IIKK - Kashmir

Kashmir stood at the top of the big building and waved good bye to Wyldfyre as she went off on her next mission. The R&D guys didn't want the Kittens to be out this much, after all, they were the prize posessions that the corporation had invested time and money in. She followed the guys down to the elevator and swished her tail around while they went back down to the department.

She lived there with her sisters, and a lot of toys and games, weapons and books. But Kashmir wanted to see more. She wanted the world.

It was there at her clawed fingertips. The net showed her the whole state of affairs here. But too - Kashmir knew there was more to it than that. Mystech was a corporation that existed on several different realities at once. She wasn't allowed to go to the departments where they had extra angles and where places connected to new universes at every doorway.

Something was waiting on the other side of each of those doors.

Yes, she'd been there once before, as a younger kit. Someone escorted her away, but not before she saw things through one of the opened doors that really intrigued her.

Kashmir went back into the dorm where the Kittens lived. Sith was there leaping from wall to wall, on the carpeted catwalks. Graf was trying to catch her. As per usual, the poor thing only managed to get her tail caught in a support beam and almost break again.

"Be careful up there," Kashmir warned. "You two are giving cats a bad reputation. You're supposed to be light on your feet."

"Like you, you overfluffy throw pillow?" Called Sith, mockingly. Her calico sister joined her after her tail was straightened out under her own quick fingers.

"Show us how it's done - come on!" Grafitti cooed. Her broken tail lashed through the air. Kashmir rolled her green golden eyes and sighed.

"Okay - fine. You want a lesson in why I'm the leader of this joke group, great. But don't come whining to me that you're beat again." Kashmir said. She looked up at the cloth and carpet covered runners along the walls, ceiling and the platforms which stuck out from every angle. Sith and Graf were on the left side short-rail, a narrow jutting walkway quite close to the ceiling. There was a tall pole and a box on its top, near by.

Kashmir ground her claws into the floor's carpet, and rocketed up the wall. Clutching the shag below her hands, then twisting into the air, she vaulted over the bar between the right wall and the box-pole. Gently nicking it with her tail reminded her that she was still long-furred. It hadn't hit her skin, nowhere even close. She landed briefly on the boxed pole, and then tagged both her sisters by literally throwing herself at them and almost bouncing off the wall. She spun again, and grasped the pole - it was also carpeted - wrapping herself around it.

"Tag," she breathed, "you're it."

She bolted off the pole, running into a long pipeline that led into the main 'combat' hall. Hearing her sisters behind her, Kashmir made a sharp left, into the Maze. She was running on all fours, not the easiest thing for a humanoid to do, but since her back was so flexible, she could do it easily and gain speed. She knew this Maze inside and out - she'd designed it.

Left, right, right, left. There was the incline, the ramp, and then the - JUMP!

She vaulted across twelve feet of open space, clinging onto the vertical wall. Then, straight up, she ran with her claws supporting her weight with ease. She didn't spare her sisters a glance. She knew they were behind her, somewhere.

There was a nook that she'd built into the maze, something that she got the idea for from a video game. She paused long enough to hear her shadows coming up along the ramp, then she climbed into the nook. It was directly over the left hand horizontal ramp, overlooking the rest of the maze at about three feet higher.

While her sisters rocketed past below her, she watched them get into the main maze. Then, when they were acting all confused, she delicately put down paws onto the narrow walls that made up the complex path. The walls were only about 3" thick, but entirely covered in a rich black carpeting - including the three inch tops.

Skillfully, Kashmir scooted along the narrow walkways, just watching the bits of color that were her sister Grafitti. She didn't bother trying to locate Sith - if anything, she knew she'd be caught if she remained still for long, by the black cat.

"Gonna get lost?" Kashmir mocked, crouching below the ceiling on the narrow area above the maze walls. She saw Graf's ears twitch, orienting on her voice. But Kashmir was already gone.

She turned, and abruptly fell to the fully-carpeted ground. She'd run directly into Sith.

"Dammit," Kashmir said with a fangy grin, "would you grow some white fur or something?"

"Not a chance, big sister," Sith said, "by the way, tag - you're it."

Sith made like a shadow and vanished. She wasn't even using any of her real skills - she just blended in with the maze coloration so well that she could hardly be seen anyway. Grafitti was coming back this way, and Kashmir decided to head deeper into the maze.

It wasn't a true maze, there were many ways to get through it instead of just one. So she sniffed around a corner and listened: nothing. A good hidey place while Grafitti tried to get away. She could hear the slight sound of her calico sister's claws snagging on the carpet - and decided that this waiting game wasn't going to last. Her heart was pounding, it was so fun!

She lept out, springing on a surprised notch-eared Grafitti, yelled "TAG!" and sprinted off again in the direction that she'd last heard Sith.

This game went on for another half hour, before the trio made it back to their shared dorm area and collapsed.

Coda raised her head from her book, thought about making a snide comment, but then just laughed at them as they overheated.

***

"Do you think that it's possible to sneak in?" Kashmir asked Coda, late at night. Most of the humans and many of the simulations had either gone home or been turned off for the weekend. The hallways would be patrolled by the 'bots, but nothing else. Usually, there were people in the Observation area watching the hidden camera images - but this weekend they were all at Alabaster learning tips on what to do with crazy people or who to call when things got out of hand.

"We can get by the bots, easy. If not," Coda winked, "we can just take them down."

"It's not as easy as you'd like to think, with the four of us. One," Grafitti said, "yeah. But four of us?"

"Sure," Sith said. "I mean, it's really just three. I can already walk right by the 'bots."

"Gloat all you want," Kashmir said. "I just want to make sure that we're not detected. At least, not before we get to the portal floor."

"You know, Kash, this is your dream..." Coda said, "it's... not necessarily ours. What if we get caught because of you?"

"What'll they do, Coda," Sith said, "the only thing they can do is give us a slap on the wrist and another chance to do right by their terms."

"This would be so much easier if they'd just let us out and have fun," Grafitti said. "Let's just go. We all know the way."

"But I have a better way," Coda said, having plotted out a course through the building. She knew the times and angles of all the 'bot surveilance routines. They would manage to get around all two dozen of them.

The foursome took off.