[A/N]: I'm sort of changing the ideas of Paragon and Renegade. Paragon was 'nice and alien friendly' while Renegade meant 'mean and human-centric'. I'm changing that a little to Paragon meaning 'compromise' and Renegade to 'ruthless'. So, some of my choices may not seem like it, but I believe I've labeled correctly, and will explain why at the bottom of the chapter. Also, I get some terms wrong, or you feel like helping me spice it up, let me know.

The three soldiers dropped out of the Normandy, only to witness the end of a battle between some of her marines and drones. The area itself was littered with corpses. Some of her marines, some civilians, and some sort of mech.

"Commander!" One of them shouted, Private Mathias if she recalled correctly. "Hostiles identified as Geth!"

That would explain the mechs then… "Alright!" She shouted. "Clean up here, then set up a forward base, prioritize e-war."

Her comm buzzed in her ear, and she answered. "Commander, we found that the native lifeforms are filled with explosive gasses, we could corral a few of these creatures and use them against the Geth, the noise would attract attention if nothing else, but they are considered an endangered species and it would bring some heat down on the Alliance. It would also do some pretty nasty damage to the city and wildlife." A two-tone sound let her know she was finished, and it was time for her to make a choice. It seemed like the world slowed to a crawl as she considered her choices.

Paragon: Leave the animals alone. Carries a risk of losing soldiers and civilians to hostile forces, but leaves the Alliance blameless for a Class V crime, aided extinction of an endangered animal.

Renegade: Use the animals as makeshift explosives. Lessens the risk of allied casualties and fatalities, but could force the Alliance in an untenable political situation with unknown consequences.

Renegade

"Do it, your orders are to kill the hostiles and rescue civvies, so if you feel like you need to load a building with explosives to take out a single enemy, I want it done, understand?"

"Ma'am, yes ma'am!"

Nihilus chuckled. "A little overboard, don't you think?"

Kaiden scoffed. "Rule One: There is no such thing as overkill. Rule Two: Overkill is never enough."

Alexis started walking past the engineers, who were converting the local rock formations into crude fortifications and setting up a logistics station. "The only way you can be sure that the enemy stops attacking you, is total removal of the enemy's existence. Every hostile on this planet will die, and then you can bet your mandibles we're taking this to the Verge for some payback."

"OORAH!"

Alexis drew her pistol as she came to a clearing in front of a woodland are, just out of sight from the marine corps she left behind. "Eyes up front."

"Ma'am." Kaiden readied his biotics and Nihilus booted up his thrusters.

Five drones emerged from the trees and raced towards the colony.

"Weapons free!" She wiggled her fingers in her set pattern for her Sabotage ability, and the drones weapons read their weapon as overheated. They knew immediately they were under attack. Whether it was that malfunction or the organic shouting, who could say? Still, they began hovering erratically to avoid weapons fire.

An act made utterly useless as Nihilus pulled the trigger to his assault rifle and peppered the area with bullets.

In very short order, the drones were down, and Alexis ordered Kaiden back to the forward base to bring some people here to collect more samples of Geth tech and go back to the base. Having done that, she turned towards the colony, large pillars erupting from the terrain surrounded by vastly smaller buildings. From here, she could make out bullet trails from each of the buildings inhabitants that were hitting something she couldn't see from here.

She took a photo with her omnitool and started walking into the trees. It wasn't long before she had to dive for cover as more drones flitted out from behind the trees and began firing on her. She gave Kaiden the order for him to use throw, to knock some of them off balance, and sprung up just in time to see two drones go flying, the rest were swiftly taken down by Alexis and Nihilus combined firepower.

Alexis turned and led the team into the woods, only stopping to shoot several more Geth Drones. The woods soon opened to an outcrop, and Alexis heard the telltale noise of Alliance gunfire, Geth weaponry, maniacal laughter, and feminine shouting. She sighed. "Kaiden, affix bayonets. Drama on the horizon…"

Kaiden whimpered.

Nihilus blinked. 'More human terms to look up, I suppose.'

Two humans launched into the air, one hovering for a moment to gun down some approaching droids, while the second started launched towards, what she assumed, an enemy on the ground.

"Shit, civvie on a spike!" One of the voices sounded out, and Alexis rushed out from cover, not liking the sound of that at all.

"Fuck!" The other shouted, and they all paled as they saw two Geth infantry units hold down a screaming civilian over an object embedded in the ground, before a large spike shot up from inside it and pierced the man, who died screaming.

Nihilus didn't even blink as he started shooting, Alexis and Kaiden only half a step behind him and they started firing at every enemy they could see, leaping over cover, hovering in the air and Alexis even went so far as to use her boosters to leap in front of a Geth unit to stab it until it stopped moving.

The fight ended quickly, with six soldiers fighting with a ferocity that the AI collective of the Geth couldn't match, no matter their numbers.

Alexis gestured for Victor to keep an eye on the hill just ahead of them. Victor nodded, leaped into the air to hover for a bit, and after a few seconds, settled back down.

Zaine walked over to the nearest Geth unit and started fiddling with it.

Alexis nodded and turned towards the unknown female that was with Victor and Zaine earlier. She suppressed a sigh as she saw what she was wearing. Bright white armor with pink decals. The woman saluted Alexis and started speaking. "Thanks for your help," she glanced to her shoulders and spotted the decals that signaled her rank. "Commander. I wouldn't have made it if not for you and your team."

"At ease. Name and rank?" Alexis was not in any mood to entertain this soldier. It wasn't her fault, not really. Alexis knew that colony militias were mostly for show, but that armor was just ridiculous.

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the Two-Twelve, ma'am!"

Alexis frowned. "Sit-rep." She did not ask, she demanded.

Ashley Williams grimaced. "As of this moment, I'm the last of the Two-Twelve. The few wounds I received were solved by a quick application of medi-gel, I'm cleared for battle, ma'am."

'Survivor's guilt.' Alexis thought. 'Just out of one battle and ready to leap into another.'

Ashley took a deep breath. "We were running standard patrols when the attack came. We weren't expecting an attack of any kind, so we were only in our show armor…as you can see." She gestured to her armor with a hint of disgust. "Half of us were down in minutes. The rest of us fought as hard as we could, but…it wasn't enough. I've been running guerilla attacks until your boys showed up. I tried to keep to the dig site, but they moved the Beacon. I tried to stop them, ma'am, but one gun wasn't nearly enough. I tried for the comms, but…well, since that big-ass ship came down, I haven't been able to get anything on any frequency."

Alexis nodded, something that big had to have some impressive hardware. "Good work Williams. I'm sorry about your squad, but nobody could have predicted this. You had your armor, and your guns, that was the best you could do. We'll find an exo for you on the way. You said they moved the Beacon?"

"Aye, ma'am"

Alexis nodded. "Alright Willaims, you know the colony best, you're with us." She turned to Victor and Zaine. "We're moving out, fall in!"

Victor immediately leapt to Alexis' position, and Zaine rolled his eyes, moving in a quick trot.

They set out for the dig site, and Victor turned to Zaine, keeping his weapon ready. "So, as I was saying, yeah, I feel for the Geth. Not enough to excuse this sort of unruly behavior, but…well, I'm a sociopathic psychopath, but not completely devoid of empathy. If I was a slave, even for a second, you'd be damn sure I'd rebel."

Zaine nodded. "I get that, I really do, and the main force of the Geth behind the Perseus Veil, I think we should open talks with, or establish a pact of non-aggression at least, I'm asking about these Geth in particular."

Ashley frowned. "Aren't Geth a collective? Isn't the will of one, the will of all?"

Zaine shook his head. "On paper you'd be right, but the way the Geth are set up, is literally the basis of the Asari government, a pure e-democracy. I've looked through some of their code, and evidence suggests that these Geth are, well just a single branch of Geth, split off from the main group."

Alexis sighed. "Zaine, whatever arcane rituals you use, please send it to the techs in the field? They keep sending messages in the chat, every time they examine the hardware, it blows up, and every time they examine the software, it deletes itself."

"Well, in all fairness to the techs," Victor chirped. "The Geth do the same thing with Zaine, all he's doing is examining different bits before they self-destruct, and then putting it all together. If all he gets out of examining a Geth is a single percent, he's still got a hundred bodies to examine."

Zaine laughed. "Not that I'm getting a single percent, more like a fraction of a fraction, but he's right."

Alexis sent off the message to update the Geth Protocols, using Zaine's method could work and they do have a lot of bodies to examine.

Nihilus turned towards Ashley, "So, Gunnery Chief Williams, was it?" Ashley nodded. "I'm curious, how did Eden Prime discover the Beacon in the first place?"

Ashley shrugged. "They were digging out here to extend the monorail, we were expanding a bit more rapidly than projections estimated, so they drew up some plans for a new city. They unearthed some Prothean ruins and found the Beacon shortly after."

"Interesting…" Nihilus nodded.

Ashley snorted. "Not as interesting as you think. Eden Prime is lousy with Prothean structures. The Council never believes us when we say we found an ancient something-or-other, just because of how often we find them. I've got a collection of 'rare Prothean relics' just sitting in my pre-fab. Toys, mostly, I've got this little Thresher Maw bath toy that shoots water."

Victor smiled and turned towards Alexis. "I like her, can we keep her?"

Alexis rolled her eyes. "So long as you feed her plenty of enemies, and give her lots of ammo, sure, I'll talk to Commodore Anderson about reassigning her." Victor had a way about spotting talent, she'd take his advice.

He found her, after all.

Ashley laughed under her breath. "The second we mentioned 'Beacon' though, we got orders from on high to 'secure the historical relic.' Load of crap if you ask me, they didn't care about the history of the race that gave them new technology, but when we find something that could contain new technology, suddenly we're told not to let anyone near the 'priceless historical object.' There wasn't a single researcher on site that didn't scoff when we told them." She suddenly laughed out loud. "Sorry, sorry, it's just…one of them was using a 'priceless Prothean Relic' as a back scratcher at the time and his face when they said it was just…oh, you had to be there."

Nihilus smiled. "I can imagine. Not to bring us down or anything, but any word of the researchers?"

Ashley shrugged. "They set up camp near the Beacon, up on the hill there. Some of the two-thirty-two were with them, any more than that I can't say."

The group engaged in some idle small talk, until Victor raised his hand and pointed it towards the dig site. All conversation cut off as they took position behind the nearest giant rock while Victor slowly advanced. He grabbed a grenade off Kaiden's belt as he passed and tossed it to the left towards a collection of crates. After two seconds, he detonated the grenade and leapt to the right with his entrenching tool gripped tight, just as several Geth units retreated from the explosion, to come under fire from the rest of the group. The Geth were only three, so the battle ended quickly, Victor's melee being augmented by the group's ranged weapons.

Nihilus frowned. "How did you know they'd be where they were? So far, only the drones have shown up on sensors?"

Victor shrugged. "It's what I would tell them to do. A few stationed behind some crates to quickly pop out and attack before sprinting towards cover, while the rest flanks. There's only one way up the hill, so that's where the other one would come from, it's the only place that makes sense."

Zaine nodded. "Don't need a fancy sensor suite, just knowledge on how to conduct war."

"The peril of advanced technology," Victor started playing with his weapon, tossing it up and down, "is that it can make you forget how people fought before they had it. No matter how powerful a shield is, it can't stop a pointy object in your throat."

As they walked into the dig site, Zaine winced. "Found some of the researchers." He pointed ahead to a group of spikes, with corpses on each."

Nihilus grimaced. "Why would he Geth do this? What's the point?"

"At a guess, psychological warfare." Victor said, completely non-plussed. "They know it works on organics, so they can use it. It's a tool, everyone uses it. The best defense against it, is to not let it get to you. The best offense is to let it fill your heart with rage and go off to kill the ones responsible..."

"Oorah." Ashley growled, and gripped her weapon tighter.

Alexis' comm beeped to life. "Commander, we've done all we can in the city, we're moving towards the spaceport, we can hold this position and wait for orders to move and hit them with a pincer attack, or we can go in now and soften them up for you, maybe draw some Geth away from your position."

Paragon: Have the troops hold until you are ready. More enemies on the field until you meet at the spaceport, but the troops at the spaceport will be met with a hail of fire from both sides.

Renegade: Order the troops to attack now. Less enemies on the field, but the spaceport will be reinforced.

Paragon

"We can handle a few more Geth, hold your position." Alexis closed her comms after the private's 'aye, ma'am', and motioned for her team to move up the hill.

Zaine fingered his weapon, "I've got a bad feeling about this…"

Victor groaned and prepared his exo-suit for battlefield mobility. "Great, thanks for saying the second worst thing you could possibly say."

They reached halfway up the hill and saw the pre-fab building leaning to the side at the top. "Damn!" Ashley exclaimed. "They hit the camp hard, even pre-fabs can ignore small arms fire, they must have used some heavy stuff for it to tilt like that."

"It looks like a good place for an ambush." Kaiden readied his weapon. "Keep your guard up."

Victor smacked him upside the head. "Great, thanks for saying the fourth worst thing, it's now 98% likely we're going to walk into an ambush."

Nihilus sighed and shook his head. "Humans and their superstitions."

"Bitch, your people sing with all the voices of the mountain, shut the fuck up." Victor hissed at Nihilus.

Zaine rolled his eyes and took the lead, weapon raised. The rest of the group were only two steps behind him. As they reached the top, the first thing they saw were spikes. Many spikes. Thirteen of them, in fact. All of them with that looked like humans on them. Zaine gulped. "I don't like the looks of this."

Victor choked on his breath. "Seriously, shut the fuck up!" He hissed.

One of the spikes creaked, and lowered, the human on it spasming. "Oh God!" Kaiden said, horrified. "They're still alive!"

One spike became two, which became four, which became eight, which became thirteen. All of them lowered and released the humans to the ground beneath them, only, now that they were closer, they only resembled humans in shape. Their skin was grey, and all along where the bones where supposed to be, they saw machinery poking out through the skin, baleful red lights coming from the machinery, bringing to mind a horrid combination of zombie, skeleton, cyborg, and devil, all in one.

"Raaaagh!" The first one growled and rushed the group.

"Robot zombie! Headshots, double tab and kill it with fire!" Victor screamed. He started leaping across the field with reckless abandon, aiming to put it down before it could attack him.

"RaAaaaaGH!" The rest of the creatures screamed and rushed all at once.

"I fucking told you guys!" Victor bounced around the field, using his exo to maintain maximum mobility and bounding over the robot zombies, stabbing as many as he could. "But does anybody listen to me? Noooo, 'that's just crazy talk' they say! Don't taunt Murphy! Never taunt Murphy!"

"Less talk, more stabbing!" Alexis shouted.

One of the robot zombies rushed the group and began glowing. "Glowing is bad, everyone up or away!" Zaine shouted and leapt into the air, followed by everyone…excecpt Ashley, who still didn't have an exo-suit.

"Fuck." Ashley stated calmy, shooting the zombie as much as she could, before a dome of red light burst from the creature, hitting Ashley who wobbled. "Shit, it's an emp, my shields are down and I can't shoot!"

Victor cut his boosters and stomped hard on one of the zombies, killing it and leaving eight left. "Oh, that's it?" He said, completely relaxed. "I thought it was gonna be worse than that…oh well, stabbin' time!" He pulled out his knife and started dancing through the battlefield, stabbing every robot zombie in the face before swiftly moving to the next one, as emps blasted him left and right, to virtually no effect, he just kept stabbing. And stabbing. And stabbing.

Ashley shrugged and followed his lead, only bashing the robot zombies with her now useless gun.

Nihilus lowered himself to the ground slowly, while the rest of the humans cut the power and let gravity pull them to the ground. Nihilus sighed. "Aren't exo-suits and armor, you know…heavy? I'm pretty sure he isn't supposed to move like that." He pointed at Victor who showed an incredible amount of flexibility, stabbing one enemy while kicking the other in the leg, breaking it.

Zaine shrugged. "Victor favors the 'old ways' more than modern tech. His armor lacks all the fancy electronics and relies more on not being where the bullets are. His armor is segmented, heavy armor where his squishy flesh is weakest, and light armor where his squishy flesh is strongest…or not vital to living. He's got a hardened, heavily, modified exo, and the rest is all him. And besides," he poked Kaiden's exo-suit. "These things aren't heavy, about fifteen pounds. They're meant to augment, not substitute."

The creatures were dispatched in short order, and Victor looked at the group, arms crossed and extremely disappointed. "The fuck are you just standing around for? Double tap, then burn, you all know the protocol for this."

Nihilus blinked. "Humans have a protocol for these things? We just encountered these things, minutes ago."

Alexis nodded. "It isn't an official protocol or anything, it's just something that started when we first encountered a 'hostile alien species', the Turians. Suddenly, aliens weren't fiction, they were a real and credible threat we had no idea how to deal with. Yeah, it all settled eventually, but we, as a united species, were still pretty antsy. The brass needed to do something for morale, and the civvie's had an idea. 'Aliens were fictional yesterday, today we learned they are real. How many things are fictional today, that tomorrow we learn are just as real?'."

Ashley and Kaiden nodded and began shooting the robot zombies in the head. While Victor trotted over to Alexis and Nihilus, putting his knife away and grabbing his entrenching tool to play with. "After that, we, that is the military, decided that preparing for these 'fictional scenarios' was just the thing we needed to boost up morale and get some extra training in. So now, every human who has served in the military knows how to fight against aliens, robots, werewolves, vampires, demons, angels, deadites, necromorphs, dragons, militant rednecks, all of the gob-types, zombies, SCPs, and every other thing you could care to mention."

Nihilus frowned. "Sorry, my translater didn't quite catch those last few words. I recognized alien and robot, but the rest was gibberish…I did recognize 'zombie' from when you said it earlier, we can go over the rest later, but what does that word mean? I'll need to know what to send the Council, they might need to know how to fight these 'robot zombies'." He stumbled twice over the word 'zombie', but Alexis nodded to Victor while she went off to burn the bodies that Kaiden, Ashley, and now Zaine finished off.

Victor sighed longingly at the delicious red-head burning her enemies, composed himself, and turned to address Nihilus. "Ahem, well, zombies are the animated dead."

Nihilus took a frightful step back, and Victor nodded. He continued. "Yes, it's hard to shoot something that once held a familiar face, and it took a loooot of hours in the sims to get us all over shooting the people we loved in the face, but a zombie's a zombie. And we kill zombies." He nodded as if affirming his point.

Nihilus gulped. "And…headshots, double-taps, and fire?" He asked, shaking slightly.

"The only way to kill a zombie is…" Victor turned to the rest of the humans who shouted in unison. "Remove the head or destroy the brain!"

Victor nodded. "Whatever makes a zombie what it is, can ignore any caliber weapons fire that doesn't atomize the body, or leaves the head intact, which means as long as it controls the central nervous system, it can force the body to move and kill everything it sees."

Nihilus whimpered. Humans that were practically impervious to arms fire except in a limited area that never stopped?!

"Of course," Victor turned to the side so he could keep an eye on the bodies. "There isn't any guarantee that a single headshot will take them down, you need to double-tap the zeds, or in this case the r-zeds, to make sure none of them are just waiting."

Nihilus was a Spectre, so he composed himself with a shaky breath. "And the fire?" His question was punctuated by Alexis, who used her omni-tools 'incinerate' function to…maximum effect.

Victor grimaced. "We don't know why they got reanimated. Could be some weird radiation thing, could be mystical, but the most common held belief is that it would be biological. A parasite, or a drug, or a virus…whatever it is, we need to burn it, so it doesn't spread. That's the trick of zombies. Alone, they are no more dangerous than a human who won't stop to kill and eat you." Victor shrugged.

'Why is he shrugging, a human that ignores bullets and wants to eat sapient life is terrifying!' Nihilus thought.

"No, the real danger of zombies is that they don't come at you one at a time," Victor nodded. "It's that they come in swarms, and if whatever makes them a zombie gets in your system, when you die you add to the swarm. We got lucky since there were only about a dozen and we're trained soldiers."

Nihilus groaned. "But if one of these things gets into a populated area like a colony, where trained soldiers are few, we're looking at a few hundred, maybe a few thousand." He felt like crying. A few thousand of these…these zombies were a terrifying thought. How was he supposed to explain this to the Council?!

"Yep. Seriously though, we got extremely lucky, dealing with just zombies." Victor turned towards the rest of the group, and yelled to get their attention. "Can you imagine if we had to deal with necromorphs?!"

Alexis shuddered. "The only positive I can see in that scenario is that we have plenty of heavy mining equipment capable of dismemberment."

Nihilus' eyes widened. "Why the fuck would you need heavy mining equipment to kill a necromorph?!" He screeched.

Zaine smiled at Nihilus. "Necromorphs are basically zombies that are impervious to head-shots. The only way to kill them is…well you can't kill them, you can only render them unable to kill to kill you. By removing all of their limbs, one by one. I mean, there's more to them than just that, but that just about covers it."

Nihilus' legs began shaking. "Excuse me a moment, I need to call the Council. Now." He walked away to an area that was fully visible to the group, but far enough away that he wouldn't be overheard. He accessed his omni-tool and accessed the secure line for the Council.

The comm system buzzed to life, revealing the Turian Councilor, Sparatus. "Nihilus, the Q.E.C.'s are for emergency use only, what could be so important that you'd use it on your delivery mission?"

"First off," Nihilus said, sounding more calm than we felt. "The delivery mission is a mess, the Geth have arrived and are attacking full-force."

Sparatus growled through the comm. "While tragic, this is something that could be addresses after you get here. Preferably with the Beacon, but I won't hold on hope. What's the second thing?"

Nihilus drew himself up. "It seems the Geth have discovered a way to give humans the resilience of the Krogan and Vorcha, with the mindlessness of a hungry Varren. And the humans have training to deal with that."

Sparatus inhaled. Long, and deep. "Fuck." He said at last. "I'll get Ambassador Udina in here to explain why they have training to deal with Geth technology we haven't been able to predict. You suspect traitorous behavior then?"

Nihilus shook his head, despite that it was a voice-call only. "No, sir. From what I've been told, they have mentally prepared against this for decades, and have only trained for things like this since first contact. They call these things 'zombies'. I sincerely suggest you ask for a human Admiral that started from the ground to fully explain everything that I've learned. Because it's terrifying."

"Hm." Sparatus grunted. "That bad, then? Alright, I'll get the Council together and ask them to explain these 'zombies' then. For now, continue your mission. Both of them. Sparatus, out."

Nihilus comm blinked once, and he turned back to the group, who had finished setting the r-zeds on fire, and were cautiously aiming their weapons at the flames.

He sighed, and asked the question he didn't want to. "Why are you now aiming at the zombies you've shot in the head twice and set on fire?" He didn't want the answer to the question, but he needed it.

Kaiden was the one to answer. "It isn't a standard zombie, it's an r-zed made through alien technology, specifically a spike. It could be a technomorphic variant of the standard necromorphic creatures. If it's a standard r-zed, we can move on. If it's more than that, well we don't need these things to rise up and attack us while they are on fire."

Nihilus froze in terror. "Something that doesn't die when you shoot it in its brain twice, and then set on fire, standing back up to attack you while still on fire? Okay, hold on. I need to make another calls."

Nihilus didn't even bother to leave, and called Sparatus then and there.

Udina was the first voice he heard. "Well no, there are multiple types of zombies, and we've had this monster type for, gosh decades now. Mentally we've all prepared for them, but we never actually made it mandatory for training until after we've encountered aliens."

Nihilus coughed. "Please explain to the Councilor what a necromorph is, where it comes from, and what it wants?"

Udina sputtered. "Are there necromorphs on that planet? Orbital bombardment immediately!" He screeched, and Sparatus whimpered.

"I…Humanity gets driven into a frenzy when a planet with a single human on it gets hit by an asteroid, why are necromorphs driving you to consider bombarding a garden world inhabited by millions with a Prothean Beacon?" The voice of Councilor Tevos asked, completely stunned.

Udina forcefully calmed himself. "Necromorphs are creatures of animated dead flesh, different from a zombie, capable of restructuring themselves and 'pooling their resources' to create horrifying monstrosities guided by a higher intelligence, usually in the form of extending bones to well past the hands, creating spikes, and reorganizing muscles to the legs to grant it the ability to leap at you, to stab you with their bones. From babies that attack with their exposed spine acting as a whip, to a Tresher Maw sized worm creature, all infected tissue is a resource. They cannot be killed except with total destruction of infected flesh. You can't kill the host, but you can make it stop attacking you by removing all limbs capable of attack, forcing the guiding intelligence to drop the useless material until it can be manually restructured. It only wants to make more of itself, so if we face a necromorph invasion, then we can't risk a single cell of infected material, the planet needs to be cleansed."

Zaine's pipped up, chipper despite a heavy grip on his weapon, still aimed at the pile of corpses. "Like Kaiden said though, these are a technomorphic variant, so it's likely they used nanomachines to restructure this thing. From a cursory examination and common sense, they amplified the bioelectric energy humans naturally produce and altered the frequency to produce an emp blast. And since it's tech rather than biology, you can kill them easier by just filing them with holes, whatever makes them r-zeds needs the…uh I'll call it a Dragon's Tooth from Greek mythology, the Dragon's Tooth needs contact with the flesh to turn it into an r-zed, so far. We've got a pile here, double tapped and set on fire because zombies. If it's a techromorph, then yeah, kill everything. Including us."

Councilor Valerrn hummed. "And if it's just a...what did you call it, r-zed?"

Victor laughed. "If it's just an r-zed, it's nothing to worry about."

Nihilus nodded. "Yes. Nothing to worry about. Just one to a swarm of nigh-unkillable humans with the ability to render all the guns aimed at them useless."

Alexis nodded. "Yep, just run of the mill zombie tactics at that point. Grab a weapon from, well anywhere, and start bashing, don't let it bite you, if you get bitten report to a quarantine zone and offer your body to science."

Councilor Tevos sighed. "Most species don't just keep knives or swords handy except collectors and military."

"Well, I don't recommend sharp objects for zombies." Victor rolled his eyes. "You wanna grab blunt instruments with reach. Shovels, old school musical instruments, a metal pole. The goal is destruction of the brain, just stabbing it means more brain is left intact. I get away with it cause I know where to stab a human's brain to make it stop moving, but for your average, well anyone, total destruction of the head is the name of the game."

Nihilus nodded. "Right, understood. We'll update military protocol to deal with zombies as soon as possible, right Sparatus?"

"As well as any other undead human creature you might have, Ambassador Udina? How many scenarios have humans prepared for?"

"Well, off the top of my head…" Udina took a moment to think. "Zombies, werewolves, vampires, necromorphs, xenomorphs, Predator aliens, dragons, all of the Gob species from Goblin to Warhammer 40k Orc Warlords, all Elf variants from Wood to Warhammer 40k Eldar, all the Warhammer 40k aliens come to think of it as well as the various human factions from militia to set everything on fire types…" Udina stopped and the Councilors paled. Then Udina took a breath and kept going. "Swamp creatures, drop bears, fairy and fae, hags, imps, kraken, space kraken, witches wraiths, and…well wurms and wyverns fall under dragon so I'll skip those…basilisk, cockatrice, griffon, manticores, chimera, Ouroboros, bugbears, banshee, Dullahan, kelpie, leprechaun, Nessie and all her cousins-"

Victor gasped. "But Nessie is a good girl, she wouldn't hurt anyone!"

Udina sighed. "Yes, but what if she was mind controlled?"

"I…you…have a point." Victor sighed and kicked the ground.

Udina cleared his throat. "As I was saying. Kaiju, mummy, sphynx, druid, literally everything from Greek mythology, naga, genie, sandwalker, literally all of Japanese mythology, Christian Demons, Doom Demons, DxD demons, demons in general really, also angels with the same typeset, all the pokemon, all the Final Fantasy; to clarify I mean monsters, summons, chocobos, humans riding chocobos, boss monsters, monster breeder variations, and moogles. Let me think, am I missing anything?"

The aliens prayed no. Humans are terrifying enough as it, that they created so many monsters and haven't killed everything in the galaxy is a blessing.

"Oh!" Udina started. "Of course, how could I forget!" He inhaled deeply. "All the aliens of the Covenant, the Flood, Titans, Assassins, Templars, Gods, cryptics, SCPs, Conduits, Digimon, Heartless, Nobodies, Unversed, mechanical dinosaurs, regular dinosaurs, Darkspawn, militant rednecks, gangs, Leviathon class sea creatures that are more than just Kraken aaaaaand apes."

"Oh." Said Nihilus. And that was enough.

Kaiden put his gun away. "Alright, I think that's enough time, let's all turn and address the Council face to face, don't want to be rude."

All the humans turned their backs, and the Council stared at them. No one said anything for 3 minutes.

Victor coughed.

Zaine sighed. "Well if they haven't gotten up to attack us when our backs were turned, then they are either extremely patient or actually dead. Either way, let's move on."

Nihilus turned off his comm and walked with the group, towards the explosions deeper in the city.

[A/N]: Alight, I'm cutting it off here, this is fine. Yeah I haven't written anything in a while, I know, but, well my Grandpa got sick and died, I got a new job that love when I work overtime (and with the money I get, so do I), and am working on writing an actual for realsies book. Plus I talked with a couple friends of mine and we are gonna try and move in together in September in a new house. Plus other stuff, like lack of interest in the stories I write on FF. Well not a lack of interest per se, I just didn't feel like writing for an audience anymore, cause no one reviews. Give me the fucking reviews people, I need feedback to tell me if you like the way my stories go and thus motivation to write more, I can't improve my stories if no one gives me criticism! Happy N7 day!

[A/N]: The Editor is dead!...

[Æ/N]: Long…live…The Editor….