412Author's Note: Okay so, working on the epilogue of the story, Look forward to that in like a month or the like. In the mean time Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 96: The End of the Cycle Part 2
08M 18D 12H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Given the array of general unpleasantness that tends to go into and come out of the Shroud a measure of caution from Liara was understandable. Thus everyone was currently in quarantine. Though that didn't mean that they weren't working either.
"Currently the issue here is that the Colouring book lacks a symbol, something that people can look at and worship to give it a defined form that can focus it's vast reserves of power and use them effectively." Simple in principle, but relatively difficult in execution. "But luckily we already have something everyone knows eats Reapers, thanks to Sovereign."
The others nodded their heads in agreement. The moment of Thuban helping the Union fleet to tear apart Sovereign was the first and one of the biggest victories of the new cycle. Thuban even kept helping to tear apart Reapers during their full invasion. Not to mention that she was already a entity that was actively being worshipped, lending pieces of herself to the Union's technological development cycle in the form of her scales and genetic materials and had protected at least one race since the time of the Reapers of the previous cycle. So on paper she was the perfect candidate.
"Now how do you plan on convincing the entire Galaxy that she is the one who is going to defeat them?" Saren asked with a glare.
"The Easy way. We just need to broadcast a divine enforcer to the entire galaxy at the same time that she's gonna destroy them." Shepard stated in simple terms, prompting a groan from Liara in turn.
"And how are we going to do that?" Liara asked sounding extremely irritated. "Not even a Colossus could affect the entire galaxy at the same time?"
"By itself no, but even the likes of the Reapers or the Tumours can hit the entire galaxy at the same time." Shepard stated bluntly.
They already knew about the Reaper's Mass Relays and their plan to broadcast the transformation wave across the Galaxy, however without said Relays doing the same thing was impossible. However as demonstrated by the End of the Cycle's oh so 'helpful' demonstration the Four Tumours are more than capable of manipulating the weave of Astral Threads that make up the entirety of time and space to in order to make their own galaxy wide broadcast.
"So we just need something capable of manipulating the entire 'weave' at the same time." Saren stated with a sigh. "Not a particularly easy task." To his knowledge there were exactly four entities capable of doing that, and all of them were enemies. "Especially if those four decide to take the initiative to block us."
"Not really." Shepard stated with a shrug of her shoulders. "There's already a place where all the threads in the Galaxy lead back to." The Formless's crystal spire. "If we build a Divine Enforcer into that thing?"
"We'll get to affect the entire galaxy at the same time." Saren stated as he nodded his head in agreement to the plan, at least in principle, at the very least they need to speak to the rest of the Union Government, or maybe just the Formless themselves, it was hard so say what they would think of this plan to weaponise their planet.
"Then the only thing left for us to do right now is to finish cooking." As Shepard said this she looked up into the air, at a loading bar above her head.
Shepard took as many precautions as she possible could when she was dealing with the four Tumours. All of the information she got from them and on them have been quarantined away in a isolated file in her Grey Box, which would be moved onto it's own server and accessed only on a strictly necessary basis. Shepard's mind would be scrubbed thoroughly, along with that of her allies but Shepard's would be the most thorough of all of them, removing any trace of the Tumours contamination. For now they had their respective jobs to do as they exited the Grey Box simulation.
Liara would be off to discuss the new plan with the allied forces while Saren would be off to do as Spectres are want to do, eliminate all threats to his government internal and external with extreme prejudice.
08M 18D 12H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Wrex strongly suspected that the birds weren't getting their station back. It was an interesting thought to have, ass deep in a wall, but it was what came to mind.
"I'm not through with you yet!" Wrex pulled himself out of the wall again as the Lizard circled on him more. Turns out the bastard's biotic on top of his psionics. Normally that alone wouldn't be able to do much to Wrex but when you combine together a portable instant Rail Gun, a Warp, and a cargo crate there's all kinds of things you can do.
"I'm coming I'm coming!" This lizard was proving to be a bastard after his own heart, an idiot who likes to do nothing but fight all day, Wrex has met hundreds of Krogan just like him over the years. Most of them are dead now. Wrex had a look around at the monster's trophy room, Asari, Krogan, Turians, Chozo, Draconics, Flerkin. "Is this how you people have a discussion?" Wrex asked with a roll of his shoulders.
"Isn't it yours?" Wrex couldn't really argue with that statement.
Instead the two Charge at each other slamming into one another's bodies with the force expected from duelling rhinos. Wrex grabbed the smaller party, but he was tenacious, his charge was paired with those wretched arm blades that he forced through the gaps in the scales to get at the meaty Krogan underneath. Good, that means the bastard wouldn't be able to move. Carried by his biotics Wrex jumped into the air scraping his head against the ceiling before diving back down with a dive, body slamming the Tzynn underneath two tons of Krogan and Armour. Wrex pulled himself out of the hole he made, and pulled the Tzynn out of him too, already his medical suite was healing his relatively minor wounds.
Minor to his opponent's at least.
Wrex watched his cartonishly flattened opponent make several creaking noises as he slowly stood back up, muscles reinflating, bones realigning, blood and other bodily fluids restoring themselves, even the arm blades that Wrex knew should be smashed into a dozen pieces were fixing themselves. He knew all of this was happening because he's seen the bastard do it at least five times already.
"Seriously you're worse than Vorcha." Wrex stated as he sat at the edge of the hole he made.
The Eater's latest 'gifts' to the Tzynn.
They were already hardy to begin with, reproducing via the same Bisexual methodology as the Salarian's they already had enough Pluripoint cells in reserve that they could do things like regenerating lost limbs just by themselves, you then throw in on top of that a bio-medical suite, Thorian spores cosplaying as Vorcha cells, Lich like tissue forcibly fusing together the Soul with the flesh and a layer of dragon scale skin and you have a effectively immortal warrior.
"So are we going to continue your little therapy session now or are we going for another round?" Wrex asked snorting in amusement at the notion. The poor bastard hates every moment of his immortality.
"What is there to talk about? This existence simply has no meaning." What the gloomy gus was talking about was relatively simple.
His homeworld was a harsh place, much like Tuchanka in many ways, every day was a struggle for survival, a constant battle of eat or be eaten, and in that struggle they found meaning, but now that meaning was gone, sucked away into mindless violence.
Wrex was surprised to find he actually sympathised with the monster. Before Wrex met Shepard he was living in a void without hope, going from meaningless job to meaningless job. When he was young he worked hard to get enough credits to buy up the best arms and armour, and then he did, if he knew how easy it was to suck the fun out of the job he would've put less effort into it. The best armour and weapons meant that he could chew through goals that he normally would've struggled against like was chewing on Pyjaks. The most fun he had was when he was stuck on that station for a week with that psychopathic Huntress, and until he stepped foot on Adek a year ago he thought he would never get that again. He sympathised with the bastard, but unfortunately thanks to his boss Tuchanka had once more been turned back into an unforgiving hellscape so his sympathy only goes so far.
"I'm afraid that if you want help killing our God then you'll be out of luck." Wrex was just waiting for this thing to get back up now, keeping the Lizard's occupied while he fed Intel about them back to the Union. "We mostly use ours as a guard dog."
There were many different beings worshipped as gods throughout the Galaxy, and just as many relationships.
The Asari locked up their gods, the Ardat Yakshi who use to lead depraved little sex cults to Athame before they reached the stars and learned who Athame really was.
The Batarians were betrayed by their gods, the Reaper known as the Leviathan of Dis or Majesty from whose corpse their worthless species had spawned from used them to plan out the invasion of citadel space and rewarded them by transforming them into Synthorganic abominations.
The Draconics were protected by their goddess, the creature sniping rocks and other threats out of the same solar system of their home world while using her powers of the mind to guide their civilisation.
The Flerkin were created by their gods, the Lich manipulated the DNA of their last naturally evolved ancestor with the intention of creating bodies for their own souls to inhabit once their current occupants were finished with them, thus the Flerkin grow into and become one with their gods.
The Krogan feared their goddess, feared the wrath of Kalros and her offspring as they rampage through their territory, but they've also learned how to corrale them and keep them away too. During the Reaper war they even made use of her to kill Reapers, now the bastards weren't stupid enough to set foot on Tuchanka.
The Turians on the other hand went to war against their God, and won, which earned them Wrex's respect much as he hated to admit it, before they took advantage of the general madness of the era and the sheer size of the body count to cover up their own history, even for themselves.
And now that brings Wrex's musings to the Tzynn, who had been enslaved by their God and sent out into the galaxy to plunder and pillage in their name.
"So how does doing this help you figure out what you're going to do now?" One of the Lizard's women brought him a conch of some kind that he took a drink from, nutrition of some sort. Was it comforting to know that this thing actually needed to eat? The whole reason Wrex was engaging in this 'conversation' in the first place was so that he could figure out the upper limits on this thing as part of his information gathering. So far his conclusion was 'no mot they don't wear armour they can heal from anything so why bother?'
"Unfortunately while hunting your gods will be entertaining they won't ultimately be useful for our own ultimate goal." The Four Shroud Gods and the gods of the various people of the combined Union/council forces were two different beasts. Killing a Thresher Maw, even the Queen of all Thresher Maws, would be easier by light years than it would be to kill the Eater. "It seems that my ambitions will have to wait for another day."
"Oh? Does that mean that you're going to stop screwing around and try to kill me now?" Wrex asked as he cracked his knuckles.
"'Try?'" A snort of derision from the Tzynn leader told Wrex all he needed to know. "Amusing." And then the two monsters went at each other's throats once again, Wrex's eyes taking on a red glow.
08M 18D 12H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
Tali kept the weapons of her customised SCV trained on the Gorthikians as she completed their exchange, she also took the effort to chew out the Scouts for their idiocy.
"You will be remanded to Cryo until such a time that we can confirm you haven't picked up any corruption from these creatures." And that hadn't even touched upon their punishment yet. "We'll decide on your punishment when you're room temperature or above." Which with luck would be when they were off this half melted ball of ice. In the mean time the adrenaline junkies would be sitting in a prison sim bored. "As for you lot." Tali turned to the Squids. "Stop trying to break things!" Tali didn't expect that they would take her warning seriously, making her mood even worse she had to waste the trump card of the signal blocker on getting the idiots back. However contrary to her expectations.
"We only want to be left alone." The Squid used a synthesised voice to communicate, no doubt supported by whatever Universal Translation program they had pirated from the Union. "We've never had a good relationship with another species in our entire history." And then the Squid's went back into their hole, dragging the blocker with them.
Tali walked, via mech, back to her base of operations on the world's equator, allowing the door to their underground base to open as they re-entered.
"It's hard to believe that they never heard the concept of a signal jammer before." Tali made her suspicions known.
"Would someone who is already getting swarmed with so many different signals that they're getting headaches think to try and throw their own hat into the ring to make them stop?" Chief Wurd replied with his own suspicion.
"I suppose, it's still good for us anyway."
Included among the components of the Signal Jammer was a signal that can neither be jammed or picked up on by the Squids, a Quantum Entanglement particle, attached to various surveillance tools that would allow Tali to gain a idea of the Squid's base of operations, in theory. In reality though? The Squids were already blind to begin with so they didn't care about keeping the place well lit. They also saw using sound so Tali couldn't insert a Sonar device without them picking up on it, she also didn't have any sort of universal translation software that was compatible with their language, yet. Tali was sending the data that she picked up from the Squids off world, language was the most important detail, a few pattern recognition programs, the recording of her conversation with them and a few hundred bored Tebrids and they might be able to crack their language.
"Still that comment about never having a positive relationship with another race." Chief Wurd stated as he lounged about on a couch that they had created from their supply of Omni-gel. "That is something that we can sympathise with at the very least."
The Krogan were never enslaved, because there's no one in the galaxy stupid enough to try and enslave the Krogan, the Salarians simply separated them from their home and culture, raised them in a environment with nothing but violence and then dropped them off on planet wide wastelands with nothing to keep them company but savage insect monsters. The Clan Chief Sympathised, even without knowing the grisly details of the Gorthikian's history, because for hundreds of years they never had a single ally in the galaxy that they were on friendly terms with.
"So. Any idea how we're gonna kill them?"
But so what? Tuchanka was lost to them, and not just Tuchanka either, the Home world the Quarian's literally just got back was taken from them too, and the first colony world they've had in hundreds of years has been threatened as well. "Let's start by figuring out what they're saying first." Information is key to any battle, to beat thy enemy know thy enemy, and with the Union's backing they might pull it off this time.
Thinking these things Tali returned to monitoring the Gorthikians, a light glow of blue in her eyes.
08M 18D 12H Until the Colossus Fires Finale
The Tebrids were keeping themselves busy, building up machines that not being a engineer Samara wouldn't know the purpose of. She was however mildly concerned and how many of them that the creatures had been building.
"Lets see, engine, actuators..." Luckily Samara's daughters were somewhat more tech savvy, and could offer more information after a glance, which you know still wasn't great, but better than nothing. "Are they making tanks or ships?"
The design principle was simple enough, a cockpit suspended between two large rectangle treads that were really more shields with their large vision blocking size. The gap between the treads and the pods was filled in with a metal platform one side of which had a large beam weapon while the other hand a rack of missiles. The overall set up resembled a tank, however the girls also found sliding Ion pulse generators and Mass Effect stabilisers that were normally used in space craft, of the fighter variety.
So a highly manoeuvrable heavy built fighter craft that also doubles as a high fire power ground craft. Ominous indeed, with such a Theoretical design a would be invader could attack a defended world, destroy its orbital defences, then send the vehicles down below to destroy ground resistance. In short, they were vehicles designed specifically for invasion, and for that reason Samara was concerned, not only that the Tebrids were building these things but who they were building them with.
The Crayfish had spent far too much time alone with these things, and together the seafood combo was making far too much progress to Samara's liking, so she tore it all down. Warped ammo into the tanks of exotic gas to first ignite and then detonate the fuel supply, which would then tear the entire place down, in theory.
The loud explosion indicated that the first part of the plan was successful anyway, the other part though, the escape the retaliating security droids as they flew through the air towards them? Not so much.
The diamond shaped drones were trapped between two scales as they flew through the air, high frequency cutting blades lining the edges, the artificial Zero G environment each drone created around itself was being pushed forward with a ion based propellant. The three Asari took cover behind one of the buildings, and in response the drones punched through the buildings with the same ease as gouging butter with bare hands, and so the three women went on the offensive. Warped ammo shot the drones, traditionally flying targets are relatively easy to deal with a simple shot, but these drones were different, likely lined with some kind of super conductive materials, the strong Warp of the munitions pushed them away instead of penetrating. For now it was convenient, a way to keep the drones away from them while they worked. It was unacceptable that the Tebrids would be building machines of war for the Sathyrelians, so Samara led the girls to double around and keep wreaking havoc on the traitor's base/factory and strike at their heart, so naturally they found the starfish's caretakers.
"Justicar Samara cease your rampage." The three Asari women were greeted by the familiar sight of the Octopus like Custodians, all that was missing was the Jellyfish Hanar to complete the seafood theme of the evening.
"You have been lacking in your duties." Samara was not amused by the machine, not at all. "I would presume that you would be programmed in with fail-safes that would prevent you from letting your 'masters' play at making machines of war for Hedonists bent on taking over the Galaxy?"
"Normally we don't have to." The drone offered no apologies only excuses. Samara shouldn't expect a machine to understand remorse.
"I am going in there, and I am going to shatter this 'game' into a million pieces!"
"That might be more difficult than you may believe." The drone explained bluntly. "We have been in contact with the Animator of Clay. The Shroud entities maybe made of psionic energy but it is information that shapes their forms, as you are made of organic matter but it is DNA that shapes their forms. The more information that you have the more that you contribute your own psychic energy."
"How deep are your masters?" Samara spoke with complete seriousness.
"We do not know, we've never seen them act like this before." The Custodian led the group of three inside of the factory, Tebrids were flying around from place to place at a crazy speed, building mech's, ships and tanks.
"I take it they're normally not this active?" Samara asked looking around and tracking the movements of the various slugs on hovering platforms. "What is going on here?" Aside from the Starfish flying through the air their various game stations below were left abandoned, which given the stereotypes that she's heard was a worrying sign.
"The pleasures in life are made even sweeter by hard work." Samara ripped out a large block of machinery with her biotics and spun around as she attempted to Slam it into the Sathyrelian who called out to her. Said machine was deformed heavily as it slammed into a dome shaped barrier around the Crayfish in question. "Do you mind not breaking that? It's expensive." In lieu of a answer Samara whipped out a machine gun and fired a burst of Warped slugs at point blank range, slamming into the water barrier the Sathyrelian was maintaining and redirecting it out a way from itself, and unfortunately into another machine. "I see that we'll have to use force then."
Of the four Shroud entities, the Instrument of Desire was by far the one most hated by Samara. Extreme hedonism was a very real problem for the Asari, their five senses were unusually well developed, their culture strongly emphasises going to new places and trying new things, and trying new races, add in their long life spans to try those new things and extreme boredom and a relatively rare neurological disorder that kills the people who the afflicted meld with and well... It didn't help exactly that Samara's daughters were among those afflicted, and one of them died because of it.
"Pyro now!" Thus the three Asari started blasting as various machines around them came to life and became hostile as the Tebrid's flew out of the way. More importantly, Samara didn't miss the golden glow in the eyes of the retreating Tebrids. So be it. "We're bringing the roof down on this place!" Samara called out and affected the ceiling of the factory with a Slam attack.
"Wait stop you fools!"
The ceiling was lined with electrical cables and pipes of exotic gasses, leaking exotic gasses into the room, with broken sparking cables of electricity leading to exotic plasma which then mixed with the falling slam. When humans say that they're going to 'blow the roof off of this joint' they don't mean anything quite so literal as the actual roof of a building being blown off. And yet that was the nature of the chain reaction going on. The pipes of the exotic gasses were filled with plasma in a chain reaction, going down from the ceiling into the welders where the plasma was shot out with explosive force against the biotic field suspending the machines for maintenance. From one end of the factory to the other the entire factory went through a systematic destruction that did not stop until the entire factory was destroyed. Thus Samara not only Blew the Roof off but also Brought Down the House.
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: Thanks, agreed, I think there already was one, animated though.
Monster King: I am finishing the Story.