Chapter 1: Conditioning

I was born, no I was made, in a lab in Britain. I was told that Britain was a great place, and that it was a privilege to be there. I had white hair and red eyes, they called me a rare phenomenon.

The people in lab coats taught me basic knowledge, but I was never named. The people in lab coats referred to me as "E-324". I was often made fun of my appearance so I never had any friends. Every month the lab coats will do body checkups on us, they would tell us to strip down individually to get checked up on. The lab coats would test my sensitivity by scratching my cat ears while a device was strapped onto me. I felt this hybrid sensation of happiness as they scratched my ears: I would involuntarily begin purring and wag my tail until it stopped. A lab coat told me the feeling was pleasure, before muttering "higher sensitivity" to the other lab coats. It didn't take me long to realise I had heightened senses. I had better sight, hearing and smell, but in return got higher sensitivity of touch and taste, but even this could not cure my clumsiness. The lab coats measured everything, from my tail length to breast size. The clatter of keyboards was deafening as they record down my data.

When I was 13, the people in lab coats told us that now we should be careful: they were transporting us to a different branch of this company. They warned us that the Australian branch was not as lenient.

As we step foot onto Australian soil, the guards outside welcomed us by fastening choker bands onto our throats. The choker bands where cold and heavy, restricting the movement of my neck and eating away at the warmthness and energy in my body. Life in this new place was harsh to say the least. Mean guards replaced the friendly lab coats, meals were reduced and we slept on cramped cells. For the first time in our lives, we were introduced to punishments. The guards would use a remote control to emit electric pulses from our bands. They told us that they will shock us even at the most petty thing. The bands would automatically activate if we tried to remove them.

These did not come to me as a shock, I overheard the lab coats prior to find out more information. My insides froze when they said that some of pervious cat faunus were sold as sex slaves in the Australian branch. I made sure not to disobey the new guards.

Our checkups came weekly, the new lab coats seemed more distant and cold, muttering under their breaths and squinting their eyes at us. The checkups became more rough: the cold air biting my toes made my tail instinctively curl up. My tail acted like a communicator for my feelings, perhaps more prominent than others. My tail would become restless, often getting me in trouble many times.

But then it stopped after a month, we were shipped to a new location. In the middle of night, we were escorted to a huge building. I froze when I saw my reflection on the glass for the first time. My blood red eyes glanced curious on the development on my tail that was now curled protectively around my waist. My waterfall of white hair streamed down to my waist. My reunion with my reflection was cut short when my band activated. I doubled up with pain as my fingers instinctively held onto the band, a guard yanked my tail pulling me aside.

"No funny business, this is the real deal now." growled the guard, shoving me towards the entry.