Zero-G Passageway
It was fairly impressive to her that she'd been able to adjust so easily to standard gravity onboard the Eucharis after spending over four years on HX-24 I's weak pull. The sort of life Sienna was living, as well as the preparations she'd been making for the first opportunity to escape for so long she'd forgotten when she actually began, didn't allow her physical strength, stamina, or flexibility to falter too much. It was still a little awkward, as she was having to move against much greater resistance, but it felt refreshing in a way. She hadn't been in a standard-G environment since she was little. She'd heard most humans back on Urtullan, fringe traders mostly, complaining about how cumbersome it was to visit worlds with higher gravity after living in low-G areas for a long time, but she felt much more at home in it.
When Natsumi had mentioned the "zero-G passageway," she had figured it was some sort of euphemism. She didn't think that so soon after she'd been tossed from one-half G to full-G that she'd then have to navigate weightlessness. And she certainly didn't expect to be yanked into it before she so much as had a moment to prepare herself.
Sienna was normally very protective of her personal space. She didn't appreciate being touched or approached without permission. But when Natsumi grabbed her by the hand, she didn't even have enough time to realize it before she was pulled out into a great, vertical tube with sleek walls and equidistant aperatures, like an elevator shaft with no elevator. Where normally she would have been obviously irritated by the violation of her boundaries, her involuntary reaction was to grip Natsumi's hand back so tightly she felt like she might crush something. She felt like her insides were bumping into one another as their weight lifted off of their normal resting places within her torso, and she kicked her legs in surprise, resisting the urge to yelp. If she kept being exposed to sudden gravity changes at this rate, she expected to be a puddle of something by the end of the week.
The ride was brief, only one level, but once her feet were on the ground again and her hair and stomach fallen back where they belonged, she felt strangely exhilarated, momentarily forgetting how silly she felt in the skin-tight bodysuit. "Damn," she grinned, almost a little short of breath from excitement. "That's a helluva way to get from level to level..."
Natsumi's Cabin
Sienna eyed the selection of clothing that the white-haired Neko had laid out for her. As comfortable as if they'd known each other their whole lives, Natsumi shed her towel and began to dress herself, leaving Sienna to make her selection. Sienna blushed slightly and cleared her throat as she looked away. There didn't seem to be any sort of modesty aboard this ship, that was for sure. Focusing on the garments laid out before her, her mind wandered.
Natsumi baffled her. Twice in Urtullan, the Neko had pointed a weapon at her out of fear or suspicion. Now here they were, not even a full day later, and she was sharing her clothes and treating her like her best friend. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate it at the moment, of course, it just didn't make any sense to her. She had a sneaking suspicion that the android-clone was working some con angle that Sienna had never seen before, but even if it were true, she couldn't figure out what the Neko would possibly want from her. Nobody was that nice to someone else without an ulterior motive, but there wasn't any such motive that Sienna could think of. It didn't make any sense.
She shook her head, once again there were few options available to her, and she didn't see any immediate actual threat. They were just clothes; hardly a bargaining chip, and there wasn't anything that Natsumi would likely gain from her trust and friendship in the foreseeable future. Looking over the selection, she placed her hands on her hips. Natsumi was quite a bit shorter than she was, so any skirt that was clearly cut short for her would be hardly a skirt at all on Sienna; she eliminated the plaid one. A significant number of the crew had already gotten more of a look at her figure that she didn't feel inclined to treat them further with any amount of cleavage, so the v-necks were out, even if she wasn't quite as curvaceously built as their owner. And there was only one pair of shoes. That was easy.
She unzipped the front of her bodysuit and began the laborious process of stripping it off, which proved almost as difficult as getting it on.
Wardroom
The long black skirt she wore was probably floor-length for Natsumi, Sienna surmised, but it only came down a few inches above the ankle on her. She'd never worn any sort of dress before, and she failed to see the point. It was restrictive, it could be pulled or blown up, and it made running at any respectable speed practically impossible. The gray sweater was utilitarian enough; it was still slightly chilly in here, and the fabric was comfortable, even if it did hug her a little more tightly than she would have preferred. And the sandals offered absolutely no protection from anything. Toes exposed to sharp corners and heavy objects dropped, and straps that would easily rub blisters given enough time, they didn't seem at all like a practical form of footwear for a soldier.
Still, Sienna walked into the wardroom just behind Natsumi with her shoulders back and looking a little prouder now, thanks to what she'd seen in the mirror just before they'd left her cabin. Even though she didn't understand the "form-over-function" mentality of a skirt, she'd certainly liked how she looked, strangely enough. She even had spent a few minutes teasing her hair to enhance her appearance. It was girly, sure, but not so much that it made her want to gag. It was a much more muted kind of girly. Casually elegant, even, and tastefully feminine, framing her figure beautifully without bluntly rubbing the shape and details of her posterior and bosom in everyone's face. She never thought she'd be pleased by it, but it made her feel good to be able to dress like a woman one time in her life rather than a greasy mechanic-slave. She was impressed that she cleaned up that good. And she definitely felt like strutting a little bit.
When the smell from the wardroom finally hit her fully, her eyes got wide and her mouth almost started to drip saliva. She'd never smelled anything so intoxicating as whatever was being served there. She followed Natsumi to the buffet, watching how she prepared her dinner. It was unique, involving piling select ingredients in a round, flat piece of what looked like unleavened bread and wrapping it up into a cylinder. She surveyed the cornucopia. She had no idea what any of the stuff was, only that it wasn't synth paste or watery gruel, and judging from the smell, she didn't care one whit about what it was. Even if it was for some reason poisonous to her, if it tasted one quarter as good as it smelled, she would keel over in a death rattle with a smile on her face.
The rest of the crew were already sitting around the table, having a discussion of some kind. She wasn't listening to what they were saying, nor did she feel the slightest bit embarrassed about arriving late or any potential interruption. She was too concerned with the food before her. She took one of the flat slivers of bread, put it on a plate, and commenced to piling it up with a little of every single thing from the buffet one after the other. By the time she was done, she had a mountain on her plate, and there was no way she was going to be able to roll it up. She didn't even bother with something to drink. With a shrug, she opted just to eat it that way, and took her plate over to one of the booths in the corner. Whatever the crew was talking about didn't concern her in the least. It was their business, not hers. She was hungry, and for once in her life she was going to go to bed full.
