Shepard slammed her locker door shut, a grim smile cutting across her face as her frustration finally discovered a release. If she didn't know that it would make her look like a three-year-old throwing a tantrum, she would have slammed it another ten times.

"All right people, I'm pretty easy to get along with, and I like a laugh more than the next person, but I am thirty minutes out from a mission!" Fury ate the metres between her locker and the galley in long, quick strides. Posing at the end of the table where gamma shift ate breakfast before heading to bed, she held out her arms. "A cookie for the one who can point out what's wrong with this picture."

Kaidan jogged around the corner from the stairs. "Captain? We're all ready and waiting in the airlock." Sliding to a stop, he cocked his head. "You're not finished suiting up?"

Shepard spun, his name exploding from her throat like the roar of a small lion. "Sparky. You're our big winner, congrats."

He winced back a little, his brows knitting together almost comically. "Captain?" His gaze travelled past her to the sleeper pod area, one corner of his mouth quirking before he gave her his full attention again.

She scowled at him, rapidly losing the weak grip she held on her temper. Armour didn't just disappear. "I'm not ready to go because I've spent the last fifteen minutes searching for my chest guard, and right pauldron. If I find the one who took it, I'll give them a slow death."

Alenko offered a gracious arm to escort her back to her locker. She scowled at him, but allowed him to lead her back.

"There's nothing in there, nor the ones next to it. I've checked, at least four times."

"What will you do if you told someone that they could use the armour?" He took her by the shoulders and gently turned her to where Legion hunched over a sleeper pod.

Shepard's scowl deepened and a drill bit began burrowing through her skull between her eyes. "Does my mood say, 'play guessing games with me', Sparky? What are you talking about?" Spotting them, Legion straightened and turned to face them. "Oh." Shepard slapped a hand over her mouth as a riot of giggles chased a harsh cough of laughter out her throat. Fighting them down, she managed to get enough control to call. "Legion, I see you were able to make repairs."

The geth strode toward them in his loose, easy walk. "Yes. There is no longer a hole."

She nodded. "Very good. Nice boob." Snorting, she broke down again, biting her fist as she turned away, struggling to regain control. Laughing at new, uncertain allies might top calling them piles of devils, but she couldn't be sure on that.

The geth stopped in front of them. "Boob: a foolish individual, or vulgar slang, the mammary of a female human." His face plates rose and fell in a wave. "We do not understand the reference."

Shepard regained control and turned back. "Nothing to worry about, Legion. Serviceable is serviceable." Reaching out, she patted his arm then turned to Alenko. "Guess I need new armour then.

Shepard lifted her hand to her radio. Hey, Verblovski, what do you have down there in a medium armour, size: freakishly tiny? If you tell me you only have Pheonix, someone will die." A broad grin spread across her face. "No way. Really?" She threw her hands into the air. "Yes! Glory hallelujah! Brother Sparky will be right down."

When she closed the channel, she grinned at Legion. "You're forgiven forever." She grinned at Alenko. "Run down and grab my new armour, please?" Smiling at all the faces staring at her from the galley, she lifted her arms. "Brothers and sisters, glory hallelujah. You are all forgiven even though you had nothing to do with it. Praise the Enkindler's light! It's a good day to have your armour stolen to give a geth half a boob job." She started stripping off her old set.

A couple of minutes later, Alenko jogged up to her with a duffel of gear slung over his shoulder, a knowing grin on his face. "Predator? You know he had another set of Mantis down there, like your last one."

A wide, manic smile split her face. "I know, but Predator, Sparky! I love life." She held out her arms as if asking him to hand over a child. "Come on, don't be cruel now. You don't want to use up your free Shepard good kharma point right off the bat, do you?"

He passed her the duffel and chuckled. "You're deceptively simple complex woman, Captain."

She frowned as she crouched to unpack it, running her fingers over each piece before pulling it out. "Does that mean I'm actually simple and my complexity is deceptive or that I'm complex and my simplicity is deceptive?" She started snapping and sealing the pieces in place.

"Yes," he replied.

"It's so beautiful." She'd spent a lot of years wearing Alliance issue bland. Serviceable enough, but butt ugly. All that time, she'd dreamed of owning a set of Predator. Since taking over the Normandy, she'd traded for Mantis, which was pretty sweet, but . . .."

Alenko cleared his throat, shook his head and turned away. "I'll be waiting at the airlock."

"Oh, send Ashley and Tali down. Tell the others to relax for a few minutes. I've had a change of plan." She worked her way up her legs.

"Yes, ma'am."

She purred to her armour as she geared up. "Where have you been all my life, gorgeous? I've been waiting for this moment, dreaming of it, but I never thought it would come true."

"Shepard-Captain," Legion walked over and watched her, his head flaps doing a dance. "This unit does not understand -"

"Why I'm cooing at a set of armour?" She smoothed her hands over the chest guard. "Only way I can think to really explain it is . . . humans are strange. We occasionally do really odd things for no particular reason at all. In this case, one of my minor life goals has been realized, and I thank you for that."

"You wanted to see me, ma'am?" Ashley asked, appearing around the divider.

"I do." Shepard gave Legion a quick wink, then turned to the chief. "Do you have any civvies?"

"No, ma'am. We haven't really been anywhere long enough for me to pick any up." Ashley stopped at parade rest a metre away.

As Shepard watched, the chief's gaze slid coolly over to Legion, rested on him for a half second, then moved on. It took about twenty seconds for the Marine to do a double take, then turn to Shepard, her jaw hanging comically slack.

"Ma'am, the geth . . .."

"Legion . . .." Shepard bit the inside of her top lip to help stifle her grin.

"Yes, ma'am, but umm . . . it has . . .."

Shepard nodded. "Yes. yes, it does. Borrowed my armour to repair its platform."

Tali ran around the corner. "Sorry, Captain, I was . . .." She stumbled to a stop when she saw Legion standing next to Shepard. ". . . told you wanted . . . to talk . . .." Her head cocked to the side. ". . . to me." The quarian cocked a hip and pointed. "Why does the geth had a mammary on one side?"

Shepard sighed. "Let's get this out of the way now. Yes, the geth has a boob. Everyone stare and get it over with." She nodded toward her quarters. "Come with me. I need to talk to you both." She sized up Ashley with narrowed eyes. "I'm a few sizes smaller than you are, but I have something that should work."

"Aye, ma'am." Ashley fell in step beside Shepard. "Work for what, ma'am?"

"I want to use a two pronged approach to finding the quarian pilgrims. First prong, Tali's father stops running long enough to contact us, and we work with him." She hit her door control. "I'm not banking on that, though. Second prong is to see if we can't find them ourselves. Bait the blood pack with our own personal quarian pilgrim and follow them to their base. See if we can't find out where they are taking their captives."

She waved the two females inside. "'Come in to my parlour,' said the spider to the flies."

Tali sighed as she walked past. "Again with spiders?"

Shepard chuckled. "Sorry, I forgot about the phobia. I'll try to be more sensitive." She followed them both through the door

Ashley walked over to the table before turning back. "It's a human nursery rhyme for children," she supplied. Looking around the cavernous space, the chief shook her head. "What a waste."

Shepard nodded. "I use the desk and the bed. The rest could have been . . . something." She strode past them to her closet and grabbed a sweater off the top shelf. "Okay, so Tali. How do you feel about being bait?"

"What's the plan, ma'am?" Ashley asked.

Shepard tossed her the sweater. "We send you two in as civilians, just out shopping and hanging out. Three teams of two will be watching you from three different angles. If your father contacts you, excellent. You bring him aboard and we chat. If he doesn't, we see if we can't lure the Blood Pack into snatching Tali and then follow her back to their base."

Her fingers dove into her hip pack and pulled out a tracker. "Put that somewhere it won't be found. Just in case."

"So, you'd be following me the whole time?" Tali asked, staring at the tracker like she'd been told to hold a spider.

"Yes." Shepard pressed a reassuring hand on the young female's shoulder. "You'd never be out of sight, but this is totally up to you. You don't feel comfortable with it, we'll do something else."

Tali nodded and reached up to attach the tracker under her hood amongst the tubes feeding into her helmet. "If it helps find my people, I'll do it."

Shepard gave her a card of the trackers. "If you do get taken by Blood Pack, slap those on as many as you can."

Tali chuckled and slid the card into a pocket. "Just in case?"

"I try to leave as little to chance as I can. On that note . . .." She held up a bug. "Hide this on yourself somewhere. As soon as you get near someone in charge, plant it. On them if you get a chance or on furniture if you have to. Just don't get caught with it." She looked into Tali's eyes. "If things get too intense, if anything goes wrong, we need a safe word. You yell that word, we come running, plan be damned, okay?" Shepard nodded toward the door. "Run up ahead, we'll be right behind you. Think of a word that you wouldn't ordinarily use, and let me know when we get up there."

"Yes, ma'am." Tali hurried out the door, muttering to herself a little as she tried different places for hiding the bug.

When the door closed, Shepard looked over at Ashley. "Will that fit? You can just throw it over your trousers. If I lent you slacks, you'd look like you were trying to bring the pedal-pusher back in style."

The chief spread it out and held it up. "It should be fine, ma'am. I'll just run down and change out of my armour."

Shepard held up a hand and stepped between Ashley and the door. "Give it a moment, Chief. I want to have a quick chat away from prying ears, and the cargo bay isn't the best for that." She gestured for the other woman to sit, then perched on the adjacent chair.

"Is this about the geth, ma'am? I shouldn't . . .." She closed her mouth on the words as Shepard held up a hand.

"Yes, it's about that, but give me a minute." Shepard let out a long breath and rested her clasped hands on the table. "You're smart, and tough, and capable, Ash. I think your career could go anywhere you like after you leave the Normandy, but you're going to have to learn to curb the mouth." Shepard's lips quirked. "I know, pots and kettles, but look at my career, Williams. I'll be lucky to get a few more years." She blew out a sigh that bordered on raspberry territory. "If the council doesn't have me killed first."

"Ma'am, you're a hell of a soldier. Anyone who lets politics get in the way of that . . .."

Shepard nodded. "But part of the job, especially as you gain rank is perception. You've already got a hurdle to overcome, so don't add to it. I run a pretty casual ship. I think everyone here is under enough pressure, and has enough to worry about, without my stomping around behaving like a dictator." She smiled, her lips pressed together. "I like you, Ash, but when I give an order, that's the end of it. Friendships, joking around, everything else steps aside. Can you live with that?"

The chief nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I sure can."

Shepard stood and led the way to the door. "Good. Now come on, we'd better get moving before the rest of the team gets restless." She chuckled. "Although, I'm sure they've had to wait for the women-folk to get ready once or twice."

Ashley laughed as she popped the seals on her chest guard. "Women-folk, ma'am?"

Shepard just tossed a little shrug over one shoulder. She stopped with her hand on the door control. "Oh wait, I was talking about Kryik, C-Sec, and Sparky. I'm not sure those three have managed a date between them." Her laugh rolled up the scale as she palmed the door, striding through when it opened.

She turned sideways, bounding a little, excited and eager to get moving. "You know, with how awkward our boys are, we should take them out, get them loosened up, see if we can help them find a social life."

Ashley grinned, flushing prettily across her cheeks. "I'm not really one to talk, Skipper. I'm generally pretty awkward myself."

Shepard grinned and kissed her index finger to her lips. "I've never been on an actual date. Anderson scared all my prospective suitors off until I was on my own, then I was always up to my neck in work."

"He didn't?" Emotions blew across Ashley's face like clouds: amusement, disbelief, appreciation, and affection.

Shepard watched them all go by, feeling as they were gifts given the chief's usual stoicism. When they passed, she nodded, her teeth flashing behind a bright smile. "His favourite ploy was to take them aside and ask their opinion on which sniper mods would give him the best chance to hit a running target from a distance."

Ashley's laugh echoed up the stairs as she stopped and hit the elevator controls. "I think it's kind of great, ma'am."

Shepard chuckled. "Anderson vaguely threatening my prospective boyfriends with reenacting 'The Most Dangerous Game'?"

Ashley flushed again and shook her head. "That too, but no, ma'am. I meant, I like that Kryik and Vakarian are so awkward in personal situations." Her shoulders rolled in a shrug and her flush deepened, but her eyes didn't leave Shepard's. "As soldiers, all we every hear about the turians is the First Contact War, fight to the last man, stick up their arse, best military in the galaxy stuff. It's good to see that under all that, they're just people, like the rest of us." She stepped into the elevator.

Shepard nodded, impressed with how far the chief had come since that first day. "Yeah, it is. See you up top in five, Ash." Turning away to jog up the stairs to the CIC, Shepard smiled and shook her head. "There might be something to this mixed crew thing."

After pausing to check on operations with Pressly, and listening to another lecture on the dangers of having a geth aboard, Shepard joined the rest of the team at the airlock.

"So, Omega," she said, rubbing her hands together. "I've never been. I've heard its filthy, stinks to high heaven and is almost completely populated by criminals." She grinned. "So exciting, just like the old west." She mimicked doing a quick draw, twirling her pistols and slamming them back into holsters. "I can't wait."

"An adventure, Shepard?" Garrus asked, cocking a brow plate at her.

"Absolutely. Meeting a nervous contact on a station riddled with crime, maybe it's more like an old Raymond Chandler novel. I need a trench coat and a fedora." She aped pulling up the collar and hunched her shoulders. When she spoke, she affected a hard-boiled 1930's detective voice, "It was dark, see. The kind of dark that makes you forget you ever saw the light, and rainy . . . the kind of rain that makes you forget you ever saw the sun. I'd been hitting the bottle hard, ever since little Bugsy was taken out by the Murphy brothers."

Shepard shook her head sadly. "Poor Bugsy. That night, the office was just too full of memories, see. That's why I ended up at Joe's tavern. It was a seedy little gin joint, the kind that made you forget you'd ever seen a clean glass. I saw her through the bottom of my fifth cheap whiskey. I knew the dame was trouble the moment I laid eyes on her, because she had one of those smiles, and her legs went allllll the way up."

"All the way up to where?" Garrus asked. "Her neck? The top of her head?"

Nihlus cocked his head. "Have you suffered another blood clot? Should we delay until Dr. Chakwas has a chance to look you over?"

Shepard laughed and made a big deal of shrugging out of her trenchcoat and taking off the fedora. "As for the blood clot. No. I was just having a little fun. You might want to try it some day, Nihlus. And C-Sec, I don't think they ever specified how far up those legs went, but if they went all the way up to her neck, I can see why she'd draw attention. That's a pretty severe abnormality." She turned as Ashley walked up. The chief had put her hair down and added a little lipstick, making her look the part nicely. Shepard gave her a nod of approval before turning back to brief the others.

"Okay. I don't want to put all my eggs in the Rael'Zorah basket, so I'm going to hedge my bets a little, and fry the bacon in two pans."

Garrus and Nihlus just stared at her.

"If a more mixed metaphor existed, I think it would self annihilate," Kaidan said, shaking his head.

Shepard grinned and cackled to herself a little, knowing that the translators would have spit a bunch of jibberish into the non-human's ears. "I mean we're going to hit this bitch on two fronts. Tali and Ashley are going to go out together. Just two ladies out shopping and doing normal, lady stuff. Don't ask, I have no idea what that entails. The rest of us are going to split into three teams of two. Nihlus and C-Sec, Wrex and Sparky, Jenkins and myself. We will arrange ourselves discretely so that we can keep an eye on them from three different angles."

She took a breath and cracked her neck. "Oh, and while you're out, dextros, get yourselves some food. Ration bars, sure, but you know . . . canned Dextrogetti and Shredded Dextro-wheat, or whatever as well. Get enough ration bars to do you a month, and enough of the other for a couple of weeks."

She ran her fingers through her hair. "Right, back to the plan. If Rael'Zorah makes contact with any of us, bring him directly back to the Normandy. If the Blood Pack makes contact, the idea is that Tali acts as bait. She has a tracker." She sent the tracker frequency to all their omnitools. "But, let's try to keep eyes on and follow them back to their base. I'm really hoping we can get some trackers on the couriers or the ship they're using . . . anything that will allow us to follow them out of system. Tali also has a bug planted on her, but if she is taken, she needs to get it off her and onto one of the ring leaders." She looked at the young quarian. "What's your safe word, Tali?"

The quarian straightened her back and squared her shoulders. "Bal'Nara." She shrugged, her hands flipping then wringing together, betraying her nerves. "He was one of my best friends growing up. I couldn't think of anything else."

Steadying Tali with an arm around the quarian's shoulders, Shepard nodded resolutely. "She says Bal'Nara, we go in, all of us. This brave young woman comes home with us tonight, no matter what." She smiled and gave Tali a sort of 'told yah' tilt of the head when the others responded to the affirmative. "Any questions?"

"Can we pick up some dextro chocolate in our shopping?" Tali asked, her voice soft and tilted up.

Shepard sighed. "Not exactly the sort of question I meant, but yes, you can get some dextro chocolate." She released the quarian, her eyes scanning the team. Seven people had rarely looked so ready, and all met her gaze with a nod. "All right, let's go shopping. Wrex and Sparky, you two go first. Radio when you've lost yourselves in the dock crowd."

"Aye, aye, ma'am." Kaidan led the way, Wrex lumbering easily behind after giving Shepard a nod.

Shepard watched the krogan, sensing that something was up with him, and she made a mental note to take him aside for a chat before they dove hip-deep into another mission.

After the first team radioed in to say they'd lost themselves in the crush of people on the docks, Shepard looked to Ashley and Tali. "I'll radio when my Alliance boyfriend and I are away from the docking tube. Keep your eyes open, but try to relax. If you're too jumpy and watchful, the bad guys will know something's up." She gave Tali an encouraging smile. "You'll do fine."

Jenkins headed for decon. The door opened, and he turned, offering her his elbow.

Shepard eyed the elbow with suspicion, sidling around it. "What's this, Corporal?"

He grinned wide, appearing very pleased with himself, if a little flushed. "A proper gentleman offers his arm when escorting a lady friend through a crowd, ma'am. You did say that was our cover."

Shepard chuckled, surprised. "Someone's mama raised him right." She slipped her hand through his elbow, and turned back to the others. "See the rest of you later. Be careful, and . . .." The door cut off further admonishments.