AN: I have won at being a fanfiction writer. When authors I follow, follow my stories? That's victory beyond anything I could have conceived. Thank you all for reading my scribbles. On with the story!

It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him.
Amos 5:19, Christian Bible


Across Citadel space, the might of the Turian Hierarchy gathered. Ships joined into fleets, seamlessly integrating into a single cohesive force, ready to be wielded by their commander as a cosmic scalpel; slicing with deadly precision into their foes.

Such is the military potence of turians.

As the fleets gathered, logistics and supply chains were decided, organized, and connected to the turian's existing economic and manufacturing structures across multiple worlds. Corporations, shipping companies, and even raw materials manufacturing were all notified and coordinated with to provide the Hierarchy's ships the tools and fuel they needed to maintain the largest offensive in their history.

Such is the duty of turians. Every turian is part of the greatness of the Hierarchy. Even those not present in warships feel the comradery of soldiers. They also serve who only stand and wait.

Or at least that is how it is supposed to be.

Of course there were delays. Of course there was petty bickering and political blame games. Their volus connections were completely unresponsive for some reason. Systems were backlogged with conflicting priorities. Emergency war seizures were enacted. Stock markets crashed. Non-turians ran wild in the streets, panicking.

But despite this, the majority of the fleet was ready to depart on offensive maneuvers within two days of the turians receiving the message of the Reaper invasion of Earth.

Truly a magnificent result, a testament to their prowess.

General Minin Resvirix stood on the command deck of the dreadnaught, Indomitable Spirit. Laid out before him he could see the glowing engines of the ships in his command. Points of light, they shone; the true jewels of the Hierarchy. He was the heart of the First fleet, his decisions would dictate the lives of not only his men but also the civilians that depended on the turians to shield them from harm. He could feel the countless turians stretching behind him into history, the honor and duty of his role stamping him with both weight and strength.

He opened the com channel to every ship in the fleet. In the background the turian imperial anthem, "Die for the Cause" played softly. He stood at attention, and spoke.

"I am General Resvirix. You are all part of the First fleet. We are going to go to Earth and bring the might of the Turian Hierarchy upon the Reapers there. In the sol system, humanity is fighting the greatest battle of the ages. All the ages. The Hierarchy has never flinched from our duty. We go to not only extract vengeance against the Reapers for their own attacks on us, but also to save humanity. For we are the military arm of the Citadel! We are the keepers of the peace! Palaven confides that every turian will do their duty. Advance!"

He ended his speech with his hand thrust out, gesturing for the fleet to proceed through the Mass Relay. Resvirix waited as the gate spun up, and waited, and waited.

"What's taking so long?" he snapped at his navigations officer.

The helpless tech shrugged. "We're getting a strange response from the gate: 'Waiting for other. Your position in queue is 1,817,983.'". The tech frowned. "Now it's saying 'Waiting for other. Your position in queue is 2,133,172.' The number is increasing!"

The general was quiet for a moment, then spoke softly. "The Reapers must have built the Mass Relays. So they have administrative access. No. If they did, they would just lock down all non-Reaper travel. Instead, they have priority access. They're adding themselves to the front of the queue! But who's ever heard about a single location having so many ships travelling to it that it's caused a queue to form…"

His fleet surrounded him, bristling with impotent turian might as he could only watch as the number of Reapers ahead of him in the queue increased.

2,382,224. 2,379,872. 2,377,182.

2,519,993. 2,518,914, 2,517,120.

2,784,102. 2,784,101. 2,784,100.

3,001,819.

"Spirits help humanity."


The news that his fleets were stuck waiting in line while the Reapers cut in front of them, made Councilor Sparatus reach for his liquor cabinet. He grabbed a bottle of Horosk. Then he grabbed another, just in case.


The two person, weaponless, stealth STG ship helplessly watched the battle unfold around Earth.

Since the Mass effect gate was constantly spewing out Reapers, they were stuck here, unable to escape. Unable to assist humanity, because if they did they would be discovered and instantly slain. Floating in space, seeing the entire Reaper invasion come to a crashing halt against Earth. A flaming, exploding, pyrotechnic halt.

Stuck watching.

Recording.

And eating popcorn.

"So this is what humans mean when they refer to a blockbuster."

"Pass the popcorn."

"Here you go. Don't forget this; creamed animal lactation, melted. With sodium chloride. It's delicious."

"Ah yes."

They passed several minutes in enjoyable silence. Watching Reapers explode never got stale.

A console chirped, and one of the salarians glanced at his omnitool.

"Hey Tolan. I have good news, bad news and great news. More good news, bad news and great news. And further good news, bad news and great news."

Lieutenant Tolan sighed. "Jooram. There's only the two of us here. You don't have to drama it up."

Jooram Mas shrugged. "We're the only ones here. Humor me."

"Ok. What's the bad news, more bad news, and even more bad news?"

"Bad news? Our attempts to hack the multitude of earth com channels were instantly stopped and detected. More bad news? By at least three distinct factions. Even more bad news? In a manner that makes me question whether or not all our previous attempts to hack into Earth channels have ever been successful, or if we were let in. Very paranoid thoughts."

Tolan blinked. "Can you expand on that?"

Jooram leaned back. "So we just ran the default STG protocols and started to hack into what we already infiltrated. Glacial Creep. You know, the slow, passive, stealth hack program. First time hacking into Earth since the Reapers showed up, and things got crazy. We normally expect to get in to the unencrypted channels, get through some of the secure layers that haven't been updated since our last attempts, and not get into the rest. Even if Earth security across the board was updated, we'd at least just fail to get in. But that's not what happened."

He munched on some more popcorn.

"We're discovered. Instantly. Multiple times. Even on the unencrypted stuff. You don't develop that kind of security overnight. So it makes me think that they've had this capacity for a while, and just never revealed it until now. Because reasons."

Tolan closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. "STG command will NOT like that. I don't like that. I can't think of anyone who likes that thought. Besides whomever has this kind of security. They're probably laughing into their faces at all of us. I know I would, if I had that power. If they have that kind of security, they've also got the same kind of espionage. They probably own every secret as well. Every secret, ever. Everything the STG has at least. Probably even the Shadow Broker's information. Maybe they ARE the Shadow Broker. And you say there were three factions?"

This was pretty horrifying to contemplate, but Tolan didn't get into STG for being quick to panic. Plus, watching Reapers get destroyed was very relaxing.

Even from this distance, direct beams of light from the sun could easily be seen frying Reapers like insects through a magnifying app. It took top end sensing equipment to see the directed gravitational pulses imploding Reapers, and beyond cutting edge particle detectors to notice, let alone interpret the strange and charged particles causing the de-tessellation of Reaper matter. Tolan didn't even know that de-tessellation was possible until now.

Luckily, the STG had such sensors, and could easily render the Reaper ship as it disintegrated, in all its colorful splendor.

Even more luckily, the STG ship had an immense ability to record such sensory data. In high definition.

"What's the good news, then?"

Jooram said, "All three factions let us in anyway, after they confirmed our identity as legitimate STG. They did this by confirming our IDs, our ship's registration ID, and matching that to our supervisor's FOC. Independently."

Tolan scowled. "That's terrible news! It confirms that they all can enter STG resources with impunity. And they can drill down to minute details like our direct supervisor's force organization chart? So quickly? How is this good news?"

Jooram smiled. "After confirming our identity, they gave us access to everything on Earth. Well, not their super-secret, shadow faction data. But all military channels. All civilian contacts. All encryption keys."

"Why? Why would they do this?"

"Obviously it doesn't matter anymore. And with their total control of information they can just re-encrypt it all whenever they feel like it. Or delete it directly from our databanks. But the reason why they're giving us this access is simple." Jooram leaned forward and looked steadily at Tolan. "They want us to send it out to the STG."

"What? How do they expect us to do that?"

Jooram smiled even wider. "That's the great news. They have a secure channel out already; they used it to verify our STG credentials. They're going to give us access to that as well. They want to use us as a broadcasting station to get the data from the battle out to the rest of the galaxy. They want us to send out our sensor data as well as their comm channel info."

"That's excellent. When can we get this started?"

"That's the rest of the great news. It's already done. All we need to do is sit back, and make sure we don't get caught up in the action." Jooram gestured out at the epic battle filling the solar system. "More popcorn?"


It's no secret that the Salarians have an entire branch of their military dedicated to covert operations, intelligence, and espionage. It's a badly kept secret that the Special Tasks Group is basically all of the salarians military. Almost every salarian either was in STG, has family in STG, knows someone who was in STG, or knows someone who knows someone who was in STG.

So when live streaming, high definition data of the siege of Earth appeared through multiple STG channels, basically every single salarian gained access to it. It wasn't just a single stream either. Comm channel data from across the entire Earth was appearing in the STG database. There was too much to handle through normal STG resources, so the STG reactivated retired members and hired additional salarians as data analysts. This just gave many salarians an excuse to watch the data.

Of course, there was no official announcements. However, all of a sudden, salarian productivity across all sectors dropped dramatically. Salarians were sneaking peeks at the live feeds during work. Vacation time was used in record amounts. Salarians would get together and discuss the fighting, highlighting their favorite parts of the Earth resistance, and endlessly debating the strange 'magic' that Earth was seemingly throwing about.

Basically, the salarians discovered reality television. All salarians. At once.

They weren't going to be helpful anytime soon.


Councilor Sparatus leaned back in his chair and dialed the volus embassy.

Volus businesses across citadel space were refusing to enter into enticing business contracts to fund the war against the Reapers. This behavior was completely incomprehensible. Why were the volus rejecting such lucrative deals? Sparatus needed to find out what was happening, but even though the volus embassy was just a few corridors down he preferred to have all contact with the volus ambassador via vid instead of face to face. As the VI was opening up communications, Sparatus opened up solitaire on his omnitool.

"Councilor Sparatus. *ksssshk* The proletariat volus *ksssshk* greet our *ksssshk* turian masters."

Sparatus flared his mandibles slightly at the strange greeting, but shrugged internally. He only ever paid partial attention when the volus spoke; their rebreathing noises always made his attention wander. Solitaire was a necessity to get through any meetings with the volus.

"Ambassador Din Korlack. Greetings from the Turian Hierarchy. I called you because I have received strange reports of volus declining business deals and contracts we need to wage war against the Reapers."

"The advent *ksssshk* of the Reapers *ksssshk* has shown us that *ksssshk* galactic social and political polity *ksssshk* have been subtly *ksssshk* guided by their influence *ksssshk* to make us weak. *ksssshk* We have reviewed *ksssshk* our history *ksssshk* and found several *ksssshk* key moments *ksssshk* where we see *ksssshk* interference *ksssshk* in our development. *ksssshk* We are realigning ourselves *ksssshk* to go against *ksssshk* the Reaper path *ksssshk* and are rediscovering *ksssshk* ourselves as true *ksssshk* proletariat *ksssshk* *ksssshk* *ksssshk*."

"What?" Sparatus paused, eyes leaving his game of solitaire. He glanced at the volus and realized that it was wearing a hat. A fuzzy hat with a red star on it.

"We have found much similarity *ksssshk* in our new path *ksssshk* with a pivotal part *ksssshk* of the human paradigm *ksssshk* once known as *ksssshk* communism. *ksssshk* All business is at a halt *ksssshk* until further notice. *ksssshk* After we realign ourselves *ksssshk* to the true nature denied us, *ksssshk* we will reopen negotiation *ksssshk* with the bourgeoisie Hierarchy."

The volus ominously closed the channel.

Sparatus drained his bottle of Horosk, and reached under his desk for another drink.


Communications to Tuchanka were always shoddy at best. With the current state of affairs, the only form of contact Tevos had left to her was short bursts of written data. No video. No audio. Just words, limited to 140 characters per message.

-UWrx has joined the channel-

TheBigT: Wrex, we need your help

UWrx: council comes to Krogan asking for help again? No. Hell no.

TheBigT: we really need your help. Reapers will kill everything. We all have to join together or everyone will die. We have to fight as one or everyo

UWrx: die in a fire

TheBigT: without you the entire galaxy will die

UWrx: it's like an exact repeat of the Rachni wars. No

TheBigT: it's the greatest fight ever. Prove your Krogan valor

UWrx: so we fight after they kill you all first. Even more glory that way

TheBigT: we will reward you beyond your imagination

UWrx: Will you give us the same "reward" as before? A double genophage?!

UWrx: wait

UWrx: weren't you in the diplomatic corps a few hundred years ago?

UWrx: goddam you're using the exact same template you used before to get us to fight the Rachni!

TheBigT: nuh uh

UWrx: I'm looking at the transcript now. this is offensive. Racially offensive. I'm actually hurt.

UWrx: Get out of here. Leave me alone. I'm busy

TheBigT: what are you doing?

UWrx: imma gonna go now. AFK preparing to go to war.

TheBigT: against who?

UWrx: insensitive pyjaks who want my people wiped out.

TheBigT: what?

- UWrx has left the channel-

TheBigT: Wrex?

TheBigT: Shits.

-Alert: TheBigT has received a warning for language. Two more infractions will result in being banned-