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 Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:47 am
Prompt With the prevalence for star based shenanigans, it seems an overenthusiastic participant has taken to placing stickers on the foreheads of any animal they can find. A number of cats, dogs, rodents--anything they could get their hands on--is now donning a shimmery star sticker in the center of their foreheads. The cats almost perfectly resemble Mauvians; they have no aura, and no ability to speak, but that doesn’t mean the average person knows it. Good Samaritans have taken to trying to peel the stickers off of their foreheads--which is generally appreciated, unless they accidentally find a Mauvian. But then, most of the people who know about Mauvians are powered; do they know them well enough to tell the difference between them and an unfortunate cat? And how are Mauvians responding to these unwilling imposters?
He'd been ready to go home hours ago, but it seemed as though his trivial wants mattered little in the face of overzealous city-scale events and strangely demanding professors. It wasn't the overall activity that Nataniel cared about. Physical things didn't tire him to this degree. But the amount of sheer people he'd had to deal with in one day was almost dizzying. No one had been particularly mean. No one had been particularly rude, and he might even say some were considerate in that he was rewarded for his presence with small trinkets like buttons and a pretty purple charm. But the strain of niceties and social interaction was enough to leave him exhausted.
It really was much too much excitement- too many things going on with too many people present- for Nataniel to comfortably deal with. All he wanted was to crawl into bed so he could rise early the next morning for his normally scheduled routine...
He trudged home from the park, backpack slung over his shoulder, with clothes disheveled from constant activity and feeling almost disoriented from mental exhaustion. He had to admit that there had been a lot out of the ordinary going on, even without the festival as a distraction. It was really kind of a pain, to be honest. He considered summer classes to be much more strenuous and time consuming than average semester-long classes, so for all of this absolute nonsense to be occurring now, when his focus really ought to be elsewhere was... almost infuriating.
He sighed in quiet contentment as his apartment complex came into view. One way or another, things would level out in just a matter of weeks. Such was the way of time, to move ever forward.
That ought to have been the end of his day. Practically nothing stood between Nataniel and his bed now, except-
By some unfortunate happenstance, his gaze happened to wander across the street, to a snowy cat. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have thought anything of it. Cats were not uncommon creatures, and being the owner of a skittish rodent with a keen sense of smell for predators meant that Nataniel tended to avoid things like that. He didn't hate cats by any stretch of the imagination. Any creature should be rewarded for not being human.
And this one... did not look as though it had been rewarded. Pierced ears, wearing actual garments like necklaces and glasses, a star on its forehead. His first thought was that it had been captured by an excited child. Even just earlier that day, Nataniel had seen a woman pull a star sticker from the fur of a cat, cooing apologetically at it for all the troubles it had endured.
Nataniel wondered if this one had gone through something similar.
He glanced around, and not seeing an immediate owner or anyone else to handle the problem, crouched down. He extended a hand and clucked his tongue softly to beckon the cat over. If it chose to run at the sight of a person (as Nat would), he wasn't going to try and chase it.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 7:24 am
Arthur hated this. On a fog, it was left to baser instinct and the sticker on his head pulled badly on his fur. Meowing, it walked the streets hoping to find someone but more people were about to trample on him during the busy festivities of the holiday. After being hit by a shopping bag and nearly having his paw crushed under a heel, he darted away and went to rubbing his face against a bench leg and pawing at it without any luck.
All he knew was that this was painful and he wasn't happy but was getting too tired that just going to look for a place to sleep was growing more appealing.
The clicking noise caught his attention, further away from the shinning star lights and excited chatter of the many parties happening around the city. A man was crouched, hand out in the universal training of humans to try and get a cat's attention. Arthur was luckily a friendly cat.
Looking about, he meowed and chirped as he went across the street, face slightly smudged with dirt from trying to peel the sticky sticker and rubbed his face against the offered hand before trailing his body against it. He moved under the arm and around the man before coming back around and purring, rubbing his head against his hand.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 7:51 am
It had to be someone's pet, for all the willingness it had to come over to him. "What a mess..." Nataniel hummed softly as the cat rubbed against his fingers. And it really was. He couldn't imagine a cat would see a need for ear piercings, but someone had done it to him, yet he still came when he was called. The trust between animal and human wasn't broken yet, as absurd a thought as that was.
"You ought to know better," Nat chided the creature softly, rubbing at a dirt smudge on the cat's face with his fingers. "For all this nonsense someone has done to you, don't you know to stay away?"
He hoped any child's parents would keep their kid from treating an animal like this, but that seemed like a lot to bank on. ...But maybe it was the fault of some snobby, rich lady, dressing up her pet in all the gold adornments it wore. The sticker was a bit out of place then, wasn't it? And perhaps not the most comfortable on fur. Nataniel rubbed behind the kitty's ear. "I'll be careful taking it off," he promised. "But if you scratch me once, I'm done. Understood?"
It was ridiculous to talk to it like it knew what he was saying, but to be fair, talking to a cat wasn't so different than talking to his Dusk. It wasn't like the animal would judge him for this nonsense. Or understand, likely, but that didn't matter. Nataniel carefully set to the task of peeling the sticker from the cat's fur, trying very hard not to pull too sharply or abruptly.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 10:24 am
Before his awakening, Arthur had once been a stray, but years with being Eleanor's cat had made him friendly and happy for the company of people. The man was letting him, speaking in a soft tone, and he turned on his side, flipping over on the ground, as he enjoyed the ear scratches. As Nate pulled on the sticker, he tensed and his ears went back as his tail started to flick. A warning but not an attack. Nate hadn't crossed the threshold of biting just yet.
The sticker pulled but was easier than most stickers to get off fur namely due to a cresant moon bald spot under the spot. After pulling halfway, the sticker lifted off quickly.
A yowl and Arthur jolted as sense and identity rushed over him. In a convulsion that shakes his body, light shown before his body melted away. There, crouched on hands and knees before Nate, was a grown man with white hair, cat ears, and a tail in a star-speckled getup.
Blue eyes dilated large before shrinking to normal as Arthur stared back over his half-moon glasses.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 10:46 am
"I would be irritated too," Nataniel tried to reason with the cat as its ears went back and its tail flicked as he started to pull the sticker from its fur. It could have been much worse, though. It peeled free after hardly more than a second, and Nat took a moment to scrutinize the spot beneath the sticker. Had he been so rough to rip out that much fur? Here he thought he'd been being gentle...
He meant to apologize, particularly as a yowl slipped from the cat's jaws, but as light engulfed the creature, the thought seemed irrelevant. All this inexplicable nonsense recently. What if he truly was poisoning his mind with all that alcohol, and this was the result?
The light faded and there was-
A startled hiss slipped from his throat, and Nataniel's fist cracked against the boy's face before deep comprehension could occur. Though really, what was there to comprehend? There had been a cat, and now there was a person, and it was nonsense! Complete nonsense! He fumbled back, his crouched position not giving him proper balance to execute any particularly damaging blows, and scrambled to his feet.
What the ********. What the ********>! The shock was different than having even a few seconds to observe something unusual from afar. This was immediate and just before him. A... a cat person. "What-? What the <********>, man!" Nataniel snapped down at the boy on the ground.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 11:45 am
Reality came to him and Arthur was surprised he had changed at all. But just as he noticed he was a man, everything shot to a painful, blinding heat and he was on the ground. Glasses on the ground, Arthur clung to his face and shouted a yowl out that would make some neighbors hate cats for their entire life.
Groaning, Arthur rolled in the ground before pulling his hands away from his face to see his nose was bleeding.
He'd never been punched in the face before. Ever!!
It hurt awfully bad.
The man was yelling and Arthur slowly sat up, blood dribbling from his nose to his lips. "Ah - It's okay. I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't mean to. Please don't hit me again."
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 12:07 pm
'It's okay.' Nataniel's eyes narrowed at the other man's words, incredulous at the admission that it was 'okay' that he'd just been punched. But really, being aggressively startled was at least a standard reaction to a cat turning into a person, so Nat didn't feel have as inclined to apologize as the cat-man apparently did. What was this supposed to be. Why was all of this happening.
He kept his distance, dark eyes flickering from white, fluffy ears to gold rimmed glasses now on the ground to the specks of blood on the boy's pale fingers. This kitty- former kitty?- whatever- did not seem agitated in the same way Nataniel was, himself.
But that didn't make him sorry.
Nataniel shifted slightly, keeping a few paces between them but circling the downed cat to warily but curiously inspect from other angles. It didn't seem necessary that they come to further blows, but somehow Nat found himself extremely mistrusting toward this creature, as if he'd been lied to. 'Kitties deserved to be rewarded for not being people,' indeed. "I haven't made up my mind if I will or not," he admitted in response to the cat's plea. "What are you."
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 12:28 pm
He sat down slowly, hands up in the universal language of surrender.
He hadn't meant to change but ever since that sticker was out on by some children petting him at the festival, his mind had fogged over. The moment it came off, the swelling of magic and sense of who he was came back too strong. How the hell did he explain what he was to a normal person?
"I don't think you'll like the answer." Or believe it.
He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and frowned. "I guess the closest description an average person would get is that I'm an alien."
He looked up and tensed, holding his hangs up a little higher as if preparing to get hit.
"Maybe I can just change back?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 12:49 pm
What the hell was going on in this city. It had been his home for his entire life, and he'd never had half as many strange encounters as he'd had in the last month. There were stories, of course, if you cared to pay mind to such things, but Nataniel typically did not care for hearsay and rumor. He preferred facts with tangible, believable proof. There was a logical explanation for everything. That was what he believed. He rubbed at his neck in agitation.
Instead, literally everything was absurd.
If he wasn't drugged, hallucinating, or mentally unwell, 'absurdity' could be the only other explanation. But how could there be so many monsters, aliens, and whathaveyou just running amok and there not be more notice about it? He eyed the cat alien over the rim of his glasses. "You can change into whatever you want, then?" A cat, a shadow, a person- it seemed... as believable as one might expect.
That would at least explain why there wasn't more evidence. If they (assuming everything he'd faced up to this point was similarly an 'alien') could look 'normal,' there would be less reason for the average human to be suspicious. His lips pursed. How many strange people or strange creatures were 'aliens?' "Are there very many of you?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:04 pm
He wasn't hitting him - yet. So that was as good as any starting point and considering he was the one that saved him from the sticker, Arthur felt that they had equally gave each other the wrong impression.
"Oh no. I can't change into anything. Just - what I look like and what you saw. That's it. I'm not that magical or anything like that. If I could change into anything - my. That would be impressive." He admitted as he wiped his nose again and decided just to keep his sleeve against his nose.
"I'm not sure what you'd consider many. I'd say there isn't many of us. A small pound's worth maybe? At least here."
He pulled his sleeve again and breathed out. "I don't want to alarm you, but I can - reach into a space to get things. I'd like to get some napkins for my nose but I don't want to freak you out. Would that be okay?"
"And I'd like to thank you. For getting that sticker off. I couldn't think right with it on. So thank you. I appreciated your kindness. No one else was helping me."
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:34 pm
Just a human and a cat. What a weird combination for an 'alien' to have. Nataniel's eyes narrowed. Kitty boy could be lying to save himself from too-blatant scrutinization. It wasn't as if Nat knew him- or anything happening lately- well enough to judge what was 'reasonable' or not... It was strange, though, wasn't it? That an alien could mimic something of this earth so easily, unless-
"Is this something all cats can do?" Impossible, surely? If all cats could do it, then why didn't they? Why weren't more people aware of it? What need would an alien have for impersonating a cat to begin with? "...What brought you here? From wherever you came from?"
A small pound. So he knew of the pound, and already it didn't sound like 'a small pound' would encompass all the cats in Destiny City alone, to answer his first question, but it also sounded like there were more elsewhere. "Do the others turn into other things, then? Fish, birds, dogs, and the like?" He did have a little experience with person-ish creature-things. Kitty-boy didn't seem to me quite so moody as anything else he's encountered. A facade? Nataniel didn't know.
"'Reach into a space?'" He repeated, brows furrowing. If he thought on it, that seemed somewhat familiar, as well. An almost insignificant detail when he considered the surrounding situation, but still there, on the outskirts of his memory. "I've seen it before. Do what you want."
A sticker was really that bad? "You don't have an owner, then."
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:58 pm
When it seemed allowable, Arthur lowered his hands slowly and then seemed to reach into a pocket of space. A tear in the world around then and searched around.
"No. I'm not a cat. So your cats are just cats. I'm a alien. From another planet originally. A Mauvian to be specific though don't openly say that to anyone. If someone knows you know that term, they might think you are someone I associate with and you could get hurt. So please don't put yourself in jeopardy."
"And I was born here. Reborn here. I'm here to help with something that - well it's a lot to unload on someone and I think it might put you in a lot of trouble if you knew the full scope of things. Then again, I never really ever spoke to a normal person about all of this." But there was a good reason for it. They weren't supposed to talk to anyone about it.
"Ah, here we go." He pulled out some cafe napkins from his space and then worked to wad little pieces of them up and into his nose. That at least would stop the bleeding. "You really hit hard."
"The others don't turn into other things. We only look like cats the lot of us. Don't ask me why Mauvians look like Earth cats. I don't have that answer." It was a mystery to all of them.
"When I believed I was a cat, I had a owner. Some of us have owners because it's hard to live as a stray. Talking cats can't really get day jobs. We also like the company." He admitted.
"I can explain more but, can I ask, HOW do you know about space pockets. You said you've seen it before."
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:42 pm
It was all very confusing. And unnatural. And perhaps alarming? No, maybe not alarming. If Nataniel felt anything now it was mostly a frustration at hidden information, the potential for lies, and his own idiocy in believing any of this absolute foolishness. Or not being aware of it sooner. As he'd said, very confusing, very conflicting, very uncertain. But kitty's space pocket did seem about as similar as Nat could remember to dog boy's. There was no way they weren't affiliated somehow.
"A Mauvian," Nataniel repeated, as he committed the foreign word to memory. A fear of being hurt or jeopardizing himself did not plague him. More concerning was that someone would want to just from him knowing this cat. There was certainly more to be unboxed there, but perhaps most notably:
There were 'sides' to the aliens.
And the Mauvian side sounded small, and apparently being someone they associated with was dangerous and unwelcome. Though they were associating right now, weren't they? The fact still remained that Nataniel had no idea how much of this could be believed and how much he could trust kitty-boy. It seemed like 'not particularly much' if he didn't often talk to normal people but had suddenly elected to now with... little reason, as far as Nat could tell.
They were still standing out in the middle of the sidewalk, while the sky grew dark, and anyone could be about. Anyone could see this weird cat-eared-and-tailed man. ...Would they think what Nat had thought when he'd seen dog boy? A kid in a costume?
His sigh was soft. "My apartment is close. If it's more convenient, we could go there. I do have a roommate, though." He wondered if Gabe would still be out enjoying the festivities... Then, how many people knew about this? Nataniel was extremely closed-off and asocial. Would someone who was out even more- like Gabriel or Nat's little brother- be more aware of this?
He didn't know. It felt like he didn't know much of anything.
"There was a dog-boy," Nataniel answered as he moved to head for his building again. "He had a 'space pocket' like that too. He put energy in it." Or some similar nonsense. Nat didn't get it. It really was all very frustrating.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 5:07 pm
"Before that, I need to change back. The longer I look like this, the more I send a signal to unwanted attention. I don't want to bring that to your home. It won't happen when I look like a cat." He assured him as he breathed out. He had been attempting to change back but could feel how the sticker had stunned him and left him feeling disconnected from his own powers. Now things felt more settled and aligned within his person.
In the same glow as before, the cat from before was there, though this time with little pieces of tissue sticking out his very small nostrils. His fur on his chin were still red from dried blood.
"A dog boy...collecting energy?" He considered this information. Energy collecting was the Negaverse and the Dark Mirror Court. But a dog? The only creatures he knew were youma or wraiths and wraiths did not look like creatures.
"Hmm. That's concerning. I'm surprised you are alive to have witnessed that and that you knew it was energy. I only know of two sides that do that. Seems you've already had encounters with all this. I suppose I don't feel as bad now telling you about this if you already have exposure. How did they look like?" He asked as he moved up to the man and waited at his feet, staring up.
And yes, he was a talking cat. Despite the change, he still sounded the same.
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Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 5:36 pm
There was an internal struggle raging as Nataniel watched a fully grown man turn into a cat. It was true that he typically found it a bit easier to converse with animals. They were quieter, less judgemental, harmless. He didn't have anything against them, as he did when first meeting a person. But now he felt lied to. This super cute, snowy white cat was a person in disguise. And intelligent, the most dangerous aspect of all.
There was no saying for sure what else he was capable of, or what negative attention he could bring. Nataniel strode off down the sidewalk.
"Yes. There isn't another way to describe it." And he'd been convinced that it was a hallucination for the most part. Rationality dictated that he write it off as a dream or some such. And he would've, except there had still been that mark on his neck, where dog-boy bit him... It was absurd, and he wouldn't have told anyway if he hadn't just watched a cat turn into a man and back. So why did kitty repeat him as if he didn't know what Nat was talking about?
He shook his head. "It just... looked like a kid," Nataniel tried to explain further. "With wolf ears and a tail. He had paws, yellow eyes... That's it, I suppose." It felt like he should know better than to use the term 'werewolf,' no matter how close it came to his tongue. "He told me it was energy," though there may not have been any reason for Nat to believe that, either. Still, this part kitty did not seem surprised by.
They made it to his building, and Nat headed up the stairs to his second-story apartment. "This is the place. Are you going to be good if Gabe is home, or should I hide you in my bag or something?"
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