IIKK - Coda

19 Months Ago

"Couldn't we get a pet?" Coda asked, one day. Catherine looked at the dark muzzled kitten and furrowed her thin eyebrows.

"Um... why? Don't you have enough to do?"

"It'd be fun. Or don't you think we can handle the responsibity?" Coda chided the human woman because she'd underestimated them that way before.

"I do think you could, but..." She glanced away, and wondered how to put this. "Coda, I don't know how well a pet would ... suit living among you."

"But we'd take care of it, and give it fresh water. You'd have to buy food, and take it to the vet, but I guess you've got a vet here don't you?" Coda asked.

"Coda - I... What would you do with one? What kind of pet?" Catherine asked with a sigh.

"A pony!" Coda laughed - "not really, I was thinking a puppy, maybe a small dog?"

"A puppy..." Catherine said, eyes kind of glazing over. "Coda, you do realize that you're not supposed to like dogs?"

"... Why not?" Coda asked - genuinely confused.

"You're a cat, dear."

"I'm Coda. Cats are animals." Coda said, flatly. "If that's what this is about, then I guess I should forget about it." She walked off, not trying to hide her disappointment.

Of all four kittens, Coda was in fact the most human. Her emotions played out like a young teen's, one moment she was bouncy and the next she'd be likely to compose a dirge about her state of affairs. This wasn't new, this rejection of human things for the Kittens. They didn't get out, they weren't allowed to go to the zoo or the amusement parks, nothing like that seemed to apply to them - even though they were obviously at least as "good" as human children. Perhaps much smarter, certainly more physically fit and able.

Coda was about to lay down in a huff, when Catherine's hand pressed onto her round shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Coda. I just don't know if a dog would ... adjust well to you. I'm not worried about how you'd treat it, I'm more thinking about how traumatized a dog would be by getting mixed signals from you four. You smell like cats to other animals, but you don't act like them. I don't think it would be fair."

"What isn't fair," Coda snapped, "is that you treat us like we're children one minute, and then like we're... experiments the next. Which are we, Cathy? Your pets, or your kids?"

Catherine jolted back, but recovered quickly. Her face betrayed a bit of anger, but more concern. "Neither, Coda. None of those things. You... you're unique to me, and to Mystech. Which is why we can hardly afford to parade you about like other splices are by their companies."

Coda thought back - she did remember an article online about a splice, a tiger girl, who'd been taken to Disneyland and was almost run out by crowds trying to get at her - thinking she was a toy or worse.

"I know you're right, but I don't have to like it," Coda said. "Now, don't you think maybe... a fish? Or a turtle?"

"Turtles are the last thing I want in here," Catherine said, "next to little robotic bears." She turned away and muttered to herself, "freakish little damn homicidal maniac."

Coda didn't ask. Instead, she wandered slowly back to the dorm and watched her sisters.

***

When the door went open far enough Coda peered over tiny Sith's shoulder.

"What's in there?" She whispered.

"... It's not so much 'in' as .... 'over'," Kashmir said. Her voice trembled, "look at this, guys..."

They all gazed in, and took their own private little shocked breaths. Beyond this odd red-brown door was a vista of dark land. The door rested some feet above the ground, maybe three yards. It hovered, and cast a kind of light onto the terrain below.

When they saw movement, all four Kittens looked hard. Graf was of course the first to be able to tell what it was.

"It's a dinosaur. Shut the door." She said, and pulled at it. The door closed, and they heard a kind of 'k'thump' on the other side as the quickly moving pack of hunters had descended on the hovering portal. They all wondered if it remained visible as a floating door on the other side, or if it vanished.

Coda thought she was probably the only person in the world who wanted to check. But, her sisters determined that the next door would be better.

"How did you decide this one was right, again?" Coda asked of Kashmir.

"I rolled dice," Kash said.

All three others stopped dead behind her, no longer caring or even wondering if anyone was watching or catching up to them.

"You what?" Coda said, "I mean, that's silly."

"They were your dice," Kashmir added, flipping a little smile over her shoulder and flicking her ear.

"You are such a geek," Sith muttered, moving past the still shocked Coda.

"YOU TOUCHED MY DICE?!" She bellowed, and the others hit the floor. Or the ceiling in the case of Graf.

Coda stomped up to Kashmir and growled, ears back and eyes narrow. She didn't look happy at all. "You went into my private stuff and you took my dice? You messed my dice up? Did you know how long it took to wear those things in so they didn't roll sucky? Now I'll have to break in a whole new set!"

"I can't believe you even care about those dice," Kashmir said, trying to get the next door - a big metal submarine door - open. "I mean, they're just dice! We can get dozens of them from the gamer geeks who play upstairs."

"But that's where I got those and they would never let you touch their dice EITHER!" Coda yelled.

They would often forget that Siamese cats were rather loud. She wasn't giving them any difficulty reminding them now. She suddenly decided that hissing and spitting weren't enough.

Coda dove at Kashmir, bowling her over and sending them both tumbling across the twelve-foot wide hall. Unfortunately, that also meant they were skidding right toward a door, and it didn't look all that locked.

They slammed into the door, looked like a victorian-era kitchen back-door, and it jarred open slightly. The other two spotted this immediately, and yet didn't want to get involved in this fight. When Coda put herself into a fight, it was because she really - REALLY - meant it. All those laughs and giggles otherwise meant to amuse the humans were lost when she turned on someone.

"Guys - guys, stop it," Grafitti said, worried, "you're gonna get the door -"

The door slipped open, just as the pair rolled away, into the hall. But moments later, and long before Sith and Graf could reach it to shut it again, Coda and Kashmir (hissing and growling and batting at each other, fiercely in a hard-clawed battle) tumbled into their sisters, and went right through the door - clattering it open and ...