fly back here... When. We. Reach. The. Citadel."

He ground his teeth for a moment, then waved her off. "Whatever," he muttered. Shepard puffed out a breath, trying to calm her nerves. This is not what she expected when she got up this morning. But then again, in the back of her head, this had been what she was expecting for a lot longer than that. And even after everything, she still felt completely out of her depth.

"Shepard, are you alive down there?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't hear the Commander in front of my name," Shepard answered him.

"Since when do you want people calling you Commander?" Joker asked. "I've got a line from the Pillars of Heaven. I'll patch it through to you."

Shepard's eyes widened a little when a heavily distorted image of Admiral Hackett appeared on the console at the back of the bay. For a few seconds, his lips moved, but no sound came out with them. Then, a blast of white-noise which was direly taxing Shepard's patience for things that made her ears ring, followed by heavily distorted words.

"S-S-Shepard... -tained heavy losses..." Hackett said, image fluttering and jumping with the patchy signal. "In... -force was overwhelming. Had to pull back with th... -way we can beat them with conventional means."

"Admiral, Anderson has already ordered me to the Citadel, to get aid from the Council," Shepard began, but he cut her off with a stern look, even through a broken signal and unknown distance.

"-ore important than that. Y..." a long blast of static, "Okina Oni. Our specialists found..." another long silence. "-sannon device, which may be critical. You need to extrac..."

After that, everything got worse and worse until the signal cut out entirely. Shepard sighed, rubbing at her brow and tracing the scar that went through it. "Right. Joker? New orders; we're to head to the 'Prothean' cache on Okina Oni before we leave the system."

"Really? I don't know if you've noticed, but that's kind of the wrong direction to get away from all these Reapers," Joker said.

"Hackett's orders, Joker," Shepard said.

"Well, he's usually got good reasons. Setting course. And the gods help us."

Shepard scoffed lightly. "That'd be a first."

Asha raised a brow, as she pulled her own signature autocannon out of storage, quickly locking its otherwise detachable barrels into place. "What does he expect we should find on Okina Oni?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Shepard said. "But orders are orders, and besides, Hackett is right. We can't win this ship-to-ship. This might be our magic bullet."

"Pardon my incredulity," Asha said. "But if such a thing existed, then how could the Reapers exist also? Why would not any race before us have used it?"

"Questions I can't answer, al'Wahim," Shepard said. She cracked open the armor locker, revealing the dull plate that was now standard-issue for N7s. It was a long step up from the old Onyx I, but she would have still killed for something a bit more... personal.

"Where is your armor?" Asha asked.

"The Citadel," Shepard said. "I guess people thought I'd have plenty of time to swing by and grab it before everything went to hell," she turned a look to the two of them. "Well? Don't just stand there staring at me; armor up. We don't know what's going on on Okina Oni, and I'm not going in there half-cocked."

Vega looked like he wanted to complain, but he didn't say anything as he grabbed his own armor locker. Asha, though, nodded. Shepard picked up the breastplate, with the N7 blazoned upon the breast. And just like that, she was heading into battle against the unknown.

Typical Shepard, really.


The news of the attack had spread fast. It burst throughout the newsfeeds as quickly as an existential threat really ought to, a hundred news agencies and a thousand reporters suddenly overseeing the most critical story of their lives. And different races saw things from different directions. On Thessia, there was a worried detachment. This was a problem, and they recognized it, but it was far from critical, and there was still time to find a proper and prudent path. On Sur'Kesh, on the other hand, it was seen as a declaration of war the likes of which happened most recently when the Krogan sundered a millennia of peace. There was excitement there, not dread. A new enemy was a new challenge, one that they could work toward an answer to.

Palaven, though, the news was brutally honest and to the point. People were dying already. On every turian news-feed, there was a section of the screen given to list the confirmed dead. It never repeated itself, and hour by hour, the channels either had to decrease the size of the font, or increase the amount of screen it took up, to keep pace with the steadily increasing casualties.

For the first three hours, not one single word came from the human agencies. And when it did, it became apparent why; for all they'd spread throughout the galaxy in the scant few decades they had, so much of the infrastructure remained on Earth. That they were live once more in three hours was a testament to their ingenuity as much as their resolve. And the stories they gave were every bit as grave as those spoken by the turians. Of the whole galaxy, only those two races truly understood the scale of the combat, and only they knew what was at stake.

Of all the Council Races, only those two had Reapers trodding their soil.

One place that the attacks didn't reach the first day, or even the first week, was the Migrant Fleet. Their eyes were locked not on the machines sweeping in from dark-space, but instead a completely different set of machines, on a single, solitary world. The voices of reason from that place couldn't shake their tunnel-vision. They were hungry, and the Reaper War didn't matter to them anymore. If it ever had in the first place.

Ambassador Udina sat silently in his office, eyes on the monitors opposite his desk. He wasn't alone in the room by a long shot. Every chair was taken. They'd been in the midst of a heated argument when the news came. When it did, the argument died entirely. One of the women in one of the seats was weeping openly, looking at the destruction being wreaked upon her homeworld – their homeworld. Udina didn't see any reason to stop her. Arcturus Station was a drifting wreck. He'd lost hundreds of friends and confidantes.

Everybody in the room lost somebody, at the very least. The Fire Lord, sitting with her eyes on the screen and her mouth agape, slowly turned to Udina. "...what do we do now?" she asked.

Udina turned to the woman, and picked his words. For all Dominique Osoba looked like a fresh-faced young woman, she had a son who was twenty years old, and had been Fire Lord for his entire lifetime. She was not the kind to fall apart under pressure, nor let her composure falter long. And right now, she looked at him, grey of face, and there was fear in her voice.

"We hold the line," Udina said. "That's all any of us can do."


There was a blip in the heavens, as the Normandy dropped out of FTL. The sun stood larger in the sky by a small but noticeable margin, but it was the world they approached that demanded much more attention. It was as large as Earth, but no landmasses were visible, because the entire world was covered in a tangerine colored haze, one that only a few mountains peaked through near the equator. Dominating space nearby, causing that hazy atmosphere to bulge out on one side was another great sphere, this one devoid of atmosphere, and thus visible to all. Its body was laced with active tectonic rents and spewing volcanoes, chewing itself up and spitting itself out over and over again in the last aftershocks of a planetary impact that gave it violent birth. It was theorized that within one asari lifetime, the 'little demon', Sho-akuma, would, by tidal influence of the sun, pull itself away from Okina Oni enough that it could start to cool and solidify, perhaps forming a much less hostile place to mine its plentiful Eezo.

How optimistic that prediction had been.

A shuttle broke free of the Normandy, and dove into the haze as quickly as its descent profile would allow without burning up. Shepard held onto the rail behind the pilot's seat. Vega was in his full armor, manning the controls. It wasn't the smoothest descent, but given the circumstances, Shepard had a lot bigger things to worry about.

"I've been trying to contact Okina Oni on secure channels, but I'm not getting an answer," Joker said from the ship.

"Any sign of Reaper activity?" Shepard asked.

"We wouldn't know if there was," Joker noted. Considering visibility on Okina Oni was always to the ballpark of less than five hundred meters, that wasn't too surprising.

"The Base appears to be online, as its power signature remains intact. It is possible that the personnel were evacuated," EDI added.

"We'll find out soon enough," Shepard muttered.

"Almost there," Vega said from the commands, as the landscape finally started to appear out of the golden haze. One of the great perks of having so much atmosphere was that even though they were on the wrong side of the terminator, there was still more than enough light to see. The ground loomed as Vega set the shuttle down amidst a geothermal station that overlooked the approach to the facility. There was a buzz as the atmosphere was pulled from the shuttle, and everybody held onto something, as the shuttle door cracked, and a blast of pressure pushed in. It gave them all a shake, but nothing was knocked loose, so all was right in the world. "Still no contact. I guess we're going to have to knock on the doors ourselves," he said, leaving his seat and grabbing his guns as he came.

"That silence is really starting to grate on my good nature," Shepard muttered, peering out onto this alien world. The power cables were clad in layers of protective material, and gave a very clear direction to anybody looking to find the base. Everything needed power, and without a whole lot of sun, geothermal was pretty much the be-all and end-all. She moved to the ledge, glancing down. When she did, she cast a hand back, gesturing the others to stop. She slid her Avenger onto her back, and pulled the Mantis which was perched beside it. There were bodies down there. When she zoomed in, she could see the dark armor of Alliance, as well as somebody else.

"What is it?" Vega asked.

"Stand close," Shepard said. When all of them were crammed into a small nook, Shepard slammed her foot down, causing the rock beneath them to dive downward, bearing them to the level of the road below. Well, by road, she meant 'place where the ruts stop making mud'. One old Grizzly was upside-down, half of its track blown off. Shepard stooped beside the Alliance soldier. Reeves.

"They look like they put up a hell of a fight," Shepard said. She then moved to the other, turning it over to find that whoever this poor bastard was, they'd smashed his faceplate in and turned his face to pudding. Even if the beating didn't kill him, trying to breathe Okina Oni would. Shepard glanced between the soldier, bled out from bullets, to the unknown.

"Something about this doesn't seem right," Vega said. He then turned, staring down the 'road'. "Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Shepard asked.

"Gunshots hitting the ground," he said. Well, he certainly had some sensitivity. The three of them spread across the coverless road, at least trying to have angles on whatever they found. Besides, with two earthbenders, it wouldn't stay coverless for long. When Shepard saw something over the rise, she flopped onto her belly, and crawled forward until she was just barely peeking over the top. Asha and Vega did likewise.

Through the scope, she could see Alliance soldiers, and more of the people in the odd uniform. The latter were struggling, while the soldiers kicked the ever living hell out of them. Shepard gave a confused look to Asha, who likewise looked baffled. It ended when the marines pointed their rifles at these unknowns, and ventilated their heads. Then, they shot them in the chest a few more times, as though to be sure.

"Shit, that was an execution!" Vega whispered. "We don't do that!"

"No, we don't," Shepard said. She looked to Vega. "Keep an eye on me. I'll go say hello."

"Avatar, surely you can't be serious," Asha said.

"I'm deadly serious, and don't call me Shr-Li," Shepard answered. She pushed up, swapping long rifle for assault, and made a forced-casual stride down that street. She hadn't gotten far when one of the soldiers swatted another in the shoulder, and pointed up to her. She raised a hand. "Would you mind telling me just what in the gods' name you're doing out here?" she demanded.

They answered wordlessly, but turning their rifles on her, and opening fire. Her eyes widened, and she stomped the earth, causing a pillar of it to race up, cutting off the incoming fire. Not Alliance soldiers, that was certain. They wouldn't open fire on one of their own, not when she was as visibly obvious as she was.

A thud sounded, as Asha put a round through the chest of the first. A different kind of thud sounded when a block of stone as big as Shepard herself hurtled past and crushed two of them against a Mako. The last backed off, trying to keep everybody's heads down with sprayed fire. Shepard peeked out, got his number, then with a flick of her Omni, she was moving fast. A perk of airbending was that if you were in a place where there was a lot of atmosphere, you could get a lot of umph. And since you could bid that atmosphere get out of your way, that meant that you were defacto faster than everybody else around you.

He didn't even see her as she relocated, ghosting from rock to rock. He'd almost reached the hatch of the Mako which wasn't blocked by rock, when Shepard, Avenger steadied, put a burst into his back. He flopped to the ground. Shepard turned to the others, beckoning them in, as she stepped to the execution ground.

"This doesn't make any kind of sense," Vega said. Shepard gave him a nod, then turned one of the dead bodies over. And this time, unlike the ruined last time, she saw something definitive, and something shocking.

"Samsara?" Shepard asked. "What's Samsara doing here?"

"Phoenix, you mean?" Asha asked.

"Same thing, different title," Shepard said. "Why were our guys executing Samsara? Firefights, sure, that makes sense, but killing them like this?"

"Something about this ain't right," Vega summarized. Shepard could only nod. "Maybe they were false-flagging or something?"

"Whatever the case, we've just seen that 'friendlies' are anything but on this base," Shepard said. She motioned forward, and the squad pressed up. Shepard kept her eyes through the scope, picking out people as they appeared out of the murk. More Alliance soldiers who probably weren't. They were looking around nervously; not surprising given that sound traveled both fast and far on Okina Oni. Hell, her Avenger didn't even break the sound-barrier on this planet. "Take a chance on them being real?"

"I say shoot now," Vega said. "Nobody wants a suit breach down here."

"I will heed the will of the Avatar," Asha said.

Shepard turned a look to her. "I want your opinion, not your mindless obedience."

"Were that the case, I would recommend as the Lieutenant offered," Asha said. Shepard chewed on her lips for a moment, then puffed out a sigh.

"Well, then you'd better be a good shot, because I'm not going to ventilate friendlies on sheer paranoia," Shepard said, passing Vega her Mantis and stepping clear of her spot. "Don't leave me flapping in the wind."

"Man, that's crazy," Vega said. "They're gonna shoot at you!"

"If they do, then I'll just have to get out of the way," Shepard said, thumping her breastplate. "Besides, I'm not wearing this thing out of fashion sense."

"Yeah, yeah," Vega said, and he took to a different position. As Shepard continued down the path, the base itself loomed out of the haze which made Okina Oni a navigational hazard for anything not tethered to the ground. Shepard was well aware that there was every chance that they were going to shoot first and ask questions never, but damn it all, she had to give them a chance.

The sentries took a look of enormous tension when they spotted her, but since she completely allowed them to, she wasn't taken by surprise. They didn't shoot. Good things come to those who wait, maybe? A few of them gathered in front of the doors to the base, though, a human wall before the human fortress. "Whoa, hold it there," the soldier at the center of the mass said. "I don't recognize you. Are you part of the mining garrison?"

"It was a long walk," Shepard lied without lying. He turned and looked past her.

"Did you see what all that gunfire was about?" he asked.

"Bunch of executions, people getting killed. Normal war stuff," Shepard made her tone air-headed and flighty, which probably put the man at ease. "Don't think they're coming back for a while, though. Had some troubles on the road."

"What kind of troubles?" he asked. At this point, though, Shepard was a meter away from him. Close enough. There was something off about him. She couldn't place it, but she knew it in her gut. She knew it like she knew the reason for her birth. Even without being able to see his eyes...

"This kind," Shepard said, and she stomped the ground, causing the stone to buck the two directly to the leader's back into the air, and prevent the others from shooting her as she ducked under his guard and took his back. She didn't circle him long, because she didn't have that kind of time. Instead, she just swept his legs out from under him with a blast of over-dense air, then pressed her Avenger to the back of his knee and fired a shot. He let out a scream and rolled, clutching his rounded limb, as a pair of rifle cracks sounded, putting at least two of the others down. Shepard punched one wall before her, sending it flying at somebody she could sense beyond it. The last reached for her as he rounded the stone and tried to grasp her blood. No sell, and she swatted him back with a bolt of air, before dragging her rifle up. "Everybody stand down or I will shoot to kill, is that clear?"

"Just shoot the bitch!" the soldier on the ground bellowed. Bullets began to spang off of her barriers, so she had to act fast. She sent a burst into the fumbling waterbender, then turned and sent the rest of her clip into the man with the shotgun who was running in at her. She had to practically throw herself aside to dodge his blast, but it hit stone instead of Shepard, so that was a plus. When she landed, he tried to mount and put that shotgun to her face, but she thrust up with both fists, and sent a wave of flame up and into him. The flames blossomed far larger than they should have, lifting him and sending him rocketing away on the dense oxygen and firebending. Another pair of thuds, and all the incoming fire ceased.

"I warned you they'd try to kill you," Vega's voice came. Shepard planted her foot on the leader's chestplate, and sighted down her Avenger, very deliberately putting the new sink into it.

"And I didn't listen," Shepard said. "Who are you and why are you wearing that uniform?"

"Go to hell," he snapped at her. "We're trying to save our families. All you're doing is getting them horribly killed!"

"Save them? By shooting Weaver's drones in cold blood?"

"Fuck those guys. We'd have offed the Prothean hours ago if they hadn't showed up."

Shepard was silent and still at that. She looked up as Asha and Vega joined her. "...offed the Prothean?" Shepard asked. He was sullenly silent. "Vega, restrain him. I want–"

Vega cut her off by putting a bullet in his head. Shepard stepped back, eyes wide. "Vega, what the f–"

"What is the meaning of this?" Asha asked, glaring at him no doubt from within her mountain of armor. Vega, though, reached down and grabbed the man's hand, closed in a death grip on a high explosive grenade.

"No pin. This thing's a muscle contraction from boom," Vega said. He pried the fingers away, stripped the yellow bomb out, and hurled it into the distance. It went off with a muted bang before it even hit the ground. "Gettin' slow, Shepard."

"That wasn't necessary," Shepard said.

"I think Anderson wants you getting to the Citadel with both legs," Vega noted. And he wasn't wrong about that. Shepard glared at him, nevertheless. She then pried off the helmet, and looked at the man. A wave of her Omni and the face recognition instantly hit a match. Da Hulieman, Alliance Marine. Shepard blinked at that. Positive ID. She then moved to the next, and repeated the process. Oron Hsien Bo, Alliance Marines.

"These guys aren't false-flagging," Shepard said. "They're actual Alliance marines. Who were about to murder the Prothean when Samsara showed up."

"That doesn't make any kind of sense," Vega repeated.

"Actually..." Asha said, trailing off with a pensive pose. Shepard's shrug was what it took to convince her to speak, but even then, they only did so as they backed away from the warriors for humanity which were now acting against it.

"Well? Spill it, al'Wahim. What's your theory?" Shepard asked as they passed into the elevator, and she tapped the descent control. There was a sucking sound, as the atmosphere of Okina Oni was pulled out of the lift, then a hiss as it was replaced with breathable air. Only then did Shepard let her helmet rattle down into her armor.

"They were double-agents, obviously," she said. "And most likely by means of Indoctrination."

"But how? The Reapers only just got here," Shepard said.

"Hey, there's Reaper shit all over the place," Vega pointed out. "That thing on Fehl Prime? That had Reaper written all over it. For all we know, those guys had those squids up their butts for months, waiting for a shot like this one."

"Shocking that so valid a thought come from one like he," Asha said.

"Then what about this Samsara interference?" Shepard asked. "They're just the other side of Phoenix, and there's no way that Phoenix is going to be on our side in this war."

"Perhaps things are more complicated than that," Asha said, the lift continuing to descend into the stone. This was only the upper lift, as there was an entire facility down here before they reached the Long Drop which reached into the Cache itself. Four kilometers, straight down. "Could it not be that perhaps not all of Samsara is under Weaver's control?"

"Yes, it could not be," Shepard said. Asha then shook her head and rubbed her brow.

"Then perhaps Weaver's ends are not antagonistic to our own? Far be it for me to gainsay the Avatar, but even he must recognize the threat that the Reapers pose. And given a choice between accepting help from one we loathe and having allies die in darkness, I would always choose the former."

"Man, you really do talk funny," Vega said.

"You should be one to talk, chicken-worshiper," Asha answered back.

"What did you call me?" Vega asked, rounding on her.

Shepard got between the two of them, forcing them apart – not as easy as one would think considering he was massive and she was Asha. "Enough! I get that your people hate each other, but this is no time to reenact a thousand years of history!"

"Fine," Vega said, backing off with his hands out to his sides. Asha just smirked and backed off as well. The elevator stopped with a thud, and a wall opened to show the inside of the garage. Shepard looped wide to one of the Millipedes, and took a hard look at the wheel wells. Sure enough, there were bombs epoxied there, no doubt rigged to blow if somebody tried turning on the engine. Whoever did this, Samsara or Indoctrinated marines or both, nobody was meant to get out of here.

"Where do we go now?" Asha asked, her Omni lighting up with a map of the place.

"Three guesses," Shepard said, walking by and poking her finger through the hardlight that showed the Divination Pit itself, "...and the first two don't count."

"Hackett spoke of extraction. Does not Ellidor still work here?"

"That's my guess, and at the moment, my biggest worry," Shepard said. All the doors down here were welded shut, and as they were made to be metalbending-proof, that was an actual problem. Since she didn't feel like having to punch through lead while being electrocuted, she started scanning the upper level for something which hadn't been sealed and locked.

Sure enough, on the upper floor, there was one that still had its haptic on. And green, for a wonder. She beckoned the others close, then with a thrust, catapulted both onto the upper rail. Both landed in utterly inelegant piles, while when Shepard followed, she landed with all the grace of a dancer. Months of practice certainly were starting to pay off.

"Coulda given me a bit of warning," Vega muttered.

"She gave you all the warning any could need," Asha countered.

"Children?" Shepard said, turning her gaze back at them. Both zipped it. "We don't know what's waiting for us in here. So we're going to have to find a security station and get a look at the feeds."

She opened the door, passing through it, only to have a gun press to the back of her head. "Don't move, soldier," a man's voice came. "You two, stay back there, or I will shoot!"

"You're about to make a grave mistake," Shepard said, still staring straight forward. Whoever was behind her must be hiding behind the doorframe; a bullet that went through his arm would also go through her head.

"I could say the same to you," he countered. "You're not going to find her."

"And 'her' being?" Shepard asked.

A silence.

"...the Prothean?" he asked. "The one you tried to gun down?"

Slowly, Shepard turned to face her aggressor. She kept her hands clearly visible, hoping to not stun the jumpy fellow into shooting her out of panic. When she turned, she saw that he was wearing the same uniform as the other Samsara dead that were outside the compound, only he was obviously not a corpse inside it. Still, there was a lot of blood on his armor, and most of it seemed like it was his own. He looked middle aged, his eyes brown and his hair full but greying. He was breathing heavily and his face had flop-sweat on it. "We're not here to kill the Prothean. We're here to get her out of here before the Reapers arrive," Shepard said calmly.

The man blinked a few times, as though unable to believe his eyes. Then he pulled his gun back. "Shepard?" he asked. With that, he let himself slump back against the wall. "Thank the gods, you're not one of them."

Vega and Asha took that opportunity to crowd through the door and put two very big rifles in his face, but he didn't seem to either notice or care. "Easy, there," Shepard said. She had them back up a step, but keeping their guns on him was just being prudent. Asha, though, she turned to ensure that nobody was trying to come up on them unannounced. "You're the first person we've met since we landed on this planet who's turned down an opportunity to try to kill me. I want answers."

"My name is Panchen Erdeni, and I'm with the Golden Spiders. We came here to..."

"Wait, the what?" Shepard asked.

"Samsara put out a call for mercs, ex-soldiers, anybody willing to fight for humanity that the military for whatever reason didn't want. Voila," he gestured wide, then winced as he pulled on something that was probably injured and bleeding. "We got the call to reinforce here in case things went bad. And good gods, did they ever..."

"The marines here," Asha began.

"Gunned down everybody," he said with a nod. She turned a dubious look over her shoulder. "Look at the security feeds if you don't believe me. They've gone nuts and they're a danger, so we tried to stop them. Problem was... they outnumbered us about five to one."

"Hold on, there's only supposed to be twenty marines on site at any time..." Shepard said.

"Well, there were more than a hundred when the shit hit the fan," Panchen said. "Probably came in from the garrison. From everywhere. We managed to blow the comms relay the instant we knew what was coming, so they can't tell anybody... but that also put us in the unenviable position of being alone, without any backup, against a bunch of trained and murderous marines who by law are allowed to be here, while we... well, weren't."

"That explains the silence from the base," Vega said.

"They kept them from contacting the Reapers, so I call that a win," Shepard said. She leaned in on the Samsaran mercenary. "You said there's video of all this. I want to see it. And if I don't like what I see, you're going to spend the rest of your days in a very small cell, clear?"

"Better a small cell then helmetless on the surface," Panchen said, with a nod. And at that, he wasn't wrong. He found himself being as much as hauled along by Vega. Considering the state of him, Shepard had half a mind to tell Vega to be more careful, since nobody here wanted the only 'friendly' face thus far from keeling over from blood-loss. It had only reached half-a-mind, though, when they reached the security kiosk that made the outer-limits of the facility. There were dead people left on the floor, blood pooling where they fell. Most of them scientists, from the look of things. A lot of asari. Every single one of them, Shepard turned over, hoping that she wasn't going to find one particular face. She never did.

"See? Right there," Panchen said. Shepard turned away from the last dead asari and vaulted the desk of the security office – only open because somebody blew away the glass. Panchen wound the footage of this room back, almost an hour ago. Right about when the Reapers the Sol Relay. There were a number of marines sauntering about in the atrium in front of them, and a lot of scientists waiting for a shuttle to arrive to take them to their off-site housing. Nobody liked being buried, and firebenders worst of all of them. Without a word or a gesture, and acting as though one mind, all of them raised their guns and started by firing at the asari in their midst. When the aliens were dead, they moved on to the human scientists and the lone salarian. With that done, they split into groups and departed from the camera's view, without so much as a whisper of why they'd done as they'd done. Shepard had a pretty good idea, though.

"Alright, your story is checking out," Shepard said. She then glanced to another one, and at that, her eyes widened. "Wait, that's the top of the Long Drop," she said.

"Yeah, and?" Vega asked.

Shepard didn't answer. Instead, she reached under the desk, grabbing a brace of grenades and started toward the doors. She ran a hand up them. Welded shut, but not electrocuted. With a grunt and a throw of her fist, she buckled them inward. It took four stout kicks to get the dense metal to obey her metalbending, but in the end she created a hole big enough for Vega to fit through. "Avatar? What is the matter?"

"We've got a Prothean on the run," Shepard said as she jumped through that gap. The halls beyond were devoid of life, all those who'd been sent to study gunned down. In here, though, the dead were gathered behind a line of people in armor like Panchen. What kind of war was this when you couldn't trust your own side? She shook her head. No time to think about that right now. The others were hot on her heels as she jogged to the end of the hall, only finding the door there properly sealed. She sucked breath through her teeth, and turned a look to one of the labs which lined this path. Through the windows, she could see an active door on the far side... of sweeping panes of light.

"The door's a no-go?" Vega asked, coming to a halt before the electrified door.

"Don't try bending it. You won't enjoy it," Shepard said.

"What is that smell?" Vega asked.

"Burnt meat," Asha answered. Shepard craned her neck to get a better angle through that window, and she could see why. Every time the panes of light swept over the dead within, they were seared a little deeper. Spines and shoulderblades were already visible on those face down, and there was plenty more to sear.

"They didn't even shoot them. Just turned on the decontamination and let them burn," Panchen said.

"This is sadistic," Vega said. "No way our guys could have done this..."

"They aren't our guys," Shepard said. "At least, they're not anymore."

She then kicked the door open, and fired some rounds into the projector. It hissed and groaned, and the panes of destructive radiation disappeared. She walked through, pointedly ignoring the dead, because she knew that anger wasn't going to do her any favors right now. Instead, she focused on popping the lock on the far side.

"So if you're some sort of merc, how'd you get into this base?" Vega demanded.

"Samsara makes everything, and we are everywhere," Panchen said. "I walked through those doors as an electrician."

"They should have discovered you in a heartbeat," Asha contended.

"I've got my seal, I'm a certified electrician," Panchen pointed out.

"Then what the hell are you doing here with a gun in your hand?"

"Color-blind; disqualified from service," Panchen said. "When Samsara offered an alternative..."

"You do realize Samsara is but a front for terrorism?" Asha asked.

"Uh huh, and does that," he gestured over his shoulder, toward where the Golden Spiders died trying to stall the fire from the turned marines, "look like the act of a terrorist?"

There was a chirp, and the door opened. Shepard raised her gun, and rounded the corner. She immediately fell silent and cast a warning hand back. She had two of them facing away from her, looking in on a cafeteria which had a golden haze in it. Gods, did these people have no scruples at all? Obviously not. She knew she should have felt guilty killing other Alliance Marines, but given the day she'd had thus far, guilt was left behind about a hundred bullets back. Especially guilt for people like this.

She ghosted up behind one, the heavier armored of the two. They were obviously talking to each other, for their heads kept bobbing and dipping, tracking a conversation that didn't hit the air. What they said had little relevance or importance. What did, though, was an Omniblade that Shepard slammed into the back of his neck, angling it down to bypass all the armor. The other turned, a stunned sense to his stance, while Shepard grabbed the dying man's side-arm and put it to the chest-plate of the other. A pair of anemic 'thak's later, and he was dropping to the floor as well, his heart bleeding out his back.

"Are there any more..." Asha began, quietly, but Shepard was already moving.

"Shepard, there's somebody in those vents," Vega said, catching Shepard's movement for what it was. "More than one. Hell, more than four."

Shepard nodded, and passed into the next path. Her gun was up at the vents; since those things didn't hold air, Shepard hadn't the first clue but instead a great worry about what could be within.

A few seconds later, a crack and a hiss, followed by a new alarm going off. A few seconds later, a section of the ceiling fell down in front of Shepard, followed almost immediately after by a gravid Prothean. She lay on the ground for a moment, eyes pressed shut, then she pulled in a very deep breath. "Oh, that was extremely unpleasant," Elli said. She reached for Shepard's hand to help her up, but Shepard just motioned to Asha and kept her gun raised. "Why aren't you..."

Then, the thumping continued, audible to all now that the path was actually open. The odd smell of the gasses within that tube started to mix with the air, but there were bigger things to worry about. Vega pulled Elli away mere seconds before another form dropped down, armored in blue. Shepard damned near shot it, before she realized two very important things. First, the armor wasn't Alliance issue, and second, she was unarmed. She landed more elegantly than Elli had, and then immediately turned. She cast her hand up to the ceiling, and a Singularity pulled into being, dragging her pursuers out of the vent and leaving them dangling in space. These ones, unlike the first two, had Alliance greys on, and one of them wearing the dress blues. Shepard scowled, and put a bullet into each of them.

"Thank you, Avatar," Elli said, as the dead fell to the floor, no longer held aloft by biotic force. "I had feared that those traitors would be the death of me."

"How did you survive this long?" Asha asked.

"I took a note from you; I learned how to become bulletproof," Elli said.

The other, though, turned and faced Shepard, silently. Then, still silent, the helmet rattled down into her gorget, and revealed the one face which Shepard was direly hoping not to find amongst the dead. Liara T'Soni. She stared at Shepard, as Shepard stared back, each with a lot on their mind, obviously. But T'Soni went immediately from a blank mask, to chewing her lip, to smiling and running to Shepard. Shepard found herself tackled back a step, as Liara mashed blue lips to pink. A hundred impulses fired off in just about every direction at that, but there was only one that Shepard could actually attend.

She pushed Liara back, to Liara's stunned expression nearly matching her own. "Liara... I can't do this..."

"What are you talking about?" T'Soni asked. Shepard wanted to tell her, but given everything else, there wasn't time and there was too much at stake. So she gave her second reason instead of her first.

"...I just watched my homeworld burn," Shepard said, her pain obvious in her tone. T'Soni winced in sympathy, and then retreated.

"Well, that was awkward," Vega said.

"Vega," Shepard said, turning to a problem that she could solve right now. "Get Erdeni and Elli back to the shuttle."

"Wait, what?" he asked.

"Do I need to point out the obvious?" Shepard asked, pointing between Elli's swollen belly and all of the blood on Panchen. "We can't afford to burn time dragging them back through the base, and they can't afford to be so dragged. Besides, I need somebody on their toes in case somebody tries to run."

Vega looked like he was about to deny her, but Shepard's hard look turned his tune. "Right. Aye, Commander," he said, and then started guiding Elli toward the door, with the limping Panchen keeping pace.

"Don't think this is over, Erdeni," Shepard said before they reached the doors leading back.

"Not even for a second," he answered over his shoulder.

Shepard nodded, then puffed out a calming breath, facing T'Soni once more. "Alright. We can deal with... everything... later. Right now, I need to hear some good news."

"Oh. Well," T'Soni said. She palmed her face for a moment, wiping away sweat, before clearing her voice, and transitioning from joyful reunion to college professor in the space of a heartbeat. "I believe I've located the schematics for the Crucible."

"Which does what exactly?" Shepard asked. Liara gave her an odd look.

"It is the device which you told us the Protheans tried using against the Reapers in their time," Shepard winced and rubbed her head.

"Sorry, I've taken a few blows to the head today. Not thinking at my best," Shepard said. T'Soni nodded.

"Why would such a thing be found here?" Asha asked.

"These ruins weren't Prothean, like the Matriarchs claimed. Elli was right, in that they were Inusannon," Liara said. "The Protheans used a device which they reclaimed from the Inusannon. I had to presume that any blueprints which would be used to resist the Reapers would be housed here. And I was right."

"How'd you find it, considering we've been sifting that thing for decades?" Shepard asked.

"Process of elimination, desperation, and having a telepath handy," T'Soni said evenly. "It was much faster with Elli's abilities than it would be for you."

"Hey, I wouldn't know," Shepard said.

"Hackett knew that my resources as the Shadow Broker could be valuable in narrowing the search. I'd only discovered the first schematics when the gunfire began. What I saw, I don't doubt I could recreate from memory, but I fear I only saw a small portion of the greater whole," she said, a note of self-disappointment in her voice. Like that was something to be ashamed of.

"So where do we have to go to get the big picture?" Shepard asked.

"The Divination Pit, and the Beacons that Elli set up to store what she found. Transliterating between three different forms of communication was... trying," T'Soni said.

"So we're pretty much one Long Drop away from the Pit," Shepard said. "Any idea what those soldiers wanted, besides a whole lot of bloodshed?"

"I believe destroying the schematics of the device would be objective enough for them," Liara said. "I guess we're fortunate that Beacons are hard to decode for somebody who doesn't think like a Prothean, and almost impossible to break."

"Then it's not a race, but an extraction after all," Shepard said. "Only we're extracting you as well."

"So it would seem," T'Soni said. Shepard nodded, and started toward the Long Drop. "I tried to contact you. After the fight..."

"Later," Shepard said, very quietly. "Just not right now."

"Right. Sorry," T'Soni answered. Asha looked between them and gave a shake of her head. And Shepard knew she wasn't wrong in being exasperated. Things between T'Soni and Shepard went from good to completely obliterated over the course of one afternoon, and she didn't have a whole lot of faith that a relapsing alcoholic would have the strength to put that back together again. So much on Shepard's mind. And she didn't have time to talk about it. Honestly, she wasn't even sure if she could.

The Long Drop opened before them, an industrial lift which had been overengineered to be able to make one trip up through liquid magma. Given the slightly tenuous status of the Inusannon site, it was likely that it'd only need to ascend through that murk once, because there'd be no second chances. And at the moment, the overdesigned lift was absent, a black pit standing in its place. Obviously, whoever wanted to make a run at the pit, had already taken it down. And... yup, locked it from the other end. Shepard shook her head direly at her Omni, then leaned over that precipice. The lights converged toward the bottom, beyond her eyes' ability to perceive.

"Expeditious descent?" Asha asked.

Shepard turned to her. "With what? A parachute?" Shepard asked. Asha, on the other hand, reached into a pouch on her thigh and extracted a winch and line. Shepard raised a brow. "I don't think that's going to stretch for four klicks, Asha."

Asha, though, strapped the thing around her waist. "It won't have to," she declared. Shepard turned a look to T'Soni, who could only shrug in ignorance. Shepard shook her head, and then turned to Asha, to give her an alternative which didn't involve freefalling for three and a half kilometers... when Asha stepped off that ledge and dropped toward the bottom. Shepard stared for a moment, then hurled herself down after.

"Are you out of your mind?" Shepard shouted, but the noise of the air tearing past her swallowed it long before she could reach where Asha was descending. She'd angled herself head-down, cutting through the air faster than any but an airbender could, meaning that even with airbending, Shepard was hard pressed to keep up. The roof of the lift quickly became visible, then large, in Shepard's eyes. She hadn't even half closed the distance to Asha.

Then, there was a snap of metal, and a pair of pitons fired into the opposite walls. In a snap, Asha decelerated, the wires turning her body-liquifying descent into a sustainable impact. Shepard, on the other hand, twisted air into a cushion, one which blasted out the windows to the surveillance station when she hit it. Even slamming into air, it still hurt like she'd taken a bad fall off of a roof. Shepard pushed herself to her feet, shaking her head, as the steady whine of wire spooling out came to her ears, followed a few seconds later by the thud of boots against metal. Shepard turned, and Asha had the most neutral expression on her face that Shepard had ever seen, which was probably her doing her damnedest not to be intolerably smug.

"You should have warned me about that thing," Shepard said.

"We have no time for explanations, yes?" Asha asked.

"You could have died!" Shepard said.

"I have tested this under worse conditions," Asha rolled her eyes. At about that point, there was a nimbus of blue light bathing them, and T'Soni finally descended into view. She slowed to a delicate landing, quite unlike Shepard's pratfall or Asha's thud. Asha hit a button on her belt, and there was a snap, followed by a sound of the wire respooling at breakneck speed. When the end of the wire reached her, it actually knocked Asha back a step, but she allowed it no more distraction than that. "I see noone."

"They would be within the Inusannon superstructure," T'Soni said. Shepard, though, took a side-track and jumped throught he shattered windows into the security station. She waved her Omni over the monitors, and stared at what they showed. Business as usual, until that moment when the marines flipped their loyalty switch and started killing. But there was one which was quite different. It showed a different security station. This one had a pair of marines in it, until a third person entered. A woman, wearing a form fitting suit. Not a soldier, definitely.

"Brei, did you hear that?" one of the men asked.

"It sounds like... buzzing," the other answered. He then turned, spotting the woman. "Doctor? You're not supposed to be in here."

"Neither are you," she answered. Then, pulled a gun, and put a bullet into the second's head, before turning to put three more into the first. She raised her hand to her ear as she moved to the first's position. "They're completely compromised; we're going to have a bloodbath in a few minutes," she paused, looking at something outside of camera shot. "...Arm and ready. We can't let them destroy that information."

There was a crack, and the woman staggered back, stumbling as though she'd been shot. She then raised her gun and fired a barrage of shots back, before pulling herself over the divider from kiosk to what lay beyond it. Now concealed from view, all that passed through camera shot, were bullets, punctuated by a grenade being hurled in her direction. After that, silence.

"Samsara is taking great pains to preserve that information," Asha said.

"Yeah, because I bet that Weaver would love to get his hands on it," Shepard said. She shook her head. "Look, we're close to the Pit, so we should just keep moving before either the marines or Weaver's goons beat us to the prize."

"Of course," Asha said. She pulled her autocannon from her back, and looked for a decent spot on the floor. "That should lead to the main hallways."

"Actually, that would be ill advised," T'Soni said. "You should try that wall," she said, pointing. Shepard gave her a nod, then moved to the warped dome of metal. It was hard and it was dense, but it wasn't platinum or lead, or worse yet, Prothean Steel, but she still cracked her knuckles and rolled her shoulders, before sending her fists forward. The sound of her metalbending seemed to echo through the chamber like a gong.

"So much for the element of surprise," Shepard muttered. She pounded forward again, and this time, ripped.

She opened it into an utterly alien environment.

While floodlights bathed most of the chamber before them in light, every 'shadow' found itself lit from within by photoluminescent grasses which covered the floor. The architecture was more in keeping with the Sun Warrior ruins on Earth than a high-tech facility, everything looking like it was made of hewn stones. Statues marked a circle around another dome, this one of smooth, white stones. It wasn't marble, or at least didn't look it. But for the gaps between them, every brick could have been identical, a smooth, milky, translucent white. The statues themselves were no doubt of the Insuannon themselves, shown sitting forward, their bald heads in their hands, the tangle of tendrils which dangled out of what other species would call a mouth dropping down away from it. Every one of the statues had weeds and vines digging into them, which was beyond odd, considering there was no light to be had for plants to grow down here.

And yet, grow they did.

Probably some sort of thermochemotrophic plantlife.

There was a silence which followed Shepard's breaching into the facility. There were dead people on the grasses. A few scientists, a lot of marines, much fewer of these 'Golden Spiders'. Then again, the choke point they'd picked was literally the only way in, so the marines had to crush their way in using wave tactics, instead of anything nuanced or careful. Why they didn't simply earthbend their way in, Shepard couldn't have said.

"Then what was below us?" Asha asked.

"A geothermal energy cell," T'Soni answered. Shepard jumped down from her high vantage, and landed on the black grass. "Isn't this familiar?"

Shepard turned back to her. "To what?" she asked.

"It looks like Ilos," she said. Shepard turned, taking it in, and gave a shrug.

"Well, considering Ilos was an Inusannon world, I should think it would," Shepard said, and shouldered her rifle. It was astounding that T'Soni and Elli got as far as they did, given all of what was arrayed against them. And especially considering the distances involved. Four kilometers down was not a trifling distance. "Any defenses I should know about?"

"The only defenses were soldiers," T'Soni said. "Installing that sort of infrastructure inside an untapped ruin was considered a poor idea."

"And understandably so," Asha agreed, as Shepard reached the edge of the white dome. She ran her hand along those bricks. Completely smooth. And when she did, she noted that she got no vibrations back from it. Plastic. This entire thing was made of high-impact plastic, cut to resemble stone. Another way to keep benders out, Shepard guessed. The strangest thing about them, though, was how things became dulled and muffled when she was close to them, the sound of footsteps vanishing. It was like the bricks were eating sound.

"I have never actually been within this place before," Asha said, looking around as they skirted the fallen and moved toward this dome's one entrance. As they went, they passed by what looked like stalls that were set onto the grass. Places where the scientists of every race and species had tinkered and toyed with the things they brought out of the greater ruin below. Most of them had been scattered, either by people grabbing something and running, or simply by somebody ransacking the place. Probably the latter.

She peeked through the door before she actually walked through it, and good that she had. More marines, one of them wearing IED tools. Shepard pulled back, and glanced to the others. "They're preparing to blow the place," she whispered to the two women with her. Well, one woman and one monogendered alien, but still. "If we go in loud, we're going to make them panic and hit the switch."

"How many?" Asha asked.

"Four that I could see. Probably more that I couldn't," Shepard said. She gave a second peek, as one of them put a blasting charge on a support pillar. Most of them were probably at the bottom of the site, to dump the whole ruin into the magma tube. She wagered that anything worth preserving couldn't survive a bath in liquid rock. Asha quickly rounded the door, to peek in through the other side.

"Hrm. Too far a distance. The blindest of fools would know to glance before we could close."

Shepard, though, pulled her sidearm. "We only need to close on one of them," she said, clicking the suppression function on. While she wasn't much of a fan of pistols, this one? This one was handy. She gauged her timing, trying to make sure that she didn't leave herself open. She waited, as one prepared for demolition, and the other two ambled. When one of them was behind the other three, facing in her direction, she spun out, and fired a pair of shots. The only sound which came was a loud click from her end, and the pop of a bullet going supersonic. The first, as expected, smashed against barriers, but the second, an instant after the first, found its home in a helmeted skull. She started forward, even as the first of them was falling. She had to move fast, but at the same time, be ready for the next shot. Lucky she was an airbender, then.

When she'd gotten half way down that exposed and open hall, one of the ones keeping a bead on the bomber turned, seeing his comrade on the ground. Instantly, as if drawn by a targeting VI, Shepard put her sights on him. In the instant between his intake of breath and his screaming about the people coming behind them, Shepard put another two rounds out, these into his head. The unfortunate thing was that as he fell, the third saw him drop, and Shepard had to turn her attentions to him. This time, though, he started to dodge before even spotting her, so her second headshot flew wide and struck the wall. Instead, she broke into a run, swapping sinks and trying to stitch shots toward him. The last three ended up inside his chest, but the crash drew the attention of the bomber himself.

Shepard dropped all pretense of steath at that point, and hurled herself at him as he turned toward her. The drop-kick she levied was enough to send him smashing into the wall, his head cracking against the explosive he'd planted. Shepard, before even rising, kicked his legs out from under him, sweeping upward as she came, then drove her Omniblade down into his throat at the first available moment. Breathing deep, she glanced one way, then another. Nobody else had seen her. Hopefully, nobody had heard her, either.

She beckoned the others to come, and when she did, she peeled the explosive away from the pillar. That wasn't going to do anybody any good there. Like an onion, the facility moved inward in layers. Like a skewer, the Alliance had burned a direct path into its center. Of course, they'd done that almost sixty years ago, when nobody knew anything about 'preserving prehistoric sites' or 'how much stuff you break when you drill recklessly'. Shepard wagered when the Citadel races saw the mess that humanity had made getting into this thing, they palmed their faces so hard that their hands went out the back of their heads.

"Geng squad, are those explosives in place yet?" a noise came through the bomber's helmet. Shepard winced, and glanced to the others. She quickly stripped the helmet off, to get the transceiver. When she did, she was mildly surprised to find a woman – and a Si Wongi at that – under it. "Geng, are you there?"

Shepard winced toward Asha, then flicked the transceiver on. "This is... Geng squad," she said, attempting her best Si Wongi accent. Instantly, Asha facepalmed. "It is taking longer than I had hoped. A few minutes, no more."

"Good. The sooner we blow this place to shit, the better. I don't feel like dying on this rock for a bunch of ingrates on the Citadel," the voice on the other side said. Then, a click.

"You are a terrible impersonator," Asha said gravely.

"Hey, he bought it, didn't he?" Shepard pointed out. She then stood, dropping the transceiver onto the woman's thickly armored chest. What was it with Si Wongi women and wearing mountains of armor? Probably some sort of cultural thing. Shepard had just presumed it was an Asha thing.

"If he did, then he was more the fool than half the people I wasted two years with," Asha noted.

"Sometimes peoples' stupidity works out in our favor," Shepard noted.

"Since when?" Asha asked, utterly dry.

"Oh, this is close," T'Soni whispered. "The Divination Pit is in there. If we can get to the Beacons, I can get the schematics and we can be free of this place."

"They're going to have eyes on that entrance," Shepard said.

"Then the time for stealth is at an end," Asha said.

"I think Shepard's impersonation was adequate," T'Soni said. Asha chortled.

"Of course you would," she said, and hefted her autocannon before her.

The path they walked through the melted plastic showed layers of art and symbology, no doubt the Inusannon trying to explain the reason for this place to those who would inevitably find it. Shepard didn't know it as well as Elli or T'Soni, but she could tell that there was a marginalized portion of the Inusannon population that built this place to spite them... or something like that. The bas reliefs etched in plastic left much open to interpretation. The crystals embedded into the ceiling and along the walls cast the whole thing in a faintly blue light, its shadows reaching up instead of down.

"We're not far from the Divination Pit," T'Soni said.

Shepard nodded, and followed her rifle in. The path opened into a catwalk, one that Shepard beckoned the others to pause shy of. The metal structure had been put into place to easily access this chamber, contrary to the Inusannons' goal of forcing entrance to walk past their justifications and reasonings for this place before they got to the center. There were voices in that space, voices which should have echoed because of the architecture of the room. The fact that they reached the walls and stopped dead was frankly eerie.

Shepard tapped a function on her Omni and quietly pressed in, picking a nook beside a discarded container. There were seven marines, all of them loitering while a single of their number hooked bombs to the heart of the eponymous pit. The Pit itself was formed out of a similar plastic to the sound-eating walls, only it was grey instead of white. A shimmering fluid pooled inside it, one which seemed to show things to you even though its perturbations were random. Apparently, though, there were ways to make a seeming into a reality. One thing caught Shepard's attention even more than the mercurial pool.

"Asha... Collector," she whispered into her line.

"I had thought them extinct," Asha answered. Well, apparently not, because there was one of them standing before the Pit right now. Pale blue light leaked from the corners of its joints and along the line of its horns, no doubt blazing out of its six eyes. Not just a Collector, but a puppeted one. She couldn't even conceive of how that thing got smuggled in here. Regardless; not good.

"Master, our explosives are almost ready..." one of the marines said to the Collector.

"I care for the destruction of this place, not for your platitudes. Focus on your task, insect," the Collector boomed.

Shepard needed that one taken out fast, since she didn't have room to maneuver and entering the Avatar State was simply not an option. If there was one thing that everybody learned to their great glee, though, it was that even these things would go down to sufficient firepower. And 'sufficient firepower' was practically Asha's middle name.

"Focus down the Collector," Shepard whispered. "Liara? Warps on my mark. Ignore the marines until the Possessed is dead. Asha, on my signal."

"Of course, Avatar."

"Ready when you need me," Liara added.

Shepard took a few deep breaths, centering herself, making sure that she was as limbered as she was going to need to be. The amount of fire that was going to be sent her way in the next few seconds was going to be absolutely withering. And she would need to keep ahead of it... She flicked the suppressor off of her pistol, and swapped it into the groin holster so she could get it quickly. This was going to take a lot of bullets.

"Now!" Shepard shouted. A thud sounded when the entropic force slammed into the the Possessed Collector, making it deflect slightly, but when Shepard detonated the field, it reduced the human next to it to a pulpy mass. It staggered aside, then turned its attention up to her.

"Kill them!" the Possessed demanded. But Shepard was already off like a shot. As the bullets streaking toward her began to dig into the walls and catwalk, she stayed ahead through sheer skill and admittedly a little bit of desperation. She whipped her Mantis from her back as she bounded over a gap in the catwalk, firing in mid-air. The bullet smashed into the pale-blue field that surrounded the Possessed. She hadn't even reached the other side when it lashed out. A crash of lightning leapt from its arm, and she had to pull herself out of its way so that she didn't take it square. She didn't have hands to redirect and she didn't have time, either. She dropped her Mantis and stripped her pistol, taking the shots as she got them in her circuit. The Possessed made a tearing motion, and Shepard barely managed to keep her footing as the catwalks rebelled against her.

Its metalbending was interrupted, though, when a stream of high-impact bullets began to tear into its back. The field held for a moment, but fluttered and sparked when T'Soni put another Warp into it. Shepard once more popped the field, starting to tear apart the land around the Collector. Shepard's shields started to scream at her, though, as she was still taking fire from the Marines, who hadn't yet realized they had to divide their attention. She needed somewhere where she could let her barriers cool off. That was something which, apparently, wasn't going to happen.

The Possessed seemed to be actively ignoring Asha as Shepard ripped with her hands and dove down from one catwalk to another. She hadn't hit the ground when the air smashed into her and sent her splaying against the wall. She kicked free before its white-hot flames could finish the one-two, and let them instead bite into ancient plastic. She twisted the air under her into a scooter, zipping around the chamber no longer beholden to the structure that Man had put there. That made it easier to dodge the incoming fire, as now she could use the body of the Pit to block shots even as she swung her arms through that practiced kata. When she emerged on the other side, scootering up toward the lowest catwalk level, her arms were crackling with lightning.

The crack of it sounded so strange, as she sent it raking along the Possessed. Thunder without an echo was... unnatural. It finally staggered, then, but Asha's fire came to a halt as she had to swap blocks. Shepard needed to keep the pressure up. She jumped off of her scooter, running full on at the human who was also reloading. She didn't bother going for a gun. Instead, she spun out her Omniblade and with a bound, slammed it into the center of his helmet. When he fell back, the heat-sink he was reloading flew into Shepard's waiting hand. She slammed it into her pistol, swung it toward the Possessed, and started firing on its head. The first two shots seemed to carom off of its head, but the third chipped into one of its horns. She knew the trick to killing these things. Her face tightened into a rictus as she made the next shots count, rupturing the horn and causing it to explode glowing ichor off of the Possessed's body. The ichor faded to red within moments of leaving its source.

"A little help!" Shepard shouted, as the Possessed, ignoring its injury, made an aggressive, metalbending stomp toward her. A ripple started through the metal, reaching toward her and she could sense the power coming with it through her boots. But it was cut short, when a new stream of fire came down, slashing the second horn and causing it to burst as the first had. The stream was then twisted away as Asha let out a yelp of pain. Shepard had to take this opportunity, because it was the only one she was going to get. She ran forward, through the buckling and rupturing, letting airbending propel her faster than the place would have allowed. The bow-wave pulled one of the marines who was trying to kill her off of his perch and sent him plummeting to the slope below. It probably wouldn't kill him, but it'd keep him out of the way for a while. She would have to take that.

"You will die, Avatar!" the Possessed bellowed at her as she came.

Shepard ducked under its firebending, sliding along the floor between its legs, kipping up on the other side. It tried to circle-kick her with other flames, but she took and kept its back as it came, her hands flying through the motions of reloading and changing the ammo-type. It tried to round on her, but she was too quick for that. When it pulled in, and sent out a blast of biotic force, Shepard rooted herself on the ground, her pistol clicking awake once more. "But not today," Shepard said.

Then, she crossed the meter which separated the two in their deadly dance, put the pistol to its head, and fired an Impact shot straight into its chitinous skull. The way it exploded was viscerally satisfying, even as it was fairly disgusting. The body, no longer being adequately held together by the Reaper's power, burned itself into ash and pooled on the floor. Shepard turned that pistol to the nearest standing marine, firing the shots which sent him stumbling back, his aim spent and wasted. Then, she pulled her Avenger to finish him off. The droning of autocannon fire rose up one more time, and a few pistol shots later, several people fell out of Liara's Singularity, sliding to the bottom of the room.

"Squad? Are you still up?" Shepard asked. She looked around the room. A few dead scientists here, too. One of them was slumped forward over a data-panel, now cut off due to the Collector's metalbending.

"Thankful for the thickness of my armor," Asha said.

"It is astounding how quickly you forget how hectic a firefight can be," T'Soni added. "The databanks should be down... there!" Shepard craned her neck around until she could see where T'Soni was pointing. The asari then vaulted down, even as Shepard rounded toward where she was going.

"So this is you and Elli's work?" Shepard asked, looking down the row of Prothean Beacons.

"Yes," T'Soni said. "She found it most helpful to transition formats first, before we did any actual data-mining. It was actually a fairly intricate process, which started with Elli communing with the Divination Pit and gathering the Inusannon data into..." she trailed off when Shepard just stared at her. "Right. Simply put, everything which we found is in these."

"Which one?" Shepard asked. T'Soni glanced between several, then pointed.

"That one. Yes, I'm sure of it," she said. Then, a silence. "Aren't you going to get the data?"

"Um, isn't that a terrible idea?" Shepard asked. T'Soni had a confused look. "I don't even know what I'm looking for."

"Oh, right," she said.

Shepard rolled her eyes, and as she did, she noticed one of the hard-light projections flickering and fluttering. When it became solid, it wasn't showing the Pit's superstructure anymore. Instead, it was showing a man who was looking intently forward. He was unshaven and smoking furiously.

"Is it through yet?" Weaver asked. Whatever answer he got wasn't audible to those present. T'Soni, about to 'hit the Beacon', spun with a gun out at the projection, before realizing that firepower wasn't going to be of much use right now. "Okay, I can see that it is. It's been a while, Shepard."

"Not long enough," Shepard said grimly. Weaver smirked and pointed toward the Pit that lay at the heart of the chamber.

"Such a fascinating means of storing information," Weaver said. "If only we thought to try the things that T'Soni and Ellidor were doing decades ago, we could have unearthed information that brought the Inusannon to prominence a hundred thousand years ago," he shook his head. "Instead, we sit on our hands and let the Citadel Council fart around in it, treating it like every other 'Prothean' site, never considering for a moment that this is something outside their paradigm. Pointlessly chasing a ghost that never lived to begin with."

"What do you want, Weaver?" Shepard asked.

Weaver took a long drag, then glanced between Shepard and the Pit. "What I've always wanted," he said. "This thing holds the solution to the Reaper threat, Shepard..."

"A solution which requires leading deluded men to their deaths at your convenience?" Shepard demanded.

Weaver turned his artificial eyes to her. "The men that I've given purpose and direction to are better informed than most that you employ. Look at what befell this place. My soldiers died to a man trying to protect what those you're so proud of tried to destroy. They knew the risks better than any Alliance soldier, I'm willing to bet."

"This doesn't excuse raising your own army, Weaver, let alone everything you've allowed under Phoenix," Shepard said.

"Shepard, allow me to make this perfectly clear," Weaver said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it under his toe. "I will do whatever it takes to defeat the Reapers."

"Like I haven't heard that b–"

"If I have to lose every copper penny that I've ever earned to defeat the Reapers, I'll do it. Gladly," Weaver cut her off, expression no longer jovial. "If I have to sacrifice nine out of every ten human beings so that the tenth will survive, I will. If I have to be remembered in history as a monster, so that we get to have a history to remember me, I'll take that mantel gladly. If I have to burn a thousand worlds, so that the Reapers will fall, then I will burn them."

"And you claim you're not a monster," Shepard muttered.

"If there was a way that I could defeat the Reapers without losing a single innocent life, I'd take it," Weaver said. "But there isn't. I'm willing to do what must be done. Somebody in this war has to be."

"Earth is under siege and you're bickering about who's going to be the one to beat the Reapers?" Shepard demanded.

"I want to trust you with this, Shepard," Weaver said. "I really, really do. But the fact is, I can't depend on you to do the smart thing – the practical thing – so I'm going to have to do this for myself. There's more than one way to win this war. And one way or another, I'm going to find it. You made your position clear when you destroyed the Collector Headquarters, so I'm not going to waste breath to convince you otherwise. Instead, I think I'll let my actions speak for themselves."

"That place was an abomination and it had to be destroyed," Shepard said. She shook her head. "But if you're so convinced that you know what you're doing, then work with the Alliance! Cut Phoenix adrift and do some good instead of..." she trailed off.

"Shepard... with you at the head of the resources I could bring to bear... honestly, you would do better than most. But this is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced. And as much as I like you, I can't leave an alcoholic with anger issues in charge of the only chance we have of victory. I brought you back to life with a singular purpose: to defeat the Collectors. And you were in some ways surprisingly effective. But the plan I need can't depend on one lynchpin. That's what you are. A lynchpin. And everybody knows it, even the Reapers," he pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. "I'm sorry, Shepard. This is the way things have to be. Ju Li? We're done here."

"That we are," Shepard said. "T'Soni?"

The asari nodded, and moved toward the Beacons, but as she did, all four of them dimmed. She stopped, blinking between them, and glanced back. "Shepard, something is happening."

"What?" Shepard asked, turning away from Weaver's visage.

"The power is being sapped and the Beacons are inactive. Somebody is in this system..."

"How? I thought only organics could use these things!"

"Organics... or..." T'Soni began, her Omni flashing through pages.

"Avatar! Look!" Asha shouted. Shepard glanced up, following Asha's point. The 'dead scientist' who'd been slumped over the panel wasn't there anymore. Instead, Shepard could see the woman sprinting toward the rift in the plastic hull surrounding the Pit.

"She has the data!" T'Soni shouted. Shepard didn't wait or ask questions. She bounded up to the catwalk, rolling into a run that had to dive under a fireball that streaked toward her inside a hard-light cage.

"Catch up!" Shepard shouted as she raced up the tunnel, closing distance on the fleeing woman. As she reached the outer breach, Shepard was hurling herself into a tackle. With apparently superhuman reflexes, she managed to bound out of Shepard's grasp and cast down a blast of frigid chemicals which momentarily locked Shepard's joints and caused her to face-plant in the turf before her suit thawed enough that she could run again. The woman bounded up the scaffolding with the ease of an acrobat, before diving through the breach that Shepard had made on her way in. Shepard's boots tore sod as she got speed under her, and sent herself barreling through that breach, landing at a roll just in time to see the woman wrapping her arm around one of the counterweight cables, and then firing a few shots downward. With the line severed, the woman was sent streaking upward.

Shepard honestly came to a stop, watching the woman ascend. That should have ripped her arm off, not bore her up. A shake of the head later, and Shepard was looking around, trying to think of a way to catch up. Heavy armor and no glider ruled out airbending. Metalbending would be too slow. Firebending... now there was an idea.

Shepard ground her feet in, then took a bound upward, before thrusting her fists downward and erupting brilliant flames below her. The force pushed her upward, steadily gaining velocity, slowly gaining ground. The counterweight had reached its terminal velocity, so the woman essentially had a steady velocity. Shepard, though, accelerated. She was almost invisibly small when she reached the roof, which once more had Shepard wondering how the impact with the ceiling didn't just outright kill her. Instead, she passed beyond the lip of the Long Drop and out of sight. Shepard twisted in the air, cutting off the upward thrust, and sent out a blast that slowed her enough that she powered into an arc that followed the fleeing woman instead of crashing headlong into a roof.

"Vega! Somebody's got our data and is going to try to evac! Cut her off!" Shepard shouted as soon as the signal could reasonably be expected to reach its destination. She landed at a roll, and took off at a sprint past where Elli and T'Soni dropped back into the picture. She caught only a glimpse of the woman rounding a corner, following the blood back toward where Erdeni had her at gunpoint mere minutes ago. When Shepard reached the decontamination room, the doors slammed shut in her face, and the woman bolted past the glass toward the exit. There was a groan as the radiation sweeper tried to come back online, but bullets had killed it in a way that mere programming couldn't undo.

Shepard glanced to the glass. Reinforced, but silica was a form of earth, and the metals just as much so. The plastics would be the tricky bit. Shepard reached hard, grabbing the glass with her bending, and heaved back. There was a crunch, and a spiderweb of cracks spread out from its center. She then thrust forward, and to a new crunch, more fissures and fractures. Whoever designed this stuff knew their business. Shepard then rooted her feet in the floor, squatted low, then heaved. There was a crash as the glass burst, flying in tiny shards into the hallway beyond, but even then, it was only a gap half a meter across at the dead center of the pane. Good enough.

She gave a glance behind her, considering waiting for the Long Drop lift to meet her, but that was time she didn't have to waste. The agent was almost out, no doubt. So Shepard bounded through that breach, and let her legs pump. Erdeni's actual hiding spot, marked by his blood pooling, shot by her as she outright leapt into the heart of the entrance room. She regretted it, because her eyes began to sting and burn. She hit a command, her helmet rattling up as she continued onward. Focus, Shepard, she chastised herself. You can't lose your grip like that! When the helmet was in place and her breathing now pulling in air instead of the unhealthy mixture of carbon dioxide and other unpleasant substances that filled the atmosphere of Okina Oni.

The doors to the outside world were left open, the lift parked at the top. Shepard let her airbending bear her upward, punching through the floor of the lift when she reached it, and hitting the down command as she ran past. Asha and T'Soni would need everything in their favor to make up the distance. Shepard wouldn't be surprised if they were reaching the top of the Long Drop only now.

When Shepard ducked through the narrow gap in the doors the first thing that struck her, before even the notion that the agent could be anywhere by now, was a fist that felt like a pneumatic punch. It sent her rolling to one side, and she hurled a blast of airbending that hurled the ambushing agent off of her feet. She didn't fly as far as Shepard had anticipated, but landed on her feet, a firearm flying to her hand and sending bullets in Shepard's direction with brutal precision. Until Shepard rolled her way behind a support pillar, every single one of the shots was hitting her square. She took a moment, letting her barriers spool back up, and glanced a glimpse at the agent.

She wasn't wearing a helmet. That brought to mind two possibilities for Shepard. One, she was wearing a breather and was almost blind – a notion proven false by her marksmanship out here – or two, that she was an airbender, and just holding a bubble around her until she could get somewhere breathable. Shepard leaned toward the latter. She also leaned out of cover and sent a cluster of fire from her Avenger at her, only to have the woman pop out and fire back, the shots tearing the rifle out of Shepard's hands, and then hitting it again before it struck the ground. She was running, and Shepard couldn't stop her.

Still, no reason not to try. She rolled to her feet, and thrust her arms up. A shelf of rock jumped up before the agent, but she simply diverted. Shepard tried again, to hem her in completely, but when that shelf rose up, the first one burst and crumbled as incoming fire sapped it and sent it falling down. Shepard squinted, trying to make out a shape in the murk. When she did, her blood ran cold. It swooped past the facility, coming in over the ground and hovering there. A Kodiak shuttle, but not one wearing the colors of the Alliance.

"No!" Shepard shouted, as the woman made a sprint for it, and Shepard knew her earthbending wouldn't reach her in time. "Vega! Normandy! ANYBODY!"

And her heart stopped when the agent jumped into the shuttle, and the doors swung shut.

It didn't start again, until another form streaked out of the haze and slammed into it. Shepard stood there like an idiot, and only had time to mutter "Oh, hell..." before the tangled mass of both of them slammed into the parking area, and a great chunk of the escaping shuttle collided with Shepard and hurled her from her feet.

She wasn't sure if she'd lost consciousness, but when her eyes opened and her breathing began once more, she certainly felt more like she was coming back from the dead than coming back from a concussion. Then again, the amount of times she took a head-injury today would make most athletes recommend she take some time off.

Shepard pushed herself to her feet, making a stand just as Asha and T'Soni cleared the door and joined her up top. The hatch of her own shuttle opened, and Vega bounded out. "Told you I got that one."

"Did you just ram a shuttle holding a pregnant Prothean and a–" Shepard demanded.

"Gravid Prothean," T'Soni corrected her.

"Gravid means pregnant," Shepard snapped.

"Not in her language," T'Soni noted. Shepard swallowed a growl, then faced Vega once more.

"And a wounded POW into another shuttle?" Shepard finally finished.

"It worked, didn't it?" Vega demanded.

"You primitives are all insane!" Elli's complaint was made clear, even though she remained in her own shuttle.

"It doesn't help if the data was destroyed!" Shepard snapped. The fuel managed to burn even in the hostile environment. Considering it was self-oxidizing, that shouldn't have been surprising. Asha nodded and moved for the burning shuttle. "Asha? Is there anything intact in there?"

"I see..." Asha began, and was cut off when the damaged door exploded away from its fixture, missing Asha by centimeters. Storming out of the flames came a blackened figure. The agent, moving as though she wasn't actively on fire, let alone being burned to death. Shepard reached back for her Mantis, and only then remembered that she'd dropped it in the Divination Pit. Her side-arm... gone. Her Avenger now had a chunk of burning shuttle on it.

Asha reacted fast, bringing her autocannon up, but the agent – who it was now apparent was some kind of goddamned robot – ripped it from her hands and hurled it aside. Asha backpeddled a step, drawing her overpowered pistol, but the shots that she would have sent into the automaton were each slapped away, before the machine darted through Asha's defenses, and grabbed her by the helmet. She spun fast, bashing Asha against the side of Vega's shuttle. From a hit like that, even Asha could be forgiven for being stunned. Vega couldn't get a shot on the robot, who held Asha between itself and he.

Its hand rose to the side of its visor, and the atmosphere allowed her words to pass.

"What are my orders?" it asked in a fairly pleasant voice.


Weaver leaned back. "Your orders?" he asked. "Your orders are to bring me that data. Al'Wahim is irrelevant."

The stealth-bot gave a nod at that. "Understood. Terminating hostage."

"Wait, I didn't say..." Weaver began, but he could only fall silent and wince as the robot first smashed al'Wahim's head against the floor, then drove a fist straight down into the faceplate, causing it to buckle and dent. Weaver's face fell into his hands. "Yup. I'm getting blamed for this."


"Asha!" Shepard shouted as the machine drove its fist so hard into Asha's face that her head caused the rock to crack. Vega opened up, but the avenger's bullets spanged off of the robot's barriers as it charged. Vega then swept his arms up, rock trying to sweep the machine down, but it navigated the wave as easily as a surfer, before outright hip-checking Vega so hard that he flew through the air and landed in a pile five meters away. The machine seemed to only have eyes for Shepard. And she was closing fast.

No guns, no plan, no time.

Shepard swung her arms in a single arc, as though sweeping from a spot above her head, and dragging down toward her groin, before lashing both fingers forward. The bolt of lightning that she'd managed to conjure in that instant was pale compared to a proper bolt, but given the speed that she needed to loose it, she was still pleased when it burned through the machine's barriers, fried its body, and sent it collapsing into a pile on the ground a mere meter from Shepard's feet.

"Asha," Shepard said, bypassing the machine entirely. When she reached Asha and pulled her head out of the little crater that the machine's blows had created, she swallowed with absolute fear because there was red dripping out of the back of her supposedly hermetically sealed helmet. "Liara! Help me with her!"

"What the hell just hit me?" Vega asked, shaking off the fact that he'd been beaten up by what looked like a fifty-kilo waif.

"Grab that and bring it," Shepard pointed at the machine as she and Liara together pulled Asha up and dragged her to where Vega had 'landed' their shuttle. Shepard and Liara stepped through the atmosphere shield into the shuttle and let Asha fall onto the floor. Shepard then had to metalbend the poor woman's helmet off, because it was too broken to deactivate otherwise. Shepard almost felt a little sick to see Asha's face in the condition it was in.

But she was still breathing. That was something. It had to be something.

"What has happened?" Elli asked, leaning down beside Asha.

Shepard sat back against the wall as Vega unceremoniously dumped the robot onto the shuttle's floor. "I have no idea," Shepard said.

She was silent as they rose up out of the atmosphere, and Shepard could only feel another wince as they beheld, streaking toward the surface, a trio of Reapers. They'd made their escape.

And it didn't feel like a victory.


Weaver got up, and lit up his eightieth cigarette of the day. "Ju Li, who was responsible for programming that thing?" he asked.

Ju Li, ever the able assistant, gave an askance look at that. "What do you mean?"

"If they were Samsara, I want them fired. If they were Phoenix, I want them fired, and then killed!" Ju Li blinked dully at him. "If I can't trust my machines to do what I goddamned tell them to do, then we've got a snowball's chance in the Fire Nation of actually beating the Reapers. Clear?"

"Perfectly," Ju Li said.

Weaver, though, turned and faced the panel of information that dictated the decisions he made on behalf of the human race. "This is just what I needed today. Having to run down a bunch of over-literal AIs."

He threw himself down into his seat, and sullenly smoked as he tried to figure out how much this was going to set him back. Not just in Shepard's goodwill – which contrary to his own deceptions, was actually rather important – but in terms of all the other operations which had these things flying by dodgy programming.

"Do you want to be the Coordinator of Samsara, Ju Li?" Weaver asked.

"Not even a little bit," she answered, eyes on her own business.

"Figured I'd ask," Weaver sighed.


Shepard found herself staring at Asha, who'd been stripped of her armor and laid out on the table of the infirmary. There was nobody to fuss and care for her. That didn't seem right. And Shepard wasn't a quarter of the healer she needed to be in order to make all of this right on her own. She wagered if she even tried, she might just kill her.

"I am so sorry, Ash..." Shepard whispered. "I shouldn't have gotten you involved."

"Aimei?" T'Soni said from the doorway. Shepard didn't pay attention. "...Shepard?"

"What?" Shepard asked over her shoulder.

"We have to leave the Agni System," she said, moving to Shepard's side. Shepard just nodded dully.

"I know."

"She needs medical attention and we can't give it here," T'Soni continued.

"I know!" Shepard said.

T'Soni leaned into Shepard's line of sight. "She can get the help she needs on the Citadel. We should go."

Shepard found herself uttering a single, highly inappropriate laugh. "Yeah, I guess I should go," she muttered.

"Aimei, please. Talk to me," T'Soni said, those eyes starting to well a little. "After all this time..."

Shepard, though, was trying very hard on her own not to cry, and T'Soni wasn't helping right now. She held up her hand, a forestalling gesture. She bit down the guilt that was flowing like blood through her veins, and turned a vitriolic look toward the scorched machine that had been dumped into the corner of the infirmary. "Just... work with EDI. Find out what's on that thing," she said. She turned, and started toward the door, but before she could make that distance, she felt her hand being caught, and she was brought to a halt.

"Aimei... promise me you're not going up to your quarters to drink," she asked, voice barely above a whisper. Shepard turned to her, swallowing past a lump in her throat, and gave a weak nod. At the moment, drinking was the last thing on Shepard's mind. She pulled her hand free of T'Soni and left the infirmary behind. She didn't walk far, though, before putting her back to the wall and thudding it with her head.

"How could I do this?" Shepard asked, perhaps of herself, perhaps of the universe. Either way, she didn't get an answer.

"Shepard?" EDI interrupted her gloom. "I've received a signal through our QEC. It is from Admiral Hackett."

Shepard's eyes bugged. Oh, there was a meeting that she wasn't going to enjoy, even virtually. There was only one person who could be more pissed about what happened on Okina Oni. Shepard nodded. "Patch it through, I'll speak to him in the War Room."

She crossed the ship, passing by the monument and up the elevator in a matter of moments that seemed to stretch into weeks. She knew she was out of uniform; wearing only the shorts and undershirt she bore under her armor, it was downright unprofessional. Shepard was feeling unprofessional right now. The path passed in a blur as she moved into the actual chamber of the QEC, a bank of computers which she only barely understood the workings of.

Hovering in faint blue hardlight was Steven Hackett, Admiral of the Fifth Fleet. His image was fuzzy and indistinct, but it was obviously him. "Admiral Hackett," Shepard said, giving him a salute as she entered camera shot.

"Did you get to the Archives?" he asked, his voice cutting in and out as he did.

"EDI, clean this up," Shepard said, then turned to Hackett once more. "I was there. But so was the Illusive Man."

"I should have known that Weaver was going to try something," Hackett rubbed at his chin. "He's got us in a terrible position. We can't denounce him without saying goodbye to a massive portion of humanity's economy."

"It wasn't Phoenix, though," Shepard said. "The people trying to kill me were Indoctrinated Alliance personnel."

Hackett stared at her so long that she thought the signal might have dropped, before he uttered a grim sigh. "I had to presume that this might happen," he said. "We'll have to screen our security for projects more thoroughly, but that's beside the point if we can't even tell what we're screening for. What about the data? Is it what we're looking for?"

"Honestly, sir, I have no idea," Shepard said, shaking her head. "Weaver almost got away with it. I almost lost al'Wahim to get it back."

"That's not going to sit well," Hackett noted. Shepard only nodded. "Send me a report on that data as soon as it's available. But until you do, I'm ordering you to the Citadel. It's time that the Normandy gets its crew back in order."

"You don't need to tell me twice, sir," Shepard said.

"Make no mistake, you did well today, Shepard," Hackett said. "This could have been a total loss, but you pulled it back from the brink."

"Barely," Shepard said.

"Sometimes, command is in the business of 'barely's," Hackett said. "You learn to take the victories that you can get. I'm sure you'll understand in time. Hackett, out."

Shepard turned from the QEC and faced the supercomputer which now owned the section of the ship that had been essentially rebuilt from scratch. She slowly moved to the console, bringing up the data feeds. Unseen, it crunched a trillion points of data, tapped into networks that Shepard didn't even know the names of, parsed reports given by everybody who had given the Normandy permission to. All to the singular purpose of telling whoever was standing at this point exactly what they had to work with.

And at the moment, the figures were not looking good. Shepard hung her head, feeling like an absolute fraud for being here. While the trip to the Citadel proved to be brief, it stretched eternally for a woman trapped inside her own dread and guilt.


War Asset: Asari

Nassana Dantius

The significant wealth of the Dantius Family has been spread throughout a number of feuding sisters, aunts, nieces and mothers, ever since the establishment of the Illium colony. However, when the Reapers invaded, they swiftly razed the city of Nos Astra to the ground, and with it, put a premature and permanent end to the Dantius family's power-struggles. The only legitimate and recognized member of the Dantius family who was not present and thus is still alive was Nassana, who at the time was in psychiatric care on Thessia.

As the sole beneficiary of one of the largest monetary bequests in galactic history, Dantius immediately dedicated an enormous portion of her now vast wealth to funding and bankrolling the developing war-effort.