Phil reached up, lifting his hat off of his his face and shooting a look at Tsukiya. Said look did absolutely nothing as the Lyn had already turned and wedged his fingers between the door frame and the door and ripped it from the wall. He sighed heavily, watching the tiny Lyn bolt down the hallway, slowly shaking his head in disbelief. Nobody listened to him and especially not Tsukiya. He supposed he should be used to it by now, but operating as a lone wolf mercenary for ten or so years did tend to make one forget what working with others was like sometimes.

Phil arched a brow at the faun currently looking perplexed in the middle of his cabin. “Look it--”

"A zombie is an undead corpse. A corpse that walks with the living though really, scientifically speaking, the probability of there being a zombie on board this ship is incredibly slim. I'm no biologist but I've read into zombies, the theories are truly fascinating, but I find my biggest concern towards their existence to lie with their brain - not that they'd be stupid or anything, no for being dead I imagine just having the ability walk would qualify them as rather smart or maybe just skilled but skill requires a degree of brains. But the problem is when a body shuts down blood flow to the brain ceases as your heart has stopped. A stopped heart, I believe, would be a large indicator that someone is dead... But the brain requires blood to function it needs the oxygen the nutrients in order to function. Without the blood the brain would shrivel up - dry and cracked. There are some theories that the electrical impulses in the brain are able to trigger some sort of magnetic attraction and repulsion process with brain - possibly due to the presence of iron but not all iron is magnetic and I'm not quite sure whether the iron in our blood is one of the magnetic kinds. Some people think that the blood acts as an agent of it's own and moves itself but really thats just silly."

Phil slowly turned his head to look at the giant bipedal bird that had joined their crew, his brows slowly lifting. Apparently this ‘Ex’ either didn’t have lungs or didn’t require them to take in oxygen. He continued to stare as he rambled, explaining more than necessary about zombies and their plausibility. Phil heaved a sigh and reached inside his coat for his old, battered lighter, lighting the unlit cigarette between his lips and taking a long drag. If the fact that he was a fresh keeper didn’t tell him that Ex was green around the edges, then his ramblings did.

"So you really have nothing to worry about. Zombies are known to eat the living, having a particular taste for brains which is rather ironic considering the previous. But anywho, with the lacking evidence towards their existence in the first place, it will all be perfectly alright..."

“Zombies exist.” Phil muttered, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “You’re gonna see all sorts of weird shit on this boat.”

Phil took the opportunity to gesture at Ex because, in his mind, a large, walking bird was just about as weird as a Zombie, really. At the next thing Ex said, Phil turned his head to look at the doorway, resulting in another smoke-filled sigh; so much for quiet and privacy. It wasn’t like he had actually expected to be able to get any real solitude, but he hadn’t expected for there to suddenly be a party in his room and to lose his door. Thankfully it was still not quite as eventful and face-palm worthy as his introduction to his old team had been. He might have actually shot someone if it had been.

"I can fix that."

"Oh good." Phil muttered. "Dunno if it's worth it at this point, though.  Can just get it fixed at the next Keeper dock."

Phil watched the small, quiet newcomer plop down on the second bunk in the room, mentally sighing; a bunkmate, great. At his comment about everyone being fine, Phil gave a quick nod before climbing to his feet and heading for the door, leaning against the dented and abused frame as he continued to smoke. He heard hurried, shuffling footsteps and turned his head; gait was too heavy and stride too long to be Tsukiya coming back, even with a door in tow. He turned his head ever so slightly, moving to lean a little, taking up as much of the doorway as possible without making it obvious.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched someone pass, noting that the figure didn’t so much as glance at him. As they continued on, Phil frowned, perplexed, as he watched a zombie shamble past and, having a sudden thought, suddenly pat down his jacket. Phil finally found what he was looking for, reaching inside his jacket and drawing out a data pad. He pulled up the roster and began to flip through the names, searching, searching, until he found a particular entry…

“Shit.” he swore, taking another long drag on his cigarette.

---------------

Nein gave their captain an incredulous look at how relaxed she seemed to be. If the research he was doing said anything, it was that situations such as these could potentially be dangerous and cause quite a few problems. However, in a way, her calm made him relax a little, one had absently reaching up to smooth through his hair, flattening it; focus on navigation, it was everyone else’s job to deal with potential threats, not his.

"Dude, okay, guys, like... isn't there supposed to be a Shambler in the medbay? Did no one like, read the roster?"

Nein immediately pulled the roster up, relaxing once more when he realized that the captain was right, there was supposed to be someone of that description on their crew. While that was a relief Nein could only hope that he never got injured as he himself could admit that he had difficulty acclimating to new and strange organic things… There had been nothing like this on his homeworld and he hadn’t really seen it at the Keeper Academy either.

"Continue procedures as planned, folks. I'll handle this one. Nein, set short navigation to auto, continue long navigation as normal - just be extra careful not to run her into anything til I get back, yeah?"

As she issued the order Nein nodded, entering the appropriate commands, before stiffening a little when she mentioned not running into anything; of course he wouldn’t! “....Yes, Captain.”

He turned his head, watching her leave before sighing and setting the navigation to auto, making minor adjustments to account for anomalies as needed. Part of him wanted to show just what he was capable of, but he admitted that that side of him was the more childish side of him. Thus he simply sighed and followed his captain’s orders, doing only what was necessary to keep the ship flying smoothly and uninterrupted.

----------

Phil had finished reading the dossier when he heard footsteps again, his shoulders immediately relaxing when he saw Althalia striding down the hallway. It was a good thing too because he really wasn’t good at the whole dealing with people thing like she was and, thus, would royally fuck up any conversation he probably would have attempted to have with their medic. He gave Althalia a quick nod as she walked past before slipping back into the room, stubbing out his cigarette.

“Alright, Kids, no being nosy.” Phil muttered, walking back over to his bunk and plopping back down onto it.

“Hello again everyone, I brought a friend~ Peoplelegs is safe and sound, just got startled by our shambly friend in the med-bay. Be sure to be nice if you see him, he's in a bit of a bad mood~”

That was when Tsukiya appeared, a visibly rattled girl in tow, who he tipped his hat to immediately. Thankful Tsukiya was there to explain things and make them seem inconsequential at the same time. He drew out another cigarette, placing it between his lips, wincing when Tsukiya wedged his door back into place, making Phil grimace a little; at least there was now a… Vent for the smoke to go through he supposed.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your door Phil, you can have it back though~”

“Thanks, Tsuks.” Phil muttered, hesitantly reaching out and ruffling the hair between the Lyn’s ears; something must have happened and, even though he didn’t know what, he figured Tsukiya could use a quick head pat. “We’ll probably be reaching our destination soon so don’t get too comfy, guys. We’ve got some work to do soon.”

In reality, research only goes so far. It always seems as though when you get so close to finding what you want when researching, you hit barrier. Maybe the paper is in a language you don’t speak. Maybe the paper just barely skims what you want to it - if it touches that bit of information at all. Sometimes even, that one particular piece of knowledge that you may want to know has never been looked into.



Exaltare did a lot of research in his spare time and he prided himself for having a lot of little pieces of information stored in his brain. He was by no means a “bird-brain”. He had researched zombies at one point when he was little and his brother read him scifi stories featuring the undead walkers. At the time, no research stated that zombies were real. Finding the subject interesting, he occasionally would check up on the latest research of the plausibility.



Nothing ever said that zombies existed.



So when the old cowboy was saying that zombies existed, Ex’s first instinct was to argue. He had read into the matter plenty of times. But when he looked back at the keeper, something told him that despite the lack of scientific evidence, what this man said was true. And really he had a good point - there Ex was, a large bipedal bird walking and talking and breathing and living. Who was he to deny the existence of another species?



“I could fix it better and faster,” he mumbled absently. It wasn’t that he really doubted the ability of the team of engineers at the next stop. It was just that he knew his own ability and while his knowledge had been wrong about the zombie, his knowledge of the worldships was beyond extensive.



His eyes followed Phil as the man moved, his brain trying to process all of the questions he had now. He wanted to know everything this man knew about zombies. He wanted know how he knew they existed, what they looked like, their diet, how they acted. Their culture. He wanted to just sit down and pick his brain to pieces on the matter. Then he saw Phil lean to fill up the space left by the missing door and wasn’t that odd? The position didn’t seem very comfortable at all. Then the shambler walked past and Ex’s brain seemed to just shut down, a soft whirring growing in his ears. Everything he had read was wrong.



At a glance the shambler wasn’t all that frightening… ok that was a lie but really, it wasn’t so much the sight but the discordant sound of the man’s aura that caused Ex’s feather’s on edge. Something wasn’t right. Nobody’s aura had sounded like that unless they were… oh.



“He’s upset,” he whispered, frowning.



Before he could elaborate Phil had moved and their Vice Captain was had returned with somebody he called Peoplelegs… Wasn’t her name Chickenlegs though? He didn’t have much time as a softer discordant sound coming in waves off of the little keeper. He opened his beak to speak and then the door was being wedged into the whole and oh god. It hurt to see the poor metal warped in such a way. He pulled a marker out of one of his many pockets and started scribbling on the door, his chicken scratch handwriting supposedly acting as chicken scratch for those who would fix the door. He taped his writing with the end of the marker and looked back at Phil and Theron with a serious look in his eyes.



“If you see the engineers who are supposed to fix the door, just tell them to follow my notes,” he grumbled, ending the sentence with a click of his beak. Ok so maybe he didn’t really trust those people to fix the door properly.



He nodded absently at the faun girl, thankful for her offer, and followed her out of the room. His head was starting to hurt from the noises… He quickly squeezed through the hole that was left between the door and the wall and quickly hurried to catch up with her.



“I’m Exaltare by the way. But you can call me Ex.”