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Bus Down, Tatiana

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Valerie retired to get a few degrees. Fiona, her sister, took her place. Dottie, their niece from their brother John, followed in their footsteps... and eventually had a daughter that did the same.

***

Enter Tati Byrne, a research scientist with her team, all friendly, some more than others. One of whom, Cody, had been off for a hot minute, deviating from his usual self. He gave no helpful response whenever anyone asks about his well-being, faults coming to a head one day, pressing him to leave abruptly, and then staying away. Studies on the line from his unforeseen absence, the whole team, from heads to interns, was thrown out of whack. Tati, feeling his exit was from more than just burnout, getting that vaguely confirmed from their facility's H.R., and quite a bit closer to Cody in the group than everyone else, decided she needs to take his struggles into her own hands. However, which path to take to do so was a more challenging decision to make, so she put out an S.O.S. to the smartest people she knew.

With known intentions to return, she made a dash out of her own to get her help, catching a familiarized colleague on her way out chortling, "Say 'Hey' to the Prof. for me."

Said "Hey" to the Prof. she did as Tati, for once, had a topic to raise during the family video chat, explaining her predicament and all its laced emotions. Her grandfather John, even before suggestions were made, was disapproving but not out of malice. Sharing a man's lens, he felt this wasn't her fight to fight. Meanwhile, his daughter and Tati's mother, Dottie, agreed somewhat with a bright smile, but rebelling against the call's sole man, she thought her little firecracker should still attempt to find the source concern. Dottie's aunt Fiona and her shining necklace added to the idea, throwing out that she could get an inside look if she tried or at least a bird- or worm' s-eye-view as it helped her young students learn. To his dismay, knowing he was being ignored and seeing a glow assembling in Tati's eyes and her ring, John tossed the mic to the matriarch of the family, the busiest bee of them all with alphabets and accolades attached to name to prove it.

Valerie, breaking from her own lab notes, looked to her chameleon – the reptile enamored by the glow in her caretaker's earrings – bounced in her chair. Her hereditary coils did the same on her head, and she said with a grin, "Take chances, make mistakes, and follow your heart!"

***

Cody had been curling in his comforter in his lonesome, counting all the concerns skittering in his head as he sipped a cup of tea, when he suddenly encountered an uninvited guest. A bearded dragon of indiscernible sex climbed up on his lap, thrusting, of all things, a tablet into his face. The familiar lizard and the even more recognizable, bare torso of its caretaker on the screen raised an eyebrow. Conversations of varying comfort were had in a call. Wishes of support from his laboratorial familiars were sent his way with it. Streams of previously swallowed tea and blushes ran out his face, realizing that all of the former was dangerously close to his being, each set further into danger by the latter and his natural, sedentary actions.

Cody caught and held a gulp in his throat, notwanting to disrupt the specks with pulses exploring in his drink orunintentionally send them down his gullet. Yet he felt terror and saw a flinchof some in Tati as the flow in the scarlet tunnel where she and her secondheadquarters of a Bus floated began to slow.