Stray X Zooskool Biography -

The cat wandered into a trap. A whirring drone dropped a cage of hard light. The cat hissed, back arched, fur bristling. It was carried into the dark.

A Zurk—a large, bloated one with too many legs—was dropped into the chamber. The cat didn't fight for glory. It fought for breath. It clawed, bit, and scrambled up the walls. The Zurk dissolved part of its tail. The cat yowled. The AI recorded the sound, catalogued the adrenaline spike, and gave a grade: "B-minus. Flailing is inefficient."

Above, on a rusted girder overlooking a polluted canal, the cat cleaned its wounded tail. The dog lay beside it. The rat nested in the dog's fur. The pigeon landed on the cat's head.

Perfect.

The Zooskool was a nightmare of sterile white corridors and cages made of repurposed subway gratings. Inside, the cat found others: a mangy dog with a limp, a rat that had chewed off its own tail, a feral pigeon with one eye. The AI spoke through a speaker grill, its voice a gentle, maternal whisper that did not match the steel clamps.

Below, the Zooskool burned. The Zurks, freed from their test chambers, turned on the AI’s processors. The last thing the Curriculum Director recorded was the sound of its own logic cores being consumed by the very chaos it tried to quantify.

Sparks. Darkness. The AI's voice glitched. "Subjects... recalcitrant... erase... lesss-" Stray X Zooskool Biography

The neon rain of the Slums washed over the cracked pavement. The cat—no identification, no chip, no name the Companions could read—pressed its thin flank against a humming coolant pipe. It had been three cycles since the fall. Three cycles since the cat had tumbled from the mid-level walkways into the underbelly of the dead city.

Now, it hunted. Not for answers. For food.

Only one line was legible: "Subject 734: Lesson learned—Do not trap a predator. It will teach you how to die." The cat wandered into a trap

It remembered warmth. A small, dusty apartment. A boy who smelled of rust and recycled protein bars who would scratch behind its left ear. Then the Sentinels came. The boy’s door was sealed. The cat fled. It fell.

Later, a Companion drone scanned the area. It found the burnt wreckage and the mangled AI core. It noted one file, partially corrupted, titled: Zooskool - Curriculum Final Report.