It didn't take long for Marissa to wash up, it was only a plate and some cutlery after all, but she made sure to clean each item as thoroughly as she knew how. She would not give these chefs the satisfaction of finding fault in her ability to clean a plate, nor would she let them say that she didn't clean up after herself. Her one regret so far was that she hadn't told them to leave her pan and cutting board alone, so that she could wash them too, but it was too late to worry about that now.
She even took a towel from one of the radiators and began to dry the plate whilst polishing the cutlery. She had noted that it was good quality cutlery, and it probably wanted to be polished properly, with a silver polish, but that wasn't her problem. She returned the plate to the under-shelf from whence it came and placed her cutlery back in the appropriate holders, ensuring that her brief stints in the kitchen had not left the place any worse off than it was before she set foot in it.
Satisfied that she was done here, Marissa opened the door and stepped out into the cafeteria again. Her first thought was to scan the room and see who was still here. Max had gone, along with the other French person, and the dysfunctional boy that had barged into the kitchen first wasn't present either. She saw Yukiko, sat between two boys she didn't know by name, and another brunette girl with a Rivan accent and smart clothing that made it clear she came from money. That meant that, including herself, seven of the pilots were accounted for, loosely speaking. There was another boy sat a little further along the table from them, and that left one more person. It was another male that she didn't know by name. Marissa sighed, she was only sure of Yukiko's name right now, but if Teqi could scan the other Rays to give the names of their pilots, then maybe Marissa could work from that. With only two other women in the group, it would be easy enough to work out which one was which, and then she could try to suss out the boys. She would need to learn their names, it might help her from a social standpoint, but in terms of working as a team and completing missions, it would be a lot more efficient if Marissa just knew their names, instead of having to ask Tequila Sunrise each time. In the heat of battle, those few wasted seconds might be the difference between success and failure... life and death.
Through the kitchen doors, Marissa had heard Max's announcement about the length of a night on Ellesandis, although she hadn't heard what he had followed it with. She presumed that he had been speaking loudly to make sure that he was heard, so if he had dropped his voice after the announcement, then it was probably just to excuse himself or to address an individual, as opposed to being anything essential.
The news that Ellesandis had a long night period reminded Marissa that for all she thought she knew, there was so much more out there to be discovered. She had been born on Paipas, and had traveled to Aguaceles and Rivas during her military life, along with a good number of nondescript moons and satellites, but she had never encountered anywhere with a night so long as to outlast the human sleep cycle. It had been dark now for the best part of an hour, and if it would still be dark in ten hours time, then it meant this moon probably had something like a thirty, or forty hour cycle. It would take some getting used to, and, frankly, Marissa did not want to have to get used to it, so hopefully they could wrap up their training quickly and then move back to somewhere with something approaching a standard cycle.
The Rays were not a part of the military, but Marissa suspected that they borrowed a lot from the military's organisational structure. After all, Max was a captain, which meant he had sufficient experience and skills to have attained that rank, whilst the officers sat apart from the new recruits during dinner, and all activities were scheduled into specific time slots. Assuming it was like her military days, this meant that eight hours had been allocated for sleeping, which gave Marissa at least two hours to do as she pleased before going to bed. She had promised to re-visit Tequila Sunrise before she retired to bed, but there was no need to rush off and do that right now. She was sure that her Ray would cope just fine as she poured herself a tall glass of water and looked at the people still left in the room.
She probably hadn't made a good impression on her fellow pilots, and maybe it was time to approach some of them. From what little she knew so far, it seemed likely that the rich girl would irritate her, and that Yukiko would either irritate Marissa, or be so intimidated that she would struggle for conversation. She knew less about the guys, as only one of them had really stood out so far, and he seemed to like his own company. Marissa understood that notion entirely, so she felt it best to leave him to it for now. In fact, anyone that had gone off on their own, like Max or the Paipan girl, was probably best left alone because it was what they had chosen to do. Hopefully the others would understand that and do the same with Marissa when she wanted to be alone.
Instead, she saw one boy sat slightly away from the others. It didn't look like he'd chosen to sit away from the group, more that perhaps the people sat around him had left after eating, so he had been accidentally isolated. Feeling a nervous twinge in the back of her mind, Marissa approached the table and set her glass down opposite the boy, before pulling out her seat. She looked up to see him still eating his lobster and shrugged her shoulders, "Hey." Marissa took a sip of water to stop her throat drying up entirely, "I'm Marissa. I guess you like the lobster, then?"
(
@Orbital)
