DAY 20: LUNCH

[prisonerofdeath]

While Arts and Crafts wasn't all that bad, Gray Fox was greatly relieved when an intercom announced Lunch. He had almost reached the point where he was going to start eating more of the building materials

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[ontheabyss]

Lyta didn't even bother saying goodbye to Caim when she was pried away to be taken to lunch. He wasn't a friend, he was an ally. Lyta didn't stand on niceties for the sake of niceties.

She did care about the food, however. It was food, and that was good enough for her. But it was fresh meat, which Lyta had missed. And fresh vegetables - or fresh enough. She had her burger piled high with everything that was offered and took a side of onion rings. At least there was plenty of fuel.

Breaking out wasn't going to be simple, she knew that already. But once they were outside, it would probably be easier. She didn't know if Caim had any special talents that would aide them, but she was relying heavily on her own.

Sitting at an empty table, Lyta wasted no time in digging into her lunch.

[clone_boy]

Lunch. Darman found himself enjoying the midday meals - despite being a captive and assumedly a prisoner of war - if only because he never knew what they served. True, they listed the name on the intercom, but he wasn't familiar with the terminologys of this backwards planet, so it was all touch and go with actual tasting. Some of it he hadn't cared for, but he ate it anyway.

He wasn't entirely sure what a hamburger was, or even what the other ingredients were. His guard had to practically select the toppings for him before she settled him next to one of the other prisoners.

The clone glanced briefly at the other: she was another human woman, with a head of red hair that was bizarre to look at. He hadn't ever seen anyone with that shade of hair color, and it was still disorienting to look around the mess hall and see a motley puddle of colors than a comforting sea of just black hair like his own.

[ontheabyss]

Lyta glanced up when someone sat next to her. Young guy, well built as far as she could tell. Human, insofar as she could tell. She wasn't getting any strong emotions off of him, and nothing seemed off. Everyone she'd seen had struck her as more or less human. There wasn't a single alien in the place - at least not a familiar alien. No Narns, no Minbari, no Drazi... she was pretty sure there were no Centauri, but it was hard to tell. Flatten out a man's hair crest or keep a woman from shaving her head and how could you know?

"Guess your nurse wants you to make friends," Lyta commented, casting a glance at the staff that hung about near the walls. She was enjoying her lunch - fresh burger! Ketchup! Lettuce! Onions! At least the food was good.

[clone_boy]

Darman tried out this hamburger type of food. It didn't taste like anything he'd ever had before; all he knew for certain was it was probably a great deal in calorie count than the typical ration cubes he'd grown up with. He wasn't too sure if he liked it or not, taste wise, but he polished it off dutifully rather than let it go to waste.

"Friends," Darman snorted. "All they're doing is letting us make contacts with the other prisoners. Either they're underestimating us, or they're so confident that they think it doesn't matter."

Either was fine, actually, so long as they weren't accurate. Still, networking with contacts was tedious, a whole lot of waiting for the right opportunity that reminded him far too much of the black ops with Skirata on Coruscant, waiting to take down the Sep terrorists. If only he'd had access to his armor and weapons.

[ontheabyss]

"Contacts are important in a place like this," Lyta said, casually. "As long as you're making contacts with the right sort of people." She shrugged. "I don't know what they think. The nurses are stupid. The doctors..." She wasn't going to say anything about that. Not to some stranger.

"So where are you from?"

[clone_boy]

"The doctors are on the same side," Darman finished and left it at that.

Still, he had lucked out with that Washu woman. She struck him as flighty, easily impressed and quick to drop her guard: he couldn't have asked for anyone more malleable. He was certain that pretty soon he could have her trust to look at more of her experiments, and learn enough about her office to tell if she had it rigged for intruders when she wasn't it.

"I'm from Kamino," Darman said, taking a sip from the curious, watery yellow drink the guards had called lemonade. He didn't expect the female to know where Kamino was - most people didn't, and it was off the charts in most places, including even the hallowed Jedi Library. "What about you?"

[ontheabyss]

"Never heard of it," Lyta confirmed. But she hardly knew of every planet out there. There were plenty of regions of unexplored space, and humans had a way of getting themselves there.

"I'm from Earth, originally. I spent a lot of time off-world, though. Traveling. Got taken off a transport ship out beyond explored space, woke up here." She left it vague. She didn't know if this guy was from her universe or not, but he didn't need to know she was a telepath or that she had spent time with the Vorlons. It was better to be safe than to be sorry.

[clone_boy]

And there was this mysterious Urth mentioned again. Darman would have thought that a planet this populated with a senient species, especially with ordinary humans, should be familiar to him, especially with his rather extensive instruction in potential battlegrounds through Kamino's flash instruction program, but he hadn't ever heard of it before now. Could be another hidden planet though, Darman thought, although he wondered how anyone could have concealed an entire planet from the Kaminoans. The cloners always paid an obsessive amount to detail and information, after all

[ontheabyss]

"The Earth I'm from has had space travel for hundreds of years," Lyta clarified. "I mean, most of that is thanks to the Centauri - we were pretty behind the other intelligent races - but we've had it. But we've also proved the existence of other dimensions. It's possible that there are other Earths out there in other dimensions, or that people have been taken from different times of the same Earth." The Vorlons had done it, why couldn't someone else?

"This place seems to be consistent with Earth technology. Probably... 400 years behind what I'm used to. That's assuming this place is Earth. But I'm pretty sure that it is. I'd need to look at the plant life and the constellations to be sure."

[clone_boy]

Darman wasn't too sure he bought into this other dimensions business, but the Urth his messhall table neighbor mentioned still sounded relatively young. Only a hundred years with space travel? Most of the known civilizations had been traversing the galaxy for several thousand, and he couldn't imagine a lifetime where space travel was actually new or novel in any way. It sounded horrifying.

"Any idea what their weapon capabilities would be like?" Darman asked.

[ontheabyss]

"Well, history wasn't my best subject, but based on the technology here..." Lyta paused, thinking. "Rudimentary guns, I'd guess. The kind that shoot bullets, not enegry. Maybe knives. Nothing compared to what I'm used to, but still pretty deadly if you're not armed yourself." She shrugged. Weapons didn't bother her. Once she'd figured out what was blocking her powers and disabled it, she'd be unstoppable again. She could stop bullets without a thought - hell, she could stop an attacker just by thinking it.

But she needed her full powers back!

[clone_boy]

Darman wasn't quite sure what a bullet was, but if it didn't shoot energy, like a good blaster rifle, than he could probably assume something similiar to Verpines. Great. While their latest clone commando armor was tested to be Verpine-proof (Fi had convinced Atin to shoot him in the chest with one), Darman unfortunately wasn't. Primitive or not, a hit with a Verpine could sometimes do more internal damage than a blaster bolt.

So much for the thought of just locals with spears.

He was well trained in melee combat, but something told him that he couldn't dodge these "bullets", if they were anything like Verpines. Darman just hoped that he'd be able to at least hear the shot, if they were primitive. The Verpine weapons he knew were silent.

"Still could be a problem," Darman mused. "They must have our belongings around here though. Unless they've smartened up and moved them to another location."

[ontheabyss]

"If they even brought our belongings here," Lyta pointed out. "They could have just taken them off us and left them when the grabbed us." They'd be pretty stupid if they left weapons and personal items hanging around. But Lyta wasn't entirely sure what sort of intelligence they were dealing with. Though she was sure the Corps had a hand in this, even the Corps could be stupid.

Lyta paused, eyes closed for a moment and finger held up to keep her companion silent. She felt.... something. Another telepath? She sent out feelers, trying to pinpoint the jumbled, strange mental signature she was picking up. There was another telepath in the room, one that hadn't noticed her yet.

Interesting.

[clone_boy]

That was true. Still, he wasn't too sure he bought that - after all, the prisoners who had undergone "special counseling", such as Azel, had suddenly materialized with their posessions, weapons and all. Considering how primitive this place was, he'd have to assume that they'd have pretty poor logistics - it wouldn't be practical to be running back and forth across what had to be half the galaxy just to pick up someone's dropped belongings.

He supposed this was another thing he could attempt to (tactfully) talk about with Washu.

Finishing his meal with the typical methodicalness of a clone, Darman noticed that the woman (he'd taken to nicknaming her Red, Woman and Human Female in his head, in that order) had her eyes closed, a ringer raised for silence. She looked to be concentrating.

He didn't hear anything out of the ordinary, just the buzz of conversation in the messhall. Obviously whatever she was hearing was something he couldn't hear...which must mean she was yet another Force sensitive.

What rocks are they all crawling out

[ontheabyss]

"Sorry about that," Lyta said, peering across the faces in the mess hall. She couldn't see who she was getting that weird signature from. There was too much background noise, too many loud thoughts.

"I don't suppose you have telepaths where you come from, do you? Hardly anyone I've met has anything close. And here I thought every race in the galaxy had some kind of telepath. Well, other than the Narns." She wasn't even going to bother asking if he knew about the Corps.

[clone_boy]

"We've got some," Darman said, thinking of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Chancellor Palpatine. "Most receive training that I know of