Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now, Read, Review Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 19: Feros Part 3

The Mass Relay Decommissioning project. A little on the nose as far as names go but it got the point across. The overarching goal behind the program was relatively simple: figure out a way of dismantling, removing or destroying all of the Mass Relays in the Terminus system. So long as the relays still exist in this sector of space they represent a massive, intolerable threat to Union territory, however small that territory might actually be that they threaten. Obviously, dismantling would receive top priority, at least at first. Here they have massive intelligence capsules detailing highly advance articles of reaper technology such as the secret to the Reaper's durability, details about their power sources that fuel them, information about how they are programmed, and the full extent of the remaining network of Relays. Destroying the Relays would only be done as a last resort, at least until the Relays were no longer within Union or Citadel space, no one wants a repeat of the little incident where the Zroni broke reality so hard that they turned into zombies and rocks learned how to think. The issue here was that the Relays were... stuck for lack of a better term, pinned in place like they were nails driven into the bulletin board of the universe. The Question became a matter of why? Was there an internal mechanism going on that locked the relay in place or was there something else in play. To find out, today's experiment was being conducted.

"Scientific fleet XJ-7, Admiral's log." Admiral 'Krakenorbust243' was also a physicist, ship pilot, and a pool player usually all three at once. He was told to find a way of moving the Mass Relay into another sector of space, a process that had thus far eliminated 'tow with a space ship,' 'Shoot it' and 'Deploy custodian drone' off of the list of possible solutions. Thrice they've managed to trigger automated sub systems that turns on the Relay's and they weren't sure of how to turn them back off, which actually led to the next logical tactic which drew upon the Admiral's long and extensive history, as a pool player. "Is the rail gun loaded?" The Admiral called out as a group of humans manning the consoles explained, surprisingly they went along with the crazy scheme after two failed attempts to move the Relay that was rooted in logic failed.

"Surprisingly yes, we found one that met your exact specifications."

"And my requested control system? I do intend to take the shot myself of course."

One of the Humans let out a exhausted sigh.

"It's ready sir." A interactive holographic display of the Solar system appeared in front of the Admiral, there were some differences from the real solar system, both the flag ship and the Mass Relay were inside of holographic spheres for starters, and a pool cue taller than the admiral itself appeared next to them.

"Excellent!" The Admiral made a show of chalking the Pool Cue, turned the table around to the right angle, and closed half of their eyes while they made a show of lining up the three holograms like a pool player around to take their shot. The cue struck the ship, rather than fly off to crash into the Relay though a meteor was fired out of the Rail Gun and slammed into the Mass Relay and struck it, which to the surprise of many pushed it away. "Play the Control footage." Another Hologram played, a similar attempt was made on an active relay but the Rock was pushed away, when they found a bigger rock and hit the relay any way it didn't move which means... "So it is an active mechanism." The Tebrid Admiral stated while he rested the Cue on its shoulders equivalent. "But how do we get close enough to study it without it turning itself on?" They've studied active relays, but as far as they can tell the entire thing is seamless, which might make sense if the Reapers never saw need to take one apart or conduct maintenance on them down the line. They've had literally all the time in the universe to refine the technology after all, even the stupidest AI program is capable of making innovations when it's set to make slight adjustments to a manufacturing process over dozens of years. Admiral 'Krakenorbust243' didn't think the Reapers were Stupid.

"What now Admiral?" One of the humans at the Console asked typing away. "We design a ship to smuggle a group of our engineers over to the relay and attempt to infiltrate it without it turning on and see if we can determine how to take it apart."

Saying that the Holograms were dropped and the Admiral went back to their games.


Sovereign should've done this hours ago. Using the vastly improved upon biotics of this body they were quickly ripping through the earth separating them from their target, one that was simply, flatly, too big a threat to leave alone. If it was another cycle then they wouldn't really care, the Thorian and its secrets would just die with the rest of the Galaxy but after the Great Burning... No it would be different here, they were going to kill the Thorian, exterminate the Lich's and their malignant influence, restore the Mass Relay network and restore their numbers. A mace of all things smashed through the wall from the other side of the wall that Sovereign's possessed Husk had been tearing at. A familiar figure stepped through from the other side, the Union's so-called Dragoon. Surrounded by this many husks the indoctrination effect would be combined and amplified and they would be able to pick through this creature's rotting brains for all their secrets and afterwards? Let's see how the Union likes seeing their champi-

"Hello!" The Dragoon's cheerful voice range out as she waved a canister at the cybernetic corpse, pulled the pin, and threw it up into the air until it was touching the ceiling, where it detonated. The Caves were collapsing quickly but Shepard had already jumped into more of the fleshy Fungal structures and was now being dragged to the surface.

"Was it really necessary to Mock the blasted Reaper?"

"Obviously. If she ain't pissed then she's not following me to the surface." Shepard replied as she was spat out into the middle of the jungle from one of the Thorian's trees.

An explosion sounded as several boulders were Lifted into the air above the jungle plains.

"Well she's pissed." Shepard didn't waste any time as she made her way to where Sovereign was digging out it's latest body, despite having to dodge home made meteors all along the way, or just smashing them with her mace, either one worked.

Shepard remembered the training the Skeleton put them through. When a Reaper possesses a husk it eats up their concentration, they go from being a gigantic sea monster-esque ship to a normal sized mook and the adjustment period throws them through a loop. Do not Use this period of time to kill it. Kill all the other husks around them first, if a Reaper has decided that it needs to kill you off in person then losing one body isn't going to stop it, one gets destroyed it instead switches over to another one. If You really want to hurt it? Kill all the other husks first. After the Meteors came the Asari Husks, if Shepard wanted to use her Plasma caster against the boss bitch then she had to work on dealing with all the little ones first. Thus Shepard's opening move was to run towards the two husks that had dug themselves out of the ground while firing her laser rifle at them. The rifle hit and diffused over the biotic barriers which while doing no damage by themselves left the two cybernetic zombies blinded as Shepard spun around to the side and delivered a skulls crushing blow to the back of their necks with her club.

"Shepard to the air team. I need a spotter!" Shepard stated as she pulled out her Rail gun. "I got Husks down here!" Shepard pulled out by far the largest of her weapons, the rail gun, and took aim.

"Three o'clock." Shepard turned to her left and fired the rail gun, the weapon letting off a shot that tore through trees, a boulder, before finally several of the husks that were digging themselves out of the ground half a mile away. "Five forty five." Shepard turned again and fired the weapon again obliterating another group of husks that were emerging from the ground. "Eleven. Eight fifteen. Seven." Like that Shepard continued to swivel in place annihilating husks one after another.


The decimation of the forest was not going unnoticed from the Prothean Ruins/converted Exo-geni HQ where Saren and Liara were in the middle of disposing of the Geth on the planet. For once the Exo-geni Execs had made themselves useful, to attach their ship to the ruins the Geth had to keep open several temporary security doors that had been installed in the temple by Exo-Geni.

"Almost done and... there!" Security doors that were a few generations out of date, and had been otherwise recalled because of a common glitch in the door's pressure regulating software that disables the attempts to close the doors if they can feel a obstruction, like a person, or the anchor of a Geth ship. Several doors snapped shut on the legs of the Geth ship cutting them in the process and sending the entire ship crashing down onto the jungle below, no signal connecting the Geth together again and suddenly they all lost functionality. "That's the Geth dealt with." Saren stated looking down at the ruins of the Geth ship he and Liara used Exo-Geni's lack of OSHA compliance to destroy. "Now what are we going to do about those?" The jungle was actively being torn apart, Shepard's game of wack-a-mole was having a lot of collateral damage. "You've been researching the Thorian." Saren stated as he turned around to face the scientist and executives that he didn't trust not to get killed by the Thorian or the Geth while he wasn't looking. "What's the easiest way to kill the creatures that it's raised?"

"When Exo-geni was first colonising the planet the plants kept getting in the way, we'd cut them down and they grew back the next day, eventually Exo-Geni resorted to salting the earth, and then ceased when they learned that the cause had been the Thorian. As a result..." The Scientist brought up a map on his Omni-tool and indicated a Cargo Hold where a large crate dubbed 'toiletries and other supplies' was located. "We now have a massive quantity of Thorian Fungicide that we've only barely tapped."

"Toiletries?" Liara asked looking at the crate in question.

"For potential inspections, obviously we can't just tell the Council that we seriously considered gassing all the local plant life into submission now can we?" The Scientist explained bluntly.

"Underground storage, Toiletires, understood." Saren made his way over to the elevator again, grabbed the cable with his metal arm and promptly zip lined down producing sparks all along the way.

The Cargo shuttle was where the map said it was, it's 'Toiletries' still in the back ready and waiting to be put to use, thus Saren climbed, used spectre clearance to override the controls and flew the cargo shuttle over the battle ground. Of course a cargo shuttle didn't have a convenient feature built in so that it could spray Fungicide all over the jungle, so Saren whipped out his side arm, took aim at the back of the Shuttle after sticking his head and arm out and promptly made a few.


Down below Shepard was starting to struggle with keeping up with the enemy numbers after they wised up and sprung out from directly underneath her, they were nothing that a few foot stomps didn't solve but it took time away spent on sniping the enemy, time that the enemy used to toss boulders into the air and toss them at Shepard that she had to deal with costing her even more of her focus and buying even more time for the undead monsters to sprout. While this was going on Saren flew overhead, spilling fungicide all along the way, the heavy poisonous gas soon filled the semi-collapsed area that was left when Shepard and Kaiden collapsed the underground in order to Bury Sovereign and their monsters, all of the husks were withering away and collapsing as soon as they reached the surface, not that there were any left that were still underground.

"Is That all of them?" Shepard asked as she looked around at her surroundings.

"Exo-Geni's putrid gas. Bleg." Shepard's conversational partner sounded suspiciously like it was sick in its mouth, which was impressive since it shouldn't have a mouth, or a gag reflex for that matter. "Yes the majority of the corrupted has been eliminated." The ground started to shake. "All except for one that is." A tree covered in the light of Biotics was hurled through the air and speared Saren's cargo shuttle, with a powerful push all of the gas was pushed away from what was now a clearing filled with toxic slush, and a giant of a figure that had emerged protected by a powerful Biotic Barrier. "Naturally I'll leave that to you."

"Jeez thanks a lot." Shepard stated as she cracked her neck and then her fingers. The Monster leaped through the air, supported by a Biotic enhanced leap, finger claws held tight together as she attempted to Spear Shepard. She missed of course but then followed up with a massive roar of Ultra sound.

"Why are you not submitting to my power!?"

"I have no reason to tell you, you ugly Banshee. For one thing we're in the middle of a fight."

Shepard's advantage: Sovereign wasn't used to fighting in a humanoid body. The Possessed Banshee's advantage: Overwhelming Biotic power. Not a great match-up. The Banshee swung her claws with over whelming Biotic Force, each claw swipe equivalent to a tonne of force, However Shepard had her own heavy hitter in the form of a oversized club, when the two forces clashed, the club broke, but the arm of the Banshee was torn off.

"Insolent whelp!" The Banshee used it's remaining arm to rip several boulders out of the ground, the combination of the Thorian borne Asari's superior control over her bodily functions, Superior Reaper technology, and being directly empowered by Sovereign made for a unstoppable monstrosity, and threw them into the air before slamming them at Shepard who ended up weaving a path through the falling rock to safety. "Dog of the Zroni! Do you even have the slightest idea of what your masters did!?" The Boulders were fired at Shepard like they were inside of a cannon. "The lives that were lost!?" The sufficiently spread out now, the boulders began circling around the area striking at the entire area. "Do you!?" Among Shepard's telephathically-shoved-into-her-skull-reading on the Reapers during the last cycle was information on their propaganda and what they told their followers: Preservers they called themselves, taking entire chunks of civilisation, history and culture in the form of the people who experienced and knew of it and cramming them into their technorganic hell.

"Wow you guys really believe your own narrative do you!?" Shepard shouted as she got her Plasma caster ready. The Banshee pulled together the swirling stones into a barrier that was promptly demolished by a plasma shot. "Tell me something 'Sovereign' do you know what you've destroyed? What was destroyed to make you!?" Another shot, another boulder sacrificed to take the hit. "Do you remember the name of the species that was slaughtered like pigs to give you life? A favourite food? The light of the Morning sun on your face!" With a Shriek the Banshee released another mass of Boulders against Shepard. "Of course you don't! You're just Preserved goods, like pickles in a Jar! Anything that was worth wild about you was sucked out and stuffed full of so many preservatives that nobody wants any of it!" With a swing of her arm Shepard destroyed one of the boulders that were sent flying at her. "C'mon yah Pickle! I wanna play in the muck!"

Shepard applied telekinesis to the ground around her, not to rip out chunks of it and send it flying like her opponent has been, but to use a vibrating telekinetic force to set the muck around her on fire, lighting the entire pit full of melted organic matter laced with chemicals on fire in the process and filling it with obscuring smoke. The Banshee lashed out, Biotic slams and warps tearing through the entire area with various area of effect attacks trying her damnedest to hit Shepard with everything she had. Alas she had already lost track of Shepard figuring that she was planning on hitting her with that oh so annoying Plasma caster to detonate her Barriers, instead she was hit by a blast of plasma from the sky, completely obliterating the Banshee with a hit normally reserved for punching through ship armour.


The reserve teams came in a little later and conducted a sweep of the area, Kaiden, who was carrying a barrel full of Thorian fungus and the comatose body of a Asari woman was picked up first, after that was Saren who had to be pulled out of the wreckage of the cargo shuttle full of Thorian Fungicide, Liara was still in the converted Prothean Temple alongside a group of now arrested Exo-Geni Execs. Shepard on the other hand was found floating in a pile of Thorian Sludge with the presence of Reaper Nano-tech.

"So they Quarantined yah?" Wrex had come to visit Shepard while she was under observation in Quarantine. Of course there was a sheet of see through aluminium between them.

"Kinda yeah. Even without the Reaper Tech in that sludge there's still so many things that are funky about that sludge that everyone's erring on the side of caution." Shepard was lounging on the simple cot that had been prepared for her in her combat fatigues.

"Is it really that bad?" Wrex asked looking at Shepard concerned.

"If that slime ball was telling the truth then it's actually really that good." Shepard replied with a smile.

"Right well, I need to speak with your mother anyway." Wrex let out a sigh. "Now that the Council actually has to take us seriously now there's some pretty nasty stuff that those Pyjak's have been up to that needs answering for."

"Mom isn't the kind of person to take crap lying down." Shepard explained smirking nastily.


Sha'ira was a Asari commando, and personal Bodyguard to One Matriarch Benezia, who had recently been assigned to a corporate blacksite on Noveria when a matter of diplomatic sensitivity had been made known to council. So how exactly had she ended up inside of the Thorian on Feros? For that the telepathic fungus that Kaiden had retrieved from Feros was interrogated in order to find out.

"So this 'Sha'ira' was working with Desolas." Admiral Shepard asked looking at Kaiden exasperated. "He fed her to the Thorian as payment for it giving him a so-called 'Prothean Cipher' that lets me make sense of all the stuff that the Beacon on Therum shoved inside of his head?"

"Not just payment." Kaiden felt compelled to correct. "Being a Turian he's violently allergic to the Thorian's spores so he couldn't take it in himself, instead he had to get, at minimum, a empath to get the Cipher and then download that into him."

"So now he can decipher the contents of the Prothean Beacon?" Admiral Shepard this time directed the question not to Kaiden, but instead to the mad scientist in whose custody her daughter has been for the past decade and a half.

"That would be the case. More importantly, so can we." Skeletor directed the group towards the nearest console, where the downloaded contents of Shepard's Grey Box was located. "This however pales in comparison to the other prize of the day." Skeletor directed the group's attention to the large containment tube he had prepared, filled with the Thorian Sample that Kaiden had rescued from Feros. The grossly oversized fungus visibly vibrated at the attention.

"Yes! Gaze upon my majesty!"

"Oi shroom head, you quivering like that makes you look more cowardly than magnificent." To Kaiden's criticism the fungus with a god complex stopped moving.

"Can this thing do what it claims?" Admiral Shepard asked looking at the creature.

"For that we turn to it's patients." The Asari Sha'Ira and the numerous Salarian colonists had been put into Quarantine, the latter were doing better than the first, just... standing around, they looked at each other, their heads swivelling to and fro like they were having a conversation with each other but no words were being echoed.

"The Salarian's are... interesting. The Protheans thoughts never came as fast or numerous as they do. I look forward to when I absorb them into my mass." The Thorian seemed a little too eager.

"The consumption of Sapient organisms is considered to be a crime against sapient life." Kaiden replied bluntly.

"If I am not allowed to consume how am I to grow?"

"If they want to be 'absorbed' into your body after their death that's their business." Kaiden replied bluntly.

"We're getting off topic. What about her?" Admiral Shepard asked indicating the unconscious woman on a bed nearby.

"Vast portions of her brain has been rewritten, I've found extra optic nerves leading to eyes that don't exist." Skeletor stated indicating the brain scan of the woman in question. "Additionally in comparison to a Normal Asari this one's glands are larger than a Normal Asari, and some are missing, as if someone ran out of room."

"Never consumed a Asari before. I only had Protheans and Salarian's to work with up until this point."

"There's a Asari right there that you consumed." Kaiden stated indicating the woman on the Hospital bed.

"By the time I got to her, her brain had already turned into mush."

"Sounds like Indoctrination." Kaiden stated bluntly, which now leads to the main cusp of the situation.

"So you think that you can reverse the effects of Indoctrination?" Admiral Shepard asked looking at the Brain Scan of the Thorian's hack job.

"Give me A healthy Asari that I can learn from and I will show you the limits of my abilities."

"There's no reason for you to be greedy you giant fat mushroom. Provided that the other half of your claim proves to be true." Thus the report of another Shepard was brought up.

Firstly, Shepard had not been infected by any reaper Nano-tech, more important than that though was a cat scan conducted on her head and the samples extracted from her head. Her Cerebrospinal Fluid had increased in it's viscosity, a byproduct of mixing with the Thorian's spores, and despite getting repeatedly hit by the Ultra sound indoctrination from Sovereign's husks, or Banshee's as Shepard was calling them, she showed no brain damage to indicate indoctrination. The Thorian had protected her, as it had protected the Salarian colonists.

"No wonder Sovereign wants to kill you so badly." Admiral Shepard looking at the Thorian and smirking. Reversing and immunising people from the effects of indoctrination, one of the Reaper's greatest weapons effectively neutralised, with one small caveat. "How much of the Thorian have we gotten from the planet?"

"Without being contaminated by Exo-Geni's fungicide or Reaper tech?" Kaiden asked and then answered by pointing at the barrel sized sample he took from Feros. "That and whatever we can get from Exo-Geni, one of them mentioned that they were shipping samples of those Creeper Things off world, something about cheap labour?"

"I should use them as Cheap Labour!" The Thorian's pettiness was as clear as day and also not remotely helpful.

"Right now the biggest concerns are the talk of the Prothean's secret weapon against the Reapers that was mentioned in the information dumped into Shepard. 'The Conduit' whatever that is, whatever it does, we figure it out, because Sovereign and Desolas want it awfully bad. In the mean time our job is two fold, start filtering the sludge down there of chemicals and reaper tech for anything useful, and inflating this thing back up to size while we start manufacturing as much Indoctrination Vaccines as possible. In the mean time get a team together and head over to our last lead on Noveria."

"Which reminds me." Kaiden spoke up at this point in time. "Sha'Ira here works for one Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, mother of our very own Doctor T'Soni, currently posted at the research facility of Binary Helix located on Scenic Noveria." The group let out a collective groan at that.


Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: Glad you like it thus far. I think that if humanity is stupid enough to make Skynet we deserve to be wipe out. I like the Legendary Heroes.

Clown2107: Fungus. And it's not just the fact that people are having a hard time killing it, it's also the ability to recreate and control life, near as it can tell it's not far off from god hood, and perhaps it wouldn't survive if the Union, or the Reapers for that matter, seriously put in the effort necessary to kill it but that's irrelevant, because it's more useful alive anyway. It's not that they want to ally with Sovereign, rather they tried to put themselves into a position where they could manipulate the Batarian's as cannon fodder, not realising that the Batarian's were already being manipulated by something that was far better at it.

Chronos3035: You are right that the Reapers are targeting the Prethoryn but not the reasons for it, the Reapers core philosophy is that they are not destroying the races that they genocide for raw material to give birth to more of their own kind, but preserving them, the Prethoryn's uniqueness makes them worth all the more preserving. The core of that Preservation is the belief that all life will inevitably build synthetics to ease their own burdens and those synthetics will then surpass their own creators and turn against them. We'll see in ME2 era.