At Siyyu's request, D'rik put on more movies, starting with the second part of the movie she had seen last night. This time, he was up watching the whole time while sitting on her thigh, a spot she 'ushered' him to. She was sure their fun earlier had put them on the right track to being good friends.

Siyyu was enthralled about her small friend, but tried her hardest to keep from turning him around in her hand. The euphoria she had experienced was most likely caused by the 'chah-klet' she had eaten, something she was little ashamed of, since she forced D'rik into a position he did not feel safe in. However, she was ultimately glad about the ordeal, since D'rik seemed to trust her much more now.

It was probably best to assume that smaller steps were necessary if she wanted to keep D'rik comfortable, but her curious nature was hard to suppress. When the movie seemed to be going into greater exposition, which she couldn't appreciate since she didn't know anything about the human language, she would stare at the back of D'rik's form, looking up and down his body, wondering about everything that made him different from herself. Siyyu couldn't help but smile whenever she watched him, intrigued by almost everything he did.

As the third movie seemed to be winding down, Siyyu suddenly caught wind of an unwelcome scent. She picked at her body suit and sniffed the collar, immediately becoming embarrassed at her unwashed body. Unfortunately, D'rik's attention turned towards her as she was investigating her smell, and she turned her eyes away as he tried to cover up that he was wise to what she was doing.

Once the trilogy had ended on a spectacular note, Siyyu got D'rik's attention and pantomimed rubbing herself like one would in a bath. He nodded and headed to the human-sized door further up the wall and returned several minutes later with a dozen small white bottles and wet hair.

She raised an eyebrow as he put them down except one. He squeezed the bottle and lathed a solution in his hand for a few seconds before scrubbing his hair with it.

“Oh, it's shampoo.” she said out loud, mimicking him. He nodded, assuming she knew what it was, and started to gather them, but Siyyu grabbed them all with one hand, and held one between her index finger and thumb, glancing at her back length hair. It would probably take at least two of these bottles to cover all of her hair.

D'rik disappeared into the small door again and came back several minutes later holding a bag. He reached in and pulled out a white bar, but before he could do anything, Siyyu pretended to rub herself again, and asked “Soap?” Again, he nodded and headed to the opposite wall to the room where they had apparently decided her...facilities would be.

Thankfully, he led her to a different section of the room, where a platform was separated from the rest of the floor by a circular drain. Above the platform, was a series of nozzles, she wasn't exactly sure what it was meant for, but she gathered that it could be used as a shower for her. She noticed D'rik walking to a panel and watched as he brought it to her attention.

There was a large green button, which he pressed, prompting a sudden downpour from the nozzles, but at such incredible pressures that Siyyu thought it could seriously injure her. He then pulled down a slider on the panel and the water lightened to a far more reasonable level. The slider was large enough for her to use, as long as she was careful, and D'rik displayed that pushing it up increased the pressure, while sliding it down lowered it.
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“Now I'm going to leave you here and head out so you will have some privacy.” Derik was pointing at her then to the ground for the first part, then pointed to himself and the door and covered his face with both hands for the end. Sahyuu only returned a confused look, after which he sighed and headed for the door.

“Da-reek!” she called. He turned to see her looking a bit concerned.

“I'll be right outside. Knock when you're ready.” he pointed at himself again, then the door, then imitated knocking on a something and pointed at her. 'I think it's time we started to exchange linguistic information.' He thought to himself as he exited the room and closed the door for her privacy.

That's when he heard the call alert. Derik ran up to the communications room and flipped the switch.

“This is Derik Hunt at site 5530-32F, reporting, what is the nature of this transmission?”

A middle aged man with curly blond hair and stereotype 'secret agent' glasses appeared on screen, “Agent Jeremiah Innes of UEC Intelligence, I have reason to...uh, did I catch you at a bad time?”

Derik habitually went to adjust his bangs as he wondered what Innes meant when he realized his hair was still covered in suds, “OH, uh... not really, just, uh...I was the only one...up at the time to answer,  hard to keep track of night and day when you're underground all the time, so our sleeping schedules tend to conflict with normal hours...”

“Right, well, I'm contacting this base since a conflict occurred near the region.”

“What kind of conflict?” Derik asked hesitantly.

“UEC forces came into contact with enemy crafts, they managed to drive them away, but...”

Derik was silent, waiting for him to finish, but when he didn't, “But...?”

Agent Innes glanced to somewhere off-screen, “Reviewing all information after the fact, we believe something... might have passed out of the battle zone.”

“I'm not following, sir.”

Innes sighed, “Has anything...landed on that satellite?”

Derik straightened up, “Lots of things land on this moon, sir, or rather, crash. That IS why the base was built.”

The man looked like he was getting a little exasperated, “Has anything ALIVE appeared on the moon?”

Derik jumped a bit, and looked excited, “OH! Yes, there has! I'm surprised to get a call about it before I even made a report.”

Agent Innes was suddenly attentive, and he leaned in, “...Well? What was it?”

“It's incredible, sir, I'm sure this will change our entire way of life! Scientists and enthusiasts the colonies over will be shocked to say the least.”

“What did you FIND, Hunt?!” the agent was losing his composure.

“An alien life form, like nothing we've discovered so far!”

“Right, I'll send a team to recover it right away. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Really? You're sending men to pick it up right now? Wow, could I name this new moss Unsen's Moss? It was my mother's maiden name.”

Agent Innes paused, “Excuse me?”

“The moss I found on the asteroid! Capable of surviving in 0 atmosphere!” Derik had a look on his face like he just won the lottery.

Again, Innes paused, “Moss? You're talking about a fungus?”

“Oh no, Moss is a plant, though I guess I can see how you could get them confused with types of fungus, after all--”

“SHUT--! I mean...no, that's not necessary, I was under the impression we were talking about...something else.”

“Well what other kind of lifeforms am I going to find on space rocks aside from microscopic or simple plants and insects, sir? We haven't even met another race as advanced as us yet!”

Agent Innes was now rubbing his temple, “Yeah, well...tell you what, send that report after all, and you can send the sample if you want.”

“What about the team you were sending, sir?” Derik's face losing it's glee.

“Something...came up. Go about your business. You said you're name was Derik Hunt, right?”

“Yes sir.”

“Would any of your superiors be available?”

“I'm the supervisor of this base sir, and my superiors left me in charge of all decisions.”

“Okay, then I guess I'll be signing off. Make sure to contact me if you people discover anything...other than moss...” the screen went blank with only the words 'No Signal' remaining.

Derik sat back silently. Many things were starting to make themselves clear. For one, the UEC was well aware of 'alarians' as Sahyuu had called her people during their first attempt at exchanging information, and apparently not on friendly terms, which helped to explain her initial response upon waking up and and her combat gear. She had been on a ship that was had been entangled with Human forces and apparently managed to abandon ship. Though if Innes had been honest, there had been surviving vessels,  which gave him some comfort that he could hopefully pass on to Sahyuu, somehow...

Another thing that came to mind was that if Derik didn't do something, Sahyuu could end up a POW, something he did not want to see. But what of himself? Sheltering an 'enemy' and obstructing military and/or government business. The worst case scenario was being charged with treason, best case was not being charged with anything, but used to keep Sahyuu compliant since he trusted her and she seemed to have taken a liking to him. Neither situation was pleasing, but if he had to, he would try to push for the latter.

He finally changed his attention to his earlier plan, try to teach Sahyuu some English, and learn some of her language. He left the communications room and went downstairs to look up methods of teaching and learning a foreign language.
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Siyyu was humming one of her favorite songs as she finished her shower. The shampoo manged to clean her hair, but she knew it wasn't as effective as her normal brand, and the soap was too small for her to use effectively, but she managed.

Once she was content, Siyyu tended to her body suit, letting it fill with water then pouring it out and following up but taking a small hand full of soap bars and scrubbed inside of it. She made sure to to get  as deep as she could in all the little nooks, since she had little else to use as clothing, something she needed to address D'rik about even though Siyyu knew it would probably be difficult to procure the necessary materials.

Siyyu rinsed the body suit out one last time and hung it upside down do dry for minute, making sure to turn off the water from the panel D'rik had shown her. Once the legs seemed dry enough, she climbed in and sealed it up to her abdomen  and tied the arms around her waist. If she didn't put it on entirely, she could probably postpone a shower for a little longer, and based on some of the pictures D'rik had shown her, humans would go without tops for what she assumed were sporting events.
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Derik was drinking his afternoon tea and had just started reading up on teaching techniques for second language courses when he heard a heavy knock come from the erosion chamber door. He jogged over to the panel and hit the switch to drop the door and jogged back to the terminal to continue reading. He heard Sahyuu approaching him, but he focused on the first chapter.

He sat back and took a drink of his tea as he turned to acknowledge Sahyuu. He was met with a sight that surprised him enough to literally inhale most of his tea. He dropped his mug and coughed and hacked furiously, trying to expel the liquid from his lungs. He started beating his chest, but he was running out of air and energy.
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D'rik fell to his knee weakly as Siyyu started to panic. He looked like he was suffocating so she wrapped her hands around his chest, placing her thumbs on his back and pressed on his chest with her index fingers.

After the fifth press, she heard him retch followed by the sound of a liquid hitting the floor, and felt some of it run down her finger. She picked him up and turned him over. He was taking shallow breaths and his eyes were unfocused before he suddenly went limp.

“No!” Siyyu cried, placing her hand over his chest. She was relieved to find him still breathing, 'He must have passed out,' she thought to herself, 'But why did he...?' she looked down at herself and thought about the pictures she had seen. Most of them seemed to be in a competitive environment, and humans did have a different way of life, so perhaps being half-dressed was something of an insult. But thinking back on them now, all the humans that were topless were exclusively male, so maybe it was just something to do with normally acceptable attire.

With one hand she held D'rik carefully and untied her body suits arms with the other, then slipped into it one arm at a time, switching hands for her unconscious friend and closed up her outfit. Siyyu cradled the human gently, stroking the side of his head with her thumb, worried.

Soon enough, D'rik coughed a bit and started to come around. She positioned him upright against the inside of her arm and smiled down at him. It took him a moment to notice where he was, and when he did, he appeared to be asking to be put down. She did so, “I'm sorry, I didn't know about...” she stopped and sighed about the futility of trying to explain anything.
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He was still a little out of it, but Derik could tell Sahyuu was upset. He thought for a moment, then looked up at her.

He adjusted his bangs again as he declared, “Hungry?” he caught her attention and said again, “Hungry?” rubbing his stomach. She tilted her head slightly. So he tried a different approach, “Eat?” he pretended to have something between his fingers and pantomimed biting into it and chewing a little.

Sahyuu gave a small sound of realization and turned away, getting up at a crouch and walking to the pile that was her armor. She retrieved a pack of some sort and fished out a set of what he assumed were field rations. Moments later, some kind of jerked meat and dried fruits were procured from within, as well as a massive canister Derik could only assume was filled with water.

She said something in her language and gestured a piece of the meat at him. “Yes,” was his reply, nodding his head with probably too much enthusiasm, but he was trying to work some English lessons into communicating with her.

She broke off a piece and handed it to him. It was the size of a clipboard and five times as thick, he eyed curiously, then bit into it. It was a foreign taste, but not in a bad way; he tasted salt, and something like...cinnamon? Derik had no knowledge of cuisine, so he couldn't really tell if he recognized any of the tastes, but it fairly decent for a field ration.

He had taken a few bites when Sahyuu laid a 'massive' chunk of the dried fruit near him. He let it sit for a moment, still enjoying the jerky, but put it aside soon enough to pull off a manageable piece. She lowered her hand once more, with the bowl-sized cap of her canteen between her index finger and thumb, which upon inspection, held clear water.

“Lluoh?” she asked. Derik looked up at her, taking in the context. 'She's either asking if I'm thirsty, or referring to the water itself.' he thought.

He stood up and walked to the lid, but before placing a hand on it, he pointed to the water within, “Lluoh?” he asked her. She nodded, but her brow furled some questioningly.

The next step was crucial, he had to bring across the point he was trying to display the differing terms their languages used for the same thing.

He held his hand over the water but pointed to himself with his other hand, and pronounced “Water.” Sahyuu tilted her head, not following.

Derik pointed his finger away from himself and pointed at her, “Lluoh...” he repeated then pointed back at himself, “Water...”, he returned it to Sahyuu, “Lluoh...”, then to back again, “Water...”, all the while pointing at the bowl. He wasn't sure if it was sinking in, so he cupped his hands in the water and held it above the bowl and let it pour, saying “Lluoh...water...lluoh...water”

Suddenly, Sahyuu gasped, rattling the bowl and spilling much of the water onto Derik and the floor, “Wadahw sohnsehr lluoh yahn human!” she declared.

Derik wiped the water from his face, laughing as he did, she had apparently figured out what he was doing. He looked up at her, all smiles, and giggled nervously after looking back at him, saying something that sounded close to 'heater', but he might have misheard. He shook his head, “Don't worry about it.” he replied, chuckling.

Sahyuu pulled back the lid and carefully filled it once again, then held it before Derik, asking “Wadahw?”

He kept smiling and looked her in the eye, “Wah-ter...” he corrected, placing his hands on the lid.

She repeated, “Water?” Derik nodded then turned the bowl over onto his head, drenching himself “Lluoh!” he declared leaving the lid on his head while raising his arms up as he jogged in a small circle. Sahyuu burst into laughter, he stopped and took a pose like some stage actor in a dramatic moment, “LLU~OHH!!!” he yelled as though invoking a great spell from the book series he had been reading.

She continued to laugh, but clapped her hands at has antics. The young man heaved a sigh and sat back down next to the food she had provided for him, and took a bite of the piece he worked from the dried fruit.
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Siyyu was still smiling as she finished up their lunch. D'rik had proven to be far more fun than she originally thought; he was spontaneous, energetic, and outgoing, a lot like Jeuno.

Her eyes widened as the terrible incident resurfaced in her mind. Her face fell and tears formed once again in her eyes, she went to wipe them away, but her hand didn't leave. She began to sob quietly, failing to keep her voice under control. Seconds later, Siyyu felt something climbing on to her lap. She moved her hand to see D'rik crawling up her thigh.

She smiled weakly that he was seemed to be so concerned and carefully picked him up. She held him in such a way that he was sitting in her cupped hands and brought him close to her face. He surprised her when he reached out and wiped away the tear under her eye. The small gesture touched her so, that she gently held him against the side of her face. She felt his arms across her forehead, returning an awkward hug of his own. She could feel his minute heartbeat against her brow, and was endeared that through all their differences, he cared about her enough to surpass his fears.

Siyyu felt something against her forehead, almost like a tiny kiss. She pulled him away, a little surprised. He had an apologetic look on his face, but Siyyu just smiled, brought him in closer, and gave him a small peck on his forehead. A moment of silence passed with only the two staring at one another, things beyond words being exchanged.

Her smile faltered some as she knew they couldn't speak their minds to one another. She gave him a longing gaze and spoke, “I wish we could speak to one another. I'd love to learn more about you...”

She could tell by his eyes he was trying to follow her language, but she doubted he could come to a conclusion about what she said. She shook her head and turned to the wall that D'rik had used to project the movies, pointed to it and asked, “Think we could watch a few more movies?”

He looked between her and the wall she pointed to, then smiled and nodded. She held him up above the railings and let him slide off onto the platform, where he headed to the terminal once more.
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They watched a number of movies; an action flick based just before the turn of the millennium, a sci-fi horror about a terrifying creature that picked off the crew of a mining ship with only the female lead escaping, and a more romantic film to round out the line-up. Each movie provided a good way to observe how she reacted, and in all honesty, she reacted like any human probably would have.

During the action movie, his Alarian friend sat up cross-legged, while Derik sat on her thigh. He was wrapped up in her arms like a teddy bear as she watched the horror movie, squeezing the breath out of him once or twice when the creature sprung out of nowhere. She held him against her stomach through most of the last one, where he could almost hear heartbeat pick up during the part where the main character came back for his true love.

Afterwards, they enjoyed dinner courtesy of the container once more, then a short session of trying to learn and teach each other some basic words that they could use to ease communication. Derik managed to narrow it down; 'ehres' inclined 'to eat' or 'food', 'jjasha' seemed to refer to watching movies, 'hhourr et' was what Sahyuu was saying when picking him up, and as the hours were winding down, 'ayahs' was clearly pointing to sleep. So to try provide a little more comfort for her, he led her to once of the tarps used for the asteroids, though many were far too big for her.

Once they had found one of reasonable size, Derik had a sudden idea and ran to the residential sector and from the four closest rooms, he took the cushions from the beds and dragged them out into the main lab. With Sahyuu's assistance, he arranged them into something she could use as a pillow, and with that Derik said goodnight and turned to leave.

He noticed her fingers reaching around him just before he was lifted up from under his shoulders and pulled back. Derik no longer had a problem with her holding him, but the sensation was a bit rattling, and by surprise nonetheless. She moved him into one hand then pulled at the tarp, lying on her back with him. She  rested him on her, covering his chest with her hand, his shoulders level with her collarbone, and his legs, which he was blushing at, between her breasts.

She pulled the tarp all the way over her hand, his head barely sticking out. Once that was done, her other hand came next to him, curled up save her index finger. As they lay there, she stroked his head with her finger, making it into a bigger mess than it usually was.

Derik relaxed, deciding to go with her sleeping arrangements, not that there was anything wrong with them. He blushed once again as he felt his legs beings pressed between her flesh as she adjusted herself some. He relaxed his whole body so he wouldn't wouldn't rub her the wrong way, literally and metaphorically. His head rested at the base of her neck, and he was surrounded by her breathing, rising and falling with her chest, and faintly, through her apparently thin body suit, he could hear her heartbeat through a major artery close to his ear. It was so relaxing, so enrapturing, that he fell asleep with a few minutes.
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A light beeping and the spontaneous buzzing of Derik's wrist brought him out of what was most likely not enough sleep. He started to stretch when he was suddenly wide awake, as the sensation of the nerves in his lower leg waking up all at once. After that unpleasant feeling, he went about escaping from under his friends not-so-heavy hand and twisted his way to the edge of her neck. He fell off, bumping his head and uttered an explitive.

Finally, Derik stood up and looked at the device on his wrist, turning off the beeping. He had disabled the base-wide alarm and resorted only to the personal device, trying to prevent any further incident as with his wake-up call. A new meteor had made landfall, so he headed for the elevator to go about his normal retrieval procedure.

On his way back from getting the coordinates, he looked to Sahyuu whom was still sleeping. He didn't want to disturb her, so quietly walked past to the vehicle bay and proceeded as normal. If all went well, he would be back in three hours, plenty of time for her to sleep through his absence.
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Half-asleep, Siyyu noticed something was missing. Her hand patted around her upper chest, but she found nothing. Her eyes opened wearily to look down at herself, and did not see D'rik. She lifted the 'blanket' and felt around her abdomen, still finding nothing.

She sat up and carefully bundled up the tarp, looking around and under her in case he might have fallen off, but still she saw nothing. Placing the folded tarp on the ground, Siyyu made her way to the storage area with the food containers, thinking he left to eat. She looked around every corner, but still couldn't find him.

“D'rik?” she called, ducking back into the center room. Checking the corners of the room and and the second floor platforms, looking and calling “D'rik,” into the human sized doorways, even opening the elevator to see if he had gotten stuck inside, she was unable to locate him.

“Where is he?” Siyyu said out loud, still looking around the small compound. She finally noticed the door opposite of the storage room was down, and ducked into it. There were 4 vehicles  that looked nearly thrice as long as she was tall. The front was easily the control deck, with windows around the front and sides, and small chairs for up to two humans to commandeer. The back part was some kind of container that came up roughly level with her bust line.

She looked around the room and saw a large door opposite the vehicles. Beyond the doors was a chamber just big enough for the truck, and beyond that was another door. 'An airlock, possibly?' Siyyu thought to herself, after all, the moon was uninhabitable to both Humans and Alarians alike. Turning back to the vehicles, she realized, based on how they were spaced, that there was one missing.

'Did he leave?' she wondered. Why would he leave? And without telling her? Did it have something to do with the bases purpose? Or was he going to turn her over to his military?

Siyyu was taking shallow breaths, D'rik seemed nice enough, even if he was turning her over to his authorities, she doubted he would do it unless he thought she would be granted fair accommodations. Investigating the base, she noticed it didn't have a ship of it's own, so the two of them were truly stranded if bad came to worse. Reasoning it out didn't help the thought too much, unfortunately.

It disturbed her that she could even consider that D'rik would just sneak off and turn her into a POW. But looking at the facts, even if he wasn't doing it now, it was looking like the only alternative to leave this base...unless...

Making her way back to the central room, Siyyu picked through the pile that was her armor and pulled out her helmet. It seemed completely intact, aside from the faceplate,  and when she tried it on once again, it fitted itself like it supposed to. Testing the radio, it worked just fine, but lacked a long range function, thusly making it nigh useless in her situation.

She removed the helmet and turned it around. Without the proper tools, she couldn't even hope to fix the faceplate, and she had no idea if D'rik had anything that could fix it either. For the first time, thinking of D'rik didn't calm her any, like her faith in him had faltered, and it shook her greatly. She felt like she was losing another friend as they tried to get her out of a bad situation, but didn't realize that it would hurt her so.

Alone...nobody else was with her. She was now completely, and utterly alone. Left only with the thoughts of Jeuno and now D'rik being taken out of her life. Her breath rattled as she curled up on the floor, unable to sob as her mind filled with thoughts from it's darker corners...
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Derik grumbled some as he pulled the truck into the round-about. He had taken longer than he had hoped, forced to be careful and take it slow since scans indicated that this asteroid had a hydrogen pocket near the surface, something he'd have to take care of right away in the erosion chamber.

The first airlock door opened and he eased into it. Once the door closed behind him, the ventilation ducts at the floor began to fill the room with a breathable amount of oxygen and other such necessary gases. Once the levels were safe, he signaled the second door to open and pulled out of the airlock.

As Derik was bringing the truck to a halt, he heard rapid, almost random thuds, like a group of people suddenly barreling down a hallway. His eyes widened when he looked towards the entrance to see Sahyuu clumsily crawling on all fours in a panic, her face contorted in fear and worry. She practically leapt at the cab, smothering her form against the vehicle. Her arm covered almost the entire windshield, her head seemed to be laying against the roof as her sobs stabbed at him.

He opened the opposite door and climbed up onto the roof, kneeling next to her and placing his hand on her head, though she cringed from his touch. He knelt there, taken aback by her conflicting actions; she was in a panic from his absence, but recoiled when he tried to console her. It was as though she...didn't trust him.

Derik was crushed. His face fell along with his heart as he looked on at Sahyuu. He looked down at nothing, thinking about how she had lightened up his life in ways he never knew.

He took a drawn breath, then in a breaking voice began to sing;

“You are my sunshine...”  a brilliant light in what had been his dull life.

“My only sunshine...” after graduating, he lost contact with all his friends, and no one he had worked with on the base ever looked him up.

“You make me happy, when skies are gray...” he hadn't been truly happy in a very long time.

“You'll never know, dear, how much I...” the words were choked up in his throat, but he couldn't deny that he was starting to feel something, “...love you...”

He thought about Agent Innes and the threat of losing her, “Please don't take...my sunshine...away...”