LDQ Vol. 2 pt. 54 (Patreon)

There might not have been any police in Vala’s world, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t still worried. After all, the cat queen was drugged on the ground and vulnerable to being taken advantage of. No matter how I would have gone about the situation, I felt like there would be judging eyes on me accusing me of being a horrible person and wanting to lock me away behind bars.

Just what kind of man would take advantage of a cute girl like that?

That was why me and Vala came up with an idea.

Vala would go first.

While it might have looked suspicious if it was me taking advantage of the cat queen, Vala was a cute girl instead of a tall, fairly built guy in his twenties. Society dictated that she was less suspicious than me by default. I was the kind of guy who somebody might run away from in the middle of the night if I was out on a walk and ended up behind them. But Vala? Who would run away from Vala?

Of course, if anybody knew just how powerful Vala was, they would have known that it’d be smarter to run away from her than me.

Then again, when it came to actual things we’ve done – no. I can’t even say that she’s never done anything suspicious that could compare to me capturing cats and stripping them of their fluff. She used to be a proper dragon who would steal cows and burn down villages, supposedly. I was the one who couldn’t compare to her if anything!

But that only served to prove my point. Even though she was far more fearsome with a much darker past than me, none of that mattered for as long as she looked like a cute girl.

Even as we both looked at the vulnerable cat queen with nothing but mischievous plots in our minds, it was Vala who looked like the far more degenerate one.

But she was still a cute girl.

“Drake, prepare the censorship bars,” Vala said.

“What are you going to do to her?” I asked.

“I’m going to lewd the heck out of her.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit too villainous even for us?”

“It’s okay. Lewding cat girls is like lewding dog girls. The lewdest things you can do to them is pet their heads, rub their ears, and scratch under their chins.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ve both done significantly lewder things than that with the others.”

“Tsk, tsk. You still have a lot to learn, Drake. Those were adult things, not lewd things. As to be expected of somebody so young.”

“Are you sure that you want to call me ‘so young’ and imply that there’s an age difference between us? Do you really want to think about how I’m only a tiny fraction of your a—”

Vala frantically waved her arms around as she shouted, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You’re not that young! I’m actually the young one! You’re old and experienced and I’m just a little kid!”

“Don’t call yourself a little kid! That makes me sound suspicious!”

“Okay, I’m not a little kid. I’m only forever seventeen.”

“At least choose an age that’s legal!”

“Fine! How old do I have to be to do everything short of running for office without people complaining or causing controversies?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Deal. I’m forever twenty-one. Us dragons biologically and mentally stop aging at twenty-one. The passage of time itself stops around us, so we’re living in bubbles of stopped time while still able to interact with the rest of the world! So even if a thousand years pass for you, no time passes for me!”

“You could be lewding the cat queen right now instead of being self-conscious over your age.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” And just like that, Vala’s shame over her age disappeared and was replaced by that mischievous look from earlier as she happily walked up to the cat queen. Once she was close, her approach became slower and more cautious like a predator not wanting to alarm her prey. Comparing Vala to a predator was appropriate in multiple contexts given the situation. “Hey there,” Vala said with a tone that sounded like she was trying her best to remain calm despite her excitement as she leaned over the cat queen. “Enjoying that catnip? It’s nice, isn’t it? Hehe.”

“You sound like a creepy old man trying to lure a kid into their van with free candy!” I shouted. I wasn’t able to stay quiet after watching Vala’s approach. Sure, I was afraid of coming off as too much like a villainous predator if I would have approached the cat queen first, but Vala went and completely disregarded the cute girl advantage that she had over me. No amount of cuteness would make what she said and how she said it sound acceptable. That was impossible. Completely impossible!

The cat queen’s response to Vala was a simple turn of her head to look up at her. However, as soon as she heard my voice, her head jerked to look in my direction with her ears twitching and her tail beginning to sway in the air behind her. For the first time, I saw a wide, innocent smile spread across the cat queen’s face as she rolled onto her back and reached her arms out to me. Not a single word left her lips, but she tilted her head back against the ground as if trying to expose her chin to me as her eyes stayed locked onto me with bliss in her eyes.

“It’s… it’s as the legends say,” Vala said, no longer sounding like some excited, creepy man about to abduct a child. “People aren’t the one who get to choose cats… it’s the cats who choose people. Nobody owns a cat because cats own their owners.” She paused to look at me. “Drake, I wanted to choose her, but she’s chosen you. You’ve been the chosen one all along.” She sounded way too dramatic about this whole situation. “All I can ask… is that you don’t forget all of us.”

I sighed and asked, “Why would I forget any of you?”

“Because you’ve been chosen by a cat! The rest of us haven’t been chosen! That puts you on a completely different level! You’ve reached a status that transcends godhood while the rest of us are even more insignificant than ants!”

“I don’t want to hear that from somebody who can create a personal pocket universe!”

“Pocket universes aren’t even cool anymore! Everybody has one! All the kids these days play games with bags that have infinite holding capacities! They’re basically the same thing!”

“Creating a literal pocket universe in reality is completely different from playing a tabletop game and having a bag with infinite space!”

Vala sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “You’ve already lost the ability to relate to us peasants.”

I was about to say something when the cat queen made grabby hands at me with a gentle mewling escaping her lips.

“It is time, Drake,” Vala continued. “You have been chosen and must accept your destiny.”

“What am I even supposed to do?” I asked.

“Whatever she wants.”

“Wasn’t the whole purpose of defeating her to make her submit to us instead?”

“There is no defeating cats.”

“She’s not even a cat. She’s a human with cat ears and a cat tail.”

“Even being five percent cat grants her superiority over lesser, non-cat lifeforms.”

“Nyaaaaa… Drake!” the cat queen whined. “Don’t… make me wait!”

Vala stepped aside and nodded while pretending to cry.

Even though I was the one who won the battle and deployed chemical warfare against these cats, I somehow ended up being the one ordered around. The good news was that I felt less like a horrible person because she was the one demanding my attention while in that state.

“Here,” I said, crouching down next to the mewling cat queen. Those mewls were upgraded to purrs as soon as she was able to reach out and touch my legs with her hands.

“Queen’s… queen’s order-nya… scratch my chin and pamper me!” She might have been ordering me around, but she sounded more like a drunken and clingy girlfriend desperate for affection.

I guess that giving her what she wants wouldn’t be that bad. Besides, this is basically what we planned on doing to her anyways, I thought as I reached a hand down to her chin. Her smile grew wider and wider until the tips of my fingers brushed against the underside of her chin, causing her to smile and purr as her back arched up away from the ground.

“Mmm… mmnya… I’ve been waiting for this… it’s about time you defeated me.”

It felt more like she was the one who won and defeated me. Meanwhile, Vala stood to the side of us chewing on her thumb’s nail while wearing a look of jealousy on her face. She must have really, really wanted to be spoil the cat queen while she was like this. “Don’t you think you can let Vala pet you, too?” I asked the cat queen.

She shook he head and never stopped smiling. “It’s my character-nya to be possessive and not want to share you-nya. I love, love, love Vala too… but I want to play tsundere and treat her like my rival. Nya.”

“That doesn’t sound like something you’re supposed to admit to.”

“Nyaha… too bad.”

“Well, you heard her, Vala.”

Looking back up at Vala, she looked like she was trying her best to hold back her tears. “I – I understand. She’s one of the queens, so it’s only natural that she pretends we’re rivals instead of also lovers. I – I can do this! I can handle her tsundere behavior so that I can fully appreciate the extremely rare moments where she gives in and lets me pamper her! Her tsun nature will only make it even better when she eventually treats me to her dere side! For the sake of her character arc, I’ll survive!”

“If this was an actual story or game or whatever, you’d both be horrible characters for spelling out your planned arcs and personalities to everybody. Don’t you know anything about keeping that stuff behind the scenes to build suspense and tension?”

“Yeah, but what if people saw her act like my rival and then ended up disliking her because of that? Maybe they’d think, ‘Oh no, this brat has joined the harem and is going to disrupt it and ruin the cute stuff because she’s jealous, I hate the tsundere trope.’ If they know that she also loves me and that she’s only playing the role of a tsundere, then they’ll know that it’s all okay! It’s consensual tsundereing! You know how some tsunderes will randomly kick or punch their love interest?”

“No, and that sounds like abuse.”

“Well, yeah. It basically is abuse even if it’s for comedic slapstick humor most of the time. Anyways, my point is that because if it’s not consensual, it’s controversial! But now, imagine a tsundere who might at times be violent, but everybody consents to it! That makes it alright! Allow us to demonstrate. Clawdia,” I forgot that the cat queen actually had a name, “attack him with your tsundere powers!”

The cat queen – Clawdia, gave a lazy salute to Vala before opening up her mouth and going, “Nyaaa…omph!”

Her attack was brutally effective.

Clawdia…

Nibbled on my finger.

“This is the strength of consensual physical abuse!” Vala declared while striking a dramatic pose.

I wasn’t so sure that anything going on could be considered abuse. I was even less sure when Clawdia stopped nibbling to instead start licking my finger while it was still in her mouth. Then, as soon as she started swirling her tongue around my finger, I realized how dangerous the situation was and yanked my finger out to safety.

That kind of action was only going to get one response out of any man.

And it was an response that even I wasn’t villainous enough to approve of while she was technically under the influence of chemical substances.

“Are you ready to see the next level, Drake?” Vala asked.

“I don’t know if I should be prepared to be extremely underwhelmed or only very underwhelmed,” I answered.

“Watch and learn, Drake. You are like a child who doesn’t know anything yet.”

“Didn’t we already go over not comparing me to a child?”

“O-oh. Right. A-anyways, watch and learn!”

Vala crouched down next to Clawdia and lowered her hand toward the cat queen’s belly. Clawdia tensed up and stopped everything that she was doing as soon as she detected Vala’s hand on the way to the most dangerous area to touch on a cat, even on somebody who was less than five percent cat.

Vala touched Clawdia’s belly.

Similar to when she bit my finger, Clawdia latched onto Vala’s forearm.

Only, there was a difference.

Vala immediately cringed in pain as she stood up and waved her arm around with Clawdia’s fangs dug into her arm. She refused to let go no matter how hard Vala tried to swing her off. Even so, through all the tears, pain, and blood, Vala looked at me and announced, “This! This is the true power of consensual physical abuse! Without consent, this would be horribly abusive and a sign of a relationship destined to fail! With – with – ow ow, wi-with consent, this is proof of love and an enjoyable character trait!”

I stood up just in time for Vala to fling Clawdia toward me. Fortunately, fighting cats every day trained my reflexes to be fast enough to catch Clawdia with what ended up looking like a princess carry.

While Vala stood there sniffling letting Delphi apply the bandages to her arm that she rushed over, Clawdia wrapped her arms up around my neck and brought her lips against my jaw to give me a lick. “Only you’re allowed to touch my belly, nya,” she whispered to me.

Between my childhood trauma from touching a cat’s belly and now seeing what she did to Vala’s arm, I wasn’t so sure that I had any interest in touching Clawdia’s belly.

But I had to admit. Having a loopy, cute girl held in my arms as she repeatedly licked my jawline and cheek was pretty nice.

I wondered how she’d react to all of this if she could remember it after the catnip wore off.