I am loving FanXiaolinShowdown for being so very talkative and intelligent. I know it's almost tantamount to gushing when someone admires another for helping and being a muse to continue a story, but I had to say it, didn't I?

-:-
I don't want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests.
-Ghost World.

So Many Flaws-:-

Moth:

Forgetting to eat is something she tries desperately not to do. He mother did it quite often when Gwen was smaller and then holed herself up in her room while Gwen's dad tried to talk to the woman through a closed door and Gwen has come to recognize that forgetting to eat (or not eating on purpose; eyes glazing at the sight of cooked meat and looking over all of the juice like it would jump from the plate and do a jig) is a form of insanity. She does not want to be crazy.

So when she passed out in front of Vilgax while they were talking (his hulking form going through the motions of fighting simulations inside of his combat room, drops of sweat grooving along his strained muscles) and she woke up in the medwing of the ship with the warlord sitting next to her, she knew she had screwed up rather badly.

"I thought I ate something yesterday," she admitted, before he could prattle off about why she had ended up with a weird alien IV in her arm and something like vitamins and saline flowing through her system to get her back in perfect working condition, "But I guess I left the food in the ice chest when one of the guards said you were fighting some slave trader. I just forgot."

He doesn't say anything, but by now she knows that by the way his lips are thinned and not twitching is his way of being worried. His hand clutching the blanket near her wrist (not her wrist with blood and bones that could snap and tear if he clutched it and got overly-anxious) is also a confirmation.

Butterfly:

On his planet, there are three separate, but at the same time, similar versions of what his people would call God. Well, not like the humans, but something similar. He tried to translate and explain such when Gwen was snooping through the files on his ship's computer and brought them to his attention to alleviate both of their boredom on an oddly slow day, but Vilgax was certain that he didn't translate or improvise a translation very well when she looked at him with that sleek, raised eyebrow and then looked back at the information before her.

There was Der, which was the supreme form of the masculine mentality and physiology of his people. He didn't, exactly, support war, but he didn't oppose it, either. Vilgax had explained to Gwen ('Tennyson, damnit, Tennyson.') that most of his species kept a small stone figure of Der within their abode as a matter of polite form, not out of superstition (contrary to what Gwen proposed when she found the stone figure and her fingers picked at the long tendrils on its chin before Vilgax snatched it out of her hands and put it back at the front entrance of the ship).

Then there was Bule, who represented the female of his specie; fairness, kindness and compassion were her points to follow, but also respite, divine vengeance and quiet retribution when certain lines were crossed. The warlord told Gwen that while he didn't exactly dislike the being, he also thought that carrying the idol along with Der was almost blasphemy (he did not use that word, otherwise Gwen would have thought that he was more religious than he actually was, but he used a word synonymous, which was almost as bad and got the same reaction, much to his annoyance while he was drinking what—for him—passed for caffeine) and that it didn't fit with his lifestyle to put up her sacred rug on the wall of his bedroom of all places.

Last, but certainly not least, there was Ylewol. Vilgax, to his credit, thought that he explained this being the best. It was neither male nor female, and represented the energy that moved and lived between all things. She seemed to approve of this and brought up the word Qi (or was it Chi? The word didn't fit through his vocal chords very well and he gave up the pronunciation when she just smiled and said it was close enough—Ben couldn't pronounce or spell it, either) that was a human term for the exact same thing. She said it wasn't a being, so much as a way of life and he almost felt guilty when she walked off to get some ice for his next training session and he didn't tell her that that was the only God he believed in.

Bumblebee:

There is no feeling in the world like being stuck with a needle. Whether it be for medicine or to have blood drawn, it can be a daunting sort of thing that few creatures could ever enjoy, unless they were hooked on some sort of street drug in the back of an alley…

Or a warlord that often found a needle a kind of sick comfort after a battle gone wrong.

The sticky yellow solution of disinfectant on the cotton end of the plastic tube smeared across the crook of Vilgax's inner arm and left a cooling feeling as the circle staining the skin dried and killed off anything that could get in the way of treatment for the injury he had sustained not from Ben Tennyson or his grandfather or any other human, but from that amalgam of aliens that went by the name of Kevin 11 and was still sore with Vilgax about leaving him in the Null Void. Gwen's rubber gloved hands palmed the skin on the outside of the disinfectant before her eyes looked over tiny dots she'd placed with the other end of the plastic tube and she reached back across the metal table at her side for the needle that was still inside its plastic binding and she tore it open very slowly.

His boots jerked up much like a human when they tapped their appendages in annoyance, but other than that he did not move as the needle slipped out between her pointer and middle finger (perfect and careful and why was it that he always complimented her within his mind and felt guilty every time he didn't say it out loud… he would never want to explain it) and she screwed it into the end of a vial of medicine to treat some otherworldly muck he'd swallowed by accident in the fight with Kevin.

Her spare hand pressed down on his tough skin again as the other one readied the needle.

"Sorry if this hurts…tiny little pinch…" she spoke, much more calm than any of the doctors Vilgax had ever had on deck—more competent as well—and he almost smiled as the needle slipped into his vein and she pressed down on the plunger.

The feeling of the medication working into his bloodstream caused a small shiver to make his arm pulse and Gwen apologized. It spoke well of his character when he didn't correct her assumptions, but also said more when she dropped the supplies settled in her lap, nervously, and he placed a large hand on the top of her hand to calm her down. She smiled up at him when he patted her, claws running a little through her hair and his other hand taking up the medical waste to drop in the nearby trash bin.