(Backstory, because I got writing-happy and went kinda long)
"My Life as a Reluctant Cat Girl"
by Melehara Imiri
Memoire Rough Draft
Begining audio recording...
My parents were among the first elves born during UGE back in the early '10s in Mexico, that's Aztlan to you younger types. With the outbreak of VITAS though, thier families both fled the country while mama and papa were still newborn babes. They eventually wound up in Seattle, far from thier birth land, where thier families settled down to raise thier unusual children.
Life was rough for them growing up. The uphill walk to school both ways through 2 feet of snow. You know how parents are about thier childhoods. They found work where they could to help pay the bills. Mama worked as a restraunt hostess, and papa found a job as a chauffer for a downtown limo service. But they made it, and they eventually found each other and decided to have me. I've never been entirely clear on how they met though. Every time I ask, I get a different story.
My birthday was something of an occassion. Not just for my family, it was also the day that Tir Tairngire was founded in 2035. We didn't live there, mind you. We lived in an elven ghetto south of Seattle that eventually formed part of Tarislar. I was only 4 when the Night of Rage swept through town. All I really remember is mama and papa taking me to hide with a few other families in some old cellars. But the after effects really galvanized our neighborhood and lead to a huge amount of distrust for humans and authority.
I think that's part of why I eventually joined the Star on my 18th birthday. There had been a lot of headway made already in meta rights, and I wanted to be there doing my part to bring everyone together. I believed that with more of us in Authority, we'd make progress faster. On the less high-ideals side of things, the thought of riding around and busting thugs was kind of exciting *giggles*.
And let me tell you, after growing up in the rougher parts of the sprawl, I had me a few scores to settle. Especially with some of the bigotted human gangs that would ride in to harass us. So imagine my surprise when I discover that the chief in charge of my precinct is a Humanis member. That prick made my life hell every chance he got. Still, his hands were a bit tied up in the Star's contractual obligations for equal opportunity employment. And seeing as I was a latino-descent elf and natural-born UCAS citizen *and* a woman on top of it, I was the HR department's gold-mine of representative equality.
I worked the beat for years with Doug. He's a great guy really. Honest, hard-working, and cares about the people he's paid to protect. What you actually want out of a cop, in other words. Cute, too. We became close friends on the beat, and still are to this day, but we never went any further. He was kinda like the little brother I never had. Not that you could ever convince his wife of that, of course. The only looks I ever got from her were angry glares. It's not my fault I was born gorgeous and exotic. Still, I *tried* to make peace with her for Doug's sake. I think it mostly worked, but she still gives Doug the old hairy-eyeball anytime she finds out he's meeting me for lunch. I moved out from my parent's place, too. Found a nice little apartment in Renton where the rent was (barely) affordable. Felt good to be on my own.
It wasn't all roses and sunshine though. I saw a lot of things on that job. The sort that can keep people up at night and destroy your faith in metahumanity as a whole. I'm really glad Doug was there. He always had a way of keeping hope alive. Even he felt the frustration though. We could bust the low-level creeps all day long, but it never seemed to make much difference. And anytime the Star went after a higher up, everything would fall apart. Bribes, political pressure, evidence getting 'lost' and witnesses going 'missing'... It seemed the real criminals had too much power for us to ever touch them.
Still, we did what we could with what we had. Doug was a real whiz at putting the pieces together and tracking down the perps. I showed a knack for talking to people (often getting bits for Doug to work with), and eventually someone higher up the chain then Chief Bigot noticed and decided to put us up for promotions. Doug made detective, and I got bumped up for Negotiator training. They figured I'd have an easier time talking down crowds, saving them a bundle in hazard pay I imagine. Doug and I still hung out a lot for lunch, coffee, donuts, whatever. We'd been reassigned, but still acted a lot like partners. Old habits die hard I suppose, that's what Doug kept saying. I try not to think what his wife would say.
I finished the basic training pretty quickly and then they put me in for some upgrades. Wanted me to keep up with the rest of the riot and SWAT guys if it came to it. And while I was in for work anyway, I decided to chip in from my own saving and finally take advantage of the Star's employee discounts to nab one of those new vocal enhancement implants. Thought it might help in my new line of work and got it for a fraction of it's price (which is still a huge amount on cop salary) I was just back on duty a couple of weeks when the Comet showed up.
I was sent out alongside a riot team to break up some unauthorized flash-mobs of revellers in downtown. We arrived at the site and setup a basic cordon in due order. No sooner had I picked up the voice amplifier though, then I doubled over in pain. One of the boys thought I'd been shot and started shooting tear gas into the crowd. It turned ugly after that. I couldn't do anything but curl up in the fetal position until I passed out from the pain...
Woke up a couple days later in the hospital with Doug leaning over me looking like he hadn't slept the entire time. Silly goose, no wonder the wife's so suspicious. I was glad to see him though. Everything ached, including something I didn't remember having before. A quick peek under the covers confirmed it: I had a tail poking out under that drafty hospital gown. I believe the ensuing conversation went something like this:
Me, "Uh, Doug? What happened? How long was I out? And why do I have a _tail_?!"
Doug, "Mel, you don't know the half of it."
Me, "Care to expand on that any?"
Then he pointed me to the mirror. Staring back was a woman with long and volumous dark grey hair with 2 big black stripes running back, violet cat-like slit eyes, and grey skin with black tiger stripes running down the back and sides. I thought it was a prank at first until my brain caught up with that whole tail thing. Then I realised those stripes weren't just skin, I actually had a really soft downy _fur_ down the sides and backs of my limbs and body, acounting for the darker shade of grey there. The ears felt longer then they used to be too, but small things like that were just kinda floating in the back of my head behind one over-riding thought...
Me, "Oh you have GOT to be kidding me. I'm a fraggin' cat-girl?!"
Doug flashed his famous Hey-cheer-up! smile, "Aw, I think you're cute."
I shot him a dirty look.
Doug, "Ok ok, here's the deal. The Doc doesn't know exactly what's going on with you right now. He said your genes looked like they were doing a circus act. And you're not the only one, either. Cases like yours are scattered all over town with folks suddenly changing in wierd ways. I saw one of the others on my way up. Trust me, you could do a lot worse then the tail."
He was right, of course. SURGE had hit, and I was one of the luckier expressions. I may be a freak of nature, but I'm also #1 on a lot men's fantasy lists. That wasn't much consolation at the time, however. Chief Bigot used my condition to place me on administrative leave and the botched riot control to start leveraging me as a "health risk" to the company, and I was a little too freaky looking now for the Negotiation team, too. I couldn't do much from the hospital bed. Doug was furious about it, but I calmed him down. At least the Star payed my medical bills and gave me a full severance package. Legalised hush / please-don't-sue-us money doesn't seem so bad when you're on the recieving end.
Mama and Papa wanted me to come home after that. While I love them dearly, I enjoy my independance a lot, and I was still trying to get comfortable in my own skin again. So I stayed on in Renton, living off my severance pay for a few weeks as I got a grip on things. After that, I figured I'd need to get some cred flowing in again so I started up my own little Private Eye biz. It didn't quite go as well as I'd planned. Most folks thought I was some sort of fetishist with too much cosmetic surgery. A lot of guys that came in thought I was a new adult party service for private eyefulls. I guess I can't really blame them for not taking a cat-girl seriously. I know I wouldn't have just a month before. Still, I did squeak by on the few jobs I got from those without enough to hire the "real" detectives. Mostly insecure spouses wanting to know if thier partners were cheating on them (and they usually were).
Work was really sporadic though, and one month I was coming up short on rent money when I saw an add for Amature Night at a strip club downtown called The Black Tie. I knew it from my days on the beat. It was a clean joint, no touching the girls, mostly tired wage-slave types in attendance, and strictly legal. After so many men had been looking to hire me for stag parties or escort, I figured I may as well give this a shot and see if I could make enough to cover the rent this month. No harm in a little one-off stripping, right? Right.
There were a lot of girls and even a few guys that showed up that night. We signed up for our temp house accounts with this little geek of a decker at the back entrance. He about flipped when he saw me, commenting how I looked like an old comic character named "Tigra". I took his word for it. He was about to enter that as my stage name for the night but the stage manager intervened and suggested Shadowcat instead. I just shrugged and went with it, but the stage name kinda stuck with me ever since.
So I got up on stage that night and did some exotic dancing for the first time in my life. I had no skill at it, but I was cute, exotic, and flexible. Naturally I was nervous at first, but something just clicked and I got into it, had some fun playing with a few guys near the stage, and generally made the best of the experience. After the show, the manager came up to me with a credstick holding my tips from the night. He started talking to me and asking a few questions like where I got the great cosmetics from. You should have seen his eyes light up when he found out I was *au naturale*.
He offered me a job on the spot. Said I had great potential and could go far in the biz if I worked at it. I checked the balance on the credstick as I thought it over. More then enough to cover the shortfall in the rent. As much cred in one night as I'd been making in most weeks from my PI gig. I smiled, shook his hand, and asked when I started.
Over the next year, my PI biz slowly faded into obscurity as dancing took up more of my time. The money flowed in, enough to help the family out back home and still have plenty left to make my place good and comfy, and I got pretty good at dancing, too. But skill alone can only get you so far in this biz, and most girls wind up getting some enhancements to help draw in the customers. I was no exception. While most got the obvious like breast implants, I played up my "authentic" appeal since it was the reason I got the job in the first place.
The club sent it's girls over to Aisha's body clinic for work. She's a big tough orc with a thick Japanese accent, but she does good work and her place is clean. She also gets in some "clearance" wares from the hospitals. At first I just got some cheap helpful bioware like the dietware to keep my curves (I still have an old cop donut habit) and the anti-grossness mods to keep me smelling nice on stage even after working up a sweat. As time went on, and I saw good returns on the enhancements, I gradually started adding more. And wanting to see returns on those a bit sooner, I bit the bullet and picked up a few Clearance items too. In just 3 short years I had subtly modified my body to be a dancing machine, pulling off crowd-pleasing stage moves with the endurance to keep up the pace, and some extra help in the scent department to keep those front-row seats tipping at thier best.
Things were going along great and I probably could have happily continued working there for decades, but the world had other ideas. When the Crash of '65 hit, the Black Tie fell on hard times. Thier own systems had issues, but the killer was the loss of a lot of the wage-slaves that made up the customer base as thier jobs vanished in the corporate restructing. In less then a year, the place had the choice of closing shop or selling out to the syndicates for less savory entertainments. Either way, I wasn't sticking around.
I was in the middle of trying to find work that didn't involve "Happy Endings" and not having much luck. With the bulk of the local economy in a slump right after the crash and everyone still scrambling to pick up the pieces, there weren't as many openings for a cat-girl like myself in the few clean independant clubs. That's when I got a call from an old aquaintence back in the Tarislar neighborhood. They needed a hand fending off some predatory gangs and he was hoping an ex-cop like myself could be of some assistance. A few of them had even chipped together a reward for whoever could help them out. And seeing as the Star was too busy elsewhere to take care of business, I headed to my old stomping grounds.
After checking around with the folks in the hood, I had a pretty good idea of what I was up against. Some disgruntled pro-humanis goons were repeatedly coming in and trashing the place. They'd even burned down old man Thomas's house already. I was able to get our local watch group organized enough to keep an eye out for the gang and get the rest to saftey. Even had a handful that could handle a gun well enough. Next time they showed up, we were ready.
We drew them into a dead end street and ambushed them. I gave them a chance to surrender first and leave in peace. As I'd hoped, they turned me down. In the fight that followed, I came to appreciate my dancing mods for a lot more then working the stage. They made my rusty old LoneStar training pay off big time. The gang leader and the one who'd burned down Thomas's house went down right off the bat to the townsfolk up on the roofs with thier rifles. Then I waded in with an old stun baton to keep the remainder too busy to shoot back. It ended quick and I got Doug to get a wagon down to pick the goon squad up. Having a couple townies with video recorders at the fight to prove 'self-defense' made it a simple case.
I seriously considered turning down the reward they gave me, but as Old Man Thomas pointed out, I could use the money, and they were happy to help me out. My old pal Lucas even arranged a special "Thank You" gift from a friend of his that worked at a Zoe boutique downtown. My very own suit of sleek chic Second Skin armor.
After that, I still tried to get by normally. Landed some booth-babe jobs at conventions and expos now and then, and even the occassional free-lance dancing gig for "meta-night" at a decent nearby club again. But it wasn't what it used to be. Got me to thinking about that job I did for my old hood. I knew there was a lot of work like that out there, I'd even caught a few doing some of the rather unsavory ones when I was on the beat. The reward from my old chums made a big difference for me, and the pay rate's even better then dancing these days, if a good bit more risky. Taking down the gangers did bring back some of the old thrill working for the Star too.
In the end, I started looking back into some of these shadier jobs. I need the cred to pay the bills. The work is exciting and challenging. And I get the occasional chance to do some real good where it's sorely needed. I may work for some bad people, but it'd be to put a hurt on other bad people that the cops simply can't touch. A bit of vigilanty justice funded by the bad guys. There's a certain irony to that I find appealing.
I got talking to Lucas and found out he has a lot of connections around town that might be able to help me find some more work. The guy's a lot more mercenary then I remember, and real business-like these days. But he's gotten me a few leads, and helped update the rest of my aging gear. I don't think Doug would be too keen on the idea. He's a bit too straight-laced for it. But I'm certain he'd understand. He's always had my back, and I doubt even going Shadow on him will change that.
