a/n: There is a new restaurant in NLA, but it is not all that it is promised. People are disappointed.
Pre chapter 5, hard swears (add more, I redacted a lot), silliness and feels.
All the good things belong to Monolith Soft, but Gino, Lila, the station and Miran KFC are mine.
"You gotta admit, we need to change up the hours, at least a little," whined Gino.
Lila and her assistant manager had been going in circles, for days it seemed, trying to come up with a roster that satisfied both the fluctuating needs of the #1 Sakuraba Auxiliary Skell Refueling Station and also the employees' desire for a regular work schedule. Or, in other words, business had been irregular but usually booming on the Fridays that Gino had (or hoped to have) a hot date.
She sighed and tugged absently at the end of her braid. "If we make those changes, even just for the weekends, we'll end up in the red. I can't keep posting emergency temp requests on the Mission Board."
"I been telling ya, we need more staff, Lila."
She shook her head steadily. "There's not enough manpower in the city to keep even the base jobs filled. Finding a part-timer will be tricky. Until we find the Lifehold, or maybe some other population, we're in trouble."
"Nopon, maybe?" But even Gino, desperate as he was to have days off, couldn't continue that suggestion. Their eyes met and they snorted in unison.
"I don't know. Maybe as a receptionist, but I don't see how that would…" Lila cut off her sentence at the jingle of her comm device. She's a brick house she's mighty mighty she's … Lila whipped it out and flipped it open with a snap. A blonde, mustachioed image glared up at her.
"Commander," she greeted the caller with assumed surprise. "What can I do for you?" She tried to speak calmly while at the same time flicking her hand repeatedly at Gino in dismissal. She ignored the tech's rude remarks as he slumped off.
Commander Vandham didn't answer at once. The way his eyebrows were rising and falling hinted at some strong emotion, one barely under control. "Brown, I'm in trouble," he said shortly, his voice almost a whisper.
Lila peered at her screen for a second, then switched it to sound only and cradled it to her ear. She turned her back on the station, on the city, and focused only on his voice. She hadn't recognized the small room behind him before she'd changed the format – not his office or the command center, certainly not the open Outfitters hangar or any of the well-appointed meeting rooms of the industrialists' quarters. A closet maybe? Or store room? Something like adrenaline shot through her body. How bad was the trouble that he needed to hide? She forced herself not to tremble. "Anything I can do?" she asked with false calm.
"Nothing. Not a damn thing. Except tell me to pull myself together and get over it."
She closed her eyes and listened intently. He sounded almost on the point of breaking. "What's the matter, sir?"
The sigh on the other end was long and deep, and the breath that followed was far from steady. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."
"Something about BLADE? An … attack?" she hazarded.
Vandham responded with a mirthless chuckle. His voice strengthened. "Brown, that's just what I needed. A little perspective. No, no attacks, not even a fist fight. Just an old man's inability to take a little disappointment. Sorry to bug you."
"Oh no you don't!" she snapped. "Do NOT hang up on me, sir."
His voice grew warmer, holding almost his normal humor. "Got you curious?"
"Curiosity kills more than cats. I will expire in front of BLADE tower, in the messiest way possible, if you even THINK of hanging up on me." She waited, terrified that he would do just that. Something was wrong. Even if it wasn't lighting up the tower with red, it was important enough to have rattled the Commander.
Another gusty sigh battered her ear. "I took Lin and Tatsu out for fried chicken."
She nodded, then realized he couldn't see her response. "The new place that's modelled after KFC, I'm guessing." She smiled slightly. He'd never admit to it, but all of NLA knew he spoiled those two.
"Yeah, that one. Promised them fried chicken, but when we got there, the place was shut. Not shut, exactly, but they aren't selling chicken. There's some kind of meat shortage."
"How frustrating," she said evenly. "I thought we'd left all that behind, on the Whale." She stopped, not wanting to criticize their ship, even with its continual shortages and resulting monotonous mess hall food. She still mourned the White Whale, dreamed of it at times and woke desolate. It felt disloyal to appreciate the influx of fresh food that the colony now enjoyed. Or usually enjoyed.
"Something about a Nopon protection racket, and I swear, fluffy heads are gonna roll by the time I'm done. Main point: no chicken, no lickin', and I can't buy the kids lunch."
She hesitated, before giving a measured suggestion. "You could always get them burgers at Rosemoss."
"It's not the same," he interrupted, and to her horror, his voice almost cracked with emotion. He was back to whispering. "I'd planned this day since I heard the joint was opening. I'd been looking forward to it, Lila, and god help me but I'm hiding in the bathroom, trying not to lose my shit. I gotta keep strong. All the damn time." His ending grunt was close to a gasp.
Lila's golden-brown eyes flickered under her eyelids. "It's a meat shortage, correct? Nothing more?"
Another gusty sigh, and a stronger, wry tone. "They're frying everything else under the sun, from zucchini to rock orange. But my heart's not in it. Your advice is right. Burgers it is," he said with resignation.
"Ten minutes." Lila's voice was high and tight, but clear. "Figure a way to stall for ten minutes, sir. I'll see what I can do."
"You got chicken at your station?"
"I've noticed some loose Nopon. I'll call you in ten minutes."
She blew past a surprised Gino, racing across the wide track of pavement and along the busy skell repair bays of the official administrative hangar. She sprinted almost to the end, with its mysterious doors locking away a restricted area, but instead swerved right and doubled back, bounding up the ramp that lead to the Harrier's staging camp. She skidded to a stop in front of a tall and broad soldier, standing beyond the briefing tents. As she had been relying on, he was waiting there, drinking his standard thermos of coffee (in truth, hot chocolate, shhh, tell no one), as he always did between missions.
She was breathless, not with exertion but with hurry. "Barrett. Got a job for you. Evello, two of them, bring them back, 5 minutes."
The BLADE didn't quite do a spit-take, but he shook his close-cut head with surprise. "Uh … I'm waiting on a mission in about an hour from now," he began.
"I know. You dumped your skell at my station. It finished refueling a couple minutes ago, so you're good to go. Evello," she repeated. "Now."
"Lila, that's not really something in my wheelhouse."
"What's the problem? You're a Harrier. You kill things. Go kill me two of those oversized ostriches prancing around outside the city gate. It shouldn't even take 5 minutes. Go!"
He'd decided to take that exact moment to check his comm device. Lila could have screamed with frustration. "I don't see it on the mission board app," he said with agonizing deliberation.
Lila tried to add 10 cm to her height and 50 kg to her voice. "It's not on the mission board. Strictly private, dead easy, and I will pay the half day rate for Primordia sub-15 missions, but only if you're back here in four minutes."
"What else?" He sounded suspicious, but to her delight, he'd put away his comm device and was picking up his helmet.
"Four minutes, Barrett, and I will tell everyone I know what a great job you did."
"Huh." He didn't sound impressed.
"Trust me. You want the grass roots campaign I can do for you. Just, please," and for a second she was pleading in earnest, "please do this for me."
"Two evello. Ten minutes. Hen or tom?"
"Hen, please, if you can swing it. Six minutes. Go!"
She'd paced the full boundary of the refueling station at least 50 times when the freight elevator rumbled down, bearing a skell with the distinctive blue and white markings common to the Harrier division. She forced herself to wait until the skell halted and the pilot had disembarked before she started tugging at the storage compartment. Barrett came up alongside her, watching with arms crossed. "Five minutes, more or less," he commented smugly. "I'll take my credits now."
"You'll get them when I have time," Lila said, not sparing him a glance. She pulled several emergency deep cold packs out of the skell's "trunk", only to stop and marvel at the neatly butchered meat, wrapped in remarkably sanitary-looking plastic. "Barrett, this is … words fail me."
"Good thing you hired me. I didn't spend two summers sweating in a packing plant for nothing."
"It's perfect."
He smiled at her with embarrassed pride. "It's what you wanted?"
She grabbed three bundles, enough for a large armload. "Get Gino to store the rest. I will pay you, just, I really need to be somewhere."
She pulled out her comm device and awkwardly tapped out a message, keep stalling on my way. Then she launched herself at the Commercial District. If she could just run fast enough, not think about it, maybe she could ….
Lila crumpled at the edge of the roadway, where the sunlight finally could slip past the protective overhang of the Administrative District. She fell to her knees as if she'd bounced off an invisible wall. Clutching the chilly meat to her stomach with one hand, she wiped the even colder sweat off her face. She bounced to her feet, but the force field of her agoraphobia wouldn't let her take one step further.
… stupid idea pointless he doesn't need your help anyway it's just fried chicken no biggie it can be dinner get barrett to take it it doesn't matter what did you think was going to happen that sky will come down and crush you like the miserable spider that you are give up give up don't worry he doesn't need your help anyway worthless stupid what were you thinking he doesn't need fried chicken what's so special he can have it any other day any other month so give up and save yourself he doesn't need …
Lila swayed, stunned, but two words danced free of the vicious monologue. "Day." "Month." She struggled to remember today's date. A date, and a note on a personnel file, one of the thousands she'd reviewed during the long and at times boring voyage on the Whale (reviewed earlier, on Earth), a date of birth, at the top of a file in the engineering records, a record for the Whale's chief engineer, for the Chief. Now promoted to Commander of BLADE, doing his best to keep the city afloat, just like he'd kept the ship in the sky. The Chief's birthday, and he'd been planning on sharing a special treat with Lin Lee, the closest thing he had to family, on probably the first and only normal afternoon he'd had since arriving on this planet.
…it's just a little disappointment he can still enjoy the day the chicken can be later and ….
Lila wasn't listening. Scrunching her eyes tight, her whole face fixed with concentration, she swung her head forward, almost head butting the air in front of her. The momentum was enough to throw her balance forward, into the deadly open space. It was either fall or start running. A trick she'd learned on Earth, when the fault in her mim first became obvious and it had been a matter of life or death to overcome it. If she had a clear enough goal, and enough speed at the start, she could race to any spot successfully, although she wouldn't remember a single step until she reached her destination.
Cxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxcxc
It is a remarkable fact that Mira has exactly 13 native herbs and spices, the exact quantity for perfect fried chicken. No one can explain this happy accident. Just one more special something about this planet.
a/n: There was a tweet about the current Kentucky Fried Chicken crisis in England, where a grandfather was in tears (almost) over not being able to take the kids out for dinner. Someone on the XCX Tumblr discord said it was Vandham & Lin. Then they pinged me. I stayed up until 2am writing this. I love that board.
Next up: This story was done. Then my brain said no. Lila & Jack have coffee and Nagi has a late gift.