Author's Note: Thanks for your patience. These chapters get harder as we get closer to the endgame; this particular one was like pulling teeth. I said this wasn't going to get abandoned and I meant it, but that doesn't mean you'll be getting updates in a timely manner.

Chapter 16 - You Can't Always Get What You Want

Union of Sentient Species Embassy, The Presidium

January 25, 2032

"You are not getting any more land than what we have offered, Admiral."

Admiral Nar'Yava glared daggers at Ambassador Neva. She had been prepared to fight to get Rannoch back. She had not been prepared for the thousand and one absurdities that had accompanied their return to known space.

"Ambassador," she began again.

"I mean it, Nar'Yava. We are giving you an entire continent, including some of Rannoch's most desirable farm land. You can't tell me that isn't enough when there aren't a lot of us as it is."

"That's not the point, Neva! You're refusing to give us back quarian land because you're sharing it with the Geth! The Geth!"

Neva shot her a bemused look. "Has anyone ever told you you aren't a very good politician?"

"For not nodding along and agreeing with you while you cheat us of our land? I don't really care."

"It's not your land." Neva suddenly grew serious. "Admiral, whether you like it or not, this galaxy is different than the one you left. The Geth are a known quantity, as are the Alar. We will not drop everything to accomodate you, especially when you have so rudely demanded we do so."

"Do you have any idea what you're saying? The Geth-"

"Gave us back our homeworld, and got us out of these suits without turning our people into drug addicts," Neva interrupted. "Do you think I have forgiven the Geth, Admiral? I have not, and neither have I forgotten to tell the quarians of this galaxy how our people lost Rannoch. But for the sake of our future, I must bear it. The Reapers demand a unified front."

"We don't know when they'll come back!" With that, their argument had returned to the original point. Even the perpetually combative Nar'Yava was getting tired of it.

"You're not getting it," Neva replied, returning Nar'Yava's same glare from earlier. "Do you know what you are? Outcasts. Exiles. The galaxy had moved on without you, as had the reconstituted quarian people. I will not go so far as to say you are not welcome, but you are making yourself less welcome by the day."

"I don't care if we're welcome or not, you bosh'tet!" Nar'Yava once again lost her diplomatic composure. "WE are the quarians! Heirs to the Migrant Fleet and leaders of our race!"

"Stop," Nar'Yava interrupted, more weary than angry. "This discussion is pointless. The powers of this galaxy support the land-sharing agreement, and you lack the power to take Rannoch by force. As your beloved humans say, you must take it or leave it."

With that, the USS ambassador to the Citadel got up and left the room.

Presidium Gardens

March 30, 2032

Teyi T'Sera loved coming to the Presidium during her lunch breaks. Sitting down on one of the sleek white benches, breathing in the beautiful smells of the foliage and amusing herself people-watching...it helped her forget the monotony of her job. Today, however, the tranquility of her usual routine was interrupted. The Presidium was stinky.

Sitting in her usual spot were a quarian - one of the returned ones, presumably - and a male human, the new (and quite attractive) aliens the quarians had brought back with them. The man was smoking some sort of herbal plant that was the nearest source of the unpleasant smell, the masked quarian sitting next to him crossing her arms in disapproval.

"Maaaaark!" She whined playfully. "When you smoke, I have to keep my visor on."

"Babe, I haven't smoked all day," the human replied. "I promise I'll be..."

"Maaaaark" stopped mid-sentence when he saw Teyi approaching them. She froze.

"Umm...hi," Teyi said after a moment.

"Hey," the man, apparently named "Maaaaaaark", replied.

"Can we help you?" The quarian asked. She sounded more on edge, as if Teyi had been an unwelcome interlocutor.

"Sorry, it's just...this is my usual spot during my lunch break. Do you mind if I set on the bench next to you?"

"Uhh, sure," Mark replied warily, putting down his now-extinguished smoking blend. "You have to be nice to my girlfriend, though."

"...of course," Neyi returned in the same uneasy tone as she walked towards them to sit. Although not a particularly social person herself, she picked up on the implication easily enough: he expected her, an asari, to be unpleasant to his quarian mate. Well, only one way to prove them wrong.

After Neyi had taken a moment to get out her meal and get situated, she decided to break the ice. "I'm Neyi, by the way. How do you like the Citadel so far?"

"Nurtra," the quarian replied with her own name. "It's very impressive technologically, but..."

"But the class discrimination is fucking awful," Mark bluntly finished for her.

"Class discrimination?" Neyi felt like she was broaching a sensitive topic, but curiosity got the best of her.

"Of course," he shook his head and looked down, apparently disappointed with her answer. She got slightly flustered.

"Humans are pretty tribal compared to the rest of the galaxy," he continued. "We tend to stick to our own kind, you know? Been that way since the quarians came. No need for us to come together when we can make our own communities."

"I noticed there seems to be some distinction between humans of different skin color," Neyi replied. "Why is that?"

Both the Mark and Nurtra laughed. "That's putting it mildly," Nurtra said. "Oh, Mark, we totally messed up your species. Sorry about that!"

"No worries, babe," he said, flashing her a charming smile at her that briefly made Neyi contemplate Mark in a not-so-platonic manner.

"Anyways, we were hoping things might be different here," Mark went on. "Nope! Just as bad as Earth, if not fucking worse."

That was surprising to Neyi. She had always found the Citadel to be a pleasant, unassuming place. Though then again, she had never been to the Wards. Why bother?

"You don't let krogans in the Presidium, you treat vorcha like vermin, and you had an entire society of slaveowners here for fucking centuries!" Mark was getting a bit more animated.

"I don't understand," Neyi said, visibly confused.

"Of course you don't," Nurtra chimed in. "You're an asari. You're born at the top of the galactic social pyramid. But imagine if you had been born a krogan, or a quarian. You would see the Citadel as a very different place."

The conversation continued along those lines for sometime, drawing Neyi in to the point where she was late to return from her lunch break. Across the Citadel, countless similar discussions had been prompted by socially conscious humans. The upper and lower classes of galactic society, already seriously debating the structure of their civilization due to the arrival of the Alar, now put that introspection into overdrive.

Of course, this period of introspection was significantly shorter than anticipated.

Alyarae, The Howling Darkness

February 22, 2034

Ascended did not think of time in the same way that organics did. Most were old beyond the ability of the organics to comprehend. A day was a year, a decade a century. With the exception of the very precise time that the Harvest was measured in, eons tended to blur into one another after awhile.

In this moment, Harbinger was enraged by that fact. After years spent searching this pathetic husk of a galaxy, no trace of the Alar had been found. They had scoured the homeworld, the former colonies, the asteroid outposts. Everywhere that could have conceivably been inhabited by organics was empty. They, a species obsessed with remaining in their home galaxy and older than any found in the Milky Way, had finally left.

The corpses of the Aware told him why. They had gone to the Galaxy, his Galaxy, to warn the species of the Cycle. How dare they!

"Nazara!" He reached out across the galaxy, not bothering to temper his rage.

"Harbinger?" He could hear the fear in the Vanguard's voice. He did not care.

"Are the Alar in our Galaxy?" He sent further information on the species through his subchannels.

"...they are," Nazara replied at length. The Vanguard was terrified of what the First One would do to him. Good.

"They are a species stronger than any other we have faced before. I expected them to be here, but it changes nothing. They are abominations unworthy of ascension, and so we shall annihilate them," he said.

"I have been planning to corrupt one of the factions of this cycle, to divide the organics amongst one another," Nazara replied, correctly guessing the relevance of his plan.

"Do so, Vanguard," the First One ordered. "Prepare your faction for the Harvest. Will we arrive in the Galaxy soon." His subchannels indicated "soon" would be a few standard Citadel years. Perhaps that was a short time for Nazara, but he did not care. These deviations from the Cycle needed to be ended. For the Cycle was eternal, and could not be broken.

Omega Station, Terminus Systems

April 15, 2034

Aria downed yet another shot of human vodka as she looked over the latest reports. As much as she hated humans and quarians, she had to admit their drinks were pretty damn good.

But everything else? Ugh. She had been losing money for over 40 years now and had survived a dozen attempts on her life. The damn USS was uniting the Terminus Systems under its banner and reducing demand for Omega. She had tried to compensate by using her private security to bring a semblance of order to the streets, but it wasn't enough. People were leaving Omega, which was now clearly in its twilight years.

She was the neutered leader of a dying criminal empire, and she fucking hated it.

A blaring alarm jolted her from her thoughts. It overrode the music of the nightclub, confusing and shocking everyone around her.

"What the hell was that?!" She demanded to one of her guards.

"There's a ship heading toward the station," the guard replied as he started fiddling with his omni-tool. "It's...what the fuck, it's massive..."

"What do you mean, massive?" That didn't sound good.

"It's over a kilometer long, at least. How would someone even get something that big to fly i-"

"Asari."

It cut through the air like a knife. It was more than just a voice; it felt like the heavens themselves were speaking to her.

"What the fuck?!"

Before she could react any further, every single screen in the room, including the one on her omni-tool, switched to a display of a...strange creature. It looked looked like one of Earth's squids, but with a clearly mechanical construction.

"Your station is needed to serve the Cycle, as are you."

"Listen, asshole," she started. "I don't know who you are, but if you think you can come to my fucking station and hack my systems-"

"Enough."

A moment later, she doubled over in pain. She grabbed her head and started screaming; vaguely, she could hear several others around her doing the same.

"You will obey me."

The ship said nothing further, but it continued for hours. It felt as if her brain were being hacked apart and put back together again. She screamed until her voice was hoarse, but still the pain continued. She wished for death more than words could express, until...

...until it stopped, and she didn't.

Order of the Avenger Headquarters, The Citadel

March 1, 2032

"...and so This One is humbled and enlightened to introduce the Avenger, Avatar of the Enkindlers and Leader of our Order."

Javik stood up as the hanar finally finished "speaking." The assembled crowd, a mix of several different species, looked at him as if he were a living god. He resisted the urge to sigh.

There was a reason he'd been putting off this speech. Still, he knew it would be good. Decades of working with humanity had made him more of a politician than he had ever wanted to be.

"I never saw the Citadel in my Cycle," he began. "It was captured many years before I was born. Long did I wish to see the great Station which had served the heart of our Empire, and long did I lament the lost opportunity to do so." That was a complete lie; he had never cared about seeing the Citadel. He was a little disconcerted with how easily lies flew from his tongue now.

"As I stand here today before the Order dedicated to me," he continued, "I am struck not by the differences between my cycle and yours, but rather by the overwhelming need that defines both of our cycles: the need for unity."

"In my cycle, we were undone by disunity. Traitors within our ranks, corrupted by the Reapers, sabotaged our fight from within. You must ensure the same cannot be done to you. When the Reapers come, vigilance cannot be relaxed even for a moment. If you suspect one among you has been corrupted, you must act."

That was the easy part. Now for the part he hadn't wanted to write.

"At the same time, you must not mistake unity for uniformity. The Protheans grew our empire by assimilating other species into our culture. There were those who existed separately from us, but in time, all eventually called themselves Prothean. It was a strength that grew our empire to unimaginable heights.

But what had once been our strength became our weakness. In our fight against the Reapers, our strategy, our tactics did not change to adapt to our enemy. The Reapers are ancient machines, ones who have fought countless battles with those who came before us. They will be ready for anything, and you must be as well.

"That," he concluded, "is why I urge you learn from my people without copying us wholesale. Diversity breeds strength, but so does order and discipline. Think quickly, but always obey your superiors in battle. The Reapers can only be defeated with the combined strength of every sentient in this galaxy."

"For Vengeance and Order!" He mercifully concluded his speech. For a moment a tiny part of him thought the crowd might defy decorum and refuse to applaud, but of course they were too zealously loyal for that. He was drowned in cheers and accolades the moment he finished speaking.

Even after all these years, he still wasn't sure what to think of this Cycle. But it had given him a base to work with, and he now firmly believed they had a chance against the Reaper threat - which he now knew was coming soon.

Too soon.