Lunch Break

Posted on Wed Nov 17th, 2021 @ 4:10am by Damien McGinnis & Kilena Keithron

1,275 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: The Invasion
Location: Cafeteria, Earth Patrol Base 47
Timeline: 1330 hours, October 30th, 2050

Damien sat at the table in the cafeteria, a bacon cheeseburger and fries in front of him, the fries covered in ketchup. As always, he'd skipped the salad in the burger in favour of extra meat and cheese.

The perks of being miles from his hometown in Kansas was that his Dad wasn't there to complain about his eating habits. His mother had abandoned them when he was a baby, and his Dad had always compensated by trying to play both parents.

He picked up one of the fries, popping it in his mouth before licking the sauce from his fingers. He grimaced. Why had he finished the lemonade first? This was getting sickly. The fact he was alone just added to that.

Kilena had woken with the alarm feeling different from the previous days where she had been going through the motions of the Academy. ‘Be here, be there, don’t do that’had been the repeated phrases over the last few days to her from the all-seeing advisors and it was bad enough that she had been finding it just a tad difficult to hide the nerves and the discomfort grappling her body with tenacious claws at the situation that she was in without that.

The night before she had felt sick to her stomach so much so that she had refused food and went to sleep early or at least tried to. Rest couldn't help her, sleep only plunged her into dreams that exhausted her more than staying up most of the night studying.

Taking a deep breath and running a hand through her damp hair from training to tame it she opened the door to the cafeteria. Slipping into the large room felt like Kilena was having a flashback to high school, it looked and smelled like one and to add to the teenage feel people were staring at everyone trying to size them up. She glanced around nervously having been avoiding the place as she had felt too sick to eat since she had arrived at the beginning of meal times. With a small nod of thanks, she was given a tray of food and looked around for somewhere to sit. Every table she looked at was pretty much full apart from one in the corner that had one occupant. Slowly she weaved through the crowds and stood across from a man bent over his food at the table.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” She wondered off of the man sounding a lot more braver than she felt.

Damien looked the girl up and down for a second before kicking the seat across from him out and gesturing to it.

"Knock yourself out." He said, picking up another fry and popping it into his mouth "You must be either new or unpopular or both."

He looked familiar but she had met so many people over the last few days it was a blur. She smiled a little unsure of the reaction. Maybe he was just nervous. Maybe that was why no one was sitting next to him? Maybe he didn’t like company?

“Thank you.” Kilena let out a breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding and slipped into a chair one away from him gracefully. She settled down with her tray and gulped down some of the water before she finally dared to look around the room. Watching people carefully for a long moment she realised that there was a lot of glares that were shot in the direction she was sat in, she hadn’t done anything as far as she was sure to warrant it so it had to her company. "New but it seems you are unpopular by the glares in this direction."

"Disgraced squad commander." He noted "Doesn't win you many friends. Especially when the girl you inadvertently pranked has so many."

The woman smiled more when he revealed why he was getting glares and relaxed into her chair enough to take a sip out of the bland coffee that they served in there. Her face twisted into a frown as she set the coffee down realising she hadn’t sweetened it before sitting. The woman also suspected it was decaffeinated as with fitting with the whole Academy serving nothing but healthy food from what she had seen so far. "Now I do recognise you. My name is Kilena." She greeted holding out her hand, he looked human so the human greeting it was.

"Damien." He said through a mouthful of fries, shaking her hand with his own ketchup covered one before realising he hadn't wiped it "Sorry..."

The woman winced at her hand now covered in ketchup and wiped it on the napkin. "So what does a disgraced squad commander do around here then?" She hadn't seen him in training or anything so he must be really in disgrace.

"Lab assistant." Damien said "Apparently, playing with prototype guns is where I'm least likely to do any damage... Huh, only just realised how little sense that makes."

Kilena found herself giggling at the thought of this man in a lab with prototypes of any gun let alone anything gun related. "It really makes little sense Damien but must be exciting though?"

"Not really." Damien said "We're working with some crystal thing they dug up a few years back, along with a couple of others, but the prof is obsessive that we don't fire the weapons, only take readings. Feels like a waste of time."

"Oh, the things they dubbed solar crystals? My mum was an archaeologist on the team." She said admitted thinking that she would be better placed in the science division than fighting crime but her parents had insisted that her brain would be wasted if she went the same route as them.

"Yeah. The things are weird. Kind of creepy." He admitted, pausing "So, your Mom's an archaeologist. What made you decide you didn't want to follow in her footsteps? Got to be more interesting than daily combat drills?"

"They wanted me to try this first. They remember times when there wasn't peace, my people respect law enforcement more than any other profession." The woman said with a shrug as she thought about it properly.

"My Dad was horrified when I told him I was coming here." Damien said, laughing "Even more than when I told him I'd been kicked out of college."

"Seems like you are going from one disaster to another?" The woman said softly as she picked at her food. It wasn't that it was inedible but it wasn't exactly flavourful. "Does the food get better?" She wondered softly taking the sip of awful coffee.

"Why do you think I have so much ketchup?" He grinned "Without it, the fries taste like cardboard."

"You look a lot friendlier when you smile Damien." She commented on as she heard someone calling her name across the cafeteria. Kilena ducked a little and shoved some of her own chips into her own mouth to eat something. "That is the woman I am being mentored by Delivek... she scares me."

"Doesn't look so bad." Damien said, "What's so scary about her?"

“She took down someone twice her size first training session imagine what she’d do to me. I’d better go.” She realised that obviously lunch was over and it was time for theory work. “Maybe I’ll come down to the lab and check you're not playing with any dangerous weaponry,” Kilena smirked at her gentle teasing as a group of girls passed throwing some shade there way.

"That'd be cool." Damien said, "I'll see you around."

 

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