A/N: Shit, has it really been that long? Fuck me.

Just Shepard Things

Summary: After the Collector attack on the SSV Normandy, Commander Shepard is brought back by Project Lazarus. However, the commander has ideas on how to get on Cerberus's nerves.

*War Crimes*

Commander Shepard liked to think she was an easy woman to understand. She was relatively easy-going despite the tensions in the galaxy, liked her men turian (about as much as most turians hated her; Garrus was an exception to the rule), and enjoyed reading late at night with rain and thunder ambience. She thought that was simple enough to understand.

But now, she wasn't so sure. Maybe they were all insane.

"Tali..." Shepard stared at the quarian, eyes flat and ducking behind cover as a geth trooper took a shot at her head. "Please tell me you have something you can do about this."

"I can, Shepard." Tali's voice shook with excitement and her omnitool flashed orange as its digital keyboard popped up on her wrist. "Just buy me thirty seconds."

Grunt roared next to the commander and charged in, cackling away like a lunatic as he blasted geth aside with his specially made krogan shotgun. Shepard rolled her eyes and provided covering fire for him, ejecting an empty thermal clip from her handgun and slamming a fresh one in. Two shots broke through the nearest geth's shields and her suit's omnitool burned as a glob of fire spat out of it. Flame washed over the geth and incinerated it, Tali still typing away on her own tool.

Two geth primes entered the fray, heavy machineguns forcing even Grunt to find somewhere safe to hide. Bullets ripped through metal designed to withstand small-arms fire and Grunt ducked as a bullet came out near the top of his head. The tank-bred krogan snarled in annoyance and primed a grenade, tossing it to their new friends. The small explosive detonated and shrapnel pinged off of the geths' shields. The two primes shared a look, and while Shepard would never try and claim to be an expert on whatever kind of language the synthetics used to communicate, she was able to have a pretty solid guess as they both aimed missile launchers right at her, ignoring Grunt entirely.

"Oh come on." Shepard groaned.

Two missiles soared towards her and Shepard's shields shattered even though she took cover from them. The commander sprawled on the floor and emptied her pistol into the nearest prime's shields, the armored behemoth absorbing the punishment. Two heavy machineguns began to warm up, and the commander glared over at the quarian still typing away on her omnitool. "TALI!"

"Got it!" The quarian shivered in excitement and pressed a button. A spark of light smashed into the two geths, and both of the primes shuddered to a halt. Orange light washed over their tough white armor, their singular eye lens turning orange.

The geth prime in the lead twitched, and instead of the usual series of mechanical noises and clicks, it screamed. "RUN TIME ERROR!"

To Shepard's utter shock, the geth prime exploded.

...

"What the hell just happened?"

"You reprogrammed the geth to run on Windows 98!?" Shepard's glass slammed into the bar, nearly spilling the alcohol within, and the commander groaned while Tali looked way too pleased with herself and the rest of the crew in the port lounge roared with laughter. "Tali, I'm not sure where exactly, but I think that is a war crime."

"My favorite part is how they yell 'Run time error' before exploding." The Normandy's resident quarian was absolutely pickled and failing miserably at drinking through a straw. A straw! Or as she called it, an emergency induction port.

"How did you even find an archaic code that was forgotten about by even humanity?" Jacob asked curiously.

"Joker," Tali answered drunkenly.

Shepard could only sigh. And to think this was their normal now.

A/N: I don't know why, but reprogramming the geth to run on the atrocity known as Windows 98 is hilarious. Imagine how much would go wrong in the ME world if that happened.