damned_institute | Day 38: Lunch

What a shame Teisel didn't have a rock with him. This girl's parents had obviously been very lax about instilling any sort of manners in their daughter at all, by any technique.

"Look, kid, if you just came over here to rile me maybe you should go sit somewhere else." He wasn't in the mood to be antagonized by some punk kid. Hopefully she'd shape up and leave him alone.

Pity the fire had been so short-lived. Still, in the end serious types were potentially a lot more fun. Teasing and browbeating were easy, but they were unsatisfying compared to digging deeper into people.

"Well, that is why I came over," Evangeline admitted easily, "But isn't this better than sitting on your own wondering whether you'll make it through the night or ever see your friends again or whatever? You should live a little, even if it's just being angry at me."

What a strange girl. She really had just come over and started pestering him because she was bored.

"Are you really that starved for attention?" Teisel snapped impatiently. "No, actually, it isn't better. I got enough on my mind without some rude little brat giving me a hard time for no reason." He glared down at her for a moment. "Why don't you go play with someone your own age, eh?"

"They usually are a bit thicker-skinned," Evangeline mused for his benefit, "But I've had no one to talk to but kids for fifteen years, you see. A hell full of adults is a big improvement, and I don't want to have wasted it if they send me back in a hurry."

She paused, then tilted her head and smiled wryly. "So what is on your mind, eh? I'll waive my consultant's fee and everything."

There was absolutely nothing about her that suggested she could be trusted as a confidant or to give good advice, but it would give her something to do that wasn't mindlessly picking at him. And she was waiving her fee. A steal!

Hmph. He had all kinds of thick skin, he just didn't see why he had to put up with someone else's kid's sass. "Oh really?" He picked a bit of wilted lettuce out of his taco. Would it kill them to get rid of the slimy leaves? "You look about half that age. Just undersized, huh? Maybe you should eat something." If she were eating, she couldn't talk, after all.

The precocious act might have been more endearing if she hadn't been so snotty before. "Lucky me." One look at that face was enough to convince Teisel that she was no one he wanted to bare his innermost soul to. Hell, not even his outermost soul. "Right now, I'm wondering if my flashlight's dried out by now." Maybe it wasn't his biggest worry, but he would need the light later on and it had gotten thoroughly soaked the other night.

Evidently, he had underestimated just how bad Evangeline's manners were- eating and talking at the same time was something she was well-practiced at. She could actually get pretty snobbish about etiquette in the right circumstances, but public meals like this weren't among them.

"I look like a lot of things I'm not," she responded cryptically. Let him chew on that a little, hopefully make some assumptions. Correct, incorrect, whatever, as long as has mind led him down a path that made him think better of treating her like a child it would probably be an improvement.

"No one gets depressed over a flashlight," she added, annoyed that he'd deflected her question in such an inane way. "Anyway, everyone has one, right? I'm sure if you asked on that bulletin board someone would let you borrow theirs."

She sounded vaguely disgusted with the idea, in this case because she was imagining her apprentice at his naive do-gooding save-the-world worst, and muttered irritably. "Just like him..."

"Like a well-mannered young lady," Teisel supplied, watching bits of food attempt (and sometimes succeed) at escaping her mouth while she talked. His mind supplied a couple more options that he kept to himself. They involved a lot of 'nots': not a snotty little hellspawn, not an obnoxious human blister, etc.

Naturally, he wasn't depressed over a little thing like that, but damned if he told her what was really on his mind. If she wanted to get information out of people, she could start by not pissing them off. This was a life lesson she was learning. Maybe. "It was a very good flashlight." He gazed over at the far wall, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she wasn't worth his undivided attention. "We've been through some tough times together. And," he pointed out, "everyone has one flashlight. Nobody's going to stumble around in the dark just for the sake of doing a stranger a favor." Teisel wouldn't.

"I look well-mannered to you?" Evangeline just smiled condescendingly at the insult. She knew damn well she wasn't and was far from ashamed of it. Still, he'd been right in the end. 'Young' she was not.

He was wrong on the second count too, though for this at least Evangeline could find no fault with him. "That's what you'd think, wouldn't you? But the world is full of idiots who'll do just that. Trust me, my apprentice would in a heartbeat."

By the time she finished she wasn't looking at Teisel either, and completely missed his snub. Her thoughts had drifted to the boy.

"At first glance. The shine wears off pretty quick," he assured her. Ugh. He was losing his appetite. It had barely been there to begin with...

"Hmph." There was an idealistic sucker born every minute, that was true. "Your apprentice is a moron, then, if you don't mind my saying so. Apparently you're not teaching them too well." Where the hell would a kid her age get an apprentice? An apprentice what? Professional demon-child?

"Glad I'm not losing my touch," Evangeline said, though frankly she was pretty sure she was. A year ago she could have counted the number of people willing to start and finish a conversation with her on her hands; now it seemed like everyone considered her rudeness a harmless eccentricity and... talked to her and stuff. At least this guy seemed to hate her guts.

"You don't know the half of it," she agreed. "I've made him struggle for everything I've given him, thrown him into the crucible every chance I've gotten, and finally he puts aside his pathetic moral quibbling and fights only for himself like a dark mage should, and what happens? The next week he's talking about making the world the kind of place where he doesn't have to do things like that. By helping random people."

It wasn't the end of the world. Evangeline was fair; she was fine with people choosing to be stupid or boring. But it was embarrassing after all the work she'd put in.

Huh. No fear of that. Teisel sipped at his water, letting his thoughts drift to more important things. If his flashlight was still wet by this evening, finding the Admiral's room was going to be tricky. Maybe he'd have to count doors or something.

He hadn't been able to follow even half of what she was babbling about, but it had at least piqued his interest. "The heroic type, eh?" There wasn't any real sympathy in his voice, but if the conversation was edging in a more civil direction, he wouldn't try to make it worse again.

"Yeah. In his blood I guess. The boy at least is smart enough to have the occasional crisis of faith, might be bearable when he gets older, but his father was about as bad as they get. Big damn hero, stopped a world war, saved the world, huge fanclub and all that. Which I guess is to his credit, but the man was a moron."

And Evangeline loved him despite it all, even after his humiliating rejection and her subsequent imprisonment, though that she was not going to tell Teisel, or anyone else around here. Old Eros had a sick, sick sense of humor and she hated to be the butt of a joke.

Yeah. Moving on. "You have to deal with them a lot too? You look like you would." Not quite grim enough for a career soldier or the dark knight type... "Mercenary? Sky pirate?" She hazarded.

Teisel snorted. "Yeah, I know the type. How they manage to live as long as they do is beyond me." He picked at his salad. The dressing was a little too strong, but if his shoved it around a little it wasn't too bad.

When the girl asked about him, he got the distinct feeling that there was a reason she was changing the subject. Oh well. It wasn't anything worth prying out of her, probably. The guess, surprisingly enough, was right on the money. "Hey! Got it in two tries," Teisel said, tearing his attention away from his fascinating salad to look at her. "You're good. And yeah," he continued, to answer her first question, "it was a lot easier before some busybody with no life decided to stick his nose in my family's business." He couldn't in good conscience hate Rock, but he didn't have to like him. And he didn't.

Well, in Nagi's case he had survived by being born with overwhelming magical powers... but Evangeline agreed with the sentiment so she didn't feel any need to point that out.

"Of course I am," she said, accepting the compliment with a distinct lack of humility. Flattery probably hadn't been Teisel's intent, but it did make Evangeline a lot easier to deal with if you could stomach doling it out. She missed having her reputation.

"So you're what, in a stalemate with this guy? How's he work?" Talking business suited her fine. She hadn't had problems with wannabes in a while but she remembered what it was like. Brought her back to the bad old good old days.

Teisel wisely chose to ignore the less-than-gracious way she'd taken the compliment. Everyone had their hotspots.

"You could call it that, I guess," Teisel grumbled, stabbing a grape tomato with his fork a little harder than necessary. "He's a rival Digger, and a sharp-shooter. Whatever we're doing, he's gotta show up and hassle us. Always going on about how stealing's immoral, and we shouldn't go around bullying people, isn't there a better way to live, blah blah friggin' blah. Then he does twice the damage we caused fighting us. And the town he so graciously rescued ends up giving him the same thing we were trying to steal! It's either hypocrisy, or he's the most conniving little punk I've ever met."

Teisel took a sip of his water to calm himself down. "And now? He's trapped on the moon, and I'm trapped in here.

"That's the way it always is," Evangeline complained. "The world is full of necessary evils and harsh truths and they don't want to hear it, can't be bothered to take a close look at the limits of their ideology. They just do whatever feels good to them without any insight at all..."

She trailed off as the rest of what he'd said caught up with her through her ranting. "The moon? How did he manage that?"

She'd been around for the Apollo landings, but Teisel had up to now given her the impression that wherever he was from was pretty similar to the Old World, which owing to the limitations of magical technology had never developed a space program.

Teisel nodded agreement. She was very well spoken for her age. Level-headed, too, unlike some people.

"That's a good question. I'm not really straight with all the details, myself." He and his sibs had had their own troubles when all of that was going down, after all. "His helper robot told us about it, said he'd followed an old friend up there to give her a beating. A well-deserved one, from the sounds of it." How Data had escaped, no one knew. The little gearhead was good at dodging questions. "Whatever got them up there in the first place got trashed, and now they're stranded. I don't think it's any big deal, but no one seems to agree with me." He shrugged. Some people had no sense.

Oh. Evangeline's face fell. That was kind of anticlimactic. No big showdown, in fact or in the potential future... well, if this robot thing was telling the truth. She kind of hoped it wasn't, even though she'd almost certainly never know either way. An end without a struggle was always boring.

"So what's a Digger?" she asked, now that the potentially more interesting line of questioning had apparently been exhausted. "Professional ruin looters?"

It was a common enough profession in the Old World and she'd already guessed correctly once referring back to the place. Made a better story than if their rivalry had started over drainage ditches or something.

He ignored her look of disappointment. This wasn't story time, for crying out loud.

That question still made him feel off-kilter, even now that he'd figured out where he was (and wasn't). "Looting is kind of a strong word," he said, looking appropriately hurt. "I mean, it's not like the ancients are using any of the stuff we take, right? Besides, we're performing an essential service to society." It was true enough, and if that essential service wasn't provided for free, well...that was only fair, considering what dangerous work digging was.

"What?" she asked incredulously. "You're a pirate, right? Don't you already take living people's stuff?"

Well, some people had their little lines they didn't want to cross. Maybe he was some history buff and considered messing with the present acceptable but taking relics a necessary evil, or something. People were weird like that.

"Oh, that's something altogether different," Teisel said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Robbery's just common sense. They shouldn't show off what they can't defend, am I right? I mean, what do they expect to happen? My family's gotta eat, too." Just a touch of defensiveness came through. It wasn't like Teisel robbed people just for kicks. He enjoyed it, sure, but not in a particularly malicious way.

And, thinking practically, every ruin was a gamble. There might be something valuable inside, or there might be nothing. There was almost always money to be made in a city.

"What, they expect," Evangeline said, "Is that each day will be mostly like the last, with the same pleasures and the same pains. That's how humans live. The common sense of an outcast doesn't apply to them."

She smiled as she spoke; she wasn't admonishing him. Just explaining something she got a lot of misanthropic satisfaction out of explaining.

Teisel grimaced. The only honest year of his life had been by far the longest. "It is all the same, and it's a lot more pain than anything else, as far as I can tell. I don't know how they can stand it." At least on the outside he hadn't felt trapped.

He grinned back; he was slowly warming up to the little blister. "Huh. All things considered, they really should be thanking us. They're not losing anything they can't get back in a few years, and they get something interesting to tell their grandchildren." One adventure for the price of a bank account and maybe one lousy house plus contents--the bargain of a lifetime.

Day 38: Lunch

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