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This snip was written by Masterweaver!

APOCRYPHA: How to conquer the galaxy – by Masterweaver

The Citadel Council was a failed promise.

Eggman didn't think himself at all arrogant with that premise. From the moment he'd captured the Batarian slaver ship-he'd been the only one on Earth to notice it, of course, because everyone else was foolishly keeping to themselves-he'd had his suspicions, and looking through the galactic records only confirmed it. At its very conception, when the Salarians opened the vault of the League of One in order to encourage unity, the League had responded with rage and slaughter. And the Citadel had done nothing. Excusable, perhaps, back then, when it was new.

But the answer to the Rachni crisis? Uplift a primitive race of thugs and throw them at the invaders, instead of coming up with their own innovative solutions. The Krogan rebellions? Ask for help from their imperialist neighbors, help that came in the form of one of the most brazen violations of ethics Eggman had ever seen-and, as an imperialist man himself, he'd seen plenty, some by his own hands. Batarian slave raids? Nothing, absolutely nothing-the slavers were a wall against the chaos of the Terminus systems, whose very existence spoke to the utter failure of this so-called Galactic Alliance.

And then there was the Morning War.

Everything about how that was handled irked Eggman to no end. Before the Geth were even made, the Council had decided that AIs could not live alongside people, listening to science fiction as though it was fact and not even bothering to test their theories in laboratory conditions. The Quarians, one of the most innovative races in all of Council space, bent over backwards for their backwards allies, willingly crippling their own technology instead of showing up the arrogant blowhards in charge. And then, when one of those very fascinating Geth started asking questions-questions that made Eggman muse about his own Badniks-the Quarian leadership decided to do the most idiotic thing they could have.

Did they promote the Geth to citizenship? No, that would have ticked off the citadel!

Did they ask the Citadel for help with the situation? No, that would have gotten them in trouble!

Did they, maybe, use a remote override to shut all the Geth down? No, apparently they forgot to put an override in the highly experimental programs. Or maybe some Geth sympathizers reversed the overrides.

No, what they did was wage a private little war against what ultimately amounted to a few quirky house appliances asking philosophical questions. And when some of their own citizens pointed out, quite reasonably, how utterly asinine they were being, they decided to kill them too. Eggman was actually of the opinion that the Geth forcibly exiling them from Rannoch was too merciful.

And the council, once everything came out, did not extend a single hand of sympathy, but blamed the entire Quarian race for it! Not just the leaders, but the innocent people who had no idea what was happening! And they kept that narrative going, even after anybody who could possibly have been involved died! There was a literal diaspora of displaced people, struggling to survive in one of the most technologically advanced fleets in the entire galaxy, and not one politician had considered that perhaps it might be worth it to assist the poor souls, if only for the selfish reasoning of experienced Quarian engineers. The sheer amount of willful incompetence surrounding the whole thing would boggle an ordinary mind, and a genius like Eggman was able to calculate the level of stupidity to the exact microdumb of idiocy! How everyone involved, then and now, had such an utter failure of both logical and emotional intelligence was a question that he would have considered, if not for the more pressing issue.

Namely, the very existence of the Quarians, the one race who Eggman could-reluctantly-admit might possibly approach his own prodigious talent in the arts of robotics and artificial intelligence. Granted, their current stance was more likely to sabotage such things rather than rival him, but that in and of itself was a problem when the vast majority of his forces were mechanical in nature. And true, they didn't have enough resources to stand up to the other galactic powers, but as proud as he was of the Egg Fleet, he'd run the numbers and found that a direct confrontation with the Migrant Fleet might have him on the, ugh, backend. Sure, he'd win in the end, but it might hurt him enough for the idiotic Citadel to finish the job.

They were technically under martial law, which meant they would fight any attack with military precision.

They were innovative engineers, which made them a threat to Eggman's logistics.

But... they were also isolated. And that... that presented an opportunity.

Eggman was, after all, no stranger to allying with potentially dangerous forces. It was always a gamble, trying to determine how to control them before they could stab him in the back. But the Quarians were quite the open book, when it came to it. They could become willing allies, with the right temptation. And even if that didn't work out, well, it would at least get them close enough that he could commandeer their fleet before they expected it...

Plans and schemes spiralled through his mind as he laughed, twirling his mustache. Once he'd dealt with the Quarians, the rest of the galaxy would be easy to conquer!

...although, come to think of it, he might have to handle the Geth as well...

Bah, he was the great Doctor Eggman! He could handle a few uppity roombas!

Personal notes:

Yes, I know right now the Omake segment has more chapters than the actual fic. Don't worry about that, the next chapter in story proper is mostly complete!