Some disasters start with good intentions. Others start with cats who think graduation ceremonies need more excitement.

Mischief is a perfectly reasonable cat familiar with simple priorities: sardines, proper napping spots, and maintaining his witch Felicity's magical education through selective chaos. When her boring graduation ritual needs improvement, he helpfully destabilizes a portal. The result? He gets transformed into a human body—missing his tail, equipped with useless paws, and stranded in a dimension where monks keep trying to pet him.

Indignity upon indignity.

But the interdimensional mishap is no accident. For decades, a cosmic entity called the Collector has been systematically harvesting independent familiars to power reality's portal networks. Forty-seven thousand beings stolen, processed, and reduced to magical batteries. The bureaucratic paperwork lists them as "acceptable variance."

Someone clearly needs to learn proper respect.

When Mischief discovers his chaos magic can heal corrupted familiars instead of just annoying humans, he faces a choice: run home to safety, or accept responsibility for beings who've been waiting decades for someone to care enough to fight back.

Pack tactics against impossible odds. Sometimes the only solution is to teach rigid systems proper behavior through applied chaos.

Accompanied by Rowan, an academic who measures disaster in statistical probabilities, and a growing family of displaced outcasts, Mischief must infiltrate a cosmic processing facility, survive philosophy debates with interdimensional horror, and prove that cooperation works better than control.

Even if it means missing dinner.

The ceremonial hall smelled of wet stone, boiled rosemary, and the sharp tang of sweat from people trying to exude confidence. Candle smoke curled under the rafters where the shadows were thickest.

Decent perches up there, but no self-respecting cat would perform for an audience of hat-wearing bureaucrats.

Chalk circles glowed on the floor, their lines so perfectly drawn they made my whiskers itch. Light pooled across the grimoire's leather where it sat atop the pedestal, and the clasp twitched once.

Someone else's scent has marked this space. Chalk dust, authority, and the stale breath of committees. Time to improve the territorial boundaries.

Felicity stood in the center, her robe pressed within an inch of its life, a wand gripped tightly in her palm, her breath coming in nervous little hitches. She had scrubbed the ink from her fingers, though the scent of fear still clung to her. Near the chalk, a dish gleamed with three sardines in oil, their silver skins catching every speck of light.

At last, one wise decision.

The Council perched on its dais, all threat display and puffed importance. The High Priestess wore an emerald brooch that caught the light, marking her as the alpha of this particular pack. The clerk smelled of ink and panic, clearly bottom-tier. The apprentices clustered at the edges, unwilling to stand too near the grimoire, each watching it with wary attention.

I picked my way across the chalk, testing each line with my pads for texture and temperature before committing my weight to it. The magic hummed against my paws, curious but not hostile. I chose the fattest knot of lines and arranged myself in a perfect loaf, weight distributed for maximum comfort and instant escape if these bureaucrats proved more dangerous than they appeared.

The air carried the scent of metal and mint, the smell of people determined to enforce order, whether or not it wished to be enforced. My whiskers twitched, mapping the room's dimensions, cataloguing exit routes past robes and ceremony.

The facility's entrance gaped wide, edges cauterized with wards. Steam rose from metal gratings, carrying scents that made my phantom whiskers recoil—ozone mixed with something organic gone wrong, the particular staleness of air that had circulated through too many lungs before finding freedom. My phantom whiskers mapped the entrance, filing it under 'hostile territory that would soon learn better manners.

Time to remind them who's hunting whom.

Behind me, the pack moved with synchronized alertness born from shared trauma and coordinated desperation. Bellwether kept to the center of the corridor, away from walls where mechanical sounds hummed with institutional malice. Her breathing had become deliberately controlled the moment we entered—four counts in, hold, four counts out—the rhythm of someone who'd learned to manage panic through structure.

She's avoiding anything that sounds like processing equipment. Smart.

Selyn's crystals blazed with determination that tasted of salt spray and storm winds, but her free hand compulsively checked the pouch where she kept backup crystals. Physical anchors in a place where reality had become negotiable. When a distant mechanical whine echoed through the corridors, her shoulders went rigid for three heartbeats before she forced them to relax.

Cipher's amber gaze catalogued security measures with mathematical precision that bordered on obsession, but his hands shook as he traced patterns in the air. Numbers that stayed safely in his control, equations that couldn't develop opinions about their own existence. “Seventeen potential breach points,” he whispered, voice tight. “Assuming standard dimensional architecture, which this clearly isn't, so the calculations are useless, aren't they useless, everything here is—”

“Breathe,” Rowan said quietly, moving closer without crowding. “Count the things you can control.”

Pack care. Making sure everyone can still hunt.

My chaos field rippled outward, golden threads probing defenses with the methodical precision of a cat examining new furniture for optimal destruction potential. The first security checkpoint materialized from shadows—ward-stones flanked a narrow passage, their surfaces crawling with symbols that rewrote themselves faster than the eye could follow.