Brilliance that was how it was sold to him. Sign up for a joint operation with this brilliant species, brilliant his back tentacle. They were dull, dull and dull. Whatever there was supposed to be, he couldn't see it. It wasn't that they were bad, just.. dull. Well, fool me once shame on me. It was only for a year, he had made worse mistakes. Now if only the humans with him would shut up for five seconds.
"Im telling you, that kind of gas would kill a guy in five seconds flat."
"Aww come one, you would easily survive a couple of minutes if you didn't get it in the lungs."
"Right, and how are you going to prevent that. It's a light gas, diffuses fast. You wouldn't even have time to take out your gas mask."
"It's not that light. This is a pressurized station, it would take almost a second per room."
With a voice dripping from sarcasm, "Oh no, I'm sorry. That makes all the difference then."
He had finally had enough, "Would you to shut up with this useless chatter." They had been going at it for over an hour about different gases and horrific way they could die from them. "This is a state of the art facility, any leak would be sealed way before any of those came to use." He motioned with one tentacle towards one of the gas masks they insisted on caring around their necks.
"Hey now, if it's one of the heavier gases we have a decent chance with these."
"Yea, never hurts to be safe."
Truly a brilliant species, carrying around useless junk. "You do of course realize that you would have to react almost instantly in a panic situation right? Any hesitation, even a moments, and they're useless."
"That's what the training is for. We devised it ourselves in one of the sealed rooms. So far gases that disperse slowly haven't been any problem. Some of the lighter ones however... still, better than nothing."
"That what's you said about that silvery tape as well, is anything better than nothing?" Both got quiet, finally.
"Do you hear that?" Oh for the love of- is five minutes to much to ask for?
"Hear what?"
"A strange hissing sound, hey it almost like- fuck, NOW!" At that sound the two humans started to move with fervent activity.
"What now, surprise training session?" The two of them could now almost not be seen. They had pulled up their gas masks and got out some kind of inflatable suite that they where now in. It looked ridiculous. Then they started to move towards him.
"Hey now stop that, stop you-" After that all he could get out were muffled sounds, as they strapped one of their infernal masks onto him. It didn't fit, of course. So he could hear how they used that ridiculous silvery tape to strap it on. Cause that would seal any leaks. He was just about to get violent when he noticed a strange color. That wasn't supposed to be there, then everything went black.
Someone had turned every tentacle in his body into liquid flames. With a groan he managed to move around a bit and get a quick look at his surrounding. He was in sick bay, at least the bed was comfy.
"So your finally up." The voice came from his right where he noticed a small human sitting and looking at him. "You were lucky, a little more and you would be a corps right about now." Lucky? He was still hurting from the treatment of those two humans.
"What happened?"
"A gas leak, container sprang lose and the automatic system failed. You three were the only ones affected, everything else was sealed of."
"How are we not dead? If you don't react instantly-" and that was exactly what they had done he realized, no hesitation.
"Sorry, didn't hear that last part?"
"Brilliant, just brilliant."