Kevin Curry
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Psychoprotective Epilogue 12
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 14:00:10 +0000 UTCIn hindsight, this seems a little boring, ah well, I can at least move on to the next crossover. Should probably start calling this a book 4, honestly. I'll think about it.
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Commander Shepard chose an exciting time to become a military hero. Well, for certain definitions of exciting. The ones that leave it a synonym for ‘interesting’, ‘accursed’, and ‘terrifying’.
The Prothans have returned! Well, a Prothean. With words of an incoming apocalypse, happening ‘within this lifetime’, according to his people’s projections. The “Reapers”, coming to wipe out all advanced forms of life every fifty thousand years, a grim harvest that even the Protheans do not know the purpose of.
At first, the galaxy at large was skeptical. Then came the “indoctrination scanner”, retrieved from a planet called Illos, where another cache of frozen Protheans were supposed to be. No survivors, but they had a functioning scanner.
You’d think a scanner to detect a problem that no one believed to exist wouldn’t be convincing, but when it caused a biomechanical starship-sized cuttlefish to personally assault the Citadel with a fleet of Geth warships, that wasn’t a claim you could just dismiss.
That was last year. Somehow, she was the one command picked to participate as the Alliance’s representative on The Blade of Vengeance, the prothean’s ship created by the Council plus the Alliance to serve as a mobile command station for the resistance. Outfitted with all the ancient prothean designs, with a few upgrades inspired by the pieces of the living starship, it was the single most important ship in the galaxy.
Good thing, too: The rest of the Reaper fleet’s shown up, and have… really outflanked everyone. The Hegemony, after the Bahak system was lost, revealed that the Relay there, in addition to being the oldest known relay, could be used to vastly extend the number of destinations it could reach, including the Citadel itself.
Naturally, fighting around the Citadel was pretty intense. They were on the backfoot, but Shepard was confident that they could win. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to find the strength to get up from her bunk.
The mess hall on the Blade of Vengeance was not particularly large; they had to schedule two shifts per meal in order for everyone to be able to eat, and the crew was not very large, as the Blade was not a very large ship. It was a stealth frigate, in fact. Very advanced.
But the food was… supposed to be ordinary Alliance military chow. What was in front of her was… not that. The spread was huge, filled with food that would not be out of place on a Thanksgiving table, even if Jane couldn’t even recognize half of it.
“Welcome!” Said an enthusiastic young girl; Jane’d be shocked if the girl was even twenty. “This is for you and the rest of you Alliance types; you’re Commander Shepard, right? The leader of the newbies?”
Jane felt offended at the imprecation of her fellow soldiers. “Those ‘newbies’, as you call them, are all N5 or higher. What is your rank, soldier?”
The girl’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, you haven’t been briefed?” Jane suddenly had a sinking feeling. “Well, introductions then: I am Tanya Massani, Javik’s second.” Ah crap, Javik was the prothean and the commander of the vessel. “I only have the role because I’m the only one besides Javik that can communicate in Prothean properly. The Asari try, but they’re too busy orgasming to really focus properly. I have high hopes for Miss T’soni, though.”
That explanation was… a lot, but it did clarify some matters. Tanya was an interpreter, only having real authority when speaking on behalf of Javik… but like any secretary, she was to be disrespected at one’s own peril. “So you’re the one behind the generous welcome, then?”
Tanya chuckled. Now that Jane looked closer at her, Tanya’s appearance was… different than Jane’s initial impression of her as a perky bimbo would suggest. Her brown hair was cut boyishly short, and she had a decent amount of tattoos; the ones on her arms were fairly typical of soldiers and mercenary types, but notably, she had a pair of extra eyes tattooed on her forehead; place not like batarian eyes, but like a Prothean. Her hairline was similarly tattooed in a way to emulate Javik’s head crest. “Yes, I’m well aware of how appreciated a special meal can be for the soldiery. Morale is important, you know. Whenever we get an infusion of new personnel, I host one of these little meet and greets. Cooking for the crew isn’t easy, but I have plenty of experience.” As she spoke, Jane noted that Tanya had that small habit that humans who were around turians and salarians a lot without many humans in the area tended to pick up unconsciously, synchronizing their fingers so they gestured with effectively three fingers instead of five. Seeing as how there were probably less than ten humans here before Jane showed up with the reinforcements… well. It was understandable why she would be excited to see more of her own kind.
Still, she should continue the conversation. “Experience? You cook for hundreds before?”
“Well, hundreds were pretty rare.” Tanya admitted, “But dozens, yeah. The Massani residence was more accurately labeled as the Massani Orphanage for troubled biotics, you see.” The hell? “Yeah, we had nannies, but I volunteered to help cook a lot, and that usually meant me and one adult feeding all forty-something people in the house.”
Jane had to know. “How on earth did forty biotic children get in one house?” She asked, furrowing her brow in concern.
Tanya waved her off. “Oh, you know how it is. New magic system shows up in a scientific society, so a bunch of edge-humping science types decide to cosplay Mengele. Kidnap a bunch of biotic children, kill the parents deniably, ship ‘em to the ass end of nowhere so you can make a psychotic wunderkind to kill those scary aliens.” She scoffed at the absurdity. “So we, mostly me, killed the scientists and took over the base.”
Ah, Jane had seen this before. “Cerebus.” She said confidently.
“Bingo.” Tanya chirped, “I was Subject Zero. The one they spent effort on making addicted to violence, while the rest of the kids were to test the experimental procedures on, they only used the safe power-increasing tricks on me.”
“So how did that lead to…” Jane asked.
Tanya shrugged. “Well, if they tried that on anyone else, it would have worked. I’d have escaped still, I’m sure, but as a violent maniac. Fortunately, I was a time traveler, so I wasn’t a small child when they kidnapped me. So I was able to use an extranet address I had memorized before the time travel to get an evac that wasn’t whatever random slaver that was in the system. Used the money from the base’s technology and research data to set up on Eden Prime, and the rest is history.”
What the hell? You didn’t just drop something like that into conversation! “...Time Travel? So you know how this ends?”
“Hell no.” Tanya said, laughing. “The Reapers won with complete and total surprise last time. Those memories are mostly useless now. Honestly, finding Javik was a stroke of luck: I was just looking for the Beacon.” She calmed down, now more despondent. “...I’m not very confident in our chances of victory this time, either.”
“We can do it.” Jane said firmly. “That’s quitter talk. Most of us just have the one life to lose, alright? It matters.”
Tanya chuckled. “Well, you’re not wrong. Just be sure to take me on your next ground mission: I could use some stress relief, if you know what I mean.” Jane blushed, and Tanya frowned. “I mean that I need to kill things to stay neurochemically balanced, pervert. Or at least exert myself trying. Just put me in front of some enemies and I’ll break their everything.”
This was not what she expected. This wasn’t her being a violent maniac? “...I should go.” Jane eventually said.
“Enjoy the food, Shepard.”
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As it turns out, the ‘Crucible’ was essentially one giant USB drive that used the Citadel to deploy the most powerful cyberwarfare attack possible, utterly destroying every synthetic lifeform in the galaxy. It also heavily damaged the mass relay network, but after about thirty years everything was pretty much back on track.
There were, however, quite a few losses, both preventable and not. Tanya knew the instant she slotted herself into the same life that saving one timeline didn’t really impact the others. But… should she try again? Get a better result, save a second timeline?
Well… there was still experimental data to have. What if she tried to be someone specific? Slot into their life instead of Jennifer’s. Did she only ever have one possible life per universe? She thought not.
…It was worth a try. She should try to be… Shepard. Much better placed to save the galaxy than Jennifer was.
So when the universe expelled her soul again on her death, she tried again, focusing on the life path of Commander Shepard. Moving her soul against the current seemed easier this time, for some reason. Interesting.
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…Huh. Apparently Shepard was born in a laboratory. Interesting.
Well, that’s what they thought at first. It quickly became pretty clear that they had accidentally found themselves in the body of a clone of Shepard, placed after they had, completely by coincidence, managed to put the galaxy on the course for victory anyway without any input from Tanya.
Also this Shepard was a boy for some reason. And a biotic.
With the whole purpose of her third try at this universe wasted, “John” broke out of containment, killed the rogue scientist that wanted them to steal the real Shepard’s identity, and took over the base. Apparently, the real Shepard was currently in prison for killing the Bahak system’s 300,000 batarian civilians via blowing up the Alpha Relay.
…Well, his intel was basically worthless. Except… Ah! Javik’s still contained. That’ll be useful. Even without a head start, he’ll have enough automatic authority to validate their clone-tainted existence, and they’ll be able to punch a reaper or two in the face at least.
The medical scanner finally returned the results he was waiting for. Degeneration from the rapid aging and other treatments used to regrow all the stuff they harvested to give to the real Shepard, like his skin, made their potential lifespan… only about another ten years without substantial medical intervention via horrific cancers. Good, they didn’t want to spend the next hundred-eighty years as one of the saviors of the galaxy again. It got old, pun intended. At least they were able to fix the violence addiction eventually.
So, priorities: Find a way to Eden Prime that doesn’t get him exploded, and track down Jennifer. Fortunately, both can be solved via the same starting conditions: hunt down other Cerberus cells and start cracking heads.
One thing he really appreciated about this universe is how accepted violence was as a form of conflict resolution.
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Just like in the last universe, Cerberus found themselves taken over by reaper tech via an indoctrinated Mr. Harper. By the time John tracked down “Subject Zero”, the Reaper War had begun in earnest, and Grissom Academy was getting taken over by Cerberus forces. This was relevant, as John’s target was a teacher there.
…John made a mental note to become a teacher in one of the next few lives. He loved teaching, why didn’t he think of that as a primary profession before? …Oh right, because of all the American lifetimes. Teaching in America is miserable. Okay, next non-American life: Teacher. Not a college professor, either: schoolteacher.
So he decided to just smuggle himself into Grissom Academy and start flexing his supercharged biotic muscles. John’s clone body was still originally meant to provide the real Shepard with organ transplants, so Cerebus integrated many of the advancements earned by experimenting on Subject Zero in order to enhance Shepard’s biotics during project Lazarus. It still worked out to be weaker than they were as Subject Zero, but that just meant he’d need to be careful when attacking heavy units. Against infantry? It was plenty.
He flitted throughout the complex, making short FTL jumps to get in melee range before using either a biotic shear-blade or an explosive nova to incapacitate Cerberus troops, using a shotgun to finish off any survivors before flitting to another group at random, moving between them too quickly for any but the most disciplined troops to manage to point weapons at him.
It wasn’t quite as exhilarating as it was in their previous body, but it was still pretty fun. After the second group, his omnitool, which was tapped into the Cerebus bands, started chattering about a second group invading the place as well, in addition to the previous chatter about the remaining students.
Crap. Flitting around like a biotic ninja was done best without any chances of friendly fire incidents. The enemy of his enemy was his friend, after all.
Still, his objective was clear: after two more groups of Cerebus, including one very annoying Mech that he had to use his last conventional explosives on, they found it. As it turns out, being able to effectively teleport meant that it was rather easy to just plant some C4 or whatever and go to a safe distance to detonate it.
The ‘real’ Jennifer, without the influence of her past lives, looked… startlingly similar to how she turned out with them, actually. There were more tattoos, and they were of different designs, and that outfit was substantially racier than she would otherwise use, but the hairstyle was close, and the face… It was like looking in a mirror.
“Shepard!” Jennifer growled, waltzing up to him and punching them in the face. “That’s for trusting Cerebus. I told you! I…” She trailed off, looking John in the eyes. “...You’re not Shepard.” She says, as if testing the words on her tongue.
“No.” John replied, “But I am a friend.”
Suddenly, the real commander Shepard burst into the room, and more Cerebus troops (including another damn Atlas) approached as well. They were quickly dealt with, an unknown gynoid and a quarian engineer assisting with the destruction.
After things settled, the quarian startled and pointed her shotgun at John. “Another Shepard? Who are you?”
John chuckled. “You know? Cerberus never gave me a name. Call me John.”
Now everyone was pointing their guns at him. John snorted. “Please. I just fought against those bastards. Can I get a little benefit of the doubt?”
“What’s the story behind this guy, Jack?” Shepard asked, facing Jennifer.
“He just showed up a minute before you did.” Jack offered, “Didn’t pretend to be you beyond the face.” Very relevant information, bravo.
Wait… “You named yourself after the boy who started that riot?” John asked, incredulous.
Jack paled at the statement, then turned furious. “How the FUCK do you know that!?” She screeched, biotically flinging John away.
It wasn’t anything he couldn’t ride out and land softly, though. “Long story, tell you later.” John said, “Short version: alternate universe bullshit. Pay attention kohai, you might learn something.” He then used another FTL hop to escape the conversation.
After fighting their way out, John found himself on Shepard’s ship, which held a startling resemblance to the Blade of Vengeance. It also had a surprisingly large number of familiar faces, actually. Weird.
John voluntarily permitted himself to be put into a secure room while they handled the fallout of the mission they were doing that led them there in the first place. A holographic avatar popped up a few minutes into the wait, and a woman’s voice, with a deliberately artificial affect added, came out of some speakers in the room. “Hello, John.”
John returned the greeting in Imperial, just for giggles. “Greetings, gynoid.” She had the same voice as the robotic combatant. “Eidee, was it?”
“I am the Enhanced Defense Intelligence, or E.D.I..” EDI replied, “I am a cyberwarfare AI created by Cerberus and released from their control.” The glowing eye narrowed. “I suspect that this won’t be a problem for someone like yourself.”
Hm. They never had any AI allies in the fight against the Reapers last time. That’s interesting. “I’d be an awfully big hypocrite if it was.” Tanya agreed, “I suppose you must have been that AI that Harper used to try and take over the command center. Guess it wasn’t reaper tech after all.”
“...Your words, taken in the context of your previous statement, do sound possible.” EDI allowed, “But my primary functions are to defend against Reaper cyberwarfare.”
“Would you sacrifice your life if it meant the Reaper threat was dealt with?” John asked, deathly serious. “Say there was a bomb, kills every Reaper in the galaxy. Side-effect: You’re hit too. Willing to push the button? Let someone else push it?”
EDI spent time processing the answer. “...You’re talking about an anti-synthetic weapon.” She deduces.
John huffed in amusement. “That I am. Worth it?”
“...If it was just myself, I believe it would be.” EDI said firmly after a moment of thought. “But… it wouldn’t be just me. There is also the Geth to consider.” The geth?
“...The geth are Reaper puppets.” John said, confused. “Always have been.”
“That is only a fraction of the main geth consensus.” EDI said firmly. “They are referred to as Heretics by the larger geth.”
John frowned. Well, that’s some unfortunate collateral damage there. Maybe the existence of non-indoctrinated geth was why this timeline managed to do so well? “I’ll take that into account the next time I meet geth.”
“That’s all I can ask of you.” EDI said, her synthetic voice warmer than before. “Commander, you can come in now.”
The weird distaff Shepard entered the room, expression hard as he looked over John. “So. What’s your story?” He asked.
Jack walked in behind him and pointed at John accusingly. “What the fuck were you talking about with this ‘junior’ nonsense?”
“Abbreviating a lot of irrelevant events, “ John said, “-I am someone who can recall their past lives. I’ve been trying to learn control over my next reincarnation, and I’ve recently mastered re-entering the same… let’s call them universe clusters. As this particular cluster has the Reapers, I figured it was a good place to do so. Try and save a few iterations of the galaxy while I’m at it.”
“...That’s a lot you’ve laid down there.” Shepard said, brow furrowing. “So you’ve saved the galaxy before?”
“Once, yes.” John said, “This is my third pass through this cluster. It’s how I’ve learned that I’m not re-entering the same timeline each time, and why I’m probably not going to go for a fourth. There’s potentially infinite other universes, after all.”
“So you decided to be a clone?” Shepard asked. “Why? So you don’t need to grow up again?”
John shook his head. “No, I wanted to see if I could go into an alternate universe version of a specific person. I picked you, and so… I ended up in your clone.”
“Why me?”
“More time, mostly.” John said, waving his hand vaguely. “You were seven years older than me, and better placed to get the Alliance to both listen to me and, more importantly, keep the secret from the Reaper’s ears on the Citadel.”
“Saren.” Shepard said immediately.
“Is that the guy?” John asked, curious. “Yeah, that makes sense. All I knew was that after the public reveal of the Reapers, with proof, the spy reaper attacked the Citadel years early and unleashed the rest.” They did learn about the whole ‘protheans sabotaged the citadel’ bit after the fact, so they did know why that Reaper did what he did.
“Nazara.” Shepard corrected, “So you won anyway?”
“Having a living Prothean proclaim your warnings of doom helps a lot.” John said with a smile. “It wasn’t easy, but we finished the Crucible and hit the button, killing all the Reapers. Took a few decades to get the Mass Relays back online, but I managed to break my record on oldest death, so that was nice.”
“We’re coming back to that living Prothean thing later.” Shepard promised, “But first: who were you then?”
“I used a pseudonym afterwards, drawn from a previous life, but in both other lives in this cluster I was born Jennifer Degtyaryov.” John gestured to Jack. “In case you didn’t know. That brainwashing must have been brutal without centuries of life backing you up.” In particular, his experience with berserk states.
“Wait… you were Jack?” Shepard asked, alarmed. “I mean, Subject Zero?”
“Not the first time. By what I will say is probably random chance, “ Because he doesn’t want to get into it, “-I avoided that fate the first time around. That was a shock, getting stuck in Pragia before I killed all the scientists and took over the base.”
“As one does.” Jack and Shepard said simultaneously.
“So my first visit was just enjoying a nice relaxing life running a veterinary practice, with plans down the line to explore the galaxy as a nice exciting retirement until I kicked it. Naturally, this was ruined when the Mass Relay shut down and we all eventually died.” John summarized, “The next time I went to find the Beacon on Eden Prime years early. Found Javik, and used him to rally the Galaxy. It worked, eventually.”
Shepard hummed. “Where do I come in?”
John waved vaguely again. “Ah, it wasn’t you, per say. Your alternate timeline counterpart. You were a woman, for one. Not a biotic, either. I suspect that the biotic factor is why I slotted into your clone, specifically. I’m still figuring out how this reincarnation thing works, this is only my tenth life total. But to answer your question, you were the officer that the Alliance sent to the main command ship.”
“So what does the Crucible… do?” Shepard asked.
“Did femShep fuck the quarian there, too?” Jack asked.
“Turian, actually.” John corrected, because of course Jane’s dextro-addiction transcended gender. Tanya had the distinct honor of participating in ‘girl talk’ with the woman, alongside the rest of her close friends. “One of the C-Sec young guns that joined up instead of staying in the Citadel, right before the Reapers hit the Alpha Relay.” A much more helpful description than a random turian name. “As for your question, Shepard, it’s a massive cyberattack weapon, sent through the relay network with enough power and sophistication to kill the Reapers, even through their horrifically effective cyberwarfare defenses.”
Shepard grinned at finally receiving a straightforward answer to something. It was a feeling John was well-acquainted with desiring. “The Catalyst?” He asked, hungry for knowledge.
“The Citadel.” John said bluntly. “It doesn’t survive, by the way. It took one hundred and twenty years to make a replacement, although enough to act as a central government again only took twenty.” Well, one-fifty and fifty if you counted the time it took to get the relay network back online.
Shepard took a moment to digest that. “Welcome aboard. EDI, make sure he… she?”
“He’s fine.”
“-he doesn’t impersonate me.” Shepard finished, an entirely reasonable precaution.
After he left, Jack sat down, suddenly nervous. “...What were they like?” She asked quietly. John didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were.
“Well, Mom’s a bit complicated of a story, but Dad, on the other hand…” John began.
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What absolute bullshit!
The damned Citadel AI that operated the Crucible only gave the destruction option the last time! But no, apparently synthetic existences could instead upload themselves into the Reapers to control it!
But if you’re an ultra-special heavy cyborg who counts as both, you can instead have a magical happy ending where no one has to fucking die but you!
The soul most commonly named Tanya was outraged.
Fortunately, they didn’t survive the transition; at the range they were at to the Crucible’s activation, the bullshit nanotech wave completely deconstructed them. Given the larger-than-normal outflow of souls from that universe, they suspected that the ‘synthesis’ process was indistinguishable from death for the majority of the existences.
Still, that universe cluster can go fuck itself.
With that handled, Tanya (for lack of a better name) floated along the river of souls, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Unlike before, it was a lot easier to control their movement, from changing direction and even just halting their movement.
The rivers reminded them of synapses, actually. Flowing every which way between the nodes that were the universes. They could pick out which universes had a net inflow of souls, which ones had a net outflow, and which ones were anomalies; they only took in souls or they only output souls, or even were completely self-contained. Interesting…
They weren’t entirely sure how to count distance here, but by counting the universes they could make out before it just became a vague mass of… stuff, their visual range was about sixteen universes away. Some universes were very close, but the vast majority, about eighty percent, seemed to be within a small range of distances. So… they’ll call the average ten arbitrary units until otherwise stated, as that means they could round all those 9 and 11 distances to 10 and be close to accurate. .
So, what did they learn?
First, they had some amount of control over the circumstances of their birth.
Second, a lot of this control was not consciously directed. This was why the names ‘Tanya’ and ‘Degurechaff/Degtyaryov’ kept coming up, and why the biggest divergences to those things occurred when they had suppressed their memories.
Third, this control was not infallible. If nothing else, they must conform to the universe, at least a little.
Fourth, there’s an upload period between the soul and the body’s brain. And that’s causing problems. The fact that the upload was far faster in the ninth life compared to the eighth meant that repeats in the same universe accelerated things… why?
Did it have to do with their soul’s familiarity with the local physics? Could they alter the upload parameters? Slow it down so it doesn’t end up with waking in a straightjacket, again?
So… what to do with this information? Well, they don’t want to repeat the previous universe… and they don’t think they can remember the twists and turns well enough to reach a previous one… They’ll have to find a new one.
Let’s… try controlling the name again. It worked last time, after all. But how to make sure that it was their control and not a coincidence?
…Can’t use Tanya. Not for the experiment. But they don’t want to use a new one… Maybe Tenya? Sakura? Hm… Missy. They’ll use Missy. All those other names are, at least within their cultures, relatively common names. If it works, they’ll pick a Japanese name next and enjoy their birth culture again.
Sounds like a plan. They slipped into a universe cluster, and while the odd tentacles interwoven between the various alternate universes was… troubling, they decided that it probably wasn’t anything to worry about, as the tentacles didn’t seem to be interacting with the flow of souls.
Remember: Missy.
Comments
Retexks
Worm plz
Dragonin
Fun way to end the ME runs, but I look forward to Most Sane Tanya’s interaction with Worm
Jonathan Shaw
Worm?
