damned_institute | Nightshift 38: Men's Bathrooms (M41-M80)

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Nightshift 38: Men's Bathrooms (M41-M80)

[from here.]

"...But, really, Hei-chan, you ought to tell them about the time that you and Kazu...huh?"

Shinichi had made enough use of the facilities in his day and a half at Landel's to know that the bathrooms did not normally look like that. They were clean and plain and institutional and reeking of antiseptic...just like every other hospital men's room.

These bathrooms, on the other hand, were not like other hospital men's rooms. They looked like a set from a B-rate horror film, except that the slime on the walls and the horrible reek were real. The detective half expected a gaunt woman in a bloodstained kimono to jump out from behind one of the broken stalls and try to eat their brains.

He'd seen dozens of crime scenes over the years, all gruesome and usually very bloody. Shinichi thought that he'd grown accustomed to horror, or at least a thicker skin, but...this was something else entirely.

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"Sink. Right, gottcha," Sokka nodded that he understood to make them both happy, but he'd meant to hear the more detailed parts of how this sink worked. Where did the piping lead? He could only see that it went back into the wall, but that only told him so much. And who would want to pipe gross sludge everywhere? Unless this thing went into a swamp. ... did it go into a swamp?

These guys didn't seem to like his questions, some more than others, so he didn't voice any new ones. Or any new jokes he could have made - sink was just golden for this kind of situation - either! They really had no sense of humor. Sokka missed his group already, even if Appa did lick covering him in Bison drool and Toph used him as a punching bag too much. At least they put up with his humorous side. Even Zuko would have been in higher spirits than these guys, and that was saying a lot.

And it wasn't as though he knew the guy would start throwing up either!

"Look, sorry, all right?" Sokka held up his hands, both apologetically and defensively, "You guys are all just so serious... I was just trying to lighten things up. I mean, come on, only one of you guys has smiled this whole time, and he's the one I can barely understand." He huffed just a bit before giving Heiji a quick, "No offense," and going back to his main point, "And usually I'm the one who's all for getting things done, but since I still don't know what the heck's going on, I can't be as into this as you guys!"

Sokka was doing a lot of talking, especially about things like food, and not very much working. Yes, he would have fit in very well with the other soldiers. Shin-chan, on the other hand, had done a good job of continuing to work even after the liquid made him vomit a bit. Aware of the nod, he nodded back, although he wasn't sure what the reason for the exchange was. Still tugging at his own work, and more liquid came loose with more piping, the metal pieces dumped on the ground to free his hands for more. The fact that his upper body and abdomen were now covered in the sludge didn't bother him, but the tingling sensation remained.

He didn't understand the confusion; it seemed simple to him. They were gathering metal for a group, and that metal would be turned into weapons. Slowly, after a long wait in a line, something the Commander had already decided that he couldn't pause for. Unless... He glanced towards the group's leader again. "If we participate in a club's activities, will it speed the time for getting a better weapon?" A bat would be fine if he had to improvise, but he'd been built to use a sword.

Oi... Heiji hadn't expected Shinichi to ralph all over everything either. He was starting to wonder if his first night had really been okay, or if he should recommend to Homura that he stick with the other detective for the next few nights or so. He felt bad for him, really, and not in the 'Sucks to Be You!' manner that was normal for him when thinking about Shinichi's problems. Genuinely bad. None of them had asked for this, that was for sure, and despite the fact that they were used to messy murders, Heiji could safely say that neither of them had ever been in a prison like this.

A vein went in Heiji's temple, despite the fact that Sokka had tacked 'no offense' onto the end of that little speech. He hated it when people claimed they didn't understand him. He was speaking plain Japanese, after all! Nothing hard about that, even if he had an accent. But he had to keep his cool.

"Listen, no one's attackin' ya, but y'r not exactly makin' this any easier. I'm of th'opinion tha' we c'n screw around durin' th'day, but at night, screwin' around gets people hurt. Look around, Sokka. I don' know where y'came from b'fore this, but y'ain' in Kansas no more. Monsters come out at night. Things attack us without warnin', and they don' back down until someone's dead--them'r us." He shouldered his katana, "I'll tell ya what's goin' on though. We're bustin' out, and that requires weapons, which require materials, which requires manpower. We're th'manpower righ' now. S'get t'work on that sink pipe, 'n maybe we can get th'fuck outta here b'fore somethin' decides that we look tasty. Comprende?" Heiji tossed a screwdriver at Sokka. "Y'work, or I leave ya behind in Kudou's room."

He nodded to the Commander. "Yeah. Th' more metal we get," he glanced at Sokka. "Th' more material there is t'go around and th'faster you can get somethin' that isn't jus' a blunt weapon." He threw the pipes he'd procured from the two sinks into a pile on the floor and began looking around for something else to scrap while everyone else worked on their pipes.

Shinichi angrily kicked at one last pipe, freeing it with a terrific clang. He managed to avoid getting slimed in the face this time, but the rest of him was pretty much fair game. He was so evenly coated in a layer of black grime that whether or not his clothes had actually been gray before he'd started was anyone's guess.

The detective had to bite back a snicker when Sokka finally took it a step too far and insulted Hattori Heiji's precious mother tongue. And for Osaka Prefecture's proudest native son, that was one of the worst insults possible.

Shinichi should know. He'd been at the receiving end of such wrath a few times. More than a few times. Almost every day.

"Hate to cut in, Hattori, but how much of this stuff do you need? Just out of idle curiosity, of course."

Sokka fumbled to catch the sharp thing thrown at him, managing to snag the metal end of it before it fell and went through his foot. The fumbling helped to keep him from asking more questions as well since he didn't know a Kansas or what that last word Heiji had used either. It sounded like a question, but Sokka wasn't sure he knew what he was supposed to say. Instead, he looked at the little tool he'd been given, gripped it and nodded. "Yes sir! Oh, and so you'll know? I'm from the South Pole. Southern Water Tribe," he just had to say it so they wouldn't get confused again. "

And again he was back to not knowing what to really do, but he had down that Heiji wanted him to get one of the pipe things away from beneath the sink. He could do that, right? The tool was supposed to help too, it seemed, so after crouching down again and looking between the pipe and the sink, he eventually began beating as hard as he could at the pipe with the wrong end, trying to make it come off.

Having worked with little pause during the tense exchanges, joke sessions and time-outs for vomiting, the Commander was making good progress despite his size limitations. His arms were stronger than they appeared even malfunctioning, and the sludge coating him could have been rosewater for all he cared. Uncomfortably tingling rosewater, but that didn't matter if it wasn't causing real damage.

Tossing another piece of metal into his pile, he stopped again to look to Hattori. "I was told there was a wait to get proper weapons. Can you speed that wait by helping this group?" Hattori had said something about a 'weaver' working for them, which was different from the 'cooking' codeword, but still not too secretive.

There was the fact that Hattori himself had a sword immediately ready, but the problems with trying to claim that were even worse than the problems with Celes's knife last night. No one here would listen to his orders without outside motivation, and trying to take a weapon from an armed person while the Commander was bare-handed and didn't know what abilities Hattori had would be stupid and might just result in more malfunction. The group itself might turn on him. Just doing the work in exchange for the increasingly distant hope of extra weapons was the best way to prepare himself for now.

"As much as we can get from this bathroom," Heiji replied, examining one of the shower fixtures, then turned his attention to the locks on the stalls. He took the extra screwdriver and began going at the screws holding them to the doors. They weren't much, but every little bit helped.

His head turned at the sound of the Commander throwing another piece of metal onto the pile. He caught sight of Sokka going at the pipe with the wrong end of the screwdriver and sighed. He only had to work with the guy right now--he could only imagine the kind of Logic Hell Shinichi would go through with this guy as his roommate.

"Yeah, there's a wait," Heiji said, moving over to correct Sokka's grip. He didn't even want to start on the fact that the South Pole, in his and Shinichi's world, was completely uninhabitable. "However, if y'do your part and work f'r th'team, Homura'd prob'ly getcha a weapon faster. It also d'pends on whether'r not y'can use it. He won' arm people who can' fight b'fore the people who can, y'know?"

He straightened up after correcting Sokka ("Like this. Y'hold th'other end...") and continued working on the stall latches. "After'm done wi' this, we c'n head out to the field."

Oh, great. More metal. Shinichi had been under the impression that they were only going to be working with the sinks, but now Hattori was moving onto the showers. Well, this was perfect. Sighing, he crawled out from under the sink where he'd been uncomfortably cramped. He was choosing to ignore Sokka entirely at this point. Once he started going on about living at the South Pole, he lost whatever small amount of respect the detective may have had left. The kid was obviously insane, and was reaching levels of obnoxious that even some of the more immature kids in his first grade class hadn't even managed to get to. At least they had their age as an excuse.

Plus, he didn't even know how to hold a screw driver. He was a lost cause.

The Commander, on the other hand, he didn't really have much of an opinion of, other than the fact that he was obviously very well disciplined for someone who didn't look much older than thirteen or fourteen. He had been plugging away at his own sink, almost wordlessly, for the past twenty minutes at least. It was pretty impressive, even if it didn't give Shinichi much to go on in regards to his personality. There were very few of those "tells" that helped him deduct things about people that others couldn't see for Shinichi to go on. He did seem particularly interested in weaponry, though. Rather unusual for a kid. Just what sort of place could he have come from?

Oh, well. If what Heiji had been going on about for the past two days was true, he'd have plenty of time here to figure stuff like that out.

Moving over to his friend, the detective made a valiant (but ultimately futile) effort to brush some of the gook off his trousers. "Hey. Want a hand?"

Well, when someone had never seen anything like a screwdriver before (well, maybe something like it, but not similar enough), he had every excuse about not knowing how to use it! But Sokka wouldn't have thought that made him a lost cause unless someone voiced it. And Heiji was nice enough to give him an explanation, so he soon got the hang of it to where he too was covered in a lovely spray of gunk.

"Awwwww," he whined, but didn't barf at the stuff getting all over him. He's been covered in Flying Bison snot before, so this was nothing.

"Sooooo, I'm still allowed to talk, right? No jokes, but questions? Like... which nation is Japan a part of?" Sokka couldn't stay quiet for long, and now that he wasn't putting all his might into beating at the piping, he found himself curious. Shinichi didn't look it at all, but Heiji could have been Water Tribe if you turned your head, squinted, and knew that he probably came from the swamp like Hugh and the others.

"What about you? What's your Nation?" he turned his head to Commander since the other two had gone off.

Anything but Fire would be good. But they probably weren't since Sokka had already let it slip that he was Water Tribe and water and fire weeeeeren't exactly the best of buds.

"I can fight, I was designed to work with a sword," the Commander told Hattori, not pausing in his work except for a moment when the spray had nearly caught him in the face. More metal to throw on the pile. How would they hide the smell of it from nurses during the daytime, if it was hidden in someone's room? It didn't matter; his mission was to obtain metal. Holding it wasn't his concern. "I would be more efficient with a sword."

He also would have less reason to keep working with a foreign organization, but that wasn't important either. For ordinary soldiers, who didn't perform duties just for the sake of their king's will, work meant pay. This wasn't very different from that, he'd worked according to their orders so he was due pay.

Sokka's question caught his attention again. "I am not from a nation. I am the commander of the Pig Mask army and I serve King Porky, who rules the world." He was clearly not aware how strange it was that someone so young could look so solemn while saying something like that. "I was working in the Nowhere Islands when I was brought here. I have never heard of Japan, either."

"Nah, I think I got it," he assured Shinichi, working at the last of the screws. "Japan is a nation, Sokka," he explained. He had to be patient with the other people who weren't from his world, he knew that much. "Land 'o th'Risin' Sun, yeah? We used t'be a buncha wanderin' tribes, but we're our own country now. That era was a looong time ago." He threw the last hinge into the pile and straightened up. "Dunno about any King Porky though--considerin' he isn't the ruler of our world," Heiji said with a grin.

Assessing the pile, Heiji seemed satisfied, and turned back to the rest of the group. "Okay, we're set here. Let's carry this back t'Kudou's room, then we c'n get you guys weapons. Everyone grab what'cha pried loose and follow me."

(To here. (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/547788.html?thread=45995468#t45995468))

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Nightshift 38: Men's Bathrooms (M41-M80)

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