"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 in his urge to laugh out loud.
"Alright we have to kill as many pus- I mean cats as possible" Said Mike with a stutter.
"Ok…" Replied Abhi.
Round one starts…
(Mike uses the mic to speak)
Yellow Cat Mike: "Hello there my fellow cats"
(Another Person speaks out from 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 looks back at Abhi to see him speechless.
Yellow Cat Mike: ... I'm gonna kill you first
Looking a bit embarrassed Mike said. "I didn't lose my aura for you did I?"
"What?" Asked Abhi. "I was just a bit startled to see that device make a sound, I have never seen such a big and advanced phone before, even the one used for the president's speech was smaller" He continued.
"Oh…alright! That's called a speaker and this is a mic by the way." Mike said slowly while pointing at the two devices one by one.
Red Cat: Huh someone with you?
Yellow Cat Mike: Don't worry about it.
Another Cat jumps into the conversation.
Orange Cat: Well it better not be another student, your goofy ass didn't forget that we made a deal about keeping these games secret did you?
Yellow cat Mike: Of Course not.
"..." Abhi looks at Mike with droopy eyes of judgment.
"By the way sir, why do these people care so much about the school?" Asked Abhi.
…
…
…
Red Cat: YOU RAT YOU BROUGHT A STUDENT HERE DIDN'T YOU? YOU FU-
(Mike mutes the voice chat and his mic)
"Well they are all our school staff, you'll meet them soon. The soon-to-be-dead, Red Pus- I mean Red Cat is Mr Ben, the math teacher and the Orange Cat is Ms Dixie the art teacher and finally the Grey Cat is Anita the science, These guys are calmer than they appear, trust me"
"Alright! Everything makes more sense now"
Tringgg!
"Ok, so that's the bell for the killing phases to start, all our mics are muted now." Said Mike while getting his focus back on the game.
"Now we need to use the first step of the "acting method". " Mike continued
"acting method?" Asked Abhi with an eyebrow raised.
"Yes, with this method you act like the people you want to blend in with to understand them the best and really get into the role." Said Mike calmly.
"Hmm, I might have heard of a similar role, did you just reverse "Method Acting" to come up with this?" Asked Abhi with a perplexed look.
"Uhm no I didn't… Anyways, the meaning of this first step is to truly act like a generic demographic. Like right now I am going to mimic the activities and tasks of an NPC ahh cat player even tho my only goal is to kill everyone like a rat." Mike explained.
While travelling through the game map Mike came across a room with a cotton ball at its centre
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"Now see, as a rat imposter I don't really need to do anything here. But I will go play with that cotton ball as not only will this help me understand a cat better, but in the off chance that someone is secretly observing me through cams I can essentially clear any suspicions of me about not being a cat." Said Mike.
"That's quite smart, but what is 'cams'?" Asked Abhi Curiously.
"Cams basically mean security cameras, They are cameras placed in certain places of the map, a player needs to go to a specific room in the game to access these cameras and see the game through them." Mike then points at the corner of the room in real life. "Like see the desktop screens there, the manager can see this entire facility using different security cameras in that little mini room."
"Very interesting" replied Abhi with a hint of curiosity in his eyes.
Just as he said that the 3 other cats walked across the cotton ballroom one by one, and they saw Mike's yellow cat avatar "playing" with the cotton ball. After that the Red Cat and the Orange Cat went to the right side of the map whereas the third The Grey Cat went to the left.
Seeing this Mike said to Abhi, "Ohh boy this feels like our lucky day, as an opportunity has met our preparations haha."
"What do you mean by that?" Asked Abhi.
"You'll see soon enough." Replied Mike.
"Also, why are you not just killing everyone as soon as possible?" Asked Abhi.
"There is a cooldown timer for killing." Replied Mike
Mike's Yellow Cat Avatar then went to the left side of the map, and into the Grey Cat's room, acting as if he was doing general Cat tasks while brushing past her. He then went back to the cotton ball room which acted as an intersection between the left and right hemispheres of the map, and changed his fur color to Grey.
"Whoa, what? How did you change your Cat's colour?" Asked Abhi in amazement with his mouth wide open.
"Hehehe, When you touch another character as an imposter you get the ability to temporarily shapeshift into their character, the true meaning of a rat.
But when you shapeshift into another cat you can't kill anyone, henceforth you have to be in your own skin for a kill.
This brings us to the 2nd step of the acting method, After you mimic the general activities of a group, you would be accepted as a potential candidate for said group, but to truly be a member you need a matching personality to the group.
Just general mimicking isn't going to cut it when you truly have to immerse with other people, So take it a step further and imitate a fellow group member to grasp the community members' personalities and blend in better." Mike said with a smug attitude and a charlatan's tone.
"Very informative…" Abhi replied in amazement.
"Now let me COOK!" Said Mike. He then turned his Cat's colour back to a bright Yellow and went to hide behind the Right Hemisphere's entrance.
"Oh, are these Cats also supposed to work in the kitchen? Also, why did you change back to the original colour, isn't that counterproductive" Asked Abhi unironically.
"Nuh uh we cook in a different way, And for the second question's answer we get to the 3rd point of the acting meth-" 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 slows 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 at the centre of the next room that the Yellow cat was previously playing with. With increasing heartbeats and a sense of anxiety, The Red Cat decides to play it safe. In order to get a better view of the room The Red Cat subtly tries 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 his will to resist.
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 so open so wide its cheeks had torn apart following the lining of the lips, The Red Cat could only see its insides when looking from the front, It's face hand essentially turned into a circle of its insides and the teeth acted as an outline to this fleshy circle. Inside this monstrous skin suit, Yellow Cat's mouth sat a red-eyed Rat, his feet tightly holding onto the 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 who could catch this Rat red-handed so that his death wouldn't be meaningless, his death could lead to justice being served to his killer, letting his soul rest in peace. But when he moved his eyes back to his attacker he saw the Bright Yellow fur on the monster fade. Turning into a dull 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."
.....