OF SERENDIPITY AND BALANCE : THE EDITING GANG SAYS SANITY IS FOR THE WEAK

In which the Editing Gang loses both patience with my slow writing pace and their mind.

The Kitten Wars also continue.

This is mostly the work of the Editing Gang. Once again, it is set in the canon Premiseverse. (I give up. Man's delusional.) (SILENCE! The chickens talk to me.) (...and he accuses US of being drunk and on drugs?)

Remember: This is all Progman's fault.


"Shepard."

"Wrex."

"Shepard."

"Oh stop it primitives!"

(Yells Vigil as Garrus trolls in the background)

-TSMT-TH-

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Grunt looked around and growled, "Mother, what is that noise?"

Shepard tilted her head as she checked the PlayAzure centerfold and replied blandly, "The angry mob, son."

The baby krogan that was in fact a giant, scratched his unfused headplate in confusion. "Ugh, can I eat them?"

"Nope. You'll get an indigestion. Remember the last time you had one? We had to sanitize the whole Normandy." She gave him a black look which actually made him take a step back. "If I have to listen to one more goddamned joke about potty training or suffering through Vigil's brand of humor AGAIN, because you had an accident, your future will include discovering what it means to be a female krogan."

Grunt looked aghast at his mother and crossed his hands in front of his armored codpiece. "Right. No eating the mob. What about shooting them? Can I at least get some target practice from them. They are so loud and I have this urge..."

Sara Ying Shepard stopped admiring the nubile asari on her omni-tool and glanced at her son. "I thought we had taken care of that when we were on Omega. Don't tell me six asari dancers and three female drells weren't enough?"

Grunt sheepishly looked away, chuckling. "Heh-heh-heh..."

Shepard rolled her eyes and flipped the haptic page, smirking when she beheld the asari triplets smearing baby oil on each other. Whoever patented the 6th generation GIF, should get a nobel prize. She sighed when her son continued chuckling and didn't seem intent on stopping. At least she broke him out of the habit of declaring his species before he atomized something with his shotgun death star. "Yeah, how about no. Besides, the mob isn't here for you or me. They are here for the author."

Grunt gave a krogan equivalent of confused look which made him look constipated and murderous at the same time. "Who?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "You know, the human writing this story, making me all sexually frustrated as of late when all I need is a single, steamy session with [REDACTED BY THE COMMISSARIAT FOR HERETICAL AND ANATOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE CRIMES AGAINST NATURE. GODDAMN IT WOMAN, GET HELP.] You know, the Author."

Grunt swallowed thickly and made to retreat from his mother's stateroom. There were some things a son shouldn't know about his mother. "I don't know who you're speaking of. I'm leaving... I'll see you around." The krogan beat a hasty retreat. What was heard couldn't be unheard...

Shepard shook her head and lit a cigarette, taking a drag of the aromatic tobacco and flipping to the next page of PlayAzure.

Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Wonder how she can contort like that? Shepard angled her head and moved her omni-tool in another direction but still couldn't figure how the asari did THAT. Maybe she'd had removed some of her lower ribs. Heard that Ashland broad did that so she could do the lips to lips maneuver.

Sara blew the smoke through her nose and then glared right at you. "Don't you have something to write? Or do I have to sic another mob at you?"

-TSMT-TH-

Sara couldn't believe her eyes what she was seeing, or rather what her eyes were translating as images - either somebody, somewhere had a really screwed up mind or her sensors were malfunctioning.

Vigil had sent the entire Normandy crew a vid, of what he dubbed Mutated Lizard and Primitive Human - when he had been checking the numerous data-feeds that were being sent throughout the Galaxy. Starring, what looked to be Jason Delacor and being chased what looked to be a mutated flying lizard, that she was ninety-nine percent sure looked like a dragon from a cheap-fantasy tale.

"Did I accidentally drink that SA-crap again?" asked Sara looking at her coffee, which seemed to be the high-grade she usually drank, being only the second person in the entire Normandy who wasn't laughing their butt-off. She took a long sip of it, wondering from what Terminus backwater planet did that freak of human-nature crawled out of.

That moment ended, when Shepard choked-out her coffee onto the vid-screen, when Delacor's lower-armor that covered his back and waist was bitten off by that mutant lizard. "Who in the fuck wears rainbow-colored underwear?!" asked Sara, also succumbing to the laughter that plagued the ship.

In the science-lab, Mordin Solus simply shook his head at what he was seeing. "Cloning of extinct animals-," then his eyes twitched, at the moment when the lizard bit-off Delacor's lower armor. "-never a good idea. STG never one for reason. New weapon, maybe. Or likely source of entertainment. Need more data, likely both."

-TSMT-TH-

"Shepard. Glad you came. Need second opinion," said Mordin, as soon as Sara entered the science-lab, wanting to ask the salarian a personal matter.

"Alright, what you got, doc?" asked Sara, walking over to a vid-screen that Mordin was typing behind.

"Possible Reaper cyber-warfare weapon. Take a look," he replied, starting up a vid on the screen. As Sara leaned closer and started viewing it.

"Wait a minute! This is krogan-salarian por-" spoke Shepard, before her sensors and brain malfunctioned. Thank you, come again. Her entire body then collapsing onto the lab-deck, twitching and speaking gibberish.

"Hmm. Effective against organic targets too. Opinion?" debated Mordin.

"Flying monkey-pyjak unicorn fish sandwich…" replied Sara, still twitching on the floor.

"Medical to science lab," informed Mordin on his omni-tool, before he shut down the new Solus Anti-Reaper Weapon.

-TSMT-TH-

Miranda stared aghast at the weapon Shepard was adding the finishing touches to. "What in the name of creation is that thing?"

Shepard smirked, lifting it up. A rotary cylinder of metal and Prothean crystal surrounded a barrel with an opening the size of her fist, with heat venting down its length. "Made me a particle beam minigun."

Miranda, against her better judgement, spoke again. "Why?"

Shepard's smirk became slightly crazed as she placed a Kangol hat on her head backwards. "Particle beams, the very best there is. For when you absolutely, positively have to kill every last motherfucker in the room!"

Garrus, leaning on the wall nearby, nodded. "Accept no substitutes."

-TSMT-TH-

On Earth in the Tower, the High Lords of Terra are interrupted by a harried looking messenger.

"My Lords the there has been a new announcement from the rebels. I'm sorry to inform you it has lead to the defections of the entirety of the Third and Fourth Fleets."

Lord Manswell quickly pulled up the newest piece of propaganda on his omni. It was put forth by the Shepard/Cerberus/Military Rebellion that seized control of the outer colonies and the Second Fleet in a matter of days.

Normally the Citadel wouldn't stand for such foolishness but the SIX were suddenly engulfed in a war of assassins and the Thirty were facing open rebellion from the clanless. Most shockingly the Turians just had a bloodless revolution and the Palavanus were in the process of reorganizing the Hierarchy.

"Don't let word of this get to the SolGuard, the Commissars might not be able to stop a mutiny." He croaked after the piece finished.

"My Lord," the messenger quaked under the gaze of the assembled High Lords. "The Commissariat are among the defectors. It appears they organized the mutiny among the Third Fleet and some elements supported the defection among the Fourth Fleet. The loyalists among the Sol Guard report they don't know how much longer before mutinies breakout among the enlisted troops."

"How is that possible? What could possibly be powerful enough message to break their conditioning?" Raged Windsor.

"Did the Butcher offer them asari whores? Booze on every ship?" Questioned the Emperor of Japan. With the finality of a doomed man, Manswell projected the message to the rest of the High Lords.

"We are doomed," despaired Al Saud.

"What if we rushed our private supply to the front? Would that allow us to turn this around?" Coleman tried.

"It's too late," replied Windsor.

"So what do we do?" Questioned Coleman.

Manswell reflected in those last moments and thought on his mistakes. "We have been outmaneuvered. We are now outnumbered and outgunned, our remaining soldiers are now unreliable. We have no choice. We… surrender," he finally conceded.

The humiliation of losing to such a cheap ploy irked him to no end. For all his 'loyal' soldiers to defect en masse, for the revelation his black projects were paid for from the profits made off selling SA coffee to the military was too much for his mind to handle.

Also the rebels got better food, real coffee, and joint exercises with new Alliance asari units but that was besides the point.


And then…. Wrex was a fruitcake.


Meanwhile in the secret meeting room of the six (that is totally not right under the meeting room of the high lords and you are getting a mindwipe for no particular reason)

"NOOOOOOOO… The coffee…" Yelled Muvai Solus as the flood of coffee that was being used to boil the high lords alive spilled into the meeting chambers.

-TSMT-TH-

...50 001 years ago

Javik had some downtime, finally after the Reapers had stopped chasing him, locked down underneath a bunker several kilometres under the surface - he needed some rest and some time to catch his breath. As thus, he did something unheard of at this time - watched a show on his omnitool; he needed a good laugh and some remembrance. He brought up the vid, dubbed Hairy Primitive, said to be from some blue-planet.

Seeing four hairy primitives going like, well primitives gave him a good laugh - how anybody figured they could be Empire-material ever, needed to have himself brain shaved.

"OH! AH! UHH!"

...Present

Javik watched with controlled dis-amusement, as the human called Shepard, was barking at the leaders of the current galaxy on the communicator. In retrospect, it might have been a good thing, they didn't have the option of brain shaving here.

"OH! You damn idiots! AH!" yelled Shepard, at their idiocy to ignore everything - even with a Prothean explaining them the issue of getting together or dying. If they were set on fire, they would also think it was 'a dismissed claim'. "UHH! Politicians!"

Albeit, when she started venting, he had slight twitch at his mouth, remembering that old Prothean show - wondering, if any of those hairy primitives, might have been one of Shepard' ancestors.

-TSMT-TH-

"This hurts you."

"Enough!" Shepard screamed, and pulled a new weapon from her hip. It was a modernized squirt gun from the 21st century, though it wasn't loaded with water. She pulled the trigger and a stream of SA tea hit the harbinger collector in the face.

"This hurts...me?" it said as it began to dissolve into a bubbling puddle on the ground.

-TSMT-TH-

Javik channels Jackson

"I've had it! With these motherfucking Husks ! On this motherfucking ship! Throw them out the airlock!"

-TSMT-TH-

Shepard was currently busy, feeding her three chickens and a rooster - Cerberus having decided to replace the fish tank, and save drinking water on it, with a simple habitat. Who had thought of the idea of chickens in the first place likely had drank a dozen cups of SA-coffee and had been shooting Hallex, but that was Cerberus for you.

Sara had just finished sprinkling chicken-feed on the floor of their glass-home - when the rooster looked at her and opened its beak.

"Ca-ca-li-bra-tions…" cried the rooster, before returning to eat the chicken-feed. Sara, merely having her eye twitch at that act, as she looked over her box of chicken feed - Palaven' Delight; Dextro-Feed.

Somewhere, some Palavanus was likely laughing in his grave.

-TSMT-TH-

Shepard was working in her quarters on the Normandy when she decided to call Joker on the commlink for a status update. "Joker, are we near Omega yet?" she said.

"Sorry Shepard", Joker replied. "The FTL drive went down. Every time we try to start it up there's an error message. Something about it's disabled until the destination is written, whatever that means."

"It means the human writing this story last century hasn't finished deciding on the little details about what happens on Omega, so the ship is stuck for now", Shepard said.

Joker was confused now. "Wait, so if the guy writing the story is working on Omega, who's writing this conversation?"

Shepard laughed. "That would be one of the editing gang people. They're getting excited about an upcoming update, and when that happens, we end up with a new line of coffee based weapons."

-TSMT-TH-

Garrus was starting to get used to his current situation. He wasn't sure which was harder to believe, that he was still alive or that Shepard was alive again. Both were true however, and Garrus was on his way to speak with Shepard in her base's firing range.

When he arrived he saw Shepard tinkering with some kind of weapon he had not yet seen. It sort of resembled a large rocket launcher with a scope.

"Shepard, what are you working on?"

Shepard looked back and smiled at Garrus. "It's a sniper shotgun."

"...A sniper shotgun?" Garrus asked, confused. "It looks nothing like a shotgun."

"You'll see, chicken." Shepard raised the weapon to her shoulder and aimed it downrange at one of her favorite targets, a batarian slaver of course. She fired, and a Claymore shotgun attached to thrusters and outfitted with an omni-bayonet rocketed out of the launcher's cavernous barrel.

The shotgun cleared the distance in a fraction of a second, before spearing the batarian mock-up through the nose with the omni-bayonet. The shotgun then discharged in the target's face, the recoil giving it a boost as the thrusters carried it back to the launcher it had come from.

Garrus broke out laughing, then regretted doing so as his wounds from the Omega clusterfuck weren't yet fully healed.

Shepard shrugged. "Tali was complaining she couldn't hit things at range with her shotgun when we went to get you. Had an idea to fix that."

Garrus was starting to wonder if the revived Shepard was crazier than before, but then he realized he wasn't exactly the same since her death either.