Cronos Station: Mass Effect Ascension

I love the way Shepard slides down ladders.

Hold the hell on, I blew the base up, how did Cerberus get ahold of the baby reaper?

I googled it, and apparently, if you give it to Brother TIM, you get the head, and if you blow it up, you get the heart. Which is not a good answer. I exploded it, how did they get the heart?!

Continuing on through --

-- we come to our final console.

This time Shepard has no clever dialouge with her squadmates, it's just her, checking out some space YouTube.

They are, of course, referring to our wonderful friend Paul Grayson, the most important Mass Effect character to never appear on screen. Honestly, if you're going to read one piece of media, I'm going to insist on Mass Effect Ascension.

There's no conversation between videos, so that responsibility falls on me.

I honestly thought the point of Sanctuary was to create reaper forces. It was to control humans? ... but Cerberus is trying to save humans?

Plot hole time: okay, so Brother TIM wants to control reapers. And humans. But putting some cybernetics in Shepard to control her and make sure she doesn't, I don't know, steal the SR2, run back to the Alliance and then later bust into the Cerberus base and kill anyone? Why sir, that is horrifying! No controls on Shepard. Only Shepard. What the hell.

... also, on what planet was Sanctuary considered a success?

Um, I was more hoping that we could discuss the fact that YOU'RE FILLED UP TO THE GODDAMN BRIM WITH REAPER PARTS but ey, if you say cut off the recording, I'll cut it off.

Subject Zero: I Am So Sorry

Man. You probably see some shit on a multispecies space mission, don't you? Especially if you've never been on one before.

Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel, I fart around in MSPaint trying to make an alien and a human take a leak in a urinal.

(I have notes in my notebook now as to what the construction of the Normandy's men's room looks like. You're welcome.)

No living clue why the hell you all keep coming back each week.

So Cerberus has this one kid that they did experiements on to see if they could make her super biotic.

... no, sorry, there's two. There's our good friend Gillian Grayson, and then there's the subject of today's entry, Subject Zero, also known as Jack (who is female, it's short for Jacqueline).

Hang with me, because I got curious/confused and had to figure this out. Cerberus abducted Jack in 2165 when she was four years old because she had such high biotic power, and they were interested in advancing human biotics. They did a bunch of experiments on her, some spoiler shit happened, and I'll get to the end of that story in a second.

Mass Effect Ascension takes place in 2183, and Gillian was ... ten or eleven, I think, meaning she was born in 2172 at the earliest. They don't say it out loud, but it's a damn fine bet that whatever they learned from Jack back in the 2160s was what Jiro and Paul were doping Gillian with, which answers the question of why the story has two superbiotic young girls running around. Sort of. If you're confused, I can just draw Garrus peeing again.

Back to 2185, Jack is currently being held in a high security penal colony run by the Blue Suns. ... I don't get it either, I know they're crooks, but this is what the story's giving me, damn it. However, Cerberus has paid her bond, and it's up to Shepard to pop her.

Anyway, the guard takes Shepard to look at Jack.

They're not fucking around with this whole high security shit, Jack is literally kept in a little capsule that's moved around by a crane. Damn. Is she dangerous or something?

Well, let's go to outprocessing and see what's up.

The other prisoners are scared of her? Damn, Cerberus, the fuck you got us in to?

Anyway, let us arrive at outprocessing.

Anyone who didn't see that a mile off doesn't play enough video games.

The guard's got it figured out: it's more worth his while to capture Shepard and her two compatriots and sell them off than to give up Jack. So, now we've got a whole jail full of guards chasing Shepard! Damn! We sure could use some help!

Shepard does, uh, science, and causes the capsule to release.

We ... we must pause here for a moment and talk.

My friends, my real life friends, yes I actually have some, when they found out I was doing MSPixel, responded with, "You fucking nerd."

But after that, the second question out of their mouths, almost universally, was, "What the hell are you going to do when you get to Jack?"

I can draw the other characters in triangles big space armor, but Jack, she ... um. She. Um. Doesn't. ... doesn't wear space armor. She. She. She, ummmm ...

I am so sorry. You don't even know.

But in my admittedly weak defense, Bioware didn't give me a lot to work with. Literally. Jack does not wear a shirt. She has a ... would you call that a tit strap? I guess, and that keeps the game from getting an AO rating from the ESRB. You can understand how important that is in a game where you can get a face full of alien wing wang.

No, but hey, look, guys!

She's really good at biotics! See! See all the blue shit? She goes zap, and ... then ... there's blue ...

You're not looking. I understand. There are boobies.

Back in the booth:

(Well?! Didn't you have the same face?)

(I can make these jokes, I was elected President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee last year. I put that shit on my damn resume.)

Okay, and also there's a prison riot, on top of the tits (but of course secondary to said tits), so we've got to fight our way through that.

Eventually, Shepard and pals come up against the warden himself.

... okay, I've spent like the last fifteen minutes laughing myself stupid at my little Warden. Look at him. He's perfect.

I'm sorry, this is a serious art blog, I'll draw in the real warden now.

... FUCK I just missed a perfect chance for a Dragon Age reference. Whatever, I'll work it in.

Once you dispense of him, you run into Jack, and she runs into the Normandy, which has a big ass Cerberus logo on it now. She shits a brick, since Cerberus was the one who experimented on her, but Shepard wants her on her crew, so ... hmm.

GOD I wish this was the last time we'll about breasts.

NEXT TIME: Jack does not get a shirt.

Ascension: Quick On The Draw

Mass Effect: Ascension is the second book in the book series, and book two of the three books Bioware will admit to publishing. I'm also pretty sure that this is the only one of the four three books that has no playable characters from the games.

This book takes place directly after Mass Effect 1. So, all the characters know Shepard, the whole thing at the Citadel shook down, whole nine. We now resume our story at the John Grissom, Alliance Hero Academy For Kids Who Are Hella Gifted With Biotics, Grissom Academy for short. The Alliance started this special school for biotic kids to help them control their powers and use them for the greater good.

The Alliance was so happy with Kahlee Sanders' actions at Sidon (wait, what?) that they made her Lead Scientist In Charge of Science at Grissom. She monitors the students, uh, levels of, uh, biotic ... thingies ... element zero ... she measures midi-chlorians. Yes. Why the fuck not.

Wasn't she working on AI in the last book? What the hell is her degree in, again? I'm somehow picturing her having a degree in Science from Space University, the same place Liara got her degree in Old Shit.

The kid in the picture there is Gillian Grayson, who is just ate the fuck up with midi-chlorians way super hardcore biotic. She's a special case because she has autism.

That red headed guy there is Jiro, who also ... does ... science. Look, it's a science fiction novel, the actual real science isn't that important. That's right, I said it. Oh, and another thing about Jiro:

eww kissin

At first I was all, "The hell?! ANDERSON!" but then I was like, "No, wait, this rules, I like that she's not all damsel in distress about what happened back in the first book. Good on her. You tap that weird red headed Asian kid, gurl. You go."

Then I was like, "Wait, why does she always have to have a guy in every single one of these books?"

Then I was all, "Fuck me sideways, why do I give this big a shit about who my fictional characters are dating?"

The book makes this big damn deal about how Kahlee's takin' a visit to Cougar Town, if you're picking up what I'm putting down, 'cause she's like 40 and he's like 20. Whatevs, I'm thinkin, go head girl, go head, get down.

So then the scene flips from the HOTBED OF SEX that is Grissom Academy over to Gillian's dad, Paul Grayson, who's currently on a plane.

I've been trying to think of cute ass ways to say this and let you figure it out on your own, but I legit think my art skills aren't up to it there's not a really good way to do this, so I'll just say it: remember that bastard Jack Harper from Evolution? Yeah, he grows up, gets pissed the fuck off at aliens, and becomes The Illusive Man, sometimes shortened to TIM. Old Boy now heads up an organization called Cerberus, dedicated to doing what it can to advance humanity. If a few aliens get stomped on? Feh. If a few humans get stomped on? Feh. Cerberus quite frequently takes "greater good" to its illogical extreme.

Not much happens in the plane scene, except to introduce us to the idea that Gillian's attendance at Grissom is a total Cerberus set up. They got her when she was a baby, gave her to Paul to raise as his own, and then got her into Grissom two years ago. TIM gave Paul a fake life: he's the face CEO of a fake buisness called Cord-Hislop (you get the joke, see, because we went through Evolution together), and he's fake jet setting all the time. But now he's rolling in to see his kid.

So anyway, it's late at night at Grissom, and Kahlee is tucked into her bed.

Uh. Hmm. Whoops. Okay. I guess maybe she's off doing science in the lab?

No. Damn. Where the hell could she -- ?

GIRL! Go on! Get you some! You go!

... oh honey. Oh honey no.

I've been reading all of this Mass Effect media on my iPad, I like it better that way. For one, when something TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE happens that makes me LAUGH MY ASS OFF FOR A HALF HOUR STRAIGHT, I can screen shot it and reproduce it nicely, like so:

You guys. You guys. Early ejaculation. The world is a beautiful place.

So Kahlee rumbles around in the dark for a bit looking for her clothes -- fuck no I'm not drawing that, I have standards, and they apparently stop right past krogan dick but whatever -- and waxing philosophical about Jiro's ass. Yes, this book was written by a dude, why are you asking? Then, the chief of security at Grissom, Hendel, calls Jiro's room and is all like, "Kahlee, pull out and roll off the poor kid's raw dick, Paul's here!"

So Kahlee gets dressed and greets Paul, then takes her to see Gillian.

Paul visits with Gillian. Sometimes he can get her to talk, sometimes she just stares forward, but whatever, he's just glad to see her. (I had no idea catatonic states were considered an autism symptom?) At the end of his visit with Gillian, he meets Jiro outside her room in SUPER SEKRIT.

Shit, you guys! Jiro's with Cerberus!

The next day, in the cafeteria, a young boy named Nick tries to make friends with Gillian.

Gillian gets so pissed off over the milk that she casts singularity, a biotic power that sucks in everything around it. Hemdel manages to taze Gillian and gets her to the hospital ward.

So anyway, when Gillian is found missing from the med ward, that's a Thing.

The whole academy's on high alert. Turns out, Jiro broke her out to give her her next dose of medicine, since the first one went so well. ... I apologize, but I really can't bring myself to draw someone doing something like that to a kid, you'll just have to live with text. Jiro inserts a needle into the back of her neck, dopes her, and then she begins to seize.

So anyway, Hemdel finds Jiro, and kicks his ass.

Then Kahlee finds Jiro and kicks his ass.

Children, this joke, it will never get old. I'm kind of super sad that Jiro only pops up (WHEE) in this one book and not in the other three two. Anyway, the Alliance takes Jiro in to custody, meaning he has to leave the plot prematurely.

Kind of like how he ejaculates.

TIM calls Paul up and is like, "race your ass over there NOW and get her out of there," so he does, playing the role of concerned dad. Hemdel figures out that Paul and Jiro are both in on Cerberus. Paul figures out that Hemdel knows, so he's trying to think of a way to get Gillian away from the Alliance and then maybe even away from Cerberus too. Kahlee gets the bright idea to convince Paul that she and Hemdel should come along to help him look after Gillian, and he agrees to it because I don't know why.

Paul, by the way, is addicted to red sand, a drug in the Mass Effect universe that makes you sort of biotic for a while. Paul tells everyone that they should go see his dealer, Pel, because maybe Pel would have some good ideas as to how to get away from Cerberus. So naturally Pel dopes them.

See, Pel's in league with these guys called collectors. Promise me you'll remember that. They're strange aliens with triangle shaped heads and four eyeballs that gather species and take them away, never to be seen again. Pel probably figures he can sell the four of them to the collectors for a nice profit.

But!

That ... that's supposed to be them all tied up, okay?

There's a sub plot I've been ignoring involving Pel, and two quarians, Golo and Lemm, because it is boring and I skipped over it. But Lem finds Kahlee, Gillian, Paul and Hemdel here, unties them, and rescues them. He actually convinces Kahlee, Gillian and Hemdel to go back to the quarian fleet with him, since Kahlee knows a little bit about AI technology. She'd serve as his gift to complete his pilgramidge. She agrees.

So Kahlee gets to go talk to the captain, Captain Mal.

REALLY! Who the hell are the other quarian fleet captains, Captain Kirk and Captain Janeway?

Captain Mal aims to misbehave has this theory, see. We all saw Sovereign the reaper, right? But what if there's, like, more reapers? Like, enough to fill three games worth of reapers? Kaylee Kahlee isn't much help, since she had no idea she was studying reaper stuff at Sidon at the time, but Mal's excited to talk to her all the same.

Meanwhile, Golo and Paul roll up to the fleet with the intention of taking Gillian back to Cerberus. Shit! No! They'll dope her more! Kahlee and Hemdel go trying to hunt out Gillian during the attack --

But it turns out Gillian can handle herself just fine.

After a long action sequence that I won't spoil for you, Hemdel and Gillian agree to stay on the flotilla where Cerberus can't reach Gillian, while Kahlee is to escort Paul to Alliance custody.

Oh, man, that's cool. We've actually never seen Kahlee complete a task on her own before. She usually has some guy's help. So, neat, she's gonna drive Paul to the Alliance on her lonesome. I bet she --

For fuck's sake, REALLY?

Paul escapes. Sadly. The last scene is Paul telling The Illusive Man to stay far away from Kahlee, because ... um ... honestly, I'm not even sure why old TIM should give half a fuck about Kahlee, but that's okay, I guess, because we've got two one more book to find out.

NEXT TIME: Actually, I'm out of town for next time, so. Filler! It'll be fun, though, I promise.