Hank and Catseye

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Catseye goes for her fitness testing as part of her requirement to join the X-Men as a trainee, and gets a preview of an upgrade to the Danger Room Hank and Kyle have been working on.

Catseye hadn't been down to see Hank in the medlab since before they'd both departed the mansion, years ago. As she headed down to his lab she smiled at the memory of the first meeting between them. She'd been in catform the entire time, despising the smell of the medbay, had shamelessly bribed him into feeding her sardines and been most completely unimpressed with his question about her doing any physical activity in girlform. And now, four years later, she was scheduled for a physical fitness examination to see if she could become an X-Man trainee. She had definitely changed from who she'd been back then.


"Doctor McCoy," she said when she'd knocked on the wall next to the wooshing-open door, smiling and nodding her head politely. She was much quieter, sounding much more reserved than she did with most people. The enormous feral didn't scare her, exactly, but she recognized he was an alpha and that earned him a lot of respect from her. "It is nice to see you again."


Hank smiled, turning away from the cabinet he'd been restocking, recognizing the smell of the young mutant immediately over the sterile scent of MedLab. "Catseye, it's wonderful to see you again as well," he said in a warm tone. "Miss Monroe said you would be coming by. She said you were planning on joining the team and required a fitness test- correct?"


"Yes I am and I do!" she answered, some of her usual enthusiasm sneaking into her voice. "I have been practicing veryveryhard in my girlform." She stood in the middle of the room and glanced around, a little unsure as to what she was supposed to do.

Hank gestured toward the physical therapy room, "We'll start with a simple cardiac stress test, so you'll want to change into your new mutants training clothes, which I see you brought with you." Leading the way in, Hank pointed to the changing screen, "Go ahead and get changed while I warm up the equipment."


"Isn't the equipment always cold?" Catseye asked innocently, twirling her 'training clothes', in the form of a collar, around her tail. Without going behind the screen, she shifted into catform so she could pull her shorts-and-tshirt collar off with her tail, then flipped a second collar over her head and shifted back, now wearing her training clothes.

"Chilly perhaps, but not quite what I meant by warming up," Hank flipped the switch on the EKG, listening to the start-up sequence he'd secretly enjoyed since his Med-School days. "Some of the equipment takes a few moments to warm up and I have to say the clothing generators that Forge made for you are quite ingenious. I must confess I wish I had thought of the idea when you first came here."

Catseye giggled at the mention of her collars. "Forge had the... what is it? He thought it was veryimportant to make me collars that are also clothes because it was his room I kept going into and shifting into girlform with no clothes on. He did not like that. If I went to your room you would think of it too yes?"

Right after Maddie tossed me out to the couch for the night, "Yes I suppose that would have been some incentive for brilliance." Hank took out a set of the gummy EKG nodes and motioned Catseye over to the physical therapy treadmill. "Did Miss Monroe explain what to expect from this series of tests?"

"Incentive that is the word yesyesyes," she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. As for the expectations of the tests, she shook her head. "No the tests are a surprise for me," Catseye answered with a grin. It had been hard not to pepper Miss Monroe with questions about the tests but since it was Hank's job and not Miss Monroe's she had decided to leave the questions for Hank.

Stepping onto the treadmill the catgirl's tail twitched nervously. She'd been on a treadmill before but they made the part of her that still thought like a cat rather uncomfortable.

Hank attached the nodes to Catseye's body with quick professionalism, "These may be a little cold." While talking he began to hook Catseye up to the EKG machine, "Alright the first test is going to be a simple cardiac stress test, fairly common place in modern medicine and made infinately simpler with the creation of the treadmill. What I'll ask you to do is simply run until you feel yourself ready to collapse." Hank attached the safety pin to Catseye's waist, "The goal of this is to see how your heart reacts in stressful situations, so make sure to give it your all." Stepping back and turning on both machines, the good doctor smiled and connected his netbook to the diagnostic machine. "You may start whenever you are prepared."

"Run as fast as I can until I fall down?" she asked, skipping a little as the treadmill started to move under her feet, "I can do that! Do I have to stay in girlform?" To avoid being run over by the treadmill she started running.

Hank considered the question for a moment, "Let's do one in Girlform and then one in cat form, though I've never performed an EKG on a feline before- so this should be interesting for both of us." The doctor smiled and reached back with a foot to grasp a rolling stool, pulling it over so he could sit down. "If you start to feel faint or are having difficulty, let me know, and if you fall, there are mats to catch you."

Nodding emphatically, Catseye ran without showing strain for close to ten minutes, then pounded on for another two, though she was clearly labouring by this point. Since she wanted to show Hank what she could do in catform though, she stopped before actually collapsing and stood sweating on one side of the treadmill. "I... could have... gone longer... but I... wanted to see... how catform... does too," she panted, looking around for a bottle of water.

"I believe we'll do the testing for your Catform in the Danger Room actually," Hank mused while filling up a cup of water from a nearby sink. "That way you don't have to be constrained by this piece of equipment and it gives me a chance to test a wireless EKG machine I've been toying with." He handed her the glass and smiled, "You preformed admirably, Catseye. You'll be pleased to know you have a perfectly healthy heart for a girl your age."

The catgirl let out a happy chirrup that was incredibly catlike and preened a little as she drank the water. "Thank you! I practiced lots! Should we go to the Danger Room now?"

"We have a few more tests to run before we get there," he said with a smile. "Rest up for a bit and we'll move on to test your lung capacity."


~~

Once the tests in human form were done, Catseye led the way to the Danger Room, skipping excitedly around Hank. "And I really did okay? I can really be an X-Man? And I can help you test your new sticker-thingies?"

Hank chuckled at her enthusiasm, "You did very well, Catseye. You're in excellent shape, but we still have to check your catform." He was carrying a tray with the prototype wireless nodes that would send the results directly to his Netbook. "As for these, I had a feeling you wouldn't be terribly excited once you were cleaning inedible glue off your fur, so we'll be using a non-toxic polymer that should wash off your girlform fairly easily."


"Mister Hank appreciates how hard it is to get sticky things off fur," she smiled with a nod of gratitude. "Did you have to test your new poly...polymer on your own fur while you were making it?"


"I did, actually," he smiled proudly, "Washed right out...after a few trials with less successful formulas." Stopping at the doorway to the danger room, Hank typed something into his netbook and watched as the doors slid open with a hiss. The large bare room was fortunately not reserved and since Hank had been making minor improvements it wouldn't be unusual for him to take this time slot. "You know, Kyle and I have been working on a new feature to the danger room, would you care to see that before we start?"


"Yesyesyes! Yes please I like to see new things! What is it Mister Hank? Mister Hank should I call you Doctor Hank or Doctor McCoy?" she asked suddenly, the thought just occurring to her.

With a suppressed smile, Hank typed up a program and the holographic structure of the room shifted to resemble a vast field of grass with a breeze blowing through it. "Hank is fine if you prefer, though if we're in the field, remember that it's Beast." The sun seemed to shine down on them as clouds passed overhead, as if they were really outside. Taking a deep breath, he continued, "What do you think?"


"Yes Beast is your special name for when you are being an X-Man, I understand special names!" she assured him with a vigourous nod, the movement stopping abruptly as her eyes widened at the sights and smells that hit her when the scene came up. Catseye shifted into catform and bounded off into the middle of the 'field.' She romped through it, the heat from the sun and the summery smells sending endorphins swamping her system and to make her feel like a kitten again.

After several moments she shifted back into girlform. "I think it is awesome!" she said happily. "Some of the smells are different than they should be for outside, but it does not smell all like Danger Room anymore, only a little bit! Do you want to come play with me?" she grinned.

Hank smiled and shook his head with a chuckle, "Another time perhaps. We're still working the bugs out of the system, but when we finish with this improvement we should be able to replicate any scent in any simulation." Setting down the tray he began to ready the nodes, "Are you ready to show me what you've got?"

Jogging back over to where Hank was preparing the nodes, Catseye nodded again. "Ready! What do you want me to do? Should I be regular catform or BigCat?"

"Let's do big cat for the time being, I don't think we'll need to test your smaller frame," picking up two of the nodes he crouched down and smiled, not showing any teeth. "Whenever you're ready, Catseye."


Catseye shifted into BigCat in the blink of an eye. The cougar lashed its tail and sniffed at Hank, then crouched down on the grass in a submissive position to allow the nodes to be put on.


Giving the big cat a scritch behind the ears, Hank set to work putting the nodes on her purple fur. Once they were all in place, he tuned his netbook to get a reading on her resting heart rate. "Alright, you're all set. Just let loose."


The cougar sniffed at Hank some more and trotted out into the middle of the field. Catseye looked around, as if she was trying to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Running? But why? She didn't have anything chasing her. The alpha was looking at something else, not her. And there was nothing to chase. So why run? Sniffing at the grass and the air around the field, the cougar lay down, bored. Catseye recognized that she was supposed to be running for Hank's experiment, but it was always easier to fight the BigCat's animal instincts when she had adrenalin in her system, and since this was a field with nothing to fight, the contented animal's instincts were trumping her human thoughts.


Hank waited a moment to see what the big cat was going to do. After a short while he used his mind to deduce that the large animal needed some motivation. Pulling up the program he materialized a rabbit- though it likely didn't smell as such- near the student's head, allowing it to chomp on some clover.


The sight of the rabbit confused the BigCat's senses for a moment, but the introduction of the animal into the field sparked the cat's curiosity, and that was all Catseye needed to assert her human thoughts over the BigCat form. She ran a lap around the Danger Room, then for fun pounced near the rabbit to see if Hank had programmed it to do anything.

The rabbit vanished under a thud from her paw, as it was supposed to, then reappeared a short distance away. Hank chuckled to himself as he watched the cougar's confusion.


Catseye turned to Hank at the sound of his chuckle. She twitched her tail and cocked her head, cougar eyebrow raised in a distinctive 'oh really?' look that was followed with a very uncharacteristic (for a cougar) grin. Catseye bounded off after the rabbit again.