"Minion!" Mace Mind called over his shoulder, currently in the process of trashing his room. "Have you seen my watch?"
"Yes," Minion answered, stepping into his room and giving a mental sigh at the mess his master had caused. "It's right there, on the desk."
"No, not that watch, Minion," Mace said, shaking his head. "It had black hands shaped like lightning bolts-"
"I'm afraid I haven't seen it Sir," Minion said. "But you have others, and it won't be hard to secure another of the same-"
"No, Minion, you don't understand," Mace said, shaking his head. "This watch is very special! I was working on a disguise generator, and that watch was it! It has over twenty disguises uploaded into it, and can scan new ones in, and it was almost finished and-"
"Sir, I'm sure it can't be too far," Minion said, setting a hand on Mace's shoulder. "I'll bet it came off while you were working in the lab earlier. Why don't you go ask Father about it while I tidy up?"
"Good idea, Minion!" Mace exclaimed with a grin, giving Minion a friendly punch on the shoulder. "I don't know what I'd do without you!" Minion watched as Mace leaped up and dashed out of the room, hitting his head on the doorframe before going out the actual door, then looked back around at the room and shook his "head." Time to get cleaning.
"Dad!" Mace called, running down the steps to the lab he shared with his father. "Have you seen-"
"Mace!" Macklnn Mind cried, turning to smile at his son with warm orange eyes. "You're just in time! I need your help!"
"What with?" Mace asked, walking down to join his father, grabbing a lab coat as he passed the coat rack and throwing it on over his day clothes.
"I need you to look through this microscope and tell me what you see," Mr. Mind said, setting a hand on his son's shoulder.
"Why?" Mace asked, leaning over to peer into it. "Can't you tell what it is?"
"I accidentally blinded myself again," he admitted, and Mace drew back to give his father a look.
"How?"
"Let's just say explosions, chemicals, and bare eyes don't mix, son," Macklnn said, shaking his large head. "Always wear your goggles, Mace."
"How long will it last?"
"It should only last about eight hours," Macklnn brushed it off. "Just please don't tell your Mother. She'll have an absolute fit." Mace grinned.
"I won't mention anything," he promised. "But if she figures it out on her own, I'm not going to lie to her."
"I expected as much," Macklnn grumbled, then nodded toward the microscope. "What do you see?"
"I see a cluster of discolored Cerulean cells," Mace told his father. "They seem to be fighting off a pox. Why?"
"Are they succeeding?"
"Yes. Why does it matter?"
"Wonderful!" Macklnn exclaimed. "That means that human and Cerulean viruses are remarkably similar! Overlord Cadrid will be very pleased, as will the Cerebellums..."
"Are you working with that human girl's DNA again, Dad?" Mace asked, turning to look his currently blind father in the eye. His father and mother were both double-fielded. His father was a geneticist and a physicist, his mother a physicist and an ambassador who made frequent visits to their neighboring planet, Crypt. It had been years since he'd stopped work on the human girl's DNA, partially because he could only do so much with the very miniscule amount of DNA he'd managed to collect from her.
"It's only a small experiment," Macklnn said, feeling around for his pad of paper and pen. He was blinded often enough that he didn't need too much help getting around the lab. He had a bad habit of not putting on his goggles. "I had a sudden thought when I was getting ready to send one of the brainbots off to the scientific community to deliver a few papers, and wanted to test to see if, in the event of a pox epidemic, she would be impervious. It's amazing how similar that child is to our kind!"
"If you're so interested in her, why don't you request more samples?" Mace asked.
"Mace, I'm a scientist," Macklnn snorted, "not a specialist on torture."
"You wouldn't have to torture it," Mace argued. "You could just ask for a small sample, maybe some spit, or a used band-aid, or-"
"Her, Mace," Macklnn corrected his son. "I wouldn't have to torture her. And it doesn't matter how I went about it, if I decided it was alright for me to view her as anything besides a complete equal, the rest of the world would decide they could do the same, and a slide of saliva would turn into a vial of blood, which would turn into a bucket of bone marrow, and before we knew it, that girl would be a series of experiments scattered across the world. Anyway, what did you come down here for?"
"I was going to ask if you had seen the watch I've been tinkering with for the last month, but I'm going to assume that would be a question better suited for Mom."
"Ha, ha," Macklnn said, rolling his eyes. "Very funny, Mace."
"I'll send Fid down to help," he promised, still grinning, as he touched his forehead to his father's in farewell. "Where is he, anyway?"
"Fid went off with Idna a few hours ago," Macklnn said, shaking his head and waving his son away. "I swear those two are like hormonal teenagers. Mark my words, we'll have thirty more minions to train before too long."
"Well, I'll be sure to tell Minion," Mace called, heading back up the stairs. "He'll be ecstatic to learn about having more siblings to play with!" Macklnn smiled and stroked his goatee, peering into blackness as he scribbled sloppily on his note pad.
"Mom," Mace said, peering into his mother's lab, which was on the lower level of their home and across the house from his father's lab. Mace and Macklnn Mind had a much higher rate of explosion than Mendje, and she was very adamant that she'd rather not have them blowing up both labs at once-that was also their reasoning for having Mace share his father's lab. If they blew the place up, only half of the house would suffer. "Have you seen my watch?"
"No," Mendje answered, looking up from her work, taking off her glasses to better view her son. "Have you asked your father?"
"I have," Mace answered with a nod. "But he hadn't seen-"
"He's blind again, isn't he?"
"Yes," Mace answered with a sigh, and Mendje smirked.
"Which chemicals?"
"He didn't say."
"Were there explosives involved?"
"Yes."
"Was he wearing his goggles?"
"Nope."
"Is he down there alone?"
"Yes, yes he is."
"Get Idna and Fid," Mendje ordered, setting her glasses aside and shaking her head. "I'll get the restraints. You should probably bring Minion along as well."
"This should be fun," Mace laughed as his mother pushed past him.
"Don't laugh at your father's expense," Mendje Mind lectured, pausing in her stride, then smiled anyway. "But yes, it should be." Temporarily forgetting about his watch, Mace raced up the stairs to find the Mind minions.
"Minion, Fid, Idna!" he cried. "Code: Dad is blind and we need to get the coat hangers!"