Day 61: Arts and Crafts Room (Third Shift)

[oyaji]

Now that he had finally been allowed back inside, the warmth from the Sun Room hit him like a heated slap in the face. With ruddy cheeks and the sticky feeling of perspiration from his little walk/job with Niikura made him feel like a sun-burned mess. His nurse was kind enough to take his jacket from him before he went to the restroom to splash a little water on his face.

It also gave him a moment to himself, completely alone and silent so he could think. The water in the sink continued to run, but the older man was more occupied with the mirrors. He stared at his wet reflection as he took a few slow breaths to help contain himself. The longer he stayed here, the more surreal it all felt. Slowly, he began to feel less and less attached to this reality because he believed it was only a matter of minutes, seconds before he woke up.

He couldn't let the sensation overwhelm him. In fact, he picked a hand up from the sink and pinched himself to prove his point. Bizarre or not, this was his situation and he needed to figure out soon just who put him in it. The fact that none of the nurses would even humor his talk of his Hero alter ego said many things to him. Suddenly no one had even heard of him and it was an all too familiar problem that made his blood run cold. In spite of it all, he needed to be on his toes. This was no time to fall apart, he reminded himself. With one last deep breath, Kotetsu put his clueless smile back in place and stepped out of the bathroom with his nurse in toe who gave him a quick tour of the all the places he could go if he chose to.

He passed one room and took three steps back to get a better look. "Ah, excuse me, ma'am! What's this one?"

"Oh, that's arts and crafts," she said flippantly, not expecting a grown ass man would be interested in playing with clay. Well, she was clearly mistaken now that he saw the extent of the materials. They had a lot in here! And he had the perfect idea. If the staff here refused to regard him as Wild Tiger, he was just going to have to force it on them.

Snickering like a fool, Kotetsu grabbed several sheets of black construction paper, glitter, glue, and a pair of safety scissors before sitting down at a vacant table. Actually, all the tables were empty. He was the only one in here and that was probably for the best since he was making himself a makeshift domino mask of ultimate secretiveness.

He laid all the pieces of construction paper on top of each other before he began cutting out something that looked like an elongated figure eight with little barbed fins at the bottom. It wasn't going very well. Kotetsu was confident he could probably cut a tree down with a stick of butter faster than these scissors would cut through the paper.

He was going to be here for awhile.

[Kaede Kairi, come to papa!]

Comments

[threepwood]

Guybrush slid into a chair, opening his lunch sack to inspect the goods inside: a cookie, a sandwich- things he would have kept normally, but given that the nurses watched him and his fingers every time he entered the room, he was led to believe he wouldn't have been able to sneak either item back to his room if he tried. He looked over his shoulder casually, pretending to stretch- indeed, the nurse was watching him, standing by the door to make sure he didn't leave with any of the implements littering the tables.

He turned back with a sigh, resigning himself to being as well-behaved as humanly possible and hoping they didn't search his pockets on the way out. One idea did cross his mind: perhaps he couldn't take the plastic safety scissors or tubes of glitter, but he could ask if he'd be allowed to take something else, like something he'd made. They'd probably tell him it was just a way to fuel his delusions, but he figured it couldn't hurt to work off some stress with some old-fashioned letter-writing. It reminded him of his days out at sea, when he was separated from his beloved Elaine for months at a time. He could have written entire novels dedicated to her at that time.

Grabbing a sheet of paper and a few crayons, he got to work.

My dearest Elaine,

A pause, after which he couldn't think of what to write. What did one write in a hypothetical letter to the woman he loved when she'd been at the institute before? Did she still have her mind? Was she Elaine from the past, or would she know of the future? How much was safe revealing to her without sounding crazy? 'Honey, I saw an inspector get mauled to death by an abomination worse than any conjured by voodoo' generally wasn't a good start for such a thing.

He reached into the bag and pulled out the cookie, starting on it first.

[Michelangelo]

[hiddenbadass]

Man was Mike ever glad that Landel's was getting normal food again. He was going to get spoiled at this rate. Sure, it wasn't the best food he ever had, but it beat rations, MREs, and emergency meals. Fresh fruit, too. He could get used to this.

Of course, that didn't stop him from trying to munch on his cookie as he walked, and he had just gone to shove the bag under his half-arm when his nurse gave him a disapproving frown.

"Michael, you could choke if you walk and eat at the same time."

His response was to roll his eyes, but he put the cookie back in. No use arguing with her. The cookie would still be there when he got to wherever he picked.

Surprisingly, the arts and crafts room drew him. He hadn't really drawn anything beyond maps and descriptive drawings of armaments in a long time, but his conversation during the shift previous had cheered him up. Rainbow was a pretty cool kid. Maybe... he could try something.

Which felt weird. He hadn't really... It had been forever. But as he got in, he saw the clay and changed his mind.

Clay would be an interesting challenge. He hadn't tried using it with just one arm before, and had only gotten his hand on it once or twice back home. Mike wasn't sure he could make anything of worth, but at least it'd be something to try that would help further hone his skills.

So, he grabbed himself some wax paper and a big hunk of clay, bringing it towards the tables. He'd have to eat first before he could play with it. Mike could handle that, really. Mike's lunch was safely tucked under his half-arm again.

It was a bit of a surprise to see Guybrush there as well. Well, at least he knew where to sit now. Mike walked over to the guy and dropped himself into the seat and his clay onto the table in the same motion. He then put his lunch bag down carefully.

"Yo, Guybrush," Mike nodded at him, leaning over a bit to not-quite-read the paper. "Writin' a letter?"

[threepwood]

"I am," Guybrush said with a wave of his hook in greeting, bringing the crayon back to his letter. Beyond the initial greeting, he'd started decorating the bottom of the page with an illustration of a boat and an island with a giant monkey head on it.

"I thought I might write a letter to my lovely wife, Elaine," he explained, holding up the page. "My artistic skills leave something to be desired, but I'm sure the emotional content will shine through my talentless drawings."

He took another bite of his cookie, eyeing the chunk of clay Mike had brought with him.

[hiddenbadass]

Mike stared at Guybrush for a good ten seconds as the word 'wife' ran through his head. Wait, Guybrush was married? Really? Seriously? Not that the guy wasn't nice enough to get a girl, but... Mike couldn't of guessed. Back home, well, he hadn't really interacted with any married couples other than those in the Resistance. That was completely different, though. Guybrush probably wasn't living in a post-apocalyptic world. He was a pirate. With wooden ships and cannons and parrots. Eye-patches and hooks for hands, too.

"... Huh," Mike finally made a sound, then looked away from Guybrush to dig into his bag and pull out the cookie first. "Never took you for a married man."

[threepwood]

"That's understandable," Guybrush said with a casual smile, setting the page before him again and finding another crayon. "The life of a pirate is one often full of whirlwind adventure, of the boundless sea and all the treasures that await. Most wouldn't think a scallywag who spends his time on the ocean would settle down with the beautiful governor of the Tri-Island area, but that's how it goes."

The crayon halted its progress across the paper as he sighed, his smile fading. "Or that's how it will be, I guess would be more accurate. She was here at the institute for a while, but she was from the past, before we got married. There's nothing quite as awkward as having a conversation with the woman you've been married to for seven years about all that time you've spent together that she hasn't experienced yet. I just hope she didn't change her mind."

[hiddenbadass]

Aw crap. Guybrush was missing his wife now. Mike wasn't the type to shy away from comforting another, but he was still very bad at it. He quickly chewed and swallowed his last bite of cookie (where had it gone?) so that he could speak.

"Well, if you're still married, you're still married," Mike replied. "You wouldn't remember getting married if you didn't get married, so she obviously still marries you."

One of these days he'd get used to applying Science Fiction to his everyday life. He decided to skip the whole 'alternate timelines' explanation. That might be a little much for Guybrush.