So, try to imagine what it’s like when you’re the centre of attention of a group of people that either want to have sex with you or kill you or maybe torture you a little, then all of a sudden you’re the only one around that isn’t high as a kite. It’s… not exactly a situation you can either prepare for or sympathise with because, let’s be honest, it is pretty specific and who would ever experience it? At the very least, whatever was affecting everyone else in the room would probably be making you feel a little buzzed too. Right?
Kumitada was a bit of a practical person. When he saw that a good deal of the powder had stained his shirt he took the opportunity to quickly strip down. The girls in the room - in a pique of literary justice - catcalled. Which he couldn’t help but find particularly funny because even naked from the waist up he was still covering more of his body than almost any of them. Though with that said, he didn’t particularly like the gleam in either Girva or her commander’s eyes.
“Oooh,” the commander cooed, her body language completely changing in an instant. She licked her lips and leaned forward in an approximation of a seductive form. “You’rrrrre rrrright, Girva! He’s hot! Purrrrr… We should have some fun with him firrrst! Maybe then he’ll be morrrre willing to talk!”
He saw the pounce coming, and was able to sidestep it. The second one he didn’t quite spot until she was already in the air, which resulted in his arm being caught by a horny, high catgirl, and the next thing Kumitada knew he was being mobbed. His shirt went flying, wound up on a ceiling fan, and the next thing anyone else knew they were not only cats but blitzed out of their already drastically altered minds.
“Come on, handsome!” Girva hissed, grinding her body up against his in a way that made even his iron will tremble a little. “I’ll take you to the back rrrrooom and we can have fun!”
“I make it a personal rule never to do anything with someone outside of their own state of mind,” Kumitada forced himself to say. It was true twice over in this particular instance, but damn if it wasn’t tempting. The men in the room seemed happy enough. Rolling around on the ground, trying to push each other away from the limited supply of catnip so they could enjoy themselves. The whole cafe had devolved into chaos. Before it had been carefully controlled, a perfect machine to lure in and brainwash the unwary. Music, attractive women, the sights the sounds and the smells… Now it was anarchy, with the women throwing themselves at the cutest guy nearby as though they had taken leave of their senses.
And in spite of all that, the first thought at the forefront of Kumitada’s mind was that catnip does. Not. Work. That. Way. Then again… Perhaps it was psychosomatic? Perhaps the people believed that catnip had that sort of effect and so it had that sort of effect because their minds were being altered. That was the rational possibility behind this, but then again rational possibilities could go take a flying leap right about this point. Nobody else seemed to be thinking rationally and the entire situation was insane to begin with. So. What the hell, why not?
The first thing he had to do was get into the staff-only area. He didn’t have any more catnip, so he’d have to rely on good luck, skill and above all else paying the utmost attention to his surroundings. Which really should have been his top priority when he felt a pair of cat ears land on his head. The fakes had been dislodged when he’d taken off his shirt.
Uh oh. He reached up to bat it away, only to find his hand seized by… By a stunningly beautiful woman that he faintly recognised. Her name was Girva, wasn’t it? No, wait. This was bad. He had to get away from her before she - Kissed him on the lips, pushed him into a seat and sat in his lap.
What was he doing again? He felt Girva tug at his trousers, and a lightbulb went off in his head. Right. He was going to be taken as Girva’s mate. She was a strong woman and would care for their young well. Yes. She seemed like a solid option.
Kumitada heard a sound like a guttural growl, and suddenly Girva was flying out of his lap and across the room. He blinked and looked up at another familiar beauty wielding a cat-shaped plushie, and patting it into her hand like a baseball bat. Her eye was twitching a little for some reason. Her face was smiling, but her eyes weren’t. She reached out and pulled the headband from his head before he could stop her and oh goodness, he could smell toast.
“Hey therrre, handsome!” another woman said, crawling towards him seductively. Kumitada blinked and smiled down at her a bit vacantly. “Be my mate!”
“Sorrrrry,” Yukiko said, pushing the newcomer away with her foot and pulling Kumitada onto wobbly, wobbly legs. “He’s my mate, not yourrrrrrs.”
Kumitada had to place his weight onto Yukiko, which she didn’t seem to mind all that much. His head was a complete mess, and it wasn’t exactly helped by the way that Yukiko kept on pulling his body close to hers and insisting to anyone that dared come near them that he was her mate and nobody else’s. That kind of thing does something to a young man’s head.
Eventually the two of them were able to get into the staff area. “Clever idea, that,” Kumitada said, extracting himself from Yukiko’s grip. “Insisting that I was your mate to drive them all away. Really convincing, especially the way you got your eye to twitch like that.”
“Yeaaaaah,” Yukiko said, biting her lip and fidgeting with a foot. “Honestly though, the less I have to say ‘r’ today, the better I’ll feel.”
“Did I get you enough time for whatever it was you had in mind?”
Yukiko nodded, twirled the plushie around in her hand and set it on a convenient table by the door. “You bet! Come on, let’s set this table up so they can’t follow us. Time for my fave bit of any job! Acts of sabotage on the baddy’s equipment!”
“Equipment?” Kumitada quirked an eyebrow, and took special note of how she was indeed deliberately avoiding words that used ‘r’. He moved the table, plush and all, up against the door to block the way back into the club and tried not to think about how well it would fare if all of them decided to pour their weight against it. “What sort of equipment? Back here? I thought their main gear would have been up front?”
“Tut tut tut!” Yukiko said with a twinkle in her eye, tapping the side of her nose knowingly as she spoke. “Come on! You’re going to love this!”
Somehow, the way Kumitada heard her say that last part made it sound more like “You’re going to hate this,” but honestly he just wanted to get this case over and done with. They’d been through quite a lot today, and his professional integrity was screaming for him to get this job finished correctly, not only to save his own dignity from further beatings but also to save the people involved from whatever the hell was going on.
Thu Mar 06 12:07:17 2014