She mostly meant it in the sense that they all move over here, she wasn't picky about the how! The way he chose to implement the scootching was very cute.

Anyway she's going to start trying to see if she can figure out what the heck is going on in the world through this console. She can still send a message to Conrad, right?

Yeah she can. It's actually pretty simple, and there's a nice intuitive interface. Probably Nai needed to call Conrad often enough that he just made it as painless as possible. There's even a special icon there.

(Zash can't float, himself, so he decides it is time for him to pull Nai onto the floor with him so both of them can snuggle while leaning against Yvette's legs. At least 40% of the reason why he's doing this is because it'll be really cute.)

(O...kay.)

(Zash you need to fix your gate.)

(Nai, Zash loves you but please shut up, he still has very complicated feelings about his gate and his arm and he would rather not deal with that right this second.)

(...okay.)

Excellent!! Then she can get to directly planning… what to do. How to put the plants back and save as many lives as possible. That sort of thing. She is so incredibly not qualified for this. But she’s all they’ve got, so she’ll try to be enough. At least she has very cute boys she can lean down and pet as she gets stressed.

Refugee crisis: yeah that’s happening. She’s not surprised, but it sure does make her unhappy.

… She’d thought that she couldn’t fix this by just putting the stolen plants back, but actually… that might literally be the best option. The equipment for assisting them in matter creation without straining them too much, and the infrastructure to turn the ultra efficient raw materials into something that’s usable, is definitively not portable. That was all located where the plants that fueled it were. So… her job is to figure out which of the locations that had their plants stolen are closest to as many people as possible. Which are most capable of being able to handle a large influx of very upset, very desperate people. And then, probably, rough estimates of what kind of strain the plants that are put there are going to be under, and how many plants would need to be sent to compensate for that.

Maybe she is qualified for this after all.

...they can't just return the plants, the humans are just going to go right back to hurting them!!!

And besides, Nai may have, perhaps, accidentally, in some cases, slightly trashed those places. A little bit.

Well obviously they will be 'returning' the plants that are the healthiest, not just the ones that had been there, and probably in larger numbers than what had been there. The new arrangements will be efficient and kind to the plants because she is good at her job, actually. But he does bring up an excellent point about humans not following the directions their plant engineer (read: now Yvette) gives them and will not accept being told to not fucking touch anything, so they need to have some sort of setup there, too.

Also, can he give her a list of the places he trashed? That'd be very useful for her project of which ones are usable in the future.

He doesn't know which ones his minions trashed—he thinks the sand steamer may be a goner?—but he can try to remember them. And he assumes she doesn't want the very old ones? He's been doing this for a century and a half, some of those have probably been consumed by time by now.

Also, Jeneora Rock was not his fault, he adds a touch defensively. If that human hadn't shot at his robot with a grenade launcher—

Nai.

...grumble grumble. He's sorry. He guesses.

Nai.

He's sorry, okay?! He didn't mean to destroy the town! It was an accident! Genuinely! He wasn't aiming for the rock with the grenade launcher! He just wanted to grab the plants and go!

She pets him. Jeneora Rock was a bit of a mess for a number of reasons, including that bomber that was probably there for her, because plant engineers are valuable. As she is, uh, currently showing and has shown in this facility. She doesn't even really blame him for twitching and getting all plants evacuated after he heard one screaming while being hurt for what was essentially no rational reason. She wasn't aware the rock collapsing was an accident, actually, that makes her feel a bit bad about all of that yelling she did at him. Not entirely, because he really needed it, but... it does color the situation a bit better.

Honestly though, Jeneora is going on the 'mostly intact' end of the spectrum, because while the rest of the town was rubble, the bones of the plant factory were fine! She would know, she was briefly buried alive in there. A town can be rebuilt by ordinary human hands, the infrastructure to handle multiple plants is much harder to come by. In a similar sort of vein, even if the sand steamer was completely and utterly unharmed, it's entirely disqualified. It was built after the Fall, and to only handle a single plant, and shove a lot of the work onto that plant instead of outsourcing it to a factory or human workers. It's basically useless to her purposes and can go rust in the desert for all she cares.

Also if Nai would like to be distracted by work instead of squidgy emotions none of them really know how to deal with: the obvious people to ask about the state of the plant factories at the time the plants were stolen is, you know. The plants themselves. He's better equipped to handle that than she is, would he like to do that?

(Zash is not allowed to have a job. Zash needs cuddles and the reassurance that his two favorite people are A: themselves as he loves them, B: not going to die, and C: being happyish, which is going to be by being little workaholics.)

YES screw this whole "feelings" noise he wasn't good at those before being Knives and he's definitely not good at them now. Though he does still want to be hugged and petted so it's good his work can be done entirely telepathically. He's still not amazing at properly translating plants, not as good as Zash is, but he's better than nothing, and he extra does not want to be doing anything other than this.

Zash can do it, he's way more used to translating for humans, Nai can just translate them for him and then he could—

Did she fucking stutter.

Zash is the mental equivalent of swatted with a rolled up newspaper. No working! None!!

...but—

It would be against the principles they are operating by for them to have a plant who is currently in recovery to then be put to work despite this being past their comfort/safety threshold.

Which is to say:

NO.

...fine. He supposes he is kind of still breaking down in tears at the slightest provocation. But in his defence the slightest provocations present are the two people he loves most having thoughts! And feelings! In his head!!!! He thinks breaking down crying is very reasonable actually!!!

It is absolutely very reasonable, and so he should SIT THERE and BASK in his two favorite people working together for a humanitarian goal and have his feelings in peace and comfort.

Engineer's orders.

Alright alright he'll stay put.

(The plants are SO EXCITED about all of this!!!! They can help people again!!!!!!! They've missed helping people!!!!!!!!)

...Nai is having some kind of emotion about this.