Anime Hospital Episode three: Basic Macek
begin opening credits
(sung)
We hate Animes
What's with these guys anyways?
Tiny mouths and hubcap eyes
Repair bills are on the rise
Karl better soon get wise
Before it's one of use who dies.
Dr Karl Stoopenstien
Had a little to much wine
Now we're stuck in space and time
Tell us, just what was our crime?
Now we're the
ANIME HOSPITAL!
ANIME HOSPITAL!
Nine to five we're curing ailments
Of people purely fictional!
Toni's got an attitude
Let her bark, her bites hurt more
Heather's got both her eyes glued
On every single guy's barn door.
Mike's a romantic
Pam's a mystery
Karl's always frantic
Brain the size of a flea.
Life's a little dangerous
Doctors only raise a fuss
Screaming out our final plea
All we want's reality!
Cause we're the
ANIME HOSPITAL!
ANIME HOSPITAL!
Nine to five we're curing ailments
Of people purely fictional!
C R A S H ! !
Anime Hospital Episode three: Basic Macek
The cafeteria was packed as usual, but Mike, Heather,Pam and Toni all sat at their customary table, conversing amongst themselves. Heather was particularly vocal on this day.
"...and he has the one of the biggest-" she was in the midst of saying.
"Nurse Farley!" Mike said in alarm.
"-checking accounts I've ever seen," she finished, glancing at Mike with annoyance. "What did you think I was going to say?"
"Nothing," Mike said, and a slight blush fell over his cheeks. He tried to hide it by biting down on the massive submarine sandwich he was grasping in his massive hands.
Almost offhandly, Heather added, "Oh, his buns are pretty cute too. Just like yours."
Mike squeezed down so hard on the sandwich that a good deal of the fixings in the back sprayed all over Toni. Pam dodged the mustard with no problem. He gave Heather a baleful look. "What did you just say?" he asked with fridged tones.
Heather gave him one of her best innocent smiles and said, "He owns a bakery. He took me there yesterday."
"You weren't talking about baked goods!"
"Sure I was!"
"Sure you were," Toni and Pam said in flat tones.
Toni leaned back then and patted her stomach in satisfaction. "Well, that was filling," she said.
"For an elephant," Heather returned, and she was rewarded with a severe blow to her head from Toni's plate. As the plate broke into pieces and fell away from the base of her skull, Heather simply said, "I deserved that..." in slightly whimpering voice.
"Yes you did," Toni said. "Now then, are we all going to meet at my place like we planned tonight to play poker?"
Pam nodded, and Heather said, "Definately! I still think we should play strip poker, since Mike's such a bad player,"
Mike choked on the bite he had taken, and he had to cough for a short while before he could breathe easily again. He met Heather with a flat look and said, "Nurse Farley..." in a very dangerous tone. He did not finish the statement, though,settling for looking guiltilly at his glass of soda and saying,"I can't come."
"Hey, no problem," Heather said, all smiles. "There are other ways you can entertain me."
Mike glared at her and growled savagely. Heather took the hint and said, "Okay, okay. That went too far. So, why can't you come to the game?"
"Yeah, we were counting on you, Mike," Toni added.
Mike returned his gaze to the glass of soda and said. "I'd rather not say."
"Oh, no you don't," Toni snapped. "You can't back out of our game like that and not tell us why."
"Li, please..."
"Don't you 'Li, please' me. I want an answer, pronto!"
Mike stared at his glass a bit longer and finally said,with a great deal of discomfort, "I, uh, have a, uh, date."
"You have a date?!" Toni said with surprise. Heather clapped her approval and Pam simply nodded her head once.
"Come on, tell us who it is," Heather pressed.
Mike twitched and turned to her angrilly, saying, "Look,I have a date, and that's all I'm going to tell you, all right?!"
Suddenly the entire cafeteria silenced. Somebody murmured, "Nurse Jones has a date?"
Another voice answered, "First I've heard of it."
"I wonder who it is."
"I bet she's cute."
"Why don't you ask him?"
"No way, you ask him!"
Mike stood stock still. His face had turned six shades of red by this time, and finally he exploded into a full fury. He ran out of the cafeteria as fast as he could, knocking several tables and the people sitting at them over in the process.
The three women remaining watched the scene with surprised awe. Finally, Toni said, "So, should we respect his privacy and not try to find out who this mystery date is?"
They looked at each other for a long time, and finally all said, "Nahhhhh!" at once. They formed a semi-huddle to work out their plot to uncover the identity of Mike's date.
Once the lunch break was over, Toni sat at her cluttered desk, busilly typing away at her computer. She was running through the files on some of the doctors and nurses at the hospital to see if any of them were likely to be Mike's mystery date.
One of the doctors walked up to the counter and said,"Hi, Toni. What's up?"
"The Roadbuster and the Mach V are racing in the parking lot again," she said without glancing up from her monitor.
"Really? Who's winning?"
"A-Ko. She jumped in just for the heck of it, and the parking lot is suffering." She tapped a few more bottons and then said, "Say, where's that report you said you were going to get me. I've been waiting since this morning for it."
The doctor gave Toni a distressed look and said, "Uh,well, I was busy so I gave it to an Anime who was headed your way."
"I didn't see any Anim-" Suddenly a look of alarm crossed Toni's face. "Wait! Which Anime did you give it to?"
"I don't know one Anime from the other. You know that."
"Then describe him," Toni pressed. "Can you at least say which universe he came from?"
He thought for a bit, and finally said, "Um, well, he was wearing a yellow headband with black marks on it, and he looked angry about something. I think he was from one of the Takahashi Universes."
Toni clutched her head in frustration. "I knew it! You gave the file to Ryouga, you moron! You'd better find him before he gets out of the hospital, or it could be next year before I finally get that file!"
The doctor edged away from the counter, stuttering,"Y-Yes Toni. I-I'll get right to it!" and with that he left down towards the south wing.
When Toni finally looked up from her computer again, she noticed that the Lobby had gotten considerably packed since the last time she looked. "All right, everyone, come up and tell me what's wrong."
A large group of Animes approached Toni. As they got closer, Toni mumbled to herself, "Macekans. Not them!" She studied each one in turn and began to puch up their files on the computer. "Lisa Hayes, depression because of lost love. Rick Hunter, anxiety over love triangle. If you'd just dump that rotten little brat you wouldn't be having these problems. Minmei, depression because nobody likes you anymore. Gee, looks like you've got the last appointment, so take a seat. Bowie,depression because of lost love. Scott Bernard, depression because of lost love... More lost loves... Still more lost loves. How many of you have lost loves anyways?"
Nearly half of the assembled Macekans raised their hands in response to the question, although they did so half-heartedly.
"I know what'll cheer you up!" Minmei said suddenly. "I'll sing for you!"
"NO! DON'T!!!" Everyone said. Minmei pouted and sat back down, while everyone else breathed a sigh of relief.
Toni looked back to her monitor. "Seems that everyone is here because you're upset about one thing or another. How in the world did you all get scheduled for the same day?"
"So, has phase one of our plan succeeded?" The Zentraedi leader asked. Deep in outer space, millions of Zentraedi cruisers, Robotech Master warships, and Invid vessals slowly approached the Earth. Aboard the flagship, the leaders from all three fleets were holding a meeting in the utmost secrecy. Because this is a spoof of Robotech, however, we get to eavesdrop on the bad guys anyway.
"It has." the Invid leader replied. "We have managed to alter the files in the Anime Hospital computers to show that all of our enemies have appointments scheduled for today. Now, while they are without their advanced weaponry, they will be completely helpless!"
"Yes," The Robotech Master triad agreed. "Their morale will be at its lowest point while they are in treatment. It appears that this thing called emotion has finally been turned to our advantage."
"Too many times we have suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of those meddling micronians," the Zentraedi leader said. "Now, at last, we will have our revenge!"
"Agreed," The Robotech Masters said. They turned to face the Invid Queen. "Are your forces in position for phase two?"
"My soldiars are ready," she assured them.
They stood there, watching the screen in silence for a few moments. Finally, the Zentraedi leader spoke up. "Somehow, I feel as if we're supposed to do something more at this point."
"Yes," the Invid Queen replied. "I believe the expected action is a thing called a 'villainous laugh.'"
"Shall we give it a try?" The triad asked.
"We're obliged to."
With that, the five of them made a pretty poor, wooden attempt at an evil laugh. Halfway through it, they all broke off and stared at the viewscreen again.
"That was pointless." The Zentraedi leader said.
"Yes, one wonders why such things are so popular." the triad agreed.
"If I might say so," The Invid Queen said, "We appear to have been on screen for a bit longer that our usual airti-"
Once Toni had sorted everyone out and had them where they were supposed to be, she took a moment to relax. She glanced over to the front doors and noticed Madoka from the KOR Universe come inside. She gingerly approached the front desk and asked, "Excuse me, is Michael Jones in at the moment?"
"Who, Mike? Sure he's around here somewhere. What do you need with him?"
Madoka shuffled her feet nervously. "I just need to talk with him about something."
Toni gave her a quizzical look. "About what?" she said. Then her face lighted up with shock. "No! Nonononononono! It couldn't be!"
"I'm sorry, Miss?" Madoka said with a slightly embarassed voice.
"Madoka!" Mike's voice called from down a hall. Moments later, the brawny nurse hopped up to the desk with a worried look in his eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"I just wanted to tell you-" she began, but Toni interrupted her.
"I can't believe it! You're dating her?! She's an Anime,Mike! How could you!" She had risen from her chair and had propped both her fists on the desk.
"Oh! Toni!" Mike said guiltilly. "Um, well. You see..."
"Mike, you traitor! I thought you hated Animes as much as we all did."
Suddenly Heather walked up. "What's this?"
"This is Mike's date." Toni said with a hiss. By now,Madoka looked about ready to cry.
Heather laughed. "You're kidding, right? Mike hates Animes." She looked at everyone, and her voice lost its humor. "You are kidding, right? Ohhh, my gosh. Oh, I gotta tell the other nurses about this!"
"Nurse Farley! No!" Mike said, but Heather had already run off. Before he could chase after her, though, he was distracted by a whimper from Madoka.
"Is this true, Michael? Do you hate Animes?"
Mike looked nervously from Toni to Madoka, and appeared to be getting troubled by the excitement developing down the hall as Heather spread the news. "Uh, well. Erm, I- uh-"
Fortunately, before Mike had to answer the question, the wall next to him exploded.
Suddenly droves of Invid warriors flooded into the lobby. They fired a few shots, scattering Animes in every direction as they fled from the assault. Soon the halls were filled with all varieties of Invid. The red drones, the purple drones, an ED-209, and all the advanced leader drones were present. In a very short time they had everyone rounded up in the lobby and under tight guard.
"Attention micronians!" A voice announced through the loudspeakers in the hospital. "We have you completely surrounded. You will surrender to our demands or we shall vaporize this planet. Our first demand is that you relinquish all of our foes to us so that we may dispose of them at our liesure. Our second demand is that you return all protoculture and flowers of life to us, as well as the vessal known as the SDF-1. Third, you will provide us with a hamburger and large fries."
"I though we agreed on pizza," another voice suddenly said.
"We do not have time to debate about this again. Well,micronians? What is your reply?"
Karl von Stoopenstien was have a perfect fit about this,and Mike looked about ready to kill the first Invid that looked at him funny. Toni, however, remained calmly seated at her desk and pressed the two-way comm button at her desk. "Um, could you give us a little time on that? Hamburgers are pretty hard to come by, you know."
There was a long silence, and finally the Zentraedi leader spoke. "You have twenty-four hours. After that, we shall destroy this planet if we have not gotten what we demand."
Heather was looking at all of the Macekans in the lobby and saying, "Well, come on you guys! Aren't you supposed to be taking care of this problem?"
Dana looked up at her and sighed. "We can't do anything without our weapons or mecha. Besides, I don't really feel like fighting anymore." A few of the others near her voiced their agreement at that.
"Great!" Heather said. "I can't believe this is happening."
Suddenly the front doors burst open and in walked a demented-looking guy with several hideous burns on his face. "MacGyverrrrrrrrr!!!!!" he screamed.
Everyone turned to face him with shocked expressions. Toni simply sighed and rested her head on one of her hands. "This is the Anime Hospital, Murdock. It's 'The Guyver' around here. You want the Syndication Hospital four blocks down."
The look of rage on his face suddenly disappeared. "Oh,I see." Then suddenly he was looking down the barrel of one of the red combat drone's energy weapons. "Have I come at a bad time?" he said, as he raised his arms in surrender.
"Yes," Toni said, "as a matter of fact, you have."
A few hours had passed, and to add to the Invid warriors came a few battleoids and Zentraedi battle pods. All of the Robotech Animes were gathered together like one giant heap of depression, the fight gone completely out of them. Off in the corner, Madoka was playing a sad melody on her saxaphone, although how she got it was a mystery. The entire staff of the hospital had gathered together and were discussing the situation.
"Well, what are we going to do?" one of the doctors said.
"We couldn't just let them have what they want, could we?" Heather asked.
"Nurse Farley!" Mike said. "Of course we can't do that. If there's a way to defeat them, we have to find it."
"Oh, yeah, sure," Toni said. "There's only a few dozen of their fighters right here ready to blast us to kingdom come the minute we try anything, not to mention the million or so odd ships in that giant armada flying over our heads. No problem,I'm sure we can fight them just fine." Her viel of sarcasm dropped and she suddenly became rather violent as she said,"We're a hospital! What are we going to do, prescribe them barbituates and hope they fall into a coma or something? We can't fight things like this!"
"Heck, we have to give them treatment when they come in with injuries," Heather said. "I hate Animes."
"Hear hear!" a good number of doctors and nurses said.
Suddenly Heather looked down. "Oh, did you want to say something, Doctor?" Karl was twisting around on the floor, bound and gagged, and did not look happy about it in the least. Mike reached down and undid his gag.
"I want you all to know that I am very upset about this!" he said.
"Yeah, we figured that much out," Heather said. "Are you going to say something important or should we just tie you up again?"
"No! I can help. I have an idea"
"Is that even possible?" Toni said.
"We have to get to my lab. I'm sure I have something there that can deal with this problem."
They all looked at him for a long moment. "Maybe," Heather finally said. "Only, there's just one problem. Your lab's out there, and we have all those heavily armed psychos blocking our way."
"Leave that to me," Pam said then.
Everyone turned and looked at the serious expression on the nurse's face and nodded their heads. Despite the fact that very little was actually know about Pam, everyone knew that the nurse could be relied on to find solutions for the most hopeless problems.
"I need to know one thing first," she said, before she told them her plan. "Mike, are you going to appologize to Madoka for your rudeness to her?"
Everyone fell over in exasperation.
"Excuse me, you appear to be the one in charge here," Pam said to one of the Invid drones. It tuned to face her, ready to blast her at first, but because she didn't do anything suspicious, it relaxed and opened up to allow the driver inside to come out.
"What is it you want, human?" the driver asked.
"I have a question," Pam continued, unphased by the imminent threat. As she talked, Karl, Heather and Toni were edging toward one of the halls.
"You may ask, human."
"You have your enemies at your mercy right now. Why do you not kill them now?"
The driver looked at her with disdain. "Ignorant creature," he said. "We cannot destroy them here. To do so would remove them from existence, and without them existing, we could not exist either. We must destroy them in our Universe to ensure that the story is changed so that we emerge as the victors."
"Oh, I see. So it would be bad if something happened to them while they were here," Pam continued.
"Yes, it would be bad. Why are you asking us these things, human?" the driver appeared to be losing his patience.
"Oh, I just wanted to know if you would be upset if I did this." With that, Pam delievered a rather violent punch to Lisa Hayes, knocking her down.
"Hey!" Lisa said, "what was that for?"
"Or if he did this," Pam continued, and, taking his cue,Mike clocked Lunk, most likely because he was his equal in body mass. Lunk did not take the punch very well, and he struck back at Mike.
"Wait! What are you doing?" the driver said. "Stop this! I command you!" It was too, late, however, as nearly the entire staff of the hospital started jumping all the Robotech characters. As they did so, they succeeded in getting the characters rather upset.
Mike was still one-on-one with Lunk, Pam has her hands full with both Dana Sterling and Rook, but she appeared to be doing well, and everyone else was doing about as well as could be expected of doctors and nurses against trained soldiars. The only group that appeared to be doing any amount of damage to their opponent were the twenty or so odd that chose to jump Minmei.
The Invid soldiars and the others were thrown into confusion, unsure of what to do, but knowing that they wanted what was happening to stop. They began to enter the fray in a desperate attempt to end the brawl any way they could. As the confusion was reaching a peak, Pam took a moment to glance Toni's way and nod.
The trio who were lurkin on the sidelines took the signal, and before long Karl, Heather and Toni were rushing down the halls to get to Dr Stoopenstein's lab.
"I still don't think this is going to work," Toni was saying as they opened the door to the lab.
"Just trust me," Karl said. "We'll find something."
"Do you trust him?" Toni asked Heather.
"No," Heather said simply.
"Neither do I."
"Oh! You two should show more respect for me," Karl said with an indignant air.
The three walked into the lab and looked around. "Sheesh, what a dump!" Heather said. "It's a wonder you could find yourself in a place like this!" Indeed, Karl's lab did give new meaning to the phrase "pig sty" with all of the electronic and mechanical gadgetry spread throughout the laboratory. The three had a great deal of trouble walking around as they waded through it all.
"Just what... ouch! is it we're supposed to be looking for?" Toni said with disgust.
"I'm not sure yet," Karl said. "I'll know when I find it, though."
"I'll kill him," Heather said, but as she attempted to climb over some junk to get at him, she tripped and fell. "Hey, wait! I think I found something!"
"Really? What?" Toni said.
"This," Heather said as she stood up and cleared some junk away from what appeared to be a control panel. A big, shiny label on it read "All-purpose Plot Device: One-time use only."
"That looks like exactly what we need all right." Toni admitted.
"How do we work this thing, Doc?" Heather asked.
"All the man who sold it to me said was that you press the right button for the problem you need solved, and it does the work itself," Karl answered.
They all looked at the control panel and read off the labels ender the bottons. "Problem... big problem... disaster... Armageddon would be more pleasant... It's Monday... The Zentraedi, Robotech Masters and Invid have teamed up and are threatening to blow up the world."
The all looked at each other, and Toni said, "It really is an all-purpose plot device. Okay, let's press it, and see what happens."
Meanwhile, the brawl that Pam had started had managed to return the fighting spirit to the depressed characters. The Invid and others might have been able to handle it if suddenly a large number of Robotech mecha hadn't suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
Suddenly Rook, Rand, Scott and Lancer were climbing into cyclones, Rick and Max were boarding their respective mecha, and Dana, Bowie and the rest of her crew were prepared to do battle. Inside the space of seconds, the scirmish with the hospital staff had accelerated into an all-out war with the small force that had been holding them prisoner.
In short, it was a massacre.
Out in space, the five leaders had been thrown into confusion. "What is going on down there?" the Zentraedi leader was demanding, when suddenly they noticed the viewscreen. They all gaped in surprise when millions of mecha started to appear in space, followed by no less than twelve Super Dimensional Fortresses.
"Where did these come from!" the triad cried out in surprise.
"It is estimated that the total force assembled is enough to completely destroy our armada," the Hive Queen said. "I recommend we retreat."
"Agreed, this attempt has failed," the Zentraedi leader declared.
"I knew we should have asked for pizza," the triad said.
Once the massive fleet escaped out of real space and back into their proper universes, the mecha slowly faded out of existence, as did the mecha that were conveniently wrecking property back near the hospital. Fortunately, the bad guys had fled from there as well.
Heather, Toni, and Karl ran to the lobby and stared in silence for a little while at all the destruction. Karl then fainted. "I don't know what you did, but it worked great," Mike said.
Heather continued to look around. "If you say so," she said. "Except for the repairs, are our troubles over?"
"Think again," Toni said, and pointed to the front door. Hobbling their way inside were the cast of the Robotech saga, extremely injured because of the mecha they were riding disappearing.
"Well, at least they aren't depressed anymore," Heather said.
The next morning, the four friends had gathered in the Nurse's lounge to discuss the events from the day before. "So,how was your date?" Heather asked Mike.
"I still say he's a traitor," Toni said.
"Oh, you! We don't all have to hate Animes you know."
"I know, but I thought I at least had Mike's support as far as that went."
"Nurse Jones," Mike said.
"I really wish you'd stop asking everyone to call you that, Mike," Toni said.
"Never mind," Mike said. "Nothing much happened. Madoka decided that she still loved her other boyfriend and that she felt guilty about dating me. That's what she had come to tell me."
"Figures," Toni said. "You know," she added, "Somehow I feel like I've forgotten something."
In the streets of Paris, a young man wearing a yellow headband and carrying a backback with an umbrella strapped to the top walked, stopping people at random. He was holding a file in his hand, and as he stopped on person, he could be heard asking, "Excuse me, could you tell me where the front lobby of Anime Hospital is?"
preview of next week's episode
Giant mecha are best know for the amount of damage they can do, so when some of the biggest giant robots and mecha around show up at the same time, will Anime Hospital be destroyed when an evil force somehow takes them over? Find out what happens next week in episode four "Big Mech Attack!"
