Captured by aliens (It was his own fault)

38. Toru messed up the equipment

Ri's perspective:

After going into Ri's new temporary room, both him and Teotu were called back down by Jia, as the tests had begun.

The first one was simple, they wanted to see just how quickly Toru got acclimated to new places by seeing if it would eat in a new place, plus, even if Toru showed fear and ate in a corner or while hiding, it would show some food motivation, which would be convenient.

Toru didn't eat until Jia played the word for eating on the speaker, which they wanted to take note of, but weren't sure if it was because it got scared or it actually understood, either way they'd confirm later.

After looking around for a moment, Toru started digging around, which was also noted down, since the way it first did was weird, as it seemed to first sift the dirt, kicking it around and then would dig when it found something.

It was interesting because it did eat a little bit of the food hidden in the floor before, which Jia explained was there because they wanted to test out if it would smell food even underground later on and someone left a capsule there on accident.

The three of them were interested while seeing Toru look around for more food after finding that first capsule, seeing it start to find random things left underground.

It was a bit dissapointing for the researchers seeing Toru pull out and play around with the testing paper, which was meant to test out and record things like the CO2 Toru released, the humidity, heat, and more, by marking different colours based on the different metrics.

It was a bit worse for them seeing Toru quickly dig out the seismic activity detector, which they had planned to use to test out a ton more things even, such as how much it walked around, how fast, how it moved while sleeping, its heartbeat and weight distribution when stepping and laying down.

Teotu noted down how it seemed a lot more interested in finding food after finding the capsule, to their dissapointment at having their equipment be either altered or left useless for the time being

They felt a bit better seeing Toru play around with the objects, thankfully only with the capsule, which it bounced around for a while until they turned off the lights to have it go to sleep so they could safely put back the detector and a new testing paper.

Thankfully for them, Toru did go to sleep like most diurnal animals, despite the weird hour, so they put what they needed back in place and let it rest for about an hour while the two researchers organized the info and prepared formats and testing protocols for later.

Meanwhile, they asigned Ri with having to look for and talk to a language teacher to ask them to come and teach Toru more formally.

He tried a couple times but failed, until Teotu assured him that he didn't need to speak as quietly as he was, since Toru's enclosure was soundproof, after this he quickly managed to get someone to teach by asking his first language teacher.

The conversation went oddly, as the Dije teacher seemed to think it was some sort of joke, even though Ri tried his best to confirm that it was official, even citing the researchers.

Either way, the teacher, Freas, would go to him in one of the following days and talk through on how to teach Toru, planning out simple lessons, though it was still some time before she could decide.

After this, it was time to wake up Toru, but before that, Ri mentioned how Toru liked to scribble on paper when it had the chance, and since this was an animal research center, if they had any fully organic ink for it to use.

Jia confirmed before Teotu could and pressed some buttons on his computer, creating a small whirring noise after a little bit until a small compartment in the wall opened up, showing an ink vial.