Generation Loss

[MethodicalSlacker]

"There is no better way to understand a system than to live inside of it for a time. Consequently, it should follow that there is no worse way to understand a system than to grow up inside of it during the formative years of one's life. This is because growing up inside of a given system means that one is biased to the ideas and cultural influences of the system in a way non conducive to the study of a system in a critical and thoughtful way. If one cannot separate themselves from the ideas that they have grown up with, then there is no hope for them to be able to recognize what the problem is with their society. However, once exiting their system or society, one carries with them the biases and cultural ideas that they learned while participating in their own society, making it impossible to become an impartial observer of any system without growing up in total isolation. In this way we are doomed, for we cannot address our own problems as a species without turning towards a biased viewpoint. This will be our undoing. Some may argue that this is one of our strengths and view the multitude of perspectives on Earth to be a good thing and find pride in diversity of opinion, but all this does is serve to confuse us. The fall of the tower of Babel was just that - a fall, a negative consequence, not something to be championed as responsible for one of our strengths."

This is too fatalistic. The biblical reference is shoehorned in, and all of these claims lack any sort of sufficient evidence. You make an effort to bring up the opposite viewpoint, but you do not sufficiently dismiss or address its concerns without crossing over into the realm of ridicule. I know it's tough to write for the other side of something you don't believe in, but try to understand it before you decide you don't like it.

Oh, come on!

It was so hard to work with this guy! Every single group project, every single lab report, every individual happenstance that put the two of them together was a pain in the butt. No matter what she wrote—whether to appeal to his sensibilities, or to fly in the face of them—he had something to say in the contrary. Like, okay, it was one thing to disagree with something you disagreed with in a legitimate, honest way, but it was an entirely different thing to tear apart what boiled down to your own life philosophy, or something! Did he even believe in what he believed in, or did he just decide it was the least worst opinion, mathematically? Maybe he thought that the sum total of all writings was leading up to his grandiose synthetic thingamabob of great and perfect knowledge. Maybe he fancied himself the unbiased wanderer of the world, able to tell the problems in everything while sticking to his own, unbiased, infallible, divinely inspired moral code.

Or maybe, juuuust maybe, he was a bit of a tool.

She didn't care anymore. She had spent all night writing that paragraph, and now it was being torn apart. Second semester seniors didn't need to worry about that kind of thing anymore, but he insisted on trying anyways. What school did he get into, anyways? Harvard? He probably thought he was too good for Harvard. He'd probably choose Yale. He'd probably realize that having the choice between Yale and Harvard was hilarious, and refuse to laugh at it. He'd go to UTC just to spite the world. Build himself up from "nothing" into "something."

Fuck.

That.

Guy.

Bert closed her laptop and sipped at her coffee angrily. Fuming with mad. She could crush the cup if she wanted to. Her booth was empty, the space on her seat next to her taken up by her orange backpack. She looked at her smart watch. 1:30 in the afternoon. To her parents, she had come over here to get some work done, but she was really just here to hang out. Starbucks was a little passé and overdone by now, but it didn't matter. She liked their coffee. Unironically, too. Max Rudolph probably went to Starbucks, ordered water, and walked back out. Demetri, his travelling companion, would giggle. Nah, it would be more like the whole of right-wing GHHS would snicker and laugh and, holy fuck, chortle along with him, and tip their fedoras at each other. It sucked to have to think about others this nastily, but it was all she could do. She was mad, and coffee wasn't helping.

What would really help, right now? Someone to vent to. Her eyes went to the entryway (no door, not even an automatic one, for this was an open air Starbucks, it seemed, though it still sat removed from the rest of the food court). Expectantly, she waited for someone to walk in, somebody she knew, making their cue, delivering themselves across the table from her, maybe even right next to her, moving her backpack to the floor, so she could give them a big, nice welcome hug, whether they liked it or not. A Lucas, perhaps? Or maybe even a Violet? There were a lot of Violets and Lucases to go around. She'd even go for the Violet that didn't like being hugged! She was nice!

But nobody came.

With a sigh, she took out her phone and opened Snapchat. It was about time to update her streaks. Today's filter would have to be the dog. Everyone loved the dog filter, right?

[backslash]

((Siyanda Nagi continued from Man's Only Friend))

If there were any errant mind readers hanging around the mall food court, soaking up all the mental signals or whatever, here's a glimpse of what they would have heard as Siyanda rushed past:

Late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late late-- you get the picture.

There was really nobody to blame but zirself, which was extra annoying. Ze always tried to leave earlier than seemed necessary when ze had a shift at the mall Starbucks, because downtown's traffic had a mind of its own and it always decided to be hell when Siyanda was running behind or otherwise in a hurry. This afternoon, however, ze had nodded off in the middle of catching up on some reading for French class and had come to just in time to see that it was a good fifteen minutes after when ze should have left the house. Everything following that realization had been a lot of frustration, internal swearing, and a mantra that could have put Alice's white rabbit to shame.

The mall Starbucks didn't even have the decency to have a door that Siyanda could dramatically fling open upon zir arrival. This place was the worst.

"I'm here, hi, traffic, sorry!" Ze said to the first other employee ze spotted as ze rushed in with zir apron flung over one shoulder. Ze probably wasn't in too much trouble, given that Siyanda was one of the few younger workers who managed to regularly turn up at all, but that did little to lessen the instinctive stress. Siyanda made a beeline for the door behind the counter to soak up the thirty seconds of peace ze was going to have to get zir uniform in order before the inevitable afternoon rush of coffee-hooked zombies experiencing their post-lunch crash began.

As annoying as the customers could be, Siyanda was also a coffee-hooked zombie, so it was hard to judge in that regard.

[MethodicalSlacker]

Someone rushed in, late for work, and that someone turned out to be someone that someone knew, one of those someone's being Bert, and the rest being Siyanda. Ze looked like ze had been running late for a while, but it wasn't really Bert's place to guess. Bert wasn't really all that good at jobs, anyways. Her parents had tried to get her to apply for one over the summer, but Mamie advised against it. Back when Mamie was a girl, she wasn't expected to work, and, plus, Bert had enough on her hands as is/was. What space was there for a job amidst the hectic schedules of being a figure skater, a member of student government, and a lass full of pluck and wonderment that happened to get herself into all sorts of fun and exciting hi-jinx™ with her wacky™ fun™ friends™?

Siyanda seemed like just the person for the coffee job, too. She wouldn't want to take that away from zem by applying for a job here, even if she knew that she wouldn't make the cut and that wasn't how job applications worked in the real world. Ze was like a stressed out, jazz addicted version of Tweak from South Park, except not really a caricature, and a lot less annoying to have to listen to. Bert's coffee wasn't exactly finished yet, but maybe she'd go up and order another one just for fun, and also to have an excuse to talk to her friend.

Maybe another friend would arrive, and Bert could give them her coffee? That'd be swell.

Bert stood up and awkwardly shuffled out from her seat and got in line for another drink. Maybe she'd get a brownie or some sweets, too? She didn't have much money left from last week's allowance, but she probably had enough for, like, a cake pop or something. Sugar could help take her mind off of Max and his horribleness, but a regular brownie—or cake pop, for that matter—probably wouldn't be enough to make her feel better on its own.

Yeah...

Quietly, she wondered if it was possible to make weed cake pops, and shuffled forward in the line. Not quite there yet, but almost.

[Pippi]

Damn. Someone was eager to get their caffeine fix.

((Dean Puchero: PREGAME START!))

Dean had to take a big step backwards to avoid being knocked down and flattened, but he couldn't help but laugh as he watched Siyanda tear into the Starbucks like a person obsessed. He imagined that, if they were in a cartoon or a, what was it called, annymay, there'd be a big cloud of dust left in their wake, with a bunch of papers drifting down as it dissipated. Heh. Yeah, something like that.

He rolled his shoulders, and adjusted the longboard tucked safely under his arm. Kinda sucked that he wasn't allowed to use it in the mall, but he could get the logic behind it. People would probably get mad if their kid got knocked flying by a guy on a skateboard. Not that it would have been his fault if they did. He knew how to control his longboard; kids could barely control their own legs.

Dean looked up at the big green Starbucks sign, a contemplative look on his face. Did he feel like a coffee right now? He'd only really headed out to grab some fresh air on his board, as well as some new earphones; his current ones, plugged into his phone, were more exposed wiring than anything else at this point.

He looked at the sign for a couple more moments, before shrugging and heading inside. Eh, why not? Wasn't like he was strapped for cash at the moment, and wasn't like a single frappucino would suddenly give him a gut and weedy little arms. Err. Arm.

Dean waltzed in, pausing the music on his Spotify as he took his place in the queue, removing his earbuds and stuffing them into his pocket. A broad grin broke onto his face as he recognised the person behind the counter as the person who'd almost sent him flying, and then recognised them again as Siyanda Nagi. Dean knew about Siyanda, because Dean knew most people at George Hunter, but the main thing he knew about them was that they didn't really dig 'she' or 'he' or even 'they' like a couple of people at school did. Issue was, Dean could never remember what those pronouns were. He tried his best, but he would willingly hold his hands up; his best could be better.

He flashed a grin and a wave towards the counter anyway, hoping Siyanda would catch his eye. He thought he recognised someone in the line in front of him, too, but it was a liiiittle hard to tell from just the back of a head. Didn't wanna call out to them with a guess of a name, only to find it was someone's Aunt Janet instead. Not that that had ever happened to Dean before. Nope.

He put his hands in his pockets and bounced gently on his heels as the line slowly trudged forwards.

[backslash]

Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. Things were fine. Things were under control. Siyanda got fixed up and into zir uniform with little trouble, since ze'd had zir apron with zem. Technically you weren't supposed to take it home unless it needed to be washed, but Siyanda had had one apron stolen already. If fucking Ron on the evening shift thought that he was going to get his hands on zir apron a second time, he had another thing coming.

So Siyanda got all settled into zir place behind the counter and zir heart rate back to something approaching normal when of course someone that ze actually knew had to turn up. At least there were worse people who could have shown their faces than Bert and... was that Dean? Instinctively, Siyanda's eyes dropped to check his right arm; the quick glance confirmed that the visible part of the arm was a shade or two off from the rest of his skin tone. So yes, it was in fact Dean.

Siyanda could probably stand to come up with a better way to remember Dean than staring at his prosthetic. Ze gave him a nod, hoping that he hadn't noticed the direction of zir gaze (or that if he had, he was unperturbed). This wasn't helping zem calm down and get into the routine. Fortunately, Bert's arrival at the front of the line served as a suitable distraction.

"Back for more?" Ze asked conversationally, picking up a fresh cup and holding zir marker poised over it to take Bert's order.

[MethodicalSlacker]

At last, she had made her way to the front of the line. The journey had been a long one, and she had grown a whole entire beard on the way, but she had managed to make it through the arduous seconds separating her and her goddamn coffee. Siyanda was here. Ze asks her a friendly question. Now would not be a good time to crash.

"Ugh, and I need it too," Bert said, slouching theatrically, "Siyanda, I've been working on a history essay for the past few hours, with Soh-craytes himself, and I'm getting nowhere."

Hopefully, she didn't seem like too much of a Debbie downer, even though Max was stressing her out a fair deal. She smiled at Siyanda, but felt like ze would know that it was forced.

"Can I get a tall pike place roast," she asked, "with room for milk, please?"

This would probably be her last order of the day. After she finished this cup, she'd give up on the essay and go home. Probably catch up on the latest episode of Darling in the Franxx. She turned, and saw another familiar face behind her in line. Dean, right? He towered over her. Real nice guy. The plug to end all plugs. The one, the only, the Fullmetal Alchemist. Surrounded by familiar faces, she felt some of her anxieties melt away.  

"Hey Dean!" she said, with a little wave, "How goes it?"

[Pippi]

Hey, wouldja look at that. His intuition had been right. His point from earlier had well and truly been proven; he knew basically everyone at George Hunter, even from the back of their heads. Bert was a sweet girl, even if Dean didn't exactly get why she went by that nickname. She was friendly and outgoing and, holy shit, freaking tiny. He was pretty sure he could just pick her up with one hand and lift her over his head without breaking a sweat.

Heh. Maybe that could become part of his workout regime. Bench pressing Bert.

He nodded at Siyanda, trademark easygoing smile firmly planted on his face, as he quickly ran through the coffee options in his head, trying to decide what he wanted. Didn't wanna be That Guy, the person who spent 5 minutes going 'Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' whilst the queue grew longer and longer and longer and the baristas collectively lost the will to live, after all.

"Yo, Bert, Siyanda."

Dean returned Bert's wave with his free hand, before running it through his hair at the back of his head.

"It's going pretty good, yeah, can't complain. Almost got creamed by a certain someone rushing in here-"

Dean looked over at Siyanda, grinning at them, before looking back at Bert.

"-But yeah, nah, everything's pretty sweet otherwise. 'm taking a break from History revision to catch some air and replace these."

At this, Dean pulled out the tattered, tangled pile of spaghetti that was his headphones from his pocket.

"You doing good?"

[backslash]

Siyanda didn't hurry to get Bert's order into the register, since she herself seemed in no hurry to move to the other end of the counter, and the rush hadn't quite started yet. Pike Place with room for milk, "Bert" with a quick and sloppy doodle of a cartoon bear face next to it. Not that it was likely to help anyone actually get the pronunciation right, but Bert might appreciate it.

Of course Dean had to go and disrupt the groove just as Siyanda was getting into it by offhandedly mentioning that he had been the person ze had almost bowled over in zir haste to get to the store. Siyanda took the moment required to hand off Bert's cup to also mercilessly crush the trickle of embarrassment that made zir cheeks flush before turning back to Dean.

"Sorry about that.The time crunch is real. Sometimes there are casualties."

Ze was, ze supposed, glad that Dean hadn't become a casualty. He was a nice guy, and Siyanda would have hated to have inflicted more injury on him than he'd already suffered in life. Not to mention the bills.

"What can I get for you?"

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Revision?" Bert asked, wide-eyed with bewilderment, "Please tell me you've started the current assignment before you went back and started revising old stuff, Dean, for your sake. That's what I'm here to work on: the current thing, not the revisiony thing. I've been stuck with Max Rudolph for it, and it's a pain in the aaaaaanus to work on."

The cashier called out her name, held out the drink, and Bert graciously accepted, holding out her cash in the other hand. The cartoon bear must've been Siyanda's doing, an effort to get Bert's name to be pronounced 'correctly.' It really didn't matter to Bert how people chose to pronounce her nickname. She preferred 'burrt' on some days, and 'bear' on others. Right now, she was in a 'bear' mood, if only because she wished she were one so she could track down Max with her super smell, claw him to pieces, and then eat his face off.

She gestured to her seat, looking at Dean. Hopefully she did so in an inviting way, but she didn't entirely trust herself to be the judge of what was and wasn't appealing to others. Even if she turned out to be right about it, most of the time, half of the time, the reason she succeeded all of the time was that none of the time she was trying to appeal to others or thinking that she had some kind of sense for what they wanted. She just did what she did, and people seemed to like it, more than most of the less than half of the all of the time.

"You can sit with me and help talk things out, if you'd want," she suggested.

"Or not. I'm kinda tired of writing anyways."

[Pippi]

"Ouch. That's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy, working with old Rudolph."

Now, Dean was friends with a whole bunch of people at George Hunter, and on friendly terms at least with the vast majority of those remaining, but there were exceptions to everything. While he hadn't had any bad experiences with Max himself, he'd heard plenty of horror stories about the guy from his friends, and over time, they'd all built up to paint a pretty unpleasant picture. And he was more inclined to trust his friends, rather than a guy he was on little more than speaking terms with.

He shot an apologetic look at Siyanda, glad he wasn't holding the line up just yet, then gave a sheepish grin towards Bert. Lotsa looking at people today, jeez.

"Eh, well, you know how it is," he said, shrugging. "You get yourself all focused on finishing one school thing, you don't realise you've kinda...  forgotten about something else, y'know? I'll be fine though, probably. I've got plenty of free time."

That was basically true. It'd be eating into his workout time, and probably a get-together the gaming club was planning for later this week, but hey, at the end of the day, schoolwork was more important, specially if he was already behind on it. Whoops.

"I'll still come sit with you, though, that'd be cool. Even if we don't get any work done it'll be cool to catch up, and I'm probably a better conversation partner than Max, eh? Gimme a sec, though."

Dean grinned at Bert, before turning back to Siyanda – man, he was gonna get dizzy as well – to finally place his own order.

"Sorry 'bout that, Si," Dean said. Did they prefer being referred to by their own name? He wasn't sure. Damnit. He'd have to get better at this, make a concerted sit down with them so they felt comfortable around him. For the meantime, if they asked him to stop, he was gonna stop.

"Oh, and hey, don't worry 'bout earlier, it's all cool. I think you'd probably have been hurt worse than me if we'd collided, anyways."

Dean flashed Siyanda an easygoing smile, before quickly glancing up at what was on offer.

"Can I just get, uh, a medium caffè mocha, if that's cool?"

[backslash]

Lots of swiveling and chattering back and forth going on here. The three of them probably looked like- well, like a group of high school kids who all knew each other, Siyanda supposed. As long as Bert and Dean weren't holding up the line, ze figured nobody would care if they hung around the counter to chat.

Si, though? Siyanda had never really gone by a nickname. Names could be a tricky things, but Siyanda had always liked zirs and hadn't ever given much thought to changing or shortening it. Ze would have to think for a while on whether or not ze liked having someone call zem by something else.

"You mean a grande?" Ze asked Dean. Ze knew what he meant, but was pretty much required to ask. At least at this point in the Starbucks chain's lifespan, people weren't such smartasses about the terminology, and Dean was nice enough that Siyanda would have been genuinely surprised if he decided to go in for that shtick. He was already both forgiving and somewhat apologizing for the fact that Siyanda had almost run him over, in between his conversation with Bert.

Siyanda leaned onto the countertop on zir elbows, twirling the marker while ze waited for Dean's response. Ze felt that ze should add to the conversation somehow, but was lacking for things to say that weren't unbearably inane. This was what happened when your social life was on life support: eternal small talk. That thought was accompanied by a brief but intense rush of malaise.

There had to be something to say here that wouldn't leave zem swept off to the side, right? Ze was usually way better at interaction than this. Ze needed a coffee of their own.

"What... history assignment is that?"

Yes. Nailed it. We've gone from mundane to ultra mundane and also late to the topic of conversation. Truly an achievement.

Siyanda stared very hard at Dean's left ear instead of his face and hoped for the floor to open up and swallow zem.

[MethodicalSlacker]

"Thank you for your enduring support in this trying time," she intoned, putting on the puppy dog eyes for Dean.

His beliefs about school work made sense. She'd been stuck in revision loops herself, more than a few times. The relatively light course-loads of second semester senior classes helped out, but last year she would find herself crushed under mountains and mountains of work. All. The. Time. She'd come to school with Physics, English, and Math done, and forget about History and whatever elective she was taking. The next day she'd make up those missing assignments, and then miss out on the current stuff. Even with her perfect attendance it felt like she was missing school.

Siyanda's question was an entirely valid one. Ze didn't know it, but Bert had been conflicted on the answer herself.

"To be entirely honest," Bert said, throwing her hands up in a gesture of mock defeat, "I can't even pretend to effing know anymore. Started out one way, and then Max happened, and now we're floating a house down the Mississippi river. "

She snort-laughed at her own ignorance. Bert knew what the essay was supposed to be about—an analysis of a theme in Noam Chomsky's documentary Requiem for the American Dream—but since she had been paired up with Max, the assignment had taken a somewhat ugly turn. He made it clear from the start that, as far as he was concerned, Bert's input meant very little. He had a specific theme in mind that he wanted to analyze, and that was that. The last couple of days had been a back and forth battle of passive aggressive attempts at undermining Max's vision, attempts that he always just so happened to be ignorant towards, interpreting every half-sarcastic jab as entirely sincere. Just last night, while Bert was working on the essay, she started writing down phrases from the animation podcast she had been listening to while working. When she woke up in the morning to find not only that Max hadn't deleted them, but that he had commented on them and given tips on how to revamp them in order to fit the essay better, she almost blew a gasket.

If the person in question were any less dense (or just a little, um, human?) then she would probably have laughed it off and explained what had happened. Just for Max, though, she decided to revise the section. As a matter of fact, the entire paragraph had turned into a halfway revised version of a spiel about the second Croods movie being cancelled from the sixty fifth episode of the Pizza Party Podcast. Max was none the wiser.

"At this point," she added, "it's as much about turning in a complete essay as it is about making Max look bad."

What was the point in caring about assignments like this essay anymore? She didn't know. Max had decided, at some point or another, that giving in to senioritis would be a blow to his own personal pride, and if there was anything that Bert could observe that Max liked more than baseball or being right all the time, it was his own concept of dignity. Whether he had gotten into Harvard or decided to study abroad—or, just likely, did the mental gymnastics necessary to conclude that all colleges are liberal propaganda machines and that he was going to get around the entire process by not applying at all—she figured that he'd attack the assignment all the same. It didn't matter to him that getting a bad grade on it had relatively little consequence. He just wanted to keep the status quo.

"Anyways," she resumed, "I'ma stop holdin' up your line and get back to the grind. Both of y'all are welcome to come sit, if you'd like, whenever you want. Maybe we can write something dumb into the essay, and hope he doesn't notice."

With that, Bert took her coffee over to her seat. She'd check up on what sort of stupid edits Max had decided to make, and then report back to Dean—and Siyanda, if ze was still interested.

[Pippi]

Dean chuckled as Siyanda corrected his coffee shop faux pas. He really didn't think it mattered what term he used, but he was also certain that they didn't think it mattered either. It was just, y'know, policy. Nobody liked it or cared about it, but everybody had to deal with it cause that was just how the world worked. Just like cockroaches, or working with Max.

"That's the one," Dean said, nodding his head, grinning at Siyanda. "Y'know, it kinda sounds better, doesn't it? Sounds more like I should be lounging by a pool in, like, a Spanish villa, doesn't it?"

He chuckled again, before turning to look at where Bert was sitting – yep, definitely dizzy now – and responding to her, raising his voice just enough to be heard above the general hubbub of the Starbucks.

"I'll be with you in a sec, Bert! Lets try and fit that Navy SEAL quote in somewhere!"

Dean rested his longboard against the counter, idly spinning one of the wheels as he flashed his smile back at Siyanda. It was looking likely that he'd be out here for a good while longer than he'd anticipated, but that was fine by him. He'd never pass up the opportunity to hang out with people, and it wasn't like all the stores were gonna close before he could buy a new set of earphones, either.

"It's that Requiem for the American Dream one," Dean said, answering Siyanda's earlier question. "Tell the truth, I'm kinda struggling to get started on it. It's feelin' like one of those essays where even writing the first line's an accomplishment. You wanna hang with us when you get a spare moment? Three heads better than one, y'know, and it'll be cool to catch up anyway."

He laughed again, running his hand through his hair as he did so.

"Whatever the case, it'll be a chance to make fun of Max. Don't tell me you can pass that one up."

[Jilly]

((Desiree Beck continued from Bargain Basket Baller))

Desiree continued to sip on her lukewarm coffee. She looked back at her mother seated across the table; she was still shooting daggers at the baristas behind the counter, her finger tapping slowly increasing in pace as minutes passed by.

She didn't even want to be at the mall, but her mother dragged her to go clothes shopping. "You really should have more professional attire for when you leave for college," she said. So now Desiree was here, held hostage as her mother lugged her from store to store and flung simultaneously boring and gaudy clothes at her. She didn't even have the chance to pick anything out herself as her mother shoved her into changing room after changing room.

But at least now the misery was almost over; the more Desiree played along to her mother's whims, the sooner she could go home to her true loves Minecraft Alex and Toby. All Desiree had to do now was stomach this overpriced bean water and she was home-free.

Or rather, that was the plan. They ordered their drinks 10 minutes ago, and her mother was still waiting on hers.

"...This is ridiculous," her mother grumbled in Wu Chinese. Her finger tapping and foot bouncing reached a rapid syncopation before she finally started to get up.

Desiree finished her sip and splayed her free hand out beckoning her mother to stop. "I-I'm sure it's gonna be ready any minute now."

"No!" her mother snapped back, "I'm not waiting another damn minute; I'm saying something." Her mother finished her ascent out of her chair and stormed to the front of the line at the counter. The counter where both the worker and the loiterer were kids Desiree recognized from school.

Desiree put one hand over her forehead and eyes as her mother whined to Siyanda. "Excuse me miss; I've been waiting ten minutes now. Where's my order?"

[backslash]

"I wouldn't mind," Siyanda said to Dean. "I've been having trouble getting off the ground with that one too." Which was to say that ze had barely started on it before forgetting that it existed in favor of something more urgent, until this assignment itself had become urgent. But hashing it out a bit with good company (unlike the company that Bert was saddled with) would be helpful. Siyanda would be less likely to lose something important among all the brain fog with two reasonably competent people to sound off of.

Of course, that was the exact moment that the universe noticed things seemed to be going well, so it had to tip the scales back a little.

Siyanda blinked slowly at the irate customer who seemed to have materialized before zem. Ze was pretty sure ze hadn't even taken her order. Or that could be the brain fog talking.

"Rae, did you take her order?" Ze called over zir shoulder to zir coworker, only to discover when ze glanced back that Rae had disappeared into the back room to retrieve something. Siyanda sighed.

"I'm sorry about that. Can I see your receipt?" Siyanda glanced over the woman's shoulder to where Desiree Beck looked to be trying very hard to make the rest of the cafe disappear. That was, as the kids said, a mood. A rare moment of solidarity between them, and Desiree wasn't even looking so that she could appreciate it.

Please be halfway civilized, Siyanda thought at the woman who was presumably Desiree's mom. Ze was slow on the draw today and not feeling especially accommodating.