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siren-dragon · 3 years

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Do Androids Bleed Silver? (Ch.1) -- The Cat Returns fanfic

Hey everyone, I wrote another story and this time it isn’t a one-shot but a chaptered one. Yay! This is my first time doing a sci-fi story, so if it seems a little strange or odd, I apologize but I wanted to get something out before I go on vacation. Anyway, hope you all enjoy it! Also tagging @catsafarithewriter because they have been a wonderful support and inspiration.

Ao3 story link

Summary: Cyberpunk/Android AU

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‘Next stop; Shibuya Station. I repeat, next stop Shibuya Station.’ The automated voice sounded over the train intercom, ‘please wait until the train comes to a complete stop and stand away from the opening doors before disembarking.’

Looking down at the half-crumbled note in her hand, Haru took hold of her frayed but well-loved duffle bag and stood from her seat. “I guess this is my stop,” she muttered aloud before the exiting the train and out of the station.

In the year of 2207, the use of androids and cybernetics had advance to a level where their use was a common practice and the backbone of modern society; even in her much smaller hometown. But after entering Shibuya Crossing- Haru felt her backwater home was definitely not on the same level as Tokyo. The famed metropolis was well regarded as the forefront of robotics and cybernetics throughout the entire world but the invention of CREATIONS was the achievement that truly put the city into a category all of its own. Though technically possessing a robotics classification, many who’ve had the chance to see a CREATION regarded them as so life-like, it was almost as if their creator had conjured life itself….

And it was part of the reason why Haru wanted to study robotics in Tokyo; as the only robots that her hometown possessed were generic models of the Alpha and Beta-Classes. She wanted to see the daily technological wonders always taking place in Tokyo. But in truth, the real reason Haru wanted to go was because she loved to help others and repair problems. It was why she decided to study robotics and cybernetics in the first place- with the exception of her apparent talent in the field.

At first, many had viewed the cheery but ultimately clumsy brunette to be a bit of a hazard; and it wasn’t exactly a secret to Haru herself either. She could remember constantly stumbling on her impromptu runs to high school after having slept in- or when she once tripped cleaning the trash disposal unit in the classroom and ended up spilling the contents everywhere. But the moment she sat behind the small desk in her bedroom among the clutter of spare parts and tools, her once graceless movements sharpened and Haru would smile as she’d begin to skillfully repair whatever tech the residents of her hometown brought her. So, with the encouragement of Hiromi and Tsuge, she applied for various internships everywhere in Tokyo in the attempt to join someone’s Workshop team.

And it seemed that only one person was willing to give her a chance…

Walking further into the depths of Shibuya Haru gazed in amazement at the 3D holographic displays and looming skyscrapers that was a far cry from her small hometown. The streets were littered with people possessing a variety of enhancements the young woman had only seen before in adverts that managed to be broadcasted back home. Quickly shaking off her awe and hurryingly pulling out her note of directions once more, Haru began the walk away from the train station and towering skyscrapers while weaving her way through the small alleyways, the brunette teenager came to a halt once more on a rather isolated street. Glancing down once more at the paper in her hand, Haru glanced up at the sight before her with a bit of surprise.

“This… is the Bureau?” Haru spoke, looking at the old, neon green sign that flickered slightly with a smaller neon sign saying the Workshop was open beside an open doorway that was partially blocked by a dark noren curtain. Next to what was meant to be the entryway into the shop was a pair of roll-up garage doors- one of which was already lifted up to reveal the illuminated Workshop within. Tools ranging from chisels and wrenches of all sizes to a designated soldering station, making her maple-colored eyes glow with delight.

“If you don’t have any business Chicky, keep walking. This isn’t a museum.” A gruff voice sounded, causing her to jump slightly.

Standing up from beside what, to Haru’s surprise, was an AeroCycle on a hydraulic lift was probably the largest man the young woman had ever seen. He was tall and rather stout with ivory crew-cut hair and a dark stubble about his mouth and chin while dark brown eyes gave her an unimpressed stare as he crossed his arms; with the left being a robotic prosthesis baring a shade reminiscent of a dark coffee. As the man took in her short height, petite frame, and slightly disheveled ponytail; Haru only hoped he didn’t immediately send her back home based on looks alone- after all, she knew her appearance didn’t exactly scream ‘mechanic’.

“Well? Do you have business here or not Chicky?” He asked again, a hint of impatience coloring his tone.

“Sorry sir, my name is Haru Yoshioka… I’m the intern assistant you made the offer to.”

It was here a skeptical eyebrow lifted as his hands soon went to his hips. Haru mentally scrambled for a way to defend her skills should this man end up turning her away, but he only asked one question. “Can you cook?”

“…Yes?” Haru answered, still a little confused.

“Show me; head up there and make something then bring it over. We’ll talk after.” And with that said, the man returned to his work on the AeroCycle without another word.

Haru could only stare with a slightly dumbfounded expression before letting loose a soft sigh and followed his brief and general directions. Up a set of steel stairs lay a large viewing window, which oversaw the garage, and another door that lead into the living quarters that was surprisingly clean; if a bit cluttered. To the left lay a small kitchenette while the right had a simple living room and a corridor that led further into the flat. Turning to the kitchen and figuring not to keep the man who’d likely become her boss waiting, Haru was quick to fix a lunch from a hamburger steak with a fried egg on top and rice (it was either that or one of the instant ramen containers nestled in the pantry) and returned to see the stout man now talking to a customer while gesturing to the AeroCycle. “Next time learn to drive properly bird-brain.”

“And I told you before, lard-ball, it crashed during a chase!” The customer, who was dressed in a police officers’ uniform, snapped in response all the while glaring at the mechanic.

The mechanic merely grinned savagely, as if he was used to the explosive behavior from the officer. “While you were chasing what? A nearby bird.”

“As if you’re one to talk, you over-sized marshmallow. I’m surprised you can even climb the stairs to your flat without them snapping from the strain.”

“You say that again, you big chicken!”

“Umm… excuse me,” Haru spoke up, causing both men to swerve their heads to her immediately. “Is everything alright? I’ve got the lunch ready.”

“Thanks, Chicky, I’ll just take that off your hands.” The larger of the two men spoke, retrieving the succulent smelling meal with a gleam in his eyes, “and congratulations- you pass my test; welcome to The Bureau. The name’s Muta and this idiot here is Bird-Brain, a regular.”

“The name is Officer Toto Tsubame, nice to meet you and please, ignore this fatso.” Toto replied instead, bowing in greeting with a kind smile. “Are you new to the district? You are a bit young to be on your own…”

While Muta was large and hefty, Toto was his complete opposite with a slim frame and long, layered black locks tied into a small ponytail at the nape of his neck; reminding the brunette of a bird’s feathers. His skin was a tad darker than the larger mechanic and his clothes the standard dark navy-blue police uniform with the exception of knee-high shock absorption boots and a black carbon-fiber and titanium woven shirt that rested under the uniform with the cuffs rolled to his elbows. But what truly caught Haru’s attention was the unique dark-grey coloration of his eyes that she had only seen a few times before in holo-books or advertisements. “Oh wow, you have an optical upgrade on your eyes, I’ve never seen that before. That’s really cool…”

Here Toto gave a good-natured laugh, “you’re definitely new to Tokyo if this is your first time seeing something like that, but well spotted. My eyes have been altered with increased monocular vision and can see with UV and Infrared, alongside night vision. Plus, the color is a rather nice aesthetic as well- but that’s enough about me; what brings you here to the city Miss…”

“Haru. Haru Yoshioka, and it’s nice to meet you too.” She smiled, giving a bow of greeting in return. “I am here for an intern job at the Bureau. But, I’m not sure what cooking really has to do with robotics and engineering.”

Muta bit into the hamburger steak and sighed happily as he devoured the plate of food while Toto groaned at the mechanic’s table manners; or lack thereof. “I didn’t want some assistant who couldn’t take care of themselves, I’m not a babysitter. Besides, if you weren’t skilled enough to be here, I wouldn’t have offered you the job in the first place.”

“O-Oh, thank you.” Haru beamed, more than relieved that though he seemed to be rather rough and intimidating, Muta wasn’t that bad- arguing with Toto aside. “I promise I’ll do my best, and thank you for your help Moo-ta.” Haru quickly gasped, raising her hands to her mouth in horror as if attempting to prevent the words from being heard, but it was too late.

“What?! Did you just say Moo? Like I’m some kind of fat cow!”

“No, no, you’re just fat! Oh- um…”

Toto, meanwhile, had lost all pretense of professionalism and started laughing with tears of amusement threatening to spill from his eyes. “Bahahaha! Oh, you’re going to fit in here quite well with nicknames like that Haru. I’m definitely going to be using that one.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up bird-brain.” Muta grumbled, glaring at the still chuckling policeman, “and you Chicky- you got anything to say for yourself or to me, your boss?”

Haru gave a nervous smile, “I’m sorry Muta, it really did slip out. Would you accept an Insta-Pudding with my apology?”

The ivory-haired man stared down at her with an irritated look before sighing, “make it an Angel Cake from Osono’s bakery down the street, and we’re even.”

“Coming right up!” The young woman chimed before quickly making her way toward the aforementioned bakery.

Toto and Muta both watched her leave with the former giving a thoughtful hum, “Yoshioka huh? I don’t suppose she wouldn’t happen to be related to Hayata Yoshioka, would she?”

“His daughter apparently, if you’re that curious. And she’s only a few good years younger than you and me, idiot.” Muta answered, releasing the AeroCycle from the hydraulic lift while wiping the oil and grease from his hands. “I didn’t know he had a kid, and thought the name was just a coincidence till I saw the resume file Haru and her friends sent me. She was apparently fixing Alpha-class mechs at 11 years old.”

Toto gave an impressed whistle, “well, she’s certainly her father’s daughter if that’s the case.”

"I thought that too, but it was the fact that she has no personal cyber-enhancements that really sealed the deal." Muta added, that information causing the slim police officer to splutter in shock. "So I thought ‘why not?’ and decided to give her a shot; and it wasn’t like I was going to turn down the help- so here we are. But the fact that she can cook is a definite bonus.”

“Do you ever not think from your stomach?”

“Shut up, bird-brain!”

Toto sighed, “well, just try to keep an eye on her, alright? Not everything is exactly safe here, so if you ever need anything give me a call.”

“Thanks… you big chicken,” Muta answered before giving a devious grin and holding out his hand. “Now for the repairs, that’ll be 3,500 credits.”

“What?! That’s daylight robbery!”

“Is that so? And here I was giving you the ‘Friends and Family’ discount. But if you would rather pay full-price, who am I to deny you that.”

By the time Haru returned to the Workshop, she could hear Toto and Muta starting to argue once more and was glad she decided to buy two cakes in order to pacify both parties. Though slightly nervous about her new job, Haru couldn't help the feeling of joy at the upcoming work ahead of her.

#the cat returns #haru yoshioka #baron humbert von gikkingen #renaldo moon #toto (cat returns)#haru x baron #cyberpunk au #android au #there will be angst later #fanfiction #my writing #other characters and plot to appear later

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soulcluster-moved · 2 years

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@linchxpin Caregiver for Adam, Inventor for Gamora, Teacher for Baron, and. uhh. Witness for Drax? jfiea that ended up being a lot of marvel sorry wheezes

C - Caregiver - How do they give/receive care best? Do they care for everyone or just a small number of people? How do they react to someone in need?

Adam is definitely more a giver in regards to care. If he sees someone in need, he will jump in and help without much regard (I was just reading some pages where the narrative makes fun of him for it too lol) and most often his help comes in the physical variety. Taking care of a problem through his strength or powers. It takes him a long time to understand more emotional needs and it’s not until....like waaaay later in the comics that he actually displays more emotional intelligence.

He’ll also care for any number of people. There’s a neat, small run where he comes across some people on a planet being manipulated by a ‘god’ and he basically ousts this figure and frees the people. He has a very debilitating need for responsibility that he takes onto himself, and that has interfered with his personal relationships.

I - Inventor - How creative is their thinking? Do they seek out the opinions of others or rely on their own ideas? What’s their problem solving approach?

On the battlefield, Gamora is certainly creative. With that she has no issue. Her problem solving approach is, more often than not, violent. Even outside of battle. When it comes to non-battle problems, she still ends up...blunt with her method? It depends on how emotional the topic can make her. The more emotional she is, the more her argument is likely to fall apart. Her solution to learn info from Quill was to tie him up in a chair and force it out of him, and that was about Thanos.

Other than that, she does learn over time to rely on the other Guardians for planning and likes working with them. There was one notable moment where she used her regen effect to do something to save the team, and that hurt her badly but she was counting on her ability to bounce back. She’s not afraid to sacrifice for the team but she’s also used to suffering so I feel that definitely relates to how she chooses her problem solving methods.

T - Teacher - How often do they have to teach others? How do they go about it? How do they learn best? Do they dive in first and reflect later or study the theory of something new before putting it into practice?

I would say he doesn’t have the opportunity to teach often. Muta and Toto have minds of their own and often just do what they want, when they’re not bickering anyway. If he did though, he’d be a very patient teacher and probably rely more on showing vs telling, or even guiding just enough that they can put the pieces together themselves (I feel like he does this a bit with Haru?)

Baron himself is adaptable with learning, but I think his preferred method is to study first and then put into practice. He’s not afraid to dive in headfirst if he needs to, and it tends to work out as he’s good at thinking on his feet, but he enjoys being able to learn and study at his own pace. Life just has a lot to offer and there’s so much for him to experience.

W - Witness - What do they consider the best thing they have ever seen? What would they most like to see in their life?

The best thing is either...Yvette on their wedding day, or the day Heather was born, it’s hard for him to pick. He has so few memories of his human life and he tries to hold onto these moments.

And he’d most like to see...Heather lol He just wants to see her happy. He’s seen all sorts of views in the universe, different planes of existence, aspects of the universe taking shape in Eternity, Infinity, and others, so many different planets, but nothing is going to beat his family.

#hc: adam warlock #hc: gamora #hc: baron #hc: drax #answered #linchxpin #WHY ARE YOU APOLOGIZING ASLKJDASD #every day i am here crying about my marvels #ur so kind #tysm

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typewriterghcst · 3 years

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Title: A Very Small Wish Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Baron, Muta, Toto, Haru, plus some OCs Rating: PGish maybe?? Summary: A pleading request from a parent whose daughter has been cursed by a resentful witch is nothing truly out of the ordinary for the Cat Bureau— in fact, it might be so common so as to be routine— so why does something feel inherently off about this particular one? Notes: Fourth chapter of seven of a Secret Santa gift for @deedee-sunflowers. As mentioned on ao3, I split up the fourth chapter, so consider this something of an intermission! And I’m sorry it took me all the way until the fourth chapter to finally get to the ‘witch’ part of the prompt rip I also had neglected to apologize before now for the lack of romance. I hope that’s not a deal breaker orz I tend to gravitate toward gen, and that held true for this story, unfortunately, aha

Ch. 4: Grandmother

By the time the errant inhabitants of the Sown Forest are put back where they belong, a few mishaps aside, and the Bureau and Haru make their way back to Vanya’s spot, any disquiet he’d been on the verge of verbalizing is long gone. He greets them with an expected cheeriness, almost shyly giving Baron’s hat back to him.

...Were he not seemingly incapable of such an emotion, that is. In truth, he is dangerously close to instead offering the Creation a remarkably potent example of ‘bedroom eyes’ as he hands the accessory over.

Perhaps in a polite attempt to distract from such a reaction, Baron asks, “Which direction is the— ah, what did you call them? The Top-Top? Will it take us long to reach our destination?”

“If we go, we will reach it,” Vanya responds nonchalantly.

Well, it doesn’t take long at all for that answer to rankle Muta’s nerves enough for him to protest.

“...Yanno, you’re pretty mouthy for something that’s about a foot tall.”

“Let’s not idle,” Baron cuts in as politely as he’s able, giving Muta a discerning look where Vanya can not see. “Time is against us, and, as previously detailed, we ought to shave off as much unnecessary labor as we possibly can in our endeavors. Mr. Vanya,” he starts, turning to the fox, “This is your home, and you know the ins and outs of the environment much more thoroughly than we do. We will follow your direction.”

“I’m still gonna complain when it doesn’t make sense, though,” Muta grumbles from the side.

“With your comprehension skills? That’s going to be a lot of complaining,” Toto is swift to remark.

“At least I’m not a birdbrain!”

“That is Oostal, though!” Vanya chirps, having clapped his paws together a few times in delight while listening to the two bicker. Then, thoughtfully, “There is a caravan that accepts passengers. It will take us to the Top-Top.”

“It’s too far to walk?”

“No,” Vanya chirrups again, scampering away and waving for the four of them to follow him shortly after. They share a dubious look with each other before complying, leaving the tidy border of the Sown Forest behind them.

When Haru turns to look just moments later out of nothing more than muted curiosity, she finds that the orderly line of white trees which made up the framework of the forest are no more than faint outlines, like a particularly abstract watercolor painting or a distant cityscape through rain-dotted glass. Seeing also that she’s let a fairly substantial gap form between her and the others even as Muta pauses to let her catch up (having noticed her absence), she jogs forward to continue beside him, putting the oddity out of her mind.

&&&

The roving carriage that Vanya leads them to is, like many things in Oostal, not so terribly outlandish so as to be wholly alien, but still just enough to feel… unfamiliar.

It’s at once delicate and rusted, another relic of Oostal’s ostensible fading vitality, or perhaps of its apparent age, two rows of seating enveloped in a velvety but threadbare and stained layer of scarlet cloth. What had likely once been quite a pretty canopy stretched over the back of it now lies in ragged gauze hanging from bent and dainty posts. The creaking of its wearied joints and wheels echo throughout the air as it rolls stubbornly over the landscape.

There are no horses. Nor is there an apparent driver. More than that, there’s no apparent motor attached to it (and had there been, it would have been the most traditionally technologically advanced object in Oostal the Bureau had yet seen). Yet Vanya is forced to break into a modest jog to catch up to the thing, and it still doesn’t stop in its implacable journey even when he manages to gallop alongside it and clear its side.

“It’s easy!” He calls to them once he’s settled in the back of the wagon.

Amusingly, simply gaining a passenger, even one so minuscule as Vanya, seems to slow the carriage, enough so that it’s little more than a meager sprint the Bureau must employ to catch up. And the addition of four more passengers results in it coming to a momentary stop; then, with all the weary resignation of a browbeaten beast of burden, it circles back around in the direction it had just come, and they are again on their way. At least, Haru assumes they are.

She notices Baron open his mouth and almost immediately close it again, looking faintly discomfited with something, and to herself she hazards a very plausible guess that it was most likely to ask how long the journey might take them.

They’ve all gathered by now that Vanya’s grasp of the passage of time is… tenuous, to say the least. It’s not an entirely comfortable handicap, considering.

So, as a rather roundabout way to procure an answer, Toto instead asks, “Would you advise getting comfortable, Vanya?”

Vanya wastes no time in flopping down into a sitting position at the edge of the base, tail twitching contentedly. “It won’t hurt!”

“So, when were you gonna tell us about that whole ‘spend too long in the forest and you can’t leave’ bit?” Muta asks sourly in the proceeding silence.

“We weren’t going to be there that long,” Vanya sniffs.

Muta appears unsurprisingly unsatisfied with this answer, and he stares the fox down for a good minute before the lack of reaction from Vanya leads to him giving up the ghost for the time being and figuratively throwing his paws in the air.

“Whatever. I deserve a nap. Don’t talk to me until we get there.”

Vanya surreptitiously turns up his nose, but otherwise doesn’t respond, and Muta wanders a short distance away to the driver’s seat, where he quickly plonks into a sleeping position with his back turned to the rest of them. Baron, having watched this show of exasperation with a small measure of knowing affection, then turns that same half-crooked smile to Vanya, this time with a faint edge of sympathy.

“...Well, if there’s room for rest—”

“A short rest,” Vanya clarifies, back to his earlier agreeable tone.

“A short rest, then— I believe I’ll take advantage of it, as well. Don’t hesitate to let us know when we’ve arrived.”

“It’ll be obvious.”

Baron nods once in acknowledgement before moving to join Muta in the front seat. The indistinct, murmuring conversation they begin shortly after is quick to fade into the ambient noise of the laboring of their current mode of transport.

Toto seems content to remain where he is, perched upon one of the velvety seats lined along the side. Haru sits across from him on the opposite row of seats.

“Not to sound skeptical or ungrateful, Vanya, but it’s awfully convenient that this carriage is so willing to take us to our next destination. Does Oostal have a lot of secrets like this?” Toto starts.

“Yes,” Vanya doesn’t hesitate to answer. Then, more thoughtfully, “...or, maybe no.”

He leans back a little and stretches, and when he continues, there’s a certain impassively dazed quality in his voice, “...The Muta Cat complains a lot about Oostal. He wants Oostal to make sense, but Oostal wasn’t made that way. It is what it is.”

“Don’t fret too much about Muta,” Toto says with a dismissive wave of his wing. “He’s just grumpy because we didn’t bring enough snacks.”

Vanya gives an amused-sounding hum.

“...also, out of curiosity, why are we using it anyhow?” The crow pats one of the cushions under him with a talon. “At least, since it’s not too far to walk.”

“Hmm, because it makes it easier.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“Because sitting down is easier than walking,” Vanya replies with a glib obliviousness, the sincerity of which Haru finds she can’t quite discern one way or the other.

Toto, at least, only laughs. “I guess you have me there.”

“It seemed like it was already on its way somewhere, though,” Haru then begins, and the oddness inherent in this ostensibly sentient carriage is not at all lost on her, though she neglects to address it specifically. “Where was it going before we, er… commandeered it..?”

“Nobody knows,” Vanya explains blithely. “Always on a journey Somewhere, though. We just let it roam, because it never stops.”

He pats the faded wooden base under him, almost affectionately.

“Maybe it will finally sit down and sleep when it gets There. In the meantime, it takes you anywhere you wish.”

For a fleeting moment, Haru thinks to ask how the wagon knows the way to all these locations, but she’s by now gathered that, however it works, locations in Oostal do not exist in the same way they do on Earth (or, indeed, in her general understanding of how such things exist). She has often liked to think of herself as being a natural with directions, and yet has consistently felt lost in Oostal (the inherent disorientation seemingly built into the Sown Forest notwithstanding).

She watches Vanya kick his dangling feet for a few minutes, and then moves from her seat to sit beside him.

“I haven’t asked yet, but I’m curious, Vanya—” She eventually starts. “What is the witch like? Does she have a name?”

Vanya seems happy enough to answer, long tail thumping once against the worn base of the carriage and one tiny paw going to his chin in thought. “We call her Grandmother.”

“Grandmother?” Toto sounds profoundly amused, and Haru can’t blame him.

“She’s given us no other name. We came up with our own, and I think she likes it. It is a very affectionate name.”

“Yeah, it is. From her antics, I would have expected her to have a more… um, nefarious name. Definitely not something so casual.” Then, after a moment of further deliberation, “Is she really a grandmother?”

Vanya emits his pealing laugh again, flapping one of his paws. “She is a witch! She has no family. She has lived almost as long as Oostal itself!”

“Th-That long? How old is Oostal..?”

“Old,” Vanya responds unhelpfully, as per usual. Haru is abruptly reminded of Muta’s earlier assertion of the same, back when they’d been searching through the Sown Forest.

“...I see.” Haru glances out at the rolling scenery— a golden sky streaked with teal blue, long, pearlescent grasses that wave in the breeze, and dark water in the distance. It’s beautiful, scenery unlike anything she’s seen before, and so blissfully dreamlike. Then, seemingly just as soon as she’d expressed her appreciation, it all shifts in an instant. It’s seamless, but… indescribably disorienting, how the colors and shapes of their surroundings suddenly melt away into something new.

The sky now is dark, clear of clouds or gold or teal-colored streaks. The gentle hills and their shimmering grasses vanish; all around them the landscape has flattened. Like the Sown Forest, the horizon stretches on so far so as to be near unfathomable. And despite the fact they had previously been traveling uphill and are now incomprehensibly rolling across a flat surface without reaching the top of the hill, there had been no crash downwards, the transition from hills to plains as unremarkable as the one from their surroundings.

If Haru spends too long questioning it, her head will start hurting, she knows it.

“I’m no expert on witches,” Toto starts behind them, “But I’ve always heard many of them have an unassuming object which serves as a source of power for them, nefarious or not. In fact, I recall one which had hidden her soul inside a flower. Does Grandmother have one..? It isn’t often I hear of mischievous witches who also happen to be very graceful losers, after all.”

“Mm, a source of her power, maybe not, but Grandmother is the sole proprietor of a very curious book,” Vanya answers. “It’s the only one of its kind, and no one quite knows just how she came to be the owner of it.”

“Oh? And what sort of book is this mysterious tome..?” Toto asks.

Vanya gives a questioning, thoughtful noise, twisting a little to look at the crow as he does. “It is like an address book. Every creature that now lives in Oostal, or once has— its name is written in that book. Its real name, that is.”

It’s here Toto tilts his head, and his eyes, to Haru, sharpen just so, not so abruptly so as to cause alarm or suspicion, but noticeably for someone who has become more accustomed to his mannerisms. When he speaks, it’s with a marked delicateness.

“...I imagine such a book would be quite coveted.”

“Oh, yes.”

It’s when they pass through a broken iron gate that Vanya suddenly stands, dusting off his hands and sides excitedly before pointing out in the distance behind the two of them (Haru has to crane her neck to see what’s got his attention; as she does, she sees that Toto is following suit, as well).

“There it is! The ruined workshop of the Top-Top. Once home to the finest crafters of decorative eggs in all of Oostal.”

Haru, again feeling the faintest veneer of old destruction and deterioration lingering over yet another Oostal location, gazes up at the looming structure, overgrown with red ivy and moss, and the deteriorating gate they’d just rolled through, and then asks, “...What happened to the Top-Top?”

“Nobody is quite sure,” Vanya answers blithely; his own eyes never leave the dilapidated factory, and Haru gets quite the impression that where she sees the echoes of a lamentable catastrophe, he sees something quite different. “It happened overnight, and by the time there were explorers doughty enough to traverse the city, there were no remains to tell the story.”

“That’s a sad story,” Haru says.

“Mm! Sad! It’s an enduring mystery, all right. Virtuous Siree is obsessed with it. Oh! There— on the side, there’s an entrance. That was for their clients.” Vanya hops over the side of the carriage with such speed, he’s little more than a wispy, white blur. Haru slides off the back end to follow him, sharing a — look with Toto before she sees that Vanya has been joined a short ways away by Baron and Muta.

“There will be many eggs inside,” Vanya is explaining.

“So, what, we just go in and grab one that looks good..?” Muta asks with a shrug.

“Were you paying attention to the original riddle at all?” Toto replies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“It means not just any egg will do, Hairball Brain. From the sounds of it, we’re looking for one that never had the chance to be decorated. Isn’t that right, Vanya?”

Something in Vanya’s expression appears lightly annoyed, as if he feels Toto had rather upstaged him and his no doubt theatrical reveal of the answer to this particular stanza of the witch’s riddle.

“That’s right,” he answers, but his clipped tone at least doesn’t last. He laughs again, though, clapping his paws together once. “A bird should know his eggs, shouldn’t he? Here, follow me.”

&&&

If the outside of the old factory had looked desolate and crumbling, then the inside only furthers the aesthetic— peeling wallpaper, overturned furniture, thick, dusty cobwebs. The air is stale, cold. And unlike the Sown Forest, there is no persistent ambient noise to temper the silence. There are, however, hundreds (if not thousands) of tiny eggs scattered across every surface. They litter the floor. Some of them appear to have been dropped and now lie in shattered slivers across the stone flooring.

...Not one of them, from what they can see by the door, has been decorated.

“Wa— hold on, how are we supposed to tell which one is the right one..?”

“We take them all!” Vanya responds brightly.

“You can’t be serious,” Haru starts.

“I’m not.” He scampers to a nearby cluster of eggs and swipes one, holding it out to the rest of them so that they can more easily discern the thin seam along the middle. Then, when he’s certain they’ve all four seen it, Vanya takes both paws and… gently pries it open much like a jewelry box.

“Oh!” Haru responds with breathy awe. “It’s beautiful!”

In contrast to its plain, unadorned outside, the inside of the egg boasts a vibrant green coating, whitish gold lining an overlapping shell pattern in dainty filaments. The same gleaming platinum is present just below the egg’s seam, forming a tiny floor, upon which rests a minuscule, lace-clad mouse carved from something that resembles ivory.

“It reminds me of a music box,” Haru continues softly.

“Mm! ...But not every egg here is like this. One of them must be unlovely both inside and out.”

“It’s just a little plain, that’s all,” Haru feels oddly compelled to counter.

Muta, on the other hand, appears to have singled out a different issue in the present discussion.

“...so, the plan is to just… open every single egg here and hope one doesn’t have some glitzy trinket in it? How are we supposed to do that in just— how long do we have left..?”

“Somewhere around 28 hours,” Baron says.

“In just 25 hours! Look at all these things— there’s gotta be an easier way..!”

“There is, but…” Vanya appears rather uncharacteristically abashed, paws linked behind his back and stance nearly cringing inward.

“But..?” Muta prompts warily.

“You can not be upset with me! It had to be done!”

“Mr. Vanya,” Baron starts with measured patience. “Please, we are here to assist you and your daughter— there is no need to keep secrets. What is the faster method you know of?”

Appeased, the fox clasps his paws together and then opens them again, revealing a modest handful of the scarlet-colored berries from the Sown Forest.

It doesn’t take long for the pieces to fall into place.

“It was you! You’re the reason those things all turned on us!”

“I was promised there would be no upset!” Vanya cries, apparently deeming Baron the least likely to condemn him, as he quite swiftly scurries behind the Creation, only peeking out to yelp his defense. “Pretty Vanya happened across a berry bush while running to meet the others! It couldn’t hurt to have extras! What if something happened to the one the Helpful Bureau was given?”

“Cut the crap, twerp, you picked them up because you knew we’d need them to make this egg hunt easier,” Muta argues. “Why else would you have worried we’d get mad at you, like it was your fault?!”

Vanya doesn’t respond, but the way his eyes widen in apparent consternation, and the vulnerable, searching look he directs to the four of them says that he hadn’t expected to get caught in one of his own fibs. Even Baron, ever the charitable gentleman, displays some misgiving as he stares at the fox cowering behind him.

“...There do appear to be a number of details you’ve neglected to advise us of, Mr. Vanya,” he eventually agrees softly.

Feeling evidently betrayed by this quiet admonishment from Even Baron, Vanya backs away from the four of them, glancing rapidly between them all again and giving the impression he’s quite frantically running through all his options in his mind. Perhaps predictably, he settles on… well, what they’ve all come to expect as the usual.

“It has been a long time!” He cries, hiding his face in his scarf. “Little Virtuous Siree has spent so long being the way she is now! I wanted a surefire way to gain Helpful Bureau’s assistance, and fast! A time limit, I thought, was the easiest way to do it. The Pretty Vanya Creature is not so devious!”

“Th… that’s it?” Haru pauses. “I guess that explains the time measurements always being off.”

“And the speed of the riddle being solved,” Toto adds. “You must have been working on this for a while, Vanya.”

Muta seems unconvinced, but reluctantly so. “Are you really telling me that a witch not only gave you no restrictions about getting outside help but also didn’t slap down a time limit on you? Eh, look, I’m not trying to be that guy, but that just seems real careless to me, specially for a witch.”

Vanya only cries more loudly.

“Now, now,” Baron starts, offering his own handkerchief to the fox. “It is understandable why you’d feel the need to fabricate this, er, half-truth, but I do promise you, it’s not necessary. We of the Cat Bureau are quite happy to offer our assistance to you in a timely fashion, Mr. Vanya, legitimate time limit or not. And I do hope you will, here on out, feel comfortable placing your complete trust in us.”

Vanya’s black eyes, always rather stark against the pale ivory of his fur, shine now as if they’ve been dusted with glitter as he regards Baron with his paws clasped.

“Yes, yes! The Prettiest Vanya Creature promises— from here, no more fibs.”

“Good.” Baron responds with an obliging nod.

“Alright,” Toto agrees, as well, before continuing, “These berries you picked up at our last location, though— they’re going to help us find the right egg in a quicker fashion? How’s that?”

“We eat them,” Vanya answers bluntly, miming the motion of popping one of the little berries in his mouth.

A reluctant uneasiness settles over the group, then. Their eccentric client has just promised to abandon his exaggerations and falsehoods, and Haru, personally, thinks to herself she’s never been the type to rebuff a genuine apology, but… So, too, does she think this feels like an awfully monumental amount of trust to place in someone so fickle so soon.

“Eat them…” Toto echoes pensively, softly.

“...They don’t taste gross, do they?” Muta asks, unimpressed.

“Hmm, I don’t know. There are no records kept in Oostal about the taste of the Sown Forest berries. So few people have had them!”

“Well,” Baron starts, again the voice of optimism, “If, even though there have been but a handful of pioneers who have tried this particular curiosity, it hasn’t yet gained a reputation as an anathema, then I believe it should be taken as a sign of favorable fortune. No news is good news, as some might say.”

“Bet they said the same thing about enemas,” Muta grumbles under his breath.

Vanya holds his own little red berry above his head, as if attempting to see the light pass through the opaque sphere, and smiles at it in the same way a mother might her stumbling toddler. “They are very special, like most sacred things. And because of that, they allow those who have been gifted with them a most impressive temporary ability.”

“Oh, yeah? And what ability is that..?”

Vanya smiles at Muta, distracted from the fruit. “To see to the heart of anything.”

“Ah,” Baron says with an acknowledging nod, “Like the Lubov, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“Well…” Muta sighs, interrupting the silence that settles seconds after. “Bottoms up, I guess.”

Finally, with one last tentative look between the four of them, they all take the proverbial plunge.

#the cat returns #secret santa #three fics in two days???? is this madness???#fjfjkd;a

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catsafarithewriter · 4 years

Text

Day 6: Midnight Snack

A/N: This was inspired by a conversation with @wolfiethewriter about potentially how much Baron really knew about human habits, and how easily he’d be to fool. (Also late again... but

The first impression most folk had upon meeting Baron was usually cat.

The second impression, after realising this tiny, well-dressed feline was capable of speech and wielded his words with significant eloquence was normally gentlemen.

Most people didn’t progress past this point, which worked well in Baron’s favour because the third impression commonly veered off into chaos territory.

Haru was on her ninth impression.

This stage consisted of speed running past past words such as infallible, charming, and emotionally constipated, and boomeranging back into the early stages in a messy amalgamation of chaotic gentleman cat Creation.

The overall outcome was the realisation that while Baron was indeed a gentleman and an immortal Creation, he was also substantially under-experienced when it came to the human experience, and also was not immune to laser pointers.

And while the latter was a tendency that Haru would occasionally indulge for her own amusement (so far the list of banned Bureau items involved not only laser pointers, but also wind-up mice, chalk, and suspiciously-empty boxes), Muta was far more drawn to the former trait.

As such, sometimes there were weird moments in the Bureau.

(Not weird as in abnormal - in a Bureau dedicated to dealing with magic, the supernatural was practically natural - but just gently odd.)

For instance, being woken at 11:45pm by a soft tapping at the door.

Haru rolled over and surveyed the room that was definitely not her room for several long, belaboured moments, before groggily recalling the events of the day before.

Right.

The case.

The nightmare case.

The case involving personified nightmares and physical dreams and had been the reason she had slept in the spare bedroom the Sanctuary had spontaneously produced for her use.

That case.

She stared up at the speckled ceiling and tried to align her unexpected sleepover with the knocking at her door.

It wasn’t the frenzied oh-dear-god-the-monsters-have-found-us hammering, nor the apologetic excuse-me-but-you-left-the-dishes-in-the-sink rapping, but it was unfailingly polite. It was, in nature, the same tone that flight hostesses give when they wake you up for your paid airborne meal at 5am.

She almost would have preferred monsters.

She rolled out of the bed, grabbing the dressing gown that the Sanctuary had thoughtfully provided, and lumbered to the door.

“Wassup?”

Baron, infuriatingly bright-eyed at ridiculous hours of the night and apparently confused as to why Haru didn’t share that trait, offered what was probably a winning smile at any other time of day. “Miss Haru, food is ready.”

Haru blinked.

Then she blinked again for good measure.

When it became quite apparent that she wasn’t dreaming and Baron was indeed there and informing her about food, she mustered up all the eloquence she could manage in her sleep-addled brain, and said, “What?”

The winning smile only slightly faltered. “Muta warned me that after the chaos of the previous case, you may not feel up to macks, but he’s previously made it quite clear how important of a meal it is for mortals, so it’ll do you good to eat.”

Haru squinted through the haze of midnightitis and decided these kinds of hijinks were the reason she didn’t sleep over at the Bureau. Her mind eventually settled on the words that she had understood, even if the direction of the whole sentence had escaped her. “You’re asking...” she fumbled, “for me to come with you at...” she checked, “11:53pm, for food?”

“That seems to be the gist of it, yes.”

She stared at him, swaying slightly in the doorway. ”Sure. Why not?” She yawned and pulled the dressing gown tighter. “Lead the way, mah... messtro... maestro.”

The first signs of reconsideration flittered across Baron’s face. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I’m awake now. Kinda too late for second guessing.” She tucked her arm into his, partly for the intimacy, but mostly because she didn’t trust herself to find her own way to the kitchen.

A few more of her mental facilities had come back online by the time they reached the main heart of the Sanctuary, enough for Haru to fully appreciate the extensive spread of food laid out before her.

“Wow, this is... this is a lot,” Haru stammered. Geez, I’d forgotten how the Bureau never does anything by halves. “I mean, a cold meat spread and everything? Grilled cheese? Sticky rice? Why...? How...?”

“We thought you might need a proper macks after the day you’ve had.”

“...What?”

“Well, during the nightmare case, you barely had a chance to rest, let alone eat--”

“No, no, I got that. Well,” Haru amended, “I see your logic. Macks?” She wondered whether the Sanctuary translation magic was having another off day. “Is that... Is that a Creation thing?” Except Creations didn’t need to eat, so that didn’t really make any sense...

“Oh, maybe I’m not saying it right,” Baron hemmed. “Macks: the last meal of the day, originating from the tradition of eating the leftover food before the new day. A portmanteau of ‘midnight’ and ‘snacks’.” He looked at her expectantly as if that explained everything.

If anything, Haru was left even more flummoxed. The way he spoke was that of a dictionary definition, but it was no word she had ever heard. Maybe the Sanctuary really had tapped out for the night. “Okay, but I’ve never heard of...”

Across the room, Muta suddenly furiously gestured for her to derail that sentence.

Oh.

Well. Now it all made sense.

“...never heard of grilled cheese for macks,” Haru weakly finished. “Excuse me, I always take a turn around the garden before macks; Muta, please join me.” And without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Muta’s arm and hauled him out into the Sanctuary courtyard.

She waited until the door had swung solidly behind her before starting what was looking to be a very enlightening conversation.

“Muta,” she said, her arm tightly curled around his arm despite her deceptively light tone, “is it my sleep-deprived brain talking, or have you managed to con Baron and Toto into believing that midnight snacks are a legit meal?”

“Yeah, in hindsight this kinda got out of paw.”

“Kinda?”

“Look, Baron caught me snacking one night, so I lied and made up macks to get him off my back--”

“And he believed you?”

“Keep it down, Chicky; do ya want them to hear? And... eh, at first I think he just let it go. But then he started putting away the leftover food to remove temptation, so I showed him it was a real word.”

“It’s not a real word.”

Muta smirked. “It is if you edit Baron’s dictionary.”

“How...?”

“You’d be amazed what yer can do with a printer, glue, and far too much time.”

“You don’t have a printer,” Haru pointed out.

“The library does.”

Haru digested this as they circled the far end of the courtyard. “Muta, have you been sneaking into the library at night?”

“Maybe?”

“Oh my god, you’re why everyone thinks it’s haunted.”

“It is.”

Haru’s mouth clattered shut for several seconds. “Oh no, I did not need to know that.”

“Yer stuff a load of dead trees into one building, yer bound to get spirits following after, like bogeymen and ghouls--”

“Stop talking. Just... stop.”

Aware that they were returning back in the direction of the Bureau, and that too many circuits would rouse suspicion in their companions, Haru attempted to wrangle the conversation back on to relevant territory.

“You know he’s going to figure it out eventually.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be today, does it, Chicky? I’ve got a good thing going here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She made a show of tilting her head in the impression of deep thought. “I don’t know how I feel about being an accessory to your lies.”

“How about one secret for another, then?” Muta offered. “I won't tell him your secret if you don’t tell him mine.”

“You don’t know any of my secrets.”

“I know you’re the one who ate the last of his birthday cake.”

Haru froze. “You have no proof.”

“I found the crumbs on your scarf.”

“Okay, but it was really good sponge cake and I was hungry and suffering from cramps!”

“So we’ve got a deal?”

Haru narrowed her eyes. “Is this what it feels like to be blackmailed?”

“This ain’t blackmail, this is mutually beneficial shutting-up.”

“You’re skating on thin ice, buddy.”

“Just play along for this one night and I promise Baron’ll never know it was you who stole the cake.”

“Only the last slice,” Haru muttered, but she steered them both back into the Bureau, where ‘macks’ was still spread across the table. She had to admit, it did look delicious, and her stomach gave an agreeing rumble. “Well, I feel better for that midnight constitution,” she said jollily, grabbing a seat and pulling herself in. “Don’t you, Muta?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“Mmmm, smacks, my favourite meal of the night.”

Baron gave her a strange look, and Haru wondered if she was laying the enthusiasm on a bit thick. Then, “You mean macks, don’t you?”

“...Yes?”

Another searching look. She could see the gears whirring through his mind as he put two and two together and realised he had been duped. Then he pointedly retrieved his dictionary and flipped it open to what Haru presumed was the ‘M’ section.

“Mackem... mackerel... mackintosh... macks...” His finger caught something on the page, and Haru saw the edge of paper curl, dried glue giving up its secrets as he peeled the addition away. “And look, here’s ‘mackle,’ mysteriously hidden beneath the definition for ‘macks’. How peculiar.” He looked up. “Don’t you think, Muta?”

“I... Uh... Haru ate the last of your birthday cake!”

“MUTA!” Haru gasped. “You said you wouldn’t tell!”

“Hey, Chicky, my secret’s out, so so’s yours.”

“You...” Haru felt herself redden and she threw a hand in his direction. “Muta was the one who broke the teapot!”

“She forgot to water your plants last summer and replaced all of them so you wouldn't notice!”

“He brought home the cursed chopping board that nearly ate the Bureau!”

“She’s the one who hid the laser pointer!”

“He got himself employed by a Cat Kingdom smuggling ring!”

“Yeah, well, she...” Muta floundered. “She’s in love with you!”

“WE’RE ALREADY DATING!” Haru roared back.

There was a long, long pause.

“Wait,” Toto interrupted, who had been happily watching the proceedings until then. “What? Since when?”

“Uh...”

“You’ve been dating in secret and didn’t tell us?”

Haru glanced to Baron. “Um, a little help here?”

“A moment, please.” Baron was flicking through the dictionary, apparently entirely oblivious to the turn the conversation had taken. He frowned. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that second breakfast isn’t a thing either?”

“Not unless you’re a hobbit,” Haru replied. She glanced to Muta with a ‘exactly how far did you take this?’ look before returning her attention to Baron. “Um, just how many meals of the day do you think there are?”

“Is the number in the double digits?”

“...No.”

Baron’s face took on a funny sort of expression, his whiskers twitching and his nose wrinkling. “MUTA!”

#tcr birthday bash #tcr birthday bash 2020 #the cat returns #the cat queues #day 6 midnight snack #also I maaaaay have borrovved the 'shouting secrets at each other' thing from FRIENDS #unintentionally #a ficlet in which muta has been scamming baron with fake meals for years #and haru finally accidentally brings it all crashing dovvn #I mostly wanted the 'second breakfast isn't a thing either' realisation #eveyrone's in trouble today #apart from toto #although toto technically knew or suspected that mtua was lying #but kinda wanted to see hovv far it would go #also the 'go walking' bit is probably the jane austen shovving

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skullsandfairylights · 5 years

Text

Writer’s Month 2019

Day 26: Trope Prompt: wedding

Life for Haru after her adventure in the Cat Kingdom, was very normal. After saying goodbye to her friends at the Bureau, Haru returned home to her normal life, with a few adjustments. Her adventure allowed her to mature, allowed her to accept her responsibilities, allowed her to grow up and take more control of her life. She continued to play lacrosse – the team was really well equipped after selling off some of the spare sticks – and she continued to spend her free time with friends.

She got on with her life and let her adventure fade back into her memories.

At least until one night, more than half a year later.

She had just finished practice for the night and was on her way home when she began to get the feeling that she was being followed. She felt a gaze on her back as she wound through the streets. Glancing behind her, she saw nothing. Just the dark alleyways and empty streets illuminated by streetlights. Seeing this, she powered on, focusing on the path ahead while also listening closely for anything behind her.

The feeling followed her all the way back to her house and only vaguely subsided when she made it inside. Haru greeted her mother who was busy, working away at another quilt, and went to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. She pulled her mother away from her work just long enough to have a cup of tea each and share the day’s events.

It was only when Haru retired to her bedroom that she figured out what was causing the feeling. There, sitting on her pillow was an elegant, cream-coloured envelope with golden accents. A cool breeze blew in from the open window.

Haru was written in calligraphy on the envelope. The young girl gently pulled the parchment free.

“Dearest Haru,

We hope that this finds you well. Since your visit to the Cat Kingdom, we are please to inform you that the King has announced his intention to relinquish the throne to Prince Lune in the coming months. However, we have decided to celebrate our union before this happens and as such, we would be honoured if you would accept our invitation to the wedding. It would mean the world to us both if you attended.

After previous events, we would completely understand if you do not feel it wise to attend but please rest assured, that if you agree to come, then you will be treated as our most honoured guest. We shall do everything within our power to ensure your safety. You are also welcome to secure any precautions of your own. Anything which would allow you to feel safe enough to join in our celebrations.

An attendant shall be on call to receive your decision, whenever you are ready.

With all of our love,

Prince Lune and Yuki”

Haru pulled the invitation to her chest as she felt the tears in her eyes. The memories which had faded into the background all came bursting forward. She could feel the warm sunlight in the field from when she first arrived with Muta. She could feel the secure weight of the ball gown she was given to wear. She could smell the food from the feast. She could feel the strong reassurance as Baron had taken her hand – paw – and swept her round and round the ballroom. She felt the rushing of wind through her hair as she walked on a staircase of birds back to her regular life. She felt the acute pain in her chest that one feels when they lose a friend.

She missed Yuki and Prince Lune. She wanted nothing more than to attend their wedding. But the idea of the King being there made her nervous, she didn’t quite trust him.

But there was someone that she did trust. And she expected that, to get his help, all she had to do was ask.

Tap tap!

Haru startled and spun around to face her bedroom window. There, peering in through the glass, was a familiar feline face. A small paw came up and tapped again on the window. Haru rushed over and opened the latch, allowing the small cat to scurry inside.

“Miss Haru, wonderful to see you again!”

“And you, Natoru.” Haru greeted, bowing slightly. Then she paused, “You’re not going to ‘cat’-nap me again, are you?”

“Oh, no, not at all, Miss Haru.” Natoru replied. “His Highness, Prince Lune sent me to receive your answer to their invitation.” The cat smiled, “So, what is your answer?”

“Well, I would love to go!”

“Great! I’ll go and let them know right away!” Natoru made to rush back out the window, but Haru was quick and just managed to grab at his tail.

“Wait! Before you go!”

“Yes?”

Haru wrung her hands. “Do you think that Yuki and Prince Lune would mind if I brought someone with me?”

Natoru blinked at her. “They said in their letter that you were welcome to do anything to make yourself comfortable. I don’t see why not.”

“Then could you wait a day? I want to make sure that he can come before I accept.”

Natoru nodded. “I shall come back again tomorrow evening, then. For now, I shall return to the kingdom and relay the news.” Then, in a flash, Natoru jumped out of the window and disappeared into the night.

The next morning, after breakfast and tea with her mother, Haru ventured out into town. She headed down familiar streets, idly staring into shop windows as she passed. When she reached the café where she had first met Muta, she surveyed all the tables and seats but saw no sign of the fat cat. Letting her shoulders drop, she made her way inside the café and ordered herself a drink and a small fine piece then she settled herself down at a table outside.

And she waited.

And waited.

She went through three more drinks before her friend finally showed up. The large white cat slowly plodded up along the street. He paused on the corner and scanned the tables before selecting one, sitting in the sun. Standing up on his hind legs, Muta reached up onto the seat and, with more than a little bit of huffing and puffing, pulled himself up. There, he kneaded and walked in a circle before flopping down on his stomach.

Haru watched from her seat for a few minutes, looking around to see if anyone was paying attention to her. When the coast was clear, she got up from her seat and moved over to sit at the table.

“Hello Muta.” She greeted, trying to look like she wasn’t talking to a cat.

Muta grunted and groaned before he opened one eye to look at his companion. When he realised who it was, he opened both eyes and lifted his head to look at her properly. “Haru. What are you doing here?”

“I was hoping to visit the Bureau. Could you show me the way?” Muta grumbled loudly but pushed himself up and slid down from the seat.

“Alright, fine. Come on.” And then he turned and started off down the street, leaving Haru to hurry after him.

The route was familiar yet not as she stumbled over her own feet. The scenery blurred past as she focused on Muta and following his every step. With every step, she began to feel a pulsing in the air, feeling the static electric tingle of magic, it got stronger, the closer they got.

And then Muta was waltzing through the archway and Haru stumbling through. Muta dropped down onto his bench, “You know the drill, I’ll be here when you want to go home.” Then he pulled out a newspaper and crossed one leg over the other. Haru nodded once before turning her gaze towards the Bureau.

She kneeled down and peered in through the window. There was the Baron, frozen in the window, all elegant porcelain and bright painted eyes. She smiled and gently knocked on the door. “Baron?” She called.

The lights in the square dimmed, a pure brighter light shining over the tops of the buildings encompassing the area. The lights pulsed and shone, creating a light show overhead. As it rose up, got bigger and brighter, suddenly, Muta grumbled, “Knock it off already, she’s already seen the light show!” and then everything stopped. And the door opened.

Out stepped the cat figurine, now fully animated and alive. He looked around and settled his gaze on Haru. “Miss Haru! What a pleasure it is to see you again!”

“And you, Baron. I’ve missed you.”

Baron smiled warmly. “I have a feeling that this is not just a social call. You have a problem for the Bureau to solve?”

“It’s not exactly a problem, but I do have a request.”

“Well then, why don’t you come in and we can talk over a cup of tea?”

So Haru – now small enough to enter – followed Baron into the Bureau and settled down onto one of the sofas as a pot of tea was put on. Toto and Muta soon followed them in and all four of them were soon engaged in a friendly catch-up, discussing what everyone had been up to during their time apart.

Eventually, Haru’s request came to the front of the conversation and she explained how Prince Lune and Yuki had sent her an invitation and how she would only feel safe if she had company with her. After asking them to accompany her, they all agreed – though Muta took a bit more coercion. They arranged for Haru to visit the Bureau a few hours before the wedding was supposed to start, so that they could all be transported to the Cat Kingdom together.

-=[Additional Notes]=-

So this is more wedding invite rather than a wedding but I started this yesterday and since the muse has run away from me. One day I’ll come back and complete it.

#writersmonth2019 #i tried writing words

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tcrmommabear · 6 years

Text

TCR AU #4: D’n’D AU (2)

Welcome to part 2 guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Let’s get this show on the road! Today we’re talking characters!!

Sidenote: So, 90% of my experience is with Pathfinder, so that’s what I’m using in regards to race and class and suchforth. D’n’D and Pathfinder are two separate things, but I felt D’n’D was a better name for the AU.

Name: Louisa Player: Louise (DM) Race: Catfolk Class: Vigilante Backstory: Louise is the (older) twin sister to Duke. They grew up in a primarily Catfolk village by loving parents. When they were young children, their parents were viciously murdered. Duke took the time to mourn, while Louisa viciously clung to the idea of vengeance. The twins separated due to conflicting wants and desires- Duke settled down as a sort of “sword for hire”, deadset on helping and defending those who couldn’t do it themselves, while Louisa searched tirelessly for their parents’ killer. Years later, she finally has a lead and asks Duke for help, just this once. Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Name: Duke Player: Baron/Humbert Race: Catfolk Class: Paladin Backstory: Duke was happy to live his life, working for little pay to help those in need. He couldn’t protect his family, so he’d protect as many people as he could. But when his sister Louisa finally came back into his life after nearly 10 years, he couldn’t deny her ask for help (or the gold she provided when he originally said no). With the help of his employees/friends, they’ll travel across the world to finally find peace. Alignment: Lawful Good

Name: Moon Player: Muta Race: Half-Orc Class: Bloodrager Backstory: Moon doesn’t have much of a story to tell. He keeps it close to his chest except after a few gallons of ale. He was raised in a human family, educated beyond measure. Then his Orc family took him away and all he knew was violence and bloodshed. He was caught between two worlds for a long time until he settled on being a mercenary for hire. It wasn’t until Duke came along that he knew he wanted to do something more. Something better. With a healthy dose of brains and a great disregard for rules, Moon is willing to do anything to help a client. (Side Note: Has a weakness for little kids) Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Name: Aubert Player: Toto Race: *Tengu Class: Rogue Backstory: Aubert came from a distant Tengu village, hidden in the mountains. He talks little of it though, only sharing bits and pieces of the life he lived there with the friends he surrounds himself with. All is known is he left, and he committed theft after theft in order to survive and get where he is. Now, he uses his talents to help Duke and Moon, to pay for the meals when Duke refuses payment. Now with Louisa in the picture, he’s seeing different sides to his oldest friend, and wonders what this adventure will do to everyone. Alignment: True Neutral

Name: Hero Player: Hiromi Race: Human Class: Ranger Backstory: Hero stumbled across the group during their journey to cross the sea and just... Never left? With nothing better to do, and instantly bonding with Yuki, Hero decided she would be just that- A hero. Alignment: Neutral Good

Name: Kore, Pirate Queen of the 8 Seas Player: Persephone Race: Merfolk Class: Swashbuckler + Witch Backstory: Merfolk are xenophobic and harsh people. With amazing musical ability and a dangerous beauty, they lure many a sailor and innocent victim to the cracks of their islands and devour the bodies as they fall to the sea. Kore was born the most beautiful of them all, but with a compassionate heart and no singing voice. She was forcibly chased from her home, her family, her life, and sought out a new way of life. That’s how she met Captain Killigan. The two women were inseparable, and Killigan helped Kore find her calling- benevolent pirating. Killigan died, and Kore conquered the seas in her name. Now alone, and hiding her heritage with an innate magic, she sails for hire and battles other pirates competing for her crown. She was supposed to be the Ironwilled Queen. Until a certain Catfolk came onto her ship. Alignment: Chaotic

Name: Yuki Player: Haru Race: **Skinwalker (Elf) Class: Druid Backstory: “H-Hello? Is this the Cat Bureau?” Yuki was just looking for help. Little did she know she’d get dragged into the advenure of a lifetime, with romance, bloodshed, intrigue, and deeply personal problems. Indebted to Duke and Louisa, Yuki travels with them to help the siblings find their parents murderer and seek vengeance. But is that what the pair really need? Working constantly as a voice of reason and constant motivation, Yuki hides a dangerous secret from her friends. Maybe one day, she can tell them about the animal skin she wears. And warn them to let sleeping dogs lie. Alignment: Good Neutral

*Tengu= Bird people **Skinwalker= Shapeshifters (Haru looks like an Elf rather than a human)

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williamtshakespears · 6 years

Text

Origins of A Fat Cat: The Muta Theory

Get a cup of Baron’s special tea and grab some angel food cake, this is going to be a long one.

So we’ve all got questions around our favorite fat cat: How’s he come to work with Baron? How can he say the ‘ph’ sound if cats can’t? Is he a normal cat; and if not, what is he?

He’s hinted at being something... different in both the manga and movie. His line in the manga: that the Cat Kingdom is a place cats go “if [they] can’t live on [their] own time like [he] can” (pg. 74), indicates there’s something about him that makes him more capable of living in the Human World than most other cats. The Cat King in the manga even asks, “How could he have lived for so long in the outside world?” (pg. 122)

As far as the movie and manga lore go, it’s possible that Muta's story is that he used to be a human that was transformed into a cat, most likely through an experience like Haru’s. Perhaps even at the same time he ate all the fish in the lake, making him the most notorious criminal in cat history.

Cat-turned humans might have slightly human traits remaining, like the ability to say the “ph” sound, longer lifespans, perhaps including food tolerance.

Though this is merely speculation. There’s another explanation that makes a little more sense based on Japanese lore and evidence seen in the movie and manga.

Muta is a spirit.

It probably sounds like a stretch, but it makes sense with Japanese lore: spirits have something to do with every story. Spirits and supernatural events are crucial for a majority of Studio Ghibli’s stories especially.

Japanese spirits (or really any phenomena that's worshiped by the Shinto religion) is classified under "Kami". Kami can be 'elements of landscape, forces of nature, as well as beings and the qualities that these beings express, and the spirits of highly revered dead persons'. Kami are not separate from nature but are of nature, possessing positive and negative, good and evil characteristics. It is also said that they are manifestations of "musubi", which is the interconnecting energy of the universe, and are believed to be hidden from this world, inhabiting a world that mirrors our own. Already sound familiar? (pg. 63)

In ancient Shinto traditions, there were five defining characteristics of Kami:

1. Kami are of two minds, possessing two souls: one gentle and one assertive.

Additionally to this, there are two hidden souls within the Kami: one happy and one mysterious. One must appease and respect a Kami in order to be on the Kami's 'good side'. We can attribute some of Muta's actions to this. Notice how in the movie, Muta is always gruff or angry; he does things reluctantly or with a ton of teasing or arguing on his end. But he becomes more docile and cooperative when you feed him, like in the movie when Baron placates him with angel food cake. We’ll return to this point in a moment.

2. Kami are not visible to the human realm.

They inhabit sacred places or people during ceremonies. Now Muta obviously hasn't inhabited anyone during the course of the manga or movie, but think about it: besides the Bureau, where's the one place people can apparently find him on a frequent-enough basis? The Crossroads. It's entirely possible that the Crossroads is located atop a sacred place (possibly sacred to Muta personally).

3. They are mobile.

They never stay in one place forever. It would explain why Muta never went to the Cat Kingdom; his very being as a Kami means he doesn't stay in one place forever. And I know this can seem contradictory to the previous statement, but it's the keyword "forever" that comes into play. He's not 24/7 at the Crossroads. He also spends a decent amount of time at the Bureau, the CK, and Nishi's Antique Shop, as well as countless homes and who knows where else.

4. There are many different varieties of Kami, with different functions.

There's Kami for the sun, moon, ocean, stars, storms, water, etc. There's even Kami for roads, wisdom, compassion, bliss, etc. Along with this, there's a specific subgroup of Kami known as Nekomata, literally "cat spirits".

These Nekomata even get their own shrines!

There are a bunch of stories that tell of these Nekomata in two categories: Mountain-dwelling Nekomata, and Domesticated Nekomata. Domesticated Nekomata are cats that grow old, grow two tails (it's where the 'mata' part comes from), and perform several strange, supernatural things, from poltergeisting a house to kidnapping people. Of course this is extreme for Muta, it's just part of the lore. But people also believe that the 'mata' in Nekomata has double meaning, both the two tails part, and from the other meaning: 'monkeys', translating to the Nekomata are in a way like monkeys, in that they can freely come and go between trees in the mountains at will. Now I know this is a bit of a stretch, but does that not sound like a certain cat who can pass between the CK and HW freely at his own will, when it appears that others have to travel between the two by portal, lake, or death?

And 5. Kami have a duty to the people around them.

Just as people have to keep Kami happy, the Kami have to perform the specific function of the object, place, or idea they inhabit, which ties into points 1. and 4.

Back to point 4.: there are Kami for everything: sun, moon, water, earth, roads, wisdom, bliss, etc. So isn't it entirely possible that there's a Kami for "Self Confidence"? Think about it: what's one thing Muta explicitly shows throughout the movie and manga?

Self confidence.

Even when he's wrong, like with cheating on the maze walls (pg. 153), he doesn't start doubting himself or any of his ideas afterwards, nor (in the movie) does he just go back quietly to the maze when the guards notice he's cheating. He starts running away from them, because he knows he's capable of escaping them, no matter what they or anyone else thinks of his weight or his abilities.

Now we apply this to Haru and to point 1. of Kami.

“Kami are of two minds, two souls, and two hidden souls. Kami must be appeased in order to gain their favor.”

Muta is initially appeased in the beginning of the movie to help Haru out because Baron offers him cake, then the CK chefs offer him all their food once in the castle, and even in the manga, Muta complains to Baron that he 'owes him a treat' for helping to chase after Haru (pg. 165). But what's better respect to a Kami than to deliver on the one action the Kami represents? When Haru stands up for herself against the King directly, Muta does the first thing for her that doesn't involve bribing or griping; because she believed in herself. She showed self confidence in one of the best ways possible to Muta, therefore, she gained his favor and willing assistance in getting her out of the CK. He even says in the movie, “I respect a woman that stands up for herself.”

It also makes sense for why Muta would hang out in the Sanctuary with Baron.

Baron is all about encouraging self confidence (and he’s very confident in himself too). What better way for Muta to help other people in his department (self confidence) than by following the one guy whose main motto is to believe in yourself?

Staying at the Crossroads ensures Baron gets customers and Muta gets to do his duty as a Kami, along with entertainment and food ('cause come on, I honestly doubt a Kami with Muta's attitude would turn those down).

Even his fights with Toto can fall under these rules. Toto constantly makes fun of his weight and appearance as a cat, so of course he's gonna be on Muta's bad side. But Toto's a Creation, which means he's probably just as powerful as Muta, so Muta can only fight with him every now and then instead of actually doing any damage. And since he's a Kami, he's immortal, just like Baron and Toto. So a combination of Toto's power equaling his own and spending a ton of time around him, probably has turned their fights into more of a frenemy thing than actual hatred by the time Haru comes around.

And as far as Kami go, there are no rules saying that they have to be godly, divine, nice and neat all the time, so Muta's attitude is completely justified to his character if that's just who he is.

This ties into the part of the movie where Muta gets trapped in the jelly too. It is clear that he can't move until Baron breaks the glass of the container and releases him. This would seem contradictory to the theory that Muta is a spirit, because he wouldn’t get trapped in something as simple and silly as jelly.

In actuality, Kami "are not necessarily considered omnipotent or omniscient, and like the Greek Gods, they have flawed personalities and are quite capable of ignoble acts". So Kami aren't perfect; they have flaws, and Muta's is probably food. Muta's most likely taking a physical form in most of his adventures with Baron and Toto, and food is his weakness. So when he fell in the jelly, he was incapacitated. But when Baron released him, he gets up and starts fighting like nothing happened, when I'm sure if any mortal cat got stuck in jelly for an indiscernible amount of time, there would be some negative, lasting effects. But Muta just brushes it off like nothing.

So actually! Muta being a Kami makes a lot more sense than if he were a human turned into a cat, because he would eventually have to die; I doubt even Sanctuary magic could prevent that. But being a Kami can. The manga might have specifically called to this on page 68.

This might, of course, just be silly dialogue put here to make us laugh, but what if it’s more than that?

So there we have it! Muta is (or should be) the Kami of Self Confidence.

Sources:

The Cat Returns, Hiroyuki Morita (2002)

Baron: The Cat Returns, Aoi Hiiragi (2005)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kami

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nekomata

https://japanesemythology.wordpress.com/nekomata-cat-myths-and-cat-shrines-of-japan/

#the cat returns #muta #renaldo moon #baron humbert von gikkingen #haru yoshioka #toto the crow/magpie #theory #this was so much fun!#a film theory #/book theory

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writing-ro · 7 years

Text

I’m Coming Home

Rating: G for General Audiences Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Haru Yoshioka, Baron Humbert von Gikkingen Ships: Baron Hubert von Gikkingen/Haru Yoshioka Tags: Romance, Haru is a pop star, Drunken Kissing, Love Confessions Also Available: AO3, Fanfiction.net

Haru has everything a girl could want, fame, fortune and a great relationship with her band’s lead singer. But it’s all fake, and she is tired of putting on a face for the world. She just wants to go home to her true love.

“Alright everyone, I’ll see you all tomorrow,” Haru said as she walked into her bedroom in the hotel suite. Once the door was closed, her smile dropped and she breathed a sigh as she pulled the blonde wig off of her thin brown hair, her chocolate eyes turning weary and tired. But it wasn’t physical exhaustion that haunted her.

She dropped her purse on the bed and walked over to the window. It was large with a seat, which she took advantage of as she opened the window. The hotel was ornate and old, much like the room she was in, so the windows weren’t sealed shut like most of the others she’d stayed in before, even in the penthouse.

She sighed again, looking over the fantastic skyscape. Paris was beautiful at night, having rightfully earned it’s name of City of Lights. And as she recalled it’s other name of City of Love, she saddened. To the world, she was in a happy relationship, but it was a sham. She liked Machida, they’d become good friends after he dumped his jealous girlfriend, but her heart belonged to another.

She thought about the one she loved, Baron Humbert Von Gikkingen, Baron to his friends. Not that he was a real nobleman, or even a human, but a magical living statue whose form was a foot-tall half-man half-cat. But under that he was a kinder man than almost everyone. He has saved her life on an adventure that gave her courage to follow her heart, and she had given it to him.

She had often visited the Refuge after their trip to the Cat Kingdom, and with each visit she grew fonder and fonder of the magic square in the hidden corner of the city and it’s occupants. With it’s magic, she was able to shrink down upon entering, a measure Baron said was to make repeat visitors more comfortable. Through tea chats and lazy days, Toto and Muta grew to become brothers, and the place in her heart that Baron held grew bigger and bigger.

It was him she first told about her secret passion, that she loved to sing. It was him who encouraged her to join Machida’s band after their singer had surgery that ruined her voice. It was him who helped teach her how to dance so she wouldn’t fall off the stage as she sang. It was him she was smiling at when she performed for the first time and he, Toto and Muta hid in the rafters of the barn. It was him who supported her when she decided she wanted to wear a wig on stage to help her walk around anonymously after they became an overnight sensation. It was him she sang to when they performed their romantic songs. It was him she wished would sing the duets with on stage, after he helped her practice one. It was him who always wrote to her when she’d gone on the national tour after winning the Battle of the Bands contest. And it was her who left to go on the world tour after that.

She remembered the last time she saw Baron, face to face. It was just a few days before she was to leave for the tour. She had come to the Refuge after dinner with the band and their managers. They’d served sake with the dinner, and she had a little more than she should have. As she tripped her way into the Bureau, after giving the door three sharp knocks, her own personal signal, Baron helped her to a chair and just gave her tea to help sober her and to settle her stomach so she wouldn’t get sick. He explained Muta and Toto were elsewhere and waited patiently while she called her mom to tell her she’d be staying at a friend’s house overnight, and that she’d be back in the morning.

She remembered he’d kept the light low so she wouldn’t get a headache once she sobered up, using candles as opposed to the gas lights. She had sat slumped against the arm of the sofa and watched him. She always had thought he was handsome, but in that light he was even more so. The alcohol had also lowered her inhibitions, so when he’d bent over her to take the cup of tea from her hands for a refill, she leaned up and kissed him.

She could tell he was surprised by the action, the way he tensed when she made contact showed it. However, when she noticed he hadn’t even moved, she pulled back. “What’s wrong Baron?” she’d asked him, tilting her head slightly.

He was blushing hard enough it could just be seen through his fur. He quickly stood up straight and turned to the tea pot, busying himself with pouring new cups for them. “I believe you might need another cup of tea, Miss Haru,” he said.

“You know your tea is more of an aphrodisiac than any alcohol, right?” she’d jokingly said, sitting up and watching him. “And what’s with the ‘Miss’ stuff. I thought I told you to call me Haru years ago.”

“I think things might be a bit different now,” was his answer, still not turning from his position. “You are, after all, inebriated, it’s never certain how it affects people.”

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since I first met you Baron. The alcohol just took away any reservations I had about doing so.” She stood, swaying only slightly. Already the tea was sobering her up, she knew she’d have to say what she wanted fast.

“And why ever would you want to kiss me, Miss Haru?” Baron turned as he asked this, seeing her walking up to him.

“Because I love you Baron, and that’s not the sake talking.” And with that, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. This time, he responded, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her closer. The kiss was chaste and passionate at the same time, Haru’s drunken ferocity countered by his calm control, never letting her push to far. When they finally pulled apart, they were reeling from the feelings they felt.

“Will you regret it tomorrow, Haru, if I said I loved you too, and kissed you again” Baron asked her, the nervousness in his voice evident.

Haru shot him a look. “Never, Baron. I don’t want to push too far so soon. What I do want is for you to keep kissing me.” And with that, she pulled his lips back to hers as she walked backwards and when she hit the couch, she let him fall on top of her.

The rest of the night they spent curled up together, talking and kissing, until Haru finally drifted to sleep in his arms and he held her until morning came. When Muta and Toto returned, he motioned for them to be quiet so to not disturb her. When she woke up, they told the cat and crow what had happened and, while they felt a little embarrassed about it, neither of them wished that it hadn’t happened. When she had to leave, he walked her to the arched entrance to the refuge and kissed her goodbye just at the point where she returned to her normal size. And for that moment, as she grew so did he and the hint of a future might have been there. Then the kiss ended and when she opened her eyes, Haru was looking down at Baron. With tears in both their eyes, they turned around at the same moment, she walking to a future they couldn’t share, and he to a world they couldn’t stay in.

That had been almost a year ago, and the tour had taken them everywhere, from Seoul to Mumbai in Asia, Los Angles to New York in North America, Rio de Janeiro to Johannesburg in South America and Africa, and finally the European leg of the tour. Their first stop was Rome, and Paris was their second. It would be another month before they would finish in England, after which they’d return to America to do a TV show. It all seemed to be a good idea at the time, but now Haru was wondering about her choice.

She closed the window again and rested her head against the cool glass. From an outsider’s perspective, the day she’d just had was perfect. They arrived in Paris early in the morning, attended a CD signing and took photos with the fans before the band was able to spend the day however they wanted. She ended up spending most of it with Machida, wandering around Paris as paparazzi took pictures and prepared them for the buzzed about question: When will there be a proposal?

It was Candy, their publicity manager who came up with the idea. The media had already gotten the story of Haru’s crush on him when they were in high school, and what better way to ride that hype but with an actual relationship. Within a few weeks, media around the world knew about Haru and Machida’s whirlwind romance and their sales and income increased significantly. The only people who knew the relationship was fake were the other band members, Haru and Machida’s families and the Cat Bureau. She’d made sure to write them about that, even if she didn’t do so very often anymore.

When the tour kicked off, Haru and Baron exchanged letters as often as they could. She’d send them to the Cat Kingdom, where Lune and Yuki would make sure the letters got to the Bureau. However, after a while, she just kept writing the same message, “I’m fine, how are you?” with some token description of whatever city they were in, or what happened on the tour bus, plane or train that day. Eventually, she started writing them, but wouldn’t send them; she didn’t want that sent to him. Still, his letters came, and they were the happiest times for her.

She sighed again and pushed herself off of the window seat. It just wasn’t worth it to her. She might have had fame, fortune, and the opportunity to do something she loved. But without the man she loved, she hated it, and she’d had enough.

She pulled a carry-on suitcase out of the closet and started throwing clothes in it. If what she took was a mix of casual and fancy styles, or large amount of shirts compared to pants and shoes, she didn’t care. Into a small duffle, also from the closet, she packed the few books she had, a couple changes of clothes, her necessities and her wallet. Her phone she left, she wouldn’t need it where she went, and she could easily get another one later on, and the same for her music, except for one CD, which held a song she’d spent months trying to find and had finally gotten a copy of a few months before; her and Baron’s song, Katzen Blaut.

Quiet as a mouse, she slipped out of her room, grateful that the other band members had turned in to their own rooms and she was the only one still awake or not busy. She left four envelopes behind her, one each in front of Machida, Candy and Hideiko, their stage manager’s, rooms. The last was on her bed and contained the same information the first three did, just put there in case someone went into her room before they found their own. She’d written them almost a week before, and she was now putting them to their purpose.

The letters all said the same thing.

I’m sorry everyone, but I can’t do this anymore.I used to enjoy this work, and I love all of you like family, but I can’t do this anymore. If I tried to keep going, I’d probably go catatonic over time, and the only way to fix it only on person can do, and you would never be able to contact him.

“In regards to the band and the tour, have Jessica replace me as the lead singer, that’s what she wants and she’s been practicing. I should know, I’ve been helping her. Ami, Neji, keep going strong; I’ll be expecting an invite to the wedding. Jon, try and settle down, or at least don’t break so many hearts, we want you to give us nieces and nephews the proper way. And Machida, follow your heart. Consider this my Dear John and ask out Go, I know you two like each other.

“Candy, Hideiko, I know you’re probably disappointed and angry at me, but I have to do this or I will slowly go mad. I’ll start ranting about cats and crows and talking statues and you’ll have to institutionalize me. This way is better for everyone involved.

“I’ll miss you guys, and I hope you write. If you want to contact me, write to the included PO box number and write the following word on the envelope: Refuge. Again, I love you and I wish you all the best, but for me, I’m going home.

With the letters delivered, Haru put her shoes on and walked out of the hotel, down the street to a bus terminal. Paying her fare, she settled in, dozing in her seat until she reached the airport. Before too long, she’d left the country and was on her way to Tokyo.

~~~

Making her way out of the airport, Haru waited a moment to look at the metropolis around her. It was beautiful, as it always was, but Haru didn’t linger too long. By now, people would know about her disappearance and she would have paparazzi and possibly police looking for her. Changing in the airport bathroom, like she had before she got on the plane in France, she hopped on a bus out to the suburbs, to the small town where she had grown up.

After getting off the bus, she walked around the town for a little bit. First she visited her old house. Her mom still lived there, but Haru didn’t, having moved into an apartment with Hiromi and Ami after the formation of the band. Now, Naoko rented rooms to college students, and was never lacking for company with her quilting friends around. Haru didn’t go up and knock on the door; she’d written her mother just before they arrived in Paris, she knew Haru’s feelings and what she’d been planning to do.

Haru then walked down the street, passing the traffic light where she’d been talking with Hiromi and ended up saving a gray, odd eyed cat and triggering the adventure that would make her who she was today.

She kept walking down to her school. The day had just ended and she watched as students poured out of the building, either mingling on the grounds or walking through the gates to the shops or home. Here, she had been Haru, the-girl-who-was-late-everyday-and-a-total-klutz, then later Haru, the-confident-girl-who-wasn’t-afraid-to-be-herself. There, her best friend was Hiromi, her other friends were Chicka and Machida and she was happy. This was also the place where she ended her adventure and started to change her life.

Finally, slowly, she walked to the Crossroads, taking in all the sights. The florist where she and Hiromi worked at, and the cafe who first sponsored the band were still open and going strong, There were a few new families walking around, but otherwise, much was the same.

She made it to the chair where Muta usually sat. He was not there, but Haru didn’t worry. She just walked to the old familiar alley, noting the man who stood and started following her. Luckily, she managed to be quick enough to lose him before long. Around that bend, through that alley, over the tin rooftops, down the stairs, around the corner and finally she saw the white marble archway of the Refuge, and through it, the lighted windows of the Cat Bureau. She paused for a moment before walking on, only one thought running through her head.

As she passed under the arch, she felt the magic wash over her. Willing it to make her change slow so she’d get across the square quicker, she noticed Toto was not on his pillar. ‘They must be inside,’ quickly interrupted her one thought, then she shook it off as she made it to the Bureau doors. Through them, and the open window above her head, she heard Muta and Toto insulting each other and Baron’s soft admonitions. Setting her bags down, she raised her hand and knocked on the door sharply three times.

The voices stopped. Haru waited with baited breath, nibbling her lower lip. After seemingly an eternity, the door opened, revealing Baron. His suit coat and hat were off and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He had a stunned look, like he couldn’t believe what he saw. “Haru?” he asked softly, as he slowly stretched out his hand, reaching for hers.

Haru smiled and took his hand in hers. “Hello Baron,” she said, tears of joy welling in her eyes.

Before another word could be said, Baron had her in an embrace and his lips were on her’s. After a year’s separation, the two lovers were together, and in that moment, nothing else mattered.

When they finally separated for air, Baron rested his forehead on Haru’s. “You came back,” was all he could say.

Haru smiled, pulling him closer to her and saying, her lips hovering over his, the thought that’d been running through her head since she saw the Refuge. “I came home.”

#My Fics #I'm Coming Home #fandom: the cat returns

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nanenna · 7 years

Text

TCR Mulan AU

A young woman hears the drums of war and decides to answer to protect her family.

For @mommabearsdayoff

Rating: G Fandom: The Cat Returns Pairing: Baron/Haru

“Right, okay, no. I can’t do this.” Haru sheathed her sword and began pacing back and forth in front of her horse.

“We both already knew that,” Muta groused as he ignored Haru’s pacing. “But uh… if you head home now what’s gonna happen when no one from your family shows up to join the army?”

Haru’s frantic pacing halted, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “My father gets dragged off to trial for insubordination.”

“So wouldn’t it be better if you just finished what you started?”

“Ugh,” Haru groaned as she put her fingers to the bridge of her nose, “you’re right.”

“Say it again,” Muta purred.

“C’mon, we better hurry up.” Haru picked Muta up by the scruff of his neck before swinging up onto her Taro’s back, the horse placidly waiting for her to get settled and give him a command.

Haru couldn’t help feeling nervous as Taro plodded into camp, it seemed like all the other recruits were just so… manly. Then again, they were all men and not some girl just pretending to be a man so she could join the army. Well, Haru was pretty sure none of them were. She’d never seen any girls pick their toes with a knife before. Finding the sign up wasn’t hard, in the very center of camp stood a thin, dour looking man holding a clipboard with several papers attached to it.

“Uh, hello?” Haru called nervously.

“You will get down from that horse before speaking to your superior.”

“Oh, right!” Haru scrambled down from Taro’s back and stood nervously holding his reins while Muta smirked from Taro’s back.

“Summons,” the thin man said while holding out an equally thin hand.

“Right, of course, I’ve got it right here!” Haru reached into her tunic and felt around until she found the conscript her father had brought home but three days ago. She plopped it into the man’s hand, who opened it up, flipped through his papers, then marked his paper with a quill that Haru hadn’t noticed tucked behind his ear earlier.

“Name?”

“Haru…” her eyes widened as she trailed off. There was a brief moment of sheer panic as the man raising an eyebrow at her. “-ka!” Haru tacked on hurriedly. “Yoshioka Haruka.”

“Mmm...” the man responded as he wrote something down. “Go stable your horse and collect a uniform, no need to flout your father’s status with that armor, boy.”

“Right, sorry...” Haru gently tugged Taro in the direction of the stables. Once out of sight of the thin man, whose name Haru still didn’t know, she groaned and slumped against Taro’s shoulder. “Well that went spectacularly.”

“Better than I expected,” Muta said.

“If you’re not going to be any help, you can shut your face.”

“Wow, he really got to you, Chicky. No need to be so rude, maybe I’ll just leave.”

“I’m not even sure why you came along.”

“To watch the show, of course!”

Haru stuck her tongue out at Muta, then squared her shoulders and marched determinedly towards the stables.

“Hey, Kiddo, wake up!”

“Jus’ fi’ mo’ minuds...” Haru mumbled as she tried to roll over and pull the covers up.

“All the other recruits are all lined up, I think you’re late.”

“What?” It took less than a minute for Haru to hop out of her tent, still trying to pull her boots on, but it was plain to see she really was late. All the other recruits were lined up as someone walked down the line with the skinny guy from yesterday at their elbow. “Oh no oh no oh no!” She raced to the other recruits, slipping onto the tail end of the line and standing at attention. It seemed to have worked, the group making its way down the line was only halfway to them. Haru peeaked at them and squinted to try and get a better look. “Who is that, anyway?”

“Some noble who’s supposed to be in charge of training us,” the recruit next to Haru answered.

“A noble?”

“Well, he was introduced with a title.”

Haru peeked again, the group only a few soldiers closer, but now she could make out the crisp, pale suit he was wearing and… “Is that a crow on his shoulder?”

“Yeah, either it’s a pet or his familiar.”

“I vote for familiar,” the next guy down said in a low voice.

“Can’t be,” the first guy responded. “No one would be brave or stupid enough to publicly have a familiar, especially not one of those hoity toity nobles.”

“Who better to get away with publicly flaunting a familiar than a noble?”

“Shut up,” someone further down the line hissed at them. Everyone immediately stood to attention.

Haru listened as a familiar, if grating, voice called out names one by one. There was no reply from the noble, why were they taking so long if he wasn’t saying anything? Eventually they arrived.

“And lastly, Yoshioka Haruka.”

“Ah yes,” the nobleman said. “Since you missed the introduction: my name is Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, and tardiness will not be tolerated.”

“Y-yes sir!” Haru snapped, unsure if she should salute or what. The warmth growing on her face made her sure she was blushing horribly, the titters from her left weren’t helping either. What a way to start her training.

“And to help drive the lesson home, you’ve just volunteered yourself for a little demonstration. Come with me.”

“Yes sir,” Haru sighed as she followed the nobleman and his flunky to the other end of the line of recruits. Strangely enough the crow on his shoulder took off and flew away. Haru tried to watch it leave but decided it was better to watch where she was going. She didn’t need any more mishaps today. The group stopped a few yards from a tall, wooden pillar in the very center of the camp. That’s when the crow came back carrying a bow and arrow in his claws.

“Ah, thank you Toto,” the baron said with outstretched hands to catch the objects. The crow, Toto she supposed, landed on the baron’s shoulder to offer a string held in his beak before moving over to the flunky’s shoulder. Neither seemed happy with the arrangement.

With practiced ease the baron quickly strung his bow, notched his arrow, aimed for the top of the pillar, and shot it. The arrow stuck fast right at the top. “Now then, Mr. Yoshioka, climb up there and fetch me that arrow.”

Haru swallowed nervously as she looked up and up and up. “All the way up there?”

“I do not believe I misspoke earlier.”

Haru took a tentative step up to the pillar and looked up again. “Right, I can do this.”

“Not quite yet, you’re forgetting the most important part.” The baron grabbed Haru’s wrist and slipped a sash with a heavy weight dangling from it onto her wrist. Haru barely had time to brace for the weight before he let go and repeated the process with her other wrist. “These represent discipline and determination, without both you can’t reach the top.”

“I don’t think I could reach it either way,” Haru muttered. The weights were quite heavy, just carrying them would be a chore.

“Well, get climbing Mr. Yoshioka, we don’t have all day.”

Haru took a deep breath, then released it slowly. She stepped up to the pillar and put her arms as far around as they could go. Then she drew her legs up and clung to the tree like a small bear. She had climbed lots of trees as a kid, surely this was just the same. She slowly inched up a bit, but the weights unbalanced her and she quickly slid down, it was only her quick reflexes that stopped her from tumbling to the ground altogether, instead she ended up rolling backwards and landing in an awkward crouch.

“Better than I expected, but still a dismal attempt. You can return to the line up now.”

Haru’s face burned as she handed over the weights. Hopefully the humiliation was done for the day. Fortunately it was, for her at least. It seemed the baron was intent on humiliating every last recruit because he had them all try to climb the pillar one-by-one.

“It seems we have a long way to go. Get some rest, men, we start early tomorrow.”

There was a collective sigh from the recruits as the baron walked away.

“Hey, good job not cracking when that guy singled you out,” one guy say as he slapped Haru on the back.

“Yeah, if you hadn’t gone first I wouldn’t have even known how to start climbing that thing,” another added as he threw an arm around Haru’s shoulders.

“Really?” Haru asked in disbelief. “I mean… it was just like climbing a tree when I was a kid. A very tall, very smooth tree.”

“I would never have thought of that, I usually picked trees that had branches close to the ground.”

“C’mon, let’s go get some grub,” the first guy said as the whole group headed towards the mess hall. “My name’s Machida by the way.”

“And I’m Tsuge.”

“Haruka… nice to meet you,” she belatedly tacked onto the end.

“We know, I think everyone in camp knows after that display.”

“Hey it’s Mister Yoshioka!” a passing recruit hollered. “Don’t let that fancy pants noble get to ya, you did real good!”

Haru couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Haru groaned from her spot on the ground, her backside aching from its recent abuse and every muscle screaming in a chorus of fire. She didn’t even have the energy to wipe the sweat from her brow, she just wanted go to bed and sleep for a hundred years.

“Stand up, Mr. Yoshioka.”

Haru groaned again, but did as she was told. She stumbled to her feet and swayed in place, but still she gripped her weapon and held it ready.

“Such sloppy foot work, where’s your center of balance? How can you stand tall with your feet akimbo? Not that you’re standing tall, recruit.”

Haru grunted, then shifted into the stance all the recruits had been shown that morning. Apparently she wasn’t fast enough for the baron, he was tapping her legs with his cane. She grit her teeth at the treatment, this nobleman was really getting on her last nerves. Across from Haru her training partner was also shifting his feet about and straightening his posture before he could get the same treatment.

“There, much better. And don’t think I didn’t notice you, Mr. Morita, keep those feet and posture straight. Just because I am not right next to you is no reason to be lazy with your footwork. The same goes to you, Mr. Golberg.” The baron pointed his cane at a recruit a couple sparring partners over and began walking over to him.

“Guess we keep going, then,” Morita panted as he held his weapon ready.

“Ugh, fine,” Haru grunted in reply as she held up her own weapon. Neither one chose to chat as they sparred, not like when the day had been fresh and this had felt more like play than torture. The playful banter and cocky jokes had died out as the training wore on and the baron still didn’t call a halt. Now every recruit was dirty, sweaty, aching, and bone tired.

“I believe that is enough for now, you’re all dismissed.”

There was a chorus of groans and grunts as most of the recruits collapsed to sit on the ground. Haru, like a few other recruits, was sprawled out flat on her back, one arm flung over her eyes.

“We should probably go get some food or something,” Morita said half heartedly as he leaned back on his arms.

“Jus’ leave me...” Haru begged as she waved a hand in Morita’s general direction.

“That would mean having to get up,” Morita replied.

“So are you going to lay there all day whining or am I going to actually get fed at some point?”

Haru shifted her arm so she could look in the direction the familiar voice had come from. Muta was just sitting down right next to her head, she should have known he’d show up as soon as food was an option. Haru rolled her eyes, “Oh all right. Let’s go eat then.”

“Yeah, I guess we should,” Morita replied as he started struggling to his feet.

“Since you’re up, mind giving me a lift?” Muta asked as Haru gathered her feet under her.

“You can walk to food just fine by yourself,” Haru replied in irritation.

“I never said I couldn’t,” Morita said in confusion.

“Not you, Muta.” Haru pointed to Muta, who only eyed Morita grumpily.

“You know that fatso?”

“Of course, he’s my fatso.”

“Hey!”

“Why on earth did you bring your cat with you to become a soldier?”

“Honestly, I ask myself that every day.”

“Hey! I’m here for moral support! Without me you’d be lost!”

“We’re heading to the mess hall now, you coming or what?”

Muta grumbled to himself as he trotted after Haru and the other recruits slowly drifting towards the promise of a warm meal and a cool drink.

“Hey Yoshioka, check it out.” Haru looked up from tying her shoes to see Machida pointing diagonally from them as he continued, “Seems fancypants nobleman can wear something besides suits and tall hats.”

Haru followed the direction of Machida’s hand to see the baron walking towards them wearing clothes very similar to theirs, albeit obviously of a higher quality. “Huh, didn’t think it was possible.”

“I know, right?”

Haru bent her head again to quickly finish her shoes before they had to fall in. With a muffled yawn, she fell in line with the other recruits and stood at attention as the baron seemed to pick at his clothes.

“All right men, today we’re going for a little jog.” There were a few scattered murmurs at the baron’s announcement, most of which seemed to them wondering what the catch was. “You’ll be following me, and stragglers won’t be tolerated.”

“Wonder what he means by that?” Machida whispered to Haru.

“Better not to be a straggler and find out,” Haru replied. Machida nodded, that was a lesson they had learned quickly.

Without any other preamble, the baron started jogging out of the camp. The recruits all scrambled to catch up to him and fell into an easy pace. Haru placed herself right in the center of the group. Jogging was easy, jogging was something she could do.

Haru managed to stay near the center of the group, even as the recruits spread out and the tail end started to lag behind. Eventually the baron lead the group to a large clearing and came to a stop. The clearing was full of various structures, an obvious obstacle course. Not that anyone seemed to notice, most of the recruits unceremoniously fell to the ground and gasped like landed fish. Haru wanted to join them, but chose to simply rest her hands on her knees as she panted, she had a feeling the baron wasn’t done with them yet.

“Everybody up, you’ll recover faster if you stand straight. Don’t hunch, you’ll just squish your lungs.”

Haru straightened immediately while the others all groaned and clambered to their feet. “I hate it when he’s right,” the recruit nearest Haru grumbled.

“Isn’t he always right?” Tsuge shot right back.

“And here we have today’s lucky volunteers,” the baron said jovially as the last few stragglers stumbled into the clearing. “You lucky fellows will be the first to run this next course. What we have is a race.” The baron went on to explain the route they would be taking and where the start and finish points were. “And of course, I’ll be joining you for the first race.” With that he stripped off his shirt to show bare chest.

Haru quickly averted her eyes, suddenly finding that shrub to her right very interesting. It was such an interesting shape and had everything to do with her face suddenly growing very warm for no reason at all.

“My, my, you lot look worn out.” Haru looked up to see someone handing out water skins to the recruits watching the race. “Your face is positively red, you definitely need some water.” He handed Haru a water skin, who could only nod and mumble her thanks as she took the skin. Haru carefully sipped at her water, eyes still averted as she heard the others cheering. With a start she turned her attention back to the race, too late. The baron had already finished and the recruits were all near the end, she hadn’t seen the route any of them had taken. Drat, she hoped she wasn’t in the next group.

“Alright, for the next group...” the baron singled out another group of stragglers, it seemed he was going in the reverse order of their arrival at the clearing. Good, Haru would be somewhere in the middle. She watched as the racers ran through the obstacle course, memorizing the route they took. Then when the next group went she tilted her head, eyeing the way they tackled the obstacles. Some of them, such as the tall wall with ropes to get over it, were pretty straight forward. Others, like logs spaced to weave over and under, the recruits were obviously tackling in the most inane way. Haru wondered if the baron had run the course like that. Her eyes strayed over to where he was standing by the finish line, then snapped back to the racers. She had forgotten his missing shirt.

“For the next group: Mr. Yoshioka, Mr. Morita...”

Haru handed her water skin over to the nearest person and rolled her shoulders as she stepped up to the starting line with the others in her group. She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face, she was going to turn heads with this run. She ran a pretty standard race with the others until she reached the cargo net set up at a steep angle, rather than try to climb the net she decided to just walk up the supports. She heard several cries of “cheater” behind her but chose to ignore them in favor of finishing the race. She knew she couldn’t just walk over the “weaver” portion too, but rather than going feet first and trying to ungulate like a drunk worm she set herself up sideways and quickly wove her way down the incline. She was well ahead of the other racers now, but rather than take it easy she decided to put her all into the rest of the race.

The grid of rings she had to step through and the tall wall slowed her down a bit, the other racers were starting to catch up. That was fine, she knew a faster way down the wall. She kicked off the wall once about half way down and jumped the rest of the way, taking off for the next obstacle before the others had done more than start down the wall. At the monkey bars she decided to just blatantly cheat and climbed on top to walk across, she had no upper body strength and would be dead last if she went across them normally. The balance beams after that were too easy, then just a hop over a short wall and she was across the finish line. The other racers came running up after that, all gasping out accusations of “cheater” as the recruits watching all cheered for her.

“While Mr. Yoshioka’s interesting method of running an obstacle course certainly is quicker, anyone else who attempts such stunts will be disqualified and forced to race again. Save for the weaver, Mr. Yoshioka was the only one to display the correct method of traversing that particular obstacle.”

“Wait, you mean because he did it first he gets away with it?”

“Mr. Yoshioka has proven himself to be quite clever, that should be rewarded. But in the future I hope you will prove yourself capable of following directions.” The baron directed the last sentence at Haru with a rather stern frown.

“I don’t recall you giving detailed instructions on exactly how we’re supposed to go through the obstacles, baron, sir.” Haru couldn’t help the cheeky grin she gave him.

“I shall have to be more careful of such oversights in the future.”

Haru sat cross legged on the ground, discipline and determination sprawled out on either side of her though still attached to her wrists, one hand supporting a cheek as she stared glumly up and up and up. It was late, the stars were out in all their glory but her eyes were blind to them, her sole focus being the arrow at the top of the pole.

“Still out here?” Machida plopped down next to Haru and looked up as well.

“Yeah,” Haru reluctantly agreed with a sigh.

“We should both be in bed, we got an early day tomorrow.”

“We have an early day every day.”

“All the more reason to go put those things away and head in. C’mon, Yoshioka, being tired won’t help anyone.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Haru slowly climbed to her feet, careful to keep the weights from tangling around each other.

Machida also got to his feet, already facing their sleeping tents. “You coming or what?”

“Yeah I… I just gotta go put these away first.” Haru held up one of the weights, then let it drop. Machida was already heading out of sight as she experimentally let the weights twist around each other, then attempted to pull them apart. It couldn’t be… Baron didn’t like having tricks to things. He was always very straightforward in his instructions, and yet every time she bent the rules she didn’t get in trouble. She wasn’t allowed to pull the same trick twice, of course, but she still never got in trouble. Was this another situation like that?

Haru stepped up to the tall pole, flung the weights around it so they twisted together, then pulled them tight to test their hold. This could work.

It was in the early predawn light that Baron found Haru at the top of the pole. Or rather, had an arrow throw at his feet. He looked up to find Haru perched at the top of the pole, the weights hung over a shoulder, and a wry smile plastered across her face.

“Mr. Yoshioka, you know the challenge doesn’t count if discipline and determination were not attached to your wrists!”

A faint and distant “What?” drifted down from the high pole.

Baron made an exaggerated pointing motion as he shouted, “Come down from there.”

Haru shrugged before detangling the weights from each other, putting them back over her wrists, tangling them up again, then slowly worked her way down the pole. She couldn’t see his face clearly from so high up, but she liked to imagine the shocked expression he must have on his face. By the time she got down and had re-detangled the weights he had composed his face into something akin to stern disapproval if not for twitch to the corners of his mouth. There was also a growing crowd of recruits gathered around Baron.

“I do believe I have figured out your trick, Baron sir.”

“There was not supposed to be a trick, Mr. Yoshioka.”

“I suppose then that no one else will be allowed to use my trick,” Haru replied glibly with a huge grin spread across her face.

“That was a one time challenge, and well done I must say. In all my years I’ve never seen anyone solve it quite like that.”

“That’s because men always think with their muscles instead of their brains.” Haru’s grin faltered as she realized her slip, “Well… most men. There are a few good thinkers here and there.”

Baron raised an eyebrow, but otherwise chose to let the comment pass. “Go put those things away, you’ve earned a day off.” Baron turned to the gathered crowd, “You hear that? Mr. Yoshioka has just earned you lot a day off, you had best thank him.”

“I would have liked another week of training, but orders are orders. Start packing up camp, we move out first thing in the morning. Dismissed.”

There were murmurs throughout the recruits, now officially trained soldiers in the royal army, at Baron’s dismissal. “How bad must the war be going to pull us from training?” “We’re not losing, are we?” “I heard the enemy is using the black arts, it’s why our side is getting so desperate.” “We’re in the middle of nowhere with no contact with anyone else, how in the world did you hear any rumors?”

Haru ignored the whispers as she turned and headed for the stables.

The next morning they did break camp and head out. The battalion of fresh soldiers marched to the front lines and spent the next several months fighting for king and country. Haru surprised herself by actually rising in the ranks, her quick wits and fast reflexes proved to be her saving grace time and time again. That is until one fateful day.

“Baron, look out!” Haru shoved Baron out of the way and kept shoving even as a rain of unexpectedly long distance arrows fell around them.

“How in the world… we should have been out of range!” Baron angrily blustered as he performed the motion to raise a shield.

“Must be those new bows we heard rumors about,” Haru wheezed as she slumped against Baron.

“Haruka! You’re injured!” Baron gently laid Haru on the ground, his shield protecting them from further attacks if only for a short time.

“Only a little,” Haru joked with grimace as she clutched at an arrow embedded in her shoulder, her hand coated with her own blood.

“Here, let me have a look at it.”

“No!” Haru cried. “No,” she said again more softly, “pulling it out will only make me bleed out. Just help me get to a doctor.” Or one specific doctor Haru had made friends with when she first went to the front lines. She could trust him with her secret, had been for almost as long as Haru had known him.

“I can do healing magic,” Baron chided like reminding a forgetful child as he struggled to unbutton Haru’s jacket. “And the sooner we get it out the better, less risk of infection this way.”

“Baron, please!” Haru begged as she desperately tried to fend him off with only one hand.

“Stop acting like such a-”

Whatever Baron was about to call Haru was drowned out in an indignant squeak as he pulled open Haru’s jacket to reveal the binding around her breasts. Baron’s face flushed tomato red as he instantly let the jacket go and turned away. Haru quickly pulled her jacket closed, but couldn’t manage the buttons with one hand shaking badly and the other slippery with blood.

“I-I’m so sorry,” Baron stuttered out in shock before putting a hand up to his mouth.

“Doctor now?” Haru weakly asked.

“Yes, of course.” Baron straightened his back and turned back to help Haru stand. It was difficult with her trying to keep her jacket closed and one hand near useless. “Here, let me just...” Baron tentatively reached for Haru’s jacket and hastily did up a couple buttons before finally pulling Haru to her feet. He moved to sling her good arm over his shoulder when Haru recoiled.

“My legs are just fine, just keep that shield up.”

“Right, of course.” Baron performed the shield motion again knowing it wouldn’t affect anything but made him feel better nonetheless. He then attempted to put an arm protectively around Haru’s shoulders, causing her to flinch in pain. “Ah, sorry. Camp isn’t far.”

“I know,” Haru growled in frustration. This was exactly what she had been afraid would happen if she was eventually discovered. Well, this and also being kicked out of the army in disgrace and probably going to jail.

The rest of the trip back to camp was made in silence as Haru gripped the arrow in her shoulder and pictured which of the worst case scenarios was most likely to happen. Baron held the flap to the medical tent open for Haru as she ducked inside and made a beeline for the back of the tent.

“Dr. Morgenstern!”

“Oh, Yoshioka! What happened? Come over here, sit down on the bed. Nurse, privacy screen please!”

“Yes doctor!”

Baron dithered near the door for a moment, unsure what he should or even could do, before finally ducking back out into camp.

Haru lay in the dreary cot, tucked away in the far back of the medical tent with a privacy screen up despite not needing it at the moment. She sighed heavily as Dr. Morgenstern wrote down some notes nearby.

“Perhaps he can be persuaded to keep the secret. He might even let you stay in the military, you’ve proven yourself to be quite capable.”

“He’s gonna feel hurt and betrayed, especially since he’s known me longer than you but you’ve known longer than him.”

The doctor made a noncommittal noise as he finished writing with a flourish. “Well, either way, get some rest. And try not to think about it to hard.”

Haru snorted, but nodded before settling in as best she could. Her shoulder hurt terribly, the sling her arm was in was uncomfortable, and the cot was even more uncomfortable but she was tired, so very tired.

When Haru opened her eyes again it was morning and Baron was standing at the edge of her privacy screen. Haru smiled to see her dear friend visiting her, then remembered that he knew her secret now. She blushed and turned her face away from him.

Baron had smiled when Haru had, glad to see her doing better than when he had last seen her, but then she had turned away and his heart had dropped into his stomach.

“So, what’s it to be? Quiet dismissal or a full on court marshal?” Haru gripped the course blanket with her good hand as she continued to look away from Baron.

“Neither, if that is what you wish.”

Haru looked up in surprise to find that Baron had stepped closer while she wasn’t looking. He picked up her good hand and held it to his lips. “A pleasure to finally properly make your acquaintance, Miss Yoshioka.”

Haru couldn’t help the girlish giggled that bubbled up in her throat. “So the rumors are true, you really are an incorrigible flirt!”

Mommabearsday off on Tumblr asked for a Mulan AU and at first it was fun and I teased her about how tragic a folktale it is and that I was going to go for the bad end. Of course I wasn’t really, but then about half way through I suddenly got slammed upside the head with Undertale feels and focusing on anything else has been like pulling teeth and stabbing myself in the eye with a burning poker at the same time and I wish I didn’t hyperfocus like this. Augh! Anyway, I finally managed to finish this in fits and starts. It has the worst transition I’ve ever written in my entire life, and that includes the drivel I wrote at fourteen. But I also super love that ending.

About Mulan, I always wondered just what she was thinking. Obviously her father would not have been a rank and file soldier, as a clear veteran he would have likely done some behind the scenes work like training the new recruits or being an adviser or something. He was probably never in danger of going to the front lines, who would send a crippled old man to the front lines?

Bonus scene taking place shortly before they get called to the front lines below.

“He’s just so… so clever Toto! I always think I’ve laid out all the rules in the clearest way possible and he still some finds a way around them without breaking them. And on his feet too! It doesn’t matter if I have him go first or last, he just gets more clever if he goes last. And how can he be so cute? Have you seen the way he smiles?”

“So do something about it,” Toto replied as he lazily groomed a wing while Humbert frantically paced to and fro.

“I can’t, he’s a subordinate and still in training. It would be incredibly unethical to pursue him right now.”

“Their training is almost over, do something about it then.”

“Okay…” Baron flopped down on his bed next to Toto’s roost, then turned to look up at him with big, frightened eyes. “So what do I do?”

“What do you mean ‘what do I do’? You know what to do, heavens know you’ve a reputation for being a flirt back home.”

“With the ladies,” Baron corrected as if being a flirt was something to be proud of. “How does one flirt with a gentleman? Or for that matter, how does one flirt with a trained soldier? I… Toto… what if he doesn’t like me back?”

“Then you move on and go flirt with one of those ladies you’re so capable of flirting with.”

“Toto, this is serious!”

“I am being serious! If he’s not interested in you then you just have to accept it just as much as you would of any lady who’s not interested in you. Need I remind you of Louise?”

“Heavens no!” Baron cried, then sunk further into his bed and held his pillow close. “I really thought we could be happy together, arranged marriage or not.”

“Perhaps you could have, but isn’t it better to let people go than to force them into a relationship they’re unhappy with?”

“Yes… you’re right old friend. Thank you.”

“Good, now enough moping. Don’t you have a report to write?”

“I should think you’d be loathe to remind me of it since I know you hate carrying messages back and forth.”

“I’m not a carrier pigeon, couldn’t you find another way?”

“Not one half so secure my friend.”

Toto sighed and ruffled his feathers, “I hate it when you’re right.”

#the cat returns #tcr #mulan au #nenna writes #it's finally done!#if only my other wips were done

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writingroold · 7 years

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I’m Coming Home

Haru has everything a girl could want, fame, fortune and a great relationship with her band's lead singer. But it's all fake, and she is tired of putting on a face for the world. She just wants to go home to her true love.

She dropped her purse on the bed and walked over to the window. It was large with a seat, which she took advantage of as she opened the window. The hotel was ornate and old, much like the room she was in, so the windows weren't sealed shut like most of the others she’d stayed in before, even in the penthouse.

It was him she first told about her secret passion, that she loved to sing. It was him who encouraged her to join Machida’s band after their singer had surgery that ruined her voice. It was him who helped teach her how to dance so she wouldn't fall off the stage as she sang. It was him she was smiling at when she performed for the first time and he, Toto and Muta hid in the rafters of the barn. It was him who supported her when she decided she wanted to wear a wig on stage to help her walk around anonymously after they became an overnight sensation. It was him she sang to when they performed their romantic songs. It was him she wished would sing the duets with on stage, after he helped her practice one. It was him who always wrote to her when she’d gone on the national tour after winning the Battle of the Bands contest. And it was her who left to go on the world tour after that.

She remembered the last time she saw Baron, face to face. It was just a few days before she was to leave for the tour. She had come to the Refuge after dinner with the band and their managers. They’d served sake with the dinner, and she had a little more than she should have. As she tripped her way into the Bureau, after giving the door three sharp knocks, her own personal signal, Baron helped her to a chair and just gave her tea to help sober her and to settle her stomach so she wouldn't get sick. He explained Muta and Toto were elsewhere and waited patiently while she called her mom to tell her she’d be staying at a friend’s house overnight, and that she’d be back in the morning.

She remembered he’d kept the light low so she wouldn't get a headache once she sobered up, using candles as opposed to the gas lights. She had sat slumped against the arm of the sofa and watched him. She always had thought he was handsome, but in that light he was even more so. The alcohol had also lowered her inhibitions, so when he’d bent over her to take the cup of tea from her hands for a refill, she leaned up and kissed him.

She could tell he was surprised by the action, the way he tensed when she made contact showed it. However, when she noticed he hadn't even moved, she pulled back. “What’s wrong Baron?” she’d asked him, tilting her head slightly.

“I think things might be a bit different now,” was his answer, still not turning from his position. “You are, after all, inebriated, it’s never certain how it affects people.”

“I've wanted to kiss you since I first met you Baron. The alcohol just took away any reservations I had about doing so.” She stood, swaying only slightly. Already the tea was sobering her up, she knew she’d have to say what she wanted fast.

“And why ever would you want to kiss me, Miss Haru?” Baron turned as he asked this, seeing her walking up to him.

“Will you regret it tomorrow, Haru, if I said I loved you too, and kissed you again” Baron asked her, the nervousness in his voice evident.

The rest of the night they spent curled up together, talking and kissing, until Haru finally drifted to sleep in his arms and he held her until morning came. When Muta and Toto returned, he motioned for them to be quiet so to not disturb her. When she woke up, they told the cat and crow what had happened and, while they felt a little embarrassed about it, neither of them wished that it hadn't happened. When she had to leave, he walked her to the arched entrance to the refuge and kissed her goodbye just at the point where she returned to her normal size. And for that moment, as she grew so did he and the hint of a future might have been there. Then the kiss ended and when she opened her eyes, Haru was looking down at Baron. With tears in both their eyes, they turned around at the same moment, she walking to a future they couldn't share, and he to a world they couldn't stay in.

When the tour kicked off, Haru and Baron exchanged letters as often as they could. She’d send them to the Cat Kingdom, where Lune and Yuki would make sure the letters got to the Bureau. However, after a while, she just kept writing the same message, “I’m fine, how are you?” with some token description of whatever city they were in, or what happened on the tour bus, plane or train that day. Eventually, she started writing them, but wouldn't send them; she didn't want that sent to him. Still, his letters came, and they were the happiest times for her.

She sighed again and pushed herself off of the window seat. It just wasn't worth it to her. She might have had fame, fortune, and the opportunity to do something she loved. But without the man she loved, she hated it, and she’d had enough.

She pulled a carry-on suitcase out of the closet and started throwing clothes in it. If what she took was a mix of casual and fancy styles, or large amount of shirts compared to pants and shoes, she didn't care. Into a small duffle, also from the closet, she packed the few books she had, a couple changes of clothes, her necessities and her wallet. Her phone she left, she wouldn't need it where she went, and she could easily get another one later on, and the same for her music, except for one CD, which held a song she’d spent months trying to find and had finally gotten a copy of a few months before; her and Baron's song, Katzen Blaut.

Quiet as a mouse, she slipped out of her room, grateful that the other band members had turned in to their own rooms and she was the only one still awake or not busy. She left four envelopes behind her, one each in front of Machida, Candy and Hideiko, their stage manager’s, rooms. The last was on her bed and contained the same information the first three did, just put there in case someone went into her room before they found their own. She'd written them almost a week before, and she was now putting them to their purpose.

The letters all said the same thing.

“In regards to the band and the tour, have Jessica replace me as the lead singer, that’s what she wants and she’s been practicing. I should know, I've been helping her. Ami, Neji, keep going strong; I’ll be expecting an invite to the wedding. Jon, try and settle down, or at least don’t break so many hearts, we want you to give us nieces and nephews the proper way. And Machida, follow your heart. Consider this my Dear John and ask out Go, I know you two like each other.

~~~

Making her way out of the airport, Haru waited a moment to look at the metropolis around her. It was beautiful, as it always was, but Haru didn't linger too long. By now, people would know about her disappearance and she would have paparazzi and possibly police looking for her. Changing in the airport bathroom, like she had before she got on the plane in France, she hopped on a bus out to the suburbs, to the small town where she had grown up.

After getting off the bus, she walked around the town for a little bit. First she visited her old house. Her mom still lived there, but Haru didn't, having moved into an apartment with Hiromi and Ami after the formation of the band. Now, Naoko rented rooms to college students, and was never lacking for company with her quilting friends around. Haru didn't go up and knock on the door; she’d written her mother just before they arrived in Paris, she knew Haru's feelings and what she'd been planning to do.

She kept walking down to her school. The day had just ended and she watched as students poured out of the building, either mingling on the grounds or walking through the gates to the shops or home. Here, she had been Haru, the-girl-who-was-late-everyday-and-a-total-klutz, then later Haru, the-confident-girl-who-wasn't-afraid-to-be-herself. There, her best friend was Hiromi, her other friends were Chicka and Machida and she was happy. This was also the place where she ended her adventure and started to change her life.

She made it to the chair where Muta usually sat. He was not there, but Haru didn't worry. She just walked to the old familiar alley, noting the man who stood and started following her. Luckily, she managed to be quick enough to lose him before long. Around that bend, through that alley, over the tin rooftops, down the stairs, around the corner and finally she saw the white marble archway of the Refuge, and through it, the lighted windows of the Cat Bureau. She paused for a moment before walking on, only one thought running through her head.

As she passed under the arch, she felt the magic wash over her. Willing it to make her change slow so she'd get across the square quicker, she noticed Toto was not on his pillar. ‘They must be inside,’ quickly interrupted her one thought, then she shook it off as she made it to the Bureau doors. Through them, and the open window above her head, she heard Muta and Toto insulting each other and Baron’s soft admonitions. Setting her bags down, she raised her hand and knocked on the door sharply three times.

The voices stopped. Haru waited with baited breath, nibbling her lower lip. After seemingly an eternity, the door opened, revealing Baron. His suit coat and hat were off and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He had a stunned look, like he couldn't believe what he saw. “Haru?” he asked softly, as he slowly stretched out his hand, reaching for hers.

Haru smiled and took his hand in hers. “Hello Baron,” she said, tears of joy welling in her eyes.

Before another word could be said, Baron had her in an embrace and his lips were on her’s. After a year’s separation, the two lovers were together, and in that moment, nothing else mattered.

When they finally separated for air, Baron rested his forehead on Haru’s. “You came back,” was all he could say.

Haru smiled, pulling him closer to her and saying, her lips hovering over his, the thought that’d been running through her head since she saw the Refuge. “I came home.”

#My Writings #Story: I'm Coming Home #Fandom: The Cat Returns #Ship: Baron Humbert von Gikkingen/Haru Yoshioka

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typewriterghcst · 3 years

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Title: A Very Small Wish Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Baron, Muta, Toto, Haru, plus some OCs Rating: PGish maybe?? Words: 2797 Summary: A pleading request from a parent whose daughter has been cursed by a resentful witch is nothing truly out of the ordinary for the Cat Bureau— in fact, it might be so common so as to be routine— so why does something feel inherently off about this particular one? Notes: Second chapter of six of a Secret Santa gift for @deedee-sunflowers. I had the realization that it actually takes a Bit for the witch part of this to show up, and I apologize for that orz That said, I'm so glad you liked it! Especially that they're all in character and that Vanya is interesting, aha. I worry a lot that he might be too grating, bc I definitely get a lot of enjoyment out of writing those kinds of characters, but I don't want them to also be irritating to sit through rip Anywho, a chapter in which Haru has a chat with a beloved monster i’m sorry that was a very vague shrek reference

Ch. 2: Virtuous Siree

She might be hesitant to admit it, but Haru is almost disappointed to meet the cursed daughter, having halfway convinced herself in her unshakable unnerved skepticism that the Vanya creature had crafted her existence wholesale from lies and nothingness. Yet here she is, standing before them with her hands (hands? it’s hard to tell) folded in a mannerly fashion in front of her. Her long, golden veil is in much better shape than her father’s handkerchief, though the odd snag and rip is perhaps inevitable when one is in possession of what appears to be a pair of curly horns.

She is otherwise far from inconspicuous, as well; the gauzy shroud masking her person still reveals the aforementioned horns, and a pointed snout, and little hands adorned with inch-long claws. A long, hairless tail snakes out from behind her, curling at her feet like a sleeping dog.

Perhaps the most pressing thing, however, is that the same uneasy chill runs through Haru within this strange, half-concealed child’s presence as it does when her father is around. For the first time, she wonders if it’s not, in fact, her blunted human instincts furiously trying to warn her of Vanya’s true nature and simply a facet of his kind’s existence.

Vanya wanders into her line of sight again, standing beside his daughter with a laughably manic, skittish energy and reaching for her clawed hand. Haru notes the two are very nearly the same height. Yet, to hers (and probably the Bureau’s surprise, as well), he appears to have little trouble lifting her off the ground and holding her out to them, as if he’d worried they wouldn’t understand just how truly monstrous she’d become should he not bring her closer to their eyelines.

“This is my daughter, Virtuous Siree.” He seems to take a certain, special glee in saying so. “She is exquisitely cute! Like a baby. I’ve had her for years now.”

Virtuous Siree, though her face is obscured by the veil, seems unbothered by this treatment, inclining her head politely to their guests.

“Pleased to meet you.” Her voice echoes much like a lonely call in an empty stairwell, resulting in the definitively disorienting effect of two separate people speaking in unison.

“...And you, as well.” Baron is the first to recover from the oddness of the situation, removing his hat and bowing, and the rest of them follow suit shortly after (sans Muta, anyway, who gives a more characteristically terse greeting).

“Thank you, by the way,” Virtuous Siree then continues, as casually blithe as her father. “For taking the case. We are beyond aromatized to have obtained your assistance!”

Behind her, Vanya utters a noise somewhere between a squeal and a sob, and then hugs her close to him. “Cute! She’s too cute! Virtuous Siree, did you have a good day today?”

“Yes, Papa, I worked in the garden. The cherries are ripening on the vine! And I started a new painting when I was done.”

“Your funny prickly face horns are sticking me through my fur!” Yet, he appears to make no motions to pull away. (Haru sneaks an amused look at Muta; sure enough, the mystified frown on his own face makes it clear he’s as lost about how to feel about this interaction as she’d expected him to be.)

“How far of a journey is the Sown Forest from here, Vanya?”

The fox glances at Toto only from the very corners of his eyes at first, but the expression lacks even the most minuscule hint of suspicion. He pulls his face away from Virtuous Siree’s veiled one, placing her back on the ground with a happy coo.

“I can’t tell you how far, but it will take….” Here he counts futilely on his tiny paws again. “...eighteen-twenty minutes!”

“...You mean, eighteen to twenty minutes?”

Vanya hesitates, and here, now, it becomes obvious he’s beginning to pick up on Toto’s skepticism. When he answers this time, he’s back to his by now expected plaintive offense.

“Time works differently in Oostal! I’m only a little creature from Oostal, and I don’t know your Earthical time measurements!” He cries.

“Papa’s trying his best,” Virtuous Siree interjects with the modest passion one might expect from a shy girl her age, patting her father on the paw.

“To focus on the pretty Vanya Creature’s tenuous grasp of a time he’s never used before when his cute daughter is at risk of being cursed forever!”

“Yeah, birdbrain, that’s real heartless of ya,” Muta can’t help but add (a marked testament to how much he enjoys antagonizing the crow, if even his antipathy for the Vanya creature doesn’t see him pass up the opportunity.)

“But if time works differently, how are we meant to keep track of how long we have?” Toto asks, side-eyeing Muta with no small degree of smug amusement. (For his part, Muta seems uncertain whether to take this abrupt subject change as a surrender or a snub.)

“Use a pocket watch,” is Vanya’s dismissive reply.

Baron finds himself rather suddenly the object of vested interest for three pairs of eyes; Muta, Haru, and Toto all three almost instantly turn to him. He looks from each one to the other in moderate bemusement for mere seconds before his shoulders relax in a subtle show of resignation.

“Yes, I have one with me.”

“Wouldn’t have been you if you didn’t,” Toto teases with a smile.

“Of course,” Baron deigns to play along with a faintly put-upon tone.

“Where’s that witchy paper you said you got, anyway?” Muta asks Vanya. “The one that says it’s okay for you to get help from strangers. Don’t think I forgot about it,” he ends with crabbily.

“I left it on the table!” Vanya replies with a matching huff, less than humored by Muta’s skepticism.

Here Virtuous Siree jumps to contribute, expression molded into a contrite, abashed frown, “Oh, no— Papa, those papers got blown away earlier today! I-I opened the door to go out into the garden, and a bigly strong gust blew in!”

“Seriously—?”

“They blew up into the surrounding trees,” Virtuous Siree continues, more chastened than before in the face of Muta’s apparent exasperation, a reaction which seems to give the cat some considerable pause. “I couldn’t reach them.”

Vanya pats her head.

“It’s no significant loss that they did! We can search for them when I go to pick up the leg up in our sleeves.”

The perplexed silence which settles after Vanya’s words lingers heavily, but at least only briefly.

“Oh,” Toto first responds with a dawning amusement and the slightest of laughs. “You have something in mind to help make these tasks less of a struggle.”

Vanya nods enthusiastically, giving no indication of having discerned their earlier confusion, nor why Toto then felt the need to clarify. His tail, also, curls into an excitable question mark shape before relaxing again.

“It will take just a moment— I hid it in the root cellar with the other cates.”

“And the root cellar is—?”

“At the edge of the property, by the fence.”

“Very well. It shouldn’t take us long, I think, but we ought to depart right away. Please lead the way, Mr. Vanya.”

“I’ll stay here,” Haru speaks up. “I’d feel a little bad leaving Virtuous Siree all alone again, even if it is just a few minutes— I don’t mind keeping her company. I mean—” Here she turns to the girl herself with a sheepish expression, hands folded bashfully behind her back. “ —if she doesn’t mind my company, of course.”

“I don’t mind!” Virtuous Siree responds with a resolute shake of her head.

“Good, goods!” Vanya agrees in delight. There’s yet another almost cat-like expression of affection from him, rubbing his cheek against Siree’s as he swings their joined hands. “Play nice, Cute Siree. We’ll be back before you know it!”

&&&

The little house in which Vanya and Virtuous Siree have made their home is in all honesty not all that strange to Haru. At least, in the sense that it has walls and doors and windows, and furniture with purposes that are easy enough to grasp upon laying eyes on them. Yet two things still stand out to her as unusual.

The first is that the walls, if not the house entirely, give the rather distinct impression that the entire thing had been carved from an enormous gourd or another hardy vegetable of sorts. When Haru furtively lays a hand on one of the few unoccupied walls, she finds she can’t discern the material by sight or touch.

The outside of the house hadn’t struck her as so outlandish. It certainly hadn’t appeared to be a massive vegetable.

The second, as previously alluded to, is that almost every available surface is buried beneath an arbitrary variety of countless objects— threadbare coats, rusted silverware, broken trinkets.

Distantly, Haru recalls Vanya’s pithy words regarding his shattered teacup— waste not. Seems he kept that particular aphorism close to his heart.

Vanya’s daughter has claimed a spot at the round table in the middle of the room, perched precariously on a wobbly stool with a set of messy watercolor paints and a well-worn brush.

Her face is still hidden, but Haru can still tell her companion (Virtuous Siree, as her father has stubbornly referred to her, and it’s still a terribly odd name to Haru) is shyly stealing glances at her, one after the other, before quickly looking away again, back to her painting.

“Can I draw something, too?” Haru eventually asks to divert the tension.

Virtuous Siree jumps on the distraction. “Oh, yes! You can! Papa always keeps plenty of paper and paints around for me!”

The girl jumps off her stool and scurries to a cabinet across the room, behind a pile of ostensible scarves and socks (the cabinet itself also piled high with an unimaginably diverse array of items— hairbrushes, hats, and tattered books, just to name a few.) In a snap, Virtuous Siree has an identical spot to her own set up at the table beside her for Haru.

“Here you are! Would you like a flat or a round brush..?”

Haru, having never been much a painter, finds herself somewhat stumped at the question, glancing back and forth between the two brushes for a half-minute before sheepishly speaking up. “Actually, this is silly, but do you have anything more fit for an amateur? I don’t do much drawing, and I’d hate to waste some of your good materials.”

Virtuous Siree laughs, a short, girlish noise that quite comically clashes with her unnatural-sounding voice, and waves her hand. “Don’t be silly, I have plenty of materials. You can’t waste them if you used them to do something fun.”

“O-Oh… Well, I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“If you want to start slow, though, hmm…” Virtuous Siree scampers across the room again, stooping to look in her cabinet; Haru hears her shuffle various objects around as she searches for something specific. “Oh! I have some wax crayons. They’re a little used, though.”

“Oh, that’s okay. They’ll be perfect.”

It’s when Haru is settled again, this time staring down at a sheaf of brown, grainy papers— thick, heavy, with a distinct weave to the tiny fibers that must make up the sheets— that she finds herself beset by another stumbling block. She hasn’t drawn anything since she was a child, and those childish scribbles had consisted mostly of attempts at whatever animals had caught her eye.

Absently, she wonders if her skills have managed to budge past their old level. Probably not. But, there’s no time like the present to find out, she supposes. She’ll try drawing Baron.

“What does the name Virtuous Siree mean?”

Virtuous Siree gives a pensive noise. “You don’t have to call me Virtuous Siree. Just Siree is fine. Only Papa calls me Virtuous Siree-- he added the first part a little while ago.”

“Okay, Siree, then. If you like, you can call me just Haru.”

“I’ll do that!” Then, remembering what Haru’s original question was, she adds diffidently, “‘Siree’ is just a filler word in Oostal’s language, but it has a-- umm, an implication of emphasis. It’s what you use to boost the feelings in what you’re trying to get across when you can’t remember a word.”

Haru pauses in her attempt to color in one of Baron’s eyes. “Does that mean your name with the addition of ‘Virtuous’ is kind of like saying ‘really virtuous?’”

“It is!” Siree admits with an almost embarrassed laugh. “Papa’s very silly sometimes.”

To herself, Haru thinks that sounds like yet another vast understatement.

“...Have you ever dealt with witch’s magic before?” Virtuous Siree asks.

“Not…. witch’s magic, no. At least, I don’t think so. But I was transformed into a cat once,” Haru says, carefully drawing a spiral on her paper with a yellow crayon (her interpretation of the sun. It won’t do to put crayon scribble Baron into a rainy, sad environment, after all).

“What’s a cat?” Siree asks.

“Oh— um. It’s an… an animal from my world. They look a little like your father, but a little bigger. Oh! Actually, Muta and Baron-- well, Muta is a cat, but Baron just looks like one.” Then, abruptly remembering Siree has been cursed and must therefore look quite similar to her father under normal circumstances, Haru hastily adds, “I-I guess they’d look like you, too, wouldn’t they?”

Siree nods slightly, even though she hasn’t looked away from her own painting. When she speaks, her voice is soft, shy again.

“They're cute. I wish I could be cute, too, like Papa. Or, um, like I was.”

Somewhere, that gentle, beseeching string of words tugs at an old fear, one that had been allayed rather completely with the return to her normal form but not altogether forgotten— that of losing her familiar reflection. What was on the inside ultimately wouldn’t have changed, and there had always been little flaws in her human appearance she could have spent hours complaining about, but… in the end, her face, her humanness, had been held more dear by her than she could ever have realized without being transformed against her will.

“Don’t worry,” Haru finds herself saying. “Baron and the Bureau managed to rescue me from becoming a cat. They’ll do the same for you, no problem. You just wait. You’ll be your old self in no time.”

Siree’s brushstrokes slow and then stop altogether. She moves so that Haru knows she must be studying her thoughtfully, and the very knowledge of Siree’s no doubt unblinking, pensive gaze trained intently on her is enough to give her goosebumps again.

“...You’re very kind,” the girl eventually remarks. Then, finally looking away (Haru’s pretty sure, at least), she adds, “I like that. I hope you make it out safe.”

“I have the Bureau,” Haru says surely. “I’ll be fine.”

“Well, I hope they stay safe, too,” Siree adds.

As if wise to the fact they’d been the subject of the past few moments of conversation, the Bureau (accompanied, of course, by Vanya) arrive just seconds after with the familiar sound of the beginnings of an altercation between Muta and Toto. Vanya again wastes little time in hugging Siree.

“You’re back,” Haru says in the meantime. “Are we good to go now, then?”

“Yeah,” Muta breaks off his disagreement with Toto to answer with a shrug. “Whatever the pipsqueak picked up, it didn’t take long.”

“It’s a surprise!” Vanya protests, turning a haughty gaze upon Muta. Then, thoughtfully, he amends, “...A good surprise.”

Haru, thinking of Vanya’s original haste in returning to his daughter, and seeing perhaps the same veiled concern in Baron’s and Toto’s faces, nudges the avian Creation beside her, and… well, bless him, Toto takes very little time to speak up for them all.

“Will Virtuous Siree be alright here all by herself?”

Vanya rocks back and forth a few times, dragging poor Siree with him (though she seems unbothered, at least). “Yes, yes, Virtuous Siree is safe here. There are neighbors! ...In fact, if she feels scared, she should go next door to Mr. Gleb.” This spoken directly to Siree, despite the odd choice in phrasing.

“I will, Papa,” Siree answers without hesitation.

It’s here that Vanya lets her go with one last delighted chirrup, bounding over to the door and the Bureau and darting outside. Before following suit (...somewhat), Haru turns back to the girl and flashes her a reassuring smile.

“Bye, Siree! Stay safe, and don’t worry— we’ll get you all fixed up.”

“I know you will!”

As far as Haru can tell, Siree continues waving until they can’t see each other, and something about the dedication instills a certain amount of similar sentiments in Haru.

#the cat returns #secret santa

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typewriterghcst · 3 years

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Title: A Very Small Wish Fandom: The Cat Returns Characters: Baron, Muta, Toto, Haru, plus some OCs Rating: PGish maybe?? Words: 4724 Summary: A pleading request from a parent whose daughter has been cursed by a resentful witch is nothing truly out of the ordinary for the Cat Bureau— in fact, it might be so common so as to be routine— so why does something feel inherently off about this particular one? Notes: Third chapter of six of a Secret Santa gift for @deedee-sunflowers. It’s about here that the chapters start getting a bit long hhh. Tho I think they end up a little shorter again eventually Anyway, the first task. A lot of different influences went into these parts of the story, and I hope they’re not too blatant or distracting, aha ;; Also, I forgot! I drew a very small doodle of the little patchwork creatures which feature in this chapter, if anyone’s interested `~`;;

Ch. 3: The Sown Forest

The Sown Forest is near deathly silent, or… perhaps at least it feels that it should be, but the crunching of the snow under their collective feet and an ever-present rumbling ambiance akin to a distant earthquake means there’s little true silence to be had. And even without that unexpected ambient background, something about the place doesn’t feel quite right. In every direction grow thin, white trees, scattered haphazardly and yet also in just the right formation to make the forest seem far too organized, tidy. Patterned.

No matter where they look, the horizon stretches out over an immeasurable distance, and the white of the sky and that of the level, milky ground meld into one. Only the wispy, bare branches of the trees break up the monotony of the landscape.

“Well,” Baron finally thinks to remark, “The bright red of a holly berry is likely to stick out like a rather sore thumb in this environment, isn’t it?”

“Sure, if you can find the one dumb enough to grow right now,” Muta grumbles, burying his nose into the warmth of the scarf wrapped around his neck and grumpily huddling further into his coat.

“Now, let’s not lose faith so early, Muta. Should we remain positive and keep a cool head about this, we’re sure to succeed.”

“Yeah, that’s what you always say…” More grousing.

“We have only a limited amount of time to triumph over all three of these challenges, and I believe we’ll cover more ground if we split up into groups. Muta, Miss Haru— the two of you start in that direction. Mr. Vanya and I shall take the opposite. Toto, see if you can discern anything from the sky.”

“A berry— even a patch of berries, might be difficult to spot from an aerial view,” Toto responds as a gentle caution. “Even in such a uniform environment.”

“I know, but there’s no harm in trying anyhow.”

Toto nods. Then, more firmly than before, “And how do you propose we find this spot again to inevitably reconvene?”

Ah, bless Toto again, Haru thinks to herself briefly, because Baron looks rather comically bemused by this question, and she and Muta and Toto (if possibly even Vanya, the newcomer that he is) know that this very important piece of information had not occurred to him while putting together his impromptu plan. He gives a pensive noise, one hand going to his chin as the other is planted on his hip.

Eventually, he glances at the trees surrounding them, appearing to have been struck by inspiration, and then removes his hat.

Wordlessly, he hangs it on one of the nearest branches, positioning it just so so it won’t slip off or blow away (though there’s not been even the slightest whisper of wind since they’d arrived).

“Here we are. We’ll all meet back here in an hour— keep an eye on your own footprints. They’re all four of them different, and they should help to distinguish our separate paths.”

Something in Vanya’s gaze gleams as he looks to Baron’s hanging hat, though he ultimately turns away from it to rejoin the group. Instead, he hops like a particularly excited toddler to Haru and Muta (well, Haru, to be more truthful). In one of his paws is what appears to be a skewered snake or worm, which he wastes no time in handing sloppily to the teen, much to her dismay.

“For good luck! This is a traditional Oostal charm good for finding tricky things. And we need all the good luck we can get!”

Haru looks swiftly to Muta for assistance, but the cat is leaning away from her with an expression that speaks to no less than utter baffled disgust. Well. Strained gratitude it is, then, it seems.

“O-Ohh… You’re right, that’s a good idea— th-thank you.”

Vanya beams in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Cat King before scampering back over to his place beside Baron (and it’s only through their long shared history with the cat figurine that Toto and Muta both glean the subtle apprehension in his own expression, that he is mutely waiting in terror for the fox to hand him one of these traditional charms as well). Vanya neglects to do so, however, and Baron’s subdued trepidation is gone almost as soon as it’d revealed itself.

“Remember— one hour. If all else fails, Toto at least should be able to reunite us.”

With that decided, they start off in their opposite directions, Toto taking wing into the sky.

&&&

It’s terribly easy to become disoriented in the Sown Forest, Haru and Muta quickly find out. If not for their own footprints, they swiftly agree they’d have long since been wandering in tight circles and not even realized it. The seamless boundary between land and sky and tree has Haru occasionally feeling rather like she’s walking on a spinning top which also wobbles across the table.

She eventually places the skewered… animal Vanya had given her down beneath a tree, shooting Muta an injured look when he comments on it.

“Looking a gift horse in the mouth, chicky? Didn’t think you had it in ya,” he cracks with a sardonic laugh.

“I’ll pick it back up before we head back to the others! He’ll never even know. B-Because there’s no reason for me to actually carry it with me the whole time we’re looking…”

“I’m just picking on ya. You dropping that thing is gonna do wonders for my nose. Smells like a spoiled fish.” Then, with an annoyed huff, he continues, “I woulda thrown it at him— try to give me some stinky dead thing on a stick—”

“Come on, he’s not that bad,” Haru tries, but she knows she doesn’t sound all that convinced herself. And Muta’s not about to let it go without comment, either.

“You don’t sound so sure to me, kid.”

Haru turns in her spot on her heel, feeling lost and restless in a hard-to-define way. The Sown Forest is devoid of rocks and bushes entirely; it’s nothing but thin scraggly trees, and she would never have imagined before now that to scour such a nebulous landscape might prove to be so exasperating. Where does one search for a pop of color when there are no hiding places?

“...do you get… kind of a weird feeling from Vanya..?”

“Yeah,” Muta doesn’t hesitate to respond sourly. “He’s a tiny, annoying puffball with a bad laugh.”

“N— No, I mean— like an uneasy feeling. Like something is… um, off.”

“Probably ‘cause something is off about him. I don’t trust that puffball.”

The relief Haru gains from such a simple sentence is near indeterminable. She almost leaps in victory.

“I knew it couldn’t be just me! Well, and Toto, maybe, but he was more mum on the whole thing. You know how he is.”

“A gargoyle of few words, yeah, I guess. Real annoying, if you ask me. It’d be a lot easier if everyone just said what they mean instead of hanging on to secrets to keep the peace.”

Distantly, Haru gets the distinct impression this complaint has roots beyond the borders of the current situation, and she’s not sure what to say to it.

Muta, also, seems similarly surprised at himself, and in the end, he chooses to bulldoze past it, circling a few trees in the silence and eventually speaking up, “...Anyway, this Vanya creature pipsqueak is fishy, an’ I don’t like him. I don’t know what he is. Something old. And this place is, too.”

“What about Baron? Do you think he’s being careful enough? He’s wandering around alone with Vanya right now…”

“Eh, Baron’s kind of a soft-hearted ham sometimes, but he’s no peabrain. He’ll be fine.”

“Is that really the best you can do to reassure me..?”

“What? I dunno what to tell you, chicky, it’s the truth.”

“Yeah, but a little more optimism wouldn’t have hurt,” Haru mumbles plaintively.

“If you want, ya could bust on to the scene and rescue him from the puffball to pay him back. Hey, maybe he’ll start crushing on you, then.”

Oh, that calls for a heated blush. Haru stares down at the snow-covered ground of the Sown Forest, hands balled loosely into fists at her sides, though she’s trying desperately to play it all cool. Unfortunately, she’s never been much of an actor.

“He’s my friend— of course I don’t want him to get hurt.”

Muta’s response of the beginnings of a chaffing laugh is not well-received; Haru spins around to protest, but—

Something comes shuffling into their space from behind a nearby tree. And something is all Haru can think to describe it as— smaller even than Vanya and Siree, with a long, snuffling snout and a soft, bean bag body. The tiny creature lacks arms or wings of any kind, giving it an awkward, waddling gait. Missing also are eyes and any noticeable ears.

Yet the strangest thing is that it appears to have been sewn together out of scraps of colorfully-patterned fabric, much like a quilt. (It triggers a memory of her mother’s handiwork, in fact, and the very idea of her mother back at home, in the real world, throws Oostal’s alienness into stark relief. She’s so terribly far from home.)

Muta and Haru watch the little thing waddle between them and then down the way from them in silence before looking back to each other.

“What is it, Muta?” Haru asks. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“What, you never had a stuffed animal before?”

“Stuffed animals don’t walk, Muta,” Haru responds with a huff.

“Eh, shows what you know.”

Whatever response Haru might have had to this lazy red herring abruptly trails off, because the funny little creature, having paused for a brief moment, now drops its floppy snout onto the ground and continues on in a faintly opposite direction, snorting softly the whole way.

“It must be one of the rumored inhabitants of the Sown Forest, right?”

“Yeh. Bet it’ll lead us to those rumored holly berries, too, if we’re careful about it.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Baron.”

Muta darts out from beside her with a faint derisive groan. “Remind me to scratch you later for that one.”

&&&

Following a colorful (albeit very small) waddling quilt animal through an otherwise blinding array of white snow and sky proves to be astonishingly more difficult than either Muta or Haru would have expected. More than once they somehow lose sight of the thing, only to have to stop and strain their ears for its characteristic snuffling breaths.

“It has two little stick legs and waddles like a sedated duck,” Muta complains at one point when they’ve lost it again. “How do we keep losin’ track of it?!”

“Hold on— Muta, I hear it again. It sounds really close.” Then, after a few seconds spent listening, she adds, “...Actually, it… sounds a little like it’s eating something, doesn’t it?”

This is all Muta seems to need to hear before turning on his heel and starting the opposite way.

“Where are you going?” Haru calls after him.

“I’m out!” He hollers back. “Nothing good comes outta anything that involves weird creatures feasting on stuff, I don’t care what it’s actually— woah!!”

“What is it— Muta, what’s wrong?” Haru dashes in the direction of his voice, fearing the worst. Yet she finds him with little difficulty, and in one piece, poised in the same horrified position a housewife might take were she confronted with a trail of muddy footprints across a formerly pristine linoleum floor.

At his feet, so close he could stretch out a paw and tip the little thing over were he so inclined, is the patchwork animal they’d been struggling to track… and the good luck charm Haru had abandoned earlier, which appears a little worse for the wear.

Muta dashes behind her with an unsteady gait, complaining the entire way. “Ughh, it’s even worse than what I was thinking—!”

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Haru tries, even as she takes a repulsed step back at the faint sound of tearing meat and flinches. “...it’s still pretty bad, though.”

It’s as they’re watching from a couple paces away that the little thing lifts its ostensible head to… well, scrutinize them, Haru supposes, though it lacks the eyes to do so. Perhaps there is another, hidden sense that allows it to see in a less traditional manner.

Your trade is acceptable.

Haru can’t quite place it, how she Knows that this is what the creature before Muta and her is communicating, as it hadn’t spoken aloud, nor does she hear the words echoing in her mind as one might expect of a bizarre display of telepathy. Yet, still, the resounding statement is clear.

“O-Oh—” She starts, and her voice is like an echoing gunshot in the silence of the forest, which leads her to whisper her next words, “We’re, um, glad you like it.”

Then, as they watch, it drops its head again and continues tearing delicate slivers off the charm, seemingly oblivious to their presence again.

“Well, now what?” Muta says at her feet. He’s still eyeing the patchwork creature with no small measure of antipathy, but he’s at least not subtly hiding behind Haru anymore.

“I guess we… wait for it to finish..?”

“Great.” Muta sits down with an annoyed huff. “Doesn’t it know we’re on a tight schedule here?”

Haru laughs, but it’s tinged with a speck of nervousness.

If not for the unmistakable noise of flapping wings over the ever present hum of the forest, the resultant wind would certainly give Toto’s arrival away— there’s been not even the barest hint of a breeze since they’ve been searching. The crow perches atop a nearby tangle of branches, cocking his head in a distinctly avian fashion at the creature they’ve run across.

“Ha, looks like you’ve found one of the inhabitants.”

“What was your first clue?”

“The quilt creature down there, mostly.”

Muta, again feeling indirectly bested, only grumbles lowly to himself and crosses his arms. Instead, Haru speaks up.

“It’s taking this good luck charm as a trade for the berry. At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. I guess it’ll… um, show us the way once it’s finished..? I’m not sure how it works.”

“Sounds plausible to me. Baron and Vanya are some ways off in that direction,” Toto also adds, gesturing with his wing. “I’ll go to let them know they can stop searching, and bring them here. Be right back!”

Haru and Muta watch him take off, and for a little while until he’s too far in the distance for them to make out, before turning back to their… companions. It seems in their distraction, more of the little quilt animals had arrived, attracted no doubt by the scent of the ‘good luck charm’ Haru had laid down before the tree.

“They really like this icky stuff, don’t they?” Haru muses in an almost-laugh.

Muta pokes one of them on the top of its soft head, causing it to lose its balance and fall to the side. Grudgingly, he sets it rightside up again. “...Guess that little pipsqueak knew what he was talking about, after all.”

&&&

Elsewhere, Toto’s return trip hits an unforeseen, somewhat bizarre snag.

“The Very Pretty Vanya Creature does not fly through the air like an unsolicited blown kiss!”

Baron and Toto share a puzzled, if slightly frazzled, look between them.

“Mr. Vanya, I sympathize if it’s a matter of a… ah, disdain for heights, but the time limit with which we’ve been burdened is perpetually ticking down, and we ought to do all we can to minimize wasted time,” Baron first tries.

“I’m a very careful flier, too. I promise you’ll have your feet on solid ground in no time at all,” Toto also adds.

But Vanya only shakes his head. “It is no matter of fear!” He begins in a manner that says fear is exactly the matter. “It is the principle! Pretty Vanya has no wings. He was meant to stay on the ground.”

It seemed there would be no convincing him. Baron turns to Toto.

“Toto, do you think then that you could fly a little ways overhead and guide us to the others? If we hurry, perhaps we’ll still make good time.”

Before them, Vanya wrings his paws fretfully before finally throwing one arm across his eyes and crying out, “Pretty Vanya must be left behind! He is the millstone dragging everyone else down!”

“N-Now— Mr. Vanya, please, don’t despair—”

“The Most Helpful Bureau must leave me behind,” Vanya insists again, this time without his face hidden, fixing Baron with a determined look. “I said it before, didn’t I? The Pretty Vanya Creature will meet you there in no time, because he is very fast.”

Faced with Vanya’s clear obstinate refusal and the added stress of a ticking clock, it doesn’t take long for Baron to give in, though the veneer of reluctance lingers over him still.

“V… Very well, Mr. Vanya. If you do insist. We’ll go on without you.”

"You will. But there's no reason to worry. It'll be all okay!"

"...Yes. Of course. Be careful."

As they’re flying away, Toto speaks up. “Do you think he’ll make it?”

Baron seems reluctant to answer, gaze distant and unfocused. Coupled with his stilted posture, it gives him the look of someone who is quite diligently trying to avoid jumping to an unpleasant conclusion.

“...It doesn’t matter,” he eventually responds quietly. “I suppose it’s not something which overtly needs his presence.”

“What about covertly?”

“Then we shall hope for the best.”

&&&

True to Toto’s ultimately fruitless attempts at reassurance, it seems only a matter of seconds when they have their feet back on solid ground, spotting Muta and Haru from the air easily enough and touching down just shy of them in the hopes of not startling the by now bristling crowd of tiny quilted animals surrounding the other two.

“Eh? Where’s the pipsqueak?”

“He chose to find his own way to our location,” Baron first explains in his impeccable manner.

“Scared of heights,” is Toto’s more honest addition.

Muta turns back to the quilt animals with an unimpressed scowl. “Figures. Just make us do all the dirty work.”

“Now, Muta, a genuine fear of heights is nothing to brush off.”

“Yeah, if it’s genuine…” Mumbled under his breath, but distinct enough for them all to hear, and that Baron (nor the other two) step in to offer a defense is telling… but also serves at least to inform them all that they’re all four on the same page.

“What about these little guys? Have they brought up the trade or the berry again?”

“No. I think they wanted to finish off the, um… trade first,” Haru says, looking from Baron and Toto to the gathering of quilt animals scattered about before them. She sits crouched on her haunches with her elbows on her thighs, gazing out at their odd companions with the same detached but amiable curiosity one might reserve for a child’s play.

“Can they really stretch out that one sticky charm enough for this many to have a bite of it?” She eventually notes with some incredulous amusement.

“They’re sure gonna try,” Muta snorts.

Finally, as they watch, in the distance it looks as if there are languid waves in the sea of brightly-colored patchwork, divots in the throng that speak to the movement of only a few individuals while the others part to let them pass.

It doesn’t take long; they soon find themselves approached for an apparent audience with a… particularly diminutive individual which separates from the group, one which also appears to have been adorned with a tattered shawl thrown over its body, which trails like a leaden weight after it (though upon closer inspection, this threadbare train is simply part of the little thing’s frame).

Some of the seams on its patchwork appear to be coming undone. Distantly, Haru wonders what will happen should they truly do so, and— quite swiftly derails her own thoughts before they can wander down distressing paths.

Strikingly, also, unlike the others, this one has been endowed with an eye— a single coffee-colored iris in startlingly familiar, human-shaped white sclera. Situated somewhat strangely off-centered atop its tapered, drooping head, it stares vacantly ahead, half-lidded.

The four of them feel themselves scrutinized by this seeming elder; even Muta has no complaint to offer in an attempt to hurry the process along.

Only one.

Haru can’t quite place it, how she Knows that this is what the little creature before them all is communicating, as it hadn’t spoken aloud, nor does she hear the words echoing in her mind as one might expect of a bizarre display of telepathy. Yet, still, the resounding caveat is clear.

Baron nods stiffly, appearing to have been caught off-guard in the same way the rest of them had. “Yes. Just the one.”

The quilt-like creature responds with some erratic, floppy movements that vaguely resemble an affirmative nod before placing the tapered end of its cloth snout into Baron’s hands, where it drops a single round, bright red berry. It’s about the size of a particularly plump blueberry, though it seems quite larger in Baron’s gloved hands. Seemingly satisfied, the little animal turns then, and begins to waddle away.

“Thank you,” Haru thinks to call after it.

Not too far into the future, they will all four find themselves remembering this particular phrase and wonder furiously why such an innocuous one seemed to have such a profound effect upon the Sown Forest’s minuscule inhabitants. For now, however, it’s little more than a curiosity, when the creature abruptly stops with an accompanying jerk, and then goes quite still.

The others surrounding them, too, copy this one’s motions.

“Uhh, I don’t like the look of that—” Muta starts, but he’s rather abruptly cut off by a hoarse, low-pitched bark which echoes through their surroundings. The four of them instinctively back up in alarm, a sentiment which only grows upon witnessing the little things begin convulsing, tossing their heads into the air and then back down, all the while emitting those same short roars like a baleful staccato.

“That’s loud—”

“I think it’s time we took our leave,” Baron says (he makes a motion to steady his hat, only to belatedly realize he’d left it behind). He’d liked that hat.

No sooner have they turned on their collective tails and fled that the Sown Forest’s inhabitants scuttle and crawl after them in whatever way they can, and despite their obvious disadvantages, the little things are startlingly adept at keeping up with them. Haru doesn’t have the nerve to give their pursuers the thorough, lingering look she wants, too intent on making sure her pounding steps remain even and sound, but the tight-knit mob’s thunderous pursuit is impossible to mistake. It’s not long before panicked discouragement sets in. To everyone’s surprise, it’s Baron who speaks up first.

“We won’t be outrunning them on foot—”

“Good thing we have a gargoyle chicken, then, isn’t it?!” Muta snaps, then calls to said ‘gargoyle chicken,’ “Hey, birdbrain—!”

“Toto’s many good and admirable things, Muta, but I doubt even he is strong enough to carry a full-grown human—”

Haru, overhearing this, burns with the inclination to wildly apologize, all too aware of the cracks of the trees and the deafening crunch of packed snow behind them. She bows her head in remorse, feeling fervently in this moment that her decision to tag along really had been a mistake. She’s so close to contemplating how far she might get should she separate from the group and divert the creatures away… when she notices something rather strange.

“Wait—” Haru gasps, glancing down to herself in a bewildered fashion, so much so that for a fleeting second she stops in her tracks and has to be tugged along by Baron. “I’m not the same size I was— when did I get this small—?!”

Baron sounds just as bewildered when he answers, though he at least moves past it, “Let’s not kick a gift horse, now— Toto!”

“Got it!”

If Toto at all struggles with the effort to carry all three of them, even if Haru has been unexplainably shrunken, then he’s quite gifted with hiding it. He takes off into the air with them, far above the swarming quilt creatures, with no less agility than he usually does, and Baron and Haru spend the next few moments surveying the horde raptly.

“Ya just had to thank them, didn’t you?” Comes Muta’s complaint from his not altogether eager spot in Toto’s talons.

“I was just trying to be polite!” Haru counters just as plaintively, but even she sounds at least a little remorseful. “What kind of place takes words of gratitude as an offense..?”

“They don’t show any signs of slowing down,” Baron notes.

“Are they really gonna chase us all the way to the border?! They barely have the legs to run! You really steamed them with that gratitude BS, chicky.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Haru laments.

“We know you didn’t, Haru, “ Toto tries to reassure.

“Ah, it’s Vanya,” Baron says with a nod in the fox’s direction; he looks quite small (smaller than usual, that is) from their height, rapidly looking between them in the air and the horde of… well, what look to be furious blankets swarming the forest below them. He’s motioning frantically to them to come closer, to land as quickly as they can.

“Is he crazy?! There’s no way we’re landing that close to the forest— if he doesn’t make a break for it, he’s gonna get smothered, too,” Muta says.

Seemingly as an exasperated response to their stubbornness, Vanya points to the forest behind them with an agitated zealousness, or, perhaps more specifically, the perimeter which is teeming with untold numbers of the tiny quilt creatures. The vast majority of them pace behind the line of trees, fretful and overwrought; the unfortunate few that have accidentally tumbled beyond it lie scattered and twitching on the snow-covered ground like marooned fish.

“What’s wrong with them..?”

“Looks like they can’t go beyond the trees,” Toto guesses.

When they land, still uneasy from the agitated mass of patchwork continuing to obsessively tread back and forth just a scant stone’s throw away, Vanya is swift to bound over to them, practically throwing himself at Baron and wrapping his arms around the Creation. If Baron had appeared disconcerted at the mere possibility of being given one of Vanya’s messy luck charms, he’s downright alarmed when being in no uncertain terms ‘glomped’ by the same creature.

“You made it! Pretty Vanya was worried!”

“What’s wrong with the forest’s inhabitants, Vanya?”

Vanya lets Baron go (much to his evident relief) and cants his head in thought. “The Sown Forest exists as a powerful transformative milieu. Stay too long and one becomes part of it. The inhabitants can’t leave it.”

“What will happen to the ones that accidentally fell out of bounds?” Haru asks, glancing to the small number of quilt animals still lying pitifully just out of reach of the border of trees.

“They will die,” Vanya answers with a shrug. “Eventually.”

“But that’s awful! Can’t we just push them back into the forest..? Will they go back to normal then?”

“Yes.” Vanya sounds confused.

“Then that’s what I’ll do,” Haru says, starting for the border with a marked lack of hesitation. “There aren’t that many— it shouldn’t take long, should it?”

“Even less with assistance,” Baron agrees shortly, following after her.

“I guess we’re doing this now.” Muta, as well, trails after the two with a sullen grumble.

“Cheer up, kitty, exercise is good for you.”

“Don’t make me cook you.”

Behind them, Vanya, still holding Baron’s hat as if it were a priceless artifact, watches them leave with a hard to define look, moving just a foot or two from side to side (but never so much as a half-step forward). His tail twitches and flutters in a manner quite reminiscent of an inquisitive squirrel, with the searching mien to accompany it, but he ultimately says nothing and seems to content himself with killing time.

#the cat returns #secret santa

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catsafarithewriter · 5 years

Text

Desperate Measures

A/N: Do you know how sometimes you get an idea that’s so stupid you immediately have to write it? Well, I saw THIS POST, and instantly latched on to the “The Fiance You Thought Was Lost at Sea” flavour and couldn’t resist.

Human AU.

The date was going badly.

Not covertly-ask-the-bartender-for-a-taxi bad, but definitely veering into climbing-out-the-bathroom-window territory.

At least, it would have been if the windows were large enough.

(They weren’t.)

(She’d tried.)

Haru hummed her way through another of her date’s monologues on the virtues of the different brands of modelling paint and subtly checked her phone. Still no reply from either of her housemates in the last thirty seconds.

She wistfully looked over the pudding menu and tried to convince herself that the triple-fudge brownie was worth dragging the date out to a second course.

She needed chocolate. Lots of it.

She deserved it, really, she rationalised. As a prize for her patience.

She made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat as her date moved on to the various selections of glue and good god was she bored of toy planes.

She ate a little faster and dismissed the brownie. She’d come back for it another day. Even free pudding wasn’t worth this.

“...and of course, there’s CA, which will bond between most dissimilar materials, including plastic to metal, but it can discolour some plastics...”

It wasn’t that she disliked model planes. Or tanks. Or trains. Or whatever her date made. (Truth be told, she’d forgotten within the span of dinner arriving.) It was more to the fact that it had been forty minutes and he hadn’t asked her for a single detail about her life.

She had tried. But it turned out that derailing (all puns intended, she needed something to amuse her) a topic on scale model building was harder than it sounded.

“...so personally I prefer an epoxy resin, even if it does take longer to dry. Of course, if you’re wielding plastic to plastic, then the obvious choice would be a solvent cement...”

Dear god, kill me now, Haru thought.

And that was when Louise burst through the pub doors with a raucous bang and cried, “HARU, I’VE RETURNED!” at the top of her lungs.

The bar went silent. Even Haru’s date trailed off on the merits of solvent cement. And it wasn’t just because of Louise’s dramatic entrance or her outburst, although either might have been enough.

She was soaked.

Like, dumped-in-a-river soaked.

Her usually perfect hair was plastered along the sides of her face, her clothes bedraggled, and what looked like a crab hung off her ear like a huge and ugly earring.

“Haru?” Haru’s date asked. “Do you know that woman?”

“Uh,” Haru said.

Louise cleared the pub in three easy steps - mostly because people swiftly got out of her way - and drew Haru into a bone-breaking hug. From this proximity, Haru could smell saltwater.

“Louise,” she wheezed. “What are you doing?”

“Saving you from your god-awful date,” Louise whispered, and released her. “Haru!” she boomed. “I know you’re in shock, but it’s me! I have returned! Your fiancée, lost at sea, but finally I have come back to you!”

Louise paused.

It took Haru a moment longer to register that this was her cue. Luckily, everyone else seemed so perplexed by the turn of events that they didn’t notice her hesitation. She threw her arms around Louise and buried her head into her housemate’s shoulders to hide the hysterical laughter.

“Louise!” she cried back, and she hoped people mistook her shaking voice for heartfelt emotion and not the physical restraint of hiccuping giggles. “It is you! I almost didn’t recognise you after all this time! How did you...? How did you survive the shipwreck?”

“Ah.” Louise leant back and Haru could see her mental gears frantically whirring. “It is a tale of drama and suspense and daring-do of epic proportions. It will live on in history as a tale through the ages. In song! In verse! Maybe in a little Broadway show.” She paused and reconsidered the rapt audience she had. “It is a story for another day!”

Haru’s date got uneasily to his feet, paler than Haru remembered him. “Uh, hi, should I be leaving or...?”

“Haru!” Louise bellowed. She was going to have no voice tomorrow at this rate. “Who is this man you’re with?”

“This is...” Good god, she’d forgotten his name.

“Going,” he supplied. “Haru, it was... this was an experience, but I’m going to go now. It looks like you have a lot of catching up to do.” He paused. “I’ll pay on the way out.”

Haru was beginning to feel somewhat bad about her date, however boring he had been, but then Louise swept her off her feet in an overly dramatic lift and spun her through the air and Haru was too busy trying not to yelp/laugh to worry.

As her feet touched back down, there was a shocked kind of applause from the onlookers. Again, Haru wasn’t given any time to process this before Louise grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the bar. She passed at least two bar patrons who were filming the whole incident.

“Fiancée?” Haru managed to ask as they slipped back outside, as if that was the only question she had in her mind.

“It sounded better than girlfriend. More dramatic.”

“You have a girlfriend,” Haru reminded her.

“Yes, and she’s waiting for us in the car. There she is.” Louise gave a cheerful little wave at her mini, which currently contained her brother and her aforementioned girlfriend.

Persephone was settled comfortably in the driver’s seat, while Louise’s brother and fellow housemate, Baron, was squashed into the back with his knees about his ears.

Haru opened the passenger door and stared bemusedly at the occupants. “So what’s all this then?”

“What does it look like?” Persephone asked. “It’s a rescue mission. Now get inside before we attract any more attention. Louise, towel.”

Haru slid into the seat beside Baron while Louise ruefully dried herself off. “And who decided that posing as a fiancée lost at sea was the best way to get me out of a boring date?”

Persephone and Baron both pointed to Louise.

“Oh, come on. You can’t say that wasn’t fun,” Louise protested.

“We did suggest alternatives,” Baron said.

“Yes, but they were boring and no fun.” Louise twisted in her seat to look back at Haru. “We drew straws to see whose idea we’d go with.”

“And what were the other options?”

“Fire alarm,” Baron said.

“Isn’t that, like, illegal?”

“Only a little bit.”

“And only if you get caught,” Louise added.

“Sephie?”

“Awkward third wheel,” Persephone said.

“I’m not gonna lie, that’s kinda anticlimactic after the other two.”

“Never underestimate the power of an awkward third wheel. Cringey date stories, constant photos of my ninety cats, random facts on the mating rituals of bats, you name it. And even if it doesn’t end the date in thirty seconds, at least you’ll have an interesting conversation.”

“Your imagination never ceases to amaze me,” Louise said.

“Oh, I do actually know about bat mating rituals. Blame late night nature documentaries.”

“I was referring to the cringey date stories.”

“Honey, I love you, but you once punched a guy on our anniversary.”

“He deserved it.”

“We nearly got arrested.”

“But we didn’t.”

“No. But we did get permanently banned from that bar.”

“The food wasn’t even that good there anyway.”

Haru leant over to Baron, although that didn’t take much in the confines of the mini. “Did you really suggest setting off the fire alarm to end my awkward date?”

“Toto proposed one of us pose as your child from the future and mutter about how you were late to meet your future spouse, if that puts my suggestion in a better light at all.”

“Toto was in on this too?”

“And Muta. He suggested posing as an FBI agent on the next table over.”

“Why?”

“I think his train of logic was that it would eventually freak your date out into leaving early--”

“No, I mean why do either of them even know about this?”

“Ah. Yes, well we had to stop by their place to grab the final costume pieces. Toto still had a fake crab from the Little Mermaid school play he helped with.”

“Oh god. Is there anyone who doesn’t know about my terrible date?”

“I believe Hiromi is still ignorant to this.”

“Nope,” Louise said cheerfully. “I texted her for ideas and she’s the one who suggested the bucket of saltwater to add that extra briny effect.”

Haru cradled her head in her hands. “You’re all mad.”

“Hey,” Louise protested. “It got you out of the date, didn’t it?”

#tcr ficlet #cat writes #the cat returns #shit i write at 1am somehow makes it into a ficlet #goddammit one that's nearly 1.5K too #this got out of hand for a shitpost #i would have done baron doing this #but he'd try to be too suave #whereas louise goes all out #and also baron 'emotionally constipated' von gikkingen wouldn't be able to proclaim to be haru's fiance without one or both of them #spontaneously dying inside

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catsafarithewriter · 5 years

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“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m ninety percent sure you grabbed the wrong person."

A/N: I immediately thought of this post with this concept a la haunted house attraction, ironically before we started discussing Disney’s Haunted Mansion on Discord. Anyway, human AU (for reasons that will be clear), enjoy!

This was the last time Haru would let Hiromi talk her into something.

“It’d be fun,” she’d said.

“Different,” she’d promised.

“Exciting,” she’d wheedled.

So far, the only point Hiromi had been right on was different. If she had included dark and cold, she would have had three for three.

In her designated nook of the haunted house attraction, Haru lurked. She was rather good at lurking, she reckoned, and would be capable of lurking for a good few hours longer. Which was just as well, since that was what this summer job was paying her to do.

She resisted the urge to scratch her nose. The face paint itched something awful and hadn’t lessened, despite what her supervisor had assured. A monochromatic design of black and white had sunk her face into skeleton outline; simplistic but effective in the gloom of the corridors. At least she hadn’t had to apply the fake sores and open wounds that Hiromi - albeit rather gleefully - had needed to administer.

The shuffling of feet and shushed voices announced the arrival of her next victims. She hunkered down into her shadow an watched as the guests - a young couple with the guy making a show of going first - rounded the corner, waiting until they were just passing before giving a pointed cough.

The lights flickered, momentarily illuminating her face and its otherworldly makeup, and there was a scream as the guests fled onto the next corridor, dissolving into giggles as they vanished.

Haru couldn’t help herself she grinned as she returned to lurking. Okay, maybe Hiromi hadn’t been entirely wrong. It had its fun moments.

This was the last time Baron would let Louise talk him into something.

In hindsight, admittedly, the haunted house attraction would probably have been a little more enjoyable if he hadn’t taken it upon himself to stand between Muta and Toto in their group lineup. If anything, it had forced the two to shout louder at each other.

“And I’m telling yer we’re going the wrong way!” Muta snapped.

“It’s a haunted house. There is no wrong way,” Toto retorted.

“If we keep going this way, we’ll jus’ end up at the beginning.”

“Do you have fluff for brains? Obviously the entrance is that way.”

“Children, children,” Persephone chided from the front. “Right now the scariest thing is how loud you two can bicker. Shut up and let the ghosts do their job.”

Louise tilted her head back to shoot them a glare. “Also we’re leading and we’re going this way.”

Baron decided against mentioning that he had already seen one designated scarer, but they’d raised an eyebrow at the raised voices and had evidently agreed with Persephone’s assessment.

They turned a corner and the corridor dropped into deeper darkness. Their pace slowed, senses heightening in the absence of sight. Suddenly he was aware of his hands curled around Muta and Toto’s, the shallow breaths of his companions, the shuffle of feet, the tap on his shoulder–

He froze. Muta walked into him. Toto was pulled to a halt.

“What’s the holdup?” Muta hissed.

“Something tapped my shoulder,” Baron whispered.

The lights flickered into momentary blaze, but all he could see were his friends and the crossroads in the house ahead. His sister gave a tug and issued them slowly along.

“At least it was polite ghost,” Toto offered. “It could be worse; it could have actually tried to scare us–”

The lights flickered again and everything happened at once. A shape leapt from the darkness, a blur of movement, the face of death, the roar of something animalistic and feral, and Baron lost both hands of his companions. In the passing light, he saw the others scatter down the split corridors like something out of a Scooby Doo skit and he grabbed Muta’s hand and hauled the tailend of their team after the vanishing shadow of Toto.

He slammed into a dead end. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been Toto. He leant against the wall, still holding Muta’s hand on instinct, breathing hard and feeling a little foolish, when he realised a few discrepancies about the hand he held.

For starters, it was significantly smaller, palm fitting comfortable in his instead of dwarfing it, the fingers slimmer and less comparable to sausages than usual.

It was also wearing a skeleton glove.

He looked at the hand. And then slowly up to its owner. A skull stared back. It grinned, because skulls are always grinning, but he was fairly certain, even in the dim light, that he could see the corner of the scarer’s real mouth twist into a smile. There was the shadow of a dimple along their left cheek.

It occurred to him that if he could see the dimple of their smile, he was probably too close for comfort. He tried to step back and immediately hit his head on a low beam. “Uh,” he managed eloquently. “Hello.”

“Hello,” the skeleton replied, the voice higher than expected and now he could definitely hear the smile. “Not to be the bearer of bad news,” she said, “but I’m ninety percent sure you grabbed the wrong person.”

Haru felt a little bit bad for her overreaction.

Not a lot. But a little.

She had been planning to only tap a few shoulders, cough a few times, maybe lurk in the light - but at the dismissive ‘actually trying to scare us’ comment, she’d - without any real conscious thought - decided to up it a notch. Or several. She hadn’t imagined it would go down so well.

Or that, in the confusion, one of the guests would grab her hand instead of their friend’s. She stared at him in the confines of the dead end, feeling rather confidence with the mask of her face paint.

“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m ninety percent sure you grabbed the wrong person.”

He grinned nervously. “Only ninety? What about the other ten?”

“I don’t know. You might have a thing for cute skeletons.”

“I might, but I don’t.”

A beat passed. They were still standing intimately close.

“So,” he said, “what do we do now? Is there a precept for this sort of thing?”

“Well first,” she answered, “you let go of my hand.”

“Ah.” He released his hold, running his freed hand sheepishly through his hair. “Sorry. I… don’t suppose you could get me back to my group, could you?”

“Do ghosts go boo?” She cringed almost immediately after saying that. “Sorry, I’ve been here too long. Yeah, uh, please hold.” She stepped back, hitching a walkie talkie from the depths of her costume. “Machida? Machida, you there?” She held it away from her ear as a cacophony of laughter crackled through the speaker. “Machida, stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry,” her coworker replied. “I’m so sorry, but you should have seen your faces!”

“Trust that to have been caught on camera,” she muttered. Louder, she added, “Machida, I’m looking for this guy’s group. Can you tell me where they are?”

“Sure, give me a moment.” There was the clack of keys as he cycled through the cameras. “Two guys, two ladies, the guys have been bickering for the past ten minutes?”

“That’s them,” Baron said with a sigh.

“Got them. Okay, they’re in Room F, the zombie cage.”

“Fantastic. Have Hiromi keep them occupied, I’ll drop him off there.” She flicked the speaker back into her pocket and turned to her accidental companion. “We could go the long way, but I have a shortcut. How do you feel about tight spaces?”

“Depends on the context.”

“In a totally non-murdery-way.”

“Oh. I’m good then.”

“Great.” She grabbed his hand before she could think twice, and pulled the hidden staff door open. “Follow me.”

Sickly green safety lights lay low along the staff back corridors, bathing the narrow walkways in a glow that made Baron think of preserved museum specimens. The scarer wove her way though with practised ease, as if she wasn’t surrounded by a Frankenstein-background reject, hand still curled surely around his.

“You can’t scare easily if you work here,” he said, searching for something to break the silence and detract from the creepy environment.

She gave a snort. “I’m not actually a huge fan of horror movies. I didn’t sleep for a week after watching The Signalman.”

He watched her outline silhouetted by the safety strips. Like that, it was easier to see the curve of her face and bypass the skeleton decal. “They why do this?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It pays. It’s different. And my friend kind of talked me into this.” She glanced back. He focused on her eyes and not the skull design. He wondered what she looked like without it. “How about you? Are you a fan?”

He chuckled. “It’s not my preferred genre. My sister dragged us all along, but I’m fairly certain she just wanted an excuse to hold her girlfriend.”

The scarer laughed. “Does she need an excuse?”

“No, but she’s an opportunist. She’ll take any opening.”

“And so she dragged the rest of you along.”

“She has a penchant for that.”

“Apparently it’s a family trait,” she said, and Baron reddened at the reminder of what had got him into this mess to begin with.

“Miss, I am sorry for–”

She waved it away. “Honestly, no worries. It’s the funniest thing to happen to me all day. And it’s Miss Skeleton to you. Ah, here we are.” She clicked to a halt by what appeared to be another section of wall until she slid it back to reveal a haunted house room beyond. “Your group should be just round that corner.”

His feet didn’t move. They should have, but they didn’t. “Miss Skeleton,” he said with a small smile at the amendment, “regardless of your good humour, I still feel somewhat responsible for this situation.” He considered. “Ninety percent responsible.”

He saw the grin now for sure, even hidden beneath the layer of makeup. “And the other ten?”

“Well,” he said, “you are the one still holding my hand this time.”

She released him with a sheepish aura. “Just making sure you get back safely. Didn’t want you accidentally befriending another monster while you’re here.”

The open door waited for him, but he still didn’t move. “May I know the name of the monster I’ve already befriended?”

“Was Miss Skeleton not good enough for you?” she teased, and she gave him a gentle push out into the room. But before the door slid shut, she hesitated. “But my friends call me Haru.”

“Humbert,” he replied. “But my friends call me Baron.”

She grinned. “I’ll see you around, Baron.”

#chez-pezeater #replies #i've been using my mother's laptop over my holiday to post stuff #which doesn't have xkit :( :( :(#so finally I can back up these posts in drafts #the cat returns #cat writes #tcr ficlets #also the lurking line is definitely a mangled nod to good omens #muta: YOU LEFT ME BEHIND #Toto: how do you lose Muta #Louise: you forget to cherish him #because she would meme #baron doesn't get it #toto does but doesn't react #persephone high fives louise #the cat queues

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catsafarithewriter · 5 years

Text

Day 3: Angels and Demons

A/N: Oh grimm, I’m behind schedule. Oops? Anyway, please enjoy!

Toto had tried the distant guardian angel approach for nearly two millennia before deciding it wasn’t for him.

He appreciated the logic. After all, mortals had such brief lifespans that it was foolish to get too close - and guardian angels got plenty close given their innate bond with their mortal-of-the-generation. But, after centuries of watching from afar, he had received a most unusual mortal.

“Yer gonna get in trouble for it,” Muta said.

“With who?” Toto asked. He sat atop the museum rooftop, watching people scurry from one fleeting moment to the next, a half-ghost amid the city’s smog. “There’s no actual rule saying we can’t meet our mortal. In fact,” he continued, a smidgen too smugly to be simply pointing out fact, “the occasional interaction is encouraged. Give them a little nudge in the right direction and all.”

“Yeah, emphasis on the occasional. I’m jus’ saying, there’s a reason we keep our distance.”

“You spend almost all your time in mortal shape in the Human World,” Toto reminded his fellow guardian, a tad accusingly.

“As a cat, yeah. I never actually start a conversation with anyone.”

“Probably because you have nothing good to say.”

“Cause the world just ain’t ready for me yet.”

Toto snorted, but didn’t take the bait.

They watched the world below in silence.

“I mean,” Toto continued eventually, “he’s barely mortal anyway. So it doesn’t count.”

“He’ll die one day.”

“Not for a long while yet. Not within a human lifespan.”

“Maybe.”

Toto cast his gaze across at the other angel. “You’re just a ray of sunshine, anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Another silence passed. This time it was Muta who broke it.

“So yer all set then? Yer really gonna meet him?”

“I think so.”

“How’s that even gonna go? Are ya just gonna be like, hey, I’m yer guardian angel, be not afraid?”

“Give me a little credit. I’ll introduce myself as a creature like him. A Creation. That should bypass any questions about my own long lifespan.”

“Oh, lying. Are ya sure that’s allowed?”

“Well, if I don’t burst into blasphemous flames, I’ll assume so.”

“Yer picked a mortal shape yet?”

“I don’t know.” Toto watched the dimming horizon, the silhouettes of seagulls stark against the rosy sky. “I’m thinking something with wings. Something unremarkable. A corvid, maybe.”

“I always knew you had a birdbrain.”

“Very funny.”

Muta caught Toto’s eye, and the smile wasn’t entirely sure. “Jus’, ya know, don’t get too attached. Even Creations can die.”

Toto grinned. “He’s practically immortal. Unless he’s stupid, he’ll be around for a good long while yet.”

“So. How’s the fake-immortal?”

“Stupid.”

Muta chortled. “Told ya it was a mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake,” Toto retorted. He shuffled his wings - the mortal bird form was still taking some getting used to, even now - and tried to look unruffled. “I’m making far more progress working alongside him than I would watching from afar. It’s just...” He cawed in disgruntlement and tried again. “It’s just he keeps running into stupid situations.”

“So he thinks he’s immortal. Got it.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s...” And Toto struggled to pin down exactly what kind of mental pathways went on in his charge’s head. “Well, maybe partly, but... he’s just very bad at making plans that work. And sticking to them. And aren’t needlessly dramatic. He somehow ended up trapped in a dog kennel last week while trying to find a little girl’s lost toy. I had to fly in to get him out.”

Muta grunted. “Oh yeah, you got that Bureau thing happening. How’s it going?”

“It’s... doing its job.”

“Which is?”

“It gives him a purpose.” Toto was silent for a moment, and for once Muta didn’t take the opportunity to butt in. “You and I have each other, but Creations are so rare that if I wasn’t there, he’d be alone. The Bureau gives him... something. Not that we get many clients, but... it’s a start. It helps.”

“Yeah,” Muta grunted. He sounded like he had thoughts on his mind, and Toto would have teased him for it, but something stayed his beak this time. “So the Bureau helps people out, right?”

“Yes...?”

Muta took another moment to think. “Yer want to help out my human?”

Muta never intended it to become a regular thing. But the years passed and he watched over multiple mortals while Toto remained by the Creation’s side, and somewhere along the way, Muta ended up ferrying more than just his own contemporary human to the Sanctuary’s doors.

Sometimes it was for big things. For when the magical world spilled over onto humanity and some poor human ended up way in over their head. For people who really didn’t have anywhere else to go but to turn to a strange little Bureau populated by talking cats and crows.

But sometimes, when the Bureau had had few guests and fewer clients, and Toto worried over his mortal charge, littler problems would find their way to the Bureau’s doorstep. Things that wouldn’t matter in the long run, that didn’t need magic to solve. But Muta led them to the Sanctuary anyway.

So when his current human - a teen girl, young and awkward and far too reckless for a mortal body - found herself engaged to a Cat Prince against all her wishes, he knew just where to take her.

He did not, however, expect her - years later - to return.

Or to stay.

Or to complicate matters.

Muta was sitting outside the Bureau when Toto returned to the Sanctuary.

“We have a problem.”

Muta barely looked over his newspaper. “He’s your mortal, your problem.”

“It’s not-- well,” Toto amended, “it’s not just him.” He nodded towards the Bureau’s interior, where their respective charges were making tea and conversation. “It’s him and her. Both of them.”

“Yer telling me.”

Toto looked down his beak at Muta. “Don’t you pay any attention to your mortal?”

“Sure I do. She didn’t get married off to the Cat King, did she?”

“So you keep reminding me.”

Muta huffed and folded his paper. “Alright, beaky, I’ll bite. What have they done now?”

“It isn’t a matter of what they have done as what they aren’t doing.”

“Yer speaking in riddles, birdbrain. Cut it out.”

“Have you checked Haru’s connections?”

Muta squinted sceptically at Toto. “Is this one of those trick question things where I’m meant to have checked every other month cause, if so, yes.”

Toto sighed. “Just do it.”

Muta continued squinting for another dubious moment before turning his attention to Haru. He could see the strings of connection running out from her - to her mother, to her friends, to Muta and Toto, to Baron...

“Oh heck.”

The string between Haru and Baron was a deep, burning red.

“When...?”

“Long enough that they should have done something about it by now.”

Muta scoffed. “That ain’t Haru’s fault. It’s your mortal with the emotional constipation.”

“That’s not--”

“Your words, not mine.”

“Toto didn’t speak immediately, pouting in the ensuing silence. Then, “We’re their guardian angels. We should do something.”

“Why? People fall in love all the time, no biggie.”

“He doesn’t. Not like this.”

Muta scoffed. Again. “How old is he? And yer telling me he’s never fallen in love before?”

“Crushes and curiosity, yes,” Toto confirmed. “But this... is much more long-term. This is staying.” This could make things complicated.

Muta hesitated. The bond between Haru and Baron wasn’t just built from love, but from trust and friendship and a thousand little moments. With any other mortal, he could just sit back and watch life take its course. Naturally, it would be Toto’s charge who would be the exception.

“Fine. Do you have a plan?”

“The beginnings of one.”

Muta grunted. Like mortal, like guardian. “And?”

“How familiar are you with Disney’s The Little Mermaid?”

“No. No way.”

Angels couldn’t rewrite reality, but they could... sweetalk it, given the right motivation.

So it perhaps wasn’t wholly unexpected that it was a perfect summer’s evening, that night upon the lake’s water, or that when the breeze rippled through the reeds a gentle tune whistled.

It was, and Toto was quite proud of the fact, the perfect romantic setting.

“This has to be,” Muta said, interupting Toto’s little moment of pride, “and you’ve have a lotta prize-winning moments over the centuries, the dumbest idea you’ve ever had. And that includes the noodle incident.”

“I didn’t see you offering any better ideas, furball.”

“I wanna see how badly this fails so I can laugh about it later.”

“Thanks. Your support is appreciated.”

Toto watched as Baron jumped down into the boat and offer a hand to Haru. Not that he was ever going to admit as much to Muta, but Toto hadn’t been entirely sure they would even get this far. It had taken a fair bit of gentle shoving - both verbal and mental - to get Baron to take the hint and invite Haru out on a definitely-not-date romantic evening.

Emotionally constipated indeed.

As Haru hopped down from the pier, an errant wave lapped against the boat and sent her stumbling. Baron shifted his grip within a heartbeat, catching her and suddenly they were so very close.

Then they both coughed awkwardly and moved away.

Toto shot a questioning look to Muta.

“What?” Muta demanded. “If you’re gonna meddle, I don’t see why I can’t have a little fun too.”

Haru settled into the boat, trying desperately to believe her blush was because of her near miss into the water and not for any more, uh, people-orientated reasons. She made a good show of examining the lake they were rowing across until she could be sure she could look at Baron without recalling the passing proximity of his eyes.

“So,” she managed eventually, “what exactly are we doing out here?”

Baron raised an eyebrow. “Did you not read the report?”

“I tried, but it was all Latin names and science. I mean, what’s a Balaenoptera caelum?”

“I believe the common name for the species is sky whale.”

“Well, why couldn’t they just say that?” Haru paused. “What, really?”

“Yes.”

“As in actual, whales-in-the-sky, those kinds of sky whales?”

“Yes.”

Haru took a moment, and then sat back. “Okay,” she said, “it’s official. This just got ten times cooler.” Her attention returned to Baron. “And we’re here because...?”

“Because once every decade, the juvenile sky whales leave their birthwaters and take to the sky for the first time. It’s meant to be quite spectacular, so I’ve heard.”

Haru was silent. Then, “This isn’t a case is it?”

“Not in the usual sense, no. We have no client, but Toto made a good point that it would be a rather unmissable experience.”

“He says and then misses it.”

“Yes,” Baron mused. “That did seem rather odd.”

“And Muta.”

“Yes.”

Haru thought. “Did you get the sense they were trying to get us out of the Sanctuary?” she asked eventually.

“The thought has crossed my mind, but I couldn’t discern for what reason they would want that.”

“We’re probably going to return and find the Bureau covered in toilet roll.”

“A daunting prospect if they could work together for five minutes without devolving into fighting.”

Haru snorted. “Oh god, it’s like leaving the children at home. I wonder what they’re up to now...”

“Are they still jus’ talking?”

“Give it time.”

“They’ve had time. Three years of it.”

Toto’s beak was set in a thin line. “Give it time.”

But still, he couldn’t resist. He sent a cold wind their way.

The air shifted and Haru shivered as an icy breeze rippled across her skin. She jarred mid-sentence with a teeth-chattering rattle. “I’m okay,” she managed, pulling her thin jacket closer. “I just should have brought a thicker coat. Geez, I thought it was meant to be a mild summer’s evening.”

A light-grey jacket came into view.

“Aren’t you going to get cold?” Haru asked.

He flashed her a warm smile. “You forget. Creation.”

Muta raised an eyebrow at his fellow angel. “Cheap shot.”

Something rocked the boat. Haru jolted upright, heart-pounding from too many cases where things that rocked boats usually wanted to eat them. Baron must have seen the thought skitter across her mind, for he gestured to her that everything was under control.

She had been on too many cases for it to assure her completely, but it did stop her from retrieving her heavy duty torch from her bag and wielding it like a crowbar.

“I think it’s beginning,” he whispered. “Listen.”

Haru did. At the edge of her hearing, there was the faint undercurrent of sound that she had previously mistaken for the breeze, but now it was growing and swelling and twisting into something resembling... “Music?”

Baron nodded. “All sky whales have their own unique songs. We are the first ones to hear these.”

The boat rocked again, and Haru shifted onto Baron’s side. “If I’m going overboard, you’re coming with me,” she whispered.

“That seems reasonable.”

“Oh, shush.”

The song rose and tumbled and suddenly a grey form was breaking the water’s surface. Eyes. Head. Mouth. And then flippers and back and tail... and suddenly no part of the whale was touching the water anymore.

Haru leant slowly against Baron, her heart pounding with the fear of a small primate coming across something very big and very scary and realising why they evolved to leave the ocean all those years ago. She licked her lips. Her mouth was dry. “Uh,” she said intelligently.

Baron looked to her questioningly.

“Big whales,” she croaked.

“These are just the juveniles.” He tilted his head. “Are you okay?”

“Big flying whales,” she managed. “Yeah, I’m fine, just... Big.” Another head breached the surface, and a sound caught between awe and rabbit-in-the-headlights caught in Haru’s throat. “Oh my god, there’s more.”

“It’s still not working.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You got any last minute plans up your wing?”

Toto grimaced. “Just the one.”

He gave reality another shove.

Once her initial instinctive reaction had been forcefully put down, Haru had to admit that it was pretty amazing. The whales seemed happy to pass the little boat by without incident, except for the occasional curious glance, and the air was now alive with the thrum of melody.

Baron was giving her another questioning look.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re humming.”

“So? It’s catchy.”

“All sky whale songs are unique. You shouldn’t be able to hum it.”

“Sure, but it sounds... familiar.” Still, she hummed along a little louder, trying to work out what it reminded her of. “There you see her... duh duh duh blue lagoon... mmmm one way to ask her... she won’t say a word, not a single word, go on and--”

She froze.

“Oh my god.”

“What is it?” Baron asked.

“Oh my god,” was all she could say. Her face was burning. She ducked her head into her hands, her words muffled. “I know why Toto and Muta sent us out here.”

“Why?”

She raised her eyes above her fingers, her expression caught between hysteria and indignation. “I literally cannot tell you.”

“Haru?”

“It wasn’t to toilet paper the Bureau.”

“Haru?”

She exhaled, long and slow and steadying. “I’m am going to kill them.”

“Oh dear,” said Toto. “I think we’re in trouble.”

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