4 minutes to change your fate

“Uh!”

Huh! Talking cat. Okay. He wasn’t exactly expecting an answer, and was more so checking to see if the animal was okay and if they would respond to his voice but… this…

This is definitely new. He doesn’t shy away or anything, but he does stare at Sissel for a good long moment before sort of tentatively reaching to pat his head.

“Okay, but it’s freezing outside lately. You should…not be wandering around?” And what if something happened??? The city wasn’t exactly the safest at times. “Are you cold?”

Sissel is purring loudly as the man reached to pat his head. The ghost cat can’t feel it, but any kind of affection shown towards him makes him really happy and he keeps purring as he rubs his small head against his hands.

 “Woof.” what are you, an idiot? stupid? if your not going to approach, then stay away. 

Someone a bit mad at the situation. 

“Hey there, uh, little guy…?” It seems like Mike has a cat companion, one that doesn’t even look bothered by a human’s presence - he’s not sure if this one’s a stray, but if so, they’re getting awfully chummy with him. Curled against his hip, purring like mad on the bench he’s taken up.

He’s really not sure what to make of this… Maybe the cat is just trying to steal his body heat? Which is still weird. He knows he’s always usually warm to the touch, but still.

“Are you homeless, or lost… I wonder…”

Sissel’s just being extremely friendly, as usual. He’s feeling really lonely ever since his argument with Yomiel, so he’s seeking desperately for attention, even if it comes from a complete stranger, like this guy.

 “Woof.”

Dang… Full context or not, this is a heavy take that Sissel has brought up. Battler knew ever since the Halloween Party that Yomiel had a side to that would creep out most people. But to think that would extend to such a dark path of life… Or death, in this case.

He doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, he takes his time to ponder about everything that Sissel said. …He can definitely where Sissel is coming from in terms of picking the girls over Yomiel. They are innocent in regards to Yomiel’s fate. You could make an argument about the two cops, but those girls had no agency in terms of means to hurt the guy. And hurting innocent is something that does piss him off. A younger him might have given up on the guy here over his actions, and fully take the stance of stopping him at any cost.

…But what would that accomplish? Especially in a city like this, where true death doesn’t exist, simply treating Yomiel like a criminal would just keep him stagnant on this cycle of vengeance and hatred, more and more isolated. All that would accomplish is to eas him into more and more atrocious acts, as his sense of humanity erodes for good.

And besides that pure practical angle of how unfruitful that’d be for the goal of protecting Lynne and Kamilla… Well, how about Yomiel’s own pain and suffering? How about his own suffering heart? …Or the suffering his lack of one causes? He underwent 10 years of undeath. 10 years of not being able to sleep, or eat, or feel anything. Even during his stay at the hell that was the Logic Error, at least Battler had kept his senses.

Truth is, he cares about Yomiel. Even though he doesn’t have the same degree of intimacy with the guy as Sissel… He can’t bring himself to hate him, even after hearing such terrifying revelations about the guy. The guy is a hurt soul who came to pick terrible life choices because of that hurt. What happened in the past can’t be changed (at least in this world).

But… if Battler has a chance of changing the future… If he can use his ‘magic’ to truly revive Yomiel in the most real way possible, not just his body… Heh. That would be taking a chip out of Ange’s Witch of Ressurection grimoire, no?

He moves towards Sissel… then takes the cat on his arms, caressing the feline’s back. Rationally, he knows that Sissel is probably incapable of feeling the warmth the gesture brings… but maybe it will comfort him anyway.

“……Thank you for trusting me, Sissel. I understand.” He says with a gentle voice, hoping to soothe the cat.

Then, his tone becomes more emphatic. “I promise you. I’ll do my best to help all four of you. I’ll help you, help Lynne, help Kamilla… and most important of all, I’ll help Yomiel. I cannot promise you that I’ll be able of changing his heart. But I’ll willing to help him heal.”

Even if the kitten can’t feel, the gesture is really appreciated. Sissel leans into Battler, purring softly. He’s glad he understands and he is glad to let it out of him. The kitten was only suffering more and more the longer he stayed in the island, being unable to help the person he loved most like he did in his own timeline. And now, how he wished Battler’s arms were Yomiel’s arms! He wanted nothing more to have his friend back again, for Yomiel to hug him and forgive him. He just wanted his best friend back.

If cats could cry, Sissel would be crying silently, but since he couldn’t he was just quietly resting in Battlers arms, letting all his feelings out so he could put himself back together. Sissel now understands what pure sadness is and what Yomiel must be going through right now. The kitten had made a terrible mistake in hissing at him. 

When Sissel finally feels better to speak, he raises his small feline head to look at Battler with his big yellow eyes.

“Thank you. Thank you for listening to me. I’ll need any help I can... I’m glad to know I can count on you.”

He purrs softly and rubs his head against Battler in a friendly gesture.

“Lynne too?!” What the heck is this? Are their captors trying to reenact a tragedy here as the means of a cosmic play? Because that lost the fun of it a long time ago! “Hang on, doesn’t that mean-”

Before he can proceed, though, Sissel goes on with what Battler can only describe as a ‘word vomit’. Foreign nation? Cabanella? Pigeon Man?! Manipulator?! Every time Battler tried to make Sissel slow down a bit so he can breathe, the cat just kept going...!!

After all, the dead don’t need to breathe.

“ALRIGHT!! Alright, I get it!!”

At last, he can’t stand all the babbling anymore and raises his arm to beg Sissel to stop talking. “Look, you don’t have to tell your whole life story for me to get it! Lynne and Kamila are both people Yomiel has a vendetta with, so chances are he will go after them and hurt them or more. Isn’t that what this is about?!”

Sissel realized he got too carried away and didn’t realize he was talking too much without giving time for Batler to process everything, so the cat lowers his ears a bit in embarassment.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I got carried away.” He sighs.

“Well, anyway, you get the picture now, I guess. Yeah, both Kamila and Lynne are here and I fear this could awaken his dark side that hasn’t truly been sleeping ever since I got here.”

The kitten curls up in the couch, making himself looks so small and defenseless.

Oh… suicide. Of course. He should have expected that, but it doesn’t make the punch any less harder. …Considering the circumstances, it’s possible that Yomiel might have blamed himself for that. After all, one could reason that, if he had retrieved his memories earlier, he could have stopped Sissel from committing such a reckless act.

And perhaps… It was to stop that guilt from crushing his own heart… that he turned to seek revenge on people related to the incident. So that his heart wouldn’t be destroyed by the pain the truth gives, he sought escapism with ‘black magic’, as you’d frame it back in his home world.

Yes, he can understand Yomiel’s heart, from that sense… But that doesn’t make what he hears next easier to swallow. Especially when Sissel drops a new familiar name into the discussion…

“W-Whoa, hang on… Did you say… Kamila?!” No way, this has to be a coincidence, right…? “Would that Kamila, per any chance… b-be a young girl with purple hair and a yellow ribbon on her head…?”

God, he prays that he is wrong. After all, if he is right… Yomiel and Kamila are in the city at the same time. And as horrifying as that act Sissel just descirbed was… There is more to this, isn’t there?

“So you know her too? Damn...” Sissel wasn’t expecting Battler to have met Kamila. “Yeah, that’s her! And she’s here with Lynne too, the same girl Yomiel held hostage in the partk, she just arrived recently...” The black cat moves his whiskers in nervousness.

“A-Anyway... So.. After he killed Kamila’s mother and Jowd was arrested, he planned to give his powers to a foreign nation in exchange for a new life. He premeditated two impossible crimes to make them believe his powers were real. He made a singer leak national secrets during a concert and made a curry loving man hold the Chief Commissioner hostage in his own office. The other detective, the one who interrogated him, Cabanela tracked him down and was working with a professor, ex-police medical examiner known as Pidgeon Man, who was studying the Temsik meteorite at the time.”

“Cabanela wanted to prove Jowd’s innocence and he knew he couldn’t have possibly commited that crime, so he climbed the ladder to the Special Investigation Unity so he could take care of the Manipulator case by himself. They tracked Yomiel down, ten years after the incident, when his plans to meet these guys would take place and he would finish his revenge by getting Jowd executed on that night and finishing his deal with the blue people so he could get a new body and a new life. As he prepared himself for this, he took me in so he could leave with me to start his new life. He arranged to meet Lynne in a junkyard, in the edge of town with the purpose of manipulating her to shoot his corpse and make her look like a murderer, so she would suffer the same pain Jowd felt.”

…Wow. Talk about a contrived way of dying. Sheesh. It’s definitely terrifying to be accused of something you didn’t do, even more so what he assumes to be a pretty high profile crime, if it involves spy stuff.

Still… This does not sound like something that, as an outsider, he could put the blame on the officers. Like, Battler won’t blame Yomiel for panicking. That would be ridiculous. But it’s clear that the only people he could possibly see Yomiel wanting revenge on are the officers and the little girl. The girl was, well, just an innocent passerby. The officers might have acted harsher than needed, but they didn’t kill him, nor did they seem to have the intention of killing him. Unless Yomiel thinks that normal people can summon meteorites!

…Geez. He is getting a headache from hearing this story. Maybe some more tea will help. Speaking of that, he was going to ask why Sissel didn’t touch his food… Until he remembers that the cat is also an undead being. Oops.

“Ok, I’m following the story so far…” He comments. “But how exactly could he inhabit your body? Doesn’t he have his own undead body? And what does that have to do with his fiancée dying?”

“Don’t worry, your questions will be answered soon. Let’s start with the first one: How could he inhabit my body? Well, when he died, his spirit was detached from his body. You see, when someone dies, we tend to forget our memories. I was a kitten, asking for attention. He heard my plea and tried to reach out for me, but his spirit transferred to my body instead. Since he couldn’t remember who he was, he spent some days living as a cat inside my body.”

“When he got his memories back and remembered who he was, he went to get his body back from the morgue. He wanted to see his fiancée again, but when he arrived home... She was dead. She only left him a note saying ‘I’m coming to you, Yomiel.’ As far as I understand, she killed herself to join him in the afterlife.”

“After this, Yomiel adopted me and named me after her. He spent years alone, with only me as his friend until his mind became twisted with the desire for revenge against the ones responsible. He learned he could manipulate people with his ghost powers. So the first thing he did to get revenge was....”

Sissel paused because the story was about to get much darker from now on, so he had to prepare himself for the terrible chain of events that led them to that fateful night.

The kitten is purring loudly when Kay comes to him with her gift. 

Instead of answering immediately, Kuro walked over to the pile of food he kept in front of the TV for when he was in one of his Shut-in moods. “I only ever keep quick foods near me, since as a Shut in, I can’t spend too much energy or time away from the TV. Ramen is easily made with water and a microwave, and chips are premade, all you have to do is open the bag. Do you want to try shifting to into my other form?”

“Feel free to eat as much as you want. I usually eat ramen or chips, but ice cream is good too. It won’t kill you. Just stay out of the sunlight for extended periods of time. And don’t worry about needing to drink blood. It’s too much of a hassle, so I just don’t bother with it unless Mahiru needs me to.”

“I don’t know what kind of food these are, but I really liked fish. Yomiel used to give me lots of sardines and tuna. I miss being able to eat it.”

As the cat began speaking, Battler nodded along to his words. Indeed, he had been made aware of Yomiel’s general condition back in the party, when he first offered the guy the opportunity of revival. He will admit that he finds it a bit weird that Sissel is seemingly ok with not eating, sleeping or feeling pain. Still, if Sissel says that he doesn’t mind being like this, Battler won’t force life on him.

The part about a desire for revenge is new to him, though. Revenge? Geez, that doesn’t sound good. Especially the part of feeding a desire for it during ten years, in the state he met Yomiel under…..

It’s while he ruminates about it that Ronove enters the parlor with Sissel’s food, alongside a tray of tea for Battler. He takes a sip of it, letting it rest on the table.

“This sounds a bit weird, though. What relation could a meteorite have with people. It’s not like they could summon a meteorite purposefully to kill him and his fianceé, right?”

“Well, yeah. But still, he wanted someone to put the blame on, something he could lash out on. I really don’t understand this feeling, revenge.”

There were some things Sissel would never understand about humans. Revenge was one such thing.

“Back then, ten years ago... He was arrested, being a suspect in a crime involving spies. He was innocent, but the detective interrogating him pushed him too far, so he panicked. It doesn’t help that the same detective forgot his gun in the interrogation room, leaving Yomiel the opportunity to escape.”

“Another detective pursued him into the Park. This other detective shot a warning shot and only made him panic more, so he took a young girl who was playing in that park as a hostage to make the detective let him go. But that’s when the meteorite fell from the sky, hitting him and killing him immediately.”

Sissel pauses. He’d witnessed all this with his own eyes when he went back in time to avert Yomiel’s fate. 

The godling is about to turn around and leave, eager to discover more unusual places in this new city, when he hears a voice. He freezes on the spot, slowly turning his head to look at the cat with a confused look.

For some reason, he seems relieved when he realizes that that voice doesn’t come directly from the kitten itself, but from the collar he’s wearing. Loki cocks his head to the side at first, a spark of curiosity burning in his green eyes as he starts walking closer to Sissel, crouching down to better meet his gaze.

“What’s this?”

“Some new Stark device?”

He moves a hand, fingers trying to reach under Sissel’s chin to gently scratch it. “So this is a different dimension, hm? Not the first time I end up in one, but people losing their abilities is… concerning.” He smiles thought, not looking all that inconvenienced. “Sounds like we got a mystery to solve. I’m all about mysteries! Loki’s the name, by the way.”

“I don’t know what a Stark is.” He says innocently as he hears the godling say the word. 

Even if Sissel can’t feel it, he still purrs when Loki gently scratches under his chin.

Okay, several impression worth noting here. First, this black cat is friendly. Despite his initial fears about its possible connection to the Witch of Miracles, it seems like his fears were unfounded, thankfully. No cat of Bernkastel’s would purr and play with his leg like that.

Second, he can talk. How, Battler doesn’t know, but it might have to do with the third point: this cat knows Yomiel - and he came here to ask for help with the guy. …Battler has to admit, he too was expecting that whatever pain assaulted that guy’s heart would be healed once he was brought back to life.

But of course, reality is very rarely that simple, when it comes to pain.

“…I see.” Battler nods, as he makes a sign for the goat butler to go away. The butler bows, before dissolving in a cloud of golden butterflies. The sorcerer, meanwhile, kneels down to Sissel’s level, followed by patting his head.

“Let’s go to the parlor. We can talk more there. Ronove!” He shouts, and a man with a butler outfit and a peculiar mustache appears from nowhere. “Prepare some cat food for our guest. …And keep an eye on my cookies, please. I don’t want him to be scared by an accidental fire, ihihi!”

Ronove agrees with the command, not before chuckling in amusement over Battler’s apprehension, remarking how he has become smarter over kitchen stuff. Battler groans in annoyance, before taking Sissel on his arms and carrying him to the parlor.

Once they get there, he allows Sissel to accommodate himself as he wishes. “Now, tell me more about this story with Yomiel. Starting by your name, please.”

Sissel quickly follows Battler as he guides him through the mansion. Once they get to the place, the black kitten choses a spot he fins comfortable and sits, his big yellow eyes now staring right at the man’s eyes.

“Oh, right. I’m sorry. My name is Sissel. I’m Yomiel’s best friend from where we came from. I’ve been with him for ten long years and I was his only friend.” The kitten starts to explain.

“It’s a long and complicated story, but if you revived him, then you know he was stuck in a state between life and death, just as I am right now, thanks to a piece of meteorite that killed him.” This fact doesn’t seem to bother Sissel as much as it bothered Yomiel. Sissel is literally a Schrodinger’s cat right now, but he’s very okay with this fact.

“He even said I could come seek you if I wanted to be revived as well, but... I’m okay being like this. What happens to me isn’t important. I just want to make him happy again and... well...”

He lowers his ears in sadness again before continuing.