Daisy guided me to the second floor cafeteria where a buffet was set up for the building residents and employees. I wasn`t sure how they knew that I qualified as either, but whatever. The point was, the buffet was free and fresh, and everything looked delicious. I was prepared to take full advantage&

　　& Like that guy.

　　"Who the heck&?" the unintentionally audible question fizzled out and died, but not before Daisy caught on and followed my gaze to a man filling the third of four plates to capacity and beyond on his tray. At that point, why bother with plates at all?

　　"Don`t you recognize him?" Daisy prodded slyly.

　　I looked up at his face and recognized the triangular nose and buzzcut. Through the mirror, I hadn`t realized how big he was- tall and broad in every sense of the word. "Kane?"

　　"Mhm," Daisy laughed, skipping past me to flag the guy down and exchange a few words that I could only assume had something to do with me for the way Kane`s eyes flickered in my direction. I watched as Kane nodded and loaded the fourth plate before heading to a table in a corner of the room where two more such trays were loaded for bear. Daisy materialized by my elbow in the moments that followed. "Aren`t you going to get a plate?"

　　"Right. Sure."

　　"You don`t mind sitting with Kane, do you?"

　　"Is there even room at his table?!" I balked, a little in awe of a man who could put away so much food and still be reasonably trim.

　　"Oh, there will be by the time we are ready to sit down."

　　"There-!" I cut myself off and grabbed a plate, accepting the challenge to grab food as quickly as possible. I found some fried chicken and a baked potato to start with, loading my plate in seconds to then search for the beverages. Sure enough, by the time I`d grabbed a cup of water to help wash down the food, I turned to find that Kane had already licked clean every plate on the first tray and was half way through the second. It was mesmerizing to watch, honestly& and maybe a little revolting.

　　"Told ya," Daisy smirked as she walked past my hypnotized butt, sliding easily into the seat across from Kane and clearing the now two empty trays to make room for me next to her. I took the seat quietly, realized I`d forgotten silverware, and got up to find some. In the time it took me to find the counterintuitively located utensils and sit back down, Kane had cleared his third tray and was getting up for seconds. He nodded a brief acknowledgement in my direction on his way back to the buffet.

　　"How?!" I mouthed at Daisy as soon as Kane turned his back.

　　"He`s a champion competitive eater," Daisy shrugged, but her continued smirk and a sudden glint in her eyes merged in a way that told me there was more to the story.

　　"What are you not telling me?"

　　"Ask him yourself," Daisy shrugged.

　　I`d gotten through a single wing when Kane returned with his fourth overflowing tray, and it occurred to me that his face was a little rounder than it had been when I`d located him during my audition.

　　"Daisy told me you`re the new guy?" Kane said through a mouthful of steak.

　　"Uh, yeah. Oran."

　　"Cool. Kane," he gave another nod, returning his attention to the steak he barely bothered to chew before swallowing. He got through the entire fourth tray before I could finish my potato. Admittedly, it was distracting watching him, but more than that, he was a champion competitive eater for a reason. Somehow, the man could open his gullet and practically inhale food with minimal mastication- or maybe none at all. The opening and closing of his jaw seemed to serve little purpose but to push food towards the back of his throat& like a snake.Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

　　I shuddered at that thought, imagining a Kane-sized snake getting hold of a creature closer to my size. I wasn`t small, but comparatively, I was skinny& and the gap in size only widened the more the man in front of me swallowed.

　　Thirds.

　　Fourths.

　　Fifths.

　　I counted ten trays before he finally sat back in his seat with a toothpick and a glass of chocolate milk to wash it all down. And now I was quite certain that his face was chubbier.

　　"How was training today, Kane?" Daisy seemed to take his reclined position as an invitation to start a conversation.

　　"Oof," Kane chuckled and slapped at his belly. "I was hungry."

　　"Yeah. I can see that," Daisy`s airy laugh floated across the table. "Looks like you made up for what you burned though."

　　"And then some," Kane nodded. "Group training tomorrow. Gotta get the new guy caught up to speed."

　　"Yeah," I asserted myself, "first of all, I have a name. Second& uh& can you maybe tell me, I don`t know, what to expect tomorrow?"

　　Kane, who`d maintained eye contact with me while I was talking, glanced at Daisy and broke into a small chuckle. "Alright, new guy, Oran. What do you want to know?"

　　"Well, uh, I don`t know," I found myself floundering for the hundredth time that day. "What`s this training thing tomorrow?"

　　Kane sat forward, resting elbows on the table and slouching in a way that didn`t seem like it should be comfortable given how much food was currently processing in his gut. "Argus is having us run a mock mission. Get us all on the same page, ya know? He wants to see if bringing you on board will work out for the group as a whole."

　　"I see," I frowned back at him. "And what do you do?" I asked, the thought only half-formed.

　　"What do you mean?"

　　"I mean, your gift: what`s your role on the team?" I rephrased, coming up with something coherent on the fly.

　　"I`m the guy that catches the target," Kane said with a crooked grin that was somehow both friendly and intimidating. "While you and the rest of the team find the bad guy, I`m the one that goes in and deals with him."

　　"Ah," I nodded my understanding. This was the guy that knocked people`s teeth in, as Daisy had warned me earlier, the guy who trained off thousands upon thousands of calories every day, the guy who probably really could swallow me whole in a figurative sense if not a literal one- the muscle in a special, government sanctioned ninja team. The actual ninja.

　　Prison had taught me to tuck my tail between my legs in the presence of such men- submit, put my head down, be respectful. He probably had an athletic-performance-enhancing gift: speed, strength, reaction time, reflexes, ninja fighting skills&. He was likely the cool kid on the playground growing up, and the swagger when he stood to refill his chocolate milk only seemed to confirm that theory.

　　"So! Oran, do you understand what your job on the team is?" Kane`s body slumped back into a chair that seemed to protest beneath his considerable person.

　　"Kind of?" I admitted sheepishly. "I`m supposed to find& the target?"

　　"Exactly," Kane nodded once and leaned lazily back in his chair again. "We`ll be counting on you to help us nab the bad guys quickly. We had a bit of a snafu last year with a target that succeeded in his plans before we could locate him. Conventional surveillance tech is darn useful, but it can`t beat a gift like yours. Argus said you found me in under three minutes? That`s impressive. We really could have used you last year." He chuckled, musing to himself and settling even further into his groaning chair with his tongue mindlessly shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

　　Relaxed, flattering, quietly confident, unflappable even when discussing his failures- it was hard not to like him.

　　"Well, you two, I`m off to bed," Kane puffed to his feet. "Nice to meet you, Oran. Make sure you set your alarm. Training is at 0600. Meeting in 4L. Goodnight, Daisy." He didn`t wait for the return "good night"s that rolled down the back of his beefy shoulders as he walked away, and, truth be told, it only added to his swagger- a swagger I found myself in awe of and only slightly coveting.

　　"Well, he seems fun," I commented wryly to Daisy.

　　"Yeah. He`s the de facto leader of the team," Daisy smiled at his back. "He`s a good guy, tough, but cool. You`ll like him; most people do. Actually," she snorted, "I think Kane gets holiday cards, unironically, from some of the guys we`ve put away. He goes to visit them sometimes, and they`ve become friends. It`s kind of funny, isn`t it? But that`s typical."

　　Her comment served to fuel my bubbling jealousy, but the simultaneously growing respect was real. "Yeah. Well, six in the morning is gonna feel early. I think I might just go to bed too."

　　"Are you good to find your way back?"

　　"I think I`ll manage. Thanks," I said with a shallow smile and cleared my dishes on my way back to the elevator.