Day 47: Lunch

[idontregret]

Heat was able to ignore the still faintly throbbing spot on his head as he was led back into the cafeteria for another meal he had no intention of eating. He kept himself from rubbing at what he knew would be a small bump because dammit it didn't hurt that much. It was embarrassing, was what it was

Comments

[constellates]

"Cool," Alkaid said, happy that the guy seemed to welcome visitors. She'd had slightly bad luck with that in the past couple days - one guy had snapped at her, even, but some people were just like that. She'd also heard of the occasional woman-hating zombie, like the eyepatch's boyfriend, or whatever. Maybe the guy from the other day had been one of those... Hmm.

When he introduced himself, she reached out to take his hand, and shook it twice, rather firmly. She hadn't shaken hands too much in her life, but at least she knew how. "Alkaid, Demon Palace Emperor. If you haven't heard of me." Which most people hadn't, unless they were from The World. (She kept wondering how many people here were from the game. People that she'd met online kept showing up, like Kuhn, so that meant that there were probably a bunch of people from The World that she didn't know, right?)

The grin still on her face, she started digging in when she pulled her hand back. Oooh, pretty tasty!

"Man, I can't get enough of the food here," she said, glancing down at her plate. "Doesn't really make up for the monsters and torture sessions and stuff, but at least there's adventure, ya know?"

At least she could keep her head up high. Brooding was for losers. And Venom.

[zack_fair]

That was some title for a teenage girl! Zack looked thoroughly impressed as they shook. "Can't say I have, but... wouldn't Empress be a more adequate title?" he joked. She was clearly female (hadn't he made a promise with himself to not think about that?), but maybe it was better not to question it. Oh well, he'd already brought it up.

And here was someone else with an 'A' name. Were they all just trying to offset his much cooler 'Z'?

"Well, if we're going to get into titles, then I was a SOLDIER First Class, but I decided it wasn't my thing," he explained with a smirk. Even if he was trying to play it casual, though, he had to privately admit that it still bothered him. He hadn't wanted to shed the title he'd worked so hard to achieve, but Shin-Ra just hadn't given him a choice. That was that.

Alkaid was kind enough to bring him back to the matter at hand, though. The food really was good, and he wasn't exactly regretting his decision to give in and just eat, paranoia or not. "Yeah, it's delicious," he said, grabbing a potato strip (what had they called them, chips?) and popping it into his mouth. "I'm always up for a good fight, but it's the experiments that really bug me."

At least he could play it off as just general outrage, rather than speaking from personal experience. Alkaid seem like a pretty cheerful girl, all things considered, so he hardly wanted to be a downer.

[constellates]

"Empress? Come on. When someone's really strong, don't you think that busts through the gender boundary? I don't think they should have to make an exception to the rule just 'cause I'm a girl. That's just stupid." Alkaid spoke completely frankly, determination fierce in her eyes. She had been Emperor from December to May... and loved every minute of it. Not just the celebrity or the title, but she'd proved to herself that she was strong, and got to hang out with other strong people 'cause of it.

"Soldier... A military man." That was kind of cool, wasn't it? Even if it wasn't for him after all... she could see his muscles, and something... strange about his eyes that she hadn't noticed at first. Yeah, there was no way he was lying. He stood out. "Takin' orders is pretty tough. If it were me, I'd end up playing hero, and bang, I'd be picked off just like that." She snapped her fingers, then took another bite of her fish.

While she occasionally had daydreams about being in an army, like the famous soldiers in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, she knew that she'd probably end up breaking rank. Not that Japan had a standing army, or that it ever would, but there was something a little cool about the whole army thing, if only in history books.

She nodded twice when Zack talked about the experiments. "At least people live through them, I guess. People who come out look a little worse for wear, yeah, but... alive. So it's not the worst that could happen."

Optimism was a flaw, but she'd cling to it as long as she could.

[zack_fair]

It looked like he and Alkaid just viewed things differently. Wasn't it even more of an honor if the rule was broken to acknowledge you? On the other hand, Zack could see how Emperor sounded cooler than Empress, so maybe that was the real reason. It was hardly worth arguing about, though, and so he just shrugged in response. If that's what she wanted to be called, then that was up to her.

Funny, how she pretty much explained exactly what had ended up happening to him. He wasn't sure if Alkaid meant picked off in quite the way that it had applied to him, but the basic idea was there either way. "Yeah, believe me, I was guilty of that sometimes," he responded with a smirk. No need to imply that he'd gotten killed due to his refusal to go along with the company's lack of morals... That'd just be a huge downer. Not good lunch material!

Alkaid had a good point, though. Experiments that ended with the so-called subject dying were the worse kind, though on the other hand... It was difficult for some people to live with those aftereffects, if Cloud was anything to judge by. Zack had kept up hope that his friend would recover from the overexposure to mako at some point, but a lot of that had been wishful thinking. Mako was pretty powerful stuff, so...

"True, true," he agreed with a fake sage nod of his head as he crossed his arms over his chest. "Probably doesn't mean we can assume we'll get out of everything here alive, though."

Yeah, Zack had already learned that lesson. He wasn't going to make the same mistakes if he had any control over the situation. Which he wasn't sure he did, but still.

[constellates]

Unaware of any similarity her silly little conversations had to anything that might have happened to this guy, Alkaid continued.

"Yeah, I don't blame you," she said with a little shrug. To be a hero... That was what she wanted, right? She just needed to get it through her head that people ended up breaking arms over things like that, leaping in front of stupid eyepatches who didn't deserve it. Ugh. Idiot. Idiot. "And then you end up breaking your arm. But at least there are healers here. Though it sucks when you're a zombie and they end up bleeding all over the place and you're trying your hardest not to take a bite out of their arm."

...For something that had actually happened, she sure was able to laugh and ramble on about it. In retrospect, it was a little comical, wasn't it? It had hurt like nothing else in her life, and she'd ended up taking a chunk out of Mr. Spock's shoulder. But... um, he was fine now, at least? And she was better too, as far as she could see. She just hoped there wasn't gonna be any kind of relapse. Who knew what this place'd do, though.

Funny that she'd be talking about this stuff during lunchtime. How had this become normal for her? And how many people here were having a similar conversation, at the very same time? So weird.

Alkaid mimicked his nod, then broke the serious look and laughed again, unable to keep the straight face. "Still. I'm pretty convinced people are secretly escaping from here. Doesn't that sound fun?"

[zack_fair]

While it was definitely good news to hear that there were healers around (he was assuming they could pull it off without Materia, which was pretty impressive), Zack knew that he could always fall back on a limit break for that. All he had to do was think of Aerith and then he was all set. He remembered what Aidou had told him about the limited abilities they had here, but... hopefully he could still manage that much. If not, there were apparently other options around, so he'd have to keep that in mind.

He raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his seat when she brought up stuff about zombies. For a second he wondered if she meant it in a figurative sense, but then she started going on about wanting to bite someone's arm. "Wait, so that happened to you?" Alkaid didn't look very much like a zombie (not at all, in fact), so she'd apparently gotten over it, but that was reaching a whole new level of weird. What was with this place?

Zack's train of thought was completely rerouted when Alkaid implied that escape was possible, though. No one else had really given him that impression, so he had to wonder if she was jerking his chain or if she just happened to know something that everyone else didn't. It seemed unlikely, but...

"Really?" he asked as he leaned forward in his seat once again. Zombie germs or not, he needed to hear about this! "What makes you say that?"