There was a sharp, meaty crack – the sound of someone’s head impacting with someone else’s fist – and another of the scientists who’d been trying to get Zektor to step into the processing-tank went flying backward to smash into the far wall of the lab.

"I told you to piss off, meat sack!"

The bent support beam that he’d been using for a crutch— had been until some of his fellow Hyper Zoanoids had dug him out of the rubble of Mt. Minakami—had since been replaced by a pair of actual crutches. A pair, hence Zektor’s being able to use one of them to club a few of the more persistent – or in his view, dumber – doctors in the head. The flat whack of the crutch as it slammed into another doctor’s head made Zektor smirk a bit.

"Zektor, we’re just here to help you."

"I don’t want your fucking help!" the irate Hyper Zoanoid snarled, his baby-blue eyes spitting sparks at his tormentors.

"We just want to fix your leg, Zektor."

"Have any of you fucking dumbshits even considered the fact that I don’t want to have my leg fixed?" Zektor demanded, remembering again just how and why he’d lost his leg in the first place, because it would be an insult to the memory of his team if he got it fixed without finding a way to get back at Aptom.

It would be just like forgetting about them, so until Dr. Balkus – whom Zektor fully believed was searching for a way to deal with that bastard Zoanoid-eater – came up with a way to make him immune to Aptom’s infectious cells, the leg was going to stay off. Not that Zektor was going to try and explain anything to these dumbshits, since all they cared about was getting him back on his feet so they wouldn’t look bad in front of Dr. Balkus.

"I told you pissants to stay the hell away from me!" Zektor snarled as he bludgeoned another of the doctors with his crutch. "Are you all deaf, or just damn stupid?!"

"What’s with all the noise here?" another voice asked, sounding confused.

Zektor turned with a minor amount of difficulty, thinking that the newcomer was yet another idiot doctor who needed some sense pummeled into his empty head. What he saw instead was the brown-haired, impeccably groomed form of Panadyne standing beside him.

"Oh, it’s you," Zektor said, lowering his crutch so that he could stand on it again. "What’re you doing here, Panadyne?"

"I came to find out what all the noise was about," Panadyne said, grinning slightly. "I should have expected it to be you, you old bastard. What’s your beef now?"

Zektor shrugged. "I just have a problem with morons," he said, turning a scathing blue-eyed glare on the scientists gathered around him and warning them off in case any of the dumbshits were going to try and get to him while he was talking.

"Okay. What’s your problem with morons?" Panadyne asked, looking like he was somewhere between curious and confused.

"Aside from the fact that they’re so goddamned stupid—" here Zektor turned to glare at the gathered doctors, prompting them to take a few steps back, "—they keep trying to make me do shit that I don’t want to do."

Panadyne glanced down at the pitiful remains of Zektor’s left leg. "Why in the hell would you not want to get your leg fixed? You didn’t strike me as the type who’d stay down any longer than you had to."

"They told you what happened to the rest of my team, right?" Zektor asked warily, not wanting to explain his situation again if he could help it.

"I heard they were all killed," Panadyne said, with the usual amount of distant sympathy. "That was always the risk though, you know."

"You don’t get it," Zektor snapped. "My friends weren’t just killed. They were eaten. By Aptom."

"Aptom?" The fish-eyed look that Panadyne gave him didn’t make Zektor feel any better about his situation. "Aptom, as in the leader of the Lost Unit screw-ups? Aptom, as in the guy Dr. Balkus wants to personally toss down the incinerator chute once he gets finished ‘examining’ him? That Aptom?"

"Yeah, that Aptom," Zektor spat. "He’s the reason I lost this leg. And until Dr. Balkus finds a way to give me a fighting chance against him, the leg’s going to stay off."

"Your way of remembering?" Panadyne asked, though the tone of his voice suggested that he already knew the answer, or at least suspected.

"That’s about the long and the short of it," Zektor said, nodding.

"Come on, then. Let’s get out of here," the other man offered, putting his right arm around Zektor’s shoulders and helping the other Hyper Zoanoid walk out of the laboratory.

Neither of them looked back.