From Fang’s spot atop the chubby human’s backpack, he stared down his familiar with half-lidded eyes, the tip of his tail twitching as, instead of promptly providing scritches, Lillian stared at him with an open mouth, in-between exchanging meaningless human babble with the others that Fang had neither the desire nor mental stamina to decipher. Something about the big bird he’d killed, fire, and the circle of stones he had claimed to sunbathe in before his pets had appeared.

Naturally, his familiar’s continued lack of petting activity was intolerable, and Fang’s next meow was a much louder, firmer demand, “Human. I killed the big flashy bastard. I deserve sunshine pets even more than I always do.” Fang accompanied his demand with pushing a bit of sunshine into his familiar through his newfound connection, just in case she had somehow run out. Fang then realized what he had just said, and stopped to contemplate it. The question of how he could deserve pets more than usual when he usually completely deserved all the scritches anyway was a mighty one, but dealing with such conundrums was simply the duty of those as peerlessly intelligent as Fang.

Fang, in his infinite wisdom, promptly abandoned the question, in favor of directing more of his irritation at his familiar. Instead of obeying his commands, the human had a little flame dancing above her palm and was jabbering more at the other human about fire and danger and magic. It was like that dream all over again. At least the ashy guy had used his one arm for some proper scritches. Fang stood up on Charlie’s backpack, planting his front paws on the boy’s shoulder and staring at Lillian. “Human, I want my scritches now or I will do things!” Fang demanded, already wiggling his butt to prepare for a leap that would more directly demand attention. However, his magnificence must have finally filtered down into the human’s brain, because his familiar’s attention finally focused fully where it belonged, on Fang.

However, the human’s non-genius brain must have been a bit too small to contain the full magnitude of Fang’s command, because rather than pets or scritches, the flustered white mage came at him with a hug, scooping him off Charlie’s shoulder and into her arms while saying something about how glad she was that he was alive (Of course he was, how dare she imply otherwise), and came back (He was hardly going to abandon his pet forever), and other nonsense about magic and mana and levels that went completely over Fang’s head as he froze in shock. The sheer audacity of picking him up and squeezing him spared Lillian from the immediate ball of scratching death he would normally become in response to such an assault. Instead, after a moment of shock, Fang blinked away. That same pressure from earlier kept him from going too far, and he emerged right behind Angela’s legs, his back arched and tail fluffed out as he glared at his traitorous familiar.

Then a feeling of shock, apology, and a trickle of warm, fuzzy sunlight came from his connection to Lillian, and all was forgiven. Fang wound between Angela’s legs and back up to his familiar, holding back just far enough that he was sure she was reaching down to pet him rather than pick him up. Then Fang flopped over onto his side, exposing his belly to both the sun and the apologetic healer, permitting her to bestow the makeup scritches.

Judging by the amount of sunshine contained within his familiar’s (admittedly amateurish) scritches, she must have been truly sorry. Her preposterous inquiries about his health had increased dramatically after he flopped over, but not to the point they were worth diverting attention from the glorious sunshine scritches. Miracle of miracles, the human was actually improving quite quickly as well, no doubt due to the genius guidance Fang was able to impart through his familiar link. She improved so quickly in fact, and imparted so much sunshine through her scritches, that Fang allowed her to continue for a full 17.861 seconds, a whole 0.532 seconds beyond the standard permissible belly-rub duration. Then, naturally, his claws came out. Lillian displayed impressive reaction speed and an even more impressively high-pitched “Eep!” as she yanked her hands away from the sudden flurry of motion that the cat had become, quickly enough that Fang’s claws barely even grazed her.

The flurry of batting at wiggling fingers ended with Fang on his feet, purring contentedly and trotting toward Lillian. Even a casual walk from the feline perfection that was Fang was enough to outpace Lillian’s hesitant backpedaling, and Fang contentedly rubbed against her legs, rubbing his face on the bottom of her robes. His purrs deepened in approval at the fact they were the same robes as before. All his previous owners had continually changed their clothing every day, forcing Fang to constantly re-claim ownership, but this strange, forest-dwelling girl still had the same black hairs clinging to her robe as he had left there the first day she became his familiar.

The humans made some more noises at each other, and Fang got a few more pets along his head and back as the quartet of adventurers fussed over his kill. Charlie was mostly too busy disassembling it to actually pet him, but after the first few times Fang got distracted chasing after a serpentine stream of blood emerging from the corpse, he did dangle a small serpent of blood above Fang’s head. It provided a pleasant little hunt whenever he was not too busy ignoring its existence or plying Angela or Lillian for pets. Angela was being rather boring, simply sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, one hand on the head of Fang’s prey. When he stepped into her lap, her other hand did pet him, though clumsily. It almost seemed like she was trying to push him off, but with her eyes closed and Fang’s semi-liquid feline state, there was little difference.

He remained alternating between the scritches of Lillian and the pets of Angela, with occasional breaks to hunt Charlie’s bloody string. Alex got the side-eye. Somewhere in Fang’s head, he had equated the gaudily dressed human with the flashy bastards. But considering he had assisted in killing the biggest flashy bastard, it was probably safe to assume that they weren’t secretly the same person. Fang still didn’t fully trust the human though. The foul smell of the preserved meat he had shoved in Fang’s face still made Fang’s ears flatten any time he saw magenta.

Then, right as he was returning to Angela for pets once more, something intruded on Fang’s feline utopia. A little white bird that had been flitting around the clearing swooped down and perched right on Angela’s shoulder, its back facing toward Fang. Something was oddly familiar about this bird, in particular, more than its resemblance to the canny pigeons that had always known just when to flutter away from him in the city. Fang suspected it was the same one that had been following along ever since the humans came and he left the sunning stones with them. It had always stayed at a safe distance from Fang, though it had perched on Angela’s shoulder sometimes when he was away hunting something else. Fang’s stance lowered as the bird settled in on her shoulder, and he stalked forward, paws not making a single sound against the dusty rock of the mountaintop. It wouldn’t escape this time. In the fringes of Fang’s thoughts, other ideas cropped up. This might be like his own blue boxes. Stalking one of his humans, taunting them. Considering that his humans were at least moderately competent, it must be a fearsome foe indeed to have survived so long without being taught its place.

Fang would correct that. It would learn its place in the same way as his blue boxes, or he would hunt it and protect his humans from this strange avian stalker. He set his back paws, wiggling to make sure his claws had a good grip on the stone through the dust, then leaped forward, easily pouncing just over the seated mage’s shoulder and snatching the bird off of her shoulder. The following instants were a flurry of claws and desperately flapping wings until the pair hit the ground, Fang’s paws pinning the bird down, yet somehow not punching through its strangely durable feathers.

Fang had the bird well pinned though, his perfect feline weight pinning it down at such an angle that its own talons and beak, meager as they were, couldn’t reach back to pose a threat. He took a moment to put his enormous 30 int to use. He was trying to tame this bit of prey, the same way as he tamed his blue boxes. Or kill it, that was fine too. But he’d done it twice before already. Once with his blue boxes, and once with his familiar. The blue boxes he’d tamed by using that strange extra paw that didn’t respond to anything physical. His familiar had been strange, with a whole big circle and flashy lights and blue boxes, but when he wanted his familiar to do something, the most effective way seemed to be pushing sunlight at her. It had gotten him warm healy light in return when he was attacking the big flashy bastard, and… well it had eventually led to her getting distracted from the other human and petting him. Meowing worked on her too, but a bird could never understand a single word of cat.

All this came together as a fuzzy bunch of impressions as Fang leaned in to bite at the bird’s neck, in the hopes that its feathers were weaker than elsewhere. Unfortunately not. As the humans around him started to jump up in shock and move towards him, clearly intending to help him end this avian threat, Fang tried both his ideas at once. He reached out with that strange extra limb and pressed like one of the blue boxes’ buttons, while simultaneously pushing his sunlight out of his core and along it, the same way he pushed it over to his familiar.

Then things went wrong.

The sunlight flowed through the limb without complaint, even more easily than it flowed to Lillian, and sank into the bird beneath him… and kept flowing. Much more sunlight than he intended to send drained away, and before he could twitch that mental limb away and break the connection, the white dove beneath him erupted into a searing bonfire, searing his whiskers and toasting his ears in the moments before Fang teleported away, appearing a foot back with his back arched and his fur puffed out, glaring around in search of the fox that had thrown a fireball underneath him.

However, even to Fang, it was apparent that there were no foxes hiding in the open expanse of the mountaintop, and the nearest cover large enough to hide even a cat was too far away to suspect foul play. Fang looked back to the bird just in time to see it let out a pitiable squawk and disappear, dissolving into a cloud of light. The flames guttered out in the next instant and Fang leaped forward, uncertain if his prey was trying to escape, or if he had accidentally turned it into glowing white ash. He bit at the air, but his teeth clacked shut on nothing. A little trickle of mana that tasted like dirt and dust did settle on his tongue, and he tried a bigger bite of the insubstantial cloud. Same unpleasant taste, but the first bite’s worth of mana was already changing, shrinking down into the warmer, better sunshine that filled him. Clearly, this dusty not-sunshine was just not as good, and it took a great deal to turn into even a sliver of the sunshine inhabiting his own feline perfection.

As he tried to go for a third try at the ephemeral cloud of glittering dirt…sunshine…dirtshine, Fang was, for the second time in a single day, picked up. Naturally, he teleported out of the offending grasp, reappearing atop Lillian’s head and glaring daggers down at the girl as her panicked hands closed around the air he had previously been occupying. At the same time, Angela thrust her hand out, and the remaining cloud of dirtshine flowed towards and into it, making its escape. Fang settled down as it disappears, hopping Lillian’s shoulder and then the ground, sniffing at the dirt the dove had scuffed up in its struggle. Fang gave a little sneeze, then glared around, looking for the dusty bird that must have invaded his nostrils for such a thing to happen.

When no such culprit became apparent, the cat trotted away from the group. They were very loudly babbling in human. Some sort of disagreement over his hunting, if the impressions he got from his familiar were any indication. As though the clumsy humans knew anything about hunting. They didn’t even realize the white bird had been stalking them for some nefarious reason. Fang would have snorted in contempt if his feline majesty were not utterly at odds with such an undignified act.

Fang trotted a moderate distance from the group, then flopped over and started rolling around in the dirt as the group continued to argue. Angela slowly calmed down and started to side with Lillian against Alex, while Charles remained neutral. Fang made sure to let the fine dust permeate all the way through his fur, smothering any little biters hiding out in it, as well as blending his scent with that of the local area and ensuring his coat maintained its consistently soft, fluffy glory without clumps or mats.

Once he was quite thoroughly coated, he rolled upright and began grooming himself. Paws and legs first, followed by using them to clean his face. The humans had finished arguing and begun drawing some sort of circle. By the time he had moved on to licking along his own spine, Angela was sitting in the middle and the whole circle was beginning to glow. Just as he finished up grooming his chest and belly, the circle flashed, momentarily stunning Fang in the middle of grooming between his thighs, making him freeze and look up with his hind leg up in the air and his tongue sticking out of his mouth, pushed to one side by his uneven teeth.

In the center of the circle, in Angela’s lap, was that same pure white dove. Fang immediately rose to his paws, grooming complete enough for another hunt. Unfortunately, there was still no cover between him and the party, so his only approach was to quickly slink forward with his body carried low to the ground. Evidently, last time his sunshine had just been too strong. Something with dusty dirtshine couldn’t stand up to proper sunshine. He must have accidentally reduced it to ash by using too much. He would use less this time, just enough to fill the bird with righteous sunshine and make it his minion, just like the boxes and his familiar. Just-

Then Fang’s thoughts ground to a halt. The dusty bird was sitting placidly on Angela’s finger, and the girl’s other hand was making motions it took Fang a moment to parse. She was giving the bird scritches. She was giving the scratches that should rightfully go to Fang, to a bird!”

Fang yowled in rage and abandoned even the idea of stealth as he rushed forward, blurring through the hands of Lillian and Alex as they stepped into his path, and up into Angela’s lap, nosing at the hand preening the dove’s feathers and loudly demanding his own.

“He- he wants scritches too.”

For once, Lillian’s words needed no effort to translate into Fang’s mind, even if the word she used for scritches was woefully lacking in complexity next to the feline concept. Angela looked warily at the black cat squirming in her lap, nearly stepping on her re-summoned familiar that he had brutally immolated not an hour ago. She sighed, and bowed to the inevitability of feline victory.

Fang got his scritches.

Fang had negotiated an uneasy peace with the bird he was sharing Angela’s lap with. He got scritches, and the bird was allowed to continue its existence. Lillian had been trying to convince him that the bird was already an ally. Fang wasn’t convinced that he could ever be friends with a bird. But Angela was giving better scritches now. Even if the second hand that should rightfully have been devoted to floofing his fur was instead preening some bird’s feathers. The very concept of it rankled at the very core of Fang’s being, but Lillian did make at least one good point. Fang had been trying to tame the bird, and it was quite obviously tamed now. Angela directed it on a few loops around her head, and to land again. Despite the lack of any proper intelligence in those little beady eyes, it had proven to be at least a loyal minion of his minion.

It was enough for now. Though another piece of information had slipped into Fang’s head during the persuasion attempt. The bird could be revived if killed, even if it was inconvenient for his pets. So it lived for now. But Fang would keep his eyes on it and his claws sharp. Just in case it needed another reminder of the pecking order.

The scritches did eventually come to an end for both him and the dove, once Charlie had finished dismantling Fang’s kill. Several bundles of feathers, a few of bones, one of the talons and beak, A couple cases of who-knows-what, and something that looked suspiciously like a marble sitting inside a metal case. However, it was the size of an apple, and it didn’t run away at Fang’s approach. Fang swatted at it while the humans strapped the other bundles to their packs, with the lion’s share adding to Charlie’s burden.

Fang’s initial little taps revealed that the big marble gave him a similar sort of flow of sunshine to his last marble, though substantially stronger. But while he’d never wanted to stop playing with the boar’s marble, and frequently chased it for hours on end until he tired himself out, this one felt a bit different. He batted it around the box for a little while, but it was too big for his mouth and too heavy to easily swat up and out of the box it was trapped in. Before long, he tired of the game, and instead curled up next to the pile of wood the humans were building to begin grooming himself, rasping his tongue over his fur until it bore a healthy shine.

Suddenly, the insane humans lit their tower on fire.

Fang was startled out of his peaceful preening, and bolted away to shelter behind the nearest rock, his mind conjuring grinning faces in the flames, and fox tails trailing every spark that flew from the wood, the faint scent of alcohol wafting off the flames. Fang cowered there in very reasonable fear of the fire, tail curled into the shelter of the rock and ears folded back to avoid any errant sparks singing them. All perfectly reasonable precautions for a cat to take in the face of fire.

Then Lillian was there, leaning against the rock, providing just a bit more shelter from the firelight. She hesitated a moment, seeing Fang’s fur puffed up and his claws out, gripping the ground. Then she reached down and ran her fingers along his back, soothing, healy sunshine seeping in through the contact. “I guess there are some things you can’t handle after all. I was really starting to wonder after that stunt with the Flash Phoenix.”

As Fang’s human pet his bristling fur, he slowly started to relax. His ears gradually rose from their place pinned back against his head, and the tension bled out of him as he began to wind against his human’s hand. When the sizzle and scent of roasting meat came from the direction of the fire, Fang even dared to lift his head and peer over the rock. Alex and Angela were sitting near the fire, chattering as humans are wont to do, while Charlie slowly rotated a sizeable spit over the flames, a carcass that vaguely matched the size of Fang’s prey mounted on the end, slowly dribbling juices onto the fire as the skin crisped.

Fang’s eyes still went to the bonfire underneath it though, then to his familiar. Something clicked then, that hadn’t quite made sense to his superior feline mind until he’d felt the fire so willfully set by the humans abruptly roar to life next to him, and he repeated the advice he’d received to his human: “Don’t play with fire.”

Lillian was somewhat taken aback by the abnormally verbal thought coming from the cat, but she kept stroking his fur as he crawled up into her lap. “Don’t worry, they have it under control. It’s just like a campfire, but bigger. They need it to cook the Flash Phoenix’s meat. It smells good, doesn’t it?”

Fang had to agree that it smelled pretty delicious, and it only took a little more coaxing to get him to approach the bonfire. Even if approaching took the form of allowing Lillian to carry him. Fang did discover that at just the right distance, the heat of the fire almost resembled sunlight, seeping in and buzzing pleasantly in his core. So long as he didn’t go as close as the other nutty humans and kept his eyes shut, he could almost pretend the fire was pleasant.

The meat on the other hand, once it was done, was extremely pleasant. Fang had trouble believing it, but the fire actually improved the taste. And that was on top of this being an even richer, more sunshiney version of the flashy bastards he’d been feasting on already. Fang ate until he was more ball than cat, as did the rest of the team, and even then there was a good bit of meat left when the fire had burnt down and the majority of the party, Fang included, drifted off to a well-earned sleep for the night.

Despite the watch the humans managed to maintain through their food coma, nothing dared to challenge the blazing beacon of the new lords of the mountaintop.

The next morning at the crack of dawn, the group woke up, shouldered their packs of assorted monster parts, and started trekking back into the woods. Fang made sure to get a few last bites of the roasted bastard before leaving. He spent most of the day’s walk close to Charlie, sniffing at his backpack and occasionally trying to fish something out of it. The jerky the flashy one had tried to foist upon him had put him off of trying anything the humans wanted to eat, but last night’s roast had rekindled the cat’s curiosity.

Though saying he spent most of the day on it might be misleading. Fang spent most of his time walking with the group plying Charles for tidbits of food, but the majority of his time was spent depopulating the surrounding woods of every passing rodent and bird too small for his humans to properly react to. Though his efficiency in that job approached the point where it was barely more than half of his time.

He did hunt one unexpected thing. Yet another blue box.

Level Up!

Thrice-Charred Cat class has reached level 13!

+10 status points gained. Visit the Status screen to allocate them.

The group arrived at their destination late in the evening. They all stomped into the clear circle surrounding Fang’s favorite sunning spot in this world, and set up their camp next to the stones, amid a cluster of other packs similar to the ones full of flashy bastard parts they unshouldered alongside them.

Why they would choose to sleep next to the most comfortable napping rocks in the entire forest was utterly beyond Fang. Yet another instance of his humans missing the most common of senses. Like not playing with fire. Fang spent the rest of the evening doing a loop around the field and culling the local rodent population. He even brought a few of the earthy diving rodents to his familiar. A little sunshine snack would be good for her, and with his improved skills, clearing the entire field of any head brave enough to pop up was only the work of a few hours. More than enough to keep his belly full and still leave a medium pile of corpses.

Fang did consider having Charlie roast one of the tastier pieces of prey. Then the field around him spontaneously caught on fire and Fang carefully avoided those sorts of thoughts for the rest of the day. Luckily, the humans seemed more sensible about putting out a grass fire than they were about lighting a towering inferno.

Fang spent his night on top of the pillar he knew would be the first to greet the sun in the morning, while the humans below clustered around their campfire.

The next morning, Fang spent sunbathing and napping amid the dawn rays, while his humans hauled pack after pack of monster parts onto the stone circle. As the sun rose higher, the humans clustered in the center of the packs. Fang joined them, though not out of any particular desire to be close. The sun was more pleasant on his fingers than even Lillian’s fingers at the moment. No, the best sunning spot just happened to be right in the center of the circle, where the humans were clustered. Fang settled on the stone, enjoying the thrum of sunlight from below matching the warmth of the sunlight from above. The sunlight below seemed stronger than usual though, tickling at some memory of Fang’s that didn’t quite break through the pleasant fuzz of warmth that sunbathing brought with it.

Then, as the sun hit its zenith, the world tore open beneath Fang's paws and sent him hurtling off through the void between worlds, yowling at the top of his lungs all the way.