Ordinary Days

[Huitzil]

Paul sticks his head out of the bathroom, his hair matted and wet. "Hey, dingus! You told him we're going to be staying here for a couple of weeks, right?"

[Brian]

"Steak sandwiches," Ginrai replies with a certain lack of enthusiasm.  "You know, there's no cow in any of the hospital food I've been eating so far.  Just thought I'd, you know, point that out for you."

[Dracos]

Dracos' smirk could be heard almost through the phone, "Oh, then you'll abso-lutely love the meal.  See you later man."  Dracos closed the phone connection and turned it off, "Of course I did, nutfucker."

Dracos went and used the shower to clean off.  Presuming Huitz doesn't get in the way, he contacts the airport folks to get an evening ticket out for the three of them.  Following that he sees about getting two steak sandwiches and a chicken sandwich, as well as transportation to the hospital and then the airport, all timed appropriately according to the planned schedule.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

"Whatever you say, cockdoctor. Hey, do you know anywhere around here where I can use the Inter-web real quick? I wanna check the Shelob's lair previews."

As he says this, he picks up the first note he wrote, with 'Rain, Tokyo on Monday Jan 8?' on it, from a messy and disorganized heap of notepapers with his pencil-scrawl on them.

[Dracos]

"Dunno, check with the embassy staff."

Dracos gestured idly, ~Once you are done packing of course.~

Dracos

[Huitzil]

Paul nods and starts packing up, throwing his clothes haphazardly into the suitcase. As he does so, he checks out the clothes Bjorn got him for a really, really ugly shirt, on the chance that Bjorn picked one up at Goodwill as sort of a "fuck you" for making him go clothes shopping for him.

[Brian]

Assuming differences in taste, it was in the bargain bin, he really was pissed at you making him do your shopping, or they hid it in the bag to get rid of it, you do in fact, find the loudest, ugliest, most horrid short imaginable.

It's a button-up, pseduo silk material that LOOKS cheap even beyond the snot-green and vomit-yellow splotches that someone, somewhere, probably claims is designer.

You think it looks like someone trained a monkey to throw bad colors at a canvas, and then made it into a shirt.

Upon closer inspection, you're glad no one personally looked through every part of your baggage when you boarded the flight, because this shirt might actually violate customs.

[Huitzil]

Paul smiles and walks into the bathroom with the shirt and an armful of other clothes. After a quick shower (quick meaning only 20 minutes), he puts on the Ugly Shirt, then puts on a button-up flannel shirt over it. He then walks out of the bathroom and, assuming no interference from Phil, walks down to the first floor to ask about Interweb-services.

[Brian]

One of the desk women says that they do have a specific internet workshop on the third floor, with a few PCs for "Checking your e-mail, and such.  No naughty stuff, now."

The PC internet library is aging, hosting about five working iMacs, all of which are running the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer, and which have CNN.com set as the home-page.

[Huitzil]

Paul hops on the closest one and does exactly what he said, checking the Shelob's Lair previews. (Hey, you gotta take opportunities when you can get 'em) In another window, however, he has Yahoo! Weather open, and after clicking around for forecasts in various parts of France (in case it's being monitored, you see, that way the cover story is more believable), he starts checking past weather reports. Specifically, the weather report for Tokyo, on Monday, January 8th.

[Brian]

Tokyo had a rainy morning that day.

Also, the Bears are looking like they might take the superbowl.

[Huitzil]

Paul's features become stone-grim. He continues to move and click the mouse, as he had planned to do just to really, really throw off anyone monitoring his computer usage, but he isn't clicking anything -- even though his eyes are open, he doesn't even see the screen. All he sees is a girl in a hospital bed, her brother knelt by her side, rose petals falling outside the window.

He stands up, eyes looking ten thousand miles away. As he walks by the woman who directed him to the terminals, he mutters a "thank you" and keeps walking. He walks, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, all the way back to his room, where he opens the door and wordlessly flops onto the bed.

It was real. Dear God. It was real. There's a man in the hospital whose life I have to save. And the only thing I know of my plan is, I have a really ugly shirt.

[Dracos]

"Yo, get up.  Fooding time.  I'm headed out for some real grub."  Dracos picked up his bag and gesturing for Huitzil to follow.  Dracos headed out, first finding a place in the embassy that would exchange some cash, and then getting in the cab and asking to be taken first to a local sandwich joint and then to the hospital.

Dracos

[Brian]

Your plan has a sizable flaw in it, that being your assumption you can make it past the reporters that are loitering before the embassy, just waiting for you to walk out.  They snap a lot of pictures of you on your way to the gate (much to the annoyance of the guards), but don't look like they plan on moving any time soon.

There's probably about eight guys, five of them with cameras (bright flashes, too), one of them a video camera, and the rest with microphones or notepads, and they're all clamoring for your attention.

[Dracos]

Dracos heads back quickly.  "They are still out there?  Bloody heck, can't even go get a sandwich."

Dracos checks with the embassy to see if they can get the two of them out of there, to the sandwich place and then to go see ginrai.

Dracos