This story is a sequel to A Thousand Voices
"Together, we can build a future greater than any one of us could imagine. A future paid for by the sacrifices of those who fought and died alongside us. A future that many will never see..."
For seven months, Equis was left in peace, and for seven months Twilight Sparkle has waited for the return of Legion. Just as she is ready to give up hope, the galaxy decides it is not finished with Equis. Unfortunately, it does not send someone as patient as the geth...
For the alien civilizations of the galaxy, they fight for their lives against the greatest threat ever known. And when victory is finally achieved, the crew of the Normandy find that their mission is not over just yet.
Chapters (18)
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I find this really sad. Not only is EDI offline but the entire geth civilization is down too.
Still awesome read so far can't wait for the rest.
The Illusive Man setting hi sights on Equestria....? GET COMMANDER SHEPHERD!!!!! And on a side not, welcome back!! 1ST COMMENT
................WHAT THE HECK JUST HAppENED?! And Red energy means destruction of tech right? BUT WHAT ABOUT EGI AND THE GETH?! No~~~~~
What? What is it? WHAT?! Oh, God, it's like someone gave me free drugs, I just finished, as of now there's no new chapter, AANF IM GOING THROUGH WITHDRAWEL!!
I'm hoping EDI can be restored. If not... Well. Keelah Se'lai
What happened? Why would Shepard condemn EDI and the Geth?
What? What? Dont leave us hanging like this!!!
You horrible tease! Why would you leave us hanging like that!
WHAT HAPPEN?
I liked the first story, but started skimming a bit closer to the end, I definitely will be reading the sequel too though
I knew you would do that,fortunaltely I was mentally prapared to resist, and now I'm fine, good fic by the way
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5767658
Because he probably felt that the reapers were just too dangerous to allow to continue in any form. Sacrifice one companion, one species for the guaranteed safety of the galaxy and a permanent end to the reaper threat? EDI and the geth would make that choice in a heartbeat.
5767992 Also true, which means what did Legion give Twilight exactly? Did it survive the Crucible intact?
That's why I always chose the green beam... Shephard still dies no matter what... but with the green ending everybody wins.
5768050
If you have enough points, Red ending suggests that Shep survives. Which is why I always chose it. I promised Liara that we would retire and raise blue skinned daughters together.
You're a magnificent bastard, you know that?
wait, Jeff is CO now?
...why doesn't this story have a comedy tag?
... damn it. That guy's nothing but bad news.
5767175
Unfortunately, it seems that the only other people who would know about the ponies at this point are the Geth, given that they received Legion's memories too. Here's hoping they do something, or tell someone.
5768050
Doesn't Shepard live if you get to the highest tier of readiness and choose to destroy the reapers?
(Yeah, I chose the green ending too.)
Though it bothers me that a reaper showed up on Equis. I was under the impression that only space-faring races got harvested. The Equestrians don't even have guns.
Good start to the story! Glad you wrote enough before publishing that we got to see everyone meet.
A few comments:
- The Illusive Man would not have expressed interest in Equus just because it has intelligent life. He is solely focused on the Reapers, and if you've played ME3 you know there's a very good reason why he is (namely, he has no choice, though he thinks he does... trying to avoid spoilers here). However this is easy to avoid this plot hole as Legion's information would tell him these ponies were special with their magic, plus since he had the Reaper's data he would know the Reapers would find them of interest as well (presumably that's why the Reaper showed up to ruin their day). Anything that interested the Reapers would also interest the Illusive Man.
- Normandy was travelling from Relay-to-Relay when it got knocked by the blast wave. Not FTL. Your story makes more sense if it was Relay-to-Relay anyway. Still a bit of a coincidence.
- Legion gave her a hard drive without explaining it's not something she could use, and that she would need to give it to aliens? Legion must have known she'd obsess over it. Geth must have a sense of humor now.
- Good call with the drive in general, though. I figure it contains all the hard data Legion collected about Equus and in particular translation modules for their language, which EDI will be able to use. Assuming she's still there (wasn't the red beam supposed to kill her and the geth as well as the Reapers? I wanna see EDI though. Maybe we say she had special shielding installed which the geth couldn't use because of their reliance on inter-communication).
- On second thought, it's a backup of Legion, isn't it? I guess he figured the Reapers would ignore the planet, and left them the drive so in hundreds of years or whatever, they would have the technology to bring him back. Then he could help them avoid the next cycle of Reapers.
- Kinda far fetched just a single button would be needed to turn power back on to the Normandy. Sure they can make other repairs before that but chances are they're gonna miss stuff and only figure it out once they try to power up. Also far fetched the switch mechanism being busted would prevent the engineers from bypassing it to power everything back on. More likely I'd imagine power production would be repaired first, which would also enable diagnostic equipment allowing them to see other problems, then they can focus on getting power conduits and individual subsystems back online. Most likely the AI core would be the top priority, as EDI could then help in diagnostics and determining the cause of system failures.
- The AI core would not take hours to reboot. Does your PC take hours to reboot? Of course this can also be easily explained... assuming parts of the core were damaged, the AI core would not boot properly. Automatic repair systems then might be activated to test the core for damage and bypassing detected damage parts, switching over to redundant components. We can say that the core is highly complex and this operation takes several hours to test everything.
These are mostly nitpicks, of course. Overall I am liking the story so far. :)
5768592
It's safe to assume that the Reapers find the ponies a threat because of the power the Collectors saw in them. Since it's only one Reaper, and it has five arms, we can assume that it is not Harbinger, because it had four arms, and that it is some random Reaper.
*muffled schoolgirl scream do to helmet* sequel
I hope this turns out alright.
5768050
I just quit the game and deleted my save data every time I got close to beating the game, because then everyone survives forever.
(Not before beating the citadel DLC though, that shit was bomb.)
5768592 that is true about the Reapers, they did only harvest spacefaring races because those were typically the ones that had advanced V/AI capabilities and were on the verge of Synthetic vs. Organic war over the entirety of space. I don't remember the exact details because when I played the ending all I heard was "Blah blah blah... I'm space god-child... Blah blah... Deus ex machina... Blah Blah Blah... choose between destroying synthetics and some of your closest friends... controlling the reapers and not destroying the geth that you chose over the quarians because you don't have the first two games and/or the genesis comic... and become a green glowy half-machine who doesn't have to worry about killing off the geth that you side with because of the above reason.
Then I got the genesis comic and was all "YEAH! I GOT THE QUARIANS AND THE GETH! Take that Heavy fleet leader! I'd be happy to punch you in the face again!"
But yes, it is quite worrying if the reapers thought Equus to be enough of a threat that they had to 'preserve' it.
5770548 Well, more people survive when you choose the green ending anyway... at least the extended ending fixed that BS about the relays being destroyed because that would've been stupid as hell if they rolled with that.
5768592 Well someone you assume is Shepard moves. And perhaps the Reapers fear what they don't understand (magic *snort snort*) and they may figure Equines will not follow the intended advances like other bi-pedal races (like tech made from the relays). Reapers hate variables.
I'm curious which ending of ME 3 this story was derived from....
5771679 Assume Synthases, as that's the canon one.
5771679
5771799
Nope , It's derived from the red end , most likely the "perfect" red end , as was implied in the first chapter.
5767248 How the fuck do you think I feel? O.O
I love how we see a lot from Joker's perspective! He feels really developed here too, not merely used as comic relief. So far I'm loving this!
5771799
Considering none of the group seems to have sprouted cool cyberimplants in their bodies, the Reaper attacking Equestria is dead and EDI is out, so I think Shepard chose "Destruction".
I choose blue because you get god Shepard and my head canon is he can use the knowledge of the reapers to clone himself a new body and copy his mind into it, seeing as they do have cloning in the ME universe.
This is just a theory....but what if Legion copied himself into that device?
Something else that occurred to me... how can the crew of the Normandy see the status of ALL the Mass Relays? They don't have any communication capabilities!
Though it is definitely possible they might be able to ping off the local Mass Relay and see that it is damaged and offline... assuming it wasn't destroyed like the others.
5768904
Cerberus scavenged Legion's data on the ponies from a Reaper, so it's safe to say the Reapers know everything Legion knew.
5771679
Story says. It's the "Red" ending, the destruction of all artificial life. Which would include EDI and the geth, canonically (which never made sense to me, either you would wipe out ALL computer equipment and data stored therein, or none at all. You can't discriminate between bits and bytes used for an AI and ones not). Somehow I suspect the author won't be going with the canonical (and flawed) events, hopefully. For one, if Legion IS stored on the drive, he would have been wiped out too!
5768825
You know, you got me thinking.
I think that EDI will live....just it will not be like her. You said that AI core could be damaged. Seeing as AI core is EDI brain, imagine it as brain damage.
5775776
Maybe. But I would think the AI core would have some redundancy built in so there are multiple copies of all data in case of damage. We have that capability today, so it makes sense a future AI would have it built-in.
5776469
Most likely. That's what RAID-1 does for hard drives and it's becoming more and more common as storage capacity per dollar slowly outpaces the average user or company's need for it.
...and that's not even considering the possibility that EDI protects data with the addition of a Forward Error Correction (FEC) as it enters her long-term memory. (It's what things like QR codes use to remain readable in the face of damage. About 1/5th of the QR code's surface doesn't encode data but, instead, recovery information. The optional "recovery record" feature for RAR archives and the PAR files used on usenet are other examples of this.)
Think of it like a much more complicated version of "1 + 2 = 3". If any one of those three numbers is missing, you can still derive it from the other two. The recovery information added by an FEC scheme turns your data into something similar. As long as the percentage damaged remains below a certain threshold, you can derive the damaged bit from what remains and recover the data perfectly.
(In fact, EDI protecting long-term memory with FEC would make sense as a design decision since it would produce a human-like effect that "head trauma" can cause short-term memory loss but long-term memories are much more robust.)
Not EDI D:
Poor EDI.
Poor Jeff!
EDI NOOOOOO!!
I always disliked the renegade ending because it meant EDI and the Geth die. the other two choises werent much better Destroy, Control and Synthesis. I always picked synthesis but it felt to extreme in a sence
Calm down a little bit man, I feel this story its becoming a little bit too fast pased, and I feel too much eggerness in the writing, at least for me, it appears you are enjoying writing this more than its healthy for the story; take a breath and take a little bit more time in the writing, I can wait, I still find the fic awsome though, keep up the good work
5779532
5779525
Watch the start of the next chapter be: "Just kidding Joker!"
Would be a dick move, but kinda funny maybe.
~Crystalline Electrostatic~
5779573
I like to take Control. Then we have God-Shepard.
Baaah I like EDI. :(
I'm still maintaining that the drive contains a backup of Legion. Tali's found some files that she can't figure out the purpose of? Sounds like some of Legion's thousands of programs. Guess he's the new EDI now? If we are going to be technical I would say EDI's platform wouldn't support him (one AI program compared to thousands of SI programs... plus EDI just communicates with the platform, she is still located on board the Normandy) but whatever. Would be weird to have him walking around in it. Joker probably wouldn't like that.
I think you meant 0.9866. Otherwise everyone who stepped out of that airlock is dead (and the ponies are being crushed by their equivalent of 10 AU).
Hackett and Joker seem to be far too interested in the ponies, Joker's main concern (at least once Hackett has been contacted) should be getting Normandy repaired and figuring out if they can use the Mass Relay to return to the fleet. Hackett's concern should be getting everyone in the fleet organized, repairing the Relay (if possible) and making sure everyone is stocked with food and water and other vital supplies for the short term (which was a concern of various ME3 ending critiques... Quarians have the biggest stores of food and they aren't gonna want to share. Who knows what the food stores on earth look like after the Reapers have disrupted food production for so long). He might take time to say Hi, glad to make first contact with you to be polite, but he has bigger concerns at the moment.
Joker mentions the origin of the Crucible is unknown. ME3 establishes it was built by an earlier cycle's race, and the design refined with each cycle (Javik in the DLC may have provided this info). Previously it had been thought to be of Prothean design, in reality it's just their flavor of it.
Joker would not be so hesitant to tell Luna they survived a Reaper attack. The whole point of the hell he had been going through previously was to kill them all. He's be glad to hear confirmation it didn't just affect Reapers on Earth, but he wouldn't need to ask for clarification. It's fresh in his mind and there's nothing else in the galaxy remotely like the Reapers, or the Crucible shot that killed them all.
Eh... explanation for EDI's startup time is possible, I guess. I still like mine better. But, author's privilege and all that.
I think it's clear from the start of the section that Cerberus is the one with the hidden facility. No need to be all secretive about that. The location of the facility is a nice twist, though. You'd think they'd be able to immediately identify a Reaper since they're so interested in them... nope, they have to get the newspaper like everypony else. :) That's a little weird. I think they would be hiding from the locals and wouldn't know or care about local happenings (except observing the 2 km tall Reaper which is hard to miss).
Whelp... a bunch of people wanted Joker comedy... I guess this is it? :)
Can't wait for more!
5779600
I rather like the pace. As I said on the previous story, a lot of stores tend to move terribly slow. The opening chapters do feel a bit fast but at the same time I think it's justified since it all happens rather quickly.
5779616
That would be cruel. I suppose there could be a deus ex machina like a backup, but remember EDI hid herself from Alliance personnel while in drydock by pretending to be a VI. They wouldn't have had any reason to treat her specially like making a backup or whatever. Could be something on board, but I would have expected it to work its magic by now.
5779573
I don't believe it's considered renegade. In fact I think if you lack appropriate paragon/renegade the red ending is the only one available, right? I forget. Or was it simply the war score? Anyway what's interesting is if you get a high enough war preparedness and get the red ending, you get an extra scene... OP might want that as the ending to this story.
I always pick Synthesis too. The endings always felt odd. I guess they were trying to avoid purely Paragon and Renegate endings, so there's no "right" choice. Just choices with different consequences the galaxy has to live with.
The AI core is empty. EDI is dead.
ODC holds over 1000 undisclosed programs.
Legion's personality consists of over 1000 programs.
And Joker is going to go batshit when he wakes up.