One moment Kittul was bound in a chair, purring at the sheer joy of being reunited with Zed. The next, her bindings slid free, her chair fell backwards slamming the wind out of her, and something bizarre happened to the brunette agent. As she watched, the Agent split into two copies of herself. One stumbled to the side, where it hung, limp, screaming, and faintly translucent. The other stood, stretched, and wasn't the Agent any longer.

Kittul still faintly saw the Agent's body through the translucent form that cloaked her, but that didn't matter. What did was the huge demonic figure that covered her like a shroud. Its back was to the Neko, but Karin had seen the form enough to realize what it was; the thing Kent had her working on. All the pieces fell into place with a sick finality. Kent used this thing as his avatar, and he was having her make him a real-world version of it, so he could do things like it was about to do and walk away a free man.

The demon riding the Agent's body said something that Kittul didn't catch through the sound of blood rushing through her ears. Words forced themselves from her mouth as she shoved herself as far away from his avatar as she could get. "Kent, you sick bastard!"

Allie leapt at the demon with a feline scream, her shift to Neko complete before she left the ground. The edges of her claws glittered as if they sliced the air itself to rainbow ribbons. The demon's gun went off as she brought her arm around to block the little Neko's slash. It wasn't fast enough; Allie's claws slashed through the face of the Agent's demonic overlay, and spectral blood flew through the room.

"Little bitch! How dare you strike me! Destroy her, my monster!"

Kittul glanced away from the demon to Winston and Melissa. Winston still stood where he had, but now he hunched over in a subservient crouch, as if ready to wait on Agnes. Here and there she saw a spectral form not quite overlapping with his, as if someone a bit smaller than him were sharing his body. On the floor behind him lay a copy of himself, fading from view even as Kittul saw it.

Melissa, on the other hand, stood next to where her body had been, speaking calmly. Kittul couldn't make out the words, but the immense, mechanically augmented monstrosity that had taken her place listened with rapt attention. No one was coming to Allie's aid from that direction.

She looked at Zed, hoping he would be able to help, but he clutched at the woman he'd walked in with. Blood soaked the front of her shirt, and even though her eyes were open, the look on her face was one of a woman in mortal agony.

There was no one left to help the little kitten. No one except Kittul. But Kittul wasn't an abused girlfriend anymore. She wasn't an orphaned, feral child. She was strong, she was fast, and she was going to help her little lost kitten.

From Kittul's memory of the brutal scuffle in the alleyway, Allie wasn't a fighter, but she had gone absolutely berserk. She slashed over and over with her claws, flaying tiny flakes from the demon's hide with each stroke. One claw caught on something, and she started raking with her back feet. The demon howled, thrust Agnes' hand into the kitten's stomach, and shouted a word that made Kittul's ears lay back in response.

One Allie dropped to the ground, boneless but breathing. A shadow Allie flew backward, burning to ash before it hit the far wall. Kittul screamed wordlessly as the demon rolled the kitten over with a toe and aimed her gun at the little Neko's head. Without thinking she launched herself at the demon, her glittering claws sinking into its back, raking it with her feet as it screamed and flailed at her.

The demon riding Agnes threw herself backward. Before she was driven into the ground, Kittul rolled away. She hadn't damaged Agnes, but she'd shredded the thing's back. Unfortunately, it was made of sterner stuff than the Tom she'd killed. It pushed itself to its feet, murder in its eyes.

"You dare to strike me, little genecrafter? I will find you, take you, and eat your legs while you watch."

"I told you before, Kent, you're not my type. Now get the hell out of Zed's sister."

The demon cocked its head in apparent confusion. A moment later it barked a derisive laugh. "You still think... Oh, little genecrafter, I will have such fun breaking you."

"My boyfriend is a were-stripper?" Zed's incredulous words took both demon and Neko by surprise. She looked to the professor, who now held a dark, muscular man in a bloody shirt. The moment Kittul looked at the professor, she sealed her own fate. She never saw it, but Karin found out what it felt like to have a slug pass through her brain.

***

I didn't see Sue move. One moment I stood there staring down the barrel of Agnes' forty-five, the next I was trying to sit up, Sue's weight a still lump atop me. Damp warmth covered my chest, and when I turned her over shock and fury raced through my veins like ice and fire. The hole in her chest was tiny, but the one out her back was as big as my palm.

Somewhere a world away, I heard the bandsaw shriek of an enraged Neko, but nothing but Sue mattered. I rolled her back over and reached for her throat to check her pulse. Before I could finish the motion, her eyes snapped open, and she caught my wrist in a grip like steel.

"Goddammit that hurts like a bitch."

"Sue! How are you..."

She just rolled her eyes at me, "Shifter. Duh. Dammit."

"Hang on, Sue. We'll get the Agency doctor."

She shook her head in negation and let out another hiss of pain as even that motion pulled at her ragged wound. "Too late for that, Zed. I didn't want to do this, but I don't think the kittens can take her."

I've seen lots of Shifters change. Oddly, I'd never seen a Neko do it until Allie leapt at Agnes. When they change, it's not a painless process, nor is it done in an eyeblink. Except, apparently, for Nekos, and whatever Sue was. Sue shifted. Al lay in my lap, staring up at me sheepishly. My mouth, never at a loss for words when it could show everyone how much of an ass I am, came to my rescue.

"My boyfriend is a were-stripper?"

For a bare sliver of an instant, I saw a twinkle in Al's eye. Then another gunshot rang through the room. Kittul's body slumped to the floor, red and gray leaking from a hole the size of a baseball in the side of her head. Before I could move, before I could even say anything, Al spun into action.

He swept his shin across Agnes' knees. A crack almost as loud as the recent gunfire filled the room, and she flipped forward, barely getting one arm in front of her before her face slammed into the ground. He grabbed the end of her gun, wrenching the pistol from her grasp, crushing the barrel closed, and tossing it into the wall all with one smooth motion. He whirled to his feet a second later. Agnes was already drawing power for another spell; her hand glowed with a terrible violet light. Before she could do anything with it, Al's foot landed in her side, sending her flying across the room to smash into the wall.

As she flew over Allie's still body, Agnes reached out with one hand and snagged the kitten's remains. As Al advanced on her, she shoved herself to her feet, holding the catatonic little Neko like a shield. She glanced at Melissa, but our sister stood muttering to herself.

"Useless monster. I will deal with your treachery later. Servant! Destroy that one!"

Winston's lunge took Al by surprise. The two caromed through the remains of the table Kittul had sat next to, then slammed into the wall above her body. The two grappled, and I realized that all I could do would be get in the way. Winston was an Ursa, and even in his human form strong enough to throw a pickup truck across a parking lot. Al matched him strength for strength, his feet digging furrows into the floor as he did.

I looked around for anything I could use as a weapon. Agnes' gun had gone through the wall. Melissa still clutched at hers with a white-knuckled grip. Winston hadn't carried one when I worked at the Agency. I had to get to an armory, and the nearest one was at least a hundred feet down the hallway.

"Legionnaires! Rally on my voice!" Agnes' shout echoed out into the corridor. A moment later I heard heavy footsteps running. They were cut off by gunfire, howling, and the sound of bodies impacting with bodies. Emergency lights started flashing, a piercing alarm ripped through the air, and the door to the room slammed shut, automatic locks engaging the moment it was closed.

Now I was stuck in the interrogation room with a pair of wrestling Shifters, two dead Neko I'd come here to protect, and two Special Agents who had gone completely insane.

***

Karin's throat was raw from screaming. She screamed her pain, her fear, and her rage until they echoed in her room. For hours, she'd been trying to disengage from Cat's Paw. Now she wanted back in, and all that showed when she tried to log in as Kittul was the picture of a body lying limp, brains leaking onto the floor. She still felt the ghost of the spike of pain as the bullet hit, she could still see the life fading from Allie's eyes as she fell.

It was irrational, but she had to get back into the game. She had to stop the thing that Kent was running, that he was trying to become. She had to save Zed from the demon and her mechanical minion. She couldn't just walk away and leave Allie lying there, her soul ripped from her body by the demon.

Inspiration struck. She accessed the drive in her head, pulling out the last image she had of the little Neko she'd tried so hard to rescue. She activated the Cat's Paw character creation screen and uploaded the image of Allie the moment the screen came up. She ignored the section on statistics and skills, focusing instead on where in the world she wanted to be. She narrowed it in to the Paxtuent area, then typed in a name - Allie.

***

I thought things were bad, but life will always show me they can be worse. Agnes dropped the soul burned little Neko and started toward me. Winston let loose a deep, angry scream as his jacket ripped, fur sprouting from every split seam. Melissa stood still and mostly silent, the only change that her eyes had slipped closed. I pushed myself to my feet, balling my fists as I did. I'd had enough of Agnes as kids, I wasn't about to take her crap lying down now.

"What's wrong, Ag? Getting tired? Or don't you know what to do if you can't fuck the target into submission?"

"Aren't you this one's sibling? How wonderful. I have never experienced fratricide before." She looked away from me, staring into the distance, "For that matter, I've never experienced incest, either. Disrobe."

"Okay. Melissa? Our beloved sister has officially gone insane. Are you still AWOL?"

I didn't expect a response. Melissa didn't make one. Instead, Al let out a sobbing, wordless shout of negation. I glanced over to see him struggling as Winston, now fully in his Ursa form, picked him up and stretched his arms outward, preparing to pull him limb from limb. The look on Al's face wasn't one of pain, though. Instead, he was looking at me as if he were trying to memorize every detail of my face.

"I'm sorry, Zed. I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Al. It's not your fault he's bigger than you."

"That's not why. I..."

I never got to hear what Al was going to say. The bandsaw shriek of an enraged Neko filled the room again, and two long steps away from me Agnes spun about, buffeted by a blow to her shoulder. Allie slashed downward, missing my sister by inches, but the blow drew an inhuman shriek from Agnes' throat. She still protected her face and throat with her arms, but now she did nothing but swear at the little Neko and kick feebly at her.

A deep bellow of pain echoed Agnes' shriek, and Winston flew across the room, the stump of his right leg spurting blood, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.

A thing stood where Al and Winston had been fighting. Coarse, sand colored hair covered a powerful, hunched body. Oversized joints made its limbs seem spindly, but the thighs of the cantilevered legs were bigger around than my body. Heavy breasts drew my eye, as did an equally heavy phallus. As it straightened, I realized that its posture wasn't hunched; it had a huge hump on each shoulder, giving it a hunchbacked look. All in all, it was a powerfully ugly creature.

Then it turned so I could see their face. Despite the short, furred muzzle, their face was beautiful, its eyes a deep chocolate brown. In that face I saw Al, I saw Sue, I saw the person who I'd fallen for without ever knowing who she was.

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"Al? Sue?"

She smiled Al's sad smile at me, "Asoofit." Baby Jane Doe. "Almudi." Nobody. "I love you." She... he... Asoofit had told me all along, and I hadn't listened. They blinked tears away and took a step toward my sister.

Agnes took one look at the huge Shifter advancing on her, screamed, and with panicked speed grabbed the little berserk Neko by her throat. She held the Neko out like a shield, and her other hand started to glow once more.

"Imperiatrix!" Everyone froze at Melissa's sudden shout. "A tactical error has been made and must be exploited at once!"

The fear evaporated from Agnes' face instantly, replaced by imperious disdain. She turned away from Melissa to face Asoofit squarely. She ignored me completely. "It has taken you long enough to subdue her and discover this flaw, my monster. Explain and exploit it. Now!"

Melissa stepped behind Agnes, her gun coming up smoothly as she did. "This body has no software controls." With each word she pulled the trigger. The first round exploded out the front of Agnes' forehead, the rest carved a series of chunks in a line down her body as they exited. When Agnes lay on the ground before her, Melissa lined her gun up on our sister's still-twitching face. "Bitch."

She pulled the trigger once more, then collapsed to the ground. Allie let out a sobbing scream of triumph and loss, shrank down until she was a shrieking cat, then curled into a ball and went silent.

I looked to Asoofit, the beginnings of hope stirring in my breast. The moment I saw her face, my hopes were dashed. She stared furiously at where Agnes had been standing.

"Oh, no. You don't hurt him and get away that easily, you bitch."

She flashed a smile at me, then reached out in front of her, swinging her hand back and forth. A moment later, she twisted her hand as if wrapping a rope about her wrist, and then she leapt. The moment her feet left the ground, she was gone, leaving me locked alone with the dead and dying.

***

Kittul...

Karin slipped from her VR rig, an aching hole where her heart used to be. She fell into her bed, sobbing for Allie, sobbing for Agnes, sobbing for the huge part of her that lay dead on a virtual floor. Nothing could ever make this right. No success could ever overcome her failure to save the little kitten who had trusted her. There was no way Zed would accept her in Allie's body, and without her Allie's body would be nothing more than a catatonic shell. She would never again be able to walk in the body she'd grown to think of as 'her' more than the cotton candy shell that lay weeping in her crappy little apartment.

Somehow Kent had discovered her secret life within the game. He'd set up the whole Agency raid to suck her in. Then he'd used his goddamned demonic avatar to destroy everything she loved. She was going to hunt him down, tear his kneecaps off, and rip his intestines out with her claws.

She froze a moment, then convulsed again with another racking sob. She would never feel her claws slip their sheathes again, no matter how much she longed for them. Kittul was dead. A part of her, the part that had been healing, was dead. There was no way to bring it back, no way to recover the game data that Kent had surely purged by now.

She was still lying there, berating herself for being such a fool, when the door to her apartment slammed open.

"Go away, Vi!"

Vi didn't listen; she tromped heavily through the living room, her destination obviously Karin's bedroom and office. Before she could start lecturing, Karin rolled over to face her...

"I said go away!"

... and found herself staring at the sawed-off shotgun in Kent's perfect hands.

"Stupid little genecrafter. I am going to enjoy breaking you. When you beg me to let you, I will allow you to finish my commission. At last, I will walk your world in my proper form, and when I do, I will temper my new sword in your blood when I split you in two."

Karin was too tired and too heartsore to deal with Kent's psychosis. "Just fucking kill me, Kent. I'll work for you when Hell freezes over."

"Your naiveté is so endearing. I may not let you die when I split you. It will amuse me to see you watch your world fall to me."

"Fuck you, Kent."

She was about to roll over when she saw Kent lift the scattergun, press the end to her ankle, and pull the trigger.

For a fraction of a second, she just stared in shock. Then the pain hit, and she couldn't scream loud enough. She thrashed as her blood splattered out on the bed and the floor. The smells of rust and sugar filled the room, and she forced her screams into words.

"Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck your work, fuck your fucking plan, fuck you straight in the skull."

"I suppose you only need one of these." He lifted her arm clear of her body, lifting the gun to aim carefully at her left hand. He met her gaze, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his pants bulge with anticipation.

As he pulled the trigger, a wall of sand-colored fur appeared behind him. A heavy hand with two thick fingers and a broad thumb lashed out, lightning fast, and squeezed the barrel shut. Karin thrashed away as the gun exploded in Kent's hands, showering hot metal across her back, ravaging her hand before she could pull it away. When she looked back at him, Kent's perfect face wasn't perfect anymore. He bled from fragments of steel and lead shrapnel lodged across his front.

The thing from the Agency picked Kent up and threw him into her rig. Karin heard his spine and the rig itself shatter. The thing... it had called itself Asoofit... bent over Kent, wrapping one huge paw around his head, turning it so he was forced to stare up into Asoofit's huge brown eyes.

"I'm coming for you, Demon."

She squeezed, and Kent's skull shattered.

Assofit turned to where Karin lay wallowing in her agony on the bed. Curls of smoke rose from the tips of its fur, like it had just stepped out of a furnace. As she watched, the lacerations from the exploding shotgun sealed themselves shut, bits of metal falling to the floor as they did so.

"Sorry I took so long. It's hard to track that bitch. I can't stay long, but..." Its face and voice were as beautiful as its body was grotesque, but all of that was lost to Karin's haze of shock and pain.

The monster grabbed up Kent's belt, wrapped it around Karin's ankle, and cinched it tight. It looked around the room, snorted in frustration, and with a shake of its head spat in its hand. It rubbed its palm across her bleeding stump, drawing another shriek from her.

"Sorry, but I didn't see a clean towel. At least you're not spurting now. I wish I could stay longer, but that bitch isn't getting away."

The thing leaned down and pressed its forehead against hers. "Take care of yourself, Kittul. I probably won't make it back, and Zed... Take care of Zed for me, kitten. However you have to. "

It... she... turned, leapt, and was gone.

***

Magnus lay on the examination table in the center of the laboratory. Around him the Imperiatrix's Legionnaires still lay connected to the virtual world. The mistress commanded it, and it was enough for them. The reason why brought a smile to Magnus' face.

De'Shak lifted the heavy grinder, moving it away from what remained of Magnus' left leg. His hands were already gone. His augmentation kept him alive, kept the pain messages flowing to his brain, but he'd long since lost any trace of sanity that might make the pain meaningful. His hands, his legs, his whole body meant nothing. The demon leaning over him meant nothing. In his head, he saw none of it. In his head the only thing he saw was his wife, smiling at him before he went to war, and his enemy, her look of surprise half blown off the front of her skull.

The Imperiatrix screamed at him, beating him with hands broken and bloodied by the claws of a tiny feline humanoid. Every slash she'd taken while she rode the woman Agnes had been faithfully transmitted to her real body. Magnus still had no idea how that had happened, but the sight of the demon bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts in her hide pleased him.

She lifted the grinder above his head with a scream, and he readied himself to rejoin his wife. It had taken him a dark journey to find her, but they would be together in death as they had been in life. The thought soothed him as he waited for the blow to fall.

He waited, but the grinder spun free, whining in the air, until the demon dropped it on the ground beside the examination table. He wondered if she'd been overcome with remorse, found another target for her rage, or simply gotten bored. Making a supreme effort, he flopped his head to the side.

The thing from the battle in the other world stood grappling with De'Shak. She was just as tall as the demon, but as broad across the chest as Magnus. Where the demon's hide was a shiny red carapace, the newcomer was covered in a thick, sand-colored pelt. Her stubby hands clutched at De'Shak, shoving her fingers through the slashes in the demon's hide. De'Shak flailed at her, but this was no thrall that De'Shak could shut down with a word. The thing twisted the demon around by main strength, inch by hard won inch. When De'Shak's back was to her, she grabbed the demon under the chin and pulled.

It took long minutes of screaming, but when the demon's head finally released its hold on her body, Magnus closed his eyes, satisfied at last. Soon the thing would come for him. His systems would fail, and he and Andrea would be together once more.

***

"Karie? Are you in here?"

Vivian's voice cut into Karin's coding trance. She took one last look at the image floating in front of her, then slipped the VR goggles away from her eyes.

Vi stared down at her, a look of concern on her face. She started to say something, stopped with her mouth hanging open when Karin motioned for patience with her mangled left hand.

"Sorry, Vi. I forgot you hadn't seen it yet."

Vi visibly steeled herself, then reached out to touch the ropy scars running across the remains of Karin's fingers. The nerve endings remained raw, and screamed at her when Vi stroked them, but Karin forced herself to stillness. Her hand ached whenever she moved it and burned like fire whenever she brushed against anything. Enough painkillers to overcome her accelerated metabolism made her drowsy, and she had no time for that. She had no time for Vi, really, but for some reason she couldn't bring herself to tell her friend to go away. Instead, she wracked her brain, looking for something to talk about.

"God, I'm so sorry, Karie."

"It's okay, Vi."

"Why haven't you... I mean... We could get you a prosthetic. You know that, right?"

Karin looked down at what was left of her hand. Ever since her inspiration, she hadn't even thought about a prosthetic. Getting fitted would take time, time she couldn't waste.

"I'd want one for my foot first. Doesn't matter. I can't afford one, let alone two."

Vi froze, her expression one of guarded concern. "Karie, sweetie, money isn't really a problem anymore. You know that, right?"

"Did we sell something?"

"The lawsuit, sweetie."

Karin blinked. She didn't remember any lawsuit. She was sure she'd remember if one of her coding jobs had gone so wrong someone filed suit. "What lawsuit?"

Vi's voice took on the hushed, singsong tones of someone not tracking well with reality. That didn't make any sense; Karin was tracking perfectly on anything important. Visions of her coding swam before her. She blinked; Vi was talking again. "...Kent's estate. The forensic accountants are still checking, but it looks like he's the only owner on record for Cat's Paw Incorporated. You're suing his estate for enough money to... to... Hell, that ought to tell you something. I can't even think of something to spend it on."

Vi took a moment to look over the cobbled together rig Karin was working with. She'd scraped together a few parts from her office rig, what was left of her Cat's Paw rig, and an old processor Frank the shipping guy sold her to replace the one shattered by Kent's corpse. Karin's agent winced when she saw the bare cabling connecting the disparate parts.

"Okay, maybe replacing the rig Kent busted when his gun misfired would be a good start."

Karin winced. Getting a new rig would mean transferring all her work over to the new rig. That would take time she couldn't spare. She shook her head, the motion pulling at the wires jury rigging her old office headset into the Cat's Paw rig.

"I'm... I have work to do, Vi."

Vi looked again at her hand, this time glancing at her missing foot as well. Vi didn't understand. She would eventually, but not now. For now Karin needed time to work.

"I'll be okay, Vi. I just need this to keep my mind off things. Until I'm ready to deal with them."

Vi took another long look at her, searching for something in her eyes. After a few moments, she found it, whatever it was, and nodded. "If you say so. If I think you're losing it again, I'm going to come drag you out of here, bad foot and all."

Karin smiled up at her friend, the expression odd on her face after all that had happened. "If I need you to, I'm sure you will. Now, please?"

Shaking her head, Vi gave Karin a quick hug, then walked out of the room. Karin didn't even wait to hear the front door close before she dove back into her work. Her fingers flew, pain forgotten in the joy of coding. An image floated before her, a constant reminder driving pain away, goading her to keep coding through hunger and fatigue, drawing her toward her goal.

Kent's last action had been a gift. He'd destroyed her masterwork. He'd broken the chains binding her to her cotton candy perfection. She was finally free to become whatever she wanted to be. She was finally free to look like herself, and she finally knew what she looked like. As that thought passed through her, the petite brunette floating in the virtual space in front of her shifted again, leaving a tiny black cat staring up at her.

***

Magnus lay on the slab in power-saving mode. He watched the Imperiatrix decay. It happened rapidly here, or maybe his time sense had gone.

A few minutes, or maybe weeks, after the sandy colored monster disappeared, Magnus heard the distinctive rubbery sound of a Researcher's wheels. They drew closer one hesitant squeak at a time, until finally he saw the light reflected from the thing's tank moving across the ceiling. It stilled where he could reach out and touch it, if De'Shak had left him his arms. When the thing's voice whined at him, he pushed himself to full wakefulness and reviewed his automatic recording.

"What are your orders?"

For a long moment, Magnus couldn't understand the question. When he finally did, a harsh, rasping laugh forced its way past his lips. The monster who had stolen everything from him had unwittingly given him the only thing he might still want. She had left him the tools for vengeance against her entire world.

"Warlord?"

"Yes, Researcher?"

"What are your orders, Warlord?"

"Wake the Guard. Ready them for a war like this world has never seen."

***

In the end, it was the recordings that saved me, I suppose.

The Agency knew many of the Others could cloud minds. They could affect cameras, too, but only if they knew about them. That's why there were tiny video cameras hidden throughout the entire building, taping everything, twenty-four by seven. The footage was almost never useful, but when it was of any use at all it was critical.

The Director saw Agnes go insane. He saw the recording of nearly eighty Agency employees, forty Agents and forty office workers, going berserk and attacking their fellows. Since that was almost all the active Agents in the country, all of whom were heavily armed and able to stand up against a Shifter in hand-to-hand combat, the video was not for the faint of heart. Not too many of the coworkers of the possessed lived to talk about the attack.

It would have been the end of the Agency, but for the werewolves who had stowed away in the back of Asoofit's truck. The moment the Agents went crazy they leapt into action. A few of them kept the Agents busy. A few of them got the rest of the office workers outside the building. Most importantly, one of them, a big alpha named Wyatt, shut down the defensive grid. After that, the battle was over in minutes as a wave of civilized, disciplined, but very, very angry Shifters swarmed into the building.

Wyatt was the one who told the rest how I'd come to the Agency with no backup except my girlfriend and a little girl, all to save one little Shifter. That earned me a kind of honorary Shifter status, I think. Also, they all tell me I smell good. Since I'm the only one with a clearance they'll talk to, the Director decided to use me as his official Shifter liaison. It pays my bills since I can't bring myself to teach any more.

So once in a while, when the Shifters need to talk to the Agency, or the Agency needs the Shifters as muscle to replace their missing Agents, they come by my apartment and ask me to make a phone call. I talk to both sides and play translator for people who already have a common language but won't talk to one another.

But mostly, I sit in my living room, pet Allie, and wait. I wait for my new kitten to wake up and talk to me. The doctors don't think she will, but they told us for so long that Shifters weren't really sapient that I don't give two shakes of shit what they say. I wait. I wait for her to wake. I wait for the pain to go away.

I wait for Asoofit to come home.