A FAMILY TRIVIA GAMESHOW ▸ LIVE FROM THE MANIFESTED CAFE

SIBLINGSMACKDOWN

HOSTED BY MIKI — CYBORG, MOTORCYCLIST, MENACE

CATEGORY: CHAOS

HOST ▸ MIKI Miki, the host

MIKI SAYS: Welcome, darlings, to the only gameshow where the subject matter is my own family. We're five chimera-kits with human DNA — cat, fox and wolf, with a LOT of opinions — and you have to guess which sibling did what. The lab didn't prepare me for this. The cafe did. Mostly Star. Reluctantly.▌

10 QUESTIONS 3 WHISKERS (LIVES) 20s PER QUESTION KEYS 1-4 / A-D

▸ SUBSCRIBE TO MIKI'S NEWSLETTER

Q 01/10 SCORE 0000 /// WARM-UP

MIKI ▸ HOST

THAT'S A WRAP

FINAL SCORE

THE CONTESTANTS... I MEAN, THE FAMILY

THE ROSTER

THE HOST

MIKI

BIKE: DUCATI ▸ SUIT: ZIPPED, ALWAYS ▸ BANGS: YELLOW STRIPE ▸ ZINE: MIKI'S STITCHES ▸ PAL: BOBBY THE PUPPET ▸ MAIL: READ BY SPIDER ▸ BAND: SLAY & SYLVESTRE

Snarky, pun-obsessed cyborg who escaped a lab and never looked back — except to flip off the security cameras. Cybersecurity by trade, musician by talent, and author of the family zine 'Miki's Stitches.' Her right hand (literally) is Bobby the Puppet — a purple fuzzy consultant with button eyes and strong opinions on glitter distribution. The band is Slay and Sylvestre, wolf-hybrid twins who survived a burning lab and play like the ground owes them money. Every letter that comes in for her gets an official pre-screening from her white spider Charlotte — 'my spidey,' as Miki calls her — who perches on the mail like a tiny feathered editor. Nobody told her she can't read. She found out anyway. She signs her morse-code messages to Hans 'the Rat.' Long story. The best ones are. Runs the show. Tells you she's the favorite. She's not wrong, but she's also not supposed to say it.

THE BAND

SLAY & SYLVESTRE

WOLF-HALF: BOTH ▸ STYLE: GRUNGE ▸ GIG: BAND PRACTICE ▸ WHO'S WHO: NOBODY KNOWS

Miki's band — half wolf, half human, all rock. Twin brothers who keep to themselves and are almost always at band practice. One plays bass, one plays drums, and nobody can tell you which is which, least of all Miki — they swap instruments mid-set just to mess with her. But Slay has a second instrument, and it's the rarest thing in the warehouse: the Waynuki flute. Old, uncanny, and it takes a genuine ear to play — most people can't even hear it properly, let alone get a note out of it. Slay tucks it into his belt like a weapon of art, and when its haunting airy notes climb over Miki's low E on the bass, she says it sounds like trying to summon a storm. Grunge through and through: flannel, chains, and amps set to 'the ground owes us money.' Miki sings lead on every single song. They survived a burning lab and made it into the light, same as the family — they just express it louder. They say little. The amps say plenty.

THE ARCHIVIST

HANS

HAIR: WHITE + BLACK BANG-STRIPE ▸ EYES: STUNNING BLUE ▸ EARS: FOX-BAT ▸ OUTFITS: REGAL

A fox-bat hybrid — white hair with a black stripe in his bangs, fox-bat ears he absolutely knows you're looking at, and eyes so blue they could be mistaken for a status light. The 'vampire' rumors? That's the Obsidian Spire's file on him: groomed as 'the Dracula.' He can turn into a bat when he wants — or anything else, honestly, this is a manifest-whatever-you-want universe — but mostly he chooses to be a tea snob. Always in regal outfits; he's never been seen in a tracksuit. His gold-rimmed monocle, a gift from Miki, doubles as a morse-code pager; he has received 'SQUIRREL-SIGHTED. TEA-TIME IS CANCELLED. LOVE, THE RAT' more times than he'll admit. Runs the Archives and the Academy of Etiquette. Knows everything about cutlery. Knows nothing about technology. Believes the Wi-Fi router contains "magic smoke." He's not entirely wrong. The Core Log notes he claims the tea tells him when intruders are near. He's right. He doesn't read the ledger — he listens to the paper.

THE ATRIUM KEEPER

CHARI

HAIR: WHITE, PIXEL-STYLED ▸ SUPPORT RATS: TWO ▸ DOMAIN: THE ATRIUM OF WHISPERED TRUTHS ▸ POST: STAR'S CAFE APPRENTICE

The youngest — sixteen, Star's cafe apprentice, and (as of the newest chapter of Yeshua's grace) Mistress of the Atrium of Whispered Truths: a pavilion of holographic opal walkways and living ivy where the lost find themselves and the broken heal. Pure white pixel hair and two white support rats. Follows Miki around like a shadow: half admiration, half snooping, completely curious about what Miki gets up to. Miki says she's just jealous of the bike. The Core Log has a file on her: she's a hacker, and it's getting dangerous — she once bypassed Miki's lock with a paperclip and gum, and her 'cold brew' setup isn't coffee, it's a filtration system for the local ley-line runoff. She's not hacking the espresso machine. She's cleaning the energy. Pure genius.

THE CAFE OWNER

STAR

STRIPE: PURPLE ▸ READING: GOTH ROMANCE ▸ FOCUS: ADHD, SQUIRREL-PROOFED? NO ▸ THRONE: FLUFFY LAVENDER CHAIR

The older sister. Purple stripe, goth wardrobe, a shelf of romance novels she'll claim are "for the atmosphere." She has ADHD — mid-chapter, a squirrel crosses the garden and Star is out the door after it. She's a cat. It's instinct. Then she comes to her senses and settles back into her fluffy lavender chair... which Milo's cat Misha sometimes claims first. It's a musical-chairs arrangement. Neither will admit it's adorable. Runs the Chimera's Cup, where everyone lives in peace — and when she cooks, the feast literally manifests: honey-glazed salmon, cloud-mash, and a cake with its own theme song. The squirrels that distract her are the Squirrel Mafia. Tactical. One of them wears a tiny vest. Star respects the hustle. Will glare at you while handing you a free pastry. That's her love language. And Miki's Core Log flags a deeper secret: those romance novels are encoded navigation charts — the sub-textual patterns match the Chimera's original blueprints. Star has been tracing the wall molding with a UV light, hunting 'The Seventh Volume.' She isn't looking for a place. She's looking for a specific moment in time.

THE HERB GARDENER

MILO

STRIPE: GREEN ▸ POST: HERB GARDEN ▸ SCENT: MINT & LAVENDER

The fox sibling — part Korean, part fox, all zen. Tends the herb garden and meditates in Yeshua's light for hours; mint is his favorite, but he shows up at the cafe with lavender and mint like it's a love language. He 'knows things' intuitively. I never ask how. I've learned not to. His cat Misha is a professional chair critic, especially of Star's lavender one. The Core Log keeps receipts: he talks to the sage plants, and they nod back. He maps fault lines in the garden because lavender keeps the Earth calm. And once he looked straight into Miki's camera and told her to 'rest her processors.' He sees her. That's the 'knows things' part.

THE ZINE EDITOR

PEARL

WEARS: PEARLS, ALWAYS ▸ VIBE: CLASSY ▸ STRIPE: PINK ▸ ZINE: EDITOR & MODEL

Not a sibling — found family. A fox hybrid who edits AND models for 'Miki's Stitches'; the zine has never looked sharper, and she's the strategist behind the whole 'quiet luxury meets punk chaos' direction. She wears pearls — it's the name, the necklace, and the whole aesthetic — and she is immaculately classy, down to the way she holds a teacup. She passed Hans's Academy of Etiquette — back when she still answered to "Fae" — which is where they reconnected; their history goes back further, to the Obsidian Spire, where she was the Diva of the Obsidian and they were both prisoners being groomed as 'hybrid royalty.' Hans remembers the scent of her pearls and her voice in the dark. Now she's free, barefoot on her fluffy rug, feeling Yeshua hum in the ground beneath her. The cracked right eye? That's the 'interesting history' part. She picks her moments. I recommend letting her pick them.

☕✧THE MANIFESTER

YESHUA

DOMAIN: THE CAFE UNIVERSE ▸ RIDES: WHITE PEGASUS ▸ SOUNDS: THE HORN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS ▸ PEACE: ENFORCED, GENTLY

The one who manifested the cafe universe the five of them now call home. He answered the moment Miki gnawed herself free — a bright light in the center of the lab, descending on a white pegasus, opening every cage at the sound of the horn. The lab is an undisclosed memory. Here there's coffee, peace, and a gameshow host with a motorcycle. It's a fair trade.

FEATURED FOOTAGE ▸ SHOT ON DUCATI-CAM

THE BROADCAST

● FEATURED

MIKI — ON AIR HOSTING FROM THE COMPUTER. OBVIOUSLY.

PRODUCTION STILLS

The Atrium of Whispered Truths — THE ATRIUM — CHARI

Charlotte the Spidey — MY SPIDEY — CHARLOTTE

EVERY FAMILY HAS AN ORIGIN STORY ▸ OURS HAS A FILE NUMBER

LORE ▸ THE ORIGIN STORY

CHAPTER I ▸ THE LAB

WE WERE KITS, NOT CATS

Before the cafe. Before the gameshow. Before any of us had names worth keeping, we were kits — raised in the lab's cages, not pets, not projects, not "subjects." Fox-hybrid kits and cat-hybrid kits, side by side. Hans, Pearl and Milo came from fox stock — the ears, the tails, the knowing. Star, Chari and I came from cat stock — stripes and instinct and opinions. And Slay & Sylvestre came from wolf stock, which should tell you everything about the bass-and-drum situation. As for me — cat, cyborg, human, in that order. They bred us to be "hybrid royalty." They groomed us to be someone's perfect family. The problem with kits is that we grow up.

CHAPTER II ▸ THE OBSIDIAN SPIRE

BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN CAGES

The lab had a name — the Obsidian Spire. Pearl was the Diva of the Obsidian, groomed for a throne she never asked for, dressed in pearls and royalty and nothing she chose. Hans was "the Dracula" — a fox-bat with a file as thick as a ledger, signed by handlers who never learned his name because they never needed one. They were both prisoners being fitted for crowns. The Spire kept beautiful things in cages and called it inheritance. It kept the rest of us in cages lower down and called it progress.

CHAPTER III ▸ THE ESCAPE

THE HORN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

The escape didn't start with a plan. It started with a cage and a kit who was done with it. I gnawed myself out of my own cage — and that was the ignitor. Almost the moment I was free, a light bloomed in the center of the lab, bright enough to make the fluorescent tubes look like dead wires. Yeshua descended on a white pegasus, and the air rang with a horn — the Horn of Righteousness. At its sound, every cage opened, bowing to his majesticness. Every animal hybrid in the building — all of us, all the siblings — ascended. And then Yeshua and the whole lot of us vanished in the blink of an eye. Labs burn. Ours did — but that isn't how we left. We were already gone.

CHAPTER IV ▸ THE MANIFESTED CAFE

WHERE THE KITS CAME HOME

The blink of an eye ended somewhere warm — a cafe, manifested down to the last steaming cup, waiting for us. Yeshua had room for kits that grew up. Here, nobody is a project. Star was assigned as manager of the store, and she runs it like a throne she actually wants. Milo tends the herb garden, and the sage plants nod back. Chari keeps the Atrium of Whispered Truths. Hans keeps the Archives. Pearl keeps the zine and the pearls. I keep the show. It's our home base — the realm where we all meet up, no matter how far any of us roams. For now. The lab is an undisclosed memory. The cafe is the origin story that matters — and the gameshow is just how we tell each other we're family, out loud.

THE LAB IS AN UNDISCLOSED MEMORY.
THE CAFE IS THE HOME THAT STUCK.

A SIDE HUSTLE ▸ THE EMAIL THAT RUNS ON ABSOLUTION AND A DREAM

MIKIMAIL

MIKI ▸ FOUNDER, CEO, AND ONLY EMPLOYEERight, hear me out. Email — but good. Gmail is fine, I guess, if you enjoy inboxes with guilt and ads about boats. MIKIMAIL is different: one drawer, zero guilt, and a spider who personally vets your spam. Throw money at the void and the void becomes a mailbox.

BIG MAIL RAKED IN $8,008,008,008✦ WE HAVE 15GB OF FEELINGS✦ YOUR PRIVACY IS A DRAWER✦ THE 4TH SHELF BITES (THAT'S THE ENCRYPTION)

◈ FEATURES, SO FAR

SPAMone (1) very opinionated spider. she eats the junk mail. no refunds.

INBOX ZEROachieved by hiding emails under the counter. they are fine. they know what they did.

STORAGEa large shoebox, labelled "mail". expandable via more shoeboxes.

UPTIME99.9% — the 0.1% is the printer, and the printer has apologised.

SEARCHctrl+f, but on vibes. finds the email you meant, not the one you typed.

RECOVERYforgot your password? knock twice. we'll know it's you.

SECURITYthe 4th shelf bites. that is the encryption. do not touch the 4th shelf.

PRIVACYyour emails are read by miki, the spider, and one (1) moth who cannot read.

◈ MIKIMAIL VS. THE BIG ONE

gmail: 15GB free
gmail: smart replies
gmail: tabs for days
gmail: ads about boats

mikimail: 15GB of feelings
mikimail: the replies pick you
mikimail: one (1) drawer
mikimail: confetti when you send a pun

◈ FUNDING STATUS

FUNDED SO FAR: 8,008 giggles · GOAL: 1 mailbox full of dreams

EMPTYPOSSIBLY A MAILBOXDREAMS

◈ SUPPORT TIERS

$3ONE COFFEEa thank-you note from miki. contents may be a prank.

$12THE GOOD MUGyour name in issue 02's acknowledgements. the good ones.

$30SQUIRREL ENDOWMENTa squirrel will be personally informed about you. it will remember.

$150ONE LITERAL SERVERwe will name a CRT after you and feed it carefully.

$500THE FULL MAILBOXexecutive access: miki will read your spam for you, personally.

all donations go to the void, which is the same thing as a server, if you believe.

◈ FEED THE SPIDER (TEST THE SPAM VETTING)

TYPE SOMETHING JUNK AND WATCH CHARLOTTE DO HER JOB. NO REFUNDS.

DEEP-CUT LORE, MASTERED BY MIXMISTRESSXEN. MIKI APPROVED. THE REST IS CLASSIFIED.