In another time, another galaxy...
Rachel Shepard dreamed. And in her dreams, she remembered.
She remembered that the battle had actually been going well at first. The united forces of the galaxy had come together to deliver a hammer blow to the Reapers and break their hold once and for all. Even the Quarians and Geth had stood together to defeat their common foe. The Normandy crew had actually made it all the way to Earth's surface, had fought through the Reaper ground forces and had nearly made it to the Citadel portal... when their luck finally ran out. Harbinger arrived and immediately enacted a scorched earth policy, nearly killing Shepard and her team. In fact, Shepard was pretty sure that some of her team had been killed. Had it been Javik? Or Vega? Garrus? She couldn't remember...
Shepard, grievously wounded, had stumbled into the portal. She did remember bleeding from everywhere.
She remembered facing the Illusive Man at last and illustrating to him why he was such a dumbass. With her gun.
And then she sat down with Admiral Andersen, both of them too tired to move.
Oh, that's right. Andersen was gone now.
Somehow she had stumbled up to the deck where the Crucible could be activated from. It needed to be interfaced with the Citadel's main computer. She had been relishing the sight of the ancient-but-not weapon finally destroying the Reapers. Then there was VI, like Vigil or the one they found in the Temple of Athame. And it revealed the horrifying truth.
"It appears you have misunderstood. This Crucible, as you call it, is not meant to use the Citadel and mass relays to destroy the Reapers. It will open a gateway to a place that the Reapers cannot follow. It was meant to be an escape."
She had told Admiral Hackett. He had made the grim decision to order as many ships to flee through the gateway as possible and if the Reapers started getting too close, it would be destroyed. He ordered Shepard through; the survivors on the other side would need a leader. Shepard, too numb to respond had simply nodded.
The Normandy had swung in to pick her up, Harbinger hot on its tail. She remembered Liara and Tali dragging her into Sickbay and then Joker said something about going in, the lights went off and... and the universe seemed to invert? Or maybe that was her pain-addled mind, deprived of blood and about to shut down.
Things got hazier from there. She'd probably been drugged, maybe operated on. She had a vague impression of Dr. Chakwas hovering over and a blur of blue that had to be Liara...
"There's a planet out there but it's not Earth and EDI doesn't recognize any stars. She doesn't have one frickin' clue where we are."
"Unknown starships are approaching us."
"You will be escorted to our base on Taris below. Where is the captain of this ship?"
She remembered being dragged out of Sickbay and taken down to... the Shuttlebay?
"Shepard? Shepard, wake up! We need to get out of here!"
Someone blue, had to be Liara, had been dragging her along. Then there were strange noises and bolts of red light impacted the walls and floors around her and Liara. Things were starting to fade away again...
"Shepard? Shepard? Can you hear me? Shepard!"
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A/N: Now that the prologues have been re-edited, I'm going to start work on the first actual chapter. There are also going to be bonus chapters that show what happened to Revan, Carth and the others before Shepard and Co. arrived.
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Force Effect: A Star Wars/Mass Effect Crossover
FanfictionPublished for the 10th Anniversary of KOTOR, this tale mixes two of Bioware's biggest hits and the results could be... explosive. Shepard and her crew thought that The Crucible would save them and destroy the Reapers. They were wrong. New rules. New...
