Author's Note: The Reapers arrive this chapter. They leave in fairly short order.

Also: go ahead and send me negative reviews! I love debating! (as long as you'll actually try to understand what passes for my twisted version of logic)

Curbstomp Fleet 1 (destination: dark space)

Hannah Shepard was tired. They had just spent 3 whole years flying to the Reaper's hideout. They still had a full month of travel ahead of them, when a communication from high command arrived. It said "The Citadel has opened, return ASAP". Hannah made a quick evaluation, getting everyone home through the zip lane would take 3 months with a fleet of this scale, but using the Citadel relay would both allow them to appear behind enemy lines with the most powerful fleet in the galaxy and get everyone home within 2 months. Very much wanting to squish some Reapers Hannah decided to continue on.

Curbstomp Fleet 2 (destination: Khar'Shan)

The 2nd curbstomp fleet (consisting of roughly 120,000 ships) dropped out of FTL. Intel had indicated that the Reapers were likely to target home worlds first. As the Sol system was insanely fortified by even human standards, they weren't particularly worried about Earth. So, to kill 2 worlds with 1 RKKV (as the saying now went) a fleet had been dispatched to all the home worlds for the dual purpose of thwarting the Reapers and making the Council races a bit more... pliable. As they exited FTL, the 2nd curbstomp fleet immediately transmitted a message to the Batarian government stating "Your practice of slavery has gone on for an unacceptable duration, either surrender immediately or we will deploy ground forces."

The Batarians, being either arrogant, deluded, desperate, or some mix of the 3 responded by firing on the biggest Capital ship in the system. Considering that by now everyone had upgraded to antimatter warheads, this attempt to destroy the human flagship would have succeeded, if the painfully slow Mass Accelerator shells hadn't been redirected by the GDP systems on the human ships. Considering that the human fleet outnumbered the entirety of the Batarian military, and had an utterly ludicrous quality advantage, the Batarian defense fleet was wiped out instantly.

Ground operations

Tank commander Jefferson was driving one of the new Armageddon tanks, which was best described as a Devastator up to 11. It was equipped with a Relay cannon instead of the old plasma gun, it had a gravity drive replacing the old thrusters (though it still had tracks), the armor was made of Relay Alloy in addition to the Mass-Shifting system, it had a VoT reactor for power (and this one wouldn't go up like a supernova if it got wrecked), and it had those awesome gatling Relays for anti-infantry. All-in-all it was an awesome tank.

As he descended, he was forced to come down roughly 30 klicks northeast of (whatever Khar'Shan's capital city is) due to extremely heavy AA fire. As Jefferson ordered his lance of 6 tanks forwards, he spotted those AA guns dotting the skyline. Wanting to make things easier for the next wave of mechanized infantry, a single round was fired into each AA gun. With that out of the way, the tank lance gunned their engines to 19% and accelerated to 450 km/h. As the tanks reached the defensive perimeter, they set their main guns to full auto, and opened fire. The main guns on an Armageddon tank hit with force equivalent to 100 tons of TNT, and fire 20 times every second. In total, the tank lance was firing 12 kilotons per second of hurt.

As the tank lance continued into the city, they effectively became a rapidly moving wall of "rocks fall everyone dies". Just as it looked like nothing could stop Jefferson's rampage into the city, they hit a landmine, more specifically an antimatter warhead with a 120 megaton yield. This was sufficient to cripple most of the tanks, and mission-kill Jefferson's personal tank. The detonation was also sufficient to demolish most of downtown, but the subterranean bunker system was still intact, along with the capital building. That meant it was time for the infantry to move in.

John Shepard POV
Author's Note: I tried using a D&D dungeon generator to figure out this place's layout, but the result was so nightmarishly complicated that I just gave up on trying to map this place.

John's squad felt a slight jolt as the Rhino IFV slammed through the door of the capital building. That was the cue for the 8-transhuman, 2 android squad to disembark. Getting out, Shepard immediately engaged the 3 Batarians who happened to be on guard. Though they went down to Relay SMG fire in 300 milliseconds, John noted that they had been wielding quite advanced Plasma Guns. Continuing down the corridor, a heavy mech was dispatched with his Machine Gunner's Relay Gatling. As they reached the parlaiment chamber, John looked up just in time to see a Plasma Cannon near the back rows. There was an extremely bright flash, and Shepard's squad was no more. Eventually, the human forces would deal with that plasma cannon ambush by ramming a Rhinoceros in flight mode through the window behind it at roughly mach 6. The Rhino received a few minor dents from that stunt.

The Citadel

Saren was upset. Not the normal upset that happens when something doesn't go your way, but the absolute "Whoever did this is going to suffer until the Heat Death" upset that comes when everyone you were friends with died, most of the things you thought were strengths of your civilization turned out to be traps designed to cripple it, and your !#$%ING GUN WOULDN'T WORK!

Saren dispatched a few more husks with his omni-blade as he made for the docks. Then he noticed a pair of Collectors on the level below the balcony he was on. A quick biotic Lift and a Warp later with some omni-blade shanking mixed in, Saren had a Collector Particle Beam and 2 corpses he needed to hide. The latter was dealt with by bioticly throwing them onto a nearby roof. Continuing onwards, Saren got the jump on 2 more squads of collectors (and took a bullet to the gut, though it didn't hit an artery or extremely vital organ) before finally arriving at the docks. Searching frantically, Saren managed to find an OoS shuttle, which he hoped still worked.

As Saren entered the shuttle, he both had his hopes confirmed beyond his wildest dreams and crushed when the shuttle said "Hi, I'm Eddy, what's your name and where do you need to go? If you're wondering why I haven't left yet I volunteered to help get people off the citadel."