Private Finished Coulomb's Law in Action

KC had been putting all of this off for long enough. Her own feelings about Konpeitō aside, she needed to talk to him. He was the only Nek0 she had met who had performed successful self-modification. And if she wanted to go through with her own set of upgrades, she would need to talk to him about it. Though he had taken the arguably easier - one might even call it cheating route - of using magic, KC was still sure that if there was anything weird with how their biology reacted to changes made after the building process was finished.

Not that she was anyawhere near having enough money to get the pod that she needed to make her changes. But it didn't hurt to have as much info as possible before diving headfirst into whatever she was going to do. And besides, the sun was out for once and it wasn't too cold to go out in shorts. She had the day off from working with Dadley, so she figured there was no time like the present.

Kon was'nt too hard to find: just ask around for the giant Krylon eyesore catboy and people would be able to point you in the right direction after a bit. And once she was in the park, the last place someone had seen him going, he was easy to pick out of a crowd. Keeping her distance at first, KC waited for Kon to be relatively alone before she approached him. Their past interactions had been sort of a coin flip about whether they would go well or not.

"Hey."

Simple: she just wanted his attention. He very likely had no idea why she was approaching him, and KC's tail fluffed up proactively in case he came at her aggressively.

"Yeah, I guess I do," KC said in response, her ears flattening slightly as she could practically taste the passive aggression coming off of Kon. Two could play at that game though. She shrugged and gave a droll wave of her hand. "I've just been thinking about making some... edits to myself. And I mean, you're the only Nek0 who's made those kinds of- ah, sorry. You don't consider yourself a Nek0, right? My bad."

It was hard to not smirk, to not bask in her own absolute fuckassery. But she managed, crossing her arms under her chest and letting her tail curl gently around her ankles. "But yeah. I wanted an additional perspective before I dive headfirst into fucking around in my genetic code too much. You were the one who pointed me to the Scouts to get the specs on the Nek0s, so I figured you were the best person to come to again."

Okay, she couldn't help it anymore. KC broke into a shit-eating grin, her slightly sharpened teeth pulling her bottom lip between them as she turned her focus to not laughing. "Oh believe me, I know you're not a Nek0. You've made it pretty clear how much you hate the rest of us. Not that I'm really all that surprised by that."

KC shrugged and left the question hanging, not explaining what she meant by that.

"And no, I'm not being made to come talk to you. I genuinely thought you were the best person to talk to about it. But that doesn't mean I have to like it." There was a lot of emotional whiplash going on here, and KC moved off to the side a bit. If Kon ran, she'd never let him live it down. If he hit her - unlikely - she'd just make it weird. "I mean, you are the super helpful type, right? That's why you started that whole TWIS thing?"

At this point, KC's programming was taking over more and more. The help she wanted be damned, she was having fun. Her own smile spread. Putting a hand to her chest, she batted her eyelashes coyly. "Friendly? Why Konpeito, I've been nothing but friendly. I get that you can't really understand this, not being a Nek0 and all, but cats tend to show affection very differently from other animals. And we're very temperamental. It's not like I'm hissing at you or going all-"

KC's inflection changed and she let out a long, low growl very much like an agitated house cat. Her ears flattened fully against her head as she did before returning to her normal, grinning self.

The people gawking at them were of no concern to KC. They could stare all they wanted, she didn't care. She was riding that rush of having had gotten under someone's skin. That she'd also fucked up whatever chance she'd had to get help from Kon was a far second place to that feeling.

Might as well push those buttons harder.

"Yeah, that's fine. You go ahead and run away. That's what you're good at. Running away and pretending you're better than the rest of us. You want all the good that comes with being a Nek0, but none of the stigma we have to deal with. You don't get to have it both ways."