damned_institute | Night 49: Nurse Lounge

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Night 49: Nurse Lounge

[From here]

A slightly larger and comfier-looking room greeted the pair next. A couch and several cushy chairs littered the space, along with a table, chairs, and a large cabinet, among other things. Definitely wasn't the worst place they could have ended up in, Scott thought. They could have ended up in a fridge or something.

Speaking of fridges. "Anything you wanna grab from in here? I kinda want to see if there's anything in there," Scott said with a little grin, gravitating toward the side of the cabinet where a mini-fridge sat. If he knew mini-fridges, he knew they tended to contain at least one of two things: alcohol or pop. With the former, he didn't want any, but he could think of at least a few people who probably would. With the latter, he didn't really like the fizziness, but hey, there could be free power-ups in them, at least!

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[From here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/921466.html?thread=69926266)]

No rain, as predicted. Depth Charge stayed perfectly dry as they walked from the darkness of the shed into... the darkness of a whole new room. Of course. They were in the actual Institute building again, that much he could make out, but he didn't think he'd ever seen this room before.

Directing his flashlight around the room he could pick out a couch at the back, under a wide set of-- windows? Hard to tell at first, but those looked like blinds. In fact, there were a whole lot of chairs in this part of the room, and a table set in the center just waiting to be gossiped over. This was a regular little pitstop, huh? There was even a kitchen on the other side of the room, too. The most he could say was that he didn't see any immediate signs of monster activity, and even that wasn't exactly shining praise.

He turned to Hime, eyebrows raised. "Not exactly useful, huh? Unless you're planning on taking a nap and forgot to tell me."

Hime had no problems with Depth Charge taking the lead, burdened as she was. It seemed to be unnecessary so far, however. Despite the apparent lack of monsters though, Hime remained in the door way, foot jamming it open.

"Not particularly, no, but I've other uses while we've still time," she mused, looking about. "Bring over one of the chairs - now that we're not connected to Marc, I'd like to try something."

Perhaps it was a moot point given how late at night it was, but Hime was still at least curious to see if she could solve this puzzle much as she'd solved the spell cast on her mansion once upon a time.

"Other uses?" With a chair? Not that it didn't sound a little non-sequitur-ish or anything, but hey. Wasn't like they were in any immediate danger, or like they had any real plan to follow anymore except 'walk through doors, pray for something useful'. Anyway, Depth Charge wasn't going to be letting his guard down any time soon.

He headed over to the seating area and hauled one of the plastic chairs over to Hime, standing it in front of her at the door. She still hadn't taken her foot out yet, he noticed, so he took the handle and pulled it open properly to save her one squashed slipper. "What's the plan? You gonna try and jam the door or something?"

"More or less. I noticed the doors have been closing on their own," Hime replied, taking the chair from Depth Charge and placing it firmly in the doorway. Once she did, she moved out of the way and let the door close on it, wedging it in place. Beyond, she could still see the darkness of the gardening shed. So far, so good.

"As I believe I mentioned, I dealt with something similar to this before," she explained, picking up her spoils from before and trotting across the room towards the couch. Or, more accurately, the windows. "The rooms continue to shuffle every time the doors close, but as long as they remain open, they remain connected. By opening, or in this case, jamming open all the doorways, we can create a stable set of locations." Of course, as she'd also noted, these situations, while similar, were hardly the same. For one, this wasn't her mansion. For another, if they ended up in Doyleton or outside again, this method really didn't mean anything. "Well, I doubt we can actually isolate the culprit through this method, but there's nothing to lose. At worst, we can make a trail we can follow back if we end up somewhere unsavory."

She stopped in front of the windows, staring at them for a moment before stepping aside. She simply looked back to the robot and pointed with her fuel can at the glass.

"We're going through there."

Made sense so far. Depth Charge listened distractedly as she left the chair in the doorway and moved across the room, still keeping a careful eye on the kitchen area- if they were going to be attacked from anywhere, it was going to be from there.

"I guess that could work. It's worth a shot," he agreed when she finished her explanation, looking back to where she stood by the window. Wasn't as though they had any other options. Anyway, the logic made enough sense, he supposed, in a backwards kind of way, but what wasn't backwards about this entire-

"... through there?" he echoed. As in, through the window. Right. Quickly, he hefted up the blinds on his side of the window so that he could look out, just in case he'd been wrong and- yep, they were on the second floor. Then he checked her face for any signs she was joking. Oh, Primus. "You're serious, aren't you?" Even he could say why throwing a couple of human bodies out of a window was crazy idea, and he wasn't even human.

"I don't see another door, do you?" Hime said impatiently, as if the robot's trepidation was completely unfounded. As the previous experience, both in her own world and in the bookstore earlier, had proven, windows worked just the same as doors, so the fact that they were on the second story matter little. Really, if anything they should be afraid every door they stepped through might send them out a second story window, seeing as Landel had little trouble letting them get outside, unlike the spell she'd been trapped with before.

Of course, if this window did let them go outside like it was normally supposed to... well, that would be a victory in its own way, so long as they were quick enough to get back inside and not fall. Well, not as if a fall from two stories up was necessarily fatal.

"My hands are full, so breaking it's up to you," she encouraged him, though her monotone was hardly encouraging.

The worst part was? She had a point. There wasn't really any way he could argue with her logic- the only way out other than that door genuinely was the window.

Didn't mean he had to like it, though. Depth Charge narrowed his eyes, giving Hime a critical look as he dropped his flashlight onto the couch and rolled his shoulders back in preparation. "Oh, of course, princess, just leave it to me. Geeze..."

The window didn't look particularly heavy-duty, not like the ones downstairs, but it would still take a good couple of swings to break through. Both hands on the crowbar, he pulled back, aimed, and swung it hard into the glass with a loud crack. A spider's web of crevasses had appeared in the glass, spreading out to the edges of the glass. One more shot, and-

The crowbar smashed through the window pane, sending glass shards showering down through the rain to the ground below. Flecks of wind-strewn rain caught the couch and splattered against his face. Standing back, Depth Charge made a sweeping gesture to the window with one hand. "After you. If we die, I'm gonna kill you."

"You have my full confidence, Depth Charge," she replied, managing not to smirk until he was turned towards the window. The princess stood by as she waited for him to finish demolishing the window.

"Your concerns are duly noted," Hime said, climbing the couch like ascending the stairs to the throne. Knocking the shards of glass off the frame with the gas tank, she ducked through and jumped.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/889995.html?thread=69973387#t69973387)]

[Returning from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/889995.html?thread=69973387#t69973387)]

It seemed jumping was the right choice - Hime came flying out of the broken window they'd used to escape this room and carried her over the couch and onto the floor beyond. Her landing was a little clumsy, weighed down as she was by everything she was carrying, but it was better than simply walking through and then immediately stumbling when one met not floor but a couch a few inches below the window.

Getting back on her feet, Hime looked around as she waited for Depth Charge to join her - angry with her seemingly rash action, no doubt - and immediately noticed something else.

"Nothing is so easy, it would seem," she noted sourly.

Caution? What was that, anyway? He'd never heard of it. Shaking his head and muttering under his breath, Depth Charge followed her through the door with a giddy leap of his own just in case, landing down on his haunches in front of-- the couch. The one in that last room. Good thing he'd missed it, too, it was already slippery with stray rain. So, that little theory of hers was right, then.

He straightened up, not quite looking at her as he decided how best to admit she was right. Again. Luckily, she'd already found something else to occupy her attention. He frowned, glancing back at the window. "Nothing? I don't know. I'd call that pretty easy."

"Over there," Hime corrected him, pointing towards the door that led to the gardening shed. Or used to, at least. Despite having jammed a chair in there... it was now perfectly closed, with the chair sitting right next to the wall as if it had always been there, not keeping the door open at all.

"It seems the doctor doesn't want us mapping his new maze so easily," mused the Royal. So, he was undoing their work while they weren't looking. She couldn't help but think this might be indicative of a more prevalent theme than just what applied to their current situation.

"Start looking for string or something else long we can tie," was the next order as Hime set down the weed whacker and gas tank on a table and headed for some of the cabinets off to the side to start searching. It was probably a futile effort, but it wasn't in her nature to just accept the apparent conditions without trying to defy them.

Depth Charge blinked and turned to the door- oh, gear. Someone'd had the decency to disrupt Hime's set-up the second their backs hand been turned. There was the chance it had been another patient, of course, but if he was going to believe that he might as well go the whole way and say that the Head Doctor had nothing to do with the door-portals, and that all of this was just some kind of big misunderstanding. Yeah.

"Looks like it. The slagger." He gave an irritated little sigh, rubbing a hand through his hair. Even if he hadn't been one-hundred-percent sold on her theory, the fact that something had apparently gone out of its way to throw them off was frustrating. "No one said this would be easy, I gu- something long?"

He stared at her for a moment, surprised, then shook his head almost wonderingly. "You never give up, huh?" Maybe he might have sounded just a little impressed there again. There was that grit he'd seen before. "Alright, but I don't think it's gonna work." Heading over to the kitchen area, he began to pull open drawers. More plastic cutlery- what did they think the nurses were going to kill each other too? "Nothing here."

"As if I'd quit over something like this," Hime said with a hmph, going through the drawers where there were more office-supply like items. No string, it seemed. If they had been able to get to the Arts and Crafts room, surely there would have been yarn, but it wasn't like the staff needed those kind of things to play with. What they did need, however, was tape, and Hime located a roll of it, clear cellophane tape which she pulled from its plastic dispenser.

"Then this'll have to do," she replied, holding it up. Moving back to the table where she'd left her prizes, the Royal first knelt to wrap the end of the tape around one leg, making sure it was secure and wouldn't pull loose easily. Threading a finger through the center of the roll, she picked up the weed whacker and gas can and began walking towards the door, pleased to see the tape unwind, leaving a translucent trail behind her.

"Get the door and we can be on our way," she called back to Depth Charge, not slowing in her walk towards the portal.

"Tape? What're you going to do, tape the slagging thing ope-" Never mind. No sarcasm necessary- Hime was doing just that, winding one end around the table leg and stretching it out behind her like a pale silver ribbon that glinted in the glow of their flashlights, all the way to the door. The odds of it working? Pretty slim. But like that was about to stop her trying.

Depth Charge shook his head for what felt like the thousandth time that night, making his way to the door so that he could kick it open for her. "You're something else, you know that?" he said, standing in the doorway while she finished her tape-trail and watching with his head cocked to one side. "Seriously. Slagged if I know what to make of you most of the time."

"Oh, nothing like that - Landel's already proved he can close the doors regardless of what we do to jam them open," she replied as she came to the door. "I just forgot to bring my breadcrumbs, that's all."

She quirked an eyebrow at Depth Charge, as if curious that he'd be so surprised.

"Am I really so mysterious? Though I suppose explaining myself was never a hobby of mine," she admitted. Despite saying that, it seemed she had no intention of changing that now, since she immediately turned her attention back to the door, stepping through and still trailing the tape behind her.

[To here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/923687.html)]

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Night 49: Nurse Lounge

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