Current date: April 14th, 2419, 25th century;
It had taken a day of broken communication, planning, and cooperation, but the aliens had managed to get their idea of bringing their diplomat with them, alongside a guard detachment. Tulius was, in the end, simply glad that no fighting had broken out, given the fact that, despite Turian pride, these aliens were almost certainly more advanced than the Hierarchy. Why, one of them was openly walking around with a sword and shield, both of which appeared to be made out of either plasma or hard-light, neither of which had been reliably researched by anyone yet. Not even by the Salarians! And they clearly had some form of spatial manipulation, he had caught glances of multiple objects merely appearing in flashes of blue next to them.
Concerns about military might aside, there was also the communication problem, as there wasn't a single Asari around. His rather crazy idea to bring this small diplomacy group to the Citadel itself was, in retrospect, rather foolish, but at least it would allow the aliens to be brought to an Asari translation team. The frigate they were on shuddered, finally reaching the grand Serpent Nebula. Tulius sighed one final time, knowing the chaos he would be causing very soon.
--- --- ---
One hour later
--- --- ---
Anderson was, overall, very impressed. The alien station they had disembarked onto - he wasn't sure what they called it, was decently sized, had a bunch more livable space on it than the Lifeboat did, and it seemed to be a heavily armored and fully stationary object. Although, being completely stationary is rather foolish. Granted, he also knows nothing about its defenses, or the technology of these aliens, so he wouldn't judge. Maybe they have some technology to prevent harmful objects from reaching the station - perhaps some form of distortion field to divert the movement of comets and such, preventing them from getting dangerously close. Why, they may even be able to direct them into specific locations, and harvest them!
Moving on, he pulled his thoughts away from the station they had just entered, and instead looked forward, seeing as a moderately sized security team approached, from a small variety of aliens. One of the security aliens stepped forward, with an alien crew member moving to talk with them. After a few minutes of discussions, from what he could tell, the aliens all formed up into a vague clump, with the human team in the middle. The alien group then all surrounded them in a vague circle, and one by one started walking, with Anderson and the rest of the humans moving along with them.
As he walked, Anderson couldn't help but be decently impressed by the various aliens around. So many different species, all working together peacefully! He couldn't help but imagine them having anything other than a utopian society. Why, everything was so clean too! All of the stations whites and silvers, and their retro styled holograms with those fun distortion lines through them, he was impressed with their progress as a society.
--- --- ---
Tevos was sitting at her council seat, face in her hands. On her left and right, her fellow council members kept yelling and arguing about this new species. The brand new Turian councilor, Sparatus, repeated yet again "We cannot let them simply walk around with a few C-Sec officers to keep curious crowds from dying! They are a very clearly militant race who broke the law surrounding Relay activation!"
On her left, the old Salarian councilor, Aehann, sighed audibly before replying again by saying "And not only have they never agreed to such a law, they also do not know it exists! As it is, they are clearly a cautious people, rather than a violent one. They have yet to do anything remotely concerning, half of them can't stop looking around the Citadel like they haven't seen anything like it before, and they are a race we just started first contact with! The fact that this hasn't devolved into another Rachni war yet shows incredible promise! And think about their technology, they are clearly decades, if not centuries ahead of us in some fields!"
Tevos ignored the young Turian councilors response, her two colleagues simply throwing the same statements with slight wording changes at each other yet again, and instead she pulled up her Omni-Tools interface, communicating with a few Asari she knew personally to go meet with the new species, hoping that by the time their language is translated her fellow councilors will have calmed down.
--- --- ---
About half an hour later
--- --- ---
The ambassador was, for the first time in a while, truly and totally confused. He and his escort detail had been, surprisingly quickly, been ferried across the station they were on, eventually being brought to a station full of enclosed hovercraft, where the - rather massive - group of humans and aliens were all herded into at least a dozen of the hovercraft, and then rapidly brought to another end of the station, fairly close to this massive spire that, as far as he could figure, was likely this stations control center. Why it existed as a large tower, instead of an enclosed and secure CIC chamber buried under five meters of Tek Alloy, he had no idea, but perhaps it was merely a luxury that these aliens could afford. He could also be wrong, and it may serve an entirely different purpose.
Now, however, he was alone with a single other alien in a side room, standing and staring at the bizarre alien sitting in a chair at the other end of the room. It was almost... human? It could easily pass as a human woman, except for her - at least his mind labeled the alien as female - strange, blue-purple skin, and the fact that her head had strange tendrils instead of hair. The two of them kept simply looking at each other, until the ambassador eventually went and sat in a chair across from the alien. She then said something to him, but whatever it was, his already barely functional translator simply spat an error noise back at him. He merely pointed at his ears and mimed them being plugged, causing the alien to pull up some sort of holo-interface on her - he decided he would label the alien as female until told otherwise - arm, before a short little animation played, showing an alien like her and a large collection of different aliens.
It then showed the alien similar to her speaking, with a little text bubble in some unknown language appearing. All of the other aliens then said other words, each in their own language. The female alien then went, and pressed her forehead against each of the other aliens one by one, before saying something again, this time with samples of all of the languages attached.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
He realized that this was some weird and, frankly, alien method of translation. He figured that it couldn't hurt, and it was just for language, so why not. He then nodded, before leaning forward. After a quick second, he felt the aliens hands on the side of his head, before their foreheads met, and everything went black for a second.
--- --- ---
About forty minutes later
--- --- ---
Anderson nursed his elbow, looking for a brief moment at the strange female aliens in the corner, all talking excitedly and presumably working to finalize the translation of the various human languages they got access too. What a fright that had been.
Once all of the humans filed into the multi-room building they were in, a few random people were pointed into different rooms, one at a time, where the aliens - apparently called 'Asari' - had used some strange alien magic of some kind to pull copies of human language and cultural understanding out of each participants heads, allowing them to translate the various human languages - although mostly it was just English with a few slang terms here and there - and, after the first round, also speak with the next participants.
Hence the elbow, as he had jumped and slammed it into the wall when the Asari he went to speak to and 'Light Meld' with had greeted him in mildly accented english. Every humans little bit of language understanding had already been peeked at though, so at this point they were simply waiting for the small team of excited Asari to copy all of the information down to their translator programs and begin releasing updates all around, so that at least the aliens could understand the humans.
He idly wondered just what had to happen for a species to evolve an ability like these Asari and their 'Melding'. Perhaps he could ask around after they finished the translation software - assuming humans ever get access to the translators, of course. Then again, if these people were as utopian as they outwardly appeared, he couldn't see any reason for them to deny humanity access to the ability to communicate with everyone else.
After a short while the Asari had clearly gotten a basic form of translation software functional, as one of them had come over and told everyone in moderately good - if monotone - english to follow her to where they would be staying. And, in his opinion, their temporary quarters were rather lavish. Lots of rooms, beds, windows that could be tinted more or less opaque, lots of fancy looking furniture.
It was uncomfortable. And he could tell he wasn't the only one - everyone else was uneasy too, unused to the soft surfaces and excessive comfort, a far cry from the conditions they were used to.
In the end though, their job was to provide security for their semi-official ambassador, and if these aliens wanted to shower them with lavish gifts, he wouldn't care, as long as it doesn't interfere with their jobs.
--- --- ---
The Council Chambers
--- --- ---
Tevos sat between Sparatus and Aehann, pointedly ignoring how they were shooting each other hostile looks. She was, in the end, very disappointed in them. Acting like brash young Maidens, instead of the grown men she knows they are, and in such a high position. At least there was good news about the translation software - a working model had just been finished by her translation team, with a much more comprehensive update package coming along shortly. Rather interestingly, they had also reported the presence of multiple languages to these new beings, which had self labeled as 'Humans'. A rather quaint and simple name, in her opinion, which she was fine with. No real discovered meaning behind it, other than it simply being a means of identification.
And yet, such an interesting species behind the name. From the incredibly basic information gotten - both from direct questions and the slight memory overflow from the Light Meld techniques the translation team used - the Humans were, interestingly enough, a rather old race, and yet their only world was their apparent colony world, with their homeworld lost in some way.
She wasn't quite sure just how it had been lost, just that it had happened, and she would offer them the chance to help them recover it - such an offer might get them to join the Council, and what a boon that would be! Teleportation technology, advanced alloys and energy production systems, some form of advanced hardsuits, the very little bit of recorded technology they have is already marvelous beyond her imagination.
And then the other Councilors. Still glaring at each other, despite the fact that they should be figuring out how to cleanly invite these Humans to the Council, and get them protected against things like cosmic accidents, the Batarians, and the Geth - assuming those machines hadn't all died out behind their veil without anyone noticing.
She then got an alert on her Omni-tool, letting her know that the Human ambassador had arrived, and that he was sitting in the small lobby outside of the Council Chambers, reading up on their Codex. She was a bit interested that he had arrived so early, but she would wait, either until the time of their meeting, or until the other Councilors notice the alert. Not that they likely would, as they had just devolved to shouting again.
Tevos sighed. This was a long term ahead of her. At least it would be just a blink of the eye for her - relatively at least.
--- --- ---
Twenty minutes later
--- --- ---
Tevos looked up from her Omni-tool and prepared herself for the upcoming meeting. Sparatus and Aehann had, finally, calmed down and were now looking forward - still pointedly ignoring each other - in preparation of meeting the Human ambassador. Tevos was, finally, somewhat excited. Nothing interesting had happened in such a while, that the introduction of a new species was always interesting.
And finally, after such a long time waiting for all the coordinating to finish, the meeting time had arrived, and the Human ambassador stepped through the door.
Tevos was very curious about this ambassador. He had this interesting fur on the sides of his head, that was this brown and gray color. And he was also in what seemed to be armor padding of some kind - although it wasn't a hardsuit, just some kind of unknown woven material. And he did have some form of pistol on his side, but it wasn't very obvious, and likely meant as a deterrent.
He also didn't hold himself like a politician, but rather like a soldier, or even a normal civilian, at least in her eyes. He was holding a helmet under one arm like a soldier would, but was also fidgeting with some strange, hexagonal object on his belt, which had a thin silver casing and opaque blue barriers of some kind, preventing a view of what was inside the object. It looked fairly unique, so Tevos could only assume it was some kind of heirloom or prized object.
The ambassador took a breath and stepped forward, saying "Hello Councilors. I am-" before Sparatus broke in and spat "Care to explain your reckless opening of a Mass Relay?"
And Tevos sighed, yet again, as the ambassador just sat there, his mouth loosely held open, as Aehann just glared at Sparatus. "Must you antagonize every being you speak with, Sparatus?" Aehann loudly said. "Well, someone has to make sure we don't unleash a second species like the Rachni on the Galaxy, such a thing would be crippling!"
The ambassador was, at this point, looking baffled as he was looking between the two Councilors glaring at each other. Tevos waved the two of them down, before turning to the Human "I am sorry about my colleagues... they can't seem to behave like adults, even when in session with a completely new species." she glared at Sparatus and Aehann after this. She then turned back to the ambassador "My name is Tevos, the Asari Councilor. On my right is Sparatus, the Turian Councilor. And on my left is Aehann, the Salarian Councilor. And you are?"
The ambassador smiled lightly "I am the temporary Human Ambassador, Donnel Udina. It is a pleasure to meet you Tevos."