Neko-Jin HQ

[Mitera Nikkou]

"Um... Uh... Not that I know of..." She replied, uncertainly, mental questioning whether it was a good idea to have agreed to have tests taken.

To distract herself from her misgivings about the situation, after getting a good look at the "lab", she said, "Do you think I have any special powers or abilities?..."

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia's back is turned to Tetsuo. "I'm not sure. It depends on, well, some random factor I couldn't quite figure out. Like I said, Rose doesn't really have any, and most of the others don't really have any, though I've heard of a few who do. I'll be able to find out in a minute, though."

She turns around, revealing that she is holding a ridiculously large laser cannon. The barrel alone is the size of a man's arm. She smiles from the other end. "Okay, first, let's see about regeneration!"

[Mitera Nikkou]

"Eep!"

Without thinking about it, Tetsuo sprinted away, like a blur, hiding behind the large glass tube, pitting it between her and Scientia.

"Can't I, um... Just find out if I regenerate... Naturally...?"

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia thinks for a second. "Well, I suppose I could just cut you with a knife, but that wouldn't work as well! I mean, you said I could preform tests, and I haven't even gotten to testing for enchanced agility. Which you might qualify for, actually."

[Mitera Nikkou]

Peeking her head out from behind the tube, Tetsuo, her voice quavering, said, "But... I thought we were family..."

Despite her face being incomplete, it had changed near enough to the finishing point for her tearful googly eyes to express the beginnings of an adorable masterpiece. You see, she had taken after her mother and, as a boy, had a rounded and babyish face, small, button nose, and thick, healthy hair. Of course, that wasn't exactly the kind of traits girls looked for in a guy, so he fell under their radar. However, now, his already expressive genetics were being augmented for a sex best equipped for it.

But would it have enough of an effect at this point, along with her words, to change Scientia's mind, with said mind seeming to have a great interest for science and experiments?

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia sighs, and looks sad for a bit. "We are family. I just happen to be the person in the family who likes to tease people."

She fires the gun off in the ceiling, and a little bitty scanning laser flashes over a part of the wall. Scientia's eye are slightly teary. She honestly feels guilty about what she did. "I would never really hurt you. I just thought it would be a bit of a joke."

She puts the gun down, and pulls out a chair. She sits down in it, and leans back. Her eyes glance at the ceiling, or almost beyond it. "It's just that I used to be a 'hokkimaru', a shut-in. I never even left my room. I barely ate. I just slept, played video games, trolled around on the 'net, and then went back to sleep. I ate enough to live, whenever I was hungry. I had a bit of a job, enough to keep me alive, but I hated it. When I met this group, I got out of my shell a bit. And, I guess I'm sorta making up for lost time."

She turns to Tetsuo. "So, seriously, would you mind me giving you a quick bio-scan. It won't hurt, I'm just going to check for any suspicious genetic markers. I've mapped most of the 'normal' genome, so I'll be able to tell at the LEAST if you're baseline."

[Mitera Nikkou]

Tetsuo walked out from behind the tube, the expression on her face a mixture of sympathy and guilt. She approached Scientia and stood before her, and seemed hesitent. It took a moment for any resolve to show, and it was then that she nodded almost imperceptibly, to herself, and leaned down to embrace Scientia, moving to sit on her lap afterward so she could hug her better.

"I'm sorry... Yes, you can scan me. I just thought... With how things looked around here... And your mention of arsenic..."

She sniffled a bit before she continued in a more quieter, softer tone. "And I know what you mean..." She leaned back so she could look at Scientia, though a bit shyly and, trying to put some humor into her voice, she said, "That kind of life sucks, doesn't it?"

[Chibi MitchellTF]

She accepts the hug, and treasures that feeling. "Pretty much. It's a prison, and the prisoner is his own jailer. As for this place, well, yeah, it's sorta a joke. Well, mostly a joke. I did manage to create Neko, after all."

She pulls out of the hug, and picks up a handle that's attached to a computer. She pulls at the handle, revealing that the handle is part of a gun-like scanner, almost like a barcode scanner. She scans Tetsuo over, and then puts it back. "Now, to look for deviations from baseline..."

(Do you want Tetsuo to have a special trick?)

[Mitera Nikkou]

(What are my options, and the limits of those options? XD)

Tetsuo blinked for a moment, absorbing one of the details that Scientia had mentioned.

"You created Neko...?" She asked, her voice expressing wonder.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia nods while looking through the computer file. "Yeah, our current leader was a member of this group called S.U.C.K. They wanted to take over the city, and then the world or something like that. Something about being able to a better job than whoever's running it right now. Anyway, they did a recruiting drive recently, and have been trying a few more plans. One of those was to create the ultimate weapon using bio-engineering. I think the plan was, if they didn't take over the world, they would at least not get sent to the hospital so much. So, they managed to pick me out thanks to a paper I posted on the internet. I'd gotten bored, and I developed a possibile way to custom-grow an organism as long as you had a sample of DNA. So, he met me, and got Rose to help with the finances. Anyway, I took a map of the human genome, then I mapped the cat genome. Creating the virus was the hard part, and it took a few tries, but I finally created one that left a stable organism. Now, the basic specifications called for something that was capable of creating a loyal army of followers, and it worked pretty much. It's not mindless zombie slave loyal, but Neko is at least able to theoretically command, or at least influence, actions of the catgirls she creates. Combined with the personality change, she can at least get all the catgirls to make other catgirls. Well, unfortunately, I was not able to genetically encode loyalty. We used some subliminal hypnosis and stuff while she was fast-grown, but she had a contradiction between 'turn everybody into catgirls' and 'obey our commands. Not to mention that she's Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and that's part of the template she passes on. 'Turn everybody into catgirls' won out. The police managed to stop her, combined with a twist of fate."

She stops talking for a moment, and looks to the sky. "Every day that I am alive, I thank God, Buddha, or whoever, that the day we picked was the hottest day of summer, and there was a warehouse full of pillows, with a glass roof to boot. The miracle of sunbeams and catnaps saved the planet from a feline fate. Neko being ruler of the world would be bad, especially since she probably wouldn't realize it. After that, we all got picked up by some hospitals, who injected us with some nanobots designed to prevent us from being contagious. By 'us', I mean the over one hundred catgirls, or possibly more, that are now scattered throughout this city. We just recently managed to escape two years of imprisonment, and that leaves us where we are now."

Scientia spins her chair around to face Tetsuo. "So, did you get all that?" She holds up two signs, one that says 'Yes', and one that says 'No'. "Press the sign to continue!"

[Mitera Nikkou]

Tetsuo tilted her head to the side a fraction, her brow wrinkled just a bit.

"I think I understand most of it..." She said slowly, then pressed the "go" sign.

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia sighs with relief. "Good, then I don't have to explain it again. That's always the most borrowing part of any game with long exposition. Now, onto your powers."

Scientia looks over the monitor, and makes various 'hmm' noises and such. "Let's see, you got a nice enchanced attributes set, not as much as Catnip, but still above baseline. Enchanced senses too, and something funny. Hm, I have no idea what this one is. Haven't seen anything like it since Neko herself. But it's not quite like hers either. We might want to check on this later..." Scientia laughs out loud. "You DO have regeneration. So, even if it really WAS a big gun, nothing to be afraid of!"

[Mitera Nikkou]

"I'd rather not be on the wrong end of a big gun, anyway..." Tetsuo replied, a sweat drop forming over her head.

"But why do you say there is something funny?" She asked, leaning in to look at the monitor as well despite not knowing how to read it. "Is that another way of saying that it's just something that you don't recognize yet?"

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Scientia nods. "Yeah. It's funny-strange, not funny-haha. Now, you having regeneration is funny-haha."

On the monitor is two strands of DNA sequences, each labeled with numerous pairs flashing by rapidly. As they flash by, codes are highlighted as they come up. One looks like the 'baseline', and the other is labeled 'Tetsuo'. A few messages in corners of the screen mentions, 'Match found', 'Match found', 'Nanites surpressed', 'minor malnutrition', and 'Match error. New strain?'. Along with a few others that disappear.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Tetsuo blinks after she looks over the readings that she could understand, that being the messages on the screen.

"I'm somewhat malnourished...?" She comments, frowning a bit.

Well, she conceded to herself that she didn't eat very well, isolating herself in her room and all, eating quick, easy-to-make foods that were probably better for guinea pigs or lab rats.

"Here..." She indicated the suppressed nanites with her index finger, though not touching the screen. "I think I understand how the virus can be transmitted, and that the nanites check the virus, but... How come the nanites that I got from Neko aren't working?"