The Purfect Fighting Machine

By Ebonhawk

Hawke stewed over the diagrams again. He rethought every element of the design. The theory was sound. Everything looked good when he started. Hawke grabbed the matrix and growth analysis on his superlink palm pilot. The Ki-Sorenson wave was solid; as was the QRB aura sequencing. There was no way it could have happened. Hawke looked at the growth tube and thumbed at the broken seal on the side. Still he couldn’t believe it.

It was supposed to be a form fitting stealth combat suit. It was supposed to be grown of micro-molecular silica machines so that they could be mass-produced with simple cutting - like a plant. It could emit beams of psychoactive beta waves so that the team wearing these would have totally silent communication via telepathy, magnetic senses and would act like a Global Positioning System. An expert AI would control all this. Add to this the copious number of bio-laser weapons and gravimetric control (granting flight and hyper speed) and you have the ultimate infantry weapon. But all his planning and all his work was ruined when his kitten jumped in the tank and got changed.

He came in to the check on his creation he found the growth tank open and his kitten being eaten by his experiment. Without thinking about it he reached in to save his cat. He cursed his morals as the nanos tore at his skin. Pain shot through him in waves, as he pulled the cat from the tank. His experiment was ruined and poverty made it so that Hawke couldn’t try again. That was when he passed out.

When he awoke he first saw her. He tried not to look at her, but she was too magnificent not to. She was almost human but even more like a cat. She was small at only 5 feet with green eyes and blonde hair. Her arms and legs were mostly normal and her body sported an acceptable if not shapely figure that included most of the normal female accruements. But her human nature ended there. She was covered in white fur from head to toe. Her feet ended in paws and her teeth and claws were the stuff of a mouse’s worst nightmare. She even took strongly to the purring and yowling as part of normal English communications. When she first saw him she jumped at him and danced around him. After introducing her to the concept of clothing, he called her Felicity.

He was startled out of his thoughts as white furred hand caressed his brown skinned shoulder. “What are you doing?”, came a purring voice inches from his ear.

Even now, an hour later, she is still smiling and giggling. As he stood and turned to face her, he found himself face to face with her and not an inch between her whiskers and his nose. Hawke pulled away but she grabbed him by the shoulders and began to rub his face with her whiskers.

“Stop that”, he said trying to be firm and not to laugh as her whiskers tickled him. He was determined that she would listen to him. In typical feline fashion, she continued to rub his face and stopped only when she was good and ready - about second before he was about to scream.

As she jumped away from him and landed in a three-point stance on his cocktail table, she smiled at him. As she turned to get a better look at him, her tail started to sweep the table clear. She tried to catch a few of the things that fell but she ran out of paws before the crystal decanter that had been in his family for generations shattered on the floor. She was initially quite surprised when she ran out of hands and disappointed that she had failed to catch the last moving object. She frowned for a second and the she made her best attempt to put on a happy face as she widely smiled.

He wanted to scold her but what would be the point. She was a cat after all. Even if she was human, she couldn't make the past change. So, it was the focal point of his family heritage and he was about to pass it on to his nephew. Two hundred years of history gone. He had a right to look at her disapprovingly on general principles if nothing else.

She looked at him and tilted her head sideways. She reached her pawhand out to him. She looked almost like she knew.

“I’m sorry”, she said. “I don’t want to be a problem kitten. I didn’t know how special it was to you.” Then slowly tears began to form in her eyes.

It wasn’t her fault and he knew it. Hawke was angry and he really wanted to say hurtful words to make her feel like he did so she would understand what she had done. But the words were frozen off from her. His wounded pride wanted that mean-spirited act to occur, but he knew it wasn't what he really wanted. She was already sad ant that hurt him almost as much as his loss. .

“Are you mad?“, she mewed.

“Yes”, he said trying to hide his aggravation.

She locked her vertically silted eyes on his. She began to cry, “Are you sorry that you made me?”

He thought about it. It was his experiment that had created her. He was her creator, even if he hadn’t intended to do so. Now she was here. A new form of life created from nature and science. And she was looking to him to validate the very fact of her serendipitous creation.

He took her hand and slowly pulled her off of the table He caressed the tears from her cheek. He smiled at her and knew that if he were to be a creator, he would be a kind one. At least that is what he aught to be. So what if it cost him a few priceless artifacts. It would be okay, he thought,

She shook her head in a definite yes.

“Wait a second. Why did you do that?”, he asked.

“I heard what you thought at me”, she responded. The puzzlement on his face was obvious. She continued as if she had to remind him of something that a child knew but he had forgotten, “That IS how you taught me to speak”

It was true. He had wished that she could speak when he had pulled her body from the tank. He wanted to know if she was okay and he wanted her to say that she was. A couple of moments later she did just that. He hadn't really thought about it.

A hypothesis formed in Hawke's mind. He thought about the laser that his suit should have. He looked at his fingertips and then he pointed at the wall. Hawke allowed himself to calm down. He felt something different. He could only describe it as a mental switch. He pressed it with a thought. A single beam of light shot from his fingers and put a nice hole in the wall. Shock gave way to amazement as he realized that he had floated over to the wall, to examine the hole in it. With that realization he couldn’t escape the truth - he hadn’t failed the suit had survived by merging with him. He hadn't failed. He was a success. And he wouldn’t have known it if not for her. He looked over at Felicity and she was jumping up and down in place - ecstatic that her creator was finally happy with her.