A/N: I have decided to change this story from just a simple one-shot about how the Allied-Council Wars got started, into a compilation of snap-shots from the course of the first and second wars. It will be from the point of view of the trooper from the story Coming Together. You'll see what I mean. It takes place in a room that's like the pod Shepard went into in order to disable the geth fighter squadrons in Mass Effect 3. The third war will be explored in the story Coming Together. You may also notice some small elements from the Halo Universe slipping in. This is one of my stories after all, and they're all connected (all part of a crossed universe). However, this story is like 99.99% Mass Effect, so I don't think it really qualifies as a cross-over.

In this chapter, there is a lot of background information about conventional geth, and some of the information may be seen again in another story of mine (as I said, I don't intend on ever writing two stories that aren't connected at this time). The Geth are the fastest growing species in the entire universe, and by the time stated in this chapter, they are a Tier 1 civilization, the fifth civilization to reach such a level of advancement in the Milky Way. The other four are the Forerunners (who left the galaxy after they defeated the Flood), the Prehistoric Humans (who are still around in my stories), the Prehistoric San 'Shyuum (they're gone), and the Collectors (they recently achieved Tier 1 status as well, but it took them eons longer than the Geth). I don't know if I would consider the Reapers to be a Tier 1 civilization before their downfall. There is not enough information on them for me to comfortably make such an assumption, but if they weren't, then they were definitely close, or could have been, but chose not to be.

Candela and decibels are units of measurement for light and sound, respectively. A real-world M84 stun grenade emits 170-180 decibels and more than one million candela.

The marine and the trooper stepped into a blank, metallic-gray, poorly lit room.

"Stand still," the marine told the trooper.

As soon as they both stopped moving, they were lifted a few inches off the ground. It seemed like they were being scanned. The trooper started to squirm a round a little, to get a look at what was going on around him.

"Excess movement is discouraged during an upload."

"Oh. Right."

After a few moments, a brief flash of light and sound permeated the room, and both the marine and trooper were gently placed back on the floor. They were no longer in the small gray room, or so the trooper thought. Their physical bodies were still floating in the blank room, but their consciousnesses were not. They were now surrounded by endless space, with tiny white orbs floating around as far as the trooper could see. The trooper had never been to space before, and he imagined this must have been what it was like, minus the gravity.

"Where are we? What is this?"

"Our consciousnesses are in a database, a database containing the Allied-Council Wars Archives. It's an encyclopedia. Every one of these orbs is a piece of unclassified information about the wars. Statistics, reports, even memories."

"Memories?"

"Yes. Memories of those who experienced the wars. Now, grab one..."

The trooper grabbed the nearest orb.

"...All right, now squeeze it."

The trooper squeezed the orb in his hand, and was immediately submersed into an incredibly vivid dream.

The Fate of Adrien Victus

LOCATION: MILKY WAY / APIEN CREST / CASTELLUS SYSTEM / DIGERIS

DATE: circa 2545 CE

650 AS

EVENT: SIEGE OF CASTELLUS, SECOND ALLIED-COUNCIL WAR

Hundreds of thousands of geth ships orbited the burning world, sifting through the debris filed of wrecked turian warships and battle stations, stripping them down for anything useful. The battle was over; over before it even began. No organics had ever defeated the Geth in a major engagement, and the Siege of Castellus was no exception. Down on the surface of Digeris, there was no more turian resistance left than there was anywhere else in the system. Only the Citadel of Digeris in the planet's capital of Apparitus remained, albeit not all of it. Much of it had been destroyed, and what remained was set aflame, but it still stood. The only reason the geth in orbit had not simply bombarded the citadel into oblivion was because Primarch Victus was inside, and they were determined to take him alive.

In the massive great hall of the Citadel of Digeris, over 800 turians stood ready to fight to the last breath, and they soon would. They were as prepared to make their last stand as anyone could be. Auto-turrents, mounted guns, combat drones, and lines and lines of soldiers all took aim at the main gate with their eyes fixed, and their hearts pounding. The Geth were right outside, and would be pouring through any second. The hall was dead silent, and if someone were to drop a pin, the sound of it hitting the ground would have been deafening.

Before entering a battle, the Geth determined who their enemy was going to be, and then modified their ammunition to combat that specific enemy's biology. In the past, the modifications were drastic, with completely different ammunition being used for different enemies. Now, the Geth were able to simply modify the mysterious energy discharged from their weapons, rather than constantly switching from directed-energy to projectile weapons when switching from organic to synthetic enemies, and designing various different types of directed-energies and projectiles according to the nature of the enemy they were killing.

In this battle, the Geth were fighting the Turians, and they modified their ammunition accordingly. The Geth were the currently the third most advanced known species in the galaxy, and could design the mysterious energy in their weapons to elicit an endless variety of effects, limited only by imagination. The energy was currently designed to react to turian bodies by causing the immediately affected area of the body to explode. The force of the explosion was enough to knock the turians off their feet, but not enough to send them flying (the ammunition could of course be modified to send the turians flying). Bodily fluids were drawn to the affected area, giving true meaning to the term 'blood-bath' when the affected area exploded. Lastly, the energy caused near total paralysis and bodily shutdown, with the exception of sound production, and pain reception. The energy caused turian bodies to scream uncontrollably, and suffer unbearable pain for a few seconds before falling silent.

There were no wounded when fighting geth. Their weapons either killed you instantly, regardless of where they made contact with your body, or they subdued you instantly, regardless of where they made contact with your body. Shooting someone in the foot with a geth weapon worked just as well as shooting them in the head, provided the shooter was a geth. Conventional geth weaponry only operated in conventional geth hands, not in the hands of another species, or an outdated form of geth.

For three centuries, the Geth had not changed their bodies far from their original quarian designs. They made new bodies for new purposes, but they stayed largely the same. The weapons and ships they designed for themselves after they discarded all the quarian equipment they commandeered for the Morning War were new, but individual geth bodies – the ones with hands and feet – stayed entirely the same, right down to the materials the Quarians used to build them. Now, in terms of appearance, geth bodies and vehicles bared resemblance to the new handheld weapons they designed for themselves after the Morning War. They were smooth, sleek, shiny, and most importantly, enclosed. There were no more exposed tubes or wires which the Quarians didn't care to cover up. The Geth could also change the color of their skins and lights at will. The skin of their bodies, weapons, vehicles, everything would darken and discharge red light for a more terrifying effect, and lighten and discharge blue light for a more calming effect, and they were not trying to calm anyone right now. The materials used to create all things geth had also changed. Modern turian infantry weapons were not powerful enough to damage the super-dense materials the Geth now used to create things. Only turian heavy weapons could do any damage to a simple geth drone now, and all the turians in the hall knew it, but they would not lay down and die just because they had no chance of survival.

The Geth were the fastest growing species in the galaxy, and maybe even the entire universe. In their only six-and-a-half centuries of existence, they had already become a Tier 1 civilization, incomprehensibly faster than the other four Tier 1 civilizations of the Milky Way combined, and they had done so without reverse-engineering any alien technology, something else none of the other Tier 1 civilizations could say. The Geth were actually strongly opposed to reverse-engineering the technology of another species, preferring to 'build their own future,' something they were very proud to say they had done.

The gate to the hall burst open. A blinding red light covered the room, robbing the turian defenders of their vision, and the horn used by the Reapers blared so loud it shook the room, robbing the turians of their hearing in addition to their sight. Many of the organics simply fell from the intense light and sound alone, which remained constant until the battle was over, never ceasing. The turians' battlesuits struggled to compensate for massive emission of decibels and candela, but there was not much that could be done, as the geth were attacking the turians in the digital world as much as the physical world, disrupting their electronics. The over 800 turian defenders were completely wiped out in less than minute when the geth entered the hall, and came down on them with more force than the combined might of every organic race in the galaxy.

When all of the defenders were dead, the geth walked over their corpses to the next gate at the end of the hall, leading them to an atrium where the last 30 turians in the Apien Crest were set up to defend Primarch Victus. No one fired. The geth walked into the atrium with the weapons lowered, despite the turians taking aim. All of the geth spoke as one.

"Primarch Victus, you're coming with us. You can come peacefully..."

The geth raised their weapons.

"...or we can kill you and all your men, take your body, and reanimate you later. No more turians have to die. You can put an end to this war, and save your species. The choice is yours."

Victus put his hand on the barrel of his nearest soldier's weapon, gently pushing it down.

"Everyone, stand down..."

When the turians lowered their weapons, the geth did so as well.

"...All right. So where are we going?"

A portal opened up over the doorway to the atrium.

"Step through the portal, all of you..."

The turians hesitated.

"...You all have ten seconds to make it through the portal."

"Move. Move. Through the portal," Victus barked at his men. He had no doubt in his mind the portal would close after ten seconds, and those left behind would do worse than die. The geth did not tell them to drop their weapons, and so none of them did. When Victus stepped through the portal, he found himself alone, in a dark, blank area, with only a small light shining down on him, seemingly without a source. His handheld weapons had not gone with him through the portal, and his omni-tool had been disabled. His cybernetics were also suppressed, leaving him with nothing but his talons, which were just as useless as his weapons against geth. All Victus could do now was wait, and wait he did.

Nothing happened. No one came, and Victus spent the rest of eternity plunging into madness; thus was his sentence for leading the Council in war against the Allies... and losing.