Night 55, Main Hallway 2-West

[swornandbroken]

[from here]No one else was up here yet, at least not in sight. The hall off to his left still seemed almost to pulse with the unnatural quiet, as if it were a dark blot on Mello's mental map of the place. He didn't so much as swing the flashlight beam towards it; he turned quickly away, heading for the closet where he'd got his pipe. It seemed so

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[shorttank]

"Oh, the professor's not actually that bad. He just keeps volunteering us for life-threatening missions. He's a mad scientist, what can you do?" She shrugged. "Apart from the complete disregard for safety regulations, it's not a bad job. And someone has to keep my idiot co-workers from getting themselves killed."

Vomiting at the sight of humans? Leela stifled a giggle at the idea, which she didn't think ZEX completely meant as a joke, and which actually made a certain amount of sense. If horrible gelatinous blobs were, well, horrible to humans, she could see a creature completely unused to hair, or fingers, or a lack of antennae, finding humans pretty gross-looking.

She'd been hesitant to talk about her eye for most of her life, but found she didn't mind now. Maybe it was because one (possibly the only) good thing about Landel's was that no one would be tempted to stare at it, or poke it, while she was talking about it. And ZEX was used to only one, too! She thought his attitude about losing the extra was really reaching for a silver lining, but, hey, more power to him.

"I had one big eye, before. It feels weird to have two, with a nose between them. It seems like I see less and more at the same time. Depth perception... wasn't a strength. But I haven't had any headaches. Kind of a butt-ache," she admitted. "I tried to kick my nurse my first day here, and missed."

Yes, that was enough about her. "I'm glad you're open-minded about humans! You must have started out looking really different. Has it been hard to adjust?"

[wantsyourzex]

That certainly didn't sound like someone that ZEX would want to work under. You could not take unnecessary risks in his field of work, and he'd done his best to make sure that all soldiers under his command hadn't died in vain.

"A mad scientist?" Voluntarily working under someone who was apparently mentally ill was fascinatingly bizarre to him... how had the mad scientist even kept his job? That was certainly not how they did things back home, but humans did seem to treat their "defective" more kindly. That ZEX could certainly appreciate. "That must certainly be a fascinating job!" No doubt the humans on her plane of existence were free from the slave shield. Such a lovely thought. "It can be trying at times to be the only sensible one."

Leela didn't seem upset by the mention of how revolting other VUX found her species, which was refreshing. Both species held such deep grudges over their appearances! Sometimes it was outright childish.

"So you had an eye like mine!" Finally, someone he could relate to! "I thought all humans had the tiny double eyes, and most of the other people brought here all seemed to have two." He took a moment to picture a human with a large central eye like his own. He adored humans for their difference, of course, but it was an intriguing mental image nonetheless. "And yes, depth perception has been quite a challenge for me... humans seem to rely on it quite heavily. Their field of vision is so limited! And they lose so much subtlety in their gestures without one..."

He was losing track of what he was doing, and he waved a hand to try and drive away some invisible thing fluttering near his cheek. "Ah yes, we should keep moving, I suppose. It does us no good to stay in one place."

[ to here]