[Mad Tiger] Chapter 58

I perched on the roof above the gate, watching as Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto struggled to gain entry into Torideneko. Honestly, the cat guards were straight-up messing with my three little shinobi, all of whom were now wearing fluffy cat-ear headbands. Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto were down on all fours, enthusiastically pouncing at some kind of “cat grass” the guards had tossed in front of them, meowing like kittens. I was laughing so hard I nearly rolled off the roof.

From what I could hear, the locals found it just as hilarious. My sharp ears picked up whispers about how “the Game has started again” and how “these funny little humans are really putting on a show.” Basically, my team was getting completely bamboozled. Their entrance had caused quite the commotion, and judging by the hushed murmurs, everyone was “getting ready for the Game.” I still had no clue what this so-called Game was, though Papa-san had mentioned something about it earlier, claiming that “Nekomata-sama invented it.” But he hadn’t elaborated, and I’d totally forgotten to ask Sagashi. The whole thing reminded me of The Truman Show—only this time, the unwitting main characters were my poor teammates.

As the guards kept toying with my squad, a hush fell over the crowd. Cats scattered, darting off in different directions like they were taking up strategic positions.

“This is so much fun!” Naruto suddenly yelled, snapping my attention back to him. The way he spoke sounded slightly off, like his words were getting lost in translation, but somehow, my brain still understood them just fine. Weird.

Then, one of the guards flicked Naruto’s nose, making him sneeze so hard he nearly cracked his forehead against the stone bridge that connected the sphinx-shaped castle to the mainland. Huh. I guess that “rabbit hole” we went through earlier had teleported Sagashi and me straight onto the island while these three had to take the long way around. Neat.

“This is a human!” the guard suddenly gasped in exaggerated horror, as if he’d just now realized. At first, I didn’t get what was happening, but then I saw it—Naruto had sneezed so hard that his cat-ear headband had flown off. Ohhh. That was intentional.

Sasuke grabbed Sakura’s wrist, and the two of them bolted straight through the gates.

“ALARM! ALARM!” the guards shrieked, and suddenly, the entire place exploded into chaos. Huge and small cats alike sprinted onto the scene, hastily strapping on armor and wielding spears with suspiciously soft-looking tips. From the looks of it, if you unscrewed the tips, you’d probably find the very same blades of grass my little ones had been playing with, pretending to be "real cats."

For a split second, I wasn’t sure whether to chase after Sasuke and Sakura—who had already vanished into the labyrinth of corridors—or Naruto, who had just been dramatically thrown out of the gates. Then sirens blared, and giant searchlights started sweeping across the ground like a full-on prison escape movie. Welp. Guess I’m going after Sasuke. I still needed to take him to Mama Wasei and Papa Wasei so they could actually talk to him as an official representative of the Uchiha.

Watching the Game unfold was… actually pretty entertaining. The cats weren’t even trying to win. Most of them didn’t even unsheathe their claws. Sasuke “cut through waves of enemies,” who giggled behind his back and whispered about how beautifully they were letting him win. They were guiding him—carefully, subtly. He “discovered” that Nekomata-sama was inside the central tower, “overcame” the castle’s defenses, and kept making his way forward, never realizing he was being herded like a lost kitten. 

I stuck to the shadows, following as Sasuke finally climbed up into the “head” of the sphinx-cat castle. From the whispers of the surrounding felines, I gathered that any human child participating in the Game was completely safe inside Torideneko. That put me at ease about Naruto and Sakura.

“You actually made it here?” a silky voice purred from behind a curtain of hanging beads in the massive, torch-lit chamber. The flames flickered with an eerie blue glow, casting strange shadows across the high ceilings. The silhouette behind the beads twitched its ears. “And who might you be, brave little boy?”

“I am Uchiha Sasuke,” my player declared. “Are you Nekomata? Hand over your paw print willingly, or I’ll take it by force!”

The shadow behind the curtain shifted, hunching slightly, and then—soft laughter. My fur bristled. That wasn’t a normal laugh. It had weight. Power.

“And you have the courage to say that to my face?” the voice mused.

I caught a disturbance in the air behind the curtain—someone was weaving hand signs. Sasuke stiffened, trembling on the spot. Oh damn. Nekomata-sama just hit him with a genjutsu.

“And what about you, little one?” That smooth voice was suddenly directed at me, and I nearly jumped out of my fur. “I can smell you. Come out.”

Hesitantly, I padded forward and stopped beside Sasuke, who was visibly sweating and twitching, locked in some internal struggle.

The beaded curtain parted, and out stepped… an absolute unit of a cat. He was massive. Easily a hundred times bigger than me. His fangs were longer than my entire tail. And then—he rose onto his hind legs.

Oh.

Oh no.

This wasn’t just a giant cat. This was a monster.

Nekomata-sama was a hulking mix of feline and dinosaur—razor-sharp teeth, silver fur streaked with dark stripes, thick claws that didn’t retract, and strangely shaggy ears that made his head look even larger. His eyes were bright yellow, but the black markings around them stretched up and down like stylized war paint.

“Greetings, Nekomata-sama!” I managed to squeak, bowing just in case.

“The Wasei clan?” He blinked in mild surprise. “Papa Wasei recently sought an audience with me, but I was… otherwise occupied. I have waited seven years for a new Game. Why do I smell your markings on this boy?”

“Because he’s my boy,” I said proudly. “People call him the last Uchiha. His clan was wiped out—along with every Wasei that lived among them—less than six months ago. That’s what Papa Wasei wanted to tell you.”

The enormous feline’s tail flicked once. “So, you are a Keeper?” he mused, stroking his chin with one massive claw. “Very well. You will tell me everything. Come.”

“What about Sasuke?” I asked, glancing worriedly at my human, who was now sweating bullets and gritting his teeth.

“He will break free from my illusion in about twenty minutes, using his Sharingan,” Nekomata-sama assured me. “That’s more than enough time for me to review your memories.”

A shiver ran down my spine.

Review my memories?

But there was no time for fear. This was my chance. If the Nekomata was willing to listen, maybe he could actually help us. Maybe Sasuke, Shisui, and Itachi could finally do something.

And if they could help, that meant I had done my job right.

I took a deep breath, lifted my chin, and followed him.

By the time Nekomata-sama was done, I felt like an old, wrung-out dish rag. The experience had been just as disorienting as my hallucinations in the Forest of Death or the time Ino hijacked my body. My entire life had been flipped inside out, every moment replayed in vivid detail—joy and grief, laughter and loss, the deaths I had witnessed, the despair I had endured. Even old, half-forgotten memories had been dragged to the surface, leaving me raw and exhausted.

“You did well, little one,” Nekomata rumbled.

I barely had the strength to nod before collapsing onto a pile of cushions behind a screen. My head was spinning.

I drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, only to be jolted awake by fleeting images—Kushina screaming, Naruto crying, Sasuke staring blankly at Itachi, and a massive, grinning fox morphing into a white, twin-tailed cat.

“Here, drink this, little one. It’ll help.”

When I came to, I found myself comfortably sprawled across a thick, warm expanse of white fur. Apparently, I had been out cold, and now I was curled up on Nekomata-sama’s massive back while he was lazily coiled atop his enormous cushion. A claw the size of a tree branch delicately extended toward me, holding a small dish of milk. Meanwhile, the oversized feline deity himself was sipping something deep red from a goblet as big as Naruto’s entire apartment.

“Where are my humans?” I sniffed the air and immediately picked up the familiar scents of Naruto and Sakura. “They were here?”

“Yes, they were,” Nekomata-sama purred, his golden eyes narrowing with amusement. “They got the paw print they came for.” He lifted his huge paw, revealing that the pad was still stained with red ink around the edges. Then he chuckled. “You should’ve seen the mess they made inside the illusion. Those little menaces nearly leveled my castle with explosive tags. Blew a hole in the roof.”

I paused mid-lick from the milk dish. Okay, that… yeah, that sounded about right.

“They’re both sleeping now,” Nekomata-sama added, waving a tail lazily toward the next room. “Time moves differently here. But don’t worry about them.”

Feeling my strength slowly return, I sat up. “Wait… that was all an illusion? You can control illusions?”

“Of course,” the giant cat chortled. “Now then—shall we go find Shisui-kun and Itachi-kun? I haven’t seen them in ages… I can’t wait to lay eyes on them. They must be all grown up now—human children sprout up so fast.”

I blinked. “You know them?”

“Why, of course,” he purred, stretching out like a lazy housecat. “They both played the Game.”

My brain short-circuited for a moment. Shisui and Itachi played the Game?

Nekomata-sama suddenly rose to his full height, and I yipped in surprise as I slid right off his fur, tumbling onto the cushion below. Before I could react, he began weaving hand signs at a dizzying speed.

And then—he shrank.

One moment, he was a towering, monstrous feline deity with enough chakra to smother the entire room. The next, he was… my size.

“Well? Shall we take a little stroll, nya~?” he asked, his new, much smaller form giving me a sly, toothy grin.

I just stared.

This new Nekomata was a sleek, light-gray cat, built almost exactly like me, except his ears were slightly droopy, and the dark markings around his eyes remained. His once-massive twin tails had merged into a single, normal one, split down the middle—half black, half white. But the biggest shock?

He was wearing clothes.

A short, gray kimono, tied with a thin white sash.

And just like that, I suddenly felt very indecent.

On top of everything, my sharp nose picked up something I hadn’t noticed before—his scent. The same scent I had smelled back in that workshop in Ryu.

So that’s who it belonged to.

What the hell had I just gotten myself into?