Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
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Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Feb 23, 2011 1:02:04 GMT -5
Dragon stood in the corner, staring wide eyed at the chaos unfolding before her. She was so distracted by the site of the tiny little white... thing... that she forgot she'd been planning on leaving before anyone could stop to wonder why she was there again.
It didn't even look like a cat. It looked like an alien rodent. That was not even how a kitten's head was supposed to look. She knew. She'd seen PHOTOGRAPHS of kittens.
She stared at it momentarily before Mika barked some commands at her and she began following them without thinking. She stared at the kitten in bewilderment while rubbing it. She was good at following instructions. Actually, she was probably AWESOME at following instructions, but not only would her low self-esteem never allow her to admit that, she wasn't enirely sure it was something one should be bragging about.
She stared blankly at the kitten. It mewed at her. And suddenly, she was no longer in control. This kitten was now the most important thing in the world and nothing else would ever matter more ever.
((xD I can't resist laughing at Dragon, I'm sooorrryyyy.))
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Post by Kitten King on Mar 26, 2011 4:20:03 GMT -5
True enough, it wasn't long until the next kitten was born. This one was bigger, by just a little bit, and she was pure white as well. Though she didn't meow too often, her few cries were high-pitched and piercing - she had personality, and she was healthy as ever. Though Mika was wary of her idiotic relative handling the kittens, she didn't know Trinity's current state, and handed her over with the same, firm instructions, along with a nice heavy glare.
"How you doing, Trin?" she asked, giving the queen a gentle pat on the head.
"Great, considering I'm just starting on squeezing half a dozen giant water voles out of my-"
"Okaayyy, I get it, girl. No worries, I'm here. I know what I'm doing."
"Do you really? Because I'm beginning to sincerely doubt that!!" Mothers were always so cranky… at least she could help this one more than she could the others. Vets got suspicious when that sort of thing happened. Focusing her mind back on the task at hand, it wasn't long until Trin calmed down a little - a break between kittens. It'd be awhile until the next one came.
Sighing, she leaned back on her palms, leaving Trin be for the moment. Flash's kitten had quieted down, and she took it back from, checking her over. The other kitten was so quiet, she'd almost forgotten about it.. and Dragon's presence in the room.
"… why are you so stubborn?" The comment came literally out of nowhere, and it was rather hard to tell who it was directed at. Everyone was quiet, cats and humans alike, and she turned to look at Flash. "Well?"
"I… what do you mean?" He sounded suspicious - he always did when she asked questions.
"Why are you so insistent on being hostile towards me?" He opened his mouth to say something, but she cut him off, continuing as she set the kitten at Trinity's belly. "Look at you, even now. Sitting over there, all aloof, not saying anything. What's so wrong with me?" More quiet.
"…you already know the answer. Why are you asking?" Did he have to be this way? Aughhh… then again, it was sort of the truth.
"I know, I know. It's because of Dad. But, you wanna know a secret?" She leaned back again and looked at him. "I'm not Dad. I can't help it that he had me, too. I can't help it that he fell in love with my mother after yours. I can't help it that he.. just ran off." She twisted to the side, wrapping her arms around her legs. Flash was still quiet - she wasn't sure why. She didn't know if he was angry, or sad, or actually thinking for once. She didn't know anything about him anymore.
"You know what you're doing? You're projecting. You look at me and you see everything you hate, and you hate me because I'm the product of it. Well you know what, I can't help that either. You need to stop brooding over it." Her brother stared at her for a moment, slack-jawed, and then he glanced to the side. He shook his head, and responded.
"Let's… not do this right now. We can talk later." Talk later? Well that was some improvement. She followed his glance, and caught sight of Dragon again - ah. Right. She's completely airheaded that. Where had she thought that first kitten had gone too? Idiot. She stood up, approaching the other girl.
"Here - I think he's ready to go to his mother for now. He needs to get some milk in his system before too long." Maybe she hadn't overheard them - but really, she probably had. Not that it was a big deal… everyone who knew the two siblings also knew they had issues. They'd had their spats in not-too-private places before, after all. God. Were they really that screwy? One hell of a family… and she didn't at all mean that in the positive way.
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Mar 26, 2011 4:40:27 GMT -5
Dragon was distracted with the kitten (who was the most important thing in the world), but she wasn't that distracted. Her drama radar locked on, and her little concentration beam was dead center. There was some juicy stuff here. So they were half siblings, and Flash's mum had run off or died or something and then his dad had remarried and he blamed his half sister. What a baby. She would mock him with it later, when she figured out a delicate but stinging manner to do so.
Of course, the word projecting struck her a little bit. Hadn't she been accusing herself of that, earlier? Still, she kept getting convenient new reasons to dislike Flash that distracted her from the reason she'd disliked him in the first place. Her like for Mika (despite the fact that the older girl seemed to be one hundred percent flake) was only growing. Although it dipped a little bit when the girl insisted on taking the kitten back. Dragon was sure she was saying important things, so she let the kitten go, but the face she was making could probably break hearts. She looked like Mika was taking away her only child COMBINED with her lover COMBINED with her mother COMBINED with... well... a kitten.
"Oh... ok..."
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 12, 2011 1:13:46 GMT -5
Oh man, that face. That face. If anyone knew what a good puppyface was, it was someone who had routinely seen puppies - and Mika had to say, this was one of the best. She softened a little more, taking the kitten back delicately.
"Don't worry, I'm sure I'll need your help with him again in a little bit," she assured the girl, who was starting to grow on her already. "He just needs to go back to his mum and his sister for a moment." She moved back to where Trin was, placing the kit carefully at her belly. Xan was there too, licking the queen between the ears. "As for you-" Mika fixed him with an icy glare, and the black cat paused, his ears going back. "You little scoundrel, you promised! You PROMISED!"
'Well, I-I... I couldn't help it, I'm just a cat!' he protested, though he avoided her eyes the whole time. 'Animal instinct, you should know all about those!'
"We're all animals, Xan. Some of us are just apparently smarter than others. DON'T EVEN-" She cut him off early, the little cat lifting his whiskers and opening his mouth. "Don't start with me, Xan. Oh, the Headmaster is going to kill me. Thank you, Xanthur D. Rythos. Thank. You."
"...your cat has a middle-"
"Don't you start either." Tonight could be going so much better...
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 19:50:17 GMT -5
After five kittens and a lot of speculating on Dragon's part about exactly what Mika's cat's middle name was, everything had settled down a lot and the weird looking kittens had started nursing. Dragon was probably a little closer than was strictly necessary, fussing and annoying Mika every time Flash's cat so much as shifted towards one of the little kittens. She had it in her mind that they were going to get squished, and Mika's expertise didn't seem to be able to convince her of anything otherwise.
It was about two, maybe two thirty in the morning at that point. Mika had stepped out of the room, probably to let Miss Secretary know what had happened. Dragon was still sitting right next to the box with the kittens in it, her arms wrapped around her legs as she stared with hawklike intensity at the very first "miracle of life" she'd witnessed. It was messy and kind of nerve wracking. She couldn't picture someone making a movie out of it, that was for sure.
Despite her concentration on the kittens, there was only so long you could really stare at seven sleeping cats before at least looking around at the rest of your surroundings. Flash was in the same corner he'd been all night, sulking like a child. He was practically part of the furniture. Her eyes traced around the rest of the room, resting momentarily on the single most beat up looking guitar she'd ever seen (did it have a chunk out of it?).
"Do you play, then?" she asked, suddenly breaking the enlongated silence. She pointed at the guitar when Flash looked at her as if she'd spoken in tongues. "The guitar. Do you play?" She used to play around on Alexa's drums, a very long time ago.
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 25, 2011 20:18:37 GMT -5
He looked up, surprised and exhausted, then over to where she was pointing.
"Uh, yeah... not as much as I used to, though." The night had been long and tiring, and this thought seemed to be the first thing to spur his interest. After a momentary pause of contemplation, he got up off the ground, moving over to the guitar itself to put his hand on it. "I've had this one awhile - even had to partially rewire the inside once, thanks to Brett and his big mouth." He meant that quite literally, too... damn shifters. "Used to write my own music too, but... not for awhile." Flash glanced over at Dragon again. He wasn't sure why he was still trying to be civil with her - he was positive she was just going to snap back with some comment about him, as he'd come to expect in their few encounters. Maybe he was just too tired to try and be passive aggressive, hell if he even knew anymore...
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 20:22:45 GMT -5
Dragon was unusually quiet... Well, unusually quiet for when she was around Flash, anyway. She was thinking, which was something she tended to avoid... Thinking about the past, anyway.
"I had a friend once," she said, her voice sounding a bit hollow. "A couple, really. Back when I was a real little kid. Alexa... She was kind of my partner, I guess. She had a bunch of musical instruments. She couldn't play half of them, but she liked the way they looked. Me and some friends, we used to go there, after classes, when nothing much was going on, and just sort of wail on them. We were all absolute shit at it, of course." She waved her hand vaguely. "We didn't have a clue what we were doing, but it was a fun way to pass the time, especially when the weather was too bad to go outside."
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 25, 2011 20:52:28 GMT -5
"Sounds like it," he said. He picked up his guitar, taking a moment to think back as he played with the knobs and made sure everything felt right. He'd made most of his friends when he'd come to Ansem, and barely remembered any of the ones he'd had in the past. His friends came and went fairly quickly, he never held any for a steady time. Jacob was more of an acquaintance and occasional buddy than a close friend, and while Brett was proving to be an exception, he didn't know how long that would last once the slightly younger boy stopped flunking and actually graduated.
A quick plug and a flick later, the gentle buzz of life returned to the beat up guitar and the worn amp beside it. He gave it a go for just a second... f# g# b c# f# g# b b e d# c# b f# g# b c# b d# d# g# f# b... before looking back up. "Music is a good way to make memories."
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 21:08:43 GMT -5
Dragon listened to Flash fiddle around for a few minutes, before there was a pause in the playing and she finally chirped up.
"That thing is more beat up than your cat, and she just gave birth five times," she said dryly. She didn't bother asking why he didn't get a new one. Who had money for that kind of thing? "Oh, that reminds me... Hold on." She reached into her bag and pulled out something small, square, and metallic. She'd made it just the other night, thanks to the random half-broken shit that she had combined with the random half-broken shit Flash had had laying around his workshop, the key to which he was /never/ getting back.
It was covered with little plastic squares that lit up red when she pushed them. After fiddling with it for a minute, she turned a knob and it started making little 8-bit beeps. She had to fuck with it a little bit while it was looping, and then she had to fiddle with a knob that seemed to effect tempo... But sure enough, it was playing the same pattern Flash just had.
"It works," she said, seeming pleased with herself. "I wasn't sure... I just made it the other day, and I'd never made a synthesizer before. But it's just a little eight bit, eight beat loop." She held it up, and it did look kind of piece meal and simplistic. But hey, it worked! It just looped, over and over.
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 25, 2011 21:39:55 GMT -5
Flash couldn't help but crack a little smile at her comment - he wasn't going to deny it, his guitar had seen much better times over the years. He looked up, admittedly a little intruiged at the contraption Dragon had. He looked back down a for a moment while she fiddled with it, strumming at the strings a little more, playing the same notes, making sure his guitar was still in-tune. He was surprised when she got it playing the same tune in a relatively quick amount of time, and let his guitar rest on his lap while he looked at the little machine.
"Huh. Impressive." It was impressive that she'd built it, yes, but that wasn't actually what he was talking about with that particular phrase. "You've got a good ear for music... and you say you made that, too? Not bad at all." Okay, so sure, she was one hell of a prickly bitch, and had probably stolen his workshop key (some of those parts looked familiar..) but he couldn't help being impressed. "You're better with that than almost all of the guys I know, actually."
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 21:47:26 GMT -5
Dragon rolled her eyes, signaling a sudden re-appearance of "oh, right, I forgot I hate you" Dragon. "You sound just like this idiot back at en... That place. He was a technopath too," she added, fixing him with a sharp, piercing blue glare. "He had it in his head that girls didn't have the right kind of brain to be any good at electronics. ...I actually only started fiddling with it to prove him wrong," she admitted. Simon had been a prick, though, so she didn't want to credit him with much of anything. She was never as good as him, either, but that was just because he was cheating.
She waved away Flash's comment about her musical prowess. "Oh please. Anyone could do that; you just played the notes." A real genius probably would have known exactly what notes they were immediately and not have had to fiddle around to find the one that matched. But the device itself, that was something she was willing to take credit for. "I'll make it better. I think I can add a knob and make it play different sounds, like a proper synthesizer. It's kind of plain as it is right now." She pressed a few of the buttons as it looped, making the simple notes into chords. "And it can only handle three notes per beat. Any more and it starts freaking out."
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 25, 2011 22:05:51 GMT -5
Flash would argue, as he always did, that he wasn't technically a technopath - he dealt with electricity, not technology, after all - and he could deal with a lightning storm just as well as he could with a generator. He decided to just roll his eyes back at her and leave it though, for the moment. He was too tired and things were going to well for him to start up that argument right now.
"No no, I mean it," he insisted, though that little grin of his had returned. "You'd be amazed how horrible some people are with music, even if it's right in front of their faces." He watched as she fiddled with it a little more. Hmm. Normally if he'd heard of someone with this sort of project, he'd have referred them to Brett - he was the one who messed with the sound systems, after all. He'd even run the music for the Masquerade, since he knew how to work the system better than the staff. However... Flash figured he'd keep this one to himself. For reasons that were clearly simple interest in music. Yes. "Well, I should have the sort of supplies you'd need in my workshop room... that is, if things have stopped moving around in there..." It was him who fixed her with a blue gaze this time, though it was more bemused than accusatory. "It seems one of my keys has gone missing."
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 22:13:22 GMT -5
"Really?" Dragon said, her face carefully blank. She blinked her ice blue eyes slowly. "That is unfortunate. You should be more careful with your things." The slightest hint of a smile crept through, unbidden, but she smothered it as quickly as it arrived.
Honestly, she could have married Bonnie for his habit of stealing shiny objects. She got more scraps for machines that way, and the key to Flash's workroom had been a real gem. She shrugged, however. "Honestly, it's just a side project. These days I'm more concerned with robotic chickens." She pulled what could only be a full sized robotic rooster out of her bag to show him. "Not as heavy as it looks. Watch." She pulled out what appeared to be a remote control, flicked her hand across the rooster's beak, and it came to life. She walked it around the room, and then towards Flash. Once it was next to him, it lurched forward to peck and the man's knee.
"Kind of useless, really. But I'm thinking of some sort of... gas expulsion system..." She walked it back to herself and turned it off, flipping it upsidedown. A screwdriver was suddenly in her hand, and she was opening it up. "It's still pretty empty inside, honestly. That's why it's so light. I'm thinking of maybe having it fold up like a Transformer or something. I dunno what it's for yet."
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Post by Kitten King on Sept 25, 2011 22:27:28 GMT -5
He knew it was her - he was sure it was her. She wasn't fooling him with that innocent look. Still, he was somewhat distracted by the fact that of all the things she had on her, one of them was a robotic chicken. Wh- really? Who just sat down one day and made a robotic chicken? This girl was more interesting by the minute. He moved his knee as the mechanical bird pecked at it, watching it move around curiously.
"And you just sat down and made this? Out of scrap parts?" Shit, man. Sure, he could do that, but he had an edge above most of the competition. She didn't even have that, and she was his level. He thought for a moment about suggesting a camera - super stealth recording chicken! - before realizing that a chicken was really anything but stealthy. Now on that tiny mechanical mouse she'd had before, maybe... "If you could install a big soundbox in it, it'd make one hell of an alarm clock for a sleeping roommate." Hey, it was the natural thing to think with a rooster, right?
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Ixtlilton
Moderator-In-Training
he knows where all the naughty boys and girls live
Herp
Posts: 205
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Post by Ixtlilton on Sept 25, 2011 22:32:15 GMT -5
"Huh?" she said, seeming confused at his confusion. "Well, yeah. I was bored. There's nothing to do here, and there's more shit laying around than there ever was with the doctor." She shrugged. "Schoolwork only takes so long, and I have to do something." It occured to her that he was probably specifically confused as to why she made a chicken in particular. "I have a mouse, too," she said defensively. It wasn't like she was obsessed with chickens. Actually, he'd broken her mouse. She'd fixed it, of course, but he was still an asshole for it.
"And don't go pulling out your static buzz, either," she scolded. "You fried my mouse, and this chicken is a lot more intricate." She snorted at his suggestion. "I'd love to see Lilith's face if I did something like that. But honestly, she'd probably spaz out and smash it into a million pieces, and I don't feel like putting it back together again. "Besides, I already have a soundbox." She gestured again to her bag, but he hands were full with chicken at the moment. "It's not very GOOD, mind. I'd like to go to town and buy some real supplies, but I've got no money... you know, plus the whole 'mutant freak' thing we've all got going on."
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