Quest 08

[newmemorywhodis]

i. Healing is terrible

Like many warriors, Link...was…not the best patient.

Sure, he could sometimes be very still, and patient. He’s spent countless hours on guard duty. But that, somehow, was different from being stuck in a bed. At least guard duty was doing something, even if that something was, paradoxically, standing around doing nothing.

Unfortunately, standing all was rather outside of the question, since thanks to Gaurus the Bleeder, Link’s leg was now broken.

Not that this stopped from attempting to flee his assigned bed wherever possible. In fact he was often seen hobbling around the hospital wing - usually by hopping - as he attempted to find some way to do something useful. Can he help sort medicines? Fold bandages? Clean surgical tools? Cook meals for other patients?

Until the medical staff noticed their rogue patient, and ushered Link back to his bed. Where he would begrudging stay - for a while - until once again restlessness took over, and the cycle begins anew.


ii. Looking after Donnie’s garden [Vault]

When Link is - finally! released from the terrible boredom that was being stuck in the hospital wing, he ends up making his way to Donnie’s underground garden, in the Vault.

For a long while he just sits on the ground by Donnie’s patch, crutches tossed to one side while he stares vacantly at the muddlebuds and bombs flowers.

Link should be helping. He wants to help. He’d find a way, broken leg or not. But any suggestion of Link joining the rescue team had been struck down immediately, so instead Link was here. Not helping at all.

…There’s some weeds around the puffshrooms, though. And the bomb flowers are ready for harvest. At least Link can take care of those.

Slowly, Link gets to work.


iii. Angry angry chickens [Flotsam]

Later - when the rescue is over and the Flotsam fleet is coming back together - Link makes his way back to his dorm room. Where he is met with a very, very angry chicken.

“...Sorry,” he tells Pepper the chicken, as she furiously clucks at him. She also pecks him, repeatedly. But since she mostly just gets at the leg that it’s a cast, he doesn’t actually feel anything.

He does feel pretty guilty, though. She hasn’t had any company - or anyone feeding her. And sure, that’s mainly because getting back had been a bit tricky for Link to manage. He still feels bad regardless.

As an apology, Link starts emptying his pack of several chicken-friendly meals.Meals which Pepper immediately descends upon - although this does not do anything to halt her angry clucking at all.

She’s probably going to be mad at him for a while…


iv. Time to get some sweet wheels [Vault]

They’d given him crutches, to get around on. And they were…okay. They did the job.

But Link had Ultrahand now. He could do better.

So just outside the Armory, with Pepper the chicken keeping him company, Link is making himself a vehicle. He doesn’t have any Zonai devices, but he’s still managed to scrounge up some pieces of wood and metal and a small collection of some wheels.

They’re the sort of thing that you usually wouldn’t expect a man with a broken leg to be able to move easily. Except Link doesn’t need to move at all: he just raises his right up, points it at a wheel, and as his arm temporarily changes in appearance a glowing green light connects the wheel and his arm. And the wheel lifts.

Deftly moving it through the air, Link positions the wheel next to the corner of a plank of wood. Then - as the green light disappears and his arm returns to normal - the wood and wheel move towards each other, as a green glue-light substands sticks the two together.

One wheel down! Now, just three more to go…

Comments

[esperbuthuman]

Mr. Link! Mr. Link!

[A young woman with vibrant green hair can be seen quickly approaching our errant broken-legged knight. She looks mildly distraught]

Mr. Link! Please come back! It's time for your examination!

[newmemorywhodis]

Hey, Link remembers this young woman! Sure, they tried to kill each other once. But it's fine, she's not wearing that crown anymore. He's a bit curious to see what she's like as herself, actually.

...Although he maybe wasn't expecting to find out right now. He's only halfway through the puzzle of stacking this pile of hospital gowns by size and colour.

"...Haven't finished yet," he says, looking at the sheets with a faint frown. He hates leaving a puzzle unsolved.

i cw:death

[blessmefather]

Matt takes a moment of pause by himself in the hall. He lent his help where he could with the injured, but even after the worst of the flee from Vindess ended, there were still a few casualties following, and he went to their bedsides to give them a blessing to leave on a peaceful path straight to Valhalla. He would have to get used to this aspect of his new position.

That should be all for now. He takes a deep breath and his thoughts shift to thinking about what to attend to next.

Then he hears someone hopping down the hall. Curious, Matt turns the corner and walks towards the sound. He hasn't spent enough time with Link to know him by scent- certainly not by sound- but he recognizes the unusually old soul attached to the body. "Link? I thought you were on bedrest after dealing with Gaurus the Bleeder."

iii

[bearsperminute]

While she'd fought alongside Donnie, command felt that having an Armor jock show up to break him out might be a bit too conspicuous. In addition, she was working on becoming an officer-- and so, she'd ended up in the classroom during the mission.

Now it was after, and it still stung a bit; never mind she'd gotten some much-needed rest after taking three missions on in one month.

... Though perhaps not as stinging as an angry chicken vibrating a cast. She waves to Link "You, uh, you okay there?"

[newmemorywhodis]

For a moment, it seems like Link is seriously considering diving behind a nearby laundry cart in a hopeless attempt at stealth. Alas, Link has to concede; he has already been caught.

With stealth sadly off the cards, he's forced to resort to the next best option: blatant misrepresentation.

"I'm good," he says, as he continues to hobble down the hallway. See? Totally fine. Pay no attention to fact that he's clearly still very unstable on his one good leg; that's not important.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link nods his head, and waves back at Kanna. Yes, he's fine; Pepper's just angry.

And also rather territorial; as Kanna approaches, a barrage of furious clucking is similarly directed her way, along with a puffing of Pepper's feathers and a territorial flap of wings. This is her food!

[bearsperminute]

"Easy, I'm not after it." Seems she understands chickens, at least somewhat, as she sits down and avoids taking Pepper's food.

"How's the leg?"

iv. time to get some sweet wheels

[thunderwarden]

Cid may not spend all his time at the Vault, but he's here today. He's been getting the itch to work on something, and while he did have something of a pet project in a mobile container designed to keep food warm during transit, research was also necessary.

And so was a stop at the armory, where a spectacle unfolds that Cid is more than happy to watch as he lights a cigarette, taking a long pull and letting the smoke out slow before he says anything.

"Well, lad, I'd ask if you wanted a hand, but it looks like you've got it covered." Not that he wouldn't help. He loved building things.

[newmemorywhodis]

"Fine." His leg was fine.Irritatingly out of commission, but fine. He'd suffered far worse before; he wasn't dead this time.

If anything, more irritating was being cooped up in the hospital wing. At least now Link was out, and there was no one around nearby who could try and stop him from paragliding with a cast on.

Glancing at Pepper, Link explains: "She's hungry. And hates everyone." Except for Link, sometimes.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link pauses for a moment. Actually, Cid could help, now that Link thought about it. Sure, Link could mostly manage well enough with Ultrahand. But sometimes it was hard to get things to stick exactly how he wanted them to, without things positioned exactly right.

And with only one wheel currently attached to the plank of wood, positioning exactly right was...challenging.

So Link Ultrahands the plank-and-wheel towards Cid, and rotates it into a position that will make attaching the next wheel easier. That is, if Cid holds it up for him.

"Hand please?" Link asks. Hopefully Cid gets the idea.

[esperbuthuman]

"Ummmm..."

Terra looks over what Link appears to be working on.

"Wouldn't those go there?"

She does point out a combination that does, in fact, help with the puzzle.

[bearsperminute]

"Everyone, huh?" She's still going to hang out not being a threat. That does tend to keep animals relatively happy.

"Maybe I might get to 'armed detente' in a few weeks. If I'm lucky."

[newmemorywhodis]

Link peeks at the combination in question. He stares intently for a moment. Then makes a soft noise of realisation.

She's right! That is the right spot!

He quickly re-arranges the gowns she pointed out. A few more soon follow, and then all the gowns are correctly sorted. Success!

[newmemorywhodis]

Link cocks his head to one side, a faint frown on his face at the word 'detente'. Even if he doesn't talk much, he's gotten pretty good at understanding Imperial. But 'detente' isn't one of the ones he's familiar with.

Translation, please?

[bearsperminute]

"er... Armed truce?"

[esperbuthuman]

Terra giggles a little.

"Are you able to come back for your examination now?"

[newmemorywhodis]

Link hums in acknowledgement; that did make more sense.

At that moment though, Pepper briefly pauses in her consumption of the foot to viciously peck at Link's cast. She's still made at him, it seems. Though Link doesn't seem particularly bothered.

"No truces for Pepper."

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks; looking down at the pile of gowns. Oh. The puzzle was done now?

He sighs, and nods. Yes, he can come back through. Though he's not exactly keen for it. Not because of the examination itself - he's fine with that. But afterwards, he knows want him back in bed again.

And then he'll be bored, again.

[esperbuthuman]

"Do you... not want to go back?"

Terra finds this puzzling, but she has perhaps an abnormally high tolerance for hospital beds and tests.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link blinks at her.

"...Bed's boring."

[esperbuthuman]

Well. That's a new one. Terra blinks in surprise.

"...did you need more books?"

[newmemorywhodis]

Link hums a soft negative. No, he didn't need more books.

Mainly because he still couldn't read Imperial particularly well. And there was only so long that he could tolerate lying around, reading in a language that wasn't native to him, without feeling the need to move.

Do something.

Be useful.

[esperbuthuman]

"...food?"

She's going to figure this out Link, or at least she thinks she is.

[newmemorywhodis]

Link's face doesn't tend to show a lot of expression. But there's a slight widening of the eyes which suggests that food is definitely an effective incentive.

"You have food?"

[bearsperminute]

"No truce with tiny furies, huh, Pepper?" She seems to have a god humor about it, pleased as punch to meet this new old friend of Link's.

It probably won't win her any favors with this particular chicken, but it's sure helped elsewhere. Glad to see you're doing better, then."