Side Quests for Harem and Power 2: Sneaky Plan

“So how do you intend to get this woman?” Cortana asked. “She’s not exactly on your playing level.”

“That is true,” I replied. 

Asari, as a species, was a ridiculously long lived. Their biology and mindset was different to adjust for that long lifespan, and one of those was their ability to remember. Asari matriarchs were fast for their ability to remember events in the far long past that no one else did simply because they were alive then and now while everyone else were dead.

Case in point, the Morning War. The only other species to remember that were the Krogans. 

So why was this important?

Well, for starters, this meant that the Asari matriarchs were individuals who had done, seen, and remembered a lot. Not a lot of things impressed them that definitely did impress the rest of the galaxy. 

On top of that, Benezia was a matriarch who had connections far and wide. Furthermore, she was a powerful biotic. 

How could I possibly approach her?

“Well, Benezia isn’t exactly someone who holds parties or spends money frivolously enough to warrant any kind of subtle approach,” I said with a frown and my fingers tapping on my crossed arms. “I know from my future knowledge that she is an investor in Binary Helix along with Saren.”

I had already explained to Cortana about what was going to happen in this galaxy, and how Saren was the “trigger” that will make it happen. Benezia was also one of his allies, which meant that converting Benezia to my side would disrupt Saren.

Again, how could I approach an Asari matriarch known as one of the great leaders of her people? 21st century wise, it was like some bumfuck nobody from Thailand or Mexico with a bit of money trying to get a meeting with Angela Merkel; money alone wouldn’t get me that access. I needed influence beyond the human sphere of influence. 

I needed power. 

… Or I could go about this a very brute force way. 

I knew exactly where Benezia was going to be. I accessed Mass Effect timeline enough times to know that she would be at Noveria at one point to drop off the geth in order to delay/kill Shepherd sometime during 2183 CE. If I built up enough force, then I could ambush Benezia as she landed on Noveria and get her that way. 

Now, I wasn’t going after Benezia because she was a booty I’d like to tap. Unlike how she was portrayed in Mass Effect game, she looked completely different and … menacing. 

https://honestcake.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/benezia003.jpg

The primary reason was to deprive Saren of a political and financial ally, who also commanded a sizable retinue of Asari commandos, who would all also become part of my harem. Instead of these commandos dying to Shepherd and his crew, they would be turned against Saren and the Reapers.

It would be awkward having to explain why …

Actually.

Why the fuck am I thinking about ambushing Benezia with overwhelming might on Noveria? I had Cortana to find and track Benezia right now!

“Can you find where Benezia is right now?” I asked her. “I think I’m going to be a little sneaky.”

I only had to put a Stamp on her, but I never had to do it after conquering her might. 

Cortana looked to the side as she did something before looking back at me with an expecting stare. “What are you planning?” she asked me. “I hope it’s not anything stupid like attacking this woman when she’s backed by all of her allies.”

Ugh, she got me. Almost.

“No, I think the tools of an assassin is far more useful for me.”

“... I thought you were going to turn her around.”

“Oh, I am, but the thing is, I don’t know exactly what her level of indoctrination is.”

Cortana shuddered. “I can’t believe something like that exists here. It’s a cuter version of the Flood.”

I snorted at her comparison. In a way, it did make sense. The Flood converted all sentient life to itself while the Reaper’s indoctrination prepared the entire galaxy to be converted into Reaper. Neither was good, but the Flood made you ugly. If I had no choice, then I would choose indoctrination. At least, I would die “happy.”

But I did have a choice in the form of my Waifu Stamp. Indoctrination may be a powerful tool for the Reapers, but it was a tool grounded in physics and reality; Waifu Catalog stamps were anything but grounded in reality. 

On that note, my Waifu Catalog Stamps were a rapey version of both Reaper’s indoctrination and the Flood. I wonder if that made me the bad guy.

“Why do you even care about how indoctrinated she is? Whatever your … thing is, shouldn’t it be better? You literally pulled me from across parallel worlds,” Cortana asked. “And you still haven’t exactly explained how you intend to get to the Benezia woman.”

“Well, once you track her down, we’ll go over to where she sleeps, flood her room and maybe even the entirety of whatever compound she is in with sleeping gas. I would then go to her room and Stamp her.”

Cortana looked thoughtful about that. “I guess it reveals nothing about us aside from a good hacking capability if someone catches you in the act,” she noted while looking to the side with a hand on her chin and her arms crossed. I tried not to look at her boobs as she unconsciously pushed them up. “And you still want to build up our own force?”

“You know how people are without a visible threat to punch them in the face. They don’t act.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I blinked before shrugging, conceding to her point. She was from the Halo universe, where the human governments more or less accepted that there was the threat of extinction and gave the military all the power, metaphorically speaking. Her situation was very different from Mass Effect, where Shepherd had to constantly do missions to gain the alliances and promises of others. 

“Fair enough,” I replied. “But people here, humans or aliens, are ignorant and stubborn in worse ways than from your galaxy, Cortana.”

“That was the gist of what I was seeing,” she snorted. “The idea that the highest body of governance would just … ignore a threat to their structure of power or their people is ridiculous.”

“French Revolution was a thing.”

She glared at me before turning her hologram off. “I’m going to look for information. Later,” she spoke through the speaker before going silent. 

“... I guess I better start looking for an asari-friendly sleeping agent.”

Internet or extranet, information was free, after all. Now, let’s see… Oh wow, there’s over ten thousand variants. Which one’s easily aerosolized? … I guess that cuts down on the list of candidate compounds...

-VB-

A/N: 1.2k words took me over ten hours of work to write. Scrapped it at least three times. This was the hardest chapter to write for me to date because I didn’t know exactly how I should transition. But here it is, something of a filler chapter. I will try to get a longer chapter out next time.