<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/NOvUeJw.jpg)</div>Henry Tanner had seen the world that nobody else sees. At 7 years old, he'd been lost in the woods, and a woman with feline features - cat ears, a tail, a cleft lip, and whiskers, but otherwise looking human - had helped guide him back to his family's campground. She smiled, beckoned wordlessly for him to follow, and started walking away. Henry was so fascinated, that he simply followed her. If she had been some evil creature, or even just a garden variety psychopath, Henry would have died that night.<br/><br/>Nobody had believed him, of course - it had to be a woman in a costume, playing some silly games in the woods with friends. But Henry was certain of what he'd seen. Her ears swiveled and twitched like a real cat, responding to the world around her. Her tail had likewise moved like it was alive, attached to her as surely as the tail of any cat or dog. Even his own parents had told him that he shouldn't make up fairy tales. Ears that moved? Plastic costume ears wouldn't do that. And the idea that she'd been as naked as a jay bird, but didn't seem to care so much about her nudity, was also dismissed as fantasy, or bad memory. She had to be wearing<em>something</em>.<br/><br/>It had been more than twenty years, and he was still chasing that fantasy. He'd grown up believing in a world that nobody else said could exist. He believed stories about werewolves, vampires, and other things that go<em>bump</em>in the night. And he<em>needed</em>to prove everyone wrong. When he finished high school, he immediately started taking classes that involved proper investigation techniques. Forensic investigation became his passion, and his family believed that he had taken an interest in law enforcement. But then he shocked them all - he became a private investigator.<br/><br/>Money wasn't the issue - his grandfather had left a healthy amount of money in a trust, and he'd drawn enough out of it that he owned the office building that he ran his investigations out of. He hired other investigators. Henry made sure that they had all the work they wanted, the most mundane investigations of missing persons, cheating spouses, unsolved murders, and the like. But anything out of the ordinary, Henry handled himself.<br/><br/>It took several years before Henry finally encountered something that stepped him through the Veil that protected the mundane from the fantastical, and vice versa. A simple investigation of things going missing from an auto shop. The owner locked the doors at night, to come back in the morning to find tools strewn about on the ground, in patterns that looked like it was a message. It took him a week to finally catch the creature - a<em>brownie</em>, he'd figured out later - and convince it to stop. The creature didn't seem to speak English, but it understood it well enough. Henry catching the brownie had impressed it, and the fact that he hadn't attacked it or treated it like a monster earned enough trust that it agreed to leave the auto shop alone. Henry wasn't quite sure when<em>he'd</em>agreed to have the brownie follow him back to the office.<br/><br/>Now, he worked on both sides of the Veil. He'd been working on a case where an entire family disappeared one by one over the course of a week, and that took him Underside. Fate, luck, or connections - it wasn't clear what led him to the auction that night, but he'd earned enough respect Underside that he was grudgingly allowed into the Auction. The first few auctions hadn't been anything that meant anything to him. Some book that was bound in human skin; An old, oddly-shiny hammer; a crate of high-quality alchemy reagents; and a handful of other things that defied his understanding.<br/><br/>The auction clearly didn't have anything that he cared about. This had nothing to do with the missing people he was looking for. He was about to turn away when he saw Kitty led on stage. The auctioneer explained what she was, and started the bidding. Henry was transfixed. She didn't look much like the woman in his 7-year-old memory, and yet...<br/><br/>"<strong>One million,</strong>" called out a man next to Henry. Henry glanced over, and was almost immediately sorry he did. The man's face looked like something that came out of a sewage pipe. All of the parts were there, it just looked...<em>diseased.</em>Looking back at the catgirl, Henry frowned.<br/><br/><em><strong>Don't judge a book by the cover, eh?</strong></em>he thought,<em><strong>Bullshit to that. I don't think he wants her as just a pet.</strong></em>His hand moved up, and he called out, "<strong>Two million</strong>," before he could really think about it.<br/><br/>The man with the sewer face<em>hissed</em>at Henry. "<strong>Stay out of this if you know what's good for you, <em>tourist</em>,</strong>" he growled quietly. "<strong>This is important.</strong>" Speaking up, he countered Henry's bid with, "<strong>Two point five.</strong>" Taking hold of something that Henry assumed was a weapon, he glared challengingly in Henry's direction.<br/><br/>"<strong>We have two point five million,</strong>" called the auctioneer. "<strong>Do I hear three?</strong>"<br/><br/>Henry looked back and forth between the sewer man and Kitty. This was a lot of money they were talking about. He'd be able to take out a loan to cover it, based on his trust, but he guessed that the payments would pretty much kill off his monthly trust payments. He'd be broke and have to actually take work seriously... at least, for a while. It wasn't something he'd ever had to consider before.<br/><br/>"<strong>Two point five going once,</strong>" the auctioneer called out. "<strong>One fine, healthy, and nubile Neko, excellent for breeding or cross-breeding. You won't see another like her for years. Two point five going twice.</strong>"<br/><br/>Sewer-face... well, Henry would have a hard time calling it a<em>grin</em>, but his face contorted in a rictus of pleasure. "<strong>The slaad will love raping her,</strong>" he hissed.<br/><br/>That was enough for Henry. "<strong>Three million,</strong>" he called loudly.<br/><br/>The sewer man hissed. "<strong>Sleep with one eye open, tourist,</strong>" he whispered loudly to Henry. "<strong>I will have her, one way or another.</strong>"<br/><br/>"<strong>...going TWICE...</strong>"<br/><br/>"<strong>Thanks for warning me, idiot,</strong>" Henry grumbled under his breath. "<strong>Now I <em>know</em> I made the right choice.</strong>"<br/><br/>"<strong>...And <em>sold</em> for three million.</strong>"<br/><br/><div align="center"><strong>- = * = - </strong></div><br/>Kitty was moved to a holding room along with the other sold items. It took more than half an hour before Henry could talk to the clerk handling the exchanges. After a brief, terse discussion, it was accepted that he could pay for her as long as he paid within the next three days. Otherwise, she'd go to the second-place bidder, and Henry would be barred from future auctions. Looking through the cage wall at Kitty, he nodded and said loudly, "<strong>Fine. I'll be back for her. Don't pull the rug out from under me, though - you said three days, I expect you to give me three days. And make sure she's given adequate food and water.</strong>"<br/><br/>With that, he turned and walked away, his mind working furiously on how he could get the money THAT fast. He knew it'd be difficult - he couldn't exactly just take out a loan to buy a catgirl.