Something New [2430-1-2-Wed-7:45am]

[quillan]

Thomas Quillan woke up about fifteen minutes ago to the sterile beep of his in-ear alarm clock. He didn't really like it compared to his hand-wound clock from a horologist in the Terran 'Tween... But he sure bet everyone else much preferred it.

After fufilling his morning routine, he dragged himself around the curved corridor to the mess hall. His new home.
The cold steel look was growing on him... It had an air of class that you just couldn't get from any of his previous jobs.

Thomas grabbed a spatula and then decided it was instead time for a nice morning stretch.

"Alright..." he sighed out, "Let's try something new."

He grabbed the key and got a few ingredients from the fridge and a few more from the pantry.

To an outsider it just appeared like he was tossing things back and forth. However, Thomas was actually passing things back and forth.

After a rough 10 minutes of maniacal passing and sizzling the ingredients were beginning to look like food. Thomas sniffed the air, definitely the nice smell of sausages, pan-friend potatoes and toast.

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace wandered downstairs and into the mess hall, following the smell of cooking food. It was early enough that the others hadn't woken up yet. That didn't surprise her much. Castle looked like he enjoyed his sleep. And she was willing to bet Klove had stayed up last last night, watching movies on his padd.

"Morning Quillan." She greeted the chef, taking the moment alone to get a good look at him. He was odd looking, but she could see how it all came together to give him a sort of handsome look. Grace doubted he had many troubles getting women, assuming that was his inclination. But he had a high-strung way about him that she imagined didn't make him too popular with a certain sort of man. "Good to see someone else is up this early in the morning."

She powered on the viewscreen, once again bringing up the ship's radar so she could keep an eye on it while eating. She changed the channel away from the news and over to the Underworld's frequency to see if they were in broadcasting range. Nothing but static. Grace brought it back to the news. Some fellow in a bad hairpeice was talking about girl gangs in the Below. She couldn't stop the smile on her face. Today was a day for nostalgia, with some things worth remembering more than others.

[quillan]

Thomas turned around when he heard his name. Must be the captain, no one else is usually up and about this early. But she had stuff to do, of course.

"Morning to you, too" Thomas said back at Grace, "I like mornings... Makes me feel productive... Even if I don't do anything. It's a good deal, methinks."

She was eyeing him up as far as he could see. But girls could be tricky that way... He learned that the hard way. It was a rather unusual story involving a renegade spatula and three gang girls from The Below in one of his restaurants.

He looked at the viewscreen as it came up. It was very entrancing to Thomas as he had only really been familiar with old tube screens that were bigger than was necessary for their purpose.

"Food will be ready soon if you're hungry. There's some friend potatoes, sausages and some toast." Quillan told the captain.

Thomas looked at the viewscreen as a man in a bad hairpiece started talking about the girl gangs of the Terran Below. He looked back at the stove and grimmaced.

[Grace Forjacks]

"Better up early than lazing about in bed." Grace was a big believer in waking up early. But most criminals slept in and woke up late. Being up while they all slept helped you get the jump on them. And you needed every advantage in the book when you were a woman surrounded by cut-throats and psychopaths. "And I'll help msyelf as soon as you're finished."

She sat down and cracked her back. The solid popping noise was so satisfying. She'd meant to ask Enan to do it for her, but then they'd gotten distracted. Not that she was complaining about that. She could pop her back all on her own if she had to, and it wasn't nearly as much fun.

"So, Quillan, why'd you become a cook?" She didn't want to pry too much into the man's history but she was still curious. He was better than the few cooks she'd hired over the years, mostly burly men who smoked while they cooked and tended to get ashes in the eggs. Quillan cooked a better breakfast than she got at most places planetside.

[quillan]

"S'almost, done, Cap'm..." He said as he flipped some sausages over on the grill.

"W-Why I became a cook?" Quillan asked in disbelief. He had never been asked this question in his entire life and he wasn't quite sure he even knew the answer. He knew he was used to and enjoyed for being the thing that people could count on... But at the same time he felt that maybe at one point or another, a mafia boss thrusted a spatula in his hand and told him to make them dinner or else.

"Well... I guess to goes back to my childhood... I lived in the Terran Below in a pretty bad house. ...I think at some point... I either wanted to fend for myself... Or someone just happened to thrust a spatula in my hand." Thomas began in a jumble.
"It's gotten me pretty far... Not to the top, mind you... But I've been able to make my way out of the Below and into the 'Tween no problem. Just had to avoid the wrong people... Or right in that case..."

Quillan had thought of how to elegantly phrase his past work and escape from the Below instead of saying that some people don't like when their opposing gang uses their cook as a mercenary...

[Grace Forjacks]

"It's smelling good." And it was. The other advantage to getting up early, especially when there was a cook, was that you got first dibs on the best food. There were plenty of times it wasn't worth getting up to eat first, but this seemed to be the exception.

"Lower? You've done well then." It was a stupid sort of kinship to feel with someone, but it was one that ran deep. The Lows hated the Tweens who hated the Tops who were oblivious to how much everyone hated them. Being a Low meant having to fight and scrabble to get off the streets and up into the walkways and high-rises. That was the beauty of meeting other Lowers. They all had to do the same.

She grinned a little, "Which neighbourhood did you grow up in? I grew up in the old steel district. When I was a kid, I used to go play in the abandoned factories." The city had grown up around them and swallowed them whole, killed them when it got too tight and cramped to bring anything down, or up. They'd just abandoned the factories. Some were turned into squatters dens, but most just rust and served as playgrounds for kids too young to join gangs.

[quillan]

Grace didn't seem like one to talk about her past, but she was quite open today. Was this a trick, or did she just genuinely want to know? Either way... It wouldn't hurt to share a little.

"Well my family grew up just south of the central corridor. My father kept a shop there. But when him and me mam went we were only 7 at the oldest. A old lady took us in to her shack of a house in a basement of one of the shops on the central corridor. It was sort of like an orphanage... Except instead of nuns, there were guns."

Maybe he had said too much now. Maybe she's getting the idea he crossed the wrong paths and that's why he decided to jump on a boat and get away.

"... Not sure if it's still there..." He said, flipping the last pieces of food onto a dish and grinning, "... Ready."

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace nodded. She'd been to the central corridor before, but not too often. It was a day's walk away, and it was a poor neighbourhood. The Molls had always roamed more northernly, in the market district. There was money to be made there, or at least goods to be stolen. But she did recognize the orphanage Quillan was talking about. "Our Lady of Ammunition, right? At least, that's what Jane always called that place. She hated it. Last I heard, it was still limping along."

Quillan seemed to be getting nervous and she knew the exact reason. Man had probably left some gambling debts, or pissed off a few people, and now he was worried she was going to bring down hell on his head. But there wasn't anyone from the Below who didn't get out without spilling a little blood on their hands or running from the mob. Of course, you couldn't just come out and say 'I don't care what you're running from, just keep cooking good food'. People didn't tend to believe you when you came right out and said the truth. She'd have to find another way to work it in.

"Perfect. I've got a hell of a hunger starting." She grabbed a plate from the cupboard, and a knife and fork. "Let's see if this tastes as good as it smells."

[quillan]

He nodded. She said the name.
He hated that name.

Thomas always worried about his food being considered bad by whoever was eating it. Fortunately, whoever didn't like it did not live long enough to tell anyone. That's what he hated about his work in the Below. He had to do it or he would be eating the poison, too. Atleast they got to have a nice meal during their death. All Quillan would have gotten was a pretty axe.

"Should I wake the kids, or do you mind if I have a quick bite to eat?" He said, turning a chair around to kneel on.

"... So how did you get here, Cap'n?"

[Grace Forjacks]

"Sit yourself down." She gestured to the table, "They can wait another ten minutes. Those who get up early get the spoils of battle." Grace took her fork and began helping herself to the food, taking a large helping of the potatoes and sausages, and a slice of toast for good measure.

Grace settled herself across from Quillan, popping a few of the potatoes in her mouth. They were great. She mmm'd and gave him a nod, small gesture for a job well done. She paused between mouthfuls, trying to decide how much to tell him.

Quillan seemed like a decent fellow. But there was a darkness around the edges, like most from the Below. She doubted he'd be very shocked to hear that Grace was a murderer. And while he seemed like he wouldn't harm a fly, she had a very sneaking suspicion that the man was no stranger to death. Just because someone didn't look like they could take you on in armed combat was no reason to doubt their efficiency with a pistol or knife.

In for a penny, she thought. "Which tale do you want? What I did before I left the Below, or what I did once I got the hell out?"

[quillan]

Sitting himself down, Thomas grabbed a few slices of toast and promptly covered them with potatoes to make an open face fried potato sandwhich.

He gave a smirk when Grace made pleasant noises over the quality of his cooking.

Grace spoke and Thomas listened. Even if it was just a few words of a question, she seemed like she had a good head on her and could tell a good story.

"Oh... Well... The beginning is usually the best place to start, I find. Unless you're doing one of those cheesy restaurant maze games..." He said before grabbing another sausage.

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace speared a sausage on her fork and bit it, carefully thinking over how much to tell him. He was Low, which meant he got more than anyone in the Between or Top ever did. But he was new, so there were certain details that could be withheld simply because she didn't like to tell them to people she didn't fully trust.

"I'm the eldest of seven. Mom and dad were seriously about having a family, so once they started, they didn't stop. Like I said, we were in the old steel district, so we were in those old tenement houses. We had one apartment when I was little, but by the time we got out, myself and Constant and dad had started bringing in enough money to buy the one next door and knock the wall down so we had room for everyone."

It hadn't been bad. The apartment had been squished and there had barely been enough food to go around, but lots of girls had worst times in the Below. Lots of parents sold their kids early on. The brothels liked to get them young so they could train them. Grace's parents hadn't ever thought about doing that.

"It was a pretty typical childhood. We played in the steel mills and got into lots of scraps over whatever shiny thing we found. Constant got into rat-trapping, but I thought it was too boring." How Constant had managed to check those traps everyday was beyond Grace. But, he had occasionally brought home real meat, and after nothing but cheat synths, that was amazing. Grace wiggled her fingers at Quillan. "I preferred the five-fingered discount. The cops got to know me pretty early on. They had to drag me home a few times a week before I learned to get really good at shoplifting and pickpocketing. After that, they didn't drag me home as much, they always followed me around, trying to get me to do something dumb. Classy guys, full grown men picking on a six year old and hoping she'd lash out and bit them so they could take her away for 'anger management' or whatever they were calling the training camps that week."

"Mom ran a little school for the neighbourhood kids, so I learned how to read and write and all that jazz. I think they had plans to get me a job like Constant, or at least get me to help look after Hope when mom was knocked up with Justice, but I ended up joining the Molls instead."

There it was. She bit into her toast and waited to see his reaction. If he was from Our Lady of Ammunition, then he knew all about gangs. The Sadgrrls had controlled that territory, maybe they still did. Molls hadn't run up against them very often since they were so far south. But they'd all known about one another. You had to keep track of the neighbours, just in case one gang wiped out another and took their territory.

[quillan]

"Sounds eventful." Thomas sad, biting into his makeshift sandwhich.

He let some of the information sink in for a short while before swallowing his food and talking again.

"The Molls, eh? I ran into them a few times. They didn't like the way I made lasagna so I got out of their way."

What thomas meant to say was another cheasy line of food mercenary work paid for by the gang that ran most of the higher scale restaurants in the Below. Higher scale didn't mean much, but it did mean the workplace was professional and not a sleezeball paying some tramps to heat cuts of bacon in a microwave.

These places were untouchable by the gangs. They were all owned by a larger group that held it's location in the 'Tween. They liked to consider themselves to be artisans of the Below, bringing a touch of class to the dirty streets... In some ways, they did their jobs by slowly eliminating the gangs that did try to step on their toes. But in the end, they were just bringing more destruction to a world that couldn't take it.

[Grace Forjacks]

Grace snorted a little and shook her head. The man was a character.

"You probably ran into the Molls that reformed after I got out. They were... different." She'd looked in on them once after coming to visit her parents when she was fifteen. They hadn't been anything like her old gang. Those girls had been the girlfriends of the Dragons, given their own little gang to play at while the boys did their own thing. It had made Grace sick to her stomach to see what had happened.

"I joined when I was eight. Got my first tattoo when I was nine. Made leader at eleven, after Jane got herself knocked up and had to quit, and Sweet Polly refused to take command. She didn't like being the leader. So I got pushed into it since I had the most experience, and I was a nasty bitch." She didn't need to tell Quillan what she'd done. Everybody knew what the gangs did, especially girl-only gangs.

It was a hard scene. You had to be nastier and more brutal than the boys to stay ahead of them. More than once, she and Sweet Polly had taken bats to a Dragon or Tiger who ended up in the Molls territory and thought they could throw their weight around because they were a few years older. But they'd carved out their space and they'd ruled it with an iron fist, a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year old girls running the streets. The mob had watched them, and the cops had tried to chase them down, but they'd somehow managed to get by.

"We had a rivalry with the Goomars. We fought over the same cornershop. After I became leader, I managed to drive them completely out of our territory. We extended to the old Freeway, even got our hands on some real grade-a shipments of goods. It was a pretty great time."

Grace paused for a moment, thinking about that night. She'd been with Sweet Polly. But she was always with Sweet Polly in those days. They'd been inseparable. Grace could even remember what they'd been talking about before the Goomars came in. They'd been talking about the Top. Polly wanted to see the towers. Grace had promised her they'd go there next week and dangle their legs off the edge of them. Neither of them had ever been out of the Below.

"The Goomars decided to get rid of us. They tracked down our homes and came in a group, grabbing us one by one. They gave us a choice: either beg them to cut up our face with a knife, or they'd gut us." Grace took another bite of toast, "The other girls all begged. I took it in the belly." And so did Sweet Polly.

"I spent the next six months in the hospital getting myself stitched back up. When that was done, I got the hell out. There weren't any Molls to go back so, I go found something else." Except that wasn't the total truth. Because there had been one last thing to do before Grace got out, and Grace had done it. Only those girls hadn't gotten to choose between the face or the gut.

She helped herself to another few sausages. Damn they were good.

[quillan]

"That's quite early to be running around in a gang. I, myself, started helping barricade the orphanage and keep everyone happy." Thomas said, watching her bite into some sausages.

Food was usually the best remedy for depression in a lot of people. Of course you wouldn't want them to go overboard, but a good sandwhich could always brighten someone's day. Especially if they had just ran out of a field of bombs and bullets.

"Six months?" Thomas said in disbelief. "I suppose that's reasonable for an unreasonable knifing. Although. What knifings are very reasonable?"

He took another bite of his sandwhich, chewed and swallowed.

"One day a man came to the door of the orphanage. He wore a completely black suit and dark glasses. He looked around and spied around the whole building, inspecting the living quarters, the washrooms, the kitchen, and even the children. He then went over to the lady in charge and whispered something into her ear... Before I knew it my things were packed and I was in the back of a small sedan on my way to who knows where. The lady told me this would be for the better, and in a way... I trusted her. She never lied to me before. If she knew there would be trouble she would say so."

He looked down at his plate of food.

"This, I suppose, is how I began my career with cooking as a profession. I always enjoyed it, but as soon as we were into the sedan they littered our minds with questions. Eventually, they brought me to a kitchen and I was told to make a meal. I did what I was told because I was used to almost getting shot if I didn't. From then on I just seemed to work as a chef in restaurants all owned by a mafia from the Tween... But the tattoo was my idea."

He didn't want to look at Grace just yet, he feared that she would know exactly who he was talking about. Maybe she was catching on that he was running from something and turn him in.
But it was all over now... He couldn't rewind time.