13 Devil Lion (1/2)
”Where did your test subject go? Is he still alive?” Ivan straightforwardly asked.
Mazur snorted in response. ”Of course. What, do you think I have to cut him up to find out how his body works? I'm not such a novice.”
Ivan merely rolled his eyes in response. He grabbed Valeria and pulled her toward where the automatic food preparation area upon which he taught her several words for different dishes and drinks and how to make the command for food. Of course, how much she could remember of that was entirely up to her.
Valeria didn't fight back and obediently followed Ivan as he led her around the ship, perhaps because she no longer felt like her life was in danger.
They first went to the laboratory, where Mazur's captive was sedated and strapped to a medical bed. Valeria showed absolutely no sympathy for this person and looked over the Vulpe man with cold eyes.
Ivan picked up some medicinal past which stimulates healing before then leading her to the crew's quarters, choosing the personal room next to his to register as hers. He demonstrated to her how to use her hand to open the door.
Each personal room had a bathroom, which Ivan used to start a shower for the Vulpes girl who was covered in filth. Valeria was extremely intuitive and quickly learned to follow Ivan's instructions with body language. She stood with him in the bathroom and removed all of her clothes, revealing her bony figure and blood mottled bandages wrapped around herself.
Valeria stood neither nervous nor embarrassed. Ivan raised her arms up before slowly peeling off all the dirty bandages and piling them up on the floor, revealing a motley of old scar and some festering wounds on her body. The fox-girl didn't even flinch from the pain of the wounds as if it was something she was used to.
After placing her in the shower, Ivan walked out of the bathroom and returned to his room. He peeled back the eel skin armor from his body in the third dimension and replaced it with a plan t-shirt and pants from his personal room.
-Beep- -Beep-
A chime rang out in Ivan's room of someone trying to open his door. He quickly walked over and opened the door to see Valeria, still naked and dripping wet, nervously pressing against the palm scanner of his room and trying to open it.
”To think you wouldn't remain in the shower by yourself,” Ivan helplessly said to her before guiding her back to the shower.
Now that he wasn't wearing the razor-barbed eel skin armor, he rolled back his sleeves and grabbed the bar of soap, scrubbing Valeria down with it until all the dirt was washed off her body. He also turned her around and poured a massive amount of shampoo into her hear while avoiding the fox ears.
”It's interesting,” Ivan mused to himself as he also poured the shampoo into her tail, ”50,000 years have passed yet bathroom necessities have remained the same. If anyone told me back then, that the stablest market is soap and shampoo, I probably would have laughed at them before kicking them out for wasting my time.”
As Ivan began to scrubbing her ears with his thubs, Valeria began to twist and fidget and breath out a pleasure breath. He stopped momentarily, but figured that even he would feel pleasant if someone was massaging his ears, so it wasn't anything disturbing, She didn't show much of any reaction when he cleaned her tail though, proving the Japanese culture that flooded the Earth 50,000 years ago was wrong.
The water in the shower was turned off and Valeria stepped out dripping wet. Ivan grabbed a large town and scrubbed her dry, but frowned upon seeing some fresh blood smears left on the towel.
Valeria was dry by some of the festering wounds had reopened and were bleeding. He made her wait here while he grabbed a few more medical supplies. Retuning to see her licking her hand and scrubbing off the blood from her body, he hastily stopped her.
He first applied the medicinal cream to all the wounds on her body to both remove infection and promote healing, before wrapping clean bandages around her. In her new bedroom were several sets of clothes in the cupboards and draws, but they were all too big for her, the shirt alone hanging down a dress on her body.
Ivan just decided to leave her dressed as is, she would be spending the foreseeable future on the Poseidon anyway. He put her in her bed and left the room. Night was falling outside the ship and even he was tired.
Ivan and Mazur never had to worry about sleeping in the third-dimension, as there are no other four-dimensional creatures that try to ascend this high, nor could they even if they did. The energy concentration in subspace got more and more dense the deeper it went, and for the very outskirts, the concentration was so thin other beasts would simply suffocate. Ivan and Mazur could only rise to the third dimension as their bodies had evolved there, adapting to it in the process.
-Beep- -Beep-
Just as Ivan closed his eyes, the bell that someone was trying to open his door sounded again inside his room. He wearily got up with a sigh, and opened the door to find Valeria trying open the door.
Once confronted by Ivan, she stood there and silently stared into his strange '+' shaped eyes. Ivan figured she would just bother him all night so walked back to bed without bothering to lock the door. Valeria darted into the room like a shadow and moved to the corner, crouching on the ground with her kneed to her chest and staring at Ivan with her large amber eyes.
Ivan ignored her quirks and decided not to deal with her and her strange quirks any further. simply closing his eyes and allowing nihilism to overtake his consciousness.
*****
The next morning when Ivan drowsily woke up, he looked over to the corner of the room and saw Valeria still squatting in the same position. She had her knees up to her chest as she sat against the wall, head tilted forward as she breathed lightly.