Catgirl System

Minutes after our photo competition, as human-Reed and cat-me walked away from that scenic spot under the afternoon sun, she kept that winning photograph in front of her, looking with wonder.

You’re gonna crash, Reed, I thought, several times. You’re gonna trip and fall over. See that rock? Of course you don’t…

But she never did fall, always slowing down and tottering around the obstacles. I’d call it impressive, but it was more likely that my habit of crashing and burning at hyper-speed whenever my System interrupted was just uniquely unimpressive.

Eventually she put it away, bashfully, almost saying “sorry” but then cutting off her own apology.

We wandered on, continuing south, and the yellowing sun made its slow trek to the west. Looking up through the cover of trees, I wished I could ask if Reed expected this trip to last a day or less. We’d been going about it like an afternoon sojourn, but…now I was beginning to wonder.

Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood
Progress: 27% (8/30)

And no mountains in sight yet.

Instead, we got the emergence of a swamp. The trickly traces of streams we’d been seeing now and then blossomed into bog water sitting in splotches covered in green, filmy algae. The ponds themselves looked like crocodiles lying in wait.

And the earth was a little less stable. Mud stuck to Reed’s shoes and, irritatingly, my paws.

“Hey,” Reed said as we plodded through our second bad stretch of mud, “you look like you could…uh… I meant I have some little bags that you could…maybe you could wear them on your…feet?”

She was right to say that with so many ellipses. Reed had just offered to put bags on my feet, as a gift. Was I weird for feeling offended by that? Is there any animal alive that likes putting shoes or socks or gloves and mittens, let alone sloppy bags, on their feet?!

No thanks. No survivalist would want to give up access to all the sensory info that a paw pad tells the brain. I shook my head.

With the changing biome came new animal voices in the groves around us. The voice of a cackling bird, one whose voice I almost mistook for an insect like the chirps (or krigries, the poetry book called them?), sounded particularly loud.

I stopped in my tracks to hear it better. My ears pivoted.

Off to my right, at the top of a leafy willow, there was a cackling scaly lump. More of them were cawing even further in the distance, impossible to see but easy to hear.

Wait…scaly? Most snakes and lizards on Earth didn’t bird-cackle.

Reed looked off in the same direction. I wished she’d identify what that creature was, but instead she clammed up. That was just as well. It meant she had some survival intuition and assumed that I’d sensed danger.

I decided this was a good scenario. I was getting antsy and eager to make my own danger.

How far could an Air Cutter reach? I gave myself no time to reach back into my memories and make a calculation—just act!

I launched a blade of air so violently that I reared up almost onto my hind legs. The little sonic boom soared right for the lump. The lump soared away. My Air Cutter obliterated nothing but the edges of a few leaves.

On one hand, I’d lost my prey. On the other hand, I knew for sure they were birds, seeing feathers with rattlesnake patterns. Plus, that blast had to have traveled thirty meters!

“That bird is called a raging wryneck,” Reed murmured. “I don’t think they’re so dangerous. Do you think their cries are annoying? Most people find them annoying.”

Nah, that didn’t bother me at all. What bothered me, I knew as I took off suddenly, was the fact that my quarry had escaped.

“I-I’m coming!” Reed cried sweatily, hurrying after me.

Now I was racing through a landscape of swamp litter. The brown, green, and gray sometimes blended together, making it hard to tell what was solid, what was liquid, and what was dead stuff under squatting fungi. Case in point: thirty seconds in, I went headfirst into a lumpy brothy substance.

“Mah!”

As the soup burned into my still-open eyes and the sounds of fleeing fishtails reached my ears, I realized that water didn’t scare me anymore. But swamp terrain…was starting to. The vomit consistency of most of the puddles didn’t help either.

I rose with a gasp, confident that my fur was now completely green, and took a Leap to make sure I wouldn’t slip in again. Fortunately, I hit a rock (which unfortunately hurt, but I could scramble onto it).

My trail, I can assure you, wasn’t just a random direction. I’d seen the raging wryneck dipping down in their flight and curving, slightly, to one side. I was hearing louder cackles from a few other directions too—some group of nests or communal territory had to be up ahead.

Through this brush!

I pushed through into patchy, sunlit dirt and grass, face-to-face with a bird.

Up close, those feathers with their odd zigzagging pattern looked almost like armor. I had to assume they used it for a rattlesnake disguise—and maybe also defense. The wryneck cawed in my nostrils, and the sound was joined by various others standing along the tall, ruler-straight birches around me.

Each bird was built like a cross between a woodpecker and a bulldog. The beak now aimed at my face was short and tough, and looked unusually worn. But the eyes were most startling: with sharp viper’s pupils, they glowed a radiant orange.

Any truly smart predator would know that rattlesnakes didn’t have slit pupils, but hey!

Before I could react, I saw the raging wryneck in front of me rearing up with wings spread—not taking off, but lunging at me.

Act fast! Would I dodge and go from there? After all, I did have some long-range—

No! No, I knew what to do! I wasn’t a long-range black cat, I was an ash-gray hunter!

I could get a Swipe in!

SP: 13% (45/333)

Err, probably not. Actually, I only had enough SP to Guard or Meditate.

Going for broke, hoping for a win, I did what I could. Guard!

DEF: 69 (+50%)

In its own way, that fired me up.

I hurtled forward, my claws wild. We crashed into each other, nearly headbutting. But I couldn’t attack. I found my front limbs locked in a strange position, unable to reach the wryneck.

The bird was grappling with me. The bird. With absurd upper body strength and meaty, armlike wings that, as I now realized, had two pterodactyl claws each at their joints.

…I guessed now I was a wrestler too?

The other birds had become our audience, laughing in a constant scream. I could’ve sworn one of them threw dirt at my back.

With a long groan, I struggled to swat at the back of the wryneck’s head, but my limbs just weren’t flexible enough—my paws pathetically fwopped against the feathers at the back of their neck. Enemy claws dug into my shoulders, crawling up to my neck. My furiosity (that’s a word now) fumed.

But I dug my back heels in. And if I could’ve Leaped, I would’ve—but instead I jumped.

Springing off the ground and hoping to flip the wryneck, I put all my weight and energy into my enemy’s upper body.

I was stopped.

Half a second after the spring, the wryneck’s meat-wings glowed bright citrus-orange. “Hnrrrh!” they roared, muscles tensing, leg joints locking into place. My hind legs left the ground, only to flail in midair and fall again with a plop.

Now I knew for sure that the audience was straight-up laughing.

Too bad they didn’t know that embarrassment fuels me like coal fuels a steam train! (Is what I tell myself at night.)

…Oh, darnit.

Now I was laughing at me too. I’d forgotten all about my killer apps!

Why? Well, maybe because I’d gotten so caught up in hanging out with Reed and taking pictures with Reed, and seeing Reed kick weasels, that the exciting Spellcraft I could now use had just slipped my mind.

D’oh. But…no harm, no foul.

HP: 88% (352/398)

And I didn’t consider that real harm.

Launching fire in the wryneck’s face didn’t feel very sporting, so instead I’d use an Attack Up!

I activated the Spell.

Wait, no I didn’t. I didn’t even know how to do tha—

Ah, yes I did. And it seemed to require hands.

…I felt like someone should’ve brought this up…

Message from Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata
Is the tutorial still not over yet?

O Goddess, I beseech you in all possible humility, I thought as the wryneck came closer and closer to pushing me over. How can I use this magic and momentarily keep from dying? (Again, that was an exaggeration, but anything was fine as long as it kept her attention.)

Spells can be fired straight from your Inventory. Just call out the name of the Spell, either vocally or in your mind.

Woah! It’s actually considerate of creatures without human vocal cords! Thank you!

I don’t respect kiss-ups.

If it works, it works!!

As soon as the pop-up warped away and I was locking eyes again with the wryneck, my mind cried out, Attack Up!

It was like a fire stoked in my soul, spreading out to all my limbs. A sweet smell of spices surrounded me, and the dimmest of glows, deep sunset-red, charged me.

Yeah! I checked my Stats for good measure.

ATK: 96 (+50%)

The boost was solid! It lined up exactly with Guard and Meditate, which was very good and heart-cheering.

This time, instead of jumping and giving up my foothold, I went for a headbutt.

For the past minute I’d been staring ten-percent into the wryneck’s eyes, ninety-percent into their forehead. If I charged straight into it, I would cause a nasty wound…two of them, actually. And depending on this bird’s Level and Defense, it might just wipe me out.

That was why I ducked and went for the gut, full-speed.

Poomf!

“Caw!”

The bird fell onto its back, splattering into a shallow pool.

The tone of the audience changed instantly. The volume went down and the tone became sulky. Imagine a crowd in a stadium: “YEAH! YEAH! YE—aw…”

EXP: 88% (2347/2550)

I hadn’t killed the bird, of course, but apparently this had been an honest-to-goodness wilderness duel, with the raging wryneck acknowledging defeat.

“Mreaow!” I said, cheering for myself because no one else would. I began strutting around in a small circle and wondering whether the other birds were entertained or not entertained.

Part of me expected them all to gang up on me. Instead, they scattered. They flew up in a geyser of feathers, sending the trees into a tizzy. Then they were gone and I was alone with the challenger.

Moments later, I heard Reed’s voice calling.

“Cat!” she cried, giving up on the idea of cover entirely.

Had her approach scared off the birds? Probably. I meowed back.

My opponent rose from the puddle and snarled. Feeling both cocky and curious, I swatted at the water as hard as I could. It actually shocked me how high the little explosion of water flew, and how far. About fifteen Levels ago, I would’ve needed a Swipe to do this.

The intimidating sound of the smack against the surface was a thing of beauty. Though the wryneck flinched, they weren’t down and out, and seemed to still have most of their strength left. They fluttered up and away.

Phew. I shook myself out to de-green myself as much as possible before my friend got back.

Then, at last, I could tell where her footsteps were by the sounds of boots in undergrowth. I turned and walked for a bit before encountering Reed, whose boots were covered in the same sort of muck as I was, only less hard and with some tricky pine needles clinging to the sides. Also, her right hand was balled in a fist—holding a Spell?

“Are you alright?” she asked, wiping sweat off her face.

I replied with an energetic yes-meow.

“That’s a relief. Did you fight the bird off?”

“Meow.” Yes! And I couldn’t have done it without the magic you picked out.

“Good! Good. When we camp tonight, let’s hammer out a system for signaling to each other in the woods, just in case we get lost.” She added with a laugh, “Because I came very close to that…”

Aw, but I was fully to blame for this!

Of course I agreed to it. And as we continued walking southward, I thought about the fact that we would, in fact, be out here together for at least twenty-four hours. And soon the stars would be out. And I’d actually be able to pay them some attention, and hear about signs, and stand some chance of learning what they meant, because she’d help.