Name: Rustbucket StargM011 Gender: Male Breed: Wild Coat: Orange and Light Brown Classic Tabby Barred Grizzle Eyes: Yellow Genetic Code: O/bl (Tortie; codominant Orange and Light Brown) tcl//C+ (Classic Tabby and Barred) +//cb (Carries Sepia) G//+ (Heterozygous Grizzle) +//zwh (Carries Recessive White) Size: 88 Domestication: 28 Friendliness: 66 Noisiness: 51 Parents: Mother Calla Lily F105 Father: Orange and Black Ticked Tabby Sepia Grizzle Teak M163 Mate: F169 Tapper Offspring: M184 Mudslide, F190 PaAle; M182, M183, F188, F189, M185, M186 Current Location: Barney's Barn Art By/Born-Adopted From: Kitsu / Stargleam Cattery

"Aren't calicos supposed to be females?" Gordon asked, and Barney shrugged.

"Yeah? Cats aren't supposed to have wings, either, right?" Barney suggested when Gordon tried lifting the big cat's fluffy tail again just to make sure. Rustbucket - or just Rusty - thought that was a cue to play, rolling onto his side and grabbing the scientist's hand. "You know he's gonna leave marks, you keep doing that..."

Gordon knew that, of course, both of them had their share of newly acquired sets of small, parallel claw marks on their hands, shoulders, thighs, wherever the flying cats landed and took off from them.

Barney gave the cat a slow blink, as the bonkers thing remained on his back, wings spread, hind feet pushed hard against Gordon's arm while his forepaws gripped his hand (why is the hand leaving? don't come any closer!) and Rustbucket blinked back. Well he kind of got that dazed look like he'd forgotten entirely why he was on his back, suddenly whipping around to his feet, leaving Gordon's hand in mid air completely ignored. Barney licked his lips, a smile spreading on them. Gordon was gearing up to give the cat's back one of those extremely-faint touches.

That sent the cat zipping off the bar table, into the air, and if anything he could be said to have the zoomies horizontally around the rafters. Others joined in.

Barney's first impression of the cat was another of those strange, distant memories, not his own. It was Gordon who named this one, though, and not just because of the mottled colors resembling the rusted buckets and half-painted drywall of the unfinished bar. It was because the cat, large as he was, had wedged himself into one of those rusted buckets, and was yelling his head off trying to get out.

*** From Nine Half-Lives *** (sad)

The day that the Combine came, was a very bad day for everyone. That was what Izzy said, anyway. Looking back, while his words weren't exactly untrue, they certainly didn't capture the… seriousness or severity of the situation. Master of understatement, that man.

That day, almost everything they'd been working toward, that all the Brains had been thinking up, had been destroyed. How to get water clean and in quantity where it was needed. How to keep headcrabs from burrowing through soils. Where to place sonic barriers they'd designed, for the best protection from those damnable antlions.

Well, most of their research was vaporized along with half the City. If they hadn't had their respirators already, everyone that Barney knew would have died from the cloud of dust raised by the collapse of buildings. Their hideout was still around, so they met up in the restaurant under the edge of the forgotten south side wall.

Alyx kept her chin up, that girl was amazing. She got the group ready to run, to fight, to do something . When the weird flying craft started going overhead, giving off their strange humming from engines that were more biological than mechanical, looking for strays to shoot or gather up, Barney had to clamp his hand around her mouth, keeping her silent. Now was not the time, his green eyes begged hers. She nodded, he felt her lips tighten and jaw clench. She knew better than to scream when he removed his hand.

But did he? The hovering craft was almost directly overhead. Its bright blue-white light swung back and forth, fans and rotors blasting the tattered building's broken interior. The basement where the group of Black Mesa refugees huddled was hardly protection, if that thing started aiming its built-in weaponry at them. Or if it landed. The floor was already broken up, the last Portal Storm a few years before had seen to that.

It probably saw their heat signatures, that was what Barney thought anyway. Their two Vort friends were about ready to break their own silent, frozen vigil and begin firing their green bolts of electricity at it.

It swerved away, suddenly drawing its searchlight beam over a wall. The others scattered quickly into the alley, and beyond, to the Outlands where more rubble would hide their presence. But Barney remained just a moment longer. He'd seen something, the same thing that caught that Combine's faceted eye.

Maxy Two, bigger and bolder than Maxy had been, and most surely the stupidest cat Barney had ever met. But stupid wasn't what went through Barney's mind, as he saw the animal tear across the rooftop away from the restaurant. That cat drew its fire . “Good cat,” Barney said, quietly, and then vanished into the alley.

That cat was hardly a fighter. But he defended his territory: he'd inherited it from Maxy One, and if he was anything like that bag of fleas, there would be more Maxy-like cats in this City for years to come, even without this one. Barney was a bit moody when they got to the nearby shelter, he was even more moody because no one realized why .