Soon, my pretties….

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When Mark arrived, he was surprised by what he saw. Anne was taking a bit of a nap in the visitor's chair, while Effie was scowling at a particularly obtuse piece of text.

"Are you… ok?" he asked her softly as he moved in the door.

She nodded distractedly, then looked up at him, her gaze sharpening. "Did you know I have a file?"

He flushed a little but didn't respond.

"Am I the only person here who didn't know I have a file?" she asked the ceiling rhetorically before returning to her perusal.

Her question was sharp enough to wake Anne from her doze.

"Oh, hi Mark. You all packed and ready?" she asked as she rubbed at her eyes.

"I'm packed," he said shortly, bumping his bag into her chair to emphasize the fact.

"And are we ready?"

He scowled.

"Ready for what?" asked Effie, looking at the two of them. "Don't tell me that you're running away with that tart finally."

Mark narrowed his eyes and looked first at Effie, then at Anne as she unsuccessfully tried to stifle a snort of laughter. "No. Mr. Herman said that I get to sit and watch her and her fellow freaks while he tries to figure out what to do with them."

Effie shuddered. "Have fun. Glad I'm not you."

"I wish I weren't me, either, thank you very much."

"Sorry to be such a problem for you," Anne muttered at the floor. "Not my idea."

"But it is your fault," he said.

She looked up at him, puzzled. "My fault how? For breathing?"

"Sure. If you were in the bulb still you wouldn't be breathing, and you wouldn't be a problem."

"And then where would this project be?" she said airily. "Not to say I'm the only one working here," she said hastily as Effie looked at her incredulously, "but you can't deny that I've played a major part in getting us as far as we have as quickly as we have."

"Like that means anything," said Mark harshly.

"Well… I thought it meant something last week. When your racist tendencies weren't showing so obviously." She returned to looking at her hands.

"I'm not a racist," he pointed out politely. "I just don't think that freaks like you have any reason to be interacting with normal people."

"I am normal, Mark. I'm just a normal me."

"Normal people do not send laser beams out of their fingertips."

"I did not!" she protested. "It wasn't a laser. Just light." She formed a ball of pale green light and floated it towards the ceiling. "See?" she said, pointing at it. "Light, sans bulb."

They both stared at her soundlessly until she sighed and let the light fade. "Fine. No light," she apologized. "But it's not a laser," she muttered under her breath.

"It's still freakish," Mark said after a moment. "No human could do something like that."

Anne kept her mouth shut and carefully didn't look at Effie.

"What?" she said. "Are you saying I could do something like that?" she demanded.

Anne shrugged and looked at her. "It's not hard. Not entirely practical, but it can be a fun trick at birthday parties and dance clubs."

Mark looked between them. "What are you two saying?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," they chimed together innocently. Effie went back to her reading, and Anne stood and stretched the last of the sleep from her joints.

"Ok, Mark. Let's go introduce you to the rest of my family."

"Do we have to?" he muttered as he backed out the door to her office.

"Well, they've kind of taken over my house. As soon as I need a change of clothes, you're going to get to meet them."

"Lucky me."

"Some people might say that. Stupid people, mostly. Just a warning, Knives is just as racist as you and your buddies are, but he's a lot more proactive in showing his feelings. It might be a good idea to not provoke him."

"I'm not afraid of any of you."

"That's not smart," she pointed out as they wended their way out of the lab. "I'm not entirely comfortable around him, myself. He's a bit better than he used to be, though. You could probably engage in a few smart assed remarks and he wouldn't kill you out of hand, but if I were you, I wouldn't press your luck."

"I can handle him."

"Like you handled me four years ago? Did that limp teach you nothing?"

He glared.

"I'm not saying that you aren't competent. I'm just saying that you have no training fighting someone as fast as him, and if you push at him the way you've been pushing at me today, he will probably smack you down a little."

"Let him start something. It will just prove how intrinsically violent you freaks are."

She sighed. "You do realize the irony of that statement."

He flushed. "It's true, though. What's your, all of you, what is your first reaction to a problem?"

"Ok." She paused in the hallway. "I freely admit that I have problems," she said, looking him straight in the eye. "And I admit that the boys have their own neurosis's. But we aren't anymore violent than our upbringings have left us."

"Oh, that's a great excuse. A bad childhood explains away all the murders, all the death, the destruction, the fact that we are all stuck on this dustbowl of a planet until we finally die off? It's ok because someone teased you while you were young?"

She threw up her arms in defeat. "Believe what you want," she said, walking down the corridor again. "Who am I to try to prove you wrong?" she muttered.

Wryly, she reflected that the reason the position as mediator between the plants and the plant haters was still open was because their hadn't been an optimist stupid enough to take up the role. Until her.

Which was an ironic thought, in and of itself.