Inception

Chapter 21: Spork

A yawn took hold of her. A long one.

"Got a lot of work down in the lab?"

She had to blink several times to clear out the film of drowsiness before she could make out who had spoken to her.

The green haired guy. The handsome one. Had he been the one to surrender his soda last time she'd been in a hypoglycemic crisis. Or, rather, Leno more or less swiped it from him. No, it'd been the pink haired one, right? Oh, whatever.

He was smiling at her, all lax shoulders and half-lidded eyes.

"Only got a few billion yoju samples to test," she said. "I hate it when they reproduce like that."

"Yeah, clean-up takes forever, especially having to take out the reproductive organs on the corpses too."

"Funny how you're talking like that wasn't your first and only mission so far," broke in Hoshina suddenly.

"Uh, of course not, sir." Then the guy's attention was back on her. "How are you getting through it? Find anything weird?"

She shrugged and didn't really pay attention to whatever she told him in response.

She must have mentioned something about caffeine because he suddenly said, "Same. You want to get coffee before work tomorrow?"

She opened up to say she doubted their schedules started at time when the usually quiet, large blond next to him piped up.

"Caffeine isn't good for hypoglycemia."

"Oh?" cut in Hoshina, his default smile unusually sharp. "You've done research into this?"

"Diabetes runs in my family," said the man. "Sir."

"I don't recall reading that in your records."

"Didn't think it was important."

Hoshina didn't look away from the soldier, even as the latter clearly seemed to have signed himself back out of the conversation.

Lena rubbed one of her eyes. Her head hurt. It was making it hard to chew. "I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

The green-haired guy refocused his grin back on her. "Haruichi Izumo." He held out a hand, which she shook.

"Ichigawa Lena."

"I remember. Pity you didn't remember me, though."

"I have a lot going on."

"So, that coffee...?"

A spork hit Haruichi square between the eyes. Stir fry sauce splattered across his thin eyebrows and flecked his white shirt.

Haruichi froze.

Leno grinned, despite not having anything to eat his stir fry with anymore.

Lena decided it was time to leave.

"I'll leave that to you," she told the Vice Captain, even as Haruichi turned his head with all the gravity of a predator onto her little brother.

She could hear Hoshina's sigh through the din of the cafeteria.

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Oh, that warm little fuzzy thing on my foot was a kitten... :3