A mighty wave of psionic energy washed over the battlefield, and the first sectopod strained under the forces of it. Unable to resist the flow of raw mental power, the already-weakened armour bent and tore, before the walking tank was torn apart by the forces applied to it. "One down, two to go!" Rhino shouted, her voice carrying loud and clear over the comm link.

"You're doing alright, rookie!" Prophet shouted. "Taking down a Sectopod is hard work!"

"Dammit, woman, stop talking and keep shooting!" Double-Down shouted back. "And I'm not a rookie!"

"You'll always be a rookie to me, Casey! Never forget that!" The massive laser beam of the other sectopod quickly diverted her attention. As it stopped, she and the rest of the squad quickly poked their heads above cover and unleashed bolt after bolt of plasma upon the thing. One of its beams fire low over Emo's head, but two more bolts from his plasma sniper pierced its hull and burned out its internal systems. There were a few moments of silence, before the voice of the Uber Ethereal emanated from somewhere in the air.

"The New One continues to surge…" it muttered. "To prove that this was the worthy path, that we were justified in our efforts…" It paused as if to speak again, but it was swiftly interrupted.

"What do you want, you bastards!?" Rhino shouted. "You keep speaking as if you're right, but if you're so worried about our development, why don't you just help us without starting a fucking war!?"

A few more seconds of silence… And then an answer. "The lesser species cannot be trusted to ensure their survival," it replied. "Left to your own devices, you shall war amongst yourselves and die, just as we have seen so many times before… And we shall control your primitive urges, and you shall rise to conquer that which is rightfully yours."

The door opened, and the Uber Ethereal stood, waiting for the New Ones to arrive. Instead, a small device appeared in his chamber. His Muton guards looked at it, curious.

"That's a battle scanner. Gives Emo here a clear shot."

A bolt of plasma came screaming into the Uber Ethereal, catching it off guard and sending searing-hot plasma spewing across its body. It roared in anger, and the other aliens prepared themselves to let the humans feel the force of their leader's fury. A second bolt slammed into it, setting it aflame.

"This is not your path!" it shouted. "Not your purpose! You need our guidance to hone this power…" Another bolt hit it, and it screamed, dying. "Without us, WHAT ARE YOU!?"

It let out a surge of psionic energy, tearing through ship and Muton alike. The humans braced themselves.

All that happened was that shards of the ship bounced off of their Titan armour. Slowly, ever so slowly, the Uber Ethereal and its minions slumped to the floor. The plasma rounds had burned through the creature's nervous system, destroying the core of the Ethereal Hive Mind and instantly stopping the attack. There was silence, before someone acted.

"Okay, guys, we have to get this ship into orbit!" Rhino shouted. "It'd be catastrophic if something this big hit Earth!"

The squad all saw the sense in that, and rushed pashed the corpses of the Ethereals to what had to be the ship's control. The psions amongst them glowed with purple energy, and activated it.

And saw what was to happen if nothing was done.

They searched the psionic sphere for anything that could stop it, even as they began to bring the ship forwards and upwards. Shards of alien alloy began to move along the floor, to what would soon be the centre of a black hole. It continued to pull, and would soon be a force that could destroy everything humanity had called home.

And then they figured it out.

The pull ceased.

And then everything exploded in a sphere of white light, and Earth looked on in terror as it was consumed.

"Strike team! Strike team, do you read me!? I repeat, do you read me!?"

Slowly, Chen "Emo" Cheng came to. "I repeat, do you read me!?"

"Loud and clear, Commander. Although maybe you could quiet down a bit…"

"Good. Glad someone's still alive up there. How's the others doing, Chen?"

He pushed himself to his feet. "The others are still alive. Looks like they're out cold, though. I presume Igor is still dealing with Casey. He took a nasty shot from that Cyberdisk." The nervousness of the Commander faded away, and Chen smiled. "So, how's everything going down on Earth?"

The Commander laughed. "The civilian population has started celebrating already. I'd say it's a little early for that, but it's good to see some hope going 'round for once these days. They don't know what you did, but it worked. Floaters, Mutons, Thin Men, Sectoids… Whatever you did made their advance grind to a halt. There's only those damned Chryssalids that haven't stopped coming from the quarantine zones… Come to think of it, what did you do?"

"May have rearranged reality, Commander… And make sure there's alcohol when I get back. I need a freakin' drink."

"…You did what?"

"Rearranged reality, Commander," Rhino said sleepily. "The ship was supposed to just implode in an alternate dimension, but we decided that killing the whole team wasn't the best option, so we just used all of the energy to pull a switcheroo… May have got Alpha Centauri as well…"

The Commander sighed heavily. "Well, at least we got results. Get the others on their feet. You're coming home to a heroes' welcome."

July 18th, 2016

After an hour of shuffling, just-finishing and navigating the labyrinthine XCOM base, the majority of staff had gathered themselves in the meeting room. All of them had a vague idea of what had been going on for the past 24 hours, but none of them knew the full story.

The Commander chuckled. Well, now they would. He walked onto the speaker's stage, and readied himself to speak.

"As I'm sure you all know," he began, "we launched the assault on the Temple Ship at 11:00 AM yesterday, successfully killing the leader of the Ethereals and stopping the invasion in its tracks. This, unfortunately, had a fundamental effect on reality. The death of the Ethereal Hivemind sent the Temple Ship's gravitational drive haywire. Originally, this would have created a singularity that would have destroyed much of the solar system, a fate that obviously could not be allowed to happen. The second option was to warp the singularity into a different dimension, which would have killed Strike-1 and allowed the debris from the temple ship to rain down on the earth, which would also have a massive negative effect on humanity, although not nearly as bad as total destruction." He paused for effect.

"Strike-1 found a loophole in these events. Instead of the above options, they discovered that they could exchange the entirety of the local area between the two dimensions and use up all energy contained within the ship's drive core. We probably won't know the full effects of this until Alpha Centauri's light reaches us, at the very least, and we'll see if it's been affected. If it was caught in the wave as well, it will take more years until we see an unaffected star. However, this is not our priority right now.

"Earth still needs us," he stated. "The aliens are leaderless, but they are still here. And, unless we do something, they will continue to be here. So this is what we will do.

"We will find them. We will search the cities. We will comb the countryside, we will dive to the deepest depths of the sea and climb the highest mountains. We willfind them," he told his people, "wherever they might hide! And no force on earth shall stop us!

"This is our home!" the Commander declared. "We will make them rue the day they came to earth! And they shall not harm Earth again!"

The Commander smiled as thunderous applause flooded XCOM Base. Everyone here knew they deserved to have hope.

June 20th, 2016

The Thin Men watched desperately as the last of the Mutons fell in the room beyond. The landed UFO was under siege, and the final line of defence had fallen. They had managed to trick the Mutons and Sectoids into acting as meat shields, but the foe was insurmountable. An atmosphere of fear and dread held the room. None of them had a hope of survival, and they were simply waiting to die. One of the Thin Men, though, decided to take its life into its own hands. It closed its eyes, stood up and armed its weapon.

A room full of glowing, soulless eyes looked back at it. The chitinous purple creatures looked at their former ally with an unnatural hunger.

They charged, and the alien grenade exploded.

June 22nd, 2016

May stepped out of the Skyranger first, alloy cannon in hand. They had been called in to one of the Brazilian watchposts after it had gone silent., and had set down on the landing pad."So, Rhino," she said. "What do you think we're shooting today?"

Jess sighed in response. "Do you think about anything other than shooting things? We're looking for survivors, and you're the medic, so-"

There was a sound.

She lifted her hand up, and the team stopped. "You hear that?" she muttered.

The team knew what to do. Cheng moved first, using one of the barriers on the edge of the pad to take cover behind. His genetically-modified skin changed colour in moments, mimicking the colours perfectly. Camouflaged perfectly, he looked over the barrier...

And saw a veritable horde of Chryssalids that had come to investigate their arrival.

"Get over here, guys. And get ready to shoot some bugs."

This was the start of the Chryssalid War. It would be more than 2 billion lives later that it ended.

XCOM- Chryssalid War

The Chryssalid War was the bloodiest conflict in human history, and directly followed on from the Ethereal War. It is unknown quite how many died, but it is believed that over 30% of the total human population was killed by Chryssalids and various aftereffects of the conflict. Some believe that the figure was much higher.

After the war with the Ethereals, three countries (Brazil, France and China) had pulled out of the XCOM project and suffered for it. It is hypothesised that the Ethereals, seeing as the countries had ceased to support the greatest asset to human survival and advancements, decided they had no further use for the governments of those countries and took over. The human population was left largely untouched, despite this, but the countries were used to build up land armies and experiment on humans. When the Ethereal Hive Mind was destroyed, a civil war between the remaining aliens ensued. Only one alien would make it out alive.

The Chryssalid was tightly controlled by the Ethereals during the war. These creatures were believed to be the alien's terror unit. UFOs tracked them at all times and reabducted them once the aliens no longer needed them on the ground. Once the Ethereals were killed, though, control was lost and they feasted upon the unarmed civilians left. This was where the majority of casualties took place, sparking off the first and bloodiest part of the war. Before the war, these countries had 1.75 billion people. Afterwards, they were virtually empty. There could have been 1.75 billion chryssalids, but chryssalids also attacked livestock and wild animals, which meant that final numbers were much higher. As the populations of large animals were already devastated, the nuclear option was taken.

Worldwide, over 400 nuclear bombs were dropped. Each one had an incredibly-loud siren attached, to try and bring all Chryssalids within the area as close to the bomb as possible. Once there was an appropriate density of Chryssalids near each bomb, they exploded in synchrony, instantly killing enormous amounts of Chryssalids and preventing the world's ecosystems from being overrun. It is thought that this action saved the world's biosphere despite the amounts of radiation released into the environment.

The Council of Nations and XCOM both agreed that mechanisation of the armed forces would be critical to their success, as Chryssalids would not be able to bolster their numbers if a mechanical squad was lost. MECs and SHIVs were initially used, and during this conflict, humanity devised one of its most effective combat vehicles. DOOMSHIVs (Defensive Or Offensive Massive Super-Heavy Infantry Vehicles), based on alien sectopod and cyberdisk designs, were developed. These autonomous hover-tanks are armed to the teeth, and during the conflict, they usually used a combination of particle cannons, a blaster launcher and flamethrowers. The first DOOMSHIVs were similar to the Hover SHIV, although their larger size made them slower and reduced their air-time to that of Archangel armour.

The development of the DOOMSHIV was the turning point of the war. Chryssalids could dig underground and enter a state of torpor, in which they could survive for up to a month without food, leaving only the glowing tips of their exoskeleton to act as electroreceptors. A DOOMSHIV's sensory arrays could detect the presence of underground Chryssalids, and using its blaster launcher, it could kill them before they dug themselves out. The ability of a DOOMSHIV to scour large areas for Chryssalid activity allowed them to methodically wipe out Chryssalid presence near the borders, forcing them into the irradiated centres of the ex-countries and starving them to death.

Officially, the war ended after 6 years. No Chryssalid presence was detected after the 18th of December, 2018, which is commonly cited as the end of the Chryssalid War. The countries were left as uninhabited memorials to the lives that were lost, although the radiation was a large factor in this decision. After the end of this war, the nations of Earth were finally able to rebuild.

January 19th, 2020

Dr. Vahlen scanned through the results one more time, and decided she was satisfied. "Let me see..." she said to herself, and picked up the note, reading the numbers to herself as she dialed them in. She put it to her ear, and waited a few seconds before it was answered.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Mrs. Cheng."

"Ah, Dr. Vahlen! Please, just call me Jess. Makes me feel like a teacher when people call me that. So, the results came back? Presume they're good, from your tone of voice."

"Yes, they have, and yes, they are. Our scans indicate that the organs are growing healthily. No tumors or other problems detected."

"That's wonderful!Thanks, Vahlen. I don't know what I'd do without you and your team."

"I presume you'd be in interstellar space somewhere, probably with far more alien implants than healthy... Oh! Maybe with a gun directly attached to your nervous system. That sounds about right."

"So you're still the most humble woman alive? That's good, then."

Vahlen laughed. "Of course! Anyway, by cloning skin, heart, muscle and bone marrow tissues in the lab, we can confirm that the genetic modifications are hereditary. Your own modifications are the most prominent, but your husband's modifications have also been inherited. Make sure you tell me how easy it is raising a child who can turn invisible at will, okay?"

"I'll make sure to pass any stories on, Vahlen. Thanks again!"

"No problem. Good luck with the baby!" With that, the top scientist of XCOM hung up.

2021-2074: The Golden Age

During 2021, one of the most important discoveries in the history of mankind was made- the knowledge of how to manufacture elerium in useful amounts. Tiny amounts had already been made by atomic research labs, but over certain temperatures, the elerium could crystallise liquids into more elerium when exposed to psionics. This discovery changed mankind forever, as elerium had previously been a rare resource that had to be conserved. Now, though, elerium generators could be made worldwide, and they had elerium to spare for the first true starships.

Soon after, the secret to alien alloy (officially known as xenaesium) was discovered, thanks to the much larger availability of elerium. When Meld and jellied elerium were added in tiny quantities to an aluminium-titanium alloy (analysis of alien alloy had already revealed that those were the metals used), the Meld created microscopic structures within the metal, creating a metal nearly as light as aluminium but far stronger than any other metal. As Meld was already a material that could be duplicated, due to the semi-biological nature of it, this allowed a vast increase in alien alloy use as well.

As the development of FTL pulse drives continued, the presence of psionics in the population had a previously-unknown effect. Exposure to psionic individuals slowly but surely built up similar capabilities in other psionic-capable individuals. In those raised from birth by psionics, as parents David "Double-Down"/Patricia Shepard and Jessica "Rhino"/Chen "Emo" Cheng discovered, a mastery of psionics was developed that allowed finely-tuned telekinetic and empathic abilities. The population managed to adapt to this without the development of widespread discrimination because of the high opinion of pre-existing psions (who were mainly restricted to Strike-1, XCOM's primary spec-ops team).

Elerium tech was honed by humanity as it developed. Within 5 years, plans for a machine were built: the Elerium Sling. Experimentation on grav-drives had revealed a second type, one that could create a spacetime bubble and fire the object within at a massive speed. This was useless for ship engines, but it would massively decrease travel time to (and hopefully from) distant stars. The remains of the Temple Ship (which was largely intact, even after years of being stripped for its alloys during the Chryssalid War) were used as the base for the Elerium Sling. 15 years of work culminated in a massive machine, roughly teardrop-shaped, which was able to travel within 5 light years when first operational and up to 30 light years away when it was deemed suitably-large in 2059.

However, the aftereffects of 2016 were just becoming visible to the galaxy at large by the 2070s, and in 2074, Second Contact was made.