I'll admit that I was surprised that this universe's Progenitors were willing to let me keep what I had looted from the city, which only increased when they revealed that they did not intend to settle in that city, instead choosing to build their home near the planet's Southern magnetic pole. Though, a quick examination of that area revealed a good reason for this: it turned out that that particular area also had some progenitor ruins in them, albeit ones that had seemed to be under constant assault by storms. Some data I'd surreptitiously obtained from my new neighbors confirmed that yes, these storms were caused by a piece of Progenitor technology, one that I was already making moves to acquire. A couple of nanites mixed into a rainstorm would be all I'd need to hack into their databanks and download the schematics for that device (which were only present on databanks already on planet - it was lost technology for the newly arrived Progenitors). Additionally, orbital scanning also noted that the area was fairly resource rich, which led me to another possible reason they wanted to inhabit this region: they wouldn't need to worry about resource shortages. All nearby natural resources in my territory were already being exploited by yours truly, so they probably assumed I might charge them for those commodities. Choosing a base location where all available resources were untapped meant no conflict for those resources, so they could focus on building up their civilization. I could respect that train of thought.

I was also able to use my advanced hacking software to determine another important tidbit of information about the newest arrival on planet: they really did want peace. Even the most militant of them wanted to use diplomacy instead of violence, at least for the moment. The reasons were simple: they lacked the numbers and resources for a conflict. While they did have a technological edge against most of the human factions on Chiron, reverse engineering from the ruins dotting this world's surface had narrowed the gap, meaning that unless the Progenitors had the element of surprise when they attacked, they would be forced into a war of attrition, which, given their numbers, was infeasible. Additionally, attacking one human faction would likely unite the rest against the supposed alien menace, which would make the number disadvantage even worse. For now, at least, the Progenitors preferred peaceful interaction to warfare. As long as thy stayed that way, I wasn't inclined to act against them, aside from stealing their tech, of course.

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With no conflicts to fight and no new people to meet and tech to steal besides that of the newly arrived aliens, I decided to spend some time integrating what technology I had into my existing forces.

First off was the Progenitor technology: thanks to my new acquisitions from the abandoned city (which the Progenitors had requested be turned into a museum and not exploited any further), I was able to begin creating several artifacts that could assist my forces. The first to exit the design area was the Tessellation Foundry. A marvel of engineering, it's in-game benefit allowed you to complete production of military units 30% faster than normal. Given that most of my forces counted as military units, and my already absurdly fast construction, the foundry ended up boosting my unit production rates to ludicrous speed. Plaid was unfortunately not yet attainable.

Additionally, I was able to start acquiring artifacts that were Old Earth in Origin. I think the arrival of the aliens caused the colonists to become more paranoid, because they started asking if I was willing to trade anymore of my technology. Ok, scratch thought, I knew they were getting more uneasy: having a shared consciousness has its benefits. Anyways, the 'United Colonies' were surprisingly reasonable about their requests: they'd offer me some technological item, specifically an Old Earth Relic, since they had plenty of those lying around from recovered resource pods and satellites, and would then ask me what I would offer in return. Additionally, all advances would be shared between every single colony on planet (including, eventually, the aliens, a point I made very clear to the human factions on Planet). Weapons technology was off the table for now.

This lead me to acquire a huge collection of Old Earth Relics (as in, all of them at least three times over) for the price of aa fair amount of my technology: basic Commander Orbital Sensor systems, gas harvesting technology, nanotech repair systems, and advanced energy storage from my baseline Planetary Annihilation tech-base, and various terraforming technologies from Spore. I had already begun to create artifacts out of all my assorted relics, and the results were awesome: my first Old Earth Artifact was the Pan-Spectral Observatory, which made using satellites significantly easier. For all their advanced technology, the Progenitors who built my Commander never bothered to add in any system to track solar winds, which can be an absolute mess on satellites. Though, that could probably be chalked up to most of their units straight up resisting the effects of solar winds, which was admittedly a nice thing to have. Unfortunately, I was having trouble adding this into my new satellites obtained from the colonist' designs, meaning my new Artifact was a lifesaver.

Another artifact I was able to create was the Ground-Penetrating LIDAR. Specially designed lasers that could map out areas below ground, they were absolutely wonderful to possess, as their range actually exceeded the underground detection sensors my Commander had, even if they weren't nearly as detailed. No surprise attack from Zerg or Locusts on me! The only reason I could build tis one was because I had all three types of relics, since it was created out of all three sets: it seemed that unity equaled power here.

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While I did make a few advances, I'll admit that things were rather slow going. No conflict was happening, I hadn't detected any additional planets where successful seeding missions (or surviving Progenitors) were present, and I wasn't exactly sure where Earth was from here, and while I wasn't going to slow at the tech integration, things were getting rather boring.

For the most part, I decided to work on getting my rescues back to their families. Now that they were free from EXALT, I was slowly reintegrating them with their families. Many of them could hardly walk, so I had to build a lot of wheel chairs and robots to push the chairs: it takes a while to re-acquaint your muscles with moving if they haven't been used in months. I hadn't yet allowed any to leave my base, mainly because I was worried EXALT would try to capture them again. I was not going to let these people get kidnapped all over again.

The rest of my time was spent training my psychic powers, my E-DNA powers, ordering up new fleets for expanding my influence, and examining my new technologies. For a time, it was peaceful.

Eventually, though, another big game changer happened. Or, rather, two game changers happened.

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I stared at two different screens, each showing the same thing: a picture of a giant gateway consisting of a glowing light in the center and four arms around it. One glowed gold, the other red.

In the peace following the aliens' arrival, industry had boomed. While the aliens had been a source of paranoia, they were also a new set of consumers, ones who had never been exposed to human goods. Every faction on planet had scrambled to start trading with the aliens, who had already begun to expand their territory. The colonies were also trading more with each other, which I could tell was supposed to help build up capital in the event a war broke out. With trade booming, industry began to thrive as well, and the increase in capital allowed the colonies to begin attempting projects that had been put on the backburner over lack of funds.

Among them were these gates. The gold one was the Emancipation Gate, meant to be used by the Cybernetic and Mechanical Forces of Supremacy to eventually conquer Earth and defeat the warlords who apparently ruled it. The red one was the Exodus Gate, meant to be used by those who wished to remain pure to Old Earth to bring pilgrims to this new world and make it more like home. With the arrival of the Progenitors, the two ideologies had decided their goals were not mutually exclusive and had worked together to assemble their gates. Additionally, the Purity aligned forces had managed to reestablish contact with Earth, and had passed on some detail related to it to the Supremacy forces. I assumed they were giving them a heads-up of who they would fight. Admittedly, it was mostly garbled up tidbits with the occasional piece of useful intel, at least according to my worms, but something was better than nothing.

Anyways, back to the gates: around the gold one, robotic and cybernetic warriors formed a perimeter, waiting for it to fully come online, and for the light to turn into the portal they would advance through. Purity aligned forces had circled around the red gate, waiting for the same thing. At both sites, hybrid affinity troops, XCOM, and followers of Harmony stood vigil, waiting to meet their cousins from Earth. Even the Progenitors had sent representatives, having never witnessed this technology.

The wait seemed to drag on forever as the gates slowly powered up. Finally, though, they reached full charge, and they activated, tearing great holes in the fabric of time and space, and making it possible to return to Earth once more.

"Common, Exodus One is Open."

"We repeat, the Gates of Conquest have opened."

Looks like it was time for me to go to Earth.

"Indeed it is," mused a feminine voice behind me.

I sighed. When would she finally get tired of this and leave? Couldn't she just be stunned silent like the kids were.

"Like I'd tell you that."

SHUT UP MELISSA!

"Mission Accomplished...wait, were getting strange readings," remarked the guy monitoring the Exodus Gate (Exodus One).

Huh?

"Command, unidentified signals coming from the portal...Something's coming through."

What?

The guys were about to speak, only to go dead silent when beams of light began to shoot out of the portals, scorching the nearby ground. The gathered crowds stared on for a moment, stunned, before beginning a surprisingly organized retreat. They stopped, though, when the sounds of explosions began to come form the portals.

Not a moment later, a pair of crafts emerged from each portal. One was purple colored while another was pink in appearance, though both resembled classical UFOs, except that they looked organic. As for the other two, they looked like regular looking planes, of all things, albeit red and white.

...Oh. Didn't see that coming.

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AN: Read and Review! Please mark errors as well, because I have a bad track record with finding them. This is Flameal15k, signing off!