Work Text:
Proper Protocols
Lyle plunked the round plastic carrier on the lab table and waited. It only took a moment.
Brainiac 5 stared for a moment at the furry contents of the carrier and then eyed Lyle. “What is that?” he demanded with distaste.
“It’s a cabbit, from the planet Jurai,” Lyle responded promptly.
“And what is it doing here, in my lab?” Brainy asked.
Grinning, Lyle pressed the release button on the side of the container. The cabbit, brown with white paws and ear-tips, looked around her new home, sniffed inquisitively of the air, and then zeroed in on Brainy. The creature almost appeared to grin, and then hopped into Brainy’s shoulder, purring ecstatically as she rubbed her face against Brainy’s.
Querl Dox reflected that it just figured he’d at last managed to unload Koko on Lory and Proty, only to end up with a long-eared felinous creature taking his place. Looking up through his bangs into the wide violet eyes of the cabbit, Brainy sighed and turned to Lyle. “I do not want a pet, Lyle. In fact, I am most certain I have informed you of this numerous times.”
Lyle nodded, the smile never leaving his face. “True, but you were lying, Brainy.”
Brainiac 5 actually spluttered.
“You miss Koko more than you’d like to admit,” Lyle diagnosed rightly. “You didn’t like him bothering you in the lab, but the rest of the time, you seemed to actually find his presence…soothing. I caught you more than once actually petting him.”
Feeling his face warm, Brainy turned away from Lyle – only to find the cabbit investigating the large crate Lyle had brought in moments before her case. “What is in that?”
“Her food for the day,” Lyle replied with a smirk.
Brainy’s eyes went flat. “That crate is large enough to hold a Terran elephant, Invisible Kid.”
Lyle nodded. “Cabbits like to eat. Good thing, too, because if they didn’t have all that fuel they wouldn’t be able to turn into spaceships.”
Brainy blinked. How, in the name of twelfth level intelligence, had he never heard of a biological creature that could turn into technology? “Cabbits are biomechanoid?” he asked in awe.
Lyle was smirking. Again. “I thought that would get your attention.”
Brainy coughed and busied himself with releasing the catches on the side of the crate. It opened to reveal a giant mound of…carrots? Pink carrots, with the seeds embedded on the outside like in strawberries, but…carrots.
The cabbit made an ecstatic, “Meeeee-ahhh!” sound and pounced. Brainy’s eyes widened as he noticed the pile of pink carrots growing pronouncedly shorter by the second, presumably being devoured from within.
Brainy was so entranced by the boggling sight that he almost didn’t notice Lyle leaving. “Oh, and one more thing, Querl?” Lyle said as he lingered in the doorway.
It was the sound of his true name that got his attention. “Yes, Lyle?”
“The cabbit was deucedly hard to get hold of, so this had better count as a proper Coluan courtship gift, or I’m going to have to give up on you.” With that, Lyle vacated Brainy’s lab, leaving behind one extremely happy, if yet unnamed, cabbit, a rapidly diminishing pile of pink carrots, and one extremely confused, but not for much longer, Coluan.
“Courtship?” Brainy squeaked, mind working at light-speed. “Oh, grife, this means I’m going to have to study Earth mating rituals, doesn’t it?”
The cabbit just continued munching her pink carrots, disdaining to answer.