The Bill, Please

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"Watson, briefing."

It's a mundane sort of urgency in the man's face. "Intern" isn't quite applicable for organisations behind the veil, but regardless of the young man's proper title Rhianne wonders if he's under or overselling how important his message actually is. She errs on the side of caution and shoots him a thumbs up before standing.

She spares a brief glance to her friend working on the desk opposite her. It's a quiet office day, with no recent intakes to the site or local operations to support, and the bluehead is doing an excellent job pretending she's not watching the clock.

"Back in a few, Krona."

"Mhm," the researcher nods idly. Rhianne wonders if she even heard the exchange through her earphones.

Without fanfare, she closes the door behind her and follows the message-boy through the halls. Even with spring arriving Site-34 remains preternaturally chilly, and Rhianne suppresses the urge to use her expertise in thaumaturgical practices for personal gain. At least until it's been a month or two since her last reprimanding.

In time, the sequence of tiled and easily cleaned floors leads to its end, yet another unassuming door among many that her guide sheepishly knocks on.

"Enter," comes the reply, and Rhianne's heart sinks a little. She pushes the door open and meets her superior's eyes as best she can.

"Director," she nods slowly. Site Director Dumas returns the gesture without pause. "You asked for me?"

Rhianna looks about the meeting room. A dozen or so chairs crowding four pop-up tables that have been shoved together in the centre of the room. Most are filled with people she recognises, albeit only fleetingly, as members of the only task-force local to the area. One dedicated in its mission to seeking and eliminating any retailers, haberdashers, or restauranteurs who take the bold and dangerous decision to expand their businesses into the inexplicable.

One to which she was briefly assigned.

"Thank you for taking the time out of your day to see us so quickly," the director's bile is earned, Rhianne has made no effort to hide her distaste for the man's lack of foresight in the past, and in return he has ensured that she knows how unlikely it is to ever be let off the leash. "I trust you need no introduction to Lambda fourteen?"

Despite the distance of time, Rhianne feels her muscles tense.

"I only joke," there is no humour in the voice of the middle-aged manager as he continues. "Take a seat, field specialist."

She fights past hesitation with each of the mere seven steps that lie between the door and the nearest empty chair, ignores the sideways glances she receives from the less diplomatic agents around her, and at the end of her stride she forces herself to sit. Forces herself to drown out the conflicted urges to run or start a fight. Forces herself to hear, if not truly listen, to the words the director says next.

------

"I think I'm in a slump."

There's the very briefest of pauses in the rustle of paperwork from across the desk. The stout man's greatest display of shock to date. Whatever his partner may think, it only takes the briefest fraction of a second for him to continue tallying the month's take from all of their colleagues across the world. Those who, through respect, admiration, or a regrettable amount of intimidation, had added his name to their front doors.

He understands the surprise of course. He's used to being a living avalanche barely restrained by the energy a human body is able to support. If it were a normal day, he'd be complaining about *this* place's new menu item, or *that* place's choice of ingredient. He'd never ignore signs that his precious franchisees are prioritising profit over quality products, even if half the things the man across from him says are beyond him, with the other half being merely abstract in the extreme.

He spins on his chair, it's a plush office chair that he'd insisted on carrying home with him after trying it in the showroom. A mistake given his relatively slight physique, but the sore muscles were but a temporary barrier to true comfort. Now, sunk into its delightfully soft cushions he stares at the ceiling above and tries to piece together the feeling he has. Does he feel trapped? Drained? Does he feel like he's being carried or that he's doing all the lifting? He tries each of the words under his breath, but none resonate quite with the feeling in his chest.

His chair comes to a rest and his eyes focus on the desk in front of him. //His// desk. In its drawers, crumpled up beneath it, and scattered across its surface, are sheets of notepaper. Yellow pages scarred in roughly outlined ideas, written hastily as soon as the ideas had come to him. None of them are finished of course. Most are simply a set of three or four ingredients, an idea of preparation without anything to actually prepare, or else the verbose and overwrought first half of a recipe he had no idea how to finish. It never mattered before, he could always just pick up the next piece of paper and start something new, and if he just kept starting then invariably, //inevitably// he would finish something.

He leans forwards and leans on his elbow. He flicks through a few pages. Dangerous ideas, ones that would instil a sense of dread, relieved at the end by some light blissful epiphany. A dish for many mouths to eat at once, the experience only coming together in that brief shared moment. He crumples the next pages. Derivative. Referential. Thin jokes disguised as entire menus. For a brief moment he considers a particular idea again. It was escapism in a pure form, a meal served to you that is a recreation of something the 'you' of another world ate. The idea has legs, and is almost complete. It only needs a small push to set it in motion.

"Marius, what were we looking for?" He asks to the other man, still working away where he left him.

Amid the shuffle of papers comes the response from his partner. His even tone betrays little emotion, same as it ever has. The old Nord is ever a stable rock to him.

"You wanted me to help you share your food."

"Are we doing that? Do people feel what I wanted them to feel when they sit down at... what's that new one?"

"Under Johannesburg?"

"It's underground?"

"No, that's the name of the free-port."

He rolls his eyes. Restaurants opened with his apparent blessing, not only that he's never heard of, but in entire regions that he apparently isn't aware exist.

"Right. Are we sharing my food or am I just the big ticket name to license for foot traffic? Gods, is it even my food anymore or am I just chasing what I think my food should be? Hell, what //other people// think my food should be?"

He doesn't mean to shout, but the tension in his voice cannot be hidden. He doesn't //want// to hide it, and Marius, ever the professional, regards him with as calm a look as he's ever seen.

The short man, broad-shouldered and square of features, is more than anything a refrigerator given legs and arms. It's a joke he's made a dozen times before and will likely make a hundred times more in future, but at this moment he just sees a friend. A sound colleague who is exactly needed to fill in his eccentricities. His sense and reason, when he lacks it. And he leans over to pass him a piece of paper.

"You should take a walk. This will help."

------

Rhianne feels the vehicle slowing its pace, the road beneath giving way to a less solid material that crunches beneath its tires. To each side of her is an agent of her organisation, armed and armoured in the finest equipment its funding can spare. A subject-matter expert, she'd been called. An invaluable source of insight. She feels a prisoner, and has half a mind to riot. The shaded windows of the vehicle, an ordinary police van commandeered for extranormal use, give little sign of their destination, yet despite this the driver assesses that this is the place to stop. and without a word the mobile task force stands for action. The door is pushed open and the two operatives nearest follow it briskly, scanning the horizon for any signs of imminent ambush before waving their cohort to follow. Rhianne steps down onto the grass-shot gravel.

The 'One Star Reviewers' have arrived to a small patch of roughly level mountainside, a small corral for hikers and picnickers to leave their cars without any facilities fancier than a worn wooden fence to distinguish it from the road leading up to it. Rhianne follows its length, seeing no vehicles besides their own making use of it. Isolated underneath an evening sky.

For many, the work day would just be coming to a close. Hell, for her it usually would be. She pictures briefly other staff back at the facility gathering their coats, greeting the night-shift, making plans for dinner. Despite herself she feels her stomach rumble.

"Watson, glad you could join us!" It's the first words out of the sergeant's mouth today, at least that she's heard. Not for lack of trying, she's been watching him attempt to start a conversation several times after the briefing. More accurately, she's been staring daggers into him until he abandons the attempt.

"Why am I here, Gary?" She hates that this idiot has risen so far. This //child//. He stumbles over his words, but there's no abandoning the course. If he wishes to speak with her, she will have him speak.

"Um, should you be calling me..?" Another glare. Rhianne doesn't pull on the energies that surround her, doesn't make a spark or force steam to rise from her hand. A clenched fist sends the message well enough. "Okay sorry. With all of your experience dealing with group one-sixteen we thought you'd have the best understanding of anyone of the person in charge. So if anything concerning or unusual is said you'd probably be the first to notice."

Sergeant Jannsen's voice is almost a squeak when he finishes speaking, fading away under her gaze. It's heartening to see him foster such a healthy sense of how much she wants to strangle him.

"That," her own voice is stilted, containing irritation. "...was in the briefing. Gary, our mission is to capture people like him and put them in very dark holes so they do not snap and kill us all. So they don't //continue// to kill us."

Rhianne steps closer to the man, the temptation to strike him very real.

"I, more than anyone want to see him put to the dirt. So, //Sergeant//. Why. Am. I. Here?"

Gary does not respond, stumbling over his words. Something in Rhianne gives way and she steps past him, striking the side of the police van with her fist. It smarts, and the pain brings her into focus. She sees the patterning of the side of the van distorts slightly where she hit, a satisfying new dent marring the otherwise undamaged exterior.

"Take me to him."

"We, uh, brought a communications specialist--"

"Take. Me. To. Him."

Unable to manage another word, Sergeant Jannsen points the way and begins walking. She follows from a moderate distance, watching the shoulders of the larger man sag downwards. She doesn't hate him that much, Rhianne concedes, not a burning passionate hate at least. A cold indifference is more apt, and he tries to be a positive influence. But despite that he is a fool, as is anyone who thinks that murderer deserves a single word of friendship.

They walk for ten minutes away from the carpark. The terrain is rugged and mountainous, and the air is dry and dusty. Others of their unit are following behind, presumably including whichever Masters in Psychology she had just usurped the role of, and the sound of heavy boots scuffing over loose stone is all that Rhianne hears until at last they approach a short incline which once summitted, shows her everything she's been chasing.

Years of memories build up before her, featuring a wide selection of abandoned restaurants and event spaces. Since that first explosive contact, she has always been on the back foot. Always //one minute// too late to catch them. One minute too late to do real damage. Operations considered successful not by dismantling the ambitions of the monster she pursues, but in taking single pieces of leftover equipment and branding them with arbitrary numbers. And yet before her the ghost of the kitchen is made manifest in open air, taking by choice no methods of escape.

There on a small bench, partially shaded by overgrown shrubbery clinging to the orange rock, sits a man of unremarkable build. Brown hair allowed to grow just slightly too long, casual clothing not entirely suited to a day of hiking, and an overly relaxed posture. It's disarming, in a way, to see him so confident, so self-assured, so utterly indifferent to the well-armed contingent ascending to his position. Jannsen stops where he stands and turns to her.

"Please try to be calm?" the man's unsteady tone barely registers in her mind as Rhianne walks forwards. The ground is more stable here, as less foot traffic erodes the dirt and more plants bind it together with their roots. Her footsteps are less crunches now and more hard impacts, and for a moment she feels transported back to the streets of the city she can just about see on the horizon, before all too quickly she is stood behind the bench. She can see the man's face as he stares off into the distance. It would be so easy, so quick, a little surge of power, a little push, and the man who has cost her so much is ash upon the ground.

And yet.

And yet she finds herself looking in the same direction as he does. Can she see the street from here? After so many years, has something filled in that address? Is it another restaurant, more mundane and benign? Perhaps it's been turned into flats as the city grows, housing for those not wanting to live in the larger cities of California.

"Cup of tea?" The man breaks the silence, though he does not look at her. His voice is a little hoarse, and there's a cough as he clears his throat. She can't quite place the accent, it sounds a little forced to her ears. Belatedly she considers his actual words, and sees the small table balanced upon the ground with a flask at its centre.

"What is..."

"It's mundane, I assure you. Come, sit."

Despite herself Rhianne does so, taking a few easy steps around the bench to perch upon it. She takes the offered cup with caution, it's lukewarm at best.

"You are Chaz Ambrose?" There's a coiling feeling that twists through her stomach as she waits mere seconds for the answers. They feel longer than the rest of the day combined.

"Yes. I am."

She takes a sip of the tea. It's floral, complex, and leaves a lingering taste that's pleasant enough.

"Seven years ago..."

"Temecula, yeah. I know."

Of course he would. It was his business, his staff. If he didn't know of that flashpoint she'd have been insulted. Seven years of anger, of pain, of dealing with the fact that she walked out of that building and... She doesn't let the thought finish.

"What were their names?"

Her eyes snap to meet his. There's some emotion in those gold-coloured irises, one that in each and every night she had spent hating the mere idea of this man she had never once thought to see. Never //wanted// to see.

"Nathan, Richard, and Kiaran."

"I see."

And in a moment he's looking back towards the city in the distance, sipping on his tea. Rhianne glances behind the bench, looking at the half-dozen armed men and women surrounding the position, looking at the woman holding a listening device and repeating every word that's said. Looking at the idiot that lead them here. And then she turns her head back to her tea. She drank a lot of tea that day as well. It was just as good.

"Why did you come?" She finds herself asking. The offer made from on high that she would have torn up into pieces if she had been in his shoes. To give up so much in return for so little, increasing work tenfold just for the privilege of the status quo. If it had been her she would have burnt the paper and returned the ashes.

"I've been... thinking recently. Refocusing. What I'm doing." Chaz places his cup onto the table, careful not to rock it on the unsteady ground. He clasps his hands over one knee. "These last few years I've been chasing something. Trying to find what it was that made me who I am, or at least who the world thinks I am."

"You're a murderer," Rhianne's tone is harsh, though not as fierce as she'd intended. Her heart just isn't it it, and the accusation is just a statement of fact. One to which the man simply nods.

"Yeah. Yeah you're right. Not just those three but many more. A phoenix explodes in a man's stomach, a library-goer is mistaken for an ingredient, that incident with the garlic bread..." his words trail off as he speaks, and his gaze drops to his hands for a moment. Rhianne can see his knuckles are growing pale from where he grips his leg.

After a quiet moment he looks up again, and his tone is more even. "I started this all because I loved cooking. I loved cooking and I got good at it, and I wanted to show off a little."

Chaz chuckles, then wipes his face with one hand. He coughs again, spitting out some dust.

"No, that's not it. Showing off came later. I just wanted people to see why I loved cooking so much. To show people how interesting food is."

Rhianne absorbs the information more soundly than any she's heard in more than half a decade. Her own tea is almost forgotten in her hand, and she makes the conscious decision to finish the cup before it gets cold.

"'Wanted'?" She repeats, emphasising the last syllable. The man snorts softly at that.

"I suppose so. I don't know if I fell out of love somewhere along the way or if I just felt I had said my piece, you know?" He picks up his own cup and refills it, downing it seemingly without any conscience for its taste. "I don't know. A lot of people have supported me to get here. To the point I feel that 'Chaz Ambrose' only exists because of these people. Marius, Ignaas, Icky, the Doctor, gods even that deranged pharmacist..."

There's a moment of silence as the chef trails off, and for a minute both of them are staring at the Californian landscape in silence. Within her, the twisting ball of emotion takes on a different character. It doesn't burn as she has always known it to, instead hanging heavily in her stomach. It's still familiar, but not the fiery frustration that she projects so freely to those around her. It's the emotion that comes to her during evenings alone, when the inertia of her life feels inescapable.

Rhianne spares a glance to the man who shares the bench with her, and once again sees reflected in his expression a cruel familiarity in the emotions that lie behind it.

"Ennui," she says.

"Who's on we?" Chaz looks at her, whatever train of thought he'd been trapped in soundly harpooned by the statement.

"//Ennui//, a state of listlessness drawn from lack of novelty or activity." It's a state she's intimately familiar with, and has spent the better part of her time since that day growing ever more studied in it.

"Yeah. Yeah I guess so." Chaz leans back onto the bench. He still looks relaxed, far more than any man with as many firearms directed at him should be. "You wanted to know why I came today, right?"

Rhianne nods, a single slow assent.

"I've been thinking about what the Foundation does. What *you* do. And I can't help but laugh at myself. I stand around claiming to know the mysteries of the cosmos, when someone in your organisation has spent their entire life saving mine, as well as everyone else on this damned planet. And they never ask for any credit, no recognition, no awards of excellence. And all the while the silly little chef gets to make his silly little meals, in his silly little restaurant."

Chaz reaches into his pocket, and despite his words since she's sat down Rhianne instinctively tenses for a weapon to be drawn. Instead it's a simple piece of letter paper, folded into thirds.

"I can't do that. It's not in me to be so selfless. And I can't quit the business, hell I don't *want* to. Despite it all I //do// still love what I do. But I also want it to mean something."

The man stands up slowly, showing his hands to the agents spread across the ridge behind him as he does so. Still moving carefully, he opens the letter and begins to read aloud.

"To the management of Ambrose Restaurants, we the Foundation offer a compromise based on mutual disinterest in further conflict. Henceforth, should you limit your operations only to such partitioned realities as you currently are known to inhabit, and make commitments to not expand beyond them into baseline reality, you shall receive amnesty for past crimes and a stay of execution. 

As a further stipulation, you are to offer services at a competitive rate to supply Foundation facilities with mundane and extramundane culinary service to the best of your abilities, including to staff, field operatives, and contained objects. You are also to surrender the individual known as Chaz Ambrose to Foundation custody for questioning and further negotiations."

He stops short of the signature, folding the letter away into his pocket before raising his hands.

"Consider the offer accepted."

Rhianne looks up at the man as he calmly waits for the approaching task force to detain him. He makes no sudden moves, and quietly complies to each whispered instruction as his hands are bound, and various safety measures are affixed to his body. Rhianne watches all the while as the source of her frustration, her anger, and her entire reason for being is brought down before her eyes, until all she sees is a man. Chaz Ambrose offers her a weak smile.

"I've been thinking of taking up pottery, you know," he remarks idly as he turns to look at the horizon one more time. The city is bathed in pink and orange tones as the sun sets. "Nothing too outlandish, just fancied a go."