Meow Mix

[Deleted]

Name: Meow Mix
Age: Old enough to know better
Gender: Female
Race: Brown?

Personality/Highlights:

-loves to tinker with everything
-loves food
-loves food so much
-is horrified by how much awesome stuff people throw away
-wishes that awesome stuff wasn't so heavy
-might steal stuff if she thinks it's not being used (and that it is awesome)
-is particularly fond of things that are brightly colored, glittery, soft, or useful
-also salty, sweet, chewy, savory, or crunchy
-have i mentioned she loves food
-generally cheerful, curious, and nosy to a fault
-not even remotely shy by any definition of the term
-bites if necessary

Appearance:

Meow Mix is a fascinating monstrosity to behold. Standing at just over five feet in height, she is a misshapen amalgamation of junk, lopsided and malformed but nominally humanoid. If you squint and cock your head just right, you can identify a few of the main component parts. There’s most of a battered and stained dressmaker’s mannequin for a chest, and the shape beneath the tubes, lights, and dials that shroud her head might be a large coffee can wearing a football helmet. A rattling, much-mended generator that might have started life as a leaf blower is strapped to her back, and there’s so many wires and gears and random chunks of tin, steel, and plastic armor holding together and articulating her arms and legs that it’s hard to make out what’s underneath. All around, she looks like tetanus personified… but it’s pretty obvious that someone’s put a lot of love and hard work into her. She moves fairly smoothly, and limbs rarely fall off. An attempt has been made to clean her up and make her pretty. A few stray bits of her shine, an aborted attempt was made at painting her left leg, nothing leaks, and a bright cheerful smile has been painted on her ridiculous coffee can head.

There’s one problem with that description, though.

That’s not Meow Mix.

That’s her ride.

Meow Mix herself is the mechanic responsible for creating the junkyard Frankenstein mecha monster above. She’s a short little lady, and unashamedly plump, with curves that do nothing for anyone but still make her comfortable. Her greyish-brown hair is worn short and spiky, and her sparkling black eyes are set off by her near-constant nose-wrinkling grin. She’s got big ears and big feet and delicate, clever, pink little hands that are almost constantly filthy with oil and lubricants. She’s usually wearing some kind of baggy, stained, raggedly-stitched, much-mended jumpsuit that seems composed entirely of pockets.

Oh, and she’s also a rat.

A fluffy, soft-furred, pink-tailed, whiskery brown rat.

An intelligent, talking rat riding a rattling, awkward, human-sized mecha suit that she made from junkyard refuse, sure, but definitely a rat all the same.

History:

Meow Mix, quite honestly, isn't really sure what her own history is. She knows she's a rat. She must have been born to a ratty mother and a ratty father and had lots of ratty brothers and sisters, and quite possibly a ratty mate and ratty babies at some point, but she doesn't remember it. She isn't sure if she got hit with a cosmic blast, fell in some cooperatively mutagenic toxic ooze, nibbled on an ancient spellbook, or all three, but she just remembers waking up one day and... thinking.

Actually thinking.

Noticing the world around her. Seeing the sky above her. Considering what a sound in the distance meant and how it could affect her. And that led to paying attention to details- like the words on the discarded cat food bag she'd been sleeping in that she'd never realized could be read before, like the way foods could taste better if you didn't eat the rotten stuff, like the way fleas bother you a lot less if you actually bathe, and like the way the machines of the world around her moved and interacted and could be used by even weak humans to manipulate things much bigger than themselves. With a couple years of carefully orchestrated thefts of tools and a LOT of trial and error, she fashioned herself a suit that would let her be able to move around and interact with the world in a meaningful way.

I mean, people ran from her in terror upon seeing it, but hey. That was probably for the best, anyway, given the general opinion most people have of junkyard rats.

[Deleted]

Meow Mix Repairs

Mixie's home and place of business are the same place- a workshop tucked into the cliffside of the Weyrd, facing the town more than the crater lake. It's got a large window up front where all sorts of gadgets can be seen- toys, radios, clocks, and even a small working refrigerator with some obnoxiously bright magnets stuck to it. Half the window is taken up by a battered wooden table with a very large, elaborate, terrifyingly pink dollhouse resting on it. The old window is quite a bit the worse for wear, but work has been clearly taken to fix it up. The glass of the window is old and warped, cracked in a few places (the biggest crack having been carefully sealed up with duct tape to keep out the drafts), and it rattles in it's frame when the wind hits it. But it's been cleaned top to bottom, inside and out, and while the glass is a little pitted and grey, it's still lets the light through.

The shop has an old wooden door, like a lot of the buildings and rooms in the Weyrd. The weathered grain still shows in spite of extensive sanding, but there are no splinters, and it's been painted a cheerful bright blue. A very simple sign, hand painted on a plank of wood, hangs above the door: Meow Mix Repairs. While it doesn't look like a very professional job- the person who painted it definitely hadn't grown up writing things by hand, and it shows-, the spelling is accurate, the spacing is fairly even, and the sign hangs levelly. It's a competent job, if not particularly pretty.

Inside, the room is oddly shaped. The walls are bare stone and no two seem the same length, as if the room had been barely shaped out of a natural cavern (which is, in fact, the case). It's cluttered inside, and strangely lit. There are multiple workbenches along the walls, piled with an assortment of exotic tools and parts, with buckets of screws, bolts, and other bits and pieces tucked under the table. Well, I SAY buckets. There are, in fact, buckets, tubs, flower pots, plastic bins, and coffee cans full of bits and pieces, no two of them quite alike. Mixie's mecha rests comfortably beside the largest and most well-used workbench, which happens to be pushed up in front of the window, the better to take advantage of the daylight. A washing line hangs above the back tables, usually draped with often-rewashed, grease-stained rags and Mixie's little jumpsuits. In spite of the initial impression of filth, it's actually kept quite clean- there's lots of rust on some of the old parts, lots of rust being cleaned off better working ones, but very little dirt. The scraped and battered tile floor is kept carefully swept. The lighting is a bit uneven, but it's plenty bright enough to see.

There's an entire world of different goodies in there for sale. Heaters and trinkets, coffee machines and toys, lamps and fans and a surprisingly large collection of chipped old mugs. Mostly, though, Mixie does repairs. If it's broken, the little mechanic can probably fix it, so long as you don't mind it looking a little funny when she's done. She's an engineer, not an artist, after all- her job is to make it WORK.

The giant doll house on the table in the window is basically Mixie's apartment. It's got stairs, and rooms, and carpeting, and even a miniature kitchen with little rat-sized bowls and plates and tables and chairs. She doesn't use the kitchen very often- she has a big appetite- but still, it's there, and every now and then she likes being able to whip up a light breakfast. A little ramp runs between the table and the workbench, since the table's up a little higher. Tucked under both tables is a small fridge and a toaster oven, and there's a hot plate off to the side that she does most of her cooking on. Near the back of the shop is a sink with running water that does for the rest.

It's a strange, haphazard, cobbled together little shop, and Mixie is delighted to call it home.

As the shinies start to move in, she's going to end up claiming more of the space around her (as one does, in the Weyrd). A couple of other room farther back in the cavern system, and even one above her on the cliff side, that more energetic shinies can clamber or fly up to without difficulty.