37First things first, this first fic in the series is based on the Mass Effect: Redemption comic book mini-series and the Mass Effect franchise is owned by BioWare and Electronic Arts while the Fallout franchise is owned by Bethesda, with Obsidian Entertainment on Fallout: New Vegas.
I would like to thank Sarge 1995, 4Ferelden, mizdirected, and Leareth for helping me polish this chapter.
For anyone new to either setting, I would recommend you go to the respective wikis for Fallout and Mass Effect (or Gamepedia in case of the former) for information. Be wary of spoilers, though.
UPDATE 8/26/2021: Do you know the parts where scenes that are pop cultural references occur? That's the Wild Wasteland trait. I've removed or replaced nearly all of them as well as tweaking some scenes that brings it more in line with the comic it's based on. I wasn't sure if I would replace that trait. On one hand, it's fun to come up with funny scenes due to Ethan's trait. On the other hand, it can be a bit of a pain. Plus, it could clash with the tone of the rest of the story. While most perks and traits in the Fallout series would fit well in the narrative, there are some exceptions like the said trait and the Bloody Mess perk (or trait in the first two Fallout games). I hope you're okay with that.
UPDATE 2/18/2025: Not only have I made changes to this story, I've split the first chapter into two. For the edits, I would like to thank AndrastianMage from Archive of Our Own. She's awesome and you should check her stories out!
Mass Foundations: Redemption in the Stars
Years after the second battle at Hoover Dam, an experiment at Big Mountain had gone awry, sending the Courier to a universe where humanity became a spacefaring race. In exchange for a way to fix his Transportalponder, the Courier joined Liara T'Soni and Feron in finding Commander Shepard's body. However, they weren't the only ones looking.
Chapter One: A Stranger in a Strange Land
Year: 2286
Location: Big Mountain
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Especially after one too many near-death experiences that led Ethan Sunderland, the Courier, to upgrade his Transportalponder.
He set his experiment up at X-84, the facility that manufactured his Transportalponder. There was the device itself in the testing room with a robot, a Mister Handy, as the test subject, and an alarm system. Not long after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the facility popped out of the ground like a mole rat during mating season.
The walls of the facility were adorned with pipes and vents, which had greatly rusted from centuries of disuse. Despite the place looking like every abandoned facility he had been to, it was well lit. It even had the occasional light bulb flickering in and out as well as those hexagonal patterns laid out on some random spot, typical for any facility at Big Mountain.
Looking through the thoroughly cleaned window to a small, sealed room, Ethan observed the Mister Handy using one of its claws to pick up the Transportalponder. As he pressed a button on the console, the Mister Handy squeezed the trigger at the prompt.
Through many calculations and tests made, he got the essential parts down. It should increase the device's range, allowing him to teleport to Big Mountain from anyplace and anytime.
In theory, at least. Anything could go wrong, especially at Big Mountain.
A complete disaster would have been a vast understatement. Instead of the robot blinking out, sparks flew out of the device. Ethan looked on, his brown eyes wide in horror, as a miasma appeared in the room and expanded, stars from a distant world trailing in the deep black. He read about wormholes in science textbooks and what they could look like, and this was it.
In a swift motion, he switched on the testing room's force fields to contain the wormhole as the alarms blared out.
"Oh, honestly!" the Mister Handy complained. The wormhole pulled it in along with the Transportalponder.
The rift ripped through the field like a hot knife through butter and tore everything around it. A piece of debris missed his head by mere inches.
"Oh shit!" he exclaimed. He held on to a desk drilled on the floor as much as he could, but the wormhole managed to drag him in. He slammed head-first into the now-flying furniture, and consciousness left him.
He woke up in an alleyway with a smell resembling Brahmin shit mixed with gunpowder and rotten flesh assaulting his nostrils. At first, he thought he was back in Freeside after all these years. Instead of a night sky as he looked up, he saw a rocky ceiling with buildings that stretched far, far above him. At least by the looks of it he wasn't in the Sierra Madre nor somewhere in the caves in the Divine. He never was a fan of either of those places, anyway.
He stood up, kicking off whatever pieces of garbage clung to his brown boots. Dusting off his clothes and armor, Ethan took a thorough, good look at himself, placing his hands all over his face. Hands, arms, legs, feet… everything was left intact. He sighed, relieved that he was still himself, and he was still alive.
He checked his Pip-Boy 3000, still strapped on his left forearm. With a whir and a beep, Ethan's olive, scarred face was bathed in its familiar green light. The Lone Wanderer told him an old friend of hers said he could drop a bomb on the Pip-Boy, and it would still work with hardly a scratch. Even submerging it in water wouldn't short-circuit it. If he found a way back, he would tell her to add a trip through a wormhole to the list of things the Pip-Boy could withstand.
The Pip-Boy's screen revealed nothing on the map. He would have to wait for the Pip-Boy's GPS to adjust to whatever new coordinates it could get, much to his annoyance. According to its clock, he was out for only a couple of hours—unless he traveled through time, he thought with a wry laugh.
He looked up from his Pip-Boy and scanned his surroundings. "Wait, where is that Mister Handy and the Transportalponder?" he asked himself.
As if to answer his question, the Transportalponder was across from where he was, placed against the wall. He picked it up and inspected it. The plastic container that contained the energy cracked open while the vacuum tube at the front of the pistol-like device was burnt out from using enough power to create that wormhole. Without the unique materials to create the Transportalponder, he was stuck here.
He hoped the wormhole hadn't annihilated everything in its path. That wouldn't go well with his conscience if it sucked in everything in its vicinity.
"At least I could play with it," he muttered before putting the broken device in his messenger bag.
He checked his surroundings and spotted a small security camera mounted on a wall. The sight of someone appearing in a dark, dank alley suddenly would surely be suspicious to whoever was watching.
He stepped out of the alleyway, only to be taken completely by surprise at what he saw. "What in the goddamned…" he muttered, dumbfounded, his mouth half-open.
The place looked much like a scene from a bad science-fiction movie or a superhero comic book, like La Fantoma. It was dull and brown, and it all seemed rather dirty, much like the alleyway before. At a casual glance, he noticed the dimly lit storefronts and aging neon signs reminding him of the Strip.
What was even stranger to him were the locals. Some of the others had these metallic plantings on their face, making them look like a weird cross between a bird, a raptor, like a dinosaur from the Pre-War books, and a futuristic trash can. He also noticed that few of the locals are small and skinny, but their heads were big with horns on top, and their eyes were big, beady, and black. To him, they looked too much like grayheads to his comfort. Some women looked human at first, much to his confusion, but the range of skin colors from blue to purple refuted that notion, and they possessed tentacle-like scalps in place of hair.
Ethan wandered aimlessly, as if in a daze, before gazing at the guns of a few guards by what appeared to be a nightclub, with a giant gorilla-like alien guarding the entrance. Compared to what the guards were carrying, they made his equipment seem outdated in comparison. Their suits of armor were sleek, their weapons looked either blocky or curvy. One gunman with a pair of mandibles on their face had an orange holographic light on their forearm. Were they weapons or gadgets, he wondered. But he couldn't shake off the feeling of the way the alien guard glared at him, and he didn't want to find out the hard way, so he kept moving.
As he passed by an alleyway, someone bumped into him. He turned around to see a hooded figure quickly shuffled by, muttering a quick apology before vanishing into the crowd.
Without warning, something grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him to the alleyway. A thug preying on their next victim was taking him away so there wouldn't be any witnesses, he thought. Obvious and predictable. This should be easy for him to fight off.
Swaying left and right, Ethan broke his would-be attacker's hold. He reached over his shoulder and grabbed the attacker with the back of his shirt. In a quick motion, he slammed his enemy to the ground like a wrecking ball.
The attacker stumbled to his feet, giving Ethan a chance to glance at them. He was a four-eyed, well-built and masculine humanoid with a pig-like nose, pointy ears and fur-like brown skin. At least that alien had coveralls. Ethan whipped out his Bowie knife and lunged, giving the mugger a long gash across his chest. His attacker yelped and stumbled a few steps backward, clutching his chest in pain before muttering a string of words that Ethan couldn't understand.
"Well, that'll make having a conversation difficult," Ethan remarked. He drew his auto. 45 pistol and took aim at his would-be attacker, his knife now in his left hand and underneath his right.
The four-eyed alien pulled out a strange looking pistol and aimed down its sights. It was boxy with what appeared to be two barrels stacked vertically on top of each other. It also had no hammer despite resembling a semi-automatic pistol. But all in all, it was a gun. It looked like Ethan was about to find out the hard way, he thought.
As the thug was about to squeeze the trigger with a wicked grin, showing his teeth to be all resembling needles, a dark blue projectile zipped past Ethan and landed on his chest. The impact was enough to send him flying backwards and knocking off his feet.
Ethan lowered his pistol and turned around. At the end of the alleyway he was dragged to, there was a blue-skinned feminine humanoid clad in purple, orange-rimed armor that molded into her body neck to foot. Her blue eyes, eyebrows that looked to be drawn in, and freckles across her cheeks made him think it strange to see such an alien look so… human. With a stern look on her face, she lowered her hand to her side.
"Are you alright?" the feminine alien asked.
Ethan blinked. Did she just speak in English? Not a hint of a strange accent in there. It was honest-to-God, perfectly good English.
"Yeah," he answered. He looked at the thug, laying on the ground in the alleyway, then at the woman, then at the thug again, then at the woman again. "What was that you pulled off?" He pointed at the thug without looking at him. "Are you a psychic? Did you use telekinesis?"
The strange woman, confused, stared at him with a cocked brow. "I'm a biotic," she answered after sighing. It was almost like she took pity on him. Almost. She opened her right hand, and it glowed a dark blue as she moved her fingers around, almost in rhythm. She closed each one, slowly, and her hand stopped glowing, like a flame on a candle flickering out. "I can do things you saw and create mass effect fields through electrical impulses in the brain. You… you didn't know that?"
"No, I'm not from around here," he replied. "How do these biotics work?"
"I pull that off because of my bio-amps, which synchronize my nervous system to make the biotics useful. My people, the asari, are naturally adept at biotics," she answered. "Other species can develop biotics through exposure to element zero in the uterus and enhance them with implants."
"Element zero? Like a chemical substance that has neutrons like neutronium?"
She tilted her head to her left slightly, even more incredulous than before. "You don't know it's a nickname for element zero, or eezo? They're exotic material. They're made by stars going supernova, releasing dark energy. Then they latched onto nearby asteroids. How do you not know this?" She glanced past him.
Ethan turned around to see what the woman was looking at. Behind him, the four-eyed thug was rolling on His back, clearly struggling to get on his feet. He raised his pistol and aimed it at the thug's head. The thug looked back, His four eyes glaring daggers at him. He fired once, the shot landed right between the eyes, and the four-eyed alien slumped back, lying in a pool of his own blood.
The woman flinched. "Probably for the best," she commented.
She watched Ethan reload his pistol with a fresh magazine—of which he had a couple on him—and holstered it at his hip. He approached the body, knelt by it, and began rummaging through its belongings. Digging through his pockets gave him a thin card with a single word in several unrecognizable languages. One of them read 'credits,' and he guessed it was a sum of currency.
She shook her head, her right hand on her hip. "You're looting already? I think I'll just—"
"Almost done." Noticing something sticking out of the thug's pointed left ear, Ethan yanked the thing off it, finding it to be an earpiece. It wouldn't fit him, going by its shape, but it looked like it might be worth something.
After pocketing the earpiece, Ethan grabbed the pistol the thug dropped. Pressing a button near the grip, a magazine began to slide down, but he caught it. Inside the pistol's magazine were cylinder-shaped blocks that were as thick and big as his thumb. He could find a better use for this than the four-eyed asshole. Especially if it could even the odds against anyone else.
Taking the pistol after putting the magazine back in, he stood up and turned to the feminine alien. "By the way, thanks for the help."
"My pleasure," she replied, a slight smile on her face. "I've been in a… similar situation when I arrived on Omega earlier. When I saw you attacked by that batarian, I had to step in."
"Omega, huh?" Ethan curled his lips. "That's the place we're at, right?"
"Yes. It's a space station that used to be a mining facility, built into an asteroid," she answered. "Since you didn't shoot me, maybe I can trust you a little. My name is Liara T'Soni. I'm looking for someone."
"Yeah? Who?"
"A contact. I'm sorry, that's all I could say on the matter, but it's nothing illicit."
Ethan's eyes lit up. "Maybe that contact of yours could help me with something. As long as you're being honest with what you said."
Liara raised an eyebrow. "Oh? With what?"
Ethan paused. He wasn't sure if he could show Liara the Transportalponder, but she had helped him so far. A little bit of mutual trust would go a long way. "A way to fix this thing," he finally answered and pulled the broken device out of his bag.
Liara stepped forward, looking at the device in question. "What is that?" she asked. "I've never seen anything like it before."
"It's… it's a long story," Ethan replied as he put the Transportalponder back into his bag. Would she believe him if he told her what it was and how he got here, he wondered. But he had so many questions… "But I can't help but ask, how are you speaking English?"
"When I studied archeology, I've also learned how to speak your common languages in case my translator malfunctioned. Other than that, I've spent my time as an archeologist among your kind for some time during expeditions," she answered.
"My kind?" Confused, Ethan's brow furrowed as he frowned. "Where?"
Liara tilted her head to her right. "…On other planets. Is something…?"
Ethan took a deep breath before continuing. "Look, this may sound crazy, but what year is it right now?"
Liara's eyes narrowed, incredulously. "To your kind, it's 2183. Why do you ask?"
Ethan quietly gasped, wide-eyed. His heart raced while his mind grasped around for anything in his thoughts. If Liara met other humans before and in other worlds, which would not be possible, knowing history, and the current year was 2183, not 2286, then he only could come to one conclusion in mind.
"Oh shit. I'm in an alternate universe," he muttered.
"What did you say?"
Ethan shook his head and looked at the asari. "Nothing."
"Oh… okay." Liara paused. "You're welcome to come along, but I can't promise anything about this... device of yours." The asari stepped out of the alleyway and into the crowded streets.
Ethan nodded as he followed closely behind Liara. "Thanks, but why are you so quick to help me?" he asked.
Liara looked over her shoulder. "A… good friend of mine went out of her way to help those in need, even when the galaxy is at stake," she answered before continuing. "You need help, so I'll do my best to do that."
Ethan smirked. That was something he could relate to.