Is the emotion, perhaps, "oh come ON I just rescued all of you and you just want to jump right into the endlessly hungry maws of the monstrous humans again"? Or maybe "PLEASE don't be so easy to abuse and do any self-care"? Or alternatively just a sort of instinctive association between plants wanting to help SO MUCH and being tortured to death by humans?

...all of the above? Mostly the last one.

Naaaaaaiiiiiii.

They will not be tortured to death, because they (Yvette, Zash, and Nai) will not let them, the plants will be sort of returned but still considered under their jurisdiction or something. Which is to say: if they start getting tortured to death, it will be noticed and they will put a stop to it directly.

... But she's really glad the plants are happy, too. She understands very well how annoying it can be to be trapped in a little comfortable box that is nonetheless cut off from the outside world with no way to affect it. It's kind of why she went rogue and got a car and a guide and drove out into the desert like a crazy person.

Well, how do they do that? They don't exactly have a ton of fast transportation, here, planes haven't been reinvented yet and the number of—

Nai had been under the impression that Yvette had been very clear about how much work Zash was meant to be doing right now and the reasons for why that amount is zero.

[Et tu, Brute?]

[I was the one who taught you that expression back on the ship, you don't get to use it against me.]

...oh, he was.

Zash's crying again.

Pet pet pet pet. [It's okay, darling. You're not alone, anymore.]

Also, she genuinely thinks Nai or at least his people are better positioned to answer that transportation question. Because Zash walked everywhere. Like, how the hell did she get here from the sand steamer so fast?? Before the plant did, even! That's probably Zazi related bullshit, but the plant still nonetheless made it here before Zash and Morgan did. Nai has been stealing plants from all over the world, he has to have some kind of transportation network available. Underground, maybe? She bets that Zazi-as-worms is really good at tunneling.

...he does have tunnels but he is NOT letting humans use them! They're his tunnels!!! Humans will just ruin them—uh, present company excepted.

Zash wraps his arms around one of Nai's legs and starts rubbing his face against it.

...Zash, what are you doing.

He thought he'd just narrated it, he's rubbing his face against Nai's leg.

Why—

Does Nai want him to stop?

...he didn't say that.

Then it's settled!

...okay.

(He's getting some weird fuzzy happy feelings about that but instead he will focus on work.)

ANYWAY yes okay he maybe perhaps sort of has a network of underground tunnels spanning all of the civilised areas of the planet. And good transportation in it. And occasionally Zazi helps but he doesn't trust them and doesn't rely on them. He has robots to deal with the maintenance and infrastructure though honestly uh if Zazi wanted to wreck their shit they wouldn't have much to do about that? Nai's got them beat for firepower but short of a war of extermination which would absolutely have a ton of casualties he doesn't have much in the way of ways to deal with the bugs.

Yvette is honestly fine not letting humans use his tunnels. Or, well, it's sufficiently out of her area of expertise and she has a vested interest in them being specialized for keeping plants healthy that she's not going to pick a fight about it? Maybe as a one time thing to get refugees to designated refugee locations, but that does show the world that those tunnels exist, so there are legitimate reasons not to. As for extended 'let the humans use the thing' kind of stuff? Yeah, she just has no idea how to make that function without exploding and getting into some kind of war or something. That is a thing she is entirely not qualified for. They can try to figure out the benefits and downsides of letting humans use Nai's transportation infrastructure at a later date. When there is not an ongoing refugee crisis. And maybe they have experts that are actually... knowledgeable... about transportation networks and their benefits besides plant maintenance.

Also they should... probably figure out what the heck to do with/about Zazi. Um. That sounds like a scary thing to think about.

Zazi is weird and complicated and even the plants have trouble reading them—

—still mad—

—but on the other hand they've never killed a plant, unlike a certain other species he could name.

Naaaiiiiiiiiii!