Why am I always the one cleaning up?! [completed]

[fossil-icicle.livejournal.com]

Character(s): Vexen, a random Dusk
Content: Some idiot left a flying ship out there... Guess who has to clean up?
Setting: The laboratory (undisclosed location), then the shorline of Q3. Yay for portals.
Time: Night
Warnings: Possible spoilers? I think I got them all. Piers is going to have a hard time going home...

Vexen was going over the profiles of each prisoner one at a time at his desk, open journal to his left to monitor the happenings on the message board, a cup of coffee to his right that had been warm when he'd microwaved it but was now cold and tasteless. Each detail of each prisoner's personality had to be noted carefully as a variable in each experiment, and its possible effects projected into each situation the subject was placed in. Would be placed in.

The Academic muttered to himself as he finished with one set of notes, stapled the sheaf of paper and set it aside, and found that he'd made his way to the reports on Larxene's favorite subject, wondering when he'd stopped being the hand holding the scalpel and started being this glorified secretary. Frost formed on the rim of his coffee mug-- Larxene was doing the tasks he'd rather have, and he was stuck writing!

Vexen swallowed some coffee and his pride and got back to work. It was comforting to work in longhand and hardcopy, which couldn't be hacked through the journals the way softcopy on the computers could (Vexen had, and his specialty was biochemistry, not computer science). It was also satisfying to have something physically present to offer when asked for a report, while the neophytes would dismiss such a request with a reply of, "Oh, I emailed it to you already..."

A caged lumen of the lunepe, or fox-like, kind hissed at a small portal of darkness that opened past the working one's shoulder and emitted a scrawny Dusk Nobody.

"Busy." Go away.

Sir, there is a situation...

---

Vexen glared at the ship like it was a living thing that could fear him. Anyone with any sense for the artistic would have admired the vessel's sleek design and the wings that seemed almost natural on either side; to Vexen, it was a nuisance, a problematic aside to the perfect experiment. His perfect experiment, only now the neophytes had overrun it with their tendancy to damage goods and panic populations, and he was left cleaning up. Always the one cleaning up.

The sailor who had come in on this ship would at some point want to leave on it. That wouldn't be permissible.

After a moment, Vexen decided the best thing to do would be to move the ship to a position underneath a cliff on another edge of the island, where it would be all but invisible and impossible for the owner to find. He overrode the security system at the door to the cabin, synthesized the catalyst that would move the ship into the water, and from there it was a simple matter of creating a large enough portal through the darkness and mooring the ship on the other side.

"I will not be bothered again," he told the errant Dusk as sternly as he could, and returned to his studies.

Leaving the cabin door wide open.