Omega might very well die of boredom. It had been a couple weeks since the last mission, AKA the one that she hadn't been allowed to go on. Since she had beaten Hunter at a game, she was supposed to be allowed to go on them again, but they hadn't gone on any missions. They hadn't done much of anything. Omega knew that Hunter was in contact with people but she still was bored. Cid had to have a mission for them. Or something for them to do.
But Cid just seemed determined to have Omega win more games for her so she could make her more money, while Hunter wouldn't allow that.
"It's too risky," Hunter said. "She needs to keep a low profile. All of us should." But especially Omega. That was what he was saying.
And Omega knew that it was true, but she was so bored. She didn't want to be kidnapped and taken back to Kamino. She didn't want the bounty hunters to catch her, especially not Bane, but she also didn't know if she would be able to stay here and do nothing.
She would lose her mind.
Sometimes they wouldn't even let her leave Cid's. A couple times she worried that she would be told that she had to go somewhere else when strangers came here. Usually the regulars were the ones who showed up and Hunter was fine with her being around them.
Or maybe not fine with it, but he wouldn't make her leave.
But she was worried even that would change.
"Are we going to do another mission soon?" Omega asked, dragging out the last word.
"I don't know," Hunter said. "We will when the time is right."
When the time is right. When was that going to be? She tried to ask, but Hunter wouldn't give her any real answers. This just wasn't fair. She wanted to do something. To have some fun.
So she came up with an idea. Maybe it wasn't a good one, but she needed to get out for a short time. She would come back then. Even though they were somewhere some called "seedy" Omega loved it. There was a lot to do and she thought there was a lot to see even though the others sometimes said the opposite. Things weren't the same for them. They hadn't been on Kamino for their whole life. They had been able to leave, even if it had been to fight in a war.
Omega wanted to see everything.
And today she was going to try and see more of the town. Not just where she and Wrecker got the Mantell Mix and near Cid's. She heard there was a park and a waterfall nearby. A waterfall sounded so beautiful. Kamino was basically only water, but she had never seen something like that.
But now she was going to get the chance to do it.
She waited in the ship until she was pretty sure the others were asleep. Her stomach twisted as she pulled on a jacket. They wouldn't like that she was doing this. Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true. Wrecker wouldn't have minded. Maybe she should have asked him if he wanted to come with her. He would have been willing to, but at the same time there was a better chance that Hunter, Echo, and Tech would find out then and then she would have to stay.
Maybe Hunter would even change his mind about letting her go on missions.
Omega didn't want that. She would lose her mind.
So she was going to go by herself.
Sneaking through the ship caused her heart to race. It reminded her of when she had been Kamino and would sneak out of the medical center so she could see more. Nala Se had never wanted her to do that.
Now Omega wondered what Nala Se's plan for her had been. Omega had cared about her so much. She had taken care of her. It wasn't the same as how the Bad Batch did, but still. She wanted to think that Nala Se would have cared about her. That she didn't want something horrible to happen to her.
But maybe she had been like the other Kaminoans and didn't care what happened to her. Maybe she thought that Omega wasn't a real person and just another experiment. Just because she was a clone didn't mean that she wasn't real. She had feelings like everyone. Everything was so unfair.
And she didn't want to believe that Nala Se thought of her that way. Omega had always cared about her.
Thinking about Kamino and Nala Se almost made Omega stop. It almost convinced her that she should be good and she should stay in her room. She could play on her datapad. Maybe she could even wake Wrecker up and he could play a game with her. Perhaps she could wake him up and convince him to go on an adventure with her.
But no. She shouldn't be afraid. Everything was going to be okay. Shand and Bane weren't here. She was safe. And she wasn't going to go far away. She would have her com device with her too and she would bring her bow and another weapon. Therefore, if something happened, she would get rescued.
Still when she stepped out of the ship, her heart raced. But it wasn't only in a bad way. When she looked up at the stars, they were so beautiful. It was amazing how the stars looked different depending on what planet you were on. Omega could hear people chattering but they weren't too close so she couldn't make out what the words themselves were.
She smiled and hugged herself before heading in the direction that she had been told the waterfall and the park were. Omega had been told that parks had swings and that swings were fun. She had never been on one before, even though she had seen them once in a book. Would she even be able to swing or would she be like a little kid? It wasn't fair how there was so much that she didn't know how to do that other people would have.
Would she ever be able to catch up to others? She knew that she knew how to do some things they didn't, but she still wanted to be able to do normal kid things. And she wanted to find out how to do it with Clone Force 99. Wrecker hadn't done a lot of either. He was like the big brother that Omega had never knew that she wanted to have.
But now she was so grateful. He was amazing. All of Clone Force 99 was, even if they weren't all letting her have the fun and go on the missions that she should get to. She was one of them, even if she had been taken that one time.
She wanted to prove to them that she wasn't a problem. That she was helping them. She had helped them by winning the credits to pay off their debt. But she wanted to do more than just that.
Omega walked in silence. Every once in awhile, she would hear something behind her. Sometimes she thought that it sounded like footsteps and she would spin around. Her heart would race. She didn't know if she was worried that it would be her friends or if it would be… someone else.
She would spin around, expecting to see something terrible. Like Bane… She could still see his face sometimes when she closed her eyes. She could still hear his voice. She could still imagine what the Kaminoans would do to her. She would be a test subject like the one who had been in the tube. They would cut her open. She would never get to leave. They wouldn't care about her.
To them she was just a clone and not a real person.
After the third time of spinning around and expecting to see something terrible, she wondered if she should go back. Maybe this was a mistake. But if she couldn't even do this then how was she going to go on another mission soon? She could only imagine what the others would say if they saw her now.
She had to be brave.
And soon she got to the playground. She grinned as soon as she saw it. Instantly she knew what the swings were and she ran over to it. She could do this. She would figure it out. She wouldn't be like a small child who didn't know how to use them. She was a preteen after all. That made her basically an adult. And Omega imagined that she was more mature than most people her age since they hadn't gone through the kind of things that she had.
She would swing the proper way.
But when she tried, it was as if she couldn't get the timing right. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Omega sighed, but she wasn't going to give up.
And that was when she heard a branch snap underneath someone's foot. She cringed. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe again she was imagining things that she shouldn't be.
"Are you all right?" a voice asked, and she knew that wasn't the case. Someone was actually here.
Omega froze and stopped swinging. She jumped off the swing perfectly and spun around. There was a woman there with dark blond hair and big eyes. She was short. Not even much taller than Omega which was surprising. It threw her off because recently she hadn't seen too many humans here. The woman still didn't look like she was threatening, but that didn't mean anything. Yes, Omega had known right away that Bane was, but it hadn't been that way with Fennec Shand. Omega had trusted her! She had thought that she wanted to help her. She didn't think that she would want to capture her. She thought that she was a good person and could even be a friend.
That just showed how wrong Omega could be. Maybe Omega was too trusting.
But she wasn't going to make that mistake now.
"Where are your parents?" the woman asked, studying her as if she was trying to solve a puzzle.
It had been a mistake to come here. She should have known that she would run into someone. She should have been smart. She was so good at strategy games and she was good with her bow now too.
But she still made stupid choices.
"Where are your parents, little girl?" the woman asked again. She took a couple steps toward Omega. Omega stumbled backward. She was tempted to bring out her bow. But what if the woman wasn't a threat? She would draw more attention to herself.
And she shouldn't be pointing weapons at innocent people.
That was assuming the woman was innocent.
"They're… They're…"
And that was when someone put their hand on her shoulder. Omega jumped and spun backward. She grabbed the blaster. This had to be Bane or Shand. They would take her away and then she would die. No… That wasn't true. It would be much worse than death. Omega heard that some things could be worse than death.
Being an experiment and not being treated like she was a person would be worse.
"It's okay," Hunter said.
It was just him and Wrecker. Wrecker was the one who had touched her shoulder. Wrecker grinned at her as if he didn't know that anything was wrong. She smiled back, even though it was hard to. She though that they could be someone else. She wasn't even worried about being caught by Hunter for that reason.
Hunter looked at the woman. "I'm her father."
That… it sounded… different. He had never said anything like that in regards to that. Sometimes she felt like she was just another soldier. She wanted to be a soldier just like them. The people who she looked up to more than anyone else.
And she liked how it sounded despite that Omega had always known that she wouldn't have parents. Clones didn't. And even though she had loved Nala Se, she had known that she didn't want to be her mother. But there had been times when she wished that she could have been.
But now she didn't know if she even cared about her.
The woman smiled for a moment but then tilted her head to the side as if she was thinking. "That's good that you're here, but why were you letting your daughter go out after dark?" she asked, clearly judging Hunter's parenting, even though he wasn't really her father.
"Omega can handle anyone," Wrecker said as he came over and put Omega on his shoulders. She grinned. She liked to believe that she could handle anything also.
But after Bane, she knew that it wasn't true. But maybe it could be one day and if she didn't then she wouldn't improve.
"Yeah," Omega still said. She grinned at Wrecker. He was clearly not mad at her by the way that he was smiling.
Hunter wasn't smiling.
"We were nearby," Hunter said. "And we knew that she was here the whole time." He hadn't even reacted to saying that he was her father. Maybe that was good. He could have acted like it was a horrible thing, but he hadn't done that.
"Okay…" the woman said with a sigh. "I was just making sure. This isn't a good place for children to just be running around on their own."
"Omega isn't—" Wrecker tried to say, but he didn't get the chance to finish his thought.
"Yeah, and that is why we were nearby," Hunter said.
The woman studied him, but then sighed and left, leaving Omega with Wrecker and Hunter.
"Kid, you should have invited me to come here with you," Wrecker said as he put her on the ground and then went to one of the swings. "This looks fun."
"I'm sorry, Wrecker." She had wanted to invite him, but she wasn't going to say that right now. "But we can swing now and—"
"Omega…" Hunter said, looking at her.
Wrecker had already gone over to one of the swings and was doing his best to swing, which was better than she had done, but it looked unnatural with him on it since he was so much bigger than the swing was.
"You shouldn't have gone out without our permission," Hunter said, kneeling to her level. She half expected that he would yell at her like he had that one time. That… she had been so sad when he had done that. She had known that she had made a mistake then.
And she knew that she had made a mistake now as well.
"I'm sorry," Omega said, clutching her hands together. She looked at the ground. "I just… I didn't want to be locked up. It… it reminded me…"
It had reminded her of when she had been on Kamino and she hadn't been allowed to do much of anything. The only time she could do anything was when she had snuck out.
"You're not going to be locked up again," Hunter said.
"Like I was when I was on Kamino or when Bane…" Bane had locked her up too.
"Neither. You're not going to be locked up at all. You're not going to go back to Kamino and Bane and Shand or any other bounty hunter isn't going to get you. I promised you that and I intend to keep it."
"I'm… I'm really sorry," Omega said. "Sorry, Hunter."
"It's… You can't do something like this again, Omega," Hunter said. "What if something had happened to you? We might not even know about it right away and then…"
"I promise I won't do it again," Omega said. "I just…"
"I know you didn't want to be locked up, but that's not going to happen. I keep my promises."
Omega forced herself to nod and look into his eyes which were so similar to hers and yet at the same time different. Even though they were all clones, they weren't the same. They all had different goals, dreams, personalities and thoughts. Even their appearances weren't that alike.
Especially Omega's since she was a girl.
"Okay, I'm sorry," Omega said. "I really am."
"Just… just don't do something like this again," Hunter said with a sigh.
"Am I not allowed to go on missions again?" Omega asked as she kept looking at the ground. He didn't know how crazy she would go if that was the case. She couldn't stand it. "I won't do something like this again, Hunter. I promise. I just… I don't want to be stuck somewhere again."
"Omega… you can go on the missions, but you have to listen to us," Hunter said.
"So I'm not in trouble."
"No," Hunter said. "But promise me you won't do this again."
"I promise." Omega hoped that he would believe her.
He smiled and touched her shoulder. "Okay, good, so why did you sneak out? Anything you want to see?"
"Because we should see it," Wrecker said. He was flying through the air on the swing. "We should see everything."
Omega couldn't help but grin. She loved being in the Bad Batch and that would never change.