revivalproject | Never try to outstubborn a cat

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Never try to outstubborn a cat

WHO: Catra, OTA
WHERE: Tunnel -> factories
WHAT: Dragging a whole damn bed across the city. Obviously.
WHEN: July 10th, following release from the tunnels
WARNINGS: Angry cat, will update.

Catra didn't want to hang around in the tunnels any longer than she had to, but she also wasn't about to give up that bed. And so she could be found hauling the whole damn thing inch by inch, mile by mile from her room across Temba towards the factories, dragging it around determinedly by the bed frame. She had to stop periodically for breaks, flopping down exhausted onto the bed, but she would not be deterred from her mission. She was going to get this damn bed to the factories and away from everyone else if it killed her.

[ooc: Tag with which ever tense/style you prefer and I'll match.]

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Having been transported directly into the tunnels for the Calibrations, the Soldier had to rely solely on the accounts of others in regard to the planet's actual landscape and resources (or rather, lack thereof). As such, the exit from that underground bunker meant not only liberation, but exploration. He'd poked around the communication device enough to find the map; currently he was engaged in marrying said map to the actual layout of the landscape. Thus far he's run across a few people he recognized from the runnels but he was sure there were more he hadn't met, considering he'd tried to spend most of the time behind the door of his assigned room rather than interacting heavily with others.

Now though there was open sky and slightly fresher air and room to just breathe. There were ruined buildings aplenty — enough to make a run through the unfamiliar terrain a little on the challenging side, and that in the good way — and enough space to just get away from people. And there was...

There was...

He was pretty sure his eyes weren't deceiving him to say that there was a humanoid cat — cat person? — dragging a bed across the landscape. The Soldier had no illusions about his levels of brain damage but he was pretty sure that even he couldn't hallucinate that sort of sight. It was enough to make him slow his run to a jog, to a walk, and finally to a halt as he regarded the (overly dramatic, in his opinion) flop onto the mattress.

"You, uh, good over there?" He mostly just wanted confirmation that he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

Hey, it was harder than it looked to drag a queen sized bed across open air space. She panted softly, tail twitching, and her ears swiveled towards the source of the noise before he spoke.

"Yeah. Totally. Just taking my bed for a walk. Don't I look good?" she challenged, rolling her eyes and sitting up with a huff so she could keep a better eye on him.

She too had been trying to keep to herself, and she didn't recognize that the face belonged to more than a few people here.

Okay, yes, that was definitely a cat-person. Ears, tail, the whole nine yards, and they appeared to be both attached and functional, not just ornamental like a headband. He'd seen that a few times, though he didn't understand the trend at all. Then again, the man with the metal arm didn't have much room to talk about appearances.

"Far be it from me to question other people's hobbies." The sarcasm wasn't lost on him, but knowing how he'd hated his own imprisonment in the tunnels, he couldn't entirely blame her for it.

He crossed his arms and leaned back against a half-standing wall, keeping the distance between them close enough for conversation but for enough that they weren't in each other's personal space.

"Oh yeah, top bed wrangler back home, gotta keep in shape."

She looked him over with a faint frown, looking a little unsure how to carry on without implementing that sarcasm.

"So...are you one of the new people, or one of the ones that've been stuck here forever?"

"World championship title to defend? I can tell."

Sarcasm was just how a person dealt with things sometimes. It was a way of life. And it probably wouldn't phase him if she brought it back out because really, she wasn't expressing anything that he didn't feel himself in terms of frustration.

"New. But not my first go-round with kidnapping of this sort. You?"

"Obviously." Her lips curled into a guarded sort of smile, putting on an air of confidence and examining her claws.

She shrugged a shoulder, "New...ish. I guess? I wound up here maybe a week before they crammed us all in there. Least out here no one can go poking about inside our heads anymore." She made a face. "...You gotta name?" she asked, pointedly asking for his first rather than offer up her own.

He couldn't help the almost-chuckle that her reply caused, and returned her smile with a half-smirk of his own. This one had attitude — cattitude? — and he could admire it. Much better, in his eyes, than the blank acceptance of this being their new reality.

"Mmm. I showed up directly in that bunker." So she didn't have much time here before his own arrival. Might not be too good a source of information about the place, but that was fine. The Soldier already had the most important piece of information: the Agrii were assholes. What he didn't say was that he hoped she was right; they'd left the bunker, yes. If the Calibrations of the Agrii were anything like the Calibrations of the Atroma, then the so-called poking about inside their heads was in fact over — for now. But he knew from his time under the Atroma that those beings had access to their minds whenever they wanted via the implanted chips.

But it had been mentioned that the Agrii didn't use such implants on their kidnapees. As such, he wasn't sure the extent of their powers over the populace.

Her question drew his thoughts back to the conversation and he shook his head. "I used to. Not anymore."

Catititude was right.

And while she might not have too much more to tell him about this world, she did at least seem to have some idea of where she was going.

Not anymore. That wasn't an answer she was expecting, and for a moment she looked a little unsure how to follow that up. "...Right. Uh. So say I need to get your attention for something, do I just do a 'hey you?' or...'big guy with the arm' thing?" she wondered, arching a brow at him.

Really, having an idea of where she was going was more than he had; aimless wandering wasn't quite what he would call it, but it was pretty darn close. Then again, some wandering wasn't a bad first step to exploration.

He shrugged, which had the effect of making the plates in the shoulder and upper arm ripple with the movement. It was, at least, a relief to not have it gawked at, or asked about. Too many people seemed to think themselves entitled to a history or an explanation, neither of which he was inclined to so casually give. "Soldier is the designation I give to others." A beat. "Or Soldat if you speak Russian."

He somehow doubted that she did, but the adage about the ills of assumptions wasn't without reason.

"And I suppose it would depend on why you wanted my attention."

Her head tilted curiously. 'Soldier' could have been the most basic designation for herself or any member of the Horde, but it felt strange to be offered it up in place of a name.

"What's Russian?" she asked, rather than push him on the name front. If that's what he wanted to be called she wasn't going to argue.

She shrugged a shoulder again, like she didn't really care. "I dunno, if I wanted someone to compete for the bed wrangling title or something. You seem like you'd be okay at it."

For a minute he thought she'd push the name issue, but she didn't and his estimation of her ticked up a notch. Sarcastic, attitude a mile wide, and something that approximated consideration: he could work with that.

"Russian is another language," he replied. "If you haven't heard of it, it probably doesn't exist where you're from." It still felt a little weird to speak of evidence of different worlds, but hey, he'd been on other planets and here he was talking to a cat-person. Could be worse.

"I don't know, that title seems really important to you." Judging from her dramatic flop onto the bed earlier, he could guess the difficulty she was having. "But I guess I shouldn't pass up the chance to work with a champion. You got a name? Kitty Cat doesn't seem fierce enough."

"Are you from Earth?" she asked curiously, "It's where almost everyone else seems to be from." She grumbled a little at that. Stupid name for a world.

Her lips quirked, and she might have even given a low rumbling purr, laughing a little. "...It's Catra," she finally supplied, chancing a more genuine smile.

"Originally, yes." It wasn't where he was before he came here, but he supposed it counted as an answer to the where are you from question. "Doesn't matter to me where someone's from, though. More interested in how they act."

He paused a moment to think about it. "Well, unless you're actually one of these so-called Agrii, in which case we're gonna have a conversation." She could probably guess from his tone of voice that he meant to do less talking and more punching in that sort of encounter.

"Catra, then. Handshakes traditional where you're from? Supposed to be for me, but I'm not a huge fan." Of handshakes in particular, and of being touched in general. But he returned her smile; he could identify with the way she'd been so guarded and sarcastic at first.

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sorry jon

It’s a fair question.

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