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The second chapter of "Rebirth," in which Kaneda gives the kitten a bath.

DISCLAIMER: AKIRA and all of its characters are created by Katsuhiro Otomo; I'm just borrowing them for fun.

Words: 2,360

Kaneda stepped inside, trying his best to close it as softly as possible. He had a nasty habit of slamming doors, and he didn’t want to startle the already shaken kitten in his arms. The chronically squeaky hinges and his occupied arms made this a challenge, but he managed to squeeze himself inside while keeping the noise to a minimum.

For a moment, he considered what he should do first while he had the cat with him. She was bound to be filthy, considering that she had been left out in the streets for god knows how long. A bath would probably be a good place to start. Yeah, it’d be pretty hard for him to screw up a bath.

...He didn’t have any cat shampoo, though. She wasn’t completely caked in dirt or anything, though, so he figured they’d be alright with just water.

He carried the trembling little bundle into the bathroom, then closed the door and set her down, keeping an eye out to make sure she didn’t wander too far. The bathtub that doubled as a shower was probably the cleanest part of the entire apartment, purely from lack of use. In fact, the whole space was so much cleaner than everything else in the once-apartment that it almost seemed as sterile as a hospital by comparison. Kaneda had never much liked hospitals, yet something about it was calming, in a way. It was something that he had managed to keep neat and clean, even if only by some sort of accident.

He settled on the floor, legs crossed over each other. He briefly wondered what he would have done had he found the kitten when the city was still without running water. He supposed he could have used the bottled water, though there might not have been enough.

He sighed, remembering the first hot shower that he had taken in almost two months. It had felt like heaven, the most euphoria he had allowed himself to feel since the city had become, somehow, even more hellish than before. Since he had found himself trapped in it in a way that was, somehow, even more tightly binding. Barely anyone in, no one out.

As he was recalling this, he ran a hand through his hair, realizing that it could do with a washing of its own, as well as a cut - it was getting a bit long for his comfort. It wasn’t too big of a difference from before everything went down, but he wouldn’t have to try too hard in order to pull it into a small ponytail, if he so wished. Yeah, he had to fix that.

First things first, though: wash the cat.

He plugged the drain and let a small amount of water fall into the tub from the wide, shiny faucet. The steady, thundering sound of the water hitting the bottom of the tub made his head buzz. It felt like it was putting a layer of TV static over his brain, but somehow also brought him further into the moment. The cold edge of the tub pressing into his chest, the steadily warming water falling into his hand; the bright, hot lights that were starting to give him a headache. He’d turn them off, but he figured that he needed to be able to see to properly bathe the kitten.

The buzzing quickly turned to sharp, stabbing pains, consistently pressing into his temples and behind his eyes; like the beat of little wings by his ears turning to a thousand stingers pressing into his head.

Thankfully, she wouldn’t need all that much water, being her size - plus, he didn’t want to use up too much of it, as the whole city’s supply was very limited. Those who were left were generally encouraged to use it as sparingly as possible.

It didn’t take too long for the tub to be filled up to a satisfactory level. He tried to contain his haste as he shut the water off.

He placed the kitten inside the tub as gently as possible. As expected, she almost instantly started to cry and tried to escape. She tried to jump out and claw at the sides of the tub, but with Kaneda still holding her down, she found herself unable to do any such thing. He chuckled a little and apologized to her softly, as if she could possibly understand what he meant.

“Sorry, you’re probably real’ confused, huh? Sad to say, this part’s gotta happen at some point.” Another tiny, raspy cry in response. “Yeah, I’m not super stoked, either. Don’t worry, though, this shouldn’t take too long.”

She still cried and yowled, but just hearing his voice seemed to calm her down, if only a small amount. Huh. Weird. Whatever, there was no point in dwelling on it (and there was most certainly no point in dwelling on the sunny feeling he got in his chest at the thought that his words or his mere presence might have been comforting. Nope).

He took a recently cleaned cup that he usually used to rinse out his mouth and scooped some of the bathwater into it so that it was about half-way filled. He poured it over her, being careful to avoid her face. He felt a little twinge of amused guilt when she started crying with brand new volition. After making sure she was properly and thoroughly soaked, he took a rag and dipped it into the cup, starting to scrub her fur clean as softly as he could while still actually cleaning her.

This went on for a few minutes (with some rinsing in between to make sure the scrubbed off dirt didn’t decide to stick around) until she looked... well, her fur hadn’t suddenly changed color or anything, but the difference was instantly recognizable. She was already doing better.

He picked her up and wrapped her in a towel. As he gently rubbed her fur to get it dry, he got to thinking once more. This felt... nice. Here in his arms was someone who depended on him, who needed him in order to flourish.

Now, Kaneda wouldn’t exactly describe himself as someone with any sort of nurturing instincts (if you asked a few select people who knew him, they might disagree to some degree, but they’d never say that to his face). He had to admit, though... it did feel nice to be so strongly needed, and to be responsible for the growth and survival of another being, even if it was only temporarily.

...Ah, right. Where exactly was this cat going to go? He didn’t know anyone who had enough time or resources to take care of an animal of any kind, even in passing. He definitely couldn’t just put her back out on the streets, that would quite possibly be even crueller than having never taken her in at all. Maybe one of the animal shelters...? Ahh, but pretty much every single one for miles out was so packed, since there was almost no one who could or even wanted to take in an animal.

There was just too much that everyone had to do, and not enough that they could offer to someone who needed consistent nurturing and attention. Too many problems and not enough solutions to add another one to the pile.

...Maybe he could just keep her then? He wasn’t an idiot - he knew he wasn’t any better off than anyone else around there, but other people managed to make it work, even now, so why couldn’t he try? He didn’t have any sort of prior experience with this kind of thing, but there were people he could ask. Hell, he wasn’t the fastest reader, but he wasn’t illiterate. He could read a book on the subject, if there were any to be found in what was left of Neo-Tokyo’s libraries.

Besides, he’d missed having company. Understandably, everyone was busy nowadays, so meetups were always either brief or strictly business-related. He didn’t dare complain though, even in his thoughts. He knew better than anyone else just how little control any of them had over their situation. The only way out of it would be to just leave, but that simply wasn’t an option.

The city was being kept on some sort of lockdown; probably to keep the news of what had happened as contained as possible, at least before a sufficient cover story was concocted. Really, though, there was no point in it. Generally, the people that were still there didn’t really have anything anywhere else. No friends, no family, not even any sort of future prospects that could be found anywhere but where they already were.

Rebuilding a once-bustling and now completely obliterated city into something at least liveable was hard, yet somehow simply starting a new life somewhere else seemed infinitely harder. Hell, it probably would be; Neo-Tokyo hadn’t exactly been a normal city, even before the recent explosion. Adapting to life in a place where the rules actually mattered to the larger population would be difficult for those who had never known any such thing, to say the least.

Many of the city's natives had given up on any sort of normal future before they even started middle school. The adults barely tried to discourage it. Everyone knew that most of Neo-Tokyo’s youth didn’t have any sort of bright future ahead of them. Many of their high schools had downright abysmal graduation rates, and there were only a handful of local universities. Kids knew practically from the start that the key to becoming much of anything was to get out, and that had been something of an impossibility for as long as Kaneda could remember.

That didn’t mean that they all turned to rebellion and delinquency; some chose to simply live however they could manage. Entering the workforce early, giving up any hope of something better, something more. He had always hated the idea of that, yet he had never been much of a dreamer, either. He had known that he wasn’t going anywhere, had known that he was predestined to amount to nothing in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Instead, he had chosen to fade away screaming. To go down in a pointless fight. If he was going to stay there for the rest of his life, if he was going to die a nobody in a city full of nobodies, he had figured that he might as well have been a nobody that had had fun while he was there. A nobody that a few other nobodies had taken the time to know. A nobody that some of those other nobodies had maybe even looked up to.

If he was to be forgotten long before his generation was done for, he might as well make enough noise to be dwelled on for a moment before he finally faded.

Somehow, though, he had miraculously survived several months past what he had thought would be his due date. He was to be 17 in less than a year. In less than a year, he would officially have been around for longer than he had ever thought he would be. Longer than he had wanted to be.

Why him?

The kitten started squirming, abruptly reminding him that he had stopped drying her. Yeah, he probably shouldn’t unpack all of that while he still had a job to do. Maybe he shouldn’t ever. God, he really was thinking too much.

In any case, the best option for both the kitten and himself seemed to be each other. The kitten needed someone to take care of it, and he needed someone (or something, he supposed) to break the lonely cycle he had been going through day by day (and maybe something to depend on him as much as he depended on it).

He didn’t know much about cats (or any animal, for that matter). He did know that it would be a big commitment to decide to take this one in. She would need a lot of necessities that could be hard to procure. But, well, he figured, he had braved everything else that had been thrown at him so far and come out the other side, for better or for worse. What was a little pet care compared to all of that?

Affection would obviously be necessary too, but looking into the big eyes of the little survivor in his arms, Kaneda knew that would be no challenge.

...Jesus, when did he get so sappy? This cat would make his rapid descent into softness even hastier.

In all honesty, though, he was okay with that. She couldn’t read his mind, but as the kitten started to purr, it felt like some sort of signal that she knew, in a way, and that she was okay with it too. It was almost as if she was thanking him. The thought was enough to earn another smile as he stroked her fur.

The road ahead wouldn’t be easy (really, when had it ever been?), but at that moment, he decided to just enjoy the moment. For just a moment, nothing outside of that bathroom mattered. Nothing and no one else. Not his past mistakes, not the ghosts of those he held dear, not all of the people still surviving and fighting, finding their own way - living.

It didn’t matter who he was, what he had done and failed to do, what he had said, and what he would and wouldn’t do in the future. At that moment, he was just a teenage boy, sitting on the bathroom floor and drying off his cat, and she was just that. A cat. Not a survivor, not a mystery, not a single thing but what she was. Neither of them were, or needed to be. They didn’t have to be important. They didn’t have to be brave, or strong, or anything else that they had had to be before. They just had to be, and that was enough.

To Be Continued...