Day 58: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

[freewill]

By the time that breakfast had ended, Michael didn't really know what to think.

The good part of him -- the part that went to church every Sunday and prayed that he could find justice for his clients -- wanted to feel for those two boys. They were going through Hell (and not the literal kind that they were thinking of) and he really did hold out hope that they would get their acts together. But the rest of him wanted to forget all about them and focus on himself. They weren't his responsibility anymore, now that the case had been dropped. The very idea of a killer had been a fantasy, after all. It wasn't his job to worry about them.

He certainly wasn't some guardian angel, either. He had never signed up for that and he had no idea why his mind had decided that was the case. Figuring that out was probably his key to getting healthy again, but it seemed like an uphill journey at this point.

Either way, it was good to get away from Matt and Eric. He needed some breathing room, some time to just let his mind clear out all of that crazy angel and demon stuff. Being religious was one thing; this was another, and he knew it wasn't right. He tried not to think about what his parents probably thought of him, but for all he knew they weren't even aware that he was here. In fact, Michael couldn't even remember who had admitted him. It was possible he'd just brought himself here.

A shower sounded like a real blessing, though, and he didn't hesitate to strip out of the uniform and find shelter under the hot spray of one of the shower heads. It was definitely more than just washing off; it felt like a cleansing experience, like he was scrubbing the very idea of Castiel out of his skin. He knew it wasn't that easy, that he could relapse at any point, and yet he tried anyway.

However, once he'd washed his body and shampooed his hair, he realized that he needed to give up the shower space for someone else who might need it. As much as he would have liked to spend the entire shift there, he did the right thing and went back to get dressed once he was finished, heading out into the Sun Room on a soldier's heels.

[To here.]

Comments

[hiddenbadass]

Coming from his breakfast conversation with Niikura, Mike couldn't exactly be called more relaxed--he almost never relaxed--but he was better than before. He knew he could function as himself now. Which wasn't exactly a normal person, but it was who he was (he was a mutant turtle turned human who might be able to turn into a turtle again--what part of him was normal?).

People didn't seem to react too badly to his visible scars, which was still rather surprising. Of course, it wasn't often that he showered, either. Mike was apprehensive about it. Last thing he needed was someone else's pity.

But the shirt had to come off, and no complaining would change that. Instead, he fought with his clothes quietly. He hated clothes, but he hated worse the ideas of people constantly staring at him and his man parts dangling freely between his legs. Even if he hated it, those, and everything else, had to come off, too. Eventually he was standing there naked and very much not looking down.

A bit more fighting with fitting a towel around his waste, and he began to walk over to the showers. Mike did his best to find a relatively quiet corner with only one other guy there. Mike noticed briefly that the other guy was missing a hand, but didn't comment. That wasn't exactly something that he liked to talk about himself, and he was pretty sure the other guy felt the same way.

... although it would be kinda cool to have a hook.

He was working on trying to soap up his chest when a loud sound at his feet made him jump back into a crouch, one knee pressed to the floor. Mike found himself staring at a bottle. Yes, a bottle. Not a mine, not a barrage of bullets, or anything else that was remotely dangerous. And now he was crotch height to half the people in the showers (shell humans just looked so wrong down there).

Great going, Mike. Way to appear normal.

He frowned a bit at the offending shampoo bottle, then picked it up. He almost offered it to the man right then and there, but thought better about doing so on one knee, and quickly stood up.

"Uh, here," Mike offered the bottle awkwardly, looking faintly embarrassed. "You caught me by surprise."

[threepwood]

"I can see that," Guybrush said, looking mildly red-faced himself. He took the bottle with his hook, averting his eyes from looking downward in the most painfully obvious way possible- and given the unfortunate height difference, looking down was about the only thing he could do. He set the shampoo aside, tying the now-soaked towel around his waist tighter, wondering if the shower shifts were as practical as they were painful. True, people did start to stink after a few days, but it wasn't like the pirates he dealt with on a daily basis had the best hygiene practices. Guybrush himself was more of an exception to the rule than most, as he was relatively cleanly anyway and liked to keep his privates private.

Then again, not everyone in the institute was a sea-faring pirate with a disposition as bad as his breath. He'd bet money the many lawyers of Landel's bathed every single day at home to wash away the filth of their own legal arguments. Also, it probably helped one's case if he looked less like a scallywag and more like a law-abiding citizen who had never even heard of piracy.

Managing to bring his eyes down to an acceptable level, Guybrush gave his shampoo-returner a look over. Some things were hard to miss: scars, lack of a hand, cat-like reflexes in the shower in case someone animated the toilet with voodoo- it seemed they had more than a few things in common. Their meeting may have come at an awkward time, but he had a hunch they might be on the same page on at least a few subjects.

"So... bathrooms make you nervous, too?" That wasn't an admittance, or at least he'd keep telling himself that.

[hiddenbadass]

Mike didn't reply immediately, instead gaging the man by giving him a quick once over (while trying to avoid looking at awkward places). He had only seen him before out of the corner of his eye, but now Mike gave him a better look over. Skinny, but still athletic. At first glance, someone might mistaken him as a wuss, but Mike knew better than that.

Wusses didn't survive long here.

The question was interesting enough, and Mike raised an eyebrow at it. "More like the exposure."

He paused for a moment in thought then frowned at the pirate. "Use the crook of your arm. You've still got an elbow. Squeeze the shampoo out that way. Or use the wall like I did. You've got an advantage I don't."

Mike had used the wall, himself. Pinning the shampoo to the wall with his good hand, then switching to his half-arm had been fairly easy. Then he could simply press with his left arm and squirt the shampoo into his waiting hand. When you didn't have both hands, you just had to make do with improvising.

[threepwood]

"Hey, good idea," Guybrush agreed, doing just that: with the shampoo bottle set in the crook of his arm as instructed, he gave it a squeeze, returning it to the floor once he had as much as was needed. Even just wiping it into his hair without lathering left him cleaner than he was on any given day during most of his adventures. "The hook was a little more useful back home— for picking locks, holding searing peppers, or just being piratey— but I guess I should be thankful I've got it at all."

And wasn't that the truth. Morgan could have left him with nothing: instead, she unintentionally gave him an extremity that would ultimately help him on his quest for La Esponja Grande in more ways than he could have ever imagined. Talk about handy.

Even though the stranger was missing more of a limb than himself, it was still a common link between them. Just how many other guys were missing a hand? "I'm Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™. And you are... ?"

[hiddenbadass]

Mike raised an eyebrow. "You're a pirate?" Then, he leaned closer, eyes narrowing dangerously. "Well, I'm a ninja, and where I'm from, we're supposed to be mortal enemies."

Then, he promptly straightened and starting rinsing out his hair, not looking directly at Guybrush (what that his name, seriously?) as he worked to keep his face and voice blank as usual. "But I really don't care about that. Name's Mike, and I'm a ninja. We stick to land and fight from the shadows. Shadow warriors."

He wasn't up to really giving his full name to strangers. At first, he had, but then he decided to be more cautious as the military took over. They were plenty more dangerous than the Doctor had been, and that put Mike on edge enough to hold information back. Even if he was already dead, he didn't want to risk getting himself killed again.

[threepwood]

While the narrow-eyed look wasn't one that was entirely new to Guybrush— on the contrary, actually, as it was usually the first look given to him by any lawyer he introduced himself to— the fact that Mike was a ninja left him surprised. "Wow, really? I've... never actually met a ninja, actually. They're not really common in the Caribbean. The closest I've ever been to one is when I made a counterfeit Dark Ninja Dave figurine." And really, that didn't count. It wasn't a real Dark Ninja Dave, after all.

He turned to his shower head, turning the water on and rinsing the shampoo out of his hair as he avoided getting his hook tangled in it. "Where I'm from, mortal enemies tend to be pirates and other pirates, or even the occasional Mighty Pirate and Ghost-Zombie-Dread Pirate. The shadow warriors part sounded neat, though. Probably works out well for you at night, too."

Guybrush paused, realizing he was talking a lot. He had to admit that it helped keep his mind of the p-p-p— the P word. And no, not that P word. The Monkey Island™ series was known for a classier brand of family-friendly comedy than that.

[hiddenbadass]

... a counterfeit Dark Ninja Dave figure. Part of Mike wanted to know, and part of him wondered what the heck that figure would look like. Dave wasn't a Japanese name, much less an Asian one. Reverse affirmative action?

"Night's my day," Mike confirmed as he finished rinsing out his hair. "... Ghost-Zombie-Dread Pirates? Seriously? You've fought zombies before?"

Mike was experiencing an emotion he hadn't felt in a long time. It took him a long moment to realize what it was. After all, he wasn't expecting, out of all the things he could feel, to be feeling it.

Jealousy.

[threepwood]

"A zombie," Guybrush corrected as he fumbled with a bottle of soap. "He was also my nemesis, so I didn't think about the whole him-being-a-zombie too much... until I tore his arm off with a voodoo doll I'd made. That was more horrific than I thought it'd be."

As fantastic as his stories sometimes were, Guybrush was all-too aware of just how they sounded at times to the more average denizens of Landel's: too bizarre to be true. Not everyone had faced the perils commonly seen in the adventure genre, and while a good yarn every now and then added spice to life, it didn't help his credibility in a place where he apparently needed a certain degree of it.

So far, it looked like Mike was meeting him at least halfway on the subject. That was encouraging. "But you're a ninja, so you've probably had some incredible fights yourself that you could tell me about. Either that, or you're just really unlucky and should probably stay away from sharp objects."

[hiddenbadass]

Mike smirked a bit at the tearing the arm off part. He bet that the guy didn't like that much. Sounded like Guybrush picked out a decent nemesis, at least. He even called the guy his nemesis. Mike was starting to take a liking to him.

Luckily, the jealousy only lasted a moment as he remembered... he had gone through something similar. Damn, that was forever and a day ago. Mike had completely forgotten about it.

They didn't sound all that bizarre to Mike. First off, he was a mutant ninja turtle. Second off, his mortal enemy had been a pink brain-shaped alien with tentacles that moved around in an exosuit bigger than a van. Third off... he'd been around the universe a bit before everything went to hell, and things were much more believable then.

He decided not to comment on the whole "sharp objects" bit, because that likely wouldn't end well. It wasn't a snipe on his missing part of an arm--not this guy. If it wasn't another guy missing a part of an arm, though, Mike might consider getting rather ticked off.

"I'm good with sharp objects," Mike stated, then grabbed a brush and pinned the side of it with his half-arm so he could lather it up with soap. "... and now that I've thought of it, I've fought zombies, too. Was a bit gross."

[threepwood]

"Really?" Guybrush asked, a hint of incredulousness in his voice. Awkward setting for a conversation or not, he was starting to like this Mike guy- probably because he was one of the (very) few people he'd met at Landel's who not only seemed to believe his tales, but had supposedly battled some similar enemies himself. Zombies weren't terribly common in the Caribbean— a relief, as most of his experience with them hadn't been positive— it wasn't as though something as powerful as voodoo couldn't bring back the dead.

Guybrush shuddered at the thought of how he was going to deal with his own death once he got back home. At least he wasn't likely to end up as a zombie... probably.

"They do tend to be a bit gross, with the whole 'being both dead and undead' deal." He turned the tap off, wringing some of the excess water from his long hair. "It only got worse once his arm was ripped off- something I actually didn't mean to do, for a change. Well, I kinda did mean to tear the doll's arm off, but I didn't think it'd actually translate onto the original. But to be fair, it was in self defense. He was torturing me with a doll of his own. It was supposed to transport me to a dimension of infinite pain, but it just kept sending me a few rooms away. It was an annoying inconvenience and he had to be stopped."

[hiddenbadass]

Nemesises (what was the plural of nemesis? nemesises? nemesi?) sometimes left a lot to be desired. Messing up transporting the hero to a dimension of infinite pain numerous times was hilarious, but inexcusable. Mike raised an eyebrow at the tale.

The Shredder never would have made that mistake. He would have gotten it right the first time. Although, transporting people to other dimensions wasn't really his way of doing things. He preferred proof that his enemies were dead. He had always insisted that he watch the executions of captured Resistance leaders or those that had greatly failed him. The grunts he could care less about.

At least someone had the luck of a semi-incompetent arch nemesis. Or.. perhaps...

"It sounds like he was having a very bad day," Mike remarked. "Or does he usually have issues like that?"

[threepwood]

"Both," Guybrush answered reflexively. "I think any day he has to deal with me automatically constitutes as a bad one." That was because most days where they met resulted in the dread pirate's defeat, but there were times where they managed to have almost an entire conversation without one of them offing the other in a dramatic and daring duel. "His convoluted schemes seem to work okay until I arrive.

"Though I have to admit that he did end up with the upper hand that time," he continued, running his hook through his hair (finally found that tangle- he stifled a yelp as he pulled it out). "Soon after the whole arm-ripping incident, he left me stranded in a place called the Carnival of the Damned, where he'd enchanted me into thinking I was a little kid. Took me over three months to get out of that place, during which time he'd gone back to his usual shenanigans of trying to get my soon-to-be fiancé to be his undead bride. That's a plan that will never go well for him."

Guybrush wasn't sure that Elaine-of-the-Past would still marry him after all that had transpired at Landel's, but he could rest easy with one certainty: she wasn't about to head off into unholy matrimony with LeChuck.

[hiddenbadass]

Mike actually snorted a the first comment; yeah, any day Shredder had to deal with them had been a bad one, too. Guybrush was definitely a guy he could get used to liking. Seemed to have a level head despite all that had happened to him, and could manage to say all that stuff with a straight face. With a name like he had, Mike supposed it just came with the territory.

Stealing the fiancée wasn't original, but the way he lefted him stranded was. For what he lacked in original ulterior motives and the ability to pull off fiendish plots, at least Guybrush's arch-nemesis had some original ideas on how to be, well, evil.

Mike then remembered he was supposed to be taking a shower. He put the soap aside, then grabbed the brush and began to scrub his back. It wasn't like him to get distracted like that, but it wasn't often that Mike met someone with experiences that were entirely unique, either.

"At least he makes sure you aren't bored," Mike commented. "Mine is a broken record."