Lucius smiled a bit. "Yeah, she should," he said. "Usually she doesn't get colds like that, I'm kind of worried. But she's not running a fever or anything, so that's a good sign I think. Do Others work like humans?" Maybe they didn't. "Maybe I should take her to an Other doctor... haven't wanted to do that because the only ones I know of are Republic." And, well, they actually didn't know he had an Other hanging around his farm, and maybe what they didn't know wouldn't kill them.

Unfortunately, there was no right thing to do, here. Because either option could be quite dangerous, and he didn't want to have to make that call. Anyway, there were weeds to pull.

"I worry a lot, sometimes." Yeah, he did. "When my parents still ran the farm, dad would employ the city kids to come pull up all the weeds for him in exchange for butterscotch discs. It got the kids doing something, out in the sun, and they'd pester their parents to come buy my cousins' butterscotch candies when there wasn't any weeds to pull. The city kids don't know us anymore, though." Yeah, sadly.

"Suppose I could get a buncha kids out of the Grid to come help. There are bunches in the orphanages." And bunches that weren't in orphanages, and he wouldn't mind sharing some of the excess with them. It was probably a lot safer of a way for them to get food than the rest of the Grid had as options. Lucius tried not to think about it.

It was odd, listening to a Tyrrhenian talk about an Other like they cared. There was no reason for Lucius to be trying to make a point by pretending though, so Viktor didn't know what to think of the situation. Except... that maybe this guy really was strange enough to care. It was sort of possible, he supposed, for a Tyrrhenian to have spent enough time with a specific other to form a bond, even if the vast majority didn't care at all. That was the most logical assumption at least.

"Not exactly, no. But no fever probably is a good sign." And taking her to an Other doctor could be... well. The Republic tried sometimes and actively sabotaged other times. Wasn't it fun to figure out which a particular situation might be? Viktor didn't say that, of course. "As long as it doesn't last, it'll probably be fine." If it did then... well. Viktor wouldn't pretend to be knowledgable about this specific Other, of course.

"Not a bad idea if you could arrange it." Not that Viktor knew why Lucius wound want to help a bunch of kids in the grid, but the help could be nice, and most grid children would do damn near anything if you promised them food. Viktor should know, he'd seen it in action.

He didn't say that, of course. Often it was better not to think about back then. Mostly it just hurt and the pain didn't serve anyone because it wasn't as if he could get back what he had lost.

Anyway, there were weeds he was supposed to be pulling. Viktor's attention turned slightly towards the plants, though he was still listening for anything Lucius might say.

Ah. Lucius frowned slightly, but then nodded. "You're probably right," he said. "It's only been a day. I should just calm down, and wait to see what happens. If it gets any worse, or doesn't get any better, then we'll worry about what to do. Right." He had some friends in the Republic's medical labs. Maybe they would be familiar enough with Other biology to have an idea of what to do for her if she didn't recover on her own. He was worrying about nothing, probably. They'd just have to make sure the floofball got some rest, and proper fluid intake, and that was that.

It wasn't like he had friends or anything to worry about besides her. Zarinidia was his friends.

"I think I can," he said. "And sometimes I've got excess. Enough to share, at least, and it's a better idea than the arena, at any rate." That was for sure. "Well, you might'a noticed, but I'm kind of friendly with Suyis," Lucius mentioned. "He can probably find me the help easily enough. There's a bonus to having connections I guess." Something like that. Actually, having connections specifically such as Suyis Lucain was very dangerous. Most likely this particular Losrian had no idea how dangerous, but Lucius knew. Unless he did, in which case, well he probably had an idea of what was coming next.

It was okay. Lucius was doing pretty well staying on just this side of illegal. He hadn't gotten shot at thus far, that was a marked bonus, right?

"That sounds like a solid plan." Viktor agreed mildly. And it really was the best option, giving it time was always a good start, and safer than revealing her to the Republic if Lucius had managed to avoid doing so by now somehow. Most Others could typically take reasonably good care of themselves, and they did seem to have some kind of an immune system that could handle the majority of things they came across. ... Then again, his Other had essentially been a sentient balloon, so perhaps it was best that he not make too many assumptions about this Other. Which, of course, was why the waiting and the seeing.

"It's hard to be worse than the Arena." The Arena was a terrible thing, and it shouldn't have been the last resort that it was for so many people. But no one in the Republic really cared about Pyxis, except maybe Suyis. And many times, the Arena was the only thing that kept so many people of Pyxis alive. Even... if it also killed many of them, in the end. It was, in many ways, an easier death than starvation.

That was sad to think about, he wasn't going to say that. "I suppose Suyis' connections would make it easier to find help. And the help would make it easier to manage everything." Viktor hadn't looked very far into that. It wasn't his concern exactly. Beta Primes were well above the sort of people that Viktor worried about in his typical day to day interactions. Mostly he was just worried about not ending up with a handler that he absolutely couldn't abide by.

Lucius didn't seem like he was going to be on that list. Viktor continued to look for weeds among the plants as well as damage to the main crop. If Lucius really did have enough to share, maybe he could keep some of those kids out of the arena just a little longer than they might have been able to otherwise. Few kids to end up like Ian.

Good. Okay. Lucius was going to go with it then, if someone else also thought it was a good idea. That was a pretty solid indicator that he wasn't too far off of a good idea, at least. And that was nice to know, considering Lucius wasn't what most people would call very bright. Sure, he was smart enough; he knew his way around farms and manual labour. He knew how life worked, even if he didn't understand the semantics behind it all. It was for the best probably, because Lucius wasn't really cut out for all that science crap. That was for someone else to bother with. Like Jesse Lin and Kai Iman.

"Sure do," Lucius agreed, finding a broken stalk and standing long enough to rip it out of the ground. It'd started dying, notable by the rot up the stalk. "I usually just grab a bunch of assignments and their handlers from Eridanus around festivals, but the rest of the year I'm mostly on my own. Just me and Zari out here, trying not to go nuts." But, well, he didn't mind it very much, and Zarinidia never seemed to mind it much either.

"So," Lucius started, "I'm the one Suyis assigns people to when their powers are on the fritz. What do I gotta try not to get hit with?" Because he was quite sure there was something wrong with this one, and with the Losrians, it was usually a bad reaction to Euphoria. It was almost like... they didn't need it...

"Sounds like it might be nice, having all that peace. On the other hand, it looks like a lot of work for one guy and an other. And maybe your assignments." Depending on how consistently Lucius had one of those. It was hard to tell, but it did seem that Viktor was alone here with Lucius at least so there was... that. It wasn't a bad thing, Lucius didn't seem like he'd be terrible to be around. Certainly, Viktor had had less pleasant first meetings with his handlers, so he wasn't going to complain any.

"Is that so? That doesn't sound... pleasant. I'm sorry." That seemed like an unpleasant task if Viktor had ever heard one. In that case, probably he didn't have an assignment because once their powers started to go on the fritz like this, they were going to die soon. Euphoria did what it would to them, and eventually, their control eroded to the point where they had to be put down, or they destroyed themselves. Plus, Lucius seemed like a decent enough guy, constantly having assignments that were going to leave him in short order must not have been fun. No wonder he was so attached to the Other.

Viktor was under no illusions that this was anything more than the last stop before the end of the line. It was just... unfortunate that it would be like this, so far from home. He'd always hoped he'd see at least the ruins of Gibraltar one last time before he finally died. There was no point in saying that, it was a silly thing to wish for anyway. Still, it would have been nice to allow his body to go back to the earth in the same place he'd been born.

"Death energy. Or ghost energy, some have called it." Viktor admitted after a moment. "I'm reasonably good at directing even the leaking, and its worst right after a shot." There was a pause. "I'm not sure if you've had a chance to read my files, so I'll add that in addition to that I occasionally see things you can't, unfortunately, I attract them because I can see them." Ghosts, they really just wanted someone to pay them some attention and help them move on.

... Unfortunately, they had limited methods of communication and it could be not fun.

Ah, well... "You're the first assignment I've had in... maybe almost two years now." Lucius paused a moment, counting on his fingers. "Yeah, two. The thing about being a farmer, the Republic tends to forget I exist. Well, that and they seem to have decided I make a better farmer than a handler, and given how many times I've told'em to shove it when they tried to give me a mission in the middle of planting or harvest season, that's fair I guess." Lucius paused a moment. "Then again, maybe their timing just sucks." A lot, notably.

Lucius shrugged a bit, at that. It was what it was. Lucius didn't mind it, because he got a few decent losrians at least out of the system. Part-bloods were another story. They were much harder to free, for a lot of reasons, but losrians usually could run to Andasca. Not that this was any guarantee that running to Andasca would turn out okay. Freeing them was kind of a dual-edged blade. On the one hand, the freedom was nice, but on the other, for both losrians and part-bloods, freedom was unpredictable.

"Oh boy, this one's new," Lucius said, sounding amused. "Ahh... Gibraltar, huh?" There were a number of losrians that had the ability to see and communicate with ghosts, and they were all Gibraltarian. Yes, Lucius paid attention, a lot more than most handlers. "And Suyis just sent me the files a few minutes ago. I don't usually read them though," he mentioned. "As one of my fellow handlers likes to say, everyone knows the files are about eighty percent bias, ten percent bullshit, and maybe ten percent useless factoids." Sounded about right, though. It wasn't like the white coats had any idea what was useful to the handlers, so they tended to focus on inane science-y crap they couldn't make heads or tails of if they weren't science-inclined, and everyone else was full of shit.

Such a fantastically efficient system, yes?

Two years? Interesting that he was assigned to Lucius now then, that was a long time to be forgotten out here with the farm. It made sense though, sort of, if the food production was more useful than what they thought he could do as a handler. Whether they'd forgotten or decided he was better at this or... it didn't matter, really. It was interesting that they chose now. ... Or Suyis had chosen now?

Viktor tried not to think about it too deeply for the moment. "That seems likely." The republic didn't tend to care about what others were doing, it cared about getting what they wanted when they wanted it.

"You got it." That surprised Viktor a little, that this handler knew enough to pin that down instantly. But on the other hand, this was also the same sort of Tyrrhenian who had bonded more or less with an Other, and perhaps it shouldn't have been so shocking at all. He'd get used to how strange this Lucius was eventually. In the meantime, apparently there would be some confusion. Maybe that was better than the alternative. There was a slight pause there and then, Viktor continued, "I was the warlord of Gibraltar before it fell." Was gassed, fell, the same end result.

"That's fair." Viktor couldn't argue with the fact that there was probably less in there that would be helpful than one might hope. After all, the reasons for their actions were never left in those incident reports, now were they? Because no one cared why, Lorians weren't people, they didn't deserve that much courtesy, according to the Republic. "Can't say I necessarily mind the blank start." Ah... no. Maybe not.

And the fact that he was getting the chance to have one was strange, sure, but Viktor wouldn't look that gift horse in the mouth, either.

Lucius clicked his tongue. That explained why Suyis wanted this one free. If he was the warlord of Gibraltar before it fell, then it was possible that the losrians in Republic control, whether they were Gibraltarian or not, would rally behind him if he decided to rally them. Whether he would or not, that was variable, and probably what Lucius was supposed to be doing. Giving him the will, and then the idea. Yeah, Lucius had figured out Suyis' games a long time ago, and while he may not always agree with the guy's methods, he did make some sense somewhere in his endless madness.

In some sense, Lucius was kind of honoured, but in another, he found it unbearably annoying how much faith Suyis kept having in him. Listen, clearly Suyis thought he was some kind of a bad ass or something. It was annoying sometimes. The price of failure was sometimes ridiculously high, and Suyis never seemed to be particularly aware of this. Or maybe Suyis was aware of it, and simply, didn't care. That sounded more like the bastard to Lucius.

"Well, for what it's worth," Lucius said, "I'd like to be your friend. Just, Lucius, not the idiot with the shock bracelet or you know the handler, just me. And I know I gotta earn it, so I will, but I wanted to say it."