[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=steelblue][i][b]Ash Holloway[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=4682b4]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M) -> Mess Hall (C)
[i][b][color=4682b4]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/Wnnd0Wm/Ash-FC-5.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	The testimony seemed to crowd around Ash getting a misleading statement about Thana's ability to pull in breath from back in Quarantine. It was not his best moment, granted. In any case, the memory of how he felt had stuck with him, even if he had already silently forgiven the deception by omission. Thana was alive, all was good. Now if they could just get done what had to be done with this trial for the day, he could get back to doing a mixture of nothing and everything with her while the rest of the world just kept spinning around them. The fact that there was a trial was a great sign for the civility of this settlement. The fact that it seemed more or less fair was a boon, too, when one thought about how things could go down outside of the walls like that. Ash was okay with these things. He was even more okay when they called for a break. True, he could go for a meal, stretch his legs, do whatever came naturally, but the fact that he had someone to do these things with could not be overstated. 

	So it was with a heavy heart that he did not see Thana as he glanced up at the balcony. He was hoping they might have their evening meal together. The trudge up the aisle, still walking with respectful precision as he had for the Court Martial so far, seemed to take longer than it might otherwise until he was almost out of the building. His heart lightened considerably at the sight of Thana waiting by the front door. It was a little touching. She waited for him. It seemed in this day and age that few people did that, and he counted himself as blessed for having someone willing to stick around for his company. Ash offered her his arm and, whether taken or not (as he understood that she might be considered On Duty at the time), went with her the distance to the Mess Hall with a smile that, not too long ago, was a lot rarer. [color=4682b4]"Hey, missed you down there,"[/color] he said, a little playfully. 

	Feeling the need for greenery, Ash selected the rather spicy vegetable soup. He wasn't sure why, exactly. Spicy food wasn't the easiest to get hold of for him for a while, and despite not being someone who overly ran for the capsicum, it was something a little different. Different was good sometimes. 



[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=crimson][i][b]Thalia Carmichael[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=dc143c]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M) -> Mess Hall (C)
[i][b][color=dc143c]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/qjj5tn4/Thalia-TWD.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	Testimony was an ongoing thing, and while learning as much as possible about Camp Mexico Beach and the way they did things here was a priority, she was pretty sure at this time that she had learned all that she could at this point in the trial. Maybe more would be revealed at sentencing. Or verdict, whichever came first, though Thalia was pretty sure she knew which way this was going to go. It reminded her of [i]Alice in Wonderland[/i], when the Queen found out that someone was painting her roses red and so put on a trial to make sure "justice" was met. The sentence was already established, as was the verdict, and they had difficulties figuring out which was supposed to come first. Except with this, it was fairly obvious that Hunter was guilty, whatever that meant, of offenses which ranged from the insubordinate to the merely foolish. Until everything had gone through its proper course, Thalia would just hang out and wait, maybe get called on and pretend to be content to be there. 

	Except that the last part was obviously a lie. It was hard for her to pretend to be anything but what she was, which mostly involved being mildly irritated on the day-to-day. 

	Oh, but Thalia did notice Shears with growing interest. He was the next stop on her ongoing hunt for whatever the hell she was supposed to be hunting for. That, and she could do with a shorter haircut, so long as she was thinking about it. So she waited until it seemed like a good point to approach, and then moved to do so with quiet, grace, and surreptitiousness. 

	Except that she had all the quiet, grace, and surreptitiousness of a yodeling chainsaw giving birth to triplets. Coming up behind Shears as he filed away and toward the door was more of an exercise in Thalia misjudging the distance to him and getting caught up in a push of people, prompting her to band her metal hand on the back of a nearby chair and having to get out, [color=dc143c]"excuse, um, yeah, pardon, damnit, need to, grr, ...[i]fuck[/i]."[/color] When she finally prodded her way up to the man, Thalia blew out a breath and said very bluntly, [color=dc143c]"You know you'ah the next on my list, Shears."[/color] She cracked the barest of smiles. [color=dc143c]"What'cha got for me?[/color] She continued on her way to the Mess Hall, glancing over with a pause to provide conversational incentive, [color=dc143c]"Oh, and tell me on the way. If I don't eat something soon I'm gonna really bitch out."[/color] More to reality, Thalia was more likely to grow quieter and even less sociable until that need was sated, probably with the action of foraging or the application of a pointed stick. In any case, wherever Thana had gotten of to, she must be having the time of her life with this. 

	In the Mess Hall, Thalia selected the seafood chowder. It was meat, which was always a plus, and it was [i]chowder[/i]. What self-respecting New Englander, even one who was raised during some pretty formative years in Mexico, was going to pass up the niftiness of chowder? Thalia found a mostly relatively quietish place to sit, held up her spoon with her one fully working hand and poised to attack the bowled up fishiness, whispering the single-word battle cry of every hungry Bostonian: [color=dc143c]"...nnn[i]chowdah[/i]..."[/color]


[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=burlywood][i][b]Hank Wright[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=deb887]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M) -> Mess Hall (C)
[i][b][color=deb887]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/HLcYbzm/Hank-Smiling-Kinda.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	There was a general lack of regard on Hank's behalf as to what everyone else was doing, beginning the very moment that the Professor called for a recess. It was not really a hard and fast matter of the erstwhile Sheriff's overriding interest in whatever was for supper, nor his massive, gnawing hunger. Not to say that Hank couldn't go for a burger, or whatever, just then. He was frightfully bored with the whole trial; the repetition, the mind-numbing sameness or every piece of testimony that kept pointing in the same direction over and over, was rubbing his nerves roughly. If he had the benefit of a six-pack to numb things up, that would have made it more tolerable. But this? Nah, not his scene. Hank had been in several courtrooms in his pre-apocalypse career. [i]Civilian[/i] courtrooms. Events where, for the sake of expediency, one side concedes certain things as fact based on overwhelming certainty and they move on to attack or argue their point in a different fashion. This had none of that. Of course, this mindset came from a man who also had no problem drinking lots of beer and watching the same WWII documentary three times in a row. The things which bored him were fickle sometimes.  

	Mostly, Hank really wanted a change of scenery. So, this lack of regard for what everyone else was doing translated in him springing up right along with Wayne and heading along with his hetero lifemate in a determined and direct pace to the Mess Hall. His lack of desire to engage in unnecessary conversation was a bit of a boon for him in this instance, as he made good time arriving and scuttled into line readily. He settled on vegetable soup and rolls for his repast. Being a steak guy, and having no shortage of fish as of late, he was comparatively in the mood for something that might have been pulled out of a garden. And bread. Fresh bread made the tragic loss of 99.7% of humanity more bearable. [color=deb887]"Hey there, Maldonado. How's about we pick a good spot to quietly make fun of people like those two old guys from The Muppet Show, huh? Need something to break the [i]bland[/i] we've just been dragged through."[/color]