Here kitty kitty

[walkingballpit]

I.

[ Robbie is storming out of his quarters, which look decidedly disheveled. Borderline “a weather wizard got really pissed in here”, although not yet at the “did a bomb go off?” level. He figuratively grabs anyone he sees, with a half-hearted attempt at literally. There’s an air of repressed freneticism. ]

Hey.

[ He sounds like Ross Gellar. No one hears that greeting and expects to hear good news afterwards. Robbie straightens up a bit and tries to brighten up to match. ]

Sooo... I have this cat, right? You’ve seen him. Orange. Stripey. Cat-sized. He goes by the name of Niels, because I was even more annoying at 15 than I am now.

[ He pulls the thin blanket haphazardly up on his bunk, because that makes it better. ]

Only right now - I don’t have this cat. I can not find that darn cat. We have to find him before he scratches the wrong person.

II.

[ An hour into the search, Robbie is setting up a cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and a Wil E. Coyote trap for the roadrunner. From the looks of it, the sequence of things that can be bumped, rolled, or manipulated will all eventually lead to a box being lifted, rather than dropped. It will never trap anything, but the goal is actually to seduce Niels with milk and some scraps that Robbie stole from the mess to stay in one place long enough to be found and brought back to safety. ]

Break time’s over, Niels.

[ Robbie carefully adds one more thing, a single boot, and backs away. ]

III. [ Your choice - or let me know you want something different. It doesn’t have to be related to the cat hunt. ]

Comments

[walkingballpit]

[ Robbie blinks because he wasn’t expecting small + brightly coloured + wearing a collar to equal sentience. He should know better about judging a book by its cover, but it was playing with a cat trap and ate tin foil. All signs pointed to ‘pet’, despite the unknown species. ]

Okay, you’re not a pet.

[ Robbie spreads his arms wide, hands palms up, and shrugs. ]

I’m still going to call you bud unless you give me a name. It’s better than shortstack.

[ With a slight hesitation, Robbie crouches down and starts resetting the area as best he can. The fangs have been noted, and he’s not about to have his face gremlined.

He’ll have to figure something out to replace the balloon for a noisemaker and the tin foil ball. ]

Niels is my pet cat, and he’s AWOL right now. He’s good at getting in trouble, so I need to find him before he creates an army of kippers out of Stuff. Or worse, he scratches up an exec. Bribes work, but if he thinks it’s his idea - like if he thinks he’s getting away with something clever getting to that milk - that works better. I’m not going to hurt him - or you, for that matter.

[ It’s hard to be that afraid of a fanged alien when it’s hiding behind a box. ]

[loomingterror]

[When Robbie concedes to him not being a pet and starts talking to him like another person, no questions or condescending tone, it’s enough to calm him a bit. Not enough to get him out from behind the box, but he at least lets his fangs retract back into his gums as he watches the human cautiously try to reset the cat trap.]

My name’s Ickis.

[Which he definitely preferred over bud or shortstack.

Listening to him talk about Neils and his fear of the cat getting into the wrong thing or running into the “execs”, it's hard not to be reminded of his own share of trying to hide pets from authority figures that would rain hell on his head if they found out about them. And he hadn’t yet made the connection between uniform and position in the hierarchy of this place, but by the way he talked, it sounded like they were probably on the same rung. “New Hires”.]

Mhn...We-Well...[Speaking up cautiously, then thinking better of it, he stops himself, unsure for a second of what the rules of engagement with humans would be in this situation. But then, he’d never really followed those rules anyway. Why start now?] w-when I’ve had to hide pets and they got away, they somehow always seemed to get into the one place that w-would get us both into the most trouble. What would be the worst places a cat could get into here?

[walkingballpit]

“Hey, Ickis. Nice to meet you.”

[ He nods his head, but resists going for a fist bump with someone so skittish. It would also probably be mistaken for aggression.

Robbie groans under his breath and nods again as Ickis tries to help theorize where Niels could be. ]

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. He’s found the worst place to be, and we don’t even know where that is. This is a giant, mobile corporate base. He could be in the engine room, he could be on the bridge, he could be peeing on the CFO’s houseplant. He’s like your size - to him, this is all a giant cat condo.

[ He considers the new guy, tilting his head to the side. ]

You came out of that grate, right? Cats go for dark, enclosed spaces - or high spaces. Where’s the worst place you could get?