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baze malbus

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There's a small fire burning outside in the fading light as dusk approaches. Mark had a good catch today, and since the Marina base is always ransacked every time they come back to it, he doesn't have a decent way of cooking anything back there right now.

So he's doing it here, gutting and filleting his catch at the lakeside and roasting it over the open flames with some wire fencing that serves as a grate. He managed to get a roll of tinfoil from the bar, which is making this about a hundred times easier than it usually is.

This week's menu: shark and swordfish, seasoned with the smoke of a fire that doesn't quite want to stay lit for some reason. Every so often, Mark looks up at the sky to see if it might be raining. It's not. It's just his inability to multi-task.

[ooc: Dodger may bounce in and out of threads.]

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As Baze approaches, he's wearing a sober, grim expression.

"Do you have a permit for that fire?" he says, tapping his Security badge.

Mark looks up, not sure if he should run away or not.

“Nnnnno?” He says.

Since when does he need a permit for a fire?

Baze holds the Most Serious Face for a few seconds more. Then he cracks a smile.

"Good, becuase I'm teasing you. No one needs a permit for a fire. May the Force of others be with you, Mark. What are you cooking?"

“Oh, good.”

He didn’t want to try to gather up everything and run anyway.

“Uh.” He looks at the fish he’s still cutting up, and the big plastic bucket next to him. “Swordfish, and the shark is still soaking.” He points at the bucket, which has big cuts of shark submerged in water.

"Why are you soaking it?" Baze asks, peering curiously into the bucket. Shark bits. Huh.

“Because it kind of tastes like pee if you don’t,” Mark says candidly.

He gets another piece of the swordfish cut up and wraps it in foil so it can go onto the fire once there’s room.

"Why would you eat that, then?" Baze says, wrinkling his nose.

"I can't imagine soaking the shark would improve the flavor that much."

“Lots of good meat on it otherwise,” Mark says. “And it’s not like we can really afford to throw it back.”

He pokes at the fire with a stick, but it doesn’t really seem to want to light.

“Took me a long time to figure out how to get that taste out though.” He makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and shakes his head.

"I still don't understand why you two don't just leave your world behind and move in here," Baze says, shaking his head.

"You can even get jobs here, if you're worried about money."

“And leave Dave out there all by himself?” Mark asks.

He shakes his head. The idea of being stuck here forever is almost as scary as anything he’d ever encounter out there.

“Give up all that space? All that ocean, and the city?”

Uh-uh. He’d rather have freedom to move and a tight budget than a meal ticket and no room to move anywhere.

"Fair enough," Baze says, shrugging.

"I won't ask you again. So, what's the deal with Dodger?"

“Uh.” That’s a big question Mark isn’t sure he can answer. “Which deal?”

There are multiple deals with Dodger.

"Why she can't take a hint," Baze says, frowning, as if the corners of his mouth are tugged down by tiny hooks.

“Oh.”

He moves the fish around his makeshift grill so he can put another foil-wrapped piece onto it.

“I don’t know. I didn’t know her before all that happened. She’d broken into our lifeguard shack, and we found her almost dead on the floor. If we’d stayed at the Marina just one more day...”

Nope, he doesn’t want to finish that thought. He already knows how it ends.

“But she’d pretty much been alone out there up until then. I don’t think she did a whole bunch of socialising. She’s kind of weird. You get used to it.”

Baze lifts his chin. He's not about to get used to Dodger. He doesn't intend to spend enough time around her to get used to her.

Still. She did apologize, and that's to her credit. She laughed as she said sorry, but she did say the words. That's better than Wilford can do.

Hmph. Baze folds his massive arms across his equally massive, armored chest.

"Well, then. She can continue to be weird elsewhere."

Mark considers this and nods. "Yeah," he agrees. "What brought this on? She didn't hit you or something, did she?"

He thought she was getting past that 'panic and swing at everything that moves' phase.

"No," Baze grumbles, feeling rather silly now that he's about to lay it out there.

"She challenged me to eat something nasty, and then laughed at me."

"Oh. Yeah. She told me about that while she was puking her guts out in the sand."

Mark moves the fish around, checking inside the foil wrapping to see that they're done. They need a little bit longer, so he pokes the fire instead.

"Adjusting back to fish and birds was hard enough. I don't know why she thinks her body knows what to do with all that salt."

She's ridiculous. Mark actually doesn't know how she survived on her own.

Well, shavit. Now Baze feels bad. He didn't puke. He has to remind himself that it's not his fault that she threw up.

He also has no idea what to say to that. "I'm sorry" rings hollow, because, while he means it, he's still mad at her. Hmph. Hmph!

"Well, that was a waste of food. That's too bad."

Mark shakes his head.

"We've both done it."

He's not too bothered by it though. He's more concerned with keeping this fire going.

"Not a big fan of mac and cheese, then?" he asks casually.

"That was the worst food I've ever encountered, and I've eaten roadkill," Baze says vehemently, setting his jaw.

"The Mac and Cheese of the Kraft variety is something I'm glad to put behind me."

"Really? Wow."

Mark's a little surprised to hear this.

"Kraft's supposed to be the good stuff."

He's so glad he was not there.

"I'd hate to see what the bad stuff is, if that's the good stuff," Baze says, folding his arms with a derisive snort.

"I don't actually remember what the other stuff was like," Mark says, thinking about it. "I just know that Kraft was supposed to be the best."

Huh. If he wasn't so averse to puking his guts out, he'd almost be tempted to try it.

"Who says?" Baze grumbles, snorting again.

"The company that produced it, or a neutral party that had no interest in advertising for Kraft?"

"Everybody who ever complained when their mom bought the store brand."

Name brand is always best.

"Store brand?" Baze says, cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah. You got, like." Mark tries to figure out a good way to explain something that doesn't even exist anymore.

"You've got something that ten different people make, and they're all different. Like mac and cheese. You've got Kraft, which was like, the top of the pyramid, because all they make is a very specific list of foods. Then you've got these smaller brands which are all right, but they make a bunch of different foods, so they have to use cheaper ingredients to make their budget stretch.

"Then you got the supermarkets that sell the food, but they also make their own brand of everything they sell. So the store brand has its own mac and cheese, and coffee, and shaving razors, and everything else you can think of. And it's all really cheap and gross, but you paid seventy five cents for it, instead of a buck-fifty."

That... was an explanation that covered a lot.

"Huh," Baze says, his brow creased.

"So, what's a supermarket? I'm only familiar with small shops and stalls."

"It's a really big store that sells a little bit of everything. Some of them will even sell clothes and furniture and TVs and stuff."

This fire is being a pain in the ass. Mark gives up trying to coax it into life and pulls out a can of lighter fluid. He squirts some of the liquid into the fire, making it flare up violently.

Baze blinks at the fire. He wonders whether he should have brought some firepaste out here. Hmm. Mark looks like he's handling it just fine, Baze decides.

"So, whoever owns a supermarket must be incredibly wealthy."

"Usually, yeah."

While the flames are still going strong, Mark shoves a few more small pieces of wood into his fire. Then squirts a little more lighter fluid onto it for good measure.

"Catch, already."

He has so much fish to cook, and this is not helping.

Baze sighs, rustling through his pockets for a string cheese. He opens the wrapper and stuffs half of the stick in his mouth.

"Do you want me to get some fire paste? That stuff will catch anything."

"Uh. Sure. What is it?" Mark asks.

Anything to make this job easier would be great!

"Fire paste is just what it sounds like," Baze says, scarfing down the rest of the string cheese and placing the wrapper back in his pocket.

"It's a beige substance that's like lighter fluid, except it's more of a paste and will burn anything. Hold on, I'll go get some."

He heads back to the bar, and soon returns with a red tube with a stylized fire drawn on, labeled "Brahanan's Fire Paste!"

Baze wordlessly hands the tube to Mark, expecting him to read the instructions or otherwise figure out how to use the paste.

Mark looks down at it, frowning at the tube as he reads. It shouldn't be too difficult. He takes his fence-grate off and sets it aside so he can get at what he was hoping to be a decent fire pit, but which has just turned into a sad thing.

"All right," he says, poking everything to try to improve the air flow since the lighter fluid has already burned off.

He takes another piece of wood and squirts a line of the paste across it, before putting it paste-side down onto the pile. It definitely catches, but Mark decides to wait to see if it stays caught, or fizzles out like the lighter fluid.

"This is neat. Where'd you get it?" he asks, looking at the tube again.

"It's something common in my world. Everyone carries some when they're on long trips or hiking or generally trying to survive in an unfamiliar environment," Baze explains, nudging a rock with his foot.

"Fire paste is cheap to make and easy to use, so it's ubiquitous."

"Huh."

It sure seems useful.

"Mind if I keep this?" he asks.

"Sure, no problem," Baze says, waving the cost of the fire paste off.

"I'd better go find my friend, Chirrut. See you later, Mark. May the Force of others be with you."

"Thanks," Mark says.

He considers offering Baze some of his fish, but he seems like he's in a hurry. Maybe he'll leave something in return for him at the bar.

"See you around, man."

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