Nexus Effect

Ch.86

“Who is a good boy~? Who is a precious boy~?” I asked with a baby-voice as I played with my new puppy. I decided to name Ghost after Jon Snow’s direwolf since he didn’t have a name already. I’d bought levo puppy chow, several toys, even a full-size doghouse for him to sleep in even after he grew up. That is, if he didn’t somehow become gigantic.

“[I am! I am!]” Ghost yipped and canted both vocally and in his broadcast as he wiggled on his back while I rubbed his chest and tummy.

“You just find the best damn things, Nora.” Jack smirked as she made smooching noises and Ghost, quick to understand that meant someone wanted to give him affection, rolled away from me to jump into Jack’s lap to let her pet and snuggle him.

“I know, right?” Ashley watched with a fond yet wistful expression. She must’ve had dogs before and Ghost was reminding her of old family members now gone.

“I wonder how many of those LI are breeding and how many Cerberus has control over.” Yola considered aloud with concern, because while he was clearly a wolf pup, Ghost also seemed a bit fluffier than wolves normally are. His mama could be some stray bitch in the wards his daddy couldn’t resist and those things have been out and about for months already, more than long enough for little Ghost to be conceived, carried, then born and separated from his family.

“Likely all of them, likely none of them.” I replied in answer to both considerations. Knowing things as I do, they likely fucked up. The LI have all gone off the reservation, now there’s invasive breeds of hyper-intelligent animals spreading across the galaxy.

“[Daddy had mated an asari!]” Ghost commented, causing Yola and I to blush hotly. Woof. I had no idea that even those stuck-up girls could have some serious deviants. Then again, asari are very sexually explorative.

“Do you know who your mommy was?” Yola asked worriedly, because if this little darling was born from an asari, the poor woman must be either traumatized from having him or terrified that her little ball of fluff went missing.

[Mommy was a human! She didn’t want me.] Ghost casually answered without any emotion in the often painful statement, so I think he misunderstood.

“Not your digital mommy, your physical mommy.” If Cerberus was using Project Overlord as a template, then the LI these creatures were based off of must be EDI. Oof. How can I explain to my daughter that her data echoes were being used to make thousands of little babies and now grandbabies?

[Oh! Mommy Shear must be worried about me! Can you please tell her I’m okay?] Ghost’s words made me a bit nervous. He didn’t seem all too eager to return to his mother.

“Do you know where she lives?” I asked in concern and he shook his head.

[No, but I have her omni number!] Ghost transferred the number to my omni without ceasing his puppy kisses to Jack’s chin and enjoying the petting.

“Okay, I’m just going to make a call.” I said before I dialed the number and was promptly connected.

“Hello?” A panting asari answered.

“Is this Shear? Little Ghost told me to let you know he’s okay.” I tried not to focus on the lustful sounds happening on the other end.

“Who? Oh! My little puppy? Oof, yes, I know, sorry. Um, I’m working right now, please take good care of him. I don’t know the first thing about wolves or dogs.” Shear grunted and panted and I mentally whined in understanding of what her job was and how she could have had Ghost.

“[Mommy!]” Ghost cheered in joy as I heard a dog panting in the call.

“Oh, he sounds happy-yes, I know you-fine. Please take good care of him, I can’t just stop working and I needed to find him a good home anyway.” Shear huffed in a mixture of pleasure and disappointment. She was probably looking forward to keeping Ghost anyway.

“I will, good luck with your, uh, job.” I hung up before I could hear more of the woman’s fetish work going on. She clearly had zoophiles for clients. However, that didn’t stop me instinctively being forced to view the scene being recorded that I tried to ignore.

“Not the knot! Fuck yes! Ugh, he’s filling me!” An Asari had a massive wolf on her pinning her to the floor and it looked like a Cerberus model. The damn thing was pumping at least a gallon into her.

“What is with these beasts? How do they override even Asari genes?” The scientists asked as I realized they captured one in a lab. Oh, she isn’t a fetish prostitute, she’s helping them study the creatures, but she’s enjoying it a bit much.

“So what’s going on?” Ashley asked, now the one snuggling Ghost.

“We’re keeping him, but know that he’s the son of an asari, somehow.” Seriously, that is a feat in and of itself, not even mentioning that he is male and was born from a species known for being monogendered. Just what the absolute fuck has Cerberus managed to create here? Other than the goodest of boys that is.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“What!? How did that happen?” Messana asked her contact in the scientific community from where she was laying against the glowing green shell containing the eggs Laiel, Medulla and she had cooperatively worked on. Her long tail flicked in agitation as her wings spread, the blue-scaled asari-turned-dragoness was a mixture of intrigued and in disbelief over what she was hearing. She was retired, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to be ignorant of things.

“We don’t know, these LI seemed to be designed to breed with anything. Further study into its genetics shows this was not an intentional design. Our volunteer, Shear, proved even Asari would just birth a pup!” The Asari on the other end said in panic. “And they are far more intelligent than their parents, having sapient-level intelligence rather than mere sentience.”

“Interesting. That isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean they could eventually breed-out other species if allowed to spread unchecked.” Messana hummed as she stretched out on the smooth shell of her mate’s brood in the corner of the nursery where they were transferred after they’d finished secondary incubation within her. That was a fun two weeks.

“Geth seem to have a similar ability. Though they don’t override even our genes like these animals. Wah- hey! B-back off!” Messana’s friend yelped before a wolf started mounting her. It slobbered over the Omni as it pinned the Maiden to the floor, a glimpse of it’s huge member briefly appeared. “A-as you can, Ah-see our subject is in a breeding frenzy after so many partners. Shit it tore my skirt off! Someone help!”

“Is that the initial subject? Or one of its offspring?” Messana asked casually as the Maiden got penetrated by a monstrously big dick and she screamed in a mixture of pain and pleasure. “Come now, you’re a professional. I understand if you only have a couple of centuries of experience, but relax.” Messana coached her younger friend who moaned and panted.

“Th-this one is the o-oldest of the sapient ones. Ahn~! H-how are you-unf, ah, oh~!” The woman was reduced to a moaning mess and she hung up her omni, causing Messana to mewl in disappointment.

“Love, were you listening to porn?” Laiel asked when he entered their home with Medulla close behind him since the door shut after he was deeper into the large apartment.

“No, I was talking to a recent friend of mine. It seems Cerberus has created something they couldn’t control. Have you heard of their Living Intelligences?” Messana asked her lovers from where she was perched atop her egg pile. They may not be her eggs, but she laid them the second time around and damn it, her new instincts wanted her to preen atop her pile.

“How does that sound like sex?” Medulla asked as she entered the nursery while Laiel was in the kitchen and she leaned against the shell containing their brood to kiss Messana.

“One of the second-generation ones, who are sapient unlike the first generation, got loose and proceeded to pleasure my friend.” Messana shrugged, as if dubious-consent was just another normal part of sexual interaction. Ever since she became a dragon, things have been different.

She felt passion burn in her hotter than her Maiden days. Her already impressive libido was intensified, she felt overly possessive of her friends and family, she was also fucking hot. The ego boost was welcome and she didn’t realize how many asari generally tend to be detached bitches until she no longer was one. It made her not want to go back after she spent two weeks as a sex-obsessed incubator for her mate’s eggs.

“I see. Should we be concerned about this?” Laiel asked as he joined his mates in the nursery to go over and check on little Zeleen in her crib. That was another thing, why the fuck do asari wait for everything? She can’t believe how much of a detached bitch she’d been, not even fucking naming her daughter right away? She sickened herself.

“From the sounds of it, they’re to be labeled as an alpha-class invasive species on par with asari, changelings and geth. Sure, geth might produce children of the same ‘species’ as their partner instead of themselves, but they’re still biomechanical LI.” Medulla said and Messana nodded in agreement. “However, second generation onward are sapient, so we can’t just euthanize them. They’ll need to be captured, educated and brought into society rather than seed it’s underbelly like the fictional Skaven.”

Even though the Skaven are real, there are still rampant, slanderous rumors of them hiding beneath other civilizations just waiting to pounce. Anyone with a real brain would know that’s false, the Skaven are the Empire’s most zealously loyal citizens and fervently outspoken.

“Okay, enough talk, can we please either have sex or go out someplace? Little Zeleen will still be out like a light for several more hours and these eggs aren’t hatching for another week.” Messana huffed some smoke from her lips and Laiel sighed in fond exasperation with her pushiness. So she got more assertive after she became a dragon, sue her.

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“That went really well.” Penny toasted her glass of bubbly with Anderson in his private office alone with the older man. Garrus decided to check out some of the weapon shops and Tali cited she needed some tech, so they went shopping while Penny chose to catch up with her old friend and former commanding officer, now her political superior.

“You’ve made a lot of friends, Commander. It’s only sensible that the Council provide support for their Spectre, even if indirectly.” Anderson smiled softly at this victory for his friend while he sipped the champagne. “That said, I’ve heard disturbing news. You’re no longer human?”

“...I thought I was doing a good job at keeping that secret, what with Cerberus wanting it known I’m still the ‘pinnacle of humanity’.” Penny huffed and looked around the office, before sighing as she relaxed and her mocha-skinned human form became a mocha-furred anthro fox, her tail swishing around in the air behind her after it threaded through the gap in the seat’s back. “Thank gosh I can relax. Holding another shape is easier than being stuffed in a me-shaped suit, but it’s still like I’m squeezing into a dress that’s a size too small.”

“Even so, I’m glad that this hasn’t changed the person you are.” Anderson smiled more genuinely as he set his drink down. “So, how did it happen?”

“I used an emergency medipen provided to me by the Goddess Wiatr for...um, services rendered. She said it was only if I was going to die with no way out. I was...I was spaced. I was suffocating, my body swelling in the vacuum. I stabbed myself with it in the hopes it would save me. It did, but at the cost of my humanity. Cerberus was not pleased with me about it.” Penny petted her tail to help calm herself down. It was very soothing to pet her tail or curl up with it.

“Then I should send a letter of thanks to Wiatr for saving your life. You’re too valuable to lose.” Anderson stated firmly before taking another sip of his bubbly, so Penny knocked back her champagne flute to down the drink all in one go. She didn’t know if she could even get drunk, but damn it, she might as well try. “I know that look. Do you need the bottle?”

“I could use it.” Penny admitted and Anderson handed her the whole bottle which she then chugged since she’d learned her babies were safe from ingested toxins. The carbonation was good to feel in her slime. It was like she was being tickled and pleasured from the inside. Woo. She needs to chug soda and stuff more often. “Mm~, that feels good~.”

“Glad to have given you a moment of relief from the stress, Commander.” Anderson said as he stood and went over to the balcony, which was high up and safe from casual observation, so Penny got up and wobbled with a giggle at how the carbonation made her slime fizz and inflate, her breasts pressing against her armor along with her ass, so she started shoving more of her mass into her Inventory to keep inside of her armor as she followed him outside.

“What are you thinking about?” Penny asked him as she leaned on the railing and tried to focus past how incredible she was feeling right now. She kinda wanted to just get naked and let the expanding gasses inside of her turn her into a slime balloon, but she could try that later.

“I’m just thinking about how bright our futures look, even with the threat of the Reapers on the horizon. Even though I’m spending my twilight years driving a desk instead of an IFV, I still feel like things are only going to improve, even if I wasn’t the one on the Council.” Anderson said as he looked down at the people in the parks of the rebuilt Presidium.

“Pfft, yeah, right. Like Hackett or anyone else could stand to be sitting pretty here instead of the bridges of their dreadnoughts.” Penny blew a raspberry and the surface of her ‘flesh’ bubbled and popped before she gathered herself and firmed her membrane back up. “But yeah, with people like Nora, Yola, Marrow and all the other incredible folks out there striving to make the galaxy, no, the universe a better place, I can’t see it being anything but incredible.”

“That’s exactly what I mean, but you forgot to mention yourself among their number. If not for you, Shepard, none of this would’ve happened. If you didn’t become a Spectre, if you didn’t doggedly chase down Sovereign, if you didn’t help bring peaceful coexistence between the geth and quarians, things would’ve been much, much darker.” Anderson ruminated on the situation and Penny looked back on things.

She didn’t think she was all that special. Her friends, they were special. Sure, she enabled them to do what they were best at, allowed them the outlet for their skills, but that’s all she was. They were the bright shining stars and she was just the ship travelling to them, connecting them. Bringing her friends together to accomplish things she or they, couldn’t possibly manage alone.

“Sure, whatever you say.”

[1001100 01101001 01101110 01100101]

“Princess?” Twilight blinked and looked down at her unicorn assistant from her staggering height. As a 20 foot tall giantess of an alicorn, Twilight, even sitting, towered every everyone in the throne room of her palace on Khar’shan. Sure, she could just use her collar to be shrunken down, but it was also a political move. If she was so toweringly imposing yet Friendly, the Batarians had an easier time adjusting to her rule. “Is everything alright?”

“Wonderful. Someone just realized they’re like me.” Twilight wistfully smiled, feeling nostalgic and a bit sad because her friends were scattered across Andromeda, pursuing their never-ending dreams like she was. Someone out there in the universe, someone of great importance, just came to the realization, the Spark, that they were the linchpin connecting their friends together. She hoped to meet them someday.

“Princess, as wonderful as that is to hear, what should we do? The Collectors have abducted Skaven, Cat-Kut, Ponies, Changelings and all other species in between with this latest and most audacious raid on our colonies.” The white unicorn asked in worry, which was understandable. Their people have been taken and sadly…

“There is nothing to be done. If they’ve slipped our net, try to find them, if they refuse to fight us, pursue them without pause with our fastest ships. Otherwise, all we can do is keep vigilant alongside Aria’s defense forces at the Omega 4 Relay.” Princess Twilight Sparkle sighed gustily in lament. Her people have such faith in her ability to govern, but time and again she fails, yet they refuse to attribute them to her, instead blaming the situations that she should have the power to prevent and fight against. Being a leader often left one feeling powerless, ironically.

“Understood. We’ll retrieve any survivors and cancel all future colonization efforts until these monsters can be found and brought to justice.” Her assistant announced and Twilight nodded in affirmation.

“That would be best. Is there anything else on today’s itinerary?” There shouldn’t be, she checked the list before even starting court for the day.

“No, your highness, but if you would like to accept, Hermais has sent a request for tea after court is adjourned.” Twilight perked up at this news.

“Thank you Pen Teller, that is all then. Dismissed.” Everyone in the hall stood and left as Twilight entered the oversized doors in the back of the throne room meant for her, where she shrunk down to her original 6 foot height. Once she adjusted to the feeling of being normal size, she went to her private study, where she anticipated Hermais to be. Low and behold, she was right. The roguishly handsome draconequus decided to be male today it seems. “Hello Hermais.”

“Hey Purple Smart!” Hermais approached then and smooched her lips, causing Twilight to titter at her friend/lover/fellow intellectual.

“Hermias, what is it?” Twilight asked before she saw the boner Hermais had in his trousers. Unlike most people, Twilight had the advantage of knowing Hermais to the point that she understood he preferred to swap his pronouns around based on his appearance like changelings usually do.

“A few things, mostly discussion on the Collectors. Also, I want to stuff you full of foals.” Hermais said with a devilish smile.

“Hermy, you know I can’t do that. If I do, then I’ll be too preoccupied to work.” Twilight sighed in disappointment out of her nostrils. Ever since Starlight...passed, it was hard to even think of having children that weren’t with her wife. Trixie became Undead, but Starlight didn’t obtain any form of agelessness or immortality and she eventually passed on at the magically extended age of 2793. Even with all that time, it still hurt to watch her little piece of the heavens fade away.

“Urta suggested I pick you this time.” Hermais smiled in understanding and Twilight sighed.

“So it is my turn to bear more mortal alicorns…” The discovery that alicorns aren’t ageless as a rule also stung. They just age very slowly like asari and krogan. Only Ascended Alicorns are ageless like other Gods.

“Yeah and no, it's technically Tia’s, but Urta says you’re so lonely and wanted you to have some kids since you won’t date anyone.” Hermais huffed. “She insisted on me.”

“...Probably because you’re the only one I’d consider…” Twilight muttered and smooched Hermais’ cheek. “Fine, but go herm. I want to have tits to squeeze as you plow my fertile fields.” Twilight demanded and Hermais immediately did so, pinning her to her desk and making the purple princess of Magic and Friendship groan into her lips.

It really has been too long…