\chapter{12}

Even if it wasn't by much,
the part of the city that Katt and her tribe lived in was different than the part where he had met the cat girl and ran for his life.
There was one important difference:
The night sky that spread out above the crumbling roofs of the ill-treated city wasn't a light-swallowing darkness,
but a completely normal sky with a small sickle moon and countless twinkling stars.

And they had only left the house for a couple of minutes when it got bright.
The sky in the east started to turn grey and started to brighten almost unnaturally quickly,
but Andrew kept his thoughts in check even though they wanted to go on absurd wanderings.
They were high in the mountains,
which was known for how quickly it got bright,
but also dark in the evening.
Even if he didn't have a shred of proof for it,
by now he was completely sure that he was on a different planet in the future or in another dimension.
And he was also (pretty) sure that he wasn't having a nightmare or was hallucinating the whole thing.
He was in the time he belonged in,
and he was actually experiencing all of it.
He just did not have a single idea as to why.

Katt had accompanied him out of the house obediently,
but had stood still,
keeping just as silent as before and Andrew had left it at that for a while.
What he was seeing was enough to keep his thoughts busy for a while.

Bull, Liz and Rex weren't the only uncanny mixtures between human and animal that he saw that morning,
and not even the most bizarre.
Andrew chose not to focus too much on a lot of the figures to keep them from following him into his nightmares,
but he did see that not \textit{all} of the members of the tribe were as mutated as Bull or Ratt.
A lot of the figures that sat,
ate breakfast,
or were just taking in the sunrise at the extinguished fire looked completely normal.
If they even had any mutations they were either hidden under their clothes or were so little that they weren't noticeable.

After they had silently strolled across the Plaza for a while the silence got so uncomfortable that he couldn't stand it any more.
He stood still,
 turned around to her and tried to catch her eyes,
but he didn't manage it.
Just to say anything
(and to not talk about Bull and the rest;
he wasn't motivated to do that)
he asked: ``How is Bat doing?''

Katt threw a quick glance in the direction that they had come from before she answered.
Fires burnt in most but not all of the buildings that surrounded the Plaza.
One of them was lit up enough that it was bright as day inside, with fires even going on the roof of the three-storied building.

``She's getting better.'', she said.
``She's having a baby.
But it doesn't look good.''

``I'm sorry'', answered Andrew.
``Hopefully it isn't anything too bad?''
