Having found their own spot, Nanoha and Fate immediately began eating their meals rather quickly, pausing only to watch the respective moments of the fight they were not pressent for, or to watch the opponent's perspective.
Nanoha seemed particularly interested when Crash tried to use the Hyperlance Extension shot to take Fate out at extreme range. When the shot was fired, extra statistics displayed from anylized data put the shot above nine-hundred meters a second. She imagined a dozen ways to have Raising Heart duplicate the simplistic mechanical principle that fired the Hyperlance Extension. Having a beam that could hit farther away, all that much faster would allow her to pluck targets off all the quicker. Or perhaps make a homing version of the shot... That's it, a nine-hundred meter a second homing shot. Dodge THIS! It made her grin, and almost start chuckling out loud.
Fate noticed after a few seconds Nanoha was laughing to herself, and quickly began to sweat... Oh god, she didn't want that toy for herself did she? Nanoha held the record for longest range direct shots in the TSAB, all she needed now was a way to make them hit even farther away and faster. However, she found the window in the corner of the replay showing a Crash's Visor HUD Point of View quite fascinating. Even as Crash was busy getting his ass handed to him in their hand to hand duel, she watched as the bracket that identified her changed color to indicate threat level, and took stock of the small indicators next to it displaying relevant data.
"Oh god, I think I pissed her off..."
Nanoha burried her face in her arm to keep from laughing outright, causing Fate to simply turn red in embarrassment. Those in the room had caught on to the spectacle in Crash's HUD and were also barely containing their own laughter. Fate decided after a moment, that despite not really feeling it, she DID look rather pissed off as she hoisted Bardiche up in its Zanber Form.
'THUMP!'
Suddenly, all laughter in the room ceased. The girls took a second to realize the deathly silence that had come over the room, yet the strange feeling of a dark aura finally drew their attention to the entrance.
Don stood, hard hat still on, right at the entrance. He seemed preocupied with something in front of him... Actually, it was the glass and shattered light bulb on the floor in front of the food line. After a long, almost scary pause, many in the room dreading a repeat of earlier, Don took a slow, deep breath and walked over the damage, and quickly exchanged quiet words with Marilyn. A quick dart of his head in Crash's direction gave them a good idea of the conversation before he scowled. Before he could say anything though, Marilyn suddenly shook her ladel at him, speaking quietly with a look on her face that was most certainly not offering him a five star dinner. The head mechanic seemed to bite lip to prevent whatever he wanted to say from coming out, but he relaxed and tipped his hat a little, then accepted a plate of food from her. Appearant dissaster averted, attention returned to the replay, now matching Nanoha's high altitude dogfight with the Madcap.
"Clunk!"
Nanoha and Fate jumped as a tray came down right in front of them. Don joined it a second later.
"I hope you don't mind an old angry man like myself joining you," he stated, almost apologetticly.
They both shook their heads quickly, and he smirked in what seemed to be the antithesis of the personality they'd seen him display, then sat down.
"I don't like to be mean," he stated, grabbing up his fork and taking a bite. "It's just that I work very hard around here. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who knows what he's doing."
"I bet that can be really hard sometimes," Nanoha nodded. Don instantly recognized that she was 'keeping her distance' in the conversation, and simply attacked a piece of meat.
"Look ladies," he stated after a few more bites. "I'm an engineer, and that means I solve problems."
He took a fork and stabbed some of his food rather agressively.
"Not problems like, 'what is romance', no. That would fall under the perfue of your cunundrums of philosophy."
As he said that, his eyes drifted to a small fly that was attracted to the aroma of their meals, then snapped back up to them.
"I solve practical problems," he continued. "For example... how do you keep some nasty little piece of filth from ruining hours of hard work?"
For a few seconds, the senior mechanic went back and forth between Nanoha and Fate.
"The answer," he began.
WHOOSH-WHAM!!
Both aces jumped as his arm came up fast, and then slammed hard on the table, holding a large fly swatter he'd somehow managed to produce from seemingly thin air. The rest of the room had frozen again at the loud report, only to go back to eating after spotting the reason.
"Use the right tool."
Don lifted the fly swatter up, inspecting its matted surface to note the rather flat remains of the little pest that had been attempting to enjoy what would now be its last meal. With an idle swish, he shoved the fly swatter out of sight and reached up, pushing his hard hat up and pulling a tiny little spray bottle out while fishing a small white cloth towel out of a pocket.
"And if that don't work," he continued, spraying the spot he'd struck a few times. "Invent a better tool."
Don quickly wiped the spot he was spraying and stuck the stuff he'd used back where they came from. One couldn't tell at first glance how much he really had on him.
"But Crash is different," he stated, shaking his head as he returned to eating. "No matter what tools I use, what I make, how much I plan, he foils any attempt to stay ahead of the game."
Starting to understand how the engineer felt, the aces began to relax a little and resume eating, feeling just a slight sympathy now that they had witnessed enough to make sense of it.
"I don't hate the boy," Don continued. "But I hate wasted effort, and that boy invariably leads to more hours of wasted effort than I thought physically possible in one day. Do you know how many times I have had to change the card readers in the test facilities before we simply switched over to using personelle to watch the entrances?"
Nanoha expected him to give them the answer, but instead he skipped onto another train of thought.
"It's extremely frustrating waking up each day and wondering what you'll have to clean up after this time, and how much it's going to cost in time, effort, and money, to deal with. If I wanted to be a janator, I needn't have worked so hard to get this position."
After another bite he looked Nanoha square in the eyes.
"And that leaves me a bit grouchy," he stated evenly. "I'd like you to understand, that even if I look ready to kill somebody, I can't really say it's anyone's fault, not even the Boy's. And I don't mean anyone any ill will. I'm just good at yelling, it's generally the only way I've ever been able to get anyone to listen and perform as I need them to. As I've said... the right tool."
More silence, dominated by the engineer quickly going through a portion of meat. The one-sided conversation, seemingly over, the girls resumed their focus on the replay again. At this point, it seemed to be around when EDI and Crash had retreated. They listened to the Dialogue as the pair went over their combat options, having only just missed Crash realizing they weren't fighting top level. A muted screech announced when EDI began jamming.