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It’s been fun times on the ship lately just Garrus cuddles and drinking and cuddles and drinking over and over and over. I’m sure Miranda thinks I should be doing something more useful, but I feel content spending my time this way.

Then I remember a message from Admiral Hackett I got a while back. Fuckkkk…didn’t he want me to go save someone? I should probably go do that, right? I then remember that he needed me to KILL BATARIANS and I am suddenly super excited! He also said I couldn’t bring any friends with me though. Humph. I tell Garrus to maybe see if we can get the sheets washed in here while I’m gone, and not to worry, I’m way awesome at killing those four-eyed fucks.

This planet is so far away on my galaxy map that I don’t even see it at first. Holy what, it’s way down there? I set a course, and then land stealthily on the planet with my NOT VERY QUIET shuttle. I find a door to go in and a crazed Varren charges at me. Then I find a hole with a button. I push the button. Nothing happens. I push it again. Nothing. Well. I turn around and find a hallway and stairs and eventually make my way down to another button which I also push, and hear the sound of a bridge extending above me. Awesome!

Up there I work my way through an elaborate system of fire and gas and varren, until making my way to some other buildings. I see a couple batarians, standing around and presumably looking right at me. Uuuuuuh. They don’t seem to be reacting though so I duck into another room where a crate of minerals has now got my attention instead. I don’t know what I plan to use these minerals for, but AT LEAST I HAVE THEM.

I wander in this prison some more with no real sense of where I’m going. I end up at a crane by a truck with a bunch of boxes. I push a button and the crane moves, push another button it moves again, push another button it picked something up. I keep pushing these three buttons trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with this thing and where I’m supposed to go from here, when I realize that I can just jump down these boxes to get to another room. Oh. Uuuuuh. Huh.

I poke around a bit more until finally hearing some Batarians saying dumb stuff and following their voices to Dr. Kenson’s cell. She’s being guarded by a Batarian that I, I dunno, punched or something. We end up in a room where she says she’s gonna hack some terminal while I have to keep the swarming batarians off her back.

Everyone else is apparently way worse at hacking things than I am because man, I get all up in those terminals’ business in a matter of seconds and she’s like, “JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER” while I keep getting flippin’ shot at. Think we could move it along a bit lady? She also yells like I know where anything is at in this room. Oh they’re coming up in the elevator? No I don’t know where that is. And then I just wait for guys to appear and then I shoot them. Like some Batarian Whack-a-Mole.

Finally we jump onto a platform and ride it down to a shuttle we can fly off the planet. Unfortunately there are batarians all over the place now and the shuttle bay doors are locked. Kenson says she’ll help shoot dudes, but I gotta figure out how to get the doors open. I say that I will just do it “the usual way.”

…I’m gonna push a button? I’m pretty sure the usual way I open doors is with a button of some kind. Fuck there’s no button down here, what am I doing? I see some explosives near the door finally and shoot them. That should do it? I think? I jump in the shuttle and the doors open just fine as Kenson and I fly away, burning Batarians with the fire from our awesome jets as we do. Wooooo!

On this shuttle ride, she tells me that they’ve found a reaper artifact and have been studying it. Oh awesome, I bet that’s been going super well. Every occurrence of people studying a reaper artifact has always gone SO AMAZING. She explains that the reapers are on their way, and closing in on this system, which has a mass relay they will use to reach all the other systems. Their plan is to destroy the mass relay.

I uh, whoa. I ask if they even can destroy it and she says the reason people think they are indestructible is probably just that no one has tried. I guess, yeah, I don’t know why we WOULD try to destroy one before this. It seems like an entirely impractical and overly complicated operation to do unless it was for a good reason.

Eventually we land wherever and I take a look at some big countdown thing they have rigged up. It is at 2 days. Uh, what is…what’s this.

Oh that’s how long until the Reapers are here.

…wait 2 DAYS?

Oh my god I got that message from Hackett like MONTHS ago. I GOT HERE JUST IN TIME. BUT I FEEL KIND OF BAD NOW. My lord, 2 goddamn days, and to think when I looked at my terminal, I had been thinking of putting it off MORE? Fffffffff.

Kenson says I can ponder that clock a bit and meet her inside.

The final station on our tour of Project Shitstorm is Atlas station. We drive over there with the Hammerhead, but not before I run over a few more innocent mammals.

We arrive and head inside where Archer tells us the VI is trying to upload itself to something from there so I need to stop that. All the doors in this building are doing annoying stuff like it’ll be open so I go to walk through it and then it locks,  and the door that had been locked opens instead. STUPID VI JUST OPEN THE DOOR YOU WANT ME TO GO INTO IN THE FIRST PLACE.  I hit some buttons, pick up some stuff, shoot some stuff and finally make it to a room with an elevator.

I hit the elevator button a few times but it’s not coming to the floor. I look around for more buttons to push, but also think to myself, is taking the elevator the best idea? I mean, this VI is taking over everything and trying to kill me or something, should I really get into an obvioulsy malfunctioning elevator?

I push a different button. Elevator moves. Push another button it moves again, push some more buttons, I basically pushed buttons until it arrived. Who has time for puzzles, just push buttons.

The elevator opens up and out pop a Geth Prime and some other Geth. I’m like, oh excuse me, is this your floor? No, you get off and then we’ll get on, oh shit you wanna fight. I hack the little ones and the big one quickly follows suit thanks once again to Garrus and his overload.

We get in the elevator, which I am still  nervous about and OH GOD IT STARTS GOING CRAZY. Goddammit! I knew we should’ve found a fire exit with some goddamn stairs or something. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S LIKE SEVEN FLOORS. I jog everywhere! Now I’m gonna die in this goddamn elevator!

Oh nevermind it’s calming down.

DING!

We’re here!

We exit the Elevator of Terrible Ideas and continue through the building and more silly door hijinks. Why VI? Why? JUST TO BE CRAZY? JUST TO BE WEIRD? WHATEVER! STOP IT!

Finally I get into a door and there’s a button there.  I hover over it for a moment, about to activate it. I turn to Garrus and Thane and say “Don’t be surprised if this summons a reaper.”

I…no, I would be pretty surprised by that. You guys have my permission to be surprised if that happens. I don’t even know why I would SAY that, it’s like ASKING for it to happen. What you definitely shouldn’t be surprised by, is if I push this button and the building starts exploding and we have to run out of here really fast. That is what I am expecting! That is my favorite thing to do! I do NOT think a reaper is gonna show up.

I push the button and it shocks me or something and I start staggering around like a crazy person. Garrus and Thane just stare at me.

“I know her eyes are glowy too but…did that button make her drunk? She’s acting like she’s DRUNK. She’s staggering out of the roooom-ohshit the door locked behind her fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

As Garrus and Thane panic in the other room, I am seeing everything in crazy orange glowy shit.  I think I might actually be drunk…hmm. OH SHIT A GETH

I shoot it. And continue wandering around while the VI screeches at me more. It sounds like it is definitely saying “MAKE IT STOP” and such now. I sigh. God, I’m gonna find that guy’s brother in some horrible contraption, aren’t I? Goddammit. Also there’s lots of little scenes to watch, of the brother calculating square roots nonstop. Uuuuugh, that would get so annoying, uuuuugh this is going to be awful at the end I just know it.

I make it to another room and there’s another elevator there. H..hurray? It has more geth which I kill, and then get on it and push the button, fingers crossed that this goes better than last time. AND IT DOES! A SAFE TRIP TO THE OTHER FLOOR!

There I find a large glowy ball and large glowy balls off of it that I need to shoot and more geth. After some fighting, all the glowy shit goes away and sure enough, there is that guy’s brother all strung up with tubes going down his throat, and a harness all stapled to his neck and just to be mean, stuff holding his eyes open.

The other brother comes running and tries to convince me that this is totally cool, despite the fact that all these people are dead now, and your brother is miserable, and went crazy and what have you. No it’s totally cool. Project Shitstorm is a huge success.

I tell him I’m taking his brother, and I pistol whip him in the face for good measure.

NOW, IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME.

I think Garrus and Thane are still in that room.

So this Archer guy explains to me that in order to stop the VI, I need to fly out to two other stations and flip some override switches. Sounds simple enough. Oh, one station is an old geth ship and the other is in a volcano. After that I can go to the third Project Shitstorm station.

Oh oh, is it in the eye of an actual shitstorm? No, it’s pretty easy to get to actually.

Well then.

I head out to the Hammerhead where Garrus and Thane are still doing stuff with corpses. Guys I said leave that stuff. This isn’t even close to all the dead people we saw anyways, I’m pretty sure. Besides, it’s time for Team SS…to ride again.

INTO THE HAMMERHEAD!

While I’m sure the good Dr. Archer would like us to hurry or something, I am taking my time driving my crazy ship thing around. I see some weird deer creatures, so I crash into them. They make a horrifying noise and Garrus and Thane glare at me.

*shrug*

…provisions? eh? Throw it in the back.

I see some dragon-y looking creatures flying around off in the distance so I fire several missiles at them, but they are indifferent to my attacks. Probably for the best. After driving in circles for a while, I finally somehow end up at Prometheus station: the abandoned Geth ship.  I don’t think that’s where I was originally headed, but here I am now! I fly towards what seems to be a shield, and then straight off a cliff, whoops.

Um, sorry, sorry. Look, it’s fine. We’re all fine!

The ship has a giant ass gun, and big shield around it, powered my several shield generators.  I use my amazing brains to get the gun to shoot the shield generators, knocking down its own shield, and then destroying it with my missile. AHAHA I AM BETTER THAN YOU MACHINE. YOU ARE STUPID!

We park the Hammerhead and go inside. In the first room is a inactive Geth Prime, hanging out in a weird egg pod thing. I can’t shoot it. I know this will come up later. Can I put a bomb down or something? This is…can I hack it and have it explode in 2 seconds? It’s right there, I know it will try to shoot me eventually. Let me take care of it now.

Alas, we can’t, and continue through the station, not seeing any geth anywhere. The weird VI thing keeps screeching at me and I start looking to see if maybe there’s an earplug upgrade I missed somewhere. Argh. Shut up I get it screech whatever!

I finally make it to the switch thing I need to flip and go ahead and flip it.  It awakens a bunch of the geth on the ship.

I roll my eyes. See! See! I knew it! Arrgh now we have to FIGHT STUFF, and RUN AWAY FAST.  And then sure enough, as we get back to the room we came in, there’s that Geth Prime, guns ablazing. I hack a couple of the smaller geth and start working on the Geth Prime with Garrus’s badass overload and then before I knew it, it was dead and so was everything else. Huh.

That went well.

We climb back in the Hammerhead and make for the station in the volcano. I’m sure my driving skills will improve vastly between here and there.

I drive right off a ledge, when there was a ramp down about 10 feet to the right. I am so unobservant. I come across a lava flow with large debris in it, and my ship computer says that I can totally land on those, they’ll work. I zip out and land on one and oh god it’s sinking, oh shit oh shit get to the next one, oh god, I hate lava someone else drive, someone else drive oh god jump jump hey we’re here!

We head inside where the main problem seems to be some crazed mechs and of course, more of that screeching.

Not that hard for us though, and we quickly come across a mech in a room doing something and is then startled to see us.  Garrus and Thane shoot his arms and he takes off running. I flip the switch and call Archer to let him know.

The armless mech runs by and I consider shooting it, but I’m on a call and his silly running amuses me. Then BAM someone shoots it! I look over at Garrus, holding his gun.

He gives me a look like

“Yeah, I shot it. You like that, eh Shep? WINK WINK”

We head back to Hammerhead. There’s one last station to attack.

As long as I’m doing stuff for the Cerberus fucks I told to fuck off, I figure I might as well go check out this Overlord bullshit. We land on the planet  in the Hammerhead which is very encouraging for things to come. Well for me. Not for my squadmates. Hahaha. AAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

After landing we enter a building that is already so full of dead bodies. So…things are going well here. A guy named Archer tells me I need to stop some rogue VI from uploading itself via the giant dish outside. I pay very little attention to him and just open any door I can, and shoot anything that is available. I care little for what this guy is telling me.

There’s a bunch of Geth and Garrus is just destroying them with his overload. I am honestly a little scared when it takes it out like 3 geth at once. Holy shit dude, what points did I give you anyways?

We make it to a room and try to lower a satellite dish, because we are NOT paying for Sunday Ticket during this lockout. Oh I mean because the VI is going to upload itself with it. I try to use the computer but SURPRISE the VI has overridden it! Who saw that coming? NO ONE. NO ONE AT ALL.

We take the tram to the satellite itself, because now we’re just gonna destroy it.  Dizzy Shepard gets drunk and crushes her problems beneath her mighty omni-fist! Team Sexy Sniper! Go!

The tram ride itself was mostly noisy, but didn’t go as horribly wrong as I thought it might. Which is to say we made it to the other end without incident. I thought for sure it would seize up in the middle and we would have to climb out and walk carefully along the rail while Geth shot at us to get to the other side. I mean I am honestly surprised that didn’t happen.

At the dish, this Archer guy instructs us to blow up some support struts so we do that while geth come at us from who knows where. I don’t even think about any more, I just shoot and reave, shoot and hack, and when they’re all gone I shake my head in disgust.

Finally I blow up the third thing I was supposed to blow up, and oh for fucks’ sake. The whole thing is gonna come down on us and guess what, we need to run away really fast. I’m upset at this, but Garrus and Thane are like “YOU DO THIS ALL THE TIME SHEPARD. It’s always with the fast escapes and sprints away from death, it’s getting goddamn exhausting.”

Oh Garrus, don’t act like you don’t love it.

I mean sure, Thane might not. But you do. And he has to come along because we need a third for Team Sexy Sniper and Legion is a robot so he can’t be sexy even if he does wear my old armor which is inherently kind of sexy.

DON’T QUESTION MY LOGIC JUST RUN THE FUCK OFF THIS SATELLITE DISH

After narrowly escaping with our lives, we return to that weird scientist guy to find out what exactly is going on.

He tells me about their project to merge a human and a geth, his brother being a volunteer for it. Project Overlord, they called it. Oh and you didn’t expect that to go horribly wrong? Project Overlord? Why don’t you just call it Project Shitstorm, you little asshole. Oh no, Project Shitstorm has gone horrible wrong. WHO IS SHOCKED? WHO? IT IS NO ONE WHO IS SHOCKED THAT IS WHO.

I decide right then to call this Project Shitstorm the rest of the time I am here.

While I ask him questions I already can tell the answer to, Garrus and Thane are apparently hauling around and casketing up these corpses. Jesus guys, can’t we get a team in here to do this? You gotta do it? It seems a little weird, ya know? Team Sexy Sniper shouldn’t be hauling dead bodies around.

Get Jacob down here; make him do that.

Then we will “forget” him when we leave!

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.

Having found the location of the Shadow Broker’s base, we head right there. It is some fucked up ship flying around in the middle of a crazy ass lightning storm and we’re gonna run around outside of it and try to find a way in. Liara comments about making the mistake of looking down. I run to the edge of the ship. What? What about it? Looks cool. It’s not like I can jump. Maybe if there was something to crouch behind first…

We eventually make it to a hatch, that Liara starts hacking. It’s taking some time to work though, and we need to keep these Shadow Broker agents off us in the meantime. Finally the thing opens the door and we rush inside. Where there are more agents. I have no idea why I even thought it might be safer INSIDE for a second. I’m ripping through these guys fast as fuck though and finally make it to the prison section, where Liara’s friend Feron is being held. And has apparently been tortured for the last two freakin’  years.

Well at least he’s a Drell so he’ll never forget this.

We can’t free him right now so we continue through the ship to the Shadow Broker’s um, office I guess. He is a creepy looking monster, with creepy looking teeth around the most confusing mouth sitting at a nice desk with a nice suit on. It’s kinda weird. Liara says he is a “yahg.” He says some snooty stuff to me, and Liara says some snooty stuff back while I make noises like “OOOOOOH SNAP.” Then he picks up his desk and smashes it. He must figure he can get a new desk. The impact knocks Garrus out, but me and Liara seem mostly unscathed and apparently decided to take this moment to spoon a little bit. Jesus, Shepard, get up.

We hopelessly fight the broker for a bit, while Liara gets a plan to shatter his lightning ceiling down on top of him or something. I work him into position and POW, HE EXPLODES INTO FUCKING NOTHINGNESS. GOOD FUCKING LORD.

Garrus groggily sits up and I run over to him. Garrus. Were you just pretending to be unconscious so you wouldn’t have to do anything? You scamp.

Suddenly a bunch of the Shadow Broker’s contacts start checking in to see what the problem is. Liara sends them a message that everything is fine, as Feron, having escaped finally charges into the room, guns hot.

For a second I thought this was going to be an awkward moment of Feron thinking Liara’s been the Shadow Broker this whole time and has been playing an elaborate trick on him, but alas.

Liara explains that she’ll be the new Shadow Broker now. Works for me. We chat for a bit, and I head back to the Normandy to change into my civvies. I immediately return to the Broker ship to look at stuff. There’s files on my crewmates. And things to invest my credits in and…A NEW MODEL SHIP! Liara, I’m taking this! I like model ships more than you anyways.

I explore a bit more and find a terminal with videos from around the galaxy. Stuff from the Citadel, Omega, Tuchunka, Illium…everywhere. And um, is that Jacob doing situps? Wait wait wait, this is on the Normandy. What the. LIARA HOW MANY CAMERAS DO YOU HAVE ON THE NORMANDY?

Do you uh

have one in my cabin?

I would prefer you not. Or um, if you do, I want those tapes.

I invite Liara to hang out on the Normandy for a bit to take a tour and see my ship collection and whatnot. In my cabin, I pour two glasses of wine. She enters and has a gift for me: my old dog tags. Oh neat, my stuff. I show her the ships, and my fish, and here’s my space hamster. And a picture of you that I’ve put down instead of just putting away which would make sense, or changing it to Garrus, which would be hot. We talk for a bit and she gives me a hug and leaves. Both glasses of wine still sit on my table.

I drink them both and walk over to my intercom.

“INVITE GARRUS UP.”

Garrus and Thane catch up somehow and we chase after Vasir. She jumps into a space car and takes off. Liara has already secured us our own space car. I am hella snippy at her about not asking me if I’m okay. C’mon Liara. Remember the old days when we would stop and ask the other person how they are all the time. You’ve changed! You’ve changed! You forgot all about the Normandy etiquette that we all agreed on!

I can only bring one person with in this space car, besides her. I turn to Garrus and Thane.

*ahem*

Gentlemen. I do not know why four people cannot fit in this space car. It seems roomy enough to me. There are even four seats. But I must choose only one of you so I choose Garrus. Sorry Thane. You really didn’t have a chance here. Plus Liara makes your biotics rather redundant. I guess find some way back to the ship.

Garrus, Liara, and I pile into this car and take off after Vasir. I’m driving even though I have no idea why. I’ve never driven a space car before, and I’m probably still at least a little bit drunk. Surely someone sober and with more experience should be doing this.  Thankfully I figure it out pretty fast and manage to keep up with Vasir through traffic that I don’t know the laws of and proximity mines that I almost ran directly into on more than one occasion. I also manage to not reach across the car and choke Liara who is doing some terrible sideseat driving. I don’t need a navigator woman, just find something with a good beat on the radio. Find some good chase scene music. That’s YOUR job here.

Vasir tries to ram our space car with hers, and then crashes on the rooftop of some hotel. We calmly land and pile out to find a bunch of guys waiting to shoot us.  We quickly dispose of them and follow a blood trail after Vasir through this weird hotel where I take a moment to break into someone’s safe and steal all their money. It’s for the galaxy! We need those creds!

We eventually chase Vasir down, which wasn’t hard because she’s bleeding a lot and kinda hobbling too. We catch up and she grabs a hostage, and tells me to drop my clips. Fuck that I say, and distract her with my fancy city talk while Liara throws a table at her. I guess taking a hostage gave Vasir some sort of crazy rush of adrenaline because now she is darting around like a motherfucker and making it a pain in the ass to shoot her. I find cover and tell Garrus to just keep throwing concussive shots at her. Bitch be crazy, Gar-Bear. I’ve had enough asari to last a lifetime.

Between waves of her bullshit and waves of guys she’s sending out to fight me from…who knows where, we eventually beat her down and get back the disc she took from the Salarian. And she was all “We’re not so different Shepard.” Well not exactly. But I know a “not so different” speech when I hear one. And that was definitely one.

Liara takes the disc and looks at it or something. She’s very determined to go get the Shadow Broker RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND but I’m a little like, whoa calm down woman. We need to find some food and rehydrate at least first. Take a few deep breaths or something.

And then she snaps at me.

…about Garrus.

and his uh, recreational calibrations.

*sigh* yeah…he’s so dreamy.

Oh you’re mad about that. Ummmm sorry? Where did he go? Are we having this conversation right in front of him? No he seems to have run off somewhere, like he does sometimes.

Thankfully she doesn’t want to talk about this for very long, which is good because I don’t think she would actually like where that conversation was headed.

“You never called!”

“I was dead!”

“I know!”

“Then why are you so mad?”

“You’re sleeping with Garrus!”

“WHY DOES EVERYONE KNOW ALL ABOUT MY LOVE LIFE?”

We head to the Dracon Trade Center where Baria Frontiers is located. This should be a walk in the park, I think to myself as I approach the doo-OH GOD THE BUILDING JUST EXPLODED.

*sigh*

Motherfucker.

I wish Liara had had some booze in her apartment I could’ve hit before coming over here, though I did get tanked in Eternity before going to her apartment so I’m still rocking a healthy buzz from that. Explosions have a way of sobering a person up. NOT ME THOUGH, I’VE GOTTEN USED TO EXPLOSIONS. 

That Asari Spectre tells me she’ll go in from the top and I should work my up to the Baria Frontiers office from the bottom. Uh, okay. Whatever. I run past some shook up civilians and into the building where priority one is to check for things to loot. This datapad has some credits in it! So does this ATM! Excellent. I will also take this medigel for myself. You injured people wait for a doctor or something!

I find a dead civilian, killed curiously by gunfire and not the explosion. I mention this to Vasir (the other Spectre) who is like “oh this must be more than just an explosion.” Ya think? Oh figured there was just a gas leak or something. I thought maybe some testing on some explosives had gone wrong. They do a lot of explosive testing here, right? Near the gas pipes? Just happens to occur as arrive looking for Liara as we hunt the Shadow Broker. I don’t need Encyclopedia Brown on this case; I think I got a pretty good handle on it myself. 

I continue on into the Baria Frontiers office, where I notice that Liara was here as she has taken time to sign the logbook. I know that when I am being hunted by the agents of a mysterious unknown criminal, I take time to sign logbooks. They could chase me into a wedding and I would be like…Where is the guestbook? And I would sign it “Dizzy Shepard, Earth” and the couple would be confused later because they don’t know me; I’m just using their reception as a place to hide. If they chase me into a bathroom, I will hide in a stall with my feet off the floor, carving “SHEPARD WUZ HERE” into the divider. The most important thing to me, when running from people is to leave a good trail with my name everywhere.

I don’t have  much time to consider this though as I am quickly attacked by several of the Shadow Broker’s agents. And they are using those annoying ass flashbang grenades. Oh they are extra annoying when you are totally pretty wasted still. I was ALREADY seeing double. You are making my vision and hearing exponentially worse. Thankfully Garrus and Thane handily take care of them, while I throw up in the corner for a minute.

Throwing up, while a sucky process, always results in me feeling just WAY better though. Wow guys, do you have some gum? Because aside from the taste of this asari booze and stomach bile in my mouth, I am feeling way better! What were doing? Oh yeah, looking for Liara.

We continue fighting through these assholes until we finally come across Liara’s contact, only to see him get shot by a Shadow Broker agent. Oh god my reaction time is so slow why didn’t I stop that? The agent is immediately killed by Vasir though, so I’m like, oh cool. I go to talk to her when Liara comes barging into the room, pointing a gun at Vasir.

Whoa whoa whoa, what’s with the guns and the pointing Liara? She’s a spectre and they’ve always been cool right? Wait. I seem to remember one that wasn’t…Liara explains that Vasir tried to kill her and she’s working with the Shadow Broker or something. I’m kind of startled by the sudden flood of information but ultimately we all point our guns at Vasir. 

She biotic smashes the glass and biotic insults Liara who biotic protects me and my squad and I biotic try to tackle (head up! lower the shoulder) who biotic falls out the window with me but biotic cushions our landing with biotics. Not that I need your damn cushion, ain’t nothing getting through my bone weaves! Liara leaps out the window as well, and we take off after her. 

I yell back to Garrus and Thane.

GET DOWN HERE SOMEHOW!

UUUUH

THANE HAS BIOTICS! HUG EACH OTHER AND JUMP!

MAKE OUT A LITTLE!

I CAN TAKE A MINUTE TO WATCH I’M NOT IN A HURRY OR ANYTHING.

The threat of the Collectors finally taken care of, I head upstairs to my cabin and cuddle with Garrus for like 4 hours straight. Slow, methodical, repetitive cuddling. On the bed. On the couch. Back to bed. Just cuddle, cuddle, cuddle.

Finally I decide to see what else in the galaxy needs to be shot/blown up/destroyed and remember that I had some info on the Shadow Broker that I was supposed to take Liara like, forever ago. Um, whoops.

Okay uh, let’s fly to Illium and do this, I suppose. But I’m going to Eternity and getting a drink. And we’re going there first. FIRST. Not afterwards. Well, I suppose afterwards too. Yes, we’re going before, and afterwards, and if I get a moment in between doing stuff, we might swing by there sometime then too. 

I take my usual crew of Garrus and Thane, and head to Liara’s office. Hey. How’s it going? So…um, you wanna go get the Shadow Broker, or uh, whatever? I give her the info I have and she practically wets herself with excitement. She says to meet me at her apartment later and runs off, saying I can feel free to use her computer or something. I’m like sweet, I wanna check my email and show Garrus and Thane this funny video I saw earlier where this pyjak is sitting on a branch and then scratches its butt and then fall off the branch. 

Unfortunately, I can’t ACTUALLY use the computer. 

Liara said meet her later so I assume that means it’s okay to kill some time…at the bar. I drink a few drinks, listen to a few conversations and then decide that it’s late enough to go to Liara’s place. I head to a taxi terminal and I say, “car! Liara’s apartment!” It knows what I mean and takes us right there. 

At her apartment I am, well, somewhat shocked to find that things have gone horribly wrong. Not completely shocked  because I’ve started to just expect a mess no matter where I’m going. I’m not sure if I’m unlucky or…I mean I was expecting trouble eventually, it just seems to be jumping me sooner and sooner on these little tasks I go on. 

Anyway, Liara’s gone, shots have been fired through her window and there’s another Asari Spectre there waiting for me. I’m all, ‘scuse me, best Spectre ever right here. Let me through. They let me in, and I tell the other Spectre, Vasir, that Liara was expecting me and would of course, have left me a note. She wouldn’t have just left, even if people were shooting at it. She’d put up a biotic bubble thing with one hand and awkwardly write a note with the other. She would! She would! 

Vasir’s all, whatever, have a look around. So I do, while Garrus and Thane stand around by the door. I start by examining the window where the gun shots came through. Yep, those look like bullet holes all right. I turn around to check out the rest of the place and see a case displaying uh, most of my old armor. I uh…huh. She’s got my old armor. What the…what else of mine does she have? I wonder for a second if maybe she has that Foo Fighters disc that’s been missing since my ship got blown up, but it occurs to me that it’s probably floating in space. I look around some more and head upstairs where hooooly shit this is a nice apartment.

Oh my god look at that fishtank. What the hell!? She has jellyfish! Jellyfish! Garrus! Thane! Go in Liara’s kitchen and see if she’s got any plastic baggies. We are taking these fuckers back to the Normandy. I ain’t got no damn jellyfish.

After digging through all of her belongings and her underwear drawer and checking behind all the paintings for safes, I finally find a data disc where one of Liara’s contacts asks her to meet him at the Baria Frontiers office in the Dracon trade center. Vasir is like “aha sweet!” and I’m little put off by her, to be honest. I grab Garrus and Thane though, and make for the trade center. I suggest we stop for drinks on the way.

But they tell me no. 

For the final mission, I pick my usual team of Garrus and Thane. Everyone else needs to stay and hold the line by this door. I can’t remember why I care if they get through this door. If you recall, I had a lot of wine before this mission started. Oh well, I work better with only two people at this point anyways. Even having Samara around for that last part was like, who’s this other person talking to me? What’s going on? Game: Thrown off!

The three of us climb on the platform and oh man, we look awesome. We look hot. We look like…something I might be open to later. 

Ahem.

Anyways, I tell everyone else to stay here and shoot things while we ride this platform off into the sunset. Other platforms start flying in and connecting to it. Each one has a few collectors on it, but thankfully the platforms rotate and I can shoot the collectors from my platform as they come into view. It’s like a lazy susan of murder. 

Finally a platform takes us to the center of the collector base where oooh my god what in the hell is that?

There is some sort of retarded three-eyed slack-jawed half-a-person giant robot hanging from the ceiling that all the tubes are feeding into. EDI tries to answer some of my questions, which it is obvious I have because I have not stopped looking confused and horrified for a good 5 minutes. 

“So, they’re melting people down…to make a person reaper? Yes? Okay. So…I mean they melt people? And then…I guess I’m just getting lost at this concept here EDI! THEY’RE MELTING PEOPLE? AND THEN MAKING A REAPER OUT OF THAT? Well can I see like some schematics of how that works? You know what EDI, fine, forget it, just tell me how to blow it up.”

There’s 4 tubes at the top that are sporadically exposed because whoever is in charge of those tubes is an idiot. 

“Okay, we got our human reaper hanging from the ceiling. Is it up there good, Bill?”

“Oh yeah, that thing ain’t coming down unless someone gets in here and shoots ALL FOUR of those tubes.”

“They would just need to shoot the tubes?”

“Well yeah, but no one’s getting in here anyways.”

“Right, but if someone did, they just have to shoot the tubes?”

“Well, yeah…but they have these shutter things that close so you can’t shoot them.”

“Oh, okay.”

“They open back up though.”

“WHAT?”

“Oh yeah, they totally will open back up after a few seconds.”

“GODDAMMIT BILL!”

Some lazy susans start flying in and I’ve had enough of talking about this reaper, let’s shoot those tubes, blow this thing up and get the hell out of here. I start blasting them, and the collectors that are showing up and the Reaper plummets pretty quickly. I pull up a chamber thing and get ready to rig the place to explode. Suddenly the Illusive Man wants to talk to me.

Oh. Good.

He says we should just kill the all the collectors and keep the base! It’ll be fun! 

Oh fun? Like the science team on the derelict reaper? Or when you sent me to the disabled collector ship that wasn’t actually disabled? or hell, like the ride here through all the debris and robot eyes? Yeah, I don’t think so.

I set the explosion, and suddenly turn around to see the abortion of a reaper trying to attack us. The three of us start shooting it even though I don’t really know why. I just set this station to explode and would really prefer to just run the fuck away and let the explosion take care of everything, especially since knowing me, that explosion is probably set to go off in something like half a second. Still, we stay and kill the reaper and get caught up in the platforms crashing around us. 

I get knocked out for a second but wake to find Garrus and Thane next to me. I check that they’re ok, help them both up and hear Joker telling me to hurry up. The three of us sprint towards the Normandy, and I leap into the airlock, barely grabbing it. Garrus pulls me up, as my bone weaves have made me too heavy to do a single pull up on my own now. The door slams shut, and we fly away as the base explodes.

Everyone is alive.

And we are all fucking badasses.

TO KASUMI’S ROOM! 

SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!