Day 46: Lunch

[tostepforward]

The mere fact that she'd been susceptible to whatever hold the Institute had had on her yesterday was sufficient to leave Ayumu both upset and angry - no, not angry, downright furious, both at herself and whoever was responsible for that. But there was also the fact that because of it, she'd lost out on an entire day of work, and in several ways

Comments

[loyal_soldier]

More food. There was always some part of 622 that wondered why they were given three meals every day. It just seemed too generous, too much for this place. Why hadn't they been made to starve? People's defenses lowered significantly when all they could think about was getting food, after all.

He took some of the 'pizza' and sat down in the mostly empty mess hall, trying a bite of this strange new food. It tasted like grease and bread.

He had half the piece eaten before he even stopped to think.

[For one Doctor McCoy!]

[hes_deadjim]

Whoever that man was on the primitive speaker, McCoy was finding his bedside manner more and more abrasive by the second. Maybe abrasive was the wrong for it. He'd have called it sickeningly sweet. He preferred frankness, honesty, and being treated like an actual person, not someone you had to tip-toe around, dammit, or talk down to. He found it hard to trust any medical practitioner who felt like they had to resort to downplaying any potential problems to a patient's face. It made him feel as if they were hiding something. If they could go glossing over vital facts to a patient, who knew what they'd decide colleagues or commanding officers really needed to know? It was a slippery slope

[loyal_soldier]

622 eventually noticed movement in his peripheral vision that had escaped his attention for... he didn't know how long. Oh, blast. He looked up, swallowing his current mouthful of food.

"Sorry I didn't see you there, sir," he said politely, trying to ignore the look. Yes, he ate fast. All troopers did, by habit and by demands of metabolism. But everyone here seemed to find it odd.

He wiped off his hands on a napkin and held one out to his tablemate. "Stormtrooper Sergeant TK-622. I haven't seen you here before. Are you new?" He tried to keep a vague mental tally of faces he'd seen before, and this man wasn't among them.

[hes_deadjim]

That was quite the mouthful. It reminded him more of a serial number for a piece of machinery than the name for a man. The 'Stormtrooper' part of his rank was also strange. Definitely from a military organization with that rank. McCoy didn't know what organization he belonged to though. He'd never heard of one that used that designation.

The doctor took the offered hand. He had a strong grip. "You could say that. Chief Medical Officer McCoy."

He paused, consideringly. The name did sound familiar. He wasn't sure if the exact number was a match but he thought he'd heard it yesterday.

"TK-622? I think Commander Hayes mentioned you last night," McCoy said. That was if this was the man in question, but how many people had a name like that?

[arc_wrench]

Refueling shift, again. It was pathetic that meatbag bodies needed so much processed organic product to maintain function. It was especially irritating that something in his mouth was producing more saliva at the smell of whatever that flat, gooey-looking stuff that had been set down before him was.

You had to hand it to the meatbag body for coming up with disgusting subroutines. Smell lipids-->produce slime. Ugh.

[SHO!]

[number_crunch]

Waffles and pizza in one day? This 24h period just kept getting better! Too bad about the chocolate chip cookies last night. No 8-legged exponents to spoil this meal though.

Biting back a rant as the cafeteria workers refused to let his pizza pile exceed 25cm, Sho trundled over to a free spot by some guy staring at the food like it had skewed his calculations.

"It's pizza; it goes in your pi-hole," he explained as he let his weighty tray hit the table loudly and sitting down. "If you don't want it, I'll be > happy to add it to my sum."

[arc_wrench]

Oh, this one! "Exclamation: I know you! You are the loud meatbag that stood up on a table and provided momentary amusement several days ago," HK said, cheerful voice totally at odds with his customary deadpan stare.

"Statement: I am quite surprised that you have survived this long. One would think that your traits would have been kicked from the shallow end of the meatbag gene pool long ago."

[number_crunch]

Great, another robot. No wonder he was giving the food funny looks. Hopefully this one wouldn't want to comment on his P-value since they weren't in the showers.

"And I've seen your posts on the bulletin," he growled back noncommittally. "You can take your genetic guesswork and shove it up your arc, robot." So maybe Sho would have gotten eaten by a tiger had he been stranded in the jungles of India, but he came from the concrete jungle where being louder and prouder than anyone else could only increase your value.

[brooklynisangry]

Okay, so that had been pretty cool. There might not be other Digimon here, but there were loads of people (well, two so far) who were actually giant robots. Sure, he knew some metal-type Digimon, but the idea of things like that from out in the Real World was a new and weird idea to him. Now, if only they weren't all jerks or grumpy old guys, then things would be great.

Actually, things were great anyway. He'd never had pizza before in his life, but now that he had, wow! Beelzemon started chomping on a pizza slice with enthusiasm. If there was one thing the Real World could do right, it was definitely food.

[Sylar! Come and get yer Digimon!]

[7_to_midnight]

While some of the information Wally had ended up spilling had already been obvious to Sylar from his previous observations, some of it... hadn't. For one thing, Clark Kent seemed to be out of the picture entirely at this point, which erased most of Sylar's original intent in befriending Wally in the first place. Disappointing, maybe, but it sounded like there were a hell of a lot of other interesting people who Wally knew. Maybe they'd show up again, like missing patients sometimes did, and if not, at least Sylar knew for a fact that he was closer to Wally than anyone else here. The man was becoming more and more malleable by the day, and soon he'd probably implicitly trust anything that came out of Sylar's mouth.

Sylar couldn't help but grin as he one-handedly set down a plate of pepperoni pizza and chips. Now, now, he was in a damn good mood. In fact, he was feeling so high in spirits that when he glanced up and saw the tattooed man in front of him gobbling down a slice himself, he smiled and said: "Good stuff, huh?"

[brooklynisangry]

Beelzemon looked up, at the new guy, swallowing a big bite of food. "Yeah! Never had this stuff before. 's great!" He wondered why Japan didn't have any of this stuff. Sure, Takato's mom and dad made really good bread, but this was different. Maybe even better, and that was saying a lot.

"'m Beelzemon," he said, for once remembering to introduce himself right from the get-go, but taking a moment longer to remember the handshake thing. He wiped a hand off on his pants, holding it out to the guy, giving him a big grin full of sharp, filed teeth.

[7_to_midnight]

Sylar paused when he heard the guy's voice. It was a strong Brooklyn accent, the kind that he sometimes heard from non-regulars who'd wandered into his shop back in the day. The voice matched the tats and general body language of the guy, but not the complete lack of knowledge about pizza, of all things. Was this another weird case of alternate dimensions or something?

In the end, Sylar didn't care that much about someone new after having gotten an 'old friend' under his thumb, so he easily gave a good-natured laugh as he watched the other man. "I'm Z-" he paused, then corrected himself: "-Gabriel. You know," he continued, leaning back in his chair as he grabbed a slice and took a bite off the edge, "I grew up in New York. I'm guessing you did too...?"

[mitase]

Lunch was the greasy triangles again, and Hanatarou wrinkled his nose slightly as he regarded the food lying in front of him. At his nurse's prodding and claim that he "loved pizza" he took one piece and set it on his tray along with a piece of bread, then quickly moved on over to the salad. He was starting to get heartily sick of salad, but really, it was about the only edible thing they served

[opposingheaven]

"You look like someone kicked your puppy, kid," Kenren said with a grin as he slid into the seat next to Hanatarou, reaching out to ruffle his hair in a friendly way. He did look pretty miserable. Then again, Hanatarou looked pretty nervy all the time so maybe it wasn't such a surprise. But he didn't like seeing it and to be honest, he was still pretty angry about what that jerk had said to him on the bulletin. Free will was something that Kenren favoured more than almost anything and he hated this idea of slavish devotion to duty.

He set his own plate down and took a bite of the pizza. Not his favourite food, but it wasn't bad. "Something wrong, Hanatarou?"

[mitase]

Though he didn't see anyone approaching him until Kenren was already there, the hand reaching for him made Hanatarou automatically flinch as soon as he caught sight of the movement from the corner of his eye. When it just turned out to be a hair-ruffle he blinked a little, then gave the older man a somewhat surprised look. He hadn't spoken to any of the History Club members since the other night, except for the message from Homura on the bulletin, and he'd been starting to wonder if they still remembered he was there. It wouldn't have been unusual if they'd forgotten him, and finding that they hadn't startled him more than slightly.

"Uh? N-nothing," he replied, somewhat uncertainly. "It's, um, not...anything. You're okay?" He'd had trouble keeping an eye on everyone in the darkness and...everything, the other night. But apparently Homura was hurt. Unless that had just happened last night?

[opposingheaven]

He frowned a little when Hanatarou flinched at the touch. That wasn't a reaction that he liked to see. The kid really was nervy, or else he was expecting to be hit and neither of those options gave Kenren much confidence. In what kind of place did a good healer end up acting like a kicked puppy? He was liking this Soul Society place less and less by the day. He smiled reassuringly at the kid as he finished his mouthful of food.

"I'm... I've been better but I'll live. Nothing physical though so no worries about healing, okay?" He always seemed like he needed to be doing something, like he felt he had to prove how useful he was even when he wasn't healing. "I was just a bit worried. That git on the bulletin laid into you pretty badly the other day. You okay? I meant to check up earlier but events got the better of me."

[unheroed]

And so it had finally come around to lunch. This would be the moment of truth, and while he hadn't been able to get as many pointers from Jason as he would have liked, Harvey was sure that he'd be just fine in the end. This was the sort of thing he was good at

[unheroed]

It was hard to tell if the kid had noticed who he was, seeing how he'd only spared a glance at Harvey in the first place. Well, if he hadn't, then they'd just have to wait for the fun to start when they got around to introductions. He was assuming that Robin knew his real name