#mephalasturm

When Feitan tells him that Hisoka brought a cat back to base, Chrollo thinks he must be joking. Granted, Feitan doesn’t joke, exactly—doesn’t have much of a mood for cracking wise or a grasp of comedic timing, but he must be, right? Hisoka bringing a cat into the abandoned apartment complex they currently call home sounds like the start of a terrible joke.

And yet, as Chrollo ambles after Feitan into the wide lobby (and before eight stories of ceiling and floor had collapsed into it and when all four walls were still standing, Chrollo is certain it must’ve looked wonderful) that the rest of the Gen’ei Ryodan is assembled in, his eyes meet Hisoka’s across the expanse of shattered tile. He’s perched on an exposed ceiling beam, the second story a gaping darkness at his back. In the gloom, Chrollo can see the curve and movement of what must be the cat, the reflective glint of an eye, a flash of red mouth when it yawns. The rest of the troupe watch him watch Hisoka, waiting for his reaction to rally behind—the quietest sound of Machi’s thread unspooling, a throbbing hum that Chrollo’s come to recognize as the start of Bonolenov’s music. It’s a bit much posturing for dealing with a cat, but any pet of Hisoka’s may not be exactly what it seems.

“It’s just a cat,” Hisoka croons from the rafters like he’s read Chrollo’s mind. He sits with an elbow on his knee, the other leg lazily dangling. “I promise. If you worry too hard, Chrollo, you’ll get wrinkles.” A card appears from nowhere in his hand and he twirls it between his fingers. “I won’t find you nearly as handsome then.”

At his side, Feitan scoffs behind his scarf, but Chrollo is long-suffering and used to Hisoka’s particular brand of blustering bullshit. “Where did you get it?”

Hisoka looks entirely too unsettling in his new red suit. Chrollo knows it’s new; it doesn’t reek of iron and sweat like all the rest of them seem to, no matter how well-laundered. And it may be the shit lighting but it looks like Hisoka may have dyed his hair a deeper red than usual to match his clothes—he remembers when Hisoka had stank of bleach every few weeks and his hair was blue and if anything, he has to admire that Hisoka suffers for his aesthetic. "I rescued it."

"From what?” Machi asks, looking like she regrets the question already or is at least preparing to regret hearing the answer. For what is perhaps the better thing to ask, Chrollo thinks, watching the cat curl a sinuous loop around Hisoka’s bent leg. He can’t quite imagine Hisoka carting the cat up to the ledge with him, but wouldn’t put it past the cat to have clawed its way up there on its own.

Hisoka’s grin curls across his entire face, eyes crinkling and brows arching as he tilts his head to the side. “From an untimely and gruesome death caught in Illumi’s crossfire, of course.” Of course, like Chrollo should know that the Gen’ei Ryodan sits on Hisoka’s list of priorities somewhere under stacked matches at Heavens Arena and an assassin of particular intrigue. Chrollo knows Hisoka has something with that Zoldyck—doesn’t know what exactly, doesn't need to know, honestly. He is, having grown up Ryūseigai, possessing of an expansive and unorthodox range of experiences but there are some things better left to the imagination, if even that.

“And your first inclination,” Chrollo says instead of shuddering, “was to bring it back here with you.”

“It followed me back.”

Hisoka can cross a continent in a day if properly motivated. Chrollo arches an eyebrow, rolls his shoulders, smirks. “I’m sure.”

“I’m sure you’re sure.” Hisoka’s smile is altogether too blithe to be innocent, but Chrollo appreciates the attempt.

Feitan’s shoulders stiffen under his coat and Kortopi mutters “childish ass” under his breath. Chrollo can feel Paku’s eyes on his back—he shouldn’t let Hisoka’s impertinence stand, he knows, but before he can decide how best to grind Hisoka’s face into the dirt, Shalnark says, “I say we keep it.”

“I say we skin it,” Nobunaga chimes in. It figures he isn’t a cat person.

“I say you’re an asshole.”

“I say—”

“I say,” Franklin rumbles, subwoofer voice and a ground-shaking step forward, “we take a vote.”

It’s an unprecedented suggestion. Machi and Paku whip around to look at him and deep in the ceiling Hisoka hums tunelessly in surprise. Uvogin chuckles and Nobu scowls and Shizuku yawns—there’s a decent chance she’ll wake up tomorrow having completely forgotten there was a cat in the first place. Shal and Feitan don’t budge, looking firmly at Chrollo. It’s his job. He’s the boss. He makes the decisions, and a vote should be unnecessary and inconceivable. But—Chrollo finds he doesn’t have a decision. Whether that’s because this isn’t exactly the sort of choices he thought he’d be making as head of the most fearsome band of thieves in the world or because he’s not entirely averse to the idea of a pet (a mascot?), he’s not sure.

Chrollo puts up his hands and grins ruefully. “A vote.”

Two arguments (which Nobunaga starts) and one fight (which Nobunaga concedes, but only after Shizuku threatens his sword with a vacuuming) later, they vote. Feitan, Phinks, Bonolenov, Kortopi, and Nobunaga are firmly against. Uvo and Franklin vote together to keep the damn cat, and Shal and Shizuku too. After a pause, Machi raises her hand with them. Chrollo and Hisoka abstain, Hisoka smiling to himself and rubbing the cat’s head absently. Across the lobby Pakunoda looks at Chrollo, and if Chrollo is long-suffering then Paku is a fucking saint, expression deadpan as she raises her hand to break the tie.

The cat stays.

  The thing is a cat only by the most stringent of technicalities, namely that it has four legs and makes a sound vaguely reminiscent of a meow, and regards Chrollo with slitted eyes when he finally hunts it down in the maze of the apartment complex. It’s harder than he would’ve thought, tracking the beast, partly because of how well it blends into the surroundings and partly because sometimes, when Chrollo thinks he’s on its tail, he turns around to discover it’s really been following him. He hesitates to call the cat grey; it’s mottled, splattered grey and black and brown almost haphazardly, with ruddy orange eyes and too-long limbs and a whiplash tail. The shadow of ribs and spine are visible through the ripple of fur when it moves but as Chrollo watches it scour the lobby for a meal he decides it doesn’t look at all sickly. And it likes him well enough, will sit with him while he reads, eventually picking its way through the rubble to curl up just beyond arm’s reach. It even purrs once, a rumble that shakes its whole body one night when Chrollo lights a fire in one of the few hearths that remain intact.

His luck with the cat doesn’t extend to all of the Ryodan, however. Phinks discovers that he’s unbelievably allergic to cats when he wakes up one day with the damn thing on his chest, and spends his time avoiding it like the plague if only to spare his eyes the itching. The cat, out of sheer spite or slighted indignation, takes it as a personal challenge to exist in the same space as Phinks as often as possible. It makes swift enemies of Bonolenov and Nobunaga too, having too much fun with Bonolenov’s bandages and Nobu’s topknot, but flaunts its total flippance for their immense power and murderous tendencies by staying just within their sight no matter how much Nobu threatens. It’s been the cause of more than one scuffle as Nobunaga rages and Uvo mocks, and Phinks reports later, eyes and nose red, that the goddamned creature looked like it enjoyed watching the two of them tear each other to bits over it.

Uvo, Chrollo suspects as Machi curses and swears and charges through the nose as she repairs where Nobu’s blade made contact, is quick to jump to the cat’s defense because the little monster is enamored with him. Him and Franklin both, actually, because their shoulders are big enough to ride and they sit patiently while it bats at Franklin’s ears or Uvo’s hair. It extends its good graces to Machi and Paku as well, going so far as to sit with them while they work—the first time it picks its way onto Machi’s lap and flops down to knead at her thigh, Chrollo has to duck out of the room for fear of her wrath when he sees her scratch its chin almost fondly.

Shal, for all his pestering to keep the damn thing, hadn’t actually considered how similar his antennae may appear to something the cat might like to hunt, and the cat’s interest in him wanes sharply when he finally thinks to put his gear away. Shizuku’s Blinky is baited and then ignored too, once the cat realizes that the vacuum doesn’t pose it any threat and therefore isn’t any sort of challenge. The vacuum takes this harder than Chrollo would have expected, moping every time it’s summoned for weeks after. Shizuku, as expected, forgets the cat is even there at all half the time.

Once, it lets Kortopi get close enough to copy it. They all watch, a little awed and largely prepared to watch Machi put Kortopi’s arm back together again immediately after, as he hovers his left hand over the cat’s knobby spine and a stiff, lifeless copy flickers under his right. There’s a silence smothering enough they can all hear one of Machi’s pins drop as the cat studies its own likeness for a long minute before deciding that it was, in fact, completely ambivalent to Kortopi’s creation, sneezing in its direction and looking altogether too smug when the copy vanishes the next night.

But it likes Hisoka best—which, in and of itself, is a strike against the wretched thing. For all that it will stroll the rooftops with Feitan and twist its way around Paku’s ankles, Hisoka remains its staunch favorite. It sits with him on whatever high-up place he chooses each night, allowing him to scratch its ears and ruffle its fur and wind its tail between his fingers, butting his chin with its head and croaking in response to whatever quiet, sly things he murmurs to it when they all settle in at night. Two sets of eyes watch Chrollo now as he shifts and stretches under his heavy coat, bright gold and ruddy copper, Hisoka and the cat that perches on his shoulder or his knee or his outstretched arm like he’s Bungee-Gum’ed it there. They blend into the dark of the gaping, hollow building above them, four pinpricks of light against black, and they never seem to blink at all no matter how long Chrollo watches them back.

  The cat doesn't have a name, Chrollo realizes one day, or at least not one that he knows—come to think of it, that may be because nothing about the creature screams domesticated and he hardly thinks it would come when called. In fact, it's not so much their pet as their unsightly, scrawny neighbor, really. It catches its own food, comes and goes as it pleases, and sleeps somewhere Chrollo has yet to come across (which is impressive in its own right), and Chrollo discovers that it bothers him enough that—

"You called a meeting for this?" Nobunaga snaps when they're all assembled. "For the fucking cat?"

“We’re all already here,” Shal says, prodding just because he can and Chrollo can taste the fight in the air before Nobu even reaches for his hilt. He’s let the brawling run amuck for longer than he’s meant to and Paku’s judgement is unsubtle in the set of her jaw and her steely gaze from across the room. Shal sees her expression just before he makes another jibe and he puts his hands up instead, placating. Nobu leans back into the wall, still buzzing with adrenaline but not willing to push further.

Chrollo wonders sometimes if Paku wouldn’t take his job if he offered, if only to get some peace and quiet. She’s more than likely to shoot him, so he refrains. Instead, he tilts his head back to look at where the ceiling would be, watches dust motes float in the light from some remaining window three flights above them. “The cat,” he murmurs, “doesn’t have a name.”

“And that’s,” Uvo hedges, “a problem?”

“Yes.”

Feitan shifts uncomfortably, slipping his hands in and out of his pockets. “Want us to—name it?”

“If you think you can handle it.”

Chrollo waits and the room is silent for a long, long moment before Shizuku ventures, “Kitty?” to the mass disapproval of the troupe, and he keeps his eyes on the shaft of waning light above his head as the conversation devolves from there. Shal mentions an old Manipulator technique that was first tried on a cat decades ago, rendering it both alive and dead at the same time, and that derails them into a segue on the ethics of not-killing a not-alive cat. Franklin asks what the name of that cat was and Bonolenov insists that that’s neither here nor there, never mind the fact that naming their cat was the entire point of this conversation in the first place—

“There’s an old Saheltan saying about curiosity and the cat,” Hisoka says from up in the rafters, voice curling around the bickering Ryodan like a chill, “have you heard it?”

“What, you want to name the cat Curiosity?” Uvo drawls, crossing his arms over his chest.

“No, no. Of course not.” Hisoka rolls a coin across his knuckles and vanishes it with a snap. “That would be misleading, after all.”

“Misleading?”

“It's not the whole saying.” Machi explains, scowling. “Curiosity may have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. Isn’t that right?”

He may be speaking to Machi, but Hisoka has eyes only for Chrollo. There’s a flying streak of mottled fur in the air and the cat lands just short of Hisoka’s boots, sitting down and running a paw over its ears like it hadn’t just jumped the span of the empty ceiling. “Absolutely correct.”

“Satisfaction. It's a mouthful, but—” Chrollo tilts his head to the side consideringly, still looking up. They both pretend he isn’t watching Hisoka from the corner of his eye. “I like it.”