~Ugh, would you believe that the last couple chapters I had worked out got screwed up on my flash drive so that now I can't use them? Bugger that sucks...and I really don't want to have to write all that stuff up again, it won't be the same, y'know? So instead I'm just going to plow ahead into the actual game and go from there...yeah. At least things'll start to follow along the set-up as I have it better now, so that should be good...
PS- I hope I got that doctor-guy's name right, I dunno, somebody told me they got it from somewhere and I just went with it. If it's a made up name and I took it I apologize but that's what I heard and I've no clue where they got it from.
Tiedemann's sitting in his office, his face buried in his hands. The past week and a half has been for him a total nightmare, what with having to deal with the deaths of both a patient and one of his higher-end doctors, the latter of which he still couldn't explain for the life of him. The whole room spattered with a fine coating of gore, the bulk of a body missing, and no one to blame in the slightest for it? Ugh...
And the paperwork was still piling up on his desk. He'd authorized an investigation, but of course because the doings here were as secret as they were, he couldn't inform anyone of this, so the rest of the Administration was just going to have to stick it; he neither could nor would tell them anything beyond the fact that yes, the guy was, in fact, dead. Funny, though, how a doctor can become such a big deal post-mortem...none of these people harrasing him now had given a lick about this guy prior to. Damn waste of paper, this mess was...
Just as Tiedemann's about to set to work trying to diminish the number of papers on his desk, however-
"ARGH!" he howls in frustration at the lack of a handy pen, only to hear a shriek in front of him that causes him to shriek in turn. Rather highly pitched, for that matter...
"What the- what the hell do you want?" roars an enraged Tiedemann as his secretary cowers before him. A second later and three guards troop in, Pulse Rifles drawn.
"You shrieked, sir?" one of them says importantly after a quick scan of the area. The other two promptly seize the poor secretary and start hustling her out of the room at gunpoint.
"Don't worry, sir!" calls one of them over his shoulder. "We're detaining her now!"
"Move it, you!" barks the other as the secretary cries out in a panic.
"What the-?" the EarthGov Director starts, unable to keep up with the whirl of action going on around him. "Oh for the love of God!" he snaps finally, jumping up from behind his desk.
"Don't you mean 'Altman'?" queries the lead guard.
Tiedemann chooses to ignore that one-liner from hell. "Bring her back here! That's my secretary!"
"No-can-do, sir." The guard says flatly.
"And why not?" snarls the Director. Being talked down to by a guard is not on the list of 'Things That Just Might Amuse Tiedemann'. Far from it, actually.
"She's already been detained, sir. She'll be up before the EarthGov Firing Squad by noon tomorrow."
Tiedemann's face falls. "Are you that thick, man? She wasn't even armed! You could tell that just by-!"
"I understand that, sir, but Section 3-4-8 of the EarthGov Statute of Guard Behavior states that-" here the guard clears his throat loudly before continuing, " 'Should the Director shriek in such a fashion as to have one assume that a five year old girl just saw a spider in his quarters, whatever the cause is found to be is to be detained immediately or killed on sight.' End quote." The man sighs. "You're lucky we chose to detain her, that Perkins guy we just hired can get pretty trigger-happy. At least this way you can go down and file for her release." He shrugs. Tiedemann, however, looks like his eyes are about to pop out of their sockets and roll laps around on the floor.
"When...the hell...did that one come about?" he says, trying to contain the urge to crack that man in his helmet with a weighty bookend before going to harass his own superiors.
"When the rulebook was revised, sir. You should look it over sometime."
"...You're dismissed until further notice." growls Tiedemann, peering up at the man even though his head is still turned down from having a minute ago been glaring down his desk. The soldier snaps a salute and marches out, but just as the door opens for him to leave...
"WAIT!"
"Yes, sir?" the confused guard turns.
A pause. Then: "...I did not shriek like a girl."
"Not at all, sir." responds the guard, blessing his helmet for how well it hides his facial features. Just because his voice is straight doesn't mean his face is; he can already feel the fresh tears of mirth rolling down his cheeks. "You shrieked in a very -manly- manner. ...May I go now, sir?" he asks, for fear that the Director might see him quivering with the effort of holding in his amusement and 'dismiss' him in a whole different way.
Tiedemann's eyes narrow a moment as he scrutinizes the guard, before finally waving him off. "Yes, yes. Go." The guard snaps another salute and scoots off in a hurry, causing Tiedemann to wonder...
And yet, with the patients...or, at least, the only one that matters anyway...
Ever since the 'group therapy' incident, despite the fact that the patient's are finally starting to shake off their various breaks and bruises from their last encounter with each other, both the hospital staff and Tiedemann are of the belief that they should still give it more time before trying that kind of stunt again. Beneficial as it may be, rushing something of this magnitude is not an option (especially owing the trouble the 'cleaning up' process has caused). So sessions are resumed as they went before and the mishaps are kept as minimal as humanly possible...though like these people have any real say in that...
"Right, let's try this shit again," Dr. Foster announces as he re-takes his seat, having just gotten himself a large espresso to help him continue the interview with Patient Four through a bruised eye and an even more-bruised ego. "Now, where I believe we left off. You were telling me about-"
"They're in the hallway," Isaac breathes, suddenly staring hard into space. Edgar Foster's face falls. Oh boy.
"That's the video rental guys," He responds shortly, so very much not in the mood for this, the usual bull. "They're bringing in a shipment of movies the Department requested. Something about 'patient entertainment'. Now-" he skims through his notes. "-We were discussing those nightmares of yours," he looks up to see Isaac's still in his previous fog. "Any day now," Foster grumbles, tapping his pen against the desk irritably as he waits for Isaac to come back.
He's just beggining to nod off when-
"AH! THE VENTS! THEY'RE IN THE VENTS-AUGH!" screams Mr. Clarke, whipping backwards out of his chair as Foster starts horribly and nearly follows suit.
"What the-?" he cries as the engineer thrashes around on the floor like a man possessed, floundering around with his straightjacket. "WHY me? Why?"
10 minutes later...
"For the sake of MY sanity, just tell me what the hell her name was!" Foster moans after about the fifth time asking, his head down on the table. Just next to him is an ashtray with about eight spent cigarrettes in it, and a ninth one smoldering away, and they've only been in this session now for little over an hour. Imply something?
"Who?" Isaac questions in all seriousness. Foster raises his head to meet the engineer's gaze.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Nope."
"Awwl...!" Foster claps a hand to his forehead as Isaac just smiles over at him, unaware of anything being amiss.
Some time after that...
"Nicole," Isaac growls, as though unveiling the name of some sworn adversary, narrowing his eyes at the wall behind Foster.
"Oh thank God!" Foster sighs, his hair on end by now as a side-effect of having to deal with his patient. As if on cue, however, wouldn't you know it-
"I didn't want it to end like this," Nicole coos, suddenly right behind Foster.
"AH! Eddie, look out!" Isaac starts.
"Ah hell!" Foster takes the 'cue' and quickly uses the excuse presented to dart out to go fetch his third espresso, leaving Isaac alone with...her.
"I really wanted to see you again." she continues softly. "I loved you. I've always loved you..." She grins at him and winks.
"Hey wait..." Isaac ponders aloud. "Why don't you look, y'know...dead?" He shrugs at the lack of a better word.
Before she can answer, Foster bustles back in. He drinks heavily from his large cup before bringing it back down onto the table a little harder than intended, so that a few drops of espresso fleck onto his notes.
"Nicole Brennan!" he cries as he wipes off said notes. "She was a Senior Medical Officer aboard-!"
"The Ishimura," Isaac adds before Foster can finish his sentence. Behind Foster, Nicole nods in silence.
"Yes!" Foster exclaims, sitting back down. "The USG Ishimura!" My God, I might actually get to go home tonight! he thinks as he presses on with the interview. "Part of a mining operation on-"
"Aegis 7," Isaac finishes for him yet again. Foster narrows his eyes, er, eye. One was already narrowed on account of Mr. Clarke.
FLASHBACK...
"Isaac!" barks a male voice from somewhere within the void of his sub-conscious.
Who the hell is Isaac? he thinks, but then a second later-
"AH-GOD!" he shouts as a hand collides with the back of his head.
"Ugh, not this again," groans the voice from before. "Mr. Clarke!" a rapid snapping sound is heard. Opening his eyes, he sees a man snapping his fingers in his face.
"What the hell was that for?" he rubs the back of his head as the man in front of him shakes his own and jots something down in a book.
"Subject required the use of mild force to regain focus after the second test," the man says into an audio log. That's not important though. What is important is...
"HEY! Get your meat-hooks off my Pi!" roars Isaac, earning an awkward glance from the addressed.
"Excuse me?" the doctor says, setting his pen inside his shirt pocket and fixing his subject with a bemused gaze.
"My Pi!" Isaac snarls again, shooting daggers at the doctor. "Put him down or so help me-"
"Hmph. And what're you going to do?" the doctor sneers, but that quickly changes as Isaac lunges across the table after him before he can really react properly.
"THIS!" screams the enraged Isaac, and suddenly those two're thrashing around on the floor like a couple of wild animals. After a quick box in the eye, courtesy of our beloved engineer, downs the 'good doctor', Isaac jumps up with his prize Pi, only to realize...
"Hey, wait a minute..." he pouts. "You aren't Pi-ACK!" he suddenly drops to the floor, out cold. The guard responsible for the knock-out blow looms over the doctor as he rubs his sore eye.
"What the hell do you want?" the doctor snaps, seeing the look on the guard's face.
"Only to tell you that I just sent that vid to the rest of the staff on this floor," the guard chortles, putting away his mobile device. The doctor pales instantly.
"Y-You bastard son of a-!"
END FLASHBACK
"I don't remember that part," Isaac says cheerfully from across the table as the doctor returns to the here and now.
"What are you talking about?" The doctor scowls, but then... "Wait a minute...did you...?" he chokes as Isaac just nods, unaware of any harm done. Or, for that matter, just how wrong that whole concept is.
"Yeah, weird huh?" he says as the doctor's uninjured eye twitches furiously. A few moments of awkward silence and some serious eye-twitching later...
"You should really get that checked out." Isaac says, staring.
"I'm going to choose to forget that whole conversation." Foster shakes his head.
"That's probably best." nods the deranged engineer.
More odd silence later...
"Ok, really now," Foster finally says, sounding more like himself as we all know him from the actual opening of DS2.
"Getting back to the matter at hand..." After scanning his notes, Foster sees where they left off. "Right," he says, more to himself than his patient. "We were talking about the mining operation on Aegis 7. I understand communications went down shortly after their arrival. You were-"
Again Isaac cuts him off. "-part of the repair mission. Yep." he nods, grinning dimly. 'Eddie' glares, but continues on.
"Yes. A mission you volunteered for, am I right?"
"I just said 'yep' you-"
"Alright!" snaps the doctor, leaning over the table to stare down the guy in the straightjacket (oooo scary). He then states in an undertone, "Listen, you, you're cutting in on my lines, dammit. I've gotta look professional, y'know." He frowns deeply, but even deeper still when Isaac adds to that.
"You're probably gonna want to use some hair gel then," Isaac suggests as the other sits back and picks up his drink again, followed quickly by a long drag on that ninth cig previously mentioned.
The interview continues (as it should), right up until Isaac's dead girlfriend (having gone wholly unnoticed until this very moment) climbs up on the desk, and then it gets weird again.
Hot damn! My lucky night! Isaac thinks wildly as she perches before him. Take it off, baby!
Sadly for him, all he gets instead is:
"Make us whole!" she hisses in his face, and then he blacks out.
"Son of a bitch," Foster sighs heavily, having just called a guard to cart Mr. Clarke's dead ass back to his holding area. "I hate my job." He packs up his equipment and hustles out, shaking off the serious thrill of the chills that just came over him. Why the hell was he staring at me like that? He thinks as he recalls the look on Patient Four's face just before he passed out. Like a deprived man at a strip joint...
"Why was his tongue hanging out like that?" comments a necromorph from their 'home', having just finished probing through Nicole's thoughts along with all the others.
"Oooooooooh! Get it!" calls out a slasher, doing pelvic thrusts to emphasize the point. As the others hoot and jeer, Nicole's voice shrieks through all of their subconcious, "STAY OUT OF MY MIND YOU SICK SONS OF BISCUITS!"
"...What's a biscuit?" asks one of the horde quietly as they all shrink down like children just put in a time-out.
"Maybe this is a biscuit," pipes up a lurker, using one of the tentacles from it's back to hold up the keycard that had been stolen some time before. Before anything can be said or done otherwise, the lurker promptly swallows said keycard, causing the rest to stare on and yowl out in horror.
"NOOOOOOOO!"
The lurker looks pleasantly oblivious as it comments, "Not bad. Could've used something though, it wasn't nearly as good as-EEEEYAH!" it screams as it suddenly goes sailing across the room and smacks off a far wall.
"And she says this is a BAD thing!" barks the enraged divider that just booted that little creatin. "NOW how are we going to free the Master?"
"We could always fall back on Dave's idea," shrugs one of the many slashers, gesturing a sythed arm toward a nearby leaper.
"And just, er, what was that again?"
"What, 'tearing down the establishment'?" Dave prompts.
"Yeah, yeah that's the one!"
"Hmm...and just how did that go again?"
~And off we go! To hell with the 'seriousness' attempts (unless you like them...like chapter 3 type-seriousness though), this fic was founded on madness and that's where it's gonna stay! -Hopefully it works out and still qualifies as 'funny'...? Eh, expect the bizarre in future installments. Untill then!~