damned_institute | Day 22: Brunch

Cid usually liked sleeping in, especially in a place as messed up and uninviting as this, but this happened to be one situation where he really wished he hadn't.

Right there, on the bulletin board. The Head Doctor and he'd fucking missed it? Some part of him wished he'd been there to take his eye out and another part of him knew he wouldn't have been able to. No man that powerful who hid for so long went to dangerous places without some kind of entourage.

Brunch sounded like it'd be filling, at least, though he nearly stopped in his tracks when the bastard announced TEA. TEA. It'd been a damn long while since he'd had some fucking tea, though with all the stress this place had found fit to rain down on his fucking head, it hadn't really been the first priority on his mind. Kinda nice, even if Cid was sure this was just some game the mother fucker was playing to get them all stuck neck-deep in Stockholm Syndrome.

He scanned the mostly-empty room for any sign of a familiar face once he'd piled waffles and sausages and syrup on his plate, though the person he really wanted to talk to was that Reynolds guy. "Spaceship" was the last word he remembered clearly before waking up in his bed, and dammit if he wasn't going to keep it stuck like glue in his mind.

He found a table where he could watch people come into the cafeteria and grabbed for his mug. The steam rising from his drink and the bag of herbs in it was nearly enough to make him grin despite it all, and it was with marked leisure and a little relief that he drank his goddamn tea.

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"That's simple enough." Schuldig gave Darman a brittle smile. "I'm a damned good telepath and I can get into people's minds whenever I want. But I can't keep the thoughts at the front of their minds out. And my powers have a radius of, oh, roughly a mile and a half in every direction. Imagine the thoughts of every person within a mile and a half of you invading your head at all times, not being able to do a thing about it. It's remarkably easy to hate them - to want revenge for never being able to be alone in your head, to never be able to have quiet or sleep or privacy. Minds in torment always taste sweetest, anyway.

"And then," he continued, with evident malice, "imagine some utter bastards come along who've got some of your power and none of the drawbacks. Who're quite happy, actually. The thought of breaking those smug bastards down is delicious."

So basically it was a matter of busting someone down to size.

Darman couldn't say he agreed, but if the outcome was the same...well, that would suit the requirements of Order 66, wouldn't it?

"So you would take satisfaction in this, then," Darman said, thinking it over furiously. Yes, he had made a mistake, if this man held no love for Jedi, and in fact wanted them to suffer. Darman didn't believe that suffering really mattered - he hadn't seen enough of the galaxy to really want to make an enemy suffer, seeing as a corpse was just as fine - but if he was no friend of the Jedi and their fellow Force Sensitives...that put things into perspective, didn't it?

He couldn't pretend to understand this mind-reader's point of view, but he thought his goal was close enough to be interested in pointedly looking the other way with this Force user and not trying to find out where he came from.

"I apologize, then, for what I said earlier," Darman said earnestly. "I was a bit enthusiastic, I guess. I didn't know you didn't care for the Jedi. Are you planning to simply break them or kill them?"

It was an important distinction, in Darman's very limited worldview. He much preferred a target dead, but he was seeing now that wasn't enough for some beings. It was definitely a learning opportunity and Darman rather enjoyed learning what made nonclones tick (when they weren't shooting at him).

"Killing them isn't that entertaining," Schuldig replied with a slight shrug. "If you break a toy, you can't play with it again. It's more amusing to break them, to play them off each other, to make them suffer for as long as I can keep coming up with ideas. Usually that's a long time." He smirked.

So the boy was finally rethinking killing him. It had certainly taken long enough to talk him around. A one-track mind was difficult to divert.

Darman frowned, trying to turn over this new viewpoint in his head and still finding that he couldn't quite understand the point of all it. It seemed like it left too much room for error - it was entirely possible to break down someone through proper demoralization (what Skirata called just a fancy name for torture of some kind), but he was of the opinion that there was still a risk involved. Something could always trigger hidden reserves of strength or willpower and then you'd have a potentially messy, ugly fight on your hands.

But he supposed that this strange mind-reader had a somewhat different agenda compared to his and took more pleasure in the means than the end. All he knew was this Force user certainly didn't sound very Jedi-like.

Still, he would prefer to just kill the Jedi rather than leave them as loose ends, but he supposed that incapacitating them would fit the bill. At least temporarily.

"And how do you plan to do all this?" Darman asked. He couldn't help a glance at General Kenobi, deep in discussion with Takaya.

Now that the constant death threats had ceased, Schuldig was beginning to get bored. Darman's mind was dry as toast - all about orders and directives and tactics and for the love of little green apples did the man have no thought that didn't originate in some military holovid?

Schuldig spent a thoughtful moment as he realized he'd just used a bit of jargon he was entirely unfamiliar with that hardly made any sense and resolved to retreat entirely from Darman's mind for a time.

Aloud, following Darman's gaze, Schuldig replied, "I haven't decided. I haven't made up my mind as to whether I will yet; it's just an intriguing possibility. But there's no shortage of those, and I'm not so ready to destroy them now that you've presented yourself as an excellent argument against it. If I decide to, I'll do it in my own time and in my own way. I certainly won't be doing it out of any desire to help you, so I'd suggest you make your plans for them independently and leave me to my own business."

Darman raised an eyebrow at all this. This mind-reader seemed so caught up in the idea what he perceived as his threatened individuality - it had to be his choice, his time and his way - that he would rather choose obstinate stubbornness (and not in the good, Mandolorian sense) than doing the smart thing and acknowledging any weaknesses he might have. Frankly, Darman didn't believe he alone could take on a Jedi, much less two of them - he had seen what they could do with the Force and much of it hadn't been anything less than a certified miracle.

He shrugged, finished with his meal, and decided he definitely had room for more. An accelerated metabolism did that for you.

"Suit yourself," Darman said, picking up his tray to make another run for refills. He'd still keep an eye on this mind-reader, if only to make sure he didn't jeopardize the clone's own mission with his foreign fascination with torture and suffering; Darman was fascinated with how utterly different the people here were to his brothers, and in the case of this one, they seemed almost like an entirely difference species.

[Wandering here (http://community.livejournal.com/landels_damned/65478.html?thread=3494342#t3494342)]

Day 22: Brunch

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