The aftermath of the ADVENT strike proceeded quickly, Malcolm explaining XCOM's efficiency to Natasatch as a simple matter of having lots of practice. In accordance with procedure, the returning soldiers met a line of paramedics after their brief debriefing, and one of them determined the gash along Malcolm's forehead serious enough for treatment. Less than half an hour later of pacing along the Advanced Warfare Center corridor, Natasatch was given the clearance to her friend, much to the security detail's relief.

Proceeding down the row of curtained hospital beds, the Viper came upon Malcolm locked in a heated discussion with an orderly. To her relief, he only sported a few stitches, yet he appeared anything but happy. He explained to her how it was a minor injury, and that he had the proper medical training make that judgement, and that mandatory bedrest was stupid and the reason the last mission deployed soldiers out of their area of expertise. The nurse carefully considered his comments, then she expertly discarded them in short order, leaving the young man with a pain medication and a request to "suck it up, buttercup."

Grumbling, Malcolm turned to Natasatch, who waited patiently through the whole tirade. His agitation softened as their eyes met. She inhaled, and spoke.

"Are you doing well, Malcolm?"

"I'm perfectly fine, Nat," he said. "Despite what those quacks say."

She tilted her head, puzzled. He quickly added, "It means a doctor who doesn't know what they're doing."

"Ah."

The rest of the conversation hit familiar, but comforting points. Malcolm commended her performance, Natasatch enjoyed the praise and offered compliments in return, and they both laughed recounting the new recruit's abysmal marksmanship. She pointed out the frequency of his yawns, the early deployment and combat fatigue finally catching up to the young human.

"Sorry I can't keep this up for much longer," he said. Malcolm yawned again. "How about we continue this when I get released?"

Natasatch's hood relaxed, contented. "I would like that," she said.

"See you in a few hours."

"Yes."

He shut his eyes, and nodded off within moments.

Some time later, Malcolm stirred awake. Turning his head, his eyelids opened just a hair, enough to see that a familiar alien face in the same spot.

In soft-spoken but curious voice, he spoke, "...Nat?"

"Malcolm?"

"You're still here."

"Yes."

Malcolm pivoted his head, looking at the electronic clock on the wall. 6:52. "You've been here for six hours?"

"Yes." She repeated.

"Doing what?"

"Waiting, obviously," the Viper said, in the same matter-of-fact tone that only increased his concern.

"Oh boy," he said under his breath.

"You know don't need to wait around for me, Nat. Those nurses are blowing this outta proportion. I'm going to be fine, even if you walk around for a bit."

"I know that, Malcolm."

"So... you're still worried?"

Natasatch hesitated. "...No."

Malcolm didn't look convinced, and neither did Natasatch, for that matter.

"Maybe a little," she conceded.

Malcolm sighed. "Nat, I think you should... go off on your own for a bit. Relax. It's not doing you any good staying here and fussing over me, huh?"

She cast her gaze downward, suddenly sullen. "Are you mad at me?"

"Nat, no, no. I'm not upset with you at all."

"Then why do you want me to leave?"

"I'm worried about you, Nat."

"How is that? You're the one on the hospital bed."

Malcolm chuckled, much to the Viper's appreciation. "Not that you'll get hurt, really. But if something worse happens to me, what will you do?"

Natasatch stayed silent, retreating further and further within herself. The young man watched her for a bit, then rolled his head to the side, taking in the other occupants of the room. The other injured soldiers were sleeping, or watching their alien guest of the corner of their eyes. Except for one...

He spoke up. "Hey, Lieutenant! Mercier!"

"Hmm?" Across the med bay, the woman in question turned from the male patient she stood huddled over.

"Could you come over here?"

Mercier nodded, turning back to her bedside companion for a moment to give him a peck on the lips, then stood up and closed the distance. Arriving at the foot of the bed, the woman stood an arm's length from Natasatch, yet only gave her a single glance. Good.

"We were still playing our game tonight, right?"

"Yeah, in-" she looked to the wall clock, "-five minutes. Looks like you'll miss it."

"Actually, Natasatch here wants to take my place."

Natasatch's hood flexed in surprise. "I do?"

"Yep, she does,"Malcolm said.

Mercier gave him a dubious look. "Does she now? Alright, but does Natsatch know how to play?"

"No, but I was hoping you'll teach her. Nat's a quick learner."

Mercier looked to Natasatch this time. The alien swayed slightly in thought, eventually answering "I suppose?"

Malcolm's face sported a lopsided grin, promising complete innocence and benevolence. It felt too lively for him to be confined in the drab hospital bed, which prompted the officer to tilt her head and probe again. "What are you playing at here, Silva?"

"Don't you want to make a new friend?"

"Do you really think this will be a good idea?"

"Is having her twiddling her thumbs for hours next to some twitchy injured soldiers a better one?"

"Why are you responding to her questions with further questions?" Natasatch butted in.

"Hmm..." Mercier tapped her lips with an index finger a few times. "Oh, alright."

She turned to the Viper, who straightened her stance at the attention. "Alright, Miss Natasatch, let's go have some fun."

Beckoning at the door, she moved to leave. Natasatch followed; it was hard not to notice the other patients relaxing with her departure. Before she left, she gave a final look at her human. Malcolm smiled and gave her a thumbs up, putting her somewhat at ease.

While the hangar was located on the other side of the Avenger, the lack of floor transitions resulted in a short journey. The path only placed a few staff between the two and their destination, and Natasatch was pleased to see no paranoid crew with hands on their sidearm holsters. They merely ducked into doorways or pressed flat on the wall when the two passed in the tight corridor, but Natasatch felt that was an improvement.

As the two girls entered the hangar, the human pointed at the assembly of people barely over the armory threshold. The game table, she found, was not a table at all, but instead a shipping crate at waist-height. Three seated humans and two empty chairs circled the container, with their focus on a patterned mat with various plastic pieces on the top. Mercier whistled to get their attention.

"Huh, wasn't expecting her to show up," one of them spoke. Natasatch recalled the german-accented sniper from her first mission, but the face slipper her memory. Schwarzschild, was it?

The human she didn't recognize had a more animated reaction. He stood up, eyes widening, and he reached for his gun in his empty holster. He grimaced. "What's that thing doing here?"

"This 'thing' is going to play Monopoly with us," Mercier stated, adjusting her beret.

The defiant human's eyes grew wide, aghast, and declared, "It can't. Everyone knows it can't be out of its pen unguarded."

Calmly, Mercier responded. "In case you haven't noticed, my dear Ackers, she isn't unguarded at all. She's with us right now."

Natasatch locked eyes with the belligerent human, apparently known as Ackers. His angry eyes narrowed, but his quickening breath and occasional glances around betrayed a deeper emotion. He was afraid, and a few months ago, she'd have capitalized on that. Yet, now she approached him for a social call, essentially, and Natasatch found her own body sabotaging the attempt. It couldn't be helped, she supposed. She clasped her hands together and tried to shorten her stance as she addressed him.

"I'm not trying to be your enemy, Mister Ackers."

Despite the cracks, the human kept his composure. He responded, slowly and evenly. "I don't care. You'll never be my friend, alien."

Mercier pointed a thumb at the hangar exit. "If you don't like it, you can always leav-"

"I will." Ackers interrupted, stomping his way to the hangar exit with as loudly as he could. He gave Natasatch a wide berth.

Watching the doors close with the remaining humans, Natasatch turned her head forward again. The Viper took a deep breath, and hoped the other humans wouldn't react the same. Fortunately, she detected no vitriol in the rest. Best recover as much of a good impression as she can.

"I'm... sorry for his reaction."

Mercier waved it off. "You can't win them all, I suppose. Now, let's sit down."

Natasatch found the humanoid folding chairs ergonomically unsuited to her, so the Viper elected to simply curl into a smaller spot and lower her stance to the rest's relative eye level. They took a moment to briefly reintroduce themselves; Natasatch recognized the Russian-accented Morsov from the anatomy class last week, and finally learned the name of the German soldier, Schwarzschild, from another combat mission longer ago.

Mercier took a moment to explain the rules of Monopoly, to how the objective was to move your avatar about the ring on the board, acquiring locations and accumulating currency. Natasatch inherited Malcolm's piece, a spent pistol casing, and his sizeable fortune of paper money. She found it easier to understand it as a game of arithmetic and securing locations, so she cautiously treaded forward.

She started to enjoy plopping down those plastic domiciles, Natasatch decided, as she turned a green one over in her claws. The thought of having possessions to her name appealed, in an avaricious way, to the part of her that rebelled against the Elders in the first place. Another dice roll, and Natasatch landed on one of the last few unowned properties, which she quickly rectified. Taking advantage of a pause caused from the transaction, Schwarzschild inquired, "May I ask about how Vipers found their amusement back when you were with Advent?"

"Yes, you may," she responded slyly, clawed digit drawing circles around her new acquisition.

He stood there, perplexed, before the rest of the table snickered. He wasn't the first human to fall into that verbal trap when addressing her.

"Oh, haha. Clever!" Schwarzschild remarked. "So, how did you pass the time back in ADVENT? Tell any jokes? You seem pretty good at them."

Natasatch swelled with the praise. "Rarely, actually. And thank you."

"Any board games like this?"

"Hmm, no."

"What about cards?"

"Games of chance were forbidden, upon the threat of termination. Gambling encourages disobedient behavior."

"Oh, that... makes a lot of sense."

She shrugged. "That was the official stance, but we didn't need such distractions anyway."

She noticed Schwarzschild glanced at her chest, or rather, her shoulders. It took the Viper moment to remember the gesture wasn't natural of her species, but thought it certainly was unintentional, the slip was not unwelcome.

Schwarzchild started speaking again. "So, what do you guys do, then?"

The Viper rapped her claws on the table in thought, trying to find the right translations. "If we ever need stimulation, we go to the... well, the best I can translate to is a 'Cascade Theater.'"

"Go on."

"It's an intriguing device that fills up the room with light and color. If you look in it, you see images, sounds, like a sort of trance. It's hard to describe the sensation, since it's always different, but after you lose track of time and finish, you always feel refreshed, and content." She glanced around, and the humans appeared just as confused as before. "Sorry if I can't explain it well."

Schwarzschild stroked his chin, his fingers lightly plucking at the hair beneath. "So, that's what you aliens do for entertainment?"

"Largely."

"At least they weren't reading trashy romance ebooks," commented Mercier. "That seems to be the only genre that's published anymore."

Morsov cleared his throat. "That's really interesting, but we're busy with our human entertainment here. Now hurry up and roll, Mari."

The game resumed, and Natasatch's luck turned from acceptable to diabolical. After rolling two ones (which made the humans giggle amongst themselves - she never asked why), two threes, and two ones again in a row, her tiny avatar was impounded for "speeding" despite traveling less distance than the player before her, as the Viper quickly pointed out. Newly freed from imprisonment, the brass piece immediately cleared the jail's confines onto a well-developed utility tile owned by Morsov.

"Ooh, damn, Nat, you landed on the worst possible tile," he commented, a wicked grin set on his face. "You'll owe me... two hundred."

Natasatch looked to her money stack, and she realized just how depleted her reserves had grown with her purchase-happy style. In total, one hundred eighty. She blinked.

"I don't have enough to pay," she conceded.

"You can sell some of your properties to make the money back," offered Mercier.

Years ago, Natasatch witnessed a peculiar thing. During a skirmish with rebels, a building collapsed on an ADVENT soldier, and fighting through the pain, she witnessed him hack his own mutilated legs off to crawl away from the ruins, apparently trying to avoid being caught helpless. Of course, the soldier died a few minutes later from the blood loss, his desperate action buying him a slightly-delayed death. In the present, the Viper underwent a similar experience of chopping her own tail off to escape the inevitable, as consecutive rolls forced her to sell off more and more property with no opponents landing on her own dwindling squares. She gave one last roll, landing on yet another tile owned by that ruthless Russian, but now with no more of her own tail to devour.

"Horosho!" Morsov declared, looking thoroughly pleased with his accomplishment. "You're out, girl."

Her nostrils flared in annoyance, and she tried to find a familiar face for to focus on. Of course, her go-to was absent, and Mercier only gave a sheepish shrug. Schwarzschild only looked on, bemused. It wasn't her fault she didn't succeed in a game she only learned less than an hour ago. She complained, "That was unfair. There's no reason for housing to ever cost that much."

"That's the rules of the game," Morsov responded.

"So your goal is drive your fellows to ruin?"

He was toying with his quarry, now. "It's my favorite part."

"Hmph."

He stuck an elbow to his male friend's side. "Man, Malcolm's going to love hearing about how he went from first to worst."

Natasatch didn't stop the hiss that came, the sound echoing through the cavernous hangar, startling the other players. Conflicting urges danced through her mind; a small part of the Viper wanted to put Morsov in a bind and see how he liked it, though the rational part of herself shut that suggestion down quickly. Another part of her found only herself to blame, as Malcolm had trusted her to win their game and befriend some others, and both goals were falling apart obviously.

An urge to get up, get out, get away nearly won, but Natasatch straightened her livid stance to fight it back. As calmly as she could manage, placed her wad of fake money on the table, crumpled from her tight grip, said venomously, "Very well. Enjoy your robbery."

Natsatch resumed her sulking posture, and once the initial shock wore off, the game resumed. Eventually, the chatter between the competing players worked its way back onto the table, though significantly lower in volume, and the sombre alien didn't join in as before. She'd ruined any chance of a good impression with her outburst at a simple defeat so best to avoid irritating the wound further. And how she'd deliver the news to her friend, she dreaded imagining.

A human voice broke her from her ruminations. "Hey, Natasatch."

She looked up at Schwarzschild, who was trying his best to look friendly. "Thank you for, uh..." He trailed off."

"Not attacking you?" Natasatch finished.

"Uh, keeping your cool."

She closed her eyes momentarily and released a held breath. "I wouldn't be that foolish to attack over an imaginary slight," she stated, and oddly, a lot of the aggression seemed to depart with that calming exhale.

"Not that you would! I wasn't worried at all."

She looked to him, raising an eye ridge. Schwarzschild sighed, and sheepishly admitted. "Okay, perhaps I was worried, slightly. But, you're alright, Natasatch. Still less of a sore loser than Morsov here."

She looked to the man in question, indignant at yet not denying the claim. Their eyes met, and Morsov stuck out his tongue. Another mocking gesture, but no malice lurking behind his face. Just like before, she finally noticed. She tilted her head forward, mimicking Morsov by holding her long tongue out in front of her. The Viper fought her instinct to retract it immediately, and was rewarded with the humans smiling at the unexpected display. Perhaps this experience was not a total failure, after all.

"Hmm, maybe you're not an evil alien. But you're still a loser at Monopoly," said Morsov.

"Check where you landed again, because you're about to join her," taunted Mercier.

"What do you- wait, no!"

The Russian soldier descended into curses in his native tongue. The other humans laughed at the how the newcomer's own misfortune quickly turned on Morsov, and with a distinct lack of hesitation, Natasatch joined her compatriots' mirth. She remembered, briefly, Malcolm back in his hospital bed, but only thought of how sullen he would be hearing what he missed, and she realized that her human had a point.