Summary:Moondragon stumbles over a rooftop garden with an unsual purple feline stalking through it, and stops to speak with Cateye about many things. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Catseye is quietly prowling around the rooftop garden, and it's a little disturbing how something so large can be so quiet. Add to that a lavender lion blends far better into the shadows than one would suspect, and it's something of an eerie sight. Nothing, then the lion slipping out of cover, smelling a bench, rubbing against a tree, then slipping back into another bit of cover to prowl some more.
Moondragon, since her return to Earth, is still getting used to the many differences. Earth cities are….ugly, compared to K'un-Lun. Less artistic, more functional and blunt and standarized gleaming glass rather than worth of great attention. Especially the commercial buildings, which tend to be built as facades almost, function over form.
It's a bit depressing, really, to see.
Still, she's finding that flying over the city she's at least above a lot of the nose, particularly that of the millions of minds in the metropolis below, as she propels herself along
That said…a purple lion does stand out. So when she spots said lioness, she descends, completely unbothered by the large predator being there and more curiously where it came from as she touches down easily. She's wearing a tight fitting green outfit that hugs her figure, leaving the hips and her cleavage bared, her head shaven and bare, with a pair of large oval metal earring dangling from her earlobes. "Hmmm…you don't look like you belong here…" she murmurs thoughfully.
Catseye pauses as Moondragon descends and yawns and stretches. It's a combination of 'I'm not afraid of you' and 'Look how big my claws and teeth are'. "Catseye was kitten in city. Been away longtimes." She peers curiously at Moondragon, her nostrils flaring, her mouth opening slightly as she scents the air. Lionesses aren't supposed to have manes, much less ridiculously fluffy ones. Adding in being lavender and talking, and well, she may be the strangest thing for at least a couple of blocks!
"…..annnnd you talk." Moondragon says dryly. She looks pretty unafraid of the big cat thus far herself, or at least more interested than anything else. "Longtimes. So you recently arrived here in New York?" the tall bald woman asks, folding her arms across her chest absently.
Catseye's tail lashes once. "Catseye talk yes. Catseye return last night. Deadgirl let Catseye stay safeplace." She stands up on all fours, and prowls slowly to Moondragon's left, putting a little more distance between the two, but also trying to put herself in the shadows and making Moondragon look into the lights.
Oddly…Moondragon doesn't turn her head to follow the motion. Most humans would with a predator nearby. Moondragon cheats, on the other hand, in that she can sense where Cateyes is roaming without having to actually look. "Ah. You returned from elsewhere?" shes ays simply. "You're not an alien cat, are you?"
There is something very odd about seeing a lion trying to shrug, "Catseye is cat. MotherMother find Catseye, make Catseye shift smoothskin, gives Catseye English." Catseye has begun to pace back and forth, tail lashing, agitated. "Badmen shoot Catseye, take her farfarfar. Two wintercolds and summer to walk back. And Safeplace gone. Mothermother gone." She gives an unhappy, very feline yowl.
"Ah, I see." Moondragon says thoughfully, tilting her head. "Two years, or so. But you lived here before? Perhaps I could help you locate her then." she says after a moment. "Though you seem well able to take care of yourself."
Catseye gives a wary nod. "Furform strong, fast. Badmen caught Catseye in smoothskin. No wear smoothskin, badman or badlady try to hurt Catseye, they get claws." The implicationis that she won't hesitate to claw Moondragon if she attacks, but it isn't a direct threat. Moondragon is a stranger, and a smoothskin. The fact that she flies means Catseye is willing to talk, but not trust. Not quite.
The tall bald woman turns at that, facing directly to where Catseye is. "I can understand being nervous about it. Though you can be dangerous as a smoothskin, even without claws." she points out, resting her hands on her hips. "…I'm guessing you don't fee comfortable enough to be smoothskin around me, however?"
"Smoothskin weak, smoothskin clumsy. Not wear smoothskin anymore." And that… sounds like a flat out denial. "Go woods and mountains, eat deer and wild piggies in furform, better than smoothskin." She tilts her head, "Baldlady not have furform, so not clumsy in smoothskin. Catseye is cat."
"Well of course I'm not. I've practiced being a smoothskin all my life." the woman says, arching a brow. "You're only clumsy because you didn't have time to be taught to be one properly, from the sound of it. Like a kitten never taught to hunt completely." She shrugs slightly. "You could be graceful as a smoothskin as well as strong as a cat."
Catseye says calmly, "Furform is better." And grooms her shoulder like an overgrown housecat. It is a very dismissive gesture. Of course BaldLady thinks smoothskin is great, it's all she has. Tiny, nearly useless nose, no claws, no fur. Furform is obviously better.
Moondragon hmmms, then seems to just sit back on thin air, sitting crosslegged in midair as she rests her arms on her thighs easily. "How do you know if you haven't tried to see how far you can go as a smoothskin?" she murmurs easily. "Look around…do you see lots of cats in charge around here…or lots of smoothskins?"
Catseye bahs, "Catseye trained smoothskin. Learned fight. Learned dance. Learned math. Furform faster, better." She admits, "Hands useful, but half-form has hands. Books amusing, but silly and can just remember them." The odd side-ways grammar suddenly vanishes as she recites, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters." Her whiskers arch in amusement. "Much silliness."
Moondragon grins. "I was never much for Jane Austen…though she lived some time ago where women were more ornamental than equal." she says easily. "An excellent memory however. My point is that your smoothskin form could be fast as your furform, with some training, I assure. I've spent years learning exactly how to use this form effectively." She shrugs slightly. "Though I do find cats have more simple and straightforward ways of doing things. It can be less wearisome than the machinations your average smoothskin goes through in their heads to justify the world around them."
Catseye's tail twitches in amusement, "Better than Shakespeare. Fighting and sexjokes. Like written for tomcats." She nods at the comments. "Smoothskins twists words around yes. And lie, even lie to self. Confuse everything." She stretches, long and slow. "Cat… hunt when hungry, sleep when tired. Guard and train kittens. Feed the colony. Is honest."
Moondragon spreads her hands. "Humans think mostly about sex and fighting. It's what drives us as a species, passing on our genes to our descendents and making sure they succeed, I think." She tilts her head. "But you are not purely a cat, are you? If you can be either, I mean."
"First memories, kitten, being nursed by cats. Bigger than other kittens, mothers take turns nursing me. Teach me to hunt, down in tunnels below. Hunt rat, grow bigger. Still kitten, but bigger than mother cats. Grow slower, but have to hunt like adult, hunt -above- because eat more food. Get bigger. Claws shred cans, can bring more food below. But… no words, no language, no numbers. Cat. Many, Many years." Catseye's tail twitches. "Then MotherMother comes. Speaks in head. Gives Words, Gives Name, makes me change to smoothskin. I learn, makes MotherMother happy. Now…" She curls up, tucking her tail under her chin. "Now cat again."
The monkish woman tilts her head slightly. <I can do that.> she says in the feline's mind. <If this is easier for you.> She smiles faintly. <She gave you an appropriate name, certainly. It matches you.> She ponders. <I would guess you are one of those rare metahumans or mutants who is born with their gifts, instead of them appearing when they are becoming an adult at puberty.>
Catseye responds with a surge of emotion. It -is- easier. She pulls up a memory, of making up a poster protesting Mutant Registration, carefully spacing out the letters on poster board. Her hands are human in the memory. A brief flash, a bunch of teenagers in a car, music on the radio, posters piled in her lap. Then another flash, a crowd of human bodies, pushing in panic, screams, and canisters of gas hissing evilly, smelling fruity and wrong. Her mind is very neatly organized, but words are not her first choice. And in feline form, her senses are so much more acute that it is ridiculous. She easily puts the bad memories away just by focusing on the smells around her, she can smell the difference between your skin and your costume, between concrete and carved stone. She lets what IS wash over her and fold away the pain of what was. Living purely in the moment, being Cat, there is no pain, no memory, just now.
Moondragon's brow furrows slightly as she closes her eyes. <Ah. These were the bad men, then? You were attacked?> She has no real knowledge of that period as of yet…she wasn' there, after all. There's plenty of irritating lapses in her knowledge of what happened between when she left this world and when she's returned. <You became a cat to flee this?>
Another flash of memory, waking up in feline form, knowing the difference in her bones, smelling blood, smelling death, her friends some alive, some not, the vibration of being in the back of a truck. Opening her eyes and surging to all fours and launching herself at the nearest man, large, all in black with automatic weapons and body armor that does not save him from her claws. The bright pain of being shot by the other men, their screaming, knowing if she moves towards her friends they will be shot. TwistLEAPslash at the men and at the rear doors and so much pain and falling out and falling far and falling down bridge and truck far above and TWIST and PAIN and water and struggle to swim. Then her mind comes back to NOW and she kneads at the ground like a kitten, the motion comforting, anchoring, here. Now. No bad men. Just Cat. Just now.
Moondragon's mind is…sharp. Blunt. Her reaction to that is to reach out mentally, like a hand resting behind the ears, scritching slighty, even though her hovering form doesn't actually physically move. <Ah. I see.> she responds quietly, sympathetically. <Humans make monsters, in more ways than one. And then you made your way back here, from there?>
Memories of crawling into a burrow and sleeping. Hunting and sleeping until the pain is gone. Then making her way through forests, crossing fields only at night, roads only at night. Snow, and holing up for the winter. Sleeping and hunting and sleeping and hunger. Avoiding humans. Eventually the same dorm room where the poster was made, but the electricity is out, the air smells of dust, the furniture is gone, there is a huge hole on one of the walls. Then more wandering, more wilderness, more hunting. Then the memory changes to this building, a girl who has no heartbeat, smells dead but not of rot, but walks and talks and smiles and is showing Catseye around the garden.
Moondragon inhales slowly, then lets it out. After a moment, there's a returning brush of memories, foreign ones. Laughing in a car, a man with a dapper mustache and a woman with slightyl overdone hair and a somewhat skimpy top that looks a bit younger in the front seats, teasing and laughing, the woman pouting a bit as the girl in the back listens to music. Then a bright light. Suprise. Panic. A ship hovering, shaped like a disk.
A flash of energy and suddenly everything is turning, the door next to her breaking away as she's thrown out, another flash as the car explodes, burning into flam as she's lifted into the air and sent tumbling down a ravine, her skin burn and torn in places as sharp desert plants pull at them., until she hits the bottom. Blacking out in a sudden surge of pain at the back of her head as it strikes the unyielding rock.
Waking in the sun. Dizzy. Dehydrated. Stumbling to her feet, starting to try and find a way out of the ravine, back to the car, to the people who were there…but she gets lost…stumbling into the mountains nearby, more and more disoriented. Her fear reaching out. Her pain, her will driving her to keep going, even when her body finally gives out.
Robed figures approaching her…then lifting her and carrying her towards a shimmering building on a mountain that seems almost like a heat haze.
A last view of the desert behind her, as light pulls together, sealing it away from her vision as she passes out again.
Catseye says, "Deadgirl nice. Tell Catseye stay." But Deadgirl isn't just the name in her head, its how the dead mutant smells. Nice is the feeling of safety, the taste of cooked lamb and rice and fresh bread lingering on Catseye's tongue. Catseye is a glimpse of cat-slitted eyes in a human face, Stay is the scent of gardens, the feel of a soft bed. "Baldlady stay too if need?" Baldlady is a flash of Moondragon's face, stay is a feeling of safety, need… need is a deep, aching empathy at knowing someone else was hurt who didn't deserve it. Her sideways-fractured speech is an effect of words being clumsily tacked on top of images and emotions that are how she actually thinks.
Really, it's easier now. Moondragon's mind adapting quickly to images and concepts versus having to attach words. After all, i'ts how minds truly communicate…the language doesn't matter, when you see the underlying thoughts and ideas. "Perhaps." Moondragon murmurs. "I have no place to go, yet. There's someone I'm looking for…." There's a image in her mind of a beautiful woman with white hair and a scar over one eye, wearing red. "But I will visit at least. And meet this dead girl." She unfolds from her lotus position, reaching over to gently brush fingers at the back of your neck, scritching your ruff lightly before she says. "I will leave you to your garden for now…but I will return later." And with that, she rises up into the air. "It was good to meet you, Catseye. I like your mind. It's very pure." She smiles faintly, then soars off into the air again. Seeking…