text: [Themes: family friendly, anti-hero, villain protagonist]
  
  Cat made his way out of the hut of a house and back toward the barn. He was really running around this morning!
  
  The village fanned out around him, he cocked his head this way and that, ears swiveling toward dissonant sounds, hoping for another mission. Crow was probably admiring her reflection in the water trough with the rising sun as the backdrop, and the last time he bothered her, he earned a heavy bonk on the head. Those shiny wings were ridiculously strong.
  
  He heard both Alice and the baker, Ms. Turner, at the same time. Judging by the squeals, the boys were pulling Alice's pigtails again. Ms Turner, on the other paw, was making a lot of scuffling and grunting sounds near the bakery.
  
  > help Ms. Turner.
  Cat rushed to the bakery, and he found Ms. Turner brushing off her hands happily. She'd gotten the sack of what must have been flour into the bakery all by herself! Cat purred with approval when he watched her face glow. Content that nothing had went wrong, he wiggled his tail happily before spending the rest of the day building up his strength.
  
  > At night.
  "Crow."
  
  Cat stretched out and stared at the barn roof, at a tendril of web, saturated with dust, dangling from a horizontal beam. It was lit to make it silver, as if it were the hair of an old woman.
  
  Yet again, she was preening her already perfect feathers. "What is it, kitty?"
  
  His tail twitched. "It's two days til the eclipse huh?"
  
  "Why, yes. It is."
  
  "Well, I'm worried about the town. I'm not sure if they can take the amount of magic there will be."
  
  "You mean the bats."
  
  Cat gulped. "Yeah. And the rats."
  
  Crow hopped over and settled herself beside Cat even though she hated sitting on hay—she thought it was too soddy.
  
  "Don't worry about it. I can take care of those unsightly winged vermin, and you can fill your stomach with those rotten earth-scuttling ones."
  
  "But... if the rats get to the humans, and if the bats get to the young ones..." Cat remembered. He remembered an era centuries ago when darkness descended, where men whipped themselves and begged a God to relieve them, where women concocted all the medicines they could and failed, where children hid inside houses, their bodies covered in boils and pain. It had been a failure of his duty, and he promised to serve humanity in penance forever.
  
  He could smell the foulness of the rats inside this barn, and he could hear them chattering, snickering at him. He didn't understand their evil language, but he knew they were scheming. These rats... there was only a certain number he could kill in one day, a certain number his stupid, clumsy paws could even catch in one day.
  
  "I will help you, Cat." Crow slid her beak through his fur, and he purred at the soothing sensation. "There is nothing in the world more important to me than a friend like you."
  
  He could feel sticky tears developing when he thought of Crow's sacrifices of betraying her crow cult, of teaching him the ways to destroy the evil ones. The full moon—that was the day evil had their biggest chance to comeback.
  
  The next morning, Crow had reported no missions, which seemed rather suspicious. Cat saw no rats around, so he had nothing to eat. Resigned, he knew there were only a few places he could go for food.
  
  > go to Ms. Turner.
  Ms. Turner, the baker, was a thickset woman with a love of pastries. Her boyfriend has his own farm out in the plains, and Cat sometimes sees him bringing treats to the village for her. Otherwise, Turner gets the grain from the local farmers and bakes delicious bread for everyone. When she has eggs and sugar or fruit, she might try for a cake.
  
  What Cat really was looking for were the mice. Mice loved the bakery and always attacked Ms. Turner's stores. Ah, mice. Cuter, fluffier, and more squeaky (less chittery) than their rat counterparts, mice were hard to catch but put up little fight when they were caught. Cat licked his lips. Yes, he had been clumsy the past few centuries, but he had already lost most of his lives.
  
  Cat crept into Ms. Turner's store through the doorway, slipped close to a corner where some chaff had drifted, and mreowed when Ms. Turner grabbed his tail and gently pulled. He whipped around, fixed a glare at her, before darting underneath the table.
  
  "C'mon, Ms. Turner..." Cat mumbled.
  
  "Now, now, Cat—" she was the only person who actually referred to him by his English name "—if you're in here to steal food for your avian friend, I'm afraid that's not possible."
  
  He flattened his ears. "I have to get food for Crow too."
  
  "But if you're here to eat the mice—" she frowned "—I suppose I'll have to let you in, won't I?" She returned to working—sorting grains or whatever humans did with those nasty carbohydrates.
  
  The dismissal hurt Cat a little—the majority of the townspeople welcomed him into their homes. He picked up his tail and moved on, spending the rest of the day hunting within and in the proximity of the store and the storage shed. Crow came in a few times to borrow a mice or two and to review the chant with Cat. Cat fed himself up—for the energy—but anxiety trickled into his stomach.
  
  Will the ritual make him strong enough to defeat all the rats? The problem he'd always had was how ubiquitous rats were, how they swarmed and infested and festered. Ah, those glorious days when he had all nine lives... how he regretted wasting so many on foolish things.
  
  That night, Cat gazed up at the sky, satisfied with Ms. Turner's mice. Crow was strong enough to defeat the bats. Was he strong enough to decimate the rats?
  
  > Lunar Eclipse Day
  Cat did his morning stretches, pranced to Ms. Turner's for some mice, and when the night finally came, headed to the forest to begin the ritual.
  
  Crow followed him, giving her unwavering support to him. She soared on above, cawing when she saw the bats on the horizon like a jarring swarm of starlings or bees. Cawing when she saw the bushes and leaves rustling.
  
  He flicked his eyes to the full moon and halted in his steps. Forget the lakeside. He had to start now. Immediately, he began to chant. It sounded like sirens to his ears, melodic in a lethal, lulling way. Until he got to the part he could never say correctly, the part where he had to grind his teeth together, where he felt his throat grinding on itself just so he could make those whining, screeching, hissing sounds.
  
  He was doing it wrong. Everything was wrong.
  
  Everything came out like pollution, and by the end of it, the lunar eclipse hung in the sky, his throat was sore, and nothing—
  
  Tiny claws pierced through his skin from everywhere, and their fester had just reached his nose—the rats. But more than that. There were soft, fuzzy bodies with them with their pippy-squeaky sounds and quivering noses. Mice.
  
  Cat swung around, trying to throw them off as they aimed for his flanks, his belly, and his eyes. He was literally being torn, torn to shreds, and it hurt like God himself had smote him.
  
  One life ripped away, and soon, soon, as blood gurgled from his mouth and the tiny cleaves on his body, he was losing his last life.
  
  A pudgy rat entered his fading vision.
  
  "This is what you get for messing with the innocent mice, Cat. I don't care what Crow had planned for you—we kill you." The rat kind brandished his own set of disproportionately large claws and dug it into Cat's head, in, in, like a drill through his skull.
  
  It hurt. God, it hurt.
  
  > Epilogue: Blood
  Crow flapped her wings angrily as she observed the horrifying scene. Ah, it had been entrancing to watch Cat's beautiful blood splash from his body, but she needed Cat's body to bring Lucifer back. She flew down and charged at the rat king. Make these rats and mice and land crawlers now what it means to betray Crow.
  
  She picked up the gloating rat and flung him onto the ground. He was dazed, and she did it again and again despite his desperate pleas. The others didn't dare come closer—not with the lunar eclipse empowering a bird more than a mammal. The rat king and Cat died beside each other.
  
  Blood pooled at Crow's taloned feet, and she spread her wings wide to the frightened land crawlers. The bats were just settling on the branches.
  
  "We have an entire village before us." Crow bent down to taste the salty blood. The rats had spoiled her original plan, but she could easily go for a blood sacrifice. But she needed more. "Anyone care to join?"
  
  Endings: 1 / 5