voidtreckerexpress | Guri's Monthly Log [OPEN]

Entry tags:

Guri's Monthly Log [OPEN]

Who: Guri, one closed prompt for Alice, open overall.
Where: Various
When: Pre-mission, can add more later
What: The daily life of a Human Replica Droid
Warnings: None needed, will add if that changes.

How to Care for an Alice - CLOSED

She'd thought it over carefully since the last, rather relaxing, stop. Alice had been through a rough number of months, and since it didn't seem like the train was providing resources to help with that, beyond any limited extent, she had taken it upon herself to counter that existence to the best of her ability. Alice was her best friend and...well, she cared for her. Truly caring for another human being was new to her. Oh, she had her friends on the train and she cared about them in her way - but Alice was special in ways she was just beginning to figure out.

She certainly hadn't ever experienced a feeling of finding something truly beautiful before - but she had, with Alice and her transformation into butterflies. More than just noticing something was aesthetically pleasing, but truly being struck by it. All very new.

In short, Alice = special - which meant ongoing efforts to ensure her continued functioning. And in this case, she'd been drawn to some of the books in the limited library, and had once again set to work. Finding a beach blanket was easy enough, as was scrounging some candles. The sources had made them out to be essential, but she was dubious on that. And it was amazing the places you found forgotten candles, half-used, all around the place.

But she'd arranged the blanket on the bed in their shared room, the candles lit around it, the lights dimmed for the purpose. And she waited, reviewing the one text, not that she needed to.

Training - OPEN

Given the rather disturbing news they'd received about the nature of...well, their predecessors...she was preparing. Which in her case meant training harder than ever before. It wasn't that she could build artificial muscles much further, but it was about creating muscle memory, shaving milliseconds off of her movements - getting used to weapons she hadn't before.

You never knew when these would be necessary things. And whatever they got into, she knew full well the sort of tasks that Team Purple was usually assigned. It didn't sound like there was going to be any actual opposition - but it paid to think there always would be.

At the moment, she was preparing a test of her heavy repeating blaster, setting up a target at one end of the gymnasium, and herself at the other. There were, in fact, a series of targets - each smaller than the last, with sandbags placed behind them - to better simulate range.

Working, Around and About - OPEN

Some time ago, she'd started on a personal shield projector project with some of the others. They were gone, now, but it had stuck with her, and she stole time in the corners of workspaces when she could; still working on perfecting it, which was easier said than done with ersatz parts and materials from another universe. She couldn't exactly go around asking for durasteel components, could she?

But she kept working on it, hoping it would succeed. In her universe, shielding worked mainly against one thing or another - so a melee weapon was effectively blocked by one, which would do little to block energy weapons, or vice versa. She reasoned, given the number of projectile weapons they'd encountered (and the falling debris she'd seen here and there) that the former would be the wiser choice.

As ever, though, she can be found around and about - she's a busy HRD, after all. And always willing to talk to new people.

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It's probably a good idea to start without the oils, indeed. After all, Alice has to even get used to the sensation of a massage in the first place, let alone adding something else on top of it right away.

Still.. she doesn't shy away as she's laying there now. She's determined to be able to do this. The worst that happens is that Alice twitches when Guri initially touches her, but when the fingers move more, the movement on Alice's part ceases. She's still a little nervous, her fingers pressing into the palms of her balled up fists.. but it's not as bad as she thought, she thinks.

It's a little scary, but it's the kind of scary that doesn't make her want to run away. She just wants this to keep going for another moment, especially since something about the movement of the hands on her back does feel oddly nice. It's something she has to adjust to though, for sure, which is why the girl doesn't speak up right away when Guri starts the massage.

Guri will definitely find though that Alice's muscles are crazy tense. Maybe from the nerves about the situation, but let's be real, Alice often operates at high stress levels here on this train. There's so much tenseness going on in this body.

The tenseness is to be expected - she'd figured on a mass of knots, and she's not disappointed in that, really. Poor Alice, left to fend for herself with all this. It's hardly fair, she thinks. But at least she can do her small bit to redress the balance. And so her fingers keep working on the center and upper reaches of her back, pausing only to gently brush aside some hair that falls across her path.

And so, she proceeds, working at each muscle, each knot with dedication and - above all - precise skill. Warm, firm where she needs to be, soft where she doesn't, she works at Alice's tenseness.

After a while, for no reason at all, she begins to hum - with perfect pitch, naturally - an old Cathar song she'd heard once. A lullaby, possibly, or some such - but the goal is, above all, Alice's total relaxation.

Honestly, the lullaby might be even more effective than the massage itself. Although Alice is slowly growing used to the probing fingers, it's still easier to associate those with something bad than the humming itself is. If anything, the humming takes her back.. far, far back. To a time long ago when there was still someone to hum her to sleep, when she was just a young child, frightened of the dark. To Wonderland before it was corrupted, and its denizens' tendency to recite poetry and sing.

An easier time, that's for sure.

Alice isn't sure whether or not she's supposed to keep her eyes open for it - there's ought to be some reason all these candles are here, after all - but she can't help but let them fall shut for a moment. Not quite sleeping, but it's all just a little easier to process with her eyes closed, her own hands slowly opening and then forming fists a few times in a row, like a faint attempt to root herself in this moment.

"What is that song..?" She just mumbles, her voice quite soft.

"An old Cathar song, I never learned its name," she replies, softly, beginning to hum it again. Her whole hands follow where her fingers have begun, working slowly downwards from just below Alice's neck to her middle back.

"But I remembered it, for whatever reason," she added, continuing onwards, feeling a knot of tension give way. There, good.

"What is Cathar?"

She can't help but ask. Alice is naturally curious, after all, and exploring all these unknown names and places and people from Guri's world feels very much like when she was very young and tumbled into Wonderland for the first time. It feels like there are so many stories out there, just waiting for Alice to find them.

And she does love stories very much.

Hence why she's content enough just listening to Guri hum and tell them as she's lying here - though she does let out a faint sound when Guri passes over that knot to make it disappear. It's not easy to forget about the massage with all these sensations going on, after all.

"A place, and a people," she responds, softly.

"A feline race," she adds, working further - hands just gently kneading Alice's flesh. "A very old one, too, with a rich culture and history."

Feline. Like cats. Thankfully the idea of cats forming a society of their own doesn't seem very strange to Alice. It wouldn't have, even before she got onto the train. She's definitely imagining these beings to be a little like the Cheshire Cat, for one.

.. though perhaps less sassy.

In fact, her mind might already be making up entire ideas about them. Mental images about the people, about the place they live in.. As usually, Alice's mind loves carrying itself away with this stuff. But it thankfully means that it's sailing away further and further from any possibility of a negative thought.

"Did you meet many of them..?" She instead asks.

Definitely not like Alice's Cheshire Cat - but then she wouldn't know about things going the other way, would she?

She just keeps working, working her way down Alice's spine. Poor thing, so knotted up. She hopes she's doing some good.

"Oh, quite a few. They're a very successful species. Not as numerous as humans, mind, but I'd say almost as numerous as Duros, who may be an even older species than humans."

At first it seems like Alice is only answering with a hum.

Mostly since she doesn't continue to speak after that. She doesn't even ask anything else quite yet, even though there's a million things she could ask about here. So much she wants to hear about. So much she wants to know about Guri.

Instead she speaks up with something else a moment later. Still a hint of something more vulnerable in her tone, as there has been the entire time Guri has been massaging her.

"I.. think I like this," she softly says.

It might not be even a faint step for anyone else, but for Alice specifically? It's a huge one.

"The touch feels a little.. relaxing." That's what people would call this feeling, right? "And I just like listening to you speak about anything as well.."

She pauses for a moment, smiling warmly.

"I'm very glad," she finally replies, working over her middle back. "For both parts - sharing stories with you has always been one of the things I like best about this place."

"I like listening to your stories.." .. as much as Guri herself likes sharing her, she means to say. "You have so many interesting ones."

And it's nice, being able to focus on these parts of Guri's experiences. Not thinking about the terrible things she was forced to do. Just thinking back on people and places, on things Guri can now think about freely.

"My older sister used to read books to me when I was much younger as well, but they were all so boring.. There just was no fantasy in there. Or adventure." And Alice was much too young to truly appreciate any of it. Too much a kid with her head in the clouds. "If only she had told me stories like these, about places so far away.."

"I do have a lot of them," she muses, moving to Alice's lower back.

"Adventure I have certainly seen," she adds, "and many strange things. Did I ever tell you about the giant ships, made of wasps?"

That one is designed with a deliberate hook in it, really, and the smile on her face shows it. Granted, so does the tone of her voice.

There's a faint groan when Guri starts touching a spot she didn't get to before, but it doesn't seem to be meant as a sign that she should stop. Especially since Alice just speaks on right after, as if nothing happened. It's just an involuntary sort of reaction, especially with the spots on her back that Guri hasn't worked on yet still having such tight knots.

"No, I do not think so."

Granted, Alice does know a lot of strange insect stories herself, after everything she's seen in Wonderland.

"I have seen wasps do many things, but never form a ship."

That's a good sound, and she carries on happily. Given the complete lack of positive touch in Alice's life, she's doubly glad to be the one giving it now.

"Ah, well, the Ithullan Colossus wasp is a special case. They're a kilometer long, or a bit more - space-travelling creatures. They move through the void of their home region, feeding on everything from...cosmic rays to minerals, even the radiation of stars. Whatever they can get, including occasional other space-living creatures. When they die, their carapaces are...well, moved into. Converted into ore haulers. Rare to see them, in my time. But something to see."

"How do they travel around, if they were more than a kilometer long?"

.. granted, this question is partially born from the fact that Alice knows so very little about space and its measurements. She's had brief encounters with it through void missions, but never on a scale that she can quite grasp that kilometer-long wasps are nothing on a space-travel scale.

"Would they not get stuck somewhere?" See, that indicates that Alice is thinking more in Earth terms. She's pretty sure she didn't grow that tall after drinking that potion in Wonderland, and she already had trouble with getting stuck everywhere.

Still, apparently it's not even Alice's own question. She's curious enough to just ask right on. "Did you see them? While they were still alive, instead of being used as ships?"

Sure, they may be rare, but Guri sounds like she's seen a lot.

"The distance between asteroids, planets - they're so great, the wasps would be...well, rather like any insect, travelling in what to them are vast spaces.

"And I did, once. See one, I mean."

She recalls the details, as ever, quite vividly.

"I was delivering secure courier information. The asteroid facility I was delivering it to had a problem with space slugs. They start at about ten meters long, live in the vacuum. Eat practically anything. But I saw a large one, about a hundred meters - and the wasp that picked it up off the surface like it was a paperweight."

Alice is quiet, trying to imagine it in her mind. It's not that hard, really. Despite never having been in Guri's world, Alice's own imagination is so overactive that she can immediately think of what that sort of sight would be like, even though most people would find the thought most likely little more than ridiculous.

"Being surrounded by gigantic insects like that.."

After all, Guri is just regular people sized. Relatively speaking.

"It must have been as if you were really tiny in that moment."

Maybe a little like that time Alice herself had been shrunk down, but even smaller than that, judging by the sheer sizes Guri is naming here. She really does wonder if the other felt tiny in that moment, while trying to carry out her mission.

"It was," she replied, brightly. "Thankfully I was inside the moonbase at the time. But even had I been standing out there - I think they wouldn't have even noticed me. I would've been too small for them to bother with."

She smiles, hands stroking up and down Alice's back in a gentle, wave-like pattern.

"I have been next to gigantic objects before - starships, primarily, but something living, like that? That was unique."

She pauses.

"I think now what I would want is to see the Oswaft," she said, after thinking. "About the same size, but like the seaborne rays of your world. Just in space. And, from what I understand, sentient like you or I."

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Guri's Monthly Log [OPEN]

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Apologies for the delay, I was unexpectedly without internet for a few days!

that's alright! hope everything is okay!

Vacation, and our B&B room was the only one that didn't have internet, out in the sticks. :P

at least it's a good reason to be away for a bit! c:

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