Day 51: Men's Showers [Second Shift]

[lawful_perfect]

Bah. So much for yet another suggestion of von Karma's. Such priorities this Institute had. They would implement a foolish suggestion to introduce origami lessons and to offer sewing supplies to select patients, yet refused to allow them to cleanse themselves more often than twice a week -- and, of course, without any additional privacy? How many more of his reasonable suggestions would the Head Lunatic make a point of ignoring?

von Karma scoffed, shaking his head as he entered the shower facility. Fortunately, it appeared that he was the first one in here. As soon as the announcement over the intercom had blared out signaling the shift change, von Karma had been quick to excuse himself from his conversation with Naraku to promptly head for the showers. It had been bad enough last time that there were already three men in the showers by the time he arrived. This time, he would make certain that he would be the first one there.

Without wasting a single second, he disrobed, meticulously washed off the grime from the past several days, dried himself, then got dressed. All within a perfect three minutes, zero seconds, before anyone else had a chance to enter. He would have preferred a much longer time to devote to hygiene, but he didn't want to risk any needless immodesty in front of anyone.

Now finished, he exited the restroom and entered the Sun Room.

[To here]

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[war-wounds.livejournal.com]

Getting through the day as a human took up a disproportionate amount of Ratchet's energy. He'd barely made it through the first fueling period and already he felt worn out. This primitive washrack wasn't any help, either. The feeling of pressurized water on human hide was uncomfortable and weird, and he didn't like seeing so much of the fleshbag he was trapped in at once.

Still, there was nothing for it but to cooperate and hope the night was more productive. Grumbling to himself, he adjusted the water temperature (and why was there such a narrow setting between too warm and too cold?) and started working detergent into his hide. "Stupid, slagging high-maintenance organics..."

[hes-deadjim.livejournal.com]

Showering with water might be something of a luxury, more inefficient compared to sonic showers, of course, but he didn't have time to sit around enjoying it. It was hard to take any kind of enjoyment out of it now. Bad enough they were captives, but that "visit" by his daughter had changed a few things. So had that news about the experiment on Spock.

The doctor was halfway done washing when another patient stepped in next to him. He was an older man, hair mostly silvered, and bearing a few battle scars. His age alone set him apart from most of the patient population. With most of the population being in their teens to twenties, a patient this man's age stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Pardon?" McCoy asked, puzzled.

[war-wounds.livejournal.com]

"This hide, for starters. Everything sticks to it," Ratchet said, annoyed that he even had to explain something so obviously flawed. "And what's the point of all the secretions these meatsacks insist on...secreting when it all has to be rinsed off? It's poor design, if you ask me." No one had, of course, but that had never stopped him from offering his opinion before.

"And don't even get me started on these useless little armor plates of yours," he said, scraping under his fingernails in an attempt to get rid of whatever mysterious organic grime had settled there. "If my hands had these, half my patients would offline from contaminant shock."

[hes-deadjim.livejournal.com]

The man was speaking as if he'd never had skin before, much less seen bodily fluids or oil from the skin. McCoy would normally have been surprised by the complaints, except he'd had those encounters with the admiral and that other man to dampen the surprise by now. McCoy frowned at him anyway. Compared to other lifeforms, human epidermal tissue wasn't exactly perfect, but there wasn't anything terrible with just being human either.

"There's nothing wrong with how human bodies are made up." Maybe not perfection, but that was the beauty of it. Humans were flawed and that made them different. It helped them avoid stagnation, grow and adapt, mke amazing discoveries and blunders.

It took him a moment to figure out what the man was getting at. McCoy resisted the urge to to stop him, but could only watch warily as the patient worked at his fingernails, wondering if he was going to try and rip them off right in front of him. He never thought the day would come when he'd have to explain fingernails to someone. Most humanoids had them, or at least, some variation of them. There was a first time for everything, he supposed.

"Those aren't armor plating," McCoy said gruffly. "They're fingernails. Keratin. I can tell you they aren't useless, so stop tryin' to pry them off." Even if an injury like that was easily repaired back home, it didn't make it any less painful to go through in the first place. If this man really was an alien transplanted into a human body, he was going to be in for a surprise if he kept it up.

If that was the case, someone had to set him right about a few things before he hurt himself in this body.

"I take it you're new to all this."

[war-wounds.livejournal.com]

"Tch!" Ratchet couldn't help but scoff at such an outright wrong statement. This guy obviously didn't know what he was talking about. "I could fill a large datapad with what's wrong with human bodies and organic life in general." He cursed as some detergent made its way into his optic. Why would such an important component be so slagging fragile that it wasn't even washable? "You're too small, too delicate, too damp, and I don't like the way you smell." He could easily have kept going, but for the moment his attention was divided between ranting and flushing the detergent out of his now-sore optic. Every time he turned around, something was getting damaged or malfunctioning. How did humans survive like this?

Once the stinging in his optic had died down, he turned and waggled his digits for the other man's inspection. "Don't throw a rod, human, I was just cleaning the miserable things. I may hate this body, but I'm not about to mutilate it." Certainly not while he was living in it. He was a lot of things, but he liked to think he wasn't an idiot.

"That's the understatement of the stellar cycle." Ratchet sighed, which called his attention again to his current lack of facial vents. Instead, the air rushed out his snout. Nothing felt right. If he ever found himself in his own body, he'd never complain about worn servos or low coolant ever again.

[hes-deadjim.livejournal.com]

McCoy was certain he was getting that very look on his face that his Spock had back on the Enterprise, the one he called a Vulcan sourpuss-ed face. He'd never had any issue with how Scotty spoke or when fell back on slang, but now he was starting to figure out just how it felt like to Mr. Spock. It was like this man was speaking in another language, all this "rods" and "meatsacks" and "stellar cycles" instead of "days" or "years".

"Well, you're managing as fine as a Klingon in an Organian diplomatic function," he said ungenerously. McCoy wasn't all that reassured by that hand wave. Maybe he didn't want to mutilate himself, and that was all well and fine, but having an accident due to unfamiliarity wasn't out of the books.

Writing papers on what was wrong with the human body? He could do the same thing, in fact, he had already. He had a feeling it wasn't exactly the same thing. Where this patient would do it out of disgust for these "organic life" (what was he outside of here, a computer or something? an honest to God AI?), while McCoy did it out of a professional capacity and a scientific curiosity. Research never stopped, and out here in space, patients turned up with the damnedest things. but he could also do the opposite just as easily. He could fill several books and journals as to what was remarkable about human bodies and "organic life".

"We seem to manage just fine, Mr...." McCoy trailed off. It was becoming a bad habit, but he didn't catch his name just yet. He continued. "There's not a thing wrong with the average human size or sebaceous gland output. I can't help you with whatever you're smelling or if you're tripping over your own feet."

All the same, this man acted and sounded like he was out of his element. And for a moment, when he sighed (very nosily) McCoy did feel for him. He couldn't imagine what it was like to get transplanted into another body type entirely, but he could imagine it wasn't easy. "What were you before anyhow?"

[war-wounds.livejournal.com]

"I'm sure that's meant to be insulting," Ratchet said, scowling, "so I'll keep things simple: blow it out your exhaust port!" That was the thing about humans-- they were almost all unapologetically rude.

Offended by the man's last remark, Ratchet considered simply ignoring him for the rest of the shift. But a dimly-remembered lecture from Prime replayed through his processor (complete with Prime's special Great Autobot Machine inspirational voice that ground Ratchet's gears like little else could) and he reluctantly decided to be the bigger bot. "Ratchet," he said. "And I'm perfectly capable of walking upright, thank you; I've been doing it a damn sight longer than your kind has." Uppity meatsack. He hadn't even said anything about tripping. "Any sentient I can pick up with one hand is too small. Try walking through a city where you're liable to step on someone and tell me how much fun it was."

"I was- am- Cybertronian," he said, with the illogical hope that that would explain everything and the human would finally understand because what more needed to be said, really? But even if the man had known what a Cybertronian was (and he probably didn't), it was doubtful he'd be too sympathetic, being organic and all. "An autonomous robot," he added for clarification.