The nurse, after setting down Ace's clothes and towel somewhere where they wouldn't get wet before their time, quickly made for the exit. She waited patiently outside of the showering area for the guest to finish, clutching her clipboard.

Casey stared unblinking at Corin for quite a while. While Geoff spoke, he was still staring, evaluating the aardwolf. He spared the hedgehog a glance, but not much more, at least not yet.

Then, in an instant, something clicked. It seemed that at this precise moment in time, Casey once and for all realized that Corin was dead serious. That is, he realized that Corin was genuinely a cape-wearing, spear-swinging warrior from a dated civilization who was not merely wearing a facade of grandiloquence and importance, but was built entirely of the facade, and was truly exactly what his wild persona said right on the box: a vain, self-important, but well-meaning madman.

Suddenly: belly laugh.

"Yerrr allll right mister," Casey declared with a hearty backslappin'. "'EY, ROBOT," he then suddenly bellowed to the cafeteria's lunch-lady-bot, holding his bowl aloft. "Some good slop for the brave knight o'er here, hauh?! Haha!"

He set his bowl back down, grinning at Geoff.

"Y'run with interestin' sorts, don'tcha?" asked the loud, plump pig with the gun for an arm.

"Yeah?" The cat seemed to take an especially long time wiping the grime from just above his mouth before he answered, and suddenly the room seemed much quieter, even with the falling water. Suddenly, he wasn't actively showering so much as he was getting wet. "Maybe we're more alike than we think." The shower wall had a conveniently-placed, knee-high protrusion to sit on, so he made use of it.

The shark leaned against the wall. "Yeah, well... seriously, the cosmic forces have somethin' out for me. ... it's probably named something totally mundane, like Paul. Or Matt. Or Billy." Pause. "Or Gortharx the Exterminator."

Ace chuckled, but continued. "Y'know somethin' though man? All these jokes aside, it hasn't been easy. For real. This past month, I lost my girl. I lost my two best friends. I found my father, just in time to lose him again. And it doesn't look like I've got a bright future here, either. And when I say all that out loud, it kinda sounds like the end of the world. But when I look at it... it doesn't really matter.

Mako gave the cat a sort of raised-eyebrow look. He paused for a moment, seeming to actually give it a moment of consideration. "Because... weeee're stuck on the far side of the planet and there's like, nobody that speaks the same language as us?"
He shrugged his shoulders and gave a sort of 'well, I tried' half-smile.
"Strike that. Go ahead. Why 'dunnit matter'?"

Through the sarcasm, almost peanut-butter-thick though it was, Ace managed an almost genuine looking smile. "Hey, I'm only tellin' you this 'cause it looks like you could use the advice yourself," he lied. "It's just somethin' my grandpa told me 'fore he died."

Uh oh. Story time.

"He said to me: Never, ever give up on yourself, and that'll put you one step ahead of everyone else. 'Cause most people will. It ain't their fault. People are built for maximum achievement with minimal effort. That's just the way they're wired. But if you really wanna make the most of your life, just wake up every morning and ask yourself: 'Will I give up?' And so long as the answer's no, you're still in the game. 'Cause there ain't nobody that can break you but you."

The fish paused for a moment, raising his eyebrows again. "Huh."

"And you really buy into that?"

For as disbelieving as the words would sound written-down, there was no (okay... only a very little) hint of his usual sardonic tone. He briefly peered through the door in the wake of the nurse, but kept his person in the room and turned back to the conversation at hand.

And there was that smile again. If he wasn't careful, that could quickly become a habit. He leaned back.

"I'll admit, some days it's a lot harder than others... But my gran'pa was an honest man. An' he never lied to me."

...

"'Cept that one time where he said we were out of pumpkin pie, an' he was just saving the last slice for himself, the greedy old bastard."

As if their conversation was a queue to the powers-that-be, the very same nurse that had gotten Ace his clothes walked back into the shower room.

Well, maybe "walked" was the incorrect word. More like barged in, this time. She dropped her clipboard and lunged straight for Ace with her left arm outstretched to grab him by the neck and pin him against the slick ceramic wall behind him.

If she got that far, the follow-up would be a hypodermic needle in her freehand with the intent of jabbing it into his shoulder so as to pump some muscle-numbing drugs into his system. Even in the event of success, the drugs would take a little while to kick in through-out the body.

Guess they can add "Attacked by a psychotic nurse" to their list of weird stuff orchestrated by Gortharx the Exterminator.

While the shove provided by Ace was not enough to send her rolling to the ground, it did send her backstepping abit. Ultimately, though the important thing was that the needle stab was interrupted.

But Mako's action put the lid on it, knocking her on her butt. Her fancy nurse hat flying off, along with her...wig?