Chapter 35: The Captain can take care of himself
Maeve was excited to see Kellen when he entered the office, along with the other scientists. Their excitement to see him helped him calm down from the interaction he had with the Captain. The scientists stopped what they were doing and spoke to Kellen when he entered the office, their eyes glowing with their questions. After they had spoken for a few moments, Kellen noticed that there was a snack bowl practically on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Once Kellen had noticed it, he also noticed how everyone watched him, and he knew he was going to have to take from that snack bowl regularly. It wasn't a burden to him, but made his heart warm.
Finally, after Maeve noticed the time, they all went back to what they were working on, leaving Kellen to enter his office and get to work on his own project. The laptop was a big help, not that Kellen minded writing out the program by hand. But having it as a digital copy meant he could easily edit it after sending it to Casper. The sticky note Casper provided was also quite helpful. It turns out that the Guild had it's own system and each person was assigned a code and login. Kellen had to go through about 10 minutes to set up his account but now it meant if there were any papers or files he needed access to, he could through his secure login. It made sense, since Kellen hadn't seen a library or anything for secure documents when Casper showed him the Guild, or maybe Casper hadn't viewed it as important. He also hadn't seen their storage for weapons either, so maybe it had just slipped his mind.
Either way, with the new login, Kellen got to work moving what he'd already worked on into a word document on the laptop, and then worked past that. He was using programs he'd made in the past as a base level, and built on that. He didn't take any breaks and continued to work on the document until he got a knock on his door.
"Guide Kellen? Have you taken lunch yet?" It was Maeve. She poked her head into the room, frowning at the state of his desk.
"Oh, sorry. I completely forgot." Kellen laughed at himself, while she only seemed to grow more concerned as she looked over the Guide.
"Well, I'm planning to head up and grab a bite with some of the other researchers now, did you want to join us?" She asked. Kellen looked past her and saw a few others behind her, maybe three since he couldn't tell from this distance. He glanced down at the work he'd done, and the time, and sighed. He really should eat before guiding the Captain, and given the fact it was past noon now, he needed to rush it. He could only imagine the scolding he would get from Taylor if he didn't eat before their session.
He got to his feet, not even bothering to take his phone with him since he didn't plan to be gone long, and joined Maeve and the other researchers in the main office. There were three of them outside of Maeve. Two were the more secluded researchers who weren't in the main office, while the other one was on the more quiet side. It seemed the Maeve took it upon herself to take care of the really introverted ones, and that made Kellen smile.
"Let's head out then, shall we?" He offered, opening the door for them. Maeve smiled at him and they headed for the elevators as a team.
The first thing Kellen found out about the researchers is that all of them were awkward around large groups, including Maeve. Kellen had to take the lead, becoming the de facto leader as they moved around the cafeteria. He directed the others, made sure they got enough food, talked to the people serving the food, and found them a table. It was a very reminiscent feeling for him since he had led research groups into gates before. In fact, the more he talked about his experiences on the front lines during lunch, the more he found out that all of them were waiting for permission to be on the front lines.
Maeve was the only one who had gone to the front lines, but because she specialised in the flora and fauna around stable gates, she'd never needed to go into one. That wasn't the case for some of the others. But because they were civilians, they had to plead their case more. It didn't matter if they were apart of a guild, without the powers that classified them as either an Esper or a Guide, the front lines were dangerous. For Maeve, she only needed the agreement from the Saturn Guild, where the civilians also needed approval from the D.E.C. Kellen was sympathetic to them, since he'd needed that too when he went as a freelance Field Guide. Getting permission was notoriously hard, and often you had to apply several times. Lots of the researchers he'd spoken to while guiding them had ranted about how the whole system needed an overhaul.
The conversation was so interesting that Kellen had briefly forgotten about what he was supposed to be doing after lunch. That was, until a shadow fell over him and everyone shut up.