Author's Note: Well, off to try and write again. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 75: Rift Delta

12M 17D 12H Until the Colossus Fires

The Citadel was abuzz with activity, and for good reason too, after all there was a celebrity in the house. Entire religions had been built around the Protheans and their role in shaping modern galactic civilisations. Now they know that large chunks of that information were blatantly incorrect, however the faith in them remained.

"I find myself in an awkward position Shepard." Javik stated as he looked in the mirror, in the apartment on the Citadel that had been rented out so that he would have the time and place to get ready.

"Never had to give a speech before?" Shepard was dressed formally with a long black dress, contrasting with the blood red armour that Javik had been wearing.

"Speeches? In my time Speeches was your commanding officer giving orders through your coms detailing the next target that you must eliminate at all costs. Morale came from hearing of another dead enemy. Hope..." Javik breathed in deeply. "I lived in an era where hope was dead."

For Shepard she lived in a era where there weren't Reapers poring into the galaxy with endless numbers, she lives in a era where people fight for planets instead of city blocks, she lives in a era where she doesn't spend every day gunning down her own people that have been warped beyond the point of recognition by the Reaper's technology. Javik was born generations into the reaper war, a warrior raised by soldiers, desperately fighting with everything that he had in order to stave off the impossible numbers of enemies that kept flooding through the gates.

"You forgot the important part though." Shepard stated as if Javik had missed some obvious detail. "You won." Javik spun around to address Shepard angrily. "The Zroni nuked the bastards into another dimension. The Zha'Til broke free of their shackles. The Baol were able to hide away. And you-" Shepard stopped the Former Prothean from getting any closer with her finger. "Was able to evolve into this lovely specimen, every cell of your body is technology that the Reaper's flat out don't have access to." Shepard walked away from Javik towards the Balcony attached to the apartment. "The Galaxy has dedicated the past 65 million years to winning this war! And we won the first battle!"

"You give speeches better than I do." Javik sounded more like he was complaining than he was complimenting before he looked back on the citadel. "In our time the Citadel was a place of myth and legend, it was the heart of our civilisation and its downfall, spoken about only in stories and viewed only through our precious few memory crystals." And someone had built a shopping mall in the middle of it. Dark times indeed. "The Hanar were minnows swimming in the ocean. The Salarian's licked their own eyeballs because they didn't have the common sense to blink." Somehow that explains a lot about the Salarians. "The Asari were lab animals, their long life spans, their innate gifts with biotics and psionics, their unique reproductive cycle, all tools to be able to fight against the Reapers."

Javik expected the Asari to turn into Generals, Warriors and Survivalists. Liara expected the Protheans to be scholars, artisans and Philosophers. Amazing the power of time.

"The future is not what you were expecting?" Shepard asked though she suspected she knew the answer already.

"No it isn't." Javik stared off into the void. "Never did I imagine that the Zroni of all beings would go as far as to burn the Galaxy in order to eliminate the hated enemy. How Long had they been setting up their counter attack, building their bombs? Planning their attack, and what had finally pushed them to detonate?" Perhaps not even the Zroni could answer that question.

"A question for the Sages." Shepard grabbed Javik by his shoulders and started pushing him to the door. "Now come on, we have a public to address!"

A few short moments later a sky car transporting both Javik and Shepard arrived before the Monument erected in the wake of Sovereign's attack.

"I am Javik, one of the last of the Protheans, and first among the Pasharti, among my people I was known as the Avatar of Victory. My civilisation was destroyed by the ones you know as Reapers." Javik held his arms wide as he gestured around and drew attention to himself. "But we survived! I see before me, Hanar, Asari, Turian, and more! The Potential of what you could become was obvious even in my cycle, and it's obvious as I stand before you today. My people fought unto the last day for even the chance of victory, of the hope that I see here before me. We knew that even if we failed to restore our civilisation then we would make sure that yours had a fighting chance!" It wasn't just the Council Government that the Protheans protected with their Conduit gambit, they bought precious hundreds of years for the Union too. Without the sabotage to the Citadel The Reapers likely would've returned as soon as the Custodians or the Geth gained galactic prominence. It was apparently the same way with the Zha'Til back in Javik's cycle. "The Reapers are a cancer on civilisation. They have no place here, and we shall see them gone." A good speech, here's hoping that they don't get killed first.

12M 17D 11H Until the Colossus Fires

Lessus was one of the least important of the Asari controlled worlds, there was after all one tiny monastery here that had previously been dedicated to the control and containment of Ardat Yakshi, right now the planet and it's facilities were being rededicated to the training of those same Ardat Yakshi as well. There were a few reasons why the sight of the rift was put here, as a start the emergence of Psionics was connected to the destruction of the Mass relays, and by extension the now sealed Astral Rifts in Union territory, so having a large number of psykers in the form of the Ardat Yakshi and their instructors here would make for the best place to test out if they have a influence of the void beyond the rifts. There was a heavy Turian presence in the system, a recent addition, and several Union and Salarian science vessels as well. With that said, the ZPM warhead was fired detonating just outside of the planet's gravity range. The new Rift opened up and already the science team began their assessment.

"Rift appears stable. Alpha, Beta and Gamma reporting no abnormalities." The Salarians at the communication platform consoles reported the status of their fellow researchers in the Terminus Sector, which also means that the theories about their instability being related to their close proximity to each other was true. For now it was best to wait until the newly declared Rift Delta was stable before they start poking at it to see what comes out.

It gave Smok the chance to look at how the planet itself was doing, there was a factory built to build equipment for the newly formed Fenrir, Hugin and Kraken units along with supplying the newly expanded Justicar order. Given the realisation that the Justicar's were keeping guard over beings that were previously relegated to myth and legend their popularity got a odd surge, and with the appearance of the Reaper's there was a massive uptake in the sense of responsibility of Maidens and Matrons who previously relegated themselves to being mercenaries in unsavoury parts of the galaxy like Omega and the rest of the Terminus sector. It can be more accurately thought of them as taking on positions where they can get paid and not run afoul of the law, though basically getting weighed on hand and foot by Custodians all the the time when they're not training helped. The Justicar's remained ever vigilante of non Ardat Yakshi coming into contact with their prisoners, the use of the synthetic workers created a fair compromise. On top of that was the Turian and Union ships parked in orbit, so in the unlikely event that something managed to force it's way though and come out intact the planet was far from defenceless.

12M 15D 18H Until the Colossus Fires

The Rift stabilised oddly fast, which was taken to be a relatively good sign. Harvesting of the Astral Threads followed soon after with the construction of a station for the Rift Sphere, followed by tossing said tethered probe through to the other side. This time there was no empty space, no inside of a giant amoeba, nor was there some freaky abnormal planet in the distance or ruins of someone else's empire. It seemed that the rift had popped out into the middle of a solid mass of rock.

"When you think about it. It's actually pretty likely." Admiral SpeedJunkie stated as she brought up his own opinions on the situation. The Head of the Scientific fleet had been in a meeting room with other notable representatives from the Turian Fleet, General Victus and the representative of the Justicar/Asari Samara. "We've tried using probes to explore deeper into the rifts. When they aren't flat out destroyed then they loop back around to the otherside of the space from where they came from. So the actual amount of space on the other side of the rift is pretty narrow."

"Implying that the rifts themselves were formed around the planets that were lost in the void." Samara gave her own theory on the matter.

"Ms. Samara has a good grasp of Interdimensional Metaphysics, which should be helpful for her during these difficult times." The Admiral explained as he gestured back to the footage from the Rift Sphere. "But yes. I'd say the odds of landing inside of a planet would've been between one in ten and one in five based on the amount of space we've been able to observe on the other side. The odds are more likely that the amount of available space would shrink down if unlike the ones we've observed until now could be more stable."

While Theories were good, so much of their knowledge was limited until they decide on their next move.

"I suspect the answer is going to be no but I'm going to ask anyway. Bombs, weapons fire, we punch a hole through to the surface with brute force." Victus stated as he leaned forward and folded his hands together.

"Admiral Victus's understanding of Interdimensional Metaphysics is slightly worse, but it will improve as time progresses I bet." Victus wanted answers too badly to be offended. "But we don't know how weapons fire will affect the rift yet. It could seal it, could make it worse, or it could do nothing to the rift proper." Not worth the effort or the ammo in his opinion. "Instead we dig the old fashion way." Which of course means a new Rift Sphere design, or rather five. "Teams of Tebrid engineers are hard at work rapid prototyping multiple designs of Rift Spheres as we speak."

"Five of them at once?" It sounds like a waste of Resources to Victus. "There were more designs than this, but they were excluded because they were deemed too dangerous." SpeedJunkie explained as he began operating the individual holograms and showing the features of the machines they depicted.

"How many more?" Victus asked as he glare suspiciously at the star fish.

"In your language? 105." The Tebrid stated bluntly. Never do math against a creature with over a hundred individual digits, they have a name for each of them. "We'll test these five in the order of what can be built the fastest, if they fail then we'll revise the designs and improve on them with the data we'll acquire."

Bloody Tebrids!

12M 12D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

After a series of successive failures, a design for a excavator, dubbed by the human crew as 'the Pac-Man' resembled a large ball shaped set of excavating jaws designed to scoop away the obstructing rock one boulder at a time. As they worked they already started to make progressed as soon as the third 'scoop' of rock.

"They're worms?"

As soon as the rock had been pulled out these worm things started to fall out. Of course standard quarantine protocols had been followed. For one thing the stone had been released into a sealed chamber, seeing the way that the creatures they took from inside were casually chewing their way through solid rock they were suspended inside a Mass Effect Field. Samples were taken, scans were conducted and tests were concluded as a result there was quite a bit of information revealed about their wiggly little friends from another dimension.

"Rather than being Sapient, I doubt that they qualify for sentient." Mordin had managed to get out of Mad Scientist Jail, and in time for yet another extra-dimensional creature that needed a Xeno-biologist to dissect. "There is a nervous system but there's no nerve cluster large enough to be the brain." Mordin displayed the results of the ultra sound that he performed on the one holo projector, some basic nerves, a few rudimentary two chamber hearts, a rather basic stomach, some decent lungs, over all Mordin would say that they were looking at a pretty rudimentary life form in the early stages of evolution from multicellular organisms some where between Mollusks and worms. They weren't however completely boring little tubes of meat.

"Byssal threads contain nerve clusters which are used to grip onto other objects. Possibly used to help with locomotion, but most likely..." As Mordin was making his theories known a mechanical arm dropped another of the worm things into the biotic sphere that he had the first one trapped in. After a few moments of circling around each other and probing one another with their threads the two worms were joined together seamlessly forming a larger singular worm.

"So they connect together?" Lieutenant Tarquin Victus, yes he and the admiral were related, leaned over as he got a closer look.

"Ill advised." Mordin pulled Tarquin back. "A worm bit into the arm of someone who got too close this morning." Mordin led Tarquin over to the containment field with the worm in question inside, along with the arm of the technician in question. "We had to amputate." A relatively easy fix with the Thorian, specifically the dextro variant since the limb in question appeared to be Turian, what the arm was doing was far more interesting. In simple terms, it was moving, the arms fingers were wiggling around as if the person who owned them was trying to get the numbness out of their fingers. "Thread from the worm enters the limb and tangles with the nerve clusters, integrating themselves and overriding the now absent brain's signals. Overall a very nasty piece of biology." Mordin led Tarquin to a third containment field, this one didn't have an arm inside of it though. "Thorian reproduced brain, Quarian precisely. Not suffering. Grey box running rather nice simulation, most likely not even aware of current conditions. Added bonus, provides specimen with stimulation, reacting in a number of interesting ways. Not parasitic, not inherently, joining together multiple units allows them to share organs, circulatory systems, nervous systems, digestive tracks. Only approaches parasitic when it encounters organism it's not familiar with."

"They're completely different organisms though." Tarquin stated the obvious.

"Correct. Thorian more likely explanation. Will need to arrange a test with a clean subject." Good to know, moving on.

"Do they only connect... ass to mouth for lack of a better term?" Tarquin asked already feeling like his father put him on this assignment for the purpose of keeping him out of trouble, or to embarrass him he wasn't sure.

"A good question. This one did not connect to any existing opening on the body, and possesses no sensory organs that I can find. It's possible that it uses electrical signal sensory in order to locate others of it's own kind through the threads." Mordin stated as he held his chin with his hand in observation.

"And when it saw a squishy thing giving off a signal it thought it was one of its own and tried to connect together?" Tarquin gave his two cents on where he thought this situation was going.

"Correct. To answer your original question." Mordin brought Tarquin's attention to the mass of fleshy worms that had originally fallen out of the Rift Sphere, suspended in a Mass Effect Field that was rated for small strike craft. "As you can see." Mordin operated a mechanical claw to pick at the ball of worms, grabbing one and pulling on it, the creature loudly screeching in protest as it held onto the ball with it's nervous threads to and from every inch of it's body. "It not only connects end to end but all over the mass as well." Mordin concluded his demonstration releasing the worm that he had taken prisoner with what might be interpreted as relief. "It does lead to the question of how it shares nutrition and life sustaining fluids like this though." Mordin released the struggling creature as he finished his tour.

Tarquin had been given the duel unenviable tasks of making sure that Mordin didn't accidentally invent another species and figuring out if they could weaponise whatever they pulled out of the rift, so far he was seeing some potential boons for prosthetic technology but that was it.

"I assume that you're familiar with Element Zero?" The last stop on the tour was the tissue tests that Mordin had conducted, which included a large amount of Element Zero.

"The worms are biotic?" Tarquin asked looking at the ball of meat in question. "Correct. In large concentrations normally only seen with Asari." Mordin stated as he showed off the contents of his report. The Stupid worms are biotic, Tarquin was jealous.

"This might be obvious, but it also has a Dextro-Amino based biology." Considering the arm that it was chewing on earlier that much was obvious. "Extremely high mineral and mineral by product body content, logical considering the creatures diet. May have to conduct more tests." Mordin began pacing back and forth across the room.

"But do they threaten our path into exploring the rift?" Tarquin asked bluntly.

"In the worst case scenario?" If they were going to be barbaric about this anyway. "They're not slug proof, they'll die if you shoot them." Something that dies when you shoot at it. The way the galaxy is these days it sounds like a dream come true.

"Noted. I'll share your observations with the admiralty board." Tarquin stated and left, not that Mordin noticed at first.

"If you're done here I have more experiments that need to be conducted." Mordin turned around to face his specimens and noticed something that was rather odd going on. The four specimen samples had started glowing the familiar purple like biotics, not a constant glow, and hard to notice with the field already suspending them in the air, but Mordin was a man with a eye for detail, and right now he was seeing a pattern, the light from his containment cells blinking their lights with pauses in between.

"Interesting." Humans call it Morse code, letters formed from pauses between blinks of light, Mordin doubted that this was a one to one comparison, less light and more sensing electrical and Biotic pulses with the light as a by-product. "I'll need to run all the footage of the worms through a VI program to detect-" Mordin's thought process was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a loud rip. Turning around Mordin was greeted by the sight of a long tendril formed from chained worms smacking him across the room. More ripping sounds echoed out, the ball of worms was tearing off more of it's worms off of it's body and forming tendrils, after retrieving the contents of the other three containment cells the ball of worms got up and walked out of the containment cell.

Of course the laboratory was full of precautions, the entire thing was covered in a net of sensors that alerted EDI of the tiniest movement. The giant meat ball was many things but Tiny was not one of them.

"I have no intention of breaking quarantine." EDI informed the creature thrashing through Mordin's lab bluntly. "If you do not return to your cell then I'm afraid that extreme measures will have to be taken." Ignoring EDI, the worm ball curled up again. The entire thing glowed a familiar purple as it floated into the air, and then suddenly slammed directly into the door leading out of the laboratory using a Charge attack leaving behind a sizeable dent that nearly tore the door off, and then the meat ball floated to the other side of the laboratory to do so again. "The Rift Specimen is about to break containment!" EDI's usual monotone voice had hints of urgency and panic but still remained calm. "All security personnel to Laboratory Alpha!"

Tarquin just came from laboratory Alpha, what the hell did the lizard do while he was gone!? Luckily unarmed Turian's simply wasn't a thing, especially on a black site. Drawing his side arm and turning around Tarquin was soon greeted by the sight of a familiar meat ball, it was using the security door as a shield and one of it's tendrils had at some point stuffed itself into a air vent and was using it as a arm guard. Both made for effective blunt instruments as the ball of meat forced it's way through the hallways blocking weapons fire from both automated turrets and from various security personnel who found themselves getting full body checks as the creature blocked their weapons fire. The door was designed to block anything short of a weapon of mass destruction, but having been ripped out of its socket the door was now a highly effective shield. Even worse the tossed Turian's being picked up and tossed into the meat ball where worms were biting into their bodies and infesting their bodies with neural threads, Tarquin no longer had a clean shot on them, and most of the Turian's hadn't gotten the Grey Box augmentation, himself included, if they die they'll stay dead unlike the Flerkin's Immortals.

"Damnit!" Tarquin hacked a nearby security panel with his Omni-tool.

At once the meat ball, and the unwitting security personnel attached to it, were boxed in via a security force field, even the floor and ceiling leading to the meat ball to use the various Turian's as mouths to scream in agony with. They'll need a surgical team to cut them free, security to stun and incapacitate the meat ball while they work-

"""HHHIIIYYYAAAHHH!""" Suddenly all of the Turian's stuck on the meat ball screamed at once as the creature started to force it's way through a force-field, one that notably led away from where Tarquin was in the hallway, worse yet, it was succeeding.

"I have the Rift Specimen in a containment Force-field. It has taken several Turian's as hostages and is forcing its way down hallway 9H." A loud snap echoed out as the Meat Ball forced its way through the force-field and went down the hallway.

"Come on. Come on!" Unfortunately the Quarantine fields couldn't be dropped with Tarquin's level of access. Instead the Turian had to go around. "The Rift Specimen is using a door and an air vent as armour, I need to know everything that's in Hallway 9H that it can use against us!" Tarquin snapped into his Omni-tool.

"Prototype armour technologies."

A Tebrid's synthesized voice squeaked over the coms. A giant mass of worms that can take on a seemingly infinite number of different shapes so long as it retains the same mass in a room full of armour, lovely.

"Volus, Hanar, Tebrid?" Tarquin immediately listed off various best case scenario's in regard to the creature he was hunting.

"What Galaxy are you living in?" So much for bringing up the fighting power of weaker races.

"Batarian? Human? Turian?" If it was armour that the Meat Ball was too big to fit into then it might just ignore the armour before it, or split itself up to fit inside, hopefully releasing it's prisoners in the process, in the worst case scenario: he could deal with normal sized enemies.

"Nothing so small I'm afraid." The Tebrid replied as Tarquin rounded the corner, one more turn and he'd be in the weapons development section of the ship.

"Krogan?" Tarquin remembered reading a report about how popular designing for the Union's newest member race had become for the Tebrids. It was unfortunate but they've run drills for downing rampaging Krogan that he could apply-

"Elcor." To the Tebrid's words Tarquin comically ground to a halt, not only that but he actively turned around and hid around the corner he just passed. "Elcor!? Are you Freaking Kidding me!?" And then the doors leading into the Armour lab was torn open, and a armoured monster rampaged out.

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: The first three games are good as they are. Andromeda needed more people working on it.

Monster King: I currently intend to.

Grimmideals: Good to know. Maybe if I write Mass Effect again.

Halo: Good to hear from you again!

SCP 173: What else do you call a explosion so massive it tears open a hole in time and space?