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Chel's spoon swirled around the little bowl as she mixed and twosted ingredients into something shapeable. One of her somewhat hidden talents.

"Hm. Guess I never thought about it. " She tapped her chin a few times with the clean end of the spoon. "'Bout ... Year and a half ish?" It might have been longer or shorter. Time really moved differently on Deus. "It don't take too long for most folks to rise in the ranks. They uh. They got a lot of holes to fill with people dyin' all the time." Chel didn't feel like sugar coating it. She firmly disliked Deus and wanted Dawson to know how she felt.

She shrugged, going back to stirring. "Basement though ouch. I never had to room down there- I was here before they cracked it open. What's it like down there?"

Chel could feel Dawson's tone getting darker, and she immediately put a hand on his back and rubbed gently. "Sounds freaky as ********. I don't blame ya a bit that's ********' harsh." She hated that everyone one Deus seemed to have a story like this. She squeezed him in a light side hug. "Yer welcome to come sleep up here any time. Always got room. Bed's a bit big and empty anyways."

Really there was only one person she wanted to share it with, but he seemed to be the only person who didn't want to. She didn't mind sharing it until he got there. Especially not when she knew what it felt like to have your room be a prison.

She took his cap and put it on her own head in jest. "C'mon, these things won't ball themselves."

The nostalgia of a TV running at all times brought her back to her own home. Her parents hadn't been perfect, but it wasn't like she never missed them. Chel laughed and said, "Sounds like a fun home." She pointed to the tiny television at the end of her bed, the one that sat on the ground near her "couch." "S'not a big TV and it don't play cable s**t, but s'all I got for ya."

She followed Dawson's hands and grabbed her own ball of mush, squinting at it idly and wondering if the mixture was looking like it was supposed to. She didn't have any pictures or videos, just this old fashioned recipe. Oh well. She would eat whatever came out anyways, and Dawson looked like a fellow that would follow in suit.

"So ya got a cookin' mama and a big TV. What else should I know 'bout you? You like long walks on the beach and pina coladas?"

"You have a niece? Awww." Hearing Dawson blubber about his loved one was endearing. Chel didn't really have anyone she missed from back home; Chris was already here with her.

Cartoons were good in Chel's book, but she gave a snort of laughter in Dawson's direction. "Yer such an old fart oh my god," she shot in his direction. "What do you do for fun, not yer niece." Chel had never desired children (too addled by her mother's talk of "with that behavior you're going to be pregnant by 20!"- which probably wasn't unearned advice), and as such she had no interest in learning about Dawson's niece's television watching habits.

Now that the oil had come to a boil, she gestured to the wire spaghetti fork she had. "Now we dip this s**t in the s**t and you take it out when it floats to the top." She demonstrated by doing it herself once, so Dawson could see how it was done. "You try~"

"A horse!" Chel cried exuberantly. She had a lot of feelings about both the horse and the fact that Dawson was video games savvy enough to name his horse after Duke Nukem. The fact that his goal was also just playing games and watching TV gave her a lot of hope. "Why the ******** didn't you start with that? Holy s**t a horse that's so ******** cool-"

Chel jumped with Dawson's yell, hand clenched in a fist that threatened to summon a weapon she couldn't materialize. Life here had made her too jumpy.

She moved to another drawer in the kitchen which had a very pisspoor first aid kit (some cough medicene, some headache pills and some runic bandages- that was all Chel needed, apparently). She ripped a tiny square of the runic bandages and said, "Here, gimme yer hand cowboy."

"Ugh that's so ******** cool," Chel whined. She'd always loved the romantic imagery of the wild west, and having a ranch was nothing short of a daydream of hers.

She put the bandaid patch on gently, kissing it when it was applied. "All better," she squawked like the little kid she was.

Since Dawson had injured himself, Chel took the liberty to drop a few more in. Slowly they were amassing a pile. "Yer talkin' just a fine amount, trust me."

Whether or not she missed home was tough. "Yer openin' up a can of worms. You sure you're interested?" She carefully moved a few more balls of dough into her fork and dipped them into the oil. The motion helped her focus her attention. "It's ... complicated. Chris is my cousin, right? He up and joined the military after he graduated high school. My grades tanked senior year so I went to a shitty community college. Didn't really like it though- never really cared about my education or nothin'. Deus recruiter came and said they'd leave him alone if I saddled up." She pursed her lips and said, "That turned out real well."

She shrugged, somewhat losing her previous energy. "I don't really miss home. I always knew I was just gonna be a bum with some dead end job livin' paycheck to paycheck." Chel had been assured by everyone of that. "But Deus ain't home to me neither. I just came to help Chris. M'tryin' to make the best of it, I guess."

Chel let out a loud laugh, almost knocking over the plate of hush puppies. "Honorable?" She wheezed and her bracelet began beeping, a sound she'd almost begun to ignore. "Oh bless yer heart, ********. If ya think ya came to an honorable place you goddamn ******** up big time."

She controlled herself enough put in the last of the balls, but every once in a while she'd start giggling and you could hear her whisper the word honorable. It was just a really grand joke to her.

The last of the hush puppies were created and Chel turned the oven off, carefully moving the hot oil to another burner to let it cool. She turned to Dawson and said, "They need to cool for a bit. Ya wanna go get some fresh air while we wait?" She even booped his nose for being so gosh darned cute and innocent. Honorable.