damned_institute | Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

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Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

Somehow, after their talk in the chapel, Elaine felt simultaneously more accepting of and more irritated by her future husband. On the one hand, seven years had clearly been good to him. He seemed more sincere and thoughtful than he had been before his disappearance, and he had a more mature (dare she say, handsome?) look to him. On the other hand, there were clearly some things that made even time throw up its hands in vain and say, "To hell with this!" Guybrush was still inexorably prone to disastrous accidents if the story about the Pox of LeChuck was anything to go by, and he was so obviously keeping something important from her that any passing dolt in the Institute would have been able to tell. In the end, that eternal underlying sweetness of his that won out, keeping her from punching him again, at least. That was only by a hairs width, though. Her snugglecakes was going to have to stay on his best behaviour if he knew what was good for him.

She left the Mighty Pirate™ alone for the time being when the announcement of the next shift went off. He would want some time to catch up with Morgan next, presumably. As much as the woman's attitude bothered her, she was a friend of Guybrush's, as she had claimed. Elaine could be strict, but she wasn't the kind of shrewish future wife/past fiancé who would keep her man from seeing his friends. Besides, she needed some more time to catch up on the goings-on of the Institute. Patients filled the building to the brim, now, it seemed; there would be a lot to investigate.

After a few quick trips back and forth to the bulletin and a few new leads to follow up on, the governor gave in to her nurse's persistent nagging and headed to the cafeteria for brunch. After the relatively light fare of the day before, Elaine took advantage of the Institute's admittedly scrumptious offerings and loaded up a full, balanced brunchfast of eggs, sausage links, waffles, and vegetable soup. As expected, the selection of drinks did not offer either root beer or grog. Grog she could live without, at least, she thought while making a face. Eugh. For now, she settled for a tall glass of water.

Elaine settled into a seat in the cafeteria and tucked into her meal. Her eyes didn't stay on her food, though, instead gazing around restlessly; she hadn't seen LeChuck so far this morning, and god forbid he wanted to invite himself to brunch with her if he chose now to show up. A certain horribly unpleasant dinner on Mêlée Island came to mind. She was prepared to either move at the first sign of the dread pirate or signal a random stranger to sit with her before he could.

[For Dean]

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And the attention span of Sari herself. Carter finally took a break from his constant gobbling and set his elbows casually on the table. "No, they're on land, not in subs," he said, chin on one fist. Although they could be on subs, in theory. "The Gestapo are the German secret police. They go around investigating things, and interrogating people--and that's the torturing kind of interrogating, not the asking questions kind like regular policemen." He made a face of disdain. A visit from the Gestapo usually mean the rest of the day was a total loss. "They're pretty nasty customers, hung my friend LeBeau up by his thumbs when they caught him working for the underground. This one guy, Major Hochstetter, he's always harassing us and our kommandant because he thinks we're with the underground." Which was entirely true, but it didn't make him less of a bother. Nobody in the camp liked the guy but Carter outright couldn't understand him...Schultz's cowardice and Klink's desperate need for validation made sense, but he just couldn't wrap his mind around a sadist. Hogan could, but that was why Hogan was in command.

"Now he's a Kraut I wouldn't mind exploding," Carter finished, expression slightly wistful. Maybe at the end of the war he'd get put in front of a firing squad. Maybe Carter could watch.

"Eh?" Ratchet was caught off guard by what seemed to him to be a random statement, and with a great effort kept himself from calling Carter on it. It would only make things worse.

The group Carter described, as well as their methods, were familiar enough. Both sides had tortured for information during the War; Ratchet had the feeling the Elite Guard were still capable of throwing basic ethics to the side when they thought they had reason to. "I've found over the stellar cycles that people like that generally get what's coming to them," he said, about as comforting as he was capable of being. "Even if it usually takes a long time." Too long, in some cases.

"You really think so?" Carter asked excitedly, all smiles and sunshine. "It's been sixty years, I bet it's already happened. I know we're gonna beat the Germans in a year or so--I mean, a year after I left--but I bet something really nasty happens to him. Yeah." Carter beamed and rubbed his hands gleefully. His mind ed with happy thoughts of mayhem and bloody death.

"Does that happen in your wars? I don't know where you're from, I don't know a lot about space."

Well, at least that seemed to have made the human feel better. "Sure, kid." This Hochstetter must have been a piece of work, if such a seemingly gentle human as Carter was so enthusiastic over the thought of his end.

"It may not work out that clean most of the time," Ratchet said, wondering where Carter got the idea that wars always ended up with the right side winning as some kind of moral imperative. "Our Great Wars started when our enemy faction tried to wipe out all of my kind, and they were run off the planet for their troubles. So, I guess you could say the Decepticons got what they deserved, for all the good it'll do. They'll never change." And it had taken far too many Autobot sparks and far too much of Cybertron to achieve even that much.

"Sounds like they'd get on great with the Nazis--that's the guys running Germany, the bad guys." Carter offered a comforting laugh, then cut himself off as he realized it might not be the best thing to do. "I'm glad you won, though. You seem like a pretty nice guy."

Nobody had ever bothered to tell him that wars were more than good side vs. bad side. There was the American Revolution, which they won, and the Civil War and the first World War, and the French had the French Revolution and the war against Napoleon. Newkirk had mentioned a few English wars but Carter hadn't been paying attention and if the good English were in control now they must have won. Seeing the world in black and white came easy to Carter--it was part of what made him such a good saboteur and assassin. The people who died just needed to die.

"Decepticons don't 'get on' with anyone." A shame, though, that there were humans who shared similarities with them. "There are a few of them here, in fact. I haven't run into them in the metal yet, so I can't tell you what they look like now." At least they weren't as dangerous in meatbag bodies. There was a lot to be said for the fact that they couldn't simply step on the other inmates.

When was the last time someone had called Ratchet 'nice'? Well, he supposed it beat most of the things people said about him, even if it was coming from a human simpleton. "Yeah, I'm glad we won, too." He couldn't muster up much humor about it. This was the most he'd talked about the wars in a few stellar cycles; it was a little tiring.

"I was only kidding. The Germans don't even get on well with their allies, let alone aliens. It's that whole master race thing they're tied up in, they think people with blond hair and blue eyes are better than anyone else just...cause." Carter ran a hand through his own thinning hair, far from an Aryan ideal but close enough to pass for a German officer, and grinned with half his mouth. The master race probably didn't even begin to consider befriending people who had tentacles on their head instead of any hair at all.

"I'll watch out for any evil aliens. So far I've just met Admiral ZEX, and he's a really really friendly guy." Carter was glad he'd stolen that animal book for him, the little guy would probably be over the moon at so many pictures of Earth animals.

"I don't see where coloration comes into it." The Decepticons, at least, based their superiority complex in actual capabilities. Not that this made their reasoning much less arbitrary than these humans'. "But then, you all look about the same to me."

Ratchet sipped at his water. "You won't know them when you see them, kid. Even before we ended up in these meatsacks," he said, gesturing to himself, "we were pretty gifted at blending in. Unless they out themselves, you can't 'watch out' for them." He never thought he'd be in a situation in which Lugnut, of all bots, was completely undetectable. The big oaf usually stood out like a bent rivet. "If they do happen to show themselves, though, just stay well out of their way. They're dangerous." Maybe not quite as dangerous as usual, but still outmatching a normal human.

Still, Carter would keep an eye on the matter. They'd dealt with spies before and sniffing them out had rarely proved an effort of more than a day.

"Oh, we're very different," he said, shaking his head firmly. "We have different eye shapes, different skin color, different hair color, everything. It's only the Germans that make a big deal about it, in America everyone is equal." The whole separate drinking fountains thing didn't really matter; if it had, Carter would surely have thought of it. And at Stalag 13 it didn't really matter, they only had one bathroom anyway.

The sergeant toyed thoughtfully with ihs fork. "The way I hear it, they're even trying to make sure people make babies so they turn out blue eyed and blond haired, because they think that's what makes someone part of the Master Race. It's all garbage, those Germans can be a bit crazy sometimes."

Ratchet shook his head. None of the things Carter was listing were very apparent from a few mechanometers above their heads. "On the other servo," he said, "you're all about the same size, you have the same body shape, you're all some shade of brown, you all have the same number of eyes and limbs and digits. There are a few humans I know well enough to pick out of a crowd, but for the most part you really do all look alike, and these Germans of yours are idiots for splitting wires like that."

Prime, apparently, knew how organics replicated themselves, but had refused to speak of the matter except to say that they weren't built in the normal way. He'd seemed upset, and Ratchet had to wonder what sort of arcane practices the humans got up to that would rattle Optimus like that. One thing Ratchet did know was that there were some things a bot was happier not knowing, and this may have been one of them. "I guess its harder than just installing the proper parts after they're built, so I'll just take your word for it."

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Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

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