Day 46: Lunch

The mere fact that she'd been susceptible to whatever hold the Institute had had on her yesterday was sufficient to leave Ayumu both upset and angry - no, not angry, downright furious, both at herself and whoever was responsible for that. But there was also the fact that because of it, she'd lost out on an entire day of work, and in several ways had ruined some of what she'd done already. That little conversation with Himura the day before, for instance, was something she'd sincerely prefer not to remember if she'd had any choice in the matter.

Unless the man was a complete moron, which, unfortunately, was one thing she couldn't believe of him, he had to have realized just who her brother was. After all the effort to keep that fact quiet (not exactly a secret, but certainly not advertised; half the Shinsengumi probably never even realized it because there was no reason to) she'd gone and chatted about it with him. Told him all about it, practically painted a bright target around a weakness that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

She'd spent the shift in the Sun Room pretending to sleep, while in truth forcing herself into calm. After years of practice she could shunt away the useless and distracting emotions, focusing only on what was important and needed to be at the forefront of her mind, and by the time the intercom signaled the lunch period she was feeling considerably calmer. The time to silently observe others had, as well, alerted her to something she probably should have noticed earlier: Mello was back. Would her previous objective be reinstated now? He seemed to have far less of a bulletin presence this time, so perhaps not. Still, though, it bore investigating.

None of her thoughts were visible, of course, as she moved through the line, examining the lunch selection somewhat dubiously. Now with the benefit of Yuuko's memories she might recognize the food, but she certainly didn't share the enthusiasm for it that her imaginary self apparently had. Ayumu skipped past that part and settled for the salad bar and some bread, then positioned herself in a place where she could watch both the door and the rest of the room, setting her journal open in front of herself as though planning to write something. There was far too much that she'd missed, too much work to do now.

[for Okita]

[identity profile] ruthless-hunter.livejournal.com 2009-12-22 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Lockdown shrugged and said cooly, "At least I don't look like I'm past due for the scrapheap." The bounty hunter actually didn't mind if he looked ugly, he was mostly just jerking the medibot's chain. Why pay for a medic when you can do repairs yourself? And if it made you look scary, that was just a bonus.

He scowled at the other comment, but then smirked and said, "Same t'you. Then again, not like there wasn't much to improve on."

[identity profile] war-wounds.livejournal.com 2009-12-23 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"Of course not," Ratchet returned, "You just look like you are the scrapheap." Likewise, Ratchet wasn't overly concerned about his appearance. If he'd wanted to look like he'd just rolled off the assembly line he wouldn't have gone into the line of work he had.

"Well, at least all my parts matched," he said, raising and optic ridge and trying to ignore how the scar pulled at the surrounding hide.

[identity profile] ruthless-hunter.livejournal.com 2009-12-23 06:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Lockdown couldn't help but laugh at the medic's insults. Was that the best he could do? So he looked like a walking scrapheap. It just meant that he got to scare the slag out of most bots he ran into. Plus he had more mods than most bots ever did, which was another added bonus of chopping and grafting.

Leaning back smuggly, the bounty hunter asked, "You done now?"

[identity profile] war-wounds.livejournal.com 2009-12-24 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
Ratchet glared, but took a moment to consider the question. "Yes." In all honesty, he had no levity to spare for his former captor. Part of him was still expecting to wake up in the programming ward of Central Infirmary, though, and he was hesitant about playing along with this place too much. There was still the very real possibility that this was a simulation brought on by a virus, and that this Lockdown was a composite from Ratchet's memory files. And his memory files regarding this bot were very well indexed, with multiple tags.