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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Lanzen_Jars on 2024-07-02 21:58:33+00:00.

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Chapter 174 - The round piece and the square hole

As he had promised, James waited outside and out of sight as Shida was allowed into the place where her conspecific terrorists were being detained. However, what she hadn’t quite expected was that she nearly walked right into someone’s back the moment she stepped through the opened door.

Stopping herself quickly, she caught the very tail end of an exasperated sigh escaping the person standing so obstructively in the middle of the hallway between the different detention cells, right before their ears twitched. Obviously, they must’ve heard the door opening to let her inside already, however they now seemed to react to her actual presence separately.

Turning around with vigor in their movements, the myiat quickly scanned Shida up and down with almost copper-colored eyes that were quite the match for their tanned skin.

With a complexion similar to Shida, one side of the feline’s head was shaved, while the slightly darker hair on the other was thrown over it in a side-cut-like style.

Their face was a bit on the rounder side, especially by myiat standards, however that didn’t detract one bit from the fact that they could quite visibly more than keep up with Shida in the physical department as some parts of their beige-brownish uniform were a little tight around the arms and shoulders specifically, indicating they had put on a good part of that mass only recently.

“Ah, it’s our runaway,” they finally stated after a few moments of scrutinizing scanning over Shida’s form, and their arms quickly crossed into a relaxed position. “Welcome to my ship, Lieutenant-Commander. My Mindihajai is a beauty, isn’t she?”

For a moment, Shida caught herself almost wondering why her host, who she realized had to be the local Commander by now, was crossing her arms instead of going for a handshake, nearly assigning some sort of malice to the action before she quickly realized that she had spent way too much time around humans at this point. Scoffing a bit at herself, she tried to remind herself of the culture she had grown up in for more than half her life as she brought her hands behind her back in a more respectful ‘myiat-salute’.

“Lieutenant-Commander Shida, at your service,” she greeted in an evenly paced, respectful manner. “It is a pleasure, Commander Jireynora.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” the Commander replied with an honest-seeming smile. For a moment, she stretched a bit to look past the slightly taller Shida in order to check if the door behind her was well and truly closed. Once she had seen what she wanted, she leaned in a bit and held one hand next to her mouth in a shielding manner as she whispered, “Just between the two of us, any friend of my mom is a friend of mine. And you did her a huge service, so I really owe you.”

Shida raised an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly as the words sunk in for her. Friends with the Commander’s mother? And why was she so weirdly secretive about it? Did they know anyone who could be-

Her questioning thought was interrupted by a light bulb going off in her head as the answer to her question crashed right into her train of thought.

Shida’s eyes widened as she looked back at the Commander once she had leaned away again. She was one of Avezillion’s. She had to be. That was the only way this made any sense.

“No way,” she quietly mouthed to herself, which Jireynora apparently understood as she widely smiled to herself. She nodded briefly before taking up a slightly more formal position again, quickly pretending like the brief exchange had never happened.

“So, you’re here to take a crack at these dry bones?” Jireynora then stated, returning to a conversational volume before gesturing behind herself at the detention cells. It was almost a bit hard to believe that there were actually people locked up in those. It was so eerily quiet as the rooms were locked tight, not letting any sounds from the inside escape unless they were told to do so. “You are free to, but I mean no offense when I say that I would be surprised if you managed to get any more out of them than I wrote into my reports.”

As she spoke, her tail swung in an almost challenging manner, though Shida believed her when she said that she had no intention of insulting her. It seemed like the Commander simply had a bit of a competitive streak by nature.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I surprised someone,” she therefore gave back in good-natured confidence that wasn’t entirely accurate to reality. After all, all this was only meant to be an honest attempt, and she really had no idea if she was even going to achieve anything here.

But what else was she going to do if she didn’t try? It wasn’t like there was a whole lot else she could accomplish right this moment.

“Any tips on where to start?” she then added as she looked along the rows of cells, figuring she may as well ask to possibly save herself some time.

Jireynora nodded and briefly ran a hand along the longer side of her hair to push it back a bit before she turned on the spot and waved for Shida to follow along with her as she led her fellow feline down the hallway.

As was typical for anything built by their people, the walls, floors, ceilings, and even doors were all of a dark color and fluidly flowed into each other in their rounded shapes, leaving no sharp edges or corners between them and almost evoking the feeling of a naturally emerged – if far more orderly than usual cave.

After they had passed three of the pairs of doors spanning the hallway on both sides, Jireynora stopped in front of the fourth on the right and lifted her hand to flatly pat against it.

“These would be the ones who almost got turned into sieves,” she announced with a tone that sounded a bit too casually happy while expressing something so possibly disturbing. “One of them happens to be their leader.”

That part, Shida already knew, but she simply assumed that the Commander merely wanted to be thorough.

“Got it,” she quickly said with a thankful nod before stepping slightly to the side to allow for the Commander to more easily pass her on the way out.

Taking the hint, Jireynora began to walk towards the exit with a sway in her steps, patting Shida on the shoulder once as she moved along – which was already far more causal contact that myiat-strangers would usually expect to have with one another. However, being used to the human way to conduct oneself by now, Shida neither minded nor even really noticed that much.

“Holler if anything comes up,” Jireynora then quickly informed her as one last formality before speeding her steps up a bit, reaching the door quite quickly and exiting the ship’s detention area.

Shida didn’t look after her, but she waited until she heard the sound of the door opening and closing before moving to the control panel of the cell’s door. Placing her hand on it, it immediately informed her that she didn’t have the necessary clearances to open the cell, yet she could change it into ‘visitation mode’ if she desired.

Admittedly, despite her origin and upbringing lying squarely with her species, Shida never had all too close of contact with their own military tech since she skipped right to the communal forces once she was old enough. Therefore, she was a bit surprised that the machine was programmed to immediately assume she probably wanted to open the cell instead of giving her some sort of options first, however she didn’t let that stop her as ‘visitation mode’ sounded pretty much exactly like what she needed.

She only briefly paused, quickly checking the camera on her chest to make sure it was actually running as she didn’t want to cause a repeat of recent hiccups on accident. Seeing as everything was working as intended, she then informed the control panel that she accepted the proposal, which in turn caused the door to ‘open’ – thought it would’ve been more fitting to say than an outer, metal layer of it peeled away, leaving an intact but much more transparent second layer that was presumably made of either tempered glass or transparent metal behind.

Additionally to being see-through, this transparent layer hosted the additional feature of being noticeably perforated with little, minuscule holes all over. As soon as the noise of the outer layer peeling away had stopped, these perforations allowed sound from inside of the cell to reach Shida’s ears, as the people inside seemed to react with both surprise and mild annoyance to the sudden disturbance of their peaceful confinement.

One of them, a familiar dark-skinned man with a scar right over his cheek bone which he had sustained from a cut Andrej gave him during their scuffle back on Tsacantiot-Station – at least if Shida recalled correctly – seemed to have sat on the ground and leaned against the wall before her arrival and was now in the process of pushing up to his feet.

Meanwhile, the cell’s second occupant was laying on one of the beds and slowly lifted his head to look at her. It shook heavily as he did so, almost seeming like he barely had the strength to hold it up. However, a moment later, his hand had reache…

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