"The undisputed best way to understand and blend in with cats is to… BECOME a cat!" Mike said with a huge grin on his face.

Abhi held back his urge to laugh out loud.

"Alright, we have to eliminate as many puss– I mean, cats— as possible," Mike stammered.

"Okay…" Abhi replied.

Round one starts…

[Mike has joined the voice chat.]

Abhi excitedly read the words on the screen

**Yellow Cat Mike:** "Hello there, my fellow cats!"

(Another person speaks through the speakers.)

**Red Cat:** "Sup loser? Finally found some time off your 'special research,' huh? How do you not get annoyed handling these kids for so long without breaks, you freak?"

Mike subtly glanced back at Abhi, who looked speechless.

**Yellow Cat Mike:** "I'm going to take you out first."

Looking a bit embarrassed, Mike added, "I didn’t lose my aura for you, did I?"

"What?" Abhi asked. "I was just a bit startled to see that device make a sound. I've never seen such a big and advanced phone before; even the one used for the president's speech was smaller."

"Oh… alright! That’s called a speaker, and this is a mic, by the way," Mike said slowly, pointing to the two devices one by one.

**Red Cat:** "Huh, someone with you?"

**Yellow Cat Mike:** "Don't worry about it."

Another cat jumped into the conversation.

**Orange Cat:** "Well, it better not be another student. Your goofy self didn’t forget that we made a deal about keeping these games secret from everyone in the school, did you?"

**Yellow Cat Mike:** "Of course not."

Abhi looked at Mike with droopy eyes of judgment.

"By the way, sir, why do these people care so much about the school?" Abhi asked.

…

…

…

**Red Cat:** "YOU RAT! YOU BROUGHT A STUDENT HERE, DIDN'T YOU? YOU FU—"

(Mike mutes the voice chat and his mic.)

After releasing a deep sigh he turns to Abhi "Well, they are all staff from our school, and you'll meet them soon. The soon-to-be-dead Red Cat is Mr. Ben, the math teacher; the Orange Cat is Ms. Dixie, the art teacher; and finally, the Grey Cat is Anita, the science teacher. They are calmer than they appear, trust me."

"Alright! Everything makes more sense now," Abhi hurriedly replied.

*Tringgg!*

"Okay, that’s the bell for the killing phase to start. All our mics are muted now," Mike said, refocusing on the game.

"Now we need to use the first step of the 'acting method,'" Mike continued.

"'Acting method?'" Abhi asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, with this method, you act like the people you want to blend in with to understand them best and really get into the role," Mike explained calmly.

"Hmm, I might have heard of a similar concept. Did you just reverse 'Method Acting' to come up with this?" Abhi asked, looking perplexed.

"Uh, no, I didn’t… Anyway, the meaning of this first step of the ‘Acting Method’ is to truly act like the generic demographic. Like right now, I am going to mimic the activities and tasks of a cat NPC, even though my only goal and task is to eliminate everyone like a nasty, blood-thirsty rat," Mike explained.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

While navigating the game map, Mike came across a room with a cotton ball at its centre.

"Now see, as a rat imposter, I don't really need to do anything here. But I will go play with that cotton ball; not only will this help me understand a cat better, but in case someone is secretly observing me through cams, I can clear any suspicions about not being a cat," Mike said.

"That's quite smart, but what are 'cams'?" Abhi asked curiously.

"Cams basically mean security cameras. They are placed in certain areas of the map, and a player needs to go to a specific ‘Security Room’ in the game to access them and see the game through their perspective." Mike then pointed at the corner of the room in real life. "Like, see those desktop screens there? The manager can monitor the entire facility using different security cameras from that little mini room."

"Very interesting," replied Abhi, a hint of curiosity in his eyes. Just then, three other cats walked across the cotton ballroom one by one, and they spotted Mike's yellow cat avatar "playing" with a cotton ball. After that, the Red Cat and the Orange Cat went to the right side of the map, while the third, the Grey Cat, went to the left.

Seeing this, Mike said to Abhi, "Oh boy, this feels like our lucky day. An opportunity has met our preparations, haha."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Abhi.

"You'll see soon enough," replied Mike.

"Also, why don't you just eliminate everyone as quickly as possible?" Abhi inquired.

"There is a cooldown timer for kills, it wouldn’t be fun if I could just instantly kill everyone would it" Mike explained with the tone of an average, positively condescending teacher.

Mike's yellow cat avatar then moved to the left side of the map and entered the Grey Cat's room, pretending to do general cat tasks as he brushed past her. He then returned to the cotton ballroom, which acted as an intersection between the left and right parts of the map, and changed his fur colour to grey.

"Whoa, what? How did you change your cat's colour?" Abhi asked in amazement, his mouth wide open.

"Hehehe. When you touch another character as an imposter, you gain the ability to temporarily shapeshift into their character. That's the true meaning of being a 'rat.' However, when you shapeshift into another cat, you can't eliminate anyone. So, to make a kill, you have to be in your own skin.

This brings us to the second step of the acting method: after you mimic the general activities of a group, you'll be accepted as a potential member of the group. Keyword ‘potential’, to truly fit in, you need a matching personality with the group. Just general mimicking won't cut it; you must get deeper into the character by imitating a fellow group member to understand their personalities and blend in better," Mike said with a smug attitude and a charlatan's tone.

"Very informative..." Abhi replied, still amazed.

"Now let me COOK!" Mike exclaimed. He then changed his cat's colour back to bright yellow and hid behind the entrance to the right hemisphere.

"Oh, are these cats also supposed to work in the kitchen? And why did you change back to your original colour? Isn't that counterproductive?" Abhi asked, unironically.

"Nuh-uh, we cook in a different way. As for your second question, that leads us to the third point of the acting method—" Mike suddenly stopped talking.

///

The Red Cat Ben came out of his room and started slowly walking towards the intersecting cotton ballroom to complete his remaining tasks on the opposite sides.

Tap.

Tap…

Tap...

Sensing something, the Red Cat slowed down its pace. When it got to the intersection's right entrance it suddenly stopped looking at the eerily silent environment. Standing at the corner of the entrance, it glanced at the mangled cotton ball highlighted by the golden spotlight from the ceiling in the next room, where the Yellow cat had previously been playing with it. With each step he took forward, The player behind The Red Cat—Ben felt an increasing rate of heartbeats and a sense of anxiety, The Red Cat decided to play it safe. In order to get a better view of the room The Red Cat subtly tried to peek around the cotton ballroom's right entrance and…

Slash!

A rusty blade comes swinging from the right and cuts The Red Cat's neck a third of the way through, thick viscous blood starts pouring out mottling the blade and the ground. The cat tries his hardest to scream, but the blade twists and turns deepening the wound, cutting through his vocal cords, soon the blood-stained white vertebrae in the neck becomes visible.

The blade starts to move back and forth, Its rusted uneven edge ripping the fibery nerves in the Red Cat's neck. The Red Cat backs off and tries to hold his own falling head up with his hands while trying to run, but trips and falls in his own blood, He still tries to grasp at the thinning hope and steps up trying his best to escape but his attempt to get up again, fails.

The Red Cat realises that the entire right half of his body has gone limp, he even stopped feeling most of that side's pain, and with that came a hard sense of losing, losing his will to resist the impending doom.

In his last moments, he looks back in horror, agony and rage at the killer behind the sword. But what he finds shocks him, The sword came out of another Bright Yellow coloured Cat's mouth, a Mouth open so wide—that its cheeks had torn apart following the lining of the lips, The Red Cat could only see its insides when looking from the front. Its face had essentially turned into a circle, its insides being the fleshy fill and the teeth acting as an outline. Inside this monstrous skin suit—Yellow Cat's mouth sat a red-eyed Rat, his feet tightly holding onto the inside throat of the wide open mouth, and in his hands; the sword that was embedded in the Red Cat's neck.

In the last few moments before the light in the Red Cat's eyes was replaced by eternal darkness, he saw a 'shadow' of hope. A fellow innocent Cat friend was coming from the right hemisphere, she could catch this Rat red-handed so that The Red Cat’s death wouldn't be meaningless, his death could lead to justice being served to his killer, letting his soul rest in peace. But suddenly he felt the blade embedded in his neck quickly retract. When he moved his eyes back to face his attacker, what he saw immortalized sorrow in his last moment. He saw the Bright Yellowish-Golden fur on the monster fade… Turning into a dull and harrowing Grey…

Suddenly, Mike speaks again, but this time in a colder tone;

"The 3rd Point of the acting method: Never Forget who you truly are."

..........