Tali found Shepard and Garrus sitting side by side in the mass hall when she went looking for the Turian. The two were whispering something to each other, and none of them had their hands above the table. Instead, both were squirming and twisting their bodies in the most awkward of manner. Tali moved closer to see what her two friends were doing.
"Shepard!" Garrus hissed. "Told you to stay off the waist!"
"This is what happens when you calibrates till you forgot dinner," Shepard hissed back. "Do the guns really need that much calibrating?"
"I'm doing more than calibrating!" Garrus had caught Shepard's hands and had them pinned down on the seats. Shepard was now the one squirming to get free. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get Legion away from the cannons? Every opportunity he gets, he comes to the main battery! I have to creatively steer him out and away from the guns every time!"
"Legion can help," Shepard freed her hands out of his talons and smacked them. "Don't tell me you think he can't calibrate. He's an A.I., for crying out loud."
"Trust me, Shepard," Garrus said. "No one can do it better than me."
"Are you two playing handsie?" Tali said, joining them at the table.
"What "sie"?" Garrus asked.
"Handsie," Tali said. "It's a human expression meaning you two are flirting."
"That's footsie, Tali," Shepard corrected. "It's not playing "handsie". It's playing "footsie"."
"Footsie is when you use your feet," Tali corrected back. "You two were doing unspeakable things with your hands under the table. So it should be "handsie"."
"We were NOT doing unspeakable things under the table," Garrus said.
"Tell that to those watching," Tali said. "It sure looked unspeakable from where I was standing."
Shepard laughed but Garrus frowned, "Don't you have some garbage disposing unit to work on?" he asked Tali.
"I don't work on garbage disposing units, Garrus," Tali said calmly. "I'm not a sanitation engineer. Although if I were, I'll stuff your bosh'tet ass in to check if it is working before I work on it myself."
"Glad my ass can be of service," Garrus said without thinking.
"That would be another one of those things you said that ended up in some horrible place," Shepard said, smiling.
Tali started laughing really hard.
"I should just keep my mouth shut today," Garrus sighed.
"What're you doing here in the mass hall so late, Tali?" Shepard asked. "Don't tell me you forgot to eat dinner like he did."
"I was looking for Garrus actually," Tali said.
"For me?" Garrus asked.
"Did you guys hear?" Tali continued. "Jacob said that there might be a ghost in the armory?"
"A what?" Garrus said. "Turians don't believe in that kind of things. Spirits are a whole different thing."
"Tali," Shepard said, "Even if there were ghosts in this world, the Normandy is a new ship. It's hardly believable to say its haunted."
"That's what I thought," Tali replied. "But apparently, it's true. Even EDI has no idea."
"I did not say I have no idea, Tali," EDI's voice chimed. "I said it was a fleeting image that was not clear enough to determine its origin."
"In other words," Tali said, "You have no idea."
"When did you become so friendly with EDI?" Shepard asked.
"When YOU pushed two A.I.s in my face and made me work with them," Tali said.
"You guys caught a ghostly image in the armory?" Garrus asked. "And now you are thinking its a ghost?"
"Here, I brought it to show you, actually," Tali took out her data pad and showed it to the pair.
"Looks more like Kasumi to me," Garrus shrugged. "Most likely sneaking in there to ogle and gawk at Jacob's ass again."
"I'm right here, Garrus," Kasumi appeared out of thin air, seated next to Tali.
"Fuck!" Garrus was taken aback. "Stop doing that!"
"Keelah!" Tali screamed and instinctively hit Kasumi with a backhand sweep, which the thief easily avoided.
"That scared me more than your little stunt in the armory," Shepard said.
"That was not me," Kasumi said. "Come on guys, I've been here so long and you never even noticed. How could I've been so unprofessional like that?" She pointed at the image.
"Well," Shepard said. "If it's not Kasumi, then it had to be Legion."
When the others just simply looked at her for further explanation, she continued,
"Legion is an infiltrator! Who else would be sneaking around? If it wasnt Kasumi, it's Legion."
"I told you that Geth was trouble," Tali said.
"Let's ask him," Garrus said. "EDI, is Legion in the A.I. Core?"
"Legion is with Justica Samara at the moment," EDI said.
"What's Legion doing with Samara?" Shepard asked.
"He's learning mediation," Garrus answered for EDI. Now the rest looked at him for an explanation. "Don't look at me. I knew about it earlier when they asked to see me."
"EDI," Shepard called out. "Can you tell Legion to come see us now?"
"Already done," EDI said.
Legion came walking like the Geth he was, behind Samara. His head panels were flapping and his head light was brighter than usual.
"Shepard," Samara greeted. "Tali, Garrus, Kasumi."
The three nodded back as Samara took a seat next to Tali. Legion remained standing.
"Shepard-Commander," Legion greeted. "Garrus-Vakarian, Creator-Tali-Zora, Thief-Kasumi-Sato."
"How come I got the worst sounding title?" Kasumi asked.
"We do not comprehend," Legion said. "The title "thief" is held in high regards by you. Therefore we deemed it fit to call you by the title."
"Forget it," Kasumi said.
"So, Legion," Tali's voice was all business when she pointed at the data pad. "Was this you in the picture?"
Legion head panels flapped as he looked down at the data pad, "It was not."
"Liar!" Tali shouted. "You went into the armory, didn't you? You cloaked and went to sabotage Jacob!"
"We do not comprehend," Legion said. "Agent-Jacob-Taylor is a sentient being. Sentient beings has no wiring and therefore cannot be sabotaged. He can only be poisoned but we do not have the necessary ingredients to make a toxin strong enough to incite death."
Samara looked at the time stamp on the picture, "I regret to inform you that it is true. Not the toxin. That I have. I have with me sixty different toxins for different races and metabolic rates. I mean Legion was with me at the time stated in the picture."
"What the hell is Legion doing with you anyway?" Shepard asked. "Don't tell me he is really learning meditation."
"He is, in fact," Samara said. "And showing progress actually."
"But," Shepard looked at Legion. "Legion, you're a Geth unit. An A.I."
"We find learning... pleasant," Legion answered, but his head panels flapped downward.
"Ok, that's it," Shepard turned and glared at Garrus while addressing Legion. "Who put you up to it?"
"What are you looking at me for?" Garrus asked.
"Samara and Legion came looking for you earlier and the next thing I know he is with Samara learning meditation. A Geth, meditating? You did something, didn't you?"
"Garrus did suggested it to Legion." Samara answered. "Legion came to look for me asking if I could teach him meditation. When I asked him who taught him to ask, he told me Garrus did. I confirmed it with Garrus after. But I didn't know that Legion did not in fact enjoy learning it."
"We did not want to seem rude," Legion looked down. "We wrote a program to simulate a representation of an aftermath of mediating if Geth were to engage in the act. It involves brighter blinking head light and lighter footsteps after the process is over."
"Legion, it is fine if you do not enjoy it," Samara said. "You do not need to lie about it."
"We apologize. We did not want to offend," Legion said.
"I just got Legion to learn lying," Garrus said proudly.
"Garrus!" Shepard scolded.
"What? Legion asked if he could help. I figured it would be better that he had the chance to learn something new instead. See, he did learned something new!"
"So," Kasumi was curious. "What were you doing while you were pretending to meditate the whole time?"
"We were participating in an online Interactive Cross-Species Relationship Simulator named Fleet and Flotilla. According to the trailer, it was based on a best selling vid. We had a playtime of seventy-five hours and six minutes."
"Keelah!" Tali said. "I play that! What is your score?"
"Player score: fifteen," Legion replied.
"You are hopeless!" Tali laughed. "You can't get a relationship with that kind of score! You need to be at least level three with a score of two hundred and fifty to get a relationship started! Seventy-two hours and you're still level one? You can't be serious!"
"We have been attempting to improve our gameplay," Legion said and if his slow flapping panels were of any indication, he was disappointed with his own scores too.
"We do not comprehend stimulated sentient relationships. We could not maintain simple conversation. We usually ended with the other party calling us "idiot" or "jerk" or "dork". We have not arrive at a consensus as to why it is so. We were called a "pin-like torch-head" once. We told the party involved it was quite an accurate description of our mobile platform, in which we were then told to "go to hell". When we debated the probability of a Geth mobile unit going to the underworld, we were reported as a "troll". We were suspended for thirty-two Citadel hour."
"I'd call you a troll if you start telling me probability in a virtual world that cared only about sexing each other up," Kasumi said quietly.
"We do not comprehend trolling," Legion said.
"It's like you infiltrating," Garrus said. "Only with words."
"We understand," Legion looked down. "We did not intentionally troll."
"Maybe," Tali said. "If I learned to trust you, I might show you how to do it right someday."
"We will be truly appreciative," Legion said. "Thank you, Creator-Tali-Zora."
"Don't thank me yet," Tali said. "I have not decided to trust you yet."
"That's a start," Shepard smiled.
"What?" Garrus retorted, pointing to Legion. "Teaching Legion to live an alter ego life and have online virtual sex is ok but lying isn't?"
"The game sounds intriguingly immoral," Samara said. "It's no wonder the Justicas are dying out. It is hard to bring justice to a virtual world."
"Why not?" Shepard said. "Just make an avatar, go in there with big virtual guns twitted and modded with specifications and blast the avatars to smithereens!"
"We can program and modify as well as design and build the guns to be used in game," Legion said.
"See!" Shepard cheered.
"We can also come to a consensus on setting up a program to determine which avatars in game have been engaging in deceptive participation of immoral behaviors and/or victimizing other players."
"That would be like half the gaming population in there," Tali face palmed.
"That is a rather intriguing option," Samara said.
"I thought you don't intentionally troll, Legion," Kasumi laughed.
"We do not intentionally troll," Legion said. "We do not troll. Garrus-Vakarian said trolling is using words to infiltrate. We are not infiltrating. We merely brought the game to a higher level if we modified it. There are no restrictions on modifying the game. Therefore, we have reached a consensus that it can be done."
Garrus' mandibles flared and his jaws dropped.
"You wanted him to learn?" Shepard said quietly next to him. "He learnt that from you. I'm so not correcting him."
"There were no restrictions because the game was supposed to be a social networking game, not a third-person shooting game," Kasumi told Legion
"But a social sex-based game is rather boring and psychologically lopsided. Having a few guns blazing and hunting down ruffians would mean a lack of boredom for many in there when we do log in," Samara told Kasumi.
"I have to agree," Kasumi answered. "Count me in when you guys do it. We can all go to Shepard's quarters with our data pads and troll the hell out of that game, legally. We can be the Fleet in Fleet and Flotilla!"
"Tell you guys what," Shepard clapped her hands together. "Let's go catch us a ghost. Then when that is done, we all set up accounts in that whatever simulating sex game Legion can't play, have Legion hack and mod some bad ass virtual weapons, go in there and blast off some virtual asses!"
"Keelah!" Tali shook her head. "Now I can never enter the game without thinking of you few going around trolling it."
"Not me," Garrus said. "Count me out.
"Not happening, Turian," Shepard said.
"You guys do know that we have real life Collectors to shoot at, don't you?" Garrus frowned at Shepard.
"Yes, Garrus," Samara said. "But going into a virtual world where people think their actions do not hold any accountability, and then punishing them and making them realize that they do, is just as satisfying as saving civilizations."
"Tali," Garrus said. "Say something. Back me up here. You seriously don't want these four going into the game and trolling it, do you? Come on, helmet head."
"Actually, come to think of it," Tali said. "Let me make a new account when you guys do, I want to join in."
"What?" Garrus was surprised. "What the fuck, Tali?"
"I know a couple of players in there I'd like to blast their virtual asses off... and their virtual something else off too," there was menace in her voice.
"Spirits," Garrus sighed. "You females are vicious, no matter where you are."
"Not all females," Shepard shrugged. "I think you're one of those lucky males who meet only the vicious ones. The usual males don't get such pleasures."
"Spirits," Garrus said again. "Spirits. Spirits. Spirits."