001 - No cat puns

[heeeyadora]

A: What's yours is mine

[If she's going to be stuck here, Catra figures she might as well look around. Whatever measures might have been taken to keep her out, she's managed to work her way into your space while you were gone, and she's made herself quite at home, lounging peacefully and looking quite annoyed when you return, bearing her teeth and hissing.]

Hey! Get outta here!

B: Stars

[Now that night has finally fallen, Catra seems entranced by the night sky, staring up at the stars in wonder. She doesn't realize she's not alone, jumping in alarm when she finally notices you, yelping and tail poofing up to twice it's usual size.]

Hey, watch it! Don't sneak up like that! [She bristles a little longer before her shoulders relax a little, looking back to the sky.] ...Are those really...stars?

C: Network

[Catra scowls at the screen, eyes sharp and ears pressed low.]

I don't care about you or your stupid planet, so you send me back right now, you hear me?!

[OOC: If you want to continue the TDM threads here just reply with a link to your last comment, or if you want to start over reply as normal :) ]

Comments

[in_extremis]

Tony nodded slowly as he made his way further inside, circling wide around his invader to put himself more firmly into the middle of his space, because this all very much was his junk and it was kind of her to notice. Most people realized that should also mean respecting his space, they would work on it. "You don't think I know the smell of my own junk?" he challenged. "You're getting wet dog all over my..." He gestured vaguely, whatever this interloper was touching, disturbing the delicate balance he had here of metallic tang to bitter charcoal, and the acidic chemical burn at the back of the throat. What she was bringing to the table did not suit the milieu.

[heeeyadora]

"Wet dog???" she repeated incredulously, and that hair poofed right back up, tail twice its usual size and twitching angrily.

"Look- I dunno who you are, but you left. No one was here. This place is mine now, so take your junk and get outta here before I make you," she growled.

[in_extremis]

Outside of Tigra, Tony didn't have a ton of experience to draw on with Cat People, and was left only sure of one thing: those claws would hurt if they got too close. She didn't ever seem this feral around Tony, generally respected boundaries, he couldn't even remember her even coming into the garage, so he was at something of a loss. He sighed, lip raised in wary confusion at the poofing display, then brought a dainty hand in offense to his chest for not being recognized on sight. At the very least, he was clearly the man of the house. "Tony Stark," he took his opportunity to introduce. "If you're staying, you can call me Tony, but you're going to have to make your own bed. I'm exhausted, I have shit to do."

[heeeyadora]

"I didn't ask-" Catra grumbled, shooting him a glare, and her tail twitched warily, not sure how to handle the unique approach Tony seemed to have. A moment later she edged off of his bed, almost sulking, and she climbed to perch in a place out of reach.

"...Catra," she mumbled finally.

[in_extremis]

Consistent naming conventions, now he had that one, too. As long as Catra wasn't the magical kind, they could make this work just fine. It was always nice to have Tigra around and reliably sunning herself in any sunbeam she could find at the west coast house or mansion, anyway. Tony nodded his thanks for the introduction, then turned to get to the work he should have been doing when he walked in, taking up a poker from next to the wide column jutting up through the whole, vaulted room to crouch in front of the darkened mouth of the forge. There was still an ember sizzling pitifully underneath a blanket of ash, and Tony tried to coax it back to life with a gentle blow and some words of encouragement as he dragged some kindling from the fringes of the pit.

[heeeyadora]

Hmm. Catra watched him while trying to appear uninterested, curious to know how to restart the fire. Her ears turned, watching him from the corner of her eye before silently climbing closer, head tilting curiously.

[in_extremis]

She could only get so close before Tony was turning to give her a questioning look of his own, biting his lip and raising his eyebrows, that clearly asked if she minded giving him the space to work at least. They could make this puzzle fit, from the look of her this close now Catra was obviously too young to have been deposited here on her own and could use some support, but Tony was not used to taking on that job alone without someone like Steve or Carol to temper his impatience. "It's a forge," he tried, not sure which part of this had caught her attention, and gestured vaguely back to the hammered scraps littering his workbench and what looked like parts of a disassembled set of armor scattered throughout the dark room. "Get it hot enough, you heat up some different compounds, you can make them look like anything you want."

[heeeyadora]

That look had her edging back with a flush, and twitch of her tail, ear tilted back. Still, she kept watching.

"We have a forge back in the Fright Zone. I've never seen it, but it's where they make the armor and everything."

[in_extremis]

"Good. Exactly," Tony replied, clipped, and already out of ideas for what she might have been lurking that close for. The kindling caught then in a quick lick of flame, so Tony stood out of the way as he swept the ash out into the grated gutter at his feet, careless as most of it sighed across the forge floor. "Keep it lit now," he instructed, pointing to the fire that was easily building now with just a little love and care, a simple job for anyone that wanted to stay here. Dropping the poker back where he had found it, Tony left without another word, through a door at the other side of the room that he slammed behind him, leaving Catra with the sound of the crackling fire and, shortly, running water. The only other way out of this wide room outside of the door they had come in seemed to be a set of shivering, too tall stairs that wound around the back of the column of the forge to an upper level, but most of what Tony used seemed to be right here; aside from the tools and striking surface cluttered around the fire itself, there was the workbench built up with scaffolding suspension and brightly lit, a grapevine of glass spheres cascading down one side and unpolished pieces of the armor hung around another, almost in the shape of a man. Pushed up against the wall where Catra had found it, the only other thing Tony seemed to have crafted for himself was the bed, a nest of scavenged fabrics from the surrounding factories, mostly coarse and industrial.

[heeeyadora]

She huffed and rolled her eyes like she had no intention of listening to him, and for a long while after the door slammed she was still. Her ear flicked and craned, and finally, she dropped back to the ground, moving closer to the fire and basking in its warmth for a moment before giving it a begrudging poke with the stupid stick.

She looked around the hole in the wall he'd crafted for himself with a dismissive hum. It wasn't all that impressive, but...maybe it wasn't so bad. The fire made it a lot nicer.