A/N- And now it officially begins where the Saints take the galaxy by storm! Eventually. I even got a couple of OC's from people! I'll put the OC's in next chapter, I can't put them in this one. But in the meantime, a big thanks to BioshockerN7 and Wing Omega to the OC's they've contributed to the story!
Time to get off-world! Only problem is a small fleet hovering over the Saints and no way to get off-world. However will they get out? Well, they've dealt with worse.
MASS MISCALCULATION
Episode 19- Getting the ball rollin'
The Alliance dreadnaught currently hovering over the now-abandoned colony 'Genesis', the SSV Trikora, a Kilimanjaro-class dreadnaught, was the lead of three cruisers leading one solitary mission:
Wipe out a bunch of no-name gangsters.
The captain, one Captain Gordon, had found the order given by Hackett to converge on the colony with three other ships to be preposterous, in his words. A dreadnaught, in his opinion, was a monument to humanity's strength, that they could hold off against any alien force, and come out through the top. The First Contact proved that much. And yet here it was wasting it's time on some pointless mission.
Sure, most dreadnaughts just sat around and did nothing, basically oversized muscle for important colonies or even Earth. Really they were barely ever used for anything other than war, being as they were extremely expensive and difficult to produce, and thanks to the Council, they could only have a certain number, so they were treated with great care. So in hindsight Gordon took some small comfort in knowing that the ship would at least get some exercise, along with it's crew.
From what the briefing told, the gangsters were in affiliation with Aaron; someone who Gordon had come to know as one of the most ill-repute, idiotic, reckless, and most unstable individual in the entire galaxy. No-one knew exactly how he came to hold such power, the Council even blamed the Alliance once it came to light how dangerous he could be. Gordon had a burning hatred for the man, no, not even a man, a BOY, had broke into a Alliance shipping yard and defaced all the ships there, all two-hundred, with graffiti.
Gordon would at the very least admit Aaron was not bored easily, no matter how monotonous a task.
But Hackett was had announced to the entire Alliance government, and by extension the Council, and by extension the entire galaxy, that on a need-to-know-basis mission involving Shepard, Aaron had died on a mission. After that message it was likely a lot of Alliance personnel had participated in immense drinking, Aaron had made quite a few enemies. Shepard would most likely soon be detained for questioning, but really, his fate was in Hackett's hands, so it was likely he'd wouldn't be in much if any trouble besides a room with a one-way mirror and a long line of questioning.
But Aaron had accomplices, a small gang of sorts, and they were on the colony, so it was time to cut loose ends. So he was leading the assault on them.
A monitor came online, one of the ground-teams helmet-cams also coming online, the screen being split into six squares. Three dropships of Alliance soldiers had been deployed, in all honesty Gordon assumed that would be all was needed. In hindsight four ships, one a dreadnaught, seemed overkill.
Back to the cams, all six were converging around a corner to one of the numerous abandoned buildings, and came upon a empty lot, a muscular, dark-skinned man with a afro, donned in a strange jumpsuit standing with his back turned to them, strange weapons holstered to his sides.
"You there! Freeze!" one of the soldiers shouted. They had orders to kill, but they at least wanted to look at the man's face before they pulled the triggers.
The man simply turned around, a stylish pair of sunglasses revealed over his eyes. "Guys" he spoke, "you are really catching me on a bad mood right now. So why don't you just turn yo' punk ass's out of here before I start letting some steam off. Dig?"
The Alliance soldiers realized he was serious, and looked at eachother, shrugging and aiming their guns at him.
"Sir, you are currently in the sights of three Alliance cruisers and a Kilimanjaro-class dreadnaught filled with the finest the Alliance has to offer! Each of those ships are filled with thousands of men who have orders to shoot all targets within this abandoned colony, you currently tagged as one of those targets! There is no escape, surrender NOW!" The commanding officer of the squad barked at the man, stepping forward to prove his point. Gordon smiled upon seeing the officers fine control over the situation.
The man they were about to kill shook his head before cracking his neck, and started rolling his shoulders. "I'ma level with you guys. It's been a long day. I just got back from a suicide mission. Betrayed a guy. A very close friend got killed. I'm not even in the mood to yell, so I'm just going to kill you all now. Kinzie, kill their cams"
It was at that point the camera and audio feed to the cameras gave out, Gordon's face twisted in confusion as he barked at his technicians to get the camera's back online, but it was to no avail as they failed to bring them online. But it was less than two minutes later that it came back on and Gordon gasped at what he saw;
The entire squad was laying on the ground, likely dead, pools of blood splattered everywhere. One man was missing and arm. One member turned out to be alive and tried to crawl away, Gordon watching through the helmet camera of one of the soldiers, the camera shifting slightly, signaling this one was alive as well.
The soldier crawling away revealed to have had both of his legs broken, and was grunting with pain whenever he crawled forward a few inches. Then the man they had attempted to kill stepped up behind him and stomped on one of his now-useless legs, causing him to scream in pain. He then held up a strange pistol and fired a laser into the back of his head, killing him.
After doing this, the man walked over to the shifting camera and tore the helmet off, showing it to a wounded soldier, blood pouring from his armor. The man ripped the soldier's knife away from a wavering hand and jammed it into his skull, killing him.
Finishing the deed, the man turned the helmet so he was staring straight into the helmet. "I have got no clue who is watching this, but according to my hacking buddies, it's the captain of that big 'ol dreadnaught over in the sky over there. Apparently you've all made it your mission to come and kill us. Lemme tell you right now, that ain't how it's going down. At all. Here's what's gonna happen: We're going to find a way into that oversized compensator of yours, blast a cap in your head, then use that ship to blow the other three cruisers up. So, if I were you I would raid the booze cabinets, you ain't going to live much longer. Boss out" with that, Boss unceremoniously dropped the helmet, the camera's view shattering as he walked away.
Gordon eyes widened in shock at the video feed. He was still trying to comprehend what he had just seen when someone shook his shoulders.
He shook his head and looked over at one of the technicians. "Orders, sir?" he asked.
"The other helmet cams from the other teams, can you bring those up?" He asked, regaining his composure. He still didn't understand, how could one man take out six Alliance soldiers?
"Aye aye, bringing them up now… oh dear God…" the technician gasped, covering his mouth.
Gordon went to where the technician was looking and put a grim look to his face.
Dead. They were all dead, with not a trace from who killed them. Every single one of them. The captain shook slightly while he looked at the communications officer. "Radio to the other ships" he ordered, "tell them to send down as many men as they can. Ditto for us, I want a hundred, two hundred if possible, boots on the ground right now"
"Aye aye" the officer saluted, getting on the horn with the other ships. Gordon looked out the viewport to the ship and satisfaction graced his lips when multiple dropships exited from each ship, heading towards the planet.
Onboard one of the cruisers, the crew continued their normal task as they waited for the captain to give them their orders, such was the regular routine. The helmsman, however, grew a frown when the ship picked up a message from an unknown source.
"What's the situation?" The captain asked, coming to the pilot's side.
"Sir, I just got a message from an unknown source. What do you want to do with it?"
The captain hummed. "Open it. I can't see the harm"
The helmsman nodded and opened the folder. Their frowns turned to confused looks when the message had only one word… if they could even call it a word; |)3(3pt3|).
"What… what does that say?" the captain asked.
"I have no idea" the helmsman shrugged. "Some kind of coding or- oh shit!" the pilot yelled when red lights started blaring everywhere.
"What's wrong!?" the captain shouted as the ship shuttered.
"Something was in that message, a virus or something!" the pilot explained as he desperately worked at the controls. "I'm losing control of the ship, I don't know what they did!"
Instantly, every single screen on the ship switched to a video feed of someone in a black hoodie, the face being obscured by a mask that, in layman's term, was a glowing blue triangle, the tip pointing downwards. The edges were three-dimensional, for the sole purpose of not being able to see through the side, wire framing connecting the edge to the main mask. Two, smaller triangles were on the top of the mask, sitting next to eachother, holes being cut into the hood to allow them to poke through. All in all the mask looked like a very rudimentary cat of some sorts.
The unknown hacker looked at the camera as he typed at a keyboard… a actual keyboard, not some holographic one people used these days. However how he attainted a antique like that was the least on the crews mind as the figure held up a black-gloved hand and waved childishly at them, before the screens turned black, flashing blue wireframe triangles randomly appearing at different intervals, locations, and sizes, while another strange message appeared in the middle written in blue text; 8i/\/4ry |-|45 t4|3/\/ (0/\/tr01.
"No…" the captain gasped, stepping back. "Not one of them… please not one of them… I thought they were gone…"
"Sir?" the pilot asked. "Sir, what's wrong? Sir, what's going on-AAGH!" the pilot, captain, and every other personnel on the ship covered their ears as the volume to the speakers were turned up to the max setting, loud techno music screaming from the speakers, some crew members leaking blood from their ears due to the sheer volume as the ship seemingly flew all by itself towards one of the other cruisers.
Captain Gordon paced nervously around the bridge. He had just lost communication with one of the cruisers. He was about to ask for a status update on the ground soldiers when one of the tech heads spoke up.
"Sir, the cruiser that we lost contact with, it's… it's engaging with one of the other ones!"
"What!?" Gordon screamed, jogging to the viewport to see that, indeed, two cruisers were firing upon eachother. Strangely, one of the cruisers was flying directly at the other, in a ramming formation.
"The one in the ramming formation, is that the one we lost contact with?" Gordon asked.
"Yes" a crewmember said. "We can't raise them, they were fine a minute ago. I don't know what's-"
"Try raising them again" Gordon ordered.
"I can't, they won't pick up. It's like someone blocked them out so no-one can communicate, or…anything" The tech responded. They could only watch in horror as the hijacked cruiser crashed into the other one, the mass-effect core set to overload as it aided in the detonation with the entire ship, catching the other one and causing it to be destroyed as well.
Back on Genesis, the Saints had been preparing for the oncoming onslaught of soldiers the ships would likely send out. The fact that they only sent a few squads like they did was a bit anticlimactic, so Boss just had to go and rile them up. But, in his words, he had a plan.
"Okay, so think about it: They send a bunch of their boys after us, we squeeze in a couple of these dropships, and while they're all down here looking for us, we slip in the dreadnaught and take it over" he explained.
Gat didn't like this plan so much. "Really, sneaking in like that? Doesn't sound like as much killing if everyone was on board"
"Agreed" Grunt agreed.
"Guy, let's face it; we're human… and lizard… and blue lady, look what I'm saying is we just literally went through a giant suicide mission, and I'm goddamned tired"
"There'll still be people on the ship, I should know, I took a frigate over with this tactic once" Zaeed said. "They're still be heavy resistance, especially if we hit a bloody dreadnaught. Why not a cruiser?"
"One, it's a lot bigger and I really want a super ship. Two, if we try and jack a cruiser that thing has a lot more firepower, it'll blast us out of the sky. Space. Whatever. It's logical, okay?"
"Uh, guys…?" Matt muttered, pointing upwards. They all looked up and they're eyes grew wide when one of the cruisers sent to kill them just rammed another cruiser, destroying both in a giant fireball.
"Coool…" Boss drooled when he saw the explosion.
"Someone wanna explain why they just killed their own men?" Ben demanded.
"I… have got nothin'. Wait, what the…?" Kinzie mumbled when a message appeared on her omni-tool. She pulled it up and the message read; (0/\/5i|)3r t|-|i5 0/\/3 4 |=r338i3. :)
"The hell does that say?" Jack asked. Kinzie looked and saw that Grunt, Morinth, Jack, Zaeed, Kasumi and Ouro were shaking they're heads, not understanding the message.
"Um, it's leet" Matt explained. When Boss looked at him he shrugged. "What? I used to lead a gang of hackers, what do you think we talked in?"
"Okay, then what does it say?" Kasumi challenged.
"It says 'consider this one a freebie smiley-face'. Do you seriously not know leet?" when the former Normandy squadies shook their head, he groaned. "You better not be telling me this universe never invented leet…" he said, barely above a whisper.
"Wait, who are you?" Kinzie asked the omni-tool. Another message popped up.
'J|_|5t 4 10\/\/1y |-|4|3r, 1i|3 y0|_|. :)'
"And you just hacked into an entire ship and guided it to a ramming course?" Kinzie questioned.
'y3|'
"…Damn, that's pretty impressive. I didn't think that was possible"
'/\/\y 01|) gr0|_|| (0|_|1|) /\/\4|3 4/\/yt|-|I/\/g |055i813 \/\/it|-| |-|4(|I/\/g. Y0|_| 411 I/\/t3r35t /\/\3. 533y4 500/\/! 8i/\/4ry 0|_|t'
"Okay, aside from the wonky-ass writing, the guy seems like a good hacker" Boss noted. "What did he say his name was? Binary?"
"Pfft, whatever" Kinzie brushed off rather quickly. "He's probably some punk who got lucky with hacking"
"Kinzie, he, or she, took over and entire ship. I think he/she is good"
"I don't care, what's the plan!?" She yelled. "In case you didn't notice, we have dropships inbound!"
"Sheesh, alright. Damn, take a chill pill" as the dropships landed, the Saints readied their weapons. "Okay, plan: new Saints, since I'm pretty sure we can't all fit in one of those things, you'll split off from us and get yoself a dropship, we'll do the same. I'll drive it, you follow, and we'll head to the dreadnaught"
"Won't they try and shoot us down? That don't seem like it's very healthy in the long run" Pierce noted. Kinzie's omni-tool rang again and another message popped up; G0t it (0\/3r3|). 411i4/\/(3 (|-||_|/\/\|5 \/\/i11 t4|3 411 |)4y |=ixi/\/g it. 3/\/j0y. ;).
"How the hell do you keep hacking into this thing!?" Kinzie screeched, trying to swipe the message away in vain.
'\/\/iz4r|) /\/3\/3r t3115 |-|i5 53(r3t5, /\/008'
"AAGH, screw this!" Kinzie screamed, turning the omni-tool off. "Jackass, I swear. Anyway, what were we doing?"
"Getting down!" David shouted, shoving Kinzie to the ground as bullets whizzed over their heads. dozens, upon dozens of Alliance soldiers had opened fire upon them, slowly advancing to their position.
"Okay, we can still make this work" Boss said, grabbing the two suitcases of Aaron's stuff and the broken armor. "Hey guys, I'm gonna be weighed down by this stuff, your gonna have to cover for me here" Boss ordered.
"You want us to bloody run out of cover and just shoot them while running around!?" Zaeed shouted, seriously questioning the sanity of his new Boss.
"Hey, that's what we Saints do whenever someone shoots at us, it's worked so far" Boss said, shrugging. All the other Saints shrugged to.
"Works for me" Grunt rumbled, jumping out of cover and blasting away with his claymore.
"Shit, krogan!" A soldier yelled, running to cover. He popped his head out but it was immediately cut off by two green omni-blades, Ouro materializing. He turned around to see twenty soldiers aiming their weapons at him.
"Think you can beat a master of tech attacks and CQC?" Ouro questioned. When all the soldiers tilted their heads Ouro sighed. "I hate Cerberus and what they did to my voice" he grumbled, flashing a omni-tool and causing all the soldiers guns to overheat, the thermal clips ejecting out, Ouro having hacked the guns.
Realizing he could mess with their guns, the soldiers dropped them and one tried to knife the offender. Ouro responded by vaulting over him while simultaneously grabbing the hand and shoving it into the soldiers own skull. He then did a breakdance, knocking down four more before flipping back onto his feet and bringing the omni-blades out. "So, who's next?" He challenged.
Meanwhile, the other Saints, minus the ex-Normandy Saints, had reached one of the dropships, Gat killing the pilot and using him as a meatshield as the other got on board.
"Do you even know how to fly this thing!?" Matt asked/screamed as a bullet whizzed over his head.
"If I can pilot a zin ship I have no know-how over whatsoever I think I can pilot this piece of junk!" a slightly insulted Boss assured. "How about the other, they get one?"
Shaundie looked past the ramp to see Jack biotically slamming the pilot into a wall repeatedly before she tossed him aside, motioning the others to get in the ship, which they all did. The ramps to both ships closed as Shaundie informed, "yeah, they're good. Let's get out of here!"
"'Kay, thrusters: check. Fuel: fuck if I know. Tunes… where in the hell is my tunes?" Boss demanded.
"This isn't the time for damn music!" Kinzie protested.
Boss crossed his arms. "I ain't leaving without my tunes" a rocket exploded outside near the ship and he quickly went back to the controls. "Okay, nevermind! Let's go!"
Both dropships full of Saints lifted off, Alliance soldiers attempting to shoot them down, but it was in vain as they both flew off.
One soldier got on the comm. "Come in Trikora, I say again, come in Trikora! Do you hear me, you have hostiles imminent! Damn, all I'm getting is static!" He yelled, throwing his helmet to the ground. Someone had disabled the ships comms.
In the Trikora docking bay, the majority of the marines there were on standby, in case reinforcements on the ground were needed. But unfortunately comms were down, so it wasn't clear if they needed them or not.
"Man, this is bull" one soldier complained. "It's a bunch of street thugs, how much trouble could they cause!?"
"Amen, brother" said another, "command is in way over their heads with this. I think we can take- oh look, two of the Kodiaks are coming back. Must've already finished them off"
"Um… we sent a lot more than two" a third noted. "And they aren't slowing down" all the marines in the docking bay glanced at eachother before they all scrambled to cover as the two ships crashed, setting many things alight as it crashed and causing multiple explosions. The two ships settled, and the ramps from both were blasted off. From one emerged a crazed krogan as he charged head on with a claymore, followed by the rest of the ex-Normandy Saints. From the second emerged Boss and the rest of the other Saints, firing off their weapons.
"Kinzie, how many soldier can we expect here!?" Boss yelled over the gunfire.
"It's a dreadnaught! It has a crew numbering in the thousands! So a lot!" She yelled back. She shook her omni-tool in frustration. "Okay, I forget, how do I work the, the disable app thing?"
"You press the damn button! It's right on the display!" Kasumi instructed.
A soldier went into spasms as he was shocked by a neural shock. "Oops, wrong one. Hey, I'm still getting the hang of this thing, gimme a break!" Kinzie complained.
"How the hell are we going to beat thousands of crewmembers? We can barely take these guys as it is!" Ouro asked. He was forced to dodge a tech grenade and flung out five of his own, which shocked ten soldiers to death. He landed behind two and stabbed them both in the skull. "Open to suggestions!"
A soldier attempted to knife Boss, but the Saints slid under the soldiers legs, punching him in the balls and standing up behind up while flipping the soldier on his back, shooting him in the face. "Yo Pierce! Back when the bugs attacked the Normandy while we were gone, didn't Joker use some FTL trick and purge everything from the ship?"
"Yeah, why!?" He shouted, pinned behind a pillar.
"You can't be serious, you'd kill thousands! That's pretty heavy, even for us!" Ben argued.
"Ugh, fine. We'll get to the bridge and give them a ten-minute warning to get the fuck out before we purge the ship. After that though anyone left behind is dead. But we can worry about that later, let's finish this!"
With that, a barrage of lasers from the zin weapons peppered the frontal force of marines, waning them down. One tried to get a potshot on them, but a biotic warp from Jack killed her. After a few more bursts from the new Saints, only one marine was left, Randall, Morinth, Ouro, and Kasumi aiming their weapons at him.
"Fight to live another day, or just die here. We could care less" Ouro said, emphasizing his point by unsheathing two omni-blades.
The marine looked between the four, and all the other Saints, and shook his head, dropping his guns and running for his life, screaming hysterically.
Boss chuckled. "What do you know, guy made the smart choice and ran. Okay guys, let's get to the bridge and get out of here"
Gordon was most likely having the worst day of his life. Right now he was the only one in the bridge, everyone else having either run off or tried to engage with the Saints, even the pilot, so he was all alone with nothing but a pistol. He had watched from all the cameras as these Saints slaughtered any crewmembers in their way as they made way to the bridge.
The worst part? While countless men and woman died as they tried to kill these monsters, not a single one of them died. Not one. So when the doors to the bridge opened, and the swarm of the gangsters converged on him, he died screaming as he fired his pistol wildly, hoping to clip at least one of them.
And that was how Gordon had died as countless lasers and rifle fire riddled his body to pieces. A man who thought he could single handedly take on the very people he had doubted when this operation began. His last thoughts were of how wrong he was about them; they weren't some meager street gang, these ones… they were professionals. More than that, even. It was as if nothing could touch them, a twisted purple guardian overlooking them.
"Well, that was anticlimactic. Kinzie, Matt, can you fly this thing?" Boss asked, kicking the late captain's body away.
"Yeah, what do you want us to do?" Matt asked as he and Kinzie entered the pilot's seat.
"One, kill the last cruiser, I don't want any loose ends, soldier boys on planet can get a distress beacon up and call for help. And get me on intercom"
"On it" Kinzie said. The dreadnaught's weapons instantly turned on the remaining cruiser and began firing, tearing the ship apart as Boss walked over to the intercom.
"Hello, this thing on?" Boss asked, tapping to intercom button. "Yo yo yo, this is Boss up in the hood! Now, if your listening, it means your probably now just realizing that we just handed your asses to you and have taken over the dreadnaught, and by that large explosion outside looks like that last cruiser just went bye-bye" as he said this, the remains of the final cruiser burnt up as it fell towards the planet. "Anyway, we're taking this ship. But, I'm gonna give all you a one-time deal! It goes like this: you all have ten minutes to get your punk-asses to the nearest escape pods and boost on out of here. After ten minutes we purge the ship. I'm out, peace" Boss turned the mic off and turned to his friends. "What do you think, too heavy?"
"Nah man, you did fine. Look, they're already gone" Pierce said, pointing to the escape pods… thousands of them heading to the abandoned colony.
"Damn…well, they're all gone, guess we can call the timer out" Boss announced. "So, to recap; we escaped the colony, just whupped some Alliance ass, and scored a dreadnaught to boot. Anything I leave out?"
"How about the mysterious hacker that helped us out?" Kasumi asked.
"Oh yeah, that. We can figure that out later. So, can we pilot this thing to Illium?"
"Yep" Matt answered. "We can take this thing anywhere we want. Only problem is we can't land these things on planets, the mass effect cores can't handle them. I don't really know the science, I'll look into it"
"Meh, one problem at a time. Alright guys, let's go to Illium" the Saints cheered as the massive ship went into FTL, thousands if humans passing hateful glares at the ship as it zoomed off.
On this day the Saints showed the Alliance they weren't mere street gangsters.
Beyond the Omega-4 relay, the remains of the detonated collector base loomed, floating in the vastness of the void, all killed within once it was detonated.
However, once Shepard and the Normandy had acquired the reaper IFF, EDI had copied the complex piece of coding and had sent it to Cerberus, still having been shackled.
So in lieu of that, 2 Cerberus frigates had come out of FTL, hoping to salvage any of the collector technology, and especially if anything from the human reaper could be salvaged. Flying towards the remains of the base.
As a couple dropships were touched down, many Cerberus soldiers moved out, followed by engineers, their facial features hidden by the helmets. One engineer glanced at his omni-tool and held his hand up, muttering, "detecting a energy spike of unknown origin. Around where the reaper was killed…"
"Then let's start there. Move out" the leader of the Cerberus assault forces commanded, leading them deeper into the remains.
At the bottom of a dark gorge, three things were visible; the remains of the proto-reaper, whatever survived the explosion. Some rubble, and strange, black, pixel-like dust. The dust suddenly flashed red, flashing from black to red, before the red changed to blue, the dust gathering under a large plate of metal. After a few minutes, the unmistakable blade of the lazor razor speared through the metal, the blade black with the edge a bright cyan. The blade cut the metal slab in half, and a unseen force pushed the two pieces away. From the rubble arose the unmistakable figure of Aaron- only his cloths had changed. He now wore black shoes with blue, glowing laces, and a purple sole. He wore black jeans, and a black t-shirt. The front had a blue Saints fleur taking up the entire chest, while the back had a purple fleur. His sunglasses remained unchanged, but his hair was now bigger and spikier, with a black edge. From time to time one could see blue electricity arcing in his hair for a few moments. Other than that, Aaron kept the same young looks he had chosen when he first made his simulation avatar.
With a groan, Aaron held his head. "Ugh, what happened…wait, wait…fuckin' Shepard his what happened… piece of- oh man" Aaron was forced on his knees and dry-heaved, not having any bodily fluids to expunge. He felt horrible, every pixel in his body aching and screaming at him to slow down.
"Erg, don't feel to hot… where the hell's my things…?" he slurred, picking up his O.M.G., which remained unchanged, and his sword. He frowned when he saw it was still black and blue.
"The hell, I'm not in dark eezo mode, go back to blue" he said, willing his body to power down. Unfortunately the sword stayed the color, and even after shaking it and bashing it against rocks he couldn't get it to go back to normal. He stood up and looked at himself.
"What the…just, what the, what the hell!?" He shouted in a panicked voice. "I'm darked up, but I don't feel a drain. Weird… let me try something" he held his hand out, summoning fire. For some odd reason the fire was now black.
"Okay, creepy… ice?" Ice was still a pale icy blue, but seemed to glow now.
"Electricity? Wait a minute…" the electricity was the signature black and blue, but he was only able to access the electrical powers to his throw, buffer, and telekinesis. He couldn't summon his dark stream either.
"Are you kidding me, I lost the dark eezo powers!? The hell, that's now how it works! I still have the standard simulation powers, but they feel… I dunno, different" he mumbled. He was greatly upset that he had lost the dark element zero powers; they had helped him greatly during his journeys. At least he still had his weapons and simulation powers.
Looking around the cavern he was in, he sighed. "Well, not getting anywhere talking to myself. Gotta get outta here…" he looked at one of the walls, then tried to sprint up the wall. But something strange happened- he sprinted to fast to be able to keep up with his surroundings, and wound up slamming right into the wall.
Holding his nose, he grunted in frustration as he stepped away from the wall. "Alrighty then, my sprint got upgraded apparently…way too much, I'm running too fast to keep up… damn, all my powers get amped up or what?" He looked straight up. "Hmm, that's about… a thousand feet to the ledge? Don't know if I can make that. Well, here we go" he crouched down as his body glowed blue, readying his jump. After building enough energy, he jumped… only too much.
"Shiiiiiiit!" He screamed as his body flew up and hit the ceiling, causing him to fall back into the gorge.
He jumped him and brushed himself off. "Ah, fucking perfect, my powers are too powerful and until I find a way out I'm stuck. Unless…" he picked up his comm piece from the ground… but it was busted. "Figures" he deadpanned, throwing the useless piece of technology away. "Meh, they're probably not even here anymore. How long have I been out anyways?" He glanced upwards again. "Okay, let's try again, this time with a lot less oomph" he charged his legs again, but only crouched down for half the time, jumping up right to the ledge.
"Grab it, grab it! Oh thank the lord…" he sighed, holding onto the ledge with one hand, pulling himself up. He looked at him hands and shook his head. "Damn, I'm way too overpowered now, I can't even control these powers without slamming into something. Perfect" he thought glumly. His thoughts were interrupted when a bullet hit him in the shoulder, the wound instantly being repaired by the pixels. Aaron stared at where the gunshot came from and saw a squad of Cerberus troops.
"'Course you guys couldn't keep your grubby mitts off of reaper tech. Bring it!" Aaron challenged, activating his lightning buffer.
"I thought he was dead" one assault trooper asked.
"Doesn't matter, kill him" a engineer instructed. They all aimed their guns at Aaron, but something strange happened. He disappeared in a black, compressive flash, and reappeared in the same black flash.
"I can teleport now. Cool" he said in a monotonous voice. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, "I can teleport baby! Oh man, that was awesome! At least I gained one new power out of this" the Cerberus commandos tilted their heads in confusion. They weren't told he could do this…
"Okay, now let's see what my powers do now" lifting his hand up, Aaron used his telekinesis…only he managed to pick the entire Cerberus squad up.
"Oh, sweetles, man. That'll come in real handy. Okay, now let's see this…" he flung the squad forward, hoping they would fall into the gorge below… only for them to get flung into the wall on the opposite side of the chasm, and get splattered on the wall, turning into a fine red mist as the wall was stained red.
"Whoops. Man, this thing has a lot more power now…" he jogged to the exit of the tunnel the soldiers had came from, seeing two Cerberus frigates, with multiple dropships flying towards him.
"Oh, looky at this, I get revived and already Cerberus wants to throw me a party" he chuckled as he threw a green and black hack-blast throw, the throw hitting a dropship, Aaron forcing it to crash into the ground and explode.
"Welp, might as well see how destructive these new powers are. Hehehehe…" he chuckled darkly, leaping at the nearest dropship.
Ever since it's local overpowered gangster had left, Illium had been surprisingly calm ever since Aaron left… well as calm as a city like that could get, what with the organized crime shipping drugs and indentured servitude.
Other than that it had been pretty quiet for awhile.
But unfortunately that all ended when a human dreadnaught had exited from FTL, hiding on the dark side of the planet's moon. Kinzie and Matt assured the Saints that no-one would be able to find them, the Saints had taken a couple of dropships and had flew to the planet, heading towards the location of Aaron's apartment. The Saints were surprised the garage to the apartment complex let them park two military vehicles and let a bunch of highly armed people into the building, but upon seeing the garage and realizing Aaron had committed a large number of grand theft auto, dozens of stolen cars in the garage, they realized it was one of the more shadier apartments.
Reaching Aaron's old penthouse, a penthouse that bore a similarity to the penthouse they had back in Steeleport minus the décor, they lounged around, somber looks on their faces. Boss had plopped the computer Aaron had given him and looked through the files, finding some marked 'logs'. He opened them and the Saints crowded around him, realizing they were video logs. They still missed him, so perhaps this would give them some closure.
Aaron was sitting in a chair in a different apartment, his old cloths on. "So, I'm bored out of my skull, so I decided to record these things, 'cause, why the hell not" Aaron spoke, "anyway I got this sweet apartment on the Citadel. Hopefully it lasts, 'cause it's a pretty nice place" he sighed. "Yeah, still pretty hard adjusting. New universe, and everyone here is so boring. Sure, there's gangs out there, but they're usually too mediocre or have too sick methods to bother with. Seriously, those batarians… yech"
"…I miss the Saints. I miss Boss and all the rest of them. Gat, Shaundie, hell even Pierce. And nobody gives a fuck about him"
"Hey!" Pierce shouted, swiping at the screen.
"…Ah, who am I kidding, I would have blown up that one time if it wasn't for Pierce. Last time I rob a gas station…"
"Damn straight" Pierce muttered.
"Anyway, I'm gonna -knocking- oh wait, hold on" Aaron walked away from the computer, the video still playing.
"Yeah?" Aaron's disembodied voice asked. "Uh-huh, whaddya want? Um, who's Cerberus?"
The log ended there and Boss pressed the next one. Aaron was sitting in the same position as before, but in the apartment they were in now.
"So, yeah, screw Cerberus. Gonna miss that apartment… anyway, I've been thinking- time travel. How do I do it? I'm thinking if I go back in time maybe I can go through that wormhole that sent me here. Only problem is I don't know how to time travel. Apparently that wasn't one of the powers I got"
"So, I'm going to do something crazy" he continued, "I'm gonna try to FTL my body through a mass effect relay. Crazy, I know, but I ain't doing anything at the moment. Screw it, I'm out. Hopefully this doesn't teleport me across the galaxy"
The log ended there and they hit the next log.
Aaron appeared, sitting down, covered in black soot. "Yeah, so… I almost killed myself. Tried FTLing but it tore my body apart, only thing left was a hand. Thank God for regeneration, huh? Anyway I actually did time travel by about three seconds. Into the future. So that did jack in terms of help. Screw it, time travel isn't worth it anyways"
"Well we figured it out" Boss said before hitting the final log.
"It's been awhile since I did a log, but I've done a lot of shit for the past two years. Gonna go to Omega, 'cause, once again… bored out of my skull. Hell, something exiting might happen. But hey, what do I know, I can't time travel, I've tried. Alright, bye computer. I'm out, peace" that was the last log.
"That's must've been right before Shepard recruited him" Kinzie summarized. "Well Boss, how do you feel?"
"Still shitty. Still miss him. Guy was my bro, and…I dunno, guys" he looked over at Kinzie. "Did you ever make any progress with making something that can send us back to our world?"
"You can't be serious, that Shepard guy is still out there! We can't let him just walk away from what he did!" Gat argued.
"I know that, we're still clipping the fucker!" Boss snapped, standing up. "I just want to get the damn armor fixed. Maybe get some new zin stuff… he declared war on us, I need war stuff. So Kinzie, progress?"
"Well, I got a base design and blueprints. I just don't have a means to build it… didn't Aaron say something about a shipping yard that doesn't ask questions?"
"Yeah…" Boss rubbed his chin. "He did. You think they can build it?"
"That and the ship from the designs I stole. But I need something with an extreme amount of processing power. Like a certain giant robot brain…"
"No!" Boss screamed, stepping up to her. "I see where you're going, we are NOT going back to that place to salvage that thing's brain!"
"Look Boss, you want to go back to our dimension? We need that brain, or at least some collector tech. We might even find something left of Aaron, give him a proper burial"
Boss sighed and went to outside the apartment, to a large overlook with a swimming pool connected to a landing pad. "One, this place looks almost exactly like the penthouse. Two…fine, your right. I want closure. The least we can do is recover his sword or something" he turned to Kinzie. "Okay, come with me, we'll get this sorted out. Rest of you, stay here, relax, I don't care. C'mon, Kinz"
The shipping yard Aaron was talking about, which was safely nestled in a large asteroid away from prying eyes, but for some reason had a large neon sign that said 'the secret shipping yard that asks no questions' on the front.
Landing the dropship, Boss and Kinzie immediately went to the person who ran the establishment, presenting him with the plans to build the ship, CID's body, and Kinzie's machine. Once they got the brain, they could hook it to the machine.
"We want this all done in a month" Boss said. It wasn't a request. Opening his omni-tool, he added, "here's the payment. I want this all done in the time I said. No exceptions"
"Look buddy" the leader of the shipping yard said, wearing a reflective, purple, construction vest, "you can't expect me to put my workers in serious overtime. These two things look complicated and expensive to build, and I just can't- fuuffuffuff…" the leader started drooling when he saw Boss had wired ten billion credits to them.
"One month, got it?" Boss questioned.
"S-s-s-sure thing mac, I'll put the guys in overtime, and tell my guards not to shirk their duties. I'll get this done in one month, promise!" He ran off, shouting orders to his workers.
Boss leaned over a railing, watching as the workers began designing the blueprints to building the ship and machine. "So, we're really getting a super stealth space ship, and going to get a monster robots brain and Aaron's remains"
"Yep" Kinzie agreed.
Boss hummed. "Well, all she needs is a name…"
A/N- Yeah, not the best, but I just did the ME2 finale, I need to slow down somewhere. Next chapter will pick up.
I tried to make Aaron's survival more shocking, but I'm pretty sure everyone saw that one coming. C'mon, I'm not gonna make a OC like him, use him for almost the entire story, than kill him off….Well I could have, but I didn't. Mischievous plans and the lot.
So! Next chapter there's gonna be a small time skip. Sorta. You'll know when you read it. I got a bunch of chapters planned out for the Saints and a bunch of adventures around the galaxy that fit the style of 'Saints Row' while at the same time still relevant to the plot.
Also, you know what's really annoying? For some reason the fanfiction sight won't put in these when I submit the document, so I gotta edit them in. I don't why, but-Eh, no biggie I guess. Still, mildly frustrating.
Also, still trying to find a name for the ship. Some help would be appreciated, I'm horrible at names when it comes to ships. I got 'Trikora' when I looked up 'famous mountains' since all the Alliance dreadnoughts are named off of mountains.
A'ight, cya.
