"What the everliving...?" she groans, sitting up and looking around. Everything's so dark, where is she??

The last thing she remembers is Zash running off to handle the latest crisis at really quite an inopportune time. She had been pacing, frustrated and worried, and then… something hit her…?

She seems to be on a platform of some kind, hard metal, though that's the first thing she can perceive...

...except for a luminous child over there, who doesn't look exactly like she remembers them but whom she might recognise anyway. "Ai, ai... You're finally awake!" they say. "Welcome, welcome, to February."

They're in a great dark dome, large enough to rival one of the Seven Cities themselves. Silver cracks run along its surface, only visible because of the blue and red lights from below. Rows and rows and rows of plants in their pods wait in neat little rows beneath her platform, and beyond the glow of the plants is a dark shape that looks like it might have once been a spaceship, nestled in a large mound of sand. Now that she looks, actually, there's lots of sand all over the place, in little discrete piles, like... it leaked from above.

Ah. Yes. They're underground, aren't they.

".... Uh, it was Zazi, right? Hello," she says, carefully getting to her feet. "Thanks, I feel. So welcomed."

"So polite. You're not mad about how we tried to eat you and then kidnap you and then succeeded at kidnapping you?"

"Um. I'm mostly confused about why you would do that. Eating me makes sense, I guess, even though it's... obviously the option I like the least. Why did you kidnap me and take me to a failed city with a lot of..."

Oh. Oh no. Her brain has caught up with her observations and if there are this many plants in one place, then. Well there is one person she knows about that collects this many plants, isn't there.

"... why would you bring me here?" she finishes, a little plaintively.

"Catching up! Well, anyway, we're sorry about that time we tried to eat you. We disagreed with that us so we ate them and we're not the us who wanted to eat you. That was a very wasteful decision, you're so delightful, eating you would've been no fun. And there's another us who just wanted to eat you and Zash to see what the Punisher and Mr. Knives would do but we don't talk to that us.

"Now the reason we brought you here is that we want you to help with this old disagreement we have with Mr. Knives."

".... Okay. What's the old disagreement, and why do you think I can help?"

She's suspicious already but, well. Probably best to let Zazi explain. Instead of jumping to conclusions and falling into a panic.

"Who's better for us?" They extend both hands out in front of them, palms up, and luminous spores fly out of their sleeves to form tridimensional silhouettes of a person, "Humans," and a familiar bulbous shape, "or plants? Who will be better for the planet?

"Mr. Knives has an opinion. He's biased. We want to hear yours."

"Well, I think that's a false dichotomy," she says, turning from Zazi to continue looking around. Huh. Is that a console, over there...?

"Is it? Mr. Knives will kill all humans; or humans will kill him, and then all plants will die. Isn't that so?"

That's indeed a console. Old, but recognisable.

"With a fatalistic worldview I suppose those do seem like the only two options." She walks over to the console to peer at it. Hm. This... looks like it's connected to the plants below. Probably from all the way back before the Fall, and just updated with additional plants as they were gathered. "But, you know. Maybe there's some in between we can work out."

The spores fly off and the images they were representing dissolve as Zazi flies over to where Yvette is and takes a seat on the railing next to her. "Maybe. We don't see the point. Duke it out, the winner was right all along. It's how we do it and it's always worked for us.

"You know, it was the Punisher's job to bring Stampede here, but we think we'll win that little competish. He will be really bugged until he can find you." They make a face. "That wasn't very good, we should try harder."

This earns a little startled laugh from her.

"... Oh my god, we crashlanded on an alien planet and taught the natives how to pun."

They grin. "Language is such an interesting concept! We should've thought of it ourselves. We can say one thing and mean another, say two things that mean the same thing and one thing that means two. What else will you invent? We are so excited to find out."

"Well I can introduce you to math if you're curious, though that one's not a new invention, and you've probably heard of it by now." Tap tap tap at the console and. Yeah it. It really is connected to. All of those plants below.

"What are you doing there? The doctor will be mad at us if you mess his plants up." They sound like they'd find it very amusing if the doctor got mad at them for any reason.

"Well, if it's the doctor I think it is then I don't particularly care. It's not him I'm worried about. Anyway, I'm not going to mess them up, I just want to look." She frowns. .... Yeah, uh, these plant maintenance routines are as outdated as the hardware. "Isn't that why you put me down here in particular?"

"Yeah! It'll be sad if Mr. Knives kills you, though. We're just hoping something more interesting happens instead."

"Yes, I quite agree." Mmhmm. And from these readings, none of the plants have been getting anything except usual (outdated) supportive maintenance from the system itself. Yet some of them have improved over time, in little bursts. Always one at a time. Sort of like someone with plant healing abilities devoted those abilities to helping a plant. "... Sorry, should I explain what I'm looking at and what I'm seeing? You seem like the curious type, too."

"Yeah! That way after Mr. Knives kills you we'll be able to tell him what you broke."

“I will not be breaking anything but, sure.”

She does, in fact, explain what she’s seeing. How the system is functional but outdated by over a century, and the plants are essentially being left alone in standby mode. Which is fine, it’s not a problem exactly, they’re all stable, but it could be better. See, just waiting for Nai to swing by and personally heal each and every one by himself is inefficient. Clearly, he has a backlog. Really what should be happening is he gets the more complicated and tricky ones, and the rest who are recovering from ordinary wear and tear…

Well. She’s pretty sure she’s being tested. It’s also not like she’s going to be getting out of here without help. So if she is going to be found by people likely to kill her, she might as well make herself useful, first. It just might save her life.

So then she gets to updating the standby mode to do a bit better than ‘essentially leave them alone.’ While explaining what she’s doing to her kidnapper. Knowledge is to be disseminated, after all.

Her kidnapper sways back and forth, watching her intently with a wan smile on their face as she explains. They're not really getting anything, they're just memorising it, but they have a guess for what's going to happen soon which is confirmed by a couple of the bugs they have all over everywhere in this compound.

Her kidnapper is in fact right in their prediction. The metal door leading to this chamber opens and Knives stalks into it looking absolutely—neutral. He does not have much of an expression on his face. The main indicator of his mood are the myriad blades swirling around him. "What is the meaning of this."

She freezes a little, like a child being caught doing something she’s not allowed to do. Then she raises her head and very deliberately continues.

“Well,” she says, not letting the rush of terror leak too much into her voice, “Zazi brought me here, so I thought I might as well help.”

"Help—" He pauses. Squints. "You. I know you."