Over a Half Ham

[Rhys Whitley]

_ A bright sunny saturday afternoon, a breeze turning to a bluster, Rhys squinted at the glare refracting off the fogged glass window into his face and snobbishly sniffed and shifted an erect posture away towards the table opposite his inside this cozy café. Café Jambon. He artlessly struggled to free himself from his tight black printed suit jacket as he noticed a girl just over there, finally folding the jacket over the back of the adjacent seat and clearing his throat.

He retrieved his active datapad and replaced it atop the menu display on the table, his eyes flicking up to the news holo screens mounted on nearly every wall corner as his ears picked up a soothing violin softly stringing over the café's ambiance speakers. The menu screen shut off and he panicked as the relentless server bot rolled towards him yet again, flinging his datapad aside and vigorously tapping his finger to awake the power saver.

"Find somethin' you want, honey? Y'gotta order somethin' or pay the area network fee."
"I-uh, uh... You know, I'm not a fan of your behavioral modifiers dishing this honey business-"
"Orda' or pay."
"I, well, what would you recommend?"
"Ham sandwich."
"Do you have a half ham sandwich?"
"I gotta full ham sandwich with a side."
"But I only want half. Couldn't you just-"
"I gotta full ham sandwich with a side."
"Well, what are your sides?"
"Flank fries or potata' salad."
"I'd rather a green salad or a-"
"Flank fries or potata' salad."
"P-potato salad please."
"Of course. And a drink?"
"Well, what do you-"
"Water it is. Thank'ya honey!"
"Hey, wait. What's your operating number? I'm filing a report. I'm no honey. I am one hundred percent salty, do you understand? I... ugh."

Rhys left the server bot to her rolling and returned to his musings, retrieving the datapad once again and setting it neatly before him. He drew his finger across the screen and scrolled down the news story he was reading about a nearby incident, also posted across nearly every screen in the joint. Jedi had intervened in a gang war of sorts. Drugs. Slavery. The works. And worst of all one of the Jedi had been seriously injured by one of his captives that'd been spared. Information was somewhat restricted, but assumptions and opinions slashed across the page. Opinions Rhys couldn't help agree and disagree with. @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara sat in silence at her lonely table at the one end of the cafe, calmly waiting for her meal to arrive. Feth. She really hated this planet. Sure the weather was fair, but everything else sucked. The crime was what brought her here, or her master at least. Yeah, she wasn't allowed to deny her master. Jedi Code and all.

While he talked to some of those media folks she waited for the blasted droid to bring her some simple salad. Fighting criminals without actually killing them was much harder than it appeared, even for a girl of her calabar. Well she didn't want to kill them, but that didn't make it easier. She has never killed and hopes she will never have to do so.

She sighed impatiently and annoyed tapped the legs of the table with her feet. Jedi are supposed to be patient, my young padawan. "Feth this" She jolted up from the table and walked over to the counter. The sudden outburst caused her lightsaber to get loose and fall to the floor, causing a loud clang as it landed. She picked it up, not caring much for the attention she may have caused,"Hello!? I've been waiting in this blasted cafe for a half an hour!" She leaned over the counter as she spotted the cook in the kitchen,"Hey asshole! My salad!" A jedi is supposed to be humble. I hope you will learn that in time, Tamara. Her master dragged her into this sad excuse for a planet and now she started to get absolutely ticked off about everything.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Rhys shook to the sudden metal clang, his jittery nerves flicking his eyes up to the disturbance. A lightsaber? Surprise puckered to a curious frown. A girl. A young girl. Thoughts recalled her likeness in the stereotypical padawan he once was. Except... She had a potty mouth. He might've giggled at her bravado, but his mind stalled as he dreamt of a revenge of the machines.

Scooping the datapad off the table into his man-bag and ducking under the shoulder strap as he hastily scooted out of the double seater, Rhys shuffled up behind her to intervene. Awkwardly, he tried to avoid her bobbing bum that was bent over the countertop.

"Psst! That's not a very good idea..."
His lashes fluttered as he made some final primping adjustments to the satchel strap over his dress shirt and continued in his aristocratic accent.
"These droids are programmed to deal with gangsters and thugs," he daintily pointed up to the holo screen, "let alone little girls with... laser swords."
Then he leaned in with a hand shielding his mouth from prying ears to deliver the most debilitating of secrets.
"They'll even put grease in your biscuits."

And after Tamara had a chance to respond, the rickety chef-bot, despite genuinely working as fast as he could, took notice of the commotion through the obstacles of hanging cookware, head snapping sideways nearly spinning his paper hat off top, slamming his fist and spatula down into the grill, and calling out in character with an obscene gesture.
"I gotcha baby greens right here y'little imp!"

@Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara turned her head around and skeptically looked at the stranger behind her,"Is that so?" She turned back again to speak to the waiter behind the counter, with a blank expression on her face,"Can I have my money back...please?" The grumpy and fat waiter that doubled as the cafe's second cook pointed to a holographic scene without even looking at her,"No refunds!?" She lifted herself up from the counter and crossed her arms, with a rather aggressive look on face,"Listen here pal, I-"

"I gotcha baby greens right here y'little imp!"

At that moment, Tamara just lost it,"DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME SMALL!" She reached past the counter with an arm stretched out and used the Force to crush the droid's head, then pick up it's remains and throw it against the kitchen walls. She pushed pass Rhys and oddly went to sit down at her table again. She remembered she still had to wait for her master to get back. She calmed herself down again and inserted her earphones into her ears to listen to some music. She was normally very polite and humble, but when she is angered she forgets herself. Like just a moment ago.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Aghast and befuddled, his heart jumped from its front row seat into his bulging eyes to the girl's handiwork. The umpire to her tantrum, calling it a homer as she knocked it out of the park straight down center field; the chef's metal head the crunched bystander of a quick k/o. And Rhys couldn't help but be spirited away by the hype as he quickly grabbed a salt shaker and daintily chucked it at the dangling pots and pans as added distraction, a cloud of salt splashing into a thunderstorm of cookware hailing down around the tweaking kitchen droid.

"Oh no! An accident," he pointed to the clamor, looking to the sous chef. "Someone help him!"

It was enough to distract any staff nearby from catching on and getting him kicked out with this... Jedi? Any patrons who might've seen what had happened weren't stupid enough to side with the droids. Though some food orders might've been lost in the shuffle.

Shuffling, scampering more like, Rhys scurried back behind the girl away from the dreadful countertop to return to his... wait this was his table wasn't it? There she was, sitting at his table, her back squishinghissuitjacketintocalamitouswrinkles and he inhaled a wheezing gasp! She must've been really worked up before, because she hadn't realized where she'd sat her tiny tuchus down and tuned the world out.

He cringed, quivering upper lip, and took a deep breath before sinking into the seat opposite her. Lifting his bag onto the table, strap crossed over head, and sliding it down to the end, he folded his tense fingers into each other and stared at her for a moment.

"So what brings such a... sprightly young lady such as yourself to a social hub such as this?" Then he leaned in to pet her pride and whispered, "It's not every day you get to meet a Jedi."

Then he realized she hadn't heard a word he'd said. ...Right. Headphones.

"Uhm, miss?" His finger tapped the table under her nose. The stupid power saver mistook his tapping for a request to view the menu again and lit up. He cleared his throat and plowed ahead regardless. "So what brings such a... sprightly young lady such as yourself to a social hub such as this?" He felt absolutely idiotic leaning in to pet her pride with a whisper exactly as he had just done. Sith save a sailor if anyone else saw how ridiculous this looked. "It's not every day you get to meet a Jedi." @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara barely even noticed the man's finger tapping the table in front of her, being zoned out from her hip hop music, but she reluctantly turned the volume down a bit and looked up with one of her eyebrows cocked up. Then the mean leaned in and she instinctively threw her hand up and gently Force pushed his face away, mid speech.

"Excuse me, what are you doing?" She had quickly calmed down and was back in polite mode. She pulled her headphones out and put the music player on the table.

"Can I help you? Otherwise can you please scoot" She gestured him to move away and then proceeded to put her headphones back in.

 

[Lamper]

Rhy's shoulders kicked back against the backrest as his mouth, agape, ate wind from her palm's ejection and he choked a bit, coughing.

"W-well no, I was just... I mean yes I was hoping," he stuttered under duress. This girl was atrociously antisocial all of the sudden. Truly this encounter embodied the troubles he entangled himself with when dealing with women. Not his strong suit.

"Wait wait," he pleaded at gunpoint. Then he pointed a trembling finger. "M-m-m-m-y jacket. If you'd be so kind."

He smiled pathetically, hoping to earn her pity. And in doing so, presumed she might realize her accidental displacement and the innocent bystander beneath her back. @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Before she pressed 'play' on her music player, she stared at Rhys in a very dubiously, before sighing and putting the player back down again. She leaned forward and pulled the jacket rather harshly and handed it over to him. Then it became apparent that she just discovered she had been sitting at the wrong table,"Oh..I'm sorry....this is the wrong table...." She awkwardly got up and moved her chair back so she could get out and find another to sit in.

"Didn't mean to be so rude. It's been a rather crappy day for me", she said smiling.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Rhys cringed to her violent reaping of his jacket as if a root from suffocated soil and coddled his precious article in maternal embrace before realizing the change in his table buddy. And so he straightened up with a sly side-glance and baited the girl.

"Yes I'd imagine so, what with your master nearly getting himself killed by his own captive in the middle of a territorial gang war... Typical Jedi amentia."

It was a mildly antagonistic jab, snarky to say the least, to get back at her for the way she mistreated his jacket and for otherwise just being a psychotic girl; though he also was coming from a bitter place in regards to the Jedi. And while it wasn't right to take it out on her, she was the only Jedi, likely Jedi, around. Which was why he inaccurately pegged her as the padawan to the Jedi mentioned in the news article. Jedi weren't pouring out of his ears, so what else could she be here for? @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara shot around and pointed her finger at Rys in disgust,"Hey! You no nothing of what it means to be a Jedi! So don't you calling us am-am...um....whatever you just said!"

She walked right back to him and put her hands down firmly on the table,"Listen here, I don't know who you are and why you are bugging me but seriously!? What's your problem?" She had nearly killed a couple of people nearly an hour ago and now her blood was starting to boil again with this stranger starting to pry into her Jedi business.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Rhys shook to her sudden pistol-pointer, her finger practically loaded with lethal ammunition, his neck stiffened with a wrenching iron-board whiplash. His face frozen, however, began to break at the first sign of her lacking vocabulary; his lips sucking into his mollusky mouth, holding back his ridicule even as his cheeks began to rosy.

Lifting a leg to cross over the other, he just about dismounted his high horse when her hands planted down onto the table. His bag shook and he blindly reached back to secure it, both thrown hands all together missing and slapping onto menu screen as though he were mocking the girl with mimicry. His eyes flicked up to hers, hoping she wouldn't take offense.

But she ignored his plea. Gave him the third degree. Put him between the devil and the deep blue sea. She blamed he! ...I mean him! Rhys was insulted. All he had done was try to help her. But she'd pulled him to the brink. And for once in his life he felt the fire in his chest. He'd set her right and teach her a thing or two, this snot-nosed little brat. So he mustered up his courage, finally gathering enough breath, and punched the palm of his fist upon the table and, with a stern brow, let her have it:

"I'll tell you what's my problem! It's your..." Then he saw it, sitting there on the table just behind her. And he said plainly, "...your salad." @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

She steadily grew in anger and prepared to blatantly attack (or slap) him as soon as he began to speak. She could sense the same amount of distrust coming from him and that made her ever more mad, weirdly enough. Her high midichlorian count made other people's emotions slightly influence her own, and allowed her to detect his much easier. She lifted up a fist and prepared to deliver a blow right to his face, until she was met with a rather off remark.

"My salad?"

She lowered her fist and seemed to have calmed down almost instantly. That's what happens when you inherit your mother's bipolar disorder. She straightened up and went to fetch her food. She took the plate and walked back over to Rys and sat down again,"Your problem was my salad?

 

[Rhys Whitley]

"What? No. Don't be ridiculous. I love salad. I-"
"Here's your ham sandwich and potata' salad, hun."

The droid appeared out of nowhere and placed his greasy dish down across from Tamara's, rolling off just as quickly as she'd come. Rhys' lashes fluttered at Tamara for a moment, caught in a contradiction. But then he realized:

"Hey how 'bout my water?!? Hey ...ah."

Despite his waving, he couldn't flag down the slippery Mrs. Butterworth bot. And so he slumped into his ham sandwich and picked up the half triangle cut and chomped a depressing bite of spongy bread slick with slimy meat and cheese.

"This place is the pits," he grumbled with a mouthful.

And for a second, Rhys felt a camaraderie with Tamara in this diner's oppression. He looked at her as he chewed, frowned, then swallowed as he remembered what was there between them. And he started to giggle. A giggle turned to genial laughter. But his continued joviality relied on her reception to it, until he tried to explain himself more cordially, yet directly.

"Look. It doesn't take a genius to see he should've killed his captive before his captive killed him. Jedi or no, it was stupid."

He'd take another bite, Force willing. @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara picked up her fork and was about to start eating until she saw the droid roll in. She smiled slightly just as she saw what was on his plate,"You bloody liar" She could even sense his disturbance and found it quite amusing, she laughed a bit. But then it got serious when he started to speak of the incident that had happened earlier in the day, well a hour really.

She wondered for a second how he even found out about her master's mistake, because surely a backwater world like this wouldn't really go into that much detail in their news reports.

She sighed and put her fork down after seeing someone's, other than her own, saliva on her plate. She put her hands down on the table again and looked up at Rys,"We Jedi do not kill defenceless men"

Well he was defenceless until he got free, but whatever.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Rhys was doing quite well in continuing his cover as an everyday average citizen, not some Jedi dropout. Though she'd probably picked up on his aura, it was pointless. There were millions of people living in blissful ignorance of their affinity, most of whom couldn't possibly hope to attune themselves to even Tamara's skill level.

"Ha! So it's true then," he cheered with triumph in his postulation before taking another smiling bite of ham sandwich, smile quickly fading to the mysterious crunch between his teeth that tasted rather racy.

He placed the piece back down on his plate and struggled to swallow.

"And a'lotta good that did him. Even defenseless men aren't defenseless. Of course this man wasn't defenseless or there'd be a different story on the holo's. A chit for every time a Jedi's morals got him in the sack and I'd be a rich man. But even so. Why not kill a defenseless man and be done with it? I'm no murderer, but sometimes death can be merciful no?" @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

"I don't know if I made it clear before, but it's not what the Jedi do. Killing a defenceless man is......it's not right. I don't think people should be doing that. And I'm glad we do that, it gives these criminals a chance to change. Not of them agree it seems"

Tamara wasn't quick to judge her master on how he was seemingly attacked from behind by a man he had previously restrained. He shouldn've just kept his guard up. That's all. She thought. She was now quite content with have a simple chat with Rys, since he lured her into it.

"There's nothing wrong with that philosophy is there? People really seem to distrust us nowadays.

 

[Rhys Whitley]

Rhys' face contorted into a cantankerous conundrum, cocked and bug-eyed.

"A chance to change! A chance to change?!? Ha!"

His palm banged onto the table upon his utensil, both plates rattling, admittedly painful as his left eye winced; physically exclaiming his protest and consequently picking up the spork. Preoccupied as he prattled on, he scooped up a bite of potato salad, shoved it into his mouth, and munched and munched and munched.

"Of course they distrust you. A man whose loyalty lies with honesty lies with no man other than himself. Or in your case, woman. Erm, well woman, yes." He almost said child or girl, but quickly u-turned out of that dead end. "An honest Jedi has no loyalty to the everyday-man. A Jedi'll flip in a second if you so much as sneeze out of order."

Rhys stifled a burp. Then he leaned in onto his elbows and tapped the spork to opposing index finger.

"Rule number one about any rule is that said rule cannot defeat its own purpose. If a protective philosophy to not kill others gets you killed, then you very well can no longer protect when you're dead can you?"

Rhys's lashes fluttered again, becoming a tell when his thoughts became jumbled, not sure if what he just said made any sense or not; but coming to the conclusion that it very well did. @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara's eyes began to narrow again. This man was really starting to pull at her nerves. Who does this guy think he is? She began to wonder while he continued to annoy her with his terrible attitude,"Who do you think your are? Being a Jedi is much more complicated than you could imagine"

"Killing in defence or when it is needed is acceptable"

 

[Rhys Whitley]

"Oh I can imagine," he began, but quickly stifled that rebuttal in favor of secrecy.

"Exactly! Wait... Well that's my point. Are-Are you gonna eat that?" He motioned his spork at a cherry tomato on her plate for permission to land a bite. If she permitted him, he'd impale it and whip it up onto his tongue to squash it to the roof of his mouth.

"Look. I've nothing against the torchbugs. I just wish they'd stop pussyfooting around and take this teenage galaxy to third base already. History teaches us that the truly great empires fall from success and comfort. They've got to keep the love alive, that spark, that excitement, that activity. Without full investment, tall dark and handsome over there will take it from you," he said as he brainlessly waved a finger at a large ugly puke-green and spiked alien trekking towards the refresher. @Tristyn

 

[Tristyn]

Tamara passed her food without a second thought and continued to listen intently to Rys, she also wondered how seemingly easy he got distracted. He also has a very big vocabulary. Then he began to speak more about the Jedi, but damn this guy is nosy. She started to get annoyed once again when he started to use teenage terminology to describe the Jedi Order as a whole. Sure she went to school, but she was at the temple on Chandrila just as often, she didn't speak like a typical teen of her age. Well she thought so at least.

"The Jedi Order has been around for thousands of years-" I think... "Every few years we face a crisis...and every time the philosophies of the Jedi are questioned...and people wonder if we still be around for years to come and whether we can handle these problems. I'm beginning to wonder the same thing, and sure I haven't been a Jedi too long" Is 10 years a long time? "I think people should learn to trust what the Jedi are doing, we are doing our best"

"And now that the Sith are returning....again....feth...ok sorry whatever....people are gonna go down hard on the Jedi again for this. We are gonna do our best to stop the Sith -"

Tamara paused. She thought for a moment what a horrible time it was for the Sith to return again. Why did the Sith have to return in my lifetime?

"I'm....probably gonna end up like many of the other padawans....forced to fight the Sith and end up dead before I even reach knighthood. All because we Jedi have to do our bit to protect the galaxy from those blasted Sith...because no one else is gonna do it"