Day 43: Arts & Crafts Room, Third Shift

[euphemise]

The princess felt a little better after her talk with Soma. It cheered her up to have made a friend - from what she was quickly learning about this place, the more friends you had, the better off you were. It gave her a little more hope, after what had been said about the Head Doctor. And if there was anything in this world she was good at doing,

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[number_crunch]

So, he'd said seven days, but at the moment, Sho really had no elaborate plans for ensuring the composer's downfall other than possibly a shovel to the back of the head some dark night, a concept that, while appealing on a more visceral level, lacked beauty. He needed a plan.

It was in this state of mind that Sho found himself in the Arts & Crafts Room. While obviously not his first choice in materials, the chance to exercise his creative muscles after so much scheduled time was a welcome chance and he dove into the supplies of pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue with unsettling enthusiasm. It wasn't long at all before he was arranging the mess into what could either be described as chaos or genius formulas done in multiple colors. Given the way the mathematician sounded as he mumbled numbers and fragments of differential equations, it was hard to tell which it was.

[Free, Slow]

[razmaspaz]

[from here]

"Here you go!" The nurse gently pushed Raz into the room. "Enjoy yourself," she said before leaving.

Raz groaned. Arts & Crafts. Great. So much for hoping for something useful...

He walked over to a table, seated himself, and placed his head on the table, repeating what he did back in the Sun Room. The boy looked to his left and saw an older teenager scrambling for a wide variety of craft supplies, including glue, Popsicle sticks and a bunch of those fuzzy bendy sticks he saw other kids use at the camp for their own crafts. Soon after, the guy started putting it all together, if you could even call it that, into a nonsensical structure that Raz couldn't recognize as any identifiable object. Maybe this guy's a modern artist? Either way, the boy was intrigued.

Raz approached the fellow patient and asked with enthusiasm, "So, whatcha making there?"

[number_crunch]

Sho had been just about to derive the final factor from the existential exponent as represented on his three-dimensional model when some hectopascal just had to come over and interrupt his work. Couldn't these fools recognize a busy artist when they saw one?

"Art," he replied shortly, sparing the nanobrat a single glance before returning to his work. Now what had he... fractal, there went his train of thought! Hissing in annoyance, the Reaper viciously ripped off several of the pieces he'd just recently added on, stripping the model down to a less complex, but no less confusing form. "It'd be so much easier if I had some metal, maybe a stoplight or a vending machine... this stuff's all so soft and malleable and just won't hold an angle!"

Oh, the woes of an artist restricted.

[razmaspaz]

"I figured that," Raz retorted, folding his arms. He continued to watch the guy work with haste, the man not really paying attention to anyone or anything else around him. Eventually, the artist seemed to have gotten so frustrated, he ripped off a lot of the things he added on to the piece, leaving a simpler... well, actually it wasn't that much simpler, but it was definitely smaller.

Raz raised an eyebrow. A stoplight or a vending machine? Could this guy even carry those? Still, it was obvious that the guy needed some help with his project one way or another; it looked like he was a metalworker, but he was stuck with kindergarten supplies. A prisoner of art! Kinda.

"Do you need some help?" Raz asked the guy. "I could maybe find some metal for you." He didn't really have anything better to do right now - might as well assist some crazy artist. It wasn't like that was something new to him, either.

[number_crunch]

"I can do it myself!" protested Sho, scooting his creation away from the intruder as if afraid it might be tainted by outside contact. The childishness of his remark went completely unnoticed to the Reaper. "Besides, unless you can find it right this nanosecond, I don't need it. There's plenty of stuff that I can crunch once the lights go out and they let us out of our rectangular regulation rooms. Washing machines, copiers, computers..." Just to name a few of the things he'd thrown down into the Sun Room. If only that flying naked alien hadn't subtracted from his t value, he might have actually gotten something done...

"Besides, you look like lifting trash can could turn you two-dimensional," he pointed out irritably. "You that eager to lose your Z-axis?"

[razmaspaz]

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Raz was taken back by the older teen's hostility. He only wanted to help! But the more the boy listened, the more confused he got. Z-axis? t value? What was this guy going on about? "I can lift trash without turning two-dimensional... I think, whatever that means," Raz asserted.

Soon enough, though, Raz realized that this guy sounded really familiar... Then he got it. "Wait, you're the guy from the bulletin board! The one that challenged me with math equations and stuff!"

[number_crunch]

Sho's expression when from vaguely angry to incredulous and amused. Seriously, this attogram was the one that he was going to crunch? This would be too easy!

"Are you kidding me? You're the psyche-wielding PSI that was asking about on the boards? This is so zetta lame!" he laughed, throwing up his arms. "A zeptoliter like you couldn't psychic basic algebra, much less the kind of multiple inverse matrices that I was going to crunch you with!" Not that he should be one to judge children by their size, but that didn't count; that kid had the Composer as his partner. And this one was even younger than Neku! "Just save us both the trouble and stay in your room tonight; deriving your factors wouldn't even be worth the t."

[razmaspaz]

"Hey, watch it!" Raz said indignantly. He stood up on his chair and started wagging his little finger at the other psychic. "I may not know what a 'zeptoliter' is," he exclaimed, "but I got all my training from some of the best psychics in the world. Just because I'm small doesn't mean I can't still kick your ass!"

Soon enough, the intercom rang, announcing the beginning of fourth shift. The boy hopped off the seat, but his finger still pointed at his challenger. "I better see you tonight," he growled. "Otherwise I'm gonna tell everyone you were too scared to fight a ten-year-old kid!"

And with that said, Raz scurried off to his next destination.

[to here]