Noctis never wore anything except her lab uniform, and her hair alternated between being tightly pulled back to hanging loose, unbrushed and unstyled, depending on whether or not she was working.

" Bring me CF-3012," she ordered, hunched over her microscope. She had spent almost all day drawing complex diagrams of the flash-frozen samples, labelled down to the minutiae in Standard he didn't understand. The day prior, she had spent all day hermetically sealed in the test chamber, wrapped in what looked like an extremely clunky full function suit. The decontamination procedure afterwards had taken hours, as well.

" Yes," he answered promptly, jumping up to go to the large cabinet she stored the sample plates in.

Internally, he cursed his fate. Why couldn't she just have assistants for this sort of thing? Why did William have to assign him to look after her? Why was he listening to William, anyway, he wasn't DASS! He'd probably outrank him if he was!

" Take CF-3011 to the MRR-In," she said as he brought the triple-sealed plate to her. She had already taken 3011 out, and handed it off to him without so much as an upward glance.

He held it gingerly, mentally repeating all the warnings William had given him about its content, and took it to the incinerator, setting it with all the others; the MRR-In took a decent amount of power to run, so it had been scheduled to run only once per day.

" You'll hurt your back if you're always hunched over like that," he cautioned her, sitting at the other end of the table.

" Quit nagging," she responded shortly, her pencil only slowing for a moment as she began writing... drawing... whatever again. Were science diagrams called drawings?

" You should at least take a break to eat," he said.

" Don't have time," she responded, clearly irate.

" Did Wille really put you on that harsh a schedule?" Prima asked, doubtful.

" You're an idiot, so you wouldn't understand," she said, sharp. " It's unlike anything known to science; at least the Imperial science... It's stunning. I don't even know what kind of organism this is. It doesn't resemble anything from DASS, either... It may be perfect. Yes, it may be perfect..."

Her voice trailed off as her scribbling became more fevered.

He didn't like being called an idiot, but it was also true that he didn't understand, so he didn't address her again.

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