NOVEL WEB Chapter 28 – Cat Gets Licked Clean And Travels to Candy Land
Chapter 28
Yoruichi eyed the black shadow as it charged toward her at an admittedly slow pace.
‘What is this guy thinking? He knows I just beat his brother up, and yet hes sending this thing to attack me?’ Yoruichi pondered, her thoughts moving at lightning quick speeds.
While she was trying to analyze the situation, she was eyeing the shadow that was still only about halfway to her position. Internally, she just shrugged and asked Rain, ‘Yo, you want a shot at this thing?’
Rain just snorted, and said, ‘Looks like shit, smells like shit, its definitely some sort of shit. Still your shit to deal with though.’
Yoruichi had to pause everything she was doing and go, ‘Wait, you can smell that thing? Why-how?’
Rain just snorted again and ignored her. She quickly put her interdimensional thought spirit smelling physical shadow beings out of her mind and took a step to the right to let the admittedly still rather large being go right by her.
She was a bit suprised when the being stopped immediately upon getting within arm’s reach, with an inhuman level of momentum control, i.e. there was no momentum, it just stopped, and was surprised enough to let the black hole-like being reach out and touch her at a speed the thing definitely did not move at before.
If she was surprised at the unnaturalness of the being before, she was outright shocked when upon touching her, she felt the thing trying to suck her soul out of her body.
Now, unknown to any person on the planet she was on, Soul Reapers technically don’t have physical bodies. Their entire body structure is made up of their soul, which is then mimicking in its entirety how a normal body functions. This is why the residents of the Rukongai don’t need to eat to sustain themselves. They would still need to sleep, as at that point sleep is a reducer of mental stress more than anything, but the general premise is that residents of the afterlife in the Soul Society don’t exactly have physical bodies.
Now what would happen when a being that is able to take soul pieces out of humans to keep for itself tried to do the same thing to a soul directly? Well, it would probably end up ripping a ‘physical’ part of their body off, for instance a chunk of their side, or their entire forearm based on how much was being taken.
This is exactly what happened when the black being attempted to attack Yoruichi. It used whatever ability it has to reach into a soul and take a piece out, and tugged.
Or at least it attempted to.
Yoruichi Shihoin Is at the level of a Shinigami Gotei 13 captain who has achieved her Bankai in the past, even though she no longer has access to it, and still maintains that level of fighting power regardless.
‘Why is this an issue?’ one would think. Well, the issue lies in what happens when souls start becoming Shinigami and getting more powerful. When someone looks at a Shinigami Captain, said Captain probably has an absurd amount of Reishi, or spiritual particles in their bodies. It is what fuels their attacks, allows them to support their increased levels of energy with their Shikai and Bankai, and also increases the ‘physical’ aspect of a Shinigami’s body, which manifests itself in Reiatsu, or Spiritual Pressure.
When this pressure is referred to as an actual ‘thing’, in reality it is not. Reiatsu is a direct side effect of Reishi density in a Shinigami’s body. This density is why Shinigami Captains, or really any Shinigami at a seated officer level or above are at that level.
However, releasing this pressure into the environment is a matter of control. Usually. Shinigami are required to hone their control over their Reishi to the point that it is subconscious, and then once they reach Lieutenant or Captain level, to a point where their actual subconscious controls the output of Reiatsu.
Of course, this can be controlled manually, just like when someone says “You are breathing manually”, and every single person who read that sentence is now breathing manually, Shinigami can ‘take over’ operations from the subconscious to exert pressure on their environment.
Now, all of this leads to the riveting question of “why is that a bad thing in this context?”
This is why.
As soon as Yoruichi felt the being try and succeed to grab a piece of her soul, she knew shit was about to hit the fan. She was entirely right, as soon as a part of her very being moved out of its ‘intended’ place, her subconscious immediately decided it was going to plug up the hole by any means necessary.
This caused Yoruichi’s Captain level spiritual pressure to explode out of her body in a completely frenzied and hurried manner and disintegrated all of the homies on the island and ships, about 80% of the people living there, more than 60% of the pirates on the island, and most importantly, the black being which had caused all of this in the first place.
It disintegrated almost as fast as the homies on the island, only lasting a moment longer. But this moment was enough for the being to turn its head with wide eyes and capture Yoruichi’s glorious visage as she gave off an aura of utter death and despair.
This visage was what was transmitted upon the ‘death’ of one of Big Mom’s incarnations directly into Big Mom’s mind when it died. Regardless, Yoruichi clamped down manually on her soul pressure as hard as she could and immediately patched the tiny scratch that the being had done to her.
It wasn’t truly powerful enough to do any damage to Yoruichi, who is on the rather powerful side of Shinigami captains, and thus a higher density in Reishi. To be honest, it could probably injure a lower seated officer, but that was about it.
Yoruichi exasperatedly glanced around at the carnage and destruction wrought by herself inadvertently. When she saw that pretty much everything in sight was pretty much out of commission, permanently or otherwise, she just sighed and turned around, and started walking away.
‘Mahhhhhhh.’ She sighed internally, ‘And that is why officers bind their power levels before going to the world of the living.’
Yoruichi vanished into the dust that was now the remnants of any physical object in a decent radius from her body.
Unbeknownst to her, there was a single person who was able to stay conscious in that millisecond it took to completely devastate an entire island.
Perospero coughed up a bit of blood and a lot of spit as he slowly and gingerly picked himself up off the ground, coughing up a tooth that got knocked out when his head slammed onto the ground.
“Wha-What -w-w-was that.” He stuttured, looking on in utter horror at what had happened.
He wasn’t horrified by the destruction. He was one of the strongest people under a Yonko. He himself had done worse to multiple islands than what was before him now.
What horrified him was the aura that Yoruichi put out, and the fact that said aura had obliterated one of his Mama’s incarnations. Her aura reminded him of Big Mom’s Conqueror’s Haki, but different. Instead of a straight pressure that made it hard to move, the aura that Yoruichi gave off seemed like she was going to kill him by just being near him. In fact, it had killed many people. She did not infuse it. She didn’t even attack at all.
The incarnation’s destruction was another matter as well. They are basically small clones of Mama’s soul that go around and collect souls to transport back to her. This has a side effect of being able to remerge with her and share it’s memories with her, such as when her soul has it’s container destroyed and is summoned back to her automatically.
“I had better get back quickly, or Mama will be going on another rampage. We are barely recovered from the last one.” Perspero muttered worriedly. He scrambled up from his kneeling position, his tongue swinging around wildly as he looked around at his men.
All of them were down for the count, including his younger brother, Daifuku. Perospero frowned, but did not pay it much mind. ‘He was pretty roughed up when I got here, the blast must have knocked him out.’ He thought.
The eldest of Charlotte Linlin’s children walked around the wreckage, waking up and shaking his men awake, taking inventory of the destruction. It would only be a few hours before he was able to secure his ship and make way to Whole Cake Island.
Yoruichi had spent 30 minutes after leaving the hole in the ground that used to be an entire district of the island looking for a ship to strategically transfer to an alternate location, but she found none.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true, she did find a bunch of ships. However, they were all massive, ships meant to be used by entire crews of people.
And as well as Yoruichi can make clones and as fast as she is, she probably couldn’t sail an entire ship by herself. This was when she noticed the newer addition to the port, made up of a ship very similar to Daifuku’s. She saw what was probably left of the pirate crews on the island packing up and getting the ship prepped to leave.
Figuring that making other people work for her, Yoruichi quickly ducked behind a pier and quickly stripped off all her clothes and stuffed it into her bag and transformed into her cat form.
After that she ambled closer to the ship and watched the men for as long as possible until it looked like they were ready to go. Once she felt like they were about to ship off, Yoruichi took of from her perch on a pier post and ran toward the ship, intent on stowing away somewhere until she can find her bearings and, hopefully, Shiki.
Unfortunately, all of this was lost as right as Yoruichi was about to start climbing the gangplank she was picked up by a somewhat familiar face.
“Oohhhhh look at you, kitty kitty!” Perospero said as he snatched the stray feline off the ground and held her up in front of his face.
Perospero smiled as he held Yoruichi up to him, his tongue flagging around as he spoke. “Arent you just so lickity cute!” the man cried, holding Yoruichi like she was the newest prince of the jungle, when all she wanted to do was scratch the weirdo in front of her.
‘If that fucking slimy ass appendage gets any closer to me im gonna tear him to shreds with my bare hands-er, paws.’ Yoruichi grumbled, her cat face looking decidedly unhappy.
Her worst fears came true when said appendage came closer than she ever wanted it to be, with a wet *shlick* sound as Perospero licked Yoruichi up the side of her shoulder and up over her head.
“Ooohhhh, you do taste so good too! That’s it! I’m keeping you! Your new name is Mr. Bonbon, and you will be the premiere mousier on my ship” Perospero said proudly. He turned to hold the cat up to show his crew members, who cheered at the sight. They hated rats. Even when they had to eat them as emergency rations. Cats definitely would taste better than rat.
If Yoruichi could be a teakettle right now, she would be boiling over with rage. Her kitty body was trembling in anger, her face scrunched up in unholy fury. She swiped out with her claws at the disgusting man’s tongue that was still flapping around and scored a rather nice gash down the length of it.
“Gahhhh!” Perospero screamed, as he threw the cat up in the air and held his tongue in pain.
Yoruichi landed abruptly on the gangplank from her impromptu catapault, and quickly darted up the walkway and onto the ship, disappearing into the cabins.
Once she found a nice place to hunker down, Yoruichi started ranting in her mind, ‘IF I DIDN’T, I DIDN’T NEED THIS SHIP, I WOULD TURN IT INTO SPLINTERS!’ she roared in her mind, all the while she was being laughed out of her own head by her spirit companion.
“BAHAHAHAHHAHA WHAT ARE YOU, A LOLIPOP?! BAHAHHAHAHAH” Rain laughed, proverbially rolling all over his spiritual home.
you’re just lucky it wasn’t you out there.’
Rain just laughed some more, and said, “Bahah, This King wouldn’t get caught dead getting licked like some ripe fruit, hahahaha” Rain quickly retreated into Yoruichi’s mind, leaving the poor werecat to stew in her own annoyance.
To be honest, Yoruichi wasn’t that mad. As much as she wanted to come out and tear the man limb for limb for freaking licking her, she would take the slight to her pride if it meant she found her way to civilization.
At least once she had not just inadvertently blown up, because she doesn’t think the residents of this island would be giving her any directions that didn’t involve a one-way trip to a 6-foot-deep hole. Or a crematorium.
Of course, this was how Yoruichi spent the next 4 days, flitting about the ship from shadow to shadow, superciliously avoiding any and all crew members, especially Mr. Lickums himself. She may have made some friends with a few mice and may have made them poop all over Perospero’s quarters, but that was irrelevant.
Yoruichi was currently making biscuits in Perospero’s room (read: tearing everything to shreds) when she felt her spiritual senses come into range of an island. One that was probably the weirdest thing to date that she had ever set her senses on.
Her head perked up and swirled over to her right, looking at something her physical eyes cannot see.
‘Oi, Rain, you seeing this?’ she asked tentatively.
Rain hummed in thought. ‘Yes…. This is worse than we thought, isn’t it…’
Yoruichi could only nod in agreement. ‘Yeah, I was willing to let it slide with the homies on that island, as it looked like they were only inconsequential pieces, but this? This is too much. There is no way this doesn’t affect the balance of souls.’ She thought, concerned.
Yoruichi had never forgotten the core reason for a Shinigami’s purpose. Yes, they act as ferries for the dead, transporting them to the afterlife, and also act as defenders of the same afterlife, killing hollows that intend to feed on souls.
But, their core purpose was keeping the balance of the universe at a certain level so that everything didn’t collapse. It was why the Quincy War had happened, it was why Yoruichi had participated and led multiple culling missions in the Rukongai as the population of souls was too overflowing between the land of the living and the Soul Society.
And this….. This was definitely a reason for Shinigami to assert their powers on the land of the living.
Yoruichi was currently eyeing an entire island filled with captive souls that would not flow into the soul society until their holder decided to let them go. And only let them go, because with the amount of soul power Yoruichi could feel on that island alone was enough to keep someone alive for at least half a millennium.
She could ignore a few minor things, like a china set being turned into a shadow of something living, or special cannonballs made to be able to navigate on their own.
That’s fine. But when it turns out Big Mom is somehow taxing every single person in her nation with pieces of their souls as payments, and then turning them into basically an extra battery on her own island, things start to get dicey.
Yoruichi quickly crawled out from behind the wall she was hiding in with her minions (see, mice) and ran out the door as one of the crew members went to go to sleep on his bunk.
Dodging all the men in the corridor as they went about their business, Yoruichi made her way up the stairs and onto the deck so she could see at what exactly she was dealing with.
What did saw was probably the most sickening sugar overload she had ever seen in her entire life. Yoruichi hopped up onto the railing to stare gob smacked at the island that was made entirely out of some sort of sugary confection. Cake? It’s there. Ice cream? There. Pancakes? Also, there. Of course, there were like twice as many cakes as anything else, but what did she expect when the island’s name was ‘Whole Cake Island’?
Yoruichi was surprised enough it took her multiple moments to notice the actual issue.
‘Oh wow. She turned the entire island into cake, and then put souls into pretty much everything on it. Is it so she can just eat it all for more lifespan?’ Yoruichi laid down on the railing so she could expand her senses outward to get a better picture of what the island was all about.
About 10 minutes later she thought she had had enough. ‘Oh yeah, that place is crawling with souls forcibly stuffed into random things. It kind of reminds me of those early experiments Aizen was doing on hollows, where things just got, weird’ Yoruichi thought, causing Rain to huff in laughter.
“Humph, Was the tentacle hollow not weird for you? Or the one that would detonate on impact with literally anything? Even air?” the king of the jungle grumbled, his thoughts going back to the very entertaining moments of Yoruichi and some other division two members attempting to put down a couple hollows from Aizen’s earlier experiments.
Of course, they had no idea that it was Aizen’s experiments at the time, but who cares about the details after the fact?
Yoruichi watched nonchalantly as the crew started preparing for disembarking, her tail swishing behind her as they got closer. She had to move her spot a few times as she sensed Perospero getting closer, and after that first time she wanted nothing to do with him.
She watched as the men scurried about, throwing lines and shouting orders to port once they got close enough. As soon as they got within leaping distance, Yoruichi took off like a flying squirrel, leaping across the 20 or so feet from the ship to the dock, completely ignoring the despairing cries of Perospero at loosing his ‘Mr. Bonbon’.
As soon as Yoruichi landed, she quickly took off in the direction of the town, in an attempt to get lost in the streets.
Of course, most of the people on the ship wouldn’t risk jumping the distance just to get Perospero’s cat, so they just let her go. This let Yoruichi get free reign over Whole Cake Island. No one would pay any attention to a random cat, especially with how many different species of animals and people are on the island.
This was ever more prevalent to Yoruichi as she darted into the street, taking stock of all the people on the island. ‘Damn, that guy has long ass legs’ she thought as she saw some guy in a pink suit walking down the street with legs probably twice the length of his whole body, and for some reason in an eggshell.
She looked over to the side to see some sort of ferret person selling fruits to some people, all of which had smiles on their faces as they jumped in excitement at being bought.
Yoruichi quickly scouted out a vantage point of a stack of boxes, which somehow all of them were not homies. She quickly hopped up to the top box, blurring in a swift flash-step and perched on top.
When she got up there she made the simple mistake of putting her weight on top of the stack, she quickly fell through the top and into the box itself, causing the rest of them to topple over from the unstable motion.
With what was definitely a cat’s meow, and definitely not a suspiciously deep voice shouting in surprise, Yoruichi tumbled down through the rest of the boxes and back to the ground, causing them all the follow suit and made them fall all over the road, causing quite the scene.
A few people came over to check it out, including two pawn shaped people with spears and weird dresses. They were all quite confused as to what had happened, until one of the boxes at the center started moving. After a few moments, a box at the edge of the now messy pile shifted upwards and out came a little black cat with golden eyes.
The people surrounding the boxes jumped a little in surprise, but quickly turned to cooing at the little cat as it meowed at them and ran off.
‘That would have made a very good bed.’ Yoruichi thought. ‘Too bad there was a bunch of people around.’
Yoruichi-kitty raced down the roads, taking back alleys and main roads alike as she explored the city she was in. The first thing she noticed was the overabundance of sugar in pretty much everything ever.
This was very apparent when Yoruichi tried to use her sharp claws to dig into the side of what was supposed to be a stone building, and quickly ended up falling on her face when she attempted to grip the wall and came back down with a paw full of some sort of chocolatey-gram cracker.
However, she was able to make it to the top of the building by using a slight flash-step to push herself off the walls and bounce in between them until she was able to climb up and get a good vantage point over the city.
‘All right, Rain. First order of business. Find anything we can on Shiki. We know he was here at some point, so someone must know where he went.’ Yoruichi thought, ‘And secondly, find out about what idiot is trying to cause reality to collapse. That Dufuku guy mentioned something about ‘Mama’ so I’m gonna assume that means Big Mom.’
Rain laughed, saying, “Hahaha, what are you going to do, go and confront Big Mom about ‘not destroying the world’? You can’t even fight a Navy Admiral, what makes you think fighting one of the Yonko is a good idea?”
Yoruichi pouted, looking quite funny on a cat’s face. ‘Shut up. You know the only reason we couldn’t beat Kizaru was because of that stupid logia property or whatever.’ Yoruichi grouched.
“Yeah yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that.” Rain replied haughtily.
Yoruichi snorted, and changed the topic, ‘Either way, This is more of a long term thing. Big Mom hasn’t caused any problems. Yet. The real issue will start happening when all of these people start dying and all of a sudden they cant go to the afterlife. Then we have souls who are weak enough because of all the pieces of themselves missing that they start drawing hollows to them.’ She said, before stopping short as something hit her.
‘Hey Rain……’ Yoruichi asked slowly, mulling over the information she had just thought of.
“Yes, my pint-sized compatriot?” Rain drawled in reply.
Yoruichi narrowed her eyes, and looked around, taking an actual look at the world for what would probably be the first time.
‘Where are all the souls?’