Catseye and Doreen; Catseye and Yvette

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Catseye learns about a new game called Dungeons and Dragons when she goes to play Guitar Hero with Dori.

With a videogame guitar slung across her back (she'd finally gone and gotten her own because she wanted to paint it purple) Catseye knocked enthusiastically on Dori's door. "'Girls with Taaaaaaails!'" She cried out in a sing-song voice, "let's get ready to rock or roll! Dorrrri! Come play with meeeee! I want to sing the song about the werewolves of London! Aaaaaa-ooooooo!"



Dori was buried in her Dungeons and Dragons stuff. And there was a lot of it. With a job she had been able to start building up her collection again. And a modest employ discount never hurt anything. She looked up over the edge of a Dungeon Master’s guide when Catseye came bursting in, “Oh, hey. Sorry. Trying to figure something out quick. Can you wait just a second?”

'Yesyesyes! I can waaaait!" she sang, sitting down at the table where the little figurines were. "These are kind of pretty. What are they?"

“They’re miniatures,” Dori said, “So you know where your character in the game is on the map and stuff.”

"Character? Map? Game? Is this a game?" the catgirl asked, picking up one of the miniatures and holding it up in front of her face, eyes crossing as she examined it.

“Yeah. It’s a role playing game. You pretend to be someone else for awhile. It’s a lot of fun. I’m going to be playing with Megan,” she said happily.

"Be someone else? But not like when we play Sonic? You pretend to be these statues?" Catseye wasn't entirely sure how fun that would be- she preferred games like Chase. "Is it like when children play with dolls and soldiers?"



“Kind of? It’s like you get to pretend to be a whole ‘nother person,” Doreen said, putting down the book, “And you get to tell an interactive story.”

"Interactive story? Like a play?"



“Kind of, except there aren’t any lines and you don’t have to go up in front of a lot of people.”

Catseye tilted her head, examining the board with great interest. "Really? That does sound like fun!" She marched the figurine she was holding around the board, grinning. "Can I play?"



“Sure,” Dori said, “The more the merrier, right? And it’s totally a game that’s more fun the more people there are.”

"Yesyesyes!" Catseye agreed. "How do I play? I pick a statue and move it like this?" She continued to march the figurine around the board.



“Well, that’s just for the battles and stuff, so you know where your character is on the map. I’ll teach you how to play and I have books that you can read and I’ll help you make your character too.”

"Books! I love books! And being a character," she giggled, "especially in plays and this is almost like a play! What characters are there to be?"



Doreen dug out the players handbook and handed it over, “There’s whatever character you want to be. You make them yourself. That book tells you how.”

Catseye took the book eagerly. "Okay thank you I will read the book and make one myself and then we can play! I will do it now!" she exclaimed, Guitar Hero forgotten.

***

Afterward, the catgirl encounters Yvette in the kitchen and the two discuss Valentine's Day and Kevin.


Humming to herself in a loud, off-key tone, Catseye fought to open a package of paper-wrapped pastrami while staring at the book she'd opened on the kitchen counter. "Rangers can be cats!" she exclaimed to herself in surprise. She ripped through the paper of the pastrami package with slightly more force than intended due to the startling revelation and bits of meat flung out onto the counter and plopped onto the floor. "Oh no!" She tore her eyes away from the book and looked forlornly at the floormeat.

There was the distinctive muffled clicking of toe-talons in socks on the wooden floor and then Yvette appeared at the door. The small girl had been scarce of late, spending a lot of her time in the library, but everyone needed to eat sometime. She paused at the sight of Catseye, mourning her pastrami. "Catseye? Are you all right?"

Catseye shifted into catform and gobbled up the floormeat, because cats didn't care about food being eaten off the floor, of course, and then shifted back. "Yes I am alright Yvette. Now I can have extra pastrami because the pastrami from the floor was supposed to go in my sandwich but now I can have new sandwich pastrami and I got to eat the floor pastrami too!" She picked up the stray pieces from the counter and slapped them onto a piece of bread. "Are you alright you have not been around for reading and napping and homework and driving very much lately."

Yvette giggled at the logic - it was so very Catseye - and headed for the fridge, pulling out the milk. "I am well," she replied, slightly evasively. "Just... thinking."

"Thinking? About what?" Catseye inquired, adding new pastrami to the sandwich. "Do you want a pastrami sandwich Yvette?"

"About Valentine's Day. And yes, please," Yvette replied - Catseye's sandwiches were always generous with the pastrami. "And in return, would you like some milk to go with your lunch?" She paused in the action of pulling a glass out of the cupboard, waiting to see if she needed two.

"Okay thank you!" she answered happily, and began working on a second sandwich. "What are you thinking about Valentine's Day Yvette? About being in jail?"

"Actually, no." Yvette pulled out a second glass, standing on tip-toe to reach the shelf, and began carefully pouring milk. "Kevin... he sent me the presents and asked me to go out for a meal with him."

"Ooooo! With just you?"

Yvette spilt milk as she suddenly became flustered. "I... think so?" she replied, unsure. "I do not know what to do."

"Well, you go of course! And eat! And maybe Kevin will say he wants to be a couple with you!" She frowned in thought, hand pausing in midair over a piece of bread. "It is strange though because I know that Kevin likes Angel. But maybe it is not strange though because Kevin does not want to be a couple with Angel because he is worried about hurting her. But it is strange though because you and Kevin would hurt each other if you were a couple. And because Kevin said he did not want to be a couple with anyone. So maybe Kevin just wants to buy you food as a friend?"

Yvette's eyes flared brightly at the thought of Kevin asking her to be a couple with him, but she pushed the thought away, along with the stab of jealousy at the thought of Kevin liking Angel. Her former roommate got all the boys, it seemed. "I think that is the case, yes, that he is being the friend. It is just..." She paused, biting her lower lip. "He is probably meaning well, but I wish he had not done this. I do not want the pretend boyfriend."

"What is the pretend boyfriend?" the catgirl inquired, head tilted in curiosity.

"It is where it feels like someone is doing the boyfriend things - like the Valentine's Day presents - but he is not really your boyfriend," Yvette explained, feeling foolish. "Like he is, how you say? Feeling sorry for me? I know Kevin is my friend, but he does not think of me as the girlfriend. I do not want him to be pretending that he does, even if it is to make me feel better."

Catseye pursed her lips in thought. "Did you tell him that?"

Yvette hung her head a little. "No." The thought of broaching the topic with Kevin, even when she could tell him anything else, was terrifying.

"Why not? Are you afraid if you tell him it will make him feel bad and he will not be your friend anymore?"

"Perhaps," Yvette admitted. "Or he will laugh at me, because I am liking him."

Thinking this over, Catseye abandoned the sandwiches and turned to her friend. "I do not think he would laugh at you because that is not a very nice thing to do and Kevin is a very nice person. But if you are afraid of him laughing I can tell him that he should not pretend to be your boyfriend because it makes you feel bad if you want me to," she offered. "Or I can go with you and thwapp him if he laughs and I will pounce and sit on him so you can kick him for being mean."

"Do I have to be telling him at all?" Yvette asked, rather pathetically. "It is not such the big thing."

This question gave the catgirl pause. "Umm..." She thought about that for a full minute. "Yes you have to tell him. Because it is making you sad and you should not be sad. Or maybe you do not have to tell him but someone should tell him."

"It just seems so silly, yes?" Yvette huffed out a sigh and propped her elbows on the counter, resting her chin in her hands. "He did not mean to be making me sad."
"But that is why someone should tell him," Catseye prompted. She stroked Yvette's back comfortingly. "Because if he knew he was making you sad he would not want to do that to you anymore."

"Can you? Talk to him for me?" Yvette asked, possibly a little more pathetically than needed, but she wasn't above using the power of cute to make things easier.

The catgirl nodded. "Yesyesyes I can talk to him if you want me to. Then he will stop being your pretend boyfriend even though he does not mean to be one and then you can go eat food as friends and not worry about being a pretend couple! Is that what you want?"

What Yvette really wanted was to remove the 'pretend' from the whole equation, but friends was better than nothing at all. "Yes, please, Catseye," she replied with a small, grateful smile. "I am sorry to be such a silly goose."

"What is a silly goose? I do not think gooses are very silly," Catseye frowned. "I think they are delicious, but not silly. How come you are a silly goose?"

Yvette giggled then. "It is just the expression, from the book," she explained. "Shall we take our lunch outside? It is not so cold today and the sun is shining."

"Can you read to me outside after we eat?" the catgirl asked, putting the sandwiches together and onto a plate. "I am reading about a game it is called Dungeons and Dragons and you get to be a character in it like a catperson and you get to have adventures with your friends when they play other characters do you know this game?"

"Of course I can read to you." Yvette liked to read and reading out loud both helped her English and the state of calm she needed for her powers. Plus Catseye was a very appreciative audience. "But no, I do not know this game. It sounds like very much the games of Pretend I was playing as a little girl, where we were soldiers or princesses or knights, only with the rules?" She carefully picked up the two glasses of milk, long fingers wrapped around the glasses.

"Lots of rules," Catseye agreed with an emphatic nod. "But rules make games more fun because then everyone knows The Way Things Are and it is a fair game. When we read all the rules we should play this game with Dori and Megan!"

"Very well, then we can read about the rules for the Dungeons and Dragons," Yvette said with a nod of her own.