This was indeed, her turn. Her escort had rumbled on, standing up, and attached the net bag with her clothes onto his hip as he grabbed her right bicep this time to walk her to the shower room doorway. She was totally naked, so was everyone else she assumed, since the military guy ahead of her was.
She kept her eyes on his bare ass, both because it was an impressive sight, and because it helped her maintain her balance better rather than staring down at the floor.
Thanks to being drunk, she didn't think much of being naked around so many strangers, but the tricky part came when it was time for her escort to let her go at the doorway. Her foot slipped and she panic grabbed the doorway with her left hand, just as he let go. It was a sharp spike of awareness in her drunken haze, and it was startling. She jerked her head to the right to look for him.
Once he'd let her go, he continued down the hall, before standing with his back against the opposite wall to line up with the other escorts, all facing the wall with the shower doorway. Right, so he was there, he's be waiting. The slippery guy got chased rather quick, she remembered.
A low growl from behind her made her jerk to attention, and Eva carefully walked, flatfooted so she wouldn't slip, into the shower room. It was almost impossible to make out anything beyond a few feet. The heat and steam were oppressive, and her lungs protested the thick air, making her ache.
The thunderous sound of the showers came from the left wall. There seemed to be bench seating in the middle of the room, dividing it, with.. toilets on the right wall? Eva couldn't be sure, through the eddying of steam clouds, but the right wall seemed to be lined with a long metal bench seat, with oval holes in it. Eva's brain happily remembered reading about ancient Rome and their communal toilets.
There were already a number of people in the room, she could see their blurry shapes through the steam. Some at the showers, others at the.. toilets? Eva decided she wanted a shower first, so she carefully followed the line of the sitting bench in the middle of the room until she spotted what she thought, might be an open shower head, next to another blurry human outline.
Flatfooted and slow, she made her way there, only able to see maybe a few feet ahead of her as she went. Her lungs were seriously protesting, tightening up, making it hard to breathe a she finally felt the hard spray of hot water on the tops of her feet and the splash of drops up her legs.
God, it felt incredible. Groaning roughly, she put her hands out in front of her to ease closer, until she was under the spray itself. The water pressure was insane, almost stinging at it beat down, but it soaked her almost instantly and warmed her up. A shower and a massage, all in one.
The floor still seemed to be metal, if the reverberations were anything to go by, but the surface of the flooring was gritty, like maybe they'd coated it in sand for traction? Eva didn't know. The thunderous pounding of the hot water on her and all around her soothed her, plus it distracted from all the other noises of the scared people. There seemed to be a lot of that, already in the room and filing in after her.
After a few minutes of just getting wet and warmed up, Eva remembered the naked guy making a break for it. He'd been coated in a blue foam. A cleanser? Where the hell would she find a cleanser? Already people were abandoning the showers to go where, she didn't know. She couldn't see shit, really.
Maybe on the wall in front of her? Ducking under the spray, she exhaled a spittle of water and wiped her face with her hands, before feeling along the metal wall in front of her. Sure enough, she found something. It felt like a small spigot, but without any handles. There was another one to the left, and to the right of the main one she'd found. Above them on the wall, she also felt tools, or something.
They were higher up, and because she couldn't see, she stepped out of the water fully and against the wall to try and see better. The first thing her hand touched, seemed like a short, hard bristled brush but it was a lot rougher than a scrub brush back home. Maybe for scrubbing feet? She found another, long handled brush, the bristles were long and tough but not quite as bad. For the back, maybe?
Jesus, she had no idea. Grabbing the first brush she assumed to be for feet, she stepped back into the spray a bit and looked at the first small spigot. Without a knob, she hummed dizzily and waved her right hand under it. Suddenly, a squirt of thick paste plopped into her palm, making her jump and almost fall. Right, motion activated then.
It was so hot and humid in the room though, that Eva listed and had to keep catching her balance. Her lungs felt worse, and she coughed wetly but it didn't seem to make her feel any better. Jesus, she had to hurry. The paste in her hand felt gritty, so she scraped it onto the first brush she'd grabbed. Bracing a hand on the wall, she started scrubbing it on the bottoms of her feet.
"I wanna go home!" A high pitched, feminine voice sounded from her right. "I want my Mom, I wanna go home, Jesus I wanna go home!"
"You ain't goin' home, honey!" Another voice called out, from the other side of the room. The toilets maybe. It sounded female, but rougher and older, almost laughing. "Suck it up!"
Eva ignored it all, finished with her feet, she rinsed the brush and hung it back up before grabbing the longer one and holding a quickly pruning hand under the middle spigot, to get a glob of bright blue gel.
"Fuck off, bitch, what do you know?" An angle male voice came, also from the toilet direction. "You're here just like the rest of us, lay off!"
"I know enough that none of us are going home." The older, rough female said. "Even dead, we're not going home. They need us," the voice seemed to hiss.
The crying to Eva's right grew louder, though she couldn't see much through the steam. Several male voices though sounded angry, but Eva's pounding head couldn't make much sense of it. She scraped the blue gel onto the brush, and went about scrubbing herself.
The rougher female voice just seemed to laugh, as everyone in the room ignored or cried or protested. The brush was soft enough on her skin, that she was able to clean herself quickly, even if she had to keep catching her balance on the sandy rough floor.
"So what do you know?" Eva heard herself ask and choked, coughing again from the thick, wet air as she carefully turned under the spray to wash herself off.
That seemed to shut everyone up, word wise anyway, as Eva doused her head and hung the brush back up before getting more gel to scrub at her short, but growing out, dark hair.
"I know enough," the voice said.
The blue gel tingled on her skin, almost like a mint or eucalypti extract would. It bubbled and foamed up readily as she scrubbed with her short nails, before rinsing it out and listening.
"Know enough of what?" Eva asked, sputtering to breathe through her mouth as she rinsed out her hair.
"Enough of everything," the voice hissed malevolently, "I was taken as a young woman! I've been here for ages, and I've seen it all. It is ruin, and all will die."
Eva, clean now, slowed her movements and steadied her feet as she heard the reply. Looking over her shoulder, she couldn't see much of anything at the toilet bench across the room through the thick steam, but she blinked and wiped at her face as she thought.
"The fuck are you talkin' 'bout, lady?" A male voice broke in from further down the shower line.
"The uprising!" The older female voice cried, before it dissolved into rough laughter. "I wasn't captured with you," she stressed. "I was taken ages ago, as a young woman! I was a pet to them."
A pet? Eva thought, but couldn't make sense of. While the shower had done a good job on sobering her up, she was slowly starting to fall into the hang over category of drunk, and her body was feeling it. Her legs were shaking. She opened her mouth and tried to drink as much water as she could from the shower head, bloating herself, and kick starting a harsh reminder that she needed to pee.
"What uprising?" Another voice asked, it sounded shaky and female, from near the door where a loud and sustained whooshing noise could be heard, making tracks in pushing back the steam so it was sucked out of vents along the far wall, through over sized vents.
"The uprising," the rough female said, "Of the eta."
"The fuck are et'ah?" A male voice asked, and it sounded like the soldier that had been in front of her out in the hallway, but she couldn't be sure. He was further down the shower line to her right.
The rough, female voice laughed and it wasn't a nice sound at all.
"The eta, you stupid boy, are the lowest of the low. The derelicts of Yautja society. Those born too weak to be aesigan or Hunters, they are slaves. The backbone of this society," The voice hissed.
"So you're saying there was a fuckin' slave rebellion and now here we are?" The soldier asked.
The rough voiced woman burst out laughing, and it was creepy to Eva's nerves. She couldn't pinpoint the location, so instead she carefully felt her way to the front wall, to get whatever the hell was in the third spigot to dump into her hand as she listened and listed.
"Yes," the woman said, sounding amused. "The eta finally rebelled. They outnumber the ranks, three to one, and over the years that number grows." The voice almost purred, like she was happy.
"Hunters are the stars of this society, and they die in droves every cycle. For every born eta there is at least one who has failed a hunt, been maimed and barely lived, forced into their ranks. The eta are badly mistreated, and with the help of the maimed hunters into their ranks, the help of mistreated aesigan and badbloods, well.. they rose up, and here we are."
Eva was listening, barely aware of the texture of the gloop in her hand as she spread it between her palms and started to rub it all over her skin. It seemed like a moisturizing lotion to her, so she treated it as such while her focus was elsewhere.
"So you're saying," Eva said, before quickly scrubbing the lotion on her face and down her neck. "That there was a class war, and now they're taking humans?"
"Yes," the rough female voice said, almost humming it. "It was a coordinated attack, and it hit every major clan. All 7 of them." The voice hardened. "With help, they set off bombs, they ruined systems, they refused to work, they destroyed what they could. They fought and killed their Masters, Hunters, they did as much damage as possible."
The shower room was silent, save for some soft crying and the sound of the pounding showers.
"The eta class have been decimated, culled, there are no more left. The aesigan class has also been culled, a little more than half of their number. The Hunters," the rough female voice laughed. "Forgot one, simple thing. Their lower classes might be weak, might not be Hunters, might not be renowned providers. But they're still, Yautja!" The voice yelled out.
Eva just blinked in the steamy room, absently running the lotion all over herself, into her skin. It almost felt, like so often recently, that her drunken state was some kind of wall, that her reality slammed against but didn't break her, yet it still effected her psyche.
"So they're called Yautja, and.. we're the new slaves?" Eva asked.
"Yes," the rough female voice said. "They are the Yautja, and all of you, are now eta."
"So… what are you?" Eva asked, finishing rubbing the lotion into her skin and using the metal wall behind the shower head to balance her.
"I don't know," the female voice said. "My Master, my nyaka'de, died in the uprising. I'm an old woman now. My life was extended, I should have been bones and dust long ago. No one will claim me, no one will fight for my ownership. Not now. Now, I'm as much an eta, as you."
Eva felt chilled, even as her skin felt as soft and supply as it ever had. As hot as the water was that she stepped back under for a final rinse, she stumbled to catch herself and collapsed down into a crouch with her pruned fingers on the gritty, metal ground. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.
Eva was done with the showers, and the blast of hot air dryers along the wall that housed the door hurt her head even more and almost blew her off her feet. She was dried in a very short time, but the hang over phase of her night was kicking in, along with the revelations of that old woman, and her stomach finally couldn't take it anymore.
She ended up crouched down in front of a toilet seat opening along the opposite wall as she violently heaved up her guts. It was amazing to Eva how much booze was still in her stomach, and it worried her a bit to see how much dark red blood was floating in thin, coagulated floats along the top of the water in the tank directly below the toilet hole, before a rumble and blast forced all of it away.
So she was a slave, now? Jesus, she didn't know what to think of that. All she had to reference, was her own human kinds history on the subject, and it wasn't anything to take comfort in. Plus, if these slaves of the Yautja were Yautja, how much had they endured, before they finally rose up? What all had they been subjected to, before they cracked and said, no more?
Eva didn't even want to think about it. She felt like shit, and after rinsing out her mouth at an empty shower head, she stumbled out the shower room door. This time, it was only partly because she was drunk. The other part, she couldn't even fathom yet, because she couldn't panic.
She'd barely cleared the door, before a Yautja was shoving a bundle against her bare chest. Eva startled, grabbing it to her with her right hand as she held onto the door frame, not moving until he settled himself back against the wall to the right of the door.
Jesus, she was a mess now more in her head than she was in her body. She was becoming hung over, in pain, now scared and confused and weak and she was trying so hard not to cry.
"Where is my Yautja?" She called out. She had no idea if she was pronouncing it right, but all she knew was that she wanted her escort. Humans couldn't help her, they were in the same boat she was. Yes, one of them had explained what was going on, but she was helpless again too. Her escort hadn't hurt her, and now that she knew more, maybe she could communicate with him? She was overwhelmed.
"Where are you? It's Eva!" She called out, naked and slumped in the shower room doorway, with a clump of clothes against her chest. "I need you!"
A deep, throbbing rumble hit her ears, along with the sound of heavy footsteps and Eva slumped harder against the door frame, trying so hard not to cry.
"Please, I need your help! Please help me!"
She saw him through the clouds of shower mist, and a burst of breath left her in a sort of laugh, sort of cry, as she pushed away from the door and staggered a few steps to meet him. She was buck naked, but she didn't care, she reached for him and he caught her.
He was down on one knee again, closer to her height, but she was beyond caring at this point. She went up onto her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, having dropped the bundle of whatever, between them on the floor as she hugged her escort for all she was worth.
She buried her face into his neck, feeling the warm, coiled metal of his neck guard against her as she started to babble, feeling his large arms come around her. He'd frozen stiff again, but Eva hadn't caught on to that, she just leaned heavily against him, hugged him tight, and rambled.
"Please, I need your help. I got… got clothes or something. I don't know know how to put them on. I.. I showered. There was this woman, she said… please help me."
The rumble ramped up a lot, until everything about her was vibrating. Opening her eyes, her vision wavered. She felt it in her lungs, the deep vibrations. In her bones, her muscles were turning into jello but she hung on tight to her escort. She was naked but dry, and she could feel his touch where ever he moved his large hands. From her hips, to her back, the back of her head, down her ribs to her spine. He didn't hurt her, and while she felt the slight catch of his claws, it never hurt.
Finally, he started to lean away from her. Eva was temped to follow and keep clinging, but she reluctantly let go and leaned back to see his silver mask and dark visor again. The mouth piece, she noticed, was pushed out from the mask, and she scrunched her brows as she stared at it.
His deep rumbling never stopped though, and Eva started to calm down. Carefully, she lifted her bruised and swollen right hand, to gently touch around the mouth and chin section of his mask. It was an odd shape, when she tried to think about it, but she was still drunk and confused.
"Help me?" She asked. His head glanced down to the bundle she'd dropped, before he grabbed it up and unrolled it in his hands, sitting back a bit in his one kneed crouch. The fabric seemed to be a light tan, light deer skin or something. Inside of it, hidden, was another smaller piece.
He laid the bigger garment over his upraised thigh, before orienting the smaller piece in his clawed hands and holding it down for her to step into. Eva though it might be some kind of pantie, so she stepped into the legs and let him draw it up to her hips. It was a pantie, but the ties were already done.
The rumble he was making never stopped, as he carefully undid the tie on one side to fix it better over her hip before retying it, and adjusting the other side. To Eva, it seemed like some kind of bikini bottom. The back covered her ass, the front covered her, and then it tied over each hip.
It was probably a stupid thought to have, but Eva had to admit that she wasn't exactly built to handle a bikini bottom like this, with her figure. She didn't squirm or say anything about it though, as she watched him lift up the bigger garment from his leg. He'd gathered it so that it went over her head, so Eva leaned against him with her hips, leaned away with her shoulders, and lifted her arms.
The garment went over her head, she felt her way into the sleeves, before he settled it down around her. It was a light fawn color too, with a good neck opening, it was sleeveless, and seemed to drop like a sack around her with the hem stopped around her knees. She was barefoot, but that was okay for now.
He kept rumbling, it was nonstop and honestly, the sound was a balm to her. The more she thought about it, she hadn't heard anyone else make it since she'd gotten here. Then again, it had been so damn noisy from everyone it was hard to say. This close to him though, she wouldn't complain.
His large, black claw tipped hands helped to smooth down her baggy shift dress, and against her skin, Eva had to admit that it felt buttery soft.
"So," she asked, watching his mask. "What now?"