The Legacy Of Humanity

[One-Shot]

Awaken

If there was one thing that could be said about the vast wonders and horrors of the universe, it was that they had an immeasurable and inexplicable hard-on for both the Human race and the planet Earth. The number of superior ancient beings or civilizations that had left their marked on Humanity could not be counted or ever truly recognize. But their remnant legacies gave Humanity a strong base that allowed them to excel.

It was no wonder then, after Humans had ultimately managed to survive through out all the chaos that were left behind for them, that they had evolved and advanced to become another race of beings that had attained galactic-glory.

However, like those before them, the Humans fell from grace and power.

And yet, unlike those before them, they were not truly extinct.

They were merely dormant.

[...]

It screeched at her, face splitting into a tentacled-maw of fleshed that was lined with dozens of jagged teeth, as it leaped forward with the strength of three men. With a flick of her thumb she dialed down the setting of her grenade and then pressed the activation button to lock it into place. She threw the grenade straight into the mouth of the rushing Horesque, the projectile clicked as it stuck itself into the flesh of its target and then promptly exploded - shrapnel flying everywhere - as the zombie-like creature was ripped to pieces.

She swiped her hand at her waist and removed a handle from her magnetic harness. Wordlessly, her molecular-blade reassembled itself into a longsword. Kicking off the floor, she pounced at the next - more humanoid-looking - Horesque and dismembered it in a flash with little resistance. The first to go were the long out-stretched arms, followed by the sunken head, and then the thick trunk legs. She side-stepped away, as it continued moving forward by three steps before falling to pieces.

The next eight also met with an equally swift demise.

A monstrous roar down the hallway immediately caught her attention. A charging beast, something that was like a cross between a rhino or elephant with that of a wolf, came straight at her as it plowed through and stomped over its fellow Horesque. She quickly pushed herself as flat she could on the wall and did not need to give the command to her allies at the other end of the hallway.

With a silent whirl, the turret let loose an accurate storm of grain-sized bullets into the beast. The high-velocity rounds had little individual impact but the turret was not valued for its stopping-power. Rather, it was designed to whittle down large, tough, and relentless foes with overwhelming firepower. The beast thrashed its head about, trying to repel the barrage, but in mere seconds it would not have been wrong to say that the beast was being flayed alive as the pieces of its flesh were sheared off with every bullet.

Using her free hand she plucked another grenade from her waist and this time flicked the dial up - there was a greater chance of damaging the ship but if left alone then the charging beast could do far worst than a single hand-explosive. Silently giving a command, the soldier controlling the turret stopped their assault, at that moment she leapt back into action and tossed her grenade.

The creature rushed in unaware and so the grenade exploded right beneath its neck; it gurgled in pain, practically sliding down the hallway due to its fast but now interrupted momentum. She did not allow this opportunity go, with her superhuman reflexes she closed in upon her target, crouched down, and then swung her longsword as she pushed her whole body up and forward. The beast had no time to screech as its head was separated from its body.

Looking down the once emptied hallway revealed that the spaces were quickly being filled with the writhing masses of the Horesque.

The Grand Knight faced the horde but she could see no end of them in sight.

And yet she found that it had truly had ended.

The memory vanished from her eyes and then reality sank back in. It was only a mere four hours ago that she had found herself in combat with the Horesque. And now - now - it was almost over.

The remaining survivors were gathered in the blue-hued cryo-chamber of the ship and now had to deal with the final aftermath of the assault.

The Normandy had originally started out with a full count of 50000 crewmen or soldiers. But that number had been cut down to less than a third during the initial raid of trying to reach the Horesque-Spawning Artifact on the planet, then further dwindling down to nearly a tenth of the original number during the clean-up phase after its destruction.

3822; that was how many people were still alive on the Normandy.

Amongst the crowd, there was a certain individual that stood out against the various Humans who wore full-body hardsuits or power-armor. In fact, her clothing - which were quite both skimpy and showy - were against all sensible reason for space-use and most certainly against regulations within a regular military group. The woman with sapphire-blue hair and eyes quite easily drew attention to herself for her appearance. But this time the she had the crowd's gaze, not because of her looks, but because she was currently speaking.

With one hand on her hip and the other casually raised, her pose was somewhat like that of a lecturer.

"Due to the blind jump to get away from the unknown alien artifact's detonation range, and the necessity of keeping the Horesque far away from any human-controlled territory, we are currently drifting in space beyond any nearby human colony or facility." Her voice was clearly and directly transmitted to every personnel, so that even a person half-way across the room could hear her. "Secondary generators are online and the distress beacon has been activated." She sighed, folded her arms, and readjusted her posture, "As per standard Stranded Protocol: all systems data has been wiped clean, all crewmen are to enter cyro-sleep, and the ship's AI will be placed under stand-by until further notice."

Though it could not be seen behind their visored faces, everybody had a grimace of some sort on. Indefinite cyro; it was a necessity in their situation but nobody liked what it meant either. With nothing left to be officially informed of, the people dispersed and began to lightly chat and say their goodbyes before each settled into a pod.

Slowly, one-by-one, the number of available pods disappeared.

Soon, only the Grand Knight and the Blue-Woman remained awake.

"What's wrong?" the lightly-dressed woman said with a smirk, "Getting cold feet now?"

The knight turned to face her. She spoke quietly and kept her voice low - as though wanting to prevent her words from rudely waking up her fellow comrades from their slumber, "What's the probability that we'll be rescued in time?"

The Blue-Woman's expression shifted into a neutral one. "We're stranded a significant distance away from the human-sphere of influence, all other UHF forces were scattered during Operation Dead Zone, and - since the firing of the God Driver - we have been unable to regain contact with the home-system due to some strange interference." She paused, "Secondary-power normally won't last anymore than 50 years but all of it has been diverted to supporting the cryo-chamber along with the distress beacon and some minor support systems. At minimal usage we have enough power to last us around 600 years and there's no need to worry about the cryo-pods malfunctioning before then... but the odds are still stacked against us."

Having heard the answer, the Grand Knight had no more reason to linger around. She briskly approached the closest empty pod, opened it, and stepped inside. The see-through cap slowly began to close shut.

The woman waved her hand in good-bye, a lonely expression on her face, "...See you around, Shepard."

"Yeah, I'll see you soon, Nor."

Then she quietly fell into a dreamless sleep.

[...]

Space is a big place, generally a vast emptiness that stretches as far as the eye can see, and yet it was also an amazingly small world.

By all accounts, the Normandy should have never been found in time and its frozen crew should have wasted away and died a peaceful death.

But, somehow against all odds, a humble passerby with a stray eye had luckily found them.

[...]

Sha'Tlar nar Potemai was an ordinary male Quarian on his way from his Pilgrimage. During his journey he had attained a freighter to call his own but it was that very starship that he soon planned to give as a gift to the Migrant Fleet. Honestly, despite how hard he worked for it, he had little attachment to the craft, much preferring to be back on his birth-ship of Potemai.

Still, it felt nice to be a captain of a ship, if only for a little while.

On a whim, Sha'Tlar had decided to take a detour to the Migrant Fleet to extend his short period of captaincy.

He stood on the bridge, arms folded behind his back, standing tall and proud, and imagined himself as a competent leader with a faithful crew working by his side. He stood like that, lost his daydream, until the VI on his ship warned him of an incoming object.

When Sha'Tlar's focus returned, he really couldn't believe his eyes.

A pristinely colored white-and-gold ship was simply drifting in the path before him. Eyeballing it, at an estimate of 1.5km in length, it was fairly larger than the average dreadnought - scratch that, as far as he knew, dreadnoughts couldn't get much bigger than 1km for technical reasons. With an overall smooth yet also somehow blocky design the large craft emitted an aura of both power and beauty.

It must have looked even grander in its prime.

Sha'Tlar's stomach could only churn as he soaked in the immediate damages on the ship's hull. There was an odd mass of coiling and dented trails, as though multiple serpentine of massive sizes had wrapped themselves around the craft and squeezed as hard as they could to crush it. On several parts of the ship there were also equally massive circular holes, almost as if something had actually managed to take large bites out of the hull. Yet there were no other immediate signs of the attackers, the ship was - for the most part - still in good shape, seemingly as if the attackers had just up and decided to leave.

'Keela Se'lai; what happened here?'

If he didn't know any better then he would have suspected that there was an insanely huge Thresher Maw that had taken a fancy to space-travel...

Suppressing that terrifying thought, curiosity then got the better of Sha'Tlar.

Who had built this ship? By the bright color scheme alone it was clear that it did not wear the color of any recognizable race and its design were not considerably similar to any other modern-day aesthetic choices either. Vaguely, strangely, and impossibly, it seemed like the sort of thing you would get by throwing an Asari, Turian, and Batarian into the same room and then had them draft up the designs together.

If he still had doubts about whether this vessel was alien in nature or not, then he had no need to look any further than the distress signal he was getting. As it was repeating an emergency message that he couldn't understand even with his omni-tool's galactic translator.

'New aliens...!'

Sha'Tlar could practically feel an immense weight on his shoulders; new aliens meant new technology. For a quarian on pilgrimage - especially one who sought more to improve the Migrant Fleet than to gain prestige - it was an exciting prospect, so much so that it had slipped his mind that this was a first contact scenario in the making.

If the aliens onboard were still alive then maybe he could help them and in return they could help him and his people! If they weren't alive then he could probably scavenge some alien technology or knowledge from the ship. And if the ship was cleaned out, well, he could at least find a way to convince the Migrant Fleet to come on over and salvage the oversized vessel.

Friendship, technology, material; whatever he chose to give to the Migrant Fleet would have been a much better gift than his measly freighter.

Swiftly tapping the console before him, Sha'Tlar tried to get into contact with the craft. "Uh, hello! My name is Sha'Tlar nar Potemai and I come in peace! Um... I repeat: my name is Sha'Tlar nar Potemai and I come in peace! Please respond." All he received was silence in return.

A slight chill ran down his spine but that wasn't enough to dissuade him from turning around and pretending that he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

If the hosts weren't home then perhaps he should take a peek around for himself?

It didn't take long for Sha'Tlar to find an entrance into the gigantic ship. Really, there were at least as many holes on the hull of the ship as there were digits on a Quarian's hand - all it came down to was to pick and choose where he wanted to drop in.

Dropping into a dark hallway and activating his flashlight, there wasn't much for him to immediate note of besides the lack of air and gravity. As he walked down the long passage the echoing click-clack of his footsteps were the only sound being made. He had also come across some locked doors but stopped trying to hack them after the first one - he couldn't make heads or tails about the security system and he wasn't going to spend hours attempting to figure it out either.

'Is that... light?'

To his amazement there was light at the end of his path. He hadn't expected that considering the state he had first found the ship in just some forty-minutes ago. Either the ship was very sturdy or someone was still here.

Passing into the new hallway - gravity returning without warning - gave him a fresh view at the creator's style. Unlike the outside's pristine white which bore itself with a certain nobility, the white inside of the ship was more cool in tone and reminded one of looking at falling snow, and in contrast the natural lighting was more on the warmer side of things.

A quiet thud sounded right behind him and Sha'Tlar whirled around only to realize that the doorway had suddenly shut closed.

It could have been an automated response - albeit a delayed one - but his gut feeling told him otherwise. Turning around again, he was unnerved and so tried to reach out to anyone on an open channel.

"H-Hello? Is anyone out there? M-My name is Sha'Tlar nar Potemai and I come in peace... Please, if there's anyone out there: respond."

As if to answer him and make him jump of his suit, hissing steam was vented everywhere into the hallway and oxygen-levels soon returned to a more normal level. Sha'Tlar spun around, unholstered his pistol, and delirious pointed his firearm as though he had expected a ghoul to jump out at any moment from behind him.

He was wrong but also right.

There was something - two somethings - in the hallway with him now but they weren't monsters. Well, in the typical sense of the word, anyways, they were bipedal and seemed to be the residents of the ship.

The first person to stand out in Sha'Tlar's eyes was the faceless individual wearing a fullbody armor. Though calling it 'armor' wasn't entirely ideal, just like the ship's color and appearance, it was somewhat of a strange work of art; glass-like and fragile, yet radiant and powerful - it seemed fit more for ceremonial purposes than for actual protection. Also, standing at slightly over six-feet tall, the person could look a Turian straight in the eye.

The second individual on the other hand was, well, fairly underdressed and left little to imagination. But, at the same time, it gave Sha'Tlar a good inkling about what these aliens would look like without their armor. He couldn't help but gasp at the clearly female form as she had an appearance - minus the lack of a bowed-leg, three fingers, and some other minor details - that was actually very much like a Quarian! In fact, now that he thought about it, changed her skin to blue and she could have been passed off as an Asari as well!

If Sha'Tlar didn't know any better, he would have suspected the female to have been some impossible Quarian and Asari half-breed.

Dressed in a robe that hugged her figure tightly, the cloth matched her the color of hair and eyes, though it faded into a cool white near the edges. She seemed oddly out of placed next to her much taller armored-ally.

By the time he realized that the pair were standing a respectable distance from him, that he was still staring at them - particularly at the dancer-looking woman, and that he had his gun pointed at their face, he cringed at his own accidental rudeness and soon nervousness gave way to embarrassment as he lowered his firearm. A wry chuckle escaped from his lips.

The woman simply smiled at him, amused at his response, and didn't seem to be the least bit offended.

Instead she calmly walked forward - keeping her movements gentle - and placed a object on the floor. Hovering over it for a moment, she slowly pressed a button and then backed away as the device lit up and some sort of energy flowed out from the round machine.

It happened so fast that Sha'Tlar wasn't quite sure what had happened at all.

Curiously staring at the active device, nothing more seemed to occur besides the constant emitting of a soft green glowing light. All he could tell was that he was standing in a rectangular field of energy that seemed to sparkle every so often.

Sha'Tlar awkwardly mumbled to himself, "Is that suppose to do something...?"

The blue-woman's smile changed into a cheeky smirk and then she spoke: "That, my friend, would be a universal translator."

He couldn't believe his ears; the alien was speaking perfect Quarian!

"Wha- How?!"

"It's as the name implies: Universal. Translator. It can translate any language."

"That's..." Sha'Tlar wasn't quite sure he should have cried foul because such a thing shouldn't be possible or whether be amazed because his hosts - well one of them anyways - were speaking Quarian nonetheless. He decided on a less outrageous response. "...How does it work?"

The woman paused, recieved a silent nod from her companion, and then spoke. "Well, before we get into that. Let's introduce ourselves, why don't we? I'm Normandy, or Nor for short, and my partner here is Shepard; we're humans." He noted that her voice was rather pleasant to listen to.

'Humans... I haven't heard that of that race before.' Nodding, he introduced himself, "Um, I am Sha'Tlar nar Potemai and I am a quarian."

"Nice to meet you, Sha'Tlar; can I call you Tlar?"

"Yes, go right ahead."

Nor smiled, "Well, it might be hard to believe but the Universal Translator, or Unitl as we call it, does exactly that. I can't go too much into detail but it works by converting 'Knowledge' and 'Intent' into a 'Stimulus' which is then 'Felt' by a being's senses and interpreted into a manner they can understand. For example, right now I am speaking in my home-language and you in yours, but you don't know exactly what I'm saying but you can certainly understand it," she paused, "Does that make sense?"

Sha'Tlar shook his head, "I'm sorry, you've lost me."

The woman was only a little apologetic, "Ah, long story short, we can understand each other while in the presence of the Unitl. It's necessary to do so since we don't know your language."

"...If it helps then I could give you my language," he said somewhat hesitatingly but he truly did wanted to give them a good and helpful impression of him.

Nor's ears seemed to perk at his response, "You're carrying a dictionary of the quarian language on you?"

"Uh, yes," Sha'Tlar activated the device on his wrist and the typical orange holograms floated in view, "The Galactic Translator is a basic feature on all Omni-Tools; it's what allows different races to communicate smoothly in daily life."

The attractive woman's eyes almost seemed to glimmer as she heard his words. "Did you say 'different races'? Are you part of some sort of galactic community?" she asked excitedly.

He cleared his his throat "...Yes, there are also the Turians, Asari, Salarians... um, if you have a storage-device or something then I could send you the codex entries," he added on, "and the translation software too."

Nor blinked, "Oh, give me a moment to grant you access," she snapped her fingers joyfully, "There we go, you can send the data to me now."

With no need to be prompted, Sha'Tlar sent the relevant information to wherever Normandy had linked him to. At that moment she became quiet and closed her eyes as if she was deep in concentration. He didn't know what she was doing but about five seconds later she snapped her fingers again and had cheerful expression on her face.

At the same time, the Unitl device had shutdown for seemingly no reason and the Quarian's omni-tool beeped - it downloaded something without his approval.

"Thanks, Tlar! The information will be really useful, I'm sure! Oh, I also hope you don't mind but I've sent you a transcript of the human language and some public files about us as well. So we don't need to use the Unitl anymore and if you need to know something about us then just look it up!"

On one hand, he should have been wary that she had been able to hack into his omni-tool; on the other hand, it was a harmless act. "Um... thank you?" Sha'Tlar pushed the conversation into a new direction - back to why he had ventured in here in the first place. He couldn't salvage the ship anymore but he could still try to attain either new technology or a minor friendship with these humans. "Anyways, I, uh, caught your ship's distress signal. Is there a problem I can help you with?"

For the first time it was the one called Shepard who spoke. "Your concern is appreciated, Sha'Tlar, but we have the situation under control."

Despite the intimidating appearance, the tone was quite casual and her mature but clearly female voice came at a surprise to Sha'Tlar. He had assumed the taller individual to have been a male example of the species, but he didn't let his embarrassing mistake show on his visored-covered face. "O-Oh. Is that so? I see..."

The main conversation was now over, leaving them to have small chit-chats about their history, culture, philosophy, and some other 'came-to-mind' subjects. There was even a quaint tour around the vessel.

But what stuck with Sha'Tlar the most - half in surprise and half in fear - was just how advance and powerful their species were.

For one thing, they used teleporters to get around the massive 1.5km craft. In fact, it was only classified as a small frigate in their society - they had starships that were even larger than this! But, more importantly, their spacefaring race had apparently evolved for centuries without use of the rather common Element Zero and by extension that also meant having never used the Mass Effect phenomenon or had even heard of the Protheans!

If they weren't being so gracious and kind to him right now, then Sha'Tlar would have been probably been even more inwardly incredulous and frighten than he already was.

Though Sha'Tlar didn't quite care all too much about the galactic scene - his focus primarily on bettering the Migrant Fleet - but he could easily understand just how much discord these Humans would bring if they were to announce their presence to the community. Everybody would be scrambling to get their hands on the Humans' technology and knowledge.

Admittedly, that was exactly what Sha'Tlar was trying to do. But, in his defense, he had no active interest in competing with the other species in an arms race on how to make a better weapon.

At the end of the tour, which left the quarian rather mentally winded, Shepard expressed her gratitude.

"Sha'Tlar nar Potemai, in the short time that we have talked, you have us taught us much about your galaxy." Opening up her palm, she handed him something. "For that, you have our gratitude. If you ever find yourself or your people in need of help, then know that I have your back."

He slowly reached for the device and took it, "I-I don't know what to say..."

"That's fine. But prepare yourself, Sha'Tlar. Next time we meet, the two of us will most likely be the bridge between our two races," she placed a hand in front of her, "It'll be a pleasure working with you in the future; I'm looking forward to it."

He took in Shepard's hand with both of his own in a rather weak grip, "I, uh, yes, you too... Till we meet again next time."

The quarian said his goodbyes and soon departed back home; he had many stories to tell when he got back.

[...]

On that day, Sha'Tlar nar Potemai unleashed a sleeping beast that would change the plans that fate had in store for his galactic civilization.

[...]

When their new alien friend moved out of earshot, Normandy and Shepard shared a conversation between themselves.

"Was it alright of you not to explain yourself to him, Nor?" Shepard started. "It would have probably saved us some troubles for diplomatic matters later."

The woman merely shrugged her shoulders, "You read their codex, right? You know the Quarians especially have a problem with synthetics; you know, with having been evicted from their own home-planet and all. I think telling him that I'm an AI would just complicate things. Let's handle this one-step-at-a-time, Shepard."

The Grand Knight merely nodded and then changed the subject, "So, how is Earth and the UHF then?" She knew that her partner had managed to regain contact with them but the AI hadn't bothered to fill her in with the details until later - and now was later.

"Well, good news is that the Earth and Humans still exist and they're sending a dreadnought to pick us up." She winked. "The boys and girls down at R&D also have some new power-armor prototypes that are just fresh off the assembly-line and I hear that they would be real excited if a Grand Knight could come on over to test them out."

"And the bad news?"

Normandy sighed, "Because of the war with the Velvar and their pet Horesque, along with the devastating activation of the God Driver, we have apparently been rebuilding for the past 300 years while sticking close to the home-system and a few other minor colonies that survived." She brushed some stray strands of hair away from her eyes, "Other than repairing our frigate, I'm not so sure if the LOH is willing to spare resources to meet-and-greet our neighbors; even if you are a Grand Knight, Shepard. Right now, Humanity isn't the powerhouse it used to be."

"I see... and LOH?"

"Legacy Of Humanity. It's the UHF's new name but they're still more or less the same organization."

"A bit egotistic, don't you think?"

"Sure... but we're not extinct. We just survived a war with an advance alien race that wanted to kill us by using space zombies and also the firing of what is most likely the universe's most powerful weapon. I think we can afford to be a little cocky in celebration, don't you?"

"It wouldn't leave a favorable impression, is all I'm saying."

She smirked, "Showing off your big guns always leaves a bad impression, Shepard. I think a name would be the least of these alien-folks' worry."

The Grand Knight could almost snort, "Touche; you've got me there, Nor. So anything else?"

Normandy smiled as she sent a camera-fed to her partner's interface, "Well, it looks like it pick-up has finally arrived."

Within the vastness of space above the Normandy there was a unnatural tear in it with a dazzling cosmos as its backdrop. From it quickly emerged a behemoth of a starship that was more than seven kilometers long. Seeing another ship, it was truly a sight for sore eyes.

After a sleep that they didn't believe they would have woken up from, Shepard and her crew felt relief in their hearts.

They were finally going home.

But, sooner or later and for good or for worst, they would return.

[...]

Wherever humans go, trouble is sure to follow.

Author Notes

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy; this story certainly took a damn while to revise! It was originally just a Mass Effect x Earth Defense Force idea, then I rewrote it as one about Human's with power-armor and mecha, and then I rewrote it again as where the Humans are 'living on a treasure trove of advance alien technology'. Huh, funny how that happened...

I had considered including Magi-Tech (aka Magic Is Advance Alien Techniques) but decided against it - for now anyways, could be introduced later, if this wasn't a one-shot. I had also considered cutting out all the point-of-views from the Human side to give them a more mysterious feel but didn't go that route either.

Anyways, thanks for reading this one-shot! If anyone wants to adopt (or do whatever) to this idea, then please feel free to do so.