Night 55: Stairwell by Waiting Room/Lobby 1

[yin_yang_fox]

[from here]No sound came from inside the stairwell, but that amounted to little at times. Still the Digimon stretched her senses, moving quickly and quietly into the dark. None were in this place yet, despite the small crowd in the hall below. It might mean none have moved upstairs, or it might simply mean they were quicker than she

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[shorttank]

Leela liked ZEX already. He ranked higher than Zapp had when Leela had met him (assuming the VUX system worked the same as DOOP's, which, for her purposes, she was perfectly happy to assume), without being a big, dumb blowhard. She'd long since decided that if Zapp ended up here, he'd spend every night huddled in his room, and would still somehow get another few stars out of it when someone else--probably her, she was forced to admit--busted him out.

"We sure have," she said. "Back home, I work for an interstellar delivery company. I'm the captain. I bet most of the people here have never even been to the moon." She wondered what the Stupid Ages equivalent of being so poorly-traveled was. Never having been to the kitchen? "They all seem to be from about a thousand years before me. Sometimes more." She actually liked the people from Olden Times, like Elaine and Guybrush, more, as a general rule, than a lot of the others she'd met.

She didn't mind ZEX staying close by, and she swept her flashlight around as they climbed the stairs. Doors in her time were a little different, but the concept was the same, the main variation being that the ones here didn't come with sound effects. Leela felt they still shouldn't be much of a match for her.

She saw the cut appear out of nowhere, and gave a little cry of dismay. "Oh, you're hurt! What happened?" She took another look around by her light, carefully inspecting the corners this time. Nothing there. ...nothing visible.

[wantsyourzex]

Another person who'd experienced interstellar travel! Finally! They were in such short supply here, and already ZEX felt a great deal more comfortable around her. They had some common ground, no doubt more than enough to develop a beautiful relationship together. And a captain too! ZEX did have a fondness for captains.

"Yes, that seems to be the case for me as well!" ZEX couldn't quite keep his excitement from his voice. "It's strange for me to even think of it... I can't imagine a time without interstellar travel, and our species' have had such a tangled history together for so long, yet so many people here have never heard of either thing. It's unbelievable."

And now she was showing some concern for him! No doubt evidence of her already developing feelings for him. ZEX felt quite confident about this already. He waved a hand, not wanting to show any outward weakness towards his new target.

"Oh, it's nothing, don't worry yourself. It happens to me at night..." A moment, and ZEX didn't particularly want to relive the memories of what had been done to him, or go into the details, so he tried to keep his voice nonchalant. "An unfortunate side-effect of one particular night here some time ago." Probably the intended one as well. "They do have a flair for sadism here... although working with the Ilwrath for so long does sort of make one used to it." Although the Ilwrath's sadism had been much more tolerable when it wasn't directed at him personally. Mentioning the Ilwrath's particular love for dismembering humans alive seemed like it'd be in bad taste though.

[shorttank]

Leela had seen first-hand the poor patients who'd been brainwashed at night, even if it was hard to think of them as "poor" when they were doing things like having robot body parts and using them to beat up other poor prisoners. And she'd heard references to "sleep studies," which had always seemed to her to deserve the ominous quotation marks, though she didn't know exactly what it was they did to people in them. Nothing good, that was for sure, if ZEX's problem was related to them. Leela tried to tone down the sympathy in her expression so she wouldn't make him feel any worse.

"I work for someone who, I'm pretty sure, is actively trying to kill me and my crew," she said. "I'm not sure why, except that he's a lunatic. We don't even all have the same blood type as him."

It was true, though, that Leela felt much more warmly toward the Professor now that she'd seen what a truly evil mad scientist was capable of. Farnsworth probably just wanted to use his crew's expendability as an ad tagline. Landel and the not-DOOP guys were actually out to get them.

She edged past ZEX to take the lead, deciding he needed a bodyguard if he was already at a disadvantage.

[to here, and sorry for my slowness! work has been frying my brain.]