We head for the warehouse district. Harkin’s ready for us, and throws wave after wave of mechs and mercs at us. We punch through his defenses and make it to the control room.

Mom: “I remember Harkin.”

Me: No you don’t you liar.

Mom: Shoosh, HE doesn’t know that!

Garrus beats Harkin into submission. The crooked C-Sec officer finally relents, and agrees to set up a meeting between us and Sidonis.

Mom: Stop talking and kill him!

Garrus draws his gun and fires, putting a bullet in Harkin’s leg.

Mom: No, you idiot, I said kill him!

We head into the warehouse to talk to Fade, the criminal who made Sidonis “disappear.”

Fade is a volus, flanked on either side by a krogan mercenary.

Mom: Shoot ‘em!

A Renegade Interrupt appears and I do exactly that.

Mom: Shoot Fade too!

Me: We need information out of him!

The volus gets nervous and immediately starts talking. He explains that he’s not actually Fade, he only works for him. He tells us where we can find his employer, and reveals that Fade is none other than Harkin, the alcoholic C-Sec officer we had to deal with back in Mass Effect 1.

Me: Do you remember that guy.

Mom: Of course not. Shoot Fade!

Me: That’s not even the real Fade! He was lying.

Mom: Ughhhh.

Me: Near the beginning of the game, we got an email from Udina that we should go see him if we’re in this area.

Mom: Who?

Me: You remember the guy that you put in charge at the end of the first game?

Mom: Oh, yeah, like I remember something.

Me: You know the… the “mad scientist.”

Mom: Nope.

Me: Alright whatever. Do you want to go see him?

Mom: Why would I want to go see a mad scientist?

We head into Zakera Ward. On the way to the warehouse, we overhear two krogan arguing about something.

Me: One of those guys thinks that the reflecting pool here has fish in it.

Mom: Okay.

Me: Do you want to find out if it does for him?

Mom: …Why would I want to waste my time doing that?

Me: Fair enough.

We head on downstairs and come across a volus, a quarian, and a C-Sec officer arguing with one another. The volus is accusing the quarian of picking his pocket, and the quarian is insisting that he only thinks that because he’s racist. The C-Sec officer is leaning toward the volus.

I talk to the group, but mom immediately selects “goodbye.”

We grab Garrus and Jack (obviously, we need her killing expertise) and head for the Citadel for the first time since recruiting Kasumi. We run into some trouble on our way in from the docking bay.

Me: They’re having trouble processing our ID because we died at the beginning.

Mom: Yeah yeah, I remember.

Me: Why don’t I believe you.

We manage to get through the security checkpoint and go to talk with Captain Bailey, the man in charge of C-Sec in Zakera Ward. We walk in on him telling a subordinate to beat a confession out of a criminal.

Mom: I like this guy!

We decide to stay officially dead, and get some information on Fade, a criminal known for making people disappear. Garrus’ man is most likely using his services. Bailey sets us up a meeting in the warehouse downstairs.

Me: Alright, so we’ve gotta do some missions before the IFF is installed. We can Investigate Project Overlord, Inspect the Normandy Crash Site, recruit The Justicar or The Assassin, Help Zaeed, or we an go see what Garrus, Tali, or Mordin want to talk to us about.

Mom: Why do we care what they want?

Me: Because they probably want us to do missions with them.

Mom: But I don’t feel like helping them with anything.

Me: Then you can pick one of these other missions.

Mom: But they all sound boring.

Me: I don’t know what to tell you.

Mom: Fine, let’s go see what they want.

We stop in on Mordin first. He explains that he was not entirely honest about his involvement with the STG earlier, a conversation which we never actually had with him because Mom doesn’t care. He explains that years ago, the Krogan were beginning to adapt to the genophage, and he was part of a team that modified the disease and re-infected the Krogan. And now Krogan mercenaries have kidnapped one of his colleagues to force him to make a cure.

Mom: Tell him we don’t have time for this, let’s see what the other two want.

We head down to Deck 3 to speak with Garrus. He’s located the man who sold out his team of vigilantes on Omega, and wants your help to go murder him.

Mom: Ehhh, tell him no, but maybe we’ll come back to him after seeing what the last one wants.

We speak to Tali in engineering, who has been accused of committing treason against the Quarians, and has to go stand trial.

Mom: Bo-ring. Let’s go kill that guy.

Me: Okay, so last time we played, we stole a piece of software that will allow us to travel to the enemy’s homeworld. It’s going to take a long time to fully install though, so we need to do some missions to kill some time.

Mom: Can’t we kill time at the bar?

Me: We can go to a bar if you want but that doesn’t make time pass at all.

Mom: What?! That’s stupid. You should be able to just hang out at the bar until it’s done.

Me: Well, you can’t.

Mom: Didn’t you say that the people that make this game read our website?

Me: They posted the link on their twitter, so at the very least they know of it.

Mom: Then you should tell them that you should be able to waste time at the bar in their next game.

Me: I’ll see what I can do.

Me: I’m playing a really interesting game right now called The Walking Dead. It’s sort of a survivalism thing. Like for instance right now I only have four rations of food and I have to figure out how to divvy them up amongst ten people.

Mom: If you need help you know that I know how to handle these situations.

Me: Maybe we’ll talk about doing The Momlking Dead after we finish the third game.

Mom: The answer is to eat all the food yourself.

We head into the AI Core, where the disabled Geth is laid out on a table. We activate a barrier around the table and have EDI switch it on.

The Geth rises to its feet and calmly greets us. It does not appear to have violent intentions. We continue to speak with it, and after a bit of cultural misunderstanding, we decide to give it the nickname Legion. Legion is interested in helping us combat the Reapers and Collectors.

Mom: See you like this guy! You WERE trying to trick me into getting rid of him!

True to form Mom walks away from Legion as soon as the game allows her to.

I blow the Reaper’s core and the entire thing starts to fall. We’ve got to get back to the Normandy, and fast. We grab the deactivated Geth and book it back to the exit.

Mom: Wait why are we taking him?

Me: Well, Jack is saying he might be worth a lot of money.

Mom: Hmph.

The Reaper sinks into the depths of the Brown Dwarf as we get back to the Normandy just in time.

In the conference room, Jacob and Miranda are debating what to do with the Geth. Jacob wants it destroyed before it can hack the Normandy and possibly kill everyone. Miranda, however, is suggesting that we turn it over to Cerberus in exchange for a considerable bounty.

Mom: Shut up Miranda.

Dad: Yeah, you haven’t had a hit in years, Michael!

Mom: He’s dead.

Dad: Oh, right.

Me: So do you want to hold onto the robot or let Miranda sell him for you for a lot of money? You can get a lot of cash for it.

Mom: We’ve already gone over this. I want to do the opposite of what Miranda wants. We’re keeping it.

We dismiss Jacob and Miranda and head down to the AI core.

Me: I’m surprised you decided not to sell him!

Mom: Why do you want me to so much? You’re trying to trick me aren’t you?

Me: No, I just thought you cared about the cash.

Mom: Eh, we have enough cash.

Me: What.

Mom: Well how much would we get for selling him?

Me: I think 50,000.

Mom: See? That’s chump change! That’s a drop in the bucket. Not worth it. And besides pissing off Miranda is more important than getting money.

Me: I never thought I’d live to see this day.