2013.08.25 - Catbus And Cat And 'Bus

So there's someone's cat up on a roof in Gotham City. And the cat is out on a really far ledge and injured and won't come down. And no one can get to it safely, and also the cat is furious and not letting people get close enough to help it even if they could. The cat is kind of a dick honestly. Well, with no qualified physicians with super powers around, it seems poor Mister Jerkcat is doomed to suffer and maybe even use up one of his nine lives. Until suddenly, the fire department has a mysterious tiny Japanese girl with white-dyed hair and weird cosplay clothes popping up on in a robo ambulance that kind of looks like that cat bus from My Neighbor Totoro only it's a robot and lacks whiskers (BUT NOT BY CHOICE. They just kept getting torn off when responding to rescues).

"It's, like, definitely going to be okay probably!" Konomi Mihara assures the nonplussed firemen. "I'm Doctor Awesome, and I am a doctor." The veterinarian present inquires after more information on exactly in what way things are going to be okay. "I can totally doctor on humans! It's the same, right?" The veterinarian says, "Nope!" Konomi insists, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's easier. Because cats are smaller. Humans are bigger so they have more stuff in them." "No." "Whatevs! You guys aren't rescuing the cat, and someone needs to do it! Ransu take off now!" Then the ambulance lifts off the ground on some kind of... Anti-ground-staying-on device and produces propellors from its back, and lifts up into the air, heading for the roof.

Soon, Konomi is hanging out the side of her flying robo-ambulance-helicopter with one hand and waving a first-aid kit with the other. "Like, come closer, neko-chan! I'm totally going to heal whatever is wrong with you, even if I have to resort to surgery!" The cat is, understandably, displeased with this display, and makes this known through all the classical signs, and potentially the attempted (though unsuccessful) inclusion of eye lasers.

It's difficult to say at what point the woman with fiery hair appeared, but one moment there's just the cat, and the other moment, there she is, a little distance away. Despite the sheer height and the dangerous spot she's in, she kneels down and offers the cat her hand; it's just close enough for the cat to sniff, if he or she should so desire. At least this strange woman seems to be practically broadcasting soothing vibes. "Hey...why don't we blow this popsicle stand, huh?" She'll try it the old-fashioned way, first.

"Eeehhh!?" Konomi lets out a shrill cry of dismay as some lady appears suddenly on the protruding ledge with the cat. "Like, I was totally going to rescueificate that neko-chan! That's so totally unfair! There should be a law!" She waves the first-aid kit upsetly but eventually, as the cat stops trying to develop the power to shoot lasers from its eyes through sheer malice and instead retreats towards Lilith, Konomi climbs back into her robocopterbulance and lands it on the rooftop, giving the strange Lady of Disapparation room to work with getting the injured cat to safety. Only... The cat doesn't really seem to be injured upon closer inspection. It's just a really, really irritable feline. No pain involved.

When some rather... Voluminous older woman slams open the roof access door and comes waddle-bouncing her way across the roof crying about her 'baby' and how glad she is the cat (whose name is apparently 'Fruity Pebbles'. What the flopping heck.) is okay, the cat immediately starts yowling its displeasure but doesn't become violent as it was with everyone else who tried to rescue it.

Konomi seems disgruntled by the lack of rescuing a cat in mid-air, but she can still make this awesome somehow, she's sure! She puts on a headband with a pair of flashlights strapped into it, switches them on, and advances towards Lilith and Fruity Pebbles whenever they make it back to the roof (assuming they do anyway. Maybe Lilith is a dirty CATNAPPER AND RUNS OFF WITH FRUITY PEBBLES NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN). She is rapidly reading off all available internet knowledge about how to treat cats off the screen of a hand-held computer. Some kind of future machine that is held in a bunny-shaped cellphone casing and plays Angry Birds on occasion.

After soothing the cat as much as she can, Lilith does a double-featured trick: she first teleports the cat to Konomi, then herself after the cat. There! And just to be sure, she takes a little peek into the older woman's surface thoughts. Is this person a responsible cat companion? Well, she certainly seems to be enthusiastic about the cat being rescued. But how exactly did...er, Pebbles...get out and to the roof? While all this is going on, the strange girl with the huge peace sign earrings offers a sort of airy smile to Konomi. "Hey. How's it going?" As if they'd just met on the street randomly and were already acquainted with each other. What a spooky chick!

The cat appears in front of Konomi, freaks out, and as Konomi leans forward with a kitty-cat-goes-night-night-now tranquilizer spray, Fruity Pebbles becomes Clawy Pebbles. Cue comedic dust cloud of furious cat battling if this were that kind of universe. Instead Konomi mostly just gets torn up, puts the cat to snoozles and after inspecting him to the best of her knowledge and willingness, determines he's fine. The lady is the cat's owner, is very affectionate, but insists on hugging and carrying the cat everywhere, and the cat doesn't really seem to like being carried for more thn brief periods. The cat is also Houdini and seems to escape from the lady's apartment fairly frequently. All of that can be picked up easy because this lady has, like, a negative Will score or something.

"Your cat is fine!" Doctor Awesome snaps as she shoves the tranq'd feline into the woman's arms and turns to Lilith, with her face and arms covered in so many cat scratches the teenager more closely resembles raw hamburger. "I'm, like, peachariffic!" she announces, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation. "Also, thanks for saving the cat!" she adds on angrily. Not sarcastically, just like... Annoyed. "If it hadn't been for you, I'd probably, like, have had to tranquilize the fuzzmonster on his ledge and then he could have, like, plummeted to his kitty doom!" Konomi continues, furiously grateful. "So you definitely helped!" She huffs as she heads for the back of the roboambulance to get something for her scratches.

It... It's kind of hard to tell if she's actually angry and if so, what she's angry about exactly. I mean, she made some good points about exactly how Lilith helped, and how grateful she was, but she also seems very cross!

Konomi pokes her head out from behind the ambulance after she gets out some medicated ointment and starts dabbing it on her scratches. "I lost my game of Angry Birds looking up cats on the internet, by the way!"

Lilith turns to the woman and gives her a little smile. "Hey...Pebbles is a little bit freaked out by carrying too much. But he likes sitting in your lap. Be careful not to take him somewhere he can get away onto a roof or something." She's just so...chill about it all. It's hard to really pick a fight with her or get too angry with her. Maybe that's part of what makes her so special.

Once all that's sorted, her full attention turns to Konomi. "Sorry...is that why you're so irritated? I may be a mind-reader but I'm not...well, I'm not always a mind-reader..." Whatever that means. The woman crosses her arms and leans against the side of the roboambulance, watching this strange, strange young woman. They're surely two of a kind. "I'm Lilith."

Konomi continues to grumble as Large Marge thanks Lilith for that information and for rescuing Fruity Pebbles, though she's a bit confused how Lilith knows that exactly. Then she excuses herself because she's a random NPC and she has served her purpose. Fruity Pebbles, on the other hand, is likely to go on to become a recurring villain.

Once she has taken care of all her injuries, Konomi answers, "I'm not sure why I'm angry! I think maybe it's because I thought I had this, like, totally awesome rescue scene ready but it turns out it was probably not going to work, and then you turned up and resolved it better than I could, and also cats don't work the same as humans so I guess I couldn't have helped it even if it HAD been injured! This whole thing was disasteriffic!" She throws her arms up again dramatically and dislodges one of her headband flashlights, reminding her she's even wearing it. She removes it quickly, and in the time between when she removes it and when she looks up again, she has completely changed attitudes.

"But as long as everyone is okay -- except for me, I guess! -- I probably should just be happy everything ended well! Hi, I'm Doctor Awesome, also known as Konomi Mihara! Nice to meet you!" Smilesmile.

Lilith laughs, covering her mouth to be polite, at all of this that comes rushing at her like a tidal wave of information. "Well you rescued the kitty, right? If you hadn't been here, he would've just run off or hurt himself. I just happened to be in the area and thought I'd give a hand. That little cat might not be here if you hadn't been so quick with the sedative spray...I don't think that's a disaster at all."

With the return introduction, Lilith offers her hand to shake. "Pleased to meet you, Doctor. If it helps, I think your heart's in the right place. Not everyone can say that, these days."

Konomi smiles at the attempt at consolation. She just kind of accepts it at face-value. "Yeah, I guess I am pretty awesome still!" She accepts the offered hand with both of hands and shakes it up and down energetically. "Hai! <> Like when someone has birth defect where their heart is all weird and not where it should be, or when they're in a car accident without a seat belt and their internal organs are torn free inside of them, or when their internal organs or torn free OUTSIDE of them because some villainous villain decide to go all, like, 'Kali-ba! Ninja Heart Removal Technique!' and plucks it out! Those ones are tough to fix if I don't get to them in time! Also, thanks!" She finally releases Lilith's hand after all that and then says, "So, like, are YOU injured or anything? That cat of evil completely tore me up, and you were holding him too!"

She also fishes out a bag of lollipops from a medical pouch at her waist. "Also do you want a lollipop? There's strawberry and cherry and grape! You can pick first!" D-Does this girl REALLY need to have more sugar in her system? Looking around, Konomi lifts her free hand up and puts her phone to her ear, letting the fire men down below know everything is resolved up here, before launcing into yet another motor-mouth frenzy. "Gotham City is cool and spooky, but not exactly in a Halloween kind of way, right? More in the, 'Someone might knife me while I'm walking down the street' kind of way. I've had to treat lots of gunshot wounds while I've been hanging around here lately. Geez! It's like they don't know how to get along with each other at all! Like, even more than in other places! Maybe there's something in the water!"

"I'm fine, thank you though." Lilith doesn't seem to be at all bothered by the energy levels Konomi exhibits. Maybe it's experience, maybe it's something else, but whatever it is, she seems pretty cool with whatever, whoever. And even if she may seem to be a little mysterious, maybe even have some secrets hidden by those profound eyes, the way she presents herself seems to be at least on the level. "It must really help to have such high energy when you're hurrying to help someone."

The lollipops are offered, and like anyone Lilith nods and points at the pouch, not wanting to reach and be impolite. "Could I have a cherry please? Thanks for offering...yeah, the air here is just...well, it's not really my favorite place to be. I like Halloween though." Widening her eyes, the red-haired woman lifts her hands and wiggles her fingers. When she speaks again, it's multi-layered, as if it were echoing in an impossible way, and it's...kind of rough and creepy. "It's a scary time of year!" Then she's all back to normal and laughing again.

Zip! Cherry lollipop extracted and delivered! "Energy is important, but so is proper rest, diet, and exercise! A youthful constitution and eight cans of Rock*Star Energy Drink a day aren't reliable when there's, like, a bunch of crisisis going on! ...Crisisis? Crises? Crisisii? Hee! That last one sounds funny. Anyway, yeah, I know, right? Halloween is great! All those people who are like, 'Cosplay is butt!'--Heehee. I said, 'butt'.--start cosplaying too, and then I'm like, 'Hah!' That shows them!" Then Konomi's phone starts playing the ThunderCats themesong. 'Thunder, thunder, thunder, thunder CATS!' "Moshi moshi~? <>" Konomi answers. "--Gaaassp! A car crash!? Okay, I will be right over, emergency response machine that can't actually understand me!"

Doctor Awesome hangs up on the automated system that alerts her of emergencies after getting directions. "Hey, I would super love to keep talking about Halloween, since you seme really cool, and mysterious, but there's more of those people whose hearts aren't in the right place -- and by that I mean 'the place where they are still connected' -- who need help, so I gotta' go, bye!" While she says all that she's running over to her ambularobocopter and leaping into the driver's seat. ...I-Is 16 old enough to drive? Even for a super hero?

She waves enthusiastically, and drives in reverse right off the roof.

Apparently not.

Moments later the robocopterbulance comes flying back up in helicopter mode, and Konomi calls out, "It's okay! I caught it in time and I was wearing my seatbelt! It was nice to meet you Miss Lilith maybe we can eat lollipops again sometime!"