Night 57: Medical Wing Hall

[purpletaint]

[from here]He glanced idly at the doorways as they passed them, and yet still none read infirmary. "It's only a waste of time," he replied. "If you can't find them. Which would be a bit pathetic in a small building like this

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[sheepwood]

[From here.]

Continuing down the hallway led to more doors- lots and lots more doors. Deciding they could come back to the side halls if they missed the infirmary entirely, Guybrush kept going down the main corridor of the medical wing, casually trying the knobs on the doors along the right-hand wall as he passed them. All were (unsurprisingly) locked; however, there was some activity from the last door. As if the fact that it had been opened wasn't enough, the plaque beside the entrance clearly labeled the room as the infirmary they were looking for.

"Looks like this is the place," he noted. "After you, inspector."

[unmocked_lawr]

[Sorry about the wait! LJ keeps crashing on me. D:]

It was unsurprising that the lock on the infirmary door had been broken, though he was surprised that it had been locked in the first place. Hadn't Aguilar been trying to get patients to come here?

No matter. He pushed the door open, holding it open for Threepwood as he stepped in.

[unmocked_lawr]

[to here]

[unmocked_lawr]

[from here]

Now that they were in a hallway with a clearly defined exit, Javert turned back to Threepwood. There was unquestionably something off about the younger man's appearance, though he didn't know what precisely. Instead, he chose to focus on the obvious.

"That scratching behavior isn't normal for you," he said abruptly, tightening his grip on the flashlight. If consuming that potion had merely brought about a bad rash, he'd consider himself thankful--but something so innocuous sounded too good to be true.

[sheepwood]

"It's probably a rash. Or the mange. Or I'm just crazy and imagining the it- I don't know!" Furiously scratching the area behind his ears, Guybrush finally managed to satisfy that nagging itch. He let out a sigh of relief. "There. Better." He hated to say that Javert was right, but the scratching was a little out of place with his usual behavior, even if it probably wasn't anything to worry about.

Well, maybe he should have been concerned about it, but he was more preoccupied with the other unusual sensations running through him: his middle was starting to turn as though he'd taken a few too many punches, his feet were aching, and he was pretty sure that strand of hair in front of his eyes was darker than he remembered it

[unmocked_lawr]

Javert wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Some sort of mental aftereffect, he supposed; something to make the drinker second-guess himself. Voices, perhaps, or a tendency to see things that weren't there. That was how Landel worked.

Aguilar's modus operandi was apparently different. Werewolf was the first thing that flitted through Javert's mind, and the fact that the thought made perfect sense to him was a sign of how long he'd been here. Threepwood's hair had grown increasingly darker, and there was more of it than there had been. Why hadn't he noticed at the outset?

"I certainly hope you've learned your lesson," he said dryly, but there was a tenseness to his posture that hadn't been there before. It was probably a bad idea to remain this close. "Unfortunately, I have little experience with my traveling companions growing claws and--" was that?-- "and, apparently, tails. Have you encountered the like over the course of your numerous travels?"

[sheepwood]

"Tails?" It was only as Javert mentioned them that Guybrush looked over his shoulder: lo and behold, there was indeed a tail trailing behind him- or half a tail, at least. The tip seemed to be missing, the edge of a raw bone emerging from the end. "Eugh. That's new." He was sure there was witty innuendo to be made about a long, snakey, and bony thing emerging from his pants, but he wasn't really feeling up to making it at that point

[unmocked_lawr]

"Dying, Threepwood, might be the least of your problems." It helped that the man didn't appear to be given to hysterics, which both surprised and pleased Javert somewhat--or as much as could be considered realistic, given the circumstances. In any case, it made this...entire business a little more straightforward to deal with

[sheepwood]

Guybrush muttered something along the lines of acceptance of both Javert's orders and the possible worse-than-death fate that was in store for him, but it came out too garbled for coherence. Nodding to show his compliance, he leaned on the wall and got to his feet, stumbling ahead of the inspector and into the suggested hallway. Whether it was from the sickness or some worse part of a transformation on the horizon, his legs felt weak and unreliable, his feet still aching as they stretched in length.

He hit the first door on the left heavily, leaning into it before trying the knob. Of course, these would be pretty much the only doors in the institute that weren't locked at night.

[To here.]

[sheepwood]

[From here.]

Though they'd passed through the hallway a couple of times already that night, the view was quite different, both literally and figuratively, to Guybrush on the third time around. Even without his flashlight- he hadn't thought about it until that very second, and it dawned on him that he must have lost it in the midst of his transformation- he could see his way down the hall, each entryway and plaque becoming clearer in the shadows to his changed eyes. He trotted in front of the inspector, eyeing each door as he wagged his tail instinctively.

"Well, this seeing in the dark thing isss a nice perk," he remarked, looking over his shoulder. "Though you're prrrobably going to have to do mossst of the door-opening from now on. Brrreaking locks open shouldn't be an isssue for me, but I've already dissscovered that complicated actions like turning knobs without a thumb are beyond me. The thingsss you miss when you no longer have them."