The Tempest finds itself in possession of a shipment of freshly cloned kitties.
The laboratory was surprisingly noisy today, the source apparently a large crate in the corner of the room. There was a blanket over it so that Scott couldn't peek inside, but there was very clearly a collection of animals inside there.
"So what's in there?" Scott asked. "Newly discovered species? Test subjects?"
"No actually, they're cats," one of the scientists replied. "Ten week old kittens to be exact." He didn't even get past the word "cats" before Scott was already across the room and lifting the blanket to peek in at them.
"Aww! They're so cute!" Scott said before poking his fingers in at them.
"Well, I'm glad you actually agree, because that's why we asked you here. We have a favor to ask of you and want you to ship the kittens on board the Tempest to Eos."
"You want me to ship kittens to Prodromos?" Scott asked as he felt tiny kitten toe beans grabbing back at his fingers.
"Precisely! Prodromos is doing really well right now, except for the fact that morale seems a bit low..."
Scott did notice that people seemed a little bit bummed out last time he was there. Even as the outpost was finally succeeding and kett threat was actively reduced on the planet, one couldn't deny that a lot of people were starting to grow homesick for the Milky Way. He saw it all over, not just at Prodromos.
"...and then we noticed that someone requested we thaw out the genome for cats for some reason anyway, and cats make people happy, so we thought, why not clone them some kittens to bring their spirits up a little?"
"That is an amazing idea!" Scott replied before adding, "You guys didn't have any plans to clone back dogs anytime soon, did you?"
"That might be next if resources allow it. I can put you on a waiting list," he suggested.
"I want a goldendoodle," Scott blurted out. "Actually...put me down for three."
"We'll see," the scientist replied skeptically about whether or not he'd actually be allowed to give the pathfinder three dogs. "But in the meantime, let me get you the data for the shipment and we'll send that crate straight to your ship."
The news that the Tempest was going to be used to ship a crate full of kittens attracted the crew to the cargo hold. Even Bonkers the pyjak was poking around a bit, having been attracted by the sound of the kittens' cries.
"Oh. So this is a cat," Vetra said as she poked at one of them. "I never knew that's what they were called."
"I want to hold one!" Peebee shouted.
"Pathfinder, I detect an error in the shipment invoice," SAM interrupted the crowd cooing over the kittens. "There is a typo listing the number of kittens as '12' when there are in fact thirteen of them."
"They'll figure it out when they count them, SAM. It's no big deal," Scott reassured the AI.
The sound of everyone in one area quickly attracted Jaal. He could hear the sound of some small animal coming from the crate that everyone was crowded around but couldn't see through all of them.
"Oh? Are we being used as a courier ship again?" Jaal asked.
"Yeah, but it's no big deal this time," Cora replied. "I don't mind if it means we get to share the ship with thirteen kittens for a while."
"Kitten?" Jaal stated. "What is a kitten?"
Scott looked like Jaal had just asked him what was oxygen, despite the fact that it was perfectly logical that Jaal would have no idea what a kitten was. "You are gonna learn today!" he shouted before unlatching the crate. He picked up the biggest, fluffiest kitten of the bunch and carried it to Jaal while everyone else grabbed a kitten from the crate and fought with Peebee when she took four of them.
"It looks like vermin," Jaal stated at the sight of the animal.
"Not vermin," Scott replied. "Just the second most perfect being formed in the Milky Way after the goldendoodle."
"Goldendoodle?"
"Yes. When I still lived in the Milky Way, I had four goldfish and a goldendoodle and I named them all Goldie."
He missed Vetra mumbling, "Of course you did," behind his back.
"Oh, so it's a pet, like your hamster or your..." Jaal looked at the pyjak, who was staring back at him with a deeply intense look. "...Bonkers."
"See, centuries ago my people had this problem, and that problem was that rodents kept eating all our food and spreading plague amongst our houses. Back then we dealt with the problem by throwing rocks at them. Eventually we evolved the intelligence to use shotguns indoors, like my dad did that one time he saw a rat, seconds before he realized that was a bad idea and my mom yelled at him for an hour under the impression that closing a door means my sister and I can't hear them."
"What does any of this have to do with kittens?" Jaal asked.
"I'm getting to that," Scott said. "Somewhere in between throwing rocks and putting holes in the living room wall, we found it was much easier to just keep cats. This perfect lifeform..." Scott held the struggling kitten up in front of him for emphasis, "...earned its keep by killing and eating everything that was smaller then them. Years later they evolved into higher beings that eat our food, only we don't mind so much when they do it because they have the power to hypnotize us by acting cute. They're also known to like lasagna and hate Mondays."
"So basically cats own you now."
"Exactly!"
"Why would you ever want to keep a pet that thinks you are its pet?"
Scott shoved the kitten into Jaal's hands. "Hold it and arm yourself with knowledge!"
The cat's legs dangled underneath it as Jaal held it in front of his face. "I don't get it," Jaal said as he watched it. "It's cute, but so is a baby eiroch. What does it actually have to offer that makes you want to allow yourself to become enslaved by its..."
The kitten raised its front paws and pressed them both against his nose. Jaal stood for a moment, frozen in time with tiny kitty toe beans on his face as he processed it. The kitten meowed and started to make that same rumbling sort of sound that he sometimes heard Vetra make. She only made that sound when Scott made her really happy. Did this kitten also make this sound when he was happy? Did that mean the kitten liked him? HOLY CRAP, THAT WAS SO CUTE!
Jaal managed to break the hypnotic spell the cat had on him (to be fair, Scott had warned him) and looked away from it. "I want one," he stated bluntly.
"I think there might be a waiting list, buddy," Scott informed him. He took the kitten from his hands, oblivious to the grabby motions Jaal made at him as he took the kitten back. "Okay, so we'll just put the kittens back in the crate and put them somewhere nice and warm and we'll have them at Prodromos within the day."
"What?" Liam protested. "You mean we've got a crate of kittens and you won't even let us play with them while we've got them?"
"Well..." Scott said thoughtfully. "It'll only be a few hours...they'll be fine in the crate during that time." He felt something wet and scratchy on his hand and realized the kitten was licking him. It looked up at him with large, blue eyes and meowed. "Okay, you guys can play with them until we get to Eos, but they stay in my room," he gave in.
Over the sound of cheers, Cora asked, "Why your room?"
"Because I'm the pathfinder!" Scott shouted back before sticking the kitten back with the others, grabbing the crate, and marching off towards his room with it so he could let them out and snuggle with them all.
"Pathfinder, Kallo Jath would like me to inform you that the estimated time of arrival on Eos is approximately twenty minutes," SAM spoke up.
"Okay everyone, the kitties have to go back in the crate now," Scott announced.
"Aww," everyone in the room groaned when they realized that meant the kittens were going away now.
"Well, if we're really almost there, then I guess I should get back to work then," Jaal said in a bummed out voice. He stood up and started to leave when Scott quickly stopped him.
"Give them back, Jaal."
"I do not know what you're talking about," Jaal replied. He spun him around and found that he was holding three kittens in his arms. "Oh, you meant these...yes, I was just putting them back now," Jaal stated as he sheepishly put them inside the crate.
He began to walk back out again when Scott once more stopped him. "And the one behind your back."
"I do not know what you are talking abou-" He was interrupted when his rofjinn moved and meowed. "Fine, I'll put that one back too," Jaal sighed.
Scott made sure all of the kittens were safely back in the cage and that the door was secure. As the kittens all looked back at him through the holes in the grid-like door, he suddenly felt overcome by their adorable hypnosis once more.
"Well...we have twenty minutes. Maybe I should get you guys a snack or something until then," he said before excusing himself to the kitchen.
"Hey kid," Drack said when he saw Scott enter the kitchen. "Don't fill up on snacks, I'm making dinner."
Scott shuddered at the thought. It wasn't that he didn't like Drack's cooking, it was that he often worried about what he put in it and that even if it tasted good, it didn't always agree with him afterwards. Lexi suggested it was a nervous reaction and pointed out that he'd been throwing up when he got anxious long before he started eating Drack's cooking, though he wasn't entirely sure she was just covering for him because she liked him.
"I'm actually looking for something to feed the kittens," Scott replied. He dug through the cabinets and checked back and forth at the list of recommended food that he was supposed to deliver along with the cats.
He managed to find some canned meat by-product and reasoned that was probably all that cat food was anyway. He dished it out on a plate and brought it back to his room…
...and found the crate door wide open and the kittens missing.
Vetra sat on the bed reading a book, seemingly unaware that anything was amiss. "Something wrong?" she asked when she saw the look on his face.
"Vetra, did you let the kittens out?" Scott asked.
"No?" Vetra replied. "They were there when I went to the bathroom a moment ago..." She got up and walked to the crate. "They are gone!"
"I told you!" he replied.
"Who could have…?"
They both seemed to come to the same conclusion at the same time. "Jaal," they simultaneously stated.
Jaal was in his room tinkering with something that Scott recognized as too alien to recognize. Scott looked around the room, looking for any hiding kittens, and thought that if Jaal did indeed have them, he was impressed with how well he'd hidden them.
"Alright Jaal, where are they?" Scott asked.
Jaal jumped when whatever he was tinkering with snapped shut on one of his fingers. "Where are what?" he asked.
"You know what!"
Jaal stopped tinkering and looked at him, utterly confused. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."
"You didn't take the kittens?"
"I'm not a thief, if that's what you're implying." After a moment's pause he suddenly looked genuinely concerned. "Are the kittens missing?"
Scott looked startled when he realized that Jaal was completely telling the truth. He was an extremely bad liar, he would have known if he was lying to him. He turned to Vetra. "He doesn't have the kittens."
"So...where are they?" Vetra asked.
Peebee was asleep and mildly annoyed at being woken up when Scott had SAM hack the lock on her room so he could open the door. "So, the kittens have gone missing," Scott said. "You wouldn't happen to know where they might have gone off to, would you?"
"Why is it that whenever something goes missing, you guys assume I took it?" Peebee asked sleepily.
"...did you take them?"
"NO!" she shouted. She biotically chucked a pillow at him. "Go away, I'm trying to sleep!"
"Heeeey, Drack! Whatcha makin'?" Scott asked as he poked his head back into the kitchen.
"It's a surprise," Drack replied while he checked on a pot on the stove.
Scott stood at the doorway and waited for Drack to turn his back to chop up a weird looking vegetable (maybe it was a vegetable, it could have been a seed pod or something for all he knew) and slunk to the stove to peek inside of the pot.
"Just so you know, the kittens are missing, so if you see them I'd appreciate it if you let someone know."
Drack seemed to be growing suspicious of him after his statement. "What are you doing?" he asked without turning around.
Scott closed the lid on the pot a little noisier than he wanted to. "Uh, well...I was just seeing what was in there, and..."
Drack turned around and scraped the contents of the cutting board into the pot. "I wouldn't eat a kitten!" he protested. After a brief pause, he amended, "Well, I would actually eat a kitten...but I wouldn't make you eat it!"
"Vetra, he doesn't have them either!" Scott shouted as he left the kitchen. "I think..."
"They aren't in the air vents," Gil stated.
"Check again!" Scott replied frantically.
"I didn't find them hiding in the clean laundry," Suvi added.
"Check again!" Scott replied just as frantically.
He'd set several of the traps he'd used to capture his hamster throughout the ship and frantically checked them every minute or so in hopes that one of the kittens would turn up inside. They only had a few minutes until arrival and he still had no idea where the kittens were.
"Did anyone check the crew quarters?" Jaal asked.
"Cora's in there and she said she was getting dressed. She would have noticed by now if they were in there," Scott sighed.
"The ship isn't that big, Scott," Jaal pointed out. "They've got to be here somewhere."
"But there's thirteen of them! How is it that we can't even find a single one of them?!"
"They must all be in one spot. Maybe someone has them after all," Vetra suggested.
"Yeah, but we checked all the usual suspects and everyone else is out here looking for them!"
"If I may Pathfinder," SAM interjected. "There is one crew member who is just as unaccounted for."
"Yeah, but who…?" Scott asked. He looked around and tried to remember who he hadn't yet spoken to about the kittens. All of a sudden it hit him.
The door opened and at once three of the kittens poured out into the hallway, where they were quickly wrangled up by Vetra's quick turian reflexes. The other ten kittens were prancing about the crew quarters. One of them was sitting inside of a sneaker, two were playing in a cardboard box that they had overturned, and the rest were running around the room or sitting in the arms of the shocked looking culprit.
"I told you I didn't eat them," Drack said.
"I have absolutely no idea how all these kittens got in here!" Cora said in a vain attempt to deflect Scott's judgmental staring. A particularly tiny one that was mixed calico in color with white feet poked her head out of the pocket in the front of Cora's sweatshirt and meowed. "I named that one Peanut..."
Scott stood by while the liaison sent to meet him counted the kittens inside of the crate. "Well, it seems like all twelve of them are here," he said. "Thank you! The colonists will be so happy when they receive their kittens!"
"Well I'm just happy that I had a part in making other people happy!" Scott nodded.
Vetra was the only one who didn't look happy. She instead looked confused. "Twelve? But I thought..."
Scott grabbed her by the arm and started pulling her away. "Well, if you guys ever need anymore kittens delivered, we'll gladly transport them for you! Come on, Vetra!"
Back on the Tempest, Vetra still had questions about what happened to the thirteenth kitten. "Did something go wrong? We didn't lose it again, did we?" she asked.
The smile on Jaal and Cora's faces was more of an answer than anything Scott gave her. "He let us keep Peanut," Jaal said right before Cora's pocket meowed.
I got the idea for this chapter months ago after seeing fanart by a deviantART user named NecrosisDemon of Jaal discovering a cat for the first time and just never wrote it. Then recently I found out that Cora loves cats, which gave me an idea for the ending on the spot and convinced me to finally write it.