Man off the Moon

by FiendLurcher

A rusted hero let loose in a galaxy of myriad grays, walking the familiar steps and seeking answers beyond death at the end of that long, ever-winding road. (Currently editing ch22, took a break last month cuz of flu&brainfog)

17. Serene Serrice

A leaping figure blurred past massive flashing advertisements; the newest action vids; that super popular MMORPG that just received a new update; various dazzling luxury products; services of all kinds, cleaning, re-decoration, flights to resort planets; exotic foods and snacks in the real world...

Anything and everything could be found here in the virtual world of the extranet.

It really was just the internet, just, bigger.

Emiya dove out through the connection, jumping from one computer to the next without pause as he ignored everything around him. At first when he began exploring this world, everything had been blinding and stupefying in scope, but soon enough he had grown used to and become bored by all of the spectacle and pomp.

It didn't really matter whether he was looking at the holographic display of an omnitool or the inside of the digital ocean as he dove through it—with enough time and exposure you simply learned to habitually ignore everything that wasn't your current interest.

When a single personal omnitool was like a world unto itself, the complex network of connected computers, servers, and routers became something beyond words.

They were like small island realms; spheres of 'reality' floating in the void and intersecting with countless other spheres around them. Servers; computers that functioned as hosts for specific content that could be accessed by numerous computers through the extranet were truly mind-boggling at times. A single sphere of reality could have windows and connections to millions of other smaller bubbles, all as complex as any of the omnitools he had been in before.

Thessia was home to 5.5 billion asari, a rather paltry number in the face of the total population of the galaxy.

But for all that, the local extranet was humongous beyond words, reaching beyond into the entire galactic society out there.

Because unlike the internet of his age, the extranet was not really one thing. Due to the immense distances involved between planets, even assuming unbroken communication was possible, the lag between two different worlds would make it difficult and costly to maintain for commercial use.

Thus, it was more like a series of internets, updated regularly to retain a somewhat parallel development, but distinctly different nonetheless. Information packages were copied over and moved to other planets to access on-demand with only high priority connections being allowed to regularly have a 'real-time' communication between planets and star systems.

In theory that should have meant that as long as he was on Thessia, he could only interact with computers and users that were on Thessia or within the planets immediate range in the Parnitha system.

But in practice, it was completely different.

The asari were the ambassadors and peacemakers of the galaxy, known and generally accepted in every corner of the galaxy. In heavily krogan populated worlds, turians and salarians would face hostility everywhere they went, but an the unisex blue alien race could usually walk around nearly completely unmolested. Perhaps it was due to their ability to rapidly and smoothly get along with any civilization, or perhaps it was simply a result of their status as the first of the Citadel Council, but as a rule, no one troubled the asari.

Which made them the natural traders of the galaxy.

Personable, with long life and memory, and with privileged access to the Citadel, they could travel anywhere and trade with anyone. The volus might have been the most industrious of all the Citadel races and could control most of the banking and financing going on, but when push came to shove, most would rather deal with an asari than a volus.

The salarians might have been the most intelligent and forward-thinking of the races, but their habit of making decisions with short-term gain foremost in mind had a tendency to keep their economic strength rather unstable. For all that the salarians could spike ahead with their innovations and brilliance, they would sooner or later always come crashing down as whatever economic bubble they had created inevitably popped.

In the past year along Emiya had seen three salarian bubbles crash, involving the most outlandish and ridiculous concepts.

Who would pay hundreds of thousands of credits for the picture of a monkey, however unique it was...?

So where the volus were industrious and the salarians brilliant, the asari were stable. You could always rely on an asari company to be able to meet your needs, to remain unaffected by the market conditions due to their foresight and experience. It did not hurt that the asari still held an iron-hard vise grip on the eezo market, backing their economy with a material that would never lose value in the galaxy.

For two millennia the asari had been creating FTL starships, using Thessia's natural element zero resources, spreading themselves ever-outwards in the galaxy.

And yet, those reserves did not seem to be dwindling at all.

Simply put, despite the Citadel being the nominal heart of the races colloquially known as the 'Citadel races', it was Thessia that remained as the economic center for most of the trade that was ongoing. This meant that nearly everything that was sent to the Citadel through tightbeam buoy relays, was also sent to Thessia.

Meaning that in practice, nearly the entire galaxy was within reach when he simply dove in. Simulstim movies, chatrooms, video games, forums, image boards, databases, financial records, private exchanges, and so much more. And all of it was simply there, waiting to be explored. At times he had begun to feel less like someone who existed in the real world that dove into the digital world, and more like a digital entity that occasionally spent time in meatspace.

But that was mostly the time dilation he experienced in dive, he figured.

Though it felt like an indescribable amount of time may have passed since he last took a breath, he realized without fail that it was time to wake up now.

Leaving behind the digital world, he closed his eyes as he settled back into himself.

---

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---

Emiya opened his eyes, inhaling slowly as he sat up.

Scratching his scalp, he lifted aside the blanket and swung his legs down. The floor was nice and cool, the blanket thin and light. Serrice wasn't the warmest of Thessia's republics, but it was hardly a cold place either.

It had nothing on Fuyuki's winters, that was for sure.

He got out of bed, stretching as he walked to open the electronic blinders on the windows. Outside, the sun had yet to rise, giving him a view of the deep indigo of Thessia's night sky. The stars above were still unfamiliar and strange to him, even after all this time.

Shaking his head, he opened the window and inhaled deeply the ocean air, smelling the unique scent of Thessia's Serrinan Sea. Like many of Thessia's cities, Serrice was located near the ocean, with a long beach vista and a view that was breathtaking even at the worst of days. The asari seemed to have something of an affinity to water, he had noted, as often they were drawn to and built their cities near the ocean. The Presidium lake back on the Citadel was also their doing—the keepers stubbornly maintaining the open-air water tank for millennia now to accommodate for the first arrivals' desires—or so he had heard.

Looking out, Emiya could scant tell the difference between the sky and the sea, as both melted into one somewhere in the indistinct and distant horizon, with the stars twinkling merrily on the blended canvas of blues. In the distance he could see just a hint of something; a pillar of water stretching high into the heavens over the edge of the horizon.

Huh, a waterspout. How rare this close to land, he thought with a shake of his head.

"Well, that was a productive night," he noted aloud to himself, turning around to begin preparing breakfast. With a mental effort, he also turned on the news vidreel. With his cybernetics, he did not really need to turn on the terminal—both in the sense of physically activating a button or having to actually have the terminal on to be able to hear the news—but it was a part of his morning habit by now.

The chatter filled his otherwise empty apartment as he continued.

"—but, this recent string of corporate and governmental leaks and exposees show no signs of stopping. As of yesterday, the number of corporations that have filed for bankruptcy due to these leaks has finally reached triple digits. Is this vigilante red hat hacker truly unstoppable?" An asari in a blue, green and purple dress spoke with calm and precise words, nodding her head at just the right moments to emphasize her message. "Here in the studio with me, C-Sec representative Castis Vakarian. What is the official stance of the C-sec on this?"

Looking at it analytically, he could see she was throwing out human, salarian, volus and turian body language cues all at the same time in different ways, getting the same idea across in numerous 'frequencies' at once. She really was quite talented.

Most asari could handle about two different and distinct body languages at once. Three was already quite rare, with four being at possibly the peak of what was physically possible.

As expected of the asari, really.

"Firstly, I must protest to the erroneous and inflammatory terminology that continues to see use in newscasts and in public discourse. There is no such thing, as a 'red hat hacker'; he is at best, a cyber-vigilante. That is to say, a criminal." The turian with blue facepaint that appeared on the show immediately began to disclaim vigorously. "An uncommon one, for certain, but a criminal nonetheless. The specific terminology stems from humanity—as many things these days seem to, unfortunately—but even among their culture, it is not an accepted term today. There are but 'black hat' and 'white hat' hackers, based on old human terminology from 'bovine child' vids, to separate the bad and lawless from the good and lawful." He paused, letting his flaring mandibles calm down as he collected himself. "Thus, the very premise of these newscasts only continue to incite vigilantism and—"

Emiya shook his head and went about his business, letting the newsreel play as background noise for him.

It had taken him some time to regain old and necessary habits for independent living, but after the coating of dust had been blown off, he had had no trouble with adjusting to life again. Having to personally go to sleep, exercise, cook and clean all came back with ease once he set his mind to establishing a pattern. Though at first, he had to draw up a time table, akin to the one he had had in the Navy, as he simply did not feel enough discomfort from hunger or lack of rest to notice it if he was not paying attention otherwise.

But, once he got back control over his life, there was even a slight pleasure to be derived from the acts, as each reaffirmed his existence in a small but undeniable way that simply had not been there back in the Navy.

After being initially sent out of the Moon Cell, he had not really let himself slow down or rest. Not until he had arrived on Thessia anyhow, where he had essentially been forced to re-civilianize himself, in a sense.

Emiya went about performing his morning exercise while the water boiled in the kitchen.

After five hundred push-one-clap-up burpees, he exhaled and stopped; there was no need to keep going after twenty minutes. The point was to keep in shape, not over-perform and burn out since it was a daily exercise. Additionally, while as a compound move it worked everything, it was not a very good exercise to repeat for extended periods of time or at a rapid pace lest his form suffered and he hurt himself that way.

It required considerable concentration to ensure that all the movements were done correctly, as poor form could stress many parts of the body needlessly. It did not work the cardiovascular system as a whole very well either, nor did it train any of the muscles involved very much since it was a purely calisthenic effort.

At most, it could be said to be a superb exercise for raising one's heartbeat, thus that was what he really used it for; a wake-up routine.

With his heart beating more rapidly, he could feel his entire body waking to life already.

Jumping up, he rolled his arms and shoulders, checking that everything felt fine. Satisfied, he hopped into a handstand. His feet pointed at the ceiling as he stood upside down with his hands extended, balancing himself for a few seconds. Then he began to dip down until his nose touched the floor. Pushing back up, he repeated the exercise. After thirty repetitions, he pushed off and felt his entire body be airborne for a second. He clapped his hands together three times in the air before he had to catch himself against the floor.

His feet and body swayed as he spread his legs to balance out. Hmm, still just three claps. Is this the limit of the human body? Repeating it nine more times, he swayed back down and stood up.

A sheen of sweat coated his skin, with his heart rate still quite rapid. Getting up, he moved over to the metal bar he had installed into the doorway to his bedroom and began to perform pull-ups without letting his heart rate or breathing normalize quite yet.

Working his way through varying grips and widths, he finished off with thirty one-handed muscle ups with both hands.

Dropping down and exhaling as finished, he began to go through a few half-remembered—and long since modified for personal use for his physique and specific needs—martial arts forms before he grabbed a pair of weighted sticks and began to work with them. They were the same length as his favored swords, though they were weighted differently to offer greater resistance.

They were more clubs, really.

Strike forward, step back, parry a blow and use it to riposte with a triangle step, moving left and right continuing to exchange blows, occupy the center and strike around, step, sway, turn like a leaf in the wind...

He spent another ten minutes simply dancing with the two short sticks as if they were his usual swords, going through every cutting angle with both hands with smooth precision before he set them aside as well to finish the rest of his basic sets. Performing cooldown stretches and light massaging on his limbs, he loosened up and went to take a cold shower.

For exercise, he had a few simple rules, but 'little and often is best' was his general rule of thumb.

The point was to normalize a certain level of performance and allow his body to get used to it, not to be able to reach specific peaks for short periods of time and then deal with injuries from training too hard. Professional athletes certainly could reach greater heights, but they also required longer periods of rest and had to take extreme care over their bodies to maintain that level.

For him, it was simply enough to be able to fight at a stable and predictable level.

He hadn't ever really been able to overpower anyone when it came to a fight during his life, thus he had settled for focusing on his endurance and agility. As long as he could keep moving, he would find a critical moment to bring him a decisive victory.

Besides, while the DOMS—or delayed onset of muscle soreness; the feeling of soreness the next day from a hard and heavy work-out—might enjoy a certain fetishistic idolization among fitness enthusiasts, to a hero of justice it was simply a handicap. What point was there in training so hard that he could push a little bit harder in a month if it meant that tomorrow someone might suffer and die due to his poor condition?

Humans, in general, weren't very strong, anyhow.

As a species, their focus had long been stamina and wits, long before Emiya had been born. Thus, he had seen no reason to break an apparently winning design.

He really only used a handful of exercises to that end; push-ups at various angles, pull-ups with weights, jumping and running et cetera. Burpees handled two out of four, which made it an especially efficient exercise in his mind. The sword training was to maintain a sense of familiarity with the weapons, as like with most combat skills, swordsmanship was highly perishable.

Just a week of inaction could result in a major drop in ability, as the sword would not feel quite right in your hands.

Well, it was also relaxing to play around with swords, he had found thanks to his affinity for them.

As he returned from his shower, the preparations for breakfast were complete. The water was at a boil and his freshly pressed aruni-juice was ready. Downing three glasses of water, he took a glass of the juice and slowly drank it, relishing the bittersweet tang of natural electrolytes.

He had been working on his asari cuisine for a while now, and he thought he was getting along quite well, though there were obvious handicaps that prevented complete mastery on his part.

Though the pressure cooker is getting there, already giving me quite a few options... But I can always take it further.

After he had eaten he began to get clothed, checking that he had everything necessary for the day before he walked out and closed the door to his small apartment. Jumping down the stairs, four steps at a time, he got into his skycar and flew off.

Though he had applied for the University of Serrice almost five years ago already, most of his time he spent off in the other republics.

Serrice had Thessia's best program for exo-archaeology with a focus on Protheans, known far and wide across the galaxy as the most comprehensive course there was on the subject. He had applied, faking his way through everything and using his newfound ability to hack things without leaving his body to look up most of the answers he needed to get through the various tests.

If it was merely a matter of factual information, most of it he had already gained access to over the years, but it was one thing to have raw data and another to understand the subject. Simply put, he did not really know anything about the Protheans themselves, despite knowing what most people knew about them.

For that, he needed to understand their culture, their values, and their logos.

And the only way he reasoned he could find that, was by being taught by someone who had been studying and trying to understand Prothean culture for almost a thousand years now. Professor Nirida Henell, Asari Matriarch and revered expert on all things Prothean, was the source he had settled his eyes on. Holding a professorate in numerous related fields, she was the most well known and often cited authority when it came to discussing Prothean culture.

He had signed up for her courses in exoarchaeology and xeno-anthropology here in Serrice.

Of course, at the time of his arrival, he had not considered everything through completely. Thus, he spent more of this time in Ulee and Usaru, than at the University of Serrice during the daytime. Though he still stood by his decision, he had had to consider the unexpected hiccups he had run into along the way.

Simply put, he had not considered all of the consequences of trying to study among an alien race.

Though he understood their words and he had been accepted as a transfer student easily enough—thanks to his cheating at every turn—he still ran into quite a bit of friction as he began his studies. For one, Thessia's strict policy on immigration made him stand out wherever he went. On the surface, it was to restrict eezo smuggling, though given how conservative asari culture as a whole seemed to be, he thought it entirely possible it was to quarantine the youngest of the race to the planet for a few decades in an effort to curb out the most of their youthful exuberance.

In the galaxy at large, it was widely thought that asari were exceedingly promiscuous due to their extroverted preference in marital partners, but the asari themselves often and vocally protested such characterizations. However, coming to Thessia, he had come to realize that there was more than a grain of truth to such stories.

At least as far as asari who were younger than a hundred years or so went.

Shaking his head, he opened the skycar's window to let some of the fresh air inside. He kept flying, reaching for the sunglasses as the Thessia's star Parnitha began to rise over the horizon.

Though the excitable and curious asari were often times something of an annoyance, they weren't really a problem. Not compared to the reason he was still on Thessia, five years after he had arrived, anyhow.

Simply put, when a species lived for a thousand years and was considered to be still nearly a child at the age of a hundred, education took on an entirely new scale. Five years for a human was a considerable investment of time from his limited lifespan.

But for an asari, it was a trivial amount of time.

The five years, attending classes nearly every day, was not enough for him to have earned a single degree. He did not even have the beginnings of an asari degree, really.

It was not unusual for asari to spend decades on a single subject in school, achieving a mastery that was simply beyond any human. He had understood that, seeking that very same inhuman mastery and understanding from Professor Henell. But he hadn't understood quite what it would mean in practical terms.

In 2171—a fifteen months before he had arrived on Earth—she had left on an expedition to the planet Dretirop, along with a contingent of various experts and students from the Universities of Serrice and Usaru. The joint expedition was to research and uncover a Prothean ruin that had been found by the locals, leaving most of Thessia bereft of Prothean experts after their exodus. She had been gone since then, scheduled only to return this very month. He had asked about that from the University staff, only to realize that having a decade long break between teaching courses was par for the course for the asari.

What was ten years for a species that lived to a thousand?

It was something he hadn't considered at all when he had applied.

He had prodded at the possibility of joining that expedition, but even with his best attempts at spoofing credentials and ability, he had been firmly—if rather politely and sweetly—turned down. He had even considered going there on his own, only to give up after thinking about it for a while. He doubted Professor Henell would appreciate his barging in to demand an education.

Emiya had, of course, tried to look for alternatives, but apparently most if not all of Thessia's top experts had joined that expedition too, meaning he was completely out of luck on that subject.

Accepting the state of things, he simply decided to study what he could in the interim. Which led to a rather eclectic and unstructured syllabus, including everything from history and socio-politics to element zero engineering and theory. He had been called in for discussion more than once, as several of his teachers at the University of Serrice had professed worry over his lack of focus. Entirely understandable, given that he simply took anything and everything he thought could be useful, combing through course plans for individual lessons and appearing for specific lectures in various universities without any seeming rhyme or reason.

Even now he was headed for a lesson on mass effect field theory, held in Usaru.

As his professors realized his problem, they had tried to accommodate their lesson plans to him, making the effort to contact other Universities to allow him to attend classes around Thessia, which had proved very helpful. As expected of the most diplomatic of the Citadel races. But even an accelerated course would necessitate for him to stay on Thessia for another two decades if he wanted to graduate with anything resembling an actual degree.

Not that he needed one.

At this point, he was more than happy to while away his days while working on odds and ends. It wasn't like he was sitting idly by or anything and doing nothing in the meanwhile. The Protheans had been gone for 50,000 years, what was another five when it came to solving that mystery, he had concluded.

Well, he had learned a lot and had gotten a decent grounding into the galaxy with his time here. If nothing else, his persona as Fujimura Saiga was now strong enough to allow him to act as a civilian in most settings. Well, as long as no one started to prod deeper at it, since his face still existed on various records on the Citadel and on Earth.

Though, with this, as soon as he had a chance to take Professor Henell's courses, he would be just about done. He already had a pile of things he wished to work on, leaving him itching at getting some proper privacy and space to work with. Though he nominally had privacy in his apartment, rare was the week that went by without someone coming to apparently visit him.

As social as the asari were, it seemed that loners were not taken kindly to.

Sometimes it almost seemed as if all the asari around him were conspiring to keep him company whenever possible, neighbors, teachers and fellow students alike approaching him at the oddest of times.

Emiya shook his head.

He rolled up the window as he began to land, the sun already inching upwards over the edge of the sea as he landed at the University of Usaru. He only had the one four hour course today, meaning he would have plenty of time for other stuff later.

"Maybe I should eat out, today?" he mused, almost hesitating despite still having over four and three-quarters million credits to his name a little else to spend it on.

He nodded to himself, might as well.

---

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Emiya stretched, getting up and walking out.

He only had a datapad he needed to carry his lesson notes, or rather to keep people from asking why he wasn't taking notes. With his cybernetics, it wasn't really a problem to just write down everything as it was being said, after all.

Most of the lesson was centered on the lecture followed by discussion and questions by the asari teacher. Overall, it was a rather dry subject, most of which he did not entirely follow. Partly it was the fact that he had not been for many of the preceding courses which had started several decades ago, but that was fine as long as he got the gist of things. Understanding practical things was one thing, but the mathematics and theoretical formula to explain it all was something completely different.

A lot of this lesson had been just that, theory and numbers.

Nothing he could really use, but something of a foundation for his other ideas, giving him a feel for the subject. He had been looking into it in relation to i'usu and his other interests in eezo for the most part, but he doubted he would be getting much out of this course.

It was something of a filler course during a slow season.

Arriving outside, he inhaled the ocean air and looked out at the city. Usaru was much like Serrice in how modern it was.

In practice, it did not look any different from the Wards on the Citadel. Certainly, the buildings generally had that same swooping design that was also a tell-tale sign of asari culture. But aside from that, at a distance, it could have very well been any city on Earth. The same metal and glass spires dotted the horizon, the sun shining high above signifying that noon had come and just gone.

His belly rumbled and he exhaled as he turned to walk down the steps leading up to the main University entrance.

A consequence of his cybernetics leeching off of his bioelectricity to function, was that he had to eat more than before. Not that he had ever been a light eater, but since he had had to boost his metabolism to keep up, he was currently forced to eat four solid meals a day.

Making him a distinct oddity, given that most asari only ate two meals a day. He resorted to eating home-made nutrient bars when he was low on time, which wasn't always optimal. It was simply more efficient for him to make a batch of dried foods that would last him for a week, once a week.

Continuing to walk around, he eyed the surroundings.

No matter the years he had spent here, he still could not get over how normal Thessia seemed. The gravity was just a touch above that of Earth, the days a few hours longer and the years just a bit shorter. The same blue sky above, the same green trees and grass below, the same daily lives he had seen all his life playing out in between.

And once he got used to the asari, he almost forgot that they were technically an alien race.

The only problem he really had was that no matter where he went, he was a center of attention.

"Who's that?"

"Is that a human?"

"Do you think he's a student here?"

He did his best to avoid making himself stand out, but he had realized early on it was a wasted effort. Just by virtue of being a human on Thessia, he was already exotic and made him catch the eye of any asari. So, he hadn't even bothered to dye his hair, since whether or not he had red hair among the blue-skinned aliens hardly mattered.

However, since very few of them actually knew anything about humanity, they left him alone for the most part. Well, most of them anyhow.

"Go talk to him!"

"No, you go."

"He kinda looks like my dad..."

"Your dad's a human?"

"No, but..."

Ignoring the whispers, he moved on.

At first, he had tried to simply avoid line of sight, but that only lead to them growing more interested when he seemed to appear out of thin air at classes. Trying out various methods of keeping his distance, he finally settled on simply pretending he didn't notice any of it. Usually, a brusque surface worked, but many were still rather curious and approached him anyway.

Emiya stopped, glancing to the side.

Something flew past him, hitting the wall and bouncing on the ground, almost hitting him in passing. He blinked, looking at the synthetic leather ball the size of a melon.

A biotiball?

"Heeey!" someone shouted, a cheerful voice some three dozen meters away by the grass lawn just next to the University entrance. "Pass it back, won'cha!"

He turned to look at the asari who was shouting at him. The same blue skin and fringe as most any asari, but with a pattern of 'freckles' dotting her cheeks and a pair of lines marking her jaw, was standing there and waving at him. Turian father, then.

Crouching, he grabbed the ball with one hand and blinked as he felt it. He hadn't actually ever touched one before, only knowing of the popular sport in passing. Like most anything in asari culture and as the name implied, it was a sport heavily based around mastery of biotics.

There's a freely moving weight inside of it?

He stood up, tossing it up once, twice, into the air as he weighed and judged. Simply throwing it, he judged it would probably fly oddly since the insides weren't a perfect sphere inside, but a sort of three-dimensional Y-shape with four legs, which would throw off the center of balance once it was thrown, when the freely moving weight settled into one of the branches.

Tossing it a third time, he added a little spin to it to see how it would behave.

As expected, it was spinning lopsidedly as the internal weight settled into one side causing the point of balance to be off-center.

Huh, this would be pretty interesting to actually watch. I thought biotiball was simply handball with biotics, but...

Judging the spin, he looked at the expectant asari. She stood there, with one hand on her hip.

Pulling his hand back, he threw it forward, adding a spin to it in a way that he expected it to keep the weight centered. It flew straight until halfway through its arc began to rapidly degenerate and slow down as if the wind resistance had suddenly increased. Or rather, as if the ball's weight had suddenly increased. He blinked, not having expected that.

"Heh! Nice try!" The asari grinned, running up to grab the ball and then walking up to him.

Emiya frowned, not quite understanding what had happened.

"You shoulda spun it the other way around, would have been a perfect throw," the asari explained, grinning up at him as she came to a halt, tossing the ball in her hand. She was wearing an exercise jersey of a sort, showing off the definition in her shoulders and arms as she grinned at him.

At those words, he understood it.

"Ah, there's eezo in the internal weight."

It was her turn to frown, before realizing what he was talking about. She grinned spinning the ball in her hand with a motion of her wrist and tossing it up slightly. It rose slowly, continuing to stay in the air for several seconds at her head's height before it slowly landed in her hand.

"Yup, it's all about how you spin it." She caught the ball on her extended index finger and leaving it spinning there, raising an eyebrow at him. "I'm Tyra, by the way."

"Saiga," Emiya answered, his eyes still on the ball.

"You play?" she asked, nodding at the ball though the answer should have been obvious from his inexperience so far.

"Biotiball?" He shook his head. "No, but I've been doing i'usu for two years now."

She snorted at him, then, and he had to raise an eyebrow.

"Figures you're a nerd."

He huffed at that judgment, not deigning it with an answer.

"What? Everyone knows only nerds who wanna play around with swords do i'usu. I bet you played one of the MMOs and thought 'I wanna be an aryi i'ususa like all my favorite vid stars', huh?" she mocked him playfully, grabbing the ball as it landed on her hand again and resting it against her hip.

"Would you believe me if I said I was just interested in the swords?" he said and she only scoffed again.

"Like I said, nerd." She grinned at him. "You wanna come an play some ball instead? Way better, trust me."

He shrugged. "Not a biotic."

"And you're doing i'usu?" She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Pfft, shouldn't be too hard to throw some ball, or you scared you can't keep up?"

He looked at her, raising an eyebrow to show he could tell she was baiting him.

But he was kind of interested in the ball, now that he had realized how it worked. Spin one way for a current, spin another for a counter-current. Should be simple enough.

"Sure. Why not," he finally replied, nodding and she grinned at him, tossing the ball up with the flick of a wrist, turning to lead the way. As he moved to follow, he grabbed a homemade snack from his bag and ate it to keep his stomach from complaining too much.

Lunch would have to wait a little while longer.

"Huh? The captain actually brought him over?" another asari in similar clothes wondered at their arrival, causing a whole host of asari to look at them.

"What's this, Tyra? Got us a cheerleader?"

She cackled at that. "Nah, thought I'd try and see if he's any good. We don't have a good passer and just look at his arms. Bet he could throw you further than you can throw the ball."

She nodded towards him, causing everyone to look at him for a second and ogle openly. For a moment, he felt vaguely uncomfortable as each one of the twenty-something asari seemed to be judging the circumference of his arms.

More than one seemed to consider wrapping their hands around to get a better feel.

I shouldn't have worn a sleeveless shirt today.

"Cap, there's more to biotiball than just how throwing the ball. Like, you know... biotics? I mean, humans aren't even biotic, right?" the asari argued back, with a tone of voice that spoke of long-enduring suffering at the other's antics, sitting on the grass and stretching.

"No, some of them are. They mentioned it in a class about humans in exo-sociology. A case study for how primitive races treat biotics with hostility and suspicion," another piped up, holding a bottle of water as she gestured at him. "Umm, no offense intended. And I don't think he is one, either. No amp that I can see."

"He seems kind of bulky, like an elcor. Can he even run around for a whole game?"

The exo-sociology student shook her head at that. "No, humans are crazy good runners. Like, best in the galaxy-good at most distances. Krogan can technically beat them in a super-long marathon since their humps have more nutrients, but they need way more breaks. Humans just don't stop, ever, until they're just completely done and have to die. It's crazy."

"Huh, well, I guess that's a thing." An asari nodded, looking at Emiya askance now. "I wonder if running is the only thing where they just never stop..."

Several giggled at that, throwing knowing grins at Emiya.

"Eh, quit complaining. I'm the captain, so when I want to do something, you should all just listen and do as you're told. Or I'll make you do more laps again!" Tyra immediately proclaimed as others began to pipe up with similar comments. "He's a part of Usaru U, so there's no problem, right?"

"I'm not actually an Usaru student, you know," he quickly injected, having realized they were the university team.

"Huh?" Tyra looked up, frowning at him. "But you went to class this morning, saw you go in and all."

"Special circumstances. Enrolled at Serrice, actually," he explained, shrugging.

"Wha—Serrice!?" Tyra blanched, as several of the asari looked up at him at that. It was as if 'Serrice' was a taboo word among them.

"So they have a team, too?" Emiya asked, causing murmurs and nods to spread among them.

Ah, a rivalry of some kind.

Tyra was now half-glaring at him, now. "Yeah, so you better not go blabbing to them about this, okay?"

He merely blinked once, affecting amusement at her annoyance. "Sure, sure. Never even seen them before, but if I do, you're the only one to blame since you dragged me over."

"Wha—?" She blinked at him, turning slightly purple in the face as she flushed, as several of her teammates were laughing at her now. "Well, now you're definitely going to practice with us. I'll have you running laps till you're sore all over!"

Half of the team was now grinning at him, apparently accepting his presence while the rest seemed content to ignore him. There was something to be said about asari jocks, but at the moment he was too interested in actually trying his hand at the game to care.

After a quick and light warm-up not too dissimilar to his morning workout, they began to practice specifics.

"We'll play a match afterward, yeah?" Tyra promised, grinning at him as she showed him how to do a basic pass or toss, explaining the rules at the same time.

Off to the side, the rest of the team was pairing up and performing various drills. While he was figuring out how to throw the ball, the asari were jumping around and performing curving shots with their biotics while using biotic charges to move around, zipping across the field at incredible speeds.

Finally, after half an hour, they started to get a game going.

Unexpectedly, Emiya proved a rather popular choice as both teams wanted him. Though he gathered it was more for the mascot slash bragging right value, rather than any trust in his ability to play well.

Not that he minded, he had come along on a whim anyhow.

Like he had originally thought, the game was rather similar to handball or soccer, though the rules for physically engaging the opposite team were actually closer to rugby. Simply put, the point was to get the ball into the other team's goal-zone, but the scoring zones from where it was allowed were somewhat limited. The closer you were, the more restrictions you had on what you were allowed to do—no touching the ball with your hands at the closest zone, etc.

But the further away you were and tried to score, the easier it was for someone to disrupt the shot and catch it out of the air with biotics.

Soon enough asari were using their powers to jump twenty meters into the air and to rush from point to point while using mass effect fields to push and pull at the ball in blinding patterns and feints. The innate property of the eezo inside of the ball also made it grow heavier or lighter, depending on how you spun it as he had noted earlier, giving the game another level of complexity.

It was actually rather similar to the practice swords he had grown accustomed to in that property.

Watching the others throw the ball, noting the wrist movements and motion of the ball on release, he began to understand a bit better how the game was played.

Not that he got much of a chance to get any hands-on practice during the match, since without biotics he had no way of cutting off any passes or charging for the ball. Well, he could have upped the ante by using magical energy to blitz the ball, but at this point, he was rather enjoying just using his base ability for exercise while trying to keep up, mentally trying to out-play and corner his opponents.

Variety was the spice of life, as they said.

Well, for him it was more the change in exercise to keep himself sharp that he was valuing.

Running around, closing gaps and blocking shots at his team's goal, he spent a good hour simply playing around. In the end, as he could not rely on anything but his own body and had to put in double the effort to keep up, he was soaked from sweat when the practice match finally ended.

His team ended up losing, though not because of him pulling the team down as he had found a niche for himself as an extreme-rear defender keeping any scoring attempts from coming through. Without him on the defense, he thought it entirely possible that the score would have been ten times more lopsided at the end of the game.

Rather, Tyra's offensive chain with two other asari on the other team was so strong that she could simply keep his team on the back foot the entire game, allowing her to keep trying to score until they finally got something in past his guard.

It was a nice game, reminding him of the easy competitiveness he hadn't experienced in years. Not since high school, probably. He really felt like he was back during the boys' physical education lesson again as everyone joked around, cheering and jeering at every turn.

"Nice game, everyone. Cooldown and then get cleaned up. We have practice again tomorrow at the same time!" Tyra shouted, clapping one and another asari on the back as they began to clean up after themselves.

Turning to Emiya, she grinned at him.

"Well, you sure got into it."

Looking down at himself, he pinched at his soaked shirt and pulled at it to separate it from his skin. "Yeah. Thanks for the invite. Haven't had a chance to blow off steam in a while."

"No problem, no problem," Tyra answered, grinning widely.

"You're free to come 'blow off steam' any time you want, Saiga~" One of the passing by asari said, winking as she walked past them.

Emiya huffed at that, taking the ribbing with good cheer. "I need to get back home and take a shower. I didn't even bring a change of clothes, either. See you around."

He nodded at her, grabbing his coat and turning to leave.

"Ho... wait up, Saiga." Tyra immediately ran up to him, putting an arm on his shoulder to slow him down. "You're gonna leave like that? You're a mess!"

"It's not a problem, my skycar is just around the corner..."

She rolled her eyes, grabbing his arm and pulling at him as she spoke right over him. "You're flying all the way back to Serrice like that? Naaah, screw that. You're coming over to my place, you can take a shower and quick-wash your clothes."

"No, it's fine—"

"C'mon, no need to be shy. I won't bite! Sides, I asked you to mess around with us, so it's only fair."

Emiya considered that, before shrugging. It would be more convenient. "Alright then, if you insist."

She grinned at him, then, as she grabbed his arm and began to pull him with her.

She certainly is thoughtful. Or, hmm... No, I'm just overthinking it.

---

;

---

Emiya came out of the shower, rubbing at his hair with one hand while the other held the towel by his waist. The apartment seemed rather big for just one person, but there didn't seem to be signs of anyone else living here.

Though with prices being what they are... Could she really be living here alone?

"Hmm... Nice."

Looking up, he found her by the kitchen, sitting and drinking from a bottle as she sized him up.

"What now?" he asked with a raised brow.

"Oh, nothing. Just checking take-out prices, you wanna get something to eat?"

"Hmm... How about my clothes?" he asked instead, looking around.

"No worries, no worries~ They'll be dry before you need them," she replied without deigning to even give him a look. "Hmm, maybe that place, no it takes too long..."

He looked at her evenly, before sighing mentally.

I knew it would end like this again... Just buy time and distract her until my clothes are clean.

Scanning for something, he noticed the biotiball by the couch. Reaching out with a bare foot, he rolled it toward himself and kicked it into the air, where snatched it with one hand.

"How long have you been playing?" he asked, opting for a topic that would catch her attention.

"Biotiball? For about sixteen years now! Pretty good already, but I need a few more years before the pro league scouts are going to be willing to talk to me," she explained, bubbling with enthusiasm and forgetting entirely about the subject of food. "You don't follow the leagues, right? Generally, it's divided by age. Cuz the older you get, the stronger your biotics are too."

"And asari do not suffer much from physical deterioration until the very tail-end of the matriarch-stage." Emiya nodded, noting that she seemed to have forgotten all about food already.

"Yeah! We played Usaru's Matron-league team once and we got our butts handed to us! They're just on a whole other level," Tyra excitedly told him bouncing on her feet now with excess energy.

"The 'maestros' right?"

"Huh? Oh, no, that's the Maiden-league team, the Matron-league team is—oh, right I didn't even explain it yet." She gave an awkward laugh at getting ahead of herself. "So because of the gap in biotic power, there's a bunch of leagues, right? The novice league is for those who haven't matured yet—that's less than a hundred-bouts years old—so everyone just calls it the kiddie games. The biggest league follows that one: the Maiden-league. Since everyone is really energetic and there's a huge pool of players, it's the most popular one. They also play against the other races, usually. Though there aren't that many of them, not compared to us anyhow."

She looked thoughtful then.

"Do humans have any teams yet?"

Emiya shrugged. "Not that I know. But wait a decade and I'm sure there will be one or two lining up to challenge you."

"Nice... But yeah, see, once you get to the Matron stage and keep playing... Well at that point you're so good that no one can keep up. Like, no one. But most quit before that, anyhow. Matron games are rare, since most of the time they'd rather just go around coaching the Maidens. Also lets them settle down, since they all got kids already."

"Matrons are usually three to four hundred years old, right? If they've played all that time, they must be exceptionally good."

"Yeah, yeah," she answered, nodding twice. "But even the veteran Maidens are really tough for me. They're the aces in the Maiden leagues and they have to plan around them every game. Sometimes the whole match is decided just by whether or not the ace can just get their hands on the ball."

Emiya almost asked when she would be turning Maiden herself, before deciding to steer clear of alien puberty as a topic of discussion, especially while trying to distract her.

"So why did you ask me to join, anyway? Not that it wasn't fun, but I could tell that it made the teams a bit lop-sided," he asked instead.

With him filling a slot, it had somehow ended with seven good players against only four decent ones on his team, the arrangement for the teams somehow too arcane for him to decipher.

"Right, yeah we were doing a weighted game... But - well, since I'm not really all that good with biotics, so I've been thinking a lot lately about how to get better at the game without it. Well, it's not like I'm bad or anything, but all the Maidens in the league are a hundred years older than me, so I'll be completely outclassed once I do get in." She looked at him, eyes absolutely certain that she would be getting into the leagues, apparently. Then, she pointed at his arm. "So I got to thinking that maybe if I could figure out how to play better without biotics, and then I'd have an edge."

She grinned, crossing her arms in a decidedly turian way.

"Something to catch the eye of league recruiters, like. Get invited into the league next year or the year after that, rather than next season, you know?"

He blinked, nodding as he considered her idea.

It had some merit, of course, but...

"Right. Well, as you saw, muscle doesn't really help much when it's a game of biotics. I barely got to touch the ball." He shrugged.

"Nn, yeah, noticed that too." She sighed. "But still, I bet you could throw the ball really hard if you did get it. So point kind of still stands... I think?"

He made a thoughtful noise, considering the melon-sized ball in his hand. It fit quite comfortably into his palm, though he couldn't grip around it completely, not like a baseball. Unlike a handball, it wasn't soft enough to dig his fingers into for a better grip. And his hands were considerably larger than the average asari so perhaps that wasn't a good comparison to begin with.

"It's a bit too big for anything I know... The air resistance means you have to be pretty close, I think. If the zones for scoring by hand were a bit closer, you could pull off some of the rebound tricks I've seen in handball... Or if it was about the size of a baseball, then you could probably pull off some decent long-range throws with it..."

He mimed a few pitcher's tosses, frowning at the ball as it threatened to slip from his grasp.

"Hand-ball? Base-ball?" She perked up at the unfamiliar words, obviously interested.

"Handball is pretty much the same as biotiball, just without the biotics. And you aren't allowed to hit the other players." He elaborated.

"Huh? What's the fun in that?" She looked confused at the very idea.

He shrugged in reply.

"No biotic barriers, so injuries would be too common. Baseball is a bit more difficult to explain, but..." Looking around, he spotted a bowl of aruni fruit by the table, that was about the size of a baseball. "Toss me one of those, will you?"

She blinked, noticing what he was pointing to and nodding as she with an underhand toss gave him one. He opened the window, with a view out to the ocean in the distance.

At this range... I can't see any swimmers either. Should be fine.

"If the ball was about this big, then you could pull some interesting throws," he continued, showing the fruit in his hand as he set aside the biotiball.

"Uh...?"

"Here, see..." he said, falling again into the stance of a baseball pitcher. It had been literally over a hundred years since he had last played, but the muscle memory from his middle school days was still there.

It didn't hurt that the core motion was the same as with almost every other martial art, rotating the core and translating the momentum into the limbs to create acceleration.

The turning of the hip; the whirling of the shoulder and the driving forward of the hand as an extension of the whole body. It was the same as in the basic diagonal overhead cut from any school of swordsmanship; the same as any over-the-hip standing throw in all grappling styles; the same motion as used in a straight punch in striking with the fist; the same motion as anything that required a lot of power to be generated nigh-instantly.

Once you learned one thing, it tended to happen that you began to see that pattern in everything else.

Well, more logically put it was simply a consequence of the biomechanics of the human body. Which also—strangely enough—were the rough biomechanics of the asari body as he had observed years ago.

He raised his front leg and leaned his center of mass forward; causing him to fall forward as he stepped down from the raised leg. His arm cocked back; preparing to whip forward. His front leg touched the ground again and his rear foot began to turn as he pivoted his hips. Starting from the ground up—like a whip coiling outwards; accelerating more and more with every inch it went upwards along the length of the cord—all of the force concentrated into his arms as it exploded forward.

"Hey—"

The ball was released, loosed like an arrow with enough force to cross the hundred and fifty-meter gap all the way to the ocean in two instants.

"—what are you! Whoa!" Tyra jumped up, blinking as she saw the fruit flying off into the distance like a rocket. She blinked, and Emiya huffed with satisfaction as he saw the surface of the water splash on impact.

"Hmm, a little overripe. You should eat them before they go bad," he commented, smelling at the pulp juice in his hand from the sudden acceleration.

"Whoa, that's super far away! I can't even see it! Hey, hey, how do you throw like that? Show me again." She turned to look at him as he walked to go wash his hand in the kitchen.

Looking around with some annoyance, he realized again that faucets did not come standard in asari kitchens. Usually, they had containers of purified water for the rare need, instead. He had forgotten all about that fact, having renovated his own apartment to have one.

"Same way you tossed the ball when you pass in biotiball. It's just that you compress your body more and put more of your hip into it, and you need a better grip on the ball, which isn't really possible since it's so big. Well, maybe if you compressed it with biotics, but..."

She blinked at that, nodding thoughtfully. "No... Singularities are banned from league games. Wouldn't work, huh."

"Really, if you just want a lot of power, then you'd probably be better off kicking the ball," he noted, moving on with his leisurely analysis. "I mean, our legs are considerably stronger than human arms, and Thessia's gravity is higher than Earth's, so it should be pretty impressive."

She looked at him oddly, then. It was as if he had suggested something completely outrageous to her.

"Kick it? Really?"

"Absolutely. Football is a popular human sport, after all." He tilted his head at her. "Well, I see how it would be a problem with how easy it would be to snatch it away with biotics and how you can't as exactly control the spin, but it would definitely solve the power problem. Besides, none of the rules say anything about kicking the ball."

She frowned at him. "Foot-ball? But... Wouldn't you break your toes, or..."

"Well, no. You don't kick with the toes. You do it either with the instep or the top of the foot."

She grimaced at him, not quite getting it.

Well, I suppose it makes some sense. Turians and salarians probably don't have anything like it, either.

"Well, you can look it up on the extranet, I'm sure you can find a lot of stuff that way. Anyway, are my clothes dry, yet?"

"Huh?" She blinked, realizing they had been talking for a good while now. "Uh, oh, I..."

"I really should be going already." He said with a polite smile, having effectively killed any mood there was already. "Thanks for letting me shower and wash up, it was decent of you."

"H-hold up, we could still, uh..."

—piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Emiya blinked, the sudden noise causing his vision to double. It was like tinnitus, only ten times worse, piercing, making his teeth and skull ache. He shook his head.

"What the hell is that sound...?" he ground out, raising a hand to his temples.

"Err, what sound?" Tyra asked, looking at him askance.

Emiya blinked, shaking his head again, but the sound did not disappear. It seemed to be coming all around him as if everything was echoing and amplifying it.

No, it is coming all around me; the terminal, that datapad over there... Everything that's connected to the extranet?

Including his own cybernetics, it seemed, like a tuning fork acquiring the tone of something ringing nearby. With some force of will, he suppressed the sensation and ignored it, as it did not seem to be directly harmful if he just filtered it out and didn't allow the cascading resonance to build up.

"Never mind, my ear just popped," he said, putting on a forced smile as he suddenly felt uncertain of what was going on. "My clothes, if you would."

"Ah, uh, sure..." She blinked at his suddenly forceful tone of voice, walking to get them.

Emiya frowned as he waited, focusing on his senses. It wasn't coming from just one place, rather as he had noticed it was all around him. It wasn't a physical sound, but something that his brain was translating into such, he realized.

Like how my soul understands something inside of a computer when I dive in. It's a signal of some kind?

Closing his eyes and reaching out, he could suddenly place four dozen sources for the continuous signal all around him. Omnitools, terminals, datapads; anything that had connectivity functions, and each had a unique return signal in response, he realized.

"Ah, sorry, I made a little mistake. Your shirt is still wet, but it won't take long to dry..." Tyra came out holding his pants while apologizing.

"...It's fine." He nodded absently, accepting the clothing article, also noticing that she had taken off her jersey top, leaving her in a slim sleeveless shirt.

She had been exercising and hadn't showered yet, but given that she had been relying much more on her biotics, she hadn't been quite as sweaty as he had been, and he grew more conscious of how improper this all was.

Looking up at him with large green eyes, she bit her lip. "Do you really have to go...?"

He opened his mouth to reply when the front door suddenly opened.

Another asari, dragging two large luggage bags came walking in, her eyes stuck on an omnitool display she was reading while walking.

Noticing them a second later, she looked up.

"Oh, hello Tyra. The flight from Dretirop was earlier than I had—" The new asari began, only to freeze at seeing the nearly naked Emiya and Tyra all but holding hands, as she was handing him his pants. "Oh my! I—I did not mean to intru—Tyra!"

The asari in question standing in front of him blinked, licking her lips in a sudden unconscious gesture as she glanced at Emiya with growing panic in her eyes.

"This again? I thought your mother made it clear that you weren't to—"

"Liara, calm down, this isn't what it looks like—"

"Oh, I am certain it is like nothing what it looks like. Did Dreniza not have you pulled from the Citadel because you could not be trusted to stay out of trouble with—oh my, is that a human?"

Emiya blinked, nonplussed by all of this.

"Will you stop making a scene, goddess, I can't even invite friends over—"

"And have them undressed in the living room?" Turning to look at him, she made a slight bow. "Ah, I apologize, this is nothing personal... But her mother has entrusted me with keeping her out of trouble since her father passed away."

Emiya wasn't sure whether to be amused or taken aback by how polite this Liara was in comparison to when she spoke to Tyra.

"Hey, this wasn't anything like that, so just mind your own business."

"Well pardon me, for not being able to distinguish the difference between a naked krogan and a naked human."

"He wasn't naked! Trog wore that everywhere! And mom was overreacting anyhow! I hadn't even become a Maiden yet, I couldn't even have melded with him even if I had wanted to!"

"Should I take that to mean you were thinking about it now?"

"You—!"

Emiya sighed, raising a hand into the air between the two. "I think it's time I take my leave, then. My shirt?"

Tyra sighed, throwing a glare at Liara as she turned around and stomped to get the shirt. "Yeah, yeah... I need to get my scolding from Matriarch Liara, I get it..."

He blinked at that, glancing at the other asari who seemed to be more embarrassed and uncomfortable about what she had been called, than angry.

"This... Umm..." Liara said, approaching Emiya and suddenly appearing much more bashful now that Tyra was no longer in the room. It seemed like she was not very used to people, or perhaps it was merely strangers that put her off so.

"So you live here together?"

That would explain how Tyra could afford it, then.

"Ah, umm... Yes, that is correct," she answered, having obvious trouble deciding where to look.

She seemed quite uncomfortable with his appearance, so he shrugged and put on his pants, settling the towel over his shoulder to cover up himself for the most part.

It seemed to help a little.

"The university campuses are sorted out alphabetically, thus we have been living here together for a while now," Liara explained. "It is not always easy, but... We make do."

"Hmm..." Emiya nodded. Asari writing was similar enough to the Latin alphabet in structure that it made sense.

They waited for several awkward seconds, as Tyra was looking for his shirt.

"And yourself? It is quite rare to see aliens here on Thessia—ah..."

"I'm enrolled at the University of Serrice," he answered.

She perked up at that, raising her brow and making him note the eyebrow-like markings on her face. "Oh? That is impressive."

He was like to agree, having seen very few non-asari students in all his time on Thessia.

Still, he only nodded and looked at her more keenly, causing her to blink. The eyebrow-like lines over her eyes weren't reminiscent of turian facepaint, far too thin for that. They were rather like human eyebrows.

Was her father a human? No, she seemed too old for that considering first contact was only a few decades ago. Curious.

"No, I did not mean anything by that, I merely..."

"Well, I suppose it is, for a human. I hear asari prepare and study for years for the entrance exams," he said, realizing she had thought he had taken offense.

"Oh yes - it is a rather prestigious school," she agreed hastily, relieved. "What is it that you are studying, if I may ask?"

"A bit of this and bit of that. Right now, I'm focusing on eezo and mass effect theory," he replied and she nodded. "Though I find parts of all courses rather strange."

"Hmm?" She looked up at him, their eyes meeting for a few seconds before she looked away.

Her body language is strangely closed off and demure. Not quite scared, but...

"I've noticed something unusual about the subjects taught. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say, in asari knowledge bases in general. They seem strangely concentrated and focused. It's like a tree with no branches, except at specific and periodic intervals.

He frowned. At times it felt like as a species they had skipped entire steps in the development of certain ideas and technology as if they had been reading ahead in a script or something.

"I mean, you asari never had propellant firearms, when almost every other species in the galaxy did. Well, it could be a consequence of your biotics rendering primitive chemical propellant firearms useless, but it's still unusual."

She gave him a pointed look, which he recognized at asari body language for curiosity before she realized he wasn't asari and switched to a more neutral stance. She seemed to mentally stumble for a moment, not sure what to do before she used an awkward smile.

Perhaps she's never met humans before, or seen other asari interacting with humans. So this is a first encounter, of sorts?

"I think it might be a consequence of your long lives, and how Matriarchs have a tendency to focus on one thing until they reach mastery, only then releasing it to the general public. I mean, it matches historically as well. Matriarchs Dalikhan, Voaszia, Erultie, Benezia, Phaeldis..." He listed out various names he had heard and read about.

Each had brought forth some great innovation, shooting the asari forward decades at a time. They were like cultural torchbearers, setting forth into the dark unknown and leading the way for the rest of Thessia to follow.

"Ah... Yes..." Liara answered, looking away.

Huh? What did I say?

He wondered, realizing her asari body language spoke of being very uncomfortable at that moment.

Tyra returned, holding his still half-wet shirt in one hand.

They exchanged the towel and shirt, while Liara was obviously waiting for him to leave as she was glaring impatiently at Tyra. Emiya nodded his thanks, folding up the shirt rather than putting it on, as he would rather drive home shirtless and let it dry out a little while longer.

This domestic dispute really wasn't his problem so he really should be leaving already. Nodding at Tyra, he turned around to leave.

"You wanna come play tomorrow? We're having practice at the same time, same place. You could show me that thing with the feet you were talking about?" Tyra asked, looking up at him with a hopeful grin.

He considered it, shrugging. "Sure, why not. See you there."

Liara blinked at their byplay, saying nothing as he turned around and left.

---

;

---

As expected, everything is emitting this signal, Emiya noted, arriving back at his house in Serrice.

The 'sound' had not lessened, but it seemed to wane a little as he had flown over the sea as only the connectivity-capable items he carried around were nearby. And then upon returning to his apartment it seemed like he was in the middle of a thousand little screeching devices again.

It wasn't quite painful...

But was definitely becoming an annoyance, especially because he still could not divine the cause behind it. It wasn't as if there was some central origin or as if it was being boosted along from someplace.

It simply seemed like pretty much everything had received a sudden firmware update, for no reason he could imagine, causing the ungodly signal to continue blaring.

Parking the skycar, he hopped out and began to walk back to his apartment's front door. He halted, realizing that something was off. The patterns of sand on the ground wrong, the angle of the shoe mat off, someone other than him had walked here.

Someone is inside.

Opening the door, he looked around and immediately spotted the dark-haired beauty sitting in his living room. He blinked once, checking the door for any signs of forced entry before walking through and closing it behind him.

What does she want?

And what was the catch? Had she someone else with her, hiding in wait? This was hardly a good position to ambush him. Was the strange signal her doing? Was that how she tracked him here?

"How did you get inside?" he asked neutrally, testing his disguise.

Miranda smiled, looking up at him with a knowing spark in her eyes as she crossed her legs. "That is of no consequence, Shirou Emiya."

He inhaled slowly through his nose. She smiled at him, knowingly, but not as if she was holding something over him or enjoying his pause, motioning instead with her hand for him to sit down opposite her in the kitchen.

"My name is Fujimura Saiga."

"Of course. My apologies. Come, sit. Let's talk a little while."

So, she hasn't made the connection yet.

Emiya sighed, noting the gun in her other hand under the table. It was hidden from view and she did not show any signs that she thought he was aware of it.

Really, what was she doing here?

"No, I think I'll start preparing dinner - I haven't eaten in hours."

She blinked, tilting her head and looking at the rather well-equipped kitchen to her left. He had a dozen knives there, along with plenty of other things he could use as a weapon in a pinch.

Not waiting for an answer, he simply strode into the kitchen, grabbed his apron and began to pull out utensils and ingredients. He could feel her blinking gaze at his back, the confusion almost enough to make him grin.

If you're going to play with subtle threats, then your opponent playing obtuse will completely negate your advantage if you aren't willing to escalate. What will you do now, Miranda - play hardball?

How she handled this would tell him a lot and how to proceed.

"Make it for two, then," she replied a second later, just a beat out of sync to reveal her improvised response. But it told him plenty, nonetheless.

She's not here to fight or capture me...?

Shrugging outwardly, he motioned at the cupboards. "Sure. Make the table for both of us, then."

Miranda hesitated for a second, holstering her gun before getting up and doing as he had suggested. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her hesitating at what to take out.

Never had to set a table before, I see.

"Flat plates will be fine, along with knives and forks. Glasses are by the top corner," he called out without looking, taking out the Thessian fish he had cold smoked last weekend and prepared portions for two.

Then he took some of the local vegetables and put them in his tiered mass effect field pressure cooker. He hadn't thought up of a good name yet, simply thinking of it as his pagoda, since he could put five separate pots into the same system, all with their own adjustable pressure and seals, stacked on top of each other for efficient cooking.

The pressure cookers from his time worked by raising the internal pressure so that the boiling temperature of the water rose, allowing it to be superheated, cutting down on cooking time. The asari did something similar with biotics, lowering the mass of foodstuffs to alter its heat capacity to give chefs a very high degree of control over how something cooked. He couldn't do something quite on their level, but with his pagoda, he was starting to approach that level.

The trick was to control how it returned to normal mass without the heat being lost - something that required precise feedback that machines normally could not do. His cooker simply performed some of the simplest of procedures based on raw calculations and predictive modeling, painstakingly experimented and prepared, allowing him to very quickly make simple ingredients.

These vegetables for example could be prepared in minutes. But accomplished asari chefs could prepare entire meals on the go in the same amount of time.

I still have a long way to go.

Though they had no direct equivalents on Earth, he had mentally simply labeled the things he put into the pagoda as 'potatoes', 'kale', and 'carrots'. The consistency and shape were different, but the taste buds in the mouth they activated, and the taste was similar enough that he felt the comparisons apt enough.

Taking out the spiced mayonnaise mix he had made from local herbs and eggs, he set it by the table while the pagoda filled with water. Setting up the timer and pressure, he cut off the water and set the mass effect field generator on. With that, it would soon be done.

All the while he had been doing this he had also been extending his digital senses.

Since his operation and cybernetization, parts of his brain had been replaced with circuits and processors. One of the advantages he had quickly grasped from this, was that since he was in a constant state of a half-dive, interacting with digital tools was incredibly easy. Almost instinctual, even.

He simply reached out and focused on her omnitool.

It was similar to the ones he had encountered before in Cerberus use, though their methodology had advanced considerably since last he had run into them. Too bad; he had improved exponentially at this since they had last tangled, too.

But so far he hadn't found anything. At least nothing relating to the strange signal, whose purpose still eluded him.

He turned to look at Miranda who had returned to sitting by the table.

"So, who are you, miss?" he asked, washing his hands and wiping them with a cloth, deciding on a script to stick to.

"Lawson. Miranda Lawson," she supplied, smiling at him as she crossed her legs. "For starters, I'm looking for your brother - we worked together a handful of years back... Has he told you anything about me?"

Emiya exhaled slowly through his nose, raising an eyebrow and still trawling through her omnitool. It seemed empty enough, aside from a copied schedule and a mail client that only received notifications of mail arriving at another account.

That must be her real omnitool, then. And she's fishing for a confirmation on my 'brother's' existence, and how much 'he' has told me... And the nature of our relationship based on how I've been told, too, I suppose.

But really, now he was to play his own brother?

He shook his head.

"He hasn't told anyone, that I know."

Miranda smiled slightly, gaze turning sharp for a second before she nodded and relaxed.

"He called himself Emil last, but that was a fake identity... What's his real name?"

"He's no one," he said, shrugging. "Though he goes by Emiya, too."

At first, she affected amusement at him, but at the last bit, her eyes sharpened. "I see, so it really was like that..." She gave him a measuring look, before continuing. "And where is he right now?"

Emiya considered how to go about that before he simply decided to go with the truth.

In one form, anyhow.

"You've heard about the hacking and information leaks that have been going on for a few years now?"

She nodded, understanding shining in her eyes. "I had thought as much. It figures that he would continue with what he knows best. Well, it makes me feel better to know my case wasn't merely a fluke." She seemed to vacillate between amusement and annoyance for a second. "But, to be perfectly clear... We are speaking of 'Redhax', aren't we?"

"...That was something the media named him, he's..."

"Never used any names or signs for identification, yes, I know. He is 'no one', after all. Yes, I thought the moniker a bit... too flagrant and on the nose for his style," she said, nodding. "So he is on the Citadel, then?"

"He would have to be somewhere that has extranet connections to everywhere in the galaxy. The Citadel certainly fits that bill." Emiya shrugged again, getting up as he noted that the pagoda was just about done.

Following Miranda's mail client, he found a connection to another omnitool, similar to the one she was wearing. Only, it had not been wiped clean but still had considerable amounts of data stored on it. He found it nearby, not fifty meters from his apartment.

Probably in a nearby skycar or shuttle.

She blinked at him getting up, following him with her eyes as he turned off the power and began to pour out the excess water. The moment he let out the excess pressure, the boiling temperature of the water dropped sharply, and a third of the water began to evaporate within seconds.

Straining the rest of the vegetables, he moved them to the table and then brought out the cold smoked fish as well. Sitting down, he motioned for her to begin. "Well, it's not much, but go ahead."

Pouring himself some water, he watched as she took a little bit of everything and then waited for him to take some as well.

She thinks I might have poisoned the food. How insulting.

Or was that a simple cover for her own avenue of attack? The angle she had used and was expecting to be used against her? She could have simply shot him dead already if that was her goal. So if she had dosed his utensils—the ingredients and kitchen had been untouched, he had checked thoroughly—then that would have been the easiest way.

If she expected him to come without a fight once drugged, she would be in for a rude awakening.

He said nothing, taking a bit of everything as well, and then with a quick 'itadakimasu' began to dig in to slake his ravenous appetite. Ignoring Miranda's owlish blinking, he simply ate at his own accelerating pace. He had been hungry for hours now and had no interest in waiting any longer to sate himself.

At the same time, he went through the data he had found, verifying that it did indeed belong to Miranda.

So, she found me through a photograph someone posted on social media with me in the background. I thought I had been spoofing all omnitool cameras around to avoid having my face show up anywhere, but as expected of a 'dumb machine' that can't be connected to in real-time.

A child had taken a photograph with a soft-locked omnitool and it had then later been uploaded through a social media account to the extranet, completely beyond his immediate ability to suppress. But that's what he got for staying still in a highly-populated area for so long.

Opposite to him, Miranda sampled everything he was eating in the same order, making sure not to eat anything before she had verified that he thought it safely edible. But it was obvious her wariness was being rapidly replaced by her occupation and increasing distraction by the food before her.

If there was something he could hold pride in, it was his culinary skills.

As he continued digging through her files, he blinked in the middle of his eating. Before Miranda noticed his reaction, he continued.

Her boss did not tell her about my kidnapping on Ares Station, but she figured it all out by herself and now she's here without telling anyone? What the hell?

"This is quite good. What is it called?" Miranda suddenly asked, reaching for a second portion.

He looked up, tilting his head, not certain what to say to that.

"It doesn't have a name per se - I just made it. Cold-smoked fish with cooked vegetables, I guess?"

She looked up at him at that admission. "Using Thessian ingredients? I had heard that the trace amounts of eezo and the higher gravity made it taste too bitter and sour for the human palate."

"...Well, you're not wrong. But in the end, ingredients are just ingredients. As long as you know what you're doing and understand who you're serving to, then balancing it out and making good food isn't all that difficult."

She raised an eyebrow at him, obviously skeptical at his nonchalance. But it really was the truth; there was no need for recipes or rules once you broke it down into the base components and their properties once you had enough experience with it. That was all there was to it.

Kind of like swordsmanship, come to think of it.

He continued eating, taking his third portion as he continued going through her files in secret.

So she wrote a predictive aging program and threw in all the data she had on me and then let it run, keeping it looking for me for years on a hundred different computers. She's spent two-hundred thousand credits on buying extranet packages alone... She's certainly a tenacious woman.

"Did he teach you how to cook?" she asked, almost tenderly.

"Err..." Emiya hesitated. "I'm self-taught. I guess you could say I mostly fed him."

Even now.

For the moment now that he had a proper handle on the situation, he considered how to handle this.

So far, he had simply been playing along as a host ought, even if she had invited herself inside without invitation. He really had nothing against her, or Cerberus at this point in time. They had inconvenienced him so he had repaid them in full and then let the Systems Alliance deal with the rest. Thus if they were content to leave him alone, then he did not see any need to continue hostilities.

But he had used them - had used her.

So he had little hope that they felt as laissez-faire about the whole matter as he did. Miranda especially struck him as the type of woman who would get 'even' or die trying.

Wait... Cerberus itself doesn't know I smuggled myself to the Citadel, either? And it doesn't look like she or Cerberus knows about my cybernetization with the STG, either. Emiya looked at Miranda, then. What exactly is she doing here?

If she thought there was a brother and he was in hiding, far away from humanity... Was this a threat to 'Emiya'?

"So, what can I help you with?" he asked as they finished up with their meal.

A little bit of everything still remained, as he had been holding back so as to leave enough for her if she wished to take thirds. Considering how quickly seconds had vanished, the possibility remained eminent.

She looked at him, huffing and smiling lightly. "No, you've done plenty already. A few more questions if it's not a bother?"

He shrugged at that, making her nod.

"What are you doing here? You have been whiling away for years now. Certainly, you have been busy as your eclectic syllabus will attest, but you still nowhere near any kind of future career, that cannot be it."

Questions about him and not... him?

Still, there wasn't any reason to lie about this. Maybe her reaction to the truth would reveal what she was planning?

"To find out more about the Protheans. Their culture, mostly."

She blinked at that, obviously taken aback, turning thoughtful then as she nodded to herself.

"Ah, yes. Professor Henell should be returning this week. That does make sense, I suppose."

They sat in silence for a good ten seconds, before Miranda shook her head. She seemed to have come to a conclusion about something she had been thinking about for a while, now.

She stood up and holstered the pistol she had been resting on her lap during the whole meal. If she thought he had known about it, she did not react to his stoicism. She walked over to him as he still sat by the table and smiled down at him.

He was much taller than she was, his growth spurts bringing him to his proper, full height. But sitting down as he was, he was still shorter than she was standing up.

Eh...?

For a moment, he felt utterly bewildered. She was patting his head, awkwardly, obviously aware of how strange an action it was as he could see a slight widening of her pupils at his reaction.

"Stay out of trouble, mister Emiya. And don't trouble your brother too much," she said, turning to walk to the front door.

"Er... Okay?" was all Emiya could say as he blinked, too confused to do anything else.

"Thank you for the meal—it was exquisite—and I apologize for intruding like this. I'll see myself out now," she bid, walking out and closing the door behind her with a knowing smile and a wave of her hand.

...What just happened?

He looked out the window, seeing Miranda walking to a skycar parked by the adjacent block, where he had tracked the second omnitool. He instantly managed to connect to the vehicle and find out it was a rental with nothing to it.

Should I follow her? Or take her out, now?

He hesitated, more concerned about Cerberus than Miranda. He was certain they were shady, but he hadn't heard much of them since his last run-in. It was part of the reason he had chosen to lead the human authorities to them, rather than trying to handle them on his own; they would have known what to do with such an organization better, he reasoned.

Emiya watched as she began to drive off, the back of her skycar already fading into the horizon as she sped away.

I'm not going to kill her, but... I should follow her and see if I can find out something more, he decided, walking back to sit by the dinner table and exiting his body, setting his cybernetics on a stand-by protocol that would keep his body running in a low-power mode as if he was meditating.

Immediately, something went wrong.

He only realized because he was still half in a dive in his brain, but the moment he was letting go of his control, his cybernetics began to do something all on their own. The moment he had begun vacating himself, the keening sound that had been playing for hours seemed to suddenly echo back from his own head back to the various other computers.

What? He blinked for a second, before quickly diving back inside himself. He traced the outgoing broadcast and cut it off. Why did it do that?

He extended his senses, realizing with sudden horror that the signal had been received and was being bounced forward and being propagated by every computer around him. He could tell it was wholly unique, nothing like any of the signals he had been aware of until now.

Damn it—what is this?

Realizing immediately that the signal that had originated from him was distinctly different from that of everything else, a thought occurred to him: was this perhaps some kind of trap for him? A method for sussing him out from hiding? He began to try and delete the signal, but for every one he could get his hands on two others were splitting off into other computers.

Realizing he couldn't handle all of the exponentially multiplying signals like this, he instead began to try and diffuse its point of origin before realizing that wouldn't work either.

Even if I manage to dissipate the signal's origin to a wider area, I'm still one of the only humans on Thessia! Damn it, I need this thing gone!

If this was some kind of attempt to track him down, then he could assume any success in pinpointing his location would call in who-knew-what kinds of hunting hounds. He would have to disappear again if that happened, ruining five years' worth of preparations.

Emiya focused, pushing more and more magical energy into the dive as he began to phase his consciousness out of his body, keeping only a tendril behind to keep the signal from being propagated again.

It's just spread to computers in Serrice, it's not just trying to go to one terminal which would make it easy to track. It's almost like this was tailored to work against me...

He was burning through magical energy rapidly and he could distantly note that his exhale felt like he was blowing fire through his teeth.

I need to wrap this up before my body gives out. If I could just jump out and not worry about my body, I could go all out, but that signal will just start again from my body if I do - so I need to seal it away first!

Emiya opened his eyes, pulling his attention back to his body. He stood up, kicking away from the dinner table as he extended his hands.

"—Trace, On!"—begin projection;

The coffin-like steel chest instantly encased his entire body. It was three times in thickness of the icebox he had used years ago, with fourteen layers of Faraday cage-like isolation, all grounded to the floor separately. No signal should be able to go through this.

He immediately jumped out of his body, diving into the nearby kitchen terminal.

Good, my body isn't sending out any signals. That means I can go all out!

He dove deeper, falling into that dark ocean once more. But he didn't wait to fall to the blue plane beneath, instead immediately focusing and pushing his essence outwards.

It had been two seconds since the first signal from his cybernetic parts had begun to spread outwards. Since then, it had spread into everything within comm-range and replicated anew to spread into everything else around that, again. It had almost already reached the extranet hubs that could take it off-world already. Only his earlier prioritization of cutting off those signals had kept it from already happening. But the longer he waited the less he would be able to do, as the signals continued their exponential growth.

Thus, he had to exterminate it right now, while he still could.

"I am the bone of my sword."

He intoned and everything warped around him, barely able to bear his immense conceptual weight without shattering.

In the past, he had tried to project various items inside of this digital reality, experimenting with the results. Generally, it required extremely powerful hardware to handle the results. He hypothesized that it was not so much the function of the noble phantasm that did it, but the forceful addition of something that was too big into a container that was already straining to contain just him in the dive. Whatever the cause may be, the results were usually always the same.

Even a noble phantasm that was characterized by how it would not damage what it struck, such as Rule Breaker, could cause considerable 'pressure' to the system.

This time, he was going to go way beyond those careful times.

Emiya beheld the fourteen thousand two hundred and sixteen computers capable of wireless communication that were propagating the signal, each represented as a dot of light in this digital world beneath him. They were spread out all over Serrice, from where he lived as a rough center.

He had to destroy them all, right now.

The preparations set, he raised his hand.

—all processes completed, all projections stand by, ceasing decompression;

Fourteen thousand two hundred and sixteen virtual swords appeared above him, all pointed at the signal propagators he could see. His arm swung down, like an executioner's blade crashing down to cut off this hydra's heads.

—all projections fire!

The swords exploded forward as his magical energy roared, shaking the entirety of that virtual reality. It was like a depth charge had gone off and what followed only grew more potent.

White static erasing instants and moment as reality itself came crashing down.

The digital ocean exploded and he was forcibly ejected out into the real world again as he barely had time to see his swords striking true. He shook his head, looking at the smoking terminal he had dove into earlier and been spit out of just now.

The screen was dead, its internal systems burned out.

It's broken, he observed and turned on his heel and jumped outside his house, phasing through the wall.

Miranda's skycar had shut down and she was looking around, obviously perplexed by what had happened. Emiya didn't spare her another glance as he moved to find a working omnitool to dive into.

Back in the digital world, he began to immediately search for any other signals with the unique imprint that had started from him. That was the biggest problem with his dive; it wasn't the same as what a skilled hacker did. He wasn't writing code that could self-propagate and spread like a wildfire, scaling its function and scope as necessary. Even the earliest computer viruses humanity had made had the ability to spread and 'act' independently to fulfill their purpose.

But he could only act himself and on the things he could perceive.

If a single ping had escaped beyond his notice, it would have already spread beyond his reach in the time it had taken him to reach another omnitool. If that was the case, there was nothing to be done but make his escape before anyone had time to come investigate in meatspace.

Emiya began to go through system after system, jumping from server to server, checking everywhere he could think of for signs. As he found nothing, he finally let out a sigh of relief. He immediately began to trawl the extranet for any information as to what the hell he had stumbled into.

As he found a news article that seemed related, he blinked.

'Citadel Council pushes through an invasive new Cyber-Surveillance Bill that will allow it to gather metadata from all computers!'

He blinked, reading through the article.

'In an attempt to fight back against the rise of malicious blackhat hacking incidents in recent years, the Citadel Council has signed a bill that will allow it to gather information on all computers with extranet connectivity capabilities. This controversial bill has been propped up by three hundred top companies operating in Citadel Space, along with Salarian Union officials and the Turian Primarch. The justification behind this claim is that due to the environment of fear surrounding these events, companies have not been able to do business safely and that with governmental communications so exposed, this vulnerability poses a grave risk to the continued cooperation and diplomatic relations of all Council races.'

Emiya ground his teeth, realizing that this wasn't just something that had come out of the blue. This was something mentioned in the morning newsreels several times, yet he had been completely ignoring it.

'Critics of the bill have argued that the galactic economy has not suffered at all, but rather that consumer trust is at an all-time high, even if investor trust has dipped slightly in recent years (Click here for more). Additionally, strong objections have been raised to this kind of mandated installing of tracking software on personal computers. Earlier this week, concerns over the sapient rights' violations over privacy were raised, but after the asari-lead Sapient Rights Council based in Ulee gave the bill the green light after extensive discussion, many who had been vocal objectors prior have fallen silent. On social media, the famous free-information group TruthHax has continued to rally against this bill, under the banner of there being a significant resource drain on every computer due to this (Click here for more), but as of today it seems to have all been for naught.'

"Oh for fuck's sake." Emiya sighed, palming his face.

This was all his fault, wasn't it?

Or rather, it was an enemy moving against him and he hadn't been paying attention, too comfortable in his superiority all these years. He had grown lax and careless.

Emiya stopped reading and began to navigate towards one of the hacker boards he knew about. It was a surface-level board, but it still held a presence of more experienced and knowledgeable cyber-specialists who would know what was going on. He immediately found the thread discussing the bill and began to leaf through.

As expected, there were people who had found connections to both the Special Tasks Group and the Spectres. One poster claimed that an asari by the name of Tela Vasir had visited the Ulee Sapient Rights Council days before they had received the bill, postulating that there must be more behind that than a mere courtesy call.

But just as he had thought, this really all was his fault.

'RedHax has been way too indiscriminate. I mean, it's one thing to reveal to the world that a corporation is laundering money or using child labor on a colony world... But hacking into salarian and asari ministries to reveal corruption and tweedisms? Even if those people have been tried and sentenced by their governments since, they can't just let someone like that stay around unchecked. This is just the natural consequence of that.'

He exhaled, pulling out and returning to the real world. He leaped back to his house, settling into his body and dismissing the coffin he had created. The air within had been getting stuffy, too. Something he would improve on the next design.

"What a mess."

It had all started about four years ago when while reading some news he had stumbled upon unusual signs that he felt were vaguely familiar. His instincts drove him to investigate further and he ended up diving through a company's internal records regarding a distant planet near the border of the Terminus systems.

As a result, he had found a full-scale slave revolt going on, where the corporation in question had been abusing the colonists to make a profit, using the inhospitable conditions and the long distance from any other system or mass relay to isolate them. It was so far away from everything and everyone, that no one had noticed. Enough so that he hadn't had any means of going there himself, either.

Feeling rather helpless, he had wracked his brain over what to do.

Finally, he simply decided to reveal the truth of the matter to the world, without revealing his identity or the exact means through which he had uncovered that information. Spreading proof on social media sites, and revealing attempts by the company trying to suppress him, he had managed to rouse enough attention for something to be done about it. The galaxy had been outraged, the company's stock had plummeted and public outcry for action had stormed the various social media.

The Citadel Council had intervened and things had seemed to work out surprisingly well, with the company forced to take responsibility and conditions improving for the people on the distant colony. Of course, since they still lived in such a distant and inhospitable region, their lives had only been really affected in the short term.

But he had helped them.

Thus he had started hacking into places and things he found suspicious and had begun to spread information whenever he found something questionable or illegal going on. He was essentially stuck on Thessia, yet aware of the goings-on in the rest of the galaxy, thus it only made sense if he wanted to help.

It was quick and efficient, and while he was not the arbiter of justice—merely the one who made the truth known to the people, letting them dispense their own justice—it was actually pleasantly easy and clean for a change, he had thought. No need to bloody his hands, no difficult moral quandaries on how or whether to even act, no need to even leave his apartment.

Most nights as he let his body rest, he spent his time diving and investigating the extranet, finding leads, and following up as he felt necessary.

Of course, it raised other kinds of considerations. Whether that cleanness was just an illusion wrought by distance and incomplete information. Whether he was simply prioritizing convenience and quantity, letting countless other slip between his fingers.

And sometimes when justice remained unserved by the system...

He hadn't ever left any kind of calling card or signs of how he accomplished what he did, thinking that there was no need to draw attention to himself. But it seemed that his ability to ferret out the truth from anywhere and anyone, along with usually undeniable proof without any kind of traces being left behind anywhere, had instead become his 'signature' in the eyes of the public.

There had of course been copycats and those who tried to coast along on that infamy, but if he thought they were stepping out of line, he revealed the truth of their duplicity just as he did with anyone else to the galaxy. Rather, their copying made him keep an even closer look on their activities. He had thought that to be the extent of his troubles - that outside of a few individuals he wouldn't have to worry about direct consequences of his actions.

But expecting the governments and companies to do nothing had been naive of him, he now realized.

He sighed, rubbing his brow. Looking out through the window again, he tried to search for Miranda. The skycar was still there, dead to the world, but she was gone. She must have left quickly, realizing something was amiss, perhaps even suspecting retaliation or a warning from himself.

Closing his eyes and weighed his option.

Look for Miranda or continue monitoring the situation here? She could have tried to shoot him, take him in as a hostage, could have done any number of things, given that she had the gun and he had been unarmed—from her perspective anyhow.

That meant he could probably assume she had no intention of burning him at the moment.

Probably, anyhow, Emiya thought, getting back to the table and taking the rest of his lunch.

He had burned through a lot of magical energy with this debacle and he needed to recover in case everything went south again, as was less certain of the rest of the situation here. He might have missed something, someone might be coming in to investigate and could trace it back to him.

Really, he needed to be keeping an eye on this situation and seeing how it developed. He nodded to himself, deciding on a course of action.

In the worst-case scenario, he had to be able to leave Thessia in minutes. Once he had preparations set for that possibility, he would dive right back in to continue his investigation.

---

;

---

Mordin rolled his eyes, closing the mail with a heavy heart.

Another of his old colleagues had just perished—the approach of old age once again making one among the ranks of the STG grow desperate enough to try something outrageous. They could push themselves to a very advanced age, but they could not deny death.

The promise of longevity through self-modification was as tempting as it had always been to the salarians. And with an example of someone so clearly staving off death using such methods...

In recent years, they had been growing bolder and bolder. Despite constant failures, that one time still taunted and tempted them. Surely there must have been some detail they had not considered that was now right there, surely something could be gleaned from that operation, surely somehow they too could turn themselves more synthetic than salarian.

Anything for just a little bit more time.

He had read the detailed analysis on the exotic matter pulled from that anomalous human's brain and as expected, it hadn't worked as had been hoped. One of those who had been looking into that case had thought to use the exotic matter as a form of bridging material, attempting to perform a highly invasive and complex cybernetization operation on himself, thinking that it would allow him to recover as quickly as the anomalous human had.

"Foolishness." Mordin shook his head.

As he had outlined himself in his original analysis, back with 'Shirou Emiya' himself, the exotic matter was something that was disappearing. The human had been seeking something to replace the exotic matter, thus assuming that it had anything to do with his recovery was quite fallacious. All of it had been removed from the brain, thus assuming that it had been the catalyst for the flawless cybernetization was ridiculous.

A great amount of the exotic matter had been disappearing, only leaving the Special Tasks Group with a fraction of the original amount by the time they had found a way to halt its decay. Since then, many attempts had been made at investigating the matter, but so far nothing had been truly made of those forays.

Yet, it still seemed like the key to the holy grail for many.

There would be no funeral, no wake, and no one to send off the recently passed away salarian. Their colleagues had not even waited for the body to cool down, before beginning their biopsy on him.

It was beginning to seem like an obsession to Mordin. A dangerous one.

Another good reason to distance himself from that branch of the STG. He had worked on the cyber-division for a while instead, using his personal experience with 'Shirou Emiya' as a basis for the new contingencies and plans. They had long since connected the dots between 'Shirou Emiya' and the entity publicly known as 'Redhax'.

Attempts had been made at tracking down the individual, but so far with minimal success.

Several sting operations and tracking attempts had been made, resulting in many arrests and interesting revelations regarding the prevalence of un-monitored AI, but those had been incidental. Oftentimes, it even felt like a lead was nothing more than a red herring meant to sic the STG onto various criminal activities. Ranging from hard drugs and arms merchants to organ trafficking, from political corruption to kidnapping rings, anything and everything that seemed to be related to 'Redhax' was delivered to the STG, who would then go snooping around and find something they couldn't ignore.

But nothing tied to the actual object of their obsession.

While Mordin was always happy to do good, it did feel slightly irritating on a professional level to be held in such low regard as to be made an errand boy.

Attempts had been made to prod the Alliance Intelligence Agency for information regarding 'Shirou Emiya', but aside from evidence gathered from Cerberus' assets regarding a hunt for an individual called 'Outis', the STG had nothing to show for their work so far. As a result—on explicit Council orders—very little information had been passed back, causing a rift to occur between the intelligence branches of the Citadel and of the Systems Alliance. The humans knew that the STG knew something, but aside from the connection between Cerberus and 'Outis', they couldn't even speculate on what that was.

It really was a rather embarrassing and uncomfortable state of affairs, given that 'Redhax' never seemed to stop or slow down.

As a result, the Citadel Council had been growing rather desperate.

Certain extreme measures that had been drawn up were taken into consideration in recent months, and against the Special Tasks Group's advisement, the new security bill had been passed. Mordin thought it a foolish policy, given that it was predicated on the model that 'Shirou Emiya' was an advanced Artificial Intelligence bound to a bluebox computer, for which no proof existed. But the Council was under a lot of pressure and could not be stopped, thus half-cocked measures were better than no measures, no matter how untrue that actually was.

Already things were shaking up to be complicated, as it was being enacted. Merely the reveal that the STG had a model of nearly every operating system used in the galaxy and could create firmware additions to their base code, with the practical considerations for such a thing already in place, was telling of how long the Citadel's reach really was.

No intelligence agency worth its salt would fail to pick up on that.

Mordin rolled his eyes again, wondering at the long-term effects that the bill would have. The Systems Alliance had never taken kindly to being restricted or monitored too closely, thus the effects of the bill would undoubtedly only serve to further chill the relations between humanity and the Citadel races, just for starters.

But it was out of his hands already.

He set aside the omnitool and began to pack up. He was moving to another facility, where he would be tackling another problem which while older and far slower, presented a far more insidious threat if not handled delicately. Already he had been reading up on the planet, familiarizing himself with the subject as preparation.

"No time for rest, always working~ A busy salarian, never a duty shirking~" he hummed, thinking of a song he had been writing up for a play recently. Perhaps he should try his hand at publishing another one, again.

Well, it would have to wait until after this Genophage situation was handled.

---

;

---

Emiya sighed, rubbing his brow.

After Miranda had left evening had fallen, followed by night and finally by the dawn of a new day. He hadn't gotten a wink of sleep, as he looked around for information and kept an eye on the investigation that occurred after his mishap.

He had just returned to his body, dispelling the coffin and getting himself something to eat again to re-fuel his magical energy.

Despite his earlier confidence, he hadn't been able to find any good information on the cause beyond something the Citadel Council had passed into law. The signal simply seemed to work like a ping that echoed back from anything that had the necessary extranet protocols to connect to anything—be it through wireless or wired connection—creating a unique ID based on the physical characteristics of the hardware.

And all of that he only knew based on the speculation of a forum poster whose account was subsequently scrubbed off of all records. Even though he had read up on a variety of subjects, he really did not have a solid enough foundation in signal analysis or omnitool hardware to be able to actually figure out what was going on.

When he was diving, he was not acting in the capacity of a talented hacker. He was simply cheating, powering through with magical energy and brute force when he faced problems.

He could not understand why the signal only pinged when he left his body, either.

Perhaps his dive inside of the hardware somehow blotted out the base functionality necessary to send a confirmation signal? His constant state of half-dive, while he was in his body, meant that the hardware was not operating independently, but rather only acting as a vessel to house half of his consciousness. The only counter-measure he had come up with so far, was encasing his body in a grounded Faraday Cage to block out any possibility of connection. This put a serious hamper on his ability to act as a heroic spirit, he realized, as it would require him to project that coffin every time.

At night, when he was sleeping, it wasn't really a problem...

But if he needed to suddenly act during the day as a heroic spirit, it would require some careful planning to handle.

So finally, after hours of looking around for anything with no real luck, he had pulled back and settled back in his body. So far, it seemed that no one had caught on as to what had happened; the damage he had done had spread out far enough in the city that it couldn't be tracked down enough to point to his location directly.

Officials were completely flabbergasted by what had happened. There were rumors of gamma-ray bursts or an EMP attack, of a hacker out on the loose, or even of a rampant AI causing this. But there was no official word out by Serrice Police, yet.

The omnitools, cars, household appliances and public terminals that had been absolutely destroyed in his rampage had accrued material damages that were being conservatively estimated in the tens of millions of credits. Luckily, no one had actually been seriously hurt, though several skycars had been immobilized in mid-air and had fallen to the ground.

Only the numerous safety features and 'dumb' redundancies had allowed them to land unscathed.

I was too hasty and over-reacted. I could have gotten someone killed, he chided himself, looking over the list of injured again.

That no one had gotten anything more than a bump or a scratch was a small mercy, at least.

He looked at his open palm, weighing the consequences of his actions again. Should he have let the signal go through? He could have simply run, couldn't he? Sighing again, he got up and shook his head. He had made his choice; staying on Thessia given how close he was to getting to attend Professor Henell's classes was worth the damages he had caused. For now. No one had died, nor had anyone been permanently injured.

He could repay them all, with time, obliquely, but he couldn't get this education anywhere else, he reasoned.

Emiya closed the file, noting that the list of damages hadn't been updated in half an hour now. He would directly repay the worst of the damages since this had been his mess. But his current funds weren't enough, so he would have to do something about that.

Well, the thing is already finished, I just need to start production.

Shaking his head, he got up and looked at the clock. He wasn't in any hurry yet, as the afternoon lesson with Professor Henell that marked the first of this year's course was still hours away.

Still, he needed to get his head out of this funk.

"Might as well pay Baliya a visit," he decided.

Leaving his apartment and getting in his skycar, he drove to the University of Serrice. He had a tendency to shut down his skycar completely when he left it parked, leaving it still operational after everything. It was simply a method he had thought to keep anyone from tampering with it without his knowledge since to do so they would have to turn it on, leaving him an obvious log to reference for changes.

Not that it would have mattered since public transportation in Serrice was quite good.

Finding a parking spot where the Automated Parking System would handle it, he left the car.

Getting out, he turned towards a wing on the west side of the main building. It was the museum of the University of Serrice, housing artifacts from both Thessia and many other planets within its ancient halls. Normally the sections he liked to visit were closed off to the public, but he had managed to get in Professor Haphia's good graces over the years. Apparently, the ability to repair anything cheaply and flawlessly was still appreciated anywhere in the galaxy.

Walking through the front entrance, he nodded at the guard posted behind a security window. The uniformed asari looked up, nodding at him as he walked past her.

He looked at the various sculptures and artworks—things deemed to be the most interesting for the asari public—held up on display as he walked towards the personnel-only section of the building. Using the digital access card he had been given, the normally locked door opened to give him access.

Walking onward through the storage areas, his eyes raked the numerous closets and drawers, all labeled for various contents by period and location. There were shelves dedicated to single plants, while there were entire rooms dedicated to specific cities on Thessia.

Even a cursory glance told him that in these rooms were things stored from half of the known galaxy's race's pasts. He walked through, not bothering to slow down to examine any of them. It wasn't his first time here, thus the awe had mostly worn off already.

Arriving at an office deep within the museum, he knocked at the door as he peeked inside. The lights were off, yet he could see that the computers were still on. Lucky thing that it didn't spread all the way here. I would have hesitated to nuke the university's computers, considering the value of everything stored here.

"Baliya, are you in here?"

He heard a mumble from beneath the desk, causing him to huff as he walked around to find her sleeping on the floor on an inflatable mattress.

Crouching down and shaking her shoulder gently, he looked at her as she slowly woke up.

So much for the Matriarchs all being figures of respect and authority.

"Don't tell me you were up all night again. I keep telling you that you need to take better care of yourself."

"nn...?" The sleeping asari complained, raising a single hand to shoo him away.

"I'm taking the key for a moment, that fine?"

"nn..." She made a sound he knew to be roughly equivalent to 'go-ahead' but could have equally been a 'go away'.

Well, close enough.

He huffed, standing up and taking a keycard from the desk's top drawer, deciding to leave her be.

Though Baliya Haphia was one of the oldest professors at the University of Serrice, she really only cared about the museum. Having been the curator for well over three hundred years, organizing and tagging everything stored within these walls was her passion and purpose in life.

Walking out, he continued on until he arrived at another door. Reinforced and hermetically sealed steel, this section of the museum stored the oldest and most valuable pieces housed within. The door closed behind him and he pocketed the key card as he looked at a specific wall.

Third section from the left, fourth drawer from the floor, he remembered clearly.

Reaching out, he opened the drawer to reveal a collection of asari artifacts, dating back more than six thousand years on average. From half a meter long to almost one and a half at the most; sharpened steel with a hilt for comfortable gripping, with a point of balance that lay somewhere in the lower quarter of the blade, just above the crossguard.

Swords—a full dozen of them—sealed in plastic containers and coated in a layer of patina that spoke of aging with grace in a way only eezo alloys could. They were beautiful pieces, all curving lines and rolling design with sparkling dots of element zero peeking through, reminiscent of the ocean and the night sky.

These were the works of master swordsmiths, he could tell at a glance.

There was just one problem.

According to Unlimited Blade Works, they weren't swords. Well, that wasn't strictly true. The moment he touched one, and felt the weight and thought 'this is a sword' for the first time, it would suddenly become one, appearing within his reality marble.

Problem was that even then he could not read the past of the blades. Not beyond the moment he touched them.

It was a strange inversion of the case with the Prothean gun.

Something that shouldn't have been replicated, was. Something that should be replicated, wasn't. He hadn't been surprised; he had realized as much five years ago, back on the Citadel already. Seeing the turians' traditional culinary talon knives attached to their fingers and not having them appear in his reality marble was enough to clue him in on that fact.

But, he hadn't been dissuaded.

Rather, he had taken it as a learning opportunity.

He knew nothing about the Protheans and hoped to learn more about them; to acquire their logos and to be able to understand more about those strange guns he had found. Of course, such a thing was by no means an easy feat, and he had had no idea where to even begin.

Thus, these asari swords presented a possibility to him.

To learn how to learn a logos.

The Protheans were dead and gone, only traces remaining of that once galaxy-spanning civilization. By contrast, the asari were still around, flourishing even. Surely it would be easier to learn the latter than it was the former, he reasoned. Then, using the methods and principles of learning he had from learning asari logos, he could plan out how to learn about the Protheans better.

That had been the plan, and he had been working at it for a good five years now.

Emiya knew about asari customs, their languages, and their habits. He knew how they lived and died, how they celebrated, and how they mourned. He knew about the history of Thessia, of its religions and conflicts. He knew about the rise of republics and the fall of empires. He could converse with any asari he met and leave them surprised with his fluency and familiarity.

He thought he had come to understand the asari, as well as was humanly possible.

Yet, it changed nothing when it came to these swords, apparently. He knew their exact physical makeup by sight, he knew how to use them, he knew the theory behind their function and construction, he knew when they had been made and had managed to reason out the methods of construction for each.

Yet, they remained silent before him.

Empty - like a rock on the ground.

Nothing had changed in the year since he had been here last, even as he had refined his understanding of eezo and mass effect field theory. As a result of his hard work, he had figured out how to create his specialized pressure cooker, something which emulated asari cooking. A feat that no one else in the galaxy had managed to get working yet.

He had even been training i'usu and even gotten rather good at it, despite his obvious handicaps in lacking access to biotics.

Really, it was just asari kendo with biotics, but he had taken to it quite well once he figured out the way the eezo-laminated swords worked.

At one point he had questioned whether the weapons held a similar meaning to the asari as they had to humanity, but upon reflection, he could only assume that it was so. Ancient tales, myths, and surviving theater scripts in ancient times were full of references to them. Action vids and simulstim spectacles in today's world glorified them. Many a game had classes such as 'Blade Mistress' or 'Sword Saint' as asari exclusives, based on old legends of asari who had been able to hold off entire armies on their own, wielding but a single sword.

They were as ubiquitous in asari culture as swords were in human culture.

Most considered them nothing but aphoristic myths or tall tales, told again and again, with each re-telling making it sound grander and greater until the result was the legends now known and written down in ancient texts. Modern recreations had clear limits to what could be done with such blades, proving in the eyes of many that those legends could not be taken seriously.

But he had a unique perspective on such things. He had not found any evidence of magic in the galaxy so far, but that did not mean that in the past such things had not existed. Looking at it, he thought it entirely possible that ancient asari blades had been able to demonstrate effects on the level of what the legends spoke of.

He simply wasn't able to confirm it.

Emiya sighed, staring at the swords. He had been on Thessia for years now yet nothing had changed. A part of him felt that even if he did learn about the Protheans, that nothing would change then either; that even if he stayed for another decade he would get no closer to understanding what had happened in that chamber deep below the surface of Mars.

It's not like I have been sitting idly by for all these years... But is it time to give up on the Protheans?

What if he simply stopped trying to follow this lead and focused on his 'hacktivism' instead, by spending more of his meatspace time in those activities? Wouldn't he accomplish more good that way - keep more people from slipping between his fingers?

The Protheans were dead and long gone, what would it matter if he never figured out the cause behind their disappearance?

He shook his head, closing the drawer. The time wasn't quite yet for declaring this a lost cause. If nothing else, he had learned a great deal, that would allow him to continue living in the galaxy without further problems.

"My time here hasn't been wasted," he told himself before he turned to leave.

Returning to Baliya's office, he found her sitting upright and groggily looking around. On seeing him, she tilted her head and squinted.

"Fujimura? I thought I saw you come in..."

"Good morning, professor," Emiya spoke with only slight amusement. This was hardly a new occurrence, thus the novelty had long since worn off. "Shall I put the coffee on?"

"Oh, yes... Please..."

Though the price of coffee beans was considerable, Thessia was not the heart of galactic commerce for nothing. Importing it was merely a matter of finding the right supplier.

The asari, as a rule, weren't great fans of the beverage, but Baliya who spent all of her time indoors and ignoring the natural day cycles as much as she could, had come to cherish the pick-me-up it presented. At first, she had complained about the bitter taste, but soon enough she had grown into someone who could not stand anything but a freshly ground black brew.

Taking out the bean grinder he had made her and filling it up, he began to prepare a cup for the asari as she slowly got herself into something resembling wakefulness.

"I see you've been busy. With the expedition's return from the dig site, I'm guessing there are a lot of new Prothean artifacts to label and get sorted away."

She looked up, eyes lighting up as she processed his words.

"Yes. You wouldn't believe the things they found there. Everything from third-era materials to first-era artwork in nearly pristine condition! And this is just the first shipment of three. I'll be busy with all of this for weeks!"

He huffed as he put the water on the boil.

Of all of the methods he had tried, she had come to enjoy the French press the most. Though, Emiya suspected that was simply due to the ease of use when it came to the press he had also made for her.

"Make sure to eat and exercise properly. I don't want to find you in another coma from overworking yourself the next time I come back, alright?"

She shook her head and waved his concerns off with a scoff. Then, she sniffed herself, grimacing at the smell.

"Ah, I'll have to shower and change clothes before Nirida returns. She's always so prim and proper, always telling me to 'look the part of a professor', tch... If it wasn't for how good she was, I wouldn't be able to stand her guts!"

Emiya merely raised an eyebrow as he made a noise of understanding.

"...You're not going to tell her that I said that, are you?"

He merely smiled in response, making her get up and walk towards him with pleading eyes.

"Come on, I wasn't serious. She'll give me that look the next time we see if you tell her. I've gotten along with her for fifty-three years now, don't go and ruin it!"

"Well, we'll see. I'll be starting my classes with her today," he said, smiling as he poured two cups of the dark brew.

Really, he liked a touch of milk to curb the bitterness, and overall preferred tea, but on Thessia it wasn't exactly easy to get the leaves he preferred in good condition. Coffee was really sold on its caffeine value, rather than on the taste. Milk was also something that did not really exist on Thessia.

Not that he would have drunk anything so easily spoiled, were it to be stored in this office. Baliya might have claimed to love the taste of a cup of plain black, but he knew she had only started drinking it like that due to being too lazy to store anything more than the bare necessities in her office.

He had once found a glass of water that had dried out and half-calcified on the inside from the liquid slowly gathering dust and evaporating. He had done the calculations; given the average humidity and temperature, it must have been in the room between at least thirty to fifty years untouched.

I hope not all Prothean-enthusiasts are this 'unique', he thought as he handed her the other cup.

"Thank you," she said, blowing once, twice, at the beverage before pouring half of it down her throat. He didn't bother commenting on her drinking habits, as she then as usual washed down the heat with cold water from another cup.

Then again, the entire species seems predisposed towards extremes. A result of their reproductive methods, perhaps? He playfully mused, not seriously considering that beyond a joke.

"You've been here for half a decade already, huh. It feels like we just met yesterday," Baliya said, setting down the cup and sitting down by her desk as she with her foot rolled up the mattress she had been using and kicked it to the side. Turning on the terminal, she grimaced. "Ugh, work mail always piles up in the mornings... Why does everyone always use the 'send all' button? I don't even care about any of this stuff!"

He smiled as she began to rant about staff meetings, upcoming social events, and students sending adverts using the mail, clogging it up constantly.

"Well, I should be going. Thanks for lending me the key," Emiya said after emptying his own mug and pouring in some water to wash away the remains of the coffee, drinking that too.

"Hmm? Don't mention it. You're always welcome here, Fujimura," she said, looking up as she finished the last of her coffee too. Unlike him, she did not bother washing it with water, but instead, there was a flare of dark energy around her and the remains of the drink floated into her mouth.

He nodded, turning around to leave.

"Oh, wait up." She said before he could reach the door. He blinked, turning around. "There's a mail here, let's see... You were talking about the Prothean-101 course with Nirida earlier, right?"

"Hmm? Yeah."

She looked up, with a look of consternation as their eyes met. "It looks like it's been called off, for some reason."

He perked at that, brows furrowing. "Does it say why?"

"No, but you want me to ask? They're all online, right now."

Emiya nodded. "Please."

He walked back to the desk, crossing his arms as he stood by. It took a minute until a reply was received.

"Huh, she's still gone. She was to go on the last ship to leave Dretirop, but she hasn't come back yet. The rest of the skeleton crew with her is still missing, too. They don't know anything more, so for now, the class has just been canceled," Baliya said, looking up with a frown. "That's not like her. She's very punctual normally... At the very least, I would have expected her to call in."

Emiya frowned.

"Thanks for telling me, I need to go."

She looked up, nodding as she was broken out of her thoughts. "Hmm? Yes. Come any time, Fujimura."

"You just say that because I'm the only one who will make you coffee," he shot back with a smirk.

She didn't bother to deny it, waving him away as he left.

He walked back to his skycar, mentally already connecting to the University intranet to look into the class, tracing back the mail and then checking what the faculty knew. As Baliya had said, it appeared to have been suddenly canceled, though no other word had been said as to why beyond Henell having failed to return to Thessia.

If it wasn't for Baliya, he probably would not know even that much.

I could dive in and take a closer look—

He had to restrain himself, remembering only that he had to be doubly careful from now on. He had gotten so used to the ever-present chiming signal that he had almost forgotten about it.

Settling for simply sitting in his skycar, he did it the slow way and accessed the data while still in his body. Overlaying one of his eyes' vision with the data he was browsing, he tried to find anything on Professor Henell, but ultimately nothing beyond what he already knew was on record no matter how he tried to look around.

Shaking his head, he turned on the skycar and lifted off. The flight back was uneventful.

Emiya arrived back at his apartment, making sure to make a loop around as he checked for anyone around. With Miranda and the fallout of his attempt at tailing her, he had no reason to assume his cover was anything resembling solid anymore. He had considered getting another apartment, on the other side of Serrice, but that would only raise eyebrows if someone did come to investigate. He could delete records, but the neighbors all knew and would remember him.

He sat down in the kitchen, deep in thought as he continued to trawl through the extranet. He found dozens of articles about professor Henell, written in the last three decades. She was a larger-than-life figure in certain circles, but her tendency to drop off the map and join expeditions to remote planets for Prothean digs kept her as something of a distant figure.

So far, no one seemed to really have noticed her disappearance—or failure to return, rather.

Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying went.

Sighing, he changed the subject, looking into the effects of the recent bill. Serrice's police were continuing in their investigation over the blackout he had caused, though in a public statement it had been ruled out as being caused by malicious intent and the case would be handed off to cyber-specialists to investigate. So far, the running theory seemed to be a bug that caused a logic virus that corrupted certain nearby computers due to the Citadel firmware update.

He wasn't sure whether to consider it a good thing that it had taken him so long to handle the signal, but since having spread so wide, no one had yet seemed to cast a suspicious gaze at him. There were a hundred thousand asari living in this part of Serrice and while most had been off at work leaving only stationary computers affected, it still represented a humongous number of people to investigate.

The question was whether his cover could handle any level of inspection at all.

If Serrice police created a file on him, could the Special Tasks Group get a hold of it automatically? Could he alter the pictures they took of him, without alerting the Serrice Police to his duplicity? If Miranda had been able to find him, so too must many other agencies if they put their minds to it, thus leaving it alone would not be acceptable either.

But avoiding the Serrice Police if they came to question him would not work, either.

Everything he did would only raise concerns and curiosity right now.

"And with Henell a no-show, is there any reason for me to stay here?" he asked himself.

With his current abilities, blending in was the most important. As long as he had a good cover, he could continue to act in near-perpetuity. But at the same time, the better connected he was, the more he was able to do, since outside of his informational capacity he was still bound to the planet he was on.

Then again, if I leave I can set aside that disguise.

Which was an undeniable plus.

But did this mean he had to give up on trying to learn about the Protheans?

Stumbling on a more recent article, he paused in his thoughts.

'Citadel Council announces successful anti-AI campaign result!'

He blinked at that, opening up the article to take a closer look.

'As a result of the new cyber-security metadata gathering bill, C-Sec has announced having successfully found and caught three different rampant Artificial Intelligences that had been active on the Citadel. According to a Council spokesperson, the bill has been proving just as effective as intended in curbing out the malicious hackers who had been suspected of being unbound AI. "The dangers of Artificial Intelligences have long been known, and thus the best minds of the Citadel races have come together to prepare suitable measures for combating such entities, now and in the future." At least three instances have so far been confirmed, but given the number of disturbances all over Citadel Space, there is little doubt that many more other cases are going to be brought up soon.

The Asari Republics, the Salarian Union, and Turian Hierarchy—along with many of their client races—have all agreed to abide by the ruling, but controversially the Systems Alliance has refused to take part in these new measures. Citing many earlier critics of the bill, humanity's Ambassador Donnel Udina has gone so far as to threaten to leave the Citadel, if the Council does not cease pushing for the surveillance bill in Systems Alliance territories.'

Emiya blinked, stopping as he eyed the article for a moment, trying to process that.

"What the hell?"

Looking around, he found many other articles decrying the heavy-handed surveillance measures currently being put in place while just as many were in support of it. It seemed like nearly all of the galaxy was up in arms about cyber-security now.

...Did I cause this?

He sighed, closing the articles as he rubbed his brow.

Certainly, he had been rather indiscriminate in terms of who he had targeted, but he had only been exposing things that really should have been brought to the light of day. If it didn't affect people's lives, like a mere small-time white-collar crime, he had ignored it for the most part, since as expected going around and exposing every little thing would affect the companies themselves more than it would to simply ignore it.

It was no good to lose sight of the forest for the trees, and in punishing one individual hurt a hundred more.

He tried to carefully consider who it would affect when he decided to act; a sword once drawn could not be easily sheathed, after all. And even now, he still considered his actions to have been a net positive on the galaxy. He hadn't ever thought it would snowball into something like this.

Damn it, this is why I stuck with acting in the real world back when I was alive. Did any of my allies have these kinds of problems back then?

He tried to remember, thinking back to the various topics his old partner had complained about, but he couldn't think of anything specific.

Sighing, he moved on as he read the next headline.

'Mysterious computer blackout in Serrice! Experts at a loss, blame new surveillance bill!'

But there was no new information beyond what he already knew in the article. Though as it seemed, the police were blaming a rampant AI for now, following the Citadel's lead.

Emiya shook his head, closing all of the articles and focusing on the real world again. This seemed like another case example of Blue Team-mentality at work. For years now he had been able to remain hidden, leaving little to no evidence of his work beyond what he had decided. Hiding in the crowds, avoiding detection and doing good where he could. He was thinking like he was still a part of the Red Team, and while he technically was, his actions weren't on such a small scale anymore.

Back when he had been alive, his actions had at most been a blip on the general news' radar. He could fight for a month straight through and it would never reach a headline on any newspaper. But now it seemed like his actions had wide-ranging implications and effects beyond what he had ever considered.

An alarm beeped and Emiya was shaken out of his reverie. He looked at the note and frowned. "Right, biotiball... I guess that was a thing."

He got up and changed clothes, bringing along another set and a towel.

Maybe some exercise would help clear his mind.

---

;

---

Codex:

[ Asari Culture & Element Zero ]

---

Due to the overwhelming prevalence of element zero on Thessia, most if not all of asari cultures have been heavily affected by its presence. From having no need for a great many tools that most other races develop to cope with specific needs, to hobbies and unique crafting methods and products—the presence of eezo can be seen everywhere.

One famous example is biotic cooking.

Ingredients are handled by a skilled biotic chef, who can not only handle half a dozen items at once but can also use the intrinsic properties of mass effect fields to alter the way food is fundamentally cooked. By altering the heat capacity by changing mass, the speed with which food can be cooked can be radically shortened, or by gradually cooking certain spots of the food with certain fields, the taste and consistency can be greatly enhanced.

Another interesting facet of Thessia is that compared to many planets such as Earth, it has a very dense and vigorously moving molten core. Being smaller yet heavier than Earth, it is estimated that the total amount of iron in Thessia might well exceed forty percent. A detailed analysis has noted fluctuations, which have been speculated to be caused by the vast amounts of eezo on Thessia's surface, though no one has conclusively been able to prove such theories yet. The molten core is also noted to be moving very rapidly, giving the planet a very strong magnetic field.

As a result, a great many applications using element zero and simple circuits exist in asari culture. Ranging from i'usu to biotiball, by using simple movement it is possible to cause weak mass effect fields to be generated. Simply put, by following what is often called the "right-hand rule" of electromagnetism—specifically in regards to Lorentz force—it is possible to create an electric current without any batteries or generators.

This effect can also be observed in starships and hovercraft passing through magnetic fields, or by attaching a looped wire to a voltage meter and moving the loop back and forth, though outside of small scale biotics it has not been found useful enough to warrant use, though several asari have noted that it might be possible to create a giant wire to spin around the planet's orbit to generate massive amounts of electricity. But after reviewing data from an attempt by humans on Earth over a hundred years ago, most have deemed the plan unfeasible.

For small-scale biotics, it has however seen much use. Take the simplest eezo core design, featuring a simple lump of element zero. This core contains a homogeneous grain, with all of the element zero pointing in the same direction in terms of mass altering field effect output. Thus, when a current passes through this core, depending on the direction, it will create a mass effect field that will either increase or decrease mass, nothing more.

Attaching this core to a simple circuit—a length of wire that is attached to either end of the core, such that it forms a single whole loop—is enough to allow the element zero to generate a mass effect field. As the circuit moves through the uneven magnetic field, it will cause electrons to move within the wire, creating a current which allows the eezo to power a mass effect field. Depending on which way it faces as it is moved, the current will either be positive or negative for the eezo core, affecting what kind of field will be created.

Inside of a biotiball a more complex system is set up, such that merely throwing the ball will not cause it to function, requiring a spin for the circuit to form and for a current to begin flowing. Thus, depending on how the ball is thrown it will behave very differently. Of course, even with the unusually strong magnetic field of Thessia, this current is minimal; only enough to affect the ball's mass. Traditionally, this field does not even stretch out to match the size of the whole biotiball, such that if the internal weight is locked in one of the side chambers, the far side of the ball will have a greater mass, allowing the ball to behave even more unpredictably.

Fans of the sport claim that it is this feature that gives the sport its unmatched depth and complexity, as even a hundred years of practice are not enough for someone to master all of the known plays and techniques, allowing for many teams to have signature tactics and maneuvers.

Another cultural icon of this simple technology, that has existed on Thessia for tens of thousands of years, is the at-one-time nearly ubiquitous asari swords—the i'usushij.

By using biotics to laminate and twist steel with element zero, it was possible to create swords similar to biotiballs in function. With flowing water patterns of eezo running through the steel, these artifacts are cultural icons of an age so far gone that not even among the long-lived asari does anyone remember it anymore.

According to the oldest tales, such blades could not only enhance the wielder's power, but also perform some of the most complex biotic feats known to asari even today, and in conjunction with their wielder could perform unbelievable feats that beggar belief. The most well-known of legends tell of warriors who could halt entire armies with but their blade and biotics and of Justicars who could condemn entire nations with their executioner's edge.

Tales of such heroes and villains are popular to the point of overflowing in various forms of media. From classical theater to simulstim movies and MMO extranet games, the biotic warriors—sword saints and blade mistresses alike—of legend are asari cultural icons.

Many an Asari Maiden has dreamed of being princess T'rilya the Sword Maiden of the Ur-Serrice Cycle, for example. The legend having been told and re-told already in over a hundred different forms over recorded asari history, its sociological effects on immeasurable. As such, some thousand years ago there was an effort to recreate the art in the form of "i'usu", a word taken from an old asari dialect, meaning '[of the] blade art'. Oftentimes called 'asari kendo' by humans, it is a form of competitive swordsmanship that combines both biotics and physical swordplay, and it has according to the most recent estimates well over half a million active practitioners on Thessia today.

However, even with modern technology and knowledge of mass effect theory, it has only been possible to create blades that can perform simple biotic powers such as 'pull', 'throw' or 'barrier'. Efforts to create multipurpose blades have so far failed, since to activate the blade it is necessary to swing it in a certain way to activate the circuit, limiting the internal construction of such blades. Additionally, the amount of eezo a steel alloy can contain is highly limited and all of it is usually necessary for the execution of the single biotic power.

Even then, due to being powered by Thessia's magnetic field, the power is quite weak when compared to a capable biotic attempting the same maneuver. This does make them lend well for the i'usu sport, as the danger of injuries is thus minimized. Of course, rumors and legends persist of blades capable of more, though often such are little more than urban legends or fangirl-ism by the part of some Maiden asari.

Additionally, due to the stresses involved, such swords tend to degrade and suffer internal stresses that weaken and eventually destroy the blades. Most authentic antique i'usushij are similarly usually non-functional, as the delicate eezo configuration or internal circuit have been long since broken. However, even non-functional antiques are known to sell for millions of credits in auctions, though such events are rare as authentic i'usushij have been declared cultural artifacts on Thessia and are prohibited items to traffic or sell.

These examples are of course but scratching the surface of asari culture, being but the most notable and easily explainable to outsiders.

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Thanks to PseudoSteak for proofreading and feedback, he's the best. Also thanks to Tactical Tunic.

Sorry for the delay, but I had to bounce around ideas and see what I wanted to do next(since while I have an ending in mind, the middle parts are still a bit hazy in some respect.) I have been getting A LOT OF feeback about the idea of nerfing Emiya, which frankly was never really on the table. Rather, I was struggling with handling the effects of what I had made and how to handle it to keep the plot on rails while still being interesting. The solution I've settled on, was the "change the resolution of the scale of conflict" as I fancily call it. It will become more apparent what I mean by this as I go on, but if you have problems with where you think I'm going, drop a review to let me ponder on, I appreciate all feedback.

Thanks for reading everyone and have a good one.