What's wrong with this food? It tastes like paper.
"You enjoyin' yourself?" The voice came from above my head.
Holding my chopsticks without moving a muscle, I looked out the corner of my eye. A prehistoric face looked down at me from beneath a flattop haircut that leveled off about two meters above sea level. His features were more dinosaur than human. Definitely some velociraptor lurking in that family tree. My spirits fell when I saw the tattoo on his shoulder: a wolf wearing a crown. He was from the 4th, the company holding a grudge against us over that rugby game. I went back to lifting food to my mouth with machinelike regularity.
He raised his eyebrows, two plump bushes that would have been the envy of the caterpillar world. "I asked if you were enjoyin' yourself."
"How could I not enjoy myself in such fine company?"
"So how come you're gulpin' down your chow like it was something you found stuck on the end of a toilet brush?"
There were only a handful of soldiers sitting at the oversized tables in the cafeteria. The smell of something sweet wafted from the kitchen. Artificial light from the fluorescents in the ceiling washed over the fried shrimp heaped onto our heavy—duty plates.
If you had to categorize the food prepared in the UDF as good or bad, it was definitely good. There were only three things a soldier in the UDF did, after alclass="underline" eat, sleep, and fight. If the food wasn't good you'd have a morale problem on your hands. And according to Yonabaru, the food on Flower Line Base was better than most.
The first time I tasted it, I thought it was delicious. That was about five subjective months ago now, maybe more. About a month into the loop, I started heavily seasoning my food. The intentionally mismatched condiments created a taste just horrible enough to remind me the food was there. And now, even that had stopped working. I don't care if you're eating food prepared by a four—star chef, after eighty days of the same thing, it all tastes alike. Probably because it is. By that point, it was hard for me to think of food as anything other than a source of energy.
"If the look on my face put you off your lunch, I apologize." No use trying to start a fight.
"Hold it. You tryin' to say this is my fault?"
"I don't have time for this."
I started shoveling the rest of the food on my plate into my mouth. He slammed a palm the size of a baseball glove down on the table. Onion soup splashed on my shirt, leaving a stain where the lunch lady's best efforts had failed. I didn't really mind. No matter how tough the stain was, it would be gone by tomorrow, and I wouldn't even have to wash it.
"Fourth Company grunts not worth the time of the mighty 17th, that it?"
I realized I'd unwittingly set a very annoying flag. This loop had been cursed from the get—go, really. I had accidentally killed Ferrell at the end of the last loop, and that had thrown everything out of whack this time around. From where I was, it hadn't even been five hours since he'd died vomiting blood. Of course I'd been KIA too, but that was to be expected. Ferrell had died trying to protect a fucking new recruit. It had been just the spur my migraine needed to kick into a gallop.
I'd planned to ease my mind by staring at Rita the way I always did, but my foul mood must have been more obvious than I realized. Clearly, it was bad enough to trigger something that hadn't happened in any of the previous loops.
I picked up my tray and stood.
The man's body was a wall of meat blocking my way. People started to gather, eager for a fight. It was 1148. If I lost time here, it would knock off my whole schedule. Just because I had all the time in the world didn't mean I had time to waste. Every hour lost meant I was an hour weaker, and it would catch up with me on the battlefield.
"You runnin', chickenshit?" His voice rang through the cafeteria.
Rita turned and glared at me. It was obvious she had just realized that the recruit who'd been staring at her during PT was eating in the same cafeteria. Something told me that if I returned her gaze, she'd help me the way she'd helped during PT—the way she'd helped in my first battle. Rita wasn't the type who could turn her back on someone in trouble. Her humanity was starting to show through. I wondered what her play would be. Maybe she'd start talking about green tea to cool this guy off. I laughed under my breath at the thought.
"What's so funny?"
Oops. "Nothing to do with you."
My eyes left Rita. The Keiji Kiriya standing in the cafeteria that day was no green recruit. My outward appearance may have been the same, but inside I was a hardened veteran of seventy—nine battles. I could deal with my own problems. I'd imposed on Rita once during PT and once more, indirectly, by smooth—talking my way into one of her spare battle axes. I didn't need to involve her a third time just to make it through lunch.
"You fuckin' with me?" He wasn't going to let this go.
"I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to waste screwing around."
"Whaddayou have hangin' between your legs? A pair of ping pong balls?"
"I never opened my sack to look. You?"
"Motherfucker!"
"That's enough!" A sultry voice cut short our argument. It wasn't Rita.
Salvation had come from an unexpected quarter. I turned to see a bronze—skinned woman standing beside the table. Her apron—bound breasts intruded rudely on a good 60 percent of my field of view. She stood between us holding a steaming fried shrimp with a pair of long cooking chopsticks. It was Rachel Kisaragi.
"I don't want any fighting in here. This is a dining room, not a boxing ring."
"Just tryin' to teach this recruit some manners."
"Well, school's over."
"Hey, you were the one complaining about how miserable he looked eating your food."
"Even so."
Rachel glanced at me. She hadn't shown the slightest hint of anger when I'd knocked over her cart of potatoes, so for this to have gotten to her, I must've been making quite the impression. A part of her probably wanted to embarrass anyone associated with Jin Yonabaru, widely regarded as the most annoying person on base. Not that I blamed her. I'd tripped the spilled potato flag, and now I'd tripped this one. The aftermath was my responsibility.
In a base dyed in coffee—stain splotches of desert earth tones, a woman like Rachel was bound to attract an admirer or two, but I'd never realized just how popular she was. This man hadn't picked a fight with me over some company rivalry. He was showing off.
"It's all right. I shouldn't have said anything." Rachel turned to face the looming giant and shooed me away with a gesture from behind her back. "Here. Have a shrimp. On the house."
"Save it for the penguins."
Rachel frowned.
"Doesn't this runt have anything to say for himself?" He reached one big, meaty arm over Rachel's shoulder and threw a jab.
I reacted instinctively. Subjective months in a Jacket had conditioned me to always keep my feet planted firmly on the ground. My right leg pivoted clockwise, my left counterclockwise, bringing me down into a battle stance. I parried his lunge with my left arm and raised the lunch tray in my right hand to keep the plates from falling, my center of gravity never leaving the middle of my body. Rachel dropped the fried shrimp. I snatched it from its graceful swim through the air before its tail could touch the ground.
The parry had thrown the guy off balance. He took two tottering steps forward, then a third, before tumbling into the lunch of the soldier sitting in front of him. Food and plates went flying with a spectacular crash. I stood, balancing my tray in one hand.
"You dropped this." I handed Rachel the fried shrimp. The onlookers broke into applause.