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Despite losing her only remaining pair of footwear to chemical contamination, Mimsy's path out of the lab led directly outdoors. As always, it was not her preference to be outside, and she reserved the time spent there for necessity (or nighttime, now that the stars were visible) - this, however, was a moment of necessity. Without question.

The idea that she had ruined her flawless safety record and almost defiled the integrity of a laboratory all in one day was unbearable at best, and the thought of doing anything that could even kind of decrease her credibility any more than she had made her nauseously shiver. That was not an option.

Once outside, she hastened her pace, the warmth of the ground unfamiliar beneath the soles of her feet. She couldn't remember the last time she'd walked outside without shoes on, but the grass here felt softer than the grass where she grew up, so she was sure that she must have. It still managed to feel strange and new and both nice and uncomfortable all at once; sort of like tickling, she supposed. Svensyl began to sing a song about kisses and tinkering and fishimps and the touching of grass, so she stopped thinking about the way it felt beneath her feet, in hopes of preventing him from forming any new lyrics.

This only caused him to repeat the same five lines over and over again, determined to get his point across.

As they walked towards the greenhouse and the small field they had worked on cultivating, she didn't say a word, though Svensyl's singing did earn the occasional mutter of annoyance. It would be best to wait until they arrived at the garden, the safest possible location she could imagine on the island, because it put them in a situation where the tables were turned: Robert was more invested in this place than she was, and if she ruined anything here, she thought she could probably get over it.

She finally stopped under the shade, next to the crates she left there, and as she stared at him she had great regret for not considering what she should say once they got here.

"So." Obviously, she was learning to excel at conversation. She tried again. "Is there any further insight that you think you need to offer? Is there anything you need me to clarify? Or can I try to locate a new pair of shoes to wear, as I am now devoid of options?"

This was being addressed with a 'so' and an 'uh' from each of them respectively, and Mimsy felt very confident that they were making great strides towards understanding. She wasn't even sure that they were on the same page, or that they had the same perception of what was happening, and the only comfort that monosyllabic words brought was that it enabled her to avoid conversation. This was only problematic because it was a conversation of lifelong importance, regardless of its difficulty to speak about it.

She stared blankly at him, just along the fringes of incredulous, and raised her eyebrows.

"Really? You would have kissed me and whisked me away in your arms to find shoes in the humid greenhouse beside a budding mountaintop garden?" It was so impossible a scenario that she pulled the most fantastical imagery out of the depths of her memory, sarcastically waving her hands along with it.

As he instructed her to wait, she plopped down on one of the crates and propped her chin up in her hands with a hmph, still annoyed with herself for her carelessness. Boots were replaceable and expendable, but her reputation within what little bit of a scientific community Deus had would be impossible to fix.

She would just have to ensure that he didn't tell anyone.

It legitimately impressed Mimsy when he actually found some shoes in there. Her eyes lit up when he delivered the boots - not at the appearance, but at the mention that there might have been spiders in them. Spiders! She had no idea that there was a possibility of spiders!

Delighted, she picked one of them up and stared into it, giving it a gentle shake.

"Are you certain that there were none in them at all?" she asked, turning the boot upside-down to check again, her palm cupped beneath it in case one came tumbling out. When nothing did, she hesitantly pulled it onto her foot, surprised when it actually fit. There was a bit of wiggle room, as was to be expected with shoes that weren't hers, that could probably be fixed with a pair of socks. Which she should have been wearing in the first place.

The second boot was thoroughly inspected for spiders, and she managed to let only a minor look of disappointment get past as she slid her foot into it. She was not really looking forward to wearing these for the foreseeable future, but it was better than nothing, especially if there was another chemical spill. With a little wiggle of her bee-costumed feet, she stared up at him with a crooked smile.

"Well, the shoe fits. Thanks, Prince Charming." She was running out of knowledge about cliché romance references, but was fairly proud of that one.

Trust him more often. Mimsy paused as a faint reminder resurfaced, and faintly smiled to hide the frown of discontent that wanted to find its way to her lips.

"Right. I apologize. If you should ever encounter any type of arachnid, however, I would appreciate information regarding its location."

As he explained reason after reason why he was not a prince, she idly moved her feet back and forth, tapping the toes of the boots together. The bee eyes looked like they might have moved at one point, but they now sat in firm refusal. It was odd to hear him speak negatively about himself. Maybe he had strong feelings about not wanting to be royalty, which was odd in itself.

"Oh, what a shame. I seem to recall being a science princess, so I am inevitably in dire need of a prince. I would have gladly slayed dragons on your behalf." She pressed her lips into a thin line of faux-disappointment, and slowly shook her head as she leaned forward to hear what the secret was. He got a very intrigued look when he told her - where had he picked up that word?

"A scribe?" She made a show of thinking, as if she would not be doing that anyway. "As a science princess, I think that I need a scribe far more than I need a prince. A prince cannot keep records of my research, after all. If you would like to be my scribe, the offer of dragon-slaying still stands."

It wasn't until the use of the word 'warn' that Mimsy realized he'd gotten the wrong impression about her feelings on spiders. Instead of correcting him, she laughed, because the idea of an arachnophile being arachnophobic was hilarious. She wondered how long she could allow the misconception to continue, now that Clerise was gone.

As he moved to sit closer, she found herself fighting the conflicting need to move away, trying her best to side with the half that wanted to stay right where she was. There was little that felt more more troubling than her body betraying her mind, and she wished it could just understand that she was trying to accomplish something.

She stared at his hand when he lifted it, and was briefly uncertain about what was going on, until she recalled that high-fives were a thing. That was simple enough. She returned the enthusiastic gesture, but her hand lingered, curiously curling two of her fingers around two of his.

"Absolutely. We will usurp everything as we demand what is rightfully ours - while you take notes, of course. So, what..." she abruptly paused, remembering the warmth of the blood splattered across her face, the taste of it in her smile. "...or who should we conquer first?"

A look of disbelief had to be hidden by turning her head, and Mimsy momentarily wondered what she was even doing here. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, managing a smile before her eyes found him again.

"I was not speaking about Slurpees," she said, the hints of impatience in her tone shifting to sound more like her words were meant to tease him. "Unless your plan is to take over frozen beverages, in which case...I think that we might need to discuss your alignment."

As she turned towards him, she took his hand in both of hers and held it tightly, accompanied by a very serious stare that was difficult not to break. But this wasn't a lab filled with anything that could not be ruined. This was land meant to be destroyed just so it could be rebuilt again. And it was exactly the kind of place that gave her the feeling that she had the upper hand.

"A neutral evil princess and a lawful icee scribe together is unheard of, but if you are willing to overcome these differences, I can still agree to your unstoppable clause."

"Yes, yes. Jokes. Shhh," Mimsy hushed him, setting his hand down on her knee (for safekeeping) as she reached to smooth his hair, which still resembled a toddler trying to pet a dog. It was awkward and clumsy and she really had no idea what she was supposed to be doing, so she continued to hope that her closest approximation of comforting hair-petting was close enough.

"What do you think it means?" She curiously tilted her head as she tried to imagine any possible reason he would know something about alignments in roleplaying games, unless he was just focusing on the 'evil' part. "If someone who knows me as well as you do thinks that it doesn't sound like me, I must be incorrect. What alignment is your princess, then, scribe?"

It amazed her that he could believe such a thing, and she thought that she should probably feel guilty over the continual optimism and goodness that he projected onto her.

But she didn't.

It would have been out of alignment, anyway. The only negative response she felt towards the idea that he thought she was anything else was concern that discovering otherwise might prevent him from loving her. That would be difficult to recover from, to put it mildly. Maybe he could learn to accept her. Maybe this could still work.

Mimsy scrunched up her nose and inched backwards when he touched her hair, thoughts repeating in a loop that she didn't need to do that, she wasn't supposed to do that. Svensyl joined in and began to rattle off a very extensive list of all of the other things she could be doing right now, which resulted in a quiet little 'no' around the same time Robert said that he believed she was nuts.

Attempting to regain her mental footing, she cleared her throat and offered a smile. It widened with amusement at the statement that they were all a little evil - but why did he keep asking her to trust him? This would be much easier to process without a persistent nagging in the back of her mind that she shouldn't.

"Destined? Oh, I don't know. There are ample discoveries that I might have made that would have been truly beneficial to all of mankind." She paused, chewing her lip. "Hm, I concede to your point. Those would have been largely incidental discoveries on the path to my intended goals."

She put her hands over his, fingers jittery, and very gradually let her palms press against them.

"Chaotic neutral." She made a thoughtful noise. "I suppose you are correct, upon second thought. Please ensure my character sheet is updated, scribe. Or do you prefer 'dungeon master'? You contributed an entirely accurate alignment that I did not speak about. Where did you learn this? Have you embarked on tabletop adventures?"

Her hands curled around his to hold them in her lap, and she gave them a little squeeze. This was interesting information.

"I like it," she slowly said, as if it were a difficult admission.