The brightly colored planet spun. Purple atosphere rendered the entire surface an amazing violet hue, and the clouds that flitted through it were bright blues and pinks. As the black pod hurtled down through all this, the synthetic inside, known as Returner Darkfold, the Geth, took note of all the compositions of the planet, doing one more check to see that his systems were all functioning properly. Finally, after ten more minutes, the pod slammed down onto the ground, opened up, and the Geth sprung out, checking his surroundings immediately, his finger opened up to allow the red lasersight to peek out. He saw that everything was all fine, and he closed the finger, nodding and standing up. He began to walk, heard a rustling, and looked down. He had landed on a flowerbed, and as he scanned and felt them, he came to the conclusion that they were both real and unreal. They were growing, and gave off scent, but every single one of them was made of birghtly colored paper. The Geth scanned a few, storing them in his memory, and then began to walk, trodding carefully through the fields.
The Geth counted his equivalent to three hours before anything really happened. He had walked and walked, pausing only to scan the area, until eventually a cloud passed overhead. His auditory sensors picked up sounds, and he elevated their sensitivity. He listened to the sounds, and detected that they were comming from the clouds. A soft, sweet sound, one that could lull any natural organic into drowsiness. He scanned the clouds to see how they could make that sound, and found that exactly nothing could cause it. The clouds were made of sugar, packed into cloud form yet light enough to float over the world. Returner began to grow suspicious, and continued along the planet's surface, letting the blue stripes of sugar clouds float over him, in a stark contrast to the dark violet sky.
Returner now found himself trodding in snow. He looked behind, towards the fields, and turned back, noting the strange climate and storing the data. He walked on, the snow crunching under his synthetic feet, noting the lack of snowclouds in the sky. On the contrary, the sky remained just as purple as it had been over the fields, and the stones around him were pretty much the same color. He wandered around rocks and through mazes, doubling back when he came to a dead end. Finally, after what seemed like hours, he came to a small house. He walked up, and knocked on the door three times. There was no answer, so he walked in.
The house was normal-furnished, with a bed, and a dresser, and a desk. A small blonde girl stood facing the wall, and Returner approached. "Greetings." he said. "What is this world called?" The girl said nothing, only turned and walked three steps to the left, then blankly stared at that wall. Returner waited, and waited, then tapped her shoulder. The girl still did nothing, and walked back to her origional spot, then three paces towards the door, staring at it. Returner scanned the girl, and none of his readings made sense. She wasn't even fully aware, by his readings, nor could she make noise or hear. In fact, according to his readings, she shouldn't even be alive. At that, he opened his finger up and pointed it at her. "Reveal your true self." he ordered. "Your current form does not match any logic, therefore it does not exist. Reveal yourself." The girl simply stared, then walked to the middle of the rug and stared at the south wall. Her eyes were dull and blank, and the Geth closed his finger, walking over and turning the light off. He looked back, but the girl was still there, staring right at the wall. Returner walked out, and closed the door. He was about to walk away when he heard a click from inside, walked back in, and discovered the girl standing next to her bed and staring at it. The light had been turned back on, and Returner once more flicked it off, beginning to wonder why she had reacted only to that. He stood there, watching for her to turn the light back on, only to have the girl.....do nothing.
This continued for three minutes. He walked in and shut the light off, walking back out. Immediately, the light turned on, and he went back in to turn it off. This occurred exactly thirty-four times by the Geth's account, and he finally stopped going outside. He flicked the light off, staring at the girl. He flicked the light on himself, and scanned her again for the second time since he met her. He was alarmed slightly by the fact that her threat level had grown from negative five percent to ninety-eight percent while he had been playing light tag with her. Whatever this girl was, he mused, she was dangerous. And growing even more so as the light turned off. He opened his finger, took aim, and shot a laser into her head before she could turn on him. Rather than hitting the floor, the girl faded away into nothing, leaving the Geth slightly confused. He turned and flicked the light off, but this time.....he was met by an ear-grating sound, like dozens of instruments humming at the same time, and the walls became outlined in bright green. This sudden sensation caused the Geth to jump, in shock, and spun around towards the source of the noise. His eye widened, as in the place the girl had vanished was a shocking creature. It was a black blob, the size of a child, with a mangled white face. The eye sockets and the mouth were empty, showing only more black, and there was a black line running from the top of it's face to it's eye. Returner opened fire, blasting laser after laser at the creature, but they just went through, scorching the walls and floor behind it. The Geth grew afraid, as when he scanned it, the threat level meter broke from an overload, and all his sensors pointed out that this being couldn't, shouldn't, and had never existed before. He tried to escape through the door, but the door was jammed shut and broken. He tried to ram it, but only succeeded in damaging his shoulder armor. He turned back, and saw the creature hadn't moved. He thought, perhaps only the physical could slay it, and rushed forward, attempting to tackle the creature before he lost his sanity from the music and the sight of the thing.
Returner lay in a puddle of white. His first thought was that the creature had deactivated him, but his auditory system picked up slow, strange sounds. He stood up, and found himself standing in a large white lake, surrounded by black on all sides. The sky showed a horrible figure, a black being with a bleeding head, picking up the water as if it were a cloth. He remembered what had happened just moments before. The instant he had touched the creature, everything became hazy and fuzzy, his radar was jammed, and he momentarily switched offline. He looked around now, and saw no way out. He walked and walked, but there was no land, only this shallow white lake. He wandered for seventeen days, until finally he reached a conclusion to rejoin the hive mind and leave the body behind. He sat down in the puddle, and activated self-destruct, waiting for the blast to carry him back to the program. Finally, after a ten second coundown, he exploded, showering bits of himself everywhere, a massive blue fireball reaching towards the sky.....
Then suddenly, he awoke. His sleep mode deactivated, his scanners reading full, and his body strapped into a large black unit, thick wires restraining and plugged into him. He looked up, and saw a ferocious-looking red creature, nearly ten feet high, holding an odd metal cylinder in his hands. The red creature grinned, holding up a watch. "Fifteen minutes. Not bad, machine, most don't ever make it out of my Dark Network." he said, chuckling. He pressed a button, the metal thing made a loud buzzing sound, and the Geth was unrestrained. Returner stood, and before the creature could talk, he had piledrived it, beating on the thing like his life depended on it. "YOU DARE MESS WITH MY PROGRAMS? YOU WILL SUFFER THE RAMIFICATIONS!"
An hour later, after a tussel, Returner was dragging the red creature back to his pod, sitting in a field of grass, the night sky shining with stars and twin moons. He tossed the red thing in, opened the spare space, sat inside, and programmed it to fly back to the Normandy, his first experience with rage completed. He was calm now, and the creature would make a fine addition to the ship.
