Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ennéa walked into the Minipet Labs, feeding pail in hand. She had donned a pair of grey coveralls and a thick pair of leather gloves that one of the Life Hunter techs on duty insisted that she wear. She made a face and tugged on the coverall for what seemed the thousandth time. Ugh, these things were itchy and they bunched at the knees and were obviously meant to be worn by someone larger than her.

She shoved open another door and then paused, coveralls totally forgotten. "Whoa..." She breathed, staring at the glass cages that extended all the way along the walls of the huge room. In each were creatures of every shape and size and color. "It's like a zoo!"

Ennéa carelessly put her pail down and went to examine one of the cages; there was a fuzzy creature that looked a lot like Mrs. Parlam's neurotic Pomeranian back home... only violently green. In fact, it was so green it practically glowed. Ennéa tapped on the glass and then noticed a notecard underneath the cage that read: Foxfire - Irradiated (rare).

"Neat." She said, bemused. She moved on to the next cage which contained, according to the card, a Foxfire - Junk (uncommon).

Ennéa turned from the cage she was peering at, Foxfire - Shadow (rare), to look at the hunter who had addressed her. Surprisingly, she didn't have to look too far up, which was nice. It got a little tiring always been loomed over by Robert and Jordan and practically everyone else. "Yep, I'm Ennéa. Hello." She said pleasantly if somewhat distractedly.

She then looked back at the foxfire in the cage. The shadowy figure hissed at her; its tiny jaws opening and closing, full of needle-sharp pointed teeth. Oddly though, the creature's tail was wagging enthusiastically. "Aren't they neat? I never even knew we had a facility like this until I got called for minipet feeding duty." She tapped the glass and the foxfire lunged, scrabbling at the smooth surface with is tiny claws.

They're just stupid poof-balls. Baraz groused. Ennéa ignored him.

"Are you on feeding duty too?" She asked as she stepped away and picked up her pail. "I've never done this before." She admitted. Ennéa picked up a small candy from the pail and twisted it between her fingers. "I wonder why they feed the minipets candy? Doesn't seem like a balanced diet to me. Do you know?"

She looked expectantly at the other hunter but then flushed slightly. "No wait, where are my manners? You're Bii-- er, Gale? Right?" She extended her hand to shake. "Nice to meet you!"

"Yeah, I'm glad you came along." Ennéa looked down the long rows of cages upon cages and shook her head. "Really glad. Doing this alone would probably take all day." She grinned at Gale. "At least we didn't pull kitchen duty, huh? I bet they make the trainees peel mountains of potatoes or clean out the grease traps." Ennéa paused. "Er...have you had kitchen duty yet? Do you know?" She looked at him curiously.

"One of the techs explained what we're supposed do here." She went on. "Basically, we feed each mini-pet this special sort of candy -- one a piece."

Ennéa idly juggled the piece of candy she was holding from hand to hand and then up into the air. A couple of assorted Geophyllis in the nearby cages noticed the candy and started excitedly squeaking and running back and forth. They knew it was feeding time. The commotion also set the nearby Hazmutts barking an odd sort of muffled bark behind their masks and the chaos spread from there. Pretty soon, the whole room was a cacophony of squawks and roars and squeaks and growls.

Nice going. Baraz said sarcastically.

Ennéa dropped the candy she was fiddling with back into the pail. "Oops." She said, looking sheepish. "Well, I guess we'd better start feeding them before they make us deaf." She said wryly.

"Okay! Sounds good." Ennéa said cheerfully to Gale's suggestion. She scooped up a handful of candies and started her way down the left side of the row. An odd many limbed creature the info tag identified as a Spijox (uncommon) chittered at her and lunged at the candy she dropped in.

Ennéa recoiled at the sudden movement but quickly recovered and bent down to peer curiously into the cage and get a better look at the creature. "Whoa, neat!" She exclaimed. "It's like a.... freaky cross between a spider and a dog!" Ennéa tapped on the glass and the spider-dog chirped at her, clacking its mandibles.

It's just a Jox. Baraz said, sounding unimpressed. There's all kinds of those -- some are even *more* impressive. Like this one zombiejox that used to live under my bed. I was forever cleaning up tiny rotten bits and pieces it'd shed everywhere.

"Really?" Ennéa murmured. She wasn't sure what to think about that. A lot of these creatures were neat but it was kinda of like seeing snakes at the zoo. They were fun in a controlled environment but the idea of something like the Spijox skittering around free (and possibly under her bed) gave her the jibblies. The shadow under the bed that always tried to grab her ankles when she was little had been bad enough.

Ennéa continued on, happily passing out candy pieces and looking at all the weird creatures when Gale asked her a question. She blinked, pulled out her own little world of imagining what it would be like if she had her own stunted pony (the tiny stunted horseflies were adorable, after all). "Huh? How do I like Deus...?"

She shrugged ambivalently. "Uh, I don't know? It's okay, I guess?" Honestly, she wasn't sure how she felt after coming back from that last mission. "It's... not what I expected." She finally said. Of course, she wasn't sure just what she had expected, just... not this.

Ennéa shrugged again, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. "Um, how about you? Do you like Deus?"

Ennéa watched nonplussed as Gale gestured between himself and her. "Talking thing?" She echoed, "But... we're talking just fine?" She looked at him, wondering if something was wrong. It was hard for her to pick up on this sort of thing. Back at home, everyone at school tended to shun her so she didn't have much experience socializing. But that was fine usually; she could keep herself entertained. It did make situations like this tricky though...

Oh! Ennéa drew in a breath as something occurred to her: one nice thing about Deus, she realized, was being able to talk to so many other people like her. No one thought she was creepy for staring at monsters in dark corners or skirting gutter grates to avoid grasping shadowy hands; they all could see what she did. They all understood what it was like.

But she was getting sidetracked. Ennéa refocused back on Gale and gave him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry about it!" She said breezily, before turning back to attend to a pair of pigmy dragons. "I'm just happy I don't have to do this all by myself." The dragons were eagerly sticking their snouts through the bars of their cage and breathing tiny plumes of flame. Ennéa gingerly fed them each a piece of candy and tried her best not to get her fingers singed in the process.

She continued on to the next cage where a Questing Beast (uncommon) placidly yawned at her and then got to its feet, moving to where she held out a piece of candy.

Ennéa was enjoying just marveling at all the weird creatures as she fed them but as the silence stretched on she realized it was also kind of novel to have someone to talk to and who wanted to talk to her. She looked back over at Gale as she moved on to her next cage. "Um, so..." She racked her brains trying to think of what to talk about. "tell me a little about yourself?" she asked.

"Oh!" Ennéa did a little gleeful hop. "I'm fifteen too!" She bounced a couple more times, making several Corrividus in a nearby cage quork and beat their wings loudly in protest at all of the commotion. Ennéa ignored them, continuing on enthusiastically, "I knew you were young but I thought you were still older than me -- I was beginning to think I was the youngest one here!" She beamed at Gale.

There was a long pause and in her head, Baraz sighed in exasperation at her.

Ennéa's smile slipped a bit when she belatedly realized that her gleeful reaction was perhaps a bit insensitive. "Erm, I mean. Sorry." She blushed. "About your sister, I mean." She scratched the back of her neck sheepishly. "Ugh, this came out all wrong, didn't it?" Ennéa said wryly. "Let's try this again."

"Okay, so, my story." Ennéa straightened and looked at Gale but then turned and grabbed another handful of candy instead. She tossed a piece to one of the fussing Corrividus who caught it in midair. Ennéa then fed the rest of the birds in similar fashion.

Finally though, after several long moments, she began talking. "I'm from Maryland, near Baltimore. My dad died when I was six, and that's..." Ennéa hesitated. "That's also around the first time I really remember seeing things, stuff no one else could see." Ennéa smiled and shrugged at Gale. "You know how it is, right?"

"Anyway, no one ever believed me but my brother -- er, he wasn't my twin brother or anything neat like that, he was just my older bro, but he... was the person most important to me. Our mom was always working so he practically raised me."

"And... yeah." Ennéa poked a candy into a cage labeled Nyan Cat (blueberry) and paused to stroke the tiny pastry cat as it leaned up against the cage's bars. "One day, I finally realized that even he didn't... um, he had just been humoring me, about the things I saw." Ennéa slowed in her stroking, causing the nyan cat to mew in protest. She gave it one last scritch and then moved on.

"So I ran away from home and became a hunter." She said quickly. "Silly, huh?"

Ennéa rushed on to the next cage, feeling stupid for having said anything. She hadn't intended on telling Gale all of that; it had just slipped out as she started talking. She hadn't even told Jordan or Maddie all of her story.

Maybe it was because she and Gale were the same age, she wasn't just the 'baby' of the group with him? Ennéa couldn't even say. The thought of her unresolved fight with Tobias ached terribly now that she wasn't fiercely ignoring it. Would she ever see her brother again? Ennéa blinked rapidly, determinedly ignoring her stinging eyes, as she tried to feed a piece of candy to a disinterested Drutten (uncommon).

Ennéa wiped at her eyes and gave Gale a watery smile before looking away again. "My mom sent me to a psychiatrist; I was 'too disconnected from the real world' or whatever that meant." She fiddled with a piece of candy, rolling it between her fingers. "I but I didn't care because I knew Tobias understood me..."

Ennéa's lower lip trembled and she hurriedly wiped at her eyes again. "Sorry." She mumbled. In her mind, Baraz's wings made a rustling sound but the ahriman didn't speak. Ennéa stood there for a couple long moments but at last she took a deep quavery breath and straightened her shoulders.

"Thanks." She said, looking at Gale. On impulse, she reached out and gave him a quick hug, like how she usually did with Jordan and Maddie and the rest of her Phoenix squad members. "Sorry things were so rough for you too." She said.

She stepped back and wiped her eyes once again with the cuff of her duty coveralls, wishing she had a tissue. The danger of her completely bursting into tears seemed to have mostly passed though. "Ugh. And sorry about all of this. It's been... well, 'hard' would be an understatement, wouldn't it?" She giggled slightly, a little bit of her usual spirit returning. "But at least everyone here understands; we all have our own personal damage." She twirled on one foot and raised her arm in a pose. "We can commiserate!"

Ennéa then turned and poked the piece of candy she had been fidgeting with into a cage marked Gremlin (common). The gremlin snatched the candy and made an odd tittering sound reminiscent of a hyena laugh. She moved on to the next cage. "And it's nice to understand, I guess," She continued over her shoulder, "to have names to all the strange shadows and creatures I used to see. I'm not just a helpless observer and victim anymore -- I can face my fears and laugh."

Ennéa paused a beat. "Er, not that I do that. I don't laugh when I fight."

"Anyway," Ennéa waved her hands to clear away her misstep. "Do you have any hobbies? What do you do for fun?" She asked, oblivious that the questions were a total topic jump and liable to cause cognitive whiplash.