IIKK - Grafitti

Three Months Ago

When Kashmir suggested that the group of kittens ought to find a place among the other worlds, Grafitti wondered if she had lost her mind or what. But as things progressed, every week she'd learn more about the portal floor - and became more intrigued with the idea.

Graf spent some time on her own every day working out, she was less of a loner than Sith was, but she enjoyed her private time. Plus, she could stand there in front of a wall full of weaponry and know just exactly how to hold every piece of it, wielding it right the first time. That impressed the humans in Mystech, but some of them were convinced she ought to try harder to concentrate on mental things too.

So she wasn't a big-headed reader. She didn't mind not knowing who won this war in 17-something or other, or how to conjugate a French verb that she didn't even know how to pronounce right. Grafitti would rather be running, getting into scrapes. She loved math, enjoyed reading maps, and she could calculate angles like no one else, she played pool with the humans and managed to sucker most of them out of half a day's pay every time.

Not that she had anywhere to spend it.

She wondered absently if the other worlds that Mystech's portal floor opened to had anything like their kind of cash currency. She'd find out.

Grafitti was walking back from the workout rooms, down in the Dorm section, when she almost tripped on a human who'd apparently gotten lost. "Sorry," she said, and the man's eyes got all wide and wobbly.

"Wh-what-"

"I'm Graf," she said, simply, continuing on her way. She heard the man sputtering and breathing funny, like he really was having a fit. Finally she turned, and saw him vanish around a corner. But ... something seemed a little bit wrong.

So she followed him. It was only natural. Maybe he was a spy or a terrorist or something. Those things happened to other corporations, and Mystech wasn't immune to them. How did he get past the 'bots?

Grafitti smelled for the man and picked up his scent easily. She had a good swath of it on her own arm, where she'd bumped into him. He smelled... very strange. Not like anyone she'd ever met. She hadn't met all that many people, of course. But, enough.

Following him was an easy matter, as it looked as though he didn't really know where he was going anyway. He kept checking into each door, every hallway, as though he'd never seen either before.

Instead of giving herself away and asking if he wanted help, Grafitti concentrated on remaining just outside of his visual field. He didn't see her, not even a shadow. So she was somewhat surprised when he entered a robotics room, and came out with a handful of chips and circuitry. At that point, Grafitti decided it was time to intervene.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!?" She hissed, and the man turned to see her. His eyes got wide, glassy, and then he -

Vanished?!

Grafitti ran up to where he'd been, sniffing the air. It smelled of toasted electronics - she looked in the room beyond and found...

"Oh, great... Just great." The whole room was filling with a faint cream-silver smoke, coming from a pair of half-gutted computer banks. Grafitti sped back down the hallway, into the security sector - where she finally managed to locate someone who could help her.

She was questioned of course, about the nature of her odd visit. But when they realized that she hadn't done any harm, and would have to be thanked for having intervened, they changed their tune quick.

"We've been trying to figure out where this guy comes from," someone said, holding up a securicam photo of the man. He was wearing the same thing, but the date on the image was three weeks before. "And now I guess we know he teleports out. But is it magical t-porting, or mechanical?"

Graf decided that she'd offered all she could, and finished off her statements. Then, she went back to the dorms for a well-earned nap.

***

The corridors in the forbidden Portal area were always kind of dimly lit, the walls didn't much look very friendly. It was a concrete area, no paint, few overhead lights. The corridor oddly seemed to twist down and to the left, no matter which way you came at it.

Grafitti got dizzy just looking at it, but she followed her sisters. Kashmir was in the lead of course - she was always doing that thing with the dominance trip. Sith's black tail tip danced in front of Graf's nose, and she almost swung at it.

"Where are we now?" Graf whispered, and Coda ahead of Sith whispered back.

"Not where we want to be," and that was that.

They continued walking, sneaking along, until they realized that there wasn't another soul around at all - no bots, no guards, there were certainly no obvious cameras. It was very - very - spooky. Their breathing was all Graf heard, their heartbeats were thready and soft, fast. Grafitti realized that the clicking on the cement floor was her own feet nails.

"I should trim these," she muttered, and Kashmir up front gave a subdued chuckle. When she saw the others stop, she pulled up short and kept looking behind her, though there was no one there.

"Well, this is the one I think," Kashmir said of a door which was painted a rich dark brown, and had faded red trim. Its knob was round, it looked like an old inside door to a musty house.

She cracked it open, and the four kittens looked in.