RP: Cirrus Station [Episode 4] A Pleasant Dinner

Tweak had stayed quiet the rest of the walk with George, then picked out a seat after waiting for a few others to do so first once they arrived at Cassifin's quarters. Then she stayed pretty much as invisible as she could without actually becoming invisible throughout the dinner, just watching, listening, and eating.

The soup wasn't the tastiest, but it was soup. And the salad actually was the best thing on the table, having the texture of the lettuce to give something to it where the soup was mostly bland.

But the burgers...flavor was not something missing in the burgers. Though Tweak wasn't sure what flavors would normally be in a burger, there was no possible WAY they were supposed to and actually intended to taste this way.

The Tactical OS was happy, in a way. It snapped on the chance to analyze the contents of the burger, and a list of the constituent ingredients began scrolling down on the side of Tweak's field of vision. Tweak's face began falling almost at the same rate as the list. It just couldn't be possible that someone could be that bad at cooking...who would put what tasted like moonshine-soaked wood pulp in a hamburger? That wasn't anywhere in her database recipe...

Putting the burger (faaaaaarrrr) to the side, Tweak munched on lettuce dipped in soup for a few minutes as Dream and Cassifin talked. Then she got brave (how could Headmaster Real possibly mess up the bread?) the neko eventually put some of the salad in the bun and then dipped the burger into the soup...the resulting combination was the tastiest of all, fortunately. And so four more buns vanished that way as she listened to the whispers that passed as conversation and the exchanges between Cassifin and the more daring of the team. The meat patties, though, were beginning to stack.

Cassefin's sudden reaction didn't bring him any reassurance. With everyone around him cautiously avoiding the burger meat itself, and Cassefin's determined stare and unnerving focus on him, he suspected something was awry. But he didn't have any real reason to believe this, and he didn't want to offend his new boss...

"Uh... ok..." His eyes focused on Cassefin, nervously watching her in case she did anything suspicious. Quite what she could do that wasn't already suspicious he didn't know, but he was looking for it. His arm slowly took one of the stacked patties from near Tweak and brought it close to his mouth, pausing for a second to look at Cassefin, regarding her with distrust and suspicion.

Time seemed to stand still for him, trying to work out what bizarre cogs were turning in the head administrators brain. At least this is the Cassefin Montreal I was warned about back at base, he thought to himself. He bit into the burger, chewed a few times while still staring straight at Cassefin, then swallowed.

"Uh... tastes pretty good." It was a lie, and not a very good one, though he hoped it was convincing. It tasted like a cheap night in a cheap bar, drinking only the cheapest drinks that were 90% chemicals and smoking cigarettes that tasted like they were made of charcoal. Not a great taste, but one he'd lived through before, and hopefully he'd wake up tomorrow morning much the same way.

"...Did you make them yourself, or did you have them ordered in?" he posed, trying to distract himself from the burger in his hands.

Tweak glanced up at Stovaa, wondering why he was taking the patty...and why he hadn't wondered why she wasn't eating them.

But apparently he liked it. So she picked up another one and offered it to him with a friendly smile.

"Ah ha ha!" Cassefin clapped her hands together joyously and kept them clasped in front of her, absolutely beaming with pride. "You are indeed correct, Stovaa, I did make these delicious sandwiches myself! They are a new formula for creating a healthy alternative to meat without the unnecessarily high levels of protein present in normal meat substitutes."

The truth of the matter was that these 'hamburgers' were absolutely, positively inedible. There were no redeeming qualities to the taste or texture in the slightest. This 'meat substitute' could potentially be the worst thing any person in the room had ever eaten. Cassefin leaned forward on the table, grinning almost maniacally at Stovaa.

"Delicious, aren't they? Would you like another?"

With a surprised and confused blink, Tweak looked at Cassifin.

"But protein is necessary for a typical humanoids diet, and is one of the few redeeming quality of a meat-inclusive diet..." she murmured. But she just shrugged to herself and waited a few more seconds for Stovaa to either grab or refuse the patty.

Meanwhile, in her little corner of the Scene, Dream was eating the woodburger, and enjoying it.

That was, probably, the best sign that it was inedible, if it took one alien with a screwed-up biochemistry to digest it.

"...wow. This tastes like the stuff I used to eat back home! Awesome! Nostalgia trip..."

(no one had forgotten that the staple diet of Freespacers is space slugs, minced musks and lichens, plastic derivatives, industrial chemicals, recycled waste and recycled dead people, with a side order of a variety of radioactive metals)

"Uh... Just one more, I suppose..." Despite the fact he'd spent a long time roaming Funky City's lowest of lows, eating the cheapest food possible, these burgers were something else. But he was dumb enough to try and keep Cassefin happy, so he finished the one he was holding and took the one Tweak offered him.

"Thanks... Tweak was it?" He took a bite of the McAntifreezeWoodpulp and chewed it slowly before swallowing it laboriously. "Why would you get rid of all the protein though? I mean, like ..." His mind went blank. What was the crazy 'Spacer's name? "...DREAM! Um, yeah, like Dream said, protein is pretty important, especially to Id-Sol's like me, since we have a higher muscle density as well as being taller in general..."

He took another few bites to finish the burger before grabbing a handful of salad and eating it fairly fast, trying to get the taste of the "meat" out of his mouth, while also trying to look normal to keep Cassefin from flipping and throwing something at him.

"Mm... Where did you get the idea for the ingredients, if I may ask?" he wasn't sure he'd like the answer, but it was a question that would have played on his mind all evening if he didn't ask now. His guess, she looked through the garbage and inspiration struck.

While everyone else was beginning to gorge themselves on the burgers, Keziah, too, stopped eating.

She started unbuckling her uniform tunic until it was half-open, listening to the talk that was flying around. So the soup was okay. The salad, too. But the burgers were home-made, from the ground up, with no meat in them.

Claire had a point. If the burgers were like that, then what about everything else?

Keziah leaned over to whisper to Claire. "Okay, you win." She grinned.

Claire was a tad confused as to what Kaz was talking about when she said that she won. Then again, she was kind of absorbed in her own thoughts at the moment so she probably missed something. At least she didn't feel so bad about not eating, now seeing that she wasn't the only one.

"I won...?" Claire's eyebrow raised as Keziah unbuckled her tunic. "So what did I win?" She smiled. The things happening around her didn't concern her as much, though Dream really seemed to be enjoying whatever the food actually was. Something she didn't care to find out at this point. She kept her ears open just enough in case Cassefin had something to yell about.

"You have a nice smile, you know that?" She complimented Keziah with an honest look on her face. She wondered if she smiled very often. There was a difference between someone who smiled a lot and had found out a way to do so at will and those who were genuinely enjoying themselves. Claire believed her friend to be the latter. Hopefully.

MissingNo said:

With a surprised and confused blink, Tweak looked at Cassifin.

"But protein is necessary for a typical humanoids diet, and is one of the few redeeming quality of a meat-inclusive diet..." she murmured. But she just shrugged to herself and waited a few more seconds for Stovaa to either grab or refuse the patty.

Click to expand...

"Not only that," Serra continued after Tweak talked. "The reason non-meat related diets have high protein alternatives is because of the inherent lack of protein in the selection." The Elsyain finished by pushing her glasses up, and poking one of the "Vegen-burgers" with a finger. "Making a protein-less meat alternative is pretty dangerous in a protein starved diet in the first place. Given the choices, I'd eat a tofu-burger over something made from pulverized hardwood."

The smile disappeared, and Keziah turned away, frowning to herself.

She wasn't used to compliments about herself. Her work, of course. Her training. She had once taken an AIR unit through atmospheric maneuvers it shouldn't have been able to do, impressing even her sergeants. Probably more with the fact that she had survived.

Keziah shook herself, and turned back to Claire, her face impassive. But her eyes showed her emotions; surprise, and a mild kind of confusion. "Thanks," she breathed. "I don't hear that very often."

"Really? It's a shame you don't, dear. A smile like that could diffuse even the most onery of people's tempers." Claire, deciding to take a chance with her friend (Despite having just become such.) and reached over to pat Keziah's hand. It was a small gesture, but a kind one nonetheless. "I get the feeling you don't have the greatest of self-esteem though, hon. Tis a shame, really. I've just met you and I already think you're an interesting person." Claire gave her a warm expression. She really was a caring person, despite being a bit onery herself at times.

She listened to the Elysian, ...Serra was it? Anyway, she listened to her elaborate on her opinion of the food. Did this Montreal person starve these people or what? She didn't get the feeling that they had that much interest in food before they ever came here... "A burger without meat? Isn't that like... an oxymoron or something?" Then again, what did she know?

She looked away from Claire again, longer this time. It wasn't the touch, it was the words, and she carefully hid her blush from everyone. It was gone by the time Claire switched the subject to food (something she could talk about!).

"Protein substitutes that aren't meat-based," Keziah was murmuring, running her spoon in circles through her soup, thoughtful. "Or you could go completely sideways with vegetable subs, or completely synthetic compounds." It was those purely synthetic ones that positively frightened her. How they were ever classified as food was beyond her.

Maybe some nutrition officials had been bribed. Or the flavor police had been murdered.

She hoped these burgers weren't like that, but she wasn't about to go and have a taste to check. I'll endanger almost everything about myself, except my mouth.

"Now if it was meatless steak..."

Cassefin, oddly enough, didn't break away from her enticing, accepting smile as she surveyed the varied opinions around the room. However, it soon became plainly obvious that she was doing her best to maintain this expression, and later the Head Administrator could be heard gritting her pearly whites behind that sly little grin.

"For your information, there is no 'wood pulp' in this meat-substitute-substitute mixture. It is a complex cocktail of enzymes and low-protein legumes found in the Prilisa IV flora infrastructure. I will have you know that protein, when taken in amounts that exceed daily recommended dosages, can clog your arteries, constricts your airways and can eventually lead to shortness of breath and possible blindness," Cassefin said, picking up her own alien-bean sandwich and taking a small bite, throwing her chin up at the rest of them as she chewed.

After a moment, the chewing started to slow. Slower...slower still...until it finally stopped. Cassefin held narrow-eyed glance across the table for a moment or two before releasing a closed-mouth cough. Slowly, calmly and as nonchalantly as possible, Cassefin reached for a posh red-woven dinner napkin, expelled the half-chewed contents from her mouth into the cloth, which subsequently vanished underneath the edge of the table as if it never happened at all.

"It is very important that you look after your own personal health...because more often than not, nobody else is going to watch over you for you. You all should consider yourselves lucky to have such a caring Head Administrator," She stated.

Serra watches Cassifin for a moment a brow perking as the Administrator took a bite of the bean paste burger, it lowered again once Cassifin slowly stopped her chewing and she quickly removed the lump of food from her mouth. Serra then narrowed her eyes and smiled sardonically at her.

"Not very tasty is it?" She asked, her words dripping with something, but it wasn't venom. "I'm betting you didn't bother to either spice these up to enhance the flavor, or you didn't bother to add any bullion to mask it." Serra stated, "with your own response to them, I will regretfully decline to eat one." The Elysian said, taking some salad and a bowl of weak broth soup.

Stovaa watched Cassefin dispose of her mouthful of burger, all the while slowly chewing his mouthful of lettuce. Damn, didn't she even try them before serving them to us? he thought.

"Uh... So if we have too much protein, it's bad for us. So... a good meal for a team of soldiers would contain... very little protein?" Stovaa said slowly and quietly. What is this crazy woman thinking...

He swallowed the last of his salad and leant back in his chair, feeling relaxed if a little unwell inside. His stomach was rising in anger against him for shovelling the foul food into it, he suspected.

"Tastes great, by the way."

Lorcan had sipped at his soup and nibbled at his salad and then relaxed back into his chair and watched the rest of them bicker over if the burgers were actually edible or not. Seeing that Dream was eating one and Stovaa had had a few, though obviously not enjoying it. So Lorcan himself got bold, picked one up, stripped it of bun and then with artistic creativeness piled a few fork fulls of salad on it and devoured the whole thing without pause.

Once he'd swallowed the last bite he sat there for a minute and then grinned at 'Real. "Honestly Headmaster Montreal I believe this to be the best thing you've created yet..." And the big street fighter happily dug into a second, and then a third, packing them away like cookies, sipping at his soup broth and heaping them with salad. When he'd finished Soup and Salad he quit there, his stomach full and a rather 'Just-Got-Wasted' looking grin on his face as he idly picked at his teeth with a fingernail.

Tweak watched Lorcan pack away the burgers -- sans buns no less -- and held out her plate of discarded burger patties. "I'll eat those if you aren't going to," she offered, motioning to the pile of bread on his plate.

"It's a substitute.... of a substitute? How in the hell do you manage that?" Claire looked rather incredulous at Cassefin's explanation of what was in the food. Now she really didn't want to eat it. It's not like she wanted to be rude to the administrator... Just that old memories don't go away easily.

She looked around the table. Some, including the headmaster herself, thought it tasted positively awful. While others thought it was the best thing that they had ever eaten. These people now genuinely confused her. She could understand having different tastes, but after witnessing Cassefin's reaction to her own food, she wasn't sure how the others could like it. She glanced sideways at Keziah, "Please tell me they're just pretending to like it just to be nice..." Although the words 'kiss-ass' crossed her mind earlier, she filtered out that line of thinking.

Lorcan looked up as Tweak asked after the burger buns. He considered, stuck a few into the pockets of his trench coat for later and passed the rest over to tweak with a grin. "Sure, help yourself." Then he turned to look at Claire, having overheard her murmur to Kez and chuckled. "Better than most of what I've eaten since I was six... except for maybe boot camp..." He shook his head. “I like it, it’s solid… not this bagged crap she’s making us eat…The salad helps…” He added in a whisper.

Then he grinned, got up and shifted so he could put his put his head in between Kez and Claire, this for their ears only, although undoubtedly someone else would hear. He murmured softly in each of their ears a flattering “And might I say you’re both rather beautiful tonight.” And left them to think that over while he took a seat and casually slipped his knife from his left boot and commenced cleaning his nails beneath the table.