Soren's House

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Episode 1: Ilyana, Interrupted

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Soren sat in his chair, tapping the stone floor with a wooden walking stick he had found lying around. The wars were over, and Ike was staying in Crimea while deciding where to travel aimlessly for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, Soren had found a way to kill the time in-between killing things: Using his Beautiful Mind (TM!) to solve some of the world's most baffling medical mysteries.

It was a beautiful day, cloudless and comfortably warm, and the sun filtered soft orange daylight through the open window. A cool breeze blew through and the sounds of songbirds filled the air. Soren, being the curmudgeon he is, didn't give two craps about how nice it was outside. Bored out of his skull and a little bit hungry, he bitch-slapped the ground with his cane and whistled off-tune.

There was a gentle rap on the outside of the door and Soren sat upright.

"What?" he barked.

"Um, is that Soren?"

It was Ilyana. Soren sighed.

"How disappointed would you be if I weren't?"

Long pause. Then, from through the door, "Um…"

"Just come in," Soren said, shaking his head.

After a few seconds of struggling, Ilyana managed to open the door and shuffled into the room.

"Hello, Soren."

"I suppose I have a few seconds to spare on your most-definitely life-threatening condition. 'Course, I still need to make dinner. Steak. Mmm mmm."

"Um…" Ilyana's mouth watered and she smacked her lips.

"So," Soren said, leaning back and poking at the ground with his cane. "What's the problem? It might take a while, but I'll figure out what's causing it. Shoot."

"I'm hungry."

Long pause.

"I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt: You're so deliriously ill that you think being hungry is a serious illness. The other alternative would be that you're just a moron, which I admit is a pretty enticing alternative to consider."

"No, I mean…well…" Ilyana sat down across from the doctor. "Isn't it…unusual for me to be so hungry? I'm always hungry for things like chicken…and steak…and chicken-fried steak…and steak-fried chicken…and fruit…a leg of lamb would be soooooo good right now."

Soren swiveled around in his chair a few times before he realized that the chair he was sitting in wasn't meant to spin like that. He shook his head. This was almost as bad as the clinic.

"Well, there are a few possibilities as to why you're hungry all the time, Ilyana," Soren said, pretending to draw breasts in the stone floor with the tip of his cane. "Luckily, most of them don't involve me actually having to look at you."

"What…what are the possibilities?" Ilyana said meekly (as opposed to yelling it loudly or saying it forcefully with a bit of hope and a subtle energy).

"Well, let's see. We'll go through the list of symptoms and see what we find." Soren looked around the room, then peered under his desk. "Oh, crap, just my luck. Do you happen to have a whiteboard handy?"

"Um…what's a 'whiteboard'?"

"Never mind. We'll go down the line, shall we? You're suffering from extreme hunger, you never get full from eating food, you never gain any weight no matter what, and you're frail and sickly all the time, plus you can't take a hit to save your life. And you couldn't double-attack a pile of wood. Did I get all of them?"

Ilyana squeaked. She looked idly out the window and Soren wondered if her problems came from an addiction to "suspect" mushrooms and she was just lying like a junkyard ho about it. Because everybody lies.

"I, um—" Ilyana started.

"Yes?"

"I think it's lupus," she said.

Long pause. Soren blinked. "You think it's—"

"Yes."

"You fool! You know what I'm going to say, right?"

"No."

"You eeeeeeediot!" Soren yelled, and smacked Ilyana on the head with his cane. She yelped, and Soren sighed again. Long day. "You're wrong, by the way."

"So, so, can you help me, doctor?" Ilyana rubbed her head and swayed precariously in her chair. She eyed an apple sitting on Soren's side of the desk and started to feel very light-headed. "It makes me irritable whenever someone takes my food away. And it's hard to make magic go in the right direction on an empty stomach. It's…urr….not a very good feeling. I'm so hungry I thought I hallucinated the other day. I thought I was hunting a Humpback Snorklecracker."

Soren rolled his eyes. His patience was running about as thin as Ilyana's stomach.

"I hate to break this to you—actually I don't really care—but I know exactly what you have," Soren said. "Well, aside from being a loony moon unit, I mean. Ilyana, you have chronic Get-fat-a-few-years-later-itis. It's the only logical way to interpret the constant hunger, the never gaining weight thing, and yada yada yada. Get-fat-a-few-years-later-itis has no long term effects except for the fact that in exactly two years you'll blow up like a hot-air balloon and you'll be so ungodly huge that Ashnard would rise from the dead just to ride you."

"But…but people just tell me I have a good metab—"

"Suuure, that's what they all say," Soren said, rolling his eyes. "I get to do the diagnosing, lady; that's why they pay me the not-so-big bucks."

"Are you sure that's the right diagnosis?"

"Well," Soren said, tapping his chin with his finger. "Considering that I'm right and everyone else is wrong, I think it's safe to say that the diagnosis, at least, is sound. You, on the other hand, are very suspect. Be glad you don't have Neurobeuropullmynosis. Watch out for stray gusts of wind. Cheerio!"

"Um, but I thought, um..."

"Look, do you want me to say you have an eating disorder or something? I mean, excuse me for being scientific!"

"W-well, w-what can I do to help myself get better?" Ilyana asked.

"Well," Soren said, sitting forward with his head in his hands. "There are two surefire things you can do to help yourself. You ready? Okay, first, get the hell out of my office. Second, get a forklift."

"Huh?"

"In two years, you'll be so abysmally chunky, even Gatrie won't hit on you. Now if you'll excuse me, I have business." Soren stood up and twirled his cane. "Doctor Soren needs his alone time. It's what's for dinner!"

Ilyana quietly shuffled out of the room, quietly muttering "dinner" on her way out.

After he had ensured that Ilyana was long gone, Soren sank down into his chair and rustled through his desk. He swept the inside of it clean with his hand, and when he didn't find the comforting feel of bottle, he looked into the dark drawer. At last, he pulled out a bottle of elixir, empty and clear.

Empty.

"Oh shit," Soren said. He started to feel his body shake. He was going into withdrawal already.

"I'm out of Vulnerary."