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Post by Tobey on May 8, 2007 23:13:59 GMT -5
((Naturally, since I owe at least two posts in other threads already, I decided this would be a good time to get myself involved in another roleplay instead. Pipsqueak is finally gonna get introduced! He's probably going to be the last character I /ever/ introduce to the House, so make him feel welcome. Oh, and a note: his vocabulary doesn't include a lot of words for things we have in our world, so I'll be translating for him a bit via asterisks. Just so you know.))
Pipsqueak fell from the sky like a stone, his membranous wings folded back against his body. He leveled out his flight twenty feet off the ground, his vertical speed translating smoothly into horizontal. He shot like a bullet above trees and rooftops, putting as much distance between himself and his hunters as he could. The swaths of black rock that formed paths on the ground* were the hunters' weakness, Pipsqueak had learned. They needed the black-rock-paths for their rolling metal beasts**; without their rolling beasts, they were forced to walk on their ungainly two legs, and Pipsqueak could easily outfly them. The small, vaguely batlike creature that called itself Pipsqueak scanned the horizon for areas devoid of the black stone, and sped his way into the countryside, away from the black-stone-covered city, beating his wings to maintain his momentum.
He'd finally lost his pursuers. For now, at least. Deciding it was safe to rest for a moment, he alighted on the branch of a tree behind one of the giant structures made of wood***. The wooden structures were his allies; where these structures were, Pipsqueak had learned that his hunters were more cautious to attack him. He was a quick learner; a fact that his hunters apparently hadn't counted on.
Pipsqueak was nestled deep within the tree, hopefully deep enough to be away from prying eyes. Although, of course, he knew that if anyone had seen him land, how hidden he was wouldn't matter. But he wasn't concerned with that at the moment. What he was concerned with was the terrible itch right in the middle of his chest. Itching was never good; it meant disease, infection, parasites. He turned his head upside down below his body to look, to see what it was that was causing the itch. He had to look closely, but there was a tiny silver dot attached to his skin. It didn't look natural; it had the same feel to it as the rolling metal beasts and the metal-and-water trees****. Pipsqueak didn't hesitate to bite at the offending silver dot, scratching at it with his teeth, trying to remove it from his skin. After a few moments, he felt it on his tongue, and disgustedly spat the thing out onto the ground, after which he proceeded to vigorously lick his fur, instinctively trying to remove any contamination that the parasite might have left in his mouth.
Meanwhile, in a police car that was approaching Pipsqueak's location at a rapid clip, three Evolab scientists watched a small computer screen, which showed a bird's-eye view map of the neighborhood. "There, it looks like our target has stopped," one of them said. "It went behind that old Victorian house there," he continued, pointing at the House, as the police car slowed to a stop in front of the sidewalk.
*Roads **Cars ***Houses ****Skyscrapers ("water" means glass)
((Just so nobody's confused; the silver-dot-parasite-thing that Pip just removed was a tracking device.))
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Post by zimmy on Jun 12, 2007 20:20:34 GMT -5
Kat let flexed her claws, and crouched. Now, to concentrate on the prey. It's very large, very flat, and seems unresponsive--most of the time. It doesn't seem to mind all the stuff people have stabbed onto it, like the pictures, the cabinets. It might very well be extreamly hard to tackle this certain creature, since it has such a firm foundation. Drat. Ah well, the hunter must press onward. She pressed her body onto the floor, the fluff of her stomach brushing the carpet (or tile or whatever El House-O has). All you could hear was a snarl, followed by a simply wonderful, rich roar, and then... the pounce!
She tore at the wall, without her full force (which would take away a couple chunks drywall, I would think). It was hard to bite, seeing as a tiger's jaw didn't open quite that far. Her wings flapped, until she swore she heard something out front. It was hard to give up attacking such easy prey, but the noise was distracting. Now that Kat had stopped, she took a moment to look over the damage. Not tooooo baaaaaad, just a couple of claw punctures, and some chipped paint. But, mostly, damage was minimum.
Kat decided she was imagining things... Again. Which isn't much of a suprise.
It was kind of quiet in the hallway, and food sounded good. So OFF INTO THE KITCHEN SHE WENT! There could be cookies, and Cokes, and bananas, and chiiiiips... Most of which she'd have to tranform to get into. Except maybe the bananas. So, although they have the nutritional value she'd rather avoid, Kat nabbed one off of the counter and clawed it open. It was all bruised and junk, but it still tasted very much like a (soggy) banana. Her sandy tongue lapped the banana up off the counter, and she ambled through the kitchen, passing the back porch door.
"Mrowr?" Something outside was moving, in one of the trees. OH! WAS IT A SQUIRREL??! YES!!
ooc; I'm gunna do some guesswork with the Houses layout, and pretend the door to the back porch is in the kitchen.
...
Okay, so I've always thought that. And thought they'd be, like, pretty french doors. And I'm sorry for teh suck ^^" I just figured I had to post here, and I wanted to, and I didn't know how to incorperate tackling walls violently and seeing Pipsqueak all in one post, and the noise was the car since I'm assuming most cars don't stop there, and I couldn't think of a good end to the post, and now I'm rambling, so I think I'll shut up now...
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Post by Tobey on Jun 12, 2007 21:39:07 GMT -5
Pipsqueak immediately looked up from licking himself, as his sensitive nose caught a whiff of something he'd never smelled before. It was vaguely like the smell of the pink-skinned two-legged creatures, like the ones who were chasing him, but it wasn't nearly close enough to be called the same. There was also a vague hint of the scent of the flying creatures that were common in this new world. But there was something else, a third smell in the mix, a smell that completely dominated the two others, and it was a smell that was utterly foreign to Pipsqueak. But he knew it smelled like predator, and that fact captured his interest.
The batlike scavenger turned his head to the smell, cautious, but knowing he was high enough in his tree to be safe from almost any threat. Huh. That was odd. The smell was coming from the wood-structure. Had the pink-skin-bird-predator rubbed its scent on it? No, he was fairly certain he wasn't smelling rubbed scent. The thing he was smelling was actually /inside/ the structure! He hadn't considered, until this very moment, the idea that these wooden structures might actually be /hollow/. But, as he stared at it, he realized there were holes in the wood. And he could see inside.
Looking through the hole in the wooden wall, Pipsqueak saw movement. Was that the thing he was smelling? It looked a bit like an Ursal, from what he could see, but very different at the same time. Again, unlike anything Pipsqueak had ever seen. He was wary, as any animal is of something unknown, but the pink-skin-bird-predator seemed to be trapped, so he decided it was safe to curiously creep closer. So he clambered on all fours to the end of his branch, gripping the bark with his hands and feet, to get a better look at whatever it was that was trapped in there. Pipsqueak was now in full view of Kat, which, in his own world, would have been a good thing. Predators were his allies; most of the time, at least. But the predators in this world were strange. Would this one be friend, or foe?
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Post by zimmy on Jun 16, 2007 9:30:04 GMT -5
If it was a squirrel, life would be heaven! It's been three days since she's seen any squirrels in the backyard, after her little squirrel run. She hadn't hurt any, but after dressing up almost every squirrel that had hung around the backyard in frilly purple dresses, Kat didn't believe they wanted to stick around for more. The tiger smiled demoniacally, and put her front two paws on the door. Her claws were retracted, so as not to get in the way. After a minute of fumbling around, she used the pads of her paws to turn the doorknob and open the door. The second her front legs hit the ground, she smoothed out all her fur and feathers, falling into a crouch. She slinked so slowly, across the grass, her eyes trained on the perhaps-squirrel in the tree.
Oh. That was definitely not a squirrel.
She should've noticed the smell awhile back. But her usually keen sniffer didn't have much of a say when Kat was so... tunnel-vision. Kat had rationalized that the smell must be some newcomer to the house that was doing something somewhere else in the backyard. But she immediately realized the scent came from this thing, whatever it was. She stalled, and loosened out of predator mode-which probably wasn't very smart. Who knew if this thing had rabies. Apparently it wasn't too scared of her, or it wouldn't have shown itself like that, but if it meant her any harm, it would soon learn the evil kitten-y wrath of Kat, The Almighty! The tiger puffed out her chest, and spread her wings some to make herself look bigger. She wasn't playing any games. This thing was twenty times smaller than she was and would know it. But before she chased it out, she gave a questioning mrow, and flicked her tail.
ooc; Have fun with that XP
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Post by Tobey on Jun 17, 2007 22:01:45 GMT -5
Pipsqueak jumped, a movement that shook his branch but didn't quite cause him to fall, as the door opened. He had simply assumed that the pink-skin-bird-predator had been trapped inside; it had not occurred to him that the predator would stay inside a hollow structure from which it could leave at will. But his surprise turned to something almost like relief as he watched the predator's tell-tale signs of "hunting mode" disappear, being replaced by a threatened posture. Good. That at least meant that the pink-skin-bird-predator didn't consider him prey. That was a good start. He adopted a submissive posture, his head bowed, to let the predator know that he was not an enemy.
"You speak?" Pipsqueak asked, tilting his head curiously sideways, while at the same time tensing up his body in case the answer was an unspoken 'no.' You could never fully trust the predators of this strange new place. Pipsqueak knew that from experience.
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Post by zimmy on Jun 24, 2007 19:49:18 GMT -5
Okay, so it was submissive. Cool. But she still didn't let down her guard, other than retracting her wings. She took a step or two back, to see the bugger better, and noticed how it didn't follow the TV's version of a bat too strictly. And it definitely didn't fit when it the thing talked. Oh yeah, that threw her off. Kat bit her tongue, let a soft nervous purr emit from her throat.
She nodded. Yup, Kat speaks. Not quite when she's a tiger, of course.
Wait. If this thing could speak... Then it wouldn't be any random animal... It would be something special. Something from a lab. Duh! Of course it must be an experiment! She smiled, showing a row of rather sharp teeth, and flicked her tail. It had found the House! The tiger, still smiling, took a couple more steps back and made a motion to stand on her hind legs, and within a second, there was a nakie, furry girl in the tiger's place. "Psh-aw, a'course I speak!" Kat let her tail bob in excitement. "So, you made it to the House, then? You're an experiment toooo? What Lab you come from? Was it really baaaaad? Do you know the Muffin Man? Who are you? I'm Kat, with a K! Where'd you come from, like, what state? How long did it take to get here? You're alright, right? Not hurt bad? Cause I know Zepher can fix any hurts you gots. Do you need a room? There's rooms upstairs, unless you wanna sleep out here. That's cool, too, I've done that before! You hungry? There's food, lots of yummy food! So, 'sup, Batty Friend?"
O.o; Now image that said really really fast.
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Post by Tobey on Jun 25, 2007 17:32:59 GMT -5
Pipsqueak's black eyes grew wide. He had never before seen a living thing suddenly transform into something else. His mind did not even contain the idea of shape-shifting. As such, he saw what he perceived as one creature being completely replaced by a similar, but different creature. And it scared the bajeezus out of him. He was flapping his wings for altitude, above the tree, before he even realized he had gone airborne.
But then the new creature began to speak, and now that Pipsqueak was in the air, he could stay to hear what she had to say. He always felt safer when he was high above the potential danger. He circled the sky above Kat, coming quickly to the conclusion that she was insane. Only a severely mentally deficient creature would talk so fast, for so long, and about such pointless things. Still, Pipsqueak tried to pick out the important bits from the babble. He vaguely recognized the terms 'experiment' and 'lab,' remembering that they were both terms used by the ones who were hunting him. He had no idea what 'experiment' meant, but he knew that 'lab' was where the hunters were from. Specifically, 'Evolab.' And he definitely heard the part at the end of Kat's tirade, the part about food. He /was/ hungry, but he wasn't stupid enough to trust a mentally-deficient predator with magic powers to give him food. Overall, it seemed this new creature wanted to know more about him. He made an 'uh-uh' sound, and said, in a high, rough voice that didn't quite sound human, "Can't tell you my name, or where I'm from. You could be working with them." Upon having said this, Pipsqueak looked around for them, and saw the rolling metal beast of his hunters out in front of the House. Suddenly realizing that they could see him in the air, he dove back into the tree. But he knew it was too late, and he cursed under his breath.
"They are here. You want me to trust you? Earn trust first. Kill the ones who hunt me," he said to Kat. There wasn't any hint of malice in his voice; he said it in a casual tone, as if asking someone to kill your enemies for you was a perfectly normal favor to ask of someone.
"He's being way too still," one of the Evolab scientists, still in the car, said to the other two. "He's either dead, or he managed to get the tracker off again."
Another scientist, with short, black-brown hair and blue eyes, and who looked like he was the one in charge, hit his fist on the dashboard and said, "D**n. He's too clever for his own good." Then he looked out the window of the car, just in time to spot Pipsqueak flying circles in the air before he disappeared again. "He's acting like there's someone else out there. We're going to have to ring the doorbell. Be sure to bring the file, Travis," the brown-haired scientist said as he opened the car door. "I'll do the talking," he added. Travis, a light-blond-haired, younger man, followed the other scientist up the sidewalk to the house. Both were wearing white coats and name tags announcing their affiliation with Evolab. The older scientist's nametag said, 'Isaac Elias, PhD'. Isaac walked up to the door of the House, and rang the doorbell, his underling standing behind him and holding a manila folder that was labeled 'HDAC-487.'
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Post by zimmy on Aug 20, 2007 17:36:06 GMT -5
bic; Kat's eyes followed him as he drifted upward, bending her neck back to keep him in view. After a second of that, her neck hurt enough for her to realize stepping back might just be an eensy bit smarter. "Aww, why not? And who's them?" The little girl sat down on the grass, criss-cross-applesauce. Her tail flicked behind her, wings spreading out and resting on the ground. "If you're talking about experiments, your one too, dummyhead. We all are. I think." She followed his eyes, and noticed he was looking toward the front of the house. "Gawd, you mean... Scientists?" Her eyes got wide, and her wings folded tight behind her. "They're by the front of the House? And of course I'm not one of them-they made me like this!" She stood up, offended.
"Kill them?" Kat wanted to slap him--bad. "If they even see me, they'll know! They'll kill me!" It's not like she explained what they would know, exactly. Her little mind assumed he knew.
And at about that very second, her ears swiveled toward the House in time to hear the doorbell. "That's them, isn't it...?" Her voice was low, angry. "You lead them here?"
ooc; It's not good but, hey, I replied, right? WOO!
And someone else can get the door xp
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Post by Lunar Music on Aug 25, 2007 1:28:36 GMT -5
There was a quick thuda-thuda-thuda as Zepher hurried down the stairs. She'd happened to catch a glimpse of the car from her window on the second floor, and, well, Kat had been known to answer the door before. Usually, it wasn't a bad thing; the little tiger even put some newcomers at ease. Now, it would be a very bad thing.
Before going to the door, she glanced out the back, seeing Kat and... whoever or whatever that was. "Kat?" she said. "Kat, I want you to hide out here. And if you hear any kind of trouble in here, get away. Ok?" Without waiting for a response, she shut the back door firmly, and went into the living room, opening the front door.
"Can I help you?" she asked, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her, though she kept one hand on the doorknob. Her eyes went immediately to the id badges, though, she supposed, that was natural. Most people would be mildly interested by such official looking badges. She'd never heard of Evolab, but that didn't mean there weren't any Evolab escapees at the House.
(short and crappy. But hey, I posted, right?)
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Post by Tobey on Aug 27, 2007 22:35:55 GMT -5
Now that Kat was speaking at a much more sane pace, Pipsqueak was able to listen more closely to what she was saying. He still had no idea what an 'experiment' was, but he was fairly sure he wasn't one. He'd know if he was, wouldn't he? He certainly knew his own species better than a possibly mentally unbalanced predator would. "I'm not an 'experiment'," he stated with certainty, "whatever that is. I'm a dactyl." The thought occurred to him to add an insult to Kat's intelligence for making him state something so obvious, but he decided that there was no point getting on a predator's bad side without good reason.
Scientists. Another term that he didn't know. But judging from Kat's frightened reaction to the idea that there were scientists close by, they were obviously a formidable species, at least in her mind. Perhaps Pipsqueak's hunters actually were these 'scientists.' "They made you like what?" he asked, curious. He had the feeling, from the way she had said it, that the scientists had done something to her. Something bad. And if Pipsqueak found he shared a mutual enemy with Kat, he could perhaps play that to his advantage.
Pipsqueak was somehow not surprised by Kat's assumption that the scientists would kill her. They did outnumber her, after all, and she seemed to be aware of just how dangerous they were. However, he hadn't planned on her being so very well-informed of the situation; he quickly realized that it must have sounded like he was trying to get her killed when he told her to kill the scientists. "They're after me, not you," he said, trying to smooth over his mistake. "They won't kill you as long as they think you might be able to give me up to them. Which is, incidentally, the reason I can't trust you."
Pipsqueak looked up from his tree branch at the sound of the doorbell. "Yes. They were hunting me, I had to lead them /somewhere/. Don't worry, these 'house' things slow them down a lot, so we have time," he said, using the word 'house' somewhat tentatively; he had only heard the word twice, now, both times from Kat. He was really only guessing at its meaning.
Isaac waited patiently for someone to answer the door, straightening his coat ever so slightly as he waited. After a few moments, the door opened, and the scientist was greeted with "Can I help you?" Isaac thought it was just a little odd that Zepher would come outside, closing the door behind her to talk to him, but it wasn't enough to make him suspicious. She probably just had a messy house.
"Good evening, ma'am," he greeted her warmly, in a tone meant to reassure her. "We're here because there is a very dangerous creature on the loose in this area. A mutant vampire bat; much bigger and more cunning than a normal one. Highly dangerous. And we believe it is roosting in a tree in your backyard. So, could you please show us to your yard so we might capture him?" Isaac had meant to say 'it,' but the more human pronoun 'him' had simply slipped out. He pretended not to notice. "I would have to ask that you remain indoors for your safety while my asociates and I detain the bat," he added, and then waited for her answer. He wasn't terribly worried that he was lying to Zepher; after all, most normal civilians don't question a scientist who tells them that there is a deadly vampire bat roosting in their backyard. Rather, he just wasn't terribly used to lying in general. It tended to be bad for one's reputation to be caught in a lie, so Isaac usually just avoided it when he could.
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Post by Lunar Music on Aug 27, 2007 23:28:27 GMT -5
Dangerous mutant vampire bat? That was, quite obviously, referring to some sort of experiment. And anyway, to her empathy, the man felt... oily. False. Interesting that they were trying to look legitimate about it; Zepher would have expected them to just go after anything that was still in the yard. And whoever they were after was still in the yard, unless he'd taken off already - she'd seen him a few minutes ago. Unfortunately for everyone involved, she couldn't assume that he'd moved on - and even if he had, Kat was still back there.
Well, if these men, who she was certain were scientists, could pretend that the whole matter was bland and completely ordinary, she could put up an equally banal front.
"Really?" she asked, pushing wavy blonde hair from her face. "Are you sure? I was just out back with my little sister, and I assure you, there wasn't anything there. And my sister's a bright kid with a really good eye for wildlife. She points out every bird and squirrel. I don't think she'd miss something like that." She tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrows, the picture of innocent curiosity. "Did you say it was a bat? Seems a little odd, for a bat to be out this time of day. Especially a really smart bat."
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Post by zimmy on Aug 29, 2007 14:30:24 GMT -5
Kat nodded to Zepher, although the empath was moving at such a fast pace she probably didn't see it. Zepher was normal-looking. She could fix things up. Yay! But, still, she had to work with Mister Stupid and such. Speaking of... "Well, since yur being chased by scientists, and you're not a regular animal, I say you're an experiment. They made you."
Sigh. He didn't know anything, did he? "Like... this!" She extended her wings, able to stretch them out to their full span back here. Her tail flicked once, she swerved her ears the best they could swerve in such an awkward position, and stroked her left arm with her right, going against the flow of her fur to ruffle it. "I was normal, now I'm not. Why? Dunno. They did something." Kat was speaking slow, now, able to understand and explain it better than when she first got here. "For me, it wasn't all that bad, but for lots of people here it was. I hear lots of stories... Everyone's different. But for the most part, the two things we all have in common is we're not completely human, and we've gone through pain. Or... they have." By now, Kat had already tucked in her wings. She was looking at her hand, palm down with her arm extending straight down, examining her claws. "And we all escaped. Escaped from the crazyhouse they changed us in, and came here... it's our own little secret base, kinda."
"If they know that there's a bunch of 'spearments here and this is Thee House, then they'll want us all, dur. You by yourself prolly isn't gunna keep 'em from doing stuff to the rest of us." Kat took a couple steps away from him, not bothering to even look at him anymore. She was thinking like a growned-up now, all logically and stuff. Most of it was picked up from other residents, but she could make sense of it all. Most of it, anyways. "And why can't you trust me? I'm not that mean, am I? I wouldn't give someone to the scientists, like, ever." By this time, she had meandered over to the closest point she could get to the front door, and was listening through the hedge. "And Zepher's not giving you to them either, see?" Her voice was low, but it was obvious she was offended. Who couldn't trust the all-lovable Kat, who's never done anything wrong-Ever?
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Post by Tobey on Aug 29, 2007 22:51:54 GMT -5
((This post went a little long. If it's too much to read, I sincerely apologize (I tried to shorten it! Honest!), and if you like long posts, well, enjoy.))
"Then I'm sure you won't mind if we check? I don't mean to doubt your honesty, but there is some chance that it was able to hide, even from your sister. We saw it flying behind this house, and we have to be sure," Isaac said, still keeping up the lie, but starting to get a little nervous. He hadn't anticipated that anyone would ever argue with something so simple as permission to enter a backyard. And, of course, Evolab was a respectable lab; they couldn't exactly just go barging onto people's property illegally.
Isaac couldn't get why Zepher was acting so casual about all this. Even if she didn't know the truth, and how important this whole situation really was, a vampire bat in one's back yard still should have been at least cause for alarm. How could she just not care at all? Isaac let out the tiniest of sighs, barely able to conceal his impatience, and said, "I told you, it isn't a normal bat. Its sleep cycle is another thing that apparently went wrong with it." Great. See, this was part of the reason he didn't like to lie; anyone who was a little too curious could force him deeper into the lie with their questions, until he'd had to make up so much stuff that he couldn't remember it all. That probably wouldn't happen here, but it was starting to be a concern, nonetheless. Part of Isaac wished he could just tell the truth, but that could easily end in disaster, both for Pipsqueak, and for Evolab. A far worse disaster than telling a little lie.
Again, Kat was not making sense. How was Pipsqueak not a regular animal? He was a dactyl, just like any other; far more normal than most of the creatures he'd seen since wandering into this strange place. And what did she mean, the scientists had 'made' him? That sounded like lyca talk; like the silly stories lycas told, about the White Ones who had created all the creatures of the world. As Pipsqueak listened, trying to make sense of it all, he suddenly twitched, ever so slightly, as if startled by a loud noise. "We're not completely human," Kat had said. Did she mean that she was once human? As in, human, the mythical creatures from the stories that lycas told their pups? "What?" he asked softly, not sure he had heard right, and he blinked for a moment, trying to decide whether Kat was even more insane than he had originally thought (she had, after all, just claimed to be part-mythical-creature), or whether she might, somehow, actually be telling the truth. She had said it with an odd inflection; as if not being /completely/ human was far more noteworthy than being /human/. Then, all of a sudden, it clicked, like the final clue of a mystery, which, once revealed, causes everything else to make sense. Of course! The strange, pink-skinned creatures that populated this world were humans! This was news to Pipsqueak. Humans, after all, don't tend to announce their species to random bat-things.
This one simple idea revealed so much that Pipsqueak's mind could barely even keep up with his own insights, which were now falling one after the other like dominoes. It would explain why the myths about humans were so widespread; because humans actually were real, but they only existed in a place that was cut off from Pipsqueak's world. A place that, to get to it, you had to "travel across the sky on foot"; a silly myth that Pipsqueak had always just ignored as rubbish. As he recalled it again, however, it made sense now; he had walked, "on foot," through a pipe that curved upwards (presumably through the sky) to get to this new world. The myths had also said that humans were supposedly the only intelligent creatures of their world; something that, again, now that he thought about it, seemed to fit. The one sentient creature he'd met that was not human claimed to have once been so. That must be why Pipsqueak was 'not a regular animal'! He was intelligent, but not human. Yeah, it made some sense that humans would find such a thing strange.
And . . . and the 'White Ones' of the lyca myth must be the scientists! Powerful beings, in the form of humans, with white coloration . . . they had to be! So that's what Kat meant when she said they had 'made' him; they had created him, and all dactyls, and lycas and ursals and cervu, too! But . . . wait. Something didn't quite add up. The White Ones were supposed to be benevolent, right? The scientists were clearly not so. Well, okay, apparently that detail didn't fit, then.
Caught up in his own thoughts, almost giddy from his own brilliant discovery, Pipsqueak had stopped listening to Kat for a few moments. He had still been paying attention to her movements; he knew better than to drop his guard completely with a predator nearby. By the time he started listening again, Kat was saying, ". . . can't you trust me? I'm not that mean, am I? I wouldn't give anyone up to the scientists, like, ever. And Zepher's not giving you to them either, see?"
Well, Kat really seemed to want him to trust her, didn't she? "Tell you what," he said, conceding to her persistence. "I'll tell you my name, at least. It's Pipsqueak." He paused a moment, then asked, "Who's Zepher?" Even as he asked it, he remembered the person who'd told Kat to hide, and to get away in case of trouble. That was probably who she was talking about. So, as he realized what Zepher had looked like, he decided to ask a more meaningful question. "Is Zepher a human?"
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Post by zimmy on Aug 30, 2007 14:48:37 GMT -5
ooc; Yay for reading long posts ! -huggwes- Zimmy can't make them, but...
bic; Kat wasn't that interested in Pipsqueak's moments of revelation, but instead the conversation on the other side of the hedge. It was far enough away for their voices to sound dulled, but she could still easily tell what they were saying. And what was presumably the scientist was being rather persistent. Nyeh, Zepher could hold them off... Right? If only Eric was here, he could relay a message to her or something, because Kat desperately wanted to see the scientist. Who knows? There could be a whole army of them outside, and Zepher was going to try and keep all of them at bay by herself? Impossible! Maybe... if she got up on the roof, from behind the House, they wouldn't see her... She could look down from there, or at least be able to check out the situation.
Blue-rimmed eyes glanced back at the bat thing, when it decided to start talking again. "Pipsqueak?" Okay, that was funny. She had to giggle, it was a reflex. It was cut off quick, and her face still had the twinge of a smile as he (finally decided to) started asking question. She leaned away from the bush, her tail thumping her leg in thought. "Zepher. The girl who was just out here? She's like my mom, kinda. Ish." Turning, Kat started meandering toward the back of the House, wondering if this idea still counted as 'hiding out here'. "And, yeah, she's pretty human... She's psychic, but that's the only change." Her little walk stopped when she was in the center of the back yard, looking up toward the roof of the three-story house. This would all have to be done tiger-mode, it was saferer and easier.
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Post by Tobey on Sept 9, 2007 22:13:42 GMT -5
Pipsqueak, too, had heard the familiar voice of the scientist. And the voice of that Zepher person, he guessed. He'd more or less dismissed the conversation as irrelevant, though; it was basically the same conversation that he'd heard Isaac engage in probably dozens of times before. The only thing about it that he'd really noted was that the conversation was taking longer than usual. But that didn't really matter, either.
Pipsqueak showed no reaction to the amusement Kat seemed to derive from his name. He was used to it. And he simply didn't care if predators thought his name was funny. Point was, it was a name, and that was all that mattered.
Pipsqueak listened to Kat's answers to his questions. So Zepher was 'kinda like' Kat's mom. The concept of someone being 'like' a mother was just a little bit foreign to Pipsqueak's species. Either a dactyl was your biological mother or she wasn't; the word 'mother', to a dactyl, carried no meaning other than the person who gave birth to you. But, nevertheless, Pipsqueak got what Kat meant. So, he thought, these humans were like lycas, forming bonds even with those not related by blood. Kat's second answer revealed that Zepher was 'pretty human.' Again with the vague, half-answers. And she was 'psychic,' whatever that meant. Well, the point was that she was mostly human, which confirmed Pipsqueak's theories. Yes, the pink-skinned two-legged creatures were humans. Maybe 'psychic' was a term for a certain type of personality or behavior; something that couldn't be seen.
"What are you doing?" Pipsqueak asked, seeing that Kat was now moving around, which was making him nervous. Especially since she was looking /up/, at the House, almost as if she was ready to take off. Pipsqueak had never seen something that /big/ take to the air before, but, since she had the same wings as a bird, he had no reason to doubt that she was flight capable. And the idea of a flying predator made him extremely edgy. Almost instinctively, he began to analyze what to do if she went after him; he still didn't trust her enough to feel safe with her in the air with him. He was more streamlined than her, he reasoned, so he'd be faster in a dive, most likely, and he was probably more maneuverable, too. He'd bet that she'd be faster in a straight line, though, and she was way more powerful. So, if she went for him, he'd try to lose her in a dive, maybe make her splat into the ground. Or he'd run her into whatever other obstacles he could find that required just enough maneuverability for him to get through. Yes, that's what he would do. Play to his own advantages, and keep Kat from using hers.
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