"Well, they were all gathered in the main conference room behind the new Overlord, who, judging by his accent I would say is Japanese, and they seemed to be in charge of the interrogation." Calvari paused for a moment, looking as though he was in deep thought. "Actually, I don't think 'interrogation' is really the right word to use. It almost seemed like they were introducing him to the staff."

"I'd think that was pretty normal, given the fact that this guy's new and all," Dr. Hana Saberwal put in.

Dr. Saberwal was even lower ranked than Dr. Calvari, but she was new, so that kind of thing could be forgiven. It was when her fellow scientists didn't even make the slightest effort to advance their positions that Dr. Ash got annoyed with them.

"Dr. Ash?" one of the secretarial staff called. "It's time for your group to go up now."

"Of course," she said, nodding and heading toward the elevator.

It would be very interesting to meet this new Overlord of theirs. As she headed into the elevator, tucking her notes into her labcoat to let her carry them more easily, Dr. Ash stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button that would carry them all up to the meeting place. She wondered briefly about what Dr. Calvari had said about their new Overlord, but then, his opinions didn't particularly matter. He was still several grades lower than she, after all.

XxXxX

Gaster – who had been given no particular work to do but had come into the room anyway because where one of Team Five went, all of Team Five went, at least when they could – stood in the back of the room and just watched. The kid, their Overlord, was really cute. Confused and looking to Zektor for cues on what he should do, but pretty cute nonetheless.

The fact that Zancrus had found the ki- Overlord a pair of wraparound sunglasses to wear was good: it made him look just that little bit more mysterious and grown up. Still, anyone who listened to him when he was alone with Team Five would know what he was. Well, if they didn't end up thinking he was mildly retarded or crazy or something like that. Of course, if they ended up thinking anything like that, he would have to kill them.

Watching as the next group of scientists came in, led by a dark-skinned woman with a hairstyle that consisted of an uncountable number of small braids tied back into a ponytail, Gaster subtly studied them. It was extremely difficult for him get his mind off the lead doctor's hair, however. It was a really elaborate hairstyle, and Gaster had to wonder just how the hell she found the time to put it up that way every morning. It seemed like there would be a lot of better uses of her time, her being a Chronos scientist and all, than putting her hair up every morning, especially in an obviously time-consuming style like that.

As little Lord Mirabilis greeted her with the same understated manner that Zektor had worked to instill in him, he and all of the others just stood around looking vaguely menacing while Zektor took charge of the questioning. Gaster still wanted to know what was going on with her hair, though, so once Zektor was done questioning her group but before he could dismiss them, Gaster stepped forward and confronted her.

"What are you doing, Gaster?" Zektor asked, turning to look at him as he stepped forward.

"Just give me a sec, okay, boss?"

Zektor looked a bit dubious, but he wordlessly stepped back behind Lord Mirabilis' desk and folded his arms—his usual "I'm being very intimidating here" pose.

"What did you want to speak about, sir?" the woman – Dr. Ash, judging by the name on her tag – asked.

"Your hair, nor to put too fine a point on things," Gaster said, mimicking Zektor's usual "interrogation" voice as best he could.

"You want to know about my hair?" Dr. Ash seemed more resigned than confused by Gaster's line of questioning, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by the Hyper Zoanoid himself.

"I take it you've gotten a lot of questions on the subject?"

"Well…" Dr. Ash seemed a bit embarrassed for a moment, but before Gaster could do much more than wonder about the cause of the feeling, she'd started speaking again. "It's like this, really: Dr. Andrews noticed that I tend to fall asleep at my desk, sometimes. And we all know that guy has a strange sense of humor; we have a standing agreement that, if he can style my hair without me waking up, I'll wear it that way for the rest of my day."

"You must be some kind of deep sleeper, then," Zancrus said, chuckling, and Gaster couldn't help but agree with his smaller friend's assessment.

Dr. Ash was a bit more candid about the situation. "I'm one of the Sleeper Techs, sir. Owing to our circumstances, we don't usually get much in the way of normal bed-rest. So when I do get the chance to conk out, I don't wake up very easily."

"Oh," Gaster said, chuckling a bit himself. "I guess that's understandable."

"All right, Dr. Ash," Zektor said, stepping forward from his place behind and just to the right of Lord Mirabilis' desk. "You and your subordinates are free to go now."

"Thank you," she said, bowing slightly. "It was nice meeting you, sirs; Your Excellency."

With those as her last words, Dr. Ash led the rest of her group out of Lord Mirabilis' office. When a thought struck Gaster, something that he berated himself for not having thought of before, he turned back to their young Overlord.

"Hey, you do know what a Sleeper Unit is, right boss?" Gaster asked, feeling slightly uneasy at the idea of explaining Sleeper Units to a little kid.

"Yeah. Dad told me about them; he said that they were Zoanoids who didn't really know that they were Zoanoids." A look of confusion and something else that Gaster couldn't really identify came over the kid's face then. "Of course, Dad always used to shoot them when he found out they were there. And he once told me that they were bad," it took only a few seconds for the confusion that Gaster had glimpsed briefly to vanish, but it was replaced by a blankly dazed expression that the pink-haired Hyper Zoanoid definitely didn't like the look of.

"Kid, y'all right there?"

And then the look was gone; their Overlord was smiling like he hadn't a care in the world. "Alkanphel says I shouldn't worry about that, though."

"Alkanphel?" Zektor asked, looking askance at their Overlord.

"Yeah." Gaster saw the expression on their Overlord's face change to one of honest confusion. "You mean you've never heard of Alkanphel?"

"I know that Dr. Balkus is the highest authority that Chronos has, at least in the area of developing new Zoanoids," Zektor said, "but I've never heard of someone above him."

"Silly, Alkanphel's the one who leads Chronos," Lord Mirabilis said, giggling at the leader of Team Five. "Mr. Balkus is his Second; Alkanphel told me so himself!"

"Wow," Zancrus said, suitably awed. "You mean you're that close to the guy who leads the entire Chronos organization?"

"Uh-huh," Lord Mirabilis said cheerfully, nodding while Gaster and the others attempted not to freak out too severely.

If this – it had to be said – kid was really that close to the Supreme Overlord of all of Chronos, then it was no wonder he'd been given this kind of a fast-track promotion at his age. Hell, the kid was practically the prince of the organization, being the obvious darling of Supreme Overlord Alkanphel and all.

"What about your dad?" Zektor asked, wanting to know all the angles the way he usually did. "What's his connection to the Supreme Overlord?"

"Oh, Alkanphel likes him, too," Lord Mirabilis said blithely, smiling. "But Dad has to keep an eye on all the other branches of Chronos and make sure that the scientist-people there are doing things right, so I don't get to see him so much."

"Oh," Zektor said, nodding in a way that suggested to Gaster that he was on the verge of freaking out. "I guess that makes sense."

Stock answer; translates to "I have no idea what you just said, so I'm just going to agree with you to save myself some trouble and/or a headache," Gaster mused as he chuckled. Zektor was probably trying to keep himself from either gawking or fainting again, though their boss would be the last one to ever admit that he'd actually fainted. That was part of what made Zektor who he was, though: he had a lot of pride—in his status as a Hyper Zoanoid; in his team as a whole; in the fact that he was the leader of Team Five; and in the fact that he himself was the kind of guy you could count on to get the job done, whether that job was guarding the higher-ups, tracking down and assassinating people Chronos had a beef with, or even teaching an inexperienced baby Zoalord the ropes of handling the base he'd been put in charge of. When they had been given a job, Team Five would get it done.

That was just the way things worked.