The Prankster's Hero

Author's Note: The following tale takes place during before Shepard bumbled his way through the attack on Elysium. In fact, it takes place while he was training in OCS. Readers may notice that I borrowed quite liberally from a couple shows.

Chapter 1: The Battle to Keep Your Hair

It was a wonderful day. Well, as wonderful as a day can be after being rudely woken up at 0500, going through an entire day of training drills, weapon handling, leadership exercises, combat sims, live-fire combat drills and mind-numbingly dull classes. Seriously, I wonder who in the Alliance thought it would be a bright idea to drum all the initiative and intelligence out of its recruits in Basic, then turn around and try to stuff it all back in for OCS. But what do I know? I'm just a dumb grunt enjoying dinner with the other guys and gals—

"What are you doing?!"

—until Happy Tang came along to ruin a perfectly good meal.

As one, we all swallowed, put our utensils down and stood to attention. Well, sat to attention. You know what I mean. A shadow loomed over our table—at least, it tried to. Hard to loom when you're only five foot four. Officially he was five foot five, but I knew better. You see, during my first week, I'd finagled access to the officer lockers. Every night, I'd swipe Tang's boots, break into the vehicle maintenance bay and run the boots through the sander. By the second week, I'd shaved an inch off the boots. The fact that I hadn't broken through the soles, and my ability to perform simple arithmetic, brought me to a very amusing conclusion.

But I digress.

We turned our heads towards one Sergeant Instructor Harold Tiberius Tang, self-styled pain-in-the-ass and official brass-appointed... well... actually, I'm not sure what his official job was. One day he'd be quartermaster; the next day drill instructor. He spent a couple days teaching classes, most of which wound up being a complete waste of time—especially when the real teachers he was substituting for had to play catch-up the following day correcting all the mistakes he'd made. None of us could figure it out. After much pondering and brainstorming, we bribed a fellow student—one of the female persuasion—to flirt and flatter the answer out of him. She later told us that he puffed his chest out, stood to his full five foot four/five, and proudly told her that his great-grandfather was one of the founding members of this happy little boot camp. Following his ancestor's advice, he was determined to learn as much as possible from each and every facet so as to better impart his wisdom and experience to future generations of students. As she shuddered and went off to the showers, loudly complaining that she needed a long, long soak, we wondered out loud if he was actually being serious. Personally, I thought the staff shuffled him around to spend as little time with him as possible.

Anyway, Happy Tang was glaring at us, his face twisted in a grimace that suggested he'd just swallowed a couple lemons. Situation normal, in other words. "What are you maggots doing?" he snapped.

...

...

...

"Eating?" a foolish idiot piped up at last.

Happy Tang glared at me. Did I mention I was the brilliant numbskull who'd opened his big fat mouth?

"Eating? Eating?!" he howled. "Elbows on the table, back hunched over, utensils at every angle but parallel to the table edges, napkins crumpled and stained with the food you smeared over your lips, crumbs on the table, food all mixed together instead of separated into their designated sections and... and... you! Did you put any vegetables at all on your plate? That is not eating! That is not proper. If any of the other races saw you, what would they think?"

They'd think humans had some really strange idiosyncrasies that they were still trying to shake off after several generations. "It'll only take a minute to fix all that," I tried again.

"A minute? A minute?" Happy Tang activated his omni-tool. A single command dimmed all the lights in the mess hall except for the ones over our table, all the better to shame us into seeing the error of our ways. A second command brought up a series of spreadsheets. I idly wondered where he'd found the time to generate them, when he seemed to spend a third of the time glaring at someone, another third yelling at someone and the rest of his time doing both. "A minute to correct that means a minute not spent eating. A minute not spent eating means a minute eating outside your break. A minute eating outside your break means a minute not spent working. Or learning. Or sleeping. And all of that adds up!" Happy Tang huffed.

We all stared at him blankly.

Happy Tang let out a long-suffering sigh. "You are not grunts anymore, ladies and gentlemen. You are leaders. Alliance leaders. Humanity's leaders. The vanguard of humanity, bringing our potential and promise and glory to the wider galaxy. To all its races, all of whom have been out there flying amongst the stars before we even started paddling water. We have a duty and responsibility to present the best humanity can offer. And this?! This will not cut it!

"Clean it up!" Happy Tang bellowed. "And don't think you get extra chow time to make up for this mess."

With a flourish, he tapped his omni-tool and restored all the lights. Then he stomped away, leaving us to take our elbows off the table, straighten our backs, re-align our utensils that were only a degree or two off, uncrumple the one napkin that was crumpled—none of them were stained, by the way—clean up the six or seven crumbs scattered across the table and separate the rice from the veggies, the veggies from the meat and the meat from the rice. That took us twenty-three seconds. Another fifteen seconds to transfer some (more) veggies to the lone guy who'd happened to eat all his veggies before Happy Tang descended. That left us twenty-two seconds to spare.

Twenty-two extra seconds to firm my resolve for this year's April Fool's Day prank.

That resolve was only strengthened by Happy Tang's schedule tinkering, which we discovered the next day. When Happy Tang marched into the barracks and used his omni-tool to turn on all the lights and set off all the alarms—both the ones in our omni-tools and the one on the wall. I suppose the reaction would have been funnier if we had been watching it. Sadly, we were experiencing it, so... not so much with the funny.

"Attention, maggots!"

Maggots? Seriously? Didn't we 'graduate' from that after Basic?

"The mess hall is being temporarily closed due to renovations."

Then where were we going to eat?

"Therefore, you will eat meals in Building A, room 1138, until further notice."

"There isn't enough room in there to fit everybody," a bright genius pointed out. That was me, by the way.

"Which is why I've arranged staggered meal breaks. You'll find the schedule in your omni-tools as of..." He paused to transmit the schedules from his omni-tool. "...right now. Hurry up and get dressed."

Happy Tang marched out, leaving the lights on and the alarms still blaring. I managed to turn mine off and opened up the schedule planner app in my omni-tool. Breakfast for me was... four hours from now? And I'd last eaten dinner six hours ago. Was that legal? Or physiologically possible?

Actually, it was. The last part, anyway. So the first part bears repeating: was that legal?

"This is ridiculous!" one of my bunkmate, Tony, complained. "He can't do that!"

I heard a groan above me. "Actually, he does have the authority to make those changes." There was a brief indentation as McGee plopped his head back on the pillows. "He's in the administration office this week."

"How did you find that out?" I wanted to know.

"Got a care package from my sister last week," McGee mumbled. "Tang was picking one up as well from his wife. He mentioned it to me. And the adjutant. And the janitor." He frowned. "Everyone in the building, come to think of it."

"He's drunk with power," I growled. "Has been ever since he got his new omni-tool."

"The Master Omni-tool," Tony nodded sagely. "One omni-tool to rule them all. Like the One Ring in the Lord of the Ring vids. I'm talking about the early 21st century trilogy directed by Peter Jackson, not the radio versions or the 1978 animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi. What a masterpiece that was. Sir Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, and how could I forget Liv Tyler? Oh, what a hot, succulent—"

"It was a book series first," I interrupted. Tony was the kind of guy you wanted to watch your back, take the initiative or pick out little details that a less observant man might have missed. Of course, that assumed you could overlook his promiscuity, occasional bouts of chauvinism, immature sense of humour and penchant for quoting obscure vids. The trick, I'd learned, was to know when to rein him in.

"It was?"

"Anyway," I emphasized, "something really has to be done about that."

"He could have an accident."

We all turned towards the door. Anna and Ziva were poking their heads in. "I'm just saying, I know a guy," Anna continued sweetly. "Very reasonable. His rates, I mean."

"And if not, I know eighteen different ways to kill him with my omni-tool," Ziva offered.

Why was I not surprised to hear any of this? Anna's parents had signed her up with the Alliance with the hopes that it could weed out her rebellious and provocative tendencies and instill proper, respectful, traditional behaviour. All it seemed to do was teach her how to better mask her true nature. As for Ziva, she was as playful as she was lethal, which was saying something considering her combat skills and her willingness to use them. The only reason she hadn't been kicked out of the Alliance was that one: the Alliance needed her skills and two: she usually exhibited a high degree of professionalism. Most of the time. Some of the time.

"Way to think outside the box," Tony approved.

Why was I not surprised by Tony's response as well? It was starting to look like I had to be the voice of reason. That, if nothing else, should tell you how much trouble we were in. "Guys, come on," I sighed. "This sucks, I agree. But don't you think offing him is just a little extreme?"

"Oh, I see," Tony snickered. "You've already caved in. Given up. Thrown in the towel."

"Oh ye of little faith," I snorted, hoisting my sorry ass out of bed. "Haven't you learned by now?"

"He did dye your underpants neon green," Ziva agreed. "I did not realize you were a briefs boy, Tony."

"Briefs man," Tony corrected before turning to me. "I knew you were the one behind it."

"Traitor," I glared at Ziva. She shrugged.

"So you have a plan?" Tony asked hopefully.

"Depends," I replied, halfway into my fatigues. "McGee?"

Timothy McGee's the kind of guy you want to have as a friend. Quiet, dependable, friendly and could rival a quarian when it came to hacking through computer systems. He was a bit of a nerd, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, especially since he knew how to balance it out with real-life concerns. Besides, I found his nerdy tendencies kinda cool. And his mad computer skills even cooler. "Hacked into the OCS mainframe," McGee reached down and handed me an OSD. "Access codes to Tang's quarters. It's only good until zero-hundred hours tomorrow, though."

Pocketing the OSD with one hand, I waved McGee's concerns off with the other. "That's all the time I need."

"So what's the plan?" Anna asked.

I looked around the room to assess my potential conspirators. The usual list of suspects were all there, except—"Hey!" I frowned. "Where's Awesome?"

"Probably finishing off his extra exercises," McGee yawned.

"And hiding from you," Anna added.

Understandable on both counts. Devon, affectionately known as 'Captain Awesome' for his awesome proficiency in academics, physique, all-around fitness and everything else, was the only person who was going through OCS while finishing medical school. A devout—or crazy, depending on who you asked—fitness buff, he usually squeezed in an extra round of pumping iron and jogging. Very nice, very straightforward, very open—sometimes a little too open.

Which brought me to his only downside: his penchant to have lots and lots of sex. He was just as promiscuous as Tony, though he was a lot nicer about it. Don't get me wrong, he was a perfect gentleman. Treated his dates with the utmost of respect and care and attention—both in and out of bed. But he did tend to move from woman to woman (to woman). And while he wouldn't brag or exaggerate about his conquests, unlike Tony, he did tend to be very open and forthcoming with details. Unfortunately, his latest conquest happened to be the woman I'd grown up with and regarded as a surrogate sister. I may have been a little upset when I found that out.

"Yeah," Tony shuddered. "Is it true that you tied him up, left him dangling from the apple tree outside the weapons range and sniped random apples dangling around him until he swore to date Ellie and only Ellie until she broke things off?"

All right: make that very upset. "Well, we'd received a new shipment of sniper rifles," I shrugged. "It was as good an excuse as any to test them out. Thanks for letting me know they'd come in, Ziva," I added.

"Of course," Ziva nodded. "Was I correct about the weapon sights?"

"They were off centre," I confirmed. "Had to recalibrate them before going to see Devon. Wouldn't want to hit him."

"Mind you, had you hit him in a particular... area, your problems would be solved," Ziva pointed out.

All the guys winced. Yes, even me. "Tempting," I admitted. "I was saving that for a last resort measure."

"Ah."

Having settled that, I consulted the new staggered break schedule, courtesy of Happy Tang. "Plan's still on," I continued, "though we'll have to change the time. Anna, Ziva; you two start at the end of your dinner break. Everyone else, make sure you're outside Room 1138 at the start of your dinner break so you can gather around and make a scene."

"Sure you don't want to watch?" Anna asked with a naughty smile and a lascivious wink.

"Love to, but I have a job to do," I replied. "Burden of command and all that."

For the umpteenth time, I checked my chronometer. 1659 hours. In one minute, Anna and Ziva would be having a catfight to end all catfights. Grinding and punches would be involved, if I knew Anna. Sultry stares and bruises would be involved, if I knew Ziva. Howling, hooting, catcalls, grunting and other vocalizations would be involved if I knew the other students. Red-faced fury would be involved, if I knew Happy Tang. He'd tear his hair out in frustration if he had any left.

And where was I? Trying to set up a loop in the surveillance cams so they didn't record a recruit marching through the staff quarters. Which was kind of hard to do when your fingers were shaking from the cold. And the rain. And the howling winds. Why oh why didn't I get McGee to set this up for me?

Because I needed my head examined, I told myself, cursing as I screwed up and had to start from scratch. Come on, come on, come on... and... almost...

...YES! Loop set up. Now all I had to do was wait for the fighting to start and Happy Tang to find out. I checked the chronometer. 16:59:59.

17:00:00.

17:00:01.

17:00:02.

17:00:03.

17:00:04.

17:00:05.

17:00:06.

Hopefully he'd find out soon, before I had to use my numb, shaking digits to bypass the lock.

17:00:07.

17:00:08.

The doors burst open and Happy Tang came barging out, his usual not-so-happy grimace plastered on his face. I hopped down from the awning and walked through the doors before they hissed shut, vigorously rubbing my hands to get the circulation flowing once more.

I'd never been to Happy Tang's room, but I knew where it was. Everyone knew where it was. How it was on the fourth floor—which was a grave insult because four was an unlucky number and because it wasn't on the top floor, where a man of his stature and wisdom and importance should be billeted. How it wasn't a corner room—which was a grave insult because it didn't have a splendid view to greet him when he got out of bed after a long, rejuvenating night's sleep to inflict himself on all us lowly peons—his words, not mine. Except the 'inflict' part, of course. How the number of the room was a grave insult because it reminded him of how many people were before him on the waiting list to see the Consort.

Stopping outside room 469, I popped McGee's OSD into my omni-tool, loaded it up and sent the encoded ID signal. Sure enough, it worked. The doors hissed open and I sauntered in, wondering why the security protocols for individual bedrooms were harder to crack than the ones protecting the actual building. Making a bee-line for the computer, I pulled up a certain program and started downloading it from my omni-tool to the computer.

01%.

You see, the only way to stop Happy Tang from continuing his mad reign of power was to disable the One Omni-tool—oh geez, now Tony had me saying it. I could destroy it, but where's the fun in that? (Plus, the superiors might get a bit peeved. They were still searching for the man responsible for 'defacing' the statue outside the grounds. Thankfully they had restricted their search to OCS students who were present at the time. I hadn't started OCS yet, so they didn't think to look at me. Personally, I think the whole thing was blown out of proportion. I didn't 'deface' it, after all. Not really. I just took down the Alliance flag from the flagpole and wrapped it around the statue. Like a diaper. That's all.)

10%.

But I digress.

I had a plan to deal with Happy Tang and his Master Omni-tool, but I needed to download a customized update patch to his computer first. Ideally, I'd download some protocol or algorithm to his omni-tool directly. Unfortunately, Happy Tang carried it around at all times—like everyone else—so that was out of the question. Remote hacking on a mobile device like the omni-tool was theoretically possible but tricky, given all the other omni-tools and drones floating around any given area. Without the ID code assigned to Happy Tang's omni-tool, I'd have to blindly search through all the signals, which would increase the chances of getting caught exponentially. Mind you, McGee could probably have done it, but I couldn't ask that of him. I'd already had to do a lot of begging for him to get the codes to Happy Tang's quarters.

26%.

Thankfully, I knew two things about Happy Tang. One, he followed Alliance protocol when it came to electronic security, which dictated changing the access codes on personal items like an omni-tool every month. Two, he was too lazy to think up access codes for himself, choosing to let an Alliance randomizer program on his computer generate one for him. All I had to do was get access to his computer, tweak the program to generate a not-so-random code and I'd have complete remote control of his omni-tool.

42%.

Of course, that would all be moot if I got caught. Students were not supposed to be in the staff quarters. The administration said it was to provide some distance between the teaching staff and the students. I said it was because there were a few, quietly-hushed-up, times in the history of this glorious institution where various staff were caught having next-to-no distance whatsoever between them and the students.

59%.

My head jerked up. What was that? It sounded like footsteps. Oh, wait. That was thunder. I hazarded a quick peek out the window. Geez, the rain was pouring! I was gonna get soaked for sure. And me without an umbrella. Or any biotic abilities to improvise one. Boy did I get the short end of the stick. On the other hand, I didn't have any eezo nodules that were causing crippling disabilities or ramping up the chances of cancer. Gotta look on the bright side, right?

63%.

Wait, what was that noise? Maybe the ventilation systems were on the fritz again. Or maybe someone was walking around outside. What if they came in? I checked the progress of the download.

65%.

Oh come on! You've gotta be kidding me! Why won't this thing go any fast—what was that? Sounded like footsteps. Definitely footsteps... footsteps stopping outside the door? Yep, the footsteps had stopped all right. And there were voices talking. To each other, not in my head.

Aw, crap.

I looked hurriedly around, then ducked underneath the desk. As I crouched down, I accidentally knocked over a datapad. Thankfully, I managed to grab it before it clattered down on the ground. My thumb accidentally hit the power tab and turned it on. Looked like Happy Tang was...

...looking at hair regeneration genetic mods?

Only two hundred credits per month for eighteen months?

Reverse your premature balding or your money back?

And there were a lot of transactions and customer service e-mails as well!

I quickly copied the contents to my omni-tool. This was just too good to pass up. Reaching up, I carefully put the datapad back. Then I craned my neck around the desk. Voices were gone. Footsteps were dying away. I looked at the download rate.

87%.

I let out a sigh of relief. Now all I had to do was sit back, bask in the glow from the computer monitor and listen to all that was trickling and pouring and gushing...

Aw, crap. Now I had to go take a leak. I peeked at the download rate.

88%.

This was gonna take a while.

Supposedly, it only took another three minutes to finish the download. Felt like three hours. Running through the pouring rain felt like another three hours. Finally relieving myself felt like—

Actually, you don't really need to know that.

I stumbled into the main lecture hall, shaking like a leaf in the wind. A stream of rainwater trailed out behind me. How I was going to make it to room 1138 without anyone wondering—

"What happened?"

Awesome was gaping at me. "I got wet," I shrugged.

"No kidding," he agreed. "Here."

He handed me a spare set of clothes. "Tony filled me in," he shrugged when I shot him a questioning glance. "He figured there was one small detail you'd overlooked."

"Thanks," I said at last. I started to duck into a nearby classroom to change.

"Dude?"

"Yeah?" I said, turning back.

"We cool? About, well, you know."

I considered that for a second. Only a second—I was still cold and dripping wet, after all. "You remember what I said."

"Yeah."

"Then we're cool."

"Awesome. Hey, did you finish... you know?"

I nodded. "Yep."

Awesome beamed. "Awesome! Lookin' forward to it, man." With that, he headed off. I went into the classroom, changed clothes and went off to dinner, dumping the wet clothes in a convenient locker along the way.

"Done?" McGee asked as I slipped into my seat. He passed me my meal tray.

"Done," I confirmed, staring at its contents: imitation lasagna and vat-grown greens. Yum.

"Done," Tony announced, handing me an OSD. "Vid of the catfight," he explained. "High-def, of course."

I looked at him curiously. "Didn't Ziva threaten to cut off 'Junior' if you ever did something like that again?"

"That's why I gave it to you."

"Thanks," I grumbled sourly.

"Don't mention it."

Shaking my head, I pocketed the OSD. I had just started to force down what could generously be called dinner when I heard a beep. Putting down the fork, I activated my omni-tool. "Huh," I said with a startling degree of wit.

"What?" Anna piped up, peeking over my left shoulder. Apparently she had gotten out of whatever punishment or discipline had been handed down to her.

She wasn't the only one. "Good news?" Ziva asked, peeking over my right shoulder.

Tony gave me a look of envy. Don't know why. He'd been getting laid every other night since he got here. Except for last weekend, when he blew a chance to get a threesome by boring the women in question to tears with his comparisons to similar scenes from vids such as 'Species 2'.

"Tang changed his access codes early," I announced. "I have access."

"Well?" McGee prompted.

"Hang on." I tapped a few commands. Looked like Tang was updating his itinerary for the next day at this very moment. "It seems that the great and illustrious Tang has been chosen for a last-minute substitute. He's going to be giving the CIC procedure and protocol lecture tomorrow."

"Isn't that the one that all the bigwigs are sitting in on?" Tony wanted to know.

"Yeah," I nodded, a smile spreading over my face. "Including Captain Mikhailovich and Rear Admiral Hackett.

"This is going to be fun."

It took a while to get everything set up. Would've have needed nearly as much time if I just set up a remote connection between my omni-tool and Happy Tang's, but that ran the risk of being detected. Setting up a series of events that would trigger when Happy Tang keyed for certain functions took a lot more work and meant I wouldn't have as much control over what would happen, but it was a lot safer.

Unfortunately, it took most of the night to finish. So I was double-fisting cups of coffee when I stumbled into the lecture hall. Awesome raised an eyebrow when I bumped into him. "Dude: you do not look awesome."

I grunted.

"Busy getting a surprise ready for Tang?"

Another grunt.

"Coffee clearly hasn't kicked in yet."

Yet another grunt.

"OK, I'll let you find a seat, man. Hopefully you'll wake up by the time Tang starts."

"Yeah," I managed at last. Progress, I guess.

Somehow, I found a seat. A loud buzz filled the air as everyone was chatting about this and that. Emptying my second cup, I put it on the floor. When I got back up, I saw Tang strutting onto the stage. He tapped his omni-tool, presumably to activate the microphone function.

Nothing happened.

He frowned and tried again. Everyone winced as an ear-piercing shriek of static exploded over the speakers. The students who were in the know turned and glared at me. I shrugged sheepishly. I didn't realize the volume settings would be that high. Still, Tang was clearly starting to get flustered, which meant the prank was going along swimmingly so far.

Tang's next step was to dim the lights. He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as they complied. I kept my eyes on him, though, so I saw his mouth drop when the lights abruptly started flashing again in a pattern reminiscent of that old twentieth-century disco genre. A pounding beat started thumping through the hall. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud as a man's voice sang out from the speakers: "I'm too sexy for my hair... too sexy for my hair... that's why it isn't there..."

Not having my forewarning or self-control, the majority of the audience burst out into laughter. Mostly students, but a couple teachers succumbed as well. I was grinning from ear to ear by this point.

Tang's face was bright red by this point. I hadn't seen it this red since the last time he looked ready to explode—which would probably be a couple days ago, come to think of it. His eyes were darting around the audience, trying to figure out which one of us had humiliated him in his moment of glory. Good thing I'd told everyone not to offer any signs of congratulations whatsoever.

Eventually, the din died down. Tang tried to dim the lights again. They dimmed obediently before suddenly brightening. The next minute Tang spent frantically whacking away at his omni-tool, hoping percussive maintenance would help fix his suddenly uncooperative Master Omni-tool, was both unscripted and hilarious.

At last, the lights dimmed down. Tang pulled up the presentation. The first image showed a standard CIC, with the words "Combat Information Centre Procedures and Protocols" superimposed over it. "Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests," Tang began. "It is my honour and privilege to..."

He was interrupted by all the snorts and chortling that was rippling through the audience, mostly due to the e-mail that had suddenly popped up:

From: MarsGene

Dear Sergeant Tang,

Thank you for your interest in our hair restoration genetic mods. As the designated supplier for the Alliance's enhancement programs, we believe that you need the best weapons available to fight and win your battles. And no battle can be more important than the battle to keep your hair!

Our genetic mods boast a 95% success rate in—

While Tang managed to close the e-mail before any of us could finish reading, the damage was already done. Every man and woman in the audience was laughing at him. Maybe with him. But mostly at him. "Um... yes... moving on. We—attention! ATTENTION!"

It took a couple minutes for him to get our attention back. Eventually, though, the audience settled down. "Ahem. Yes. Well. Today we will present the current models on—"

"—what happens when you double-cross your customers!"

Tang abruptly blanched. I stifled a grin.

"Sergeant Tang, please calm down," a female voice soothed over the speakers. "We—"

"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" Tang's recorded voice screeched. "Do you know who you are talking to? I am Sergeant Harold Tiberius Tang! And I have been lied to! Betrayed by your false promises to the men and women who risk their lives every day to protect your rights and freedoms!"

"Sir, as I have tried to explain to you, our methods are designed to minimize the chances of rejection, but they still happen. You simply were unfortunate enough to fall within the 5% whose genetic code was incompatible with the hair restoration genetic modifications."

"Unfortunate? No, this isn't unfortunate. This is a disaster. You've crushed my hopes and dreams."

"Sergeant—"

"All I wanted was to be respected. To be recognized for my brilliance and wisdom. But that hasn't happened. No, I've received nothing but skepticism and ridicule. And do you know why?"

"Well—"

"Because I'm BALD! I was robbed of a thick, lush head of hair that could command respect and admiration. I was robbed of the hair I needed to attract throngs of hot, sexy women. I was robbed of the hair I needed to be taken seriously. Why won't you take me seriously? Why won't anybody take seriously? WHY?!"

"Uh..."

I don't know whether Happy Tang was drunk or high when he contacted MarsGene Customer Support. For all I knew, he actually believed every word he said. All I know for sure was that—

"AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

—that Tang had finally snapped and was running offstage. I'd like to say the audience saw his departure and sympathized. Actually, no I wouldn't. I was pleased to see that everyone was too busy howling with laughter—yes, even Captain Mikahilovich and Rear Admiral Hackett. Some of the students had even fallen out of their seats and were rolling on the floor.

"Nice job!" Tony complimented me, pounding me on the back.

"That was awesome," Awesome agreed, laughing away.

"Guess all those hours of hacking paid off," McGee grinned.

"Couldn't have happened to a better douche," Anna approved.

Ziva just gave me an approving nod before slapping Tony on the back of the head. "Hey!" he protested. "What was that for?"

"That," she hissed, "was for recording our distraction last night. Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

"Don't look at me," I shrugged when Tony glared at me. "I didn't even open it. Here you go, by the way," I added, passing over the OSD.

"Thank you," Ziva said sweetly before putting Tony in a headlock.

"Yeah. Thanks," Tony managed.

"Don't mention it," I replied cheerfully.