damned_institute | Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

Yuffie took the long way around, practically making it a tour of the entire town. She collared--not literally, since the nurses would've thrown fits--a few random citizens along the way, asked as many inconspicuous sounding questions as possible, and then moved on. Wash, rinse, repeat. Sneaking a few covert glimpses into stores and windows confirmed what she'd been talking about with Sam earlier; no dates, no explicitly mentioned locations outside of the town itself… how weird was that? Even the most insular of towns back on Gaia would've coughed up some kind of connection with the outside world.

It was almost like a living ghost town.

Well, maybe she was just thinking too hard. Maybe she was throwing shuriken too hard at the wrong target. Back home, she had a concrete frame of reference. Here, she couldn't take anything for granted; she had no local or international knowledge whatsoever. All she could try to do was get a profile of the immediate area and build it up and out from there. Theories were already budding, popping up like weeds hit by Quadra-Haste, but without facts to back them up, theories were like sand in a desert.

Not that she didn't want to share those theories, sand or not. She did. A lot.

Once she'd developed a viable mental map of the place (as viable as she was gonna get given the time constraints), Yuffie swung back around and jogged back to North Street. From there, she took the alley; a quick right turn; slow to a trot, and there. Her cheeks were tinged pink from the cold winter air, and they stung as she poked her head in through the door.

Okay, so maybe she was a little early after all. That was cool. Very cool. She had some time to set things up, to pretend that she wasn't hideously under prepared for this lunch date. Stepping into the warmth, Yuffie surreptitiously cased the place out as she headed to a table. Homey, in a way that almost reminded her of some of the up-and-coming rural towns. Automatically seeking out one of the more strategic seats--one with a good view of the rest of the restaurant, and one that didn't leave her totally vulnerable to mutant chairs or murderous sandwiches--she made herself comfortable, whipped out a few crumpled pieces of paper and a pen, and began to jot down her findings.

[Closed to Edgeworth.]

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Asch looked up, frowning a little. He hadn't wanted company. He had to admit, though, that Claude was a much more welcome sight than Jason had been.

"I fell asleep last night and didn't do much of anything," he said, after a pause. He hadn't meant to, of course; he'd just been inexplicably tired, and when he'd woken up, it was morning and they were all being herded onto the buses headed for the town.

He fidgeted a little, feeling awkward. He still wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to talk to Claude. Claude had allegedly known him before, although he himself had no memory of it. And Claude was more or less the only constant he'd found here. Guy didn't trust him, that was obvious, so he'd made no real attempt to talk to Guy again. The replica was missing, and Van couldn't really be counted as constant no matter what happened. He supposed that Zex was pretty constant, but he was also pretty strange.

The silence felt awkward, but Asch wasn't sure how else to fill it without talking about the missing replica or something like that.

"Fell asleep, huh?" he echoed, though he sounded more concerned than anything. "Guess you must have needed the rest."

He remembered back when Asch had been his roommate, and he'd fall asleep sometimes, or have strange gaps in his memory. Claude really hoped nothing like that was going on here. Since something like that had yet to happen to him, though, he wasn't so sure what he could do to help the other man, if anything at all.

Instead, he moved a little closer to the table, trying not to read too much into the strangely awkward silence that followed the red-haired man's reply. Asch was probably just tired. If he didn't want him around, he'd just say so, right? Something he'd learned about him while they were rooming together was that he wasn't afraid to speak his mind.

"Mind if I join you for lunch?" he asked. "I'm pretty hungry, so..."

Asch shrugged. He didn't care about the rest, but why voice that to Claude?

"Yeah, it's fine," Asch said. He hadn't really meant to say it. In fact, he'd meant to say absolutely not. But he found himself allowing it. Isolation wasn't his thing. Even the Dark Wings had been slightly better than being totally alone.

And Claude was definitely a step up from the Dark Wings.

"Have you been here before?"

Flashing him a quick smile, Claude slipped into the seat across from Asch. After picking up a menu, he idly flipped through the pages. It'd been a long time since he'd eaten at a sit-down restaurant with someone like this. Not since he'd ordered some cake with Rena at Armlock, anyway. This place looked like it served more than just tea and sweets, though, which was a nice change of pace.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard Asch's question. "You mean this place?" The blond rubbed the back of his head, looking faintly sheepish. "Nah -- I always wound up getting distracted by something or other before making it to this part of town." During his first trip, he'd spent a lot of the day in the electronics store with Guy before running into Ashton and getting a burger. His second trip had mostly been spent in the bookstore. Claude was glad he was able to use his time a little more wisely today.

"This country fried steak looks pretty interesting," he remarked as he glanced back down at the menu. "I wonder how it compares to a regular steak..."

Curious, he looked at Asch again. "What kinds of food do you like, anyway?"

Asch frowned down at the menu, looking until he located what Claude was talking about. Fried steak? What was that? He'd never heard of anyone frying a steak. Really, it seemed like a strange way to cook something.

"I've never heard of that before," he said, a little absently. He kept looking, then decided that "chicken Caesar salad" sounded safe enough. He had no idea what "Caesar" meant, but the menu indicated it was a type of dressing...? What weird food.

"Huh? Oh. I don't know. I'm not very picky. I guess I like chicken. Why, what do you like?"

[a million years late, I am sorry.]

Day 42, Noon: The Twin Pine Restaurant

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