'What if the kittens get injured?' Alex asked, while staring straight ahead.
'I'd rather die than let the kittens get injured,' was Magnus' answer. Alex coughed.
'Agreed.'
Freya, generous as she is, decided to gift a litter of kittens to Hotel Valhalla. Odin, smart as he is, gave them their own floor and decided to ask a few einherjar to take care of them. And Alex and Magnus, lucky as they are, managed to get a spot on the team (for now, at least).
The activity had been named 'kitten day-care to the death.' The most worrisome thing was the possibility that something would happen to the cats (they did not care about what would happen to them. They were somehow going to die anyway, that was part of hotel Valhalla activities with the exception of the classes Bob Ross gave).
Alex was whistling a tune when they stepped out of the elevator, onto floor 808. Previously, James Daniel and his gang used to live there, but they were forcefully moved to floor 1616 and their rooms were given to the kittens.
In the middle of the room stood an older lady with a vibrantly purple coat - Mags, one of the more typical old ladies in hotel Valhalla, with hobbies such as knitting, cats, reading romance novels and going all out in the weekly brawl armed with a knitted scarf.
'Hello, Magnus and Alex,' she greeted the two younger Einherjar. 'Nice that you two...' her words were interrupted by a loud meowing. A large, gray cat came prancing around the corner.
'Hey, I thought there were supposed to be kittens?'
'Yes, but I brought Mittens along, so that he has some more social interaction!' Magnus had to try his hardest to not say that Mittens had Mags' twenty-something other cats to play with on her own floor.
'You arrived just before feeding time!' Magnus could not help but notice that Mags got a dangerous glint in her eyes. 'Eh, yeah, what are they going to...'
'They eat mostly very small bites of fish. Except for my cutesy-wootsy Mittens of course, he gets a big fish, doesn't he?' she said, while pinching the cat's cheeks. Mittens pulled his face out of her hands. He looked annoyed, but Magnus figured that could also just be the shape of his face. You never knew with cats.
'Two other ladies are already preparing the food. If you two could just round up our little devils?' Mags looked at them with a broad smile that made Magnus feel both loved and uncomfortable.
Alex took a deep, dramatic breath. 'Alright. Kittens are fast and tiny. I don't know if... Wait, there is one!' Without waiting on Magnus to answer, Alex bolted towards the tiny ball of fur on the floor. 'Come here... Ah!' She tripped over a plastic toy on the floor and fell flat on her face. The kitten sprinted into its' room. Magnus, who was a little slow today, shuffled over to Alex. 'Do you need help?'
'Go get that kitten!'
'It ran into its room.'
'Go after it, or something!' Magnus jogged over to the door, while Alex tried to get up from the floor again in a very complicated manner.
Magnus put his hand onto the doorknob and tried to open the door. It did not give him. Magnus tried harder, but it was no use. By his feet, the cat flap swung around a few times, as if the kitten was secretly laughing at him. 'Alex...'
His significant other was already walking through his legs, in the form of a cat with pink and green fur. She hopped through the cat flap. Magnus heard a lot of meowing from behind the door. He took a few steps back. Maybe he should try to find another kitten.
One just ran past. Magnus dove down to grab it, but was too late and the kitten ran off, into its room. He looked around, annoyed, until he saw something pink and green prance around on the floor. It was cat-Alex, with one of the kittens by the scruff of its neck.
'I see you are truly becoming a mother,' Magnus commented. Alex droppen the kitten of in front of Mags, before hissing at Magnis. She ran through another cat flap, ready to get the next baby.
'Eh... can I do anything else? I think I will do more harm than good if I try to catch kittens as well.' Mags petted the little kitten on it's fluffy head. 'Hm, I guess I asked for too many people...' Magnus gulped. He prayed to the gods that nobody would run in to throw him out the window now that he was worthless.
'... So you can just sit here and look after Mittens!' Magnus stared the fat, spoiled cat into its permanently annoyed face. '...great.' At least he would not be thrown out of the window (That was his least favorite way of dying).
He sat down next to Mittens, who put his fat body next to Magnus and looked at him, clearly conscious of the situation. Meanwhile, cat-alex kept bringing kittens to the group.
Just as she was done and she changed back into a human, two girls came out with bowls of cat food. Magnus peeked at the bowls. He had no idea what was in the cat food and he did not want to know. Mags had said fish, but it looked like it could be anything: immortal goat, einherjar left-overs (interpret that however you want), ancient monster, fruits and vegetables.
'Good, girls! Now give it to the cats!' Mags had not needed to say that, as the cats more or less decided to give it to themselves. They were trying to climb up the legs of the girls, who were screeching at this moment. Mags pulled a few of the kittens off, but they climbed back on quicker than she and the girls could flick them off. One of them dumped her bowl onto the floor. A little bit of food rolled over the brim, but at least they were not hanging onto her pants anymore.
The other girl was wearing a skirt and socks. She did not dare to drop the bowl of food until she herself dropped to the floor. Her body quickly disappeared.
'What...'
'I think the nails might be a little venomous,' Mags pondered. 'Well, Magnus, I guess you'll have to join Sheryll in her work now.'
Sheryll looked confused. 'Wait, but they also climbed up my legs. How am I not dead?'
'It got onto your pants, not into your leg. Good job on throwing that bowl down, that way you gave them less time to climb up!'
The kittens, meanwhile, were gorging on the cat substance. 'What do we do after this?' Alex inquired. Mags absentmindedly petted Mittens. 'Oh, we give them a bath. As you see, they get quite dirty after eating. She vaguely gestured at the kittens, who were indeed getting themselves covered in greasy cat stuff.
'Isn't that dangerous? Because of the poison and all that?' Magnus asked. Mags looked at him and shrugged. 'They still need to be taken care off!' She said it in a tone that did not invite Magnus to talk back. He shrugged and looked at Alex and Sheryll, who also as if they were not certain about it being a good idea.
Mags brought them to the back, where a bathtub was standing. 'Now, if Alex can collect the cats again, Sheryll can fill the tub and Magnus can stand by,' she suggested (But it was not really a suggestion because it was going to happen that way whether they liked it or not). Sheryll and Magnus got to work on filling the tub while Alex changed into a cat and pranced outside to round up the little, cute, annoying fluffballs.
She put them straight into the tub, even though Mags protested every single time she did so. The kittens mewed out loud whenever one got into the bathtub. They tried to climb out, but to no avail - Alex kept pushing them back. Meanwhile, Mittens waddled into the room. He placed his big body right next to Magnus and started to stare at him again.
'We now softly put some shampoo on the kittens...' Mags picked up a bottle and put some on her hand, before softly massaging it into a kitten. A lot of dirt began to come off. Even more dirt followed. And more.
The dirt kept getting worse and worse. 'How dirty are these kittens!?' Sheryll shreaked. Alex and Magnus could only stare. Mittens proofed that he was the only smart one in the room, as he quickly ran outside.
The dirt literally started to pile up. Mags stopped putting shampoo into the kittens' fur, but it did nothing to stop the dirt from coming. Eventually, Sheryll took a deep breath and reached for the shower head. She turned it onto the kitten.
She might as well have opened a dirt-faucet. All the dirt now came out at once. Magnus and Alex found their speed back and ran out of the room before the dirt pile could suffocate them. Mags, who was used to hotel Valhalla's nonsense, managed to follow them quickly after. Sheryll was not so lucky.
The kittens, however, seemed fine. They all came prancing past the dirt mountain, into the hallway, seemingly still mowing for food and attention. Magnus and Alex did not feel like giving it anymore, if they had to be fully honest. 'Eh... we promised to help one of our roommates with paper-marchéeing,' Magnus murmured. Mags gave him an annoyed look.
'So you are just going to bail out now? While we must still clean up five of the kittens?' Magnus quickly nodded.
'Actually, yes! Mallory is scary!' He flew towards the elevator, with Mittens on his heels. The cat got into the elevator with him. Alex could just see Magnus looking afraid as it went down and the doors closed.
'Cleaning up... the other cats?' she asked in a grave voice. Mags nodded.
'Yes. And we'll go to the shower room for that, that sounds safer.' Now Alex was glad that she stayed behind. The shower room was a room filled with, as the name suggested, showers, for when the sanitary on people's own floors broke down. One could really start some mayhem when one tried to clean up a few uncleanable kittens there.
'...I'll follow,' she told Mags, while they walked to the lift, Mags with three and Alex with two poison kitties in her arms.
The elevator brought them to the shower floor. There was no-one to be seen in the room with group showers. They only heard some distant singing from one of the private showers. 'Perfect. Now, Alex, put the kittens on the ground.' Mags was already walking off to the button with which the showers could be activated all at once.
'Don't they need some shampoo?'
'Their fur first needs to get wet.'
'Their fur is already wet.'
Mags did not say anything while she turned on the shower. With a lot of mewing, the water fell onto the kittens.
A seemingly infinite amount of dirt came out of their fur coats. It was too much, even for the shower room. Before she had a chance to be suffocated, Alex slipped on some of the mud and fell onto her head. Somehow, Mags must have also perished, except there was no-one else around to see it.
What was known, however, is that there are now five kittens walking around hotel Valhalla unchecked, commiting crimes all around. No-one ever knew when they would strike next, which caused quite some more mayhem indeed (Oh, and also known is that Magnus was seen a few times fighting with Mittens before suddenly appearing in his room. Make of that what you want).