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"What?" Noah appeared around the corner of the rack of cages, awkwardly juggling a bucket and brush, a handful of rags, and a pair of gloves. "Were you talking to me? Are you Jack? I'm Noah, I think we're assigned to clean tanks together, um, hi, nice to meet you - " he nearly dropped the gloves as he automatically started to offer a handshake, caught the gloves, and did drop the rags. Way to look like a dinkus, he groaned mentally.

I THINK HE WAS TALKING TO HIS WEAPON, Lazarus put in. Noah jumped visibly. He was still getting used to the voice in his head and its occasional responses to his thoughts. Before he could formulate any kind of reply to Laz's comment, the weapon went on, WHAT IS A DINKUS, NOAH?

"Um." Noah shot a frantic look at the chain wrapped around his left wrist, then at Jack, then mumbled at the chain, "I'll tell you later."

There were tooth marks on the older guy's glove, he noticed suddenly. "Whoa. Did it bite you?"

"Laz said you might be," Noah answered apologetically. "After I asked you, helpful, right. Uh, Lazarus, my - my weapon." He glanced at the chain on his wrist again. He couldn't tell where Jack's weapon was. Konstantin's had been a tamagotchi, so that implied that they could turn into almost anything when not being actual weapons. "Is yours, uh. Creepy?"

I'M CREEPY, said the wet voice in his head, sounding quite self-satisfied about it. Noah tried to ignore that, mostly unsuccessfully.

"Like, dog intelligent, or rat intelligent, or monkey intelligent? I guess not human intelligent or their cages would have more complicated locks," Noah mused, leaning over to peer at the creature in the cage. "We don't study more than that? I'm kind of new so I just kind of assumed I was getting the crappy manual labor stuff because I don't know how to do the real work around here. Someone's gotta do the crappy stuff," he said philosophically, "and I thought maybe if I showed I could work hard I'd get to the interesting stuff. Um. Should I try taking it out so we can clean up after it? Is there like a holding cage or something for putting it in temporarily, since obviously we can't just put it on the floor?"

He put the bucket and rags down and pulled his gloves on, fiddling with the cuff of the left one. He wasn't yet used to the chain's heavy presence on his wrist. He'd tried scrubbing at the rusty stains on the metal with a brush he'd borrowed, but nothing he could do made it look any cleaner, and after a while Lazarus had started to make really disturbing happy sounds and thanked Noah for brushing him. Noah wasn't sure if he should do it again. On one hand, it was probably good if his weapon was happy. On the other ... really disturbing happy sounds.

Noah deflated slightly at the answer. He'd been hoping to hear that he wasn't the only one kind of creeped out by his new not-so-imaginary friend. "Laz is a zombie dog, he says," he reported. "His voice is ... weird."

I'M A GOOD DOG, Lazarus put in placidly.

"Okay," Noah agreed, and picked up the shovel and bag. "Can't be any worse than cleaning the rat cages." He looked around at the rows. "Uh, how many of these are we responsible for? There's a lot."

At the last comment, he paused. "So this really isn't the way things are usually," he said. "I kind of wondered. I mean. There's no lights in the dorms and stuff. What happened?"

Noah groaned a little. "That's a way bigger threat when the showers are busted, ew. What did you say to her? So I can avoid saying it. Hey, you know, this is the lab building," he added, brightening up. "Don't laboratories usually have, like, emergency showers? For getting spills off your clothes and skin and s**t? There's power here, so I bet if there's showers here they still work."

He listened with interest to Jack's vague explanation. He'd been told very little, and most of it had been along the lines of go here and do this and show up for this duty at this time and don't be late or your a** is grass, orders issued by harried or bored senior hunters. Any explanation, no matter how small an amount of information it actually offered, was better than knowing nothing.

"Merlin?" he asked. "Is that an acronym for something?" He went quiet briefly as Jack captured and re-caged the doglike thing; handling bitey animals required a little concentration. Once it was safely contained, he set the top to the regular tank aside and started scooping the stuff in the corners into the disposal bag, briefly holding his breath every time the trowel passed his face. "What are runics?" he asked. "I mean, I know there's these white runes on Laz's blade, but I don't know what they mean. Um." He paused to think for a moment. "You'd think if they were powering stuff just with runes, like magic stuff, there wouldn't be a problem, because you could ... draw more runes?" he guessed, frowning uncertainly. "So maybe runes are, like, more like diagrams, or computer code or something. Like telling the power what to do, but they need a power source to get power from."

He dipped the scrub brush into the cleaning solution in the bucket and reached into the tank to start scrubbing the inside surfaces, clearly familiar enough with the process of cleaning cages not to have to give it much thought. "Does that make sense?" he added, looking to Jack with an expression that rather resembled a puppy looking to its trainer for approval.

"It'd be nerdier if it was, like, Gandalf or something," Noah said. "Pretty much everyone knows the King Arthur legends." He wiped the cage down with a rag. "One down, about a million to go."

"It would be so awesome to learn a magical language." He brightened at the prospect. "I wonder if there's a spoken version? How would you pronounce them? Would it let you cast real spells? I mean, I was expecting like super-high-tech stuff when I woke up because of the stasis pods, but magic tech is just as awesome. Maybe more awesome, even." Meganerd.

"I just kind of want to know when we're going to start training for battle. I mean, we've got these sentient magical weapons, that means we must be fighting something, like something powerful and evil, so we won't be sitting around all day forever," he reasoned.

"You got a giant sword?" Noah's eyes lit up and he paused with his hands on the tank latches to stare at Jack for a moment, perhaps a little starry-eyed. "That is so cool."

Lazarus growled, a low, faintly jealous note, and Noah added hastily, "Not that mine's not cool! He is!"

When Jack had extracted the birds into the holding cage, Noah pulled the lid off the tank and set to work cleaning it, apparently not bothered by Jack's lack of active participation. "I haven't sparred," he confirmed. "So I should probably go try it after we finish here ... ?" His voice tilted up inquiringly, making the statement a question.

YES. WE WILL GO AND FIGHT AND I WILL BITE THINGS, Lazarus agreed, his irritation over Noah's admiration of someone else's weapon salved by the idea of fighting.

"Laz likes that idea," Noah added.

Noah nodded slowly. "I think - I think I remember. It was like a dream. Before I woke up, something, I felt something ... " He trailed off and shook his head, frowning faintly. He remembered, but the memory wasn't clear.

YOU WILL BE A GOOD HANDLER, Lazarus said, self-satisfied.

Noah wasn't sure whether to feel proud about that or insulted about the future tense in which it had been phrased. He decided to ignore it for now. He also ignored the soft, bubbly chuckling. "I hope we can do laundry soon," he said to Jack. "I only have one clean shirt left." He plucked at his t-shirt with a grimace.

"Sure," he agreed to the deal, looking a little surprised, and moved to the next cage. "I, uh, haven't ever really fought. So I'm probably gonna be awful, just so you know. Laz is a meat cleaver, he has some bone along the top edge of his blade, kind of weird looking really but I guess I really couldn't expect a zombie dog to look like a normal knife, right?"