IIKK - Sith

25 Months Ago

"I want you to concentrate on what I've got in my hand," the white-labcoated researcher said. He wasn't used to talking to cats and it was obvious by the way he kept worriedly looking at Sith.

"I can't see what you're holding. But I am pretty sure that three cards down is that wavy-line thing again. It's not shuffled very well." Sith said, tilting her head. She squinted at the man's hand, but still had no idea what card of the five might be in it.

She couldn't quite control this ability, but she was almost positive that the third down from the top of the stack...

He turned over first one (the big square), then the next (the pair of triangles), and paused before flipping to the third. It was wavy lines.

Sith grinned widely.

"I think that'll be enough today," the researcher said. Catherine supervised Sith's mental exersizes because she knew that this kitten was quite strong. She might not want to stick with her work, though. She was quite good at all the kitten-tricks that her sisters played, and had long surpassed them at hiding. Woe to the lab tech who had to retrieve her when they had to go to the doctor for their exams.

"You're doing very well," Catherine said, "I'm proud of you."

"I want to play now," Sith said. "Everyone always gets to play first, and work later."

"That's because you're always awake before them, and I want you to do the right work first." Catherine explained.

"Can we play outside?" Sith asked, knowing what the answer would be.

Catherine looked down somewhat sadly, and shook her head. "Not today. Today there are investors out for the mechanical engineering teams. If they think we're doing other things they might not want to spend so much money on us."

"But we ... I want to bask, Cathy," Sith admitted. "And I wanna play baseball."

"Tomorrow," Catherine promised, "I'll get the guys together and we can play a real game instead of that silly little T-ball thing you've had collecting dust."

"You mean it?" Sith said, excited and amazed.

"I mean it."

Catherine did mean it. The weather was good, a bit cloudy, but it held out long enough to play a game with the engineering guys against the other geeks plus the Kittens. They were old enough to have better physical reactions than almost any human adult, but still hadn't gotten their full strength up yet.

After enjoying a long, rather exhaustive game, the kittens got to lay out in the sun and just soak up all the warm real heat they could. It was bliss.

Shortly after that, though, something changed Sith's outlook to going outside. She was watching the big back area, where the cargo helicopters landed - the pad on the roof of the building was fit for the smaller personal transportation.

She sat in reflective silence, having what she didn't realize was a full-blown precog moment. A large dark-green and grey helicopter was landing and bringing in some large piece of machinery for Mystech's use. But something looked a bit odd - the helicopter swayed in the air, and then landed blades-dug into the turf. The whole area that the baseball team played on, the soccer games were held, and the big parties that Mystech hosted ... was a burning ruin. People scattered everywhere.

Sith snapped out of her vision, and shuddered. She wanted to scream, or run and hide, but when she glanced out the window (almost hesitating because she just knew what would be there she just knew it) there was nothing but a group of smartly dressed men and women praising one another about their last business deal.

Sith was torn. Finally, she bolted outside, and ran up to Catherine. The woman's eyes widened, she'd not given permission to leave the building - but...

"Sith, this is not the time for-"

"You gotta get out of there it's gonna crash and we're..." She stood watching the men and women, all human, all rather middle-aged and grey around the edges. She couldn't chase away the images of the big cargo copter.

"Sith, are you feeling well?" Catherine asked, carefully moving them away from the group.

"They gotta go away from there! It's going to crash don't you understand?" Sith cried, "but you won't listen to me!"

She ran out of Catherine's grip, and back into the dorms. Rarely did she return. But three months later, that cargo helicopter did in fact crash on their huge back lot.

***

"Great guys, just fantastic!" Sith yelled, "now you've got us..." She opened her eyes, just looking whereever her head was facing. That happened to be facing up, she was on the bottom of the pile now, and they were headed away from the door which hung in the air above.

Way above. They were falling. Faster.

"Guys - guys!" Sith clung on to her sisters, and at last Coda had stopped freaking out about her stupid dice. As a group, they oriented themselves until they almost looked like they meant to be falling together. If they had parachutes, they might be a professional team.

But there was no way any one of them - including Kashmir - was going to survive this fall. When they looked downwards, they discovered that the portal they'd gone through was literally hundreds of yards in the sky.

The sky was way off, too. It was colored just wrong, and there was a big gigantic red thing in it. It was not like any moon that they'd seen even in sci fi movies.

"It's the red star thing," Coda whispered, her words audible to them but only because they could feel it in her mind too. "It's from a book. I read it a while ago. I didn't think too much of it at the time."

"You mean those portal things lead to fictional places?!" Kashmir yelled, "why didn't you try telling me!"

"I DIDN'T KNOW, you idiot!" Coda yelled right back.

"Guys, we're gonna die." Grafitti said. "I just want to say that I love you. I'm sorry if we got into trouble, and I'm sorry we get into fights."

"I am so scared I can't even think of something to say," Sith said, half looking at the ground and otherwise trying not to cry. They were falling fast, and the ground loomed.

"I'm sorry about taking your dice," Kashmir promised Coda. "If I had known it'd make you so mad I would have asked you to roll them for me."

"Darn right you would have," Coda grimaced. "Sorry for going off on you. I think maybe I'm PMS'ing."

"We don't get pms, that's for humans," Sith giggled.

Grafitti sighed, "so, now we get to play 'is there a God'?"

"You watch too many movies," Kashmir said.

They were sure that they'd be in for the big SMUSH, but moments later, instead of that they heard a kind of whooshing sound, then an abrupt jolt.

But the jolt wasn't of impact, it was of being snatched as if by the scruff of their necks. They were slightly uncomfortable, as they were being smushed against one another gently.

By big taloned claws.

All four of them screamed at the same time, and the dragon nearly dropped them.