Now I see you [Nashi]

Suri had a few ways of finding Nashi.

First and foremost, Suri could have sensed Nashi’s energy and flown directly to it. But that was lame and boring and stinky, so Suri would have done something else.

Suri might have asked around enough to talk to someone who’d seen Nashi. They probably would have said something along the lines of "oh heavens not another one of you", assuming that Suri, in sharing Nashi’s shade and knowing him, might have shared his temperament, or, failing that, said something generic and uninformative like “yeah he was around here somewhere trying to do things interesting enough to make a solo out of” (except maybe not that last bit). Suri would likely have to go on a wild goose chase of (mis)information, eventually talking to 2d4 ogres and assorted spiritpuffs before maybe, and it was a solid maybe, finding someone who’d say “he went thataway to go look cool on a hill”.

Thataway, Nashi was looking cool on a hill.
Specifically, he was having a nice sit down on a hill that was perfectly tall enough for gazing upon it to be pleasant (in that it was tall enough to actually be a hill, a proper hill one might have seen on the Wikipedia™ page for ‘hill’, but not tall enough to risk hurting one’s eyes by looking in the sky, or by causing even the slightest discomfort of the neck by inclining it enough). He was sitting in the lotus position, eyes closed, looking mega wise as heck, his tails moving behind him oddly. It was hard to notice, and Nashi wasn’t even aware of it at a surface level, but the tails were tracing out the symbol of a many-petaled flower. So Nashi was being really quite wise… but he wasn’t wise enough to notice.

He was thinking about noodles really deeply, too, so it might have taken a bit to snap him out of it.

Stinkiness is more of a reason not to do something than impossibility could ever be!

While thinking on the subject of noodles, which Nashi’d been on for a solid eight minutes (which, as far as Nashi’s attention span went, was impressive to the utmost degree!), Nashi thought back to that time a few hours before when he’d almost seen his grandfather, Quince, who was rather like himself in that he was blue and a cat, but rather not in that he wasn’t at all human. Note that Nashi didn’t actually see Quince, he was merely thinking about almost having had, without knowing that he actually almost did. It was so astronomically improbable as to be impossible, which was precisely how you knew it was certain.

Even as Suri spoke within mere unspecified units of measurement away from Nashi, he did not awaken or react in even the slightest capacity. His thoughts stayed on noodles, now on the differences between noodles boiled over a fire or from in a kettle. His conclusion was that there wasn’t any difference, but he also couldn’t tell the difference between half the different flavours, so perhaps take his judgement with a grain of salt (though, in Nashi’s experience, a grain of salt actually made the noodles worse).

Unbeknownst to the ramen-minded Senbyō, on the outside world, Suri was being stuck in her own labyrinth of the mind. It was getting sorta cold, actually…

Nashi’s nose twitched against the cold. A moment later, a shiver ran down his spine— no, not ‘ran’, ’crept’. Suddenly, all the noodles in Nashi’s mind were bereft of their usual warmth, making them little better than dough-worms in broth-water.

One last push of frost triggered a reaction in Nashi’s mind, as suddenly he was pulled back to an old memory of a cold day in which, due to sleeping too energetically, he pushed the blanket off the bed. Nashi’s ‘sleeping’ self felt the cold encroaching and pushed it away which, due to Nashi not laying in bed and actually being in the lotus position on a hill, resulted in him falling over on his back.

”Hruumph!”

Nashi’s eyes were wide awake now. He couldn’t help but smile at the silliness of his position, near laughter as he got himself up.

”Oh, hey, Suri!” greeted Nashi, a wide smile across his face, not especially shocked, not thinking deeply on how Suri got here or why she would be. ”What’s up?” He hadn’t made the mental connection between Suri and the cold. He hadn’t made any mental connection regarding Suri, frankly.

Nashi’s left hand scratched at the hair at the back of his head, grinning widely as if all was right with the world. Apparently Suri wasn’t dead. That was pretty cool!

”Oh, you know how it is. Villains out the wazoo, doing silly things for silly reasons and thinking doing it poorly means they’re doing it well. The standard. Though, this time, er,” he said, thinking back to his murder by the Saiyans, ”there was a bit less style to it than I expect in my murderers. The stakes were bigger the first time around, I think. Braggadocio and Undress came up and killed me for my Dragon Ball.” Nashi’s humorous misremembering of names was getting worse. ”Well, I ended up killing myself first. Like in one of those samurai movies, for honour, or to deprive the enemy of killing you. ‘Committing Sudoku’, I think it was!” He was speaking of the events as if they happened casually over a late brunch.

Nashi yawned deeply, his hands outstretched. ”Anyway, so, yeah,” he said, a yawn voice still on his voice, half a hand over his mouth, ”Just died doing hero stuff. I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll be back soon enough anyway!” He was the Immortal Cat, after all. And since it had been established already that he could die— a bit more than was strictly necessary, really— the ‘Immortal’ in ‘Immortal Cat’ probably meant less ‘unable to die’ and more ‘unable to die for long’.

Nashi stretched his back. Necessary exercises, with how long Nashi could stay still for in the lotus position. ”Ah, don’t worry about it. Death is the full stop at the end of the sentence, but it can be a comma, too! And at least I can see a friend. That's you!” Even with Suri blatantly bringing attention to it, Nashi still didn’t even start to question how the Majin got up here. ”Anyway. I’m really hungering for some noodles.” He stood up. His tails realised this two seconds later. ”Wanna come?”

Nashi shrugged as Suri questioned the Saiyan’s intent. ”Probably just immortality or power. Evil stuff, y’know.” Nashi continued his stretching with a yawn, not entirely sure what Suri was sorry to hear.

”Hmm? Dragon Balls?” questioned Nashi, as if the very idea had not fully come to him. ”Oh, yeah, that’d do it.” Friends gathering Dragon Balls, yeah, that sounded about right, that sounded like them. Though, really, Nashi was pretty sure the holiday was going to end soon enough anyway. That is, after all, what holidays did: end. You could trust them to end far more than you could trust them to start.

”Aw, it’s good to see you again, too!” Nashi went in for a hug. It was only quick, and seemed half of its purpose was to rotate Nashi around her as part of his movement to Ogre Town. For noodles. ”… wait, I already said that…”

As Nashi walked to Ogre Town, a smile across his face like a string across its bow’s breadth and with exaggerated, high-reaching steps, Nashi did a little spun and touched his hands to the flowers. He didn’t know there were flowers there when he made the motion but, it was Heaven, so of course there were flowers there. ”If I had a house I’d just get lost. There’s a few ramen places! And it’s Heaven, so it’s free, too!” Paying for stuff? In Heaven? That wouldn’t be much of a Heaven at all! ”I know a good one.”

After a bit, there was more of a spring in Nashi’s step. Usually he’d just fly there on his Flying Nimbus™, but with Suri here he was too excited for that. First: Nashi did flips and twists and turns in the air, half-running across the floral plains before jumping a few kilometres high…

”To me, my Nimbus!”

Flying in at a frankly absurd speed came a small yellow tailed cloud, of like substance and shade to the clouds that blanketed hell and distantly floored the Check-In Station and Snake Way. it caught him mere moments before he’d have smashed into the (admittedly pretty) ground.

Nashi usually didn’t like flying. His feline instincts kept thinking he was falling and so were constantly trying to trigger the feline instinct to land properly. But, this? This was brilliant!

”WoohoooOOOooo!”

Nashi would reach Ogre Town. He’d zig-zag through the streets, hopefully slow enough for Suri to follow, before finding his favourite ramen place. He’d drop down to the sidewalk slowly, place his index finger and thumb in his mouth and whistle (Nashi used to not be very good at whistling but, with all the free time around, he had plenty of time to practice and improve). Responding, without explanation, the Nimbus flew away into the distance.

It didn’t occur to Nashi that Suri might not have any idea what any of that was.

”This is the place!”

Looking up, the place had a small neon sign saying, in all caps, ‘Divine Peach Ramen’ and, in smaller letters below it, ‘No, we aren’t associated with Ramen the person’ and, in even smaller letters below even that, ‘please stop looking for her here’. Apparently they had a problem with comedically ignorant sleuths. Next to the letters there was a peach— the place had a special dish which used peach in their ramen, the eponymous ‘Divine Peach Ramen’, but Nashi didn’t like new things in his noodles and so hadn’t even tried it— and the kanji for cat in blue, 猫, next to that. Nashi ended up being a mascot of the place, perhaps because being associated with a hero was good for (currenciless) business or because its owners really didn’t want to be associated with Ramen the person so much. (It’s what ya get, for calling it ‘ramen’ and not ’noodles’.)

Walking in, it was a pretty standard noodle place. Nashi was immediately recognised, but he went here regularly enough for no one to take much notice. On the wall was a painting of his Tower (as well as he could describe it to the store owner’s artistic son) and sitting on it a representation of Nashi himself… except, this ‘Nashi’ was fully feline, and fully blue. And also really big, apparently, judging by how much o the Tower it took up.

”Anything strike ya fancy?”

Nashi looked up to the menu. He already knew what he was going to get: the ‘Senbyō Special’, the place’s second special dish, which was just normal ramen but with less icky vegetables and with more delicious noodles.

”Hm? Oh, yeah, heaps of people. Well, one person. But it’s a people as strong as many persons!” Thank you, Nashi, for your insightful commentary. ”Ramen is a Saiya— I mean, Earthling hero. She does some hero stuff. The first time I met her she was really strong, but also evil, because of demon stuff! But don’t worry, we saved the day.” This ‘we’ being, generally, the Godsquad and Nashua. Nashi considered this brief demonic interference yet another instance of a goodie briefly catching the evilsies. Unbeknownst to Nashi, however, what was becoming increasingly clear to all who knew her was that she was a villain who’d just caught the goodsies for a while. ”And there was something about blowing up a planet? It must have been a pretty evil planet. Or… did that not happen yet?” Liquid time was confusing. ”Anyway, I’m, like, mega heaps stronger than her!” Sure thing, Nashi!

Nashi shook his head, smiling as Suri looked around and saw all the blue cats. ”Nah. It’s like a… advertisement-y, brand-y, sponsor-y thing. I’d say I get free noodles for it, but everyone gets free noodles anyway! Heh.” Since the owner didn’t try to pay Nashi for it or bribe him with anything, Nashi was fine with his image (or, something close enough to it) being used to sell noodles. ”Having a dead hero or celebrity or whatever associated with ya really boosts sales!” And though, since there was no currency, there was no reward in working, it was still something to do and something to be proud of. Flying across Heaven Nashi found many swathes of land, the colours in the flowers of which formed some beautiful image; many many people here had a lot of time, and there were a lot of beautiful things you could do with that reinforced with katchin Nashi’s faith in the living (and the not entirely so).

”Nice, nice.” Fried rice, Nashi could appreciate. For whatever reason he preferred normal rice, himself. Plain rice didn’t have all that much flavour, but it was a pleasant lack of flavour, like a rest after a hard day or the relief of not being kicked in the gonads. Shrimp he didn’t like at all, and didn’t understand how anyone else could like it, either, but it was made up for by the choice of dumplings. He made sure to enunciate clearly, but no doubt the staff here would have heard him if he whispered the order into the dull side of a brick. ”I’ll have a Senbyō Special, Senbyō-size,” which is the size category above ‘large’, ”and dumplings also! And also plain rice. Yeah.” Nashi didn’t have Suri’s excuse of being a Majin, he just had far too much shonen protagonist energy to not be able to eat huge loads of food.
And it would only take one until near the end of Suri’s next post (or the beginning of Nashi’s text) for the food to arrive!

”Nah, it’s not like a taxi. It’s like a car! Except it drives itself.” So, nowadays, just like a car. ”And it has something of a mind, and stuff. It’s the Flying Nimbus! The Somersault Cloud! It’s a Senbyō thing, I think. My ancestors had them, too.” That exact one, actually, because plot. ”It can go mega heaps fast!”

”Oh, it did?” Silly Earth, always threatening to go get blown up. Nashi wasn’t entirely surprised, villains tried to do blow-y-up-y things all the time. But, still, it was good to know that, presumably, heroes stepped in the way to save the day! Perhaps Nashi wasn’t as crucial in that as he thought he might have been. ”Ah, yeah, sure.”

Nashi shrugged. ”Yeah, I guess.” They certainly did like having more customers: if they were good at it (and of course they were, it was Heaven) more customers meant more happy customers, which was good, and made them happy too! It might have sound naive, like a blatant oversimplification, and perhaps it was. But maybe it was the proper way, and everything built over it’s an overcomplication. ”But I don’t mind!”

The food arrived! One Divine Peach Ramen (Senbyō-size), a standard serving of fried rice, a weird-dumpling-bowl of four dumplings and the shrimp (ew) came in on Suri’s side, while an identical serving of dumplings as well as a bowl of plain race and the Senbyō Special (Senbyō-size) came in on the Senbyõ’s side. They were brought out by the waitress, a blue puff of spirit without any identifying features and, yet, somehow, through means entirely ineffable, gave off the impression of an America diner waitress (as American as the yellow on a stereotypical schoolbus)… which, needless to say, given that this was a dumpling place. ”Nice!” Suri had asked him a question, and Nashi hadn’t forgotten but, sorry to say, Nashi had his priorities set. The Senbyō-specials were ridiculous in their scale, considerably larger than what one would expect of the size beyond Large. A while ago, back when the place had example bowls out front to show their relative sizes, they had to shoo away kids daily who thought the Senbyō-special bowl was a suitable hiding spot.

Nashi suctioned the end of a noodle with such grace it looked telekinetic. Then, he started sucking the noodles up, like a vaccum cleaner plugged into a nuclear reactor, making some cool ASMR sounds in the process, for about three seconds. Why had he stopped? Because he was all out of noodles. Now the bowl was mostly left as a nice broth with the occasional bit of carrot slice and stray noodle in it. ”Ah, well, not really,” Nashi started, tongue moving about his mouth to get the stragglers, ”not for those first ones, anyway, I suppose it was a bit of a magical journey! Heh. Anyway, nah, I just sensed the life energy going through the subtle body of the Afterlife Clouds and saw what it did.” It happened a bit more figuratively in the solo, a bit more open to interpretation, but sure. None of that would make much sense if you weren’t knowledgeable in some specific bits of spirituality which Nashi, somehow, was. He started gulping down the dumplings. ”It sroawhw me swee it, and I thwink a part of it knew who I was. So then there was a nimbus, and I followed it, and,” gulp, I proved myself worthy of it!”

Nashi tried to listen attentively as Suri explained precisely all the stuff that happened in the DE he didn’t read (and couldn’t read as, rather inconveniently, he was in the narrative himself). Nashi nodded in recognition as he heard the names he recognised like ‘Carro’, ‘Chime’ and ‘some’. ”Ah, yeah, that was the guy who killed me!” Nashi interrupted, sounding way too pleased to point out his murderer. He was referring to Vocado, by the way, not Some. Kalabas… where have I heard that before? His Senbyō senses tingled with knowledge Nashi didn’t actually know, of that time Kalabas showed up on the Lookout before even Nashi or Chime did by pure coincidence. Also there was that time they thought but mostly Nashi was remembering that thing he had no way of knowing and, indeed, didn’t know. He was a ghost now? Nashi made a few undead-themed puns on ‘Kalabas’ in his head, none of them funny.

”Ah, really, where?” Nashi wasn’t entirely familiar with the expression ‘bon appetit’ and thought Suri was saying there was a bone in her ramen. It was a big funny haha.

”Oh, er, good question…” Would the Flying Nimbus follow him back into life? Maybe, it was a more complicated question than it seemed. Nashi hadn’t even thought about it and, if he did passingly, would have immediately assumed so (for narrative cohesion, if nothing else). ”I can call it to me, and I know there are ways to get between the Other World and the other world.” That was to say, the realm of the living. For one, there was dying, but it was rather a bit more difficult to die in reverse. There was also the Furnace of Eight Divisions, which Nashi was vaguely cognisant of, which would hypothetically let it through. The Power Pole also came from the Other World, didn’t it? The first Senbyō did, as well! They must have gotten over somehow. ”Besides, when I died, my stuff came with me, so hopefully that works in reverse also.”

Nashi sorta just ignored the ‘how did you prove yourself worthy’ question. He was the Senbyō! Of course he was worthy! ”Not like an energy sensing sorta sensing, I think.” Not yet, no. Not quite. ”It’s just, what whiskers do for cats, but in ki. You know how cats can always tell if a food pack is being opened, or a dad can tell a thermostat is being adjusted, regardless of distance or subtlety? It’s just a cat thing, but ki also.” Nashi was pretty happy with his mostly wrong explanation. ”Don’t worry about not being able to sense energy! Really, why learn to do that, when you could learn to whack baddies really good? Don’t worry about my techniques, I can do this stuff ‘cos I’m a mega super wise guru or whatever.” Didn’t that sorta contradict the ‘cat thing but ki’ explanation earlier? For someone who mastered the throat chakra, Nashi sure was saying a lot of things he wasn’t sure were correct. ”The Senbyō ought to know where the Flying Nimbus is, for the latter is inherently the former’s.” Alternatively, it was because plot. ”What ‘bout you? You see any cool clouds of your own recently?”