Episode 6: Haar and Nolan go to Crimea Castle pt. 1

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(A/N: I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry...)

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"Hey, 37, let's both get butt-naked and start bangin' on the bathroom floor."

Doctor Soren always knew great conversation starters. When he went into his office with 37 early the next morning, he knew exactly what to say to get the ball rolling.

"Huhhh?" Number 37 said.

The doctor sighed. "Maybe I'll ask Nurse Anna and Ilyana when they come in."

"That's right!" 37 said, perking up. Soren took note. "You said you were going to introduce me to your nurses. I swear, if you were lying about having hot nurses, I'll—"

"You'll what? Bitch-slap me to hell and back? Pff. Think again, sista. I'm big pimpin'." Soren fished around in his desk for a bag of chewy worms and scarfed a few handfuls down. "They'll be in soon enough. You'll like them. My hos, I mean. Ilyana is a short-skirted schoolgirl with a metabolism like a pinball machine, and Anna is a red-headed slut. You'll love them. Promise."

"Oh…okay," 37 said, smiling.

Someone knocked on the door, and Doctor Soren yelled, "Come in!" Titania walked into the room, her bright white and gold breast…plate shimmering in the morning sun. Her red mare-tail of hair swooshed around jovially.

37 stood up quickly, breathless. "Is this…the red-headed slut? SQUEEEEE! KYAAAAA! She's cyuuute!"

Titania gasped. Soren said, "Uh oh."

"DOCTOR Soren," Titania said, obviously appalled. "I see the new doctor has learned how you secretly address me."

"Oh come on, Titanny, it's a form of endearment. Just like 'angst-ridden donkey-balled dirtbag.'"

"That wasn't a compliment," 37 said, but both Soren and Titania loudly shushed her.

"Uh huh," Titania said, her hands on her beautifully well-proportioned hips. "I'm sure. Doctor Soren, aren't you going to introduce me?"

"Oh, yeah, right. 37, this is Titanny—"

"Titania."

"Titanny, and Titanny, this is 37."

"In a row?" Titania said, incredulous.

"No, she's the only one," Soren said.

"I get that a lot," Number 37 noted.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you…er, Number 37. If that is your real name."

"I could tell you my real name anytime," 37 said quickly, smiling very prettily. "Maybe sometime tonight, over drinks?"

"I prefer to keep my professional relationships professional," Titania said politely. "And I like my drinks on fire. Oh, now that I think about it, Doctor Soren…ya fired."

"WHAT?"

"HAH! Just kidding!" Titania said, laughing triumphantly. "You should have seen the look on your face! HA HA! I'm not giving you the sack, doctor! I mean I hired a fat eunuch with a body odor problem to hold a match to you and burn your clothes. There, you're 'fired', see? HA HA!"

37 laughed and Soren grimaced.

"That was funny!" 37 said. "I'd like to hear some more of your jokes."

Titania blinked. "Um, sure, yes. So, Doctor Soren…"

"Yeah?"

"We have a problem. Lord Grand Master Duke Pompington the Seventh and One-Halfth, the grandmaster of dirty tricks, has sanctioned you for being, and I quote, 'An enormous ass'. I don't think I need to remind you he has the power to make your life a living hell."

"Oh, here's what I think of that," the doctor said. Soren reached into his drawers and grabbed his nuts…then he ATE THEM.

37 gasped.

"These are good," Soren said. Since he was a little boy, Soren had always loved to eat honey-roasted peanuts. In fact, he always kept a tin of them in the top drawer of his desk. "37, you don't like nuts?"

"I'm allergic to them."

"Why am I not surprised?" Soren said, chuckling. "I love nuts. They taste so good."

Titania cleared her throat. "Soren, this is a serious matter. Duke Pompington is as rich as the sun and almost as much power as the Queen. He could make your world a very dismal place indeed."

"A little slow on the draw there then, isn't he, Titanny? I'm already living in a crapsack world." Soren quipped, still chomping his nuts. He smiled in a way magical enough to make anyone in the universe spontaneously drop trou. With his free hand he tried to whack Titania on the head with his stick, but she was out of range, and Soren was unwilling to move from his swivel chair, so he decided to just spin around and say "Whee!" instead.

"Whee!" Soren said.

Titania rolled her eyes. "Be serious, Doctor Soren. We could be in an inordinate amount of trouble." Titania suddenly turned to 37. "May I ask why you are called 37, miss? Of course, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

Soren snickered. "They gave her a number and took away her name."

"I'm not a secret agent woman, if that's what you mean," 37 said. "Although I have been mistaken for a 'Stocks and Bonds' Girl, whatever that means."

"Then you must be going down, in this market." Soren quipped.

"I've been told I'm good at going down, yes," 37 said, fluttering her eyelids proudly. From the other side of the door, Anna giggled uncontrollably.

"ANNA!" Soren shouted. "My sexfriend! Get in here, you slut-headed red—er, red-headed slut—and meet the new doctor on staff!"

Anna opened the door and walked in. Red-haired, slim, and sexy as all hell, referred to on the streets as "Anna the Tutorial Girl" because she taught a lot of lucky boys how to do a few things they never knew how to do before. Soren watched with no small measure of amusement as Number 37's jaw DROPPED.

"Don't even think about it," Soren said, trying to contain his laughter. "She has a boyfriend. Some tight-suited sailor boy named Jake. Captain Jake Starling. Which of course precludes her from having sexual relationships with any other persons because we all know she's entirely monogamous. No, I'm not kidding."

"Tee hee. I don't know what that means, but…" Anna bounced up to 37. "I don't think we've been introduced. You didn't tell me you had another woman, Doctor Kierkegaard!"

"I'm not 'his woman'," 37 insisted indignantly. "I'm a free woman. And I'm not involved with anyone right now, so I'm free to date whatever women I want."

"Tee hee. You mean, 'whatever men I want', right?"

"N-No, I said women."

"Tee hee. Wait…" Anna scratched her head. "How…does that work? Two women? Together? But then you don't have a co—"

"OK!" Titania said quickly. "Thank you, Miss Nurse Person. Now, no more of that. Doctor Soren, the bottom line is that the Almighty Council wants ten DOCUMENTED cases of you actually helping people overcome a serious illness. And you're not allowed to use anyone you've healed in the past."

"Oh, that's really going to limit my options," Soren said, snorting.

"You have one week from today to find ten people with serious ailments and cure them. And don't just make up fake names like you do with those bullshit prescriptions."

"What are you talking about?" Soren snapped, but his heart skipped (like his heart, Soren made sure no one could see him skipping; he had already got a lot of grief and a nickname ['Backdoor Sor'] for doing that in public.)

"Don't play dumb with me, Soren. I know about the Vulnerary."

"Yeah, but, you know, in a dramatic scene like this where you accuse me of forging prescriptions to get pain medication for my crippling addiction, you could at least wait until the new doctor and the red-headed slut have left the room!"

"Who?" Titania said, and she seemed genuinely confused. Soren was faced with the reality that Titania seemed to have forgotten there was anyone else in the room. Either that or she just plain didn't give a crud.

"Give me a break, Titanny," Soren grumbled. He clomped over to the door with his cane and when he got there, he held his hand out like Vanessa Green showcasing a prize on 'The Wheel O' Luck.' "I got bigger things to deal with than you."

"Like your ego."

Anna gasped and 37 said "Oh, snap!"

"Touche, Titanny," said the doctor.

"That's why older women are so great!" said 37, giggling. "They're so smart. And so reliable!"

"I'm not 'old', Miss 33," Titania replied, her lips pursed. "And, Soren? I'm not going to bail you out if you flornk this up. You have to prove to me I was right to put my trust in you. Well then, Miss Teehee, Miss 72, if you'll excuse me."

37 watched Titania walk out the door, then her gaze immediately turned to Anna.

Meanwhile, Soren was deep in thought, clutching his cane so hard it snapped and turned into two fish.

"Oh, dammit," Soren said. "I hate it when that happens." The two blue fish were flopping around on the floor helplessly. It was a recurring problem: whenever Soren broke anything out of anger, the borked pieces of whatever it was he broke magically turned into animals. That one time he broke his writing desk with a karate chop, he found himself taking care of a sheep and a gazelle. When he hit a watchtower with his cane so hard it collapsed, he found himself with two elephants.

It was annoying sometimes. On the positive side, it was cheaper to buy a wooden cane from the pirate with a prosthetic limb that hung out by the docks than it was to buy fish from Ol' Genghis Bob the Fishmongol. Therefore, whenever he wanted a fresh dinner of cod just for the halibut, he bought a cane cheap and commenced to breakin'.

"I SMELL FISH!" Number 37 blurted suddenly, and Anna giggled.

Soren was about to berate the two women for their sheer idiocy when there was a knock at the door.

"Tee hee. Is Titania back?" Anna asked, but instead of the Dean Queen of Mean so Mean It's Obscene, the voice was meek and nearly inaudible through the door.

"Um…it's me."

Soren rolled his eyes. "Ilyana, open the door."

"Um…I can't."

"Why not?"

"Um…it's too heavy. Too…hungry…"

"Gaw dammit," Soren said, limping across the room. He flung open the door. "Get in here."

Ilyana drunkenly stumbled into the room and promptly collapsed.

"Oh my gaw!" 37 said, and she rose up from her beanbag chair like the bride of Frank-n'-berry. "That girl…is so HOT!"

"I think she's unconscious. That makes her even hotter, right? Tee hee—no, wait, that's not funny."

Soren hauled Ilyana up by the underarms and put her back on her feet. She groaned.

"Hun…gry…fish?" Ilyana's head jerked up. "I smell fish."

Anna giggled.

"Shut up, Anna."

"Tee hee…whatever you say, Doctor Kierkegaard!"

"Why don't you make yourself useful and go find some people who have problems. And not 'clinic' problems, 'problem' problems. Like their arm is falling off or something. You know...FRESH MEAT! Tell them that if they let me help them, I'll give them two free fish."

"Can do, doctor! Tee hee."

"Oh, and pick me up some more of those wooden canes. If ol' One-Eye One-Leg One-Arm One-Tooth One-Ball Willie Blondbeard is having his two-for-one special, get six. For the price of three, of course."

"Your wish is my co-plan!" Nurse Anna skipped out of the room, and 37 whined briefly before turning her sights to the beautiful wisp of a girl who seemed reinvigorated by the smell of fish. 37 made a note of that.

"I am…so hungry," Ilyana said, when it was just the three of them (they can make it if they try, just the three of them.) "Is that fish I smell?"

"Oh ya. You want it, Nurse Ilyana? Well, you can have it, babe." Soren hobbled to his desk, found one of the flopping blue fishies (who stared at Soren), and threw it to Ilyana. Of course, it smacked her in the face and sent her flying. "Remember, fish goes right to your ass. If you don't mind being a FAT PIG then by all means be my guest."

Ilyana wasted no time ripping into the fish, taking a huge chomp out of its side, scales and all. The fish was mortified, 37 was amused, and Soren seemed ambivalent about the whole thing. On one hand, eating the fish alive saved the time needed to cook it. On the other hand, you have the fish, who is looking at you while you murderously cannibalize it.

"You know, cutie, if you ever want to try a fish taco…I might be able to help you out," 37 said, winking.

Somewhere along the line, Soren's proverbial donkey of thought brayed and wandered down a different path, hopefully not one that led to a Gallian "donkey performance art." While riding hard the proverbial ass, Soren realized that two doctors was not going to be enough. Anna was going to screw twenty men for every legitimate patient she found, and Ilyana…well, Ilyana was Ilyana. She had her uses (at least she didn't need that forklift yet) but doing simple tasks was not one of them. 37 was at least somewhat capable, but she alone could not help Soren reach his 10 patient limit in a week. He needed fresh meat.

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(Author's Note: Part 2 coming up soon! …okay, that's a lie, but it'll come out…eventually. You may have noticed that neither Haar nor Nolan show up in this chapter. Well, that may be true, but...hey look, a fish!

Anyway, for lack of a better place to put a series of author's notes about all the pop-culture references I jammed into this chapter, I'll put a short list right here. Random-ass, often stupid, utterly non-sequitur references include, but is not limited to: Clerks, Suikoden, It Wasn't Me, James Bond, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Monty Python's Life of Brian, The Apprentice, Pirates of the Caribbean, Wheel of Fortune, Frankenstein, plus yet more references to an obscure Danish philosopher, not to mention the CHAPTER TITLE and the SERIES TITLE…and that's just this chapter!

Thanks for reading!

…Please don't leave.)