S P A C E ; advanced discussion

Mod

THE MESS HALL is a massive room
able to seat the entire academy. the SERVING LINE is split into allergies and no allergies, with ALLERGIES
served on the opposite SIDE of the hall to the
non-allergies.

It somehow seemed that no matter the hour, there was always someone in the mess hall. Multiple someones. Kids either eating, hanging out, scrambling to finish assignments, sleeping, or with work spread out in front of them, taking advantage of the large tables outside of the bustle of mealtimes.

Zoya was part of that last category. The typical lunch rush had ended an hour ago, and so she'd taken her fucking huge stack of blueprints to an unoccupied corner table, bought herself a fucking huge coffee, and ignored the few other groups of students scattered around the hall, set up camp.

Now she was about three levels of hell deep into trying to figure out where in her blueprints she'd gone so wrong as to end up with a wildly malfunctioning engine for the project due in three days, almost out of coffee, and in desperate need of something to focus on other than this. Angrily twisting her pink hair up into a loose bun and jabbing her pencil through it to secure it, Zoya scanned the hall for a distraction, but the scattered students and quietly talking groups offered up nothing particularly interesting.

She laid her head down on her papers, thinking about how satisfying it would be right now to burn them all.

After zoning out and practically dissociating for god only knew how long, an image of papers up in flames dancing across the back of her mind, Zoya was brought sharply back down to reality when someone sat down across from her.

Focusing on the figure, she exclaimed, "Liam! My savior!"

She swept a hand across the blueprints in front of her, pushing them haphazardly to the side with a single careless gesture, and then settled her elbows on the table and her hands under her chin.

"I would love some juice," she answered, smiling slightly.

She raised an eyebrow inquisitively at Liam, studying her friend. She doubted he'd be here just to wander around, to pass through the mess hall for no particular reason. It wasn't quite his style. He was probably here with some sort of goal in mind, and Zoya's curiosity was piqued.