And there it was. Someone might use the supplies. Someone who wasn't Howard. Someone who wouldn't use them for whatever it was Howard deemed acceptable use. And then they wouldn't be around for Howard any more, waiting around in their little stashes just in case. Except that the supplies had been for everyone's use, not just Howard's, and in hiding them away and refusing to tell anyone where they were, he'd essentially stolen them from the rest of the crew, no matter what justifications Howard might want to use.

Zouichi frowned, clearly disapproving, but at this point it was probably better to just suggest to Medical directly that they leave various stockpiles of supplies around, rather than trying to sweat Howard into giving up what he'd already stashed away.

"Other than whatever it was Rory did," he said (and he doubted that everything Howard had told him about that situation was true), "I haven't heard of anything else that might qualify Medical as a 'hostile work environment'."

Most of the robot parts Zouichi was interested in were damaged, burnt-out, or warped, but he did manage to salvage a few memory circuits, wrench loose a CPU or two, and collect some fuel cells. "I think that's about all these robots really have to offer for the moment."