May 23rd, 2:05 am- all automobiles around the world collectively stopped, boats were stranded in the ocean, planes fell from the sky.
May 23rd, 2:10 am- Everything went back to normal as if nothing happened.
People panicked.
Memes were made.
The world continued turning.
June 3rd, The sky cracked open. Well, not cracked per say, there was just a gigantic, horrifying cracking pattern across the sky.
People panicked.
Memes were made.
The world continued turning
June 7th, compared to what had occurred was for all intensive purposes completely mundane. Poppy feeding a local stray cat was nothing special, but she took some degree of pride in it.
The cat was new in her small neighborhood. One day he picked the house she and her roommate lived in and the rest was history.
Dreamsicle, as she liked to call him, was a very orange tabby with cold gray eyes and a quiet, aloof, mew.
Her roommate usually did the feeding themselves but they were at work, so guess who had feeding duty?
Poppy poured cat food into a small bowl on the porch railing and Dreamsicle jumped up, eating with more confidence than he used to. The girl sat on a plastic chair and watched the cat eat, waiting patiently for her roommate to return home from work. Dreamsicle liked them a lot more than he did Poppy. He usually didn't leave until he saw Poppy's roommate.
He hung around after he finished eating, as usual, jumping down and meowing quietly at her feet.
"I know Dreamy. You want Aster, but you'll have to settle with me until they come back. It shouldn't be long now." She said, scratching the orange cat behind the ears.
Dreamsicle purred and laid on the wooden porch. Poppy knelt down to the cat to pet him, the purple gash in the sky catching her attention as it was caught in her field of vision. "Damn, is it me, or is it growing bigger?" She wondered to herself.
As a cat does, Dreamsicle watched her, not reacting to her unease.
A pair of headlights flashed from down the road, getting closer until a pearlescent car pulled into the cracking driveway.
Poppy patted the cat on the head.
"There they are buddy."
Dreamsicle turned from Poppy and trotted over to her roommate, his tail twitching eagerly.
"Missed me?" They asked Dreamsicle humorously, attempting to pick up the cat. They felt the orange cat had almost allowed them to the last time they met. But not this time it seemed.
Dreamsicle smoothly slipped out of their grasp, darting to the ever so slightly opened screen door, and pawing it to the point he could pass through.
"Wow, that's new," Aster remarked in intrigue at the new behavior.
"It's the sky." Poppy half-joked, eyes flickering subtlety back to the purple gash which had been the source of her paranoia since it appeared.
"Sure, it's the sky," Aster replied flatly. "Poppy, you really gotta stop with the sky. It's getting to you."
"And you are way too nonchalant about one of the strangest events in history." Poppy said, stepping through the doorway.
"It's not as much as I don't care, as much as I try not to think about it. There's nothing I can do when holes in the sky are concerned." Aster told them, following the brown haired girl.
Poppy murmured inaudibly about not understanding her friend as she searched for the cat, finding him squeezed under the couch.
"That's where you are," She cooed, patting her hand down on the dun carpet.
Dreamsicle's eyes widened, locked on the girl's moving hand. Skillfully, he launched himself at the offending hand, following it as its owned pulled it from under the couch.
He was exposed.
Dreamsicle instantly forgot about that when he saw Aster sitting on the above him.
Mewling quietly, he jumped onto their lap and curled up.
"It looks like he's going to be staying for a while."
Poppy kicked her legs up on the glass coffee table nonchalantly. "Works for me."
The two absently watched the TV for around 20 minutes until their attention was abruptly jerked away by the sudden loss of power to the house.
"Um, Poppy, we did pay the electric bill didn't we?" Aster asked, gripping the cat closer to themselves.
There was a short silence before Poppy responded. "Yeah, we did."
Clumsily, Poppy stumbled to her feet and worked her way over to the window, pulling the blinds up and looking outside.
"All the neighborhood is out of power it looks like," Poppy confirmed. It was an unusual occurrence to be sure. Missouri was known for severe weather, but the night was completely clear.
"Hold on," said Aster, getting up and walking into the kitchens to find a flashlight. Poppy knew they'd found one when the kitchen became illuminated.
The light danced across the walls until Aster reappeared in the living room. "I guess this will have to do until the power comes back." They remarked.
A small scratching sound became subtly more noticeable, prompting Aster to shine their light in the direction of the sound. It was Dreamsicle, pressed against the wooden door, running his claws up and down the smooth surface.
"Oh, you want out?" They asked the cat, opening the door for the stray
Dreamsicle walked outside and stopped on the porch, gray eyes boring into Aster's skull. The cat began to pace back and forth, mewling nervously.
"I-I think he wants something?" Aster guessed aloud, stepping out with the cat.
He meowed much louder, walking off the porch and turning to face Aster.
"...Do you want me to follow you?" They asked, feeling slightly stupid for talking to a cat in the same way they would a human.
The cat drew his head to the murky blackness and back to Aster.
"Yes?"
With that Aster had pretty much made up their mind. They'd take a chance on madness and follow Dreamsicle.
"I'm going to follow Dreamsicle into the unknown. You coming?" They shouted to Poppy inside the house.
Aster could practically envision the utter confusion on Poppy's face at the request.
"Well, if you're going to do something insane, you might as well have a buddy," Poppy called to them.
"Aw, thanks for indulging me." Aster gushed, shining their flashlight into the inky darkness.
The pair followed the cat through the eerie darkness. If not for the flashlight, navigation would have been completely impossible. From the 10 or so minutes they spent following the cat into neighborhood after neighborhood, it was clear from the flicker of minor light sources, baffled people standing outside their house, and the nervous whisper floating endlessly through the air that everyone had the same feeling of dread.
Dreamsicle soon led them onto the darkened main street. Poppy shuttered periodically, the inability to see her hand in front of her face fueling her tension. She fixed her eyes on the darkness, trying to rationalize the blotches of shadow which somehow were darker than their surrounding. Visions of a bug-eyed, pink skinned, grinning creature with toothless mouth permanently agape assaulted her every step of the way.
It was all in her head, and she knew it.
She just wished her head was nicer to her.
Aster, on the other hand, was sufficiently unnerved by the conditions but kept their attention squarely on the cat. They were led down crowded streets where the police were desperately trying to maintain the flow of traffic and into blackened alleyways. The orange cat suddenly perked up and halted in his tracks. Aster and Poppy stopped in back, watching the cat stand on the side of the road.
"Aster, never have ideas." Poppy deadpanned as the cat began to wander around to sidewalk, nipping at the grass growing out of the cracks.
"Hey, you said you'd help me do something insane. I'm holding you to your word!" Aster retorted, knowing full well Poppy would agree regardless of her opinion on their following a stray cat into the city.
"I knooow." Poppy moaned comically, putting her palm her forehead.
"Besides, I felt me and Dreamsicle had a connection for a minute there." Aster chirped, not wanted to admit that they kinda weren't joking.
Poppy pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. "Connection? Yeah right. Keep this up and my fist and your face are going to have a connection."
Dreamsicle turned around to the pair and his ear twitched. Turning back around, the cat continued on his confusing journey until he led them into the backyard of an abandoned house. He suddenly became rigged and opened his mouth a bit, the tip of his tail twitching like crazy.
Dreamsicle focused in on a crumbling shed and took off for it, squeezing his way in between two rotten planks of wood.
"So this is what he wanted to show us?" Aster wondered aloud, not intending to say it aloud but too distracted by an ebbing feeling this wasn't just a coincidence.
"He's a cat Aster, I doubt he wanted to show us something halfway across town."
Despite Poppy's skepticism about the cat, they went to investigate. Aster pulled the rusted shed handle roughly, struggling to get the door open because of how ancient the hinges were.
Poppy was the first to peek inside, taking Aster's flashlight and shining it into the shed.
"Well color me surprised, more cats!" She exclaimed.
"Wha- really?" Aster asked, excitement overriding the creepy undertones this place gave off.
Aster joined Poppy in the shed and both of them got a good look at the cats.
The first to catch Aster's attention was the sleek black one in the back corner with haunting amber eyes. He was crouched down, tail curled over his front paws.
Poppy saw a long haired blond tabby first- mostly because he was caterwauling at her feet. She was almost tempted to pick the little guy up but something told her the cat couldn't like that.
A smaller cat- likely a she from the smaller stature and... different physiology, greeted Dreamsicle, butting her head against his side and brushing her tail under his chin. She was a pretty blue gray with orange eyes much like the black cat.
The last cat was a darker blue cat, huge and muscular. He was sleeping in the unstable rafters in of the shed, not paying any mind to the breaking his extra weight caused.
"Aster, I think owe you an apology..." Poppy said, eyeing over the cats. A creeping sense of apprehension sparked in her stomach, becoming more intense the longer she watched them.
Never thought I would be doing one of these ever. But it was pretty fun! Akatsuki cat stories are and always have been a dime a dozen so have yourself another one! In all honesty, I love the concept a lot and feel that the Akatsuki interacting with our world has a lot of potential for good stories if handled tactfully. So here I am throwing my hat into the ring.
PS. Don't worry, the rest of the Akatsuki are coming in later chapters.
Never thought I would be doing one of these ever. But it was pretty fun! Akatsuki cat stories are and always have been a dime a dozen so have yourself another one! In all honesty, I love the concept a lot and feel that the Akatsuki interacting with our world has a lot of potential for good stories if handled tactfully. So here I am throwing my hat into the ring.
PS. Don't worry, the rest of the Akatsuki are coming in later chapters.
