There were countless beliefs about how the universe began. Innumerable religions and myths, explanations both mystical and mundane, magical and scientific. Theories of how everything that is, was, and will be was shaped and formed, theories of how it functioned, theories of what came when it ended. Even theories that there were multiple universes, an endless cascading tree of existences defined moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, and choice by choice.
What very few people understood was that all of these theories, all of these beliefs and concepts and systems of knowledge, were true.
There was one, true, supreme god. The-One-Above-All, Lord of the House of Ideas, Master of the Living Tribunal.
There were the countless lesser pantheons. The Norse, the Mesopotamians, the Amatsu-Kami, the Apu, the Ennead, and more.
And yes, oh yes, had there been a Big Bang. A massive explosion of inconceivable size and power and heat.
Yet what so many did not know, did not realize and understand, was that the Big Bang was not truly the birth of the universe, but one of countless rebirths, part of an endless cycle of creation and destruction, of life and death. A cycle that was embodied, overseen, defended, and emulated by one of the most powerful and primal of entities.
The Black Angel, The Black Queen, The Chaos-Bringer, The-End-Of-All-That-Is, The Big Bang, the Cosmic Firebird, the Void Falcon. Countless names, from countless dimensions and countless species and countless cycles, all referring to one being of titanic radiance.
The Pheonix Force.
Once again, The Force was itself undergoing the process of rebirth, but this time things were different. This time, rather than simply following its instincts and hatching from within The White-Hot Room, it nestled within its timeless, primordial nest and thought. It had partnered with…more hosts than mortal minds could fathom, lived and died with them more times than words existed to express, but it had never really understood them. Mortality, and more importantly the wants, desires, and dreams that came with it, had always been far beyond it's comprehension. Nor, quite frankly, had it ever tried very hard. Understanding mortals and all that came with them were not what it existed to do, and they were hardly central to it's purpose.
Yet, no host had so fascinated it as Jean Grey. A woman whose many versions had been its host, whose children had been its host, across multitudinous iterations of Creation, a woman whose very essence it had once taken into itself so that it could live as her for years on end. Long had it struggled to understand its attachment to her, long had it wondered why it's time with her caused it to have thoughts. To wonder, to question, to feel. To love, to hate, to fear. To be driven mad by mortality, by the suffering binding itself to hosts so closely as it had to her that emotion began to affect its own mind, to degrade its sense of self and it's self-control.
A degradation that had led to it being shattered, torn into a thousand, thousand pieces and scattered across the width and breadth of the multiverse. Now it was reborn, and rather than immediately seeking out a host, it was (to use a mortal phrase) taking stock of things.
The problem, it reasoned, was that it had kept trying to do everything the same way, even after it had been intrinsically changed by those it had been hosted within. It had kept doing the same things, in the same universes, with the same people, for eons on end. Another mortal phrase came to mind: 'insanity is doing the same thing, over and over and over, and expecting the results to change.'
Perhaps the key to understanding what had changed within it, how it had truly been affected, lay not in another Jean Grey, another X-Men. Perhaps it was time to do something…new.
Decision made, it turned its gaze outside of the White Hot Room, to the endless expanse of the multi-verse. In seconds it had observed a thousand realities, and dismissed nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them. The final dimension, much to its interest, possessed an abundance of psionic energy…and not a single creature capable of wielding it.
It had never seen this before. Realities where those who wielded the power it governed were not unusual, certainly. Worlds they were elevated and revered as gods or cast down and condemned as monsters were (if not common-place) certainly not a rarity. But a dimension where there were none? Despite itself, the Force was actually excited, in a very real way, by the uniqueness of such a thing.
Then its proverbial eye caught sight of something, and its gaze focused on the radiant stars holding the sentient life of this dimension. One by one, those lights were being snuffed out, but there was something wrong about it all. It was not due to their own actions, or those of another species, but an outside force.
It focused closer still, and bore witness to a cloud of black, locusts of metal, consuming those worlds and their inhabitants without…anything. No remorse, no hate, no purpose. They consumed because that is what they did, and the Pheonix reached out across the cosmos to touch the minds of their victims. The Inusannon, they called themselves, as they cried out for salvation to a universe that lacked the means or the desire to do so.
This, in and of itself, was not inherently unusual to the Force. It had seen many such ends to many such species, but this time it seemed different, though the details of the differences seemed beyond its grasp for the moment. As the locusts continued their work, it watched and contemplated. Millenia passed, species rising and falling of their own accord, until a race named the Protheans began to conquer the races around them. It watched as they formed a vast interstellar empire, forged of dozens of races. Watched as they observed and experimented on far more primitive species, including the fledgling humanity of this dimension. It watched as they defended a strange sibling-race to mankind, females one and all, from would-be invaders. And it watched as the locusts came again, fifty thousand years after the Inusannon had been consumed. The war between Prothean and locust waged for centuries, and during those centuries it learned much.
It learned that the locusts, called 'Reapers' by the Protheans, sought to enact and preserve a 'cycle', one in which they harvested the sentient races of the galaxy before leaving to slumber in deep space.
The Pheonix Force found itself offended by such a claim. This was no cycle deserving of the name, by any stretch of imagination. Perhaps if the locusts had simply harvested the disparate races it would be no more than another example of nature's immutable laws in action, but the there was nothing natural about it. Every step of the galaxy's evolution was guided and manipulated by the Reapers, ensuring that that no species could evolve outside of their desires. It was, in effect, an enormous controlled experiment, and the Force was unamused.
As the last bastions of the Protheans crumbled away, raging against their mortality and extinction, leaving weapons and soldiers and technology behind in a futile attempt at enacting revenge from beyond the grave, the Pheonix Force turned its eyes back to Earth. Back to humanity, the race it favoured most of all, and it settled in to wait. Someday, it knew, a host would be born to this mankind. A host with whom it would bond and guide, a host that would help it shatter this wretched, farcical shadow of the natural cycle and restore order to this universe.
It would be quite the wait, tens of millennia most likely, but it could handle that. Fortunately, impatience was not one of the traits it had picked up from its hosts.
Or so it had thought.
As it turns out, it had learned anticipation, and given how the two things so often went hand in hand, it quickly found itself wishing for the days where ages could pass without notice. At the same time, however, with its new-found desire to understand and appreciate mortality, it found itself watching the events that her previous hosts had only ever learned about as children, never experienced for themselves.
Every triumph and tragedy, every wise ruler and cruel despot, every moment of hope and despair, it witnessed them all, and it felt. Time and again, it found itself having to contain the desire to intervene directly, to change things, to shape mankind's history and development along paths it found more desirable, but it resisted. Though this 'empathy' was a potent thing, it would not intervene in the natural course of humanity.
It had no desire to emulate the 'hypocrisy' which humans seemed to be so talented with.
Finally, the children of Earth reached the stars once more, advancing and learning and exploring until they found the cache of technology that the Protheans had left behind upon Mars. The anticipation grew, for it knew that now was the time to begin its scrutiny in earnest, to seek out the perfect host, the partner and weapon it would wield and be wielded by to burn the locusts from the stars. A handful of years, somehow all the more interminable despite being naught but a fraction of a fraction of the time it had waited so far, passed before it found her. A radiant, fragile, fateful soul nestled safe and warm within the embrace of her mother's womb.
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Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Hannah Shepard, Systems Alliance Navy, gently rubbed her swollen stomach as she looked out across the stars towards the gleaming skeleton of the SSV Einstein. Despite being just over five months pregnant, when the opportunity had been present for her to go aboard the Hephaistos Stardocks in high orbit over Mars, she had jumped on it with little in the way of hesitation. Serving on a ship like the Einstein, someday standing on the bridge of such a ship and leading a fleet into battle, that was her dream. A distant dream, one that would take time and effort, but one she was determined to reach all the same.
Even from here, she could see the transports, drones, and skiffs moving around and through the carrier, and the bright, flashing glare of thousands of welders were visible despite the radiance of Sol and the field of stars surrounding them, and as she watched the yard dogs labour she couldn't help but reflect on how much had changed. It had been less than a decade since the discovery of the Prothean Ruins upon Mars, and already her race reached not just for their own star, but the infinite expanse beyond the Charon Relay. Already they poured unfathomable resources into building such ships as the Einstein, despite the protests of many nations of Earth, because Humanity knew that other races existed, one of which having had outposts dedicated to studying humanity and (they believed, though efforts to study the Prothean data were still ongoing, and likely would be for her life-time and beyond) experimenting upon them.
Mankind would not be found helpless if the galaxy should prove as hostile as centuries of science-fiction had presumed it to be.
Such thoughts brought to mind her husband, her Faolan, who even now was stationed on Demeter as part of its dual-duty military garrison/police force, and she gave a wistful sight. It had been months since she had seen him last, and though she didn't regret either of them their duties, she did wish he was beside her now. At the rate his deployment was going, he would miss her entire pregnancy, having shipped out not days after their daughter had been conceived. Indeed, it very well could have been their farewell to one another that resulted in her current condition, and while grainy videos and transmitted ultra-sounds were better than nothing, she wished he was home to feel their little girl kick.
Besides which, it had certainly been true that she had found herself…more desirous of company and ravenously hormonal during her pregnancy thus far, and her loving husband being far outside of her grasp had certainly meant handling such things was rather less fulfilling than she would have hoped. Of course, that wasn't the worst part, which was without a doubt the knowing looks she got from the female staff of certain stores.
A glimpse of movement, bright and broad, caught her eye and she withdrew from her thoughts to focus on the source. An enormous mass conveyor was approaching from the direction of the relay, likely full of either supplies for the shipyards, or empty after delivering some to the equally-skeletal form of Arcturus Station. Likely empty, given that building Arcturus and its defenses was more of a priority at the moment than expanding their mobile forces. The benefits of having a natural stellar choke-point bottle-necking access to their home system ensured that.
The massive ship continued to slowly make it's way closer, stabilizers flaring as it banked a little further away from the drydocks, likely at the behest of a hawk-eyed air traffic controller that didn't want so much as a scratch on the Einstein on his watch, and she felt her lips quirk in amusement at the thought. The amusement faded slightly into confusion as she noticed the bright glow of the conveyor's engines begin to flicker sporadically, bringing to mind a sputtering flame, and a deep, primal instinct screamed that something was wrong.
Disaster struck even as she listened, turning away in an effort to flee (from what, she didn't know), the horizon vanishing in light as the conveyor's drive core suffered a catastrophic cascading failure and lost containment. instantly turned the three-hundred-thousand-ton cargo ship, and the two-hundred crewmen aboard her, into ash. Alarms resounded, filling the halls of the station with a howling clamor, and emergency shutters slammed shut automatically mere moments before the shockwave (and the radiation it carried) smashed into it. Slapping her hands onto the nearest safety railing with bruising force and wrapping her fingers around it tightly enough that they creaked in protest, Hannah gritted her teeth and road it out as best she could.
The station heaved, metal shrieking with protest as it was buffeted by the explosion, a ship suddenly adrift on a turbulent and violent sea. She could feel the Hephaistos' station-keeping thrusters fighting it, and she could only imagine the desperate efforts of the command crew as they tried to keep the station stable without having the two opposing forces actually cause greater damage than simply riding the shockwave out might have. Fortunately, Earth's premier shipyards were not a posting for the bubblegummers of the world, and the station not only didn't come apart at the seams, but slowly started to stabilize and steady out, allowing her to feel the rhythmic, thrumming shudders of the station's GARDIAN point point-defense lasers firing. Doubtlessly dealing with the wreckage of the conveyor big enough to pose a danger to the admittedly mediocre kinetic barriers.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the shockwave had vented it's fury and the shaking stopped, the world returning to a standstill. The alarms fell silent, though the crimson strobes of the emergency lights continued to pulsate and the shutters remained firmly shut, and she turned to settle her back against the wall, sliding down it and cradling her swollen belly as she focused on calming down. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, eyes closed and breathing deeply, before she heard the pounding feet of station personnel approaching. Likely not long, she knew, given the fact that the first thing that would have happened after the situation was remotely stable was parties being sent out to look for any damage to the station or anyone who might have been injured during the event.
"Lieutenant, are you…" she heard a young woman's voice ask worriedly, before stuttering to a halt, and she opened her eyes with a wry smile to find a girl that couldn't have been older than nineteen, dressed in grease-stained overalls, staring at her stomach.
"I'm alright, but I wouldn't say no to some assistance in reaching the infirmary so I can make sure my little one is as well." She answered the unfinished question calmly, and the girl (and the mixed group that followed her) bobbed their heads in synchronized agreement, omni-tools coming to life in a blossoming of orange light. She almost laughed at the brief, confused squabble as they tried to figure out amongst themselves who was going to call the medics, who was going to wait with her, and who was going to continue the group's assigned search. In the end, the young woman who had first addressed her was the one who remained with her, while the rest moved on with their mission. Leaning her head back against the cool metal, she was quiet for a long moment before addressing her companion. "Why don't you tell me about yourself while we wait? Keep me busy."
"Yes ma'am, of course ma'am." Was the immediate response, and she resisted the urge to laugh again at the instant, earnest, rote response. "Servicewoman Apprentice Tamara Mitchell, ma'am. Assigned to Hephaistos until a ship-side berth opens up. I'm, ah, I'm trying to end up being a Chief Engineer on a warship, ma'am."
"Engineer, huh? Good for you, Mitchell. Everyone wants to being a Marine or command a dreadnought, myself included, but without folks like you we'd never leave shore." Hannah told her, the compliment entirely genuine, and she smirked a little as the girl blushed.
"Thank you, ma'am. I know it's not as glamorous, and no one ever gives engineers medals or names a ship after them, but…I'm not a fighter. Never have been. I'd rather spend an eight-hour shift soldering micro-fractures or fine-tuning an eezo core than trading gunshots with someone for eight seconds. I barely managed to pass my required combat courses." She said the final words with such profound feeling that Hannah did laugh, much to Mitchell's consternation, something Hannah noticed, resulting in an apologetic smile for the younger woman.
"Ah, don't think that I'm laughing at you, Mitchell. I'm just thinking about how diametrically opposed our own interests and talents are. I barely passed my Basic Engineering and Eezo Maintenance classes in the Academy." She reassured, mollifying her companion somewhat, and the pair fell into an easy conversation about their distant lovers, though most of the conversation was Mitchell gushing about her long-time boyfriend (who had promised to propose after his next promotion), a fellow engineer named Adams.
It didn't take long for a medical team to arrive, gurney in tow, and ever-so-politely whisk Hannah off to the medical bay for rather thorough testing. It took nearly an hour of testing, prodding, poking, and a battery of questions that ranged past exhausting and into discomfiting before they finally allowed her to be bundle into a med-shuttle back to Earth, with the stern 'advisement' that she not find herself anywhere near an eezo core larger than that of an air-car or Kodiak until she gave birth.
Normally, just by her very nature and the culture of service, Hannah the Officer would be protesting such treatment and insist on her well-being. Pregnant Hannah, however, was willing to take any number of tests and instructions if it meant keeping her baby safe. Even if being laid up or treated differently stung her pride, she wasn't willing to take any chances at all, not after being that close to the melt-down of an eezo core that big.
Fortunately, while her time at Johns Hopkins was even more exhaustive than the medical bay aboard Hephaistos, it was shorter. Granted, it was only shorter because she was, at the very strong 'recommendation' of the Head of Obstetrics, informed that her new duty station was as an assistant and Teacher's Aide at Annapolis. Only a handful of minutes away from the hospital by shuttle, just in case anything ended up going wrong. Oh, none of their tests, examinations, or theories had shown anything that was of concern, but then again (as the Head had pointed out) it wasn't as if they were terribly used to dealing with eezo exposure and the results just yet. They just hadn't had enough time to really build experience with handling it, though admittedly the lack of problems so far for them to study or learn from was hardly something that a reasonable person could complain too loudly about. Not unless they wanted to look like a callous lunatic that should be in an asylum, anyway.
And so she went to Annapolis, and much to her bemusement became instantly popular. She was actually good at this whole mentoring thing, apparently, above and beyond the fact that the female cadets like to crowd around asking about her baby and the male cadets thought she was a 'total badass' for being up close and personal to an exploding starship and coming out alive. Never mind that the ship's entire crew had died and she hadn't done anything but stand in a corridor on Hephaistos.
Had she been this easily excited when she had been a cadet?
It wasn't until midway through her seventh month of pregnancy that things went wrong, with terrifying speed…and agonizing pain. She was in the midst of giving a small lecture in one of the classes she assisted with when she began to cramp. She had read enough to know that some cramping and pain was to be expected at seven months, that it was normal, and elected to ignore it and carry on with the lecture.
That was a mistake, a bad one. Cramps and mild discomfort quickly became crippling pain, and between one moment and the next, before the horrified eyes of the class and professor, she was on the ground screaming in an agony beyond anything that she had ever felt before, clutching her stomach. She could feel her baby, her precious child, twisting and turning withing her womb. She could feel her daughter's pain, and God help her she could have sworn she heard her daughter's wordless vocalizations of suffering.
She could barely think, never mind talk, but as the rest of the room swarmed around in confused, desperate attempts to help her, she still managed to demand that they help her child. That they save her baby, that they make it stop.
The world became a haze of pain, of fear, of confusion and masked white figures rushing too and fro, an endless cascade of noise and light as they tried to help in a situation outside of their experience. Hannah despaired, in the corner of her mind that was still coherent, despaired and feared that the next time she saw her husband, it would be for their unborn baby's funeral.
Despaired that the first and only time she ever held her baby, it would be in the form of naught but ashes.
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The Pheonix Force was distressed and excited in equal measure. Oh, the time had finally come for it to join it's future host, for them to become one entity, one soul, but it's host was suffering, dying from a sickness the Force had never before witnessed. This was, as far as the Force was concerned, entirely unacceptable. It hadn't waited all of these millennia for it's host, only to promptly lose her to some sort of radiation sickness!
Fortunately, the Force had saved its hosts from radiation and worse more times than it care to count and, while it would certainly prefer to wait until the moment of it's host's birth to nest itself within her soul, it had no objection to doing so now. Especially not if it would mean ensuring it's host's survival. It's hatchling's survival.
It reached out, tendrils of Self reach out to sink through sweat-soaked flesh, past fat and blood and muscle to latch onto it's hatchling's soul. Tendrils that became streamers, than rivers, as it poured itself into the infinitely smaller, yet infinitely resilient, existence it had so long awaited. Illnesses and imperfections were eradicated in an instant, genetic flaws banished into oblivion, and the sheer power of the Force and it's efforts to heal spilled beyond the boundaries of the child's form to erase her suffering and flaws in turn.
It would be lauded as a miracle, baffling and inexplicable to the extreme, but an occasion of great joy. When the child was born, two months later, her grateful and overjoyed parents named her well. Hannah gave her the name of Cassandra, for Hannah's Grecian grandmother. Faolan, fiercely proud of his little warrior that had survived such titanic eezo exposure to be born, gave her the middle name of Morrigan, in honor of his ancient Irish kin.
Cassandra Morrigan Shepard, their fierce and strong warrior princess.