Frankie
Today was finally the day to meet my own peeps at Neko Paradise, and I was looking forward to it, since Waylon was the only other cat I'd known for long, having grown up with wolves. At the same time, cats were known for being the judgmental bitches of the shifter world. We're just as loyal as wolves if you treat us right, but cats are generally harder to figure out than wolves or birds. Since I hadn't been around many of my own kind, I wasn't sure I'd do any better.
The vibe in Neko Paradise was definitely more forced than the rest of the park. I could see why the corporate board felt the need to lean in to an artificial cuteness like we were in Tokyo. Most of the employees in Neko Paradise looked like they didn’t want to be there at all, but between the pop music and the smiling pink mascot characters emblazoned on everything, it was a little easier not to notice.
In fact, there were also fewer real transformed cats to pet and more costumed characters, cats named Candy and Sandy. They first appeared on a Christmas special in 1969 and I grew up watching it, because as a kid I was excited to see cats like me. Later it occurred to me that they never turned into people, and wore clothes as cats, so they were not actually one bit like me.
"I'm sorry...about all of this," Alistair, gesturing broadly at the Japanese festival stalls, the Candy and Sandy dressed in robot suits greeting kids, and the pink rollercoaster. "It seems even worse when I'm showing it to you now.”
“You’ve apologized to us for every section of the park now,” Ian said. “At least that’s covered.”
"And on the bright side, it's so loud and smells so sweet that I've had no trouble at all building a mental picture," Waylon said.
"Like I said, this part of the park has always been a struggle," Alistair said. "Even before this it had a cutesy mood, like the Saucer ride..." The ride was still there, and still popular. You could ride a saucer down a river of milk past giant mice and cat toys.
Florian gave me a wry look and I felt even more embarrassed about my teacup of milk.
The only acknowledgement that most cat shifters turned into a larger, wilder form of cat was the safari ride.
I was not impressed.
Alistair drove us into the depths of the woods, but instead of living in a tight-knit village, the cats preferred private homesteads. I barely glimpsed cabins through the trees and bushes. Most of the homes weren't very fancy, but the gathering spot for cats was a nice, modern bar and restaurant perched on a rocky peak with a rooftop deck.
I nodded approvingly. I did love to be in the highest possible place.
I didn't anticipate how moved I would feel to walk into a room full of cat shifters who were all waiting to meet me. I didn't think I cared that much that I never knew my dad and didn't remember my mom outside of a few capsules of memory. I thought I was tough and Waylon was the first person to crack my illusion that I didn't need anyone.
Now I faced a couple hundred people who smelled like me, and the presumed leader was a woman who must be just my mother's age, if she had lived. "But you are so young!" she exclaimed on seeing me, and she clasped my hands and pressed her cheek to mine with a barely-there kiss, a very cat-like greeting but not something anyone did in Brooklyn.
"I'm twenty-three," I said, a little defensively. I hoped she didn't think I was a teenager, even though I'd dressed up as maturely as I could.
"Like I said--young. My name is Michelle, and...what else can I say? We're so happy to have our queen. Most of us thought the prophecy would never materialize. We will all do anything in our power to help you. What did you think of Neko Paradise?" she asked wryly.
"Well...I hated it."
"We don't mind it," Michelle said, with almost a wink. "The humans are lured into a sense of false security..." She glanced at Alistair like she was still deciding what to make of him, and whether he could be trusted. Alistair was always left out, not really welcomed by anyone we met, his scent masked as human.
He wasn't the only human around, in this case. I kept feeling like I sensed a human around and Ian's sharper nose confirmed it.
"That girl babysitting the little kids with the ear buds," he said. "She's either human or very well masked as one."
The girl was in the corner trying to wrangle little kids into a game. She looked about fifteen, her hair in a half-assed ponytail, a look of ugh on her face, dressed in a slouchy army jacket, a black crop top and high-waited jeans.
"Is that a human girl?" I asked Michelle as she was ordering some people around. I think she was arranging a display of the militia for us.
"Oh--yes. That is Aurelia," Michelle said. "Her parents were activists for shifter-kind but they died at the bombing in Austin when she was little. So...we took her in here. It was dangerous for the children to stay."
"Oh." My brow furrowed.
"Do you remember the Austin bombing?" Waylon asked. "You were just a kid."
"You keep acting like you're so much older than me, and you're not. You were just a kid too. And a delinquent on top of it.”
"So you remember it?"
"It was a bomb...in Austin." I shrugged. "And people died."
"It was a massive protest," Waylon said. "And most of the people killed were humans who were fighting for shifters. Authorities got a lot of tip-offs but they just let the terrorism happen, eight hundred people died, more were injured, and despite the scale of the operation...just one guy went to jail."
"Yeah, I remember," I said tensely, but what really happened was that eleven-year-old Frankie refused to even look at the news that summer. I was going to school but also learning to fight and doing small jobs for Uncle Roy. Violence was already my past and my future and I couldn't handle any more of it.
What really hit me about Aurelia is that she looked like a mirror to myself. A girl who lost her family and was taken in by people out of pity, but they weren't her people. I never thought I'd see myself in a human girl.
"I'm going to say hello to her, so she knows that, you know, this fight is also on behalf of the good humans," I said. I walked up to where she was sitting on the floor against the wall, keeping one eye on the kids. "Hey--Aurelia?"
"Huh?"
"Aurelia? Whatcha listening to?" I asked, and then I immediately felt stupid.
"Uh...Jizz Whistle featuring Tramp Smacker," she said, pulling out her ear buds.
"Oh. they must be...new."
"Nah, I made that up," Aurelia said. "It's just the Weeknd."
"I know who that is," I said, and suddenly I felt like I was about ten thousand years old. Why was I unable to talk to a teenager who was messing with me? It must be this damned nice outfit, I thought. It's messing with my head.
"Cool," Aurelia said, witheringly.
"I am cool," I snapped. "I know your game. I was fifteen practically yesterday. I'm the Queen of Destruction, so, I'm probably cooler than the Weeknd—“ Uh-oh, I wasn’t actually 100% sure if the Weeknd was one guy or a band name. “I know you're just being like this because I'm cooler than you."
"This is going great, isn't it?" Waylon asked, coming up behind me. "She just came over to tell you that she'll avenge your parents."