Farce Effect

Chapter 2

Chapter Premise:

The galaxy's newest...and oddest Spectre, Commander Caleb Shepard descends upon the scorching world of Therum, tasked with retrieving the absent-minded Dr. Liara T'Soni.

Meanwhile, Williams begins to wonder just how close Shepard and Vakarian are growing to each other. Suffice it to say, she's not pleased.

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"...devastated that the parade was cancelled, after hearing about last week's clash between Thessia's right-winged militia groups and the asari transgendered activists. In other news, the communist revolutionaries have finally been put down after forty-eight weeks of continuous fighting on Dekuuna, in Sereuun's capital square. A total of two minor injuries have been reported by the militants, making it the most violent political uprising in elcor history..."

"Hmm," Shepard thought as he watched Reporter Khalisah al-Jilani deliver that morning's news on the television. "She has a strangely...punchable face."

After shrugging his shoulders, the galaxy's only human Spectre neatly demonstrated his vigorous morning routine. Throwing the remote on the floor beside his cabin bed, he got up donned in nothing but a white wife-beater, boxers, and socks after having spent the last twenty minutes eating Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko's cornflakes in his lap and watching the news. On his way up, he let some of the cornflakes spill out to the ground, along with the shotgun he had placed under his pillow the night before, it's safety he was about sixty percent sure was still on.

"Ugh. How could anyone eat these," he said as he shoveled a large handful of cornflakes into his mouth. "Gross."

After Shepard threw Alenko's otherwise perfectly good box of cornflakes in his garbage can, he walked toward the center of his sleeping quarters, stepping over the debris that littered it. While looking for his Vans, he slipped on his favorite hanar plush and nearly landed face-first into the bong inconveniently forgotten in his path. Sliding the bong underneath his bed, he pulled himself up by the "Chicago White Sox" flag hanging on the wall and, carefully stepping over the roller skates he couldn't remember having acquired or ever used, opened his closet door, unamused by the "Info Battles" stickers Williams graffitied it with.

Somewhere under the soiled "Chicago Blackhawks" jersey and the hockey stick (the one he once took out to hit Alenko over the head with after the Lieutenant tried to argue that the word "pop" was not a suitable substitute for "soda") were his Vans. Having found them and having threw the banana peel stuffed inside one of them back in the closet, he stepped around the carefully-stacked pyramid of beer cans he'd been working on for the last three months and made for the exit, kicking the dead dove on the floor back into his room so it didn't get caught in the door when he closed it.

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"Gooood morning, ladies and gents," Shepard said in a chipper mood to us as he stretched his legs.

"Umm...Commander," I responded. "Is dress code on the Normandy normally this lax?"

Shepard looked down at his wife beater and boxers, noticing that the only thing he managed to retrieve from his quarters were his Vans.

"Crap. Thought my morning routine was a little sparse today."

Shepard then made his way over to the kitchen, pouring himself a coffee over at the counter. He puckered his face from the taste of the recycled grounds, reminded of the Alliance's ever-tightening budget constraints. Williams, nar Rayya, Urdnot, and I all sat at the Mess Hall table, the Normandy's usual site of mission planning and other sorts of intelligent conversation, having wrapped up our breakfast some time ago. I preoccupied myself with sorting out the sugar packets on the table by color while Urdnot eyed them hungrily. Shepard sat himself between the two of us.