Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect, Sonic the Hedgehog, or CthulhuTech.

Not what you were expecting, huh?

Well, someone in the SpaceBattles thread for Mythos Effect - a fanfic written by Omniscent1 both on SB and this site - joked about the NEF making a Batarian planet disappear as a form of retaliation against slavers. Needless to say it tickled my funny bone, especially at 1:30 at night, considering the whole premise of Operation ECLIPSE is that a madman from Earth made a Batarian planet disappear. And so I wrote a tiny crossover between the two fics.

The important bit is that for Operation ECLIPSE standards, this takes place quite far in the future. I'm not sure how many of the events or elements I'm vaguelly referencing here will be in the final fic, but I do want to include them all.

I hope you enjoy!

CROSSOVER: Planet's gone… again. (Mythos Effect)

After the NEF war ended, the Hegemony decided to kidnap two humans to sell.

In contrast to what one may think, it was not a matter of making profit. Nor it was because they were foolish or suicidal like many often assumed. In fact, the Hegemony had decided early on in the war that the risk while the NEF War was ongoing was far too high. Even now that hostilities had ceased, there would surely be retaliation.

The real question was what kind of retaliation.

Matter of fact was, there would always be that one idiot who thought that the absolute "DO NOTS" dictated by common sense were to be disregarded. In fact, there were several idiot of that kind. The Turian who started that war was a prime example. Sparatus another.

So in essence, the real purpose behind kidnapping those two humans was this; have an accurate picture of what the consequences would be, and to show these consequences to the rest of the galaxy.

And if by any chance the rewards outweighed the risks… Then they were in business.

Obviously, this was a life-threatening mission. The kind of life threatening that the Batarian External Forces were not qualified to handle.

So they brought the best of the best for it.

They brought the SIU.

It was the obvious choice, for the SIU threat to one's life was like the comfort of a blanket. The extraction had gone smoothly. Finding a couple of those curious hueys who decided to settle on the Terminus Systems was easy. It was never a part of the galaxy that could be effectively monitored by the Citadel, now moreso than ever with the Turian War Machine crippled beyond all repair. It even took the NEF a minute to notice.

Not a literal minute. But just long enough for the Hegemony to breathe, to think that perhaps they had escaped the NEF's notice. Not enough to withdraw the preparations for the incoming massacre, but enough to look the other way for a second. They took the hueys to Anhur for a semi-public sale.

Big mistake.

They noticed alright. And they retaliated.

Just not in the way the retaliated against the Turians.

Nobody was certain who had first noticed the stars bending.

Because they were bent. Their light turned into ribbons and they stretched, the clouds became as sharp as razors, Amun stretched over like a blanket as space itself swallowed the planet whole.

And then it was gone. Anhur was no longer there.

All that was the left was a rip in the space that seemed to pulse.

This was not a mere retaliation. It was a statement. And the SIU would have to deal with it.

Ackera Eps'hor was not involved in the initial retrieval mission. Those SIU agents were on Anhur at the time of its… disappearance.

Within less than an hour of the event the Turians – somehow finding out first – informed all the other species in the galaxy that they were not getting involved in this, before anyone other than the Batarians even knew what was happening. That was immediately followed by the NEF stating that the planet would be returned as soon as the Batarians paid reparations, and that the matter of the hostages was already dealt with. Then all the other species sat back and relaxed.

Always eager to destroy them. Always calling them parasites, treating them like they were blights. The Citadel, for all its preaches of equality, never once cared for the Batarians.

A slightly more innocent part – or rather, optimistic part – in Ackera's brain pointed out that even if other species wanted to help, they probably did not have the means to do so.

An excuse.

They sent drones first through the Rip, and although the footage from within was… indecipherable – the static images were moving and that was all that could be said on the matter – the drone had not been damaged in any way. It was a hopeful sight, and maybe possibly a glimpse into how the NEF's FTL worked.

So after confirming that safe passage was possible, Ackera Esp'hor along with a tiny handful of other SIU operatives was chosen to enter the Rip.

He prayed to the Pillars for strength, and boarded the ship.

For the SIU, threat to one's life was like a familiar blanket. Perhaps not the most comfortable, worn thin and scratchy with time, sometimes failing to keep in the body heat. But it was familiar and secure, all the details about it engraved to memory. The barrel of a gun, the glow of biotics, the shine of a blade, the mask blocking the fumes and protecting the eyes, the weight of armor and your weapon. Those were familiar things, known things, as easy as breathing to take in and live with.

The Rip was not that kind of threat.

The Rip was fractal. Twitching. Moving without movement, breathing the way stones do, the way magma and earthquakes do, standing still the way waves and lightning do and there was so much color it went back into monochrome, blinding in how it revealed the world, searing the image in ice behind closed eyelids. It was a path that could not be stepped on, paved by stones you could sink into, air you could drink, it was caught in the middle of a perfectly still storm and the rain burned like fire. It was like being crushed to the point of dissolution, like an insect between the fingers, impossible pressure and then you existence was spread everywhere, for there was too much and not enough space in this impossible pressure.

Perhaps he was struck by something like lightning.

And suddenly, it was over.

The first breath felt like that of an infant, full of relief and impossible pain, of sheer wrongness and revelation.

Also, he was dropped on the ground from somewhere above it.

The… ground was there. There were plants on it. The sky was blue, a bit cloudy. With birds. He turned around and there were… plants. Alien plants but normal alien, not "whatever the fuck was now growing on Menae" alien. Pretty organized. It looked like a decently-sized garden.

…What.

Why the fuck did the portal send him to some random garden!?

He got up on his feet to take a look at his surroundings and his eyes landed on a Salarian.

He blinked with all four of his eyes.

Yes, the Salarian was still there. He was blue-skinned with grey stripes, sitting on a wooden box, currently scrolling through his heavily modified omnitool, and was wearing clothes that were definitely not Salarian in design. There was a plastic cup half-filled with what looked like a fruit smoothie next to him.

He turned off the omnitool and looked at him straight in all four of his eyes.

"First time?"

…

"The fuck?"

The Ackera's absolute disbelief, the Salarian actually answered. "Getting thrown through a portal."

"…Obviously." It should not even be a question because there were very few people out there in the galaxy who had any sort of experience with portals, and Batarians were not on that list.

"Huh. Interesting." said the Salarian with a tone as he had just been shown a particularly oddly-bent vegetable and at the same time was informed of gossip that had absolutely nothing to do with him.

Ackera did not like that tone.

"Who are you." It was not a question.

The frog seemed to debate it for a moment, closely examining his face. He had not seen anyone give him such a close examination since his instructors. "Everyone calls me Vilm."

"I'm not here for jokes."

"Neither am I, I'm just not going to give out my name to SIU. The armor makes it obvious. By the way, your name?"

Fantastic. However, starting a fight or a proper interrogation with a complete unknown was a foolish move. He had to get his bearings first. "None of your business. Where is this?"

"Oh, right. This is Earth. It's not as bad as the rumours make it out to be."

…

It was what!?

"The Terrans are kind of weird though. Well, they are reasonable by the circumstances, it's the circumstances that are weird. But I'm certain all of you have heard plenty of hearsay."

Terrans? He never heard that particular name being used for the species of Earth, it was always the NEF or hueys, or Humans and Nazzadi, or Huzzadi in certain circles. Not "Terrans".

He started having a horrible suspicion.

"What is the date?"

The Salarian typed something on his omnitool. "Here, I switched it to Kar'Shan time." And he turned it around and showed him the display. It took a moment for it to connect in Ackera's mind.

He thought he would be missing a week, maybe a few months at worst.

Not fifteen years.

Ackera had no idea what this meant. Was this time travel? Or did it really take him that long to get through the Rip? He did not know which scenario was worse, the hueys having access to time travel or having lost that much time. It was only a tiny part of his brain processing this information because the rest of him was still overwhelmed by the Rip, and part of that was still preoccupied with the transition from the Rip to this garden he found himself in.

This "Vilm" person was far too calm about this.

"I suppose you are significantly more displaced than you first assumed."

The frog was smiling, looking for all the world as if he knew something Ackera was in the dark about. It made Ackera want to shoot him.

The frog continued as if his obvious murderous thoughts were non-existent. "Who exactly did you piss off?"

It took Ackera a moment to recognize the human slang. "Who do you think?"

He shrugged. "For all I know you could have just stumbled on a weird rock. But usually portals like that don't show up unless you pissed someone off."

Ackera did not want to give this Salarian any information. There were stories about the people in close contact with hueys. Some were little more than whispers, others were well documented with video evidence, multiple military reports, and everything, but there was no denying that many people had cracked the way humans had cracked. Tales about a serial killer Salarian with a possessed human sword, a Turian family of self-proclaimed shamans talking shit about the archeological theories on the Protheans, a Krogan anti-cult squad with a number of honorary members from various species, a newly-hired pyromaniac C-Sec officer, that one Turian soldier doing blood sacrifices to his arsenal, the ever-growing number of Hanar preachers, and of course who could forget the tales of Julek the Serene One and His Unit.

No, there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that "Vilm" was every tiny bit as insane as those people. Especially if he lived here. On Earth. Which was the NEF homeworld. In the future.

That was when the door of the sack behind – which Ackera had filed in earlier as a potential weapon storage but mostly ignored because of everything else – swung open and a… small orange blur burst through it followed by a blue one.

They came to a halt and Ackera was thrown for a loop again.

"What are you."

Those were not humans.

"Wow, rude" said the blue one. Definitely not human. Or Nazzadi. Sounded male, so he was going to go with that. His brain was not breaking the way the Rip made it break so that was good news. Maybe. "I think I made enough headlines last time I was 'round the neighbor." When he what.

Then the blue one got a good look at him and had a double take.

"Hey-"

"He just got dropped from a portal." said Vilm, as if that was a normal everyday sentence, and interrupting whatever the blue one was going to say. "Miles, did you get any readings?"

Miles was the orange one. Two tails. Holding a bright yellow tablet-like device with an antenna. Mixed holographic and on-screen display, mixed touch-screen and button features.

"I did and it's bad news. That portal had some strange energy readings, so I checked the quantum foam patterns, and they have many of the same frequencies as those forming during the manifestations of The End. But instead of transference between the Cyberspace and the material plane it was a wormhole between two dimensions, the way the Sol Emeralds do!" They sounded young. Or maybe female. He was not sure.

"Every other word of that sounds horrifying" deadpanned "Vilm". Ackera was inclined to agree, but this was Earth so it was expected. He was semi-expecting for the ground to sprout mouths or something. And he did not want to know what "The End" was. So far that had not happened.

He really should report this to the Hegemony.

"Also, dimensional travel? Are you certain?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I have lots of samples to compare."

"So… are we getting any new incomprehensible horrors from beyond on our doorstep?" asked the blue one. "Gotta admit, I could use a bit of a break."

Oh no. There were mouths in the ground after all.

All eyes turned on him as if they simultaneously remembered he was there. Three pairs so looking at everyone in the eye was a big ask right now. Now it was the orange one's turn to startle a little, which quickly switched to baffled.

"Who exactly did you piss off again?" asked "Vilm".

He did not answer. The SIU never answers to enemies.

"Look, we cannot afford to keep you locked here, the SIU is a security hazard. Not that you'd be able to report back, but Sonic is right" so that was the blue one's name "we really could use a break. So please help us send you back home, alright?"

"…Very well." Not that he had any option other than death right now.

"Could you at least tell us what you were doing near Earth?"

"We were not near Earth" he said. "Nobody knows where Earth is. One of our planets just went missing."

The small group fell silent. Deadly silent.

"Are you absolutely certain you did not piss off someone named Eggman?"

"Definitely not. I don't know who that is." And what the fuck kind of name was Eggman?

"So you pissed off someone else" said this "Sonic".

"Yes. The New Earth Federation."

Whether they recognized the name or not, they gave no indication. "And now your planet's gone."

"…Yes."

"And you got thrown through a portal and landed here."

"…Yes."

"…Was it Anhur by any chance?" asked "Vilm".

That was… extremely suspicious. "…Yes."

And the fuckers burst into laughter.

Five minutes later and it was obvious that a) this was actually NOT Earth, b) no this really WAS Earth except not quite, and c) the Salarian was annoyed at his snack time being interrupted.

Oh, and d) everyone was a Pillar-damned nutjob.

"Vilm" asked him what exactly did he do, but Ackera did not answer. Even if this was a different Earth entirely, he was not sure if telling these people that the Hegemony tried to kidnap two humans for risk assessment purposes would be a good idea. The frog looked like he was begging him to give him an excuse to do something. He was not sure what that something was, but it was certain to be unpleasant.

Meanwhile the orange one was calling someone to come help with the "dimensional portal" issue and the blue one kept poking his shoe on the spot where Ackera landed.

It fractured for a moment. Everyone jerked back and stared at the spot that briefly turned into a kaleidoscope before turning back to normal.

Miles turned back to his call. "The area is still unstable so it should be easier."

"Call Silver too, just to be sure" said the Salarian.

The two not-humans stared at Ackera again. "Makes sense" said the blue one. "It was bugging me."

No, it did not make any fucking sense at all.

"So…" he continued. "Any ideas how they made that portal?"

That he could answer, but not in any way that he personally found satisfactory. "They'll probably say it's magic."

"…"

This was the moment when they all revealed that "magic" was a giant prank of something.

Instead, the orange one said that he will also have to call an "Amy".

"Should we call Shepard too?"

"Nah, don't wanna ruin this year's longest shore leave."

It had been an hour.

The blue one – Sonic – had ran off somewhere at speeds only someone born and raised on Earth could hope to achieve and came back ten minutes later with sandwiches. In that time Ackera noticed that this garden was located in a crater in the middle of the road in a ruined city. He asked the Salarian and he replied with "domestic terrorist".

Then a pink alien – that Amy – and a female huey who greeted everyone with a "what's up, fuckers" showed up. The pink one said this was a good chance for the "Coven" to examine something interesting.

The huey was not wearing anything resembling a military uniform, and instead was very exposed revealing large tattoos all over her. With one hand she was poking the remnants of the portal in the air and getting shocked by it. He was reminded of a kid with a lit candle. On the other she was holding a metal sphere that had started to turn fractal. The pink one was doing something with a set of cards and her expression was turning increasingly alarmed.

Then the other two people showed up.

One was clearly of high caste. Extremely high-quality brand new clothes, large solid gold jewelry with appropriate gem stones, and embedded gem on the forehead, white leather shoes. They – she, after hearing the voice – greeted everyone else as if they were not so beneath her station. What was she doing? Surely she should at least have an escort? How could she even tolerate their presence?

The other person was also not a human and he was protesting against his very presence here because "it's not like I can control it so I don't know how much help I'll be".

They called a fucking amateur for whatever this was.

"Well, we're fucked" said the human, apparently done with electroshocking herself. "This is the Picture Fiasco all over again."

"Will I receive death threats online?" asked the Salarian.

"You had that shit coming" said the human. "You broke the internet-" "EXTRAnet" "-more than The Dress debate."

The Salarian slurped his smoothie. "It made the point clear."

Ackera had to extract this frog's full name so when he went back to his own dimension he could find him when he was born and kill him. The huey clearly had the same thought. Or something akin to it.

The hours after that were baffling.

In short, because of the unique circumstances everyone came to the conclusion that they had to homebrew a ritual.

This was not a sentence Ackera ever expected to hear in any context.

And the orange one had banned him from leaving the garden because he was connected to the anomaly.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

What followed was everyone drawing lines on the ground, using strings, cards, the spheres from earlier, and some massive gemstones courtesy of the high caste female to try and figure out some array that would best interact with the portal, and then they decided that the portal is pulsating too much actually, so they made the amateur lift them with his maybe-Biotics to make the array pulse along with the portal.

The orange one was running equations based on the experiments to try and find the perfect formula.

The Salarian sat next to him, currently going through his third smoothie and a second sandwich.

"You know, I've been here for a good bit and it boggles the mind every time I see them work."

Ackera did not acknowledge him. Why was the Salarian talking to him?

"Listen… I assume you were investigating something on Hegemony orders. And that nobody was around to help. Or perhaps you had no idea what to do except dive right into the unknown and pray not to die."

"I'm not giving any information" he said. It was obvious the Salarian was hoping to extract answers.

"I'm not expecting you to answer. But here is a word of advice from someone who's done this before."

The Salarian turned to him and somehow looked at him straight to all four of his eyes, despite only having two.

"There are ways to improve that you would never expect. You may get turned to paste under the pressure but the paste spreads everywhere, in directions you never thought before. And you? Well… you're taking this a lot better than most people."

"Are you really trying to encourage an SIU soldier?" This Salarian was absolutely insane.

The Salarian looked up at the darkening sky.

There were two moons. One was artificial, and resembled a face.

"Let's just say you're not the first one I met."

A tiny blue jellyfish-like being popped up from seemingly nowhere and floated near them. "Vilm" fed it a few bites of his sandwich and then handed it the straw of his smoothie to drink.

He was not going to touch that.

Ackera went to sit on the other end of the garden, between the large yellow flowers. They were facing the moons.

The control center on planet Sobek burst into activity as the systems focused on the Rip blared in alarm.

The SIU vessel sent to investigate returned.

The vessel quickly docked and each of the agents was interrogated.

Hardly any of them had any clear or sensible memories from the Rip itself. Only most of them had reached the intended destination, reporting that initial scans showed a dazed population and the two human slaves missing. Upon landing they saw that some members of the crew were missing. Despite this, everyone made it back to Sobek, somehow reappearing on-board on the way back.

Of those missing, most said something about landing on mysterious locations. One detailed oceans of blood, breathing carcasses of water titans, and a screaming burning forest. Another talked about a bizarre mine under a far too bright night sky and a sign that insisted that space was indoors. The third said that he landed in a garden possibly owned by an insane Salarian, and a human who gave him a metal sphere that was pulsing fractal in his grasp.

Those agents never saw the light of day again.

Looks like the pep talk went to waste after all.