Megan and Catseye

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Catseye comes to Megan to ask for some help in painting a present for Nick.

On a mission, Catseye scampered down the mansion stairs in catform, a garish orange plastic piggy bank in the shape of a cat bobbing behind her as she clutched it in her tail. She checked the kitchen, the patio, and zoned in on the rec room. She caught an unfamiliar smell as she neared it, the same scent she'd encountered by the door to Megan's room, which made her lope even faster towards the rec room. She jumped onto the back of one of the couches eagerly, brightening when she saw Megan was indeed in the room.



Megan, casually inspecting the rec room, skipped over to the pinball machine. She hadn't seen one of these in years! Enthralled, she pulled at the controls and gazed at the miniature scene of gadgets and lights beneath the glass top. When Dad took her to his AA meetings, which was only if Mum had some function to attend on a Wednesday night, Megan and her sister had always played with the pinball machine at the meeting hall. She fished in her pockets to see if she had any quarters in change from her Walgreens run, then paused, feeling suddenly that there was someone behind her. She slowly turned to see Catseye, balanced lightly on the back of a sturdy, stuffed couch.



Catseve shifted into girlform and nearly toppled off the back of the couch. "Hello! Do you like that loud machine with the shiny balls? Do you know how to play it?"


"Hi! Uh, sort of. Do you have another quarter?"




Catseye frowned in thought, then shifted back into catform, laying the piggy bank on the couch cushion and darting underneath the couch. She emerged with a quarter in her mouth, spat it out onto the couch and shifted back. "I have lots of shiny things in a hiding spot under the couch," she explained to the new girl. Since she was the only cat allowed to roam the mansion she was never worried about her hiding spots- humans didn't seem to have much interest in them. "Can I watch you play? I like watching the shiny ball!"



Megan blinked twice as her brain processed what her eyes had just witnessed. A girl, then a cat, then a girl. She'd known about Catseye's power, but had no idea she could transform so quickly.


She stood up, then blinked again, realizing that she'd leaned down and picked up the quarter off the couch cushion, her gaze fixed on Catseye the entire time. Her face turned a shade that matched the color of her hair for a moment.


"Wow, you're..." Fast? Talented? "Catseye. I'm Megan," she said, smiling. "Okay, let's do this. I wonder if I still have the knack for it?"


Megan popped the quarters into the slot and the silver balls released for play. She pulled the plunger and the first ball shot into game, ricocheting off the bumpers and setting off lights and digital displays in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" themed machine.

"C'mon, get the krakken!"


"Hi Megan," Catseye said in answer to the introduction, though it ended up sounding kind of abrupt as she got distracted when the shiny ball appeared in the pinball machine. She stood perfectly still except for the tail lashing out behind her, barely even breathing as she stalked the ball with her eyes.


Slowly, one-by-one, the silver balls disappeared in the gap between the flippers. Megan only needed to hit one more Black Pearl spot, and she'd get a free replay. With every possible square centimeter of the game covered in colorful graphics, blinking lights and moving objects, the last ball rolled up and around, bouncing off bumpers and activating sea turtles (aye, sea turtles) until it finally dropped down the chute on the left side and disappeared. The game was over.


"Blast. Oh well," Megan said, dusting her hands off on her baggy UFO pants. She'd worked herself up into a small adrenaline rush over the silly game.


Megan's voice snapped Catseye out of her stalking-induced concentration and had her shaking her head as if to switch it from cat mode to girl mode. "You lost?" she asked, judging by the pink haired-girl's words. She couldn't really tell. Since the game seemed to be over, though, she flopped down on the couch and picked up her piggy bank.


"Lost? Yeah. Well, you have to lose sometime, even if you do get a replay..." Megan's gaze moved to the oddly-shaped object in Catseye's arms. "What... oh, a piggy bank. Only it's a cat?" she asked interestedly.

Catseye nodded emphatically, staring down at the piggy bank. "Yes and I came to talk to you to ask if you could paint it for me? I know you paint shoes and I know shoes are not the same as piggy banks but I do not paint anything at all and I wanted to ask if you would help me?"

"Sure, I can help! I have all kinds of paints. Hmm... maybe not the fabric paints, but I also have acrylics in all colors. And I'm done with classes for today."


"Can you paint it a lovely lavender colour?" the catgirl asked excitedly, "with lovely lavender eyes? They did not have purple at the store only orange."


"Any color! Let's go see what I have. I think I have a tube of dark blue, and I know I have some carmine red. With some white, I'm sure we can make the right color."


"You can make it?" Catseye asked curiously, "by putting two colours together?"


"Yep! I'm pretty good at matching colors. Oh, I also have some metallic and pearly colors if you want to give it a different finish," Megan said excitedly. She hadn't gotten to use her paints at all in October.


"Can you match the paint to this colour?" she asked, holding a shank of her own hair out for Megan to see. "And make it shiny like a nice cat coat?"


"Hmm... yes, I'm pretty sure I can!"


Excited, Catseye gripped the bank in her tail and shifted back into catform so she could race up the stairs to Megan's room with the pink-haired girl following.