Author's Note: Okay so... yeah it's pretty hectic today. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 54: Omega Part 2

17M 14D 12H Until the Colossus Fires

Armax Arsenal was a business of many products. Guns, Armour, Heavy Vehicles, Amps, basically anything that the Turian military can use to beat someone to death with. And yet there was one exception in terms of their products, not something that existed solely to push the military agenda of their species, which was impressive since it was a Turian founded and owned company. Armax Arsenal Arena was a company that promised simulated death matches in the worst battlefields across the galaxy, it also served as a excellent platform to advertise Armax's arms and armours and on top of that was extremely popular as use for a training exercise by the Turian military, there were even some schools with their own sims built right in.

Omega ironically boasted as the only location to be the sight of an actual arena and one of its simulated battlefields, albeit it's a version of Omega that no longer exists. AAA recently had an improvement in its technology, Biotic fields shaped by psionics via a Grey Boxed Thorian cluster and coloured in via various rare crystal light projectors. Unlike previous gens of AAA technology which basically had drones projecting blocks of Mass Effect fields with holographic stand-in's inside the combination of biotics and psionics could create precise shapes while the Rare Crystal projectors fill in the images from a distance using invisible spectrums of light that are then guided, filtered and mixed by the biotic/psionic fields into precise colours, all for the purpose of creating more realistic targets to shoot at and get shot by in return.

As someone who enjoyed violence herself, Aria understands the appeal significantly, but no danger? That's the best part. For now the arena served as a means of down time for her troops, and some passive income for her from the betting pool that had already formed. For now the main concerns are turned away from Aria and the latest business venture to sweep through Omega and instead towards the arena's contestants.

"Ripper are you in position yet!?" Garrus spat into his communicator, he along with Butler and Sidonis were the first three going into the sim today.

"Almost. Just remember to keep the distraction running and I'll have grabbed what we need by the time we're done." Ripper replied bluntly and Garrus could only sigh.

The Arena has various ways that it keeps track of the score, starting with three tiers of enemies Foot, Elite and Super, several self inflicted penalties such as No Medi-Gel, No Heatsink pickups, One shot Participant Shields, Enhanced Enemy Shields and finally Enhanced Enemy Damage, additional bonuses will be reward for finishing under five standard minutes, a bonus capture objective and for racking up a kill streak the higher the better. On top of that Omega being the lawless cesspit that it is the safeties that would normally make the holographic bullets dissolve on contact with Garrus and company instead maintain their full lethality. On top of everything else for Garrus and the others to keep the distraction going they'd have to keep scoring in the top fifty percent of the arena otherwise they'll be eliminated from the running and Ripper will lose access to the arena that he needs. Well this was gonna be a long day it would seem.

"So as I understand this Garrus has some kind of harebrained scheme to shut down Aria's drug operation?" Shepard was moving through the crowds while wearing a hoodie made out of reflective material, she could keep organic eyes from recognising her with her psionics, but mechanical eyes was another matter. The hoodie reflected invisible light spectrums, unnoticeable to most, but the cameras picked up on it and were blinded by it. It was a relatively common choice of outfit on Omega, after all there are countless people who come here to simply disappear.

"Yes, and he and the members of his team are in danger. Partly because this is Omega, partly because they're tampering with Contingency technology, but mostly because Aria's looking for him." Liara explained from her proverbial mission control centre aboard the cargo ship.

"Aria has a bounty out on all of the people who were involved in losing Omega to the Union the first time around and Garrus is on the list. If she gets her hands on him, if she already realises that he's there in the middle of her arena..."

"People of Omega! We have a celebrity guest joining us today!" Aria's voice echoed across the entire station as Shepard cursed in her mind. "Officer Garrus Vakarian! One of the bastards responsible for turning our Omega into a Union fortress!" Across every Vid-screen on Omega the same footage of Garrus, Sidonis and Butler was playing. "And now it's time for Omega's golden rule folks! No one fucks with Aria T'loak!"

Aria pressed a hidden button in her office, a little something something that she had been saving for exactly when she wants to make a show out of executing someone. Immediately the holographic weapons in Garrus and his team's hands disappeared but that was the least of their concerns. This being the first match the Arena had been set to the relatively safe Arena classic, Garrus and his two teammates ducked behind some of the cover as they got to work. At once the three aliens emptied the ammo containers from their armours, but it wasn't heat sinks that came out, instead they rapidly assembled together three side arms.

While the three of them worked the holograms of the Arena started to break down, becoming glitch ridden and scrambled as if they were made out of snowy static. Suddenly the barrier the trio had been hiding behind turned into a wall with a broken gas pipe, which then started to spew flames as the three of them ducked out of the way. Similar chaos was breaking out all across the arena, tunnels for trains suddenly opened up as the vehicles in question zoomed by, rocks fell from the sky and crashed into the arena floor, trees appeared along the perimeter of the arena with lashing vines. The five walls disappeared and each of them was replaced by a different massive figure, on one side, a Reaper Destroyer ravaged a city and glared at them ominously, the second a Valhallan YMIR Giant glared within a metal station, the third a Huge Thresher Maw roared in the jungles of Tuchanka, the fourth a Unbidden warship surrounded by the fog of the Shroud and along the fifth Aria seated in her lounge a smile on her face and a glass of wine in her hand. The match hadn't even started yet and they were already being subjected to enough of the Arena's madness to kill all of them five times over.

"Over Kill much?" Garrus asked sarcastically as he glared up at the Aria projection who simply smiled back at him and snapped her fingers. The Score board started counting down and the first wave of enemies was released.

"Damnit!" Shepard growled as she already started to think up what way that she would break the arena.

Already Sidonis was conveying telemetry to the rest of the group. He's been a AAA fan for years, and a regular participant. He already has all the arena's mapped out and the data loaded into his visor and the timing for when the hazards activate, he wasn't accounting for Aria doing something like turning on all the hazards at once though. Nor did he count on having to fight the worst that the galaxy has to offer in the first five minutes of stepping into the ring. A bloody Reaper Brute, a squad of Valhallans cocked their weapons, a pack of Varren ran out from the woods and a bloody Mass Effect slinging Wizard appeared above them and they were all aiming straight at them. From the nearby buildings the laser sights of a group of snipers swept the battlefield.

"I hate this station." Butler stated as he pulled out his own secret weapon.

The enemies before them were massive, super classed enemies, each of them fully capable of wreaking enough havoc on the battlefield to see entire squadrons wiped out, and all of them had the same glaring weakness. Butler tossed his canister full of exotic gas and let the plasma grenade explode eating up a huge chunk of the arena in the process. Sidonis had already led the group to the perfect place to wait out the explosions, the train tracks or rather the area that had been stripped of obstacles in anticipation of a train coming in. Hopefully the blast was large enough to strip them of enemies and make a hole to evacuate the platform, though it wasn't big enough to damage the non-biotic shields that they got through their union contacts.

"Nice try, but the Union anticipated little cheaters like you smugling in the extra nasties when they made this place with armax." The smoke cleared, the floor stood unharmed and the holograms were reappearing. "So they specially reinforced the floors and walls of the arena with Neutron matter! Thanks for nothing losers!"

Garrus nodded to his two partners in crime, while the monsters had been temporarily taken out of the fray Garrus and the others were getting into position with their real secret weapon. Holograms were tricky things to deal with, but relatively brittle. Being composed entirely of immaterial things, and having a large amount of their energy wasted on colour, they were easy to take apart, provided the right tools. An ion laser disrupts energy flow, fairly effective against most electronics, horrible as most everything else. Most. The three men each picked targets out of the half forming holograms and fired, high intensity ion lasters filled up the Mass Effect field of a charging Brute, the electrical particles were excited and then broken apart.

"Now if only real Brutes were that easy." Garrus commented as he and the others went to work, the smaller holograms took fewer ions to break apart so Garrus and company could do them in a sweep.

Aria glared down in blatant dissatisfaction as she changed the parameters of the arena. As the holo monsters were getting swept away under the ion beams it was becoming rapidly apparent to anyone watching that medium sized enemies were simply not going to cut it, they couldn't soak up blasts, got in each other's way, and taxed the arena's output with sheer numbers. So instead Aria went for 'bigger is better' a Praetorian appeared above the arena's obstacles, a Fenrir climbed over anything that got in his way. A unfamiliar four armed Goliath jumped into the air and swung on the Praetorian like a gorilla swinging on vines, finally Garrus and company had to abandon their patch of relatively safe territory.

"In coming!" A digital meteor fell from the ceiling and nearly crushed the trio before they jumped out of the way into different directions.

The Goliath swung off of the Praetorian and went for Sidonis, unfortunately for the beast the Turian chose his cover well, a broken gas pipe spewing fire all over the beast prompting the simulated behaviour of getting torched followed up by getting lasered to the face until it disappeared. Butler had been caught by the Praetorian in a lift attack, which suited him just fine as he had another exotic gas canister and he wasn't afraid to use it. Butler threw the grenade and watched as it bounced off of the head of the Praetorian before it went off like the ball of fire it was destined to become. The hologram exploded, Butler was thrown by the blast and his back cracked as he bounced off of the score screen for the arena landing on top of the machine and loudly groaning on top of that.

Garrus was being hunted by the Fenrir, normally a fight between a giant armoured wolf monster and a fleshy little turian without any biotics would result in the turian getting squished, bitten in half, blasted into oblivion from afar etc etc. Here on the other hand, there were a plethora of buildings, simulated buildings yes, but unlike what happens when a real building suddenly has two very real tonnes of durasteel perched on top of it these ones weren't collapsing under the false weight or being destroyed by the false claws trying to rip the simulated building apart allowing Garrus to fire into the creature at whim. Then the building disappeared, and good thing too, because Garrus hightailed it out of there fast before the train came in and smashed into the Fenrir at full force. Turns out stuffing as much random stuff into the arena as possible was just as hazardous to itself as it would be the people Aria was trying to kill. Worst. Execution. Ever!

"Well if that's how it's going to be." Aria continued to mess with the dials, the trees, the trains, the falling rocks, the monsters and mercenaries, all of it disappeared and was replaced.

"We might not have an ion laser big enough for this for this." All of the Arena's assets had been repurposed for one singular purpose, a giant holographic Aria had suddenly appeared in the middle of the arena and grinned as she looked down at the two Turian's and Batarian. The giant personification of Omega's ruler reached down and grabbed Garrus in her hand as he lifted him up to her face. "No one!" Aria growled was as deep as ever. "Fu-!"

Suddenly all power in the arena went out, all the power in the district went out, with both the arena and the security system compromised everyone would in theory be free to move where-ever that they want, including Garrus entering a free fall, luckily Sidonis was there for him to land on.

"Does anyone know what just happened?"

Across the district, one of the main power stations that distributed power across the station from Omega's primary Zero Point Module had been torn open and repeatedly smashed.

Over all they had gotten through pretty well, considering the fact that most of the people on the station had expected a TPK and they walked away with nothing more than broken bones. Course they weren't out of the woods yet, they still had to get Butler off of the score board, and by now Aria would have every two bit thug in screaming distance on their way here to kill them all. And they were sitting here armed with less than a dozen grenades between them and pistols that people would find mildly irritating at best. Well it's not the worst last stand that he's been in, but it might be the last. The door leading into the arena slid open, a line of thugs waiting to riddle them full of holes was on the other side, and they promptly fell over.

"Howdy!" Behind them was a smiling woman in a black jumpsuit, far too tall for her species, said jumpsuit and her face were both covered in blood spatter and a long mace sitting on her shoulder also had blood all over it.

"Shepard?" Garrus looked confused for a few moments before he quickly fired his ion laser at Shepard burning a hole through her sweater's shoulder.

"OW! What was that for!?" Shepard growled even as her body's medical suite fixed her shoulder.

"You're supposed to be dead and we're in a holo-chamber what am I supposed to think?" Garrus stated as he kept his weapon trained on Shepard. "And yet you still have a weapon trained on me." Shepard growled definitely not feeling like she was being given the whole 'thank you for saving me' vibe.

"If Aria could get a team of Tebrids to program you into the sim they can probably program in reactions to getting hit by a laser." Garrus stated bluntly.

"Oh for Dragon's- You plowed Tali and you made her sick! There I know something about you only I would know!"

Well, most of the people on the Normandy at the time knew about it, Tali was coughing up mucus and flem for days after that, so clearly she had done something.

"You made someone sick just by having sex with them?" Sidonis asked sounding in incredulous. Garrus appeared to think about it for a moment.

"Asari." Was the Turian's simple reply.

"No she isn't Tali's a Quarian! Her immune system is piss-poor and Mordin told her to have sex with someone as a impromptu booster shot!" Shepard snapped having it up to here with this conversation. "For Dragon's sake Garrus now you're the one who doesn't know things that he should! Maybe you're the hologram instead!?" Shepard didn't have to do that, she could already read all three of their minds and see how on edge they had been, but that is that and this is this. Garrus put his weapon down and away.

"I saw the Adjutant take you off the ship. The Blast that consumed you could've been seen from the far side of the Terminus. I still have no idea how you could possibly be standing here right now and we will talk about that later." Garrus summed up his end of the situation as he looked up at the score board where Butler was. "We need to get Butler down from there. Any ideas?" Shepard walked up to Garrus and did two things. First, the Dragoon bopped Garrus in his nose making it bloody in the process. "I probably deserve that." Garrus noted after stumbling for a moment. Secondly Shepard whipped out a plasma shot gun and aimed it at the cord connecting the score board to the ceiling.

"Whoever you are, I suggest you find something to hold onto." Butler wrapped both of his arms around the central cable of the score board as he knew exactly where this was going. Shepard fired her weapon once and hit the cable, a few moments later it snapped and the entire thing soon came crashing down with Butler on top of it. Suddenly Shepard moved, yanked herself through the air with telekinesis and grabbed Butler cushioning his body with more telekinetic fields.

"Thanks." Shepard pushed custody of the wounded Batarian onto Garrus before she pulled out a marker of all things and went to the score board.

"What are you doing?" Garrus asked looking at Shepard suspiciously.

"Preparing our escape."

Aria was not having a good time, even with the power out the communicators were still working, so small miracles she guessed. Right now Aria's forces were getting ready to storm the holo-chamber, their attempts to seize the one responsible for sabotaging the waylay station but were ultimately foiled. It stunk, it stunk of people screwing around with other people's minds again, more of the Union's Void magic, and even worse than that she had no idea of how to stop them, no convenient technology that she had access to that could keep them from pulling stunts like this.

"Aria, we have them." So you can imagine the pirate Queen's surprise when she heard her subordinates had managed to capture the people that she had posted the bounty for in the first place, and after arriving in the Armax Arsenal Arena her sheer disappointment at what they had captured.

"Just to clarify: where are the cop and his cohorts?" Aria asked as she stared straight ahead at the ruins of her arena.

"Right there mam!" One of the Eclipse Mercenaries directly indicated the crudely drawn picture of two turians and a Batarian on the broken score board.

"I see." Aria stated looking extremely annoyed. "Your gun. Now!" The warlord was so done with this it wasn't even funny. Wordlessly the Asari fired a single shot into the side of the head of the guy that one of the psykers had screwed with and turned to face the crowd. "Now is there anyone else who thinks that there's a bunch of people standing there?" Aria shouted indicating the area in front of the broken scoreboard. Naturally, nobody dared to counter what Aria was saying. "Good. There's a psyker on the station screwing with your heads! Someone figure out how to make them stop screwing with us or this-" Aria indicated the man she just shot in the head "-Is going to be a common occurrence. Now find those bastards and put some slugs in their heads!" Aria stormed off back to her office.

The many mercenaries paid a look at the doodle that was left before they returned to their respective patrols. This was understandable, after all they weren't looking at the doodle, but the four people who were standing in front of it.

"This is devious, even for you." Garrus stated watching as Shepard had just shamelessly made Aria terrorise all of her men into ignoring them.

"I love telepathy." Shepard stated smirking widely as she and Garrus helped Butler out of the arena. "Now than. Perhaps you would like to explain to me just what exactly you fools are planning!?"

Garrus led Shepard back to their base in the Eezo refinery, the other members of the team was there, mostly Salarian's and Turian's, there was one relatively young Asari dressed in the reds of the Justicar order. Ripper had already long made it back, Shepard's destroying the power relay was both hugely convenient and a massive pain for him but he managed to get what the group needed anyway, which led to the next question.

"Why the hell are you knuckle heads playing around with a terminator!?" The thing that Ripper had been working on was the guts of a Terminator.

The majority of the weapons technology had been removed or replaced, leaving behind a human like metal endo-skeleton.

"Stopping Aria's self destructive idiocy is a good start." Ripper had taken something from the arena, the spare holoprojector, which the Salarian took the liberty of installing into the chest cavity of the Terminator before taking a step back. "You lot could very well write her off as being indoctrinated or a criminal or some such but the simple fact of the matter is that she's the criminal in charge of the Terminus Front. This is our better alternative." Ripper waved his omni-tool and the terminator came to life slowly moving into a standing position. "And now for the final touch." With a second omni-tool wave Ripper commanded the holo device to activate, with a ripple a biotic-psionic field surrounded the machine, followed up by rare crystal firing into the field at ultra high alternating pulses producing colours until an exact copy of Aria T'loak had taken the place of the Terminator.

Shepard stared at the machine for a few moments, glared more accurately, before, with a look that bordered on the absolutely murderous, she turned her gaze towards Garrus and grabbed him by his head to make sure they were eye to eye.

"Hey Garrus. Are you going to tell me now that you seriously weren't planning on putting Omega under the control of a Terminator?" The Dragoon was not happy, not happy at all.

"We're going to be in control of it the entire time." Garrus defended himself but Shepard was not having it.

"I just spent ten minutes inside of Aria's head and I can confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that this thing isn't going to fool anyone for one single minute!" Shepard snapped bluntly. "Have you idiots thought about the texture of her skin? Her private pass-codes, her body language?" Shepard did not like any of this, not one bit.

"It doesn't have to fool people for long, just long enough for us to 'rescue Aria.'" Garrus pointed out, trying to calm Shepard down, and thus far failing. "Can someone mind explaining to me what scheme you stupid people have managed to concoct and how I can get in on it?"

Ah yes, Garrus has missed Shepard, there was a distinct lack of absurdly tall women swinging around maces as heavy as some mountains in his life before she showed up and it was a absence all the more notable after her disappearance.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: On the one hand the first three games left a high bar to pass, on the other hand Andromeda took the bar and buried it.

Monster King: I plan to thank you.