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Nyght weaved her fingers together and then pushed them in front of her as she lowered her head between her arms. Her muscles were still a bit sore from carrying all her luggage back to her lab from the ship, especially since Fin had been oh so helpful by carrying only one item: the snack bag. Stealing a moment to glare at her Tauros one more time, Nyght shook her shoulders, trying once again to loosen the muscles. The day was turning out beautifully, though, so she couldn't stay grouchy for too long, despite the kink in her upper back. Raising a hand to pat the dark mane of Fin as he trotted next to his owner, Nyght looked about the main street of Zatao. In the few months she had been gone a bit had changed. A few businesses had opened, less had closed, and it looked like more construction was occurring the next street over. On the whole, Zatao was continuing to grow rapidly, something Nyght both enjoyed and dreaded. She wasn't a fan of extremely large cities, so she hoped that Zatao stopped its expansion in the mid-sized city category, otherwise Nyght might have to move her location to a less occupied area. She couldn't risk having her lab broken into and her specimens ruined, which could be a problem in a large city.

Just as she was beginning to think that she wouldn't run into anyone interesting on her first excursion back, a silvery glint caught the researcher's eye. Following the distraction with renewed zest, Nyght spotted a pokemon of most unusual coloration. Perfect! This was exactly the sort of sample she needed to really get a jump on her research! That was definitely a silver Gengar... and according to her pokedex, that was not a normal color variation for a Gengar!

"C'mon Fin!" Switching her pace to an over-exuberant lope, Nyght flipped her backpack onto just one shoulder and starting to unzip the front pouch as soon as she came to a stop in front of the trainer and silver Gengar. However, due to some miscommunication between Nyght and Fin, the Tauros did not stop nearly as gracefully, and soon found his snout connecting exceedingly firmly with Nyght's back. With an exclamation of surprise, Nyght was pushed forward into the Gengar, and it was only as she continued falling through the silver haze that she remembered one of those lovely traits of ghost pokemon. They are ghosts. Getting her hand free from her pack just in time to catch herself, Nyght found herself on the sidewalk underneath the Gengar, and looked up towards the trainer, "Uh, hi.... I'm Nyght...."

"Taur!" Fintan's remorseful cry was what drew Nyght's attention back to the real world, and away from the strange sensation of coolness in her abdomen. "Don't worry boy, I'm fine, and I know you didn't mean too." She smiled at the Tauros to convince him of that, before reaching for the grey haired person who was evidently the Gengar's trainer.

"Uh, yeah, I'm so sorry, I was just so excited to see such a strange color variation in a Gengar, and I wanted to get a DNA sample, so that I could compare the sequence to normal variations to try to see what causes the variations, but...." At that point Nyght realized that she had started rambling, and she didn't wish to go into the details of the foolishness of her wish to get a DNA sample from a ghost pokemon, so she hoped that she wouldn't need to explain. At some point Nyght had started gesticulating wildly in her excitement, and in order to do something with her hands, she offered her right towards the trainer, "I'm Nyght." In her attempt to look friendly, a crooked and awkward smile spread on the dark-haired girl's face. Glancing toward the Tauros next to her, Nyght looked at him heavily. Fintan watched her dumbly for a moment before realizing what his owner meant. "Taur!" He smiled as much as a bull pokemon could, and tried to look friendly despite his large size.

"And this is Fintan, the cause of my clumsiness...." the girl said through gritted teeth. "I'm really sorry about that... I just get so excited about color variations, and Fin doesn't like to get beat in a foot race...."

Nyght nodded, trying to retain the boy? girl? she wasn't actually sure from physical appearances, but the trainer's name was Lamen. As long as she didn't need to talk about Lamen in third person, it shouldn't be troublesome not being sure of her/his gender. The rest of her comments confused Nyght further though. Bringing back the dead? Uh... "I don't know about bringing back the dead.... I guess I forgot that ghost pokemon are, well, ghosts, until that point was made fairly clear to me...." Referring of course to her fall through Donut, and as Nyght looked down to her feet, that point continued to assert itself. "But, yes, whenever I see a pokemon of a strange color variation I get excited.... I guess I didn't think before, uh, rushing over here." Nyght smiled once again, this time a bit more comfortably.

"But, uh, you're interested in genetics? What is your speciality? I, I guess obviously, am researching the genetic components of shiny and non-shiny color variations. Which I need a lot of samples for, and it's easier to get them from tame pokemon than catch a bunch of wilds on my own." The girl laughed a bit at the idea of her catching the dozens of shiny and non-shiny pokemon it would take for her research.

"Oh, it's nice to meet you Donu-" The loud screeching of the ice cream man caused Nyght to wince mid-sentence. She looked a bit guiltily at the man in the truck, since it was her fault that the line for ice cream was being delayed. She looked to Lamen, "Sorry, uh, feel free to order." She laughed a bit awkwardly as she backed out of the way of the line to the ice cream. She didn't want to wander away just yet though, since this was the first time she had found someone else interested in anything related to genetics. If she could get a new colleague out of this otherwise embarrassing situation, that would be a win for everyone!

Nyght looked up when Lamen posed a question to her, but a quick shake of the head was her only response to the proposition of ice cream. While she did quite like sweets, the idea of having to speak to the man who was obviously a bit peeved at her was not one she wanted to pursue. She really was only comfortable discussing her research, anything else brought out her lack of social skills. Having been keeping her eyes firmly on the ground as Lamen ordered ice cream, the dark haired girl hadn't noticed that the Gengar had wandered off until she looked back up, but then the subject was back to research, so Nyght had other things on her mind. Hopefully Lamen didn't mind that her friend went on adventures.

Nyght nodded at the mention of an unusually high concentration of odd pokemon in the area, "I know! Isn't it remarkable? I went on an expedition with a group of scientists last summer and saw the most remarkably colored pokemon! At the time I hadn't settled on my speciality, so I didn't gather any DNA samples, but just knowing that they are out there is enough to keep me working." A winning smile crossed the otherwise demure-looking girl's face. Recombinant DNA and cancer was certainly not her field, but anything to do with genetics was interesting to Nyght. "That's really interesting. In humans, I assume, since I haven't heard of any cancer in pokemon...." Oh that would be horrible if the tragic human disease someone started to affect pokemon as well. But no, her parents certainly would have told her about such a discovery, even if she managed to miss it in the scientific journals.

"Hmmm... the closest lab I know of is my parents, and they'd certainly be able to fill an order for you, but they are still a ship's ride away from here.... I wish I had known you before I left to visit them!" Nyght borrowed most of her equipment from her parents' lab and ordered all her other needs through their lab as well, since ordering in bulk through them was a lot easier than ordering just for herself.

((Right sweatdrop sorry about that, I only ever saw a small part of what went into the protein sequencing we did, fixed smile ))

Nyght must have arrived recently, for her to not have heard of the recessives yet. "Pokemon are capable of dying from physical conditions- loss of body heat, starvation, bleeding to death, destruction of important eternal organs, et caetera. Well, except if they're a ghost type."

Donut rose back out of the ground, striking a pose.

"-However, most of these things can be prevented just by storing them in pokeballs. In a pokeball, nothing seems to affect them anymore- they will come out in the same state as they went in, no matter how long it has been. They don't need to breathe or eat anymore when they're in the balls. Sometimes I wonder whether this kind of well-kept, secret technology will ever be applied to humans. Uh... of course, not in the form of pokeballs... that would just be scary." Lamen imagined hordes of people running from some crazy inventor hoping to test the first human pokeball... she puffed with laughter, but stopped herself in time.

"And that sounds great, Nyght! Thank you! We should exchange cell numbers.
I think the genetics labs on this continent mostly revolve around pokemon, so they're a great place to find colleagues."

"Hmm... you have a point, but only if it's possible for a person to get out of, uh, human pokeballs on their own. Somehow, pokemon are able to do it sometimes- I figure it could be... possible." The idea would be revolutionary, but Lamen couldn't help but dislike the possibility of such an invention. If the technology existed to be applied to people, what would organizations like Team Rocket do?

Finally, as Nyght exchanged her number, she was suddenly in a rush to resume some labwork. "Kay then, see you next time. Bye!" Lamen said, waving a little and then departing her own way- oh wait, Donut was following them to cause some trouble at her lab. No can do.
"Donut, return!" Lamen said, and with a disappointed "Gar!" he was once again trapped in the little device.
She stared at it, rolling the green Safari ball around the palm of her hand. I just can't bring myself to keep 'em in these things, after all.
With that thought, she released the ghost again. "Gengar?" He hovered midair, confused, and then returned to grinning and running around in circles around Lamen. She extended a hand which passed through him with the (at this point desired) chill, catching his attention.
"Here, take my hand. No more wandering off, okay?" Like a joyful child, he became solid and grasped her hand- and they walked back down the street.