When the orders came through that she would be leading a new fleet for the Systems Alliance, and what it meant going forward for the navy, Rear Admiral Kishi had been a little surprised, but overall had felt like she could rise to the challenge. While the structure was that of an independent fleet, they were technically under the command of Fleet Admiral Scharfe of the first fleet. Each one of the new fleets was under the command of one of the fleet admirals from the "original" eight. That would change in the future, once all eight new fleets had been fully deployed, but that's what it was. It was still a lot of responsibility, and she knew it only too well.

Of course, her original assessment of the challenges involved had been woefully short of reality. The Ninth Fleet had been pushed to the forefront of the new Systems Alliance duties - with permission from the Second Fleet and their work with the Geth and the Quarians, of course - and it had painted a huge target on their backs. And it had been costly, too. Outwardly, the Ninth Fleet gave the impression that they were indestructible. Four carriers alone with no auxiliary fleets had taken down the First Colonial Flotilla together with the Victory of Galatana and her attached escort ships. Few people outside of the Systems Alliance knew how much it had costed them. And the same could be said about so many of their other operations, they had paid for every inch they had gained. Even aboard Arcturus. Lieutenant Kalenda had lost her life on a terrorist attack. And she had the feeling the Galaxy wasn't done with them yet.

So every operation they went into managed to send a tingle up her spine.

"All right everyone," she said, gesturing at the holographic display. "This is the latest intel we have. A third of their fleet is currently deployed in one of their raids, the largest movement we've seen in a month. We will be deploying at thirteen hundred hours. The Newton will be taking care of the static defenses, while we engage the fleet and deploy our marines on the surface. Once static defenses in orbit are down, the Newton's marines will reinforce our surface troops."

As she talked, markers appeared on the holographic projection, highlighting the different targets. The projection changed to the surface, where the fortified base was located. There weren't a lot of places to hide on that planet, but they had found a decent one after all. There was a cliff wall on one of the sides, which limited options for the ground attack. Anti-aircraft defenses were strong, and the shielding considerable. Bombing it was out of the question, sadly. They really needed to take that place.

"So what do we do when the missing third of the fleet comes back?" Lieutenant Chu said.

"The fleet is spread pretty thin, as usual," she said, "so we're borrowing the Chadwik from the tenth fleet to come and reinforce us. It's currently running the Inner Ring, and will be in position three hours before we begin the operation. SAI estimates the deployed fleet will run back home approximately twenty minutes after we begin, so the Chadwik is planning on jumping thirty minutes in. If they come early, I believe we should be able to take them, but it behooves us to spare as many lives as possible and capture prisoners instead. We can be hard on the materiel, but not on the personnel."

"And why is that?" Commander Nelson inquired.

"It's our first open operation in the Traverse. There is a civil war brewing in Anhur, and our actions could very well push it forward. This particular group of fine citizens," she said, to numerous chuckles through the bridge, "have been hired by the corporations to retaliate against batarian raids more than once. Normally that would put them in our do not bother with column, but they have too much free time, and that free time is not being used wisely. Other, smaller colonies have been targets of their attention, and we have found ourselves petitioned to intervene in their behalf.

"Don't let the politics involved distract you," she added. "Just follow our orders. We will try to limit the personnel casualties, but if necessary we are authorized to use as much force as necessary to complete our mission. My first priority is my fleet, and everyone in command knows and approves of it."

Nods all around. Good.

"Now, as for the assault. Nelson, you'll be in charge of this one. What do you see?"

The commander stepped forward and eyed the projection intently. Of course, the higher command had already been planning the assault, but she liked hearing the opinions from her crew. Most of the time, there was substantial overlap between the two.

"Cliffs along the Northeast, entrenched AA, best option would be to come from the South, but I'd bet my next paycheck that area is mined." He looked at Kishi, and the admiral nodded. "East approach while the engineering team clears the South area. Demo charges could clear it but the approach would be hard afterwards."

"And resources?"

"Terrain... Too jagged for Grizzlies. Makos?"

Kishi smiled. "And lots of them."

For Shepard, going back to the Ninth Fleet looked like business as usual, but for me, it felt quite weird. I knew there had been a substantial number of rotations, but it really hit once I was aboard again. Everything look the same, of course, but it felt different. Different faces, different people. Different dynamic. Even Shepard was different.

And so were the orders.

"Makos?" Shepard said, looking at the rows of vehicles in the hangar.

"Makos," I replied, nodding in satisfaction. "Been a while."

"You're not allowed to flip this one, Chief," Kim said.

"Flip?" Shepard said, looking at Kim in surprise.

"It happened once, okay? And it wasn't- Okay, it was my fault, but they didn't cover it in training."

"What did you do?" Shepard said.

"He flipped the Mako while trying to powerslide it on a moon with low gravity," Kim said, smiling.

"Trying? I was very successful at it, thank you very much. But as we were going sideways, and I hadn't rotated the three-dee projection, I never saw the rock that I hit with the rear tire. Inertia did the rest, and sent us spinning."

There were a number of faces looking at me as I said that, and a lot of surprised ones at that.

"You were powersliding a Mako? Sir?" one of the privates said.

"Yes?" I looked around. "Why, you can't?" I added. Heads shook all around. "All right, nobody gets to drive the Makos unless you can powerslide them."

"Nobody is powersliding their Mako," Kim said. "Not the time for it. The ballon's going up in two hours, so better get reacquainted with the lovely beast. Assignments will be coming soon, but decide your posts now, one unit per Mako. One hour running simulations." She clapped her hands twice. "Get going."

"Sir, I-"

"Nope," I replied instantly. "Don't even think about it. I'm driving."

Jayce, new kid in my unit. I actually had no idea how good he was with the Mako, but it didn't matter. If there was ever a time for me to pull rank, this was it.

"And neither is Sheppy!" Goldie called, to numerous peals of laughter from the rest of her unit.

I laughed too, even though something felt odd about it. I couldn't think of a single time when I had seen Shepard drive, but somehow I hadn't been surprised by Goldie's words.

Dropping from low orbit in the Mako had always been one of my favourite things. I absolutely loved the little beast. I looked behind me, and saw two rather pale faces staring back at me. Jayce and Norman, the new kids in the unit.

"First time?" I said.

"Not really, sir," Jayce said.

"But haven't done it since basic," I said. They both nodded. "Just remember, keep the harness on, look at the green light, and if it turns red, hit the mass effect field button but don't touch the release. 'Cos if you do we'll have to scrape you off the walls."

I turned back to the instruments and kept preparing for the launch. We were literally going to dart out of the hangar and fall towards the planet as the Einstein made a skimming run of the atmosphere. I had launched from a frigate and a cruiser before, but this promised to be absolutely wild. The Einstein was Big, with a capital B. And the hangar was huge. It was going to be crazy. We weren't even going to launch manually, the onboard VI was going to time everything for us.

"He... he's just joking, right?" Norman said.

"We're about to launch from low orbit and burn through the atmosphere of a planet pulling a one point two gees, private. What do you think?" I said.

To be honest, it was mostly a joke, but not completely. It was indeed possible to undo the harness mid-drop, in which case the occupant of that chair would likely have a hell of an encounter with the roof of the Mako, but it wasn't something that could simply be done by accident. One had to hit that release hard, and hit it three times in a row in quick succession. And while the mass effect field could stop working by accident mid-drop, it was something I had never seen, or even heard, happen.

But the regs required us to impress on the newbies the dangers of the drops and what to look out for during them.

"Foxtrot," Kim called over the comms, "you have the distinct honor of going first. You'll be dropping five clicks out, you'll be the first eyes on the surface."

"Aye sir," I said. "Quiet or loud?"

"At your discretion, but keep the lines open. Good luck."

The comms closed and I looked at Jake. He had taken the co-pilot seat, which meant he was going to be running most of the systems, including the comms.

"You got that?"

"Sure have," he said. "Did you really powerslide a Mako during patrols?"

"Damn straight. This thing's a freaking beast my dude, what I'm surprised about is that apparently nobody else tried before."

"It weights twelve tons," Jake said, laughing. "Man, you've really come a long way since basic. You were confused by the freaking omni-tools back then."

"What can I say, I just feel the need."

"The need?"

A loud beep came through the console, and a five second countdown started on the display.

"The need for speed!" I yelled. And as I did, the Mako lurched forward, and we rushed out of the hangar, plunging into the chaotic atmosphere of the planet.

For the first minute or so we couldn't even see a goddamn thing. The Mako was tumbling like a leaf in the wind as the ungodly roar of re-entry filled the air, We couldn't even see out of the windows, all that was out there was the orange glow of the re-entry against the Mako's kinetic barrier. Not that we were looking, it was during those times that you had to positively avoid looking out, and had to rely on the instruments to make decisions.

"Jake!" I yelled.

"Shields at eighty-five, ten more seconds!"

I waited for the signal, and as soon as our descent started to slow, I reached for the controls and started to stabilize the Mako. We were at thirty thousand feet when the Mako finally leveled with the horizon. Mostly. Given the noises I was hearing from the back, not everyone was having a good time with the descent.

"Hans, tell me you're keeping it together, we need the gun!"

"I am," he replied, although he sounded a little green around the gills. "Transmitting now."

I kept the descent fast and furious. The Mako was a tough beast, but a direct hit by the AA batteries was likely to put a dent on the shields. And throw us off-course. Last thing we needed was to start tumbling again with not enough time to correct our drop. Without the jets, we'd turn our landing into a pancake. A couple of shells burst too close to comfort, each taking a big chunk off our shields, but made it to the surface in one piece. I let the VI handle the jets, and they kicked in hard at three hundred feet, slowing us so hard that my vision blacked out for a moment before we hit the ground, bouncing once and possibly damaging the suspension.

Without even stopping to look around, I brought up the three-dee projection around us and launched the Mako towards the base, the beast bouncing on the irregular terrain but handling the incoming fire like a champ. A moment later our man Hans was already returning fire.

"Hans, talk to me!"

"They have a lot of turrets sir!" he yelled. "Even at this distance we're going to have to move fast!"

"You're calling the shots!" I replied. "Jake, you transmitting?"

"There's some jamming but I'm getting through," he replied. "Fleet wants us to stay in view!"

"Can we hit the AAs?"

"Negative, too much shielding! Incoming rockets, eleven o'clock!"

I swerved the Mako, and soon had my hands full. We were really freaking far from the base, so even their anti-materiel guns were far enough that they had a hard time aiming for an erratic, fast-moving target. But, just like Hans had said, they had a lot of turrets. There's no real need to aim when you can just carpet-bomb an area with rocket-propelled explosives. As I tried as hard as I could to keep us in one piece, and explosions rocked the ground all around us, the next batch of Makos started landing, one after another, and soon even the numerous turrets of the base were having trouble covering the area we were taking. Which was just as well, because our shields were down to single digits.

"Ground units, proceed to phase two as planned," Commander Nelson's voice called through the comms.

I allowed myself a moment to breathe in relief, because that meant the first phase had gone well. I wasn't sure we had all made it to the surface, but if Nelson was sending us forward, then most of us must have made it. I gunned the Mako and headed towards the path, converging with the other vehicles. We had to break through and hit some of the static defenses. As soon as we did, the gunships with the reinforcements from the Newton would be coming down. We had a lot of ground to cover, we were the first ones down but had landed the furthest from the base. Rotation. We took the initial licks, now we fell back as the others shielded us.

"Hans! Just because we're at the back doesn't mean we're here for a holiday! Get to work!"

"Aye sir!" our gunner replied, followed by the report of the Mako's main cannon. "We need to adjust!" he added after a couple of seconds.

"On it," Jake said.

I left them to their work, because I had my hands full. I was navigating by instruments alone. Visibility had dropped dramatically, and I couldn't see a thing out the window. Our gunner might have his targets painted by the VI, but I had nothing of the sort. The tree-dee projection covered sixty yards in all directions in these conditions, which was pretty goddamn limited with the speed we were moving at. Worst of all, we didn't have any way to see any of the incoming ordinance, so it was a matter of luck how well we made it through.

A hard swerve and a curse from Hans reminded everyone inside what exactly we were up to.

"Ground team, break off, break off!" the comms blared suddenly.

I swerved to the side, slowing down and watching the combat sensors as all the red marks broke away and started to spread. A moment later there was a thump we all felt, shaking the Mako even harder than the irregular terrain was doing, and saw to my shock that an empty circle had formed in the sea of green marks. The way the ones at the edge moved, some seriously hard ordinance had landed.

The comms were a chaos of people yelling - more so than they had been, at least - everyone asking what the hell was going on. The harsh crackle of a priority override stopped the chaos, and Nelson's voice came through.

"One of the cruisers is firing at the surface," he said. "Spread out, back to range engagement as discussed, move!"

"Sir, we have casualties! We need medical!"

"This is Foxtrot, we're on our way!" I replied to the comms, while Jake followed up by setting a new marker.

"Foxtrot, Kilo, Sierra, move to the target," that was Luca, one of the bridge officers. The VI updated with the new information. "Medical personnel and support, keep three people per Mako. Confirm."

"Copy that sir," I said. "Jayce! You're with me on the ground. Norman, you take the wheel."

"Aye sir!"

I was already going through the plan in my head. We should be able to do the swap in five seconds. Get to the objective, take he medical kit on the way out. Had to do triage, but we were likely to be the last ones there. Not get in the way of the work already done, get up to speed. And trust like hell that the perimeter would be secure.

And that the cruiser above decided to keep shooting at the Makos and not at the clump of exposed marines off to the side.

Admiral Kishi watched the combat sensor map, and the empty circle on the surface where the cruiser's ordinance had hit. At least four Makos had completely gone offline. Two others showed extensive damage on the combat sensors. That was all the attention she could afford to give to the situation on the surface. She had to trust that Nelson and his team had it in hand. She'd hear more when it became necessary, right now it was the cruiser they had to deal with.

"Sir," Marco said, "all Brontes are engaged, we-"

"Forget them. B-wings seven through thirteen, I want javelins on that cruiser," Kishi said. "As long as they're dropping, they won't risk another shot or they might hit their base. Move it!"

"Aye sir," Marco replied.

"Any luck with the Chadwik?" Kishi called.

"Negative, no reply," Marco said, and continued relaying her orders to the bomber wings.

It stank to high heaven. The missing third of the fleet had returned as soon as they had started dropping the Makos, and now the Chadwik was nowhere to be seen. They were being as stealthy as a two-kilometer long carrier could be, running the Inner Circle towards their destination. The Inner Circle being the chain of secondary relays close to the galaxy core that allowed one to do an entire loop of the galaxy without touching any of the primary relays. As system density increased towards the center of the galaxy, so did the density of relays. That's why it worked.

Of course, all sorts of ships used the Inner Circle for their own reasons. The Chadwik might have had an encounter and been delayed.

She opened the comms to the Newton.

"Captain Rodriguez," she called.

"Admiral," the response came.

"Any word from the Chadwik?"

"Negative, sir. I have the comms team looking into it, but they assure me the messages are leaving the system."

"Yes, same for us," Kishi said. "We can't keep fighting the entire fleet with one hand behind our backs. As for now, I'm authorizing maximum force. Take the capital ships first, we'll reconsider afterwards."

"Aye sir," Rodriguez replied. "Waiting for your updates."

Kishi turned to the three-dimensional projection, and started entering the new parameters. The VI updated targets, reassigning priorities. Of course, it was something they had prepared for. It was not ideal, but she had learned to work with the less than ideal. She looked at Marco and nodded. A moment later the comms opened up to the entire fleet.

"This is Rear Admiral Kishi," she called. "As of right now I am authorizing maximum force. New targets incoming."

She watched as the fleet re-positioned itself, shifting targets as they did. They took to the new orders with real zeal, and it was immediately clear that the defensive fleet was going to find itself really on the defensive before long.

Not ideal. It didn't matter. the Newton and the Einstein were capable of handling this much trouble once the gloves came off. The political shitstorm wasn't hers to handle.

"Nelson," she called. "Status?"

"Sir," the Commander's voice came through the comms. "We're still on target if you can keep the bombardment off our backs."

"We will," Kishi replied. "But do not engage if it looks like a trap. The fleet had set up an ambush for us, there might be one for you as well."

"We can handle it, sir," Nelson replied.

Being sidelined, or rather, backlined, during the op while the bulk of our forces were engaged didn't sit well with me, but it was what it was. With E2 certification, and with the initial wave of casualties after the surprise bombing by the cruiser in orbit, I had my hands literally full since the beginning. What at first was an emergency situation became our staging area, and we had a first aid station up in no time. We literally had a perimeter of broken Makos keeping us safe, which the engineering crew had managed to resurrect for shields, and two of them for their guns, and it was as "safe" as it was going to get for anyone down there.

"How are we looking?" I called, stepping away from the tent for a moment.

"They're pushing hard, sir," Jayce said. "The-" He stopped talking as a trio of gunships came barrelling through just a few meters above our heads, heading for the base. "The AAs on the East side are all down."

I pulled the Widow off my back and took position behind one of the fallen Makos, looking through the scope. I had a pretty good view of the battle from there. We had about a hundred marines from the Newton down now, and the gunships were making runs of the perimeter without much trouble. The problem was that the inner structure was well fortified. The gunships made the run, dropped some heavy ordinance on the second ring wall, and scored impacts on the surface.

"Shield's down," I said, and pressed the trigger.

It was just over two miles from my position, which made my shots useless against anything other than static targets. But with no shields...

"Nice shot, sir," Jayce said.

"Just a turret," I replied. "Nothing but cheap shots."

I let the spent heatsink fly and took a second shot. Another turret went down. I saw the instant hesitation as the turrets tried to find the new threat but, finding nothing, resumed their attacks on the more pressing threats. I didn't exactly felt useless, given the work I had been doing saving lives back here, but it still stung. I didn't get to E2 just to sit back, I was supposed to be there in the thick of things and help my unit as we pushed.

"Sir, incoming," Jayce said, tapping my shoulder.

With a nod, I pulled the spent heatsking out again and folded the gun away. Five gunships were flying in hot, keeping a low altitude and straight from the battle.

Five? Shit that's not good.

I got to the landing area as they landed, and rushed towards the ships with the rest of the med team. The doors opened, and out rushed the wounded. To my surprise, it didn't look bad at all. Most of the marines looked dirty and tired, but not wounded. Kim came out of her gunship as soon as it opened.

"Kim! What's the word?" I yelled.

"They're pretty well entrenched," she said. "Gonna get a team up the North side."

"You need me in it?"

"We're good," she replied, and pointed at the marines coming out of the fourth gunship. Two were being carried into the tents in a real hurry. "You go help them."

"Yeah, good luck," I said.

I turned around and came almost face to face with Shepard, who was rushing towards Kim too. She skidded to a stop, I did the same, we grabbed each other by instinct to stop the other from falling, and for a moment we just looked at each other in surprise. Then, she smiled, I returned the smile, and slapped her shoulder before we continued running in opposite directions.

"El tee!" she said. "You called?"

So she was in on that too. Shouldn't have been surprised. What did surprise me, and really shouldn't have, was the voice that followed.

"Chief!" Goldie yelled.

"Can't stop Goldie!" I replied.

She rushed to my side as I headed for the gunship, and started helping carry some of the wounded in. As I did, Goldie yelled over the chaos. "Can I borrow it sir? I'm going with Sheppy!"

Goddammit, everyone was going to be in that one. Everyone but me it seemed.

"I want you all back in one piece, you hear me?" I said. "Watch their backs and make sure it happens. That's an order."

"You got it sir!" Goldie said, and pulled the Black Mamba off my back.

It took three days before the op was called. We took the base six hours after Kim and her team managed to break through the North entrance. This time, there wasn't a long list of casualties for us to stare at. The Admiral had gone hard after the enemy fleet sprung their little trap, and while we didn't have the numbers when it came to ships, we still had the firepower. Once we had the upper hand, she dialled it back. They still took casualties, but we ended up processing a hell of a lot of prisoners.

Humans, batarians, and turians, mostly. I spent a lot of time treating their wounded after taking care of ours, even after the battle had ended they needed me to help with the medical work. Too many people.

It didn't feel right. Coming back had felt weird. It felt even weirder. And it was stupid, because it wasn't the first time I had ended up doing more medical than combat during an op. During the downtime, I spent a lot of time looking at the combat footage. Mostly, I wanted to get up to speed with the designated marksmen and how Goldie had been handling them in my absence. I ended up spending a lot of time just watching Shepard's headcam footage. which is what I was doing at the moment.

"Jinx," Kim said, coming to sit besides me.

"El-tee," I said, glancing at her before going back to the footage.

"You all right? Shepard says you're looking a little blue," she said. I looked at her in surprise, thought for a moment, then just started laughing. "What, is that some kind of in-joke with the two of you?"

"You could say that," I replied.

"So what's on your mind? You've been reviewing footage for hours."

"Just catching up with the DMMs," I said.

"And Shepard," she said, pointing at the screen.

"And Shepard," I agreed, nodding absently.

We sat back and watched for a while. Kim was the one leading, and the chatter with the command was so fast it was hard to follow. Commander Nelson was leading the assault from the front, which he was pressing hard to try and give Kim's group a better chance. Even if it didn't work and Kim had to fold back, they were managing to split the surviving forces, so it was proving useful as it was. And Shepard was right there next to Kim.

"She's gotten better," I said.

"She has," Kim agreed, pointing at the screen with her thumb. "You should be proud. So why the long blue face?"

I chuckled at that, and shook my head. "I'm just looking at her go, while I was stuck at the back... Makes me feel like I'm useless."

"Useless? Since when is medical personnel saving our wounded-"

"I know I know," I interrupted her, waving her down. "That's not what I mean. It's just..."

I let the conversation drop as we watched the footage. Kim was at the front, with Shepard right behind her, and we could hear her calling shots as they moved. Every time the enemy made a move, Shepard was calling it right as it was happening. It sometimes sounded like she called it before it actually happened. I knew why.

"She's gotten so good at that it's almost uncanny," Kim said. "I'm honestly thinking of trying to get her to come to the Vila."

"You have that kind of pull?"

"I'm an N4," Kim said, "but no. I was just going to forward the recommendation to Commander Nelson."

"Right."

She looked at me for a bit, head tilted slightly, until I turned to look at her.

"Roy, why are you here?" she said.

Roy? That's unusual.

"What do you mean why am I here?"

"Why did you join the Systems Alliance? You wanted to serve, it's how you dealt with Mindor, or..." she gestured at the screen with her head.

That was a question all right. Why had I joined? Mindoir was obvious, the coming of the reapers, the... Shepard? Well, yes, and no. I remember I told Shiala once I didn't actually have to be in the Systems Alliance. It had been the obvious choice at the time, or so I had thought. Then she had joined, and I hadn't even blinked at that. It was bad, but it wasn't unexpected.

"Maybe you need to do some thinking if you joined for the right reasons," Kim said.

"Maybe," I agreed. On screen, Shepard made another call and it was instantly followed by a barrage from Goldie.

"I'm sorry Chief!" Goldie yelled.

"What?" Kim said.

"She overheated the gun too many times, I had to replace the double heatsink assembly," I replied with a chuckle. "She's gotten pretty good, too."

"We did a lot of work out here while you were on holidays."

"Yeah, I can see that now. Hell of a way to train. By the way, did we ever find out what happened to the Chadwik?"

"No," Kim said. "Not that I've heard."

I looked at her, and she was serious. That was definitely not business as usual, not even here in the traverse. I didn't even need to say anything.

Author's Notes: I am a terrible person. Last time I kind of promised Roy and Shepard out there together, and I ended up sidelining Roy. But! I think it's what character development called for. There's method to the madness, I assure you. Shepard becoming a badass and possibly joining the ranks of the N-Crazies shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We'll see more from her PoV soon enough.

Now this doesn't look like much of an op for the Ninth Fleet, but there's a couple of juicy threads it's going to be tying up with. There's the obvious one, which is the question mark about the Chadwik. There's the political thread, which I have alluded to and will be elaborated on, and I'm going to use all this to kind of update you, dear readers, with what the galaxy is looking like these days.

Also, I've delayed the introduction of the canon-compliant complete ass. I bet you know who it is.

So! As I keep mentioning, if you want to support me a little more, I've set up a word-which-FFnet-will-eat at:

tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6

(FFnet and hyperlinks don't mix).

Reviews! Thanks for the reviews all. It's nice to see that having a chill episode was well received. Hope that watching the fleet do their thing was, too! As I mentioned before, it's a long freaking time between Mindoir and the end of the Galaxy, so I have to balance a bit between the details of missions and events, and keeping things moving at a steady pace so that we actually see things happening sometime this century LOL.

Now if only they had let us recruit Kasumi properly. Ah well.

Uemei: As I mentioned, yeah, I went back and edited out the directreferences to ME1,2, and 3. It was more of a neutral point of view that'd make it easier for the reader to follow, and my idea was that having the name wouldn't necessarily mean Roy remembers it's a game, but I saw your point. I went back to the previous draft, which was a bit confusing but in an in-character way so to speak :D

Guest: Honestly, feel free to be signed in when submitting criticism, I welcome it (I mean, if all someone posts is "you fucking suck!" or something then I'll probably ignore it, but that's not what you did). Yes, failure IS part of the plan - so we have challenges to overcome. Just bear with me for a while :)

(BTW, that's not a spoiler. I mean, if you don't expect things to fail spectacularly at the dramatically appropriate moment, you haven't been paying attention to my writings LOL).

maesde: Oh shit is going to get blown up my friend, believe it!

A Random Friend: The main reason why Roy is not freaking out of his mind about Sheppy and the Rachni is back in Chapter 39. Shepard's been more at peace with herself and her past than she's ever been since Roy met her. Sure, it's less than ideal, but if she's taking it so well, what can you do?

BJ Hanssen: Does he ever LOL.

RIOSHO: I'm half excited, and half in dread of the new edition. If they can seriously stop themselves from doing all kinds of retcons to the games to "tie up" things, I'll be mostly excited. Why? Because I'm pretty sure that if they try to do retcons, they'll retcon the WORST parts (since many of those parts, and not just the ending, are criticized for being either canon-breaking or completely out of the blue and not explored properly), and possibly ruin the better parts. Call me paranoid LOL.

Uemei: Funny you mention the Blitz... (I'm a horrible tease, but you'll see why I'm thinking it funny in the near-to-mid future). Also I'm planning to continue the fics, don't you worry.

Victorules: That's his signature move! :D

SpecterXCov, Tom712, thanks for the support!

Anyway! Next time, on My Effect: Divergence: The fate of the Chadwik, and political shitstorms. Until then, ta-ta!