All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

13. 1-6: Before Demons - The City of God

A/N:

pbluekan said: "I actually like your prose. It really speaks to the reflective and introspective nature of the story. It makes the whole thing feel very human and very much about the development of Mai and JD as people.

However, you tend to repeat things. A lot. Lone wolf, Hyper-lethal-vector, and the sentences that contain them are identical and repeat far too often in my opinion. We know what Ackerson used her for. You've repeated it a dozen times."

Roger and understood, I admit I repeat things a lot because I want you to know that there is emphasis for a reason, but I hear ya, I'm just being overzealous. Thanks for the call out!

Lanzador said: "This chapter serves as an excellent display of why the humans of Halo survived and the ones of ME died. So much 'optimist' and 'openness' here almost suffocated the character interactions, as Shepard and her ideology condescends to the Haloverse: we can be better.

Never mind that they are perfectly reasonable beliefs based on experiences. Her character reads more as a immature child who never outgrew the no loser/winner mentality. I'd only hope that at least Six gets involved with Cerberus. But based on what I've read so far, I'm sure she'll immediately default to Shepard-Jesus' judgement. 'Bad xenophobes, bad!'"

Shepard's optimism in the face of a galaxy of adversity is pretty central to her character, and at least for literary purposes it provides a very nice contrast to two human characters who were on the back pedal and in a constant state of desperation. But as is inherent to Shepard as a videogame character, this Shepard is my own. There's a... more SOF side of her that I hint in the last chapter and in this one. The type of side that I collude with modern day SOF and is a side that needs to be balanced by her optimism. In Manifest Destiny I explore the psyche of these type of SOF people through the lens of a battered America, and in short, these people are not healthy, they're not kind, and what they do as a career is not meant to help people. Shepard does help people. Killing is a failure, after all.

On a single Halo firing: Admittedly I'm playing fast and loose with Halo rules, but also there's precedent. If Professor Anders in Halo Wars 2 can straight up castrate a Halo, I'm pretty sure Cortana can isolate the Halo's signal and keep the arrays from firing en-masse. Or at least, I assume so, and this story assumes so.

RadioPoisoning said: "Are the 3s all so maladjusted or is Mai special? It feels like she's begging for someone to give her a reason to commit some localized genocide."

Generally I hope I've made it clear that Mai is maladjusted. You see this type of... blood lust, if I should say, reflected in fellow Noble Emile. Now the 3s were not, as a whole kindly treated, but it didn't stop some stand-up people like Carter, Tom, and Lucy from maturing into fine people. But inherently as Noble Six, the Lone Wolf, she is special. Violence and her effectiveness as violence has molded her into the a monster made of man, and her upbringings didn't help. Again, "Do you believe the Master Chief succeeded because he was at his core broken?" Well Mai, being our surrogate for John, being his equal, is also similarly broken.

The Watchers Network said: "Why did Spark activate the defenses? Were the UNSC forces strong enough to stop the Covenant forces from holding the ring?"

My interpretation of Halo CE:A's first terminal was that Spark was to invite the PoA in, if it hadn't been for the Covenant interfering. So if the Chief's Geas was confirmed as Reclaimer, inheritor, then I believe Spark would've activated 04's defenses in order to aid them. Also a bigger fleet was with the PoA, so I assume combined with Keyes' tactical intuition, Thel Vadam would've been bested.

In general: Expect this story to be in more bite size chunks when we get into the Normandy and the main game as a whole, but again, as is my style, a lot of set up happens in this intro. Also expect less Halo-universe side of things going on during the duration. It's not going to disappear, but I need stuff to, well, stew for a bit. That and it's better off not developed at the forefront. This is an ME story first and I'm going to bring it back in soon enough.

---

Section 1-6

Before Demons - City of God

---

They stripped him bare, and in that moment the Covenant, the UNSC, Marines and Civilians alike, knew that the idea of humanity being on the backstep was over. They stripped him bare and the Elites, knowing who he was, knew that ruin had come to their people as he stood before the entirety of humanity, lead out of the prison block he was in.

How ironic it had been: only the Covenant on human colonies or attacking, deep within UNSC space, had been spared from the Great Journey. The reality of what the Great Journey was had been revealed in the cruelest terms to the survivors. That Truth, and Mercy, and Regret all held onto a lie for thirty years on who, truly, were the heirs to the Forerunners. The Great Journey itself? A lie. A procedure. 2000 years had been robbed of the Sangheili, the Unggoy, the Kig-Yar, and all those who had come into the Covenant. An insult of the greatest tragedy that was only itself eclipsed by the fact that a Holocaust unlike any other had ended the very idea of the Covenant.

Any who had fallen under the sins of the Prophets? They had paid dearly in the most absolute.

A cruelty that, then and there, after all had been done to Earth and her Colonies, was justified.

That was the pain Thel Vadamee, now Vadam, had to bear as human estimates from the Great Journey drawn from abandoned Covenant ships drifting in the Empire had been given to him. As punishment, as torture, and as penance.

"I'm sorry for your loss." Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood had tried to consul Vadam. Though it was all platitudes as the Elite was forced onto his knees on that space station over the human homeworld, and stood before those who would preside over his judgement, his sentencing, his trial and hearing.

Vadam was a strong Elite, far stronger than he himself knew. He had led fleets to the edge of human space, destroying any chance of a victory for the UNSC in that war with a calculated fanaticism that highlighted his very servitude to the Gods, and the Prophets. Their righteous Crusade was led by him, sometimes personally, into battle. His gold armor, now cast asides and almost claimed as a trophy, cast him as a hero for his people, and for the Covenant.

In another life, he would have been Arbiter.

This was not that life however.

This was the life where-

"Less than 500,000 of my people remain, human." He spoke for the first time in that court room, the bright lighting and the cameras surrounding him flashing as he spoke the language of man. There was scorn and sorrow and horror in his words. "Less than 500,000." And then it was filled with a sob as his restrained hands raised up the few inches they were allowed only to slam back to the steel floor, the weight of several hundred billion dead Sangheili now bared by his heart. 500,00 had been a generous estimate, a great measure less than what had been present on a CSO-Class super carrier. It was almost insulting that only that many remained of his people.

The war hadn't stopped the second the Sacred Ring had been fired by the humans. Far from it.

There had been no unified command or leader to proclaim that to continue fighting was for nothing, that their entire lives had been a lie. Covenant forces that had been engaged on planets far and wide throughout the Orion Arm in battles that would've otherwise been an overwhelming victory were, suddenly, and all at once, cut off from any further support from outside human space. High Charity had gone dark. The supply routes and logistics infrastructure of the Empire stopping all at once as reinforcements ceased to come and instead, in their place, brought forth human armadas fighting back with something the Covenant had never seen before: Victory.

It had been so long, and it had never happened for that matter, since the option of offering surrender to the enemy had been entertained.

So, the UNSC came to the worlds under siege, worlds taken, who had been caught outside of the Great Journey, and all at once humanity had reclaimed what it had lost at the price of galaxy of corpses.

It was only then when it was revealed that Thel Vadam, having been recovered as a prisoner during the Pillar of Autumn's defense of Installation 04, had been the last remaining Supreme Commander of the Covenant, humanity had finally decided to use him to broadcast all at once: everything.

Every lie, every truth, and, in the end, the option to make peace or die.

How many Sangheili had committed suicide upon hearing his message? It had kept Vadam awake for days, near catatonic as the humans kept him in a cell along with the last remaining authority figures of the Covenant as a whole.

A concept had been introduced to him then and there about the idea of what happens after a war: What the victors did.

He, and all those like him, even as they lived as the last of their species, were being tried as War Criminals.

How ironic.

With his eyes watered, red with disgust and a very blackness in his soul which filled him with a sadness he didn't know how he survived, they looked up again at that line of humans behind their stands, rendering judgement.

"You dare judge me, after all you've done?!" Vadam raged against his chains, and, out of the corner of his eyes, along the glass walls of that space station which had done everything to provide the backdrop of Earth, he saw the original monsters of man: the Demons. They were all recalled now, back from their wars, brought back to Earth and gathered, for the first time since their training, together. The purpose they were trained for, for the Insurrection, had not been the one that had created them and their legend.

In their armor, they shadowed over all, and that shadow threatened to cast itself over Vadam in that court room.

In between the jurors, the reporters, those who had simply wanted to be there to see history, his vision caught some their numbers on their chest plates:

010

025

051

058

062

087

104

117.

Vadam recognized 117. He was the Demon that restrained him, and for that, Vadam could do nothing but glare at the Demon through his visor as he stood at attention, and yet ready for anything.

"Humanity as a whole deeply regrets the usage of the Halo rings. As we have regretted going to war, to meet you and your people in battle, Admiral Vadamee." Lord Hood spoke in his slow tone, to make sure that the Elite before him, bowed to them all, would understand exactly what he was saying.

Vadam snapped is head to Lord Hood. "You would have me accept your genocide as righteous?!"

"As we would accept yours, with the facts known to you at the time, as such." Admiral Margaret Panagosky was the most dangerous woman in all of the UNSC. Not by sheer combat ability or any particularly lethal aspect of her. She was not a Spartan, after all. Ruthlessness, curtness and responsibility carried with professionalism hadn't even been a part of it. Not even the fact that she had been the Commander-In-Chief of the Office of Naval Intelligence itself. No. The reason why she had been the most dangerous woman in all of the UNSC was because she had done all this, presided over humanity's sins, and still knew what right and wrong was.

She was better than the Spartans.

That was why she had been on those stands and not John-117, or Kurt-051, or Naomi-058, or any of them at all.

The others that had been on those stands: the highest judges of the UEG and those deemed worthy to judge, either by loss, or by virtue.

Vadam sneered at her. "What do you call the murderers that accuse others of murder?"

Hypocrites. "Our sins do not negate yours, Admiral Vadamee. The ethics of our usage of the Halos are not hidden from us." Parangosky looked like a skull given life: an older woman whose age had only given her lines on her face that accentuated the seriousness of her life. "For thirty years humanity has had to deal with the very reality that extinction was on its doorstep, that Earth itself could've seen the fleets, your fleets, deliver ruin to our species for the simple reason of our existence. We did what we had to do."

Vadam shot a glance to all those on the stands. "What formalities do you dare insult me with."

"This is your sentencing." Lord Hood had said with all due process, no malice to be given.

"And what am I accused of by this court?"

"Murder."

Vadam had been forced, with more than half a trillion dead women, men, and children of his people thrown at his feet, to recognize that humanity had never been the heretics. If anything, he had been the Heretic. Humanity had been the heirs to everything: to the Mantle of Responsibility and the Covenant itself. Even in his ignorance, even with what he knew now, he had to pay the ultimate price.

"You know I would've never done this to you, if I had known."

"Then tell me what you have done to us."

He stamped out humans like vermin, like rats. They were nothing more than a statistic, if not a justification for him to go to war and fulfill his heritage as a Sangheili warrior. He knew exactly what he had done to humanity, and to put it into word would've just damned him more.

If not he however, someone would reiterate his injustices.

A man stepped out from the dark, dressed in his dress uniform. He was a darker man, perhaps the darkest figure in that room, even with the black of space above them. His jaw was tight, his face was stone, and in his words came evidence. "We've tracked you for years, Supreme Commander, from Rubble, to Reach. We knew everything you did in the name of your Great Journey."

"What have I done then human?"

The dark man was happy to oblige, but he looked to his superiors above to confirm. Parangosky offered her palm to him in a swift gesture. "Agent Locke, do proceed."

"Thel Vadamee is responsible for the casualties of at least one billion humans and the loss of seven fully developed planets. One hundred and twenty-three fleet vessels and twenty-three thousand fleet personnel have been killed by his orders. He was the Covenant's most dangerous tactical asset in the war."

The war. It had barely been a week and they spoke of it as if it happened years ago. No document signed, no final planet taken: just death and death itself.

Locke went on, describing battles he had taken part in, planets that had fallen because of him. The exacting scrutiny of his tactics that lead to the most human dead above all. The public crowd stirred, and all those tuning in, they had wanted his head.

"If this war was still continuing, and you were before this court, it is in the opinion of this agent that Vadamee be executed with all due diligence, for the sake of Humanity."

His history was reiterated to him by this man. In another life he would've become a hunter of Spartans. In this life however, he became the executioner of Thel Vadamee.

He spoke in certainty. In facts that Vadam hadn't even known about himself. Even then however, it spoke to a fact he had been become particularly aware of ever since the Prophets were deemed as vermin as traitors to them: his life had not been his own. And yet they were to act on him for it. There was no way out of here he had decided. But, at the very least, he could talk, he could plead for the sanity of the stars.

As he started, trying his best to bring himself to humanity's eye level, there was a croakiness in his voice, a pleading. "My fate may be determined, and what you humans shall do to me, inconsequential. But have you no knowledge of what you have truly done?! Using the weapons of our forebearers in such fashion?! Damning my people. Do you see yourselves as Gods? Or do you see yourselves as righteous?"

Humanity had been heirs to the Forerunners. What that meant to the Covenant in all of its thousands of year history, it had meant yes, they had been gods. To admit as such would be to fall however. Those on the stands stirred into silence, Lord Hood, a grim look, curved into his mouth, knew exactly what Vadam had been asking them.

They used the powers afforded to them to save themselves, yes. To do that however, it had been to commit galactic genocide. They hadn't even communicated to the Covenant warning them. They simply just did.

It was ironic, the name of the station they were on then, as this procession was held.

Lord Hood had shifted his white admiral cap for comfort, in the same stroke, looking out at Earth, staring back at them. It looked different now, without the prospect of war before them all. All those defense initiatives, shipyards filled to the brim with hulls of warships, black projects known only to him and Parangosky besides him… They all seemed to fall away like meat from a bone. There was a warship, out in the Oort Cloud, being built in secrecy he remembered then and there, and it gave him great peace to know that it would be a warship built to live a life outside of war. UNSC Infinity's true purpose then, seemed so distant now. Closer was the city that this space station was in geosynchronus orbit with.

"This space station is named for the city that it lies over: Nuremberg. And as then, half a millennium ago, so remains as truth now: Orders do not justify evil. You will not escape your sins for following your leaders, your Prophets." Hood's words seemed haunted. Hypocrisy being swallowed by him for the sake of being human.

Those that committed the genocide, the holocaust of the Covenant, were the victors.

"And in that breadth then, humans, do ends justify means?" He said, kneeling before Demons.

Parangosky shot a look to the Spartans as the Elite spoke to them. Perhaps, she thought, but she would never admit it. "Tell me, Vadamee, you come from a martial culture, where orders matter and you are expected to follow them, am I not correct?" She spoke to him. He nodded, slowly, unsure of where she was going. "But also, tell me then, does your culture-" She paused, unsure of whether or not to refer to the Sangheili in the past tense. "Does your culture recognize a measure of right and wrong based on moral and ethical standards?"

"Yes."

"Do you know of honor?" That word. It defined Sangheili culture as a whole. To be honorable was to be alive, to know true your own life and what that life meant to all.

"Yes." Vadam stressed, almost insulted.

"Then would you know of times in your history when, despite orders, there were those who refused to carry them out on their honor as Sangheili?"

Kaidons of Sangheilios's past, Arbiters of history. Not all of them had been great and wise. Some had been tyrants, struck down by those who would dare stand against them. Their martial culture was a culture of might made right, but there had always been a wrong. Honor had been that baseline. To have it, or to not have it. No Elite worth his blade would do wrong, would be dishonorable. There was a right and wrong that the Sangheili had that the humans knew all too well. The Sangheili sense of morality was no more alien to the humans than the human morality was to them.

That was where they all spoke from now: the victors.

But even then, in their modern time, Vadam had thought of those that were known as heretics. Even in death, wherever they had been in that galaxy, they were vindicated by the Great Journey. The Ussans, led by Ussa Xellus, had at the early years of the Covenant led a legion of Sangheili in defiance against the Covenant: "The Great Journey. Where is your proof of this Journey, for anyone but the Forerunners? We hold these relics to be precious and sacred, but we use them ourselves in this very world. It is the freedom, the independence of our people that we fight for!" As was recorded in his notes by a dead Prophet. Ussa's words were hollow to Vadam then, when he learned of them. But now they had meant the world: it had meant about how wrong all of them were and just how right those they called sinners had been.

"I know what is right, and what is wrong, human." He seemed so close to crying. Not as a man or child does however. But as a leader of his people, for his people did. He feared for not his life, but for the Sangheili as a whole. Whatever happened to him, he would allow it: to repay the travesties of the Covenant. He would be the monument to all their sins. He had to be. "But what could I have done? The Covenant has been the way of my people for millennia."

He asked, not as a question for them, but as a question for himself. Had the humans been able to see all that long?

"You should have known what loss really means." Victory defeated them. Loss after loss, battle after battle, the humans knew the cost of victory. The Covenant would never know. Not when they were all dead now. That is what Lord Hood had said.

Vadam shook his chains and damned it for having no slack, keeping him kneeled on the floor like a slave. "You dare say I do not know the pain of seeing my Elites die in battle?"

"Not enough."

This UNSC never saw the Covenant splinter over Delta Halo. They never met the humbled Thel Vadam, having become Arbiter and seen his people, first hand, be cast asides by the Prophet. This galaxy never saw the UNSC and the Elites make amends with a common goal: to stop the Prophet of Truth ignite the Halos from the Ark. Thel Vadam had been as alien as the word would allow, and they had him on his knees.

In truth, they wanted him to beg for his life. There was no true case here. No judge, no representation for him. His fate had long been decided the second the Halo was fired. Humanity wanted spectacle from a species that had caused so much pain, so many generations lost.

In a conflict, in South East Asia, nearly half a millennium ago, the American Commander said this about his opponent: "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient." In that war America killed 1.5 million of those "Orientals".

What humanity could do against an enemy, otherized, dehumanized, had been unthninkable. When the Halos presented themselves and the enemy was literally inhuman, the option was easy, that far into the war, that close to defeat.

"Read then: What of the Brute Chieftan? Atriox? How was he able to discern and break away from the Covenant after knowing about the loss of his people? A Brute, no less." He felt as if a finger had been poking his chest with how Paragosky had pointed out the other enemy of the Covenant: of a faction gone rogue, against the Prophets. Again, Vadam felt so wrong, it damned him. "Were you blinded?"

"Blinded?" Vadam blanked.

"Paralyzed?" Parangosky went on. "Dumbstruck?"

Hood had reached a hand out to Parangosky, several seats down, telling her to calm, for he had words to say: "You were one of the Covenant's most treasured instruments. You led your fleet against us without mercy, and to your faith… but your inability to see the evils that you wrought upon us as another, living, sentient species, and your inability to see the evils of your Prophets makes your trial without note. You are guilty. You have been guilty for as long as you were a commander of the Covenant. There is no trial we can perform without disrespecting the billions of our dead. You are here today, brought before us, so we can tell you what will be done to you. That is the justice which your service to the Covenant has ordained to you."

Perhaps then it was a double-edged sword that, of all the species of that former Covenant, it had been the Prophets themselves that had suffered the worst fate. Only sixteen remained alive. Sixteen that hadn't been caught in the firing of Halo or the inquisition taken out upon the Jiralhanae and Sangheili crews upon the truth of The Great Journey being revealed. Those who hadn't been taken by Halo were unlucky, based on how those Sangheili that had evaded capture by the UNSC so far had gone off hunting down the last of the Prophets that hadn't been accounted for by anyone.

None were of note. They just wanted them dead.

"I remember how this war started, what your kind did to mine." There was a coldness in Lord Hood's words as he stared down at Vadam, into his very soul, into the very last strike he could use to attack at the Covenant. Vadam was the Covenant now; or, at least, all that remained of it. "I can't forgive you."

Nothing more. Nothing less. There was to be no forgiving here. No reconciliation.

"None of us can." As was the shared opinion of all those who were to judge. To be fair, and frank, for once they spoke for all of humanity. From Insurrectionist to those who actually called Earth home, nothing would be forgiven. Thel Vadam would not be forgiven.

Not one person there had made a sound. Not a reporter, a judge, Marine, or Spartan could. It was the sound of something like a black hole: taking all within its maw. Nothing could escape

So that was that. Vadam breathed against the cold floor as his head touched upon it, insanity waved off. He would take his fate with destiny, and if the humans would damn his race to death, then he too would follow with honor. His honor was all he had now.

"If you shall kill me, then I shall choose my executioner."

He looked to the Spartans. He looked to the rigid 117, and, distantly, the two met gazes. Vadam gestured toward him as best he could. "He is the Demon who had bested me once before. It is only right that he do so."

The panel of judges had all looked to one another solemnly, pitifully.

"I'm afraid not." Said one of the judges. "You may point to our barbarities, but we will not pursue revenge for the sake of revenge. We cannot be like that to you."

What?

Vadam turned urgently to the judges. "Do not toy with me, humans. Whether you shall torture me to death, or shoot me right here, at the back of my head, tell me. You will kill me, yes?"

"No." Humans truly were without mercy. The man that spoke up had been aresponsible for more than three quarters of the Spartans in that room. None of them that the IIs recognized: It had been Colonel James Ackerson. Progenitor of the Spartan-IIIs themselves. "What we did to your species was regrettable, but we did it not to eliminate the Sangheili as a whole. Just to end the war."

His mind ran as if it was in Slipspace, what were the humans doing to him? His eyes were wide and his four mandibles pulsed. The equivalent of a human with their mouth agape.

"Your sentence is not one of cruelty. It is of opportunity. It is how we forgive you." They spoke in lies and platitude, coming through the mouth of Lord Hood. "What we did, we did in the name of peace. For us, and for you."

How many children and women had been killed? Not only in his species but in all of those in the Covenant? What had been lost because of the Human's victory?

James Ackerson was to be the head of a new branch of the UNSC, centered around the Spartans. However, that was only after the shake, the plans of those that came before him brought to the public and the fallout dealt with. In that time then, he would be military governor of a world. He would become military governor of-

"Sanghelios will become a prison world as you rebuild. We will relocate the survivors of your people there so that you shall begin again. Sangheili will not be allowed space travel for this duration, and any of those that shall travel, shall travel on UNSC business, not your own. For you, it shall be a prison. For your children, it shall be a prison. Only in several generations time, when you have rebuilt, when the scars of this war fade and you recognize where you stand in this galaxy now, without the Covenant, we will free you to the stars as equals with humanity. That is the sentence of the Sangheili as a whole."

The Grunts, the Hunters, the Brutes and Jackals, they got off easy. They were ascended, in a sense, by the Covenant. They fell apart without them. The Jackals would go back to raiding space lanes, justifying the wages of the UNSC Navy. The Brutes would bomb themselves back to oblivion when they were done hunting the last of the Prophets (or rumors of). The Hunters would recede back into their technological caches and the Grunts would finally find their peace. One master was as good as another.

But the Sangheili had been the second longest standing member of it, and for that, they would bear the brunt.

"I would rather die, than be equal to you. After all you've done." There was an implication; a threat there, spit through teeth and written in blood. His own blood.

Ackerson smirked, folding his hands together. "If you shall take your life, if you shall die, then let it be known that you fail your people a second time: robbing them of someone who could help them survive and, eventually, put them on track toward coming back into the light of peace and justice."

That was his punishment: to live.

"What do you mean?!"

"You will be leader of the Sangheili at our behest."

"You would dare puppet us?" He really would've just died than see his people reduced to that, but his life was not his own anymore.

Lord Hood nodded. "A provisional government for the survivors shall be set up by our humane societies in conjunction with the UNSC until you have developed without the Covenant and see the truth."

It would kill them all, and for the first time Thel Vadam thought about his people and how alone in history they had been. "We have no doctors. No engineers. No farmers or teachers!" What happened when someone, an entire civilization no less, had been focused toward a glorious end? Been focused toward the glory of being a warrior? The rest atrophied, went away, died.

"And so that is why you shall start from scratch."

History was written by victors. The world was controlled by its conquerors. What choice did Vadam have? This was the world he was living in, the life that was forced upon him: Imperial peace.

"Gods." He spoke to himself. He spoke to the floor, only to see his own reflection in it. "Gods what went wrong? What happened?" Vadam should've known better to be speaking to his gods, after all that time. They didn't exist anymore. If anything, his gods were made of man. Though he tried, tried so hard as his forehead touched the floorhead again as if in Islamic prayer, trying to push his way through it, through reality, to spare him from that life. No one answered his questions. No one would.

Screams, his screams bounced off of metal and glass. Off of ears and flesh and men and women and Spartans as humanity saw Thel Vadam break, trying to rationalized all that had been done to him. Rocking back and forth on his knees, his head tapping the ground, it didn't take long for him to rock harder, for those taps to turn into bangs and his skull bounce against metal as best he could.

Rhythmic, like a metronome: the sound of screaming and despair. It was all in tune to a Sangheili who felt like he was being buried alive.

Hood motioned to the guards: ODSTs and Locke. They had electric batons, and one strike from Locke across Vadam's back had locked him up as the ODSTs took his shoulders and dragged him away.

Screaming, screaming, but no god was listening.

"Kill me! Please! Just kill me! Spare me from this life!"

And he begged, and he begged, and he begged for death. He begged as he was dragged out of the court by the ODSTs, his hoof like feet dragging a line in the steel, forever marring it as his screams devolved into a mess of a being. His voice reached into a crescendo, echoing forever into the hearts of all those that had to bear witness to an Elite plead to let him go for the suffering of his own existence. For then, even worse, it was they that had been keeping them alive.

When the giant doors closed with a clang of steel, the reverb shook the bones of every who were there. They did not do this for pleasure. This was for righteousness and justice.

As they said, however, justice was blind.

"Alright, bring in the next one." The eagerness in Parangosky's voice had betrayed all of them there but those who truly knew. The Spartans had not been one of them. This case, this one that was coming, had been regardless of the War. There was a time, finally, for the question to be tackled and the idea of the Spartans to be answered.

She was to be the one to answer for it.

In another world, the Spartans would've done something. The war would've gone on too long, ended in a different way, and set up a different galaxy to allow them to understand what it meant to follow orders truly. They were men and women, with names, not numbers. They knew orders and would follow them to a degree only seen in the religious zealotry of the Elite at his knees now. The cookie crumbled in a way that had damned them all however. They were on the winning side, they would never be tested in such a way that would make them question their orders. They were more machine than man, and none of them would question that now.

Just like they were designed, they did nothing as their creator was walked, cuffs in her hand and ODSTs escorting her to be before that court.

The irony was thick, and then damning.

Ackerson smirked as his Spartan-IIIs in the room stood ramrod straight.

The UNSC would not execute any Covenant, but for their own? A different fate awaited them.

"Doctor Catherine Halsey." Parangosky greeted the greyed scientist.

Halsey had no time for formalities, understanding them better than Thel Vadam that the jury and judges were stacked against her. Funny, she thought, she would find herself on the same level as the Covenant. She spat on the steel floor. "Just shoot me and be done with it."

The only solace that Halsey had was that humanity as a whole, who would dare put her on trial like this, besides the enemy, would be judged someday. She had only hoped that they remembered her when they burned.

On an installation, far from Earth…

An ancient evil awakens.

---

If Mai had to be honest, to see Earth in all of its glory, in its blue and green so unlike any other world in the Milky Way, so heavenly and healing to her as a human, it had been more impressive to her than this construct. This multi armed clam-shell of an engineering marvel that was built by gods from the before times. The galaxy had inherited it, and called it the Citadel.

Though perhaps she had tricked herself into thinking it hadn't been impressive or awe inspiring to her. The Citadel, after all, was decidedly a "normal" part of galactic life here. So she had paid no mind that it was held in an almost heavenly, lavender section of place in a cloud, or how it had been guarded by a collective fleet of every major alien race in that galaxy in a harmonious function that would've made her scoff at back in her reality. She especially didn't care that on each of those massive arms, nearly forty kilometers long with outward developments that would make even Earth pale, several million had made it their home, adorned with natural habitats and cities formed into wards that were very much livable. This was the heart of the Galaxy and she could not afford to be impressed as a security officer in the designated Alliance station looked her up and down as she posed like a T in the transfer station.

It was okay though, JD could be awed and impressed for her as he stood on the docks of the Citadel, almost as if he was aloft in space itself.

But yet again this was only because he was given time to stand in awe at the station around them, taking it all in.

When the Normandy had first arrived, it came escorted, fighters from several different Navy's flying it in until C-Sec took it over and guided them in. If this was the heart of the galaxy, then the eyes of the galaxy had cast themselves on the crew of the Normandy as its docking bay opened and the ship was flooded by aliens and humans alike. All of them there because of what happened on Eden Prime.

They came like a flood, like the tidal wave on Altis that had whisked Mai and JD away, this trove of people from other worlds had been a battle, inevitable, that had to be fought by them.

Not that anyone else could've told as they hid behind their armor, their helmets. JD's arms had been tucked around himself as Mai's hands, for everyone's safety there, were clamped at her hip. The same words cycled through her mind as if she was telling herself to breath: No one needs to die here. No one needs to die here. I don't have to kill anyone.

When a Turian had bumped his shoulder into Mai's chest, JD didn't know he had responded the way he did. He hadn't even prepared for the idea of Mai snapping an innocent person's neck because they had been alien, but, as it turned out, he had innately knew what to do as they stood next to each other by the dividing wall of the chow table.

"Sorry." The Turian had brushed off, hadn't even looked at the armored monster his gear bumped into. It also meant he didn't see the way JD's hand latched onto Mai's left wrist in a quick motion. Their vision had honed in on that, all of their senses drawn away from the world outside and brought back in: to that connection. Of cloth on steel. A gloved and uniformed hand touching an armored wrist.

She depolarized her visor, and JD hadn't gotten used to it. He definitely hadn't gotten used to her eyes: vibrantly blue, almost electric. There was an impression of sorrow in them, how they sunk in and widened, just a bit, surprised that he did do what he did.

Did he really not have that faith in her?

He opened his mouth. It was his turn to keep his visor polarized, but he said nothing as his hand left her wrist and fell limply to his side.

She could handle legions of enemies, entire planets, colonies, all out to kill her. She could deal with a new social understanding.

Even though there had been an armored gauntly and a body suit between his own gloved fingers and her skin, she felt it burn to it. She wondered what it must've felt like when she nearly broke his arm, the first time they were face to face with an Asari and Turian, back in New Buffalo. No one who felt her pain lived to recount it. No one but him.

He turned his head away, shaking it, hands returning to his gun as he found something to distract himself from the guests onboard. He found Shepard, weakly walking, but walking, as she walked a medical stretcher with its bubble-like capsule out with several C-Sec personnel and several Spectres.

One of them, a Salarian, had barred her as the procession entered the elevator of the Normandy, up and out. "I'm sorry, human, but we have it from here." Nihlus was alive, barely, but he had made it to the Citadel at least. In his voice, in his black eyes, had been failure reflected upon Shepard. The woman knew what they had thought: that the first second the life of one of their own was held by a human, the human had failed.

She wasn't some peckish school girl trying to win back her man. She was a Marine, an SOF soldier, who knew what it meant to fail. So she sucked in her gums, put on a hard face, and stepped back, letting that section of C-Sec roll out as Anderson was dealing with another procession grilling him over the loss of Prothean technology over her shoulder.

The entire contingent of Marines on the Normandy had been armored up, standing in those halls at the ready as the guests were over. It wasn't proper procedure for every Citadel government to be inside humanity's newest starship, but there were more pressing matters.

"As I said the mission report will be issued to the appropriate authorities by our Embassy. I cannot answer any of your questions at this time." Anderson had basically yelled at the procession, forcing them into the elevator as a wave of silent came over the Normandy like a beach after a wave. Nihlus being alive had forced their hand, and for that, the investigation would begin.

Anderson turned to Shepard, arms crossed. "I'm sorry."

She raised an eyebrow, tired, but still coherent enough. "Sorry for what?"

"All this. This Spectre business and the Protheans."

She blew out air from her cheeks, staring at those closed elevator doors and their hum as they took the guests out to the upper deck and then out. "Nothing you could've done sir. Who could've accounted for the Geth, eh?"

He waved his hand as he turned around back to his quarters. "I know, I know. I just can't help but feel bad about throwing you and the crew into the middle of this." And there were still in the thick of it still. "Commander, gear up, we're going to the embassy once we let this situation calm down. About an hour or so. All those who were on your fireteam are with us."

It'd be her first time on the Citadel truly, and seeing it through the viewports of the Normandy had been exciting enough. If it hadn't been for the fact she failed the galaxy, she would've been a little more cheery. "Aye captain." Her nod was short and sweet. Less than twenty four hours after she had gone to ground on a colony under siege and knocked into a coma because of it, she would have to gear up and answer for it.

Anderson disappeared back into his quarters as the Marines on guard gave a collective sigh. Dealing with that many people on the ship had been trying, especially since most of them had been alien.

Kaiden had been one of them, approaching Shepard as the Captain melted away to god knows what. There was a sympathetic look on his face, but it went away with Sheaprd's return to duty. She couldn't sulk, still, he had to ask. "Were you looking forward to being a Spectre?"

She shrugged. She was already geared up and her dominant hand rested on her pistol at her hip, the back of it being layed on by her palm like a gunman from the old American West. "Wasn't in my career path before, still ain't now if I'm being honest. 'Specially if this the shit we get into."

Ashley had been on guard, having fully taken her role as a new addition to the Marine contingent in, posted by the Med Bay, chatting idly with Chakwas now. When Shepard caught her gaze the steely Marine gave her an acknowledging nod. Palming her cheek, Shepard couldn't help but comment. "To think we have the blood of a Williams on board."

"Bodes well." Kaiden almost wanted to take back the comment as soon as he said it aloud, but it didn't reach Ashley's ears.

"She'll be a fine addition. Still, if anyone's bringing trouble to this ship, it ain't going to be her."

"They'll be fine." They thought they were on the same wavelength, but they hadn't been. Shepard looked at him alarmed.

"Was talking 'bout myself, Lieutenant." Kaiden had been talking about the two Frogmen on the otherside of the wall. He kept his tongue, rolling his head, nervously glancing at that wall, as if past it. "There something I should know?"

If she was asking a question she already knew the answer. Of course there was something she should know. That entire damned day she had needed to know things. She needed to know why the Geth had attacked them. She needed to know from the horses mouth why Jenkins had been left behind. She needed to know if that Prothean Beacon had done something to her, and, most of all, as she dismissed Kaiden, obviously unwilling to talk, she needed to know what had been done to her.

She felt it in her bones, in her mind's eye, that something had been done to her. She hadn't dreamed describing her visions to Chakwas and her staff, they forwarded her the recordings of her own voice after all. In that rush of coming to the Citadel, surrendering Nihlus and being in the galactic point of view at its very heart, she could hardly return to her own mind until now. It made her drift, drift to the mess table before Mai and JD and taking a seat weakly. Her armor didn't play well with the seats, but it didn't matter, burying her face in her hands and closing her eyes.

Seeing the blackness of her own eyes, she tried her best to recall, to remember, the visions. She could only remember the feelings, truly, of fear and hopelessness: horror. The abyss had come out and taken her by the neck while she was in the dark, and she, for her own sanity, had blocked out that memory.

Most of them that is.

"Commander Shepard?" Mai cast her shadow over Shepard, approaching her from the back.

"I'm fine, Chief Gul." She breathed out, head still in hands, facing the table beneath. "Just been a lot."

"You okay Shepard?"

JD had been more liable to abide by her request, by the name she just wanted them all to called her. Just Shepard. He looked up at him, lips in a thin line, her green eyes tired. The sleeper pods had looked so enticing but she was going to be busy in an hour, and the pods didn't play with well short naps. "I saw the worst shit I ever seen in my life, JD."

His head bobbed lightly. "So you told us."

"All this stuff, with Spectres and the mission, I feel like I'm getting distracted. I mean, I mean, it's staying with me, but I don't know exactly what I saw." Metal and flesh. That's what she saw, anything more and she would lose her words to describe. Maybe she couldn't describe it in words. "I mean, the stuff that came before the city. That kidnapping, I know sure as shit what that was."

"Ma'am?" Mai wasn't quite sure what Shepard knew, what she was getting at. Had she known that the person she had seen get kidnapped was her?

"Level with me, Chiefs," She looked to both of them before repalming her head. "You ever think you became someone else's nightmare?"

JD never fought the Insurrection, and not many Covenant had lived to tell the tale of ODSTs. The Covenant never surrendered. If he was a nightmare, he was a nightmare in waking daylights, clad in the black armor that made him a shock trooper.

Mai on the other hand. She took the question into herself, and Shepard noticed. Shepard had noticed very intently as Mai blanked behind her helmet. She pressed on, and in that moment JD knew that Shepard was looking for something from her.

"Tell me, Chief Gul, if you were witness to a kidnapping, out in the sticks, where armed men were involved, what would you do?" She had become the knife's edge of ONI for so long, dismantling the Insurrection in methods she knew were inhumane. She'd never kidnapped however. It was never pertinent to her goals of elimination with extreme prejudice, however her only experience with kidnapping had been…

JD's words echoed in her head in the same way the visions echoed in Shepard's.

She thanked him, for saying that he would've stopped those ONI agents, but it was only a platitude. She didn't think of what she really felt. She didn't think about it from his point of view. Shepard wanted it however. Shepard wanted to know, having been in that situation which JD had described.

To break down a Spartan was a task not done all at once. It came in chips, in words, and in moments. Moments that they couldn't rely on tactical training and knowledge to confront that break down.

"What if kidnapping the child was important?"

What the fuck?

For both Shepard and JD, they had both thought the same as those words flowed out of Mai easily. For JD, however, it went further: This was how she lived with herself, her circumstances, all these years later. This truly was, and she said it no more heavily than she would a response to one of Shepard's orders.

It had been such a perplexing response that Shepard's headache had gone away, her head lifted from her palm, only to look at Mai with genuine confusion.

"Excuse me? Chief Gul?"

Mai had been intelligent. Far smarter than him, JD liked to think. It had been there first day shooting Mass Effect based weaponry on the Alliance range, and the moment they had gotten back Mai had taken to her omni, writing out notes and calculations that were done out by hand and mind alone. No calculators, no guess work, just math as she would know it. Physics and ballistics cementing themselves in her mind as if necessary.

"What's that?"

"Adjustments for windage and distance with these weapons. I need to memorize them. Need to know how they work."

She had been calculating the knowledge of how to shoot these weapons right down to theory, for her cover and for her effectiveness on the field. Though what she had to sacrifice for that had been a social understanding of why her very existence had been wrong from the start. To know that there was a certain social dynamic and understanding that she would never, truly, know as JD had, as Shepard had.

The gears in her mind spun, and JD knew what it looked like: When she was in her armor she would freeze, her form frozen before looking to the speaker again. That didn't happen this time. Not as the gears spun and spun for far too long before Mai finally answered.

"Hypothetical. Ma'am."

Shepard still had a problem with that. "Kidnapping implies she's innocent."

Those cases didn't happen as much on the Crisium City on Luna. JD's father often talked of his work to his son. Too many stories of detectives getting alienated from their families because of work had been that reason why he spoke to his son about an occupation some wouldn't. What he knew of kidnapping though, they often never ended well. Demands would never be met, either out of policy or inability, and in the end most kidnappings ended up as murders.

Though JD had to think, just for a moment, had Mai been victim to Stockholm Syndrome when they took her? He didn't think he'd find out, but still, it might've explained partly why Mai had been having such a difficult time with this conversation. The bigger part however had been plain to JD:

JD knew what he would do in that situation, but Mai did not know what she would do. Not if she could save herself from that life. She was guilty of nothing but being herself: that's why ONI had come for her.

"If they were innocent, I'd stop them." Her words had been hollow. JD knew she meant it if it had been someone else, but the way she spoke now, with pauses, with a inward look she denied herself ever since her birth, she lied to Shepard.

She knew she lied and it burned her tongue, and, for once, she felt like she needed helmet now more than anything as her face was not her own, scowling at herself.

Shepard knew lies. She'd spent every moment of her free time after Akuze speaking, and bringing, truth to power. In another life, she would've been a politician, championing truth, justice, and mercy. In this life she had a gun to do that with. She saw a lie in the air, and that became the biggest mystery about Master Chief Petty Officer Mai Gul to her. Not her armor, not her training, but who she was.

"Right…" Was all that she could say, picking herself up off the table. "Chief Gul, Chief Durante, we're on the move in about an hour. Gotta play politics for a bit. Get ready."

She disappeared down the elevator to the gear lockers, leaving Mai and JD alone as, without prompting, Mai had replaced Shepard's place on the table.

Her left hand had come up to the side of her helmet, her right hand on the table, fingertips pushing into the material, lost in thought. "Am I really that wrong?"

"Huh?"

She didn't repeat what she said, even as JD slid into the chair next to her. He knew what she said, but it was a self-awareness that seemed unkind to her. "Ain't nothing wrong about you Mai." He sat on his char cocked, facing her. "Just what been done with you, that's my problem."

Her head turned, and the uncanny valley put itself on her. She moved like a statue and the ODST had been spooked for a flash of a second. "What's been done to me, JD, that's the only reason I'm here right now. Why is that so wrong?"

He wished he could've explained. He wished he could've told her that the entire Spartan program was morally wrong, and an end that would justify those means held no meaning when it had been so reprehensible. Though to say it true, it would be to invalidate her life, and he could not do that. Not now, not here, and perhaps, not ever.

The silence was his answer.

---

It was easy to acclimate. Far easier than they had anticipated.

Human meant far more than two eyes, two years, ten fingers and toes. Human had meant the conduct of living a life. Human meant standing outside of a hole in the wall store and the window displays but never going in, annoying the owner inside. Human meant loudly speaking into your omni-tool and arguing in public with your significant other to everyone's chagrin. Human meant not caring at all when a woman that had been a foot and a half too tall, and about a eight hundred pounds too heavy walked through the crowd.

Sexual dimorphism, capitalism, the knowledge on how to have poor table manners, being a jerk, and social etiquette that could be understood across species, it had made the aliens of the Citadel feel human. Though that was the trick that JD and Mai, moreso Mai, had used on themselves: it wasn't a fact that these behaviors were anymore associated with being human as much as it was associated with being Asari or Turian. It was rather it was normal.

The Turian's face mandibles, the floating nature of the Hanar, and the squatness of the Volus paired with their protective suits… all of it alien, and yet, normal.

Fears from the Admiralty and those who knew of their true nature of being overwhelmed, left in that multicultural, multiracial, multi-species pot that had been the Citadel, it was unfounded as Mai and JD walked, albeit uneasily, through the crowds of the docks. Civilian, C-Sec, and military, from all creeds of life combined into one group, and Anderson's shore team walked through it with no trouble at all.

A big enough berth was given because of Mai anyway.

The thought of Xenophobia was the excuse: the true reason why anyone worried here, with the ODST and the Spartan, was the very idea that they had been drilled with the thought that anything not human had been out to kill them. Circumstantially, it had been true, but it was systematic of a bigger reason:

All of their apprehension if there had been any, it was explained with a simple declaration: Survival.

So as Mai was scanned down with the C-Sec scanners, chest to chest with a Turian, looking up to her, nothing about this triggered any sense of hostility that hadn't been applied to everyone she met. This… man, if she was using the term correctly, was just doing his job. He was not a person whose very first instinct at the sight of a human was to kill: that was what JD and Mai were wired, were born and raised, to attend to as a sixth sense.

They were cautious, yes, but they were not worried.

They did their homework, read their books, watched their touristy travel vids.

There had been people on Earth still, in that galaxy, who had never met an Asari, or seen an Elcor, so where JD and Mai were at mindset wise, it was okay. They would be okay.

Mostly okay. "You know everything in my twenty years with C-Sec tells me to report your armor, human." The Turian officer had looked her armor up and down. "Not one bit of Eezo off of ya that isn't residual."

"Stealth tech, officer." Anderson had been by Mai's side as she was swiped up and down the scanners that led into the C-Sec concourse and out to the rest of the Citadel access. "Lessons learned from the Normandy." He thumbed back to the frigate, resting in its bay as Alliance logistics carted more supplies into it. It left on a shakedown run, not fully stocked with provisions for a longer tasking.

"Ah, right, that's that ship Palaven is so up and arms about." The C-Sec officer looked over, his darker skin making his white face paint shine. "I don't get paid enough to ask questions about these things. The mech is clear, long as she's just a VI."

Mai tilted her head and Anderson had gotten the confusion. They had thought her a mech. With one movement she had lifted her helmet off, breathing in the air of the Citadel. Her balaclava remained beneath it, leaving only the single hole that bridged across her nose and eyes to reveal that she had been of flesh. More man than machine as it looked like.

"Spirits." The C-Sec officer was aghast. "Maybe I should hop off the dextro-amino food if you humans get your sized."

Her blue eyes were blank as the helmet went back on.

"Enough struttin', Chief Gul, we get it you're tall." Shepard had teased on the other end, waiting patiently with Ashley and Kaiden. JD had appeared behind her as Mai rolled her head, adjusting the seals on her helmet, finally coming through.

It was a decision that Anderson had to go with on the spot: whether or not Mai would've been allowed on station with her armor. Then again, to be hidden in plain sight was a blessing unto itself. She had been just like the Normandy in that way, and they would proceed with it.

The all-body scanner swept JD up and down as he got done gawking at the station. "First time?"

He spread his arms. Even Luna had the same security processes. "Yeah."

The C-Sec officer passed over his guns and pistol with his omni. "Hm. Not many people carry like you anymore. Gonna have to ask you to keep them deactivated. You and the big one."

Shepard had noticed this the second they had touched down on Eden Prime: they carried their guns in the olden way. Their safeties were their trigger finger.

Here however, it made sense to not carry like that. With a flick of a switch the guns shrunk down, but they were still on their slings. Mai had carried her DMR across her chest, while JD had his SMG tucked beneath his left arm, ready to be swung out. It was a very specific choice to hold a weapon like that, and, again, Shepard wondered what kind of training those two had.

"Thanks. You're good. Like the helmet, by the way."

"Me too." JD could only respond, moving forward and joining the rest of his group. His mind had long phased out the actual helmet from his peripheral, the HUD burned into his vision, ghosts of what they were still present when his helmet had been off.

Walking up to Shepard and Anderson, they could've proceeded now, if it hadn't been for a flash of purple and pink creating itself to the image of an Asari in front of the exit processing. "Greetings!"

AI were outlawed. That was one of the easy facts to learn about this galaxy. To Mai and JD it would've been a change, no doubt. The amount of direct interactions he personally had with AI, JD could count on one hand, while Mai had herself avoided them altogether. There was a certain oddity to them, even when they were back home: the spitting image of a human mind as it was donated, at least in terms of the Smart AI. Even the Dumb AI that had often corralled most civilian ports and cities were a great deal knowledgeable in passing conversation that they could pose as human. Funny then, as it was, that when AI were given an avatar, they would imitate flesh. Funny to JD at least as the VI before them scanned them again.

"Welcome back to the Citadel. It appears that we have new guests today with you." She spoke to Anderson, having been here on the Citadel before it seemed. He had only given a faint smile to the program as it spoke from its holographic circlet on the floor

"This is Avina." He meekly offered.

Shepard had been intrigued. She was intrigued by many things in her life, and she lived by a certain mindset. "Redefine what you think is a miracle, and miracles happen everyday." A Mongolian horse farmer told her long ago, on a soul searching Summer. Avina had been one such miracle.

"Hello? Are you a person or a…?"

Avina's holographic features smiled in what expressiveness it had, its body rigid in its data stream like composition.

"My name is Avina, and I am pleased to be your virtual guide throughout the Citadel. To answer your question, I am a fully interactive virtual intelligence programmed to provide spontaneous guidance at predetermined locations of interested throughout the station."

Shepard herself hadn't much interaction with VIs, or at least, if she had she had blotted them out as purely tools to her. For all her briefing in N7 training about the Geth and the AI rebellion of the Quarians, she had understood that warning well. Any number of horror movies about rogue AIs on the spaceships had caused her a few sleepless nights.

Shepard had only smiled at the VI with a nod, the avatar not doing anything back as she looked to the Captain. "You lead the way sir."

Avina shut off, and the group followed. The group that had been there was purposeful: only those that had been in Shepard's fireteam on the ground in Eden Prime. It was a large group, but no doubt they needed to be on hand for Udina and the Council.

That was why they were summoned personally.

Shepard had to answer for her failures, and she could barely hide her anxiousness in her low brow. The pressure of galactic politics had drooped her shoulders in her armor a bit, only reminding JD and Mai that they were, in a sense, lucky.

Politics didn't matter with the Covenant. Only lead. Tons of lead.

Just because they had been somewhat acclimated didn't meant they saw a threat where no one else did. Not when the doors out of C-Sec dock processing had opened and, at the other end, more C-Sec officers had been waiting with a Turian that had been the scariest example yet. One that made Mai tighten her jaw and JD suck in a breath.

His skin had been greyer than Nihlus, and his facial markings far more imposing, as if tracing his skull. Tilted down, his eyes stared up at them in a glower that had caused the two to seize as he stuck out his hand very suddenly at Anderson. The captain returned it thankfully. "I'm Executor Pallin. My men will escort you to the embassy."

"Of course, Executor." The group of C-Sec officers that surrounded them had Mai in a mental frenzy. If it had just been Turians, she would've known how to level that threat. But it hadn't just been Turians. Humans were there too. Unsurprisingly all of them drew their eyes onto her. No one in the galaxy had seen something like her.

Executor Palin's mandibles twitched for a moment, his sunken eyes looking to Mai before he lead the way. She could only stare back.

To the uninitiated she emanated of horror.

Turian mythology and religion focused on the idea of Spirits. They were the sum of the whole in the regimented, Turian society. A military unit's spirit was the collective embodiment of its courageousness and lethality. A city's spirit was of its successes and its failures in industry and history. The spirit of the land would be of its scars and hills, its crops and its basins.

Mai however, written in the back of the minds of every Turian who saw her, stared up at her, saw the Spirit of Palaven's past. Titans, according to the creation myths of Palaven, once walked their homeworld. They were worshipped as gods by the Turians, how one swipe of their hand entire cities could be wiped out. As was their terrible justice.

The Spirit of the Titan resided in Mai. She did not look human. She did not stand like a human. She stood like an old god, come back to this world to exact vengeance for her dead race.

Palin looked away from Mai quickly, hoping no one would notice his wide eyes, coughing once in his hand.

"If you shall follow me."

Like a giant concourse. JD had felt pangs of his home on Luna in the way the Citadel looked. When those doors opened, the flashes of cameras from drones had drowned them all.

"Commander Shepard! Commander Shepard! Do you have any comment on the situation at Eden Prime?!"

"Shepard! Is it true you were present on a ship that was at Eden Prime?!"

"Commander Shepard! Alliance Command still hasn't verified whether or not the murder of thirteen alleged Cerberus Personnel-"

Huh? Mai had been to taken by the flashes, resembling gunfire, to even notice the questions asked of Shepard as news media from five different races crowded them all. But JD heard, kept in his back pocket to search about later.

Mai simply averted her eyes from the crowd, as much as her training betrayed her. The harsh lights of camera flashes had been unkind to her as she kept them focused on the bottom left of her HUD, following JD's blip.

Anderson had forgotten what kind of draw Shepard had. She was a celebrity, a hero. The Extranet loved it when a hero fell.

She was a media darling, knowing what to say, and putting on the right face for the Alliance abroad. Her name was even heroic: Shepard.

She knew the loops as Palin's men pushed out, forcing the crowd of reporters out. "Please direct all questions to the Media and Public Relations Office of the Systems Alliance! I'm not taking any questions today!" It was Shepard that said that, with a voice too used to saying that for the last year. She had her controversies and reporters loved to dig.

If this was another universe, Mai would've been, then and there under the barrage of cameras, the most photographed Spartan of humanity. It was impressive then that, despite being herself, all eyes had still been on Shepard.

"Move it people! You'll get your story!" Palin barked out at the ravenous crowd.

"We don't have a car?" Anderson asked him.

He shook his head annoyed, just shy of swatting a rushing reporter. "None that can fit that… thing." He said as an asides to him, thumbing to Mai. She heard it though.

"Christ, what the hell are you working for these guys for?" Ashley reminded JD and Mai of a UNSC Marine. A lot actually. Perhaps it was in the way she spoke, her language and familiarity with knowing what it meant to be a Marine with her boots on the ground, but the looking glass for them cracked for a moment as Ashley spoke to one of the escorting, C-Sec guards. He was a human.

"Pays well enough. Keeps me close to my family."

"No- I mean, C-Sec is mostly Turians I hear. Don't you think-"

The man chuckled, looking away from Ashley. "Not gonna talk about this."

It felt wrong for JD to simply be walking like, this, gun not out and helping out with the perimeter. The crowd thinned out however, not wanting to follow through the narrower sections of the path they were on and put themselves at risk a the shoving of a C-Sec officer, however that peace gave JD something to think about as he looked passed and saw another life. It reminded him very much of Luna and Crisium City.

It was a city, yes, but it felt as if they were indoors. The steel that surrounded them all as if it had replaced an earthen nature was claustrophobic, and each inch of space was used in some manner that betrayed what this place was:

The Protheans made this place. The very idea of them as alien as anything to JD and Mai. Mankind had made it to space on their own, however, every species here it seemed piggybacked on the shoulders of giants, long gone.

The group passed a young Asari child, standing with her hand wrapped in the talons of her Turian father, looking into the glass of a hole-in-the-wall ship model store, a Salarian attending to another customer. How human it looked: a child wanting a new toy as their parents entertained them with "maybe next time". How human it seemed, contrasted to where they were: on hallowed grounded maybe.

In all of the wonders of the Galaxy, they had turned an ancient installation made by an ancient alien species far more advance than them, into the City of God. Made in their image.

It was odd, JD thought, walking among the Citadel and its buildings, it stores and shops and residences. Sometimes, when he looked up and saw only the inverted city scape of the other arms of the Citadel, he did not see the stars.

He had become very sensitive to Mai's silence, then and there. He wanted to ask her what he thought, but didn't, shying away. It wasn't the time or place. But if he did ask, he would've gotten no answer. For in that urban sprawl of neon lights and a consumerist society that had laid itself like a shaved cat on that ancient station, she remembered New Jerusalem.

---

"You know something! Audio logs recovered from our ground team and Nihlus note that Saren Arterius was present. You know something that we don't!"

Turian Councilor Sparatus did the equivalent of flaring his nostrils. "Do you think we would be as bombastic to send two Spectres to secure a Prothean Beacon? We did not send Saren to Eden Prime, Ambassador. He's too good to babysit."

"Then why was he there?"

"That is unconfirmed and you know that."

That was what the present crew of the Normand walked into.

"Two Spectres would've then done us good though! Especially since Nihlus ended up the way he did."

"Hold your tongue Ambassador." Sparatus ground through his jaws. "This little fetch mission cost him everything."

"I will not!" Udina pointed a finger at his hologram. "This is an outrage! The Council would step in if the Geth attacked a Turian colony!"

Salarian Councilor Valern had sighed, rather audibly. "The Turians don't found colonies on the borders of the Terminus Systems, Ambassador."

His compatriot, Asari Councilor Tevos agreed, folding her arms in front of her red dress. "Humanity was well aware of the risks when you went into the Traverse."

Udina hadn't noticed the crew entering, but that's why he had been good at his job, focusing on the politics in front of him. If this was another life he would've echoed something to them: that human expansionism was curbed due to Citadel sanctioning on frontier worlds and colonization. In that life however, Mai Gul had given up the locations of colonizable planets within Systems Alliance space, and more were on the way if she was treated right. If she trusted them, in the end.

"We demand the truth! You sent one of your own and another one of Humanity's Spectre candidates into a botched mission! If Saren was there this would be the second time it's happened!"

Sparatus scoffed. "You don't get to make demands of the Council, Ambassador." His hands held behind his back like the military man that he was.

"Citadel Security is investigating your claims about interference and the mission at Eden Prime. We will discussed C-Sec findings at the hearings. Not before."

The line was cut, and the humans were left alone as Udina released his hot breath and turned to greet the reasons why he had been losing more and more of his grey hair: He was going to berate them, but he stopped cold.

This was the first time he had seen the two humans of the UNSC first hand. They had caused him enough of a headache in the month prior, but annoyance wouldn't be what he would tell them, tell Mai, now that she was in front of them. She was a giant, matching even a Krogan Battlemaster in presence, looking down on all as if waiting to render judgement.

In case a diplomatic incident regarding them were had, either through some streak of xenophobia or some massacre, he was briefed on what was the plan: Project Spartan being an experimental trial of combat drug implementation and next gen armor system which caused side effects in the user that could've conveniently been anything. JD had been her handler, and Mai had been the test rat.

"I'm uh- glad to see the tests are going well Chief Gul, Chief Durante."

They both had said nothing, answering only in a nod.

Anderson had gestured his finger to Shepard and the rest of her men, and they had left his side as Shepard led them to the balcony.

The Presidium had been far more beautiful than anything the UNSC could've made on an floating space station. It was like the most idyllic park, and, for a moment, JD had considered taking off his helmet as the fireteam collectively leaned on the balcony.

"Helluva a view." Kaiden peered over, seeing the walkways for others below the embassies. "Think people take a swim out there?"

The lakes were a light blue, and, oddly enough, a Krogan statue had stood before one of the pond sitting areas.

Kaiden nudged Shepard's elbow. She shook her head. "I wonder if there are fish in there."

"Probably not." JD hadn't known why he had blurt that out. The fireteam looked at him, hoping he'd explain. He pulled an answer out his ass as Shepard tilted her head at him. "Uh. Gravitational differences aren't good for fishes that originate on Earth."

Yeah that sounded right.

"Huh."

"Captain Anderson. I see you brought half your crew." Udina sterned Anderson as said crew looked over as if to give the Ambassador a wave. Shepard made herself available however, pushing off the railing to join her captain.

"Only Shepard's ground team. The fireteams that were in the colony are unrelated."

"I'm sure Ryder will answer different, Captain."

Anderson rolled his eyes as Hitman's ownership by the other N7 was known even to Udina.

"Well, I brought them here. They would know how to answer any of the important questions if you have them."

Udina chopped his hand into his own palm. "I have the mission reports. I assume they're accurate?"

Shepard folded her hands behind her back, almost in emulation of what she saw from Sparatus briefly.

"They are. And based on your chat there, it seems like the Council will give us the floor for this."

"They aren't happy about it," Udina shook his head. "They lost one of their top agents, and the mission was supposed to be easy, Commander."

Shepard's face crinkled. "Circumstances were out of my control, Ambassador. There are things that even we still don't know. Like the apparent presence of another Spectre."

"Saren Arterius." Udina spoke calmly. "The only reason we're making the claim that he was also there is because you claim Nihlus said his name."

"Yes sir," Shepard responded with all her heart. "Perhaps Saren was also observing me."

"He would." Anderson admitted. "He's not… fond of the idea of a Human Spectre."

There was an uncomfortableness in his throat saying that. "But the fact that Saren didn't step in, or do anything to assist you while the Geth, the Geth of all things, laid waste to our colony… It's almost as if the Council wanted to see Eden Prime burn."

Shepard's hands balled into fist behind her back. "I won't be made a scapegoat, Ambassador. Good people died on Eden Prime and I will hold people responsible."

Her voice was like glass. When it broke, people knew, grinding against the floor as if a dare.

"Settle down, Commander. You've done more than enough to jeopardize your candidacy for the Spectres." Udina kept glancing at the door, as if there was a threat. But there wouldn't be any, C-Sec had guards posted out the front door.

"You seemed occupied, Ambassador?" Shepard noticed.

"Just pressed for time. Given everything," he admitted. "The mission to Eden Prime was supposed to be your chance you could perform even the simplest duties of the Spctres, for the Council. Instead Nihlus ends up in a coma, and the beacon was destroyed!"

"That's not her fault! The Geth attacked!" Anderson defended his crew. He wasn't worth a damn as an officer if he didn't, especially against a politician like Udina.

"I know, Captain, I know." Despite being a politician, Udina was still human. "But we better hope C-Sec turns up evidence to defend us. Otherwise we might lose our best chance at earning our place in the galaxy."

The Ambassador looked at his omni-tool, checking the time. Of really, all the times for this to happen today was not good. Not with who was in the room at that very moment. "Captain Anderson, I need you to go to the Tower with your team and wait for me."

Anderson seemed surprised. "Don't you want to go over a few things?"

Udina had, in the span of seconds, seemed frantic. "I do, but-" He looked to Mai and JD, lazily looking out and admiring the scenery. "You need to leave, right now. I have other arrangements."

On cue, and it would've killed them all. The doors to Udina's office had opened swiftly, and in came walking those who were supposed to be there at that minute. It was scheduled after all.

Ashley and Kaiden had been the first to turn around, and for that, Kaiden's face drained of color as Williams, none the wiser, poked JD's shoulder and coaxed him to look at who entered the room. It was when Mai heard the tell-tale sound of a hoof walk on metal, did she snap.

It had occurred to JD and Mai that they had never seen what any of the Covenant looked like out of combat. No one but perhaps ONI knew what a Sangheili looked like when they were back home, living a life without the Covenant. Nor did they know what the Unggoy proceeded on their own homeworld, where they didn't need their methane suits and harnesses. The Covenant had always been viewed through the film of war, and now, for the first time in their lives, the two soldiers who had been to war with the Covenant only knew how to act through that film.

It explained why Mai had snapped into a combat form, ghosting over her hip and pistol as JD jerked his arm up to crane his gun to aim.

Vice versa, it explained why the Shipmistress Seylu Karonee had fluttered her cape one way as she went to unhook her sword from its clasp and, over her shoulder, the Jiralhanae, the Brute known as Mercaius, grasp his gravity hammer and turn it on.

It was an arm barred, on both sides, that left all those who would respond and start combat at the very knowledge of each other's existence crooked and frozen as if in a picture. Half-way forms and moves.

For JD and Mai, it had been Anderson, stepping in front of both of them with a nimbleness that had made Shepard second guess herself about the man's age.

For the other new entrants to their galaxy, it was an arm that came from a being held in a hover chair: The Prophet of Destiny.

Mai had never seen one this close: a Prophet; the San'Shyuum. She had only killed them from a distance with a sniper rifle, or with preplaced explosives. That was the level of security each one of them commanded. How painful then, it was that the closest she'd been to one had been here, and now. Secrets were spilled to the floor and yet still hidden by plain sight.

The Covenant did not want anyone to know that they had been to war with a humanity. The Alliance knew that, but kept their knowledge of it a secret given the Covenant's current pacification toward them. On top of that the very fact Mai and JD had been alive, in Alliance hands, was not supposed to be a secret, they were just normal humans after all. It was a secret that the Covenant, for their own sake, also had to feed into. To the galaxy, they had no idea why the woman in her hulking armor, her face like that of a black hole, and the similarly black-clad shock trooper evoked such responses from the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae.

It was the Unggoy that had been with them that broke whatever freeze they were in and screamed back out into the hall.

Orders were orders. JD wanted to scream inside of his helmet, but did nothing as he immediately dropped the grip he had on his gun and let it fall on his chest by sling, finding the gaze of Shepard as her head was on a swivel: between them and the Covenant.

He cleared his throat. "Didn't recognize them, is all." He said fast. He wasn't used to telling lies and his voice broke in telling them. Mai offered no such fabrications as she stepped down, a very audible breath from her mouth coming out as if she was a bull, biding her time.

"Oh, my Elites, I had thought that we had gotten over this?" Came the croaky, old voice of a Prophet, translated through their Omni-tools. His gravity chair moved for him, barely tilting as he moved his arm and lowered it peacefully, only to return his sight to the two humans he knew, he recognized.

Mai was well predisposed with what the San'Shyuum looked like, briefed on the species during a dozen different deep ops behind Covenant lines. They were the targets Spartan-IIIs like her were supposed to sacrifice themselves to take out. For JD however, it was different, and he was thankful he had his helmet on, hiding his face that was aghast with disbelief. The Elite and Brute he could handle. He didn't lie to himself, humanity would never commit a genocide like the one he felt was needed… right?

In any case, he fully anticipated this day to come: the day he would have to come face to face with his former enemies.

He didn't anticipate these rumored Prophets, however, to look so human. Their faces at least. Immediately he knew the character he could've given the Prophet of Destiny, now face to face, not behind a news broadcast.

This was what a leader of the Covenant looked like, and it looked like an elder he himself would respect.

Every single piece of his being wanted to raise his gun, to open fire. But he stayed. He had a new life now, and if anyone needed to fight against urges now, it wouldn't be him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. The way Mai's right hand hovered over her pistol, minute vibrations, jerks. She fought against gravity itself at that moment. It wasn't her fighting her body: it was her fighting her soul; her very nature.

He did the only thing he knew how to do:

He reached out as Shepard, an eyebrow raised over her concerned gaze at the two of them, stepped in front of them, returning her face to the delegation they were rudely in the way of.

On both of their heads, their motion trackers remaining on, the room lit up red as, slowly, just as they were doing, the Covenant stood down.

A mile divide separated both parties in the room, cut between those who knew and those who didn't; those who had an idea, and those who weren't supposed to.

Kill or be killed had turned into diplomacy, and the soldiers of the war, on both sides, had to deal with it.

For Mai and JD, they had been standing across from the enemy that had wanted them dead for being human, and had done everything in their power to make that so.

For Karonee and Mercaius, before them stood a Demon.

"I'm sorry, we'll be out of your way." Shepard bowed her head down respectfully to the group. She didn't know any better. Motioning to a grim looking Kaiden and a somewhat perplexed Ashley, they walked to her.

"Nonsense. If it's anyone, it'd be us intruding on you, generally." Destiny moved his grav chair forward, but Karonee had gripped her hands upon it. She could not say her warning, but could press it onto him. He ignored it.

Shepard heard JD step toward her, but she stepped forward in turn.

Half way, that's how the Prophet of Destiny and Jane Shepard met.

The commander had been wondering when she would've crossed paths with the Covenant. She had been in the Alaskan bush hunting deer when Altis had happened, surprised that the Admiralty hadn't called her and the rest of the N7s back to be briefed. Though she understood now why: Ryder had been the N7 in charge of that situation, and so her mind was settled. In the end, the Covenant had been edgy, if not peaceful. Peaceful enough to have been brought to the Citadel to start their own diplomatic proceedings on being recognized by the Galaxy.

Shepard's face had been a smile as the two converged, Destiny sharing the same as he reached one of his hands. His eyes had been like a Salarian, she noted, his skin giving off the impression that he had been an elder of sort based on the wrinkles, his elongated head cocked down to see Shepard, eye to eye.

She reached back, shaking. The human activity of a hand shake had been something he was to practice now. Indeed all those in the Covenant would have to do that. "The Prophet of Destiny, I presume?"

"Yes, and who do I have the pleasure of meeting here now?"

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy, I was just on my way out with my team." The respectfulness in her voice, it was admirable. Destiny had met many recently who had that kind of respect in their tones, but here, in this unexpected meeting, she did it without warning, naturally.

"Lieutenant Commander Shepard. I will remember that name." He very much would if she had walked in step with a Demon. "I presume you could guess as to why we are here?"

"Ah, not everyday several million individuals get marooned in Alliance space. I presume you're here to make your own place?"

She spoke candidly, easily. "Naturally. We'd hate to be a burden to humanity."

He spoke in truths and in lies. Lies that made Mai and JD grind their teeth and twitch their eyes.

Karonee had been glancing back and forth between the Prophet and the Demons and her Imp, Mercaius still standing, his fingers digging themselves into the leather grip of his Gravity Hammer. One swing, one impact of it would destroy that entire office.

More Elites came into the room. Not armored, but ready to throw down. At least five that hadn't been the smaller ones besides the Prophet. The Grunts already fled the scene as several Jackals came in by the sides of those Elites. The large Brute seemed ready to swing as, one by one, they all came in, and a sampler of an Empire was displayed.

Mai had never seen every member of the Covenant in one room. JD hadn't recognized the Engineers or the Prophets at all.

The only one that was armed and armored as they were in the field had been the Hunter. The only thing missing from it had been its fuel rod gun. It was a miracle that one had been able to fit in, but the accommodation of the Elcor had made it possible as it groaned and growled like a Earth tiger.

"At ease." The words from the smaller Sangheili had been translated through the Omni, and for the first time in their lives JD and Mai had heard what an Elite sounded like in English. More than that, they had also known now what a female Elite looked like.

Seylu Karonee bobbed her head back and forth across those behind her, telling them as best she could without uttering a word, dropping the veil of ignorance, to not do anything.

JD and Mai were the ones with the guns. They could've taken them, perhaps, if the Brute didn't throw his hammer and knock them off the floor. They could've taken them if the Hunter didn't charge at them. They could've taken them if-

"I think it'd be best, Lieutenant Commander, if you'd go to the Tower and wait. I'll be holding Chief Gul and Chief Durante for a moment." Anderson's voice transformed, sliding into one of heaviness, weariness. This wasn't how they wanted to tackle this topic, but this was the hand they were drawn. At least this time, instead of Geth, it had just been bad timing.

Karonee brooded as she had motioned back to clear the doorway.

"Seem like the spooks are in trouble." Ashley teased. But Shepard saw more to it.

"Sir?"

"Go Shepard. Now." Orders.

She looked back to Destiny. "It was a pleasure making the introduction." He said slowly, lowly.

Shepard could only return it. "I hope to meet again one day." She looked back to her men. "Come on."

The second the door closed to Udina's office no one would know what would happen. Bets were made, hopes and fear laid out to the floor, and, for the first time in her life, Mai Gul hesitated to kill the Covenant.

---

Usze Tahamee had seen the irony of where he had been right now. It took him the long way around, between dodging assassins in his culture and slaughtering on the battlefields of mankind, but he had eventually ended up as guard duty for a Prophet. The situation was, of course, exceptional, and the need for it was readily available to any with a modicum of respect for that situation, but still it was ironic. Still, being part of the Honor Guard didn't meant he'd be doing what he was doing now.

"Listen here you Bosh'tet!" A long finger from a three-fingered hand touched his claret combat harness, ignoring the fact he had been cradling a Carbine in his arms. "I don't like humans anymore than the next person, but I need to see them! I have information that they need to hear and no one else will listen!"

She was whiny, barely half his height, probably five times less his weight, and yet she was persistent.

Usze looked over to the Elite on the other side of the stairs leading up to the . He was just as dismissive as him, guarding the way up to the Human, Elcor, and Volus embassies. He also wasn't helping.

"Again," It was odd to speak with such reservation. To a civilian no less. "For the safety of our Hierarch, we cannot allow you to proceed. Step away."

The Asari at the front desk had hardly seemed bothered by the "suit rat" as Usze had heard her called by a passerby beneath his breath.

She grumbled audibly behind her mask, her eyes luminescent, the very faint shadow of her nose crinkling behind it noting her aggravation. "I can't even wait! They're following me! Would you rather me die, right here? In front of you?"

Usze bobbed his head non-chalantly, looking out at the sparse foot traffic of the presidium. In another life, if this was a human station, this would've been a prime hunting ground. So lackadaisical, how ignorant everyone there walked. There had been nothing for them to be ignorant about however, there was no war here. If the Citadel had been anything like High Charity, there was no reason for this one to be afraid. Security seemed tight by all means that even his posting with Destiny was purely posturing.

"I'd rather not you die, given our… relations, but I will not move from this spot until my Hierarch wills."

"Just because we share a homeworld means nothing to me, Sangheili." It was refreshing that just because the ancient homeworld of the Quarians had also turned out to be Sangheilios, it didn't mean that the Quarians had been so weak spined as a whole to immediately open arms to the Sangheili. Most did according to the reports on how Quarians throughout the Galaxy on their pilgrimage were making for Altis in order to assist the Covenant, but a precious few had made known over the extranet that the Admiralty had been desperate to accept such a highly volatile coincidence dictate relations with a new conglomerate of aliens.

He could respect this Quarian for that, even if she did it in the way a petulant child does.

"Then we are agreed." Usze had said back. He hadn't exactly been accommodating of the Quarians who had landed on Altis and were given guest of Destiny himself. He knew of the tactical and practical ramifications: if the Quarians had been so willing to host some of their people and assist them in a common goal, and that is the liberation of Rannoch in some distant future, they would ferry Covenant species in their nomadic lifestyle, allowing them a way to spread out into the universe outside of the Alliance. Surely, knowing Sanghelios' fate in that galaxy had given Usze a pang in his heart, but this hadn't been his galaxy. Would he go to war for the Quarians? Of course not. But ends justified means, and Destiny saw it that way. He was no longer just a Sangheili who existed for the Sangheili. He was part of the Covenant, and the Covenant came first.

Otherwise the answer might've been different.

"Please." Two balled fists had hit his chest, but there were nothing but a tap to him. He did nothing, she wasn't a threat as she begged, a croak in her voice. "My friend has already died for this, and if I just let this message loose I'll be called a conspiracy nut. I have to tell someone who can get it up to the right people."

He didn't have his helmet on, his harness was enough and Destiny had made it very clear that he wanted the Galaxy to see them all as they were: not covered in the shroud of war. That only meant he had been vulnerable; vulnerable in the sense that the Qurian had been able to lock eyes with him.

Usze didn't remember the last time he'd been lied to, if, at all. Lies and sedition, conspiracy, they were not part of Sangheili culture, or of the Covenant. So he was intimate with the truth, enough that it felt like Quarian had held it within her and believed herself.

The scar on his face, left by a Demon, burned.

"Hey! You there! C-Sec get down on the ground!" A Turian voice cried out in what looked like a pair of C-Sec officers.

"Keelah!" And the Quarian was gone without another word, dashing away from Usze as she jumped over the balcony, out of view, in fear of her life.

The Turian that had called out her name had approached Usze. "Why didn't you stop her?!"

He looked… worn, ragged. Not clean. The smell of him spoke to it. "I cannot move. I have my duties." Holding his Carbine tighter against his chest the Turian only swore a word that the translator couldn't translate cleanly and ran off with his partner, obviously in chase.

The Asari at the front desk didn't seem bothered as the other Elite on guard shrugged. "This galaxy is strange, brother." He spoke.

Usze loosened his shoulders in response. "So it is."

"Very interesting it is, though, you didn't stop her." A human voice had come from behind, and Usze snapped around to see an armored human walk down the stairs. In truth Usze did hear a screaming Grunt a few moments before but thought nothing of it. The little gremlins were often that skittish.

What he saw had been a very casual human, walking down the stairs with two in tow, a man and a woman.

"Who was that?"

"It is no concern of yours human." He saw her, and recognized her as a warfighter. Not like a Demon. More like the usual UNSC welp. Her red hair had been tied into a bun in the back, and her freckles intrigued him, honestly. He had never been given to see a human face alive and clean like that.

"She just seems like trouble. Is all. I caught a bit of that conversation of yours and it seemed interesting."

"Indeed it was." Usze wanted to block, but Shepard knew the way around.

"The Prophet of Destiny, he seemed especially interested in cooperating with humanity… Every great journey begins with a single step, don't it? Why not here? So what was her name?"

He relented. If this human was as important enough to have come from behind him he figured she wanted to know for a good reason.

She did tell him her name when she first approached. "Her name was… Tali? Tali'Zorah I think." He couldn't remember the last part. Ke had been one of the Elites on that station right now with him, accompanying a similar Quarian entourage. He had been part of the Covenant task group in charge with liaison efforts when he hadn't been tasked with Usze. The older Elite took it well enough, as much as he had felt guilted about forcing Admiral Shala'Raan into a flu. She was well, though. She would survive, and that meant the world to the Quarians.

Shepard nodded her head. "I see… Sangheili right?"

She drew the conversation back to him. "Hm?"

"Sangheili. Am I saying your species name correctly?"

"Ah." Usze understood. Humans were far more curious than he had ever anticipated. In truth many aliens were about them. The Salarian doctor, Mordin Solus, had been on the agenda of every command meeting back on the Solace given his requests for study of them. Most of them had been denied, but the good professor took it in stride. "Yes, human." He answered back.

He didn't hate humanity, but tolerating them now had been… a challenge.

"I heard chatter, over the Extranet, that your people are also called Elites? Which do you prefer?"

His eyes narrowed. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just wondering what you'd prefer. Honestly."

He was an Ascetic. The old teachings of the Sangheili resided beneath him and he respected that very much. "Sangheili. In truth. But most of my people prefer Elites."

Even his old commander, Rtas Vadumee preferred it now, and how it struck fear in the humans. Usze wasn't quite sure how he felt about that, for in this galaxy there was no fear of them. Not if this woman was almost chest to chest with him, taking in his details as if he were-

He was alien.

To her at least.

"Thank you." There was an awkward silence that past as Usze looked away, out into the Presidium. One that Shepard had done well to avoid. "I should go. Thank you telling me."

Usze offered no response as the trio walked off into the crowds of the Presidium. If, perhaps, High Charity had been as softly, brightly lit as this place was, he might've joined the Honor Guard willingly. To his side the Elite chortled.

"Is there something about you that makes you so appealing to talk to, Major?"

He looked back to the Embassies and prayed that Destiny and Karonee would swiftly proceed with the human ambassador. "I don't wish to find out, Minor."

---

Shepard and the rest had left, leaving behind a bloodbath in the making.

"I want to kill you right now."

"Demon, I already know where my blade shall enter your body."

It was the first time Mai had ever spoken to the Covenant, and of all the words she could've used, those felt best, responded to by the Shipmistress Karonee.

How odd it had been, that the translation software of this galaxy created a line of basic understanding that could've only been matched by thirty years of war. The Elites and the Spartans had a common language, and it was that of violence.

"We had our suspicions, but… They were unconfirmed. It would've been useless to assume that the Systems Alliance harbors our very enemy." Destiny had mediated as Anderson and Udina held in their breath. Right here, right now. Fine.

Anderson had sucked in his grievances. It didn't feel good to be bouncing between issues like a pinball, but this was how it was dealt.

"We know you were at war with the UNSC. With another humanity."

"Then we are initiated."

The C-Sec Office was next door, but even then that didn't seem close enough for Anderson and Udina as Mai stepped forward, JD squaring his feet. Courses of action went through both of their heads, and, as it turns out, only communicated through that fashion. As was the benefits of having a private comm link.

"I'll fight, you go out the balcony with them."

Like hell he was. The ODST stepped in front of Anderson and Udina, coming ahead of Mai even.

Karonee had seen the move, doing the same with Destiny as the hilt of her energy sword was in her hand and out.

His speech did not change as he spoke with threat, with ominousness. "Then do you know why, then, we purged the humanity we knew?"

"Your destruction is the will of the gods, and we are their instrument."

Words repeated. Not by the Covenant, but by Anderson.

Only then did Mai and JD realize they were caught in between Udina and Anderson, and the Covenant.

"They are our holy scourge. We are anointed by God to rid them from this world." Destiny spoke their manifest destiny.

Mai had unhooked a pistol in her right hand, one of her blades in her left.

"Your world. Not ours." Anderson's words battled with Destiny.

JD moved slightly over to the right as Mai saw, she echoing, moving reverse. They wouldn't get caught in the same burst of fire as Karonee sent several Elites to either side, Mercaius moving forward. He had waited years to fight a Demon.

"Enough of this!"

"These two humans are all we ask. For them to be purged. If they are not, no peace shall exist for us, for you harbor an enemy of the Covenant. Your harbor a Demon and an Imp."

JD hadn't even known that the Covenant had a name for them. Imps. He felt blessed only after he felt the fear as sweat pooled into the absorption cushion at his forehead, pressed by his helmet.

"These two are guilty of nothing but fighting a war for their very survival, and you know that." Udina had gotten the closest a human had ever gotten to a Prophet; only to speak truth. "What would you have done, if you were in their shoes? If you were fighting a losing war?"

No answer could be given by Destiny as he frowned and remembered where the Covenant was right now: on Altis, the eyes of the galaxy; the guns of the galaxy, all aimed at them.

Udina turned away, back to Anderson's side. "We are not your humanity, and you are not in the position to barter for the lives of this man, and this woman."

"Guns down, Chiefs, helmets off."

Mai turned her head slightly to speak to Anderson, to warn him. "Sir-"

"That's an order Chief Gul!"

Spartans followed orders and she broke with them, pistol and knife falling to the ground as her training, her programing, betrayed her. Shakily her hands went to her helmet as the pressurization around it released.

Demons, after they were killed and were unable to set off their explosive fail safes, often had their helmets collected for trophies. The Covenant knew that they were nothing but human. But to see one alive, her face twisted between regret and anger and fury, but alive, it was what Anderson wanted.

Her blue eyes burned a hole through the Covenant, for that was all she could do as her helmet dropped to the floor with a metal thud and she was told, ordered, to remind the Covenant that she had been Human. Not a Demon, not a Spartan, but a Human.

It was JD that did nothing as his head snapped between Mai, between the Covenant, and between Anderson, finally locking eyes with him. In one nod, Anderson wanted him to do so as well.

Slowly, uneasily, his helmet came off and the survivor of the Covenant, of countless ships and drops and battles and worlds, bared his face to those that did the deed.

Standing there, before Destiny, before the Shipmistress Karonee, before the entire Covenant, they were monuments to all their sins, spoken through what had been done to Mai, to JD.

They were used by the Alliance to broker for peace, held up, woe was them.

"Please." Words croaked out of JD and for the first time in years, even for all his rest, his ability to sleep anywhere and anywhen, he realized how tired he was. He was tired of feeling threatened by the very beings less than ten feet away from him. "Please."

It was all he said, and the Elites that had come into the room all looked at each other.

"Stand and fight." Karonee bit at him. "Fight!"

So many names had only been remembered by him. Who would remember his? "You'd have to kill me."

An energy sword popped, and throughout the room, like a wave, the Elites followed in suit.

Destiny ignored this all as he stared directly at Udina and Anderson. "You would not give them up?"

Anderson shook his head in defiance. "Is the life of two people, worth your Covenant?"

A few seconds. A minute. An hour. A foot. A mile. The distance between stars themselves. The divide between them was that long, that wide as they stared and held.

Udina stepped between the two of them. "If these two are vermin, are worthless to you, then you can discard them. They mean nothing to you."

Karonee had thought yes. It was their duty to kill the heretics. But Destiny, he thought differently with Udina's words. "What are you doing to them?"

"Converting them. To us. To make them live as we do."

"And if they don't?"

"They would not be fit for us. To live in this galaxy." The cruelty of their situation was not lost on Mai and JD. They were denied their lives.

"Ah, interesting. So even here, you are the other." Destiny spoke to JD and Mai directly and they were pitied. "If you do not abide by them, you are dead to them. It seems we share something now."

"We're not like you." Mai grinded her teeth.

"Good." Destiny's hand reached out to Karonee's own, powering down her sword. "See to it that these two are changed, and we shall have no problem… Ambassador Udina, shall we proceed?"

"Your holiness…?" Karonee seemed surprised with the rest of the Elites.

"Weapons down. They are not the reason we are here. Isn't that right Ambassador?"

"Of course."

Mai and JD seemed just as shocked at Destiny's complacency, going on his merry way as his gravity chair passed by them and approached Udina. Without thinking the entourage passed by Mai and JD, bumping shoulders, not even regarding them save as obstacles.

The Brute Mercaius has been the last in line, given opportunity to look down upon the Demon. She averted her gaze, met only with the Brute's blue armor. "Hmph. Nothing but a woman."

And just like that, the Human-Covenant War was over for them. No death. No treaties. No conclusion. Just a man and a woman, left behind as the Galaxy continued without them.

---

The Covenant had been there in Udina's office to discuss the travel rights of their people among other things, as well as photo ops with the other embassies along with official relations being opened up. Altis would be where the Covenant resided for the meanwhile, but the stars would not be denied to them. Not with the Quarians offering to host any that went off-world. A complicated discussion surely, but not one for Mai or JD as they were left alone in Udina's office as the meeting took place in another chamber.

Anderson had said nothing to them but to hold position until advised otherwise, going to the Council Chambers to Shepard's hearing. It was alright though, they needed to be alone, to recollect themselves as they gathered their weapons and helmets and put them back on, returning to the balcony.

They were the other. That's what Destiny said.

They were not normal, even compared to the Covenant. Lepers in the flesh, different from the humanity that took them in at their very core. Worst of all they recognized it, used their nature for peace. In honesty, JD felt betrayed, but for Mai, it wasn't anything she hadn't known. She knew what it was like to be used as an asset of opportunity.

JD's helmet had come off almost as soon as it had come on, a cigarette between his lips as he and Mai stood side by side.

"They don't understand." The Spartan said to the ODST.

"I know."

"They're using their ignorance."

"I know."

"The Covenant will attack, I just- they have to."

They have to. Because that's what the Covenant did, right?

This galaxy was not black and white. There was no us vs them. Just shades of grey not so easily defined by the red and greens of their motion trackers.

"If I see any of them outside of this place. I'll kill them. I have to."

Because that's what Spartans did: kill Covenant.

But…

"They'll lock you up for it Mai. They'll kill you."

"I have to."

She didn't know how else to live. JD knew that so painfully. He promised her, back on Earth, that he'd help her show her the way, but what could he say? For the last near decade of his life all he had done was kill Covenant, and lose to them. He was not any different, in the end, then and there in a galaxy not their own.

"I can't let you do that, Mai."

"You don't even trust me." There was scorn on her voice as the metal railing of the balcony bent underneath her fingers.

"Wha-?"

"Back on the Normandy, when you grabbed my wrist."

JD let the cigarette sit on his lips far too long as he froze, blowing out a sour cloud as he backed off. "I just worried."

"You shouldn't have." Her voice was cold. As if she were in battle, in a fight. "Tell me why you did it. Out loud."

"Mai-"

"Chief Durante."

She was human. He had to keep reminding himself of that as he bit back the fear of her. "You kill aliens so easily. We have done so, so easily, for the war. Things are different now, in a place I'm… more readily able to understand."

"I'm not an inept." She was… hurt? That word was on the tip of JD's mind. She was hurt by him and his insinuations. He thought her not in control of herself. No, he should've realized earlier. She was trained to control to the finest point of human capability, and a little beyond. It was just parameters, orders, that kept her in check, and she had her orders. She was also rational. "I know why you think that, JD."

JD put out his cigarette on his shoulder pauldron as he craned his neck, trying to see her face, hiding behind her helmet and visor.

She didn't turn though, looking out at the white and green of that park-like place.

"It's hard for me. To not do what you think I'll do." Short words was all she knew how to talk in this conversation. She couldn't mince if she tried. "But I can take it."

"I know. I know." JD said in pace with his breaths. "I just have to worry."

"Worry about yourself, Chief Durante."

He looked away from her. "Not too good at that." She had a point though. He worried for people. It kept him occupied, perhaps purposeful. The silence went on for minutes, trying to reclaim the peace that had been forced upon them, trying to make the best of it.

"I'm sorry." JD started after a while. It was easy to talk to her like this. She deserved it. "I should trust you better."

"Can you?"

JD's brown eyes flashed with an honesty, his nose taking in a breath as the sky cars above zoomed. "I have to try."

Mai's right hand had gone flat, mouth level, only then to move forward and down as she turned her head at JD, the hand moving in his direction. A single amused huff had come from his mouth. He didn't consciously know about the smile that rested on it after. He wasn't surprise that she was picking this stuff up fast. Faster than him.

"I- I've been using the extranet to look up phrases. Words."

"Cheater."

"I don't cheat."

Thank you. She said thank you to him.

He had given her a thumbs up and she acknowledged in a nod. She didn't understand when she signed thank you back however. He saw the confusion in her subtle helmet movement.

"I mean-" He looked away, wishing he didn't stub out that cigarette. "Thank you, for trying to learn. It's… been a long time." Those that did know he signed didn't show much interest afterward. Maybe sparse conversation fodder if they lived long enough to have it with him, but none had tried to understand it fundamentally. "Why, by the way?"

"Hm?"

"The Spartan Signs, I understand, but what- this." His right hand came to his forehead, three fingers touching it before drawing down, thumb and pinky out, signing a Y. He signed the word for why. "Why bother? We have other things to learn."

Her answer had been brief, to the point. "To learn about you."

"Could just tell ya'." He said after a moment of taking that in.

"Is that… how it is? Normally?"

Perhaps. JD thought.

Their comms buzzed and they were brought out of themselves.

"Hitman 1-Actual, 1-3, 1-4, please respond." It was Shepard.

Mai had taken the message with a nod as JD put his helmet on. "1-4. Go ahead 1-Actual."

"1-Actual. There was a Quarian spotted outside of the embassy, purple visor, off-white and lavender body suit. Her name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, was trying to barge into the place. Can you find her and rendezvous at Citadel tower?"

Mai and JD shared a gaze before. It was a helluva a fetch, but they could handle it. "1-4. Copy all. We're moving. Out."

Quarians. They knew a little about them, but even Alliance records of them were sparse compared to the Turians.

Still, they had a mission that drove them out of Udina's office at a brisk pace, down the stairs and- Mai looked left and saw a very familiar face.

They stared each other up, when their cells were right across from each other in Altis. Usze Tahamee knew her well, better than any among his kind now. She had left her mark on him and he had waited till the day he could repay it in kind.

"Demon."

He was about half an hour late to this, but he had responded the same as Karonee, half way. Mai had already been over that, but it had been for another reason: She recognized him. From the cell, and from the fight on Altis. He fought her to a standstill. To death even, maybe.

JD again had momentarily freaked, but calmed himself as the Minor on the other side of the stairs simply stared him down and away, to the Asari at the front desk.

"Uh- Hi."

The attendant smiled up at him from her desk with a customer service smile. "Hello, how may I help you?"

"Did you happen to see a Quarian around here?"

"Oh." Her mood soured. "That… Sangheili?" JD nodded as the Asari questioned the name. "Sangheili guard spoke to her quite a bit."

She pointed at Usze as Mai held her ground by him. She didn't know quite what to do. She always killed those she was engaged with and this Elite before her, he had been the first to get away. He didn't know what to do either, the Prophet had said that Humanity hadn't been their enemy anymore, and the revelations from inside Udina's office hadn't been told to him yet. He froze, as did she. This close again and the electricity between them stalled as suddenly they had to talk to him.

"I remember you." Mai ground out.

"So do I." He responded back, only after a moment of surprise, remembering that this Demon had been a female.

It had been odd to hear her, a Demon, speak his language. It was thanks to the translator, but still it rendered this confrontation odd.

JD had slowly walked up to him, uneasily proceeding as Mai and him had been stuck in a staring contest of inaction. They wanted to kill each other, yes, but here? It didn't feel quite right, and they had their orders.

The ODST had to stop himself as he opened his mouth. His life had certainly turned out differently than it should've he decided then and there, restarting his sentence. "I need to ask you a question."

Usze turned to JD. "Why would I even speak to you?"

Very true. JD looked around at the crowds past the archway that led to these embassies, maybe he could've gotten a middle-man? No. Useless, they both understood each other completely.

"I don't want to either but-" He laughed to himself. He sounded like his father talking to a suspect. "What the hell, man."

"Hmph. Human laughter. It's ridicoulous." The hostility in his voice was only warranted when Mai continued where JD struggled to make sense of what he was doing.

"There was a Quarian speaking to you. Where'd she go."

She spoke as if he did something to the Quarian. Usze ignored her, looking off. Mai wanted to wring his neck but she couldn't out of proper decency. Udina had enough trouble to not be dealing with blood at his doorstep.

She would've waited a month for an answer before she did beat it out of him, but thankfully there was a more readily available solution in the form of a flash of blue.

A Turian had rushed the trio, and again, the three of them had been worried about the same thing. First time it had been the Alliance Marines rushing them on Altis, now it had been a Turian in his blue C-Sec armor, blue tattoos along the bottom ridges of his eyes denoting him. He seemed hurried, panting as he stopped in front of them. He was no danger, but he seemed either in danger or looking for it.

"You." He regarded Usze. "Did you see a Quarian come past here? Purple, yay high?" He made the height with his talons.

He nodded. At least it had been the proper authorities asking. "She was… annoying." He gave side eye to Mai.

"Alive at least." He said to himself, far louder than he should've. "Where is she?"

"Tali Zorah?" JD had spoke. The Turian had almost shouted, grabbed his shoulders, when he said her name. Yeah, he was a cop JD knew. He seemed panicked enough.

"Do you know anything about where she is?"

"No, we're looking for her too. For Commander Shepard." The Turian nodded at them in satisfaction, trusting them in that moment.

"Do you?" The Turian came back to Usze. "Please. My name is Garrus Vakarian. C-Sec."

Usze tilted his head like a dog, perplexed. "A few of your officers were chasing her already, did you not-?"

"Spirits!" Garrus cursed as he thumbed the safety on his pistol, going to his omni. "This is Officer Vakarian, be advised there are- How many?"

Usze remembered. "Two. One Turian. One human."

"There are two hitmen posing as C-Sec Officers in the vicinity of the Embassies and the upper wards. I need an APB on all unbadged officers."

Police chatter, all too familiar to JD, barked back at Garrus. He readied his SMG. "We're going with you Officer Vakarian." Mai nodded in concert.

Garrus stared up at Mai, all thoughts and grievances thrown out the window. He could ask questions later if these were some of Shepard's people. "Okay fine, more the merrier. How about you? You know which direction she went, right?"

Usze planted his feet. "I will remain here, Turian."

"An innocent life is at stake, don't you realize-!?"

The sound of a hover chair. Usze had made note to watch over his shoulder more as he felt long fingers touch his shoulders from behind. Mai and JD backed up, distance between at least the length of an energy sword swing.

The touch had been Destiny. "You may, go, Major. If the innocent is at stake."

Karonee had stepped into view with her people, filling out the staircase. She nodded in conjunction with Destiny silently.

"But, your holiness, the Demon-"

"Is of no matter. If she and her Imp shall come, so be it. Humanity is not our enemy here, even if they do harbor vermin. We'll respect their wishes."

Garrus Vakarian had long known in the last twenty-four hours that his life was going to be a lot more complicated. With the attack on Eden Prime and he being assigned by C-Sec to report to the Council. So the complications of his life were readily expanded as he stood before the Covenant, and a holy Prophet allowed one of them to work with him.

"Were it so easy." Usze had said the idiom of his people. He checked the ammo in his Carbine, his helmet hook at his hip as he slid it on. "This way. We should go, I have her scent."

"Thank you." Garrus bowed his head, hoping it was respectful to Destiny. Destiny only bowed his head back as the strangest search party on that side of the galaxy took off into the Citadel.