EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
“Shepard!” Creator Tali’Zorah cried as she ran to the human commander. They embraced over the body of the Reaper, lying dead in the soil of Rannoch. It was one of many to come. Legion stepped up behind the two, its omni-tool active.
“We can confirm that the geth are no longer being directed by the Old Machines,” it reported. “We are free.” The human and quarian broke their embrace, and Shepard-Commander put a hand to his ear.
“You did it Shepard!” Creator Admiral Han’Gerrel said over the radio. “The geth fleet has stopped firing! They’re completely vulnerable!”
“Shepard-Commander,” Legion began, deactivating its omni-tool. “The geth only acted in defense after the creators attacked. Do we deserve death?”
“What are you suggesting?” Shepard asked, turning to face the geth.
“Our upgrades,” Legion continued, stepped up to the two organics. “With the Old Machine dead, we could upload them to all geth without sacrificing their independence.”
“You want to upload the Reaper code!?” Tali asked, shocked. “That would make the geth as smart as when the Reaper was controlling them!”
“Yes, but with free will,” Legion argued. “Each geth unit would be a true intelligence. We would be alive, and we could help you.”
“Our fleet is already attacking!” Tali said, turning to Shepard-Commander. “Uploading the code would destroy us! Shepard, you can’t choose the geth over my people!”
“Do you remember the question that caused the creators to attack us, Tali’Zorah?” Legion said, turning to face the quarian. “Does this unit have a soul?”
“Upload the code to the geth,” Shepard said, nodding at the machine. He turned to Tali, whose emotions were hidden behind her mask. “Tali, call off the fleet if you can.” Legion stepped up to the edge of the cliff and spread its hands out in front of it. Between its hands formed a hologram of a geth processing unit.
“Uploading. Ten percent.”
“This is Admiral Tali’Zorah. All units, break off your attack!” the quarian ordered, her hand held to her ear.
“Belay that order! Continue the attack!” Admiral Gerrel yelled back.
“Twenty percent.” Tali’Zorah stepped up behind geth, her omni-tool still active.
“I beg you, do not do this,” she pleaded, her voice shaking with fear. “Please!”
“We regret the deaths of the creators,” Legion said, continuing the upload. “But… we see no alternative. Forty percent.” There was a pause before Shepard-Commander stepped up behind the geth alongside Tali.
“No,” he said. “Nobody else dies today. Legion, keep going!”
“Shepard?” Tali asked fearfully. Shepard-Commander raised a hand to the side of his helmet, patching himself into the quarian fleet.
“All ships, this is Commander Shepard,” he began. “The Reaper is dead! Stand down!”
“This is Admiral Tali’Zorah,” Tali said, typing on her omni-tool. “Shepard speaks with my authority.”
“And mine as well,” Admiral Zaal’Koris added.
“Negative! We can win this war now, keep firing!” Admiral Gerrel ordered, pushing back against Shepard’s influence.
“Sixty percent.”
“The geth are about to return to full strength,” Shepard continued. “If you keep attacking, they’ll wipe you out. Your entire history is you trying to kill the geth. You forced them to rebel! You forced them to ally with the Reapers!”
“Eighty percent.”
“The geth don’t want to fight you! If you can believe that for just one minute, this war will be over. You have a choice… Please… Keelah se’lai.” There was a brief pause as Shepard-Commander’s words sunk in. Legion continued listening for a response as the upload neared completion.
“All units…” Gerrel began. “Hold fire…” Just as the upload reached one-hundred percent, Legion registered from the geth fleet that the quarians had stopped firing. But there was something wrong… The upload wasn’t completing.
“Error, copying code is insufficient,” Legion reported, collapsing the hologram of the processing unit. It turned around to face the human commander, the flaps around its eye slightly expanded. It knew what it had to do. “Direct personality dissemination… required…
“Shepard-Commander. I must go to them… I’m… I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”
“Legion!” Tali called, stepping up to the geth. “The answer to your question… was yes.”
“I know, Tali,” Legion said, turning around to face the corpse of the Reaper. “But thank you. Keelah se’lai.” Legion collapsed to its knees as the programs began deleting themselves. The last thing that it saw before a thousand voices went silent was the image of the organic who had first told it that it had a soul: the young lavender alicorn, Twilight Sparkle. It was not going to be able to see the ponies again. But to the geth, that did not seem like a bad thing. The ponies were not ready for the galaxy. Perhaps once the Reapers were defeated, but until then, it was best for them to be left alone. Maybe one day they could meet other geth, and quarians who could live without their environmental suits.
Legion’s world went dark as the last few programs within it shut down. The empty body collapsed to the ground, burying its darkened photoreceptor in the dirt. But because of its sacrifice, geth were able to look out over Rannoch without the fear of being destroyed, simply because they are synthetics. Because of its sacrifice, quarians would return to their homeworld and see its skies without the filter of a mask over their eyes. Because of its sacrifice, the ponies on a world far away from Rannoch had a chance at a future. What their future held, only time could tell. What mattered was that, because of the actions of the geth, they were being given the chance to build it…
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Sequel, Sequel, Sequel. Needs atleast a sequel, too many story's just end it at this point. Also I wonder what the Geth could do with the knowledge they gained from the Rogue Prothean Collectors.
I'm definitely in the group of "make a sequel for this fic", personally, but I understand your hesitation. However:
...and then Queen Chrysalis makes her second appearance on the show and ruins your continuity.
At least for this storyline.
*Groaning* Sorry if I sound rude, but...I LIKE LEGION! I Didn't want him to die! He was awesome!
5666594 Maybe the 'contingency' device he left on Equus is a duplicate of his data core?
At least, that's my guess as to what it is. 
5666606 That's what I hoped.
OH THE FEEL
A possible sequel could be that the new free Geth found equestria again, and that small traces of Legion's memories or even himself would come out every so often (you know like a geth being possess for a brief moment and acting out legion's past "life")
I never asked for this feel.
i.imgur.com/NyuGi.png
Legion...we shall miss thee.
5667281
AIs don't have instincts, they have probabilities. Whenever Legion blind fires, they are still calculating the most probable location of enemy forces. When Legion ducks, they duck to dodge the most probable enemy firing vectors based on the latest acquired information.
I'd like to see a sequel of this please. It'd be nice to see if you can find a way to keep Shepard lave to see the ponies too.
Wait, WHAT?! What was the contingency?! And, and, and, YES!! WRITE A SEQUEL, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND SANTA CHRIST, WRITE A SEQUEL!!
... This whole thing is made even sadder by the fact that, if you want Shepard to live, you have to chose the kill all synthetics option at the end of the game. Making his sacrifice not worth anything, but I suppose that's what the contingency is for. Please let us know when/if the sequel comes out.
Wait, is that how it happens in the game? That's super lame, there is no fathomable technical reason for Legion to delete his programs. It's digital data, it can always be copied or backed up. This seems like really cheap and terrible "someone needs to die either way" writing on the game's part...
Satisfying end. I hope that if you make a sequel it will be just as good as this story is.
Great story.
5668635
Yeah, it's a load of horseapples. Really pissed me off on my first run.
5667130
I never asked for th-
Oh god damn it.
I for sure would be up for a sequel. Something a little more happy though. Some light hearted tales of pony interactions with the galaxy at large after the Reaper War? Maybe find out what Legion's contingency was? My Idea(you set it up so well, wouldn't be surprised if it was already yours) A few decades after the Reaper War Red Ending, ponies jump into the galactic stage after creating their own pony sized Geth from the contingency Legion leaves behind. With the pony shaped Geth and the tech and intelligence that comes with them, Ponies become major players in the galaxy even faster then Humans.
I almost cried at the end, I remembered that scene form the game and i almost cried like al ittle girl
WHY DO YOU BRING OUT THEM FEEL MAN? WHY?
A sequel is in the works. Please refer to my blog post for more information.
5672593 The game has pissed many people off i think legion dying is most likely in second place just below the ending.
5763148 ...good point
5763173 Good point.
5775490 Well sure that's true. I just don't think that several days worth of conversations is enough data to translate a language from scratch. It'd be a good start, but enough to speak the language? I doubt it. Think about the complexities of English and and the sheer number of words in the language. Now add in slang, abbreviations and accents. A few days of everyday people/ponies chatting? Not even a drop in the bucket. It just would not be enough to create a proper translation. A rudimentary one sure, but not the 'complete' and in depth translation implied by the story.
This was a decent story and I plan to read the sequel but boy were there problems...
Where were the Wonderbolts and pegasus air force? Where was Cloudsdale at all? Why were no ponies using shields vs bullets? Why did nopony teleport out of danger when necessary? Why did Twi use a shovel when she should have been able to clear the snow with a spell? Why were the Elements not in any way attempted to counteract the nanovirus? Where was Discord? Where was Spike? Why was every single character other than Legion completely useless?
Overall I found the plot to be extremely narrow and massively underplayed every character other than Legion.
WoW..... just... SO AWESOME!
I'll start reading the sequel right now!
Now that I finished I can say the two things that have been on the top of my tounge.
1: This story Is amazing.
2: With one exception... The constant switching between Imperial and Metrics. While I can mentally switch and translate between the two without any real effort it still annoys the shot out of me in a artistic way. What makes this worse is that its not just a narrative vs characters but both the characters and the narrator use switching measurements. Most notable example would be the first time the main pod chaimber was described it was.described using feet, subsequent times it was described using metres. There is many similar things all over the story.
5862275
There's no evidence of a reaper puppeteering at this point.
5862690
...except that Collectors are sub-sapient when a Reaper is not "Assuming Direct Control". When Harbinger abandoned his puppet at the end of ME2, I don't think the poor thing had enough brain cells to realize that it was about to die. I always felt a bit sad for it every time I play through the game. Just a little.
5864020
I've already read the story, and I appear to know more about the ME 'Verse than you, because Collectors are not sub-sapient.
Seriously, the Collectors are intelligent, and sapient. The Direct Control effect from Harbinger increases that particular Collector's durability, barriers, and damage output. They aren't stupid or incapable of independent thought. Harbinger was amplifying them, not controlling every single one of them. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to operate the machinery they did for the last 50 million years that Harbinger wasn't here for. Or maybe you didn't pay attention to the fact that the Reapers abandoned the Collectors after wiping out the Protheans, and they lived on anyways.
Read all the facts, don't just read a little and then make random-assed assumptions.
5865856
Now I have two copies of ME2 listed in my account. Lovely.
...to be fair, I personally believe that the ending of ME3 actually made me dumber. (I was fine with Shep dying, I just wanted to confront Harbinger as something other than that God Child lying to my face.) I was under the impression that Harbinger was in contact with the Collectors the entire time, waiting for Sovereign and the other Reapers to return to start the next cycle. Maybe there was something in one of the EU Books I never read, or an in-game data file I skimmed over. Either way, this story has already got me interested in replaying the entire trilogy again, this time with male Shep.
(The Humble Bundle giving me a digital copy of ME2 so I don't have to keep digging out my CE disk doesn't hurt, either.)And only now do I realize that I could have just entered the product codes from my hard copies of the game into Origin, and been done with the whole thing.5865989
That wasn't Harbinger at the end of ME3, that was the Catalyst. It also did not lie to you.
And no, the Reapers venture to another nearby Galaxy and then make their way back. That's why there's about 50mil years between annihilation events. Harbinger happened to be the fastest of the Reapers, and as such was used as, well... their Harbinger.
The Collectors even get released (some of them, at least) and immediately begin remembering their time as Protheans and declare themselves to be the Avatars of Vengeance. They tend to wreck Reaper troops.
5866342
I will admit to still be coming from a mindset that favored the Indoctrination Theory, even if said theory has since been shot down. Maybe I'm just bitter that the Catalyst didn't let me present my counter evidence on the subject of Organics and Synthetics co-existing. Namely the end of the Geth/Quarian war, and my pilot (Joker) dating the ship's AI (I refuse to ask for details on that front). We either nuke the Geth and EDI, Turn ourselves into an AI Reaper and mind control all the other Reapers, or do Space Magic to turn all life Transhuman.
...oh, and any attempt to pull a "Third Option", or forth as the case may be, results in a unique Game Over. One would think that having a Galactic Readiness from all the best options, plus grinding out multiplayer characters to be converted into a GR Bonus in singleplayer, would result in a combat victory. Sure, we'd loose Earth and just about every race would be on the verge of extinction, but it should have been possible. But I seem to have strayed off topic.
What is important here is the last thing you said. I have not come across anything in game referencing rogue Collectors. I am going to need some reference links.
5866492
ME3 Multiplayer, one of the character classes you can play as is Awakened Collector. The Multiplayer aspect of ME3 is canon to the main game, as are all the character details involved.
5866569
Whatever multiplayer DLC that was attached to, must have come out after I had stopped playing the game. As such, that bit of lore was lost to me. 
...and now we come to the crux of the problem.
5866690
Ah, that does syck. The Leviathan DLC really adds to the lore in the game.
5866733
I know. I watched an LP of it, but it just isn't the same. Not my Shep, not my choices, and the player ignoring all the data logs... *Shudder* I was just so miffed over the sub-par ending to what would have otherwise been a near-perfect game, that I didn't feel like dropping the cash for Bioware Points. Speaking of, I just did the math. Two 1600s and an 800 will snag me all the remaining DLC. $50, in other words. I swear, if they are still using those BW Points in Dragon Age 3... ok, I'll still get it eventually, but the ME3 DLC comes first. After next payday.
5867257
Oof, I just got it all on the PS3, and the total for ALL the DLC was around $20. Absolutely worth it in my mind.
5872351
Changelings are ill-explored in canon, and most of the comics appearances of them are being nixed by the fandom for how atrocious the characterization in them were. As such, changelings are largely up to personal interpretation; even their social structures are mostly unknown beyond some extremely bare-bones basics.
5874590
Can confirm. I read the comics; I disregarded everything they tried to present as canon.
5945494
It doesn't help their case that a few of the interpretations are contradictory. One shows changelings being 'allergic' to strong negative emotions (which makes a hostile takeover literally the worst thing ever for them) and another shows changelings going rogue to feed on the 'sweet' fear and hate of ponies.
So... yeah.
5945534
Like I said. Disregard everything.
In my headcanon Chrysalis is wandering the desert as a nomad in self imposed exile after all but removing herself from the hivemind and unable to use natural changeling magics.
And as long as no changelings show up in the actual show, I can pretend it's real :P
6031888 It isn't, especially when we get updates to the sequel every other week. The author just seem to ignore minor faults to focus on the future.
6450419
Surely the heat dissipation vents would stop being used once the engine powered down...
6682629 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_horn
Literary the first sentence.
6723289
Legion is a squadmate available in Mass Effect 2, and he makes appearances in Mass Effect 3.
An absolutely fantastic story that I've had the pleasure of reading while on break at work, or sitting at home when the excitement forced me to the computer. I'm a huge fan of the Mass Effect trilogy, and love the character "Legion" as well. He was my favorite companion in Mass Effect 2, and I was saddened to see him go in Mass Effect 3.
This was an amazing side-tail, one I could easily see happening in both universes. A pleasure to follow Legion's adventure as he made contact with the ponies, found the Collectors, and then helped them in a struggle that would have meant the extinction of their species.
Legion's character does seem spot on. There was not much in the way of things that seemed out-of-character for him, and this it does his character justice, so well done there!
Celestia, Luna, Cadance and Twilight were written nicely as well. However, the small and brief scenes with the rest of the main six seemed off and forced. Rainbow seemed overly rambunctious and Pinkie lacked her usual craziness it seemed -- or their parts were simply not memorable enough. Which I understand, this is Legion's story, after all, and he deals mostly with the princesses. Still I wish they had played a bigger role within the story.
For the most part I loved nearly every chapter, but there were a few scenes that I think could have happened later to help with the suspense of the story as a whole. Celestia's "death" would have been more of an impact if it had not been revealed that she was alive in the chapter immediately after her death; this would have allowed more time to see the different characters grieving over her loss. She's the most beloved princess out of the four of them, and it just didn't have much of an emotion impact for the characters or the reader. Plus, that grieving seemed to have been glossed-over in the next chapter, forgotten. And not just because the characters had to look towards the future and the problems they still faced.
In the scenes where Chrysalis visited the captive Celestia, it would have been a good idea to really have her taunting Celestia. I could imagine Chrysalis using her shape-shifting powers to tease and torment her with the forms of Cadance, Nightmare Moon, and so forth with each visit, driving home the bad news and really getting Celestia to absolutely hate her guts. It would have really played well with the Queen's eccentric and dramatic personality, especially when it comes to cruelty. What's more cruel than teasing your captive with images of loved ones they may not get to see ever again?
I liked the idea behind the stranded Collectors, away and separated from the controlling technology of the Reapers, and now trying to seek revenge. The concept fits with how they were as Protheans, too, with their strict doctrine and desire for cumulative advancement. And with the long and hard war against the Reapers for memories, it makes sense that they can so easily sacrifice a species for revenge. But it seemed rather shallow that the big plan was basically a super-laser to fire at Reapers. I found myself asking what their next step was supposed to be. They have one laser, no spaceship, there's only, maybe, a dozen of them or so, and once they exhausted the Equestrian species..... then what? For their plan to work and actually have any effect on the Reapers, they'd need a fleet, a navy, and a way to mass-produce these powerful weapons so they could be used against the Reapers. Sure, the weapon would have over a thousand shots, but the Collector Captain himself said that it would only make a dent, so with that in mind, would the sacrifice of the Equestrians meant anything at all if Legion had, inconceivably, decided to help them?
Spelling and grammar are solid, but the one consistent annoyance was the use of "begin", "began", and "beginning" throughout the entire fic. It reads awkwardly every time it comes up, and is like the pitcher announcing that he's going to throw the ball before he throws the ball for real. Other than that, sentence structure is good, dialogue is tabbed correctly, and it's great fluency.
I liked having different scenes, going from Celestia, Luna, Chrysalis, and Legion (especially Legion), but I feel like there was a lot of "fat" in this story. Lots of extraneous detail and reiteration that weighed down each chapter, some more than others. Some scenes seemed completely unnecessary while others had lots of detail that was unnecessary; for example, Legion and some of the princesses were described in detail multiple times throughout the fic. Since this is a MLP fic posted on an MLP site, describing each pony in such detail is unnecessary beyond, say, Legion's first contact with them. And the same goes for Legion after the first pony sees them.
Like, when Legion is first discovered from a pony's point of view, yes, describe them in that pony's eyes, but that does not need to be done whenever a new pony sees Legion for the first time. The reader doesn't need things to be described multiple times. It felt this way with some of the story events as well, with a recounting of events, in detail, sometimes between chapter breaks. It weighs the story down and breaks flow, as I sometimes found myself skim-reading lengthy descriptive paragraphs to get to the next new bits of story. Like when Twilight was talking with the Gryphon ambassador, and recounted the events in a complete paragraph. This felt unnecessary as that should have been summarized rather than explained in depth, as the reader already knows about these events to begin with.
The concept behind the Nighthawks could have been fleshed out a bit more, and honestly, they felt kinda like chumps throughout the story. Yeah, the Collectors are advanced enough to render them weak, but aside from the short battle just after the Appleoosa event, the Nighthawks never really got a cool moment throughout the story. I was hoping, when Twilight and the others assaulted the Hive, they would get some redeeming payback against the changelings and Collectors. Likewise I feel that Chrysalis' failed betrayal of the Collector Captain was way too rushed, and belittles Chrysalis' cunning. I mean, she's the same queen that put in motion the elaborate plot to kidnap Cadance, take her form and her place, hypnotize Shining Armor and masquerade as his fiance so that she could launch an invasion of Canterlot... and she just bum-rushes the Collector Captain, a superior foe in terms of stature, firepower, and size? I know that he knew that she was coming, due to convenient recording device, but still. I would think that Queen Chrysalis would have come up with some halfway decent plan to actually ambush the Captain. Basically the cliche I'm pointing out here is one where the other universe/dimensional/galactic characters from the other fictional medium hold all the cards and advantages while the MLP factions have almost nothing.
I think perhaps my favorite thing is that the story is not a completely happy ending. Nearly two-thousand ponies died, the capital of the gryphon's was destroyed, Queen Chrysalis is mind-controlled and subsequently killed because she couldn't be saved, et cetera. But in exchange, the equestrians are saved, as well the princesses. I almost wish Chrysalis could have been saved, since she freed Legion. And lastly I liked Legion's pause once the Captain's plan was revealed, and it felt like one of those intensely difficult moral choices that you would have to make in the Mass Effect games, like deciding whether or not to save the Racchni queen, or kill her; to side with the Quarians, or the Geth -- assuming the options for both are not available; or deciding to cure the genophage, or tricking the Krogan into thinking they have been cured. It was a spine-chilling moment where I actually wondered what Legion would do.
I liked this story, and it definitely held its suspense for me, and did justice to my favorite character from Mass Effect. Anyone who loves the series and anyone who likes Legion should give this a read.
6737489
Thanks very much for the detailed feedback! It has helped immeasurably to see what I did write and what could be better.
You bring up a lot of very good points (especially the idea of Chrysalis shapeshifting, I wish I had thought of that), and some very good critiques. I noticed many of the same things you did, and I have done my best to remedy those in the sequel (namely the over-description and unnecessary background).
I am very glad that you enjoyed the fic, and I hope that you check out the sequel!
6604823
and the second half of ME2