What! What now! It's true!

Sigh.

...Zash does think he has more than zero idea what to do about Zazi, though.

...well?

Hmm? Oh, Zash thought he wasn't meant to be working.

[… fine, fine, you’re allowed to say your one idea. But then it’s back to not working for you, bud.]

He grins a teary-eyed grin and decides it is time to nuzzle Yvette now.

[not a one idea, more like a... thought]

[a few thoughts]

[one is, Morgan's dealt with Zazi most directly of all of us right? she'll probably have ideas]

[am I allowed to say my other thoughts?]

Why is Zash so aggravating?

(And since this is telepathy, they'll all get the subtext of him actually finding this kind of endearing.)

(And since this is telepathy, Nai will see this subtext reflected in their thoughts and get really annoyed with himself.)

[Nai you are so cute]

[Agreed, very cute.]

Fine, Zash may explain his thoughts in more detail but then implementation is someone else's job, understand? That seems to be the part that he finds most draining anyway. But getting Morgan's help is a good one, even though they'd then have to, like, talk? And explain? Out loud? With their words? Instead of just working at the speed of thought, which is obviously superior and much more efficient. (She has really taken to being a hybrid.)

Yeah it's definitely the implementation that'll be the most trouble, what with how this last thought of hers has just made him start crying harder again.

(HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO LAST HE IS SO TIRED OF CRYING.)

It's been a hundred and fifty years, dude, give yourself a break.

Did. Did Nai just. Tell him to do emotional self-care. And. Validate his feelings.

[love, you saw that, right? I didn't hallucinate what Nai just said?]

(Alternative things he could and maybe should've responded with are "I'm a plant after all" and "runs in the family" and "no u" but he's mostly too shocked.)

He kinda thinks it's time to nuzzle Nai again.

Why is Zash like this.

Anyway! Thoughts!

[Zazi is distributed, there isn't just one Zazi, or even an integer number of Zazis, so whatever we come up with to deal with them needs to take that into account. I... should talk to them some more now that I don't want to exterminate them, figure out what that means in practice. main thing is probably that it won't take an individual one-time bribe, and maybe even "bribing" or "paying" or "trading" might be the wrong way to approach it]

Zash thinks the most likely long-term solution will in fact be long-term, in the sense that it will need to be some plan that involves them doing stuff related to it for a long time, maybe forever. Build a proper working relationship with Zazi, as if they're the governments of neighbouring countries, rather than interpret them as being an individual they've negotiated with or anything like that.

Which, really, is probably generally how they want to deal with Zazi always? Unless they do go on said war of extermination Zazi is here to stay and honestly Zazi was here first and it would be really unfriendly to be the ones to start hostilities if they can just work together towards each other's goals.

[Nai did just, yes, and it was very charming.]

Hmmm, yeah, that does seem like it's a better way of approaching things. And also like it's so not Yvette's area of expertise. Uh. Permission to table this for now and go back to the problem that is shiny both more within her area of expertise and under a more direct time crunch? Possibly after calling Morgan, which she bets this console will let her do if she actually investigates all of the icons it has instead of tunnel visioning on her chosen task, as is her habit?

He doesn't have a generic "call random people" button. ...he thinks. He confesses the only person he really interacted with on any regular basis other than the plants was Dr. Conrad and so Nai just had a thing to talk to him and let Conrad figure it out. Nai wasn't even the main one using the consoles, something like 80% of his time was spent directly healing plants.

[...you spent 80% of the past century and a half on healing plants?]

Yeah?

Holy shit no wonder he hates humans so much.

No duh.

Yeah, his stamina for healing plants is actually really impressive, usually he's barred from continuing healing by the plant's stamina, not his own!! It's also why her own abilities and knowledge were so useful to him, because her techniques don't ask as much of the plants themselves! And they scale better, and allow for him to specialize in the hard cases, and she is getting distracted by shiny problems she wants to solve again. Sorry.

She'll go figure out how to call Morgan, which will probably involve calling Conrad. Or, no, actually she can just send him a message instead of calling like some kind of heathen. Conrad gets a message asking for him to please at his earliest convenience send Morgan down to the plant room, they want her perspective for some things.

It's not even just the physical stamina, the emotional stamina of staring the consequences of humans' actions in the face like that, knowing each detail of how exactly the plants got hurt, having to painstakingly undo the damage—sometimes while the plant herself would have been insensate with pain—and doing that for so long...

[I'm so sorry, Nai,] is what he sends, with a lot of feeling. [on, on behalf of humanity, I'm sorry you've had to...]

Nai thought he was going to be able to escape feelings, here. Can he just escape feelings? Please? They can feelings later when it hasn't been so much feelings all concentrated.

...yes. Right. Sorry. He's doing the plant thing of letting overwhelming feelings override other concerns again. Instead he'll just. Pull Nai into a tighter hug and rock back and forth a little bit.

This system was set up to always be able to get him, even wake him up if necessary—Nai isn't a very patient person—so Dr. Conrad replies with an acknowledgement not ten seconds after Yvette sends him the message. From there he can use the compound's video cameras to locate and then go fetch Morgan.

"Ms. Marlowe requests your presence at the plants room," Dr. Conrad tells her once he's found her.