Author's notes: This is my first time using multi-modal, or a piece that uses two different forms of media. In this case, music and text. If you want to try your hand at it, please be my guest. And let me know what you think in the reviews! I got all the music via youtube.

In the end, it marked the Beginning.

[X-COM UFO Defense: Lose]

"I repeat. All defenses are over run! All conventional weapons ineffective! Psi marginally better. To all those who can hear us! RUN! HIDE! SURVIVE!- Here they come! Do not Re-"

The signal cut out from the great station of the Serpent. Billions lived around or on the Serpent also included the headquarters for their paltry military, and the political leaders of his people.

"Is that it my love?" Shamash asked to his left.

"We were so close. So close to ascending. But I guess now we really know what happened to the Yifo." Juni said to his right, despair tinging his voice.

"No! This won't mark the end of our people. Juni, Shamash, your my closest advisors, and to you both I swear. Our people will be avenged, this will never continue. Call the others, we must engage suspension and go into deep space hiding. Juni, is that experimental drive ready?" Hinu'Fannini'Gualafa said, leader of the Kisunanon science expedition, to study the ruins of the last cycle.

Juni nodded, regaining composure, "Yes, I am unsure how well it will work. But if the spirits are on our side, the ship won't rend itself asunder as it enters another dimension."

They had theorized that the Yifo, the dominant species 50,000 years ago had ascended into a higher state of being. And they were sent to investigate that theory, and see if they could possibly replicate it.

Now they knew the truth, after painstakingly recreating memory shards and computer cores for decades, they finally learned what had became of this small Yifo outpost. In a way it was sort of anti climatic, the final report read that the final member was slowly dying of starvation, after cannibalising the rest of his kind. He spoke of the great fall, and how his kind had been attacked by an extra galactic force of unimaginable proportions before finally ending his own life.

That had been a few weeks ago. Any form of warnings would have been too late had they had the time to send them. For the Inusannon were not a warlike people.

Their bodies were frail. Their minds and psionics requiring years upon years of training and practice for war. And their very culture revolved around a theological peace which they had instilled on the dozens of other species in the galaxy. And Hinu knew that would be their final downfall.

Their weapons were weak mass accelerators used to destroy asteroids, their lasers were used as mining tools to gently excavate ruins and relays, and the last fission or fusion bomb to be created was thousands of years ago in one of their very few extrasolar wars.

As his closest companions moved to accomplish his orders, Hinu knew that to survive would be difficult. They had biological replicators for food, water could be collected from the gasses and nebulas in their sector of space.

But population and life span would be harder. With their advances in ascension he felt that the later would not be a persistent problem. But his people breed slowly, and his small gene pool of a hundred would get steadily smaller as time progressed and they made an army.

Things that were forbidden came to mind. Cloning, particularly gene randomization cloning. Which would soon become a necessity to grow their population large enough to take on the threat that would come.

Other things long banished from the thoughts of his kind. One was weapon design. If the reports he was receiving were correct, all mass relays were deactivated and now impossible to reactivate, effectively chopping up their pan galactic domain.

And what if his reports from the repaired and reconstructed Yifo computers were true? The Great Enemy that it describes was horrifyingly thorough in its search and destruction of all advanced life.

With a prayer to all those who had fallen, to the souls of all life, and to the heart of the galaxy, he prayed that they would protect him and his team, to survive to the very end. And with a final prayer, to the long neglected Nazara, the God of War, for victory, and in the end, peace.

-{X[0]X}-

[XCom Enemy Unknown 14 Otherworldly Dissonance]

….. Years were spent waiting, preparing. It was long and arduous, painful, and not without loss.

But under My leadership, the Ethereal genome was made from scratch.

Military weapons development had the groundwork laid.

Plans were drawn up for new ships.

Ascension to a higher plane continued being studied.

And a strategy to end the Reapers was assembled.

But these things took a painful amount of time to accomplish. Necessities interfered, silence took precedent. And as the death of our species continued, the psionic pain of listening to hundreds of billions die began to wear at our sanity. But we knew, that this was all necessary. For it was the beginning of the end for the Reapers.

-{X[0]X}-

Ten thousand years.

Had it really been that long? It seemed like an eternity since he ever knew a day without the screaming and despair of millions dying. Things had been created, namely their first tests for psionic ascension were coming to fruition, and indeed they managed to make minor entities like bacteria and even simple insect life reach the heavens through intense work and concentration. With more work they may even prolong their life artificially with psionics by preserving their bodies mentally. But he hoped it would never reach that point in order to survive.

It was so successful that they had even found ways of exponentially improving their psionic capabilities, a feat that never needed to be done. The psionic enhancement chamber was a feat of engineering at its finest and he could never be more proud of his children and brethren.

Speaking of his children he looked over reports of the latest batch of clones and sighed in relief. It had been close, a slight breach with bacteria had contaminated the batch and nearly killed them. But now as he read that they were nearing maturity. He looked out of his office's window and saw the outside school where hundreds of clones and offspring were being taught.

It had been difficult to find a habitable planet deep in dark space, so far out of the way and on the edge of the galaxy, but it had been done and now that the cycle had completed, and the rest of his people were dead, he would need to send out teams to recover some artifacts. For there were things that could not be lost to time.

"Over One! We've had a breakthrough!" Standing from his seat Hinu'Fannini'Gualafa, floated over to his friend who had entered.

"Excellent!" As he was lead to the laboratories, Hinu knew that they still had a long way to go.

-{X[0]X}-

As we resided in darkness and isolation, new nations took the Inusannon's place, OUR place. Great empires stretched forth across the galaxy once more, first it was the Protheans, who reached across the galaxy in conquest and diplomacy, first to reach the Citadel.

But their minor conquests were nothing to the machine enemy they would soon face. The Metacon, a species of AI which developed naturally on their silicate rich homeworld.

In a minor border dispute and misunderstanding, when the Metacon tried to communicate with the Protheans, and would hack their computers like they do to speak to one another. The protheans took it as a hostile action and opened fire in return every time.

The war lasted for tens of thousands of years, and 48,000 years after the end of the Inusannon genocide, the Reapers returned.

-{X[0]X}-

Finally after nearly 50,000 years, all of it spent planning, building, and researching. They had returned. Hinu had wished for more time, but he knew that they were as ready as they could possibly be.

Nearly a billion of his people had been trained, hundreds of thousands of ships assembled and outfitted with hyperdrives and particle accelerators. And after the destruction of the current cycles leadership they had come when the Protheans and Metacons were in complete disarray.

Both sides were wary of one another, and both sides had equal grievances, but the threat of total annihilation made for a convincing argument. It was also fortunate that both sides had developed FTL using the now inferior techniques his people used before they were brought down low.

But while the Inusannon were not warriors the Metacons and the Prothean empire were more than capable of war. Millennia of combat had ensured that. Things that his people would have never dreamed up were invented by the two powers in fractions of the time.

They barely had a galactic day to prepare this ambush, but the Metacon's manufacturing capability, and the Protheans design capabilities and understanding of war made it barely feasible. While they numbered in over three million combat craft, with hundreds of thousands of fighters, millions of free floating defense stations, and billions of ground soldiers on the planet below.

And they were up against possibly tens of millions of Reaper ships, and tens of billions of Reaper indoctrinated slaves. This was the final fortress world that both the Metacons and the Protheans had. Once the sight of the largest continuous battlefield in for all Hinu knew, all of history.

"Impressive don't you think?" Juni said over their communications link.

"Indeed, if only we had them with us for all this time. If only we came out sooner. No matter. Is everyone ready? Everyone attuned with the Soul Orb?" He asked of his number two.

"Yes Over One. We are ready." And like a switch it sounded like everyone was speaking inside of his mind. Something they had practiced hundreds of times, to merge all of their minds into one consciousness.

"Grand Admiral! They are coming from the relay!" A Prothean technician reported.

"Excellent, stay hidden behind the planet, and keep the mines dark for now. Let us bait a bigger force in." The Prothean Admiral next to him said, speaking before Hinu could.

Hinu would have activated the mines immediately, but what the Admiral said made sense after reflection, "Outer defenses fire with everything you got, Reserve fleet move in! May the fallen be with you." The Admiral ordered suddenly.

"But weren't we to surprise them?" Hinu asked naively.

"It is strange that you should be so deaf to combat when you have such technological marvels Inusannon Over One. We must not just surprise them, we must also trick them into believing they have the advantage. Our operations in the next sector are suddenly very proactive to give the sense that our main strategic fleet is away. We must convince them that we are under armed and poorly garrisoned. We must make them believe victory is assured, before we shatter them with nuclear fire. And for that, our outer defences must sacrifice themselves against our foes to be the bait for the trap." The Admiral explained carefully.

Upon reflection Hinu understood. Stealth, trickery, cunning, must be used in equal measures of force, brutality, and overwhelming firepower.

Now it was time for him to rally his own people. Removing an orb the size of the Protheans skull, it pulsed with unnatural energy, faces and forms could be seen inside its glass like wall, 'Let me have your strength.' He requested with his psionics, and suddenly the orb glowed bright white and he could hear all of his brothers and sisters, daughters and sons cheering.

All of his fallen people, and all of those arrayed with him, in one massive meld.

'NOW! Today we shall end the cycle!" He roared out in unison with all. The trap was set, tens of millions Reaper ships were now converging on Edan, from the Relays. Hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons phased into reality and were detonated, and suddenly hundreds of thousands of allied ships returned from surrounding darkspace. Hinu winced at each explosion, each of them marking the end of a selfless hero who manually guided the bombs into the enemy, and each of them he could hear yelling their last cries through the link.

Already tens of thousands of Reaper ships of all classes were destroyed and vaporized by powerful short lived suns and particle beams fired from Inusannon ships while the Prothean and Metacons shorter ranged accelerator cannons closed the distance, along with the more exotic weaponry that they had developed.

"First flotilla is reporting complete success despite losses!"

"110th Harassment fleet has broken through enemy lines, going in for second pass!"

"Yeeeegh! 252nd Destroyers are targeting center flagships! Activate the plasma charges, take them with us if you have to!"

It was chaos, true chaos on the battlefield, and with a force of mind he steadied his armies thoughts and focused them into a metaphorical blade, cutting through tens of thousands of Reapers. Their weapons proving to be totally effective against the untested hulls of the machines.

"This is Shamesh, we are ready for the lance." Just what Hinu needed to hear. Their secret weapon will meet the machines, and they shall see how truly devastating billions of minds together could be, in one psionic lance…..

-{X[0]X}-

… WE FAILED….

-{X[0]X}-

[XCom Enemy Unknown 24 Our Last Hope]

We were scattered.

Hinu…. I fear for my love. I fear that he died, or worse, had his mind shattered by the loss of so many of us within his own. And died broken and alone. Or perhaps, devolved into that which we sought to fight.

I fled, with a small contingent of survivors from the Protheans. I escaped our prototype on an escape pod, my sisters and brothers, dying in my arms as they succumbed to the wounds they took for me. And was picked up by a fleeing Prothean frigate destined to anywhere but Edan…

They were an auxiliary of the Protheans, the Zudjari.

We fled, and slowly, I knew that I too was dying. Not from wounds sustained in my escape. But from childbirth. It was either me or my child. And as we fled past the Arcturus relay nexus. I looked to my teachings, to what I had learned over tens of thousands of years. And with the power of so many mental fragments from the soul orb, I ascended with you.

My body, from which you took residence within, so young, ethereal, was buried upon the third world from a sun. Lush, beautiful. I know when you awaken you'll find your own way with the people upon the world. As I'll help the Zudjari find their way as well…...

The Inusannon's last hope.

Authors Notes:

Sooooo… Long time. I'm sure everyone is pleasantly surprised by this, or at least everyone wanted to follow me. Now warning right now for everyone who has not read my previous work. There will be Pony. Specifically My Little Pony. But Give my fic a shot, if you liked this so far, then you'll like what I have in store for it all. There will be nightmare fuel. Lots and lots of nightmare fuel involving the ponies.

Now about me and why it took so long.

Laziness.

Yup thats about it. A loss of what to do and laziness on my part to do it. Combined with college, ROTC, making new friends in both, and all those life things.

By the way, ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp), not as scary as I thought, very cool to meet so many new people, with so many different names and reasons for being there.

Anyways, got a burst of inspiration by reading other Mass effect Fanfics, alongside with a realization that I love to write. Expect to see more chapters coming at a steady pace, no timetable, but they'll come.

By the way Chapter 2, coming out today, just need to have my trusty old Beta Count Lurkula go over it once more. Don't forget to comment, follow, and let me know your ideas on Mass effect, X-com, and MLP.

If you want more of me, go ahead and check out Terran Federation: Contact, by L4 of the West, he has made me his Co-Author, and if you like this go check him out, I helped write a lot of his latest chapters.

Have a good day, write something nice, and have a good Veterans Day!

Updated: 5/17/2016

Upon rereading, I detected many errors in my story, do not worry my next chapter has almost been finished, and when I finish the first arc of the story, I'm going to revisit every chapter and hammer out my themes, music, and explain the meaning behind it all. Please please please! Review!

I'm serious reviews are like crack to addicts for writers on FFN, everyone is a welcome addition! Don't be afraid to criticize and tear apart my song choice!

If you liked this story, why to head on down to the Starship Troopers/Mass Effect Crossover section and check out Terran Federation: Contact by L4 of the West! I'm the coauthor of the story now and we have lots of plans!

Want something a bit rougher? Well I'm also the co author Space in Conflict: Human Assault by Phuripat down in the World in Conflict/Mass effect folder! Check it out! It's going to be receiving a massive quality boost!

Hey while we're at it check out my buddy Drewman784 for his story X-Com: Human Incursion, a bit rough around the edges but we're going to do our best to deliver a story for you guys!