Otherside Picnic, Volume 2, page 14
“Looks like you’re in the mood for this now, huh?” said Toriko. I let out a sigh of resignation.
“Okay, I guess I’ll have to. Let’s take out some ninja cats.”
“Okay.”
“Th-Thank you!” Akari’s face sparkled.
That said, though, I wasn’t going to be able to point a gun at cats after all. I didn’t want to do it, and if anyone caught it on video, it’d go viral online...
No, I guess I’d be going to jail for violating the guns and swords law first, huh.
“...Here’s hoping ninja cats aren’t cute,” I muttered to myself.
“Oh, yeah, the ninja cats, could you tell us exactly what they look like?” Toriko asked Akari.
“Oh! Let’s see...” Akari said, then trailed off.
“Hm? What’s wrong?”
“Erm... They look just like that.”
When I looked in the direction she was pointing, I saw a small shadow standing on top of the counter.
A cat... That’s what it looked like. A cat standing on two legs. It stood maybe fifty to sixty centimeters tall. It had gray fur that reminded me of a Russian Blue, and it wore tattered black clothes. In one hand, though I had no idea how, it was holding a katana-like weapon with a jagged blade.
While I was still dumbfounded, another revealed itself from beneath the counter. This one’s fur was black. It wore a hooded cape, and it carried a vicious-looking weapon with scythe-like blades coming off of it in all directions. It was just like a throwing knife from Central Africa.
“...Ninja cats?!” Toriko and I cried out in unison.
Akari was right. I don’t think you could call these anything but ninja cats.
The other customers and the staff had to notice, and they were going to make a scene... or so I thought, but at some point every single person had vanished from the busy cafe. The other tables had steaming coffee cups, plastic cups with condensation on the outside, and half-eaten chocolate croissants and french toast, as if everyone had just gotten up out of their seats right now and left them behind.
Meeeow! I was surprised by the number of yowling voices I suddenly heard, and when I looked out the window, there was nothing but cats. On the road, and on the sidewalk, cats, cats, cats.
On the other side of the cats, I could see a car had crashed into an electrical pole and stopped. Even though there’d been no sound from the crash. What broke through the front windshield and came out, lying on top of the bonnet, was clearly not human, but a creature that, with its sleek black body and short fins, looked like a deep sea fish. The cats perched on the roof of the car were peering down curiously at the fish as it flopped around.
“This is the man’s world!” Toriko shouted.
This was the interstitial space between the surface and the other world where the Time-space Man appeared. It maintained the image of the surface world, but with disturbing elements scattered around, and might have been no less dangerous than the other world was during daytime. That was the sort of place we had been transported to without warning.
“Keep alert, they’re coming!” Akari rose from her seat, raising her voice sharply. Immediately, the two ninja cats jumped down to the floor, rushing towards us.
Before I had time to respond, something obstructed my vision. It was a cream-colored square board—the plastic tray that had held our drinks. The moment I recognized it, something sharp tore through the tray and stopped just short of my nose.
“Whoa?!”
The tray fell to the floor as I rose from my seat in a panic. The African throwing knife was firmly embedded in it.
“You okay, Senpai?”
Unable to respond, I simply nodded. It was apparently Akari who had just protected me.
Toriko stood in front of me, her hand thrust into a tote bag. The two ninja cats must have sensed she was about to pull a gun on them, because they jumped backwards.
“To-Toriko. Hold on, wait.” I hurriedly put a hand on Toriko’s shoulder.
“Huh? What?”
“That’s not a good idea...!” I said in a low voice, and Toriko blinked, finally seeming to get it. Normally, we could whip our guns out right away, but we had Akari with us today.
“Well, what do you suggest then?”
“Uhhh, I dunno! Let’s just run for now.”
There were ninja cats between us and the exit to the cafe. When I looked deeper inside, in addition to the washroom, there was also a door that appeared to be for employees only. If we went there, maybe we could get outside through a window, or a back door?
“This way! Follow me!”
Without waiting for a response, I raced for the back of the cafe. Toriko and Akari followed. Once we had crossed the empty cafe and reached the door, there was a sign saying, “EnTRy By NoN-CaTS iS PrOHIBitED.” None of us were cats, but what did we care now? I opened the door, and there was an employees’ lounge. There were steel racks which held bags that no doubt belonged to the employees, hangers with uniforms, and a list of shifts posted on the wall. On the other side of the narrow space there was another door, this one leading outside, like I had thought.
Taking advantage of the lack of anyone to object, I brazenly walked in. Toriko and Akari were right behind me. Just as Akari, who was bringing up the rear, closed and locked it behind her, a jagged sword pierced through the plywood door.
“Whoa!” Akari raised her voice as she backed away. The sword made a sawing noise as it was pulled back out of the door. The glint of a cat’s eye shone on the other side of the hole.
“Yikes. They’re merciless, huh? That’s a ninja for you,” Toriko said, shaking her head in exasperation. “Akari, those things have been chasing you? For this whole month?”
“Yeah... They just tailed me at first, but things got more and more intense. For the past week, I’ve been running home.”
“I’m amazed you’re still alive.”
“Well, it was pretty dangerous.”
As I stared in disbelief at how calmly Akari was saying all this, our gazes met, and she smiled shyly. “I do karate, you see...”
“...”
Huh? Was that supposed to be an explanation?
“Oh, I see. Your moves were pretty incredible there. They went for Sorawo, and I got worried, but you had already reacted,” Toriko said, sounding impressed. I hadn’t even realized they were targeting me.
“Yeah, I do karate, so, you know...”
What’s with this girl?
No, I didn’t have time to think about that now.
There was a splintering sound, and an African throwing knife stabbed through the door. The ninja cat swung it several more times, like it was an axe, and chunks of wood went flying.
“Oh, crap. Oh, crap. We gotta get out of here,” I said, and the other two nodded.
I rushed to the back door, turned the knob, and opened it.
My feet were ready to fly out the door, but then came to a sudden stop.
“Whoa, don’t just stop—” Toriko, who ran into the back of me, said, her words trailing off.
Out the back door, the densely packed buildings rose up like steep cliffs. There was a metal catwalk the same width as the door frame that continued for about ten meters, and there was nothing beneath. At the bottom of that cliff, there seemed to be running water. The cliffs and buildings continued both to the left and the right, with similar bridges and catwalks going across the divide here and there.
The buildings across from us were filthy, like the back of a mixed residential building. It was crisscrossed with balconies, emergency exits, air conditioners, ladders, catwalks, and ducts. They were awfully small... not human size. The catwalks were narrow, and the height of each individual floor was maybe half of what you would normally expect. The stairs were awfully steep, too. The footholds carved into that overhang wall must have been impassable for anyone who wasn’t a rock climber.
“A cat... town?”
What Toriko said matched my own impression. After seeing all the cats out front earlier, I hadn’t expected this town to be particularly normal, either, but this was beyond what I had imagined.
“Wh...What is this?” Akari was obviously surprised by all this. “I knew the area around me got kiiiind of weird whenever the ninja cats attacked, but this is a first.”
So, basically, ninja cat attacks were accompanied by a shift into interstitial space? That was the same as the Time-space Man, wasn’t it?
The door was being busted down behind us. This was no time to be staring off into space.
We had to move onward... No matter where that meant we would go.
“Let’s go.” Having made up my mind, I stepped onto the narrow bridge.
The rusty metal groaned beneath my feet. Though the catwalk had railings, they were low, only coming up to about my knees. They weren’t going to stop me from falling. In fact, if I stumbled, there was a good chance I would trip over them, so they actually made it scarier.
I crossed the bridge at a jog, then looked for paths we could take. If we got down on our knees, it looked like there was a series of footholds going along the side of the cliff we could follow.
I cautiously followed the catwalk where one missed step might send me pitching head over heels to the bottom. The sun didn’t reach the bottom of the cliffs, and it was dark, so consequently I ended up looking straight upwards. It felt like I was going to fall, and it was scary, but I couldn’t convince myself to go inside the buildings. Looking in through the open windows, there were tatami rooms with small-sized bamboo mats, and hardwood floor corridors with channels for water laid in them. The ceilings were low, and if we entered carelessly we might not be able to move around inside.
There was the creaking of a door from below. I looked down to see the two ninja cats coming out of the back door from earlier. They were looking towards us, as we crawled along the face of the cliff.
“They’re here already!” Akari shouted from the rear, telling me something I already knew.
The ninja cats looked at one another, then began crossing the catwalk.
We started climbing again, this time at a faster pace. The path wasn’t made for humans, making it a difficult athletic challenge. I was somewhat used to climbing up and down from my time exploring ruins, and Toriko was a stamina monster, so Akari was doing a good job just being able to keep up with us. Was this because she did karate, too? We were doing all this on a summer day, so I was already drenched with sweat. If I knew this was going to happen, I’d have worn clothes that were easier to move around in.
I felt like I was going to die, crawling a set of stairs so steep they felt like they were at a right angle, and then we came out into an open space halfway up the wall. It was a space on top of a concrete roof where we could walk around. The walls still continued upward, but we were at our limit... Even if we climbed further, it was only a matter of time before they caught up to us.
I heard the rustle of clothes closing in from below, and the two ninja cats scaled those stairs which had given us so much trouble in no time, and appeared again.
Having been cornered against the edge of the open space, the three of us glared at the ninjas through wheezing breaths.
Akari stepped forward with resolve. She put her bag down on the ground, then struck a karate-like fighting stance.
“Wait—”
“Please run away. I’ll buy time for the two of you, Senpai.”
“N-No, no, we can’t have you doing that...”
“No. It was my fault, getting you mixed up in this.”
This was all very brave of her, but no matter how good she was at karate, ninja cats with blades drawn and ready were still a terrifying threat. They had two ninjas on their side, while we had one karate fighter on ours... Wait, what was this? When I thought about it like this, I felt like I was going crazy.
While I was panicking, trying to find a way out of our predicament, Toriko said, “Sorawo, enough. I’m using this,” and made the shape of a gun with her fingers.
“Y-You can’t?!” I said, flustered.
“Come on, there’s no other way to do this. We need to make this girl our accomplice, too.”
“What do you mean, ‘this’?”
“You keep quiet!” I shouted at Akari, then leaned in close to Toriko and quickly whispered, “She can’t be our accomplice. No way. Stop it.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
When I raised my voice in irritation, Toriko looked back at me, mystified.
Ugh, geez.
You’re the one who said it.
Being accomplices is the closest kind of relationship in the world.
You! Said! It! First!
“...She can be a victim.” I said, keeping my voice low. “A poor little victim who got dragged in by us. That, I can accept.”
“I don’t really get it... but sure.”
Oblivious to how I was feeling, Toriko thrust her hand into her tote bag.
“Akari, I’m pretty sure this is going to be a surprise for you, so sorry.”
Having said that, she drew the Makarov, pulled the slide to check the bullets, and then moved up. From beside her, I could see Akari’s jaw drop.
“Huh...?”
I pulled my Makarov and moved forward, too.
“Sorry, Akari, but if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’re going to pay for it.”
I tried to make my voice as intimidating as possible, but Akari didn’t seem to get it at all, so I immediately regretted it. I shouldn’t have done it.
Besides, if she did breathe a word to anyone, Toriko and I were the ones who were going to end up paying for it.
“Sorawo, are you already looking?”
“I-I’ll look now.” I focused on my right eye, like always.
The two cats standing on the edge of the roof... didn’t change. This was something we occasionally encountered in the other world, too. They were the kind that didn’t change between my right eye and my left.
“Urgh, they really are cats... I don’t wanna shoot...”
“Get it together! They’re coming to kill us!”
The two cats suddenly moved, as if Toriko’s voice had been their signal. They charged in at an incredible speed, holding their vicious blades at the ready. Their movements weren’t cute at all. They were filled with bloodlust.
Toriko opened fire. The gunshots echoed off the walls. The ninja cats dodged around, kicking off the wall to leap into the air. In the next instant, a jagged sword was buried in the ground where Toriko had been moments before.
“Scary!” Toriko said, then kept shooting. While I was distracted watching the one carrying the sword crouch low to avoid the point blank shot, then jump to the side to escape, the other one had run up right next to me before I could notice. In response to the African throwing knife swooping up towards me, I just narrowly managed to turn my gun on towards it. Nearly letting out a shriek of terror, I fired twice, but the bullets just bounced off of the concrete.
I’m done for! I stared at the approaching blade, unable to do anything more about it, when Akari’s foot sprang up from beside me.
“Ayyyy!”
With a sharp kiai, she unleashed a forward kick. The knife-wielder jumped backwards, putting some distance between them. Her kiai surprised me, too, and I stumbled a bit. With the same gesture she used to lower her kicking leg, Akari took a step forward.
“You get back, Senpai!” she said, immediately launching into a low kick. It looked strong enough to break a baseball bat in half, but the ninja cat spun around and moved back to evade it.
“W...Wow! You kinda don’t need our help, huh?!” I blurted out, but Akari shook her head with a stern look on her face.
“It’s no good. Thrusts and kicks don’t work on these guys. They’re speedy little things, and even when I think I’ve got a hit, it never feels like it connected.”
Ohh... That made sense. These guys looked like they had a physical form, but they were a “phenomenon,” just like the Time-space Man. Even if I could catch them with my right eye, if bullets and karate were unable to hit them, it wouldn’t do us any good. On top of that, these guys would split up to distract us.
“Toriko, Akari, let’s get closer to the wall. If they catch us in between them, we’re in trouble.”
“Okay.”
“Got it!”
The three of us clumped together, moving slowly with the wall at our backs. The two ninjas closed in on us, too.
Then there was a change in how they moved. The two approached Akari’s bag, which she had left on the roof, and they peered at the opening to it. They stuck their heads inside, as if searching it.
“Sorawo, what are those things doing?”
“Don’t ask me. Hey, Akari, what’s in that bag?”
“Huh? Just normal stuff. My makeup bag, a battery for my phone—”
“Do you have raw fish in there, or something?”
“I don’t walk around with stuff like that!”
I remembered the voices Akari said she’d heard during the gathering of cats. Could it be that Akari had the “mark” those voices mentioned, and these guys were drawn to it?
“You really have no idea why they’d be out to get you? This one is sort of a cliche when it comes to real ghost stories, but I think it’s likely you abused cats when you were a kid.”
“Not a chance!” Akari said indignantly, and I observed her expression closely as she did. She didn’t look like she was lying to me, but did I really understand human emotions...? Whatever the case, there had to be something, whether she was aware of it or not. Some “mark” that the ninja cats were looking for.
I focused on the bag, but there was no change in my right eye’s vision. I decided to turn my right eye’s focus on Akari herself instead.
It had been a while since I did this to a person. The last time I’d done it was with the Time-space Man—in the ghost town in the other world, when I shifted Kozakura’s aspects, and turned her into a plant.
The reason I hadn’t used my right eye on a person since then was, honestly, because I was afraid to. Even if it happened under the special condition of being inside a glitch, it frightened me that I had been able to completely change a person’s form through my perception of them. If that sort of thing kept happening, I might eventually lose my ability to recognize people as people—that was the sense I got. More than that, though, when I asked Kozakura about it later, she said she was still conscious as a plant, and had a super scary experience in a place separate from my own perception.
