"Tell me about it."

... This earns a little giggle from her, actually.

"That sounds difficult. I'm sorry."

He offers her a small smile.

Then it's back to his usual scowl.

She thinks that he might just have a resting bitch face, actually.

Anyway. With all of that out of the way they can get back to work! The thing that makes them both happiest, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah, it actually is.

...but after about an hour he asks, "How similar are you to your parents?"

"Hm? Very. I look like almost a carbon copy of my mother and my dad's also a plant engineer. Um. A good one, not, like." She waves vaguely.

"He's not here. You are."

"Well, yes, but I also don't think Zazi would have any reason to... also kidnap my dad??"

"He was not on the sand steamer," he says with a frustrated sigh. "Or in Jeneora. He's in December."

".... Also yes, but. Most of his work's been on linking plants together to let them help each other instead of separating them into little groups. Which was, for some fucking reason, the standard procedure before. I, he's. I know he's not here but he's doing good."

...a lot of plants linked together, was it. In December. Where this plant engineer was working with them. And he was one of the better ones, so that she wouldn't be punished or mocked when she turned out—better. And instead she grew up to be like this. Like she was meant to be.

"Hm," he replies, noncommitally.

"There are other good humans, really," she adds, softly.

"Yes, I am aware that that is an opinion you have."

She gives a heavy sigh, dropping her shoulders. Ugh.

"There's a, a range of goodness in humans. Statistically speaking it's extremely unlikely for there to be a single fantastical outlier, much less one that falls into the specific circumstances to meet you. And you seem to actually like me. Am I a bad human?"

"You're not bad." Jury's still out on that other part, though.

That causes her to smile, just a little.

"Well, thank you. So... what evidence do you need to rule me out as an outlier?"

"A human who is very slightly less good than you are. A human who is better. Many of them."

"Okay." Huff. "I can't get that for you right now, I don't really specialize in meeting and judging humans by a metric of goodness, but. Maybe some day." Zash would be able to. Unfortunately, she's not Zash. "Though I really feel like the doctor's just the absolute worst human for you to have kept around for so long."

"That much I know."

"Just, just an absolute not-even-good-enough-to-be-considered-garbage person that is terrible even when being an instrument of someone else's will," she continues, seriously.

"He does what I want. I don't care about the rest."

"Even though it's probably why you're surrounded by crazy people???"

"They don't bother me often. Some of them are useful. The telekinesis human brought me the sand steamer plant. The cross gun human is bringing me Zash."

"Th—" she stops. "The what. Bringing you Zash???"