[Fin] The Murder-Free Hotel

[PointMaid]

Yeah. You good now, Medic? (And... who was that guy?)

Anyway, now that we have the sequence of the virus, we can create gobs of it if we want to. Speaking of that, I have the result of the swab from the cat, too.

She shows the file of the sequence she got from the infected cat.

[Kennifer]

"Ah, good. We can compare it to the normal cat DNA in the database and find any abnormalities."

[PointMaid]

Yep! The cat genome in the database should have different common alleles, too -- but it's not going to have all cat genetic variation, so we might have to take some guesses about whether something's relevant or not. Until we can investigate further, anyway.

[Kennifer]

"It's certainly better than nothing, and any major anomalies ought to stand out."

[PointMaid]

Ruby nods. Yeah. Huh... Is that what I think it is? A whole bunch of extra DNA added to one of the chromosomes?

[Kennifer]

"It certainly looks like it. What a strange mutation..."

[PointMaid]

Let me cross reference, um... yeah. Part of it looks like it's from the rabies virus like we were talking about earlier, part of it is... that's a modified transposon, I think, it's how it separated itself from the chromosome. Secretion factors associated with venomous snakes? Yeah. I think somebody engineered this thing.

[madface7]

Engie looks at Ruby.

"...oh, sorry. Just, everyone calls me Engineer, so I thought ya were," he begins laughing, "talkin' to me there for a sec, and-" He coughs and clears his throat. 

[PointMaid]

What? No, biological engineering. Unless you can splice together DNA from half a dozen species not necessarily even in the same kingdom of life and put it into a cat and make it work, I don't think you did this.

[Kennifer]

"That begs the question of who, and why. Why cats, of all things? Why is the cat effect reversed by water?"

Holly frowns; this was raising more questions she wasn't sure she'd be able to find an answer for.

[wingedcatgirl]

G'raha, who had been standing around awkwardly, clears his throat. "Well, it is well known that most felines are averse to the umbral aspect of water aether."

hope i'm remembering my xiv lore correctly lmao

[SmilyCube112]

By this point, the spiky-haired kid had walked off - But whilst they were doing so, they held up their middle finger at them. Except Moon and Calli were confused as #### as to what they were on about. 'WTF is a fursona?' they both thought. They then turned to Angel, who had a UwU facial expression, which furthered their confusion.

[artsyGeek]

...so, a lot had happened while Michael was away - or rather, asleep, but you get the point.

"....well, that was weird."

---

Meanwhile, a teenage boy with glasses runs across the hallways, followed by a man in a sailor outfit.

"HEY! EXPLAIN TO ME WHERE THIS IS AND I'LL STOP RUNNING!" The teenager exclaimed.

"Kid, look! I don't know where this is either!" The man said while chasing him.

[PointMaid]

Ruby turns to G'raha, trying to decipher his phrase 'umbral aspect of water aether'. ...Dark... aspect...of...water vapor?

[madface7]

"I have no idea vat zat means eizer."

"Yer' speakin' gibberish, son."

[Kennifer]

"Well, where I come from when a cat, and presumably a cat-person as well, is sprayed with water, they don't go through any actual changes. They just get wet, and sometimes hiss at you. And there are even some breeds of cat, like the Turkish Van or the Maine Coon, that sometimes enjoy being in water."

[PointMaid]

...Yeah. That is my experience, too.

Admittedly, I've seen things here I would not have believed possible from my prior experience.

[wingedcatgirl]

"Water-aspected aether, I should say," G'raha says, sounding confused by Ruby's response in particular. "Well, never mind the details, it just means that it makes sense for water to cleanse this... cat virus."

[PointMaid]

I can't deny that it does that, yeah. It's also not quite the same, but since we think part of it was based on the Rabies virus, it's interesting that it was sometimes called hydrophobia, because people who had it didn't want to or couldn't drink.

I bet I can make up a bunch of the virus and test how water affects it... how is it not constantly in contact with water if it's in the body, though?

[SmilyCube112]

"I question if the water in the body actually causes it to have less of an effect than it should do, but the need to spray it is because the body doesn't have enough to fully get rid of it. But what do I know, I'm not a medical genius."

[Kennifer]

"I suppose it could warrant further experimentation..."

[madface7]

"Zis is going to take longer zan I sought..."

[wingedcatgirl]

"It is possible," G'raha says. "Hmm... has there been any noticeable difference in the effects from subject to subject?"

[Zanreo]

Meanwhile, in the arcade...

A blue-haired girl wearing a blue and white outfit is looking around the arcade. "I'm curious what games are here. We will see..."

[PointMaid]

I think some, ah, wanted to turn others into catpeople, while others weren't really interested in that. Embarassingly, I was in the former group.