Captured by aliens (It was his own fault)

40. New things to test out

Ri's perspective:

Ri placed the box in the room as instructed and went back out, only to be sent back to start building a small pool.

According to Jai, there was a bit more interest now into researching Toru and a couple other researchers used the already loaded model of Toru and put it into more scenarios, hence why they wanted to see what would happen with a small pool.

While Ri worked, Jai and Teotu finished cataloguing everything that had happened before and continued planning out some language lessons for Toru for the teacher to use.

Eventually, Ri finally managed to build the small fountain after some struggle and he connected the hose to a filtered water  tap, so, the three of them watched as Toru got closer and seemed interested.

It was nice seeing it first dip its finger, but then they were a bit dissapointed as it then ignored the water.

Thankfully, another thing Jai had ordered arrived, a small, fake tree for Toru to climb and sleep on, which Ri was once again sent to build, though this time it was mostly for safety reasons, as Toru seemed a bit more agitated from the new things.

Though Ri did struggle quite a bit so he got some help from the bodyguard from before, which had settled in the backwall for some time, watching over while they hadn't realized.

They got the tree done quickly and left to let Toru inspect it.

It brought along a lot more results and Toru seemed to have fun climbing it and exploring, even if it didn't stay at the top for long.

After some time of watching Toru relax and watch the fountain, Jai got a new message from one of his friends, explaining that Toru seemed to really like dark spots to nap or hide, even if they were small.

With this, they got the idea to put the packaging inside and see how it would react.

It was a bit weird how Toru waited unusually long until it checked the boxes, unlike the other objects, but eventually it got curious and started fiddling around with the wrapping.

They noticed that it seemed to be trying to rip apart the carbon paper for some reason, and it was interesting, but they knew (and hoped) that it wouldn't be able to since the material was made to be super strong to not need to be replaced often.

Still, they felt a bit bad seeing it get frustrated and toss the paper to the side, so Teotu asked around meanwhile, hoping to find any leftover lower quality paper for Toru, which she eventually managed to find.

They got the paper from the epidemiology building, since they had a different material, this one was softer, because their equipment was brittle, but this caused it to be weaker, which was finally a benefit.

They passed the paper to Toru and watched as it quickly got to work, completely tearing every single part that it could.

It was weird seeing that it then pushed the shredded paper that it worked hard on, to the side and did nothing with it.

Teotu and Jai got to work asking other researchers on similar behaviors to this in other animals, and eventually agreed on that it could be some sort of nesting behavior, basically, preparing a better bed, since other animals did the same with leaves and other large, soft tissues.

While discussing other possibilities, the bodyguard pointed out how Toru was now putting its whole arm in the water.

They all looked back and waited for what Toru would do next, seeing as it proceeded to then completely dunk its head inside the water, which first startled all of them and they were about to go in and get it out until they saw that it was just cleaning itself.