Lunch Date [Jacen]

[Faolan]

The few plates that Faolan balanced precariously on his tray put him in mind of one of those little pyramids people would make out of cards. The bottom row, what served as the base, consisted of a bit of plain white rice, a few patties of turkey sausage, and a good heaping of bacon. On the edges of these two more were balanced atop it, though they consisted mostly of condiments and syrup bottles and something that looked suspiciously like seaweed wrap. It had taken a fair amount of searching before he'd found a bar that looked like it served authentic Japanese cuisine, and only a small bit of persuading on his part to have the odd-looking chef let him have a few pieces of the wrapping for the rolls.

On the very top of this stack of sorts was a singular plate that teetered precariously on the edge and would slip from time to time. It was never enough to fall and shatter to the floor, but it kept him on his toes for a majority of the time as he migrated his way over to an empty table. The cuisine that adorned this plate wasn't spectacular-- it wasn't even a food, really, just a rather large mountain of ketchup.

The table that he found was located a bit aways from the perpetual crowd that seemed to occupy the cafeteria and offered some semblance of privacy and solitude to the Pravus grunt. After he had unloaded his bizarre meal he took a seat and began to tuck in. His uniform was still as crisp and fresh as when he had first worn it --- he paused, removed the hat from his head and set it carefully upon the table's surface --- and looked just as new. Clearly he took good care of it.

There was a scuttling sound across the floor and the chair beside him wiggled visibly away from the table. Faolan paid this no mind and simply went on drizzling a decent-sized amount of syrup all over his turkey sausage until the patties were drowning in it. A pair of beady black eyes popped up over the side of the table at him and a bottle of soda was pushed up onto the table with a strand of webbing attached to the bottom. Arioche clicked her pink mouthparts together in a reprimanding sort of tone and clambored her way onto the table to watch her master eat.

"I didn't have enough hands." Faolan answered simply and with a bit of a grin. His long, slender fingers began to tear the sausage apart bit by bit-- he began to nudge his plates aside -- and he drew the ketchup mountain closer to himself. With the sausage dripping thick strands of sugary sweet syrup across the table, he dipped the turkey patty into the red condiment and lifted it to his mouth for a bite.

Arioche's face contorted into something resembling morbid interest as she watched her master chew-- but she soon lost interest and plopped herself down in the seat to keep him company.

[Jacen Zidar]

"You should get something to eat."

Jacen lowered the book he'd been reading, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," and gave the xatu before him a questioning look. "Why do you say that?" Kairee nodded toward the clock on the wall, and Jacen followed her look in that direction. The time was 11:45. "Oh." He'd been sitting there reading since he got up at 7:30. "I didn't realize." Kairee simply gave him a stare and walked back over to the bedroom, where Jacen had seen her reading her own book of some kind. Setting the book on a table nearby, Jacen levered himself up and took hold of the articuno-headed cane. He'd planned on simply sitting down to read for an hour, and so hadn't gotten ready for the day beforehand. So he headed into the bathroom, showered, and dressed. He had, of course, been fitted for a new Pravus uniform, but as he often had before the war Jacen ignored its presence in his closet and picked out a different set of clothes, choosing a pair of khaki dress slacks and a lilac-colored shirt, finishing it off with a tie.

Jacen finished tying his tie as he turned to speak to the xatu. "Do you want to come along?" Kairee gave him a doubtful look. "To the cafeteria?" Jacen smiled. "Yes, to the cafeteria. Are you hungry or no?" Kairee didn't respond, instead simply turning back to the book she was flipping through. However, as Jacen started for the door, she stood up and followed him, walking next to him through the hallways and into the cafeteria. He glanced around on the way in, spotting a few people he knew - and one he remembered from a couple weeks ago. Jacen moved toward the shortest line for food, asking for a vegetable wrap and fruit salad (and a cup of soup for Kairee) as he tried to remember the private's name.

The answer came to him as he moved to find a table, Kairee holding the tray for him - if she hadn't come along, he would have asked Crag to come instead, for he couldn't walk and carry the tray himself. "Feng, if I remember correctly, yes?" he asked as he approached the table. Kairee stepped next to him, looking from the grunt to the little spider-pokemon, and finally settling her gaze with some distaste onto the heaping pile of ketchup on the table. Jacen inclined his head toward the table, giving a questioning look to Faolan as a request for permission to sit down. Many of his rank wouldn't bother asking, but as far as Jacen was concerned rank was a place that belonged largely in the field.

[Faolan]

At the voice he looked up, caught sight of the man and immediately placed a name with it. Though it had been quite some time and the appellation with which the man had given him was not a very common one, to Faolan it came rather easily enough and he let it roll off his tongue smoothly. Arioche seemed to disapprove and rather sunk sullenly down into her chair with beady black eyes fixed up at the newcomer warily. She did not make a move towards her master's chair, though-- whether or not Faolan was pleased with the change in situation affected whether or not she would be punished later.

"Yes, Jacen Zidar." It sounded a bit mechanical, but he didn't much care. Although this man was higher ranking than him, there wasn't really much separating them apart from that. When you got right down to it, Faolan was simply a young man and Jacen Zidar was probably... well, a lot older. He couldn't quite tell just how much older, but it was a fairly large age gap. This probably an odd difference, but then again, Faolan was an odd sort of person.

As he dipped another shred of sausage into the ketchup [which had now become rather sticky and runny with the excess amounts of syrup that had been drizzled atop it], Arioche seemed to decide on an appropriate course of action and popped up over the side of the table once again to eyeball the man standing beside it. The private seemed to regard Jacen's nod a few moments, gaze sweeping up and down his form-- they settled on the food propped up on the man's tray and he arched a brow -- before kicking at the chair in which Arioche settled and earning a rather irritated hiss in response.

"Move. He wants to sit."

Immediately the black markings on Arioche's abdomen changed to a flat line of disapproval and she scuttled on down the chair leg and to the floor. Her little feet could be heard tap-tapping across the linoleum as they approached her master's leg, but fell silent moments later when she stilled and perched dutifully at his feet. If he felt any splat of something sticky on his shoe, the Pravus private pretended not to notice and turned his attention to the seaweed wrap and the bacon, pulling each in turn towards himself along with a bottle of soy sauce.

"That isn't much of a meal," he commented, gaze flicking up to the fruit salad and the vegetable wrap. "Buneary food, really." He paused in the middle of wrapping his bacon in seaweed. "And it's Faolan, now."

[Jacen Zidar]

Kairee's eyes remained on the mountain of food in front of the young man, moving to his face only when he lifted a piece of dipped sausage into his mouth. Her expression was slightly blank, but the slight tilt of her head revealed to someone who was paying close attention that she couldn't quite believe he was actually eating that sticky mess of condiment and meat. It looked like something Thor would like, actually... The typhlosion could eat just about anything (and would, with great relish). After the initial look she tried to keep her eyes off the food, as though not looking at it would make it turn into something else, something - anything - slightly more appetizing.

Jacen smiled slightly as the kid - again with that "kid" connotation; he really had to stop doing that before it started dating him - seemed to remember his name instantly. There weren't many who, after a chance meeting in a hallway, would remember the name of one of many, many Pravus employees. High ranking or not (and Jacen was still teetering precariously in terms of keeping his old rank or an equivalent one) it was still difficult, and often fruitless, to try to remember everyone's name. It didn't matter much what tone was used, as far as Jacen was concerned. The point was, at least now, that he'd paid attention in the first place, enough to remember his surname as well, unusual as it was.

The private seemed to size him up a bit, looking him over from face to shoes, and finally to Kairee and the tray she held. The chair nearest Jacen suddenly jerked away from the table, causing more than a little disapproval from the spinarak, whose expression (such that it was) changed to a flat, irritated line. She scuttled away nonetheless, and was tactful enough not to leave any bits of stringy webbing behind as she left the spot. Jacen nodded slightly toward the private as he grabbed the back of the chair and the edge of the table, not sitting so much as controlling a sideways fall into the chair. If they were just a bit taller, getting around would be infinitely easier... Kairee set the tray down and took a chair next to Jacen, pulling her soup closer and leaving the tray itself to her trainer.

Jacen smirked slightly at the mention of buneary food. He shrugged a little, picking up a fork and spearing a piece of melon. "I don't tend to need energy food most of the time. I'm not exactly spending time at the jogging track." He tapped the head of his cane, just visible over the edge of the table, with a finger as he said this. Unlike many, Jacen didn't have a problem making mention - or making light - of his particular difficulty. The other cause of his recent lack of protein intake, that being a slightly slower metabolism than he'd had ten or twenty years ago, was a lesser-mentioned subject. He didn't like the idea of getting older, even though he was hardly the oldest person at headquarters.

"Faolan. Fair enough." Briefly, Jacen considered asking about the removal of the nickname, but he decided against it and instead took a bite of melon, eyeing the young man's own meal. Maybe not quite something he would have chosen to eat when he was that age, but an interesting choice. Jacen took a few seconds to pick at the fruit salad, chewing and swallowing another bite before deciding to open up a conversation.

"As I mentioned a while ago, I haven't been here for the last couple of years. Perhaps you could fill me in on some of the news? Not gossip; I'm not interested in that." While not entirely true, the bit about gossip was more to keep the comments specific, at least for now. Jacen was only interested in gossip as far as it was necessary (which, at Pravus, tended to mean he was often getting filled in on the latest news about this administrator or that field marshall), but he didn't expect such trivialities to be important - at least not yet.

[Faolan]

Remembering Jacen's name was not a hard feat, especially considering he'd only met a small handful of people during the time he was here. Privates usually got the brunt of the work and weren't necessarily required to socialize much with their peers unless they were performing missions together; goodness knows Faolan spent enough time out of headquarters to narrowly avoid meeting and greeting most of his other coworkers. He couldn't be bothered much, though, because half the time he tended to run or even see a bunch of moronic idiots clad in Pravus blue, guffawing or slapping themselves on the back over some particularly underhanded or nasty deed they'd performed earlier in the day. It was almost like a college frat party, at times, minus the alcohol [as far as he could see].

The rather odd tasting meal he'd prepared for himself was tangy, sweet and thick. Proper etiquette had him making sure he'd swallowed and eaten all that was in his mouth [syrup proved to be rather sticky, and his mouth was already watering from the slightly sour aspect of the ketchup] before speaking, but even then he had to take a small sip of the soda Arioche had brought for him earlier before he felt his throat cleared enough to make conversation with the man.

"News isn't really my thing. If you're asking about the Rangers, I haven't heard a thing about them. Although.."

Arioche was now curling herself up on his shoes and picking rather apologetically at the glob of spider's web she'd spat earlier. Even though Faolan tended to be a bit of a heavy-handed sort of person when it came to disciplining her, a lot of the times her jests and little pranks weren't meant seriously. She liked to think that she was one of the reasons why he wasn't looking like a hot mess in the morning and tended to fuss over the little aspects of his clothes from time to time in order to make him more presentable.

Of course Faolan never really saw, or if he did he didn't show any gratitude aside from not stuffing her in a pillowcase for the day.

Unless he got really, really bored, of course.

The cane piqued his interest, if only for a few moments. When he thought about it, really, he hadn't been around many people that were older than him. Not from Pravus, at least. He wasn't stupid enough to think that they would have followed that old folk tale and simply stuffed all the elderly chaps over forty into a little mountainside or anything, but his thoughts were somewhat close to that. Come to think of it, did Pravus actually have an age limit that determined when a person was too old and would be better suited for retirement? Maybe they just went and experimented on them, put their bodies to better use and harvested organs for future scientific ventures.

That would have been an interesting notion.

Faolan finished wrapping a few pieces of bacon up tightly with the seaweed wrap and securing it firmly to ensure it did not unroll on him. That done, he plucked up a little fork and made a sort of slit at the end, then took the soy sauce he'd procured from earlier and started drizzling it in through the little ventilation system he'd made. As the bacon-roll was soaked through with the salty liquid, he turned his gaze back to the man to properly assess and answer his question.

Some might have found it odd that Faolan tended to not look up at the ceiling or down at the floor when he talked to someone; no, he stared right into their eyes, silently watching, judging, assessing the effect his words or information might have had on them.

"Clones have been short-sighted a lot lately. Don't see them too much anymore; hear them, though, sometimes down in the lab. But those are pokemorphs, right? Not exactly the same thing." He smiled a boyish smile, laughed, and went back to his meal. The bacon-wrap was dipped into the ketchup and he took a bite, chewed slowly, swallowed, and then went on. "The island, though, it's been wiped out. Mewtwo's place, I mean."