Valkyrie's Lament

Chapter 32

Gate #6- Day 1 (part II)

A horrifying screech erupted from the giant’s mouth, causing Silver to cover her ears in pain. She fell to her knees, trying to block the sound. Windows shattered as the monster inside the smoke appeared.

It was a four story high gray rat monster that was horribly deformed. With its overlarge snout and vicious claws it tore through the building, causing it to crumble onto the ground. Sirens blasted through the streets as the police arrived on the scene. They rushed out from their cars and started to shoot at the monster before them.

Even still, the rat monster didn’t waver from the shots and continued to destroy the surrounding buildings around them. A truck full of cat swats came rushing out with guns and started to shoot at the monster around them.

Chaos was everywhere the rat monster took a step. People died from either the building or from the rampaging monster. Screams could be heard echoing through the city walls.

Silver got up and steadied her feet and watched the terror unfold. Every time the rat monster attacked, more and more people died.

It wasn’t until a muscular looking cat that reminded Silver of a fireman swung his axe, cutting through the skin of the monster. A foot was viciously cut off, causing the monster to fall to the side like a tree. With a large crash, the ground shook with vigor.

“Quickly kill it now when it’s down!” The fireman jumped onto of the monster and started to swing his axe in rapid succession. Blood spurted everywhere, causing the fireman to be doused in red.

Other police cats jump into the fight, and finally subduing the monster. A loud thunk could be heard as the head of the rat was hacked off.

Silver grimaced at the sound and couldn’t help but wonder if this was a recurring event. She wondered where such a hideous monster had come from and hope that she would not have to meet such monster again. She watched the clean up of the monster underway. Police and the firemen were moving around with synchronization as they cleared out the mess that the monster had created.

It was only a moment later that Silver noticed a fight ensue not even a block away from the downed monster. What she saw made her eyes become a slit. She noticed that the two people that were fighting were humans. One of them had on a black vest who struggled to overpower the other person for their patch.

Voices of alarm could be heard from the cat police as they shouted towards the two to stand down and disperse, but the two did not stop. They fought even more viciously towards each other, trying to either stop the other from getting the patch or taking it.

From the scene, she could tell that the fight was more in favor with the person with the black rabbit ears. He punched the man on the ground and ripped off the patch from his chest. In that moment, the role was reversed. The man on the ground had changed to a black vest with rabbit ears and tails, while the man who stole the ball had changed to a mouse with a grey colored vest.

In that moment, the cat police whistled loudly and pointed towards the two. The man on the ground was knocked out unconscious on the ground, while the man with the mouse ear tried to run away.

“We got a mouse on the loose!” The police shouted in hurry. The raised up their gun and shot towards the man. A couple of bullets hit its mark, leaving behind a bloodied shoulder.

“Quickly stop him! We can’t let such creature run wild or they’ll contaminate the city!”

The police all sprung forward and glomped onto the man that was trying to run away. They struggled at first, but eventually subdued him into the ground, and handcuffed him.

“What are you doing!? I did nothing wrong!” The man tried his best to get out from being taken away to the jail.

“Shut up you infidel!” With a smack the man was knocked forward, causing him to stumble. “We don’t allow dirty rats to just come waltzing through our clean streets.”

With a shove, the man was pushed into the police car, while the other were surrounding the man on the ground. They helped him up and instead gave him a lot more respect, when he woke up from the daze he was confused on what was going on.

“Sir,” the police cats bowed. “We caught the criminal. Would you like us to take you back to your estate?”

The man glanced at the police flustered not understanding what was happening.

“Do you need us to do anything for you?”

When they said that, the man came out of his stupor. His voice became softer, making it difficult to hear.

Silver watched attentively at what was going on for some time. It seemed that the man with the rabbit ear was ordering around all the other cats to search for something, but in her mind she guessed that he was sending out the cats to look for them.

This made Silver realized how much more dangerous being “it” was; at the same time, stealing from another player had a heavy consequence. Even still, she was glad that she was up here on top of the building, and realized the situation at hand. She knew now that it would actually be more of a problem now that the police were on alert.

This game was already difficult enough, but so far there were no crystals that she could find that will help supplement her powers for the next six days. She only had a couple red crystal and one orange crystal left from the previous game, making it that much more precious for later use when necessary. She didn’t know when the next time she will have to gain another to help her get stronger and survive the games ahead.

She did have a thought that there is a possibility to have crystals in the cat people, but the thought of killing them was not something Silver liked. If she remembered correctly the humanoid and undead types were the ones that didn’t have crystals in their hearts or brain. It was usually the monster types that did.

When the man with the rabbit ear turned around and looked up, Silver quickly ducked down. What amazed her was the sharp sense an “it” player had, even though she didn’t make a single sound.

She peeked upwards and started to move slowly backwards. If she stay up here too long, she feared that she would be found out by the “it” player. With quiet steps, she moved but was suddenly stopped by an unknown force that stood behind her.

Startled she twirled around and punched the person who blocked her way. Her hands made contact with soft tissue, causing the person to stumble backwards and hit the metal door.

“Ugh!” A sound of pain escaped out of the person’s mouth.

Silver was surprised to hear a very familiar voice and saw a crumpled body that laid down on the floor: It was Ronald with his hands on his stomach from Silver’s attack.

“Ronald?” Silver stopped herself before she punched him a second time.

“S-Silver.” He coughed.

“What are you doing up here?”

Silver slowly put down her guard.

“I came up to check the layout. I didn’t expect you to be up here.”

“Well, next time don’t sneak up on your allies. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“I’m sorry.” Ronald huffed and shakily got up.

“It’s fine.” Silver crossed her arms and leaned onto one side. “What happened to Ren and Salphie? I thought you guys went together.”

“We ran into a couple troubles, and we had to split.”

“Such as?”

“It player. We thought we had a better chance of not getting caught by splitting up and somehow we all went our separate ways.” Ronald frowned. “The problem that arose is that I believe the ‘it’ player went after Salphie, thinking that she was an easy target.” Ronald was uncomfortably shifting from one leg to another. The thought of his friends being tagged wasn’t something that he looked forward too. “I’m worried that she might become the next ‘it’ before the day is over.”

“All we can do now is hope that she doesn’t get tagged before the night ends.” Silver could see the worry on Ronald’s face.

“Yea, but she is a very important person. You don’t understand how much her future seeing ability could help us out.”

“I know what you mean, but what do you want me do about it? We’re in a city, finding her will be like a needle in a haystack right now. Plus from my guess..” Silver glanced upwards and saw the moon directly above them. “I believe that it’s almost midnight.”

“Still-”

Silver cut him off. “We can’t do anything more than to hope that she made it out alive. All of you have been trained by Tyler, and have eaten the red crystals. You guys have a more of an advantage running away without tiring too fast. From my guess, the other players probably didn’t have as many red crystals as you guys.”

“I-” Ronald sighed. “I know I shouldn’t worry, but is having four or five crystals really going to help us outrun the others? I mean, I understand if we had more than twenty like you.”

“Look even if I ate over twenty, it doesn’t mean I became some kind of superhero. Eventually, I will run out of energy and stamina.”

Ronald messed up his hair in frustration. “I was so close to helping Salphie out. I was right there, but I was afraid of being tagged ‘it’ and I didn’t want to die.”

“I understand your mindset.” Silver softly spoke.

“I don’t think you do. You Tyler, Rose, and Jasper are ten times stronger and faster than all three of us combined. I even believe you guys could survive this game perfectly fine without becoming tagged.”

“I wouldn’t know until the game is over.”

“No, I believe you would. You have the power and stamina to outlast all of us.” Ronald spoke with jealousy.

“Then instead of worrying about what I could do, shouldn’t you worry about keeping alive as well?”

“I-” Ronald felt ashamed at the stare that Silver was giving him. It was not a stare of hatred or anger, but of confidence that Ronald could keep on moving forward. “Yea…” He gave up saying anymore than necessary.

“Well then, I’m going to go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.” Silver started to walk past her. “We’re going to need all our energy for tomorrow or we won’t last.”

“Yea…”

Silver walked down the stairs and Ronald followed after. Both of them got into the elevator and got off on Silver’s floor.

“Aren’t you going to your room?” Silver cocked her head a bit confused.

“Well, I was wondering if we could sleep in the same room and watch each other’s back. Honestly I don’t think I’ll sleep well by myself wondering when they will barge into my room when I’m sleeping.” He was embarrassed at his words. “I don’t mind if I take the first shift.”

Silver thought about it, she was going to prop up the door with furniture and set some traps around the window. Having someone watch over her back throughout part of the night was something invaluable. What Ronald stated was highly possible and she did not want to be jumped on unexpectedly.

“Fine, though didn’t you pay for your room?”

“Actually no. I sneaked in through the back and up stairs.”

“I see.”

They walked towards Silver’s room. She pulled out her key and opened the door for both of them to get inside. Silver closed the door behind them and look around for anything that she could find. She saw a chest next to the door and she started to push it towards the door. Ronald came over and helped her prop up the door for safety.

With heavy breath, Ronald slid down with a sigh. “You don’t know how much better this actually makes me feel. Sleeping by myself would’ve driven me crazy thinking about what could happen.” He spoke honestly to her.

Silver wondered why Ronald was spilling his guts to her, but then realized that in the past people naturally started to talk to her about their problems. She didn’t know why, but later on they became more relieved and fought more vigorously than before.

“Oh! They have a shower!” Ronald got up excited, when he saw he bathroom. He then stopped himself and turned towards Silver. “Ladies first.” He motioned towards her.

“I’m fine. You can go first. I’m going to eat something anyways.”

“Okay~” Ronald spoke with elated voice. He rushed into the bathroom and turned on the water.

Silver walked over towards the table and started to take out the remaining food that she had left. She noticed that today was the last day that her food would last, she had to go out and buy food for herself in the supermarket.

All she had left was a bag of chips, an apple, water, and a chicken sandwich. Picking up the sandwich, she ate it without a single thought of saving it for later. Early in the morning, she was going to go out and buy some more anyway.

Time went by and Ronald came out of the bathroom refreshed. Silver took her turn and quickly washed herself. Enjoying the warm water that one wouldn’t usually get as much of throughout later in the game.

While she was showering, she heard a loud exclamation from Ronald and some strange tumbling-like sound in the room, causing her to suddenly turn off the water and listen quietly outside. She grabbed a towel on the side and tied it around herself. Her hand motioned, she took out the sword from her storage as she quickly got out and rested her back on the wall.

She slowly reached over towards the door handle.

“Silver!” Ronald shouted in alarm.

Silver pulled opened the door and rushed out with sword in hand, ready to strike down her enemy.