Chakwas shakes her hand, slightly perplexed.

"You're an eternal optimist, Terentin," Anderson says with an incremental smirk. "We've got an hour to the Citadel. Dress blues or armor for our meeting with the Council; I'd say armor, to emphasize that you're a soldier at heart, but they won't let you have ranged weapons in the tower, so be prepared to surrender them if you bring them. We're bringing Halliwell and Shi with us, make sure they know not to piss on the carpet. Oh, and I've gotten Shi on specialist payroll under your command; seemed like the thing to do. Any questions?"

It's nice when Anderson keeps her promises for her.

"Can I wear a baseball cap?"

––––––––––––––––––––––––

Ah, the Citadel. Teddy acts like she belongs there because, as far as she's concerned, she does. She's in her least-dinged armor (stiff competition) and she's done something with oil or marker or something that makes her tattoos stand out like ink on a resume letterhead. (Her hair, a similar color, is in a pewter blue silk wrap. Joker wishes he could.) This is likely the most put-together anyone has seen her. If she owned a mirror she'd be among them.

Zanna is also wearing armor, and has applied makeup that makes her look slightly more predatory than usual.

Mort looks approximately the same as always.

"Big place," he says, of the view from Ambassador Udina's office.

"Eh," Teddy replies with the assured doubt and practiced seesaw gesture of someone who implicitly disbelieves that things can be more than she is. "Greener than I expected. Like a mall." She's never been to a mall but there are magazines that have photographs of such things. She's seen magazines. "First time, Zan?"

"No, I've been before. Never to the Tower. ...never the Presidium either, come to think of it. But I've been to, you know, the superstructure. Bought a shotgun mod. Shot a batarian who was smuggling red sand, with said shotgun mod. That sort of thing."

"I've never been," Mort contributes. "Do you think we'll have time for me to pick up a replacement tool, between meeting the Council and... whatever else?"

Suzanna gets quirked eyebrows.

"I have no idea, Mort, but yes."

"Cool. You can get just about anything on the Citadel, and the taxes are lower than ordering online." He starts muttering about the Logic Arrest tool versus the Polaris, and which one would be better for his purposes.

"I see you brought your whole ship with you, Anderson," says a quintessentially snide voice.

"And good whatever time it's pretending to be to you too, Donnel," Anderson says. "Yes, I did bring the full ground team from the Eden Prime mission, given that the Council might request testimony from any one of them. I'm sorry to have crowded your ridiculous office with three people."

"Three soldiers," the ambassador says, his voice dripping with distaste. "It's too many to fit in one skycar, at any rate. I'll meet you at the Council Tower."

"Uh, what room?"

Udina looks at Mort with undisguised loathing. "The top."

Then he turns on his heel and walks out.

"I feel like it's too obvious to point out that he wasn't being very diplomatic."

It's maybe suspicious when she lets Captain Anderson leave the room first.

"So I'll just say he's a dick." If she could manage to steal his skycar she would.

She can hear Anderson snort from outside the door as he walks away.

Zanna pats Mort's back absently. "That guy's representing humanity? I wouldn't want him representing my skyball team."

"He does seem like he's probably good at playing hardball. Maybe not so good at... anything else."

The snort from the Captain joins one of many in Teddy's mental trophy case.

"The good ambassador has awful posture, Mort. I bet he couldn't throw a ball out of a wet paper bag." She wonders if she could get a Normandy team going if this Spectre thing falls through. "Do you actually play, Shi?"

"In college. I went to Edmonton, we were one of the first Earth-based skyball leagues. Competed against some snobby asari academy from Ilium and kicked their asses, then got disqualified from the tournament on a technicality so they wouldn't have to admit they lost to humans. But, to be clear, we kicked their blue asses. - I also did urban combat league, the seasons didn't conflict. Still follow the Blood Dragons when it's winter on Earth."

"I am surrounded by girljocks," Mort says solemnly. "Next you'll say you like American football."

Teddy is looking at Zanna like she's a nice new wardrobe you bought at an estate sale that turns out to have been filled with gold coins.

"If I knew mercenaries were retired college sports stars I would have hung around more mercenaries." She punches Morty on the arm; she limits herself to direct challenges or she'd be doing that constantly. "I used to be a runner until, well. Until they started assigning me to experimental stealth craft and stuff. Time conflicts." She misses running on ground, not that she hasn't technically done that recently. Mostly it's treadmills when you're in space.

Terentin cups hands around her mouth, and yells, "Not that I'm not thrilled, Captain!"

Regrettably, Anderson has already passed out of earshot.

"Oh, most of my compatriots had much less interesting lives. Underprivileged Earthlings, colony kids who learned to shoot hunting space weasels, disillusioned military brats... we got them all. I was the only Blood Eagle who played skyball."