Author's Note: I don't mind telling you all that this story is getting hard to write. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 78: Aratoht

12M 04D 16H Until the Colossus Fires

A massive part of Aratoht's facility collapsed as the battle within it unfolded. Unbidden Disentegrator weapons weapons fired off beams of lightning both at the intruders and at the facility itself. Large portions of the facility collapsed due to being ripped apart on a molecular level, Shepard and company on the other hand only narrowly survive by virtue Javik's teleportation ability.

"Think she's dead?" Leo asked looking at the shaking rubble.

"Lawson told it not to destroy his base." Javik stated noting the rubble of the destroyed facility. "Obviously he has lost control of his pet."

"Why should she listen to him?" Grunt asked as if the question was obvious. "She's stronger than him."

"More importantly she's still alive." Shepard immediately trained her weapon on the spot where she saw the rubble of the facility shifting about and shaking, as if there was something that was making their way out from underneath the rubble. Suddenly Javik pulled Shepard out of the way as a familiar biomechanical monster nearly teleported itself onto Shepard's head.

"She has integrated my people's teleportation ability!" Javik shouted as he opened fire at point blank range.

Alpha disappeared again, while the rubble pile continued to shrink, then the group saw shadows on the ground for seemingly no where and looked up into the sky.

"There's no way our luck is that bad." A worm hole appeared above their heads, from which various pieces of biotically enhanced rubble came flying down from the sky like a meteor storm. "Ah Mot!"

Javik quickly grabbed his companions and teleported away again before the artificial meteor storm could crash down on their heads.

"The creature is a distraction!" Javik snapped as he immediately assessed the situation. "The real threat is the transmitter!"

"The real question is where it is?" Shepard looked over the Horizon in search of the target, unfortunately she was soon interrupted again by another round of falling rubble. "Javik." To Shepard's request Javik teleported the five of them away again.

"Alpha might be a distraction but we can't exactly look for the transmitter with her dumping those rocks on us." Leo stated bluntly. "She already destroyed her own base of operations in her rampage after all."

It would be convenient if Alpha destroyed the transmitter itself, but again their luck wasn't quite that good. Then as if Jinxing it a familiar voice came over the coms.

"Shepard, it's me." Miranda's voice echoed out from the coms. "Miranda..." Shepard was interrupted by Javik teleporting them away from another rock shower. "How'd you get here?"

"Let's just say for now you aren't the only one who didn't trust the Salarians." Miranda stated by way of reply. "Are you planning to kill Alpha or subdue her?" Miranda's voice full of suspicion.

"Why do you care?" Shepard asked in reply.

"Because I feel sympathy for people who have been manipulated and controlled by my father." Miranda replied naturally.

"At this point?" Shepard sighed as she was interrupted by another of Javik's teleport dodges. "Anything that stops her from trying to kill us while we try to figure out where that Transmitter is."

"I'm looking at the report EDI did on the Synthorg she body jacked. It's not just one enemy you're dealing with it's three." A Guard Dog with three heads as Alpha called herself. "You'll have to individually hit her organic, cybernetic and psionic components to subjugate her." Of course they do. "We have plans in place for the organic and cybernetic pieces, still working on getting that Unbidden under control though." Of course they are.

"And the 'nuke it from orbit' option?" Shepard was getting annoyed with dodging asteroid showers, it would really be nice to end this sometime soon.

"You really wanna throw a weapon of mass destruction at a worm hole generator?"

Shepard would like to see her try and block a Tachyon lance but decided against it. Throwing an unstoppable force against an immovable object didn't seem like a good idea. Alpha's earlier movements confirmed that she's had Astral Threads integrated into her system, and given what a Tachyon Lance tends to do that's two time space manipulating phenomena colliding together and having a spat hard enough to poke another hole into space time, and while it would be convenient if that destroyed the transmitter it was also possible that it's not even here, they had teleported around to several different places already with significant distance between and still saw no sign of anything that could be a transmitter looming in the distance. So the best option was to find Lawson and rip the answers out of him, which also meant shutting down his 'daughter' long enough to do so.

"What kind of plan do you have in mind?" Shepard asked as she already liked nothing about where this was going.

"The Codex and the Miniature Divine enforcer. I have one and the other is backed up on your ship." Miranda's reply came fast and tart, little time to mess around and she knew it. "I would prefer to have her stop moving before I use the enforcer on her."

"Understood." The Next storm had already started. Didn't this thing run out of rubble? "Javik, we need to get back to the ship." Javik's next teleport took them back to orbit, the shuttle they came down on was likely destroyed or buried, but the ship was safe above the tear in space that Alpha induced to weaponize chunks of the planet.

"She'll know we're up here quickly." Javik warned in simple terms.

"Don't need long." Shepard stated by reply. Data spikes are sort of like hot-wired USB ports, a hollow spike connected to a data drive that releases nano-wire into a object, if they can stab it into Alpha's grey box, assuming she still has a grey box at this point, then they can download this into her and hopefully make part of her mind calm down. Though what Shepard intended to download wasn't the Codex Precisely.

"Here's hoping you're really as stubborn as we think you are." And then the ship started to do a nose dive as it came under the influence of super gravity. "Javik, Drop me right on top of her." Shepard and company needed the ship to get off world. When they shut down whatever has the Unbidden so spooked they're going to have to get out of here in a hurry if they don't want to get their souls sucked, they couldn't afford to lose it. "Grunt, Leo save the ship, Javik with me."

The Two teleported again, the bad thing about running around so much was that it made it easy for Alpha to track them down through the weave, but on the other hand it also meant that since Alpha was doing the same thing Javik could track her down just as easily. Shepard landed on top of the multiheaded woman in question wrapping her arms around her neck.

"Legion, time for a wake up call!" Shepard stabbed the data spike containing Legion's back up programs into the back of Alpha's skull. Immediately the programs inside flooded into Alpha's mind.

"AAAHHH!" A half synthesized scream echoed across the landscape.

The Loki head mounted on the tendril in the back made a creaking sound as it's features broke and twisted, shifting over to another one eyed mech, a Geth head.

"Shepard Commander?" The Geth took a brief pause as it took in the data. "Understood!" Javik and Shepard were separated by Alpha's laser beam. The Synthorg was firing blindly, shots of exotic gas and trails of laser beams were going after them, their attempt to calm her down made her only more unstable.

"I'm syncing your side arm with our ship's targeting computer, if you can keep your weapon's laser sights trained on her for a few seconds I'll be able to get a few shots in to hit her with the mini-divine enforcer!"

"I was afraid you were gonna say something like that!" Shepard took stock of her surroundings. Lots of stone here, with the synthorganic moss, so at least she was on her feet, which might be a bad thing considering she was probably going to be blasted off of them here in a few moments.

"Hey ugly!" Shepard called out, and at once the laser blasting weapons platform turned her attention to Shepard. As Shepard kept her weapon trained on the Synthorganic the monster retaliated with a sustained beam from her face directly at Shepard, who reached out and blocked the laser beam with one hand while using the other to keep her side arm trained on Alpha's midsection. Then after a few moments a light shined down from above, the Miniature divine enforcer came crashing down with a beam of psionic energy as a new influence hit the Synthorganic monster, the head of the Thresher Maw was distorted and changed it's shape taking on a familiar scaly serpentine body plan, in layman's terms Thuban, or one of her offspring.

"AAAHHH!" Alpha let out a new scream at that, clutching both sides of her head as she fell to her knees. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop It!"

Alpha's been through a lot, part of that being at Shepard's hands, if it didn't feel like her mind was being torn apart now then it soon would. And yet this time the changes were neither organic nor cybernetic, instead Zro crystal creeped along her person and formed crystals all over her body's organic parts. In the mean time the previous figure that was limited to a head on Alpha's back was growing in size and shape, taking on a humanoid appearance as it let out a wail and screamed, the sound like nails on a chalk board pumped directly into the brain.

"This was her idea to fix things!?" Shepard growled while she glared at what was happening.

"Youuu Woke the Dancing Demon~!" A familiar distorted voice played out. It seems that Leo and Grunt landed the ship nearby and Wander had come out of it, alongside Leo and Grunt, no doubt thinking that Shepard needed the Back up.

"No shit Sherlock. Got any plans to put her back to sleep?" Shepard was cringing in pain, she had a feeling that if not for the Thorian her brain would've leaked out of her skull by now.

"Youuu- holding baaack- Let me Solololo her~!" As usual Wander was speaking in song clips.

"I'll pin her down then you'll deal with the rest?" Shepard guessed and Wander nodded.

Shepard shot the extradimensional creature a thumbs up before she stood up and cracked her fingers. Gritting her teeth through the pain Shepard trudged forward, even despite the unstable energy vortex that Alpha had started to give off striking at her form she powered through the brain melting experience.

"Would you just SHUT UUUPPP!"

As Shepard made that frustrated scream known she grabbed hold of Alpha by her head and slammed her into the ground pinning her down there. Wander came in a few moments later and grabbed hold of the Unbidden sticking out of Alpha's back. The Unbidden was screaming louder now, both its body and Wander's were both being broken down and rearranged, the blocks of disorganised crystal being turned into fibre optic threads of Zro. Wander's body wove and knit itself back together, forming a new body like that of the one belonging to the Formless that Wander had met before. Alpha's Unbidden twin on the other hand was knitted into her main body, the crystal fibres mixing together with and combining with the existing synthorganic fibres. Alpha's psychic scream stopped, her eyes had rolled into the back of her head and her mouth was open and drooling.

"What did you do to her?" Shepard asked as she let Alpha go and checked her pulse.

"Her 'father' chewed my body up and forced it through a fabricator to give me my previous form." Shepard looked from Alpha with shock and surprise. "I merely returned a long overdue favour."

"You can talk now?"

"Yes. Since I had the designs for a proper Formless body together with the extra Zro that I needed I fixed myself as well." Wander also indicated Alpha as well. "I'm not sure if it's a proper integration but for now she's at least stopped screaming in pain."

Shepard lifted Alpha into a princess carry and brought her back to the ship. Near as Shepard can tell Alpha was still alive, even if she wasn't still alive she was fused Lich style to a Unbidden of some kind, so her body would forcibly keep itself alive as well. Which also meant that she was still a threat and needed to be treated as such.

"Why don't you chill out for a little bit." Shepard made a light suggestion as she shoved Alpha into a cryo pod in her relatively human-like form.

With the Grey box it was entirely possible for people remain conscious while in Cryostasis, mind you it was only in a state of being made to relive various memories or be affected by the various simulations fed into them, a dream like state, one that would make it convenient to decide what to do with her later. For now they had a lunatic that they still needed to deal with. The one good thing about Alpha's rampage was that it had speed excavated Lawson's base. The massive crater that used to be a building overcome by disentegrators and worm holes was little more than a crater at this point. Shepard's and company's ship landed in the hole and it's crew disembarked, looking down at Lawson who had prepared a table, chair and a kettle of tea.

"So tell me how is- Gah!?" Shepard grabbed Lawson by his throat and hoisted him into the air, slamming aside the table in the process and breaking it.

"Everyone has grown tired of your voice!" And then Shepard went into Lawson's mind.

Various research into the biological organisms of the Galaxy, advanced technology, psionics and the newly dubbed astral technology all flew by Shepard, and was ignored. There were two specific pieces of information that Shepard was after, how many back up copies that Lawson had, and where his transmitter was located. The Latter came with more information than Shepard had bargained for.

"You Son of a Bitch!" Shepard growled as she looked the other man in the eyes. "You already gave the Reapers the details on your little science project, and you're in communication with them!"

"Not everything! Kept the best parts-" Shepard gave the man a head butt for her troubles. "His transmitter has been destroyed in the chaos already." Shepard let out a sigh and dropped the man. "It was a dead man's switch to keep the bastard's from invading."

Even now as the group looked up into the night sky they could see the Alpha Relay spinning to life, from something on the other side of the galactic border. A projectile was shot through, even planet side they could tell that it was massive, and it had been aimed directly at the Unbidden's pseudo planet, slamming into it with enough force that it was shattered and crushed into Zro Dust, scattered on the winds. Whatever it was it triggered a chain reaction and a new Astral Rift was born, one that was rapidly growing in size. And then more of the projectiles were shot from the Alpha Relay, delivering countless projectiles into the galaxy proper. Including one that was flying into Aratoht.

"Damn it!"

All across Council space, the projectiles from beyond the void were being unleashed and slamming into planets with the kinds of forces that could shatter continents. A Reaper's mass was incalculable, a shell of densely packed carbon Cubrate material the height of a mountain, a single sugar cube worth of that material was equivalent to a mountain in terms of sheer mass. Because of the Unbidden hundreds of these ultra heavy densely packed ships had turned into useless corpses, so perhaps as a means of retaliation they were being hurled through the Alpha relay at various enemy worlds. Continents broke, the extra mass and the force of impact knocked the worlds in question off of their axis, huge dust clouds were spat up into the air and extinction level events became commonplace.

And then the Reapers came, and the real hell began.

12M 03D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

The Crystal Spire had become a hub of activity. It was equipped with the capacity to move masses that were inside of the Astral Rifts, it was how the Union fleet had gotten there after all. But now? Now they need to run relief efforts. Union and Council fleets were deployed, the various people across council worlds wouldn't die if left alone on their worlds for too long, they even had time to gather together resources and various culturally significant artefacts to be evacuated with them.

For the Formless this was a massive boon, a source of psionic energy to help rebuild their spire and inject desperately needed life blood into their failing civilisation. With the repairs done to the Spire, things really kicked into high gear. The Formless have the ability to pluck objects from the minds of the races that they encounter, random objects from their every day life could be recreated, by itself it was basically useless, but all of this useless junk was made out of omni-gel which could be broken down and recycled. It wasn't just the Citadel races here as well, an entire army of Union soldiers was on the evacuation fleet, and they had provided contributions to mass produce junk items as well, entirely made out of standardised components that can be broken down and reassembled into new configurations.

Combining these factors together a new mega-structure was already in the process of being built around the Spire, a ring world that would be powered by the sun like light of the Spire, once initial construction had finished people would even be able to live on it too. In the mean time the Formless's initial ability to move things through the Astral Rifts had been amplified, and they were now capable of moving the planets inside of the Astral Rifts too. For now the planet belonging to the Pasharti was brought over for the colony ships to land on. In the meantime another entity had been planted directly into the path of the Reapers as well.

"I don't appreciate my goals being used in this manner." Was the sum of the message sent to the Union task force in the spire.

The Animator of Clay had been moved from Rift Beta and into the newly formed Rift Epsilon right in front of the Alpha Relay and basically given the task of intercepting any Reaper force that enters the galaxy through the relay and either having them commit suicide or bring them over to their side. A useless exercise, as the Reapers had entered the galaxy through the galactic border, the worst fears of the Union confirmed. They didn't do something like blowing up their entry point into the Galaxy, the Alpha Relay, because that would force them to spread their numbers out and invade the galaxy by crossing the galactic border like what they were doing now. Both the convenient choke point and the thing that would limit the flow of Reapers into the galaxy had been removed, forcing them to keep their numbers spread out to deal with them and further hinder the galaxy's evacuation efforts.

"The Contingency, the Gestalt and the Formless's forces are currently holding back the Reaper forces." Sparatus summarised bluntly. "We're starting with evacuating the worlds closest to the Terminus sector and going backwards from there." Most Council worlds had protocols in place for dealing with this very situation, ideally the theoretical planet killing meteor would be intercepted and destroyed before it could get near the planet it would kill. Failing that, there were bunkers and store rooms full of preserved goods that would last for several months. Long enough that they would finish evacuation efforts by then, maybe even finish work on the Colossus. "The Colossus is going to be of Limited usefulness in a space battle." Admiral Hackett explained as he folded his fingers together. "It's aim is not so good that it can shoot enemy units out of the sky."

It's the equivalent of trying to kill a mosquito with a flame thrower, unwieldy and excessive overkill against a single target, but more useful against a swarm. Which admittedly might be something useful to do anyway considering that the entire galactic border seems to be lined with the bastards, a shame that it was little under a year before work on it would be finished though.

"This just came from Khar'shan." A Salarian spoke as they came in with a tablet. "Put it on the Holo." At Hackett's instruction the Broadcast from the Batarian Homeworld played, a crowd of the four eyed aliens had gathered in the streets as the familiar form of the Reapers hung high in the air above.

"Rejoice sons of Khar'Shan rejoice! The day of prophecy has finally arrived!" The priest who was standing on top of a pile of rubble in front of a gathered crowd of Batarians. "The Harbinger of our gods have arrived at last! We shall be remade from the ground up! We shall become perfect beings made in their image to execute their will upon this Galaxy! Rejoice and Ascend!" Hanging in the sky above was the mother of all Reapers, the Harbiger, a monster the size of a Continent, a Colossus.

From the maw of the great beast, a swarm was spat forth, countless numbers of insects came forth like drops of rain circling the globe, burrowing into the flesh of Batarians and the circuits of machines, breaking them down and rebuilding them. Machine became organic, organic became machine, the lines were blurred and erased, devoured under the gnawing jaws of a hungry horde as their bodies were transformed. The swarm left and nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. The Batarian's orange skin had turned scaly, lines of green circuits lined their bodies and lit up the darkness. With a hungry roar the Batarian's bodies changed, skin and flesh folded away revealing weapons like rail guns and laser cannons folding out from their torsos and into their faces, their bodies crackling with psionic energy. The Batarians weren't the only ones that changed. The buildings had synthorganic fungus growing on them, street lights and other poles were remade into trees as a green fog of exotic gasses began to overtake the atmosphere on top of that. This entire world had been remade down to the bed rock into a large scale collection of synthorganic organisms, maybe even deeper than that. All of it done within moments of Harbinger's arrival in the Atmosphere.

"I can see why you guys want your Colossus up and running so badly." Sparatus concluded from watching the video. Transform the planetary population into cyborgs, rewrite an entire world's genetic code, terraforming the landscape. This was just a few of the examples Sparatus saw at play here.

"Have this sent to our intelligence departments if they don't have it already." Hackett ordered swiftly. "Let's see how much we can learn about the Reaper's super weapon."

Author's Note:

Monster King: Glad you're enjoying it more than I'm writing it.

RonaldM40196867: No it isn't. That's the true horror of space: we don't know. Space is so vast and full of possibilities that the number of possible theoretical horrors are infinite, and for all of our imagination, our horror movies, our Lovecrafts, Steven Kings and Ridley Scots: we have no idea what's waiting for us.