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There was something about this smallish and slightly standoffish cat that pinged another half-memory in Barney. It wasn't his memory. It was some other Barney, in another time, another world, where things didn't go the same. The memories didn't include feathers, but this little guy was clearly apt to swipe keys and run off with corkscrews. At least Keys didn't eat them. He was zippy, light weight enough to walk with ease across a balancing tray, and just skittish enough to leap from that tray without warning. ** From Nine Half-Lives ** They'd been forgotten about, in the subsequent years. As the Portal Storms flung their misery and chaos over the Earth, everything in everyone's lives changed. Governments fell and rose. One reigned over the world, now; one which ostensibly had the best interests of Humanity in mind. They created jobs, they made people feel safer, drew them from the Outlands and to the mega-metropolises, the Cities. Incorporating miles of farmland (though any stretch of it was just as corrupted by alien life as the areas beyond its walls, at least it could be guaranteed that this land would be well-patrolled), and sometimes rising half a mile upwards with the sprawl of downtowns lumped toward a single massive living space. Cities had no names, because they were often made of multiple communities from before . Old locations were in ruins, hardly touched once the blights of alien inhabitation started. Even hard-core gangs and fools that believed this was all just a phase left for the numbered locations. They could be guaranteed shelter, food, something to do. The Cities worked like a charm. Since these lands where Barney and the Brains were hiding had gotten more than dangerous enough to be avoided entirely, the groups of survivors out there had to make choices. Enter the Cities, or perish from the aliens or starvation like anyone else. They chose to enter, of course. But they remained together. Sometimes, they thought they'd seen an old friend. Barney and the others didn't need to change their names, but whenever he'd spot someone from Black Mesa, it always wound up being the same. Recognition came at a high cost. He'd say, “it's me, Barney!” And they would look surprised, that cast of shame or fear clouding their features, causing Barney to walk away, embarrassed. But because of his training, at least, he had access to reasonably good job offers. The Cities were busy places, and there were lots of people needing to be kept peaceful. While it was true that he wasn't a fully trained police officer, and he wasn't an Army brat, he held himself with the poise he needed to pull a good position. Eli and Izzy, Rosenberg and the others kept to themselves, mostly. They couldn't be kept from doing their work though. They were engineers, they were scientists. But they had their hands full just now, with Alyx. Barney kept his eye out for the girl, but he knew she'd slip by him as easy as that cat did. Here in City 98, there were lots of pets that had gone feral. Maybe brought by well-meaning owners, but they couldn't be sustained the way they used to be. Pets were extravagant, pets were no longer really welcome. Of course, Barney's cat wasn't a pet so much as a pal . Crawling around in the vents over Izzy's apartment (wasn't it just ironic, that he'd wind up losing his keys to his home just as often as he'd done with his office's back at Black Mesa?) he'd found this one. Half-starved and all-feral, but the cat didn't take half a moment to latch on to Barney's jacket. It took him another half hour to barf up Izzy's keys, but that was a story for another time. At the moment, the orange and white cat stood on Barney's shoulder and hissed. He was gone in a flash, as quickly as he'd scampered up the man's side. Barney never even felt it: that cat weighed little more than a few pounds, even when it ate well. The black-haired man took a glance after where it had fled, and heard as he turned back the reason why it had done so in the first place. “Hey, D0g,” Barney grunted, “boy, you gotta be quieter this time of day. If someone spots you, they'll know Dr. Vance is around.” The mechanical beast lowered its head, gave off a few beeps and chirps, and then clomped away, pistons churning. It found Alyx, who was playing hide-and-seek… Though no one else knew she was playing. Oh, Barney saw the problem, why Maxy had sprung up to his shoulder like that a moment before: that was his hiding spot. Barney urged Alyx into the alley, down the steps into the old restaurant where she and the rest spent much of their time. This section of the City was old, they hadn't been able to move in to the City, so much as inhabit it . Others, lucky sods, Barney spent a lot of his paid-time protecting in their high-rises, on their way to and from still-cushy jobs. Sometimes Barney wondered why they even bothered. The world was so different, now. It wasn't like it would get any easier. The Vortigaunts and Humans had finally broadly accepted one another – with Eli's help, though not one history book would ever cover that truth. The Vorts were few and far between, but had been pushed through Xen on a regular basis. Even now, sometimes, a Portal Storm would hit, and suddenly there would be another half-dozen of them standing around in their little flux circles . Some folks tried blaming the Storms on them. But Barney knew better than that. He listened to them with more than half an ear: they'd mentioned Gordon. By name. He couldn't get much more information out of them, but he knew for whatever reason, that they idolized him. Most of them, anyway. Having been around the Brains for this long, and under such intimate circumstances, Barney never harbored any hatred of them, and certainly didn't assume they were all alike . He had to listen to that crap up in the high-rises. How Vortigaunts were ruining the economy, how they were ugly, how they were smelly. Barney really wanted to quit that job. But then, he wouldn't be able to protect his friends, if he didn't have access to good food and clean water, credit at stores, a safe place to sleep. Maxy kept bringing fleas in to that safe place. But then, Maxy kept bringing dead birds and rats home too. And you could cook those. |
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Traditional Disclaimer and Copyright Statement: content by Lethe. The artwork on the main pages is mine. Any other art or world is credited where used. None of it is for use beyond this site and cannot be distributed by anyone but me, and that does include No Fucking Thanks and any collections online. If you didn't see it on my kshau-protectorate.com site it is stolen. 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 |