Day 48: Intercom, Evening

[damned-intercom.livejournal.com]

"AACHOO! Ahem!" The Head Doctor's slightly-better-but-still-congested voice came on clearly over the intercom. The sound of Nurse Lydia sighing and pulling out a tissue from somewhere in the background was also audible.

"Ah! Yes, thank you..." the Head Doctor muttered before continuing: "Well, it seems like today, like all days, must come to an end, even if it wasn't quite as bright and cheerful as we would like, hmmm? In any case, everyone will now be escorted to their quarters.... mmaahh... AAACHOO! Ah! Erb– yes, to their quarters, where they'll be served some Atlantic wild-caught salmon seasoned with garlic and herbs, along with mashed potatoes and a small garden salad. Our usual vegetarian alternatives and drinks are also available, along with a chocolate mousse dessert.

"And that's all... all ...aaaachoo!"

The intercom clicked off.

[ All room threads go in response to this post; please post your character's room number as the subject line of the initial post. I think Court said something about the new roomies not being completely sorted out yet? :O She'll probably post about that later, so hang tight! ]

Comments

M85

[threepwood]

The nurse eyed Guybrush cautiously as she handed him his dinner tray, as if she expected the smile on his face and the pleasant conversation he was trying to have with her was all some sort of a show. In the end, she shook her head and simply closed the door before him without a word, leaving him alone. The pirate smirked, confident she hadn't a clue what he was planning.

"All right, got to get ready," he told himself, setting the tray on his desk before opening his closet door. The sword and shovel he'd crammed in there that morning were still in their places right against the door- they both clanged to the floor again the moment their support was gone, making just as much of a racket as they had earlier. Guybrush hissed through his teeth, begging the tools to quiet themselves as he listened for his nurse to return.

He took a panicked look toward the door- no footsteps, no questioning of what in the world that noise could be, no attention at all from the nurse who couldn't have been more than two or three steps away from the room. "Wow, she's either completely deaf or really, really doesn't like me," he mused grimly. He collected the shovel and sword from the floor, dropping them onto the bed. Next was the flashlight, which was tossed beside the other items. "Can't forget that, either."

Preparations as made as they could be, he had a seat at his desk and started on the meal. Worse than wandering in the dark was wandering on an empty stomach.

Re: M85

[vstheworld]

Scott could already hear items clanging and a voice talking to the empty air by the time he got to the door of M85. Guybrush was already getting ready to move into full puzzle-solving gear, then. Scott was down with that.  

"I dunno, dude, I can hear you fine enough," navigating his way through the door carefully while holding his crutch. Somehow, he managed to not fall over, and headed over to the bed where his own dinner waited. "Maybe the nurses all just have inner ear infections or something. That'd explain why they never listen when you ask them anything more complicated than 'Where's the bathroom?', anyway."

[threepwood]

"That would explain why she's been ignoring pretty much everything I've said all day," Guybrush said through a sarcastic smile. "I was pretty sure they all just hated me, but rampant inner ear infections would be a more likely reason."

He took another two bites of salmon before spinning in his chair to face his roommate. "Well, I've got to admit that my night was as interesting as promised. I met a Frenchman, called him old, dodged a fight involving a chainsaw, and found a shovel. You?"

[vstheworld]

Scott was already jealous of Guybrush's night before. That sounded way more exciting than waiting for some First Aid spell or whatever, and less hurt-y than getting shot had been. "Aw man, no fair! All I did was sit around letting my arm heal." He paused, raising a finger to his chin in thought. Then he added, "Well, I guess I made Robot Masters shadow puppets. That's something, right?"

Nope. No, that still sounded lame in the face of Guybrush's exploits. IMMENSELY lame.

Scott slumped slightly, sighing. "Man, having limbs out of commission sucks monkey coconuts." He nodded in the direction of Guybrush's hook. "Sure you can relate." After another few moments of looking at the hook, a light went on in Scott's brain. After taking a few bites of his dinner, Scott asked, "How'd that happen, anyway?" If he couldn't find out why a random shower stranger's hand was broken, he was at least going to find out how the heck the Mighty Pirate™ had lost such an important puzzle-solving tool.

[threepwood]

"Oh, this old thing?" Guybrush said with a wave of his hook. It was sad how he was growing used to it being on the end of his wrist. While it was nice that it gave him some of the piratey flair he'd been missing from his general appearance (the beard could only go so far), he thought he'd miss Lefty a little more. Well, to the hook's credit, it did make opening locks a lot easier. And it was great for scratching those really itchy spots. And threatening scurvy dogs to hand-to-hand combat had never been so intimidating.

What had Lefty done for him, again? Oh yeah- gotten poxy, smacked him around, killed an annoying French doctor... Ew. Now that he thought more about it, maybe it was a good thing it was gone. He could always get another earring and put his wedding ring on it. Then he'd be matching Elaine, though she probably wouldn't approve and it would undoubtedly look silly on him.

"As a mighty pirate, I have to face all sorts of dangers," he set, setting the stage for dramatic effect. "One of the most dangerous was the pirate hunter Morgan LeFlay, who had been hired to find and capture me. Her skills with a sword were as good as my own- maybe a pinch better- but I bested her in battle in the end. She did get manage to get a hit in before I threw her from my ship- in that single blow, she stole my hand."

Having reenacted some of the more fantastic moves in the fight with vague gestures, Guybrush returned to his seat with a sigh, a little embarrassed by the current state of his hook. "This thing looked a lot cooler when I put it on, but they probably dulled it on my arrival for safety reasons."

[vstheworld]

Scott nodded a few times as he listened to Guybrush's story, throwing in the appropriate "oo"s and "ahh"s as they seemed needed. He was almost ready to take the whole story at face value - then he remembered he was talking to the man whose first response to "Boy, you fight like a dairy farmer!" had been "So's your mother!" (or something like that). Guybrush was more at Scott's level - practiced and talented, but more than capable of being caught off guard and made to look silly. Or, at the very least, failing to come up with a good witty comeback in a pinch.

Okay, so, simplifying the story parts, you eliminate "most dangerous," throwing her out of the ship, and the single blow thing, level out some of the flair, leave it at the elements of the pirate hunter and the fight, divide by 3, carry the 2... Scott shook his head. He never had been that good at math in general, let alone advanced Pirate Bullshit Algebra.

"Oh yeah, sure it was," said Scott, smiling and nodding for now. "Sure they just didn't want you having some kind of weapon advantage over the other newbies or something. Everyone else starts out at Level 1 here, right? So why should some other people get to start at, like, Level... Hook?" A short pause. "Or whatever."

Out of pure curiosity, he pointed to the part of the prosthetic hook that was clearly for controlling the open/close mechanism. "You gotten used to the grabby bit of that yet?" he asked.

[threepwood]

"Grabby bit?" Guybrush asked after swallowing his entire dessert in two bites. He gave his hook a stern stare, noting the tiny lever on the side. How in the world had he not noticed that before? He really needed to start examining foreign objects he carried with him (or in this case, ones that were attached to him) more carefully.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he fiddled with the doohickey on the side of his left-hand replacement, a little alarmed when the two sides of the hook opened with a metallic click. "Whoa! This thing opens! Maybe it isn't completely lame after all."

The sharper hook had its advantages over its duller cousin, but it looked like the new hook couldn't be completely discredited. After all, a hook on the hand was worth two in the... hand. Okay, that didn't make any sense, but two hooks for the price of one? Guybrush was sure he'd make good use of them.

[vstheworld]

"Ah 'kay, so that'd be a 'no' then," said Scott, watching Guybrush fiddle with his hook. He was a little surprised that a man who spent most of his life taking every single available object and rubbing it against every other available object around him just to see if anything happened hadn't discovered this before. Then again, if he were anything like Scott when he actually played the Monkey Island™ games, maybe he had just overlooked an obvious solution because he thought he already had things figured out. That had lead to more than a few aimless trips around the jungle and calls to that in-game help line in the second game, if he remembered right. If that was the case, Scott could definitely cut the guy (or Guy, as it were) some slack.

"So, what do you figure you're gonna do tonight?" Scott asked. It was then that he realized that he himself didn't really know what was going on tonight. He hadn't thought that far ahead. Erk. Probably best not to tell Guybrush that. Maybe he could get some ideas from whatever it was Guybrush had planned.

[threepwood]

Guybrush nodded toward his little collection on the bed, opening and closing the hook a couple of times for good measure. "That sword on the bed? It's not mine, and I didn't steal it for a change. It belongs to that Frenchman I mentioned, Javert. Normally, I'd just keep things that ended up in my possession, but he's pretty experienced and could probably use it more than me, so I'm swinging by his room to return it before hanging out with the Search & Rescue crew." He wasn't really sure what the Search & Rescue would be doing this evening, though there was never a bad time to have a shovel along.

He made his way to the bed, taking the saber in hand and closing his hook around the blade. Well, that was one way he could carry it. "Plus, I've got a shovel now, and carrying them both with these pants is problematic."