Luncheon

Frank exits his bathroom, the last wisps of moisture leaving his skin. Across his body his faint scars, barely visible to his acute eyes, no longer ache. They burn. Even moreso with what he can feel is about to happen. Even in its state of deep hibernation, his other side can tell that they are on the precipice of a great war. And, without asking permission, it was starting to ready him for the battle’s arrival.

Splayed across his bed is the suit he’d chosen before running this morning. Slowly, more carefully than normal, he begins to dress himself for work. It’s a tighter fit than usual, not so much that most people would have noticed, but enough that the former monster’s already burning skin begins to feel the stress coming from both sides. Hopefully, no one will notice. Gathering his things, Frank leaves his apartment.

He heads across the freeport, towards his office building. Before reaching it, he makes his frequent pitstop at the corner store by the office. Less for the terrible coffee and cheap breakfast, and more for the company.

Ismael is already seated, and eating a pastry that Frank was fairly certain didn’t actually qualify as food. Ish gives Frank a nod as the massive man pours himself a coffee. Deciding to try to discourage his internal companion’s eagerness, he refrains from the greasy and or sugarcovered fare. Plopping two cubes of sugar in his cup, mostly to mask the taste, he heads to the counter and pays. The teen behind the counter barely registers the guy towering over them, focused on whatever book they’re studying just out of view.

Frank smiles as he sits down, saying just a simple, “Ish, how have things been?”

Ismael shakes his head, also smiling. “The usual,” he replies, “Got back from a great vacation only to have the work just piled on.”

Frank sighs. “Yeah, tell me about it. This ramp up has been stressing me out.”

“You can’t complain,” Ish insists, “At least you got to do this with waste. We already redesigned and had that rebuilt from the ground up to be scaleable. I had to deal with the half-functional hodgepodge system that is intake.”

“Did you find a solution?” Frank asks, mostly to irritate his old friend.

“Screw you,” Ish states, then answers more earnestly, “Basically, if we take a fractional percentage out of the public system and funnel it into production instead, no one should notice the difference individually but the additional air, water, and electricity should be enough for the fivefold increase they are planning.”

Frank smirks. “You mean sixfold,” he jokes.

Ish shakes his head. According to the thing I sent in, yes. But at the amount needed for a sixfold increase, some people like you would start to notice things being a little worse. If they actually need a sixfold and they don’t like my solution, they can damned well follow our suggestions and scrap this garbage system.”

“No, you didn’t get the garbage system,” Frank continues to needle Ish, that was given to me to do all by my lonesome while you were getting drunk. If you took more reasonable vacations, we could’ve been working these systems together...” he trails off.

Ish smiles. “Yeah,” he says as he finishes his pastry, “But then neither of us could get that pretty overtime money.”

Frank raises an eyebrow. “Is time and a half really worth all this complaining?” he asks.

Ismael waves his massive friend off. “You know dang well I’m going to find a reason to complain regardless, so yeah, let’s stick with our OT pay so I can blow it all on my next unreasonable vacation.” He tosses out his food’s wrapper, and together we head to our office.

After entering, Frank calls the elevator. While they wait, Ish remarks, “By the way, I think you might be having a bit of an issue.”

“Hmm?” Frank questions without a word.

Ish explains, “Your shirt’s a tad snug. Most people, I’d complement them or ask about routines, but you’re you.”

Frank nods. He knows exactly what his friend means by that offhand statement. “I mostly have a handle on it, for now.” With a furrowed brow, he adds, “Is it really that noticeable?”

“Only when you tense your shoulders, like you did trying to spot what book the kid at the store was reading.”

Frank breathes a sigh of relief. He just has to not flex anything. He can manage that for a few days.

As they get into the elevator, their boss Prita walks into the office. Ish tries to press the close door button to avoid getting assigned any additional work, but it doesn’t register in time and Prita enters the elevator with them, pressing the button for the fifth floor.

Prita looks judgementally at Ismael. “And we were doing that, why exactly?” She asks, gesturing vaguely at his hand, still hovering near the close door button.

Ish visibly debates on what to say. After an uncomfortably long silence, he admits, “You give us new assignments either before work in the lobby, or at around ten after your morning meetings. The later you give me the work, the easier it is to justify working over.

Prita smiles. “If you really want new work, I can give you some, but the team has already finished the important stuff for the hypothetical ramp up. No, I wanted to talk to you because one of my bosses is inviting me and my team to a luncheon this afternoon.

Frank sighs, while Ismael looks excited. “I’ll let the team know. Which boss?” Ish asks.

"Is it mandatory?” adds Frank.

"Yes,” Prita says to Frank, before replying “Uriah,” to Ismael. Uriah runs the plantside resources management.

Ish groans. “Dang it, he’s just looking for an excuse to fire us,” the man complains. Accurately complains, but complains nonetheless.

Prita nods. “Probably,” she says, “Hence why its mandatory.”

Frank begins to formulate his counter argument, after all they would have a bit harder of a time pissing people off if they weren’t physically present. The elevator opens at the fourth floor to interrupt his thought process. Ismael and Frank walk out of the elevator. Behind them, their boss emphasizes, “Second floor at one.” So they’re holding this luncheon thing here. Which means one of two things. Either no one of note is coming to it, or they really are trying to downsize the whole department. Even more reason for it not to be mandatory.

Walking over to their desks, Frank reminds Ish, “You agreed to tell the team about the mandated luncheon. Feel free to remind them that, as this is mandatory, it does not count as break time despite its name, they are allowed to take their lunch break as well.”

Ish nods. “I’ll tell all of them but Killian. He stole my yogurt three weeks ago, so I will have my petty vengeance.”

“See you at lunchtime, before this luncheon thing,” Frank says, seating himself at the desk that, despite being the largest desk on the floor, was still just a bit too small for his hulking frame.

Ish laughs. “I’ll try to convince the gang to show up too, really freak Hector and Selene out.”

“Please don’t,” Frank says with a smile. That would be entertaining, assuming it works. Even though Selene might actually resort to murder. Not him, she likes Frank too much. Just Ismael. Would take care of one third of the most likely reasons they’ll all be fired during the luncheon, but would also add a whole lot of workload to Frank’s plate, and he doesn’t need that stress with his internals acting up like they are this week.

Today is budgets day for their team. Which means everyone sends him their accounts info and he gets to put them in the spreadsheet and determine exactly how bad this is going to be. Unfortunately for him, the ‘gang’ as Ish refers to them, are all terrible at getting things done on early. Himself included. Which means they were always over budget and generally sent him that fact in the middle of the day. Maybe this luncheon thing will inspire them to send data to him early, but he doubts it. More likely, they’ll see it as an excuse to hold off until three, then argue that they’re doing Frank a favor by letting him stay late. Ignoring the fact that, unlike the rest of them, Frank has a real schedule that he keeps to consistently. Has to keep to.

Even still, without the data from everyone but himself and Julie who sent it yesterday for some ungodly reason, Frank begins his calculations. He was slightly over budget, due to his overtime, but not so much that it should impact anything. Evidently, prior to this last week of work, Julie was under budget, but establishing, testing, and refining the scaling models for raw material transit took her even more time than Ish did, and with the extra time and the full week of work, and the materials used in testing, she reached her budget. Didn’t quite make it past the margin of error into the over budget realm, but if Ismael manages to convince her to show up to this pre-meeting lunch, Frank feels like he can make fun of her all the same.

After inputting the data, Frank begins to check to see who’s actually showing up to this meeting. Prita has sent the team the invite to the luncheon. The RSVPs are private on his calendar, so he logs into Prita’s account. He’s known her passwords since before she brought him, Ish, and Millie over from the collapsing company. But to her, while their RSVPs are not private, everyone else’s are. Not a great sign. It means Uriah’s bringing someone more important than him to the party, which again means he’s trying to get the team fired. Frank doesn’t know Uriah’s password, but Nathan, Uriah’s personal assistant, should have all the same access to who got the invites, at least. He’d need to, for planning purposes. The monster logs into the PA’s email to check.

The invite does not have any confirmed RSVPs, other than Prita’s, but Frank can see who else their boss’s boss invited. Including a station manager, a representative from the President’s Office, and some people in the port authority. Frank looks over at Ish, who has returned from his quest to gossip. “Two things,” he says to his old friend.

Ismael looks up at the man. “What is it?” he asks.

“Firstly, give me your gosh darned budget info before I ask my other side to give you a visit with a baseball bat,” Frank makes sure the threat is said in a manner that it can’t be taken seriously.

“I’ll do it in a bit, don’t stress,” Ish jokes. “What’s the other thing?”

“Oh, right,” Frank replies with a shrug, “Uriah is definitely trying to get us fired.”

Ish’s smile fades. “I was hoping to be joking. How definitely is definitely?” he asks. He knows Frank well enough to know that the former monster is more than capable of figuring this sort of thing out.

“A station manager, along with reps from the port and for Bellardino herself,” Frank replies frankly.

“Well shit,” Ish says. “Maybe we don’t want to take the lunchbreak.”

“Screw that,” Frank says, “we should just let them fire us, then get swamped trying to figure out all the weird quirks of the systems we’ve upgraded. Have them flounder and hire us back for an even bigger contract.”

Ish shakes his head. “Not all of us are nigh immortal, unaging supersoldiers. Some of us can’t afford to be unemployed for the year it’ll take to get rehired.”

Frank shakes his head. “Counterpoint,” he says, “I’ll pay for everyone’s lunch.”

“Sucks to be you, then. Everyone but Alan agreed to come.”

“So just you, Julie, and Millie, or did you go back on your word and invite Killian, too?”

Ismael pauses, deciding whether his petty vengeance was worth not forcing his old friend to buy another meal. He ultimately sighs. “I can’t invite Killian, or he’ll keep on taking my yogurt.”

“So it’s basically just a Friday lunch on a Monday,” I joke.

Sighing once more, Ish says, “You’re no fun.”

“Fair,” Frank jokes back, “But I am a nigh immortal killing machine, so it balances out, right?”