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There's a possibly familiar little fellow over there, gathering dandelion seed heads and putting them in a baggie for careful transport.

Her pace slows as she sees him nearby, head tilting to the side a bit while she nears him and smiles softly. "Collecting samples?"

He looks up, then smiles and nods. "Yes."

Stretching her arms over her head she gives a slight nod of her own. "Surprised to see you're still around, figured you'd have made your way back home by now."

He'll get up to join her on the jog, so they can talk. "I did, but I came back. There aren't zombies here or some of the weird things that get in the way in some timelines, and I haven't read all the books in the library yet."

"Zombies?" Her brow knits slightly while she moves to jog again, keeping a steady pace while they talked. "You plan to read them all?"

"There are a lot of weird variables between timelines," Quint says. "Some can be fun. Some... aren't so fun."

He smiles at mention of the books. "Of course! Well, all the ones I haven't already read, at least."

"So it may be safe to say that one day the zombie apocalypse could happen?" Charisa questions, if anybody knew it would be Quint.

Side stepping a few pieces of trash on the sidewalk while they jogged she shakes her head a bit. "You've must have read hundreds if not thousands of books."

"In some timelines, it happens. It didn't in mine. We had two more world wars instead. Not quite the 'post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust' scenario, but it came really close." He gives a studying look to the trash as the pass it, as if analyzing the strangeness of littering - everything is recycled where he's from.

"The future is a mix of probability and choice. A lot of things are possible. Whether they happen? That depends on people."

He nods at the mention of reading lots of books. "It's the easiest and least conspicuous way to record them. Arcadia - one of the biggest cities on Earth at home - is putting together a huge digital library, and it's really a help to bring back any books that might have been lost during the rougher parts of history."

"Honestly, not sure which would be worse another couple world wars of zombies shambling all over the place." She seems to suddenly contemplate the topic in her mind, either way both were something she'd never want to be a part of.

"True, it usually one takes one person to muck things up."

Hazel eyes widen slightly at the mention of a large digital library back on his Earth. "You must have millions of books already in that library...no duplicates?"

"Even when it's mostly one person, like Hitler in World War Two, or Weil for World War Four... they don't get the power they have without the right situation. Sometimes, when you read history, it can look like a whole pile of circumstance and luck. But peel it away, and you have manipulative jerks... and people ignorant or desperate enough... or trapped enough... to let themselves be manipulated."

Another smile. "Well, it's digital, with a backup system, so technically there are as many copies as anyone needs there to be."

"The world will always be full of manipulative jackasses along with those who sadly are easily manipulated. Just the way things are." She seems to drop the subject rather abruptly and for good reason.

A small chuckle while she shakes her head. "Does everybody back home enjoy reading as much as you do?"

"Not everyone," he admits. "But we do try to keep literacy rates high."

She offers a nod of understanding while they keep pace together.

"I think Xavier's the first person I've ever known of who wanted people to be smart enough to question authority... while he's the 'authority' involved."

"He's in charge of things in Arcadia. I guess the closest current equivalent would be mayor... or maybe president, since Arcadia's a self-contained government as well as a single large city. It's still technically under martial law since the end of the war, but he's working on loosening some of that up now that Weil's gone."

"You try to question authority in this day and age and nothing good comes of it. Hope you don't have the same problem back on Arcadia."

There is a slight tilt of her head while she slows her pace a bit. "Sounds like the years of mistakes before your time have helped to shape Arcadia. Knowing what works and what does work from the years before."

"I think the worst that would happen just for asking questions is that Xavier might want to talk to them. And he'd actually listen."

He nods. "There's a saying that if you forget the past, you'll be condemned to repeat it. I've actually been through that almost literally once. It's another reason the library's important, and my trips like this. It's better to learn from mistakes in the past than to make them again. And when you can jump universes and look at all different pasts... there's that much more to learn from."

Charisa slows her pace until she's walking, taking a moment to roll her neck on her shoulders and work out a small kink.

"You make it sound like everything back home isn't complicated."

A faint smile. "I wish. It's just that maybe politics isn't for once. Probably because most of the actual politicians died, and while Xavier was designed to be one, he was also designed to be a figurehead for Weil to hide behind, someone that everyone would like. And my family has its own command structure, and we're pretty much left to it."

"Earth's ecosystem is a mess, and we're still terraforming Mars and Venus. The whole population on Earth fits into two megacities. They're big enough to make New York of this time look like a small town, but... they're less than a tenth, I think, of what the population was before the wars. Part of Earth's contaminated with a kind of energy that can drive both humans and 'bots viciously insane if it infects them."

"I guess with all that, we're too busy to let politics get messy again too."

She slowly digests the information given to her, it's a lot to take in and all of it is rather fascinating. Her feet carry her over to a nearby bench where she sits and nods.

"Best to not let politics get messy ever. Seems that's being handled well."

He nods, settling on the bench as well. "I think the low population helps with that. Everyone left either knows each other, is related, or knows someone who knows someone else... it makes it harder for there to be any big messy arguments when people don't want their friends and family upset. And I guess it makes people more likely to listen, too."

"And when there are disagreements, it gets treated more like a family argument than a diplomatic breakdown. Politicians always acted weird about some of the dumbest things..."

To any person who happened to walk by them, they'd more then likely find it fascinating that a kid was talking politics with an adult -- Sosa though knew he was no kid. "Just how many people are there?"

"Arcadia's the biggest place, with about half a billion people in one big city on an artificial island. Most of the humans stay there. We're still working a lot on good interspecies relations."

"Liberia's the only other city-state on Earth, and it's all 'bots. They're still kind of nervous about humans there, but things are getting better. I don't think there's more than a thousand people in Giga City - the biggest city there - at the most. Probably half that. It's on an artificial island, too."

"Mars colony I think might have as many as eight thousand people, and there's maybe half that on Venus. Everything else is just little space stations and stuff with just a few people."

"So do you stay in Arcadia or do you spend most of your time in Liberia since you're technically a bot," she muses while waving a hand toward him knowing exactly what was underneath the skin. She still had yet to tell Face that this kid wasn't exactly a kid and she probably never would.

Legs cross she places an elbow upon her knee and settles her chin into her hand while he speaks. "Wow."

"Most of my family stays on Mars. We were one of the groups that started the colony there, along with Repliforce, and the Lights and Cossacks."

"Liberia's a little weird, even for me. Giga City was actually a research facility. It's controlled now by the 'bots that escaped from research there, during the last war. The scientists there were experimenting with that weird energy I mentioned, and while they've all been decontaminated, well... People there tend to be a little crazy. There are jokes sometimes that Liberia's as much a city state as it is a self-governing madhouse."

"The leader there, Epsilon... I've met him and he's sane, I think. Or close enough that I didn't notice anything. Same with the Cadre... Scarface and Ferham. But some of the others, it's probably a good thing they have their own island."

Of course there is nothing she say on any of this, all she can do is listen and be intrigued. If scientists knew what she was being told at this very moment Quint would more than likely be ceased and forced to share his information.

Granted that part of it wouldn't be horrible, the horrible part would be when they found out he wasn't actually human. A slight twinge hit her stomach and she quickly shook the thought out of her mind.

The horrible part would possibly come a bit earlier. Quint may look harmless, but there were reasons Wilybots were once feared in his timeline. And being taken would be something he wouldn't consider an option.

"It works out ok. The ones that are crazy aren't in charge of anything. I guess it's just because they were infected for so long. X's kids were ok, but they were only under the influence for a little while."

"I have a bad feeling about the energy still existing, the areas that are contaminated. I hope it all gets cleaned up without any more problems."

"Just how large are the contaminated areas?"

The question causes her brow to furrow slightly, it was a lot to take in. To hear about a world so completely different from the one she was a part of.

"They were caused by the space station Weil built. He used the stuff to power it, so when Zero, Lumine, and Forte blew it up, the debris fell out of orbit. Sometimes a few pieces that were missed still fall down, though I know there have been attempts to get all the pieces still in orbit."

"It's like this big spiral around Earth, because of the fallout pattern. I think maybe a third of the surface... counting ocean areas."

"Jesus...." she trails off for a moment while rubbing a hand over the side of her face. "And just how many pieces is a few?"

"About twice a month, just small pieces still falling that were missed. Stuff like screws, or just little bits of scrap that should burn up in reentry but doesn't because of the energy."

"There's an alarm any time a piece of it is detected coming down, and it gets dealt with fast... unless it lands in that spiral. We can't even go in some of that because of the concentrations. To clean it up, we'll have to just work our way in from the edges."

"We're lucky, there's another kind of energy that's it's opposite... bring them together and they wipe each other out. But it's still a lot of work."

She gives a nod, understanding what he's saying though she's never had to go through anything like that.

"So even in a screw the concentration levels are dangerously high?"

Quint nods slightly. "Any of it's dangerous, because it can grow. Harpuia, she knows more about it than anyone I know, and she calls it a parasite. It feeds somehow off negative emotions. It makes its hosts violent, so those they attack are afraid... The Giga City outbreak, even the reports read more like a script for a horror movie than a mission report. I was only there for a little while, but even when there wasn't a host around the whole place just had this awful wrong feeling."

"Would defiantly not be on my list of places to visit anytime soon." She leans back into the bench slightly, while arms fold over her chest. "Nobody is sure just how this parasite feeds off negative emotion?"

Quint nods. "Giga City's completely decontaminated now, but any place with an outbreak... I'd sooner spend my time hopping timelines and occasionally finding worlds with zombies than have to deal with that."

"I'm not really sure. If anyone knew, it'd be Harpuia. I could call her..."

"Think I'd just keep my happy ass here but, that's just me."

She offers a slight shake of her head. "No, no that's alright I was just thinking aloud."

Quint can nod in agreement to that. "I'd probably stay home, too. But a lot of my siblings really wouldn't be able to do this kind of thing. Not without causing a problem somehow."

"Calling your siblings trouble makers?" She smiles softly while asking the question before pushing herself off the bench.

Quint chuckles as he gets up. "Well, it's what most of them were designed for."

"Oh," Charisa can't help but laugh softly for feeling a tad bit foolish.

"Dr. Wily wasn't sane. We like to think most of it was because of that." There's a smile that's a mix of nostalgia, sadness, a trace of bitterness, and the sort of fond but strained tolerance one can have for a relation that did horrible things but wasn't at all in their right mind.

"My siblings and I were all designed as weapons, because he decided he wanted to take over the world. He was a lot like a classic mad scientist on TV... only you never really see those demanding nachos and scotch while they work on projects."

A rather faint smile plays upon her lips though is quickly fades away. Stretching down for a moment to get the muscles in her legs a bit looser before they continued she tilted her head up to look at Quint while he spoke.

"You were designed as a weapon and yet here you are gathering samples and reading books," she muses with a small smile before laughing. "Yeah those movies really were kind of cheesy to be honest."

"My secondary function was infiltration, and some of my coding was stolen. Some of the stolen coding came from someone who was originally a lab assistant. Plus, our programming is designed to be able to adapt. It's just easier for me than it has been for some of the others."

There's a chuckle from him as well. "The fortresses we used to live in were cheesy. Dr. Wily always wanted them decorated with all these skull designs, trying to make it look scary. We didn't tell him that there were just so many it ended up looking silly instead."

"Yeah, it was probably best that you didn't burst his bubble, no telling what he'd have used to decorate next if that happened." Pulling herself back up straight she moved to start jogging again.

"Sometimes I almost miss it. All the pit traps and weird defenses and stuff. I guess home always ends up being home, even when there are a lot of bad things associated with it. He didn't mean the worst, and we try to remember that."

"Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if he was sane. If there could have been some way to save him. Enker and Shadow miss him the most, I think. And Blues. Blues is the oldest of us, so he was the only one who really knew Dr. Wily before he went crazy. ... I think Blues has missed him for a long time, but he misses the Dr. Wily that he used to know, not what he became."

A small smile crawled over her lips while Quint spoke. It was understandable, there was a part of her that missed home. Granted she moved around a lot but, she was able to remember the first place that she called home.

"All you can do it wonder, sadly you'll never get to know."

Quint nods slightly. "Even if I visited a timeline that was close enough to ours to have a Dr. Wily there, it wouldn't really be him." He had crossed paths with one not long ago, but preferred not to think to much about that incident.

"I still like to think he'd be happy with what we've done. Blues has said he would be."

"I'm sure he'd be happy with all you guys have done, so I believe Blues is right in that thought."