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There were others, before Ballister. Nimona always sought out other misfits, others who were as hated as her. Some were better than others--one of the people they had sidekicked to turned out to be actually evil, going so far as wanting to murder them. Nimona left that situation the second she figured out they were just a piece of meat to him. But the most memorable of them by far, baring Ballister, was Meredith Blitzmeyer.It was about a century or so before she met Ballister--Nimona didn’t remember, she stopped keeping track of time a while ago. Flying cars didn’t exist yet, and the Institute was somehow stricter than it was before her and Ballister dismantled it. Meredith was the first, and only, that Nimona didn’t find through wanted posters. They found her at a fair.They were slinking around through the edges of The Kingdom as a cat when she came across the science fair. She wandered the fairgrounds aimlessly, bored by the majority of so-called scientific discoveries that were really just excuses to sell something. But when they glanced over at Meredith’s booth, she was intrigued. Meredith’s booth was virtually empty, everyone steering clear of it. She was set up with a strange green device that Nimona didn’t pretend to understand even after she read the sign. “Anomalous Energy Enhancer”? Yeah, that meant exactly nothing to them.So Nimona slinked over with ease, as no one was in her way because no one was there in the first place. She wiggled around a little before jumping onto the table of the booth, sniffing around the device while Meredith fiddled with something inside a cabinet, meaning she’d yet to see them. Nimona watched her carefully for a second to be sure she was entirely busy and not about to turn around before stepping closer to the green device.It was small and circular, with many screws and a bunch of moving parts and it looked more advanced and complicated than Nimona could understand. It wasn’t that they weren’t smart, but science was not her thing. They were the sidekick, not the inventor. She batted at it a little with her pink paw, careful not to knock it over. It seemed sturdy enough, and it glowed when they touched it. She batted at it a little more, forgetting that they should be careful right now, and flung their paw at it hard enough that it rattled atop the wooden booth.“Hey!” Meredith said, looking up at the noise. Nimona couldn’t see her eyes behind a pair of large scientific goggles. She stood up and shooed at them, Nimona dodging her advances easily. “What are you doing, you miscreant! Don’t touch that!”Miscreant! The nerve of this woman! Nimona swatted at her hand, and she seethed when their claws managed to scrap a few small lines of blood from her. Meredith clutched her hands and leered at her, to which Nimona merely huffed proudly, head held high in victory, before jumping off the table with their tail swishing behind her.Curiouser and curiouser, Nimona thought as she made their way from the fair. The strange goggle woman had seemed different from all the other scientists there, albeit just as rude, and even more interesting was her device. It had sent a spark up their little cat body when she touched it, like an electric shock. Her body still buzzed a little from it, and when they were far enough away she tried to shift into a bird to fly away.But she couldn’t. No matter how hard they tried, shifting wasn’t working. It was increasingly frustrating; what was wrong with her? Shifting always worked! They couldn’t remember a time when she couldn’t shift, but--Finally, the electric shock wore off, and just as it did, Nimona was a bird flapping their wings unsteadily. They proceeded to fly away after they regained their balance, but it still shook her to the core.She would have to investigate this scientist. For her own safety, of course.