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Chapter 57: Tuchanka Part 2

16M 28D 10H Until the Colossus Fires

Wrex's eye twitched as he watched the mushroom cloud off in the distance. Shepard, why do things explode so often around you? It was hard to say whether this would be a boon or not. On the one hand, mushroom cloud, on the more practical hand the sheer amount of foliage cleared from the area may mean that they have a narrow window of opportunity to set up some real anti-air on the surface and chase off the contingency for a while. Thus reluctantly Wrex gave the order to move out. Several things resembling sprinklers popped out of the surface, however instead of water they spewed flame, burning away at the plants on the surface. Once a large patch had been cleared a massive set of doors opened and out flew massive drop ships, each of them carrying a bounty of Krogan and Anti-air weapons their mission clear: remove the Contingency from Tuchanka.

16M 28D 09H Until the Colossus Fires

It wasn't the worst explosion Shepard was in, of course she'd likely never top the hole in reality being punched through. Warning lights were flashing Shepard's vision, her medical implants were working over time trying to keep her alive and repair her body at the same time. With a gasp Shepard sucked in air as her rib cage was reset and her punctured lungs healed, her spine snapping back into place popping her out of the hole she had been lodged in. Strangely enough none of it hurt, instead Shepard was feeling oddly... giddy? Another warning light flashed.

"Mot. My helmet's broken." Which chances were good was the last sober thought Shepard was going to be having for a while. "Hahaha~!" Shepard got a notification to replenish her stores of Medi-gel as her legs snapped back into place. If she was sober she might care more about her arm bones being broken still.

'57% of Bone shards have been sewn with heavy bone weave, 32% of bone mass is lodged into muscle tissue in the body, recommend immediate surgery.'

"Mot I'm bleeding to Death~!" This was bad. "Hey EDI Sweetie."

"You calling me sweetie is considered to be a bad sign for your mental health." EDI's smooth and sultry voice was like whatever she was breathing in on Shepard's ears right now.

"Can you map out for me everywhere that there's bone shards sticking into my muscle tissue~?"

"Shepard, you're hardly qualified or in any shape to perform surgery, let alone on yourself."

"Well I can't go anywhere like this, and if I don't do something then I'm going to die here." Shepard countered with flawless logic.

"You don't even have any medi-gel."

"I'm surrounded by medi-gel~"

The scavengers had already started to approach, the explosion had attracted creatures to the area. A Kalikiosaur was one of the most massive beasts on the planet, fearing not even Krogan, so of course when presented with the promise of a easy and free meal landed in on their laps they would take it. The head of the beast approached Shepard and at that moment she struck. A rock manipulated by Telekinesis was plucked from the ground and ripped through the air plunging straight into the eye socket of the beast and swishing around inside the head until the brain was mush.

"Now EDI, before it regenerates~"

"Acknowledged."

EDI made an exasperated noise as a map of Shepard's body appeared in her mind, listing off the current locations of her skeleton turned shrapnel in her body. At once Shepard started pulling out the most troublesome pieces of bone, heated them and welded them back into place. She'd need a doctor to do it properly later on, for now it was a good thing that she was as high as she was otherwise the screaming agonising pain would've done her in ten times over by now. Instead with the bone plugs starting to come loose the blood they had been holding back started to flow, thus Shepard started to drink the contents of the monster's skull, her internal injuries started to heal as the madness set in. Ironically enough being stone cold high had offered Shepard enough clarity of mind to... appreciate what the spores had to tell her. She saw elements of the Reaper's mission, their genocide called preservation through at least two cycles, maybe more, how much they genuinely believed in their synthetics vs organics mindset, and the end goal that they have for it, oh no she had no interest in that. Hours followed consisting of Shepard sloppily pulling out pieces of bone from her muscles and tact welding them back into a semi-cohesive skeleton. More little packets of Thorian spores would show up every so often and Shepard would take them and heal more of her broken body, laughing and giggling at the pain all they way along, it never even occurred to her that she had been surrounded.

16M 28D 09H Until the Colossus Fires

Garrus and the members of his team survived the blast only by virtue of being inside of the Contingency's ship, the insides were mere durasteel but the outside was reinforced with neutron matter, forget about being blown away, the damned thing was so heavy that the blast that was like several nukes going off at once didn't even make it budge. Which unfortunately means that Garrus and company were still in danger.

"You know we came here to save you!" Garrus shouted while he and his two co-conspirators were running away with their full might.

"Too bad!" Grunt shouted in reply.

Truly 'Guilty until Proven Innocent' was an unreasonable mentality.

Their advantage was that the inside of the Contingencies ship was built like a maze, Grunt could obtain incredible speed with his biotic Charge but only in a straight line, and he handled like a tank, on top of that there were even times that the three of them would ice the floors so that Grunt would slip up and slide away under the force of his own momentum. Still at this rate Grunt might have to accept their passing out from exhaustion as proof they weren't contingency infiltrators. Then, over four tonnes of Krogan and armour, weight augmented by a charge and sliding across a friction-less surface of frozen exotic gas, crashed into a frozen durasteel wall leading into the Contingency's engine room. Grunt slammed face first into an anti-matter reactor, cracks forming over it as the machinery started to break down from the force of being struck by a freight train, it was truly a product of Union engineering that it didn't immediately explode killing all of them in the process. Immediately that is.

"Garrus." The Two Turians and Batarian looked inside of the engine room where the blood thirsty Krogan who was trying to kill them was now stuck in the side of the Contingencies engine. "I am willing to entertain the idea that you're not Terminators."

"Is that Krogan for 'Please help me off this bomb before it explodes?'" Garrus asked slightly mocking.

"...Yes." It took the use of three Omni-crowbars before Grunt was out of the block of metal that was the Contingencies engine.

"I thought there was more members of your scout team?" Sidonis stated as he looked down at Grunt. "Don't tell me you weren't sent here by yourself?"

"We broke out a while ago, the others went in different directions to tell the clans about what we found here, I hung back to break their ship." The Grunt shaped hole in the engine started to leak gasses and other unpleasantries. "As you can see I succeeded." The lights all went dark and was shortly there after flashing red lights started to whirl.

"We should go." Garrus succinctly summarised their next few moments as Grunt picked himself up with a Lift and stretched out his back, his medical implants doing the rest.

"Allow me." Giant Krogan battering ram meets frozen and brittle walls.

The group quickly made it outside of the ship, jumping into the dirt and ashes as they waited for the explosion. Trome had the misfortune of breaking the 'Heads in the Sand and Hands over the Ear's' formation first and thus suffered bleeding eardrums when the blast punched a hole through the ship.

"Well you're not a machine." Grunt noted as he and the people he had been trying to kill for the past little while got back to their feet.

"I am so glad we got to work that out." Garrus replied brushing himself off. "Now we got any idea where Shepard is?"

"In a hole to another dimension?" Grunt replied as if he was stating the obvious.

"Liara dug her out. Was mighty pissed to hear about how you got captured." Garrus replied as he zoomed in through the use of his helmet's zoom function. "There she is..." A pause as if Garrus had to confirm what he was looking at. "We might have to wait until she sobers up though."

Shepard was dancing, Ballroom, salsa, Break Dancing, she was also bending several unnatural ways a clear sigh of her countless broken bones. Even more impressive is the fact that she was wiping out several Geth and Custodians as a by-product, spinning kicks, sticking her hands out at odd angles, at least once she grabbed one of the beefier Geth Primes and started to twirl around with it as if it was a dance partner at the ball instead of a make shift flail that she was using to hammer more of the Contingency's forces as they got close.

"Well. I'm not sure what to do in this situation." Garrus stated scratching his chin as he thought the situation through.

"Shepard's probably inju-" Garrus was suddenly cut off by Grunt slamming the top of his fist into his head.

Two more hits had the Krogan flooring Trome and Sidonis as well while Grunt took aim at Shepard, held out an arm, and watched it unfold into an arm cannon. While Grunt had spent a considerable amount of time on trying to kill or incapacitate the trio, they had never thought that the blasted machines had succeeded in doing what they set out to do in the first place and build a Grunt Terminator. Right now a laser beam was charging up and getting ready to fire aimed directly at Shepard, before that is the Contingency bot she had been twirling around flew out of her hands and directly in the path of the laser beam. Shepard ran with every muscle of her super human physique keeping pace directly behind the mechanical shield she had thrown directly in the path of the Grunt Terminator's shot, the moment the mixture of energy and exotic plasma broke through she dived out of the way of the shot and into the crater that had formed from the blast of exotic plasma.

A grapple cable, belt mounted of course, pierced the side of glass earth as Shepard took the momentum and swung upwards grabbing hold of Terminator Grunt by his ankle. In a few moments Shepard had already zipped by the monster machine's effective range with his laser weapon, and right into the grasp of a bear hug. Shepard threw her arms up into the air just in time to avoid having them be caught in Not-Grunt's embrace and slammed her hands into the monster's face, both of her thumbs plunging into cybernetic eye sockets. The monster roared as he attempted to break Shepard, the explosion had already done the hard part of cracking open Dragon Scale Armour, now it was a test of viciousness and will. That and Psionic powers and only one of them had those. With a twist Not-Grunt's neck snapped, Shepard ripped out part of the machine's crest and plunged it into the emptied eye sockets before slamming her still Scale Covered head into the broken shard and through the positronic brain, the machine finally falling over.

"Shepard remain motionless, the Shadow Broker's forces are on their way now, that last exchange has just rebroke-" EDI watched as Shepard clumsily rolled down the hole again and could only let out a digital sigh in response.

16M 25D 10H Until the Colossus Fires

Skeletor and his team of mad scientists looked at the X-Ray's, ultrasounds and cat scans taken of Shepard's body. The body they literally just put back together. The one whose internal skeleton had been turned into shrapnel, whose brain had been infested by Thorian spores, who was so god damn high that she could walk with the gods.

"Alright." Skeletor folded his hands together and let out a loud crack as he stretched them forward. "Lets get this over with."

The Grunt terminator had been remanded to a isolated chamber. One of EDI's independent programs had been placed on am isolated server and was now in the process of decrypting the Terminator's system's. If one of the viruses the unit was carrying overwhelmed EDI's AI it was programmed to self terminate so that the process could start again. In the meantime Liara was speaking with Skeletor through a screen.

"So the Union can make a new body in a few hours but it'll take several days in order to Fix the one Shepard's got?" Liara asked sounding mighty displeased by the subject.

"It is incredibly easy to make something new, especially compared to fixing something that's broken. But you do you want 'an exact replica of Shepard' or do you want 'Shepard back.'"

That was the cusp of the situation wasn't?

"You already know the answer to that question." Liara's brow twitched none the less. "Then if you have no more complaints about our time table I shall explain to you what the delay is now." The screen replaced it's image of a suited skeleton with that of a diagram of Shepard's body. "Her bones have been turned into shrapnel, and now need to be extracted one by one and reassembled together." Shepard's bones were a unique psi-attuned mineral, bonded to the psychic ghost of herself that formed during her time in the other dimension, each fragment was precious and had to be recovered. "In addition to that. It would appear that she ran out of medi-gel during her little misadventure and resorted to eating the local wildlife for their Thorian spores. Complete with the potent drug cocktail that they naturally produce by dissolving minerals."

"So Shepard's still high?" Liara asked visibly concerned.

"Prior to putting her into cryo? Yes." The Lich replied bluntly.

"Which means you've already disassembled her body like a cheap synthetic in order to treat all of her injuries simultaneously." Liara stated displeased by her own comparison.

"That is standard protocol in situations like these, both to make treating her faster and to make it so that her condition doesn't worsen until she is finished being treated." Well Liara wanted the situation expedited. "We know what we are doing don't worry." The Skeleton ended the transmission and Liara went to work on the other regions.

There were dozens of such camps were the Contingency was gathering supplies, taking apart the Grunt terminator confirmed the presence of Thorian spores in both the synthetic skin and in the rubber used to make the artificial muscle's, while the fat was harvested for it's exotic gas. And yet in spite of that the Terminators were a step below the Synthorg body that EDI had taken as her local avatar, clearly part of the technology that they were using went into it's construction but there was still a variety of sources. 'Local Avatar.' Even for a AI running all of the sub systems that need her attention in the entire union was a little much, instead EDI made use of Simpified AI's or SAI's to supplement her control, of course Liara knew them better as VI's, that she would upgrade to full AI's as she needed. They were all interlinked together into a huge network that was all part of EDI's centralised consciousness, which also meant local coordination would be improved upon too, leading to the next topic that needed tackling.

"Shadow Broker, a group of Omega gangsters have arrived on Omega." The AI's voice echoed out in Liara's personal Chambers. "They apparently have an ongoing arrangement with one of the local clans for hunting Gestalt creatures. Apparently they are ingredients in the Monster drug and their body fat can be used as an effective explosive."

"So long as they don't break the clans or the union's laws leave them to their business." Liara has had enough of Omega and its gangs for the rest of her nine centuries long life span, if she never has to deal with another pirate again it would be too soon.

Omega's criminal element was used to being sneaky, dodging various citadel and Union authorities, various acts of sabotage and assassination, not to mention being armed with a variety of suicide VI programs, all of their vast skill sets now being applied to wreaking as much havoc among the Contingency as possible, in the meantime they maintained a secondary objective of clearing the base for prisoners. A huge bounty had been placed for anyone who can find any captive Krogan inside the bases after all, when retrieved alive that is. The Clans were less interested in doing things surgically, when Grunt went missing another scout team was put together and the trail pheromone they needed was got, reverse engineered and mass produced, in hours there was not a single Gestalt nest or roaming horde left on the planet that didn't have a trail laid out for them leading to a Contingency base or ship. The bots build their bases pretty solid, all the auto guns and flamers they had on them there wasn't a single base that would fall to anything less than a Thresher Maw, though several had already. With the Clans using the Gestalt to sow havoc and the mercs using the opening to sneak in and break them over their knees and yet the individuals that the Shadow Broker have been looking for all of this time had still eluded detection, to all but one.

16M 25D 10H Until the Colossus Fires

White Hair, White Skin, Red Eyes, those were the three key descriptors of the woman who broke into the base belonging to the contingency. The Union might be able to locate their bases but she was the one able to hack into their coding to differentiate the different bases and their purposes. What was destroyed in the fight with Shepard was a factory where Terminators are manufactured, here was where 'Blue Prints' for the Terminators were being kept alongside their reference points in Cryo. Blue Prints that were now being taken for a greater purpose. A long tendril crawled out of the woman's coat, on the end a synthetic eye surrounded by a trio of pincers examined each of the plus sized pods that lined the nearby wall.

The White one, the oldest of the sisters, pondered her fellow feat of genetic engineering that was inside of the pod, in his own way he was why she was here. And while it was true that Grunt had removed his Omni-tool to leave a message the same wasn't necessarily true for the rest of the Krogan here, destroying the signal jammer would probably let the Union lock on this location but it would probably make the Contingency move their base. She could destroy the power source, that would ground the base and take out the transmitter but that would result in the cryopods malfunctioning and killing their occupants, so the third open would be to just open up the pods and thaw the occupants out, it will still take quite a while for them to finish waking up after she leaves after all. So naturally this is the course of action that she had set out to do. Still waking up from cryo was an involved process, but after a certain point she could just leave the emergency power source to do it's job, of course by that point in time the subject in the pod would be awake already and fully aware of his surroundings.

The first thing that Grunt could see after waking up was the face of the person who saved him. After that it was a few hours of waiting and recovery, a combination of various fluids being injected into him by the pod for a controlled thaw and his own bio medical implants, eventually Grunt was able to exit the pod, but the woman who saved him was no where in sight just two Turians and a Batarian holding guns on him.

"The last time we trusted you, you turned out to be a terminator." Garrus stated bluntly his shot gun trained on Grunt.

"Just get Shepard in here and read my mind you dumb clocoa!" The three members of the rescue party looked at each other, back to Grunt, and without warning opened fire electricity going into his body with every shot.

16M 22D 05H Until the Colossus Fires

Grunt woke up with a start, and bloody murder on the brain.

"I have no idea what that was about but I'm gonna kill someone when I figure it out." Grunt stated as he observed his bindings, and watched as they disappeared into smoke along with the feeling of someone entering his mind.

"You look like mot." Shepard stated from the comfort of her backwards facing chair. The fact that she was able to establish a telepathic connection alone meant that she wasn't a machine. "Why were you asking for me? Considering the fact that the last time you saw me I was supposed to be cast into the Shroud and all."

"Yeah didn't think that would stop you for long, besides I saw you before I got outta the pod." Grunt indicated a window that had appeared in his end of the mind palace, the view window of a cryopod, one that Shepard looked through and saw a face through the frost. Too tall to be a normal human, much like herself, and a face that would probably hold up to facial recognition programs when you discount the eyes, hair and skin.

"Well damn." Shepard stated as she looked at herself if she was born as a Albino. "Didn't see that coming, course the last time Garrus and the others ran into you you turned out to be a terminator so they were right to air on the side of caution."

"If I was a terminator they would be dead." Grunt stated bluntly. "And they still might be when I get my hands on them."

"And this is the reason why you have a time out corner." Shepard stated bluntly.

"Any ideas for getting Tuchanka back?" Grunt asked as he sat with his head on his fist Roman the Thinker style.

"Giant brain washing laser, you probably don't wanna being on the planet in little under seventeen months." Shepard stated as she went back to her chair.

"Months?" Grunt asked sounding confused.

"You didn't think that we just had a crime against sapient life lying around somewhere did you?"

"I wouldn't put it past you guys." Grunt stated as he cracked his imaginary neck.

"Shepard." Suddenly a third figure appeared, a young lady with black hair and blue eyes. "I finished examining Grunt's Greybox." EDI informed bluntly. "There is no sign of Contingency tampering with the Grey Box." Meaning that if the Contingency was able to plant a virus in Grunt then it's extremely good at hiding from them and they wouldn't be able to detect it anyway, meaning that they would be bombarded by virus's by now and keeping Grunt in Quarantine anymore than this would be utterly pointless.

"Who's she?" Grunt asked pointing to EDI.

"A long story."

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