Author Topic: Catnips Odd Trip  (Read 2637 times)

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saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #45 on: January 29, 2018, 06:24:12 am »
The feeling in Kings Court deepened to something resembling terror. It was a thing with teeth that gnawed and worried at the staff from it's place hidden beneath a gray veil on the spore dusted table of the mind. By noon, King's Guests had begun to arrive. Pricetown's resident great and good from every house. To them, the staff was cordial and "friendly." Underneath, many of them knew something was going to happen, they didn't know what, but they knew. By evening, that feeling had passed on to the guests as well in due part to the fact that the host had yet to show himself.

The mood shifted to one of gray restlessness on the part of the guests, and rumors began to circulate. Where was King, the host? Where was his white mistress, the albino Pinky? Where was she of a thousand faces, Minx? And where was this "Dark Lady" their host had carefully spread rumors about? But more, who was this "Gray Queen" the staff had begun to whisper through sluggish lips.

Outside, night began to fall and yet still there was no show from King. Cousin, the ragged coyote sooth Sayer shied away from King's Court with an animalistic static of fear prickling up his spine. He yipped at the moon, and to the ears of the approaching men of the searing spear, his cries were an omen of doom. The doctor had called in the spear to check King's Court, and these specialists, these angels of burning mercy, had already treated many minor cases in the area around the court. As night fell, they moved in on the center of the bright that had begun to fall once again on Pricetown.


No one knew what happened that night, save for the escaping searing spear, but everyone for miles around saw the fire. In the morning, the people of Pricetown awoke to find the streets filled with billowing smoke, and King's Court a smoldering ruin. Damon Craig, the demon of searing spear, told a blood curdling tale of ambush and of nobility slain. Of burning and of monstrosities emerging from the dying bodies of King's infected staff. The story of that nights work would be told and retold in the coming year, and later remembered as the mycus terror began to over take Pricetown the following summer.

The men of the searing spear entered through the front doors into a main hall in which was taking place a veritable orgy. The leader of the searing spear, a man know for his fiery zeal in pursuit of the fungal menace and who stood tall and slender, announced aloud "Ladies and gentleman, I would ask that you remain calm and cooperative. The searing spear has reason to believe the premises has come under infestation by the gray scourge."

Damon's eyes drifted as he spoke, taking in the crowd of faces and thinking "infested, all of them are infested." His gaze came to a rest on another newcomer. As they had entered, so to had another. She was terrible and beautiful to behold all at once. Pale ivory skin smooth and rich in it's fullness over a body that all men would want beneath them in a bed of silks, and women would look on with jealous scorn. The woman's eyes seemed a strange blazing rust flaked purple, and her lips showed the bright crimson of freshly spilled blood. It was just below the head of this Gray goddess that her one obvious flaw shown. The wound that had ended her life, blossoming with mycus six years run to riot.

"Hi." Said the apparition humorously, "I'm Rita."

There was silence in the hall. The captain of the searing spear looking up into the eyes of the gray Queen even as she gazed back down into his steely blues. Someone screamed, another person vomited, and many in the room suddenly came down with a splitting ache, like a fire ignited at the center of their brains. Rita's little grin and powerful gaze never shifted, but Damon's did. The staff had begun to convulse while still others attempted to flee. A woman attacked the Noble she had been in the act of servicing, biting him on the throat while still straddling the man. He threw her from him with a shreik of pain and anger, her head struck the floor and split like an over ripe melon spewing grey mush and tendrils. This same woman was not dead though, and she sprang from the floor, her head a ruin, and threw herself at the Noble.

"So fast..." Thought Damon, "how has it spread so fast unless..." His gaze shot back to the woman at the top of the stairs, and he pointed to her. "Get her, she is carrying Marloss. Dont just stand around using your thumbs as fart corks, get her! She's a fungal vampire for fuck sakes!"

Rita laughed and swirled her skirts, and act that revealed her lovely alabaster white legs before the skirt shed a blinding cloud of spores. A thrill went through the room at that, and the men of the searing spear we're all at once beset by the staff of King's Court, now little more than mycus puppets and fungal zombies. They fought there way back, until they reached the doors and three men volunteered to go back in and do what needed to be done. The rest of them would hold the entrance and wait. Damon exerted his mental mutation and combusted a whore from the inside. Fire spat in jets from her infested eyes and mouth and every other oriface making her look like some profane bomb. Gaslight blades cut and cauterized and a flamethrower spit its raging conflagration.

Deeper in, Rita danced. As she did, she released cloud after cloud of infectious spores and relished the feeling of being one mind of many and the sensation of spreading the many in such a way. She took the time to pounce on someone she encountered, one of the searing spear, and straddled the woman like a lover and kissed her. That kiss was one of death of course, Rita's mouth filled with a squirming mass of tendrils. Some as thin as thread and others as thick as fingers, each tipped with a short and sharp bone proboscis. The woman beneath her was drained of both fluids and memories in mere moments. "They are going to incinerate us." She said aloud as she went over the woman's most recent memories. The bomb was taken up, and in her strong hands was little more than a cheap China cup to be smashed into shards. "Going to have to get going I suppose." She giggled a little, tiny puffs of dust being ejected by the little movements this caused in her chest. Rita didn't want to burn yet, not when she had a vengeance half fulfilled. Not when she was still having so much fun. She rose from the dried up husk, the blue bloom in her chest opening like an oddly placed brooch filled with fluid and power, and made her way to a place she knew she could escape the coming infernal holocaust.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
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saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #46 on: February 01, 2018, 12:59:52 am »
The interior of King's Court had soon turned a shade of red, running thick with rivulets of gray particulate. Mold and fungus had already begun to sprout and burst from walls and scattered corpses. Forces of the searing spear had withdrawn and spiked the doors. Fire spread within, belching from the windows above as ungodly inhuman screeching mixed with the roar of the flames. The fire reached the kitchen before the bomb that had been placed there went off, sparking the gas that had been left on by the man who'd put his incendiary device there. The walls of King's Court, once a refugee center and incredibly durable, held as the roar of a hellish burning wind swept up the halls and instantly incinerated everything caught in it's wake. The blaze set in King's quarters consumed everything. Furniture turned to charcoal, valuable watermarks and paper relics of the old world became as ash, jewelry and softer metal work melted in the intense heat, and the desiccated body seated in the imperial chair at the far end of King's fine meeting table was cremated along with the rest of his empire of pleasure.


Catnip saw the fire from her window at Efram's clinic, a bright glow against the dark sky. She felt worry, and a bit of sadness for the friends who may not have escaped. In a few days, she would be released. Catnip would go to King's Court, or what was left of it, with Minx and see what there was to see. What there was to see, amounted to very little of course. even several days on, smoke and ash still lingered in the air, and the ruins were still very hot. Every now and then, Catnip would cross a man or woman kicking over piles of coal or ash before turned their flames on the spot revealed. "You can never be too careful." some of them would say.

In Minx's room, they found thing to be somehow relatively in tact, but Minx only wanted one thing. A small pocket mirror containing a picture, unharmed by fire. She explained to Catnip that the photo was of the man who had hidden her face. Catnip nodded, understanding a little but eager to press on to her own room. Catnip's room, unlike Minx's, was almost completely gone. Including the poster she had foolishly hoped had survived. Instead, beneath a pile of charcoal and ash, she found a mechanism and brass attached to a gauntlet. "Agmen," She thought bitterly, "Of course she would protect junk like this." It was hot to the touch, so Catnip wrapped it in a towel she'd brought along. The searing spear checked over their belongings, and the things they'd taken from the ruins, before making them take a dose of antifungus each and seeing them on their way.


In time, the ruins would cool. Long before that though, the city would condemn the building, afraid of what may happen if it was inhabited. The entrance to the lab beneath was cemented up with a veritable mixers worth of liquid stone. Within a month, rumor began about ghosts among the ashes. That was fine with Rita. How she had escaped was her business alone, but once she discovered that the fire barely touched her, it had been a trivial task. Now she sat in the ruins of King's old chambers and planned, confident that no one would come to bother her. She didn't want that. Not yet. She rolled the skull around between her hands, then kissed it upon the skuffion before setting it aside. She needed rest, and food. Food would come first, then rest. Rita looked out the wide window looking out on Pricetowns high street and giggled.

"Look out world, here comes Rita, here comes the gray queen."
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #47 on: February 04, 2018, 01:36:16 am »
                                                                                                                        INTERMISSION
                                                                                                                                           On Mislings

Mislings are an emerging group of peoples subjected to extensive genetic alteration to make them more suitable for manual labor as well as making them reproduce more quickly. In the years since the Mislings escape from their home lab, they have gained an acceptance of what they are and begun forming their own cultural identity as the younger generation grows up in the post cataclysm world.

The average Misling is of regular build, being no taller and no heavier than a normal human. Most bear gray fur and rodent features, with a rare few being examples of the "failed" strains. Mislings are possessed of a slightly higher endurance than a normal human, enabling them to work for longer under normal conditions while their fur and tails provide a little comfort from the cold and heat respectively.

Mislings are somewhat resistant the intoxicating effects of drugs and alcohol (whether this is an effect of their mutation, the general background of the average Misling, or both has yet to be determined) but are prone to illness and infection. They are especially sensitive to fungal infection.

As part of their intended purpose, Mislings are possessed of certain qualities that make them especially effective in procreation. They are genetically stable, the feat of keeping them fertile despite their advanced stage of mutation being a closely guarded secret. Dominant features often lean heavily in favor of their Misling parents, regardless of who the parents are. This was an unintended feature of the maintaining of fertility. Gestation is usually short, about six months, and Misling females often give birth to litters of three to eight, with twins and singletons being exceptionally rare. Normal human women impregnated by a Misling often produce twins and occasionally triplets, but the children are almost always mostly human with some slight rodent features.


From the Memoirs of Dr. Efram Marsh

In the early years of the Cataclysm, I had time to think and reflect on what I'd done. I was the lead of the project that turned these people into what they are now, these "Mislings." At first it was just a simple mutagen project, experiment a little here, a little there. See if anyone wanted to volunteer or experiment on convicts. Then things started to heat up behind the bamboo curtain, and our focus shifted. What we needed was a work force that could work hard and breed quickly. We tried a few simple small things at first, but the results were less than exemplary. Once a person mutates so much, they simply can't "do it." anymore. After the initial stages, that was back in... 2030? Back before the Cataclysm anyway, we decided to try and implement our experiments with the emerging research on animal based mutagen. The results were a little better, but at that point we were running low on volunteers.

Then we struck on an idea. We could get all the convicts we wanted of course, the government was sanctioning that sort of forced volunteering at that point, but we needed more. At the time the USA was going through one of it's regular increases in the homeless situation, and you couldn't walk down the street without seeing a group of vagrants up to something. Our lab, I am ashamed to say, began abducting these unfortunate people. Near the end there, we didn't even bother making sure they were actually homeless or not. We just needed more subjects.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #48 on: February 05, 2018, 08:21:00 am »
The first thing we tried was flies. Flies breed fast and live lives too short to do more than learn a task and perform it. The experiments came up with mixed results, but we thought we could do better. After that, we tried bees and ants. The problem with the flies was that they were too dumb to control, and too short lived to be cost effective. Bees and ants reproduce by the thousands and can perform amazing feats of strength and coordination. Single ant or bee mutants could do the latter, but without some kind of control they were just like people. We tried a few tests with installing a queen of some kind, but some of these ended with the "queen" being ignored or outright destroyed, or with the subjects becoming so mindless they had to be put down. Unfortunately the three "failed" strain Mislings produced by that line of testing were killed by Mycus, a forth has since gone on to found a colony with a queenless hive in Colorado somewhere. I hear she has made a bit of a name for herself raiding settlements in her area.

Had some fascinating results with roaches, but that research was dead ended immediately. Subjects we're often skittish and impossible to put down. While not fertile, the roach strain was the only one that didn't suffer from the mycus infection years later. The lab kept the colony of about 50 subjects around and under observation until the day we were forced to leave. By then about half of em had died off, but the rest all left together. About nine or ten left now, living in a tiny commune deep in the Rockies among the Mycus. Rita leaves them alone, god knows why.

Tried reptiles and birds next. Tried that for a long time actually, but eggs were always unfertilized and male birds never lived long or very comfortably. Bone mass was the issue with birds. They were weak, and inevitably suffered a lot of injuries. Also, their feathers made them clumsy. Tam and Scofield were the best we got, Scofield being at least somewhat capable of breeding, but only with a Misling. Actually, now that I think on it, Tam passed on three years ago, bless her soul. That makes Scofield the last of that strain. Lizards were too dumb and langorous. Unpredictable too. The science team wanted to do something like the tests they had going with that hippy commune down south, but we just couldn't wait for the slow process. We had deadlines. Speeding the process was what made them incapable of more than predatory violence.

We tried a few others after that, throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, but didn't really have much success until we got into rodents. Ferrets and weasels were a mixed bag. Marketing claimed that rats had a bad rep so the stigma would make the project less.popular when we went live with it. Mice we're decided on as sufficiently adorable and viable. The common gray mouse to be exact. Early experiments showed promise, but the fertility problem was never solved until after the cataclysm, after our labs AI went completely spare and took itself from our control.


We didn't notice anything was wrong at first. I suppose that's how all disasters start isn't it? I suppose the first clue should have been when the AI solved the fertility problem for us. It wasn't supposed to be able to do that, but we were too chuffed to care. Outside, the world was on fire and we were too busy patting ourselves on the back to notice. Well, we noticed soon enough. God's above did we take notice.

The first to go was the local population. Specifically the population of the lab. In all, we had around five hundred subjects on hand, all of them what marketing had begun to dub "Mislings" after something from some fantasy book. The overall population of the lab, test subjects and non-essential staff included, was around the two thousand mark. We kind of started to get the feeling that something was wrong when it came over the wire that something had gone wrong out in the great invisible world. People we're coming down with some kind of disease that made them aggressive as hell, weird animals sighted in rural areas, rioting everywhere, our own police force turned on us, and to top it all off, Chin Wei Lin, the prime minister of the PRC had just ordered several megatons of nuclear fire dropped on just about everybody while our own President Kyle Harkness ordered just about the same thing. Some of us decided that if they were going to die, they would rather do it under the open sky or wrapped in the arms of their families. That was when we found out that our AI had instituted a lockdown.


You don't know real horror, real discomfort, or real shame until you've been forced by your own labs AI to sit and watch machines go to work dissecting live children. For a long time I couldn't talk about it to anyone. Not even the lady who would eventually be my wife, a doctor ten years my senior from the refugee center now ten years in her grave. You watch because you have to, and you have to because if you don't the AI is going to get another poor kid and do it again and again and again until you do watch. It wants you to watch because you're the last, you're the administrator and you must be present at all dissections. Protocol demands it. I kept praying every night for either death or transformation. Being turned into one of them would exclude me from the staff roster, and with that would end my "duty" of witnessing the atrocities the AI was perpetrating, and the entire practice itself.

If given the option of facing down the entire host of Ahz't'uhr and God's army, or marching straight into the lair of the gray Queen armed with a spoon and with nothing on but a sock tied around the base of my willy wang with my balls swinging in the breeze, and watching another of those dissections, I'd pick one of the first two. Probably the second, since I think Rita might have trouble with some of the memories she'd drain from my cooling husk.

I kept wondering too what the science team was going through at the hands of the people we once called subjects. As it turned out, nothing. When my time came and the AI deposited me shaken and in agony over my change with the others, I was greeted by an elderly man who gave me a blanket and said simply, "Welcome doc, we all the same here now, no need to hold a grudge against our own." His name was Jonah Hoxley, and he was an alcoholic. I say 'was,' but Jonah was insistent that he still was. "Once an alky, always an alky." He used to say. Jonah was special though, especially to the Mislings. The man was a religious, convinced that the experiments we'd done to him had been the will of God. "The humble mouse," he used to tell us, "can see the world a whole lot different when he ain't got his head in the clouds like everyone else." Later Jonah would travel around Texas speaking the word of the man Jesus, and later still he'd take his traveling pulpit to new england. When he died, I think everyone of us, the Mislings, came from miles around to attend his funeral. In those days in the lab, it was Jonah who gave them a reason to keep on living and fighting. The man who made it clear that there could be forgiveness for me and my staff.


The rest of it is well known history. A kid with the amusing name of Cole Slaugh managed to short out the AI with a logic puzzle. Cole was a good kid, but a bit strange. After the lockdown was lifted and we got out, what followed was a mass exodus to Arizona. Along the way we ran afoul of another lab and helped the Mycus spread. Years later, a rat would come among the mice and show us the way out of the desert. A slow trickle of us would come through the portal that bore us to safety, a lot of these further expeditions with mixed success. Since then, Mislings have spread out quiet a bit, and I've put a lot of effort into Toning down their fertility while helping others solve their opposite problem.

I get ahead of myself though, and there isn't much else to tell about Misling kind that you couldn't learn in the schools that I'm glad to see cropping up in settlements all over the place. I'm an old man and it's a wide world. The memories of the lab still haunt my dreams, but they come less and less now. Before long, they will probably wash out and fade as my mind gives out. They say I've got Alzheimers, but I don't need a doctor to tell me that. I forget you see, and it seems a shame to forget. I'll never forget their eyes though. The eyes of the people I helped make, viewing the outside world, looking out at a new beginning.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #49 on: February 08, 2018, 06:08:56 am »
The Howling Tower

The thing staggered it's way down an alley between a block of squalid apartments, and the bullet merchants facing crack top court. There was, fortunately, none to witness it's passage or it's mad rambling.

"Lovely... Lovely... Rita... Lovely... It's... So dark... So dark... Without... Rita... Mother said... Said... Don't drink... Prescott... Lovely... Rita... I... We... I... Want... Rita... Rita... Rita..."

It moved on, the gray mass of it's body pulsing, corpulant and tumerous with the life it carried. Soon the thing, a babbler by name, Jonathan D'frees once upon a time, came to an oppulant courtyard where it seemed to stop and whisper to itself. The mycus monster gazed with it's half glazed eyes up at the tower no more than a mile away and mumbled on.

"Howling... Singing... Ever... Ringing... Rita... Rita... The tower... The howling... Tower... Stop her... Howling... Drive her... Rita... Jonny... Boy... You... Shouldn't have... Drunk... The water... Rita... Lovely..."

The figure, even less human in appearance than it had been before, settled on a bench in the courtyard. The property was that of a prominent pharmacy which dealt mainly in birth control and cheap but effective fungal medication. The pulsing in the figure quickened and soon it wasn't just throbbing, but growing. Inflating like some cancerous balloon. It let out a how of agony, breaking the babblers incessant litany before exploding in a torrent of gray spores and tendrils. The courtyard was thoroughly painted in the monsters gray ichor, and where the thing had been sitting was now a pair of legs and a single thick stalk of something that seemed to breath and exhuded spores with every exhale. The stalk was topped with a strangely lovely flower like a sunflower, but with blue petals.

In the morning, the searing spear would come and burn out the newly risen patch, hacking off the heads of the "moon" flowers and incinerating what was left.

In the last couple months, the scene was all too common.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #50 on: February 09, 2018, 08:09:26 am »
Not as common as it would have been, had it been warmer. The winter months in northern Arizona ranged from relatively cool during the day, and downright freezing at night. Catnip didn't mind the cold. It kept people off the streets, thus keeping them uncrowded. Catnip learned a dislike of the crowded streets of Pricetown in the warmer months after her first few encounters with the towns vast pick pocket population. Likewise, the people of Pricetown liked the short winter months because it kept the mycus sluggish.

Because of the recent series of suicidal attacks though, Pricetown was warming up and people were getting worried. The searing spear did it's job of keeping back the impending flood, and the shattered helm did it's job of keeping the populace in order. It didn't change the fact though that people were afraid. Something had to be done.

Catnip stepped lightly around an old burnt hulk of a long ago incinerated truck, and both blessed and cursed her fate. The road to her new job, a position for which pinky would be paid a grand sum, was a good half hour walk from Pinky's pleasure palace and gave her time to think.


The week before.

She wasn't going to serve at Pinky's, she was dead set against it, and Pinky was alright with that so long as Catnip understood that she wouldn't be fed or kept around if she didn't make herself useful. Catnip balked, but Pinky simply looked at her.

"You ain't gotta lay with guys, and you ain't gotta do it with gals, but chica you better get it through your head that your still a slave and I can't afford to board a slave who won't work." She said. Pinky had been at that moment going over the palaces ledgers, balancing budgets, and working out the payroll.

"Aw, but Pinky, what am I gonna do? All I know how to do is-"

"None of that whining chica, it doesn't endear you to anyone." Pinky hissed before sliding two sheets of thin paper across her grand desk to the mechanic. "I'm hiring you out, but out of kindness I'm going to let you pick. First, the aeroponics farm is always looking for workers. Good job if you like being poisoned on a daily basis. The other is one I think you might prefer. The council of three is looking for a mechanic to aid in the repair of a certain facility here in Pricetown."

Catnip took the sheets while pinky talked, lighting up a bit at the mention of real mechanic work. The first was a rather boring brochure about the fast paced world of aeroponics and how fresh faces were always welcome to assist in the monumental task of feeding Pricetown.

The other, much simpler sheet was a request for workers for a project "for the safety and salvation of Pricetown." It stated that among other professions, a mechanic was needed. Preferably, a professional with at least five years experience. Also preferable, was that the mechanic had to be a genetically sound human. The last requirement was easily dropped with pinky liberally greasing a few palms here and there, but the first had to be done by Catnip herself. One from scratch electric generator and a motorcycle built from scraps and a lawnmower engine later, she had a job she could be content with.


Catnip waved her card, a simple peice of plastic she had puzzled over for hours after she got it, and was allowed entry into the run down facility where she would be working until it was operational once again. The tower standing over the derilict building was very familiar to her, as she had stopped a similar object from spinning once in the lab beneath Pricetown. More than a little, the tower reminded her that Pricetown's current predicament and the fate of King's Court were almost certainly her fault. For now, she wouldn't let it bother her and she certainly wouldn't tell anyone. Minx had helped her fill out her forms, and when Catnip explained that the closest thing she had to a surname was "blightwalker," Minx had gone pale.

"Better not Nip, people in Pricetown are superstitious." In reality, the name had given Minx a bit of a start. It was very similar to another name that was going around in connection with Rita: plague walker. Cousin had given many similar readings it seemed.

"Ms. Walker?" Came the voice of her foreman across the yard. "Yeah, that's her alright. Walker, you might be here earlier than everybody else, but that don't mean much when everyone including yourself is an hour late. Get your buns in gear and take a seat. Briefing is gonna be down the hall in the red room on the left. Move move, Jin Jin."
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #51 on: February 10, 2018, 06:22:05 am »
The auditorium was a relatively warm place compared to the rest of the facility. A room that started out narrow but widened out and descended the closer one got to the stage at the far end. Catnip righted a few chairs and took a seat behind one of the auditorium spanning desks. By then, a few people had begun to filter in. Most of them were Mislings, Catnip saw, and she guessed that these were the laborers. The cleanup crews who would be taking away rubble and replacing it with fresh materials. She spotted her foreman, and was about to go see if there was somewhere specific she should sit when someone took her by the arm with a grip like steel. When she turned to see who had restrained her, she realized the comparison was rather apt.

"Ms. Walker? I'm Tobin Lomas, aeronautical engineering. Cmon, we can sit with the other specialists." His attitude and bearing belied his appearance. For a man who acted and spoke with such youth, he looked to be fairly aged as well as rough about the edges like a man who'd been carved from old stone before being blasted in a furnace for a few days in an attempt to regularize his angular features. On his back, he seemed to be gifted with a series of four extra limbs which folded up when they weren't needed. Tobin explained that he had joined the searing spear, but was now excused from service by virtue of his botched power cell installation which to him was a shame since he had three other, perfectly good ones that were more than capable of keeping his bionics going for weeks without charge.

Catnip was led to a small group of people seated near the front row talking amongst themselves.

"Ladies and gents, allow me to introduce our new mechanic. Everyone, this is Catnip. Catnip, this is everyone." Tobin said. Most of those in the group grunted some cursory introduction and Catnip, falling into her old adaptability, did the same. Tobin the went through each person individually by name.

"This is Tenny Parsons, the electrician. Patrick Danneville and George Brookside, our architectural engineers. Felicia Thomkens, our personal foreman. Finally there's Leila Kestrel, the projects personal doctor and pharmacy all in one." Leila, a woman with the head of a bird who reminded Catnip a little of her friend crow back home didn't seem very happy to be called anyone's "personal pharmacy," nodded her head and asked "where's Sam?"

"Not here yet," Tobin shrugged. "Sam Pace is our computers guy, but he's a bit slow. He'll be here."
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
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saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #52 on: February 12, 2018, 06:29:51 am »
Throughout the introductions, the eyes of the others kept drifting down to Catnip's neck. She had gotten used to it's weight around her neck, and had forgotten the collar that marked her out as a slave.

"When did they start giving slaves important jobs?" Patrick snarked. Tobin winced. "So rat, what makes you better than a normal person at this job? Why do you get it when a real person could be doing it?"

Catnip felt nettled, and a bit pissed. This Patrick was what anyone from the farm save mica or Kathrine would call, "a shithead." The "man" looked thin and pale, and quite possibly malnourished to the point of ghoulishness. She supposed it wasn't any kind of  mutation, just a mishap of genetics, sickness, or possibly drugs. The xenophobia of God's Army was one thing, but she was utterly unfamiliar with this brand of racist classism. "I built a train." She growled, hoping to take him off guard. He wasn't.

"I bet it was a peice of shit too, rats can't build anything good except warrens and crumb snatch-" Felicia, a sturdily built woman with a shock of curly blond hair, slapped Patrick on the back of the head hard enough to make his teeth click together.

"She's an expert mechanic in a town where mechanics have fallen out of practice or have stopped working altogether. Show some respect. She comes with glowing recommendations and even a good word from her owner, Ms. Pinky of-"

"Pinky!" Patrick cried, still rubbing his head, "So she isn't even a mechanic at all! She's one of Pinky's whores! Spread your legs for us little whore. How many dicks did you suck to-" Patrick said whore so that it rhymed with "tour," and it annoyed Catnip. Fortunately, before she herself could haul off and hit the man, Felicia did it for her. No slap this, but a hard right hook to the ear that sent him reeling and sprawling. Before he could rise and fight back like his body language suggested he would do, a boot came down on his back and held him.

"Making friends Felicia?" Said the head foreman. Felicia nodded seriously.

"Yessir. Just meeting the help and making friends all over the place." She said. Patrick managed to free himself from under the Foreman's boot and stand.

"I quit. Nobody said anything about having to work with rats. Whore rats!" The head foreman shook his head, but the smile never left his face.

"No you don't. You are up to your eyeballs in debt. You wanna pay it off, you'll keep working." At the mention of a debt, Patrick backed down with his cheeks ablaze. Catnip considered. It seemed even victims could be bullies.

"Alright ladies, have a seat. There are enough people here that we can get started. Specialists, front and center."
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #53 on: February 15, 2018, 06:49:45 am »
It turned out that "front and center" meant "up here on the stage" and Catnip wasn't sure she liked that. Meeting with people one on one, or in small groups, was fine enough. Heck, large groups she could do. This was an auditorium though, filled with many people. Fortunately, she didn't have to worry much about doing any talking herself.

"Ok everyone. As we all know, Pricetown has come under... Attack... Once again by the, ur, Mycus..." Said the head foreman, stumbling over the words a bit. The room filled with a low murmur and the fear in the room spiked. Catnip was surprised to find that she could smell it. An aroma of sweats sour tang mixing with the sharp sheared copper of adrenaline. It wasn't a pleasant smell. In the short silence that followed, the sound of the electric generator running the lights was very loud in the distance.

"This place is a defense measure we could have used during the great burning, had it not been dynamited before the... Slaughter... Began." The murmur hushed a little, and someone in the crowd asked, "Hey, woah, the place is still standing Cranston. Hell, the tower itself looks alright. What's with this dynamite crap?"

Cranston, the head foreman, nodded. "Sure it's still standing. The asshole responsible didn't take out this part of it. The damage is underground. There's a whole facility under our feet. Completely separate from the lab in town. That's what you lot are here for. There's a lot of rubble to clear out, and a lot of reinforcing to do. To that end, we've brought on two architectural engineers, Mr. Danville and Mr. Brookside, to oversee the construction work and to make sure everything stays architecturally sound. After that, Mrs. Parsons will run wiring and get everything hooked back up. Catnip and Tobin will be examining the dishes and the machinery respectively. The lot of you are to assist in any way you can. Any questions?"

There were a few, of course. We're there any Mycus down there, how would they be paid, how did they know the tower would work, and how did the foreman know what the tower did anyway. All these questions and more we're answered carefully, leaving very little out. No, there was no Mycus down stairs, but their we're screamers. The shattered helm would take care of it. They would be paid in watermarks like everyone else working in Pricetown. The tower would work only if they got it working. Once that was done, the foreman knew it would work because it had worked before. Cranston was a survivor of the great burning after all.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #54 on: February 19, 2018, 05:50:28 am »
The final bit of business for the orientation was the introductions of the specialists. Tobin went first, introducing himself quickly and without much fuss. After him, Tenny stood and gave an even shorter introduction. "Hello, I'm Tenny and I'm an electrician..." Tenny was human, but small and homely. To Catnip, she looked a bit like a collection of small flighty animals stuffed into a coat trying to masquerade as a person, and her demeanor did nothing to improve this perception.

After Tenny, Patrick pushed himself to center stage, seeming like he was forcing his way through an invisible crowd. With every word of his rather long "speech" about himself, Catnip grew to like him less and less. When he wasn't being blatantly offensive, he came off as awkward and a little fake. Catnip suspected that his show of aggression and general unpleasantness might have been a put on to cover for some other failing.

George, like Tenny was quiet and small but where Tenny was meek, George Brookside was confident. Every step he took was one of measured certainty. He moved easily, and spoke so as well.

Leila did not stand, preferring simply to remain seated and nodding gently when she was called. After her, it was Catnip's turn.

"I'm um... Catnip." She mumbled. Someone in the auditorium shouted for her to speak up, and she could feel the warmth in her face. Catnip could deal with and charm people one on one or even in small groups, but such a large gathering made her nervous. The feeling was compounded by her lack of fur, still not grown back entirely from her shaving at Kings Court. The effect made her look a bit freakish. Her features combined with her numerous scars made her look, she found, like one of the Cor. Her whiskers had come back, and with them her balance, which she was thankful for. "I'm a mechanic. I'm from New eng-land. I have a girlfriend named-"

Behind her, from the direction she knew to be Patrick, she heard "pffft, gay." And then the hard smack of a hand making contact with the back of his head. Catnip stood stock still, not sure how to go on when someone touched her shoulder.

"It's ok, that's enough sweet heart, you can go sit." Felicia said. Catnip was relieved to be paroled so from an experience she felt was only going to get worse.

"And I'm your secondary foreman." Felicia went on after she was sure Catnip was reseated. "The big boss has other fish to fry and you'll be reporting to me. Every day, six AM to six PM. Understood?" The gathered laborers seemed to, and so she passed the floor back to the head foreman. There were a few more small details to work out, and by the end of the day Catnip had been assigned a basic task to get started, and her choice of assistance.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #55 on: February 20, 2018, 07:05:44 am »
That night after work, Catnip made her slow way back to Pinky's Pleasure Palace. Beyond those double doors would be the mingled smells of perfume, liquor, and food. The money which King had sent Minx and Catnip with to retrieve Pinky had been used to retrofit the old shopping center, Pre-Catalysm Pricetowns only major feature besides the base and refugee center (and the lab hidden beneath it), into an entertainment venue. Pinky had the experience and the know how to pull it off, billing the Pleasure Palace as a place where one could get a quick bite and an easy fuck at the end of a hard day. Food was something King hadn't cared to deal in. Pinky on the other hand knew that not everybody was down for the kind of trade King's court specialized in. The Pleasure Palace was smaller, but the Pleasure Palace was better.

As she expected, pushing her way into the foyer, she was hit with the smells. Mostly food, which tantalized her at the end of the day. The doorman took her bag and checked it carefully, then gave it back as always. The entrance was quiet, but the sounds of people from the inner room came muffled through the expensive double glass of the foyers inner door. She could see the people beyond, enjoying meals and the company of Pinky's girls. Some of them would later head up to the back rooms, where they would perform the trade they were used to while others would walk the floor, serving drinks and being charming.

Catnip moved instead for the stairs. She wasn't allowed in the main room, being neither server nor call girl. Catnip couldn't even cook. The best consolation she had was that she was at least allowed to eat the meals prepared by the staff. Catnip stopped a server in the hall and made a polite request. The meal would come out of her debt, if she'd been a debt slave. Instead it was a flat loss, and that suited Catnip fine. She wasn't spiteful towards Pinky but at the same time she wasn't overly fond of being a slave either.

"How was it?" Minx asked. She was surprised to see Catnip back before noon and worried that the job may not have gone over so well.

"Fine. It was just some kind of meeting thing. I guess there will be work tomorrow. There were a lot of people..."

Minx slapped her on the back, and Catnip wanted to tell her not to. She hated being slapped on the back almost as much as she hated being called "champ" or "boss." Soon she was alone in her room, putting aside her bag and taking out her tools. Before she'd finished her nightly ritual, her order came and was set aside as usual. From the small window in her room, she looked out at the eastern stars appearing in the sky, and the mountainous horizon far in the distance. A plan began to form. She couldn't walk, but there was always a way. Her transport would have to be tough and have a measure of endurance. It had to be able to shed the Mycus that was known to inhabit this side of that distant natural barrier, and it had to have a lot of power. She could design it, but she didn't think she could do it alone or as a slave. She needed her freedom, and she needed help. After her dishes were taken away and her ritual complete, she lay in bed and schemed. When sleep took her, Catnip dreamed the long dreams of home.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #56 on: February 23, 2018, 07:32:49 am »
Pricetown slept, and as it did, a form was moving amongst the trash of chief street. The form was small and black, a relative rarity in the desert hub in the elevated portion of the Arizona desert. Cousin saw the creature and turned back, making not a sound. Cousin was mad, but he wasn't stupid. The shattered helm would see the screamer and blow it away. Cousin could bark at it and alert people to it's presence, but cousin was just one coyote. In a one on one, the solo screamer would rip him up. Cousin was again turned aside though by something more dangerous. It shambled, moving it's grotesque, swollen body along the narrow alley and breaking out into the open on chief street. Cousin had to scurry, practically yelping, out of the mycus horrors way and made it just in time to evade it's attention. It mumbled and rasped insanely to itself.

"Rita... Rita... My queen... My everything... Rita... My... Heeead..."

The screamer saw it right away and took shape, black ooze streaked with trash and sand formed into something like a small chimp with a pumpkin on it's shoulders where it's head should have been. That gourd of a head opened on a bleak abyss from which came the deafening shreik of Pricetown's most dangerous pest.

The effect on the fungal monster was immediate and galvanic. It clutched at what had once been it's head and screamed in furious agony. When the pitch of the screaming thing lowered and became more like a howl, the exploder keeled over and howled right back. The screamer went on and on, seeming to hold the mycus in place until there came a thunderous boom, cutting through the din and splattering the screamer into smaller safer gobbits.

"Rita..." The thing huffed before one of the responding guards put it to the match. There was no need to worry about it exploding on them, the screamers howl had made sure of that.


"It's the same principal as the howling tower you're working on Catnip." Efram told her after being asked how the screamer had stunned the exploder. The events of the night before were big in local news, and all the bigger since it had happened on chief street, Pricetown's main avenue.

"It doesn't like the sound or something?" She asked again, getting a similar answer to the one she'd received before. Efram sometimes puzzled over Catnip. She wasn't a Misling, he knew that for a fact now. Her tail was too long, ears too pointed, muzzle too narrow. The project had also never produced a Misling fitted with a neural neutralizer before. Most Mislings were equipped with a simple tracking chip with their identity imprinted on it. Catnip though was still possessed of an unremovable control module, and a device that would likely kill her if ever activated. Without the control pin though, the module was useless and the still active kill switch could not be turned on. Efram listened carefully when Catnip explained where she was from and her history. What she said meant that perhaps the region beyond the Rockies wasn't lost, or not entirely lost, to the Mycus. He judged her mental age to be somewhere in her late teens, but this too was a reason for wonder. The girl claimed to be twenty four "Christmases" while his advanced medidoc put her age at somewhere between "null" and "indeterminate."

Catnip had been coming in to his office for a weekly check up since she and Minx had strode into his clinic a couple months prior, and today was another of Catnip's appointments. So far, she was still clean and still interesting. She told Efram about her sister and her sisters man. About her girlfriend and all the interesting characters of the farm. In return, he told her the little things one needed to know about Pricetown. Some of the big things too. From him, she learned about the Mycus and the Mislings, and about life in Pricetown. More and more though, he noticed that she seemed disinterested in that last subject. Like the town held no interest to her, a place she saw herself as "passing through."

"You're free to go Ms. Walker, don't forget your coffee, and have a good day at work." He said, finishing up his notes and placing a mark on her chart. Catnip was given a styrofoam cup filled with coffee, spiked with hot cocoa, and ushered out. Efram watched her go with a bit of worry. The girl was said to be rather energetic and talkative, but over the last couple weeks she'd talked less and less. Either she was getting depressed, or she was scheming. Catnip would say the latter, because it was true, but also because she didn't know what the former meant.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 08:16:30 am by saltmummy626 »
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #57 on: March 02, 2018, 07:44:30 pm »
The next day was much as the first, except with more harassment. Catnip had grown a bit bitter over what she'd been through, and that was what dominated her thoughts for a good portion of the day. This was because the day priors absentee workers finally showed up, and among them was a familiar face.

Catnip had asked for an assistant that second day. Back home, Kathrine had served this role while hanging around the workshop. Always moping around and looking sad in a cute sort of way that made Catnip simultaneously want to give her a hug, and shake the living hell out of her while telling her to cheer up. Kathrine was genuinely helpful to though, passing just the right tool to Catnip every time. She wasn't here though. None of her friends were here. Instead, she had a lineup of people waiting to be selected. Not that any of them looked too eager to be working for or even with her. They had their qualifications all in order, not that they meant much to her. So and so spent three years at Arizona technical college, this and that one worked for Charlie motors for seven years, she and t'other worked in a garage since highschool. Words that Catnip didn't understand and didn't much care for floated by until that familiar face was standing in front of her.

"L." Catnip growled. The tall Misling flinched, which made a bit of a sight. Catnip, who stood petite by some standards and perfectly average by others, glaring up into the face of a woman a good foot taller than her. The shaven rat and the cowering mouse.

"I-I'm sorry nip, i-"

"It's Miss Walker. Where's Mark?"

"I- he- I don't know. He wasn't paying my contract, so the agency seized it and put me to work in the airfarm. They let me transfer and-"

"Shut up. I don't really care. You work for me now."

The other applicants were clearly upset about Catnip's choice. L had no experience with the kind of work they expected Catnip to put them through, but to Catnip that mattered very little. She needed someone she knew, even someone as treacherous as she thought L was, and wasn't really looking for a mechanically minded assistant. Such "help" would counter her and might even undo her work.
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #58 on: March 03, 2018, 08:15:31 am »
If Catnip had to give a grade to L's performance over the next few days, she would have given her a C- at most. She was a fantastic book keeper, a solid A+. When it came to hugs and encouragement though, L lost marks. Mostly because Hugs was an "N/A" and L seemed to lost in herself to encourage. Tool knowledge as well was lacking. In all, Catnip thought that when it came to being an assistant, L would never stack up to Kathrines pure usefulness and appeal. If Catnip knew what "bias" was, she probably would have reconsidered her judgement a little. Still, there was the regrettable fact of L's complicity in her current state and it was that which held the feelings behind her treatment by Catnip.

"I need a clampy thingy for this part here, if this isn't held in place while I work it's not going to be straight. Are you taking this down?" Catnip said. L was jotting down Catnip's desired tool and what it was needed for with her shorthand, perfected by years of bookkeeping and gambling. For the time being, Catnip and L were relegated to examination work. Looking and seeing what would be needed. The works below and around them went ahead steadily as cleanup proceeded as planned. Somewhere, Felicia and Tenny were puzzling over the plants security computer while the architects did about the same work as Catnip, checking and rechecking.

By the end of the fourth day, the workers had cleared out the entire top floor and began on the second. On the first floor was discovered something of interest to the job site. A short term storage room marked with a simple sign reading "Wind Cell." Inside, the room had been devastated by some kind of explosions, and contained very little besides the ruins of several storage shelves, and some kind of cannisters that some angry good had decided to rip apart and twist back together again.

"What kind of cell is this?" Tenny had asked, examining the cannisters. Felicia took the hunk of metal and looked it over before passing it to Catnip. "I think it's a wind battery. The plant mainframe has whole files on them, some big energy initiative. A single one of these could power Pricetown for generations."

"What make it work?" Catnip wondered aloud, "I could use something like that." She turned the piece of metal over and an odd pinkish sand came out, which she examined very carefully.

Patrick snickered, "For what? Power your vibrator?" Catnip glared at him, and so to for that matter did L.

"Enough Pat. Some kind of stone, but without proper precautions the stones have a habit of destroying the area around them. I guess they aren't exactly made of stern stuff themselves because they usually get broken up in the process."

The room seemed to support the guesses Felicia was making about the batteries destructive potential. The walls were crumbling and seemed to even bough outward slightly. Patrick examined the walls and gave an assessment surprisingly free of insult.

"It's reinforced concrete, cept it looks like something other than steel for the rails. They're thick too, I think it's that experimental super alloy stuff." He said, prying out a loose bar. To everyone's surprise, he handed it not to Felicia, but to Catnip, "Tell us what you know, oh mechanic of vermin."

Again Catnip glared while L bristled. She took the bar though, and looked closely. Catnip had not seen the bars make before except as sheets Floyd brought her. Back on the farm, she had four of them. Small three foot by three foot panels her grandfather figure had brought back. Catnip struck the bar one of her screwdrivers and the sound it made was heavy but sonorous, sending a shiver down her spine and into the tip of her tail.

"I love that sound. It's the good stuff alright, super alloy. If I could get my hands on more of it back home..." She let the statement hang, simply appreciating the heavy material in her hands.

"If that's the case," Patrick put in, "then despite the shape of the room, it should be perfectly fine to leave it as is. I'm willing to bet that peice is just a fluke when it comes to the damages here." He took the bar from Catnip, and she was almost loath to give it up.

Felicia examined the peice of metal carefully, turning it over as Catnip had. "If there are more of these down below somewhere, we are going to need them. I suppose the worst we could find is that most of them will be busted up. If it comes to that, hopefully the backup generators can make this tower sing." She said, then had a thought, "what if this place wasn't bombed like we were told? Nothing sinister or anything like that, but no one was actually here when the shit went down right?"

They stood around in silence, the walls around them punctuating the danger. L broke the silence.

"What if there are more wind cells down there?"

"We will deal with that when we get to it."
I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

saltmummy626

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Re: Catnips Odd Trip
« Reply #59 on: March 12, 2018, 08:13:45 am »
And so they would but for the time being, Catnip was tasked with setting up an auxiliary power supply for the facility. A generator at least, and also get a few of the excavation equipment back up and running. She thought about the prior while she worked on the latter. I was slow work though, most of the parts she wanted were in the now sealed off military base or lab. What wasn't had been appropriated by the aeroponics farm. Catnip spent a lot of time watching the work as well too. Workers jackhammering fragments of concrete into smaller peices to be hauled away in wheelbarrows and then shoveling away the left over grit and gravel.

Sometimes, things would be found in the rubble. Mostly office furniture, but one day a body was found. On another, someone struck metal with their spade a dug out another twisted cannister. The pink stone that was found within (just a tiny fragment Felicia noted) was passed around to a couple of the specialists. The architects agreed it was some kind of fossil, or perhaps an aggregate of some kind. "Good concrete material." Peter put in. Catnip was fascinated by it even more than the others. The little pink fleck seemed to tremble just the very slightest bit. When placed in a ziplock bag, it wasn't long before the bag had somehow inflated and burst. This rather gentle explosion released a gust from the bag, weak but strong enough to blow papers from a desk and ruffle Catnip's hair if she'd had any to ruffle. She wanted to see more of them, a whole one if possible. The fragment had been blown out of the bag and into the realm of lost things with it's little display. Felicia assumed it had been destroyed.


A few days later, the cleanup came to a sudden halt when an ungodly wail erupted from below. A sound the likes of which Catnip had never heard, but was altogether a little familiar. She'd heard the sound a couple weeks earlier, and a few months before she'd heard it while being dragged out of the desert. Screamers. The lowest level was filled with them. As workers descended into the depths, they found themselves faced with an abrupt break in the main staircase, dropping away into a sheer pit. Light was brought and shone down. What greeted their eyes was clear water and a shiny blackness reminiscent of polished rubber. When the light hit it, there was a ripple that moved across the surface of the water and the next thing anyone knew, the air was filled with the screaming of the pool below.

I'm really just a sexy skeleton in a suit.
Fingering techniques are very important
Quote from: Six
Using guns while sober? Sounds like you're a coward.
Yes, little hats for every noodle.
Everyone is forks it seems.
"Everything is fucked forever, and ever, and ever." -Forrest 2016

 

NOCTIFER IS A FAGGOT