Sulci's Story

Psychic powers are not to be played with. Very few people who refuse to learn that live very long, and those that do tend to make it very, very clear that if the ignorant don't end up taking themselves out, someone infinitely more responsible will. It's an unwritten law, one that just about every psychic can tell you ends up worming into their brain one way or another. They listen, and would very much advise anyone else to do the same.

Sometimes though, things don't go as planned. People fly under the radar, get lost in translation, sometimes they even go even more off the rails at the thought of someone else doing what they can. It can, as has, gotten ugly. Ugly enough that in some places, the grass will never grow again.

Why? Who knows, really. Psychics are always a bit off, and a novice can do a lot of damage on accident just by flexing the wrong lobe. There were a lot of budding psychics out there who didn't make it past childhood. It's a lot easier to run with scissors when you can pick them up with your mind. Some say it's the cumulative strain of making it past already difficult stages of life when you can hear what everyone thinks of you, some say psychics attract neurosis like a lighting rod. It's a little hard to figure out. Humans are complex animals.

Of course, that's not to say that inhumans can't be psychic. Aliens, angels, ghosts, what have you. It's pretty common. The only things people are fairly certain the only creatures that lose out on the psionic lottery are animals. That, everyone can agree, would be a disaster. What sort of cosmic mistake would let that happen, anyway?

That would be answered by, of all things, a cat carrier. It was in a drift of snow, and the occupant was very cold. It didn't know where it was, exactly, but it was ice as far as it could see and it knew it very much did not want to be where it was. It thought thoughts quite normal for a cat in such a situation, like how much it wished it was given a thicker sweater, or how it's ear was itching from a snowflake that managed to drift into it. It very much did not think that it wanted to hurl itself through time and space, but such things generally do not come about by conscious effort. So, when a flash of purple light caused the cold to give way to music, colored lights, and the smell of alcohol, the creature wasn't sure what to do at first.

Perhaps it was the abuse, or the exhaustion, or maybe the smoked fish it was fed being a little too old, but the sudden shift caused a bit of a...fizzle.

The poor woman washing her hands in the bathroom wasn't exactly sure how the hairless cat got in, or why is had a seizure on the floor, but she was very certain the water wasn't supposed to flow into the faucet and that cats eyes are not supposed to be purple and very much not supposed to glow. Still, given that she was a kind soul and that the cat, despite being a little wrinkly, was kind of cute... tossed her jacket over it and walked out quickly. She paid her tab and never touched gin again until the day she died.

After a few minutes of twitching, a pink set of ears poked out from the jacket, wobbled to its feet, and stumbled out of the bathroom between the legs of another girl, who was too intoxicated to share the previous woman's concern.

Sulci dashed out in an unsteady line, bashing her head into a table leg. The jacket that had been trailing from her like a cape settling over the heap, the only sign of the feline being a set of luminous purple eyes darting around like mad.

A part of living in a new place, whether that be a new city, country, or planet even, was learning about the locals. Simeon hadn't been on Origin for very long, but it hadn't taken him a century to learn how different things were here than on his earth. Hell, it was still weird for him to refer to his home as "his" earth. He grasped the topic of the multiverse on a superficial level, enough to help him understand that there were an infinite number of "copies" of his own world and all worlds, but anything more than that gave him a headache.

The biggest difference between his world and this one was the existence of magic and a multitude of supernatural creatures such as vampires and werewolves. Mere myths back home had leapt from the pages of fictions and scripts of hollywood movies and taken their place among the inhabitants of the real world. It still amazed him when he thought about it, and he enjoyed learning about the existence of new creatures and species -- especially if he got to kill the dangerous ones.

Speaking of danger, it sounded like there was some brewing on the other end of the cafe. A scream echoed from the hall leading to the bathroom, prompting Simeon to whip his head in that direction. When he saw the stumbling woman rush into the main room and out the door, he expected some sort of menacing monster to come out shortly afterward. Much to his surprise, or perhaps disappointment, the only thing that came strutting into the cafe square was a hairless cat.

"The hell?" he muttered to himself under his breath. He couldn't figure out what about this harmless-looking cat could have scared that woman so badly. Sure it was kind of ugly, but that hardly warranted such a hyperbolic reaction. He blamed the booze. Speaking of which: where was that waiter with his drink? He stood and approached the bar to find out.

"Seems like you forgot about me." he said to waiter, who was fetching drinks from the bartender as he made them.

The man turned with a platter full of drinks and grinned, "Someone is impatient. I was just about to bring it over to you."

Simeon shrugged his shoulders and grabbed his drink from the tray. Then, he started back toward his seat. "Or maybe I prefer taking what I want." he said, making sure he was still in hearing range when he did. He scanned the room for the cat he saw earlier to see if it was still there. No sign of it. Weird.

The small cat shuffled under the table, jacket going with her. It was perfectly comfortable under there, she told herself. She could stay all night and never move and absolutely nothing else would happen. Nope. She was going to cling to this jacket with her life and nobody would take it from her and she would get kicked out or end up hanging from a coat rack and what was that musi-.

Glerk. Thump. Rustle.

The eyes under the jacket flickered back to their usual colors, blue and yellow, before narrowing unevenly and eventually disappearing under the coat as the cat had another episode. It was shorter, less intense. Probably the last one, she reckoned. There was something about the life of the club her brain couldn't handle. Sulci was used to the endless white and the occasional crackling record. This was so much more, not to mention the thoughts. So many, so loud! It was both great and terrible.

The hairless feline disentangled herself from the jacket, kicking it away so she wouldn't be tempted to go back under it. Now was the time for freedom. For warmth. For fun! She would keep her brain in check!

As it turned out, getting onto a table without levitating was harder than it looked. She was lithe and used to clambering up loose stones and perilous roofing, but this table was polished. That just didn't happen back home. After some very inelegant scrabbling, the runty Sphinx made into onto the tabletop.

She looked around, a little bit of pride worming itself into her shaky form. This...this wasn't so bad! Nobody had knocked her off! She had done something in the flesh, and this club (It was club, she was pretty sure.) looked really neat! Even the man at the table was- Oh.

She had forgotten that other people might be using the table. Her mismatched eyes had a hard time looking at the dark-skinned man, nerves forcing them away. Smooth pink tail firmly between her legs, ears flat against her head, she would try and make some sort of adorable sound. That usually worked on the child. The child liked her noises.

"Mergh."

Well, that sounded awful. She sounded diseased. She probably was diseased. Malnutrition counted, she was fairly certain, She looked thin enough for it, and not having any hair didn't help.

She didn't know what to do now. Decidedly un-catlike expressions fought for space on her face until they settled into the usual wide-eyed fear. Maybe if she used her brain?

Simeon, who was once again sitting with his leg crossed over his knee. He held his drink in his hand, whose chilled glass tickled his fingertips as he swirled it around, watching the tan liquor dance inside it. He didn’t consider himself a drinker since he rarely dabbled in the world of intoxicants, but when he did, he liked to try new ones. There was something about refraining from it that made each drink that much more enjoyable. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a hearty sip. His eyes widened in shock as his taste buds were bombarded by what tasted like one hundred cloves of garlic doused in gasoline.

“Fucking hell.” he muttered to himself with a cough. Why in gods’ name would that waiter recommend this drink to him? He wasn’t sure how he should feel about it. Simeon slid the glass away with a scowl marred into his countenance. That was when he noticed the same cat from before struggling to climb onto his table.

“Well hey there, little one.” he said, “What’s your n—”

He cut his words short when the feline made … some sort of noise. It caught him off guard at first because quite frankly, it was an unsettling sound. Confusion eventually gave way to amusement, however. Simeon nearly choked up in laughter as he stared at the strange little animal.

“Definitely wasn’t expecting that.” he commented.

Okay, she could make this work. Laughter meant good things, usually, or at least the absence of something bad. The man was probably laughing at her, that was...fair. She didn't have any illusions about that. He did seem to have a bit of a problem with whatever was in that drink. If Sulci had hair, it would've curled like a bad perm. She couldn't fathom why anyone would drink something like that. It probably had something to do with the waiter, whose internal smugness could be felt all the way over at the bar.

Her name, though, was what surprised her. He had asked for her name! That never happened! Granted, she knew exactly two people who already knew it, but still! That meant he cared!

The cat inched closer to the man, de-scrunching as her nerves settled. Her head was still swimming with the music and the smell of tobacco smoke and strong alcohol, and it was beginning to loosen her up a little. She actually started to look like cat and not some scared, unfortunately-proportioned rodent. It felt...nice. She would have to figure out how she got here.

Sulci fluidly stumbled over to the man, quietly wavering on her paws as she stood over his drink. She'd have to respond. There was only one way for her to do that.

Mental communication was actually really easy for Sulci. She didn't know what to call it or what arcane process her brain went through to make it work, but she had nailed down the how of it. All it took was a good flex of the mind and a clear head. Her eyes closed as the cat inhaled and exhaled a shaky breath. When they opened, they were the glowing deep purple that came about whenever she used her abilities.

Her mental voice was feminine, young, and quavering. It sounded pretty pathetic, really, but it was the power behind it that made it something special. It wasn't a message being sent in a neat package from point A to point B. It was a ocean drain leaking some of its endless volume in a particular direction. The stutter kind of ruined the effect, though.

My n-n-name i-is S-s-ssrrrm.

She huffed in frustration, wrinkly pink forehead furrowing as she gathered her thoughts. She breathed in the scents, heard the sounds, felt herself calm down enough to get her mind back in working order. She was free, and she didn't know for how long.

Think.

It was hard for her, but she managed to do it. She was scared, hungry, cold, and confused. Her muscles still ached from the seizures and that woman's jacket had left her skin itching. Through all that, though, she managed to force out the word clearly and strongly. Her eyes focused on the man and flared as her mind found his mind, and entered it.

Sulci.