worm_dancer | (no subject)

(no subject)

Location: Station Sector 3
Who: Sheeana, OPEN
What: Sheeana meditates on her new responsibilities and wonders if she's a bit of a worrywart
Warning(s): wordiness

She stepped down from the crumbling plasteel blocks into the orange sand. After the built up optimized environments they'd all recently come from (crystal towers, togas, etiquette, all the things a desert creature sneered at), it was a relief to feel it under her feet. Small plumes of sand sprouted from all over the basin and tiny sandworms (no more than fifteen feet long each, yet carrying the heritage of leviathans) sprouted up before her and begged for attention like eager puppies. "Of course. I've neglected you lately, haven't I?"

So, while the rest of the crew was celebrating with Qhalavian liquor they'd just 'liberated', Sheeana danced for her worms, whirling and stomping rythmlessly until they seemed temporarily satisfied. They swayed with her too, remembered flames within frames made by little crystal needleteeth.

She sat down with them and let them climb over her. She poured out her concerns over the crew's growing overconfidence to them, not expecting an answer though she knew the man inside them could give her one if he could only speak. Ah, but would you want that, Leto?

And then she noticed someone coming through the doorway that only opened with a violent impact, blue irising open to reveal her sitting cross legged with her children/ancestor. I shouldn't be surprised. My sietch knows to find me here.

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Diving...diving... That was a concept she only knew the definition of, had never experienced herself. She could not place it in context, except to make a comparison to the interior diving she had to do to survive the Spice Agony.

"Into what depths?" She had to admit her confusion.

"Physical ones, unless you think you're willing to push past the basic incompatibilities of hardware," The idea of a newly ghost-dubbed Sheeana was like the thought of handing an assault rifle to a grade-schooler. Once she got past the basic control-systems, the unintentional carnage would be incredible.

"If we head down to Sector Four, there's no reason not to test your...adaptations."

Soon enough they were across the zip-lines and Sheeana was staring at the man-made pool, tiled and plasteel, a great chamber. Underneath were more and more tunnels, she knew, a labyrinth of untold miles under the waves.

Her Fremen instincts were going topsy turvy, heart suddenly accelerating until she forced it down. "This much water would be enough for the whole of Dune for years."

"More than seventy percent of the Earth is covered in water," Motoko replied, double-checking the compressed-air floaters that would keep her from dying a very quick death under the water. That done, she snapped the lines around herself and looked to the rest of the equipment. What she was wearing would do for diving— it wasn't as if she bothered with a great deal of clothing to begin with.

SCUBA would give them as much time as they needed to have a look around— and Motoko's shell couldn't hold enough oxygen to make holding her breath a worthwhile endeavor. She held out one of the rigs for Sheeana, wetsuit and all, having made sure of the pressure and estimated her size. All told it was at least a hundred pounds, but she lifted it as if it were no heavier than a paperweight, "Here. Put this on."

"Less than one percent of people know the word 'Earth' in my time...And where I come from there is no native water."

She stripped and slithered into the wetsuit with surprising agility though. She'd grown up wearing a stillsuit, its complete opposite, but similar in composition. She forced her muscles to keep her upright. Different materials or no, she wasn't going to show weakness.

She watched Motoko closely, both memorizing the procedure and wondering at the things that kept a cyborg of her weight from dying underwater.

Motoko fitted the straps of the tanks around her shoulders and tightened them, then took the ventilator in hand and paced to the water's edge. The redundant compressors for the un-inflated quick-rise flotation buoys packed into the outer harness were secure, the air supply was adequate.

She turned to give Sheeana a steady look, "Do you think you can swim without killing yourself?"

Once they went under, Motoko would have a lot of difficulty saving Sheeana's life, if it came to that.

"This is like a stillsuit in reverse. I at least still have neutral buoyancy." She replied with slight petulance before donning the mask, sealing it and the tanks around herself, aware of the way the rubber skin clung to and outlined her, like bold strokes of pen.

She knelt at the edge of the water, looking back through Other Memory. Darwi's voice came to her, began to instruct her. Her predecessor had a childish part to herself called 'Seachild', she found. This quasi-personality had escaped Bene Gesserit discipline and was now a potent resource for her.

Motoko gave her a long, unimpressed look, evaluating, then decided not to care. She simply dropped backwards into water that had no shallows— this part of the floor stuck out like a shelf.

The Major sank like a stone and as she did so too did the inimitable buzz of contact. The signals cut away, one by one, infrared was useless almost immediately. Radio followed soon after. The water closed in above her eyes and she watched it turn ever bluer, feeling the layers to world imposed on her ghost peeling away, one by one. Only here could Motoko ever truly be alone, ever count her thoughts as her own. And still, she was sinking, weightless. A kick brought her face towards Sheeana's, to see her reaction. Only curious, for once, and not looking for cruelty's sake.

Sheeana followed slower into the great underwater chamber, regulating her breathing and heartrate carefully. It was a psychological, as much as a physical journey, she knew.

Her face showed pure astonishment, but not fear.

A memory came to her: twelve years old, being marched stiff legged into a pool by stern faced proctors. The other acolytes, all from water-rich worlds had giggled behind their hands.

And here again I plunge into this steel womb. She thought as she dropped past immense metal walls that dwarfed them both.

Bottom. Motoko's bare heels struck it with a sound that was audible and her eyes which had drifted half-closed, opened. For a moment she stared at the surface lit dimly above, and wondered what it would be like to die. Wondered if she'd even know she were dying...or would it simply be like turning off a machine?

Sheeana wheeled slightly above her, and the light rippled in response to the distortion her body made. A shadow-silhouette, like a doll made of paper. She reached out...

Touch.

Sheeana was quite a bit slower coming down but took to swimming with an unnatural facility for one who'd done it once in her life.

She did start at Motoko's fingers brushing her. She whirled a few feet above her, fingers grasping for a crysknife that was no longer at her waist.

Seduction attempt or threat? Her eyes made the enquiry.

Those were her choices? The threat in Sheeana's eyes, her grab for a weapon, engendered a twitched ghost of a smirk, and an immediate reaction. Motoko stood, suddenly no longer all but prone on the water's floor, instead standing, using her weight as leverage for speed in motion. She could not swim without adjusting the displacers, but she could balance on the bottom like a dancer, one hand darting to seize Sheeana and drag her lower.

Lust was a sudden thing, uncoiling like a snake in her mind. She let it and the processors whirled, dumping a simulation of endorphins into her systemic drives. Threat? Oh yes she was a threat, as she stripped Sheeana's breath-mask from her face with barely restrained violence and spat out her own. The Major's kiss was thing of dominance and restraint, as soft and yeilding as a natural woman's, but with a steel under it that made no secret of the fact that Motoko could crush Sheeana's bones like sugar cubes if she so chose.

Her systems were flashing red and yellow at her by the end of it, so Motoko took a hand to the pull-tab and her floaters inflated, rushing the cyborg up to meet her reflection in the underside of the surface. She was only so waterproof, after all.

So a little bit of both. Sheeana thought and water flowed in as she found herself returning the kiss. She'd learned to trust these signals her body sent her. They were guides.

So much water. Their tongues mingled in it. I've entered her realm. She thought, Fremen instincts telling her it was mana from heaven, Other Memory screaming at her to break it off, and her own body wanting more.

She followed, up and up (the bends were no problem to her, quickly regulated) and broke to air, gulping it and floating.

With death imminent, the water was no longer clarity and freedom, but instead the hand of time pressing from every angle. The warnings grew ever more shrill as the reflection, the other-Motoko in the rippled mirror the water/air barrier made came closer. She was looking down even as the Major looked up, and the feeling of layers pressing back into place was almost palpable.

Sometimes, I imagine I'm becoming a different person. It's probably the decompression.

Who had said that? Oh, yes...it was her. Motoko blinked, and found herself bobbing like a cork with he hair still in the water and her control systems markedly unhappy with the hydraulic pressure-readings that had fluctuated with the depth. She ignored them and pulled herself out of the water, streaming puddles everywhere, and looked to Sheeana.

Sheeana had one advantage here: A faster recovery time. Hers were all organic processes, though her control over them was more like Motoko's than either of them wanted to admit. She was over the plasteel lip first, grinning. She would've helped her up, but there was no way she could lift even a fraction of her weight so it would have been a futile gesture.

Speaking of organic processes, that kiss had started another one. She'd felt heat glow in her stomach for a second there and she wanted to feel that again. Grinning, she answered the challenge of another kiss.

The Major let her, pressing back in return with practiced ease, and her lips were not cold, though the water wicked away her heat as quickly as it could. So, this is what it would be? Somehow she'd expected something different from the Bene Gesserit, infamous as they were for this kind of nonsense.

Then again, Sheeana was said to be different in that respect as well, wasn't she?

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