Chapter 3: Intro Arc - Listen, and Be Afraid
I had a lot of fun with this chapter... (insert evil face)
This better not be what I think it is.
Oh, it is, Deidara-san. Please enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything except my OCs and the plot!
Kaiya's POV
I gently placed the yellow kitten down, but couldn't help but notice that he seemed quite upset about it.
"I'll pet you again later, okay?" I quickly told him. "But for now, can you please wake up all of the other cats and assemble them here? Well, that is, if you can understand me."
To my surprise, he nodded, and rushed towards the sleeping cats. He started with a large blue one, slapping his tail against him until he woke up. Although the blue kitten was miffed at being woken up like that, he eventually calmed down slightly after they started meowing a little bit to each other. When he turned around to face me, I couldn't help but notice that he resembled a shark of some sort.
Slowly, the two began padding over to other cats, waking them up in the same fashion. Nearly all of them had the same reaction as the blue kitten, except for a silver cat. When the yellow kitty woke him up, I swore that I could hear something that sounded a lot like the cat version of cursing.
The cats that had already been awake, including Kagami's friend and the periwinkle kitten who had thanked me, rushed over to the others to see what was going on. Eventually, all of them woke up, except for the last kitty. None of the kitties seemed like they wanted to be the one to arouse him. Even Kagami's friend and the yellow kitten backed a few steps away from him.
He served no visible threat, being a sleeping orange kitten, so I was unable to see why they were so frightened of him. Something told me that it was possible that he was either the leader of the kittens or just a very violent cat. I partially eliminated the second thought, thinking that the silver cat was probably the most violent out of all of them. At that moment, he was attempting to swipe at a dark brown tom.
Upon closer inspection, I realized that the only girl in the entire group was the periwinkle kitten. I smirked lightly, pitying the poor girl that was stuck with a reverse kitty harem.
Suddenly, she bravely walked up to the orange tom and gently patted him awake with her tail. After being whacked lightly a few times, he yowled loudly at the others, causing the majority of the kitties to instinctively leap away. However, upon realizing that it was the periwinkle kitten that had woken him up, he calmed down, patting her head before heaving himself onto his paws.
He turned to me and meowed. I was pretty sure that he was trying to talk to me, but I had absolutely no idea what the orange cat was trying to say. Actually, I didn't understand a thing any of the kittens said. I assumed it was a greeting, followed by a string of questions about where they were.
"Good morning, kittens," I said, and they all turned to look at me. "I bet you're wondering where you are and why I've assembled you here, right?"
To my surprise, every kitten nodded.
I see, I thought to myself, I can't understand them, but they can perfectly understand me and my siblings.
"To answer your first question, you are all at my house," I explained. "You're in North America, but I'm pretty sure you already know that and our state. The reason I've assembled you here was to welcome you into our family. Congratulations!"
I flashed a smile, but received barely any reaction from the kittens. The only real reaction I received was from the cat that Kagami had been playing with, who was jumping up and down in delight.
"As a result," I continued, "all of us are going to come up with names for you guys, since it won't exactly be convenient calling you 'silver kitty' or 'yellow kitty'. Just let me know if you don't like the name, okay?"
Turning towards my siblings, I motioned for them to come closer. They obeyed, walking towards the area where I had assembled the group of rainbow-colored kittens.
"Kagami, do you want to pick first?" I offered, deciding to go with the youngest member of our family first.
In response, she gleefully clapped her hands together. "Yes, please!" Quickly, she grabbed the kitten she had been playing with earlier and lifted him high in the air. "I wanna name this one!"
"Of course," I giggled, watching how cute the scene was. "What are you going to call him?"
"I wanna call him Fuzzsticks!" she sang happily. The kitten seemed to appreciate his name, and began flailing wildly in Kagami's arms to show his gratitude. She giggled, and began to play with Fuzzsticks again. The other kitties looked at each other doubtfully, then began backing away from the hyperactive little girl. Although Fuzzsticks liked his name, the others probably did not want to be named something so ridiculous.
"My turn, then," said Yukio. He observed each kitten carefully, then after a minute of silence, he gently picked up the kitten that looked like a shark. In response, the cat gave him an odd look, as if he was bracing himself for a bad name. However, I knew in my mind that Yukio had always been good at giving names, so there was nothing for the cat to worry about.
"Let's see…" he pondered aloud. "What should I call you? River? No, too soft. Sky? Not a chance. Jaws? Nope, already taken by that giant shark. Ugh...onee-chan, I can't decide!"
His hands flew to the side of his head, showing how hard he was trying to search his brain for a suitable name.
"Maybe you should give him a tough name," I suggested. The blue cat immediately nodded in agreement, then turned to face Yukio again.
"You're right, onee-chan," he answered. "How about Dragon?"
As we both turned towards the kitten, he gave his sign of approval and grinned, showing that he liked the name as well. Smiling, Yukio placed him down, and Dragon ran down to rejoin with the other kittens.
"I pick this one," Naoki announced, making a grab for the pure black kitten. "He's certainly caught my interest, onee-chan. Have you seen his eyes?"
I stared into the kitten's eyes, which were an unusual scarlet color. He returned the stare, as if he wanted to have a staring contest for a while.
"Those eyes..." murmured Naoki. "Do you know what they remind me of? Remember those amazing eyes that I showed you from an anime episode? They were called Sharingan."
I swore that once they had heard the word, every single one of the kittens turned to Naoki with shocked expressions. Even more, the kitten in Naoki's arms was beginning to...cringe? Twitch? I wasn't exactly sure.
"Maybe the Uchiha Clan had an adorable kitty summon, and this was what it looked like," remarked Naoki. "In fact, he oddly resembles one of the most famous Uchiha members of all time. And that's who I'm going to name him after."
At that moment, there was no mistake about it. Naoki's kitten was twitching hard. Even Fuzzsticks, who had been bouncing and meowing the entire time, had stopped to pay attention to the conversation that was going on. As I looked closer at him, I noticed that his single eye was the same red color as the black kitten's, though I swore that they were onyx-colored earlier.
Suddenly, Naoki smiled and gave the black kitten a warm embrace.
"Welcome to the family...Sasuke."
That was the day I learned to what extent kittens could twitch. "Sasuke" was twitching about forty times more than the time when my brother had brought up the Uchiha Clan. Some of the other kitties were failing miserably at holding in their laughter as the watched their friend twitch.
"I advise that you put that kitten down, nii-chan," I told him. "He looks like he's about to explode. Wait, speaking of explosions, I decided from the very beginning that I was going to name—" I paused mid-sentence to step forward and stroke the yellow kitten— "this one."
As I caressed his soft fur, he smirked, then padded closer to me. I took this as him giving his consent to pick him up and pet him some more, which he seemed rather happy about. He squirmed around playfully in my arms, making me let out a small giggle.
"You're the cutest of them all," I sighed. "And I'm glad that you have taken a slight interest in our tradition of firework launching. After all, those explosions are more than just explosions to us — they represent our feelings as well. At the end of each week, on Sundays, all four of us go outside and launch a colored firework. Each color we use represents the emotion that we felt most throughout the week. For example, red would mean that we felt angry, orange would mean that we felt threatened, yellow would mean happiness, green would mean jealousy, blue would mean sadness, and so on. It's been quite a long time since we have fired a yellow firework, but maybe having all of you kittens here could increase our chances of having one blow up."
Throughout my entire speech, the yellow kitten seemed very intrigued. It was almost as if he had a desire to launch those fireworks himself every time I mentioned them. Even the others seemed rather impressed, including Fuzzsticks and Sasuke.
"I'm going to name you Firework," I concluded, "because you seem to love explosions so much. Do you like it?"
He nodded swiftly, grinning widely. Unfortunately, his grin faded slightly when I put him down to let him rejoin his friends.
"Choose another one, Kagami," I hesitantly told my sister. When she squealed again, some of the kittens looked as if they were about to run away and hide. Unfortunately for them, Kagami selected one of them — the silver cat — to be her next victim. Firework couldn't help but laugh at that point, and so did the brown kitten that had fought with the silver kitten earlier.
"Ooh!" Kagami trilled. "Onee-chan! Come check out his eyes! They're beautiful!"
I rushed over to take a good look at the kitten's eyes, which were a lovely amethyst color. "You're right," I admitted, "those eyes really are amazing."
The silver cat seemed satisfied with my comment, but he eyed Kagami warily, expecting her to give him a horrible name. Sure enough, she did, five seconds later.
"I'm gonna call you Twinkleshine!" squealed Kagami, spinning around with the now twitching silver kitten. At that moment, almost all of the other cats burst into laughter, especially Firework, Dragon, and the brown tom. Twinkleshine hissed in fury, claws extended. Just as he was about to scratch Kagami, Naoki restrained him by snatching him away from her.
"Bad Twinkleshine," Naoki muttered. "Don't scratch my imouto."
Gently, he set Twinkleshine down on the ground. He shot one last glare at Kagami before rejoining his group of laughing kitties. Realizing that it was his turn, Yukio made a grab for the kitten that I hadn't noticed earlier: a kitten that was white on one side, but black on the other. If I wasn't imagining it, he also seemed to have a small tuft of olive green fur on his head.
"This one looks strange," he said. "Doesn't it remind you of a yin-yang, onee-chan?"
"Certainly," I answered, "except for that green tuft of fur on his head. I've never imagined that there would be a kitten that looked like that."
"Then let's call him Yin-Yang," he announced. But even after Yukio put him down, the kitten seemed to have no clear reaction.
Meanwhile, Naoki was having a hard time picking up the brown cat. Like Twinkleshine, he was continuously swiping at Naoki's hands, but a little bit less violently.
"Come on!" he growled at the stubborn cat. "Are you going to let me pick you up or not?"
His response was a claw swipe that barely missed his hand. Huffing in frustration, he took both of his arms back.
"Fine!" Naoki scowled. "Be that way, Warthog!"
Although I managed to stifle my laughter, all of the kitties began to laugh at their comrade's new name, including the orange tom and Sasuke. Out of all of them, Twinkleshine was laughing the hardest.
"Come here," I motioned to the periwinkle kitten. "Have I got a name for you."
She nodded, walking silently towards me and allowing me to lift her up in my arms.
"Your name shall be Angel," I said, smiling. "You've been so nice to all the other kittens and my siblings when we let you in, so I thought that would be a very suitable name for you."
She gave a small nod, still showing no emotion as I set her down again. However, I could tell that she was quite satisfied with the name.
"Kagami, it's your turn," I muttered, feeling sorry for the two remaining cats: the orange tom and the red-furred tom.
To my surprise, she didn't bounce up and down when she walked forward to grab the scarlet kitty. He twitched slightly, and Firework laughed as my imouto cradled him in her arms.
"I haven't figured out a name for this one yet," she stated. "Yukio-nii-chan, you can go first."
He nodded, but decided not to pick up the orange tom. "I have already decided on a name for the orange kitty," he announced. "Since he appears to be the leader or boss of all of these cats, I want to give him a tough name. Therefore, I'm going to call him Tiger. Is that okay?"
The kitten nodded, seeming glad that he had been chosen by Yukio and not Kagami. Speaking of Kagami, Firework was staring at his red-furred friend in my sister's arms, still laughing his tail off.
"I've decided on a name!" she suddenly exclaimed, almost making me jump. "Because of his beautiful red fur, I'm going to call him Rosie!"
After that, all of the other kitties couldn't hold in their laughter anymore. As soon as Kagami put the kitten down, he ran towards the corner of the room and sulked alone, twitching hard.
"Okay, now that we have officially welcomed you into our family," I began, "I'm going to go out and buy some kitten necessities with Kagami. Naoki and Yukio, can you watch them for me?"
My brothers nodded, and Kagami squealed for the millionth time that day. "Good. Make sure that none of them get into any trouble."
With that, I snatched my purse from the coat rack and began walking out of the door, with Kagami following me. I glanced back and saw the kittens chatting and arguing with each other, and I couldn't help but smile. Nearly all of them seemed comfortable where they were, even Twinkleshine and Warthog.
The only one I noticed that did not seem to be socializing was Rosie, who I took a long look at before tugging Kagami along and shutting the door.
A/N: Yup! I spent a loooong time coming up with those...
You know, I kind of feel bad for danna now, un.
Whatever. If you don't want to see him get named something cute like that, check out another book. This site is called for a reason! Or are you hinting at what I think you're hinting at? *wink wink*
What the hell?
Anyway, please review!
— Tenshi —
