"Really? Of all the times to take a walk around the facility, you decide to do it while on crutches?"

Payens and Parker were leaning over a railing, watching over the construction of a five foot tall robotic torso. A pair of metal crutches were tilted on the bar, Parker's arm looped through the middle of them. Payens was shuffling a worn Rubik's cube as glanced back and forth between it and her.

"Nothing else I could be doing right now," Parker said. "Either I go for a walk or try to count the wrinkles in my hospital bed."

"Fair point." Payens stopping shuffling and started to map out an attack strategy for the cube. "But, I have another question."

"Shoot."

"Why is the engineering facility one of your tour stops?"

"Well… I'm kinda worried about DJ. I mean, you're replacing his entire body with robo-bits. Last time I checked, that's not exactly an operation that many people have experience in."

"You're forgetting that we have one of the some the most advanced technology and medical science in the entire world. We could install a taser into him that uses his brain as the battery, and he'd still be fine."

"...That doesn't make me feel better."

"Parker, how long have you had that leg wound?"

"Like, three days."

"When are you gonna be released from the infirmary?"

"Two more days; your point?"

Payens shifted so that he was facing Parker. "You had the flesh seared off your leg and you're going to be completed healed within the week. DJ will be fine." Parker sighed and ran her free hand through her hair.

"Alright…"

"Why do you even care so much anyway? You made it pretty clear in your… little tangent during the last mission that you're not the biggest fan of your squadmates. A feeling I completely understand, but it still just begs the question."

"I care because we're a team, whether I like it or not. Even if they're batshit crazy most of the time, it doesn't mean I want bad things to happen to them. It's kinda like why you keep your niece around."

"Well, uh… you have me there. Carry on." Payens turned and walked towards a stairwell leading back to the command center, leaving Parker alone with the sounds of blowtorches chopping up metal. She watched the engineers work for a few minutes, welding things with grand sparks flying everywhere, before slinging her crutches into place and hopping her way out of the lab.

She marched through the command center, the big blue Hologlobe hanging in the air and being as impractical as ever, as people took a quick break from their computers to watch the cripple go by. Parker made her way to the rec room, using her unhurt leg to kick the door open and hop in before it swung back. Peña, Rolf, and Tariq were standing around the pool table, Golubev and the bundle blankets that had become Sullivan were sitting on a couch, watching tv. Parker pulled over at the closest corner and laid the crutches on the edge.

"Who's winning?"

"God," Tariq said, "He gets to watch the world's worst pool players try to determine which of them is worse. Both sides are going with the timer scam strategy, it seems. Him and the rest of the viewers are probably laughing their asses off."

"The viewers?"

"Us."

"Your short sighted and strangely phrased thoughts simply fail to see my brilliant set up," Rolf said as he shot the cue ball into the side pocket. "My mind games are far too deep for you to understand them."

"Are they deeper the hole you just dug yourself into?" Parker asked.

"Well, we-, ye- y- yes, of course, obviously, it is, uh, it's a great plan, and and you're, just… d- dumb."

"Wow, it's getting easier by the day to make you trip over yourself."

Pena placed the cue ball in front of a solid right next to a corner pocket. He lined up his shot, and let the cue fly off to the right, merely tapping the cue ball into a different spot. Pena nodded like this was a good thing.

"Ha!" Rolf did a little jump for joy and scurried around the table to find a new angle. "Too deep for you to understand!"

Parker rolled her eyes and pulled her crutches back under her arms. She hopped away from the sounds of missed shots clacking and empty bragging over to the couches, letting herself fall backwards over the arm of an unoccupied one and glanced at the tv. On screen were two animated brick shithouses posing fabulously and yelling at each other in Japanese.

"Welcome to the therapy couch," Golubev said, taking a sip from a steaming mug, "where all your weird-ass dreams come true." Sullivan shushed him just as the two buff guys started to charge each other.

"What am I looking at right?"

"Well, I've been trying to find a nerd show to get her mind off you-know-what, and this is the first one to stick. That guy," he pointed at the screen to the guy with a sword, "is trying to use magical sun kung fu to kill his vampiric adopted brother, the other guy." As he spoke, sword guy threw some roses at the vampire, who panicked a bit and punched them all really quickly.

"I knew it," Sullivan whispered to herself. A guy in a checkerboard top hat started to monologue about what sword guy's plan was, with Sullivan nodding weakly as he affirmed her suspicions.

"How long have you been watching this?" Parker said.

"I don't know, three hours? Three hours. She's into it, but I'm just watching 'cause of how weird it is. Even by nerd standa-" He looked at something behind Parker, his face sinking as he did, before standing up. "I've gotta go. Be right back." He started to speed walk over to the door like someone told him that his car was getting towed, but as Parker looked at the door she couldn't see anything to make him upset. She turned back to Sullivan, who was too engrossed with what was happening in the show to notice. Parker sighed, and pulled her crutches back up to leave. Between Rolf celebrating something that wasn't worth celebrating and Sullivan gasping in surprise at some turn events, Parker couldn't hear the clicks of the crutches hitting the floor.

Parker stopped outside the door and looked around the hallway. She started thinking of all places she hadn't been to before, running through her mental map of the facility. Her mind crossed through the hanger, the engineering labs, the command center, power, research, R&D, satellite uplinks, containment...

'The containment room.' Parker realized that, despite give thee war effort a pivotal head start, she had never seen the captured alien. She immediately started hopping to the nearest elevator she could remember, punching the down button on arrival. The elevator she choose was more of a freight lift than a people lift, with ample room and grated bars revealing the unpainted elevator shaft, but it would still get her where she wanted to be. The doors opened into one of the generator rooms with a few maintence guys confused as to why a crippled woman just came out the freight elevator, but didn't try to stop her as she went out into the hallway connecting departments. The hall was messy from all the equipment that's been pulled through it, but as she got closer to the containment room it become more sterilized and bright. A pair of automatic glass doors slid apart Parker's grand entrance, a touch too slowly for her liking.

The Ethereal was floating in the middle of the room, inside wide glass tube filled with living materials, reading a book as he 'paced' around the edge of the room. He wore a blue robe that completely covered its lanky body, except for the gray angular helmet hid any facial feature he might have. The only part his body that Parker could see was the arm holding the book, a lengthy, dark gray toothpick with only four fingers. He closed the book and slid his arm under the flaps of his cloak and turned to face her.

"Hello," he said, his raspy echoing as if there were several of him, "I… was not expecting visitors."

"Nobody was, I just kinda felt like coming down here, on my own, so… Hi."

"I believe that we have a… slight miscommunication, here." The alien floated to a nightstand next a bed covered in more books and set it down. "I say 'not expecting visitors' because this is Dr. Vahlen's… private time." He pointed back towards a group of computer terminals on raised flooring. Parker saw Vahlen leaning back in a chair with her eyes closed and wearing headphones, most of her body hidden by a metal desk. The alien picked a tiny remote off his nightstand and pushed a button, setting off a red light on Vahlen's terminal. Vahlen frowned and popped her headphones out.

"What is it?" She said looking over to the malien. When she saw Parker, panic flashed in her eyes, and she ducked underneath the desk. They heard the sound of ruffling clothes for a few seconds before Vahlen stood up with her hands in her pockets.

"Hello, Miss Parker, I, was, not informed that you would be coming down here."

"... What did I just walk into?"

The Ethereal tossed the remote onto the bed and turned back to Parker. "'Alone time', as she calls it. I was told this normal for humans to do." He glanced back to Vahlen, whose face was so red, it could have melted steel.

"Uh, yes…" Vahlen said, shuffling towards the exit, "It seems that I will have to do this… elsewhere." Vahlen power walked past Parker and out the door, leaving a trail of awkward silence behind her.

"Now that the… distraction, of Vahlen's personal habits are out of the way, I suggest that we start our introductions over again. My name is Etxemkyata."

"... I'm Parker."

"It is nice to meet you, or anyone, if I may be honest."

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you don't get out much."

"Not for two months, now. I have been told that most of the staff still do not trust me. One could say that they are being 'kind of a dick'." Etxemkyata dug through the pile of books and uncovered a Rubik's cube, still unsolved. Parker laughed and hobbled over to the rising, using the edge as a chair.

"Did you up pick that potty-mouth from the science nerds, or do you have R rated dictionary buried somewhere in that pile?"

"I heard it in passing, yes."

"Ya know, If somebody told me a year ago that I would be having a conversation with a real live alien, I would have thought they were crazy." Parker crossed her hurt leg over the other and leaned back onto a desk. "Now I have people who're definitely crazy helping me shoot them."

"Madness is definitely a universal… thing. The best option we have to deal with is to simply ignore it as best we can."

"That just encourages them. Crazy is still crazy if there's one less person watching."

"Oh? And what would you suggest instead?"

"I'm not sure there is a right answer for crazy. But standing there and taking it is a fuck awful idea; that shit will wear you down fast. It's more… Have you ever heard the phrase 'roll with the punches'?"

"I… can't say that I have."

"It's like, if somebody hits you, standing still or moving into a hit will hurt. But if move in the same direction the hit is going, it'll hurt less. I don't know that really applies here, but I've resolved to try it anyway."

"From what I've been told, your last experience with… an irrational individual did not go over so well."

"There's a difference between being crazy and being fucking brain dead: crazy can get shit done, stupid is almost guaranteed to get somebody killed."

"And what would the difference between crazy and stupid be?"

"Easy. Crazy's more infectious."