After some relaxing cuddling with Garrus, I head down to the CIC and dig through my old emails. I know I told Cerberus to screw off, but I’m kinda bored and maybe they have something I can do that will benefit mostly me and not really them.
I decide to go do this Firewalker nonsense which apparently involves recovering a prototype vehicle and hunting down a couple scientists.
I grab Garrus and Thane and have the shuttle drop us off near a large shipping crate. I hack the console, and for a moment worry that it is going to blow up and we’ll have to run away quickly, but instead it just opens and inside is the Hammerhead: a weird, hovercraft-y car thing.
Oooooooooh. I grin wildly. SOMETHING TO DRIVE.
Garrus seems visible nervous and Thane looks confused.
I imagine them conversing, while I ogle my new toy.
“What’s the problem?”
“You..you weren’t here for the Mako. It’s Shepard, she’s…she’s a terrible driver. She crashes into stuff on purpose, she tries to do flips in it. It’s a good thing Tali’s not here, she’d probably vomit just from thinking about it.”
HEY GUYS COME ON LET’S GO
“HAHA YEAH SURE THING SHEP, BE RIGHT THERE!…Thane if there were ever a time for one of your little prayers, it is now.”
I am basically the worst driver of this thing. Whoops, crashed into that rock. Whoops, that’s not what I meant to do. What button does what again? Fuck, how come I never pay attention to instructions?
We finish up on that first planet and check out like..a few more. One was very cold, which I did not like and am glad we did not have to get out of the vehicle. One was uh, something geth? I don’t know. One had a bunch of rocket drones that would pop up out of the ground right in front of me, startling the crap out of me and causing me to fire off like 4 rockets or whatever in rapid succession.
One planet was all volcanic and even after I read a thing that said “activating our power grid makes it all unstable and explodey” I still walked over and activated the power grid. WHY? WHY? WHAT IS MY PROBLEM? WHAT COMPELS ME TO DO THESE THINGS?
Garrus and Thane were pretty mad about that sprint out of there and then even madder when I stopped to mine for something while the whole place was collapsing around us and then probably even madder when it turned out to just be some iridium and I already have a ton of iridium and no upgrades to buy anyways…
Garrus still comes to my room for cuddles though, so he can’t be TOO mad, right?
Finally we land on a planet and park the Hammerhead outside some doors, after I drove it around like a madman for a while. Inside I find the dead scientists (Oh they’re dead, how surprising. (Not surprising. (I had assumed they were either dead or turned into husks or something.))) I read some datapads and it sounds like our scientist friends were kinda going crazy and also making deals with the collectors, ho boy. Great.
I hack a console (please don’t explode) and it opens a bunch of walls and extends a walk way to this prothean artifact. It is giant and silver and orb-y, and even makes what I would call “orb-y noises.” I slowly approach and reach my hand out to touch it, because I have to touch everything. When I do, it stops making the noise. I shut it off? Wait no, now it’s doing something else. I turned it on? Oh god it’s kinda glowing green now.
And then it pulsated and shrunk to a bowling ball. Huh.
Well, we can fit it in the ship now.
I take it back to the Normandy and confirm that the mission is complete and the artifact has been recovered.
And I know just the place for it.
My coffee table.
Even though it kinda weirds me out.