"Aye aye, boss," Calypso said, saluting vaguely and flashing Cole a wink before she left. The human nodded back, then followed Reese's lead and emerged on the third deck. He mapped it all mentally as she pointed it out. The bar made him grin. "Oh, good. I don't have to go bugging you every time I wanna get buzzed." He adjusted his pack and started toward the portside rooms she'd pointed out, turning to walk backwards. "It isn't standard procedure to change in front of each other, either, right? With all the flirting and visual assessment so far I wouldn't be surprised, or offended, really." He grinned as he turned back around and stepped inside, dumping his pack on a bunk and shrugging out of his civilian jacket.<br/><br/>The more the reality set in, the more he was actually glad for it. Or, if not glad, then excited. He stripped out of his boots, pants, and shirt, draping the last two over each other next to the coat, then dug out a set of less assuming civvies. In doing so he unearthed his officer's uniform, a deep blue number with gold trim, and a set of small badges along the breast to indicate the honors he'd accumulated when he'd been a real soldier. A documented one. He held it up for a moment, wondering what could have been. What, ostensibly,<i>should</i>have been. Then he balled it up and threw it into the corner of the room and focused on putting on his fresh shirt and pants. He'd have to make a clothes run before they left the Citadel. One set of casual clothes, all the rest military? What was he, the main character?<br/><br/>He took the jacket with him as he stepped out, pulling it on as he came out of the room. The paper he'd been given crunched against his chest, and he paused to tug it back out. His omni-tool flared up on his hand, and a second later the paper was incinerated, so intensely and completely that even the ashes left over were molecules. "Sorry," he said vaguely, shaking his hand to relieve it of the abrupt heat burst. "Last set of official orders. What was it you said about a fascinating salarian?"<br/><br/>Fifteen minutes later, the pair of them entered a fairly well-hidden door on the walkway beneath the Presidium Markets. It wasn't a secret door, precisely, but one that nobody would notice if they weren't specifically looking for it. Inside were shelves. Lots and lots of shelves, and on the shelves were lots and lots of--in Cole's opinion--junk. Bits of old guns, smaller ship components, discarded mostly-empty paint cans. One tray was full of about a thousand of the little holo-projectors like the one he'd flicked off his pack earlier. At at the center of it all was a salarian, dressed head to toe in a full-body salarian combat outfit, complete with facemask.<br/><br/>There was a dull hiss, and the alien reached up to remove its helmet entirely. Beneath he looked perfectly normal, with customary wide, eerie salarian eyes and a mottled green-brown skin. He bent down to lift a large crate up onto an empty stretch of table, then reached down to pull it open. Within were a half-dozen rifles, all somewhat boxlike in design, along with well over two dozen somewhat unfamiliar cylinders. Cole was about to ask what they were for when the salarian peeled his lips back and screeched at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason.