Arrek and I - I'd decided the kid was okay enough to call by his first name - walked into the mess hall a little after his unexpected awakening. He'd gotten dressed quickly enough to suit me, and despite the blue hair he didn't look too out of place in a uniform. He just might work out. Not that it was my choice. Sci's the boss and he makes the decisions, but I felt better about Arrek than I had after last night's incident at the bar.
"Hungry?" I asked.
Arrek grinned. "Always."
I led him to the serving line where Becki was busy cooking the traditional pre-mission pancakes, and Rich was passing out sausage and little bottles of syrup. He looked up as we approached.
"Hey, Padawan Bitch!" he called out with a devilish gleam in his eye. "Is this one of the new guys?"
"Rich?" I began as I reached for the plate of pancakes Becki offered.
"Yeah?"
I reached out with the Force and picked up a spatula from the counter behind Rich, and smacked him in the back of the head with it. "Go cook something."
With a satisfied smile I turned and headed for an empty table. Behind my back Rich retaliated by flipping me off. "I saw that!" I called over my shoulder.
Arrek and I settled at a table, ignoring whatever dirty looks or gestures Rich might have been giving me. That was when I noticed that Arrek was giving me a rather strange look of his own. "How did you do that?" he asked.
I regarded him with mild surprise. "You mean, after everything you've seen here in the last eighteen hours or so you haven't figured it out?"
"Well I certainly know what it looked like," he said. "But I just didn't think it was real."
"The Force is just as real as those X-wings downstairs, Arrek."
He took a long moment of pancake chewing to take that in. He swallowed and asked, "And you're a Jedi?"
"On my way there, anyway, yes. So is Vickie."
Arrek glanced briefly across the room at Rich, a light dawning in his eyes. "And you're her Padawan?"
"No, no, no," I chuckled. "Technically we're both still apprentices. Vickie's only known about her Force talent a couple of weeks longer than I have. But she had the advantage of some training with Corran Horn while he was still here, so she did a lot of my early training. I still kind of tend to defer to her in matters of the Force though."
"Why is that?" he asked as he shoved a piece of sausage into his mouth.
"Well . . . I haven't been keeping up my training as well as I should. I'm really good at telekinesis and the telepathic powers, but those are the simple ones. I haven't mastered anything much more complicated."
"Reading minds is simple?" Arrek asked in disbelief. "Are you kidding?"
"Yeah, I guess that does sound kind of strange," I said, chuckling ruefully. "That's how I knew Rich was flipping me off, actually. I didn't really see him do it, I felt the intent in his mind."
The look on his face clearly said he wasn't convinced. "If you're telepathic, what am I thinking right now?"
I shook my head. "It's not quite like that. You can't read a person's every thought through the Force. It's more about impressions and such. But I can see you still don't believe me, so I'll tell you what I can." I closed my eyes and focused on reaching out to Arrek's mind. "There's a lot of surface crap. About those girls last night . . . excitement about being part of the group. . .but under it all you're thinking awfully hard about something. It's . . ." And then I had it, and my eyes flew open. "ATLANTA!" I cried. "That's where I've seen you before!"
Arrek cringed and started to deny it before he seemed to realize his face had given it away. He sighed deeply. "Okay, how much trouble are we in?"
"Trouble?" I asked in confusion. "Why would you be in trouble?"
"Because, in Atlanta, you were - I mean, we caused so much trouble."
"You? I remember you being there now, but when did you cause trouble?"
His eyes still held a look of fear and distrust. "In that presentation. . . ." He trailed off, letting me remember it on my own.
I frowned in puzzlement for a second before I realized what he was talking about. "Oh, that!?" I couldn't help laughing out loud. "Arrek, that had nothing in the world to do with you!"
"It didn't?" he asked.
"No! You remember all the stormtroopers standing against the wall and in the back of the room?
"Yeah?"
"They weren't all obsessively geeky fans. Some of them were the real thing. Sylvana's ridiculous overacting and your loud obnoxiousness just gave us the distraction we needed to do something about it."
"Er . . . okay." he said, still sounding doubtful.
At that moment several newcomers entered the mess hall, most of them female. The first two were Sylvana and Crispy, with Bethany coming in separately about the same time. Behind them were several beautiful girls in matching dresses.
"Who are they?" Arrek asked me, clearly not meaning his sister and Bethany.
"Some of Llessur's handmaidens. Er, excuse me, ladies-in-waiting. I'm surprised to see them down here, actually. The one in front is Etidorhpa, and the other two are Sisi and Rathsi."
"Which one is which?" he asked.
"Doesn't matter. They're interchangeable."
"They're gorgeous," Arrek commented a little breathlessly.
"May be, but you might as well tattoo 'property of Mike' on their rear ends."
"Do you think they'd let me?" he asked hopefully.
Whatever reply I might have made was forgotten when I looked up again to see Lenka come into the room. She saw me right away and seemed about to head in my direction, but then she turned to join the rest of Llessur's ladies. I just sighed and shook my head.
"Tell you what. Why don't you go see what the girls are up to," I said, indicating the table where Sylvana and Bethany were just setting down. "I've got to go grab my datapad and go over some stuff with the Becki and Vickie before we leave."
I didn't really wait for an answer before I stood up and headed out of the room. On the way out I heard Eti's voice, which I suddenly found incredibly prissy and annoying, saying something about how the food quality in the palace went down when "all those foreigners" showed up. The last thing I heard as I walked out the door was Lenka rather haughtily telling Eti that she should get her nose out of the air and try something new once in a while.