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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[jokers_wildcard]

After impromptu drawing session via salad dressing, Harley was suddenly really in the mood to finger paint again. So when her grouch nurse came to collect her and asked where she'd like to go 'relax,' she didn't have to think it over very long.

Ahhh! It's been a while since she'd come here to paint. It was one of her very favorite rooms! The people here already had everything all set up at a few of the tables just for people who wanted to paint. The different paints were in the middle of the table and a bunch of paper was organized here and there so people could just sit down and get to work. The set up was kind of military for her tastes, but eh. Take what you can get, right?

So Harley did exactly that: she plopped down in a seat and slid a sheet or two in front of her. Then she dipped two fingers into the red paint and got to work.

[heeere Spidey, Spidey, Spidey~]

[jokers_wildcard]

Harley continued to smear the mess across the paper, bringing her face close to the page and sticking her tongue out on in concentration. Red and white and side to side and loopty-loop and back again. ...Nnnnn... Okay!

She pulled her hands away and reached for the green paint. It was here she finally noticed the other kid sitting at the table now. She'd looked at him just in time to see that washout of a fake smile he threw at her before staring down at the paper in front of him. Her whole body froze - body hunched forward, arm stretched toward the paints - like someone had hit the pause button. And like that she simply stared at him like she was somehow unable to comprehend his presence. Wow. This guy...

"...It's not gonna paint itself, ya know," she said, still frozen and looking positively bewildered.

[gentiana_clusii]

[*pokes at Euphie* hope you don't mind!]

Ken glared at his nurse as she herded him into the arts and crafts room--she'd insisted that he couldn't go outside and play soccer with his leg injured, no matter how much he wanted to. He'd spent the morning in the chapel, gotten some food, and was now getting herded off to play with glitter and crayons instead of being let outside to run--dear God this was turning out just like those seven-year-old afternoons at the church. Complete with sulking, which Ken was more than old enough to recognize but not quite inclined to stop.

And then he was sat down at a table with a girl who looked like she'd walked straight out of a cosplay party, handed a coloring book and some crayons, and told to amuse himself. This was ridiculous. Crazy as the staff thought he was, he was still a grown fucking man, God damn it. Arranging flowers was one thing, this was something else entirely.

Now all he needed was for the nurse to tell him to straighten up and quit glowering, and he'd really feel like he was seven

[euphemise]

[not at all! ♥]

Euphemia noticed that the room was getting a little more full - one girl enthusiastically fingerpainting, and a few others drawing and such. It seemed like this was just one of those places people gravitated to when they didn't really know what to do with themselves. A moment later, someone sat down across from her. She noticed the bandages before anything else, and frowned just a little. It would be rude to comment on that right away, though.

"One of those days?", she asked, her tone a little less formal than she might have used otherwise.

[gentiana_clusii]

"When is it not?" Ken grumbled, then sighed. The heavy conversation this morning with Aya had done absolutely nothing to improve his mood, but he could at least try to pretend.

He'd be damned if he was going to color in a coloring book though. He still had at least that much pride left. But the only other thing nearby was some macaroni and string.

...dear Christ this place was bent on embarrassing him. "Sorry. My name's Ken Hidaka," he said, managing an attempt at a friendly smile, mindful that he hadn't met this girl before.

[euphemise]

"That's a good point," she said, agreeably. "I haven't been here long, but...it seems a little like they're bent on making everyone depressed." That was something she was personally going to put up a really good fight against. You couldn't just go around making people miserable for no reason, after all! That was almost worse than the creatures that came around at night, in her opinion. As much as she didn't like fighting...well, you had to when something was attacking you and it couldn't talk. She didn't like it, but she knew that it took some spirit.

"It's nice to meet you, Ken," she said, bowing her head. "I'm Euphemia." She intentionally left off the 'li Britannia' part of her name. If he asked, she could bring it up.

[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.

[sewenteen_sir]

"Since you like to draw so much Victor--"

"Chekov."

"Victor--just because you have a speech impediment doesn't mean that you should name yourself something different," his nurse chided him. "Anyway. Since you like to draw so much, this will be perfect for you."

He was left with 'glue', 'glitter', and the instructions to 'draw his feelings'. This was going to be a long shift.

[Free, no limit! Also slow, be warned.]

[world_makeover]

Dist was left alone in the arts and crafts room almost immediately after getting there. All the better as far as he was concerned; he was used to being personally monitored by now and it never stopped being annoying, regardless of what environment it was in. He gave the room a cursory look-over before approaching an annoyed-looking young man and taking a seat across from him without asking for permission.

"So, what the hell is going on here?" he asked, bluntly. "The woman who escorted me here is useless. Hopefully you are not."

[sewenteen_sir]

...yes Chekov really did hope he wasn't useless. But, more importantly, he had no idea who this person was, nor why he was demanding to know what was going on without looking at the obvious bulletin board full of information.

This man's (?) voice was also rather grating...

"Euh..." Chekov began, not sure where to start after the 'useless' comment. "I am not sure myself. I only just woke up here last night. Howewer, it seems as zough we are trapped in a prison on an alien planet for some reason still unknown. ...a prison that gives us sparkling bits of plastic and glue during ze day."

The ensign picked up the tube of glitter and shook it a little, examining the contents. It was plastic, wasn't it?

[world_makeover]

Of course, doing one's own research and being reasonable about the situation was the most straightforward way to go about things, but Dist and the obvious had never been on particularly good terms.

"Where were you before this?" he asked, reaching across the table and snagging another little tube of glitter, which he then started to absently toy with. "And why do you think it's another planet? A facility like this could exist anywhere on Auldrant."

[cannotlogout]

Explaining to Leon had left Tsukasa feeling a little drained and he was still worried about Endrance and Haseo. He needed to speak with them both soon. He wanted to see them with his own eyes and also try to work out something coherent between the three of them to explain their 'world' to people if it came up again and they didn't want to tell the truth. It was just confusing, even for someone who had lived it.

Most of the rooms were busy, but Tsukasa wandered into the Arts and Crafts room, finding it mostly empty except for a few people. He let the nurse guide him to a table, set out with various art items, most of which seemed ridiculously childish.

Tsukasa grabbed a piece of paper anyway and a pack of crayons, starting to sketch out a rough outline.

[Free, limit; any]

[oldestremnant]

After he'd finished eating, Loz was told that he could go anywhere he wanted now. He said that he wanted to go home with his brothers, but the nurse, in her very annoyingly cheerful manner, had instead taken him to the "arts and crafts room", saying that he should "bring out his artistic side". Loz tried to tell her that he had no artistic side, but she'd ignored him.

Grumbling to himself, his nurse sat him down next to some kid. The Remnant looked at the various supplies in front of him, not really sure what to do. He looked around at what everyone else was doing and then just took a peice of paper and some crayons and started randomly doodling.

Loz eventually glanced at the guy he was next to, seeing his silver hair. For a second, he thought it might have been one of his brothers, but no, it wasn't. The hair style was wrong, and so was the face. Feeling obliged to say something, Loz murmered, "Hey."

[cannotlogout]

Tsukasa tensed up when someone was brought to sit next to him by one of the nurses. He gave him a skittish sideways glance. The guy was big, much bigger than he was and looked kind of intimidating. Automatically Tsukasa tried to decide what class he would be in The World. A Heavy Blade most likely, maybe a Long Arm like Crim. It was probably ridiculous to wonder though when he was in this place.

He was a little startled when the man actually talked but he gave the man a shy smile in response. "Hi. Um, I'm called Tsukasa." He began to add the detail to the drawing of the cat that he'd begun, adding a tall pointed hat.

[oldestremnant]

"I'm Loz," The Remnant introduced himself. The kid's nervousness wasn't lost on him, and he smirked a little. He liked it when others were nervous around him.

He glanced over at Tsukasa's drawing out of curiosity, and he was suddenly reminded of Big Brother's friend, the small, black, toy cat. Loz himself just started doodling a very crude drawing of the four-legged monsters he and his brothers summoned all the time.