"So that's my tragic backstory." He stretches his robot arm out then says, "Well, part of it."

"Okay. We'll break it up into chunks, how about, I need time to digest my entire profession and life's work being built on unethical torture slavery."

"Your work is built on making it a lot more ethical and that's what made me like you."

"Well, thank you. I wasn't planning to change professions, just. ... Okay, so in school and after, I was the weirdly sentimental one? And now I'm feeling like I wasn't sentimental enough, and often too callous with them, and. It's a change, I need time to process. .... Also the place I'm taking us to as a plant lead is, um. Maybe going to suck."

"I think you actually can't beat most of my life for suckage. —that came out wrong. I'm not expecting it to be roses, is what I mean."

"All right. It's, uh. Not that I've heard that they've been having plant troubles, it's that it is the expected result from their choices. Which is to say, uh. She's all by herself."

"...yeah. They often are."

"Less so now than they used to be! People have noticed that plants work better in groups and it's becoming less common for them to try to keep singles. But. ... Yeah." Wince.

Is that a flash of a green laser against the sky? Yeah, sure looks like it.

Zash notices, and leans forward to squint at it. "Did you see that?"

"The alarming green laser beam that just, aaaand there it is again. Yes, I did."

"We should go see what it is."

"Of course you think that." Sigh. "Fine, fine, I'm curious too, and you're bullshit enough that poking strange things is probably not suicidal."

She can't help but feel like she has a ghost over her shoulder telling her that this is dumb, but. ... That hurts too much to think about, so she won't.

Zash has a hundred and fifty years worth of these. You get used to them eventually.

Onwards to the alarming green light!

They come across a scene of destruction, smoking bodies scattered across the blood-stained sand, and a woman who has a gigantic cross standing in the middle of it all.

"Uh. Well, this is awkward."

Oh.

:(

Yvette makes a face, then pokes her head out of the window of the car.

"Hey um. Did you kill all of these people?"

"In my defense they had it coming!!"

They often do.

Zash opens the door and steps out of the car to examine the scene more closely. "What did they do?"

"Slavers. Robbed and then sold people off to various places."

The bodies do indeed have things like 'shackles' and 'nets' and 'tasers' that imply their chosen profession, but. ... There is a mysterious lack of any slaves, or tracks.

...she's not lying, Zash is certain of this. And yet, he can also observe the mysterious lack of slaves, or tracks.

Well, there sure is one explanation, isn't there, and it's one that rhymes with this person taking on this whole group of slavers and winning.

Why does this smell of Nai, again.

"Hm," is what he says in lieu of voicing any of these thoughts, because sometimes people feel compelled to fill a silence with more useful information than anything you might have thought to ask about.

"Sooo. Since you're already here, hey, can I get a ride?"

Yvette is making SUCH A FACE.

"Are you going anywhere in particular, then?"

"Nope, my business in this area has concluded!"