Mondder

"The Command Center is where I would start," Jade replied, hardly thinking about it at all. "It is there that everything happens." Much like she still knew the layout of her old ship by heart, the various stations and crews working at each, though most of the time she remained on the bridge, because it was the head of the ship. "But first, what about breakfast on the way there?" She smiled up at him, teasing lightly, "Or, do you intend to keep swinging me between adrenaline and starvation?" She'd have thought a direct, face to face approach was more like him.

Jade accepted her menu with a brief nod and glanced over it in a cursory fashion. She shot a glance over at the Admiral, then looked back up at the waitress. "Spiced caf if you'd be so good," was her reply to the hot drink question. Her own beverage of choice was tea, but she was particular about it and generally preferred to brew her own. She glanced around momentarily. This seemed to be a typical small cafe just like thousands of its kind spread across the galaxy. She waited till after Z'har had ordered and the waitress left before leaning forward to inquire curiously, "I am not yet familiar with this city, but what influenced your decision in favor of this cafe?"

Unlike the majority of the cafe's occupants, Jade actually looked at the spectacle in amusement. "So it appears! What did you order exactly?" Perhaps it was his food that had exploded. She peered at him under the edge of the visor he was wearing. "Maybe we should go help before there's a fatality?"

Jade smiled. "I agree. Sometimes looking too closely into things can spoil the effect." Her eyes sparkled mischievously as another waitress passed them with drink pitchers in both hands and sporting what looked like a domesticated chicken on her shoulder. "It looks like this is the tiny bit of chaos within your well-ordered machine." Perhaps the loose supervision in this place allowed for extremely high morale. It was definitely amusing, but something deep inside Jade's psyche cringed at such an overt display of disorder.

Jade was considering this when the waitress returned with their food. For herself this consisted of a plate of mixed kavasa and meiloorun fruits. She picked up a delicate silver knife and began neatly slitting the rind of a ripe meiloorun as she replied, "You have done an impressive job, though I think more than traditional governments you have the advantage of being in several places at once, don't you?" She tipped him a saucy wink as she peeled off a section of rind and bit into the juicy interior of her breakfast. "A people that is convinced they are free is easily controlled for a time. And then, when it is finally too late and they realize what is happening, the crushing fist of Power is standing by." She drifted along in a musing fashion for a moment before looking back at the Admiral, leaning forward just a bit to peer under his dramatic eye-visor. "I commend you for your dexterity."

Ah well. It seemed that he refused to rise to the occasion this time. She'd remedy that later. Having finished the meiloorun, she dipped into the kavasa fruit with a hearty appetite and finished her breakfast at nearly the same time that Z'har finished his sandwich. She generally ate a rather slim breakfast by some peoples' standards, but she'd found that a lighter meal tended to hone her alertness, and since her routine went from a light repast to a more rigourous form of exercise on a typical day she'd settled for fruit instead of a more heavy diet in the mornings. Too much food tended to make her feel both heavy and sleepy, neither of which appealed to her. She smiled, "I think some would be offended by realizing that on a basic level we crave the stability of lies. And yet, there is a shocking amount of truth in that." She delicately dipped the edge of her napkin in her water glass, dabbed at her fingers and lips, dried her hands, and then folded the napkin neatly before replacing it next to her now-empty plate.

Jade took note of where she was, naturally, but did appear overly interested in remembering every single door. Anyway, as the two of them progressed deeper into the interior of the planet and further underground, Jade bit her lip and focused on rearranging her body temperature. There were several different exercises young Jedi students were given in this arena, but it still remained her least favorite. All other things aside, she hated being cold. More than that, she despised it. So, the brisk walk was good, though not quite enough to offset the outfit that the Admiral had earlier recommended. 

She slowly circumnavigated the area around the spherical war holomap, considering the events taking place there, before coming to a halt next to the Admiral again. "And, I assume each of these Control Centers is autonomous and isolated from each other and directed from a central nervous system? Or have you duplicated them?"

As she suspected, while this was part of the Control Center, it was not Central Command. It was instead an outer layer of the nervous system behind the MandalMine Collective. She smiled wryly because in this instance 'central nervous system' might end up being more literally true than she had at first envisioned. Jade was enjoying this. It was similar to the command structure of a capital ship, but on an exponentially larger scale.

"So, you have yet to show me what I am truly curious about." By this point, she had ceased walking the room and was standing near enough to the tall Zabrak to converse in a low tone without disrupting the operation around them. "Are you teasing me on purpose?" She left unspoken that in this case she could practice stoic unconcern and wear him down.

Jade nodded. There really was no way to ask the question she'd been considering. No doubt in time all would become clear. For now, she accepted the way things were. "Understood." She replied in one word. Maybe it seemed militarily terse and abrupt, but she didn't mean it that way.