Nico and Catseye - Monday Afternoon

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

While on a hunt, Catseye encounters an exploding log created by Nico. After asking to see a demonstration the catgirl begins to worry about her friend's magical control.

Sniffing the air, the cougar shot off through the woods, the scent of Prey filling her nose. Most of the Prey was hibernating, which was why she was so excited to finally have caught a scent. She bounded through the underbrush, then stopped abruptly when the smell got stronger. From here, she would stalk. Crouching low, she inched forward.

Another scent invaded her nose and wormed its way through her senses. A Friend smell. A Colony smell. Nico.

Catseye tried to get the smell out of her nose and pick up the Prey's scent again, but a loud bang startled her so entirely she jumped up into the air. Her keen ears heard the sound of the Prey shooting off into another direction.

Irritated, the BigCat tramped through the woods making as much noise as possible, in true obstinate child fashion, and came upon Nico in a clearing, surrounded by smoke. The BigCat trotted over to her and cocked her head when she was with a few feet of Nico, questioning whether she was okay.


Nico was...swaying; one hand over her forehead, five scorched spots around her. That was the last time she tried to make things explode. She had placed a medium sized log in front of her, and then put a lot of energy into the spell, which ended up being almost all she had in her. The log exploded, alright, but then it seemed to divide into smaller exploding logs and fall all over the place; had she tried it somewhere else, she might have ended up hurting someone.

So when the big feline reached her, Nico waved a hand, managing to notice Catseye's apparent concern. "Just a minute..."

Catseye shifted to girlform, growling at the stomach pangs that hit her as she took in the sight around her. "Are you hurt?" she asked, stepping carefully around the shards of the exploded log, nose wrinkling at the SmellyBadMagic that permeated the air. "What did you do?!"


"Well, I said explode, but backwards...I don't know why I thought it wouldn't turn to be quite a mess." She crouched, suddenly feeling like throwing up, but managed to resist the urge. "Be back at you in a minute, my stomach is deciding whether or not to stay inside of me..."

Making a face, Catseye picked her way over and put Nico's head between the girl's knees. "Why are you making things explode backwards?" the catgirl inquired. And why are you doing it in my woods? she thought, but didn't add.


Nico didn't fight the movement, and would have thanked, but she didn't want to make a mess. "No, no. I speak backwards when I do magic...it was an experiment, really." She did notice the girl's...something; was she angry? "I came here so nobody would get hurt..."

"Why are you doing explosion magic?" Catseye inquired, curiosity piqued.


Nico raised her head, and then shrugged the best she could from the position she was. "Just curious, I guess? No real need to make anything explode..." She lowered her head again, she should stop doing such stupid things out of curiosity.


"It is a good thing you are not a cat," Catseye commented. "Because people say that curiosity kills cats." She giggled then, poking Nico on the shoulder. "You should not be curious by yourself. You could have been hurt. Next time you want to be curious in the woods you should tell me and I will come be curious with you yes?"





"But you are a cat! I can't be curious around you." Laughing a little too, Nico shifted from crouching to sitting, already feeling better. "But yeah, it was because I didn't move when things went boom that nothing fell on me. I got lucky this time." She was going to take someone else with her next time she tried to make something silly. Wait, I should make anything silly at all...whatever.







"Cats do not believe in luck," Catseye pointed out, headbutting Nico's shoulder affectionately. "That is why you have to practicepracticepractice your magic so that you get better and better. Is that why you are out here? Practicepracticepractice?"





"Point taken." Nico nodded. "Practicepracticepractice, that's a way to put it." The fact her magic didn't seem to get any better with time was a bother, but if she could at least control how destructive it was, it would be great. "Maybe next time I shouldn't make things explode."



"Yes, maybe not in my woods," Catseye replied, in a tone that implied there was no maybe about it. "There is a quarry nearby where there are no animals or living trees to kill," she told Nico in a helpful tone, "maybe you could practice exploding things there and I could help you!"





Her woods? Maybe she had messed up with Cats in the end. "That sounds like the perfect spot then, but I doubt I'll be feeling like exploding anything any time soon." She stood slowly, feeling way better, and with the contents of her stomach where they were supposed to stay. "Making things grow, that sounds like a safer idea...I guess."



Catseye's eyes lit up. "Making things grow! Yesyesyes! That sounds like a veryverygood idea!" She dashed off for a moment into the woods and reemerged with a Tupperware container, looking as if it had been dug out of the earth. Opening the tub, she offered a bottle of water to Nico and took a pastrami sandwich out for herself.





"My Hero", said Nico as she opened the bottle, taking a long dip. The effect was just what she wanted it to be, and any wobbliness on her movements stopped. "Alright...I don't think I should push it any longer, so maybe I should get out of your woods?" There was a joking edge on her voice, the goth already amused by that. Of course, if you were to enter the territory of a massive purple feline...you wouldn't smile that much.



The catgirl shrugged at the hero reference, wolfing down a sandwich in a manner of seconds. "I have many boxes out in the woods in case I cannot bring down Prey during a hunt but need to shift from BigCat to girlform and get hurtyhungry. You do not have to get out of my woods," she added, not catching the joke. "You can come here anytime but if you explode any Prey or any of my hiding trees I will have to thwapp you yes? Unless you grow the trees back after. Can you do that?"



She...didn't get it right? Maybe it was for the best, Nico considered. All in all, it seemed like a good deal. "Putting the trees back...I don't believe I can do that yet...or any time this year, and the next and, well, you get the point." Though it would be cool to do something like that. "So I'll just keep things from breaking or dying and you won't put those lovely paws on me, right?"

"Right! I will not thwapp if you do not make anything break or die. I thought you said you could make things grow? But not trees?"



Nico made a face. "Well, trees are, you know..." Nico pointed at the closest one, a healthy tree of a kind Nico had no idea about; if she had a question about plants, she asked Callie or Klara. "Trees are pretty big." There, that was the easiest way to put it. "Maybe I can make a tiny plant to grow, but that's all."


"Can you?!" Catseye asked excitedly. She had seen Callie and Klara make things grow, but had never seen magic used to do the same thing before. "Can I see?"

Nico was tired, and making more magic would be...unwise. That was something Amanda would say though; the idea of making Catseye happy was tempting. "Alright, but give me a second. And Catseye? Don't freak out." She was sure the girl would feel relatively uneasy when the overflow of dark energy flowed through her. All Nico hoped was to avoid bleeding.


Placing her hands on the ground, Nico focused. Not too far were several seeds. Now, to take energy from somewhere else....

"I will not freak out. How do you do it? With energy right? Where does it come from?" she inquired curiously, watching as Nico's eyes changed and she focused. Catseye didn't know anything about magic but she was learning more and more about science every day and knew that for every action there had to be a reaction; that energy could not come out of nothing. The catgirl kept all senses on high alert as she made sure no animal or person was within range of her hearing.
"I can take energy from anything, I think. But I would prefer to get it from something that won't be hurt in the process..." Her left hand reached out to the bottle of water she had been drinking later, black eyes turning to see it. "Okay, this is the part where you might freak out." As she spoke, the bottle seemed to...age, but much faster than plastic does, and that was an understatement, because plastic was more or less eternal; the water seemed to become dirty and corrupted as well. Not too long ago, several holes appeared on the bottle, the rotten water falling. Placing her free hand on the ground, Nico focused.



"Sdees, Worg."



And they grew, faster than she had prevented, thorns appearing everywhere; she didn't know what kind of plant she had made grow, but what raised was probably the ancestor of them; it looked completely wild and dangerous.

Catseye stared unblinking at the thorns, awed into silence. After a few moments she heard a twig snap and her ears focused on a rabbit approaching. She could smell its fear as it hopped towards the thorns, and the sight of this foreign thing in her woods had Catseye frowning at Nico. "That is a BadPlant, it will hurt someone," she murmured, still a little awestruck. "How come you made a BadHurtyPlant?"


Nico shrugged, finding herself in the ground again, panting. "Can't...avoid that." She shook her head, and then looked at the plants. "My magic...evil? Always happens...something similar." Nico tried to stand, but to no avail. "This time...gonna vomit..."

Catseye helped her friend into a crouched position, holding Nico's hair back while turning them both so they were downwind of the impending smell. She understood practice making you sick; it had happened enough times while she'd been trying to perfect her BigCat shifts, and even though she didn't get physically sick anymore she still felt horrible pain in her stomach when she shifted. "Poor Nico," she murmured sympathetically, rubbing Nico's back. "if you do too much magic you get sick? You should not do too much anymore. I do not think Amanda would like you being sick and we do not want Amanda to be angry with us," she pointed out, taking as much responsibility for what had happened for suggesting Nico make the plant grow.

"You got a point there", mentioned a pale Nico; for a second she felt like she could handle it, but then...well, she couldn't. Standing suddenly, Nico took a hand to her mouth and dashed to some nearby trees, where all she had eaten -and a little extra- went out; the sound was worst than the smell, or at least for a while. Turning, Nico took out a Kleenex from her pocket, wiping her mouth clean. "I think I'll be needing more water..."

Catseye wrinkled her nose and made a mental note to come back and bury Nico's mess later. "I think I should take you back to the mansion," she pointed out, not liking how pale her friend was. But she took a second bottle from her survival tub and handed it over. "Do you want to ride on my back when I am BigCat?" Nico wasn't very heavy, and her cougar form was very large.

Nico took another long, long dip, and then nodded. "That would be awesome, and fast. But mostly awesome." She didn't have anything else to throw, anyway. "Alright, take me home, and...let's keep this to ourselves."

"Why?" Catseye inquired suspiciously, holding off on her shifting to hear the reply. If Nico was embarrassed about being sick, that was fine, but if she was worried Amanda would find out and was trying to hide what she'd been doing from Amanda, Catseye couldn't promise to keep it a secret.

Oh, she had to ask why. "Making things explode...that isn't a really application of magic, don't you think? Look, if Amanda doesn't ask..." Pretty please with sugar on the top??, that was what her eyes were saying as she shot a half-dead puppy look at her friend.

"I did not know what an application of magic was," Catseye retorted, feeling a little bit like she'd been duped. She hadn't known making explosions was wrong! "Why were you doing it if you knew it was wrong?" she inquired, trying to keep her tone as level as possible.
Nico shrugged. "Well, I was curious." Simple as that. "And I thought it would be a little explosion, not something like what happened; that would have been just an experiment. This was...dangerous."


"Yes, it was," Catseye nodded. And that was why she was going to tell Amanda. Not because Nico had intended to do something Bad, but because she hadn't, and something bad had happened even when she wanted to do something Good. It wasn't Nico's fault, and that was exactly why Catseye wanted Nico's teacher to know what had happened. Because if Amanda knew what had gone wrong, she might be able to help Nico fix it, so that she didn't do Bad things when she meant to do Good. If she didn't tell Amanda, and Nico tried more magic without knowing how to do things Right, and this time Prey or cats or wolves or squirrels or people in the woods got killed, Catseye would never forgive herself.


She smiled at Nico, hoping the girl wouldn't bring up the subject of talking to Amanda again so Catseye wouldn't have to tell her she couldn't keep Nico's secret. "It was dangerous but you did not mean it because you are a good person. Let's go home and maybe we can read a book together?" She shifted into BigCat form, as a subtle hint that she didn't want to talk anymore about keeping secrets.


Nico nodded, accepting her defeat. "A book; I would love a book." She walked towards the cat, placing her hand over the purple back. "Alright...this is several levels of awesome; if I were to touch any other cat this big I would probably lose my hand...to begin with." Now, to climb up and hope for the best.

Just to be cheeky, Catseye turned her very large jaws towards Nico and opened her mouth, then licked her friend's hand and let out a rumbling, happy noise as she crouched down so Nico could climb on her back. She needed to come back to dig up the thorns later- possibly with Kyle- but for now a book sounded great to Catseye, too. Books were much easier to understand than magic!

Alright, must not have a heart attack. Must. Not. Freak. Out. Climbing up, Nico ended up hugging her friend by the neck, ready to close her eyes. "Alright, here we go..."