[closed] what the cat dragged in

[googledox]

Who| Closed to Brainiac 5, Mabel, Speedball, and Niels
What| Niels gets into the labs
Where| The Labs
When| After Tinker, Tailor, Hero, Spy ambush
Warnings/Notes| N/A

"--Get back here you pestiferous, flea-bitten nuisance!"

PWONG.

It wasn't like Brainiac 5 hated animals. After all, he'd once been inseparable with his pet monkey for the time Koko had deigned to stay with him, even letting Koko sleep wrapped around his head. But monkeys that occasionally played with the wrong beakers were not the same as cats that broke the laws of physics and went ping-ponging around a room filled with priceless equipment.

Between Brainy's annoyed shouting and the pwong pwong pwong of kinetic energy, the racket was noticeable from outside the lab.

How the cat had gotten into the lab was a mystery, but how he'd escaped from Medbay was easy enough to figure out. Back in the Medbay, the staff were still marveling over the broken and mangled cat carrier they'd tried to put Niels in.

"Would you please cease your infernal--?"

PWONG.

He had to occasionally throw up his shields to protect himself and some of the more delicate equipment, but providing hard surfaces for Niels to bounce off only made his constant ricocheting worse.

Comments

[googledox]

Brainy's eyes almost rolled out of his head at Mabel's 'he's not helpful.' He knew she was just a child, but he'd heard it before, often said in sincerity. When he was averaging 140 hour workweeks that most humans couldn't even survive to keep everyone equipped and alive, it was difficult for him to find humor in it.

The ludicrousness of Robbie claiming to have a cat-son overrode the salt, however. Brainy peeked his head out from behind the now-useless equipment and his face made the contortions the faces of the attempting-to-be-humorless often made. It was distinctly a 'I am not admitting I find a silly thing funny even though it's hilarious" face.

Brainy cleared his throat.

"I don't care what you do with it. You can declare it royalty for all I care, just get it out of my lab. A moderately well-behaved monkey is one thing -- that's a respectable pet for a lab."

The problem with cats was they believed they owned the space they were in. This was a problem because Brainy also believed he owned the space he was in. It didn't matter how much space he cordoned off as workspace for other scientists, he was just lending it. It was still his.

[bleventeen]

Mabel totally buys into it though. IT MAKES SENSE. They both have the same powers, and they sort of look similar if you squint and use your imagination. She does take a step back though as Robbie collects his child. She doesn't want to get in the way of their reunion.

"Why didn't you tell us you had a son? Has he always been a cat?" She can hope, right? There's a chance he could turn into a handsome cat boy.

[walkingballpit]

"Ah, come on, Querl. Look at his widdle face and tell me he's not going to light up the whole lab. He's the perfect therapy cat for overstressed scientists." Robbie holds Niels out to his new friend, obviously for petting.

But he can hear Mabel, and Robbie cannot believe that she's taken him seriously. The question about a possible species shift - is he understanding this right? Robbie meets Brainy's eyes for a second and raises an eyebrow as if to say, 'can you believe I have to explain this joke?'

"I don't like admitting to being a single parent. People judge us enough without that burden." He's struggling to not laugh, though, and he has to stop acknowledging anyone is in the room in order to keep going. "Would you believe Niels is actually adopted? He is, you know. How else could a human spawn a feline child? I'm just a super-evolved monkey, after all."

Robbie shoots a wink at Brainy and grins happily. "I hear we make great lab pets."

[googledox]

The wink took Brainy completely off guard. For a moment, he'd been about to protest (after all, Niels certainly could "light up the whole lab" -- by making it explode) but then Robbie winked at him, and his eyes went a little wide.

Brainy was not a person who people winked at. The last person he could even remember winking at him had been Lyle. Lyle was a winker to the core, it went with that whole devil-may-care vibe he tried to cultivate.

Lyle was also an irrepressible flirt and as a result Brainy associated winking with that.

His cheeks flushed ever-so-slightly greener, but he ignored it as he got up and went over to a console, working on dealing with some of the residual damage from the machine he'd just fixed.

"The cat can only stay if he's capable of not destroying everything. The tiny person can only stay if she's capable of being quiet. (Highly unlikely.)" He gestured to Robbie without looking up. "And you can stay if you can make yourself useful and don't have aspirations of leaving the Legion to form your own society."

[bleventeen]

"Adopted? Aww... Sarcasm." Yeah, she figured it out. That meant the part about Brainiac was too. Now she felt a little bad for causing all the commotion.

At the very least though, she is actually being quiet. Probably because she's watching the exchange between them very closely. She's not sure about a lot of what's being said, but there's definitely a vibe there.

[walkingballpit]

A wink is one of the best tools for building up a reputation for being funny and cool, maybe a touch flippant. Robbie is working on getting that going here, and he didn't mean anything by winking. It was only deployed to confirm that Querl was in on the joke.

Robbie can't tell if he was or wasn't. If he knew that Robbie was trying to wind Mabel up, Brainy certainly wasn't playing along with the joke, and Robbie isn't sure what that means. From their conversations thus far, the green Legionnaire has a sense of humor, buuuut maybe the partial destruction of his lab is killing the mood. That's probably it.

The blush goes completely unrecognized and uncommented on. If Robbie was asked what color a green alien would blush, he would have guessed a ruddy brown color, and he'd expect it to be just as bright.

"Sorry, Bells." Robbie would ruffle her hair, but he doesn't want to let go of Niels, who has started squirming. "But if you want to play with him, I'll let you catsit while I stay here and prove that I can totally be useful."

The over-emphasized loudness continues, and, even though it's directed at Mabel, it's completely for the benefit of the man who is apparently so busy that he can't spare them eye contact anymore. "I also don't have aspirations of world domination, or solar systemic, or galactic, so someone needs to dial down the comparisons to monkey bros I don't know and let me make my own mistakes. I will. I'm good at that."

[googledox]

Hearing the disappointment in Mabel's voice didn't make Brainy look up from his work, but he decided to try to cheer her up at least a little.

"Our universe's version of Superboy had stories about a secret island of humanoids who had human features blended with that of various other Earth mammals -- including some felinoids. Given that they hid themselves from the rest of society, it's highly likely that they still exist, somewhere on Earth."

Ergo, cat people -- including cat boys -- were potentially a thing. Have fun with that, Mabel.

"As for you." He pointed to Robbie with an omnitool, still without looking up. He let out an exaggerated sigh. "That's what all the intelligent bipedal mammals say."

And then they tear your heart out and rip it to pieces like a wet paper towel.

"But fine, I will endeavor to stop comparing you to Koko. You've already surpassed his talents by being capable of sentient speech anyway."