((ooc: *innocent look* What would Hunter’s techies turn up if they ran a background check on one Teresa Willingscote? Hypothetically speaking. Not as if you’re dealing with a nosy information ho who just got a full name tucked in his mental bins, or anything.))

Slate, the lady-who-might-sleep-with-me asked you a question.

...If you will excuse me, I have more important things to do. Or would you like to spend the next several hours focusing solely upon how to meld the properties of an electric eel and a poisonous snake into the body of a house cat?

What happened to the nose issue?

It is ready for a test-shift. I believe I have worked out the details of sizing; we will have to work on circulation, however. The capillaries may not match up entirely.

Well, cool. I’ll just... stop bothering you, then.

Thank you.

This little internalized dialogue only took its usual fraction of a second, but it was more than enough to let Teresa’s train wreck skid to a fiery halt far, far past them. “—I’m an evil agender. I mean agendress. Agenderix? Anyway that wasn’t nice to say. ...Cool. So what is your last name, anyway? And, seriously – why no mail?"

Teresa was sitting, after a manner of speaking, so Calley did, too: he perched his bum lightly on an arm of that chair she was manner-of-speaking on. “Umm, Yeldham. I’m Caleb Yeldham. Or at least, that was part of the deal when I got kicked out; I’m supposed to use that last name. I think there’s some detailed BS file about me being an orphan attached to it, if anyone actually cares enough to check. My dad is... kinda thorough. Kinda makes me wonder if I’ve got various half-brothers and sisters running around that no one could ever trace back to him. About the mail thing: the mailbox is on the main floor. You’ve seen it, right? It's one of those little gray boxes along the wall. All I get is junk, since no one knows I’m here, so I pretty much check it once a month to toss everything into the recycle bin. No letters for you, by the way. Are you expecting any?” She was slightly less scary-drunken-mysterious when she was drunken-crashed into a chair. And, err, on the defensive. “Sorry about the agenterixtress stuff. I guess.” He contemplatively looked down at her. What he wanted to do was say ‘So, umm, about that virginity...?’, but he was getting outvoted by the clutter on that: somehow they didn’t think that was tasteful. Instead, he very deliberately poked her stomach with his big toe. Just to see what she’d do. The Pillsbury Dough Boy had been a very bad influence on him in his youth.

(( OOC: Teresa Willingscote was born February 12, 1984, has been living in New York for awhile, is a physical fitness buff, and I dunno what else but there’s all kinds of real data because she’s a real person; if anybody wants me to make up more data I can.
Very careful analysis will probably turn up that she is sometimes in two places at once, which might be bewildering. One of those places is Mondragon Labs.
There is no such person as “Sonya Willingscote”. ))

Sonya/Teresa listens to Calley’s explanation about junk mail and his fake last name. "’Caleb’? Hee! Makes you sound like a movie villain. I prefer ‘Calley’. And see? Vodka leads to you telling me your secrets! I was right! " She pours some more vodka into his cup, and takes another swig herself. " In vodka veritas! Vodka, vodka uber alles! Im principio erat Vodka! Um… there is no Vodka but Vodka! " The pauses between misquotes grow longer as it takes her more time to think of them. "Morituri te, um, Vodkatamus! "

> “Sorry about the agenterixtress stuff. I guess.”

It’s not much of an apology, but then again she wasn’t really that upset. She’s about to ask why Slate isn’t answering her question when calley pokes her in the belly with his bare toe. She giggles, then looks carefully at his other foot, and decides he must have taken his shoes off while she wasn’t looking.

She considers asking him why he’s poking her in the belly with his toe, but decides not to. Instead she looks contemplatively at the foot for a while, then runs the back of a fingernail lightly along the sole.

((ooc: Good to know, Sonya, good to know... *innocent*))

There was suddenly more vodka in his cup: with a little stare and a littler shrug, Calley swung back his head and sent it to join its sloshy friend. Then he stared at her, and wondered if she really wasn’t making sense, or if the vodka was really that good.

" In vodka veritas! Vodka, vodka uber alles! Im principio erat Vodka! ...”

He was looking into the bottom of his empty cup with respect when the toe-poke retaliation came: a cold line of polished fire up his sole. A little shiver went up Calley’s back. Unfortunately, a rather big reflexive jerk went through his leg, and showed his precarious chair-arm perch who was boss. With a startled meh!, Calley went over the side. His back hit foofy white carpeting. He raised his empty glass into the air, where she could see it over the chair arm.

“Touché, mademoiselle. Touché,” he pronounced from the ground.

"Ack!" Sonya pulls back, startled, as Calley’s leg behaves improperly. A moment later he’s gone, replaced by a resounding THUD and a lone cup-bearing hand. "Are you OK?"

She leans over the chair arm to check on him and is relieved to see him lying there, apparently uninjured, so she pours more vodka into the cup he’s waving in the air and continues grinning down at him.

"And today’s lesson, boys and girls, is you don’t poke with bare feet!" She frowns thoughtfully and corrects herself: "I mean tiger feet. Um… tiger paws." She reaches down to take Calley’s other hand between hers, and runs her thumbs along the palm of his hand. "Very small tiger paws. Wee paws. For station identification!"

She laughs a little too hard at her own joke, then starts hiccupping and remembers a question she’d wanted to ask him for weeks. "Hey, speaking of tiger paws… howcum you aren’t stupid when you’re a tiger? Um… I mean, not that you’re stupid the rest of the time, I mean that real tigers – um, I mean, you know, tigers that aren’t shifted into by naked seventeen-year-old boys – aren’t as bright as people, but you don’t get stupid when you turn into one. Howcum?"

Calley let out a nervous chuckle as she played with his hand. It, ah, seemed appropriate. Or at least, it was all he could think to do; that, and take a hearty sip from his newly refilled cup. Considering he’d only ever really been drinking once in his life—and that time, he’d gotten so sloshed he’d managed to pounce at a gigantic werewolf man in tiger form from three feet away and miss—it probably wasn’t a good idea to let Teresa liquor him up like this. But hey, every second he was drinking was one less second of awkwardly wondering what to do. Stupid girls. Stupid girls and their vodka. Stupid girls and their vodka and their casually mentioning of their virginity and then not mentioning it again and sitting down on chairs and him falling off of chairs and—

"Hey, speaking of tiger paws… howcum you aren’t stupid when you’re a tiger? Um… I mean, not that you’re stupid the rest of the time, I mean that real tigers – um, I mean, you know, tigers that aren’t shifted into by naked seventeen-year-old boys – aren’t as bright as people, but you don’t get stupid when you turn into one. Howcum?"

Calley used the still-slightly-full cup to sloshily point to himself. “No, no, I am stupid. So don’t worry about calling me stupid. Umm, the tiger thing... I don’t know.” He tilted his head, and attempted to stare at her in a quizzical way that didn’t involve any sort of slight smile. “Do you know any shifters that get stupid? Actually, do you know any shifters at all? I’ve always wanted to talk to another shifter... ‘Bout shifting.” That thing she was doing to his palm was really distracting. And it tickled.

> “No, no, I am stupid. So don’t worry about calling me stupid. Umm,
> the tiger thing... I don’t know. Do you know any shifters that get stupid?
> Actually, do you know any shifters at all? I’ve always wanted to talk to
> another shifter... ‘Bout shifting.”

"No…"

For just a moment, she has an urge to tell him the truth about her power. Then she reminds herself of the key, important fact about Calley – more important than the fact that he’s fun to hang with and kinda cute and funny and lets her stay at his apartment – which is that he doesn’t really seem to give a damn about anyone. Which is fine for a one-night stand, or even for several nights, but is a real problem if she’s stupid enough to start trusting him with anything important.

"…well, I mean, sorta. There’s this guy at the Labs… his name is Kaz, or at least that’s what he goes by. Supposedly he’s really important there, works directly for Hunter. He’s a shifter, kinda, though not like you… not sure what that thing is he changes into, but it isn’t any animal I know. Do you know him? " She thinks back on his transformation during the training session and adds "You’re right, though, he doesn’t lose any brainpower either. I just thought, since you were in a tiger’s body, it ought to be a tiger’s brain too… but I guess it was a stupid question. Just seen too many werewolf movies or something."

So why is it different for me? She’s not at all sure, but it seems that she’s not a typical shifter, whatever that means. Kaz and Calley, as far as she knows, can only switch between two forms… and Sara isn’t even a shifter, she’s kinda stuck in between forms. Sonya’s the only person she knows who can shift into a lot of different forms… though of course she’s not giving the fact away, herself, and for all she knows there’s a dozen shifters just like her who aren’t giving it away.

"Maybe your body shifts, but your brain doesn’t! That’d be funky. Have you ever had an MRI or something like that done when you’re a tiger?" Which in turn suggests other possibilities, with more practical – or at least, more immediately relevant – consequences. "Or even better – have you ever tried to make a hybrid thing, like Sara? You’d look sexy with a tiger-tail…"

Calley shuddered at the mention of that charming three-lettered name that rhymed with ‘Syn’ and ‘Nox’ on principle if not in practice. There was something about three-lettered names... they were evil. ‘Hunter’... Hunter was six letters. That was mathematical proof, that was. Hunter was doubly evil. He reached out with his foot, snagged the tiger plushie that Sonya had bought him for Christmas, and brought it closer for his hugging-to-chest-in-traumatized-fashion pleasure. “Kaz... Kaz gets naked faster than a habitually streaking skinny dipper at an orgy. Manages to keep his pants when he shifts, though,” Calley mused, “guess that’s good. Don’t really want to see a naked shifty Kaz. Didn’t really want to see a naked normal Kaz, either...”

"Maybe your body shifts, but your brain doesn’t! That’d be funky. Have you ever had an MRI or something like that done when you’re a tiger?"

Calley might have been starting to feel a little fuzzy around the edges, but he still managed to lift an are-you-insane eyebrow. “MRI, huh? Wasn’t really on my priority list, what with the Registration Law, and everything. Though volunteering myself as a test subject would probably win me oodles of special treatment. I’ll, ah, keep that in mind.”

"Or even better – have you ever tried to make a hybrid thing, like Sara? You’d look sexy with a tiger-tail…"

Calley looks at his backside with much contemplation. “You know, I don’t think it’s safe to drink-and-shift. But yeah... yeah, I’m pretty sure I could do that. Maybe. With some excruciating pain the first couple of times while I work out how the bones and nerves and stuff connect...” He looked back to her, the tiger doll tucked under his chin. “Umm, maybe we could skip the sexy tiger tail this time...?” Oh, semi-drunken slightly-suggestive trailing off: you are many a man’s best friend.

> “Kaz... Kaz gets naked faster than a habitually streaking skinny
> dipper at an orgy. Manages to keep his pants when he shifts, though,
> guess that’s good. Don’t really want to see a naked shifty Kaz. Didn’t
> really want to see a naked normal Kaz, either...”

Sonya/Teresa’s eyes widen at Calley’s comments, and the way he curls around the stuffed tiger like a scared little boy. "Um… wow. Um, yeah, he kept his pants on." She considers making some teasing comment about how good Kaz would look naked, just to get a reaction, but judging from Calley’s reaction she isn’t convinced the reaction would be a good one.

"Anyway, sounds like you know him. Possibly better than I actually want to hear about..."

> “MRI, huh? Wasn’t really on my priority list, what with the
> Registration Law, and everything. Though volunteering myself
> as a test subject would probably win me oodles of special treatment.
> I’ll, ah, keep that in mind.”

She laughs at that. "Well, I was thinking more along the lines of having your friends the llama-kidnappers run one… there’s got to be all kinds of funky medical equipment and stuff there, right? I just got finished dropping a kid off in their infirmary, and haven’t really explored it, but still… stands to reason. No llamas though… you lied to me. Still, it’s nice to know your sarcasm glands still work!"

> “Umm, maybe we could skip the sexy tiger tail this time...?”

This time she stifles the laugh, much as Calley’s attempts at subtlety amuse her. "Weeellll…. I suppose I can give you a raincheck. This time." She grins down at Calley, still supine on the carpet, and decides she’s tired of talking.

It’s surprisingly difficult for her to get out of the chair without falling over, and she realizes her legs are a lot wobblier than she remembers them being. The vodka probably has something to do with that. Still, she makes it most of the way to the bedroom door without falling over, before tossing over her shoulder as she steps through it "You realize it’s impolite to leave a girl waiting, right?"

She closes the door behind her, though. Just to mess with his head, which is turning into far more fun than she’d anticipated.

“No llamas though… you lied to me. .."

“Did not!” Calley protested, and made a swipe for the vodka bottle. Or, at least, the neck of it: he tipped it towards his cup, and was rewarded with a glug-glug refilling, which he cheerfully took this stunning opportunity to drain. He sporfled a little through the liquor as she wobble-wobble-wobbled to her feet. And... to the... bedroom.

"You realize it’s impolite to leave a girl waiting, right?"

She’d left the bottle in his hand and an invitation in the air. Calley was on his feet before he’d thought about getting to his feet. He was on his back before gravity had gotten out more than a good chuckle at him. Woah... okay. So, apparently, vodka was better stuff than he’d thought. What was the proof on this thing? He was thinking about checking, but he found himself draining the last of it straight from the bottle instead. Good stuff. Tasted vaguely like nothing and made his tummy feel happily warm. With a carefully controlled wobble, he used the chair to get to his feet, and voyaged across the vast ocean of the living room to his bedroom door. Hark, ye doorknob—Calley was more than a match for your shutting trickery!

From there? Well, everything faded to a nice hazy black.

(and… when we return from the convenient commercial break )

Sonya/Teresa is aware of several things when she wakes up some time later.

The first, and most important to her, is that she feels rather like someone drove a railroad spike through her forehead and stuffed her mouth with lint. This she attributes to a hangover from all the vodka she’d drunk the night before.

The second is that she’s not wearing her bodysuit. Which is odd, because she doesn’t remember going to bed without it. In fact, on further consideration she doesn’t remember going to bed at all.

The third – well, to be fair, it’s more like the fourth, or maybe the fifth, because she keeps noticing the hangover over and over – so, we’ll say, the next thing she notices, as she rolls over in an attempt to bury her face in the pillows away from the glaring evil sunlight streaming through the window, is that her hand brushes against something small and warm and furry.

Which leads in turn to two realizations, which compete for the next slot in her awareness. One is the knowledge, conveyed by a familiar but unexpected wave of genetic information, that she’s apparently sharing a bed with Calley. The other is the knowledge, conveyed by more traditional neural pathways, that she’s sharing a bed with a housecat.

As that pair of observations makes their way across the finish-line of the race to consciousness, they elicit several responses, all roughly simultaneous.

One, a purely instinctive phobic response, is to pull her hand away like she’d touched a fire, shout "Ack!", attempt to roll away from the unexpected housecat, tangle her legs up in the sheets (or perhaps her legs were already tangled up?) and fall gracelessly off the edge of the bed with an elbow-punishing THUMP.

Another, somewhat higher-functioning, response is to rack her brains for some recollection of Calley having joined her when she’d gone to bed… unsuccessfully, though she remembers a couple of drunken propositions that would not unreasonably have given him grounds to do so.

The third, which a detached part of her finds the most interesting, manages to put the two observations, along with some pre-existing data, into a new conclusion: Calley is a housecat?

All of which winds up in her climbing her way back up to her knees, glaring over the edge of the bed suspiciously, elbow-scraped and hung over, at what appears to be Calley the Housecat.

shriek-crumple-spring

The sounds of a behemoth shifting on the bed jack-hammered their way in through Calley’s sensitive ears. He swiveled them back and laid them down flat—much better. Something brushed against his fur and he instinctively arched up to meet it with the barest beginnings of a purr. The sound immediately spiked up through his head. Oww. He canned it and curled up tighter, sticking his head firmly against the mattress to bloat out that cheerful morning light before it caroled murder into his optic nerves.

"Ack!" shirke-tangle-sprong-THUMP

Would you please tell her to keep it down? I am attempting to review the work I did last night, on our chimera shifts. It... does not make sense. Calley, were we drugged? I cannot fathom any other reason that my work would be so sub par. Additionally, the clutter and I are having significant troubles locating the memories from—

Slate, please. Not so loud.

“You too, Teresa. Not... not so loud. Please,” he tried to say, but murrroow was the low moan that assaulted his ears. He cringed against the pillow, and flicked a hind leg at his ear before trying again. This time, he remembered to shift himself some more appropriate vocal chords, first. Housecats really weren’t built for human speech. “Could you roll off the bed more quietly, please?” He asked delicately, his voice hissing out with a sharp lisp past his needle-like teeth. He turned his head against the sheets, letting one ear swivel her way, and one baby blue eye show itself through a thin slit. “Really, that was... loud.” He gave a cat wince against the mattress, his whiskers braking back towards his face and his claws flexing out. “Is it always this... bright?”

...Calley. We are a housecat.

Yep. Enhanced hearing and sight. Ain’t it peachy?

...Calley, do not move. Keep the collar camera against the bed. Antonescu cannot know that we are a housecat.

Why would he care? He knows I...

Yes.

Slate...?

Yes.

#%@^

Yes. Can you change back?

Do migraines grow wings in daisy fields?

...I would not know.

...Just give me a minute, here. Never tried shifting through a hangover.

The housecat on the bed was little and white, with black spots here and there. It was rather desperately putting one paw against its parted lips in parody of a human ssssh. He’d rather not have Doc Jimmy or some lab attendant press that explode-a-bad-spy button. And though it would be awfully convenient, he’d rather that Teresa’s head didn’t play catch with any bullets as she tried to leave the building. She would probably be less fun if she was dead. Boy-howdy, would she ever be dead if Hunter knew that she knew what he knew: Calley was an idiot. An idiot who wasn’t just a tiger shifter.

> “Could you roll off the bed more quietly, please? Really, that was... loud. Is it always this... bright?”

Sonya/Teresa blinks uncertainly as Calley the Housecat becomes Calley the Talking Housecat. He said he couldn’t talk as a tiger… ‘course, he’s not a tiger now, is he?

She’s indignant for all of several seconds that he’s been keeping this extra ability secret, before the hypocrisy of that overwhelms her… and a moment later, the absurdity of it. We’ve been keeping exactly the same secret! It’s like something out of an O.Henry story. Maybe we’re secretly long-lost siblings… Which she really hopes not, given her entirely unfraternal intentions. Or actions? Dammit, what happened last night?

Before she can put words to any of this, it occurs to her that the cat is doing something very, very odd… pushing itself against the mattress while putting a paw against its muzzle. Very weird. "Um… Calley? That is still you, right? Are you OK?"

((ooc: Posts now edited so he calls you 'Teresa', not 'Sonya'.

Additionally, Kat and I just determined the state of Calley's "weakness" using the time-tested D&D method: rolling dice. We determined that Calley was awake... but Sonya passed out. Therefore, we'll go with the view of "Calley just sorta pouted and then joined Sonya in passing out" view. Weakness: still present! ))

(( OOC: Hunter's cameramen were, no doubt, highly amused. ))

She has a chainsaw murder like a voice. Calley observed, flattening his ears against his head to block her out and squeezing his eyes shut on principle. “Just fine, just fine, really, truly. If you could not talk for a second... that’d be super. Really. Truly.”

Come on, stupid body. Make with the shifting.

It was times like this when Calley realized a little something: he really had no clue how his powers worked. He was just stumbling through them, on a daily basis. Which usually worked pretty well. Think about a form, shift to a form. Think about a chimera form, writhe on the ground in horrible sinus pain for a little bit then shift back and deal with Slate running smug derivatives in the back of their head. Usually, though, he wasn’t feeling like a large wasp had crawled in through his temple and dug out his frontal lobes to set up Ye Olde Cotton Ball and Ether Shoppe. Thus, the little hung-over cat with black spots here and there had to actually think. Or, at least, he had to mentally drag himself into Ye Olde Shoppe—cringe at the cheerfully tinkling bell hung sadistically over the door—and rummage around the shelves of the clutter in a surly manner. They were feeling pretty darn bleary, themselves. He found his Sinatra form in a great big mass of other cats: it lifted one eyelid warningly. He found his Red-Handed Tamarin: it gave him a little red finger. He even found an octopus. He wasn’t quite sure where he’d gotten an octopus, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to mess with something with that many tentacles when it was in that bad of a mood. At long last, in a dusty corner, he found his one and only human form. He put it on like a cheap suit, and tentatively opened one eye.

Success! Oww. Note to self: don’t be so loud in own head.

He stretched out more comfortably, and less let’s-keep-Hunter-literally-in-the-darkly. He waved at Teresa. Then, with a sudden blush, he realized he didn’t quite know where the vast majority of his clothing was. Except for his boxers: they were comfy and flannel, and apparently he’d been curling up on them as a cat. Yeah. He skitter-hop-leapt back into those.

With a sudden curious rising of his eyebrow, he looked at Teresa. It was hard to tell with her being so glaring-suspiciously over the bed-like, but... “Good morning. Are you wearing as little clothes as I am?” ‘Cause that would be awesome. Why’s she making with the suspicious face, again?

HOUSECAT.

Oww! Slate, did you just... shout?

...Heh.