The meowing and fur across her face woke her before her alarm did, and Taalia pushed Sacha off of her with a grumble as she sat up. "Waitasec-- use your words--" She cut herself off with a pthpthpthththth noise as she tried to get a cat hair out of her mouth. "Sacha I swear to god--" Another meow. "What?"

Sacha sat on the bed in front of her, tail wrapped around his feet and the tip slowly swishing. "I used my words. You slept through them."

"Bullshit," she grumbled again after a moment to think about it. "I'm not that heavy of a sleeper--" She turned to get out of bed, yawning and squinting into the sun coming through her blinds. As she stood, one hand scratching her stomach under her pajama shirt and the other blocking the sun, Taalia looked back to him. "What the ******** do you want?"

Sacha got to his feet, jumped from the edge of her bed to her dresser, and from there got on his hind legs to bat at the stick that would close the blinds. "Would this not help your problem?"

"Yeah, I guess." Taalia took the hint, reaching up and twisting the stick so that the blinds closed. Her eyes felt immediate relief and the spots began disappearing after a couple of blinks. "Anyway--what do you want? And you know you're not allowed on the dresser. Get down."

"You can't stop me."

"I will pick your a** up--"

"This time."

"Sacha!" Exasperated, Taalia stretched and turned away to survey her clean laundry basket. "I will starve you. I have thumbs."

"You will not." But Sacha jumped down from the dresser anyway, a heavy thud that she felt in her feet. "But I thought you should know about the storms from space and the world-eating serpent." He sat back on his haunches there, tail curling around his feet again as he watched her for her reaction.

"The what?" Taalia squinted at him, this time in confusion, mid-reach for a shirt to replace the nightshirt she'd just taken off. "Are you high?" She didn't bother saying anything about him watching her dress. He'd been in the same room as her fully nude so many times over the time since she'd brought him home that it didn't even register anymore. Sure, he was sentient now, but it still had that same near-clinical level of sterility about it.

Likewise, Sacha didn't comment on it as she resumed changing her clothes. "Hardly. There have been reports of storms outside. I was letting you sleep, but the reports are getting more numerous, and there is a world-eating serpent."

Taalia paused in shimmying out of the bottoms of her pajamas. Then, finishing that and kicking them to the side, she sighed heavily, taking off her bonnet and tossing it onto the bed. "Can I take a shower first?"

"The end of the world will probably wait that long, yes."

"Thanks." She stooped, grabbed the rest of the clean clothing she'd found, tossed the dirty clothes into her hamper, and made for the bathroom.

Thirty minutes later, Taalia emerged in her clothes for the day, toothbrush brushing her teeth with one hand while the other took her shower cap and threw it underhand behind her to the vanity sinks to dry. "So," she began, mouth full of toothpaste, "I'm about to go figure out why those purple clouds are in the sky, aren't I?"

"You're starting to get it."

"Listen," she thumbed a dribble of saliva and toothpaste from her chin, "if I wanted to be sassed, I'd've called Ahmaud or--hell--Hydor or Faust. I've been awake forty-five minutes." She turned back to the sink, moving the shower cap out of the way and spitting into the sink. As she rinsed her mouth and hands, "be nice to me."

"When do I get to meet any of these people you talk about?" His tone was mild, but she shot him a look anyway. "It's a fair question."

"I don't know. When Ahmaud and Sarah come over next. They've been busy with band s**t. As for Faust, I don't know how to get ahold of him except for asking Hydor. As for Hydor, I could probably call him, I don't know."

"Are you going to call him about this?" Sacha groomed his whiskers.

"Why would I?" She swished and spat mouthwash into the sink, then dried her face. "He probably already knows about it. Anyway." She flicked the light to the bathroom off and joined Sacha in the bedroom. "I better get going so I can work on reversing the shower I just took. Are you coming?"

"Of course."

Taalia took a deep breath, opened the bedroom window to the fire escape ladder outside, and glanced around. It was late enough that probably no one was just randomly peering out of their windows or up at the condos. Even still, she stepped back inside to henshin up to Ancha before climbing out onto the fire escape. She waited for Sacha to join her before shutting the window. "I really need to get a padlock for the outside if I leave this unlocked from the inside, y'know?"

"It can be done," was his magnanimous reply. She rolled her eyes.

Once they were on the ground, Ancha squinted up at the sun setting behind the purple clouds and flashes of lightning. The wind was cool enough that she wished she'd brought a jacket, but not enough to make her go all the way back up to her condo for it. "Alright. Sky observed. There sure are purple clouds up there. What next?"

Sacha was silent, sitting next to her feet and looking up at the sky himself. After a moment, "we should go to your homeworld. See if this is, indeed, happening there."

"My home-- I mean, I guess." She puffed out her cheeks and exhaled the air slowly. "Might as well. Come on, then. You've never been to Ancha." Ancha crouched down, and Sacha dutifully climbed into her arms. For that matter, neither had Ancha, herself. But she had been reading the database Sacha mentioned to her, and she was learning things. Like how to get to her homeworld.

A moment later, there was a splash as Ancha's feet touched down in warm, shallow water. This was just in time for the water to pull back away from her feet. "What--" She looked to the side, eyes widening at the sight of a tall wave riding its way to shore under purple skies. "s**t! s**t s**t s**t!" Clutching Sacha to her chest, Ancha bolted for the nearby buildings for lack of higher ground. But the sand began to give and shift under her feet, and she was forced to drop Sacha and kick off her shoes to maintain her balance as she ran. It was lucky that the water had receded only in that Sacha was able to dash across the wet sand ahead of her instead of having to swim the whole way.

The wave was looming as Ancha tore into the nearest halfway sturdy building and flung doors closed behind her with reckless abandon. Anything that could stop the water coming.

"Ancha!" Sacha's voice caught her attention, and Ancha saw him waiting for her at the foot of some stairs. "Swimming is better than getting crushed, let's go!" She couldn't deny he was right. At least they could cling to debris instead of being buried by it. As a loud, weird sucking noise reached her ears, Ancha scrambled up the stairs after him. They reached the top and stumbled out onto the lightly sloped flat-top stone roof just in time for the wave to crash into the building. It shuddered and shook under them, groaning and straining. Pieces broke off and went tumbling. Spray and water from the wave cresting the top of the building knocked Ancha and Sacha off of their feet, and the wave itself threatened to take the whole building down into it.

But it held. And then the water receded and the first thing Ancha did was look for Sacha. He was right behind her, wet but otherwise none the worse for wear. "Jesus Christ. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Sacha shook himself. "You?"

"I'm good." She wrung out her skirt and looked back out over the ocean. It was roiling, dark and angry and surely about to send another of those waves their way if she was unlucky enough. "I think we should go back home, Toto."

"My name isn't Toto. Are you sure you're alright?"

"It's a-- nevermind. It's a movie." Ancha waved him off, flinching as lightning flashed overhead and the immediate peal of thunder made the stone under her vibrate. "I think we should either go back home or at least go inside."

"Good idea." The two of them made their way back to the stairs, now slippery and treacherous for the water coating them. "Don't slip, please."

"I'm good, I'm good." And she was, only skidding once and promptly correcting. It helped that her bare feet had better grip than she was sure her now-abandoned sandals would have had. Sacha, of course, had no issue, his paws finding easy traction on the rough stone stairs. Once they reached the ground floor, Ancha let out a low whistle and looked around. It was completely dry. The door closest to them hadn't budged. "Amazing. Maybe we would have been better off down here than you thought."

"Better safe than sorry. Can you get us home?"

"Sure, come here." Ancha crouched and gathered Sacha, got back to her feet, and focused back on her condo.

Nothing.

She frowned and tried again. Sacha watched her impassively the first retry, and the second, but after the third, "is something wrong?"

"It's not working."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it's not working." Ancha leaned over to let Sacha jump down. "I'm doing what I did to get here, to get back, and it's not working."

"Maybe there is a cooldown time between transits. I didn't see anything in the database to that effect, but this is not the first time your magic has not worked as intended, no?"

"...No, it's not."

Sacha nosed around the overturned furniture. "Where are we?"

"Buddy, I have no idea." She outstretched her arms and spun in a circle. "I have never been here before!" She dropped her arms to her sides and looked up and around. The building was tall, taller than it had seemed as she was making a mad dash up the stairs to the... roof? Roof, sure.

"Were you not curious about your namesake?"

"Not... until now." She frowned. "I've been busy. Hydor's was just an expanse of water in every direction, so I didn't have much of an example behind me." Not that nearly getting swept away by a wave was leaving much of an example in front of her, either. "Think we're safe to go outside?"

The thunder crashed before Sacha could answer, and he looked up at the high ceiling. "Best we not. We know now that the storms are here, too."

"Fair enough." Ancha watched Sacha root around. "What are you looking for?"

"Insignias, emblems, anything that could tell us what this building was."

"Does it really matter?"

"Are you not curious about your namesake?" The repeat question seemed pointed. Ancha frowned and debated retorting that, no, she was curious about not drowning or getting struck by lightning. But she let it go, instead. "Besides, we have little else to do but wait for you to be able to take us home again."

"Fair enough." Ancha paused for a moment and began to help Sacha root around in the overturned furniture and dusty, sandy linens. Periodically, the building would shake, and more water would wash down the stairs. But it flowed into a grate in the floor at the base of the stairs that Ancha hadn't seen previously, rather than out into the room where it would get everything wet. For that matter, the stairs were the only part of the room that had the rough texture to them, and the sides of each stair were raised and grooved to funnel water to the center. She paused to run her fingers down one of the grooves, seeing that it ultimately led to the grate in the floor. "Smart design."

"It must get wet often enough to warrant it." Sacha looked up at the ceiling. "Maybe the waves are not from the storm."

"No, I think they are. Think about it. We've--" the building shook again, and Ancha gestured around them, "been hit by several of them just since we've been here. Eventually this building would fall, right? It can't just keep up if this were something it normally had to deal with."

"Maybe you're right." Sacha inspected the grooves on the stairs and the grate they led to. "This is probably only for incidental water, then. Rain, perhaps."

"Probably."

"But... there is something under this grate."

"Oh yeah?" Ancha turned from where she was starting to fold and stack the linens in the room. Setting them to the side after all, she came back over and crouched to see what Sacha was looking at. "I don't-" But then she did-- when she focused past the grate, and past the grate and realised that 'past' the grate went feet, not inches. "You know, I wonder if this grate lifts." Ancha shifted her footing, hooked her fingers in the grate, braced, and pulled.

She almost went flying backward as the grate--much lighter than she anticipated, came up with ease. She was left standing for a moment with it in her hands with her staring down at it.

"Wild."

"There is a room under here." Ancha's eyebrows immediately lifted, and she set the grate to the side on the floor before leaning back over to see what Sacha was talking about. Sure enough, she could now see a room under them. It was dark, except for three bright beams of light streaming in from somewhere she couldn't see.

"Don't push me in," she joked as she laid down on her stomach and dangled her head through the opening.

"Is that wise? What if something hits you?"

"Nothing's going to--" The first, immediate thing she noticed was the echo. As her eyes adjusted to the much dimmer light, she realised that the light was coming from windows in the far wall on one side, but that those windows and light looked down into a pool of impossibly blue, deep, crystal-clear water directly below them. It took her a moment to notice the landing surrounding the pool, the shelving and storage.

"What do you see?" Sacha's voice startled Ancha, and she hit her head on the edge of the hole in the floor. Swearing profusely, she rubbed her head and pulled herself back to sit up. "I apologize for scaring you."

"It's whatever. But there's water down there, and some boxes and shelves." She sat back on her heels, rubbing her head a bit more. "Since you asked." Sacha moved to look for himself and, after a few moments, looked back up at her. "I don't know how to get down there, though."

"I didn't see a way either." The building groaned enough under the next wave that Ancha could have sworn she felt it move. It seemed Sacha was of a similar mind, because he got to his feet immediately. "Can you teleport us? We will have to investigate this later."

"Y'know what, let me try." Ancha let Sacha climb into her lap and focused on her bed.

This time, blessedly, it worked.

"Oh thank god." Ancha relaxed things she hadn't known were tensed when she realised she'd landed on the carpet in the living room. She got immediately to her feet, just as immediately dehenshining. "I know I have to go back, but not any time soon, I think. Not until the storms are gone so that I know whether or not those ******** waves are normal or not."

Sasha turned in a circle to pull a specific pen from his subspace and then tapped it with his nose. Taalia had seen him do this once before--something about some blueprints he'd found in a database--and knew what was coming, but still jumped when a full grown man replaced her cat. Hauling herself from the floor, Taalia looked over the six-something giant sitting on her floor with brown skin, bright green eyes, and long white hair.

"White is an interesting choice. People say it ages you."

"I like it. It matches my fur."

"What are you going to do with your hour?" As he rose to his own feet, she went from craning her neck down to look at him to craning it up.

"Take a bath. Knit."

"You're a grandma."

"And you're a troublesome grandchild."

"Yeah, whatever. I'm going to watch some Let's Plays on youtube. Have fun with your bath and knitting." Taalia flopped down onto the sofa and reached for the remote, but swore as she remembered the database. So the television remained off and out came her phone. Satisfied, Sacha went to take his bath. With a glance to the number on the corkboard by the front door, Taalia shot off a text to Hydor--Zachariah.

'My cat wants to meet you and Faust.'