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"s**t...I dunno if I can hold all ten...I mean, I can barely grip these two. Don't think they're strong enough yet. Like...you know that feeling you get when you sleep on your hand and when you wake up, you've got almost no strength in it? It feels kind of like that..." he says while staring down his his feet. He looks up after a moment and see the smile...that smile...Tommy's seen a smile like that before. During his first year at the Academy, there were always those sadistic upperclassmen who enjoyed beating the freshmen. They would get in the pushup position after you could barely do any more and just grin at you shouting negative encouragements. You could tell they believed all the crap the Academy fed them. That they were truly shaping the freshmen into a good little soldier through the hazing. And worst of all, they enjoyed every second of it.

Tommy seems disconcerted for a moment and he shakes his head, trying to clear the image of his first year at the Academy out. Through his loss of focus though, the two cards slip from the grip of his left foot.

Tommy squints a bit at Richard and is reminded at how much he misses his glasses. Contacts were great, but when your fingers were the size of your arms...well, that made putting them in rather difficult. He's just thankful that his eyesight isn't too bad. He looks up from his thought process and down at the cards. "Yeah...alright..." he says a bit uneasily. There's something creeping in the back of his mind that all of this was so wrong. That this couldn't be hapening...his feet were not meant for this. He shakes his head trying to clear it and had the sudden urge to talk to someone about something...anything to get his mind off the task at hand. As he reaches his left foot out to make a grab at the cards, he asks Richard, "So...I met this guy in the chow hall just now. Blond hair, really short...looked to be about...ninteen or something. You know him?"

It seemed as if taking his mind of the task has helped him out somewhat. While looking at Richard, almost absent mindedly he has picked up all ten cards.

"I dunno...never got his name. Gallen? Huh...all I know is that he feinted when he saw me."

"Heh, tell me about it. The guy damn near shat himself...kepts on talking about being turned into a slug or something," he says with a shrug. Tommy glances down at his right foot and tries to do a practice motion of fanning imaginary cards. He frowns somewhat, the move seems jerky with not much control at all. After a few tries though it smooths somewhat. He then tries it with the left foot and real cards. Again, the move seems jerky and he almost looses the entire set of cards. His right foot immediately goes to stabalize them though and he's put back on track. He looks down in concentration and tries again. A little bit of success this time around. A group of cards go to one side while the others stay where they are. He gives a sigh of frustration, "Jesus...what'mI doing?"

Tommy looks up from what he's doing as Richard asks the question, "I...I've never seen one myself. However, more than a few people've mentioned someguy who's turning into an octopus...poor b*****d."

The ex-cadet shakes his head and goes about squaring the cards with both feet before trying to fan them out again...a little better this time.

Tommy looks from Richard to his cards and then back again. "Alright...let's get started with a...seven of diamonds." He reaches out with his right hand and plucks a card from his feet by turning the hand sideways (bumping into the table somewhat with his long fingers) and using his thumb. It takes some maneuvering to not hit anything else, but finally he lays the seven of diamonds down on the table.

Tommy studies his hand for a moment. He smirks and sighs, goddamn I'm unlucky, he thinks to himself as he goes about the arduous process of picking a card out of his feet with a wing and tossing it on the table. It's a four of hearts.

"Nah, can't say that I have...besides Gallen of course. Any of them interesting?"

Tommy chuckles to himself as Richard swipes the cards. His humor is genuine though, and it shows. He'd never really cared all that much about winning or losing. He was just there for a good time. Strange though, since he comes from an institution where well over seventy percent are all type "A" personalities. He goes through the motions again, tossing out a Jack of hearts. Let's see if I can't get him to throw me something to work with. Of course, just because he doesn't care if he loses, doesn't mean he won't try.

"Well s**t, I'm barely over twenty myself. I turned twenty-one in June...parents brought me to Las Vegas," he says with a fond grin, almost like he's forgotten he'll never see his parents again. This can't be further from the truth though...it's just amazing how many little lockboxes filled with poison one can drop down the well of their mind.

"But not everyone here's young...there was this one guy...Seth I think his name was...an Australian guy. He's in his thirties, 'n this other guy named Sid who's gotta be close to sixty."