[Citadel- Leaving the Ducts] A few words..

The skycar was parked outside the office and for a moment, Paul ran through the questions in his head. The man pinched his nose and shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and dry in the rear-view mirror. Removing a spray from the inside of his jacket, he sprayed his pupils and blinked considerably before stepping out of the vehicle with a hobble.

His right leg hurt. The fake foot in the shoe he wore wasn't going to easily give itself away, but the limp was. Pulling open the rear door of his car, a spherical drone buzzed to life, zipping up to eye-level.

"Hello, Paul. I am operating at optimum levels. Shall I engage in cloak mode?" The drone spoke with a more-or-less refined electronic tone. Paul shook his head and reached for his equipment from the back seat.

"Uh-" The journalist shook his head. "No, no," He lifted his hands. "Not this time. Follow me, and let me ask the questions this time." The journalist activated his omnitool and walked into the offices, the white and silver drone fast on his trail.

Michelle was actually not that much in an interview mood. The attention brought from the charity dinner, although positive, had brought on much more work to do. And her coworker Julian Snow was skulking more than usual, because the end of his community service had been delayed due to administrative problems. And working with someone who just couldn't wait to get the frak out wasn't as pleasant as one might think.
Plus, she always figured her first interview would be with superstart adventurer journalist Muckracker.
But Paul seemed nice enough, so she smiled brightly at him when he came in with his drone. She just hoped Shaart wouldn't butt beak with him this time...

"Hey Paul, how are you doing? Come in, I have some tea ready."

Paul raised a brow. "Hello, Ms. Rondor. None for me, thank you, though I appreciate your hospitality. Do you have a place where we can sit, or would you prefer to stand? I only have five questions, and you're free to refuse to answer them if you wish." He activated his omnitool and pulled a small Turian-esque visor over his eye.

The drone swung around, adopting a position near Paul's other shoulder. Michelle's face was scanned.

Five questions? That's peculiar...

"No no let's sit down."

Michelle brought Paul to the table in the main room. She sat on a side. The fact that where she was the camera would catch photos of the LTD team with the kids or framed article snippets was of course entirely coincidental.
Most described LTD operations, the last last one being "Local charity teams up with Thessian authorities to get asari duct rats into huntress program", with a picture of Michelle, Freh'ya and Arina.

Michelle sipped her tea and just said
"Ok let's begin."

"Well, five or more." He slowly took his seat and glanced over at the Drone. "Commence filming." He commanded, his voice quiet and reserved. He turned back to Michelle and crossed his leg over his knee. "Well, Ms. Rondor, I'm appreciative that you took the time to visit with me today, I'm here to ask you about the recent charity dinner and what Leaving the Ducts does for the community, along with your thoughts on other subjects."

"How successful was the dinner for your charity? Are you planning for this to be an annual occasion?"

"Well Paul let me tell you, this was an amazing success. Normally for an organization this size or this recent you're lucky to get 50 people to show up in a dingy room with sandwiches. We had one thousand forty three guests according to the ticket sales! We had influential politicians and CEOs visiting! The benefits were enormous, and are already earmarked for exciting new projects in favor of the Citadel orphans. Most of them scholarships and training fees.
This is obvious proof that people don't find acceptable anymore to have so many destitute infants living in the hub of the galaxy."

This also was a big fat lie. Michelle knew that although a lot of people came to help the duct rats, a lot more came in hope of meeting with Max, Albert, Davril or Daia. Those big names had made the charity dinner the place to be.

"It may become an annual occasion yes. I can't make promises yet, we have to make sure this will be the best course of actions for Leaving the Ducts, but it's very possible."

"Why did you found this charity? You seem to be a new injection into the Citadel Charity Network; and I'm sure other charitable organizations are very curious," He shifted his right leg over his left knee with a flash-in-the-pan grimace, but kept his stalwart tone, "Who is Michelle Rondor?"

Michelle was a bit surprised, she thought the journalist would get right to the troubles with the Lower Tayseri Elite. Her cover story wasn't as exciting and she was a bit surprised her "past" was coming up at all. She didn't miss a beat however.

"Honestly I haven't had that much contact with other charities yet, we're still carving our place in the sun. But yes I'm a newcomer to the Citadel, before coming here last year I spent all my life on Earth, in France. I was a social worker there, helping abused women. During the reaper war I found myself in charge of keeping a whole bunch of local children safe. When the war ended and I found myself with money from relatives who didn't make it, I decided I needed some change. I had met a former duct rat on Earth and was familiar with their plight.
So that's how I started this."

She raised an eyebrow at her visitor's discomfort.

"Are you alright Paul?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He raised a confused brow, his response abrupt. He quickly spoke again, asking a question in his usual tone. "Ms. Rondor, you've apparently hired a wide range of people to work for you, from hanar to humans to, much to my surprise at the charity dinner, a raloi from Turvess. Do you feel that exposing children to a wide range of characters will help them with acclimating back onto the right path, or otherwise help them with finding a sense of normality in their young lives?"

Michelle shrugged.

"Well that's not really the point honestly. Kids in the street are already from most known species, and they live in the most diverse place in the galaxy. They do not need our help to meet new cultures. Species simply doesn't count in my hiring standards. I just offered a job to individuals whom I thought could bring a lot to our team, and to the kids.
None of them has proved me wrong thus far."

"What kind of incident took place at the charity offices during the dinner? How long has Leaving the Ducts been harassed by street gangs?"

There we go...

"We've had troubles with gangs almost from the beginning honestly. Even before we started really helping the kids, the local gangs took offense to us being in their territory. It started off as surveillance, scaring off people who could help us, then more and more terror actions. They've ambushed us and attacked kids as payback when we pulled through. With the help of C-Sec though we managed to keep them at bay and wrestle influence away from them.
The attack the night of the dinner actually came at a very unpleasant surprise. They took advantage of our involvement at the restaurant to break into our offices. Apparently they wanted the files we keep on the kids we help. You have to understand that a lot of them come to us secretly, and the gangers discovering them would have been... Atrocious.
Unfortunately for them they are heavily encrypted and secured. Our alarm system alerted us, and our head of security got there and managed to break our mainframe security. By the time C-Sec arrived he got injured, but has mostly recovered by now. We all owe him an enormous dept of gratitude."

Michelle's face stayed stoic as she described the events of that night. As harrowing as the experience have been, she wouldn't let any of her insecurity show on camera, or anywhere else.

"Okay. Final question. What do you think your charity's impact will be in a decade?" Paul glanced briefly down at his omnitool. He didn't say anything about the stabbing pain in his leg nor his stacked schedule he'd built up over the rest of the day. He was worried, thinking about how much this interview sucked. "You've already made an impact with what you've done in your short time on the station, where do you want to go from here?"

Michelle was unsettled by the mood of the interview. Paul made no efforts to stir up conversation or even put her at ease, he just went through his question without reacting on anything she said. She was ok with it however, it was more comfortable for her, and avoided chances of slip up. So she beamed at his last question.

"Excellent question. 8 months ago I would have just answered that I hoped for us to be still around in 10 years, maybe gotten bigger, and at best having new teams deployed in the other other wards. At the time I thought that the duct rat issue was a fact of life that we could just hope to make a little better.
But things have changed. I have discovered that we are at a crucial juncture where there an entire galaxy to rebuild, and not enough hands to do it. And that the thousands of homeless kids we have on the Citadel just need a little push to get where they're needed, and create a life for themselves.
Paul in 10 years I'm hoping that we'll be huge. That we will have actual government backing, when they realize that giving a chance to duct rats is not just charity, it is highly pragmatic. That we will be self sufficient thanks to the donations of people and of our former charges, some of whom have already started sending us a little money. In 10 years I see us training hundreds of kids every year in a vast array of fields, and getting them where they can start a life.
In a hundred years I see us celebrating the end of the duct rats phenomenon. And for the record, in that last vision, I'm looking good for my age," Michelle concluded with a wink.

"Hopefully we're all looking good in the future." He chuckled. "A friend of mine told me that you're from Earth? Or, well, I'm sure those that are going to watch this interview wouldn't mind to get to know you better. What can you tell me about yourself?"

The personal questions, she was hoping to avoid that... Ho well, bullshit mode engaged.

"Well I'm from France, where thanks to a reasonably wealthy and understanding family I could devote my time to doing what I felt was important work : helping out abused women. Despite centuries of progress in gender equality, there was still much to be done, especially in the poorer areas...

During the war and subsequent occupation I found myself quite literally underground, escaping husks rounding people up with other refugees. I wasn't much help to the local resistance in fighting matters so I helped taking care of the kids..."

As usual, some of what she was telling was true, some of it wasn't.

"After the war I tried to resume my work, but I didn't enjoy the same safety as I did before. When I worked at relocating an abused women her PTSD suffering former resistance fighter boyfriend started hunting me instead."

In retrospect she felt guilty about using PTSD as a part of her cover story, but she couldn't change her script now could she?

"I needed a new start, so I decided to try my luck in the fascinating floating city that had appeared in the night sky...
The money I inherited from relatives who didn't make it through the reaper war, which is all of them, helped me set up, and I decided to see if I could help kids again.
Turns out I could", she concluded with a quiet smile.

"You're lying to me." Paul broke his silence and shifted uncomfortably."You see, I've run your image, trying to come up with talking points and I can't keep doing this."

He projected a theater poster with her image being one of many actresses. "You're not a Michelle Rondor. Your real name is Virginie Gauthier. I ran this name through records and comprehensive extranet searches and I've just got to ask why do this?" He gestured, irritated, "I'm an investigative photojournalist, did you not think I would investigate my interview subjects?!"

Michelle's heart sank. She had different hair (including color) and no glasses on the poster, but she couldn't pretend it wasn't her. She didn't believe for a second that Paul had found that after a cursory extranet search, the Slaves4Us guy who had created her identity was a pro and had been thorough. Paul had lead her to believe he was a joke, but it was apparently a facade.
Her mind raced to various possibilities. She could pretend it was just a stage name for her amateur acting, but it was hardly believable... Other solution then.

"Ok listen, I did change my name when I left Earth. As I said I didn't make only friends. That's why I take video interviews only with Citadel news outlet. Can we please keep that off the record? It's not LTD relevant."

"I can't shake the feeling you're just trying to cover something up, Ms. Gauthier. You see, I know when someone's lying to me. Thank my ex wife for that."

He shook his head. "It's not related to your charity but I've been looking at this image for a week trying to unravel who you really are." He spoke with all the confidence in the world as he spoke and stood.

"It's bugged me and I think this is a story. I'm going to follow it. I'm sorry I had to get you here with a false interview but I can't just let this slip by."

He straightened his jacket and turned to leave, followed closely by his drone. "Good day, Miss Rondor."