Disclaimer: I do not own or make any claim to the Mass Effect universe or the characters contained in this story, all of which are owned by BioWare and Electronic Arts. This is simply my interpretation of some events within the game universe.
The blaring horn froze Shepard in place and Tali knew exactly why. They had both heard that sound before, on the Citadel nearly three years ago.
It felt was moving more slowly, just to reinforce the horror of the situation as all three turned in unison towards the source, the larval Reaper inside its fluid sack. But as Tali looked at it, she thought it appeared… different. The contents of the sack seemed to be glowing red now, and it was growing brighter, almost as if it was-
Her thoughts were interrupted as she suddenly found herself off her feet and on course for an intimate meeting with the ground.
Both she and Thane landed heavily behind one of the support struts that laced the surface of the central island and snapped towards the threat simultaneously, weapons raised. All they saw, however, was the Commander, standing on the other side of the island with motes of dissipating dark energy falling away from him.
But that was all they saw before a blindingly bright lance of incandescent molten metal cut through the air and slammed straight into the platform they had been about to get on, ripping an enormous gouge straight through it and leaving it little more than a glowing pile of molten slag as it broke away from its dock and tumbled into the abyss. Tali's eyes widened considerably as she turned back to the Reaper.
It was no longer encased in its fluid sack.
The shot it had fired had cut clean through whatever material it had been made of and now a ragged gash had opened up and fluid was spilling out of it at a copious rate. And it was as the fluid drained that the larval Reaper came into view.
Angry red energy rippled across and underneath the sleek metallic carapace as it writhed and struggled against the material that covered it. Tali could only stare in horror as it freed one leg, then another, and another after that, until all four were free.
Now free, the eldritch machine moved carefully, precisely, as it manoeuvred one leg, than another outside of its biomechanical cocoon, using it as an anchor as it silently pulled its huge bulk out of the confines of the sack and hung suspended on its surface.
Despite the rough landing and awkward position, she still couldn't force her eyes away as it began to find a more solid anchor point amongst the nest of support structures that had helped hold the 'womb' in place. Every movement had an unnatural, fluid grace that unnerved her; more so, at least. It reminded her of the Tarantula Shepard had shown her in a pet shop once; the Reaper moved with the same alien fluidity and purpose as it stalked its prey. The thought of the how similar it was to a spider sent a shiver down her spine and forced her to look away.
'Spiders, why is it always spiders!' A strangely detached part of her mind observed. Only now that she wasn't transfixed by the Reaper did she see Shepard crouch-running towards her position, careful to stay out of it's sight-lines.
"Are you two alright?" Shepard asked once he reached their position.
"I'm fine, Shepard," she replied promptly, noting the lack of alarms or warnings from her suit.
"As am I, though my vision is still recovering," Thane noted.
"Same here, my visor couldn't handle that beam," Shepard agreed.
"Wait, you're both blind?" Tali nearly shouted.
Getting past the Reaper and off the station in time would be difficult enough with both of them fully functional, but if they couldn't see then their chances of survival dropped very, very sharply.
"Not blind, no, just… it's a bit bright, and I may have a negative colour image of that beam burned into my retina," John replied, and Tali couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"Keelah, does that mean I'm the only one who can shoot?"
"I can still fight, I just won't be making any precision shots for a while. And weren't you affected by the beam?"
"No, my visor protected me; it is rated for use with arc-welding equipment after all," she replied, tapping the side of her helmet for emphasis.
"Remind me to upgrade my helmet when we get out of here. Until then, you're our eyes."
"I assume that means you have a plan to deal with the Reaper that's currently trying to kill us?"
A quite audible whirring and clanking noise could answered that question as he reached back and pulled the now extended M-920 Cain from his back.
"I was thinking that this might be of some use," he smirked, hefting the passive weapon onto his shoulder.
"And how, exactly, do you expect to hit anything if you can't see properly?"
"The auto-targeting software should do most of the work, I just need you to point me in the right direction; the less time it takes to lock-on, the better."
"Or you could just give it to me and I'll do it," she stated dryly and made to grab the cannon, but Shepard held it firmly.
"No, I'm not going to let you expose yourself to a Reaper for as long as it takes to fire this thing. Besides, it weighs almost as much as you, you'd have a hard time carrying it, let alone firing it."
"Fine," she relented after a moment, recognising that he was right, "it was right by where the sack used to be when I last saw it, let me check…"
She carefully raised her head above their meagre cover in order to get a visual on the larval Reaper. She located it immediately, still attached to the same point it had been at before, but now there was an ominous crimson light emanating from its core where all the legs met the body. Realising what was about to happen, she threw herself into Shepard as the Reaper's Magnetohydrodynamic weapon blasted through the rows of structural beams and passed less than two meters away from their position, the immense heat and sonic boom washing over them.
Tali could feel the searing heat immediately, even through her suit. Her skin burnt and blistered immediately, leaving her in agonising pain until the devastating weapon cut out. Her suit had already begun administering painkillers and thermal gel to the burns, but there was little that could be done about it until they reached the Normandy.
She carefully rolled off Shepard, trying her best to avoid letting her back touch anything, now very thankful for the sterile and skin tight nature of her suit and its impressive thermal resilience; anything less and she would have likely been killed instantly from the thermal shock. Thane had fared better as he was further away, but he had almost certainly suffered some burns from the experience while Shepard's heavier armour and Quarian shield had protected him almost completely.
"Damnit, Tali are you okay?!" Shepard asked frantically, more as he quickly checked her over for injuries, only to retract his hands just as quickly when he heard her hiss in pain as he approached her back.
"I'm fine, the suit's already taking care of it," she forced passed gritted teeth, trying her best to hide the nerve-fraying pain until the medication fully kicked in.
Indecision halted his movements and thoughts for a second, and she knew he was debating with himself between taking care of her and focusing on the mission. She was about to yell at him to stop worrying about her, she could still move and fight and her suit was doing everything it could, afterall, when he must have reached a similar conclusion.
His posture straightened, his body tensed and his grip tightened, all signs she had come to associate with his 'On Mission' mindset.
"We need to move, split up some more so it can't hit us all. Tali, when I give the signal, I need you to activate your drone so it can get a fix on the Reaper. Link the drone's display to my HUD when you're ready and that will link it to the Cain. We need to end this fast, we've only got seven minutes until the core fails."
All three of them spread out to various positions on the island as Shepard began to charge the Cain, the harsh glow slowly building. He signalled for Tali to activate her drone, which she tossed over her cover and directly into the Reaper's line of sight. The drone lasted for all of five seconds before another lance of ruby fire annihilated both the drone and the nearby features of the environment, but that was all Shepard needed to orient himself relative to the Reaper.
As the Cain's light built into a small star, he whipped up from cover and heaved the immense weapon with him, locked on to the Reaper and fired.
The ultra-high yield explosive shell was near-instantaneously accelerated to 5km/s and it slammed with immense force into the Reaper, warping and crushing the metal as it embedded itself into it, causing the giant construct to recoil backwards. Half a second later, the shell detonated and tore a substantial gouging crater out from the nightmarish machine's side.
Its horn bellowed in defiance, in spite of its gaping wound and charged its main gun again. This time the beam was far more dangerous, carving an erratic pattern all across the island and annihilating everything it came into contact with. Tali could hear the groaning of support columns as more and more of the structural supports were damaged, in between her desperate dashes away from the beam.
Shepard, by contrast, calmly waited for it to finish its greatly extended burst, charging the Cain as he did. Eventually, it stopped and Shepard stood up, aimed dead centre (as best he could) and fired again.
This time the shell practically blew the vaguely insectoid machine apart, rending legs from its main body. In a final act of defiance before it tumbled into the abyss where it belonged, the Reaper fired again and continued firing as it fell, toppling off of its perch in a shower of flames and debris.
Everything went quiet, a stark contrast to the last four hours of constant fighting. The silence was followed by a sense of relief as what had just happened sunk in.
They had killed a Reaper, an actual Reaper! Shepard carefully collapsed the Cain and reattached it to his back before letting out a tired, happy laugh, the most genuine Tali had heard in weeks.
'First a Thresher Maw and now a Reaper, that gun is quickly becoming his favourite form of Catharsis,' Tali thought with a smile as she quickly made her way over to him.
She was less than fifteen feet away when a deafeningly loud crack echoed through the chamber. Her eyes went wide in fear as realisation struck her, just in time for the platform to lurch suddenly under her feet and drop away sharply. Caught completely unprepared, lost her footing immediately and the slick, armoured surface of her suit offered little resistance to the ground as Gravity took a hold of her. Frantically, she tried to find a hand hold in the uneven floor, but between her thick gloves and her velocity, she couldn't get a purchase on the small cracks in the ground.
Her perception of time began to slow as she neared the edge, realising that there was no way out of this. She could see Shepard sliding down after her desperately trying to catch her, but the engineer in her already knew that he couldn't reach her in time, she was moving too fast. The last thing she saw as she slipped over the edge was his outstretched hand, desperately trying to reach her in time.
As she felt the weightless sensation of free-fall envelope her, Tali knew she was about to die. And while it ought to be terrifying, part of her had already accepted it; she knew it was a Suicide Mission going in and that the chances of surviving it had been slim at best, but they had succeeded. She could only hope that Shepard would save himself now, rather than try in vain to save her and sacrifice himself in the process. Another part of her raged against the unfairness of it all, to have finally gotten to be with the man she loved and then to be taken away so soon after; she didn't want to give up and she would fight for as long as she could to survive, regardless of how hopeless it was.
She tried to feebly to grasp the ledge as her hand slipped over it at last, but there was no purchase to be found on the metal. She thought she would be screaming by now, and she may have heard herself calling out for John (she couldn't be sure), but right now she let the feeling of weightlessness consume her as she fell into the darkness below. Her last thoughts were of the time she had spent with John and her time aboard the Normandy, all the things they had accomplished together.
Her final musings were interrupted, however, by a welcome if unexpected sight; in a whirl of indigo light and dark energy, Shepard 'appeared' partly over the edge of the platform. A violent jolt halted her fall as a powerful grip clasped around her forearm, sending a sharp burst of pain to her shoulder and through her burned skin but she was too surprised to notice. From her position below the lip of the platform she could see the orange light from Shepard's omni-blade where it had pierced through the floor and stopped him from sliding over after her. The position must be extremely uncomfortable for him, with one arm effectively holding both of their weight while relying on an impossibly sharp blade to not slice through the material holding them in place. She could hear the grunt of pain from him as he tried to adjust to the extra weight, straining even with his significant strength and cybernetic augmentation.
There were no words to describe exactly what Tali was feeling and the same could probably be said for Shepard; for once neither of them had anything to say. The look they shared said it all; they were both relieved beyond all imagining, more for the other's safety than their own. Breaking eye contact after what seemed like an hour, he quickly radioed Thane.
"Thane, it's Shepard. I've got Tali, but we can't get back up, and our position is a bit precarious. See if you can get access to one of the platforms and pick us up," he grunted, his voice strained from the exertion and stress of the situation.
Thane's ever-calm voice replied immediately.
"I am already on my way to you, ETA is thirty seconds."
Sure enough, the tell tale whirring of the hovering platform became audible soon after and Tali could see it descending towards them. Thane positioned it below them and Tali felt the grip on her hand release as she fell the last two feet, landing carefully on her feet and letting Shepard slide over and onto the platform. He landed with a loud clang as he dropped ten feet from the edge of the platform where he had been hanging, rocking the platform slightly. Once he was down, he was straight back to the mission on hand.
"EDI, what's the quickest way to the Normandy from our position?"
"There is a corridor system that runs for approximately 800m and leads to an external access port. The Normandy cannot dock, so you will need to access it via one of the external doors; as your hard suits are all intact that should not pose an issue."
"Understood EDI, give us a Nav point."
Immediately a small marker popped up on Tali's HUD, indicating the location of the corridor in question.
"Alright, let's move. Thane, pilot this thing over to it and be ready to fight, we don't know what resistance we might come across. We've got two minutes until the grenades detonated and five until we lose gravity and the base begins to fall into the black hole."
A minute later, they had docked at the entry to the corridor system and received a warning from EDI; the entire tunnel was filled with Collector forces with more closing in on their position from behind; and with four minutes to go they couldn't afford to waste time.
"Check your guns and be ready to move, things are going to get crazy in a minute. Tali, I need you as rear guard; keep your turrets and drones out and stop them from pressing on us. Thane, keep an eye out for targets of opportunity both in front and behind, particularly snipers. I'll clear the area in front. Whatever happens we need to keep moving forward. EDI, can you send support from the Normandy?"
"The last of the ground team have boarded and we are en route to the rendezvous location. There are currently four squad members fit for combat."
"Only four?! What happened to the rest of the team?"
"The other members of the squad sustained varying levels of injuries, ranging from moderate to severe and are confined to the Medical Bay for treatment by Dr Chakwas. The combat effective individuals are Zaeed Massani, Garrus Vakarian, Miranda Lawson and Legion."
"Alright, tell them to grab the heaviest weapons they can manage and go to standby, we don't have much in the way of firepower so we might need them."
"Acknowledged. The fire team is standing by and will clear the LZ upon the Normandy's arrival."
"Thanks EDI. Alright people, this is the end run. Stay together and keep each other safe, I'll make sure we can keep moving ahead."
As if on cue a loud explosion followed by a large tremor rocked the station. Secondary explosions followed soon after, sending uneven ripples through the station as chunks of material began to fall from the roof and entire platforms were shaken free and began plummeting to the ground. A haze of rippling Mass Effect fields enveloped Shepard as he drew his Scimitar, nodded to the pair behind him and took off at a dead run.
Tali left Chatikka behind to alert them when the Collectors reached the corridor before sprinting after Thane and Shepard. They had made it all of fifty metres into the corridor before encountering resistance but it had been quickly dispatched. For the moment the only thing Thane and Tali had to worry about was being hit by falling rubble but soon the resistance intensified with Abominations, Scions and Captains barring their path. About three hundred metres in and still moving at a run to keep up with the Commander, Tali could see that the Collectors had begun advancing behind them and she knew it wouldn't be long before they caught up. She dropped two turrets and a couple of mines as a welcoming committee and kept moving.
For his part, the Commander was moving with a practiced efficiency ('shotgun blast to the torso followed by a biotic strike to the underside of the head, throw field on the trio of husks, decapitate the abomination with omni-blade, stab left blade into the Scion's right knee, duck cannon swing and finish with the right blade slicing through its left thigh and up through its cannon'), and leaving a trail of devastation in his path.
Thane was also displaying his characteristic grace, moving fluidly from point to point, making pinpoint shot after pinpoint shot and dropping their foes as they showed themselves. Tali was causing carnage as well, flashes of plasma, arcs of electricity and the venting steam of overheated weapons were clear signs of her involvement, focusing mainly on supporting Shepard as he continued his assault, tight clusters of plasma erupting on any Collectors that managed to avoid his attention as he moved ahead.
With only one hundred metres to go before and one and a half minutes before the base went (further) to hell, Harbinger made his appearance… flanked by two Praetorians.
Reacting on instinct tot eh threat, he dived into cover just before four lines of super ionized particles ripped through the air where he would have been if he had of kept going.
Now he had a problem though, there was nothing they were carrying that could damage a Praetorian except for the Cain, but firing that inside a narrow corridor at this range would be tantamount to suicide. And being a narrow corridor, the two Praetorians side by side left a total of two metres of free space across the breadth of it.
So he couldn't get past them and he couldn't kill them, that didn't leave a lot of options.
Only distraction.
Opening a private link to Thane he relayed his instructions.
"Thane, I'll draw their attention, Harbinger's only ever been interested in me. Once they take the bait, get Tali and yourself to the Normandy and tell Joker to leave."
Thane hesitated for only a moment, before he nodded slowly in resigned acceptance and farewell.
With that confirmation, Shepard stood up and sprayed the Praetorians and Harbinger with fire to get their attention. As he expected, Harbinger immediately sent the two floating juggernauts after him while directing his own biotic attacks and rifle fire at his fleeing form. Drawing them deeper into the corridor where it widened slightly, the two Praetorians moved straight past Thane and Tali's position, following the Commander with a single minded determination.
He could hear Tali screaming at him over the comm even as Thane grabbed her arm and tried to pull her towards the Normandy.
"I'm Sorry," was all he managed to say, over and over again, not even paying attention to her words; he already knew what she was saying.
He kept pushing back into the Collector forces that now surrounded him, dodging the Praetorians fire as much as possible, but fatigue was beginning to set in, coupled with the exertion of maintaining his barrier under such heavy fire combined and the emotional, mental and physical stress of the last few days.
Cut off as he was, he knew he was going to die; his body couldn't keep going forever and he was nearing his breaking point.
'At least they'll survive this' he thought as his shotgun decapitated another drone, 'and the Reaper's are set back once more.
'I guess it will be up to Garrus now to finish this fight, once the Reapers arrive in force. He showed today that he could lead them, and they'll need a god leader like him when the time comes. Plus I know he'll look after Tali for me,' he thought as his barrier began to slip, the occasional sand-grain sized flecks of enamel pelting and cracking his armour as they passed through the weakened barrier. IN fact, he could have sworn he could he his Turian friend's voice yelling at him over the comm, but everything was becoming difficult to concentrate on.
Looking up, he could just make out Thane still struggling to pull Tali away. They were nearly at the exit to the corridor when that they were suddenly brought into painfully sharp relief in his mind.
Harbinger's puppet had been waiting for his teammates and he watched in clear-minded horror as Thane twitched and staggered as a warp field began to rip into his barriers, just in time for a line of bullets to stitch his body from thigh to shoulder, shattering what remained of his shields and impacting the thinner armour of his back. Thane was flung to the ground by the force of the attacks, his body writhing in pain from the bullets and the biotic field that was now ravaging his unprotected flesh.
John could feel himself taking hits now, as his barriers failed entirely and only his armour stood between his soft innards and the vicious swarm of fire directed at him. Even the best armours can only take so much, and the familiar explosion of pain that accompanied a bullet wound blossomed in multiple spots around his body.
But that pain was nothing compared to what he saw next.
He could see the plasma flares of her weapon's pellets impacting Harbinger's barriers, the Reaper ignoring it like it was a mild inconvenience, well aware that it would still be able to reach her position before the body it controlled could be destroyed, advancing implacably towards the one person Shepard held dearer than any other.
He was spent, he couldn't summon the power to defend himself and he barely had the energy left to stay conscious as his armour's medical programs went into overdrive to try and keep him alive. But seeing the burning avatar of a Reaper advance towards a severely exposed Tali snapped something inside of him.
There was no way he would let anything happen to her so long as he was still alive.
Harbinger continued to approach as Tali remained trapped in the open, firing desperately. It cocked its head as if in curiosity as it studied its prey.
"Quarian; considered due to cybernetic augmentation, weakened immune system deemed too debilitating."
A biotic strike disarmed Tali and sent her sprawling on the floor. Harbinger placed a foot on her back, pinning her in place and causing her to scream in agony as the burns beneath her suit flared in agony upon contact.
"I know you feel your mate's pain Shepard. Your interference has ended, submit now."
Harbinger commanded before raising its rifle to her head, twisting its foot as it did.
"If I know Shepard, your answer is coming at relativistic speeds," a distinctly Turian voice called out as Garrus and the other three members of the fire team crested the hill and, as one, began firing on the horde of Collectors.
And he was right.
Half a second later Shepard slammed into Harbinger's puppet with enough force to knock it clear off of Tali; the dark energy contrail being the only clue to his previous position. This was followed by a thermal clip's worth of pistol rounds being emptied at point blank into its head, each round causing it to jerk violently as round after round slammed into its skull and excised chunks of brain-matter and viscous ichor.
The now thoroughly battered Collector fell to its knees, what little was left of its face and eyes still glowing fiercely with Harbinger's presence, rivers of flame running across its carapace.
"You only damage the vessel, you cannot hurt me."
"Maybe not now, but let's see what happens when you have to enter the fight personally," Shepard spat at the baleful creature, just before it collapsed into ash.
Returning to the wider battle, Shepard found the remnants of his squad still firing heavily on the Collectors, a combination of heavy automatic fire from Zaeed's Revenant, the booming shots of Legion's Widow, persistent missile fire from Garrus and precision heavy pistol rounds and biotic attacks from Miranda.
The number of Collectors had been thinned out considerably, including one of the Praetorians while the other one was beginning to fail under the barrage of fire directed at it.
"Legion, get Thane back to the Normandy, quickly! Zaeed, Miranda, help Tali; Garrus and I will cover you."
"Shepard, I'm not leaving you! Not again!" Tali shouted, furiously struggling to break free of Miranda's grip.
"We'll be right behind you; I don't plan on dying here, not now," he shouted back, silently pleading for her to get to safety while he continued firing at the oncoming horde.
She seemed to relent and the five of them began to fall back quickly. Shepard scooped up Tali's dropped shotgun and added its devastating firepower to the fray as Garrus continued to pour missile fire into the crowd. Priming a frag grenade, he threw it into an approaching cluster of husks, blowing the severely degraded corpses apart while Garrus dropped the launcher and opened fire with his vindicator, picking off advancing Collectors as they tried to rush their position.
"Garrus, go! Get to the Normandy; I just want to leave a final present for our friends."
Garrus growled at the thought before relenting.
"You better be right behind me Shepard, or Tali will kill me, then I'll kill you again when I get to the afterlife!"
Garrus began sprinting back to the Normandy as Shepard popped out of cover and rained plasma on the enemy forces. Dropping back into cover to eject the heat sink, he pulled the last of his grenades out and primed them before tossing them into the rapidly approaching horde. In the time it took for the grenades to detonate, he had the Cain out again and nearly charged.
With one final shot, he released the gigantic warhead into the ceiling of the tunnel 100m, before ducking back behind his cover as the over-pressure wave blasted past him, flinging pieces, and sometimes whole, Collectors and husks dozens of metres.
Making the most of the reprieve, he broke cover and ran as fast as his battered and wounded body would carry him.
Harbinger's disembodied voice boomed in his head as he ran, adding to the chaos that surrounded him as rounds deflected off his abused but finally recharged shields.
"Human, you have changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater; that which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."
Ignoring the omnipresent voice as best he could, he crested the rise and found himself looking at the outside of the Collector base, with the equally battle-worn Normandy less than fifty metres away, hovering off the edge of a ridge. He could see Garrus climb into the airlock door and bring his rifle to bear and cover Shepard as he approached. He could also see Tali, waiting for him despite her wounds and, much to his surprise, Joker was there, cradling his custom-modified, recoilless Avenger, ready to give him cover if needed.
Running as hard as he could, and trying to ignore the warning tones about a breached suit as precious air began to leak out of the numerous holes and wounds he had sustained, he had made it about twenty metres before the mass effect fields holding the station in a stable orbit gave out.
Suddenly, with nothing holding it in place and the immense gravitational and tidal effects of the black hole they were orbiting, the base began to shift and it lurched violently downwards, away from the Normandy. Shepard kept running, hoping EDI could bring the Normandy back in line before he hit the edge; he wasn't coming this close to lose now.
Ten metres to go and the Normandy was practically aligned again, EDI managing to match its fall.
But just as he reached the edge, as he began his leap towards the sanctuary of his ship, the base lurched backwards, tilting him away from his destination.
He found himself leaping towards a target that was now much further away than he had anticipated, the entire sequence feeling all too similar to what had happened on the Derelict Reaper. John slammed chest first into the lower lip of the Normandy's airlock, and the fatigue and injuries really made themselves apparent as he struggled, and failed, to lift himself up.
He could here weapons fire from Garrus and Joker as they tried to suppress the Collectors firing on them when two strong three fingered hands grabbed him under his arms and pulled him into the airlock. Garrus slammed the door shut once they were all inside and the subtle shift in inertia told Shepard that EDI had already begun to move the ship away from the base. The airlock cycled fully and hissed open as Joker hobbled back into the Cockpit, discarding his rifle quickly as he slipped back into his real element.
"Forty three seconds until we enter the Event Horizon. Also, the Main Fusion Core of the base is in the process of a critical meltdown, explosion imminent. 20 seconds, 19, 18-"
"Yeah, we get the gist of it EDI! Calculating course back to the Relay… Done!"
And with that, the Normandy vanished into FTL.
The crew never saw the Collector Base explode violently as its core overloaded.
Nor as the remnants of the Collector Ship were swallowed by the blast, or as the some chunks of debris were swallowed up by the black hole, destroyed in their entirety.
They also didn't see the other sections of the base that were forced clear by the blast, left to float in the accretion disk.
They did, however, see their Commander smiling triumphantly, even as he limped into the Med-Bay, cradling his Quarian love carefully in his arms.
[AN: And there you have it, the final chapter of 'The Abyssal Maw'!
Thank you very much for reading it and I can only hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
A Special thanks to Matthew G Given, V-rcingetorix and kill-phil for there consistent and extremely helpful feedback, this story is much better for your various inputs.
As usual, any and all feedback on this story is hugely appreciated, and if nothing else, I thank you for taking the time to read it.
Thanks again, and expect to see the epilogue to this show up in 'Friendship to Last', once I get back to writing chapters for it. /AN]