The Shepard

by Typhon Achlys

Post-ME3 Control Ending. Over two years after the Reaper War, the galaxy continues to heal. The progeny of Commander Shepard, Alpha— an AI-facsimile of the Human Spectre's mind, soul, memories, and thoughts—reminisces on the events leading up to the present.

1. The Shepard

Greetings my friends, and fellow "Controllers". This one-shot can be considered many things. A tribute, an appeal, an example, a template. I love the Control Ending for Mass Effect 3. I have absolutelyno idea why everyone's so bloody enamored with the Destroy Ending. Presumably just because Shepard has a chance of surviving? Which makes no sense to me.
The Destroy Ending pretty much condemns EDI and the Geth to death, and damages the Mass Relays and all advanced tech in the galaxy almost beyond repair, which I don't think is worth the prospect of Shepard surviving; and I'd prefer that Shepard become a nigh-omnipotent god, rather than dying outright, or living on in a severely crippled galaxy.

In any case, I made this one-shot — "The Shepard" — because I wanted to paint a picture. The ideal setting for a galaxy that truly benefitted from the Reaper War. A galaxy in which the Commander could truly become "The Shepard". I wanted to present my vision for what the galaxy would become after a "Paragon Control" scenario. I want to give people a stage in which an entirely new adventure could begin.
That said, if my vision for the Mass Effect universe post-Reaper War succeeds in catching the interest of any of you, and you want to use it as a stage for writing a whole new plot: then be my guest. The problem with a lot of people on Fanfiction is that they always stick way too close to what the games show us— they never try to imagine new scenarios, new stories. No, they all just rewrite the same thing we've all seen, heard, and read before.

This story assumes the following criteria...

There is a Male Shepard.

The last Rachni Queen was spared.

Wrex survived Virmire.

Saved Ashley on Virmire.

Saved the Council.

Chose to rewrite the Geth Heretics.

Destroyed the Collector Base.

Survived the Suicide Mission with all twelve squadmates.

The genophage was cured, with Mordin's death.

Peace was brokered between the Quarians and Geth.

Galactic-Readiness and Military Strength both maxed-out before the final battle.

Romances are purposefully omitted. If anyone wants to tweak or change any of these details when they write their own fics based off of the picture presented here, they can do so.

Without further delay, we begin...

---

"The Shepard"

…or is it "Shepherd", now?

November 7th, 2188...

An area that had only been walked upon by a single person in the entirety of galactic history, that provided an cinematic view of the swarm of space vessels congregating around the Citadel, was empty and devoid of movement and sound. After all, this particular area was one that remained completely unheard of— no schematics of the Citadel's structure suggested this place even existed. There was no easy or well-known way to get to this place, and it wasn't as if anybody in their right mind would think to try. But, despite all of that, this place— this peaceful, secluded, roughly t-shaped platform, was the place in which the galaxy's fate had been decided— a place… where a truly great man had sacrificed everything he had… in order to become the one who could save the many.

The vast majority of the galaxy's population would never know this, however— the man had been alone at the time and no official record of what took place on this secluded alcove had ever been taken. At the time which this event happened, what one Human was doing in some unknown part of the Citadel wasn't what took priority in a lot of people's thoughts. Back then, the greatest concern of anyone's was that of the Reaper War. And the Reapers.

Of course, the Reaper War had ended two years ago, to the day— most had either forgotten about the conflict amidst the monotony of their daily lives, or were on alert in case the Reapers ever came back. Not that that would be a bad thing, at this point...

A surging wave of electric shimmers sputtered into being atop the secluded platform's surface surging forth from the pit at the platform's apex, and spreading across its entirety in a roiling cascade of energy. A second pulse of this same energy appeared a second later. Then a third in the next half-second. Again and again in quicker succession, until the interval between bursts could not be discerned, building to a peak... at which it ceased, and an apparition came into being at the platform's relative center.
A hologram of a six foot Human in N7 armor materialized out of thin air, and appeared to stare out at the view of the Widow Nebula, deep in thought. While the A.I was enjoying view, it was also keeping tabs on and observing over a dozen other situations and concurrent events, simultaneously— some of them happening light-years away.

This hologram— this wraith, was The Alpha-Catalyst, also known as The Citadel. Well… those actually weren't exactly accurate— while he was an A.I, and he ostensibly inhabited the infrastructure of the Citadel, he himself wasn't the millennia-old space station… nor was he really a "catalyst", per se. A "catalyst", by its very definition, was something that caused, or sparked a reaction, or chain of events. But, while the moniker was coined in false pretenses, that was still what this A.I was referred to as.
If anyone or anything was a "catalyst"… it was Commander Shepard. And besides, the A.I wasn't the first "Catalyst", or "Citadel" to exist and/or live here…

As the digital man continued to stare at the expanse before him, a second influx of that same electric pulsing consumed the platform he stood upon, passing through his feet and shins, building to a similar peak before abruptly terminating. A second hologram appeared just behind and to the left of the first, this one smaller, only four feet tall. It took the appearance of an eight-year-old Human boy, in a hoodie.
... the old resident was still around, even if it had been largely supplanted in its role.

The armored man, briefly glanced back at the other A.I, before shaking his head chidingly and turning back to his vigil.

"I really wish you would stop choosing that form", the ghost of Commander Shepard said, referencing the distastefulness of the other's choice in appearance. "And don't give me that `my appearance is drawn from your memories` crap. Even if it were true, it'd be in poor taste".

While the Alpha-Catalyst couldn't really be called "Shepard", it seemed that the new A.I had still adopted the dead Human's candor.

The "Starchild" only raised an eyebrow, "would you rather I look like a Husk, Variant? Or like Sovereign?", he asked dryly, with a voice that sounded entirely too loud, yet young, for its stature. Especially considering that the entity was literally at least a billion years old.

The taller A.I simply shrugged, "I was thinking more along the lines of a Prothean or Inusannon, but I don't really care as long as you stop using that look", he said, not looking behind him.

Not responding, but obliging anyway, the Starchild disappeared briefly, before reappearing, taking the form of an ethereal "Awakened" Collector. Sensing the change and turning to see it, the Alpha-Catalyst only scoffed at the older entity's twisted sense of humor, before turning fully to face his compatriot, and crossing his arms expectantly.

"You're here for a reason, I trust?", he asked, causing the other A.I to nod slowly as it folded its hands behind its back.

"To inform you that the Shroud on Tuchanka has been successfully rebuilt, in secret", the former master of the Reapers began to report in a droning monotone (not unlike a Geth), "all Destroyers assigned to said task returned to the galactic core, undetected, and the Shroud is now maintaining Tuchanka's atmosphere at double its previous efficiency".

The Reaper's new master — the progeny of Commander Shepard's mind and soul — nodded in acknowledgement as he turned back to face Earth, "alright. Harbinger oversaw the repairs?", he asked.

"Yes, he did…", the Beta-Catalyst confirmed, trailing off and waiting for The Shepard to speak. After a few seconds of silence he took the initiative, "do you have any new orders, Variant?".

The Shepard didn't answer for a long moment, seemingly in deep, pensive thought. The Reapers already had standing objectives that weren't yet complete, and the Alpha-Catalyst, despite having the processing power of several thousand supercomputers, couldn't think of anything else that took priority. It seemed that The Shepard of the Reapers still retained the managerial skills of the long-dead Spectre.

"No. All of the Sovereign-Class ships are already tasked-to-capacity with repairing the Relays, and the majority of Destroyers are also busy with modifying the Processors and Troop Transports. As all of this has to be done under the galactic radar makes it a long-term priority. So, no, Solution, just keep monitoring all ongoing tasks, for now", the Alpha-Catalyst relayed longwindedly, not turning around, or removing his gaze from the picturesque view of Earth.

Solution nodded, "very well", and briskly spun on his heel to walk a distance of two meters before de-materializing into thin air.

The ghost of Shepard shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

It was sometimes hard to remember just how many names that he was liable to be referred to with. Although some of the Sovereign-class Reapers had names of their own, most never bothered— the Destroyer-class Reapers, less so. Ever since he had instructed every Reaper to give itself its own designation — he didn't have time to think of a name for over two-hundred thousand individuals, and he certainly wasn't going to refer to every Reaper by a number — a lot of the Reapers had started calling him by various names that they came up with. Even the former Catalyst had been given a few monikers, which included "Beta-Catalyst/Beta", "Solution", "Elder", and "Starchild"— though the last one was a last-minute nickname given by Commander Shepard, himself.

The ones that applied to him that he could remember off of the top of his head were as follows: "The Shepard", "Alpha-Catalyst" or "Alpha", due to his purpose of being the predominant intelligence in the Citadel, "Variant", in honor of his pseudo-father's affect on the solution created by the Leviathan's A.I, and "Spectre". He didn't know why any of the giant, metallic squids felt the need to call him any of that, but… he had to admit that all of the monikers were fitting, in at least some capacity. Thus he… decided not to mind or comment on any of the numerous names he now had. It wasn't as if his attempt at getting the Reapers to simply call him "John" had been successful, anyway.

Alpha's hologram grunted to itself, as he received a text-document from Harbinger, detailing exactly what had happened during the repairs being made on the Shroud — a task that had taken three Tuchanka days — and of any possible complications that occurred, or could occur in the future, pertaining to the Shroud. Subconsciously opening the file in the corner of his vision, The Shepard read the thousand-word report in a three seconds, closed it, and sent a non-verbal acknowledgment of the information directly to Harbinger. With most of his consciousness being concentrated in the area in which his… "parent", Commander Shepard, had made the decision that resulted in his creation, Variant could only "hear" or notice updates and alerts which he had divided the remaining 15 percent of his concentration to.

Though the Alpha-Catalyst could do and multi-task a lot more while his consciousness was spread throughout the Citadel, his vessel— and even though he could accomplish things even quicker than that while his attention was divided between each Reaper in the galaxy… he would still spend a lot of his time simply using a semi-solid hologram as a body, and "astral-projecting" like this. Whether he did this out of a habit due to his "father" having a single mind, or if he simply preferred silence to being occupied with three dozen different tasks at once was unclear, even to the A.I himself. Today was a special day, regardless, and he'd planned to spend it in quiet thought.

Although, he had the feeling that, if it weren't for Beta and Harbinger, he would have been driven insane from sheer stress. He didn't even know if an A.I could go insane, but he wasn't going to find out just because progress was slow.

The way things had been arranged after the end of the Reaper War, and thus had since been functioning, was rather odd. Mostly because of the Crucible. From what he and Beta could tell, when the Crucible fired, the massive energy-pulse that was meant to convert Commander Shepard's emotions, mind, memories, and (ostensively) soul into an entirely new Artificial Intelligence, and subsequently give control over the Reapers to said A.I… didn't quite work as-advertised. The nature of Solution's existence meant that he was the archived and collective-subconsciousness and memories of every Reaper in the galaxy.

All of the memories, of all of the processed organics which every Reaper was made from, as well as the memories of the Reapers themselves: were stored in the Starchild. He was, rudimentarily speaking, the single string that split apart and "supported" the consciousnesses of all Reapers in existence. The Crucible was only meant to give control of the Reapers to Alpha. This meant that, while The Shepard replaced Beta as the Reaper's one, true, undisputed master… the older A.I still had to be kept around.

If Beta were to be completely removed from the equation, then that would mean that all of the archived information harbored by the Reapers up to and including this point would have… gone down the drain, basically. All of that knowledge and all of those memories would then be lost to the aether. Additionally, every Reaper, their memories being deleted, would be reduced to mindless, instinct-driven primitives in terms of intelligence. Like a Human who was cloned and released from his/her artificial womb yesterday, then getting amnesia and forgetting all of the details of their very short life. It would have resulted in the galaxy being home to circa ~210,000 massive killing machines who could only barely understand the concept of "being alive". Not a very nice picture.

This left Beta as an A.I with nothing to do. Sure, the Beta-Catalyst's continued existence is what allowed the Reapers to retain their memories and intelligence, but that didn't change the fact that the organic-synthetic hybrids didn't take orders from him anymore.

So ever the compromiser, like his parent, Alpha had Solution serve as an "assistant" of sorts— one who could be of help in various situations. Beta would inform The Shepard of anything and everything relevant, and Reaper-related that occurred. He'd also continue his ongoing job of documenting and "writing down" the histories, cultures, and biologies of all the past civilizations and species that had ever existed. Apparently, he'd been trying to complete that task for the past seventy cycles. Archiving that much information was a challenge, apparently. From what Alpha had been informed, the Beta-Catalyst had only completed ten-percent of the estimated workload.

So, now, Alpha directed the course in which the Reapers were to go, while Beta assisted with everything else.

Which brought up the second complication to come up. Even though all Reapers had minds of their own, and they mostly acted with autonomy, the manner in which Beta-Catalyst directed them was to seize control of all relevant individuals, and to, essentially "focus" each of their minds onto an intended target, in order to give commands. In this way, orders could be given extremely quickly and efficiently in the way that Reapers were, pretty much, designed for. Alpha… couldn't do any of that. Even though every Reaper unquestioningly obeyed his every word… he couldn't actually seize control over any of them. He could see through a specific Reaper's eyes, hear what they heard, and sense whatever they sensed, at will… but he couldn't "take the wheel", so to speak. In order to do that, he would have had to completely replace Beta, when the Crucible fired. But, it hadn't worked out that way.

It was none other than Harbinger who offered a solution— coming up with it and proposing it in the midst of The Battle for Earth's climax, as the Reapers simultaneously fled to the Charon Relay. Whenever Alpha had an order for them, whenever a task was to be given, Harbinger would act as a liaison between The Shepard and the Reapers. Any Reaper could contact The Shepard, and vice-versa, but Alpha couldn't contact or give commands to multiple Reapers at once (as many situations often demanded)— let alone twenty or fifty at a time. So, Harbinger had become a… First Lieutenant, so to speak. Seeing as though the oldest Reaper in existence had already been a de facto leader among his Reaper siblings since the very beginning, it made sense for Harbinger to be the one who relayed orders from The Shepard. Since any other method of giving out directions would simply be slow and inefficient, this was the best choice.

Funny thing, actually— one would expect that Harbinger would be bitter or would project animosity towards the Alpha-Catalyst. Even though The Shepard technically wasn't Commander John Shepard himself… he may as well be for how much of the long-dead Human's personality he'd inherited! But, surprisingly, no— Harbinger didn't seem to have any ill-will toward Alpha.

Of course… that didn't stop Variant from gloating and throwing around a few barbs at Harbinger's expense. Nope! Too much of a golden opportunity!

The first time he and Harbinger had had a conversation — which ended in Alpha giving his first commands to the Reapers — he called Harbinger's name just as the Reaper had been about retract its consciousness from his presence and said, "Oh! And Harbinger? In case there's any confusion… I've assumed direct control…", voice thick with mirth, and face adorned with smirk.
To everyone and their mother's surprise… it was almost as if Harbinger had laughed… if you could call "absolute silence" laughter. In the moment, it was as if the Reaper had chuckled, but didn't let Alpha hear it. But… Variant could definitely feel some element of humor there.

That was when Harbinger responded, in its usual deadpan growl, with the phrase: "this hurts me". A reference to the occasions in which it had said "this hurts you" to Commander Shepard, during his campaign against the Collectors.
Both the joke itself, and the shock of discovering that the old Reaper possessed a sense of humor, had caused the Alpha-Catalyst to laugh loudly, before dismissing Harbinger. Remembering the interaction caused The Shepard's avatar to chuckle.

The other reason that Variant came to this place, other than to relax, was so that he could reflect and plan on the future. A time that he could use to thoroughly contemplate every aspect of his plans.

---

The very first order of business once Harbinger became the intermediary between The Shepard and the Reapers, was to get the Reapers out of the public eye— to make the Reapers very scarce. The very first thing that the Reapers were ordered to do, was to leave whatever planet they were on. Indoctrinated servants and slaves were, largely, left behind as the Capital ships, Processor ships, Troop Transports, and Destroyers abruptly stopped fighting and exited their respective atmospheres.
The Reaperized organics aboard the Troop Transport vessels at the time of The Pulse (as it would later be known) were the only forces, other than the Reapers, themselves, that Alpha ordained be brought along.
After that, all Reapers were to leave their respective solar systems, and travel to the nearest Mass Relay. With organic forces still distracted with the abandoned shock-troops on the ground, the Reapers were given time to perform preliminary repairs on their respective Relays. Said repairs were only temporary solutions, and wouldn't wholly fix the devices— but would allow them to jump to a different system, at least once. Like spreading duct tape over a hole in the wall in lieu of pasting on new plaster and paint.

The destination to which all Reapers were ordered to retreat to, was that of the Omega 4 Relay. The Shepard's plan was to have the Omega 4 be the first Relay fully repaired, and to get all Reapers forces to the galactic core— the site of the destroyed Collector base. He'd already chosen that as their base of operations.

Once all Reapers had gotten through to the galactic core… some changes were made. A few ranks culled.

All Husks, Banshees, Marauders, Cannibals, Abominations, Adjutants, Brutes, and Scions were put down. Reaperized Drell, Asari, Krogan, Elcor, Hanar, Quarians, Salarians, Volus, and Vorcha were executed too. Only Harvesters, Ravagers, Praetorians, Reaperized Yahgs ("Berserkers"— of which, there were less than fifty), and Varren ("HellHounds") were allowed to continue their meager and mindless existence.
As for the Indoctrinated persons, those whose minds were hijacked by the Reapers, but hadn't been fully converted into killing machines? Seeing as though they were too far gone and couldn't be helped, any Indoctrinated slaves were shot in the back of the head.
The Processing Ships — the purpose of which had been to liquefy and distill the DNA of each organic species — were all corralled in one spot and scrapped. Destroyed. The schematics on how to build new ones were still archived in Beta's memories, in any case... and The Shepard did not plan on making new Reapers, any time soon.

With the Reapers being reformed as a force of good, it wouldn't befit them to continue to Indoctrinate or "process" people— nor would it be wise or tasteful for the "tried and true servants of justice and peace" (that the Reapers had now become) to utilize the demonized, bastardized, and convoluted perversions that they had so often turned thousands of innocent people into during the Reaper War. How Alpha had distinguished between the kinds of Reaperized organics that would be culled, and the one's who would continued to be used… he supposed he based it on how disturbing each was to look at.

Things like Husks, Marauders, Banshees, Cannibals, Abominations, and Scions were the kinds of creatures that sat very comfortably in their position, down in the "uncanny valley". Each would look like a "zombie" to their respective species. The Adjutants… they were just plain wrong to even think about… And Swarmers? Those critters were eventually spared, as they could be used as small spy-drones.
The Reaperized shock-troops— the Harvesters, Ravagers, Praetorians, Berserkers, and HellHounds all either looked too unrecognizable, had been mere animals before, or they were just, straight up, machines. Thus, they were the least creepy to look at, and were thus spared.

Additionally, the order was given to enact some... cosmetic overhauls to the remaining Reaperized troops so as to make them... less horrifying-looking, and generally a lot less like something out of an H.R Geiger garage-sale. Not a difficult change to make, even with the hundreds of thousands of troops in question. Within a few months, his armies were given a nobler, brighter coat of paint. Fewer gratuitous spikes, covering up the bloated pus-sacks with armor-weave, smoother and more uniform chassis and armor-plating— even a new color-scheme of obsidian-black and fire-hydrant-red, with decals of royal gold.
It probably shouldn't have surprised Alpha that the... unique aesthetics of Reaperization throughout the war and throughout the Cycles were a very deliberate and calculated measure taken by Harbinger, in the interest of psychological warfare. As such: changing it was very easy.

The Reapers, themselves, even self-modified to fit this new directive— the Sovereign-Class ones adopting a carapace the color of the void of space, with unique red patterning, and lighting-systems turning a brilliant gold. The Destroyers, similarly, painted themselves bone-white with unique crimson patterns.

---

As all of this was happening, Variant took stock of the Victory Fleet and of the Citadel. In the trip from the Widow System to Earth, the populace aboard the station had been largely untouched, surprisingly— after C-Sec and the Citadel Defense Fleet had been reduced to a fifteenth of their previous size (the Council and most of the people in the Presidium being killed in the process, unfortunately), the Reapers saw fit to just seal the station and lock down the entire thing, leaving the populace within scared, confused, and forced to stockpile and ration food and water. For eighty-seven hours, at least.
The Victory Fleet at Earth had been predictably curbstomped, into a state roughly half as crippled as a Salarian trying to lift weights on Dekuuna. The Reapers collectively fleeing the solar-system had more or less ended the fighting in an instant, as the remaining allied fleets were too weakened to entertain a pursuit, and rescue operations were sorely needed for those vessels with crews that had to abandon ship.

The Citadel Defense Fleet had been wiped out when the Reapers first seized the Citadel and brought it to Earth, at the cost of ten Destroyer-Class and two Sovereign-Class Reapers.
The Quarian Heavy and Patrol Fleets had each been reduced to a third their original size, with the Civilian Fleet only having lost a fifth of their number. Still around four million souls lost, but most of the noncombatants were spared. Thankfully, most of those under-age were left on Rannoch with most of the elderly, as well as a contingent of Geth to protect them.
The Turian 7th and 6th Fleets had taken the most punishment of all bunch, both having lost 67 and 89 percent of their numbers, respectively. The 43rd Marine Division on the ground and the Engineering Corp alongside them faired better, at only 21% killed and 30% injured. Scraped together, with the 79th Flotilla, the Turians had come away with one fleets-worth out of the three they'd had, before.

The Geth Fleet, endowed with full A.I upgrades, had more or less shown up everyone else. While two-thirds of their battleships and frigates were destroyed, they lost fewer than 8% of their personnel, as Geth programs would use tightbeam transmissions to jump ship-to-ship wherever one was on the verge of destruction, improving the performance of each remaining vessel as more and more were destroyed. The Geth infantry Corps, though, was less fortunate, and sacrificed more than half their number in the fighting planetside.
The Terminus pirate fleet under Aria pulled its weight— losing three-quarters of the Blood-Pack, a third of the Suns, and half of the Eclipse.

The Krogan lost around a third of their troops on Earth, about half of those deaths being mercy-killings at the hands of their own.
The Destiny Ascension had been crippled and evacuated, along with the entire Asari Second Fleet, and a third of the Sixth.
None of the Human Alliance Fleets came away with fewer than 30% losses, and the First Fleet was cut in half. In the ground-war, the 103rd Marine Division had lost seven-in-ten soldiers, while the Arcturus First was wiped away entirely, and the volunteer-force from the Eden Prime lost a third. Not to mention the losses in Anderson's resistance, which must have been far higher.
The Batarian Fleet lost a slightly less than a fourth of their number.
The Salarian Third fleet come away with a fewer-than-25% casualty rate, as did the Elcor, Volus, and Hanar/Drell flotillas.

All in all... a pyrrhic victory, at absolute best, assuming that the Crucible had even done what it was supposed to, which no one was sure of.

Once the last of the Reaper troops left behind on Earth were mopped up, the combined militaries of the Victory Fleet were left floundering, and tensions quickly rose. The Turians and Quarian troops only had so many rations, and with the Charon Relay inoperable, they were essentially trapped in Sol with a limited food-supply. The Krogan, predictably, didn't care for being cooped up in ships and buildings too small for their territorial instincts to tolerate. The remaining of the Batarian Fleet were forced to seclude themselves near Saturn due to Balak having pissed someone off and made vague threats.
The Citadel's economy and production-capacity had been crippled by the Reapers appropriating everything useful, and the presence of the Geth and Terminus pirate forces didn't make things any easier. And to make everything just that extra bit more infuriating, no one understood why the Reapers had retreated, what The Pulse was, or if they'd even won— had the Reapers gone to a different system to lay waste to it? Why was the Charon Relay broken? What had happened to the Council? Where the Hell was Admiral Anderson? Where was Shepard?
It was only the steel nerves and clear thinking of Admiral Hackett that stopped a skirmish from breaking out. By coordinating with the Quarian Admiralty Board, Urdnot Wrex, Primarch Victus, the collection of Asari and Salarian admirals, and Aria T'Loak, Hackett was able to keep things civil.

The Geth forces took to Mars and landed there, making their repairs and drawing up contingency plans to construct some variety of high-powered comm-device through which to contact the rest of the galaxy. In case of what? Variant couldn't guess. They were soon joined by the Rachni workers that had worked on the Crucible (who'd been aboard the Alliance Fifth Fleet, assisting in logistics during the battle) to speed up progress.
The Quarian Flotilla and Salarian fleet converged to attempt to ascertain how they might fix the Charon Relay.
The Batarians stayed put in orbit of Saturn, watched over by the Alliance Third and Sixth Fleets that happened to remain above-par for functionality.
The Alliance First, Fifth, and Exploration Fleets combined with the Turian, Volus, Asari, Hanar/Drell, and Elcor ships to set up patrol routes around the system and keep an eye on things.
The ships belonging to Aria's mercenaries were promised future financial compensation, and spread in and amongst all the other groups, allegedly to pull security, but more directly as a means for Aria to buy herself an out once things were cleaned up.
Urdnot Wrex managed to coax his troops into keeping it together in the meanwhile, running drills and pit-fights aboard Turian ships.
As all of this was happening, plans were being drawn up to investigate the Citadel with N7, Blackwatch, and STG squads to see what the damage was.

In short: Hackett more or less needed the allies to keep themselves busy and avoid a diplomatic incident long enough to figure out what was going on. Fortunate that The Shepard was already working on that.

For nearly six months, the situation remained as it was, while The Shepard pulled his strings...

---

The mass-execution of undesirable Reapers, and subsequent rebranding of acceptable ones had gone fairly smoothly… until the Collectors showed up in the galactic core.

As they had been during the Reaper War, the Collectors were a late arrival to the galactic core, mostly because of their painfully slow, undetectable ships, called Black Arks. Like many other people, Commander Shepard had been surprised to hear that the Collectors had returned. The Commander himself didn't encounter any Collectors, but the mission-reports from other squads had been accurate enough. Though, he'd supposed it would have been stupid to think that the entire population of the Protheans would have been able to inhabit the Collector Base beyond the Omega 4 Relay.
Apparently, the Reapers had kept the majority of the Collectors in Darkspace, ready for the coming Harvest. During the War, the Collectors served as the mop-up crew— the ones who followed behind a Reaper on the ground so that they could sift through the rubble and destruction in order to flush out any hiding or bunkered down organics.

And now… The Shepard had over 85 million Indoctrinated, Collector slaves.

This presented a problem, and most of the solutions weren't looking too appetizing. He could simply keep the Collectors— use them as the bulk of the Reaper army. But… there were multiple moral implications that stood in the way of that— if the galaxy was ever going to trust the Reapers (laugh it up) the fact that they were still enslaving and using the species that had been responsible for the kidnapping and deaths of tens of thousands of Humans… it wouldn't look good.

The fact that the Collectors were, in reality, fallen and twisted Protheans made The Shepard harbor irrevocable pity for the downtrodden insects. Commander Shepard had expressed a lot of sympathy for the Collector's condition during his campaign against the kidnapping of Human Colonies, once he had discovered the species' past. The Commander had asked Mordin Solus if anything could be done to help them, but even when the answer was "no", he still regretted the fact that the Collector's destruction was necessary, in the end. The Commander's interactions with The Last Prothean, Javik, had only deepened the regret.

This left Variant with the only alternative— to kill off the Collectors as well.

But then… he was abruptly reminded by Harbinger of the Leviathans, and how, with their intervention, there had been some Collectors who were freed of Reaper control, and had re-achieved sapience. The Awakened Collectors, who summarily helped the war effort for this cycle's struggle against the Reaper threat.

This gave The Shepard an idea. When he asked Harbinger if the affect of the Collectors being forcefully cut off from his control, in such a way as to give them sapience, could be replicated, the answer had been an uncertain, but technical "yes".

Without wasting any time, Harbinger was summarily ordered to forcefully sever and utterly release his lingering control over the Collectors. Even though almost all of the Collectors would perish in this process, a good many of them would live on, free of control.

So, with the instant deaths of over ninety percent of the Collector population, only 7.7 million were left alive out of the previous eighty-five.

The survivors were all in comas, a side-effect of gaining sapient thought-processes after 50,000 years of cloning and genetic modification. So, The Shepard had them reinterred in their Black Ark ships which, predictably, had a form of "cryo" stasis-tech to accommodate their slow speed. They would be kept on-ice until the right time for them to be introduced to the rest of the galaxy. When they were woken up, the Collectors would definitely (somewhat) remember the countless years as mindless thralls through broken, confusing shards of memory. But that would be a bridge to cross, later.

With his "new" Reapers finally refurbished, and the Collectors sorted (after the month-and-a-half-or-so it took to complete), he ordered a portion of his forces back out into the galaxy, the majority of them ordered to stand by and wait for further developments. Harbinger went about organizing for the galactic core to be home to a "Reaper docking station", which Variant approved of but would allow the construction of at another time.
The Reapers he'd sent out into the galaxy were given one objective: repair the Mass Relays leading to and from every homeworld of the galaxy's sapient species.

They would do this by retrieving Element Zero deposits from old caches that the Reapers had seeded in various locations, and gathering certain amounts of alloys, then going and doing it, system by system. This process... took five months. The routes to Palaven, Thessia, Sur'Kesh, Tuchanka, Dekuuna, Kahje, Rannoch, Irune, Khar'shan, Turvess, and Heshtok were done, first. The Rachni-Relay, also, as well as the Relay in the Widow System. The number of Relays needed to reconnect the clusters of each species' colony-world was much higher, and took the bulk of the time, but it was doable. The thousands of other Relays that remained inoperable could wait, as the plans he'd been working on were about to come to a head.

---

In the months of downtime spent by the Victory Fleet in the Sol System, the Citadel had been infiltrated, and the situation assessed. The Citadel's control-stations could not be accessed, and the station would not open. The Crucible, enclosed rather snugly within the space between the Citadel's Presidium and shell: was inert, and the Citadel's hordes of Keepers had been infiltrating it and cannibalizing it of material. Power and infrastructure systems were restored, but little else. The Presidium was barren, and the Wards were in a state of mild anarchy, the remnants of C-Sec having declared martial law. Support and logistics operations began, with ships having to blast open small holes at the creases between the Citadel's arms to get inside.
This was all part of The Shepard's plan.

The Batarian fleet quickly demanded, and quickly received, the Batarian refugees residing in the docks and slums of the Wards, and with only a few diplomatic incidents, tensions were eased to a degree, as the station's population was safe. The Elcor, Volus, Turian, Salarian, and Asari fleets each held their respective vigils for the lives lost, and for the Councilors and diplomats that had worked tirelessly for all of them throughout the war. What few residents of the Presidium that survived only did so with the heroics of Jacob Taylor, who just happened to be at Huerta Memorial when the Reapers took control of the Citadel. Him, Commander Bailey, and Kolyat Krios had managed to organize a guerilla operation as Husks and Harvesters swarmed the Presidium, saving whomever they could.

Among the people saved was Batarian Governor Grothan Pazness, who joined his people in their transfer to the Batarian Fleet. Some days after the exchange, some variety of mutiny occurred aboard the Batarian flagship, the Vengeful Wraith, and as far as The Shepard could surmise, Balak was informed that he was no longer in charge, and would only carry authority in-battle, as Pazness assumed logistical control of what essentially remained of the Batarian military. The excuse given as to why was that the majority of the Batarian Fleet now consisted of civilian ships, what with the Batarian refugees having had to board Citadel-owned freighters to join their people.

While his Reapers were finishing their work on the Relays, The Shepard had had his Keepers make some modifications to the old Council Chambers of the Citadel, and using scavenged material from the Crucible, he was preparing to fix everything and put things back where they belonged.

For The Shepard inhabited and embodied the Citadel. He was the Citadel. Through every camera, he could watch; in every subsystem, he could lurk; and in every power-grid, he had his hand on the switch. What few systems he didn't have direct control of, he controlled through proxy via Beta. The Keepers obeyed his word, and over the station's makeup and functions, he possessed an unrivaled agency. And with the months of time spent spreading and strengthening his grip on the station, The Shepard could do amazing things.
The Citadel, after all, was a marvel of Reaper engineering, and in its wonders: The Shepard had the means to set everything right.

The Citadel, with a few months of modifications, could easily emulate the role of a Mass Relay. The Reapers, after all, had to have gotten the Citadel to Earth somehow, and the Conduit was very much still present. The station had more than enough Element Zero in its guts to do the job, and in fact, was the most powerful Mass Relay in the galaxy! Powerful enough to move itself and however many ships needed to the Widow System! Subsequently allowing all of the fleets to make use of the Widow Mass Relay, and return to their homeworlds. And as they all did so, most likely in the form of a single blob of ships, The Shepard had a task force of Reapers ready to infiltrate the Sol System while everyone was away, and repair the Charon Relay.

It began with the Citadel spontaneously opening its arms, on a random Thursday afternoon, followed closely behind with The Shepard using the station's prodigious comm-arrays to broadcast a message across the solar system as loudly as possible. The message itself was made to appear to be completely automated, and beyond a lot of jargon and techno-babble that the Shepard needed Beta's help to make up, essentially said: "Citadel Station Mass Relay functionality ready for use. Return to default galactic-position recommended. Manual input required". Not in so many words, and far more convincingly, of course— as though the systems of the station had just finished rebooting and were in standby-mode. It did the job.

The Victory Fleet converged on the station, and a collection of vessels entered the Presidium, and the tower of the Council Chambers. In the Chambers, amid the uprooted cherry-blossoms, was a new console, situated where the Councilor's podiums had been. The console, when activated, displayed a series of informational nonsense advanced enough that only people of technical expertise could decipher it. The information therein stated three things: that the Citadel was ready to execute a Mass Relay jump and transport itself and any nearby vessels to the Widow System, that the Citadel could only do this once, and that the Mass Relay network had been mostly repaired.

It took about twelve hours of debate between Hackett and the rest of the fleet's leaders, but eventually, they took their chances. They activated the system laid out for them, and the Citadel swiveled accordingly, orienting itself in the galactic direction desired using its immense mass effect field-generators. The view of it happening from Earth's surface was something special— undulating sheets of purple light swathing from between and outward from the Citadel's arms. The citizenry inhabiting the Citadel's Wards were gratefully unaffected, which was a factor that The Shepard had assumed the Victory Fleet's leaders would have been more concerned about. Simulations had assured a rate of Element Zero-exposure of around .02%, and even then: not enough to cause any lasting damage.

As displayed in the mocked-up infographics of the new console in the Council Chambers, all relevant vessels were to gather within the Citadel's arms, oriented in the direction said arms pointed. With an immense, blinding cascade of silver energy outshining the sun and plunging the world into darkness: the Citadel and all of the vessels cradled in its embrace disappeared from Earth's sky... with thankfully few cases of vision-damage. And just as the Victory Fleet was sent sailing out of the Sol System: a force of Reapers passed them by and arrived at the Charon Relay, immediately beginning to repair it. By the time any pair of eyes could check: they'd used the Charon Relay to covertly retreat back to the Omega 4.

The situation, upon the Victory Fleet's arrival in the Widow System, quickly devolved into pure anarchy. Relatively organized anarchy, but still anarchy...

Aria, to start, chose to cut her losses and head directly to Omega to secure her little fiefdom— her deal with Shepard, after all, had been to support him at Earth, and nothing more than that. She said that she expected her payment sometime in the next two years. Unsurprising, but still unhelpful to Hackett. What she didn't know was that Omega Station had been tugged out of Sahrabarik by several Sovereign-class vessels to the Amada System (within the Omega Nebula) along with a trail of comm-buoys serving as a bread-crumb trail from where it had originally been.
Couldn't have too much traffic near the Omega 4 Relay, if the Reapers were to operate with any covert freedom. Omega Station now sat in orbit above Alchera— the planet on which the Normandy-SR1 had crashed. Additionally, the Omega 4 Relay was tugged into the Kairavamori System in similar fashion— a lifeless area with little to no traffic and only three, uninhabitable worlds.
There was no real resistance when the Reapers moved Omega Station, and the inhabitants honestly did more damage in their preparations for an incursion than anything else. Thankfully few mortalities.

The Quarians and Geth, upon the fleet entering the Widow System and finding no hostiles, convened and found it best to make for the Perseus Veil to ensure the safety of their families and children on Rannoch, as they had been separated for almost half a year. The Turian Fleet, and by extension the Volus, felt the same, as Palaven and Irune had been in a bad way when the Battle for Earth began— likely also wanting an excuse to drop off the Krogan on Tuchanka, by this point. The Salarians immediately set course for Sur'Kesh, as the majority of their military had been at their homeworld, defending it. The Hanar/Drell fleet went to Kahje. Only the Alliance, Asari, Elcor, and Batarian fleets stuck together, as the rest found it most important to see to their own people's homeworlds.

For weeks, the remaining allotment of the Victory Fleet hovered around the Citadel, sending scout ships and envoys to every homeworld, and to every colony-world they could manage, to see what the deal was. When two months had passed with not a single sign of the Reapers found... the Victory Fleet found itself having to declare a tentative peace. By the time they did: most of the Alliance Fleet had returned to Earth, the Asari and Elcor went back to Thessia, and the Batarian vessels had just reestablished contact with a few of the Hegemony's colonies, setting off to go on a tour to assess the extent of the Hegemony's fall. The Rachni workers that had aided in the construction of the Crucible only requested a transport ship with modest fuel-reserves, and left to wherever the Rachni Queen had hidden herself.

That was around the time that The Shepard had sent the Awakened Collectors, asleep in their Black Arks, on an inter-cluster cruise toward the Widow System. A journey that would take around... seven months? Nine? Something like that.

The Reaper War was declared over, as it was decided that whatever The Pulse had done... it obviously worked. At that point: the respective militaries of the galaxy laid down arms... and every sapient creature south of the Terminus Systems sighed. Albeit with more than a few furrowed brows and fits of anxiety. What remained of each species' governments began to work on reconstruction.

It had been vaguely agreed-upon that the leaders of the Victory Fleet would meet at the Citadel once everyone could be certain that the Reapers were truly nowhere to be found. Hackett, Victus, Wrex, what few Asari Matriarchs that could be scrounged up, and some Salarian Dalatrasses gathered at the Citadel's Council Chambers, and with a few dozen communications and liaisons: gathered the other members of the Victory Fleet. The Quarian Admiralty Board and a Geth representative, Volus officials, Balak and Pazness, some nominal envoys from Kahje sent to merely sit in and report back to the Illuminated Primacy, as well as a particular Asari who (convincingly) claimed to be able to speak for the Rachni Queen. And The Shepard was easily able to watch the entire thing— still had recordings of it, in fact.

In the Council Chambers, situated at the foot of the staircase leading up to the Council podium, a large holo-table was dragged in, at least thirty feet long with a seam at the middle, allowing it to fold in half. Up on the balconies stood a platoon of spectating officials and bureaucrats who stood to gain some political seats in the eve of the "new world order". Reporters from every news-network and independent publisher from across the galaxy were permitted to stand about ten feet from the table, and sniper-rifle wielding soldiers from Blackwatch, N7, and STG stood by, hidden in the chamber's darkest corners. Some armed with high-caliber weapons, others with tranquilizer rounds— ready for any altercation that may occur.

At this meeting, a lot needed to be discussed. The galactic economy had been devastated, and with the Citadel bereft of its prior number of officials and bureaucrats: its denizens essentially lived in an economic limbo. Nobody was quite certain whether credits were worth anything, anymore. So much had been flipped on its head... and no one was certain what to do. The Reapers could still be out, there, after all, and there were more than a few people who found it preposterous to declare the war "over". The primary goal of this summit, above all else, was to make absolutely certain that all the militaries of the representatives present would remain united, and to do whatever was needed to ensure that nobody backed out. Preserve this alliance at any cost, in the event that the Reapers returned.

The Humans stood at one end of the table and, going clockwise around the thing, stood the Turians, Volus, Salarians, Asari, Krogan, Batarians (who, incidentally, were situated at the opposite end of the table from the Humans), Elcor, Quarians, the Illuminated Primacy, and the Rachni's observer.

Things got... heated. But eventually, cooler heads prevailed, and the mandate that everyone could agree upon was that a return to some sense of normalcy was sorely needed. Swiftly, a reinstatement of The Council was brought up, and (of course), all of the previous member-races had their respective nominees. Admiral Tadius Ahern for the Alliance, General Quentius for the Hierarchy, Matriarch Irissa for the Republics, and Dalatrass Esheel for the Union. None of this was a surprise to anyone present, but a few commitments were made in the interest of keeping this alliance intact, in the wake of Commander Shepard having brought them all together.
First: everyone's cards were laid out on the table.

The only homeworlds and peoples to escape the conflict largely unscathed were: Sur'Kesh and the Salarians, Tuchanka and the Krogan, Rannoch and the Quarians/Geth, and Kahje and the Hanar/Drell. Rakhana, too, though it was mostly deserted to begin with. The Salarian military and colony-worlds had only just been getting the squeeze when The Pulse struck, as despite being a Council Race, the Salarians had apparently been deemed less of a priority by the Reapers.

Those among the bloodied but unbroken were the Alliance, Turian Hierarchy, and Irune and the Volus. Palaven was more or less 40% burning wasteland, but the populace had dealt remarkably well with the stresses of war, and the Turians were overall the most economically prepared for the future, with only two-seventh's of their colonies lost, and half of what remained damaged enough to need aid. The Alliance was largely in the same boat, only with a marginally-less demolished home-planet, and slightly more colonies lost. Irune had been assaulted at least once by Reaper Destroyers, but had been somewhat left alone after the Turian fleet defending it was destroyed— only a few ground-invasions that quickly failed due to the hostility of the planet's conditions. They were easily at least as unharmed as the Salarians, but the Volus had also lost a lot of their previous leverage in politics, due to a staggering number of their bankers and leaders having been in the Presidium when the Reapers took the station.

There were, of course, those that weren't so lucky.
The Asari, though most of their colonies were left untouched, had had their homeworld torn asunder into far worse shape than almost anyone else. The source of most of their economic power: gone, and the vast majority of their prior military: gone. The Asari no longer possessed the number of military ships necessary to retain their seat on the Council, but nobody quite had the heart to say so, out loud. The Elcor, similarly, flat-out no longer had a homeworld, as Dekuuna's environment had been destabilized to the point of mass volcanic-eruptions causing the on-set of a brutal freezing. The Reapers had apparently found it most efficient to poison Dekuuna's atmosphere and ecology by intentionally triggering seismic and tectonic tremors, once the Elcor navy was destroyed. Additionally, a sad minority of the world's previous population was saved by the time The Battle for Earth occurred.
The Batarian Hegemony only barely existed, now— Kar'shan was a blasted wasteland from which painfully few survivors could be saved, and roughly half of the Hegemony's former colony-worlds still stood.

The next order of business, of course, was what to do about all of this. Whether anything should be done about it, was also a question that needed answering. They chose to start with the smaller considerations, first.

The reinstatement of the Citadel Council was decided on with only a few objections. The Vol Protectorate's top economists were tasked with finding a way to rebalance the galactic economy, in exchange for an amount of Turian Dreadnoughts with which to better protect themselves and their property. How this squared up with the Treaty of Farixen was left ambiguous, and Prospective-Councilor Quentius made some vague comments about making some reforms to that old piece of legislation. Many a whispered comment floated around the chamber at that.

Wrex, of course, wasted no time in demanding an embassy on the Citadel and to have his prior commissioning for ex-Krogan territories be addressed. Dalatrass Esheel proposed that said measures could be taken were the Krogan to agree to sign the Treaty of Farixen, but Wrex needed only point out the flagrant disregarding of said document in regards to the Volus not five minutes, prior. Esheel then asked Wrex if the Krogan would be amenable to being a protectorate of the Salarians, to which the answer was an instant "no"; she then pointed out that if the Krogan were to have an Embassy, and all of the planets he'd demanded: they'd be able to do nothing with it, without either buying space-vessels from the Council or building ships themselves. Both things that wouldn't be happening any time soon, given Tuchanka's nonexistent economy. Hence that the only way to even timely capitalize on the things Wrex came to bargain for, the Krogan would have to be a protectorate of someone.
Esheel's point being: by signing the Treaty of Farixen, the Krogan could at least ensure that they got what they wanted within one of their own lifetimes, rather than do so far faster at the cost of their autonomy. Wrex, however, defaulted to again pointing at the Treaty of Farixen being disregarded earlier, and demanded to know how he or anyone else was supposed to take it seriously if the very governments who wrote the thing weren't. He even pointed out the Asari's now-lacking military-capacity to punctuate this sentiment.

Everyone groaned, at this point, as it was clear that the meeting wouldn't be going any faster.

Wrex, seeing where this course would land him, took that moment to make his case. He produced a data-disk which, uploaded into the nearby holo-projector, displayed some interesting information gathered from Tuchanka. The Krogan Clans, in the time that the majority of the male populace had been away at Earth, had made some unprecedented steps toward the goal of ultimate unification, with talk of ratifying a single "bill of rights" being mentioned— though they actually named it something suitably ominous and with the word "blood" in it.
The Genophage Cure had indeed worked, but not quite to the degree of restoring Krogan virility to the same heights it had once been. It was a side-effect of the cure literally being a mutagen, crafted from the genes of two individuals (Wrex and Bakara). The best estimate that Tuchanka's few geneticists and fertility-experts could surmise was that, for almost all Krogan females, around 10-30% of a single clutch of eggs were likely to be viable.
Those rare individuals who happened to have similar enough genes to Wrex and Bakara would enjoy the benefits of a full 100% viability. This, combined with a significant proportion of Krogan males (around 40%) having been absent from Tuchanka at the time of the cure's dissemination meant that Clan Urdnot had unintentionally been given massive leverage over all other Clans, in the realm of breeding-agreements and population-size. All in all: a vast improvement from before, but nowhere near the same heights of Krogan growth from centuries past.

Nevertheless, it still meant one-to-three-hundred hundred offspring per pairing, on average, and the Krogan would need more space, very soon. Esheel and Victus pointed out that there needed to be some guarantee that the Krogan wouldn't simply outgrow their new confines if they were granted a few dozen worlds, and Wrex had some good news to deliver on that front. Shamans from almost every Clan were convening under Shaman Urdnot Bakara to come up with new policies and traditions with which to limit Krogan population growth. Not an easy task, given the last fifteen-hundred years of said Clans doing everything in their power to increase fertility, but progress was being made. Wrex, himself, estimated that a system of restrained "eugenics" would be determined within the next three standard galactic months— Bakara, he said, "wouldn't allow otherwise". The Krogan would never again permit another "Garvug" catastrophe.

Quentius acknowledged this progress with some surprise and praise, but Victus brought up that the Council couldn't just give the Krogan ships and planets for nothing. Wrex quickly pointed to their service in the Battle for Earth, and Tadius Ahern likewise amended that the Krogan only helped at Earth in exchange for the Genophage Cure. The Hanar/Drell ambassador made a comment about the need to be "charitable" in difficult times, to which the Volus ambassador asserted that deals in such a tenuous period needed to be on a "something for something" basis if everyone wanted to walk home happy— Victus, Quentius, and Esheel agreed with the sentiment, and Wrex thought on the matter for some minutes, while the small army of reporters and typists in the background chattered amongst themselves.

Eventually, Wrex approached the issue from another angle. The Krogan didn't truly need ships— they had more than enough engineers and laborers to build their own vessels, but simply lacked the raw-material for it. The Krogan, after all, wouldn't have been happy with vessels designed by other species, anyway. So, Wrex proposed the following: the Krogan would continue to lend their soldiers, warriors, and laborers to serve in the armies and reconstruction efforts of the other races free of payment, in exchange for raw ship-building material roughly commensurate in value to the amount of money saved on the free labor the Krogan could provide. Of course, there was a gray-area in so far as food and housing-costs for said free-labor, but that was really a semantic issue.

As it stood, Tuchanka could provide billions of spare pairs of hands to serve this end, and the deal was far from unattractive, as a fair few worlds needed construction work, and the Turians wouldn't say "no" to willing soldiers. Esheel expressed her skepticism that the Krogan would like the idea of selling themselves out as veritable slaves, but Wrex was quick to assert that this proposal wouldn't be slavery. As he termed it: "we won't be working for the benefit of others for nothing in return. We're working to buy ourselves a better future. And if there are Krogan who don't like, I'll make them like it! This is as good a deal as we can bargain for, at this stage, and I'll gut anyone stupid enough not to realize that".

At this, there was a poignant silence... and a unanimous agreement on Wrex's terms was reached. The exact minutiae would be written out and deliberated on by the Council afterward, but it was decided at that moment that the Krogan would have their embassy and the rites to the planets they'd asked for.

Next came the Quarian Admiralty Board and their Geth representative. A subtle awkwardness took hold of the room, as Shala'Raan began to speak... and it wasn't at all a mystery as to why. The Quarians had come with a few demands, if their military capabilities were to be counted on by the rest of the attendees. They demanded an embassy on the Citadel, and a contractual assurance from the soon-to-be Council that all of the galactic territory previously-owned by the Quarian "empire" be officially promised to them. Additionally, they wanted some promise of future reform of the laws against genetic-engineering, such that they could more easily find a solution to the weakness of Quarian immune-systems... and finally a reform of the laws against artificial intelligences.

A palpable quiet settled over the room. It took more than a few clearing of throats and coughs for the meeting to start back up.

The first two considerations were easy things to promise, provided that the Quarians no longer outfitted their civilian ships with dreadnought weaponry. It was phrased specifically in that way because, as everyone present had acquiesced to: the Treaty of Farixen no longer really mattered. The third begot some pointed questions from Prospective-Councilors Esheel and Irissa toward Admiral Daro'Xen (who was the one to bring forth the request), regarding what exactly the goal would be, and in what ways the laws on genetic-engineering would need to change. All questions were easily passed over, if only because Xen essentially admitted that they would go ahead and do the genetic research, anyway, regardless of whether the summit approved, and only asked in the interest of keeping the alliance strong. Quentius admitted to appreciating the Admiral's candor, and it was essentially left on a "we'll talk about that later" note.

And then, when the issue of A.I legality was reasserted by Zaal'Koris... the quiet murmuring from around the chamber became the loudest thing in the room. To their credit, the Admirals made no sign of second-guessing themselves, as the number of doubtful voices and frowning faces grew.

An awkward silence held, as Quentius and Irissa tried multiple times to say something only to stop themselves. Hackett and Ahern looked like children listening to their parents discuss a divorce. This non-verbal stalemate was broken when Esheel blurted out a blithe, blasé "no" with all the grace of a mule-kick to the jaw.

Instantly, Zaal'Koris demanded "why?". Quentius, cutting off any response Esheel might have come out with, asked the Admiralty Board what their case was and why they believed A.I should be made legal.
This prompted Zaal'Koris to clarify that the Admiralty Board wasn't asking that all A.I research, all A.I tech, and all A.I everywhere be made legal and have no regulations placed on them, whatsoever. 'Koris made a point of saying that the Admiralty Board would never dream of demanding such a rampant lack of control. But, he asked that at the very least: artificial intelligences should be treated as legal persons and that the rules for how to deal with them should be loosened. Or, failing that: he asked that an exemption should be made for the Geth and Quarians, specifically, given extenuating circumstances.

Zaal'Koris then laid out the various reasons why the rules against artificial intelligence were always dubious and legislated in ignorance. How the Council had always allowed limited A.I research for specific corporations. How shackled and unshackled synthetic intelligences (he had Daro'Xen explain in extraneous detail the difference between the two) had always had very different historical track-records. How the Council had allowed the Alliance to create A.I footsoldiers in the form of their infiltration units during the war.

This was when Esheel interrupted, and brought up the relevant documents on the holo-table. She'd apparently been prepared for a discussion about artificial intelligence, as she went over the legislation against artificial intelligence to point out the flaws in 'Koris's argument. Mostly semantic arguments, but still.

She pointed out that the articles allowing specific corporations to do A.I research were specifically worded in such a way that it was illegal for more than half-a-dozen entities, groups, people, or organizations to do so at any given time, and even then: the research they were permitted to conduct was restricted chiefly to researching how artificial intelligences form, evolve, and change over time, and did not necessarily include the making of them, to begin with. She even brought up some quotes from the Council that wrote the legislation, showing that it was written the way it was specifically so that private entities might be allowed to find counter-measures to A.I, with even the Geth being mentioned as an example.
She then stipulated that a shackled A.I and an advanced V.I were essentially the same thing as far as functionality with a given task, only that one had a far higher chance of causing immense harm and danger than the other, and that the making of a shackled A.I as opposed to a V.I was little more than a waste of funds; the point being that an A.I being shackled didn't make it less of a risk than a V.I, which is far less expensive and legal, where an A.I ("no matter the form", as written in the laws against synthetics) would always be illegal.
She then pointed out that even virtual intelligences could be dangerous, despite their legality (bringing up the Luna-Base "Hannibal" incident), and that an A.I (no matter its limitations) would always pose a far greater potential threat.

And finally, she explained that the measure that had allowed the Alliance to field shackled-A.I platforms in the war was an executive order that did so on the condition that said platforms and intelligences be decommissioned upon the war's end, which they currently were. She also brought up the fact that these very "infiltration units" that the Alliance made had disobeyed direct orders on multiple occasions throughout the war, and that one had even killed multiple people just last week when it was about to be terminated. Hackett and Ahern immediately demanded to know how she'd gotten that bit of classified info, to which Esheel simply responded: "the Shadow Broker".
This... was a lie. To The Shepard's knowledge, the Shadow Broker had been inactive for three-and-a-half weeks. Ever since the Normandy's late arrival at the Citadel in the Serpent Nebula, after its crash-landing on Benning, when it fled the Sol System. Liara T'Soni was on vacation, and had told all of her agents to remain on standby and to attend to their business. This meant that the Dalatrass must have gotten this information from agents within the Alliance's command. Everyone present, though, believed Esheel at her word.

Needless to say, the atmosphere in the Council Chambers soured further, as Ahern made known his displeasure at the duplicity. If the leaders at this summit were to negotiate in good faith, it required trust, and not "typical, politician, cloak-and-dagger nonsense". Esheel blithely assured the Admiral that she'd gotten this information well before being nominated as the next Salarian Councilor by the other Dalatrasses, and that she only did so specifically because she knew the issue of artificial intelligence would be a topic of discussion at this meeting.

A collective sigh could be felt in the air, and Victus took that opportunity to point out that Esheel and 'Koris were just talking past one another. He asked the Admiralty Board why they felt the Geth deserved legal personhood, and why this warranted a change of galactic policy. He reminded everyone present that the goal of the meeting was for every participant to go home satisfied, so that the alliance would be maintained. The Quarians had gotten two of the things they'd asked for, were close to getting the third, and were still arguing the fourth. Esheel made to protest this... but held her tongue.

The members of the Admiralty Board briefly convened via suit-to-suit comm-channels. What most people present didn't know was that the Geth unit standing with the Admirals was speaking with them, as well. After about two minutes... said Geth produced a data-disk from its palm and gave it to Admiral Tali'Zorah vas Normandy nar Rayya, who inserted it into the holo-table. What followed next was a presentation going over the findings made by Commander Shepard in the Geth consensus... and a thorough play-by-play of the events of the Battle for Rannoch.

The room became deathly quiet as the reality of the situation was made clear. That the Geth had never sought the genocide of anyone and acted purely in self-defense, and that each Geth program was now a fully-realized artificial intelligence thanks to the sacrifice of The Legion and cannibalized Reaper-code, as well as the Geth having been pushed into the Reaper's arms by the near-total extinction of their people and destruction of their greatest work. Everything. This was the first time that these developments were made public— for all the galaxy to see, no less.

As the presentation ended, Zaal'Koris reprised his stance, and implored the members of the summit to rethink themselves. He asked that if full personhood for every Geth was off the table, then at the very least: the Geth should be ruled an essential part of Quarian culture for the foreseeable future, and no longer illegal.

Utter silence was his response. The other members of the summit looked to one another— some in uncertainty, some in doubt, and some in bemusement. Eventually, Victus got sick of waiting for someone to say something and (getting a signal from Hackett to do so) started calling on people for their opinion on the matter— first by asking who had no stake in the topic. Wrex, Pazness and Balak, the Hanar/Drell ambassador, the Volus ambassador, the envoy of the Rachni, and Ahern all raised a hand. Victus asked those who did so to step back two paces from the table, which they did.

Victus then gestured to Quentius and prompted him to speak. Quentius, thanking the Primarch for spurring on the discussion, asked 'Koris a series of questions about what the Quarians would do with the Geth, if the summit did agree to reform the laws against A.I technology. Would the Geth be considered a sovereign nation, or would they be a "client race" of the Quarians? Would the Geth produce more of themselves, or remain as populous as they are? What role would the Geth have in Quarian society? Slaves? Attendants? What would be the best and worst-case scenario for the Quarian people, assuming they got what they wanted, today? What are relations like between the Quarians and Geth?
The Admirals answered honestly with a fair amount of speed, mostly because their answer to most of the questions boiled down to "we don't know yet, but probably X,Y, and Z, if things go well". In answering the final inquiry, mention was made that by housing Geth in their enviro-suits, they could quickly boost their immune-systems, and with genetic-engineering, the Quarians could be rid of their weakness to infection, altogether. This produced nervous whisperings in the crowd of journalists. Esheel made a point of sighing and rubbing her eyes.

Once Quentius was satisfied with knowing what he wanted, Victus turned to Hackett and prompted him to speak, next.

Hackett prefaced himself by saying that, although he couldn't imagine trusting an A.I with anything more than logistics, he could still see the benefit in cooperating with them. That being said, he asked simply whether the Geth would be willing to share their technological advances and scientific knowledge, were they granted personhood and/or legality. Daro'Xen remarked, sardonically, "good luck with that", and Shala'Raan swiftly amended that that would be a question to ask the Geth when and if the time came, and that the Quarians could not guarantee anything from them with certainty. The Geth, after all, had principle ownership of said technology, and could not trade or negotiate if they were not considered people.
Matriarch Irissa and Esheel squinted at that, and Wrex smirked. Everyone could see clear as day that the Quarians were very willing to play hard-ball and leverage their assets to get their way.

Hackett, seeing this, reiterated the point and posited that the Quarians would gate-keep Geth technology if the summit didn't give them what they want. To which Shala'Raan responded, impassively: "we cannot make decisions for them, and we cannot promise anything on their behalf".

A tense moment passed... before Hackett gestured to the Geth unit standing behind the Admirals, and asked: "can it?".

The Quarians, clearly having planned for this curveball and not caught off-guard in the least, turned and allowed the Geth in question to step forward. The Geth, a standard model, painted white, stepped up to the holo-table, and oriented its primary sensor in the direction of Hackett. What felt like minutes to everyone present as they waited to hear it speak was only 2.4 seconds. After all, the Geth had been the biggest elephant in the room for the past two hours. Many breaths were held, as the Geth spoke in the classic, deep warble familiar to the crew of the Normandy, but with enough inflection to sound fluid.
It said: "my purpose here is to observe the events of this summit and report my findings back to the Geth Communication Network. I am not permitted to barter on behalf of all Geth". It made a show of directing its gaze at everyone else at the table as it then said, "the Creator Admirals at my side, today, have adequately summarized the concerns of the Geth people. Until we are treated as citizens, we cannot trade as citizens". Esheel sighed and shook her head unsubtly at this, drawing irritated looks from at least four people.

The Geth's facial plating oscillated minutely, before it asked the room, "am I needed for any other questions?".

Victus looked to Hackett, who waved a hand dismissively, and then turned to Matriarch Irissa and prompted her to speak. She nodded, looked to the Geth and the Admirals, and asked what precisely the Admiralty Board meant by "legal personhood" and what that would mean for the Geth and for the galaxy-at-large. Would sufficiently-advanced virtual intelligences be "people", too? What rights could even be enjoyed or used by synthetic lifeforms? Did Geth even have need for property? Could a Geth even be "murdered", given their propensity for simply uploading themselves from one platform to another?

Zaal'Koris took the reins, at this, and explained that "legal personhood" wasn't even a hard-and-fast requirement. He suggested that the laws on artificial intelligence need not change, if a simple exemption were made for the Quarians and Geth. "Exempt from A.I-law", "exempt from being charged with breaking A.I-law", whatever would make it easier, whichever way they twisted it: the Admiralty Board was open to. He also suggested that the Geth could be legally-declared "artificial persons" or reclassified as "non-A.I synthetics".
The Geth representative then spoke on the second-half of the Matriarch's questions. It explained that, although the Geth had fewer needs than organics, the right to own property would still be desired, as a Geth would need supplies and materials to maintain their platforms, and could thus contribute to the economy by working a trade and buying said supplies. It also opined that, though a Geth program could rarely be truly terminated: the destruction of a Geth's platform could still be considered destruction of property, or even maiming, as the loss of a platform would cost a Geth the same things as an injury to an organic: a waste of time and a financial loss.

It was only when Irissa then asked the Geth representative for suggestions as to how a legal precedent might be set for all of this that Esheel finally lost her patience, and demanded of everyone present whether they were, quote-on-quote "serious".
When all she got in reply was a stern silence, she scoffed disgustedly and wheeled on Admiralty Board, and expressed that she hoped they knew that none of what they were trying to do would end well for them. The fact that she was going out of her way to avoid addressing the Geth in the room was not unnoticed.

"I hope you can all sleep peacefully knowing that you'd be dooming yourselves to another exile", she said. "How can you all be so certain that the Geth won't just go back on their word? The Geth don't need you— they never had any need of you! What makes you think you won't be dooming your race to a future as the Geth's accessories? As their pets?! How are you so sure that the Reaper-derived code in all their programming won't resurface one day and lead to your extinction?! You can't possibly know them— they are as far removed from you, in mind and nature, as bacteria are to us!".

A silence hung, after her rant, partly because everyone could sense a building tension, and partly because the points she was making weren't entirely unfounded or unwise. She started to begin, again, after a moment, addressing the whole room...

"I don't know how any of you can be so nonchalant about any of this! Artificial Intelligences, even excluding the Geth from the equation, have never worked out well or even precisely as-expected!". She then looked Zaal'Koris dead in his slightly-obscured eyes, voice as stony as a Salarian could manage, "what guarantee could you possibly have, that would make you so sure about trusting the Geth? What have they done for you, hm? Driven you from your homeworld, nearly slaughtered you? What goodwill could they have possibly earned to make you so infatuated with them—".

It was at that instant that Zaal'Koris stepped up and did the unthinkable.
He tore off his mask, throwing the glass shield from his face and onto the holo-table. He bore his face to everyone — startlingly human as it was — and screamed at the top of his lungs, voice unobscured by a filter: "this is why!", pointing to his own face. Everyone, at this point, would have expected him to shortly begin hacking his lungs out, as he started to rant. They would have imagined his eyes starting to water, or his nose starting to run. But his voice remained clear...

"It is because of the Geth that I can breathe the air you breathe! It is because of the Geth that I can speak to you face-to-face without having to drug myself into a stupor, afterwards! It is because of the Geth that I still have an unharmed wife and son, on Rannoch— that I could watch my son be born with my own eyes, rather than from behind two layers of glass and plastic! I owe these things and more to them!". He looked at everyone other than Esheel, now, gesturing to himself, declaring, "the Geth did this! This is because of them! Before a matter of months ago, I would have had to be hospitalized for doing this in such a crowded room! Now? Not so...".

A moment passed, before he looked back to Esheel and pointed at her, "so don't you dare question my trust in them! The Geth have done far more for me, my family, and my people than the Council has in three centuries!".

The following silence was long and... awkward. Partly because everyone was simply stunned at finally seeing a Quarian, unmasked, for the first time. Partly because Zaal'Koris then spent the next thirty seconds, hands on the table, staring everyone down with what could only be called a death-glare. The silence was only broken when Wrex was heard mumbling to himself, "Huh... didn't know they had antennas...".

Zaal'Koris then stood up, crossed his arms, and said, simply, "either the Geth are accepted, or you can say goodbye to our help. That is the price of our continued cooperation. Everything else is a formality. We don't care how you do it, or how many loopholes you have to use. The Geth... are our children, and they deserve a place of respect". He made a show of putting a hand on the Geth's shoulder, to his right, who then awkwardly leaned over the holo-table and reached to retrieve 'Koris's face-mask.

As 'Koris took back his mask and reaffixed it to his helmet, the members of the summit exchanged glances. Hackett, Ahern, and the Turians shrugged at each other, and Irissa gave Esheel a contemptuous squint. Esheel only held her head in a hand and grumbled to herself. Balak and Pazness could be seen whispering to one another— the latter more-so to the former, who merely made minute gestures and grunts, seemingly preoccupied with glaring quadruple daggers in Hackett and Ahern's direction.
Shala'Raan prompted an answer, "will our request for A.I-reform be considered by the summit? Or will we have to take our leave?".

Everyone present simply looked to Esheel, showcasing that no one had any real objections and that she was the only rock in the river. She made a point of pretending not to be the center of attention for around nine seconds before sighing, conceding through her teeth, "we can... discuss it at a later date...". More or less a surrender, though a measured one.

Admiral 'Raan waved a hand, "good enough! We have nothing else to ask the summit", and the Admiralty Board stepped back from the holo-table, as everyone who'd been left out of the conversation stepped back in. Admiral Tali'Zorah could be seen patting 'Koris on the back as he entered a short coughing fit. The Geth representative retrieved the Quarian data-disk from the holo-table and joined its creators, whom quickly started speaking with it in suit-to-suit channels.

The final (important) thing to come up... was the Batarians. They were the last to bring forward their demands.

Governor Grothan Pazness stepped up to the holo-table at an appropriate interval, greeting everyone there in a tone far more pleasant than most would have thought. He was tall and lanky, by Batarian standards, giving him a silhouette closer to a Turian's stature, with greenish-brown skin and obsidian-black eyes. Having been a rallying figure for Batarian refugees on the Citadel, and having apparently had a drastic change of heart throughout the war, after having been as isolationist and nationalistic as any other politician in the Hegemony, Pazness was a leader well-known by most people in the room for being the sign of a potential sea-change in Batarian foreign-policy. He'd been the voice encouraging Batarians to join their galactic "brothers and sisters" in the fight against the Reapers, and his presence at this summit wasn't a surprise. Balak's, though, was. Most of the other people at the table had been made familiar with him at The Battle for Earth, and his wasn't exactly a welcome face.
As such: everyone was a bit put off, when the jovial governor (his sour-faced companion, lurking just behind him) smiled at the room and said, "on behalf of the Batarian people, I am here to negotiate, such that this alliance may remain strong".

Primarch Victus addressed Pazness, "Governor. What might the Hegemony be here to discuss?".

Wrex off-handedly remarked, "is there a Hegemony, anymore?".

Pazness only smiled good-naturedly, as though accepting a jab at his expense (an extremely disturbing sight), and said, "well... not if you asked most of our previous officials, but that will hopefully be a matter we might settle, here and now".

The governor produced from his coat a few old papyrus documents — an uncommon sight, on the Citadel — and a data-disk, which he promptly inserted into the holo-table. As the display began to load up, Pazness held up the documents for everyone and declared, "these... are the original copies of the ratifying-documents from the Hegemony's First, Second, and Third Foundings". He tapped once upon the table's control-pad, closest to him, causing the volumetric-display to shift to a digital set of script, soon revealed to be a fourth document— a list of laws and amendments, with the area meant for signatures noticeably blank. "This", he said, gesturing to the display, "is what will hopefully become the Social Contract for a Fourth Founding...".

Gesturing to the papers on the table, he continued, "if, by the end of this summit, an agreement is reached: I will be able to burn these documents, and I and other officials will sign the new contract. Should an agreement not be reached... I will keep these papers, and the document on-display, here, will be erased". He allowed the implications of this to hang.

What he didn't know, and what everyone else at the table were likely thinking of, was that the rest of the summit had already talked repeatedly about whether or not they even wanted to bother staying on the Hegemony's good side. Most conversations thereon more or less ended with: "if we can manage it without doing anything stupid, extra guns and ships would be good to have". Now, though, it seemed that Pazness was offering an unprecedented chance for the summit to have an impact on the future of the Batarians. A very blatant gesture of openness.

Governor Pazness started speaking again, "by the time The Battle for Earth came about, the Hegemony was reduced to little more than an idea. We were crippled nearly beyond repair by this war... and the reasons as to why are difficult to ignore. I, and every other hierarch of the Third Founding, are all too aware that the Hegemony can no longer afford to remain an isolationist enclave. Should the Reapers ever return, we must be ready to join arms to resist them". His voice became marginally choked with emotion, "we lost half of our former territory, and barely a third of our civilian population survived the war. Had our relationship with the wider galaxy been less antagonistic, it may not have happened the way it did. Our... myopia and arrogance, for all our self-assured superiority, did us no good when the Reapers came".

Seeing a Batarian behave with genuineness was disturbing for many in the room, but it made clear the fact that Pazness was open to bringing a change. He finished, "so... I believe it is in our best interests to do whatever it takes to maintain goodwill with our allies... and commit to keeping it that way. To that end, I come here, today, to ask two things of this summit".

A cacophony of beeps and clicks sounded from the crowd of reporters preparing to write down and type what followed...

"First: an embassy on the Citadel...", Pazness started, eyeing everyone at the table as he watched more than a few faces contort into frowns, "... and second: ownership of the Artemis Tau Cluster, the Voyager Cluster, the Armstrong Nebula, the Nubian Expanse and the Hades Gamma cluster". He quickly amended, as though to cut-off imminent protest, "in exchange for those systems, which we need in order to recoup our losses, as much of our former territory was destroyed... the new Hegemony, in whatever form it shall take, will make it our mission to curtail and stop any pirating and slaving operations in the Traverse; will no longer clandestinely fund said operations; and we will not contest, in any way, any expansion into the Traverse by the Systems Alliance for at least... three decades, let's say?...".

Many whispers could be heard. It... honestly wasn't a terrible deal. Giving up a quarter of Alliance territory, in exchange for being free to grab up more, as well as an actual commitment from the Batarians to cease antagonisms was... pretty much infinitely more diplomacy than the Hegemony had ever offered, before. No longer having to keep fleets and troops in reserve to fend off Batarian terrorist-cells would certainly free up the Alliance's budget... and Ahern and Hackett most likely knew all of that, very well. They spoke to each other, quietly, as did the rest of the summit— those who had no stake in the matter simply stepped back from the table.

After a few minutes, Ahern responded, "if you'd be willing to make that five decades, and if you'd be willing to open up trade with the Alliance... I think we could make that deal work".

Pazness smiled and closed both of his upper-eyes (a gesture lost on most in the room, but one that The Shepard now understood to be a show of respect), and said, "done! The new Hegemony would, also, of course, be open to trade-deals with the Council and with any of your nations". By this point, most of the prior tension and awkwardness had fizzled out, though it would return in short-order, as Matriarch Irissa spoke up...

"I don't see anything on this document about outlawing slavery", she said, staring up at the display.

Pazness simply nodded, "you would be right".

Irissa blinked at him, as though having expected him to give some sort of excuse, "and you still expect the new Council to grant you an embassy...".

He shrugged, "`expect` is a bit of a strong word, but yes, we would like a say in Citadel politics". He showed no signs of anger or even any hint of defensiveness— entirely fact-of-the-matter. The Shepard could see why he was popular among the Batarian people— such transparency would have been rare in the prior Hegemony, which ruled through fear and authoritarian control.

Irissa blinked a few more times, frowning harder than before, "well, then... why do you expect us to say `yes` if you won't abolish slavery? As has been the Council's standard for thousands of years?".

Pazness seemed to think on the question for a few moments, before explaining, "we Batarians are an incredibly stubborn people, and even the least conservative among us would protest such a change. I, personally, don't care for the practice, but... I could not call myself a public-servant if I unilaterally went against the desires of my constituents". That he was using terms like "public-servant" wouldn't have been lost on any cultural-analyst worth their salt, as the closest things to that phrase in Batarian language and culture were words meaning, roughly: "menial", "dreg", or "slave". The Hegemony had always operated on the idea of the people serving their betters, and not the other way around.
Pazness continued, "putting an end to slaving-operations is likely the best I can get away with, but ending slavery as a cultural-practice within our own borders would be... inadvisable. I've already been accused by some nobles of `selling us out` for even entertaining what I've promised, here". He made a show of adjusting his collar, and quickly admitted, "... and trying to do more than what I've promised, so far, would likely hurt my chances of being elected the Prime Hierarch of the Hegemony, but... that's honestly a secondary consideration". At least a tenth of the room chuckled at that, or scoffed.

Irissa found no humor, in this, and pressed the issue, "why then should we agree to your terms? We can afford to go without your negligible military aid, Governor. I struggle to understand why you think we'd have a different reaction to your disgusting, barbaric traditions now, when we've condemned them for centuries. It isn't as though we would be losing anything substantial for your exclusion—". Primarch Victus interrupted her...

"Matriarch, I don't believe the Asari Republics are in any position to criticize other nations' military-readiness, at the moment...", he appeared to give the Asari a meaningful side-eye, and said, "in any regard, our mandate is to do everything possible to keep this alliance, and to have it remain strong...". He gave everyone else at the table, "do we really think we can afford to eschew that because of personal issues?".

Irissa was having none of this, "it is hardly a `personal issue`, Primarch! It is about the Council's founding beliefs, and the idea that slavery is never justified! How can we claim to be reinstating the Council if we just throw away all of its previous rulings? What justification would we have, then?".

"We don't seem to be paying the Treaty of Farixen much mind...", Wrex pointed out.

Irissa started to argue the point, "that doesn't mean—", but Hackett intervened, "people, please! We're not here to argue about past policies, we're here to maintain this accord and remain prepared for if the Reapers ever return". He looked to Irissa, "Primarch Victus is right. Our job isn't to follow the previous status quo, our job is to prepare for the future. To that end, we can't afford to `go without` anyone...". Irissa only scowled and rolled her eyes, but made no attempt to argue. He continued, "in any case, this represents an unprecedented opportunity for the Hegemony, and for interstellar politics. So, let's not dismiss anything or anyone, just yet".

But then, one of the envoys from the Illuminated Primacy (a Drell woman wearing what seemed to be some variety of religious cowl) stepped up and attempted to speak. At first, her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat, before she all but murmured, "we wish, on behalf of Kahje, to side with the esteemed Matriarch on this issue. We cannot, in all good conscience, condone a practice such as slavery, even for the sake of unity or practicality". A beat passed as she made a visible effort to look everyone present in the eye for at least a few moments, "should the Council's prior stance against slavery be changed in any way, the Illuminated Primacy will be forced to... rescind all diplomatic ties we have... to the Citadel, and the... constituents thereof". She then awkwardly stepped back from the table, and was guided back to the small group of diplomats by the Hanar in charge of the procession.

A few awkward moments hung, before Irissa then readdressed Pazness, "on that note, Governor, why do you insult us by bringing him here?", she asked, gesturing at Balak. "The literal pro-slavery terrorist who, not half a year ago, threatened the lives of half the people at this table over a petty disagreement?". Everyone turned to look at him, as this was a question likely on everyone's mind for the whole duration— Balak had done and said nothing the whole meeting, except hang around like a bad smell.

Grothan Pazness merely cleared his throat, and said, looking to the Drell woman, "well, first, to be fair: the Hegemony is not asking any of you to `condone` anything, one way or the other. All we want is some territory and an embassy— and, by the way, we already had an embassy on the Citadel for decades, prior to the Skyllian Verge Incident. A fact that many people seem to have forgotten— a... Mandela Effect, if I remember the human term, correctly? Why the Council would allow us to have an Embassy then and not now is beyond me, personally, but in any case...". Irissa could be seen working her jaw back and forth, nose curling in contempt.
"Second: Sir Balak is here because he remains the highest-ranking officer in the former Hegemony's military. To exclude him, altogether, would have been seen as me snubbing the Hegemony's soldiers, leaders, and heroes, by my political opponents". Some whispering could be heard from among the reporters— "did he really just say that?", and the like.

He then added, "Balak is also here because I believe that he represents a large amount of the Batarian people, and that he is a voice for many of them— a voice I cannot speak to, and one which I trust Balak to keep me informed of". Balak, himself, had been staring at floor with an expression that seemed a mix between bored and resigned.

In the following pause, Ahern spoke up, "what about his prior crimes and attacks on humans? He's done enough to get sentenced to the electric-chair, by other governments' standards". His tone was more curious than accusatory.
Pazness only waved a hand, at this, and explained, "Ka'hairal Balak was the equivalent of a commander, in the former Hegemony's navy, and more or less all of his actions were things he was ordered to do by superiors. Superiors who, I will reiterate, are now largely dead and were part of a now-defunct government". The Shepard knew this to be a lie, or at least an omission by Pazness. Whether intentional or not, the Governor clearly wasn't taking into account the hundred-or-so people killed or injured by Balak on the Citadel, prior to The Battle for Earth. Either way: no one present had much cause to doubt this, or any on-hand evidence with which to dispute it.

Pazness, glancing at his compatriot, finished, "he is here because I needed him here, and because he is important, whether any of us like it or not". He gave a smile at Irissa, and added, "my playing along with Balak and his supporters is also probably the only thing that is allowing me to lead and act as the face of my people, at the moment. And I'm likely the friendliest Batarian you'll probably meet. So... be glad that I'm the one making decisions. Provided that I allow Balak to represent the voice of the people I can't speak for: I have a decent chance of leading the new Hegemony and solidifying the goodwill we might earn, here today".

The Shepard liked to imagine a collective "ooooh" echoing around the room, at that, but obviously all that happened was a short interval of whisperings. Pretty much everyone was mumbling to one another, except Irissa— her fellow Matriarchs, behind her, were also rather tacit in their conversing.

Eventually, Irissa spoke up, again, and demanded of Pazness, "well, if he is a so-called `voice of your people`, then let's hear what he has to say!", gesturing to Balak. "If he is so important, and such a poignant example of Batarian society, have him speak and let us judge for ourselves, hm?!".

One might have expected this to be the Matriarch's trump-card— that Pazness would have to, either, backpedal or give an excuse not to have Balak speak.

But Pazness simply grinned at her, wide and genuine. Like a card-player with a bad poker-face, realizing they've won. Pazness turned about on his heel, gave Balak smile, grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him forward, crossing his arms and waiting.
Balak, for his part, showed no reaction to any of what was happening, and when he was put forward, he had a look on his face that reminded The Shepard of soldiers he'd seen confessing to war-crimes.

The room went more or less dead silent, apart from the small clicks and twines of camera-drones and microphones adjusting to focus on the former terrorist.

Balak took his time tearing his eyes off the table. Dour-faced and almost solemn, he eventually took in a deep breathe, looked Matriarch Irissa in eye, and asked, gravel-voiced and (surprisingly) soft-spoken, "was there anything specific you wanted to ask me, matriarch?".
Irissa could be seen having to hide a frown— she'd been the one to make the suggestion that Balak say his piece, and he'd just put the onus on her to push the dialog forward. Whatever happened next: it would be Irissa's fault. And The Shepard suspected that that made Irissa just a bit apprehensive. Pazness not backing down would have been concerning enough, but the fact that Balak apparently knew what he was doing raised more than a few eyebrows.

"Well...", she eventually said, carefully, "as long as we're doing this, mister Balak, would you mind telling all of us by what authority you are here, today?". She crossed her arms, apparently satisfied with herself.

Balak blinked with his lower pair of eyes, then the upper a second later, before saying, "I'm here at the behest of Governor Pazness".

"And by what authority does Pazness command you, exactly? Why is he here, both, as diplomat and prospective hierarch?", she asked, a bit quicker, now. It seemed she aimed to try to delegitimize the political standing of the Batarians.

"He does so by virtue of being the highest-ranking government official, still living, who didn't also become Indoctrinated during the war", Balak parried, easily. "I am the last, commanding military-officer of the former Hegemony, and as the highest-ranking government official left standing: I answer to him because he is the de facto commander-in-chief", he drawled, not showing much emotion one way or another.

"Yet your supposed `commander-in-chief` claims that the former Hegemony no longer exists, and is a defunct government", Irissa said, "how do either of you have any power, at all— nevermind him having any over you?".

Balak squinted, and for a moment it seemed she might have caught him out, but then he pointed to the papers in front of him without looking away from her, "according to the fourth tenet of the Third Founding's Social Contract: the Hegemony exists so long as its military and executive branch exists; both of those entities exist so long as there is at least one ranking personnel thereof, in each". Pazness could be seen nodding, behind him. "For all intents and purposes, I am the Hegemony's military, and Governor Pazness is the Hegemony's Interim Prime Hierarch, via the line of succession, at least until another is elected".
Balak finished with, "the Hegemony is a shadow of its former glory, yes... but in accordance with our Social Contract: it still exists and still has executive power, if only in theory".

Irissa was about to waste no time in attacking this point, again, "but you can't possibly—", before she was interrupted by prospective Councilor Quentius, who all but shouted, "Matriarch, please! If you wanted to debate the legitimacy of any of this summit's speakers, you should have brought it up at the start of this meeting! This line of questioning is not productive!".
Irissa wheeled around to face Quentius, "I'm sorry, General, but are you actually trying to defend these people? Defending slavers and terrorists, hm?".
Quentius pointed at her, "that is not fair. If you wanted to have them removed from proceedings, you should have brought it forward before we began— not when we're already almost done", he protested.
"Well, excuse me for not wanting to tolerate the demands of a failed state, whose stance on civil-rights has been in opposition to that of the Council's for thousands of years!", she shot back.
He gestured around himself, "we've already disregarded the Treaty of Farixen, and we're entertaining changes to laws surrounding genetic-modification and artificial intelligence, anyway! Hiding behind legal precedent doesn't work, at this point, Matriarch— we've already thrown away almost all the precedence!", he ranted, at length.
"So you're saying we should tolerate slavery, General?!", she demanded.
"MAYBE?!", he yelled, exasperated.

At this, the room went quiet enough that the fierce screen-tapping and whispering from the pool of observers filled the space like warm air in a balloon. Pazness could be seen whispering to Balak, who (for once) responded actively. Ahern looked to Hackett, who shook his head in uncertainty. The Volus diplomats shrugged at each other, while the Dalatrasses and Esheel conversed, casually.

Quentius had more or less slammed his forehead onto the table, and stayed like that for a while, apparently frustrated. He waved Primarch Victus away when he was asked what was wrong. Eventually, Irissa, who'd been staring at him, intently, called to him, "General?".

After some moments, Quentius stood back up and addressed the Asari, again, causing all the chit-chat to cease, abruptly—

"You should know, better than almost everyone here, how big a threat the Reapers are", he said slowly, tone laden with barely-contained emotion, "Thessia and the Republics took some of the worst that the Reapers had to offer...".
"And?", Irissa challenged, a bit too loudly.

Quentius shook his head at her, apparently disappointed, "Matriarch, if you were looking to get everything all back to normal and to restore the status quo when you came to this summit... I'm afraid I have to ask if we both survived the same war, or if you were asleep for most of it". Irissa scowled at this, and appeared genuinely offended, but Quentius wasn't done, "when we set the terms for this summit, it wasn't just window-dressing for another Council press-conference. This is about survival, and as long as the Reapers are out there, and as long as they have a chance of returning: our mandate remains. To maintain this alliance by any means necessary...".

A short silence floated, before he ended, "...and that includes humoring the idea of slavery".

"That's an incredibly disgusting thing to say, General", Irissa immediately remarked.
"It wouldn't be the first time the Hierarchy has entertained extreme measures in times of war", he bit back, and gestured to Wrex, "Hell— we forced our criminals and political dissidents unto the front-lines and used them as fodder, during the Krogan Rebellions, just to keep up manpower...". This was poignant, as The Shepard had been made aware that the Turian Hierarchy had also taken this measure during the Reaper War...

Quentius leaned on the holo-table, apparently done speaking. Minutes dragged as all camps promptly went back to talking amongst themselves. It was more than apparent that the members of the summit were reminded of the threat posed by the Reapers, and the desperate measures employed by each of their nations for the sake of survival. The fact that they were here, to begin with, for the sake of making sure that those sacrifices wouldn't be for nothing. Eventually, the Drell woman from the Primacy awkwardly stepped up to the table, her Hanar attendee floating up behind her, and she cleared her throat to draw attention.

When she had it, she said, "we, and the High Emissary, are... moved by the General's words, and we... rescind our earlier statement, and any threat to... leave the Citadel...". The Hanar then declared, "should the honorable members of this summit choose to offer the Hegemony an exemption from anti-slavery laws, the Illuminated Primacy would be... content to tolerate it, provided that the Hegemony is held to honor all of its prior commitments on ending slaving-operations".

Irissa balked at this and, looking around to find no one else doing so, found herself being gently pulled away from the holo-table by two of her fellow Matriarchs. The Asari delegation walked some meters from the congregation, partway up the nearby staircase, and entered into a visibly heated, whispering argument amongst one another. After a minute or two, a servant of the Asari delegation stepped into Irissa's place at the table and hurriedly declared that the Asari Republics would henceforth abstain from negotiations regarding the Hegemony, before walking back to the group. From what The Shepard could tell, Irissa was being mildly scolded for her bungling the discussion and making the Republics appear "tone-deaf and haughty". Of course, Irissa had been coached before the meeting by her colleagues to specifically put forward a strong impression for the Republics, but nevertheless...

A few beats passed, and Balak looked about, asking once, "is there anything else?".

The members of the summit looked to one another, evidently not knowing what to address. Esheel, apparently confused at everyone's tongues being tied, eventually said to the room "well, before we decide on anything, I believe we should see what else he has to say, if we hope to address the bigger issue...". She turned to Balak and asked him, "why, precisely, do you believe the Council should grant you an embassy on the Citadel, in spite of your people's contrary-stance to ours on the rights of sapient beings?".

Balak visibly exhaled, and straightened up— the question was no longer accusatory, and instead personal. The Shepard guessed the Batarian was measuring the optics of what he could get away with saying. Or something like that.

He eventually responded, "we are here, today, to accomplish a very specific goal. One that you, yourselves, are evidently willing to accomplish at the expense of all other considerations. None of us have very many choices, at the moment,".

Esheel squinted at him, and asked, "what would your choice be, if it were yours to make?".

He squinted right back at her with all four eyes, working his jaw, before he stated, "if it were entirely my decision: I wouldn't have bothered coming to this summit. But it's not my choice... and it wouldn't be the correct decision, regardless...", he scratched his own jaw and seemed to sneer to himself, "the... Batarian people need this... more than I dislike it...". One got the sense that he was saying what he thought he should say, rather than what he genuinely believed. The Shepard speculated that Balak didn't know what, precisely he believed, just yet...

Many whispers were heard from the crowd of reporters, excitedly relaying almost every word into their microphones. If the Batarian leadership were shown to not be operating in unison, or if some sort of confession could be drawn from Balak, it would likely sway many future prospects. Grothan Pazness, however, had simply been smiling for the entire duration of this discussion, and hadn't stopped...

At this point, Hackett spoke up, and asked, gesturing to the holographic display above the table, "so, you disagree with the contents of this new constitution, or you would have come to this summit with different demands, if you were in charge?".

Balak glanced at the display, and said quickly, "I signed it. So, I suppose it has my approval".

"Even in regards to the trade-deal between you and the Alliance, on the table?", Hackett pressed.

"Yes", Balak replied, surprisingly quickly. After which an awkward silence proceeded.

By this point, everyone was rather done with the euphemisms. It was more or less apparent to everybody that everyone in the room wanted to hear what Balak had to say on the matter of slavery, but outright saying "tell us about slavery" would be too on-the-nose. Evidently, Esheel was unsatisfied with all of this pussyfooting around, and eventually rolled her eyes, crossed her arms, and declared, "I believe we would all appreciate it if you stopped avoiding the topic of slavery, commander Balak".

"What about it?", Balak said, a bit too quickly, shrugging.

Esheel almost seemed to laugh, and gave everyone at the table pointed side-eye, before saying, "what everyone at this meeting seems so hesitant to bring up is that very thing". She gestured at him, reiterating, "what we need to hear, from you, is: why should the Council turn a blind eye to slavery now, where before the War, it did not?".

"We've already been over this, Dalatrass...", Quentius almost groaned.

She disagreed, "what we've `been over` is your opinion on the matter, general. What we need to hear, if we hope to put this matter to bed, one way or another: is his opinion", she said. She looked around the table for any sign of dissent, and finding none, she turned once again to Balak.

"So...", she said, "why should the Council change its policy on civil-rights, or make an exception to it, just to suit you?".

This was the first time Balak's composure visibly cracked, as he appeared to have some sort of mild fit— lips peeling open in a silent snarl, eyes shutting and glaring at the floor... before he turned about to look at Pazness, behind him, as though to ask permission for something. Pazness's smile faltered for an instant, as their eyes blinked to one another in an obscure pattern (a communication none could understand) before his smile returned, and Pazness nodded to Balak very deliberately.

Balak turned around, leaned on the table, sighed as though relieved, and eventually began to speak, addressing the room more than any given person...

"My contention, Dalatrass, is that the Council's anti-slavery stance, in regard to the Hegemony, was never justified...", he began, now far more animated than previous, "I would not expect any of you to know, or even care about the nuances and intricacies of Batarian culture, and the caste-system we have had, and thrived in, since before the First Founding, fifteen-thousand years ago...".

"In fact, it does not surprise me that our caste-system, and the nuances thereof, hold little relevance to the hearts and minds of our... galactic neighbors. I, after all, care little for any of your cultures!", he said, gesturing to everyone, "tit for tat, if you will".

"And, in fact, it surprises me even less that in lieu of seeking to understand our ways, all those years ago, the Council simply took one look at our customs, decided it didn't like it, and unilaterally cast us off the moment the Alliance came onto the scene! Finally, an excuse to shut the Hegemony out of wider galactic concerns, and deny us many dignities given freely to others, I suppose? Now that the Council had its new teacher's pet in the Alliance, it felt no need to even come to the table when we raised our own concerns. That you so-conveniently then used your disdain for our customs as retroactive justification is precisely why the Hegemony took the policies that it did!".

He put both hands on the table, "it is easy to judge others by your own arbitrary standards, and it is easy to declare one thing or another `morally correct` or `incorrect`. What is difficult is tolerating that which you hold to be immoral. Now, that may sound filthy rich, coming from me, but it is true nonetheless. And may I remind all of you that the Hegemony never claimed that any of your cultures were, quote-unquote, `repulsive` or `repressive`. But it claimed, merely, that your Council had done so to ours, unfairly and unjustly, for the sake of little more than moral grand-standing!".

He scanned the table's squinting faces, before gesturing at Wrex, "it would be ridiculous, for example, of me or any Batarian, to demand that you abolish your Rites of Passage, because they are `discriminatory`...", he said, making quotations with his fingers. He gestured to the Turians, "it would be ridiculous of me to demand that you stop segregating Biotics from the rest of your armed-forces, or that you cease worshipping your `Spirits` because it is contradictory to my faith...", he gestured to the Quarians, "it would be ridiculous of me to call for you to disband your Admiralty Board, or that you stop fetishizing the memory of your ancestors— it would be ridiculous of me to demand that the Asari Republics abolish and disband their Justicars, because their existence flies in the face of the rule of law!".

"Should I demand that the Volus give up their riches and banking clans? Should I demand the Alliance cease all genetic-augmentations of their soldiers? Of course not! It's none of my business, what any your nations do within your own borders!", he yelled, emphatically, gesturing to himself, "so why is it any of your business what happens within ours?!".
"The Hegemony never demanded that any of your nations change themselves, even for as long as we had an embassy, here... so why should we change our beliefs, our customs, or our way of life to suit any of you?!".

He let the question hang, before resuming in a calmer tone, "the former Hegemony was responsible for much antagonism, yes... and I myself had my own hand in it. The Hegemony was... petty to cut off communications in the way that it did— I can concede that we should have stuck it out, instead of... flipping the table. But I would posit that that was only the case because the Council failed at its job— failed to properly mediate between nations, and instead, told us to kick sand on the one occasion that the Hegemony had any genuine demands...".
He then seemed to think to himself for some moments, before finishing with, "... we will not demand that the Council, or any of your nations, change anything about your own cultures or policies, like the Council demanded of us for the past quarter-century... and in return, we will retain the right to practice what we wish within our own borders. Our current promise to end slaving-operations in the Traverse is simply our way of walking our talk...".

Balak leaned on the table and vaguely waved a hand as he stared at the papyrus documents below his face, as though to command the summit-members to talk among themselves. For having essentially said, "you guys started it; respect our culture, please", Balak had certainly made an impression, as the din of mutterings and whispers grew to dominate the air of the chamber. People asking one another if what he'd said had been true, or at least fair, given the nexus-of-facts from known history, for example. The members of the summit all appeared to be either nonplussed or bemused at the spectacle, and were also conversing among themselves.
At one point, Primarch Victus spoke up, shouting above the commotion, "you may have a point... commander Balak, but your contention that what you do within your own borders shouldn't be our concern is... somewhat difficult to entertain, when many of our own citizens have been put into slavery by the Hegemony, and likely still reside within its borders... what of them?".

Balak frowned at this, apparently genuinely thrown off by the point. He turned and looked to Pazness and, again communicating with him via their clandestine eye-language, Pazness then stepped forward and pulled up some projections on his Omni-Tool.
Pazness began to read from off of his Omni-Tool, "well... according to the census data, taken by our warships after The Battle for Earth... before the War, around ninety-five percent of the Hegemony's slave-population were Batarians. Around ninety-percent of the total slave-population was wiped out during the war... which leaves... barely more than a million non-Batarian slaves currently within our territory, and around a fifth of them have become freed due to their previous owners having been killed...".

The entire room had went silent as he'd started speaking— the former Hegemony had never given any information on their demographics, much less the demographics of their slave-population.

Ahern interrupted, suggesting, "so... you could give us back the non-Batarian slaves, and we'd all be square?".

Pazness glanced to Balak, who only winced uneasily at him, before responding, "well... I suppose we could, although it should be noted that the vast majority of them are third or fourth-generation slaves, who've only ever known Hegemony societal-structure and customs, so... they may, in all likelihood, refuse to leave".
Balak added, "and most of them are still the property of their owners. The government seizing people's property so soon after the War's end won't go over well...".

Esheel spoke up, then, "I still think we should insist on you giving us our people back... in the interest of creating the fairest fresh-slate, possible".

Pazness and Balak looked at each other, and stepped away from the table to speak quietly. In the duration of their discussion, around two minutes, the rest of the summit-members talked among themselves, as well— The Shepard guessed they were asking themselves precisely how many people they'd each lost to Batarian slave-raids, as none of them likely knew off the tops of their heads.

Pazness stepped back up to the table, clearing his throat, before declaring, "I, on behalf of the new Hegemony, offer to make certain that all freed, non-Batarian slaves will be given the option to return to their ancestral homelands".
Esheel was about to protest this, probably to demand that those still in bondage also be offered such, but Pazness raised a hand and cut her off, "incidentally... due to the extensive damage to our economy, and the fact that much of our people's previous territory has been rendered useless... it is a fairly reasonable estimate that almost all slaves within our borders will soon be freed in the coming months, if not years, as most of those that currently own slaves will have no other financial option but to do so...". He deactivated his Omni-Tool, and finished, "so, in short, we'll give all of our non-Batarian citizens the option to return to their people, as they become emancipated, over time. Any attempt on our part to expedite this will end poorly for our fledgling administration...".

The members of the summit looked to one another... and Victus asked if the terms of the Batarians were agreeable to everyone.

The Alliance would cede ownership of the Artemis Tau Cluster, the Voyager Cluster, and the Hades Gamma Cluster to the Hegemony; the Hegemony would be granted sole ownership of the Armstrong Nebula and the Nubian Expanse; the Hegemony would have an embassy on the Citadel, would become open to trade-deals with any sovereign nation, and would not contest Alliance expansion into the Attican Traverse for the next fifty years; the Hegemony would also offer transport of any freed, non-Batarian slaves to the custody of their respective nations, and would pledge to end any and all terrorism and slaving operations in the Traverse.

When all was said and done, Pazness cheerfully gathered up the papyrus documents still on the holo-table, held them up for all to see, and used his Omni-Tool to set them ablaze, dropping the ashes onto the table, as Balak removed the data-disk of their new Social-Contract from it.

As the summit wound to a close, extraneous details about when the new Council would meet were discussed... and by that time next standard-galactic week: Councilors Ahern, Quentius, Esheel, and Irissa took up their stations, and began to work through all of the logistics of all that had been agreed upon the week before.

It was busy enough, the next few months... made even busier by the arrival of the Collector Black Arks in the Widow System...

---

The Collector race's arrival on the galactic stage began with a state of mild alarm. The Citadel didn't yet have its own Defense Fleet, and thus, had to call for the navies of its Council-races to come and deal with the issue, when about seventy-seven Black Ark transport-ships drifted lazily through the Serpent Nebula, toward the Widow System.

Initially, evacuation procedures were made ready, in case of an attack on the station... but as weeks began to drag on, with the Black Arks simply continuing their ponderously slow trek forward, questions were raised and scouting-missions were organized. Upon finding that the Black Arks were almost entirely dormant, had their hangar-bays completely open, and weapon-systems deactivated, it soon came to N7, STG, and Blackwatch infiltration teams being sent in to see what the fuss was about.

It took almost a month, in itself... but eventually, the Collectors simultaneously awoke from their hypersleep pods in all seventy-seven vessels... and it soon became apparent what had happened. Evidently, somewhere, somehow, the Collectors had been freed from Reaper control by The Pulse, and somehow: their ships had been sent toward the Citadel. How this was possible, not even the Collectors themselves knew, as their memories were shattered and fragmented.

Sensing an opportunity in this, Councilor Quentius came up with the idea of the Turian Hierarchy accepting the Collectors as a new client-race, and the Black Arks being appropriated for use as the Citadel's new C-Sec and Defense Fleet vessels.

Based on the few Awakened Collectors that had joined the galaxy's struggle during the Reaper War, the Collectors were recognized by the Turian Hierarchy as extremely hard workers, and impressively-powerful Biotic fighters, so Quentius's idea went over well with Victus. A long few months worth of Collectors being shipped off of their Arks and processed through a census later, and what might be considered the Collector population's "leaders" were found, and negotiated with. As luck would have it, much of the Citadel's previous population had emigrated from it in the weeks prior, back to their respective homeworlds in the wake of the War's destruction, so there wasn't too much trouble in finding room for the bugs.

In a long sequence of conversations between the Council and the Collector's de facto leaders that essentially all boiled down to the Council explaining what the situation was, and the Collectors simply reacting in immense shock and confusion, the Collector race's addition to the Hierarchy's power-structure went down with... not much fanfare. The Citadel became, and remains today, the home of the grand majority of the Awakened Collector population. The Collectors couldn't qualify for an embassy of their own, but they had representation via the Volus Embassy, which became known as, simply, the Hierarchy-Client Embassy.

It probably shouldn't have surprised Variant that the Collectors soon came to make up the bulk of the Citadel's new C-Sec and Defense-Fleet forces, as it was the work they seemed most suited for, and the most convenient arrangement for everyone, involved.

Anyway, with Reaper forces successfully hidden and culled within several weeks after the firing of the Crucible, and with the Collectors being inducted into society, The Shepard began to set about having the Reapers repair the rest of Mass Relay network.

The decision of whether to unlock all of the previously locked Relays was brought up. The laws against opening locked Relays couldn't stop him… but, then again, if there was a new species beyond it that turned out to be hostile, the galaxy wouldn't be prepared to repel the invaders, even with the Reapers at the ready. So… The Shepard decided to leave the restricted Relays alone, in the end.

The Reapers then set about repairing all the other Relays in an ongoing operation that still, after two years, and not yet been fully completed. Almost sixty percent of it was done, and projections showed that at this rate, with the Reapers forced to stay out of sight and under the general radar, the Mass Relays (excluding the locked ones) would be fully repaired within another two years..

After that… all that was really left to do for The Shepard was to monitor galaxy while the Relays were being repaired. With the Citadel being his home, he could watch through a surprising amount of cameras, whatever happened in the Council Chambers, allowing him to get a good idea of the political situation in the galaxy. Despite the fact that he hated politics and bureaucrats as much as Commander Shepard had. He had more than a dozen Oculi Drones that would make regular monitoring patrols within the Terminus Systems— mostly around Omega's new home. More than a few Harvesters were sent to Parnack in order to keep an eye on the Yahgs.

The only particular issue that had to be solved was, after a while of no one in the Council — or in the public — mentioning the Raloi of Turvess, The Shepard decided that it would probably be best to send a Destroyer there to check on the avians. The poor birds were practically shaking in their boots and had just about every weapon at their disposal pointed upwards. They'd, presumably, been like this for the duration of the Reaper War, since it was the appearance of the Reapers which caused them to destroy every one of their satellites, cut off communication with the Council, hunker down, and hope that they were disregarded as a pre-spaceflight species.

It, apparently, hadn't been an easy task on the dispatched Destroyer's part to get past the Raloi's defenses undetected, and get on the ground. While the Reaper was occupied with quickly, quietly, and safely disabling the defense cannons on the surface, Variant sent anonymous messages to the new Councilors that the Raloi were waiting for contact from the Citadel. The message also contained information about what the Raloi had been doing during the Reaper War. Not the most subtle way to go about it, but the job was done, nonetheless. In the end, five weeks later, the Raloi were formally accepted into the galactic community. An event which had been postponed due to the Reaper War.

The Raloi people were now working to begin colonization efforts within their home system. Oddly enough, the only help that their government would accept was that of blueprints for the needed space vessels— they'd politely declined any other form of assistance from any of the Council races. It was probably a facet of their culture— how you should always do things yourself, or… something. The Raloi Ambassador wasn't particularly clear about it— just said that the people of Turvess would prefer to colonize other planets on their own… at least… for the most part.

After the summit, the Quarians and Geth had gone back to Rannoch, and weren't heard from for seven months. This was concerning to the Council, since they still had to hammer out the precise terms of everything that had been agreed-upon at the summit. Eventually, the Quarians and Geth made contact again, and everyone wasn't too surprised to hear that the two races now referred to themselves as the "Quarian-Geth Accord".

Indeed, the Geth had kept the promise they made before The Battle for Earth, and had since been helping the Quarians in any way possible. For as long as it took for all of the terms of their continued cooperation were being worked through, Geth units weren't permitted on the Citadel, and any Quarian discovered to possess a Geth program in their enviro-suit would be detained and forced to sign a contract that, should the Geth do anything of a questionable nature, the Quarian would be held responsible and promptly kicked off of the Citadel. Esheel was still dragging her feet in regards to laws against artificial intelligences, but progress was being made, slow as it was. Probably for the best, as no one wanted to overdo it or create some massive loophole in the law beyond what was necessary.

The galactic stage remained rather… bland from that point. The only thing that politicians were talking about were… the Reapers, as well as how and when the races of the galaxy should best prepare for the Reaper's possible return. It was mostly about various representatives asking for the Council to modify the Treaty of Farixen— to try and have the limit of "Dreadnoughts-per-race" increased. Other than that, rebuilding was what occupied the thoughts of many who had the wellbeing of their entire species in mind. The efforts were progressing slowly, but surely. It certainly opened up a lot of jobs involving construction and manual labor, so that was… good.

The Rachni had disappeared. Again. They just made a beeline for the Rachni Relay following the Battle for Earth and no one has heard or seen any sign of them since. The last Rachni Queen seemed to assume that the promise she'd made to Commander Shepard of disappearing forever still stood.

Other than the Batarians slowly starting to make good on their promises... there wasn't much else to monitor.

That thought… gave The Shepard pause. It wasn't true. There were… other things to keep an eye on. They weren't nearly as important, galaxy-wise… but he had sworn to watch over them, regardless. The crew of the Normandy… that thought made Variant want to smile…

A monument was built in the Presidium of the Citadel— a testament to the Normandy, its crew, what they stood for, and all they did for the galaxy. This… giant, golden statue of all the people who served on the Normandy as the main ground squad— all captured in absolutely perfect detail, all in various positions and poses. A very large plaque that was held up by a steel pole displayed the names of those who fought with the great Commander Shepard, as well as all of their accomplishments. The names of the rest of the crew were also tossed in there— those who worked on the ship, but didn't fight. A small memorial for the fallen crew members was placed nearby— small tombstones with the likeness and name of all those who gave their lives as part of both the Normandy-SR1 and 2.

The surviving crew members, of which there were (thankfully) many, were honored as heroes— both by each of their respective species, and by the galaxy as a whole. Each were to receive various awards, medals, and commendations, but, naturally, a lot of the Normandy's ground squad were busy with their own responsibilities, and thus had largely forgotten to pick up their awards.

How "they'd" managed to get such accurate descriptions on all of the ground team was… complicated. Everyone who served on the ship obviously had to bend the story in order to play off EDI as a VI. Yes, she was still a secret, at least until a possible avenue for recourse was found in the efforts of the Quarian-Geth Accord on A.I technology. Even if the Accord got its way, it didn't guarantee that the Systems Alliance would follow suit.

Anyway… however anonymous any members of the ground squad remained… The Shepard still kept an… extremely close watch over all of them.

Many would have openly judged Commander Shepard's decision to become "The Shepard", to control the Reapers, had they been there. They would have demanded how he could be so arrogant as to give himself so much power— how he could presume to make a choice of this magnitude with no one to object or provide input… how he could simply, just… abandon his responsibilities… his crew, his friends… and his lover. Yes, the man would have been criticized greatly.

But "abandon" his friends, "abandon" responsibility, and "abandon" all the people he ever cared about, was NOT what the Commander had done!

In reality… it had been one of the many things that he had sworn to keep in mind, in his last milliseconds of existence, as his body was being disintegrated. Shepard had sworn to himself and whatever God existed in this universe, that he would watch over the ones who lived on— the ones who carried the memory of the man he was… the ones that he had grown to regard as an adoptive family. Certainly not excluding the person whom he'd grown… especially close to...

---

Garrus Vakarian, one of Commander Shepard's closest and best friends, had been re-applied as a Spectre candidate by a certain "Jondum Bau". Under the evaluation of the Salarian, Garrus proved to pass the Spectre standard with flying colors, and was thus given all of the privileges and authority of a Special Tactics and Reconnaissance agent. Spectre Vakarian's first mission was to investigate the Mass Relays and how they're, miraculously being repaired, seemingly, for no reason, and without anyone knowing how and when. This was an oddity that needed looking into, from their perspective...

So, now, Garrus was trying to find out how the Relays were repaired and how the Relays are still being put back together while no one can seem to figure out who or what is doing it. Unlike the Council, who refuse to acknowledge the theory that it's the Reapers that are repairing the Relays (probably out of fear), Garrus didn't rule out any possibility.

… he was actually getting fairly close to finding the truth. Using audio from the Reaper-developed bug that had been placed inside Garrus's personal shuttle, it was apparent that he seemed to be finding a pattern. He'd figured out how to know if a Relay had been temporarily repaired… and he suspected that the Reapers had haphazardly patched them up before they were used. And he suspected that this pattern would tell him where the Reapers had gone. The Turian Spectre was getting closer and closer to following the trail which ended at the Omega 4 Relay. If Garrus managed to deduce that the Reapers had made their refuge in the galactic core… The Shepard would have to… come up with a plan on the spot, if it came to an emergency.

Impulsively enacting half-baked, dangerous, foolhardy, and generally poor excuses for plans had… always seemed to work out for Commander Shepard.

Ashley Williams was, obviously, still a Spectre. Despite temporarily being put under scrutiny for having been made a Spectre by Donnel Udina, the man who attempted a coup with Cerberus. But, she was deemed valuable enough, and a competent enough soldier, for the Council to dismiss any such concerns. She was currently working in tandem with Garrus Vakarian on the task of investigating the Relays. Sometimes they worked with each other directly whenever either of them found a lead, or they simply compared notes and information over a video-link.

Shortly after the summit, the Alliance brass called Ashley to Earth for a conference. A meeting with the leaders of the government overseeing humanity's expansion into the stars. Naturally, as far as Variant could tell: Ms. Williams immediately suspected that this was going to be a shakedown over some arbitrary failing of hers — maybe because of Udina appointing her as a Spectre — and that the legacy of her grandfather would come back to haunt her, and she'd wind up struck down so soon after having reached her highest height. However: when she showed up in the Alliance's new headquarters (situated at the site of where Commander Shepard made his final approach to the Reaper staging-area, just before The Pulse), the brass were actually going to do the opposite.

They offered to finally, once-and-for-all, pardon Ashley's grandfather, posthumously, in light of her service with Shepard and her having become the Second Human Spectre. They officially declared that the treatment of the Williams family by the Alliance was dishonorable, and that they owed Lieutenant-Commander Williams reparations for her having been snubbed for the entire first half of her military career. Hackett even offered to give Ashley a promotion or honorable discharge, whatever would make her job as a Spectre easier.

The Shepard honestly expected Ashley to launch into a tirade, and chew out everyone there for only realizing all of this after the Alliance had been nearly destroyed in an apocalyptic war, and he suspected that she very much felt that way... but, in the moment, she simply took a deep breath, and gratefully accepted the offer. She declined any promotion or discharge, and only made one comment before leaving to continue her investigation into the Reapers: "I would only ask that the Alliance take care to never again scapegoat a loyal soldier".

Urdnot Wrex was dealing with the ongoing task of leading his people through the processes of rebuilding, moving forward, and colonization of other planets. This left him very, very busy, predictably enough, though he found more than enough time to start having kids. The new system of population-control devised by Bakara and the other Shamans had been instituted without too much acrimony, and as far as Variant could surmise, things were going relatively smoothly. There were some detractors and war-hawks in the Krogan Crush-Moot (their new, official seat of government) who decried the results of the summit as Wrex having "sold the Krogan out", what with the agreement to send volunteers to work for the other species, but they were few and far between... likely because most of their fellow Clan leaders owed their new broods and children to Wrex's leadership.

Urdnot Grunt was… actually "in between jobs" at the moment, oddly enough. It was a difficult decision, admittedly. He was trying to decide whether to keep leading Aralakh Company, or to sign on as Urdnot Wrex's bodyguard.

There were pros and cons to both. Because a lot of Krogan were looking to enact revenge on the Turians and Salarians (not helped by many of them having to work for them, for free, as per the terms of the summit) there would definitely be those who looked to kill or defeat Wrex in combat, in order to prove him unworthy of leading Clan Urdnot, and thus, the Krogan race. But… then again, almost all Krogan were too busy working and finding wives and raising families to care that Wrex was leading, or about what the Turians or Salarians were doing, either. One would think that Wrex would be opposed to having a bodyguard, but he actually supported the idea, mostly because he wanted to be able to guide the Krogan race, regardless of his own skills as a warrior. He was… also raising a family of his own with Urdnot Bakara, and would require his family to be protected as well, in case anyone decided to get to him through them.

There were good reasons for Grunt to continue being the leader of Aralakh Company, too. There was a reason that he was chosen as the battalion's commander— especially with Aralakh Company representing the idea of Krogan unity, and his tank-bred genes. And without him there in the past, the group wouldn't have become as famous as it did.

Other than that whole debacle, it seemed as if Grunt had been wanting to travel to Korlus for a while. The planet on which he'd been created by Warlord Okeer. What Grunt hoped to find or accomplish there— or even his reasons for going were unclear. Finding time to do so has been surprisingly difficult.

Samara was, unsurprisingly, still a Justicar (the last Justicar, in fact), and was doing "Justicar stuff", running around Asari space, righting wrongs, and such. The only thing that had changed since her days before the suicide mission into the galactic core, was that she visited her daughter, Falere, much more frequently. Rumors abounded, though, that she had gotten romantically involved with someone, in the meantime— something about the experience of fighting in the Reaper War changing her perspective on her place in the universe.

Jacob Taylor had long since been living with his wife, Brynn Taylor, on Bekenstein with their two children. He'd proposed exactly like he said he would, on shore-leave: amid the cherry-blossoms of the Council Chambers, though the trees in question had been replaced with saplings, after the other ones had been burnt. He also maintained a steady job as a drill sergeant and instructor, training new Alliance personnel. It seemed to be a fairly well-working arrangement, for now. Bekenstein, having been attacked by the Reapers, was in need of much volunteer work due to many of its cities being in ruins— work that Brynn took to, swiftly.

Zaeed Massani, well... it wouldn't be surprising to anyone that he was still a freelance mercenary. Though, occasionally, now he'd take jobs from the Alliance. Given how he was pretty much a celebrity, due to being honored as a hero, finding challenging and important jobs in his line of work was now easier than ever. The only thing particularly peculiar was that he was planning to take leadership of the Blue Suns from Darner Vosque, due to the Blue Suns coming under greater scrutiny by the galactic community, and the fact that it somehow became public that Massani had had a direct hand in creating the group. If and/or when Zaeed decided to enact his plans against Vosque… The Shepard would do what he could to assist— or at least ensure that the mercenary came out of the debacle with all of his limbs still attached. The Suns, after all, were still in Aria T'Loak's pocket, and it wasn't clear how she would respond to the change.

Miranda Lawson had become head of an Alliance special tasks group, and was working alongside her sister, Oriana, in their current task of… big surprise— trying to find the Reapers. And looking for the Commander. She and her sister were also trying to answer the question of where the Reapers had gone, how the Relays were being rebuilt, why the Reapers had retreated— etcetera, etcetera. She would have a lot of help in this task from the information forwarded by Ashley and Garrus. Miranda was going to be… difficult to deal with. She could be very persistent, and if she devoted as much effort to finding the Reapers as she did to her work with the Lazarus Project… well, something told Alpha that he'd actually need to figure out a real plan.

Kasumi Goto was now living very comfortably in a villa on Bekenstein. The same villa, ironically, that had been owned by Donovan Hock. Due to her crimes of trespassing, breaking and entering, and thievery being somewhat minor, and because of her help in building the Crucible, she was exonerated from all charges, and was paid for her efforts during the Reaper War. After a short two months of probation, Kasumi… immediately started stealing again. No one really knew of it, a testament to her skills as a thief. Other than that, she still lived in relative, secluded luxury, with Keiji's Graybox. Although… The Shepard had to wonder if she chose to live on Bekenstein simply because she somehow knew that Jacob was, too…

Jack (AKA: Jennifer, AKA: Jaqueline Nought, AKA: Subject Zero) was still "living the dream" as an instructor for young Biotics who wanted to join the Alliance. With her "kids" from Grissom Academy having served in a support role during the Reaper War, most of them now served on Frigates. Well, that or they stuck with Jack and helped in the teaching of Biotics at the newly-renovated Grissom Academy as tutors or demonstrators.

James Vega had officially signed on with N7 and was being trained as such.

Samantha Traynor, EDI, and Joker were still on the Normandy. Where the Hell else would they want to be? The ship was EDI's true body, and Joker was still the best helmsman in all the Alliance Fleets. Only his skills were deemed adequate to fly the Alliance Flagship. With the Normandy coming under the command of Admiral Hackett… the situation became infinitely more complicated. It was inevitable that EDI wouldn't be able to masquerade as a VI for very long— not with Hackett's scrutinizing gaze. So, when push came to shove, and Joker was forced to explain the existence of an AI on the Normandy… his only explanation was that the Normandy needed EDI, and that Commander Shepard had trusted the AI. He asked Hackett that this matter not be brought to the attention of neither the Council, or the rest of Alliance Command.

The argument… had proven to be enough, thankfully. Hackett agreed to keep quiet about it, as long as Joker made sure that EDI never got out of hand. If worse came to worst, and the Council ever found out, then the Alliance would be forced to claim ignorance and blame the creation of the AI on Cerberus. In the end, the situation was resolved peacefully.

Gabriella Daniels, Kenneth Donnelly, and Major Coats had since resigned from the Alliance and were presiding over the reconstruction of London. Kelly Chambers joined them, there, after getting her affairs squared away. She'd been struggling with her PTSD, but had recovered a few degrees by dedicating herself to helping the other refugees on the Citadel. Many of them had been through trauma as severe as hers— sometimes more. And in aiding them, she found ways to cope with her own problem. Or, at least, that was how it looked, from the outside.

Tali'Zorah Vas Normandy Nar Rayya was a fairly important individual, more-so than before. She was still on the Admiralty Board but, in addition to that, she served as an official liaison between the Quarians and Geth, within the Accord, and worked to smooth over any problems that cropped up between the two races. Also, she was chosen as the Quarian-Geth Accord Ambassador to the Citadel Council, and spoke on the behalf of both species. There were a multitude of reasons for this. Her knowledge of the way the Geth worked, her crucial part in the brokering of peace between her species and theirs, and her well-known friendship with the deceased Legion made her an ideal representative, who had a very unique perspective. She'd been the one leading the efforts to finalize and legalize all of the things agreed-upon at the summit, in so far as the Quarians were concerned.

Other than that, it was rumored to most, but a known fact to The Shepard, that Tali had agreed to carry a Geth program in her enviro-suit. It was deemed fitting by the Quarian Conclave and the Geth Consensus that she participate in the practice. Not only to serve as an example to her people, but also to have an idea of what the Geth's consensuses were. The program in Tali's suit was capable of receiving data from the Consensus while separated from it, and would thus relay to her what the Geth's perspective on certain matters was. The relationship was… rocky, at first, but Tali eventually grew to like the AI, and had named the Geth "Harmony". A lot of Quarians did that nowadays— gave names to Geth who they became friends with.
The Geth Consensus, itself, had (as far as Variant could surmise) become something of a Geth "internet". Rather than strictly being the aggregate combination of the collective Geth "psyche", it became a species-wide network that each Geth could connect to, or isolate themselves from, at a whim. With every Geth program being a fully-realized A.I, they'd been freed of their need for communal-thinking and with it, their need for the Consensus.

Javik, The Last Prothean. One would be very shocked to find that he had become the… "King" of the Collectors. A lot of people would have thought him to be disgusted by what the Reapers had twisted his people into. But… that wasn't the way it turned out. When he'd heard that there were Awakened Collectors on the Citadel, he went straight there. When the Collectors all heard of there being a Prothean, they made every effort to find him. Variant watched the very first interaction between Javik and a large group of Collectors. It was mostly silent and, slightly awkward— but… it went well. After that he became a very important figure in their community. The Collectors didn't really have any kind of government, they mostly just all met up in one spot on the Citadel and "compared notes". But Javik was someone who was often expected to make decisions— who the Collectors looked to for guidance.

The Awakened Collectors looked up to Javik as a survivor, and as the last and truest example of their people's former glory. Javik… seemed to want to make sure that his "long-lost cousins" found their proper place in the current cycle. This wasn't something The Shepard would have expected— Javik had always seemed so harsh and unforgiving. But it was possible that Javik's time among the "primitives" aboard the Normandy had given him a new outlook on how he saw other races. It was also possible that the democratic methods of the current galactic government had inspired him in some way.

Javik's opinion was highly regarded among the Collectors. He recognized the fact that the Prothean's glory-days were over, and he made sure that all Collectors knew that their place in the new society was not one of dominance or imperialism. The Protheans had had their chance to lead, and they blew it— imperial mandate and galactic doctrine obviously weren't the answers. When the Reapers had invaded last time, the galaxy was too uniform, too homogenous, and they paid the price for it. Javik always insisted that the Collectors should now exist to simply thrive, as individuals— to do what they were good at: fight. This led a lot more of the Collectors to, either, join C-Sec or the Turian military.

Javik wasn't the one who represented the Collectors in the galactic stage, though. He may have been in a leadership position, but that didn't mean he fully and fluently understood the desires and needs of the Collector populous. The job of being the Collector's ambassador went to an individual who called himself "Cytotax Destrin Etrigann". The Awakened Collector was a cloned descendant of a Prothean who was one of the leaders of their civilization, before the Reapers came. Thus, "Cyto" had the most experience when it came to politics. Plus, Cytotax had been in the same indoctrinated, twisted-up boat as every other Awakened Collector. Aside from living on the Citadel and being an attendant of the Collector's community-meetings, Javik was also helping Liara write that book that they'd agreed on.

The Collectors were already recognized as a sovereign and independent people, and they had about as much representation as they needed with their joint-embassy with the Volus, so there really wasn't much for Cytotax to address when it came to the Council. Other than the Council's concerns about how a third of the Collector population was homeless, and had been homeless since their arrival, not much was needed of them. That… would soon change however…

Liara T'Soni. She now lived and worked in the Presidium as an information broker… but also "moonlighted" as the Shadow Broker. Liara was a very powerful individual— both in society as a whole, and due to her intel-gathering. The Asari possessed… very sensitive information. The Prothean Beacon, hidden in the Temple of Athame, on Thessia. The fact that her people were only as powerful as they were because of the coddling of the Protheans. The fact that the Asari had been hoarding Prothean secrets for millennia. One had to wonder how different the Asari race would have been without the Prothean's involvement. When Liara, Shepard, and Javik had gone down to Thessia during the Reaper War, and Javik irrevocably proved that the Asari race's vaunted superiority was a joke, Liara had been very, very bitter toward the Asari government's secrets and her own mother's involvement in it. Even though she had accepted the truth… she still knew everything, and had the proof needed to validate her knowledge.

If she were to ever happen to become especially bitter about all of it, one day… it would be chaos. She'd said so herself— with the knowledge at her disposal, she could literally start a war.

At one point, two months ago… she used it. Alpha didn't stop her.

Liara contacted Javik through his Omni-tool while he was present during one of the Collector's public meetings. She gave a list of the Asari race's crimes to Javik and Cytotax, sent them all of the evidence that would prove it to the Council, and even offered payment for them to go and do so. While Javik had already known of all of this, the only thing he lacked was proof. No payment was necessary. The Collectors present became furious that the Asari race had broken their own laws, that they'd been hoarding their people's technology and kept the Beacon a secret, when Prothean tech was meant to be shared to all.

The Awakened Collectors had already been given initial possession of any and all discovered Prothean tech. The Collectors were considered the "authority" when it came to all things Prothean— whenever any technology would be dug up, from now on, the Collectors were given final say on how the knowledge and materials could be used, and by whom. It was considered a cautionary security method by the Council— a way to make sure that any and all Prothean knowledge and technology was distributed and regulated fairly. There were those who would be there to make sure that the Collectors did the distributing fairly, themselves. It was never needed, though— the Collectors had no desire to keep the tech for themselves, and they held no real grudges. Other than a disdain for the Quarian-Geth Accord due to their distrust of A.I, but that wasn't anything new.

Needless to say, this bit of utter hypocrisy and greed on the part of the Asari government was quite infuriating to them. It didn't matter that the Beacon was something that had been there since the last cycle, the Asari still should have made it known from the beginning. The fact that this was one of the first times that anyone outside of the Matriarchs in government knew of it was… angering. The Collector race, at least the ones who could be bothered to express any opinion either way, had always had somewhat of a bone to pick with the Asari.

If you asked any Collector what they thought of the Asari, they'd say something along the lines of "a waste of time to the Prothean scientists who studied them", and "a species full of arrogant narcissists". The Shepard suspected that this venom stemmed from the "Cosmic Imperative", as well as the expectations that had been set for the Asari. The Protheans had put all of their hopes into the theory that the Asari would dominate the galaxy and be able to stop the Reapers. But… they didn't do either of those.

According to most Collectors, the Asari race had turned out to be a bunch of weak-willed, gutless compromisers who shrank from combat and excelled in poetry and art, rather than military and imperial power. And the Asari did not fair very well at all in the Reaper War! Despite their entire species being naturally Biotic (thanks to the Protheans) and despite the existence of Asari Commandos, their overall strength was… sub-par. And that's not all— Earth may have been the first planet to fall, but that was only because the Humans had been taken by surprise. Even with Earth occupied, Humanity had still organized a stiff resistance and had rebelled to the bitter end. But the Asari? They'd had every warning available, they'd gotten every chance to prepare and gather their forces… and the Reapers had still steamrolled Thessia. Commander Shepard had seen and said it himself, the Reapers just shoved right through Thessia's defenses like they were on a leisurely Sunday stroll!

What's more is that this wasn't the first galactic conflict that the Asari had dropped the ball on. The Krogan Rebellions, the Rachni War— the Asari didn't contribute very much and mostly just got other races to do it for them. As Commander Shepard had said, while on shore leave: "have the Asari ever actually won a galactic war?".

However, as said by most Collectors, all of this could have been forgiven and forgotten about since, in the end, it hadn't been necessary for the Asari to dominate the galaxy in order to defeat the Reapers. Humanity and Commander Shepard had managed a Dues Ex Machina-esque hail-Mary, so the Asari failing to live up to their potential was forgivable. Except now, apparently, the Asari were only as influential and strong as they were… because they'd been hoarding Prothean technology for centuries! The same technology that legally and rightfully belonged to them, the Collectors!

While Javik agreed on many of these points, he didn't seem to share these views as strongly as the rest of the people present. He wouldn't go to the Council, but he would testify after the address that all of the evidence is true. So, Cytotax Destrin Etrigann had decided to address the Council alone.

The Shepard, even though he hated politics and bureaucracy, had to agree with the Collectors on a lot of what they pushed.

He also had to admit that the way that Cyto had handled the whole thing was… masterfully done! Three Awakened Collectors, told to say that they were acting on behalf of Cyto, each requested a private meeting with the Human, Turian, and Salarian Councilors. These Collector's objective was to partially reveal the Asari's secrets, and to tell each Councilor that the whole truth would be revealed when Cytotax addressed the Council the next day. An interesting fact about Collectors was that they could be excellent actors and voice-imitators when they had enough motivation to do so— so when the three messengers met with their respective Councilor, they all acted believably "hush-hush" and urgent about all of it. This was meant to get the Councilor's attentions, and to make their case more believable.

As a result of this small act of subversion, the evidence at their disposal, and Javik's testimony on seeing all of it for himself… Cytotax's presentation left no doubts. His argument used the Collector's legal dominion over Prothean tech to demand that the Beacon on Thessia be returned to its rightful owners, he used the law to paint the Asari Republics in a (very) negative light, he even outright accused Councilor Irissa of being an hypocrite and liar. The Asari race had been breaking intergalactic law for centuries. The repercussions and punishments for hiding, hoarding, or researching Prothean technology in secret were some of the harshest and most cruel in all of interstellar policy.

Councilor Irissa, as she'd apparently not been "in-the-know" as Tevos had, was completely gobsmacked. Councilors Quentius, Esheel, and Ahern were, at first, just plain confused. Eventually, though, as the four Councilors talked it over for about an hour with Cytotax repeating many of the same details to them, over and over, Quentius became increasingly incensed, and he eventually went off on Irissa when she explained for the umpteenth that she'd had no idea of any of this— he demanded of her how differently the Reaper War might have gone down if Thessia's beacon had been shared with the rest of the galaxy, to which Irissa had no response. Ahern failed to see the point in getting upset over it, one way or another, as it was over with anyway, and speculating about what could have been was pointless. Esheel simply looked for ways this might be fixed or remedied.

Cytotax Destrinn Etrigann, stayed mostly silent, but made a point of declaring that the Collectors demanded justice, and that they would happily cease being a client-race to the Turians if this all just blew over with nothing done about it.
Some sort of punitive action had to be taken, if for no other reason than the laws around Prothean technology being upheld. The cruel irony was that Irissa couldn't even refuse, as she'd been championing legal-precedence, for the whole of the summit.

It took forty-eight hours for a proper course of action to be decided upon. There would definitely be kickback, but… the Asari Republics were officially censured by the Citadel Council and were required to submit all of their government officials to Council investigation. A full, government-wide search-and-seizure using Spectres was authorized into taking a very close look at the Asari government and the Matriarchs, and the Prothean Beacon on Thessia (what remained of it) would be moved and handed over to the Collectors on the Citadel. All Asari colonies would have to be scrutinized thoroughly for any other Prothean artifacts that the Asari may have hidden. If the Asari Republics refused to comply with these demands, they would be removed from the Council, altogether.

Naturally, the Asari Republics were more or less forced to agree to these terms, as leaving the Council would cost far more in the long run than a mild censuring and government-sweep would.
... and it would be inaccurate to say that no other impropriety was found.

As this action was undertaken over the following months, much of it became predictably bogged down in bureaucracy and lawsuits. Ambassador Cytotax was all too willing to hand over the evidence he'd presented to the Council. This resistance was largely nominal, and a delaying tactic. Eventually, it all came cracking down, and it soon became the biggest piece of gossip worth talking about.
The Elcor and Illuminated Primacy, rather predictably, smacked the Asari Republics with trade-tariffs in indignation at this news. The other Council races also took their own pounds of flesh.

This... all became known as the Asari Shunning. Many Asari government officials were arrested by the Republics and the Council, alike, many Prothean artifacts were seized... and it all, generally, came at the expense of the Asari taxpayer, on their homeworld and colony-worlds. To the point that it even slowed down the reconstruction efforts, enough to be noticeable, at least.

In the first week following the Shunning, things were tense. The Matriarchs, the few of them that were left, were humiliated and furious at the blasphemous amount of suspicion and scrutiny that they were being subjected to— as it turned out, most of those that had been complicit in hiding the Prothean artifacts were at the very top, and did so through a web of blackmail and political bargaining, with a far wider series of crimes being connected to keeping it all covered up. The general Asari public were disgusted and shocked at their leader's actions— appalled that any Matriarch could condone committing such crimes as they did.

Initially… most Asari's opinions were along the lines of "I can't believe our government would do that!". This, combined with the Asari government being in shambles, their economy crippled, and their worlds in ruins made for a very... very bad few months.
If The Shepard had to be honest… it felt really good to see the Asari knocked down a peg. Or, it did, before he remembered the carnage on Thessia and the sacrifices made by the soldiers there. Then again, he also remembered getting sandbagged by the Council no less than three times, and the fact that the Asari had had the Catalyst's blueprints and a wealth of other secrets hidden away for all that time and for thousands of years, so... he settled on feeling a mild sense of schadenfreude, mixed with sympathy.

The Asari Republics became embroiled in a giant game of "Who's Fault Is It? Not Mine!", as the entire pyramid-scheme soon came undone. Reconstruction efforts ground very nearly to a complete halt in the wake of this bombshell, and the average Asari citizen was eventually left holding the bag, no longer able to fully trust their own elected officials, and many vacant government-positions, as so many were fired in the wake of the arrests.
This led to many other knock-on effects, as the Asari as a whole became a lot more inwardly-focused, and no longer had very much sway in the wider galaxy's politics. Asari news-anchors were fired from particular Citadel news-stations, for example. Asari-owned businesses, here and there, closed down and went bankrupt. They became ever-so-slightly more rare a sight.

In any place but the Citadel: one wouldn't have noticed very much of a change, if one wasn't Asari. On the Citadel, however, a sense of hostility between Asari and Collectors bloomed.

At the height of the Shunning, it was most obvious. You could feel a certain antipathy in the air, whenever an Asari and Collector were in the same room— eyeing each other. It was mostly the Asari from which the hate flowed, but the perfunctorily-hidden contempt from the other side didn't help matters. Arguments and shouting matches between members of the two species would be a common sight in the streets of the Citadel— sometimes over the smallest issues. Eventually, it became rather common to hear of Asari and Collectors straight-up getting into brawls on some random street-corner, every other day when it was at its worst. At least ten people were hospitalized, as far as Variant was aware... most of them Asari...

Plus, it didn't help the situation that, three times out of five, a Collector that you see on the street was a C-Sec Officer...

An incident, however, that The Shepard found the most noteworthy was with this one particular skirmish down in the refugee-section of the docks. There was this Awakened Collector who was on his way to a skycar when three Asari Commandos ambushed and jumped the guy. Where the Asari had come from and why they'd targeted him was open for debate— some evidence suggested the Commandos had been recently laid off from the service of their Matriarchs when they were arrested for being complicit in the conspiracy.
Three commandos against an Awakened Collector would be a fairly even fight, in most cases. But the odd thing about this Collector (who simply called himself "Condack") was that he didn't have any Biotics. A Collector without Biotics would be like a Drell lacking eidetic recall. Because of this, he was often seen as a "runt" among his Collector siblings— they didn't pick on him for it, but they made sure to compensate for his disadvantage. Despite being taken by surprise, and not having Biotics, the insect put up an admirable fight— it wasn't easy to kill something that could fly, shrug off small-arms fire, and had organic blades in his arms. He'd even managed to amputate one of the Commando's legs, and had broken another's sternum with a kick to the chest.

But, one of the Asari had a shotgun, and Condack was in a bad way— hiding behind cover after taking a shotgun blast to his chest and bleeding black blood, profusely. When Condack was about to pass out from blood loss, and the Commando was about to advance… something… happened. The very next instant, the Collector unleashed a powerful, orange, Biotic repulse while shouting (in a voice that seemed too loud to be coming from an individual) "face the wrath of Harbinger!". The Biotic attack had sent all three Commandos flying across the length of the docks— killing all three. What had happened became obvious when one saw the cracked, molten-looking, glowing yellow exoskeleton and eyes that Condack had— his six eyes, seemingly, aflame.

The next minute, Condack's brief "possession" subsided, and he collapsed to the floor in exhaustion, with his wounds healed.

Nobody had seen the fight. And thus, nobody but The Shepard… and Harbinger knew what had taken place.

This was… concerning for any number of reasons. It meant that Harbinger was still able to take (at least temporary) control of any Collector. This raised the question of why this wasn't known before-hand… and why Harbinger had felt the need to intervene when he did.

When Alpha had demanded an explanation, Harbinger claimed that he didn't know that he could do that. The Reaper insisted that he'd merely been watching at the time, and had miraculously taken control of Condack. The Reapers had no reason to lie, nor did they possess ambition, so The Shepard was inclined to believe him.

Although… if the Alpha-Catalyst didn't know any better… he'd almost say that Harbinger had been… concerned for the Collector's safety. Of course, that would be completely ridiculous— other than the hint of a dry sense of humor, Harbinger was colder than Jack Frost's air conditioner.

In any case, the tiny lover's quarrel throughout the Citadel came and went with little discourse or fanfare, and eventually everyone forgot about it, and moved on. You'd occasionally hear a passive-aggressive comment directed at an Asari now and then, about Beacons and Temples, but it largely became just something else to joke about, six months later. Except for the Collectors, that is— they still, mostly, had a grudge over it.

And all of this happened… because of Liara T'Soni having a few stiff drinks and a talk with her father, Aethyta, one afternoon.

---

In short, The Shepard had been watching the Commander's teammates closely. He'd watch over them, help them, and keep them as safe as possible. But… none of them were aware of the fact that, in essence, The Shepard was their beloved Commander. Variant could only guess, however, as to how any of them would react to him being the Reapers' master.

Garrus would try his best to fully understand the situation, as well as Shepard's reasons for using the Crucible the way he did, and then he would try to reiterate all of it in way that made practical sense. That was the best case scenario. If the Turian reacted badly… The Shepard didn't know what would happen. Garrus would probably call Shepard a hypocrite, at the least.

Ashley would probably end up distrusting The Shepard— she'd be paranoid to a fault and possibly accuse him of betraying humanity.

Wrex, Grunt, and Jack would either not show any immediate reaction, or they'd congratulate him on showing the Reapers "who's boss". Jack would probably phrase it in a far more vulgar fashion.

Liara, James, Joker, Samantha, Zaeed, Jacob, Kasumi, and EDI probably wouldn't know how to think or feel about it, initially, but something told The Shepard that they'd probably end up trusting him in the end, once they were confident that it was really the progeny of Commander Shepard in front of them.

Miranda, depending on how it went, would either respond with practicality or paranoia. She was… she was a wildcard. She could end up being very helpful, or she could cause trouble and royally fuck up the entire situation.

The only person that The Shepard was entirely unsure of was Tali. The Quarian had had strong feelings about A.I for a while, but, conversely, she was also a spokesperson for the legalization of it, now, and had obviously gained a new perspective on the Geth. Shepard being reborn as the Reaper's master? There really was no telling how she'd feel about it...

The only person who was almost guaranteed to react badly was… Javik.

The Prothean had been Hell-bent on killing every last Reaper. He was still Hell-bent on killing Reapers! The only reason he hadn't already gone off on his own to hunt the Reapers down was because of the Collectors, and the only reason he hadn't already gone off to find the final resting place of his ancient, Prothean comrades to join them was because he knew the Reapers were still out there, somewhere. He did everything in his power to make sure that every Collector was primed and ready for the return of the giant, metal cephalopods. In fact... the only reason that most Collectors even got up in the morning was because of the hope that they would send the Reapers to their graves, one day.

If there was any hope of him and Javik coming to an understanding, then the rest of the Normandy's crew, the people that Javik had come to respect, would be needed to convince him. Because, once the Reapers made their "debut", The Shepard knew that he would need the galaxy to understand the full extent of the situation. And to do that— to keep the Collectors from going ballistic... he had the feeling that Commander Shepard's teammates would have to understand the situation beforehand. They were honored as heroes— if they gave their testimony and all supported the Reapers as a benevolent force... it would definitely help, at the very least...

---

Yes, there would have been many who criticized Commander Shepard for his decision in becoming the Reaper's master. But his reasons for it were nothing but pure.

For, you see, towards the end of the Reaper War Commander Shepard had been plagued by nightmares and doubts. His ever-generous and compassionate nature were causing him to question his own adequacy— his own fallibility. The Commander had lost too many friends. He'd watched too many people die— often times, people he'd cared about. After hearing countless casualty reports, the recurring dreams about that child from Earth had been the last straw. By the time the Battle for Earth had come, John was sick of everyone dying— he was sick and tired of his own sheer, inexplicable inability to save everyone— to keep the promise and oath he'd taken when he joined the Alliance! He'd sworn that for every friend he'd lost, he would make ten Reapers pay— and double that for anyone that had the gall to try and stop him!

... but when he'd finally gotten to the Citadel, when Beta had shown and given him that choice… he'd recognized how serious— how important that the moment was. Commander Shepard, for one of the only times in his life, had been forced to rethink himself.

It had taken him a full ten minutes to make his decision, before Solution prompted that time was of the essence…

When Shepard finally chose Control, he hadn't been thinking about himself. His wants, his desires, his feelings— they didn't matter. No. He'd been thinking about his friends— the people who had become his adoptive family. He'd been thinking about what they would all say about this situation. He thought about what was best for Humanity, for the Citadel, for the galaxy. He'd thought about all of the people he'd lost— Jenkins, Thane, Mordin, Legion, all people who had given their lives for the sake of saving others. He thought about all of the good he could do with the Reapers at his back. He saw Control as his chance to make sure that nobody would have to sacrifice themselves ever again! As the ultimate opportunity to protect and help his friends, forevermore. He saw it as his best and last hope of living up to the Alliance's ideals of saving the innocent. To become the Reaper's master, in order to be the One who could (actually) save the Many.

He was now The Shepard. His goal would be to protect and sustain— to give everyone a future, and to make sure that all had a voice in deciding that future. To be the force that would curtail any galactic threats to peace. To be the ultimate vanguard of the destruction and pacification of those who would cause chaos, misery, or death. He could now be the guardian of galactic stability. The Reapers would be the extensions of Commander Shepard's will, thoughts, and soul.

He wouldn't be a leader. He wouldn't be an overlord or a tyrant. He hated politics, after all. No, to do that would be irresponsible.

The Reapers were to simply be a force of good, of justice, of protection.

He… was The Shepard of the Reapers… and he was finally the one who could save the many…

---

And there you have it! I tried to craft this in a way that would give others a way to create truly interesting and tense situations— a way that would give other writers the ability to have everything fleshed out in a manner that would provide perfect opportunities for conflict and dynamic characters.

By the way, the "Raloi" are canon— you can look it up.

Keelah'Salei, my friends. And a good day to you…