Celia wasn't kept waiting for a response long, though she couldn't help but jolt slightly as the same vaguely-mechanical voice echoed from an unseen speaker. She squinted at the corners and walls of the chamber, trying to find the hidden cameras or microphones she suspected she was being observed with, and pulled her limbs in a bit closer. Not that trying to preserve her modesty really mattered much at this point, she supposed. They  had almost certainly seen everything already. Even so...<br/><br/>The voice once more apologized for essentially kidnapping her, maintaining an unexpectedly-polite demeanor. Celia wasn't entirely inclined to forgive them for it just yet, especially since she wasn't yet sure what made her species the "key to survival" for his, and what that meant for<i>her </i>species. She was afraid, there was no way around it. Yet at the same time, despite that fear she found herself intensely curious about her captors and their species. If this was all real, then she was on the cusp of a world-changing discovery. Assuming she ever made it back to Earth, she was going to have one hell of a paper to write.<br/><br/>Trying to keep her expression calm, she listened intently to the voice's explanation. Somehow, after being abducted herself, she found the idea of higher beings uplifting species from Earth's ancient past a bit easier to believe. Yet it seemed their ancestor-species left behind had<i>not </i>been the ones to dominate Earth. Well, that was a little awkward. Imagine coming to a planet hoping to find your long-lost cousin-species, only to discover that a bunch of hairless apes were now running the place. She wondered what kind of creature they had been uplifted from. Octopi? Cetaceans? Birds? Perhaps even one of the last theropod dinosaurs...<br/><br/>Oh. Bats.<br/><br/>There was a cosmic sort of irony in that, wasn't there? Just a few hours ago, she had been capturing and tagging their primitive kindred, and now here she was, a captive herself. Of course,<i>her </i>program was strictly catch-and-release, and she had no idea if that was to be the case here.<br/><br/>As the voice asked, she remained on the bed, and shortly afterwards one of the walls darkened and turned transparent. One-way glass, she realized, or some similar technology. This was followed by the realization that her captors had probably been watching her the entire time. She wasn't sure what she expected to see as they revealed themselves, but she certainly hadn't expect beings so...tall. Any attempt at appearing cool and collected was quickly abandoned as she took the sight of them in. Their faces carried the vaguely-canid features and pointed ears of the flying-fox family, and were covered in dark fur that contrasted sharply against their large, bright eyes. Ruffs of lighter-colored fur encircled their faces and ran down their necks, like neatly-trimmed manes. One of them had a redder tint to his ruff, while the other was brownish, though both seemed to have dark, greyish-dun coat covering the rest of their bodies with the exception of their forearms and wings, at least as far as she could see.<i>Six limbs</i>, she thought dimly,<i>fascinating</i>. Their wings and their arms were separate body parts, rather than just having armlike structures  derived from wings as she would have thought. Were they capable of full, powered flight then, or were they gliders?<br/><br/>She only realized after the fact that she was staring at them, and looked away sheepishly. "Uh...sorry," she muttered. "I've just never really seen, well,<i>aliens </i>before."