Senator Irenside was known at the restaurant and was greeted by name by every one of the staff as we were led to his apparently own personal table.

The staff were all wearing white jackets with a row of buttons down one side of the chest, all burgundy, with matching collars and sleeves. They reminded me of a less-practical version of my own uniform, but obviously white instead of black.

"The usual," Irenside said to a bowing waiter, as he sat down, throwing himself comfortably into the chair. Karu sat daintily on his right, smoothing her dress as she sat and setting her purse on the floor behind her -- another thing I'd never seen on her. I privately wondered if she had any grenades in there.

"You eat meat, I assume?" he asked, turning to me as I attempted to join them seating. I sat on Karu's right, keeping her as a buffer between the two of us. The table sat six, but I guess nobody cared that we were only occupying half of it.

"Um, yes, Senator Irenside, sir," I stammered.

A strange expression crawled onto Karu's face as he laughed. "Just call me Idris, son. Or just Senator if you must. But not 'sir', I'm just a civilian."

"Yes...Senator," I said, feeling it way too extremely weird to refer to my girlfriend's dad by first name. He laughed again, and I saw another resemblance between Karu and her dad.

"Good. Good. That you eat meat, I mean. I've never dined with an Exhuman, and I don't know what they're like. So tell me, son, what are Exhumans like?"

He leaned forward, propping his elbows at the table while smiling at me warmly. I wasn't sure what I was expecting by means of interrogation, but it wasn't this.

"Um," I began lamely. "I suppose not that different from humans? We were all humans once…"

"Father, if you want to know more about him just ask what you wish to know," Karu said, crossing her arms. "There's no need for all these games."

His smile paused on his face strangely for a moment as he looked at her, and then he turned back to me. "I suppose Karen is right. Tell me about yourself, son."

"Um," damnit. "I don't think there is really much to know. A year ago, I was a senior in high school heading to Cal, that's UC Berkeley sir, erm, Senator. Um, on a football scholarship. And then I became an Exhuman, and that all went out the window, I guess."

"And how did you come to become best friends with the director of the XPCA?" he said with a laugh.

I was about to answer when something drove into the top of my foot and I jumped, banging against the bottom of the table and making the silverware and glasses jump. I checked down at my feet. Whatever it was, it had been sharp and forceful. I didn't see anything down there but our feet. Karu was wearing white heels, I noticed though, yet another first for me.

When I came back up, Karu was staring fixedly at the wall with the same weird expression and her father was looking at her with obvious irritation. What had I missed here?

"Um," God damnit. "Where were we? I'm sorry. Director Blackett?"

Rather obviously this time, Karu stomped on my foot.

"Son, maybe I should have scheduled us for golfing instead. Awful hard to have a private conversation over all this racket," Idris said, staring at his daughter.

"He is not a politician, Father. Do not presume to sink your hooks into him."

"I was just asking the boy an innocent question," the Senator smiled warmly at both of us.

"If you presume your tricks will work against me, you must think me a failure of a student," Karu said, arms still crossed. "I know very well what it is you are doing, and I do not approve."

"It's just an innocent question, Karu," I said.

"Is it? Have you considered that it is only very recently that harboring an Exhuman has become anything less than a treasonous offense? Have you considered who might be implicated if your life story were exposed to the world for scrutiny?" She turned to her father. "Or who might benefit from the accrual of such knowledge?"

"Such harsh words for your own father," Idris said, sounding hurt. "And blackmail accusations as well. You have grown cold from all your time up north."

"This...this isn't how I was expecting this to go…" I hissed at Karu.

"I, too, had hoped he would prove reasonable."

"Uh, yeah. Him."

"Very well then, Karen, since I can't steer a conversation without personal benefit, why don't you tell me something about the boy?"

"I will," she said, and I saw her green eyes burning with challenge as she stared at his, it was a look much more fitting on her than the dress and heels. "Ashton is a paragon of virtue and sacrifice. His strengths include his tactical genius, his quick wit, and his remarkable fortitude and endurance. His weaknesses include a love of self-sacrifice and his dependency upon his friends and allies, among whom, I rank myself. Any who consider to exploit or harm him had best be forewarned that the last time an entity did so, his friends and allies disassembled the entirety of the XPCA for him." She crossed her legs. "Certainly a harder target than, hypothetically, a senator's political aspirations."

Idris paused for a moment and then laughed. "You paint me a villain, Miss. I mean no harm to your little Exhuman friend."

"No, but you do intend to use him."

"Well, he's the fastest up-and-comer in the entire country. From one of the most detested to one of the most powerful figures in the country. Who wouldn't want to befriend such a celebrity?"

"Somehow I doubt mere friendship is on your mind, Father."

I didn't know what was going on or what I was doing here. I had been concerned about questions about Karu and my relationship, or bigotry against Exhumanity. For the two of them to seemingly be locked in trench warfare...and all before appetizers...I wondered if this was every dinner between the two of them. It would certainly explain some of Karu's apparent confusion between what constituted friends or enemies.

"Back me up here, boy," said Idris, seeming pressed. "Please tell my rebellious daughter we're just having a pleasant chat. She obviously won't listen to me."

"Karu," I said. She spun on me with a scowl that clearly told me exactly how much I should fuck off right now. All of it. All of the fucking off.

"Then you would propose dinner in silence?" he said.

"It would be preferable to hearing this moral prostitution."

"Well, you heard the girl. My apologies if I'm not one for conversation this evening, Athan."

What followed was the most awkward silence of my life. We sat in absolute silence for several minutes until a plate of something flakey and in a marbled pesto-like sauce, topped with a slice of a tiny tomato was placed between us.

I watched with horrified fascination as nobody did anything. Just stared at the food in continued silence. Did this competition extend to opening one's mouth at all? What was happening? After a minute, a waiter came up and asked if everything was alright with the dish, and got no response from either Irenside. As he stood there, nervously unsure of whether he was intruding or if something was horribly horribly wrong, I spoke up.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I think everything's fine. Sorry, they're just...not talking."

Karu snorted derisively. Idris shrugged apologetically.

The waiter slowly peeled away. "Um, very good. Your plates will be out shortly...please enjoy…"

"I'm...just going to eat one of these...then…" I said, trying to get them to do...anything. I reached over and Karu slapped the back of my hand.

"Karu, what the hell?" I said.

She gave him a stare like 'don't you dare', and then turned to me. "Say grace," she said.

Oh. She hadn't been a stickler on this any other time we'd eaten together, even though she was one of the most weirdly devout people I'd ever met. Was she trying to pretend for him? Or was he religious as well, and despite the twistedness of the evening, she was still trying to get him to like me?

I wasn't very religious but I'd been raised Christian, I guess. "Um," I hated that fucking word. "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we receive in grace of thy bounty, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Idris gave me a small wink and a smile as he stole an appetizer for himself, and Karu took one as well. He ate using his hands, but Karu delicately cut off tiny pieces using one of the several forks and knives before us. I followed his example.

I felt something rubbing my leg and looked down. I needed to stop looking, there wasn't anything down there but Karu. Instead of stomping me, she was gently rubbing my calf with the side of her heels. I'd done well? Was that the message here? Stomp me and stroke me until I was well-behaved?

I still didn't know what I had done wrong or even right, so that wasn't going to work, sorry Karu. I was not an easy dog.

We lapsed into another awkward silence of quiet munching sounds and Karu's fork and knife gently clattering.

I didn't know what to say or do. I had hoped that spending time with Karu would be nice, but I really just wanted to be in my bunk, feeling like crap about Mage. I stood up from the table.

"Excuse me," I said. Karu looked at me sideways. "Restroom," I lied.

"I'll come with you," she said, folding her napkin from her lap and placing it next to her clean forks.

"Uh," I said, before she wrapped herself around my arm, breasts even more prominent than usual pressing against me, and there went any ability I had to make an argument against her.

"Can you believe that man," she hissed when we were out of earshot. "The nerve of him to attempt to exploit you."

"I can't believe you," I said. "He's just trying to talk to me, and you're coming down on him like a crazy bitch."

"Cra--" she lowered her voice again. "Crazy bitch? Is that truly how you see me, looking out for your best interests?"

"He hasn't done anything but try to make small talk. You keep jumping to all these insane conclusions."

"Because I know how he operates and what he is like. He is manipulative, Ashton, beyond your reckoning."

"He doesn't seem like that, he seems nice."

"Oh, because he would certainly be very good at manipulating people if they always realized he was doing so?"

"Look, I can be careful about talking about Blackett like you said. That was a good point, but us all sitting in silence is insane."

She chewed her thumb. "Yes, I am afraid I agree. This is not going entirely how I had envisioned it."

"How did you envision it?"

"He would meet you, be instantly charmed, give his tacit approval for our eventual marriage, embrace you as a son, and reinstate me as heir of the Irenside household while also letting go of his troublesome need for political legacy."

"I don't think that was going to happen."

She sighed. "Nor I. But one can hope."

"Eventual marriage, eh?" I asked with a sly smile, totally pushing it.

"Very eventual. As in, perhaps if all other men on Earth died off."

"And yet you choose to date me?" I said, pushing it even further.

"Hmm, perhaps I should address that," she gave me a coy smile. "Did you intend to use the restroom or are we to loiter outside of it for the remainder of the evening?"

"Not going to lie, this has been the best part of the evening by far," I said, shoving my hands in my pockets with a sigh.

She tousled my hair which I'd spent a few minutes tackling with a comb with Cosette before coming here, and I worried she was messing it all up, but then she pulled me in and gave me a quick kiss. "It hasn't been a very good day," she said. "But I hope I can improve it by spending the night together, at least."

I giggled and felt a stupid expression on my face, and saw something equally impish and red on hers. "Now at least pretend to use the restroom, and wash your hands. He will notice if you do not, believe you me."

I did as she asked, adjusted my hair, and washed my hands very thoroughly in the ornate bathroom, fixated on ignoring the man who held the door for me while balancing a tray of rolled cloth towels. Karu was still outside when I emerged.

"Small talk only. I will notify you when you are treading dangerous waters, as it were."

"Can you notify me less violently?"

"I'm afraid I left my signal flares in my other purse," she said looking at me sideways with a smile.

"Just poke me or something? Discreetly?"

"That seems a splendid idea. I will simply covertly reach under the table towards your lap repeatedly. I am certain that will arise no suspicion."

"There you are. Are you two finished?"

We looked up. Idris was standing there, all hints of a smile gone from his face. He glowered at the two of us like we were locusts in his garden.

"Karen, return and sit down immediately," he said in a voice completely different from earlier. She lowered her head and walked over quietly. "And stand up straight, child." She snapped upright and scurried back to the table where she sat modestly.

He turned to me and I expected an equal measure of verbal lashing, but to my surprise he smiled and resumed speaking to me like I was an old friend. "You didn't fall in, I hope?" he laughed. "Did you just get to talking with the towel boy?"

"No sir, just your daughter. I think she just wanted a conversation out of earshot."

He looked me up and down like he was appraising me. "I like a man who doesn't mind being honest. Makes me feel like I know who I'm dealing with."

"Thank you sir, Senator. I uh, don't really know how to do it any other way," I laughed a little, and he laughed a lot.

"My daughter is a fantastic girl, sharp and strong," he said. Across the room, I could see her alone at the table, now burying her face in her hands. No way she could hear us from here, though. "But she's also misguided in some ways. This one-woman crusade of hers, every time I hear about it, all I can think is that she's going to run into an Exhuman--not you of course--and that will be the end of her. Or how she thinks she needs to protect you from me, her own father."

"Yeah," I said and scratched my head, and then wondered what that did to my hair. "She just means well for everyone though."

"Oh of course, but there are bad people out there who take well-meaning girls like her and twist them to their own ends. That's why I wanted to meet you, son, to make sure you weren't taking advantage of my daughter."

"Oh! I would never!"

"I see that now. In fact, I feel a little safer knowing that she's with you. Maybe with you at her side, she'll live a little longer out there." He gave a defeated sigh. "I always wanted her to follow in my footsteps, foolish old man I am, but at least then she'd be making the world better while I knew she was safe. There are battles on the senate floor, but none which lead to dead little girls."

He put his hands on my shoulders, only adding to my unease as the topic shifted out of my control. "How did you find the funeral, boy?"

"Uh." He was right there, his face inescapable, green eyes, paler than Karu's but still with a hint of that brilliance within them. "It was...horrible, honestly."

He let me go. "Damn right it was. Thirteen year old girl dying to serve her country. Karu's been in the armed forces since she graduated high school, a couple years before that damn Exhuman event in San Diego, and then a stint with the airborne, and now this hunting business. And she's still just a child. Can you imagine how many lives she's saved, how many lives your friend Mage didn't get the chance to?"

"I'm sorry, Senator."

"For what?"

"It was my decisions which killed that girl," I said darkly.

He put his hand on my shoulder again, but it was a reassuring touch instead of a heavy one. "The only reason that girl is dead is because some insane Exhuman decided to make her that way, son, and don't you think otherwise."

"I could have done so many--"

"And he could have been a decent upstanding Exhuman like you and her, and instead chose not to be. You mustn't blame yourself for that."

I chewed on his words for a moment. I appreciated what he was saying, but…

"Sir, not to pull rank, but I disagree. You weren't there. You don't know the situation like I did, and you can't tell me from reading about it on the news what I did right or wrong. We all made decisions, him, Mage, myself, and all the others, and it was only because of all of them that she died."

He smiled and gripped my shoulder tightly before releasing me. "You're a man who refuses to shirk responsibility. I like that too. It looks like my daughter is about to fall asleep in the main course, shall we rejoin her?"

"Yes, let's do that," I said, feeling very dark and alone. We advanced on the table and sat down on either side of her. I gave her a smile, but she just looked completely miserable, slouching forward on the table, even after we sat down.

"Karen," her father barked, and she jumped. "Sit up, girl."

At least this time it was vaguely justified, she was almost lying in her food.