[FIN] Sad Lasagne

[BlackFireKitsune]

Night descended upon the base as the sun finally slipped behind the horizon -- not that anyone inside would know except from the clocks on the wall or on their various devices, given the underground nature of their headquarters. The fluorescent lighting overhead ensured it always remained bright and well-lit around the base, and the cafeteria was no exception, even if the late hour meant it was almost entirely empty. Sync preferred it that way, at least at the moment; it meant he could clean it in peace.

Roughly two months had passed since his joining Team Rocket, which meant he'd had roughly two months to work out the best system for cleaning this damned cafeteria. Any trays or items left out had been put in the appropriate areas, trash left out had been tossed, and a cleaning cart sat near the middle of the room while the trainee busied himself cleaning off tables and their chairs. While he didn't look like he enjoyed his work even remotely - if anything, he simply looked like Christmas had come early, given the garish contrast between his bright red outfit and his green hair - he at least wasn't dragging his feet and was doing it systematically. Truthfully he rather hated it, but cleaning meant he was possibly maybe being at least a little useful to Team Rocket, albeit not in the way he would've liked. Soon, though; soon he would be promoted - to grunt, of all things; he still couldn't get over the dumb naming - and then he would be able to move on to bigger and better things. Or, at the very least, he wouldn't have to do nearly as much cleaning, and not in such an awful uniform. He wasn't one for fashion, but he'd have to be blind not to think the trainee uniform looked awful on him.  

[TawnyAngel]

It was late and he had been doing a lot of thinking in his new room, empty but for him. He'd only realised he was hungry much past the normal dinner time, and even when he'd realised he'd been reluctant to get up and do anything about it. Eventually however his growling stomach won out over his churning thoughts and he put on fitted jeans and a slate gray tutleneck top before heading up to the cafeteria.

The place was pretty much abandoned at this hour, there were a couple of knots of colleagues in close conversation but for some reason he shied away from approaching them instead of swaggering over to ask for what he wanted, with a side order of innuendo. Instead he headed over to a lone trainee, one he realised he knew as he drew nearer. "Hey, you were on the training mission with Articuno right? Do you know if anything's left from dinner?" ...Wow, he really looked bad in red. Worried and rather lost he might be but KO would be dead before he lost his eye for style.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Despite the late hour and how few Rockets remained, hearing footsteps coming or going was common enough that Sync didn't bother - or perhaps didn't care - to look up or pay any attention to them. That is, until someone spoke up nearby, mentioning a training mission, which sounded familiar, but then a pokemon name, which did not. Not until he thought about it more, anyway, and then it began to ring a few bells. He still wasn't the least bit interested in pokemon. "I was, yeah," he affirmed as he turned around to regard the newcomer, rag in hand that he'd been using to clean off the tables. Huh, this guy again... Hadn't he died or something? Sync had yet to really form any kind of bond with anyone apart from casual, temporary work relationships, if that, and that was how he liked it, but he was fairly sure that the gossip surrounding a red-headed grunt's recent death had been about this guy. Maybe he'd heard wrong, though? He didn't particularly care one way or the other. "There's probably some leftovers in the kitchen," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, "but I haven't looked."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Thanks." KO nodded, his expression perhaps a little vague as he headed off into the kitchen. There were leftovers, depressing flabby cold lasagne among other things that were less appetizing that depressing flabby cold lasagne. He scooped some onto a plate, added a bit of the sad looking garlic bread, and shoved it in a microwave for a short while before deeming it 'good enough' and taking it out again.

After a short while of indecision he headed to a table near where the trainee was cleaning and sat down. "So, did we ever get reports back from that mission? It turned out a bit out of the ordinary, hu?" He'd caught an Articuno, and Xerneas. Him. Okay it had been luck but it had been his luck. Did it count for anything?  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sync thought he'd have peace to clean in when the man had left, but that assumption disappeared when KO came back and sat at a table right nearby. What, was telling him what was left from dinner not enough? "Reports? Not that I know of," he supplied unhelpfully with a light frown as he swept his cleaning rag across the surface of the table he'd been working on. Out of the ordinary...? "I don't know, did it?" He queried rather sarcastically. That had been his first training mission, after all, and he hadn't gone on one since. The trainee had little idea of what constituted 'normal' on training missions; maybe it had been the pepper spray? Maybe the giant birds? Probably the giant birds, but he didn't feel like being that agreeable.  

[TawnyAngel]

KO sighed and poked vaguely at his food. Hungry but not hungry.

He missed the old days sometimes, days before he'd got involved in anything more than a bit of dealing; they'd been simple. Simple but dull, and going nowhere. He missed other stuff too, other people, people he'd been sure of. How long ago had that all been now?... Mmh.

"Training missions don't usually involve capturing legendary pokemon," KO said after a few moments, still looking at his food. "Team Rocket will make a lot of money on what they create from the juvenile Articuno I caught, that we all brought back. I would have liked to think we at least got a pat on the back for handling the situation." Not that he remembered the Prettiest Christmas Tree contributing much but whatever.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Legendary or not, it's still a pokemon," he pointed out, "albeit larger and more dangerous, I guess." Still a pokemon, which meant he wasn't fond of them. Two months of being in Team Rocket had taught him at the very least that legendary pokemon were not just like any other regular pokemon. He still didn't know many particulars - he had mostly only focused on the two he had, and even then not as much as he probably should've - but he at least could glean they were more dangerous than the regular, run-of-the-mill pokemon he'd seen running around the forest.

So that was it? Was he serious? "You seriously want a pat on the back for what we did two months ago?" Sync paused in his cleaning to offer an amused smirk at the man. "I hate to break it to you, but if they were going to do it they would've done it already."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Well it would have been nice to have a pat on the back two months ago, I'm hardly expecting it now," KO replied dryly, putting down his fork and looking up at the trainee with a shrug. The kid was smirking. KO frowned slightly and shook his head. "We'd been after Articuno for years, I mean I wasn't asking for a parade or anything but-" he shrugged again in lieu of a proper end to the sentence. "Well no matter, I suppose if I wanted some kind of celebration I should have thrown the party myself. A little late now though." Too late to celebrate the capture of Xerneas too really, which was a shame because he could really do with something to lift his spirits like now. Like maybe some spirits.

KO poked his food again, sighed, and took a bite. It was about as inspired as the styling of a grunt uniform.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"You should've asked two months ago then," Sync replied with his smirk still present as he moved on to wiping off the chairs around the table and pushing them in properly. It sounded like a person problem, really. It also sounded like this guy wasn't going anywhere until he was done eating. Oh well. "Two years? Seriously? Didn't it take ten minutes or fifteen to catch it? Why did it take two years?" Seriously? Why had it taken that long? Either Team Rocket wasn't nearly as good as he'd been led to believe, or there was a good reason he wasn't aware of.  

[TawnyAngel]

KO rolled his eyes but elected not to rise to the bait, he was way too tired for an argument or to go through the trouble of pulling rank and having to follow through with some kind of beat down.

"I don't know how many years exactly, longer than I've been in the Team though," he said instead with a shrug. "The reason it took so long though is that all previous encounters have been with an adult alone and only a couple of operatives have been present. If we hadn't had Elite Rook there to draw off the adult and a crowd of us to deal with the juveniles it would probably just have been another sighting. As it happened we lucked into a good scenario and despite somebody deciding to use Thunder on all of our pokemon we managed to pull it off." He still couldn't believe that stupid girl had actually done that. "And where does a grunt - or is she a trainee? - even get the money to buy a mega stone? I'd be willing to bet she's doing favours for somebody higher up the ladder if you know what I mean."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The trainee didn't insist when KO didn't respond to his first comments, and instead merely continued to clean, though he did pay attention to the grunt's answer. Huh. Well, given what he'd seen firsthand of the giant icy birds' behavior and power, he could sort of understand the Team not managing to catch it previously. "Is that what that was?" He queried with a laugh - high, light, and full of amusement. He remembered one of the other Rocket's pokemon using some sort of electric attack that had managed to hit a number of the other pokemon, friend or foe. "You'd think at the very least she'd have enough common sense not to electrify something covered in her teammate's pokemon." He didn't know much about pokemon, but one didn't need to know anything about them to know common sense.

Though he didn't comment on KO's last statement, the laughter that bubbled up within the trainee was probably a pretty good indicator that he did, indeed, know what the grunt meant.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Well you'd think so," KO drawled lazily, his mood markedly improving now that he had somebody to malign. "Sadly joining the illustrious TR doesn't require an IQ test or common sense test." If it did the labs would have some more subjects and things like that wouldn't happen to the people who did have two braincells to rub together.

"So then what department do you want to go into once you're out of a red uniform?" KO asked after another bite of lasagne, he felt he'd broken the ice a little by complaining about the girl's stupidity, and suggesting that she got the nice things she had by servicing some higher up or other.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"I guess they're not too picky then," Sync hazarded with an amused smirk. No, they hadn't had any kind of IQ or common sense test when he joined, but then, why should they need one? "Maybe they just assume everyone has at least some common sense and then weed them out after that." There was no way they would let the idiots rise in rank - not in an organization like this.

The question of which department he'd be interested in gave him pause, and the trainee actually ceased his cleaning for a moment or two to consider the thought that never crossed his mind before. "I don't know," he replied finally with an unhelpful shrug as he moved on to the next table, one still beside the one KO sat at. "I haven't thought about it yet. I don't know all the different departments yet, but probably whichever I'd be most useful in."  

[TawnyAngel]

"I suppose so," KO agreed, "and even fools have their uses." There was a lot of cleaning to do in a base this size after all.

While Sync talked about his thoughts on departments - or rather lack of them - KO ate some more lasagne, it seemed to taste a bit better now than when he'd started eating. Company was good for him, he guessed. "Well there's no shortage of choices, though not all are attractive," he began after a sip of his drink. "Clerical, maintenance; couldn't pay me enough to consider those. I'm in the sciences myself - chemistry to be precise - and then there's technology, medical, and legal that all need very specialised knowledge and skills. Field agents go on a lot of missions and specialise in stealing pokemon or valuables. Security keeps an eye on what goes on within the organisation while intelligence looks outward, it's broken down into espionage and infiltration...." What else? KO sipped his drink again. "Other than that there's transportation, demolitions and," he did a quick count of the departments in his head, came up one short, thought for a bit and then concluded; "Recruitment."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Even fools were useful. He'd be useful too, in some manner, though he hoped it was at something worthwhile. Paperwork and cleaning had never been something he'd liked nor excelled at.

As KO expounded upon the various roles, Sync moved to wiping off the chairs around his current table and pushing them in, as well as removing garbage from them when necessary, because some people dropped food or crumpled napkins onto chairs and just left it there for someone else to clean up. Only a couple of the departments really interested him all that much, out of all the ones listed. "What do people in espionage and infiltration do?" Fieldwork was obvious - it helped that KO had gone into it a little as well - and none of the others seemed like something he would consider, so he didn't bother to ask about those. One thought did creep up on him, though, and he mulled it over a moment or two before asking, "Do they let you choose what department you want to go into, or is it sometimes assigned?"