Cats weren't so much more interesting than people. They ate, they slept, they walked, they lived, same as everything else. They weren't any more likely to see him either, so Naruto returned the favor and paid them no attention.
This one was doing something weird, though.
Naruto watched from the roof as the cat ran a paw over another section of the house. Reiatsu flared briefly, less intense than a pinprick even at so close a distance. The cat strode twelve paces down, left another invisible marking, moved on.
With each tiny spike, the bonfire that was Ichigo-oniisan simmered lower. The teenager's reiryoku wasn't steadily skyrocketing anymore, but it was already more than everyone else Naruto knew put together and was somehow still growing. Naruto'd already had to cut down nine hollows, all of them huge, towering things several times stronger than the kind he got back home. He was prepared to keep vigil the remainder of the night to make sure the guy didn't get eaten in his sleep or something.
"Can't catch anything if the bait's dead, ne?"
People weren't bait.
"Whatever makes ya sleep better at night."
He wasn't sleeping tonight anyway.
"What's it feel like, to imagine you're a hero?"
When he flashed down to the ground, the cat acknowledged him by turning its ear towards him. He slid a step back, eyes widening, and froze when the cat looked over, clear yellow eyes fixed on him.
It—no, she, the scent on the wind corrected—flicked her tail, then she set him aside and went back to her task. She swiped her paw over the yellow paint one last time. Immediately all the previous markings gave a sputtering burst before— not vanishing, but blending into the ambient spiritual noise. Ichigo-oniisan's reiryoku dropped down to a normal level in the same instant.
A startled yip. "Bastard!"
What?
"Idiot! She cut off your hollow supply!"
Oniisan wasn't bait. This wasn't fishing!
Dripping liberally with sarcasm: "Well, bridges generally go 'ver water—"
"That should hold for a while," the cat commented. Her voice held the deepness characteristic of animals forcing their throats into making human sounds with chakra.
"What did you do?" Naruto asked.
"You don't need to talk! Just get rid of her and get back ta killing hollows already!"
"Shielded the house," said the cat. "He'll light up again the minute he steps out, but it'll keep the hollows off his back for the rest of the night."
Naruto crossed his arms. "I was handling it."
"You're an idiot."
"I'm not denying that, but there's worse things than hollows that could have come looking."
"But a cat would know so much about it, na?"
"Like what?" Naruto asked dubiously.
"Bigger hollows, for one," said the cat. She stretched languidly, mouth yawning wide, then sat down and curled her long tail around her dark-furred feet. "Anyway, what were you going to do? Watch over him until his reiryoku fixes itself? Children need plenty of sleep to keep healthy, you know."
"Hey, that cat's calling you stupid! You gonna do something about it?"
He hadn't thought that far ahead, actually. Long-term planning had never been his strong suit, mostly because he'd never needed it. Fixing problems as they came worked pretty well every time.
"What am I saying? Of course ya aren't. The beetle stole any guts you mighta had, ne, jellyfish?"
"I'm not that little." Naruto dropped to crouch on the balls of his feet, partly to bring them to a slightly more even level and partly to emphasize his point. Even if his shoes had been touching the ground, the cat's ears would barely reach past his nose. "I'm bigger than you."
"It seems that way," said the cat, whiskers twitching.
"That's right, 'ttebayo." Naruto frowned, eyes closing to slits. "What are you gonna do when oniisan leaves the house?"
"What makes you think I'll do anything?"
Naruto tilted his head slightly. He waited.
The cat's mouth opened enough to show the sharp tips of her fangs. On any other cat it would have been a frightened baring of teeth, but on her it was very clearly a grin.
Odd. Naruto'd seen summons and ninja animals use human mannerisms before, but showing teeth as a sign of amusement was exclusive to people. It was like how only civilians shook hands or bowed—ninja couldn't view casual contact with strangers or assuming an unbalanced position while exposing the back of the head as anything other than suicidal. Carnivores couldn't see grinning as anything other than overtly aggressive. They'd tolerate it from humans, sure, the same way ninja were okay with civilians shaking hands with each other, but they'd never do it themselves.
Therefore, the cat wasn't a cat. She also wasn't dead (if the lack of a chain hadn't already been proof enough), because only living people had chakra, and ninja techniques like transformation needed chakra. Yet whatever she had done to Ichigo-oniisan's home had used reiatsu, not chakra, even though Naruto couldn't feel any more reiatsu off her than the typical amount living souls exuded.
It'd been a long time since Naruto had so thoroughly not known something. He wasn't sure what to feel about it.
The smile showed a bit more teeth. "He's more dangerous to himself right now than the hollows are. If his reiryoku keeps growing at this rate, his physical body is going to break down."
Naruto reared back, eyes widening. "It's gonna— Wait, so he's— That can happen?"
"No, he's a special case," said the cat. "Certainly you instigated it by exposing him to your reiatsu, but you had no way of knowing."
"I—" Naruto's hand found the rough-wrapped hilt of his zanpakuto, and he ignored the immediate comment of "What, I exist now?" "I wanted to talk to him."
The cat blinked up at him. "No need to take it so hard. It's easy enough to fix."
"How?"
"The only reason it's a problem is because the reiatsu his soul is generating is staying bottled up inside his body. We need to give it an outlet. Tomorrow afternoon when school lets out, if you want to be there."
"Yeah," said Naruto. "Okay. You know a lot about spirit stuff."
"Not enough to help you get home, unfortunately," said the cat.
A low growl reverberated through his mind. Naruto's gaze traced the curve of the cat's muzzle. He placed the shape with another black feline who'd been in hearing range during his and Ichigo's conversation.
Well, that was all right. He hadn't told Ichigo-oniisan anything dangerous. More importantly, she wasn't going to leave him dangling with just the knowledge that she'd eavesdropped: she had to be planning to follow up with what she wanted from him.
"But I know a man who might be able to."
He had to grin at that. He liked being right.
Also, it was starting to seem like everyone in this world could see ghosts. Okay, maybe not everyone everyone, but back home, there were... Ringo-san had been the first, three months after the beetle hollow killed him, but she'd only been able to see him for a few hours after he rescued her. It'd been two years before he'd met a second, Nii-neesan.
Compared to here, where, in less than a day, he'd already found out about three. There had to be something in the water.
"Tomorrow afternoon when school lets out?" he guessed.
"I was thinking tonight, since he has a spare room with sleeping mats," said the cat, her voice a touch gruffer. "You could catch a cold out here."
"I like oniisan's roof," Naruto said. A lie for a lie. The roof had shingles, which were the worst roofing ever invented. He hadn't touched them, instead opting to stay in the air a few inches above. But just because Ichigo-oniisan's dad had terrible taste in houses didn't mean he and his family were terrible people, and Naruto knew how much he trusted the cat's reiatsu-concealing technique to hold.
"Stupid thing hasn't even said her name."
Oh, that was true. She wasn't a ninja animal, who didn't think to introduce themselves by name until someone else brought the matter up. A human withholding her identity while under a transformation technique was doing it deliberately.
"I won't push, in that case." She rose to her feet.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Yoruichi," she answered without the slightest hesitation. Whatever reason she'd been hiding her name for wasn't a problem anymore. A trust issue? That couldn't be it, Naruto wasn't acting too differently now than he'd been with Ichigo-oniisan. If he had done something that made her suspicious then she shouldn't feel any differently now.
Unless he hadn't done anything, she'd been suspicious from the very beginning, and something he'd done had made her okay with him.
"Don't ya dare sit here and take that."
He felt his smile stiffen at the edges. "Tails-san."
"Come again?"
"You're Tails-san," Naruto said. There was a common expression about a cat spirit always showing her tails eventually, left over from before the villages' foundings back when Matatabi-san would regularly disguise herself as young women to slip into human society. He knew it was petty and didn't care.
"You're letting her off with a stupid nickname. 'course you are."
"Ah, we're using pet names already." Her ear flicked. "I can live with that. So, Naruto-chan, we'll see you tomorrow. Take care until then."
"See ya."
Naruto waved at her retreating figure, then flashed back up to the roof and watched the cat until she disappeared behind a wall. There weren't any more hollows that night.
