I adore these portraits Saf makes... especially those little patterns and markings within the colors.

Even in this stylized vanity portrait, The 3rd looks like it thinks sitting still to pose is a bullshit idea! Typical cat.
Katyusha's a really interesting contradiction. She's technically obsolete, yet makes constant use of hard-light to function.. a tech advancement that seems far in advance of anything else shown in the design of your other characters.

I like stuff like that... but: no.

She has no hard light, she cannot touch anything with her "limbs", they just go "through" stuff.

She does have a few floating "pens" she can use to touch stuff.

Really? I could've sworn some of the comic panels had her trying to handle the antsy cat in her webcam feed. If she couldn't successfully do anything like that since her creation, why would she even try?

I'm still impressed, because this new info means she must have some sort of levitation tech keeping her hardware trunk off the ground and at a torso height all the time. And I presume it's internally provided. Devising and installing that miniaturized version of the technology would be more useful and practical in the end than placing levitation machinery all over any parts of a military facility that she'd need to quickly traverse.

oh, the cat "feels" the scratches as hot spots that is all, as if one were shining a light there.

Also: how is a flying drone more "wondrous" than a hard light?! You can buy them in stores, alls she does is having a sort of "tube" inside her that pushes the air out.

I never said it was more impressive than hardlight. But look at Katyusha's specific circumstances.

A flying drone itself is common tech nowadays. But the maneuverability of small ones are touchy, they must be very lightweight, and the slightest touch might overwhelm their reaction control.
Given how little of Katyusha is actually hardware, and the fact at least some of her apparent solid bulk is actually empty space holding a cat, it doesn't seem possible a powerful enough mechanism for air jets could be installed without crowding out the space needed for her other systems. She seems not to have the exhaust ports needed for stable air-jet propulsion. And less importantly, the sort of noise involved in generating it tends to freak out cats, unnecessarily complicating the training and mental well-being of the organic peripheral sitting inches away.

Those nubs below her hips look like energy emitters, very likely involved in projecting her holographic legs. So I've assumed something like a crude repulsorlift was invented, and used in her construction.

The way i saw her the air intakes are her shoulders.

The main air out-take is her hips, with her "crotch" shifting air left-right to stabilize her, her "tits" and the exhaust between where her shoulder blades should be are her upper "triangle stabilizers".

But if this were the case if her electronics and engines weighted as much as a rugged workstation portable PC (5 kg) she would need about 15 kg of batteries.

Which gives us a "maximum cat payload" of 5 kg (indeed the 3rd does not look very fat).

So she is "kinda buildable" with current tech. (no, she is not, the AI is way too advanced and the holograms we have today only work in specific conditions of atmosphere and light or need a solid emitter, but... it's "5 minutes into the future")

How they managed that 20+ years ago, using a Katyusha aiming system, of all things (AKA: 1942 analog tech)... is where the joke actually is. 😂

Mescaline-hallucination portrait!

still good, had portrait.

😂