Truth be told...

I really can't help much.

Even assuming I were able to talk, I wouldn't know the first thing about how to talk to traumatized young girls, much less how to help them through their trauma. I didn't exactly study child psychology, see?

What I do know is that Marina and Reiko need time, time for themselves and time with each other. Obviously, things don't just magically get solved by a single conversation all at once, it never is that easy, but thanks to the Old Man's help surely they'll have the conversation they desperately need to have and Marina can learn a little about her powers.

Me?

I've got other fish to fry.

I've been loafing too long, and cat though I might be, there's only so much I can lie down on my laurels before I get the itch to hunt.

So hunt I did.

For several days, I would stalk and hunt and wait. Accompanying Marina and Reiko places would yield some results, not the most promising results at first but, results nonetheless. Admittedly in my line of work, getting results was always a bad thing.

I just had to keep an eye on anyone whose gaze lingered suspiciously on the young girls I was accompanying, anyone who seemed to be walking a few streets too many behind them as Marina taught Reiko how friendship works, especially as Reiko began to join Marina's classmates on trips to the arcade and the nearest playground.

Eventually I landed on a target, someone who kept showing up at places like the Arcade, who used the noisy playground as a place to supposedly read a book and rest, but whose eyes kept glancing at the children using it. After catching my target taking a few sneak pictures of the girls at play, I knew I had struck gold.

Or in this case, trash.

The next step, as it came, was to follow the suspicious person and potential predator. Normally, a difficult task that could set me up for some danger or even to be caught out myself, not too surprising since I'd be doing the weird stalking and following when I was presented with a target.

But that wasn't relevant as a cat.

So when Marina and her friends brought Reiko to a playground to teach her how to use the hang bars, which she knew only as a training device, I waited until my target showed up.

And there she was.

Hardly the sort you'd expect to see involved in this sordid, disgusting little business, but that was almost certainly by design. A sharply dressed woman wearing glasses, a skirtsuit and carrying a large tablet that she was reading from.

Her hair was up in a tight bun, and she had all the look of a businesswoman just taking a break.

But there was no nearby office building that matched her looks, she had come here with a purpose. That was the first sign of suspicion. The next was the fact that her tablet moved in odd ways, when she took pictures. It didn't take long for me to pay enough attention to notice her vile gaze.

So that day I followed behind her as she went back to where she came from. For a moment I wondered if she'd go to the part of the city where there were a handful of high rise buildings and office buildings, but she began to weave between alleyways and side streets and eventually reached a much smaller building in one of the residential areas of town.

It was a house that looked a little bit rundown, just enough that I could tell it was actually lived in, but not enough that the average person could tell anything was off.

Luckily, houses weren't really meant to be fortresses, and cats have a way of getting into even those, so it wasn't exactly a hard time following her in. The inside was in slightly better repair, dust and cobwebs here and there but otherwise clean, but not being exposed to the elements helped. It was a two story, two bedroom home, the kitchen didn't have many appliances, just the basics, there was furniture but mostly cheap stuff.

As I went past the kitchen and headed up the stairs in the living room, I began to hear noises.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I heard terrible noises.

Noises I was disgusted by... they were disturbingly familiar.

I remembered a time when a little boy sat alone in his room, with headphones on, with the music volume set as high as possible. Headphones that weren't his, headphones that belonged to someone else.

What that little boy had been hearing... was the sounds of a drug fueled orgy, and every vibration and thump on the wall continued to reach him, even as he sat on the ground, trying not to hear it, not to notice it, not to think about it, but it was no use.

My pawpads made no noise, but the thumping on the wall more than made up for it.

Brought me back to that moment.

That little boy wasn't alone.

The skittering noise of my claws against the polished wood floor was completely masked by the voices of the monsters.

Just like then.

Just like back then.

The door was cracked open, and I peeked in, just like then, I remembered the noises, the smell, the sight.

Just like then, a young girl, a pair of hands around her neck, a large man right on top of her, just like then a woman strung out on drugs thinking nothing of what was happening in front of her.

Her eyes were listless, tears flowed from them, and my gaze met hers.

She was no different.

I remembered the girl who had once been the sole good thing in the life of a little boy whose home was broken and who faced nothing but more torment in all places outside it.

There was once a little boy.

His mother was a drug addicted whore that had two children from different fathers, who knew neither of their fathers, a woman who traded everything she had for drugs, and sold her body for more when that wasn't enough.

His father, well, nobody knew who that man was.

And his sister was a ray of sunshine of a girl, the total opposite of who and where she spawned from. She assumed the role of mother and raised a young boy only a couple years her junior, while going to school and earning what little pocket change she could by doing things like mowing lawns or the like.

Despite their miserable existence, the little boy was almost happy by spending time with his sister, she would usually say that as soon as she was old enough, when she could pull it off, she'd take him and they would both go away and never have to deal with their mother, or the many men she brought home, ever again.

But that wasn't to be.

That little boy got a bad feeling one night, and while listening to music with the device that a neighbor had gifted his sister, he couldn't shake it.

Something told him he had to go. He had to see it. He had to do something.

So he got up, he found a cracked open door, and just as my paw pushed the door open, I saw it all. The only ray of hope in his life, lifeless, strangled to death in a drug fueled rampage.

My claws came out, like the knife that had ended that whore's life and which had brought punishment upon the predatorial monster she had brought into the little boy's home, they cut through the air, through skin and flesh and organs, just the same.

Blood flew and flowed and splashed all over.

The monsters had to die, they needed to die, it was imperative that I brought them to their end. I'd been too complacent. I'd been too lazy.

I'd been too focused on something else.

Throats tore, eyes cut, screaming was cut short, I ripped and I tore and I cut and I slashed and I attacked, everything that was within my reach, I would destroy.

I'd promised I would never let this happen again and here I am, letting it happen all over again.

I will kill them.

I will kill them all.

Only when every last monster is dead, only then will I be satisfied.

My fur is covered in red hot lifeblood.

Already I can see the woman I slew, she was only partially dressed and she still had a small bag with some pills in it clutched in her hand even as she bled out from the cuts I made... But she wasn't still, no, instead, she was starting to twitch and move and I knew she was about to mutate.

That couldn't be allowed.

Marina and Reiko could not be allowed to come hunting these monsters, to come and see what I had failed to stop. I couldn't allow it.

I wouldn't.

With as much strength as I could muster and moving as swiftly as my body allowed, I jumped on her and began tearing her to shreds, reducing her to shreds of purple flesh, cutting her organs, slashing them apart, until I finally found her heart, and bit down into it with as much of my jaw as I could, shattering it as it had begun to crystalize, the pieces falling apart.

Catching my breath was... simple.

My body wasn't that of a human.

Back then, I had passed out from the effort. Back then when that young boy died it was all he could do just to keep breathing even as everything fell apart.

But this time it's different.

This time...

The hunt is complete.

But I'm not yet done.

I've only slain the beasts, after all...

Approaching the victim, I put my ear to her nose, and could hear her faintly breathing. Her neck and throat would surely be bruised all over, and her mind may never recover. But she at least deserves to have the one chance that we never had.

Luckily, there was a very easy way to get people to call the police, and this time, I wouldn't have any trouble with people tracing any evidence back to me.

I just went to the front of the house and rubbed my bloodsoaked fur all over the walls, making it quite obvious something fucky was going on, and then I made a fuzz, screaming and hissing and making as much noise as possible, rushing away the moment people started checking things out.

The rest would be in the hands of the people.

I wasn't just about to run back to Marina's home covered in blood, though, so I had to actually clean myself, which... needless to say, would take quite a bit of time.

I don't regret it for one second though.

After this, I remembered I was supposed to check in on a particular family. And while cleaning myself, I began to make further plans.

I got careless. I was too comfortable.

Stepping up was the only logical response.