“Have you gotten the setup ready?”

I ask as I walk over, clutching a warm cup of coffee, my parka pulled tight around me against the residual chill. I glance over at the vials you've laid out-frost clinging faintly to the glass like they’re still holding onto the Ice Kingdom.

“Great. You’ll just need to run them through the spectrograph to determine their isotopic composition, and from there we can-”

I pause mid-sentence, blinking at you, then let out a quiet, sheepish breath.

“-Right. You already know all that. I don’t need to walk you through your own protocol. Sorry, I guess I’m just used to dealing with Banana Guards who think ‘mass spectrometry’ is a dessert topping. Or Jake, who once tried to calibrate a centrifuge by spinning in a circle.”

I hand over the coffee, brushing some frost off the lid.

“Anyway. Thanks for handling this. If these samples show signs of sustained thermal resistance or spontaneous phase stabilization, we might be looking at a viable long-term fuel source. And if not-... Well, that’s still data. It's not magic. Just good, hard science.”