 |
Name: Nth (aka Max the Nth) M090 Parents: Mother: F076, Smooth Brown Barless Ticked Tabby, Speck Father: M070, Blue Sooty White Tailed Velvet Checker, Skates Mate: Current Location: Barney's Lap |
"Why do I have the inexplicable desire to make a launcher for a miniature high-energy superpellet?" Gordon asked, just out of the blue.
Barney shrugged, turned the steak just a little to check its level of char, and replied, "I'unno."
"Helpful as always," Gordon chuckled. But still the bespecticled scientist furrowed his brows. "It just. It just feels like something is happening. Or already happened. Something Vortal I mean."
"That's no surprise," Barney said, putting that steak onto a plate and waggling the tongs he'd used to serve it. Gordon rose from his slouch on the couch (ever heard of elf on a shelf?) and managed to walk over to the kitchen, but it was with the glazed-eye distracted look that Barney knew plenty well. He wasn't talking to his dragons, telepathically, something else was going on.
Gordon came right up to Barney, his Barney, but what he saw was something or perhaps someone else. Someone from another place, another time. He ignored the steaks, and their pairs of varied green eyes met. Gordon reached up with those steady, sure, scientist's hands.
And his thumb went straight up and gently jabbed Barney's eye producing a flinch with a wincing "Ow!" Suddenly Gordon looked around, eyes wide.
"Sorry! Sorry, what was - that..." He looked down and discovered that there was a darkly speckled grey winged cat, right under his elbow, eating the steak on his plate.
*** From Nine Half-Lives ***
“Well Max, it's just you and me,” Barney said, putting his hand over the grizzled cat's shoulder and scratching just in the right spot to get that itch. There was always an itch there, no matter what. “What say we play some ping-pong?” He reached his left hand onto the table beside them, rooted around in a box. That perked the cat's ears up, made his heavy tail thump against Barney's leg.
Max… was it the third? Fifth? Barney wasn't even sure any more. How many Maxes had there been, since that first one more than thirty years before? This one in particular had seen his share of events. This one, Barney had noted with a grin, actually lived more than a few years. Max the Nth (he'd picked up that term from Gordon) was a good cat. He didn't have to help save the world, he didn't need to guard against unwanted headcrabs, or hunt for tidbits to feed hungry refugees.
This one hadn't exactly been pampered, after all he'd been found under the roof of one of the burnt-out buildings that the Alliance was going to tear down and rebuild. He was an ornery cuss, too; only Barney had been able to coax him down from the rafter, and only with Barney, was where he seemed to feel comfortable.
The former security guard, former rebel, current hero in good standing, found what he was looking for in the box beside his well-cushioned chair. A tiny, glowing, encapsulated ball of energy. It gave off a tingling vibration, a slight sound that Barney's hand muffled. Open and shut, open and shut; the cat peered intently at Barney's hand, and spotted the toy every time he could see it.
Barney steeled himself. “Go get it!” He said, and let the ball fling out to the floor, where it bounced energetically and with a tiny spark. The cat, very predictably, launched his heavy butt off of Barney's legs and left two lines of slightly scratched skin behind him. But Barney didn't care.
All he seemed to care about was whether he'd have to fetch the thing himself. After all, Max the Nth wasn't exactly known to catch them. Only chase them. Good thing he had an inexhaustible supply of the energy pellets. Gordon's work on things like that was sheer genius. Barney's admiration of the man never ended. But then, he'd saved the world. Barney had been there to help. Gordon never hesitated to create silly things like a cat toy using those Combine-made energy pellets, he'd hardly batted an eye at the whole saving the world thing.
Not everyone had made it to see the Alliance form. Vortikind and Humanity moved together into the future, Barney headed up the security division for a number of years before stepping down. Pretty much everyone from the days of had retired, or passed on, depending on their age and directness of involvement. Some folks would be missed more than others, obviously. Eli's sudden and tragic death had hit everyone in the rebellion quite hard. It could have been much worse, though.
Gordon's actions later on made for decisive victories against the Combine on Earth. He and Alyx, well, they'd become the item that Eli had wanted, though still had yet to get on that whole grandkids thing. Life was plenty busy for Gordon and Alyx. If Barney hadn't lost his eye in that battle ten years ago, maybe he'd be out there crossing the countryside and looking for pockets of Combine activity to stomp out. But that was not to be.
Instead, Barney insisted on getting something done that no one really expected after this long. He started a brewery, and Max the Nth was his bar cat. All that beer he'd owed Gordon? Paid in full, of course. Max stood careful guard over the bar when it was open, and enjoyed his daytime sleep arrangements on Barney's lap quite a bit. The cat didn't mind noise or smoke, but had a thing against certain people: most of the time, when Max bristled up and started growling, it was because one of those jerks that liked to start fights had come into the place. They'd be allowed to stay, only as long as they didn't fight. They generally were thrown out by D0g2.
Life was good. Barney just wished that Max wasn't so picky about the women that he met… Because even if Gordon wasn't ready to settle down and make little Vances and Freemans, Barney certainly was. Except for this cat, who expressed his decisions about any given lady long before Barney even brought them into his upstairs apartment.
If they tripped on the stairs, they'd never, ever make it. So proclaimed Max, with a knowing, wise grin.
Barney's Barn Bar Barn Cats ... Barney is from Half Life / Valve; Map used for bar via Gmod, apparently is from the Life is Strange game? Xen from Crowbar Collective's Black Mesa.
Individual cats will be from various artists, credited on pages.
Fonts used: Airstream, Scribble, AnimalTracks