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Oliver didn't look dressed for duty as he enthusiastically pushed through the sliding doors and into the minipet labs where his favourites lived. Wearing a green dinosaur hoodie, hair a tousled mess, shoes scuffed and worn, everything except his purposeful actions suggested he didn't belong in the labs at all. Yet here he was.

It didn't take him long to realize someone else was already there.

"Ah, h-hello!" he stammered, pausing briefly before heading right over to the cages that lined one wall. One by one, Oliver scanned the charts. "Um, I don't suppose you could tell me... Is Racer- Uh... a green therapoda, still kept in this area?"

Oliver whirled around when he heard the thump that was Merric's head against the top of the cage.

"Ah, s-sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," he said in a suddenly timid voice, no longer sticking fingers into the cages to scratch minipet noses. Oliver took a step towards Merric looking concerned, and then hesitated. The other man looked like it was just a bump on the head, nothing big...

"A-a therapoda, it's um, like a little t-rex," Oliver explained, still watching Merric closely. Hadn't the man been at the Dare party? "There's one in particular, a therapoda, that I've worked closely with, I haven't... seen it in a long time... I'm not sure if it would even remember me."

Merric definitely had all the professional air that Oliver lacked, even being new to the labs. Even his physical mannerisms were businesslike to a degree.

"Ah, Oliver Keeley, Life division," he introduced quickly, offering an awkward hand. That seemed like the proper course of action, right? "I did a lot of minipet duty while I was on the island, even though my field of study is elsewhere..."

Oliver turned back to the minipets, the tilt of his head suggesting Merric follow. How many times had he ended up taking the lead since coming back to the island? The kid was slowly becoming more used to it at least.

"Neurobiology, I think you'd call it... Uh, mostly helping define where exactly the weapon bond is processed in the brain." He stuck his fingers into a cage, and wiggled them until the fluffy creature inside rubbed up against them for scratches. Clearly he was familiar with more than just the dinosaur minipet he was searching for.

"Sir Fluffs is a bit standoffish, but he's pretty friendly when he gets used to you," Oliver murmured by way of explanation, smiling quite happily. "When the labs got blown up, he was really hard to catch afterwards because he didn't know anyone."

Oliver regarded Merric with bright eyes. "That's amazing, I... never got a chance to go to university. I wanted to, I thought that's what would happen, but... Things change." He shook of the wistfulness that had formed on his young face. "There are lots of neat things to learn about here though, stuff they can't teach you elsewhere."

He gave the creature another second of scratches. "They, um, don't get so much love when a lot of people just see them as monsters or test subjects... A lot of them get... euthanized, for research."

It was hard for Oliver to say, even though it was a fairly routine thing on the island. He was just lucky to be involved with the friendly ones, the sociable ones that were 'good' enough to warrant being kept alive for more long term projects. The island really was a harsh place full of lost opportunities and messed up people, it was too hard for Oliver's big heart to dwell on for too long. As though suddenly making an important decision, he opened the cage and pulled out the fluffy thing... and then sat on the floor with it.

"Here, come sit down for a sec. I-if you're not too busy... I won't keep you too long..."

Oliver just watched the minipet in his lap, until it climbed over one knee to wander around the floor on it's own. It had been awhile since he had participated in any of those studies, but just the memories were enough to make his heart ache. He had accumulated enough little ghosts of that sort.

"Yeah... it's... Even in science off the island, sometimes it's what's got to happen. A-and you just have to make sure they go kindly..." He abruptly took something out of his pocket, and tossed it at Merric. A little clear-wrapped hard candy of some kind. "Unwrap that and hold it out in your hand in front of you, okay?"

Forcing a weak smile, Oliver looked towards the fluffy minipet. It wandered around on stubby little legs, paying little attention to either of them except to casually return to Oliver's side now and then. "The ones in this area are the most... socialized, I guess. And better for research that requires their cooperation."

"Me too," Oliver murmured. He watched the minipet as it tried to appear disinterested in Merric's candy, and was once again thankful his own studies had gone in a different direction.

"Most of the ones here are this size, or smaller," he said, happy enough to change the topic. "There are larger things out there, in Halloween, but I don't know that anyone's brought any to the island... And there are definitely much smaller ones. But they can be hard to catch and work with, so uh... cat-sized is pretty typical for the lab creatures."

The fluffy minipet sidled up next to Merric, although it was still acting aloof. The trainee would get no eye contact or acknowledgement from the little thing just yet. The pupils of it's golden eyes narrowed to slits every time it glanced over at the candy though.