Captured by aliens (It was his own fault)

36. Toru goes on a trip

Ri's perspective:

After playing for a little bit, both Ri and Tonuk were at a bit of a stalemate, though playing the same game three times did get a bit boring.

Eventually, the "slightly serious" call sound that they set up rang, which was a bit concerning, but usually it was just used for when Tonuk forgot to answer messages for a while.

Low and behold, Ri was right, as Gint started scolding Tonuk for not answering his messages, which Tonuk looked at finally, he found that Gint had sent him a load of messages a lot of time ago.

They were all about how they had found out something incredible when testing out how Toru would interact with Tonovo as a pet in the simulation.

They had found that it could start to understand very basic language and actually manage to communicate different things.

So, the researchers wanted to bring Toru over to the Technological area to do more thorough tests, since this would be very exciting for them to try out, along with that they could have Toru directly tell them if it was a pet and other info on its owners.

They had sent the messages in advance to let them prepare and organize themselves before a researcher went to pick up Toru and either Ri or Tonuk, to keep Toru calm for the trip and the new environment.

After this, both Ri and Tonuk had to hurry up in organizing how this was going to happen, settling on that Ri should go, since Toru has known him the longest and Tonuk had to stay in case a Toru got hurt.

Finally, they managed to get Tegnuk to call another friend of his to help out with cooking and cleaning while Ri was gone and so, they got ready to meet Gint's friend.

They all went outside, although they all quickly remembered the frigid cold from the snow and regretted this as they waited for a couple moments for the snow plow to pass and the vehicle to come.

A very fancy car arrived, as a very well dressed Tonovo walked out, introducing herself as "Teotu", then Tonuk handed her the crate with Toru, warning her to be careful.

After this, Teotu walked back to the car as Ri followed behind, climbing on top as she closed the door and the vehicle started  moving just as Ri and Tonuk said their goodbyes.

Ri and Teotu waited for Toru to calm down a little bit before chatting, not wanting to have it worry from them talking excitedly too soon.

As Toru continued to squirm around, clearly stressed out, both Ri and Teotu talked quietly about how they felt bad about it, but ultimately, Teotu didn't let Ri take Toru out of the cage for safety reasons.

Eventually, Toru stopped moving as much and instead shrunk on itself at the back of the cage, hugging its legs, which they chatted about for a moment, seeing as it was a weird self defense, considering it would be better off fighting using its strength.

After this, they both chatted a bit more calm, as  even Toru relaxed a bit, it looked like.

Ri learnt that Teotu studied behavioral science at a pretty good university and decided to stay in the technological area for a job studying new creatures behaviors.

They continued chatting, Ri eventually stuck to staring out the window as the more advanced buildings appeared, watching all the bright lights and water cooling tubes all around the place, although it was missing colour, as all the buildings were metallic or stone, so, gray, except for the blue dyed water running along the walls.

It was always interesting to him seeing just how tall the building seemed to get every time he came back, even more as they went more into the center/capital.

Ri stopped looking outside, apologizing for not paying attention for a moment, but Teotu didn't seem to mind, so it was fine.

Finally, the vehicle stopped and Teotu carried Toru into the massive stone building, as Ri followed behind.

He looked around the place, seeing the smooth, tiled floor, the white walls and white furniture, although he wasn't too sure anymore at what he was seeing, as everything blended together and was too bright.

Thankfully, they reached an elevator soon after and Ri was thankful to see black and red once again, as there were a lot of red, bending lines decorating the black walls.

After silently waiting for some moments, the doors opened and they were greeted with a lot more pleasant, non retina-destroying colours, although it was still very bright and took a bit of adjusting to.

When he was finally able to see properly, Teotu told him that they'd let Toru into a large cage with what they assumed to be similar to what was on its home planet, based on things they found out in the simulation, like that it needed red light or the sun in order to be healthy.

They let Toru into the cage and watched through glass door as it nervously looked around, though it then sat laid down and took in the light, splayed out with its eyes closed.

Toru was clearly breathing, slowly even, so they knew that it was fine now and y'know,  alive, and so, Teotu told him that he was free to go be with Toru in a little bit, but for the moment, he should wait for Toru to finish adjusting.

Ri decided to take a look around the place, seeing that, for starters, the walls were also gray with red lines, the furniture was changed between red wood or metallic gray and there was a table with Teotu's computer, which almost took up an entire wall.

Ri also noticed that the room was heated nicely, but for now he was more focused on where to prepare food for Toru, but when he turned to ask Teotu, she was gone.

Not knowing where anything was, and also since he didn't want to get in trouble, he decided to sit still for a couple minutes while waiting for Toru to adjust.

Finally, Teotu came back along with a Dije researcher, who introduced himself as "Jia", who was holding a plate full of food and water, which were for Toru.

Turns out, the cage Toru was on was also recording its breathing, heart rate and blood pressure, since they wanted to see what was different in the simulations and with Toru, since in the simulations it would always be very weak and have very low bone density for some reason.

The results came back as the same for real life Toru and the simulation.

The two researchers left the food into Toru's cage and then went to the computer to once again start studying Toru, as they explained that there was a small chip in the food to test all the enzymes it used for digesting, since the simulation could have a problem with absorbing food.

Toru completely ignored the food, though this was expected from it having been stressed out from the trip.

For the time though, there was nothing to do but wait, since rushing to force Toru to like the researchers was probably not a good idea, plus, it usually took very little time for Toru to get used to new things.

So, the researchers led Ri back to the elevator, explaining that they might as well show him where he'll be living for a while, meanwhile, Jia would stay back to observe Toru.

The elevator doors opened and they entered a small hallway with various doors, one of which Teotu led Ri into.

They entered a fairly big room, with dark gray walls, wood furniture, an admittedly too big bed, likely for a Tonovo, but aside from that, there was a small kitchen area, a small screen, a washroom and a bookcase.

Fun fact:
To reason that almost all technology made by Tonovo and Dije is flat is because of their large claws, as they make it very complicated to get into nooks and cranies, so to avoid this, everything they have is flat large to avoid something being impossible to access to them