Preface:

You thought you could escape it, huh? After four years?

Think again, dirtbags. In the words of The Infant, "Let us proceed."

CHAPTER 9

Let's Continue

Let me ask you a question, reader: do you remember Jacob Taylor? No, seriously. You don't remember? You think you might remember but you can't right now? That's okay, I don't either.

So anyway, after throwing some dude who said his name was Jacob out of the airlock, our intrepid hero's unreliable sidekick Charles Pressly, impressed at his own importance to the story and his racist assertiveness at dealing with a potential threat to the crew, strutted confidently through the corridors of the Normandy. He - wait, you don't remember Pressly either? What do you mean, he was in the first chapter of this story, I'm pretty sure. What? You don't remember that because it was written almost 10 years ago? You know what, that's fair.

Anywho, our intrepid hero's seldom-picked squadmate and new resident minority Kasumi Goto, satisfied with the quickness with which she tied up and gagged that bald fuck Pressly and stuffed him in a closet, swaggered down the dirty and sometimes sticky corridors of the SSV Normandy 2: The Squeakual with the self-assuredness of a woman who is perfectly content with being a side character from a DLC with life goals that are in no way parallel with the plot of the mission she's "helping" Shepard with. Life for side characters can be hard, she thinks. But it's not bad. The Normandy has free craft services. Dumbass socialists. I don't even have to steal.

Sometimes, Kasumi might find herself in Shepard's ready room (which is his bedroom, accursed as it is) to receive instructions on a mission, and sometimes - yeah, who is she kidding? Shepard did her mission and then dropped her like a used cumrag - about a foot from the trashcan. Then when he wanted to fight the Collectors, Kasumi was about to leave but Shepard just stood in the doorway and stared at her obliquely, because he didn't respect her enough to look her in the eyes (and also because Shepard is afraid of women). A bunch of people could have died, but she stayed on the Normandy with Joker and scratched her asshole.

Afterwards, no one told her she had to leave, so she just kind of stuck around and stole stuff. And yeah, she might have recently been discovered stealing Pressly's wallet from his front pocket, but there's a solution for that kind of problem. Being Kasumi Goto doesn't come with experience or camaraderie, well enough. But a free bed's a free bed, and sometimes Thane wants to dick down. You know what they say. Once you go lizard, you realize what a lizard cock is like and regret it immediately. Why does every lizard dude have a dead wife? Oof.

Today Kasumi found herself rifling through the drawers of Liara's cabin, looking for anything Liara had on Shepard that she could use later. Y'know, after they beat the Reapers. There would definitely be a war crimes tribunal, and Shepard was definitely going up first, so the more crimes Kasumi could blame on him, the better. The unfortunate part about that was that Shepard was seemingly immune to controversy, as he had virtually no oversight and everyone already knew every little disgusting thing about him. The man wore scandal like lube, and nobody could hold onto him. Asshole.

She did, occasionally, find some stuff that people didn't know, though. Like how that one time on Illium, Shepard and Garrus totally-

She froze. I'm not hidden. Why didn't I hide? I got too complacent. Fuck, I got too complacent!

So you might, reader, be either disgusted or chuffed in some way that our current perspective whore has found herself in quite an awkward situation: staring down the flaccid barrel of a sad, saggy, and pale revolver that's just run out of bullets. This one's more of a small iron, though. Do you get it yet? It's a penis. It's Shepard's penis.

If the sight of a quite embarrassing man lying spread-eagled on the floor with his own dried ejaculate in his mustache, seemingly shocked to the spot (or stuck with cum) doesn't fill your heart with true disgust and despair, then you should keep reading this story. Kasumi, however, is not like you, and has self-respect. This is pretty much exactly the situation that personal cloaking devices were made for. Kasumi disappeared, but not before vomit appeared out of the air and hit the floor between Shepard's exceedingly sweaty and pale outstretched legs. Another stroke of the brush on the canvas that is Shepard's life; another masterpiece painted by our Lord. (That's me!)

Now quite sick at the sight of her auto-hot-glued Commander, Kasumi stumbled, invisible, back down the corridors she had just confidently walked earlier. Very soon, however, she bumped into someone and fell over, interrupting her invisibility and rendering her onto the floor as a garbage-sifting racoon who has just been discovered with a used tampon in its grasp. She looked up to see a profoundly sorry and MILFy Samara. It was an odd framing, with her pitying face staring down at Kasumi from between her massive motherly (blue) milkers, giving Kasumi the illusion of looking at an asari justicar wearing big slutty earmuffs.

"Oh honey, I'm sorry, I didn't see you!" Samara helped the now stunned Kasumi up and brushed her off. She took a long look at Kasumi. "You just came from Shepard's cabin, didn't you? Oh, you poor thing. I know how he can be."

No, you don't, Kasumi thought. The man treats women like shit… that is, unless they happen to be blue. In that case, he just gets nervous and makes seuxal comments. Who does a person complain to about sexism in the workplace when they supposedly live in a sexism-free society? God, I wish the Reapers would take me.

Samara, acknowledging Kasumi's shocked silence and darting eyes, sighed. "Oh well. Boys will be boys, right? I'd bet that Enterprise doesn't have these problems. What nice gentlemen they have on that ship!"

"CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!"

*pppthhhh*

"YEEEEAAAAHHHH!"

Barkley, what a legend. The dude had just put down another Klingon bloodwine - INTO HIS BUTTHOLE! Buttchugging bloodwine, or buttwine as the Klingons called it, was so damn culturally appreciative.

"HELL YEAH!" Lieutenant Barkley, standing on his hands, grinned. "Get me another bloodwine, whore!" Guinan, always the buzzkill, didn't look happy.

"Get it yourself, loser."

Ten Forward was all awash with placating noises. "Whoa whoa whoa, calm down," said Commander Riker, an appreciator of other cultures. "This is Klingon awareness month. We're doing this to honor them, it's how they do it in the Empire. So, that being the case, please, whore, get this man another bloodwine, stat!" All the boys cheered, high fives all around. Guinan turned and walked out, probably to complain to her boyfriend, the captain. Riker stepped over the bar like some kind of gorilla and pulled out four bottles of bloodwine, two in each hand. "Some people just don't appreciate other cultures like we do, boys. Pity them. Now let's get NASTY!"

Ten Forward vibrated with the roars of a thousand culturally sensitive men as several open-minded junior officers pissed on the carpet.

Guinan angrily stalked the clean and not sticky corridors of the Enterprise-D. She took a turbolift to the bridge and walked by a thoroughly engaged (asleep) bridge crew before smacking the button to Picard's ready room repeatedly. She heard a commotion on the other side of the door - a vase breaking, and a bunch of zippers zipping. Guinan had lived long enough to know, but also long enough to know that these kinds of things should be forgotten as soon as possible.

"Ahem. Come in."

Psssht.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Hold that thought, Guinan." Picard got up, straightened his uncomfortable uniform shirt, and went over to the replicator, which was very inconveniently not next to his desk. "Tea, Earl Grey. Hot." Then he remembered what month it was, and shakily said "Belay that, replicator. Klingon bloodwine, um, Earl Red, warm." He waited the appropriate amount of time for the replicator to finish beaming in the very culturally sensitive beverage, and took it back to his desk. "You may continue."

Guinan, in a particularly ignorant episode of cultural insensitivity, smacked the bloodwine out of Picard's hand and stared at him. Picard looked shocked, but in that way people who don't really care look shocked.

"Guinan, what is the meaning of this? You know full well that it is Klingon awareness month!"

"'Klingon awareness'?" Guinan incredulously posed. "What are they, retarded?"

"No, of course not. Retard awareness month was two months ago." We humped doorknobs and everything. "Haven't you read your messages from Starfleet?"

"No, I don't read Starfleet emails. I'm not in Starfleet."

"No, of course not." Picard calmed down a bit. He started muttering to himself. "That might explain a few…"

"What's that? A little louder for the civilian in the room!"

"Oh, nothing. Just… um… thinking about the past lives I lived that one time. Many thoughts. Oh yes." He involuntarily licked his lips in remembrance of all the... flute he played.

Guinan looked disgusted. "What is going on with your officers and this 'appreciation month' thing? You know we're in the middle of an important mission, and some of them should be at the ready and not plastered off Klingon… emissions." Picard gulped. "I know you've always respectfully appreciated my opinion, so appreciate when I tell you that this ship is a fucking circus. Respectfully."

Needless to say, Picard was pretty sweaty by this point. He didn't have a speech queued up, and therefore was not sure what to say, so he impulsively went to straighten his ever-too-short shirt, but did it too hard and accidentally ripped the seam, exposing his standard-issue Starfleet wifebeater in all its glory.

He froze. "I… I'll be in my quarters." He then scrambled around the desk and ran past Guinan out of the room. Psssht. Guinan heard him yell at the bridge crew, which at this point were a bunch of now very groggy and shocked young ensigns: "What are you looking at? Check the long range scanners! Look for subspace interference! Do.. whatever you do with tachyons! Now!"

Guinan smirked. Making Jean-Luc Picard uncomfortable was the largest feather in her very oddly shaped cap. But just as she was about to leave to kick all the assholes out of her bar, she got hit with a debilitating alternate-universe-sense attack. Aw, shit. Not this again.

Images flew by, which showed her some pretty nasty shit. One was an actual nasty shit, being frantically dropped by some guy wearing a helmet. No clue, but I've seen worse. Regret for that thought hit her, as the next image was a particularly graphic exchange between a human male and a… bolian female? She wasn't really sure, and she didn't want to know more. A familiar face: Geordi LaForge appeared. She again regretted the relief she felt after she saw what he was doing in the "privacy" of the holodeck. That kid needs to get laid. The next image showed her a big triangular looking ship doing donuts in space. Something normal. I'm thankful for that. Alternate universes were weird.

Darker images swept through her mind. Different planets with sentient life across the galaxy… made to suffer. Everyone repressed, prudish. Is this a universe without porn? A shiver. A broken, smoking Earth. Children crying. Adult humans were being harvested. No wait, they were still alive… and it seemed like female humans weren't being touched at all… oh. Cum farms. I've seen this before, many many years ago. The McAfeean Jihad. Didn't end well. Gamers always rise up.

During all of this prophesying, something shocking occurred to Guinan: all of this was so clear, so vivid. She had never seen visions this lucid. This immediately shocked her to her core.

All of this shit was happening. Right now.

Shocking, of course. But she had learned how to get over it. Listen, I'm just here to press a button and give drinks to people. Picard lets me do what I want. Why should I care what crazy shit is going on outside? I'll just switch to an alternate reality where Commander Shepard doesn't exist.

Were it so easy, dear reader. Were it so easy.

"Were it so-"

"Oh, will you shut up? I can't stand it, Arbiter. Now will you stop staring into the distance and help me with the plasma manifold?"

Many thousands of miles away, on the former Covenant former carrier Shadow of Intent, lived an Arbiter. Arbiter was a good ol' boy who longed for the good ol' days. Back when he was Thel 'Vadamee, Fleet Master of the Glorious Fleet of Particular but Not Very Discriminating Justice, things were easy. In fact, one might say they were so easy. It was simple. Human? Kill it. Flood? Kill it. But then one day he decides to kill some Flood. Just doing his job, right? Wrong. Turns out, he was killing Flood, and forgot to kill some Humans. Not even some humans, just one human, really. Now, thanks to him, things aren't easy anymore, and Thel 'Vadam had to figure out difficult concepts like nuance and grapple with his newly unrepressed sexuality. Were it so easy. He wistfully shook his head as plasma steam from below tickled his mandibles gently.

Rtas 'Vadum, also known as Half-Jaw, the Honorable Shipmaster of the former Covenant former carrier Shadow of Intent, just banged his knee hard on a pipe. "Fuck!" The steam made it hard to see inside the access tube next to the plasma manifold. He was gonna have to get at least two of his four knees replaced after this. "Arbiter! What the fuck are you doing? Throw me the plasma wrench!"

"But we won't need that plasma manifold where we're going. Our fight is with the Brutes, and the bastard Truth. I will not be made a fool of again!"

"Arbiter, we need this manifold operational if we're going to get back to Sanghelios after the battle. Think ahead! By the gods, how did you make Fleet Master?"

"You know, I was born on Sanghelios."

Rtas stared up at him incredulously. "Yes. I know. So was I. And if you'd like to see it again, you'd throw me the fucking wrench!"

"I wonder what the Demon is up to right now." Arbiter got on the commlink. "Demon, are you there? It's the Arbiter. I'm bored."

A woman's voice answered the call. "Hello? Who is this?"

Arbiter felt his chest tighten. "Um, who is this?"

"This is Cortana. May I ask to whom am I speaking?"

Arbiter gulped. "I am… calling about your car's extended warranty."

"Oh, you again. Well, I don't own a car, on account of being a computer program, and my boyfriend doesn't own a car either. He just wrecks them. Anyway, next time you call here again, I'll send a UNSC nuke to your location. Bye!"

Rtas was pretty close to passing out from the heat in the access tube. "Arbiter, are you still there? I'm stuck. I'm stuck and my commlink's melted. I need you to help me out. Arbiter? Arbiter!"

The Shipmaster couldn't hear Arbiter's sniffling rage over the spewing steam from the exposed plasma manifold. He stormed back down the hallway to find the nearest airlock, passing the deaf grunt janitor on the way.

"Gods damn you, Arbiter! Hey, you, unggoy! Get me out of here!"

But the grunt didn't hear him, and the Arbiter was already flying through space toward the nearest UNSC ship, sword in hand, ready to kill some humans.

"It do be so easy."