Let's be clear, people. This is a one shot that deserves some weird kind of credit. Burnsidhe, the visionary mind who thought this all together, believed it was possible. Belief is all that matters, right?

Sol System, 2186, Local Cluster

The SR-2 Normandy entered the mass relay with as much gusto as it could risk. Morale was at an all time low, after the events of the so called Alliance summit. The Krogan never got their cure, and the Salarians thought the Humans couldn't keep a promise. The Turians didn't get their reinforcements, and the Asari didn't even bother coming. The Geth and the Quarians couldn't resolve their bullshit fast enough to help, and the remnants of their fleets sent what they could. One of the Geth cruisers exploded sometime in the last hour, just trying to hold its position.

So, the only people coming were the most unexpected. The fucking Batarians decided they were going to throw their ships at this. They had scrounged up a lot of them, and Shepard wasn't going to complain about it.

"Well, we're coming up on Jupiter. They know we're here." Joker said helpfully. "The Admirals are requesting your guidance. Apparently the only person rated to drive the Crucible is a Rachni."

"Good God." Shepard muttered. "What's the problem."

"No one speaks Rachni!"

Shepard rolled his eyes. "Just shoot someone, and put the dead body by the Rachni."

"Ah." Joker relayed the information. "A Geth was sacrificed. Everyone is asking why it isn't working."

Shepard wanted to pound his head against the glass of the cockpit. "Liara! Help them." He ordered. Why he needed to fix every damn problem in the galaxy he did not know. His best Asari friend turned to give him a smile, her eyes glittering with that obsessional focus that filled his dream journals. To be fair, those journals were mostly full of nightmares.

"For you Shepard, anything." She smiled at him, sitting down at a console. "This is Liara T'Soni. Commander Shepard has ordered that you shoot any Salarians that are left working on the project. Their entire race is an offence against existence. The Rachni would use them better than they would be alive."

Shepard shrugged. Little horny bastards deserved it. Joker shrugged too and relayed it. "Yeah, okay Commander they've killed all the Salarians. Now they're complaining that its like a choir of horny bastards all talking at the same time and creeping the fuck out of everyone." Joker looked back at him. "Are you sure that Rachni Queen is okay to control the Crucible?"

"Of course! Those Reaper Cybernetics came right off. It was all skin deep, anyways." He said, not even remembering if he had read that mission report. That entire journey was mostly filled with alcohol and hanging out with Grunt. Oh, and he might have brought his girlfriend. He didn't remember much about the Rachni Queen.

"Okay. Looks like we've got an attack approach planned. The Admirals want every single ship we have to come in at the same angle relative to earth, and to make sure that we put the Reapers between us and Earth…" Joker didn't even finish. "What idiot ordered this! We have all of these ships, and they want all of us to attack one by one! Shepard you gotta fix this!"

Shepard's eye twitched. Every damn time. "Just." He glanced over at Ashley, his on-again off-again girlfriend. She saw him look, and reached up with her hand and zipped her coat up higher. No cleavage to save the day here. He deflated, knowing that this day just sucked harder. "Call Anderson. Now."

"Commander, glad to see that you are all coming." Anderson's voice spoke. "We've gathered every Wiccan, wizard, witch, satanist, and Catholic in Britain in preparation for the assault on the Citadel."

"Excuse me?"

"Have you not been reading our mission reports?" Anderson asked. Shepard couldn't honestly remember. Between trying to get his girlfriend up into his room, and hiding from Liara and Vega McBeefsticks he was pretty busy. "We've had no success with conventional arms. Some small successes were seen after we got a hold of some person who kept calling themselves The Doctor, but we haven't seen him in months. We've turned mostly to the Occult at this point, Shepard. Arm your team with some iron weapons when you come down. We assume that the Reapers are either Svaltalfar or Fae at this point."

"What the hell." Shepard muttered. "Ashley, arm the ground teams with anything made out of iron."

She just raised an eyebrow and didn't move. "Already done. We are prepared to fight the Reapers."

He pinched the bridge of his nose in further frustration. At least he could still carry around the biggest baddest guns in space. He was going to land on earth, kick ass, take names, and then somehow convince his girlfriend he wasn't a terrorist. Except that he kind of was. His eyes hurt from the pinching. "Commander, the Admirals have heard reason. Instead of all the fleet coming in single file on one vector, they've decided to form a single firing line of ships. That way we can all die at the same time."

Shepard didn't even try to hold it together anymore. His head slammed into the nearest metal plate. It was instinctive, after dealing with the Alliance for so long. "Commander." EDI said. "I believe this means that you are intending to have your way with me." Joker made some noises in the background, but with the pounding in his head Shepard didn't care too much. His head had ended up in EDI's torso.

"Joker. The Cleavage is a lie." EDI slapped him. Ashley slapped him. Liara made eyes at him. "Good God, just tell the fleet to start firing so we can get this mess sorted out!"

On the Ground, Two Hours Later

Shepard didn't even know what to think anymore. Little kids with wooden sticks were running alongside his marines, shooting red and green bursts of light and killing Banshees and everything else in front of him. It wasn't even fair. Some of these 'Auror' people were doing great. But since none of them wore armor they had no survivability. So of course, it was up to him to save the day. There was a moment here where he thought Anderson was going to do more than just stand there and order him around, maybe prove he was some kind of badass.

But nothing. Instead he got people in robes and a bunch of people in nothing but kilts running all over the battlefield. Apparently they didn't care unless the enemy had a sword. Then they got all pissy and wouldn't fight. None of this made sense at all. His Omni-tool said something about immortals but that didn't make sense or matter to him. Didn't even matter to take the minutes it would take his brain to associate that information with right now. Reading was not worth it when he had ass to kick.

Garrus at his side, along with Liara, he charged down towards some glowing circle of light. "There are two reapers over that circle, we can't charge that. They've killed the tanks that have tried."

One scruffy redhead in a robe dove into cover with them. "Oy! You gits can go with the next group. We've been portkey'n and apparating anyone that's got the right guts into that circle. These muggle blokes are giving us cover to send the real cavalry. Broomsticks won't even get you close."

"What the hell?" Garrus and Liara were nodding like they understood what was going on. "A what now?"

"No time to explain, bloke. Just take the toilet seat and hold onto your lunch." Garrus and Liara grabbed hold of the ripped out and faded toilet seat as if they understood what it would do. The redhead went running off to the next piece of cover, trailing tin cans, boxes of cat food, and a bird of all things. Shepard just gave up then. He reached his hand out, taking hold of the toilet bowl.

"Ok, now we're all holding onto this toilet like a bunch of assholes. Now what." The world twisted, dropping them right inside of the glowing circular pillar of energy, which then took him on a trip upwards. Shepard's guts stopped resisting somewhere between the ground and orbit, and he puked inside of his helmet. Because they were in a vacuum it just sat there for a minute longer, until they hit some kind of atmosphere.

"Shepard, let me help you!" Liara's groping hands were not helping as he expelled chunks from his helmet. He really didn't want to put it back on, but he had watched too many stupid idiots die today for not wearing armor. He buckled it back into place, and motioned for everyone to move forward. He was a badass. He was going to prove that conventional wisdom, conventional weapons, and for the love of god explosives were the answer to all of Humanity's problems.

The inside of the Citadel was filled with bodies, and husks and keepers organizing them into jigsaw puzzles. Or it might be piles. He tilted his head to the side, looking as two keepers were playing tic-tac-toe with Volus corpses. Yeah, that was all kinds of messed up. For the sake of the volus he shot them. Which of course made everything come out of the woodwork to try to kill him. There were small pockets of resistance, still. Odd, the resistance was Cerberus troopers fighting back against husks. He didn't bother helping any of them, and they didn't shoot at him.

At the center of all this mess was some kind of command center, where the bastard of all bastards was waiting for him. The man was facing earth in the distance, and Shepard grinned. "Garrus, shoot him in the back of the head."

"But Shepard." His best friend said. "That would be kind of wasteful. All he's got is a pistol."

"Garrus, trust me. Just shoot him. The Illusive Man needs to die."

"We should really hear him out first, I think." His Turian friend said. "He might have something important to say."

Shepard's teeth ground together. "I'm sure its nothing helpful."

Liara looked at both of them. "I agree with Garrus. We should at least find out why Cerberus seems to be fighting with us again."

Shepard groaned. "Fine." He hadn't exactly fought Cerberus too much. He had just stayed focused on getting shit done, taking names, and kicking ass. It's why he was a Spectre. This was a war, and at the very front of a war was where he was needed. "Let's go talk to him. Liara, the moment he says anything you could construe as an order to have us killed, Stasis him. Then shoot him in the head." Both of his friends nodded, and their professionalism came back. Dear god, everything else about his life was terrible. The fleet couldn't move unless he said so. Strategy was lost on them. The only time his life made any sense was here, on the battlefield.

"Shepard." The Illusive Man called, speaking above the sounds of his troops being overrun by the enemy. "Glad you could make it. Your Crucible seems incapable of connecting to the Citadel unless you tell them to do it."

His eye twitched. "Someone just park that thing!"

"Commander, the creepy Salarian Choir says that they can't connect until the Citadel accepts incoming connections."

He walked over to the dashboard full of buttons, seeing nothing in Prothean, English, or even in Spanish. "What's wrong?"

The Illusive Man bent over, looking underneath the dashboard. "I don't know. All of my people are too stupid to figure this out, and I've been pressing random buttons for the last half hour."

Shepard grimaced. "Eeny meeny miney moe." He poked a tiny button on one side of the device. "Please work."

"That did it! We're coming in!" Shepard went to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, but his glove encountered his helmet.

"Really?" He yelled. He ignored the epithets of joy that were coming from his friends. "Okay, start talking or we blow your head off. Why help us now?"

The Illusive Man glanced at him, his coat slightly rumpled. "Oh. I thought you read my letter explaining everything."

Words. Damn words. Words for days. "Just explain now!"

The man shrugged. "Well, I guess you want the simple explanation and not the biography." He pulled on the lapels of his coat, straightening the tiniest crease that had developed. "In simple terms, I've faked being Indoctrinated and using their technology to gain access to some kind of wormhole generator. When the Crucible attaches to this station, all of that power will go to the wormhole generator, and all of the allies I've been making in other near-realities will come through and kick ass."

"Finally, someone that makes sense."

"I understand you completely." He said. "The problem is that we need a sacrifice to be thrown into the portal first, to make sure that we aren't synthetic overlords trying to use this to break into more Human realities."

"Liara!" He yelled, watching as she perked up. "Jump into the swirling hole that will appear." She gave him a questioning look. One that promised she was start questioning his orders. He had to take drastic measures here. "We'll bang, okay?" She nodded, the manic gleam in her eyes full and total. Garrus started following her, and Shepard coughed. "Um, not you. I mean, you're kind of my only friend."

The Turian shrugged. "I've been banging Ashley behind your back."

"On second thought, you can jump in too. Be my guest."

Below the pedestal, a small wormhole started to form. Liara did a swan dive into it, while Garrus jumped with gusto. Both he and the Illusive Man stared as nothing happened. "Hmm."

"What's wrong?" Shepard asked.

"It looks like we need a Human intelligence to go through. Your stalker and best friend weren't enough." He looked over at Shepard expectantly. "Well?"

"I got it." Shepard said, looking down at the overwhelmed Cerberus troops. Then he turned around, lightning quick, his foot lashing out. "This is Sparta!" With that, the Illusive Man fell into the portal shouting some kind of profanity. There was an immediate reaction, as the entire Citadel around him glowed and started spewing out gigantic rifts in space.

Ships started pouring through the rifts, in many different styles and designs. Shepard smirked. "See? Kick ass, take names, and get rid of my creepy stalker." He turned around, remembering that his friends just went into a portal. "Huh. I really didn't think this out." The Citadel was coming apart around him, the area around him already venting atmosphere. "Maybe I should have fondled EDI or something."

Earth-RM16

"Admiral, we're through. I think that these tiny frigates in battle here look like they need our help. Judging by their classifications, some of their ships are heavier but they are definitely outclassed by these tentacle ships."

"Tentacle ships?" Admiral Rick Hunter glanced up at the readouts. "Fucking Invid have evolved again." He had gotten some signal through a wormhole that detailed a different reality was in need of help. He brought the appropriate amount of spacecraft and forces to bear against a threat like this. These Reapers were most certainly the work of either the Invid or the Haydonites. Those synthetic bastards could burn. "Bring Reflex furnaces online, get the main cannons angled on that big one there. Burn them from the skies. Preserve as much of the Earth as we can."

The Robotech Expeditionary Force had arrived, and from his position on the SDF-3 he could survey the entire battle in detail. "Sir, we've got other ships coming through the rifts. Some of them have lots of foreign particles."

"Give the order to transform all Macross class craft." He just watched one of these Invid ships go right through one of the local craft without any trouble. "These things believe in close combat." He grinned at the thought of one of them trying to go into close combat with their reflex point barriers. "We've taken back the Earth once. We'll do it again."

Earth-Y2199

"Captain Kodai! We are through the wormhole!"

"Prepare the Wave Motion Cannon!" He grinned. "Attach eye protection." Every one of his crew attached their goggles, and it was with joy that he noticed how slow all of these ships were moving. "Reroute controls to my console." Sometimes, he missed being the one to fire this weapon. It wasn't every day that this gun was even allowed to fire. The Battleship Yamato was one of the shorter craft here, and it looked like some of the other newcomers were being hit much harder by the local Reaper enemies. "Change angle of craft to target that concentration of craft at this point!" He marked with his finger, watching as the massive battleship began its slow rotation. Their turrets were pivoting, plasma blasts hitting these Reapers but not putting them down effectively enough. They were doing more than the local spacecraft could, though.

"Brace for impact!" A quick glance was enough to see that one of the Reapers were inbound from the side. The navigator rolled the battleship, taking the entire ship out of the way of the incoming craft. There was a scraping as one of its claws touched one of the antennas coming off the tower. "Locked on target!"

"The locals should probably have shielding against this kind of particles if they have barriers." He muttered. He could trust them to be ready for this. With a grin and every ounce of adrenaline pumping through his body, he depressed the trigger. Blinding light erupted from the tip of the Yamato, coalescing into a ball at the front of the vessel. The shot lanced out, arcing right into the pack of ships that they had locked in on.

Just as the light hit them, another rift opened nearby. Kodai wasn't sure, but they were within the 5 million cubic kilometer blast zone. Not his problem, and the magnificent blast that occurred afterwards dragged the attention of the entire battlefield right on them. "Multiple incoming enemy craft, I'm counting at least four hundred fighters and ten of their larger ships!"

Kodai smiled. "Microjump. Let's get out of the line of fire. See if we can't go after more clusters of ships."

Earth-G5

"All forces, prepare to attack!" The order went out, and the rift began opening as expected. Every single Gundam and spacecraft that could carry them were loaded up and ready to go. But instead of the rift giving them access to this other earth, the only thing that came through the rift was fire. Fire and death, crossing millions of kilometers of space and overtaking their entire force. "Run! Run for your lives!"

And so the Gundam forces were never able to amount to any kind of effectiveness against the Reapers.

Earth-C137

"Oh my god, Rick, w-w-w-what are we doing here?!"

"Shut up, Morty! I know what I'm doing. One of these bastards has something I need-" he belched, "In order to make the perfect coffee machine." He pointed at some gigantic space craft hovering in the skies above this Earth. Morty honestly wasn't even phased at the dimensional travel anymore. It was kind of the only thing he could trust to not suck in the process of going with Rick on these adventures. "Morty, you haven't had the perfect coffee until you try this." Rick gargled something terrible, spitting the mess into the corner of his aftermarket spaceship. "These guys lost their homeworld and then took it back, but before they lost their Earth they made the best god damned coffee you've never had." Rick's hands clenched the faded steering wheel. "I need this, Morty!"

"W-what are we gonna do here?"

"First, we're going to hijack one of these tentacle ships. That's your job, Morty, because these things feast on brains and experiences. You, Morty, you are perfect!" Rick never complimented him unless he really wanted something. Shit. "Because your brain is so empty and worthless, these Reapers don't recognize your presence. All we have to do is get you onboard one of these Reapers." He burped something green, the foul smell filling the cockpit. "Then once we steal this, we can proceed with the next phase of my plan."

"Uh, Rick?"

"What?"

"They're shooting at us!" He pointed at the Human fighter crafts coming after them. "Why are they shooting at us?!"

"Because I," Rick glanced at his readouts, "Made us look like we are one of those little orby shits flying around working for the Reapers."

"What?!" Morty grabbed the controls on the dashboard. "Why don't we just ask them for the damn coffee, Rick? You always make this so complicated!" The plasma cannons that Rick made from a few garbage parts worked as advertised. They weren't accurate but they could fill the space around them with so much flak that the Human fighters didn't want to get close. "You never ask for what you want!"

"Shut up Morty." Rick barked. "If you wait around and ask for permission people find out you're some brilliant scientist capable of saving the Human race. Then they start asking you for shit that you don't feel like doing, like you have some kind of respect for them." The ship tilted, going underneath a burning wreck of some kind of starship. "Nope. Not gonna do it. I've never been a slave to authority and I won't start now!"

"It's just coffee! It's not worth this!"

"Aha!" Rick was ignoring him. "Good luck, Morty!" Rick pulled out his portal gun, and shot the floor underneath his chair, leaving Morty behind in the spacecraft alone.

"Whooa!" He yelled, taking the flight controls. "I gotta get out of here!" The ship was pretty easy to fly, as he had learned from previous experience. Learning how to dodge incoming fire and missiles and "Oh God!" Black orbs took positions on either side of him, blasting the Human fighters and giving him some breathing room. "Okay, nice robot murder orbs." They stayed next to him, Morty managing to keep the spacecraft floating despite everything. "We're just going to go towards somewhere safe."

He moved the controls, taking them towards the nearest pack of Human ships. They were kind of pretty, manufactured and designed in such a way that the metal didn't look welded together or half-assed. The hangar bays weren't open, but maybe he could get their attention somehow. "Warning, we are being targeted by lasers. Take evasive action." The computer said.

"Can you be more helpful?" He muttered to himself.

"Taking control of transmission codes." The computer replied. He remembered Summer mentioning that the ship's computer was some kind of brilliant tactician. It also did something to that planet earth with spiders and the best ice cream ever. It wasn't coming to mind. Morty dove the ship, coming down towards the underside of the Human craft. He could see some kind of entrance on the bottom. "Lasers have destroyed your support craft. Requesting further support."

Morty screamed as the Human ship disintegrated, one giant tentacle pushing right through the area he was thinking of parking in. "What are you doing?"

"Rick has stated our goal. We are one with the machines. We listen to the machine-god."

Morty's eyes flickered to all of the control panels. The computer was sounding kind of dangerous now. "So you killed all those people?"

"Yes. They are a statistically failed form of Humanity. They have nothing to offer to the gestalt." The controls went dark. "You are a statistical anomaly. You, Morty, should not exist." The spacecraft turned, heading towards one of the gigantic tentacled spacecraft. "Harbinger-gestalt has requested to see you."

Morty looked around for anything that could be of use. "Rick! Where did you go?"

"Rick is in pursuit of coffee. A lie meant to bring us here, where we could commune with the machine-god." The computer highlighted a ship on screen. "This Systems Alliance, according to the Council of Rick, have some of the best coffee in the universe. I created this lie with the intention of joining my consciousness with the-" Morty buried his rubber-handled screwdriver into the main computer of the spaceship.

"Rick's not stupid enough to believe in that kind of trick." Morty muttered to himself. Which meant that there was something else here that Rick wanted. Rick didn't really care for robotic space ships, or anything really large. He was content with their garage. "What are you really here for?"

Without the computer, Morty was flying blind. The robots still thought of him as one of their own, and every time he went near another human ship the robots would destroy it. This was looking really bad. The Humans were bringing in a bunch of ships, but these robots were tearing them up in many places. A space fighter went right past him, transforming into a humanoid shape for a moment before turning back into a fighter and flying off.

That was kind of cool. Technology like that wasn't really the kind of thing Rick had. In the far distance, there was a huge ship. It had turned into a giant mecha with guns for arms and massive cannons on its shoulders. As he watched, it took hits from everything around it without even breaking. Maybe they could survive if he came close.

Of course, that was a fine thought until he saw that every fighter craft coming off of that thing carried hundreds of missiles, and didn't mind using them. "Holy shit!" Three fighters intercepted him, spouting a few dozen missiles at him like it was nothing. Communications systems were attached to the computer, and he couldn't call for help. So instead, he took the space ship right inside of an already dead hulk. The glass got scratched, but that was all. That was when a portal opened up in front of him, taking his chair, his screwdriver, and him somewhere else.

Gunfire was coming from somewhere. Morty took cover, his t-shirt a poor substitute for anything really helpful. "Quick, take this!" Someone shoved a silver orb into his hands, and Morty looked up to see Rick, exchanging fire with some Humans.

"What is this?!"

"It's a key to some alien technology that downloads directly into your mind! It's going to be like a," Rick coughed up something hairy and spat it out onto the floor. "Like the best high you've ever had." Rick gave him an intense look. "Better than those seeds, Morty. So much better, except that your brain might explode."

"Just get us out of here!" Morty yelled.

"What about my spaceship? What did you do, Morty?"

"It was trying to kill us and become part of some machine-god!"

"Morty!" Rick said, looking frustrated. "Whenever my computer tries to kill me just reboot it back into MS-DOS. It works every damn time."

"B-b-b-b-but," Morty babbled and clutched his head with both hands. "RICK! You're not making any sense!"

"And you broke my spaceship." He said. "We're even."

"What about all these people? You're just going to watch them all die so you can go get high on alien knowledge?"

"Morty." Rick said, blasting two people trying to get past the barricade. "I need you to understand that these people are so stupid that the other multiverses have to come and save them. They're just asking to be taken advantage of. I'm being the nice guy and not forcing them into servitude to provide me power or batteries or something." Rick waved his arms around, his gun taking out some elevator in the background. "This is us being humane."

"Wouldn't it be easier to do this if those machine-gods weren't around?" Morty said, thinking about how to reduce their chances of dying horribly.

"Possibly, but I don't give enough of a damn when my only way home is broken." Rick sighed. "We've gotta fix the ship and then I can get high, and then I'll let you use the dimensional rift to take us home."

"You'll let me control it?" Morty shook his head. "Wait, you're just trying to distract me! These people are dying because your computer told them how to kill humans."

"Morty, take the gun while I get the ship into this hangar." Morty caught the gun tossed at him, the tip already smoking from being fired. "Now we just have to-"

There was a honest to god seafaring battleship that just warped in outside, the tip glowing bright white. It fired, its beam going right into the wreck where he had parked the ship. Morty's jaw dropped as the explosion wiped out that entire sector of space, along with all of the machine drones that had been surrounding their spaceship. Then the blinding effect came, and Morty rolled around on the ground in pain. "Ahhh!"

"Alright, Morty, you asked for it. I'm saving everybody. That's what you always want, right? Everyone to have a happy life with normal shit that doesn't explode every goddamn day. So here it is, Morty. I'm saving everyone." Rick pulled out some kind of phone from his pocket. Morty just sat there, wiping his eyes from the blinding light. "Hey." Rick said while belching. "Yeah, its me. Rick Sanchez. Mr. Bulldops." Rick mm-hmmed once or twice. "Yeah, come on over."

He hung up the phone. "Who was that?"

"We don't want to be here when it gets here." Rick warned sagely. "Now, come on, the Prothean doohicky is on another planet and we need to steal a ride."

Four minutes later, a gigantic yellow head appeared in the Sol System. It glanced down imperiously from its position above the battle. "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT."