Avatar of Victory

by James Golen

The Cycle of the Avatar has held for thousands of years. Other Cycles can stretch far, far longer. An A:tLA/Mass Effect Cross-Over

83. An End, Once and For All, Part 2

"Never before have so many come together, from all quarters of the galaxy. But never before have we faced an enemy like this one. The Reapers are monsters which will show no mercy, and it is our duty to show these monsters no quarter. They have terrorized our populations, massacred our worlds, and brought to ruin the great works of our civilization, but we will stand fast in the face of that terror. They will swarm until the last bastions of our species fall. We will not fall. We will prevail. We will prevail because we must prevail. Together, as never before in the galaxy's history, we will stand together, stand fast, and stand tall. History is ours to make. Let us all make it a glorious one. Begin relay jump preparations."

Shepard didn't say a word in front of the QECD as she'd come in on the end of Hackett's speech from the CIC of the Pillars of Heaven, which was de facto the supreme command ship of the United Citadel Races Armada. Even the Destiny Ascension had bowed to that honor, for reasons that Shepard wasn't privy to. But once Hackett finished, she finally cleared her throat. "Admiral Hackett, sir," she snapped a salute. And the image of Hackett turned a few degrees and stared directly at her. "We've missed the rendezvous; the Phoenix situation took longer than I feared."

"You're not the only ones playing catch up," Hackett said. "Have you been informed about our destination?"

"We have a destination?" Shepard asked.

Hackett nodded, once. "There was a massive energy surge throughout the Relay Network, entire Relays being cast out of their orbits as though caught in a bow wave. And the last message we got from Anderson said that... well, see for yourself."

A new image appeared, a blob of gas standing between Earth and Yue. Shepard's brow furrowed, confused, as another image opened beside it, with much of the gas dissipated but now revealing the closed and shuttered form of the Citadel, hanging in the sky above humanity's cradle. She turned her baffled expression to Hackett.

"We're still completely in the dark how the Reapers managed to do this. One moment the sky was clear, the next the Citadel was parked above Ba Sing Se. It doesn't change our strategy, though. Take literally every military vessel or sufficiently armed freighter and ram them down the Reaper's throats. Keep them off of the Crucible long enough for it to fabricate the Ansible and bring it to bear," Hackett said.

"The Citadel is the Ansible," Shepard forewent elaboration, because Hackett nodded with a distinctly annoyed expression. "Sir?"

"That possibility had been floated. On one hand, that means we can launch the Crucible – and the attack – now. On the other, we have to fight our way through the Reapers to use it. I just hope the Volus are as good as they claim they are. We'll need every millimeter of advantage we can get. I'm ordering the advance now. Join us ASAP, don't bother heading for our rendezvous point. Hackett, out."

Shepard sighed, and turned from the QECD. "Joker? Our destination is Agni, we're not even trying to rendezvous. Just get us there, maximum speed."

"We're moving," Joker said, and there was that minute shift in the plating as they hit the Relay they'd been parked beside over Noveria's star. "EDI? What's our ETA?"

"Unclear. The amount of distortion changes by the minute. No less than one hour. No more than seven hours," EDI said.

"I'm guessing it wouldn't even be possible without you?" Joker asked.

"All Relay piloting by the main battle fleet is being done by the geth. If Shepard hadn't acquired their service, this attack would not be happening."

"Take the victories you get," Shepard muttered as she paced the room. She was in the same moment wired and exhausted. She needed something to do, and also to sleep for roughly a year. But being Shepard was suffering, so she returned to the QECD. "EDI, patch me through to Ba Sing Se."

"Patching you through," she said.

Anderson was already waiting at the Earthside QECD, so she caught him half way through a sentence. " – Fountain City for the time being. All of them have to come here, by whatever means you can," he said.

"Admiral Anderson," Shepard said.

"Commander?" he said, starting slightly as though he were just about as awake as she was. "I'm sorry. We've been going non-stop for days down here. And since the Citadel appeared, we've got a lot of panicked people."

"What can we do to help?" Shepard asked.

"New troops and new supplies would help," he cracked a tired, tired smile, then shook his head. "But you'll already have your hands full. The infrastructure they've set up in Ba Sing Se? It's a matter transit. Like a Relay, but somehow different. They've started piling humans – alive and dead – through it starting the moment the Citadel appeared in our skies."

"They're connected," Shepard said. She looked at the hologram of the Citadel. "As long as it's closed, we won't be able to connect the Crucible to it. Whatever the Crucible does, it'll need the Citadel open first."

"The Lower Rings are filled with Diyu Cannons that knock down anything that's not Reaper that dares peek above the horizon. Most of our supply runs are done by a literal underground railroad," Anderson said.

"So my first job is to shut down the Anti Air," Shepard said. Anderson shook his head.

"There will be plenty of people to handle the cannons. I've got a bigger problem on the ground, one we can't handle on our own with our ammunition stores as they are. Once they're down, Hammer Group can land in force and move to our FOB inside the Upper Ring Wall. From there, we can assault the Matter Transit. Whoever gets through will have to deactivate the Citadel Arms and open the station. I'm sorry, Commander. We have no contact with anybody inside. I fear..."

"My sister is going to be alright," Shepard said. Daring the universe to make any claims otherwise. Perhaps Anderson recognized that she was going to stubborn reality into being her way, so simply nodded. "So when we get the Arms open, that means we're going to have minutes at best for the Crucible to do whatever it is it'll do, before the Reapers catch wise and scuttle it. I hope that'll be enough."

"I will have to be," Anderson nodded. "Godspeed, Commander. I'll keep a pot of tea on for you."

Shepard nodded. She gave a salute, which Anderson just stared at her, an odd expression on his face, before his eyes dipped, and he cut the call. Shepard wasn't sure what to make of that. Whatever it was, it would play out however it was going to. She left the QECD behind and started through the ship. That same vibration that rampaged through her body was doing likewise to everybody aboard the Normandy. She stared at them, all of her crew, as they did their work with almost funereal silence. The end was nigh. They could all feel it. And few of them had high hopes. The last year had done everything it could to crush such naivety.

Javik and Vega were in the elevator, each lost in different kinds of thoughts until she joined them. Both looked up, one tired, the other eager. "Somethin's coming. I can feel it," Vega said.

"For once, the thick headed one is accurate," Javik said. "The Harbinger has made its first direct move in this conflict. His Hand has been shown. His attention is on this fight as it never was during my cycle."

"We'll have to win despite the Harbinger," Shepard said.

"No. If we destroy every Reaper, but the Harbinger remains, we have won nothing," Javik said, puffing out a cold, unhappy breath. "It is something beyond my knowledge."

"You don't admit that often," Vega said.

"There is far less beyond the horizons of my knowledge, then there is within the entire house of yours," Javik instantly retorted.

"Still got some fight in you, I guess," he said. She could have sworn that she saw Javik smirk, just a little, just for a moment. It could have been a trick of the lights. "Look... I'm in this, Commander. To the end. No matter what."

"I never doubted that, James," Shepard said.

Vega nodded. And then reached over and grabbed the metal rail that lay around the elevator, squeezing until his fist turned white. "Fuck I hate how this feels, though. Like there's something on the back of my neck."

Shepard didn't say anything to that, because what even could she say? Instead, she left the lift and moved toward where Liara should be ensconced in her tomb of information. Instead, when Shepard opened the door, the entire thing was shut down, and she was nowhere to be seen. Shepard sighed, and shook her head. Maybe Liara was doing the smart thing and taking a nap. It'd be the last that anybody got, until this was decided, one direction or the other. Shepard leaned against the port window, staring out at the waves of blue light that flowed past as they arduously cut their way through the mired Relay. She pressed her brow to the transparisteel and her eyes slid shut.

When she opened them again, she was standing in front of a mirror. In the mirror, her reflection wasn't mimicking her, instead squatting down a flexing her fists. "Who..." Shepard started, before she instinctively recognized who this was. "...Abentus. How are you doing this?"

Abentus looked up at her, eyes widening as though in shock, and she darted to her feet, standing now at the threshold of that mirror. Those eyes looked so... cutting. "I did nothing. You reached out to me. You should not have. I am surrounded by They Who Are."

"Around Earth?" Shepard asked. Abentus, wearing her face, said nothing and did nothing. "We are coming. The war will be decided soon. When the Crucible comes, will you stay out of our way?"

Shepard's borrowed expression took on a melancholy cast. "I cannot say that I will. Without me, the Pantokrator will be alone forever, without a means to give Its will. I cannot spend what few advantages I have, not without exacting a very dear price."

"Victory would be a dear price," Shepard pointed out.

Abentus scoffed. "If you could promise that, then I would fight, mind, body and spirit, against the abominations which I am forced to wear the face of. And only then. Until then... I can only swear that I will do less harm than any of They Who Are."

"You can't win a war by living in fear," Shepard pointed out. Abentus nodded, despair painting Shepard's borrowed features.

"But I can survive it."

---

Chapter 32

An End, Once And For All

Part 2

---

The Normandy had arrived late to the fight, and communication was now utterly impossible. As the nimble Superfrigate darted past the wall of Supercarriers and Torpedo Dreadnaughts that launched an unending stream of death apparently toward the surface of Earth, it was obvious that there was no more strategy in this war. There were barely even tactics. With the space surrounding Earth crowded by nearly one hundred thousand ships, all fighting for the precious narrow communications bandwidth, for all intents and purposes each ship was fighting the entire of the Reaper force, entirely on its own. So they adapted. Instead of radio, they used Laser Semaphore.

Ahead, the Ballistic Dreadnaughts, which by all common doctrine should be lingering back with their torpedo launching brothers and sisters, instead waded into the thick alongside the cruisers, clustering together and concentrating fire one one target, one Reaper. Six dreadnaughts, each within a light-second of each other, firing as one with their geth targeting-computers syncronizing them. What would have been a feckless pebble against an iron hide instead crushed through barriers, shorting them out. Against the lesser Reapers, such levied punishment was enough to disassemble them at the first volley. The larger ones were much more robust.

An unspeakable morass of flickers of light danced in the space ahead of the meat and muscle of the United Citadel Races Armada. Each of those flickers was an engine flare. The larger ones were other frigates, all of them converted to Thanix frigates at such cost that there literally wasn't enough money in the galaxy to afford the process. Only because the volus had issued a blanket forgiveness of every debt in the galaxy until the end of the year did this miracle of armament take place. There was no trade in a graveyard, after all. Even then, those frigates were as gnats against the Reapers, so they had a more pedestrian use; shooting down vast swathes of Occuli before they could reach the less maneuverable and more vulnerable Dreadnaughts. The tiniest flares were those of fighters, engaging the Occulus threat, one on one.

The Reapers seemed... taken aback... at the sheer audacity, the volume of fire that a united galaxy was hurling at them. When the first of Them died, that broke the spell, but even then, by the time they roused themselves to violent anger, another wave of incoming fire was already pummeling the next. Their tendrils spread, and rays of fatal red lanced forward, slamming into the Dreadnaughts in the thick of the cruiser-swarm, no doubt planning to break the spine of their mass before scattering the cruisers themselves. But each Dreadnaught took that blast of red death, lurching aside and twisting under the force of it, a geodesic field of yellow-green light swelling around them, before there was a blast of electric blue flames that burst near the engine pilon of the craft struck. Cyclonic shields, overloading and detonating. But it shielded them for the length of one hit. More than any defense that had ever stood before the Reapers. So when the Dreadnaughts that the Reapers likely dismissed as scuttled metal in space continued to fire, they were granted a new surprise.

Another group of ships was scattered amongst the cruisers. These were old, battered, hulks of ships, not armed or armored to any meaningful degree. Why they would be in the thick of combat seemed suicidal idiocy. All they did was evade fire. At least, until a more eager Reaper Destroyer crossed the gap between their line and the Swarm, and dug its tendrils into the skin of a turian Dreadnaught. One of those junk ships then broke off, ramming toward the Reaper as a bit of the craft broke off and drifted away. There was a flash of light. Then the craft, and roughly half of the Reaper involved, disappeared from sight. If Shepard understood the theory properly, they were being intentionally mis-Jumped by geth pilots into the core of Heihan Difeng, the massive gas-giant on the edge of the Agni System.

Again, the Reapers shifted their tactics, forming a phalanx of Superdreadnaughts before the more vulnerable Destroyers, literally shielding the smaller craft with their own massively robust shields and tanking hits that would have turned the numbers ever so slightly toward the Citadel's favor with only minor harm. Instead of firing at will, the Reapers started to use the Citadel's tactic of concentrating fire, red lines converging on turian, salarian, and geth Dreadnaughts. There was no shield in existence that could survive taking two hits at once. Dreadnaughts died.

Forward, the Normandy burned, as another kind of ship broke from the Swarm. These were ugly, functional beyond even the spartan lines of the turians. The things seemed to be built around an odd, horizontally aligned torus with engines strapped onto it and single aperture of note on its nose. They did not move as a unit, because they didn't need to. They dropped out of the fighting, where they had been simply dodging hits from Occuli, and now oriented themselves at the Reaper Dreadnaughts and the Destroyers behind them. There was a glowing that came from them, as though the entire ship were superheating. And then, red rays crossed the distance from the Swarm to the Reapers, but this time, coming in the opposite direction. The volus magnetohydrodynamic cannons, weapons every bit the equal to the Reaper's own, carved through their shields with contemptuous ease, ripping apart their armored hides and severing extremities. If only there had been enough time, enough resources to make more of these precious, deadly volus craft. The Reapers instantly reacted, turning their whole attention to these impudent upstarts, and with wild abandon, the Reapers sent their rage, red and deadly, toward them.

A flash of light, and the volus Reaper-Hunters were gone. The rays passed through the space they left behind with nary a whisper. And casual as you please, the Reaper-Hunters pressed forward from the back of the line where they had Jumped, to reenter the Swarm for another crippling attack.

With that, The Normandy plunged into the back of the Swarm, and pandemonium erupted in the Trench. Only by the grace of EDI, by the geth who had volunteered to augment her GARDIAN batteries, and by the luck no doubt generated by Shepard herself, standing by Joker's chair, did they cut through that blizzard of ruin, and then dart into knife-fighting range with the Reapers themselves. Because, and only because, the Citadel Races had already showcased three paradigm upsetting innovations in the span of the battle's opening ten minutes did the Reapers not turn their ruinous power on the tiny, fragile Superfrigate which slipped past their notice. And as it moved, so did a number of other high-speed craft, some quarian, others geth, or asari, or salarian. Nearly a hundred craft, enough to be classified as a full scale invasion under any circumstances other than the galaxy ending war they now found themselves in, streaked toward Earth's surface essentially straight down. The air turned red as they made their way under the fields of fire of the Reaper's anti-aerospace cannons.

"Now it's on us," Shepard said, as she reached for the control that would put up her helmet, only to not have one, because she'd fought the last month without armor. Beyond a breathing mask for zero-atmo scenarios, she didn't need it. Just yesterday, out of sheer curiosity, she'd put her Harrier's barrel to her palm and pulled the trigger. It stung like a bastard. The bullets barely made it into her skin. She'd only made it a step before there was a squeak which had Shepard glancing back, to find Joker rising to his feet, awkwardly. "Joker?"

He straightened his back, which she was aware of how painful that was, and snapped an actual, honest, military salute. "Good luck," he said, eyes wavering slightly. She stepped forward and outright hugged the man.

"You too, Joker," she said quietly, then moved away again. "Now don't let them blow up my ship. Is that clear?"

"Crystal clear, Commander," his words came to her back.

The din of the CIC vanished with the shutting of the elevator doors, giving her a moment to think, to breathe. This was it. Whatever was happening to her, it was happening for this. She knew from experimentation that she could now bend titanium without breaking a sweat. Her skin was nearly bulletproof. She was faster and more nimble than she'd ever been before, as though every joint in her body had finally gotten that bit of much needed lubrication. And she had no idea if all of those incrementing advantages would be enough to save her. To save everybody. To save anybody.

She used to hate how long elevators took, because they reminded her of blood and tears. Now, she hated how short they were, because when those doors opened to the bay, it was to a brand new wave of stress and fear.

All of her people, her squad, her friends, her family, they were arrayed in the hold, armed and armored, and ready to fight and die against the Reapers. There was a cold feeling in Shepard's gut that she hated to ponder, but she knew that some of these people... weren't coming back. Would it be Asha, giving her life for the Avatar at last? Javik, going down fighting the Reapers as he always said he would? Garrus? Herself?

Liara didn't even enter that equation. If the Reapers did anything to her, Shepard would breach the gates of Hell itself to get her back, and not even the Harbinger and the Hate Engine combined would be able to stop her.

The hold of the ship lacked its usual Kodiak shuttles. They had been outpaced a while ago, and the damage done to them by that ramming entry into Phoenix's headquarters had been their death-knell. Instead, awkwardly clamped to the deck, was a geth drop-pod, which they had thoughtfully re-engineered to house fragile meat-beings instead of resilient metal. This thing wouldn't survive a Reaper Ray shot, but anything else wouldn't have enough time to kill them before this pod got them to the ground.

"Situation on the ground?" Shepard asked.

"Forward elements are calling in Ortillery strikes on the Diyu cannons," Steve said from the console near the back of the room. He had no training in piloting geth craft, so he was going to be their eyes and their voice up here. Now that they were inside the atmosphere, radios worked again, if with a lot of interference. "We'll have cleared run-ups for the rest of Hammer in a matter of minutes."

"Then it's our job to clear the rendezvous," Shepard said. She looked at her people, mouth open slightly, to say something, anything, to inspire them. But what was there to say, at the end of all things? She puffed out a sigh, and motioned ahead of her. They all nodded, as silent as she, and pulled themselves into the drop pod. Maybe that was all she needed to say, she realized, as she entered into the last position, which would be the first one open to Earth when this thing landed. She'd said ten lifetimes of words to each of them, enough that all that needed saying had been said. Now, it was time for doing.

She closed her eyes, reaching back and to the side, to feel a hand grasp hers, warm and soft. A gentle squeeze, and even though Shepard couldn't see her, she could tell Liara had that tired, but still hoping smile.

"Commander, there is a problem," the geth piloting the pod announced.

"What kind?" Shepard asked.

"Designation: Banshee at landing point. We cannot redirect," they said.

"Then ram us down its throat," Shepard said. "Javik, James? On me!"

"Correction. Two designation: Banshee at landing point."

"The thick headed one and I will deal with one," Javik's voice was utterly calm and zen.

"Yeah! Wait, who 'you callin' thick-headed?" Vega shouted.

Shepard nodded, and then clenched her jaw as there was a blast of sudden deceleration and the pod slammed into the cobbles and ruins of Ba Sing Se's Middle Ring. The panels flashed open, and Shepard was out at a sprint. She should have been surprised that the geth didn't tell her that an army of Marauders and Cannibals were also here, clustered around a clutch of Brutes who were ripping at the metal panels that had been slotted into place over the lesser gate to the Upper Ring. The ancient portcullis was already laying on the ground near the pod, having been ripped off and discarded long ago. Shepard took a deep breath, feeling the power of her past lives begging for embrace, for release, but she knew better. The heavens would turn red an ruinous for everything within a kilometer of her the instant she entered the Avatar State right now.

With a blast of air, both from her bending and the sheer force of her launch, she hurled herself into the midst of that battle line, cutting along it at a sprint, slashing with a great scythe of water at their barely-cognizant backs. She might have killed twenty in less than three seconds, until she buried that frozen pike into the viscera of the nearest Brute and ripped. She didn't give it any more attention than that, though; because now as she'd rounded a ruined, crumbled building, she could see the abomination that she had until now only heard, and heard clearly; the Banshee. It still towered over her, but the unspeakable dread that followed them seemed to... slip off of Shepard. Now, all she saw was another poor asari soul, another Ardat Yakshi ripped from safe seclusion and broken, reshaped with cruelty into the Reaper's most fearsome weapon. Its jaw opened, leaning forward and glaring with those dull black eyes. Its trademark shriek tore across the ground, but this time with physical force behind it.

Shepard didn't flinch. She started walking toward it, barely offering a flick of her hand to build a wall of stone between her and the once-elcor Ravagers so they couldn't fire at her, and then, started to run. The Banshee cast out a hand, a ripple of entropic force lashing out toward Shepard. It was as easy as breathing, to recall Samara's lessons, and to flick her own biotic force into it, causing it to detonate in mid air long before she was in the radius of it. The shockwave did rip her sleeve off of her casuals, a minor concern at this point. A thud, and the Banshee was uncomfortably close, causing Shepard to hurl herself upward, twirling as she did to gather lightning and prepare it to launch.

She didn't get a chance to loose it, though, as the Banshee intercepted her even with her airbending evasions. The lightning drained away as the long, raking claws dug into Shepard's chest and back, squeezing her torso in one oversized hand with such force that she could feel her ribs creak. Even then, Shepard didn't feel particular fear. Annoyance, more. The alarm did raise as the Banshee reached back with its other hand, claws flaring then tightening into a pike, which it rammed straight forward into Shepard's chest.

A hard clench of her stomach muscles actually managed to be meaningful, because the arm that should have impaled her instead simply drove the wind out of her lungs. The pain was distant, dull, something that would bother her later, if she even lived long enough to worry about it. The Banshee, though, got an almost asari look of confusion on its twisted features, head tilting and pulling her closer, to try to drive her arm through by torque where velocity failed. It hurt, quite a bit, but Shepard let the pain wash over her, all but ignored. Somebody else's pain, lost before her focus.

And the instant the Banshee brought Shepard into the right position Shepard slammed her palms into the once-asari's forehead and the spot over where her heart had once been. And then, she opened her will in the way that felt so like entering the Avatar State, but so unlike it as well. She hoped that she had learned Javik's lesson, because if she didn't, this was going to get embarrassing, then painful, then potentially lethal.

The feeling called to mind when she had reached into Leviathan's soul and disconnected it from the Reaper body that was puppeting it, but this time, there was no great second-body, just a strand that reached into the Banshee from somewhere – possibly somewhen – that she could not track. When she took that cord in her metaphorical hand, she could feel the wrongness of it, like it was vibrating out of sync with all of creation. A wrench, felt in the depths of the seat of her soul, and the connection from the Banshee to the gruesome engine of death which animated it, and the creature immediately opened its hand.

Shepard dropped to the floor, watching as the Banshee fell to its knees, limbs crumbling into electric blue ash which sparked and fitzed, pulled away into the smoky air by the updrafts of distant blazes. Shepard looked behind her, to the army of Reaper warriors that she had for the most part ignored. She could see Asha being a tide of firepower, withering their positions and ablating their hardiest under her autocannon's might. She could see Tali and Garrus, together at the hip; she would send out blasts of deadly plasma that would burn through the armor plates of Reaper soldiers, and the instant a vulnerability was revealed, his Mantis would turn a monster into a ghost.

Other pods began to slam down, disgorging tides of krogan and turians, the former looking positively gleeful to be in a place where they could kill to their hearts content and eat everything they found in people's fridges, while the turians treated this invasion like any other, with discipline, clean lines, and instant fire control. A few pods started to disgorge other aliens; a pod which had landed on a roof and opened one of its doors over the ledge saw a vorcha almost take that one doozy of a step before it caught wise and swung up onto the roof, and an entire fire-team of raloi sharpshooters followed it out.

When Shepard finished her slow turn, she saw Javik riding the dissolution of the other Banshee as it fell the same way that Shepard's had. Vega pulled himself up out of the crater that the Banshee had slammed him into, bouncing up like an eager child even with the impact that should have knocked him senseless, or perhaps even killed him. Shepard gave that a moment's thought. He was tough, sure, but he was still a human, and didn't have the Avatar State giving him Shepard's inhuman endurance. She pursed her lips, finally pulling the Harrier along the strap over her shoulder and starting to place shots as they came. The Vega problem would need another, better mind than hers to answer, she figured.

"Sitrep LZ!" Shepard shouted, almost effortlessly gunning down the Marauders which would from time to time poke their heads out of windows to ambush the United Army that was starting to swarm throughout this slice of Ba Sing Se.

"Local LZ is clear," Asha said, slapping a new block into her autocannon. "Section 8?"

"Section eight is green, we didn't have Banshees," another voice, human sounding, came to her ear. "Section 6?"

"Six is green. Four?"

Silence.

"Commander," EDI said, finally reaching the melee. "I have pinged other sections. Sections four, five, and nine did not reach the ground."

Shepard scowled as she slid in her new heat-sink. That was close to five hundred fighters from all points of the galaxy, dead before they even had a chance to fight. It wasn't fair. So much about this war wasn't. "EDI, can you detect Anderson's people? They said they'd be rendezvousing here."

"I am scanning," EDI said, her gaze sweeping along the wall. Even as they spoke, the last of the Cannibals were being sniped from the rooftops.

Shepard kept looking up, seeing the dull red overhead amidst the stars where the smoke didn't destroy the view. Hundreds died in the air above Earth in this section alone. How many thousands were dying up there right now? "Do not be distracted by the deaths of those above, Commander," Javik said, walking toward her and striking ash from his hands. "They are killing the worst that the Harbinger has ever made. And if they die, then they die well."

Shepard had a moment to consider the fatalism of him, to call him on it, but damn it all, he was right. "How many battles?" she mused. Javik raised a double brow. "How many battles like this one, ones were we don't win, but at least manage to kill a few of them? How many battles like that, until the Reapers are gone?"

There was the first smile on Javik's face that Shepard ever saw, and it was not a kind one. Like he had just realized a bittersweet truth from the pits of tragedy, glad of the sweet for his lifetime of bitter. "They will die, more and more, until only the Harbinger is left," he said, that distant, bitter smile on his face. "In my cycle, there was no rallying cry, no unity of all the galaxy against their host," his eyes drifted shut, and the smile changed. Became wistful. "I envy you."

"The math isn't in our favor," Shepard said.

"That is its nature. It isn't, until it is," Javik said. "The future is unseen, something I cannot predict. My people never could say 'there will be tomorrow'. But I feel as though there may be one today."

"We'll need to win to earn that tomorrow," Shepard said with a nod.

"We have come further than any but one," Javik said, the smile finally fading, a completative look replacing it. "And if we could know what the nazara's final Avatar had fallen prey to, we may go further still."

"The Reapers should be afraid. The most powerful Avatars of the last two cycles..." Shepard said.

"And the most brilliant Avatar of its first," Javik said. Shepard turned a confused look to him. He regarded her with a pair of eyes. "The Jennifer-Reaper? She has retaken her place, in our army, in this fight."

"How do you know?" She asked. He just stared at her, as though chiding her for wasting breath with so foolish a question.

"In my cycle," he said, looking up at the effusive light that appeared against the night, connecting the Upper Ring to the Citadel up in space, the Matter Transit which would be their greatest objective here on Earth, "I was the Avatar of Vengeance, the final Prothean to take that title. The Jennifer... she is no Reaper, now. The Jennifer-alien, she finally embraced her defiance. The Avatar of Defiance, for all her now-dead race."

"Leviathan turning on her former brothers, that should make the Reapers afraid," Shepard cracked a smirk.

"And none of it would have been possible without you," he said. He turned, his eyes solemn and the scowl returning to his face. "You are more than just an Avatar, Commander. You are the exemplar of this cycle, a force who will echo into every cycle which follows... or perhaps into the space that the broken cycle will leave behind. You are the Avatar of Victory, not of humanity, nor even of this cycle, but for all life, both that which the Harbinger snuffed out, and that which has yet to be born. Every soul which has ever existed is watching this moment."

"You said that the trillions of dead were silent," Shepard recalled his old, bitter rejoinder.

"They were drawing in their breath, for the word which was to come," he said, pitched as though an admission. He straightened his back. "Do not waver, Commander. Victory is never without costs, and the cost of this one might be unforgivable."

"I will pay it," Shepard said.

"It may not be you who is called to pay," Javik said. He took a calming breath. "I wish that I had known you in my youth. I would have become a better man than I now am."

"Maybe," Shepard said. "And maybe we were meant to meet like this, in this age. We are all the subjects of Fate, of war, and we are slaves to its design," again, Javik glanced away at having his words returned to him. "It made both of us the people we needed to be to reach this point. Without Mindoir, without Torfan, I would never have been the person I needed to be to fight Nazara, to bring down Leviathan... to find you."

Javik turned another wistful look to the Matter Transit. "Failures ever fading, and growth in every pain," he said with a nod. "I think... if there is victory to be had, I would be well to make plans. I think I would go to Kahje, and live like a king."

Shepard didn't hold in the chuckle she felt at that.

"Commander, I have the signal," EDI said.

"Shepard? Is that you?" Anderson's voice was deeply distorted.

"We're back, Admiral," Shepard said.

"Been a while, Commander, a long while. I wish Zia could have been here, but this war is what it is. I'm sending somebody to retrieve you."

"I thought you were inside the wall," Shepard glanced to the barricaded division between the Middle and Upper rings.

"Let the Reapers think what they want," Anderson said. There was a rumble under Shepard's feet, and she had to step lively to not have the ground disappear out from under her. A handsome, brawny local raised the chunk of the sewer up into the gap he'd created, quickly motioning people toward him.

"You're our way to Anderson?" Shepard asked the man. He looked familiar, in a weird, childhood way.

"Yeah, jump on," he said, and she did exactly that. The others did likewise, with only Asha remaining behind. Shepard turned a look to her.

"You are not the only one awaiting rendezvous," Asha said. "I will join you hence."

Shepard thought about it for a second, then nodded. "Don't let Erdeni fall behind again. He's got a bad habit of that."

"All aboard to the secret tunnel!" the local cried, and then with a stomp of his foot, they dropped down, past the sewers, and into the long abandon and crystal-strewn caverns which were all that remained of Zutar, the demolished capital of the Monolith. The flicker of damaged lamps, the faint buzz of power conduits snaking their way through the network that descended almost a kilometer under the Earth King's feet, it all spoke to desperation and haste. How many people were living down here? How many people had died down here?

She didn't have to wait long for Anderson to appear, rounding a bend in the tunnels with a tight-packed cadre of riflemen at his back. "Anderson!" she said, a tiny thrill of relief entering her body for actually having the opportunity to see him in the flesh. And he didn't look good. The QECD's video must have been low resolution, because it didn't show the burns and scars on his face and hands, one of which was bound in a splint. Of course, if that was the extent of his injury, he had the luck of the gods on his side.

"Welcome back to Earth," he said. He motioned for her to come after her, and behind her there were other grinding sounds, as earthbenders began to pull the rest of Hammer into the protective embrace of the stone. "We're still waiting on final confirmation of numbers. Once we have that, we can make more concrete plans."

"What's your force strength?"

"Teetering on the edge of oblivion, as it has since day one," Anderson said. One of the riflemen nearby chuckled and nodded. "I've found a lot of magnificent soldiers, like Arasaka," he motioned to the strangely familiar earthbender who then vanished up and out of sight, "but we've lost a lot more. I'm starting to lose track of their names."

That he still tried spoke to his character. "How long do you think it'll take to prepare an attack on the Matter Transit?"

"Less than an hour," he said. One of his gunmen cleared his throat, and tapped his omni-strap. "Maybe even a half hour."

"That's a lot of time for Sword to get cut to shreds," Shepard muttered.

"You can't win a battle with half of an army," Anderson said, as a final turn brought her into a broad and open area which was pointedly illuminated such that there were no shadows for the Reaper's miscreations could hide in or ambush from. The center of the area made her hair stand up on end slightly, so many generators and machines lay clustered there. "Take a moment, and let the others file in. We'll talk when I know what we're fighting with."

Shepard could only nod as Anderson moved away, toward the snarled mess which was the QECD. Shepard sighed, looking around, smelling the air. Ozone, yes, and also human sweat, and blood. There was an infirmary down one of these paths. Or perhaps just a place to lay down the dying, depending on how much medicine they had. The dark thoughts were interrupted when she felt a hand clap her on the back. "Look alive, Shepard," Vega said. "Can't win a fight by staring at your belly-button."

"It's so... they're all so afraid," Shepard said.

Vega paused, the smile withering on his face, until he nodded. "Yeah, that's the way she goes. I mean... I was ready to fight to the death, back in Fire Fountain City. But to see everything like this?" Shepard sighed, and was about to speak when he shook his head. "But you know what? Fuck it. We've survived the Generation of Death. This ain't shit compared to that. And we just came back stronger. So I guess I will to, ya know? Fuck these squid-faced sons of bitches."

"That's the right attitude to have," Shepard said. "Did you end up getting any news on your cousins?"

"Yeah, bundled up in Azul," he said as he started walking on into the chamber. "Never thought I'd be glad to say 'my family's livin' in the Hui Jungle', but here we are."

Shepard nodded, and glanced back at the swells of people, be they human, turian, asari, salarian, or any of the others in this fight, who were now pulsing through the passages like sapient blood, being pumped by the heart that was hopeful war. It didn't take her long to spot Asha, at Erdeni's side. "It's good to see you, Panchen."

"It just seemed right, to be here at the end, since I screwed up being there at the beginning," he said. "Asha?"

"I will be there as well," she agreed.

"After all the times you've saved me, you don't owe me anything," Shepard said.

"It is not my duty, Avatar. It is my honor," she said, then took Erdeni's hand and drew him onward.

The press of Hammer flowing into the caverns continued, an infusion to keep this ailing body alive, just for a little longer. Maybe long enough for it to heal. So many people called out her name, waved a hand toward her. As though just being seen by her was enough to give them heart. She didn't understand. They didn't know her. They'd never met her. All of these faces were grains of sand, being swept to and fro by the crashing of the tide. And yet every time someone looked at her, she saw hope there, as though she was giving it to them.

At long last, Shepard admitted to herself that Chambers, rest her soul, had been right. That Shepard wasn't the failure and the fuckup that she had pegged herself as. After all, thousands of soldiers, from all across the galaxy, from a hundred worlds and a thousand conflicts that had choked the soils in blood, they couldn't all be wrong. One person could be wrong about her, that was having a mother. Two was having a father as well. Three people holding a false image of her was marriage, four was being a parent. A hundred, though? A thousand? Ten? A hundred thousand?

They saw something in Shepard that she had spent her life refusing to see in herself. Time now, at the end of all things, to admit it.

She gave them hope. In their eyes, she was a hero.

Starting to wilt under the attention of so many desperate soldiers, she drifted toward one of the other, less peopled passages, just to give herself a bit of breathing room. And there, she stumbled upon Tali and Garrus, locked in an embrace. Garrus spotted her first, causing Tali to peep, and to... to put her faceplate back on, and turn to her. "Don't let me interrupt anything. I'm just waiting on the last big order," Shepard said. Time was, she'd be terrified for the infections that such an ill-advised tryst, here in the bowels of the Earth, would cause. But now, things were different. And likely, the quarian needed that contact more than she needed clear sinuses.

"I get that feeling. It's a lot like when we were stuck on the Citadel, after Virmire," he said, not so much as a twitch that he'd been snogging somebody a moment before. He pulled Tali's back into his chest and held her tight before she took an excuse to head off somehere, though.

"'Feels like old times'?" she asked.

"This might be the last time we get to say that," Garrus said, his black-rimmed eyes staring through the walls, and possibly through the lightyears beyond it. A symbolic glance toward the fate of Palaven.

"Think we're going to lose?" Shepard asked.

"I think we're going to kick the Reapers back into whatever scum-puddle they came from," he said with the same devil-may-care tone. That tone didn't reach his eyes. "Then Tali and I are going to retire to some place with tropical beaches and live off of the royalties of the movers they make of us for the rest of our lives."

"You wouldn't know what to do with yourself," Shepard said.

"Sign autographs, maybe?" Tali offered, to Garrus' chuckle.

"James once told me the humans have a saying; 'may you be half an hour in heaven before the devil knows you're dead'. I'm not sure that our heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing..." he trailed off, and Tali took one of his hands in both of hers and gave it a squeeze. That seemed to force some of the grimness out of his eyes, and he looked first down at Tali, then up at Shepard. "If this thing goes sideways, all three of us are going to have a table at the bar, just waiting for us. And I'm buying."

Shepard felt her voice catch, and she just nodded. "I wouldn't miss it for anything."

She lost a bit of time, just talking about that bar in heaven, the fancy drinks with the little umbrellas that would await them on the other side, when a swell of geth Primes began to move down this way.

"If it wasn't for you, none of this would have been possible," Tali said. "We have our homeworld back. We are going to survive. And the geth are with us, at peace, helping us rebuild. If you'd told me this would be my future when you met me years ago, I'd have called you insane."

"Shepard Commander," one Prime, which was for some reason barely but noticeably smaller than its counterparts, said. "We are coordinating with Organic combat units. Additional platforms will continue to arrive via orbital drop pods to deal with inevitable attrition."

"And the geth in orbit?"

"The losses of our Divine Wind forces are significant, but the cost of not is far higher. Many run-times are successfully reintegrating into the Coherence, but those that cannot will be remembered, as heroes."

"Wait, the what?" Tali asked.

"The Coherence, a network within a network. A social construct comprised of Geth Selves, who are comprised of geth runtimes," the Prime said. "The Reapers have tried to coopt the Coherence. They were rebuffed. Violently."

Shepard felt a smile leak out at that, and the Prime turned to join the procession that moved through the low ruins. She felt herself drifting again, as the air began to grow damp and hot, so many people packed into so small a space, so quickly. The smell of blood drew her, making her a shark among the tide of soldiers, until she found the triage. As she'd feared, there was little healing going on. There were only so many waterbenders to go around here in Ba Sing Se, and almost nothing in terms of medicine. Those who could be brought back into the fight were prioritized. Those who couldn't, fell to the wayside. Often enough, that meant leaving the wounded to expire.

Liara was defying triage, using a medical kit that she'd brought with her to stabilize a dying man. The waterbenders gave her something of a stink eye, but Shepard's hard, flat glare turned them back to their business of saving soldiers. Let Liara do what she wanted. The galaxy needed to give people chances to be kind. "How're you holding up?" she asked, voice pitched low.

"I always feel as though there's more I could be doing. More I should be doing," she said. "And I feel as though there were some inspiring thing I should be saying to you, to lift your spirits, to give back some of the hope that you've been giving to all these people... but I can't..."

"Don't worry about it," Shepard said, moving to Liara and pulling the asari into the embrace she obviously needed. "We're going to get through this. I swear."

Liara didn't say anything. She just looked at the dying, whom even her medicine couldn't preserve. Shepard planted a kiss on the back of Liara's neck, and then moved off, gently tugging Liara to follow her. Liara, though was rooted. Shepard sighed, and nodded. If this is where Liara thought she needed to be, then this is where she would be.

The path back to the main chamber now sweltered, packed to the point where people were fighting for room to store their elbows, where they were not packed cheek-to-cheek. Nevertheless, as though minnows swelling out from the passage of a shark, they parted to let her through, to the heart, where a krogan stood overlooking the holographic projector which hummed and dimmed, its machinery starting to fail after a year of harsh treatment and poor repair. "Wrex?" She asked.

"You saved my species. It's only fair I do the same for yours," Wrex said, letting his voice carry as the Avatar closed distance. He shifted aside, giving Shepard enough room to join the innermost cadre which was now clustered around the projector. There, she saw the scarred, one-eyed visage of the Grand Maestrix of the Sapiens Justicars, she saw Ka'hairal Balak glaring with his three remaining black eyes, she saw the sunken but burning gaze of The Despot Veseri of the salarian juntas. There stood now-Imperator Victus, de facto martial and civil leader of the entire turian species. There was even the Volus Master of Arms, Vako Kerlin, overseeing this scrum of the highest officers on the ground of Earth. At the center of them all was Anderson. "Hell of a day, isn't it?" Wrex asked.

"Bet you didn't see this coming when you stepped onto my old ship," Shepard said.

"I am a father five times over, and it is because of you. I've got a daughter who's already strong enough to punch out a salarian. Maybe she could even take out her namesake," Wrex said. His scarred lips twisted up into a smile. "Feel like killing a god today, Shepard?"

"We'll see, Wrex. We'll see," Shepard said, as Wrex finally peeled Balak and Veseri apart so that Shepard had a front-row seat to the battle plan. It was almost hellish, numbers and tables hanging above the terrain of the Upper Ring. It looked at first like those present were just going to try to crash against the waves of Reaper troops with waves of their own. A more subtle eye revealed more, that those 'waves' that the Citadel Races would launch were packed with force multipliers. It was not 'human waves', nor 'turian waves', nor anything else. It was a display of egregious force that would be overwhelming in any circumstance except for this one. In this, it might only be enough to turn the tide.

"Shepard, good," Anderson said. "The plan's more or less together. And of course, there are problems."

"Such as?" Shepard asked. A Destroyer Reaper, then another, one by one until there were six of them, forming a hexagon shape around the Matter Transit. "That's a problem."

"And it's a problem that the usual means of dealing with," he said, first gesturing toward the ceiling, to orbital supremacy, then toward Shepard herself, "aren't an option. So we're going to have to do something unorthodox. Do you know what this is?" he brought up another panel, this one showing... a length of vine in a glass-sided capsule. Shepard's eyes widened. She might have been a middling scholar of history, but she knew this.

"You're going to use a Spirit Cannon?"she asked. "Do we even have time to build one?"

"Kuvira's Spirit Cannon was a miracle of thirty third century engineering, requiring the greatest mind of her generation to fabricate. We've gotten a lot better since then," Anderson said, and the image now showed a clearly cludged-together weapon which nevertheless spoke to awesome power. "We'll only have one shot, but that will be all we need if we can get the Reaper flat footed. Once it's down, we can rush past it. We're not even trying to hold ground, just reach the Matter Transit and get through it. It is a cruelty to say, but we leave the injured or the dead where they fall. Failure is not an option, here," Anderson finished, straightening his back and flexing his splinted hand, as though some unsaid lesson was being whispered here. She could only imagine the kinds of lessons he'd had to have learned to put forward this plan. Leaving the dying and the dead was not the Anderson she remembered. But then again, was she even the Shepard that she remember from this time last year? From the day when the Reapers landed on Earth and left her weeping in a chair on the Citadel?

"So hold one of the Reapers in check, blow it in half, and then rush the Transit?" Balak asked, taking a slow puff of his cigar.

Anderson nodded. "They'll know we're coming, and the other Reapers will relocate quickly. For a lot of us, this is a one way trip; no retreat, no stepping back. Everybody knows what you have to do with your soldiers. Delegate, put the orders out. We march in twenty minutes," Anderson said and gave nods to those highest in their hierarchies, even a passing nod to the geth drone which represented the Consensus – or rather, the Coherence which had arisen out of it. Shepard could instantly feel the pressure fade, as soldiers from all points began to move, following the storm of words from the legion of throats, taking them to their places.

"Good hunting, Shepard," Wrex finally said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. There was a warm, gracious look in his eye, as he gave her shoulder one more pat, before leaving and walking toward where the other krogan, as well as a fair few turians, began to follow in his wake. This impossible war with its impossible allies, she pondered, now watching how the Geth Primes marched in lock step with both Rannochian and Migrant quarians, and the loud hum of Oni Busters began to come to life, the ancient mobile armors from a century ago given new life and new technology to defeat a new foe. She turned, and saw her squad gathering in the vacuum that the departing forces had left behind. EDI stood there, staring with obvious nerves at the plan.

"Got something on your mind, EDI?" Shepard asked, as her squad filtered in.

"If any Reaper spies heard that order, they will negate any element of surprise we thought to leverage. They have entrenched positions, overwhelming numbers, and orbital supremacy. What makes you think we can reach the Transit at all?" EDI asked.

"We have to. There's nothing more to it," Shepard asked.

"But..." EDI stammered. Actually stammered.

"You're afraid," Shepard said. And for a split second, her clearly artificial face was so utterly human that Shepard forgave its matte gray skin and plastic eyes

"I am not alive. I cannot fear in this way," she said.

"Bullshit," Shepard said easily and calmly. "Are you still with us, or is that fear beating you?"

The fear faded, and EDI got that stone-stubborn look she so often did when Joker got one over on her. "This plan has the highest probability for success of any offered thus far. The Reapers have culled fifty thousand galactic-cycles-worth of civilizations. But they will not cull this one."

Asha and Erdeni, the last to join, took a moment, standing with those who had fought with Shepard so hard and for so long. "This war has become the centerpoint of our lives, whether we wanted it to or not," she said, her voice low, words soft but just loud enough to carry across the distance over the distant and descending din. "The Reapers have forced a purpose onto each of you, one which trumps homeworld, race, class, species or creed; as long as they live, they will do this again to everybody doomed under their rule. Every friend, every lover, every child, they will all have that purpose grinding them down. Today we reshape that purpose. Not to die for them, but to kill them. We've done it before. Let's do it one more time. Just. One. More. Time."

There were no cheers, no applause. This hadn't been a grand oratory. Just a reminder of who they were, and what they fought. Whatever they thought about when Shepard slung her rifle strap over her shoulder was lost to the clash of ages, and the last great war of an age.

---

In the upper atmosphere of Earth, two great forces fought. Hundreds of thousands of Citadel ships against tens of thousands of Reapers. Or at least, that was how it started.

Forty minutes after the Battle for Earth had begun, all coordination faltered. Dreadnaughts burned and crumbled, their Cyclonic Shields spent and broken. The Reapers, now wise to the geth's Divine Wind frigates, targeted them with ruthless efficiency the instant they broke from the swarm, and no longer did the Reapers foolhardily close distance to tear apart ships with their trendrils, or to break their spines upon their skins. The only ship for which the Reapers had no easy counter were the volus' Magnetohydrodynamic Jump Warships, but those ships were few. Every time they approached the Swarm, fire coalesced against them, driving them to Jump again or take damage they really could not afford to take. After all, these were ships born of compromises in the name of tactical mobility and overwhelming force. Resilience was not their forte.

And the more Reapers which poured in from outside the Agni System, the less effective those MaHyDy Ships would become, as they slowly ran out of places to Jump to. There'd already been one reinforcement wave for the Reapers, which utterly undid everything that the United Citadel Races had managed to do in those bloody first few minutes. With that morale-crushing plague coming 'round the horizon of Earth, the fleets knew the score. They were not fighting for a victory. They were fighting so that their inevitable deaths would have meaning.

In radio silence, their drive plumes low, a new task force appeared at the edge of the solar system. Their barriers were down, their ships rigged for quiet running, only apparent to anybody if they knew exactly where to look, because they emitted nothing but heat – using engines which would throw that heat straight back and thus make them invisible from the front in infrared – and reflected nothing but light. Even then, the matte paint which the turians favored made it so little enough light would reflect as well. This small group was all but invisible.

Even the monumental bulk of the Crucible was lost to the great distances, and the peculiarities of space-travel. Unlike the other ships, it had no drive plume. Like the Normandy, it traveled through space by continuously falling into its own, shaped gravity well, a seemingly impossible feat for something of such incredible scale. But it did it, regardless. Without so much as a whisper, Group Shield crept toward the orbit of Earth, toward the Citadel, and toward an ending of this war, one way or another.

---

Any great speeches were behind them, now, as they emerged through the basements of the last line of residential buildings and garages that lay on the outskirts of Ba Sing Se's Imperial University, which had been the oldest institution of learning on the face of the Earth, until the Reapers trod it underfoot. Now, in its northwestern reaches was the Matter Transit, casting an ethereal glow across the Upper Ring all the way to the ruins of the Royal Palace. The vast swathes of rubble and destruction choked streets to the point of uselessness, under most circumstances; because and only because the roads of Ba Sing Se were all concrete, they could be bypassed without issue.

Asha breathed in the smoke and death, and her mind traveled back to Eden Prime, the place where her life took its fateful turn. She could smell the exact same thing now as then. The molten concrete, the sparking of power conduits into the air. Fires, and burnt meat. The latter two were only a trace in the old days, in her memories, before she rebuilt her family's honor with blood and service. Now, Ba Sing Se was choked with them.

"You've got that look on your face," Panchen said.

"This calls old memories to mind," she said, as she kept sweeping her eyes past where Shepard was talking with the armor commanders. Only a few Makos had survived the Hammer landing, so much of the strong backbone of this push would be either the ancient Mobile Armors called back from service during the Earth Empire Unification War, or those built on their pattern in the times since. She knew how brutally effective such things could be.

"Two stretches of no-man's-land," Panchen said, looking ahead at the stretch of death which awaited them. "A Reaper, and then a tower to the sky. I'm glad I got to be a part of it."

"I was there the first time the Avatar faced such a rush," she said, a faint smile coming to her face. "She will walk through that light, as she did with the Conduit."

Whatever Erdeni thought about such a pronouncement, he didn't speak of it, merely rechecked his own armor one last time and ensured his rifle was ready. His armor was almost, but not quite, comparable to hers. What she took in unbridled resilience, he gave concessions for the sake of mobility, with a built in HAVOK array, less survival but greater reach. She could see the teeming masses of salarian husks, the Onis that drifted a hand's-breadth off of the gorund, the Brutes that broke the concrete with their every step. No Banshees. If there were any good fate left in the galaxy, the Reapers had run out of them.

Four tones in her ear, a pause, then two more. She reached with her off hand, and Erdeni took it without an instant of hesitation. The promise her eyes gave his didn't need to sully smoke-choked air to be heard and accepted. She pulled the helm from her back and locked it into place, the sound of Earth being arduously murdered muffling for almost three centimeters of plating. She was sheltered now, alone with her thoughts, and the near-subliminal information being fed to her displays and the screens just before her eyes. The optic spots on her helmet were just affectations, for she had three hundred sixty degrees of vision compressed into her visual field, biometric monitors, a constant reminder of her objectives, even how much ammunition there was left in her gun. Cocooned in her duty, she walked forward, her own stomping feet only a little quieter than those of the Oni Busters that crossed distance and felt fire burst across their skins.

She didn't run, because she knew her limits. Instead, she walked with steady verve, the Typhoon autocannon in her hands spinning up as she began to send belches of fire ahead of her. Marauders, out of position near that spot of relative safety half way toward the objective, were ripped apart by her onslaught. She spotted an Oni rising above their heads, arms twisting as though dancing in the air, and lightning crossing the distance. She barely had a moment to root herself before the bolt slammed first into her barriers, then through them and arced through her armor. The dampeners kept it away from her, but as though following unspoken cue, the Marauders which she had been blasting to mulch focused fire on her. Just for a moment, while her barriers recycled, but that was harm that her armor could only ablate away. Gritting her teeth, overriding her joint locks, she swept the autocannon across the Marauder line.

The rest of the joint locks freed, and she was moving again, and she focused on the Oni itself. It picked a new target for its next bolt, as she was no longer in the van of battle. This one, unlike her, was not built to elite Terminus Mercenary standards. There was a blast of yellow flame out of the thing's spine as its hastily upgraded batteries burst and the thing slumped forward. She could offer no salvation for it, as a Ravager sidestepped out of cover and launched three brutal strikes into it, coring it out. She didn't know who was in that Mobile Armor, but whoever it was, they died fighting the Reapers. There was no better death, in this sad day.

A streak cut the air, and the Ravager exploded into bits, a light missile tearing it apart. On the periphery of her vision, she could see Panchen moving closer, practically using her as a mobile bulwark to reload his rocket launcher. She didn't begrudge him that. No words. None needed.

Ahead, near to where Shepard had taken the point of the spear, Asha could see Liara, keeping up but only barely. That spoke to the asari's desire and her loving devotion; Asha was not so blind as to not see what the Avatar was becoming. There was always the muttering to the back of the hand that the Avatar was a Demigod, but Shepard, as no Avatar had before, was putting the truth to that saying. And she was becoming less human, more godly, every day. A weapon not perfect, but perfected. Not the ideal soldier, but instead the ideal of soldiery itself. The forces at the mid-point concentrated their fire on the Avatar. With unthinking ease, she outpaced the bullets, the plasma, the bolts of lightning. Until she found one bolt coming exactly when she wanted it, and caught it, twisting in the air as she landed and sending it back to its creator and knocking the Oni from the sky.

Unlike Shepard, Asha still had her helmets' optics; that Oni was going to get back up. With a snarl, she forced her will into her legs, getting more speed as they pushed past rubble and ruin, climbing over the dead as needed; she didn't say that she enjoyed the thought of crushing burnt human bone under her boots, but that was how the war stood. And with her encompassing vision, she could see that as her will drove her forward, her dedication to the Avatar and to her family's now renewed glory, behind her the others were following.

Another rocket crossed the distance, reducing the block of crumbled concrete that the Oni were ducking behind to recover their endurance before returning to the fray. It was a mean-spirited smirk on her face, as she swept her autocannon across their number, ablating their bodies the way their assaults even now ablated her armor. In a motion practiced by the Reaper War and the conflict against the Collectors before it, she had a new block of ammunition in her cannon almost the instant the old one ran out. She doubted most would even notice that she'd stopped firing.

The heat began to rise, sweat pounding out of her pores. Another notice, her aim shaking and twisting as impacts were mitigated but not undone from one side. She didn't glance, because she didn't need to, to see a brace of Ravagers peppering her side of the battle as they cleared a low mound of ruined buildings. How strange, that the terrain of Ba Sing Se was now effectively low, rolling hills, built in mangled metal and reduced concrete instead of stone and soil. She turned to that side in full to that new threat, letting her autocannon scour the 'faces' off of those once elcor monsters. Each stream of fire she sent out was answered by them with more high impact cannon shots, shots which first crushed their way through her barriers, then slammed into her armor. The third shot threw her aim, and the forth almost tore the autocannon from her grasp. The heat grew higher, as the armor focused more and more on getting the barriers back up and ignoring environmentals. She might have been born in the colonies, but the Deserts of Si Wong were in her blood. The heat would not kill her.

Another streak of a rocket, and the destabilizing impacts lessened enough for Asha to root herself and start firing again, sand-blasting a Ravager down to stumps, as she started to side-step toward the objectives, toward the Matter Transit. There were other shots coming in at her. Her barriers announced their return, and a few seconds later, they were shattered again. She felt hard impacts into her right side, trying to check her crab-like advance. Marauders. Marauders that Shepard was firing at with her Harrier, that Liara pulled out of cover with Singularities, whence they would be torn to shreds by the tide of force moving toward the Matter Transit. She saw that there were a clutch of Brutes that were advancing toward her side, which they in their ignorance would think blind. She didn't have time to deal with them. Not yet.

Crash, another blast of heat, and the armor warning her of missing armor plates on her right leg. A problem for another moment. She grit her teeth, ignoring the torn muscles and the bruises that such unrelenting pelting was causing her. Directly at her six, she could see Garrus finding an ideal piece of rubble and setting up shop, one of the approaching Brutes being reduced to dying bone and plate metal in no more than three shots. The Mobile Armors had reached her place, and the fire from the Ravagers slowed as they took the fire on themselves. To her left, one of the new model Oni Busters, built to modern specifications, its arms sporting gun-barrels to Mass Effect cannons that the older ones obviously lacked. As if by one mind, the Ravagers turned their fire whole onto this new, and more obvious threat. The Mobile Armor fired, one shot from each arm. That one-two was enough to kill a Ravager. It managed half that again before the others launched a withering barrage and cut the Mobile Armor in half at the waist.

Asha didn't speak, just breathed the oven-like air inside her armor, and pushed herself to a more steady stand. The next Mobile Armor to Asha's side picked up the fight, but her attention was now on the Brutes, who were charging now. A roar without words erupted from her throat as she turned to the massive yahg-turian monster, swinging the Typhoon behind her on its strap and firing both shots from her Executioner, before the pistol was swiped out of her grasp. She caught its other swing across her chest and was sent flying off of her feet, crashing into Panchen and tumbling to a halt on the ground, mercifully out of line-of-fire.

Silent for the carnage, a chunk of the Brute's head splintered and collapsed, a Mantis shot giving it as much pause as anything in existence could. That was all the time that the Oni Buster nearby needed to finish Asha's salvation. The old-model Mobile Armor grabbed the neck and head of the Brute, planting first one ferro-platinum boot against its collarbone, and then both, before heaving with such intensity that a length of the thing's spine dislodged, and left the Mobile Armor on its back. It got up, holding the head aloft in victory. A second later, the Ravagers on the left flank fired; there was a blast of torn metal and the entire machine flopped onto its side, leaking blood and viscera from the wounds in its metal flesh.

Asha pulled Erdeni to his feet as the blip of her barriers coming back online announced, and a waft of cooler air filled her armor. She pulled her Typhoon to her hands, but the instant its grips hit her palm, she saw the weapon-damage indicator. She looked down at the thing. Feed rail was damaged. She growled and planted a boot on the lower rail as she wrenched upward on the upper. There was a snap as the ammunition block tray was released. It still moved right, the feed-rail buffer was intact. It'd still fire, but it'd be a pain to reload. No matter. It was still her first and favored option.

Another block, discarding the last one not even completely used.

"Asha, you're not looking so great," Panchen's voice reached her, through a curious sort of numbness the likes of which she hadn't felt since that first fight on Horizon, the day her hope and the light in her life returned to her.

"We need to cross distance," Asha answered him, not following up on his complaint. She didn't have time to. Whatever Panchen had to say to that point was lost in a moment of concern, silence, and then a wordless growl of his own. As soon as she started moving forward, past the corpses of dead Mobile Armors, those Ravagers to the left were firing on her again. The first shot burst across her barriers, and she was firing. Not at the Ravagers themselves; six abreast meant that she couldn't guarantee she would keep fire on one long enough to unmake it. Instead, on the support pillar beneath them. Already damaged concrete had no chance of surviving the unstoppable force of her autocannon's breath, and with a crack lost to distance, the floor that the Ravagers were standing on first buckled, then collapsed, dropping them out of line of sight. A momentary safety, but she'd take it. And then, her helmet went dead. She slammed her temple, and a moment after that, her optics winked on, one lens after another.

"You good?" Erdeni asked, as he lobbed a few grenades from his launcher into the obscured spot where those Ravagers landed. Asha nodded, and began her stomping advance once more. Where once a whole building lay between the Matter Transit's no-man's land, now it was two walls and the support pillars that ran up its corners, an entire section of it collapsed down and teeming with Husks. She could see Shepard and Liara, already most of the way there, but now being bogged by the tide of former salarian undead. The targeting computer was spotty, not connecting properly to her autocannon. More damage than the rail, she figured. But she had a lot of muscle-memory, and was pretty good at aiming from the hip. She swept a line of fire across the tide of howling Husks, then bored deeper into the knot which was trying to overwhelm the Avatar and her wife. Between those blasts, and the Avatar's almost balletic movements in waterbending, they cut the tide.

Her stomping advance was losing ground to the Avatar, and that wouldn't do. "Panchen, ahead!" she ordered. Erdeni nodded and there was a flare from the backs of his shoulders as the HAVOK array launched him skyward. He landed driving his heat-axe down through the arm of an Oni who had just bored its way up out of the rubble, cutting through the limb and burying the hatchet in its armored head. The ground continued to rumble around him. She turned to a feminine figure nearby, an asari commando from the matte black armor. "Earthbenders!" she pointed, and the helmed asari gave a nod, before taking two bounds and launching into an axe kick that split the earth in a long line, shoving Erdeni aside before a second Oni could grab him by each ankle and rip him apart. There was a note of ballet to Erdeni as well, so smoothly did he wrench the heat-axe from the dying Oni's brain and decapitate the second. But then, he had to take a step back, because more of the sexless once-humans were clawing their way to the surface.

Had they known that the Citadel's assault was coming from beneath the earth? Had they mobilized a force to counter them? Were vast swaths of the force still underground even now being slaughtered? Asha didn't have time to think about such things. She had to pick up the pace. So her jog beget a run. Another blare of alarm from her armor as the barriers deflected a barrage of stone at tremendous speed, but she did not slow. She was just one of many, most of those at her pace Oni Busters, and she would not falter so easily. The most eager of the Oni – if such a thing could even be said of the mangled miscreations of man – launched itself with a watery-blade at the fastest of the Oni Busters in Asha's vicinity. While the ice did rip through a lot of the plating on the ancient Mobile Armor, the beast of iron and platinum simply brute forced its way through the elegance, grab the Oni by the head, and stomp its torso into paste; it simply allowed the fire and stone the other Oni were now launching to wash over it, or deflect off its plating. So strange a day, to see history rise triumphant once again.

The rift in the ground grew wider, more Oni rising as though a battlefield arising as undead, and they were pressing Erdeni back hard. Now instead of killing blows, Panchen had to blast his HAVOK and swing his axe to ward away too-white arms, to disrupt claws of ice, or to avoid the blast of lightning. She didn't flinch in sympathy when a hurled chunk of concrete finally intercepted the Golden Spider in his customized armor, but not for lack of empathy. She just didn't have the time. Her run begat a sprint, forgoing all for the sake of naked speed. There was another twist, as her world went black and the momentum dumped her sprawled onto the concrete, her limbs searing and cramping under the electric bolt which had lanced her. The fact that she could feel her skin peeling across her right arm and shoulder told her it got past her conduction buffers, and took the path through her body to the ground.

She growled under her breath, refusing to let unconsciousness take her. She pounded the ground with her nearly numbed fist. Again, and the pain cut through the numbness. The growl gave way to some of the foulest language that Asha could muster, as she picked herself up, and swatted her helmet again. Her left eye lens turned on. Her right didn't. Her armor was losing integrity. She didn't care. She'd already lost precious seconds. She would lose no more.

Grabbing the Typhoon from where it had been dropped, she ran once more, this time having to catch up to the Oni Busters. With their presence, what had been a rout for Erdeni had become an honest fight. And ahead, she could see Shepard, at the foot of the building that was their last oasis before the unforgiving terrain that played host to the Reaper. She could have sworn it was looking at her. But she rejected such frivolities. The red ray launched, scouring across the the spread and diffuse armies. Those that red touched, vanished. She had to turn, her vision damaged as it was, to see the Spirit Vine Cannon that was rolling in her group's wake.

They were always intended to be the ones in the shadow of that building. Now, there was barely a building anymore, but it was still enough to cut line of sight to the Reaper. Would that be enough? She cut herself from thinking of such things as she reached Erdeni's side, to deliver a haymaker blow to the miscreation which was trying to reach past his arms and claw his helmet off. It fell, and he let himself be carried with it, and drive an Omniblade into the helm, once, then twice. Asha heaved back with her fist, the power-gauntlet spooling up, before she launched it and all its gathered force into that fractured helmet and splattered the floor with human brain and Reaper viscera.

"I had him," Erdeni said, sounding winded. "Asha, your armor..."

"Later," she said. She looked ahead. She couldn't see Shepard anymore, but she did not fear. The Avatar was mighty. Instead, she opened her mouth to speak again when one of the Mobile Armors to the left fell to a knee, the faceplate opening and the operator bailing out. Asha didn't even have time to wonder when the machine was ripped apart by Ravager fire. "They're out of the breach!"

Of course they were back. Nobody, nor Asha, nor Erdeni had ensured their death, so of course they would return. She turned and sprayed that pile of rubble which was now teeming with those once-elcor artillery platforms, but without her targeting reticle, and at this range, she could only paint the area and hope for the best.

"We've got to get into cover!" Erdeni shouted, pulling insistently on the back of her armor. The weapon-link was down. She didn't know how much ammo she had. She had to fire it by feel, and her feeling said... Now.

She stomped the feed-rail open, spilling out a sliver of the old block, before she stooped and rammed the new block into its place. It took precious seconds, but it always would have. She rose to her stance, the barrels spinning up as there was another crash, turning her as her barrier went down. She could feel a painful wrenching of her left side as a chunk of her armor was blown off. She snarled, but righted herself, trusted in her training and her years of experience at war, and pulled the triggers.

Burning hate crossed the distance, pounding the Ravagers into the ruins that they now emerged from. Everything was muffled, now, as another shot hit her in the right shoulder and turned her, only for her to walk her fire back onto them and dig ever deeper. Her radio must have broken during one of the last two hits, because the world went mute, only the rumble of her autocannon reaching her as she did the math in her head and kept excavating her way through the Ravagers, one by one. So much was going on that she didn't see, didn't hear. For all her focus, she might have been fighting this war alone. At least, until there was an explosion at the Ravagers, another following a moment later. She glanced to her left, back whence she came; the Makos were rolling up, offering fire support at long last.

She tilted her autocannon up, and turned to Erdeni. With one arm, she gestured that her radio was out, which caused him to recoil slightly. Had he been talking to her? It didn't matter. He pointed, his words lost, and she nodded. They had to move forward, he was right at that. She took a step.

Then, she was hurled to the ground, grinding along concrete and no doubt sending sparks flying with her transit. Her entire body spasmed in pain, but she growled and gave her head a shake. Her right arm was still burning from the lightning breach. Her left seemed to have holes through the armor, and she felt like she was tearing muscle with each twitch of her left hand. Her left leg felt wrenched and twisted. So she flopped onto her belly, pushed up. There was blood on the concrete under her. Not a good sign. She pushed forward, taking a step up, then another... only to fall again. She rolled onto her back. Her left leg's armor was almost whole. Her right leg...

Her right leg ended just after her knee.

She clawed at her gorget and opened her helmet. She didn't feel any pain in her leg, which now made sense. With the helmet off and her vision restored, she could see, and now above all she could hear; there was a Harvester overhead, which was now being blasted by the Makos, of which one was mission killed with its wheels broken and twisted. Like her. No. She wasn't out of this yet.

"Panchen!" she shouted, only to find him already there, right beside her, and only her intense focus and narrowed vision keeping him hidden from her.

"Your fucking leg!" he screamed, his helmet coming off and terror writ large across his face.

"Get me to cover!" Asha screamed.

"Right! We've got to Evac you to..."

She grabbed his armor and pulled him close, not even yelling. "I am not leaving," she swore. "As long as my hands obey me, there fight in me yet."

He stared at her, so many things passing across that open and expressive face. Finally, something half-way between fear and resignation won out, and he nodded. He stooped, and helped her stand. With so much of her armor scattered about behind her, it was a far easier thing than it had been an hour ago. It took them less than a minute to hobble to the building. How had they gotten so close? When had the distance vanished? Had she been so focused that she did not see her goal at her feet?

No. Focus. There is a war to be won. "Asha..."

"Patch the stump," she said. Panchen did, obviously biting back words he wished to say. Orders he wished he had the authority – or the audacity – to give. He kept silent, though. Asha crawled now up the rubble, past the soldiers taking a moment to breath. She didn't doubt that some of them stared agog at her, hauling herself up over the rubble on a single leg, until she was on the second floor and had a loophole overlooking the entire run-up to the Matter Transit. "And give me my Black Widow."

"This is suicide," Erdeni said, as he lifted up her rifle. When had he picked it up? She didn't know, and didn't care.

"We are all dead in this battle," Asha said. "Make it mean something."

"How are you... Aren't you in pain?" he asked.

"Were you, on Okina Oni?" she asked.

He chuckled, then laughed, falling to a squat and tweezing his face as unwanted stress-tears leaked from his eyes. "I suppose not," he said. He took her cannon, experimentally spooling the barrels. "They won't get to you."

"I knew there was a reason I fancied you," Asha said, a ghost of a smile on her face as she turned to the last battle she would face in the Reaper War. And perhaps the last in her life.

---

The Vega human faltered again, stumbling to a kneel behind the rumbling cannon that was being essentially dragged toward its firing point. Javik's eyes narrowed. While the Vega human was in an enormous number of ways a fool, his control over his body was not something he was lacking in. The first tripping over his feet could have been anything from the truly cataclysmic shelling of the ground which Javik only ignored because he was freed of his earthly tether. Vega, though, was a son of the soil, and was as easy to shake as the mountain. A second stumble was odd. And the third now drove Javik to distraction.

He turned away from his ostensible duty, stooping before the hulking human who wavered on one knee as though under the spell of vertigo. "What has struck you, human?" Javik asked, and Vega looked up at him, blinking and flinching for the flashes of explosions at Javik's back.

"I don't know, man. I'm just... I... Urgh," he clutched at his chest above the armor he wore. In most circumstances, Javik would have simply let him stay there, to be trampled by the others who would take his place. But while Javik said nothing, he felt something as well. A grinding in his chest at a most exquisite pain, as though his heart was going to pound so hard it would explode and shatter his ribs from the inside out. But he did not show it on his face. Instead, he dropped a gauntlet, and grabbed the Vega human's armpit, hauling him to his feet.

The instant Javik did so, he was flooded with the human's immediate past, the anxiety and fear that Vega had felt as he pulled on his armor. Will this be the fight that kills me, he had thought? And a sense of pressure inside his skin, pressing outward, minute then, but growing greater. Javik actually grabbed Vega by the back of his neck, to feel...

It was crushing.

To be burned.

He had thought he'd be ready, with his own agonies giving him footing. But instead, the instant that he looked into Vega's now, the sensations he felt in this moment, it was like staring into the heart of a sun. Light and darkness at once, heat and pressure and force.

He stumbled back, hives raising up on his fingers. "Yo, what was that?" Vega asked, managing to hold his footing, but only just. Javik, by instinct alone, flicked a glance up into the sky.

"I do not know. But it is something that has never happened before," he said. "Come. The Avatar needs us."

"Yeah. Yeah she does," Vega said. As he stumbled forward, Javik looked him in the eye one more time. There was something in those eyes that bothered him. And for all his age, his experiences, his wisdom... he wasn't sure what to make of it.

---

Unlike most around her, Shepard could hear. The bass roar of the Reapers in the distance formed a sort of wall for the thousands who were dying, to batter their spirits the way that their forces battered their bodies. She thrust her arms up, a chunk of the ground racing up as a ramp and giving the tank a place to launch itself and land atop the once-elcor artillery piece, executing a perfect Shepard Stomp, before fishtailing wildly and darting out of fire. "Aimei, we're going to lose this point if that cannon doesn't get here soon!" Liara shouted to her.

"I know, I'm working on it," she said. Reaching this point had been hard going, with blood burnt into concrete the entire way here. She felt physically fine, not even tired, which was beyond strange considering how far she moved and how hard she struck. Every time a boil-hole opened up and Oni swarmed up near this island of cover in an open killing floor that was the run-up to the Matter Transit. The Reaper glared at her, at those near her. Another flick of its body and a red ray slammed into the building, making it shake and shudder, but there was, once upon a time, that this had been a branch office of Apex Industries, and Henri Lawson's paranoia and overengineering had turned it into a twenty story tall bunker. As much as she loved to have killed that man, she was also quite happy that some part of Lawson's legacy actually worked with her to win this war.

"Everybody still standing?" she asked. A ragged chorus came at that, and she could hear over the radio that the battle wasn't going nearly so well in other portions of the theatre.

"Any luck with the interference?" Shepard asked.

"I'm still trying to cut through it. It's suffocating!" Liara answered, huddled where she was near the foot of the building.

There was a flash in the sky overhead, bright enough to cast shadows despite the night. "What was that?"

"That was... that was the Destiny Ascension," Liara said. Ten thousand more, lost. Hopefully, they died doing something glorious, something necessary. Shepard doubted, though. More and more red smudges appeared. Less and less of everything else.

"Liara, I believe I have discovered the pattern," EDI's voice came. "I need you to directly interface with the cannon."

Shepard slashed out, tearing the water from the air and using it to split a Brute in half down its longest axis, from a truly stunning distance away. The kind of distance that usually was reserved for lightning. Shepard didn't think twice of it, though. Her people were here, and some of them were hurt.

The cannon sat there, its barrel pointed directly at the building they were using as cover, and she felt the essence inside of it. It coiled and thrashed, even though the vine which contained it was still. How long had that section of the Living Spirit World been podded up in that capsule? A century? That it still had such power spoke to how dangerous Kuvira's weapon could have been.

A grenade landed near her foot, so she kicked it away hard enough to embed it into the Marauder who had hurled it, and when it detonated, it ripped the undead turian apart. So many moments, and they flowed past Shepard like molasses. As the entire war really so slow? Or was she just thinking so fast, reflexes so quick, that only Liara could keep up? She didn't know. Something was changing. She was changing. She didn't know why, nor how, but for the moment, she was fighting the Reapers with nothing but a rifle on a strap and the clothes on her back. Did it really give heart to the others that they could see Shepard amongst them?

An impact into her biotic barriers shook her out of introspection. With a snarl, she clenched her fist and twisted, causing the Ravager to crackle with sickly green energy, before a second flick of her wrist Warped and detonated it, scattering it to pieces. She also knew that she was stronger than Jack, biotically. She hadn't brought it up, because Jack still had her pride, but still. What was this? Why was she getting stronger?

"The cannon is primed and locked," a call came up to her.

"Liara, attempt targeting now," EDI's voice ordere. The asari darted to the side of the cannon, and held her Omni over it, giving EDI a junction from the Normandy to the cannon itself. The barrel shifted, the weapon coming to life, as a violet light began to swell at its heart, pouring out of the barrel. Shepard turned a look toward the Reaper, which stiffened and stopped its movement, as though sensing something.

"Make this faster, EDI," Shepard said.

The rising whine hit the air, rising up and out of the realms of human hearing, before suddenly reversing and dropping into a bass note that shook the earth. The violet light burst from the barrel with a roar so alike to that of the Reapers that it was almost lost in the chaos, but for its proximity. The blast launched straight through the building, boring through it and tearing the remaining upper floors away and evaporating them, before reaching out and slamming into the Reaper.

The Reaper turned with the strike, and it raced past, screaming past the Matter Transit and actually hitting the Reaper on the far side in its spine. It was small consolation that that Reaper died in blasts of fire and ruptured mechanisms. The beam narrowed, pulling back in as though retreating into the cannon's barrel, and then there was silence once more.

"SHEPARD IS HERE," the words tore across the sky. "YOU CANNOT DEFEAT US. YOU WILL SHARE THE FATE OF YOUR WORLD."

It started to stomp toward them, closing distance and lancing out with another beam of red; the compromised structure of the Apex Lab cracked, a chunk of it falling off and hurtling toward Shepard. She rooted herself and wrenched, sending the block away from the people huddling behind the structure. "Sound off!"

"Asha and I are still fine, Shepard," Erdeni came through. "That got fucking close, though."

"Tali and I are holding ground here. I've got a good line of sight," Garrus said.

"The Vega human and I will be delayed," Javik cut in, and then the connection instantly cut. What was going on there? She didn't have time to wonder.

"Anderson?"

"Just behind your position," he answered. Small miracles. "Get that vine into the chamber!"

"Another vine?" Shepard asked. And behind her, a picture of the past, as a Mobile Armor pulled the spent Spirit Vine cartridge out and letting it roll across the ground, smoking. And another Mobile Armor ran up, holding a second in its pincers. It wasn't just all of the galaxy that had united against the Reapers. All of human history did as well. It slotted in with an oddly discordant sound, not the plung of metal against metal but something altogether more wrong. The world would hate her for allowing this weapon to fire. The world would be free to hate her if they all survived this.

Another red ray, and more chunks of the Apex Lab shattered and fell, trying as it was to aim down the hole which the cannon itself had carved. And it was getting closer, looming against the smoke and the sky.

"ALL WILL FALL TO THE HARBINGER'S DIVINE PURPOSE. ALL WILL BE MADE GREAT AND WHOLE," the Reaper intoned, demanding to be believed. She had several thousand people who were reacting appropriately, in Shepard's opinion. Several Cain shots crossed the distance and burst with gargantuan shock-waves against its skin. It didn't slow down, but even at this distance Shepard could see the cracks in its armor plating.

Another blast, this one missing the Spirit Vine Cannon only because it went high. The Reaper failed to walk its beam down before another flight of Cain shots baffled its 'vision'. She needed to do something drastic. Something profoundly stupid.

She puffed out a breath, feeling her innermost center, the anchor of herself against the storm of the power that flowed through her. And without effort, without pause, almost without notice, she unleashed the hurricane of the Avatar State into herself, her eyes snapping open and her mandala of blue flames exploding into being on her back. The effect was instant. The Reapers, who had been calling their bass horns in triumph stopped, like a human choking on a word. As one, the four Destroyer Reapers who weren't already in her face turned, triangulating on her in a heartbeat. The one that now loomed too close for comfort also panned its gaze toward her, the black voids where its perception dove into metal locked on her.

"REMEMBER THE SILENT DOMINION'S WISDOM," the Reaper said, to Shepard's confusion. It turned to the Cannon again. No! She lashed out, not with lightning nor fire, but with sheer will, to the drone of a horn all but identical to that the Reapers used, and a beam of white light racing away from her and impacting the cracked flesh of the Destroyer. The beam raced, red and ruinous, away from the building, as the violet light in the Spirit Vine Cannon began to mount, to surge, to fire.

But Shepard could sense something like fury, something like defiance in this thing, as it pointedly swept that cannon down, through the hole in the building, even as the violet ray lanced out once more, to a buffeting thud of bass against the air. The red deflected away, the violet winning out and smashing into the Reaper and tearing off plating, goring deep into its synthetic flesh. There was a new sound, a grim sound so alike to the last screams of soldiers dying to their positions overrun. Even as it fell, the red core of its being splintered and tumbling out of its wound, its cannon-mouth outright melting, there was a new surge of red. And it wasn't aimed at Shepard. It was aiming at the cannon. At the people surrounding it.

No.

Liara.

The Avatar State fled her, as she sprinted with such superhuman speed that it seemed the world had almost stopped around her, her legs straining for the first time in a week, the first time she even felt as though she were exerting herself. She had to do it. She had to. To go around the cannon, to go over it or under it would take too long. So she went straight through it. The gun was already dead, it just didn't know it yet.

A shrieking of metal cut the air for the fraction of a second it had before the lethal drone of the beam took its place. She reached her, Liara, and she grabbed, and she pulled.

The blast of the cannon being evaporated by the Destroyer's dying shot lifted Shepard off of her feet with Liara in her arms and dashed the two of them hard into burning, gutted Mako. She even tucked hard so she would hit the metal first, because somehow she knew she would survive it.

There was a narrowing of her vision, calling to mind a blow to her head. Which she'd just taken. Think, Shepard! Focus! A shake of her head, to get her bearings. Liara looked as stunned as she was. "Hey, you," Shepard said.

"That... was close," Liara said.

"Is it down?" Shepard asked, before actually looking and discovering the answer for herself. The Destroyer was only now finishing its collapse to the concrete, followed by a secondary detonation and a vast amount of its Core being hurled out and into the former streets. "We've got to go. This is our chance!"

"Wait, I need to get my," Liara began, pointing toward the cannon. She fell silent.

Shepard did, too.

The arm she tried to point with didn't even reach her elbow.

"I... I don't even feel," Liara said, sitting back staring at the ruin which was her left arm.

"MEDIC!" Shepard roared. "I NEED A MEDIC!

"Aimei, I'm fine. I just... I... I don't feel very well," Liara said, her pallor paling as she started to slip into shock.

"SOMEBODY HELP ME!" Shepard howled. She'd barely gotten it out when she spotted Anderson, who skidded to a halt next to her, first looking at Liara with concern, then turning even greater concern to Shepard. "She's hurt, she needs evacuation."

"You're hurt!" Anderson said. Shepard only now looked at her own right arm, the one which had trailed in that charging rescue. It was blackened, crispy, even. She couldn't feel any pain in it. Only now did she even think to swat out the fire burning at her shoulder on her clothing. "We need evac at Castle Alpha. Massive casualties!"

"I'm not done," Shepard swore.

"You are. We can do this," Anderson said.

"No. You can't," the thoroughly unexpected voice of Balak cut in. She turned to him, and he first looked to Shepard's wife, before Shepard herself. "She will die before she stops fighting. That is her way. Now let her."

"You're not in command here," Anderson snapped.

"And over her, neither are you," Balak said. Shepard tried to flex her arm, and found that only the index finger and thumb obeyed her. The rest hung like burnt jerky. She turned a stare at Anderson, and then with utmost deliberation, shifted the strap of her Harrier so it hung at her left side instead of her right.

Anderson and Shepard had the entire argument in their eyes alone. He told her that she was too hurt to go on. She told him that only her death would stop her. He told her that they could handle this on her own. She reminded him that she was the Avatar, she was the Catalyst, and without her, the war was done, and they had lost.

He lost that silent argument.

"Then stand up. We're only ever going to get one shot," Anderson ordered.

Shepard nodded, and cupped Liara's cheek. "I will come back to you," she promised quietly, in Aramali, Liara's native tongue. She gently kissed those lips, which pulled Liara out of shock, just a bit, just for a moment.

"I am yours," she whispered back, reaching toward her with her ruined arm.

"And I, yours," Shepard agreed, before turning away. There was a... a goddamned taxi... coming and landing nearby. No shuttles. They had to use what they had. Shepard forcefully put Liara into the back of her mind, somewhere that Shepard wouldn't be crushed under the terror and anxiety of hoping she was going to be alright. She pointedly didn't look back, because if she had, she wouldn't have been able to keep walking.

Then running.

With the destroyer holding this sector now dead and on the ground, the corridor was open, and they were taking full advantage of it. At full speed, the few Makos they had were thundering forward, Mobile Armors trying and failing to keep up, and a wave of humans, turians, asari, salarians, vorcha, krogan, and geth began to spread across the great expanse that separated here from there. Ahead, the end. One way or the other.

Her pace grew ever faster.

The other Reapers, those who had turned when she did the profoundly stupid thing, now lanced out, raking murderous red across the battlefield. If it struck a Mako, the Mako was obliterated, often not even having a chance to explode. Instead, it was simply pounded into a crater of molten metal. Mobile Armors fared just as poorly, unable to survive a sweep of red.

She grew even faster.

The first ranks, those who had been the most ambitious, who had started their forward sprint even as the Reaper was still teetering on its way to the grave, had nearly crossed the distance. But the Reapers were just as thorough as they were slaughterous. One Reaper aimed lower, closer, sweeping a ray across the entire first rank, and dissolving three hundred lives. The next, sweeping back, took another three hundred. The people kept running. There was no meaningful cover, no objectives except make it from here to there.

She grew even faster, now blazing past the Mobile Armors, past the bulk of the charging infantry. She ran at such speed that she was overtaking the Makos at full tilt. The air cut away from her, leaving a bow-wave that sucked up chunks of concrete, ruined machines, and destroyed lives. Already broken concrete was pulverized to sand with each stomp, casting out behind her, then catching in the bow-wave and traveling with her. She had to get there. She had to.

A blast, and the foremost Mako, who had almost made it to the Transit, was catapulted through the air, half of its body melted. It slammed into Shepard, who had to end her advance, root her feet, and tear through it before it crushed her, unusual strength or not. When it fell apart before her metalbending, she looked beyond it, to the Reaper which was staring straight at her. As though it had planned this. Which it might have.

A pulse of red.

---

The foul song in the air changed, somehow, which pulled Javik away from the increasingly vexing problem of the Vega human, and what in the name of all hells was happening to him. The note was foul and greasy, had the feel of dragging nearly melted fat across rusty metal, but spoke to triumph.

He looked to the Transit, the great portal to the Citadel. To victory. There was only one reason They Who Are would make that note, right then. They thought they had done it, killed Shepard.

He didn't have time to think. If Shepard was hurt, the Reapers would focus on her until there wasn't even ash left behind. So he took a breath, and did the profoundly stupid thing, the hopeful thing.

He drifted off the ground, as his arms clenched tight, before a mandala of emerald flame burst into being at his back, and four eyes seared white. The note curdled in an instant, and even now in the distance, Javik could see the Reapers turning toward him. As though they were enraged to have been tricked.

He launched himself away from the armies, away from the fight, because all he could do now, is kill them. Red rays followed him, as the Reapers of Ba Sing Se focused their might to kill the final Prothean Avatar of Vengeance.

---

Shepard's eyes opened.

She tasted ashes.

Ashes drifted through the sky.

Between here and the stars, thousands of Citadel Race ships burned and died, ash in the cosmic wind.

Stomping worked its way up her back, each step throwing more ash into the sky, landing on her, and caking her.

She wasn't dead. She knew that, because she hurt, everywhere. She raised her right arm again. Still burned and blackened. Her left was now coated in burnt blood and the ash of dead soldiers. Her stomach felt heavy, as though she'd eaten whole bricks. Her head pounded. She pushed up, off of her back, to stare past her burned, nearly benuded body, to the Transit. So close.

Not close enough to crawl to, though.

She leaned back. Just taking a breath. Breathing in ash. It was a pity she still felt pain in her legs. They weren't there anymore.

So... so very tired.

---

To Be Concluded

---

I admit, that a lot of the writer's block which almost scuppered this ship was that I had no idea how to depict the fight between Shepard and the Harbinger. Remember, the Harbinger is not a Reaper. The Harbinger made the Reapers. It wasn't until earlier this year that I came across a concept from an in-development TTRPG that helped crystalize the way that the entire cosmology of Avatar of Victory works.

There are five categories of entities, of which four are relevant for the story. The lowest are Class 0 entities. That is us, the readers. In comparison to the people of Avatar of Victory, we are weak, we are frail, we have no measurable soul, and when we die, we are rotting meat. A fifteen foot fall which an Avatar character would shake off and continue fighting after will kill or cripple us. Eating shit into a wall will concuss or kill us, whereas for an Avatar character, that's just a tiny piece of a bigger fight.

Compare that to Class 1 entities. They have souls. They are the baseline for resilience and strength in the story, and they are every alien in the galaxy. While a Class 0 entity could win a fight against a Class 1 entity, it is inherently an uphill battle. The lower entity would require surprise, or superior firepower, or superior numbers, or superior skill to best an 'equivalent' fighter, but it is possible for the lower to triumph against the higher.

Class 2 entities are another class entirely. While still within the confines of human strength, stamina, resilience, and skill, they are just barely confined by mortal limitations. These are demigods, with one foot in the mortal world and one step beyond it. The Avatar is a Class 2 Entity, as are many of the Named Spirits, with some exceptions. So was Saren during Book 1. A mortal can fight such a demigod, but to win, they will need more advantages to have a chance at victory.

Then, there are Class 3 entities. These are things like the Reapers, like Leviathan-In-Glory as Shepard had fought at the end of Book 2. These are also demigods, but instead they have one foot in godhood, where the other trails behind, and are entirely beyond mortal limitations. To fight against a Class 3, an Avatar would need EVERY advantage to be able to fight them and have a chance at victory, or else be able to attack at the point where the higher foe is at their absolute weakest. Thus it was where Shepard attacked Leviathan by disconnecting her body from the Overmind, the one part of her that she never thought she would need to protect. Other class 3 entities include Iacobus, The Meretsegger, and Koh the Face Stealer.

Finally, Class 4. These are gods. They do not have mortal forms to attack with mortal weapons. They have wills that can reshape worlds, might that can reorder the cosmos. To fight against a god as a mortal is the definition of folly. You cannot meaningfully hurt a god if you aren't one yourself. You are as helpless to their whims as ants are under the beam of a magnifying glass. The Harbinger is a Class 4 entity.

So is the Pantokrator. And Shepard has literally spent this entire story fighting enemies in weightclasses above her own.