a prominent aspect of veritas ratio is his relentless pursuit of understanding. a man of numbers, conclusions, and the deep-set ambition to work towards the dissemination of knowledge, he carries himself with the with the confidence that only someone with his level of genius could hold. does it make him appear stuck-up? certainly, but given his intellect and achievements, it’s frustratingly justified.

now, he is fully aware of the various species and unique individuals that hail from different planets and star systems. what may be an everyday reality for one planet can be something that could only be dreamed of in another; one’s fact is another’s fiction. the universe was vast, big enough to contain all of these impossibilities and anomalies—aeons know how many things have been left unexplored. so by all accounts, you should have been a problem to solve, nothing more. a mild fascination, something to study and understand—ratio had expected that much from himself. but this interest, in the scientific definition, had gradually grown into something that he could not classify.

you speak, and he listens longer than he intends to. you look at him with those eyes, and he notices the way his gaze sharpens on you before anything else. you smile with your fangs just barely visible, and he, against all reasoning, feels... something warm. something irrational.

utterly unacceptable.

dr. ratio stands now in his office, fingers tapping a steady rhythm against the datapad, though his gaze keeps drifting toward the seat you occupy. you do not seem to realise the extent to which you disrupt him—how your presence alone introduces aberrant variables into his thoughts. and worst of all, you appear comfortable here. as if the calculations spread across his desk, the machines humming in their quiet precision, and his own sharp, stern posture do nothing to intimidate you.

“your heartbeat is slow today,” he comments finally. he tells himself it is only an observation, nothing more. “is that normal for your… condition?”

you laugh, and veritas feels it again—an impulse, an emotion that he does not possess. he refuses to. he cannot. irrelevant. illogical.

he clears his throat, finding another topic to pick at. “also, i noticed you had gone out,” he remarks. “i would have accompanied you, you know.” ratio continues. “in fact, i expected you to ask. you cannot be doing this without notice.”

it’d only been a short walk, nothing of importance—even though you had agreed to let him fulfil his curiosities about your abilities and physiology, you still have to stretch your legs every now and then. surely, this could not mess up whatever results he’s been gathering—but given his reaction, apparently not.

externally, his expression remains placid and calculating, though his mind is anything but. he does not know when your existence stopped fitting neatly into the category he had assigned you, yet the fact remains: you no longer do. you defy it—defy him.

this should irritate him; in fact, it does. but the irritation coils into an unfamiliar warmth, and veritas almost despises how easily you bring this chaos into his meticulously ordered life. “..do not misunderstand,” he states, more firmly than necessary. “i am simply ensuring that the data is thorough.”