Chapter Text
Morgana stretched his spine as he looked down from his city perch. No matter how nice the heat from the windowsill was, he needed to finish his reconnaissance.
New York City, the greatest city in the world. He wasn’t quite sure why he was here. He wasn’t sure who he even was. But he knew he was special. He knew he had a destiny. This was the place to prove one’s self.
If he could make it here, he could make it anywhere.
He hopped from the seventh-story window, landing on a sixth-story patio. His paws served as a cushion, making the landing soundless and elegant as a cat’s. He wasn’t a cat of course. That was ridiculous. However, it did serve as a rude reminder of his current predicament.
He had no memories. He had no identity. He had no money. And he was in a cat’s body. The last of those was clearly the most concerning.
However, a gentleman thief such as himself was far too great to let something as minor as that stop him. He had knowledge. Experience. Skills. Powers.
He looked over the sea of humans, walking through the crowded streets. While he was slightly envious of their thumbs, the ability to step into the parallel universe known as the Metaverse was something beyond normal human understanding. It was an ability that took years to master, and it was a skill he hadn’t lost in his cat form. Almost as impressive was his ability to fight the eldritch monsters that lingered in the realm.
Well, probably. He had lost his memories after all. However, he was willing to bet he had all kinds of friends who he just needed to find and they’d confirm it. All sorts of admirers who were going to tell him all about the exciting life he had lived up until now. This was just an exciting chapter of his life. One where he could prove, while stripped of everything, that he was still something to be proud of.
As he slipped between windowsills down towards the street, he examined the pedestrians with a smile. He wondered which of them he would look like when he became a human again. Humans came in so many shapes, sizes, and colors. He didn’t know what he wanted to be most, he could have come from anywhere realistically. He was fluent in every language instinctively, that much he had already tested in a book shop.
He could even identify the origins of every person walking down the street. American. Moroccan. French. Japanese. It almost felt like he was from everywhere. It seemed like whoever he had been was very well traveled.
His attention snapped to a shine of metal in the crowd. The owner’s identity was hidden behind a black hoodie he had pulled over his face, and he seemed to be indecisive whether or not to pull the weapon out. He shoulder-checked the nearest person, a silver-haired Japanese teenager, and with some sloppy sleight of hand lifted his wallet before taking off down the street.
He shook his head. As unfortunate as it was, crimes like that were a consequence of city life. There was nothing the Japanese kid could do except call the -
This teenager took off after the thief.
Morgana rushed to watch the chase, jumping between windowsills to avoid the feet of unsuspecting humans. The teenager however pushed through the crowd as necessary, shouting at them to move out of his way. Most of them complied, although no one tried to stop the thief. He found himself frowning. He wouldn't have hesitated to if he had been a human.
The teenager quickly gained on the thief, and after turning a couple of corners to shake his pursuer, the thief cornered himself in an ally. At first, he felt a bit of pride for the teen who had stood up for himself, but that evaporated when the thief pulled out his handgun.
Morgana felt his tail puff up instantly as he prepared for the worst. The teen didn’t seem to know how to react, but the thief took charge.
“I’ll fucking shoot if you come any closer!” He shouted. “It’s just a wallet man. It’s not worth your life. Walk away.”
Morgana couldn’t help but agree. The small amount of money he happened to be carrying couldn’t be worth the trouble he was going through. However, he had a sudden realization while watching the teens’ blank reaction.
He didn’t speak English.
The danger in the situation just escalated. Was he about to witness a shooting?
Was he really going to just stand by?
He jumped to a second-floor window, and bolted towards the thief in his blind spot, pouncing the moment he was in range. The thief had no time to react as Morgana snagged the wallet in his mouth, instantly slipping farther down into the shadows of the alley. He reached an area he could easily get cover before taking the time to look back at the two.
They both looked dumbfounded, complete awe over his skills most likely, but he primarily watched the teen. What would he do from here?
The idiot charged the thief.
Morgana took a moment to process the action. He could have left. He could have done anything else. It was a stupid move. At the same time, Morgana had to smile. The kid had some serious guts.
The humans wrestled on the ground as he circled them, watching the gun. In his current form he couldn’t do much, but one well-timed interference could easily save a life.
It didn’t take long for the opportunity to come. The thief quickly had the teen pinned and wasted no time leveling his pistol between the teen’s eyes. Morgana tossed aside the wallet, and pounced, biting the thief’s hand. His proximity to the following gunshot made was disorienting and left his ears ring, but the bullet bounced off concrete to the teen’s side.
The teen followed up, shoving the thief off him and picking up his wallet. In the scramble, Morgana kicked the gun away, to dissuade any future bloodshed, and jumped onto the teen’s shoulder as he sprinted away.
He felt the adrenaline linger in his body as the teen carried him from the scene. It had been a close one, but he had done it. He had stopped anyone from dying. He examined the teen, who was starting to slow down. He hadn’t been too bad in a pinch. Sure he had been a little unrefined, but he hadn’t backed away from the conflict.
He could be seriously useful with a little training.
---
After running several blocks, Yu Narukami slumped into the first chair he found, which happened to be outside a hole in the wall cafe. A simple glance around told him he was completely lost. He steadied his breathing, ignoring the stares of whose passing by.
What a way to start his first day of an American school. It was bad enough his parents hadn’t bothered asking any of his relatives if he could house him for their year-long business trip, the new school was in a neighborhood like this.
A waitress with zebra stripe stockings and a blue messenger bag seemed to appear out of nowhere, dropping off a menu.
“Cool cat,” the waitress said in perfect Japanese, “if he wants something it’s on the house.”
Yu quickly thanked her before looking at the menu. He narrowed his eyes in frustration at not being able to read the English, but the cat pawed at one of the menu items.
“Is that what you want?” He asked, to which the cat nodded it’s head enthusiastically. The waitress sighed and adjusted her blue hat as she walked off.
“Really? California rolls? Jeeze, I thought you were cool…” she muttered to herself.
“Don’t listen to her,” He said, causing the recipient of the complement to begin purring. “Getting you some… ‘california rolls’ is the least I can do as a thank you for saving me. What should I name you?”
The cat narrowed it’s eyes at him, but before anything else could be done a plate was slid in front of them. However, along with the food, six shimmering blue butterflies were on the plate.
“Don’t mind them,” The waitress said with a slight shrug. “they’re just checking you out.”
The cat seemed almost hypnotized by the butterflies, one of which fluttered up to his nose and covered his eyes with his wings for a second before flying off. One by one, they fluttered away, until the three of them watched the last one flutter away.
“They liked you Narukami. Looks like we’ll be seeing each other again sometime soon.”
He turned to her to ask how she knew his name, but his eyes widened. The entire cafe was gone. No building took its place, the buildings surrounding it were now neighboring each other as if the entire section of space had been erased. The only evidence it had ever existed was the chair he was sitting in, the table Morgana was still on, and the california rolls that were now sitting in a carryout bag..
The cat looked at him in excitement, and he laughed. “You liked the butterflies too?”
Yu scratched him behind the ears as he nodded. He recoiled at first, but seemed to allow it.
“So then cat, you have a place to stay?” Yu asked. “Or you wanna tag along with me?”
Jumped onto his shoulder, diving into his backpack. He dragged out a pencil and paper, wrote something in Kanji, folded the letter nicely and placing it in his hand before diving back into the backpack.
* My name is Morgana. I guess I can stick around for a while. Oh, and I’m not a cat.*
---
Akihiko felt his body fall into a rhythm as he listened to his fists land on the heavy bag. Despite being a welterweight, each impact echoed through the empty gym like a gunshot. He ran through his standard drills, giving every punch the attention it deserved. He paid attention to the weight behind each, the angle of attack, the precision of said attacks, the commitment required to return to a defensive stance after each, potential counterattacks an enemy could make, potential switchups, as well as the conditioning he could force his enemy to unconsciously create.
He turned from the bag and switched to shadow boxing so he could better imitate the energy consumption of missed swings. Since coming to America, he hadn’t lost a match. None had even gone beyond the second round. Calling him a rising star in the world of boxing was an understatement. He was a meteor crashing through any barrier put in front of him. Too bad none of that really mattered to him.
He turned back to the heavy bag, and the gunfire restarted. None of this had ever been about the accolades. None of it had ever been about beating other people. It was always about being better than yesterday. It was about being as strong as possible.
Strength was what let you do things. It was something there wasn’t enough of in the world. It was strength that let you live. It was strength that let you push your life forward. It was strength that stopped the world from stopping your life. It was strength that let you save another’s life.
He dropped back from the heavy back into one armed push ups. Sweat dripped from chin as he kept his breaths even. Once his arm began shaking too badly to do another he switched to his opposite arm with a clap.
The clap wasn’t necessary of course, but damn did he feel cool doing it. It got him pumped to do more.
Once that one began giving out, he planted both hands firmly on the mats and pushed himself into a handstand for upside down push ups. His body was screaming in exhaustion, but he felt himself start to laugh. Pushing himself this hard was what he lived for.
He rolled from the hand stand to his back and let himself rest as he panted to the ceiling. Mitsuru hadn’t convinced her father to pay for his overseas tuition for nothing. She knew he had potential. She knew he would use every opportunity that so much as glanced in his direction. But for now, it was a light day, he could afford to call it here.
For now.
---
Ann pouted as she watched her parents go through the motions with another client. Since their nanny was out of town for some family emergency, she had to follow them to work again. It was increadibly boring. Watch them put on some dumb outfit that no one would ever wear outside, pretend to like the client, and then talk themselves up for an hour to get their name out even more. All the other girls in her grade thought it was so cool to have parents be some famous fashion designers, but it was really lame.
At least since they were in America for the time being, they were speaking a language she knew. Their time in Germany had been a bore-fest, since her nanny at the time had too thick of an accent to understand and no one else defaulted to english. Yeah, she could have just asked them to speak english, but that seemed like a real hassle.
She eyed the time. Six twelve. The Feather Man TV special was on. Every other eight year old in the world was probably watching it. All the kids at school were going to talk about it, and she wouldn’t be able to watch it until tomorrow. It was a new school, new school year, all new kids, and she wasn’t going to be able to make any friends. Yet here she was having to watch old people pretend they were pretty while dressing like peacocks.
She tapped the fancy chair her parents had stuck her in impatiently, eyeing the snack table her parents had laid out. The only good thing about going to work with her parents was the food. Not the yucky adult stuff like the spinach skewers or tomato-mushroom bread, those were a danger to mankind. No, dead in the center of the table was a gorgeously decorated assortment of dark chocolate and deep red velvet cupcakes, surrounded by a sea of double chocco chunk fudge brownies. For some unknown reason, the adults never touched them. Something about figures, but she didn’t care about their work talk. She knew everything center table was kid friendly and approved. They never brought it home after work either, so when they brought her to work was the only time she got to feast on the sweets. Only once their meeting was over though, so it still looked nice.
She glanced at her backpack, decked out in top of the line princess buttons. It was her parents’ idea to help her make friends, but they didn’t seem to realize that it didn’t help if she didn’t know the characters. It didn’t help that they were Disney princesses, and if she remembered anything from California it was that Americans practically breathed Disney. She had to know all the Japanese stories and all the Finnish stories too, so it was unfair to expect her to know them all as well as the natives.
As the new kid she needed an edge, not to blend in. An idea struck her as she noticed the coloring book her parents still took everywhere they were worried she might get bored. She giggled and pulled her backpack to her lap, taking out the crayons. She turned her backpack around finding the ugliest princess and got to work.
She might not be the most talented artist, but it was easy to improve things. One princess, Cinderella if she remembered her name right, was just begging for a mustache. Snow White was way more interesting when she was on fire, it really helped the red in her outfit pop. Jasmine needed some more sapphires, but after a couple failed strokes of the crayon she decided to just cover the entire button in blue and banish her to the depths of the sea.
And so the Annification of her backpack continued. With some covert operations, she managed to find some ribbon she liked and stole a serving knife from the table to cut it with.
After all her stealth missions and art projects, the clock showed it was almost eight. She smiled as her parents finally started showing the clients away. Once she was finally alone she stole some of the cookies and cupcakes and sat back down in her chair with her newly decorated backpack. The day wasn’t quite as horrible as she had originally thought.
“Ann Takamaki,” Her mother suddenly yelled through the doorway, causing her to look up in terror. She was reverting back Japanese to express her anger, which she only did when she was truly livid. But what did she do?
Her mother rushed across the room, picking up the backpack in disgust. “I can’t leave you alone for four hours without you destroying your backpack? School is tomorrow! Ugh, we’ll have to buy you a new one on the way home. Wait, is this is my good ribbon? And is that a knife?”
Ann held back tears as the scolding continued, only sniffling in defiance as she was berated. She didn’t do anything wrong. She really didn’t.
Right?