Massive Disaster 5-25 (Patreon)

Rotting wood exploded in a burst of splintered shrapnel, foul-smelling sap smearing against the field of his Mantle and trailing down.“Watch-!” He dropped, a blind shot snapping down the tunnel from the Full Stop. The impact was drowned out by another roar from Jane Shepard’s shotgun, Zedd gritting his teeth at the echo. “Watch your fucking fire, woman!”“Forgive me for trying to keep your face from getting eaten, Victors!” The Spectre barked out as loud as her shotgun from somewhere in the dark, Ashley’s M-8 a backbeat to her voice as it strobed out in the tunnels. “I’ll just let it happen next time.”“My face-” He pulled the trigger of his weapon to carve apart a Creeper. 

“-Is just-” Another went down in a burst of bark.

“-fine, thank you!” A third joined its brethren and Zedd held his gun high as more came rushing up the dark underground space.They’d been descending for the better part of fifteen minutes, the crew of eight pushing down through the open throat of the crashed freighter. Steel bulkheads and flooded deck floors had vanished a half mile ago, giving way to just…

Meat.

Vegetarian meat, yes, but still meat.

What had to be thousands of tons of pulsating botanic flesh in the form of oversized vines that threaded deep into the bedrock of Feros, directly under Zhu’s Hope.“Oh, Jesus…” Zedd bit down on a much louder and much more blasphemous curse as his boot sank a full two inches deeper into the floor. He dragged it back up, suction fighting his soles with a wet tearing sound that stunk as hard as it sucked. “Oh, this is foul.”His face twisted, lip curled high as he wiped the slow drip of sap off his glasses with the back of one blue glove. Note to self: increase Mantle sensitivity and kinesis field responsiveness to more than just environmental ‘hazards’. As protective as the field could be to anything lethal or even heavily harmful when it came to force or heat or energetic sources in general, it definitely had some larger blindspots. Blindspots I’m gonna need to buff out.

At the very least, his glasses were as adaptive as his protection fields weren’t; blue lenses automatically polarizing to filter out the bright light that lit up the newest cave opening they entered into; a sickly green glow weeping from the walls.

His eyes widened. Bioluminescence?

That wasn’t good.

And, from the looks of it, it especially wasn’t good the way the walls seemed to be breathing on top of that. Massive vines, bulbous and vascular things closer to swollen veins than simple plant-life, pulsed in a sluggish rhythm with each one expanding and contracting against the stone.

“Keep moving.” John Shepard pushed past, the Commander’s blue armor caked in sludge as he waded deeper into the living tunnel, rifle flashlight tracking the shadows. “They’re already doing their best to funnel us.” 

Zedd swiped a thumb across the edge of his glasses, silver frame responding immediately with a flicker of blue overlay. What the- The architecture was interacting oddly with its attempts to get a proper scan, mostly because… 

Well, he wasn’t sure, honestly.

There was no architecture in the first place, so what kind of interference could he possibly be getting down here other than… 

Zedd’s gaze went high, taking in the cavernous ceiling and walls as previous conversations flicked through his mind. The Thorian… it’s a giant brain. A giant psychic brain that absorbed other brains as they died and stored all that neurological data in what else but… Holy shit…

What else but the vines themselves, right? After all, it was a massive interconnected nervous system; one strong enough to control and create countless others.

"Hold up." Zedd stopped dead in his tracks, several others around him doing the same.

Garrus bumped his shoulder, the turian’s sniper catching on a hanging root. "Any particular reason why we’re stopping?""See those?" He aimed the barrel of his handcannon pointed at a cluster of person-sized nodules, the glow from them brighter than all else as they swelled out of the fleshy wall like tumors. “Against my will, but yeah, I see them.” Ashley stepped up, Avenger tracking his aim. "Looks like how a cold feels. What’s the deal, Victors?"

"My sensors are having a stroke with the feedback down here." Zedd tapped the side of his glasses. "Unless we were in an unshielded eezo core, that shouldn’t be happening. And I’m not getting anything radioactive down here.”“Meaning?”“Meaning those things are giving off some high-density neurological activity. We’re in a fucking brain and the walls are thinking.” Jane walked up to the other female soldier among them, the Spectre tilting her head as Zedd explained. “It’s a goddamn router.”

Jane raised her Katana. "So we pop those and what?"

"We piss it off or we give it a headache by the sound of it." The sniper’s mandibles clicked softly from the rear, Garrus chuckling the raspy way only a seven-foot turian could. "Either way, progress."

"Shoot the router, Shep." He shook his gun, Full Stop aimed at the largest pulsing bulb on the wall node. "Let’s make our job easier."

Jane didn't wait for anything more than that, the sound of an ‘easy job’ forcing a grin on the Spectre’s face. A split second later, a blast from the Katana shredded the nearest node. 

A scream tore up the walls, a high-pitched shriek forcing a tremor along the grounds and pulsing up their collective boots. Seconds passed and the shudders only got worse across the entire tunnel, dust and green slime raining down on their heads. “Victors?”Ummmm… A tongue flicked out over suddenly dry lips as he looked over at Jane. “...this is probably a good thing.”

“Probably?!”

"Contact!"

Kaidan’s yell sounded over Jane’s as the walls tore open.

Thorian Creepers tore themselves directly out of fleshy membranes along the walls, dropping from the ceiling and clawing up from the floor by the dozens. Unfortunately, they weren’t alone because Wretch after Wretch came with them, the mutated Asari already flaring unstable biotics as green as their skin. 

"Choke point! Hold the line!" John stepped forward, Avenger already firing out at a Creeper that dropped in just feet from him. “Hold it!”

A green asari hurled a sickly emerald mass effect field directly at the Commander, but John didn’t even bother to dodge. The commander flared his own barrier, the air warping around him and meeting the green biotic blast head-on.

Blue and green splashed against each other, both dying out an instant before John Shepard tore the Wretch apart in a spray of chlorophyll-colored blood. 

“Flank right!” Ashley dropped to a knee right in front of Zedd, pouring fire into a cluster of Creepers , as he backpedaled with handcannon held high.

He barely managed all of four steps before a Creeper lunged at him, jaw unhinged to spit.

“Don’t you-!” The weapon barked, almost bucking in his palm. The Creeper’s head snapped back, hanging limp with a hole in its neck as green sludge spilled from its mouth and gaping throat. “...dare.”A second shot sent the thing back, a clean hit to center mass snapping its spine like a dry branch. It crashed into a green asari, both falling to the ground. Another bolt of blue barked out and a single high-yield slung went through both their heads."Incendiary!" Tali’s shout came loud over the sound of shardfire, the quarian fumbling with a side-pouch on her suit. "I have incendiary rounds. I can load the—the thermal—"

"Tee, A fire? Underground?" Zedd ducked a wildly thrown claw from a Wretch, a yell thrown back over his shoulder. "While we’re still down here?"

"I—I forgot!" Tali snapped her pistol back up. "I forgot! Cryo! Using Cryo!"

"Drop the nodes! Ignore the fodder, shoot the glowing shit!" Jane was a blur of blue, violent and vicious. The air cracked around her as she slammed hard into the far wall, erasing a good thirty yards of space in a split-second. She slammed into the fleshy wall with an explosion, the resulting shockwave throwing three Creepers high and far as they screeched.

Without wasting a breath, Spectre Shepard jammed her Katana into the nearest node and pulled the trigger.

Green sludge poured down in a thick rain.

Zedd fired out with his cannon of a pistol, kickback thumping as he splattered apart node after node; Kaidan and Ashley did the same as they flanked him, three sets of weapons firing out at three different paces — and finishing the job in just as much as time.

A Creeper slipped past the three of them, on a shrieking path as it lunged for the bluest one among the crew. The asari didn't panic as her hands began to glow, a dense ball of biotics yanking the screaming monster helplessly into the air.

"Pull!" With a crack of the Mantis sniper rifle and a shout from Garrus, the Creeper’s head vanished.

"Last node on the right!" Kaidan threw a wall of biotic power over a cluster of Wretches, stalling them in place just long enough for John to close the gap.

The Commander stepped into the pack, dense mass effect fields compressing around his right forearm. He drove his fist directly into the chest of the nearest one, naked flesh no defense against raw and focused power layered over itself. A twitching lifeless body flew far and fast across the tunnel, body slamming into the last pulsing neural node.

The node ruptured, a geyser of fluid squelching out into the tunnel.With a final scream that shook the cavern, everything finally gave way. Vein-like vines deflated all at once, rhythmic pulsing stuttering before coming to a stop. Creepers and Wretches nearest them simply dropped, puppet-strings cut as they collapsed into piles of lifeless plant-flesh.

Silence was something you only appreciated when it was gone and as it came rushing back again all at once, Zedd found himself breathing that much easier. Still, that didn’t mean everything was over and he knew that as he wiped a smear of green fluid off the silver frame of his aviators. "Disgusting."

Nobody else spoke at first, simply breathing as heavily and as steadily as they could manage.

"Move up." John stepped over a still-bodied Wretch, the corpse not even twitching. "Can’t be too far from the core now.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

They weren’t.

At all.Barely a minute more and they had gotten to the very heart of it all, a hollowed-out cavern filled with graying plant matter. What had to be the Thorian sat at the center of it all, the thing someone’s nightmare idea of an elcor given a mass of vines and foliage as an oversized and overgrown elephant’s trunk and left to metastasize for millenia.

It was probably a lot more terrifying when it was thriving, but given that it was suffering from a severe case of brain damage, all the life was just visibly bleeding out of it as it slumped in on itself in shuddering heaves.“Huh…”Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on perspective — they didn’t have the time or effort to worry about what was effectively now a non-issue.

No, their new issue was currently hanging from the ceiling and suspended by vines as thick as they were lifeless, in a bulbous pod filled with translucent green goo.

“I’m guessing that’s Shiala, then.”

The asari they’d been told about was curled into a fetal position, floating in amniotic fluid as green as her skin seemed to be. 

Zedd raised an eyebrow at the sight. Not much of a Wretch, though. Sure, she was green, but she didn't look like the mutated, mindless things they had just been slaughtering; her skin still smooth and lacking the same bark-like growths as the clones and her facial markings were still clearly visible on top of that. 

The sound of a shotgun racking loud pulled Zedd’s attention as Jane stepped directly under the pod, barrel pointed straight up at the asari’s sleeping face. "One left then."

"Hold up." A single step took him to Jane’s side, one hand pushing the barrel of the Katana down as he looked her way.

“Don’t you-” Jane’s eyes snapped to his, a dark glare on her face as she bit down the words with a hiss before finding them again. "Don't touch my weapon, Victors."

"Well, don’t shoot the witness, Shepard." “Witness?” Jane’s frown deepened. “It’s as green as the rest of them. What happened to making my job easier?”“Well, for one, I'm not getting the same read on her. The ones we flatlined were already flat upstairs. Meat puppets… plant puppets? Either way.” Zedd tapped his glasses, ignoring the slight whimper Liara let out from behind the both of them. “This one’s brainwaves are active. AKA, she still has a mind, Shep."

"Doesn't that make her more dangerous?" Jane Shepard had a one-track mind if there ever was one, her gun rising back up.

“How about…” John walked up, resting a hand on his sister's shoulder to physically lower her aim. "We see first."“...tch.” The gun finally fell, the shorter Shepard rolling her eyes. “Pansies.”

Zedd didn't wait for a committee vote, combat knife drawn from his belt. A shaped kinesis field flared to life along its edge as he flicked it open and stepped up to the fleshy sac. This is gonna be messy. With a breath, he drove the glowing blue blade directly into the membrane and ripped downward.

As usual, he was right.

A deluge of thick foul-smelling fluid spilled out over his boots, Zedd biting down on a curse as he jumped back. By the time he looked up from his green-caked kicks, the asari had tumbled out of the ruptured pod to hit the fleshy floor with a wet slap.

Violenct coughs forced out more green slime from her innards, chest heaving as she dragged actual oxygen into her lungs for the first time in days most likely. With another ragged inhale, the green asari pushed herself up onto her hands and knees.“Shiala…?” John knelt down, even the diplomat among them keeping his distance.

The asari looked up, eyes wide but fully lucid. "You... you severed the connection.”“We.” Green eyes flicked his way, a glare from Jane Shepard enough to have Zedd looking back at his boots.

"You are Shiala?" John continued like he hadn’t said anything. “Aren’t you?”

"My name… yes." Another gasp left her as she wrapped her arms around herself. "I was... I was Saren… he gave me to it. To the Thorian. A trade.”Oh, wow. Even ancient psychic plants support capitalism. Zedd raised his eyebrows. Although, I guess that’s not really an endorsement…

"We know." Liara stepped forward, boots squelching in the muck. "He wanted the Cipher. The Prothean knowledge."

"Yes. The creature... it possessed it.” Shiala squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before looking back at Liara, a flicker of recognition crossing her face. “It spent millennia here, beneath the ruins of the… the Protheans. Watching them. Consuming their dead for nutrients. Assimilating their echoes into its cells."

"And when he gave you to it?" Kaidan’s prompt came quick, Zedd noticing the man still had his pistol drawn even if aimed at the floor. “What’d you get from it?”

"When I melded with the Thorian, I shared all those echoes. Absorbed their knowledge.," Shiala breathed in slow. "The Cipher. Saren... he reached in. Through me. He took it."But… Zedd’s eyes narrowed at that. How though?

"He sees it." Shiala looked up at the Alliance Commander, focused past everyone else to aim her attention at John Shepard. "He sees what the beacon showed you. He understands it. He is trying to stop you."

"Then we need what you have.” 

"I cannot give you the location. The Cipher is not a map. It is…” Shiala nodded at John’s response even as she struggled to her knees. “...context. Instinct. The essence of those that came before us all. I can transfer it to you. It will make the visions clearer."

Green hands reached out toward John, fingers tremebling

"No." Jane stepped directly between them, Katana raised high again. "Absolutely not. You are not letting another random asari into your head."“Random?”“He knew you barely eighteen hours.” Jane didn’t even look back at Liara. “You were random then and barely above random now. Don’t push me.”

"Shep's right on this one, Commander J." Zedd crossed his arms, leaning up against a less-slimy patch of wall. "That's the second blue alien offering to finger-bang your brain in under half a week. We don't know what the giant weed left in her."

"I am in control of my own mind." Shiala gasped, even as her hands trembled through the words. “I simply wish to make amends for my previous loyalty.”

"Jane." John didn't raise his voice or blink, attention firmly on the green asari. “Step back.”

"John, she was one of Benezia’s.” The words came gritted through Jane Shepard’s clenched teeth. “One of Saren’s. Think about what you’re doing here and be fucking reasonable.”“She has the Cipher.”“She has Thorian DNA in, on, and over her.”“She has the key to stopping Saren.”“This is an enemy, Johnny!.”

"And right now, Janey, she could possibly be one of our best allies.," John didn't bother to argue further, stepping forward until he stood directly in front of the green-skinned asari. "Do it."

Shiala hesitated for a fraction of a second, eyes drifting warily to the shotgun still clenched in Jane’s grip.

Nerves aside, she still reached out, thumbs pressed gently against John Shepard’s temples.

In front of them all, her eyes flooded as black as the void of space as two words echoed out from her lips.  

"Embrace Eternity."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Gardener Supreme (300 FP)Put an end to the apocalyptic spread of the Thorian.

ROLL: Could Stand To Lose A Few Pounds (200 FP) [Gundam - Advanced Generation] {Vehicles}:When it's out in the cold expanses of space (away from that damn plotradiation), nothing counts more to you than having a well-toned machine. With some basic knowledge of 'Alright, I can't make this any thinner or it snaps like stressed knockoff plastic', you can make upgrades to Mobile Suits that shed crucial weight, making them faster, sleeker and more humanlike in motion- cutting what you can and generally making things more able to dodge, bob and weave.Forge Points: 300