Day 51: Breakfast

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

Yuffie Kisaragi, indomitable bouncing ball of sunshine and unfathomable ebullience, was tired. It'd been a long night full of gibberish and getting nowhere fast.

"Can't I—"

Plucky, who had been busily loading a plate full of French toast and bacon, tittered. "I'm afraid not, Hanna, darling. A chat over a nice, hearty breakfast would do you a world of good, don't you think?"

"Aaaaactually—"

"Come on, let's find you a seat. Plenty to choose from this morning!"

For a long moment, Yuffie seriously considered doing something—anything—to act out. Punch her nurse, rub jam in an orderly's face, climb a wall and hang off the ceiling, jump on a table and parody Loveless… A ruckus like that would definitely jolt her back into gear, right? Sedation aside. And it'd turn Plucky's good day right on its head, which was always a bonus worth shooting for.

But, by the time she'd reached a decision—and it was an epic decision, a really awesome one; everybody'd appreciate the genius, she was sure—she was already alone. Her breakfast tray had been set down neatly by the nurse, who had left with an infuriatingly winsome smile.

"Wow," Yuffie muttered. Shaking her head, she picked a chair at random and threw herself into it. She kicked back, one arm slung across her eyes, to wait. For what, she wasn't totally sure. Some moron to decide that she looked like good company? That was how it usually went.

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[fangirlfatale.livejournal.com]

Morgan wasn't surprised to find herself waking up back in the same room again, but she was annoyed. It felt like she'd been smashing up pipes in the bathroom just a minute ago (actually, she was pretty sure she'd been mid-kick last thing she remembered), which meant that somehow someone had once again managed to get the drop on her without her noticing a thing--not to mention drag her back here and tuck her into bed. It was insulting! And kind of creepy, too. The worst part was that she couldn't even figure out how someone could knock out both her and Elaine, both trained fighters. It had to be some kind of voodoo or...well, she wasn't sure what, but Morgan was definitely going to find out.

Her next thought was for her prizes, as pathetic as they were--the closet rod and the metal. Morgan started upright and groped instinctively around for them. She got lucky: her hand hit one of the pipes right away, nestled in the bed next to her. "How nice of them," she commented sarcastically as she wedged the rod under the mattress and went to stash the few pipes she'd managed to collect in the closet. "I'll just put these in here for safekeeping." She'd have to come up with a better hiding place, but hopefully S.P. or her goons wouldn't bother searching the room today, if they even cared. The metal wasn't a bad start, but Morgan was glad she had an extra night to come up with some more. If this was going to be her big chance at getting a sword, she was gonna make darn sure she had everything she needed.

That done, Morgan opened the door and strode a few paces ahead of S.P. (uuuggff!) to the cafeteria, where she put together a well-balanced breakfast (pirate hunters had to watch their nutrition) and found a seat alone. She didn't see anyone else she knew yet. Chewing her first forkful of fruit, Morgan wondered idly if Guybrush had made any progress with his kleptomania-and-chatting plan last night.

[free! No limit unless threadmate wants one.]

[loyal-soldier.livejournal.com]

[Is a random clone okay?]

622 went from asleep to fully awake even more abruptly than usual when he rolled over on his burned arm, wincing and biting back a few choice words in Huttese he'd picked up on Malastare. Someone had bandaged the area, but little lightning-like forks of the burn were still visible. Deal with it. It's not as bad, and you protected someone this time. That was enough to snap him out of any pointless attempt at depression, collecting himself before the nurse turned up.

Doing his very best to tune out the woman's chattering about breakfast, how he'd gotten that burn, and then breakfast again when she ran out of material as they neared the mess hall, 622 got himself a helping (or three, if the nurse's usual protestations were any guide) of anything he could identify as 'healthy'.

He was about to find a seat by himself when the nurse grabbed him by his injured arm, earning her a slight hiss of pain and a cold glare, which unexpectedly produced an apology from her before he was steered towards another prisoner. "How do you do, ma'am," he said as politely as he could manage, setting down his tray. "Apparently I'm supposed to sit here." The nurse then left, but not before completely losing any credit she might have gained for the apology by giving him a pat on the head and telling him to be a good boy.

622 made sure the nurse had left before turning his attention back to the other prisoner, sighing and running a hand through his hair, both in a reflex expression of frustration and to try and dislodge the slight lingering embarrassment of being treated like a small child. "Sorry about this, ma'am. If you don't want to be bothered, I'll move away once the nurse forgets I'm here."

[fangirlfatale.livejournal.com]

[Of course!]

Morgan's eyebrow quirked up when another stranger (somewhere between her age and Guybrush's, a few inches taller, and look at those scars and burns--now there was a guy who'd seen a fight or two in his time!) sat down with her, but it was pretty obvious what was going on. "It's fine," she told him. "Mine's been on my back about 'socializing'--" cue the rolled eyes and air quotes, "--too, so maybe this'll get both of them out of our faces for a while." She doubted it. S.P. was starting to get bolder now that it had been two days since Morgan had attempted to beat the living tar out of her. She gritted her teeth. If she could just deal until tomorrow night, her threats of making that woman appreciate the finer points of the delicate taste of cold steel wouldn't be so empty anymore.

She'd been planning on leaving it at that, but then she realized the guy'd been speaking in an accent she couldn't quite place. Morgan thought it might be Australian (hard to say, since she'd never been there herself and she was pretty sure the accuracy of the impressions she'd heard of that Ozzie Mandrill guy had degenerated over time), but she wasn't sure. And she was already learning to interpret accents she didn't recognize as a bad thing. "By the way, where are you from?" she asked the guy curiously.

She kind of wanted to ask about all those old injuries and whether they had any good stories behind them, but maybe she'd wait until they got some more small talk out of the way.

[loyal-soldier.livejournal.com]

"I don't know why they actively encourage alliance-building among prisoners. It seems like the last thing they would want is someone to stand up in defense of another who's drawn attention to themselves," 622 commented, starting in on his meal. It seemed like such a stupid idea to him. A better-equipped guard could easily take down one prisoner, but if there was an increased chance of another who might have gotten hold of a weapon and the will to use it? He really was surprised that there never seemed to be any fatalities among the staff.

"They--" he gestured in the direction his nurse had wandered off in "--are convinced that I'm from somewhere called 'New Zealand'." Or at least the nurse kept on asking him about what it was like there. "I was trained on Kamino, but my home has more been wherever I've been stationed." Not the most friendly of homes, Malastare and Ralltiir, at least outside of the bases. "Are you from closer to here, ma'am?" It was the most polite way he could ask 'Are you from this tiny planet no one's ever heard of?'

[fangirlfatale.livejournal.com]

Who's building alliances? Morgan almost asked. At least the scars made this guy seem like he might actually have something to bring to the table, but Morgan LeFlay still worked alone. Actually, she thought, if the nurse wanted to steer a prisoner to the person who'd be least likely to get the sudden urge to defend someone unless there was something good in it for her, she wouldn't be a bad first entry on the list.

"Guess they're pretty confident they can handle us," she observed dryly instead. Her tone probably made it pretty clear that she didn't agree with such an obviously stupid opinion. "During the day, anyway. It looks like they're too scared to show their namby-pamby faces at night when we're armed."

Morgan's confident grin dimmed when the man said the word "Kamino." New Zealand she'd heard of, but not that place. "You're not another one of those people from a different planet, are you?" she asked (with another habitual raised eyebrow, although she wasn't completely unwilling to believe that answer anymore). "I work mostly in the Caribbean, but until I get a clear look at the stars I won't be sure how far away we are from there." Just judging by the weather and the plant life here, it could be hundreds or even thousands of miles, a distance Morgan hadn't really contemplated before. The first thing they'd have to do would be to make it to the nearest coast, she decided.

[loyal-soldier.livejournal.com]

622 wasn't exactly impressed by the unvoiced response. It might just have been his training's focus on squad-based everything, but he didn't think it was a good idea for anyone short of Lord Vader himself to be wandering around here alone at night.

Still, disagreement wasn't a reason to withhold information about this place, anyway. "They're still around at night, but quite a bit more dangerous," he said, indicating some thin lines of scars on his unbandaged arm. "They change along with the rest of this place." Which had been illustrated as graphically as was possible that night when the buses had gotten back just a few minutes late from the town.

Oh, great. 622 sighed slightly, steeling himself a little. He hated getting called crazy, but it seemed like he might be on the path towards that again. Still, he wasn't going to lie. "I am. But all that really matters is that I'm a soldier." Someone capable, not some gibbering idiot who couldn't hold a gun straight. "You've certainly got an advantage over me, pretty much everything about this place is confusing on some level for me." Well, that was an exaggeration. Mostly he just had no clue how to handle civilians, and unfortunately, that meant just about everyone. Most of them being from a pre-hyperdrive society just made things that much more boggling.