trans_9 | the test of techniques/the forms/and stances/the flow/the rythm/the internal answers [open]

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the test of techniques/the forms/and stances/the flow/the rythm/the internal answers [open]

God knows where she'd gotten the blades.

They hovered in the air, little menacing antigravity buzzsaw shuriken. Violence lay coiled within them, not directed outward but in, at Sheeana who stood poised with her arms spread. This was the attitude with which she called the great worm. Her toes curled in, feeling the strange, unfamiliar grass (coarse, yes, like the rare poverty grasses that sometimes grew on the leeward side of the dunes but still far too thick for her liking and multicolored). She opened her awareness, allowing herself to become part of the place and her of it.

Seven, a warm up. Their timer finished counting down, they converged in on her

There was a series of contortions that blurred in and out of visibility. She leapt. She hugged the ground. At one point she found herself poised on one hand, feet thrown up into the air like a Minoan athlete over the bull.

For practicing the Weirding Way, no artificial lightshow would do, no matter how real feeling.

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"...all right," Tess says, curious—a little bit suspicious, but she makes no particular effort to hide that from her voice. "I don't s'pose you'd be willin' to tell anythin' 'bout it in advance?" she asks, but dutifully closes her eyes. Her throat twitches as the subvocalized commands turn up the dynamic gain on the suit's microphones a little."

"Only that it won't harm you. And if I wished to, I would have attempted it already!" She called before putting her boots back on, running into an alley, taking a loop around in a wide arc that took her to the worm pen.

A few minutes later, she returned with two worms in tow. Two leviathans of the sands, one small, grey, as long as either of them. The other twice as large, reddish brown, but slower.

"Meet shai-hulud, the sandworm of my homeworld."

Tess' eyes open again, and the subtle movements of her jaw suggest that she's returning the suit to normal settings. She looks at the worms—and her mouth parts in surprise. Pleasant surprise, though. Familiar and yet different all at once in shape and purpose... those teeth suggest to her more than just a predator, they're far too complex for just that, but a powerful driller of some kind.

"Shai-hulud," she repeats, careful to try and match the pronunciation. Her body language suggests she'd like to step towards them but isn't sure if it would be safe.

She sees the hesitancy in the girl's movements. "They will obey me. Due to a set of circumstances which would take some time to explain, I was born with the ability to command them..."

The smaller one came slithering towards Tess, opened its tripartite mouth to squeak, but took no aggressive action. 'Hesitant acceptance' was how she chose to interpret the emotion of her wormy god-emperor.

"...But even if I couldn't, my people have been riding them for thousands of years. It may not be as quick as grasshopping, but nothing can compare to the feel of riding across the open bled on one..."

With that reassurance, Tess steps forward, crouching to look closer at the sandworm. It's not her she was worried about, that much was clear in her manner—it was the sandworms and how they might be affected by what she'd to do defend herself. A little twitch of her throat and she—and whatever chunk of attacking creature was caught in her radius—would be gone, but doing that makes her feel guilty.

Slowly, she offers a hand forward, staying up and past the mouth to try and touch the sandworm's hide. "There's gotta be bigger ones, right?" Tess asks. Riding... no, these ones don't look like they'd be able to bear a person's weight comfortably. And how would you even harness something with a body structure like that.

The smaller worm reared up to her, blowing cinnamon scented breath in her face. The larger one joined them too. It was a real worm, not the temporary construction the smaller one was, and its interior blazed with its internal fire.

Leto approves.

"From the Worm comes the Spice. The Spice extends life. It expands consciousness. In the old days, it was the only way we could travel between star systems. The Guild Navigators used it to fold space around them. And it is also what allows one to become a Reverend Mother."

Tess breathes in the cinnamon exhalation, the membrane on her face quiescent and letting the scent pass without incident. "Oh, it's beautiful," she murmurs, looking between the worms. She can feel the heat off the second, and her suit's autonomic functions automatically key up the heat-regulation.

"Like handlin' a jump drive, 'cept without somethin' to run the numbers for ya," Tess says, more to herself than to Sheeana. "It sounds pretty amazin'."

To run the numbers for you...yes, exactly like a no-ship in miniature.

Sheeana gave her a diabolic smile. "These are infant specimens here in an artificial environment. Nevertheless, would you like to ride one?"

"I would!" Tess says. "If I ain't gonna hurt it by sittin' too hard, anyway," she qualifies, glancing down at herself. "I'm heavier'n'I look... how much weight can it take?" Despite her reservations, the idea seems to rather much delight her, and the heat coming in sharp waves off the second worm doesn't seem to phase her enough to even blink about it.

Sheeana's laugh was like the wind over the dunes. A human concerned about harming a maker!

She gestured and the big one lowered its head. She hooked a hand into a leathery segment and vaulted up until she sat stradling it, an attitude noone before had yet succesfully taken with the Worm. She waited for Tess to climb up behind her. "An adult sandworm can shrug off blasts from vehicle mounted lasguns. Now without a set of maker hooks, you'll have to hold on to me."

And the worm took off.

Tess climbs up behind Sheeana, grip ginger until she's sure the extra weight she carries in her reinforced muscles and bones and in her suit won't cause any problems. Her gloved hands slide forward to grip onto Sheeana's sides, and then a little further, unsure of how much of a hold she'll need.

And the worm goes—!!

Her arms slide forward, reflexively clinging more, to the point where she's almost clinging directly against Sheeana's back. "Woah!"

Sheeana leaned forward, grabbing one of the segments to steady herself. The worm was traveling down the widest avenue, between strange buildings, followed by its smaller cousin.

"Tell me, Tess: Besides traveling, what is it a Grasshopper does? What is your role in society?" She had to raise her voice over the wind.

"We help people," is Tess' instinctive first response. There's much more than that, certainly, but when it comes down to the main thing they do for society—yes. Strange, anarchist helpers, but helpers. "We share info'n stuff we find, and we introduce ourselves to new kinds've folks." Aliens, that is.

She moves forward with Sheeana's motion, still clinging to her to keep from losing her balance on the worm.

Help people... That was certainly a tip-of-the-rock-formation response.

"Will you tell me more? Because..." She dodged a tipped over wreck of a hover-van. "...that sounds like what the Bene Gesserit do."

Woo! This is fun, even if Tess is rather out of her element. (But, being out of their element is part of what grasshoppers do—dive in to the strange and the new and learn as much as they can from it...) "Mostly we teach folks 'bout what they're missin' out on," Tess says, calling it over Sheeana's shoulder to be heard. "Tellin' the Good News is enough t'break up some've the nastier claves'n'cans out there, by itself. If y'gotta get more'n slingshots fer anythin' there's crickets. They ain't all nice folks, but a lot've'm don't mind gettin' involved if there's anythin' really bad goin' on."

"The Good News? A religious publication?" She gestured to the right and leaned. The worm leaned and turned with her. She could feel the softness of the girl's body on her back...waterfat her Fremen instincts told her.

"Oh, naw," Tess says, with what's almost a laugh, and tightens a moment against Sheeana. Soft, certainly, but there's something harder underneath: with a suit so slim and elegant, her body's been subtly reinforced for the rigors of space travel, too, with harder bones and stronger muscles and ligaments, with more-efficient lungs and a larger heart. She and the suit are a system meant to work together. "It's the book fer makin' yer own jumper, and how t'set it up so you can land somewhere without goin' smush."

Like the Missionaria Protectiva...But not nearly so sinister. She thought of the planets that would never rise up with the banner of the cult of Sheeana. She could not help but feel this was for the best. The Missionaria was a dangerous instrument.

"So you insert information where it will do the most good. That is a laudable goal. We Bene Gesserit are charged with one great task: help humanity to mature. Tyrants have a soothing effect on the psyche of their subjects. We work to make humans mature enough to reject them anyway."

"That sounds like a great thing t'do fer people," Tess says. "Yer religious at all?" she asks. After Sheeana's own assumption about her, it seems like a safe thing to guess at.

Sheeana laughed and quoted from the Acolyte's Oath. "'Religion is the emulation of the adult by the child.' I am interested in 'moments of mystery' as you might call them: revelations, trances, orgasms..." She let that one hang there for a few moments and swung the worm around as they reached a dead end. "...And we have created religions for our own purposes...But for a Reverend Mother, Other Memory is all we need for an afterlife."

Mention of that last one makes Tess' face go a little red, but that doesn't stop her from clinging a little tighter again to Sheeana as the worm circles around. "I guess we're kinda like that. Y'can't really be a good grasshopper if y'ain't interested in stuff y'ain't never run into before. Without that yer just a weird cricket." Insect-based labels are a big thing where she's from, apparently.

Sheeana turned the final time, ending back at the park they'd started at. She knew it was best to ask her while adrenaline and flirtation were still fresh in the girl's veins...though she did not know how quickly her friendlies would compensate for this. She brought the worm to a halt.

"Tess, I am going to make you an offer that I want you to give thought to. As Mother Superior, it is my task to keep this organization alive and we are always looking for new blood...hybrid vigour. I think you have the kind of traits that could eventually make a good Reverend Mother. I would like you to consider that for at least two days. In the library you will find records concerning our order...and not all of them friendly. I request you take in all points of view then come back to me with your decision."

Tess' breath is quicker—but not as quick as it should be. Her subtle artificial enhancements make her more like an athelete than like someone as soft as she looks. Still, the adrenaline is there, and she's done nothing to make it go away. That would cheapen the experience. But that doesn't keep the clever little backend parts of her mind from cataloging some things—like that 'we' should barely apply, with the limited population on the ship. But—

Her face lights up. To refuse to at least look over the material Sheeana is talking about would be unthinkable. "Sounds interestin'," she says, with a broad, curious smile.

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