Simple Skutters

Who: Keto, Shakespeare
Where: Air ventilation ducts
When: During the madness
=========================
<<SNIP>>
Keto picked up his jacket and threw it on angrily. "Grab anything you
need and follow me." He stormed out of his quarters, Shakespeare
timidly in pursuit.
<<END SNIP>>
Keto was currently a very unhappy man. This, of course, was primarily
due to the fact that Shakespeare had reappeared. That alone would
have been enough to build up a month-long bad mood.
The fact that he was currently crawling through an air duct with the
pathetic surgeon simply added insult to injury, requiring Keto to stay
in relatively close contact with the man - close enough, at least,
that he could not get away from Shakespeare's incessant jabbering.
The final straw was that Keto's run-in with the stasis cabinet earlier
seemed to have had an unpleasant side effect. His left ear was now
several minutes younger than his left and, for some reason Keto
couldn't quite explain, the effect was still lingering.
In short, Doctor Keto was hearing everything correctly in his right
ear, and then hearing it again two minutes later in his left.
This did nothing to improve his conversational skills.
"No, I do not think we are going the right way!" snarled Keto
irritably. Shakespeare turned and looked at him.
"Charles," the surgeon replied slowly, looked worried, "Thou hast
already answered that question mere moments ago. Be'est thou all right?"
"I'm fine," growled Keto, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to
concentrate solely on what he heard through his right ear, "It's just
a slight hearing problem. It'll go away, unlike my much bigger problem."
"Bigger problem?"
"YOU, you insipid creature! You're leading us in circles! We're
SUPPOSED to be making our way to the Supply Fields on the lower decks,
to track down something we can poke or inject into you to prove that
you're a demon, so that I can persuade everybody else to eject you
from an airlock!"
Shakespeare gasped.
"A lock of air? Nay!" he exclaimed, "I am no minion of hell! I am
thy old friend, Shakespeare! Tis the truth!"
"NO I AM NOT ALL RIGHT!" snapped Keto, then shook his head as he
realised that he'd passed this point in the torture...sorry,
conversation...already. "Look," he continued, gritting his teeth,
"We're lost, I'm hearing everything twice, and you're an idiot. This
is not a winning formula. We need to get out of these ducts, into a
corridor and work out where the smeg we are."
"But Charles!" protested Shakespeare as Keto began unscrewing a nearby
access hatch, "What about the foul beasts whose blood be darkest ooze
and whose breath be the blackest vapors of hell?"
"They're both back in the medibay," muttered Keto, before raising his
voice, "We'll avoid the skutters, cretin."
He finished unscrewing the access hatch and swung it open, clambering
down with Shakespeare following. "Besides," Keto continued as they
descended, "Their brains are the size of small slightly-damaged eggs.
How clever could they be?"
There was a whirring as Keto's feet hit the deck. He looked down.
A large group of skutters was in the corridor, weapons levelled at them.
"Charles," said Shakespeare in a timid voice, "Methinketh...clever."
There was a pause as the two medical officers stared at the group of
armed skutters, who stared right back. Then Keto raised one hand and
pointed at Shakespeare.
"Hi," he said brightly, "THIS guy thinks your brains are the size of
damaged eggs!"
And then he turned and ran.
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OOC: Tag anybody! :)