Blood Cat and The Ghost Cat Of Moya Manor
Table of Contents
Kaibyo
Kaibyo are manesological unions resulting from an odic disorder.
When a person dies, their soul naturally detaches from their body and becomes a ghost. But sometimes a disorder occurs in the odic layer that borders physical reality and the Astral and the soul doesn’t detach. The soul, while empowered by the death, does not disconnect from the body and does not form a true, independent ghost. Given enough time, this results in the formation of a vampire, a ghost bound to his or her corpse. Martin’s own August “Auggie” Mars, known by his supername Ampire, provides an example. Vampires (the politically correct term is “Brown syndrome sufferers”), must maintain their corpse or risk discorporation and losing their memories. This maintenance consists of keeping the body from physically rotting away by repairing it with a combination of ectoplasm, the material form of odic energy, and blood.
Souls are Astral impressions of the human body in total. They are not, as many erroneously assume, impressions purely of human intellect and personality. DNA is complex information and thus is mapped by the soul and contains odic energy. The circulatory system is complex information and thus is mapped by the soul and contains odic energy. Blood, flowing through the body, carrying cells, powering organs, contains a great deal of odic energy, and the blood of a vampire is overflowing with odic energy in its ectoplasmic form.
What happens when a person consumes the odic energy rich blood of a vampire?
It’s an odd question, but its a question many have asked and a few have been foolish enough to try to answer through personal experimentation.
Incredibly painful death is the most likely outcome through odic shock. The ectoplasm in a vampire’s blood causes a person’s soul to “jump,” which in turn causes the nervous system to go into hyperactivity. Everything hurts for one searing moment and then death.
But, if a vampire’s blood is consumed moments after their initial death before the vampire can fully form, the result is a manesological union. The vampire’s soul and the soul of the soul of the drinker merge to form a kaibyo with the drinker’s body perishing from odic shock. This union is similar to that of a ubume, but while a ubume maintains a physical and spiritual form, the kaibyo is all spirit.
Given that kaibyo result from a rarity of a rarity–something drinking a vampire’s blood immediately following his or her initial death–few have been recorded throughout history. There is exactly one human kaibyo known to man–the cannibal serial killer Drayton Pinker, who by chance happened to eat a person with Brown syndrome. Most kaibyo are animal hybrids. Wolves, birds, fish, and cats being the most common.
In the western world, kaibyo are known as werewolves, though this causes confusion with the shapeshifters of Ariège, who are also known as werewolves, due to the influence of Charles Fontenot, the Rougarou of Orleans Parish. In 1918, Fontenot was a victim of the superhuman serial killer known only as the Axeman of New Orleans. He avenged himself on the killer by bringing him to justice and then became a private detective in New Orleans, partnering with Ariège shapeshifters Manon and Tiago Beaux to form “The New Orleans Pack.”
In Japan, where wolves were hunted to extinction, cats became the most common kaibyo due to their status as common pets and willingness to consume the flesh of their deceased owners, and indeed, kaibyo translates to “mysterious cat.”
Kaibyo are notoriously vengeful. People that were left unburied to be eaten by animals tended to have someone to blame for their situation, and after the manesological union, this human outrage was amplified by animal instinct. The Black Sky, a kaibyo formed in 1917 when a flock of birds ate the carrion of Ypres Salient, menaced all sides of the Great War in the Air until it was discorporated by Dr. Stone. The Monster of Ravenna, sighted in 1512 Italy, was thought to have been an Ariège shapeshifter or nothing more than a product of folklore until manesologists captured it in 1884 using gaeite candles. They discovered that the Monster was the combination of a murdered nobleman and several animals which devoured his body, giving the Monster a chimeric appearance. They also learned that the Monster had systematically taken vengeance on the entire house of his murderer, going as far as to cross the Atlantic to the new world to hunt his descendants in America.
But perhaps no Kaibyo was as vengeful as the Ghost Cat of Moya Manor.
Perhaps none were ultimately as remorseful as her.
The Ghost Cat of Moya Manor
“If any ghost seeks to take vengeance upon me, I will not resist. I have lived for many years by the tenants of vengeance. It would be unseemly for me to hold others to a different standard.”
“Vengeance is a fire. It spreads and consumes without discrimination. Justice is a light. It illuminates and brings truth out of darkness.”
During the Edo period, a great crime took place at Moya Manor, a mansion in the Kyoto countryside owned by the Ninjo clan. It got its name Moya from its environment. Built near a lake, think mists were common, thus the manor was called Moya Manor, or “Mist Manor.”
The young head of the manor, Toshiko Ninjo, known for her skill in the game of go, was obligated to host Kenzo Nakamura at her estate. The Nakamuras were a powerful clan, far more powerful than the Ninjo, and had connections in the city of Kyoto that the rural Ninjo did not. Nakamura fancied himself an expert in go and challenged Ninjo to a game.
During the game, which was being watched by all members of the household, Kenzo realized he was losing and slipped Toshiko a note ordering her to throw the game or risk her family forfeiting deals in the capital. Toshiko not only refused, she shared the note with his household, shaming Kenzo who fled the estate. Kenzo returned with a small army of brigands to slay everyone in the household and plant evidence to make it seem as if they were killed by a rival faction within the Ninjo clan.
The only witness to the carnage that survived was Toshiko’s cat Tama, who licked her blood and became a Kaibyo.
The Kaibyo’s vengeance was brutal, as if the vengeance of all Kaibyo. It started with warnings and portents. A bloodied go board materialized on Kenzo’s bed. Ledgers detailing his payments to the brigands wound up in the hands of Kenzo’s superiors in Kyoto who pretended not to know what they were lest they suffer by association, but they refused to have any further dealings with Kenzo or his clan. Kenzo began to hear the voice of Toshiko calling to him when he was alone. “You will lose everything, Kenzo. You will lose more than I have lost by far.”
Then the Kaibyo began to leave the bodies of all the brigands Kenzo hired at his door, just as a cat would leave dead birds on a doorstep. Each of them had their throats torn open. Each of them had a look of horror frozen on their dead faces.
Kenzo wrote a letter explaining the truth of his crimes and then tore his belly upon in seppuku…or he would have, but supernatural hands stole even that final honor from him. As he prepared to commit seppuku in front of the necessary audience, the room was suddenly plunged into darkness. When everyone could again, they found Kenzo dead, his body torn to ribbons as if he was but a small bird in the paws of an enormous cat, his head missing.
The Kaibyo returned to Moya Manor with Kenzo’s head as her trophy. She felt accomplished, but not satiated. She could smell Kenzo’s blood inside others. They had to be punished too.
One-by-one Kenzo’s family members met horrible fates. Some were driven to madness, or suicide, or simply vanished one night and never returned. When concerned citizens tried to burn down Moya Manor in an attempt to put an end to its Kaibyo, she used the spatial warping powers common to powerful ghosts and made the Mist Manor vanish into the mist.
It appeared throughout the Kyoto countryside as an Edo folktale–the ghost manor. If you were out in a thick fog and see a cat, don’t follow it. That’s the Kaibyo of Toshiko Ninjo either going out for a hunt or returning with the remains. A common story went that a traveler lost in a thick fog would see an old woman hunched over and go to her. As he got closer, he would hear a snapping sound. As he got even closer, he would hear a slurping sound. And when he close enough to see what the old woman was looking at, he would see that the old woman was the Kaibyo of Toshiko Ninjo cracking open bones and sucking their marrow.
The Kaibyo came to call herself Moya, for she understand that she was neither the woman Toshiko Ninjo nor her cat Tama. The cat knew nothing about and cared nothing for revenge, and Toshiko would never have carried revenge so far. She was something different, something that lived to hunt. She decided to call herself Moya, for Moya was a comforting word to her. Moya was where she slept. Moya was home. She, the mist, and the manor were one in solitary peace.
Moya haunted Kenzo’s bloodline for centuries. The bloodline was vast. It took her a long time to find them all. And in the early 19th century, she encountered the Sword Saint, who wounded her. It took her years to recover, and as she recovered the survivors of Kenzo’s bloodline married, had children, and produced a whole new generation.
But time gradually cooled her rage. She could not help but notice that the world was changing around her, indifferent to her anger, indifferent to her killings.
When the 20th century rolled around, Moya felt like a being frozen in time. She haunted men and women that dressed in styles that came from across the sea. She chased them through cities with paved roads and electric lights that dimmed the nighttime stars. The men that knew what she was, that called her Kaibyo, were no longer bald-headed monks but men called scientists who explained her as a “manesological union” instead of a yokai.
The awkwardness the felt in such an unfamiliar environment forced Moya into introspection.
What was she doing?
She was taking revenge. That’s what she was doing. It was her whole reason for being. It was why she was brought into exitance. But the revenge she took in the 19th century was so unlike the revenge two centuries ago. Then, her victims would exclaim “Ah! It is the ghost cat of Moya Manor! She has come to take revenge for Kenzo’s crimes!” She knew the reason. They knew the reason. Now her victims had no idea what she was or why he plagued them. They didn’t know who Kenzo was. They didn’t know who Toshiko was.
To the modern descendants of Kenzo Nakamura, she was chaotic phantom hurting them for no reason.
Eventually, she found she could not longer hate the descendants of Kenzo Nakamura. For a little time, she appeared to them simply to do something, simply to have a reason to leave Moya Manor, but then she stopped even doing that.
She slept in the mists, unsure why she was still alive, but knowing that she could not help but be alive. It is the great irony of ghosts that they are immortal.
Then, purpose introduced upon the depressing stillness of the manor in 1930.
When men armed with devices known as “gaeite candles,” devices that could either bind ghosts to hunks of metal called gaeite mined from burred Dyeus culture ruins or expel ghosts to the further reaches of the Astral, intruded upon Moya’s mists, they found her far deadlier than the prey they had previously hunted. Moya misdirected, misled, and mesmerized the men until they turned their gaeite candles upon themselves and burned.
Moya then found spirits and yokai seeking her and her mists out for protection. Frail wisps, little imps, and small kamis of thimbles and anthills and dolls all found sanctuary in the overgrown weeds of her court and the pitted walls of her palace.
Moya had finally found a new purpose–protecting spirits that could not protect themselves. Her manor became a wandering refuge, something the Imperial government sunk considerable time and resources into finding until the costs of the the Worlds War of the 1940’s forced them to abandon their hunt.
Moya is aware that though she protected many innocents during the 30’s and 40’s, her actions do not clean way the innocent blood on her hands. Since Moya made a name for herself among the yokai as a protector and the post-Imperial government was strongly interested in repairing relations with the yokai, Japan granted Moya amnesty for her crimes, but Moya knows well that nothing sanitizes sins, not even blood. She awaits the day a vengeful ghost much like herself arises to take revenge on her. As a ghost, she is immortal, but that doesn’t mean she can’t feel pain. That doesn’t mean she can’t be punished.
When they come for her, she won’t resist. As long as they keep her vengeance just to her and spare the spirits under her protection, she won’t even run.
Recently, the ghost of Katashi Nakamura, a 19th century paranormal investigator slain by Moya, rose to imprison her and punish her, but after seeing what Moya was like and what she meant to her spirits, he spared her, though he promised that if Moya ever returned to her old ways, he would be the first to stop her–for good.
Moya works closely with the Ishinomori School for Superheroes. Her manor contains a diverse range of Astral beings, perfect for an Astral studies class, and Moya likes seeing young people. After spending so much of her life alienated from the world outside her manor due to her slavish devotion to an old grudge, seeing young Ishinomori students makes Moya feel in tune with reality. Seeing them respectfully interact with the spirits under her protection brings Moya a profound sense of peace missing from all her years of vengeance.
To preserve the peace of Moya Manor and keep thrill-seekers and gawkers away, Moya uses her spatial warping powers to move the mansion around the Japanese countryside. She dissolves the manor of mist into mist, and where it next appears only Moya and a few trusted souls know.
If you’re ever walking in the countryside and find yourself lost in an impenetrable fog, you may stumble upon an old, overgrown manor whose stones are tangled in weeds, whos shadows hide furtive spirits. This manor is a refuge, and if you are polite, and if you respect the manor and its inhabitants, its guardian will accept you under her protection.
Blood Cat
“Hey, you smell weird!”
“Wow…you got some tasty blood! What have you been eating? I’m getting a kind of spicy flavor…oh, this is something you may want to know! Your blood’s given me the name of the girl that cheated off your math test! You wanna know their name?”
15 years ago, 3 year old Yua Sato and her family were slain in a terrorist attack by the Neo Darklight syndicate. They were three of sixty victims killed by cybernetic monsters before superheroes could respond. During the attack, Yua had just enough time to hide her kitten Aka, “Red,” named so because of her rusty colored fur, under a pile of rubble.
From a slit in the rubble, Aka watched the commotion and heard the sounds of metal claws ripping flesh and comprehended nothing. She mewed, for she was scared and confused and wanted comfort, but comfort did not come. When things were silent and still, Aka wiggled her way out of the rubble and found Yua–still, unmoving, cold. The warmest thing was the red liquid that pooled around her, and thirsty and cold, Aka lapped the liquid.
She licked Yua’s blood, and the two were combined, transformed.
Aka stood on her hind legs. She grew, expanded, took the form of a small girl stained with blood.
She crawled to the two beings she recognized as providers, protectors, and nuzzled them. She willed for them to move, to say something. She cried for them to stir. They did not.
She tasted their blood and knew for the last time the love they had for her.
And she knew who had killed them.
The blood told her everything.
She sobbed, alone among the bodies, but just as superheroes arrived she vanished, for she knew what she had to do. She knew, in the same way Aka knew that she had to pounce upon and bite small creatures, that there were people she had to kill.
Taking the name Akane, which meant “deep red,” as in the bloodlust that now constituted her being, the newly formed being set out out to avenge herself. The need for revenge often generates a powerful ghost, the Eternal Lady being an example, and Akane was no exception. She sensed her killers. Even miles away, they burned like hot embers in her mind. She discovered a hidden Neo Darklight base and attacked–but was stopped before she could take a single life by Moya.
Moya had felt Akane’s creation. She had felt her rage and anger because they were the same rage and anger that burned within her being all those many years ago. She had arrived to prevent Akane from taking a life–not for the sake of the Neo Darklight members but for Akane’s sake. She knew that if Akane indulged her bloodlust, she would be consumed by it, as she had been.
Moya and Akane’s first meeting was a confrontation. The older, wiser, more powerful Kaibyo scooped Akane up in her arms and held her. Even as Akane bit and scratched at her, she held her, taking her pain as her own, until the kitten was exhausted and fell asleep in her arms. She then, with a wave of her hand, subdued the entire group of Neo Darklight thugs with psychic snares.
Akane grew to know Moya as “grandmother,” and Moya grew to know Akane as “granddaughter,” though many generations separate them. Moya raised Akane and taught her all the tricks she had learned in her many years of existence–psychic snares, shapeshifting, illusion casting, spatial warping, hypnotism, and more. Everything Moya knew she taught to Akane, but above all she taught Akane not to yield to the impulse for vengeance. She taught Akane to seek justice over vengeance, to seek an ideal that was larger and more complex than vengeance.
When Akane became a young woman, Moya enrolled her in Ishinomori so she could learn how to be a heroine of justice and develop the reputation Moya never did, and never can with the innocent blood on her hands.
Akane throws the entirety of her being into being a superheroine. She is outgoing, exuberant, and friendly. Moya notes with pride that Akane is everything she herself is not. But in some cases Akane is perhaps, too friendly.
Having grown up among yokai and ghosts, Akane knows little about the social graces of mankind and cares even less. She eats with her hands–and drinks with her hands too. A brush has never touched her hair and it contains more than just mats. She eats her food raw–her taste are not dissimilar from that of a Thule, and in fact, she quite likes Thule cuisine–chilled leviathan eyes being her favorite. She thinks nothing of reaching a hand into a stream, grabbing a fish, and eating it in front of people. She likes to sniff people–and lick them.
As Akane grew up, her aunt Ichika Sato has tried to be apart of her life. A normal woman, a basic without any special powers, Ichika Sato makes a humble living as a florist. She had, and still has, a fear of yokai and spirits, but she braves Moya Manor time and time again to visit her niece.
Ichika and Akane have never seen eye-to-eye. To Ichika, Akane is still Yua, still the three-year old daughter of her brother. She tries to get Akane to clean up, wear modern clothes, hide her ears, and socialize with girls that aren’t ghost or kitstune or tengu. She tries to get Akane to be the girl Yua would have been. But to Akane, Ichika is the annoying lady that keeps chasing her with a hairbrush.
Ichika respects Moya. She understands that Moya helped Akane in a way no other person could. And Moya respects Ichika. She respects her courage, and though she doesn’t think that Akane will ever be the kind of niece Ichika wants, she appreciates her expanding Akane’s horizons. The world is more than yokai, spirits, and Moya Manor, and Moya wants Akane to experience the world in full.
With Akane’s social skills, or lack thereof, she became one of Ishinomori’s “misfit girls” along with Graveborn, Blood Witch, and Stranger 3. She particularly gets along with Graveborn, as Graveborn understands yokai and spirits. Gravceborn often visits Moya Manor. Akane envies the seeming ease with which Graveborn navigates the world of the spirits and the world of man.
Akane wishes to be a heroine of justice with all her heart. Though she dislikes academics, she keeps her grades up to stay at Ishinomori so that she can become the heroine she dreams of being. It is through her hard work and dedication that Akane was able to develop an incredible skill with the help of her grandmother, Graveborn, Blood Witch, and Ishinomori’s head of manesology Dr. Kitaro Nozawa: she can lick a person’s blood–any person’s blood–and taste their soul.
With just a lick of a person’s blood, she can taste their soul and learn their most intimate secrets–what they remember, what they heard, and what they saw. With the person of a victim or their next of kin, she can lick their blood and discover exactly who hurt them–even if they hurt them indirectly. And what’s more, she’ll know exactly where they’re hiding. Theoretically, Akane can do more than taste a person’s soul–she can swallow their soul through just a taste of blood, absorbing their soul into her own, but this is something she would never do. On occasion, she has licked a person’s blood while fighting them, and in these cases, she does not lick, she bites, and the result is acute pain followed by unconsciousness as the opponent’s soul “jumps” from its body in a low-grade form of odic shock. This is a move Akane doesn’t use in sparring unless her opponent knows exactly what they’re in for.
Though she likes to be in the thick of battle, Akane has sometimes done more good staying out of fights. The Tokyo Lighthouse Center, The Lighthouse organization being the Japanese version of the Statesmen Organization, keeps blood samples of captured supervillains on file. In the case a captured supervillain breaks out, Akane can bite their blood to quickly subdue them for other superheroes to capture. She’s done it before, and likely will again.
Akane has licked the blood of several victims and personally avenged them in the name of justice, though in some circumstances she’s been forced to stand down and let veteran superheroes apprehend the threat. There are powerful supervillains in Japan, and some are more powerful than Akane, though its a fact she is loathe to acknowledge. Sometimes, especially when Neo Darklight is involved, she is partnered with Gentleman Shadow, who is an expert on the organization. Gentleman Shadow and Akane don’t get along. He keeps trying to tell her what to do as if she was one of his robotic assistants and Akane hates being told what to do, especially on a hunt. It’s the cat in her. She longs to hunt alone. She doesn’t like working in teams and doesn’t perform well in teams, which has led to her ERC grades to suffer. Akane has to learn to work with others. Japanese superhero culture pushes collectivism far more than America’s. A superheroine doesn’t “hunt alone” unless she’s an established veteran or has the permission of an established veteran. In Akane’s case, she gets persmission from Moya, who is seen as equal to a superheroine by the community.
It is for blood licking power that she takes the supername Ketsueki Neko or “Blood Cat.” Ketsueki Neko can often be found at the Tokyo Lighthouse Center, where she is given blood samples to taste for various cases, Ishinomori’s shrine to Susanoo, where she tries to ambush and prank the Shisha Twins, particularly Rol, because she can’t stand her stuffy, formal demeanor, and Moya Mansion where she can often be found curled up on the floor napping near her grandma.
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