Even though the hotel was a perfectly acceptable place to stay, neat, clean, and comfortable, Kat still followed Chuuya out into the strange city.
It reeked.
While Yokohama smelled like any city, like metal and gasoline and people, it was dispersed by the sweet scent of bakeries and flower shops, and the salt air of the sea.
This city smelled like garbage, and rotting meat, and Kat really would have rather stayed in the hotel. But she wanted to go with Chuuya.
Cat's may have been solitary, and sure Kat was fine with being alone, but she liked being with Chuuya. She liked his strong shoulders under her paws, and the warm of his coat around her body, and the scent of his cologne.
And, privately, Kat wanted to keep an eye on him. She worried about him sometimes. He'd come home more than once with heavy steps and dark eyes and it was only her incessant meowing that pushed him into the kitchen to make dinner for the pair of them. Twice last week she had basically bullied him into washing his own bloodied clothes instead of leaving them piled in a corner of the room.
Even Chuuya Nakahara couldn't escape the gravity of his own life's work, it seemed.
So Kat followed him.
They had come to this place alone, just the two of them. With Dazai already gone from the Port Mafia, and Chuuya being an executive and there fore no longer Kouyou's underling, he was without a partner.
So Kat stayed at his side, dogging his heels while he walked briskly through the city.
There were underlings waiting for them, and they talked about the logistics of what was happening, but the cat wasn't paying all that much attention to them. Besides the fact that they all wore the tattoo of a peacock feather on their inner arm, there was nothing really distinct about them. No ability users, no names that she recognized, and no one she cared about.
She lay on Chuuya's lap while he idly scratched behind her ears and asked for details, locations, and faces.
They weren't there for long, before they set out to a warehouse where the bulk of 'the enemy' was stationed. About a block away from it Chuuya stuck his foot out in front of her and stopped Kat from walking any further. She looked up at him.
"You stay here," he warned. "I won't be able to keep an eye on you while I'm in there. So stay put. Understand?"
Kat tilted her head, but sat down obediently. Chuuya waited another minute to make sure she stayed that way before he nodded to himself and turned to walk into the warehouse.
Ten minutes later it was nothing more than rubble in the ground. Shards of stone and rebar stood as monuments to what had happened. Kat's fur all stood on end.
She had known, consciously, what Chuuya did for a living. She even know what he was capable of with his ability. She had seen the crater that formed a city first hand. She had witnessed through a tv screen the destruction of a great dragon and a chthonic deity. She had even seen him break a couple of walls without actually trying.
But this.
This was something entirely different.
She understood, suddenly. Chuuya was raw destruction.
He walked about the decimated warehouse with barely any dust on his shoulders, completely unharmed. His shoes squished red footprints. He smelled like copper and iron.
The cat part of Kat wasn't bothered. Hunting and killing were in her nature, and those people had been their prey. The human part of cat was horrified. Not at Chuuya, but at what he had been forced to become.
He was-
A man loomed out of the rubble on impossible silent feet. Claws stuck out of a brass knuckle in his hand and he lunged for Chuuya.
Kat's own claws bit into her face and she screamed her fury at him, tearing into the soft tissue around his eyes, mouth and ears. Metal flashed, blood splattered across her fur and her own skin split horribly under the blades.
She dropped like a rock to the ground. She had never been in so much pain.
The sound of stone shattering and something crunching and squelching were the last things she heard. Familiar hands found her bloody body, and the world went dark and quiet.