Nightfall

Keto angrily shuffled forwards on his hands and knees, ducking to
avoid smashing his head on yet another smegging pipe jutting out of
the ceiling of this smegging vent above a smegging corridor chasing a
smegging appendix!
"Kind of cramped in here, isn't it, Charlie?" asked Wildflower
behind him. Keto took a deep breath and said nothing. Wildflower
had effectively won a victory by default by using 'Charlie' as his
name - Keto couldn't afford to waste that much breath to refute the
name.
"What makes you think it's up here?" asked Wildflower, and *that*
made Keto stop - so suddenly, in fact, that Wildflower crawled into
the back of him.
"What?" he asked quietly.
"I was wondering what makes you think it's up here..." said
Wildflower. Keto turned his head to one side, the closest he could
actually get to turning around menacingly, and repeated, "What?"
"I was wond..."
"YOU were the one who said you saw it up here!" growled Keto.
"I was?"
"YES!"
"Ah. I might have been mistaken," murmured Wildflower, and Keto
closed his eyes.
"Wildflower, I swear, when we find that creature, it'll be a
difficult decision for me whether to stick IT or YOU in the
quarantine chamber!" he snapped.
As they crawled on, Keto now looking for some grating out of the
vent, he muttered, "And then vacuum it..."
There was a clang, and a small grating clattered to the floor.
Keto tried to lower himself calmly down, lost his grip and Wildflower
accidentally knelt on his fingers, and ended up falling awkwardly to
the floor.
"Charlie, are you all right?" asked Wildflower, landing with far
more skill. Keto climbed to his feet, refusing the proffered helping
hand up.
"No," he muttered, "I am NOT all right. Due to your INCOMPETANCE
we are now chasing your mutated organ about the ship, without a clue
as to where it could be! Do you have any ideas, hmm? Because I'd
like to hear them! Really, I would! Where in the world could your
mutated, living, intelligent and corrosive appendix be hiding, hmm?"
As Keto spoke, however, the lights above the two of them
flickered. Both glanced up as the dim yellow bulbs switched
off...on...off......on......off............
"Great," said a voice from the darkness, "Now, as well as all that,
we have to deal with this. Why have the lights gone out?"
"Perhaps it's night-time," said Wildflower's voice.
There was a pause.
"Night-time," replied Keto, sceptically, "It's night-time, so they
turn out the lights. Because, of course, they only need the lights
during daytime, don't they?"
"Don't be silly, Keets," laughed Wildflower, "They don't need the
lights during daytime!"
"Oh? And why not?"
"Because the sun...wait a minute...."
"I can see you're beginning to get the point," sneered Keto, "There
IS no source of light on this ship OTHER than those lights! So why
would they turn them off?"
"Maybe it's night-time," persisted Wildflower.
"I hate you."
With a swish, the door swung open, and Keto staggered inside,
followed by Wildflower, and they looked around.
"The lights are on in here," said Wildflower unnecessarily.
"Evidently it's daytime in here," snapped Keto, ignoring the glare
that followed that comment, "It seems we're in a room of some kind."
"I can see how you got your degree."
"You want to shut the hell up?!" snarled Keto, "As I was *saying*,
we appear to be in some kind of UNUSED room. As we can tell, you
see, from the faint layer of dust, as well as that nearly-microscopic
cobweb in the corner."
Keto's smugness at his own deduction was somewhat lessened when
Wildflower chipped in, "Yes, as well as from the fact that the place
is completely trashed and rotted through."
"I was focussing on the relevant details."
"I was focussing on the large, blatantly obvious ones."
"Shut up!" snapped Keto once more, "Well, we can't very well find
our way through that corridor while it's pitch black, so we'll have
to wait until those lights come back on."
"That shouldn't be long, should it? After all, somebody's bound to
notice an entire corridor of darkness, aren't they?"
"Of course, Wildflower," said Keto brightly, "After all, people
always travel along the corridor between the recycling decks and the
cargo bays. Because it's not a purely mechanical service route at
all. The JMC didn't just put it in because it's a safety
regulation. Oh, wait a minute, they DID!"
"So what are you saying?" asked Wildflower as Keto took a seat on a
rusting bunk, "That we're stuck here until someone finds out?"
"Unfortunately for me," murmured Keto, "That would appear to be the
case."
Wildflower shot another glare at him. "One question?"
"No."
"What made you so bitter?"
"The fact that everywhere I go I seem to end up with morons,"
replied Keto, "As evidenced."
"How come you believe everyone else is a moron? Couldn't it be
that you're just too proud to admit that they're as good as you?"
asked Wildflower pointedly. Keto glanced up at her.
"Wildflower, I work with you, a pink tree and a man who firmly
believes he is a fourteenth century playwright."
"I rest my case," said Wildflower triumphantly. Keto frowned as he
tried to work this out.
"Fine, then I rest mine," was the best reply he could come up with,
and reached for what had been, at some point, a magazine. It fell
apart as he touched it.
"Why the hell did the lights have to go out?" he muttered to
himself.
"Good question," replied Wildflower, opening the door and glancing
back out into the darkness, "Who knows what could be lurking outside?"
"Not me," said Keto, "Why don't you go and find out if it's hungry?"
Wildflower sighed and took a seat on a chair with one leg missing.
"I spy..." she began.
Keto involuntarily began to tear the proto-magazine into shreds.
==========
OOC: don't worry, it is just that corridor that's busted. Oh, and
Parrott's. Oh, and Jay's quarters.
Shakes, looks like it's up to Team Two (and before you ask, you're
Team Two because Shakespeare is most definitely inferior to the
almight Keto ;) ).