Day 40: Lunch

[whiny-egomaniac.livejournal.com]

*hobble wobble*

"Damn that SCOURGE!" Starscream cried out, the slowly-filling cafeteria producing a jarring echo of his raspy voice. His limping, already bad enough from not knowing how to properly use his crutches, was now exacerbated from the injuries he'd received the shift prior. Despite the gauges in his non-casted leg so lovingly provided by the aforementioned 'patient', Starscream could still put some weight on it, but not so much that he could really stop and rest; relieving the soreness under his arms was out of the question. The nurse that walked behind him with his tray, already upset at having to deal with yet another troublesome inmate, was growing rather impatient as his charge slowly made his way down the food line.

"Just...give me a standard serving of the aquatic creature's flesh, some of those fried potato slices, two bananas, and three bottles of juice," Starscream sighed, his anger from just a moment ago assuaged by the physical exertion needed to move the way he did. "I'm going to sit down here...bring it to me when you're done."

He was hardly surprised to find that one of the bananas was completely bruised along its inner curve, or that the handful of 'chips' on his plate were all on the small side. Tired and frustrated as he was, however, he could barely muster a 'damned flesh-creature' before moving his fingers to the plate, picking one of the longer 'chips' and shoving it into his mouth listlessly.

There was an unusually high concentration of sodium chloride crystals on it. Of COURSE.

[For Tony Stark]

Comments

[sheisthecause.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, it's a little scary when that starts to sound normal, isn't it?" Meche agreed with a grin. Strange that death gods had actually been the most natural thing for her to grasp here, after the last four years. It was just everything else that seemed bizarre to her.

She ate a few forkfuls of salad while she considered her answers to his next questions. The night before last wasn't really something she wanted to mention to him, either, especially not now that it would be a first impression for him. She wondered why it was so much easier to talk about it to strangers--probably because they didn't know her well enough to be disappointed by her. Even outright disgust was better than the feeling that you'd let someone down.

"I've met other people, but sometimes that's not good enough to stop the things this place throws at you," she said truthfully. "This happened last night, when my partner and I were attacked by this huge monster--bladed tail, two sets of jaws, really, the worst. We would've needed a cannon to fight it off without getting at least a little scraped up." It wasn't a lie, just a sin of omission. Meche thought that was okay.

[tightsofmight]

[Forgive my fail!! DDDD: If you want to backthread after today, I'd be up for it.]

Peter had read about the monsters, naturally, but he hadn't given them too much credence. So far no one he'd talked to had seen anything, and so he didn't pay the notices much attention. It was always about the patients. Brainwashed people, delusional sadists, old enemies out for revenge. Yet here was Meche, who had clearly been mauled by something. But by a monster? Peter wasn't so sure he bought that.

He'd seen what some mutants turned out like. And that wasn't to say that they were disgusting or savages or anything like that, but to anyone who didn't know better, it might seem that way. All it would take was some jumpy idiot to scream, and everyone would be grabbing their torches and pitchforks. As if that wasn't bad enough, there was this whole mad scientist vibe about the head doctor and his experiments. What these people called monsters could be mutants under permanent brainwashing. Or people who were surgically mutilated to gain powers or strength, like Deadpool. On second thought, it wasn't much of a stretch to assume that the animals were given the same treatment. If you could shoot up human with super cocktails like OZ, then you could definitely do it to an animal. God, that was so disgusting.

Or, as much as he loathed the idea, there was always magic to consider. Peter knew next to nothing about 'sorcery', and even less about fighting it. Generally he tried to steer clear of anything remotely close to that end of the spectrum. He wasn't even sure about what really happened that time with Doctor Strange. That could have been a demon, a ghost, some sort of elemental spirit thing - crap, he didn't even know how to classify that stuff. What if Landel was using magic? Summoning demons and gods like in Ghostbusters (did he actually use Ghostbusters as a reference? Cripes, he was turning into Kong). Oh man, he'd have to ask Harry or Steve or somebody about that. If their worlds were remotely like his, then there was a decent chance that they had come across magic at some point in time.

For now though? Peter was going to stick with what he knew.

Appetite lost, he gingerly pushed his plate away. "This monster thing, did it look human at all? Or was it closer to an animal?" The bladed tail bit made him think of reptiles. So it was some kind of lizard hybrid, maybe? Although the two jaws bit had him stumped. Peter couldn't even imagine how that would work, aside from having two heads. In all likelihood, the thing was probably engineered that way just to be repulsive.

[sheisthecause.livejournal.com]

"Oh, not even close," Meche replied instantly. "Humanoid, maybe, but even that'd be a stretch. I didn't get a great look at it, but its head was really long, almost cylindrical. The second set of jaws looked like it came out from in between the set, like on some kind of tongue. It was big--dark and big. And it moved almost silently; I remember we barely realized it was there before it attacked us." Those were the only impressions she had of it, aside from the long whipping tail. She hadn't had time to get anything else, even if she'd wanted to. She hadn't.

Peter looked skeptical, not that she blamed him. If someone had been telling her the same horror story, Meche would have been tempted to raise her eyebrows too. She hoped she hadn't ruined his appetite too much. "I know it sounds far-fetched," she said. "But I'm pretty sure about what I saw, and I know it hit me with its tail--the blade was strong enough to punch through metal. Just--be careful, all right? The last thing you need is to disappear a second time."

[tightsofmight]

His brows contorted as he listened to Meche's description, an eerie sense of familiarity overcoming him. "That sounds kind of like the aliens from Alien. The movie," he said incredulously. "Weird."

Okay, so it wasn't human. Some kind of demon or gene-spliced animal then. In spite of her kindness and her clear sanity, he held onto the tiniest sliver of false hope that she was mistaken. Coming across a creature like that in the dark would be pants-wettingly terrifying. And this is from a guy who's seen the Kingpin in a muscle shirt.

"Everything here is far-fetched. Some things might not be real, but other things are. As much as it pains me to use cliches, you just gotta take it with a grain of salt." His smile returned. "I'll be careful if you are. Try not to get banged up again tonight, okay?"

[sheisthecause.livejournal.com]

Meche shrugged. "I couldn't really say; I'm not a big moviegoer. Guess anything's possible, though." Another thought occurred to her. "You know, you could check the bulletin board in the Sun Room--have you seen that yet? There are usually some messages about monsters up there. Maybe someone else has seen the same thing and could give a better description." Someone had been really aggressive about collecting information over the past few days; Meche would've been surprised if no one had mentioned that monster yet. Naoto might even have been there already.

She smiled back at him, appreciating the gesture. Peter really was a good kid, whenever he was from. "Thanks; I'll do what I can. Actually, there's supposed to be someone from the Arts and Crafts club coming at the beginning of the night to do something for my injuries. I'm going to be working for them for the first time tonight."

Had he heard about the clubs and the board yet this time around? Somehow, without meaning to, she'd slipped back into the role of Landel's vet. Oh, well. Better safe than sorry, Meche told herself with a sigh.