Catgirl System

Drunkenness! I’d only ever experienced it secondhand. Humans swaying on the streets, collapsing into cars and alleys. Sometimes hotheaded, sometimes seductive, and sometimes just excessively jokey.

I never envied them! Probably because I was a semi-wild animal and I still had to defend my life at a moment’s notice.

WARNING: Blood alcohol level rising.

System may not function properly.

Oh geez. I really didn’t need my System to tell me I was getting tipsy. Even though I’d never felt it before, I had long since gotten my fill of it from pure observation. My mind was fogging up, and my senses were getting wobblier. I had to work to keep myself upright, and my brain worked double-time scanning all the magenta blotches along the ground and roots, seeing which ones were dry, which ones I could actually step on.

Ugh...this was gonna su—

Message from Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata
WHAT? You’ve never been drunk before? Come on, the animals around here aren’t that strong. You can live a little.

…Well, now I was determined to think it sucked.

I snorted and sneezed the box away.

Then, with a third and more powerful snuffle, I shook my head around and pawed my face a good dozen times. If I’d had water, I would’ve reveled in it for once, slamming my face into the bowl of it and glugging as much as I could.

Calm down, I said to myself—all I had to revel in were my words.

I tiptoed onto a big bare root. At least I thought it was bare, until I landed on it, but what was a bit more fruit wine on the paws at this point? Then I edged aside from the testy rabbit I found crouching there a moment too late, and…

Then it hit me.

The second part of the one-two punch: a dazzling warmth in my core.

…Mmmmm.

Did I say that out loud? Darnit.

Actually, I couldn’t get myself to care who heard that. Suddenly I felt as comfortable and snug as if I were back home. I felt so lethargic and peaceful that I could’ve slipped off my feet, rolled a few meters and pretended that the everycolor flowers were my bed.

So this was part of it all along, huh…

WARNING: Blood alcohol level rising.

System has activated Safe Mode to remain partially accessible. Some features are currently unavailable.

Aw, who cared about that? It probably wasn’t hiding anything I wanted anyway.

Still, in my head I cried, Stats!

Okay, that sounded more like “stazz.” Didn’t even know it was possible to slur words in my own mind, but moving on…

No, no moving on. No moving. Just sleep. After all, Sierra said this place, this fruity little nook under the dandelion tree, wasn’t so dangerous.

I repositioned myself on some crinkly leaves. With a big yawn and an overwhelming urge to curl up and let my warming core envelop every part of myself, I mentally said, Good night, which sounded more like, Guh-aah.

…Ow!

Ow ow ow!

“MEOWWW!”

Most sensations were hazy, but pain was not! When had this enormous cloud of vibrating, buzzing, tiny winged things gathered around me?!

I desperately (and this time more lucidly) called up a few of my Stats.

HP: 18% (504/0-19)
SP: 09% (2/7376)

The system had to be kidding—how could “safe mode” obscure the very info most needed to keep me safe? I was gonna have to learn a whole new kind of mathematics to figure out how close I was to death!

I jumped to my feet with what had to be a hundred stings covering my body. I was now facing a swarm of…bees…yellowjackets…honeysuckles?…man, I just had this word three minutes ago. It’s not a bee, it’s not a hornet, it’s a—

Ouch, the nest was right under my dirty purple feet! It wasn’t leaves! It really, really wasn’t!

I ran out from under the great tree, crashing against roots and no doubt a few wild animals on my way, feeling all the damage I couldn’t read. Then I Leaped, as soon as I remembered Leap existed. And I Leaped again, and a third time, flying, crashing, face-first into a hill and down, and then I was rolling, head over heels, covered in dirt and loud, mewling shame, and a blade of dust got in my eyes and my throat was super-dry even though I hadn’t even gotten a single one of those fruits in my mouth yet.

And two things were very funny about the situation.

One: despite all that had just happened, and was still happening, I felt more determined than ever to see and eat that killer fruit. Except…y’know, maybe I would take it home instead of eating it here.

Two: no matter how fast and far I traveled, those hornets stuck to me. Like glue.

They were not only matching my speed, but humming in my ears, loud as if coming from my drunk core itself.

Stazz! Not like seeing the garbled numbers would help, but it was oddly reassuring! I meant STATS!

HP: 55% (0324/1/11)
SP: 85% (^5/22)

The kinda nice thing about this was, I could pretend I was a supercathuman with a four-digit HP value far above my three-digit limits who hadn’t taken any damage at all. Too bad that took a lot of patience and imagination.

Okay but seriously, Guard!

Things were so bad I pulled out another one. Guard! And don’t glitch on me!

My body flashed, and incredibly, the effects of the fruit paled in comparison to the fortitude I now felt brimming inside me. The pain of stacking the move, the way it seized a stomach that I now realized was a little too empty, made me want to vomit. (Come to think of it, there was no part of this situation that did not make me want to vomit.)

A bee stinger jabbed into my neck—didn’t make it. The needle didn’t pierce at all.

It was followed by a hundred more, all over me.

Even if I couldn’t see my HP right, I knew this had to be doing damage in the single digits, if that.

I wanted to laugh, to gloat in sudden victory. Instead, I stood firm. This wasn’t the time to laugh like a fool—that time was thirty seconds from now!

Instead, I found my wits.

T7exxu03 3e*8c0ed!
9dk20 >hgw 924 ::; [ao ldwe8c0s.

I summoned my calm, ignoring the box in my eyes that I couldn’t read anyway.

And I brainstormed a quick plan.

First, I pretended that these latest stings hurt worse than ever. Flopping solidly onto the hillside we were all having so much fun on, I yipped and groaned, writhing around like a bird in a dusty, grassy bath.

A scant few hornets were killed this way, mashed down by my back, and I saw the Experience trickle in. By that, I mean I saw random symbols randomly changing. Even randomer than my HP and SP numbers.

EXP: )s5 (u&/P$)

Was my act convincing? The yellowjackets had to know that their stingers hadn’t gone in this time, but they hesitated, confused, for a moment. “Moment”: my favorite word ahead of “opportunity.”

Both perfect things to exploit.

Here came the hard part: killing hornets with a one-handed Swipe. Along with the fact that I didn’t know my SP—I thought I had used three Leaps, but maybe it was four or even five, so what if I’d severely depleted the tank? Well, I had to try my—

Squelch.

L^ve>/ -5!

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POUOFUofo8fmdiofoimd;

OFmudmfdsopm;f*Fmd*f

My perception was flooded with the epitome of word vomit, a garbled box of garbo that decimated my field of vision. And almost my concentration.

But I was lucid enough to know what this meant. I’d just gotten my SP refueled—along with a “new” move. Back in the saddle with Slash.

With two front paws charged by the deadliest attack in my arsenal, I used the back paws to stabilize me as I attacked up and out—swinging my Slash in twin arcs.

The fragile insects were ripped apart.

Some of the insect cloud finally scattered as their comrades fell to the ground in the form of mere scraps drizzled in weird gooey insect blood. But several actually stayed, like they wanted vengeance.

Well, it wasn’t like they were going to combine robot-style into a super-hornet that could all of a sudden take me out.

Oop, wait—wait, I forgot this world had magic—yes, the five remaining wasps were grouping together in front of me and they were glowing suspiciously! Five stingers stretched into inch-long sabers and were pointed directly at my forehead. The hovering yellowjackets brought them together with a soft clank (I swear this all happened, I wasn’t in a total drunken haze) and then their needles all glowed the red of termites.

A super-move! Bad!

But it was a super-move from some insects that, individually, couldn’t even hurt me anymore. Doable!

The previous Slash had petered out. I used it again, and then I went for it. We lunged at each other, but I knew I had both the reach and the Speed to win this.

Augh, I spoke too soon.

The split second was passing so fast. G-Guar—

I didn’t get the move out fast enough. I took five needles to the chest, and they stuck, driven in with all their might.

HP: 16% (41/258)
SP: 68% (142/208)

It did so much damage—so much now-legible damage—that I almost keeled over on the spot. I buckled, expecting the hornets to keep driving into me.

Instead, they fell to the ground, their stingers remaining motionless in the wound.

A-are they…

EXP: 74% (1229/1650)

Phew…but…

It still hurt.

In fact, it hurt way more when I tried to delicately paw one stinger out.

HP: 12% (31/258)

This didn’t bode well. What if these were poisoned?

I…was just going to assume that wasn’t an option. I didn’t seem to have any status conditions, according to my newly comprehensible System. Beside, the stings hadn’t hurt me much so far. And what did an attack with red light mean? The red light that didn’t just come from fire, that is. It meant an Attack boost, right? Poison would’ve been, what, purple?

Which reminded me of a certain color I had stepped in.

I looked around. This hillside was facing the west of a setting sun. I’d run so far away that the fruit-bearing dandelion tree was nowhere in sight. Only gaudy flowers and normal, un-fruity trees dotted this angle.

In a few short steps, I reached the top of the hill. A little eastward was that tree. Though somehow it seemed to smell a bit less strongly, all that color was still distinct. And in the sunlight turned golden, it looked almost majestic.

Which felt cruel, considering the trouble that very tree had just put me through.

Was the tree on my Map? If not, I was determined to get it on there, by hook or by crook. Maybe I could, if it came down to it, ask Sierra to do it for me…

Current Location: ??? (S.2D)

Note: Treasure detected and marked.

Perfect!

Wait—a Treasure?!

No…no no no. Not again. Not today. Not with this Health.

You see, I still had this unhealthy desire to eat that fruit. Not smell it, not barely lick its juice, but get a big hunk of it. Whatever it was.

But who doesn’t hate leaving one errand undone when you came to do two…

I glared at the tree for a quiet minute. Squinted.

And then I turned away, knowing I’d be back when I could come in full confidence.

Until something caught my eye. Something new, and not a fruit.

A rabbit was dragging something out of either a big hole at the tree’s base or the tree trunk itself. I stood to watch.

It was a whole sword, gleaming as golden as the sun. And it was fresh. I could tell that from here. As pristine as if a strolling knight had casually forgotten it.

Let me just…

Just run over here for a quick minute…

It’d be fine. I could call Chora, she could carry it.

(…Yes, I’m kidding.)