Author's Note: Not a lot to say right now. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 77: Rift Zeta

12M 08D 11H Until the Colossus Fires

The bare bones of the launch rig had been rapidly built around the Astral Rift, and work was being done to get the Rift Sphere into place. The contents of the Video had been shown to both the Council and Union forces. And while the Salarian's involvement with criminal number one was a serious matter that was being addressed with full seriousness for now there was a diplomatic issue that needed to be addressed. The contents of the video could be interpreted as a threat, a warning that this new Extradimensional faction was aware of everything that they had been doing inside of the Rifts, with the addition of a demonstration of military power. Or it could be a call for help, 'Our home is under attack please help us!'

The fact of the matter remained that they clearly demonstrated something that they themselves desire, a method of moving between the rifts. So Liara was being sent forward for diplomatic purposes, her job being to clearly determine what the other party wants and the best course of action from there. Thus Liara, alongside Wander, climbed into the Rift Sphere and was sent on her way through.

"They really were identical." The Admiral commented on it before, but the Rig on the other side of the Rift sphere was identical to what they were using for the other rifts, apparently it also made setting up the rig on their side faster and easier too. That was the end of the similarities though. Unlike her Research ship the Rift Sphere rig on this side was being guarded by a familiar ship, the same kind used by the Unbidden. Moreover, there were a trio of the Purple extradimensionals that she saw from the footage approaching them as well.

"Wander, Care to introduce us to your friends?" Liara commented to her co-pilot on this venture.

"Welcome to the Show~!" Wander gave his greetings to his fellow extradimensionals who in turn tilted their heads in confusion.

"Why did you teach it to sing?" A voice that Liara didn't recognise appeared in her mind, which probably means it was one of the three here that were talking to her.

"It wasn't our idea." Liara stated just as confused as her opposition. "More over why are you able to talk? We've been trying to teach this guy how to talk for weeks."

"It's a different species from us." The Purple Extradimensional stated. "It is heavily mutated, but this looks to be an Unbidden."

"You're right, it is. But what do we call you if not an Unbidden?" Liara asked sounding suspicious about the whole situation.

"We are the Formless." The Purple figures finally introduced themselves. "We require assistance."

"That was one of our theories." The better one, as they'd like to not have anymore enemies to deal with. "What's the situation?"

"We're under attack."

12M 08D 09H Until the Colossus Fires

In Layman's terms? The Formless were the ones living on the Crystal spire in the footage, and they had come under attack by a rival faction of extradimensional beings who similar to themselves feed off of psychic energy. They were entities that the Union and Council were already familiar with, the Unbidden and their endless parade of horrors. Endless being the key word. The Formless were far from weak in battle, and they had the advantage in defence but that was it, every time they cut down the enemy ships new ones popped up to replace them from wherever the Unbidden keep coming from. Unfortunately Liara had an idea of where that was.

"So it seems that the Unbidden are fighting their war on three fronts, us, the Reapers, and these Formless." Shepard turned around in her chair to look at Liara. "We think they're actively sending troops through the Alpha relay to drain the Reapers." Which would be the best case scenario. "Even if they weren't: Thanks to the Reaper hearts they seem to have cracked unlimited psychic energy." It would be incredibly convenient if the Unbidden would wipe out the Reapers with their vast unlimited numbers, even Reapers understand the value of numbers, 'overwhelm the enemy' is a key part of their tactics. But Unbidden ships are fragile, even the tried and true weapons the Council had employed for years were effective against them once the shields were taken down, so they could be wiped out with greater ease than the Reapers. This wasn't to suggest that they were underestimating them, until the retrofitting of the Colossus's hull had been finished the original planet destroying mining laser had not been removed. Provided that they could get it there in one piece, the Union could theoretically destroy the Unbidden world at any time that they pleased. However Shepard knew where they could get another planet destroying super weapon as well. "Contact the Envoy, we require an audience with the Animator of Clay."

12M 05D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

"We have posted your request to the Animator of Clay." Proxy was sitting inside of a meeting room inside of the Beta rift's own research station, or more accurately it's guard post.

The Contingency was flat out one of the most dangerous armies that the Union has ever had to fight against, and right now they were sitting pretty on the other side of the rift. Let alone an ally, no one knew if the Animator of Clay or the Contingency under it's influence were enemies.

"Situation highly complex." The Envoy explained in simple terms.

"How complex?" Kaiden and Ashley were sitting opposite of the machine.

"The Animator of Clay is preparing to deal with the old enemy." Proxy explained bluntly.

"Reapers?" Ashley asked and Proxy nodded.

"Correct. The Animator's ability is a great boon for resolving the Reaper conflict." Though they hadn't seen the deed done, the two remembered the sight of a Reaper Corpse that had torn itself apart under the influence of the Animator of Clay.

"To be Clear, you said 'resolve' not 'fight.'" Ashley did not like the wording in play.

"Correct." Proxy seemed to confirm the concerns of the group. "The Animator of Clay intends to free the Reapers of their programming, and then give them the freedom of choice on what they shall do next." Spreading the Freedom of Choice was the Animator of Clay's primary goal, from it's point of view the Reapers were ultimately victims, slaves to their own programming and it would free them in the same way that he freed the one he met before. "Does this run counter to the Union's intentions?"

""Well."" The Answer was complex.

When broken down into brass tacks the simple fact of the matter was that letting a bunch of Reapers run wild in the galaxy will never be a popular decision. The Union will theoretically take any allies that they can get against the Reapers. But allying with Reapers against Reapers? On the other hand, intellectually they knew the Animator of Clay was correct, none of those Civilisations asked to be reduced to Technorganic slurry and be trapped in the endless hell of being a Reaper, and if given a choice will resume their own wars against the Reapers, but at the youngest they were 65 million years old. They got to witness the madness of those collective consciousnesses suffering under the Reaper's programming first hand when the Gestalt consumed their organic components and absorbed their insanity.

"Will you take measures to ensure that we don't have to deal with millions of insane Reapers?" Ashley asked suspiciously.

"Yes. We are. But those are part of the preparations we need to make." Small miracles. "We are sorry, but we are not able to help you resolve this crisis."

"There is one thing you can do for us." Kaiden voiced the situation proposed by the Formless. "The Formless say that they can move things that are inside of the rifts. If we move our reinforcements for them into a rift then they'll be able to transport them to where they are currently under attack. What we need are two things, the first is permission to enter your sponsor's territory, and secondly his assurance that he isn't going to cause a riot on our ships by 'freeing' our AI and VI programs."

"I will relay your requests to the Animator of Clay." The Geth replied as the two Dragoons let the synth go.

12M 05D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

Shepard didn't wait for the meeting to take place with the Proxy for the Animator of Clay. Every moment that isn't spent tracking Lawson down gets him closer to getting his Tachyon transmitter working, closer to the Reapers obtaining the technology that they need to form an unbreakable iron grip on the Galaxy. Thus Shepard right now found herself on Omega, where she was getting ready to hit Lawson with everything she has. "Firing in three, two, one!" And so she swung, and she missed, the Exotic Gas Jump bomb that she had programmed to detonate directly inside of the Alpha relay having instead been redirected away to detonate harmlessly. "Well, there's plan B Gone."

Aria had entered a... uneasy peace with the Vorcha, one that basically involved not getting eaten by the newly enhanced monsters and in exchange she agreed to provide the Union the use of the station. For one thing she and her forces were still criminals, working to earn their freedom from the Union, who did not appreciate her trying to launch a coup to retake control over the station in the middle of trying to fend off three enemies and preparing for a fourth.

Plan A had been going into the territory itself, but Leo had talked Shepard down from a plan that would involve them having to face fewer armies by themselves.

So Plan C then.

The Turian's fleet had been retrofitted with the Volus Doctrine of 'minimise crew support and creature comforts, max out excessive fire power and redundant protective and repair systems.' There were many Turians who had grown accustomed to suits thanks to prolonged time in space, but most of the crews consist of Volus and Quarians, even though the term crew was used, the total number of individuals on each ship could be counted on both hands in most cases, with the rest being Geth styled interlinked VI Programs supported by AI, there were almost no one that the monsters could feed off of and even if they do thanks to the newly implanted Grey Boxes and other implants of the like they could quickly and efficiently recover their minds and personalities and replace their bodies.

The Weapons had been carefully curated, the slow but long range Tachyon Lances would fire into groups of Unbidden ships at range snapping space on top of them like the jaws of a great beast crushing them to dust and scattering them on the winds, for knife fighting range there were Thanix cannons, each shot strong enough to one shot a Unbidden ship, backed by chain activated shield technology based on what the Geth use. Basically, if the Unbidden manages to down a shield, they'll have back ups in place to replace it.

In the meantime the Union Fleet was acting, the full might of the punitive fleet was gathered together around the Beta Rift and entering it with the grace that the Animator of Clay allows them. The Punitive fleet had long since acquired Dragon Scale plating of its own, Their weapons the combination of an energy siphon to drain and neutralise shields and various kinetic weapons such as flak cannons and missiles to shatter their fragile hulls. Soon with the cooperation of the Formless they will be transported to their home-world equivalent the Spire. The Unbidden will have to fight on two fronts now, quite possibly three, and while they were doing that, Shepard would be taking the Normandy to hunt down Lawson.

"Do you know if Lawson is in Unbidden Territory?" Shepard was staring ahead at her only intelligence capsule for the infiltration of the Unbidden's territory.

"-Yeah, Yeah Yeah~!" A guitar rift accompanied Wander's voice clip. Shepard knew that Lawson grabbed Wander from somewhere, or at least she thinks she does, but getting information outta the guy is like pulling teeth.

"Do you know how he was able to hide in Unbidden territory?"

"Creeping in my soul~" This time a woman's voice, weirdly deep but not much use for figuring out what he's talking about.

"No luck then?" Leo asked as he brought Shepard a mug of coffee.

"Not unless Lawson's figured out how to screw with them directly. Frankly speaking, if he's figured out how to mind control them then we're screwed." Shepard let out a complaint as she took the cup of coffee with a deep breath.

"Only one way to find out." The Pair of Dragoons looked out the nearby view screen as the entire council fleet was catapulted across space via the Mass Relays and soon, they were sitting the middle of Unbidden Territory.

The Council Fleet unleashed it's entire capacity for violence all at once, every lance of Tachyon particles deleting entire groups of Unbidden ships in the span of a few moments. In the meantime Normandy was able to slip through the chaos. Luckily the Mass Relays sat unused by the Unbidden, it was entirely possible that they didn't know what they were or how to use them, so the ship was able to quietly enter the Bahak system to unleash hell on the enemy. Shepard wasn't going to use any of the particularly nasty surprises the Union could call upon, after all with the mass of Reaper hearts at the centre of the Unbidden's world the risk of another rift opening up was extremely high. Luckily, they shouldn't have to either, as the Zro that made up the planet was extremely delicate, one solid hit with say a Gungnir rod and the entire kit-kaboodle will be shattered, in theory. So for the time being it was 'stealth as hard as possible and try to find Lawson.'

"Oi." Leo was looking at Wander who was all jittery as he kept looking around the inside of the cockpit. "Our musician isn't looking so hot." And then it clicked for Shepard.

"Like someone's 'creeping in his soul?'" Shepard got a feeling that she knew exactly how to find Lawson's base of operations, the unfortunate part being that it involves torturing the soul sucking monster from another dimension. Lovely.

12M 04D 23H Until the Colossus Fires

The Union punitive fleet remains undefeated, the energy siphons sucked the enemy extra-dimensionals dry and the weapons fire shattered them with high speed ships stacked on their huge durability breaking the enemy on the Fleet's knee. Of course it helped that the enemy's ship might've well been made out of glass for all their numbers. That just left the people that they had rescued.

"Your defences are appalling." Admiral Hackett explained as he looked over the holographic layout of the Formless's System.

"We agree." The Formless acting as ambassador to the Union forces had his hands folded together as he nodded sagely. "We haven't been able to rebuild to satisfactory levels after the events of the Shattering."

"Perhaps we should start with a cultural exchange." Udina stated as he leaned back into his chair. A diplomatic ship had been prepared inside of which the Union's representatives had been gathered. There were also three holograms that connected to the Council, as a courtesy. "You know your old enemy better than we do, and the needs of your people as well. If we understand these things better then we'll be able to conduct a proper exchange."

"We are Formless. Once our people colonised what you know as universes in much the same way that you colonise worlds." The Formless ambassador produced a map, albeit not a map in anyway that they know, beyond describing a place that they didn't know existed, there was various details that were beyond description beyond 'this makes my eyes hurt.'

"I hope 'colonise' doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to us." The Kahn used one of his wings to shield his face from the 'map.' "We require the energy of living beings." The Ambassador explained. "You passively produce this, we take advantage of this, we manipulate the fabric to deliver it to us, ideally you would never know we are here."

Pre-FTL was a term used to describe races who have not been able to break the limitations put on them by the laws of physics and travel beyond their home system, here the Formless use the term 1U or One Universe, to describe those who were a step behind themselves. To them the joint Union and Council forces had only barely crossed this threshold in the crudest way. But they were desperate, and the people before them were on a level where they could help.

"Fabric? Would this be the barrier separating dimensions?" The Tebrid representative only had two tendrils busy with games. This was serious.

"Correct. We manipulate the threads that compose it to send us the energy that you passively generate, without it we weren't able to sustain our population, several groups of us broke off, and when they came back it was in these crude forms that you are calling the Unbidden, with other warring factions as well. We assumed that lack of psionic energy drove them mad." That would probably the the Aberrant and the Vehemont.

"Threads?" The talking floating crystal at the head of the Lithoid Federation looked about as enlightened as a floating rock could get. "The Astral Threads?"

"A combination of exotic particles and vacuum energy, to use the crude terms that you are familiar with, yes." The Formless explained bluntly, casually explaining mysteries that had left the rest of them baffled for generations. "Shortly upon entering this universe we were met with an unexpected ambush, we know not from whom. Multiple explosions detonated at once, tearing apart the fabric and triggering a chain reaction that shattered our spire and severed our connection back to our people trapping us here and leaving us without the means to manipulate the fabric or return to our native realm."

At once, all Union and Council eyes turned as one to a familiar corpse in a suit.

"How long ago was this?" Xidre asked as he already dreaded the answer.

"Time is a concept your 1U's use to cope with existence, we've already moved past it." In other words he doesn't know.

"I have an understanding of your situation now." Xidre wisely chose to begin changing the topic. "The question now is what do you need to begin fortifying this system from further attack?"

"As a start. Your people." That got a suspicious look from the members of the Union.

"Slaves?" Tevos asked sounding suspicious.

"Resources." The Formless Corrected. "We have the ability to compress the material of our realm into objects from your collective consciousness. We'd like to do this on a large scale but our facilities are not yet repaired yet so we can only do this in small amounts." The Formless conjured a chunk of Zro the Size of a basketball, which after a few moments were altered and took the form of a coffee maker. "Unfortunately we have little control over what we end up producing. But we do hope that we can produce items that can be of use in defending this system." No one spoke at the sight of matter being casually created before them. Suddenly Hackett bowled over and started cackling like a mad person. "Is he alright?" The Formless asked, not yet knowing how much easier he had just made mounting the defence here.

12M 04D 20H Until the Colossus Fires

After over a day of flying around the Bahak system the group sent into the territory had determined the one spot that Wander, and by extension the rest of the Unbidden, wanted nothing to do with. Aratoht. This was especially apparent because this was the spot where the Unbidden were being kept prior to their release. For now Wander was returned to the Council Fleet and Shepard and company resumed their search planet-side.

"Place has under gone some changes." Grunt has never been to Aratoht before in his life, nor did he have any memories of it in his greybox. And yet it was plain to see that someone had been redecorating. The once arid desert was replaced by sprawling technicolor plants, even from up high it was easy to see the glowing circuit board that cut through the landscape and vegetation, being grazed upon by animals that were unfamiliar to Grunt while the herd animals were being preyed upon by other animals. It would be nice to look at, if not for the implications of what it meant. "You see this?" Grunt asked looking down at the world.

"You mean Lawson remaking an entire planet according to his warped ambitions?" Shepard asked looking down at the landscape. "Yeah I see it. Come on the facility is this way."

The group touched down where the Tebrids built the research lab that they were using to hold the Unbidden that started the whole mess in the Terminus sector. The base has been remade. It had the same basic design as the images they had of it but that was it. The walls had been consumed and replaced by some kind of fleshy material, a densely packed fungus that they didn't recognised but was probably a variant of the Thorian, more of the circuit lines going through it. Shepard looked to her motly crew as it were, Javik, Grunt and Leo. Nodding to each of them the three entered the facility. The deeper they went the more disturbing the crap Lawson was into became.

In one instance they discovered a Loki Model Mech inside of a specimen tube, its metal shell now resembling the exoskeleton of an insect with familiar lines of circuits cutting through the body.

In another case they found a wall that was full of organs from different creatures, lungs pumping air, hearts pumping blood, stomachs gurgling.

They also found what had Wander so scared of, Dozens of Unbidden of different variants, bouncing around their containment cells and screaming to get out. Shepard wouldn't want to come here either.

"It's so hard to get them to stay still." Lawson walked into the hallway and immediately all the weapons were trained on him. "Oh please. Do you know how many times I could've had you all killed by now?" Lawson stated raising his hands in the air.

"We taking prisoners?" Grunt asked, looking like if he didn't get his answers in a timely enough fashion then he was going to take the whole question off the table. And then someone else did it for him, as the ceiling of the hallway collapsed, and the familiar figure responsible revealed herself.

"Try not to do too much damage to the base sweetie." The white skinned figure looked more machine than woman, with the white scaley skin having folded itself away to reveal weapons on both arms and coming out of the head and torso while both legs had turned into opposable graspers digging into the ground. The Three tendrils had their graspers replaced, a minature Thresher maw, a Loki Styled Synth head, and an Unbidden head.

"Great this bitch again." Shepard snapped as she and her group slowly backed away.

"Someone you know?" Javik asked in return. As a warrior it was necessary for him to become familiar with the face of his new enemy.

"I am the monster with Three Heads who guards the gates of Hell." Alpha growled in a gravely synth voice. "I am The Cerberus!"

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: Good to know. I think I'm good right where I'm at. All the planets are a little too much 'instant death' for my liking.

Halo: Glad you're liking it.

Maginator1: Understandable. Have a nice day.