~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For 20 advanced chapters, visit my Patreon:
Patreon - Twilight_scribe1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barbara swapped the big straw hat for a pair of sunglasses and lounged in the passenger seat, leaning against the window and enjoying the cool breeze that rolled in once they left the city behind.
Henry's Cadillac DeVille was almost thirty years old, but he'd kept the air-conditioning in good repair — no weird slls, no half-broken vents. Still, out in the suburbs the natural breeze was more refreshing than running the AC, so nobody complained. They let the wind do the cooling.
Katie the tiger draped her head over the other rear window, tongue lolling out as she dispelled the heat.
Because of the tiger's head in the back seat, the Cadillac had already been stopped by the police a few tis. Still, a reminder: California hadn't outlawed keeping big cats. As long as they didn't hurt anyone, the cops had no right to interfere — and Katie was on an iron chain, so what more could they reasonably do?
Queen was on the car stereo. Freddy rcury had passed away at the end of 1991, but the band hadn't completely folded; they still perford and produced. That said, their peak monts would always be those songs left behind before his death. Right now "Radio Ga Ga" was playing and Henry and Barbara humd along.
At first Barbara had been super wary of Katie: worried the tiger's claws might co over the seat and rend her, or the big mouth might accidentally take the headrest and her brains with it. The chain only stopped Katie from jumping out — it didn't stop her from waddling forward if she wanted to.
But Katie, raised by a Kryptonian, didn't have the temperant of a wild tiger. Thanks to strict handling and discipline, she'd grown surprisingly calm for such an animal — almost a miracle. In tiger terms she'd be considered unusually steady.
Katie thought all bipeds looked the sa: so were edible, so should not be ssed with. She'd sorted the world into those groups and mostly stuck to her internal rules. If anything, Katie was more llow than the Kryptonian owning her — which was saying sothing.
Katie found the perfu-spritzed female in the passenger seat uninteresting, so she didn't bother approaching. This was one of Henry's recent little discoveries, actually.
As Katie grew, she'd wreck the house more and more. Computers and speakers were covered in protective housings so she'd rip the cover rather than the device itself — but constant repairs still drove Henry mad and made everyday life clunkier. At one point Henry thought to armor everything like a house tank, but that was obviously impractical.
Then, during a trip to the lab at Sheep Hollow Canyon, Henry saw Katie actively avoid a certain pungent chemical. He realized he'd been solving the wrong problem.
Everyone knows infants put stuff in their mouths during their oral phase. Nintendo solved the "tiny kids pop the cartridge into their mouths" issue by coating ga cards with an extrely bitter substance (benzyldithy lammonium? — the text nas a bitter compound) so a child spit it out imdiately. It's a bitter deterrent.
Henry couldn't use a sll-based repellent that would also puml his own Kryptonian nose — Katie could sll everything he could, and he didn't want to torture himself. So he borrowed Nintendo's idea: create a coating that's harmless to humans and animals but tastes or slls unpleasant enough to keep Katie away from things he didn't want chewed.
Benzyldithy…sothing would have worked, but it stuck to skin and made everything taste awful if you touched it before als. He also needed a scent that wouldn't spread widely, would be barely perceptible to him, and wouldn't cling to everything.
Henry, not deeply schooled in materials science, took the brute-force approach: he grabbed comrcially available perfus and pungent substances and made Katie sniff them, noting which ones made her recoil. From that set he tried combinations: bitter agents, alcohol, camphor, chili extracts.
After much trial and error, he mixed his own "tiger-repellent coating": a blend of bitter, alcohol, camphor and capsaicinoid extracts. When applied, the sll was faint enough that even Henry barely noticed it, but it triggered avoidance in Katie. Lab mice went berserk when given the compound, trying to escape the cage, but physiological checks revealed no imdiate harm. Long-term effects still needed watching.
Henry forced a tiny taste on Katie anyway — and the poor tiger seed to live three dreary days afterward. Henry tried a bit himself and for the first ti since waking up in Alaska he lost his appetite for days; Kryptonian sll acuity ant the minor bitterness absolutely wrecked him.
Still, it solved the core problem: Henry no longer had to fortify his flat into an armored bunker. Katie learned what she could bite and what she should avoid. The coating had one unintended side effect: Katie developed a phobia of people who wore perfu. That explained her cold shoulder toward Barbara — in developing the repellent, Henry had made perfud humans aversive to Katie.
That side-effect turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Katie wouldn't randomly lung at people who slled of fragrance, saving Henry the headache of training her not to pounce. Barbara, of course, was baffled by Katie's disdain and gradually eased into the trip anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
🎉 Power Stone Goal Announcent! 🎉
I'll release one bonus chapter for every 500 Power Stones we hit!"
Let know what should I do
Your support ans everything—let's crush these goals together! Keep voting, and let the stones pile up! 🚀
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
User Comments
0 comments from readers