A single can of food wasn't much for Yimi at this point, but she could genuinely feel a tiny sliver of energy returning.
"Right, Tokisaki Kurumi does like cats..." Up on the ship, Kotori hugged her knees, thoroughly exasperated. "Eating cat food at least proves to us that whatever this thing is—Spirit or otherwise—it really is just a cat. But if it actually is a Spirit, doesn't that mean Shiori would have to make a cat feel bashful, and then kiss it?"
"Should we give up?" Reine stared at the screen, pensively.
"But she just spoke out loud and communicated with the little girl, so at minimum she has Tohka's level of rationality. We have no reason to give up."
"Oh, this one's so chubby!"
Right as Kotori finished stating her position, the little garden that their staff should have been locking down received a second set of uninvited visitors.
At this hour most people were either at work or in school—yet the feed still locked on Yimi now showed several delinquent young men sauntering in, holding slingshots and water guns.
"Which one? Ha, this thing probably can't even hop the wall, it's so round—and that bright coat screams house cat. Got abandoned by its owner? Poor thing."
"Mya?"
Kotori frowned slightly. "What do these people want?"
Her subordinates confirmed it quickly: "Unemployed drifters living about two kilometers away. Two of them can't find work because they were exposed online for animal abuse. Our people tried to stop them at the front gate, but they climbed over the wall."
"In broad daylight, this brazenly?" A bad feeling crept over Kotori. "Get someone out there—now!"
In fact, the last time Tokisaki Kurumi had been on a date with Shiori, they'd run into this exact type: brazen cat abusers in broad daylight. It was then that Kurumi had revealed her man-eating side to Shiori.
"Before you said that we'd already sent—"
But even as the words left their mouths, a stone launched from a slingshot struck Yimi square in the back.
"Mya?" Yimi glanced over her shoulder at the impact point, not even registering it as an attack.
Her power as a cat had diminished. She was still no ordinary cat.
The kitten didn't quite understand. A moment later, a water gun drenched her from above.
One of them was grumbling: "I should've boiled the water, but it would've warped the gun."
"This is a dumb cat—doesn't even know to run. What if we grab it, stuff it in an iron can, and roast it?"
Yimi deployed the ride-on toy car.
The cat had an excellent idea. The canned food had barely filled her up—but these few people were worth way more than cat food.
...
"Hold on—am I seeing things? Where did it pull that from?"
On the feed, the small cat lay sprawled on the toy car and lazily steered toward the man who'd sprayed her.
"Oh ho, kitty's playing with its toy? Cute. Let's see what it does. Come on then—run me over." The man crouched down.
The small cat leisurely worked the steering wheel with her front paws and pulled right up in front of him, the nose of the car touching the delinquent's shins.
Wham.
Dust and debris scattered through the air—the visual effect produced by the delinquent's trajectory and his subsequent friction with the ground—before he landed in a Yamcha pose inside a curbside gap that might have been measured for him.
"What the—what the hell is this?!"
"It scratched me—the little beast!"
"Grab it! Hold it underwater!"
"Wait... I feel kind of hungry all of a sudden..."
"Hey, you lot over there—what are you doing?!" Ratatoskr staff had finally arrived.
"Run!"
"Wait for me—I genuinely can't move, I'm so hungry..."
"Idiot."
"Hiss—you got rabies or what?!"
"What's wrong with you? Pull yourself together—everyone, please stop!"
"He's infected! He turned into a zombie, AHHHHH!"
The camera caught what followed—something grotesque, beyond comprehension. The man Yimi had scratched grew weaker with every second, his body visibly shriveling in real time.
Driven by agony and desperation, he dropped to all fours and began gnawing at the grass in the flower bed. Then, tapping some primal survival instinct, he hauled his mummified husk of a body forward—red-eyed—and bit off his accomplice's ear, swallowing it whole. It did nothing to stop the horrifying transformation.
Almost the exact moment Yimi caught up to the others, the first man had curled in on himself, too far gone even to scream, and became a dried husk.
One of the staff members who'd tried to intervene was even bitten by another delinquent in the chaos; had Ratatoskr not sensed something wrong and teleported him away in time, he would likely have been mistaken for one of them and starved to death by Yimi as well.
Before long, only five shriveled corpses remained in the little garden—so brittle that a passing stray dog crushed one underfoot without even trying.
Kotori let out a long breath from the command chair and turned to her sister, who had just returned from a separate date: "As you can see—this one's threat level looks no lower than Tokisaki Kurumi's."
Itsuka Shiori clutched her chest, breathing hard. The scene had the same impact as the first time she'd witnessed Kurumi kill—the only difference was watching from a distance versus being on-site. If anything, it was a completely different kind of brutality. She'd just watched people who might have passed her on the street die horribly in front of her.
"Well, there's no need to be too gloomy about it—it counts as self-defense, after all. And when Tokisaki Kurumi approached it earlier, it showed a friendly side too. So relatively speaking, Shiori—have you thought about how you're going to kiss a cat..."
She was cut off.
A Spacequake alert.
"It's that cat!"
The energy provided by humans was clearly far superior to canned cat food—it even nudged the Holy Corpse fusion along, though still barely a drop in the ocean.
Still, being full helped her think. The small cat had arrived at a brilliant idea.
Transforming into Astral Dress = causes spatial distortion.
Spatial distortion ≠ something the cat spent her own energy to summon = the cat can eat Spacequakes.
That strange tugging sensation—reaching the threshold in an instant, then snapping back.
Evacuation sirens swept through the city. Stray animals, far more sensitive than humans, scattered in every direction.
Then, centered on Yimi's feet, the small garden split open in a crater spanning a full two meters in diameter—an unprecedented display of force that drew a collective sharp intake of breath from everyone aboard Fraxinus.
At the epicenter of the Spacequake, the white-dressed little girl puffed her cheeks and swallowed what she'd been chewing. The Spacequake she'd mostly consumed successfully pushed the Holy Corpse's digestion forward another step.
Reiryoku even began manifesting its fusion with her—pure white radiance answered a sacred summons and spilled across the earth, wrapping her completely in a hazy glow that made her hard to make out.
Yimi looked down. Two small white hands, still carrying the unfinished softness of early childhood, flexed and adjusted. The spiritual energy belonging to her Stand responded to the catalyst and completed its evolution—not fully merged, but enough to fall under her brief command.
『Famine · Love Train』
A few more feedings and full fusion might just be within reach.
The little girl's crowned cat ears swiveled. Something made her turn around.
"Not a cat... a child?"
The girl who'd been aboard Fraxinus just moments ago had already been transported to stand behind her, squinting hard, trying to peer through the light. By virtue of her unique constitution, she managed to make out the figure cradled within the brilliance.
[—A girl even younger than her own little sister.]
This child was the cat from the feed that had brutally killed those delinquents? A killer who was also a grade schooler??
"But... am I really supposed to kiss a child this young? That's a crime."
"Small? Shiori, what are you seeing?"
"A girl—maybe not even ten years old. Can't any of you see her?" Shiori's stomach tightened—if the girl decided to act, Ratatoskr might not react in time.
"A little girl..." Kotori exhaled in relief. At least it was a person.
"Think of Yoshino—you're already committing crimes, Onee-chan." She delivered the line with cheerful ease, leaving Shiori appropriately mortified.
"Now make your choice..."
The four options, curated by a panel of yuri romance veterans:
① Did you get lost, little one? Where's your mom?
② That outfit—you must be a high-purity Magical Girl. Interested in joining the Time-Space Administration Bureau?
③ You feel familiar somehow. Have we met somewhere before?
④ Did you kill the people in the park?
Because the target was a child, there were none of the options that bordered on sexual harassment this time, mercifully.
"I see..." Kotori glanced at the vote tally. "Shiori, go with ②."
"?"
"What possible use does a completely random option like that even have?" Itsuka Shiori muttered under her breath, pressing the earpiece flat.
"Ha? What are you talking about—isn't that a line from the memoir you wrote when you were twelve...?"
"SAY NO MORE! I'll choose it!"
"Choose what?"
But the cat-girl was already floating directly in front of her, staring up at her with open curiosity.
Yimi grabbed Shiori's clothes with one hand and reached up with the other to tug at her ear, pulling out the invisible earpiece—then held it up to her nose for a sniff.
She'd lost the razor sensitivity of her cat form, but she could still catch a scent. Something that, if eaten, might make her stomach rumble. Compared to the white crystal that Phantom had once fed her...
Yimi circled Shiori once, looking her over from left and right, then swallowed. "You smell so good."
Just like that white crystal. Exactly like Phantom's.