Day 37: Men's Showers

[pleading-ngri.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't really call this a locker room. More like a bathroom with lockers. The place was uncomfortably crowded, with almost every adult male patient being hustled into the showers at once, but Phoenix wasn't as annoyed by the claustrophobic, milling throng of bodies as he might have otherwise been. Every extra person was one more person who might end up standing between himself and Edgeworth.

He knew that the prosecutor would have a fit if he found out about this. He'd known since he'd tacked that first response up on the bulletin board. And in a way, he couldn't blame him. Phoenix knew that he jumped into things all-or-nothing more often than most people. At the same time, he had some kind of reality testing. He wasn't going to learn the basics of how to defend himself and suddenly decide that he was Rambo.

He found an unoccupied locker in the southwest corner and glanced around, trying to gauge how long he could possibly stall in a locker room, looking as if he was expecting something, before people started looking at him strangely. It would have been easier if he'd known something of the description of the man he was supposed to be meeting. As it was, all he had was handwriting and a military rank, neither of which guaranteed any particular appearance.

It's not as if there was a better way to plan this, though. "Yeah, meet me by the lockers. I'll be wearing gray and a smiley face, just like about a hundred other guys."

[for Hughes]

Comments

[runner-up-robot.livejournal.com]

"I tried to run yesterday, on the round track outside, to see the limits of this body, but the muscles malfunctioned and seized up. They need to be initialized before strenuous activity, too - that's the kind of thing that I want a book for. One of the humans I met on my first night has been teaching me, but there's always something new to find out. Usually in a painful way."

[whiny-egomaniac.livejournal.com]

"I'm telling you," Starscream replied, reaching blindly for the shut-off valve after having sufficiently rinsed off, "human bodies are so unbelievably inefficient. If it's not understanding their anatomy for proper...organ strengthening, it's having to eat the proper foods for maintenance purposes. Oh! I do know of one particular exercise; I witnessed a number of their military personnel lying down on the floor and pushing themselves up with just their arms . From what I could observe it looked strenuous, so it might be useful for strengthening the...biceps, I believe are these at the front of the arm, and the pectorals on their chests."

[runner-up-robot.livejournal.com]

"That sounds like a good idea. I'll have to go to the library myself sometime soon." Matching Starscream, the cleaning period almost over, Forte shut off his shower. "There was one more thing I wanted to ask you about. I talked to another 'bot, and there's more on the board saying you're a legendary traitor where you come from..." he didn't actually ask a question, but left a space for Starscream to respond to the statement. Forte assumed he already knew what Starscream was going to say, but wanted to be sure.

[whiny-egomaniac.livejournal.com]

"Is that so?" Starscream responded, the sneer on his lips curling up to his ears. Surely he speaks of Lugnut and Blitzwing, he thought. "Well, those that would say that are a slanderous bunch; one of them was a fellow Decepticon from my world who, at a time, attempted to usurp control of our group, while the other is unrecognizable to me, one who worships our former leader with a disturbing zealousness and considers my leadership a traitorous one."

The Decepticon placed a comforting hand on Forte's shoulder and continued smiling sinisterly. "I assure you, words of my disloyalty are greatly exaggerated. It is true that I felt I could lead the Decepticons better than Megatron, but I would never do anything to overtly usurp his position. You must believe me over the words of cowards who would attack me on paper."