“I suppose none of them are in any state to go hunt down and kill Legato,” sighs Morgan.

"Nnnnope. Though we'd hoped there would've been more fighting, it's such a shame there wasn't any!"

"Truly, my heart, it bleeds. Maybe we should go stop by one of the big cities, see if we can buy several thousand tiny violins for you."

Well now Zazi has to make the sound of violins come from nowhere for Morgan. It's only appropriate.

"Oh, look, you beat me to it. Good for you." Her eyes slide over to Conrad. "Oi. Doctor. Were you the one responsible for Livio's new cyber-brain fashion accessory."

"Yes." He will not look up at her from the computer for some reason.

"Why am I not surprised. Oh wait! I've met you. Whatcha doing, there? Important work?"

"Yes. I am working with Ms. Marlowe's new systems to improve the conditions of some of the plants. I do not have as much familiarity with this side of things but I am doing what I can."

"Fucking damn it she's corrupting us all," hisses Morgan, suddenly furious. "Fine! Fine. Go ahead, have yourself a fucking blast."

He does not ask her what she had hoped he'd been doing instead, or what she wanted to do about it. He doesn't want to know.

"Hmmm this is getting boring, who can we go bother..."

"Have you considered introducing yourself to humanity at large. Maybe getting yourself some other fucking people to poke."

"Oh we've done that to some people! Did you know some humans have this illness called 'psychosis' where they see and hear things that aren't there? Those are fun!"

"Ahuh. I bet. Hey, bug, do you know how to play chess."

It's one of those things she picked up on the steamer while the lovebirds were busy making eyes at each other and fretting over the plant that was being treated horribly.

"Yeah!" Does Morgan mind having a floating chess table made out of worm spores? Zazi can make one of those.

No, she doesn't mind. Her life is weird as fuck already. They can play.

Zash doesn't wake up before Yvette, this time. Partly because he doesn't want to, partly because he hasn't slept in weeks and he has a lot of it to catch up on.

...well not exactly, he still doesn't actually need to need sleep, but he can choose to need it and that's about the same thing. And he's having such great dreams!

And Yvette has recently undergone some changes that result in many things, one of them being that she doesn't require as much sleep as she once did.

.... She's never seen Zash sleeping while touching her. He's taken naps in the back or passenger seat of the car while she drives, but not. Right here, in her arms. Where she can feel his dreams and happiness and, and, and himness. She missed him so much. She's been falling asleep alone for what feels like forever.

Probably she should, like, go do important things or something but. ... But. He's so cute and cozy and happy!!!!

He doesn't wake up before her, but he does wake up soon after, stirred awake by her own thoughts. "G'morning," he mumbles, yawning hugely.

The bleariness isn't exactly fake, it's just that he could choose not to be bleary if he wanted to. He does not, currently, want to. This is very cosy and he is very happy and he loves her very much and actually waking up in her arms like this is threatening to send him into yet another crying fit.

Get a grip, Stampede.

"Good morning," she says fondly, petting him.

She is trying very hard not to think about all of the things she's got to get done (research needs to be disseminated and Elendira and oh no she thinks she broke Nai and...) but she's bravely trying to clamp down on those urges because, actually, he does in fact deserve to just have. A lazy morning with the woman he loves. He must have been so worried.

He was so worried. So so so worried. But they'll have all of eternity to have lazy mornings together, it's fine if the first morning after her complete transformation and following the series of related events isn't that lazy.

(Zash has decided he doesn't want to use words. Words are for people who aren't psychic.)

In priority order:

Nai is the least urgent of that bit. He'll keep, and some misery directly caused by his own actions is probably good for him. Builds character or something. And going after him while he's still trying to not be found—he's hiding from everyone but Yvette, right now—isn't likely to be very productive.

Disseminating research is important but also not very time-sensitive. There's a chance any given bit of it will help plants but the chance isn't that large and probably bigger chunks of coherent research are more effective. Besides, it's not just a matter of emailing a bunch of people some random equations; they need to work on presentation, on a way to make it reach a very wide audience, on a way to make it be credible enough—and, most importantly, on a way to convince people to stop sucking their plants dry, which is the most critical part of making everything else work as intended.

Elendira is a lot more urgent, what with how she's a murderous psycho, but a little bit of poking the plants turns up that she's not in the compound anymore and Dr. Conrad's best guess is that she went after Legato, who apparently called her an "angel of God". Now, maybe if they fix Nai they can get him to recall his missionary, but Zash suspects it won't be that easy at all.

(Yeah, words are dumb and they are psychic. They can just skip those things for right now.)

Oh, good. She's immediately soothed by how he supports her in her ruthless pragmatism. It was in retrospect kind of silly to think that for some reason he wouldn't be immediately and gleefully on board with it. She is very silly. Sorry, love. Having him prioritize is really really helpful and she appreciates him for it. (Having him back is SO GREAT.)

She's not sure how to go after Elendira and ??? Legato, who is that?? oh it's Morgan's asshole ex-boss gotcha gotcha okay yes definitely him too, fuck that guy, while Nai is out of commission. Zazi could track them but she suspects that they wouldn't, and Conrad (the fucker) is already apparently on it, so. .... Uh, Brad, could they get Brad in on it?? Can they contact him? He has resources, and actually now that she thinks of it she bets he can help a bunch with presentation of how to not be an asshole to plants research. (That's what she calls it in her head, it's 'how not to be an asshole.') Oh, oh, wait, since she thought of Morgan, should they check on her to make sure she's not about to die of Conrad running out of time due to her super healing and fix it if they can?? If she dies she's gone forever, something something hook Morgan up to Zash's gate maybe?? That's probably possible, right? Though that should probably wait if it's not a flaming emergency because there is definitely an adjustment period.

It is perhaps becoming apparent that the reason she is so organized and systematic in meatspace is because her brain is a little bit of a mess. She's a little bit all over everywhere.

He loves her so much.

So, he, uh... expects hooking anyone to his gate will not be straightforward at all, what with how, uh, he doesn't actually have direct access to his own gate. There are some things he can do sort of on intuition but direct manipulation? No. They'd probably need Nai for that, too, and maybe even Conrad, though if he doesn't miss his guess—and he doesn't, the plants are just now confirming that this thought he's having is [=] to some thoughts Conrad's had—Conrad kind of wants Yvette to take over all of his (good, useful) research and finally be allowed to die. So maybe she could figure out how to do it.

Brad's team can probably help with presentation! Communication is difficult, the reason the arcology's managed to be secret this long is that it's actually a repurposed ship and it has an artificial sandstorm surrounding it at all times and it moves with the sandstorm. Kind of like a sand steamer, but way more competent at it; he's pretty sure even Nai wouldn't be able to find it. There are some drop locations he can leave a message at and some other drop locations where he can fetch a message from, and he's got practice at not thinking about those explicitly so even though the plants could fetch it from his innermost thoughts they'll respect his request not to. But all that said, there's no fast way to contact them, which is another part of their security measures. They are, effectively, cut off from the external world except at semi-random intervals in semi-random locations.

Yes, yes, fine, she will not throw her own beloved into the grinder of suddenly sharing a gate with someone else. Especially after she so thoroughly yelled at Nai about doing that exact thing. It's just that she worries, okay. Her feelings about Morgan are a little complicated right now because apparently she was lying to them and attempting to get Zash here, but Zash clearly (kinda?) trusts her so she's fine going with that. Whatever their complicated feelings for the child super soldier are, she doesn't want her to die.

Okay, so, yes they should see about contacting Brad, but that will take a while to get an answer back from.

Conrad... wants her presence to mean that he's allowed to die. Huh. Well, she's kind of fine with this. She's not sure if she could just take over all his research, though? They work in very different spheres of science, but, well. She does have forever now, doesn't she. She'll see about trying to pick up all of his work so they can all be rid of him.

Also maybe they should stop trying to tactics and instead tell each other all that's happened while they've been apart? That seems like it might be smart.

They can do that! Has he mentioned he loves her? Because he does, he really does. This thought has been brought by being reminded of THAT BEAUTIFUL CHECKLIST. She is the best and she was so so so correct that he and Morgan absolutely needed it, they were SO out of their depth with that car. They didn't even realise they had to CHARGE the car, that's how out of their depth they were.