damned_institute | Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

Somehow, after their talk in the chapel, Elaine felt simultaneously more accepting of and more irritated by her future husband. On the one hand, seven years had clearly been good to him. He seemed more sincere and thoughtful than he had been before his disappearance, and he had a more mature (dare she say, handsome?) look to him. On the other hand, there were clearly some things that made even time throw up its hands in vain and say, "To hell with this!" Guybrush was still inexorably prone to disastrous accidents if the story about the Pox of LeChuck was anything to go by, and he was so obviously keeping something important from her that any passing dolt in the Institute would have been able to tell. In the end, that eternal underlying sweetness of his that won out, keeping her from punching him again, at least. That was only by a hairs width, though. Her snugglecakes was going to have to stay on his best behaviour if he knew what was good for him.

She left the Mighty Pirate™ alone for the time being when the announcement of the next shift went off. He would want some time to catch up with Morgan next, presumably. As much as the woman's attitude bothered her, she was a friend of Guybrush's, as she had claimed. Elaine could be strict, but she wasn't the kind of shrewish future wife/past fiancé who would keep her man from seeing his friends. Besides, she needed some more time to catch up on the goings-on of the Institute. Patients filled the building to the brim, now, it seemed; there would be a lot to investigate.

After a few quick trips back and forth to the bulletin and a few new leads to follow up on, the governor gave in to her nurse's persistent nagging and headed to the cafeteria for brunch. After the relatively light fare of the day before, Elaine took advantage of the Institute's admittedly scrumptious offerings and loaded up a full, balanced brunchfast of eggs, sausage links, waffles, and vegetable soup. As expected, the selection of drinks did not offer either root beer or grog. Grog she could live without, at least, she thought while making a face. Eugh. For now, she settled for a tall glass of water.

Elaine settled into a seat in the cafeteria and tucked into her meal. Her eyes didn't stay on her food, though, instead gazing around restlessly; she hadn't seen LeChuck so far this morning, and god forbid he wanted to invite himself to brunch with her if he chose now to show up. A certain horribly unpleasant dinner on Mêlée Island came to mind. She was prepared to either move at the first sign of the dread pirate or signal a random stranger to sit with her before he could.

[For Dean]

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Morgan's eyebrow climbed even higher. "And you don't know where that is? Guybrush, what have you been doing for the last three days, just chatting up crazies?" Pants or no pants, she expected the infinitely resourceful Guybrush Threepwood to have made some progress in recollecting his stolen stuff and escaping. At least he had to have a plan, didn't he?

She kind of wanted to dispute those charges ("quick cash" just made her life's vocation sound so...what was the word. Petty? Cold-blooded? Fantastically amoral?), but if she was honest with herself she deserved everything he'd said and more, so she wiped away the downcast look threatening to take over her face and just pushed past it. "Hey, I'm all for your homicidal wi--uh, fiancee not trying to decapitate me while I'm focusing on getting out of here and getting revenge on LeChuck."

Morgan stabbed a sausage from her plate and took a bite. Stupid plastic cutlery. "So I won't tell her anything that would make you look bad. But I can't make any promises about getting along with her." How someone that condescending had been able to hang onto any kind of career in politics was way beyond her, but she had at least enough good grace not to mention that to Guybrush.

Guybrush snorted, miffed that both Elaine and Morgan seemed to think he'd been having some sort of vacation during his three-day imprisonment. Had she not learned a thing from the Guybrush Threepwood School of Puzzle-Solving? Chatting with crazy people was half the battle, followed immediately by stealing, doing favors and quests to get stuff, and trying to use every item at his disposal in every situation imaginable in the off chance something worked. And if that didn't work, call a hint line.

Oh yeah, this was Morgan he was thinking about. He wasn't sure how much mileage she'd be getting out of her patented method of "Dice first, ask questions later" without a sword.

"Well, getting along or not, I'm sure you and Elaine will be just fine and not screw up my future," Guybrush said with a smile and an enthusiastic swing of his arm. "We definitely need to focus on getting out of here and- wait, revenge on LeChuck? Don't you think that can wait until we get home? I mean, I'm the one he offed, and even I think we should save it for later, as this place is definitely bigger than his usual schemes."

It didn't escape Morgan's keen-eyed notice that he hadn't answered the question. "Well, how did you escape from the Carnival of the Damned?" she asked, trying to jog his memory. She knew that must have involved something other than talking--those were some of the best Threepwood legends on the seven seas! "Personally, my favorite story is the one where you roped a bunch of sea turtles and lashed them together into a raft using human hair--from your beard!" Just remembering the story brought an involuntary grin to her face. What a classic tale of Guybrush's daring and ingenuity! Admittedly it was also really gross, but having just sailed through the business end of a giant manatee, Morgan's tolerance for disgusting things was at an all-time high.

When he dismissed her plans to get revenge on LeChuck, though, the smile dropped right off her face. "Uh, he stabbed me with my own sword, remember?" Morgan reminded him. "I don't know how long ago that was for you--heck, I don't even know if I actually died--but no way am I going to let him get away with that." She skewered two more sausages, one on top of the other. If they'd been people, the tines of her fork would have gone right through the vitals. "And as long as he doesn't try anything, I can wait until we get out of here to settle the score. But don't let him fool you with that stupid nice-guy act, Guybrush."

"You... don't want to know what really happened there," he answered with a grimace. The only thing Guybrush liked thinking about less than the Carnival of the Damned and what a jerk he was to Elaine during that time was the subject of his first beard. "Let's just say it was a tragic tale of loss and follicle failure, of pies and costumes and-- "

Whoa, wait. LeChuck stabbed her? LeChuck? As in, not De Singe? So much for his record time on vengeance.

"Uuuuhh... Mo?" he asked, already suspecting his next statement was going to earn him negative points. "From what I remember before waking up here, you were stabbed only a couple of hours before I was- and you were definitely dead, by the way- but I was preeetty sure it was at the hands of De Singe. I saw him running away from his lab suspiciously and everything! And I sort of avenged you when he fell into this Vaycaylian wind machine and was chopped into a billion pieces. Now I feel so unaccomplished."

"What could be weirder than using your facial hair to lasso sea creatures?" Morgan asked, then looked up from her food to Guybrush's expression and decided she really didn't want to know. Maybe she'd just let those particular legends stay intact in her mind.

But she wasn't about to let his next statement go. Had he seriously thought DeSinge was responsible for what had happened to her? Even more insulting than his complete lack of listening comprehension were the implications. How could he possibly think she was such an utter wuss?!

"Guybrush, I told you who stabbed me!" she burst out, punctuating her words with increasingly broad gestures with her fork. "Weren't you listening? The last thing I said to you was clearly, 'Don't trust LeChuck. He hypnotized a bunch of monkeys and ran me through with my own blade'! I would have been better off saying my dying words to Jacques!" God, she knew the guy had his flaky moments--okay, sometimes it was more like he had occasional moments when he wasn't being flaky--but couldn't he pay attention for five seconds when it was was a matter of life and death? Literally?!

"Although good job on that DeSinge thing," she added as an afterthought, even though she knew she probably shouldn't be encouraging him. "That powder-faced pansy and his freaky finger definitely had it coming."

Guybrush crossed his arms, his posture stiffening. "No, the last thing you said to me was clearly, 'The monkey told me,' followed by the sound of your final breathy death rattles in my ear." He calmed down the second that statement was off his tongue, but instantly regretted it in some way, as well. There were few better ways to kick sand in someone's eye than to tell them their final words were garbled or inaudible or lost in translation.

"Sorry," he mumbled after a few seconds, rubbing the tension from the back of his neck. "At least LeChuck is here too- possibly because he died, if that theory is right. And that would mean De Singe and his freaky finger might have ended up here and maybe actually be this Landel guy. That doesn't really explain how Elaine got here or why she's from the past, but the point is that we're going to need to stay on our toes and work together to get out. Find out clues as to why we're here, find some Voodoo stuff to help us out, etcetera."

He waved his hook vaguely. "We don't have to work with LeChuck or trust him in any sense, but with a wife from the past who isn't yet married to me and monsters and all the other weird things going on here, I like to think there are bigger problems out there. Yes, bigger than my nemesis and his amazing facial hair."

Edited 2010-06-23 03:23 (UTC)

Day 50: Cafeteria (Brunch)

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