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Mau had pushed up his glasses and was rubbing the bridge of his nose when Nyx spoke to him. They had been going over every chart and graph they had. Every reading, every print off, even the personnel logs of everyone who worked on the project to see if there was anything that could have caused the catastrophic failure. "P033R?" His fingers clacked over the keys of the computer. "File 13... day 1..." He mumbled to himself, trying to allow his thoughts to drown out the sounds of Nyx's stomach. The louder her hunger, the more aware of his own hunger he became.

Normal. The first 11 days of the experiment were completely normal. Day 12, evolution achieved, Charizard- "Well now..." He suddenly sat up straight in his chair. "It spiked. P033R levels reached 9001 before the system couldn't handle it. It was only for an instant, but it was not an error. In fact, the spike seems to have damaged some of the circuits in energy relay probes in the subject's brain. After that the levels appear to have dropped back to normal. But the readings... are wait a moment." He shuffled through a few papers before holding something up to the screen. "Yes, the data after the spike is a redundancy of the first several days of the test."

Mau did his best not to smirk as Nyx's stomach kept trying to punctuate her statements. "It was either a localized power surge, or we created a true monster." His fingers flew over the keyboard again as he looked for any anomalies that would explain the spike.

And the computer froze.

Mau's eye twitched and he tried to clear the error to no avail. He sighed. "Well, this gets us no where fast." He had to reboot the computer. It would take some time for the system to restart and the security scans to run, making sure that no files were tampered with. "Want to grab some dinner while we wait for this to reboot?" He leaned back in his chair and looked at Nyx over his glasses.

He rolled his head to one side, then the other. He hadn't realized his neck had stiffened while he was sitting there. "Mnnnh... We probably don't have enough time to go out somewhere... The cafeteria probably closed..." He sighed. "I suppose we should head to the kitchen and make something. What do you feel like having?" He half closed his eyes as his head rolled aside once more to look sidelong at her.

Mau groaned slightly. "Those are terrible." He stood up after Nyx. "Cooked, Frozen, and re-heated questionable animal byproducts that are passed off as food should really not be allowed on base." He walked behind Nyx to the door before stating "Suppose I'll just make something... if we have it, what would you prefer, chicken or fish?" If he was going to make something for himself, he would be a gentleman and make some for Nyx as well.

Mau stared at her a moment in disbelief. "A pound... You eat a pound of that junk?" He seemed to be in mild shock that she sustained herself on dreck like that. When they got to the kitchen, Mau asked Nyx to sit tight and took a quick survey of what was available to them, and after a moment's thought, got to work. A pan of oil was heating on the stove while Mau chopped some chicken. To say he was methodical when moving around the kitchen was almost an understatement. When the oil was heated, Mau was able to drop the chicken in and began chopping vegetables.

True, the time it took Mau to cook everything, Nyx could have heated and served 2 boxes of 'manly man's food,' but it wouldn't have been anything near as good as stir fried honey and ginger chicken.

Mau offered her a plate of the chicken, surrounded by a bed of broccoli and rice. There was a hint of garlic to it, but it mingled with the ginger into an exotic spicy scent.

This. This was real food.

He retrieved a pair of forks for them, and a glass of grape juice. It was the only non alcoholic beverage besides a carton of long forgotten milk, that was now more than likely akin to half chewed Swiss cheese.

"Bil hana wish shifa." Mau said with a smile- a true smile. "Bon appetit."

Mau raised a brow at her as she dove into the food. It must have been a while since she had anything that wasn't refried fat with gristle and something green- theoretically a vegetable of some kind. "Ginger chicken." He replied simply before taking a bite of his own food. "With a honey glaze." It was a fast stir fry, which given the protests Nyx stomach was giving off earlier, he figured was the key to dinner tonight. Rather than preparing something that would take an hour to broil or something.

He wanted to ask if she liked it, but some how he was sure she did. And for some Arceus-forsaken reason, he was glad.

The logical part of his brain tried explaining that her not liking it would damage their working relationship. Specially if she hated it and thought he was trying to poison her. So this was good.

But at the same time, he was telling logic to shut up.