Chapter 97

With a successful first meeting with the Geth completed, I made my way back to Shadow Broker's base. I was met with significantly less fanfare this time around as I walked into the command center. Inside Suki was sitting at a console looking at a series of monitors and typing quickly. Although, there was something different.

"Suki I'm back."

"Oh, Silva!" She exclaimed running over to give me a hug.

"Hey, Suki? Where's Toph" I asked looking around?

"About that... While you were gone Toph had a lot of downtime, so she started planning out what she could do to help the Krogans. When she found out about the nuclear war that destroyed Tuchanka's environment. She contacted the vault to ask if they could add fixing that to the priority list. They told her they already had something to fix it. It's called a geck or something. Anyway, they said all they needed to do is adapt it to Tuchanka's environment. For which they needed samples from the planet. Toph immediately volunteered to go. She was bored and said if you could leave by yourself then she could too."

"Of course she did. Fine, she'll be safe, and if worst comes to worst she can always go into the warehouse and get medical attention."

"Well, I'm glad you are taking this so well because I want to go do my own thing too." She said trailing off.

"Alright, I guess I'm fine taking over as the Shadow Broker. What do you want to do?"

"I was hoping to go back to the migrant fleet."

"I thought we wouldn't contact them until we had an immunity booster, so we could mediate peace with the geth."

"Yes, that's still the plan. I just thought it would go smoother if we had someone on the inside already."

"Does the shadow broker's network not have anybody in the migrant fleet."

"It has a few agents inside and we even have some pull with a few Admirals. More people won't hurt and I just want to go. I have all these fake memories of the place, but I'm feeling homesick. I miss Kiyoshi's island and the fleet."

"If you want to go, I won't stop you, but I want you to remember the warehouse. It has an extranet connection so let me know and we can still see each other no matter how far apart we are."

"Aww, that's so sweet Silva. You know I still need to prepare my pilgrimage gift before leaving"

"You must have gotten them something pretty good if you plan on making your way to admiral."

"A ship so I can become a captain. Then some money and blueprints I got from the vault and Beacon"

"A little bit of everything."

"Yep. So, my ship won't be ready until tomorrow. That means we still have tonight together." She said suggestively.

After Suki left, I got a lot busier. My multi-tasking skills had skyrocketed after becoming an AI, but with everything, I was managing it was adding up. I had to oversee a galaxy-spanning automated information network. The Vault scientists started to have success across all their projects. That meant I needed to set up new manufacturing facilities as well as drug companies. I needed to recruit patients for drug trials, but I also had to hide the Quarian immune boosters and Genophage from the council. If the council found out it would be shit down, and my patsies arrested. I ended up masking them with mundane research that I bought from failing medical corporations.

In addition, I also had to keep a specific eye out for activity by Quarians, Suki, Krogans, Toph, Geth, Cerberus, the Council, and the plot. The geth we're as silent as ever if not more. Suki kept me up to date with the Quarians, but nothing they were doing stood out. I didn't hear much from Toph, but I did hear rumors of more Krogan going back to Tuchanka. Cerberus was still laying low trying to avoid attention. The Council was having problems with the Batarians, but that's normal. Tracking exactly how the plot was progressing was difficult, but I did start placing my agents on Eden Prime. My agents, we're primarily there as surveillance, but they're not too shabby in a fight.

With my material and informational priorities dealt with could move onto personal projects. First, was integrating water bending with biotics. Toph and Suki did it so well and I barely did anything. With more time practicing I did come up with a few combos. Blood bending and stasis both immobilized people and the effects stack. Either individually can stop a full-grown Krogan, but together I can stop something much bigger. Launching ice pellets with mass effect fields made them a solid substitute for bullets. If I ever lose my gun shooting ice near the speed of light would make a good back up or subtle alternative to bullets. I tried to add mass effect filed to walls to increase their defensive capabilities, but discovered mass effect fields increased the pressure making it harder for me to form ice. So, while I couldn't boost my walls I did find a way to train my temperature control. Forcing myself to make colder and colder ice. My final combo was increasing water weight. Shields typically work by blocking high-speed impacts, but they do nothing for slow speed impacts. They block bullets fine but would do nothing for a sledge hammer. I took advantage of this by using biotics at the last moment to increase the water's weight hitting significantly harder while bypassing shields.

All of that was at least in some way productive. I did have one hobby project. I decided that Tori, my porygon, shouldn't be my only Pokemon that hasn't evolved 4 times. Tori was also a fellow AI so I couldn't very well leave her in a technologic rut. Improving her base program to be faster and more intelligent was easy. The Pokemon world is advanced, but its nothing compared to Mass Effect computer tech. The hard part came in upgrading its body and somehow incorporating element zero. I found that incorporating all of the upgrades into a single package would allow for a more natural interpretation of the upgrades. So I held off on directly upgrading her and instead wrapped up her code improvements along with eezo, a biotic amp, and other advanced technologies with hopes of making an evolution item. It took several attempts, but eventually, Tori absorbed it all. I named the new evolution Porygon-C2 after eezo's ability to affect the speed of light. It uses electricity from its previous form to charge its eezo and create mass effect fields. I tried to typecast it, but the idea of element type falls apart after leaving Pokemon.

The C2 form was a pure upgrade. She was faster, stronger, tougher, with more powerful and varied abilities. Tori was larger and sleeker with significantly fewer connecting points. It was almost amorphous in a way. It had its main face/body but was surrounded by extra floating pieces that would attach at will. The floating pieces themselves shifted in shape and size so that they could perform better. It could look like anything from a dog to a filled extension cord.