Author's Notes: Fanfiction will continue to exist far into the future.

- A big reason for my writing this fic is due to the ending of ME3. There are so many problems with it, I can't address it all at once. So I'll just hit one point at a time whenever. Needless to say, this story will NOT have the ME3 ending. I'll put them at the bottom for anyone who doesn't want spoilers.

- Something about the Mass Effect universe still kinda bugs me. They have no drones. They still risk people's lives by sending living fleshy things onto battlefields. It's 2013 right here and the US Army's already got remote controlled drones bombing the crap out of everybody. Honda's got a cute little automated walking robot. In Space-Future-Land shouldn't there be much, much better robotics doing the fighting? Whatever. Not as interesting, I guess.

Chapter 5: Adventurous Archaeologists

"…so we're just going to pick up some kid digging in the sand? What a waste," Wrex snarled. It only took a few hours cooped up in the ship and Shepard was already worried the krogan would start punching out the walls.

"Look, the Shadow Broker told you to follow my orders, so you're going to help me get this asari on board whether you like it or not," Vasir retorted, ignoring the fact that the krogan outweighed her by a factor of ten.

"Heh heh heh. You really want her, don't you? I know you're getting to that age, Vasir, but isn't this one a little too young for you? You're more than double her age!" When krogans laughed, it looked like they were ready to take a bite out of the person in front of them. Usually because that was exactly what happened next.

Instead of stepping back, Vasir met him at face level with her natural biotics rippling through the air. She spoke slowly and deliberately. "Big talk for someone without a working set of quads."

The laughing stopped. "You'll take that back if you know what's good for you." Wrex's own biotics matched and opposed Vasir's. The reverberations between the fields was already causing unsecured furniture to fly around them.

Suddenly, a highly focused wave of biotic energy cut in between them, causing both of them to destabilize and fall backwards. Shepard, standing at the opposite side of the table, kept his arm up and charged, ready to Throw either of them. "Need I remind you two that this is still my ship? I could choose to ignore the damn Shadow Broker and kick you both off my ship if I have to."

"I'm still your Spectre mentor, Shepard," Vasir reminded him. She gave Wrex one more disapproving look and took a seat.

"Yeah, and a great role model you are. So let's get back to business. What do we have on this 'Liara T'soni'? As far as Alliance military, Council records, even Spectre profiling is concerned, she's a nobody. A quiet asari girl who grew up on Thessia all her life. Stayed in school, no drugs, no weapons dealing, no geth, nothing worse than a few speeding tickets. Sorry, Vasir, but I'm with Wrex on this one. This does sound like a total waste of time," Shepard said. He tossed his datapad across the table. Vasir ignored it.

"Shepard, sometimes you just have to trust your allies. She's a prothean archaeologist at a prothean dig site. He has his reasons, but maybe he suspects that's Saren's next target."

"I can understand if he wants us to grab some important artifacts before Saren get them. Wouldn't explain why he was so adamant that we rescue the girl," Shepard replied. "This smells fishy."

"Commander, we're dropping out of FTL now. Half an hour until I drop you on the surface," Joker announced over the comms.

"Alright, let's do this. Wrex, Vasir, you're with me. I'm getting Garrus, Ashley, and Kaidan on board as well."

"Six crewmen to pick up one little archaeologist. At least we'll be wasting everyone's time together," Wrex snorted.

"Joker, are you reading any life signs yet?"

"Nothing so far, Captain. If she's down there, she must be somewhere heavily shielded. Try going down the tunnel."

"How about you, Tali? Any sign of geth activity?"

"The geth were here, I have no doubt. No active readings, but I have to warn you that many Geth are capable of entering a low-power hibernation state."

"We're landing straight at the entrance then." Shepard set their shuttle down in the middle of an abandoned encampment. There was little doubt that the geth had ravaged the area- the characteristic plasma weaponry left scorch marks across the shipping containers and portable living units. The entrance to the dig site had been obviously forced open.

"You heard what Tali said. Geth could still be here to ambush us. Wrex, Kaidan, you're with me. Vasir, Ashley, and Garrus, you cover our retreat."

"Got it, commander."

Shepard's team descended the long mineshaft. The elevator ride took ages, but at least it was working. If the power was still on, the damage down below might not be too extensive. As they went deeper, their link to the Normandy began to cut out. There was now at least a full kilometre of solid rock between them and the surface, and Shepard still couldn't see the bottom. "I guess there's a good reason the Normandy couldn't pick up anything on sensors. There could be a full-on battle below and we wouldn't have detected it. Weapons ready."

When they reached the bottom, what they found wasn't so much a battle, but a siege. There were about twenty geth troopers and a single quarinoid geth. The troopers were low-slung, four-legged bots with two plasma rifles each, attached to highly flexible arms above their crab-like bodies. All the guns were pointed at a massive biotic barrier, peppering it with a hail of superheated plasma. The lone quarinoid geth was attempting to hack through the controls to shut down the barrier.

As soon as the elevator came into view, however, half the geth immediately began shooting at Shepard's team. All three members put up their barriers, with Kaidan enhancing his with an additional layer of tech armour. The elevator wasn't going to last all the way down, and they still had thirty meters to go – or fall, if the geth continued to shoot.

"Screw waiting around. Watch and learn, Shepard." Wrex blasted open the already-weakened door of the elevator with his shotgun and leapt out. Whatever the geth troopers had been engineered and programmed to fight, it certainly wasn't a biotic krogan making very good use of gravity.

Wrex expertly used his biotics to redirect his fall and land right on top of one geth, pulverizing it into a small impact crater. He immediately blasted another to pieces with his shotgun, and charged at a third. He simply let his impressively strong biotic barriers absorb all the weapons fire.

"I'm not letting him have all the fun," Shepard said. "Try to capture another memory bank for Tali to analyze, ok?"

"Yeah, no problem, Shepard. I'll just take the emergency ladder. You go do your Charge thing." He started climbing down, now that the geths' attention was all on Wrex.

Satisfied, Shepard prepared a Charge and instantaneously landed on the ground beside Wrex, punching another geth into the ground with more force than Wrex did with his landing. Zero point eight seconds later and his own shotgun was deployed, and two quick blasts took out three legs on another geth.

"Nice trick, Shepard, but you've got to hit a little harder," Wrex roared as he stomped down on the trooper that Shepard disabled. Another blast from the krogan-sized shotgun at point-blank and the trooper was left in pieces.

"You sure about that? I go any harder and you won't get to stretch your legs," Shepard responded as he readied another Charge. This time he went for a geth near the cavern walls, flipping and smashing it with enough force to send it flying into the rocks behind it. The Charge was enough to cause its shields to fail, and the impact against the rocks destroyed both of its rifle-wielding arms. It flopped to the ground and attempted to right itself, but before it could, a shot from Shepard's gun put it down permanently.

The geth were quick to react- despite contending with the unstoppable train that was Wrex, they still managed to find time to find time to shoot at Shepard. Obvious benefits of having an machine brain. He'd only been standing still for less than a second, and his Barrier was nearly depleted from plasma impacts. He had to take cover behind the same pile of rocks he used to take out the trooper. He readied his Charge and let his barriers regenerate for a second, but he knew he couldn't stay very long. The Geth were already circling around to get him from both sides.

This time he moved to the exact opposite side of the cavern and pulled the same move against a pair of geth. He sent lead shrapnel flying into the less-protected underbelly of the first one as it flew through the air, destroying it instantly. He swung his shotgun around to the other and fired, but hit nothing but rock. The geth was scuttling across the ground at breakneck speed, with both its guns perfectly aimed at Shepard. Instead of taking it head-on, Shepard Charged to the opposite side of the cavern again to the troopers that were originally attempting to ambush him.

Meanwhile, Wrex was simply charging headlong into the geth. Not to say that it was ineffective- despite the geth themselves having near-instantaneous reaction times, Wrex was a true predator. He moved far more nimbly than his one-ton frame should physically allow, thanks to his biotics. He used his shotgun not just to damage the geth, but to corral his intended target and trap it. He performed biotic Pulls with one hand, and followed with point-blank shotgun blasts with his other. He repeated this strategy over and over, while multiple geth were still trying to destroy his barriers. Like having multiple livers and redundant nervous systems, Wrex must have had far more implants and eezo in his body than any biotic, asari included.

Shepard tried to replicate what Wrex was doing, since the geth were already starting to adapt to his tactics. There were no lone geth to single out any more. Each time he took out one, there were already two more firing at him as he readied his next Charge. A pull brought one of the geth flying towards him, but he nearly shot his own hand off trying to use the shotgun one-handed. Not doing that again until I grow a Krogan arm or get a more manageable shotgun, Shepard reminded himself.

Kaidan had finally started taking on his own opponent. He was spending enough time on this one trooper that Shepard and Wrex had taken down four in the meantime, careful not to damage it too much while trying to expose its CPU core. He'd used his nanites to bring down and disable the geth's shields from recharging, then overheated its plasma rifles. Disarmed and disarmoured, Kaidan was now chasing it down and attempting to hack it, all while it was attempting to perform self-repairs. Every geth that Shepard and Wrex killed had burned out their own memory cores; he was trying to salvage this one like he had on Eden Prime.

Until it ran by Wrex, who smashed it to pieces.

"Damnit, Wrex! I was trying to keep that one in one piece! We could get a lot of data on Saren if I can salvage its memory banks!"

"Is that what you were doing? Looked to me like you were struggling. Thought I'd help out."

"Ugh. Forget it, Wrex. Now there's only one left. Don't touch it." The only one remaining was the quarinoid geth, still attempting to disable the barrier. Whatever it was working on, it certainly wasn't modern barrier technology. It was something either extremely advanced, or ancient. Or both. In either case, the geth was obviously a non-combatant model and didn't even bother to try to defend itself. Kaidan shot it a few times with his assault rifle to quickly bring down its shields as he rushed in. He turned off his tech armour and used every last nanite he could spare to quickly disable as many systems in the robot's body as he could manage, hoping that at least one of them would be the memory-wipe protocol. The bot fell to the ground.

"I'll keep working on salvaging this little guy here. You two look for the archaeologist."

Since all the geth had been working so hard to get past the barrier, Shepard and Wrex decided that would be the best place to start off. The barrier itself was unlike any they'd ever seen before, and the controls were most definitely not written Citadel Standard.

"Uh… hello?" A voice came from the console.

"This is Commander Shepard, Council Spectre. Who am I speaking to?"

"Hello? Is anyone out there?"

"I don't think she can hear you, Shepard," Wrex said.

"Do I have to press some kind of button to talk?" Shepard wondered aloud. He began to poke around at it, but seemed to be having as much luck as the geth did before him.

"Are you a biotic? You need biotics to operate the console. In the upper right corner of the console, if you can perform a tiny Pull with your fingertip, it should activate the speakers."

Wrex held up one finger, which was about as large as four of Shepard's combined. "This is probably a job for you, Shepard. Delicate isn't exactly my style."

"Yeah, I sort of noticed." Shepard did as he was told, and the console flared to life. It was a strange experience for Shepard, as he'd never thought of using biotics this delicately, but as he ran his hand over it, it felt almost as natural as haptic feedback on regular terminals. Whoever made this were obviously natural biotics like the asari- unlike the current galactic population, where roughly 9.4% of the population was biotic, with asari making up the overwhelming majority. Shepard was among the lucky 1% of humans who grew up around eezo.

"This is Commander Shepard, Council Spectre. Who is this?"

"Oh… a Spectre? Really? I didn't think… oh. Um. Can you- can you get me out of here? I'm trapped."

"Trapped? And you still haven't answered my question. Who are you?"

"I'm Dr. T'soni. I'm just an archaeologist. I'm trapped in a stasis field and I can't reach the controls from here."

"Don't tell me those geth were helping you and trying to set you free," Shepard joked. He continued to run his hand over the console. Despite not knowing the language, the interface felt familiar somehow.

"Help? No. No, definitely not. They killed everyone and stole our artifacts… I was only able to grab a few small things and seal myself inside this… bunker. At least, I think it's a bunker. We didn't have time to fully excavate the site, but from what my team found, it looked to be some sort of highly militarized…"

"You sure you have enough air in there?" Shepard cut her off, eager to just finish the mission and return to hunting Saren. "Just tell me how to shut off this barrier."

"Right. Of course. From what I can tell, your side is actually the interior of the bunker, before the whole thing got buried. You'll have to deactivate it from the panel there. Is there a word that's about six letters long, with the first letter being a triangle with a vertical line through it?"

Shepard stared at the panel for a while. "I think so. Should I press it?"

"Please do."

A wall of hot plasma filled the gap between the barrier and where Liara was standing. She managed to put up an impressive biotic barrier of her own to save herself.

"You alright? I suppose I hit the wrong button," Shepard said.

"I think you hit the 'purge' button. Sorry, my mistake. The first letter should be a triangle with dull corners and a vertical line. The second letter is similar to the human letter 'E,' with an extra horizontal line."

"Ah, here it is." Shepard pressed the correct button this time, and the barrier disappeared.

Out walked a young-looking asari. Her face was devoid of facial markings, other than the skin around her eyes, which appeared to be the asari equivalent of freckles. Her cheeks were blushing a deep blue, no doubt due to the intense barrier she just had to raise to protect herself from the purging protocol.

"Liara T'soni. I'm Commander Shepard. I've been told you might be able to help me hunt down a rogue Spectre."

"Pleased to meet you, but… I don't see how. I'm no expert on combat, or Spectres. I mean, I've never even fired a gun in my life! My area of expertise is all things Prothean- language, culture, technology..." Liara shook his hand and followed him back to the elevator. Kaidan was already there with the disabled body of the quarinoid geth slung over his shoulder. Wrex just stared at Liara silently with a disapproving look.

"Well, maybe that's our link. Saren seems to be targeting Prothean dig sites. Have there been any major discoveries by your colleagues lately? Maybe an ancient superweapon?"

"No, nothing spectacular. I mean, there's been a few theories on mass-cloning being the cause of the sudden Prothean collapse and extinction. Another prominent researcher from the Alveris University thinks their biotics were so advanced, they were effectively telepathic. All old theories with supporting evidence still being uncovered, but I don't see any reason why someone would kill archaeologists over it…"

"Did this site have a prothean beacon? Or a good number of data discs?"

"Yes! I have several discs, in fact. I've tried to decode them without luck so far. As for the beacon, this site certainly had one, but it's been destroyed for millennia. The protheans were planning something amazing on Therum, they just never got around to finishing it."

Wrex finally chimed in on the discussion. "Well, it's obviously some kind of superweapon. Probably something like a neutron bomb. Something caused the total extinction of the protheans, left behind the Citadel and mass relays in perfect condition, and is valuable enough for Saren to abandon everything he had. What else could it be?"

After Dr. Chakwas released Liara from the med bay, she was, surprisingly, left to her own devices. That wasn't to say that she had full access to the ship- there was nowhere to go other than sick bay or the mess hall, which were right beside each other. She didn't have an access tag to take the lift down to the cargo bay, or open the doors to the operations deck.

Most of the crewmen were busy, and those that were having a meal didn't look like they wanted to talk to her. She wandered some more to look for her rescuers, but apparently they were all at a debriefing session.

Eventually she ran into one of the few non-humans on the ship.

"So… um… nice to meet you. I'm Tali. You must be the one they fetched on the planetside mission."

"Liara. Liara T'soni. So, Tali… you're a quarian."

"Yes...?"

There couldn't have been more awkward silence even if they were in the vacuum of space.

"What I meant was… this ship seems to have a lot of humans… I mean, for a Spectre vessel."

"It doesn't belong to the Spectres. It's a Human Alliance ship. Commander Shepard just so happens to be a Spectre."

"So he really IS a Spectre? I wasn't aware of any humans that received the title."

"Yes. First of his species, I guess. Only got the position yesterday. We're off to hunt a rogue Spectre named Saren."

Liara tried to piece together the puzzles in her head. Human military ship. Human Spectre. A giant Krogan. All of that made sense so far. But…

"Sorry to be so blunt, but you seem to have about as much combat experience as I do. What are you- I mean, we- doing here?" As if on cue, a heavyset human crewman, as large as the two of them combined, walked by. He gave a disapproving look, but didn't say a word. Liara followed Tali to her cabin. "These people are all military, and I've never even held a gun in my life! Have you?"

"I've been using recoil-dampened shotguns since I was big enough to hold them. In fact, my father gave me his old combat shotgun just before I left for my pilgrimage." Tali sounded like she was purring through her filtration mask when she talked about her gun. "I named him Bu! He's got more kick than I'm used to, but that's just part of his character."

Liara kept staring at Tali, unable to make out whether she was serious or not through the visor. "Well, it's just me, then. I'm fairly talented with biotics, but I still don't see why they need me here."

Tali put a reassuring hand on Liara's shoulder. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to be fighting any time soon, either. They brought me along because they're expecting more geth encounters. I doubt anyone outside the Fleet knows more about them than I do. What's your expertise?"

"Protheans. I've been studying them for the past forty years," Liara answered. "It was something of a childhood obsession, really."

"Saren seems to be targeting Prothean dig sites for some reason. I'm sure they wanted you for a reason."

"Yeah. They do," came a voice from the doorway. Kaidan was standing in the entrance. "Debriefing's over. Shepard wants to see you, Liara. Bring the prothean artifacts." He then gestured to Tali to follow him. "And I've got a little present for you, Tali. You get to extract more memories from the geth in the cargo bay to figure out where we're headed next."

"Wait… what do you mean geth in the cargo bay?"

"Let's get one thing straight, Vasir. I serve the Council and the Alliance. Not the Shadow Broker. You're only here to oversee my Spectre duties. I'm not using this ship to run errands for you, or your boss." Shepard stood with his arms crossed, his face as stoic as he could keep it. The asari Spectre was really getting on his nerves- yes, she was his senior in pretty much every aspect of life or work, but she didn't have to teach him with such a damn patronizing, know-it-all attitude.

"You have no idea where to go next anyway. Why not Thessia?"

"We'll have an idea once Tali gets her hands on the geth. And what if Thessia's in the wrong direction? We'll have wasted time and fuel."

"Maybe the Shadow Broker thinks Thessia's one of Saren's next targets. If we can get there before him-"

"That's bullshit and you know it! He hit a human colony at the borders of Citadel space, and a bunch of barely-populated planets with prothean trinkets. There's no way, nor reason, he'd ever strike at the heart of the asari homeworld. That would be as stupid as a full frontal assault on the Citadel itself."

"The Shadow Broker hasn't been wrong yet, Shepard. This is about learning to trust. I'm trying to set you up with one of the greatest lifelines you could have in your entire career, and you're turning me down? We're going to Thessia."

"My ship, my orders. We're not going anywhere."

"-is this a bad time?" Liara meekly piped up. The others who had left the briefing room had let her inside.

"No. It's fine. Vasir was just leaving," Shepard said pointedly.

"Commander… what can I do for you?" Liara tried to look her best, but it was difficult, given how she'd been trapped underground for a day and just got booted out of the med bay.

"Dr. T'soni. I want to talk to you about prothean data. Have you ever come across a disc like this in your studies?" Shepard held up the disc from Eden Prime, now completely inert.

"Yes, we have… but few people have ever managed to activate them properly. They are encrypted, like any good archive… but much of their technology uses biotics in nearly every aspect, including the user interface and data connections. We've been trying different methods to extract the data for years." Liara inspected the disc that Shepard brought with him. It was burned out- whatever data on it would have been completely lost. She'd seen discs like that when they were first discovered. There was so much information that was lost forever. Better understanding had led them to being able to access the data without destroying the disc, but so far nobody had managed to fully decode the prothean encryption, data codecs, and natural language- all of which were needed to properly make sense of what was stored on them.

"I think I may have accessed the data by accident. I need some help to make sense of it all."

Liara blinked. "Did you just say you… somehow decrypted the data? By accident?" That was impossible. Beyond impossible. You could spin the slots at every casino on Illium and have a better chance of winning a jackpot at every single machine on the planet than decrypting a disc by accident.

"It was on Eden Prime. I remember using my biotics on a disc that was falling to the ground- next thing I knew, I was having the strangest thoughts and feelings poured into me. Like someone else's memories got dumped into my own head. Doctor told me I was asleep for thirty hours."

Liara grew wide-eyed at him. "Thoughts… direct neural connection. Of course! It could be like the Joining… but they were advanced enough to digitize the entire process. Could they be Joining with their computers? Long-distance melding? The technology potential is… incredible. And that would explain why nobody could ever make sense of the data! This could be revolutionary! I could… I could get tenure for something like this, and I'm barely over a hundred!" Liara continued to babble to herself and pace around the briefing room.

"Uh… Dr. T'soni? About the topic at hand?"

"Oh, yes! I'm so sorry. I think there is a way for me to help you…" she shyly walked up to Shepard. A little too close for his comfort. "If I'm right… then what you experienced from the data disc must have been similar to what we asari experience when we perform the Joining."

"I've heard about the Joining. Never experienced it myself, though… what does it involve, really?"

"Our minds will connect. Thoughts and emotions are intensified if our minds resonate properly. You gain… perspective. Your mind is expanded. For this to work, of course, you have to trust the one you're Joining with." Liara took both his hands in hers. "We could… do it here. I may be able to help make sense of the data in your head."

"Wait, hold up. You're going to get inside my head and… do stuff to it? Are you sure this is safe?" Shepard leaned back a little.

"Oh, no, it's perfectly safe for you. Since I'll be the one initiating the joining, I will be altering my neural pathways to synchronize with yours. Would you like to try?"

Shepard shrugged. "I guess so. You're sure there's no risk at all?"

"None. I'll take all the necessary precautions." Liara slid one had up to his face, gently caressing his cheek and pressed her body against his. "Look into my eyes…"

"Ahem." A fake cough caught both of them off guard. Vasir was standing at the door, her anger completely replaced with amusement. "Look what we have here. Dr. T'soni, I know you young maidens like a little more excitement than us mature asari. You've known the commander for all of… what, fifteen minutes and you're putting the moves on him already? I guess you were stuck down on that dig site longer than we thought, huh?"

Liara suddenly jumped away from the commander and held her hands up defensively. "It's not what it looks like!"

Shepard looked back and forth between the two. "Wait, what's not supposed to look like what now? What is it supposed to look like? And Vasir, what are you even doing here?"

Vasir ignored him. "Really, T'soni. Because it looks to me you were just about to meld with the commander. Am I wrong?"

Liara's cheeks turned a deep indigo blue. "It was an entirely professional Joining! I was investigating some prothean data with the commander!"

"Really then? Entirely professional? So you won't mind if I just… watch you two do it?" Vasir walked across the room to the QEC console. "Maybe even have a chat with the council… you'll just be in the background. Don't worry about it."

The indigo colour now spread across Liara's entire face. "I… what? No! That's… no!" she sputtered.

Vasir laughed. "Shepard, I need to borrow the QEC for a second. I don't mind if you're here. I just forgot to give the Council my primary evaluation for your performance. Maybe it's better that you hear it now, actually."

"If you think that means I'm just going to give in, forget it. I'm still waiting on Tali's report before we point this ship anywhere."

Vasir stopped and stared for a second. "Huh. You know, I kind of like that. Still, don't let it go to your head. You're still a rookie. I'll just go and amend my report before I send it out. Have fun, you two. Don't forget to lock the door this time…" She gave them a casual wave as she walked away.

"What was that about?" Shepard asked.

"Well… um… usually the Joining is only performed between a couple who are… very close. Often just before… uh… intimate physical contact."

"Sex." Shepard said it out plainly.

"Yes! But not always! I mean, psychiatrists use this technique quite often too! There are plenty of professional applications of this technique…"

"Well, as long as we know where we stand. Let's do this."

Liara returned to the position they were in before Vasir interrupted. "Look into my eyes, Shepard. Embrace-"

"Wait a sec. Do we have to be this close?" Shepard didn't want to say it, but asari in general were pretty attractive, and Liara herself certainly could have made good money as a dancer if she were so inclined. And now she was pressing up against him looking like an asari maiden straight out of a cheap action vid, all alone with the hero. Which basically was the situation at hand. He wasn't ready for what usually happened next, but his little member apparently was. "Can we do this sitting down or something? I don't want this to get weird."

"I'm sorry. Some physical contact is required to initiate the Joining. Now, concentrate, and look into my eyes. Embrace Eternity!" Liara's eyes suddenly turned pitch black, and things got very weird.

Shepard could feel her. He could feel her feel an unusual warmth around the crotch level. Okay, concentrate on something else. He could feel her passion… for researching prothean artifacts. It certainly gave him a lot of perspective on how much work had been done, yet how little we truly knew about them. He could feel her age- a hundred years barely qualified as mature and she was still unsure of what career she really wanted. And here he was, living his life just like he planned it since he was twelve. Grow up, join the army, be the best goddamn biotic soldier humanity's ever seen. Certainly one of the most impressive biotics Liara had ever seen, zipping around the underground site. He could feel her recall the memory too.

Remember what we're here for, Shepard.

Right. Prothean artifact. Eden Prime. The artifact. Lifting it with a biotic Pull. Images. Pain, power, corruption, darkness, infection, vengeance. Flashes of emotions recorded for millennia.

Liara broke the connection and stumbled to the ground, hyperventilating. "By the goddess, Shepard. That was… that was amazing… you got all of that out of the disc?"

"Yeah. Did it make sense to you?"

"A little bit. It seems to be about a war. One that the protheans were losing. This could explain where they went! Or why they seem to be extinct. Here, Shepard. I managed to save a few discs from Therum." Liara pulled from her pocket an identical disc to the one Shepard had shown to her. "We have to know what it says! There must be more to the story."

Shepard was still in a bit of a daze. Whatever the Joining did, it certainly gave him some new perspective. He was almost as excited as Liara was about investigating the discs. Hell, he could even recall what it felt like to be a natural biotic. Asari were one lucky species, on that note. He performed a gentle pull on the disc, letting it float to his hand with more control than he'd ever thought possible. He could almost sense the texture of the disc through his biotics, if he wasn't mistaken. No, that wasn't it. Not its physical texture. It had some kind of biotic texture. He molded his fields to match.

The disc flared a bright green, and once again his own biotic fields shifted from blue to green as well. Liara looked on excitedly as Shepard felt more memories flood his brain.

Pain. Twelve trillion dead, their suffering protracted over centuries.

Power. The combined might of the empire, crushed. They could only look back at their foolish arrogance and despair.

Corruption. They had been there long before the first strikes. Leaders were not to be trusted. Comrades were not to be trusted. Your own self… could not be trusted.

Darkness. They had no stars. They came from in between. Their massive forms blotted out suns, covered entire cities.

Infection. The fallen had to be burned. It was a plague. An intelligent plague. Every fallen body added to their ranks.

Vengeance. They had struck us down with pain, with power, with corruption and darkness, and infected our bodies. We have nothing to strike them with but our vengeance. Only our vengeance.

"Hey, are you two done in there? I'm done revising my-" Vasir walked in on Liara, who was straddling Shepard and shaking his shoulders. Shepard was unconscious on the ground. "Wow, you two really went at it. When I said knock yourselves out, I didn't mean it literally."

Codex Entry: Natural Biotics

Natural biotics are species or individuals who are born with innate biotic abilities. While the extent of the abilities varies greatly, exposure to sufficient levels of element zero during gestation to the developing central nervous system are requirements for manifestation of the abilities. Thessia, the homeworld of the asari, has some of the highest reserves of element zero in the known galaxy, and it has played a major part in the evolution of asari and other forms of life on the planet. Often, natural biotics can perform biotic feats that are unique to the individual or species, and are very difficult to replicate with biotic implants.

The asari melding (or Joining) ritual is one such ability. It is an integral part of the asari social fabric and reproductive processes, performed almost instinctively by maiden asari, and yet no artificial forms of melding have been successful thus far. The asari are capable of utilizing biotics to read the brainwave patterns of a nearby individual (of nearly any species with a central nervous system) and alter their own brainwaves to match. Melding is most successful when the partner is also a biotic. For more information, see Codex Entry: Asari melding ritual.

Natural biotics, despite the name, can be created artificially. This was proven during the Rachni Wars, when salarians exposed developing krogan embryos to large amounts of element zero. Despite a massive birth defect rate, some krogans developed natural biotic abilities. There is consensus that a natural biotic can manipulate biotic fields much more efficiently than one of the same species using implants. However, most studies are limited by low numbers of artificially-produced natural biotics. Due to the massive rate of mutation and birth defects to developing embryos, deliberate exposure of unsafe levels of element zero to embryos have been outlawed by most of the Citadel member species.

Author's Chapter End Notes:

- So, first things first: the worst thing about the ME3 ending is that it forgets that Mass Effect 1 and 2 happened. What do I mean? Let's check this out. Catalyst is an AI that resides in the Citadel. The Catalyst controls the reapers and oversees the whole "reaping" process.

- So, here's a reminder about the plot of Mass Effect 1: the Reapers can't perform a Relay jump into the galaxy because the Citadel can't activate. Apparently the AI that controls the entire reaping process is having trouble activating the very space station/mass relay it's sitting on. And continues to, you know, direct the whole reaper invasion throughout Mass Effect 2, still unable to flip a damn switch, just sitting back and waiting for the Reapers to get there the slow way. Then, magically, it says it's been watching all along and knows everything and blah blah blah. That's bull.