Finished with his grooming for the moment, Mowzer looked back up towards his human and the nice one as they conversed. The two had been talking for some time already, about boring subjects that didn't seem to involve him. But as he took the time to observe these two, a sudden thought occurred. He had run, he had bathed, and now, two very nice, well-trained humans were kneeling just nearby. They obviously had nowhere better to be right now, which meant there would be no problem if Mowzer decided to...

~-~

Antoine chuckled, shaking his head as he raised a hand in response to Ms. Weber's apology. 

"No need to be sorry at all. If you can enjoy listening to me talk about myself, I can certainly enjoy it as well." He chuckled some more, grin widening yet again at how simply [i]nice[/i] this whole conversation had been so far. To think it started with the most unlikely of people tumbling over his threshold after playing tag with Mowzer! 

"Let's see though... fear never really came into it, though maybe that was military bravado left over from before?" Antoine shrugged, then blinked, realizing he was going about answering her questions the wrong way. "That was the 'service' I was in before the mountain... proud medic of the French army, who traveled across Europe and Africa before coming to the Mountain."

As was proper, he puffed out his chest and lowered his voice, adopting a fair approximation of the gruff-and-proud soldier. He would have saluted too, maybe rose to stand at attention to [i]really[/i] get into the act again, but was cut short when... well...

When Mowzer decided to interject with a sudden, sharp meow, before trotting up to sit on Antoine's legs.

"Oh-! So you've forgiven me then?" Act fading into more chuckling, Antoine paused to give Mowzer the proper scritching behind his ear, rewarded for his efforts by a deep, growing purr. 

"Anyways," Still petting his cat, the medtech looked back up to Ms. Weber. "I always liked language, so I took courses in English and German while in school. That proved helpful on it's own when I first joined the military, so when I was stationed in Cairo just before the Change really started to be a problem, I picked up Egyptian Arabic to help with my work there."

More helpful than he had ever anticipated, once the Change began to spread in earnest. Too many people panicking, too many orders that needed to be given out, and too few foreign servicemen who could do anything to help. Antoine probably would have been pulled back to France had he not learned the Egyptian Dialect, ordered to join the rest of his squad who had left him back in Egypt... who he had never found again...

But thoughts like that wouldn't do much to entertain Ms. Weber, let alone himself. He cleared them away with a shake of his head, recalling it was still a few hours from when he could take his medication.

"Maybe it's a military thing, or just from running around trying to combat the Change, but I got used to doing what I could to help. In the Mountain there was less of that for a soldier to do, but plenty for medics and the like. My tour was just about up, so I switched paths, talking to the scientists and surgeons hard at work in those caves, and learning what I could. That's where I heard about the project to improve mental abilities through surgery, and the sales pitch was brilliant." 

Still petting Mowzer, Antoine used his free hand to make the necessary gestures to accompany his following words.

"Learn any language faster than before! Think of the possibilities! What better skill to have, in the event of a 'first-contact' scenario!" He grinned all the wider, chuckling along with the words. "It was a grade-A recruitment pitch, and they had pretty strict regulations on allowing surgery like that on humans. Benefits outweighing harms and such, I certainly can't complain now, it's been great for me."

He really couldn't. Though his memory right around the surgery was blurry, it had been expected and hardly bothered him now. There was too much good that had come from it all- his days were so great, now! What reason would he have had, to have been afraid back then?

"But I think that's most of it, did I answer your question?" Mowzer purred a little louder, curling into a tight ball on Antoine's lap as he spoke. [i]He[/i] seemed quite content as well, now, what fun had he gotten up to, after leaving Antoine with Ms. Albright before?