Day 52: Game Room

[full-score.livejournal.com]

Lunch had taken his mind from his worries, if only for a few minutes. But after the intercom sounded and the nurses began leading patients onto the next activity, one look at the bulletin board brought everything back in full force. No replies from Ashton, Dias or Dad. By now Claude felt like he was practically counting down until the end of the day, when he was going to have to finally grapple with the real possibility that most of his friends from before Landel's, as well as his own father, had fallen victim to the institute.

And now he was going to have to deal with his mother being here on top of that. It didn't seem like a coincidence that she'd show up right when his father's whereabouts were so up in the air. But what did it mean? Why couldn't Landel leave his family out of this?

Normally, the announcement about new video games would have made him perk up, but his eyebrows only knit together with concern as his nurse led him into the game room. That didn't seem to stop her from trying to get him to unwind, though.

"Oh, come now, Thomas, you've worn that expression for most of the day!" she told him with a frown. "Why don't you have a bit of fun now that your eyes are all better? I'm sure you could use it."

The last thing he wanted was to be reminded of his "sleep studies", he darkly thought to himself. But before he could protest, his nurse had sat him down in front of one of the television screens. There was an old gaming console, one Claude had never seen before, and he glanced at her with a confused expression. "Go on," she encouraged as she placed one of the controllers in his hands. "I know how much you enjoy these kinds of things. Someone will come play with you soon, too, I'm sure. Doesn't that sound nice?"

He didn't have time to answer her, because she'd soon bustled off to tend to some of the other patients. Claude watched her leave with a sigh. He realized the daytime staff meant well, which made knowing what they turned into at night even worse to think about. But now he was just being negative for the sake of it, wasn't he?

Taking in a small breath, he reached over to the console and turned it on. As long as he was waiting for some kind of answer from the bulletin, there probably wasn't much he could do except pass the time. Claude watched the title screen appear on the television, his expression growing more curious in spite of himself. Super Mario Bros....

[For Prussia!]

Comments

[flou-canadian.livejournal.com]

Matthew almost felt guilty at Scott's annoyed tone towards the question about how long he had been playing. Matthew didn't like to bother others, and he was clearly distracting him from Super Mario with such useless questions. So if the blond hadn't realized the older youth was Canadian, than he probably would have just left or shut up and watched silently from then on out.

But nope, he had just found a Canadian citizen in a American mental institute that had some rather hidden criminal activities going on in it, and therefore he would be rather insistent.

The sudden mistake in the Canadians otherwise perfect play through of Mario caught Matthew's attention, and he winced as the pixelated man on the screen shrunk back to normal. "Oh crap." Well...since his questions really were clearly distracting him; maybe he'd wait until he was finished with the game, and then ask how he was doing here. After all, he seemed abit too focused to actually pause it-

Oh wait, there was the pause. That made things somewhat easier. As the youth finally turned around to face him, Matthew nervously tensed at the suspicion in the youth's voice and expression. Oh right, it was unnatural to tell that a person was Canadian this quickly. Normally when he spotted a Canadian he'd just ask what country they were from, instead of bluntly asking if they were Canadian. But he'd been abit too shocked at meeting another Canadian here to really remember that at the moment.

"Oh don't worry, I'm Canadian too!" He waved his hand reassuringly. "From...Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia." Well, that was where he was born. Though he'd spent the last several hundred years with his main household in Ottawa, moving between different provinces for several years at a time when he had the chance.

"I could tell because I've...traveled around Canada alot, and I've gotten very good at recognizing the different accents we have. Where are you from in Canada?" Matthew asked cheerfully, pretending he didn't already know. Well...he got out of that mess fairly quickly. Finally calmed down from trying to explain himself, he took the time to look at the youth's appearance. He stared.

And he stared.

He momentarily adjusted his glasses.

And he stared some more.

...Orange hair, early 20s, somewhat large eyes...

He had gone to Toronto for afew hours in the weekend before he arrived here. During that time, he'd seen this face plastered everywhere. On the outside of comic stores, movie posters, on the covers of wrapped comic book sets in book stores...

"Um...what is your name?"

[vstheworld]

Scott was still dubious that someone could recognize someone else as being Canadian just by virtue of being Canadian as well. Maybe you could do it if someone spoke with some crazy Newfie accent, but Scott Pilgrim didn't speak with one and neither did this guy. Was there really that much more to accents than he realized? ...Wait, what if there was? Was this like British people insisting they didn't have an accent? What if he had had some kind of crazy accent this whole time and Ramona had just been too polite to tell him? He had never said "aboot" to anyone before, had he? He was pretty sure he hadn't. But how did he know for sure? How did he know?!

Good god, he was feeling self-conscious now.

And then it happened: a realization struck his brain. A Canadian who had travelled around a lot and knew Canadians well enough to pick other citizens out at just a few words? This guy had to be the Canadian representative that Honda Civic had been talking about earlier. Ohhhhhkay, that made sense, then. If their super secret club was as mysterious as Honda made it out to be, then maybe this was, like, Canadaman or something. Maybe back in his world, he had, like, a kung-fu beaver sidekick, a Canada Cave, a Maplemobile - the works. That would actually be kind of kickass, Scott thought. He hoped he was right.

"Northern Ontario originally. I moved down to Toronto during high school, though," he answered when asked where he was from. As he spoke, he suddenly felt very aware of just how much the name "Toronto" ran together when he said it (more like "Tronno"). "What's it like in Nova..."

He was being stared at.

"...Scotia..."

And being stared at some more.

Scott blinked awkwardly. He hadn't done anything. Why was this guy looking at him like that?

And then he was asked his name.

"Uh, Scott Pilgrim. Why, what's yours?" he asked with an "ulp" in the back of his throat. Why did he get the feeling this wasn't going to be good?

[flou-canadian.livejournal.com]

"My name's er...Matthew Williams." He gave his human name blankly, treating it as just after thought. At breakfast Japan had told him about this; that many of the other patients were dressed as anime or manga characters, and pretending that they were those characters. Didn't Japan call it cosplaying? So was this boy a fan of the comics or movie, and had decided to cosplay as Scott Pilgrim here?

This was pretty odd thing to be doing at a mental institute, even though it...well...was a mental institute. He himself hadn't actually read the comics, but it's popularity everywhere in Canada had given him a basic jist of the plotline: The Toronto-ite videogame nerd and slacker Scott Pilgrim falls in love with a American girl, and has to defeat her 7 evil ex-boyfriends in order to date her. It actually sounded like a fairly clever series, and if he hadn't been busy with paperwork all the time than he might have actually read it.

So, even though this person were clearly from Toronto, they were just a cosplayer of the character Scott Pilgrim. He had to be; after all, who had heard of fictional characters appearing in real life, especially here? Ignoring the tiny inkling at the back of his mind saying 'this person looks too much like the character to just be a cosplayer he spoke up, laughing weakly.

"Oh, no no, I mean your real name? I know you're suppost to be Scott Pilgrim, but..."

[vstheworld]

"Supposed to be Scott Pilgrim"? What the hell does that even...? Confusion tangled with wariness to the point at which a whole new mutant emotion (confariness? warfusion?) took hold instead. He had absolutely no idea what this guy was getting at, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, either. Unfortunately, he couldn't just leave things hanging there, if only because he didn't want to leave his paused game alone. 

"What, do you mean, like, the fake-real names the nurses give us?" Scott asked at a slowed pace, drudging up words as they came to him one by one. "I dunno. Bryan something, I guess? My real-real name's still Scott Pilgrim, though, dude. That's the same here and back home. Is there something wrong with that?" 

Even as he finished speaking, he got the feeling he still hadn't hit on what was being asked of him or why. What did someone have to gain by asking about the fake-real names? Nothing, that's what. Even the newbies figured that out pretty quickly. So why did he find himself having to defend his own name here?

On a side note, if this guy's real-real name was really-really Matthew Williams, that was going to make him the second Matt that Scott had met in the Institute so far. Later, whenever he got over this weird conversation, Scott knew he had to figure out who was going to be Matt and who was going to get stuck being Other Matt. Law of the Universe dictated. 

[flou-canadian.livejournal.com]

"So your name's...actually Scott Pilgrim? Really? Really? You really think your name is Scott Pilgrim?" An expression of increasing disbelief appeared on Canada's face as the blond subconsciously began to shift away. He had to be joking…he just had to be. But inspite of how much Matthew looked for signs of dishonesty on the youth’s face, he found nothing to suggest that the person was lying. For all intents and purposes, this Scott Pilgrim fully believed he was telling the truth.

Normally Matthew would conclude that this person was taking his cosplaying hobby abit too seriously and leave it at that, but just as the Canadian was about to wave goodbye and stand up, he noticed something even more alarming than the possibility that this Scott was insane. The harder he searched for signs that this person was just dressed up as Scott Pilgrim, the less he actually found. If what he could remember from the comic book covers and movie posters were accurate, than the person in front of him looked identical to the actual character Scott Pilgrim.

….Seriously? A comic book character? Here?

...How was he even expected to respond to this?

Matthew chewed on his bottom lip, scouring his mind for a decent way to word what he wanted to say. After all, he didn’t want to offend or weird out the only Canadian he’d met here so far. But...he'd never asked somebody if they were a fictional character before, and he had no idea how not to seem rude during the question.

“So…you are the Scott Pilgrim out of the comics? And the movie? You know…Scott Pilgrim vs. The World?” He couldn’t believe he was saying this. Was the stress of all this getting to his mind?

[vstheworld]

Oh right. The fourth wall. That thing. 

It was one thing (one very mind-blowing thing, but still only one thing) for S.T. to point out how likely it was that everyone in the Institute was fictional. It was another, shoot-to-the-moon-and-beyond kind of thing to be asked straight-up, "Hey, are you a comic book character?" Scott was going to have to ask Peter if the Earth suddenly fell out from under his feet when he had gotten that question popped to him, too. 

Scott felt a hand go to his head as a million-billion questions roiled to the surface of his mind. "Wha... Wha... Since when does the world have a beef with— No, how long have these comics been in print? Do I get the girl in the end? Is it even finished yet? Who the hell makes this thing? How popular is it? Tell me they didn't show me naked anywhere. Oh god does that mean everyone in the world knows about all my personal crap now? Is there scary fanfi— Wait, so there's a movie too? Who did they get to play me? Was it freaking Hayden Christensen? Hey, is the room spinning right now for you too?"

Canada used Fourth Wall. 

It's super-effective. 

Scott Pilgrim fainted. 

Canada gained 8000 EXP. 

[flou-canadian.livejournal.com]

The explosion of words from Scott was way more than Canada could effectively respond to. He might have been able to say something if it was just one or two sentences, but the tiny verbal sample of Scott's thoughts as his mind began to break left Matthew uselessly speechless throughout the entire tirade. Therefore Canada did nothing but sit, stare in shock, and occasionally say half broken sentences as Scott's world broke around him. Maybe telling him that he was a fictional character was a bit of a mistake.

And then Scott fainted alongside the paused Mario game, and Matthew concluded that yes, telling Scott he was from a comic book was a terrible, terrible idea. Success rate at asking Scott if he was a fictional character or not in a manner that did not leave him alarmed: 0%.

Looking as if he'd accidentally given a person a heart attack from some overly greasy poutine, Canada scanned around the room to see if anybody had noticed the unconscious person in front of him. Well...it seemed that nobody had seen him yet. But, what was he supposed to do? He glanced awkwardly between Scott and the exit, momentarily contemplating just walking away and pretending that nothing had ever happened. That would be the easiest way out of this, right? Or he could also tell a nurse that Scott had randomly fainted and act as though nothing had happened. Either way would be quite simple.

However, he quickly shook those ideas out of his head. The people working here were criminals; he couldn’t let attention be drawn to either Scott or him! He had to stay here and make sure that Scott would be okay!

.....

…So what exactly was he suppost to do now?

Canada stared down at Scott for a moment, hoping that maybe, just maybe Scott would wake up, and everything would go back to normal. Unfortunately, just like his hopes for getting maple syrup covered pancakes in the morning or meeting the other nations before lunch, those hopes were quickly crushed as it became apparent that nope, Scott was utterly and completely out cold.

He sighed weakly. He finally meets a Canadian, only to make him faint 5 minutes later. How wonderful his first day here was going. Was there anything good about this day?

Glancing up, Canada’s attention was suddenly brought to the Super Mario game alongside the unconscious body. Upon making the decision that he’d inform any questioning person that Scott was just taking a nap, Canada shifted over to where the controller was and picked it up. Well...he needed to stay here, and what else was there to do? Sure, the last time he’d played Super Mario was about 10 years ago, but…how hard could it be?

And that was how Canada spent the remainder of the shift unintentionally destroying Scott Pilgrim’s perfect run of Super Mario.