Chapter Five - Purrniture Purrchases
Crossover: Stray Cat Strut by RavensDagger

***

Cat sent a text to Myalis. Mostly because none of her augs could connect to the internet, and there was no wifi signal to work off of anyway. Hell, even her GPS was pulling up a blank, which was somehow really distressing. “What’s going on?” she wrote.

I have no idea. Which is to say I have several thousand hypotheses, but none of them are confirmable. Interestingly enough, I can still order things, and the connection to my main servers is still intact. I am attempting to work through what happened with several of my colleagues.

“Hey, cat-lady, did you hear me?”

Cat grinned in what she hoped was a disarming way and rubbed at the back of her neck. “Sorry, I got distracted by my own thoughts there for a second,” she said.

After the... she supposed it was a summoning--but that sounded too much like some magic bullshit, and she wasn’t keen on the idea of magical stuff at all--she was confronted by three girls.

Two of them were a bit older. Maybe Cat’s age, a year or two more at most. The blonde was an easy eight out of ten, and her little freckled girlfriend was cute too, in a bookish geek sort of way. They were either a couple, or the useless sort of lesbian that were a couple but didn’t know it.

That, or Cat really needed to recalibrate her gaydar.

The third one was a bit weird. Cat had spent a lot of time around kids, and something about the girl that had called herself Dreamer was pinging as ‘wrong’ to Cat’s senses. She didn’t know what it was, exactly. The kid had a clean enough dress on, with more ruffles than Cat would be caught dead wearing in a million years, and she was barefoot, which was strange if she could afford such a nice dress.

“We have a lot of things that need renovating,” Dreamer said. “Mostly the stuff in the kitchens, and the tables and chairs and stuff elsewhere too.”

“You, uh, know I’m not a carpenter, right? I’m a samurai. I fix problems, usually in very violent ways. I don’t know jack about furniture and shit like that. I don’t know how to cook either, so you’re out of luck there too.”

The Dreamer girl pouted, then a tentacle sprouted from the air next to her. One moment there was nothing, the next there was a rip in reality and a thin purple tentacle slipped out of it and started to rub Dreamer on the chin.

It was the most disturbing ‘thinking pose’ Cat had ever seen.

Catherine, don’t panic.

“Not a reassuring thing to say,” Cat muttered.

“That’s weird,” Dreamer said. “Was my summoning thing wrong?”

Disregard all points in your future purchases. We will give the creature whatever it wishes in order to keep it happy. The cost will be waived.

“Well,” Cat said. She felt a slick bead of sweat sliding down the length of her back. She’d only been with Myalis for a little while, but not once had the AI ever sounded worried. “I do have one thing that might help. I can buy stuff.”

“Yes, we have money here,” the Daphne girl said.

“I mean, I can buy some really neat stuff. Shit that’ll blow your renaissance minds,” Cat said.

Dreamer frowned. “Don’t blow Abigail.”

“Uh,” Cat said. Whatever Dreamer was, she was a kid enough for Cat to place her words in the ‘too innocent to know’ category and move on. “No problem, pipsqueak.”

The creature identifying as Dreamer is a transdimensional being. It inhabits multiple dimensions. While the Protectors are capable of cross-dimensional travel, it has always been within a relatively narrow bandwidth. Creatures like Dreamer can move between these naturally through unknown means.

Cat nodded, an easy, cocky grin on. “So, wanna show me around?”

“You’re cooperative all of a sudden,” Daphne said.

Cat shrugged. “The AI living in my head is scared shitless of Dreamer here for some reason.”

Daphne blinked. “That actually explains things quite neatly.”

“Really?” Cat asked. “Is that a common occurrence?”

“Only with people who have common sense,” Daphne said.

Catherine... I do not know how your lack of tact has not yet ended in your violent death. I suppose I should congratulate you, but I won’t for fear of encouraging even more recklessness.

The trio before Cat filed into the cafe, and Cat followed after them while writing a text. “How do you know about Dreamer? Why is she scary?”

The Protectors, from what Cat had gathered, had met and were made up of plenty of aliens.

Our first contact with a being like Dreamer was in a solar system on the far reaches of the Milky Way. We established a forward outpost on the planet, and a small cephalopod-like creature appeared from a rip in space. It proceeded to consume the outpost and the planet around it.

Cat blinked.

All attempts to combat the creature led to great losses until the area was quarantined. Any organic crew suffered from severe mental trauma by dint of being in proximity to the creature, and AI, who require that natural laws function as they ought to, don’t adapt well to creatures that disregard these. The creature was eventually consumed by a purple tentacle-like appendage the width of a yellow dwarf that slid out of nowhere and returned there just as rapidly.

“Huh,” Cat said.

The girls turned her way, and she gestured to the kitchen as if she was commenting on that. “Nice enough, but I’m sure we can do better,” Cat replied with an uneasy grin.

“Yeah. I want a kitchen where we can cook a bunch of tasty food and things,” Dreamer said.

“Hungry, huh?” Cat asked.

Dreamer nodded. “I could eat a sun.”

“Haha... yeah.”

***