Rosa nonetheless notices, but doesn’t seem offended.

“I’ll leave you to it, then?” Except… she’s afraid to ask about payment but she should, it’s not just Zash, so — “How much do we owe you…?”

Blink blink.

“At the moment, absolutely nothing. When the plant is back to full output, I’ll want one percent of that output to be under my purview for the next decade. But, um. I’m a reasonable person who cares about your town and your people and don’t want to wring you dry, I just. Also want to invest in the future.” By having the plant contribute to the ongoing project of ‘make the world not be such a shithole.’

“Good lord where did he find you,” snorts Rosa. “Thank you.”

"In the middle of the desert," Zash says brightly to Rosa, in a tone of voice that suggests this is some inside joke, then winks at her.

“Excuse me, I found you,” she snorts.

There’s another couple of thank yous, then the laymen get going and the apparent happily wedded couple are left alone to geek out in peace.

“You did this,” she says, pointing to the little barely perceptible positive trend. It’s not a question. “And you’re not going to tell me how, are you.”

He peers at where she's pointing. "I didn't touch that console," he points out. "How could I have done that?"

“Nice dodge, but I never said you touched the console. I said you did it.” She raises her eyebrows, amused. “And I have some guesses as to how, but if we’re playing mystery games I’ll keep them to myself for now. To keep things interesting, mystery man.” She winks.

“Besides, I’d rather focus on,” and she motions to their red and sickly friend.

He grins at her again but then: yeah, they can geek out.

Despite Zash's goofy persona and dumb affect, and despite his earlier demuring about how much he knew about this exactly, it becomes extremely clear that he knows a lot. Not as much as she does, and especially not in as quantifiable a way as she does, but he can easily keep up with her and offer his own useful mysterious insight. It's soft squidgy feelings insight but at least directionally it's helpful.

Ahuh.

Well, she will just quietly accept his mysterious insight without question, and instead just happily work from it as if it’s concrete fact. It makes her inner scientist itch a little, to not properly test something she's then relying on so heavily, but that’s just her own geekery, not anything important. She understands there’s something more going on here that she doesn’t see yet. She’ll play along. That probably makes her a bad scientist, but she’s an engineer first, and engineers care about application over theory.

They will in fact make marvelous progress figuring out what exactly is ailing the red state plant, and furthermore she’s clearly having fun.

He is also clearly having fun. His speech style becomes more animated, and animated in a different way than before. He speaks quickly, gesticulates wildly, paces, occasionally walks over to the plant and adopts a distant look in his eyes before turning back around and giving some weird sideways suggestion for an avenue of exploration that nevertheless turns out to be surprisingly relevant in some nonobvious way. From his mannerisms it almost sounds like he's... well, a doctor, or maybe a nurse—as contrasted with being an engineer, that is. He doesn't sound like he's talking about a machine to fix; he sounds like he's talking about a patient to heal.

And compared to his previous shows of energy, this feels a lot more focused and, in a certain way, genuine. Before, he was cheerful; here, he looks happy. There's a difference.

Well, a patient to heal is perfectly logical. Plants are, and have always been, alive. If anything, treating them like they're machines instead of living things is just a dumb coping mechanism humans have forced upon them, because humans like things that are simple. Fit into the box, follow the dotted line, make the quota set before you. If you've done it once, you can do it again, so do it again. Even when things aren't always that simple.

It's very telling, though, the way he goes distant and blank and then comes back with a mysterious insight or sideways suggestion. Sort of like someone who, instead of playing an eternal guessing game, just asks, what's wrong? She herself has wanted to ask this exact question hundreds of time in her life, but never been able to, instead having to figure it all out from mapping trends and using algorithms and data from other plants in similar situations.

But of course, she's not bringing nothing to this relationship, either. He can learn a number of things about the state of the art of plant engineering, too. She's more than happy to tell him, and happier still that he understands. Along with the general breakthroughs of the unending march of science: a lot of the reason she can figure out what's happening with plants in red state at all is because, over the hundred and fifty years since the SEEDS ships crashed out of the sky instead of sensibly colonizing the place, the various nerds of the world have updated the systems taking care of the plants. On modern tech, this plant would not be considered red state yet, because pompous narcissistic genius engineers do not want to admit defeat. There are, in fact, instances of plants in the big cities that had numbers worse than these now, that floated above the arbitrary 'red state, throw it out' line, because someone kept moving that line down. And then, since it had clearly been fixed, obviously the line can just stay down there. Everyone else can have more breathing room and less scary red lights that frighten people into doing stupid things.

But also, they've been there for hours and someone eventually comes to check on them.

"Hey uh, have either of you two lovebirds eaten," calls Vernon, who was kind of expecting this of them, really.

Zash blinks up at him from where he'd been staring at the screen with a deep furrow of concentration to his brow and then grins sheepishly. "Whoops," he says, not really sounding regretful at all. "We got a bit distracted."

"Oh. Yes we did, and no we have not eaten or. Really done many things to care for our human forms. Since you left. Oops."

... That does explain why she was starting to get a bit cranky with the data, doesn't it. Damnation, she was just hungry. Figures. Right, they can go care for their mortal forms. ... Well, she can go care for her definitely still mortal form, and Zash can present the illusion that he is doing the same. It's not clear if he needs to eat, but she's increasingly suspicious that he doesn't. She needed a bathroom break, awkwardly realized uncomfortably late, and he has not.

Yeah he uh did not remember to pretend to need the bathroom until she needed it herself and at that point he just decided it would be a waste of time when she seems so on board with how inhuman he is. He'll need to take care not to get too used to it and slip up around other people but she seems... fine? She seems fine with it.

He also does indeed not need to eat, but at least to the people of this town he should keep up the pretense.

Fortunately, there is an establishment in these parts that is equipped to feed people. They can all go there, and be fed, and there isn't even any fussing about money because honestly Yvette has paid for everyone's meals several times over by loaning out the water purifier in a time of water crisis.

"... So?" asks Rosa, anxiously, as she puts their plates of food in front of them. "What do you think."

Right, she should update these people on the state of the thing they stake their livelihoods on. That is an important thing to do when one is fixing the thing they stake their livelihoods on. Yes, very reasonable. Also, she can't help but notice that this diner is more crowded than it had been, and that also all of its occupants are staring at them. She will just carefully pretend like this is perfectly normal and does not unsettle her in any way. But she will make sure her voice carries, when she answers, since they all seem to care so much.

"Better than I was expecting, actually. We still don't have a time table, but it's looking really good."

"We managed to mostly stop the water plant from feeding the food plant," he says in a less carrying voice, since it was only Rosa that was there for that part of the explanation, "so unless we mess up we will probably be able to keep it from getting any worse, and from there we're optimistic." Zash himself does not seem to have any reaction to being stared at by the entire town. Or, if he does, he is not showing it at all.

"Good. I'm so glad. Thank you both so much. Oh, I'll stop hovering, let me know if you need anything."

As they're eating, someone very small clears his throat. He is carrying a rusted cage with a couple of flying bug-like things inside, and looking very serious.

"—oh, you must be Tonis! Hi, little guy! Is that for us?"

"Ye."

He caaaaarefully leans up on his toes to place the cage on their table. The little creatures inside skitter around their cage, then settle back down. In the dim light of the diner, they glow slightly.

Yvette blinks at them. Huh. She hasn't seen the juvenile form of the planet's major fauna (colloquially known as worms, for the way the adult form is a giant worm) this close before.

"Well thank you very much," she says, smiling at the little boy. "I haven't seen these so close before, they're very neat."

Also kind of ooky and gross, but, well. The bio-luminescence is cool.