999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Part #31

Part 31: Kitchen

Junpei, June, Lotus, and Santa stopped for a moment, and looked at their surroundings.

A short distance away, a metal grate extended across the width of the hallway. They took hold and shook, but it refused to move.

Nearby was a pair of elevators.

It took only a few button presses to determine that the elevators would not respond to their efforts. They could only assume the elevators were not powered.

Well, if you couldn't tell already this time we're starting on the opposite side of the grate that needed the Venus key to open before.

Well, looks like we don't have any choice.

Yeah.

Sure does.

Well then, let's open it.

Junpei grabbed hold of the knob, and quietly pushed the door open.

This is one of the handful of doors we've seen before that has no opening animation.

The others followed shortly.

Santa did not look pleased.

What were you expecting?

Isn't it obvious?

Heh. You really think it'd be that easy?

Yeah, yeah, I know. Still...

As they talked, Lotus headed deeper into the room.

If we can just get through this door, we should come out on the other side of that grate we saw earlier.

But...don't we need a key for that...?

Junpei tries to open the door, but with no animation again. There's a strange lack of them here, for some reason.

Junpei dug the ship map from his pocket, and spread it out in front of him.

As he did...

What's that?!

Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you.

I found this a little while ago.

She ran her finger across it, muttering to herself.

I knew it. See? Look.

Junpei did as he was told. Santa and June moved over to look at the map as well.

See? We came in here. If we go out there,

With her finger Lotus traced a path on the map. She was right.

Satisfied that she had been correct, Lotus folded the map and handed it back to Junpei. He took it, and slid the valuable piece of paper back into his pocket.

Then that means the [key card] is somewhere in here, right?

That seems the most likely.

All right, we know what we need to do then.

Okay!

Another short pre-room scene so let's just dive right in.

[Music: Ternary Game]

Alright, let's go! Last room on the B Deck! There's quite a lot of stuff right off the bat to poke around at, so let's start with each of these plates.

Those 9 plates look pretty expensive.

They're plates for appetizers. Remember, appetizers usually come on square plates.

Let's move over to the next one to the right, now.

1, 2, 3... There's 10 of 'em.

The middle is super deep for a plate.

They're soup plates. They're made that way so that the soup doesn't spill. If we ever get out of here, you should treat yourself to a nice dinner out.

What makes you think a poor college student has the money to do something like that?

What I have learned about Japanese economics from various things: shit be fuckin' expensive.

I mean, c'mon, I'm a "poor college student" (for a given definition of it) and even I can afford to eat real food.

Oh well, next pile of plates!

I think there are 15 of these plates. I'm assuming they're for seafood.

How the hell can you tell that?

They look just like any other plate from the 99-cent store.

If you ever take a lady out to dinner, you're going to embarrass yourself. I feel sorry for June.

And the last one!

There's a bunch of little wavy ridges on this plate.

C'mon, it's not like I need to know this crap... Geez.

Now we get a bit more things to poke around at. The table seems like a good, logical spot to look at next.

This looks like a serving table. I would imagine food is put here after it's prepared so that the waiters and waitresses can take it out to the customers. But... Something doesn't seem right here.

I'm sure it's nothing important at all. Probably just left over from a party or something; that seems to be the most likely answer.

There's three things just hanging around back here; they could prove useful, or they could just be decoration. Let's give it a look!

It's kinda far away... I can't really tell, but...is that a ladle?

I don't really think a ladle is going to be very useful.

Let's poke it again!

(Just an ordinary ladle. No reason to hang onto it.)

Sorry, that wasn't very interesting. Once more!

(Oh wait... This is sad... I can't even remember a simple children's song.)

And, hell, once more for good measure.

There's still some stuff left in the immediate area, so let's take a look at this... shelf? Is that what that is? It looks like one from here.

oh its a door sorry

What the hell?! There's no way I could open that thing!

You'd better watch your mouth, boy, or someone won't live long enough to see that door opened.

(This has got the 2 of them on edge. We gotta get out of here, and fast...)

Okay, so the last thing in this room isn't very exciting on a first look so we'll skip right to the second.

Hey, is that a boiler over there?

Who knows.

The pipe goes up into the ceiling.

Idiot. How the hell are you supposed to get into a pipe that size?

(Well, at least he kind of got my joke. That makes me kinda happy.)

Nothing left on the first screen now, so let's spin around to the right like we always do and take this in a sort-of clockwiseish order.

There's surprisingly little here, but there's still a few things. Like this teapot!

Wow. This pot looks like it's made out of silver.

I bet drinking tea from this pot would be really yummy.

Jumpy?

Oh, nothing.

We don't really need hot water, so we should be moving on.

I just realised that we haven't checked out any of the lights here yet. Let's fix that with this one, chosen Entirely At Random (honest).

Wow Jumpy, you can reach really high.

Here we go!

At least the game is nice enough to make sure that you can get some of its stuff regardless of which room you pick, it seems. Between this and the mirror gag I wonder when we're gonna see more repeats.

Until then, though, there's a bulletin board here. It has to have something useful on it!

It's a note. It's got a bunch of stuff written on it, but it doesn't look like a code or anything like that.

Nothing really suspicious about that.

Bah, that shows me for thinking I was being clever about that one.

So let's check out this door now.

So, disregarding the obvious block does it even open? We should find out.

Then I'll bet all we need to do is get this bolt off.

Well, if the bolt is the only thing stopping us after all let's just throw this door wide open.

Will this even open...?

We won't know 'til we try! Let's give it a shot.

(All right, let's see if you're gonna come out...)

A rusted bolt... This door won't open until we can do something about this bolt.

That seems like it'd be a good idea, but there's nothing here that could prove useful.

Maybe, there'll be something here though. Or at least in the bins or something; that's a rather simple enough idea.

Well, better than being full of rotten food, I suppose.

Well, the left one is empty. Dunno about the one next to it though, so we should be thorough with our trash digging excursion.

Damnit, there's nothing in here.

What the hell did you say?!

Oh my. I don't recall asking you to do anything...

Rrrrggh... I oughta throttle you...

(Does...does it feel colder in here?)

Yeah, okay. That seems to be rather useless, so let's just look in the sink. We've had rather mixed results with them, but it's got to pay off more than the once.

There're a couple'a plates in there, but I don't think they're gonna help us much.

There's not really much left here, but there is something back here.

Why don't you take it back with you?

Are you offering to carry it for me?

You're kidding.

Wow, rude. I mean, yeah, she's most likely thinking about her kids and all but still. Super rude, lady!

In order to help not worry about this issue so much, let's check this thing out in the background.

Probably. Kinda hard to believe there's a chef on board somewhere.

Yeah... yeah. Let's see what else there is on this grill, though.

There's two smaller aspects that are kind of easy to not notice.

I wonder what this drawer is...

You see the metal grate on top of the grill? They make it like that so that the fat and

Well, it doesn't look like we have to worry about that being an issue here. Shame it's locked or just otherwise won't open, because that sounds like a good place to hide something.

Then again, so does this drawer down here.

It looks like the area under the plate opens up.

No, you can't. I already checked. It's sealed shut.

Okay, so there's coal in there. Not the first time we've seen coal used for fires on board this ship, but at least that explains why we can't just go rooting around through there I guess.

There's nothing else on that part of the room either, so let's take a look over here now.

All we've got here is a pot and frying pan... Oh, and a pressure cooker.

What kind of an idiot are you? You're gonna run around holding that thing while you're looking for the DEAD?

We can examine the pots a few more times, but the next one is very generic and bleh so let's skip past it.

Did you see that action movie that came out last week?

Clearly they are talking about the world famous terrible movie "Michelle's Farm Tools."

...And before I continue that thought any longer, let's keep up old traditions and see if there's anything on the counter.

If there are some ingredients around here, I could cook something up for us...

Lotus, you can actually cook?

Who the hell do you think I am?

...

...

I'm beginning to think that maybe Nona and... the other one weren't actually kidnapped, but they ran away for a while to avoid Lotus' terrible cooking.

I reckon we should try and do the same. I think I see a door back there!

It's not locked, so we could go back out, but...

What's the point, right?

Yup. Might as well be locked, for all the good going back out there'd do.

If only the Mercury keycard was in this room...

But, there is a second door right there. Let's give it a shot.

It doesn't matter how many times you try it.

I'm sure this is all just part of Zero's plan. I just can't imagine what his motives could be.

Well, there's nothing we've seen that could indicate a thing about motives. Absolutely anything is possible right now.

Speaking of "right now," let's just look at the pretty light.

Since the light's red, I figure it's probably still locked. The key card for it's gotta be around here somewhere. We just gotta find it.

Well, we've seen a few places where it could have been but probably isn't for one reason or another.

There's always the oven, though. I can't help but think this isn't going to be it either.

It's probably industrial quality. I bet you could cook anything with this.

Anyway, let's have a look inside...

Bah, it was worth a shot. I wonder what that thing on the door is, now that I get a better look at it.

It's probably for entering a passcode. After all, the oven door is locked.

Alright, that seems like a good option. We don't really need to worry about what the code is, since we can easily just brute force it!

(These buttons are for entering a passcode.)

(I should probably look for some hints before I start messing around with this thing.)

Oh, c'mon. It's not that big of a deal. So what if we're not certain, we can figure it out. Maybe stress-test the keys or something.

(These buttons are for entering a passcode. I shouldn't be messing around with this)

...Well, so much for this then. We've covered the entire area now, so let's head back a bit.

We skipped past this door before, but let's check it out now.

Looks like its where they keep all the food and drink for the kitchen. There's a few white cloths blocking some of the shelves, though, so let's see what's behind them. Keep going left-to-right since that's rather efficient.

A whole lot of cans.

This is probably a pantry.

(There are cans lining every shelf in here.)

Huh, that's a bit odd. Let's go take a look at what that's all about.

...Oh. Um, I think we should just pretend there isn't a giant knife in the kitchen.

Instead, let's look at the right set of shelves.

Milk in an iron barrel. Judging by the rust...it's probably really old.

Maybe we shouldn't open it up.

Junpei, what kind of college student are you? You've got the complaining about money down, I suppose, but then you've got...this. Every college student knows that you've gotta chug that shit!

...Speaking of old milk, though, there's an awful lot of cheese in the corner. Let's go look over there.

This is gouda cheese. The most famous Dutch cheese. If you don't cut open the casing, it usually won't go bad so you can store it at room temperature for quite a while.

But how does it taste?

Most likely.

(Uh, I'm not hungry. At all.)

Pfft, eat anyway. Don't wanna pass out in the middle of this thing, do ya? There's tons of perfectly edible cheese here! Cheese party for everyone!

Heck, there's also some cheese hiding down here. Let's see what else it's with.

I don't think you have to search down there...

I just want to be sure.

Nothing down below, but I think I can see something hiding behind this block. It's kind of hard to see, here, though.

You're right. Why don't we move some of the cheese.

(All right guys, time to move it. June and I need to look behind you.)

A... green bottle? I think we should take a look at that.

You could probably use this to make something slippery.

A bottle of oil, huh? Hm... nope. No idea what that could help with. Maybe Santa and Lotus have an idea.

The bottle's old, but we might be able to use the oil inside for something.

Maybe we could put it on the old hag's

Oh, of course. How could I be so stupid. This is perfect!

Sadly, we don't get anything at all for not equipping the oil but still having it.

Of course! Maybe if I put some oil on it.

H-Hey!

Just a little bit of oil, and... Come on! Come on, you little son of a bitch!

You did it, Jumpy! You're so smart!

I'm fairly sure that we shouldn't attempt to boost Junpei's ego quite like that.

But at least we got the door open, now, so let's see what's behind it.

Brr... It's cold in here! What is this place...

Are you blind? It's a freezer.

Lotus, however, was in an even worse situation.

I'll freeze solid in seconds. Sorry, but I'm afraid I'll have to pass on this one. I'm going to leave the rest to you.

And with that, she ran out of the room.

As Lotus left, June came in.