“Tiger put that down! You don’t know where that’s been!”

The macro tigress shouted at her significant other from across the field. Tiger let out a sigh of boredom as he flung what looked like the charred remains of a old motherboard Into a pile of much larger scrap.

“But jaaaaaaas!” he complained “its so boooring! You’re doing all the heavy lifting and I’m just standing around here watching you do all the work”

not that he ever had a problem watching her beautiful figure moving about. She then gazed over at him and set down the container she was lifting with a loud thud and then rubbed her temples in slight annoyance.

“Snookums I know your restless but I’m asking you to be patient with me here. I only have a few more containers left to load onto the truck and we will be done for the day. I don’t mind if you rummage through the little piles, just stay away from anything bigger than you. I don’t want to have to pull you out of a junk avalanche.”

Tiger looked up at her kind of shifty eyed from her tone, sounding more like his mother than his girlfriend.

“fine, fine” he lazily retorted back “can I at least keep something?” she rolled her eyes but then smirked at him with a quick change of expressions ”sure…..you can keep any one thing you find”

Suddenly his eyes lit up with excitement to her reassuring words and his tail swung eagerly as he looked up at her

“Really?!” he said energetically. Getting his hopes up way higher than they should be for his own good

“yep. Any one thing… you can fit in your pocket”

that’s when all the excitement quickly drained from him and he slumped back over with a groan.

It wasn’t the most typical job for the two Macrover specialists, but it was well with in there contractual boundaries. Tiger and Jasime had been assigned to a uncommon job of clearing remains of a collapsed building that had been forgotten for decades. The condemned medium sized plot land that sat there for so long was bought out by a real estate company, which in turn hired Macrovers to send out two of their best to handle the task of clearing out the area. Soon enough Jasmine arrived with tiger and they instantly got to work. Tiger worked his magic and used his power glove to enlarge jasmine to a bigger, more accommodating size to lift heavy steel beams and move collapsed walls with ease.

Amidst all the rubbish tiger was enjoying his time spent there at first. Scavenging around looking at the ruins of what appears to be an old research facility. While jasmine was busy loading up large containers of crumbled building remnants, tiger was moving through the piles of junk seeing if he could find anything worth value or that would help him find out what transpired at this site.

Just by letting his gaze wander around the question of what went down began to become more prominent in his mind. There were pieces of fried electronics scattered throughout the area, thus leading to the theory that the building was burnt down. But there was not enough evidence to support that theory. Possibly an explosion due to a gas leak or bomb? Once more his theory was rendered inconclusive by the lack of evidence to back it up.

As he fumbled through the odd piles of damaged infrastructure he was told by jasmine to stay out of harms way. as he was very close to her work zone. Making him liable for injury and a potential lawsuit. Jasmine then made tiger stay on the other far end where the rubble barely went above his waist. Even though it was the wiser choice tiger valued entertainment over personal safety in this instance. He felt as if he was being kept from all the fun stuff to discover as his super sized love interest cast it into the trash containers barely paying attention to any potential value they may have. Jasmine did not pay much mind to the worthless remains of some random old building. She was more interested in finishing the job than going on a scavenger hunt

Tiger proceeded with his new bummed out demeanor crossing his fingers and praying in his mind that he find a pocket sized gold nugget or something of equal value. As his eyes swept across the ground and small rubble piles something glimmered out of the corner of his eye, To which his head quickly snapped back to look at. He saw a solid gleam in a small pile of scrap metal and wandered over to it hoping it was some kind of preserved tech that could be salvaged. He reached down to dig out what was glimmering, carefully reaching in to pull the possible treasure out. His paw finding the sparkle’s origin and gets a firm grip around it and it feels hard and cold. Tiger cracked a slight smile at the possibility of it being a big yet pocket sized surprise. With a determined tug he yanks it out and gets a good look at it. Once again his excitement turns to utter disappointment as the shiny object is revealed to be just a ordinary metal can.

Letting out an even louder detesting groan than before he tosses the can behind him not paying any mind as to where it lands and he shambles on looking for a pile that may be nice enough to sit and relax on. The can bounces off another large pile of scrap with an audible clink noise to each bounce it made on the way down. On the last rebound of the can it must of dislodged something due to the loud noise that followed of the pile falling over and spreading itself out. tiger flinched at the sudden rustling noise and he turned around to observe the change. What quickly followed was jasmine calling out to him

“Tiiiigerrr!” she yelled out causing him to flinch again and his ears to twitch “what did I say about staying out of trouble?!”

“i-i know dear! I’m not in any danger. I’m staying safe, just like you wanted me to!”
“You better be! Now be a good boy and just stay out of the way and let me handle everything”

He sighs and mumbles under his breath mockingly “okay mom”

Jasmines ears twitch and perk up as her eyes dagger towards him “what was that?!”

Once more his body flinched up but this time he broke into a cold sweat as his tail curled up and a shiver rolled down his spine from the sheer fear her words put into him “n-nothing honey! L-love you! Keep doing what you do. You got this!”

She nods as she looks back to the scrap piles and continues to load up the bins “that’s what I thought”

as she hoists the bin onto her shoulder lifting it to the transport truck tiger lets go of the breath he was holding when jasmine caught him and relaxes with a sigh. Narrowly avoiding her tongue lashing he resumes looking onward at the now knocked over scrap pile to see if any hidden treasures were revealed. He squinted his eyes observing the pile thoroughly. Suddenly to his surprise he saw a dim blue glow in the darkness from within the heap. Tiger became curious but did not get excited as he didn’t want to get his hopes up again. He came close to the mess and hesitantly slid his hand through the opening ready to jerk it back out if the pile shifts again. He reaches in farther and eventually his paw comes to a stop, believing to have reached the origin of the peculiar light. He moves his fingers over it to see if he can make out what it is without pulling it out first. It certainly felt like a piece of a computer due to the texture and shape he felt running over his pads. He gripped it firmly but carefully eager to lay eyes on it and gave it a hard solid yank. Wires ripped out of place and metal shifted as the piece was removed from where it was. He managed to successfully retrieve his discovery without getting his hand stuck in the process.

As the pile of scrap shifted once more to a new resting position tiger looked upon what he found. It was a broken off shard from what looks like the remnants a highly advanced circuit board. Tiger became sufficiently interested in this odd piece of tech for it was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He carefully examined it seeing if there was anything salvageable still on it. As he turned it over to the backside he noticed what was giving off the faint light. A small blue rectangular chip cane into his sight, it greatly resembled a mini flash drive in all aspects. His interest rose as he was sure this little component with a flashing light was certainly of some value. He carefully plucked it from the remains and cast the board itself aside, clearly more interested in this peculiar little device. The curious cat looked it over and stopped when he saw the edge of the unusual piece of tech had a small metal port on it, like it was to be plugged into something. Tiger examined this closely as he feels he’s seen the shape of the port somewhere. He then realizes what it looks similar to and looks at his power glove. He rotates his gloved paw to the side and notices a perfect match to the port. Baffled by this discovery tiger double checks the ports for the match making sure he’s not confusing the two. Sure enough they were a perfect match. Tiger’s excitement began to rise once more as he may have finally made a discovery worth while. He examined the small drive’s port once more and blew on it to clear away any dirt or dust before he inserts it into the port on his glove. The potential risk of what could go wrong by plugging a foreign piece of technology into his glove was not present in his mind. He was too overcome with joy over his new find to stop and think about what harm this could do to his glove, him, or even Jasmine. Not waiting a second longer he lined up the two ports and firmly plugged it in and it locked right into place, fitting like a glove.

At first there was no initial reaction. The light flickered and the device itself emitted a high pitched hum and then turned off. Tiger stared at it and waited patiently for something extraordinary to happen. But his patience began to wear thin when it stayed in its inert state for a few minutes. Suddenly to tigers surprise a hologram screen appeared in front of him being projected from the power glove itself. Tiger quite surprised as he forgot that his glove had that capability. In no time screens started to pop up left and right, showing corrupted data, locked files, and unfinished yet undecipherable coding everywhere. It was enough to give tiger a headache as he tried to keep up with the data display and make sense of it all. Despite his efforts to understand all these pop ups tiger gave up trying to comprehend all of them and just let it go. What seemed like an endless stream of pop ups quickly halted as tiger was greeted with a error screen reading “error! Incompatible software.” He was at a loss for words as it seemed that his glove’s on board computing system crashed. He went into a small panic hoping he didn’t fry the glove entirely. Once more putting rational thinking aside he went for the barbaric solution and gave the glove’s control unit a quick smack making the screen flicker. The array of windows stayed opened but the main error screen quickly changed to a screen that read “adaptive software conversion in progress” tiger took a big sigh of relief as the fear of him having to explain how he crashed the power glove to jasmine faded quickly.

As the screen flashed the same message blinked in front of all the rest. Tiger had a perplexed look about him as he watched all of the present screens suddenly started to change their messages and retype themselves. The screens went form an unreadable code and text to something that looked normal computer coding. Tiger watched as he finally started to make sense of it all as the coding started to render into something he is familiar with. A few minutes passed as he watched the device finish translating everything it had on it. Tiger managed to read most of the fast changing windows and noticed it contents were all incomplete or botched coding, like parts of it were corrupted or deleted. Tiger was even more curious about the state of this mysterious device as it divulged all of its secrets to him.

Finally the transitioning of screens stopped and one final window opened up with a single folder on it labeled "experimental program Z3N-T4”. Tiger tilted his head in curiosity then highlighted it using his control unit and opened it up. Immediately the hologram shut off but then just as quickly turned back on. What was projected this time was far beyond Tigers expectations. A pixelated figure began to appear before him and started to take shape of a thick torso. Massive chunks and pieces were missing from the figures frame. It had become apparent to Tiger that this device must have held some sort of Artificial Intelligence program that had yet to be finished. And this was its current incomplete state. Watching as the body still continued to partially materialize what was complete Tigers jaw was agape in astonishment as he watched his amazing discovery take form right before his eyes.

The pixelated and incomplete apparition finally completed its hologram materialization. Its form was very botched as it was only a torso and a head. It became apparent who ever designed this program intended for it to be male and some sort of species of reptile as it displayed the corresponding characteristics. Enormous chunks of the body were missing. Even part of its face had yet to be completed. This incomplete mess was undoubtedly a result of the corrupted parts of the code. Tiger examined every inch of the artificial projection, almost as if cataloging everything that needed to be worked on with it. Suddenly the figure that had its back turned to him slowly looked over it’s shoulder and at Tiger. Its body followed through and revolved around giving him a blank stare. Although he was a little creeped out by the silence of it he assumed it was only natural since its communication parameters were most likely not completed yet. Still filled with much surprise he looked on at the figure before him and in an instance the greatest feeling he’s had in a while washed over him as he came to a realization. He looked back down to the little flash drive that held the plethora of data on it and smirked as he thought to himself

“well aren’t you a convenient pocket sized surprise?”

---

Posting this as I had almost forgotten about it. It's part of the Macrover's Universe.

Click here to see the inked version.

Tiger Claw ©
Story was written by & Zenta belongs too © To see his posting of the inked version with story, click here.
Art was commissioned from and drawn by . To see his posting of the inked version, click here.
Colouring done by  fazzer12