kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

[headandhand]

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The RoCocoa Cat Cafe
WHEN: Aug. 10-14
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!


Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces, but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating! Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! But don't be too shy, you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

This month’s event is held at the brand new RoCocoa Cat Cafe, a sparkly new establishment that caters to children and the young at heart with iced and hot cocoa drinks of all kinds, delicious pastries, age-appropriate live music, and of course many friendly kitties who love to lounge in laps. The cats are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including some who may look a little different from what you expect, or may look like an ordinary cat but are actually anything but ordinary underneath that adorable fur coat. All cats in the cafe are adoptable, too, if you meet a new furry friend and just can’t bear to go home without them!

So pull up a chair, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a sugary treat or two with the resident furbabies. You might just meet your new two- or four-legged best friend!

Comments

[yondu]

Yondu is leaning so far back his chair is starting to come off the ground, tipping a little. But that tail is twitching and he very much does not want that thing aimed at him. So he just puts a pastry he half ate between him and what he knows to be a fathomless cosmic horror that purrs.

"I don't reckon it's lookin' for friends. They tend to look for snacks first. You willin' to put that on the ground for me?"

He does not want to touch it. But definitely isn't having that much of a reaction to the fairly average (if flat-faced) cat looking up at him from the floor.

[bravers]

He's really got no idea. None at all; so it's with a nonchalant shrug he first removes the pastry from the table and places it on the floor, then he picks up the cat in both arms. It's placed down with the pastry, but the weird thing? It keeps staring at Yondu. It even moves; to rub himself against the man's legs.

It's pretty taken with him, it seems.

"You alright? You're acting as if it's going to explode."

[yondu]

Yondu's doing his damndest to make his legs not TOO available. It makes him practically tap dance in slow motion while this 'cat' seems to want to leave its scent on him.

"That'n ain't a cat. That'n's a Flerken."

Now that it's on the floor he'll say that. But he finds the distinction very important. "You know how in the wild you might get two animals that kinda look alike? But one of 'em's normal and best it can do to hurt anybody is to give 'em a nip an' one of 'em got big ol' teeth and a pocket dimension in its belly where one can hold several grown adults? Sorta like that."

[bravers]

"...Oh."

A what? Yondu's explanation makes absolutely no sense, no matter how many times he repeats it in his head. Still, it's no reason not to believe it. Especially considering cat belly pocketuniverses weren't the strangest thing about this place.

Bright eyes move to the ravager's face as soon as he speaks, his gaze vaguely accusatory. Yet still, he sits.

"You wanted me to do it, knowing what it was?"

Rude. And yeah, he's going to lift his legs from the floor, and tuck them underneath himself. He places his elbows on the table, meshing his fingertips together to lean his chin on them. And he can't help it, he's curious.

"How do you know what they are?"

[yondu]

"Yeah, 'cause a flerken prolly won't attack someone that thinks its just a cute fuzzy thing. They fuckin' know. See? It knows I just outed 'im."

He glances down at it. "Don't you got a bowl of food somewhere to eat whole or somethin'."

He will A+ tuck and roll out of that chair to keep from getting scratched.

"They're from my universe. Probably the only thing here that knows what I am, too? Now ain't that some irony for ya." So far he's just been a weird blue guy.

[bravers]

So it was a self-defense mechanism? Or...? He finds himself more confused than not by virtue of Yondu's explanation, but it certainly isn't the ravager's fault. He's concise about it, just descriptive enough to be helpful, yet not overly so- not enough to overshare and sound like babble.

It... what he's describing is similar to the saying that animals can smell fear, right? The cat really can't percept thoughts, can it? As he's about to ask, Yondu indeed does tuck and roll out of the chair and out of harm's way. But it's just for a moment. The cat mews, and starts to follow him.

Cloud's eyes follow it as it mewls again.

"You look like a person to me."

Blue, sure. But no less of one. But onto the cat.

"Are they predators?"

[yondu]

"Yeah, I'm a person." Simple enough. "But I'm Centaurian. An' that's absolutely a predator."

He pulls out his arrow, now standing near the table. It can't do the damage that it used to. It's weaker, doesn't fly as far. But it still responds to his whistles and it floats in the air.

And that seems to deter the flerken. It doesn't know the arrow isn't effective. But it sees the arrow and decides, oh, hey, some food might be a good time after all.

There's another cat, Siamese looking with four blue eyes, eating from the bowl when the whole bowl disappears into the flerken's nightmare maw. It mewls in disappointment, before moving onto the next bowl.

Yondu is about to grab his arrow out of the air, but then a genuine kitten (genuine as in whatever type of cat it is, it ain't a flerken) is watching it with giant baby animal eyes at his feet.

He whistles and it goes down near the kitten. It falls over in a splayed-paw attempt to bat at it."

[bravers]

"I meant the Flerken." He's quick to clarify. Yondu's fear about the thing, as well as his knowledge, half made him wonder if where he was originally from had them as a predatory creature.

But he doesn't comment further. To be honest, two things surprise him. The pocketuniverse actually... being a thing, as well as the floating arrow go a way to surprise him.

The former's disturbing. And it's been explained. So the latter...

"How are you doing that?"

sorry for my slowness, new event and busy stuff held me up

[yondu]

He taps the fin on his head. Now that the flerken has backed off, he's more comfortable in sitting down. And with the small kitten that runs to grab his ankle.

"It's called a Yaka arrow. I give it commands and it does what I want it to. For the most part."

He makes a so so motion.

"Been actin' a little funny since I come here."