First off, I'd like to apologize for not updating this in forever. I'm going to bring this up to where the Spacebattles version is at, and a new chapter should be out by the end of the week.

I expect things to diverge more as the story goes on. If it gets that far.

Chapter 2: Arrival at Normandy

Sandra

I wasn't sure what happened. One moment I was on my computer, the next I was... somewhere else. The walls were shiny grey (silver?), and it was stacked with crates and boxes. It looked familiar- the Normandy! It had to be.

Elated, I stood up and shouted at the top of my lungs, "IT WORKED! IT WORKED! I CAN'T BELIEVE I FINALLY DID SOMETHING THAT WORKED!"

Hey, it was an accomplishment. On my birthday, I bought a bunch of lottery tickets, because it was my lucky day. I didn't even win a free play and I had to eat nothing but noodles for the next month! It wasn't fun.

"I am detecting a lame reference in the cargo bay," a slightly synthetic female voice announced. EDI. "Flooding the cargo bay with a deadly neurotoxin. Error- morality core has blocked access. Attempting to reroute. Dispatching security."

"Did someone merge EDI with GLaDOS?" a familiar voice joked. I turned to my right, and there was Kevin, aka Ultra_Elite_Engineer. He was dressed in one of those futuristic colonist outfits that didn't look very futuristic at all, an ugly brown color really.

"I am detecting another lame reference in the cargo bay." She sighed. Oh my God, did EDI just sigh? "But I guess that one was my fault."

Other than that, he looked mostly the same. Brown hair that came down and covered his ears, similar colored eyes and scruffy beard. He adjusted his glasses and blinked a few times before asking, "Where's everybody else?"

"Oh, bloody hell," said a British accented voice. A man in a normal and not futuristic outfit stumbled out from between a pair of crates, pulling a duffel bag and instrument case behind him. This was actually the first time I'd seen Aleks, or SublimeVirtuoso, in the flesh. He looked decidedly more normal and less British than I imagined.

"Fuck me," a deeper voice, this one not British. That was Jason, aka RaqVeteran25. He was in full military gear with a gun and one of those tactical vests and stuff. "God fucking damn it."

A door on the far side of the cargo bay opened, revealing two humans in armor and carrying assault rifles that I'd never seen in the game. Security. They pointed their guns right at us, which was pretty scary since I'd never had a gun pointed at me before.

A third figure emerged from between them. She had short red hair and dark brown eyes- a combination I'd never used. There was a scar running down her face, but it actually made her look more beautiful. Though her uniform was hardly flattering, she was slim, feminine, and pretty. Was it really her? The great Commander Shepard? In the flesh?

"Is that-" I squeak out.

Jason shakes his head, peeking out from behind a metal crate. He doesn't have his gun. "Nah, that's not the Commander."

A different woman, with the same hair (but dirtier) and eye color (but more intense) but taller and more muscular with a much uglier scar, followed behind her. She was decidedly less pretty. The slimmer woman turned and saluted, and the larger woman saluted back before saying, "At ease, marine."

"That's the Commander."

I manage to squee before I black out.

Kevin

"This can't be happening." Oh shit, we're actually here. On the Normandy! In Mass Effect!

"Can it," Jason snapped.

"This can't be happening!" Everyone is gone! We're headed toward certain death! The Reapers are coming! I left the bread in the oven! "We're fucked!"

"Shut the fuck up!" Jason screamed at me.

"Hey!" Shepard called, stepping down into the cargo bay. "Who are you and what are you doing on my ship."

I forced myself to speak up and try to sound as professional as possible. Come on, Kevin. You can do this. Just like in those other, less ambitious self inserts. "Commander Shepard. We heard you're taking on the Collectors, and we want in... umm, if your buddies lower the guns, can we talk privately in your private quarters? You know, the one with the fish tank and the collectable ship display."

She just looks at me like I'm insane. "Excuse me? Collectors?"

I get a second look at her uniform. Blue. Alliance. So are the Marines. "Shit, this is Mass Effect 1, isn't it?"

"Could be 3, couldn't it?" Jason asked.

"No, if it was 3 she would know about the Collectors," Aleks told us, untangling himself from his instrument case.

I asked, "Hey, what year is it?"

Before Shepard could stop her, the pretty woman replied, "2183"

"Yeah, this is Mass Effect 1."

"I'm sorry, what the hell are you talking about?" Shepard asked. "You better stop explaining yourselves before I throw you in the brig."

I couldn't stop myself from pointing out her error. "You mean start."

She raised her gun a fraction of a centimeter. "No, I mean stop. You're really digging yourself deeper here."

"No, no, no, you answer my question first," Aleks said forcefully. Did he not notice the guns? "If this is the SR-1, what's with that psychotic AI?"

"AI? That's just Joker and his stupid voice changer," the chatty woman added before covering her mouth, embarrassed.

"Hey, you gotta admit, it's pretty funny," the female AI voice which was actually Joker said over the intercom.

"Joker, turn that thing off," Shepard snapped.

Another sigh. "Aye, Commander."

Aleksandr

This was getting very peculiar very quickly.

"I want answers, now!" Shepard demanded. "This is a military vessel, highly secured. How did you get aboard?"

Oh, shit. See, we didn't have time to come up with a cover story. We're going to have to improvise.

Actually, seeing as none of my mates are saying anything, I'm going to have to improvise.

"Well, there's this song, it's called Vexations, and it's known to cause hallucinations and even death to people who play it. I started playing it, and, well, the next thing I knew I was here."

I trailed off as Shepard started laughing. A strong, bright laugh. Genuine amusement. Laughing at us. Laughing at me. "Seriously? That's the best you could come up with? Perfect op, and that's the cover story you've got?"

"Just tell her the truth," Jason advised me, trying to give me another opening I suppose.

I took a deep breath. "Look, I don't know how we got here, okay? We just went to sleep in a not so nice place, next thing we knew we were here."

A pregnant pause. "Bullshit."

I'm going to need to break out the big guns. It's a bad cliche but at that point I was much to disoriented to conceive a good metaphor. See, in any self-insert, the characters use information they shouldn't know to gain an opening. Then they at least have an in, and can talk with Shepard at some level of equality. If they do it right then they can actually pass themselves off as oracles or such.

"Shepard, I know things. We know things. Believe it or not we can help you."

She folded her arms. "Start talking."

There's a problem with this plan. We thought we were going into Mass Effect 2, and this is Mass Effect 1... and I know nothing about this Shepard. We have no predictable entry, no plan, no parameters, no known information other than what is common between all runs of Mass Effect. And even that is of limited use because we do not know where or when we are.

"Mate, help me out here," I whispered to Jason.

He shrugged. "I got nothing."

"Kevin?"

"Bitch ass shit fuck damn!" the engineer stammered. It seemed that at some point he had lost all ability to function as a human being. "Son of a motherfucking cuntbitch!"

I couldn't help but gasp at his display of obscenity. "Whoa."

"Is he okay?" Shepard asked. "I can make him shut up."

"Commander!" the other woman protested.

"What, I'm just kidding!" Shepard told her. She turned to us. "Although if I don't hear some answers, I will throw all of you in the metaphorical brig."

"Why metaphorical?" Jason asked.

"This ship doesn't actually have a brig," the other woman told him.

So, we didn't know much at all, or at least those of us that are useful don't. The talkative lady, however, probably knows all kinds of things about life, the universe and everything. I called out to her, "Hey, redhead who's not Commander Shepard!"

She perked up. "Yeah?"

"Where was Shepard born?"

"Oh, that's easy, she was born on Mindoir. Then she lost her family to slavers before she joined the Alliance." She covered her mouth. "Sorry!"

"Commander Shepard! You were born on Mindoir, and joined the Alliance after slavers killed your entire family."

She started chewing her lip. "Keep talking."

I turned to the smaller of the two redheads. "Did Shepard do something very significant during her career? Say, on Akuze or Elysium."

"Yes, she was the sole survivor on Akuze. You've heard the story?"

"You were the sole survivor on Akuze," Jason shouted, starting to figure out what I was doing.

"I'll admit, that's pretty good," Shepard evaluated. "Clearly you know a lot about me. But what about the current mission?"

Great, we know that Shepard flies somewhere down the middle when it comes to morality. And she seems

My friends were catching on. Kevin had managed to snap out of his streak of profanity and posed the question, "Are we headed to Eden Prime or the Citadel?"

"We're on our way to the Citadel from Eden Prime," the helpful woman answered before covering her mouth. "Eep! Sorry."

"You just came from Eden Prime," Kevin shouted. "Saren was there with the geth. He used the Prothean beacon, then you used the Prothean beacon, then it blew up."

"Keep going..." Shepard said. Clearly she was starting to be convinced.

"Hey, talkative lady!" Jason called. "Did we lose anybody on Eden Prime?"

"Nihlus was shot in the head and Jenkins was shredded by drones. I had to help move the bodies. It was awful."

"And did we pick anybody up?"

"A Gunnery Chief Williams, last survivor of her unit. Really awful when that happens." The talkative lady suppressed a shudder.

Jason mulled it over for a moment, then shouted, "Commander Shepard, Nihlus was shot in the back of the head on Eden Prime by someone he trusted, and you lost Jenkins to drone fire. Chief Williams lost her unit and you picked her up."

I conclude, "See, Commander? We're like, oracles. We just know things. And we can tell things about the future, too."

Shepard pinched her nose. "You've told me literally one thing my sister didn't tell you. Did you really think that was going to work?"

Biting back a surge of fear, I answered meekly almost as a question, "It worked the first time around?"

Her answer was an understandably incredulous "Really?"

"Look, this is the most boring part of the whole adventure," I protested. "You just need to believe us so we can get moving already."

She didn't go for it. "What is this, a shitty self-insert?"

I could only answer, "Maybe?"

"Why couldn't we have gone somewhere nice, like Beacon?" Kevin protested quietly.

Beacon... beacon. That's it! "There's one more thing. When you used the beacon, it gave you visions of death, destruction, and doom. Because the beacon malfunctioned, they're malformed and confusing. We know what that stuff means. We can help you understand it."

Shepard lowered her rifle slowly. "Okay. I'm going to trust you blindly and completely even though this is probably the weirdest and most suspicious thing I've ever seen, and I've seen some shit."

"Really?"

She raised her rifle again. "Fuck no!"

I threw my hands up in the air. "Oh, come on!"

"Relax, I'm just screwing with you, this has dragged on long enough already." She laughed and lowered the rifle again. "Come on, the cargo bay's cold and stuffy. There's still some cake in the fridge, and Kaidan just put on a fresh pot of coffee. We can talk over lunch. I'm Jane, by the way."

"I'm Kevin Georgeas."

"Lance Corporal Jason Hernandez, USMC, retired."

"Sandra McCarthy," Sandra muttered as the two guards began dragging her across the floor.

"Aleksandr, but everyone just calls me Aleks," I replied numbly, following her up the steps.