trans_9 | Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? [Open]

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Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? [Open]

In a truly feline move, Arhu wandered into the cafeteria as nonchalantly as if he hadn't been missing for who-knows-how-long. His tail waved through the air above him, and he approached Stacy's sensor and seated himself neatly, tail wrapped around his feet.

"I'd like something to eat, please," he requested, as polite as he could manage when his stomach was rumbling loudly enough that he was surprised no one else could hear it. When he received the standard bowl of whatever-it-was, he stared down at it, and tried to summon some sort of enthusiasm. He hadn't been enamored of this the first time he'd had it, and he wasn't thrilled now.

“Look, these ehhif might let you push them around, but I’m not going to. I’d like something better to eat than this.” After a moment, courtesy-lessons chimed in again. “Please.”

When nothing further manifested itself, he put his ears back, and stomped one paw hard on the urge to create a wizardry that would reduce the scanner – and that who part of Stacy – to slop of a similar consistency. Though…that made him think.

Hey, what all is in this? He stared down at his slop, and listened to the Whisperer as She gave him the components. Everything he technically needed, but in a form that was worse than the dry food the parking garage’s ehhif left out for him. Still, Arhu was not limited to just accepting this situation.

“Fine. You’re not going to give me real food, then I’ll make this real food.” Laying out a transport circle, he popped himself and the bowl over to a table out of the way.

“’Scuse me,” he muttered to the occupants that were at the other end of the table, mostly ignoring them as he started pacing a circle around the bowl. A few quick consultations with the Whisperer, and he started reading the spell to take the basic components in the glop and re-form it into a much more meat-like substance. At least the texture would be right then, and he’d certainly eaten worse-tasting things.

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As he was in the middle of a spell - alright, toward the end - he didn't answer her just yet. Instead he finished it up, and then said the word that was the wizard's knot, the equivalent of hitting the 'go' button. With a flash of silvery light, the contents of the bowl shifted and reformed, and then there was a raw piece of meat sitting in there. It wasn't particularly identifiable meat, but it was meat.

"Making this edible," he said smugly, waving his tail at her as he held it in place with a paw and began tearing at it.

Hit Girl stared a full minute. Seriously, this place was high on her "weird shit-o-meter," but so far animals, unlike Beastboy, could not speak, until she saw him do so now. She sighed.

"Ok, so you're a cat that does magic," she said, shaking her head. "What sort of world do you come from?"

The smug-kitty look was still in full force as he looked over at her. "Earth. Pretty standard version of the universe, too. And of course I do magic, I'm a wizard. There are ehhif wizards too, y'know."

He tilted his head curiously at her. Arhu was in no way any sort of expert on ehhif fashions, but there was something about her that didn't look quite like the people dressed similarly that he'd seen around the City. "What about you?"

She could forgive the smug look, she sure as hell didn't know magic. What was a little daunting was how he mentioned he was from Earth.

"Never heard of there being wizards on the earth where I come from," she said. "Maybe its a different kind of earth? I'm from New York, our version is pretty standard. I don't even know what E-hiff means."

Well, there was something she could at least not feel out of the loop about.

"I'm a hero in my world...well, sort of. No one really knows about us, but we do fight crime, and we're pretty good at it. I'm Hit Girl."

Forget that this crime fighting was initially spawned by revenge and the fact that there was no longer a "we."

"New York City?" He perked up in excitement, his whiskers going forward. "That's where I'm from! I live in a parking garage several blocks away from Grand Central Station - that's where I work." More smug feline looks. "I'm a worldgate technician."

"And ehhif means human, like you." Still he was feeling a tiny bit more kinship toward her than he might otherwise have, considering that they were from the same place. And suddenly, somewhere like this, that meant a whole lot. "Wizards do that too, sort of. We work behind the scenes to make the world better, to fight entropy and its effects."

At her name, his ears went back. He'd have no chance of saying that the same way she did. "Hi'hh Hh'irlh, I'm Arhu. Hunt's luck."

"No shit, really?" Well there was something to lift her spirits a bit: there were several people from New York here, and as it turned out, the cat was a...technician? "I've gone to Grand Central a few times myself, but we're situated around Hell's Kitchen."

Oh, that made sense...sort of? She didn't know a whole lot about magic to be tossing her opinion around easily, to be honest. For all she knew, those kinds of magicians might have even lived in her time, she just hadn't known it.

"I haven't met too many wizards," she said. "My world usually is pretty raw in the sense of less magical stuff, more violence and blood and guts. What do you mean by entropy?"

Arhu. Hmm. Kinda reminded her of the name Atreiyu, a name she liked since The Neverending story.

"Yep! It's not a bad place, either. There's a couple of good Dumpsters around the corner if Ahbah'd doesn't put out good food for me, and the deli guy in the concourse likes me. And I like pastrami." He glanced at the meat-like substance disdainfully. That certainly wasn't pastrami.

"Entropy is..." His ears went back, and finally he said, "It's violence, and blood, and guts. Entropy is death. The running-down of the universe, and the suffering of everyone in it. The Lone Power's cruel gift, the wrongful end."

"Ahbahd?" She was really going to have to start getting used to the way this cat spoke with certain names, not that it was that huge of a deal. You've been to Grand Concourse, or is that just another thing where you're from?"

She was actually pretty interested in the New York this cat came from. It was actually really comforting to find someone talking about where she was from: it made her feel less alone.

She kept a LITTLE quiet about that Entropy part though. "Um, that whole entropy thing kinda sounds like what I do: not about the cruleness and ending the world, but I fight, and with violence. You kinda can't avoid it."

"The ehhif who runs the garage. He thinks he's mine," he said absently. And while he wasn't as willing to be cuddled by ehhif as Rhiow was, he didn't find it too much of a hardship to stop by every now and then and let the man pet him. "And nah. I spend most of my time in Manhattan, not the Bronx. I'll make sure to check it out, once we get our worlds back." And they would, too. "Or I think there's a place you can go that lets you see things like your there? The Sensoriums." Who knew? Maybe he'd show her Old Downside in turn, and would his body change to match his soul like it did when he actually went there?

Arhu took a moment to groom his shoulder-fur before he addressed the last part, though. "It...depends on what you're fighting for. I fight with violence, too. I kill. I'm a Person, of course I do." He made the tail-gesture that was the feline equivalent of a shrug. "Hunting is a part of me. And I fight for my worlds, and I've killed for them too. It depends on if there's justifiable reason for the pain and suffering - and what that reason is." He met her gaze squarely. "I don't do it just because I can. I do it because it's my charge from Those Who Are."

The Grand Concourse question was just to make sure he was actually from her New York, and it looked like that was the case. Not that she had a problem with the Bronx: the boroughs, if anything, were more hardcore than Manhattan. "Yeah, the Sensoriums are a good place to do stuff like that."

She was a little curious. "When you say you're a person, what does that mean? I mean, I just look at you and I see a cat or whatever. I know I kill because I have to take out the people that would kill me. It's that basic. That, and...I lost my daddy to this shit."

His ears went back in annoyance, fur beginning to bristle up along his spine. "And I just look at you and see an ehhif or whatever. I, however, am a Person."

"I fight because I swore to. I took the Oath to serve Life in all Its forms. I'm a wizard. And because I accepted the Oath, it accepted me in turn." And just like that, all of his annoyance melted away, replaced with gentle grief. "You're not the only one that's lost loved ones."

She frowned a little here, trying not to get pissed. Geez, how was she supposed to get along with people when thy got mad over stuff she didn't really understand. "Well, if you say so. When you say person, I think human. If it means something different to do, you could explain it. I'm not a mind reader."

She shrugged, which was her way of trying to get over it. She didn't like reliving those memories, but she preferred people knowing where she stood. "And in my world, I'm a hero by night. Nobody knows it, because its not like I'm Spiderman or Superman. I'm just a regular human, and to win, I have to kill. We work in secret."

Or did, anyway.

"And when I say person, I mean a cat. Why wouldn't I? I'm not an ehhif." What was so hard about that? Turning his back on her, he started up a bout of composure-grooming. No matter how annoyed he might be, he could still just about hear Rhiow lecturing to him that ehhif didn't understand things the same way People did, and so he'd need to dumb things down for them. Well, she'd probably say it nicer than that, but that would be the gist of it.

Once he was finished, he turned back to her, ears canted back somewhat. "Sorry. You didn't know better."

Ok, so much for being nice. "If not being a Person means being an arrogant jack ass about it, I'm fine being an Effif or whatever." She took an angry swipe at her food and jammed it in her mouth. Sure it was shit, but it was better than conceding to the fact that she was only a human.

"The hell is so great about being a wizard anyway?"

His ears went back again in annoyance. "Ehhif is what you are, your species. It's just that that's the word my species uses for you. You don't have to be so vhai'd touchy about it."

"What's so great? I dunno. The fact that I can go from one place to another in a second, or that I can talk to anything and expect it to talk back, or help fight the death of the universe!" Or that he could have the One Herself peek through his eyes, or maybe it was that She showed him things through Her eyes, though all that gave him nowadays was a headache.

Hit Girl chuckled. "Really? I don't? Take another look around, Mr. cat, and look at all of the stuff that people can do. Keep in mind, by the way, that I know most of theses people as fictional characters in my world. Now, most of these guys have a lot of strength and power and magic. They use that stuff to nut hurt or kill, just incapacitate an enemy. So think this: how would a little girl who fashions herself a hero by killing her enemies look to them?"

It was a bitter pill she'd had to swallow, knowing even people she considered heroes would think of her as a murderer and a psychopath.

"And let's face it, you sound like you're bragging. Not that there's usually anything wrong with that, and sure as hell isn't like I'm saying being a human is superior. What I'm saying is human is pretty much all I got. You make do."

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Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been? [Open]

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