The first night, Mel sat in the cargo hold, fully awake, yet completely motionless as Kitty constantly hopped back and forth on the edge of the nearest crate, clearly agitated.
Mel could feel Kitty's annoyance, but didn't know what to do or say to help. And with everyone else sleeping, she also had to stay quiet too.
Kitty let out what easily sounded like a sigh, turning towards Mel and tilted his head to the side before sighing again.
Mel blinked, and the next thing she saw, Kitty was gone. Instead, a strange new girl was idly sitting in his place with her legs crossed, smiling at her.
Mel immediately stood up and took to her claw stance, all of which glinted in the low overhead lights as she took in the strange girl's appearance itself; pink eyes, large curved horns on the sides of her head, a white dress with a pink sash for a belt, and a silver metal glove on her left hand that went from her wrist to her knuckles, leaving her fingers exposed.
But for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to attack... She somehow knew the girl.
"Relax, I'm not going to hurt you." The girl spoke quietly, still not moving.
"Where's Kitty?" Mel demanded with a glare at the girl.
"I am Kitty." The girl replied. "But my real name is Ram."
"But... Kitty bird. You person." Mel didn't soften her glare, though it did hint her confusion.
"I can turn into things." Ram explained. "But this is my real shape."
"How?"
"Magic. I'm something called a Liaison." Ram replied. "C'mere, sit with me." She patted the edge of the crate with her unclad hand, and after a moment of consideration, Mel relaxed and joined her. "Now, can I tell you something very important?"
"Is it bad?" Mel seemed to grow wary at the question.
"Not at all. It's about you and me." Ram shook her head slightly.
"Okay."
"You and me have something special called a Lifelink. I can feel what you feel, and you feel what I feel too. And nobody else can feel the things in our Lifelink."
"What is Lifelink?" Mel tilted her head, confused.
"It's when two people are able to know what each other are thinking and feeling, where they are at all times, and even if they're hurt." Ram explained. "It's also got special stuff on top of all that that is just for the two of us, no other Lifelinks have the special stuff like we will."
"How only I can understand you when you Kitty." Mel seemed to catch onto that detail immediately, and of course, Ram nodded.
"Exactly. So if it was another Blue Jay, you and it wouldn't be able to understand each other at all." Ram smiled slightly. "With enough time, everything about our Lifelink will make more sense, and it won't be so confusing."
"What abour River? She has mind reading powers." Mel asked with a tilt of her head back to where the sleeping quarters were located.
"She can read thoughts and emotions, but she can't detect Lifelinks." Ram shook her head slightly. "And she can only do it to people around her. You and me can be far apart and still use our Lifelink easily."
"So why you be Kitty and not Ram?" Mel asked, turning her head back to the girl that was clearly her special friend.
"It's because my job as a Liaison means I travel a lot... So I made Kitty so that I can still be with you even when I'm off working as Ram." Ram patted herself in the chest with her gloved hand. "Kitty is my avatar, he's still me, but he's not me as Ram, okay?"
"But Ram real you." Mel nodded in understanding.
"Exactly. And I can be more than just Kitty too. It's just that Kitty is the one everyone else sees as me, so I can't let anyone else see me as anything else, and only under special work rules can anyone else see me as Ram. Does that make sense?"
"But why me? Because Lifelink?" Mel asked, and Ram nodded.
"Yeah, I can be Ram for you because Lifelink. But only when nobody else can see me, except for those special work rules."
"Is that for work?" Mel pointed at Ram's silver glove and Ram nodded.
"It's called a Cortex, it's like... all of the tools, weapons, and even my magic, that I need for my job put together into one object, which I chose to make into a gauntlet on my hand."
"Is Cortex how you turn into Ram and Kitty?"
"Yup, and I can even call my boss with it." Ram nodded, then paused for a moment. "In fact... He just called me..."
Mel immediately glanced at the metal glove, then back at Ram, who was staring off to the side at nothing, but looked like she could hear someone talking that she herself couldn't hear, both directly or with their Lifelink.
After a few seconds, Ram nodded and turned her attention back to Mel.
"My boss has a gift for you to celebrate our Lifelink." Ram smiled, and Mel tilted her head in confusion.
"Is boss here?"
"No, he has special work rules just like me. But his rules are bigger." Ram replied with a teasing glint in her eyes. "I think his rules are a bit on the crazy side, if not complete Insanity... But, that's besides the point. He sent your gift already, and here it is!" Ram opened her other hand, holding ten small silver balls that were made of the same silvery metal as her Cortex. "He said to put these on your claws, they're the same metal as my Cortex, so they'll be much stronger and they'll be able to change shape into normal fingers for you, whenever you want them to!"
"How do I put them on claws?" Mel couldn't see a way to safely touch, let alone pick up the silver balls, without scratching Ram's hand.
"I can help you with that. Here, hold out your hands." Ram smiled as she sensed Mel's slight concerns about hurting her. "See, all we have to do is touch the metal to your claws, and the metal will do the rest. Simple."
With that, Ram easily picked up each of the silvery spheres, one at a time, and touched them to all ten of Mel's Titanium claws, which caused them to wrap around each claw like liquids, and turned themselves into the same shape of the claws, only to then turn into silvery fingertips, as if Mel had completely normal hands that were simply dipped into very shiny silver paint up to the first knuckle of her fingers and thumbs. It even had the shape and slight edge of real fingernails too!
"But how to make back to claws?" Mel asked, staring at her new fingertips in utter awe. No pain took place to do it, and as she gently touched them together with each other, she could feel the contact, even though it was metal-on-metal.
"You already know how, give it a try." Ram smiled brightly. "Here's all the Titanium that was used in your hands, by the way. I put it all together into one solid piece for you." Ram held up a small bar of metal that Mel knew immediately was her old claws, so she gingerly grasped the ingot into one hand, then felt her other hand's metal tips turn into the claw shape and she scratched her name into one side of the ingot with her index finger. "See? Excellent work, Melaris."
Ram immediately winced and gritted her teeth as Mel felt a brief hint of Ram being hurt out of no where like that, making her look up in confused concern.
"But sir... our Lifelink..." Ram was clearly trying to explain herself to her invisible boss, but Mel still didn't like that he seemed to be hurting Ram's head. "But...! Yes, understood... I'll fix it, sir."
With a gasp, Ram seemed to be finally free of the pain, and panted for breath for a moment to collect herself, even as Mel gently wrapped her arms around Ram's shoulders and put her cheek against the top of Ram's head, since Ram's horns and much smaller height prevented her from doing it to her cheek instead.
"I made a mistake, my boss was punishing me for it. I shouldn't have called you by your real name yet." Ram explained, gently placing her hands around Mel's forearm and bicep, right in front of her chest. "So now I've been given a new assignment to fix it... and I have to give you some special rules now too."
"Is rule that it secret, no tell anyone?" Mel asked, still cuddling with Ram, knowing what she was about to say was to keep her name and her real form a secret from everyone else.
"River won't be able to use her power to see this one, but yeah, you can't tell anyone about your name or about me as Ram... but my boss just gave me something to explain your new fingers. Can you trust me?"
"What did boss give?"
"He's calling it a 'surprise revelation', but it's gonna hurt your hands a lot and make me turn back to Kitty because everyone's gonna come running here, because my boss said his thing will make you scream from the pain."
"But what will happen?"
"Can I share the thing to her as a memory, sir?" Ram asked aloud, then sighed. "Understood, sir." She glanced up at Mel. "He said 'No, just trust Ram'."
"Boss mean, but I trust Ram... and Kitty." Mel pouted in a very adorable way.
"Okay, on the count of three, I'm gonna do it, okay?"
"No count, just do." Mel let go of Ram and stepped back from the crate, still facing her special friend as Ram nodded once and held up her Cortex hand to snap her fingers.
"Here we go..."
SNAP!
Mel's hands started burning in agony, right where the new metal connected to the rest of her fingers, causing her to immediately scream in pain and fall backwards into one of the crates of food for their job with Badger, breaking it open to reveal a container of what appeared to be the same silvery metal of her new fingers... but in liquid form, and it broke open as she threw out her hands to stop her fall, and was splashed by the liquid metal up to her elbows and over most of her chest and face.
The commotion then drew out the sounds of running feet and loud screeches as Ram - now back to being Kitty - flew overhead in what seemed to be startled panic as everyone came running to find Mel trying to distract herself from her burning hands by hopping from foot to foot while shaking them back and forth in front of herself, to minimal effect.
"Mel, darlin', look at me, over here, c'mon now, eyes on me." Malcolm, shirtless but holding his usual sidearm in his other hand, was beckoning his fingers towards Mel to get her to focus on him instead of what even he could tell was pain coming from her hands. "That's it, good girl, focus on me, okay? Can you tell me what happened? Simon, hang on! Wait a tick." He held out his gun hand to bar Simon's approach past him, since even if Mel didn't intend to, she was in pain and everyone could see that her hands were the source of the agony, so he had to keep her attention on their conversation, not her fingers right now.
"I fell, box break, hands hurt when touch silver stuff!" Mel whimpered, still trying to ignore the pain in her fingers. Idly, part of her mind noted that only her fingertips were in pain, while the rest that had splashed onto her was just slightly warm liquid that was idly dripping off of her.
"Okay, now I'm gonna need to let Simon have a look at your hands, see what's the matter, okay? Can you keep them still so you don't hurt him? Can I trust you to do that for me?"
Mel's tear filled eyes locked with his, and despite her distracted hopping and hand shaking, she could see the trust and concern in his gaze, so she slowly relaxed and stopped moving, so Malcolm lowered his arm to let Simon approach her and she carefully held out her shaking hands as requested.
"Now, Mel, where exactly does it hurt on your hands? On your claws, or on your skin?" Simon first gave a visual inspection without touching her, asking the question in a carefully calm voice.
"Claws." Mel replied with a snifle through her nose.
"Must be reacting with the Titanium, then..." Simon turned as River approached with his field kit, already holding out a test tube for collecting a sample. "Thank you, now, Cap'n, was Badger ever hinting to there being something smuggled into the cargo during your meeting, or was this a complete surprise?"
"Wouldn't put it past him, but no, no hint of the sorts." Malcolm lowered his hands with a sigh. "Now, Mel, we know you're not keen on the infirmary, but can you go there with Simon and River to get yourself sorted? I aim to have a chat with Badger about this little surprise addition to our shipping manifest..."
"Yes..." Mel's hands were shaking as the pain finally began to subside, so she meekly followed the siblings to the medical room to fix the mess she'd made, with Kitty following along behind her.
"My apologies, everyone, but it looks like... she'd tripped over your baggage in the dark." Book knelt to pick up one of the passenger's bags, which was clearly knocked over in line with how they'd found Mel sprawled into the broken crate.
"That's strange..." Simon muttered as he checked the scan again. "This liquid... is actually some kind of metal."
"But metal hard." Mel, now cleaned and bearing her silvery claws.
"The molecular structure is incredibly dense, but as we can clearly see, it's in liquid form, and despite that density, it's not very heavy at all." Simon continued, clearly intrigued. "And it only reacted to your claws, none of the other metals, like the floor or my equipment here, are reacting the same way that it did with your claws. It seemed to... fuse with them on contact."
"Like a symbiotic fusion." River commented, since she was examining Mel's shiny new claws with the aid of Simon's mind full of medical knowledge. "If only we had taken a sample of the Titanium beforehand, then maybe we could figure the reason for it fusing like this."
Kitty chirped several times, and Mel, now aware of who Kitty really was, immediately heard Ram's voice speaking in her head, in sync with Kitty's chirping.
"Trust me, Mel, things are still going just as my boss planned them. Are you okay? He said the pain should be gone by now, but we can't show them anything but the claws like how you have them just yet. I can let you know with our Lifelink when it's okay to turn them over to being your fingers, and when it's not okay."
Mel whistled her reply, knowing that Ram could translate it with their Lifelink.
"But why stuff only hurt claws? Did boss do magic thing too?"
"Yup, since the liquid metal was already in place of the old Titanium, he made it seem to everyone else that the stuff in the crate only reacted with your claws themselves. In fact, we could drop that ingot of the original Titanium into the container, nothing would actually happen. All of this is being done with his and my magic, so just keep playing along and it'll all be back to normal."
Mel nodded in agreement, and let Kitty flutter onto her shoulder, hopping closer to her cheek to nuzzle with her.
"I forgot to thank you for giving me those cuddles earlier." Ram spoke in their Lifelink without making Kitty do any sounds. "So I hope this is good enough for now. I promise I'll make it up to you properly as soon as I can."