Night 57: Medical Wing Hall

[purgatio]

[from here]

He glanced idly at the doorways as they passed them, and yet still none read infirmary. "It's only a waste of time," he replied. "If you can't find them. Which would be a bit pathetic in a small building like this."

There was another hallway to the left and Albedo ducked into it, coming up short. Draping his hands behind his head, he walked back to the other, tilting his head. "Especially since I saw Sora about twenty minutes ago. Hopeful with hair at unrealistic angles?" Which would make sense. Sora was sky and didn't Riku speak as shore?

It was annoying, that. It spoke of a beach, and that reminded him too much of a girl.

Comments

[threepwood]

[From here.]

Continuing down the hallway led to more doors- lots and lots more doors. Deciding they could come back to the side halls if they missed the infirmary entirely, Guybrush kept going down the main corridor of the medical wing, casually trying the knobs on the doors along the right-hand wall as he passed them. All were (unsurprisingly) locked; however, there was some activity from the last door. As if the fact that it had been opened wasn't enough, the plaque beside the entrance clearly labeled the room as the infirmary they were looking for.

"Looks like this is the place," he noted. "After you, inspector."

[unmocked-lawr.livejournal.com]

It was unsurprising that the lock on the infirmary door had been broken, though he was surprised that it had been locked in the first place. Hadn't Aguilar been trying to get patients to come here?

No matter. He pushed the door open, holding it open for Threepwood as he stepped in.

[unmocked-lawr.livejournal.com]

[unmocked-lawr.livejournal.com]

Now that they were in a hallway with a clearly defined exit, Javert turned back to Threepwood. There was unquestionably something off about the younger man's appearance, though he didn't know what precisely. Instead, he chose to focus on the obvious.

"That scratching behavior isn't normal for you," he said abruptly, tightening his grip on the flashlight. If consuming that potion had merely brought about a bad rash, he'd consider himself thankful--but something so innocuous sounded too good to be true.

[threepwood]

"It's probably a rash. Or the mange. Or I'm just crazy and imagining the it— I don't know!" Furiously scratching the area behind his ears, Guybrush finally managed to satisfy that nagging itch. He let out a sigh of relief. "There. Better." He hated to say that Javert was right, but the scratching was a little out of place with his usual behavior, even if it probably wasn't anything to worry about.

Well, maybe he should have been concerned about it, but he was more preoccupied with the other unusual sensations running through him: his middle was starting to turn as though he'd taken a few too many punches, his feet were aching, and he was pretty sure that strand of hair in front of his eyes was darker than he remembered it.

"Okay, maybe not all better," Guybrush admitted with a slump of his shoulders. He examined his hand in front of his flashlight. "I still don't feel like I'm dying, though what I am feeling is probably a sign you shouldn't try strange drugs in exchange for better food. At least my nails got longer to combat all this scratching I'm doing. Not sure I appreciate this new hair on the back of my hand, though. It doesn't match with the rest."

[unmocked-lawr.livejournal.com]

Javert wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Some sort of mental aftereffect, he supposed; something to make the drinker second-guess himself. Voices, perhaps, or a tendency to see things that weren't there. That was how Landel worked.

Aguilar's modus operandi was apparently different. Werewolf was the first thing that flitted through Javert's mind, and the fact that the thought made perfect sense to him was a sign of how long he'd been here. Threepwood's hair had grown increasingly darker, and there was more of it than there had been. Why hadn't he noticed at the outset?

"I certainly hope you've learned your lesson," he said dryly, but there was a tenseness to his posture that hadn't been there before. It was probably a bad idea to remain this close. "Unfortunately, I have little experience with my traveling companions growing claws and--" was that?-- "and, apparently, tails. Have you encountered the like over the course of your numerous travels?"

[threepwood]

"Tails?" It was only as Javert mentioned them that Guybrush looked over his shoulder: lo and behold, there was indeed a tail trailing behind him— or half a tail, at least. The tip seemed to be missing, the edge of a raw bone emerging from the end. "Eugh. That's new." He was sure there was witty innuendo to be made about a long, snakey, and bony thing emerging from his pants, but he wasn't really feeling up to making it at that point.

With the concern over his newfound appendage and that feeling of an impending vomiting session, Guybrush could tell things were looking grimmer by the second: even if he couldn't see it himself, the look the inspector was giving him wasn't an encouraging one. "This would be the first time I've experienced anything like this, unless you count the time I was tarred, feathered, and ended up resembling a giant demon chicken beast. I don't think that's really the same—"

Oh, there was the aforementioned retching spell. Guybrush doubled over, his middle turning again, both figuratively and somewhat physically. His eyes were drawn immediately to the hand that held him from the floor, the lengthy claws that replaced his nails hard to miss. "Okay," he said, his voice raspy, "might be dying now. Lesson learned."

[unmocked-lawr.livejournal.com]

"Dying, Threepwood, might be the least of your problems." It helped that the man didn't appear to be given to hysterics, which both surprised and pleased Javert somewhat--or as much as could be considered realistic, given the circumstances. In any case, it made this...entire business a little more straightforward to deal with.

Not that there was nothing highly disturbing about the sight. It occurred to him that perhaps the hallway was not the best place for a transformation of this nature to occur. Best if he could get Threepwood into a small room and incapacitate him before whatever animal mind this was took over. At this point, it was highly unlikely death would be the result of this drug.

"Can you move?" There was another hallway not too far from them, lined with rows of doors. Given the layout of the rest of the Institute, that meant offices or examination rooms--small enough to contain them until this episode had passed. He pointed, ready to haul the pirate along with him if necessary. "Get in one of those. If you are turning into something, it is probably best to limit the damage done to everyone concerned."

[threepwood]

Guybrush muttered something along the lines of acceptance of both Javert's orders and the possible worse-than-death fate that was in store for him, but it came out too garbled for coherence. Nodding to show his compliance, he leaned on the wall and got to his feet, stumbling ahead of the inspector and into the suggested hallway. Whether it was from the sickness or some worse part of a transformation on the horizon, his legs felt weak and unreliable, his feet still aching as they stretched in length.

He hit the first door on the left heavily, leaning into it before trying the knob. Of course, these would be pretty much the only doors in the institute that weren't locked at night.

[To here.]

[threepwood]

[From here.]

Though they'd passed through the hallway a couple of times already that night, the view was quite different, both literally and figuratively, to Guybrush on the third time around. Even without his flashlight— he hadn't thought about it until that very second, and it dawned on him that he must have lost it in the midst of his transformation— he could see his way down the hall, each entryway and plaque becoming clearer in the shadows to his changed eyes. He trotted in front of the inspector, eyeing each door as he wagged his tail instinctively.

"Well, this seeing in the dark thing isss a nice perk," he remarked, looking over his shoulder. "Though you're prrrobably going to have to do mossst of the door-opening from now on. Brrreaking locks open shouldn't be an isssue for me, but I've already dissscovered that complicated actions like turning knobs without a thumb are beyond me. The thingsss you miss when you no longer have them."