Night 58: East Wing, Hall A (Second Floor)

[selfnighted.livejournal.com]

[ from here ]

Heavier topics aside, she had thought this route familiar. That was one of her concerns out of the way--only to leave another in its place. This seemed to be the only place she was allowed to enter. But for what reason? Maya didn't fancy using another night to test more theories. However, at this junction, it seemed quite inevitable. She couldn't be certain of what lay ahead if she did not, yes? How cumbersome.

But never mind that for now. "Is it a closet?" she asked, striding ahead. If she were wrong about the destination, Theepwood would simply lead her correctly, but the last time she had been here, the other doors had been locked.

Comments

[threepwood]

"I hope so," Guybrush replied, looking over his shoulder nervously again. There was something about wandering in the dark without a flashlight of his own that unnerved him- he couldn't check around for himself or see what he was missing, be it a useful item or a ferocious monster ready to devour them. That was often how it went with other protagonists in less family-friendly games, where they missed something vital because they didn't pick up the batteries in an earlier chapter.

Of course, Landel's wasn't exactly a family-friendly setting, so all bets were off.

After passing a couple of doors, he found the one that seemed right- and given the name on the plaque, it did sound like a place they might keep extra batteries. "This looks like the place. And if it's not, there are plenty of other doors to try." Guybrush knelt beside the lock, raising the dead flashlight in his hand, ready to give the door a few sharp hits with it. It opened slowly as the lock gave way. Though dented from the impacts, the flashlight was no deader than before.

[To here.]

[threepwood]

[From here.]

"He said if I could find him some ingredients for his voodoo, he would be willing to help me out with some spells. I have a bit of experience in adventuring, and getting supernatural aid is a crucial step. Unfortunately, I have no real idea what I'm looking for, so I thought I'd just take things that seem useful and will fit into a pillowcase. My pants don't hold much these days."

He stopped once in the hallway, glad to have his own light for seeing. "Which door should we try next?"

[selfnighted.livejournal.com]

Well, it was better than having no plan, Maya thought as she followed him out. The 'getting supernatural aid' seemed a tad...suspect, but what would Maya, who was not a might pirate, know of matters of adventuring?

More importantly... "Do your pants usually hold much?" she asked, amused, as she started across the hall to try the door she'd seen over there.

[selfnighted.livejournal.com]

"Many things can not be explained by such things as instruction manuals," she said, picking up again the thread of conversation. "Including those pants. Could you truly put a cannonball into a pocket?"

Had it been a small cannonball? Maya possessed a tiny violin that could be held in the palm of her hand. But from the way Threepwood had described the objects, they...might or might not be toys. Hmmm.

... There was no doubting anyone's stories now, was there? Maya was already committed to the veracity of fellow patients' stories at the surface level. Threepwood seemed practical enough. And harmless enough despite the hook given the ease with which he had tripped.

Speaking of... Maya had spotted something familiar out of the corner of her eye, but when she adjusted her flashlight beam to intercept, the girl seemed to have vanished. Strange. Maya was accustomed to fellow patients moving in and out of her field of perception, but this one had been inexplicably unsettling. Why had it seemed familiar...? Someone she was acquainted with, perhaps...?

[threepwood]

"Sure could," Guybrush said as he moved down the hallway. "I never really thought much about it until I got here and found I couldn't carry everything in them anymore. You never know what you have until it's gone." That last line was coated with a bit of nostalgia as he lamented not only the loss of his inexplicable talent for carrying a plethora of seemingly unrelated items in a single pair of trousers, but also that of his Plunderbunny.

He let out a sigh. "Oh Elaine," he said to himself quietly, moving his flashlight from door to door. "Will I ever see you again? Or have both your future and my past been ruined forever, dooming us to—"

Mid-aside, his flashlight caught glimpse of a figure down the hallway: long hair emerging from the bandanna that framed her head, cutlass by her side, a body perfectly befitting of the governor of the Tri-Island Area. He'd seen her for only a second, but would have recognized her in even less time.

"Elaine!" The moment his flashlight returned to the spot, she was gone. "Elaine?"

He looked over his shoulder. "Maaaayyyyaaa? Did you... see that, or am I just going crazy? Neither sounds good, but I prefer the one where I'm not insane."

[selfnighted.livejournal.com]

Maya had certainly seen 'that,' but which 'that' had Threepwood seen? Maya knew of no one named Elaine. Even so, it appeared the glimpse Threepwood had had of whoever he'd seen had not lasted much longer than Maya's glimpse of whoever she thought she knew.

Mind trick? Perhaps. "Who did you see?" He'd mentioned Elaine before he saw her, but Maya hadn't been thinking of anyone. But this wasn't the first time something quite strange had occurred in this hallway—

...That had been Senna, hadn't it? But depending on what Elaine looked like, Maya might have simply mistaken one for the other. "What did she look like?" she asked Threepwood.

[threepwood]

"It was my wife, Elaine," Guybrush said as he looked around the hallway again. No sign of her, and Maya didn't give him a clear yes or no on whether she'd seen anything. That wasn't reassuring him on the whole 'am I just going crazy' part. He turned back to Maya.

"She's beautiful, with hair as vibrant as a sunrise and eyes as deep as the ocean on a moonlit night. Her skin is flawless, even though a rough life on the seas can do a number on complexion. Her fingers are delicate, but perfectly fit around the hilt of a sword or—"

Guybrush cut himself off, losing that vaguely dreamy look. "Oh, you meant what I saw. She was more or less the same as I was describing her. I only saw her for a second, but I know it was her."

[selfnighted.livejournal.com]

...Well. That description didn't help Maya any, poetic as it was. "I haven't seen her. When you saw her just now, did she disappear into a wall?"

Had they truly seen two different people who had mysteriously vanished without acknowledging the two who'd seen them? Perhaps; they simply might not have noticed. But the crux of the matter was that both women had been missing, and Threepwood, at least, seemed certain it had been a hallucination.

"Let's go after her," Maya suggested, heading off in the direction she'd seen her old roommate. Then she stopped, and turned back to Threepwood, waiting to see what direction he'd take, if indeed they'd seen their alleged apparitions in the same direction.

[threepwood]

"I didn't see her disappear into a wall, but if you're imply she's a ghost, then you're wrong." Guybrush's tone took a turn for the defensive there. His Plunderbunny wasn't dead. Couldn't be dead. Impossible for her to be dead. She was his wife! Didn't the love interest of the protagonist have protection from this sort of thing? Turning her into a statue was fair game, but being turned into gold wasn't the same as being turned into a corpse.

Though he had to admit, she did disappear so suddenly that she may as well have walked through a wall. With a nod, he headed for the door at the very end of the corridor. Turning the knob did nothing, as did bashing the lock with his flashlight.

"Elaine? Honey? You in there? Or alive? Answer me if you're alive! That part is kind of important."

He looked back toward Maya, only to see another figure over her shoulder: equally recognizable, and gone in an instant, just as before. That one hadn't been Elaine, though- that was Morgan, who he was positive was just fine. What was going on?

[believein0.livejournal.com]

[From here (http://damned.livejournal.com/1171273.html?thread=80364361#t80364361).]

The hallway ahead was almost empty, surprisingly. Not like Zero was thinking too much about that when his nose, throat and eyes were irritating him like this. What in the world caused this reaction to happen? He hadn't smelled anything off about the air.

.... Of course, if he were still a Reploid, he wouldn't be having these effects at all, would he?

Ugh, never mind. Nothing he could do about that. Right now they needed to focus on either solving the mystery behind the strange air(?) irritant or continuing on ahead to their destination. Zero would allow either Ema or Mr. Dent (or both) to handle it, as right now he was clueless on both things.

[scientist-skye.livejournal.com]

Ema fell more toward the back of the group, staying close to Zero without really making any moves to speed up. Even though it was totally fruitless (and likely irritating things further), she kept rubbing her eyes. "If we had access to clean water, we could flush out our eyes. But in my experience, the water's murky and smells bad at night; it's not something we want to use unless we absolutely have to." She remembered Agatha's hesitation to use the dirty water to clean Ema's wounds their first night in the Institute and the fact that it didn't help fend off the impending infection from the rat's bite. Even if clean water had been available, she didn't know the geography of the second floor well enough to find a bathroom quickly enough for their purposes. They were running out of nighttime.

"Biologically, our bodies will flush it out with time. It's just an irritant. We should just keep going and try our best to ignore it." It was easier said than done, but it was the only plan Ema could think of.

[dualistic]

Despite the fact that Ema was young and Zero was new to this place (or so Harvey could guess, what with the twenty questions), it couldn't be said that either of them were complainers. They were all suffering from the same irritant, but no one had asked to rest or started whining about it. Harvey could appreciate that.

More than that, Ema's observations about the dirty water were well-founded. The girl was clearly inexperienced overall, but she had a good head on her shoulders and a love of science, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing in this place.

"Yeah, we'll just have to grin and bear it," he said as he led them down the hall, pausing when he reached the correct door. He'd been here a number of times before, so he didn't have to question himself on whether this was the right one. As it turned out, the lock had already been broken. "Looks like someone beat us to it. Let's hope they didn't take all the pipes."

After letting out a rasping cough to dispel that itchy feeling from his throat, Harvey stepped inside.

[To here.]