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GM: Walker
Players: Nine
Synopsis: Nine goes on an astral quest. Cat things happen. Baubles are smashed, ears are scritched, some wrestling occurs and lessons are learned.
Date: 31 January 2081
«Plot» Walker revs up the log and asks for consent to AQ consequences.
«Plot» Walker says, "Then if you want to pose your setup and projecting to the Threshold we can go from there."
«Plot» Nine consents to the consequences of my… R5 AQ: Spell Learning (Extended Detect Phrase).
Within astral space, Nine still looks very mewch like her own self - sable hair and verdant eyes except with a few adjustmewnts: additional ears (feline triangles) atop her humanoid noggin and her skin tone actually seems to be on the silvery side of gunmetal grey, too, whilst her active foci show up.
As the material world fades away around her, followed swiftly by its astral reflection, the green-eyed mage is left floating in the absolute void between planes: moving towards the Threshold, certainly, but without any indication of movement. Time stretches out as the darkness presses in around her until she hears a voice, breathy and distant, from behind her.
"Nine Lives!"
Despite it seeming to whisper in her ear, the blackness around her seems as empty and oppressive as ever.
One of her dark brows quirks up in a Spockish manner as she curiously glances toward the whispered voice on whichever side that might have seemed to be! Getting her bearings, or trying to, she pipes up in a cheerful fashion what is the standard greeting of the B Team: "Hello and Welcome!" even though the Dweller was probably here all along, and it is she who just arrived!
"Nine Lives!"
Again from behind here, and with no sign of the Dweller having moved. Behind her though is a smile, all brilliant white teeth in a feline grin. As it chuckles, the Dweller fades into view from the smile out -
because who says timeless spirits from beyond the planes can't catch up on their reading?
Fully formed, the Dweller appears as a rather large and handsome tortoiseshell cat, fur a mix of night black and bright blond. "Must be getting hard of hearing," it taunts her before licking its paw fastidiously, "That's why you're hear, right?" Somehow, the mage can actually detect the deliberate pun being misspelled.
Nine felinely grins just before she cracks up over the deliberate pun, "It is!" Stepping closer, she reaches out to Dweller Cat with a behind-the-ear scritch! "Hear to teach my anchors how to hear." She even laughs at her own joke, too.
Dweller Cat looks a little unsure about this whole ear scritching business, but ends up giggling - a strangely human sound for a cat - at the pun as she approaches and thus is a little surprised when the scritches turn it's cat brain to warm fuzz. A purr that starts soft and rapidly builds to a crescendo that not only fills the black space with sound but also light - sound that vibrates her bones and light that shines through her - before disappearing.
The feline mage is left in a new space, a tall, airy room filled floor to ceiling with shelves. If they held books it would look like a library but instead each holds a series of silken cushions cradling glass spheres no larger than an apple.
"MRRRRRrrrrrraowII like this game, Nine Lives!" the voice cries out, echoing around the room so it seems to come from everywhere at once, "But if you want to teach them you'll have to learn yourself!" In front of her is a table littered with parchments and pens, a lifetime's worth of scribbled notes to sort through.
Nine certainly knows the bast ways to dole out feel goods. She does so and tandemly purrs (too) until Dweller Cat suddenly disappears! Where did they go? Quickly glancing (here and there), she takes note of the interesting shelves with those cattious cushions under those glass spheres and then all those writing supplies, too. She jokingly comments, "Well, it looks like you played with the papers and pens." She lets out a quick laugh before scooping up dishevelled parchments which she straightens up, doing so rather repeatedly — and with unending patience — until there is a neat stack upon the table top. Then, the sorting purrcess cat finally begin. If she can actually read these!
As she stacks the parchments neatly on the table, it quickly becomes obvious to Nine what the scribblings are. Page after crumpled, ink-stained page is covered in notes and hastily scribbled hermetic formulae, apparently all an effort to detect sound. Upon realising this, she notices a soft whispering that was always there but only now makes itself known.
A quick inspection of a couple of the glass spheres confirms it: each contains a voice, and each whispers a different phrase. Whoever the note-maker is or was, they've spent years in vain trying to find a particular bauble among the throng. Looking between the shelves, row upon row seem to march on forever.
After straightening out all the crumpled notes and then sorting through them (which certainly takes some time), Nine ultimately reads each-and-every one before finally leaving the neat pile of design notes on the table top. Then, simply closing her emeraldine eyes, Nine ultimately follows her quad ears and mathemewgicat instincts as she gracefully glides toward the correct direction which might locate the right sphere. Of course, she holds out both hands, so walking blindly will not end up with her body checking any random shelving!
There's a bit of tinkling as a couple of shelves are gently bumped as she floats by, but besides that the only sounds are the soft whispering of the spheres. Shelf after shelf glides by, none of them quite fitting with the notes she found on the table, until her cat ears prick up at something that fits the pattern!
Drifting closer, she finds one sphere rocking back and forth on its cushion, the voice coming from inside it her own, albeit rather more irate than normal as it exhorts an anchoring focus to LISTEN for once.
Whenever Nine bumps into any shelf, she makes sure to set things right again, making sure that the orbs are on their cushions like they should be before finally reaching her own voice. She curiously observes the associated sphere before catfully lifting it into her silvery handpaws. "Well, hello there. Mmm, sounds like you might need to go take a breakfast break or a cat nap and then come back with pawsitive purrsuasion?" Catfully rotating the glass orb, the cougarly magi checks out every pard of it in a visual way then simply listens with closed eyes once mewre.
As she closes her eyes, the ranting of her voice still carrying on from the sphere, Nine experiences an odd sensation: a little like being dropped into freefall but with indecisive gravity. After being jerked one way then another for an unpleasant few moments, she comes to rest, the soft whispering of the orbs now gone.
An unpleasant crack of breaking glass cuts the silence and the orb in her hands shatters into powder. In front of her, an aggravated hiss announces that she has company: a large tabby with a lustrous silver coat with back arched and fangs bared.
When things go sideways, Nine opens up her green eyes once mewre but does not catually resist the indecisive gravity, just barrel rolling along with it all. Then, there is the powered glass and the hissing feline! Nine kips up to her strappy-booted footpaws then dusts off her silvery handpaws. "Howdy! Please, forgive mew. I cat pet you and give you the bast scritches you ever had for bothering you in your home…" Well, is it the feline's home? She takes note what the surrounding environs might be but never disregards the fussy feline!
At first it seems like she's standing in some immense arena: a huge circular space with towering walls. Then she notices the tartan blanket underfoot and perspective shifts. Fluffy walls, blanket… very angry cat? Yup, that's a giant cat basket all right. As the understanding dawns on her, the hissing critter grows in size to match the basket before claws extend and it lunges at the interloper!
Petting negotiations are turned down, and Nine softly sighs a quiet breath which she does not really need to truly breath in the metaplanar realm, but still does because old habits from the meat world die hard. Darting forward, Nine moves beyond the overcast shadow of the incoming paw so ginormous that being caught underneath would surely spell doom in capital letters for her. Though, she is incredibly swift, never letting the big paws curb stomp her, basically playing like the DDR machine at CHROME! and simply avoiding all 4, until the tail swipe onto which she jumps aboard until she leaps off that swinging appendage and finally lands on back fur. She grabs ahold of the silvery strands, shouting aloud ye olde song lyrics: "Do you really want to hurt me? Do you really want to make me cry?"
The giant feline, clearly frustrated by the smaller figure's agility, grows increasingly irate as she evades it, paw after giant paw slamming down but always a little shy of where she is. Climbing on to it's back doesn't improve matters at all, the giant now meowling at the top of it's lungs as the mage takes hold of it's fur, flailing around like a mechanical bull with a dwarf on its back.
Only as she shouts out the song lyrics does the animal's demeanour change: the thrashing stops and it sits down on its haunches, yowling out a quite impressive rendition of the old chorus.
When the giant cat finally sits, Nine lets out a relieved sigh then lets go, turning 180 as she slides down the sloped back of the metaplanar cat to the cushioned floor of its bed where she inadvertently disturbed it. After the softest landing, she kips up once mewre and sings along with the yowling one while walking forth to where she can gently pat those silvery handpaws of hers upawn the tabby's nearest bigger paw.
As the creature calms it shrinks - or perhaps it only seemed so big while it was angry? In either case by the time Nine has dismounted the tabby is merely the size of a tiger. It lifts a paw to touch it to hers, its eyes reflecting the green in hers as it stares into them.
"Listen!"
The voice of the Dweller Cat sounds in her ears and there's a moment of dislocation as the disparate pieces fall into place as understanding dawns. After a moment of blackness the mage finds herself back in her body; a little stiff perhaps, but unharmed and a little wiser.
Nine definitely listens! She does so with keen ears (all four) and doles out a quick scritch behind the other's ear just before going still and soaking up Citadel-ic wisdom. Already here? Wow! She is a bit awed about the quest speed but chalks up such things as just being 'that good'. So vain! Waking Up May Be Hard To Do (shoobie doobie doo down down), but she does so in the meat world, the saviour advanced mewdkit sensors also indicatting this. "Honey, I'm home!" says she without actually yelling but with a Cheshire grin.
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