-Venice, 1966-
The screeching of the Somali devil-cat was what drew Silvestro from her handwriting practice, the town dark with the late afternoon of an ending Winter. She groaned and got to her feet, chair squeaking on the hardwood before she pattered over to the window, which still had a crack in the pane.
"Good afternoon to you too, Ruggine," the woman grunted, prying the window open and allowing the cat to bolt into the apartment, but not before hissing violently at something down below. Silvestro made a face at his fleeing form, seeing the cat squirm its way under her bed again, before she eyed the window sill, curiosity brimming.
The ex-militant wrestled the window the rest of the way up and stuck her head out, expecting to see another stray cat, or perhaps a dog, but instead was met with a rather…'exotic' sight. A man, in a lab coat, was clinging to the water pipe which ran parallel to the wall of the apartment building, his eyes wide behind thick, circular lenses. He was rather ragged, hair tousled, either by the climb or by nature, his glasses askew.
Neither spoke for a moment, slowly letting the gears in their head grind over the situation.
"...Fascinating. A nonstandard Flame expression, yet standard Flame classifications are also present? A rare muta-" the man snapped from his mutterings and straightened his glasses, before latching back onto the pipe for dear life. "Hello there! I was looking for a...cat, yes, cat, about 7.32 kilograms? And you are?"
Silvestro's mouth moved mutely, before her face fell flat and she frowned at the wall climber.
"Why are you scaling my wall and chasing my cat?"
He didn't answer immediately, nor would he have gotten the chance, as a low groan of metal sounded out from the pipe. His eyes widened before he yelped, the joints coming undone and letting him tip back into a four-storey drop.
The ex-militant cursed loudly before snatching a handful of white cloth, her fingers digging into the man's lab coat shoulder, dangling him in a rather death-defying manner that left him babbling calculations of impact survival.
"Oh, stop being dramatic," she grunted before heaving the man up and into her window, ignoring how he complained about grazing his shins and knees on the rough brick and dumping him on the floor. "Now, again, why were you chasing my cat?"
The wall climber got to his feet and dusted himself off with a huff, patting down his slacks, which looked like they hadn't been ironed since he bought them, and straightening his coat.
"I wasn't chasing your cat, I was pursuing an escaped experiment!" He declared, crossing his arms.
Silvestro raised an eyebrow, before shaking her head, her hand coming up to scratch the fading scar on her jaw.
"Well, you've come to the wrong side of Venice then. Nothing bizarre enough to be an 'escaped experiment' has been seen around here recently," the woman lowered her hand, her shoulder pulsing under the bespeckled eyes of the 'scientist' who had taken notice of her hollow sleeve. "Tell me, who exactly have I dragged through my apartment window?"
The man puffed himself up, scrawny shoulders straightening as he lifted his stubbled chin. He was choosing to ignore the missing piece; she was still unsure if it made her feel better or not.
"Verde, the greatest scientist the world has ever known."
The ex-militant pursed her lips, "not the best climber though."
"Well," he bristled, "if the subject hadn't destroyed my drones, then I wouldn't have had to!"
Her nose scrunched in confusion at the exclamation, her head coming to tilt.
"Drones?"
"It's still in the workings, the public hasn't been made aware of them yet- Experiment!"
Silvestro followed Verde's sudden, violent attention and huffed when she saw Ruggine gnawing at his paw pad, a low, rusted growl vibrating from within him. She grunted as she watched the feline shake itself down and begin to do its usual prowl around the house, shoulder-checking her calf as he passed as a kind of recognition.
"Ruggine? He's not an experiment - though, he is a weird one."
"Weird?! This experiment is a feat of human ingenuity and genetic mutation! The doorway to the future of genetic modification for the betterment and gain of humanity!"
The woman stared at him as he continued to speak, feeling the cat in question begin to wind around her legs in an endless figure eight, screeching in demand for food. The yowls of a lawnmower rattled in her ears along with the constant mutterings of jargoned scientific hypothesis.
She sighed and walked into her little kitchen, both the cat and the man following her with their tirades, and plated up three cans of tuna, draining it of its oils over the sink. The plate was barely on the ground by the time Ruggine had slammed his face into it, loud chewing coming as the scientist slowed his speech to stare.
"You seem less destructive when you're talking," Silvestro supplied, leaning against the counter.
Verde blinked slowly, testing the atmosphere with narrowed eyes as he refused to acknowledge her statement. "Your findings are flawed, you have not tested it thoroughly enough."
"It's just an idea."
"A hypothesis then."
"Sure," she sighed, "A hypothesis if you wanna call it that." When she looked back to the man, he had already moved on from her, crouching on the floor with a pad and pen in hand, scrawling observations of the rusty Ruggine's eating habits. "...would you like some coffee?"
Verde looked up, before giving a tiny nod, said: "Yes. Black," then went back to work.
"I'm Silvestro, by the way. You know, the one who lives and pays the mortgage here," she huffed, turning to the counter and pulling down the pot of instant coffee.
"Do you have any live creatures so I can document the subject's hunting patterns?"
"There are mice that live in the basement if that works?"
"It will do for preliminary testing."
"Of course it will," Silvestro let out a long breath and got the water boiling, already resigned to her new guest laying on the kitchen's linoleum floor as he muttered about the disgruntled cat's chances of taking down a small horse.