A reunion with her colleague, but it's not exactly a hero's welcome...

The doctor blinked her eyes dizzily, feeling as though she was in a dream (well... a dream within a dream). The last thing she remembered, she'd been on another planet, entering the so called Tower of Total Defeat, a place of superstition and mystery. There, she'd met a goofball adventurer named Dr. Lockhart, who called herself a demon. The adventurer had led her to the Reality Crystal she'd been seeking. She'd seemingly used that crystal to wish away Zauber, then restore earth to its original form.

If this was a Mahmuna- Corrupted Wishes- story, she'd probably be deeply regretting that wish already in some fashion. Instead, this being a dream and all, she had no reason to worry about the fact that she hadn't stated for the crystal to restore all of the human lives beneath Zauber. A certain thudding behind her eyes had always told her that Zauber was watching, since the creature's conception... Now it was gone. For the first time in a long time, she felt truly safe and at peace.

... Well, almost. She wasn't quite at peace, because she had the worst feeling of a hangover hanging over her, like when she drank too much vodka and passed out at her work-station after a late night.

She also didn't quite feel safe... what she'd originally taken for a blindingly bright white light was actually the sterile walls of some sort of holding cell. As she refocused her eyes and fixed her glasses upon her nose, she finally recognized the place for what it was: a Tolstoy Sciences clean room. Vents discretely hidden inside each of the walls, the floor, and the ceiling were designed to shoot out stored chemical compounds that, as the room's name suggested, cleaned and sterilized the subjects inside. If that wasn't enough, there were also extendable guns with more sinister purposes, capable of firing lasers of flamethrowers to kill the sorts of abominations she'd regretfully created in her pursuit of a being with eternal life. She wondered if someone ought to fire up the flamethrowers and put her out of her misery... If Zauber was truly dead and the planet restored, then she herself was the last evidence of her own sin.

At any rate, her scientific mind couldn't rest without knowing who was responsible for bringing her to this specific place. There was no way she'd been warped into one of her cells by the Reality Crystal; it would surely have deposited her wherever she was thinking, right? Doctor Tolstoy knew she must have been thinking either of her top-floor office or her laboratory, but not one of these eerie holding cells. Why had she been brought here?

As if in answer, a hologram faded, revealing a glass, one-way screen on one of the walls. This might have surprised other chamber inhabitants, but not Doctor Tolstoy; she'd designed it, after all. Soon, the one way screen flickered, becoming two-way glass that allowed her to see her observer. She recognized the eerily symmetrical, bespectacled Japanese man, a few years her junior, as Dr. Dotford Lang, one of her talented underlings. He'd been one of the first to be absorbed by Zauber, unfortunately, giving the zombie all kinds of knowledge that catapulted his scientific skills beyond the average human's comprehension. To see his head restored back to its old body caused her to nearly tear up with joy... and she was not a sentimental woman, but the fact that Zauber had chosen to take her closest colleague's appearance had always pained her.

"Doctor Lang... You have no idea how pleased I am to see you." She approached and placed one hand on the glass.

He returned a smile, but it quickly settled back into a frown. Part of the reason she liked him was that he wasn't the sentimental type either. "I can't believe you returned in one piece, Doctor Tolstoy. I still don't understand how you destroyed Zauber, either. There's part of me that can't imagine he's truly gone."

"Agreed... At any rate. Now's the time for a tall glass of vodka, isn't it? Or maybe champagne? What am I doing inside a clean room?"

Her colleague adjusted the round glasses upon his wide, box-shaped nose and gave a long "hmmm" before responding. "Miss Tolstoy, when I said that I can't imagine that Zauber's truly gone, I meant it. We have to be very thorough before we bring you back into the facility, or really, anywhere among other humans. A hazmat team brought you in here and you've been lying there for an hour... I wanted you to be awake before we took the next step. There was a woman with you too, who named herself as Miss Lockhart... We've contained her in another cell, believing her now to be some sort of... It's hard to say. She seems like a mad woman. A bit outside of our realm of specialization. Regardless, my focus right now is your safety and that next step I mentioned."

Doctor Tolstoy lowered her eyebrows critically, then shook her blond hair and slapped her palm against the glass. She didn't like where this was going... "Wait just a minute! I am 100% confident I removed every trace of Zauber from the universe. You feel it too, right? There was an instinct, a sort of thudding in your brain, from the moment we created him in my laboratory, Dotford! All of humanity experienced that... and it's gone now! That means he's gone. You can release me from the chamber."

The other doctor returned her expression, putting on a serious frown. "Not just yet. First, I must initiate the cleaning process. It's a standard procedure, I assure you; Miss Lockhart is undergoing the very same. You of all people know that we can't be too careful-"

"I'm your boss and I'm telling you you are being too careful! Quit playing around and let me out of this room!" The designer, CEO, and face of Tolstoy Sciences hit against the window angrily with one fist, unbelieving that she should have to suffer an indignation like this moments after saving humanity... conveniently forgetting that she'd sort of doomed humanity to begin with. She found herself wishing she'd had her bag full of tools, but evidently, someone had taken that from her and stored it before dragging her into this room.

The other man turned his back and grabbed a switch on the wall with one hand, while pushing his glasses up with the other. It seemed he had something on his mind, but thought it would be unprofessional to speak it out loud.